Chapter 4 #2
Solicitously laid upon the wide, flower-patterned bed, his nymph was a vision indeed.
One small hand lay loosely, palm-up, gently cupped; the other rested against her breast, fingertips touching her heartbeat.
Her braid had unraveled, a skein of blue-black silk tangling deliciously across pillow-hills of patterned fabric.
Breathing scarcely audible even to freshly sharpened sanguinant ears, pulse slow and regular, her restlessness was neither physical nor visible.
Yet the quietus swelled as she sought to wake, perhaps with terror still echoing in her fragile, beautiful bones.
Her throat was enticingly bare, and his mouth was full of sweet numbing anticipation. He could sink his fangs in, loaded with change agents to trigger the initial stages of the Gift. It was best to do so swiftly, yet the soldier hesitated.
He stood at the bedside, head cocked, watching.
Dullard. The sharp slap of corrective harshness, necessary for training. Yet this was not combat—or was it? Will you let the prize slip through your fingers? Take her now.
She was utterly defenseless. Even with the Gift she could not hope to hold off one such as himself, old and strong, but he did not move. Something was… not right.
The instinct was one he had felt a handful of times over the centuries, and it halted him surely as a brazen trumpet calling vespers.
The texture of his clothing was unbearable, every inch of him newly sensitive and the mating-thrall dark wine in his veins, pushing and prodding.
He was desperate for relief, to sink his teeth into that soft, enticing pulse, to rip the irritating fabric from both of them and bury himself in what had to be glorious relief.
And yet.
What is known? Start there. Her group had been hunting his own personal quarry—not entirely surprising since Esgard the Varangian had become extremely sloppy, enough to attract the attention of mortal authorities.
Father had decided it was time to expand the borders of his own rule in this direction, and the soldier had been dispatched to once again do his duty.
The stacks of paper upon their flimsy table, and the name attached to the picture—Nemesis, a title the entire demimonde knew to fear, bestowed upon the soldier by the patriarch himself. Now mortals had heard whispers of it as well.
Is that who I am? What he had become, with the stone-layers of years rising, thimbleful by thimbleful, to drown him?
It had been so very long since he thought of himself as having a name at all.
No need for such things when his existence was so blessedly simple, move and countermove dictated by laws of warfare—endless variations, but only a few simple themes at their core.
Strategy and tactic both could be used to stay alert, either in complexity to stave off the temptation of glut and bood-craze—the bane of fledglings—or in direct brutal sensation to batter away the languorous killing-sleep which took so many elders.
He had survived so long, reaching elder status and a certain fame. Yet he remembered little of a few past centuries save the violence, the constant work of ensuring Father’s safety, the games a patriarch liked to play.
Lamps burned upon the bedside tables, smokeless captive lightning casting loving gold over the curve of her cheek, the blue tones shimmering in her hair, the soles of her heavy boots—of fine quality, her footwear, though far too heavy for such slim, dancing feet.
Think about it, the new, nearly uncomfortable clarity of thought whispered. Who are you, really? Do you know anymore?
A name was superfluous. Yet was not Nemesis a title? The soldier’s eyes half-closed; he stared at a rosy, slumber-chained nymph and wondered what she would call him.
Even that uncertainty was wonderful, sending faint shivers down his back, tingling in his fingertips, the padded hammer of her pulse strike-spreading through every inch of him in warm, overlapping waves. He had been numb for so long any emotion at all was a dangerous blessing.
Now, he possessed a divine cornucopia.
Dawn was nigh. He did not need a fledgling’s daylight rest, especially with a near-glut filling his veins, but the sunlight was an enemy to be dealt most carefully with.
Just as her fear and fragility, for a leman could be broken or injured beyond repair if their sanguinant were not cautious—or ruthless—enough.
Even shattered or feral, she was too precious to lose. Still, only a fool wasted a god’s gift.
Father could be the most dangerous enemy of all, if he did not assume Nemesis dead of age or failed attack.
Worst would be if the patriarch realized what the soldier had found and taken, for Antinous held back his own calcification by simple dint of acquisition—territory, treasure, fledgling toys to break and consume, mortal power and influence, all sought bit by bit to add to his stores, to provide a moment’s diversion.
It had never occurred to the soldier that there might be something worth the trouble of disobedience. A murmur, a slight movement as the nymph upon the bed fought to awaken, and trembling, absolute certainty took the place of his former loyalty.
Best spoils belonged to the emperor, of course, and the general took first pick of what remained.
But even the lowliest of an army’s humming hive knew how to hide his own share, whether scraped from the hovels of a burning city or reflexively hidden by a sanguinant who dimly understood one day he, too, would be expendable to his master.
His fangs were out, upper and lower all painfully sensitive. He had to force them away, invoking a control which grew slimmer with every passing moment.
Committed, now. There was no possibility of retreat. In its own way, the lack of choice was a comfort.
Softly, increment by increment, the soldier released the quietus, and waited to see how his prize would wake.