by Gwynn White
“Silvipor?” she called out when she had opened the main door to the house.
“Clarius calls for me, girl?” He immediately rose from where he crouched against a stone wall at the front of the villa. He looked nearly the same as he did the last time she saw him. He wore his usual tunic and had that same bullish expression that made him look perpetually angry.
“You will call me mistress now, Silvipor. I am no longer a slave and Clarius will never again be my master.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, obviously debating about whether Clarius would wish him to comply. “Yes, Mistress,” he finally said, though his words were slow and forced.
“Do you understand what is happening here today? Do you understand what Clarius wants you to become?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“This life is a kind of immortality—but only so long as I offer it freely to you. Without me, you will die. Clarius will die. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, Mistress.” Still, his words were forced through tight lips.
“We are enemies, and we likely always will be. You have chosen to follow Clarius. But to stay alive, you must not cross me. You now have two masters, Silvipor, and I do not envy you.”
He shrugged. “Even if I wished to live a different life, Clarius would never allow it.”
“Yes”—Petra offered him a half-smile—“you are right.” She turned back into the house and he followed one step behind to where Clarius waited.
When they entered, Clarius grinned at his slave. “Are you ready for immortality?”
Silvipor’s bulk took up the whole of the narrow doorway, and he looked down in obeisance as he murmured, “Yes, Master.”
“Well, come in, then, and let us watch the goddess at her work. How do you do it, Petra? From the neck?” Clarius instantly moved toward his slave as a predator stalks his prey.
“Stop, Clarius,” Petra nearly shouted, recoiling as Clarius licked his lips in anticipation, eyeing his slave as a meal rather than a man. She sensed Silvipor’s fear, and while she couldn’t stop Clarius indefinitely, she could talk Silvipor through the steps at least.
“You will die today, Silvio. When you awake, you will become one of us. It begins when you drink this liquid.” She held up the phial hanging around her neck.
“What is it?” Clarius asked warily.
“It makes no matter,” she retorted, but she saw in his eyes that he wouldn’t give up.
“You will tell me now.”
“Or?”
“Or our bargain ends. And you know exactly what that means.”
She stared at him hard, thinking. It was a secret she had hoped to keep from him. She knew he would find out eventually. It was inevitable. She took a deep breath and let it out.
“Poison.”
“Poison?” Clarius eyed the liquid and narrowed his eyes. “The poison that killed us?”
“Yes.”
“What is it, truly? Hemlock?”
“No.”
“Tell me,” he demanded.
“We call it mortanine.” Since it was only the name her mother gave the flower, a flower that otherwise had no name, Petra hoped that revelation wouldn’t come back to haunt her in the end.
“Where does it come from? How is it made?”
“That, Clarius, you will never know.”
He laughed at that. “I have an eternity to wheedle it out of you, girl. I am a patient man.”
“No, you are not,” she retorted, and then turned her attention back to Silvipor. “Once the poison takes effect, I will feed you my blood. It is this, and only this, which will revive you. When you wake, you will be one of us. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Clarius may consider you his slave, but to the Essentiae—my kind—you are a freed man. To us, you will now be known as Silvio.”
Silvio glanced at Clarius, a questioning in his eyes. His master laughed.
“She can call you the god Jupiter for all I care. It matters not. You are my slave, Silvipor, and will be for eternity.”
Silvio bowed in deference to his master, making his final choice—a choice she sensed he would ultimately regret. An eternity of servitude? She would rather die. She tamped down the niggling remembrance that she, herself, had chosen to become a slave to Clarius’s bloodlust. It might be on her terms, but it was still a kind of enslavement.
“So be it. Let us begin, then.”
She held out the phial to Silvio, and with trembling fingers he reached out for the bottle, but Clarius slapped his hand away.
“I will drink him first.” Clarius didn’t look at Petra as he said the words. “I will drink him to the point of death before you give him the poison.”
“Master, I—” Silvio backed away even as Clarius advanced.
