WITH EACH passing day Billy remembered more why he loved Marsuuv the way he did. In so many ways he was only doing what he was created to do: love himself.
Naturally. To love the beast was to love himself, because Marsuuv was as much a mirror of Billy’s heart as a beast, born and bred to feed on the blood of mortal souls.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the lair following Janae’s departure, a few days at least. The intimacy Marsuuv had shown Janae in both words and deed at first twisted a knife through his belly. Who was she to steal Marsuuv’s affection after Billy’s own long journey to find him?
When Marsuuv descended on her and thrust his fangs into her neck, he’d nearly cried out in protest. Seeing Marsuuv exchange his blood with her like that . . .
Billy had trembled with rage.
But then she’d been sent off and Billy had time to think about what happened.
Janae was a very small part, perhaps only one-hundredth, Shataiki, a descendant of someone bitten by Alucard generations earlier. A creature of the night.
Although the mythology surrounding vampires was sadly misinformed, there was some truth to the rumors. Vampires were real, of course, but they’d originated from this reality—not from Dracula in Transylvania but from a Shataiki queen named Alucard. Dracula spelled backward.
Crossbreeds between Shataiki and human were the Nephilim referred to in the Holy Bible itself. Billy had found the subject oddly compelling as a young boy.
While Janae was fulfilling her own destiny, Billy was preparing for his, as Marsuuv had promised.
“He comes,” Marsuuv said, shifting his torso away from Billy.
They’d been reclining on the beast’s bed with only their breathing and the occasional popping sound of Marsuuv’s phlegm to accompany them. More accurately, Billy had been reclining, leaning against the queen’s belly as he lightly stroked Billy’s hair and cheek.
It struck him now and then, but less and less with each passing day, that he should be appalled by his environment. Instead, he was convinced he lay in heaven, and he found himself yearning to be even closer to his lover. They’d bitten each other several times, but Billy wanted to be bitten again. This was how Billos had become Ba’al, he thought.
He found himself dreaming of a blood transfusion. If he could only rid himself of all human blood and be pure Shataiki . . .
“He comes!” Marsuuv said again, brushing Billy aside.
He sat up groggily and came to himself. The scent of Marsuuv’s breath wafted over him, and he fought off the desire to lie against the beast’s belly again.
But the clack of talons on stone arrested his attention, and he forgot the thought. And then he remembered who it was Marsuuv referred to. Teeleh was coming.
The great beast himself?
Teeleh stepped into Marsuuv’s lair, dragging his wings. He was taller than the queen, clearly the master here, though Marsuuv didn’t bow or show respect other than to bare his fangs. He put a wing behind Billy and nudged him closer, as if to say, this one is mine, and Billy found the gesture as kind and loving as any Marsuuv had yet shown him. He swallowed a bundle of emotion that rose up in his throat.
“Billy . . .” Teeleh said.
Billy looked at him again, took in the mangy fur that crawled with tiny worms and flies. His large red eyes weren’t glamorous like Marsuuv’s, but terrifying. A quiver ran over Teeleh’s shoulders, scattering a few flies.
“He is mine,” Marsuuv said, and Billy felt better.
Teeleh ignored the queen. He stepped closer to Billy and examined him. “Stand up. Let me see you.”
Marsuuv removed his arm. Billy scooted off the bed and stood next to the altar, five feet from the beast.
Teeleh’s bulging red eyes studied him from head to foot. Billy was still dressed in the black robe he’d taken off the temple guard, but after days with Marsuuv it was badly stained.
“Take it off,” Teeleh said in a soft, gravelly voice.
Billy glanced at Marsuuv, received a nod, and shrugged out of the robe. He stood naked except for his underwear. Sores from Marsuuv’s fangs marked the inside of his arm and would be clearly visible on either side of his neck.
“Such a beautiful specimen,” Teeleh said in a low, crackling voice. He reached a long claw for him and touched Billy’s white chest. Then ran his talon down, leaving a thin scratch.
Billy looked at Marsuuv again, shaking with fear now.
“Be strong.”
“If I didn’t need you so badly, I would pull out your jugular now and have my fill,” Teeleh said. “You humans make me sick. Why you were given such power . . .” He didn’t finish, but his disdain was clear.
The beast lowered his claw and rested it on the altar, satisfied to stare at him for a moment.
“If you fail me, I will drain you.” He flicked a fly off his cheek with a long pink tongue. “Do you understand this?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand.”
“You will use the books and return with a single ambition. To deliver a time of tribulation in which my kind will reign. The Great Deception will leave humans desperate for a leader.”
“What he says is true,” the queen Marsuuv said with uncharacteristic reverence.
“In that day, many will flee and many will cower before me, and you will stand at my right hand.”
The words washed over Billy as if carried by an electric current. He was shaking again, but not out of fear. Teeleh’s words intoxicated him as much as Marsuuv’s bite.
“You must not let the other one, Thomas, stop you. He will try. He will enter the Black Forest and all of humanity will stand in awe. But you, Billy, you can stop him. He must drink the water.”
Teeleh spat to one side.
“Say it. He must drink the water.”
“He must drink the water,” Billy repeated.
“If he does not drink the water, I will crucify you. He must drink the water before he can save the world. You must go back to force his hand.”
“I’m going back?” The idea terrified him. He wanted to stay here, with Marsuuv.
