Antediluvians

by Jim Butcher

My lord was so beautiful when he died. I stood and watched, in horror, as the Get of Fenris hemmed him in, and there was beauty in that, too, in the savagery of their unwashed forms, in the unfettered rage of their howls as they transformed--and then in the arcing sprays of their blood, as they began to die.

My lord was all power, all fluid motion, like a mountain stream. Even they, the wolf-children of the savage Germanic forests, looked sluggish beside him. He danced among them until tears stood in my eyes, and left more than one corpse upon the earth, in a dozen different delightful agonies. He was the rain to their mountain, the starlight to their ocean, incomparable, deadly, pale and beautiful as the statue of any saint.

When they finally pinned him, against the wall of the cliff, some clinging to it above him as if they were great, shaggy spiders, some circling him in, he could see that there was no escape--even for him. The dark waterfall of his hair shook as he laughed at them, silently, and the silver of his eyes outshone the bright moon as his gaze caught mine. I was in ecstasy with him. It was an ending in which he, like I, could revel.

My lord smiled.

I wept for joy at the sight of his blood, dark in the silver light, staining the pale fur of the enormous female wolf-thing who finally tore out his throat. They descended upon him in a horde of heated flesh and mindless passion, beasts of all forms, some almost like men, some lean, swift wolves, some that were neither, or both, or somewhere in between. I imagined myself in his place, dreamt of the agony of those raking claws, writhed under the tearing pain of steaming fangs, surged with him towards the icy cold of the coming darkness.

It went on for some time, and I subsided, slowly, returning to the world about me, to the ropes which cut cruelly into my wrists and the dull, throbbing pain that went with them, to the mud on my torn skirts--and to the two guards who stood over me.

They were little more than boys, really. They stood staring with glassy eyes as the pack tore my lord's body into pieces, and they were horrified and excited. I could see it in them. I lay upon the ground, looking up at them. One was quite a lovely young man, really, with the most gorgeous blue eyes and a full mouth that cried out to be kissed. The other was not: His face had been ravaged by diseases of some kind, or perhaps a fire, and was pocked and scarred over everything below his eyes, which were too close together. He had a slash of a mouth with barely any lips at all, and he looked used to the half-snarling expression he wore now. Lovely and Ugly, and so I named them.

Ugly saw me looking up at them, through the dregs of my joyous tears, and kicked at my upturned face. I cringed away from the blow, and it pushed me down. It only hurt a little.

Lovely scowled and shoved out a hand towards Ugly, shoving him back from me. He snarled, a wordless sound that contained something of the fury of the creatures still ripping at the shell where my lord once lived.

It was all I could do to keep the tears in my eyes and not burst out into laughter. Lovely was protecting me, the poor innocent, the victim of the hated vampire, perhaps rescued only in the nick of time. What a dear boy he was.

I had been taken by my lord as I reached marriageable age for a young woman of station in France--fifteen summers. My lord had kept me with him and nourished me, fed me on his beauty and his power (I buried my face in my hands, so that the angry young men would not see me smile). And his blood. My lord had given me his blood, like wine, the purest distillation of all that was him.

For a time of summers and winters, I cannot remember how many, we danced together, each night a new delight, and each day a dreamless sleep. And then, in the spring of this year (what year? I do not know, especially. I think there was a new Holy Father in Rome), he had given me something more. He had remade me in his own image.

Then I heard new voices. Oh, there were always voices, but these were beside me, and issuing forth from the mouths of my captors. They spoke a rough German, which I understood. I stared up at them. The female who had slain my lord was, now, a large, tall woman, heavily muscled, naked, and covered with blood. My lord had taken one of her eyes. She did not seem to notice, or care. "Five," she snarled. "We lost five to the leech."

Another, a tall male with distant brown eyes murmured, "It was old. We knew it would be dangerous." It didn't sound like an accusation, but I could taste it on his lips. The other garou, beast and human alike, watched the female.

"Why did you not strike sooner?" she demanded.

The male shrugged. "I did not have the correct opening."

