Cassius
Greece 79 AD
I FOLLOWED HER SCENT. I would stop her at all costs if things got out of hand. She’d promised.
She’d lied.
Again.
I wanted to turn a blind eye, mainly because whenever Eva was near, the world didn’t feel as dark or desperate.
The way she laughed and smiled through her immortal life was a thing of beauty, and I hated being the one responsible for dampening that light.
“Shh, I’ll return one day.” She whispered to the little child. His face was wet with tears. “Just be good for your mama, alright?”
He wrapped his tiny arms around her neck then kissed her cheek. “I love you.”
The air filled with sadness, drenched with such a hollow emptiness that I sucked in a breath.
Vampires weren’t supposed to be so emotional.
Leave it to a child to bring out the worst of human weaknesses in all of us. God forbid I ever felt such weakness.
“I love you too, John.”
Eva set the boy on his feet. He reached up and captured one of her dark curls between his fingers dropped it, and then turned on his heel and walked off.
“He’s precious,” she said aloud, already sensing my presence. “It was his birthday, I couldn’t allow him to think I didn’t care anymore.”
I crossed my arms. “Eva, there will always be something. A birthday, a holiday… You must leave him for good.”
“I want children.” Eva hung her head as I approached her from behind. “I’ve always wanted children.”
I could taste her desperation in the air as tension swirled between us. I’d known for a while Eva felt strongly for me, the way I felt for her.
But a union between a Dark One and a Vampire would do nothing but present us with hurt feelings when a bond failed to take place. We could not mate with one another.
And children were an impossibility.
“I can’t give you that,” I whispered, setting my hand on her shoulders. She gripped my fingertips. I shuddered from her warm touch.
Eva turned, her eyes green and beautiful as they gazed up into my cold depths. “We could adopt.”
I smiled at that. “Humans adopt. And you and I… will never be.”
“Immortality.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. I never allowed such liberties. “Not for the faint of heart, hmm Cassius?”
“No.” The temptation to kiss her was too strong to deny any longer, my mouth descended, fusing with hers, creating a hum of energy between us as her blood heated out of control, my touch cooled her as fangs descended past her top lips.
Our tongues twisted in a fight for dominance as I lifted her into my arms. The last thing we needed was to be seen in a forbidden embrace, not only was she a council member, but she was a Vampire, not mine.
She would end up with a snotty-nosed human.
One who would get her pregnant.
One who would love her like I never could.
Slowly, I pulled away from her, my hands pressing against her wrists as I lowered her arms to her sides.
“One day…” Her voice was filled with sadness. “…I’ll be mated to someone and you’ll forget all about me.”
“I highly doubt I’ll ever forget your taste, Eva.”
The air charged with a thick flowery scent. Eva’s eyes widened just as a voice said from behind me. “What have you done?”
Slowly, I turned.
Sariel’s eyes were white, his hair a blazing rainbow of blue and black streaks. His feathers protruded then shuddered as if they tasted the wrongness in the air. “Survivors?”
He shoved past me and Eva and pressed his fingertips against the door of the house.
“Two survivors. How many more? And why aren’t they destroyed?”
I couldn’t lie.
It wasn’t in my makeup as a Dark One to want to lie to my creator—to my father.
“I saved them,” I admitted while I grabbed Eva and shoved her behind me. “I saved twelve.”
“Twelve!” Sariel roared as the ground shook beneath our feet. “You were to destroy them all! Every. Last. One.”
“I did not.”
Sariel’s wings turned purple, the color of angelic royalty. He was about to pass judgment. “Then, you will die. Blood must always be spilled, you know this.”
I nodded, unable to conjure up any guilt over doing something that gave Eva happiness no matter how temporary.
I took a step forward.
“No!” Eva shouted. “It was me!”
“Eva!” I hissed out her name and shoved her body into the nearest wall, she stumbled back and glared. “Stay out of this.”
“You will not DIE because of me!” Her eyes glowed green as her fangs elongated past her bottom lip. Her gaze snapped to Sariel. “If you want a life. Take mine. I asked Cassius to save them. It is I who is at fault.”
“Very well.” Sariel nodded.
“You cannot be serious!” I charged Sariel fists clenched. “She’s a council member! She’s been around for centuries! You cannot simply eliminate her for one bad choice!”
“Oh?” Sariel’s head tilted to the side as he pulled a purple feather from his wings and held it out in front of him, the edge was black. The color of the Angel of Death. He meant to truly kill her, to make her no more. “We live by the rules, we die by the rules, Cassius. She broke the rules. She dies.”
“But—”
Head held high, Eva pushed past me and got down on her knees, her head bowed toward Sariel.
“Sariel, think about this.” I knew reasoning with him would do nothing, but I couldn’t stop myself, this was Eva, my Eva. I’d had her by my side since I was created. She was the reason the darkness wasn’t so dark—the reason I was always pulled back into the light. Without her, what was I?
“And there it is…” Sariel nodded. “She makes you weak. She makes you second guess your decisions. Not that it matters, one of you must die for this serious lapse in judgment, and Eva is right. The fault lies with her, and I need you to lead the immortals. Therefore…” He held out the feather to me. “Life is taken.”
“Cassius.” Eva whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I love you.”
Sariel sucked in a breath.
Now he knew.
I’d failed him twice.
Because I loved her back.
“Eva, I will always love you,” I whispered, taking the feather from Sariel and holding it over her head.
Sariel’s anger was tangible. “Cassius, you are their king. She pays for your sin… kill her.”
“I can’t.” My body was empty so empty.
Eva locked eyes with me. “Cassius, promise me you’ll check in on John, promise!”
At death’s grasp and still she was worried for the boy.
I didn’t understand that type of love—so maybe I’d never really loved her after all. Had I?
“I promise.” My voice shook as I pressed the tip of the feather to the base of her neck. It slid in through her skin, she slumped against my arms as immortality left her body.
Right before my very eyes, my dear friend, my love, aged. She aged so horribly, her tight skin became wrinkled and paper-thin. It lost all the glow of youth, her hair turned ten different shades of gray before finally falling out of her head, the bones in her body were brittle, the muscle detached from the correct positions, and as she took her last breath, I saw what it would be like to be human, to love a human and watch them die.
The pain was unimaginable.
Her frail hand reached up and caressed my face with the lightest of touches. “Cassius… you will always be more light than dark.”
She died.
In my arms.
“For her sacrifice,” Sariel whispered. “The twelve children will live.”
I didn’t see Sariel again for five hundred years.