by J M Hemmings
‘Come my friends, step in!’ Octavian cried. ‘The water is lovely, and it is scented with fresh rose petals. Shall I have one of my serving boys fill you a goblet of wine? It is the finest to be had in this fair city of ours.’
‘Yes, yes, wine,’ Claudius muttered sourly. ‘I need some after that harrowing journey through the slums. Have you seen how these plebs live?! It’s revolting! The smells, the filth, the noise, even at this time of night! They have no sense of decency, none whatsoever. And our only protection from the scum that prowl these streets was that glowering, scar-faced mute you sent to escort us here! And by Jupiter, I’ll tell you this: I, I feared for my life a number of times! I’ll not stand for further treatment like this from you, Octavian! I am a senator of Rome, I’ll not stand for it, I say!’
Octavian, seemingly unmoved by his acquaintance’s outburst, took a deep quaff of wine from his golden goblet and then walked over to him, cheerfully placed a reassuring hand on the old man’s shoulder when he reached him, giving the flabby, pale flesh a playful squeeze with his strong, tanned fingers. He pointed at the guard who had brought the senators in, who was now standing sentry in silence next to the bath.
‘Do you know who that is?’ Octavian asked gently, pointing at the man, a towering, swarthy fellow with the massive shoulders of a blacksmith, and thick arms crisscrossed with abundant scars. His face was also heavily scarred, with one particularly savage old wound running from the left corner of his lip all the way up to his left ear, which was missing. The deeply pared flesh had healed from the grievous wound to twist his mouth into a permanent sneer. Upon each hip a long scimitar was sheathed, and beneath his cloak he wore a shirt of chain-mail, while each thick forearm was protected with bracers of steel-plated leather.
‘That “glowering, scar-faced mute” who I sent to escort you is my bodyguard Kurush,’ Octavian continued, massaging Claudius’s shoulders as he spoke. ‘He is an elite Persian warrior, and a former gladiator. Indeed, my friend, he was a reigning champion for a time. He could take ten of those untrained street thugs with one hand bound behind his back, I guarantee it; you’ll not find a more deadly bodyguard this side of the Tiber. Now, calm down Claudius, come, enter the water and sip on this delectable wine. Then let me present to you my discoveries, and you may well change your mind about this evening.’
‘Fine, fine,’ Claudius grumbled as he slipped the tunic off his rotund, wrinkly body and stepped into the bath. ‘Well, I suppose that this water is rather pleasant,’ he muttered as he sat down, his reluctance nonetheless plain to see. ‘Boy, make haste with that wine! My throat is dry!’
One of the slave boys rushed over to him, bearing a jewelled golden goblet filled with red wine. Claudius snatched it from the child, held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply of its woody aroma. A smile broke across his crimson lips as he took a tentative sip.
‘Ah, you were not jesting, Octavian! This is fine wine indeed. Well, let’s have it then, tell us what you’ve dragged us out here for.’
‘I think you would appreciate it more if I showed you, Claudius, rather than if I merely told you. Since we are all here now, let me bring out the creature.’
‘Creature? What mockery is this?!’ Claudius exclaimed with indignation. ‘You truly are beginning to wear my patience thin!’ he hissed, spitting half a mouthful of wine into the steaming water from the vociferousness of his bellyaching.
‘Hold on to that last strand of patience, I beseech you,’ the still-smiling Octavian said, unfazed by his guest’s irritability. ‘Brutus! Bring out the beast and her lover.’
A spear-wielding guard, attired in the exotic armour of a champion gladiator, responded to Octavian’s order. He saluted and then disappeared through a door that was hidden behind one of the hanging tapestries. A few moments later he reappeared, followed by three more guards who were kitted out in equally impressive armour. The first of them was dragging a shirtless young mulatto man behind him in chains. The prisoner appeared to be in a state of semi-consciousness, either through drink, a drug or simply from being beaten senseless; his attractive, well-formed face and his muscular torso were bruised, swollen and bleeding from a multitude of fresh wounds. Behind him, wheeled in inside a cage of steel, was a North African woman, who was nude. She, however, was fully conscious, and she was yelling, screaming and weeping hysterically all at once.
