After family and friends left, Valentine made sure Mirella ate something before breastfeeding their son once again. It turned out that a baby werewolf needed more sustenance than a mortal newborn, and Valentine felt it was his duty to take care of their son’s every other need since, as powerful as he was, he still couldn’t feed him.
It was late in the night when Valentine decided it was time to call a meeting with Martali, Gabriel, and Dragon. But he hated leaving Mirella and the baby alone in the master quarters and summoned everyone in the nursery.
“Is this your new studio?” Gabriel asked, the first to arrive, entering from the hallway door. With an amused expression, he passed a hand between the clockwork figurines hanging from the ceiling, setting in motion one of the many colorful mobiles decorating the room. Diaphanous wings stretched out of red ladybugs that whirred as they flew in a large circle. A soft lullaby filled the room.
“For the time being. Baby is sleeping between us anyway.” When Valentine had started the nursery, he thought the room—connected to the master bedroom through the closet—was perfectly placed. Now, he couldn’t bear the idea of his son sleeping so far away from him and Mirella.
The little bundle had been born for only a few hours, but he was already the center of Valentine’s universe.
“I understand. I would do the same if I had a newborn kid.” Gabriel smiled one of his sad smiles, and lazily flicked a clockwork butterfly into action. Soon, purple and blue wings fluttered all over the room. “But, at least I get to be the handsome uncle who spoils the brat rotten.”
“Good thing such handsome uncle live a planet away.” Valentine pressed the button on one of the butterflies to stop the mobile. He ached for his friend who could never have a kid of his own, but knew that Gabriel didn’t want to be pitied.
“How is Mirella?” The vampire sat on the bench under the window, and opened the cream curtains, letting in the silvery light of the Fifth Moon.
Was it just that morning when Mirella’s water broke? Time had ceased to have meaning the moment Valentine realized she was going to have their baby.
“She seems fine—” Valentine was too terrified to say it out loud because fear was still holding him hostage.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Gabriel frowned. “But?”
“Marcellus discovered that a few blessed brides survived for a week after giving birth to their children.” Valentine couldn’t stop thinking of his father’s note. Every minute that passed, he dreaded more and more that Mirella’s clock was ticking again. What if fate had decided to play the most horrifying prank on them? “I just got her back—”
Silently, Gabriel stood and walked to Valentine, then gave him a one-arm hug.
Dragon and Martali knocked on the hallway door and entered at the same time Mirella appeared from the closet’s archway, holding the baby swathed in an ivory lace newborn-dress.
“You should be resting, kitten.” Valentine had waited for Mirella to fall asleep before calling the meeting. Draping an arm over her back, he guided her to the rocking chair by the fireplace.
“I want to know everything,” she said, sitting on the padded cushion and rearranging the long gown of the baby’s dress on her lap.
In between feeding sessions, Valentine had told her about Balenus, but there was much he didn’t know himself.
“You look radiant, Mirella.” Dragon bowed before her, and for once, Valentine didn’t feel the need to tear the Solarian apart for being gallant to his bride.
“You do,” Gabriel said, regarding Mirella with a long glance. “Your eyes are greener and your skin more luminous than before.”
Valentine smiled. “It’s her she-wolf’s doing.”
Mirella raised her free hand to her shoulder to place it over his. “I’m stronger too.”
Under Valentine’s strict supervision, she had moved the large frame of their bed with a mere touch.
“It’s such a pleasure to see that our Blessed Bride is well.” Martali stepped in front of Mirella, then kneeled and brought his right hand to his heart. “I’m honored to meet the Twelfth Master of House Lobo.” He bowed deeply to Mirella. “I pledge my life to your son, Blessed Bride.”
“Thank you, Martali.” Mirella squeezed Valentine’s hand, and he nodded at his head guard.
“Where are the High Priest and Balenus?” Mirella asked.
