by Aja James
It was true.
Dark Laws strictly prohibited the intermingling of races, neither with humans nor with Pure Ones.
Children could only be borne of Mated vampires. In rare instances where issue resulted from interracial intercourse, they were killed immediately either in the womb or after birth, for they were regarded as unnatural abominations.
“Where was your precious Pure male when you suffered from the ailments of pregnancy?” Anunit plunged on, with every word beating down Ishtar’s newly found trust for her love that was just beginning to bloom in her heart.
“Fucking the Pure Queen in his tent, no less,” Anunit drove the image home like a dagger between Ishtar’s ribs.
“You saw him with your own eyes, remember?” she whispered, coming ever closer to Ishtar, her lips mere inches from her sister’s ear.
“Remember how it felt to see him inside another female, telling her he loved her. Giving her everything of his own free will, as he’d never done with you as your Blood Slave. Remember how he called out her name in the throes of passion, and what he said to you that night on the mountain top.”
Ishtar’s eyes flickered. She remembered.
The same dark, roiling emotions came flooding back through her veins, threatening to douse all the light within her.
Her eyes pierced Tal’s, willing him to gainsay her sister, to say something in his own defense.
He said nothing.
Only holding her gaze with those sorrowful, soulful eyes.
“I am the one who has always protected you, my darling Little Star,” Anunit murmured, cupping Ishtar’s cheek in her hand, smoothing a gentle thumb across her mouth.
“I am your favorite person in the world, remember? We can make our place at the top together, just you and I. All you have to do is choose me, the one who truly loves you.”
Ishtar broke her gaze with Tal and slid her eyes to Anunit’s face.
A beautiful, achingly familiar heart-shaped face. One she knew as well as her own.
Her large, slightly tilted dark eyes were glistening pools of tenderness and affection as they held Ishtar’s in their thrall.
I forgive you for straying from me, sister, Anunit’s voice whispered in Ishtar’s head.
I forgive you for Challenging me and hurting me, for taking the Dark throne away from me. I have loved you through it all.
Anunit placed gentle kisses on both Ishtar’s cheeks, and a lingering one on her mouth.
I love you still. More than anything else in the world. We are twins, you and I. Two halves of a whole. No bond is stronger than ours.
Join me, Ishtar. Stay by my side. We can conquer the world together.
“What must I do?” Ishtar asked, mesmerized by Anunit’s fathomless black gaze, the haunting voice in her mind.
The serpent’s lips curled slowly in a bewitching yet hideous smile.
“Kill him, Little Star,” Anunit said softly, as if it was the only conclusion that could be reached, so logical was the journey that had arrived at this point.
“Carve out this weakness from your heart. Unleash the beast and fury within.”
Ishtar’s eyes, no longer bright with an inner fire, turned slowly to her sister’s prisoner as if he were a mere stranger.
Her eyes were emotionless when they connected with his.
Tal could not see them clearly, but the bright stars had dimmed to a dull glow in her face.
“Here,” Anunit hissed beside her, “I’ll give you a head start.”
Anunit turned to fully face Tal and extended her arms straight out, fingers splayed.
There was only silence in the underground hall for long moments.
And then—a gasp.
Tal’s gasp.
Before Ishtar’s eyes, the countless scars on his body became gradually clearer, bolder, raising from his skin.
Then splitting it.
As each wound he’d received over the millennia of his imprisonment reopened one by one all over his flesh. Until fresh blood oozed from them, dripping down his body, coating every inch of his skin.
At last, while Ishtar stared into his agony-filled turquoise eyes, he couldn’t hold back a guttural moan as his pupils, then his irises, filled with blood, mingling with his tears as they leaked down his cheeks.
“Stop.”
Ishtar whispered the word, barely audible, as if she hadn’t meant to say it but couldn’t hold it back.
And then she commanded more loudly, “Stop, sister, before there’s nothing left for me to finish.”
Abruptly, Anunit retracted her fingers but continued to hold her arms out toward her prisoner.
Tal slumped in the chains that bound him, his weight no longer supported by his own will.
His entire body shuddered with indescribable pain, his chest heaving, his labored breathing loud rasps in the otherwise silent chamber.
He tried with all his might to lift his head but couldn’t. And even if he could look into Ishtar’s eyes again, his own saw only darkness.
The stars had gone cold.
“What do you have in mind, sister?” Anunit asked solicitously. “How do you intend to end him?”
Ishtar looked casually around her, her eyes finally alighting on a long dagger in one of the vampire warrior’s weapon belt.
“There’s a certain poetic symmetry, don’t you agree, Big Star, if I killed him the way Mother killed her Blood Slave? With a dagger through the heart?”
Anunit raised one brow, half impressed by Ishtar’s suggestion, half disbelieving.
She lowered her arms and stared unblinkingly into her sister’s eyes for lengthy, intense minutes, considering Ishtar from every angle, calculating potential actions and reactions.
She’d injected Ishtar with enough venom this time around to mind-control a herd of elephants, much less a female of her size.
Surely, this time, victory would be hers.
