His face darkened as a storm began to brew in his chest. “Careful, Delicia,” he warned her through gritted teeth, hackles raised as he matched her stance. Their faces wavered mere inches apart. “You would be nothing without her power.”
“How dare you, you impotent excuse for an immortal,” she jeered, her cold brown eyes dancing with truculence. “Be gone from my rooms before I tear you apart myself.”
David braced himself for attack, just as Lucius entered the room.
“Please, no arguing between brethren,” he began. He paused, his eyes sweeping around the room in a similarly confused fashion as David moments earlier, finally settling upon Morgana’s naked form. A low growl rumbled from his bowels as his eyes caught sight of David. In an instant, he had him by the throat, slamming him against the wall in untethered rage.
David felt his pharynx crushing under the passion of his fist, unable to correct the misunderstanding as he fruitlessly pried at Lucius’s clenched fingers.
“Lucius, no!” Morgana shrieked, mercifully restored to her Morrigan half. She threw herself at the two of them, grabbing Lucius’s outstretched arm.
He relented at her touch, as David crumbled to the ground. He shuddered at the pain in his throat as his immortal body worked to heal itself. He was grateful he had instinctively stiffened far before Lucius charged, or he might have spent the evening unconscious from the affliction.
“You let him touch you?” Lucius spat at Morrigan.
Morrigan’s face twisted in anger. “Just because you lay with the wench you fused me with does not make me your property,” she seethed. “I can barely stand our endeavors as it is.”
Lucius’s expression melted, giving way to fretful unease. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Surely you don’t mean that, my love.”
Morrigan threw his hands off her, coming to David’s aide. His throat had mercifully restored itself to its proper shape, and with her help, he stood to meet Lucius’s level.
Only once had David succumbed to his desire for the Morrigan, long before they came to Wallachia, when they roamed the lands of Gaelic Ireland per her request. And Lucius had never forgotten it.
It was a time when David took part in their many battles, his innate predator relishing the opportunity to utilize its immortal strength. It served him twofold, for not only did war sate the beast inside of him, but aligning himself with Celtic tribes similar to his own ancient clan offered him a detached sense of justice.
The world had descended into late autumn, around the festival of Samhain, when the last copper leaves surrendered, amassing in piles around the barren trees. It was a battle like any other, the raven Morgana soaring above the advancing warriors, unleashing her shrill war cry as Lucius led them through the wild grass into combat. David had focused his energy upwards, pooling together a spiraling windstorm that blotted out the sun.
Although disoriented by the tumultuous weather and vicious birds, the enemy fought hard, David utilizing all his strength to clear rows of bodies with the sweep of his hammer. Splattering blood obscured most of his vision, but he caught glimpses of Morgana in human form, her hair a mess of short, wild curls left after she chopped it before each battle, holding her ground not far from where he stood. She moved with the grace and poise of a dancer, bending and twisting around the extended limbs and swords, slashing her double-edged spear with artful precision. He felt compelled to run to her aid only when they surrounded her, covering her tiny frame in a wall of brawn intent on ripping it apart. Yet she shattered their hold as she shot up from the center of them in an eruption of ravens that exploded as soon as it reached the sky, raining down upon them in merciless slaughter.
He stood watching her, in the midst of the chaos around him, transformed into the young boy who watched in awe of the carnage she brought to the Port of Rome.
After the men lay ravaged and motionless in the mud, she was human once again, her chest heaving with the exertion, steaks of dirt and gore covering her scant clothing and the acres of flesh it exposed. She pulled a wayward arrow out of her thigh, casting it aside as the wound released a short stream of obsidian blood and sealed itself as if her skin had never been torn. She noticed him gazing at her and responded with a wild, triumphant smile.
The battle was over, the carnage so great that every man left standing was covered in the splattered remains of the savage butchery that had occurred. They roared cheerful victories over a battle fought hard, but won.
The horde made their camp along the nearby Unshin River, the three creatures finding shelter in the nearby caves. Lucius, normally bright eyed and exhilarated by a good fight, instantly fell into a deep slumber, the rarity of such an occurrence revealing he’d gone weeks without rest. Although it had been the same for David, he found he was unable to follow suit, opting to meditate near the rushing river waters instead.
As soon as he reached the tributary behind their caves, her figure came into view, ghostly pale in the moonlight against the sapphire pool where she stood. She was a perfect vision of the Morrigan he once knew, all traces of the madwoman Delicia fallen away, as if the magic of her homeland absolved her of her burdens. She turned towards him, exposing rounded breasts neatly stacked upon rippling rib bones, her ivory skin taut over her stomach and thighs. She reached up to let down the long onyx hair which had grown back at nightfall, letting it tumble down in shimmering waves about her sylphlike curves.
