Chapter 10

Immortality, Part 2

March 9, 2005, Miami - 7:23 PM

I went over the entire conversation in my head for the tenth time. It had been decades since I was this anxious. I had wanted to go to the beach since the moment I woke up, but convinced myself not to be the one waiting. What would it be like not being able to fly, to experience life the way only a mortal can? After so long, the idea was inexplicable to me. I had a vague recollection of a previous life as a simple man; but somehow, it played like someone else's dream instead of my past.

I couldn't make up my mind about what I would do first once I became mortal again. Then it hit me. I would go and see Lucy. I would have a full meal. A salad with sides included. All the things that people take for granted and sometimes get annoyed by, I wanted to do them all with her. We would go to a club and dance until we broke a sweat. It had been so long since the last time I actually sweated, and I won't deny that more than once, I felt jealous of the mortals just because they could.

I was going to call her first thing in the morning and ask her to spend the day with me. I wanted to walk over Ocean Drive and sit at one of those tables with big beach umbrellas and order breakfast. I would let her drive me everywhere she wanted—to the park, downtown, to Coral Gables, anywhere.

I looked down at the city. My eyes captured all the details and the brightness of the night. Its energy made me feel all powerful. My body rose slowly, high enough for me to see as far as Fort Lauderdale. Swiftly, I dove toward the distant shore, determined to leave behind the powerful being known as Renzo Von Klatas.

I found her, facing the dark ocean, alone. The sea breeze was generous, working in my favor, allowing me to sense her while washing away my own scent. I landed softly on the beach, staring at her back; and even then, I tried to find any sign of human life in her. The body was human, but whatever was inside of it was not.

"You're early," I heard her say without even turning to look at me. And then she did, slowly.

My vampire eyes easily spotted the microscopic bluish lines mixed with gray ones in her brown iris.

"So do you," I replied.

She smiled and extended her left arm toward me. "Come to me," she said.

I gave my all trying to read her mind, not moving like she asked me to. She stared at me and began to laugh.

"You can't read my mind," she explained.

This is how the old man must feel, I thought, keeping my distance.

"If there is a god and a devil," I said, "if perhaps there's a heaven and a hell, if we all have a soul, I assume there's some kind of an arrangement between the two sides, right?" I paid attention to her reaction to my words.

It was intentional from my part to assume she had divine properties. I was intrigued by what she had to say regarding that.

"Nothing men have created in an effort to explain everything their limited intellect can't comprehend is true. It's just fiction. The nature of the exisitence of the beigns that created the creature you now call human is beyond everything you can imagine. However, there are sides and there is a struggle. We fight each in our own way for the set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is; we fight for that you call soul," she answered.

Despite all my vast knowledge about deities and religion, I found myself wanting to believe beyond reason. At that moment, everything was either real or not. There was no room for doubts.

"One side promoting rules and regulations like the Ten Commandments and the other side advocating sin," I said with every intention of letting her know that I was following the beliefs of the manmade ruling religion. To make her believe that I "knew" whom I was dealing with.

I could feel she was indeed trying to read my mind, so I invested all my efforts in concealing my real thoughts.

"No, humans have been indoctrinated to believe their own fantasy. There are no rules to follow or code of conduct that will grant passage to another life. There's no heaven or hell. There's only the cosmos. Life does not know good or bad. Life simply is." she said.

I walked toward her, slowly, preparing myself for the possibility that I was indeed in the presence of a force that could match mine.

"And the afterlife?" I asked, wanting to know more.

"There is a transition. A mystery beyond your comprehension. Once the essence of everything living leaves the flesh or body moves to a realm where there are no names, familiar faces or lost relatives. Only the awareness of a never-ending existence." she said.

It was very hard for me to hide my feelings, not to reveal the fact that every night I get to be in the afterlife, and that I knew there was only emptiness.

"Death is that simple too?" I asked, pushing the issue.

"Your kind, better than most, should know the difference. You stand proud fooled by the immortality that lingers in you thanks to the remanent of the watchers. In reality, their gift keeps you from transitioning- forever lost in an eternal darkness of dispair and sorrow. Now come, act quickly, mortality is waiting for you," she insisted, extending her arms toward me for a second time.

My kind, she said. What does she know about my kind? I smiled at her, and again kept my distance.

"Your entire act depends on impatience, choices made in a rush, people not willing to wait. They step in, and they fall," I said without hiding the fact that I was having fun.

"Time helps me and you. Mortal creatures, people, as they get older, become less active. They smell their mortality, and they become fearful. Most waste their time with prayers to a deaf god for salvation," she said, looking at me with a puzzled expression, as if trying to understand why I was toying with her.

