“Caesar’s late again.”
Eliana absently poked the tines of her fork into the gelatinous yolk of the fried egg on her plate. It quivered and split apart, oozing over the porcelain in a spreading stain of yellow. She shuddered, disgusted. Chicken stillbirths. Who liked these hideous things?
Silas did, apparently, because he cut into his own with surgical precision and ate half of it in one bite. Mildly he said, “He’s sleeping in.”
This didn’t fool her; Eliana knew Caesar too well. Sleeping in meant sleeping it off. He’d spent another night carousing with the catagirls—new ones, ones who didn’t know his particular tastes—or at the infamous Moulin Rouge, where the girls were paid handsomely to cater to those kinds of tastes and the men who possessed them. It had been five days since she’d witnessed the ugliness at the Tabernacle, and he’d only made one of their morning breakfast meetings.
It was their long habit to take breakfast in the back garden of the DuMarne, the old, sprawling abbey they’d moved to when they’d decided to take refuge in Paris after fleeing Rome three years before. A beautiful ruin, cavernous and neglected but in no danger of being sold because of its historical value, it was the perfect temporary hideaway for their little colony. The access to the catacombs was an added bonus they all took advantage of; they were creatures of the underworld, after all, even more so than all the other human cataphiles who went there to cavort and hide from real life in the cool, succoring dark.
“Maybe if he didn’t spend so much time sleeping I wouldn’t have to spend so much time working,” she said. As it usually did when the subject was Caesar, her stomach tightened to a fist.
“You don’t like the fighting?”
She glanced up at Silas to find him staring at her in sharp-eyed assessment. His shoulder-length black hair, gathered in a neat queue with a slim leather tie, framed a square-jawed, imposing face that others described as handsome but she saw only as hard. And preternaturally intelligent; Silas never missed a thing.
He was a dozen years older than she, and she’d known him all her life. A servant before they’d fled the catacombs three years ago, he was now second-in-command to her brother, the Alpha, and had been invaluable to them both in the years since. He was utterly capable and loyal, and if she had the occasional strange vibe from him, she tried to dismiss it as nerves.
To be sure, her nerves were not what they used to be.
“The fighting is…well, it’s a distraction.” She shrugged. “And it’s just for show, no one ever gets hurt.” Egos were really the only thing that ever took any damage. In the weekly matches at New Harmony, she fought for money, not for blood.
Silas wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, still watching her intently. “So it’s the stealing you object to. You don’t like being a thief.”
She grimaced. “Of course I don’t like it, Silas. It’s dishonorable. Even a child knows stealing is wrong.”
He smiled at that, a faint curve of his lips that might have been either amusement or disdain. “You’re only stealing oil painted on canvas, Eliana. It’s hardly a stain on your morality. And in any case, the ends justify the means. Your father knew that. Sometimes we have to sacrifice our own…lofty ideals…for the greater good.”
He would consider honor a lofty ideal. To him, there was only one benchmark by which everything was measured: Is it useful? If the answer was yes, regardless of the situation or ethical questions or opinions of others, it was adopted. She’d never known anyone more clinically pragmatic.
“The greater good of my brother’s fondness for beating prostitutes?”
Silas’s smile only deepened at the acid in her tone, the look of disgust on her face.
“Your brother’s little peccadilloes notwithstanding, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to see your father’s dream of freedom for all our kind come to pass. We all share the same philosophy; unfortunately, you are the only one with the Gifts to get us what we need.” His eyes softened, yet somehow grew more intense. “Believe me, I’d take the burden on myself if I could.”
Uncomfortable under his penetrating stare, she glanced away. “We have almost enough money now to finance the construction of the stronghold. Once that’s completed—”
“Then you’ll stop,” Silas said, reading her mind. The man really didn’t miss a thing.
How irritating.
“Then I’ll stop,” Eliana agreed, nodding. And do what, she wondered. Garden?
