Meet the Ancients: Chapter 5

"I see Him Pam."

At the same time I heard "That overprotective interfering asshole . . ."

Good news for me – she is not happy to see him.

Looking at Him I realized that He was taller than I expected. His long hair was pulled back on top and secured with an ornate knotwork hair ornament. Accenting the tattoos that could be seen on His neck and chest was a heavy gold torque with snarling wolves in the front. He was surveying the room as if He owned it and I could feel the power radiating off of Him.

I continued on the phone with Pam saying, "Bring Him over to the booth; let me get this over with."

I watched as she said a few words to Him and then led him over. As He approached I said, "Please be seated." He looked over at Magan, smiled and seated himself across from us. I glanced at her and saw that she was glaring at him.

She is not happy with him at all. I wonder if this can work to my advantage.

Pam was still standing there and I told her, "That is all." She dipped her head and left.

He gave a low laugh. I heard a deep smooth voice say, "Darling, are you not going to introduce me?"

He calls her darling? How dare He.

In a clipped voice she stated, "Wolfram, Erik; Erik, Wolfram."

Well that explained the wolf Sookie had seen.

We sat there in silence for a long moment. I spoke first. "I hear that you are residing in my area."

There was a low laugh again. "My contemporaries and I do not tend to get involved with the convoluted politics and pretentiousness of those so much younger than ourselves, we do not feel a need to. But in answer to your question, yes I am currently living nearby."

Magan cut in angrily, "Wolf - stop this posturing and tell me why the hell you are here! I most certainly don't need a guard dog. Just because I mentioned that I would be here is not a reason for you to appear also. We parted years ago and you have never been concerned yourself with anyone that I've been interested in before."

No wonder she in not afraid of me, she is not afraid of him.

"I am merely looking out for your interests' darling. You have never shown an interest in another vampire before. And I am also interested in finding out if this Viking is the one Godric told me he had made. Most likely he is, Godric only made 3 children and 2 of them are dead."

To me he said, "How old are you Viking?"

Godric had never told me about his life prior to turning me. I did not even know that he had created any children before me.

I replied, "I am just over 1000 years old. Tell me about Godric before he turned me. I am still trying to understand why he did what he did."

"That matches what he told me 500 years ago. And I am surprised that he did not greet the sun sooner. He had been headed down that path for a long time. But right now I am more interested in what your interest is in Magan."

Now I know how Bill felt when I started going after Sookie.

I decided to go with directness and declared, "I want to know if she is yours."

He chuckled at this, "Every few hundred years I find a human to establish a relationship with in order to gain a more human mindset for the times. In our culture we do not own humans – a relationship must be mutually desired. That, however, does not prevent us from watching over and protecting those that we have spent time with even after we part."

That was a warning to me. But it also might be good news if she wants a relationship with me.

He continued, "Have you bitten her?"

I am not exactly sure how to answer this one. I hesitated.

She interrupted by saying, "Wolf, Erik has not bitten me."

He looked over at her, but stated to me, "But you have tasted her."

I looked straight at him, leaned forward and replied, "Yes."

"Why are you interested in her?"

I leaned back again. "Truthfully, I do not know. I thought at first it was because she is a telepath, but I have tasted another before and it is not the same. She is not afraid or intimidated by me. She is distinctive and compelling, different from anything that I have ever known. There have been a number of upheavals around me recently, most significantly the loss of my Maker – with whom I shared an extremely close bond. As a result I have started feeling emotions again, mostly ones of emptiness and loss. When she walked into Fangtasia I could not stop watching her. She fascinated me. After she left I was in a daze for the rest of the night."

Wolfram looked at me for a few minutes. Then he seemed to come to a decision. He started:

"My Sire and Godric's is Alric. Godric was the third son of a major chieftain. I first saw him on the battlefields when he was 10; even then he showed great promise in becoming a noted warrior. His path in life should have led him to become a chieftain in his own right. Regardless, as he grew older, I wanted to turn him into one of us. Our custom at the time was for the oldest of us to turn any new vampires. Alric refused me."

