13. He Who Holds Down the Cow's Leg Is Just as Guilty
In the beginning I felt kind of disappointed that it hadn't been a greater challenge. With all my amplified magical powers, each one of the monsters would stand out clearly for me like a clear bugle among the numbing murmurs of human minds. When I detected a great concentration of those monsters living in the Old World, I took aloft and relocated to Europe. For months on end I roamed through countries filled to bursting with history. And monsters. Every so often I would go into Asia and Africa, but I would always return to Europe, because there were more vampires there.
It was easy to find their hideouts. Most of them lived in covens with dozens of vampires trying to obey all the rules and feeling completely miserable all the time. Those were the weakest ones, and very few of them were older than a century. I took to phoning the fire departments ahead of time before I would arrive to wherever my next victims would be, to avoid unnecessary fires. But others lived like packs of wild dogs, terrorizing whatever county in which they would have settled down, and wreaking havoc among the natives. For those feral vampires I reserved the punishment of cutting them to pieces first before lighting them up in flames.
The vampires that were at least a century old were completely different: they spent most of their time accumulating wealth, alone. The strangest thing about them is that they used human guards and servants. They ruled their gangs with outlandish rewards and cruel punishments. Some of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world were controlled by those centenary vampires. They were much more paranoid and difficult to find, and never hesitated to shield themselves behind any human at hand.
Like I cared… From the beginning I was convinced that, if the humans in question knew that their boss was a vampire, they deserved to be destroyed along their chief. It was easy to read their minds when they were in a state of panic, when I would advance on them and there would be nothing that could deflect me. However, it wasn't all that easy to hunt their bosses. Those centenary vampires did have some of the spirit's powers, and sometimes I had to stalk them for many days before being able to destroy them. Generally, they also fell pray to my power of the flame, although they knew how to use some powers to avoid my attacks. For instance, the ones that could read thoughts detected me because of that noise like a trumpet of final judgment resounding in their brains whenever I would be close to them, and so they managed to escape for a few more hours. Some others knew how to weasel away very well by using the swiftness of the spirit, but they would forget that I could track them down by letting the spirit itself guide me towards them. I would invariably ambush and destroy them.
After a while, I started carrying strapped to my back a couple of hoes, just for style. For some strange reason, the actual use of my body with human movements (although much swifter and more powerful than any other human) made me feel additional pleasure when I would charge a mob of blood-thirsty monsters and would emerge unharmed, leaving behind only trembling chunks. Sometimes, when I felt especially cruel, I would break apart those centenary vampires in large chunks. While I kept them paralyzed with the power of my mind, a single slice the hoes would separate a hand, or a foot, or from the knee to mid thigh. Slowly, deliberately, I would place the chunks in an almost anatomical position, without letting them touch each other, and I would leave them there for many days, letting them contemplate the horror of immortality. I must admit that I forgot more than two or three of them and left them behind in that position. I hope no one has found them, because in time it is possible that the spirit might mend their bodies and that they might emerge again, like thirsty Quasimodos. But, were it to happen, I'd only have to visit them again, this time in a more definitive manner.
After some time this diversion bored me and I started roaming among the settlements and the large cities like the Angel of Exodus. Instead of taking the life of Egyptian firstborns, I would walk the streets starting lonely conflagrations in some hidden basement, or multiple blazes inside abandoned buildings. The powers of the spirit grew stronger and stronger in me, and I guessed that it was in part due to not having drunk blood in a long time. But also there were many less recipients in which the spirit could dwell, and its powers would grow more concentrated in those of us who still survived.
That notion worried me quite a lot, thinking that I hadn't found any of the millennial vampires yet.
True, Benjamin's memories had shown me a history where Benjamin had massacred all other vampires and left behind a world in Roman times without vampires. But something that I had been noticing is that there were very large gaps in Benjamin's memories, and that he did not know everything. A simple example was Imenand's appearance. If I had understood it right, there were millennial vampires that could hide from Benjamin, and would wait for the opportunity of coming out into the world while Benjamin "took his rest," whatever that meant.
Although revolting, I started an investigation with the centenary vampires that I found. Every time I caught one of them, I would empty out his memories along with the blood. I didn't feel revulsion to the blood, for sucking it out was still the most pleasurable thing in this universe, but instead I found it revolting to come in contact with their twisted souls. From them I learned two important things: Most vampires believed that the millennial firstborns had resettled in the New World. And there was another very important power of the spirit that I should learn to perfection.
I practiced the new power with those few vampires left in Europe, Asia, and Africa: To veil my presence completely from the eyes of people and vampires, and from the minds of those who could read thoughts. I learned to be invisible. If I used the speed of the spirit to move from side to side, several steps away, changing positions continuously, it was almost impossible for anyone to actually see me. Maybe one of those ultra high-speed Phantom cameras could photograph me for one or two frames, but I doubt it. And if I asked the spirit to fold its tentacles inside the center of my soul I could go unnoticed by inquiring minds.
Confident that I had learned to use my powers well, and that I was leaving the vampire population virtually reduced to zero, I crossed the Atlantic, towards the Gulf of Mexico.
