Firstborn

  PRAISE FOR

  THE PROGENY

  “Dark, tense, and gripping, The Progeny by Tosca Lee has all the ingredients thriller fans crave.”

  —Joe Moore, internationally bestselling coauthor of The Blade and The Tomb

  “One killer story. . . . A roller-coaster ride that picked up speed, racing to the gasp-out-loud conclusion.”

  —Ronie Kendig, bestselling author

  “Twisting and chilling. . . . A headlong, haunting thrill. With action and romance in spades, this is one to read.”

  —Kate Brauning, author of How We Fall

  “A brilliant read and a thrilling ride—all the more fantastic because it is set in the real world and based on historic facts and secrets.”

  —Michael Napoliello, Radar Pictures

  “With each chapter of The Progeny, I became a bigger fan of Tosca’s. Wow! What a ride. Tosca has done it again.”

  —Randy Goodwin, actor (The Vampire Diaries) and director (The Job)

  “A riveting ride from page one. Historical codes, serial killers, and whirlwind global travel just begin to frame this tale. I galloped through the book and at the end wanted more. Sequel, please?!”

  —Lis Wiehl, New York Times bestselling author and Fox News legal analyst

  “Lee effortlessly combines The Da Vinci Code’s rolling mystery with the identity puzzle of Memento. Audra’s trials leave you wanting more.”

  —Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

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  FOR WYNTER, KAYL, KOLE, AND GAGE.

  You fill my life with joy, hilarity, love . . . and more laundry than I thought humanly possible.

  CHARACTER LIST

  PROGENY (ALSO KNOWN AS UTOD)

  Anastasia: Elizabeth Bathory’s illegitimate first child

  Paul: Elizabeth Bathory’s son

  Audra Ellison: formerly Emily Porter (reported to have died in a car accident)

  Eva: Audra and Luka’s infant daughter

  Tibor: Prince of the Zagreb court

  Jester: French hacker/hactivist; Piotrek and Katia’s half-sister

  Piotrek: Claudia’s protector “sibling”

  Claudia: Piotrek’s protector “sibling”

  Nikola: Prince of the Budapest court (formerly Brother Goran); Amerie’s former protector “sibling”

  Amerie Szabo (aka Barbara Bocz): Audra’s mother (deceased—possibly killed by Nikola)

  Tamas Vargha: Audra’s father (deceased—killed by hunter)

  Ivan: Audra’s former protector “sibling”; Tibor’s biological brother (deceased—killed by hunter)

  Katia: Piotrek’s twin sister (deceased—killed by hunter)

  Andre: Katia’s lover (deceased—suicide)

  Ana: Nino’s protector “sibling” (deceased—killed by Nikola)

  Nino: Ana’s protector “sibling” (deceased—killed by Nikola)

  Adran Horvat: (deceased—killed by hunter)

  Analise: Arrick’s lover (deceased—killed by hunter)

  Arrick Drexel: former lover of Analise; not Progeny

  SCIONS OF THE DISPOSSESSED (LIVING)

  The Historian: leader of the Scions (identity unknown)

  Luka Novak: Audra’s former hunter, now husband, turned Scion traitor

  Eva Novak: Luka’s mother

  Lazlo Becskei: Hungarian Curia president

  Giada Borghi: Italian senator

  Serge Deniel: French billionaire

  Gerald Schelert: German banker

  SCIONS OF THE DISPOSSESSED (DECEASED)

  Cristian Alexandrescu: (a past Historian)

  Attila Bertalan: (a past Historian)

  Otto Errickson: (a past Historian)

  Gregor: hunter killed days ago by heretic monk/Scion Rolan Vasilescu

  Franz Nowak: ancestor of Luka Novak

  Tolvaj: one of the original twelve families

  Me’sza’ros: one of the original twelve families

  Samsa: one of the original twelve families

  FRANCISCANS

  Brother Goran: Nikola masquerading as a monk on Cres Island

  Brother Daniel: curator of Progeny/Scion history at Kosljun Monastery, Krk Island

  Rolan Vasilescu: member of heretic sect turned Scion

  ABOUT ELIZABETH BATHORY

  Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed (1560–1614) is the most notorious female serial killer of all time. The exact number of her victims is unknown, though one witness testified at trial to a total of 650, as detailed in the countess’s private diary.

  Her accomplices were burned at the stake, but Bathory herself was spared execution. Instead, she was walled up in a set of rooms in Cachtice Castle (in present-day Slovakia), where she remained for four years until her death in 1614.

  Known to be exceptionally educated, wealthier than the crown, and a doting mother to her children, the private life and sins of Elizabeth Bathory remain a mystery. History calls her a monster. Others, a victim of conspiracy and greed.

  Legend knows her as the Blood Countess.

  * * *

  BEFORE

  * * *

  Six weeks ago, I woke up in a cabin in the north woods of Maine with no memory of the last two years or any pertinent details of my life before. My real identity, for one, along with the names and faces of anyone I ever loved—all erased by an elective procedure I chose to undergo in a bid to protect a powerful secret.

  Because when you’re me, knowledge is dangerous. And my memory is deadly.