"Godric's father was one of many chieftains defying the Romans so they decided to make an example of him and his tribe. Thus one night when we awoke there was a heavy layer of smoke, and the smell of blood was thick in the air. We moved toward it looking to feed, and found the settlement razed and the inhabitants slaughtered. We made our way through the settlement. Here and there we found the mortally wounded, these we eased from existence with visions of the afterlife. We were sated by the time we reached an inner courtyard. There we found Godric, his sisters and younger brothers. The carnage there was worse than anywhere else. In an act of true cruelty they had lashed Godric to a nearby fence then raped and dismembered his family while he watched helplessly. Then they cut open an artery just deep enough to keep it from clotting over, but shallow enough to cause a slow death and left him."

"He was near death and hallucinating by the time we found him. His path in life had changed. If we just healed him he could never be more that one of many warriors in another tribe. Again I asked Alric to turn him, and this time he did not refuse me.

We had all been appalled by what we had seen. Godric wanted revenge and so we helped him. Over the next few years we killed every member of the legion who had participated in the slaughter. As Rome sent replacements we killed them too. For us it was not a matter of right or wrong, it just was. To Godric it became a matter of survival or death. He felt that the more Romans he dealt death to, the more he proved that he was the survivor."

"Eventually Rome decided that there was a curse on that legion and recalled them to send elsewhere. Godric wanted to follow them and continue the killing, but we had tired of the killing and refused to allow him to go. We worried that if we let him go he would become nothing more than a slayer and would never learn any more of what immortality offered, and thus lose all reason to live."

"By then the rest of us had been a group – you would call it a nest – for over 800 years. We felt it was time for us to separate for a while since when vampires stay together for too long we lose all perspective and tend to become pitiless. Our way of dealing with immortality has always been to separate for periods of time equal to the time we stay together. During the time we are apart we individually look to learn new things; then when we are together again we bring what we have learned back to the others. Up until that point Godric was my brother. As he was not yet old enough to go out on his own, Alric assigned us to pair up. I then became his father and he my son. "

"While we roamed Godric created his first child; a Druid bard by the name of Rhodri. He was dying of a fast growing form of what is now called cancer and would have died a natural death in less that a month. As it was, less than 40 years after he was turned he chose to greet the sun. Bards were never a good choice in creating new vampires unless they were also warriors. Our preferred choice has always been warriors as they tend to have the will to remain undead."

"His second child was a woman that he had become fascinated with. By this time Godric was 500 years old. She also had lost her entire family to the Romans, but her temperament really made her too wild and undisciplined to be made vampire. Godric wanted her though and I remembered how much I had wanted him so many years earlier, so I allowed him to turn her. Upon becoming vampire she took the name Morrigan. That should have been my first warning that I ought to destroy her. She broke off from us within a few years and became a menace - killing indiscriminately, not hiding her kills, creating other vampires and allowing humans to see her feed. I ended up needing to contact Alric and the others to help hunt her and her progeny down and execute them. Godric was so mad at us that I do not think that he ever forgave any of us. "

"150 years later Alric contacted me to help hunt down a Maenad. Their habits are sloppy and often a threat to our secrecy, thus we never allowed them to reside in the same areas we were. The five of us had hunted down 14 or 15 of them by that time. I should have not brought Godric on the hunt. All of us had put out of our minds how we had found him when we turned him; and the easiest way to destroy a Maenad is to literally rip them to shreds in the same manner as they dispatch their sacrifices. During the kill Godric left us, it reminded him too much of what had happened to his family."

"None of us heard from him for another 850 years, when he sought me out. He told me that he now had a Viking companion whom he had turned 500 years prior. I only ever saw him 3 more times in the past 500 years. I believe he went and saw Alric 8 times during the same time period, and each of the others at least once. He never told any of us more about you Erik. As he seemed to want to keep us from knowing any more we never looked for you."

I was stunned by the entire chronicle. I had asked Godric about his life before turning me many times, and he had always told me that all that matters is now.

"That explains some things about him to me." I said, "When he made me he told me that he would be my father, brother, son."

"We always referred to each other in those terms." said Wolfram, "I see it stayed with him."

