Dane (7 page)

“Fuck.” Bastian‟s clipped curse was a tangle of frustration and fury.

Dane‟s crazed behavior—convulsions, sleepwalking, incessant nightmares—after his abduction had worried his brothers to the extent that they‟d agreed to have him deported to ElseWorld for treatment when he was but thirteen.

“You couldn‟t have known,” said Dane. “And the doctors there did have some experience with my disorder.”

“Disorder?”

“Dissociation, they called it, caused by a psychological trauma.

Something happened to me that resulted in a fragmenting of my personality. It is as if I am divided into two distinct men. One that goes about life, another that fornicates.”

“This trauma—it was something that happened during the year of your disappearance?” hazarded Bastian.

“Yes, but the doctors never moved much beyond that initial diagnosis. Treatment was forestalled when Special Ops recruited me.

After that, it was easy to go without women. We‟re trained not to give in to our carnal natures.”

“Except during Moonful.”

Dane sent him a rueful half smile. “There‟s no avoiding the ritual then, for anyone. Every species of our world must heed it to some degree, and the Ops didn‟t want their entire army dead at dawn following Moonful. They brought us ample numbers of females, and I was told Dante enjoyed some fine orgies.”

The growing horror in Bastian‟s eyes told him he was just beginning to fathom how all this had shaped Dane‟s life.

Dane stiffened. He didn‟t want anyone‟s pity. Beyond uncomfortable by now, he‟d rarely been so grateful to anyone as he was to the woman who joined them just then from the depths of the temple.

Swathed in an overlarge dressing gown similar in design to Bastian‟s, she carried a neatly folded stack of what he assumed to be his brother‟s clothing. After she set them on the altar, she went to hug Bastian‟s waist.

Michaela. Dane found the name from somewhere, realizing he‟d met her once before. She was fey and a courtesan—an expensive one who dwelled in the surreptitious business establishment Sevin owned on Capitoline Hill.

Absently, Bastian roped an arm around her, stroking her side. He‟d always been a tactile sort, but a woman‟s curves and a nicely turned piece of pottery seemed to fascinate him equally. Michaela curled into his touch.

Dane angled his chin toward the discarded scroll. “What do you make of that?” he asked his brother.

Tacitly agreeing to the change in subject, Bastian flicked his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Nothing. We receive these lectures and missives with monotonous regularity. It‟s most likely the address of a Marital Broker.”

Dane laughed, then quickly sobered when he realized that his brother wasn‟t joking. “You can‟t be serious. A matchmaker?” He picked up the scroll, studying the address.

“I‟m quite serious. They proliferate up north in Tuscany these days, each vying to catch the bigger prize and cast them into matrimonial hell.

And now one has come here to Rome. Follow up on it if you feel the urge to find yourself a bride. I, however, don‟t.”

The woman in his arms stiffened at his words. It would have been an imperceptible tightening of muscles to most observers, but Dane had been trained to notice such things. The least little detail was often the very one that led a Tracker to make a capture.

Michaela was infatuated with his eldest brother. However, Bastian‟s affections had long been reserved for females carved from marble, limestone, and granite. Even twelve years ago, when Bastian was seventeen, flesh and blood women had found their way into his bed on occasion. But with his heart, they‟d stood little chance. It seemed nothing had changed in that regard.

“I‟ll go bathe and dress,” Michaela murmured, slipping away from him. “Find me when you‟re ready to depart.”Then, shooting a shy smile toward Dane, she scurried off down the path toward the house.

“She‟s breeding,” Dane announced into the silence that fell after her departure.

Bastian straightened. “How did—?”He expelled a breath.

“Sometimes I forget the sort of work you‟ve been doing in ElseWorld all these years.”

Dane eyed him. “Is it yours?”

Bastian shook his head. “She was raped a week before we met. She refuses to name the villain, but once I wring his name from her, he will meet with a swift and fatal accident. The child won‟t reach term.”

“Due to another accident?”Tucking the scroll in his pocket, Dane stood.

