by Gwynn White
Then the stench of death made her jolt to a sitting position. Everything came back to her in a rush. Clarius must have laid her body on the flagstones in the villa’s garden. but he was gone now. Only the dead remained.
Lucius! Petra jumped to her feet. She ran down the stairs and found Lucius where Clarius had left him. Even before she dropped to his side, Petra saw that he yet breathed, but the blade remained deep inside him as he lay in a pool of his own blood.
“Lucius, can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes to her, but they were shot through with pain. He moaned and tried to cough up blood, but the effort left him weak as blood streamed from the corner of his mouth.
“We are free to leave, my love,” she whispered, unable to check her tears. “Please, let me take you away from here.”
“I can’t move.” He shifted against the hard stones, grimacing and breathing heavily.
“Here, let me pull the dagger out.”
He shook his head. “I’ll lose too much blood.”
“Can you stand?”
“I Don’t know.” His words seemed to come a little easier now.
He cried out, and then sucked in a breath as she helped him to his feet. When he finally stood, he clung to her side. “Get me out of here,” he whispered, his words barely audible.
Helping him negotiate the stairs proved far more difficult than helping him to rise.
“Drink from me,” she said. “It will give you the strength you need.”
“Soon,” was all he would say.
She didn’t understand, but he pressed on, so she did too.
They moved quietly through the various rooms of the house, Petra gingerly steering Lucius around the bodies, which lay in various states of decay. The sickly-sweet smell and the sight of decomposing flesh threatened to make her vomit. Lucius held to her tightly, his walking ability slowly diminishing.
As they moved through the tablenum, the master’s finest room, they saw Clarius, surrounded by the dead. His skin was no longer ashen, his veins no longer black. He looked again as he had when he had been master of this grand and ancient villa. He held an empty bottle of wine against his temple and drank deeply from the goblet in his other hand. Petra was surprised by what she saw in his eyes: misery.
“You did this to me, slave girl. All of it. You made me poison my family. You turned me into a blood-sucking devil. And now… Now your blood has made me hate myself and everything I have become.”
“Bury them all, Clarius,” she told him, ignoring his words so she wouldn’t have to feel pity for him. “Bury these people and sacrifice a pig to Ceres to sweep away all this madness.”
“A madness you have wrought,” he said, his voice as cold as the corpses around him. He acknowledged her with his raised glass, saying only, “Until we meet again, slave girl,” and then he turned away without another word as they passed him by.
She exchanged glances with Lucius. Blood began to stream from the corner of his mouth again as he doubled over with pain.
“Take me out into the light,” he said.
“We are almost there,” she whispered. “Hold on.”
When the morning sun hit their faces, it washed away the horror of Clarius’s madness. They moved as spirits through the bodies of the dead, stumbling out of the villa and into the olive grove beyond.
There, Lucius collapsed at the foot of the nearest tree. His breathing grew more and more labored as his body slowly began to give up.
“Now, Petra,” he said. “Pull—the dagger. Draw from me.”
Petra didn’t register his meaning. Her mouth gaped open, and she didn’t think she had heard his halting words aright. When it finally dawned on her what he meant, she had only one question.
“Why?”
“I want you to take my life. Not Clarius.”
His statement dumbfounded her but she understood. She would probably want the same if their roles were reversed.
“You are certain?”
“Remember old Tibullus, Petra.”
She frowned in confusion, and then she remembered. Tibullus was one of his favorite poets. She spoke the words as her arms surrounded him: “May I be looking at you when my last hour has come, and dying may I hold you with my weakening hand.”
“I will see you when I wake, my love,” Lucius whispered.
“I will not fail you.” When Petra wrenched the knife from his chest, Lucius’s cry echoed through her body, and she shuddered along with him.
Petra drew his life as gently as she could, hoping to turn his pain into pleasure. He was so weakened by his injury that it didn’t last long. They were locked together in the power of the draw, and only moments later, the vapor escaped from his wound, and she felt his heart stop.
She took up her dagger, and sucked in a breath as she opened a small cut in her neck. She held him close and raised his cool lips to skin untainted by Clarius.
“Drink, my love, and rise again.”
10
The Vellessentia
Rome
August 13, 2 AD
Petra reached out to Lucius, but he pulled away from her and rose from the bed.
“I cannot do it. I won’t watch while he—”
She closed her eyes and sighed. He couldn’t even say the words. How would they get through this every year for all of eternity?
“We have been over this too many times. You agreed.”
“No, you agreed. With him.”
“You know why.”
Lucius sliced his hand through the air. “You should have let me die.”
“So I would be alone forever without you?”
“So I wouldn’t have to watch him murder you forever, Petra.”
This brought her to her feet. She walked to him, pressed her fingers to both sides of his face.
“Clarius will not come between us. I won’t allow it. He is our enemy, but you know as well as I do he is more powerful than the both of us. If we cannot kill him, we will quell him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw it yourself when we left the villa. My blood changed him. It was the first time I have ever seen him regret anything in his whole life.”