He was in her arms instantly, tearing off his tunic and leathers and letting them fall carelessly into the river with a splash. She proved to be as intoxicating as any conquest, and soon he was lost in a carnal desire he hadn’t experienced since he was a young man enthralled by a slave girl named Gaia. He held her easily as she mounted him, her muscular legs gripping his waist as she ground her hips into him. She buried her teeth in his neck as she climaxed, sampling his tarnished essence as her body shuddered in release. Breathlessly, she then tore open a vein from her own wrist, pressing it against his mouth to offer him the same experience. His eyes rolled back in surrender to the exquisite pleasure of being connected to her in every way, her blood whispering her secrets, centuries of life as the great, formidable Morrigan.
When it was finished, they both collapsed into the water, delirious with exhilaration. He lunged for her, eager to begin again, only to realize the water around them had grown unusually warm.
David looked up to see the figure of Lucius standing on the muddy bank, his body tensed in fury, currents of red heat sparking around his body like electric lightning, radiating from his hands in currents of fire. He had created a ring of flames around them, slowly bringing the water to a treacherous boil.
Morrigan immediately drew David into her arms and transformed, pulling him out of the river with her talons. She carried him through the air to the mouth of the cave where they had made camp, shifting back to human as she landed and pulling him inside. David barely managed to pull on a tunic before Lucius arrived and promptly pounced, pinning him to the ground in a chokehold. “Did you forget that I am your sire, your master?” he cried, his eyes black and face contorted by violent wrath.
David wrenched his scorching fingers away from his throat as Morrigan grabbed Lucius by the hair, tossing him across the room. In the narrow confines of the cave, the air began to churn into funnels, threatening to intensify.
“Enough,” Morrigan commanded, standing firmly between them, “unless you want our lives to end in a fury of wind and fire and crow.”
Lucius remained crouched at the farthest nook of the cave, regaining his breath as the angry sparks that wound around his body cooled to a flicker.
David noticed the vision he had seen of Morrigan in the water had faded away, the woman before him restored to the dual deity that was Morgana. Her variant eyes looked compassionately towards his assailant as she moved closer to him. “Please forgive me,” she crooned, her voice now flavored by the sopranic pitch of Delicia. “I was under the spell of this land.”
David glanced at Lucius, who gazed up at her with pained eyes. It suddenly occurred to him that his sire’s lust had evolved into something much more than he had realized. He rose to his feet, brushing the cave debris from his clothes. “Apparently, so was I,” he said flatly.
Morgana crouched next to Lucius, holding him to her chest as a mother might soothe her babe, running her fingers through the mess of his dark hair. “I love you both as my family,” she declared, looking directly at David. “But Lucius’s bed is the only one I will share.”
David knew that the creature before him was not the Morrigan, and that even if it were, she could not be contained nor possessed. In fact, he felt no desire to, their brief interaction enough to hold him off, though he could still taste her on his lips. His response was genuine as he told them, “I never meant to come between you. You are both my brethren in this eternal life. How was I to respect something of which I did not know?”
Lucius’s face did not soften as he peered at him coldly through the tangle of Morgana’s sinewy arms. “Now you are aware.”
David felt as if ice poured through his body as Lucius’s eyes bore into his. Gone was any trace of the being who once called him brother, David confronted with pure malice, the antithesis of compassion. Chills prickled the flesh of his skin.
He remembered looking away, unable to maintain his gaze.
The same look was painted across Lucius’s face now, his mustached lip quivering as it pressed the other into a thin line, his eyes roaring funeral pyres. “This madness must end,” he said brusquely through his teeth. “We must find a way to fix her.”
Morrigan left them to their current standoff, moving towards her wardrobe to retrieve and pull on another chemise. She turned back to face them, her dried hair flowing wildly from her chiseled face, eerily reminiscent of the Medusa. “You must kill me,” she said simply. “It is the only way I can be freed of this torment through which I live.”
Lucius softened, his eyebrows unfurling as he pleaded with her. “Morgana, you cannot ask that of us.”
David felt similarly in sentiment, sorrowfully observing the fierce resolve behind her words.
Frustrated, she withdrew to the window. “I long to fly free once more,” she murmured, gazing out onto the clouded horizon.
David met Lucius’s eyes in a fleeting moment of camaraderie. “There must be another way.”