"Svenna and Aeryk are dead because of it." She jammed a finger back at two of the corpses with which my lord had decorated the ground. Even in his passing, he was an artist. The deaths were heavy upon her thoughts.

"Death walks in all battles," the male said. He was calm. I admired that, on occasion. "The only way to avoid it is to avoid the field."

She snarled, clenching her enormous hands as if they were talons. The male did not react to her display. Low sounds, whispers and growls, ran among the Garou.

The female saw this, her good eye flicking back and forth. Then she looked down at me. I flinched away from her, not because of how the blood drenched her, goodness no--I should gladly have found any number of ways to repair that. But because it seemed I might draw more of her interest than if I did nothing.

She stretched her lips into a grimace that might have been a smile. "And his whelp?" she said, indicating me. "What will you do with this spawn?"

"We do not know that she is a leech," the male said. There were growls and mutters from the other creatures. My guards shifted slightly apart. Lovely went towards the male. Ugly towards the female, a motion so small as to be unconscious.

"Where is your skald?" she snarled. "Let him come forth and judge her." "Dead," the male said.

He nodded towards the first of the garou to fall. The first to die. My lord was so clever. "Yours?"

The female growled, without answering. Another of the creatures who could smell our kind lay among the corpses. My lord took care of me, always, and even in death was thoughtful. I should have to remember to thank him for that.

"Kill her," hissed one of the garou, a black-haired, scrawny man standing beside the large male. There was a flash of the large male's fist as it moved, and the scrawny speaker was down in the dirt, clutching at his face.

"I did not ask your opinion," the male said. His eyes, the entire time, never left the pale-haired female. She snarled, at last, glancing away from him, and folded her arms beneath her breasts.

I saw Ugly scowl. Lovely smiled, a triumphant grin, at the large male. "The night is young," the male said. The moonlight shone on his eyes in a fascinating manner, and I saw that what I had mistaken for calm was in fact nothing more than sheer, iron self-control. I could feel the howling beast inside of him, struggling to be free. "Let us hunt and feast to honor the fallen."

"What of her?" the female asked. She kicked me, as well, and I curled up around the blow, letting her hear a whimper. "She could be one of them."

"Let the sunrise decide," the man said. "The cubs will guard her." With that he shimmered, and in his place was a gaunt, dark wolf, that turned and hurtled into the trees. The other Garou also transformed, eagerly or reluctantly, and followed.

The female lagged behind, and said to Ugly and Lovely, "Do not come too close to her. Do not speak to her." And then she, too, took on the shape of the beast and was gone.

Silence fell over the little clearing by the cliff's base, where lay my lord's remains, my two young guards, and myself. The moon was round and beautiful overhead, and it had a subtle, maddening effect on my captors. I could feel it tickling at the base of their skulls, crawling over their eyelashes, pinpricking their tongues.

How did I know? My lord had made me well-acquainted with madness. It was his secret, our secret, the Great Truth that no one else understood. I will tell you of it, some night, if you ask me prettily enough.

"Damn them all," Lovely said, with a wistful sigh. Somewhere, in the distance, the sounds of the pack, of the hunt, arose into the night air.

Ugly growled his agreement, pacing back and forth, back and forth, with marvelous energy. "We get all the drudge work."

Well. Enough time had been wasted, and opportunity was at hand. The dawn lords would be marshaling their forces for their daily charge upon the eastern horizon. I gathered my torn skirts about me in the most fetching manner that I could, showing my calves just so. I let my voice quaver, as one whose heart was broken (and, had I stopped to think of the depth of my loss, it may well have driven me mad!), and asked, in my own tongue, "Do either of you speak French, please?"

Ugly stopped his pacing to glare at me. "What did she say?"

Lovely shrugged. He looked at me as well, with those bright, intent eyes. "I don't know. She's pretty, though."

"She's one of them. A leech." Ugly growled at me, and I cringed back from him, whimpering. I let the skirts get a bit tangled, to show more of my legs.

