by Aja James
I breathed deeply through my nose, tamping down the urge to scream and rage in a well-practiced ritual, and clenched my jaw. At least it wasn’t a thousand on that arbitrary scale, which was what it used to be a few weeks ago before Ishtar and I decided to visit the Shield for a time.
Now, surrounded by family and friends, and most of all, by the innocence, love and pure joy of children, my demons have receded like shadows chased away by the brilliance of sunlight.
The Healer’s silence spoke volumes. I didn’t fool her.
“Lie back,” she instructed, “I will use my zhen now.”
What she meant was that she wouldn’t touch the most shameful part of my body with her hands; she never had. Only Ishtar had ever seen the scars, for I would not hide any part of myself with her. She deserved to know the broken male she’d tied herself to for eternity.
That’s not entirely true either.
I’d hidden the worst of myself from her. My recurring nightmares of the millennia of torture suffered under Medusa’s hands. The vile, unspeakable things she did to me. I’d tried to protect Ishtar from that darkness, even when it tore me apart inside. All over again.
Over and over and over…
“Papa…”
My son whispered in my daughter’s voice, his hand tucking gently into mine, as if to hold me steady, reminding me to breathe.
And I did. I soaked in the aura of his beautiful soul.
There is unfathomable darkness within him, but there is also light. He warms me. He lances through my doubts and demons with hope.
I’ve finally found him. I will never let him go. I will always protect him. Love him. Support him. And to do so, I must get stronger. Medusa will not win.
I gave him a slight smile and patted his hand before lying back, forcing my body to relax as the needles of the Healer’s zhen inserted into my pores, hundreds of them all at once.
Rain was mostly silent as she probed me, keeping her assessment to herself. She was infinitely gentle; I barely felt it, merely a tickle here and there. This was a vast improvement from when I was first freed by Inanna from the prison in a land called Japan. Back then, everything hurt. But after a year of recovery here in this very same healing chamber, the pain was borne more of the nightmares in my mind than real physical trauma, though there was that as well.
I took another deep breath, filling my chest.
I was stronger now. I will get stronger still. The physical pain, whether phantom or not, I knew how to deal with. It was my soul that needed to heal.
And I am. Slowly but surely healing.
“When will you tell him, General?” the Healer asked, jolting me out of my reverie. “He deserves to know.”
I darted a nervous glance at my son in the guise of Inanna. I felt the tension in his hand that still gripped mine loosely. I didn’t even realize he was still holding me until that almost imperceptible twitch.
“He does,” I agreed. “But do you think he will believe us?”
“DNA does not lie,” Rain replied.
“A person who wishes to believe something will always seek evidence that reinforces their beliefs,” I argued.
“True,” she murmured, and I felt the subtle retraction of her zhen from my body. “But he must know the truth to start healing. It is the only way for him to know himself, as well as the family who loves him.”
My son’s hand in mine tightened, even as his skin grew clammy and cold. I suppose we were telling him the truth whether we planned to or not.
Perhaps it’s best to “rip off the Band-Aid.” There was no going back now.
I didn’t know much about Binu. Or Ere. Or the Creature, as we used to call him. An undefinable “it.”
I will rip out the throat of anyone who ever called him such again.
I knew he was smart, logical, cunning. He had to be to survive Medusa. She did not suffer fools in those who served her, whether voluntary or not. I tried to give him the facts now, and leave him to draw his own conclusion. Perhaps this was the best way to reveal the truth to him, when he pretended to be someone else.
“Explain to me again about this DNA test,” I requested of Rain. “I am not certain I completely understand the magic of modern medicine.”
She continued to flutter about me, checking this and that. I could feel the slight breeze from her movements and sensed the soothing gentleness of her methodical approach to healing. It seemed like an elegant dance in my mind, a delicate hummingbird hovering over a wounded flower.
“Shortly after Inanna came back with…our guest, I took his blood sample when he collapsed in that sudden seizure,” she said. “His disguises prevent us from seeing his real form, so I couldn’t visually track the state of his health. I suppose Benji is the only one of us who can see the real him. But I could glean no severe health issues from Benji’s descriptions.”
I nodded, encouraging her to go on, even though I’d heard all of this before. This was for my son’s ears. I could tell that he was intently listening as he continued to clutch my hand.
“His blood is extremely polluted, and he’s almost fatally anemic. If he were human, he’d have died long ago. That seizure alone would have killed him.”
I ground my back teeth at the Healer’s words. Hearing my son’s condition was worse than suffering my own.
“Some kind of reptilian venom, mixed with an inorganic concoction of a variety of poisons, makes his blood run black when he doesn’t have regular infusions of Pure blood,” Rain continued. “I tried other blood, of course, to revive him from the coma, starting with human, as we all assumed he was vampire. But it was your blood that brought the color back into his skin the quickest. You are the only one amongst us who is born of two Pure parents. Your blood is the most powerful for a Dark One to consume.”
“He is not entirely Dark,” I reminded her.
As well as my son beside me.
“No,” she agreed. “As the DNA results show, he is half Dark, half Pure. Well, if we want to be precise, half Pure from your genes, one quarter Pure and one quarter Dark from Ishtar’s genes. And of course, he shares half of his genes with Inanna, his sister. That has been verified as well.”
