“I don’t know that, either.” Celeste looked at Jerusa, but her mind seemed to be somewhere else, somewhere far away. “I just feel that you should know. That you would understand what it means.”
Celeste opened her mouth as if she had more to say and Jerusa had the strangest feeling that it had something to do with her. But in the end, Celeste closed her mouth, a sad little shadow passing over the light of her eyes, then turned and vanished into the night.
Jerusa glanced over at her ghost companions to see what they made of all of this. Alicia ran a finger around her ear, making it clear that she thought Celeste was cuckoo-bananas. Foster’s face seemed chiseled out of stone, jaw tight, eyes narrowed. He knew something…or at least suspected something. But there was no use asking his opinion. He couldn’t share it if he wanted to. Ghosts are annoying like that.
“What was that all about?” Taos asked.
A tiny smile crept onto Shufah’s face. “I think we may have found an ally.”
Taos rolled his eyes. He wasn’t much for friends. “Yeah, but what was she blabbing on about?”
“If she’s right, then the Stewards—or at least the High Council—have fled the Roman sanctuary.”
“Why would they do that?” Thad asked.
“That’s a good question,” Shufah said. “I don’t believe we will have to wait long for the answer. I think our summons is about more than Thad and Jerusa, or even Kole.” Her voice took on the slow pondering tone of one lost in a dream. She shook herself and blinked away her thoughts. “Let’s go. We mustn’t keep our escorts waiting.”
Thad parked his Jeep in the garage, while Taos hid the ruined hard top in the woods. Then, they climbed into Taos’s Charger—Thad awkwardly pulling Debra Phoenix’s limp legs into his lap—and off they sped to the tiny airport outside of town.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Silvanus spent the daylight hours discussing many things with the Furies. He was moved by their story of being wronged by not only the brutal Stewards—who didn’t flinch at killing, even when it came to their own kind—but also the powerful Divine Vampires.
Unfortunately, where to find the other Divines was just as unknown to him now as before he met the Furies. All they held were rumors and vague mysteries they didn’t quite understand themselves. But it was their theory on how a blood drinker becomes a Divine Vampire that vexed him the most. The Furies believed the Stewards suspected the method, but had not yet perfected it.
“Can you imagine the calamity that would befall the world if the High Council of the Stewards were able to be reborn as Divine Vampires,” Tisiphone said. Alecto and Megaera nodded, their faces grave. “They fancy themselves gods already. I shudder to think what would happen if they actually became gods.”
The three looked on Silvanus with a kind of muted reverence (though Alecto held the only eyes to perceive him with).
“I told you, I’m not a god,” Silvanus said. “Neither are those that abandoned you to the cruelty of the Stewards.”
They spoke no more for a long time and when the sun vanished beneath the horizon the four of them walked out of the cave, passing amidst the lion pride, without even a growl of warning.
“Why are the lions so docile toward us?” Silvanus asked as they stepped out into the fresh night air.
The three smiled at him in unison and even after a whole day of witnessing their synchronized movements, it still caught him off guard.
“We don’t know,” Tisiphone said. “Normally we have to force our way in and out of the dens of beasts. They don’t much like the presence of other predators. It must be you.”
Silvanus didn’t argue. He turned and looked at the lionesses exiting the mouth of the cave to go on their nightly hunt. To his surprise, the large female that had stalked him—the one he had fed from—passed beside him, brushing against him with the flirtatiousness of a house cat. He had thought that he killed her, but it seemed he had only taken a taste of her life. How strange that he should end up in her daytime sanctuary.
A thought occurred to him just then. It was an epiphany of such simplicity that he felt foolish to admit that he never realized it before. He turned his head up, looking into the black canvas, speckled with the diamonds of the Milky Way, at the vastness of the universe, realizing his own minuteness and a laugh escaped him. He sensed the three watching him through Alecto’s eyes, listening to him through Megaera’s ears and it made him laugh all the more. A god, indeed. Would a god miss such an obvious detail?
