A Dangerous Legacy Pt. 17

"I see you have been talking to Leanne."

"Who hasn't?" I asked rhetorically. If everyone knew her theories, why didn't they listen?

"You do not ask the right question, little queen."

Only a man who was easily six-eight could call me little. Magic sure made a lot of tall people which was skewing my view of how I fit in. "Please, can the 'I'm an ancient and mysterious god' thing and just tell me what you mean."

"Leeann is wrong too. You see, before the vampires died there was light magic and dark, two sides of the coin. Never could they meet, though they existed together and had to. Always were they in balance until the vampires learned how to turn other humans."

"What!?" No one had told me this!

"You will find no record of this, but it was I who saw it, it was I who told the wolves."

"You brought about Chengzhou?"

"Not directly. Indirectly, yes. I started the war between our friend the wolves and our enemies the vampires. But even I did not foresee the final slaughter. It matters not. If the witches or sorcerers had believed me, we would have been doing the slaughtering.

"Now, after we took the magic there was a change."

"A change?" Pierre and I asked in unison.

"You see-" He stopped suddenly, a strange look coming upon his face. "I must go. I will return, but I must go." With that he was gone.

"What the hell!?" I asked Pierre.

"He does that," my lover sighed. "He's no longer a god, but once a god, forever in that mindset. He was never technically a god...I don't think, but he has people he feels he should protect. It's likely he has a village under his protection and they were being harmed, so he has gone back to help them."

"Dude...time travel."

Pierre shook his head. "Horus has never told me why, but there was some incident, long ago. I believe he went back to save his beloved Egypt. Something happened, and ever since, Horus refuses to travel through time."

"Why?"

Pierre shrugged. "If I had to guess he loved a queen, the last queen, the Cleopatra humans obsess over. I think he tried to stop her death, personally I think he tried over and over again, but never could. He once said to me that the earth still has magic, greater than our own, and there were certain things no light or dark magic could change."

The history writer in me wanted to track Horus down and hear ever salacious detail, but I knew I couldn't. "When will he return."

"Whenever he is able to. He always keeps his word."

"All right, let's go back for cake." I took his arm and we walked back to the restaurant. "Seems anti-climactic after meeting the first real god humans ever worshipped."

Pierre smiled. "You'll get used to it after about two hundred years."

I had conjured up a pool table in my suite and my wolves were playing in teams of two, Andre working on the computer. For all the tailing my little spies had done that day we learned nothing, and Andre, Pierre, and Julian had found no clues in the human relatives of dead magic-bearers.

Sometimes when researching historical events things got crazy. Humans were weird, weirder than any supernatural I had so far seen. Once, a Hungarian peasant revolt had ended with the traitors starved, and their leader roasted live on a red-hot throne with a similarly hot crown and scepter. If people thought that was in the past they only had to remember the KGB had killed a man by poisoning him with a radioactive element. Humans did strange things, often confusing, and so historians often made lists and timelines.

Making a timeline when I myself had traveled time multiple times seemed like an invitation to a migraine, so I made a list of what I knew.

1.Magic chose twenty-two humans who became witches and sorcerers

2.Witches made werewolves

3.Sorcerers made dragons and vampires

4.Everybody gave a big fuck about balancing light and dark and we had a big ol' war over it

5.Horus had seen vampires converting humans, vampires had begun feeding on magic-bearers and everyone got pissed at them, but it was the wolves who did something about it

6.I would, in the future from now, go back in time to aid the final battle and end vampires

7.Malachai and the queen of the time would harness the magic and spread it amongst all followers of light and dark

8.People stopped giving a fuck about balance, but I didn't know why yet

9.Twelve hundred years ago witch queens started dying. Within twenty years of each death two sorcerers, descended directly from originals, also were killed.

