three— closing in quickly. Panicking, I ran toward the steps as fast as my legs could carry me. At full speed, I’d beat a gazelle, but they were cheetahs and easily overtook me in that short distance. Remembering Ethan always cautioned to show no fear, I froze as they surrounded, appalled and amazed by their appearance.
All three had the look of pubescent boys, thirteen or fourteen, but spared the awkwardness of early adolescence, graceful, their enchanting, unblemished faces polished marble. All were somewhat raggedly dressed in the manner of street kids. Glittering eyes watched me curiously as they speculated in Italian where I’d come from and who I belonged to. Their circle around me tightened. Laughter tinkled like crystal bells. I felt like Wendy in a very bizarre part of Neverland. Ethan said this ancient world wasn’t the one I’d left behind. Nothing was sacred to these monsters, certainly not childhood. On each was a small mark behind the left ear, of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.
Their eyes were ancient and expressions hungry. I backed away slowly, preparing to flee. The leader inclined his head and the others moved in closer. Pack hunters.
The leader sprang and clapped his hand over my mouth, dragging me away. In spite of his size he was much stronger. I struggled against him with all my power. His grip tightened nearly crushing my chest. Gasping desperately for air, I clawed at his bare arms, leaving long, raw tracks streaming with blood. He yelped.
Something large ran toward us at full speed. The other two took flight, leaving the leader holding me at the water’s edge. Ethan’s enraged roar filled the air. “Vermin!”
My captor dropped me abruptly. Salt water stung my nostrils and throat. I came up sputtering to see Ethan grasping him by his slender throat and holding him up to his icy gaze. The boy’s eyes bulged out of his skull as Ethan’s hand closed tighter over his windpipe.
“Ethan, for God’s sake let him go!”
“Mia, stay out of this!” Ethan growled, as he began to twist the boy’s head around the neck like a light bulb. The boy screamed, struggling vainly as his neck ripped open with a sickening crunch of bone and moist tearing of flesh. Tendons wriggled, bloody spaghetti, as the head came loose. Blood spurted everywhere splashing us both. Terror stricken eyes glared from the lifeless boy’s head, the once sweet mouth frozen in a grimace. Ethan grasped the head by the hair and held it over his open mouth, gulping down the rain of blood and then to my revulsion raised the body to his lips to suck the remaining blood from the raw stump.
He stood, a panting animal, licking thick crimson clots from his lips, covered in sweat and rusty red smears, his thick dark hair plastered to his skull. “How dare you disobey!” He struck me hard across the mouth. I fell to the ground, sheltering my body with my hands. “They’d have dragged you off and violated you again and again. They’re the lowest of the low, sewer rats, castoffs!”
“Gaius did this! Little boys, for crissakes, Ethan!”
“They were never innocent.” He turned away and went about the business of burying the body, covering it with sand and rock.
“Did you have to kill him?”
He looked at me as shocked as if I’d suggested we go sunbathing the next day. “It’s customary, a matter of honor.”
“Honor is shit to me! You cling to these absurd notions as if they still meant something! It’s bullshit, Ethan! Gaius is nothing but a disgusting pedophile! We should sleep in coffins and haunt graveyards because we are ghouls. You think I can I develop a new conscience to suit? You make me sick! I’m no better off than them. Maybe I don’t wear your mark, but I can’t venture a foot from my doorstep without someone preying on me. You never told me I’d be your slave when you swore undying love.”
“You accepted me as your master.”
“I thought it was a goddamned metaphor!”
“You were aching for it.”
It was true. I wanted to be so thoroughly sexually dominated by this spectacular creature that I hadn’t questioned all this entailed. Submission in all other aspects grated.
“Where does this put you in relation to your master?”
Ethan flinched. “I have no master.”
“I’m not that naive. Someone’s always on top. Does Brovik top you?”
He raised his hand again, but I stared him down. He dropped it and then tore off his clothes to dive into the water, swimming