“I have no quarrel with the child, only its father,” Bastian assured him. “However, Michaela was stricken with the Sickness and is unable to bear children. She caught it when she came through the gate. The—“

The rest of what he‟d been about to say was interrupted by the sound of footsteps crashing toward them through the grove. It was Sevin, looking as if he‟d run the entire way back to them after seeing the nereids off.

“There‟s been another killing,” he announced. “We found a body down by the Tiber as the messengers were departing.”

4

Fear boiled in Dane, hot and caustic. “It‟s not—“

Sevin shook his head. “No. Gods, no. It‟s not Luc. It‟s a girl. Fey.

Come see what you make of it. Before she‟s found and her body disturbed.”

Bastian threw on his clothes, and within minutes the three brothers were at the foot of the hill, and Dane was standing over the twisted body of what looked to be an eighteen-year-old girl.

Set between Aventine Hill and the Tiber River, this was the Monte Testaccio area, built on pottery shards. The Vinarium—a market dedicated to the commerce of wine—had stood here in ancient times.

Traders had carried their vintages here in amphorae from faraway vineyards. Once these clay vessels were emptied, they had been tossed into the Tiber. Eventually, the broken shards had built up so high they‟d threatened to block the river itself. They‟d been fished out and tossed onshore here. Like this girl.

“She looks to have washed up here, likely having been dumped from farther upriver.”Dane kneeled down and pushed her damp shift aside, stoically inspecting her. In Special Ops, he‟d dealt with more than one bloated, lifeless body over the past twelve years.

“There are needle marks on her arms,” he noted. “And a red ring around each of her breasts.”

“What from?”asked Bastian.

“I don‟t—“As Dane bent to examine her more closely, a pungent odor struck him full in the face. Onions. His insides twisted and heaved.

Turning away, he staggered and fell along the shore, fighting the urge to retch.

“What is it? What‟s wrong?”Bastian demanded from behind him.

“Onions. Fuck, can‟t stand the smell of them.”

“I don‟t smell them,” said Sevin, his tone bewildered.

“Nor I,” said Bastian. “But don‟t forget—in ElseWorld Dane had training that gifted him with an ability to detect the minutiae of scents.”

“Do you suppose this is a clue of some sort?”Sevin speculated.

“Could she have been murdered in an onion field?”

Their voices seemed distant as Dane grappled with the awful stir of memories that gnawed at him like a shark‟s teeth. And the guilt.

Always the terrible, seething guilt over the fact that he‟d come back alive while their fourth and youngest brother, Lucien, had remained missing.

He could still see Luc‟s trusting, terrified face all those years ago. Just as if it were before him now.

It had been a Moonful night when all had gone so awry. Their parents had gone out to the grove—the very one Dane now owned—leaving their four boys in the care of servants. Dane had recently become curious to learn something of these mysterious rites in which the satyr engaged under a full moon. And he had sneaked out, hoping to spy.

Unknown to him, Luc had followed.

They‟d been boys, not yet men. Luc only five to Dane‟s twelve.

Both had been years away from fully understanding what it meant to be Satyr, for they would not be physically ready to participate in the carnal rituals until their eighteenth years, when their bodies would finally alter for the first time with the coming of the full moon.

The night should have been safe for them. The grove‟s perimeter had been bespelled by their parents and the rest of the Satyr clan—there had been far more of them in Rome then—who‟d gathered there for the rituals. No human should have been able to pierce the veil of magic surrounding it, and all Else species would have been engaged in the Moonful observances.

Yet somehow, there had already been other spies there in the grove that night, waiting. And when Dane and Luc had accidently stumbled upon them, both brothers had been captured and hauled away. His last memory of Luc was as they‟d been blindfolded. When Luc had looked to Dane to save him.

But he hadn‟t, and for that he couldn‟t forgive himself. Instead, both boys had gone missing, and only Dane had turned up again a year later. Alone and without any recollection of who‟d abducted them or any of the events during the time that had elapsed since then. With no recollection of what had happened to Luc.

