by Aja James
© Copyright by Aja James 2019
Dear Reader:
I hope you will enjoy the fifth installment of the Dark Ones saga on the following pages (Book #8 in Pure/ Dark Series). You will soon see that much more is yet to come.
Every story has many points of view, many different interpretations and versions of the truth. So what about the perspective from the Pure Ones’ POV? See how it all began in Book 1, Pure Healing, and meet Maximus for the first time (officially) in Book 2, Dark Longing.
Email me at [email protected] to find out more. And follow me on https://www.facebook.com/AjaJamesAuthor and https://aja-james.blog/. I will have free chapters, behind the scenes and other goodies on the Pure/ Dark Ones series.
I love hearing from you!
Enjoy!
Aja James
Contents
Glossary
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Other Books in the Pure/ Dark Ones series:
Excerpt from Book 2, Dark Longing
Glossary of Characters
Glossary
Blood-Contract: Contract by which a human Consents to surrender his/her blood (and sometimes soul) to a vampire for a promise in return that the vampire must fulfill. The vampire has the choice to accept or reject the Contract. Upon acceptance, he/she must fulfill the bargain or risk retribution from the unfulfilled human soul in the form of a curse. See also Consent.
Blooded Mate: the chosen partner for each Dark One. Once the Bond is formed between two Dark Ones, it cannot be broken unless a third party has prior claim of blood or flesh. The third party can elicit a Challenge to one of the Bonded Dark Ones to obtain rights to the other. The Challenge is fought to the death.
Save in the case of a successful Challenge, the Bond cannot be broken except through death. Attempts to break the Bond by one or the other Mate will end in death or madness or something worse, depending on the depth and strength of the Bond in question.
Blooded Mates do not need to take the blood and souls of others to survive. However, they must take blood and sex from each other on a regular basis, else they will weaken and eventually go mad and/or die.
The Chosen: royal guards of the New York-based Vampire King, Alend Ramses.
Consent: a human’s willing agreement to surrender his/her blood (and sometimes soul) to a vampire.
Cove: base of the New York-based vampire hive, with dominion over the New England territories in the U.S.
Dark Goddess: supernatural being who is credited with the creation of the Dark Ones. She is a deity to which Dark Ones pray. It is unclear how or whether she is related to the Pure Ones’ Goddess. See also The Goddess.
Dark Laws: One, thou shalt protect the Universal Balance to which all souls contribute. Two, thou shalt maintain the secrecy of the Race. Three, thou shalt not take an innocent’s blood, life, or soul without Consent.
Dark One: supernatural being who prefers to live in the night and who gathers energy and prolongs his/her life by feeding off the blood, and sometimes souls, of others. Dark Ones are born, not made. Sometimes confused with the term vampire.
Ecliptic Scrolls: events past, recorded by the Keeper of the Dark Ones.
Ecliptic Prophesies: events in the future as foretold by the Oracle of the Dark Ones.
The Elite: royal personal guards of the Pure queen.
Gift: supernatural power bestowed upon Pure Ones by the Goddess. Usually an enhanced physical or mental ability such as telekinesis, superhuman strength and telepathy. True Blood Dark Ones also possess powerful Gifts. See True Blood.
The Goddess: supernatural being who is credited with the creation of the Pure Ones. She is a deity to which Pure Ones devote themselves. She protects the Universal Balance.
The Great War: circa 2190 B.C., the Pure Ones who had been enslaved by the Dark Ones rebelled against their oppressors en masse. At the end of countless years of bloodshed, the Pure Ones ultimately regained their freedom, and the Dark Ones’ empire lay in ruins with the members of the Royal Hive scattered to the ends of the earth.
Hive: society of vampires with typically a matriarch, the queen, at the head.
Horde: small groups of vampires with no queen, typically composed of Rogues who band together for ease of hunting.
Nourishment: the strength that Mated Dark Ones take from each other’s blood and body through sexual intercourse. Once Mated, they will no longer need others’ blood to survive, only that from each other. Sexual intercourse is required to make the Nourishment sustaining.
Nourishment is also what Pure males provide their females as Eternal Mates.
Pure One: supernatural being who is eternally youthful, typically endowed with heightened senses or powers called the Gift. In possession of a pure soul and blessed with more than one chance at life by the Goddess, chosen as one of Her immortal race that defends the Universal Balance.
Rogue: lone vampire who does not belong to an organized vampire society or Hive.
Shield: referred to as the base of the Royal Zodiac, wherever it may be. Not necessarily a physical location.
True Blood: a vampire born of Dark parents. See also Dark One.
Vampire: supernatural being who prefers to live in the night and who gathers energy and prolongs his/her life by feeding off the blood, and sometimes souls, of others. Contrary to prevalent beliefs (see Book 1: Pure Healing), vampires are both made and born. Some vampires are Pure Ones who have chosen Darkness rather than death after they break the Cardinal Rule. Some are humans turned by other vampires. Some are True Bloods that are born of a vampire mother or father, more accurately called Dark Ones.
