The Oldest Living Vampire Reborn (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 5) by Joseph Duncan

Author:Joseph Duncan [Duncan, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cobra E-books
Published: 2016-08-09T22:00:00+00:00

Not Even Dust

Bad Wildbach was a scintillation of lights at our backs, flickering amid the winter bare branches of the forest. Once, not too long ago, those lights were a bronzy gleam, the glow of candles and oil lamps and the ruddy radiance of a hundred cozy fireplaces. The lights of the city were cold and hard and blue now, the stark glare of contemporary utilities, but that is the cost of progress. Convenience before beauty. I wondered what advances the next millennium would usher in, then realized I would not be around to see them. It was a small shock, followed by a mishmash of complex emotions: regret and excitement, fear and longing.

I stood now at the foot of the mountain we called Old Stone Man. Once it had reared its head over all the other mountains in this range, a queerly shaped peak whose protuberances of stone gave it the rough likeness of a human face, but time had whittled its features to a bland blank visage. The shelves of stone that were once its furrowed brow had been soothed by the elements. The outcrop of rock that was its great hooked nose had fallen away to rubble, clawed from the face of the mountain by the scrabbling fingers of rain and ice and snow. It still looked down upon its ancient fellows, but it no longer regarded them so haughtily. Time had stripped it of its dignity, as it strips all men of their dignity. It hunched along with all the rest now, back bent by the weight of the ages, with a scarf of wind-stunted pines trailing down its spine.

It was here, in a small cavern near the summit of this mountain, that I retreated from my mortal life after I was transformed into this thing that I am. I was unable to control my lust for blood in those days, a danger to every living creature around me, and so I became a hermit and watched over my loved ones from a safe distance.

It was hard to believe that my headstrong Nyala had climbed this mountain once. She was an ancient crone then, her time in this world all but run out, but some Foul Ones had kidnapped our granddaughters and she came here to find me and set me on the fiends. The mountain was not so stooped with age then, and she nearly fell to her death before I knew that she was searching for me. I destroyed the raiders who abducted our children, returned our daughters to the bosom of our tribe, but Nyal died from the injuries she’d sustained during our adventure. She was so very old then, flesh as thin and fragile as onionskin, hair like spider silk. She was the last of my mortal lovers to perish. I took her body from our village, as I had retrieved both Brulde and Eyya before her, and brought her remains here, to this mountain again, to rest for all time among the dust of our beloved spouses.

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