by L. C. Davis
"The war is coming," I murmured. "Prentice will figure out I'm a dud."
"Then maybe he'll lose interest," said Victor. "Something tells me he'll figure it out even sooner if you die."
"He's right," said Remus. "If you're as sorry for what happened as I know you are, then you owe it to me to at least stick around. You can't make it right in the grave."
I watched him, swallowing hard. "Remus..."
"I mean it. I've already lost my father," he said softly. "I won't let him take you, too. Promise me."
It took an embarrassingly short amount of time for me to give in. I had never been able to say no to Remus under the best circumstances. My voice failed me again, so I nodded.
"Now that that's settled," muttered Victor. "I have some work to do on plan B."
"If I was plan A, what the hell is plan B?" I asked warily.
Victor gave me a weary half-smile. "Fairytales and superstition."
Clara groaned and pressed a hand into her temple. "I can't believe we're even considering giving Selene what she wants, assuming she even exists."
"She exists," Remus said in a somber tone. "It was always going to come down to this, and she knew it. In the end, our only hope is me making an impossible choice and trusting that she'll use it to protect us like she said she would."
"Have you?" Clara asked, casting a nervous glance in Victor's direction. "Made a choice, I mean."
Remus and Victor shared a knowing glance and I realized that plan B wasn't quite as spontaneous as they were letting on. "I guess we'll just have to find out on the harvest moon."
Chapter 26
REMUS
"You're sure about this?" asked Sebastian.
I gave him a weary smile. "Just as sure as I was when you asked five minutes ago and I'm going to be even surer the next time."
He sighed. "Just making sure you're...sure."
I leaned up to kiss him and caressed his cheek. It was both a gesture of comfort and consolation for the final blow of betrayal Victor and I were about to deal him. At least when all was said and done, Victor would be alive and around for Sebastian to forgive him. "Everything will be fine. You'll see."
Those puppy dog eyes I had yet to find the depth of were filled with doubt, but he gave me a strained smile and nodded. "Yeah, it will."
This was a hail Mary as far as Sebastian was concerned. Only Victor and I knew the truth, and only I knew all of it. Arthur couldn't save us from the other hunters, and it was likely that one of the only things preventing them from attacking us was the fact that they had no idea he was practically human. Hunter still had hope that he could reason with Selene to give him the power he needed to cast a large-scale ward against the hunters. It was either a testament to his faith or his desperation. Maybe a little of both.
"I hate to interrupt, but the moon is almost at its apex," Hunter said, looking up at the skylight above the temple. It matched the one above the scrying room. The stone altar had already been dusted and garnished with white rose petals, but I was the main dish.
Sebastian took a step back to let Hunter come up beside me. Clarence was standing not far off, his ever vigilant guardian. Victor was standing off to the other side of the altar and I envied his ability to look so calm and disaffected in what he thought was the face of certain death. At least I had a valid reason to be nervous. As far as the others knew, I was about to make a choice that would fate an entire species to extinction and as far as Victor knew, he was probably going to be included in their ranks.
Arthur was sitting in one of the pews, rubbing his arm and looking unfortunately human. His eyes met mine for an instant before he looked away. He still felt guilty for failing us, to put it in his words. As much as I wanted to reassure him that I had never been more relieved than the moment he rose from the grave fully human and fully himself, I couldn't. I settled for what I hoped was a convincing smile and nodded to Hunter. "I'm ready."
"Good," he said, reaching into the wide sleeve of his robe for his familiar athame. Alex was behind him now, a slender hand resting on the young priest's shoulder to guide him as he drew the blade along his lifeline and let the blood trickle into a bowl of water. "Holy blood falls on sacred water." He reached out for my hand and I held it still as he sliced my palm. The pain barely even registered. It didn't feel like it was my skin being cut. "Mingle now with the blood of the hybrid child, of blood and fang, both..." He frowned, hesitating. "Both..."
Alex leaned in to whisper in his ear, "Both son and daughter."
Hunter nodded even though I was the only other person in the room capable of seeing the ghost. From what I could tell, Alex's presence was more tangible to him than it was to me now that they had been training together. Hunter learned fast. It was a comfort to know that he would be around, lending some much needed spiritual guidance to counter the twins' more heavy-handed approach to problem solving.
"Both son and daughter," Hunter echoed with greater certainty. Sebastian shifted uncomfortably. He hadn't reacted as badly as I had feared to news of my beastform's less than binary sex, but if my plan worked, he would never have to see me that way.
My blood trickled into the water and began to swirl as it mixed with Hunter's. The clouds parted overhead and moonlight reflected off the surface of the water, growing brighter until it became blinding. Hunter and I both shielded our eyes and I heard Arthur cry out in alarm.
"What the hell," muttered Sebastian.
"Think a bit further north, handsome." Selene's voice echoed through the room and the light faded just enough to make out the shape of her statue at the head of the temple.
Except it wasn't a statue. She had the same beatific expression on her face and the same glowing skin, smooth as stone, but her marble robes had turned to silk and her eyes glowed with life. She looked the same as she had in my shared vision with Hunter and, just as he had then, the priest fell to his knees.
