Chapter 377 - Final Words

"Can you feel it?" I said to Lucas, standing in the chill, echoing darkness of the cave. "At last, my long life has come full circle, here on this mountain, treading in the dust of those I loved most in my mortal life. Eyya, Nyala, Brulde, I return to you! Venerable ancestors, prepare a place at the fire for your son!"

Lukas, my amoral acolyte, snorted in derision. "Getting a little maudlin, aren't we?" But I would not let him spoil my mood.

"Have I not the right?" I asked. "On this, the final night of my life? No? Well, indulge me then. You shan't suffer much longer."

I ran my fingers over the weeping stone walls, making them real, for it all seemed so dream-like now: this night, our journey from Liege, my entire interminable existence. Is this what it is like for mortal men, I wondered, at the end, when they feel the thread of their life coming to its tattered end? This sense of unreality, as if their entire existence was nothing but a dream?

It was both beautiful and ghastly, like poetry writ in blood: the ultimate futility of life. The mind-numbing banality. Yet no two lives are ever the same. Every one is unique. Like the pattern of a snowflake, once it is gone it will never be repeated.

My life.

The two words circled in my mind, repeating over and over, until they lost all meaning.

My life. My life. My life my life mylife mylifemylifemylife.

It was mine and mine alone. I had lived it, I had used it thoroughly, and now I gave it up.

Such a glorious thought. Yet I felt like weeping.

"I have lived for thirty thousand years," I said, careful to keep my emotions from my voice. "My mortal descendants number in the millions. I have lost more loved ones than you could possibly imagine. I have murdered nations and gorged upon their blood. I have purged my own race-- twice!-- and battled the Catholic Church to preserve it. Have I not the right to be a little melodramatic tonight, on this last night of my life?"

"Well, excuuuse me!" Lukas said. A passable imitation of the comedian Steve Martin.

I rolled my eyes in the darkness.

The cave seemed smaller now than the last time I had visited. It always seemed slightly smaller each time I came. A curious phenomenon. I have never been quite certain if it was real or simply my imagination.

"I spent a lot of time here after I became an immortal," I said to Lukas. "I was really a terrible vampire in the beginning. An orphan blood drinker, I had no inkling of the powers I possessed, and no self-control. In those early days, a single whiff of mortal blood could send me reeling into a mindless feeding frenzy. I was an ignorant, clumsy, rapacious fiend, a danger to every mortal around me. Yet I was unwilling to forsake my loved ones. I couldn't bear the thought of being parted from them. So I retreated here, to this cave, to watch over them from afar."

"They call that stalking now," Lukas said. "You can go to jail for it."

"Even for a blood drinker, my senses are especially acute," I went on, ignoring his jibes, "So I could watch over my loved ones from this distant aerie without endangering them. I watched my wives and husband grow old, watched my children grow up and takes wives and husbands of their own. I wept here in joy when my grandchildren were born. Once or twice, when I was feeling especially lonely, I snuck down to the village under cover of darkness. I would draw near to our wetus and crouch down beside the tent. Listen to their sleeping breaths. My handsome Brulde's bear-like snores! I would inhale the scent of their bodies with such terrible longing. Oh, how badly I wished to rejoin them! To throw aside the flap of our wetus and stride boldly inside and proclaim, 'It is I, your husband Gon! I have returned to you!' But I did not dare. Even as I dreamed of our reunion, my hunger for their blood lashed and coiled inside my guts like angry serpents. My fingers curled and uncurled, trembling with the desire to clamp around their necks. I could see myself pulling them to my chest, yanking their heads to one side and plunging my fangs into their necks. I wanted to suck every last drop of blood from their bodies. So I would retreat, before the urge to kill them overrode my love. Aching with loneliness. Weeping of despair and self-loathing. I would retreat back here, to this distant mountaintop, and return to my endless, awful vigil."

