Chapter 408 - The Death of the Oldest Living Vampire part 5

That single word froze me in my tracks.

"No?" I cried. And then I cried it again, my voice sounding childish and petulant, even to myself. "NO?"

Gan shook his head, arms crossed. "It is not your time," he said.

I wanted to howl in frustration. If it had been anyone else, anyone but my father, I might have thrown myself upon him, pushed him aside or fought my way past him. Into the light. Into the arms of my mortal loved ones. But because it was my father, I restrained myself. I swallowed my frustration and said, as calmly as I could manage, "And why must I be denied-- again?"

This version of my father, this apparition, was much younger than I remembered Gan to be. This was my father in the prime of his life, with a great kinky mane of reddish brown hair, a fresh and unlined face and a taut, impressively muscled body. It was almost comical, seeing him so young. Were it not for my frustration, I might have laughed. His mannerisms were still the same, however, the way he crossed his arms as he stood to block my path, the way he scowled up at me and heaved a rueful sigh.

"My boy," he said, shaking his head. "Shirker-of-his-duties, you are still a self-centered whiner."

I could not reply to that immediately. I was too flabbergasted. It had always annoyed me that my father could see so easily through my pretensions. All good parents can. Having raised us, they know us more perfectly—both the good and the bad—than any other people in the world. Gan had been dead for thirty thousand years, yet he could still cut me to the bone.

My mouth flapped soundlessly for a moment, and then I sputtered, "Whiner? Whiner?"

He set his furry jaw. He would not be disabused of his opinion.

"Do you know what I have suffered?" I cried. "How long I have waited for this moment?"

"What really have you suffered?" Gan asked. "You have enjoyed powers unimaginable to most mortal men. You have known pleasures beyond the realm of human understanding. You have lived longer than any other sentient creature on the face of the earth. And yet you are still the vain and impulsive child that I reared up. Selfish. Self-indulgent. Lazy. You have not changed at all."

"How dare you judge me," I raged, "you who have enjoyed paradise while I suffered endless ages of loneliness and regret?"

"You have enjoyed the adulation of nations," Gan countered. "You have had more lovers than I could ever count. Were your seed not sterile, you could have populated the earth ten times over by now. If you were ever lonely, it was because you chose to be lonely. You wallow in self-pity for the same reason the pig wallows in mud. Because you take pleasure in it."

I felt myself tearing up. I did not wish to fight with my father. I loved him. I wanted his approval. I wanted to embrace him.

"What else must I do before I am admitted to paradise?" I pleaded. "What other tasks must I complete? What have I done that merits this punishment?"

"You have done what you have always done, my son… put your satisfaction before the well-being of the tribe," Gan said. "Taken the easy way out. Shirked your responsibilities."

"I am finished!" I wailed. "I am old and I am tired and I have had enough of these concerns!"

Gan's eyes flashed dangerously. "We are never finished!" he shouted back. "We are born into debt, you lazy boy, and it is a debt that can never be paid in full. Not in thirty thousand years. Not even in a hundred thousand years! You owe us, Gon. For every drop of sweat your ancestors shed. For the lives they sacrificed so that you might have your time in the sun. For your very existence! And the price is your unceasing vigilance. Your duty is your descendants. Your duty is our descendants. A good man does not put his pleasure before the tribe. He does not eat when his children go hungry. He does not rest while his offspring labor. And he does not die until he has expended every last ounce of his strength to ensure the prosperity of his earthly bloodline."

I stared at him in mute horror as the implications of his admonition sank into my brain.

"No," I said, shaking my head in denial. "It is too much!"

"Not for you," Gan said.

"It is not fair!"

"Who said life was fair?"

"Easy for you to say. You're not an immortal."

"I paid my life debt, or have you forgotten? I honored our ancestors to my final breath."

Yes, he had. The memory of his death was still burned into my brain. Even now, some thirty thousand years later, I could picture it as if it happened yesterday. My father had fallen at the cave of the Gray Stone People. We had gone there to destroy the creature that was tormenting our Fat Hand neighbors. Instead, my maker and his twisted little sycophant had hunted us down, slew nearly every member of our war party. Only Brulde and my uncle Kort-Lenthe had survived. The Foul One had struck my father's head from his shoulders. My father was old by then, fat and gray headed, but he had died a warrior, defending our tribe from a threat whose powers were beyond our comprehension.

I saw an out then and seized desperately upon it.

