by White, Gwynn
“I—yes,” she whispered, her breath quickening. Every touch was like being burned by a cold fire. It pained her to the point of agony, and yet she craved more. “I feel like I am losing control of my wits.”
“I already have.” He stripped off his tunic and pulled her against his chest. The heat of the fire next to them was warm, but Lucius’s body was as hot as a fever. His kiss deepened and her heart pounded with the ecstasy coursing through her in waves. Her body clung to his instinctively, until they knelt together, locked in a tight embrace. He held her back and she clung to his shoulders. This was no mere kiss. There was an otherworldly power moving between them, a power she could not control.
“It’s too much,” she said, but her mouth drew down for more. The madness driving her had taken over. She screamed but she could not stop.
“Petra! Petra, you must let me go… You must—”
Something moved in the air between them… Something pulled at her. No, she was pulling him into her. Petra knew she had to stop. Had to let him go. But she could not. She needed him more than she had ever needed anything in her whole life.
All at once, she felt the power of his body, the grace of his mind, and the surrender of his life as she drew deeply from his essence. She did not even have to kiss him now. A tendril of vapor moved through the air between their mouths.
“Petra…” His fear succumbed to his desire, and then she knew he felt it, too, felt the rapture consuming her. But he was weakening, his arms releasing her now, his consciousness slipping away. She gently lay him down among the leaves and shook his head to rouse him, pressed her fingertips to his temples. She felt the inescapable power, the undeniable draw. As Lucius’s beautiful eyes began to close, his mind opened up to her. And then Petra was there inside him, looking out through his eyes.
* * *
Lucipor walked a dusty road. He held the hand of a man, and when he looked up, he saw his father’s blood-smeared face, watched as the irons at his wrist chafed his skin raw.
“Where are we going, pater?”
“To our new master.”
“Will he be better than the last?”
“It does not matter. You must do as he says.”
“We go to his villa now?” Lucipor asked, tripping over a rock and landing hard in the dust of the road.
“Yes, we journey to Villa di Avidus today.”
His father stopped to pick him up, and the young man who led the caravan, the one who had bound Lucipor’s father’s chains to the back of his horse’s saddle, shouted back at him.
“I told you to keep up, old man. Now your son will never forget what it means to obey.” He slapped the horse’s rump, and the horse took off at a swift gallop, dragging Lucius’s father with him through the dust and rock.
Lucius screamed until his voice grew hoarse, until his body could produce no more tears. When the slaves and their guards finally caught up to the young man on the horse, Lucipor no longer saw his father. He saw only the trail of blood that remained.
“Let this be a lesson to you, boy,” the young man shouted as he dismounted at the gates of Villa di Avidus. “I am Clarius. One day, I will be your master. See that you do not disappoint me as your father has.”
* * *
When the memory faded into the morning’s harsh light, Petra felt Lucius’s body fall to the leaves, his eyes lifeless.
“No, Lucius…” Her desire to consume him turned to ash in her mouth. She collapsed over his prone body, dissolving into wracking sobs. “Come back,” Petra whispered into his lips as the vapor vanished into the harsh morning light.
She did this. She killed him with her own power. Just as she had orchestrated the deaths of Clarius’s wife and newborn. It didn’t matter that she had tried to stop Clarius from giving Constantia the poison. It didn’t matter that she had no idea she had the power to kill with a kiss. She was no different than Clarius. She was the one who deserved to die. Not Lucius. Never Lucius.
Clarius was right all along. She was a murderess.
5
The Grove
July 14, 2 BC
Lucius… Lucius? Please wake up!” Petra felt his chest for breaths but there was nothing. Tears blinded her as she shook his shoulders gently. “Come back to me,” she whispered.
But he lay unmoving in the leaves and moss beneath the trees. Quelling her rising fear, Petra thought back to the bathhouse, to Clarius. She wondered again how they had survived the mortanine, a poison she had seen kill vermin within minutes. Perhaps they needed to drink more poison for the full effects. Yet how did she kill Lucius, then? Was it the strange vapor she had pulled from his body? Tears pricked her eyes as she looked down at his peaceful face. They had been kissing, and then she saw his memories inside her head, something she had never been able to do before.
She instinctively touched her lip where Clarius’s hand had drawn blood. Could that be it? Both the master and Lucius had swallowed her blood along with the poison. She knew nothing of science or philosophy or healing, but she knew beyond any doubt she and Lucius were no longer the same as they had been. To her, it seemed, the key was in her blood. She thought about letting him drink from her but dismissed it. Though, she knew it could not harm him now, given that he survived it before. The idea seemed foolish, even prideful, to believe her blood had such restorative effects. Perhaps they had not ingested enough poison to fully kill them. But it didn’t explain what she had done to Lucius just now.
Petra let out a cry of rage and frustration. “Wake up!”
Still, he did not move. She glanced around the wood, as the day grew hotter with the rising sun. Then she heard faint voices in the distance. People were walking through the forest. Travelers? Or Clarius’s servants? Did they hear her cry out and come to investigate? She fought back tears as she looked at Lucius, at his body so exposed, so vulnerable.
