by Aja James
Inanna and Gabriel were curled together on another bed, so closely entwined Sophia couldn’t tell where she began and he ended.
When she tiptoed over to have a look, Gabriel raised his head slightly and put his finger to his lips. Part of Inanna’s tear streaked face could be seen as she burrowed it into her Mate’s chest, her long, honeyed hair disheveled and hiding most of her visage.
Sophia nodded.
The Light-Bringer was exhausted with grief for her papa. She needed what little respite she could get from the dreadful hours to come.
Sophia went to stand beside Tal’s bed, forcing herself to only look upon his face, for she knew that his body was a mess of scars and unhealed wounds, and seeing them would probably make her break down bawling.
She’d only known him for a brief time, a little over a year. He kept mostly to himself, a male of few words, quiet, gentle. He never shared anything of himself, never talked about his captivity or history. But he always listened compassionately when others spoke. And when he did speak, his words were always worth hearing.
And then there was the side of Tal that was all business, all fierce, battle-hardened warrior and fabled leader.
Sophia had heard enough gripes and groans from Tristan, the Pure Ones’ Champion and one of her royal guard, that she knew Tal’s presence in the training halls had kicked up the routine several notches. Even Valerius and Cloud didn’t look forward to one-on-ones with Tal, and they were the most seasoned warriors among the Elite; never mind the human Chevaliers.
Guess Tal earned the myths and legends associated with his name in the Pure Ones’ histories, recorded in the Zodiac Scrolls. After all, he was the one who liberated his Kind from vampire rule.
Sophia wondered how much he’d had to sacrifice to accomplish it. And whether he was still paying the price.
The Elite—Aella, Tristan, Valerius and Cloud, and the Circlet—Ayelet, Eveline and Seth, had all come by earlier to offer their silent well wishes (Sophia hesitated to think of it as condolences) before leaving Tal with his immediate family. Dalair, the Paladin, was still Goddess knew where, and Rain was working furiously with Ava to find a treatment or cure before time ran out.
They all looked up to Tal, respected and liked him, even though he never invited friendship, always keeping others at a distance, including his own family.
The only people he seemed to interact more naturally with were Benji and Sophia. Perhaps because they volunteered to be his eyes to help him get around this strange new world called America, and they were his tutors on all things pop culture, technology and modern living.
Benji absolutely worshiped “uncle Tal,” and Sophia was pretty in awe of the male herself.
Humans liked to use the analogy that good men were like fine wine—they only got better with age. Sophia never really understood that concept until she met Tal-Telal, the legendary General.
The General.
Because of him, Pure Ones throughout the ages bestowed the title of General to the leader of the Pure Queen’s Elite warriors. Alexandros was the last to hold this position before they’d lost him in the war.
And now the original, the myth, was here in the flesh, as if somehow Destiny had led him here, to lend his strength once more.
Compared to the other members of Sophia’s inner circle, who appeared to be still in their early to mid-twenties, even the ones who were thousands of years old, Tal looked to be more in his mid to late-thirties.
Certainly not decrepit, by any means.
But to a nineteen-year-old girl not yet out of her teenage years, any male over twenty-five was old. After that Golden Age of youth, the consistency of the muscles, the elasticity of the skin, the places where men grew hair—they all became suboptimal in the average teenage girl’s opinion.
But aside from some extra lines and grooves on Tal’s face, Sophia, on behalf of all females aged twenty-five and below, no matter their race or Kind, thought Tal was smokin’, sizzlin’ HOT, vintage notwithstanding. And actually, those lines and grooves only seemed to add to his appeal, though he purposely avoided drawing attention to himself.
He possessed a vital magnetism that naturally drew people into his orbit. Even blind, he always seemed to see into the heart of any matter.
Sophia gently took hold of one of his hands, icy from the loss of blood, from whatever it was he was battling inside his body.
