As time passed Eme
discovered that they both shared the bloodlust, but his was not as
intense as hers. Even though she was over two thousand years old,
her desire for blood had not waned much from her first years of
being brought across. The only other thing they both shared was
immense physical strength, which they both agreed increased with
each passing year. However, Eme was to discover that she had
greater abilities then Malachi. Among Eme’s other gifts, which were
keen eyesight and hearing, she also had the slight knack for
telekinesis, something she barely attempted. She found it difficult
to master and tiring to use. Eme also possessed the ability to read
thoughts and enter the minds of others. Even though Malachi did not
actually possess this gift, he was able to use Eme’s telepathic
ability to speak to her silently as well as being able to guide Eme
within her dreams to Denmark.
In these ways Eme was more
powerful than Malachi. Pondering their differences, Eme had no
answers for how or why he didn’t have the same gifts as her
brothers and herself. She could not help but wonder if there was a
whole other breed of vampires that she was unaware of. The thought
unsettled her. Eme tried not to contemplate such things and learned
to embrace their differences.
As the weeks passed and
Malachi and Eme’s relationship grew, so did their followers. At
first it was a small group of men but it quickly grew into
thousands that followed Malachi and Eme’s guidance. By 793, Malachi
and Eme led their first group of fearless men to invade
Northumbria, on the north-east coast of Britain. Their men raped
and pillaged Lindisfarne, the home of monks at St. Cuthbert’s
monastery. It was an easy target, for it was just off the
Northumbrian coast. Eme and Malachi directed and led their men to
wreak havoc and hacked their way into the chapels and storerooms,
killing as they went. When they left they took golden crucifixes,
silver communion vessels and the monks manuscripts that were bound
with jeweled covers. They also captured the surviving monks and
sold them into slavery.
The Vikings were master
sailors, fierce fighters and greedy looters. It was not difficult
to cultivate their greed and desire to conquer to benefit Malachi
and Eme’s needs. Their brutal tendencies were not even noticed
alongside their men’s own greed. As the years from 794 to 799
passed in a blur, together they raided more monasteries throughout
Britain, as well as the remote monasteries Inishbofin and
Inishmurray, off the west coast of Ireland. Finally, in the year
840, Eme rested at Malachi’s request after raiding St. Philibert’s
on Noirmoutier at the mouth of the Loire River. However, Eme
continued to plan out attacks deep into France, so they would be
prepared for when they returned to invading near and distant
lands.
After three years of
forced rest, Eme was eager to go. Malachi on the other hand, his
drive for a raid had diminished greatly. When Eme murdered the
Bishop at the altar of his own cathedral in Rouen, Nantes, it was
the last straw for Malachi. It was not the murder of the bishop
that bothered him. It was the fact that Eme’s humanity had been
slipping and was now at a pivotal low and at a passing of only
fifty years.
With a heavy heart and
much trepidation, Malachi finally confronted Eme about his
fears.
“Eme, I think it is time
we part ways with our Viking fiends. We have come full circle and I
have to say, I fear your malicious thoughts. I fear I may have
taken you too deep; your humanity is slipping away from you. It is
time to stop.”
Malachi paused. His body
appeared weak and weary. “I am getting tired, I don’t know why, but
I am so tired. My body is heavy and every night it is becoming more
difficult for me to wake.” His eyes searched for what was left of
Eme’s humanity, and when she looked at him soulfully, a sense of
relief flooded over Malachi. There was still some of her old self
in there, not only this bestial blood-lusting vampire.
Eme bowed her head in
shame. “I know what you say is true. I am even beginning to fear
myself,” Eme said.
“Before I leave you,”
Malachi began, Eme’s head shot up and looked at him, her eyes
filled with anxiety and questioning. “Tell me, why have my scars
kept you away from me?” Taken aback by his question, Eme was
silent. She wanted to choose her words carefully.
