5: Betrayed; 482 AD

5: Betrayed; 482 AD

“I wish I was human,” Guinevere murmured, as if I couldn’t hear her. I cracked one eye open to look at her. Guinevere’s soft golden hair was set in a loose chignon with wisps framing her beautiful face and her peasant dress hid her beauty. I curled my lip scornfully. Could they not understand that we were all powerful creatures?

I could not understand how the concept of our superiority to the humans escaped them. Ahntonyn – I ignored the ever-present nostalgic tug of my silent heart – smiled at Guinevere and the jealously flared to a burning point deep in my navel.

I turned away from them.

Cristos and Richard were spread out on the snow, close to Guinevere. They were as still as statues and just as silent.

I glanced at Mathias, who sat cross-legged and uncharacteristically silent. He was staring at Richard with a look of sheer intensity – almost loathing – and I let my finger trail up his spine, hopping to distract him. Mathias was my new companion. He was always ready to pillage, unlike Ahntonyn, Cristos, Guinevere and Richard. I felt the same regret I’d been feeling for the last couple of decades. The need to destroy and cause pain was fading. I was less angry, but Mathias reeled me into it like a fish on a hook.

“Kyelke?” Mathias’ voice snapped me out of my reverie.

“Yes?” I responded. I did not like the way he was looking at Richard.

“I want him dead.” He never stopped looking at Richard. I was glad he was speaking in his native tongue. Guinevere glanced at Mathias, then away, back to Ahntonyn, a perturbed expression on her face. I wondered if she learned his tongue. I knew of the game they played when we were in still in Europe. They would learn foreign languages and have entire conversations, testing each other, as if I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t stop the jealously that led me to cease staying long enough to for them to learn.

I don’t know what stopped me from rejoining them.

I didn’t want to them to leave me. I didn’t want to tell them that their blood was different and they were no longer bound to me. I couldn’t stand it if Ahntonyn left me.

Cristos sat up and his gaze never lingered on Mathias and myself, but focused on Guinevere, with an ironic smile on his face.

We were a strange group. Or groups. Mathias and I made up one, and they made the other – although we were still united. They communicated when they had to. Ahntonyn looked at me with longing and I couldn’t meet his gaze, not without feeling the deep shame in my silent heart. I was amazed, touched and disbelieving that he still loved me.

My petulant power trips had made me blind to him.

“I can’t believe I was ever human,” Ahntonyn mused quietly. I knew he was watching the travelers a few miles away. There was a couple that held him in rapture. They were much like we used to be. They are allies, and they love each other.

I feel like a stranger, but I want to him to know I need him.

I turned away from this thought, uncomfortable and looked at Mathias.

“Cristos needs Richard,” I said and Mathias’s lip curled. I could sense madness in him. His blood was tainted from his cannibalism practice. He still ate humans.

The concept of the tribe I had snatched him away from was dawning on me. I should have never created him, but I remember the fascination I had with his tribe and his culture. I remember the beginning of the stirrings or regret that caused me to run away and make him to make me feel powerful and deluded again.

I smiled at him, hiding the blooming disgust.

“He is a waste to us. I do not understand why we keep them,” he insisted, eyeing me closely. Uncharacteristic to his madness, Mathias was incredibly quick. He could see through most people’s facades and I was ever grateful he could not read me. Thousands of years of practice at a calm, condescending face aided me as I shrugged. I couldn’t add that I needed them all.

I needed Guinevere as a reminded of who I used to be; Cristos reminded me of my downward spiral and Richard was a living breathing punishment for me. I caused Cristos so much pain. I needed Ahntonyn’s love.

“They have been with me for a long time,” I said. It was a noncommittal answer, but he needed to hear more.

“How long?” He pressed, his tone dangerous.

“Decades,” I responded.

“Longer than me?” he challenged, his eyes narrowing.

Somehow, during his time with me, Mathias thought he established a seniority of Ahntonyn. He would never come close. I knew it was my fault. I never spoke to the others, only to listen to an objection they had on a decision I’d made. Mathias could see the broken relationship we had and he took swift advantage and won my favor. He won it for a long time until I started to listen to the strong remorse in me feelings.

“A lifetime longer,” I said strongly. “They were with me for nearly three thousand years before you.”

It was the truth and it dawned on Mathias how long of a time that was. He had been with us for nearly five centuries. He could not grasp the concept of spending three thousand years with someone.

I felt the nostalgia of Ahntonyn and I building out first home.

My laughing as Ahntonyn ripped trees right of o the ground and as I, with the smallest effort, straightened a wall. I closed my eyes so Mathias could not see the sadness in them.

The need to see if our first home was still intact hit me with a strange force.

We were far north, in the same continent, crossing over the beautiful grasslands of the Americas and went forward until it we reached a land with bitterly cold climate.