It hadn’t just happened with the lioness. It had happened in the beginning, when he had first met Jerusa.
“Why do you laugh,” Tisiphone asked. “Is it for joy or madness?”
“Perhaps both.” He turned to face them. The beauty of the three and the tragedy of their story combined to make a potent elixir, intoxicating and sickening all at once.
“Has our wisdom brought you hope?”
“Indeed it has.” He felt almost giddy. “Know this, my dear Furies, you can count me forever as your friend. I will not abandon you in your time of need, as my kin have. And I vow to set right the pain brought upon you.”
The three smiled at him, though it seemed only to humor his kind words. It was alright if they didn’t believe his vow. It was true nonetheless.
“Where will you go from here?” he asked.
“Where the wind will take us.” It was Tisiphone that spoke, as always, but the words seemed to come from Alecto. “We will feed, then we will flee. We dare not linger, for the Watchtower of the Stewards perpetually seek us out.”
His heart reached out to them. Such a terrible life had been thrust upon them.
“Will you feed from me?” The question was such a natural impulse that Silvanus asked it before he knew it had formed on his tongue.
The three flinched in shock and stood with their mouths gaping. For a moment, he couldn’t tell if they were flattered or offended. Silvanus had the strangest sensation that the Erinyes would flee at any moment, taking to the darkness, scurrying into far flung caves. But they stood their ground, breathless as statues, watching him, measuring him through Alecto’s eyes.
“Why would you make such an offer?” Tisiphone asked.
“Is it such a terrible thing? Is it not a custom of the blood drinkers to share of themselves with those closest to them?”
The trio’s faces pursed. “You know that it is,” Tisiphone said. “But it is so much the more for us. To us, it is our survival.”
“Then I wish to contribute to your survival.”
The three of them smiled, their white fangs glittering like jewels in the darkness.
“If we accept your offer, what will happen to us?”
Silvanus shrugged his shoulders. “Very little, I suspect. You won’t burst into flames and rise from the ashes as a Divine Vampire, if that’s your thinking. My own fledgling is a blood drinker, just as you, though I must admit her abilities from the start are not to be winked at. I can only imagine what time will give her.”
The three stepped forward, tantalized by this revelation. “So, you wish to better arm us with your blood? Give us strength and power that centuries of blood have not already bestowed upon us?”
Silvanus threw up his hands in frustration. “Have you been so long alone that friendship has become an alien concept to you? All that I offer is myself. I have made this clear time and again. If you do not want what I offer, then I will thank you for your wisdom and be gone to finish my quest.”
“No, wait.” Tisiphone that spoke, but it was Alecto that threw up her hands in protest. “If we accept your offer of blood, then you must feed from us as well.”
“I must decline. I’m not much for blood. I tried it once and it nearly killed me.”
“To be part of our circle you must give as well as take. If you do not take from us, then you are our victim, not our friend. If we feed from you, you must feed from us.”
He thought of the little taste
of life he had taken from the lioness. Could he do it again? Take just a bit of life from each of the women without hurting them? “What if I can’t control it? What if I kill one of you?”
“That risk is always present,” Tisiphone said. “In all matters of love, is it not? It is the balance of give and take that binds beings together. It is not the passing of blood that join us three together, allowing one to use the senses of the other two. It is an act of love, of trust. Only by these intangible rungs can we hope to climb to a higher plane. To merge the natural with the divine.”
Silvanus wanted to rush to the women, take them in his arm and kiss them all. At the same, time the tiny ember burning within his heart, that spark of desire to avenge their injuries, burned as hot as the sun. He would restore these women, somehow give them back all that they had lost.