The people continued to approach. She heard men’s voices. It had to be a search party from the villa. A tremor moved up her spine. The only idea she had left was to give Lucius her blood in the vain hope it would revive him. She had no water to douse the fire, and evidence they had been here was everywhere. There was no time to help Lucius and hide all traces they had been here before the men caught up with them.
She took up the dagger, bit her lip hard, and sliced through her wrist. The pain burned. She tried not to cry out, biting her lip harder and harder. She let her tears fall unchecked as she held open his mouth.
“I’m going to try to save you, Lucius,” she whispered. “This blood is the only thing I have left to give.”
Her blood dripped into his mouth, and she pressed her wrist to his lips. She didn’t know how much to give, but she let her wrist rest gently against him while she listened to the voices draw closer.
“There! I see the smoke again, in the middle of that grove of trees.” She heard the familiar shout of Eryx and her heart fell.
She couldn’t move Lucius without alerting the men to their presence. She began to see flashes of their tunics and heard the crackle of the leaves underfoot as they quickened their pace through the trees.
“I dare not stay any longer,” she whispered, wrapping her wrist in a strip of cloth she ripped from her tunic. “I won’t go far, and I won’t leave you until you come back to me.” She kissed him, tasting the metallic sweetness of her blood on his lips, and whispered, “I love you,” before she slipped away.
Taking care to slip quietly over the moss and avoid the leaves, Petra moved behind a massive overturned tree trunk, its twisted roots hiding her body.
“They are near. I can smell their blood. I can almost taste it.” When Clarius’s voice rang out, and he stepped through the trees into the clearing, Petra gasped. He stood, alive and strong, a grey pallor to his skin and a bandage wrapped around his neck above his tunic the only evidence there had been a life-and-death struggle between them.
“Look, the boy is there by the fire!” Tros shouted.
“He’s mine. Find the girl.”
>
Petra watched Clarius, hoping he would believe Lucius had died and leave his body alone.
“Master, he’s dead,” Eryx said.
Clarius’s expression, at first triumphant at finding his prey, flashed to anger. Anger that his chance to kill Lucius had been thwarted?
“Vae!” Clarius shouted, glancing wildly around at the remnants of their makeshift camp. He kicked Lucius hard in the stomach, and his body heaved up in response, but he did not wake. Petra rose to go out to him, but she didn’t know how to help. She already knew Clarius’s strength far exceeded her own. She had no chance at all against the three of them. And if somehow Lucius did awaken, he would need her later.
“He was my kill. Mine!” Clarius shouted a string of obscenities and kicked over a smoldering branch at the edge of the fire, scattering ash over Lucius’s bare chest and the mortanine flowers beside him. “How was it done?” he shouted at his men. “The poison?”
“He has blood dripping from his mouth, Master. The poison must have finally killed him.” Eryx had taken a step back, fearful he would be an unwitting recipient of Clarius’s rage.
“The girl must have died, too, Master,” Tros offered.
Eryx nodded, studying Lucipor. “The boy likely left her behind somewhere.”
“We would have found her, you fool. No, she left him after he died and continued on.” Clarius glanced out toward the main road further down into the valley below. “I am certain they were headed toward Rome.”
“He might have buried her or hid her body,” Tros offered with a hesitant voice.
“No. I can smell her blood. She’s still alive, but she won’t be for long. I swear it. And before I kill her, the first thing she is going to tell me is how we cheated death.”
Petra listened to this in silence. Inside she was screaming. Her palms were sweating, and her face flushed hot. Clarius somehow thought she knew what had caused their astounding recovery. As if she would ever truly know.
“Master, what do you instruct?”
Clarius narrowed his eyes and knelt in front of the last remaining remnants of the fire. “I told you to track her. As for this slave, if I cannot kill him, I will burn him.”
Petra almost cried out but covered her mouth instead. She looked for anything she could use to distract Clarius. A rock protruded from the soil at her feet. Too small to make much noise, but she hoped it would make them assume she might be hiding in the opposite direction. Leaning back, she threw the rock as hard as she could toward the northeast. It slammed against a massive boulder that overhung a ravine, immediately drawing the attention of all three men.
The master waved them toward the ravine and fell into step behind them. Petra leaned against the tree trunk and tried to steady her breathing. She did not move until they were well away from the campsite. She hurried to Lucius’s side and noticed his abdomen had already started to form the beginnings of an ugly bruise. She touched it but jumped back when she felt movement under her fingers.
“You’re alive!” She could see it now; his chest moved in and out, his breathing labored but steady.
Lucius’s head lolled but he slowly opened his eyes.
“Petra?” He seemed confused, unaware of his surroundings. He blinked several times, squinting into the sunlight behind her.
“I will explain everything when we are safe. Are you well enough to walk?”
“I’m not sure,” he said too loudly.
“Keep your voice down. Clarius is near.”
“How?”
She heard movement through the forest again.
“Let me help you up. He is coming back.” Petra pulled him to a standing position. She picked up the mortanine flowers, ripped their petals off, and stuffed them into a hidden pocket in her tunic.
