I chased my attendants away so that I could ready myself in time to be in position at the presentation. I could not afford to follow the lengthy, proper anointing procedures to make myself spiritually ready to be among the chosen. Those rituals all seemed so useless to me now, so meaningless next to my true feelings of love and desire for Aziza.
Despite my careless preparation and effort to arrive at the banquet square early, many others were in position before me, those of higher rank and family status whom I could not displace to be close to the Honored Ones. I stood three men back from the procession line. Had it been two, I may have been able to catch her eye when they walked past but, from my vantage point, I feared she would not see me.
A secluded balcony framed the courtyard above us, for the few in the inner sanctum who were able to withstand the fading light--and some were, though it was rare. Perhaps my mother was there, waiting to view my handiwork on the foreheads of those I painted.
I silently hoped she was not present, that she would not see me and sense the desperation that must be hanging around me like a cloak of despair. My full intention was to become as inconspicuous as possible, until the time that Aziza and I were free of this place. My mother was the only one of rank who would notice me.
The braziers were lit simultaneously at the four corners of the square, and the crowd surged slightly in anticipation. The most talented musicians in our kingdom played on one side of the platform and the 100 Chosen walked in time to the rhythm, ready to be displayed before us all.
The men wore hand-embroidered tunics with their family crests at the center of their chests. The women were veiled in the customary ceremonial garb, with the symbols of their heritage hand sewn along the edges of their wraps, forming dazzling and complicated patterns in the draped material.
In my mind, each woman who passed my position in the line was Aziza. She would never be able to see me in this throng! If she believed I abandoned her or had somehow decided to break my promise, I would die a thousand times for every minute of uncertainty that she should experience by my inept, late arrival.
The men nodded and accepted the thanks of those gathered, while the women kept their eyes demurely forward as the large procession made its way to the platform. All except one woman, who stole a glance at the first line of admirers every few seconds.
She was close to me, so close that I might have reached out to touch her hand if no one stood between us. I saw her searching eyes, and I was afraid for the daring she so openly displayed in front of everyone at the gathering. I knew then that she was far braver than I, and I realized I must do whatever I could to show her I was still her savior.
I slipped past the first man in front of me and, though he gave me a withering look, he did not challenge me when he saw that I was more than a serf vying for the view. The second bystander was broad-shouldered and massive, his feet planted well apart and solidly braced against the excited surge from the crowd behind him.
I tripped and fell.
My hand brushed her leg just as she passed and her eyes lit with recognition and hope. I had no way to tell behind her thick wrapping, but I knew she was smiling beneath the veil. I was so stunned by my action that I could not regain my feet and the front-runner in the position, who I had violated, sent a meaty hand down to set me right. He called me a clumsy oaf and the crowd laughed at the new look of horror in my eyes.
They did not know the true cause for my fear: that I had seen a shadow in the balcony above us, that I had seen the look of disapproval on my mother’s face as she abruptly left the viewing box.
Chapter Five
The velvet-clad beauty slowed her pace when she reached the warehouse district, apparently deep in thought. For a brief moment, he assumed she found herself reconsidering her situation. Amon was unable to sense any type of indecision in her posture, however, only a feeling of apprehension and dogged determination.
The building she cautiously approached was set back farther from the street than all the other collapsing structures that spotted the area in that dilapidated part of town. The streetlight nearest to the crumbling brick building was shattered and the shards of glass that evidenced its assassination still lay on the ground at the foot of the pole.
He was remarkably close to her now, close enough to read the crumpled piece of paper she had hastily shoved into her purse, and he matched the address on the page to the filthy building in front of them.
He watched with poignant fascination as she set her hand over her chest in a visible effort to calm her beating heart, but he could hear it clearly and the sound was almost more than he could bear. The thought of her blood pumping so forcefully through her veins made him dizzy and nearly consumed him with desire.
It was then he heard the voice from within the dark warehouse.
“She’s outside,” one male hissed from deep within the maze of boxes and crates.
How could he know she was standing on the sidewalk, so far from his location?
Amon nearly lost his composure—a rare occurrence. But, he knew he must be sure of his suspicions before he sprang into action.
He scaled the side of the building easily and in perfect silence to stand on the tin roof directly above their heads so he could learn more. There were four of them and their heartbeats were slow, too slow to be mortal. Amon felt a wash of disbelief rush through his veins as he reacted.
“We can take her here, drink her now and no one would ever be the wiser,” a second voice followed closely on the heels of the first.
“If she tests in, she is meant for the sacrifice and the glory of our God. If she tests out, you can do with her as you please,” another asserted calmly, his tone as cold as the grave. They discussed the life of Amon’s beloved as though it were a cheap bottle of wine.
Was this what Fate had in store for him once more? He could barely reconcile the fact that they had truly come full circle in every way possible, including the impending death of his beautiful Aziza. He had to believe he was given this second chance to change the course of events, that this situation could never have occurred with all the same players, on the same stage, if he was not meant to save her this time.