“Clarius, stop!” Petra shouted.
But the immortal had become the animal again, and he neither heard nor saw anything but his prey. He was at Silvio’s throat before the slave knew what was happening. He cried out as Clarius ripped into his neck, spilling blood down to his dust-caked tunic. The sound of Clarius’s sucking and drinking made her want to run from the room. She would soon be next at this feast. It was almost worse to watch Clarius kill another and be unable to stop it. She knew what was coming. The pain… and the pleasure. She had already decided she would attempt to draw him as he drew from her. She wanted to see into his mind as she had done with Lucius, to glean whatever information she could from his memories and thoughts.
Silvio was moaning, his head lolling and his arms relaxing into the precious few moments of pleasure after the pain of the Sanguine draw subsided.
“You must stop or he will die.” Petra waited for some sign that he heard her, but Clarius was deep in the draw, his mind focused on the kill.
She leaned down close but did not touch him. “If you want him by your side, Clarius, you will stop now. Kill him and he is gone from you for an eternity, and you will have no one.”
This made Clarius stop. The hideous sound of his mouth prying free of Silvio’s ravaged neck made her ill. He lifted his head, using his tongue to lick the blood from his teeth in a moment of sheer ecstasy.
“I want more,” he said simply, letting Silvio drop to the stone floor with a thud. He trained his eyes on her, then, heavy as they were with desire and satiation. She had seen that look in Lucius’s eyes when he pulled her into bed with him. To see that need in Clarius’s face now was confusing and thrilling and terrifying. More than anything, she wanted Lucius here by her side, though he could do nothing but stand by and watch. No, no, Lucius was right. She couldn’t make him do such a thing. It would be too cruel.
Silvio attempted to speak, but he could no longer formulate words. She had to act quickly before it was too late. Clarius had drawn too long and too deep.
Silvio stared at the poison, and she sensed his terror in the words he could not say.
“To answer the question you fear to ask, Silvio: yes. It will hurt. But you will survive in the end. I give you my word.”
Silvio nodded and slowly downed the poison she put to his lips. As he coughed and sputtered against the bitter liquid, she pulled the dagger strapped to her leg from its sheath. She kept her eyes on Clarius as she put the blade to her wrist and sliced. She winced but was glad she did not cry out. He watched her every move, anticipation growing in his eyes.
Her blood poured into the cup, the dark stream mesmerizing Clarius.
“Save some for me, my sweet.”
“You deserve none,” she retorted, but all the same, she wrapped her wrist in the white cloth strip the servants had left her to stop the bleeding.
“Here, let me help you with that,” Clarius said, reaching out to tie the knot of her makeshift bandage. His closeness felt too intimate, his touch too familiar. Those same fingers had wielded the blade that cut her mother’s throat and stabbed Lucius in the heart.
“No,” she nearly shouted. “Don’t touch me.”
“As you wish.�
� He glanced again at Silvio. “The change is starting.”
“Give him my blood before he loses too much feeling in his jaw,” she ordered Clarius as she struggled with the bandage. He brought the goblet to Silvio’s lips, and made him gulp it down. He drank too fast, spewing the blood all over the floor and Clarius’s finery. He did not seem to notice or care.
“I can’t feel my face, Master.” Silvio writhed with the effects of the poison.
Petra knew that pain well. Seeing the fear and the suffering on his face grow darker and deeper, she began to feel sorry for him.
“How much longer will it last?” Clarius asked, obviously more annoyed at the delay in his own pleasure than in concern for his servant.
“I don’t know. Each time is different.”
“Can you make it go faster? Give him more poison?”
“No, he’s ingested more poison than you or I did.”
“I could drink from him,” Clarius said, his voice low as he licked his lips.
Petra shook her head, disgusted. “Do you want to die alongside him, Clarius?”
“I need you, woman. I need you now,” he said, stalking toward her, desire burning in his eyes.