“They have been separated and taken to the guards’ quarters. I have just finished interrogating the surviving traitor who confirmed the identity of the medicus as the leader of the insurrection.” Martali lowered his eyes before continuing, “I take full responsibility for allowing sedition under my ranks and I will understand if you wish to terminate my employment—”
“I don’t want to hear another word on the matter.” Valentine shook his head. “It’s not your fault. We were all betrayed.”
Mirella nodded. “How could anyone imagine such duplicity?” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize what he was doing to me—” Her body stilled. “Balenus had been slowly poisoning me with his prescriptions for months, but only this morning, I finally realized that I felt sick after taking his supplements. And later, when my labor started, he gave me something for the pain, but soon after I started slipping away and the baby was weaker too.”
Valentine’s stomach knotted at the idea that he had trusted his most precious treasure into the hands of a tormentor. “All this time, Balenus was the Leader we were looking for, and he was hiding under my own roof.” He closed his eyes, collecting himself. “What about the High Priest? Is he involved with the medicus?”
Dragon pushed himself from the wall. “I interrogated the High Priest first while Gabriel was talking to one of the terrorists, and he seemed genuinely shocked when I asked if he knew about Balenus’s double identity as the Leader.”
Gabriel nodded. “So when we switched rooms, I used my persuasion on the priest, compelling him to tell me the truth, and he started crying and confirmed what he said to Dragon. The man was only following his religion’s mandates; he never thought he was putting the Blessed Bride in danger.”
“What about that merchant from the Gentleman’s Club who sought an audience with him?” Valentine asked.
“A ruse orchestrated by Balenus. The High Priest told us that a man asked for an audience under the medicus’s urgent request. It was done to make us believe the clergyman was part of the rebellion,” Gabriel said.
“It sure mislead us.” Valentine couldn’t help but cringe at the irony. Since the beginning, he had thought the worst of the priest only to discover that the man was doing his job. “What about Balenus?” he asked.
“He refuses to talk to anyone but you,” Gabriel answered with an apologetic shrug. “And I thought you wanted to see him before I used my persuasion with the medicus.”
Valentine was thankful for his friend’s tact. “Yes, I’d like to talk to him first.” He passed his hand through his hair and sighed.
“I’m not sure if he’s up to something, but he said you better hurry,” Dragon added.
Valentine swore softly. “I guess the sooner, the better.”
Mirella started to say, “I’ll come with you—”
Valentine walked around the rocking chair and kneeled before her. “I’m sure you want answers as much as I do, but I’d rather have you and the baby here, guarded by my friends, than come with me to confront that monster.” He didn’t know if he could keep his fury under control, and the last thing he wanted was for Mirella to witness his anger. “Please,” he whispered when Mirella didn’t say anything back.
She finally nodded.
“It won’t take long. I promise.” He kissed the point of her nose, then lowered his lips to their baby’s crown. “Let your mama rest,” he whispered and his son cooed in response.
Gabriel and Dragon nodded as well, and after one last kiss, Valentine left with Martali.
During the walk to the guards’ quarters, Valentine tried to calm himself and managed to reach the p
lace in a state of profound agitation and anger. It was an improvement over his original mood which had verged into homicidal.
“Did you search his place?” he asked Martali outside the room where Balenus had been jailed.
“Yes, and we didn’t find anything but books.”
“Close his quarters and don’t let anyone in.” Valentine made a mental note to look at those books. “What about the ancillae? Did they say anything useful?”
Martali shook his head. “No. They are terrified and can’t stop crying.”
Valentine pointed his chin at the door. “Let’s get this over with.” He saluted the army of men guarding the cell, and they moved to the side to let him pass.
“Master Lobo, we finally meet, you and I, without false pretenses,” Balenus greeted Valentine as soon as he entered. His voice was slow.
The man sat at a table—the only piece of furniture in the windowless room—with his hands locked behind him. A short chain secured the manacles to the floor, giving him no room for movement.