Again with that uncanny intuition, he said, “Perhaps then you could consider…” He trailed off, lowering his gaze to the plate of food on the table in front of him. He toyed with the half-uneaten egg. “Starting a family.” His voice was oddly neutral. “Taking a mate.”
“A mate? You make it sound so romantic.”
A muscle flexed in his square jaw. “You’re too smart to think marriage is about hearts and flowers, Eliana. Perhaps for humans it is, but romance is a luxury creatures like us can’t afford. We have to be more clearheaded, look at choices through the lenses of logic, not emotion. Our continued survival depends on creating the next generation, especially now—”
“Seriously?” The fist in Eliana’s stomach started to burn. “It’s not enough that I steal and fight to support us—now my uterus has to support us, too?”
He stared at her, his eyes coal black and flinty. “Your uterus aside,” he said, deadly soft, “there is a war coming. Survival of the fittest is the only thing that matters now, principessa—”
“Don’t call me that, Silas,” she hissed, jerking forward in her chair. He knew she hated to be called that, knew how much it reminded her of the past. “The day my father died I stopped being a princess—”
“A war that will cost many lives,” he forged on, calm and dogged, pointedly ignoring her anger, “and leave us even weaker than we are now unless there are children to replace those lost. And since females only go into Fever once a year and many times do not get pregnant, every Fever that passes is a lost opportunity. You’ve had three since we left the catacombs of Rome—”
“Silas!” He’d been counting. The thought made her shudder.
“—and soon you’ll have another. The clock is ticking, Eliana. And no one else in this colony is better suited for you than I am. Our marriage is the logical conclusion.”
Eliana stared at him for long seconds, both repulsed and curiously deflated by the sudden realization that Silas was talking about marriage to him. Which made absolutely no sense at all; most of the time she was convinced he didn’t even like her.
She said, “That has got to be the least enticing proposal of marriage ever uttered in the history of life on this planet.”
A faint crease in his cheek indicated he was holding back laughter. Or was it a sneer?
“That’s not the only reason you should consider it, though.”
Her brows climbed. “There’s more to this fuzzy, heartwarming declaration of yours? I’m on the edge of my seat.”
He tilted his head and looked at her from beneath a thicket of black lashes, that slight crease in his cheek growing deeper as his lips curved into the faintest of smiles. Something about it set her nerves on edge in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“I guarantee things won’t always be as they are now,” he said softly. “Your brother is…unbalanced. Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true.”
She enunciated each word carefully. “What is your point, Silas?”
He stretched out his arm, leisurely, unhurried, inspected the manicured crescents of his fingernails, and straightened the cuff of his crisp black shirtsleeve. Then, almost casually, he said, “When his goals for the production of the antiserum and the construction of the stronghold have been fulfilled and you’re not quite so necessary to him anymore…marriage to me…” He hesitated, and Eliana sat there staring at him in growing dismay, feeling her heart thrum in her chest. “You know the influence I have over him,” he murmured, his voice almost seductive. In contrast to
his silky voice, his smile grew positively chilling.
He lowered his arm and lifted his gaze straight to hers. “I could offer you protection.”
So. There it was.
With as much dignity as she could muster, Eliana lifted her chin and gazed in stiff silence at the rose garden, a profusion of white blossoms nodding in the cool morning breeze. Their scent sweetened the air but did nothing to remove the sudden, sour taste in her mouth.
Though he was eldest and a boy and therefore automatically held in higher esteem by the custom of their people, Caesar had been born Giftless, and so their father—brilliant, brooding Dominus who prized honor above all—had favored Eliana. He never said it, but it was crystal clear through years of sour looks and cold shoulders that their father considered Caesar a failure, a stain upon the honor of his powerful Bloodline.
Dedecus. A disgrace.
Eliana had done her best to shield Caesar from the relentless disappointment that emanated from Dominus. Caesar, though unGifted, was smart enough to recognize the disdain that oozed from their father like pus from a sore, and he resented Eliana all the more for trying to protect him from it.
