were afraid. Terrified.
She sat up in bed, laying both hands on her slightly rounded abdomen.
She could feel the taut walls of her growing uterus, a little larger
than a grapefruit but clenched hard on itself. Gently, soothingly, she
rubbed the tight muscles, trying to communicate comfort through her
touch. The babies moved as she eased her fingers over her belly. She
could feel the movement inside her, but not against her palms. The
babies were still too small to disturb the surface of her skin with their
kicking and swimming.
“Shh,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Shh. It’ll be
all right. It’ll be all right.”
Next to her, Julian sat up. She jumped a little—she’d been so
absorbed in the babies that she hadn’t even noticed he was there.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“They’re afraid,” she whispered.
He frowned and reached toward her, laying his big hand over her
belly, next to hers. “Afraid of what?”
“I don’t know. Him, I think.” She looked earnestly at Julian, suddenly
afraid, herself. His frown hadn’t budged. “Is he closer? Can you
tell? Are we running out of time?” Suddenly she could think of nothing
but her tiny children, helpless there, inside her, and of the threat Ialdaboth
posed to them. To everyone.
His fingers tightened a little on her, strong, comforting. His words,
though, were anything but. “Of course we’re running out of time. We’ve
been running out of time since the day you let me drink you.”
“If I hadn’t, we’d all be dead by now.”
His lips twitched a little. “Don’t confuse me with the facts.” Leaning
forward, he kissed her softly. She let his lips play against hers, let
the taste and feel of him comfort her. Then he drew back, lay his face
against her belly, and began to sing.
She smiled at the soft sound of his slightly off-key crooning. The
music vibrated through her nightgown, against her skin, and the babies
began to ease under its effects. Their movements slowed, becoming
lazy and, finally, stopping. They were asleep. She knew it in the same
way she had known they were afraid. Just a sense, clear but strange,
disconnected in a way from her own emotions and senses. Their fear
had dissolved, eased away by the sound of their father’s voice.
“The babies can feel him,” Julian told Lucien in the morning, when
Lucien showed up at his door, as usual, just after sunrise. “So can I.
We’re running out of time.”
Lucien snorted. “Tell me something I didn’t already know.”
“You didn’t know the babies could feel him.”
“True,” Lucien conceded with a shrug. “Anyway, I know we’re
running out of time. We need a solution before Ialdaboth comes blasting
up through the floor or falls through the ceiling onto our heads or
whatever crazy stunt he’s likely to pull next.”
“Do you know if Aanu has remembered anything?”
“Not sure.” He stood and stretched, his spine popping rather alarmingly.
“I talked to him again last night, and he’s still having some re
trieval problems. Anyway, I sent William to spend some time with him,
just for a change of pace.”
“William?”
“Turns out William knows that Sumerian dialect. Not sure how he
learned it, but he knows it about as well as I do. Certainly better than
you.”
Chagrined, Julian said, “It’s not exactly easy sifting for vocabulary
through what effectively amounts to someone else’s brain.”
Lucien sobered. “You need to make it your brain. We’re not going
to solve this thing if you don’t.”
“I know.”
“And I know why you don’t want to. Get over it.”
Julian looked up sharply. “I don’t think you have any idea.”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you want to give me credit for.
And unless you want everybody here to die, you’re going to have to get
over your little personal problem and start using the Senior’s memo-
ries—all of them.”
“What if—” Julian started, then broke off, afraid to say the words.
“What if what?” Lucien’s voice had gentled, almost as if he knew
the words without them being spoken. Maybe he did. Lucien was that
Julian swallowed hard, and said it. “What if I get lost in there?
What if I can’t get back?”
Lucien laid a hand on his shoulder. “You will,” he said. “You have
to.”
“Do you really think it’s that dangerous?” Lorelei asked him later.
They sat in bed together, Lorelei in soft, satin pajamas the color of
a ripe peach. Unable to resist the urge, Julian reached out to cup his
palm over the soft curve of her belly. She’d told him she could feel the
babies moving, but he felt only her warmth, the tautness of her skin.
She laid a hand over his and went on. “Or are you just afraid?”
Startled, he looked up to meet her gaze. Her eyes were wide
open and ready for him to tell her the absolute truth. And they had a
look in them that made him think she already knew it.
“Both,” he finally said, “but maybe more of the latter.”
She nodded, her fingers tightening over his hand. “I thought that
might be the case. What are you afraid of?”
“If I go deeply enough into those memories to find what we need,
what’s to guarantee I’ll be able to come back?”
