Blood of the Gods (The Vampire from Hell Part 5) (9 page)

Rayea nodded.  “I’m going to snag Grace and Demetri, but first let’s go say hello to J and his dad, okay?”

“Let’s do that,” I agreed without stepping forward.  The jealousy I had for Rayea’s relationship with J continued to bother me.  I had assumed with his disappearance that it would be all over.  Now he was a vampire, just like her and Grace’s sister too.  It made me see that I needed to let those feelings go and move on.  We were going to get married.  Nothing was going to keep us apart now.  I was determined never to let her go again.  If necessary, I would share that with J very soon.

Hiding in the Wings (Typhean’s Confession)

***

“
If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining.
” ~ Unknown

***

Many of you know me without my going into elaborate introductions.  However, I’m not a rude soul and I think it’s best if I introduce myself.  Once upon a time, I was the voice inside a certain someone’s head, her sassy sidekick, and the not so quiet dweller in the Vampire from Hell.  I love it that she referred to me in her book as her sassy sidekick.  Well, okay, I wrote that part, but she put it in.  Oh, wait.  Grace actually added it.  I must meet Grace someday.  But I digress.

As I was saying…

One lovely vampire, currently on trial as I watch the scene from my vantage point and dictate this confession in my head, was my host for many days and nights.  I enjoyed my time with Rayea.  I learned many things from her.

What you may ask?

I shall get to that.

Granted like all gods do, I strayed and walked away from my lovely vampire host.  Gazing upon Zeus now and thinking of his many conquests he has achieved over the eons of years, his do not compare to my discretions.  For some, faith is hard to maintain.  For others, maybe it’s ongoing devotion and love.  For blood gods like me, the highest celestial beings on the ever-ending food chain, blood is my focus.  Bloodlust is a tricky business and the temptations for more blood, and better blood, and richer blood are never-ending.

Craving it never gets easier, no matter how old you are.  And I can tell you.  I’m as old as dirt, or a dragon standing in dirt.  I’m a dragon too, so I get the language confused sometimes.

But I digress.

As I was saying…

Acquiring blood never goes away, no matter how much you have.  And I thought I had a lot in my possession.  I was the one who dreamed up the host idea, a blood god getting right to the source, being within the creature sustaining your very thirst.  Oh yes, I thought I was brilliant.  Being the first blood god can do that to you.  The ego.  The drive.  The evil residing right under your nose.  Perhaps in your own family.  That was me, many moons ago.  I betrayed my host and I paid the ultimate price.  I was cast out.  Technically, Rayea cut my head off and left me for dead in Hell while her sister fled.  Of course, that did not really work, but it certainly made me stop for a moment and rethink my situation.  Go ahead.  Laugh.  But I’m not joking. 
Seriously, I don’t joke about my hosts or my ex-hosts.  That is my fault.  Not hers.

Perhaps I should have known that even blood gods are tempted.  I should have known.  You would think that I would.  I can create life, for god’s sake.  What more is there I don’t know?  The answer?

Plenty.

I fell for the oldest trick in the book.  Love.  Or what I thought was love for a younger woman.  I should have known better.  I should have seen her for what she really was.  Evil to the core.  A mistake against humanity.  An abomination my daughter brought forth.  But I was delighted when Mehen, my youngest apple of my eye, told me I had a grandchild.  I was overjoyed.

I probably should have known that Stephanie was Satan’s daughter too.  That would explain the bad seed in her soul.  However, it escaped me.  My sweet, innocent Mehen, my little sweetheart had been led astray by this devil.  He had promised her every desire she could dream up and they had conceived a child, a spawn of wickedness while practicing black magic every day of her pregnancy.  That was probably enough to seal the child’s fate.

But I had hoped I could fix the situation.  I had hoped I could take Stephanie from Satan and raise her as my own.  Mehen refused.  She wanted Satan to be Stephanie’s only influence.  “Her work was done.  Now it was his turn,” she had told me.

It was a decision I allowed to go undisturbed until I saw Satan pollute his older daughter, Rayea as well.  He made her drink wine made from the River Styx.  Unaware, she consumed a deadly source of bloodlust running through the hidden depths of the underworld oceans.  A deadly source Mehen had used her black magic on to taint the fresh water with Satan’s blood.  Easily he had turned Rayea into a vampire, thinking it would destroy her heart and soul and that she would arise again as a demon like her sister, Stephanie or die in the process.  She had not.  Even after the recent attack by Stephanie and Rayea’s journey into death, Rayea’s heart remains true and pure, free from the evil and the darkness lurking out there, waiting for all of us.

