What do you get when you cross a nymph with a satyr-minotaur hybrid?
Some very tall, very strong, very handsome evil-looking motherfuckers.
Us. That’s what you get.
“Tarq.” I lean on him. “You’re not going to believe this fucking night. Grant is gone, some new woman is here. She looks pathetic. Any hope we had for a reunion seems…” I shake my head. “Well, very far away.”
He says nothing back, of course. So I wander over to his tomb, slide my back down a wide, weather-stained, Corinthian column, and stare up at his stone face.
It has been two thousand years since I’ve seen him in the flesh. And they have been long years. “You probably hate me by now, don’t you? I mean, I’m stuck in this place, just like you. But at least I can come and go from my tomb. You’re just… here. And if there was a way, brother, I’d fix that. I would get you out of there. I do not care that you carry the markings of Saturn on your flesh. We are blood.”
I would love to have my friend back. This life is so pointless without friends. And Tomas doesn’t count. He’s… not one of us. Not really. More of a lingering mistake than anything else.
Two thousand years. And none of the caretakers have been able to break our curse.
“It pains me to say this, friend. I have never given up hope, but losing Grant is a blow I do not think I can recover from. Grant was competent so I kept hoping that one day he would produce the words, and the potions, and the herbs to turn back time and get us out of this miserable existence.”
Was it stupid? That dream? That we could beat this if we just tried long enough? Worked hard enough? If we just kept going?
I don’t know. But I don’t like to depress Tarq. If he can hear me, then I want to lift his spirits, not crush them. So I continue with the update.
“He was making progress. He had that spell that would allow me to leave the sanctuary in the form of a man for a few hours at a time. And yes, I hated the fact that I had to be within an arm’s length of Grant to keep the glamour strong enough to disguise my true form, but it was better than nothing. Wasn’t it? I had a tiny taste of freedom. And maybe you’re not capable of being happy for me—hell, if I were you, I wouldn’t be happy for me—but I really thought that we’d get there, ya know? I really thought that we were just a decade or so away from the answer. From the cure. And Grant took all that progress with him.”
It’s coming out a little whiny. So I stop talking and try to work the rage back up.
I look back towards the cathedral and yep. There it is. My rage.
That girl.
That baby.
That good-for-nothing substitute.
I want to hunt Grant down and kill him for leaving me here to rot.
But then my mind wanders to the apothecary room with the hundreds upon hundreds of potions and herbs lining the floor to ceiling shelves. And the books. Grant kept notebooks. He was a meticulous record-keeper.
So maybe…
I get to my feet and start walking back towards the cathedral.
Maybe he wrote down his progress. He couldn’t take the books with him—they are magical. They are part of this curse. They belong to Saint Mark’s Sanctuary, not him.
Which means they now belong to the girl.
All of Grant’s progress now belongs to the girl.
There is no doubt she comes from Grant’s bloodline. That’s how she got in. That’s how he got out. So she has the magic inside her. And even if she has no idea it’s there, it can be coaxed out.
I’ve done it a few times before with ignorant slaves of the past. But it wasn’t very productive.
Still. I can only work with what I have.
I enter the cathedral, feeling like I’ve made more trips to this stupid building in the last hour of darkness than I have in the past decade, and once more climb the long staircase.
The apothecary door is slightly ajar—like I slammed it too hard and it didn’t quite close when I stormed off—so when I approach, I can hear talking inside.
“—but why?” the girl says.
“Because you can’t help him. No one can.”
What? I lean closer. The fake rage I had mustered up to stop my whining is becoming very real again.
I have never trusted Tomas but I never imagined he was working against me. And now that he has this new power—this new ability to touch my slave—he might need to be dealt with. He is not supposed to be able to touch them. He couldn’t touch Grant. He couldn’t touch any of them.