Chapter 407 - The Death of the Oldest Living Vampire part 4

Or so I thought.

There was a light in the darkness.

It was tiny as if with distance. Warmly golden but inconstant. Like firelight or a candle flame.

I realized I was seeing then. And then I realized I was still aware.

I am Gon, the Oldest Living Vampire, I thought. And then: No. I no longer exist in that plane of reality. I am no longer Gon the vampire. No longer even living. I am simply Gon. Gon of the River People.

I liked that. It felt good. It felt right.

My fledgling, Lukas Jaeger, my bespoke killer, had drained me of my Living Blood. Not every drop, but enough to disrupt its ability to mend my injuries, which had kept me alive for some thirty thousand years. And when he struck me with that axe, cleaving my ancient heart in two, my fragile form had burst into so much glittering dust. I had crumbled like some cut-rate Hollywood vampire. I was ash now in that other world, streaming away on winter winds. To put it in the modern vernacular, I was dead as a doornail.

And yet I still saw. I still thought. I was still, essentially, me.

So death was not the end.

I was not certain I was happy about that.

Curious, I looked around myself, or imagined that I looked around myself. It was hard to know exactly what I was doing as I did not seem to have a body. I could not see it on any account. I could feel it. I could sense that I had some sort of physical form, but all was inky darkness but that one tiny glimmering light.

Well, let us go see what it is, I thought, with more excitement than I had felt in a very long time.

Where was I going? What was going to happen to me? What was that light, and where would it lead me? The questions tumbled through my mind, stoking my excitement to a roaring flame.

I started eagerly toward the light, thinking I would fly to it, or swim through the darkness like some exotic species of fish. But no, I was walking. That was disappointing. Two legs then, just as I'd possessed when I was a corporeal being. How mundane!

The light grew slowly but steadily brighter as I trekked through the darkness towards it, increasing in only the tiniest increments. I could not see the legs bearing me to the light, nor any kind of movement in the darkness that surrounded me, but the light grew nearer and nearer, brighter and brighter, as I progressed.

I do not know how long I tramped through the void. Time had no meaning in that womb-like darkness. It might have been seconds. It might have been eons. I only knew that I was moving willfully toward the light, and my mind, my memories, seemed perfectly intact. Wonderfully complete, in fact. And for the first time in millennia, I was unencumbered by the hunger for mortal blood. The thirst was gone, utterly gone. In fact, I was more purely myself than I could ever remember being. There was a wonderful sense of wholeness and well-being, as if I was the most flawless version of myself that I had ever been, the most truly me.

It was strange to be without the hunger. There was a curious absence where it had been, a hole in my psyche. I know that must sound insane to you, for the Hunger is a constant gnawing ache, a terrible agony that all immortals must learn to endure, but it was true. There was a part of me that missed it. I was like a rehabilitated drug addict who laments his old dependence. I missed the need, the craving, as a man might miss an old friend. Yet I felt no desire to feed. The thought of drinking blood was neither exciting nor abhorrent to me. I could remember it. I could recall the orgasmic pleasure of feeding on mortal blood, how it tasted, how it felt, but I was unmoved by the memories. They had no power over me.

As I continued toward the light, I gradually became aware of some sort of repulsive force. It seemed I was having some difficulty proceeding forward, as if the light were pushing me away, or some unknown agency were pulling me back the way I'd come. Perhaps the darkness was becoming thicker in some unfathomable way, reluctant to give me up to the light.

No, I decided. I was being pulled back. It felt like a knot in my tummy—a tummy I could no longer see—as if a fist were twisted up in my guts.

For the first time since I died, I felt anxious. I willed myself around in the darkness, searching the void for the entity that was holding me back. For one chilling moment, I was struck by the superstitious dread that some demonic agency meant to keep me there in the darkness, or carry me off to some torturous punishment.

Hell is a rather recent creation when measured against the yardstick of my own interminable existence, but the concept has always been a powerfully seductive one, and one that has been shared by countless human cultures.

The names tripped through my head.