"Even if I wanted to go back, it is far too late for that now," I said. "I am dead, father. My selfish plan succeeded. Lukas possesses my Living Blood. He has utterly destroyed my physical form. There is nothing left of me. Just dust and a few brittle shards of bone. And even that has been carried away by the wind by now. You are right, father, as always, but your wisdom can bear no fruit. Not this time."

"It is not too late," Gan insisted. "You may yet pick up your burden of care."

"It is impossible! Not even an Eternal can survive such a trauma. It is how we destroyed the God King. How all Eternals are destroyed. It is over, father. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it is finished."

Gan shook his head, then uncrossed his arms to gesture toward my abdomen. "There is a way."

I looked down where he was pointing. To my dismay, I saw the throbbing umbilicus I had imagined just before I perished. It was a glistening black cord about half the width of my wrist. It sprouted from my navel and curved tautly back behind me. Even as I examined it, I could feel it tugging at me, trying to pull me back to the land of living men. And I understood, standing there in the presence of my father, my creator, just what exactly that glistening cord was, and how it should be that I was still connected to the blood drinker I had allowed to destroy me.

"It is the Blood," my father said.

It was the Living Blood.

My Blood!

"You, in your folly, have unleashed a monster upon the world," Gan said. "In your selfishness, you did not stop to consider the ramifications of what it was you planned to do."

I shook my head in stubborn denial. "Zenzele will destroy him, or one of my children," I said. "He is hopelessly outnumbered. Reckless and overconfident. They have powers he does not understand. That was always part of the plan. He would kill me, and then Zenzele or some other Elder would destroy him, before he got the chance to cause too much mischief."

As I spoke I yanked experimentally at the umbilicus linking me to the living world. It was cold and greasy to the touch and throbbed obscenely in my hands. I would have ripped it desperately from my belly but the slightest disturbance of the fleshy organelle sent such a shock of pain and disorientation through me that I could not bear the thought of doing violence to the thing.

"Lukas is a new thing," Gan said. "He is like no other vampire the world has ever seen. He has your Blood. He draws strength from it. In time, he will be like you, a true immortal, and when he kills again, when he drinks the Blood of another immortal being, he will take their strength, and any strange gifts they might be possessed of. The Far Sight. The Mind Gift. The Gift of Future Sight. He knows not yet that he possesses this power, but when he discovers it…"

I finished it for him: "He will hunt down our kind, and take their powers through the Blood."

Was it true? Did Lukas possess such a gift, some strange power that I, in my self-absorbed state, did overlook? I knew he was powerful, yes. All my vampire children were gifted in some fashion or another. Nora was telepathic. Justus had visions of the future. Even Apollonius, who possessed no psychic powers, was blessed with unrivaled beauty and physical resilience. It was a thing I often took for granted, and a risk that I ignored when I granted my new fledgling the gift of my immortal Blood.

Careless!

Always so careless!

I thought of the other strange talents my vampire brethren possessed. I knew of a vampire in Venice who could inflict physical injury by will alone. There was another in Russia who could cause objects to move without physically touching them. There were vampires who could control the minds of others, who could touch objects and see their pasts or their futures.

What other strange gifts did my vampire brothers possess? And what would Lukas make of them when he realized he had the power to steal those abilities?

He would set about the world, hunting down those vampires, one by one, and collecting their powers.

How long until he was unstoppable?

How long until he fashioned himself the new God King of the Vampires?

And I had unleashed this fiend upon the world!

"Tell me what to do, father!" I pleaded. "I have to put this right before it is too late!"

"Your Blood still resides within the monster's veins," Gan said. "He has not yet… fully digested you."

I had Shared with countless vampires over the ages. On many occasions, the Blood had belonged to one of my enemies. There was always a little revolt inside my mind when I took the Blood of an enemy, as the imprint of their personality tries to usurp control. It is always like that. A little battle before the Blood is fully digested. Before the memories and personality are completely absorbed and the host personality asserts its dominance. I had never heard of a vampire being fully possessed by a Shared persona, but perhaps it could be done. It must be done! I had to find a way.

For the world, and for the sake of my soul!

 "How do I do it?" I asked my father.

He nodded once more to the throbbing cord in my hands, which was really just a psychic manifestation of the link I shared with my executioner.

"Follow it back," he said. "Use your connection to defeat your foe. He is a powerful blood drinker, yes, but you, my son, are the Oldest Living Vampire. Follow it back and defend your tribe!"