Change

of Regime

LONG

ISLAND

ATHANATE

An Athanate Novella

by

Mark Henwick

Published by Marque

Series schedule, reviews & news on

www.athanate.com

Athanate Novella : Long Island Athanate

ISBN : 978-0-9928240-8-2

Published in May 2017 by Marque

Mark Henwick asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.

© 2017 Mark Henwick

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and events portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, legal entities, incidents or localities is entirely coincidental. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology may not work as depicted.

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Author’s Note

This is a novella that began life as a single scene which I posted as a Christmas present to readers of the Bite Back series blog. It was intended to be just that: a scene with characters who are affected by what is happening in the Athanate world as depicted at the end of Bite Back 5: Angel Stakes, and generally illustrative of the problems that the Athanate face and some of the ways they overcome them…

It was also experimental. To keep my writing fresh and improving, I put aside time every week to do something different. In this instance, I was experimenting with third person PoV and the present tense.

The scene turned out to be popular, so I wrote another scene. And another…

I was still using it as a learning experience. It became an experiment in showing a story from multiple points of view. It also became more embedded in the Bite Back themes. It shone light on background that readers found interesting, but which would be difficult to include in the main novels. It took on it’s own life, and so here it is, as a stand-alone novella, which might or might not have a sequel. If it gets a sequel, it’ll become another of what I’m calling ‘companion series’ to Bite Back, called Long Island Athanate.

I wrote it entirely in my development time, so it took no effort away from Bite Back.

If you’ve come to this entirely new to my writing, you should be able to read this without reading the Bite Back series, though you’ll better understand the Athanate politics if you do read the series. If you enjoy Change of Regime, please do try the Bite Back series, starting with book 1, Sleight of Hand, or the prequel, Raw Deal.

www.amazon.com/Mark-Henwick/e/B008SBO5YK/

And finally, do please write a review. Reviews are writer’s fuel.

I’d also be delighted to e-meet you on the Facebook page, the blog site or by contact email (which is on blog site).

www.facebook.com/TheBiteBackSeries/

henwick.wordpress.com/

Chapter 1

Julius

St. Jude’s, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

’Tis the evening before the night before Christmas, and...

The girl slips into the church. Father Julius is aware of her immediately. The door is slightly ajar, as it often is at this time, and she edges in sideways, like a crab, her eyes wide and terrified.

St. Jude’s is neither busy nor empty. The church is Roman Catholic, but almost Protestant-plain. Not so high Catholic that it would scare the Irish away, nor so low that the Italians wouldn’t feel comfortable. If the church had a motto, an unofficial one, that’s what it would be: comfortable. There’s coffee and tea and cookies in the vestibule, despite misgivings from the diocese. They make noises about turning a place of worship into a café, but they can’t argue with the attendance figures at services.

And the welcome means that all are welcome, even waifs who probably haven’t been to church in years. The girl does not look familiar to him.

He’s proud that St. Jude’s looks welcoming, feels welcoming, and he’s well-practiced in this, so he doesn’t approach the girl. He makes himself busy, which is not difficult. There’s plenty to do, just before Christmas.

However, he does not lose sight of her while he works.

She sits in the back, hunched over, even though just coming in has seemed to reduce some of the fear he can sense from her.

Outside of services, he encourages people to sit in the pews and talk if they need to. There’s a chorus of older ladies who gather and murmur amongst themselves, and today’s turnout is good. It’s the most relaxing sound, like listening to the rain on a stout roof. Yet it takes half an hour to work its magic before he senses the girl moving.

He lets her get within a few feet of him, every step slower than the last, before he turns and smiles.

“Welcome,” he says, trying to project warmth and safety to her.

She flinches as if he’d struck her.

She’s late teens, living on the street or couch surfing. Unsure of where the next hot bath is coming from or what it’ll cost her. He does this snap assessment a lot. He’s seldom wrong.

She seems to steel herself and whispers, “Father.” Her eyes look over his shoulder at the altar and slide away quickly.

“Can I just talk?” she says. She can’t meet his eyes.

“Of course. Come, let’s sit.”

Without touching, he ushers her to the empty front pew. She sits on the edge of the wooden bench, every muscle tensed as if she’s expecting to have to escape. He has a lot of practice looking comfortable, and he does, half turned to her, with his arm resting on the back of the pew and his legs crossed.

Without hearing words, he can detect the murmuring ladies at the back, approving that he takes time to speak to anyone who comes in. They are good souls, every one of them, but he tunes them out and concentrates on the girl.

Her name is Tiana, and her accent makes her from Georgia. He does not ask why she’s here alone, or where her folks are, or any of the questions that he can guess answers to and which are important but not urgent.

He knows she wants a place that’s welcoming but not intrusive. A priest that listens more than he speaks.

Five minutes in and with another fearful, sliding glance at the altar, she reaches the topic she came to speak about.

“I think I was attacked.”

“Mmm,” Father Julius says, quietly. “Tell me.”

She stares at her hands and recounts a tale that starts in familiar ways. A party, dancing, a smoke, a drink. A handsome guy.

He listens.

“He didn’t—” she says and pauses. “I mean...I think I was dressed. I was dressed. I was. It’s just...”

“It’s blurred,” he suggests.

“I didn’t have that much to drink,” she says, prickly with defense. “I’m careful. I drink from the bottle. I don’t leave my drink. And it was only weed I was smoking.”

Then suddenly, her carefully stored up courage starts to leak away.

“You’re just gonna think I’m crazy.” She starts to get up, and for the first time, he touches her. Gently, on the arm.

She flinches, but she sits down again abruptly.

“I believe you,” he says. “It was confusing. Not enough to eat, maybe. I’d guess you were tired, a bit strung out? A little alcohol, a little weed, a lot of dancing. And then?”

She’s silent for a long time. Her hands clench into fists.

“He bit me.” The words are forced out.

One trembling hand rises to the woolen scarf around her neck, pulls the edge down. Her eyes come up to meet his—angry, expecting laughter, daring him to laugh.

He does not laugh.

He offers up a silent prayer for help. There are things he can do and things others must do.

“Come with me,” he says and he takes her hand, lifting her up.

He leads her to the font and places her hand on the edge.

She is trembling.

He dips his fingers in, holds them over her hand. Drops of holy water splash onto her skin.

She flinches again, but leaves her hand there.

“See?” he whispers. “You’re just you.”

“You don’t believe me,” she says.

Her hand twitches as if to draw away, but now he presses down, very gently again, and runs his fingers over her skin in a circle.

Her eyes are fixed on her hand.

“I believe you,” he says, “but what happened isn’t what you thought happened.”

“Yeah?” The street-smart sass tries to assert itself again, but she has no follow-up.

“Yes.” His fingers continue circling on the back of her hand, and his voice is low and soothing. “You were tired and hungry. A little drink and a smoke affected you more than normal.”

It’s working. It’s hard being so scared for a long time, particularly when you’re tired, and especially when someone speaks so calmly.

“Dehydration and tiredness made you clumsy. You stumbled. Hit your head. Blows to the head are strange. It can make everything a bit weird. The guy got too friendly. Bit you on the neck. How gross.”

His fingers continue to stroke the back of her hand. Her eyelids are lowered. Her breathing is slow and she’s stopped trembling.

She tries to speak, but can’t form words.

“You left,” he says. “No harm was done.”

“Mmm.” No words from her, but a relaxed acceptance.

“Vampires don’t really exist, but even if they did, you couldn’t be one, because holy water doesn’t burn you.”

“Mmm.”

Her eyes are closed, her shoulders drooping. He has not lied to her; what she knows as vampires don’t exist.

“In a moment,” he says, “I’m going to give you the address of a house just a block away. Go there. You’ll get showers, meals and a safe bed for a few nights. Get you back on your feet.”

He feels the last of the tension draining out of her, and slowly removes his touch.

Her eyes open. Blink. Lift to meet his, questioning.

He smiles at her. “You are more in need of sleep than anything I can do or say,” he says. “Here, go stay at this place and come back when you’re rested.”

He gives her a card, and she frowns at it.

“I can’t—”

“There’s no payment required. Help with others there is always welcome, and I think you’d be good at that.”

She blinks again and backs away, but not in fear. She’s still uncertain. Not quite believing.

“Go on.” He smiles and makes a shooing motion with his hands. “The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll be washed, fed and asleep.”

“Thank you, Father,” she mumbles. She moves away, gathering speed, as if the offer might have a time limit on it.

She’s at the door when it swings open to admit another. They pass, the girl and the newcomer.

Father Julius shivers.

He’s impressed and appalled.

Impressed at how quickly the response has come. It is barely ten minutes since he sent the prayer for help. Of necessity, in this age, his prayer is initially a short-range WiFi transmission, needing only to reach his laptop in the back room. The laptop then connects to a distant server and sends a prearranged message to its target in another building. That building is eight minutes’ walk away.

Appalled, because of the emissary who has come in response.

She is memorable, but in a way such that not a single one of the chorus of ladies gathered in the pews will be able to describe her actual appearance.

The polite ones will call her, somewhat ambiguously, a working girl. Their mouths will purse in disapproval to dispel any misunderstanding. Those less polite will call her a whore.

She strides. Her heels click on the stone floor. Her coat flaps.

“Livia,” he murmurs.

“Julius.”

Her voice is soft. The sound of it always puts him in mind of the phrase iron fist in a velvet glove.

They sit. Livia is impatient, but as committed to maintaining his disguise as she is her own. They work together in these uncertain times, so she will pretend to be a woman unburdening her soul to him.

The chorus mutters that Father Julius is a saint to give his time to anyone who comes in, not really meaning anyone, but meaning Livia.

Another time, it might make him smile. Not now.

The message transmitted through the internet had no details. It was simply a call for help. But Livia has acute senses.

“The girl?” she says, her head tilting to indicate the door where they passed each other.

He nods. “Bitten. Her memories left partly intact.” He sighs. “I have blurred them, offered an alternate meaning and speeded up the healing. She’ll be fine.”

“I’ll go and find him then,” Livia says. Her senses are acute enough that she’s captured an impression of the attacker’s marque, the scent that will linger after biting. Livia may not know who it is, but she’ll find him.

Justice will be swift.

Father Julius opens his mouth to speak and shuts it again, thinking he’s wasting his time.

Livia raises an eyebrow to prompt him.

“He’s young, I think,” he says. “A clumsy mistake, not deliberate.”

“Exactly the kind of mistake we cannot afford,” she says. “Especially now.”

“You have news?”

She shrugs. “He’s coming. It’s not up to us to inquire when exactly.” And as she speaks, this woman who has always scared him, this nightmare made flesh, this woman who is about as soft and sensitive as steel...she shivers. But her voice is steady as she continues. “You want me to spare this clumsy oaf, who threatens us all with discovery by humanity, just at the moment we get a new master? He might think you’d spent too long as a priest, that you’ve become your disguise. That you’ve become unorthodox.”

They are speaking English, but the word ‘unorthodox’ carries its sinister echoes from their language.

Unorthodox is biting a person and failing to blur their memories.

Unorthodox is protecting someone like that.

Unorthodox is a reason for execution.

“And yet,” Julius says, “he is the most unorthodox of all, and his interest in us might be precisely because we are different from the rest of the Athanate world. That we might not follow every rule in every case.”

As he told the girl, vampires do not exist, but the Athanate certainly do. They share few things with the myths. The need for Blood. The ability to mesmerise. But instead of hiding from sunlight in coffins and being burned by holy water, they pass through the human community, indistinguishable, carrying their own culture and language, silently, secretly.

Even in churches.

Livia leans back in the pew.

“Face it,” Julius presses his advantage, “if unorthodox is an automatic death sentence, then every single one of our hidden community is dead.”

“I’ll think about it,” she says finally. “I may just discipline him.”

She gets up and walks out, to mutters that ripple through the chorus.

This time, he smiles.

There is reason to hope.

Skylur Altau, who has declared himself Master of all Athanate in North America, has also declared New York his domain—the place where he will reside. They expect him to arrive any day. They’ve already made themselves known to his Diakon, his second-in-command, this little community that hid, unnoticed, beneath the noses of the previous tenants, the officials of the Athanate Assembly called the Warders. The same Warders who Altau dismissed and exiled.

Julius had known the hidden community here would not escape detection by Altau, and there was nowhere else to go.

Trespassing in Altau’s domain could mean a sentence of death.

But what would their new lord and master make of them? A small group of Houses of different persuasions that try to live in harmony with each other and integrate themselves into the human community.

A sort of model for the whole Athanate world.

Hope.

Father Julius smiles and gets up. He has a lot to do at this time of year for his parishioners. Of all types.

Chapter 2

Elodie

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

For a heart-pounding minute… the street is empty in the numinous sunlight. Bright, blank advertising boards above the sidewalk numb the brain. The street signs twist and lie. The shops are silent; they leak their pungent breath over the street, over her.

She leans against a wall and pretends to be reading a message on her cell.

Important message. On the cell.

Her eyes are squeezed shut so tightly it makes her dizzy.

It—whatever it was—passes.

The sounds of cars and people and life seep back in.

Her sight is blurry with tears when she opens her eyes again.

What’s going on?

Panicked, she can’t remember anything. Not even her name. Then there’s a vague sensation of talking to someone. Yes! There was a man, Barlett, speaking. It’s dangerous, he said.

Your funeral. He said that, too.

“You all right?”

A guy on the street. Talking to her.

“Get away from me,” she says. The words slur. Her mouth feels lopsided and she starts to walk away hurriedly. It takes effort. The streets are slippery with patches of ice.

Left foot. Right foot.

Gotta keep going. Important.

The man who spoke says something else. Probably as rude as she was to him. She ignores it.

It’s dangerous. It’s even dangerous for people to be seen with you.

Barlett had told her that, but she doesn’t know why.

Her cell is vibrating. There’s something showing on the glossy screen.

She keeps walking, but she looks at the cell.

Important. Something very important she must do.

There’s an animation on the screen. A rabbit in a vest, with an old-fashioned pocket watch, is gesturing at her.

Time to go down the rabbit hole.

Follow. Hurry. Tick tock.

Her fingers seem to remember, and she swipes in a code that starts the show.

The screen fades to black and she falls into a slideshow.

I am not crazy.

I need to reboot.

My name is Elodie Villiers.

I am not crazy. I need to trust me.

It feels like rocks colliding in her head. Things fall back into place, and it is a dark place.

I’m 28.

That’s too young to die.

Although she remembers the slide that will come up next, she lets it come anyway.

I’ve suffered another blank.

I just need to reboot.

She stops the slideshow, and resets the timer in case it happens again—the blank as she calls it.

The episodes are getting more frequent now.

Or maybe it’s triggered by where she is. It’s her childhood home. Brooklyn. But the streets of this Brooklyn are like old friends who’ve grown strange while she’s been away. They look narrower. More people and yet less lively. Less real.

She looks around and sees new and old Brooklyn superimposed, like one of those trick Photoshop images. Disorienting.

She stops looking. It’s what set the last blank off.

A block west.

Her head hurts, but she’s sure she remembered that right. She has to get there on time. Barlett won’t hang around, and he’d said something on the phone about this being the last meeting.

Either he has the information she needs, or her life is over.

She hurries, but stops herself from running. Running will attract attention. That’s dangerous. Not just because Barlett said so, but because she knows.

She knows things she shouldn’t.