In the beginning I felt kind of disappointed that it hadn't been a greater challenge. With all my amplified magical powers, each one of the monsters would stand out clearly for me like a clear bugle among the numbing murmurs of human minds. When I detected a great concentration of those monsters living in the Old World, I took aloft and relocated to Europe. For months on end I roamed through countries filled to bursting with history. And monsters. Every so often I would go into Asia and Africa, but I would always return to Europe, because there were more vampires there.
It was easy to find their hideouts. Most of them lived in covens with dozens of vampires trying to obey all the rules and feeling completely miserable all the time. Those were the weakest ones, and very few of them were older than a century. I took to phoning the fire departments ahead of time before I would arrive to wherever my next victims would be, to avoid unnecessary fires. But others lived like packs of wild dogs, terrorizing whatever county in which they would have settled down, and wreaking havoc among the natives. For those feral vampires I reserved the punishment of cutting them to pieces first before lighting them up in flames.
The vampires that were at least a century old were completely different: they spent most of their time accumulating wealth, alone. The strangest thing about them is that they used human guards and servants. They ruled their gangs with outlandish rewards and cruel punishments. Some of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world were controlled by those centenary vampires. They were much more paranoid and difficult to find, and never hesitated to shield themselves behind any human at hand.
Like I cared… From the beginning I was convinced that, if the humans in question knew that their boss was a vampire, they deserved to be destroyed along their chief. It was easy to read their minds when they were in a state of panic, when I would advance on them and there would be nothing that could deflect me. However, it wasn't all that easy to hunt their bosses. Those centenary vampires did have some of the spirit's powers, and sometimes I had to stalk them for many days before being able to destroy them. Generally, they also fell pray to my power of the flame, although they knew how to use some powers to avoid my attacks. For instance, the ones that could read thoughts detected me because of that noise like a trumpet of final judgment resounding in their brains whenever I would be close to them, and so they managed to escape for a few more hours. Some others knew how to weasel away very well by using the swiftness of the spirit, but they would forget that I could track them down by letting the spirit itself guide me towards them. I would invariably ambush and destroy them.
After a while, I started carrying strapped to my back a couple of hoes, just for style. For some strange reason, the actual use of my body with human movements (although much swifter and more powerful than any other human) made me feel additional pleasure when I would charge a mob of blood-thirsty monsters and would emerge unharmed, leaving behind only trembling chunks. Sometimes, when I felt especially cruel, I would break apart those centenary vampires in large chunks. While I kept them paralyzed with the power of my mind, a single slice the hoes would separate a hand, or a foot, or from the knee to mid thigh. Slowly, deliberately, I would place the chunks in an almost anatomical position, without letting them touch each other, and I would leave them there for many days, letting them contemplate the horror of immortality. I must admit that I forgot more than two or three of them and left them behind in that position. I hope no one has found them, because in time it is possible that the spirit might mend their bodies and that they might emerge again, like thirsty Quasimodos. But, were it to happen, I'd only have to visit them again, this time in a more definitive manner.
After some time this diversion bored me and I started roaming among the settlements and the large cities like the Angel of Exodus. Instead of taking the life of Egyptian firstborns, I would walk the streets starting lonely conflagrations in some hidden basement, or multiple blazes inside abandoned buildings. The powers of the spirit grew stronger and stronger in me, and I guessed that it was in part due to not having drunk blood in a long time. But also there were many less recipients in which the spirit could dwell, and its powers would grow more concentrated in those of us who still survived.
That notion worried me quite a lot, thinking that I hadn't found any of the millennial vampires yet.
True, Benjamin's memories had shown me a history where Benjamin had massacred all other vampires and left behind a world in Roman times without vampires. But something that I had been noticing is that there were very large gaps in Benjamin's memories, and that he did not know everything. A simple example was Imenand's appearance. If I had understood it right, there were millennial vampires that could hide from Benjamin, and would wait for the opportunity of coming out into the world while Benjamin "took his rest," whatever that meant.
Although revolting, I started an investigation with the centenary vampires that I found. Every time I caught one of them, I would empty out his memories along with the blood. I didn't feel revulsion to the blood, for sucking it out was still the most pleasurable thing in this universe, but instead I found it revolting to come in contact with their twisted souls. From them I learned two important things: Most vampires believed that the millennial firstborns had resettled in the New World. And there was another very important power of the spirit that I should learn to perfection.
I practiced the new power with those few vampires left in Europe, Asia, and Africa: To veil my presence completely from the eyes of people and vampires, and from the minds of those who could read thoughts. I learned to be invisible. If I used the speed of the spirit to move from side to side, several steps away, changing positions continuously, it was almost impossible for anyone to actually see me. Maybe one of those ultra high-speed Phantom cameras could photograph me for one or two frames, but I doubt it. And if I asked the spirit to fold its tentacles inside the center of my soul I could go unnoticed by inquiring minds.
Confident that I had learned to use my powers well, and that I was leaving the vampire population virtually reduced to zero, I crossed the Atlantic, towards the Gulf of Mexico.
To Be Continued…
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