CHAPTER 1 The First Vampire: How It Happened
Some time before 1200 BC
Alucius Kardasian was a mountain man. He loved the lakes and streams of the high country. In the colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset, he found great beauty, and at such times, he'd climb the hillside to peer down upon the villages in the valleys below bathed in pinks and golds. He'd become the leader of a clan at a young age and had several women and a horde of offspring. He kept them all within his dwelling made of animal bone and stretched hides. Life was good for Alucius, and he was a great believer in the gods. He was kind to people, and they loved him for his benevolence and his knowledge of seed-planting and crop-growing, a new way of life for human beings. He was known far and wide, and many a medicine man and sorcerer came to live in his village because he showed them respect and used their esoteric knowledge to help the tribe. He worshiped the twin gods Before and After because they understood the significance of everything, thinking before the act, and considering its consequences afterward. Thus, one could project one's self from the past into the future at considerably reduced risk.
All this thinking had its benefits, and lately his tribe had developed a use for fire that could melt rocks and cause the tears of the gods to pour forth from the Divine World into the real world. Once cooled, these holy tears became solid and could be pounded into any shape imaginable. Alucius made weapon tips and long-bladed knives from these celestial tears with which to slaughter his enemies.
Alucius was, in fact, so fond of this world that he came to despise the priests of his clan who talked of how the human soul left the body after death and found its way into the Divine World where it lived forever. Alucius had no desire to leave. He loved the smell and feel of a woman and didn't mind watching them perform their amorous arts on each other either. He realized that the Divine World had its sad points, including limited carnality. The priests didn't think much of copulating and talked of moderation in all things. Imagine.
Then one evening while sitting before a fire in the Carpathian Mountains with a few of his many women cuddled around and he thinking how horrible death could take all this from him, Alucius spotted a stranger standing in the shadows just out of the flickering firelight, and he called to the man to see if he was in need of a place to pass the night. It wasn't until the man approached the fire that Alucius came to see that he was of uncommon size and carried weapons unfamiliar to his tribe. The man joined them, without a word, and sat alongside him at the fire. Then, also without a word, the man placed a wondrous object before them — a shiny container that allowed one to see through it but was firm and held its shape. Inside the container was a red liquid that looked both familiar and strange. Could it be blood? Yet, it was a brighter red than he'd ever seen.
The large man spoke his first words. "Eternal life," he said, as if the jar contained the concept incarnate.
"Don't we wish," said Alucius.
"No," said the man, as he pushed the jar closer to the fire, and he repeated the words. "Eternal life."
Alucius didn't have to be told three times, and he reached for the jar, whereupon the man grabbed his wrist with such strength that Alucius was helpless.
"Are you sure?" the man asked and with such force that Alucius was taken aback, but he thought, What could possibly be wrong with eternal life? So he said, "I am."
"Then drink."
What Alucius didn't realize, and wouldn't consider until later, is that the being with whom he'd just made a pact was the god Before, and what he would have realized had he known his identity is that After wasn't with him.
It looked like a lot to drink. At first whiff, Alucius realized that it was blood, some animal's blood, but he was willing to choke it down, if it'd do the job. Twice he had to lower the jar to catch his breath, but he got it done.
The man kept looking at him, as if expecting some radical change, but Alucius remained the same.
"Hump," the man said, and at the same time, a huge animal stepped into the firelight.
"I thought I'd killed him," the man said, then stood up, as if surprised that an act he'd performed didn't turn out as planned.
The animal was a Centaur. Alucius had heard of such mythical beings, having the body of a horse with the torso and head of a human, but never thought they were real until now. And this one looked pissed off. The man walked to the Centaur and the two exchanged heated words. Finally, the man motioned Alucius over.
Alucius wasn't very fond of Centaurs. They'd been the subject of some negative gossip of late — something about being violent and uncivilized — and Alucius had no intention of getting mixed up in a pissing contest with one. But the man was insistent, and Alucius drifted over beside him but tried to keep his distance from the Centaur who appeared to be in considerable pain, stamping his hooves and shuffling about uncontrollably.
"This is an immortal being," the man said to Alucius. "However, he's been injured and wishes to give up his immortality. I've brokered this deal for you, where you may take it on for yourself."
Immortality suddenly didn't seem quite the gift he'd imagined, and Alucius thought maybe he'd made a bad bargain in the first place, and that he'd just walk away and let this Centaur keep his deathlessness, but he didn't want to seem ungrateful. "At what cost?" he responded.
"I am already immortal in the Divine World myself," the man said, "or I'd take it on. I've always been a benefactor of mankind and since you're appreciative of the gods, I've negotiated this deal for you."
"But at what cost?" Alucius again asked. He'd already noticed a certain contrariness having come to his nature since drinking the crimson liquid from the jar.
At which point, the immortal man seemed confused. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, How should I know? He finally found a few words. "You'd turn down immortality? A little more blood and the deed is done."
Alucius knew the man was right. He also realized that the blood he'd just drunk from the jar was from the Centaur and that drawing the blood was supposed to have killed him, and that when Alucius drank the blood from the jar, it should have made him immortal, but didn't. What the heck, he thought. I've already gorged myself. What's a little more?
Alucius had envisioned the man opening a Centaur vein and refilling the jar, but it seemed the process had evolved.
The Centaur bent down and motioned to his neck.
