by A D Seeley
“Where are you guys?” That was Tracker…and he sounded worried.
“We’ll have to continue this later,” Inac whispered. She knew it was a promise. And the part of her that wanted to sleep with him couldn’t wait.
“I’ll go out now,” he was continuing. “You should stay in here until you’ve calmed down.”
She nodded. He was right. He was breathing quickly too, but not to the degree that she was. After all, he’d done this before; she hadn’t.
As soon as he was out of the tent, she heard him say, “Shh. Hara’s still asleep.”
“Oh, you guys were taking a nap, were you?” Crystal asked, obviously teasing.
“Well I did drive for fifteen hours followed by setting up camp all by myself. I figured I would try to catch a few Zzzs while dinner cooked.”
“Did you get any?” she heard Ji ask, obviously insinuating something close to exactly what they had really been doing. Still obviously meaning something else, he said, “Zzzs, I mean?”
“Not much, what with you guys shouting all over the place,” Inac said, a smile in his voice.
Now that she had calmed down herself, she walked outside, giving a fake yawn and stretch to go with Inac’s story.
“Is dinner ready yet?” she asked as innocently as possible.
When she looked over for an answer, she found Inac sitting next to Ji on one of the logs by the fire—which was now an actual fire with flames—her fake yawn freezing in place as confusion set in. It was odd because Inac looked like he had Asian genes in him. Faint, but still present. He had never looked that way to her before…and she should know; she fantasized and dreamed about him 24/7.
She sat across the fire from the two guys, who were busy laughing at each other’s slightly crude jokes—actually, with the way they were laughing, she knew they were extremely crude and that she just didn’t get them.
Finally, Inac asked, “What? You keep looking at me weird.” She hadn’t realized that she’d been staring.
“Nothing…. It’s just….”
“Just what?”
“Are you part Asian?”
He laughed. “Hara, I’m part everything.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Really.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Well, I wouldn’t manage that, now would I? I’m just a product of my genetics.”
It made her curious about his parents. If he looked the way he did, what did they look like?
“At least they’re good genetics,” she said.
He laughed again, his eyes bright and carefree. “The best!”
“Better than mine?” she asked, pretending like her feelings had been hurt.
“Well, second best then,” he said, the fire sparkling back at her in his eyes.
“So mine are the best?” she teased.
“Best I’ve ever seen.” He was serious, feeding her a line that would have gotten him a kiss if they weren’t on opposite sides of an enormous, crackling and spitting fire.
“And yuck!” Tracker interrupted as he sat down next to her. “Remember the deal?”
“But we weren’t being too boyfriend/girlfriend gross!” she said.
“You were when we’re getting ready to eat.”
“You don’t think I have the best genes?” she pouted.
Tracker turned red, making everyone else laugh.
“That’s not what I meant….”
She giggled before hugging him and kissing his cheek. “Oh, Track, I love you so much. You’re so much fun to tease.” At that, his flush deepened.
Because he was acting so weird, she kept staring at Tracker for a moment, but he was avoiding her gaze. As she did, out of the corner of her eye, she could see Inac checking on their food that he’d set in the ashes at the edges of the fire. When she looked back over at him, he was looking up at Track too, giving him a small, pitying smile. Looking back at Track, she noticed him return Inac’s smile, though she couldn’t tell what it said. The boys finally seemed to be bonding. Maybe at the end of this trip they would be good friends. Then she could act however she wanted to with Inac and Track wouldn’t oppose.
“I want a picture,” she declared, trying to banish the serious thoughts from her mind.
“Ugh…” they all groaned.
“Another one?” Track complained.
“Yes. I want one of all of you,” she said, keeping her tone clipped so that they would let her take another one. She’d been taking pictures since the sun had come up during their drive. She’d brought plenty of memory cards, though—she loved taking pictures. One of her favorite things to do in her spare time was scrapbooking. “Please?” she said, pouting. She knew they wouldn’t be able to resist.
And she’d been right. Soon, her boyfriend and three friends were all huddled together, their arms around each other as she took a picture. As she did, a wonderful feeling flowed through her. Inac was in the middle with one hand around Crystal’s waist with Ji on the other side of her, and another arm around Tracker. The sight brought tears to her eyes. This was her family. And she loved them so much.
Maybe, when she married Inac one day, Track would even be her maid of honor—or whatever—at their wedding. For some reason, she just knew that she would be Inac’s next wife. His last wife. The only wife that would matter because she would be the only one he really loved. The one he married, not out of commandment or convenience, but because he loved her.
And she loved him. With every day she learned something new about him. Someday, she’d have the whole picture of who he was. And for that, she truly couldn’t wait.
Chapter Sixteen
***
Inac got into the two-person sleeping bag, moving to pull Hara into his arms. She was already asleep—everyone was—but he’d had to calm his mind first. No matter how much he’d tried to meditate, it still wasn’t clear; faces were swirling through the eddies in his mind, continuously circling. But he hadn’t slept now for over a day and would just have to try.