I glided deeper into the cave. Were I a mortal, I would have been blind, fumbling my way through a lightless void, but vampire eyes are adapted for darkness. Any illumination at all—it matters not how meager—is enough for us to see by. The winking ember of a distant campfire. A single shooting star.

The walls, I saw, still bore the marks of my occupancy, even after thirty thousand years. Here I had made crude representations of my people, etching the figures into the soft limestone with my knife. They were little more than stick figures, my drawings. My love of art has never translated to any particular skill. But it was something to do during the long lonely nights I stood watch over my tribe.

Here was a rendering of my Brulde. The squiggles around his lollipop head was my interpretation of his hair, a lion's mane of golden curls. And, of course, I'd given him an enormous cock and balls. In my etching, his genitals were nearly as large as his body. It was a slight exaggeration, I admit, but I was lonely for my E'hemann. This Venus-like figure, with gravid breasts and outsized hips, was my beloved Eyya, and this skinny form with the angry slits for eyes was my tempestuous Nyala. Here were my children, my grandchildren, and this broad figure was my father. Many a night I sat here by my fire, talking to the drawings as if they were real. And in my darker hours, when I was mad with loneliness and despair, they sometimes answered back.

I ran my fingers over the moist indentations. Over the millennia, the trickle of condensed moisture had scored my etchings deep into the limestone. Nothing in this universe is permanent. Even the stars will someday wink out. It was a wonder that my drawings had lasted so long, that they would outlive even myself. Yet here, in these stone walls, and in my recent heretical writings, my mortal loved ones would be remembered. They would never be forgotten. It gave me great satisfaction.

"So how much longer are you going to be?" Lukas asked, and I scowled in irritation.

"A few more minutes," I said, trying to keep the annoyance from my voice. "An hour. All night if I wish! Soon I will be dust and you will be free to go wherever you want, kill whomever you wish. Surely you can be patient a little longer."

"Yeah, yeah," Lukas said, kicking at a stone. "I think I'll start with that hot little number from the hardware store. You know the one. That cunt that rang us up?"

"I know the one."

"I wonder how sex will feel now that I'm a vampire," Lukas said. "I haven't had any pussy since you gave me the Living Blood. I can see better, smell better, taste better. I wonder if my cock can feel better." He laughed his awful mirthless laugh. "Check it out, Drac! You've given me my cherry back. I don't ever remember being a virgin, not even when I was a little boy. My old man was selling my ass for drug money as far back as I can remember. My two oldest memories are getting a candy cane for Christmas, and some stinking old Belgian cramming his cock down my throat. I remember Dad marching me into the bedroom. His hands on my shoulders. The old faggot waiting for me there, sitting on the side of the bed with his big rotten grin—"

"Yes, it will feel better," I interrupted. "The Strix enhances all of our senses."

"Cool," Lukas said. He fell silent, thinking.

I sighed and continued with my pilgrimage.

Like a Christian approaching the shrine of a saint, I shuffled deeper into the cavern, past my carvings, around a pile of rubble where a section of the ceiling had collapsed, across the shallow pit where I had spread my sleeping furs so very long ago. There, at the far end of the cave, in a small naturally formed alcove, stood three cairns. I had raised the stone mounds to mark the resting place of my long-lost mortal mates.

Nyala.

Eyya.

Brulde.

I had maintained these memorials for thirty millennia, visiting every fifty years or so. Oh, once or twice I let it go as long as a hundred, maybe two hundred years, but I do not think that unreasonable. Thirty thousand years is a long time. I was usually pretty conscientious about it.

As I had done a thousand times before, I approached the cairns. I knelt down before them, placed my hands upon the central mound, head lowered, eyes closed.

"Hello, my beloved ones," I whispered. Lukas lurked nearby, listening, but I ignored him. Let him make light of my words if he wished. I did not care. "I have returned to you. This is the final time I shall come to pay homage at your shrine. Pray that I succeed in freeing my soul from this prison that is my undying flesh. I miss you terribly and would join you in the ghost world tonight."

