by Aja James
“These are my guys,” Inanna said, gesturing to Gabriel and Benji, who nodded a greeting and waved in turn. “My… husband and son.”
Mama Bear dropped the oven mitts she was holding and stared at the three guests incomprehensibly.
For a worrisome second, Inanna thought she was unwell, the way the old lady seemed to have stopped breathing.
Gabriel retrieved the oven mitts form the floor and handed them to their host, their fingers brushing briefly in the process.
With a gasp, Mama Bear whirled into motion again, clucking at her own clumsiness.
“Goodness me, I must be having a senior moment,” she exclaimed, fluttering her hands at her face, “it’s not every day a girl receives such handsome gentleman callers. You sit tight while I get a tray.”
The smile on the old woman’s face did not quite match her lighthearted words, for the smile was more of a line stretched across her lips, which were forcibly turned up at the corners.
Something was wrong.
“I’ll lend a hand,” Inanna volunteered and got up to do just that.
That Mama Bear seemed too preoccupied to fuss at her to sit back down was very telling. Inanna followed the shop owner into the back room beyond the beaded curtains.
“I do apologize that I brought guests so late,” she said when they were out of hearing range. “If you are busy, we—”
“No, no, I’m so happy you came to visit with me, dear,” Mama Bear interrupted, shaking her head. “I’m just so happy…” she paused to take a breath and swallow, “just so happy you brought your menfolk too.”
Inanna relaxed a little. Even though she didn’t know how to describe her relationship with the old lady, Inanna cared for her deeply.
Some of the Chosen and even the Queen herself could be counted as friends, comrades, but Inanna had no family. She’d never met her mother, had not a shred of memory to keep alive in her heart and mind.
And she’d lost her father a very long time ago. She didn’t even know whether he was dead or alive. Surely if he lived he would have found a way to let her know? Surely he would not have left her alone unless he had no other choice?
Inanna had been alone for too many lifetimes. Mama Bear was a near stranger, whose name she did not even know and had never bothered to ask, so wary was she of forming attachments. But for all that, she seemed like family.
“It only happened recently,” Inanna felt the inexplicable need to explain. “Else I would have brought them here sooner.”
Mama Bear busied herself with making the tea and arranging the scones on an antique silver serving tray.
With her back turned towards Inanna, she said, “I am glad to meet them. You have extremely good taste in the masculine variety.”
Inanna wasn’t very helpful at the moment despite her offer. She simply stood and took in her surroundings, a veritable treasure trove of wares and trinkets from ancient worlds.
Every shelf, cupboard, nook and cranny in the storage room was stuffed with fascinating objects and artwork. Because it was filled to the brim, the room seemed small at first glance, but she saw that it was actually large enough for a fully functional kitchen with a decent amount of counter space, double wall-mounted ovens, an induction stovetop and a small breakfast nook with bench seating in a corner.
A door was slightly ajar in the rear of the room, and the light within exposed a full-size bed piled with hand-made pillows and throws.
Inanna realized belatedly that she had all but invaded her host’s private sanctuary, but Mama Bear did not seem to mind.
“Tell me, child, is it a love match? You could barely take your eyes off your swain,” Mama Bear teased while she gingerly filled a pretty dish with lumps of fine sugar.
Inanna borrowed a stool from the kitchen counter and gave in to the overwhelming need to talk with someone.
So much had happened, and so fast. She felt so many beautiful, frightening, momentous emotions she could burst. The words just seemed to pour out of their own volition.
“I love them both very much,” she confirmed readily. “Benji has always been my little angel, and Gabriel… Gabriel is my heart, which I never realized I had lost until I found him.”
Mama Bear looked at her for a long moment, assessing her face as she spoke. Apparently satisfied with what she saw there, the old lady smiled with genuine warmth this time.
“He looks like a very good man, your Gabriel. If you’ve lived as long as I have, you have an instinct for these things, so trust me in this, my dear. You have a keeper.”
“I know,” Inanna agreed. “I intend to keep him for the rest of eternity.”
“And so gorgeous to boot!” Mama Bear hooted, then covered her mouth to stifle a titter. “Goodness, but that man is fine. I almost asked him to stand up again so I could get a better look at him.”
Inanna grinned wide like the Cheshire cat who got the cream. “Amen. And believe me the back of him is just as magnificent as the front of him. What’s more, he’s not just pretty looks, he’s got all the right moves.”
Mama Bear put a hand on her ample bosom as if all the talk had given her girlish palpitations. “Those are the best, aren’t they? Oh, when I was a young girl in the first bloom of youth…” her expression took on a wistful sheen and made her appear decades younger, at least at heart.
But then her face suddenly became shuttered, as if a particular painful memory assailed her. It was but a brief flicker on her otherwise serene, cheerful countenance, and Inanna would have missed it had she not been watching the woman closely.
Mama Bear caught herself and handed Inanna the serving tray.
“You must bring your menfolk around more often,” she invited with a smile. “An old woman like me doesn’t get the opportunity to admire two fine specimens of masculine splendor such as those very often. It does the spirit good to be exposed to youth and beauty at my age.”