  It took them one month to find me.

  My name is Audra Ellison and I am twenty-one years old. I’ve spent the last two weeks on the run, chased across Eastern Europe, hiding in her underground. Piecing together the past I erased. Not knowing whom to trust.

  I am a direct descendant of the “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Bathory, the most prolific female serial killer of all time, and I am being hunted by an ancient organization called the Scions of the Dispossessed, who have sworn to destroy her progeny. For four hundred years they have systematically murdered our kind in revenge for Bathory’s purported atrocities against their peasant ancestors. They are peasants no more; today their secret society backs some of the most powerful offices in Europe, with influence throughout the world.

  But the Progeny—also called the Utod—are not without resources. We are gifted with a legacy passed through the female line. We can persuade others without words. We can appear to possess the characteristics that anyone looking at us wants to see. We have unnaturally strong charisma. We stand out in a crowd. Which is great if you want to be a rock star . . .

  But terrible when you’re trying to hide.

  We can sense others like us. We thrive on adrenaline and have to burn it often—not a problem when you’re running for your life. Most of us don’t live to be thirty, the age at which our gifts begin to fade, making it all too easy for a hunter to take us down.

  Hunters—the assassins of the Scions’ lower ranks, each assigned a single Progeny mark—have their own unique powers. They can strip a Progeny’s memory the moment the Progeny dies, making everything we know—our hiding places, our allegiances, and the identities of others like us—as vulnerable as an open vault.

  Now anyone I discover from my past is in danger if I die. But everything I erased is what I need to stay alive.
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  Twelve days ago I fled to Croatia with the help of Luka, my former hunter turned lover. The Progeny underground has pockets called “courts” throughout the world, but nowhere as deep as within the borders of Bathory’s former influence: the ancient Hungarian Empire. There, I reconnected with Ivan, Claudia, and her “sibling” protector, Piotrek—all Progeny, like me. Friends I once knew, strangers to me now. They don’t know what Luka was, or that for helping me fake my death, he’s now as hunted as I. To them, he’s merely common, not one of us.

  Hours after we met, Ivan turned up dead. Three more murders—monks, who helped protect our secrets—followed in his wake.

  We went into hiding in Zagreb’s underground, where Progeny rave until dawn, exorcising adrenaline in masked anonymity and safety. There, under the auspices of the Zagreb prince, Tibor, I met new friends Nino and Ana and found sanctuary with others like me: Progeny determined to pursue vibrant life on the edge of death.

  Until the night Nikola, the high Budapest prince, arrived in Zagreb. In a private meeting, the traitorous “sibling” once sworn to protect my celebrated mother threatened the lives of Luka and the others unless I agreed to retrieve the thing he believed my mother and I both went to such lengths to conceal: Elizabeth Bathory’s diary. A document Scions believe contains the account of her atrocities and justification for their existence . . . and Progeny believe to be the record of her innocence, which will end the murder of our kind. An item so revered that either side will kill for it.

  That night, Nino was captured. Now I’m wanted for his murder. Ana disappeared a day later.

  We escaped with the others to Vienna, where, with the help of a Progeny hacker named Jester, I located an anonymous safety deposit box—a fail-safe from my former life in case all of this went sideways. In it: my journal, an incomplete chart of the Scions’ genealogy and rise to power, my baby picture, a letter from my mother, a strange set of her notes . . .

  And a wedding ring.

  Mine. Given to me by Luka.

  Separated from the others, Luka and I fled to Bratislava, where he was captured by the Scions of the Dispossessed. Their leader—a figure known only as the Historian, whom I now know to be in league with Nikola—has given me five days to find the diary as ransom for his life.

  In the custody of Rolan, a heretical monk whose sect infiltrated Scion ranks generations ago, I have learned what I am: a descendant of Elizabeth Bathory’s firstborn daughter, Anastasia. A line of Progeny hunted nearly to extinction that those like Rolan have pledged their lives to find and defend.

  With only my deceased mother’s cryptic notes to go by, my search has brought me to a monastery on the island-within-an-island of Punat in Croatia, where I’ve found no diary, but a cache of information damning to the Scions . . . and something far more devastating:

  The thing I would have died to protect. A secret so powerful I hid it even from myself.

  I thought I erased my memory to save my friends. I thought I did it to save Luka.

  I was wrong.

  I did it all for her.

  1

  * * *

  There are moments that both shatter and restore your existence at once. That hollow you out as your entire life up to that instant—and your entire life from that instant on—collide inside you and leave you gasping for air.

  Standing in the monastery’s sunny courtyard, I watch the nun come toward me. I’m startled to recognize her. Clare. My caretaker after my memory procedure as I recovered in the north woods of Maine. I have never seen her in a habit. I didn’t know she was a nun.

  But it’s the baby in her arms that has tilted the axis of my entire world.

  Stormy eyes. Luka’s eyes. I would know them anywhere.

  And I know this is my child.

  Mine, and Luka’s.

  Several facts click suddenly into place, like teeth through a zipper:

  The ancient Glagolitic numbers tattooed in ultraviolet ink along my spine: 924615.

  September 24. The date on our wedding certificate.