“Come in, pretty one.” The cold voice took on a calculatingly warm tone, as if the owner had adjusted it in a way he thought would be pleasing to a mortal’s ears.
Every sound her footsteps made across the smooth cement floor echoed off each item in the warehouse and, though Amon could not actually see through walls, he was able to recreate the layout in his mind by the way the echoes fell. He was fully aware of the location of every box, table and chair. He also knew that the fourth immortal lurked in the shadows, not visible to her and therefore the most likely candidate to be dangerous.
“You have completed your tasks diligently, Alana, and have proven yourself worthy of this meeting. If you still wish to join our ranks, you must pass one final initiation to prove the purity of your intentions.”
“You told me over the phone that Edward Yale would be here for my last trial,” she said bravely, and Amon clearly heard the abrupt shuffle of the leader’s shoes as he stepped closer to his quarry, mere inches from her face.
He was torn with joy as he learned her name in this carnation, as lovely as any he could have imagined for her, but his pleasure was tempered by a spike of jealously when she asked for the presence of that other man.
Who was Edward Yale? Was he her husband, her lover or anyone that could be his rival?
It was not enough to hear her voice through the rusted tin any longer; he knew the situation was growing very dangerous and he needed to be in the room to fully protect her.
A grime-coated window stood halfway open at the building’s second story mark and Amon poured through it like the moonlight itself to crouch down low on the catwalk above them all.
Foolish young ones, he thought. They did not sense his presence in any way and did not even bother, in all their arrogance, to glance overhead one time to ascertain the safet
y of their gathering.
He nearly gasped aloud when the lead immortal of the group unsheathed a wicked looking needle and another tied a tourniquet around the upper part of her arm.
They were testing her blood! In his early days as an initiate, all sacrifices were selected from particular family lines known to be healthy and then raised from their birth until the feast in a clean fashion.
He supposed that with the advances of modern medicine and the loss of religious structure, the remaining devoted followers could be recruited at any age and tested for purity in a matter of minutes. Amon was astonished that he had not considered that possibility before, and he had researched all these centuries long for a cure.
He had to move quickly now, because he knew the outcome of the test would ensure her death, either by immediate execution at the hands of these clumsy followers or, later, when she was presented to the God for his feast.
He silently dropped down to the main floor behind the figure who watched from the shadows.
Was this man Edward? He wanted to tear out his throat on the spot, to watch his life bleed out on the cold cement floor as punishment for everything he might have done to Alana, for everything he might do.
It was too risky. Amon could not take the chance that this man was the reason Alana came here for answers, and he knew well what it was like to search for something that never came to fruition.
He subdued the stranger easily and quietly, laying him on the ground in a state of unconscious rest that would render him useless in the battle against the other three. When Amon was sure that he was incapacitated, he turned his attention to the leader, who was completing the test on a small table next to the chair where Alana sat, closely guarded by his accomplices.
“She tests in, just like I knew she would.” He turned to the chair with a triumphant look on his face.
Amon did not wonder at his victorious reaction for the results. In their day and age, it could not be easy by any means to find a supplicant with pure, innocent blood.
“We still want to taste her.”
Amon now had a face to match with the voice that suggested they drink Alana down before she entered the warehouse.
He marked this man in his mind as the first to die.
“Have you both gone mad?” the leader responded with a thunderous snarl, taking no care that Alana heard every word. “You’ll kill her. If you don’t, she’ll be tainted and useless for the feast.”
“There’s no one to know but the three of us.” The second fledgling smiled in a grisly manner. “Or maybe there’s no one to know but the two of us.”
The head of the little hunting party was certainly older and wiser than the challengers, but his eyes glanced nervously from side to side, as he seemed to consider the viability of their threat. He settled his gaze on the shadows where the fourth man would have been standing, perhaps wondering why he had not come to his aide.
Amon knew, then, that the young ones had no idea there was an observer in background, any more than Alana had.
The elder priest paused as he peered deeper into his accomplice’s hiding place, and his eyes widened with alarm when he finally realized that Amon was lurking there.
He dropped the vial that contained Alana’s precious blood and it shattered on the floor at their feet. The sweet smell of it reached Amon in the alcove and the rash, newly infected immortals visibly strained against the temptation, though their canine teeth grew sharper and their eyes began to shine with a predatory glow.
“Come to me now!” he demanded of them with authority as he stepped away from the girl.
They looked at each other, then to the pool of blood on the ground, before they came to him as he had asked. As they neared his guarded figure, the closer of the two tore into him as if he were a rag doll. They could not have known that he was trying to protect them from the mysterious intruder in the darkness, and now they never would.
The scent of the blood was intoxicating, primal, and Amon was filled with an irresistible desire to consume everyone and everything in the room.
