Chapter 350 - The Body Politic part 8

Like a red flag signaling the end of a race, dawn's vermillion light ushered in the climax of the orgy. Those who had not yet succumbed to exhaustion sprinted to the finish line, then wearily began the trek back home. More than a few of the revelers collapsed where they stood (or bent, or knelt). Those who could not drag themselves home slumped to death-like slumber, right there beneath the open sky, too exhausted to seek shelter. They snored, oblivious of the advancing storm, even when the first light showers began to patter down upon their bodies. The vampires, of course, had fled to their subterranean burrows at first light. The city, naked bodies strewn through all its alleys and open courtyards, looked as if it were the site of a brutal massacre, or had been visited by a lethal plague.

If this were a modern day motion picture, now would be the perfect time for our enemy to launch a surprise attack. If the God King's forces had fallen on us right then, they could have wiped us from the face of the earth with very little resistance. I had no idea what a motion picture was—it would be another 20,000 years before Christiaan Huygens invented the so-called "magic lantern"-- but our vulnerability troubled me. I saw the city as our enemies would see it. Men and women strewn from one end of the city to the other, drunk, naked, snoring in the rain. As I stumbled through the winding alleys of Penthos, my skin prickled at the thought of the God King attacking us. How foolish we were to lower our guards like this, I thought. And I was just as guilty as the rest of them! I'd let myself get caught up in the excitement, the drumming, the sex. If I wished to lead these people to victory, I had to hold myself to a higher standard. I needed to be the Father, not Gon.

A few guards still patrolled the city walls, I saw. That was some consolation. A handful of immortals kept watch as well. They had not taken part in the orgy, and drifted through the city streets like grim phantoms, their expressions sober and disapproving. I nodded guiltily to these guardians as I passed and they bowed back to me. I knew that they recognized me, now that the orgy was over and their senses were no longer obfuscated by the seething multitudes, but I did not regret my lapse in judgment. I felt released. Renewed. I had rediscovered my purpose. And I was ready now to wage war on our enemies.

I passed through the western gate unchallenged and walked to a nearby waterway, a broad and shallow cataract the people called White Snake due to its zigzagging path. The currents there were swift and bracing. They leapt in white spumes over the rocks, which were like speckled gray eggs, so smoothly had the passage of the water shaped them over the eons.

Zenzele had retired to our lair long before daybreak, but others had come down to the river to bathe. Mortals mostly. They did not linger at the water, for it was very cold, and none of them seemed to recognize me, or if they did they were too exhausted to get worked up about it. They splashed their bodies wearily before trudging back home, shoulders slumped, feet barely clearing the ground. I watched them as I slunk into the water, gasping at the cold. I admired their supple mortal forms while I washed away the blood and sweat and various other bodily fluids that had dried to a crust on my flesh. They were like flowers, I thought, so fragile and short-lived. Not like this cold white immortal form. I looked at my hands—Yul's hands, really—and shuddered. So very unnatural! More like stone than human flesh.

I strode dripping from the water and shivered my body vigorously to dry it. Thunder muttered overhead. The storm clouds were thickening, crowding out more and more of the heavens. It had begun to sprinkle again, the raindrops making a sibilant shushing sound in the nearby treetops. Before those sprinkles could become a deluge, I headed home.

I decided to try a more rapid clip, test my control of this unfamiliar body. I was acclimating to Yul's physique. I thought I was ready.

I took to the air, bounding toward a nearby tree, meaning to land upon one of its boughs before bouncing off to another. That was how we blood drinkers travelled in those days, flying from tree to tree. But I miscalculated the force required to propel myself to my target and quite dramatically overshot it, crashing spectacularly to the ground on the far side of my objective.

I sat up, ruefully picking leaves and broken branches from my hair. No one had seen, thank the ancestors, but it might be best, I thought, to proceed at a more practicable pace. The last thing I wanted to do was crash into someone's hut, or injure some blameless mortal passerby.

"I need my own body back," I grumbled under my breath.

It won't make any difference, Yul whispered in my ear. Either way the God King will defeat you.

"You be quiet," I said sternly to the specter, speaking aloud as if he were a real person.

Yul fell silent, but I could feel him there in the back of my mind, plotting insurrection. I tried to read his thoughts but he concealed them from me, confounding my efforts with rhymes and recollections.

He was getting sly.

That worried me, too.

How much influence did the Uroboran have on me? This was not like the Sharing, where the memories and personality of the other vampire's psyche faded into the subconscious, recallable should those memories be needed but not intrusive. I had thought it like Sharing but it was not. I could feel Yul's hatred as though it were my own. When he spoke up in my mind, it was as if I were hearing a real voice. Could his spirit poison my decisions, or cause me to falter at some critical juncture? I suspected he could do both of those things, and more, if I was not vigilant enough. I feared he could actually take possession of my body if I were somehow rendered unconscious.

It was a disquieting thought.

I could not risk a direct confrontation with Khronos until I had rid myself of this foreign flesh, this alien mind-within-my-mind.

I must make it a priority.