by Lily Luchesi
In his time with his new Empress, he had come to know how she ticked. Not completely; he knew she was deeply complex and to know her every nook and cranny was going to prove near impossible, but he knew quite a bit. He learned more about her every day. She was stubborn as a mule, proud, cunning, ambitious, and a born leader. She was nearly perfect, and much better than he had expected.
She was also so much like Livia. In Augustus’ long life, he had only loved three women. One of whom had tried to kill him, the other he had faked his death to desert for his own self-preservation, and this third one now, who would kill him if given the chance. It was not that Augustus didn’t have a heart, as Angelica had suggested many times. It was that his was too shattered to work properly anymore.
“I’ve been thinking,” Angelica began, shelving a book she’d been perusing and coming to sit on the divan with him. She stirred the air around them, and he took a breath, smelling her clove and musk perfume, her lavender shampoo, and the coppery tang of the blood they’d been drinking.
“Ah, is that a good thing?” Augustus asked.
“I had no idea you knew how to make a joke. Learn something new every day.” Angelica smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “I started the PID to promote not just human and paranormal safety, but also relations between every species out there. You’ll notice shifter/vampire violence is nearly nonexistent.”
Augustus nodded.
“Well, I just think you should make your presence known. You’re ruling alongside me, whether I like it or not, so I think you should come forward in the community. Go and have a quick sit down with our director, just to keep the lines of communication open. I might not be with the PID anymore, but it’s my baby, and I want it to continue to run smoothly.”
“And you are inclined to think that my going there will help?” he asked.
“I assigned the director to help me hunt you when you misguidedly thought that leaving bodies all around Chicago would bring me to you in good faith. You should clear the air with her at the very least,” Angelica explained.
Augustus leaned his head back and drank the last of the blood in his cup. “All right. I will go and make nice with the mortal if it is so important to you.”
“Thank you.”
“You know, you are the one who insists that we are not politicians,” Augustus reminded her.
“I know we aren’t, but they don’t. They all think on the level of democracy. Vampirism isn’t a democracy, but to educate other species on that is the equivalent of trying to drain Lake Michigan with a turkey baster,” she explained.
Augustus was a little unused to this era. The puns, the analogies, the coarse language, the loud music, the intense cosmetics, and the odd devices were all still confusing to him, not that he would admit it. Spending so much time with his Empress, he was getting a crash course in all things twenty-first century, and he was still not quite comprehending it all. The only thing he was accustomed to with this new world was the violence. That he understood and relished, while Angelica seemed to hate it.
This world was a mystery, as was this woman, but they were things he could not wait to unravel with his mind.
Now Angelica was using one of the devices, she called it a smartphone, to send a message to the leader of the Paranormal Investigative Division. The device beeped annoyingly and she said, “She’s free tomorrow evening. They did some hiring tonight so a meeting is out of the question.”
“You did not think to ask if I was available then,” Augustus pointed out.
She rolled her eyes, another modern gesture he was not fond of. Had anyone rolled their eyes at him in his empire, they would have been blinded before they could blink.
“Why, do you have a hot date? I play nice with you because I have to. Your comfort is not my concern,” she said.
“Oh, my stubborn Empress,” he said, his voice low. He reached over and ran his fingers through a strand of her soft hair. “You entice me at the very same time you infuriate me.”
He felt her heartbeat speed up as his hand went from her hair to her face to her throat. Her attraction to him was evident, but she denied it. Why? Because of that foolish mortal who had now threatened to kill her? What kind of hold did that man have on her and why? Why was a mere mortal able to command the heart of the vampire Empress? It made no sense whatsoever and he wanted to find out more about the man.
He moved closer to Angelica and she did not move away. “I will have you know that the bagged blood did nothing for me.” Bending forward, he pressed his lips to her neck, running his tongue along her jugular. Her breath hitched. “I told you, only we can fully satisfy each other.”
