24
SERENA
I’d never been one for museums… at least not until I met Alex.
Alex had shown me the intrinsic beauty of history. He’d taken me places and shown me things I wouldn’t normally have given half a shit about. But he cared about them, and that was enough for me. Enough for me to eventually appreciate some of the places we went, especially when we were assigned to Europe.
At one time, Europe had been magical for me. A place where the lore behind every piece of architecture could date back millennia instead of a mere handful of centuries. As a member of the Hallowed Order, I was often required to know about the past. But I’d never really immersed myself in it. Not until Alex.
For this reason I was a little choked up standing in the cour Napoléon, looking down at the Louvre. By night the pyramid of glass and crystal was especially beautiful, lit up by spotlights and a warm interior glow.
It was a place Alex had always wanted to take me. A place we just never got around to…
“C’mon, we need to hurry,” Broderick said, dragging me along. “They’re going to close soon.”
Once inside the museum my heart caught in my throat. The whole place was dazzlingly beautiful. Everywhere I looked I was impressed by the sheer scope of it all; the artistry, the sculptures, the decorations that flowed seamlessly from exhibit to exhibit.
The museum was mostly empty, and we were able to move through it with ease. Still clasping hands I followed them below ground, to where the oldest and more medieval portions still existed. We passed by marble statues, colorful tapestries. Frescoes, faded from years of sunlight and brought here to preserve them in the more dimly lit areas.
Finally we stopped. Broderick pointed, and before us was a small series of paintings, all of a similar subject.
Werewolves.
“This is our history,” he said almost proudly. “Not that full moon, silver bullet, crosses and holy water shit from Hollywood. The real thing.”
“I thought crosses and holy water were vampires?” I said distractedly.
“Whatever.”
I examined one of the pieces. In it, a witch-turned-werewolf was devouring villagers, tearing them to shreds with their teeth. It was brutal and savage.
“Seems unnecessarily violent,” I said.
Broderick nodded. “This is what people believed,” he said. “Most lore is grounded by kernels of truth, though. That doesn’t mean the books and artwork get everything right.”
Damien, who’d been silent until now, stepped forward. “Then again, there could’ve been packs like this,” he said. “Packs that took a different direction, like ours is about to.”
My eyes scanned left to right, moving from piece to piece. I saw a painting of humans with wolf-heads, standing in a circle, performing some kind of ceremony. Another of a blue wolf attacking a priest, while another sprang up from behind.
There were wolves that breathed fire. Wolves attacking children, then being hunted. Wolves trapped in wells, by men with spears.
“Karessa took you here, didn’t she?” I asked. “She’s the one who showed you this.”
Broderick nodded again. “She thought it good to know our origins,” he said. “Even in today’s and age.”
I supposed it made sense. I tried imagining what it would be like, if I’d been ‘made’ the way Broderick and Damien were. How much I’d want to know about what I was. How bitter I’d be about my own forced ancestry.
Karessa…
I found myself hating her for the connection she had with them. The connection I felt with them even now. I wondered how much of it was instinctual, given to me by the ‘call’ or the ‘pull’ or whatever it was they’d called it.
And how much of it was just plain old me.
You love them.
The admission was powerful. Strange. Wonderful. All at the same time.
The both of them…
It shouldn’t have been possible, and yet somehow it was. I tried chalking it up to circumstance. To the closeness of being hunted and fighting a common enemy. I tried even convincing myself it was because Broderick looked so damned much like Alex! Or that Damien reminded me of a more reckless, carefree time in my life.
Or that I was just plain lonely.
In the end though, I guess none of it really mattered. I was in love with them. I loved their honesty, their impetuousness. They way they’d protected me, each of them, from harm.
And of course I loved their hard, beautiful bodies. Their warmth. Their nakedness, pressed up against me…
A soft bell sounded, followed by a recorded announcement. The museum was closing.
“Come on,” I said, pushing between them. “Xiomara might not know it yet, but she was nice enough to spring for the Executive Suite.” I looped one arm through each of theirs. “And that bitch owes me a bubble bath…”