Nightlord: Sunset (22 page)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
TH

A
fter sunset, I scouted ahead, checking out the town.  Verthyn was without a wall—a community of about a hundred families or so, given mainly to farming.  There was a small chapel—more of a village church—and a few other buildings: town hall, blacksmithy, that sort of thing.  I sniffed about a bit, lightly feeling around with tendrils, and found no major magical traces outside of the church.  The church, though, was obviously cared for by the local priest; there was brightness there that wasn’t exactly magic.  I’ve seen that light before.

I left it alone and went back to Utai—excuse me, to Shada.  Since I have to call her that, I’ll use that for her name.

Shada was awake and alert, waiting for me.  I sat down and faced her across the fire.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think we should have no trouble there during the day.  We can get some more traveling gear and some food, and I might find a bit of work as a traveling wizard, too.”

“You have money, still?”

“Some, yes.  Not a lot, really, but a lot for around here.  I’ll see if I can find work, first.”

She nodded.  “Wise.  I will keep my eyes open for opportunities.”

I thought about that.  “What do you mean by ‘opportunities’?”

She smiled.

I frowned.  “I’m not a thief, Shada.”

She smiled wider.  “No, merely a murderer.  And the dead have no need of possessions, correct?”

I opened my mouth to protest—and then thought about it.

I kill to survive.  Upon reflection, I kill when I feel I need to.  A year ago, I wouldn’t have killed another human being unless it was down to that: Life or death.  Now…

“You may be right,” I admitted.  “I am a murderer—if I’m still human at all.  I have to think about that.  If I
am
human, I’m a murderer.  If not, I’m a predator.”

Shada’s dark eyes held worry.  “I have not meant to anger you.”

“I’m not angry.  I’m…”

What was I?  Confused?  Philosophical?  Thoughtful?  Curious?

“… just thinking, that’s all.”  I rose to my feet.  “I’m going for a walk.  We’ll go into town in late morning.”

She nodded and I did as I said, still thinking.

Tough questions.  I’d lived with Sasha for my entire existence as a vampire.  Naturally,
she
thought it normal.  Travis… well, Travis accepts me as I am.  I haven’t had much social contact with normal people since my sudden switch.  Shada reminded me that things might be different.  Very different.

So am I human being?  I don’t know.  I started out that way, certainly.  Can you so change a person that he is not human?  Is humanity something you can take away?  Or is it just something you lose?

Come to that, what
is
humanity?  What makes a person human?

As I said, tough questions.  I’m getting irritated at having lots of questions and never any answers.  I’m glad I didn’t major in philosophy.

If I’m a human being, then I’m a cannibal.  I drink the blood of people and eat the power of their souls.  That’s definitely not a good thing, from a human perspective.  As I understand it, I can subsist on animals for a while, but eventually, I
have
to have that last living spark of a human being.  At least, I
think
I have to have human essence, eventually…

Could this be a disease?  A magical one, perhaps?  One that has damaged my own spirit to the point I need to refresh it with the spirits of others?

Or am I just a new creature?  Could I be a predator designed for humans?  It’s possible I am part of the natural order of things, and I have that feeling quite strongly when I kill someone who longs to die… or is that just
their
relief at dying?  I feel things my meals felt, know things they knew.  If they truly, utterly long to die, then wouldn’t I feel I was doing the right thing?

But if I’m part of the natural order, how could vampires have evolved?  Vampires don’t pass on genetic material…

Wait.  We do.  We feed our own blood—our successfully surviving blood—into our offspring.  Weak lines of vampires die out, strong ones survive.  So how do vampires come to be in the first place?

I have no idea.  Skip it.  It’s not something germane to the situation at hand.

Given: I am a vampire.  I am no longer a human being.  It is my purpose to hunt and kill humans, to eat them for my own survival.  I can’t argue my purpose in life; I’ve fulfilled it more than once and felt… felt it was
right
.  Enough of humanity.  I am not human.

Does that make me a monster?

To other humans?  Yes.  I look like them, I walk and talk like them, I move among them, and I eat them.  Even the most rational of human beings must consider me to be a creature, not a person; a predator.

A
very
successful design for a predator.  Which is only appropriate; humans are the most dangerous of animals.

What of my own kind?  Vampires must be even more dangerous to hunt humans.  What of us?

Lone predators lack certain advantages.  We do not work well together.  Sasha called for help and no one came.  Vampires have an every-man-for-himself attitude, it seems, which I do not understand.  That may be a good thing, overall.  Working together could make vampires too successful.  Without some sort of check on a predator species, it eventually expands its population to the point it destroys its prey population.  Or, overhunting could get humankind wise to the existence of vampires.  Humans are aggressive on their own; proving they aren’t the top of the food chain would result…

…in something like what obviously happened here.

Vampires are gone from this world.  The Church still hunts them regularly—apparently finding them a convenient excuse to perform ‘purges’ of the populace.  Given their doorway, it looks like magicians help the Church to extend their hunt into other worlds.  I’d guess they plan on a multi-universal genocide; it looks like they succeeded locally.

Still… what would have happened if the local vampires—nightlords—had unified and defeated the humans?  Would things be any better?  Or worse?

But, dammit, that doesn’t help me right now.  I still feel human—well, half the time, anyway—and still have human feelings.  I miss Sasha.  I get lonely.  I fear dying. 

Do vampires
have
feelings?  This one does.  I don’t know what vampires are supposed to be like.  Sasha never got around to teaching me the finer points of being immortal.  I think she just assumed I knew, since I look like the guy who turned her into one.  I’m completely in the dark—so to speak—and have to figure this out on my own.

