Mack (King #4)(26)
I shifted in my chair so she wouldn’t notice my arousal. “I had to hand it to my brother; his sheer will to get back to Mia was a force unlike any other. Though it took him a few centuries, he learned how to materialize for short instances. From there, he began tracking down people—shamans, witches, Seers, anyone with gifts who could help him extend, control and manipulate the curtain that separated him from the world of the living. He got so good at it that no one knew he was dead. He amassed a huge fortune and built a powerful network of very dangerous allies; he could go anywhere he wanted with the blink of an eye. But when he finally found a way to bring me back into this world, he gave up the opportunity for himself.”
“So he could’ve brought himself back to life but didn’t.”
“Yes. He chose me over his own needs. He said that without me by his side, he would never be able to set his life right again.”
“I’m still unclear about how one comes back from the dead and gets a new body.”
I shrugged. “It took him a few thousand years to do it—he found a man who knew how to use a particular necklace he obtained many, many years prior from Cleopatra.”
“How’d he get a necklace from her?”
“He f*cked her, gained her trust, and once he got his hands on it, he killed her.”
Theodora’s face twisted with disgust. “Remind me to stay far the hell away from your brother.”
“Don’t feel bad for her. Cleopatra was ruthless and powerful. She had plenty of blood on her own hands.”
“I always thought she died from a snake bite.”
“A myth. She died from having her body drained of blood—something that my brother also wanted since it fetched a high price on the black market.”
Theodora frowned.
“Cleopatra was no ordinary woman,” I explained. “She was so powerful that ingesting just a few drops of blood could make a person look ten years younger.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have helped my brother run his business, on and off, for centuries.” Ironic, I know. I had been dead set against ever working with him, but some things were simply meant to be.
“What does he do?” she asked.
“He’s a power broker of sorts, but the occult version.”
“I’m definitely staying away from him.”
A wise choice. “Well, the issue is that he and I are linked. Our souls connected as twin brothers.”
I could see the dots connecting inside Theodora’s mind.
“That’s why he refuses to let you die,” she whispered, clearly thinking aloud.
“Like I said, your modern definition of love pales in comparison to mine. Love, real love, when you cherish the soul of another above your own, whether it’s family, friend, or lover, that bond is difficult to sever. It’s why my brother never gave up trying to bring me back. When he failed after hundreds of attempts, he finally understood that my body was the key. Cleopatra’s ankh necklace couldn’t produce a new one, so he had to find a body for me.”
“I really don’t want to know how he did that because I’m guessing I wouldn’t like that story. But, he did choose nicely.” She supplied a weak smile.
I understood that Theodora was trying to make light, but the displaced soul, the young man who used to own this shell, had his life torn away. It was one more pebble on the heaping pile of guilt that comprised my existence.
“The necklace stopped me from aging past a certain point and kept me from dying from that day forward,” I added.
“Wow. That’s a very impressive necklace. Are you wearing it now?”
“No. King made sure it wasn’t easy to remove; I had to pay a very high price to have it taken off.” The Incan chalice I stole from my brother was intended to bring back Mia’s dead brother. Unfortunately, I needed something to barter with so I could get help finding Theodora. I also needed help removing that necklace—otherwise, my body would just keep coming back.
“So you said that you and I met a second time. Where? When?” she asked.
I could tell from the twinkle in her eyes she was expecting a romantic story of two lost souls searching for one another. But nothing could be further from the truth.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MACK
1512
We were savages. No question about it. My brother, King, was building his empire of power and honing his abilities to walk among the living while he searched for the Artifact—the stone he needed to break his own curse and get his life back. As for myself, I had been resurrected but was going out of my mind after wandering the earth as a tormented soul for more than two thousand years.
Nothing made sense to me except pain and killing. It was why, after I slaughtered his entire household of servants—thirty-three maids of all ages, the youngest sixteen, along with forty-nine guards—my brother had to do something. Not that he cared about my killing his staff. He was more concerned about my drawing the wrong type of attention.
“You need time to get this out of your system, Callias,” King said, pacing the length of his lavish study at his French villa in Marseille that overlooked the ocean. “Meanwhile, I will deal with the cleanup and take care of the local authorities.”