Chapter 390 - The War of the Vampires part 13

The following night, as we drew ever closer to Uroboros, the God King came to me.

It was near dawn. The sky was brightening at our backs, the clouds there red and purple, like banners of war. We had made only a little progress that night, as we had spent half the evening taking Tanti corpses down from crucifixes and burying them in the earth. There were fourteen. Men, women… even children. It was not hard work for immortals like us, but it was disheartening, and I had even wept a little at the sheer senselessness of it all.

Why?

The word echoed in my mind, like the tolling of a bell.

Why…?

Why must there be such cruelty, such misery in the world? Why so much hatred and violence? Why so much suffering?

I do not know to whom I was addressing my sorrows. I did not believe in gods. My people worshipped their ancestors, the only creators we knew. We did not, like the Neanderthals, believe we lived on the back of a giant bear named Doomhalde, who chased the moon, his lover, endlessly around the heavens. We did not believe in demons or hungry snake gods or invisible aristocrats who held court in the sky.

I suppose I was just crying out. I felt like an infant abandoned in the wilderness.

And then he came.

I imagine my misery called out to him in some way, drew him to me, as the scent of blood attracts the shark.

Or the vampire.

I had just retired from overseeing the burial of the final Tanti victim we had come upon that night, and it was there.

The God King's invisible Eye.

Humming with energies not even my acute senses could identify, it was vast and silent and utterly inexplicable, but it was there. I could feel it!

It was closer than it had ever been before. So close I could have reached out and touched it, if there were any substance to it. So suddenly did it appear that I took a step back in alarm, raising my right arm in a defensive gesture. I thought he meant to attack me in some fashion. Strike at me with some power not previously evinced.

But he did not attack. In fact, I did not even sense malice emanating from his invisible presence. Always before there came with the Eye a sense of hatred, of great rage or frustration. But not today.

He was merely… looking at me.

I lowered my arm and looked back.

I imagined, as I had in the temple, a great disembodied eye. Reptilian. Inhuman. I felt that it was just inches from me. I knew the others sensed it too, for they had paused in their labors and were gaping in our direction.

Zenzele started toward me, an expression of concern on her face, but I held a hand out to stop her.

I was curious what he would do.

"I know you are there," I said, speaking in a conversational tone.

The Eye continued to stare at me.

"Why have you come?" I asked.

I do not know if he could have responded in any meaningful way, not in that disembodied form, but if he had the power he chose not to use it.

I leaned toward him, cautiously opening my mind to him.

And felt nothing. Just his awareness. His dispassionate observation.

"All things must pass," I said, speaking to his invisible presence just as dispassionately. "Your time has come and gone. The world has moved on, as it must."

There was no malice in what I said to him. No vindictiveness. I spoke only the truth as I saw the truth to be.

An instant later, he was gone.

I realized I was staring directly at the sun, which had just peeked over the horizon. Cold blood tears were trickling down my cheeks. I wiped them away, then looked back over my shoulder. "Assign a day watch," I said to Drago. "Let us get some rest. Tonight, we make war on the God King."