A jolt traveled through my son’s hand into mine as he squeezed me even tighter, so tightly, the bones of my fingers ached.
I squeezed him back.
“How do you know for certain that he has our genes?” I asked, for his benefit, though I could use the refresher. I’d been incarcerated in Medusa’s prisons for over four thousand years, only liberated a couple years ago. I was still learning about the modern world. It was a lot to take in, to put it mildly.
“There are unique markers in our blood, Tal,” the Healer patiently explained. “Passed on from each parent to their offspring. He is half of you and half of Ishtar. But of course, every individual is also wholly themselves. These markers are identifiable through human inventions, for they cannot be seen by the naked eye. If he understands modern medicine and needs convincing, I can certainly show him the test results.”
I could feel Rain’s sympathetic gaze on me as she said the next words.
“His DNA is a match for Evergreen, Tal. Ava and I confirmed it when she visited last.”
Evergreen. The name of the sample taken from one of Medusa’s research facilities in Japan. My son’s DNA, his body and blood, had been used for the serpent’s disgusting experiments just like I had been.
“The samples of Genesis were destroyed with the labs,” Rain confirmed my thoughts “But Ava and I believe they would have been a match to your blood, General.”
I didn’t want to delve deeper into that stomach-turning subject while my son was listening. It must already be an overwhelming amount of information for him to absorb.
“He might not believe what he sees,” I said, steering the dialogue back to the tests that proved paternity, knowing how suspicious my son was of everyone around him, understandably so. “Results can be fabricated, can they not? And sometimes, eyes lie.�
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Only Benji could see his true form, and only I could sense his real self without the use of my eyes.
“True enough,” she said. “If we know what he really looks like, we can point out the physical similarities. Benji says he has dark hair like Ishtar and blue-green eyes like you, Tal. But even then, he might balk at the physical proof, ascribing it to be coincidental.”
“So, in the end, he must choose to believe us or not,” I concluded, hearing the increasingly agitated breaths of the male in female skin beside me.
“Yes. I suppose it does come down to that,” Rain agreed with a sigh.
“We are done here. You are showing signs of improvement, warrior. Make sure you take your Mate’s sustenance on a regular basis. You have a lot of catching up to do. Your body needs it.”
Despite the no-nonsense tone of her voice, I could feel my face heat. There was only one way a Pure male obtained that kind of sustenance—through sexual intercourse with his Mate.
I reluctantly released my son’s hand with one final squeeze and stood, quickly pulling my clothes back on.
“Thank you, Rain,” I inclined my head to her. “Until next week.”
“Lots of rabid rabbit sex, General,” she called to my back as I walked toward the doors, “doctor’s orders.”
My entire body hot with embarrassment and…anticipation, I beat a hasty retreat, barely noticing that the unreal Inanna was right behind me.
“P-papa, wait.”
I immediately slowed so that he could catch up. Instinctively, I held out my arm for him to grasp, the way I would have done if he were truly Inanna.
With some hesitation, he did, taking my left arm with both of his, hugging tight.
He heard the truth just now. The question was, would he believe it?
I cleared my throat. “I am making some hot chocolate in my chambers. Would you like to share it with me?”
A pregnant pause. And then—
“Yes, please, papa,” he murmured beside me, and more awkwardly this time, laid his head on my shoulder.
We soon arrived at the private quarters I shared with Ishtar. It was a large apartment, perhaps as large as Dark Dreams, except all of the space was for our personal use, not taken up by the all-things shop and kitchen that Ishtar used to bake various sweets.
My Mate was not present in the Shield. I would sense her if she were. She must be out with the real Inanna, or perhaps Sophia, the young Pure Queen. The three females liked to go “window shopping” and “people watch” together.
I seldom went out with Ishtar or anyone else. If I left the apartment, it was to go on a walkabout by myself. I needed the space, the solitude. To get lost among strangers who didn’t even realize I was blind, for I’d honed my senses to navigate crowds and streets easily, especially if I’d been there before. Wearing shades to hide my opaque eyes, the humans couldn’t detect my disability.
I felt almost normal on those walks.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I told my son when we entered the living room, which was an open space immediately adjacent to the kitchen.
I heard him settle himself on one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
“It never ceases to amaze me how gracefully you move,” he said in Inanna’s voice. “Are you sure you can’t see, papa?”
Little did he know that my real daughter would never allude to my blindness in any way. Inanna treated me like I was a fragile, imminently breakable thing. Though, to her credit, she’d been stepping it up in training. She’s finally starting to treat me like a warrior, the General who led the Pure Ones’ armies in the Great War.
But outside of training, I was still her poor, tortured papa. I rather enjoyed my son’s teasing bluntness presently.
“Don’t worry, child,” I responded, my back to him, busying at the stove, “I always see you. I have eyes in the back of my head, you know. So behave yourself.”
A faint chortle reached my ears, injecting my soul with a dose of feathery light. His happiness didn’t sound forced. The truth of who he was did not seem to be weighing him down.
Yet.
