“Bullshit,” Lucian retorted. “You told her so you could keep her. Now her mind will be deeply imprinted.”
Alexander’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t move from the couch. “She saw me with that skinny human. She saw me go through morpho. She knew.”
“She may have suspected something, but she could never have known—”
“Enough,” Nicholas said calmly, still focused on his computer screen. “What’s done is done. The woman must stay here now. But once she’s well, Alexander, you’re going to have to clean—”
Alexander interrupted. “I’m not going to damage her mind, Nicholas.”
“You won’t. Things are different now.” Nicholas turned his screen so he could see his brother.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a morphed male, Duro. You can clean a human’s mind with no fear of permanent injury.”
Lucian brightened. “Good. Problem solved.”
“Yes, lucky me,” Alexander said dryly, his mind pushing aside one issue to deal with another. “So, speaking of my newly acquired morphed status, what have you found out?”
“Not much,” Nicholas admitted. He shook his head, frustrated. “I’ve contacted a few of our remaining peers in the Eternal Breed who are outside the credenti—first with a location request for the human I let get away this afternoon, and second, for information about males morphing before their time. I kept it casual. No reason for either request to get back to our . . . families.” He said the last word as though it were poison on his tongue. Even after a hundred years of separation, of freedom from their kind, the three of them still flinched whenever they were reminded of the nightmare that was their abusive adolescence.
Nicholas shook off the momentary gloom and nodded at Lucian. “What about you? Find anything in those old books?”
“I focused on the history of the breed, thinking this could be genetics.” Lucian shrugged. “Our father, who he was—what he was—maybe we’re all destined to reach maturity before our time.” He snorted. “Not like dear old Dad stayed around long enough to tell us if we should expect anything out of the ordinary in this department.”
It was a despised and avoided subject for the three of them, having the Breeding Male as their father, their common link. But now the questions were there. Their father had been a paven of purest blood whose genetic code and structure had been altered hundreds of years ago by the Eternal Order. He and two others had been given the ability to impregnate at will and decide the sex of the balas, in order to repopulate one sex or the other in times of dire necessity. Alexander sniffed with derision. It had been hailed as a genius move by the Eternal Breed, but had soon become a nightmare as the Breeding Males grew more like uncontrolled animals, desperate to rut and feed. The Order had been forced to cage them, and brought them out only to service the veanas, the Pureblood females, who were forced by their families to lie with them.
A necessity for progress, for breed survival, Alexander recalled with a sneer. And yet the stigma of being their father’s sons had only made him and his brothers outcasts to their peers, watched specimens to observe and test by the Order, and reviled by their own mothers.
For Alexander, escaping his credenti that hot morning in August had been a truly blessed event.
Forcing his focus back on the present, Alexander continued to grill Lucian on the texts. “Have you found any evidence of genetic predisposition?”
“No past cases,” Lucian admitted. “Not as it relates to morphing, anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” Alexander said.
Leaning back in his chair, Nicholas asked, “What if it was something in the blood you consumed over the past week? The human woman you fed from.”
“Possible,” Alexander said thoughtfully.
“Any injuries in the past month?” Lucian asked.
“Nothing. Could it be environmental?”
Nicholas looked skeptical. “We’d all be affected.”
Evans walked in then, and the servant looked rattled, sheepish. He cleared his throat.
“What is it, Evans?” Lucian said.
“I apologize for the interruption, sir, but it’s the young woman ...”
A growl, guttural and fierce, erupted from Alexander and he shot across the room, nearly setting the floor on fire in his haste. “What is it?” he demanded, towering over the servant.
“Easy, Alex,” Nicholas warned, abandoning his post at the computer and heading toward his brother.
“Christ,” uttered Lucian. “Did you see that speed ...”
Alexander’s attention zeroed in on the servant. He fought to keep from shaking the answer out of the wide-eyed Impure. His fangs quivered, each word out of his mouth a terrifying warning, “What. Is. Wrong. With. Her.”
“She’s gone, sir,” Evans said breathlessly.
“Gone?” Alexander repeated. His gut flexed with worry and disbelief. “Gone where?”
The old Impure shook his head. “I don’t know. The window in the blue bedroom was open. I believe she used the fire escape.”
Shit! Alexander turned and sprinted toward the door with his new hyperspeed. She was in danger. They all were.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Nicholas called out.
Pausing at the threshold, Alexander shot back, “After her.”
“It’s nearly dawn.”
“I don’t care!” Alexander roared.
“You’ll care when that little prick finds and kills her because you’ve turned to dust!” Lucian barked after him.
It took supreme effort for Alexander to stay where he was and listen to reason. His head dropped forward and he uttered a pained “I need her.”
“One of us will go,” Lucian said begrudgingly. “After all, we can’t have her running around with an uncleaned mind, now, can we?”
“I’ll go,” Nicholas offered. “I lost the man. I won’t lose the woman.”
Still shaking, Evans swallowed tightly. “Pardon me, sir.”
“Not now, Evans,” Nicholas said, a little less contained, his gaze trained on his morphed, and very impassioned, brother.
“But, sir, the wall ...”
The man’s words petered out as he stared slack-jawed at something behind them. All three brothers turned to see what the problem was.
“Holy shit,” Lucian uttered. “They’ve found us.” Nostrils flared and breathing heavy, Alexander stared at the blank white wall beyond the stairs. It was moving, like easy waves on the sea, and before their eyes, a message was being carved into the plaster.
The Eternal Order requests the presence of the first precipitately morphed male, Alexander Roman. At the third hour past midnight, in the Hollow of Shadows.
As one brother must shun the light, the other two will shortly follow. Do not disregard our request.
8
Alexander stood in front of the wall, his hand moving over the inscription, his need to run after the human woman momentarily quelled.
Behind him, Lucian snarled. “Un-fucking-believable.”
Alexander glanced over his shoulder. “Is it?”
Lucian’s almond eyes flashed hatred. “I won’t believe it. No one has the power to premorph males. Not even the Eternal Order.”
“Assumption makes asses out of us all, Little Brother,” Nicholas said, seated behind his computer again, typing furiously.
“Then call me the biggest ass on the planet,” Lucian returned. “I don’t believe it.”
Nicholas glanced up, ready to say something, then shrugged and uttered a dry, “Too easy.”
“Up yours, Nicky.”
“Think clearly, Luca. What makes you think the Eternal Order lacks the power to premorph? If they can create an animal like the Breeding Male or remove the sex drives of Impures as though it were any normal feeding session, how hard is it to screw with morphing?”
“Not hard at all, it seems.” Alexander went over to the desk and stood behind his brother. “What are you looking for, Nicky?”