Silvanus nodded and the Erinyes stepped in close to him. Megaera stood to his left. Her dark skin smelled of the earth and the wind. He leaned in and kissed the short, rough hair atop her head. Tisiphone stood to his right. Her alabaster skin was as soft as silk. The wind whipped her red hair about, until she seemed to be wreathed by fire. He leaned in and kissed her forehead. Alecto stood before him. Her white hair cascaded over her shoulders, like the snow that blankets the great mountains. Her skin was so much like his own that he wondered if they had perhaps known one another in the distant, ancient days of their mortal lives. Alecto caressed his cheeks with her fingertips before pulling his face down so that her lips could touch his. The kiss, though long and tender, didn’t carry with it any semblance of love. Silvanus looked deep into Alecto’s eyes and realized she had not meant the kiss as an act of seduction, but as a token of his union with the three.
Silvanus felt lightheaded, drunk by the heat of the Erinyes surrounding him and almost laughed. He closed his eyes, imagining another kiss. One full of passion and love. A kiss powerful enough to bind two souls together. A kiss with Jerusa.
The earth beneath his feet, charged by the sun’s scouring light, emanated with a pulsing heat, rising and falling as though singing to the stars above. The wind, dry and brittle, buffeted them with dust and grit, as it chased itself through the tall, undulating grass and around the ancient boulders. The partial moon, already nestled deep in the inky night, tugged at them with invisible hands too weak to fend off earth’s gravity. The lionesses cut the night with a series of roars that echoed far over the open ground, bringing a heavy silence afterward, as all other lesser beings scrambled to hide.
Silvanus, still with his eyes closed, felt the turning of the planet as one might feel the churning of a vessel tossed on the sea. No place was hidden to him. It was all laid open like a map resting before him. With a thought, he could whisk himself to any point in the world. But where to go? Having unlimited choices was just as binding as having no choice at all. He longed to see Jerusa again. So strong did this urge surge through him that he had to force it away lest he vanish from the midst of the Furies and not fulfill his promise to them.
Silvanus placed his arms around the women, drawing them in even closer. Megaera and Tisiphone took him by his arms and placed their mouths on the crooks of his elbows. Their tiny, but sharp fangs pierced his skin. He flinched at the sensation, not because of the pain, but because of the acute rapture it brought. Alecto leaned in close, nuzzling his neck like a lover. Her hot breath prickled his skin with goose-bumps. She clamped her mouth down tight upon his neck, her fangs sliding through with little resistance.
He wondered in drowsy half-thoughts whether they had the power to kill him. If he didn’t resist, allowed them to take all of his blood, would his soul fly free of its eternal prison, or would he blink out of existence like a flash of lightning? It was a tantalizing thought, to die, to search out what was beyond, but he didn’t believe it would be so simple for him to escape this life.
The vampires pulled the blood from him in slow, measured drinks, as though they were savoring every drop. They clutched him tight, their powerful fingertips kneading him as clay. Rolling groans, like the chuffing of tigers, rolled up from their throats. The wounds in his neck and arms kept trying to heal shut, but he willed them to stay open, to give all that the women desired.
An emptiness, a pang so much more that hunger, opened up within him. He thought of the day he had awakened in Purgatory, that cold, sterile fortress under the mountain. How that emptiness, that black hole had consumed him. He had taken four lives before he had come to himself.
He had promised the three that he would feed, too. A black and crippling fear rose up in him. What if he couldn’t stop? What if he killed all three of them? Silvanus thought of the lioness again, thought of Jerusa. He hadn’t killed them. He wouldn’t kill the Erinyes, either.
Silvanus concentrated on their heartbeats, not the least surprised to find the three pumping in perfect time, joined in a single percussive melody. He reached out and touched them, not with is flesh, for they were already in contact, but with the gnawing pang within his bones. The three gasped in unison as if surprised by a sharp electrical current, but not one relinquished her bite. A rush of power flowed into him and it was all he could do to not take a gulping drink of their collective life-force. He reined back the greedy black hole, but it was like holding a great, wriggling sea serpent.
Silvanus focused the dark hunger toward Megaera instead of allowing it to drink from all three. He gave it only a heartbeat’s worth of time then forced it over to Tisiphone. Another pulse and he pushed it over to Alecto. On and on he did this, cycling one, two, three then back again, moving with the rhythmic cadence of their unified heartbeat. After a time it became no more than a reflex, a product of muscle memory.