I had been quite the dancer, when my lord had taken me, and my legs were slender, strong. I was perfectly vain about them. Young men had lusted after me for merely a glimpse of them, when I was a mortal girl.

Lovely's eyes were growing heated. The moon was working on him, poor young man. Even without its influences, even were he mortal, his body would have made this difficult for him. It is that age, you see. They simply cannot help themselves. "We don't know that," he said. "If she's not, maybe we should . . ."

Ugly snarled, and stomped across the grass, towards my lord's remains. "Do you think the pack would share her with us?" he asked derisively. He prodded at something with his poorly-shod foot.

My voice shook with pleading fear. I kept speaking in French. "You are both foolish beasts. I will dance in your blood tonight." I cast a glance at Ugly. "First him." I turned back to lovely, and beseeched him, "And then you, pretty one."

Lovely's brow creased as he listened to the words. I think he meant to comfort me when he said, in his own tongue, "Shhhh. I won't let him hurt you."

Ugly held up a pale hand, separated from its arm, and then turned to waggle it at us. I gave out a little shriek, and fell back from him. (Showing yet more of my legs, almost all the way to my hips--I am such a horrible flirt, ah me.) Ugly's smile turned cruel. "She doesn't like the sight of it, eh?" He stalked towards me, bearing the hand.

"Leave her be," Lovely said, his voice sharp with excitement. "You heard what Anya said."

"Since when have you listened to anyone but Karl?" Ugly sneered. He thrust the hand into my face, and I gave a quivering shriek, throwing my hands over my eyes, and turning away as though sickened.

The anger in the air around my Lovely guard grew thick. "I told you to stop it."

Ugly grinned his Ugly grin, and tangled his grubby fist in my hair, dragging me, oh beautiful garou, you are so clever and foolish, towards what remained of my lord. I screamed and fought in a most maidenly and helpless manner, and let him be much stronger than I. It was my weakness, rather than my beauty, that aroused this one.

He threw me upon the trunk, with its heart torn from it, half its ribs cracked open, one arm and one leg yet attached. My lord's head hung by scraps of flesh and little more. The marks of fangs and claws had torn his clothing, like his skin, to ribbons. I sprawled over it, screaming.

"I said to stop!" Lovely's voice darkened, thickened, roughened, even as he said the words. I turned my head, just a bit, to see his clothing tear from his body, his chest hair to thicken into a mat that covered his body. The beast within him came forth, stretched his body to fit it, until he hove eight or nine feet high, a wolf-headed nightmare of claws and fangs and muscle.

Ugly's smile turned into a snarl, and he strode past me, ignoring me. "It's about time I got a rise out of you," he said. His own shape blurred, growing, until he faced Lovely-beast as Ugly-beast, under the bright moon. They flew towards one another with near-silent snarls, and the madness of the moon bathed them in its giddiness.

"Well done," my lord whispered. I turned to him, delighted to hear his voice again, and kissed the ruins of his lips. Vital energy still sparked in his ruined body.

"Will you take of me, my lord?" I begged him. I bowed my head, still sobbing aloud in case either of my captors had time to notice, so that my throat pressed against his lips.

He smiled. He could not have shaken his head, as he usually would have. "No, my sweet child," he whispered. "Of all of them, you are the most worthy. You dance the night more lovely than any other. You understand."

His remaining hand moved, even in ruins stronger than I could have imagined, and pressed my lips to the ragged manglings of his own throat. And forth from it flowed some hidden store of his blood.

Shall I compare the taste of it to a whirlwind, a thunderstorm? No--not unless it would be to say that I knew what it was to be the whirlwind's fury, to be the storm's might. The touch of his life, as I drank it, shattered me entire. I knew his pain. The depth of his exquisite, dismembered agony. It paled into something pitifully small next to a greater agony: Growing inertia. Gathering quiet. Swelling lucidity. Time, hated time, who could catch even the mightiest of our kind, was slowing him, calling he who reveled in wild motion, in cacophony, to torpor. To silence. To sleep.

