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The rider was Sergius, who had ridden his horse hard to deliver the news that the streets were filled with rumors that the dark lady had come to Londinium. And though Luke had not thought of his obsession since the months before Livia’s birth, to him it seemed as though Serge had arrived on the wings of destiny. For how better to save his daughter than to bar Death from the door?
It had broken his heart to part from her and from Claudia, who had wept and clung to him as he’d mounted his horse. He had held fast, though, promising his wife that he would return presently, bearing Livia’s salvation.
The trip was grueling, and he’d arrived at the city gates sore and hungry, his horse ridden almost to the point of collapse. He had cared not, his thoughts only on Livia, on finding the dark lady who could return his daughter to him. For three days he and Serge had scoured the city’s underbelly, following any rumor, any hint of news, but never finding the lady herself.
He’d been on the verge of giving up when he’d located her in a tavern and pleaded his case. She had declined at first, unconcerned, she’d said, about the welfare of his child. He’d persisted, though, determined that he would have what he came for. That he would win the lady’s gift and deliver it triumphantly to his home.
His tenacity persuaded her, and in the end, he won his heart’s desire. He would like to say that he hadn’t fully understood the terms as she relayed them to him, but that would be a lie. He’d understood. There had been no failure to disclose. No dark trick.
The soul, she told him, is not alone in man. There is evil as well. And the evil has a name and a face:Azag Mahru.A living darkness. A presence that slithers inside like a serpent. In some, it is mild. Calm. Controllable. In others, it rages. Burns. Writhes. But in all humanity, it is there, hidden well in most by the power of their soul to suppress it. To quell and control.
But the dark gift releases the serpent, and only the strongest have the strength to battle it back.
He listened. He understood. And he had taken the gift with eyes wide open, arrogant enough to believe that the terms did not apply to him. He was a good man, after all. Kind. He loved his family deeply, and they him. He took the gift not selfishly, but with his child’s well-being at the forefront of his mind.
Surely, with motives so pure the gods would exempt him from the gift’s dark effects or bestow upon him the strength to control the writhing, keening darkness.
Of course, he’d been wrong. The dark gift had freed the serpent, just as the lady had told him it would. It did not, as human mythology sometimes suggests, allow evil to enter. The evil was already within him, had been there all along. And once he became nosferatu, that evil ran free.
He’d become a killer, a monster, and were he given the chance, he would gladly return to that fateful day and sacrifice himself to the normal course of nature, if only to save those he had hurt.
The innocent. The strangers.
And, yes, his Livia.
Even now, all these centuries later, his stomach roiled and his blood ran cold when he remembered what he’d done, the torment he’d wrought upon the child he’d adored, the woman he’d loved.
With the demon riding high, he’d left Londinium for home, intending to fulfill his original purpose and draw his wife and child into his shiny new world. Claudia, however, had been horrified and had thrown herself on him as she tried to keep him from his Livia.
He’d shaken her off violently, having no patience for the foolish woman who would sentence their daughter to a mortal death. With a newfound strength, he’d thrown her against the stone hearth, and she’d slipped into unconsciousness, her body sagging to the floor.
He’d felt no regret, only a renewed purpose as he’d stalked through the house toward his child. He could smell her, the scent of her teasing his senses. Death waited in the room for her, but Lucius refused to give the vile beast satisfaction. He would snatch Livia from Death’s clutches. He would, finally, save her.
She’d smiled as he’d approached her bed, but the expression had faded as he’d moved closer. “Pater?” she’d murmured. “Quis es?”
He’d told her to hush, then drawn her tiny body into his arms. She’d snuggled close at first, reassured, then pulled away, confused, and complained that his skin didn’t feel right. “I will soothe you,” he’d whispered, and with her scream echoing in his ears, he’d sunk his fangs deep into the tender, young flesh of her neck.
She’d writhed and struggled, but the serpent had swirled unrelenting within him, and he’d drunk and drunk, the taste of her fear causing him no hesitation but instead enticing the darkness within even more. He drank deep, telling himself that he could stop in time—that he could turn her. That he could save her.
And though he felt the whisper of death touch her—though he knew that he was on the verge of taking her too far—the serpent would not stop.Hewould not stop.
He drank his fill and drew the last spark of life from her.
There would be no renewal for his Livia. No life.
He had stolen it from her, thrusting death upon her even as he’d tried to give her unending life.
He had failed, and as he looked up, confused and sated, her body limp in his arms, he’d seen Claudia silhouetted in the doorway, a knife tight in her hand. She held the blade out toward him, her face a mask of fear and fury and grief.
TheAzag Mahruhad whipped into a frenzy from which Lucius had been unable to emerge. Grief, rage, confusion, loss. All pounding inside him. All driving him down, down into the mire. Lost in the call of the blood, Lucius had leaped toward his wife, a part of him wanting to share his grief, another part wanting to snuff out her life because of the harsh way that she now looked at him.
She hurled the knife and ran even before its hilt collided harmlessly against his chest.
He let her go, then turned back and cradled the lifeless body of his daughter. And as grief warred with hunger, he surrendered, fully and completely, to the darkness within.
* * *
Xavier Stemmons stood in the dark, the swing set behind him casting eerie shadows in the light of the moon.
