by Jasmine Walt
Istanbul had been the imperial capital of the Byzantium empire, then it became the conquered city of Constantinople, and was now the largest city of the republic, which now held a constitution. The city, which had once been the center of the stronghold that had conquered large swaths of Asia, Europe, and Africa, was no longer the capital of the great nation. That was something I knew chaffed its longtime political architect.
Bet had been pulling the strings of human puppets since recorded time. The Ottoman Empire had been a pet project of his beginning as far back as his days with the Mongolian Horde that had swept across the Eastern hemisphere. He had been whispering in the ears of khans and sultans and, even more recently, presidents. His huns, sultans, and caliphs had stretched their rule far and wide for centuries, bringing what was once a small Anatolian tribe to rule some of the greatest cultures in history—until a man with modern ideas put the brakes on Bet’s progress.
After the First World War, Ataturk, regarded as the Father of Turkey, put an end to the Ottoman dynasty and issued reforms that ended the monastic way of life. Ataturk introduced representation for the people. He instituted parliament and participatory democracy—all of which were anathema to Bet.
Bet had recently returned from America, where he’d been instrumental in installing the country’s newest president—a firebrand whose speech called to days long past where the wealthy and privileged were the ruling class and had all the power.
I walked down the halls of Bet’s home. There was no security, just assistants. Though Bet had more than his fair share of enemies, there wasn’t much a human could do to him other than put a kink in his plans. But Bet always played the long game. In time, whatever seeds he’d sown in the Western world would come to bear fruits that would enhance the bounty on his table.
I felt the prickle as I got closer to the closed door he must be behind. Bet was old. His name, and the brand on his back, marked him as the second oldest Immortal.
When I opened the door, Bet sat lounging at his desk with a crystal tumbler in his hand. His dark beard was trim along his square jaw. His shoulders were as broad as a warrior’s in his fitted businessman’s suit. Light gray eyes sat out against his toasty, warm skin.
He was handsome by any culture or time period’s standards. But behind that sultry gaze, his mind was always calculating, adding up how to get the best of his opponents. And, yes, everyone he encountered was an opponent in his eyes.
My body was framed in the doorway, and his gaze locked on mine, pinning me at the threshold. I rolled my shoulders and pressed my shoulder blades into my spine to relieve some of the pressure that had gathered. Immortals became allergic when in one another’s presence for an extended period. The awareness of one another was immediate, hence the prickle in my throat. But the more sinusy effects could take days, weeks to manifest. Unless more than one of us were gathered together at the same time.
After only a few seconds of standing in the doorway, my nose twitched. The corners of my eyes watered. Bet was old, but he shouldn’t have such an effect on me.
His brow raised as he regarded me, seemingly unaffected. He didn’t rise from his chair. “I would say that this is a surprise, Tisa, but you were expected.”
“Was I?” I asked, coming further into the room.
“Yes, we were just talking about you.” Bet inclined the glass tumbler in his hand to the corner of the room.
My hand instinctively went to my hip for my blade. In the never-ending battle of fight or flight, my response was always fight. When I saw who it was, my fingers froze and my feet itched to flee.
Tresor Mohandis leaned against a bookshelf. His honey-golden skin stretched across defined biceps that were crossed at his chest. Through the V of his white cotton shirt, I saw more tanned skin with dips and peaks that brought my mind to the dangerous dunes of a desert. My mouth went parched, and I felt beads of sweat forming at my brow as though I were in a heatwave.
Tres’s dark gaze raked my body, making me feel as though I was caught in a sandstorm that the fabric covering me could not withstand. I felt naked, exposed, and in dire need of a strong, stiff drink.
“Dr. Rivers.”
“Hi.” My voice was breathy, like a young girl facing off with her crush. Tres’s formal address, along with his unexpected presence, caught me off guard. I cleared my throat and began again. This time, with command in my voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Likely the same thing you are,” Tres said. “Alerting the others about the Lin Kuie.”
Oh. Right. The old bad guys. I was on to the next bad guys.
“What’s going on?” Tres asked, taking a step toward me.
His molten eyes bored into me, seeing things I didn’t want him to, things I couldn’t remember. There had been a time when we’d been close. I may have loved him once. I knew he used to love me. But I couldn’t remember.
That wasn’t true.
I might not remember the details, but I did remember what it felt like to be in his arms, to have his lips pressed against mine, to be in his care and under his protection.
“Have you gotten yourself in more trouble since the last time I saw you?” he asked.
“Trouble?” I parroted.
Tres grinned, and I gulped. I had grown so used to Tresor Mohandis frowning or growling at me over the last few hundred years. When he grinned, it made my knees weak. It brought out the breathiness in my voice.
“What have you done now, Theta?” he asked, his voice low.
The Grecian word brought me back to why I was here. “Demons.”
Tres quirked an eyebrow.
I turned back to Bet. Mostly to come out from under the assault of Tres’s hypnotic gaze. It worked. My wits came back to me with a force that knocked sense into my clouded head.
Unlike the grinning man in the corner, Bet’s jaw was locked as he leaned back in his chair. His gaze was on his drink. But that calm nonchalance was a mask. Bet’s light eyes were focused. He was calculating.
