CHAPTER 29 The Pleasure Dome
Alex sat on her bedding considering what Cosmina had just told her about the initiation requirement. This wasn't in her vampire playbook. She'd have to find a way around it.
When Cosmina didn't return right away, Alex went for a short walk to see what other vampires were up to. They pretty much ignored her, so she listened in on some of the philosophical conversations, which were very much over her head. I'll have to educate myself to have any sort of social life here, she thought. All discussions were congenial except one on economics. She heard shouting and two vampires got in each other's face over a couple of things called austerity and stimulus. Their colleagues had to separate them.
Must have been an hour later that Cosmina returned, and she had several female vampires with her.
"Where have you been?" asked Alex.
"Shadowrise," said Cosmina. "We go outside to a hilltop where we can watch the mountain shadows blanket Sinaia. Humans have their sunrise; we have our Shadowrise. It has a deep spiritual significance. Some humans participate. The high priest of the Coven presides. Alu Kard used to officiate, but lately he's been too busy and has relinquished the duty to me. It's a great privilege."
"So what is this initiation you were talking about?" asked Alex.
"You must bathe first," said Cosmina. "The Cleansing Pool and Pleasure Dome are both in an area we call Xanadu."
"Xanadu? Like in the Coleridge poem?"
"Perhaps Coleridge got his poem from our Xanadu."
"How can I get out of it? I came here for sanctuary, not to join an organization."
"This isn't Parliament, and it isn't a B&B either. The initiation is about you and your transformation. Vampirism is a state of being. You're about to become one of us. I thought you wanted to know about vampirism, immortality. This is it."
Alex felt guilty, shook her head and wondered what she was getting herself into. "I thought you would simply teach me. Tell me stuff."
"It doesn't work like that. Vampirism is a state of being. Your relationship with it is determined in large part by your state of commitment." Cosmina still looked a little confused.
"Something's wrong, isn't it?" said Alex.
"Alu didn't know you'd had the Millennium Dream. Strange. But he will officiate for your initiation. That's quite the honor."
The women walked Alex through the dark down a descending, twisting stone staircase to an underground pool where they all bathed. Light from an unseen source lit the surface that rippled, shimmied like liquid gold, and cast a glow on their naked bodies. Deep darkness surrounded the little radiant oasis. The water was cold, and Alex shivered, but the other women only felt it comfortably cool.
"You use no soap?"
"It would contaminate the Alph. A tributary of its continuous stream of fresh water feeds the pool here, which is simply an intermediate stop for water on its way to the lower chambers."
Four men, vampires obviously, came to the edge of the pool, and they also took off their clothes. Then out of the darkness stepped Alu Kard, solemn, his actions of undressing coordinated, ritualized. He looked even taller and thinner unclothed, a near skeleton, dark skin stretched over bone. He splashed water on himself, his actions slow, methodical, precise. He took no notice of Alex.
"Men and women bathe together here?" Alex asked quietly, trying to find a body orientation that revealed the least to their eyes. She couldn't keep hers from drifting toward them, and they seemed intrigued by her baby bump and oblivious to the exposure of their own nakedness.
"Only for ritual cleansing. This is a sacred stream and not for common use."
After a quick sprinkling, Alex and the others anointed themselves with a thin film of olive oil. She felt an outsider to all this, the community bathing ritual seeming foreign and strangely perverse in mixed company.
"This ritual I'm destined to experience, it's not some capricious liturgy, is it?" Alex said.
Without looking up, Alu said, "No more talking. Only sacred utterances from here on."
Cosmina whispered in her ear, "If you'd not be so obstinate, perhaps it'd not seem such an ordeal."
Alex kept her mouth shut but sulked. She realized she'd have to be more accommodating if she expected them to accept her and provide the sanctuary she and her child needed so desperately. They all donned black bathrobes and disappeared into the shadows. Alex could barely make them out.
"On to the Pleasure Dome reciting the oration," said Alu.
Just as I thought, said Alex to herself. Some messed up ceremony to embarrass me.
He led them along a winding path with Alex forced to take up the position behind him and the four men and four women, including Cosmina, trailing behind. They chanted in Latin with a rhythm that matched their steps and made it seem a march. Alex had studied a little Latin in secondary school, but this seemed a more ancient form.