“I was starting to worry you wouldn’t come to say goodbye,” Balenus continued.
Valentine’s hands balled into fists. He didn’t trust himself to get any closer to the table and remained at the entrance, leaning against the wall. With his legs crossed at the ankles, and one hand massaging his chin back and forth, he studied the Leader.
“I surprised you, didn’t I?” Balenus laughed, but his face was a taut mask. “Don’t beat yourself up. We kept the truth well hidden from everyone. Even Rado didn’t know I was the Leader. We made him think it was someone else. And I staged my own kidnapping after the merchant’s death. That was such an ingenious ploy, wasn’t it? I needed the money—revolutions are expensive to foot—and it kept your hounds away from me.”
Trying to keep his fury contained, Valentine didn’t comment.
When the silence stretched for several heartbeats, Balenus tilted his head to the side, a scornful smile curving his lips. “Don’t you have questions, Master Lobo?”
Valentine ignored the man’s derisive tone. He well knew Balenus wasn’t going to tell him anything important. His eyes never left the medicus’s face as he studied him in silence. It appeared that the man was paling before his eyes.
Shrugging, Balenus said, “You think you can intimidate me, but you are wasting precious time.” He straightened his head and spat something on the table.
It was an oblong capsule, opened in half. A dark, viscous substance oozed from it, staining the metal tabletop.
“In case you are wondering, it’s the same poison I was going to use on your bride,” the medicus said, matter-of-factly. “I had it installed inside my molar—”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Valentine asked.
Balenus smiled. “Because I wanted you to know.” His voice was noticeably slower than before.
The ball of fury inflated in Valentine’s chest. “Why?” Unable to articulate a longer sentence, he was asking several questions with that single word.
“Because I despise you and your race, and I’m gladly dying for the cause,” the man answered. His words were a hoarse whisper.
Valentine turned on his heel and grabbed the door handle. His hands itched to strike Balenus, but hitting a dead man wouldn’t make him feel better.
With a last rattle, the medicus said, “There were others before me, and there will be others after me. Humanity will get rid of you.”
With the sound of those feeble words ghosting the room, Valentine closed the door behind him, eager to leave all that misery behind and forge a brighter future in Mirella’s arms.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Look, there is another diary here,” Mirella called Valentine from the other end of Balenus’s studio. “It looks old, like the others.”
Valentine had tried to convince her to stay in their apartments and rest while the baby slept, but when Mirella heard that he was going to look at the medicus’s books, she called her sisters and Crea to watch their son and followed him outside.
Although only two days had passed since the birth of their son, it seemed much longer to Valentine. In a shorter time than anyone could have anticipated, Mirella had been restored to full health, but he couldn’t shake his fear that she wouldn’t last the week. Her strength kept increasing, and her wolf manifested more than once in their minds, frolicking with his wolf and their pup; both occurrences should have eased his worries, and yet Valentine couldn’t sleep at night. Fortunately, the baby kept them both busy.
“Why are we here anyway?” Mirella asked, showing him yet another worn, leather-bound journal. It was the ninth or tenth she had discovered inside an antique storage chest. The books were covered in cloths, and clockwork mothballs lay in between the layers. A mechanical worker stood sentinel by the chest, and it had just recently dusted the piece of furniture.
“I am still looking for answers. Balenus died, taking with him the names of his lieutenants—” He passed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I need closure I guess.” What he needed was to know that she was safe. He smiled and blew her a kiss.
“I don’t know if you’ll find any closure in the pages of this diary, but it looks more recent than the rest.” Tilting her head, Mirella traced the spine. “This one says, Doc Carentius: Sidera Prime.” None of the journals belonged to Balenus, but so far they were all written by medicus.
“Carentius…” Walking to her corner, Valentine repeated the name a few times, then a memory resurfaced. “That was the medicus who treated my mother.” He took the journal from her outstretched hand and opened its pages, leafing through several passages as he got used to the man’s challenging penmanship.