“Betrayal is written in the hearts of all, but you, Billy, will make betrayal your lover.” Teeleh tilted his head back, swallowed the fly, then faced him again. “We will need to extract your . . . inner beauty and recreate you as two. One of you will go to Bangkok, the other will go back to the beginning to kill Thomas before he can cross over.”
Billy looked over at Marsuuv and saw that the Shataiki had begun to tremble. The queen opened his jaw and cocked his head like a fledgling bird, then allowed Teeleh to spit into his mouth. Marsuuv settled with some satisfaction.
“I . . .” Billy didn’t know what to say.
“Do our ways of evil disturb you, Billy?” Teeleh asked.
They did, but not as much as he would have thought.
“No,” he said.
“They should.” Teeleh faced Marsuuv, who seemed agitated, excited. “But you humans can’t help yourselves. Blindness becomes you.”
The queen sprang through the air and landed on the altar before Billy. He lifted a jar in which two large, slimy balls similar to fish eggs lay in a solution. Billy had studied the jar in his stupor these past few days and wondered what poor beast had given up their eyes as a trophy.
Now Marsuuv unceremoniously dumped the jar’s contents on the table. When he spoke, his voice was strained with delight.
“Accept this as my gift to you and our offspring,” Marsuuv said, lifting the black orbs. “Look into my eyes.”
Billy already was looking. The queen leaned forward as if he intended to either bite him on the face or kiss him, and Billy really didn’t care which. He only wanted to be held in a place of safety.
Slowly, the beast lifted his claw and traced his cheeks. “After I’ve taken your eyes and sent you back, you’ll remember little of this. Only what you need to know. Only the impulses and the demands upon your life. And you’ll be able to follow Thomas when he dreams.” Marsuuv’s breathing thickened. “May I blind you?”
Billy began to cry. He didn’t want to cry; he knew shedding tears at a time like this must look weak, even foolish, but he couldn’t help it.
“Yes,” he said.
Marsuuv thrust two fingers into Billy’s eyes, like prongs designed to blind in precisely this manner. White-hot pain flashed behind his forehead, and he heard himself scream.
Marsuuv yanked his fingers from Billy’s head, then slapped something into his eye sockets. Clouded sight returned, then slowly cleared. The cavern was visible through two new eyes of his lover’s making. The pain eased.
“Now you are two,” Marsuuv said, drilling Billy with a hard look. “You will be called Bill.”
Teeleh stood behind the queen, head tilted back, roaring with such ferocity that Billy thought the ceiling might collapse and crush them all. The great deceiver lowered his head and thrust a long talon toward Billy’s left.
“And he will be Billy.”
There, not five feet away, stood another Billy, nearly identical, right down to his red hair. His eyes were lined in red, and blood leaked from the corners.
I am Bill. Only Bill, not Billy, he thought.
Teeleh swiveled his head back to Bill. “Thomas must drink the water! Do not fail me this time.”
The other Billy had his original eyes, Bill realized. Marsuuv had extracted his eyes—his inner beauty—and placed them in this copy of himself to duplicate his essence.
And the eyes in his face now?
He put his fingertips to his face. They came away bloody. He had new black eyes, from the jar.
“Stop Thomas,” Teeleh growled in such a low voice that Bill’s bones vibrated.
“I will,” Bill whimpered.
“I will crucify you if you fail,” Teeleh repeated.
The other Billy was crying. “What about me?” The man even sounded like Bill.
Teeleh stepped over to the other Billy, then around, examining him. He traced the man’s flesh with his talon, stopped behind him, and marked him with three hooked claw marks at the base of his neck. Then he dug one claw deep into Billy’s spine and twisted it slowly. Billy trembled, weeping.
“You, my friend, will be my antichrist.”
Bill felt the man’s pain as if it were his own. Because it was. He wanted to cry out and demand that Teeleh show more kindness, but he knew there wasn’t a thread of tenderness in the beast.
“Do not fail me,” Teeleh hissed in the other Billy’s ear.
The redhead turned his head toward Bill. “Billy?”
“Bill. My name is Bill. I’m here.”
“I can’t see too well.” This even though he had bright-green eyes.
“It’s okay, neither can I. Our eyes are new. But I’m right here.”
Marsuuv pointed at the four lost books stacked on the altar. “Go, and do what you must do.” He slashed their fingers with a claw.
Marsuuv spoke to Bill. “Find Thomas in the place called Denver when he first crossed. Stop him. Kill him. Make him drink.”
“In Denver? Please—”
“Do what you must do,” Teeleh snarled. “Quickly!”
Both men stumbled forward, dripping blood. Together they put their hands on the exposed page.
For the second time in less than five minutes, the lair vanished, and white lights flooded Bill’s mind. Billy, the one with green eyes, was returning to Bangkok to be Teeleh’s antichrist. As for him, with the black eyes, he was supposed to go after Thomas. In Denver, right? If he remembered history correctly, Thomas had originally come from Denver.
Even as he left one world and entered the other, Billy forgot what he had seen. But he did know a few things.
He knew that he was the lover of Marsuuv, who’d shown him great kindness and gifted him with black eyes.
He knew that he must either stop Thomas or hang from a cross, where he would be drained of blood until dead.
And he knew that he was now Bill. Just Bill.