Even when I faltered, I had hoped I could fight off the darkness.  Mehen had told me the River Styx held the richest powers to quench one’s bloodlust.  Both man and beast could control their savage lust by drinking one handful of the river’s waters.  That was a lie.  It did just the opposite.  And I betrayed Rayea by picking a side.  I embraced evil.

As you may recall, I have said before that I don’t pick sides. 
Good or Evil?  I have no political stance, no agenda, really no religion.  I don’t get into the whole good or evil muck.  Life is life.  I need to be coursing through the veins of some organism’s body.  It doesn’t matter who it is.  That’s a lie too.  Now.  Now I know better.  Now I know siding with hope and love outweighs siding with hate and darkness.

After my sin of drinking the wine laced with Stephanie’s blood, I prayed to the elders of old, oh yes, even I have those I pray to like you do.  I prayed for guidance, for salvation, for forgiveness.  And finally, it came.  Perhaps it was an odd way I received it.  But I knew, when it arrived, that it was the path I now must follow.  It led me away from the darkness that was consuming me, the wickedness of my grandchild and my youngest daughter who had bathed in the River Styx for many years, who tempted me to drink its blackness and follow them into an abyss of nothingness.

Rayea saved me.  Loping off my head stopped my descent and I know now I must repay her for her kindness.

It’s time I be on my way, find my new body, and save the day.  Rayea, this is for you.

Until we meet again,

Lovingly yours,

Typhean

Author’s Note:
  To learn all about Typhean, you can read three important chapters.  Those are ‘A Foreword by a Voice From the Blood Realm’ and ‘Sacrifice’ in Part 3: A Vampire On Vacation and ‘Stephanie's Brouhaha’ in Part 4: The Vampire from Hell Returns.

Let Flames Rain Down (Rayea)

***

“
Life's full of tricky snakes and ladders.
” ~ Steven Patrick Morrissey

***

As I said my goodbyes to G and Max, promising to visit Max’s new establishment soon on Earth, Grace and Demetri waved their goodbyes too.  “We’ll see you at home?” Grace asked.

I nodded, not knowing where on Earth my home was.  It did not matter really.  Anywhere with Blick and my friends was fine, I decided.

When I finally got a chance to speak to J, I tried my best to ignore Zeus’s ongoing complaining.  I knew by Zeus’s grumbling that he was not pleased with the conclusion of my Judgment Day trial.  The potency from Grace’s blood pills flowed through my veins and I fought very hard not to burst out laughing my ass off. 
I was free!  Truly free! 
The decision had been made and I was excited to move on. 
Finally, I could start living
, I thought to myself.

“Is the glow about you because of the news of your engagement?” J asked, teasing me a little.

“Maybe,” I replied, shyly avoiding his flirtation.

“Congratulations are in order, for you both,” he said.  “We will throw an engagement party for you very soon.”

“I’m not sure about all of that,” I replied.  Blick had wandered off again as he surveyed the area.  I wasn’t sure what he was doing.  “I’m happy to be alive and awake,” I said to J.  “I’m ready to get home and see everyone again.”

“I agree.”  His fangs shown now and then as he spoke.  “We’ve been asleep far too long.”  His words faded away.

When I saw J looking over in Zeus’s direction often, I shifted the conversation.  I couldn’t get over the fact that he was a vampire like me.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?  Being a vampire now?”  I asked him as I got his attention again.  I recalled the unique sensations I felt when my father first turned me into a vampire.  As my body fought it, I was sick for many weeks.

“I remember,” he said.  “I’m doing okay I think, but at times, the energy raging in my veins is more than I can stand.  Do you get that?”

I laughed and reached for his hand.  “I do now.  That dragon shift nearly baked my brain!  Ha!”  Seeing his smirk, I grew serious.  “In the beginning, I didn’t.  I was extremely ill.  May I see your arms?”

He held his hands out to me.  “Your father’s blood poisoned you greatly.  Luckily, Michael knew just what to do.”

“Yes, that was a scary time.”  Examining each of his arms, I looked for any signs of scars from the bites I had inflicted on him when we had fought in Max’s bar.

“They’re all gone,” he replied.  “After I came to, I didn’t have them very long.”

“When did you wake up?  Was it here?” I asked.

“Yes, a few weeks before you did.  I think Beelzebub brought me after that night.  I don’t know really.  After I woke up, hiding as an animal kept my identity safe from the others.  Many thought you wouldn’t wake up, but I knew you would.  I don’t think I would have made it if you hadn’t bitten me.”

