When Darkness Falls: Book 0 of the Mage Tales Prequels

by Ilana Waters

  Yet, there are upsides. Vampires cannot contract common mortal illnesses; we are even stronger than witches in this regard. I wouldn’t have to use magic to keep myself from aging; vampires remain frozen in time at the moment they are turned. I was still a witch. I could still do magic. At least one thing hadn’t been stolen from me. Finally, consuming blood, as you’ve seen, makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. Here, at least, I had a power over life and death that I’d never felt before, not in any arena or battlefield. And its heavenly taste would have to suffice, as I soon learned my body would tolerate no other forms of drink or nourishment.

  And there is something beneath it all. Something about blood and life and death and currents. As a vampire, I didn’t just perceive the world differently. I felt it differently. Like things moving around in the earth. Creatures, roots, heat . . . it was part sensory, part sorcery, but nothing like I’d ever experienced in either. When I drank, I felt waves of magic undulating through the world. I became one with all things. I swore that if I just held on a little longer, drank a moment more, I could hear the secrets of the universe being whispered to me.

  But then, just as dreams burn away with waking, the feeling faded. It was wrenched from my grasp, drifting into nothingness, like my lost city of Pompeii. Like my Rome. Like the man I had once been. The only magic I ever wanted, forever denied me.

  To answer your unspoken question, reader: no, I am not the first vampire in existence. Yes, I was surprised as well. It turns out that the possibly fictional Carna was not to blame for my—or anyone’s—turning into a blood seeker. No, that honor went to a completely different supernatural being. Perhaps knowing her feast day’s association with doorways, this creature was playing a practical joke on us. Perhaps it saw Carna’s day as a fitting moment to step into the world, or to make its presence felt. I think the first time it did so precedes the fall of Pompeii by quite a few years.

  But it is not a story I have time to tell you right now. Suffice it to say that, eventually, I learned to make others of my kind. So, I was not as alone as I might have been. Still, they all left, one by one, or I found it necessary to destroy them.

  Children can be so ungrateful.

  Like Sabine, I had little luck finding out who Carna’s worshippers had been, or where they got the blood-filled chalice in the first place. There are times when I do wonder whose elixir of life it was. Perhaps it came from more than one vampire. Perhaps, one day, there will be a knock at the door, and another of my kind will throw open their arms to me and cry, “Son!”

  Unlikely.

  And so, I became even more brutal and stoic than I’d been before. What use was the sanctity of life, of the four elements, when you would never be one of the life-giving forces of nature? My element, fire, can only destroy. Therefore, I had to hard. To be Titus. To survive. Whether vampires are members of the “undead” is a matter I shall leave to historians. Let us just say, for now, that part of me died in Pompeii.

  Whether it was the better part is yet to be seen.

  Chapter 9

  So, I was dead. Or a large part of my spirit was. Where did that leave me? Well, as you can imagine, when someone dies (especially if that someone is you), you are left with a great many questions.

  Did Sabine know what was coming with Vesuvius? As an earth witch, how could she not have felt its rumblings? Perhaps the volcano gave no indication of its murderous intent. Had the chalice and its strange contents indeed been a harbinger? Was that why she took her own life, rather than die more horribly at Vesuvius’s hands?

  Did Sabine know what the blood would do to me? It would explain why she was so frightened of it. I should have listened to her counsel when she first acquired the chalice, instead of trying to seduce her. Being the older and more powerful witch, she had sensed its magic better than I.

  Why didn’t Sabine want to rule by my side? Hadn’t she said it was merely her disdain for Egnatius that kept him from being emperor? But she had no such qualms with me. She’d all but spelled it out the first time we met. But maybe I misjudged her. It was so long ago, the memory of that night and the wine swilling around in my head. Possibly, not even the thought of spending an all-powerful eternity with me was enough to keep her here. It was a cutting realization.

  Over the years, I came to see how foolish my earlier notions had been. It didn’t matter if Sabine saw us as deities or not. Or if I could impress upon mortals our divine sovereignty. If she was tired of living, nothing would convince her to remain on earth another day—not as a witch, not as a goddess.

  I saw now that it had not been ennui that had Sabine in its iron grasp, but despair. Could I have done more to drag her out of the depths of such hell? Had I left her alone in that wilderness, as surely as I’d left her on campaigns? Had I been the betrayer, not she? These were questions I could never bear to ask myself for long.

  I should have recognized her weariness at life. But I was too busy feasting on my own joy. I thought I’d found the cliché of my soul’s mate. That everything I’d overcome in my life—slavery, battles, mastering my witch powers—had led me to that point. To her. I always thought we’d be together somehow, in the end. That Egnatius would die, or that I would kill him. There seemed to be no rush; we had forever. We would walk the earth like the gods we were, safely above the mortal rabble.

  But to Sabine, I was no great love. I was merely the last in a long line of distractions until she chose how the end would come. She had probably been contemplating using that dagger for quite a while. No, dear reader, I don’t think she caused Vesuvius to devour Pompeii. But nor did she find some contrivance to run to the surrounding hills to save herself. To save me.

