Demon Vampire (The Redgold Series) (64 page)

Malio was angry, but was beginning to understand what was actually going on. His body had somehow temporarily absorbed this other vampeal's gift when he took in his blood. Malio felt the gift slowly fleeing his body as he was processing the fluid. The power of the gift was reducing, Malio knew that he didn't have that much time left to use it. Malio sneered at the vampeal in the sack. “I am not like you. I have no gift with power beyond my skin. You have a life that wasn't eroded slowly as the years went on. But I will tell you something. We are alike, but there is a difference.” Malio knelt down beside the bag and whispered towards what appeared to be the head. “In a few years you will be dead and your gift will be mine.” Malio quickly swept his left arm in the direction of the remaining men, knocking everyone off their back and off the edge of the cliff down to the shore. The servant was not among them, he had fled while Malio wasn't paying attention to him.

“Kill me.” The fading voice cried from beneath the sack cloth.

Malio took a hold of one end of the bag and physically slung him over his shoulder with ease and only one hand. “Don't worry little vampeal, I will kill you. I just won't kill you until the next solar eclipse. I want to try something, an experiment to see what will happen. Then I will grant you the death you seek. Until then, you are mine.”

Malio walked back into his castle of expulsion with a smile and blood trailing behind him on the stone floor. This was Malio's moment of epiphany. If he was right, it would mean that it was possible to rewrite the balance of power in the world. It meant that Malio could undo the social hierarchy that he belonged to and hated.

* * * *

Years passed as Malio truly enslaved the nameless vampeal. Malio had seen the vampeal craft many ingenuitive ways of obtaining freedom. He had cut his thumbs off in an attempt to escape and slip his manacles off. Not having the reckless reasoning to break his own ankles in order to run faster, the vampeal was still found on the edge of the castle grounds with drops of blood leading right to him. Malio retaliated with a creative solution. He saw it as inspiration, severing all his digits, and all of his toes for good measure. He then inserted a single metal spike into each of the vampeal's limbs. Then he closed the shackles and cemented them in place. Not only would the vampeal not be able to open the castle doors easily, he would have an increasingly hard time balancing without toes. A fact that Malio took full advantage of by placing long catwalks that lead to his only cell door. A short distance to long spikes ensured that if the vampeal fell, he wouldn't get very far. Malio's plan was to keep him indefinitely until he was ready to sacrifice him for use with the next solar eclipse. Until he could make Redgold from him.

Malio had the idea that if he could temporarily transfer the gift of a vampeal by drinking its blood, there would be a stark difference when that vampeal was used to create Redgold. For all Malio knew, it might kill him. It would certainly kill the vampeal, which Malio didn't care for. The chance of obtaining his gift was so tempting it caused Malio to hyperventilate with excitement. Malio had been secluded on the island for more than seven years now. He had only known the pain of his childhood. There was a lust of feeding on random villagers from the mainland. It was a joy keeping the vampeal alive with improvised methods of torture learned from taxidermy. Malio was becoming self sufficient, he was becoming cruel. Often he would cut off pieces of skin from the vampeal as a sadistic form of punishment, just to see him squirm. He would take from the arms, the legs, the scalp, Malio didn't care. They were all fair regions to him.

Malio saw the vampeal as a way to regain what was taken from him. Keeping him alive and waiting for him to escape was part of Malio's attempt at preventing the vampeal from committing suicide. Malio paid great attention to talking with the vampeal. He spent days and nights learning about his life and family. Malio found that his name was Will Leechman. He had worked as a grave digger in his youth. His mother had a tryst with a local roaming vampire and he had been born nine months later. Will was actually far older than Malio. He appeared to be in his early twenties and was just approaching his nineties. Will was eighty eight years old. He had survived off of the blood of neighbors and livestock for payment of good deeds rendered. He had been married four times, producing ten human children. Will had lived a long life and was quite happy before Malio's whim of vampeal blood ruined everything.

Will sat in a small pool of his own blood. He was lacerated from the many cuts and slices Malio had inflicted upon him, Will was exhausted. He coughed with a dry wind, clearing his throat in order to speak up. He looked into Malio's eyes as he sat a few feet away on the stone floor. “Why me?”

