The Dark Evolution Chronicles

by Cassandra Di Rossi

  The once-great kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were poor then. People struggled to get by, food was not plentiful, and yet still they came to thank Khonsu for his guidance and protection. If he ever really existed I had never seen him, nor met anyone who had.

  Opening my arms wide I invited the worshipers to come to the offering table with their gifts. Platters of bread, figs, pomegranates, grain, wheat, and beer were brought forward and placed upon the table for a god who would never eat them. I thanked each devotee as they came forward, wishing I could give it back to them, for they needed it more than us. Some of it would be divided between the priests and priestess in the morning, but the rest would sit there to rot. When the last platter was set I knelt before Khonsu’s statue and gave my thanks so that all could hear. Then, just as I did every night, I bowed to the crowd, thanked them for coming and vanished back inside my safe little sanctuary. But I was hungry that night. The lack of red cells in my blood was making my head light and my heart pound. So I waited for the crowd to depart and the young priestess to take to her bed, for she was the only other in residence in the temple at that time. When the coast was clear I made my way out through the back entrance.

  Djanet was far smaller than Pi-Ramesses had been and it was only a short walk to cross from the temple complex to the palace and down into the narrow streets of the inner city. Torches were expensive to burn, and so the streets in the poorest parts of town were kept in the dark. Only the glow of the stoves leaked out beneath cloth doors or through window slits. The darkness made my task all the easier.

  From a rooftop of a small cottage on the boarder between the city limits and the river, I watched and waited. There was a whorehouse by the dock that leant itself rather fruitfully to passing trade, and visitors who would not be missed unless they were late for their next embarkation. More often than not I was able to procure a newly arrived sailor who would find himself a day or two later, passed out on a stone bed, or in the scrubland behind the customhouse. No doubt they presumed they had drunk too much and forgotten their latest amorous adventure.

  As luck would have it a ship had just arrived from the south, and a gaggle of loud sailors was laughing their way along the jetty, coins in hand. I waited for the group to pass beneath me and then jumped down behind them. Most of the women had seen me before. Perhaps some even knew me as the High Priestess of Khonsu, yet not one ever owned it. I slipped around the side of the brothel where the whores were waiting for their new prey and waited quietly for one of the men to notice me. It was never long, for as stealthy as I could be, I have never been inconspicuous. My height, pale skin and copper coloured hair made me striking amidst the locals.

  As soon as a young man’s eye was caught, I tossed my long curls over my shoulders and gave him a slow eyelash-fluttering smile. The boy could not have been more than seventeen years old, but he was strong and muscular, though not especially tall. I was in the mood for a long game that night, so I led him around the back of the brothel and in through the side door. I pressed a finger to his lips to keep him quiet as we made our way to the smallest room on the upper floor. Most of the women didn’t use it for it was so uncomfortable, but I never minded, and neither did the men.

  The bed was narrow and the mattress thin. I gently pushed the boy back and straddled him. His eyes grew wide as I trailed my hands down his ebony chest and over his firm torso, slowly and gently grinding my hips until he was so hard he could stand it no longer. He groaned and gasped, and for a moment I thought it would be over before I had begun, but a cold hand on the balls can do wonders to slow things down.

  I had not been able to bear the touch of a man for many years after Ajax had poured drugged wine down my throat and forced himself inside me. And then there had been Paris. That night with him had been both wonderful and terrifying. I had run from his bed conflicted and afraid, yet I had wanted nothing more than to be with him again, to feel his hands upon my body and his lips upon mine. And then I had watched him leave with the Hebrew, to live out his human life without me. His loss was as painful as the memory of Ajax’s brutality. For a while, during the lifetime of the greatest of kings, I had remained alone and untouched. But then Ramses too was gone and I had to fend for myself. One evening I had been out hunting. Observing the whores as they worked their charms, and realized what a clever way it was to draw in my prey with little chance of arousing suspicion. The first time I had taken a human into that back room I had been so nervous I had to let him go with no reward for either of us, but the next time was easier. For a while, sex was a useful means to the hunger’s end, but as the years passed and the fear and pain became mere memories, I found I rather enjoyed it.

  The boy tried to flip us so that he was on top, but I was far stronger than him. Instead, I leaned over him, kissing his neck as I reached down and finally slid him inside me. I gasped at his size, for he was no small boy. Rocking back and forth, rolling my hips, I trailed my tongue around his earlobe, down his neck and pressed gently upon the pulsing vein. My teeth were sharpened and I was so very hungry. The boy began to grunt louder and I could feel the tension grow inside him. I dragged my teeth over his skin. With a great gasping shudder he pumped into me, and I bit down hard into his neck. Blood is so much sweeter at the moment of ecstasy.

  His heart was beating so fast the blood spilt from my lips. For a moment his body was ridged, unsure if he wanted to fight me or enjoy the exquisite pain. I drank quickly and hungrily until his heart slowed and I knew I must stop. Wrenching myself away I sat back, my breath shallow from the pleasure. I licked the spilt blood from the boy’s neck and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. An icy hand clasped around my waist, and another clamped over my mouth. I tried to turn around but the man was strong, powerful. I writhed against him as he lifted me off the bed. I felt his hard body against my back. I bit his hand and bucked my head against his chin.