If he was still alive these twelve years later, Luc would now be a month shy of his eighteenth year. In four weeks, another Moonful would come, and his young body would alter for the first time in his life. It would put him in danger of exposing what he was to his captors.

Luc. Gods, where are you? If you‟re alive, please hold on a little longer. I‟ll find you.

A shout came from nearby, yanking Dane back to the present.

“Fishermen,” Bastian murmured. “They‟ve spotted us.”

“Summon the polizia!”Sevin called, going to meet them. “We‟ve found a body.”

Managing to get to his feet, Dane glanced downriver, dragging fresh air into his lungs. In the distance, he saw a faint flash of iridescence—the two nereids heading westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea, where they would then turn north toward Tuscany. After wending their way through a labyrinth of sea, river, tributary, and stream, they would journey overland again for a short distance and then pass through the gate to ElseWorld.

No doubt they would swim swiftly, anxious to deliver their juicy morsel of gossip. The whereabouts of a defector—him. He had two maybe three weeks at most until the Council sent Trackers after him. He would not hide from them. But he wouldn‟t allow them to take him either. Yet he could think of only one thing that would stop them. This solution had come to him earlier, back at the temple. And now the scroll he‟d crumpled and stashed in his pocket weighed heavily on his mind.

The fishermen had arrived and were exclaiming over the body, crossing themselves and muttering as they awaited the arrival of the local authorities.

“They‟re handling it,” said Bastian from behind him. “Let‟s go breakfast and bathe. You‟ll be more yourself.”

Dane nodded and the three of them headed homeward. “I‟ll need a lift to Capitoline later when you go,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What‟s on Capitoline?”asked Sevin.

“A wife,” Dane replied.

At the first blush of dawn, Eva‟s Shimmerskin lover departed her bed, returning without complaint to the ether that had spawned him. As her world swam back into focus, she lay there naked amid tangled covers, her skin still flushed from his attentions. Except for her quickened breath, all was deathly quiet. She was alone. Melancholy. She shifted and felt a pleasant, residual tenderness in her private places.

Last night under the full moon, her body and spirit had been driven by a primal instinct to mate. She had been satisfied dozens of times, both by her own ministrations and by those of her conjured lover. With no true Will of his own, he had obeyed her every command. He‟d warmed her body with his, but he hadn‟t warmed her soul as she imagined a flesh and blood lover might have. Whenever she‟d lost herself to the pleasure for even a moment, her instruction to him had waned. At such times, he had a tiresome habit of slacking off in his attentions. It was a difficulty that plagued the ritual every month, and one for which she knew no cure.

She‟d dominated him and he had submitted to her Will. It was the opposite of what she wanted from a lover. She would have much preferred one who would command her and take charge of matters. One who would lead her with his strength and spirit, into a deeper pleasure of the mind and heart, as well as flesh. For when all were equally involved, would not the pleasure be exponentially increased? This was something she longed to discover for herself.

It was a luxury to wallow in these yearnings for these few moments. She only permitted herself to do so in the immediate aftermath of this monthly event, in the privacy of this room at the coming of dawn.

In the full light of day, she‟d leave such foolishness behind and go about the business of living a respectable life.

Until next month, when the fullness of the moon came again, reminding her of what she could and could not have.

The lock clicked, admitting Odette. Bearing a silver tray set with a teacup, a teapot, a small basket covered with a linen cloth, and a mortar and pestle, she came to stand beside the bed, staring down at Eva. Just beyond her, the sky was striated with fingers of pink and orange fast giving way to the blue of daylight.

Eva smiled, inhaling blissfully. “Mmm. I smell beignets.”

“You always like them since you were une bebe.”Odette sent her a fond glance as she set the tray down on the bedside table. Eva stretched her tired muscles, making no attempt to cover herself, uncaring that Odette saw her in this state. For this was the woman who‟d helped raise her for the past twenty-two years, and Eva had no secrets from her.