While she might have no love for Silvio, she knew intimately the pain he was experiencing. She only wished that kind of pain on one man, and that man wasn’t Silvio. She decided, then, to hasten Silvio’s death with an Essentian draw.
“I will try,” she said. “Stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.”
Petra knelt at Silvio’s side, who looked up at her with terrified eyes as his whole body shook with tremors. “Silvio, I am going to try to take the pain away. This will terrify you at first, and then you will begin to feel a kind of pleasure.”
He did not respond because his face was fully paralyzed. So she leaned down to his lips and, without touching, began to draw him out. His eyes grew wider and wider as she drew deeper. She felt his physical strength passing into her, felt his falling away. She felt the connection waning and found herself wanting more and more of the taste of his power. At last she saw the pain etched on his face ebb into peace, but by the time she had grown aware of herself and where she was, he had died.
She pulled away from him, her breathing rapid, her body trembling from exertion.
“By the old gods, Petra. You will do this to me.” It was not a question but a statement. She looked at Clarius, and the desire in his eyes shocked her.
“By the old gods, Clarius, she will not.” Lucius had entered the room, and he towered over them all as they lay like corpses on the ground.
“Lucius, please.” She begged him with her eyes to leave, but she knew what this gruesome scene must look like to him.
“Come to join us, I see,” Clarius said with a smile Petra wanted to slap off his face.
“Stop,” Petra warned.
“Or what? He’ll kill me? We all know from past experience that isn’t possible.”
“Why are you turning Silvipor?” Lucius’s anger at her was evident as he spit out the words.
“For our protection,” she countered, as her breathing began to slow.
Lucius laughed bitterly. “Was that Clarius’s excuse?”
“Please go, Lucius. You knew what had to happen here today.”
“I did not agree to you turning him. I would never have agreed to it.”
“We will discuss it later,” she said, rising slowly.
“I have a question for Clarius. A question from one master to another.” Lucius’s tone and his words were not lost on her, and it annoyed her greatly.
“By all means,” Clarius replied, obviously enjoying their quarrel.
“I am going to ask you something, Clarius, and I want you to answer with the truth.”
Clarius’s smile was slow and deliberate. He was more relaxed and calm than she had ever seen him. She realized that unnerved her most of all.
Lucius held up the goblet. “Can you drink her blood from a cup?”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“I have attempted such, but it did not sate my lust.”
“Or is that just what you want Petra to believe?” Lucius’s mouth thinned into a line, and his anger grew as the moments passed.
“You remember the bodies at the villa, don’t you, Lucipor? Some of those fell victim to my last attempt.”
“I saw the worst of you, Clarius, the day you murdered my father. Nothing you could do would shock me now.”
“A man of my… tastes needs far more than mere blood. I need the kill. Petra saw to that when she made me.”
“As well you know, that was an accident,” she reminded him.
“You both would do well to honor the bargain we struck.”
“That you struck,” Lucius said. “You bargained for me when I was unable to speak for myself.”
“So you would have chosen death?” Clarius scoffed at this.
“Yes, I would have. You think I would willingly choose eternal death for the woman I love just to save myself? I am not so selfish or so cruel.”
Lucius refused to look at her, even when she gasped at his words. She never truly understood how her bargain with Clarius had affected him. Knowing it now, seeing it through his eyes, would she have made the same choice again?
Yes.
Again and again and again.
If Lucius was by her side when she awoke, she knew she could endure an eternity of death.
“The only real power is survival, you fool. Some deserve life—the strongest, the most powerful. Others might as well die so the rest of us can get on with the business of living.” Clarius looked at Petra. “Are you sure you don’t want me to kill him for you now? He’s merely a complication, is he not?”
“You will not touch him—today or any day. Not ever.”
Clarius merely smiled.
“Lucius,” Petra said, “go now. It will all be over soon.” Despite her fear, she steadied and quieted her voice to try and tell him she understood why he had wanted to stay away. But he didn’t hear the words she could not say. He only heard “Go.”
“So be it.”
