Karpathos was the second largest island of the Dodecanese. Dodecanese literally meant "twelve islands". The Twelve Islands were surrounded by approximately 150 smaller islands, of which 26 were inhabited. The Dodecanese had been inhabited since prehistoric times. Even the smallest of the populated islands boasted dozens of Byzantine churches and medieval castles. But there were also shopping centers and airports, cellphone towers and satellite TV. All the modern amenities.
Paulo and his family had resided on Karpathos for almost two hundred years. It was the perfect place to house a coven of vampires. Remote and relatively safe, the only real drawback was the tiny population with whom they shared the island. Because there were so few mortals, Paulo and his clan were forced to subsist on the blood of animals—swine mostly, from a local slaughterhouse. The only time the striges of Karpathos could feed on mortal blood was during the Panagias, the island's most famous religious festival, when tourists and expatriates flocked to the island from all over the world. During the Panagias, the Nikos Family could hunt as proper vampires do, preying on the wicked who came to enjoy of the festival.
But the Panagias was six months away. Karpathos would be all but deserted when we arrived. There were only six thousand permanent residents, the population of a small town, and that spread across three hundred square kilometers, but I was looking forward to the solitude. I had a lot to think about.
The boat we hired to carry us to Karpathos was called the Volada. I spent most of the voyage standing on the deck, watching the dark waters of the Carpathian Sea glide sedately by as we wound our way through the islands.
Apollonius-- my beloved Paulo— had not let me out of his sight since we departed Bad Wildbach. Though we spoke freely as we had always done, I could sometimes feel his eyes on me. In fact, I could feel them boring into the back of my skull right now, as if he wished to climb inside my head and see for himself if I was still truly me. Zenzele stood at the rails beside me, her hand curled over mine, our fingers intertwined. She had hardly spoken since my resurrection.
"Do you remember when we went to see the Colossus, Paulo?" I asked.
"Father?" Paulo said, rising from his deck chair and joining us at the rail. He stood on my left, opposite Zenzele.
"The Colossus of Rhodes," I said, smiling at him.
I saw him flinch back from that stranger's smile. It saddened me a little… but only a little. It was still too exciting, too novel, to have this new body to feel very sad about the destruction of the original.
I was no longer an Eternal.
I could die now. Not tonight certainly. Not even very soon. But I was no longer the indestructible Gon, and my new vulnerability added a strange piquancy to my experiences, one they had never held for me before. Life, I found, was far more precious when you were allotted a certain measure and then no more. I could-- I would-- die someday. Perhaps that was why Zenzele clung so jealously to me. She was still a true immortal. Someday I would be gone, dead and gone, and then she would be the oldest living vampire.
How much dearer a thing becomes when you can lose it at any moment!
I pretended that I did not notice Paulo's discomfort. I had offered to Share with him, prove to him that I was still his maker, that Lukas's personality had been subsumed by my own, but the boy had refused.
On the surface, he had accepted Nora's assurances that I was truly myself, that some miracle had occurred and my spirit had shifted into the body of my destroyer, but I could see that some doubt still lingered in his mind. Especially when he looked on my face and saw not his father but some strange hybrid of the two, part Lukas and part Gon.
I gestured to a nearby island. The lights of Rhodes, largest of the Dodecanese, glimmered on the black mirror of the sea. Once, the Colossus of Rhodes, a ten-story statue of the titan Helios, stood there at the entrance of the Mandraki harbor. It was nearly one hundred feet tall in its day, a marvel of engineering, and one of the tallest statues in the ancient world. In 226 BC, an earthquake destroyed it, breaking it off at the knees. It had toppled back onto the island. Paulo and I had gone to see the Colossus, but only after it fell.
"I regret that I didn't see the Colossus while it stood," I said. "It truly was a wonder of the ancient world. I thought it would stand forever, or at least a little longer than it actually did. I was always putting it off, thinking there was plenty of time to go see it. I'm sure you remember. There was always something else to do, other concerns to occupy my time—most of them trifling things. I'm sure they seemed important at the time, but now I only remember that I did not see the Colossus until the earthquake had cut him off at the knees."
"Yes, I remember," Paulo said.
"Even then we put it off. And then we heard that the caliph Muawiyah meant to conquer Rhodes, so we sailed to see the Colossus before it was cast down and sold to the merchants."
"Even in ruins, it was a marvel," Paulo said.
"You could not wrap your arms around its finger," I said, smiling at the memory.
"I remember."
"For fifty years, it stood."
"And then it lay for eight hundred more," Paulo said. "But we finally went to see it."
"Yes, but it was not the same. I wish I could have seen it standing over the harbor. Seen it in its glory. Seen the Wonder, not the Ruin."
"You spoke of purchasing it yourself. Paying for its restoration."
"Yes, but then the Arabs invaded and we were forced to flee the city."
"But not before killing Muawiyah's general."
I laughed. "We fed well upon the caliph's soldiers that night. His general soiled his trousers when I snatched him from his steed. Did I ever tell you that? I flew with him to the rooftops, meaning to feed on him at my leisure, but the stench of his excrement spoiled my appetite."
I thought Zenzele would laugh at that—she liked a good poop joke-- but she stood impassively beside me, staring out into the dark.
"I remember," Paulo said, smiling. He looked out thoughtfully on the lights of Rhodes, then turned to me. "Are you trying to tell me something?"
"Was I being too subtle?" I asked.
"Not really," Paulo said, and he looked back at Rhodes. After a moment, he laughed.
We stood and listened to the waves splash against the hull of the boat as the island receded into the darkness. To the south, Karpathos rose from the gentle curve of the horizon as if emerging, wet and glistening, from the sea.