“My side hurts,” he whispered when he raised his arms to slip into his scratchy woolen tunic.
“I know. Clarius kicked you when you were… when you died.” He stared at her as he let her lead him over to her hiding place behind the overturned tree.
“I died? What happened to me? I remember I was—”
She put a finger to his lips. Whether she stopped him for safety’s sake or because she was afraid he would remember the truth of what she had done to him, she didn’t know.
Clarius and his men crashed into the clearing where their fire lay scattered.
When Lucius caught a glimpse of Clarius in between the roots, he sobered instantly. So great was Clarius’s rage, only unintelligible gibberish came out of his mouth as he rampaged around the camp kicking trees and scattering leaves over the dying fire.
His voice calm, his eyes focused, Lucius turned to her. “We have to run for it. Can you do it?”
“Yes.” She touched his stomach. “Can you?”
“I’ll make it. You go first. Quiet at the beginning—watch your step—and then when I say, you need to run like the wind. Head away from Rome, deep into the forest. We need to get lost, so they will find it difficult to follow.”
They took off as quietly as they were able toward a dark grove of pines to the northwest, away from the Tibur River and the old road to Rome. When Lucius pressed her to run, they heard Clarius’s deafening scream in the distance, his voice echoing through the trees like the voice of a god.
“When I find you, coward, you will beg me for death. I will make your life an endless torment. By the gods, I swear it!”
* * *
They were many miles away when Petra and Lucius finally slowed their pace. Sweat poured from their bodies in the full heat of the afternoon, despite the dappled shade of the forest canopy overhead. When her breathing slowed enough for her to talk, Petra beckoned him over to a fallen tree trunk. He followed, wiping moisture from his forehead.
“You asked me what happened, Lucius, and it is only fair I tell you the absolute truth.”
“I remember bits and pieces,” he said, wariness in his tone.
“You died because of me.”
“What do you mean? How? You could never overpower me.”
“But I did. We kissed, and then a vapor moved between us. I could see it in the air between our mouths. It moved from you into me. It gave me strength—your strength. It made my desire for you unquenchable. I could not stop. I wanted more and more, even though you begged me to stop. And then…”
He remained silent for several moments, as he looked away toward the sun beating through the oaks and pines. Finally, he simply said, “And then?”
“You died in my arms.” She was the one who looked away this time, down to her clasped fingers as she squeezed them together so hard they turned white.
“I don’t understand. Such a thing is not possible.”
“Remember we once thought cheating death was impossible. What of us now? Are we not living proof of the impossible?”
“Yes, but—”
“Whatever it was, it took your life completely. I pulled the essence from your body and stole your strength as a thief steals a loaf of bread from the market.”
“How did you do it?”
She frowned, confused. “I told you. I—”
“No, how did you bring me back?”
“I—I am not sure.”
“Petra,” he said, studying her face intensely, “you forget how well I know you. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I fed you my blood.”
His eyebrows rose so high they reached the dark hair falling across his forehead. He touched his mouth absently where her blood still stained his lower lip.
“I don’t know if it was that which saved you, or if it was merely time.”
He thought long about her words, rising from the tree trunk to pace about.
“Lucius?” she finally said.
“Hmm…?” He barely registered her voice so lost was he in his thoughts.
“Can you forgive me?”
At that, he glanced up sharply, his thoughts immediately forgotten. He walked back and sat beside her, grasping her hand in his.
“Always.”
Her gaze rose to meet his, and she saw he meant it.
“You had no way of knowing this would happen. Something has changed both of us. We are no longer human. We are beyond human.”
“No, that’s—”
“Impossible? You were right when you said we were living proof of the impossible. Think about it. Even though we must have run nearly twenty miles last night, you don’t feel hungry or thirsty, do you?”
She shook her head.
“All three of us escaped poisoning and death to live again.” Lucius touched her temple with his fingers. “And you pulled the life from my body with a simple kiss.”
Petra felt almost dizzy with the implications. What would it mean for them now? Would they always be in hiding? Would Clarius Avidus track them to the ends of the world looking for answers?
“What should we do?” she asked.
“I think we should learn all we can about what happened to us.”
“I agree.”
“And we need to learn to defend ourselves. Clarius will find us again. When he does, we must be ready.”
“How will we survive him?”
He offered up a half-smile. “You can give him your kiss of death.”
“Please don’t tease. I—”
Lucius ran a finger over her lips to silence her. “I don’t know why, but just the thought of it makes me want to kiss you again.”
6
The Prima Sanguis
Sicily
February 21, 1723
The lady turned from Aurelia and touched Lucius’s hand. “Do you remember all those months we wandered Rome looking for my father?”
Lucius’s smile was wistful. “I only wish we had found him.”
“You never received word of him, Madame?” Aurelia asked.
Petra shook her head. “The last time I was in Rome, the slave drivers had marched my family into the slave market and sold us to the highest bidder. I thought myself lucky to be sold to Master Lucius Avidus at the time. He was considered a kind and fair master.”