No matter how she tried to bridge the gap between them, Caesar was as unpredictable as a crossbred dog, and she was never quite sure from one moment to the next if her olive branches would be met with smiles or snarls.
She knew he was flawed—worse than that, possibly—but he was the only family she had left. Her mother had died giving birth to her, her father had died only three years ago, and she had no other siblings and no immediate family since they’d fled Rome. Without him, she’d be alone.
Utterly alone.
It was her deepest fear, and one of which she was even more deeply ashamed. It made her feel like a coward, and right after liars, she despised cowards more than anything else on earth.
“I’m his Blood,” she said, soft and vehement, more to herself than to Silas. “Beneath it all, he loves me. I don’t need protection from him.”
Silas’s brows shot up as if she’d just said something very stupid. “Jealousy has darkened his heart,” he answered, almost managing to sound truly regretful. “Who can say what a jealous king will do, even to those he loves?”
Heat flashed over her, scalding hot. She gripped the edge of the table so hard her knuckles turned white. “Who the hell do you think you are, trying to threaten me into marriage, trying to turn me against my own—”
“Morning, kiddies,” a languid voice drawled from behind her. Eliana turned slowly in her chair to glare at its owner.
“Caesar. How kind of you to join us.”
If he noted the sarcasm in her voice, he didn’t acknowledge it. Clad all in white, with the winter morning sun behind him flared into a nimbus around his head, he appeared like a seraph, otherworldly and darkly dangerous. He’d inherited their father’s breadth of shoulders and powerful, elegant frame, their mother’s sculpted lips and eloquent eyes. Golden-skinned and long-limbed, he was gorgeous, and as one could easily tell by the insolent way he moved and spoke and even breathed, he knew it.
“Having a little argument?” he asked lightly as he seated himself at the table. He gracefully unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap, picked up his fork, and leaned over Eliana’s plate to spear a piece of ripe melon. He popped it in his mouth and sat back in his chair, watching the two of them with bright, laughing eyes.
“We were just talking about the stronghold,” Eliana said, still stiff and seething, glaring now at Silas. “We’ll need to choose a final location so we can get started on the architectural plans.”
“Well,” said Caesar around the melon in his mouth, “we’ve all agreed on the Congo basin in Africa, which is apropos considering that’s where the Ikati originated.” He sighed. “Though I admit, I’ll miss France. The people here are so…friendly.”
The women, he meant. The paid ones. “But the final location,” Eliana insisted, but Caesar cut her off.
“I think it’s more important we discuss the name.”
Caught off guard, Eliana blinked at him in surprise. “The name?”
He took his time selecting another piece of melon from her plate. “Hmmm,” he said, sifting through her food with his fork. “An important country needs an important name.”
Silas and Eliana exchanged a look. “Country, my lord? Our planned stronghold might be a little small to call itself a country—”
“If the Vatican can be called a country, so can Zion,” pronounced Caesar, eating two pieces of melon in quick succession. Eliana had the urge to smack the fork out of his hand and tell him to get his own damn plate, but she contained it by curling her hands into fists in her lap. “It will definitely be the more important of the two, in the long run.”
“Zion,” Eliana repeated. “How dramatic. And maybe a tad too biblical, don’t you think? We’ll have the apocalyptic wackos descending on us in droves. All those Mayan calendar doomsdayers will think we’re the next best thing.”
“Actually, it’s perfect,” purred Silas, with a sideways glance in her direction. So he’d chosen sides and was punishing her. Her fists curled tighter in her lap. “Zion refers to the world to come,” he continued, “the promised land, the spiritual and physical homeland of an oppressed people, wandering and longing for safety.”
Eliana glared at him. Though her father had ensured she’d had the best education—arts and language tutors and mathematics and science instructors and even a Japanese gendai budō master paid handsomely for his visits and his silence—Silas and Caesar inevitably spoke to her as if she were mentally challenged. It was the unfortunate and infuriating collateral damage of living in a patriarchal society that had remained unchanged for thousands of years: women were second-class citizens. Or possibly third, behind the livestock.