Hell.

Hades.

The Egyptian Lake of Fire.

The Mesopotamian Underworld.

Tartaros. Gehenna. Gomokodan. Uffern.

Might there be some grain of truth to the belief? Were mankind's visions of Hell inspired by some realm that truly existed? Would I be snatched away to Hell, now, even as I closed on fabled Paradise? If anyone was deserving of eternal damnation, it would be me. I doubt anyone had sinned longer or more egregiously than yours truly.

So I turned, looking for the pit.

Instead, I saw a snowy wood. Low wooded mountains. A night sky. And in the distance, the gleaming lights of Bad Wildbach.

I saw my beloved Zenzele, trembling with rage. Apollonius and Justus were restraining her, holding her by the arms. Her cheeks glimmered with the tarry black tears of the living dead. She was screaming, lunging between the two men. They were struggling to hold her back.

"I'll destroy you!" she howled, twisting like a serpent in their hands. Spitting. Kicking. "I'll grind you to dust beneath my heel. Erase any sign you ever existed. Wipe you from the memory of the earth. You destroyed my soul's mate. You destroyed the only man I ever truly loved!"

She was looking directly at me, her hatred a blast furnace. I was seeing, I realized, through the eyes of my murderous acolyte. Lukas Jaeger. The man who had destroyed me.

I could feel his flesh around me, cold and powerful and immortal. I could feel his hunger. I could feel his malice, and the chaos of his thoughts—his tragic memories, his crude desires, his playful, vicious cruelty.

And then it dawned on me. I understood where I was, what I had become, and how my consciousness should persist even after Lukas had shattered my physical form to dust.

I was not me!

Not the real me, anyway, the me who had been destroyed. Gon, the Oldest Living Vampire, was dead. He was dead and dust and this, my thoughts, this unexpected afterlife, was just some lingering imprint, a psychic residue, transferred to my destroyer through the Sharing of my Blood.

!!!NO!!!

I could imagine no blacker fate, no crueler punishment, than to be trapped inside the psyche of the beast who had destroyed me.

I was dead, and this…this version of me was some psychic ghost trapped in the haunted house that was Lukas Jaeger's subconscious.

I recoiled from the thought, diving back into the darkness, retreating from the sights and sounds of the mountaintop where I had died, back into the womb-like void, back into oblivion.

The light was still there.

What was it? Why did it beckon? Was it some portal of escape? A release from this hellish second life?

I raced for it then. In desperation. In horror. I pushed toward the light, clawing my way through the darkness. But the harder I pushed, the more powerful the pull back into the living world became. I heard snatches of conversation from the mountaintop, the threats and insults Lukas traded with my loved ones. I caught glimpses of the standoff through my destroyer's eyes. My friends and lovers were furious, but they were unsure if they had the right to destroy my executioner. Lukas had, after all, only done my bidding. And he had my Living Blood. He possessed my final memories. And my blood had made him powerful. They were uncertain they could best him.

Do not look, I told myself. You are dead and dust. There is nothing you can do. Your days of meddling are over. No more blundering heroics. You have done it. You have accomplished what you set out to do. You have destroyed the eternal prison that was your body. The Gon that was will never be again.

All that was left for me, sad revenant, was release or oblivion, and that was what I dove for.

The light.

I drove at it, stretching, straining.

It grew closer, brighter.

I felt a quickening in Lukas Jaeger's consciousness. He had engaged my loved one's in battle. I saw flashes of the conflict through his eyes. The mountaintop. The starry heavens. Pale forms racing through the icy woodland. Attacks and counterattacks, so swift they would have beggared mortal vision. Zenzele attempted a decapitating blow, but Lukas ducked, grabbed her forearm and sent her tumbling down the slope. Apollonius sprang from the treetops, hoping to catch Lukas by surprise, but my devious acolyte sensed him coming and neatly dodged his sneak attack, catching Paulo with a backwards roundhouse kick that smashed him into the bole of a great black oak tree. Nora attempted to seize control of his mind, but Lukas fired back such a volley of hatred and madness that she reeled away, stunned by his vitriol. They outnumbered my vicious fledgling nine to one, but Lukas possessed my powerful Blood, and thirty millennia of battle experience. His immortal form was not as resilient as mine had been, but that was no guarantee they could defeat him, even with their greater numbers. Only three of them were more than a couple hundred years old. Most were barely more than fledglings themselves.

