Chapter 20
1612 Words
May 17, 2024 | The North Atlantic
The MS Sovereign was a massive, salt-stained freighter cutting through the black expanse of the Atlantic, bound for the Port of Liverpool. Far below the luxury decks of passenger liners, in the belly of the ship where the air tasted of diesel and rusted iron, Chloe Miller leaned against a stack of shipping containers.
Her internal clock was screaming. It had been exactly thirty-four hours since Cassius had pressed his bleeding wrist to her lips in the crypt. According to the logic of his ancient blood, she had exactly fourteen hours remaining before the supernatural hum in her veins faded, leaving her entirely, dangerously human once again.
"Thou art trembling," Cassius said. He was standing in the shadows of the cargo hold, the dim emergency lights catching the sharp line of his new jawline. He looked strikingly modern in his dark jeans and heavy t-shirt, yet his presence remained anachronistic—a king hiding in a cellar.
"It’s the blood," Chloe whispered, clutching her stomach. The cramps from her cycle were still there, but they were being masked by the sheer, electric vibration of the transition phase. "It feels like I’m made of glass, Cassius. Like I’m going to shatter if the ship hits a wave too hard."
"It is the withdrawal of the gift," he said softly, stepping closer. "Thy body has tasted the sun of my spirit, and now it must return to the moon of thy mortality. Fourteen hours, Chloe. Then the veil is lifted."
Their escape from the Massachusetts woods had been nothing short of a miracle—or a curse, depending on how one viewed the "glamour."
They had been cornered in a clearing just three miles from the gas station. Beatrice’s team had moved with surgical precision, the hum of their drones a low, persistent snarl in the air. Birch had been there, his silver-tipped crossbow leveled at Cassius’s heart, while Beatrice stood behind a reinforced tactical shield, her voice amplified by a megaphone.
"Chloe, step away! We have a perimeter! There is nowhere left to run!"
Chloe had felt the panic rising, a cold tide that threatened to drown her. But Cassius had merely looked at her, his eyes turning a deep, swirling violet that seemed to swallow the light.
"Close thy eyes," he had commanded.
Then, he had turned his gaze toward the line of soldiers. He didn't roar; he didn't attack. He simply reached out with his mind, weaving a "glamour"—an ancient, hypnotic suggestion that distorted the reality of everyone in his line of sight. To the soldiers, the clearing suddenly appeared empty. They saw only the swaying pines and the morning mist. Even Beatrice, with all her training and technological sensors, found her eyes sliding past the space where her sister stood.
It was a psychic fog, a "mind-bending" power that left Cassius drained and grey-faced, but it had bought them the minutes they needed to slip through the line and reach the coast.
Now, safely tucked into a "lie life" aboard a ship that didn't know they existed, the cost of that escape was weighing heavily on them both.
"She was so close," Chloe muttered, staring at her hands. "I could see her eyes, Cassius. She looked at me, and it was like she was looking through a window at something she hated. My own sister."
"She does not see a sister," Cassius said, his voice echoing in the hollow cargo hold. "She sees a ledger. A collection of cells and secrets to be harvested for her masters. She is a t****l to the 'Greater Good,' which is the most dangerous master of all."
"I'm leaving them all behind," Chloe said, the weight of the realization finally hitting her. "My mom, my dad... Sarah. To the rest of the world, Chloe Miller is a missing person. A possible victim. I’m a ghost now."
"We are both ghosts," Cassius replied. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper—the list Chloe had written for him. He smoothed it out against his thigh. "But ghosts do not bleed. Ghosts do not feel the hunger of the belly or the ache of the heart. We... we shall build a new fortress in the land of the mist."
The United Kingdom was a gamble. Cassius remembered it as a collection of warring kingdoms and damp stone keeps, but Chloe knew it as a place where they could truly vanish. They had used the remaining cash and a set of forged documents Cassius had "persuaded" a terrified dockworker to hand over to secure passage on the freighter.
