Gilded Destiny

by Nola Sarina

Master

  Levi

  Levi waited just outside the swampy entrance to the Pit, not wanting to alert Levitiqas of his return home until Festus was back, as well, to cushion the blow of Nycholas’ challenge. Who’s castrated now? Levi scowled at his own cowardice. He didn’t dare enter the chilly muskeg outside the resurrected train graveyard that was the Vespers’ home until his big brother was home, to take some of the heat off himself for delivering the news.

  He didn’t wait long. Festus materialized out of the surrounding trees like a ghost, and approached Levi with a fist extended. “We good, brother?”

  Levi nodded sharply and met Festus’ knuckles with his own. “We’re good.” Much as he wasn’t willing to indulge the same appetite as his older brother, he wasn’t about to pass judgement upon Festus for his preferences. Not his place to do so.

  Festus blew out through pursed lips as the brothers regarded the train graveyard: shabbily stitched-together train cars composed something of a loop of connected hallways and dormitories, leaving Levitiqas with one totally refurbished cabin car as his own quarters, and each of his servants with a tiny bunk cabin in a passenger car. The lobby – the entrance to the Pit – was the finest of the spaces the lesser Vespers were permitted to occupy, for only the ancient, dark, and favored Manaen – Levitiqas’ personal companion – was allowed to enjoy the more spacious quarters with the Vesper master.

  Not that I’d wanna spend any time in close quarters with him, anyway.

  “Alright,” Festus said, “let’s do this.”

  Levi sighed and nodded, and they strode into the chilly swamp with speed in their heels, gracing the surface of the almost-frozen moss with enough stealth that the slue didn’t dare try to suck them under the muck.

  The door clanged open, announcing their tardy return. Levitiqas waited inside the lobby, his indigo cloak drifting around his ankles in the breeze. Levi ducked inside and Festus followed, and the door closed with an echo that sounded like the silence of death.

  “Late,” Levitiqas’ rasp of a voice cut into Levi’s heart. His master and namesake, his ancient ancestor half-responsible for the theft in the Garden that cursed the Vespers to nighttime, turned slowly to regard his servants, and Levi and Festus bowed their heads once with apology.

  “What antics have you peons been brewing in your absence?” His voice demanded truth, and Levi was powerless but to obey.

  “Nycholas, Master,” Levi whispered, knowing he’d save himself some torture by immediate admission of the truth.

  Levitiqas’ cloak swirled in the darkness as he turned to regard Levi, his silver-streaked black hair nearly a perfect match to that of his own, only the gray of age to set them apart. His eyes glowed with the silver twinkle of experience in the pupil, even brighter than Festus’, for he was the Original immortal, damned to darkness by the ancient snake for a theft so long ago. Levi shivered as the silence dragged on between them, the dark of night even thicker and laced with hatred while Levitiqas considered Levi’s words.

  “What of him?” Levitiqas didn’t need to raise his voice to convey his disdain and the pain that lurked on the horizon for the informants.

  We’re doing him a goddamn favor, and still, he’ll torture us.

  Levi drew a shaky breath to speak. “He challenges you, Master. We delivered your orders for his return home… he will not come. He demands you retrieve him personally.”

  Levitiqas’ boots echoed with each step as he closed the distance between himself and Levi. Levi ducked his head further, never wanting to flaunt his superior height over his master, and held his breath.

  “And what else?” Levitiqas said with a sneer on his lips.

  Levi shook his head. “He said nothing else. He won’t come home. He won’t live this life.”

  Thick heartbeats pounded in the air, vibrating the fragile fabric of restraint between Levitiqas and his subordinates, and Levi swallowed hard.

  “What are you withholding?” Levitiqas growled.

  “Nothing, Master!” Levi silently begged the fates to hear the truth of his words and show Levitiqas his honesty. Please, hear me!

  Levitiqas’ sneer twisted into a full snarl and he snagged Levi by the back of the neck and jerked him down to his knees, submissive and beaten.

  Levi cringed, but refused to cry out as Levitiqas’ blackened fingernails dug into his flesh, squeezing around his spine, carving through the skin of his bite-scar, his Achilles heel.