As always happens when I visited their graves, a hiccup of emotion caused my throat to close up. I felt cold blood tears upon my cheeks.

"I am so tired!" I finished gutturally. "I want to come home!"

I swiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, feeling self-conscious now. I waited for Lukas to say something cruel and scornful. He had drifted closer while I was praying to my loved ones. But he held his tongue. Wisely, I might add.

I rose and began to straighten the cairns, picking up the stones that had fallen away and placing them carefully back where they went. Only a couple of the stones had fallen out of place, though more than fifty years had passed since I'd last performed this duty.

It bothered me that there would be no one to tend to their graves once I was dead. But it didn't really matter, I suppose. I'm sure this little ritual was more of a comfort for me than it ever was for them. Soon, I would be with them in the spirit realm, and these earthly concerns would curl away like the shed skin of a snake.

I wondered what it would be like when my physical form fell to dust and I ascended, a being of pure thought rather than flesh. Would I soar up like a phoenix, a bird of fire rising from its own smoldering ashes? Or would I be light, formless and intangible?

You will find out soon enough, I said to myself.

I was delaying.

I knew I was, even as I pretended that I wasn't.

I was scared to death.

Death... such an alien concept!

How hypocritical of me, this fear. How many souls had I ferried across the River Styx, and here I was, shaking in my boots at the thought of dying. I had been Death's delivery boy for thirty thousand years, but for me, an Eternal, it was the Great Unknown.

"Quit being a baby!" Zenzele would have said.

I placed the last errant stone upon the cairn, patting it like a cherished pet. I started to wipe my hands upon my pants and then I stopped myself. I held them up and looked at them. I considered them a moment, the moist dust on my palms, and then smeared the grime across my cheeks, drawing stripes upon my face like Native American war paint.

The dust of my mortal lovers.

To the very end, I thought.

Now I was ready.

"I am ready," I said to Lukas.

"About time," Lukas said.

I rose, started toward the mouth of the cavern. Lukas stepped out of the way, then fell in behind me. Neither of us spoke.

As we neared the entrance of the cave, Lukas loped ahead of me. He had propped the axe against the wall. He bent to retrieve it and turned in my direction, swinging it up against his shoulder, his lips quirking into a doll's soulless smile.

"Not here!" I snapped, with an implied you fool. Not in this holy place. This ancient shrine. "Outside, under the stars," I said.

"All right," Lukas said with a shrug.

I didn't trust him. I waited for him to precede before continuing on.

He leered at me a moment, then turned and exited the cave.

I ducked out into the starlight. Lukas bounced along the narrow ledge ahead of me. He moved incautiously, though the wind was erratic and the drop considerable. I followed him around the face of the mountain to the north side of the peak, which was not so steeply sloped. The lights of Bad Wildbach glinted between the trees, diamonds strewn on black silk.

The valley below had once given shelter to my tribe, the People of the River. For countless generations, it was our home. Now it hosted an ambitious little spa town. The river that was the life blood of my people was no more. It had shriveled over the millennia, once the glaciers had vanished and it was no longer being fed by the runoff. First to a creek, and then a sluggish stream. The broad and restless watercourse that I had played in as a boy, the river that fed us and bathed our bodies, had been incorporated into the municipality below. It was part of the sewage system now, full of shit and piss and industrial pollutants. You call that modern progress. River to sewer. Tribe to tourist trap. But if I closed my eyes, I could still see it as it had been. Our river. I could smell it, very faintly, in the soil. In the living things around me that had absorbed its molecules into their own organic structures. Mud and dead fish. A smell that always makes me melancholy.

We picked up the rest of our equipment, knife and chains and padlocks, and continued on.

"What are we doing now?" Lukas asked.

"I'd like a clear view of the valley," I said. "It is the last thing I will ever see."

Lukas did not complain. He was thoroughly enjoying this, breathing it all in, like a man preparing to devour a fine meal.