The finality, the acceptance in Lucius’s words carved a hollow place in her heart, a raw wound that burned like Sappho’s fire.
Fill my heart with fire…
“Good, then.” Clarius broke in, taking hold of her arm and forcing her to her knees. “It’s time you gave yourself to me, Petra. I will be your Charon now, and the price for your passage is blood.”
As Clarius drew her closer, his hand on her neck as gentle as a lover’s, his silver-pale eyes dark with need, Lucius’s eyes reflected his fall into defeat, into betrayal, into despair.
She wanted to scream at him to stay, to pull him into her arms and never let him go. But his words cut deep.
“I will leave you to your master, Petra, just as you wish.” Lucius’s fists shook with impotent rage as Clarius bit into her neck, making her gasp from the pain.
Stand by me and be my ally…
“Lucius, stop,” she called, choking out the words as the blood rose in her throat.
He turned from her in disgust.
“Let go of me—” she demanded, but Clarius was the animal again. He held fast to her body, clinging to her as he tore into her viciously. Even as the blood began to rush between them, she heard Lucius’s footsteps falling away, the sound drawing tears from her eyes.
The moment he left, the pain slammed into her. The fire in her veins, the sharp, stabbing pain, the fear… She let her body carry her loss of Lucius deep into the center of her chest. Fill my heart with fire…
Clarius pulled free long enough to beg her for an Essentian draw. She welcomed it, wanting to punish him with the same pain he inflicted on her.
Petra took hold of his head, her fingers digging into his skull, and she drew on him as hard as her waning strength would allow. His mind was so powerful it nearly compelled her hands away, but she held on, hoping to kill him before he could drain her f
ully. This time, she did not see images of Clarius’s past life as she had with Lucius. Before the blood loss took the strength from her hands, she drew down deep into his mind and, as her pain diminished into the exquisite ecstasy of death, she glimpsed his thoughts: raw, unfiltered, seething.
Die, slave. Die and die again. I hate what you’ve done to me. For making me a slave to your blood. For stealing my birthright, for destroying everything my father built. I will make you suffer for an eternity. And, one day, I will master you again.
Petra broke from him, releasing herself from the horror of his dying thoughts. She screamed Lucius’s name before the darkness took over, before Clarius drained her last drop. But Lucius did not come. Only the arms of her greatest enemy surrounded her, his words filling the emptiness in her veins where her blood had once run.
11
The Wounds
Sicily
February 21, 1723
What horrors you have survived,” Aurelia whispered. “How did you?” She looked at them both, marveling at their strength and courage.
“We did what we had to do,” Lucius said.
“I’ve always thought you both as strong as the gods. Now I know you are.”
Petra shook her head. “We had always hoped to find a way to quell Clarius for good long ago.”
“Do you think we ever will?” Aurelia asked, dropping her quill into the inkwell.
“Perhaps someday we will discover the answer we seek, the secret of my blood. It hasn’t been for lack of trying.” Petra’s frustrated smile dissolved into that ancient sadness again.
Lucius laid his hand atop Petra’s, squeezing her fingers. “We will figure it out, and the new advances in science will pave the way. I’m sure of it.”
Petra glanced at Aurelia, then, and she gave the lady a sad, knowing smile. They alone knew what was coming. It was what the two of them had used the Immortal Codex for all these years: to hide their plans behind her unbreakable cipher for a final war between the Essentiae and Clarius’s Sanguinea. Petra was playing the long game, building a foolproof strategy over centuries. She would continue to build her army and fortify the Essentiae against Clarius’s seemingly impenetrable strength. They had all long suspected the blood from his kills was the main source of his preternatural power. Their tests had proven it. What science could not tell them yet was why it gave him such dominance over them and how they might combat it. Petra was waiting for the answers in her blood before she would finally reveal her plans to Lucius. Aurelia also knew why. If Lucius had known her plans, he would have pushed for this war far too soon. And that Petra could not abide. She would never put any of them in that kind of risk.