"So now I get to know more about your past Wolf?" asked Magan, "you would never tell me before."

Wolfram looked at her, "If you have chosen Erik you needed to know because his Makers Sire and mine are the same. Because of the our ages the first time you take blood from Erik a very deep bond – much deeper than a normal blood bond - will form when our blood mingles within you. We have seen this type of bond form before. It will be completely unbreakable, and we do not yet know how your telepathy will play out in it. Once you do drink his blood I can no longer give you my blood. If you change your mind about accepting my gift it would be best to have Alric do it."

He looked over at me. "That is also why you were so dazed after just tasting her. It would have been similar to sharing blood with Godric." He paused and then continued, "You also need to make a decision Erik. Magan will never move down here. She can not handle the extreme summer heat and humidity. I do not think even the strongest bond could move her."

I looked over at her and from the expression on her face I could tell that he was right. I unquestionably had some thinking to do. She had finished her second glass of wine by now. The band started up, it must be 9:00. It seems as if it ought to be much later than that.

Something sunk in that Wolfram had said. I stated, "Your gift to her is to make her vampire."

That low laugh again. I am starting to get irritated by it. "I offered Magan that many years ago – before we parted. She declined, said that she wanted to live a human life for a while. I told her that should she ever change her mind I would do it. I do not know how much of a human life she has been able to have - as my blood has slowed her aging process down considerably. Due to that she has had to live as a vampire in terms of how long she can be around the same people."

She interjected, "At least I can live in the sun. It makes it easier to participate in the outdoor activities that I enjoy. Besides it just means that it will look like I was turned at a younger age."

"So you are eventually going to say yes? You have never committed to do so before. I will have to tell Alric that I will need a favor from him some time in the near future."

"I always planned to be turned, I just don't know when."

By now the tension in me was starting to melt away. Wolfram did not seem to want to lay claim to Magan, just to look after her. I am not happy about that - but I can accept it. She was relaxed now too and watching the two of us. From the expression on her face I could tell that she was also listening in on the conversations around us.

Conversationally Wolfram commented, "I see she has given you the Saehrimnir torque. I remember when she made it she had no idea what she was going to do with it." He looked over at her. "Darling, did you tell him why you used silver in making it?"

That made her irate.

"Not. Yet." she curtly replied.

I looked from one to the other, which was when I noticed that the teeth on the wolves were also very sharp silver.

"I thought that I might show him later", she said, "but I guess I might as well do so now." To me she stated, "Gold is too soft."

I looked at her questioningly as she reached for the torque. I thought she was going to remove it, but instead she jabbed her middle finger against one of the tusks. Blood welled out of the puncture wound and my fangs shot out. This time she immediately placed her finger against my lower lip and left it there. I licked the blood off, then reached up to hold her hand and started to drink. Because of where the wound was the blood flow was sluggish. The temptation to roll her wrist over and bite it was so strong I could barely resist it. Then I heard her whisper, "Greedy", in my ear and felt her gently tug her hand away. I released her and then looked over at Wolfram. His fangs had come out too. Now he placed one of his fingers against a wolves tooth and repeated her action. He placed his hand on the table palm up and she touched her finger to the blood there.

I felt a low growl in the back of my throat.

She then held her finger up in front of him and he licked it once, then licked his own finger. Both wounds were gone. Without even looking over at me he said, "Until you decide, you do not need to be giving her any of your blood in any way. The wound needed to be healed and she knows how much I hate wasting blood. It was her choice. She allowed you to actually drink."

Put that way I felt mollified. I just do not like the idea of Magan allowing him to have even a drop of her blood.

She said to Wolfram, "I was going to wait until just before I left to give him the torque . . ."

He looked at her and said, "But . . ."

"Look at his wristbands."

He did, "Those are remarkable. What made you wear them tonight?"

"I looked like a cleric without them, and I found I wanted to wear something from my previous life."

He chuckled, "Erik I do not think that you could ever be mistaken for a cleric. However I do see why she gave you the torque so soon."

My cell phone rang again. I glanced at it and it was Chou. I answered it.