Down they went to even lower-levels, wet stone walls leaning into them, and the stream, the Alph Cosmina had called it, now a torrential flow among rocks and along the water-chiseled chasm. The rushing river seemed enchanted, music coming from the wailing water gushing along its stony banks. The flume flung up ghostly, water-created wraiths that called to her with their warbling sprite-voices.
Through a narrow tunnel, they entered another domed chamber, and Alex's internal reference shifted. She experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. She heard music that sounded ancient and came from a single instrument, a dulcimer, plucked by a damsel sitting on a mushroom-shaped formation above the stone floor. She hummed the wordless melody like some daemon lover's lament. Stalactites wept water into a pool, all lit by bioluminescent. She took a deep breath, and the air seemed alcoholic. It smelled like a sweet perfume and reminded her of the pneuma she'd read about that gave the prophetic trance to the Oracle in ancient Delphi. She felt drugged, dazed, stumbled and almost fell. Cosmina and another woman caught her by the arms. Alex couldn't get over the feeling that she'd been there before.
They removed their robes, and Cosmina indicated that Alex should do likewise. Naked again. Cosmina stepped aside, and the dark shape of Alu Kard extended his hand. It felt cold and bony, just loose skin over skeleton. They began to sing, and Alex realized that this was a practiced chorus and in fact a sacred group among the most ancient of vampires.
Alu led her out into the middle of the pool, which was much deeper than she thought, coming to her breasts. The others followed and formed a ring, a halo, alternating woman-man-woman-man about Alex and Alu. As they slowly circled, the water rippled around them creating a swirling luminescence, a multitude of tiny suspended stars. Alex's emotions resonated with the music from the dulcimer, and its tune orchestrated them so that they danced. She seemed slave to the melody so completely that she was unable to resist its harmony of feelings.
Alu turned toward Alex and for the first time looked directly at her. He said, "You have lived, died, and wandered in the civilization of the living, and now you must descend into the Underworld, where you'll find your home and establish your relationship with your immortality. That which is born must also die. Death by violence, rebirth by blood, sustained by the community of vampires. Now begins your journey into Eternity. Your existence is being rewritten in the Book of Life. We will mark your soul with the knowledge and wisdom of the Undead. You will now take the Oath of Cheiron."
That was exactly what Alex didn't want. She felt her former self slipping away, and as Alu looked directly into her eyes, she caught her breath. Alu's words seemed to touch her to the depth of Millennium Road. She saw flashes of it, the gathering of spirits close to her, the closeness of common souls.
"Repeat after me. I swear to obey the laws of my oath, to believe in Darkness, be loyal to the immortal Undead, and speak only truth to them and of them in public and private. I swear to protect planet Earth, for it is the one true sustaining element of the Immortals. I will forsake all friendships and worldly possessions prior to my death and resurrection."
At first, Alex tho
ught this was unacceptable, but then she remembered that she'd become a vampire before she consummated her relationship with Jaklin and Mikhail. Plus, her grandmother's home had come to her after she became a vampire. She'd already given up her adolescent friends when she came to Sinaia. Her grandmother had passed on. Her family had always felt like a group of strangers. Even her cross, which she hoped to get back someday, had also come to her after being bitten by Velinar. It was as if it had all been planned.
Alu's words had resonated within her, and now she repeated them, slowly, precisely.
"Vampires also share a Covenant," said Alu. But if broken, no retribution is taken. You will repeat the Covenant: To be true to those of the Colony, to report misbehavior of any vampire, to have the best interest of both vampires and humans at all times, to strive to reduce our suffering, to take blood from humans only when offered, to solicit blood only under the most dire circumstances, to never harm a human being, to never steal human blood, to never kill a human, to serve the twin sisters Darkness and Light."
This, she could not only live with but believed in herself, although she had violated portions of it already. She repeated his words.
"Welcome to the Pleasure Dome," Alu said, then started chanting in archaic Latin.
Respice, quaesumus, Domine
Super Maria, tua humilis servus.
In hora infirmitate
Animam refove, quam conversum
Ut potest confortatus
Per Dominus Cheironum
Qui regnat et semper.
Amen
In one swift motion, he scooped Alex into his arms. He whispered, "Relax," which she did as best she could. As he lowered her horizontally into the water, Alex felt it touch her bottom first and then start to envelop the rest of her body. Alu's touch was much colder than the water. Gradually, it covered her legs abdomen and breasts. She took a breath and her head and face went under, and he held her there. She started to panic when she felt his arms release her, but realized that she was floating in the glowing liquid. She could still hear Alu's chanting overlaying the hymnal. Alex relaxed and floated free.
