“I don’t blame you.”
There was more emotion in that statement than he had ever heard from either one of his parents since his thirteenth year. A little of the dark heaviness eased from his chest.
“I will leave you both now.”
They nodded at him. “Fare thee well, son.”
“And you both.”
Tyras, Miletus 441 B.C.
The tall magik gazed at him with an expression of sympathy and understanding in his dark, magnetic eyes.
“I cannot let you have Eneas. I cannot let you commit any act of violence within my home.”
Frustration and the need for revenge bubbled beneath Kirios’ skin like hot springs in a winter landscape.
Eneas.
He wanted the hunter dead.
“Your parents were murderers, Kirios. Eneas was merely doing the job that was asked of him.”
“Under whose authority?” Kirios growled.
A look of dead calm and the superiority of one with his power settled over the magik’s face. “My own.”
Kirios sneered and yet found himself lowering his eyes in submission anyway. Galen, the magik before him, was famous throughout the supernatural world. He had established himself here in Miletus, under a colony called Tyras, situated on the north-west coast of the Black Sea. After Alexander the Great had rescued Miletus from Persian grasp, Galen had ‘persuaded’ Alexander to bestow the colony on himself and his followers. Kirios had heard of this Galen before he had tracked Eneas here. His infamy had grown because of his crusade; his crusade to find peace from the human wars and supernatural predators. And to do so he had enlisted the aid of supernaturals such as the lykanthrope, Eneas, who hunted those who preyed upon the humans. Kirios could not find fault in the crusade. He could find fault, however, in the fact that he had had no life in which to speak of for the last twenty years… for it had been spent hunting Eneas, after discovering the lykan had killed Xanthippe and Phaedrus – the penalty for killing Ephialtes.
Kirios sighed wearily. “I would lose my honor if I did not exact revenge against those who took that which is mine.”
Galen nodded. “And you are an honorable vampyre, Kirios. I know. I have heard of you. You are of the second generation. You feed on the blood of animals. You travel from place to place. You’ve even been known to rescue humans utilizing your superior power. You… are not so different from Eneas. In fact, if not for the obvious, I think you would rather like him.”
“You will not even let me challenge him?”
Galen shook his head, his eyes suddenly bright with animation. “Instead I would ask you to stay. Live here with my people, Kirios. Become one of my hunters.”
He tried not to let the surprise show on his face. Why on Gaia’s earth would Galen want him? He was a nobody. More to the point he wanted to kill one of Galen’s men.
“Why?”
Subtly, so subtle he almost didn’t feel it, the irritation and rage beneath his skin began to wane as Galen spoke of the world he envisioned. He preached that they, as supernaturals with their blessed gifts, should be protecting the humans’ fragile existence in gratitude for what the gods had given them. After all, humans were the children of the gods just as much as they themselves were. All this Kirios had known, had appreciated, but it was only now under this magik’s spellbinding presence he began to see that he was just as culpable as those who hunted humans, for he had the power to hunt the hunters, protect the hunted, to give back to the gods… and he had not been doing so.
Tyras, 377 B.C.
“Galen?”
No answer.
“Galen?”
He was catatonic. Kirios glanced anxiously around at the others. His friend, the magik Agamemnon, shook his head sadly. “What has happened?” Kirios demanded.
“Parthenia is dead.”
Kirios stumbled back. Oh Gaia, no. How could Galen bear it?
Eneas.