Marcus was gone when I awoke. Many years had passed and he didn't need me any longer. His determination and will had given him the strength to wean himself from my blood decades ago. We were never as close as Moses and I once were, but we knew each other almost as intimately. Well, as much as any two acquaintances can when they are in each other's company for a couple of centuries.
I suppose it has always been different for me. Long ago I learned that life on this rock is little more than one distraction after the next, interrupted by the odd obsession and occasional sorrow. Marcus hadn't lived yet and I wouldn't take that torment from him. Time and the endless litany of days would eventually tear at his soul as much as it has mine.
Still, that didn't mean I couldn't feel the loss. He was young, and hadn't learned what life on this rock was yet. I envied him his naivety. There was the infinity of time and so much for him yet to discover.
Years passed like forgotten breaths as I lived alone on Islay. People crossed onto my land with greater frequency, and eventually I grew tired of the battle to keep my piece of this planet mine. It was time to move on to my next distraction, and I wanted to see how the people of the world were progressing.
I walked the land as a human, and traveled the star lit nights only taking flight to cross the water between islands. The first hint of civilization I encountered was the small fishing town of MacDar on the sandy beaches of Ayrshire. What I suspected was green covered mountains had taken on night's blue hue and more resembled great hills rising in the distance. Behind me waves clawed at the shore like onyx talons and the ocean seemed to stretch on forever as I walked toward a clay and rock structure. The air was cool, as it always is in this part of the world, and the smell of the sea clung to the thick wool robes wrapped around my body.
For a fleeting moment thoughts of Marcus entered my mind, and I was now grateful he was so enamored by the things he claimed from his victims. Recently it had also become my practice, though not in as grand a scale as he managed. Each summer I would insist he remove a generous pile of his bounty from the cottage and burn it. Even though he washed the hides and fabrics he pried from his victims' still warm bodies, a stench remained. It was as if the last trickles of their horror had somehow permeated the garments and could not be wrung away.
"Hold stranger!" A slump of animal skins shifted and moved forward out of the shadows.
The man's voice was rattled deep with congestion and I wondered if I had interrupted his sleep. I could sense the power and strength in his arms and legs and knew that this lump of a man was not what he appeared.
"I seek shelter for the night." I replied in Gaelic as I continued to approach. The language had changed some over the centuries, but still the basic structure remained.
"I said Hold stranger! I will end your life without a second thought. There are things that roam the night here that even the gods have forgotten, and you may well be one of them." The lump of a man now stood like a waking monolith and snatched up the spear that lay beside him.
I couldn't contain my laughter and stood still while he readied himself. "Forgotten indeed, truer words have never been spoken," I paused to search his mind and spoke his name. "Kesan."
His name meant spear, and it made me smile that his parents had named him so appropriately. The fact that I knew his name, and that he hadn't given it, didn't set well however.
"Foul creature. By your man's voice I know you not to be Phaerie. You will not be the first of your kind I've killed during this moon's turn." He spat out the words like they were venom.
Kesan rushed forward and thrust his spear into the center of my chest. The sharpened stone blade was fastened to a wooden spear and snapped away where it was bound by leather cord. It fell to the ground and he was left with only a splintered staff to defend himself.
He wielded it deftly as he spun and attempted to strike me, but I moved much too quickly for him to land any of the blows. Soon he tired and backed away to block the entrance to the structure behind him.
The building was more of a mound of rock and clay with a wooden frame scarcely holding it aloft from the inside. It was half dug into the earth and half above. Had it not been for the orange glow of fire licking at the sky from two torches, a traveler would have thought it was just another hill.
"What, and who... are you creature. I would know the name of my opponent." Kesan spoke with labored breaths but was recovering.
"I am Lucif of Islay." His eyes widened but he held his terror in check. "Ahhh... I see you know the place."
"Many of my clansmen have gone there and have never returned. It is cursed, and the womb of all evil. Once the island was a right of passage, but the God Galen and the Goddess Dorianna warned us away from that place. Still we returned as was our custom, until these last few centuries. My grandfather passed on the stories of that place to us as children. We thought they were only meant to scare us away, but now I see the legends may have had some merit." Kesan's eyes glistened with a combination of sorrow and rage as I rifled through the memories of his past.
I had killed his three sons. It had only been a few seasons ago. I could see their faces in his mind and knew their fate. They would not relent. They would not leave, and I have little patience for ignorance. Their death was quick. The fish had fed upon their dead bodies and their bones were washed away by swift ocean currents long ago.
"Many people came to my Isle of Islay. Those that did not return are dead." I answered him as best I could and watched as the words struck him as surely as any hammer might.
Kesan staggered backwards into the recessed entrance of the inn, fell to his knees, and sobbed.
"For a stay at your inn, I will save your unborn child." I said evenly and waited for his response.
"What do you know of my unborn child?" Kesan glanced up and into my eyes with broken defiance and gazed at me as though trying to comprehend his next tragedy.
"I know that a vampire lays eyes upon your precious wife, Rós, as she sits tending a pot of stew in the burrow. She seems a delicacy with your child in her womb, and he means to take their life's blood. Grant me safe passage, and I will save them." No sooner had I spoken the words, than did Kesan leap to his feet and burst through the door behind him.