"Close your eyes," he said.
She did. Those circling about them created a slow strobing of light and shadow that seemed to hypnotize her.
"What do you see?"
Once again she was on Millennium Road traveling with another group of vampires, nine in number, four women and five men, none of whom did she recognize. These vampires of the dream world were much different than any she'd seen. Their skin was metallic, a mixture of gold and silver, and shimmered with their movement. They led her off the dark road into a dimly glowing edifice.
Alex followed them inside, and the four women came in close, caressed her each in turn, and laid her on a silk covered circular bed where they anointed her with a warm, sensuous oil and exotic perfume. The men joined hands and formed a revolving five-pointed star about the women. They hummed an ancient melody. Something told Alex that these were not beings of the real world. They were the dead Undead, ancient vampires from the time of Alu's first millennium, back even before Abraham.
The women anointed her with the sweetest smelling oil. Each of the women caressed her, their hair softly falling about her body. Then one of the men broke from the revolving male halo, while the others continued to circle and sing. The women raised her knees. At first Alex objected, "No," she said, but her body was so tuned to the music that it pulsed with every beat, and her mind went blank, and even later she could not recall what actually happened, just that it seemed a sacred act of communal intercourse. Still yet, she felt trapped in an atrocity wrapped in a sexual liturgy. Soon this man relaxed, released her and resumed his place in the circling, singing halo of men. The women and men again circled singing.
Another male vampire stepped from among the halo, and once again the women spread Alex's thighs. Again the chanting of the voices drove home the act. So it was with all five male vampires. Then the men circled, and the women again caressed her. The four women rose up from her and joined the men in the circling formation about the small circular bed. Their chants turned to wordless humming that gradually escalated to a screech of unbearable volume.
A group of dark, vile, unclothed creatures entered the edifice. They are both animal and human but nasty, stinking brutes, humped, cankerous, warted. While the vampires sang a dirge, these corrupt creatures fed on Alex. They sucked and ate her body, consuming her in great gulps, burping grossly and passing great flatulence. Once sated, they backed off from her but were consumed by violent shaking and burst into flame, then suddenly turned to ash.
Alex woke in the Pleasure Dome, the voices of the men and women vampires lofting as they raised their eyes to the ceiling where now Alex saw a circling pentagram of fire, perfectly synced with their motion. Alex was still submerged in the pool and once again in Alu's arms. She raised her head up out of the water. He carried her to the bank where the women wrapped her in a soft cotton robe. The woman playing the dulcimer then raised her voice, and they all joined in the chorus. Although Alex didn't know when, she'd joined the singing. They turned her so that she faced into the deep darkness of the cavern, and then she saw the outline of a symbol, faint at first but then flowing in flame. It was another pentagon, and within it was the nude figure of a woman, her four extremities and head forming the five corners. The perfect female vampire.
But Alex felt compromised, damaged. The initiation had been a horror and cultivated unsavory feelings. She felt assaulted, tortured, and didn't understand why the creatures who fed off her had then sparked, then flamed. What the hell? Sparked? This was the same as the feral vampires who'd tasted her.
Alu said, "You must now discover your new self. You have been born again and in some ways are a different person. You are merely clay remolded by destiny and given new aptitudes. Your initiation in this pool has bound you to your myth. You now have a destiny. What you have experienced is your private undertaking that provides clues to who you are and how you relate to the world. We do not know, and you are under no obligation, to tell anyone what happened. You must find your path, the mythic life element."
His words were not comforting but disturbing, and not just the part about the abuse being clues to her new identity, which by the way reminded her of being raped by Petru Balc. Alex had always thought that by becoming a vampire, she'd escaped death. But now it dawned on her, coming as a churlish epiphany, that she really was dead. Her death wasn't an illusion but a stark reality. She realized that her problem had been trying to live in the world of humans since Velinar bit her. She had not embraced her own death, not acknowledged it, never grieved it. Alu's words during the Oath of Cheiron had triggered this realization. She was groggy, and felt that she just woke from a dream that had lasted since Velinar bit her. Her previous life flashed past in quick episodes. Her stupor vanished. She was fully awake. And she was undead.
The glowing image of the perfect vampire superimposed on the pentagon extinguished, the music stopped, and the damsel with the dulcimer vanished. She'd been an apparition all along.