by Aja James
He was more dead than alive.
As if apart from himself, he had the sensation that he was warm. It was a foreign feeling, for most of the time he felt on ice, submerged in darkness, silence and nothingness.
Luscious heat licked at the edges of his consciousness, so enticing, irresistible. He was drawn to it like a moth to flame.
He wanted to burn.
His heart…it burned. It hurt.
The muscle that beat in his chest was sore, wounded. But what pained him more was the heart that felt. That heart was broken. Afraid and bleeding.
Someone enfolded his body, blanketing him with their own. They fit more perfectly together than the missing pieces of a puzzle; they were simply one. He felt the vital essence of his other half, the life force she pulsed into him where they were joined. The air she breathed into his lungs. Her scent mating with his.
Sophia. Kira.
No matter her name, no matter her incarnation and form, she was never meant to be his, though he was ever and always, unequivocally, hers.
He fed energy back into her where he was locked tightly inside her body. Though he had little strength, though he was broken in every sense of the word, he still gave her what he could. And her body unconsciously and continuously milked him in her sleep, greedily absorbing every pearl of his release.
He inhaled a ragged breath.
It seemed that his physical self had turned toward the female covering him. Like pinpricks, he could almost feel his lips brushing her temple, the fine hairs there tickling his nose.
With every last ounce of strength he possessed, he concentrated on this closeness, struggling, clawing his way toward the heat of her, the essence of her.
He was so very cold. She was the only one who could warm him. She was the only one who mattered.
Please, Goddess, let him have her for a little while. A brief respite from the endless torment of his shattered soul.
Even though his heart still burned. His thoughts not his own. Even though she was never meant to be his…
At least there was one thing real he could claim:
The single tear that contained all of his love and anguish, all of the memories buried fathoms deep, that rolled from the corner of his shut eyes, down the line of his nose, to the lips that pressed against Sophia’s skin.
*** *** *** ***
The Creature was barely breathing, mostly dead.
He did “die” a couple of times during the last few days since she began the experiments in earnest. But she was able to revive him each time by injecting her own venom and blood, strengthened with electricity, into his veins.
Resuscitating the mangled mess of flesh, bones and skin like Frankenstein’s monster.
Ah, the miracles of modern science. She could never have done what needed to be done in the ancient world. Not as efficiently, in any case, though there had been other ways.
“Magic” was much stronger back then, when the particles and essence of the original gods, from the original creation, retained their power, diffused throughout the universe though they had been.
She opened the Creature’s “coffin” lid with ease, though the thick, heavy metal weighed a ton, quite literally. To a being with the strength of the Hydra, however, it was like opening a peanut butter jar.
Unconsciously, a full-bodied shiver strummed through the Creature’s limbs, making him quiver and shake before he settled like malleable putty once again. Countless tubes, thick and thin, criss-crossed through his lifeless body, with fluids of different colors flowing through them.
Some carried away his blood, while others infused her blood, venom…and other things…into him. Some pulsed with his semen, taking away his life force the moment he produced it and depositing it into awaiting tubes her machines collected. Some injected him with nutrients, to keep his physical shell from collapsing. Others took away his waste.
It was exceedingly difficult to strike the right balance. The intricacies and mysteries of the body, immortal or human, were unfathomable, no matter how modern medicine attempted to decipher them. If one looked at the humanoid body as a machine, only gods could have given it life; made a lump of putty animate, think and feel.
How many lives had been lost across the history of time in the name of research? When humans tried to comprehend and harness the spark of life?
But she knew the real secret.
It wasn’t merely the body that had to function. It wasn’t the body that lived. It was the soul within the body that made it real, made it feel, think and act. But the two had to work in perfect synchronization with each other. One could not “live” without the other.
In many ways, the ancients—gods, goddesses, and their monstrous, fantastical creations—were simpler. Their power and magic didn’t need forms. They were the earth, sky and sea. They were darkness and light, air and its absence. They had intellect, power and essence, but few emotions. Those only came later, as the earliest beings evolved.
When the Twin Goddesses learned to love.
Hate. Regret. Sadness. Envy. Joy.
With every new emotion, the soul grew. Like a seed that grew roots, then a stem, then leaves, then the fragile flower that bloomed, its petals unfurling to reveal a secret center. A center that contained more seeds, more facets of the soul, until countless such spirits joined with physical shells, making each and every one unique.
Making the universe and its inhabitants exponentially, infinitely complex. And there no longer existed black and white, right or wrong, only varying degrees of truth and lies in between.
That’s why the Creature almost died a couple of times while she fine-tuned her experiment to remake him with the human gene—the various ingredients within him had fallen out of balance. But he survived, with jumpstarts from her, to be sure, but mainly because of himself.
His soul was immeasurably strong. The strongest she’d ever encountered across the many millennia of her existence.
He could have died, and did die in some ways, many times in his violence-filled history. But he always survived.
He was…special.
In some ways, just like her.
He contained the spark of the Goddesses.
“Do you know my real name, Creature?” she murmured softly, though the sound of her voice still sliced through the heavy silence of the cave like a serrated knife.
