Douglas Clegg - Vampyricon 01 by The Priest Of Blood

Author:The Priest Of Blood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

B O O K T W O

IMMORTALITY

I

VAMPYRE

• C H A P T E R 1 1 •

Resurrection

• 1 •

MY mortal life had ended in that tower, with the creature, the vampyre, taking the last of my life’s blood, and giving me the breath of the life of immortal damnation. How many years and centuries have passed since that moment! The city of my rebirth is buried in sand, while other towering citadels have risen and fallen, like sand castles in a sweeping tide, built, destroyed, re-built, undone. Time itself changes with the first resurrection—for days become as minutes, and years, hours.

Mortality is a brief flickering of a lamp in a drafty room. The immortal existence is the fire that spreads in the wind, across dried grasses and dying villages. It destroys and seduces, it is the furnace of eternity within the figure of the lone creature: the man who arises from the dead.

Hunger and thirst seem amplified upon awakening.

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D O U G L A S C L E G G

The mind itself grows, expands, and encompasses more than the mortal mind ever could. Empathy grows, as well as a monstrous understanding of the prey and the dance it must perform with the predator.

But the first thing a newly risen vampyre feels is the shock of remembering the journey to death, to the Threshold itself, and the return into flesh is an unwelcome return.

Death is a whisper, an echo, but life is a tearing, ravaging imbecile, drawing one back to the flesh, back to the nerve and sinew and the beating of the heart.

Back to the blood itself.

• 2 •

I lay in a deep, open grave.

Above me, darkness.

I caught my breath as one who comes up from the sea after nearly drowning, and grasped for whatever I could—dirt and rocks beside me—to sit up so that the burning in my lungs would cease, and I could inhale deeply from the air. I leaned forward, clutching my knees to my chest. I was naked. Beside me, my tunic, cloak, and sword.

Someone had brought me to this place. From the tower to this home of death.

My lips were parched. I felt old beyond my years. I had only a slight memory of a dream—and as I gained clarity in my consciousness, I realized it was not a dream at all but the vision that Pythia had compelled me to have.

The same vision that had frightened her so, though I knew not why.

The priest, with his eyes of shiny beetle blackness, and the figures in red and black and yellow that were painted upon his clean-shaved scalp, the small gold and jeweled T H E P R I E S T O F B L O O D

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rings that covered his earlobes and dotted his nose at either nostril.

“The Myrrydanai know of you from the breath,” the priest whispered. “Already, they seek to destroy the All.

The dark mother herself smells your flesh and blood. She will pursue you. Still, you must come. The Nahhashim await.

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