Anunit’s mistake long ago was not dosing Ishtar enough, since she’d just begun experimenting with mind-control through various venoms and poisons. She used the subject’s own fears and insecurities against them, magnifying nightmares into reality until the darker parts of their unconsciousness came to the fore and dominated the lighter emotions.
Anunit had started poisoning her sister in the soups she took to cope with nausea from the pregnancy. She increased the frequency and dosage over time, especially after Ishtar had given birth. But somehow, for the most part, her sister managed to push back her darker emotions, though at times she gave into fits of rage.
On one such occasion they’d argued about the future of the Dark empire and what to do about the Pure Ones’ Rebellion. Anunit wanted to launch a full-scale attack to vanquish their enemies once and for all, while Ishtar argued for a peaceful resolution, perhaps negotiating a truce and bequeathing more rights to the slaves.
The Queen had been torn between them, and Anunit made a calculated maneuver, accusing Ishtar of still foolishly pining for her Blood whore, doing everything with him in mind.
The charge had hit home, for Ishtar exploded back with her own confession: yes! She still loved him, she never stopped loving him. She believed that he and his people deserved better.
And when Anunit hurled insults at her sister’s pet, Ishtar had thrown her bodily against the throne room wall, cracking a few ribs and dislocating her shoulder.
The display had convinced the Queen that she needed to end the Chosen Princess’s dangerous obsession.
It had also hardened Anunit against Ishtar.
Seething with renewed fury at her sister’s betrayal, Anunit had departed on her made-up expedition with Enlil and his forces. After they’d returned to carry out Anunit’s plans, she left Ishtar to fend for herself.
Perhaps a few thousand years of trials and tribulations would kill the light within her as Anunit’s venom couldn’t do completely.
Meanwhile, over the millennia that divided them, Anunit consoled herself by punishing the Blood Slave mercilessly for
enrapturing her sister. She held the one thing Ishtar wanted the most, so in this sense, she held Ishtar in the palm of her hand.
Anunit grinned wide. She couldn’t possibly lose.
“He’s bleeding out not only from his surface wounds but from internal injuries as well, you know,” Anunit told Ishtar, lest she tried something stupid and pointless despite the odds stacked against her.
“He can’t possibly heal fast enough to combat all of those wounds as well as the venom that’s infused in his blood. Within minutes he will die regardless of what you do.”
“Then you’d better let me send him off,” Ishtar returned coolly. “What better way to show you how I have made my choice? How will you ever trust me otherwise?”
Anunit tilted her head this way and that, like a cobra trying to anticipate a mongoose’s moves.
Finally, she said, “Go on, then. Show me your choice.”
Ishtar turned to the vampire with the long dagger and unsheathed it from his scabbard.
Slowly, she made her way to Tal’s prone body, the dagger clutched in both hands, her head bowed over it.
When she stood immediately before him in the dark puddle of blood that had pooled around his feet, she could barely hear his breathing.
As Anunit surmised, he was mere minutes, perhaps even seconds, away from death. His body radiated no heat; the blood had stopped flowing from his wounds.
Ishtar’s body bristled with an intense emotion, drawing her taut—
With unerring precision, she plunged the dagger into Tal’s heart to the hilt.
And the last, shuddering breath left his body on a long exhale.
*** *** *** ***
“What now?” Inanna asked, trying to keep her cool, even as panic clawed at the edges of her nerves.
When Ishtar had suddenly stopped responding to Ava’s questions and they’d heard a sharp gasp on the line, the muffled sounds of a scuffle, followed by static as the communication cut out, Gabriel and Inanna went into immediate action.
Valerius and Rain joined them as they armed themselves to the teeth on their way out of the Shield to track down Ishtar’s last known location, while Cloud, Aella and Tristan stayed behind to protect the Queen and their base.
The Pure Healer hardly ever traveled, but given Tal’s condition and the battle they expected to walk into, her skills might be needed even though she no longer possessed her Gift.
They drove at top speed in the pitch black night and arrived in record time at the hotel in Baltimore where Ishtar and Tal had apparently stayed.
They entered the penthouse from the roof and searched the premises, found a splotch of blood in the bedsheets and a few drops near the door. There were no signs of struggle.
And no signs of Ishtar and Tal.
The tracking device stopped here.
Gabriel connected his wrist-com to the Shield.
“Did you find them?” Ava was the one who spoke up first even though Aella, the Pure One’s Strategist, answered it.
“We’re at their last known location. They must have been taken by force,” Gabriel said in clipped tones. “It might be hours after the fact.”
“Alexandros would have been able to track them using three items they’d interacted with,” Aella thought out loud, “but…”
But Alexandros was no longer with them.
“If only I can touch something with their physical imprint,” Ayelet offered, “I might be able to use my Gift to trace their recent experiences, which could give us clues as to where they’d been taken.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Tristan, her Mate, refuted immediately. “You will feel what they feel as if you are experiencing everything in truth. If they are hurt or worse, you’d suffer real consequences too.”
“I have to try,” Ayelet insisted. “We don’t have other options right now. But I need a strong physical signature since I can’t touch them—”
“Will either Ishtar or Tal’s blood do?” Ava interjected.