“Līlītu,” she told him, as if he could hear her.
Given that his ears functioned, he probably could. But whether his muddled brain accounted for what he heard was a different question altogether.
It didn’t stop her from sharing. Now that Medusa was gone, she had no one else.
Strangely, she’d always felt “close” to the Creature, as close as a being like her could feel, in any case.
There was only one other who ever made her truly feel. Even love. When he was taken away, everything good inside of her died with him. Instantly. Irrevocably.
The Creature was different.
Sometimes he was like a playmate. A pawn that tried to become a chess master. Though she never showed it, she rather enjoyed his cutting wit and sarcasm. Fascinated by the turnings of that devious mind.
Other times, he was her monster. Her creation. Almost like a child. More hers than anyone or anything else in her life. After all, her love had become the vampire queen’s whore. Her daughter…
Strange, but she never thought about the offspring she engendered with her leopard Mate. The child only mattered when they had been together. The simile of a family. She had loved the girl because of her sire. Once she lost her Mate, the child no longer mattered.
“Or Lilith, I suppose would be the modern translation,” she continued to inform her subject. “Not the one from the Hebrew bible, though I suppose I might have inspired those imaginings. I am the original, and I have existed in one form or another since almost the beginning of time. I will always exist. Just like life and death.”
She stroked long, elegant fingers through the Creat
ure’s sweat-matted hair, glancing sharp-nailed fingertips over his cold cheek and bluish lips.
“You asked before what my end game was, beautiful Creature. That is an unanswerable question, I’m afraid. For there is no end. Only the game.”
She leaned over his prone, naked shell in his snug container, no better than a form-fitting test tube, and licked a long, forked tongue across his throat from collar bone to chin.
“I am the game master, and you are my pawn,” she hissed, savoring the unique flavor of his skin.
“You will be my greatest creation yet. An earth-bound dragon. Man-made. Created solely by me, for me, with no other external spark.”
Unlike what she herself had to use in order to regain and transform her strength and power—the blood from the beating heart of a King of Beasts.
“You will be everything I want. Perhaps even a partner worthy to sit beside me as we rule this new world together.”
She opened her mouth as serpent fangs descended from her upper gums, and hissed before striking:
“Or you will die trying.”
And then she struck, sinking the dagger-like teeth into her subject’s throat, filling him with nothingness.
*** *** *** ***
When Rain came for the daily health check, Sophia was awake and decent.
Although, it depended on how one used that term. The way she’d taken advantage of Dalair in the state that he was in was hardly “decent.”
At least, Sophia was no longer wrapped around his prone, wounded, naked body like a starfish. Her greedy, wet core pulsing relentlessly around his sex, milking his life force into her body even though she should have been the one to give him strength.
But even as she hated her own selfishness, she couldn’t regret what she did. As much as his body needed hers to heal, she needed him just as much. If not more. At least, she also made sure Dalair was covered with a larger, clean towel from the adjoining bathroom before the healer entered.
That she had to count these civilities like a miser hoarding coins to make herself feel better was something Sophia chose not to dwell on.
“He is improving,” Rain commented as she commanded the zhen to retract from the warrior’s pores back into their shackles around Dalair’s limbs, after checking his vitals through the sentient needles.
“Whatever happened over the last twelve hours seemed to help him quite a bit,” the healer said carefully, regarding Sophia with her shrewd gaze.
Sophia swallowed before telling a half-truth, “He rested well. I…laid myself on top of him. The contact helps.”
Rain gazed at her quietly for some moments, and then observed, “Yes. The physical skin-to-skin contact from a female who loves him should help a Pure warrior heal. More importantly, it is the touch from someone he loves that matters the most.”
Sophia nodded numbly.
Though they’d both slept for most of the past twelve hours, wrapped around each other, intimately joined, she didn’t feel refreshed. She was weighed down by an invisible force.
It felt like grief. As if she was in mourning. For the male who looked, smelled and sounded like Dalair, but who was not really there. Everything vital that made him who he was…the soul of him was missing.
She didn’t doubt that Dalair cared deeply for her. Not even for a moment. Since she regained her memories and gradually made sense of them after her Awakening, she knew exactly how much he’d sacrificed for her.
He’d given everything.
But while he was still himself, and even now, just a shell, a shadow, she’d given him so little in return.
So fucking little.
“I took his blood,” Sophia reported by rote.
In hindsight, perhaps she should have checked with Rain before she drank the blood of a “polluted” body. Dalair’s veins contained their enemies’ poisons, after all. Goddess knew what it all entailed. Sophia should not have been so complacent and reckless.
“How do you feel?” Rain queried.
Well, at least the healer didn’t panic, Sophia noted. Though Rain wasn’t the type of female to ever panic. She was calm and tranquility personified. Great attributes to have as the race’s healer, even without her original Gift.
“Tired,” she said with a shrug. “But that probably has little to do with his blood, more to do with…”
Sophia trailed off, too exhausted to find the right words.