Hero worship aside, Tal-Telal was one of her people. As the Queen of the Pure Ones, he was under her protection. Even though Sophia would be the first to admit she was ill-equipped to be anyone’s protector.
She couldn’t stand to see him suffering like this, didn’t want to contemplate that his struggles might end with an agonizing death.
It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t just!
Why was such a good, kind male brought so low? Made to hurt so much?
Sophia felt useless, powerless.
What could she do? How could she help?
For the present, she simply kept vigil beside Tal’s bed as the warrior continued his battle with Death, and prayed.
*** *** *** ***
Third millennium BC. Capital City of Akkad. The Ivory Palace.
Ishtar tucked and rolled as the spear came at her at a furious pace, jabbing hard and fast a hair’s breadth from her arms, legs and torso.
Crouching low, she swept one long leg in a forty-five degree arc, trying to take her opponent off her feet.
But Anunit was faster, smarter, anticipating her moves with ease.
She leapt as Ishtar’s booted foot swung by and twisted her torso so that her sideways swipe with the long spear she held gained even more momentum, landing with a resounding thwack against her sister’s shoulder blades.
Ishtar growled with pain and bent into a backflip, trying to leap out of the long spear’s range, while reaching out to grasp her discarded sword where she’d dropped it on the dirt grounds.
Anunit moved the sword out of her reach with her telekinesis while she came at Ishtar with the spear, spun like a furiously flying wheel between her forearms, until her opponent couldn’t tell between the blade and the wooden bar.
Finally, Ishtar had no more space to retreat, backed up against the training grounds’ stone wall, the tip of her sister’s deadly spear angled into the skin of her jugular, just deep enough that a droplet of blood trickled down her neck.
Abruptly, the pressure from the spear was taken away as Anunit held it loosely at her side.
“You’re not even trying to beat me,” she grouched, shaking her head at her younger twin.
“Because I can’t beat you,” Ishtar returned readily, the small scratch at her throat already healed. “So why bother trying.”
“You don’t harness your powers,” Anunit argued, exasperated. “You can change into a larger male, a giant even, twice my height and thrice my weight—”
“And ten times as slow,” Ishtar said with a sardonic smile. “I’d have a lot more holes in my body if I tried that approach.”
Anunit rolled her eyes.
“Then try something else. Change into the leopard, or…”
“Oh, you mean the ‘kitty cat’?” Ishtar leveraged her sister’s oft-used description to mock herself, “and finally beat you by making you laugh so hard you collapse at my feet?”
“Mother is watching,” Anunit reminded her, slanting her eyes in the direction of the dais above the training grounds where Queen Ashlu sat with a couple of her advisers.
“At least take this seriously for her sake.”
Ishtar looked up at the dais, caught her mother’s eye, and gave her a salute with two fingers at her temple and an impish grin.
Queen Ashlu showed no reaction, save a slight downturn of her lips at one corner, and a slight upturn at the other. As if she couldn’t decide whether to be angry with her younger daughter or amused.
As Anunit and Ishtar walked off the training grounds together, the human servants handing them towels to wipe away the sweat from their exerti
on, Anunit said, “I can pretend to lose one of these days. Mother will be pleased to see you win.”
“No she won’t,” Ishtar replied immediately. “She’ll notice you faked the loss and she’ll be disappointed in us both.”
She turned around to face her sister, walking backwards as she spoke.
“Besides, I truly don’t want to win, Big Star. You and I both know she’s watching us with the Consuls because they are trying to ascertain the succession. You’re obviously much more suited than I for the throne. I don’t ever want them to doubt it.”
Anunit tilted her head slightly to regard her twin.
“Why aren’t you even a little bit interested in becoming Queen?” she asked, not comprehending. “It’s a great honor and privilege, and you would be the most powerful being in the land.”
Ishtar turned back around and put a light hearted skip in her step.
“It’s serious and boring and restrictive,” she threw back. “Your mating ceremony is only four months from now on our twentieth name day, and you’ll be expected to work hard at producing babies straight away, and not just any babies, female babies.”