  “Shhh, please. I mean you no harm,” the voice was soft and low. I gritted my teeth and threw my body back as violently as I could manage. The man lost his grip and we tumbled backwards together, crashing hard onto the floor. My lover snored quietly from the bed without stirring.

  “Everything all right in there?” One of the whores called from somewhere in a nearby room.

  I was about to scream when the man turned me over so that I might see his face. It was no surprise that he was a Vampyr, but seeing that face and eyes startled me so much I was stunned into silence.

  “Hey?” The whore called again.

  The man beneath me widened his eyes.

  “Tell her you’re fine,” he whispered.

  I drew a shaky breath and nodded.

  “Yes, sorry… We fell off the bed,” I called, to the snigger of the man and the laughter of the whore. I scowled at him.

  “Who the hell are you?” I hissed.

  He blinked his piercing green eyes at me, staring like a cat. I wondered if my eyes were that creepy, for they too are emerald green. He continued to stare without a reply.

  “I have seen you in my visions,” I said, pinning him to the floor with my legs and sitting on top of him so that I might take a better look. His skin was far too dark for a Vampyr, and yet. His gaze drifted over my naked breasts. I squeezed my thighs against his ribs hard so that he felt my anger. When he still did not answer I grew impatient. I climbed off him, rescued my gown from the bed and tugged it over my head.

  “Very well, if you will not oblige me with an answer, I shall bid you goodnight.” I hoped that I would not actually have to leave without knowing anything. He sat up and smiled. The amused glint in his eyes irritated me. I stepped over him and pulled back the cloth over the door.

  “Osiris,” he said, just as I had one foot in the corridor. I stepped back and let the wool sheet fall and close us in again. I turned around and looked down at him.

  “Oh really? I doubt that very much.” I said with a sarcastic raise of an eyebrow. I had heard of Osiris of course. He was one of the old ones. A god or man, no one was q
uite certain, but his life and murder were a bedtime story every Egyptian mother told her children. He had literally been torn apart by his brother for his crown and then brought back to life by his wife. I had always wondered about the truth behind that. I looked again at his bronzed skin, running my gaze over his muscular body.

  “In the flesh, I promise you,” he replied with a mischievous grin. “Well, dead flesh anyway.”

  I sat down on the end of the bed, almost resting upon the sailor’s feet. The boy turned onto his side and snorted.

  “You really are the Osiris?” I asked again, still not quite able to believe it, yet my instinct told me it was true. He shrugged. “You were turned?” I asked, knowing full well the answer. He got to his feet and came to sit by my side.

  “By my wife, Isis. She was born on Vampyr just like you.”

  “But turning a human, it is… most run mad, they cannot survive it,” I said.

  “We knew the risks, and we had agreed I would live and die as I was meant, but then Seth and I fought. He took an axe to my chest and chopped...”

  “She was so aggrieved that she brought you back anyway,” I finished.

  “As you see,” he held out his arms so that I might touch him to check that he was real. I noticed a scar on his chest and wondered if it was from the axe.

  “An accident when I was a boy,” he answered without my asking. “There are no scars from my death, all those wounds were cured by the turning.”

  The boy on the bed mumbled something in his sleep. We both looked at him for a moment.

  “Excellent work. That was quite a spectacle,” Osiris said with a slightly flirtatious grin. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, cautiously.

  “I was told of a seer, someone who might be able to help me.”

  “Who told you?” This news was unnerving.

  “A priestess at the temple of Khonsu.”

  “We should leave here,” I said with a sigh. He got down from the bed and held out a hand for me. “We may go to the temple,” I added ignoring the gesture, “no one will bother us there.”

  *

  My bedchamber was situated behind the inner sanctum, where no one would dare to come. It was a small room, barely larger than the one in the brothel, but it served me well enough. Osiris looked around in amazement.

  “You live like this?”

  “What is wrong with my room?”

  He shook his head and sat down on the only chair. It was undecorated wood with only a small cushion on the seat to give a little comfort. There were no windows, but a sliver of dawn light was beginning to leak through a small hole in the wall, where the builder had tried to piece the temple together with second-hand stones and not quite matched them.

  “Nothing, forgive me. I have lived as a king once, but that is many centuries ago. Our home now is a simple villa.”

  “Where?” I found myself asking. I had so many questions right then, I knew not where to start.

  “In the far corner of Upper Egypt, where the first cataract breaches the boarder with Kush.”

  “Oh. You like it down there?” I knew not why I said such a thing. But, to put it in modern terms, I was a little star-struck. Osiris was a great myth, well, not so much a myth as it has transpired. He laughed.

  “Yes indeed. It is quiet, and it is close to where I was born. There is enough there to keep us well.”

  “You were a king before the dynasties began?” I could not stop myself from asking.

  “I was.”

  “Which one?” I asked with ever-growing curiosity. He looked at me and sighed.

  “Strange as it sounds, I cannot recall my original name. I suppose it is so long ago, and so long since I used it. All I remember is that it was marked with two falcons.”