Inanna promised to do just that and helped her host carry out the tea tray.
An hour later, the threesome were on their way back to Inanna’s apartment. Conversation had been lighthearted and free flowing. It had been the perfect way to end a perfect day.
“Did you like Mama Bear?” Inanna asked Benji, who walked beside her, carefully toting a paper bag with the remaining three scones from the entire batch the shop owner had made.
“She’s the bestest,” Benji proclaimed immediately, which was the highest honorific he bestowed on anyone.
“But why do you call her Mama Bear? She doesn’t look like one at all.”
Inanna was amused by this bit of decisive commentary. “Really? You don’t think she’s the perfect epitome of an elderly, motherly, huggable looking teddy bear?”
“What’s epit-me?” Benji asked, brow scrunched slightly in concentration.
“Epitome means example,” Gabriel said from the boy’s other side.
Benji nodded sagely, then promptly shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. She looks more like Arwen from Lord of the Rings, except a lot prettier.”
Both adults stopped in their tracks, both looking down at Benji as if he’d suddenly grown two heads. Maybe some horns too.
“Benji,” Gabriel said with a particular patience, the sort that started all his lectures about Benji’s imagination getting away with him, “the nice lady has blonde-gray hair, round, rosy cheeks and a short, portly figure. Exactly what part of that description fits Arwen the princess elf from Lord of the Rings?”
It was now Benji’s turn to look with sheer astonishment at the two adults. What were they talking about?
“But Daddy, she has long black hair, is as tall as Mommy and has the same…” he fished about for the right word and landed upon, “figure too,” emulating what Gabriel had said earlier.
Gabriel and Inanna exchanged a long glance and shook their heads, changing the topic to something less contentious. The lively imagination of a five-year-old never ceased to amaze them.
*** *** *** ***
Anastasia
smoothed index and middle fingers together down the long, reflective blade of the combat knife in her grasp and went over last night’s events and what they learned in her head.
The fight clubs might have a Pure sponsor in addition to vampires and humans.
She’d caught up with Maximus as they reentered the City from upstate New York. The vampire entourage around the small robed figure who had presided over the death match they’d witnessed dispersed into dark alleys and streets upon crossing city lines. Maximus tracked what appeared to be the vampire right-hand of the robed figure, Simca another henchman, and Ana took the female orchestrator herself.
Ana finally ceased pursuit when the female entered a warehouse-cum-club of some sort, one that was obviously expecting her, since the armed guards at the door she entered parted immediately to let her pass.
The sun was already throbbing in the morning skies, making Ana feel like she’d overdosed on morphine. She kept herself upright and awake by sheer force of will. Enough to memorize the exact location of the unmarked building.
The female, however, did not seem to feel any effects, her pace brisk and purposeful. So it was unlikely she was a Dark One, though not impossible.
The way she moved was worthy of note. It was as if she floated, so graceful and effortless she seemed to bridge distances. Only Dark and Pure ones had that gait: it was the way they moved when they purposely limited themselves to appear more human.
That was a clue, as well as her bright white aura, far more intense than any human.
Maximus had learned nothing worthy of note from his surveillance, nor had Simca when he downloaded the feline’s memory banks. (They shared a special connection whereby the man could see and feel in his mind’s eye everything the animal saw and felt.)
Nothing new except that the two vampire henchmen were warrior-class from ancient noble families, the involvement of which was something they had suspected since the beginning.
The combination of half a dozen warrior-class vampires with a small Pure female, if that was indeed the case, was an uncommon pairing.
Vampire males were notoriously difficult to control in large groups. Their instinct was to hunt and kill and satisfy their baser urges with all expediency. Throw in a Pure female who was half their size, whose blood was ten times more appealing than the average human female, and the mix could turn ugly in an instant.
True, warrior-class vampires were more disciplined by training, but it took an extremely strong leader to keep them in line. The female must have some awesome powers to restrain her escorts so easily. Else, someone else was doing the restraining for her.
They could have been mindless slaves for all the notice she gave them.
Ana took up a rag and began polishing the borrowed blade until it shone with a blinding luster.
A Pure One thrown into the mix of vampires and humans organizing the fight clubs was both alarming as well as expected.
As soon as they’d reported back to Jade, Seth Tremaine proposed alerting the Shield and having the Dozen find out what they could. Their Queen did not immediately agree, which surprised Ana, for she usually took the Consul’s suggestions as given. In fact, the Queen made it clear, though said implicitly, that she wanted this information to be kept amongst the four of them, at most to be shared with the rest of the Chosen. Their Pure allies, however, were not to be notified at this time.
The Consul had said nothing after that, his expression neutral and blank.
Ana lightly ran her thumb along the knife’s edge, barely touching at all, but the sharp blade produced a thin red line where it sliced through her skin. Almost instantly, the small cut healed, and Ana barely noticed it as she admired the beautiful weapon.
Deadly. Unyielding.
Rather like a certain fighter she knew.
Perhaps she would do some digging on her own. Jade had not disallowed it. And she knew just the human to tap for information.