  As to why she had chosen that particular day, that particular moment, to end her existence, who can say? Perhaps, if she was forever cloaked in despondency, one moment was as good as the next. Why even try to outrun a volcano, when that seems as pointless as everything else? The eruption of Vesuvius was simply as convenient a time as any.

  As the centuries passed, in my more fanciful moments, I liked to think I was more than a distraction to her. That I meant something. That I could have made her happy. How I wished she’d at least given me the opportunity. Oh, how I have loved Sabine these long millennia! And how I have hated her. Hated her for adoring me, for leaving me. For the part she played in my becoming a vampire. But all this breathless rage was futile. I might as well scream my heart to Sabine in the wind. She had never truly heard me, and she never would.

  I lamented I could not give her a funeral. There was nowhere to mark where her body had lain. Perhaps Vesuvius had given Sabine her own commemoration, in a pyre the size of a city. Or is Sabine one of the lemures now, a spirit doomed to wander because she has not had a proper burial? If she is not, maybe she is in some incomprehensible, hellish dimension. Or, perhaps Sabine is beyond all feeling, all consciousness. Perhaps Charon crosses the river Styx with her in his arms. I have no way of knowing.

  After that first evening, I did not turn back to see the ruins of Pompeii again. I soon heard that Vesuvius claimed the neighboring town of Herculaneum as well. But, by this time, I hardly cared. As I understand it, about two thousand people were killed in Pompeii altogether—Egnatius among them—though many others managed to escape. Over time, people returned there searching for their valuables, or perhaps to rebuild. But there was nothing to rebuild from. Then, the looters came for whatever the citizens left behind. Scraps of metal and pottery that resurfaced. Coins, or still-usable brick and stone.

  Eventually, they stopped. Then, there was no one to remember what Pompeii had been. The letters of Pliny the Younger describing what he’d seen that day from his perch in Misenum were ignored for fifteen hundred years. Until then, the city all but vanished into myth, as did I.

  I suppose you’re all familiar with what came after. Around AD 117, the Roman Empire was at its largest. But, by around AD 476, it had collapsed entirely. I did not stay within its borders the entire time. I
wandered around for some while after Pompeii was destroyed. The Flavian Amphitheater—the Colosseum to you—opened the following year. That would have provided me with some measure of distraction, had its gory games not taken place in the daylight. But such losses seem trifling now, when I compare them with all the rest. For instance, ironically, Rome did have an emperor named Titus—from AD 79 to 81. It just wasn’t me.

  And although I’ve had many run-ins with the High Council over the centuries, I couldn’t turn to them for help after I was made a vampire. Not even when I was desperate to find out more about this new creature I’d become, and thought they might be the only ones who knew. They’d already formed opinions of me long before I ever darkened their doorstep. I doubt they consider me a real witch. Perhaps, in the past, they would have.

  But now, with the addition of my vampire blood, I’m just an abomination to them. And to most other vampires, my witch powers are something even more otherworldly . . . something to be wary of. So, I am soundly rejected by both tribes, though I do have the odd friend here and there. My son has said he feels the same way, being half-in, half-out of the mortal and magical communities. Sometimes, I think we have more in common than he’d like to admit. Or than I would.

  But I’ve kept you too long, dear reader, and my sad tale is drawing to a close. They say many things contributed to the fall of Rome. But, for me, it all ended that summer morn in Pompeii. What had once been a mighty city—like a mighty civilization—reduced to ash and rubble. Like a man of great dignity and power shrunken down to mere beast. Like me. And whether it happened in one day or a hundred thousand days, the result was the same. A dream deferred. An age ended. A paradise lost.

  After all I had done for Rome, her children betrayed me. By dying out, they betrayed me. Just like Sabine. I feel, above all, that this was the loss of my innocence. Not when I ravished my first lover. Not when I made my first kill. Not even when I was ripped from my semblance of a mortal body and turned into a vampire. It was when I realized that hard-won happiness would never be mine. A monster’s story can only end one way. And it is never in the monster’s favor.

  If you saw me now, I would appear much the same as I had then: a well-built man in his forties. Naturally, my wardrobe has changed a bit. Togas have been relegated to buffoonish parties young people attend while feigning the receipt of an education. Today, you might see me in a black button-down shirt and suit, and custom shoes (Italian, of course).

  Why did I go on, you might ask? I suppose that, like all living creatures, I dread “not-being” too much to do anything else. It is not that I do not tire of the endless centuries, as Sabine predicted I would. I do. But besides the fear of not-being, there is usually some form of distraction to help me while away the time. Women. Blood. More women. You could say that, after a few millennia, living has become a habit.

  Besides, suicide may suit more ordinary, common witches, but it would not be a very “Titus” thing to do. A general does not go down before he has to, no matter how many battles he loses. I was no craven heart, no defector. When death finally comes, he will find me on my feet, steady-eyed, hard as iron to the last.