“Nothing will quell the monster inside him.” Lucius’s voice was quiet and measured, but Petra felt the anger reverberate beneath his words.
“I can. And I will.” She moved away to dress. “I also think we need to start making our future plans.”
“What do you mean?” Lucius donned his tunic, which was a far finer fabric than anything they could have ever dreamed of as slaves. In his blue linen, he looked more handsome than Clarius ever had in his expensive Chinese silk.
In the year since they left Clarius’s villa, they had gone from owning nothing to acquiring a small estate on the outskirts of Rome. At first, they stole their way to financial freedom, their speed and quick reflexes becoming natural assets. They also found that humans were drawn to them now. Immortality had given them preternatural beauty, made their allure more seductive. They, too, were drawn to each other in ways that they could never have been as mortals. Senses heightened, bodies strong and lithe, they marveled at each other every day. Some days it took all their willpower to keep from drawing from one another. The desire had often overpowered Petra, but she was learning to control it over time.
They had begun to buy up fields and cultivate them into vineyards. They planned to sell high-quality wine to wealthy Romans, and they had the benefit of time to build for their future.
“There are only three of us in all the world, Lucius. We should create more like us. More Essentiae. I sense that Clarius will eventually ask me to do the same for those like him.”
“Those that drink blood to kill? You must not—”
“You drink my blood,” she countered, holding out her wrist.
“Only to survive. Only for life.”
“You think I would freely offer Clarius an army of immortals? No, of course I wouldn’t. But you know as well as I that
he holds too much power. I cannot yet refuse him.”
“Focus on what we could be to each other. To the world. If we had a family…”
“Who would want this life?” he asked.
She frowned. Did he regret being with her already? She shook her head in an attempt to hide how much his words stung. “Who wouldn’t? There isn’t a Roman out there who would deny themselves immortality if I offered it to them.”
“What would be the purpose?”
“We don’t have to merely exist. Think of all we could learn, of all the good we could do for the world. We had small lives before. We slaved for our master endlessly, day after day. Now the world lies at our feet, and we are only beginning to realize our potential.”
“A beginning tainted by the thirst for blood and death.”
“You will be the only one to let him come between us, Lucius. Clarius and I… You think that there is something between us. You’ve never asked me what it actually is.”
Lucius frowned, waiting.
“It’s hate, Lucius. I hate him.”
“Can you hate him if you never loved him?” His voice was sharp, and she heard the fear tinging his words.
“Can you?” she demanded, her patience growing thin. “Yes, I can feel that he desires me. But it is my blood he wants. Nothing more.”
“I saw it. I saw it in his face when he drank from you. I saw it in your face.”
“No—” she started to protest, feeling uneasy with his line of questioning… remembering with shame the blood rush she had felt with Clarius.
“It was ecstasy… desire. You wanted him. You cannot deny it.”
Petra stared at him, trying to think of a lie he would believe. “Gods, Lucius, I cannot. But you know what it is like to be in the throes of that madness. All reason flies from your mind and the body takes over. I was about to die. I could feel my life leaving me. You have felt that loss of control. You know…” She reached out, desperate to feel his arms around her, but he turned his back on her and moved toward the window to gaze out over the city. Rome was alight with the rising sun, but the tranquil scene couldn’t quell her growing fear.
“I know. I know how much stronger my love for you became when you were drawing from me. That’s what I lost control of, Petra. My love for you. It became a sickness, a desire that turned into despair for the wanting of you.”
“It was that desire that bound us together.” She moved to stand behind him and pressed her hand to his shoulder. “You were my first. You will always be first to me.”
“Will it be enough for an eternity?”
“Yes.” She kissed him, then, turning it into a gentle draw to remind him of the power only they held in all the world. “You are mine,” she said simply, allowing the Essentian draw to ebb until it was only a kiss.
Lucius seized her close in his sudden need, and the curves of her body fit into his like a key to a lock. Perhaps that was his intent, to remind her that she was still his. His kiss deepened, roughened. He explored her mouth with his tongue, while his hands pulled at her hair. He pushed her down into the bed again, and she smiled.
“I will die today, Lucius, but you will give me a reason to rise again.”
“Oh, yes, I will.”
He slid her tunic from her body and ran his hand up her thigh and up to her breast, circling with his fingers before dipping his mouth to the supple skin of her throat. He bit her gently there, a reminder of what was to come… an unbidden memory of the desire she had felt when Clarius had taken her to heights she had never known, to the edge of madness and beyond.
Petra forced Lucius to look at her, forced herself to look at him.
“Love me,” she whispered. “Love me until I can no longer remember his name.”
Lucius’s stunning brown eyes turned into liquid desire, and he entered her. Petra remembered again the stolen moments in the olive grove before immortality had touched them, when his fingers had fumbled under her tunic with a boy’s clumsy desire, when his sloppy kisses had made her laugh. He told her they would run away together someday, and she had believed him. Petra remembered the boy in the man inside her, and she fell in love all over again.
“Love me,” she whispered over and over, until the heights he brought her to went beyond all past and future. He brought her into the present, and on this day of all days, it was enough.