“Sadness? Fear? Worry?” Rain provided softly. “It’s all right to feel what you feel, Sophia. I cannot imagine what I would do were I in your shoes. To see the male I love like this.”
She came around the table to stand next to Sophia and grasped one of her hands in both her own.
“We will find a solution together,” Rain reassured her. “We won’t ever give up. You must be strong for him.”
Sophia nodded dully.
“So…you have grown in your Pure female fangs, Sophia?” Rain asked gently.
Sophia nodded again, her eyes never leaving Dalair, who lay immobile, seemingly lifeless, on the table.
“Then there can be no doubt how you feel about the Paladin,” the healer noted. “Besides taking his blood, have you…”
Jerkily, Sophia dipped her chin in confirmation.
“I see. And how do you feel?”
“Fine,” Sophia murmured.
Physically, except for the enervation in her muscles, in her very bones, she did feel fine. No sharp pains, or other signs of the ravaging effects of the Decline.
Did this confirm that Dalair loved her back? And more than love, that they were Eternal Mates?
But how was that even possible if he wasn’t himself? Did the Cardinal Rule only apply to physical compatibility then?
But that couldn’t be right either. Love was something the “heart” felt. And the heart, according to what Sophia had been taught when she was Kira in her previous life, resided in the soul; it wasn’t the muscle in the chest that pumped blood. Not the way ancient Egyptians understood it.
Mentally, she was an unmitigated mess. Self-loathing warred with fear, churned with a savage lust, mixed with an acute sense of loss and despair. The Darkness within her swirled with menace, pulling her deeper and deeper into its debilitating vortex—
Rain’s gasp broke Sophia’s trance. For the first time since the other female entered the healing enclosure, Sophia looked her in the face.
“Your skin…your eyes…”
The shock and dismay in the soft-spoken healer’s face shrilled like a warning bell. Sophia disengaged from Rain’s grasp and marched to the en-suite bathroom to look at herself in the mirror.
Merciful Goddess!
A monster’s reflection stared back at her. Greenish black veins zig-zagged all across her skin, which had turned a corpse-like gray. Red streaks radiated from her bloodshot eyes, burning crimson in the pitch-black centers. The sharp tips of fangs she didn’t realize had elongated from her gums glinted behind parted lips.
No, she didn’t suffer the Decline. But this was infinitely worse.
For the visage of the Destroyer reflected in that mirror.
“No…no, no, no, no…” Sophia rasped.
Under the power of her black stare, a soundless vibration trembled across the surface of the glass before the mirror cracked like thin ice fracturing across a frozen lake, and shattered completely into a thousand shards all over the bathroom counter and marble floor.
“Sophia!”
Rain rushed to the entrance of the bathroom, but Sophia held up a hand to keep her back.
She didn’t know what she was capable of in this state.
Well, she did. And that was the crux of the problem.
Right this moment, feeling the way she did, she didn’t know what she’d do. She felt like she had no control of herself. It terrified her as nothing else could.
Sophia sensed the presence of other people in the enclosure, out of sight. Rain was looking meaningfully at them beyond the view of the bathroom entrance. The healer didn’t s
ay anything, but Sophia easily read the expression on her face. It said:
Stay back, folks. Unstable crazy Destroyer in the bathroom. Let’s not do anything to rile her further. Wouldn’t want to bring on a premature Apocalypse.
Amazingly, Sophia snorted at the thought.
Most certainly Rain wouldn’t have said these words, probably wouldn’t have thought them either. They reminded Sophia so much of Erebu. It’s as if he was talking to her in her head.
And just like that, her imagination of his morbid humor diffused the tension building within her.
When she looked into a large piece of broken mirror that stubbornly clung to its frame, she saw that her face was pale again, her eyes returning to their normal warm brown.
“I’m okay now, Rain,” Sophia murmured, feeling even more drained of energy, dragging her feet as she slowly shuffled out of the bathroom.
Rain gently grasped her arm to steady her as she walked, and she didn’t mind the touch. She felt ready to collapse like a dead-weight sack of potatoes.
Unsurprisingly, Valerius awaited them within the main area. He always sensed when his Mate needed him. All of the Mated males did, their connection to their other half profoundly powerful.
But surprisingly, Tal, Ishtar and Benjamin were there too.
The boy rushed forth and grabbed hold of Sophia’s other arm, less supporting her weight, more offering comfort.
“You don’t look so good, Sophie,” he boomed in his boy-loud voice, getting right to the point.
“Did you have dinner yet? Has your friend had dinner yet? I brought some in my wagon. We can eat together.”
“What are you doing here, Benji?” Sophia croaked, and cleared her throat.
Not that she wasn’t glad to see him, but what just happened in the bathroom had been a close call. Besides, if he’d come a while earlier, Sophia hadn’t exactly been in a “position” to host the precocious eight-year-old while she’d been lying on top of a naked Paladin.
While they’d been connected in the most intimate way.
“I sensed a disturbance in the Balance,” it was Tal-Telal who answered, uncannily piercing Sophia where she stood with his blind eyes.