Echoes of Blood and Glory

by Ripley Proserpina

  This was his favorite place in the world. Rose didn’t know how much time had passed since his birth, but she thought it was beautiful that he held his home sacred.

  “Have you ever been back?”

  The scene suddenly changed. The fields were smoking. Animals, oxen, and goats lay in pools of blood beneath the balcony. There were screams. Cries. She glanced down at her hands, but they weren’t hers. They were Ra’s and covered in sticky, crimson blood.

  And just like that, the scene disappeared.

  “No,” he said aloud. “I’ve never been back.”

  “Why not?” she asked, and then, “That’s a stupid question. I’m sorry.” While she and her mother stayed in the house where she was attacked, Rose could never go into the backyard without a frisson of fear. “I understand why you don’t go back.”

  “It would be different,” he said, and then smiled ruefully. “Obviously. But—”

  He dug his thumbs into the arches of her feet, and she groaned aloud. “God, that feels good.”

  Smiling, he continued to rub her feet while searching for what it was he wanted to say. “I picture my home so clearly,” he said. “I can smell the lilies when they bloomed, and feel the salt in the air. I see my mother’s hands as she offered us plates, and I can remember the feel of the wheat slipping through my fingers. I don’t want to replace that with something else. My favorite where has a when attached to it.”

  It all made sense to her. She imagined it was like trying to recreate a perfect day. There was a feel to it that could never be replicated—and the harder you worked, the less perfect it would be. “I understand.”

  “I knew you would,” he replied. He wrapped his strong fingers around her ankles. Focused on her, he leaned forward, trailing his fingers up her legs.

  She met him before he reached her knees and linked their fingers. “It was a beautiful place,” she said. “The sun. The fields.”

  “It was home,” he replied. He squeezed her fingers. “Before I even had a concept of what home was. It felt like the safest, warmest place in the universe, and I never thought that would change.”

  Rose ran her thumb along the back of his hand, remembering the vision of them covered in blood. “You never wanted to leave.”

  Gently, he disengaged their hands and placed her feet back on the ground. Initially, she thought he was putting distance between them, but he just moved her chair closer to him until their knees touched. “I didn’t, but there was no choice. Sometimes we have to move on, even when we’re not ready.”

  His words punched her right in the gut.

  “When my mother was sick, she was so worried about me. I was really young to be on my own—eighteen, almost nineteen—and she was afraid of what would happen to me without her. How would I survive? But the truth was, I could have been sixty, and I still wouldn’t have been ready to live without her.”

  He stared at their laps but nodded. The moment she’d seen, the one where he’d stood watching his life go up in flames, was the moment his life changed. He hadn’t said that, but she had felt it.

  “What did you do?” Ra asked. He glanced at her but suddenly moved fast. Gripping her elbows, he tugged her into his chair and onto his lap. “After she died?”

  “It was just us.” A dozen images flashed in front of her mind. Her mother bringing her to school. Opening presents under the tree. “My mom was an only child who was raised by her father after her mom bailed. My dad—he’s got a perfect second family and doesn’t want anything to do with his crazy daughter.”

  “You were all alone.” Ra thumbed away a tear from her cheek. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.

  She rolled her eyes at herself. “I was fine. I made a plan. Followed the plan. Go to school, start a business, support myself.” Smiling through her tears, she met Ra’s concerned gaze. “Check, check, check.”

  “Funny how we can sum up the worst parts of our lives,” he said quietly. “We’re the same in that way. My parents died, and I took care of my brothers. But those bullet points leave out all the struggles that turn us into the people we are.”

  She studied him. To any human who met him, Ra would appear to be in his twenties or thirties. But he’d confuse them, because he held himself differently than someone that age. When he stood in a room, he commanded attention. When he spoke, every ear bent toward him.

  And it wasn’t because of whatever power it was he could wield. It was because he’d lived a life where that was a role he had to have. He was the head of his family.

  “You blame yourself,” she murmured. “For everything in the past, and everything that might happen.”

  “I’m the eldest,” he replied. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it; even the scruff of his designer beard was soft. “My parents entrusted my brothers to me. They entrusted everything to me.”

  He wasn’t telling her everything. Entrusted everything to me. What was everything?

  Ra sighed, and his breath tickled her skin. She leaned closer, wanting to wipe away the heaviness that had attached to him, and touched her lips to his. He bent his head toward her, responding immediately.

  One arm was wrapped around her waist while the other held her hand. He held her like he was afraid he’d break her. Every so often, his fingers would flex against her side, and then he’d relax.

  “Were your parents like you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so. I remember hunting with my father, and him drinking from the neck of an ibex. We ate the meat, too, but I think he was trying to show me how to hunt. I don’t know what he would think of me now.”

  Rose kissed his chin and then each side of his lips. He closed his eyes and let her rain kisses all over his face. “You have helped your brothers survive for thousands of years. I think he’d be pretty fucking proud.”

  His eyes popped open, and he smiled, his eyes lightening from brown to gold. “He wouldn’t understand how I’ve changed.”