He closed his eyes, pulling Hara’s back into his chest as he spooned her, breathing in her hair, which was loose, falling like starshine around her. She smelled good; a comforting smell. The scent clinging to her was innocent: vanilla and jasmine with a hint of something intoxicating; something that reminded him of an Indian marketplace.
Concentrating on the unknown undercurrent helped the eddies still somewhat, though a few faces continued their heathen dance through his mind. Finally, his mind settled on a scene, on one man, as Inac fell asleep….
…Cain’s great, midnight black steed reared up as lightning flashed around them, Cain’s inky hair whipping behind him like a comet on its way to Earth to bring about the apocalypse. The wind battered the rain against his flesh like thousands of needles pricking him, attempting to draw as much blood from him as he’d extracted from others. Especially recently. This particular life he was living, under the alias of Vlad III Draculea, was full of rivers of the sweet, sticky substance.
Attempting to calm his steed, Idimmu—demon in Sumerian—Cain glanced to the west, where fields blanketed the landscape as far as he could see. However, instead of food, the crops consisted of men, women, and children, their lifeless bodies held upright by the stakes stabbed through their anuses and up through their mouths. Such was the way he punished those not loyal to him.
It was interesting, the circumstances that had brought him to this point. A few years ago he had settled down in Rome as a noble by the name of Arturo working as a physician, though he rarely saw patients—usually only when they would further his research into the body. There he’d had a wife, Quintillia, and a son, Arturo II. Quintillia had been beautiful, the most handsome woman in all of Rome, but she’d also been very demanding of him.
Even now, in this colorless place, he could see her slender form dressed in her favorite violet-blue silk body-hugging dress over a cream silk chemise, which always came out in folds at her elbows because her hands were eternally c
lasped together in front of her, the only outwardly evidence that she was cross with him. Her hair the color of Spanish soil was always set into thick spirals tamed by cream ribbons of silk intertwined with the hair as it flowed down her back. Even in his memories of her, she had her chin lifted in challenge, her voice nagging. He had bought her everything she could desire, all with one stipulation: she would leave him to his work and not bother him with anything trivial. She hadn’t kept her end of the bargain.
Although she’d been stern with him—her unusual-for-the-region blue eyes hooded whenever directed toward him—she had been extremely loving with their toddler son, lavishing so much attention on him that he’d become a needy child; the neediest he had ever fathered. He loved his son, but Quintillia had babied him to the point where he was completely dependent for everything, even more so than the average four-year-old.
Cain had become so tired of his life with her that, when he had received the angering news, a part of him had been grateful for the good excuse to leave. That had been the silver lining in a very dark cloud; a dark cloud that still irked him today, many years later. That was why he remembered everything so perfectly….
…“Tommaso Parentucelli,” his man, Alberto, shouted to “Arturo” as he walked through the enormous gold marble-laden room that housed Arturo’s personal office. It was there, in that glory, that he made the decisions that ruled the Mokolios. The decisions that sent men to murder or be murdered. Ironic, seeing as how it looked fit for a god, and only gods had the power over life and death.
“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?” he asked, not even glancing up from his papers.
“He’s the one being raised to the papal chair.”
Arturo finally looked up from his work, annoyed. Usually Alberto didn’t beat around the bush so much.
He looked to his servant’s eyes, expecting them to tell him what Alberto was hesitant to say, but just then Alberto’s eyes, which had begun to take on a milky sheen as he aged, were busy staring down at his liver-spotted hands, a sign that his man was nervous. Alberto didn’t get nervous easily. He’d been Cain’s man for anything he needed, whether that be for information or executions, since the man had been an urchin living on the streets. His withered old hands were a testament to them having been used as much as they had.
“Alberto,” he warned. “You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
His servant let out a ragged breath.
“He is the boy, sir,” he finally said.
“Am I supposed to know which boy you’re referring to?”
As though afraid that Arturo would kill the messenger—which he very likely might do—he answered, “The one you saved.”
The words brought him back to a scene he’d come across many years before. He’d been traveling the countryside and had ridden upon a grisly picture. Four or five men—gypsies—had been beating a young boy. Like a hero from a story, Cain had ridden in, chopped the men to pieces, and then picked up the small lad, rushing him to the nearest village. Once settled into a bed in the physician’s home, and being reassured that the boy would live, Cain had gone on his way, never having learned the child’s name.
“You’re sure?” he asked his servant.
“Yes, sir. He never spoke of it, but when I went through his personal belongings, I came across a scroll where he told of the painted giant who had saved him,” he said, nodding toward the tattoo hidden under Arturo’s luxurious tunic.
“So he is the boy, then,” Arturo snarled.
He slammed his knuckles against his solid marble desk, holding them there as he pushed down with all his might until they turned white. If what his servant had said was true, then he was responsible for all the good the boy had done that had brought him the papacy. Because he’d been kind, God had won an important battle.
“It would seem that no good deed goes unpunished,” Arturo hissed through his teeth.
He felt anger deep in his chest, rising like a tsunami after an earthquake until it swallowed him whole, demolishing every living thing. He had tried to be a decent person, and look where that had gotten him.