She’s dangerous to them, and that means they’re dangerous to her. They protect their secrets with an absolute, fatal ferocity. How else could they have survived, especially here, in such a crowded area? Over 2.5 million people in under 100 square miles of city.

And that’s just Brooklyn.

All of those millions of people on Long Island...none of them see it. She hadn’t, until she’d gone looking with electronic eyes and desperation. Now she knows, and she knows where they are, in general terms.

When the internet couldn’t make the last resolution and give her a place to find them, she resorted to old-fashioned methods. She lied about what they really were, and still most of the PIs she talked to wouldn’t touch it. Barlett did. He said he was the best. He didn’t ask too many questions and she could afford his fees—just barely.

Somewhere here. This intersection.

She slows.

Barlett set up a meeting style. She’s never to go to his office, after the first meeting. She’s never to approach him. Just be where I say and wait, he’d said.

He’s ultra-cautious. And now he’s running scared.

Either he’s got what she needs, or he’s pulling out and she’s dead.

Or they found out, and he’s set her up.

Imagining her head in a telescopic sight makes the skin on the back of her neck crawl, even though a bullet in the head won’t make much difference now.

Tick tock.

He’s not here.

Just as panic starts, and she’s about to look around wildly, she hears a hiss from behind her.

“Walk, dammit.”

She walks.

She can hear a walking stick tapping, so she slows a little, catches a glimpse of him in a store window.

Barlett looks different every time she sees him. Not huge things. No wigs or cross-dressing. Simple, little things. Today, he’s limping and walking with a stick, and there’s a fedora tilted over his eyes. Scarf muffler, gloves, old coat buttoned against the cold. He looks like he’s eighty years old. He's maybe thirty-five.

“Jesus,” he mutters, as if talking to himself. He’s close enough she can hear him, far enough away that it doesn’t look as if they’re together.

“This is it. We’re even, and I’m done.”

Shit.

“What happened?” Her voice betrays her anxiety.

They walk on for several paces before he answers. He keeps his voice at the level of traffic noises. “I got too close. They’re too good. They made me. I barely got away.”

The tap of the stick is like a metronome. It seems to cut through the sounds of the road—the big engines, the fat tires running over badly fitted manholes, people yelling, horns blaring.

“I give you what I got, and I’m gone. Today. Got my bug-out money. Got a place way down south, on the coast,” he says, and there’s a humorless bark of a laugh. “Reckon I’m taking up fishing for a good long vacation.”

“What’ve you got?” she says.

She doesn’t try to change his mind. Actually, him staying on would achieve nothing. It’s too late. Either he’s got what she needs, or she’s dead.

“Not a lot. They like a couple of restaurants,” he says. “There’s also a club, and a church that seem to be something to them. Haven’t found where they live and I’m not going to try.”

A church? She’s surprised.

Old habits die hard. She’d visited one when she’d gotten back to New York, on the basis of some old memory about the patron saint of lost causes. But her cause was too lost, or maybe God was busy watching the sparrows fall or something. It just made her angry and she left before the priest noticed her and started asking awkward questions.

But what would they want with a church?

There’s a squeal of tires and a driver hammers on his horn.

Cars stop and there’s shouting and cursing. People slow and get in her way, rubbernecking the street theater.

She’s twenty yards down the road before she realizes she can’t hear the tap of the walking stick.

She turns, even though Barlett has always told her not to.

Like Orpheus in the underworld, he’d said. Never look back at me, or you’ll lose it all.

There’s a walking stick. Pale, with a pistol grip. It’s fallen into the road, next to the edge of the sidewalk.

There’s no sign of Barlett.

Chapter 3

Elodie

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

She dives through some shops and trots across a couple of back streets, her heart pounding and her head swiveling left and right.

No one is following her.

The streets are empty.

Am I hallucinating again?

Was Barlett even there?

She’s in Greenpoint. Surrounded by film studios. Huge square buildings, uniform and near-featureless on the outside. A different world in each of them on the inside.

Each of them like a rabbit hole.

How many rabbit holes have I gone down?

She has to believe she’s not hallucinating, or else she might as well sit down and die right here.

I am not crazy. I need to trust me.

Her cell is purring, but it’s not the alarm this time.

She knows the phone number. A landline. From an office. If she closes her eyes for a second, she can actually see the desk, almost hidden by the piles of paper, each pile with foliage of multicolored Post-it notes peeking out the sides. The drooping architect’s lamp. The reference books.

She doesn’t mean to answer, but there’s an ache in her throat, and while she’s hating herself for that, her thumb swipes the little green icon.

“Yes,” she says. Meaning I’m still alive.

She can’t go back. She told him that before.

“El.”

“Nate,” she says. “Why are you calling me?”

“I…” he stumbles over the words, and she suspects he changes what he was going to say. “I still care. You’re not well.”

She can hear the pain in his words.

“I know I’m not well,” she replies.

“The doctor said you should be resting at home.”

The doctor had said that. He’d said the growth in her brain was inoperable. That she would experience bizarre hallucinations. That it would be best to remain quiet in familiar surroundings. With people to look after her.

He hadn’t said she should give up and wait to die, but that’s what he’d meant.

She’d chosen not to. She couldn’t just lie in bed, dosing herself with drugs, letting the darkness creep in through the door like a tide. Wondering, every time she fell asleep, if this was the one she wouldn’t wake from.

“I can’t,” she says to Nathan, who would have taken time off from his research at the university at Ann Arbor, and would have sat with her while the long evening fell. “I free you.”

She closes her eyes again. She can imagine him sitting at the desk in the cramped little office with its single window looking out onto the campus. The view would be shrouded in snow now. Ann Arbor is white and cold and still this Christmas Eve.

That office was the place where she developed her interest in the architecture of languages. Where she traced the roots of Sanskrit and Dravidian and Anatolian up into Proto-Indo-European and back down into Scythian and Mycenaean Greek.

The place where old languages come to die, the students joked.

The place where the closed-faced federal agent had given her a frightening nondisclosure agreement and a few pages of puzzling transcript he wanted her to assess.

“Is it a code? Some kind of dialect of an old language?” he’d asked.

With nothing but the occasional headache to hold her back, she’d unleashed the full weight of her knowledge and her computing expertise. And had found, in the tangle of dead roots and archaic grammar, hints of a wondrous new language, just begging for investigation.

It was like finding gold in the pan, except the federal agent had closed the project and warned her to forget everything she’d ever known about it.

She hadn’t. She couldn’t.

Not even when the headaches and dizziness became impossible to ignore. When the doctor’s solemn words started pressing down on her, every word heavy as a boulder, every visit more and more of them, squeezing the breath from her chest and stealing the light from the day, until the only light she lived by seemed to be from her laptop screen.

And in chasing a supposedly dead language through the shadowy corners of the internet, she’d found the chance of hope, to buttress against the crushing weight of the doctor’s certainty.

Nathan is still talking, still trying to draw her back into his world. His arguments have grown cold.

“You don’t have to stay in bed,” he says. “You could come into the office when you feel up to it. I’d drive you. Take you back whenever you wanted. God knows I need the help.”

The way it is at the moment, his words spark off images in her head.

Office. Office.

She sees herself in a different office, and suddenly knows what she needs to be doing, right now.

“I’m dead,” she says, trying to grow a hard, shiny surface on her soul. “Whatever happens. Grieve and move on, Nate. I wish you every joy. From the bottom of my heart.”

“What do you mean—”

She ends the call, cutting him off.

Go, she wants to say. Be at peace. Turn away and find a new life. She wants that charmed combination of words that will comfort him and free him at the same time, but she’s better with old, dead languages than modern English.

Or maybe with a language that is old, but not dead. A language of hope.

She starts to jog.

It’s too late to worry about attracting attention.

Chapter 4

Julius

Williamsburg, Brooklyn - Waterfront

Father Julius crosses the road, sidles around the iron gate with the flaking keep-out sign, and heads down toward the river, steps crunching on uneven gravel.

He wears soft boots which keep his feet warm, and are comfortable for walking. He doesn’t know how far he will have to walk today, beyond the five miles he has walked so far. By the same consideration, his coat is warm. It’s old-fashioned, his woolen coat: military, snug, double-breasted, with wide lapels. He has put his collar and hood up, even though he knows it completes the image and makes him look like the sinister assassin character out of the video game. The hood is necessary. It hides his thick red hair, which is too recognizable. He doesn’t want to be stopped by any of his parishioners at the moment. Time is precious.

Is he too late? Where is she?

The red hair has always been a problem. He has it cut frequently to keep it from being unruly, and that makes the Bishop think he’s vain. Julius does not discourage it. Better the Bishop think of vanity than start to suspect what Father Julius really does on his own time.

Like keeping the hidden Athanate community of Long Island from spinning out of control.

Vampires! The Bishop would have a heart attack.

A flurry of snow billows out of the evening.

And behind it comes a young man. An Athanate—a very junior member of the hidden community.

He’s distressed, stumbling. He cringes at the sight of Julius.

But he’s not dying, merely…severely reprimanded, and a load lifts from Julius’ shoulders.

Julius lets him go; he’s not a problem to them. Unless he makes another mistake, and then not all Julius’ pleas will save him.

He walks on quickly.

She’s there, down near the water. Her hands are thrust deep into her coat pockets and she’s looking at the river, lost in thought.

She doesn’t turn as he approaches, but in the same way he can sense her, she can sense him.

“You haven’t visited me for ages, Julius,” she says. “We speak only when there’s a problem.”

“We do. I’m sorry.” He doesn’t argue. They don’t have time to argue and besides, she’s right.

She spins, secure that the evening’s poor light will hide her uncanny speed, and suddenly she’s behind him, arms gripping his body, imprisoning him. She’s pulled his hood back and her lips are resting on his neck. When she wants, she can move in a blur, evidence of her elder Athanate abilities. She’d given him just enough time to gasp, no more.

“So visit me now,” she whispers.

It’s like falling, the rushing sensation in the pit of his stomach. But it’s not fear—or at least, it’s not just fear. It’s the same thing it’s always been: that shivery, rabbit-snake fascination. That heart-thrashing desire.

“Livia,” he says. His voice is thick and slow, and he has to swallow. “We don’t have time. A message has come. Altau wants to see us now.”

“Some things are more important than our new lord and master.” Her fangs are out. He can feel them graze his skin and he has to clench his teeth. She makes his whole body sing. She always has.

He takes her hands in his, raises them to his lips and kisses her cold fingers.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he speaks again. “We can’t keep him waiting.”

“We could run.”

“I can’t.”

She lets him go with an unhappy sigh, and they start to walk slowly back toward the light. They are close, shoulders almost touching.

He raises his hood again. The flushed skin of his face feels like a beacon in the darkness and he really can’t have his parishioners seeing him like this.

“You’ve come to take your disguise very seriously, Julius,” she says as he hides behind the hood. “So seriously, it’s become more important to you than...old friends.”

“It’s not, but it’s complicated,” he says.

She laughs.

“Complicated? I disagree. Everything has become painfully simple. You do know, my little black-frocked priest, there’s every possibility we won’t be allowed to walk away from this meeting with Altau?”

Julius is wearing jeans and a shirt under the coat, but he lets her teasing description slide.

“If he wanted to hunt us down, he could.” He gestures, sweeping the argument away. He’s had this discussion with others, many times, over the last couple of weeks. “There’s nowhere to go, and no way to get there.”

“Yes, he could hunt us. But why bother to chase us all around the city or the country if he can get us to turn up at his door like good little sacrifices?”

“I really don’t think that’s what he wants.”

“Maybe. Diakon Bazhir wasn’t clear one way or the other. Anyway, I’ll amend what I said. There’s every possibility I won’t be allowed to walk away.”

“I won’t leave without you, Livia.”

He hadn’t intended to say that. It sounds so trite. So melodramatic, so puffed up. He lowers his head to hide more blushing.

But Livia slips her hand into his and presses herself against his arm as they walk.

“Well then, that is the only reason I will go.”

Manhattan - Office

There are two others waiting in the lobby of the new headquarters building of Altau Holdings, the huge company that is Altau’s presence in the human world.

They’ve been there for some time, these two, and Aaron Keensleigh makes no secret of his anger. The tall, powerful Were alpha probably couldn’t hide his emotions if he tried, and he doesn’t try. The Were don’t come down out of the Adirondacks much, and they don’t like the city. They also don’t like the Athanate. They certainly don’t like politics.

Julius is surprised the alpha is here at all.

The other person waiting is a complete contrast. Faith Hinton just loves the city. She only lives out on Long Island, you know, but the shops are so wonderful here in Manhattan, she simply cannot resist. Just look at all these...

Her hands press against her cheeks, framing her heart-shaped face, as if she is shocked by what she’s done.

She sits surrounded by branded shopping bags.

Julius has to bite his lip to stop the threatening laughter, entirely inappropriate in the circumstances. The Adept’s happy, babbling song of praise to Manhattan had to have been sheer torture for Keensleigh over the hours they’ve been waiting.

And he should not fall into the mistake of dismissing Hinton, as the Were probably has. That empty-headed facade is very practiced and expertly acted.

Both Keensleigh’s anger and Hinton’s exuberance simply bounce off Livia’s stone face. Since they crossed the river, Livia has not uttered a word.

And that, perhaps, is also practiced, he thinks.

House Altau does not leave them long, now they are assembled. Within a minute, one of Altau’s elite security is guiding them to an elevator.

To Julius’ immense surprise, the Altau guard leans in, enters the code for the penthouse into the elevator’s pad, and then steps back, leaving the four of them to ascend alone.

Even Hinton’s chatter stumbles as the doors open to reveal Skylur Altau himself, alone and casually dressed.

“Welcome,” he says, with an open-handed gesture.

Livia tenses beside Julius. She does not like what she cannot predict or control, and in one move House Altau has demonstrated how unpredictable and confident he is. He is not scared of any of them, not even all four of them together, and he does not care if they know it.

Chapter 5

Elodie

Sunset Park, Brooklyn

The southwestern tip of Long Island is its own little world, made up of little countries.

There are Poles in Greenpoint. Russians in Brighton Beach. Asians in Flushing. Mexicans in Jackson Heights. Haitians in Flatbush. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Greek, Brazilian.

And vampires.

She hadn’t told Barlett that particular item of information. He’d thought he’d been investigating a super-secret criminal gang.

His office is on 2nd Avenue, down in Sunset Park. A single room off a short corridor, over a shop selling household electrical components. It has a coded keypad on the door.

But the door is unlocked, and someone has already been here. Elodie can almost sense them. They could still be watching. Or they could come back at any time.

If they’re watching, it’s too late anyway.

She’ll take her chances. There’s no real alternative. And after all, that was exactly what she hired Barlett for: to find her a way to contact a group of people who don’t want to be contacted. If they find her, the job is done.

It is dangerous. They are dangerous.

But unless she’s hallucinated the whole language and conversations that she hacked into on the internet, they are the only people who can cure the growth in her head that’s killing her.

All she has to do is become part of their secret world, disappear from the sight of everyone she knew before…and be prepared to give her body and blood in exchange.

The thought makes her stomach contract and her head starts pounding again. She feels the dizziness returning.

No time for that. No time. Concentrate.

She pulls out her cell and clicks on the rabbit, watches the first few slides. It calms her. The cell is like a safety harness and a snapshot of her life all rolled into one. It’s her ID. Her email. It has copies of her medical records. Familiar photos and clips from her former life in Ann Arbor. All the useful apps. Even street maps to find her way here. And the soothing knowledge that her brain reboot slideshow is there whenever she needs it. My name is Elodie Villiers. I am not crazy. I need to trust myself.