‘What in the name of Jupiter is this?!’ Claudius gasped. ‘If you are about to perform some sort of obscene execution or torture in front of us, then myself, Lepidus and the other senators will insist on taking our leave immediately! And I guarantee you this, Octavian: no amount of gold from your blood-stained coffers will restore our relationship with you! Ever!’ He glared with fury-reddened eyes at Octavian, and then glanced back at the unfolding spectacle before he continued. ‘I’ve had enough of this pathetic mockery for one evening, enough. Enough, I say! This sort of crass entertainment is fit only for low-born plebs and their ilk, not for a senator of the Republic!’
‘Relax, Claudius, relax,’ replied Octavian, who wore a smile that was half smug, half cryptic. ‘You’ve not yet seen what I wanted to show you.’
‘Gods, she’s as black as the depths of Hades,’ Lepidus muttered, his disapproval blatant. ‘She must be from the deepest recesses of the province of Africa.’
‘She … or it?’ Octavian asked.
‘What on earth are you talking about?!’ Claudius snapped as he rose from the steaming waters of the bath. ‘This nonsense has gone too far! I’ve had my fill of it. Boy, bring me a towel and my chilton. I’m leaving.’
‘Change!’ Octavian shouted, turning to the woman in the cage and ignoring Claudius. ‘Change into your animal form!’
‘Never!’ she screamed shrilly.
Octavian chuckled, his visage contorted with mirth, seemingly deriving some sort of sadistic amusement from the woman’s wrath and defiance. He stepped nonchalantly over to a boy who bore a platter of fruit on a golden plate and plucked a grape from it. He popped it into his mouth and began chewing thoughtfully, ignoring Claudius, who was drying himself off with vigorous, angry strokes. The grape burst between his teeth, and its red juice dribbled through his lips and trickled down his strong, jutting chin.
‘Kurush, remove her lover’s right hand,’ Octavian commanded, as casually as if he’d asked the guard to simply salute him.
Kurush, without a word or a change of his robotic expression, unsheathed a scimitar, while a guard stretched out the dazed prisoner’s right arm on the polished marble floor.
‘No!’ the woman cried, her voice hoarse with a new flush of terror and desperation.
‘Do it,’ Octavian muttered as he picked another grape from the bunch.
Kurush hacked at the prisoner’s arm just above his wrist, bringing his razor-edged blade down with brutal force. The steel cleaved neatly through muscle, sinew and bone, and hit the floor with a clang as it separated the young man’s hand from his arm. Blood gushed in gruesome washes from the stump, and the caged woman wept and wailed and beat the bars in tortured anguish.
‘Gods! You’re even more of a vile brute than I could have imagined!’ Claudius exclaimed, his countenance crumpling into a contortion of unabashed disgust. ‘Senators, let us leave this hovel before this revolting spectacle becomes even more horrific! And you, Octavian, we’re done with you, done and finished! Congratulations on successfully destroying your business relationship with us, you uncultured savage!’
‘Change now, or I’ll have the rest of that arm and his other one!’ Octavian roared, his previous expression of dispassionate calm now giving way to a twisted grimace of crimson wrath. ‘Do it!’
‘No,’ she screamed, her voice shrill and hoarse from her plaintive weeping. ‘No!’
‘Kurush,’ Octavian grunted, ‘sever the bastard’s arm at the shoulder. And then take the other one too, um, make that one at the elbow as well. We’ll start on his feet and legs next.’
Kurush nodded, his black eyes icy and piti
less as he raised his blade above his shoulder to strike another blow.
‘Stop, please stop,’ the woman begged through her tears.
Kurush ignored the woman’s hysterical pleas, his scarred face betraying no hint of emotion, and with another swift blow he hacked the man’s right arm off at the elbow.
‘A good, clean blow my friend. Well struck,’ Octavian commented as he bit into a peach. ‘Now, the other arm please.’
Kurush stepped over the body and raised his scimitar.
‘Stop!’ the woman screamed between wailing sobs. ‘I’ll change, just stop!’
Octavian narrowed his eyes and held up his hand, signalling to Kurush to halt.