Alucius turned from the Centaur to the man. "What's he want?"
"Bite him," said the man.
Alucius had his reservations about biting a pissed off Centaur. "On the neck?" he asked.
The man nodded. "Drink the blood."
The Centaur stamped his hooves and again lowered his head and shoulders, and Alucius came up to him and inspected the location where he was expected to place his mouth. He couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
"Bite him!" ordered the man again.
Alucius still wouldn't do it and started to back away, but the Centaur was in enough pain to want to get the show on the road, so he grabbed Alucius about the shoulders with his unusually large and powerful arms. "I'll show him," said the Centaur with a gravely voice that seemed to come from some ancient echo chamber within his horse body. And then the Centaur did. He bit Alucius on the neck, and it hurt so bad that he screamed and emitted an unholy epithet about the beast. But he couldn't shake himself loose, and he became afraid that he'd be drained of all his blood and encounter hated death instead, so he used the only weapon available: his own teeth. He lunged forward, bit into the neck of the Centaur and sucked ferociously, tearing at the wound and growling as he slurped, and the Centaur's blood flowed freely and copiously, and Alucius strangled, recovered and continued to guzzle, thinking that surely the Centaur would weaken soon. And soon he did. He stopped sucking on Alucius and fell from his hooves to his knees and then rolled over on the ground, all the while holding Alucius to his neck with all the strength he had remaining.
"That's it! That's it! You've gotten the hang of it," said the immortal man.
r /> As the Centaur's life faded, so Alucius gained new vitality. No longer did he struggle at the open wound but sucked so hard that the Centaur's body began to wither, the hide collapsing upon the bones, its frame shrinking. Then the flow of blood stopped, the Centaur's remaining strength waned, his arms falling from around Alucius, and thus he was released.
Alucius rose from his victim in a daze. His entire body seemed supercharged. He leaned his head back, growled into the heavens, and a bright flash of white light emanated from his eyes that momentarily put out the brightest of stars. He then turned to the man who had given him this immortality.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"I'm Before, one of two gods of Thought," he said. "Enjoy this immortality, and remember me, the god who gave it to you, in your prayers and sacrifices."
As it turned out, Before and After, the two gods of Thought that Alucius worshiped, had had a falling out. The two brothers argued, and it was over this Centaur-type immortality. After Thought didn't think it wise to disrupt the methods adopted ever since mankind was created. But impulsive Before Thought didn't much give a rat's ass and told After Thought as much, whereupon After Thought washed his hands of the whole affair.
That brings us to these two gods, as we in modern times have come to know them. In the ancient Greek, After Thought is Epimetheus; and Before Thought, or simply Fore Thought, is Prometheus. The god who had given mankind fire and caused so much consternation in the Divine World had just usurped the Powers-That-Be again and created his own form of immortality for mankind right here on Earth. The row over Prometheus giving mankind fire never approached the likes of the turmoil this new immortality thing generated. The divine dust has still not settled and isn't likely to, ever.
Not long after becoming immortal, Alucius came to notice a burning pain throughout his body and a craving for blood that was beyond all telling. Since no more Centaurs existed in the world, he tried other animals but found them deficient in both taste and efficacy. The pain became unbearable, and he came to equate it with that of the Centaur, a realization that caused him to be less than pleased with Prometheus. Alucius termed it the "Curse of Cheiron."
Then one day, one of his clansmen showed undue affection for one of Alucius' wives, and he pounced on the man. He found that his teeth had now become his primary weapon, and he bit him, sucked him within a hair of his life before letting go. But while watching the man die, one of his most fearsome warriors, he experienced regret, and in a frantic attempt to revive him, placed the man's mouth on his own neck and made him suck. To his chagrin and consternation, the man also showed renewed strength and hostility shortly thereafter and had acquired his own taste for blood. Whereupon, Alucius turned all his wives, and thus began the race of immortal vampires.
Among the many things that Prometheus didn't tell Alucius was that another god had also been in agreement with Epimetheus and against Prometheus giving immortality to human beings. This was the sun god, Helios. Helios tried to prevent Prometheus from giving away Cheiron's immortality, but Prometheus did it under the cover of darkness, while Helios was away on the other side of the world and unaware of what was taking place. When Helios learned what had happened in his absence, he commanded that this new form of immortality be unable to tolerate his rays. They would of necessity become creatures of the night.
Thus, when Alucius discovered that his new lifestyle included an aversion to sunlight, he went underground during the day and became nocturnal for his above-world activities. He came to appreciate the deep recesses of the underworld, and particularly partook of the beauty of stalactites and stalagmites. Some of his flocks congregate in caverns to this day.
Once Bram Stoker came along and made vampirism cool, Alucius Kardasian became an aficionado and liked the name Dracula so much that he kept fiddling around with the letters of his own name and one day realized that if he shortened both his first and last names to the form Alu Kard and then joined the two words into Alukard, he could spell his name backwards to get Drakula. The "k" instead of a "c" was a bit problematic, but close enough. Since then he has proudly proclaimed his name to be Alu Kard. Of course Alu's detractors have taken the word Centaur, spelled it backwards to get Ruat Nec, which sounds a little like "rat neck" which describes some of the people off of whom Alu has fed through the millennia. You'll hear the disparaging epithet applied even among Alu's own flock of bloodsuckers when times get tough.