  “Master!” Festus shouted a protest. “Levi speaks the truth! Nycholas said nothing more!”

  “Yet that was not all you learned, was it?” Levitiqas squeezed harder on Levi’s neck, and finally the younger Vesper let a groan of agony escape his lips as the pain shot through his limbs, like needles jabbing into every joint, filling his bones with fire.

  Levi couldn’t escape the grip, the torture, or the pain. What the hell was he talking about? He’d disclosed all he learned from Nycholas, yet the torture continued. His lungs seized and he tasted blood, and his vision dimmed with stars along the edges of black.

  “Come on, Levitiqas!” Festus dared to address the master by name to spare Levi some measure of anguish. “Are you losing your shit?! Levi’s telling the truth!”

  Fingers released and Levi yelped as blood flow returned to his brain, dropping to the ground on his hands and knees. He gasped to catch his breath, the feeling of bruise lingering in every joint of his iron body. He rolled to his side, unable to make a sound and unable to stand, and heard a grunt as Levitiqas grabbed Festus, too, and the beating ensued.

  Hours later, on the floor of the lobby, Levi peeked open his eyes and saw Festus on the hard metal beside him. He grunted as he reached out and shoved Festus’ shoulder. His older brother rolled to face him and groaned, clutching his head.

  “Thanks for having my back,” Levi croaked, his lungs burning as though he hadn’t drawn a breath for hours.

  Festus wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, only smearing the black ooze into a worse mess as it still dripped out of his mouth from his throat. “Couldn’t help it, man. Truth is truth.”

  “What did we leave out? We told him everything.”

  Festus reached forward, his breath hitching with pain as he did, and poked Levi in the back of the hand.

  Levi hissed with the sharp touch and lifted his right hand, inspecting the shattered bones. “Ah, fuck.”

  “You shook Nycholas’ hand,” Festus said.

  Levi held his breath and re-cracked a few crooked bones, jerking them into their proper places and biting his tongue against the pain. “So? That wasn’t worth disclosing.”

  “Would we be broken into pieces right now, if it wasn’t?” Festus pulled himself to a sit and squeezed his shin, checking the bone there, too.

  Levi stayed on his back, compressing the bones of his hand into the right shape as they began to knit back together and heal. “What did I miss?”

  Festus chuckled. “You missed the handshake. And as Levitiqas learned while he crushed your knuckles into rubble, his handshake smelled like a woman.”

  “Like a Maid?”

  “No, you moron. Like a woman. A live, human woman, not digested. And you recognize the smell, too.”

  Levi lifted his hand with the help of the other and inhaled, stilling with shock. “The same one? The one he supposedly devoured, years ago?”

  Festus nodded. “The one Sychar said he watched Nycholas eat.”

  A scream pealed from a back cabin in the Pit as Levitiqas exacted penalty upon Sychar for the lie. A string of curses followed the scream, Sychar’s youthful belligerence a futile defense against the master’s brutality, and then he was silenced with the thundering crack of skull on metal.

  Levi dropped his head back on the floor of the train. “Fuck.” Sychar was only sixteen when selected for immortality, and the sound of his agony wrenched Levi’s heart in a protective way. Sychar’s wounds were not likely to be mortal, but any torture inflicted based on Levitiqas’ intol
erance of compassion pissed Levi off. “Fucking shit.”

  “Fuck fucking shit is right,” Festus said. “Now we get to find Nycholas, and his woman.”

  Sychar screamed again as Levi recovered from the torture and dragged himself back to his cabin to rest.

  When Levitiqas caught up with the traitor and his woman, the torture would be tenfold for all involved. And Levi would have to watch it, despite what his morals would not allow him to watch Festus do to his meals, because Levitiqas was the master and Levi couldn’t refuse him.

  Some days, he wondered if he’d trade it all for the chance to die and be done with the hell of living as a serpent slave beneath Levitiqas.

  Some days, he wondered if he’d trade it for something more dangerous, something worse.

  Worse, but irresistible… as Nycholas dared to do. He dared to do it twice.

  But I must not think of it. Ever.