Almost as if reading my thoughts, Ahntonyn was drawing a map of the world in the snow. I brought up the courage and reached out. Ahntonyn froze his eyes darted towards my face and at my hand. I knew he thought I was going to destroy his ice drawing. I knew he associated me with causing pain and destroying everything in my path.

I set my finger down on the spot where we built our home. Ahntonyn’s eyes flickered with recognition.

“We’re crossing the ocean and going here,” I told him and Ahntonyn looked at my face. Once again, I looked away from his eyes. I don’t know what he saw, but our fingers brushed and the same spark that attracted me to him the first time shone in us. I drew in a sharp breath, surprised that it was still there. Ahntonyn turned away and I felt a spark of hope.

In the morning, after resting in the snow for seven hours, we began our journey south and stopped at a small village to hunt. We struck the fields, one human each. The other tried to dazzle the humans into not feeling pain and they succeeded. They only left the humans confused and a little dizzy, with two bite marks on a certain spot where they could not see them. The marks healed with our saliva. I drank all of their blood and killed them.

Mathias tortured them.

Ahntonyn and the others ignored the woman’s screams coming from the fields and tried not to look at each other, horrified, when they heard his laughter.

He played with the woman for nearly fifteen minutes before she finally went silent. I knew she could feel the life draining from the body because he bragged about it me later. A sadistic little demon, growing more powerful by the minute and I needed to destroy him.

We continued our journey, stopping at the edge of the land and we stared at the vast ocean of water. We had crossed this ocean once before, and it had taken us three days of torpedoing through water to reach the mainland.

We did the same, safely attaching our packs to our backs before diving into the lukewarm water.

It was lukewarm and strangely pleasant to us, but I was sure it was freezing cold to the humans. We bulleted through the water, Mathias and Ahntonyn ahead, and the rest of us spread out in a sort of V formation.

We swam, not keeping close to the surface, but still in the water as we swam across endless water. It was two days before we reached land we pulled ourselves onto hot sand. I had a vague idea of where we were but Ahntonyn seemed to know our exact location. Not even tired, we picked up a thin stick and draw the same map he had drawn in the snow and he made a single, curving line across the space that was water. We had to go southwest to reach Sumer.

We reached the place, but we stayed several hundred feet away. The house was somehow still intact, although it was bigger now, with more rooms added and a large family inhabited it and it was farmland.

I stared at it. It was so long ago.

I let a small tear escape.

Mathias saw it and he bared his teeth. He turned, howling in rage as he attempted to attach Richard, who was always ready for anything. He leapt deftly away and Guinevere cried out in shock and Cristos who roared out his threats. They fought and I wept. Mathias with his brute strength was an even match for Richard, but Richard was a scholar, not a warrior.

It was so quick I still cannot understand it. Ahntonyn’s warm hand cupping my face, his lips brushing mine, whispering the forgiveness I didn’t deserve. He was snatched away from me, my check stinging from his absence. My eyes opened in time to see Mathias’ teeth clam around Ahntonyn’s neck and rip. He healed instantly, but of course, Mathias did not cease.

He ripped Ahntonyn apart, as I was too shocked to move. He ripped my soulmate to pieces. I aware of a noise that sounded faintly like screaming and everything slowed down. The screaming roared in my ears and it was the most pained sound I’d ever heard. It struck me that the noise was coming from my own throat, and then Mathias’ face was inches from mine. My blood was in his hands, mixing with Ahntonyn. He turned to ashes then, my Ahntonyn, and I screamed.

I knew Cristos and Guinevere beat Mathias but he ran away. They did not kill him. Cristos lifted me in his arms.

“Ahntonyn told us where to take her,” I heard a small echo of Guinevere’s voice. I was numb, but the sound of his name sent ripples of pain over my body. Was this what grief felt like? I couldn’t move.

I’d forgotten how much loosing someone hurt.

I was limp for the entire time they traveled. I never stopped weeping, not even when we crossed a familiar desert and took me to a hidden cavern – my family’s secret tomb – and laid me down in the sarcophagus. They didn’t close it.

I slept, letting my mind deal with the loss. I was to live forever, but he was dead. Gone.

Gone…

Her voice echoes painfully. Her ashes had sunk into my skin and changed my body to be like hers.

Yes, gone. I smile. I can see her in my mind, and I can feel the love she has for the vampire I’d created: Richard. She smiles at his name

My heart is in his body, did you know that, Kyelke? She asks.

I did. I felt the fusion.

Maybe it could happen like that to you and Ahntonyn? She wonders. Ria smiles in my mind. I have no secrets from this girl. My descendant. She is to live forever here too.

What is Cristos’s story? She wonders.

I’ll let you find out; I say and let her mind see my memories of a handsome young man and his long life.