The Dark Evolution Chronicles

by Cassandra Di Rossi

  We spent but a single night with one of Pharaoh's officials, and then we had been moved to a brand new villa in the elite east side of the city. We had far more than we ever imagined; a bedchamber each, a communal space and a kitchen that came with a maid. Zoe was beside herself. She has been in service almost her entire life, until the moment we had been forced from the burning embers of Troy a few months earlier. She was most uncomfortable with someone else doing the housework. At a loss as to what to do with her self, she had taken to going on long walks of an afternoon.

  One day, about a week after our arrival, the sky was hazy and the sun hidden enough that I was safe to go outside. Zoe suggested I walk with her. I wore a linen robe to my ankles with long sleeves that covered to my fingertips, and I carried a palm leaf parasol that Zoe had purchased at the market the day before. I was enjoying being out in the daylight again.

  We turned at the end of a street, walked around the side of the large storage building in the west end of the city, and stopped short. At the other side of a small park was a great wide path lined with stone creatures I had never seen the like of before. The road was so wide you could have driven three chariots side by side and still had room to walk in between.

  It stretched on until the strange winged creatures became near dots in the distance. In the sinking sunlight, the whole path appeared to be made of gold. Right at the end, a little to one side was the Great North Temple where four giant statues of Ramses towered over everyone below.

  We decided to walk to the temple. But we had not gone more than two hundred cubits when the sky began to darken, faster than any sunset I had ever known. A cold wind blew up from the north, blasting down the Avenue of Sphinxes like an ice storm from my first home on Vampyr. I noticed then that some of the householders had already tied up their animals under their shelters.

  Some folks were shutting their doors and closing out the forthcoming storm with ease, as though they knew it was coming. But others, like us, were looking up at the sky with a deepening sense of foreboding, some running about to fetch in an ox, or herd chickens into their coops. A woman from the house nearest to us was chasing a sheep about the yard, and another further on was on her knees crying up to the gods to leave them in peace at last.

  Neither Zoe nor I understood her meaning, but I knew very well what this storm would do. I grabbed Zoe's hand and ran toward the woman chasing her sheep.

  "Please, may we shelter with you?" I begged in Greek, hoping she would understand. Though I had learned to read Egyptian back in Troy, I had not heard a word of it actually spoken until we had arrived in Pi-Ramesses.

  "Aye, mistress. Now help bring ewe indoors," the woman replied in better Greek than my Egyptian would have been.

  Zoe, used to handling such creatures, was on its back in but a moment, legs and arms flailing as it wriggled to escape her grasp.

  The woman grinned in delight, threw open her door and pushed Zoe and the beast inside. There was a gust of wind so cold it could have frozen the sun. It shoved us back against the cottage wall. Even my strength was no match for it. As I helped the woman inside I looked back up the Avenue of Sphinxes and saw in the far distance, a man standing upon the temple steps.

  He was waving at the sky, as though calling in the elements. I watched in confusion and horror as the black swirling clouds drew closer toward him. My eyesight is sharper than that of a human, and I could see that he raised his arms to the sky then brought them down with the most tremendous crash of thunder. So loud was the rumble that the ground shook, just as that of Troy had done before the walls fell and the fire came. I shuddered.

  The farmer woman grabbed my hand and tugged me in through the cottage door, then slammed it hard behind us.

  "What thinking mistress? You look like seen ghost."

  "Sorry," I mumbled, recalling a vision, "I am not sure as I did not." While the waves had rolled beneath us on the boat I had dreamed this day. I had seen that man on those steps, calling up the clouds to make a great storm. I had hoped it was a nightmare brought on by hunger. But here it was playing out as real as any other of my dreams before it. A sick fear rose in my heart. I had seen ten plagues, each more devastating than the one before. I knew not the order, nor if this was the first or last. But I knew then that Egypt was to be blighted and great suffering would come.

  "What is it?" I felt Zoe's hand rest upon my arm. I shook my head.