Would our kind truly know Damnation, when the final death came at last? He wildly hoped so, that he would know the Fire. That he would embrace raw pain for all eternity. Pain, he had often said to me, is life. Pain tells one that he is still alive. It sharpens us, forces us to act to maintain that life. Pain is nothing to fear. It is a friend that guides us and preserves us. A far greater torment, for him, would be oblivion.

I will never know if my lord, my sweet, sweet Malkavian, found his fires. He fell back from me, dead now, beyond recall. The wild fury of his blood sang in my veins, and made my heart pound fit to burst. It burned.

Every little nuance of the night, every sound, every color, everything was loud and riotous, more than I had ever dared dream it could be. I expanded, dreadfully giddy, and felt it all, knew all of it, all the wide universe, in all its haphazard, glittering, madly spinning glory. I saw it, and I heard it, and there was no center, nothing static. All of it was deliriously alive, and I wept, I sobbed with joy. Such was my lord's gift, given unto me.

In death, he wore his smile.

I heard a thunderous note, equal parts rage and fear and pain and triumph, and I turned to see my Lovely-beast finish the howl, shuddering. He shrank in upon himself, over the cold, pale corpse of Ugly, until he was himself once more, naked and silver in the moonlight. He was weeping, and his breaths rasped in and out.

I had killed Ugly, I thought to myself. Without lifting a finger. Without touching either of them, body or soul. I was proud of that. My Lovely guard had made it possible, with his caring. He should be rewarded properly.

He stared at me as I went to him. It occurred to me that he, poor dear, could see only with his eyes. I took pity on him, as he knelt on the grass. I lowered myself to my own knees before him, and pressed my lips to his. And then, with joy in my heart, I let him hear the music, let him see the dance, the gift my Lord had given unto me.

He tried to dance. Really, he did. But all his poor, tired body managed was to arch up, and then collapse to the bloody grass, shuddering, all his muscles convulsing at random. His eyes were wide, staring, and he was trying to sing, but it kept coming out a scream.

I kissed him again, the poor darling, and tried to send him more, show him the proper way to step. But, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say, his screams, vibrating upon my lips and tongue, made me so hungry. So I reminded him that he was alive, by rending his flesh as I drank from the salty smoothness of his throat.

I gave the poor dear such agony--perhaps I was should not have been so generous, but I was desperately grateful to him. I even gave him the use of my body that he had so desired, let the pretty legs he had lusted after wrap around him.

He tried to reach for his own madness, the silvery strength of the moon, to help him dance with me, but he was so tired from his fight with Ugly. I'm quite sure that it was not his fault, at all.

He quivered to a finish, at last. I rose, in my scarlet-stained dressed, and as I had promised Lovely and Ugly earlier, I danced through their blood upon the grass, sometimes rolling in it, as if it were dew. The joy of it all resounded within me.

The garou pack returned, and I watched them unseen, walked among them unnoticed (for such was my lord's power, also given to me). They looked over the bodies and turned to growl at one another, divided once more behind the large male, Karl, and the female, Anya. The dance quivered at the edges of their thoughts, urged on by their moon above, but they held back from it, rather than hurling themselves into it.

So, taking pity on them, for they had suffered in a most satisfying way for my lord, I gave the dance to them as well. I let them all hear the secret music.

They responded. They danced. They reminded one another that they were alive with the most vibrant, glowing pain I had yet experienced, and I was there with them, the entire while.

When it was over, only the female, Anya, remained alive, and she, poor thing, was very alive. Her other eye had been taken. He body was spread out upon the grass, much as my lord's had been.

I went to her, and I kissed her sightless eyes, and filled her ears with music. I drank her fiery sweetness up into me, and delighted in her sobs as she faded away. I left that place, for my homeland, fair France. My lord's power sang to me, and the riotous world surrounded me.

Others of my kind must learn to hear this music, to dance this dance. They had to know what is was to be this free.

And I would remember what my lord had learned. Pain was life. To feel pain was to be alive, for the dead felt nothing. I would never, never forget what is was to live.

Remember me, in your place of damnation, my beautiful lord. Remember your Justine. I will ever remember you.