Prologue
It has been many millennia since I lost my Mate to the Dark Queen Ashlu.
Yet I never forgot that moment.
The moment when my soul turned to ashes even as my body remained whole.
The moment I changed.
My Mate had been with our daughter in the front garden of our humble hut when the Dark Queen and her entourage happened to pass by in a stately caravan, on their way to the Ivory Palace from a sojourn abroad.
He had been laughing and playing with our young in carefree joy. Shifting back and forth between his spotted leopard form, though he’d reduced it to a cub for her enjoyment, and his Pure male form, a papa who would throw her high up in the air while she screeched with excitement, and catch her in his strong arms and cuddle her close.
I was inside preparing our supper, a simple stew and beetroot salad. A full-hearted smile had spread my lips at the most beautiful sight I’d ever beheld—my Mate and our child—the two loves of my life.
We lived in a time of oppression and fear, for Pure Ones were the lowest of the low in the empire that the Dark Ones ruled. Humans were the vampires’ cattle, and we were their slaves; household servants at best, Blood Slaves at worst.
Even so, I could not have been more content with my life as the Pure Healer for my race, though it was a much less official role than it sounds. Formally, my entire family were the property of a Dark Noble House a couple of miles away.
Our masters were generous and kind as Dark masters went. They treated us in some ways as if we were part of their family. When I Mated, they allowed us to live separate from the estate to give us more priva
cy.
My Mate took care of their stables and hunted game in the mountains and forests that surrounded the capital city of Akkad (not difficult for a Pure One whose Gift was to transform into a leopard), and I was their resident healer and cook. When we had our daughter, our masters allowed her to take lessons alongside their own child, just as my Mate and I learned reading, writing and arithmetic in the same household.
Indeed, I had not one single complaint in life. Our family was blessed by the Goddess, I always thought.
Until that day.
When Queen Ashlu looked upon my Mate in our front garden.
I can still remember it in vivid detail:
The moment her eyes alighted upon his beautiful face, glowing with joy and love for our daughter.
The moment they narrowed with greed and lust, when her pupils dilated and her fangs descended, dripping with saliva as she growled an ominous, commanding growl.
When the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled before he turned to face her with apprehension, holding our daughter tightly to his chest, as if he knew this would be the last time he held her.
When she opened her mouth to issue rapid-fire orders for her squadron of soldiers to seize her prize.
I’d dashed out to confront them, not knowing what I could do, fearful and weak.
Just in time to see one Dark warrior tear our daughter from my Mate’s arms. Another soldier grabbed hold of me, locking his thick arms around my chest from behind, holding me immobile against him.
I was useless. Powerless.
My Gifts were worthless in this moment. I couldn’t even find the voice to shout.
I saw my Mate’s skin glow with the instinct to shift into leopard form, knew that he desperately wanted to fight to protect his family from threat.
But Queen Ashlu was speaking in low tones to him. I couldn’t hear. My head had felt like it was going to explode from terror and shock, my ears ringing with a high-pitched scream.
My Mate heard the Dark Queen, and the glow of his shift subsided. He knew without a doubt that any resistance he put up would be futile. And worse, she must have threatened my own and our daughter’s lives to ensure his capitulation.
So I watched, silent, numb and dry-eyed while our daughter cried and screamed for her papa, kicking and flailing in the Dark soldier’s grasp, as Queen Ashlu took my Mate away.
Took him away and raped him.
Used him. Hurt him. Shamed him.
Enslaved him.
In the end, to quell the displeasure of Dark nobles as a civil war threatened on the horizon, she killed him with her own hands. For her obsession with her Pure Blood Slave had caused the defection of her Dark Mate.
I was there when she did it. I saw it all.
You see, apart from my useless healing powers, I can take on different forms too, but only to prolong my own life.
After my Mate’s abduction and enslavement, I abandoned my daughter to the Dark Noble House, for I had no more love inside me to care for her.
I cared for nothing but vengeance.
I shed my Pure One skin to take the body of a human housemaid within the Ivory Palace and did everything in my power to exact my revenge upon the Dark Queen Ashlu and all her descendants.
The Dark Queen was killed by her own daughter. The Great War and the Purge of the aftermath crushed the Dark empire into ruins and rubble.
But I am still exacting my revenge.
There are crucial moments in our existence that define who we are.
Losing my Mate killed all hope and light and joy within me. He had been the goodness that inspired my own. When he was taken from me, there was nothing left but hate and bitterness.
I even hated my Mate, though I knew he was blameless.