Screw the movies.  Forget the legends.  Lose the myths.  How they hell would
they
know? 
I’m
the vampire; I’m making this up as I go!  If I can feel regret or remorse, being the bloodsucking fiend of night that I am, then I can!  If I love, I love.  If I hate, I hate.  Anything else I manage is perfectly appropriate—because, by definition, it must be possible.

So it’s decided:  I am not human.

Now all I have to do is figure out what it means to be a vampire…

I noticed how long I’d been walking.  The moon had risen and moved across a good portion of the sky before being hidden by a knife-edged line of clouds.  My feet had kept to a general circle, though, and I knew where our campsite was.  I turned more sharply and headed back.

Then I smiled to myself.  Even on an alien world in an alternate dimension, it’s nice to have a moon.  It looked larger than the one at home and lacked the craters and maria.  A shining, silver ball; it seemed brighter, probably because it lacked those darker areas.  The moon at home was sometimes illuminated, even during the dark phases, by reflected Earthlight; the moon here seems to be utterly black along the shadowed sections.  Less reflection from this planet, perhaps?

Shada was sleeping when I came up.  Bronze nodded at me as I came into the cleared spot.  The cooking fire was out, and Shada was curled up on both cloaks and inside the thermal blanket film.  With some surprise, I realized it was quite cold.  Last night was just cool—uncomfortably so when riding at speed—but tonight there was a decided chill in the air.  The first faint touches of frost were visible along leaves and grass.  I thought it was a cold snap before winter; the leaves were still green.

Then there came a roll of thunder.

“Damn.”

I worked quickly to gather enough leafy branches and bare limbs to make a shelter.  I took care, however, to knock on any tree and ask first.  No answer meant the tree in question lost some wood.  I spread it out to avoid irking anybody too badly, visions of haunted forests dancing in my imagination.

While dragging a pile of brush back to the campsite, I reflected on the effectiveness of a dryad for forest conservation.

I gently nudged Shada to wake her.  She muttered in her sleep and curled up more tightly.  I said something ungentlemanly but refrained from waking her; better to let her stay curled up and as warm as she could manage.  Besides, she would have to start a fire for light before she could help build.  So I fell to working.

The thunder came again, followed by a howling, baying noise that made all the hair on my body stand up.  It was a lot like the baying of hounds, but deeper, louder, and somehow purer—wilder.

If I had been mortal at the time, I don’t doubt I would have had a chill.

The thunder diminished but did not cease.  It became a low, steady rumble, and I began to suspect it was not thunder but something more like the pounding of hoofbeats.  I set aside the materials for a lean-to and tried to wake Shada.  She muttered something incomprehensible and moaned in what sounded like fear.  I couldn’t wake her.

I drew pistol and sword, left and right, and uncoiled tendrils all about.  Bronze moved to stand behind me and I wondered again just how smart my horse was.

Then I heard the horn.  It was both piercing and deep, all at once, and sent a bolt of cold fear all the way through me, from my feet to my head.  The baying grew to a howling.

The hell with this!
thought I.

I thrust both pistol and sword back into their containers.  Shada I picked up by grabbing the edges of our cloaks and wrapping her in them.  I swung into the saddle and kicked Bronze ringingly.  I slung my unconscious burden over one shoulder, rose to a crouch in the stirrups, and we were off.

Bronze pushed herself that night, and we saw just how fast a metal horse could go.  If she had been a statue of a winged horse, she would have flown, power-to-weight ratios be damned.  Trees flashed by at either hand like telephone poles along the highway.  I had no way to guess at our speed other than “bloody fast.”  The horn sounded again, merrily giving chase, and the deep baying of the hounds told me they found our trail.

Bronze lowered her head, flattened her ears, and went even faster.

We broke from the treeline, headed southward, literally burning a line through a cornfield.  I glanced back under the arm that wasn’t holding Shada and noted the hoofprints Bronze was leaving were smoking.  I could already smell hot metal in the plume of smoke streaming steadily back from her nostrils.

Then our pursuers broke from the treeline and I shouted to Bronze to move faster.

It was a pack of dogs—but what dogs!  They were white dogs, an ugly, bone-white color that made me think of eyeless fish and dead things.  They were the size of ponies, with greenish fires where the eyes should be and licks of green flame whipping over their shoulders like elongated tongues.  The thunder wasn’t hoofbeats; it was the pounding of the pack.

And behind
them
…

It was a man, or manlike in form, mostly.  He was huge, easily seven feet tall, not counting the antlers that sprang up and out from his head.  He was as black as tar and muscled like a piece of sculpture.  He bore a spear in his right hand and ran behind the dogs, keeping up on foot even at that mad pace.  His eyes glowed green.

I tugged on space around us.  Rather than decrease our weight, I tilted the plane of gravity; everything was now downhill to us.  Bronze was not slow to take advantage of this; her gait shifted more in support of us than in propulsion and we went even faster.  We passed through fields and fences, over ditch and over road, while the smoke from Bronze’ nose and mouth became shot with sparks and red flames. 

The dogs had been gaining slowly ever since I spotted them and were about a mile behind us.  Bronze just kept creeping up in speed, almost imperceptibly, until she was about as fast.  If things kept going like that indefinitely, she would lose them.

The horn sounded again, and I knew how it felt to be hunted.

I felt the flare of anger, hotter than the fear, and a low throbbing in my blood.  There was something in my anger, a fury that seethed, normally quiescent and deep down.  It made my blood roar like dragons, and the rage answered with that same throbbing power I had felt before.