“What do you mean?  I caused this.  I turned you.  I almost destroyed you, J!  I’m so sorry about all of it.”

J took my hands in his and pulled me close to him.  His fangs flashed before my eyes.  “Don’t Rayea.  You have nothing to be sorry about,” he insisted.  “Stephanie had poisoned me.  I don’t know how I let her get to me, but I did.  Once I tasted her blood, I was hooked.  I could not get enough and it drove me insane.  She used me as bait to get to you that night.  She had convinced me that I could persuade you to join us because you look up to me.  Or did.  But I attacked you first, remember?  Of course, you would fight back.  She was counting on that.  The bites you gave me?  That’s what saved me from going completely dark.  It reversed everything.  I simply drifted off into sleep.”

“The healing properties of her blood.”  Blick’s deep voice interrupted us.

Immediately J dropped my hands and stepped away from us.  “Blick, hello.”

“J,” Blick grunted.  “Good to have you back.”

Looking extremely uncomfortable, J forced a smile on his face.  “She’s quite a woman.”

The body language between the two of them wasn’t easy to ignore.  Roughly, Blick pulled me into a side hug.  His body was rigid with tension.

Just as I was about to demand they calm down and stop acting like jealous idiots fighting over me, J launched into his business demeanor, a trait of his I was fondly familiar with.

“Per Mehen’s orders, Beelzebub brought many souls to this place, including celestial beings.  She has saved a lot of people here today,” J said to Blick.

Blick relaxed his arm around me.  I hid an eye roll that I meant to direct to J and searched the thinning crowd for Zeus.  Having been freed, many humans had left at this point, so I could see what Valeria looked like.  The land of my sleeping death was vast and desolate.  No trees, flowers, buildings, or structures.  Nothing except rocks.  Miles and miles of gray rocks leading into tall mountains that reached up to a dark sky.  The area of my trial seemed to be the flattest part.  I had never seen a more dismal or depressing place in my life.

As I listened to J and Blick talk, I noticed a few small groups of wolves, dragons, and bears gathering.

“I was expecting the Ancient Council to be bigger,” Blick commented.  “Where are all of them?”

“Once Rayea released them, they vanished.  They may be gods, but they are not idiots.  Seeing her as a dragon, raining flames down upon them freaked them out.”

Glancing back at them, I erupted in laughter.  “I’m just a bad ass, aren’t I?”

J chuckled and ran his fingers through his sandy-brown hair.

I looked up at Blick and winked at him.

Lightly he bumped me on the nose with his finger.  “Don’t get a big head now.”

“I won’t,” I replied as I wrapped my arms around his waist.  “What’s going on over there?” I asked.

“Is that Zeus?” J yelled.

“He’s collapsed.  Come on!” Blick agreed.

An icy chill, similar to what I had felt when Beelzebub had called himself the Ice Man, ran down my spine.  I tried to ignore the sensation.  It meant doom.  But I raced after J and Blick who knelt down to help Zeus. 
How could a god collapse and go into convulsions?
  The animals had scattered, remaining a safe distant nearby.  Curiosity kept them interested in the unbelievable scene unfolding before us. 
Interested, but not committed,
I thought as I wondered what to do.  Was it proper to give a celestial being mouth to mouth if they were foaming at the mouth?  Did I have clearance for that?  A million insane questions whirled through my head as I stood paralyzed.

Get them back, Rayea.  Now!

“Move,” I screamed to both J and Blick.  “Get away from him!”  I yanked at their shoulders, grasping for their shirts, arms, flesh for that matter, anything I could get my hands on.  I knew that voice.  It was that voice inside my head and it was back.  Typhean, the blood god, who had betrayed me, now warned me of impending danger.  I had to listen.

All three of us fell into each other’s arms.  It had to be a comical sight.  We scrambled to steer clear of Zeus as he twisted and contorted on the flat rock floor before us.  When the head of a black snake broke out of Zeus’s chest, all of us flew to our feet in horror.  Blood oozed from the gaping wound.  I saw Zeus’s eyelids flutter and then close.

My heart slammed in my chest as I contemplated what to do.  Blick and J both stood on each side of me.  All of us were frozen in disbelief. 
This could not be happening,
I thought.  The black snake continued to grow larger and wider, flowing from Zeus’s dead body as if its tail was nowhere in sight.  It seemed to never end.

“One snake,” I whispered to J and Blick.  “We can take care of one snake, right?”

I couldn’t tell if the snake creature could hear me, but I didn’t say anything after that.  Once I had said, ‘one snake,’ the snake’s head divided and became three.

“We need a plan,” Blick yelled.