Selene reached out to him and Clarence lunged before I could. She cast her hand in his direction and sent him flying back into one of the pews next to Arthur. "My, you really are a better breed of guard dog, aren't you?" she mused, reaching down to touch Hunter's forehead. "I'm almost jealous."
Hunter's head jerked up and he snapped out of whatever trance he had been in immediately, scrambling to his feet.
"You're the one who did this to him, you bitch," Clarence snarled, straining as if something was keeping him pinned in his seat.
"I gave him plenty of chances," Selene said, her tone silken but icy. "There are consequences for disobeying the gods."
"I can't believe it," Victor murmured. He was staring at her, every bit as transfixed as Hunter had been a moment ago. He took a few shuffling steps forward and fell to his knees. "You're real."
Sebastian scowled. "Can we just get on with it?"
Selene glided across the marble floor, taking Sebastian's face in her hands. Possessiveness flared up inside of me, but I knew better than to act on it. "My, isn't this a surprising twist? And here I thought you were the devout one and your brother was the atheist. Or did I get it the wrong way around? It's so hard to tell you twins apart."
Sebastian shirked away from her and to my relief, she didn't retaliate. "I just want this over as quickly as possible. You've caused a huge mess for all of us and we don't have time left to waste."
"You mean the hunters," she said knowingly, running her hand along the stone table before her fingers trailed up my arm and swept across my cheek. "Fortunately for you all, I've got a secret weapon that makes the Patriarch's army of abominations look like a barrel of toy soldiers."
"I think the monkeys are the ones in the barrel," Sebastian muttered.
"Whatever," she said, tilting my chin up. "My, you really are my finest creation. There's only so much you can experience in a vision," she purred, her lips hovering an inch away from mine. I was frozen, incapable of breathing or even blinking. Her hand traveled down my exposed chest, beneath the folds of my white robe and trailed its way back to my ne
ck, brushing over the scarred flesh. "You can't touch in a vision. It's a shame your perfect flesh has been so grotesquely marred."
A low growl erupted from Sebastian's throat. I'd know that sound anywhere. "Stop molesting him and get on with it already. How does he stop the hunters?"
"He doesn't. I do," she said flatly, turning to face him.
"Come again?" asked Sebastian.
Selene rolled her eyes as she hopped up onto the edge of the table. "If the vampires and the wolves can't stop the hunters on their own, what makes you think the emergent properties of two failures combined will be enough?"
"What are you saying?" asked Hunter. "You lied to us in the vision after all you put us through?"
"No, I just didn't tell you the whole truth. I'm not going to let my husband harm my children," she said in a patronizing tone, patting the top of his head. "I just need the hybrid to make a choice so I can pay off an old debt."
"A debt?" Victor asked, speaking up for the first time since his religious awakening. When I turned to face him, he was on his feet walking towards us. "A debt to whom?"
"To Gaia," Selene said, examining her nails. "She's the one who decides which species live or die. The Patriarch likes to think he calls all the shots, but she's the queen bitch around these parts." She glanced at Arthur and grimaced, as if just noticing him. "Speaking of things that should stay in the ground, who let him in?"
Arthur stared at her, frozen.
"Leave him out of this," I hissed. "This is between you and me, remember?"
She gave me a knowing sneer. "You're right, darling. My attention is all yours. I trust you've come to your decision?"
"He has," said Victor. He gave me a reassuring nod.
"I'll be the judge of that," said Selene, reaching for my hand.
"Wait," cried Victor. "Before he chooses, I want a moment with him."
Selene looked him up and down before climbing off the altar. "Fine. One minute," she said, presumably going off to torment someone else.
Victor moved to stand in front of me, taking me in his arms. "Remember why we're doing this," he whispered in my ear. Over his shoulder, I could see Sebastian watching us. He quickly occupied himself with something across the room.
I wrapped my arms around Victor and squeezed him tightly, breathing in his scent. He thought it was a fake goodbye, but I knew it was our last. "I know, Vic. For Sebastian."
"For all of them," he said, pulling away to take my face in his hands. His eyes searched mine as if looking for doubt, but there was none to be found. I had made my peace with the real plan in the scrying room long ago.
"For all of them," I agreed, looking up at him as he closed the distance between us. I could feel his lips on mine even before they touched. "I'll never forget you. Maybe in my head," I said softly, pressing my hand against his heart, relishing the warmth of his flesh and the steady pulse underneath. My metronome, the rhythm to a song I could happily dance to for all eternity. "But never in here."
His eyes were the same liquid silver that had first brought us together so many years ago as he leaned in, sweeping the hair away from my face. "Neither will I. Who knows," he said with a smile that kept faltering at the edges. "Maybe in another life we'll actually get the timing right."
"You're pushing the limits of a minute even by Einsteinian definitions," Selene called in a singsong voice.
I ignored her, keeping my eyes on Victor. "That doesn't sound very atheistic," I teased.
He leaned in to nuzzle me, rubbing his cheek against mine. It was a rare reminder of his lupine nature. "If there's one thing I can believe in, it's you."