Will's question was both broad and severely personal. It provoked an equally vague response from Malio. “Faded memories. I wander back. Faded memories. I want them back. I want them all back.” Malio said as if he recited it from a poem. “You ask me why?” Malio scooted closer to Will without getting up. “That's exactly what I want to know as well. In my case, four people know the answer. In your case, it's because I got an idea in my head.” Malio leaned into Will's face and smiled. “Does that make you feel any better? Knowing that I've taken your life away from you doesn't change the fact that you are going to die. It won't help your family to sleep at night. They all think you're already dead. So tell me, what good is it to you that you now know this one little insignificant piece of information?”

“I can die with grace.” Will said softly.

Will's answer astounded Malio. He had never known such a thing. His entire life was either being punished or feeling strife for those who hurt him. Grace was foreign to Malio, a conceptual ideology that was only mentioned to him and never shown. Grace was beyond Malio now and he knew it. That's why Will's words struck him with sadness. Of all the things he had done to Will, the blood, the filth, the dismemberment, Will still retained his grace. A quality that Malio would never have.

The day had come for the solar eclipse. It was the day Will would die. Malio prepared Will by chaining him to a large wooden plank that he drug outside into the bright sunlight. Will was so weak that his skin began to dry up the moment it hit the open sky. Will's mind was still present, a fact that Malio had taken time to ensure. They had been talking for so long that in a way, Malio had come to befriend Will. In Malio's mind he hadn't actually done anything wrong. Will just happened to be on the mainland when Malio needed a vampeal. Will didn't hate Malio either, he pitied him for having such a demented perception of the world.

Malio flipped the plank upside down, hanging Will from his feet, replanting him into the ground. He was planning on bleeding him from the neck directly. From what Malio was told about the ritual, the blood from the recently slain vampire was to be placed into a silver box and allowed to bask in full view of a solar eclipse. After the eclipse had passed, the blood would be transformed into a crystal form referred to as Redgold, that would later be consumed. Therefore changing the weakened virus into the complete strain with the missing elements of the full vampire. The ritual made the vampeal into a real vampire. All the pieces were there, the only difference was that Malio was substituting a vampeal in the process. He truly didn't know what would come of it. He could merely become a vampire, or end up dead. With normal Redgold, if a full vampire consumed it, the reaction was poison, and the blood would contend the foreign strain. If the Redgold was made from a vampire of equal or greater age to the recipient, the vampire would die. Will was older than Malio, there was a clear risk. Malio didn't care. The chance of gaining a new gift was worth the price of death if it came to that. It was preferable to his current life.

Malio set up his instruments to gouge and bleed Will. “So, do you have any last words to leave me with? Any dying poems you've been working on that you want to share? Or do you not have the
Will
left to do so?” Malio was trying to push Will's buttons in the remaining minutes that he had.

Will slowly and with great effort turned his stiffened neck towards Malio and said something that was too faint to hear.

“What? What was that? You do have something to say? Please, enlighten me.” Malio crouched down to Will's mouth and put his right ear to it.

Softly and with conviction Will spoke. “Today I get to die. I get to do the one thing that you will not. Today, my pain ends with my death. Today, is the first day that you will gain the power you seek. You will live for many years and obtain the gifts of many vampeals, but you will not find the one thing you give me this day.”

“And what the hell is that Will?” Malio was irritated.

“The humility to live in peace.” Will's words faded as he ended. His breath was leaving him. In his one final act of defiance, Will had given up trying to live. He died the moment before the sun was obscured.

Malio was unnerved. Deep in the recesses of his dreams, Malio knew that Will was right. He didn't like it, he hated it. It meant that with every act of violence Malio propagated the loss of his own soul. He was selling himself, the pieces of his own persona to enact his eventual revenge of the four other heirs. For a second, a long painful second, Malio felt sadness for losing the last precious bits of his childhood demeanor, his innocence. Malio was no longer naive, he had been tempered by anguish and loathing. Malio knew that he died the minute Will did. The difference was that Will was at peace and Malio wasn't.

The second passed and Malio ran the tips of his fingers through Will's chest and tore downward to the bucket underneath the corpse. Blood spewed forth from the body as Malio came to terms with what he now was. He was deviant, deranged, violent, cruel, strange, and quite honestly flagitious.

And he knew it.