Ayelet was silent for a few moments, and then she confirmed, “I believe so. But even if I discover specific clues for their current surroundings, how will we know where to look? How will we isolate the possibilities in a city that size?”
“I’ll ping Devlin at the Cove,” Inanna said, referring to the Hunter of the New England vampire Hive under Jade Cicada’s rule. “He’s a master with all things technology. He can triangulate the location if we give him enough markers. His Mate, Grace, is even more proficient from what I understand.”
“And if you can’t reach him, Ryu can help,” Ava added. Her vampire husband might not be quite at the guru level like Devlin or Grace, but he could still take down a CIA firewall with ease.
“Thank you,” Inanna whispered, overcome with gratitude for having such stalwart support from the Royal Zodiac, from her ex-comrade Ryu Takamura and his human wife.
The Pure Ones had welcomed her and her family into their home, their trust, unconditionally over the last two years since she left the New England vampire hive and her position as one of Queen Jade Cicada’s Chosen.
She’d never allowed herself to get close to anyone since she lost her father and Gabriel’s previous self millennia ago, but now that her heart was open once more, she was overwhelmed by the gifts of friendship that had surrounded her all along, just waiting for her to accept them.
And so the plan forward was decided.
All Inanna and company could do now was sit tight and wait.
*** *** *** ***
With a few long strides, Ishtar approached her sister and intoned:
“It is done.”
Anunit couldn’t believe it.
Could it be possible?
Did Ishtar truly love her best?
She looked to the dead Blood Slave dangling from his chains. His demise was proof of Ishtar’s choice.
And she had done it with even less sentimentality than their mother. She hadn’t even tried to catch his stardust…
Wait.
Anunit’s eyes sharpened on her prisoner’s still corporeal form.
Then to the blood dripping from Ishtar’s hand, the one that wasn’t holding the dagger.
Then to the faintly glowing blade of the dagger itself.
No!
But those two seconds of hesitation were enough for Ishtar to take her by surprise, for she’d slashed the dagger through the weak link of her collar—the one she’d discovered while she writhed from the shocks it had given her—and with a flick of her wrist hurled the blade at the closest vampire solider, immediately disintegrating him when the dagger hit home.
Before Anunit could react, she transformed into the giant leopard with a roar.
Anunit screamed with terror and agony as one massive paw swiped directly across her face, gouging out both of her eyes and tearing through most of her flesh until the bones of her skull were fully exposed.
The giant leopard then turned to the seven remaining vampire guards, snapping one in half with its monstrous jaw, flattening another underneath its hind paw and sending one more crashing against the stone wall with the whip of its tail.
It dispatched the vampire soldiers in short order, but the remaining shadow assassins managed to stun the beast with fluid, amorphous strikes. A slice here, a cut there.
But the leopard’s hide was thick and its fur gave it an extra layer of protection. Only long spears could hope to penetrate its built-in armor, and the tip of the spear itself could do little damage to a Creature whose skin was several times thicker than that of a rhinoceros.
Soon, the leopard’s keen purple eyes picked up on the pattern of the shadows’ movements and began to anticipate their actions, clawing and biting the place where they would be instead of the spot they were in.
Mere minutes later, eight piles of ashes lay scattered in the cavernous hall.
At last, the great beast bore down upon its prey, as Anunit cowered between its front paws.
Just as before, in that fateful Challenge long ago, Anunit’s
telekinesis and telepathy were of no use. She huddled in on herself and tried to protect her head with her arms, however ineffectual the cover might be.
And however little there was left to protect.
I will not kill you, the giant leopard growled in her head.
You are useless without your powers. And I will make sure you never regain them.
Anunit screamed again as she viscerally felt two giant paws grind her dislocated eyeballs into nothingness against the cold, stone floor.
I am not you, sister, and never will be. Your venom will never sway me again.
The leopard opened its giant jaws and closed them around Anunit’s torso, until one tip of its canines sank inexorably into her chest, penetrating her heart.
Anunit jerked at the fiery pain that coursed throughout her body. Even her heart thrashed against the impaling fang, trying in vain to get free.
This is my mark on you, Anunit Salamu, the leopard said in her head.
If you ever hurt someone I love again, I will collect on this mark and rip this blackened heart from your chest.
Abruptly, the unbearable pressure was gone.
With a whimper, the Dark Star passed into oblivion.
*** *** *** ***
What a party!
The Creature watched the entire drama unfold from a hidden nook in the basement hall.
For the first time in its long, endlessly tiresome existence, it was shocked and…
Intrigued.
It had thought over all these millennia that the Mistress was obsessed with the Pure One’s General. It had thought that perhaps, in her own twisted way, she’d loved her previous right-hand, Lord Wind.
It had been wrong on both counts.
Each male had been nothing more than pawns in the Mistress’s game. What she really wanted, the one she really coveted, was her sister, Ishtar Anshar.
The Creature didn’t know all the history and everything that happened to lead the critical players to this point, but it had seen and heard enough to realize that the Mistress, for all her cunning and calculation, could not see her own weakness that ultimately led to her downfall.