Though his eyes were closed, Silvanus could see the aura of life, a resplendent river of sentient light, as it cycled from each of the women into him, then back out through his blood. It was a perpetual circle of energy, giving and taking in equal quantities and he wondered if it might truly go on forever. But no sooner had the thought filled his mind, the Furies dropped away from him with a collective gasp.
Silvanus rocked back on his heels, swooning from the sudden break in contact. He managed to keep his feet, but the Furies were splayed about him on their backs, staring wide-eyed—two with black, empty sockets—up into the night as the dry breeze fluttered their tattered garments.
The wounds in Silvanus’s arms and neck healed immediately, not even a drop of blood spilled. He was all at once weak and energized. He could feel his mysterious body working rapidly to replace the blood the women had taken and within seconds the swoon was gone.
He smiled in the darkness, both amazed and a bit embarrassed at what he had discovered. He could feed without killing. It didn’t have to be all or nothing.
More than that, though, it pointed to why he hadn’t yet found the other Divine Vampires.
For six months he had been searching the most solitary places of earth. The Divine Vampires hadn’t been seen in centuries and Silvanus had assumed that they were in hiding, much like the Erinyes were.
The Divine Vampires were not in hiding, but moving about in plain sight, living among the mortals.
Silvanus thought to expound his epiphany to the Erinyes but the three crept toward one another in a silent, dreamlike trance. Without a word or a glance toward him, they formed their tight triangle and began feeding from each other.
Silvanus couldn’t help but feel a little sting of rejection. He couldn’t see through Alecto’s eyes, nor hear through Megaera’s ears, nor express his thoughts through Tisiphone’s mouth. But his blood would make them strong, more so than they already were. If it gave them the power to avenge their eyes and ears and tongues, then Silvanus would not mourn the blood he gave.
Silvanus turned his thoughts toward the other Divine Vampires. There were ten, at least, scattered somewhere around the globe. On the night he had awakened, while the agents of Purgatory attacked him upon the deserted cliffs, he had focused his mind on finding another like himself. He h
ad skipped through time and space landing in a small town, where he had found the two blood drinkers, Kole and Taos. He had always thought his gift had brought him to the blood drinkers because they were the closest thing to what he was. But now he wondered if he hadn’t just missed the mark a bit. Maybe there had been someone else close by that night. Someone he had mistaken for a human.
Silvanus closed his eyes. He focused his thoughts on finding another Divine Vampire, specifically on the one that had been hiding in Jerusa’s town. There he left the Furies feeding upon each other and vanished without even stirring the dust.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A wave of nausea hit Jerusa as they pulled into the tiny airport parking lot. They drove through a gate marked restricted and out onto the runway. The private jet sat alone on the tarmac, waiting for them like a hungry dragon. She had never flown before—Debra Phoenix wouldn’t allow such a dangerous mode of travel, even if it was statistically better than driving. She didn’t allow much driving, either, which was why Jerusa hadn’t seen much more than a walking tour of her own small town and maybe a few of the more ritzy hospitals.
Jerusa thought that becoming a vampire would drive out most of the phobia’s her mother had selectively placed inside her head over the years, but it turned out that flying was still a tender spot for her.
“Isn’t this a bad idea?” she asked Shufah.
It was Taos that answered: “I guess that depends.” He flashed her one of his mischievous smiles, the kind that not only showcased his perfect set of teeth, but also filled his eyes with a pale glow.
Thad made a not-too-subtle huffing noise, shifted under the weight of Debra’s legs and turned his gaze out the side window. Thad hated that smile, really wasn’t much of a Taos fan, truth be told. He had his reasons. Being infected by Taos’s bite was one, but not the only one.
Jerusa wasn’t really in the mood for whatever joke Taos had in store, but she needed something to break the awkward level of testosterone building up between Thad and Taos.
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