A few minutes into a lengthy explanation on how to prepare medical draughts and unguents to cure space-induced ailments, Valentine was about to close the diary, when the words “Front Pro Humanity” stood out.
“Hmm—” Without averting his eyes from the yellowed pages, he lowered himself onto one of the benches lining the wall of Balenus’s studio. “Come here,” he said to Mirella, patting the cushion beside him.
“What did you find?” Mirella sat and leaned against him.
Obligingly, Valentine wound his arm across her shoulder and pulled her closer, lowering the journal between them so that she could read it as well. He pointed a finger at the name that had drawn his attention.
“Wasn’t the Front Pro Humanity that movement against shifters?” Mirella asked after a moment.
“Yes, and it seems the medicus was involved with them.” Valentine’s mind worked by leaps and bounds, forming theories as he read the rest of the page.
They will never suspect anything. My predecessors created the perfect weapon. The Front Pro Humanity had it right, but they could never succeed. Doc Vergilius was the first to think of such brilliant solution…
“Did you find the diary of a Doc Vergilius?” he asked Mirella.
“I did.” She stood and went to the corner where she retrieved another leather-bound tome from the chest. “Here it is.”
Valentine grabbed the journal and scanned its pages looking for key words. “FPH,” he read out loud the initials when he found the acronym in the same paragraph that mentioned blessed brides.
Those vermin asked for a solution to their problems, and I was more than happy to be of service. Of course, I had my cause at heart, and while I engineered those perfect brides for the werewolves, I made sure they could never multiply like they used to do on Earth…
Several pages were torn after that passage, but Vergilius then continued with another rant.
Using the clergy to our convenience was simple enough. The high priests are so preoccupied with their rituals and tenets, they make our plans easier to execute by separating the brides from the werewolves. Once inside the Birthing Chamber, those women are ours to dispose of. We kill them and give the werewolf their precious sons. They will never know it’s in their power to change the mothers. Those women’s DNA has been mutated with werewo
lf genes to make them the perfect hosts for shifters, and the werewolf infants force their bodies to change furthermore… A bite at the right moment would make them fully werewolf and immortal. But that’s something only a few of us know—
Stains marred the next few pages, making the text unreadable. Then it continued:
Once in a while, a twin daughter comes along, but without the father to witness the birth, it’s child’s play to make her disappear. And for the high priest’s presence inside the Birthing Chamber, we need only to tell him there were unexpected complications. The poor man would never suspect we have poisoned the mother, and the Vestal House’s strict rules prohibit the desecration of the holy remains with an autopsy, while per Lupine Law, bodies must be cremated—
Valentine felt sick, but Mirella’s comforting presence gave him the strength to keep reading through the rest of Vergilius’s diary. He then went back to Carentius’s journal.
In one of his diary’s pages there was a mention of the blessed brides who survived giving birth.
The Front Pro Humanity had a few defections. There were cases when the medicus became emotionally attached to the mother and refused to terminate her life. FPH members were sent to deal with the problem soon after…
Valentine skipped ahead, reading random paragraphs that contained nothing more than concoctions’ recipes. Toward the end of the journal, he reached the notes about his birth and his mother’s death, and at that point he had enough.
“They systematically brought us to the brink of extinction,” he finally said when he could talk again. “All those blessed brides were assassinated. My mother—” he shook his head, tears swelling in his eyes. “You—”
“I’m here.” She had repeated the same sentence several times already in the last two days. “You saved me.” She took his face in her hand and kissed him, softly at first.
Her warmth fired his senses, erasing past and present from his tortured mind. Valentine kissed her back, devouring her mouth with longing and desperation. “I need you,” he whispered, opening her bodice. Then he remembered she had just given birth, and rested his head between her soft breasts, panting as he tried to calm down.
The Fifth Moon's Lovers (The Fifth Moon's Tales Book 3) Page 17