  “Then who named you Osiris?”

  “My wife, after I was turned. We thought it best I had a complete rebirth. She gave me the name of her father.”

  “I see,” I replied when he looked at me for some kind of acknowledgement. Outside a hawk screeched between the temple columns on its last hunt for the night. Osiris shifted in his seat.

  “Would you like another cushion?” I offered, presuming he was uncomfortable. But it was not the hard wood of the chair that was bothering him. He shook his head,

  “Thank you, I am quite comfortable. But I need to explain my presence, both in your visions and here in the city.”

  “Please…” I invited him to continue with a twirl of a hand.

  “I need you to find my son.”

  I waited a moment, but he did not elaborate.

  “Your son, Horus?” I asked considering his reaction to the sound of the Hawk. I tried to coax him to continue, but a dark cloud seemed to have cast over his face. His eyes were the colour of algae in the dim light. I wondered if mine did the same.

  “No, we have another son, born after I was turned…His n”

  “Horus was born when you were human?” I was astonished that such a thing was even possible.

  “Erm, yes. Horus was half-human. We believe that is why Isis survived with little ill effect.”

  Vampyr women do not often conceive by choice, for the child consumes her life, draining her blood and her energy until she can survive with it inside her no more. When she gives birth it is at great risk to herself and the child. If she survives then she may go on to have more children with little fear, but most do not live. My own mother had died giving life to me, just as my cousin’s mother did for them a few years before.

  “Horus lived for many centuries, far longer than any true human could, but he did slowly grow old until his body could walk no more and his heart ceased to beat.”

  “I am so sorry,” I muttered.

  Osiris drew a sharp breath and continued.

  “Our second son was born much later, less than a hundred years ago. He was quite a surprise, and to be honest I was more afraid of losing Isis than the child. But they both made it through. That is why we moved to Elephantine, to raise him in secrecy. Times are not so forgiving as they once were. The gods in this world are reduced to stories and myth now, and we must hide away with new names, as you are quite well aware.”

  “Lord Os…Zeus,” I spluttered, taking care not to take Osiris’s name in vain, as most Egyptians did. Osiris gave a soft laugh at my near error. “What happened?” I asked hurriedly.

  “He is still so young.”

  In comparative terms, a Vampyr child of around a century old would be like a human child of around eight or nine.

  “He was playing alone by the river. We only permit him to do this when the moon is high and full, yet…”

  “Someone took him?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yes. When he had not returned by dawn Isis and I went in search of him. We combed every island in the cataract but he was nowhere to be seen. Isis has searched south through Kush to the very furthest boarder, and I came north, through Waset, Abydos, Mn-Nefer, and now to Djanet.”

  “He has been gone a month,” I observed since the moon was full once more.

  “Yes. And we are desperate.” My son has talked of a powerful seer, a woman from a vicious war. It did not occur to me until I arrived here and the priestess said there was a seer in residence, that you might be able to help me. You are the one my son spoke of I think. You are Cassandra of Troy.”

  I sighed heavily.

  “You think I can find your boy in my visions?”

  Osiris nodded with a terrifying solemnity. This was quite an expectation.

  “What if I cannot?” I asked, trying not to sound nervous.

  “I believe and trust that you can.”

  “Why do you think he was taken?”

  Osiris rubbed his hands over his face wearily, and then looked at me with a frankness I would come to appreciate greatly.

  “He has the visions, just as you.”

  I feared that he might be intending to make an exchange of me for his son. I looked at him long
and hard, drawing him into my mind. Osiris blinked at first, but then he settled and let me in. I saw the boy, dark hair like his father, but fair skin and blue eyes like his mother. He laughed and giggled upon his father's lap. Then as he grew he was curious and he began to dream. I could not see what the boy saw, but I could feel his father’s concern, and see the fear upon the child’s face. Osiris was not going to make a trade; he merely understood the gift and wanted to find his son. I could sense the boy lived, but at that moment, nothing more.

  “His name?” I asked, releasing Osiris from my stare.

  “Jonah.”

  *

  For two days we sat in the temple as I tried to find the boy in my dreams. Shadows danced around us in the dim light of the oil lamps. I breathed in lotus vapours from the fire in the hope in would assist me to concentrate. Osiris coughed a little behind me. The sound broke my thoughts. Not that I was thinking of the boy. Instead, my mind had drifted to my lost prince. Paris was long since turned to dust, and yet he lived on in my heart, so vividly that sometimes I imagined I could still feel the life within him.

  “What did you see?” Osiris asked. His tone was so hopeful I could have cried with pity.

  “I am sorry, but there is no sign of …” the vision flashed into my mind so hard I thought my skull might crack. I gritted my teeth and pressed my hands to my temples to ease the pain. Visions do not usually come with such agony; I knew this one was sent to me by another.

  The boy was in darkness; complete and utter blackness. Something was covering his eyes and rope was tied so tight around his wrists and ankles that his skin was chafed and sliced. Someone was talking to him. The voice was feminine, almost motherly. She was leaning close to his head and he could feel her breath on the back of his ears.