Seven
Behind a false wall in Tiresia’s chamber, I found her sarcophagus, lined with hieroglyphics chiseled in ancient Egypt. There I slept by day for the next eight years, at night glutting my thirst on the blood of beggars and rich merchants, boys and maidens. I even rampaged Pilate’s household, first unnerving his pathetic wife, who rambled about visions of black ghosts in her room, then sinking my fangs into the breasts of his best servant girls, their juice exploding in my mouth like plump fruit.
My cock swelled as I drank blood, and the sensation—the heat, the lusty ecstasy—transcended any erotic pleasure I’d ever had.
It didn’t take long, however, for me to tire of satiating my thirst, of testing my new strength, of flight, and of preternatural vision. I, like all beings, craved company. But I existed in isolation. I knew others like me existed, but not in Jerusalem. We were assigned domains by the dark powers, and our provinces did not overlap. Strange voices told me this in dreams.
Whores and boys of the street entertained me at night, and vagabonds cast dice with me. I paid my debts to them with silver piled up in Tiresia’s secret chamber, from what source I knew not.
But there was only one man I wanted.
After a month of refining my powers, I found Joshu bathing in the river after dusk. From behind the reeds, I watched his sinewy arms stretch as he scrubbed his back. I inspected his thighs, as strong as columns, his belly, taut as a drum. Light lingering on the horizon painted his angular features and left the shadow of his form on the shallow water.
“Who’s there?” He scanned the shore as I rustled through the reeds.
“It is I, Joshu.” I stepped into a clearing on the bank.
“I thought you were dead. Where have you been?”
For the first time the aura of strength about him, spiritual strength expressed in every firm muscle of his body, struck me as superhuman. For the first time a strange shudder of apprehension passed through me.
“Who are you, Joshu?”
“I have told you, Victor. I am my father’s son.”
I splashed through the water toward him. I stopped so close to him I could see the tiny scar on his temple that he’d told me about. A neighbor boy had struck him with a rock when he was six or seven. “Which god is your father?”
“I have told you. The only god.” He stooped over and cupped his hands to drink.
I clutched his arm. “The Roman gods are much more powerful than this god of the Jews. They outnumber him after all.”
“What have they done for you?” He straightened and faced me boldly. In the light of the rising moon, his eyes revealed his love for me.
“They’ve made me immortal.”
“Have they?”
“It’s what you always speak of, isn’t it? An eternal realm. Well, I’ve found it.”
He quietly contemplated my face.
I pressed my lips against his and for a moment he leaned toward me, but then drew back.
I snorted at his rebuff. “I thought you told me I could not approach you.”
“When did I tell you that?”
“In the vision.
“I don’t know of what you speak.”
“Deny it if you like. But here’s the truth. I’ve the power to take you. But why should I, Joshu, when you want me? Be my consort. I can grant you immortality.”
“You can never possess me.” Joshu started toward the shore.
I grabbed his arm and pulled his naked body to me. “I already possess you.” I shoved him away and, with a flicker, sped through the night, as light and invisible as the wind.
Wherever he went, I hounded him. When he retreated to the desert like one of the crazy Essenes, I squatted next to his campfire. When he paced the temple courts beneath the starry sky, I blocked his path. When he slept at the homes of those who had begun to follow him, I boldly marched through their doors.
“Why are you doing this?” he screamed one night in the desert, where he’d gone to pray. I sensed I had not been the only devil to tempt him there in the darkness. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.” I stretched out on the blanket he had spread before the fire.
“Robbing my purity means that much to you? What if you did take my body? My soul would belong only to my Father.” He looked weak and drawn in the rippling light.
“Save that pig fodder for the masses, Joshu. Piety means nothing to me. And as far as you’re concerned—you want me too. I’ll wage war on you until you weaken, my friend. You’re body isn’t enough for me. I can have any I choose. I want your soul.”
He suddenly broke into a fit of laughter. “Oh, Victor, had you wanted my love, my company, my teaching…. But my soul?”
“Do you know who I am?” I sat up and glared at him.
“I know you belong to the night with the other demons. Except …”
“Except what?”
“For you there’s still hope.”
“Damn you!” I leaped up, ripped off his cloak, and threw him to the sand. I pinned back his arms and spread his legs with my knees. “Is there hope now?”
I tore at his throat with my fangs, but the second I tasted his blood a wave of nausea passed through me. I vomited the blood from my earlier victims into the sand.
“Who is protecting you? Who is keeping you from me?”
“I am free. No one commands my will. Not even my God. But I have surrendered to him.” He sat up and rubbed his arms where I had gripped him. Then he reached for his cloak.
“They say you work miracles. Why don’t you cast me away from you as you cast away the demons from the godforsaken creatures roaming the slums?”
His response was a prolonged gaze at me, as though he were actually considering using his powers. But his gaze also held compassion.
“You’re a holy fool,” I said, spitting out a remnant of the blood that had erupted from my throat. “You’ll never rid yourself of me.”
Indeed, I kept after him, hounding him until the very end of his divine crusade, when even his charisma couldn’t save him. In the final days I nearly had him. Immortality in my company looked pretty good to someone condemned to die.
On the day when the sky darkened to the shade of midnight, I rose from my tomb and soared to Golgotha. Gazing lustfully at Joshu from the foot of his execution cross, fighting my urge to lap up the blood that dripped from his hands and feet, I invited him one last time. He listened to me but merely turned his eyes to the sky, invoked his god, and slipped into a death I will never know.
For two nights I ransacked Jerusalem’s streets, torturing, murdering whoever came into my path, mangling limbs and tearing flesh with my teeth, without stopping to suck out the elixir after my first few victims.
Then, just before dawn that Sunday, as I hurried back to my refuge, it happened. I felt him.
“Joshu! What is this? What kind of spirit are you?”
I glanced around the street, gray in the harbinger glow of morning. “Show yourself to me.”
He stood before me, naked and whole, not pale from death. The nail marks still on his feet and hands looked more like small tattoos than wounds.
“I am not a ghost, Victor. I live.”
“As do I, my beloved.” I stepped toward him, but the dawn was moments away and I had to flee. “Come with me, to safety.”
But he stood immobile and I could not hesitate another second.
When I awoke later in the darkness, I felt as though I were the only being left on an annihilated earth. Joshu was gone from me. I knew this before his followers began babbling about a resurrection. He existed, was immortal, but not in a world of darkness like mine. I howled like a wolf who’d devastated a flock of sheep and was now left with nothing. It was only then that I believed in the god Joshu returned to, a god of light. And it was then that I vowed to avenge my loss on this pompous being who had deprived me of the only one I ever loved.