She pats her pockets. Spare battery. Charger.

She stops the slideshow, resets the timer and pockets the cell.

Then she switches on the office light.

Barlett said he was getting out today. She got the impression he’d meant he would leave right after talking to her, not come back here. So, what did he do during his last visit to this office, besides call her and set up the meeting?

She stands at the desk and looks around.

The place is tidy. Barlett is an obsessive.

He hadn’t cleared the place; he probably believed he didn’t have the time, that they were too close. He was right about that. He thought he had enough time to meet her. He was wrong about that.

She suspects he intended to come back here at some point in the future when things cooled off. A vacation he said.

So what would he have done last time he was here?

There’s no point checking the filing cabinets. He wouldn’t have taken time to file anything he’d found out, and they had been here already. There wouldn’t be anything left in the files about them.

They know about her from those files, but that’s limited to the cell phone number she’d given Barlett.

If they track her using that, so much the better, as long as she gets the opportunity to speak when they catch her.

She can’t control whether they hunt for her or not. Or how quickly they might. Time is running out for her.

What can she do? What clue might Barlett have left that will help her find them?

There was a laptop on the desk when she visited. She guesses he took it with him.

Or they did.

If there was anything obvious he left here that linked to them, they’d have taken it.

Despair wells up.

She feels dizzy again and fights it off.

Think!

What else did he use?

His cell phone, which isn’t here.

Notebooks? Old fashioned paper notebooks.

She closes her eyes, swaying, and tries to bring an image of him to mind.

Yes, he had those small notebooks that fit in jacket pockets. Blue covers, lined sheets. There are packs of them unopened, neatly stacked in one corner.

No sign of any ones he’d written in.

Hats and scarves. No use.

Walking sticks. She sees an image of the pale one with the pistol grip handle lying in the road, swallows painfully, and puts it from her mind.

He has a half dozen well-used coats hanging up behind the door. She looks. One is missing—the one he was wearing.

Something more…

Closes her eyes again.

When she’d visited, she’d seen one of the coats had a newspaper rolled up in the pocket. He was a crossword addict and he said it gave him an excuse to sit in café windows and jot things down while doing surveillance. Less suspicious than a notebook.

He hadn’t had a newspaper in his pocket when he met her up in Greenpoint.

She opens her eyes.

The wastebasket by the desk is empty. It’s the only place in the office he would have used to throw something like a newspaper away.

There’s a shredder, but that’s empty too.

Finally, she has to admit to herself she can’t think of anything else, and the fervor of the search leaks out of her like air from an old balloon.

The office is a dead end.

She stumbles outside and wonders whether they are watching her at this very moment.

It would be so easy if they just came and captured her. Of course that means, the way the universe runs for her, it’s definitely not going to happen. That they aren’t watching Barlett’s office.

She looks around for inspiration.

There’s a dumpster a few steps away. A couple of cardboard boxes. A small pile of bulging black trash bags.

If Barlett threw anything away earlier today, it might be on the top. If she’s lucky.

She uses her cell as a light to look inside the cardboard boxes. Packing foam. Discarded manuals. Old paperbacks. Some shredded paper, but it looks like bank statements and old legal documents. It could have come from anywhere.

The plastic bags aren’t worth checking; Barlett would have been in too much of a hurry to even tie up a bag, and he probably wouldn’t have had any bags handy anyway.

That leaves the dumpster.

She knows she’s starting to look like a bag lady already.

She lifts the lid, shines the light from the cell down into the darkness.

The trash is right at the bottom, partly covered by a discarded newspaper, folded to the puzzles page. She can see handwriting on it. And there’s a notebook with a blue cover peeping out beneath it.

It is Christmas. Well, close enough.

The dumpster is tall.

She can just reach the trash, if she balances on the edge.

A little further…

The edge of the dumpster cuts into her hip. She hitches herself higher, keeping a firm hold on the edge. The smell is overpowering. She tries not breathing.

Her head is pounding, pounding, and the light seems to fade a bit.

Just a bit further.

She grabs the newspaper.

The dumpster is deep and dark, and it spins. The rotten fruit smells bright purple. Rock music sears the inside of her nose. She can hear the taste of rotten pears. It makes her cry. The world twists around like one of those crazy pretzels, hits the back of her head and abruptly, everything stops.

Silence.

Where am I?

What am I doing here?

Something very important. Very, very important. Must remember.

A man with a walking stick. Empty streets. Dangerous.

Flakes of snow drift down out of the night and settle on her nose.

Oh, God, it stinks.

She staggers upright. The whole world is reeling around her.

I’m in a dumpster!

What’s happened to me?

There’s someone coming.

“Nate?” she says, and her voice wobbles, but there’s a buzzing in her ears and she can’t hear.

Who’s Nate?

Who am I?

A flashlight shines in her face, blinding her. She can’t see, can’t hear, can’t think.

“What the hell? Get outta there, stupid bitch!”

Ross Woodward doesn’t have an issue with the homeless. He doesn’t actually care if one of them sleeps in the dumpster. It’s just that they throw stuff out and it always ends up with him clearing up the mess.

The woman looks bewildered, and she’s shaking. He’s sorry about that. He didn’t mean to scare her.

He lifts her out and puts her down gently on the sidewalk, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the smell.

“Go on,” he says, speaking mildly. “This is no place to stay. There’s a shelter up in Brooklyn Heights, and you can get food on the way. There’s a place on 4th that will feed you.”

The woman sways, blinks. She seems completely confused, or frozen in panic.

Ross turns her north and points.

“Go up to 4th, take a bus. Here.” He offers her a few dollars. She doesn’t move to take the money and he has to slide it under her stiff fingers. She’s clutching a newspaper to her chest.

He sighs. Maybe that was all she was after. He knows they use paper as insulation when they sleep rough, but that isn’t going to be enough tonight. At least the woman is dressed for the weather. The clothes look good quality, but that coat isn’t ever going to smell good again.

He’s thinking maybe he should walk her to the stop, but then she starts on her own, still looking frightened and confused.

Shit. He feels bad about it, but he can’t be a knight in shining armor for every homeless woman on the streets.

He watches her shuffling away until she’s out of sight.

She’s obviously ill, mentally ill, and it looks as if she hasn’t had much chance to adjust to this kind of life. He wonders what her story is. A good life, friends, maybe even a family, a job, no worries, and then suddenly this? She’s young. Younger than him.

He shudders.

The temperature is dropping. Time to get back inside.

The dumpster lid is wide open, and snow is falling inside. He might as well throw in the trash that’s been piled up alongside before he closes it.

I mean, what is it with people who can bring the trash out, then just leave it next to a half-empty dumpster? he grumbles to himself.

He shines the flashlight into the depths.

There’s barely anything in there. A couple of trays of rotten fruit. Some spoiled TV dinners. Someone’s old notebooks. A broken cell phone—a good one. Looks like someone stamped on it.

Shit. Only in Brooklyn, he thinks and tosses the rest of the trash in before he slams the lid closed.

Chapter 6

Julius

Manhattan - Penthouse

Skylur Altau leads them to a room that owes more in design to a luxury penthouse than a business meeting room. And when they’ve shed their coats and are seated around a circular, sunken sofa, he fetches a tray with an oddly misshapen bottle, an empty jar and five glasses.

It appears they are alone on this level. No servants. No security.

“I found this when I was packing to come here from Denver,” Altau says, holding up the bottle for their inspection. It is made of strange, coarse glass that is opaque and gritty. “I’d completely forgotten it.”

The bulbous base of the bottle is held in the remains of a sort of leather cover. There are characters branded into the leather, but not even the alphabet is familiar to Julius, let alone the words.

“Oh! Exciting! What is it?” Hinton says, leaning forward with her eyes shining.

“A brandy made from fig wine,” Skylur replies. “I believe I remember the family who used to make it, now I think back. They presented some to me as a gift. They lived near the Alzani River, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.”

The seal on the bottle has been removed, but apparently not entirely successfully, as Altau carefully decants the brandy into the jar through a filter.

The brandy is dark. It appears oily and smooth.

They watch silently as he pours a generous serving from the jar into five glasses.

Altau are not known for using poisons, Julius tells himself and picks up his glass, swirls the brandy, sniffs like a connoisseur.

Livia’s mouth twitches, as if from half a smile.

Keensleigh frowns, his nose held over the glass, his Were sense of smell probably trying to untangle the aromas to test them for poison.

“Of course it may be ruined.” Skylur holds his glass up against the light. “But I have hope.”

“Hope,” says Livia quietly, raising her glass as well.

The others echo the toast, touching glasses, and they sip.

Julius does not die. Not immediately anyway. The impression on his tongue is sweetness, not entirely masking great strength.

“It’s lovely!” Hinton says. “This would be such a good mystery drink for my Wednesday wine society. Do you have more? Could I buy some?”

“Alas, this bottle is the last survivor,” Skylur says.

Hinton gasps and covers her mouth with her hand. “And you got it out just for us!”

“How old is it?” Keensleigh asks, intrigued despite himself.

“I admit, I’m not absolutely sure. I believe it was bottled shortly before it was given to me, about three thousand years ago.”

There is a momentary stunned silence. Then, even more shocking than his words is Livia’s reaction.

She laughs—a bright, sharp sound in the quiet penthouse.

“Your reputation has you as a subtle man, House Altau. That was as subtle as a truck.”

He smiles.

“Call me Skylur, please. May I call you Livia, House Fabia?”

She nods, eyes narrowed.

“Subtlety is a gift for those with time, Livia,” he says, taking another sip and leaning back, resting his arm along the sofa. “We don’t have that luxury.”

“The Athanate have made their own problems with their own damned political preoccupations and conflict,” Keensleigh growls, and indicates Hinton and himself. “Why are we being included in them?”

Julius is tense. There is merit in what the Were says. The great ideological clash of Panethus and Basilikos Athanate has broken out into constant armed attacks, from what he has heard. However careful and secret those attacks are, eventually they will lead to humanity discovering the Athanate.

“May I call you Aaron?” Skylur says mildly. When the Were nods curtly, he continues. “Aaron, it isn’t just our problem, nor is it entirely caused by us. In truth, as far as conflicts go, the largest battle of recent times was when the Were of the Central Mountain Confederation tried to invade Colorado, the territory of my associates, the Denver pack.”

Julius appreciates the clever riposte. It’s not just that one battle; the Were Confederation has been far too open in its sometimes violent takeovers of packs down the spine of the Rockies, and everyone here knows it.

Skylur holds up a hand to forestall Keensleigh’s rejoinder, and reaches to a side table to pick up a small, utilitarian box. He places it on the table between them.

“Here’s an example of our problem,” he says. “This was manufactured by the US Army. It detects the presence and concentrations of specific proteins in the blood. Those proteins are present in Were as well as Athanate, and not in humans.”

Keensleigh’s eyes widen.

“And in Adepts, to a much lower, but measurable extent,” Skylur says to Hinton. “We are all discoverable by humanity. And even if we stopped all conflict right now, the possibility of hiding in the regulated, documented, electronic, recorded and paranoid modern world is evaporating. We all will be discovered, whatever we do.”

“So much for our toast,” Livia says. “It’s hopeless, then?”

“Nothing is hopeless.” Skylur leans back again, the relaxed host. “But we need to prepare, and we need to start that now. All of us.”

“This is Emergence, I guess,” Julius says. He knows the term, that the Athanate have to reveal themselves to humanity, and that the argument over that led to the last Athanate Assembly being dissolved. “The problem with being hidden is that we, I mean the hidden Athanate of New York, have been cut off. We’ve had little more than hints and rumors of the issues. Even at the meeting with your Diakon…”

“Which was, of course, a tense affair,” Livia interrupts him. “Very short of any exchange of real information.”

Tense hardly covers it.

They’d been admitting to living illegally, against the rules of the Agiagraphos and the Assembly, in the domain assigned to the Warders. By the old rules, that was a death sentence. Julius had made the argument that the Warders’ domain was an exception created by the Assembly and only subject to the more lenient Assembly rules. Bazhir, the Altau Diakon, had observed that any historical exception might be arguable, but that it no longer applied was not.

The Diakon was right; this is Altau’s domain now.

They are sitting in his penthouse. His word is their law.

“I’ll ensure that a summary file of information on the global situation will be sent to each of you later,” Skylur says. “All of you. It’ll include an analysis as we see it.”

Keensleigh isn’t interested in the Athanate by-play. Although he has cooperated from time to time, in a minimal way, with Julius and Livia, he doesn’t really care about them or the Athanate rules. If Altau executes them, it’s simply not important to him.

He’s interested in what that file will say, of course, but Julius can see he’s suspicious. A sharing of information suggests alliances.

“You’re just assuming that we’re going to go ahead and enter into an association with you?” Keensleigh can’t seem to stop sounding confrontational.

Julius is still unsure why the Were has come. It must be something powerful that has drawn him into Manhattan. Something that’s important to Were.

Skylur shakes his head. “The information is free, Aaron. The same applies to what you fear I will hold over you.”

Keensleigh twitches, his face pale. He knows exactly what Skylur means.

Julius does not, but Hinton evidently shares that knowledge.

“Oh! The ritual,” she says, excited. “Aaron, that’s wonderful. Not that your pack has a problem, of course I don’t mean that, but that other packs with halfies can get help.”

Isolated as they have been, Julius has heard this rumor. He’d dismissed it as fantasy.

“This is about the rumor of a ritual that helps new werewolves change?” he asks.

“Yes,” Skylur says. “But it’s no rumor. It works.”

If the Altau have control of it, Julius can’t believe it would be offered for free. A halfy, a werewolf who cannot change to wolf form, is facing inescapable, painful death. Packs will give anything to save them.

“It so happens, we do have a problem,” Keensleigh says.

The words come out painfully. Julius thinks he sounds like a man with his testicles in a vise.

“That’s so awful!” Hinton says. “But it’s good news then, isn’t it? Why… Oh... You’re thinking there’s a catch?”

She turns back to Skylur, her face a picture of moral outrage.

Julius is very good at reading people, but Skylur is difficult. There might be a hint that he’s enjoying Hinton’s act, but Julius can’t be sure.

The Altau leader takes a card from his pocket and reaches over the table to offer it. Keensleigh accepts it warily.

“That’s the contact number for the Denver pack,” Skylur says. “Call it and arrange with them for your halfies to attend the next ritual. Send a lieutenant along to keep order and observe.”

“And in exchange…” Keensleigh prompts, still suspicious.

Skylur shrugs. “If it works, tell other packs. Pass on the contact information. That’s really between you and the Denver pack.”

“So why am I here? Just so you could hand me this?”

“So we could meet. Although the woman who performs the ritual is an associate of mine, a sub-House in fact, she is also the Assembly syndesmon to the Were, a position that must be independent enough to represent both Were and Athanate, each to the other.” He empties his glass. “She insisted that the ritual had to be open for everyone, so it is. She’s even intent on offering it to the Confederation.”

Keensleigh chokes on his drink. “What does the Denver alpha think about that?”

Skylur actually chuckles. “That’s his problem, isn’t it? Ask him. Tell me what he says!”

Keensleigh smiles. It’s an uncertain thing, his smile, but genuine. “Thank you.” He looks down at the card as if the writing on it might fade. “Is there really nothing in exchange?”