  "The curse, do you think it was broken for everyone, or just for you and…" My cousin Apollo had cursed me for a hundred years for dismissing his amorous advances.

  "What did you see?" Zoe's voice was low and anxious. She led me to a chair by the hearth and the woman followed. I could barely speak for the images that flashed through my mind.

  "Will anyone believe what I say?" I asked. The curse was meant to prevent anyone from believing anything my visions predicted. It affected all, yet could be broken by those who trusted me beyond doubt.

  "Your friend," the woman nodded at me, "see future?"

  Zoe nodded,

  "Yes, mistress."

  The woman laughed at her formality.

  "No mistress here, but you two. Lapis," she said pointing at herself. "After blue stone."

  Zoe was holding my hand now. Her grip tightened as a bolt of lightning brightened the room to full daylight.

  "Yes, and she is always accurate," Zoe replied.

  "Well, pity she not here at beginning when Nile first turn red."

  A clap of thunder shook the house, sending the wayward ewe scuttling under my chair. Somewhere in the room, a cat began to yowl like it wanted to kill something, and outside a dog bayed as though at the full moon.

  "What do you mean? It isn't usually that colour?" Zoe's grasp on my hand was so tight now I had to pull away.

  "The river is red?" I had seen it run red in the dream, but it had not occurred to me to check and I had not been out in daylight until then.

  "Yes, you not seen?" The woman looked puzzled.

  "I am afraid I have not been near the river since we arrived, and we came in darkness."

  "I see," she said with caution.

  "When did it happen?" I asked carefully now.

  "Some weeks back. There was big surge like sea wave, then waters turn red."

  "Is it clay from the Nile bed?" I asked, trying to think logically. She shook her head.

  "They said it might be plant, or…animal that poison. They patches where it clear now, but still not right."

  "Has there been anything else unusual," I asked even more tentatively than I intended.

  "No one told?" She looked from me to Zoe with an open mouth, right as another bolt of lightning flashed through the room. A loud crack and terrifying sizzle told us it had struck near by.

  "No," I replied. "And who might that man have been up at the temple?"

  "Probably Hebrew preacher. He want Pharaoh to recognize Hebrew faith, but Pharaoh won't have none. He say they traitors and heretics, and gods will smite them down."

  "The king's son?" Zoe muttered so quietly I wasn't sure the woman had heard at first.

  At that moment the sky seemed to rip apart sending a torrent of ice pellets raining down like shards of glass onto the cottage roof. The sound was deafening, almost drowning out the thunder.

  Lapis shivered and yelled something at the sky in Egyptian. The only word I understood was Ra but I could guess the rest was not polite.

  The cold was closing in on us. Another crash of thunder sent the cooking pots rattling over the stove.

  "Do you mean Parameses, the king's son? Is he the preacher?" I pressed.

  "Aye, that him. Younger prince to lesser wife. She Hebrew too, from the old royal family. They close. No surprise that his mother turn his head. Pharaoh don't know how much he do for Hebrews. They make different his name. They use part only. Full name too much to real gods."

  "What do you mean?" A cat sprung up onto Zoe's knee and snuggled her head against her stomach. "Ohh you're shaking," she said, cuddling
it in close. The cat stuck her head out at me and hissed, but decided I was the lesser of the evils that day and turned back to Zoe.

  "Ra-mes-su mean ‘born of Ra.' So Hebrews call him just Meses," Lapis explained.

  "They call him just ‘born of?'" Zoe sniggered.

  "Aye, like mean son of any God that way."

  Zoe raised her eyebrows at me.

  "Tell us about the other torments," I asked, ignoring her.

  Lapis shook her head.

  "Meses said they God send ten plagues."

  I was so tense I was shivering.

  "How many is this?"

  "Seven."

  “Then three more will come,” I whispered. I closed my eyes in the hope that I would see what they would be in time to warn Pharaoh.

  *

  The storm rolled on so long it was near dawn before we were able to venture outside again. I had survived two wars at that time. The first had cost me my whole world: my father, my home, and the planet on which I was born.