His entire body shaking with fury, he stormed from the room, every pounding of his feet echoing throughout the gigantic space.
When his livid feet took him to the stable, he demanded of the stable boy, “Saddle my horse!”
Arturo then stalked into the kitchen and ordered bags to be filled with provisions. Once done barking orders, he himself went to grab his sword and other such things he’d need to survive in the wilderness while he cooled off.
Once his massive obsidian steed was saddled, bags attached with provisions as well as the sword he’d made for himself centuries ago, Arturo galloped through the city and took to the country.
He didn’t know how long he rode, but it was numerous months. With each day that he’d ridden through the mountains, fields, and forests, with every slam of his horse’s giant hooves on the packed dirt roads, his rage had only heightened until he was a tenebrous pit of hate. God most likely now believed him to be weak. And if he was weak, then God would no longer take him seriously. One little act of kindness and thousands of years worth of work was undone.
But Cain knew the truth about himself, even if God didn’t. His kindness had been a fluke. He was still planning to undermine God any chance he got, which he would show God by doing anything necessary to prove that He had been wrong in allowing Cain to live. It was with such thoughts that he consciously let the animal that had overtaken him when he’d answered to Aemuth strike his mind, tearing away anything good in him with its razor sharp claws until any emotions that had separated him from the wild beasts were bloody shreds of pulp.
When the sky began darkening one evening, the eastern horizon a darker blue than the western horizon, he set up camp between a stream and a field—the perfect place to catch his dinner as well as giving him direct access to water. He’d just begun cooking the rabbit he’d slain on a spit when he heard the crackling of a dry twig; the sound of someone walking toward him.
He stood up and grabbed his unusually wide, oversized sword that he’d fashioned to be as long as a large child, readying himself for a fight. Not one other man on Earth could use this sword, because not one other man on Earth had his unique fighting style mixed up of styles from all over the world. Also, it was balanced for his height and weight perfectly, as well as for how his muscles were distributed.
“Who goes there?!” he hollered, aware that he would strike as an impressive figure in the firelight.
“Please! I mean you no harm!” a weak voice called out in Church Slavonic. From the dialect, he must be in Wallachia; perhaps even Transylvania.
Cain wasn’t able to contain his wry grin; Wallachia and Transylvania were both God-forsaken places. Maybe he should stay here for a few years. Alberto would have made up a story of “Arturo’s” death, as well as would take care of the Mokolios until he returned to take them back, so he was free to do as he pleased. And if all hell broke loose while he was gone, then he really didn’t care. It broke loose all the time. What was important was that Cain could always find a way to use the chaos to further his own devices.
“What do you want?” he called back to the malnourished figure that materialized from the darkness as it entered the small circle of orange light the fire gave off.
“I wish to share your fire,” the scrawny boy of no more than eighteen said. “Please?”
Cain scowled, lifting a lip in disdain. “You’re a peasant.” He refused to share a fire with someone of low class who was of no worth to him.
“No. I’m a prince.”
“A prince wouldn’t look as though he hadn’t eaten in years,” he spat. “And where is your horse? And your guard?”
“I’ve been a prisoner for many years. But I assure you, I am a prince. My name is Vlad III Draculea. My father was Vlad II Dracul of Wallachia, exiled to Transylvania.”
Cain had heard of Vlad II Dracul even before that fateful
evening. Years before, the Wallachian prince had given his two youngest sons, Vlad III and Radu, to the Ottoman sultan as payment of a vow he had made to be the sultan’s vassal. Cain had heard word since leaving his life of Arturo behind that the elder Vlad had been assassinated, and the eldest of his four legitimate sons, Mircea II, had been blinded by hot pokers and then buried alive around that same time. Such were the things that happened to Wallachian princes.
Their other brother, Vlad—princes were never very creative with the naming of their sons, which was why Vlad II had not one, but two sons who shared his name—had been left alone as far as Cain knew. But it was only because he was spineless and timid, and nobody would have seen him as a threat to their reign. And if he wasn’t a threat, then he wasn’t worth their energy.
“Do you have proof of this claim?” Cain asked, though he was beginning to believe he was being told the truth. If so, then this boy was the heir for the House of Drăculeşti and, therefore, had claim to the throne.
The thin boy reached out a bony hand to show him a crudely made silver ring on his finger; the crest of the dragon with a cross behind it that belonged to the Dracul family.
“So you are Draculea.” The son of Dracul was standing before him, wasting away.
The boy’s eyes turned toward the meat cooking over Cain’s fire, his mouth salivating at the sight. Gesturing toward the meat, Cain said, “Please, sit. I’m afraid I only have one small rabbit.” He hadn’t invited the prince to dinner to be nice, but more to see whether or not he could use Vlad for personal gain.
“My name is Arturo,” he told the boy, using the last name he’d gone by, though it no longer fit him, as he turned the rabbit over to cook the other side. He pulled his own long black hair behind him, tying it with a strap of leather so that he would no longer resemble the animal Aemuth, but the noble he had been so as to gain the boy’s trust. “I’ve heard of you, Vlad. I knew of your father.”