by Aja James
“If you were human, I’d immediately eliminate the grandparent, grandchild relationship, but since your Kind lives across generations without aging, I can’t rule anything out, unless of course, you tell me something is impossible.”
“What are you saying?”
Ishtar wanted so badly to understand she was all but holding her breath. Somehow, she knew that Ava had discovered a critical, game-changing piece of information.
“Usually, when there’s an average of around twenty-five percent genetic match, the relationship between the two individuals could be grandparent to grandchild, as I just mentioned, aunt to niece, or half sibling.”
“Half sibling?” Ishtar echoed, immediately, instinctively homing in on the last option.
“Yes,” Ava said, “If you share DNA from only your father or your mother, then you and your half sibling would have twenty-five percent or so of the same genetic material.”
“But I only have one sister,” Ishtar said, confused, “and we…”
She trailed off as her memories and thoughts jumbled together until she didn’t know how to unravel the mess in her mind.
She’d thought all along that the other female was the Pure Queen until she finally realized that it was herself Tal had always loved.
But then why did she remember seeing Tal with the other female? Knowing Tal’s heart as she did now, and knowing the kind of male he was, he’d never share his body willingly with another female.
Then what had Ishtar seen? Had her eyes somehow deceived her?
And how could she have a half sibling?
“Based on the tone of your voice, I assume you and your sister share both parents?” Ava asked to confirm.
“I-I think so,” Ishtar replied hesitantly.
She was no longer so sure, suddenly recalling her mother’s words.
“He hated me because I didn’t love him as much as he loved me…I didn’t love him because I was stupidly obsessed with a Pure Blood Slave that I took against his wishes.”
“There’s more,” Ava said, and paused as if bracing Ishtar for another shock.
Ishtar nodded but didn’t have the voice to tell the healer to continue.
“In the batch of DNA I sequenced along with yours, Tal’s and the other female’s, I also included Inanna’s and Gabriel’s, along with three other sets. I haven’t finished making all the comparisons yet, but I did examine in detail Inanna’s, yours and Tal’s.”
“Go on.”
“Congratulations, you’re all definitely related as parents and child should be. But that’s not the finding. I need to study more thoroughly, but I think I identified at least one mutation that is distinctly Pure and one that is distinctly Dark together in Inanna’s blood.”
Ava took a breath; she talked so fast and excitedly when the topic was related to genetics that she often seemed to forget to breathe.
“As expected, Tal only has the Pure mutation. Gabriel only has the Dark mutation, But Ishtar, you have both of the mutations just like Inanna.”
Ishtar had been standing next to the windows of the living room, but now she sat down on the nearest seat.
“What?” she whispered.
Strangely enough, even though she didn’t understand most of what Ava said, she could still follow the logic. But she needed the healer to spell things out clearly.
“In other words, if you have both the Pure and Dark mutations in your blood too,” Ava confirmed Ishtar’s suspicions, “it means that somewhere in your ancestry, a close relative, even a parent or grandparent, was a Pure One.”
They were both silent for many minutes.
Ishtar could hear voices talking in hushed tones in the background. It seemed that she was finding this out at the same time as everyone else.
And then Inanna’s voice sounded in her ear.
“Ishtar,” she said, still nowhere near calling her “mother” despite the evidence of shared DNA, not that Ishtar blamed her in the least, “could there be truth to this?”
Ishtar could only breathe deeply, trying to focus despite her erratically pounding heart.
Could it be?
Could her father have been the Pure Blood Slave Queen Ashlu had taken against her Mate’s will?
As little as her mother had talked of her Mate, she only mentioned the once that she’d been obsessed with a Blood Slave, and that this was what had driven her Dark Mate away.
Come to think of it, Ishtar’s mother had never referred to her Mate as Ishtar’s father. She’d always only called him “my Mate” where Ishtar was concerned.
What had happened to the Dark Queen’s Mate?
What had happened to the Blood Slave?
There was no one to ask these questions now, no one who could answer them.
The doorbell rang then, announcing the arrival of the room service Ishtar had ordered.
“Ishtar, are you still there?” Ava asked a bit worriedly in her ear.
“I know this is all one shock after another, but just stay with me a little longer. We can talk it out as much as you like when you get back.”
The doorbell rang again when Ishtar hadn’t moved to answer it.
“The other female’s blood in Tal’s is entirely Dark, absent of any Pure mutation, although I need to reconfirm everything, of course. After all, there’s likely more than one mutation that serve as markers for the two races.”
Ishtar got up on numbed legs and feet and slowly shuffled to the door.
“But let’s assume for now that the other female is entirely Dark. And that she’s your half sibling. Could it be possible that the sister you mentioned—”
“Twin sister,” Ishtar whispered.
“Oh. Well. It would be fraternal half-twin sister then,” Ava said analytically, “This happens when two of your mother’s eggs are fertilized at the same time by two different men. It’s not all that common in unassisted pregnancies, but…”
Ishtar didn’t hear more as the healer went on, for she had opened the door.
