by Aja James
—From the Zodiac Scrolls
Chapter Eleven
“This must be a trap,” Maximus said for the nth time, scowling at Ramses in the rearview mirror as they sped along the highway from NYC to the American Falls in the deep of night.
In a black, armored vehicle without lights, cruising at one hundred and twenty miles per hour, they would reach their destination within the next thirty minutes.
“So you’ve said,” the Dark King responded with nonchalance, his face turned in profile toward the side window as he sat casually in the luxurious leather backseat.
“Why are you allowing Queen Anya to dictate the rules?” the Commander persisted. “She is the Challenger. You have the right of selecting the time and place, as well as first choice in weapons.”
“It doesn’t matter,” came the same monotone response.
Pissed off now at his carelessness, Maximus turned his body around in the front passenger seat to glare at his king while his Mate, Ariel, glared along with him through the rearview mirror as she drove.
“You are not invincible, Ramses. I’ve seen you fight. You are a seasoned warrior badass motherfucker, I’ll give you that, especially with the scimitar. And while you’d probably kick my ass in humanoid form, you wouldn’t be guaranteed to win if I took animal form.”
Ariel growled in her black panther voice in agreement.
“We don’t know what Anya has planned. How can you be so complacent? Do you have a death wish?”
Ramses continued to stare out the window, but a hint of white teeth flashed in the dark.
“I’m touched by your concern for my wellbeing, Commander,” he said softly. “Death is not such a bad thing, after all. Some might say I should have chosen it long ago.”
Maximus’ look turned quizzical. What the fuck was he talking about?
“Besides,” Ramses went on, “if I finally departed the mortal coil, you and the Chosen are well capable of keeping things in order for the New England Hive. You would make a great king, Maximus.”
Now it was Maximus’ turn to growl in frustration.
“Fuck that. I have no desire to rule. You’re staying on the throne. I’ll make sure of it.”
“You’re not fighting in my stead,” Ramses reminded him.
“That depends on the Challenger.”
“No matter the Challenger, I fight my own battles.”
“Said the stupid dead king.”
“Who is still your king, and therefore orders you to shut the fuck up.”
This was where Ariel interjected in her low, husky voice, “Give my Mate a break, Ramses. Can’t you tell how worried he is? My Maximus never curses. Stop making him fret like a virgin before a herd of rampaging Centaurs.”
Maximus speared his Mate with a pointed look, taking issue with her analogy.
Ariel bared her panther fangs and purred back.
“He worries for nothing,” Ramses responded. “But you must be on alert for Anya’s schemes. The less exposure the Chosen has, the better.”
Hence, Ramses only allowed Maximus and Ariel to come with him. Devlin wanted to ride along as well. Even Eli suggested that perhaps Devlin and himself switch roles for this purpose so that the Hunter might stay at the Cove to guard the base and its residents, while the more powerful Lord Wind could escort the king.
All of the other Chosen were still away on missions. Ramses could have waited for their return, issuing a different Challenge date, but he’d opted not to do so. If he had his wish, he’d deal with Anya entirely alone.
“Whereas it’s perfectly fine for our king to fall?” Maximus interjected again, his usual stoic demeanor cracking under the weight of his frustration.
Ramses glanced into his Second in Command’s eyes briefly with a small smile before turning back to gaze out the window.
“Such loyalty in such a short time. You honor and humble me, Maximus.”
The Commander grunted something unintelligible. Might have been another “fuck you.”
“I never wanted to be king,” Ramses murmured quietly, as if to himself. “All I’ve ever wished for…”
He trailed off and was silent again, simply gazing out the window, lost in his own thoughts.
Maximus knew that there was hardly anything to see outside as they sped down the almost entirely deserted roads. Even with their vampire vision that sharpened in the night, they were moving too fast to see anything distinctly.
But Ramses continued to stare out the dark tinted windows unblinkingly, as if mesmerized by the scenery.
Maximus turned back around to face the front, exchanging a concerned look with his Mate.
It was fortuitous that they’d arrived back at the Cove from their intel gathering just as Ramses was heading out. As such, they caught their king leaving the Cove by himself, without the escort of even one Sentry. Maximus was immediately livid at the danger Ramses put himself in without thought to consequences, but Ramses brushed it off.
After that, it had taken sheer stubbornness on Maximus’ part to convince the king for him and Ariel to attend him. Less as “protectors” than observers. If things went to hell, at least they had the upper hand of being able to transform into their animal forms—a panther and a tiger—to make a speedy getaway into the surrounding woods.
As for Ramses himself…
The king seemed determined to stand and fall on his own merits. He would not be making any kind of getaway regardless of outcome.
On the bright side, Anya had indicated that she would only be bringing two attendants herself, her Champion and her Second in Command. She wanted to keep this Challenge on the downlow, she said. But Maximus understood from Devlin that she’d issued it brazenly in front of half of the Dark noble houses and several other North American queens.