10.Magic began to weaken

11.At some point in the future, I would go back to a young Alessandra and take her back past her birth and leave her to be raped by Malachai's second, producing Kenneth four hundred years ago

12.In one year I would bear a child, and somehow Malachai and Kenneth would be a part of it. And I would see me, the me of the day before, and tell myself to build a puzzle and solve it the same, and not to come into the future again

I tossed down my pen and cradled my head in my hands. "Argh!" Somehow, the timeline was upset. Someone with greater power than I had, greater power than Malachai had, was behind the killings and blocking us from them.

And future me surely knew that telling me not to do something was the fastest way to get me to do it. So did that mean she wanted me to come into the future? Was the answer there? Why was magic being weakened? "Arrrrrrrrrgh!"

"Anna?" I looked up and saw Julian in the doorway.

Quickly with magic I hid my list. "Sorry, I'm just frustrated."

"Let me help."

The door closed behind him and he padded on bare feet to stand behind me where I sat at the vanity, eyes meeting mine in the mirror.

"Game over?"

"Liv and I lost, Pierre and Jerry are crowing over a beer. Andre has been swearing for an hour now, I think he finally agrees the research is useless."

He brushed my loose hair aside and began to massage my neck. It hurt at first, the knots were great, but Julian was expert at the task and soon I felt the tension melting away and closed my eyes with a moan.

"Oh, this is some vacation. I really want to take some time off after we fix this, we can just shut ourselves in to our new home back in Chicago."

"I hope soon," he said softly.

I wanted this to go away. What if I refused to go back to Chengzhou? What if I didn't help kill the vampires? What if you're supposed to, a little voice asked. what if you don't, and it creates a paradox. What if Chengzhou never happens, the queens don't die? You might exist, but you would never be a witch. Never have your lovers.

Gasping at the sudden shock of fear my hand shot out and I knocked over a perfume bottle.

"Anna!? What is it!?"

The door opened and they were all there. I blushed and rose. "Sorry guys, just dark thoughts. Jerry, Liv, you guys go relax, you've had a long day. Andre, Pierre, would you join us?"

"You have that wrinkle between your eyebrows again," Andre said with trepidation.

I felt it, and indeed I did. Well, tomorrow there would be an experiment. If that little voice was right the witches would be better off, possibly the wolves would never be enslaved, but I would never know the joy of these men.

As soon as Jerry and Liv left to take Diego out and then have some private time, I closed the door and used magic to make us all naked.

"Anna-" Pierre began.

"No, no words, not tonight. I need to forget my worries." I held my hands out and with only slight hesitation, they all grabbed me.

I wouldn't play games that night, I wanted nothing structured. I wanted Pierre's exuberance, Julian's smoldering, and Andre's certainty, and I forced it from them. I know they treasured my love and my submission equally, but that night all I could give was the former, and none of the latter.

I rode them each in turn, slid my mouth along each cock, stroked every inch of them with my hands, devoured each man with my kisses. I took them inside me all at once and by turn, but I insisted on experiencing their climax with each man alone, the others aiding in my pleasure, by their choice, not mine.

After, we collapsed onto the bed panting, but I felt manic. I wanted more, I wanted every moment of darkness to show my love for and my need of them. I wanted no man to doubt how I felt. I wanted to burn away the forbidden desire I felt for Malachai, the guilt over an uncertain future, all of it.

I was about to ask if they needed food when a throat cleared.

By the foot of the bed stood Horus.

I shrieked and used magic to clothe us, but Horus showed no emotion and waited patiently.

"Anna, Pierre, Pierre's brothers," he said solemnly, a strange accent only hinted at in his voice before now larger.

"Horus," I said, wondering if the other two wolves knew him.

His white pants were stained with blood and he bore bruises and cuts all over. He saw me staring and a second later he was clean and healed.

"Forgive me. I am nearing collapse and wanted to return to you as promised first."

"Just one thing before you go, and if you're tired tell me where you are headed and I will transport you. Horus, why is balance no longer a concern for us?"

He sighed, suddenly looking much older. "What it is is that the magic in vampires was dark, pure darkness. When we took it, we witches, our magic became grey. The need for blood magic made us war more easily, the death magic too, and the sex magic fueled the lust that made wolves our slaves. It changed us, or most of us."