For a moment, the snake’s body increased in height, weaving and swaying twenty or thirty feet above us.  It was growing quickly and it was only a matter of time before its head split into more snakes.

“Let’s shift and run?” J hollered back.

“Good idea,” Blick agreed.

In seconds, I saw a flurry of dust, sparks, and electricity fly in front of me.  Blick shifted into his werewolf form and J shifted into a massive lion.  Blick ran in one direction, to the left of the snake creature, and J raced around to its right side.

Blick and J both ducked and maneuvered around the other snakeheads as each snake dove in to attack one of them.  If they stopped for one moment or tried to rush over to help me, they were dead.

Me?  I did not move.  I held my ground as the snake’s center head made eye contact with me. 
Big mistake.
  I tried to shift into a dragon, and nothing happened.  The icy sensation returned.  A sickening feeling of fear enveloped me.  My eyes widened and my mouth went dry.  I could not take my eyes off the snake.  Her eyes gleamed at me.  The burning fury of my blood racing in my veins died away, freezing the moment I summoned my shift into the animal form.  I was powerless to fight.  I was powerless to do anything but look upon this gigantic snake creature looming in front of me.

“I can’t shift,” I screamed.  “I can’t move!”

I swore under my breath.  The overwhelming coldness drove its way into my flesh and bones.  I couldn’t believe how painful it felt.  The snake glared at me, watching my agony.  That is when I realized its hypnotic powers were draining my life force.

Evil is like a snake. You must meet it head on.

Typhean’s words slammed into my mind.

Do not let her destroy you.

Once I felt the weight of ice forming on my hands and arms, I knew I was in trouble.  “Help,” I yelled.  “Help!”  My mouth was the only thing I could still operate.  The fear of being incased in ice, imprisoned like my walking skeleton friends had been in their bones mortified me. 
Was this really going to be the way I went out?

As soon as my legs flew out from under me, I smashed onto the hard rock floor.  Fragments of ice flew around me as I sprang free, but I did not stay still once I could move again.  Both Blick and J had slammed into me with their animal forms.  I’m not sure who did what exactly.  I had no time to figure it out.  I rallied and jumped on Blick’s back just as he regained his balance.

“Get me to its eyes,” I yelled.

In werewolf form, Blick dashed underneath one snake’s head as it dove at us.  I wrapped myself around Blick’s body and dug my fingers into his fur.

J distracted the other snake and raced pass us just as we approached the end of the snake’s tail.  “Climb it,” J called out.

“The moment I get to its head, I want you to bail off.  Okay?”

“Like Hell, woman!” Blick snapped.  “I’m not letting you do this alone!”

When I heard the enormous thud beneath us, the last thing I wanted to do was look down and see what was going on.  It’s not the perfect time to become observant when you’re flying up the back of a huge snake on your fiancée’s back (and he’s a werewolf), so you can gouge out the snake’s eyes.  Just saying.

Another massive thud shook the ground underneath us and we fell.  I landed on my back, looking up at the dark sky of Valeria above me before I lost consciousness.

***

When I woke up, Blick and J lifted me to my feet.  Both were in their human forms again.  Each held me by my elbow refusing to let go of me.

“What happened?” I yelled.  I wiggled out of their embraces and glanced around.  The rock floor was covered in piles of ash and the air smelled like burnt chicken.  My eyes widened.  “Did I do that?”

A quiet voice spoke up as the figure approached us from the lingering smoke and debris.  “Dear Rayea, I think we can agree that your shifting powers need some work.”

I knew whose tutor voice that was before I saw him.  Typhean.  “Back from the dead, are we?”

He laughed and waved his hand in front of his face.  “Quite.”  He bowed to me with the elegance of a fallen king.  “And so are you.”

“It seems Typhean here owes you an apology,” Blick began.  “Isn’t that right?”

“If I recall, you betrayed me when you tortured me for my sister’s pleasure?”

Typhean nodded.

The man standing before us did not seem to be the Typhean I knew.  He was dashingly handsome with a thick, muscular build, dark eyes, and long shiny black hair that matched his tailored three-piece suit.  Gone were his gaunt appearance, his long neck, and long fingers with dragons on the tips of them.  This man looked very much human. 
Ra’s comments surfaced in my mind.
  T
he first blood god was a dragon and he was Egyptian. While Ra preferred his dragon form, Typhean enjoyed
walking around as a human.

“Yes, that was the old me.  You relieved me of my head and it got me to thinking.”

A smirk crossed my face as I glanced at Blick and J, who looked like they too were enjoying the humor.