"Then you agree that those that turn to you are guilty of impatience?" I said, looking for a reaction.

She lowered her arm and remained calm.

"I prefer to think that they're hungry for something better," she replied.

Her answer made me chuckle. "Jesus! Therefore, you're here to help people?" I said.

The woman chuckled back. "Yoshua was not half the man his fanatics have made the world believe he was. The real man was a fanatic who craved to become a martyr - there was never a Jesus," she continued.

"Nor a devil," I said, dead serious.

"Enlil or Satanail as your ancestors named it was amusing right until the very end. Call me romantic, but I have always had a soft spot for rebels. His was a great fight and his defeat was the spectacle that gave your kind its amnesia. I'm just glad you didn't listen to your friend last night," she said.

I paused after hearing from her lips the name Enlil, a name only I and those created by me knew from the secret origin story told by the glyphs inside Marcellus hidden chamber. I stood there considering the possibility that she had, somehow, read my mind. Because the alternative scenario of her following me to the old man's house without me being able to feel her presence was certainly a serious thought—one that made me angry.

"Is eavesdropping another one of your talents, witch?" I asked.

She turned serious as well. "I'm everywhere, from one end of civilization to another, from the beginning of time to its final moments," she said, firmly, menacingly.

"Yada, yada, yada. Yeah? It may be so, but then again, you are here fishing for souls." I added mockingly.

Those who come to me, as you have, come by choice, not fear," she explained, regaining her previous emotionless posture.

Finally, I noticed a trace of humanity in her dead voice.

"They are afraid of death. That's why they come to me," I said as I turned into the vampire I have always been.

She laughed out loud again. "It's that ego that I love the most about you, Gitano!" she said with the biggest of smiles.

Her words made me sneer, and she stopped laughing

"Answer this: Who has made them that way? Who but themselves. It has been always mortals who have created this conflict by coming up with a fall from grace myth that has no logic, and for daring to seek knowledge about something they just can't comprehend. Mortals fear death because of everything they have invented around it. There was no need for any of this. I'm unparented and eternal. I'm the genesis of all deities in all times and all cultures," she said slowly and with an evidently inflating ego.

My sneer slowly turned into a smile.

"Well, you do try hard to sell yourself. Is this the same crap that you, allegedly, tried to sell to those who followed the Carpenter's scheme?" I asked, slowly approaching her in a menacing way.

"I told you, no lies!" she said angrily.

Her sudden burst of anger made my smile grow.

"The Romans cleaned everything up once they embraced the new religion. Men have been carrying that belief since the times of Horus. Yoshua had nothing to do with it or with how the story transformed itself," she said.

I almost cracked up hysterically but instead, I stopped walking and listened.

"I trusted that in time, humans would understand the reality of all the lies, but then I knew better. I knew that the new empire needed the ancient story of the Egyptian god to secure his hold on the masses who were afraid to lose their souls. It was brilliant! One human sacrifice in exchange of millions of souls is a brilliant concept in its simplicity, and scary in the level of stupidity necessary for anyone to believe in it. That's why I suggested Constantine that the best way to save the empire was to make the so-called Christian religion theirs, to conquer it. That's when the emperor came up with the farce of becoming a Christian, but only if the religious symbol was the handle of the sword of the emperor of Rome, the sword of Constantine, the cross. The fact has always been that there was never just one child born from a virgin woman but a child with brothers and sisters, there was never a birth in Bethelm but in Nazareth, no water turned into wine, no Lazaraus miracle and no coming back after a slow, humilliating and pathetic death. Everything was added by ink later." she explained almost in a monotone.

This story was not new to me, but I stood there, forcing myself to hear her explanation.

"In the end, the joke was on everyone because every day, those who believed the tale of the Messiah pledged their souls to the same empire and to the symbol of the old emperor and to the powers that created it. They knelt in front of dead wood and prayed inside the representative houses of the empire that conquered the so-called true religion," she added.

"That's if you are Catholic," I said, not hiding the fact that I did not believe any of the things she said.

"Or if you believe in the nonsense story of the Resurrection. There is no gods, monks, prophets or chosen ones. There's only mankind fiction." she continued.

"I have defeated death," I said firmly.

"Yoshua didn't," she replied softly.

"There's no god or the devil, nor heaven or hell. There's only life," I whispered the words of my faith, as I have done for centuries.

"Believe this: Kiss my lips and gain your mortality," she said, extending her left arm toward me invitingly for the third time.

This time I walked with conviction toward her, just to stop half a foot away from her body.