“Mistress, you have a visitor.”
Petra studied Caelia’s face. The servant girl seemed frightened. It must be Clarius come to collect his promised blood.
“Let him into the triclinium room, then. He is an important guest in this house, Caelia, and I will serve him myself. You will gather all the servants and see that they remain out of the house until tomorrow at this exact hour. Do you understand?” The last thing Petra needed was the cries of her death throes setting the servants’ tongues to wagging.
After Caelia nodded and left the room, Petra glanced over at Lucius, who lay aside her in bed, propped up on one arm. He had been watching her.
She kissed him but could not seem to look him in the eye. Rising from their bed, she hurried to dress again and make herself presentable. She knew he hadn’t taken his eyes off her, but she didn’t know what else to say to ease the wide river of distrust between them.
She wanted to tell him nothing could separate them, least of all their greatest enemy, but the words would not come. She turned her back to Lucius and closed her eyes to recover her equanimity. And she did. She resolved to beat Clarius at his own game tonight, to never relinquish her power. Let Clarius smell Lucius on her. Let him taste of Lucius when he touched her skin. Let him remember that she would never be his.
“What do you feel, Petra?” His words and eyes testified his agony.
“I still feel you inside me. When I wake again after this night is over, I want to feel you inside me once more.”
She slipped from the room before Lucius could respond. She already knew what he would say, and she couldn’t bear to hear it. They had not spoken of it, but she assumed Lucius would stay away during this first Vellessentia with Clarius.
Petra strode through the house with all the confidence of a master, watching her servants scatter and head toward the posticum and out across the fields toward the servants’ quarters they had specially built far away from the main villa. She reminded herself that she did ultimately hold all the power here. Clarius would die without her, and he would do well to remember it.
As she approached the triclinium, she saw him lounging like a cat on one of the dining room’s various couches. The servants had brought in grapes, wine, bread, and olive oil. He hadn’t touched the food, but he sipped at the wine as if he hadn’t a care in the world. It irritated her to see him there, invading her space, lazing comfortably on the couch she had lain on with Lucius just last night.
“Clarius.” Petra couldn’t keep the disdain from her voice and she didn’t try. In sharp contrast to his appearance the last time she had seen him, he was a thing of beauty now, dressed in all the finery of his station, with bronzed skin that could rival that of the gods. Yet, his usually grey-blue eyes had already turned to silver, a clear sign that he was in need of her blood.
“Petra,” he said too loudly, amusement flavoring his voice.
His body language said he was still playing the part of the master. Yet the last time she had seen him, she witnessed what she believed to be his remorse at killing all the innocents at his villa. Did he feel that guilt now, or had the loss of her blood over the past year slowly diminished that?
To steady her nerves, she poured herself a goblet of wine. He watched her every movement, but his gaze kept shifting to her neck.
“Your eyes,” she blurted.
“Yes, it seems to be a symptom of… well, the need for more of your blood. A thirst you will soon quench, yes?”
Unchecked desire flowed through his gaze, and she looked away, feeling a queasy disgust threatening to overpower her carefully constructed façade of self-possession. In
side, she was crying out for Lucius to come and take her from this room, this villa, this country. But even if they tried to run from him, she knew that he would never stop hunting them. He wouldn’t give up until he’d locked her away and killed Lucius.
“It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She didn’t hide the contempt from her voice.
“Yes.” There was no apology in his answer.
She moved away from him, feeling suddenly vulnerable, suddenly afraid. She hadn’t forgotten what he did to her mother. She would never forget.
“Where is Lucius?” Clarius glanced through the open doorway. “Will he be joining our—”
“No,” she said abruptly, not wanting to hear what word he would use to characterize this madness.
“I see.”
Clarius studied her face, looking for the reason why. Petra refused to give him so much as a hint. Yet she couldn’t hide the reason from herself. She did want Lucius here. She didn’t want to go through this alone. But how could she ask him to watch her die? To watch Clarius murder her? He would only try to stop them, and she couldn’t blame him. She would do the same.
Petra didn’t know when or how, but she knew she would figure out a way to defeat Clarius, to kill him once and for all. For now she must bide her time. She was still a fledgling immortal with no knowledge of the extent of Clarius’s powers or her own.
“There are things we must discuss before we begin,” she said. “This is a new era, Clarius. I am no longer yours, and you will not demand anything of me. Ask and perhaps I will give. But the master and the slave no longer exist between us. Do you understand?”
He couldn’t bring himself to fully acquiesce, so he inclined his head and smiled instead. “My slave, Silvipor, is here. As agreed, you will turn him.”
She nodded and Clarius looked pleased.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“He waits outside.”
“Stay here. I will fetch him.”
Clarius nodded. She left the room and immediately slumped against the wall by the door, letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She didn’t know if she would make it through another moment of Clarius’s presence. She wanted to stab him with a dagger until all her blood ran from his veins and he no longer carried a part of her inside him. Yet it was her blood that had silenced the murderer within. What madness her life had become. Why her? Why was she born with this strange curse?