She was silent, tense. He knew she did not believe him still, even after getting proof. It was just another thing for which he needed patience. She would come around once she had opened her mind. It was not that he wanted to convince her to love him, he knew he could never do that. All he wanted was her understanding that they did need each other physically to survive. It wasn’t a choice. He certainly would not have chosen a stubborn, rude little chit for a soul mate.
He let his fangs extend and scrape along her throat before he sank them in; not very deep, but enough to get a steady flow of blood from her veins to his mouth, fortifying him more than anyone else’s ever could. He had waited two thousand years to again taste the blood of the Empress, and he would not be denied.
When he pulled away, he began unbuttoning his sleeve to offer her his wrist. He was too wary to bare his throat to her after what Livia had done. One day he would, but it was not today. She did not linger on his skin like he had done to her. Her bite was swift and deep, as if she wanted to consume him whole, to hold his power in her veins. She pulled away from him, her irises blazing red and her lips covered in his blood.
He wished to kiss it away, but she had not allowed him to kiss her since that first time, and he would not force her. It did not stop him from wanting, though. He reached out and swiped her lips with his thumb, tasting his own blood.
One day, he thought, you will be completely mine. My patience will be rewarded…all I need to do is remove that bloody mortal from existence to begin the process.
***
“Danny Mancini is next in line to be the vampire Emperor?” Harriet had heard a lot of crazy shit in her life, but this one took the cake. She looked across her desk at Sean, who had shown her the same proof he had given to Danny the previous evening. “You’ve got to be mad.”
“Wish I was, darlin’,” Sean replied. “I told Mancini. I’ve no idea what he’s going to do with the information, but I thought it prudent to give you the documents for your database.”
“Well, thank you. Have you told Angelica?” Harriet asked.
He shook his head. “You kidding? I have no idea how she’ll react. Anyway, it’s better that this Emperor fucker doesn’t know. You think he’d want another in line for the throne? To know that one swift chop to his neck and he’ll be replaced by someone Angelica actually loves and would choose to rule with?”
“Oh, damn it, you’re right,” Harriet ran a hand through her hair. “But Danny might go and challenge him.”
“Then Danny will die,” Sean said simply.
Harriet looked at him, at his cloudy eyes, and realized that this man didn’t care if Danny lived or died. Was everyone she knew some kind of closet psychopath?
“I’ll be meeting the Emperor tonight,” she revealed. “Angelica wants us to clear the air.”
Sean, who had been sitting back in the chair with his legs crossed and one boot pressing against the desk, suddenly came forward with a thump. “Are you fucking with me?”
She shook her head. “To quote you, I wish I was.”
“Why the Hell is she working with him? Why hasn’t she cut his head off and burned the remains by now? He’s killed countless people. Isn’t a vampire like him the exact type she founded the PID to catch?” Sean’s eyes were bright with a rage that Harriet found she could reciprocate.
“I wish I knew,” she replied. “I think she’s trying to bring him to her side, to change his ways. She can be a coldblooded murderer one moment and a kind caregiver the next. Honestly, I have no idea how I’ve handled her all these years.” Harriet grinned. “I’m glad she’s got you. With Danny on a witch-hunt—so to speak—and her Emperor some kind of murderous sociopath, she needs every friendly heart she can get.”
“I can’t protect her from this,” he admitted. “I wish I could, but I’m more worried about Augustus than I am Danny. She can handle Danny. The Emperor…I’m not so sure.”
“Neither am I. Look, you better go. The sun is setting and I’m not keen on seeing you ripped apart because you stupidly challenged the Emperor to a fight,” she warned.
Sean stood up with a smirk. “You already know me so well.”
Harriet waved goodbye and then sat back at her desk, her mind adrift. She might not know exactly how Sean felt, but she knew what it was like to have a hole ripped in her heart because of a lost love. Sean had lost his to another, she had lost hers to death. Ever since she had told Danny about Aulus the previous month, she had been unable to stop thinking about him. Her Coven leader, her mentor, her friend, her lover. Her everything. And she had watched him die, unable to do a damn thing about it.