Because he only drank on his deathbed, with the last breath of life in his body, he had never fully mastered control over the bloodlust that so many of the seasoned immortals had, and, in a way, he was as weak as the young ones who turned on their mentor.
He could not wax philosophical at the irony of it all, he had no time, because he was drinking the offenders dry before they saw his flash of pale skin and knew that death was finally calling for them.
They were lifeless husks in his hands in an instant. They weighed nothing and he instinctively tossed their fragile shells aside to look for more when he stumbled over Alana who remained frozen in the chair.
He stood before her, then, finally revealing himself in a way he could have never imagined during the countless times he had envisioned their first reunion. She regarded him with wide eyes, and he saw no emotional response as she fully absorbed the violent scene all around them.
The fresh rush of unaccustomed blood in his system set his senses on fire and he experienced a multitude of emotions at once, followed by a thousand reactions to them. He did not wish to frighten her and he could not begin to sense what she was feeling, but he could not prevent his shaking hand from reaching out to touch her lustrous black hair.
Though centuries of time had separated them, he could still feel those silken tendrils of her glorious mane as it trailed over her breasts and clung to the damp skin of his chest when they made love in the alcove so many lifetimes ago.
Amon had fully expected her to recoil from his touch, to fear him after the spectacle she had witnessed, but she did not shy away from his fingers as they wound their way through her hair with familiarity.
He hungered for her in every way possible and would have been her slave in an instant if she had asked. Ultimately, there were no words to explain his memories of everything that had passed between them at the temple, and he discovered that nothing but her name would come to his lips.
“Aziza,” he whispered as he drew her from the chair to bring her close against him.
She did not fight his pull; her gaze held his eyes and she stood just inches away, her arms loose at her side as their bodies came together in blood and moonlight.
“It’s Alana, you bastard,” she suddenly spoke with venomous anger, and her slack stance changed abruptly as she lashed a stinging slap against his cold, stunned face. “Do you have any idea what you have done to me tonight?”
Journal Entry:
I shall never forget the first words my mother said to me that evening before the feast. I should not have responded to her summons when it came so close to the ceremony, but a part of my training and loyalty to the God remained instilled within me and when I say my honor was my downfall, this is truly what I mean.
“Did you think I had not noticed your reaction to the slave girl when she came to the temple for marking?” Titum Sa’ hare stood over me with barely contained anger, but nothing my mother might say to me could shame me into changing my course.
I raised my head to face her fully, and the outline of her hand still burned against my cheek where she had slapped me with a rare and furious show of emotion.
“She is not a slave girl.” I said the words with pride, the first time I had openly defied a member of the priesthood and I vowed at that time to never regret it.
“We are all servants next to the glory of the God,” she hissed back, with such a low and deadly tone that it struck me far deeper than any clout would have done.“No mortal rank can supersede eternal life. Kings and queens may come and go, kingdoms will rise and fall into dust, and we will be there to witness as it comes to pass.”
“We?” I felt the first cold chill of terror deep within my bowels when she spoke in such a way. Though I tried to hide my reaction, my eyes flew to the doorway in panic as I immediately thought of escape.
She smiled then, her unforgettable and immaculate smile, as she circled the room to position herself be
tween me and the heavy curtains which led into the corridor. She was a priestess of the inner sanctum. She was the mother I had always dreamed of having… and she was standing between me and the woman with whom I was meant to share my destiny.
I sprang to my feet with what I thought was lightning speed. I knew I could not live with myself if I did not attempt, with all my power, to meet Aziza before the ceremony and take her away.
I knew I could not live without her if I failed.
Titum Sa’ hare took action before my eyes could register her movement and, for the first time since I entered the temple, I realized there was much more to the monstrous rumors of supernatural power in the priesthood than I had been willing to believe.
She easily snared me by the neck, lifting me with no visible effort and violently slamming me against the cold wall of her chambers. I slid down the gray stone, so slowly that my fall seemed to last forever. Her hand remained around my throat, a reminder that she still had me in her powerful grasp, should my stunned and breathless body find the will to fight once more.
“Please, Mother.” I looked straight into her luminous eyes and opened my heart to her with everything I had left. “Release me. Have you never known the truth of perfect love?”
She looked away for just an instant. I thought I saw a glimmer of memory, of longing in her gaze, and, for that moment, I held the fragile kind of hope that you do not dare draw breath for, in the event that it could change the course.
When she turned back, I saw tenderness in her eyes and my fledgling hope took flight as she nodded to me.
“I have known a love unlike any other. Your father and I were Chosen Ones at last turn, though we hid our union well. He died at the hands of the God, but, in the divine wisdom of our eternal existence, I lived. And a generous gift I received from our immortal Father, for you lived as well, Amon.”
I felt her fingers constrict around my airway as she lifted me into the air, as easily as she might a small child.
Blood Evolution (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 3