Skylur makes an airy gesture. “I would welcome cooperation for mutual benefit. We’d like to see you down in New York more often, Aaron. Liaison meetings, sharing of information, and so on. If that develops into an association, that would please me, but it’s by no means a prerogative.”

He pours another shot for them all.

The Were alpha leaves half an hour later, a spring in his step, eager to be home with good news.

Julius suspects that the Adirondacks pack will be a full associate of Altau within a month.

Manhattan - Office

Skylur suggests they find somewhere to eat. Hinton recommends this wonderful restaurant. It’s only a couple of blocks away. Unfortunately, she has to return to Long Island. There’s a gathering of her community and she’s needed.

Julius is impressed. He can sense that there’s something the Adept desperately wants to ask Skylur, but she’s resolutely refusing to raise it at their first meeting. Her goodbyes include ensuring that she can return for a further meeting.

Of course, the Altau leader has unfinished business with them, so Julius and Livia agree to dinner with Skylur.

There’s a brief hiatus while Skylur insists on arranging a car to take Hinton and her purchases back home. Julius is left alone with Livia in the lobby.

Livia has become very focused.

Altau has been a model host so far. What has concerned Livia so much? Not the revelation of ages. She has to have known that Skylur is older than her.

Julius and Livia met the Altau Diakon together. Julius is good at estimating relative ages, and he knows the Diakon is older than Livia. He assumes she knows it too, so it should not have been a shock to hear Skylur is even older.

And Livia is old. She is Roman. Not the modern Rome of the crumbling Coliseum. Not even the old Rome of the Empire. No. House Flavia dates back to the days of the Republic. Like all Athanate, she guards her exact age, even from him, but he’s a good student of ancient history. Over the years, he’s engaged her in discussions about the principal characters in the formation of Rome.

He’s sure the woman standing next to him was an observer as Roman politicians first developed public, traitorous backstabbing into a fine art.

“Are you all right?” he whispers in her ear, aware that there may be microphones in the lobby.

Her eyes swivel and fix on him, making his heart forget to beat.

“I taught you about wines and spirits many years ago, little Ruben,” she murmurs, using her pet name for him, a tease about his hair and his tendency to blush. “Tell me, what did you think of Altau’s brandy?”

“Sweetness in front, underpinned by strength.”

“Exactly. Get past the sweetness. Pay attention to underpinnings. Our lives may depend on it. Mine surely does.”

Chapter 7

Elodie

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

The refuge is full, but very quiet. True desperation is not noisy.

Elodie is rocking to and fro. She didn’t mean to come here, but she got lost and everything is so frightening outside. The streets are loud. Tall buildings loom over her till she can barely breathe. Short buildings have steps that slip out onto the sidewalk to trip her. Cars shout at her. People stare, snatch things from her.

At least in here it’s quiet.

There’s a bed. She’s sitting on the edge.

Maybe she should lie down. She can remember someone—how long ago was it?—he said to her that she should rest. He was a nice man. Very gentle.

There’s something wrong with her head. She knows it wasn’t always like this. The nice man told her all about it. Said she should rest.

There is something that helps, but she can’t find it. Her hands check her pockets again.

She is so tired.

“My name is Elodie Villiers,” she says. “I am not crazy.”

“It’s all right,” the girl sitting opposite her says. “No one is saying you’re crazy.”

“It’s not all right,” Elodie replies, fighting tears of frustration. “I’m looking for someone. It’s very important. I had something that helped and I lost it. Something’s wrong. Wrong.”

She touches her head. She wants to hit her head until it works again, but she knows that doesn’t look right. She thinks she hit her head and it stopped working. So she can’t risk hitting it again. And anyway, if they see her hitting her head, they’ll stop her, and she won’t be able to get out of here to keep looking.

If only she had the thing that helped.

The girl sees her hands check her pockets again.

“Did you have some pills? Did they help?” she asks.

“No. No pills. Don’t help. Pills make it difficult to think. Nate wanted me to take them.”

“Is it Nate you’re looking for?”

Elodie feels her eyes fill with tears. “No.” She can’t remember why she’s crying.

He said not to look back. She looked back and he wasn’t there. But it wasn’t her fault, and that wasn’t Nate. That was the man who was looking for vampires.

Vampires!

She mustn’t say that. She is not crazy.

A cell phone chirps. The girl takes it out and glances at the screen, dismisses whatever message was there.

Elodie’s hand reaches out.

The girl nervously allows her to take the cell.

Elodie frowns and grimaces, gives it back.

“Mine had a rabbit,” she says. “I must have lost it. I had to follow the rabbit.”

She is so tired.

Maybe she needs to sleep. She lies down. Her newspaper crinkles under her, but she’s too tired to push it away.

The girl murmurs something that sounds approving.

There are scribbles on the newspaper, just under her nose, scribbles in blue pen. She can read the newspaper’s printed words, but the blue writing is just too strange. Too close to focus. Almost like hieroglyphics. She knows about those. Old languages. But these are different. There’s a doodle as well. A drawing. Quite good. It’s a sea anchor, with a scroll that winds around it. The sort of thing where a motto would be written.

She’s seen that before.

It’s important.

“The man who wasn’t there,” she murmurs. It sounds like a song she heard, a long, long time ago. She tries singing. “We spoke of when and where. Of places they might fare...”

So, so tired.

“She’s asleep now,” Tiana whispers.

“Did you find out anything more about her?”

Tiana shakes her head.

“So all we really know is her name is Elodie Villiers.” The woman sighs. “Her clothes are good quality and reasonably new. Whatever happened to her must have been very sudden. Someone has to be looking for her.”

“I cleaned her coat and shoes,” Tiana says. “The coat’s hanging up, drying.”

“Thanks.” The woman wrinkles her nose. “She must have climbed into a dumpster. That newspaper stinks of it too. I’ll get rid of it.”

Tiana wants to leave it, but the other woman is one of the staff, and Tiana has just been helping out since Father Julius sent her here.

The woman eases the newspaper out from underneath Elodie Villiers and carries it off, kept well away from her, held between one finger and a thumb.

Chapter 8

Julius

Manhattan - Restaurant

They walk. To the world around them, just three friends, out at night.

The restaurant turns out to be eccentric French-Asian. It claims gourmet cooking, and has tables in private circular booths set in an arc around a semi-open kitchen.

Julius realizes four Altau security have followed them discreetly. One pair take single-diner seats at the bar that overlooks the kitchen; the other pair wait outside.

The conversation, mainly between Julius and Skylur, is desultory while they order meals and Skylur picks a wine.

The maître d’ presents the bottle. Julius and Livia remain silent while Skylur declares it acceptable and they each get a glass poured.

It’s a Chateau Margaux ’82, and Julius is glad that Altau has indicated he will be picking up the tab.

How many meals for the homeless could I…

He stops that. He can’t be distracted. He has to pay attention.

Skylur is resting his elbows on the table and peering at them over steepled fingers.

“You have made yourselves an interesting community, hidden away in New York,” he says. “Not truly diazoun, since you all interact with each other.”

It’s an unexpectedly gentle opening to the topic.

“It is unorthodox,” Julius says, picking his word deliberately, “but I believe it’s in tune with the requirements of the wider Athanate world. It is ahead of the trend, maybe.”

“Really?” Skylur slips effortlessly into Athanate, making their conversation private. “Trendy? Unorthodox is the new black?”

The word he uses for unorthodox is epitre. Rogues are epitre, and they are put down mercilessly.

“I’m not talking of fashions,” Julius says. “Things we can elect to do, if we so wish. I’m talking of a way of cooperating that we have to undertake in the modern world. And if we, as a people, can find sixteen words to describe the emotion of love and thirty-two ways to modify each of them, then surely we can see some differentiation in the quality of unorthodoxy.”

Livia smiles coldly.

“We will have to,” Skylur says, conceding the point gracefully. “Just as we will have to remain responsible for policing ourselves. For example, disposing of untreatable rogues. Or dealing with others who could damage our community.”

Julius blinks. Others could mean anything. It’s a conversational invitation to discuss what might and might not be acceptable behavior for members of the Athanate community, but there’s a point he wants to make first.

“You agree that we’ve been successful in living together and policing ourselves in the way we’ve pioneered in New York?” he says. “That we could be seen as an experiment for the whole paranormal world?”

If Altau agrees with that, then Julius can argue that individual Houses, and the people in them, should be acceptable, regardless of their individual tastes.

“You exaggerate your case,” Skylur says. He’s seeing exactly where Julius is heading. “Hiding from the Warders and then revealing yourself to me because you knew you wouldn’t escape my attention is not the same as being discovered and judged by humanity. You have some merit to your argument, but your ship may founder on this one rock—will humanity accept what we reveal?”

The meal arrives. They’ve elected to go straight to the main course.

Conversation flags again as they begin to eat. Hinton’s recommendation has turned out to be excellent. The food is delicious and yet Julius’ appetite is not good.

“Are there other communities like we have in New York?” Julius asks. “Or anywhere else where evaluating what could damage the community is not based on a literal reading of the Agiagraphos?”

Julius has come to hate the Agiagraphos, the Athanate book of laws. It is so definitive and prescriptive. The world has changed, and the Agiagraphos has not. By the laws of the Agiagraphos, Livia should have killed the Athanate that failed to blur the memories of the girl he fed from, because she was unbound. And Julius believes that is wrong.

However, though Julius has no time for the Agiagraphos, he worries about admitting such blasphemy in Skylur’s hearing. A disdain for the Agiagraphos is definitely epitre. Athanate have been executed for it before.

And yet the greatest law in the Agiagraphos is to remain in hiding from humanity. Whatever they do, that law cannot stand for much longer. Skylur’s Emergence plan acknowledges that, but what does Skylur believe?

“Well, the whole of Ireland has declared itself non-partisan and unaffiliated.” Skylur sips his wine thoughtfully. “But yes, there’s nowhere that has developed quite like New York.”

“And the strict interpretation of the Agiagraphos? Surely, if the greatest rule is impossible to keep, then all the rules are due to be re-evaluated?”

“There have been many changes,” Skylur agrees. “Some quite startling. Recently, an Athanate who went rogue was not executed. It seems, at least in that case, there might be differentiation even in the status of rogues. That rogue was treated and has recovered.”

Even Livia is shocked. She stops eating to stare at Skylur for a long minute, then returns attention to her food.

“This is very good,” she says.

Julius is unsure whether she means the meal or the news that the absolute rules of the Agiagraphos are becoming nuanced. He suspects the ambiguity is deliberate. Although Julius knows she fears Altau’s powers, she’s not overawed and she’s certainly not cowed.

“So ‘unorthodox’ is not a death sentence anymore.” Julius presses the point.

Skylur purses his lips. “Possibly. Let’s say that anything that gives us examples of the different Athanate philosophies coexisting responsibly has some value. After all, there have been times in the past when the different creeds of Athanate were not in conflict.”

Livia looks up again, her gaze calculating. “You’re looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses,” she says. “Panethus and Basilikos have been at war since long before your brandy was laid down. Exceptions are just that.”

It requires some gall for Livia to lecture Skylur on history, but he lets it pass with a shrug. “Maybe we are doing something entirely new. Maybe every previous example of cooperation was just an exception,” he says. “But the first sea-creature to pull itself out onto land was an exception.”

Julius feels that they’re agreeing on individual points and yet totally in conflict, but before he can redirect the conversation, Livia speaks again.

“So we must evolve,” she says. There is anger smoldering in her eyes.

Julius wants to say something, anything, to calm her down, but she anticipates him and one glance from her silences him.

Livia and Skylur are like beasts circling each other, waiting for a sign of weakness.

Skylur remains silent, eating his dinner, sipping his wine and watching Livia. He does not have to wait long.

“What haunts you, Altau?” she says. “When you wake in the long winter nights, with a word on your lips or a vision fading before your eyes, or perhaps a scent escaping into the cold air, what is it that’s woken you?”

Julius shivers. They’re still speaking Athanate, but she’s slipped into the older, formal style, the language of the oral tradition and recitation, with its own rhythms and descriptive phrases. He’s witnessed this before and it’s never a good sign.

“Long ago, I had a villa, high in the Etruscan hills,” she says. “It was a place to be away from the relentless crush of Rome. A place to take my ease. It was very beautiful. Cypress trees stood sentinel to mark the boundaries and line the paths through the grounds. There was a farm, with meadows and wheat fields, orchards of citrus fruit, and rows of well-tended vegetables, bordered by herbs. There was a grove of olives, a hillside of vines, a stream that was cool even in summer. Closer to the buildings, I planted banks of maple for color, walnut and oak for shade, and beds of flowers chosen for their scent.

“I loved it very much, my beautiful villa.

“My House comprised just five Athanate then, and we raised cattle and horses, sheep and chickens. And toru, sufficient to our needs.”

Julius twitches at the Basilikos word for bound human Blood slaves, but Skylur might as well be carved from stone, and Livia does not pause.

“We thrived, when others did not, and so we grew. Peasant families came to us, unbound and unbidden: for food in winter when their harvests had failed; for protection from the bandits that still roamed the hills; for curing when they fell ill or were injured; for resolution when they had disputes.

“We gave from our bounty and, in return, we took our tithes: work when it was needed; food when they had spare; Blood when we so desired.”

“They feared you,” Skylur says.

Livia’s smile is tight and humorless. “All marai—all unbound humans—fear our fangs, Altau, unless we train them like you do your kin. In exchange for all we gave them, yes, we took the sacred Rahaimon, their offering of fear, along with their Blood, and we blurred their minds so that it seemed to them they’d had an unremembered nightmare. Such is the rule of the Agiagraphos, and besides, it suited us that their fear would be fresh and sweet when we next sought it.”

Again, Julius twitches. Livia is deliberately provoking him, but Skylur’s face does not betray what he thinks.

“But it was neither our toru,” Livia says, “nor the marai from whom we reaped our dues, that brought about what wakes me in the dark.”

And now her eyes cloud. Julius stretches out hesitantly, covers her hand with his, and she allows it. He has not heard this, but he fears he knows what must come.

“I was in Rome with my Diakon, for, however much I hated the city, it was not wise to become forgotten in that society. Yet we returned early; some premonition sent me home, feverish with worry. As soon as Rome was out of sight, we left the carriage to follow us. Instead, we took two of the horses and rode. When they could carry us no longer, we ran on, into the gathering dark. And still, we were too late.

“This is what wakes me, Altau, in the shoals of the night. Not the sight of my beautiful villa destroyed, not the thought of the animals and stores stolen, not the crops torn up. None of those. It was the savagery. The viciousness. The thoroughness. The attackers had taken all of them—the remainder of my House, my toru from the farm and all the marai from the surrounding land that they’d been able to catch. They’d killed the men and left their mutilated bodies in piles on the ground. They’d violated the women and children, and when they’d finished with them, they’d trapped those still alive in a barn and set it burning.

“The details we learned later from those few marai that had been able to escape. When we arrived, all I saw was the bodies, the mob and the flames. All I could hear was the screaming from the barn and the laughter of the mob.

“Laughter, Altau, laughter, as women and children died in agony.

“Two against a mob of three hundred? I would have fought, and died killing some of them. But my Diakon caught me, held me in the shadows, away from the farm, until the screaming from the barn finally stopped and the attackers left.”

“Who?” Skylur’s voice is soft.

“Villagers. Peasants. None of those we helped or fed from. Just people who were far enough away that we hadn’t had anything to do with them, and yet close enough that they were able to see how well we were succeeding, because that’s what caused it: plain human jealousy and greed and envy.”