With a clenched jaw, Eliana said, “I know what the word means, Silas.”
“Then we’re in agreement.” Caesar’s teeth shone brilliant white as he flashed a smile. “Good!”
No discussion, no agreement, just Caesar doing exactly what he wanted. As usual. Trying very hard to breathe calmly around the sudden pounding in her chest, she said, “And the location?”
Caesar’s answer was a waved hand. “I’ve hired the architectural firm to start the plans for the main compound and outlying buildings. We’re making inquiries into the availability of a tract of land large enough for what I envision. Room to grow is important; once the disgruntled members of the other colonies find out what we’re about, we’ll need it.” He chuckled. “I imagine there are a lot of them who are quite sick of hiding like rats in the basement.”
“And how exactly are the other colonies going to find out about us?” Eliana asked. “We’ve never talked specifically about how we’re going to get the word out to those who want to live openly with humans, as we want to, how we’re going to provide them safe transport from their own colonies, protect them from their Alphas who’ll definitely want to kill them for deserting—”
Another waved hand from Caesar. “Let the men worry about the details, Ana. You just keep on bringing home the bacon. Which reminds me,” he said, snapping his fingers together. “There’s a new Degas at the Louvre you should take a look at. It would be perfect for your little human pet.”
Gregor, he meant. That’s what he called him: human pet. It was better than what he called most other humans. To him, they would ever only be three things: pets, playthings, and breeders. It was where their ideologies diverged sharply. Eliana believed they should live alongside humans because the two species were equal, as were all the creatures of the earth, but Caesar thought they should live alongside humans so the Ikati could be worshipped as they were long ago in ancient Egypt.
They were once considered gods, and he had not forgotten it.
“The Louvre? That’s pushing it, don’t you think? It’s a little…high profile.”
Caesar’s answering smile was nearly a sneer. “It should be easy enough for you, Ana. Vapor, invisibi
lity…everything comes so easily for you. It’ll be a cinch.”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her, slow and mocking, and that look made her face flush with blood. Enough. I can’t take any more of our dysfunction today. She rose from the table and shoved back her chair. “I’ll look into it.”
Unfortunately, her voice didn’t come out quite as smoothly as she wanted, and she knew he was pleased she was upset when his smile grew larger.
“Tonight,” he said lightly. The look in his eyes was anything but light, and Eliana understood this wasn’t negotiable. “Get it done tonight. There’s another payment due to the lab.”
Their eyes held for a moment, until finally she nodded. He nodded back, satisfied, and turned his attention to Silas.
“We’ve got enough of the serum now to inject all the half-Bloods from the old colony. There’s no reason they wouldn’t jump at the chance to survive past the Transition and join us. Now we just have to get the word out to them. We’ll have to think of something…special.”
Dismissed. She’d just been dismissed. Without another word, humiliated and burning with hand-shaking, throat-squeezing, chest-crushing anger, Eliana turned and walked away.
Silas’s black, black eyes followed her until she swept out of sight beyond an ivy-draped corner, heading back inside the abbey.
His Gift was subtle, but—on those whom it worked—devastatingly effective.
Less powerful than the outright mind control of the Gift of Suggestion, the ability Silas had learned over long years to wield with the deadly precision a ninja wields a katana was more a whisper than a shout, a gentle nudge than a shove, the coy glance of a maiden that garnered the same result as the bolder, more lusty stare of a whore.
In other words, it was elegant.
He had no name for it and no use for one; it wasn’t as if he’d speak about it aloud, in any case. He wasn’t prone to that horrific new age compulsion so many humans were afflicted with: sharing. He was, however, prone to plotting. Prone to planning. Prone to a dark, satisfied chuckle when some outcome he’d orchestrated came to glorious, inevitable fruition.
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