  June 15, nearly nine months after that.

  The way Luka paled the night we deciphered those symbols, which I used to retrieve my safety deposit box in Vienna.

  “Audra,” Clare says. It’s the first time she’s ever called me by my real name. “This is Eva. Your daughter.”

  I am shaking.

  She hands the baby to me. I take her gingerly, stare at that little face—the tiny nose, the wisps of her lashes. She’s beautiful.

  “You gave her up to a foundling box at a hospital in Rome. One monitored by our order for the infants of Progeny who dare not keep their babies or even know their whereabouts in case their memories are harvested and the children discovered.”

  She has an accent. Croatian. She must have concealed it from me in Maine.

  “A foundling box?” I ask, throat dry as the three other kids she’s tending chase one another, laughing, into the colonnade.

  “Yes. A small hatch on the side of a hospital for unwanted infants or babies a mother cannot raise. The Utod have left us their children for centuries, knowing they will be fostered in anonymity, undetected even by other Progeny, who cannot sense them until they come of age.”

  But she’s wrong. The wave of hyperawareness I’ve felt on meeting other Progeny is nothing to the insistent pull of Eva’s small figure. She has a gravity like the sun.

  I hold the baby close and it’s like I’m taking a missing piece of myself back—the single key to everything that makes sense out of the whole. The lengths I went to hide her. The fail-safes I left myself.

  My willingness to die.

  I hold her close and inhale the scent of her downy head. My mind may not remember her, but at the mere smell of her, my heart races.

  I take in her chubby cheeks, the curve of her tiny mouth, opened in a toothless smile. She blurs through my tears and I don’t know what I’m crying for more—the fact that I don’t recall the little face staring up at me, or the fact that I’m holding a piece of Luka, too. Maybe the only piece I will ever hold again.

  Does he know? I wonder.

  Someone else has come into the courtyard to stand beside me. Brother Daniel. The monk who received me and spent hours this morning laying out the contents of a subterranean archive chronicling the four-hundred-year rise of the Scions into a massive, unstoppable cabal. The guardian of their true history.

  “And now you see,” he says quietly.

  “What have you done?” I whisper.

  I came here in a blind bid to save Luka’s life in exchange for the Bathory diary. But now . . . how can I possibly put myself in the way of any hunter, let alone go up against the Historian herself with the full knowledge of Eva’s existence firmly rooted in my mind?

  “Why would you bring her here?” I say. “Show her to me? Knowing what’s at stake—the danger you’ve just put her in? Everything I did. Everything I erased! You’ve just undone it all!”

  Eva starts to cry and Clare reaches for her.

  “No!” I back away from them both, desperately clasping my daughter against me. But even as I turn away, I know there’s nowhere I can go. I can’t take her with me. I can’t protect her.

  “I knew when you realized the full reach and influence of the Scions, that you would see it as hopeless,” Father Daniel says. “A fight that cannot be won.”

  “It is a fight that cannot be won!”

  “It must be won! For your sake. For hers. What do you think the Historian would do to her—or worse, with her? The child of a hunter and one of the last—possibly the last—remaining Progeny of Bathory’s firstborn daughter? She will be nothing but a weapon to them! Nor will she find sanctuary at any underground court if your kind find out what she is. She will be ruled an abomination.”

  “Don’t you dare call my daughter an abomination,” I say dangerously, as I bounce Eva in my arms, trying to quiet her.

  “Now you know what is at stake. What must be done. Abolish both sides of this wa
r, Audra. Or your daughter will never be safe, consigned to living always in hiding—in isolation. Without a people of her own to help or shelter her. Would you have her walled up? Living on an island as Ivan did? You’ve seen what the Scions are willing to do to our brothers! We can no longer protect you as we have. And you will likely not live to protect her, either.”

  That last statement sucks the air from my lungs. Not the prospect of death; that shadow has been hanging over my head since birth, bleaker by the day. No, it’s the thought of not being there to protect her, teach her who she is, how to survive. Of leaving her scrambling for the scant written words of a dead mother somewhere in the path of the freight train called the Scions.

  “And now you’ve exposed her!” I say angrily.

  He reaches toward Eva. “We will take her away, and even you will not know where she has gone—”

  “The hell you will!” I clutch her tighter.

  “Audra,” Clare says. “If you are captured or killed, they will never find her location. They cannot take a memory of what you, yourself, do not know. And on the day that this is ended . . . she will return to you. I swear it.”

  And then, I get it.

  They never intended to give her back to me.

  They only intended to trigger me. She is the reason I never accessed the cache of information in the vault below, but saved it for the inevitable day I would need it to protect her.

  Though the rational side of my brain knows taking her with me now would be tantamount to killing her, I feel brutally betrayed—by myself, most of all. Standing here with Eva in my arms . . . how am I supposed to let her go again?

  “Please. Just . . . let me have a little time with her.”

  I could make him let me keep her. Could persuade him to give me another hour with her, which would still never be enough.

  But even as I think this I know that time is running out. I glance up toward the sun, slanted far enough west to hide behind the roof of the courtyard. Luka had two days left to live when we arrived on this island, and the day is dwindling fast.