But it was not the rolling cart of room service that awaited on the other side.
It was a face and figure as familiar as her own, even though she’d not seen it for thousands of years.
“Hello, Little Star.”
“Time is not linear as humans might imagine, nor is the world we live in flat. Life repeats in cycles as it happens, unless you take an alternate path.”
—From the Ecliptic Prophesies, buried and forgotten
Chapter Sixteen
Ishtar inhaled deeply upon waking but kept her eyes closed, as if the lids were too heavy to lift.
Indeed, her entire body felt weighed down, her blood sluggish and thick in her veins.
Her ears were the first to register her surrounds: she could hear crickets chirping in the cool summer night, as well as the breeze that flowed through an open window nearby, rustling the leaves outside.
Her nose was the second sense to come alive. It inhaled scents of jasmine and orange blossoms in the air, both carried from the outside by the summer wind as well as layered faintly into the sheets she lay on—soft, worn linen reminiscent of her old bedroom in the Ivory Palace.
Finally, she opened her eyes and blinked her vision into focus within the darkness of her chamber.
How could it be?
She was lying on a bed that looked and felt almost exactly like the one she used to have, in a room that was uncannily similar as well. Even the placement of furniture was almost exactly the same, down to the beeswax candles and polished obsidian and copper mirrors she used as a girl.
She looked down at herself.
Instead of the hotel bathrobe, she wore a ceremonial linen tunic, embroidered with intricate designs and hand-dyed with bright, bold colors.
The wrist band Gabriel had given her was gone, and in its stead on both her forearms were gold cuffs encrusted with amethysts. She felt around her neck and found a metallic choker of similar design.
Ishtar shook her head to clear it.
&
nbsp; Why did she feel so lethargic and strange?
All of her senses seemed muted, as if she were submerged in water. As deeply as she breathed, she couldn’t seem to draw enough air.
Where was this place?
Why was she here?
Where was—
An inner door to the room opened with a slight creak, and from it emerged the female she’d almost given up hope of ever seeing again.
Her sister smiled warmly at her and came to sit on the bed, just as she used to do.
“How are you, Little Star?” she asked softly, her dark eyes glittering.
“Anunit,” Ishtar rasped, trying to find her voice.
“What…how…?”
Anunit took her hand and patted it reassuringly.
“All in good time, my darling,” she said, “we have much to catch up on. I have missed you desperately. More than anyone else in the world.”
“And I, you,” Ishtar returned, bringing her sister’s hand to her cheek. “Where have you been? Why haven’t you come to me before now?”
“Why haven’t you come to me?” Anunit asked in turn, an undertone of anger seething in her voice.
Ishtar shook her head.
“I tried to find you, I truly did,” she explained.
“After I escaped from my human captors, everywhere I looked, everyone I asked told me that all of the Dark Ones who resided in the palace had perished, either in the War itself or in the Purge of the aftermath. I thought perhaps, because you and Enlil had been afar on errand during the last battles, that you’d escaped the carnage.”
She stared questioningly into Anunit’s eyes.
“I sought you out in those provincial lands, but there was no trace of you to be found. No record of your visit there.”
“Hmm,” Anunit murmured noncommittally, slipping her hand out of Ishtar’s grasp.
“Well, all that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that we’re finally together again. My favorite sister and I.”
“Your only sister,” Ishtar whispered, echoing the words they always used to say to each other.
Words that triggered a fragment of a memory.
She’d been talking to someone about her sister recently.
What was it about?
“Why such a face, Ishtar,” Anunit teased, though there was an edge of something else in her voice, “aren’t you happy to see me again? Am I not your favorite person in the world as well?”
“Where have you been?” Ishtar asked solemnly, with more portent than she understood. “How have you been?”
Anunit climbed leisurely down from the bed and went to stand in front of the open window, gazing into a wanly moonlit night.
“I’ve been busy,” she replied with a curl of her lips.
“I’ve been everywhere and back. At first it took some acclimating to live in a world ruled by humans, for the Pure Ones could never rule for long. They are born as sheep, not kings. Humans are more cunning, more greedy, more ruthless and savage. And without the strength of Dark Ones to keep them under control, they quickly ran amuck.”
She looked back at Ishtar, who was still trying to shake the last vestiges of mind-numbing fog from her head.
“But you should know all this, sister,” Anunit said. “You have experienced first-hand the barbarity of humans, have you not?”
How did she…?
“You just told me so yourself,” Anunit answered Ishtar’s unspoken question.
“Escaping human captors must not have been easy,” she murmured, “nor, I imagine, was the captivity itself very pleasant.”
“No,” was all Ishtar said.
That strange, curling smile was still on Anunit’s lips when she turned to face Ishtar fully.
“These trials only make us stronger, Little Star. Our experiences make us who we are. I, too, am so much stronger than I used to be.”
She paused for a weighty beat.
“Thanks, in part, to you. I have finally found my place in the world.”
Ishtar stared into Anunit’s dark, fathomless eyes.
“What is your place?” she asked as if in a trance, as if the words were put into her mouth not by her own will.