Malio accepted what he now was. He gathered the majority of the blood and poured it into the silver reflecting box. The sun was setting above and the light was retreating from the sky. The ultraviolet was starting to burn Malio's skin. The box reacted by bubbling and boiling. The blood condensed and funneled into a small lower point at the bottom of the box. Steam wafted from the blood as it crystallized. The seconds ran long as Malio stared at the newly formed Redgold. The eclipse passed and the sun lit the day once again. It was over. All that was left to do was to ingest it.

Malio looked down at his hands as he reached for the Redgold. There were boils covering his unprotected arm. The ultraviolet ray had tried to convert the blood in his veins while it was still flowing. It had damaged the flesh and raised his body temperature dangerously high. Malio felt a heat that he had never known. When he was still human, he had never had a fever, he was always kept high in the castle and away from any disease or germs. This was unique, a general warmth that swept from across his heart. He was kissed by a death from above.

Malio let the feeling run its course. He waited until after sunset to approach the Redgold. The time was spent in contemplation. Malio recognized that if he did survive, he was going to have to lure Teresa to his island somehow. He was going to trap her without Martin's knowledge of departure, it was the only way to accomplish his goals. Malio took a hold of the shinny crystallized Redgold. It flaked in his hand, the edges were thin, and crumbled with his touch. Crisp chips of blood fell and shattered on the stone floor. Malio opened his mouth, fangs perched ready, he bit through the outer crust and was surprised by the gooey creamy center.

Malio could think of only one word, which he spoke out loud. “Delicious.” The taste was unlike any other he ever had. It was special. He had heard that Redgold was different, but not this striking. The years of torture, the pain, the methodical ritual, it was all worth it. All for this moment to taste Will's turned blood.

The Redgold flowed into Malio's stomach and through his system. The same rush he had once felt years ago came over him. It was the same, yet thicker, more potent. Malio could sense the weight of everything around him, as if he was connected to each object. He was able to push, to pull, the gift had manifested in him and solidified. Malio didn't feel physically stronger. The only change was the addition of the gift. Malio had not turned into a full vampire, he was still a vampeal. Leading Malio to one single conclusion.

“I can do it again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. I can do it all over again. Again, I can have more. So many, many, many more. Again. I have to do it again.” Malio's laughter was hysterical. He was happy. Maddeningly insane, but happy in his own sick way. He had formed a machination.

* * * *

Seventy eight years came and went as Malio became obsessed with the addition of two things, gifts and torture. Month after month Malio sent out more and more bounty hunters to find vampeals in the several nearby countries. He paid kings' ransoms for them and most of the time he did actually pay. Malio felt that killing too many hunters would eventually lead to a decline in willing participants to find his beloved new gifts. Malio did however enjoy killing the hunters that brought back vampeals with useless gifts. The ability to change one's eye color was not a particularly helpful advantage in the situations that Malio planned to be in.

When the solar eclipses would come, Malio traveled to the epicenter of their birth and waited for weeks to let his bounties come in. During the eclipses, he harvested multiple gifts from several vampeals. Malio had gained the ability to burn living things without flames, the ability to chill the air around him by up to fifty degrees. Others included turning water to oil, steel to iron, wood to rot, dirt to glass, and to be able to create a spark for tender at a distance. An odd assortment of gifts that Malio planned to creatively use in the long running scheme of things. In addition to those, Malio prided himself on acquiring the ability to draw water out of thin air and fill buckets at will. In Malio's mind, it was a step apart from Jesus as Malio proclaimed it to be. The gift of ice was a very useful tool in Malio's arsenal. He used it to preserve the blood of the vampeals that were killed during the 'extraction process' as Malio put it. Every time the hunters brought back a corpse, Malio froze it and simply waited. Malio had even found the one gift that he knew would solidify his position as the greatest vampire in the world, immunity to the sun. Malio was unable to obtain it. The large team of hunters were faithfully retrieving many vampeals for Malio over the years. However they ended up bringing this vampeal back long dead. Malio saw no more reason to employ them. He killed them all by using their own swords to run them through with his gift. He let their bodies lay on his porch for months as other hunters watched the vultures pick them clean. It was a sign to never let Malio down. Since he paid upfront to fund each hunting party, he knew that it might take years to get each vampeal. Malio was perfectly fine with that, failure, he was not.