Taking precautions, as soon as the three of them had settled into the armored SUV, Maximus had requested, through digital channels, that several loyal Dark houses and their guards be on standby at the scene of the Challenge. In addition, he alerted Rhys and Anastasia to return to the Cove as soon as possible. Their ETA was about an hour after Maximus’ group had left. Ryu was still abroad, so he couldn’t come back fast enough. He’d been briefed on the Challenge, however, and knew to be on alert for any news.
Just to be triply safe (because Maximus took his role as Commander extremely seriously, especially when he had a kamikaze king on his hands), he notified his father’s enclave in the Yukon Territory as well. The Tiger King was too far away to join in the fight if all hell broke loose, at least not this particular battle, especially since he chose the hinterlands for his Kind to stay out of such intrigue. But Maximus knew that if he ever needed his aid, Goya wouldn’t hesitate to lend it.
Maximus was certain that Anya would have her own contingents observing the event. If things didn’t go her way, these observers might decide to join the fray and take matters into their own hands. He needed to be prepared.
After all, it wasn’t every day that one vampire ruler Challenged another.
Records must be made.
History must be witnessed.
Maximus just prayed that the Fates would be on the side of the righteous this time.
*** *** *** ***
Ramses couldn’t get the dream out of his head.
He seldom recalled the night he Claimed Ashlu as Mate. His mind knew to erect shields around this particular memory.
It was his greatest triumph and his deepest shame.
He’d won, but he’d done it pretending to be someone else. As such, his victory had been hollow and bittersweet. Over time, he would learn that the sweet was ephemeral, while the bitterness lasted an eternity.
When Ashlu had discovered his deception, she’d been implacably wroth. She’d torn into him verbally, physically, drowning him in vitriol. He’d let her; it was her due. He’d bled for her on the battleground to win her, and he bled for her in their private quarters, letting her cut him, bite him, hit and kick him to act out her fury.
He thought he could wait her out. Eventually she’d tire and realize that though he’d lied to her, their Mating was for the best in the end. Because no one would ever love her, support and protect her as well as he could.
He was right in this, but he was also wrong.
He learned the hard way over the millennia that followed, that just because he remained faithful to Ashlu, loved her and did everything in his power to appease her, she did not return his feelings. And because he betrayed her by tricking her into Mating a Fallen, she didn’t even bother to keep up the original pretense that she loved him, not even a little.
It had taken Ramses a very long time before he began to admit to himself, though never out loud, that Ashlu had never loved him at all.
She certainly didn’t help him learn this lesson quickly, because she played games just to torture him. For a time, sometimes months and years, she’d act as if she’d forgiven him. She’d treat him sweetly like she used to do in the early years. But just when he settled into peacefulness and complacency, she’d lash out again.
Sometimes, she pulled away from him slowly, acting as if he’d done something specific to displease her, that it was all his fault. Other times, she’d upend his world abruptly, spewing hateful words and using his physical and emotional need for her against him. Because they were Mates and depended on taking each other’s sex and blood for survival, Ramses was confused even more.
How could a female take him into her body, the female that he loved above all else, to whom he gave everything of himself—how could that female not feel anything for him in return? Not even a little affection and care?
She certainly used him well. Hating him and craving him coexisted in parasitic harmony. The more she desired the pleasures of his body and blood, the more she hated him. Conversely, the more she hated him, the more insatiable her appetites.
Thus, sex became a weapon to him, to be used against him, and which he used against her to make her crave him more, even if he could never succeed in making her love him.
Three thousand years…
Their destructive push and pull played out like a farcical Greek tragedy. The gods themselves could not have been so stubborn (on his part) and bitter (on her part). He helped her build her empires, so she “kept him around.” But she was quick to remind him that he served only two purposes for her: One, to do his duty and support her bid for becoming the Queen of all Kinds. And two, to wait upon her pleasure so that she could fuck him and feed from him whenever she wanted.
She’d destroyed all records of his origins and removed all details about her Dark Consort from the history tomes. She even executed the Consul, the Commander, and all other witnesses who knew of how she acquired him in the first place when he was still a babe.
He’d helped her do it.
He thought that if he erased all trace of his ignoble Pure and freakish Elemental lineage, Ashlu would eventually forget his origins as well. Perhaps over time, she’d look upon him without disdain at best, hatred at worst.
But she never forgot or forgave.
Because she knew how to hurt him the most, she flaunted an endless parade of males that she took to bed. She fucked them right in front of him sometimes. Such scenes always ended in blood and ashes when he killed the males she rutted with, but she only laughed at him when he resorted to violence. She could always recruit more.
At some point, Ramses’ heart began to calcify and harden against his Mate’s endless schemes to humiliate and hurt him. Toward the end, he no longer killed every male who touched the queen. There was no point.
And when they came together, when he spent himself inside of her to give her body what it needed, when he took her blood and she took his, these moments of intimacy became a rote, clinical task to carry out for the sake of prolonging both their lives. He no longer cared for her pleasure, and she had hardly ever taken care of his.