Hard to believe, just a week ago, he was little more than a common criminal. A monster by your modern mortal standards—thief, murderer, child pornographer—but a veritable babe compared to some of the devils who had crossed my path over the course of my very, very long life. Kings who put their own people to the sword by the thousands. Noblewomen who bathed in the blood of their virgin handmaids. Priests who cast wailing babes into the blazing bellies of iron idols. Compared to that lot, my new acolyte was a sneering juvenile delinquent, shooting spitballs at the back of his teacher's head. Nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but on one account: his usefulness to me.

I had to admit he was a handsome man, though. Were he noble, had he a kind heart, I might have taken him as a lover. He had the compact, muscular form I have always found particularly attractive in men. Broad chest. Powerful ox-like shoulders and thick neck. He had chiseled features, raven black hair and penetrating eyes. His face was not perfectly symmetrical. The faces of madmen rarely are. One of his dark, heavy-lidded eyes was larger than the other, and his distinctive Roman nose veered slightly from the center. But I have always found perfection somewhat wearisome. Most of the lovers I took in the past possessed some physical flaw to stimulate my interest. Zenzele's thighs were disproportionately large. Eyya was too plump, and Nyala too thin. Brulde's face was terribly scarred on one side. I had once fallen madly in love with a one-legged Sumerian whore-priestess, even offered her the Blood, though she was murdered before she could make up her mind whether to accept my offer or not.

Does it disturb you, my confession? That I spared this killer's life in part because he aroused me?

Well, it is true.

When I first took him from the dockyards back in Belgium, Lukas had just murdered a minor child, a young woman he and his cohorts had used for their pornography. They had raped and tortured her for days before killing her and dumping the body in the Meuse. I intended to feed on him, get rid of his body in the same icy river he'd discarded the girl-child. But I was seduced by him. I was charmed by his crude male beauty and uncommon wickedness. It was only later, as I came to know him, that I realized he might just be the one that I'd been waiting for, a fiend cruel enough, amoral enough, to help me end my interminable existence.

So I gave him the Blood.

I gave him immortality.

And now, at the end, I find that I must confess: I was more than a little in love with him.

He still repulsed me. I still found him contemptible. But I was also powerfully drawn to him. His absolute lack of any redeeming qualities whatsoever was fascinating, almost hypnotic, to me. Have you not, my readers, found yourselves drawn to, perhaps beyond your powers to resist, some mortal lover you found both loathsome and beguiling? Some repulsive paramour who sent you scrambling for the shower afterwards-- and whom you could not help but dream about later in the refuge of your fresh-laundered sheets?

Oh, yes, you have! Don't lie to me!

That was my Lukas.

Though I'd never deign to touch him in any way that might be construed, by any stretch of the imagination, as intimate—the very thought made me shudder in revulsion!—he was still my "guilty fuck".

I think it time I divest myself of all my pretensions-- now, at the end. All the pretty lies I have told you so that I do not seem quite so despicable.

I spared this man, this rapist, this killer, because he was beautiful to me. There was a part of me that hoped he flourished after I was gone, that some meddling elder did not immediately destroy him. I knew he would come to a bad end. His sort always does. He probably wouldn't even make it out of Germany before he offended some ancient immortal or ran across one of my vengeful blood children. But there was a part of me that hoped he survived, at least for a little while, perhaps even thrived for a time, for he was so perfectly evil, and there is great beauty in purity, even of the darker sort. I was proud of the devil I had spawned.

"Here," I said at last. "This spot will do."

Before I could go on, I had that queer sensation that someone was watching me again, just as I had felt before we went into the cave. Another blood drinker, spying on me from some distant vantage point. It was almost, but not quite, an Eye, like the clairvoyant gift my lover Zenzele possessed. Whatever it was, it made my skin prickle with unease. I reached out with my own impressive senses, hoping to identify the snooping vamp. Almost instantly, as though a switch had been thrown, the feeling of being watched faded.

Whoever it was, he didn't want to be spied on himself.