  The second had cost me my innocence. Adjusting to life in this world had been hard enough. The hunger was near consuming and filled with guilt. Our sustenance came from the juice of the Vaima fruit back home, not from blood. Yet I had grown accustomed to it. But the night that Greek general had broken into my room, drugged me and forced himself inside me, was the night I had grown-up.

  Only then had I come to know myself. I was no longer a child with romantic notions of love and peace. I had become a woman, a Vampyr with cold acceptance and hardened determination. Considering all that was about to befall my new city, I longed, more than anything, to see Paris.

  As soon as we were able, we dashed home.

  *

  "Thank Zeus!" Paris got to his feet so fast he banged his elbow on the cooking pot that hung from the wall by the stove. Zoe rushed into his arms while I stood in the doorway to our villa and watched. My heart had run to him the moment I saw him, and yet my body held still and expressionless.

  "Where were you?" He mumbled into Zoe's hair, though he was looking up at me with those bright blue eyes that made me want to melt. My own coldness filled me with sad anger. I pretended to look away.

  "We took shelter in a cottage in the west," Zoe replied.

  "I was so worried," Paris did not hide his relief. His eyes were weary, and his damaged shoulder seemed to be bothering him more than ever. My mind flashed back to the moment I had found him in the smouldering ruins of Troy face down in the dirt and barely breathing. Battered from fighting his bronze armour had split and a jagged slice cut deep through his flesh. My heart had ached for him then too.

  "And we were worried about you," Zoe offered when I did not. "Where were you?"

  I looked at his face, wishing I could let go of my fears.

  "We took shelter in the stables," he replied without looking back at me. He took his seat again by the stove. The embers still glowed from cooking supper more than a day before. It was late spring and the heat was rising, but the storm had brought a wintery blast not usually felt in that part of the world, not then or now. Paris stoked the embers and threw on a new log. The wood clunked as it settled, sending a curl of grey smoke into the room.

  "How did it go with the merchant?" I asked, finally coming inside and closing the door behind me.

  "Very well, I think,” Paris replied, keeping his eyes on the fire. “He was interested in my contacts with Kolonai and agreed to speak again, once I have a deal with them."

  "That is very good," I said, taking a seat beside him. The Kolonai were our neighbours and a great ally in Troy, and Paris was convinced their king Kyknos would agree to work with him now, bringing wool and well-bred horses into Egypt.

  "I promised to return to meet him as soon as I hear back from Kolonai."

  "I am sure Kyknos will be most pleased to hear you are alive," Zoe grinned.

  I forced a smile too and called for the maid to fetch them some wine.

  *

  It took longer than imagined to get word from our old friend, for the storm delayed the ships at port, and not a week later another terrible plague beleaguered our new home.

  The locusts came in droves, tumbling from the sky like rain, climbing and flying into every corner of every field. They covered buildings from top to bottom so that no one dared enter or leave. They had come at dawn, which was the only blessing, for it meant not many had ventured outside so early. Those that had were forced to run for cover in stables and grain huts. The creatures stayed only a day, yet they devastated the budding crops to their stems. There was nought left to grow, and Pharaoh was forced to put in place a ration system to protect the grain stores since there would be no harvest that year.

  A whole month had passed when word finally came from Kolonai and Paris could visit the merchant again.

  "May I go with you?" asked a bored Zoe. "I need something to do, maybe I can be of help?"

  Paris ran a hand through his thick blond hair and looked at our young companion. "I don't know what you can do, but you're welcome to come if you like."

  Zoe bounced up and clapped her hands together. She had always been wise for her age, but occasionally her reactions gave away her youth. She was around 14 years old then, old enough to be considered a woman, and yet still with the heart of a girl.

  "Why don't we all go?" Paris said, with a long look in my direction. I turned away, uncertain of what to say. I wanted to go, and yet I had been near avoiding him of late, afraid that at any moment he would finally see the darkness in me. I felt unworthy, used, tarnished, spoiled, dirty. I was also acutely aware that he would grow old and die, as I would not. He deserved better than a damaged Vampyr.