I knew he suffered terribly with every pain and humiliation the Dark Queen wrought upon him. But after he was made into her blood whore, I grew to despise him. And I despised myself for still craving him.
I lost my heart, my soul, and my mind.
Now, I am capriciousness and deceit, vengeance and chaos incarnate. I have no loyalty to anyone, no care, no connection.
I’d abandoned my own daughter, what do you expect?
There have been a few instances in my long existence, since that fateful day, that I’ve been tempted to “do better.”
But the ones who tempt me never stay true.
Like Rain, the greatest Pure Healer across the ages whom I’d adored like my own daughter. She gave up her Gift for a Pure male. Such stupidity.
Since then, I have no place in her life. Good riddance.
Like Alexandros, the last General of the Pure Ones, before I sent him to his death. He reminded me a little of my lost Mate, but he was merely a mirage after all.
Without further distractions, I can focus exclusively on bringing the same kind of mind-warping pain that reshaped me to everyone else on this god-forsaken planet.
Ironically, I’m doing it under the auspices of helping Medusa spread her evil. As one of her countless pawns.
Little does she know that the truth is quite the opposite: she is my pawn.
After all, I’m the one who whispered in her ear with false rumors about how the Dark Queen Ashlu arranged for her execution once her twin sister Ishtar was determined to be the Chosen Princess. I’m the one who supplied Anunit with the poisons to ingest. You could say I shaped her into the vile serpent she is today.
And just so we’re clear—I hate her too.
But enough with the walk down memory lane. I need to focus back on my important work: Creating little vampire devils from test tubes and readily available human shells.
Now, there’s an added component to my research. Thanks to Medusa’s run-in with her dear little sister a while back, one of the seeds she planted long ago is finally bearing fruit.
Human research to genetically enhance soldiers of war has unwittingly provided the fodder for the experiments Medusa’s corporations bankrolled.
We’ve already successfully spliced Dark and Pure genes with that of humans. (Unfortunately, our best subject, one Ava Monroe, has eluded our grasp).
We’ve been able to create a new breed of vampires that kill on Medusa’s command without the threat of losing pieces of her soul turning humans the old fashioned way.
What about splicing the genes of powerful predators with that of humans, Pure and Dark Ones alike?
Just think of the possibilities.
She took everything she needed from her twin sister’s genes, the Great White Beast from the Ecliptic Prophesies.
Genes from my Mate.
Medusa took them from Ishtar when she’d been unconscious and helpless in Medusa’s care during their long-awaited reunion, before their last great battle that ended in the serpent’s apparent defeat.
I have to hand it to her—even when she lost, she won.
I’ve been keeping tabs on all of the experiments Medusa commissioned. Only individuals with a certain genetic predisposition or chemistry can accept foreign injections of Pure, Dark and animal DNA. 99.999% of the experiments fail. Only one out of one hundred thousand subjects survive.
Fortunately, we’ve been planting these seeds for a very long time, far longer than the timeline of modern genetic engineering. We’ve cultivated the bloodlines of the survivors over many millennia, keeping a close eye on them all the while.
Ever hear of the Little Flower Orphanage? It’s only one of thousands of “cultivation facilities” we own around the world.
Millennia ago, humans called it “sorcery” or “magic.” When men had the ability to command the elements—fire, air, earth, water. When they fed on the blood and souls of others to extend their lives and remain eternally youthful. When they possessed special Gifts like foresight, mind reading, superhuman speed and senses.
When they shifted into something else.
My Mate was a spotted leopard. A snow leopard in the case of Ishtar. Other humanoid forms in the case of the Creature, Medusa’s little pet.
This is my last skin, and I will make it count.
What would you call it? When man and animal become one. When the animal possesses the man’s soul, and the man inhabits the animal’s body.
Whatever you call it, these are our latest creations.
Let the carnage and chaos begin.
Chapter One
Three months ago.
Simca stretched out lazily on Maximus’ gigantic bed and proceeded to meticulously bathe herself with her sandpaper tongue until her fur glistened a bluish black in the darkened room.
Given the city lights that flashed from the nightscape outside through the floor-to-ceiling window beside the bed, Simca saw everything with crystal clarity through her predatory feline eyes. In fact, she’d see even more clearly if the room was submerged in total darkness.
The shower turned off in the en suite bathroom, making Simca pause in her ablutions and raise her head with alertness.
A few seconds later, Maximus emerged through the open doorway, in the process of toweling off his hair, the rest of his freshly washed body still damp from the shower but drying quickly under the blast of the central AC and the heat of his skin.
Simca tilted her head slightly. His internal temperature seemed hotter than usual.
Something was bothering her warrior.
He forgot his toweling for a moment and simply stood there fuming, his face a grim mask, his brows slammed down over his eyes, his mouth a tight line.
Simca casually flicked the vampire male’s naked body from head to toe with her keen, golden-green eyes.