Daybreak of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  Daybreak of Revelation

  Living Relics Series 2

  A.N. Sandra

  Daybreak of Revelation by A. N. Sandra

  © 2019 A. N. Sandra

  Published by ACW Enterprises. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. For permissions, contact:

  acwenterprises1991@gmail.com

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.

  www.gobookcoverdesign.com

  To Chuck, who made this possible

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  Ancient Times

  “Please put the snake venom back where you found it,” Golda told Jurgon. The two worked over a large burnished pot, each adding specific ingredients to a liquid mass quivering inside it.

  There’s only a little bit left. It isn’t worth saving” Jurgon frowned. “I’ll just go dispose of it.”

  “I milked five different kinds of snakes for that exact combination,” Golda said sharply. It was hard not to be irritated with Jurgon over this sort of thing. He was constantly looking for an excuse to leave and escape supervision. “Don’t waste it. There is enough for half of another batch.”

  “We almost never make half batches,” Jurgon countered. He was such a pretty boy. With a golden tan, soft blonde curls, and wide blue eyes. He was extremely intelligent, but he had no sense of order or process. Wasting her hard work never bothered him at all. “I spent all week cleaning the storage area, it doesn’t make sense to keep such little amounts of things cluttering it up.”

  Golda noted that he had not put it back yet and felt more annoyed. The longer he waited to put it back the more likely he was to spill or misplace it. Cleaning it up would require abandoning the project she was working on and starting over again. She would put it back herself, but the medicine she was making needed consistent stirring at this point. If it spoiled, she would have to catch all the snakes again before the end of the day, because unless she finished the medicine now, the evening shift would not be able to use the lab later. She had taken Jurgon as a lab partner to keep him from annoying other people. A selfless act she tried not to regret. He was still in training and should be obeying her rather than arguing… but none of his generation seemed able to work without some sort of fuss. This was a small matter compared to the previous week when he had lost a bottle of snail slime but pretended he had it until the moment Golda needed to add it to something.

  “It’s not turning pink yet,” Jurgon fretted. He looked over Golda’s shoulder into the pot. Above him light poured through huge windows in the roof of the circular stone laboratory. The lab was designed so that each station flowed into the next allowing projects to be worked on in different stages by different people. In the center of the room was a large storage area that rotated on a wheel set into the floor below it.

  “It hasn’t been stirred enough. Put the snake venom back right now.”

  Carelessly, Jurgon sauntered to the storage area and set the snake venom down. Golda couldn’t see if he had put it in the right spot, but she would bet the finished potion that it would not be properly placed. She made a mental note to check later and to put it in the proper spot. It was in a bottle the same shape and color as liquid squid, so if the next person to work in the lab had an assistant as flighty as Jurgon (completely possible), there might be a small disaster in the works.

  “I could stir for a bit if you want,” Jurgon said, standing too close to Golda. He was larger than most mortals, but she was half Eternal and a head taller than him. He was blonde, almost like Golda, but her hair was brighter, and her eyes had magnetism that his did not. There was no mortal man who would not have followed her around like a puppy if she allowed it. Her charms had not faded with age even though she was almost seventy years old. Nevertheless, Golda still tried to teach Jurgon personal boundaries. Which he ignored. He didn’t try to seduce her (he was intelligent after all), but his pride exceeded that of mortal adolescents, so he drew near to her without embarrassment.

  “Just at this tempo, no faster, no slower,” Golda warned him. It was pointless to have him in the lab if she didn’t let him do anything. It had been a week since he had ruined anything. It had been a week since she had let him do more than bring her things. He stirred faster than Golda had and a little slopped over the edge of the pot, but the medicine was turning pink so Golda knew it was almost done. Once it turned pink it would be impossible to spoil.

  “Perfect!” Jurgon exclaimed as pink bubbles rose to the top of the pot. His cheeks flushed and Golda could tell he thought that he had been the one to provide the perfect touch to finish the medicine. As much as he annoyed her, his enthusiasm was adorable.

  “Stand back, I’m going to take it off the heat now,” Golda said. Underneath the pot a large cluster of glowing crystals provided the heat that had been cooking the potion. As Golda lifted the pot to set it to cool the crystals flickered with intensity. Jurgon reached to separate the crystals with large platinum tongs, and when they were no longer touching, they no longer generated heat.

  “No need for both of us to wait while it cools,” Jurgon pointed out. “You could go get a bite to eat. You’re getting a little testy. I’ll wait with the potion.”

  There is no increment of time small enough to leave you in the lab alone, Golda thought.

  “You can bring me a piece of fruit,” Golda told him, submitting to the knowledge that he wanted out from under her watchful eye desperately. “That would be lovely.”