“It’s no hardship, believe me,” Anunit interjected with a lasciviously knowing grin.
“And when you’re not draining your Mate of his seed and blood for the sake of the empire, you’re attending endless meetings with emissaries,” Ishtar continued, ticking off her fingers at all of the Queen’s duties, “settling disputes, mending bridges and roads, collecting taxes, convening the Royal Consular…”
“Putting down rebellions,” Anunit added, “executing law breakers, enforcing order among the different peoples we rule.”
Ishtar stopped at the entrance to the bath halls, unsettled by her sister’s words.
She’d purposely avoided any news about the Resistance to date. She didn’t want to think about the Pure Ones at war with her Kind. Didn’t want to entertain the possibility that he might be part of it and hurt as a result.
“Right,” she said softly, then tried to sound nonchalant as she asked, “Is the Resistance making progress? Have we managed to win back control?”
“We’ve never lost it,” Anunit replied, her tone indicating that she thought Ishtar’s question was absurd.
“We’d never let the Pure Ones gain any advantage. We’re just letting them take a few wins so we can crush them harder in the end. Let them give us their best effort, build up some hope, and then show them the true might of our armies, obliterate every rebel and supporter so that the ones who remain would shit themselves in fear and terror at even the mere suggestion of rebellion again.”
Ishtar stared at her sister, speechless, as if she’d never seen Anunit before.
Indeed, she’d never heard her twin speak in such a way, almost gleeful in her vengeance, thirsty for the blood of others, even innocents. They had grown and matured in vastly different ways, Ishtar knew, their diverging interests reflecting their polar opposite personalities.
But Ishtar had never any reason to fear her sister before, as Anunit’s ruthlessness spurred her apprehension now.
The Pure Ones were only trying to fight for a better life. Was that so very wrong? Was that deserving of the sort of retribution Anunit described?
“In fact, tomorrow I go with the best of Enlil’s shadow warriors to bring back the leader of the Resistance,” Anunit shared with relish as she doffed her battle tunic, arm and wrist bands, and stepped into the heated pool to cleanse and relax her body.
“I intend to make him my Blood Slave,” she said with an avaricious glint in her eyes. “I hear he’s quite a magnificent specimen of his Kind, and I can’t wait to make all that warrior-blooded maleness kneel vanquished at my feet.”
“Enlil cannot like that you’re taking such a male as a Blood Slave,” Ishtar said, feeling a pang of sympathy toward her twin’s Consort. She didn’t know the warrior well, but he seemed like a good, solid male.
Who was deeply, passionately in love with Anunit.
“Enlil has no say in what I do,” Anunit retorted with a flip of her long dark hair, arching her back and thrusting her generous breasts out, her hands rubbing scented petals over her womanly curves, cleansing and pleasuring herself at the same time.
“He is merely my Consort. And even when he becomes my Blooded Mate, I will still do exactly as I wish. There is too much masculine bounty in this world for me to devote myself to just one male.”
Anunit cocked a predatory smile at her twin. “That’s why we’re superior to Pure Ones and humans, you know. We can indulge in our animal desires and are therefore much more in tune with our primal powers.”
“Besides,” Anunit added, her hands wondering lower, the fingers of one strumming the pearl hidden at the top of her intimate folds, the other delving inside her heat, “pleasures of the flesh is the best currency in negotiations with potential allies and friendly enemies. We may have kept the Ensis’ sons company when we were younger, but who do you think satisfied their fathers?”
Ishtar washed herself quickly and thoroughly, trying to tune out her sister’s words.
None of what Anunit talked about held any appeal for her. If this was what it took to be Queen, she wanted none of it.
All she’d ever wanted, besides the health, happiness and longevity of her mother and sister, was contained in one single wish that refused to fade in its intensity:
To have a golden boy-man with turquoise eyes for her very own.
