The Night Eternal. Chuck Hogan

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СКАЧАТЬ But her pleas meant nothing to the Master—except as part of the feeding process: the sizzling sound of bacon in the frying pan.

      At that moment, palace guards came pounding at his door. Their orders were to never interrupt his weekly ceremony, but, because they knew his penchant for cruelty, the Master knew that their reason for disturbing him must be one of importance. Accordingly, the Master unbarred the door and admitted them to the gory scene. Months of palace duty had inured the guards to the sight of such desecration and perversion. They informed Thrax that Caligula had survived an assassination attempt and summoned him to the emperor’s side.

      The slave needed to be dispatched and her pregnancy terminated. The rules dictated as much. But the Master did not want to be cheated of his weekly sport, and so Thrax ordered that the doors be guarded until his return.

      It turned out that the supposed assassination plot was simply a bout of imperial hysteria, resulting in the slaying of seven innocent orgy guests. Thrax returned to his chamber not much later to discover that while he was away assuaging the sun god, the centurions had cleared the palace grounds, including the temple, in order to quell the phantom coup. The pregnant slave—infected, wounded—was gone.

      As dawn approached, Thrax persuaded Caligula to dispatch soldiers into all the surrounding cities to find the slave and return her to the temple. Despite a near-sacking of their own land, the soldiers failed to find her. When nightfall finally returned, Thrax went out in search of the slave, but his imprint upon her mind was weak due to her pregnancy. The Master was only a few hundred years old at the time and still apt to make mistakes.

      This particular omission would dog the Master for centuries to come. For within the first month of the new year, Caligula was indeed assassinated, and his successor, Claudius, after a brief period of exile, came into power by procuring the support of the Praetorian guard—and the evil slave Thrax found himself purged and on the run.

      The pregnant slave girl kept moving south, back to the land of her Dear Ones. She gave birth to a pale, nearly translucent baby boy, its skin the color of marble in moonlight. He was born in a cave amid an olive field near Sicily and in that dry land they hunted for years. The slave and the baby shared a weak psychic bond, and although they both survived on the blood of humans, the boy lacked the infecting pathogen necessary to turn his victims.

      Rumors of a demon spread throughout the Mediterranean as the Born grew—and grew quickly. The half boy could sustain limited exposure to the sun without perishing. But otherwise, tainted by the curse of the Master, he possessed all of the vampiric attributes, with the exception of the enslaving link to his creator.

      But if the Master was ever destroyed, so he would be too.

      A decade later, as the Born was returning to his cave just before dawn, he sensed a presence. He saw, within the shadows of the cave, a deeper shadow still, stirring, watching him. Then he felt the voice of his mother waning within him—her signal extinguished. He knew instantly what had happened: whatever was in there had done away with his mother . . . and now awaited him. Without even seeing his enemy, the Born knew the intensity of its cruelty. The thing in the shadows knew no mercy. With absolutely no hesitation, the Born turned away and escaped toward his only refuge: the light of the morning sun.

      The Born survived as best he could. He scavenged and hunted and occasionally robbed travelers in the Sicilian crossroads. Soon he was captured and brought to justice. He was indentured and trained as a gladiator. In exhibitions, the Born defeated every challenger, human or beast, and his unnatural talents and peculiar appearance drew the attention of the senate and the Roman military. On the eve of their ceremonial branding, an ambush by multiple rivals jealous of his success and attention resulted in multiple sword wounds, fatal blows that, miraculously, did not kill him. He healed quickly and was immediately withdrawn from the gladiator school, taken in by a senator, Faustus Sertorius, who had a passing familiarity with the dark arts and held a considerable collection of primitive artifacts. The senator recognized the gladiator as the fifth immortal to be birthed by human flesh and vampiric blood, and thus named him Quintus Sertorius.

      The strange peregrinus was inducted into the army’s auxilia at first but quickly rose through the ranks and joined the third legion. Under the banner of Pegasus, Quintus crossed the ocean to wage war in Africa against the fierce Berbers. He became proficient in handling the pilum, the Roman elongated lance, and it is said that he could throw it with such force as to take down a horse in full gallop. He wielded a double-edged steel sword, a gladius hispaniensis, forged specially for him—void of any silver ornaments and with a bone grip made from a human femur.

      Through the decades, Quintus took the victorious march from the temple of Bellona to the Porta Triumphalis many times and served through generations and various reigns, at the pleasure of every emperor. Rumors about his longevity added to his legend and he grew to be both feared and admired. In Brittania, he struck terror into the hearts and minds of the Pict army. Among the German Gamabrivii, he was known as the Shadow of Steele, and his mere presence kept the peace along the banks of the Euphrates.

      Quintus was an imposing figure. His chiseled physique and preternaturally pale skin gave him the appearance of a living, breathing statue carved of the purest marble. Everything about him was martial and combative, and he carried himself with the greatest assurance. He put himself at the head of every charge, and he was the last to leave the battleground. For the first few years he kept trophies, but, as the slaughter became repetitive, and as these keepsakes began to clutter his domicile, he lost interest. He broke down the rules of combat to exactly fifty-two moves: techniques of balletic precision that brought down his adversaries in fewer than twenty seconds.

      At every step of his career, Quintus felt the persecution of the Master, who had long since abandoned the fifteen-year-old slave Thrax’s body as its host. There were thwarted ambushes, slave vampire attacks, and, only rarely, direct assaults by the Master in various guises. At first Quintus was confused by the nature of these attacks, but over time, he became curious about his progenitor. His Roman military training taught him to go on the offensive when threatened, and so he began tracking the Master, in a search for answers.

      At the same time, the Born’s exploits and his growing legend brought him to the attention of the Ancients, who approached him one night in the middle of battle. Through his contact with them, the Born learned the truth about his lineage and the background of the wayward Ancient they referred to as “the Young One.” They showed him many things under the assumption that, once their secrets were revealed to him, the Born would naturally join them.

      But Quintus refused. He turned his back on the dark order of vampire lords born of the same cataclysmic force as the Master. Quintus had spent all his life among humans, and he wanted to try to adapt to their kind. He wanted to explore that half of him. And, despite the threat the Master posed to him, he wished to live as an immortal among mortals, rather than—as he thought of himself then—a half-breed among purebreds.

      Having been born out of omission rather than action, Quintus was unable to procreate in any way. He was unable to reproduce and could never truly claim a woman as his very own. Quintus lacked the pathogen that would have allowed him to spread the infection or subjugate any humans to his will.

      At the end of his campaign days, Quintus found himself a legate and was given a fertile plot of land and even a family: a young Berber widow with olive skin, dark eyes, and a daughter of her own. In her, he found affection and intimacy and eventually love. The dark woman sang for him sweet songs in her native tongue and lulled him to sleep in the deep cellars of his home. During a time of relative peace, they kept house on the shore of southern Italy. Until one night when he was away, and the Master visited her.

      Quintus came back to find his family turned and lying in wait, attacking him along with the Master. Quintus had to fight them all at once, releasing his savage wife and then her child. He СКАЧАТЬ