“Me.”
She sounded so certain, so resolute, that he could almost believe
she knew more about it, somehow, than he did. She shifted a little
closer to him, her mouth curving just a little at the corners. Her clear
blue eyes, as always, entranced him, but lately they’d held more than
simply her love for him. There was something else there—mystery,
more than even the usual mysteries of a woman.
“You could never leave me.” Her voice was little more than a
whisper, but it thrummed with power. “And if something did happen, if
you were lost there, even for a moment, I could bring you home.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. Whatever you did to me when you drank me, it bonded
us. There’s power, but it’s only protective power. I can protect myself,
the babies. And you.”
Hadn’t he had the same thought just the other day? All the more
reason to believe her.
She leaned toward him, until he could taste her breath on his lips.
“You can’t get away from me that easily.”
Her kiss held a smile, and he returned it as his mouth moved
against hers. He savored her mouth for a long moment, a hand sliding
up her back, the other unable to resist the temptation to cup her breast.
Her nipple sprang taut into his palm. The contours of her breasts had
changed already, filling out a bit, and she’d told him to be careful touching
them, because sometimes they hurt. But she was leaning into him
now, pressing harder into his palm.
He wanted her. But he only kissed her, caressed her. They’d
agreed reluctantly that it might be best to abstain during her pregnancy,
because it was so odd and impossible and neither of them wanted to
risk losing the babies. It was hard to resist her, but he had gone decades
at a time without sex. He was certain he could go a few more
months.
At least, he’d been certain when they’d made the decision. Now
he wasn’t so sure.
After a time, she withdrew, with a small sound of regret. “It would
probably be okay,” she whispered.
“But what if it wasn’t?” That scared him, too. And it was one
thing he could control in the midst of the out-of-control spiral that had
become his life. He could keep his hands off Lorelei, keep himself
from endangering their children.
She smiled a little, and he knew she understood. Her hands moved
gently down his arms, until her fingers tangled with his. “Go where you
need to go. I’ll be sure you come back. I promise.”
He kissed her softly. “Thank you.” Then he settled onto the bed.
She stretched out next to him, curled her small, peach-colored self
against him, and he put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her in a
little closer, until he could feel her heartbeat.
“Go,” she whispered, and he closed his eyes.
Worried, Lorelei watched as Julian drifted off. He seemed to be
asleep, but she could tell he wasn’t. His alertness made a kind of echo
in her own head, so she always knew when he was awake and when
he had entered the slower, meditative state that, for him, passed for
sleep.
It concerned her that he was afraid to look into his own mind. He
so rarely seemed truly discomfited, and that he would be afraid of
something as simple as another man’s memories was, to her, disturbing.
She understood, though, or began to, as he let himself sink into
himself and she followed him into the subconscious that had been blended
with his own by his taking of the Senior’s blood. She could feel the
rhythms of his mind actually change, until he felt like a different person.
No wonder it frightened him. It scared her, too. Scared her that
her lover, her mate, seemed to be disappearing. Suddenly she wondered
if she’d been too confident in herself. How could she bring him
back if she couldn’t feel or see or even recognize him?
The memories were there, clear and accessible but hidden behind
the long stretch of memory Julian called his own. He’d dipped only into
the more recent of those other memories. To get what he needed, he
had to go back hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. And to do that, he
had to let go of his own memories, his own sense of self.
To do it without the intense pain, he had to do it willingly.
But . . . how?
Even with the reassurance of Lorelei’s presence lurking on the
edges of his awareness, he didn’t know how to let go that completely.
And if he did—if he even could—how was he supposed to know how
to come back? He had no road map. It would be so easy to get lost.
He could sense Lorelei, though, on the other side, a beacon to
guide him home, when it came time to return. The lifeline gave him
courage.
So he let himself sink deeper than he’d ever sunk before, past the
edges of memory beyond which he previously hadn’t tried to venture.
Twenty-five . . . fifty . . . a hundred years of another man’s life
It was like wading through an underwater jungle, with tendrils
hanging down from above, touching him from time to time. A quick
current of memory occasionally trembling over his skin. Darkness
amongst the threads of light. Odd muffled sounds in the distance, the
voices of other, more distant memories.
It was so hard not to be afraid.
Lorelei.
I’m here.
He clung to her, a mental sensation that felt as if he were holding
her hand, and headed for that dark place where he had no desire to go.