Julius knows she wakes in the night, but she’s never before said anything about this.

“Do you hear screams echoing in the night, Altau?” she says. “Do you wake and wonder if your home is on fire, because your nostrils are full of that smell? Do you scrub yourself even though it seems you can never get rid of the feel of that smoke on your skin?”

“The screams will never fall silent,” Skylur says. “And those memories will never fade if you treat all humans as if they were the ones who attacked you.”

“I was Basilikos before the attack, and I’m still Basilikos, not out of some sense of revenge, but out of the simple fact that we are greater than they.” Livia leans forward over the table. “It was right that we chose the name Basilikos, the House of the Rulers, and we should be their rulers, never their slaves. Yet by this path to Emergence you will make us less than humans. You absolve us of observation of the Agiagraphos rules, you sweep away its trusted certainties. Very well. But in its place you raise this simple creed, with its one great commandment—that all we can do must be acceptable to humans.”

Skylur starts to argue, but Livia is in full flow.

“Once, they built many-columned temples to you, Altau. They sang songs and held games in your honor. They proclaimed you a god. They believed. They came to you for healing and divination, and you gave them what they asked for. Many years ago.

“So, what gods does an old god like you believe in, Altau?

“If in this bright new world, we may only do what they want, then we bow down to humanity as our god. Just as they bow down to their gods of fame and wealth and beauty. And jealousy and greed and envy. Gods for whom there is never enough.

“What will you do, Altau, when their hollow-bellied gods demand cleansing by fire and the sacrifice of living children? When your kin are screaming in the flames?”

“Not all humanity,” Julius whispers. He has to stop her.

“No, not all, but enough,” Livia replies. “You cannot convince all of them. No matter what the issue placed before them, humans will sink into mobs, each believing their own truths and decrying the lies of the others.”

Julius starts to argue the point, but Skylur cuts across him.

“Whatever our path,” he says. “I will do everything I can to prevent it descending into the scenes you describe, but I believe the quickest route to that situation would be for humanity to discover us while we are divided among ourselves and displaying behaviors that would terrify the majority of humans.”

Chapter 9

Julius

Manhattan - Restaurant

The maître d’, unable to understand any of the Athanate conversation but sensitive to the tension at the table, visits to top up glasses and inquire about the quality of the meal.

Skylur assures him they are enjoying the food and wine.

Afterwards, Skylur switches effortlessly back to Athanate. “It would be false to deny that our kin fear our bite at the beginning, Livia, or to claim we do not feed on their fear. Yet neither I do not agree with the proposition that it is simple practicality; that Panethus merely find it easier to feed on love. Our relationships carry a great cost, and it is partly that cost which those of the Hidden Path seek to avoid.”

Livia sneers. “Whatever the merit of the case we’re arguing, I will not put aside the name Basilikos just because the party now thinks calling itself the Hidden Path makes it more acceptable. Basilikos means what I believe, that we are superior.”

Julius knows he has to divert the conversation into safer directions. Skylur is Panethus. He’s the leader of Panethus, for heaven’s sake, and yet Livia seems intent on championing Basilikos. This is not some scholarly debate. Their lives hang in the balance.

“Really?” Skylur sips at his wine. His eyes leave Livia and focus on Julius. “Yet here you two are: Basilikos House Flavia and Panethus House di Firenze bound together and representing a community which contains all shades of creed and behavior.”

“Yes,” Julius says. His mouth feels dry. “Long Island is one example of how a tightly bound Athanate community may embrace different philosophies. Livia and I are polar opposites in our relationships with humans and the level of our engagement with human society, yet we cooperate and coordinate effectively. We even coordinate with our Were and Adept neighbors. We are the world in microcosm. A laboratory test for the future.”

A smile passes across Skylur’s face, like a wisp of cloud across the sun.

If Livia is iron hidden in velvet, then Skylur is steel hidden in silk, Julius thinks. More subtle, whatever Livia claimed earlier. Just as dangerous.

Livia laughs, and the sound makes ice in his belly.

“Listen to my little Ruben,” she says.

“Your marques are closer than two Houses who merely cooperate.” Skylur is still looking at Julius.

“Oh, much, much closer.” Livia’s voice drops. “I found my Ruben an orphan in the streets of Florence in 1416. His entire family had been killed; I never found out why. A dispute between guilds? The fighting between the Pazzi and the Medici? I don’t know. The Renaissance in Florence was, like most of human history, a dangerous time, and he was a beautiful child alone in a city full of monsters. I rescued him so that there would only be one monster he needed to fear.”

Julius is looking down. He can’t raise his eyes. He doesn’t dwell on that time, but the memories remain vivid.

That which forms you, must give you your shape. She had said that to him at the time. As you live, it lives with you. You must make peace with it.

“It sounds like you had pity,” Skylur says. “Pity from a Basilikos for a human?”

“Don’t paint me in your sympathetic colors, Altau. My intentions were entirely selfish.” Livia’s hand slides up Julius’ arm, to his shoulder, his neck. “Do you not sense it?” she says to Skylur.

I have made my peace with myself. Julius can feel the thud of his heart, the rush of his blood. He can feel her fingers slip into his hair. She has always loved playing with his hair.

Skylur does not reply, so Livia continues. “Julius was my toru, Altau. My branded property. My Blood slave. That is why his marque is so close to mine.”

As I live, it lives with me. Julius can’t deny her. His trembling body reacts to her. He is completely hers, as long as he lives.

“Yet you freed him, set him up as an independent House,” Skylur says. “Allowed him to choose his own path and creed. That tell me there’s an emotional bond.”

“Did I free him? Did I really?” Livia laughs, a low sound that speaks of hunting. “No Basilikos would ever do that, not with one such as my Ruben. Can you sense it yet, Altau? Can you see what my Ruben is?”

Her fingers pinch and tug on his hair. Julius lifts his head obediently. He has to. His face is flushed, his heart racing.

Skylur is still looking at him. Those piercing eyes seem to be drilling into his head, but it’s Skylur’s other senses that will inform him.

He fears Livia. And he loves her. Always. These are the hard truths that form him.

“The Basilikos term…” Skylur hesitates. “Delectable?”

The word he uses is the old Athanate yeftikal.

“Yes,” Livia says. “The most precious of toru. Those who can feed us both fear and desire at the same time. Those who want us for what we are. This is my Julius, my Ruben, my toru yeftikal. Is he truly free? Could I ever let him go? Not while I live.”

Skylur’s face is unreadable, but Julius knows Livia has gone too far. It’s all true, but it’s not what they need to focus Skylur on. If they cannot comply with his expectations, he will simply execute them. They have no Athanate rights that he doesn’t hold.

He tries to quell the thunder in his heart, the pounding blood that advertises how scared and aroused Livia’s touch has made him.

Without knowing what he’s going to say, he sucks in a breath to start talking.

And one of the Altau security who had been waiting outside rushes in and hands Skylur a tablet computer.

Skylur’s eyes flick over the messages on the screen. He hands the tablet back.

“Enjoy the rest of the meal,” he says to Livia and Julius. “The cost will be met by House Altau, of course.”

He folds his napkin and lays it alongside his plate.

“I suspect I’ll be too busy to resume our discussion tonight, and tomorrow is Christmas Day, so I imagine House di Firenze will have unavoidable commitments. We’ll meet again at 10 a.m. on the following day, at the Warders’ former property in South Prospect. You know the one I mean?”

There is only one house that the Warders owned on Long Island. Julius nods, while wondering why they should meet there. He knows nothing about the house, other than its location. Given their requirement to keep the Warders ignorant of their existence, of course the house and the block it’s in have been an exclusion zone for all the Long Island Athanate.

“The situation as I have found it here is untenable and full of risk,” Skylur says. He is looking at Julius. “Too exposed. Those of you that are deeply involved in human society must prepare to make your excuses and withdraw.”

Julius will have to leave the church. His stomach feels as if it’s gone into free fall. He can’t refuse. Skylur has absolute authority to make him obey. He starts thinking about what has to be done, and the flood of problems stuns him.

Skylur is still talking. “I’ll pass my decision on all of the outcast Houses of Long Island when we meet again.”

Julius hates the Agiagraphos, hates most of Athanate history, and he knows what legal and historical precedents there are for Skylur’s decision. Entire Houses executed, kin included. That’s one extreme. Or just the leaders of the Houses executed. There is a difference, if not to him and Livia.

“House Flavia, House di Firenze.” Skylur stands. “Good night to you.”

They stand and murmur their farewells, then sink back into their seats as the door closes behind Skylur’s team.

Julius is still trembling.

“Livia, I was wrong,” Julius says, words tumbling over each other. “I said we couldn’t run, that I couldn’t run. But we have to. I have money, IDs for both of us. We can leave tonight. Scatter the Houses—”

“You said there was nowhere to go,” Livia interrupts.

“There is. Skylur told us, hidden in all the talk about politics. He’s offering us a way out. He’s even given us a day’s start.”

“What on earth do you mean, Julius?”

“Ireland! He told us Ireland is a neutral territory now. And he’s just told us we have a day to get there before he expects to see us again. There are flights from JFK. We can be at the airport in an hour.”

His words dry up, and she’s sitting as if there is no urgency. He’s never seen the expression that’s now in her eyes. Almost…sad.

“My dear, sweet Ruben.” Her hand comes up and strokes his cheek gently. “No. You were right. You so often are, and I don’t listen well enough.”

“No, Livia.” He takes her hand and kisses her palm. He doesn’t care if the Bishop himself walks into the restaurant. That part of his life is over, whether he wants it or not. What he wants is Livia safe.

“Hush,” she says. “You were right before. Sanctuary is an illusion. We’d be running from ourselves and there’s no place to hide, no sanctuary for those that try that. I’ve spent too long with no judge of my actions but myself.”

His mouth works but no sounds come out.

Athanate do sometimes lose the will to live. They are overcome with a sense of fatalism, a premonition of death. The Athanate word for it has seeped into modern languages as ‘fey’. The one person Julius never expected to show any sign of it was Livia.

“I told him he wasn’t subtle,” she says. “But I was wrong on that too. He’s subtle enough to tell us there’s a hope of sanctuary, and even more subtle to challenge us not to take it. And I’m tired, my sweet, I’m so tired. J’y suis. J’y reste. Here I am, here I remain. And, you are safe. The other Houses are safe, whatever their creed. I feel they are safer here than if we tell them to scatter, or catch a flight to Dublin.”

“But you’re not!”

“I was never one who much valued being safe. The sower sows, and who knows where the seed will fall? Come, Ruben. There are other things we can spend the time on tonight. Take me home.”

Chapter 10

Julius

St. Jude’s, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

“Benedic, Domine, quia peccavi.”

Julius suspects few, outside of the clergy, would even know the Latin words that initiate the act of confession. He knows who is speaking, of course. He knew the second the man entered the church; his Athanate marque is pronounced, and familiar to Julius of course. To top it off, his voice is unique. It sounds like rusty metal plates grinding against each other.

And he is expected.

“You’re early,” Julius says. “I have a few moments more.”

A few moments before he has to go and meet with Skylur. Christmas Day has passed in a blur. His reorganization of his duties has already alerted his colleagues that something is happening. There’s a voicemail from the Bishop he can’t deal with at the moment. His life has taken a sudden, terrifying surge towards the unknown. An unknown that could be his death, just minutes away.

He is surprised at how calm he is, but he does need these few moments.

“Don’t you have to go on and absolve me?” the man says, settling into the creaking pew behind him. “Where else am I going to get absolution before Altau has me executed?”

“Confession and absolution would require you to be penitent, Gracchus. To accept that what you do is not simply the way you are, but your choice, and therefore the wrongs you do are your fault. You remember the word culpa, don’t you?”

They’d spoken in English, but now Gracchus switches to Athanate. It is early, but there are people in the church, and even whispers carry in the cold quiet.

“I am magic; I do not practice magic by choice,” Gracchus says. “As for making my toru fear me, there’s nothing about that in the list of sins requiring absolution. I believe even you have admitted that the sanction against consuming blood in the Old Testament is not applicable to us.”

Julius sighs. His few moments of peace and reflection have fled. Conversations with Gracchus are always a bit barbed, but he can never quite ignore him.

“I don’t believe you’re in danger anyway,” he says, and he rises.

Unlike Livia. And maybe me.

Gracchus is Livia’s Diakon, her second-in-command. From what Julius knows of Skylur, he would not insist on a complete execution of the entire Athanate House. Agiagraphos law identifies the Master or Mistress of each House as the one in most instances who bears responsibility…and receives the retribution where laws are breached. In most instances.

Julius hasn’t been praying, sitting up at the front of his church.

Soon to be former church.

Not praying, but thinking and revisiting everything from the last few days. For all his arguments, Livia seems intent on her path, and he knows Skylur dares not show weakness in front of Panethus. To accept a Basilikos House in his domain would show exactly that weakness. Has Livia sealed her fate by refusing to flee? Could he get her to change at the last moment?

Will Skylur also extend the same judgement to other Houses? To him? Would he want to survive, if Livia is dead?

He doesn’t know. The future is a mystery to him; he can’t even see what might be possible.

Since the last meeting with Skylur, he’s spoken by phone to every other House on Long Island. He’s set up a dead man’s switch, should they want to use it. If he doesn’t broadcast a message that he’s all right at midday, he’s advised them all to scatter and flee to Ireland. Whether they do that, or take their chances with Skylur, is up to them now. He’s told them he’s no longer their co-leader. His only concern is Livia.

He sighs again and turns.

Gracchus stands and glances around. “Religion is not very popular in the morning,” he says, still speaking Athanate.

It is early. There are only two people sitting in the pews.

One of the ladies from the group Julius calls his chorus sits at the back. Her husband has been unfaithful. Regardless of what Julius says about the matter, she comes every morning to sit and search for her sins that triggered this divine retribution. Julius hopes whoever takes over St. Jude’s can get through to her better than he has. He wants to speak to her, but he has no time left.

The other woman is closer. He doesn’t know her; Tiana brought her in from the refuge. She appears mentally disturbed, barely able to speak and suffering from blinding headaches. Nothing is known about her apart from her name, which Julius is ashamed he’s forgotten. The only time she seemed animated was when Tiana gave her a coffee. It wasn’t the drink itself, but the branding of the mug. A benefactor has supplied them with their own biodegradable mugs, printed with the St. Jude’s logo, a sea anchor with the simple motto ‘Hope lives’ curled around it.

St. Jude is the patron saint of desperate causes, and Julius imagines that is precisely the case here.

The woman has been sitting there, eyes closed and a frown on her face, fingers stroking the printing on the side of her mug as if desperate to remember something, to connect the dots and make sense of her life again. Now her mouth is working silently, but Julius can’t tell if she’s reciting prayers or recipes. Her frown deepens.

There’s something about that mouthing that makes him uneasy. She’s going over phrases again and again. But prayers are sometimes like that.

Too much going on. She’ll have to be someone else’s concern.

He needs to focus on his task this morning.

“Any last-minute security issues I need to know before I talk to Skylur?” he says. “Some transgression of the Agiagraphos will be exactly the kind of thing that precipitates a decision against us.”

Gracchus shakes his head. “It’s one area that Altau can’t fault us on. It’s got to be our best argument for continuing as we have been; that we have run Long Island as an orderly domain.” He purses his mouth. “You and I don’t agree on how to deal with transgressors and the Houses responsible for them, but we’ve worked well despite that. Apart from that idiot a couple of nights ago, there’s been nothing for months. We’re secure. No surprises.”