Cheeky bastard!

"What is it?" Lukas asked. I had fallen silent, was staring down hard into the valley.

I sighed. "Perhaps I am being paranoid," I said, "now that my schemes are coming to fruition. Afraid someone might spoil it at the very last moment."

"You feel someone watching again?"

I nodded.

"You're probably just imagining it," Lukas said. "No one knows what we're planning to do here tonight."

Not true, actually, I thought. Justus knew. He had foreseen my death in one of his visions. But he had promised he would not intervene. Paulo knew, too, or at least he suspected, but we had given him the slip in Liege. I would know if he had picked up our trail. If he had pursued us this far. My senses are particularly acute.

Lukas was watching me, shifting the handle of the axe in his hands. Though I was still turned toward the village of Wildbach, I could see from the corner of my eye a look of uncertainty on his face; a look of reluctance, very close to unhappiness.

"So we do it here? Now?" he said.

"Here is good," I answered. "The forest is open here. I have a clear view into the valley. I was born… right there." Pointing. "The circle is now complete. I am ready to die."

He strode toward me with a grin, bringing the axe up, preparing to strike me down. Then he stopped. That look of uncertainty flitted across his face again. He narrowed his eyes, considered me a moment, then said with uncharacteristic reticence: "You didn't finish your story."

"You're right," I said. I did not turn, but stood gazing down into the valley.

"You know what you said earlier," he went on. "I might not get all of your memories. I want to know what happened to the Tanti. You have to tell me how you defeated the God King. If you die and I don't get your memories, I'll always wonder how the story ended. It'll drive me crazy."

"My final battle with Khronos," I said.

I was not sure if he truly wanted the story or if he was simply delaying the moment, reluctant to finish it now that the time had come. It did not matter, really. Either would have pleased me. I love to tell stories, and I love to be loved.

"The War of the Vampires," I said loftily, turning at last to address him. "Where should I begin?"

He did not smile, but he visibly relaxed. His shoulders dropped and he lowered the axe.

"Where you left off," he said. "On the glacier, after you got your body back. When Aioa screamed."

I nodded, then cast about for a place to sit. There was snow everywhere, crusted with ice. No clear spot to sit. After a moment, I just settled straight down on the ground. Crunch! Lukas drew close and sat down as well, legs crossed, axe lying across his thighs. He looked at me expectantly.

I let the memories drift down over me, like snow upon a wooded hillside. Faces. Places. Voices. The past began to accumulate, slowly, silently upon the present, first obscuring it, then covering it over completely.

Finally, I spoke.

"Irema, my granddaughter, had gone back to Uroboros," I said. "She had gone to spy for us, and to make contact, if she could, with any Uroborans who might have grown discontent with the reign of the God King. That was part of our plan. To foster rebellion among the God King's subjects. To strike at him not just from without but from within as well. To weaken him before our final assault. But my granddaughter made a terrible discovery. While we were racing about the steppes of Eastern Russia, recovering the final pieces of my Divided body, the God King's slavers had captured the Tanti. The Tanti, if you recall, were the direct descendants of the People of the River. My tribe. My… family. Irema's family, too. And the horror of her discovery triggered the twins' telepathic link, relaying the information to us nearly four thousand kilometers away, from the shore of the Black Sea to the ice-covered Kara.

"I remember it all," I said.

I was looking down on the twinkling lights of Bad Wildbach, staring down at the valley through the trees, but I was not seeing it. I was seeing someplace else entirely. Some time else. A vast ice sheet. The aurora borealis, shimmering like a river of green fire across the sky.

I heard Aioa scream.

She had fallen to her knees, was trembling all over, face in her hands.

"Tell me," I said, taking her hands in mine, pulling them away from her eyes. "Aioa, what have you seen?"

For a moment, she was too overcome with emotion to answer me. Blood tears trickled down her cheeks. And then she drew a convulsive breath and cried out:

"Oh, grandfather! It has happened! The most terrible thing!"