By the time they docked in Liverpool, Chloe’s blood would be her own again. She wouldn't have the speed or the strength to jump out of windows. She wouldn't be able to hear the heartbeat of a man fifty feet away. She would just be a woman on the run with a man who was technically a corpse.
"You'll have to teach me," Chloe said, looking up at him. "How to live a lie. How to be someone else."
"It is simple," Cassius said, a sad smile touching his lips. "Thou must forget the truth of thy soul and speak only the lines the world expects. Thou art no longer a healer. I am no longer a lord. We are... travelers. Seekers of a quiet end."
Back in the Command Hub, the atmosphere was toxic.
Beatrice Miller slammed her fist onto the metal desk, the sound echoing like a gunshot. On the monitors, the thermal pings had vanished. The satellite tracking on the gold coin had gone dark the moment they hit the heavy lead-shielded cargo sectors of the wharf.
"How did they vanish?" Beatrice screamed at Birch. "I had them! They were right in the center of the grid!"
Birch wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his crossbow resting uselessly against the wall. "The men... they’re confused, Beatrice. They say they saw a fog. They say the target just... dissolved. The scanners didn't pick up a physical anomaly, but the cognitive feedback was off the charts."
"He used a glamour," Beatrice hissed, her teeth clenched. "An 800-year-old parlor trick, and my 'elite' team fell for it like children."
The door to the hub opened, and a man in a tailored charcoal suit stepped in. He didn't look like a hunter; he looked like a CEO. This was Director Thorne, Beatrice’s direct superior within the Brotherhood.
"The Council is displeased, Proctor Miller," Thorne said, his voice a chilling monotone. "The Carcassonne Asset is off the grid. And your sister is now a primary witness to our existence."
"I can find them," Beatrice said, her voice shaking with a rare flash of fear. "They’re heading for the coast. I’ve already alerted the port authorities."
"The port authorities are looking for a missing nurse and a vagrant," Vance said, stepping closer until he was inches from Beatrice’s face. "They are not looking for a High Proctor's failure. You have forty-eight hours to re-establish the trail, or we will assume the Carcassonne Asset—both of them—are compromised beyond recovery."
"Protocol 4?" Beatrice whispered.
"Protocol 4," Thorne confirmed. "Total erasure. If we can't have the blood, no one can."
Beatrice stood frozen as Vance left the room. She looked at her phone. There were sixteen missed calls from her mother. Twelve from her father. One from Sarah.
She picked up the phone and threw it against the wall, watching as the screen shattered into a web of silver cracks. She wasn't a lawyer. She wasn't a daughter. She was a failure in a suit, and the sister she had spent her life "protecting" was now the only target that mattered.
On the ship, the engine's vibration was a low, soothing hum. Chloe had managed to find a small crate of apples in the ship's galley, and she sat eating one, the crunch of the fruit the only sound in the dark.
She looked at Cassius, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed as if in prayer.
"Cassius?"
"Yes, Chloe?"
"When we get there... to England... do you think we can just be... us? Without the blood, without the hunters?"
Cassius opened his eyes. They were no longer violet; they were a deep, human brown, reflecting the dim light of the hold.
"I have lived many lives, Chloe Miller. I have been a knight, a husband, a monster, and a prisoner. But I have never been... just myself. Perhaps, in the land of thy ancestors, we shall find out who that is."
Chloe nodded, leaning her head against a cold steel beam. Fourteen hours left. Fourteen hours of magic before the long, hard reality of the lie began.
She touched the gold coin in her pocket. It was silent now, its energy spent. Or so she thought. As the ship tilted on a swell, a tiny, microscopic red light flickered deep within the ancient metal—a light that didn't belong to the 1300s.
Beatrice’s "legal contacts" hadn't just been lawyers. They were engineers. And the coin Cassius had carried for nine centuries had been modified the moment it entered the Brotherhood's orbit during his slumber.
The ship wasn't a sanctuary. It was a floating cage, and the signal was still screaming into the void.
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