Chapter 340 - Irema part 6

Irema rose at dusk and joined Tapas in his vigil. Sitting cross-legged beside him, she gazed out across the steppes, toward Fen'Dagher, with a pensive expression. "Did you rest, or did you sit here guarding me all day?" she finally asked, glancing up at her husband. The wind tossed her curly hair around her face so that she looked like a woman underwater. Tapas smiled but did not answer, watching with bleeding eyes as the last light of day faded from the heavens. Irema sighed and took me from her husband's lap. She turned me around to face her. "I suppose he kept you up all day, too," she said, looking amused and exasperated and somewhat embarrassed, all at the same time.

I shrugged with my eyebrows.

Tapas rose and stretched his arms above his head. He cracked his neck, then smiled down at his wife. "We should get moving, if you've had enough rest," he said. "Perhaps we'll catch some dinner on the hoof again tonight." He chuckled at his own joke, looking very fierce and dangerous with his blazing red mane and protuberant features. He had extremely long fangs. They were probably the longest fangs I have ever seen on a Cro-magnon vampire. Not surprising, really. Much of Tapas's anatomy was disproportionately large.

"Yes, I am rested," Irema said. He was only making conversation, but I could tell that he had hurt her feelings a little.

Careful, giant! I thought. This old man will get you over his grandchildren!

Irema stuffed me into her sack with a rote apology and they took off.

They ran all through the night, moving steadily east. Only once did they falter, and that was when Irema stopped suddenly to cry, "There it is! She has found it!"

I could not see what she was talking about but I listened with great interest.

"What is it?" Tapas asked.

"Aioa has found the other arm!" Irema said. "It was lashed to a stone at the bottom of a river."

All of a sudden, Irema whipped the rucksack from her shoulders and hauled my head out of it. She held me up, smiling exultantly.

"Did you hear that, grandfather? We have found another piece of your body! It is your…" She closed her eyes, head tilted a little to one side. Her eyes flashed open. "Right arm! She has found your right arm, and she believes another piece is not too far away. She is sending the arm to Asharoth with an Eternal named Sunni. She means to continue after the other."

So she can see what her twin sister sees, I thought. That was an impressive talent!

Despite their physical weakness, my granddaughters, like their father, were remarkably gifted blood drinkers. But that is a thing I have noticed time and time again. It seems the weak ones, the ones like Ilio and the twins, were often possessed of powerful and curious talents, where the true immortals, Eternals like myself, were just immensely strong and invulnerable. But perhaps that is our rare talent. Where other blood drinkers can read minds or light fires with their thoughts or send out an invisible Eye to view things at a distance, we true immortals are simply impossible to kill.

My granddaughter Irema was remarkably gifted. Not only was she able to vanish from sight, to become invisible to the senses of other vampires, she was also able to see through her sister's eyes. I would learn later that they could communicate in that manner only on occasion, when one of them were sufficiently excited, but I still thought it a marvelous trick.

I have met no other vampire twins, not in the thirty millennia that I have walked this Earth. Mortal twins are rare enough. I believe I read somewhere that twins account for only twenty per one thousand live births. Then to receive the Living Blood, and for both siblings to survive the transformation...! I am sure there have been others; I have just never met any myself.

Yes, vampire twins are exceedingly rare, so I cannot say whether my granddaughters' ability to read one another's thoughts was a faculty exclusive to them, or if it is a common thing for all vampire twins. Regardless, I was impressed by Irema's unusual talent, and very pleased that another piece of my body had been recovered.

Before she returned me to the rucksack, Irema turned my head so that I was facing east. There, at the furthest reaches of our sight, the Urals rose up to meet the heavens. Tiny with distance, just barely visible at the rim of the world, they were like a dream of black mountains, a promise of homecoming. There, my kingdom waited. Asharoth! And my beloved Zenzele.

"The Holy Mountains," Irema proclaimed.

"We will be there soon," Tapas said. "Tomorrow night. Or the night after."

"And then we make war," I would have said if I could speak.

But I could not speak. I could only gaze on the mountains and abide.