  “Well, not if you plopped him from ancient Egypt into the twenty-first century, dum-dum.”

  His fingers curled into her sides, and she twisted when it tickled her.

  “Did you call me a dum-dum?”

  She kissed her way from his cheek to his ear lobe. “Yes,” she whispered. “Because you’re being silly.”

  He stiffened, and she pulled away. He sat straight and proud, but his eyes danced as he studied her, and he couldn’t hide the way his lips twitched with humor. “I am never silly.”

  “Oh no, never,” she replied, a little breathless. She kissed him for real then, skimming her tongue along his lips. He opened his mouth, and she pushed inside. His arms were tight around her, but his kiss was still soft and careful, like he was worried he’d come on too strong.

  She deepened the kiss, showing him without words that he couldn’t hurt her. No matter how hard he held her, how intensely he kissed her, she wouldn’t break in his hands.

  Ra made a sound deep in his throat, pulling her even tighter, as if he’d heard her thoughts and felt her certainty. He drew back and opened his bright gold eyes. “How can you trust me? You don’t really know me.”

  Taking his hand, she pushed it against the center of her chest. “I know your heart. Don’t you think this means something? This warmth that changed my life and brought us together. I don’t care about your past, Ra, because I know you.”

  He struck like a cobra, hands diving into her hair to hold her still while he sucked away her breath. His kiss was hard and punishing, and she knew when they separated, her lips would be swollen, but she loved it.

  The door between their minds opened. At first, she thought it had opened because of the intensity of their kiss, but as images assailed her, she realized he did it on purpose.

  He was testing her. He showed her his hands again, covered in blood, and the sightless eyes of a human as he let him fall to the ground.

  He showed her feasts. Tables piled high with wine and food. Servants draped over him. Women whose b
odies were painted in gold and whose blood trickled down their necks.

  She nipped his lip and dug her fingers into his chest. “Don’t,” she told him. “Don’t push me away or try to shock me into leaving.”

  His only response was to growl and to throw more memories at her. Fighting, stabbing. The sound of bones breaking, the sensation of them shattering in his fists. Screams. He pushed his feelings into her. He loved the fear. The worship.

  And yet he still kissed her. “Can you love this?” he asked. “Can you stand for this to touch you?”

  There was only one way to counter this move. She parried his aggression.

  His eyes in the darkness, the sound of the crawler dying in his hands.

  Laughing with Seti and Horus.

  Smiling.

  The touch of his hands on her skin. Her pride and relief when he jumped through the hole in the warehouse ceiling to save his brother.

  This kiss.

  “You don’t frighten me, Ra. And you can’t hurt me.” She nipped his lip again. “I’m too tough for that.”

  His entire demeanor changed, the kiss morphing from one of hostility to one of apology. “How?” he asked as he kissed her. “How can you know me?”

  He spoke like a man who hid himself, not because he didn’t want to be close to people, but because he was afraid of what would happen when they did.

  He’d managed to get his hand beneath her sweater, and his rough fingertips glided across her ribs. She shivered, and he stopped, retreating.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His gaze went to her lips, and he touched them. “I hurt you.”

  She pressed them together to ease the little ache, and in moments, it went away. “See?” she whispered. “Tough.”

  10

  Rose

  After their hectic and intense make-out session, Ra seemed content to just hold her. She had a passing thought about doing some work while they sat together, and without saying a word, he dragged her computer onto her lap.

  “There,” he said. “Now you don’t need to move.”

  The warmth in her chest, the constant feeling of peace, settled her. She hadn’t been in any physical pain since they’d left her and Horus was wounded. In that time, it was like she’d never hurt at all.

  Leaning her head on Ra’s chest, she opened her computer and went back to her photographs.

  Ra’s breath caught. “Rose. These are beautiful.”

  “You think so?” She turned her head to see his expression. Gaze on her computer, he nodded.

  “Are these the photos people pay you to take?” he asked.

  “Not these.” The ones they were looking at were photos she’d taken on her many walks around Boston. She’d been playing with one of her design programs on her computer and had changed the saturation on some of the photos.

  “They look like art.” He motioned for her to keep going, but stopped her again as she began clicking through a series of black and white photographs she’d taken around her neighborhood this past summer. The candid shots included people she saw every day, but whose names she hadn’t known.

  “I don’t know what came over me that day.” The photo on the screen was one of her next-door neighbor sitting on the steps of her porch, a cat posed regally next to her. “I don’t usually talk to people. I keep my head down and go where I need to go. But it was such a beautiful day, and so many people were outside. I started introducing myself and asking if I could take their picture. Some of the people gave me their emails, and I sent them the photos I took of them.”

  Ra pushed on her finger so the next photo came up. “Rose.” His voice was quiet.

  This one made her smile. It was a close up of a little boy, his chin tilted toward the sky as he smiled. His mother cupped his face, but only her hands were visible.

  “So much love.” The joy in the boy’s face had made her heart ping.

  “Yes.”

