Akasha

• VAMPIRE •

Akasha is the Queen of Egypt and becomes the first vampire when Amel’s spirit fuses with her blood. Her most famous fledglings are Enkil, Khayman, Rhoshamandes, Nebamun, and many thousands more. She turns statuelike after a few thousand years. Lestat awakens her in the twentieth century, but Mekare destroys her when Akasha seeks world domination. She appears in The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), and Blood and Gold (2001).

Commonly known as the Queen of the Damned, Akasha is born more than four thousand years before the Common Era, in the city of Uruk, the most important city of its time in ancient Mesopotamia. A beautiful young woman even from an early age, she wins the favor of Enkil, King of Kemet—an empire that will come to be known as the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, otherwise referred to today as ancient Egypt. Becoming Enkil’s bride and queen nearly two thousand years before the building of the first Pyramids, the young Akasha rules over the world’s first civilization.

King Enkil supports the traditional Egyptian practice of cannibalizing the dead until Queen Akasha convinces him to change this policy to the agricultural practice of her own homeland. Cannibalism becomes illicit. Eventually the success of this initiative diminishes violence and increases peace, which consequently increases Queen Akasha’s popularity. Although savage cannibalism is nearly expunged, smaller rebellious groups that practice ritual cannibalism cause minor uprisings, but they are quickly crushed by Kemetian soldiers.

Fascinated by the supernatural, Akasha invites twin witches, Maharet and Mekare, to the royal court to commune with spirits. When the twins refuse, Akasha dispatches soldiers to the twins’ village to force them back to the palace. Upon arriving at the village, the soldiers witness Maharet and Mekare performing the ritual burial for their mother, which involves the unlawful cannibalistic consumption of the brain and heart. The soldiers slaughter every villager except for the twins.

Maharet and Mekare are brought back to the royal court, where Akasha coerces them into communing with spirits. Displeased with the spirits’ answers, Akasha imprisons Maharet and Mekare. Mekare summons the spirit of Amel, who attacks the Queen. Akasha orders her servant Khayman to rape Maharet and Mekare in the royal court before banishing the twin sisters from Kemet. The spirit of Amel avenges the twins by continuing to haunt Akasha, Enkil, and Khayman. Conspirators who still practice cannibalism in secret attempt to assassinate the King and Queen. The conspirators leave Akasha and Enkil mortally wounded. At the moment of Akasha’s death, Amel’s spirit joins with her soul to create the first vampire.

Akasha saves Enkil from death by turning him into a vampire. They soon discover the challenges of being a vampire, unable to either consume food or procreate. They will never age and never die, except by fire and sunlight. They also possess heightened sensitivity, superhuman strength, regeneration, and an insatiable bloodlust.

Although the King and Queen drink blood primarily from evildoers and enemies, Akasha and Enkil grow so disturbed by the insatiable power and pleasure of their bloodlust that they force Maharet and Mekare back to court to provide an explanation for their transformation. The twins have never encountered anything like this before. They suggest that, because the spirit of Amel is very large, they might dilute him and his influence if they make more vampires, which might also decrease their bloodlust. Akasha tests this by turning Khayman into a vampire against his will, yet this does nothing to diminish the bloodlust.

When Maharet suggests that the King and Queen should kill themselves in order to end this abominable union between flesh and spirit, Akasha orders that Maharet’s eyes be gouged out and Mekare’s tongue be severed. But before she loses her power of speech altogether, Mekare promises vengeance upon Akasha, which begins the Legend of the Twins. After mutilating the twins, Akasha sentences them to one day of torture before being burned at the stake as heretic witches. Later that night, Khayman rescues Maharet and Mekare by turning them both into vampires in an agreement to rise up against Akasha and Enkil. As they flee, they turn many mortals into vampires, in the hope of creating a vampire army, which becomes known as the First Brood. After a week of being pursued by Kemetian soldiers, Maharet and Mekare are captured, but Khayman escapes. Fearful of destroying the twins lest it should somehow hurt her, too, Akasha separates Maharet and Mekare by entombing them in stone coffins and setting them adrift in different oceans, Maharet towards the west and Mekare towards the east.

Akasha and Enkil reign as vampire gods for centuries, identifying themselves as gods, Isis and Osiris, to propagate their worship among mortals. They even set up their vampire fledglings as minor gods to be worshipped in far-off temples, such as Nebamun in the eastern lands and Teskhamen in the western countries. In time, a civil war occurs among the vampires, dividing them into two factions, the dark gods who are ruthlessly destructive and tyrannical and the benign gods who worship Akasha. The dark gods are worshipped by human slaves who bring them their victims. The more benign vampires mercifully kill their victims in religious practices.