*** *** *** ***
Ishtar slipped out of the Peapod truck when it reached its first unloading site at the back of the Stop & Shop supermarket on Tremont Street in Boston proper.
From there, she followed the resonance of Tal’s blood in hers toward one of the tallest buildings in the city.
She wished that she could transform into her leopard form, for the sun was already cresting over fluffy white clouds in a rainbow colored sky, the rain having finally abated, leaving everything fresh and new.
In her animal form, she’d be able to move much quicker, and with minimal drowsiness in the daytime. But as it was, in fact, daytime, and there were already a few cars rolling down the streets, and eager humans headed to work, school or recreation, a snow leopard bounding down Boylston wouldn’t go unnoticed.
So she maintained her natural vampire form and tried to conserve energy to battle the slumberous effects of the rising sun.
She was still able to move quickly despite the lethargy in her bones because of the Pure blood and…other things…she’d taken from Tal’s body. If she had filled herself to the brim with his Nourishment she might have lasted days or even weeks in the daytime without succumbing to the sun’s inducement to sleep.
But given that the resonance of his blood was even now fading to a distant echo, weakened by whatever it was that held him in its thrall, she was unutterably glad she hadn’t carried out her threat to drain him of every last drop.
There will be nothing left of you.
Ishtar stumbled at the memory but brutally pushed it aside. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. She had to find him, go to him.
To do what, she didn’t know. He’d likely be surrounded by family and friends. He made those connections so effortlessly wherever he went. It had always been thus.
At the very least he would be with Inanna, her Mate and their son. If Ishtar hadn’t been ready to face them a few hours ago when she’d carried Tal to their apartment, she wasn’t sure that she’d grown an extra set of courage in the meantime.
That was the reason she’d presented herself to Inanna as Mama-Bear from Dark Dreams, after all. Slowly and painstakingly building a rapport over the last two years. At any moment after she’d gained her daughter’s trust, and even affection, she might have revealed her true self, who she was and why she hadn’t appeared in Inanna’s life before now.
But she’d always cowardly held back.
In truth, Ishtar didn’t know how to be someone’s mother. She’d carried a twin boy and girl within her
womb for many months and given birth to them in agony and despair.
She’d never held them in her arms. Never nursed them at her breast. Never comforted them when they cried.
What did it mean to be a mother? What kind of mother did Inanna deserve? Surely only the very best would do. Someone filled with warmth, kindness, love and optimism. Someone who could promise her that everything would be all right and have the power to make it so.
Surely Ishtar was nowhere near that motherly ideal. She couldn’t bear to see the resentment, or worse, disillusionment, on Inanna’s face when she realized who her mother really was.
And, too, it was clear that Inanna was extremely close to Tal. Ishtar had seen it and felt it even though she’d only witnessed them together for brief moments when Inanna had unwittingly brought Tal to Ishtar’s shop.
Perhaps this was further fuel to Ishtar’s venom towards her long-ago love. That he should have had their daughter’s adulation and the light of her company while Ishtar had ever been alone in darkness.
But that’s all over now.
Ishtar increased her pace until she was all but running towards the crystal skyscraper where Tal must be located.
Ever since…what happened between them, she’d steadily felt lighter, her sight clearer, her spirit lifting as if an oppressive weight had been removed. Her blood was infused with his strength, his warmth, whereas before it had moved sluggishly through her veins as if congealed by an icy poison.
It was no coincidence that Ishtar’s preferred human form was Estelle Martin—Mama Bear—an old lady in her sixties, plump and slow-moving. For, most days, that’s how Ishtar felt. She was easily tired, and her moods swung like a pendulum unexpectedly.
She’d tried over the millennia to push back the darkness within her. To forget if not forgive. But it always came rearing back like an insidious disease inside of her, polluting her thoughts, fueling her rage.
Enflaming her vengeful heart.
It was as if in destroying the one being she’d once cherished more than everyone and everything, more than life itself, she’d broken a curse she hadn’t even known she’d been under.