“I had a run-in with some demons a couple of nights ago,” I said.
“You were in Greece?” Tres asked.
“No, Budapest.”
Bet’s head rose. His eyes sharpened on me. It was Bet who had first told me about demons.
It had been some time after the great Battle of Thermopylae. Much of today’s society believed the battle between the small band of Greek Spartans and the vast and plentiful Persian army had been decided at the narrow coastal pass over three days of a bare-chested, spear-thrusting, shield-wielding battle. When in truth, the battle had been won in the Straits of Artemisium. Many of the Greek forces that had blocked the Persian navy had been without pupils. Bet still hadn’t gotten over that embarrassing defeat by a demon army to this day.
“What were slaves doing in Budapest?” Bet asked. His free hand balled into a fist, as though he were preparing to grab one of the spears off the wall behind him and race to Hungary for a fight.
“Having an orgy,” I said.
Bet shook his head in disgust. I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but a deep voice filled the room.
“What were you doing at an orgy?” Tres asked.
My lips flapped for an answer before I remembered he wasn’t the boss of me and I didn’t owe him one. I turned back to Bet. “I was trying to track down information on the Eleusinian Mysteries. It’s a cult that’s said to grant its followers everlasting life. There had been a tablet in the possession of the Greek Ministry of Culture—the Ninnion Tablet. It was said to illustrate the ritual, but it disappeared years ago.”
“And you thought it would be at a sex party?” Tres sounded incredulous.
I wasn’t sure I liked his tone. “My associate, Ms. Van Alst—”
“The blonde tomb raider?” Tres interrupted yet again.
“She had a contact who offered her an invitation to the Eleusinian Mystery rituals. The contact, it turned out, was a demon. She didn’t know the signs, but I did. His eyes were black, pupil-less
.”
“Was there red around the rims?” Bet asked. He’d set his glass down and balled his other fist. His eyes were no longer sharp. They were clouded with fury.
“Um, no.”
Bet sighed. “Then he wasn’t a demon. He was Chosen.” His hands relaxed, and he slumped back in his chair.
There was that word again. “What’s a Chosen?”
Bet ignored me, rubbing at the whiskers on his chin. I watched as the fury receded from his eyes and his pupils twitched in calculation.
In the corner of the room, Tres smiled. Actually, gloated was more like it. Was he thrilled to know something I didn’t?
I was starting to realize that neither man looked particularly shocked by these revelations. It would make sense that Immortals and demons, or Chosen, had run into each other over the centuries. But since my kind didn’t have family reunions or an Immortal group chat, we didn’t always share the information we’d gathered about the world. Unless it was something that affected us as a whole.
“Were there only Chosen and humans at this party?” Bet asked.
“What else would there be?” I asked.
“Humans have pupils, Chosen don’t. Was there anyone whose eyes . . . sparkled?”
Did he mean Golden Rod? “Yes, there was a blond man. It looked like his eyes . . . This may sound . . .”
As Immortals, we’d seen our fair share of bizarre things take place. But I still felt weird talking about seeing a bolt of lightning in a man’s eyes. Luckily, Bet said it for me.
“There was lightning in his eyes?” he asked.
I nodded.
Bet cursed under his breath. “What’s his angle in Hungary? They’re landlocked and their economy is export-driven.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, but Bet paid me no heed as he continued planning his attack. Bet saw everything and everyone as a threat to the power he sought to gain in the world. “He knew me. He insinuated that we had a . . . relationship.”
They both looked at me. There was judgment in Bet’s eyes. Tres’s were carefully blank. I felt like the girl who’d blacked out at the party and was asking who had her panties the next morning.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“You don’t remember?” Tres sounded cautious.
This was one of the reasons we didn’t do family reunions. Other families competed over what accomplishments each member had. Mine competed over what was remembered or forgotten.
“If I remembered, I wouldn’t have come here asking questions,” I said, the irritation thick in my throat.
“What do you want to know?” Tres asked.
I decided I didn’t want Tres to tell me anything about Golden Rod. If something had happened between golden boy and me, I’d rather it stay in the dark. But I did need to know more about these pupil-less humans.
“These demons, or Chosen,” I said, “how are they made? Did we have anything to do with it?”
“Do you mean did a demon murder and drink the bones of an Immortal?” Tres snorted, his face softening from its blank composure. “No. Their souls are taken.”
“Their souls aren’t taken,” Bet said. “They are sacrificed.”
“To who?” I asked.
“The gods,” Bet answered.
I felt a chill run down my back. I knew this part of the story. But the pages were blurry in my mind.
“At least they call themselves gods,” Bet spat. He picked up his tumbler. Then, noticing it was empty, he slammed it down.
“What are they?” I asked. “Who are they?”
“They are abominations,” Bet answered. “And their intent is to spread their disease amongst humanity and take over the world.”
Tres rolled his eyes. “They’re not trying to take over the world. They keep to Greece. I think they draw their power from the land as much as they do from the people. Sometimes they venture into Europe and America, but not for long.”
“For now,” Bet said. “But that bastard was in Hungary.”