Julius huffs. “Surprises come from the direction you least anticipate them. It’s part of the very definition.”

“We must go, House di Firenze,” Gracchus says. “House Flavia will be waiting for you, and Altau is not known for patience.”

He’s right. It’s only a few minutes’ walk, but they’ve run out of time. All of them.

Chapter 11

Julius

St. Jude’s, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

They walk back along the aisle together, Panethus House and Basilikos Diakon.

Julius’ thoughts are torn in every direction. He has to protect Livia. He has to protect the Long Island Athanate. And he has to protect his parishioners—who will the diocese put in charge here at St. Jude’s?

But something else is worrying him. Something about Gracchus here and now doesn’t ring true. He and Livia’s Diakon have never liked each other, but there’s more going on today.

Has Gracchus just lied to him?

None of it will matter to him if he’s going to be executed this morning.

No time.

Julius slips through the door, leaving the church.

For the last time?

It’s snowing more heavily. Brooklyn has become monochromatic. Snow shrouds the streets, muffles sound, and steals the brightness from the day.

Julius blinks. His heart skips a beat. In the time it has taken to blink, he and Gracchus are surrounded by black-clad figures, like wraiths in the soft light.

Athanate, Julius realizes, his heart in his mouth. Altau security.

An execution here? In the street?

He tenses, but their leader is not immediately interested in him.

“Diakon Gracchus,” she says.

Her voice is very soft, in keeping with the steel-in-silk manner of Altau.

Gracchus draws himself up. He’s an intimidating man. Huge, powerful, rough-hewn. Lethal.

The Altau are not intimidated.

Julius can see an emotion pass across the man’s face. One he never thought he would associate with Gracchus: a sense of resignation, of hopelessness.

A van pulls up and three Altau herd Gracchus into the back.

Another slips inside the church behind Julius.

Now it’s Julius’ turn to be surrounded.

“What’s happening?” he says. “What are you doing?”

The leader of the Altau team stands in front of him.

She’s the same height as him, a short-haired brunette with brown eyes. Her face is pretty, but it might as well have been carved from ice, and her body gives off the sense of a coiled spring.

She doesn’t answer him directly. Instead, she brings her hand up and ostentatiously checks her wristwatch.

“The sidewalks are becoming icy, House di Firenze,” she says in Athanate. “The going may be treacherous. You’d best be careful, or you’ll be late for your meeting.”

He’s sure she means more than she’s saying on the surface, but he’s not sure what.

There is no give in this Altau team staring at him. The silk is off and only steel remains. Whatever has happened, there’s nothing he can do for Gracchus. He needs to concentrate on what he might be able to do for Livia.

He backs away. The meeting with Skylur is south of Prospect Park. He turns in that direction and walks as quickly as the ice and snow allow.

South Prospect, Brooklyn

The snow increases.

His breathing seems loud in the quiet. It’s not quite silent. There is the hum of the city, like an unsleeping beast, but it seems far away.

Visibility is decreasing all the time; the snow hides the beginning and end of the street. It’s empty as far as he can see.

And then, just before he reaches the house where they’re due to meet Skylur, there’s Livia.

“They’ve taken Gracchus—” he says, as she closes the distance between them.

She kisses him deeply.

He breaks it and holds her away, dizzy.

“We could still run,” he says. “Maybe it’s what Skylur really wants. Look.” He gestures up and down the empty street. “No one. He’s offering us a way out.”

“Maybe he is,” Livia says. “But just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not here, Ruben. I’ve come to realize how much Altau is not like the Warders. It seems there’s nothing we say or do he doesn’t know about.”

She pulls him back into her embrace and kisses his forehead, hard.

She’s wearing lipstick, and he guesses he’s now displaying images of her lips for all to see.

He doesn’t care.

She leads him on toward the house, holding his hand.

“For example, I believe Gracchus thought he could trick Altau,” she says. “I gather that hasn’t worked.”

“Trick him? How?”

“I don’t know. I guess I should have found out, but I wanted to see what Altau would do.”

She seems not to care about it.

This is her House we’re talking about!

He wants to shake her out of this mood, wake her up.

“His security kidnapped your Diakon, right outside the church.” Julius’ foot slips on an icy patch. “Then they were very careful to warn me: the going may be treacherous, they said. Do you know what they mean?”

She huffs a breath out, and it clouds in the freezing air.

“No. Have you done anything that could be construed as treachery?”

Julius slips again. “I phoned all the Houses,” he says. “If they don’t hear from me, I’ve advised them to run.”

Livia frowns. “Not really treachery,” she says. “Especially as you believe it’s what Altau really wants: an excuse not to execute people.”

“You think he knows I did it?”

She laughs and stops walking. “Call one of them, Ruben. Call one now.”

He takes his cell phone out. Dials.

Number disconnected.

Dials another.

Number disconnected.

He’s having trouble breathing.

“He’s moving already. We’re dead if we go to the meeting.” He grabs her wrist. “I’ll get us a cab.”

He’s already bringing up the app when she stops him.

“Ruben, this isn’t the Warders, this is Altau. If he didn’t know every House yesterday, I’ll wager he knew them all by the time you finished calling them. And if you call a cab now, maybe a cab would come. Maybe Altau’s security team would pull up. Yes, we can run, but only if he wants us to be able to run.”

She tugs his hand, gets him moving again.

“I don’t want to run,” she says. “I want to find out what he really wants.”

“Even if that means we’re dead?”

“If he wants us dead, we’re already dead. Don’t fool yourself.”

There’s a fatalistic logic to her argument.

“Then at least tone down your attitude,” he says. “You provoke him—”

“I should say something agreeable and maybe flattering?” She laughs again. “Altau won’t be deceived by what I say. All the time we speak, he’s hearing what we feel as much as what we say. I’ve always been honest, Ruben, and I’d rather stay that way.”

They’ve reached the Warders’ house. There are no lights on, no welcome.

No Altau security either.

Why does Skylur want to meet us here?

The house itself is large. Built in Georgian colonial style, all stone and brick and symmetry. Regular, matching windows are deep-set and curtained. A wide southern porch has been added later, with charcoal-black steps down to the narrow garden. Between the deep porch and the bare trees which crowd the front, the house looks dark and secret. Almost abandoned.

They mount the steps and their heels make clacking sounds on the slate floor of the porch.

There is no sound, no movement inside.

For a moment, it seems Livia loses her nerve and pauses.

But it’s not a lack of courage about what’s facing them inside. She turns to him.

“I’ve always been honest, but that’s not the same thing as being open, or saying everything I think. I don’t know what’s going to happen inside, so…” she pulls him close and her voice drops to a whisper. “I love you. I always have.”

Julius feels the tears freezing on his eyelashes.

She tries the handle. The door is unlocked and she goes in, pulling him behind her.

Chapter 12

Julius

Warders’ Court, South Prospect, Brooklyn

“Here.” Skylur’s voice comes through a doorway to the right.

They go in. It’s a living room, running the whole depth of the house. It’s furnished like a show home, with wide white sofas and seats, a slate-topped coffee table which matches the stone used for the porch outside, an ornate fireplace with a panoramic Dutch painting above it, and a cream carpet. Brass standing lamps and uplighters are all switched off.

What light there is comes from the far end, where patio windows form the entire back wall. Skylur is standing there, looking out at the huge, snow-covered backyard. He’s wearing the same black cloak as his security wears, and holds his hands behind his back.

It’s cold and silent. A scent of air freshener contends with a slightly musty air. The house tells Julius that no one lives here.

“Welcome to the Warders’ Court,” Skylur says.

Julius shivers. Court. The Warders were formed from old Dutch Athanate Houses. Their traditions would have meant that this place was kept deliberately separated from where they lived, and used solely for its purpose. This was their…what was the word? Oordeelstoel. Seat of judgment. The place for trials. And executions.

Skylur seems to be reading his mind. “Just think,” he says. “From their records, there must be fifty bodies somewhere under that snow.”

Worse than reading his mind. Taking a perverse delight in his despair.

“So.” Skylur turns on his heel. “I have to reach a decision today about the Houses who are sheltering illegitimately in my domain. From our discussions, you have a sense of the problems. The core of it is that there are Houses here whose creed is anathema to me. Even were that not an issue personally, my position as leader of the Panethus creed makes what I do here a political issue. My decision could lead to division in the Panethus party and provide political gain to the Hidden Path party.”

He has not even invited them to sit.

“The basis for a decision is clear in the Agiagraphos. Even the rules of the Assembly are not in your favor.”

Livia interrupts him. “You mean for those Houses that are not categorized as Panethus?”

She’s trying to get mercy for half of them at least. It’s an obvious point. Julius stopped himself from saying it because he didn’t want to move to expose Livia, or the other Long Island Basilikos Houses. Which he must remember to call Hidden Path when he speaks to Skylur.

But Skylur is not easily contained. “Not necessarily,” he replies. “None of the Houses are formally members of Panethus, and those that might be acceptable on grounds of creed and behavior have strong links into the others. The two of you being an example. You tangle yourselves together.”

There’s the sound of the front door opening, engine noises from the street, footsteps. A door to another room is opened to let people in, and then closed.

Near-silence again.

Skylur has ignored whatever it was. Julius can see an earbud in his left ear. Either he’s being told what’s happening, or he doesn’t care.

“My decision today will have a profound effect on my position, and through that, it will have a profound effect on Emergence,” Skylur says, and makes a small gesture to encompass everything. “The most important event in Athanate history might hang on what we do here.”

Uninvited, Livia sits down on one of the sofas, leans back and crosses her legs.

But Skylur’s eyes remain on Julius.

“So…if I appear weak, I take political damage,” Skylur says. “What arguments can you give me to counter that?”

“For a start,” Julius replies, “that by the Agiagraphos, the fact that we have lived here on Long Island for nearly three centuries gives us the right to call Long Island our domain, despite it nominally belonging to the Warders, and before them the Houses of the New Holland association.”

“A good argument against the Warders,” concedes Skylur.

Of course the Warders have been disbanded and dispersed across the globe. Julius needs arguments against House Altau, and there are none. He changes tack. There are positive arguments he can make.

“As I’ve stated, we are a microcosm of the world here on Long Island, and we manage to live together with minimal problems, Panethus and Hidden Path, side by side.”

Julius knows the key weakness of this argument is that whereas they live harmoniously with other Athanate, it’s not with the knowledge of humans, other than kin or toru. He tries to make this a strength: “We are an orderly community of Athanate. We’ve survived, observing the rules and with no lapses of security. All in keeping with the Agiagraphos.”

“You’re proud of your record with security?” Skylur asks.

Julius senses a trap. Skylur is intent on overturning the Agiagraphos and deliberately revealing the Athanate to humans. But surely he won’t hold it against the Long Island Athanate that they observed that Agiagraphos rule about keeping humanity unaware of them?

Livia senses the trap too. He can feel her grow tense.

Skylur is waiting, one eyebrow raised slightly.

“Yes,” Julius says. “One of our best points.”

“Really? Did Diakon Gracchus suggest you use that argument?”

The trap has opened in front of him.

The going may be treacherous, the Altau security said when they kidnapped Gracchus.

Oh, hell! What did you do, Gracchus? What have you been hiding?

The house is cold. He feels the sweat freezing on his brow.

“Yes,” he admits, his voice quiet.

Skylur’s gaze is like knives, pinning him where he stands.

Livia stands up and gets in front of him.

“What are you saying, Altau?” she says.

“That you should not be so proud of your security. I am interested to see how you manage the situation that has arisen over the last few days.”

Skylur pulls the earbud out, and takes a matching miniature mike from his pocket.

“Bring them in,” he says into the mike and puts the comms equipment on the coffee table.

Footsteps.

Julius’ stomach is sinking and sinking.

The Altau security detail that kidnapped Gracchus bring him in. Behind him are two other people, a man in an old coat and a woman.

The woman who was sitting near me in church just half an hour ago.

Julius flares his nostrils, reaches with all his senses.

Was he too distracted in the church? Did he miss something?

No. She has no marque. Neither does the man. Both of them are human, and they’re neither kin nor toru.

They both looked dazed, and the woman is leaning on one of the Altau for support.

Before he can ask what they’re doing here, the woman catches sight of Livia.

She steps forward, swaying a little, and goes down on her knees.

“Garheem,” she says. Her voice is scratchy, but the words are clear. “Garheem, Ykos Flavia.”

It hits Julius like a blow to the stomach. Greetings, House Flavia. In Athanate. It’s the wrong greeting; an informal greeting rather than the one she should use when meeting the Mistress of an Athanate House for the first time, but all that is a screaming irrelevance in comparison to the fact that a human who is tied to no Athanate House is kneeling here speaking Athanate to Livia.

Chapter 13

Elodie

Warders’ Court, South Prospect, Brooklyn

My name is Elodie Villiers. I am not crazy. I need to trust me.

They seem shaken, the men and women standing in this cold, empty house while she kneels and speaks the words of greeting she’s learned.

The world had been a blur this morning, sitting in St. Jude’s, trying to make sense of all the unintelligible crap in her head while ignoring the splitting headache. Someone had told her it was important, that place, that church. The man had said a church was important, but then when she turned to look at him, he wasn’t there. She’d recognized which church from a drawing on a newspaper she saw in a dumpster. And on the side of a coffee mug.

She needed to be there, in the church. It was important, but she couldn’t remember why.

I am not crazy.

And then she’d heard them. The priest and the big man. Talking.

Not English, though they’d said some things in English. Not Latin, though the big man had started in Latin.

No, they’d spoken in Athanate.

The language the federal agent wanted her to forget she’d ever seen. The language she hunted down through the internet. To here, on Long Island. A living language that was older than Mycenaean Greek and Scythian and Dravidian and Sanskrit.

Impossible, Nate had said.

A symptom of your condition, the specialist said. The pressure on the brain. Causing a form of auditory hallucination.

Take the pills. Rest.

She’d heard them speaking in St. Jude’s. She’d mouthed the words they spoke. But when she’d opened her eyes, they weren’t there. And a man in a black coat had come to take her away and bring her here.

Here…where they look startled and do not answer her greeting.

Her head is throbbing so she can barely think.

There’s a reason she came searching for them.

I am not crazy.

It feels like rocks colliding in her head. Things are falling back into place again.

That’s Barlett behind her. The Athanate took him when they had their last meeting.

They hold his life in their hands because of her. And either these people can cure her, or it’s all craziness from the growth in her head, and she should have taken the pills.

Nothing left to lose.

She takes a deep breath and speaks to the woman she believes to be the head of a group of vampires, living hidden in the communities of Long Island. Madness. Madness. She speaks in what she believes is Athanate, even though she knows she doesn’t speak it well.

“House Flavia. My name Elodie Villiers. No House. I call sanctuary of you. I beg to you. I offer Blood and life. I offer loyalty and obedience. I honor obligations and responsibilities of the House. I submit to rule of House.”

She thinks those are the right words.

The moment stretches, becomes an age without measure, and no one moves.

Then the woman, House Flavia, steps forward and kneels in front of her.

“That is the petition for sanctuary,” she says in Athanate, “and an offer of your Blood oath.”

Elodie sighs, and sways. I am not crazy.

House Flavia takes her hands, steadies her. “But only an Athanate may make that request of another.”