Ancestors, protect them, I prayed, even as I reached for the light.

It was like swimming in quicksand, this darkness, but the light grew steadily brighter and closer. It took on an irregular half-circle shape, and I became aware of a drumming, low at first, barely audible, but growing louder and more distinct with each lunging footstep.

The musical syncopation was all too familiar, and my heart—my very soul—leapt in joy at my recognition of it. It was the drumming of my tribe's ritual orgy celebration, performed on the nights of the summer and winter solstice.

Memories flooded my mind. I had attended the orgies from the time I got my chumsuhk. Chumsuhk, in the language of the River People, meant "flowing waters", but it was also a rather poetic way of referring to the fluids of the body. For women, the menstrual flow. For men, the production of semen. On the nights of the solstice, we gathered at the ritual cave. While the elders drummed on hollow logs and our medicine women prepared an intoxicating drink called brash, we feasted and danced and copulated in honor of the neverending cycle of birth and death and rebirth, a cycle we called holy for it was present in all aspects of our existence: the cycle of night and day, the waxing and waning of the moon, the passage of the seasons, sleep and wakefulness. That the very universe echoed the mileposts of our lives—we were born, we grew, we procreated, and then we died—was evidence of its holiness. Did not the very earth and all that lived on it flourish in the summer, die in the winter, only to be born again in the spring? Yes, the cycle was a holy thing! It is the cycle that all human religions revere, no matter how they dress it up. And the orgies were our tent revival. And hearing that drumbeat now, and the voices of my people lifted up in frenzied celebration, sparked in me an emotion I had not felt in a very long time. That I had not dared to feel.

Hope!

I shall plunge into that light and be reborn, I thought.

As the light grew wider and brighter, I realized that it was the entrance of a cave, the ritual cave where we had celebrated the solstice in my youth. I could see my people inside, naked bodies glistening as they leapt and twirled in the ecstatic trance state induced by the brash. I saw them, and I knew them. I knew them all! There was Hyde, tent-mate of Strom, who perished when we made war on the fiend who made me what I am. And there was Tavet, the hulking half-Neanderthal. I saw my brothers Epp'ha and Grent and Aldh, and even young Vooran, who died when we were boys, snatched from our tent in the middle of the night be a hungry old speartooth. I saw my mother, beautiful and young, her long red hair lashing the air as she danced in the haze. I saw my children: Gan and Hun and Breyya, Gavid, Den and Leth. They were all grown up, beautiful and strong. They were all there. My people. My tribe.

And then I saw them!

My heart broke at the sight of them.

Eyya.

Nyala.

Brulde.

My mortal lovers. My husband and wives.

Alive again!

Whole and unutterably beautiful.

They danced, eyes closed, heads thrown back in ecstasy, their limbs twining in a way that seemed both impossibly graceful and indescribably erotic. I watched, entranced, as Eyya leapt and fell, hair swirling in a silky black cloud, as Nyala slithered seductively upon Brulde's sweat-greased thigh, as Brulde laughed and thrust his pelvis at them, buttocks clenching and releasing, the muscles in his broad back rippling, his stiff member bobbing up and down.

I lost all self-control at the sight of them. Maddened, I clawed my way through the resisting darkness. I meant to join them in that golden light. I would not be denied. I had protected our descendants for thirty thousand years. I had waged wars, destroyed legions of my fellow blood drinkers, to ensure that our descendants would be the masters of the earth. Could I not now give up this interminable vigil? Had I not earned my entry in that glorious light? Could I not now go to my rest?

And then my father strode into the light.

He glowered at me sternly.

"No," he said.