  I had convinced myself that his absence from my visions meant he would leave us, and allowing myself to care for him would make it harder when he did.

  "The sun…it is too bright today. I had better stay here," I replied after a moment.

  "No it isn't" Zoe grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the door. "See, it's cloudy, you won't even need the parasol."

  "Do come," Paris too sounded tired and sad.

  "Yes, you must." Zoe was opening the door and pulling me out before I could think of another excuse to step away from her. I had grown used to my physical strength and had long since learned how to control my movements among humans, but sometimes I could forget myself. I yanked my hand away so hard Zoe stumbled and near fell headlong into the jasmine bush Paris had planted for me. I have always loved the smell of night-blooming jasmine.

  "Forgive me," I spluttered, considering where I could run to.

  "Cassandra, please." Zoe's dark eyes welled with tears. "You have been so sad for so long. Please tell us how to help you?"

  "What happened to you was so terrible I cannot imagine, but I…we will never hurt you," Paris said softly. "Please come with us." He reached out and gently wiped away my tears with his warm flat thumb. The gesture was so tender I almost fell into his arms and sobbed. Instead, I merely stood there, looking at his lovely face. Zoe began to walk down the street towards the docks, leaving us alone.

  Paris was one of the few humans taller than me back then. I looked up into his eyes. He trailed his fingers down my cheek, and for a glorious moment, I thought he would kiss me. But he did not. And despite our locked gaze, he did not become drawn into my mind. Most humans become near catatonic under the direct gaze of a Vampyr, yet Paris always seemed to have been immune. He threaded my arm through his and gently began to lead me down the road after Zoe.

  We three did not speak another word until we arrived at the merchant's office. He had a room at the customs house in which he did business.

  "Good day, may I help?" A young man, a year or two older than Zoe greeted us.

  "We're here to see Abraham," Paris handed him a small letter written out on a piece of juniper wood. The boy's curly dark hair flopped over his eyes. He pushed it back and skimmed over the letter.

  "Prince Paris?" He asked. His voice was smooth. He handed the slice of wood back to
Paris.

  "Yes." Paris was looking over the young man's shoulder, as though he expected to see the merchant standing behind him.

  "My father sailed to Argos yesterday morning, he will be gone some weeks," the boy said, observing him.

  The eager hope on Paris's face fell away. We needed to earn our living soon, or we should not be able to buy food or wine. Though I did not need such things, my friends surely did.

  "And you are in charge of the business while he is gone?" The trembling voice at my side almost did not sound like Zoe. I looked at her and found her cheeks as pink as the roses in the yard of our villa. I stared in astonishment. She was not easily flustered, and I had never once seen her blush before.

  The young man looked over at her. His eyes grew round and his gaze warmer. He stared for a good moment or two before Paris cleared his throat. I suppressed a smile. For the first time in many months, I felt something like pleasure in my heart.

  "I erm. Yes, mistress. I am."

  Zoe giggled and looked at her feet.

  "Then, perhaps your father mentioned our meeting, it was the night of the storm?"

  A burning pink dot of colour had appeared in the young man's cheeks also. He was still staring at Zoe. Zoe glanced up at him again. I could feel she was trembling at my side. Now I grinned.

  "Well?" Paris pressed.

  "Erm…Sorry, sir, yes. He did."

  There was a rap behind us from the wooden doorknocker on the wall. Then the cloth pushed back and a tall skinny man stepped in.

  "Master Levi, the Minoan ship is here."

  "Ah, yes, very good. About time." The young man tore his gaze from Zoe and looked directly at Paris again.

  "Forgive me, I must go. Please, come back tomorrow to discuss terms."

  "Of course."

  Paris and I turned to go, but Zoe seemed frozen to the spot. I gestured to Paris for us to leave.

  "I, may I know your name mistress?" I heard Levi stutter as we exited the room. I tried not to grin too much as my friend garbled back,