Elodie feels herself crumple from the inside. She sags, sitting back on her heels. The headache reaches a new level of pain she didn’t believe possible.

“Whatever I can offer, I offer,” she mumbles.

Maybe there is nothing. Learning bits of a language does not mean an understanding of culture. She knows they do not allow humans outside of their community to know about them. Why did she think being able to speak a bit of Athanate would make a difference?

“I plead for life of me and life of this man,” she says, indicating Barlett. “He only doing what I asked.” What can she offer? “I tell you how I find you.”

The words are becoming indistinct. Her mouth is feeling numb. It’s difficult to focus her eyes.

No. It’s too late. Not even Athanate can fix this.

The priest kneels beside her and catches her as she slumps.

Maybe he’ll give her the last rites.

“Say after me,” House Flavia says. “I give truth for truth.”

Elodie whispers the words. Everything seems far away. Even the pain is less now. It’s all happening to someone else.

“Faith for faith.”

“Life for life.”

As if from down a corridor, Elodie hears the words: “I claim this woman, Elodie Villiers. I grant the rights and privileges within my gift.”

She knows she’s not meant to repeat that. There’s another phrase. One she read in one of those hacked documents online.

What is it? Ah, yes.

“My Blood is yours,” she says.

And she hears a reply, just before the crushing darkness falls: “It is done.”

Chapter 14

Julius

Warders’ Court, South Prospect, Brooklyn

They kneel on either side of the woman they’ve just claimed, either as kin or toru. Julius is unsure which.

“Heal her, Julius,” Livia says.

“I can try, but—”

“Do better that that! Heal her! Swear it,” she cuts across him, grabbing his hand and lacing his fingers with Elodie’s so their hands are tied together.

Elodie has lost consciousness.

Julius opens his eukori, the Athanate mental power that allows for sensing and influencing another person’s mental or physical state. His vision darkens. He senses them: Skylur and Livia are like terrible dark suns hanging in an alien sky above him. He forces his mind away from them, down to Elodie, and allows her sensations to flood his mind.

He sways, stunned and disoriented. He feels, as if it were a distant memory, that hands support him so he does not fall.

Elodie is dying. He knows it is entirely possible to follow someone down into death while locked together by eukori. Some Athanate die like that when their kin die. What he is trying is dangerous.

As Julius-Elodie, they know the blinding pain in their head, the pressure of it, the exhausted and feeble pulse of blood through their heart, the tired rise and fall of their chest, the whisper of air.

“Brain tumor.” Julius mumbles. “Too late.”

“You can do it! Swear,” Livia says again.

“I will heal her. On my Blood, I so swear,” he says, the words coming slowly and indistinctly.

Julius is so completely in sync with Elodie that her mouth moves to form the same words.

Julius feels Livia’s eukori touch on him. She gives him the strength to keep Elodie’s heart pounding and her lungs breathing.

I can do this. I can.

He’s aware, through Livia, that Skylur watches impassively.

He’s telling us that it’s our problem.

My problem.

He can’t think about that now. He can’t talk either. He has to concentrate on this woman, Elodie, or she’ll slip away.

“Bring the three of them,” Skylur orders the security team. “Feed Mr. Barlett and let him rest in one of the rooms upstairs. Diakon Gracchus, wait here.”

Julius loses eukori contact with Livia and her strength ebbs from him, but he’s steadier now.

The Altau security carry him and Elodie. It’s awkward. They hold him and the woman side by side, so he can maintain physical contact with her and use his own body’s capabilities to maintain hers through the eukori link.

He can’t sustain her like this for long. He’ll have to move to the next phase, healing her. He’ll have to bite her for that.

They go down a spiral staircase. One floor. Another.

They’ll be going to the oordeelstoel, the Warders’ Seat of Judgment, but Julius loses all sense of location while he concentrates on keeping Elodie alive.

If they’d just reach wherever they’re going and leave him, that would help.

As they walk down the steps, it’s like trying to do it carrying too many things at once. Every time he thinks he has a firm grip on Elodie’s life processes, something else fails, falls away into darkness and he has to scrabble to get it back.

It gets better when they stop.

The Altau guards lower him carefully to the floor, propped against a wall. They reposition Elodie so she is lying back against him and he has his arms around her.

“I will not let you fall,” he whispers to her, though he knows she can’t hear.

In the stillness, he tries to clear his mind. He visualizes inhaling pure light and breathing it into her body.

His fangs manifest and he bites her. Syncing with her body, his Athanate glands have formulated bio-agents to attack the growth in her head, as if it were in his own. As he bites her, these flood into her blood system.

Breathing light into her body, as he sees it.

It will do no good if her heart stops beating, so he has to stay locked with her, keeping the boundaries between their bodies blurred.

He’s never healed someone so close to death. He’s still not sure it can be done, but he gave his oath to Livia, and that might as well be his own life.

He’s aware of Skylur and Livia at the edges of his perception. He hears their voices as if down a long passage.

The guards have gone, leaving the four of them alone. He’s also aware they’re in some kind of a wide corridor that curves.

Not the oordeelstoel. That would be a conference room or a court or an auditorium.

A flicker of hope lights his heart and is dashed as he listens to what they’re saying.

“Compassion, Livia? For a human?” Skylur says.

“Ruben likes to take on hopeless cases,” Livia replies, waving it away. “And if he succeeds, maybe there will be some entertainment out of it for me.”

Livia is deliberately pushing Skylur as if she has a death wish. Julius wants to interrupt, but he can’t even speak.

“What have you done with the other Houses?” Livia says.

Skylur smiles thinly. “Why do you care?”

“Being Basilikos might make me un-human, but it doesn’t make me un-Athanate. I care about them. I’ve cared ever since they asked Julius and me to run our association.”

“You care even for the Panethus Houses? And the humans in the Panethus Houses?” Skylur says. “If you say you care for them, how do you make a distinction between humans inside and outside of our communities?”

“I don’t make those kind of distinctions generally and I don’t hate humans, I just believe we are superior,” Livia says. “You hold a mirror up to me, Altau, as if that were all that’s required. I see myself, but what you don’t understand, is that’s not as you see me. Tell me why I’m wrong. Or at least answer my question about the other Long Island Athanate.”

Julius wishes she would hold back, but that’s not like her.

“I have done nothing, yet, with the other Houses,” Skylur says.

Julius can see both are refusing to give an inch, but it’s Skylur who has the power.

Livia has run out of patience. “So, we’ve established I am Basilikos, and I’m not going to change,” she says. “You’re Panethus. We aren’t compatible. You’ve claimed this territory and we’re not strong enough to contest it. How do we resolve the situation?”

“You mean how am I going to resolve it?” Skylur replies. “Like this.” He presses a discreet button set in the wall against which Julius is resting.

The opposite wall cracks in the middle and begins to slide open.

There’s a darkness beyond the retreating wall, and the impression of size, of depth. A breath of air, dry and chill, carrying a hint of scent that might be sage.

Then lights begin to brighten slowly, revealing a bare arena.

The floor is sand, smoothed so that there is not a ripple in the surface.

Julius’ heart misses a beat before he can catch it, and his senses dull again as he has to concentrate on re-starting Elodie’s heart and calming his reaction.

He knows what it is, even though he’s never seen one, outside of Livia’s oldest books.

“The Warders, long before they were Warders, or Athanate Houses in the Netherlands, were old,” Skylur says. “Older even than House Flavia.”

“A Mandaviran.” Livia’s voice echoes in the chamber. She is standing right at the edge of the arena. There is awe in her tone.

Julius tries to say no, but keeping Elodie alive is taking all his effort. He stretches one hand out, as if to call Livia back, but she’s not looking.

The Mandaviran. Sometimes called the Hero’s Circle. Or the Last Place of Judgement.

It is an old and bloody tradition, so old that the books say the last sanctified Mandaviran existed in fabled Itrexia, the long-lost city of the Athanate, where the high towers of morning gazed out over the glittering Caspian Sea.

Even if it wasn’t pure myth, Itrexia is long gone. But modern Athanate books sometimes mention the Mandaviran, in a famous saying:

Beyond emotion, there is reason.

Beyond reason, there is logic.

Beyond logic, there is faith.

And beyond faith, there is only iron in the Mandaviran.

The Mandaviran is the place of the last argument of Athanate. If all other courses fail, then two sides unable to reach an agreement meet on the sand.

Livia is more than a match for anyone else Julius knows, but Skylur is older, faster, more powerful. For them to meet on the sand is merely offering Livia an honorable death.

He raises his mouth from Elodie’s neck, calls out: “No, Livia! Wait!”

But immediately, Elodie begins to slip away, and he has to return to healing, torn between the woman he loves and the oath she made him give.

Julius can only watch as Skylur opens a cabinet on the wall.

He brings out the glittering pelea, the one-sided armor that covers a fighter from the shoulder to the hand. It’s segmented like a lobster, heavy and slick and held by leather straps. And he brings out the kinirak, the blade. It is a sword like no other. There is a brace which lies along the forearm, with leather and chainmail straps for the top of the forearm and the wrist. The handle stands up at right angles to the brace, positioned so the wrist is never bent. The blade itself flows from the back of the brace, opposite the handle. It has an easy, graceful curve so the tip ends in line with the fist. It has all the horrific beauty of a tool designed to be perfect in its function of delivering death.

I have to heal Elodie and stop this.

Desperation gives Julius a healing strength he didn’t suspect he possessed, but progress with Elodie feels as sluggish as the flow of tar in comparison to the flickering speed with which Skylur and Livia strip down, don the pelea and fix the kinirak in place.

Chapter 15

Julius

Mandaviran, Warders’ Court, South Prospect, Brooklyn

“You’re familiar with the kinirak,” Skylur says. “Good.”

“Flavia is also an old House. Not old enough to lay claim to a place in Itrexia, but old enough that the rituals of the Mandaviran are the heart of our physical training.”

Skylur has lit a rush candle and placed it in the very center of the Mandaviran. It gives off a fragrant scented smoke: sage and cedar wood, cypress, thyme and lemon.

“You know then—”

“Yes,” Livia interrupts him, indicating the candle. “When the flame dies, we fight.”

They move opposite each other, and begin stalking the sandy circumference of the Mandaviran counterclockwise.

“Is this consecrated?” Livia says. “The old tales say that only a king might consecrate a Mandaviran, and the last one vanished with the fall of Itrexia.”

His face is still, but breath huffs out of Skylur. “The old tales are right, as far as they go. Yet this is a true Mandaviran.”

“So there’s truth when they also say the king escaped the fall of Itrexia and became a god in another land, where he was worshipped—”

“We’re not here to discuss old tales of the Athanate. We’re here to resolve the future.”

“Not yet. The flame has not died,” Livia says. Then she quotes from a classic Athanate text. Julius recognizes it as a poem called “The Fall of Itrexia”:

We saluted the king

And stepped the sacred circle.

Yet still, proud Itrexia fell,

When our feet had worn all paths to dust.

“None of the poets you have read were ever there, Livia. It wasn’t the observance of rituals or the arbitration of disputes that ground Itrexia to dust. The city died by assault from human kingdoms, in blood and flames and screams. You asked me what wakes me in the night. Now you have your answer.”

“And are we so much different then?” Livia asks.

“Perhaps not. But it remains that I must rule, or risk the greatest of disasters for Athanate and human alike. And in pursuit of that, I’ll allow no one to stand in my way on the path I’ve chosen.”

Livia is silent for an entire circuit of the Mandaviran. The rush candle still burns, but the wisps of smoke are growing thinner.

“Is this my korheny then?” she says.

Julius shakes his head. She’s proposing offering her life as a sacrifice.

Skylur remains silent, so Livia continues formally. “I offer my life in exchange for all the hidden Athanate Houses of Long Island, Athanate and human alike. Take my life, Altau, and spare theirs.”

Julius is so close to completion. Elodie is not healed yet, but he’s nearly reached a stage where he can risk leaving her to sleep. Which will give him enough time to offer himself as korheny. It’s his role; he can’t let Livia do this. He can’t. The thought of her dying is like hot coals burning in his chest.

Just a few moments more, that’s all he needs.

“No,” Skylur says.

Livia kicks sand over the candle, extinguishing it, and attacks in a blur of movement.

Julius is so much younger than Livia and Skylur, so much less powerful, he can barely see the blows they exchange for their speed. Blade screeches across blade, sliding off pelea, making a wicked hiss through the empty air. Sand explodes from their steps as they stamp and twist and turn and thrust and swing at each other.

And they part, springing back. Already, sweat glistens on their bare skin. Their lungs heave to feed their muscles.

To Julius’ eye, Livia looks more the part of a fighter in the Mandaviran. Honed to perfection. Deadly. Skylur’s body seems…unexceptional. And yet Livia believes herself so outclassed, she might as well make this her sacrifice.

“Is there no way?” Livia says.

“There’s one way,” Skylur replies, “and that’s through me.”

Does he mean that only if he dies will the Long Island Athanate survive?

“You’re no different from Basilikos, really,” Livia says, “except by your preferences for your physical needs. You believe you’re superior to humans, and on top of that, to all Athanate as well. Which of us is worse?”

Skylur simply smiles. “But who will judge me?” he says. “And as for you, are you above judgment, Livia? Who will sit in judgment of you?”

“Not humans, as you would have it!”

She strikes out again. The exchange is swifter than the last, a blur of confused motion to Julius.

Livia is bleeding when they part. A cut across her belly. Not deep as far as Julius can judge. The thought of the kinirak’s blade passing just an inch or two deeper makes him ill.

“Not humans in judgement of you,” Skylur says. “Not the Hidden Path party, not Basilikos, not Panethus.”

Livia snorts. “It appears I’m left with only you, Altau. In the Mandaviran.”

Another blinding exchange of blows.

Livia has another cut, on her chest. Skylur is untouched.

He can’t let this go on. Julius has to move. Now.

His moving brings Elodie back to consciousness.

Her mind is full of confusion and fear and a wrack of emotions he can’t spare the time to untangle.

But she’s still his responsibility.

“Elodie, listen to me,” he whispers. “Listen, and trust me. You’re on the way to healing. You’re going to be fine. I can’t go with you all the way. I’m sorry. I know I should, but I can’t. There’s something I have to do. You’ll sleep now, and someone else will be with you when you wake. I’m sorry. You are so brave. I wish I could have stayed with you.” Julius rests his forehead against hers, and with their minds touching, gives her a little push that will send her into a deep, restful sleep.

“May your life be long and full of joy,” he says as her eyes close again.

He lays her down gently on the floor, and turns to the Mandaviran.

“Stop!” Livia says, and he stops, on the very edge of the sand, as if her hand had prevented him.

“No one else may enter the Mandaviran,” Livia says.

Even now, the force of her will is stronger than he is.

“You wouldn’t have to be toru any more,” Skylur says, “if I killed her.”

“No!” The word is torn from Julius. “Don’t hurt her. I offer my korheny. Take my life in exchange.”

“No,” Skylur says and Livia lunges forward again, her kinirak slicing upwards to gut Skylur.

But he isn’t there. He spins away and lashes out with his pelea, striking Livia on the side of her head.

She collapses, stunned, face-first into the sand.

Skylur grabs the straps that fasten her pelea and lifts her, drags her, until she is kneeling, swaying at the edge of the Mandaviran, in front of Julius.

