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…like mere beasts.
I turn away from all of them and stalk toward the window. The air is stuffy and unbreathable here.
Father’s ambition knew no bounds. Like Napoleon, he wanted to take over the entire world, but we were an unruly lot. Remus only wanted to tear apart the world—he knew no sides, only chaos and war. Famine fed off all the starving soldiers, as did I, who swept relentlessly among their ranks.
And Thing… well, he was mindless and blood-engorged, just fury and madness as infantryman slaughtered one another by the tens of thousands, and he carried them off to the deathly planes.
It just wouldn’t stop. One battle, and then another, armies chasing each other uselessly across the countryside on horses barely standing up, they were rotting through their saddles.
Who would have hope for this foolish humankind after that? Who would bother?
They called me Pestilence, but I saw with clear eyes who were the pests upon this earth. And for so many years I fought at my father’s side to rid the earth of them.
I believed blindly in our father’s mission for endless power… I was his truest disciple.
Until the day I became his greatest enemy.
Perhaps it would have gone better for him had I believed in him with less fealty. Had I had a ninety-nine percent belief in him, or the lackluster disillusionment of my brothers. Anything other than my absolutist devotion.
Because when I hit my breaking point, I shattered completely, and in my rage, destroyed my Creator in the way none of his adversaries, seen and unseen, ever could.
The world would know war and destruction again, but by then it was either driven by humankind bent on their own destruction or other monsters. For my brothers and I never rode again after our father and brother were put in the ground.
“That was the last day,” Thing says.
Remus just tosses a grape in his mouth—part of the food I got for Hannah-consort—eyelids fluttering with pleasure as it pops in his mouth. I’m about to growl and go wrench the rest of the cluster of stolen fruits not meant for him from his hand when he speaks up. “That day was just the beginning of the end.”
“It was the last battle.”
Remus grins. “But there was still Moscow to burn to the ground before we were through.”
“Father was so proud,” Thing remembers grimly.
I scoff at that. “Father was never proud. Out of all of the emotions that were foreign to the man, that one he understood least of all.”
“He was a terrible father,” Remus agrees, “but he made us great.”
“How can you say that?” I challenge. “You know what he was. You were never deceived. He created us, his children, and despised us even as he was happy to use us as if we were nothing more than dogs. And when we were of no more use to him, he put us down with as little thought. We all watched him murder Layden right in front of our eyes. As if it was a lesson to us.”
“I’ve seen humans with their dogs,” Thing murmurs. “I do not think we were thought of so highly to him.”
“You think you are so much better?” Remus laughs at me. “As Thing reminded you not five minutes ago, you did the same to us the second you had the chance. You chained us to the wall like animals for two hundred years. At least with Father, we were free to wander and slake our appetites.”
“Your mean your appetite for war, slaughter, and destruction? Would there be anything left of this earth had I let you continue on in your bloodlust?” I bare my teeth at him. “You forget I wasn’t your only jailer. Seems like you need to take up your disputes with your own twin, who voluntarily walked into that basement to save the world from you.”
For a second the genteel smirk disappears from Remus’s face as absolute rage takes over. If there’s anyone on this earth he hates more than me, it’s Romulus. No contest. They share one body, and sometimes I wonder, one mind?
While I stand here and talk to Remus, on the opposite side of his body, Romulus’s face lies sleeping. One always sleeps while the other is awake, and whoever is awake gets to face forward. For centuries the two worked together toward one purpose—the tactician and the madman. While one slept the other would continue the work, an unstoppable machine of war. Until the rift between them, when Romulus turned on Remus, and agreed to help me confine him to the wall with the hell-metal chains.
“What will you do now, brother?” Thing asks. “You have consort and kit to think of.”
What does he mean, what will I do now? I can only glare at him, still furious for his calm, rational speech when he would only snarl at me like a mindless beast for two centuries. “I will do as I have always done.”