Everyone is suffering from lovesickness and there’s no cure, she thought as she stood up to pour herself a small glass of scotch. As she was pouring, she heard her door open without a knock.
“Did no one teach you manners in two thousand years?” she asked, knowing it had to be the Emperor to be so rude. Even Angelica had the social graces to knock.
Silence. She was almost afraid to turn around in case she had been mistaken and it wasn’t Augustus.
“Harriet Galbraith. Well. This is a most…unexpected development.”
At the sound of the voice in her doorway, Harriet lost all feeling in her limbs. The glass fell from her hands, not breaking on the carpeting, but showering her shoes with liquor. She had to remind herself to breathe, that this was just her imagination. But then the voice spoke again.
“Will you not turn to regard your former master?”
Harriet muffled a gasp. It could not be. It wasn’t possible. “You’re dead. I watched you die.” The memory, so recently recounted to Danny, was fresh in her mind.
A deep chuckle, one Harriet had heard for many years. “Ah, little one, you amuse me still with your willful ignorance. Turn and face me. Now.”
As always, she obeyed that commanding tone. Once it had sent sexy shivers down her spine. Now she was shaking for an entirely different reason as she turned and laid eyes on a man she had watched die nearly two centuries ago: her former lover, Aulus Occio.
He had not changed very much with the exception of more silver strands now threading his black hair. He even dressed similarly, though in modern cut black suits instead of the stuffy robes witches and wizards had been forced to wear in the nineteenth century. The dark spark in his black eyes was exactly the same, as was his amused smirk.
“How?” was all she managed to say.
“Surely you, the Grand Coven Mistress—my successor—can figure that out on your own, can you not?” He stepped closer, and she smelled cologne. “Or are you too blinded by what you call ‘love’ to think straight?”
“A-a potion, a spell…a counter curse…” She trailed off, unable to believe that he had been alive for over a hundred years and had not said a word to her.
He tilted his head, regarding her. “Did you never wonder why I fought so vehemently for apprentice magicians’ rights to practice? I was no pureblood…at least not a pureblood magician.”
She watched in mute shock as his eyes began to glow a fiery red and his fangs elongated. She felt pinned to the spot, though warning bells rang in her mind telling her to run. He had her rooted where she stood, under his thrall.
“My infiltration into Britain’s Grand Coven was simply a cover, to continue my sabbatical under the eyes of my people so that none would ever find me until I wanted to be found. When you called in Angelica Cross to assist in the war, it was then I knew I needed to again make an escape, lest my Empress regard me long before she had been made to her full potential…long before she became my equal.” His voice, so rich and sensual, slowly and completely dismantled everything Harriet had ever believed about him.
Aulus didn’t exist. Not really. He was no wizard, no true Coven Master. He was an imposter. A murderer. A vampire. He was now standing directly across the desk from her, the Cherrywood the only thing separating them. And she was in no position to escape. A vampire’s thrall could not be broken by a spell or hex. If you couldn’t break it on your own, you were screwed until the vamp had finished with you.
“You lied to me. To everyone, for all those years!” she gasped, hating herself for getting tearful. “You made me love you and it was all some big joke to you!”
He shook his head. “Oh no, little one. It was never a joke. I did much good when I was Coven Master, and despite what you might think, I did love you in my way.”
“You never fed from me.” It was something she had learned from Angelica, vampires feed when they have sex, they go hand-in-hand for the Undead.
“As the Emperor, I have unimaginable restraint,” he said. “So much restraint that I refrained from tearing your throat open and savoring your sweet blood for well over a century. Do not think that I had never wondered how you would taste. You were always so…innocent.” He reached across the desk and cupped her face in his hand. It was as cold as that of a refrigerated corpse and she felt sick. “Innocence tastes even better than fear or lust.”