  With a flashing smile, Jurgon slipped out the door, and Golda knew he wouldn’t come back until the end of their shift with a piece of fruit that could have been acquired in two minutes by simply plucking an apple from the tree at the end of the walkway leading away from the door. He was too restless for the lab. He was only a quarter Eternal and did not have the sort of temperament to become a medicine maker. He was too dreamy, too impulsive, and too willing to question things that had already been proven multiple times. He had been assigned to make medicine because he was too unstable to do research and too restless to build or maintain infrastructure. Their community was mostly self-sufficient, but there were a few needs that were easier to trade for than to fulfill themselves and the colony brewed six kinds of common remedies that they traded to the rest of the world.

  “Did you know Jurgon is bothering the laundry workers?” Celeste poked her head in the lab as soon as Golda was comfortable.

  “I could have guessed.” Golda sighed. “Many of them are too beautiful for their own good.”

  “Their beauty isn’t the problem. They should be able to work in peace.” Celeste was irritated. She was very tall, taller than even Golda, and her raven hair was pulled back from her face with relentless severity. Her eyes were the color of gleaming green emeralds and they appeared to glow like jewels set in her perfectly sculpted face with alabaster skin. Like Golda, she was over sixty years old, and like Golda, none of her personal magnetism had ever worn down over
the years. She looked almost the same as she had at the age of eleven when she had fully matured. “Did you send him to the laundry?”

  “No, I sent him to bring me a piece of fruit.” Golda shook her head as she admitted her folly.

  “There’s no fruit to be found in the laundry, just lots of women mostly half dressed while they scrub linens.”

  “They should put some clothes on,” Golda said, mostly to irritate Celeste who she knew to be right about this subject. Working with Jurgon for several hours had left her ready for conflict even though normally she hated petty exchanges. “If they weren’t so tempting, I’d be eating my fruit right now.”

  “They should work in wet clothes to avoid tempting someone who shouldn’t be there?” Celeste rolled her eyes. Because she was half Eternal her eyes actually rolled back farther than a regular mortal’s eyes could, giving her an extra dramatic countenance during a rather routine discussion about the annoying behavior of Golda’s young charge. “I don’t think it would keep him away, anyhow. He’d just think they were extra erotic because their clothes were wet and sweaty.”

  “Probably I’m destined to get my own fruit,” Golda admitted. It was tempting to point out that she always took on the most challenging young people and that Celeste’s assistant was not nearly as impetuous as Jurgon. “But I can’t keep him with me every moment. He’s twelve and he wanders. He needs adventure.”

  “He’ll have an adventure if he touches one of those mortal girls—” Celeste began.

  Jurgon was bursting with testosterone and teasing the female mortals was his favorite past time after eating, drinking wine, and sleeping in. In the colony, Jurgon’s six hours of sleep a night were a big chunk of wasted time for someone with Eternal blood. That fondness for young women would almost certainly be the ruin of him. If he were to lay with one of them, they would both be required to leave the colony permanently. The colony would be supporting more than a thousand people if they didn’t regularly expel rule breakers, but it was sad to Golda every time it happened.

  The colony had a very strict policy about copulation. A woman might find pleasure with other women, a man might find pleasure with other men, and that was no one’s business. But any act that could lead to making a new child was restricted. For carnal pleasure with anyone of the opposite sex, the only options were one man, one woman, paired until all offspring that they had were completely grown, or celibacy. There was no in-between for too many reasons to count. The main reason, though, was that the island was no longer the idyllic sanctuary of science, learning, and moral study that it had once been due to the distraction of too many competing energies.

  The original members of the colony had kept the settlement in spectacular order until more and more people (mostly babies) came to live there. Each of the founding members had come with an Eternal totem to protect them. Originally, the totems (all extremely large, partly celestial animals) had been meant for physical protection, but they also provided a great sense of well-being and order to the people, mortal or not, around them. There were seven totem animals and four hundred people on the island. Even though the island was a paradise compared to the chaotic dystopia on the mainland, there were now small troubles like Jurgon’s constant need to escape supervision that, if left unmanaged, would lead to bigger problems. The young people who insisted on pushing norms instead of cooperating had not been an issue until the last ten years. All totem animals now stayed mostly in common areas to maximize their calming power over the island. There were too many people for too few animals to maintain the atmosphere of serenity and knowledge-seeking that the colony had begun with.

  One of the best medicines Golda made prevented conception for mortals, and mortals on the mainland purchased it frequently. It was too heartbreaking to think of bringing up children where keeping them safe from Blood Drinkers was a rough challenge. Of course, the most irresponsible people wouldn’t take the medicine, so they were the only people who were still reproducing. It was maddening to Golda, but the affairs of the mainland were beyond her control. There was no medicine that would reliably stop an Eternal being, even a quarter-blood like Jurgon, from reproducing, and their children needed more care than average children. The colony took in every child offered to them, but the care of children strained everyone. Children that were only partly mortal were the hardest to care for as infants and the hardest to manage as young adults. Simply keeping a partly Eternal child alive to the age of about sixteen when they became self-aware enough to manage themselves took an incredible amount of one-on-one attention from their caregivers.