  After all, I was no longer a nameless slave. Not a foolish young man in love. Not even an older man, stricken dumb by grief. No, I am, now and forever, Titus: cold and alone. Bearing the weight of centuries and the countless deaths under my feet, as only a vampire can. Like the soulless piece of marble whose form my body takes. Whether or not this is ideal is irrelevant. It is what must be. It is the only way death can never conquer me again.

  What happens to me does not define me. True men make the world. They do not let the world remake them. I was a fire witch, and by Fate, and I still have some fire left in me. Hell, I was made of fire. I was forged from fire. From the ashes of Pompeii.

  I was a being even the gods couldn’t destroy.

  ***

  And there you have it, dear reader. I’ve finally gotten my story down on paper. I do hope you’re satisfied, and that you didn’t find the entire process as dull and tedious as I did.

  Oh! How absurd of me. There is one crucial part I left out. I shall rectify it now. Here:

  It begins, oddly enough, with a man walking into a bar.

  That man was me.

  I wasn’t there for a drink, obviously. At least, not the kind that came in a glass, or a bottle. It was just another tiresome evening on the outskirts of Londinium—sorry, London—in search of easy prey. Or it was, until I saw her.

  With dark curls and keen brown eyes, she appeared not unlike Sabine. True, she looked about ten years younger than Sabine had been when I first met her. But just as with my first love, I felt her magic immediately. It was not as strong, yet not exactly subtle either.

  I remember, then, feeling a strange lightness in my chest, a flutter of . . . it wasn’t happiness, exactly. I want to say potential. Possibility. Not hope, because the word is a sentimental mess. I couldn’t decide if her resemblance to Sabine was a good thing, or a bad thing. But it seemed, for a moment, that I might be wrong. About my story. About how it ends.

  Of course, by now, the reader likely knows that I was wrong, which is not something I often admit. I married that woman. And even though it was heretofore impossible, through magic, she bore me a son. Could there be a future—beyond the dark ravishes of time—that even gods and monsters could not see?

  Sigh. “What’s past is prologue,” as a mortal bard once said. I have nearly been burned to death—and Pompeii was only the first time. The sun has been all but blotted out from my existence. And yet, my vision is more precise than ever. As if certain truths have been distilled. Given better illumination. Sometimes, I still hear Sabine’s voice whispering to me:

  Fire is a very powerful thing. So is light.

  THE END

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  Before you go, be sure to grab your FREE BOOK! Here’s a little about it:

  Oh dear. I think I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a fix again.

  It’s been a tough couple of months for Joshua, a mage. After battling vampires, despots, and demons, he heads to Chicago for some downtime, maybe even a little romance. Unfortunately, fate has other plans.

  Joshua and his would-be lover are kidnapped by two vampires and threatened with death. The vampires agree to spare them, but only if Joshua helps find an ancient statue . . . by dawn. But he and his kidnappers aren’t alone in their search. Three other vampires want the statue as well, and not only do they kill those who get in their way, they enjoy the killing.

  It seems this mage just can’t stay out of trouble, even for one night.

  All in a Night’s Work is Book 3.5 of the Mage Tales, but can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone story.

  The Age of Mages

  (Book I of the Mage Tales)

  Amazon | Amazon UK

  A mage should be able to handle anything, but really, the circumstances are getting quite ridiculous.

  Joshua’s witch mother has been missing and presumed dead since he was a teen. Years later, when he learns she might be alive, all he can think of is finding her. His antagonistic vampire father agrees to help, but Joshua fears he has ulterior motives. The situation gets even more complicated when they discover why she disappeared: she possessed a mysterious crystal whose powers remain a secret.

  Unfortunately, Joshua and his father aren’t the only ones interested in the crystal. As their search leads them from New York to Las Vegas to Rome, they’re pursued by the Paranormal Investigation Agency, the High Council of Witches, and yet more vampires. In the process, they uncover a plot to wake the deadliest vampire who ever lived.

  If Joshua can find the crystal, he might find his mother—and stop a massacring blood-seeker from rising. But that means not fighting with his father long enough to hold off adversaries both human and supernatural.

  It might just be more than one mage can handle.

  Afterword

  Thank you so much for reading
my book! If you enjoyed it, I’d greatly appreciate a review. Although they only take a minute to do, reviews can mean the difference between a writer who keeps writing and one who doesn’t. Posting about it on social media or your blog would make my day as well!

  Feel free to get in touch anytime. You can also sign up for my newsletter and be the first to hear about new releases and other cool stuff. While you’re at it, check out my other books (with excerpts) to see if anything strikes your fancy.

  About the Author

  Ilana Waters writes mostly fantasy for adults, young adults, and middle graders. She once pet-sat an electric eel and crashed her car into a house, though not on the same day. Before she became a writer, she was reprimanded and/or fired for reading in every job she ever held.

  She considers this her greatest accomplishment to date.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank the following people for helping with this book:

  Marcia Trahan: copy editor and proofreader extraordinaire.

  Deranged Doctor Design: cover designers made of sheer awesome.

  My amazing street team of beta readers. You guys rock!