He found William there, as he knew he would. He’d been avoiding
it since he’d first sensed the Senior’s relationship with William in
the sea of inherited memories. It was too intimate, too painful, and too
alien to anything he had ever experienced. But it stood like an insurmountable
reef between him and his destination. And somehow, he had
to get past it, past William, back to Ruha.
Go on. I’m with you. Lorelei’s voice was distant, a faint, wispy
sound.
I can’t.
He lurched toward the surface, abandoning the quest in what he
knew full well was an attack of cowardice. He just couldn’t do it. Not
now.
He opened his eyes and looked at Lorelei, who regarded him with
some sympathy but more disappointment.
“You have to,” she said.
Julian sighed. “I know.”
Sitting on the bed next to Julian, Lorelei drew her knees up under
her chin and watched him sleep. That he had fallen asleep worried
her—he almost never really slept—but it didn’t worry her as much as
his reluctance to find his way through the Senior’s memories. He kept
delaying it, when he knew there simply was no time for delay.
Somebody needed to talk some sense into him, somebody who
understood better than she what he was facing.
She reached over and touched him lightly, the tips of her fingers in
his hair, barely touching his scalp. Then she rolled carefully out of the
bed and went into the front room of their living quarters.
She needed to talk to Lucien. Of course, she had no idea where
he was—he was one of the most elusive people she’d ever met—but if
she thought about him hard enough he usually showed up. So she took
a seat on the soft couch, closed her eyes, and thought about him.
She had almost drifted to sleep when a knock fell on the door.
Jerking awake, she got up and went to let Lucien in.
“You rang?” he said, smiling a little.
“You could say that,” she answered. Glancing over her shoulder
toward the bedroom, she stepped into the hallway, closing the door
behind her. “Let’s talk somewhere else.”
He nodded and headed down the hallway. “How are you feeling?”
he asked.
“I’m okay. For the most part. But Julian’s a mess, and you need to
do something about it.”
“Cutting to the chase, are we?” He stopped walking. “Should we
just talk here, or do you want to sit somewhere?”
Lorelei’s teeth clenched involuntarily, responding to what felt, at
first, like mocking from Lucien. But it wasn’t, she realized, looking at
his face more closely. He was concerned. He wanted to be sure she
was comfortable.
“Let’s sit.” She tried to keep the fear out of her voice, but it was
hard. Damned hormones, anyway.
He held out his hand. She took it, he squeezed her fingers lightly,
and they were in his office. “Have a seat,” he said, and she did.
He leaned against the desk. “So what’s up?”
“We need what’s in Julian’s head, and he won’t go get it. You
need to talk to him.”
Lucien grimaced. “It’s a lot of memories. A lot of time to wade
through.”
“It’s not
just that.”
“I know.” He pushed away from the desk. “I’ll talk to him.” Then,
to Lorelei’s surprise, he took a step toward her and laid his hand over
the curve of her belly. “How are you really?”
She held still, fighting the urge to flinch away from his touch. His
long fingers were warm against her. “Scared.”
His hand shifted, his fingers tightening a little. “I can feel them.”
Her gaze jerked to his face to see a soft smile curving his lips.
“Can you?”
“Hmm. They’re . . . so small. Sweet. Lovely.”
Lorelei swallowed tears, not certain where they had come from.
“They’re not. . . ?”
“They’re not human, if that’s what you’re about to ask. Not quite,
and frankly that’s not unexpected. But they’re not dangerous. Not evil.”
His hand slid away. “It’ll be all right.”
“No, it won’t. Not if you can’t get Julian to do what he has to do.”
Lucien sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good. Then that’s one less thing I have to worry about.”
“Just worry about the babies. They need you.”
Again with the damned tears. Lorelei forced a watery smile.
“Thank you.”
Three
Across the ocean, under the ground, the power grew. Black and
strange, crawling, filling all the space it had, then breaking through a
dark carapace to grow again.
Had you taken your rightful path, you would have this power,
too.
The path of darkness, of death. Julian could feel the thick blackness
that was Ialdaboth’s mind. He fed from death. Created it so he
could devour it. Hatred and anger like honey in his mouth, bringing him
the strength he needed to exist, to grow, to dominate and become.
Become what?
You wish you could know. But you have no ability to know,
because you have sought life.
But Julian knew there was strength in life. He had felt the power
growing within him, though, as yet, he only knew it existed, not what he
could do with it or what it made of him.
Death feeds us. We kill to live. We are demons, and we should
never try to be anything else. It is not what we are meant to be.
But we feed from life, he thought. Life’s blood, flowing dark and
red, full of the pulses of living. Ialdaboth had chosen the wrong metaphor.