  “Well?” Celeste waited to hear what Golda wanted to do about Jurgon.

  “Send him back,” Golda told her regretfully. The peaceful end of her shift would be gone. Before she could forget, Golda hurried to the storage area to check on the snake venom. Sure enough, it was two shelves lower than the place it was supposed to be kept. Her eyes flew over the shelves and she quickly righted them just as Jurgon burst into the lab.

  “Where is my fruit?” Golda asked him, trying to speak lightly.

  “There isn’t any,” Jurgon answered.

  “No fruit at all, or no fruit in the laundry?”

  “I’ll pick you an apple,” Jurgon offered. He didn’t even have the common sense to be embarrassed.

  “No, you’d best stay inside,” Golda said, although she did feel peckish. Celeste would be very annoyed to find Jurgon in the laundry again, and even though Jurgon was a handful, Golda had no desire to see him cast into the life of ordinary mortals on the mainland. He wouldn’t be alive in a week. He had no protective totem of any kind, and the Blood Drinkers far preferred to drink blood from partly Eternal victims. He would do things to show his lineage just as obviously as if he ran through the streets screaming at the top of his lungs that he had Eternal blood. “We’ll finish cooling the potion, put it away, and eat dinner.”

  “Yes, whatever you want.” Jurgon sighed. Both sat in the laboratory with the evening light streaming down over them watching the wisps of steam that still rose from the pot.

  “Cattu!” Golda called from the door of the lab. She pulled Jurgon back to keep him from getting in front of her. A giant white cat, waist high to Golda, appeared from around the corner of the building and trotted up to her with the ease that only a feline owns. Instinctively, Golda pulled the cat to her in a warm embrace, and the tension of her work session with Jurgon melted away into the soft white fur.

  “Are you having a good day, Cattu?” Golda asked, relaxing her hug around the cat’s neck but keeping her hand on its large head. “Thank you for coming right away.”

  Jurgon moved close to the cat himself because the feline emitted a sense of calm and well-being that was like a vacuum, pulling people into it. Cattu might look ferocious from far away, but she was purring so loudly that it was hard to speak and be heard next to her. All three of them walked across the sparkling clean grounds of the colony, which were covered with grey pebbles and brightly-colored plants in between the large round tower shaped buildings that housed people and projects alike.

  “Go have your own dinner.” Golda kissed Cattu on top of her feline head before looking into her sapphire eyes. “We’ll walk on the beach later.”

  A large stone bread oven at the end of the refectory sent out a wonderful smell and the glow of hot coals escaped from around the door lighting the room that was already cozy with lantern light and crystal lamps along the cedar walls. There were several small windows in the ceiling of the refectory that allowed the sky to be a moving artwork for those who cared to look up while they ate.

  “I’ll just go sit with my friends,” Jurgon told Golda as the two of them stepped over the threshold of the refectory.

  Golda nodded permission for Jurgon to join his peers. Jurgon flew to get as far away from her commanding ways as he could. He blended in perfectly with the other young men who were also one-quarter Eternal, a jovial bunch now that they were free to be with each other and relax over a meal
. Many of them were more efficient at their daily work than Jurgon, although that was probably due to better work placement. Golda was sure Jurgon would have been much better off working by the sea. He loved to fish and splash in the waves. It was unfortunate that he had to be watched so much and kept indoors for long stretches. Some of the interns sitting with Jurgon had been well matched with taskmasters and tasks that suited them but they still struggled to stay clear of young women, mortal or otherwise. The situation was always fraught with temptation.

  “May I join you?” Sith, a half-mortal man with curly black hair, perfectly carved blue eyes, and a sculpted physique asked her warmly. Only a half-mortal man could be as tall or taller than Golda, but Sith was so tall that Golda had to look up to him, and her heart always fluttered when she did.

  “I would love to eat dinner with you. If you can refrain from talking about anything serious, dinner will be delightful.” Golda smiled, responding to his enchanting presence and melodic bass voice as much as his good looks.

  “Of course.” Sith smiled. He took her elbow to guide her to a table, and like a maiden, she submitted with a shy smile even though she had known him more than sixty years.

  The two of them slid into tall chairs at the end of a table and a blushing mortal woman brought them frosty cold waters and a plate of vegetables to begin their meal with. Both of them ate with gusto. It was easier to focus on food when they had already agreed not to have a serious discussion. When they had been younger it had been hard for them to keep their hands off each other no matter how many rules they came up with that forbid such activity, but the years had tempered their lust greatly.

  “So many years gone by…” Sith said as he pushed the empty plate back across the gleaming table.

  “I said ‘nothing serious,’” Golda tried to insist.

  “I was being sentimental, not serious.” Sith smiled, showing off his dazzling white and even teeth. Sith wasn’t just good looking, he was strong. Though he was almost seventy years old, none of the quarter-Eternal men Jurgon was eating with would have been able to beat Sith in a wrestling match even though they were all well under twenty years old.