  Ra kissed her temple, and they went through the rest of her photos from that summer. Every so often he stopped her, pointing out some detail or to ask a question about the light, and how she knew a photo would come out looking the way it did.

  His attention and interest in her work was like nothing she’d experienced. She loved sharing her passion with him, and she loved the way he focused on her and really wanted to hear her thoughts.

  With Ra and Seti and Horus, she didn’t have to internalize everything. She could just… talk.

  And she found herself doing just that.

  “I’m rambling,” she realized.

  “No, you’re not.” As she spoke, Ra had begun to play with her hair, extending one curl as far as it would go and then letting go to watch it return to a spiral. “It’s fascinating, the way you see the world. I’d like to go with you someday to watch you work.”

  “Maybe you could take some photographs of your own.”

  He straightened, pulling his head back so he could look down at her. “You think so?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You can’t really learn until you try it yourself. It was one thing to study techniques and learn about equipment and another to try them.” She thought about her destroyed camera. “When I get another one, you can use it.”

  He frowned. “That’s right. It was destroyed. Along with everything else.” Glancing toward the window, his expression shuttered, and the easy connection between them iced over, just like the glass between them and the garden.

  “It’s just stuff.” It was stuff she’d spent years saving for, and for the things she couldn’t afford to buy outright, stuff she was still paying off on her credit card. “Just stuff.”

  “We have lots of money,” Horus said. There was a knock on the door, and he came inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I heard your worries. My brothers and I have plenty of money, and we’ll replace what you lost.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “My stuff is not your responsibility.”

  “But it’s more than just stuff,” Ra said.

  Horus treaded quietly across the thick rug and sat in the window seat. His big body blocked much of the window, but she’d much rather look at him than the garden anyway.

  “It’s the way you support yourself. Your passion. Have you seen her photographs, Horus?” Ra asked.

  “Some of them.” Horus crossed his arms and leaned carefully back. “They are truly beautiful.”

  Rose couldn’t hold his stare when he watched her like he could see into her soul.

  “And you are our responsibility,” Ra said. “Because we choose you to be.”

  Wincing, she shook her head. “I don’t want to be anyone’s responsibility.” What a terrible word that was. It called to mind bills and going to the dentist.

  “That is not at all how we see you.” Ra frowned.

  Fine. So she wasn’t the equivalent of getting a cavity filled. “Then what do you mean?” she asked finally.

  “You’re a responsibility the way it is a farmer’s responsibility to till a field or water his garden. The farmer’s survival depends on his care of his land. Our survival depends on you.” Horus’s rough hand cupped her chin, forcing her gaze to his. “Don’t hide from us, Rose.”

  “I don’t understand,” she admitted. What did he mean, his survival depended on her? That made no sense. She couldn’t save them. Her blood might feed him, but it would also hurt him in the process.

  If anything, she put his survival at risk.

  “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” she asked. “If you came to visit your friends and you never met me, but some crazy doctor started building an army. What would you do?”

  “I don’t like thinking about that.” Until now, Seti had been quiet. She’d felt him on the periphery of her awareness, observing them. “You were here, and we did meet you. We connected with you. We chase away your pain, and you make us feel. The men who existed before they met you are gone. It’s not worth considering what they would do, because there’s only us.”

  She couldn’t a
sk this next question aloud. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t met me?”

  “Do you wish that?” Ra asked.

  Seti had silently appeared in the room and leaned, arms crossed, against the stone window frame.

  All of the brothers studied her, waiting for her answer.

  Did she wish she’d never met them? “No.” The brothers made her feel alive. Dr. Stone might have been creating a vampire army and be an evil genius, but when she woke up in the morning, he wasn’t the first thing she thought about.

  Ra, Seti, and Horus were.

  And she was excited. She wanted to talk to them, see their faces, listen to their thoughts. With them, she was a part of a family again. It was a gift.

  She’d never wish that away.

  Their faces changed as the thoughts raced through her mind. Horus smiled, deep dimples in his cheeks. Ra’s arms had been banded tightly around her, but they relaxed and his cheek came to rest on the top of her head as he went back to playing with her curls.

  Seti nodded at her and she could sense his pride. And relief.

  “No matter how we came together, we’re together now.” Ra’s breath ruffled her hair across her face, and she tucked it behind her ears. “And we’re stronger. Amazing how a little human like you can change everything.”

  “In the best ways,” Seti added, to which Horus nodded. “The best.”

  After that, everyone seemed to linger in the study. The day wore on. Horus and Ra started a game of chess, and Seti and Rose worked on her vampire research online.

  Seti’s face glowed with excitement. “I didn’t think I’d be good at this.” He’d taken her idea about Dr. Stone being able to destroy a vampire from a distance and turned it into a researchable question. “Look at this.” He read a lot faster than her, making connections quickly. “This says that a traumatic event, or stress, can turn on certain genes. What if the test today had something to do with that? What if…”

  She sucked in a breath and sat up straighter. “What if he destroys the vampires by turning on a gene?”