Fear creeped though her body, quaking her limbs and bringing bile to the back of her constricted throat. How could the man she had once loved truly have always been this monster? She had an inkling that Aulus—Augustus, she reminded herself, his name is Augustus—was not here to reconcile.
“Does Angelica know?” Harriet asked.
He shook his head, dark locks brushing against his face. “No. And she never will. I will make sure of that.”
Harriet shook her head. “I would never tell her,” she said, knowing what was about to happen, but powerless to stop it. “Please, you say you loved me once. If that’s true, don’t do this.”
“Do what? What is my nature?” His grin, rarely seen, could be either enticing or frightening. Right then, Harriet wished she could run. “I did love you once, but certainly not more than my immortality or my position. It is no more than a coincidence that we were reunited tonight, but it is fate to finally be able to put a proper end to our story.”
“Our story ended in that castle, when I saw your body hit by that Dark curse!” Harriet cried. “There has not been an ‘us’ since you evidently abandoned me!” In her rage and pain, she broke his thrall and dashed around the desk.
Her heart was beating wildly, as if she had been in stasis while he had her glamoured and it was making up for lost time. She wished that the magical community had some way of teleporting, but only Dark magicians knew how to do that. Manipulating oneself through time and space was not allowed, so she had to rely on her magical skills and speed in order to escape the Emperor.
“Obstupescas!” she cast, hoping to stun him. On the heels of that she cast, “Stabilis!” She should have cast something to injure him, not simply stun and still him, but she could not bring herself to do so. Her heart was too kind, and that would always be her downfall. She knew this.
Thinking she could reach the door, her whole body was frozen as Augustus said, “Ligabis.” A binding spell.
Unable to move her legs, Harriet fell to the ground, her body stilled as though invisible ropes bound her appendages. Her glasses snapped, hanging haphazardly from her ears. One lens had cracked, and she now saw half the world through a spider web, and the other half was a blur.
Augustus stood over her, his black cloak hanging around his strong frame. “Did you forget, silly girl, that I taught you everything you kn
ow? You were born a witch, but I surpassed each and every one of you. The ruler of magicians and vampires. Always your superior.”
When he cast such strong spells from which she could not escape, she almost had a hard time believing that he wasn’t a pureblood magician. It was only looking up at him and seeing his glowing eyes that assured her that he told the truth now. How had she been so foolish as to not see he had been a vampire?
“How did you keep it from everyone?” she asked.
The smile widened. “Glamour, my dear. I had bewitched the witches, and believe me, you have no idea how I laughed to myself when I was alone. Fools, the lot of you.” He held his hand palm up and curled his fingers.
Harriet’s body rose in the air, a strange sensation she had not felt since she was a student, learning the intricacies of this particular spell. She cast about in her mind for something she could do, but with her body bound, her magic was also bound. God, I’d settle for abra-bloody-cadabra right now if it meant I could escape, she thought fearfully. Of all the ways she imagined dying, being drained dry of blood by the vampire Emperor had not even ranked the top hundred.
The cold concentration in his eyes was very familiar, because she had seen that same expression on Danny’s face when he was on a case. Danny wasn’t exactly a nice person: he was stubborn, judgmental, and xenophobic. But until now, Harriet could never have imagined comparing him to a monster like this.
He cast another spell and now she could not speak. She could not beg for her life, try to reason with Augustus, or even utter a final prayer to her Goddess. She couldn’t even cry.
“Let’s see if you still taste as innocent as you seem, my love,” Augustus said, and now the cruel glee in his eyes didn’t make her think of Danny, it made her think of the people Angelica executed.
Angelica, why didn’t you kill this prick while you had the chance?
Her heart was beating so fast it seemed to echo in her ears and make her chest quiver as Augustus leaned in closer. His cold lips were on her neck, in a crude facetious pantomime of a lover’s kiss.