In so many ways, he existed simply to feed her and fight for her; he no longer lived.
Then, one day, he discovered that not living was still different from wanting to die. It was the day she brought home a particular Pure Blood Slave that taught him this—
A Blood Slave who looked exactly like the disguise he’d taken that day when he won her.
A Blood Slave she looked upon with an unquenchable lust he’d never before seen in her eyes. For it was accompanied by something both softer and fiercer and infinitely possessive—something like love.
He recognized that look, because that was the way he used to look upon Ashlu himself.
Thus decided, that death was preferable to witnessing the only female he’d ever given himself to, give herself to someone else, he’d taken her one last time, pouring all of the feeling that was left in him into her. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly. He gave everything he had.
And when he was done, that very night, he finally, once and for all, walked away.
He hadn’t known where he was headed, and he hadn’t cared. The farther he trekked, the longer he lived without her, the heavier his body became, and the more his legs and feet dragged. His powers, too, declined from lack of use. And even more from lack of heart and soul.
Dark Mates were not meant to survive without each other. The dissolution of the Bond could end in death or insanity. He did not know how Ashlu fared without him, and for once he didn’t care. All he knew was that his own body was breaking down, his Elemental Gift seeping out of his fingertips like the rest of his strength.
Until one day, in a faraway land that would become the kingdom of Egypt, he fell to his knees upon the hot desert dunes. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath. Day after day, night after night, he waited for his immortal body to shut down. Slowly, he sank deeper into the sands, which filled his body the way air once did.
And Prince Hulaal, “Precious Stone,” turned into something akin to his namesake, buried leagues deep under the earth.
Then, a millennium later, in the year thirteen twenty-five B.C., a young queen’s tears trickled into the sands that sifted into the earth in which he’d entombed himself.
And he reawakened at last.
The human woman had been grieving her murdered husband in the secrecy of darkness. Enemies surrounded her from every corner; she didn’t know what to do. She thought, in fact, that she wouldn’t even survive the night.
He’d risen from the quick sands like a god, and to her wide, frightened, awe-struck eyes, perhaps he was exactly that.
She’d been praying for a savior, she told him in her strange foreign tongue. She needed him, as no one ever had before.
So he answered her prayers.
The young queen’s name was Nefertari.
From that point on, he assumed the role of her dead husband, yet no one dared to gainsay him despite his much altered appearance from the slain pharaoh. He was inhumanly tall and muscular, where Nefertari’s husband was small and thin. He was perfection incarnate, his body seemingly carved from stone, where the real king had been far from handsome, his frame weak and hunched.
The resourceful queen declared that Ra had come to earth as her husband in the empire’s time of need, strengthening his physique, gifting him with godly magnificence. Thus, he became known for a few brief human years as the Ozymandias in Greek, “Chosen of Ra.” And later, when historians recorded his military campaigns that stretched the empire of Egypt to the farthest corners of earth, he was called “Ramses the Great.”
In truth, Ramses had stayed with and protected Queen Nefertari for but a handful of years. Only long enough to eliminate all of her internal spies and enemies and build the empire’s strength. They’d agreed from the start that he would leave when the dust settled and her husband’s throne was secure, when she found another man strong enough to take his place, building on the foundation he left.
They’d agreed, but she still pleaded for him to stay. The beautiful young queen had fallen in love with him, she confessed.
But Ramses’ heart could no longer be reached; it remained an unfeeli
ng, heavy stone within his chest.
And so it stayed ever since. Right to this day, in modern America.
But something had changed.
Ramses inhaled deeply and clenched his jaw involuntarily.
His red-headed little librarian had cried herself to sleep.
He’d watched her on the video screen, had zoomed in on her sex-flushed cheek and seen the wetness clumping her feathery eyelashes, making dark crescents on the silky skin. Tear after tear, she silently cried, the crystalline liquid sliding over the curves of her face to plop from her chin into the long pillow she hugged to her body like a life raft.
She looked like a lonely, neglected child, cuddled into such a small forlorn ball in the middle of the gigantic bed. The occasional sniffles and oddly adorable hiccups didn’t help.
Ramses felt like the worst sort of ogre to have caused her unhappiness.
She wasn’t the first female to cry because of him. Not by a long shot. But she was the first female whose tears actually affected him. Ashlu had never cried. She hadn’t felt anything strong enough to shed tears where he was concerned. Not even in pretense
He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t like that he cared at all.
So he distracted himself by moving the Challenge up by an hour after notifying Anya of his decision. One, the element of surprise might put a kink into whatever trap she was setting. Two, he was hankering for a good, blood-splattering, bone-cracking fight. He hadn’t found release in days, not since he came in Eveline’s hot, tight, red-lipped mouth. The tension he felt inside rivaled a volcano on the eve of eruption.
He wanted Eveline, wanted her with a vengeance. He wasn’t used to denying himself. Not unless it was business. But everything about Eveline, and with Eveline, felt personal. And Ramses wanted and wanted and wanted…
He wanted to explode.