“The one who made me,” Eme
began with trepidation, “had also successfully made two others like
myself, and he had hoped for companionship. However, he did not
find it with us and nor us with him. We had no choice in becoming
vampires. It was forced upon us against our will. We had only known
him as our King, and then feared him as the Blood God. He hoped
that we would have been created in his image but our heritage alone
made us different from him. All the things that made us abnormal
when we were human really made us different after our
transformation.
“It was our angst that
eventually freed us, for we unleashed our hatred and anger against
our father because he would not let us go. We attacked and killed
our maker. Your scars remind me of what we did every time I look at
you. It was something we had to do, but I cannot help but question
whether we were right. He gave us this new life, such as it is, and
we killed him for it.” Eme kept her head lowered until Malachi made
a sound that could have been a laugh.
“Khalid!” Malachi blurted
out in astonishment. “He was always a selfish man, my brother.” Eme
looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock. “Yes, my twin brother.
He is the one who did this to me. You see, Khalid was a weak man,
not only mentally but physically. I too did not want this fortune
brought upon me, and it was such a shock for me to have been so
viciously attacked by my own flesh and blood.
“Khalid did not want to
die, you see. He lacked the faith to believe that there was an
afterlife and he did not want to chance anything. He prayed
endlessly for years for his beloved deity Shezmu to give him
eternal life. I used to laugh at him, but he was the one who had
the last laugh. Shezmu did come to grant him eternal life, but with
an uncompromising demand he did not like. He agreed anyhow. Since
he was a twin, I too had to share in his eternal life and human
blood would be the only thing that would sustain us. If he did not
agree, he would have had to endure a single human life span, which
would be short and painful with his ill health. Once he was
embraced by Shezmu, Khalid was the one who had to embrace me. And
he did it with such fierceness and contempt; his bloodlust was
uncontrollable.
“I became mad after my
first taste of human blood. I imprisoned myself within our family
burial tomb thinking that would be the only way I could keep myself
from killing anyone. But when the bloodlust came, it took over and
I became the beast that I tried to hide. I killed readily to get
what I craved. Eventually Khalid found me to be a threat and my
irrational tendencies were a fault that had to be ‘corrected’. He
attacked me brutally one night, drained me of my blood, which he
thought he took within himself completely. His assault against me
left scars that would never be reversed or healed. When he placed
me in the stone sarcophagus I screamed out in protest, but my body
was no longer my own and my voice was unheard.
“I am sorry you had to be
part of his selfishness.” Malachi paused for a moment to allow what
he revealed to be absorbed. When she maintained her silence from
shock, he decided to continue, for there was still more to his
tale.
“My brother never knew
that I rose from that hellish sarcophagus. Now that I know of what
happened to Khalid, I fear that is why I am becoming so tired and
my body grows heavy. I fear I am falling into torpor, Eme.” Malachi
reached out, took Eme’s hand into his own, and caressed it. “I must
at least try to make my way back to Cairo. I’ve been fighting this
need to flee for some time now; I cannot ignore it any longer.” A
smile crossed his face exposing his fangs.
“I have no fear that you
will ever be held captive by humans, but rather you captivating
them. That is the way it should always be. The only other advice I
can leave you with is what you probably already know. Do not trust
those of our own kind unless they give you good reason to. For we
are the ones to be feared the most, with our sweet voices, our
fiercely erotic nature and with our different wisdom that we oddly
crave…”
With that said, Eme could
still not form words. Anger began to grow within. ‘How dare he
leave me?’ she could not help but think to herself, but she knew he
had to and there was nothing she could do to keep him with
her.
That was the last night
they spent together, the last time she would see him, and it was
the last time Eme wrought havoc. She wandered aimlessly throughout
Europe until she found Lacroix and his coven of vampires in France.
There, Eme stayed for many centuries content with the others, but
still feeling alone. Only with Malachi did Eme feel any kind of
peace play with her heartstrings and blackened soul.
▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Present Day
Rome
A single
blood-stained tear escaped, releasing Eme’s sorrow. Through the
spirit of her brother Ezra, Eme was guided to find Malachi. So many
years had passed that he seemed like a dream.
Eme pushed herself away from the coliseum wall and began
walking in the general direction of the cemetery. The closer Eme
came to the mausoleum, the more Malachi’s scattered thoughts began
to flood her mind. Bits and pieces began to make sense as Eme put
together his stray thoughts.
Malachi had been awake for
the past decade but trapped in the stone sarcophagus. Having woken
when Khalid was released from his entombment in Cairo nearly ten
years earlier he lay motionless, weak and unable to move. Incapable
to make it to Cairo, Malachi only made it as far as Rome before his
body had become too stiff and numb to move and settled into
torpor.
Eme found the right
mausoleum on her second try. She pushed on the iron gate, easily
breaking the lock that secured it, and opened the main doors with
force. The scent of death, dirt and dust filled her nostrils
instantly. She stood in the doorway for a moment before realizing
that Malachi lay in the stone coffin against the furthest wall in
the room. She then made her way across the room around other
caskets to Malachi.
Eme feared what he would
look like. Standing over the sarcophagus, she was unable to control
the slight tremor in her hand. With sigh she pushed the heavy lid,
which no single human could have moved, off to the side revealing
Malachi. His flesh was waxy white and shriveled, his veins were
like blackened ropes beneath his waxy parchment-like skin. His once
shaved scalp was now covered with a mass of dark brown hair.
Malachi’s scars appeared to have spread and swelled, but it was
only an illusion.
To see him this way broke
Eme’s heart. She raised her hand, exposed her wrist and slit it.
Before the gash began to seal, she lowered the wound and offered
herself to Malachi. Her blood dripped freely at first but he did
not take it. It pooled on his face and his skin seemed to absorb
the blood.
“Take it, dammit!” Eme
said. Her raised voice echoed in the small room. Just as her wound
began to heal, Malachi finally showed signs of life. At first his
lips parted and his tongue lapped at the blood that lingered. Once
consumed, he opened his mouth wider and Eme lowered her wrist to
his lips. A gasp escaped her as his fangs slid into her
flesh.
Eme closed her eyes and let
the euphoria wash over her body. Never throughout their whole time
together had they shared themselves like this. She had always
regretted that. The soft pulling on her veins as he drank her dark
blood made her calm and she delighted in the sensation of it all.
But soon she began to feel weak. Her knees began to quiver and her
strength to waver. As Malachi let go of his grasp on her, she fell
to the floor. As she lay on the stone floor, Malachi sat up and
climbed out of the sarcophagus. He knelt beside her and looked
around the room.
Spotting a beautifully
gilded goblet upon a nearby coffin, he raced to retrieve it and
returned to Eme’s side. Lifting her head gently he placed it on his
lap. He then bit at his own flesh and let his blood fill the
goblet. He couldn’t chance Eme taking too much from him, yet she
needed his blood. Without it, she would never heal fully and her
thirst would be the death of her. For both Malachi and Khalid’s
curse was infectious bite, where the blood of only another vampire
will heal them. However, as their blood is the cure, it is also
their inevitable addiction. They will be left with the dull ache of
desire, forever craving vampire blood.
Lovingly, Malachi fed Eme
the blood from the nearly over-flowing goblet so her body might be
hers again to regenerate normally. As she swallowed the last
mouthful from the goblet, she looked up at Malachi and relief
flooded over her that she had been able to help him. She looked up
into his violet eyes and felt that peace she had been missing.
Despite the ugly scars, he was beautiful to her and now rather
stunning with this mass of shoulder length brown hair. She had
never known Malachi like this. It was like a sign to her that
things between them would be different this time. She greedily
hoped that fate would allow it.
“It has been so long, my
love,” Malachi said in a deep tone. Eme had forgotten the sound of
his voice and a warm smile crossed her lips.