“Judgment is due, Livia,” Skylur says. He lays the blade of his kinirak alongside her neck. “You offered me korheny in return for the lives of the Long Island Athanate, who elected you to rule them. But I don’t value your death against what I might do to them. This hidden community that is no longer hidden has its own value to me. They are in no danger if they give me their oaths, or leave for Ireland. I truly hope they stay. As your toru said, they are a sort of model for the Athanate world at large.”

Julius mirrors Livia’s position, kneeling.

“Stay out of the Mandaviran,” Livia mumbles, her eyes slowly clearing after the blow to her head.

He’ll stay out for the moment. If Skylur kills her, then he’ll enter the Mandaviran and die on the blade of Skylur’s kinirak.

“You come here to the Warders’ Court, in justified fear of your life,” Skylur goes on, “and almost immediately, you ask about the disposition of those Houses sworn to you. Panethus and Basilikos equally. Humans and Athanate. A strange attitude for a Basilikos House to take. Almost as strange as setting up your toru as a Panethus House.”

“It amuses me.” Livia’s voice is scratchy, but still defiant. There’s blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.

Skylur’s lips thin. It’s not a smile exactly.

“And you’ve told me what wakes you at night, Livia, House Flavia. In great detail. The screams of your House, your Athanate, your toru and marai dying in the flames. The smells and sights you have described so vividly.”

Livia does not speak.

“Describe, what a wonderful word. Your pelea describes your arm. It tells me the length and thickness and shape of your arm, even while it hides what is beneath. The vulnerable part. Why do those remembered screams wake you at night?”

Skylur sinks down on one knee behind her. His blade still rests against her throat.

“Because you failed them.” He speaks into her ear. “They looked to you for safety, those little farmers, and you failed them. That’s what wakes you. And why are the lives of the Long Island Houses so important? Why did you stay here, rather than fly away? Because they look to you for safety and you fear failing them too. You will do anything to keep them safe.”

Livia’s eyes close. She’s still panting from the fight, sweat trickling down her face. When she speaks it’s very quiet. “You’d base all your decisions on one unremarkable quirk of my character?”

“Unremarkable? Not all the darkness in the world can extinguish the light of such a candle.”

“You’re insane, Altau.”

“Maybe I am. I see visions of salvation, and I will follow them as singlemindedly as Elodie Villiers did.” Skylur sighed. “I will not stop or turn aside, neither will I let anyone stand in my way. But enough of this challenge. I have tried emotion, reason, logic and the Mandaviran with you. If I have failed, then I must challenge Julius instead.”

“No!” Livia flinches and the razor-sharp blade of the kinirak nicks her throat, breaks the skin.

“No,” she says again, holding still. “I cede. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Are you sure? You may not want to pay the price.”

Carefully, she nods her head. “I will change, Altau. I will mold myself to your requirements. I will become Panethus. Spare him. Spare them all. I will do anything.”

Skylur laughs. The blade moves away. There’s a hiss as he sheathes it in the sand.

“House di Firenze, attend,” he says.

Julius nods acceptance of his role as witness to an oath. Anything to save her. He has no idea how Livia would be able to change, nor how Skylur would monitor or enforce it, but at least it buys time, and a desperate man will take that.

“Livia, House Flavia, are you willing to do my bidding?” Skylur asks.

Livia’s breathing is gradually slowing. Her eyes are focused on something beyond Julius. “I am, Altau,” she says.

“Good. Then under the aegis of the authority invested in me as Master of House Altau, I hereby appoint you Diakon of House Altau. You are to immediately establish, continuously maintain and always enforce the domain of House Altau in New York State, fixing the mantle in Manhattan, or such location as we shall agree.”

Julius is stunned. Not only does Skylur want Livia to be Panethus, he wants her to be his Diakon. His mouth opens but no sound comes out.

“You will, through cooperation with others sworn to me, protect the territory of House Altau, currently all of North America, or such extent as we shall later agree and claim. You will, with due dispatch and in full cognizance of Athanate laws and imperatives, communicate to all parties that House Flavia, a House that declares its abidance by the ancient creed known as Basilikos, accepts and agrees this commission and will remain fully and at all times within the loyalty and mantle of House Altau.”

Livia’s eyes are wide and disbelieving, searching the space around them as if looking for a sign that this is all a ruse.

“You will immediately make such script as shall render this oath as a warrant before the Assembly, or other body of Athanate as may later be lawfully designated to have authority.”

There is a shocked silence.

“House Flavia?” Skylur gently prompts.

Livia swallows.

“I accept,” she says. Her voice shakes. “I swear, on my Blood, to honor this commission, and to return oath for oath, faith for faith, Blood for Blood, life for life.”

“I grant the position, obligations, rights and privileges within my gift and contained in this oath,” Skylur says.

“My Blood is yours,” Livia whispers.

Skylur pulls her head back and sinks his fangs into her throat.

Her breath hisses in sharply. Then it’s her turn. Skylur’s throat is offered. She bites, delicately, pulls his Blood in through her fangs. Licks his flesh to speed the healing afterwards.

“It is done,” they both say.

Julius manages to stutter: “So witnessed.”

Skylur stands and begins to unstrap his pelea. He looks enormously satisfied.

Numbly, Julius helps Livia with hers. Then, ignoring her protests, he cleans her wounds, running his tongue along them so his bio-agents will close the gashes.

“You are crazy, Altau,” Livia says. “Why?”

Skylur is cleaning his pelea and kinirak before storing them back in the cabinets.

“On a purely practical level,” he says, “my former Diakons, Houses Bazhir, Tarez and Trang, have their hands full with their territories, so I have no Diakon, and I need one. I find you suitably qualified.”

“Even as Basilikos?”

“Especially as Basilikos. Whatever the composition and leadership of the current Assembly, I will lead the Athanate in Emergence. That needs to be not some Athanate but all Athanate. Emergence will break over us faster than we can react. I don’t have the time to convert all Basilikos to Panethus, any more than I have the opportunity to achieve the same thing with conflict. The only path left to me is to lead all Athanate, whatever their creed, so I’d better get used to it. And I’ll win Basilikos Houses to support me politically in the Assembly by taking you as Diakon.” Skylur turns away from the cabinets. “On a minor point, keeping you as my Diakon will make running my domain here in New York easy. You will see to that, won’t you? Both of you.”

“Yes, Altau.”

“The House style is to call me Skylur, Livia. I will see you at the office tomorrow.”

“Yes, Skylur.”

Epilogue

Elodie

Manhattan - Penthouse

It is dark in Altau’s penthouse, so she can see through the wide picture windows that look out over the Manhattan night skyline, and no one can look in and see her.

Luckily.

It’s silent up here at the top of the building, and snow is still falling, making the city look softer.

She shivers, even in the warmth of the room.

Her head feels clear. The first time in months she can say that.

Yes, my head is clear, but how screwed is my mind?

She realizes she can’t truly know the answer to that question, philosophically, in the same way that she couldn’t really gauge how much the tumor was affecting her.

Might still be affecting her.

Did I really go crazy? Am I still crazy?

Deep, calming breaths. She has to believe the truth of her senses—that she’s not lying in a hospital bed, fantasizing, imagining a New York penthouse.

Who am I now?

She knows she’s not the same person who came to New York in search of an irrational, incredible solution to the death sentence pronounced by her doctor. A search that, in itself, was an act of madness, chasing a people no one else could see or understand.

Yes, a year ago, before she’d even seen the Athanate language, she’d have said she is crazy now. And that what she’s doing is crazy. Abhorrent even.

I am not crazy. I need to trust me.

She submitted to the requests tonight without question.

Requests? Orders. However politely put.

Don’t imagine options that don’t exist.

She’s kneeling on the soft carpet, stark naked, with her hands tied behind her.

She’s not stupid; she understands the reasoning, the symbolism of it all.

And the same logical part of her brain claims she’s safe, sort of, all while her hindbrain is scrabbling, her ears are straining for the slightest sound behind her, and her stomach is flooded with adrenaline.

She holds her breath to try and hear better, but all she can make out is the pounding of her own heart.

Maybe it was just a test to see if she obeyed. Maybe there’s no one else here. Maybe no one’s coming.

She lets the air sigh out from her lungs and tries deep, measured breathing again.

Come on, crack a joke to calm down. That used to work when she went into her university exams. That seems so long ago. Another lifetime. There should be a good chicken joke in this, seeing she’s so scared and she’s trussed up like a bird ready for roasting.

She can’t think of one. She tries her mantra instead.

My name is Elodie Villiers, she begins.

Her thoughts skitter off sideways.

I wasn’t crazy—I found the Athanate!

I’m alive!

But nothing comes without a price.

My name is Elodie Villiers, she tries again. Elodie Villiers toru-Flavia kin-di Firenze.

Blood slave to Livia, House Flavia, Diakon of House Altau, and kin to Julius, House di Firenze.

Mouthing the words to herself stirs up a maelstrom of emotions in her body: chills on her arms. Goosebumps. A dropping sensation in her belly. A warmth. A strange, disturbing fascination. Shock. Disbelief. A giddy elation.

She’s been informed of her status, rights and obligations; toru and kin are now familiar words. So she knows what her Mistress and Master might require of her tonight: her Blood, her body.

That she anticipated.

But her Mistress also requires her fear.

Well, that’s not exactly difficult.

She knows she’s already been bitten; Julius did that to keep her alive. But she wasn’t awake then.

There’s a hint of movement behind her, no more than a change in air pressure, a flowing in the darkness reflected from the windows, and she half-stifles a scream, biting her lip.

Livia’s laugh is warm, intimate.

So freaking close!

“Oh, very good, my little Elodie,” Livia breathes into Elodie’s ear.

Livia’s fingernails touch her neck and Elodie flinches.

“No, no fangs yet,” Livia says. “There’s no hurry now, is there?”

“No, Mistress,” she manages to reply.

Livia uses her fingers to comb Elodie’s hair back so it’s all clear of her neck.

Elodie’s heartrate has doubled and her whole body is trembling.

She knows she has to submit to being bitten; she is toru to Livia. But the thought of Livia’s fangs buried in her neck...

Livia is taking her time. She pulls Elodie back to lean against her. That only succeeds in making Elodie uncomfortably aware that her neck is stretched out in offering.

And now she can feel Livia’s breath on her skin.

Any moment now. Any second. Fangs will pierce my skin and sink in until they find my arteries.

Telling herself it’s safe, it’s safe, they do it all the time, doesn’t help.

The panting is making her mouth dry and having her head tilted back makes it difficult to swallow.

She knows Livia is enjoying this. Athanate feed on emotion, and Basilikos like Livia choose to feed on fear.

This is part of the price, but accepting that doesn’t make it any less frightening.

“This is very, very enjoyable, my delicious toru.”

All Elodie has left is bravado. “Bite me already, Mistress.”

Livia laughs again, breathily. “All in good time. I’m enjoying this far too much to hurry. It’s special. And it’s true what they say: the first bite is the sweetest.”

Scared as she is, Elodie has to laugh too.

How did it get so damned complicated?

She understands Athanate have mental abilities that allow them to synchronize between bodies. They do this for healing. And other things. At the same time Julius kept her body working, his own body created bio-agents to attack the tumor as if it were his own. Those bio-agents went into her bloodstream when he bit her.

Elodie didn’t study biology at college, but she can understand that process.

However, that physical synchronization creates a link between minds as well. An Athanate can feed from a human’s emotions, like Livia is doing now, with Elodie’s fear. This is as essential to Athanate as feeding on human blood—Blood, she corrects herself—of course the gift is sacred for Athanate. As is Rahaimon, the feeding on emotion.

But the linking of minds has other uses than feeding. An Athanate can compel a human, or seduce, or terrify, or enthuse. The link is very powerful.

Julius didn’t mean to do what he did. It was simply that so much was happening during the fight in the Mandaviran, and it meant so much to him.

Elodie tries to speak, has to clear her throat. “No one is really telling me, well, how permanent this is. I mean what I feel. Not the fear…” she stops, exasperated. “I’m not explaining myself well. I don’t even know if I’m cured.”

“Oh, you’re cured,” Livia says immediately. “The tumor has been destroyed and it’ll all flush out of your system in a week or so. You’ll need lots of rest for a while.”

Relief floods through her, driving out the fear for the moment.

Of course, that reduces Livia’s enjoyment.

Way to go, ruin your first date.

But Livia seems content to continue talking. “Are you unhappy with what happened?” she asks.

Elodie’s bravado returns before she can stop herself. “Oh, yes. I’d much rather be lying in hospital, out of my mind on painkillers, waiting to die.”

Livia doesn’t seem to mind at all.

In fact, she unties Elodie’s hands and pulls her from her kneeling position until they are resting against the sofa. Livia is still behind her and those fangs are still only inches from her neck.

And...

Godammit!

Julius joins them.

Her heart squeezes inside her chest. Julius isn’t scary like Livia, but there are now two Athanate with her. They will both want her Blood.

Livia speaks, her voice even lower and smoother. “To answer your question in full: you are my toru, and you are Julius’ kin,” she says. “That is permanent, however unusual the arrangement is.”

Elodie feels a slight pressure on her mind, and then, disturbingly, a sort of doubling of everything. She can feel the dryness in her own mouth for example, overlaid by the way Livia’s jaw is throbbing just at the point of her canines, where her fangs will manifest.

This is eukori. The touch of minds. The sharing of sensation.

Her heartrate sprints. She’s aware that Livia’s speeds up to match, and then it feels as if hers is captured, and slowed back down until both hearts are beating in sync.

Fear blooms in her chest again, this time mingled with Livia’s anticipation and desire.

“My sweet Ruben didn’t intend to impress your mind with his rare combination of emotions,” Livia says.

Elodie can feel Livia’s fangs manifest. She’s not sure whether to be proud that she manages to remain still, or whether she’s actually frozen in fear.

There’s a huff from Julius, and he takes her hand, presses it between his own.

“He didn’t intend to make you yeftikal,” Livia whispers, her fangs brushing against Elodie’s throat. “However much I approve.”

Goosebumps shiver down Elodie’s body. Yeftikal. Delectable.

Julius should have been concentrating on healing her while his mind was locked with hers. But he was so passionately in love with Livia and so concerned that she might die in the Mandaviran, his emotions ran riot through Elodie’s head.

She woke up afterwards, finding such strange new emotions in her head. She’s bound. She plays with the sensation in her head. It feels like love. But in addition to being in love with Julius, she’s also in love with Livia, and scared of her, all at the same time. Yeftikal.

Complicated! You think?

“The fear could fade with time,” Julius murmurs.

“I certainly hope not,” Livia replies.

“What about Nathan?” Elodie’s voice is hoarse, and she knows the answer as she speaks the words.

Yes, she had loved him. She can remember that. Something in the past.

“He didn’t come with you to New York,” Julius says. “He wanted you to stay in the hospital.”

“I guess that Elodie died, then,” Elodie says. A single tear escapes. “I hope Nate grieves and moves on in the new year.”

“And this Elodie?” Elodie gasps as Livia’s fangs stop moving and press on her skin.

They’re sharp.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Livia can feel what she feels. This Elodie is part of the frightening Athanate world. Alive like she’s never been before. Scared. In love twice over. Crazy.

Content? No, what’s the word she’s looking for?

Fulfilled.

The fangs sink into her neck. Julius’ touch on her hand comforts her without reducing her reaction. She turns her head slightly, lifts her jaw, offering herself, offering her fear and love, stunned by the returning sensations of pleasure from Livia. She sighs at the feeling of completeness, and hope.

Hope.

And a sense that her life might now have a chance to be long and full of joy.