‘You’ll want to keep your eyes on the woman, my friends!’ he shouted to Claudius and the other senators, who had likewise dried and clothed themselves, as they were making hurriedly for the exit. Just as Claudius turned upon his heels to respond to Octavian, he saw an incredible sight unfolding before his eyes, one that would remain with him until the end of his days: inside the bars of the cage, in the space of but a second or two, the nude figure of the woman burst, in a terrifying explosion of expanding limbs, a horrifically distended torso, a monstrous distortion of her face and head, and a vigorous sprouting of tawny fur from her skin, into a snarling lioness.
‘By Jupiter and all the gods!’ Claudius gasped, stumbling back in utter shock and falling hard on his back onto the cold floor. ‘By Jupiter, by Jupiter, by Jupiter!’
‘What trickery is this?!’ cried the flabbergasted Lepidus, whose little eyes were bulging from their sockets and looking twice their normal size, utterly transfixed by the sight of a pacing, spitting lioness occupying the space where the woman had just been. ‘What … what … how?!’
Octavian laughed loudly and slowly, the sound dripping with the smugness of his triumph.
‘I told you, Claudius, I told you! Now, would you gentlemen care to re-enter the bath and discuss what I’ve just shown you?’
‘Is she … is she a real, live goddess?’ a senator stammered, bug-eyed with disbelief, his mouth agape.
‘One may be forgiven for thinking such a thing,’ Octavian remarked coolly, ‘but no, she is no goddess. Whatever sorcery she otherwise possesses, she is still made of flesh and blood and bone, like you or I. Now, Kurush, spear the beast please.’
Kurush sheathed his scimitar and took a long spear from one of the guards – and then he thrust it through the bars of the cage, jabbing the blade between the lioness’s ribs. She roared in pain and sprang back against the bars, trying in vain to escape from the stabbing horror of the steel. Kurush plucked the spear from her ribs, and a flush of bright red blood washed over her tawny flanks. Inside the cramped confines of her cage she writhed, twisted and roared bestially with agony and frustration.
‘Gods, that creature makes an awful racket! Tell that pleb to stop poking it!’ Claudius, who was starting to recover from his initial shock, complained. His eyes, however, remained locked on the lioness, and they still looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets.
‘Kurush, leave the lioness … for now,’ Octavian ordered.
Kurush did as he was told and stepped away from the cage.
‘Gentlemen,’ Octavian said, ‘let us relax in the bath and talk about this … this wonderful monster that paces and snarls in its cage before us.’
‘What of that man bleeding on your floor?’ Lepidus asked, looking horrified and overwhelmed by everything he had just witnessed, his liver-spotted hands trembling slightly as he wrung them together. ‘It is a most ghastly sight!’
‘Oh yes, the bitch’s lover,’ Octavian grunted coldly. ‘Kurush, put him out of his misery and remove the body.’
Kurush nodded and unsheathed his scimitar, and slashed the blade with cruel precision across the man’s throat. He watched with his dead eyes as his victim’s lifeblood pooled on the floor at his feet, spreading like an ink-stain across tissue paper; taking a human life was obviously something the automaton-like bodyguard was rather scarily familiar with, it seemed. As the unconscious man bled to death, the other guards dragged him out of the room, and two servant boys with a pail of water and some rags hurried over and began cleaning up the blood, while Kurush looked on dispassionately. Inside the cage, the lioness thrashed wildly about, roaring and snarling in a fury of grief, helplessness and tormented rage.
‘By Jupiter, that sound is most awful!’ Claudius snapped. ‘We cannot conduct business while that thing makes such a cacophony!’
Octavian’s glacial gaze hovered on the lioness for a few moments, and the corners of his mouth inched downward in a malicious scowl of revulsion and hatred before he spoke.
‘Very well,’ he growled softly. ‘Guards, silence the beast.’
Kurush and the other guards, who had now returned, readied their weapons and began stabbing the thrashing lioness through the bars with their swords and spears. She roared and spun and slashed helplessly with her claws, but the cold steel of the cage was too strong for her, and the claustrophobic space too confined to dodge the relentless horizontal storm of sword blades and spear-points. Their unyielding sharpness tore through her skin, opening wound after wound, and soon her yellow coat was crimson and wet with steadily flowing blood. Her legs rapidly began to weaken, and finally they gave out beneath her, and she collapsed onto the floor of the cage. Kurush rammed his scimitar into her now-exposed throat, again and again, grunting with an almost carnal satisfaction each time he did, for now his formerly lifeless eyes were bright and glossy, aflame with something malicious and sadistic, a power-lust that gorged itself on cruelty, suffering and violence. The other guards plunged their spears into her underbelly and used the embedded blades to turn her over onto her back, and once in that position they began stabbing at her body with an unrelenting fury.