"Most of us?"

"I did not take the magic. Not all did, but I am the last true white witch left. It is why I alone see things others do not."

"Great, one more thing for my list."

"Come again?"

"It's not important," I waved him off. "So why does that mean balance isn't an issue?"

He looked near to collapse, truly exhausted. I conjured up a chair and used to magic to force him to sit. "Thank you. Because, dear queen, since our magic is muddied, and the sorcerers were touched by ours and muddied as well, we can no longer achieve balance."

"Why? Why not!?"

His eyes drooped. "Because, how do you balance two shades of grey that are almost the same?" His voice was weak, and on the last word he passed out.

I transported him with magic to the third bedroom of the suite. "What the hell did he mean?" I asked my wolves who looked shocked and disoriented to say the least.

"Was that really Horus?" Andre asked.

"You've never met him?" I asked, and Andre and Julian shook their heads.

"He is most reclusive," Julian said in explanation. "He would not even answer Sigrid's summonses. We almost thought Pierre was making him up. Funny, I always pictured him in dreadlocks."

That niggling feeling in my mind roared. Another piece to the puzzle but I had no clue what it was. "Please, this is deadly serious. What did he mean?"

Andre shook off the star-struck expression. "It's like I was spelled into forgetting until he spoke."

"Forgetting what?" I asked, forcing my tone to be calm when I wanted to scream.

"Pierre, do you remember when Sigrid tried to do that love spell on her fifth son, and it didn't work?" Andre asked and his brother nodded. "Anna, Horus is right. You can't balance light and dark because they've muddied a bit. Not much, I think, but I don't know. But it was then that magic began weakening."

"So by my act at Chengzhou I will doom magic to be dulled, mixed, and that is weakening it? Oh, God!" I trembled as the next thought came. "Oh gods, if this is true, then it would show up in the strongest. I must be the killer then! I must go through time and kill the strongest to cover up my mistake!"

"Anna, I have never seen any evidence magic is mixed," Julian said quickly. "Andre, one failed love spell is not proof. Sven couldn't have been made to love that girl if she or he had a true love somewhere. I think we're all just a little tired and a little paranoid."

Once more I cradled my head. "I won't know, I won't know unless I go back to Changzhou and stop myself. I have to go back."

"No, you could be killed," Andre said quickly, jerking my hands down. "Anna, somehow in the future, when you do go back, your power is immense enough to end the vampires and duel with yourself and Shin-Zan. You cannot risk it."

"But this could be it! All that I did, or will do, whatever, that could be what's wrong with the timeline! Andre, Pierre, Julian, I love you, I love you with all my heart, but what if I must die? Surely one death is worth it to keep magic alive, keep it strong. Oh, god, that must by why I warned myself not to go into the future when I had the baby. I can't die of course until I have a child."

It all made sense, and as terrified as I had become there was a sharp sense of relief. In a year I would have a child, and some time after that I would have to go back and undo it all. I would perhaps not be born, just disappear, or be born and live my human life, never knowing them. Whatever it was, there was an answer to the riddle, and the promise of release.

Joy and anguish filled me.

"Anna, no, that can't be it," Pierre said quietly.

I looked into two sets of terrified eyes, and one pair of eerily calm blue ones. "Why not? It makes perfect sense!"

"If what you're proposing is true, why haven't you killed Malachai?"

At his question I tore from the bed, ran into the bathroom, and locked the door. I crumbled to the floor and couldn't stop the tears.

He was wrong, and I was right. Somehow I had to stop my future self from altering the timeline and magic, and doing so would kill me. So I had to wait until I had a child. Malachai had not died because he had not had a living child in all that time. But the future me may have had Malachai's child, but she never said he was alive.

The man I felt forbidden desire for, the man I was going to bear a child for, was going to die by my hand. Unless I relinquished my claim to the throne, to this life, to life itself all together.

I had to die.