When Victor's lips met mine, Selene and everything else ceased to matter. In that moment, everything was so clear, so right. The wholeness I felt in his arms began to drain away and with it went the first pieces of my vampire nature. They were just small little things at first. Memories of kisses stolen when no one was looking, late nights entwined until the difference between us was negligible. Then it was our sessions and all the things he had ripped from my mind with his domination of my body, both painful and pleasurable. The last thing to go was the memory of that sullen boy sitting on the edge of my bed, gradually growing animated with wild gestures as he regaled my teenage self with the latest metaphysical discoveries he had made, or sometimes a line from one of the brooding poets he found so enthralling.
It struck me as odd how a dream could be so much more tangible than a memory, how strongly the mind could cling to it when it was being pulled away. Then it was gone.
My memories of Victor were still largely intact, but it was like someone had sucked all the marrow out of them. I still recognized the man in front of me as Sebastian's brother, as Ulric's most trusted confidant and even as my friend, but I felt the absence as surely as if I had just lost a loved one whose name I could no longer remember.
I felt like a coin rattling around in an empty jar. There was too much space around me. I had never realized how much space the other me took up until he was gone. Selene crossed the distance between us, pushing Victor away.
"Enough of the starcrossed lovers routine," she said, pressing her hand against my forehead. I cried out sharply as the mark on my right hand burned more violently than it ever had before the pain suddenly disappeared. Selene grabbed my hands and examined them, frowning.
"Guess you did choose after all. And look at that, bestiality won out over necrophilia. The vampire mark is gone," she announced.
Victor breathed an audible sigh of relief.
"What does that mean?" asked Sebastian. "He's the hybrid now? He doesn't look any different."
"What, did you expect him to sprout wings?" Selene asked dryly.
He seemed to think about it for a moment before shrugging. "What happens now?"
"Now we wait," Selene said, casting her eyes down at the floor. The temple shook and rumbled, but it wasn't until the marble cracked at the door and the floor split like a ripped seam between the aisles of pews and all the way up to the stone table that I realized it was an earthquake. Victor barely had time to snatch me off the stone altar before it split in half and plaster fell from the domed ceiling.
Clarence tackled Arthur in time to avoid a chunk that fell from the ceiling and surely would have killed him or at the very least put an answer to the question of whether he was any more resilient now than he had been before dying.
"Shit," Hunter cried, staggering back with Sebastian on the other side of the divide that separated them from me, Selene and Victor.
"What's happening?" I cried, looking to Selene, who seemed calmer than ever.
"She's here."
"Who?" I demanded.
Before she could answer, assuming she would bother, the marble began to crumble in the center of the floor and molten lava bubbled out through the cracks. Victor pulled me back against his chest, but he seemed as lost as the rest of us.
The lava rose and stretched into a tall form that became more human the more seconds that passed. The molten earth condensed and soon took on a recognizable female form, and a petite one at that. Long, straight hair and soft features took shape, more detail etching into the woman's face as her deep hues of red and orange took on the soft bronzed tone of human flesh. Her eyes were the last to change, but soon even her molten irises turned to a warm shade of brown.
"Hello, Selene," she said in a soothing, husky voice. "I see that you've come to a decision."
"Of course I did," the goddess said, folding her hands in front of her in a submissive posture. "Just as I promised."
"You certainly did put it off to the last possible moment, didn't you?" the woman asked, stepping out of the crater she had emerged from. She came to a stop in front of Victor and me, and when he pulled me back, she gave a patient smile. "It's alright. I'm not going to hurt him, Victor."
He frowned. "How do you know my name?"
"I know all my children," she replied matter-of-factly. "I am the mother of all."
"You're Gaia?" he a
sked in disbelief.
She laughed. "You were expecting green skin and sprouts for hair, perhaps? I take many forms, but this is the one I'm most comfortable in. I see that I'm not the only one with such preferences," she mused, taking her face in his hands. "Let's have a look at you. My, you really haven't changed much at all."
Victor stood frozen for her inspection, and it was hard to tell whether it was from shock or some psychic technique. "What are you talking about? I don't know you."
"Of course you do. You and your brother were two of my first children," she said with an apologetic glance Selene's way. "I suppose I should say grandchildren, since I wasn't directly responsible for your creation."
"The hell are you talking about, lady?" Sebastian demanded, crossing the faultline. "Get your hands off him."
Gaia turned to face him with a surprisingly benevolent smile. Selene would have been a more fitting name for her. "Ah, Sebastian. So loyal and so protective. I see you haven't changed, either."
"Are all you divine weirdos this cryptic?" he asked gruffly, folding his arms.
She laughed again, a musical sound. "You don't remember me, of course, but all my children return to the earth in different forms. Different stories and different stages, but they're all the same actors. You and Victor played quite a significant role in supernatural history quite a few lifetimes ago. It seems that your souls are more entwined than even I imagined if you've found your way back into the same roles. Maybe you just wanted the chance to get it right this time."
As she spoke, Ulric's voice began to play in the back of my mind. His reading of the legend had been recorded in my thoughts and I had played it back to myself many times since his death, if only to hear his voice again. Now the words themselves had new meaning.
"The legend," I whispered. "They're the brothers from the legend, the original wolf and vampire who killed the Patriarch's son."