Eventually the lioness let out one last soft, gurgling growl, and the final dim light faded from her eyes as life left them forever.
‘Thank the gods,’ Claudius muttered in a flat, callous tone, staring with a cold gaze at her corpse. His hands, however, were perceptibly shaking, and he could not completely cover up how shaken up he was. ‘Well, now that this beast is expired and the world is safe from its sorcery, what would you discuss, Octavian? I fail to see how these, these monsters, as remarkable as they are, will have any specific bearing on our business concerns.’
The corners of Octavian’s mouth crept up, bending into a hint of a smile and revealing the cocky flash of a yellowed tooth between his lips.
‘Let me explain, Claudius.’
Claudius folded his flabby arms across his chest and tilted his face up to stare with a contemplative gaze at the paintings that decorated the ceiling. Fresh memories of the hideous violence, committed before his very eyes, though, were raging through the corridors of his mind.
‘Very well,’ he muttered in a put-on tone of indifference. ‘We are all ears.’
‘My friends,’ Octavian said, stretching his arms out as he slipped languidly back into the hot water, ‘the existence of this monster was not a mere once-off occurrence. No, this lioness is not the only one of her kind by any means. There are more like her – many more. They walk among us as men, yet possess this uncanny ability to assume the form of a beast. I have been researching them for quite some time now, ever since a chance encounter with another of them.’
‘And this other one that you speak of … he still walks free?’ Lepidus asked in a hushed tone, with a flush of panic quickening his pulse and brightening his eyes. ‘Gods! How shall we be safe from such a terror?’
‘His name is Lucius Sertorius, and we have nothing to fear from him. He does not even know of my existence – but I know all about his.’ Octavian paused here for a self-congratulatory chuckle before he continued. ‘He is a petty gambler who makes his profits from trading slaves and betting on gladiatorial games. Granted, he has amassed a small fortune in this field, but despite his ostentatious trappings of wealth and his garish and distasteful d
isplay of coin, he remains a low-born pleb at heart.’
‘But he is more than that,’ Claudius hissed, ‘for if he is a creature like this lioness, then he is a monster! How do these beasts maintain their magical powers? Surely only by the most potent and evil of gods, and by frequent blood sacrifices to them, could such sorcery be possible? He must slaughter people by the thousand to appease whatever dark powers have granted him this ability!’
‘These creatures perform neither blood sacrifices nor rituals,’ Octavian said dismissively. ‘Trust me. I have been secretly observing them for many years – both this Lucius fool and the lioness we just killed. My eyes and ears in other provinces have also been making reports to me of others like them.’
‘How on earth do they obtain such powers then?’ Lepidus asked.
‘I am not sure of that, exactly,’ Octavian admitted. ‘I know it has something to do with their blood, and the transferral of that blood from one of them to one of us has the ability to change us into one of them.’
‘By the gods!’ Claudius exclaimed with a gush of sudden and almost frantic excitement. ‘The possibilities for this may be endless!’
‘Not so fast, my friend,’ Octavian cautioned. ‘It is not as simple as that, unfortunately. Believe me, due to my long-term interest in these creatures I have been conducting many experiments in secret. The transferral rate of their powers is absolutely minimal … perhaps one in a thousand, if luck was on my side. Maybe one in ten thousand, more likely.’
‘What do you mean?’
Octavian’s eyes blazed with a flicker of arrogant triumph.
‘I have been extracting blood from this lioness from the past year in an attempt to create my own beast. Not on myself, of course! That would be too much of a gamble for my conservative temperament. No, I have been transfusing the blood to slaves; cheap chattel who I got for next to nothing from the quarries, those who had been worked near to death. I own an estate in a distant part of Egypt, you see. It has proved, by virtue of its remoteness, to be quite convenient for these experiments.’