“At a party,” Tres replied. “Do you think he’s planning a military attack through an orgy?”
Bet turned and gave us his back. His head tilted up to the collection of weapons on his wall. Though Bet was a cunning strategist, he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He’d fought beside Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who had spread his empire to . . . Greece.
I hadn’t noticed how often Bet seemed to have his hand in the battles to overtake the Greek State. I’d also never seen Bet so agitated. This man had led armies without so much as an eye twitch. He manipulated the world’s most powerful men and women until they were wrapped around his fingers, doing bidding they didn’t even understand, might never see the true outcome of in their lifetime. Bet was ancient, often cruel, and completely single-minded.
As I looked at him now, his jaw clenched. His eyes were unfocused and twitching. His nostrils flared like a cornered beast.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Who are these people, or gods, or whatever?”
Tres and Bet turned back to me, as though they’d forgotten I was there.
“I can’t believe you forgot this.” Tres had a huge, amused grin on his handsome face. “Now I don’t feel so affronted that you forgot us. You and she used to be very close.”
“Me and who?” I asked.
“That bitch has been trying to use Tisa to get to me for centuries.” Bet snarled. His eyes were wide, his arms crossed over his chest. He paced the floor with shuffled steps.
“You think everything is about you,” Tres said dismissively.
“It usually is,” Bet countered.
“Hello . . .” I waved my arms. “Who are you talking about? What bitch?”
Tres opened his mouth to answer, but Bet rounded his desk and grabbed the other man’s shoulder.
“Don’t say her name,” Bet said. “Any mention fuels the empty vessel that she is.”
Tres shrugged off Bet’s grip and faced me. “Demeter.”
Bet groaned, running his hands through his hair and messing up his orderly locks.
“Demeter?” I asked.
“Yeah, Demeter,” Tres parroted.
“Enough.” Bet cut the empty air with the straight edge of his hand.
“As in the Greek goddess?” I asked.
Tres nodded, a twinkle in his dark eyes.
“She’s not . . . Is she real?”
His smile widened. “Very much so. And you two were friends once. I wonder what she did to make you forget her?”
I wondered, too.
“If you want to open this can of worms,” Bet said, “you go right on ahead. But don’t drag me back into that family’s craziness. I tried to bring civilization to that corner of the world for centuries, but they insist on being a den of heathens as they take more and more souls to march in their cause.”
“They have no cause but to live,” Tres said.
“For them to live, they need to eat souls.” Bet looked disgusted. “They’re a threat to our existence.”
And with that, Bet, the Sultan of Cool, the King of Khans, the Iago of Presidents, marched out of the room. The man who had felled hordes and militias looked as though he was frightened by the mention of the name Demeter. Who was this woman?
6
“Nia, wait up,” Tres called as he ran after me.
With our host departing in a huff, and few answers to my questions, I’d left Bet’s home shortly after he’d left the room, leaving Tres standing in the corner. I may have left rather quickly, with my legs pumping a bit faster than a walk. But it wasn’t like I was running away from anything, or anyone.
“Slow down, would you?”
I took a deep breath and slowed my pace. It wasn’t like he couldn’t catch me. It was just that I wasn’t sure I wanted to get caught. By him.
Breaking up with Zane was still a raw and ragged scar in my chest. And Tres had made it crystal clear the last time I’d seen him that he wanted to pick up where we’d left off a millennium ago. I
still remembered the lingering kiss he’d whispered upon my lips the last time I’d seen him. It had awakened something inside me that I’d been trying to put back to sleep ever since.
I closed my eyes as I paused in the market outside Bet’s place. My nose twitched as Tres drew closer, but I focused on the smell of food in the air. The sounds of a large crowd gathered outside wafted to my ears. I opened my eyes to see people sitting patiently with untouched food laid out before them.
It was Ramadan, and the city’s inhabitants were coming together to break their fast. They’d spent the day keeping themselves from bad habits and evil thoughts, making a sacrifice to their God. Though the sun was setting, the fast wasn’t truly broken until the evening call for prayers.
My stomach grumbled at the delicious smells. I hadn’t eaten since leaving Loren this morning. I was starving. The pangs of hunger, of emptiness, of needing to be filled slammed into me.
I felt Tres at my back. He stood silently, but his gaze upon me was loud. He was probably just as hungry as I was. It would be polite to ask him out to dinner so we both could see to our basic needs. But I didn’t. Though I wasn’t Muslim, it was impolite to eat in front of everyone before the fast was broken. Dinner would have to wait.
“Well, that’s new,” I said, breaking the heavy silence between us.
“What?”
His deep voice rumbled through me, and I shuddered. In an effort to hide the tremor that coursed through my body, I turned around to face him. That was a mistake. His gaze pinned me, and my stomach grumbled. I coughed to cover the sound. I looked away, losing focus in the crowd.
“Bet,” I said. “I’ve never seen him lose his cool.”
Tres shrugged. “He and Demeter have a bit of a past.”
“Really?” I turned to Tres with interest. I assumed when he said past, he meant it in the biblical sense, and of biblical proportions. Of course, Bet had had his share of affairs. He was a powerful, rich, and handsome man. But I’d never known him to have a past with a woman.