“At the top of it,” Anunit answered, her smile widening to reveal all of her teeth, including two long, fully-extended fangs.
She came to Ishtar slowly to stand before the bed, eye level with Ishtar sitting upon it.
“You can be at the top with me, Little Star,” she hissed hypnotically. “We can have it all.”
Ishtar didn’t want “it all,” whatever that entailed. She only ever wanted one thing.
She wanted—
“Ah, that,” Anunit read her mind, her voice falling flat with disappointment.
“You can have him too, of course, if you put him in his rightful place.”
“What—” Ishtar shook her head determinedly to clear it.
Finally, she cleared her mind enough to get out the question that had been burning on her tongue all along:
“Where is he? Where is Tal?”
*** *** *** ***
Tal hated himself for being so careless, for keeping Ishtar with him, for indulging his selfishness to be with her.
He stupidly thought they’d have more time before Anunit tracked him.
He’d been dead wrong.
He’d awoken naked and alone in bed with a fighter’s instincts, his body tensed and ready.
But when he would have dealt a lethal blow to the intruder’s throat, his newly recovered but still hazy vision had deceived him.
He’d pulled his fist back when he saw Ishtar’s face staring back at him.
Yet not half a second later, his other senses told him that his eyes lied.
The figure before him didn’t smell like Ishtar; its essence was completely different.
The line of its lips that curled into a smile was sinister rather than joyful, and its eyes burned not with internal light but with a voracious darkness.
That half second of hesitation was all it took for another intruder to plunge a dagger into Tal’s back.
A dagger coated with poison, for almost immediately, Tal felt the venom invade his bloodstream, darkening his consciousness.
He must have blacked out for hours, for he sensed the night outside the thick, stone walls despite the windowless basement in which he was held.
His arms and legs were braced apart by chains hanging from the ceiling and secured to thick iron posts hammered deep into the ground.
He was naked and vulnerable, strung up like a sacrificial lamb.
Fuck.
Footsteps echoed against the walls of the cavernous cellar as they descended down a steep, curving set of stone stairs.
A procession that was eerily familiar filed into the main hall of the basement—eight vampire warriors, two of which were shadow assassins.
Fully armed and deadly.
Just like the night he’d been captured and brought to the Ivory Palace.
As they parted into single lines on each side, the vampire bitch who’d been the bane of his existence for thousands of years appeared, walking leisurely down the middle.
He couldn’t make out her features with any clarity, but he didn’t need to.
He’d recognize those footfalls anywhere, given how often they’d darkened his prison door. He’d recognize her venomous stench from ten paces away, the way it polluted his nostrils worse than any fetid excrement.
“Here you are,” his torturer said in that serpent voice, “looking as gorgeous as ever, Blood Slave.”
A gasp sounded behind her, alerting Tal to another’s presence.
Ishtar.
Anunit moved slightly to the side, giving Ishtar an unobstructed view to her masterpiece.
Her monstrous creation. A labor of lust, hate, vengeance and violence over thousands of years.
“His body is lacking the beautiful designs I painstakingly etched into his flesh over the millennia of our time together, but I can fix that short
ly,” she mused, half to herself, half, almost apologetically, to her sister.
“Release him at once,” Ishtar growled in a deep, guttural voice as she turned on Anunit with purple eyes.
Anunit stood her ground.
“Or what? You’ll transform into that great white beast and strike me down with a giant paw?”
The edges of Ishtar’s body shimmered as she poised on the verge of change.
“Try it,” Anunit invited, not in the least alarmed, despite what happened the last time she faced down the giant leopard.
Ishtar did, and immediately collapsed to her knees, choking and gagging, her hands clawing at her neck.
Chains rattled as Tal strained against his bindings to go to her, but the thick metal held him fast.
The collar.
It had sent a debilitating shock of electricity throughout her body, all but frying her brain, when she tried to transform.
“See,” Anunit explained as Ishtar struggled to breathe, “I always learn from my mistakes. Did you think I wouldn’t be prepared for this long-awaited reunion? Did you think that after millennia of human progress and innovation I wouldn’t find a way to defeat you?”
She circled Ishtar as she spoke, hissing down at her from above.
“I underestimated you once, little sister, I will never do so again. Because of that one small mistake, I lost everything.”
“And for what?” Anunit spat.
“For that?”
She flung an accusing finger in Tal’s direction.
“That piece of Pure meat?”
She stooped down to Ishtar’s level and gripped her chin.
“Tell me, sister, is he what you want most in the world? If you had to choose between us—your flesh and blood, the one you shared a womb with, or that Pure whore who will never be your equal, who would you choose?”
Ishtar drew breath to speak, but was prevented from getting her words out when Anunit’s grip on her tightened.
“Think carefully before you answer, sister,” she said with dark warning. “There are consequences depending on what you say.”
Ishtar shook out of Anunit’s grasp and struggled to her feet.
“Why are you doing this?” she rasped, her nerves still recovering from the fiery shock they’d had.