*** *** *** ***
After tucking Benji in bed way past his bedtime, Inanna reluctantly left her menfolk to check in at the Cove.
Though the Chosen kept their own abodes apart from their base, it was more home to them than anywhere else.
That had changed for Inanna. Her home now was wherever Benji and Gabriel were.
When she entered the main atrium, one of the Sentries, Maximus’ well-trained battalion who protected the Cove, informed her that the Queen was resting, not to be disturbed.
Strange, that.
Inanna wondered when Jade had started to sleep at night rather than during the day. It must have something to do with the Queen’s Blood Slave, who was a powerfully ancient Pure One.
Inanna’s own biological clock was changing as well, and she wondered whether it was because she’d recently fed her fill of her Blooded Mate, who was a vampire with a Pure soul potentially on the cusp of an Awakening.
Did that mean he was more Pure than Dark?
A shiver of alarm traveled down her spine at the possibility that threatened her Bond with Gabriel.
She inquired another Sentry for the whereabouts of Simone Lafayette and caught the Keeper emerging from her chambers looking fatigued, though she should have been sleeping all day.
“Simone, a word,” Inanna said quietly, without preamble.
The Chosen picked up immediately on the urgency in her tone and nodded in reply.
“Shall we convene in the library?” Inanna asked, and Simone gestured for her to lead the way.
Once they were enclosed in privacy behind the thick double-doors, Inanna got straight to the point.
“I need your help in a personal matter,” she began, then paused briefly to reconsider.
Simone was one of the handful of suspects in Devlin’s hunt for the female vampire who had almost killed Gabriel. She was an unlikely candidate given her station as a Royal Scholar, not a warrior, but there was still a possibility.
After all, Simone had held her own in the battle against the Creature’s horde when the Chosen had aided their Pure allies a few months ago.
On the other hand, there was no one else Inanna knew who could help her search through thousands of years of Dark Ones’ histories and lore to find what she was looking for, if it existed at all. And time was of the essence.
She decided to take a risk.
“Do you know of any examples in our history where a Dark One Mated with a Pure One?”
At the Keeper’s sharp inhalation, Inanna knew that even the question itself was shocking, bordering on blasphemous. Nevertheless, she pressed on. She had too much to lose not to go all in.
“What were the consequences? Why are our Laws so unyielding in this matter? Is it to protect the couple from disaster or is it—”
“It is to protect everyone else from death and destruction,” the Keeper interrupted, effectively silencing Inanna from further query.
“Let me show you something,” Simone said as she brought Inanna to the center of the rings of concentric ovals where a book encased in gold with gold tipped pages lay open at three feet wide, two feet in length and more than a foot in thickness.
The Ecliptic Scrolls. The Dark Ones’ bible, encyclopedia and sacred laws all rolled into one.
Simone deftly turned the delicate pages, so thin they were almost transparent, to a particular chapter and verse toward the middle.
It was a time period shortly before Inanna’s birth, during the most dominant era of the Akkadian empire. Although the writing was Sumerian, it was similar enough that Inanna could read the words.
“The only example that I know of was before the Great War,” Simone said in a hushed tone, as if speaking too loudly would awaken ghosts long buried. “Some historians attribute the Great War and the Purge of the aftermath to this aberration.”
Inanna inwardly flinched at the word “aberration,” but she steeled herself and said, “Go on.”
“All that was ever written about it is here on this page,” Simone pointed to three paragraphs of calligraphy and added, �
��though the myths and legends around it traveled across generations by word of mouth. Our old often tell this story to young girls and boys as a cautionary tale. A nightmare to be avoided at all cost.”
Inanna read silently as Simone stood by and read aloud in the old language:
“In the Third Cycle of our Queen’s glorious reign, the Chosen Princess and future Queen, came into her maturity on her twentieth name day. A celebration was held for all to rejoice her beauty, strength and wisdom. As tradition dictates, the Princess must choose a Consort and Protector from among the worthy Dark males, who will eventually earn his place by her side as her Blooded Mate.
During his Training, he will acquire the skills necessary to deserve her trust. He will learn her interests and become expert in them. He will hone his skills as a warrior on fields of valor, both real and procedural. He will become all that she needs in a sexual partner and devote himself, body, mind and soul to her every pleasure.
But when the critical moment arrived, the Princess made a disastrous choice. Instead of her Dark Consort, she chose a Pure Blood Slave, and more shameful, a prisoner of war. Over the years she’d kept him, like an ever-present shadow by her side, polluting her thoughts, confusing her desires. Until one day, she gave into his willful seduction and consummated their union, pledging all of herself in the process. And from this union, death and destruction, chaos and mayhem ensued.
Thus began the Great War.”
“Every story has more than one side, like a crystal that captures and reflects different colors of light. Do not take for granted what you think you know, Dark One, for until you hold the entire jewel in your palm, the temptation is to fall prey to illusion and deception.”
—Excerpt from the Lost Chapters of the Ecliptic Scrolls.
Chapter Sixteen
Inanna took the long way home, driving aimlessly through the City.
What she learned tonight raised more questions than provided answers.
Why was the pairing between a Dark and Pure One disastrous?