“Was I very naughty, papa? I don’t recall now, it was so long ago. What was the worst thing you ever caught me doing?”
I let out an exaggeratedly beleaguered sigh, more than willing to play along.
“What didn’t you do?” I said. “From the time you were old enough to crawl, you got into no end of trouble. I didn’t know how to raise a girl child. I was often away at war. I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the brave, beautiful woman you are today. You were mostly raised by the village women and Alad. Or Gabriel now, I suppose. You chased him even before you knew how to crawl.”
An eerie silence followed my rambling speech. For a moment, I thought I’d made a mistake with what I said.
And then, “I-I remember Alad,” he said slowly, as if he were sifting through Inanna’s memories. “Before he was Gabriel, I mean. He was…he was a mighty warrior. Tall, lean, broad-shouldered. I thought…I thought that those shoulders could hold up the world. But then…then…”
I turned around to face him, though I couldn’t see. I could hear his agitated breathing, hear the movements of his hands, as if he’d thrust them into his hair in distress.
“I remember… why do I remember things I haven’t lived? Impossible…”
He was muttering to himself, his breaths growing ragged and rough.
I stepped toward him to do something. Anything. My instinct was to gather him in my arms and hold him tight.
Did he remember something of his past? What was his past? Did he have a life before Medusa caught him in her snare? Or had he always been her pawn?
His voice stopped me, still Inanna’s voice, still wearing his disguise.
“Tell me something else, papa.”
I did not miss his emphasis on the last word. Something savage and dark laced his tone.
“How did you and dear mama meet? Was it love at first sight? I never tire of hearing that story. Tell it to me again.”
It was a demand. A command. His words were full of fury.
I’d never told Inanna that story, and my real daughter would know. She’d asked me repeatedly as a child, then as a young woman, but I never answered. I’d been in too much pain. I was certain that I suffered a kind of Decline back then, and in the many millennia since during my captivity. The Healer said the same.
I supposed that it was my punishment for loving a Dark One. Such a union was strictly forbidden for a Pure One; we were mortal enemies. Ishtar’s mother, Queen Ashlu, had enslaved my Kind for three thousand years until the Great War.
But recently, before Ishtar and I were reunited, before we Mated in truth, in every way that a male and female could be Mated, I knew that the version of the Decline I endured was because she taught herself to hate me. Her doubt was more powerful than her love. But it wasn’t enough to kill me, because deep down, in her core, in her soul, she never stopped loving. It was her sister’s poison that kept her from our truth.
I prayed to every deity in the heavens, including the cruel Goddess who had forsaken me for thousands of years, that Medusa’s poison would not keep my son from his truth—
That he is loved.
Unconditionally. Eternally. By me. By Ishtar. By Inanna. By the friends all around him just waiting for him to give them the chance.
I turned back around and tended to the chocolate slowly simmering on the stove. I had to be patient. He needed time. In this moment, I had the opportunity to share my truth with him. And perhaps remind him of his own.
I didn’t speak again until the chocolate was ready. I poured it into two giant cups large enough to be bowls. I placed his in front of him and waited until he took a sip.
I took a surreptitious breath to fortify myself, for this story would be difficult to tell, and I intended to tell him all of it.
How Ishtar and I met. How we broke apart. How we came together again in the cruelest way. How I broke her heart, and
how she broke mine. The deal with Medusa that ended the war. The millennia of punishment at the serpent’s hands. How my one true love tore me apart when we came together again. How everything inside me withered and died…
My heart thundered in my ears, as fear and shame made my throat close tight.
But I swallowed past that lump and began:
“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess whose innate light rivaled the heaven’s brightest stars…”
Chapter Three: Do You See Me In Black And White?
*THE CREATURE*
And that brings us to my present conundrum.
If the Healer and…Tal are to be believed, he—that is, I—that is—it…
MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING SHIT!
Who the fuck am I?!
I’ve always been the Mistress’s Creature!
I’m Frankenstein’s Monster!
I have two fragments of her rotten soul within me! I’m a thing! A nonentity! A collection of holes for people to fuck and rip into! A jumble of thoughts and rebellious snark! Why am I even alive?! Why do I exist?!
I hate myself I hate myself I HATE MYSELF!
The next few hours I won’t bore you with. I may or may not have ripped and hurled and broke every breakable, movable thing in my apartment.
Ha! My apartment.
Am I truly not a prisoner here? Do they really think I’m the prodigal son returned to their goody-two-shoes bosom?
Or is this some kind of elaborate trick? Are the Pure Ones devious enough to invent such a convoluted story? The son of Tal-Telal, the legendary General of the Pure Ones, and Ishtar Anshar, the most beautiful Dark princess who ever lived?
Come on! Who’d believe it?!
(I may or may not have hysterically laughed at this point until my stomach cramped and tears streamed down my face).
When I finally calm down enough to breathe normally, I trudge into the en suite bathroom with its wall of mirrors on one side.
According to Benjamin, I have dark hair like my…like Ishtar, and blue-green eyes like Tal. The image in the mirror shows one of my disguises, the Creature who is both male and female and neither at the same time, with long, wavy black hair, pale, translucent skin, and evil black eyes glowing red at the centers.