Great vampire battles ensue. Akasha and Enkil are eventually captured and entombed within blocks of diorite and granite. Pinioned and immobile with only their heads and necks exposed, Akasha and Enkil drink from victims provided by their captors so that their captors can in turn drink from them. After many centuries in this imprisonment, Akasha and Enkil stop drinking blood entirely. Although the lack of blood robs them of immediate strength, the more they age, the stronger they become. They stop talking and moving. Their minds gain the ability to astral project, their bodies become like vacant marble statues, and their skin turns translucent white.

After many more centuries pass, no one remembers why Akasha and Enkil were imprisoned or who imprisoned them or why they can never be let out. And after even more centuries pass, fledglings discover one night that Akasha and Enkil have become so strong that they have broken free from their stone prisons and are lying naked on the floor, embracing each other. Understanding the great immensity of their power, their fledglings now erect them in beautiful sanctuaries, where Akasha and Enkil are worshipped in a blood god cult. Though unmoving, Akasha and Enkil demonstrate awareness, such as accepting evildoers as sacrificial offerings, drawing evil out of people, protecting their fledglings, and even giving droplets of blood to their worshipping subjects.

Many more centuries pass. Soon these religious beliefs begin to diminish. Akasha and Enkil continue to be cared for under the title “Those Who Must Be Kept” by their keeper, a vampire referred to as the Elder. Shortly after the outset of the Common Era, the Elder grows exhausted from his duties and loses faith in the blood god religion, so he takes Akasha and Enkil out of the shrine and leaves them by the Nile River, where they are exposed to the sun. In the Great Burning of 4 C.E., it is discovered here that Akasha and Enkil can no longer be damaged by fire or sunlight, only bronzed. Their fledglings suffer the damaging effects, however. Younger fledglings are incinerated completely, while older vampires are severely burned and weakened.

To unearth the fate of the Mother and the Father, Akasha’s former servant Teskhamen turns Marius de Romanus into a vampire. Marius travels to Egypt and finds the evil Elder caring for Those Who Must Be Kept, feigning his innocence. Marius attempts to outwit the Elder and steal Akasha and Enkil, but he needs Akasha’s assistance, who rises from her throne and crushes the Elder under her feet. Marius then becomes the keeper of Akasha and Enkil for the next two thousand years. He moves them to various locations, from Rome to Constantinople and even to a secret shrine hidden in the snowy Alps. Under Marius’s watch, Akasha’s old enemy Maharet learns of the Queen’s location. Maharet steals into the sanctuary and stabs Akasha in the heart, only to discover that if Akasha is killed, Maharet and all other vampires will be killed also.

In the 1800s, when Marius introduces Lestat to Those Who Must Be Kept, Lestat’s bravado so impresses Akasha that she allows him to drink from her while he gives her some of his own blood. This enrages Enkil, who rises from his throne and nearly kills Lestat. After helping Akasha save Lestat from Enkil’s rage, Marius takes Akasha and Enkil away from Lestat, to the Canadian north, where he gives them every modern refinement. Marius makes several attempts to awaken Akasha and Enkil, but it is not until 1985, when Akasha hears the rock music of the band the Vampire Lestat, that she finally truly awakens.

Seeking to have Lestat as her sole paramour, Akasha kills Enkil and drinks his blood to consolidate her power and become the only progenitor of the vampire race. Desiring to rule the entire world the way she had ruled over ancient Egypt, Akasha creates a plan to destroy almost every vampire in the world and then kill all but 10 percent of the mortal male race in creating a new religion for her to be worshipped as a goddess by the remaining mortal female population. With her Cloud Gift, she flies across the world, incinerating with her Fire Gift every vampire she senses, save those whom Lestat loves, yet some whom she cannot sense or who cannot be destroyed by her Fire Gift are spared.

Akasha then appears at the Vampire Lestat concert, where she saves him from the numerous vampires who seek to kill him for revealing their secrets. Eventually, she takes Lestat to Maharet’s Sonoma compound, where thirteen of the remaining vampires are planning to destroy her. Akasha offers them the opportunity to be her servants in her new world order, but they spurn her. Even Lestat turns against her when he discovers her true plan for world conquest. He and the other vampires fight against Akasha, but she is too powerful for them. When they seem utterly defeated, Mekare appears. And in fulfillment of her prophecy nearly six thousand years earlier, Mekare decapitates the Queen of the Damned. As the blood drains from Akasha, vampires feel their own life extinguishing also. Before Akasha truly dies, Mekare eats her brain and heart, which causes Amel and his Sacred Core (the life force of all vampires) to enter into Mekare, making her the new Queen of the Damned.

All that remains of Akasha is an empty shell.

For more perspectives on Akasha’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Amel, Enkil, Kemet, Maharet, Marius, Mekare, Lestat de Lioncourt, Those Who Must Be Kept, and Vampire.