Blood Legacy: Heir to the Throne (36 page)

She was not, however, as frightened as Madelyn, who had the disadvantage of understanding exactly what was happening.

“Oh dear god, no,” Madelyn said, “this can’t be.”

Terrifying men began pouring through the opening, soldiers, all heavily armed and bearing a unique and intricate insignia. They had the similar, bluish tinged skin of Madelyn’s men, but a deeper blue. Their expressions were grim, as if some great wrong had been committed that must now be punished. Madelyn recognized the fearsome insignia immediately, as well as its significance. She went to her knees.

Ryan felt the familiar sensation, but when the creature came through the opening, she had no way of preparing for the crushing weight of its power. Ryan could barely lift her head, so great was the force of the presence. The creature appeared to be a woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, intensely beautiful but with a reptilian coldness about her that dropped the temperature in the room. She wore an elaborate headdress and robes both foreign and familiar to Ryan. The woman was extremely tall, but it was not her physical presence that was the most frightening. Ryan shivered uncontrollably, uncertain if it was because of the cold or her terror. The woman flowed into the room, surrounded by her escort, and she focused her attention with laser-like precision on Madelyn. Madelyn stood, resignation on her face.

“Your Majesty, I could not have known…”

The woman approached Madelyn, her fury evident. When she spoke, it was in an ancient voice, one that Ryan knew well. Although the language should have been unintelligible, Ryan understood her words clearly.

“There was a reason I put this world off limits, Madelyn.”

Madelyn swallowed as the woman put her hand about her throat and leaned close.

“It is where I left my son,” she said with the faintest hint of sibilance on the final word.

The woman paused, and for the first time, glanced over at the girl on the floor. She turned back to Madelyn, then said with significance.

“And my grandchild.”

Ryan closed her eyes just in time to avoid the spray of blood that engulfed the entire room. She could not see what happened, nor did she want to. She kept her eyes tightly closed, still shivering uncontrollably. The shivering was taking what remaining strength she had, and she could feel herself again begin to slip into blackness. She was lifted, very gently, upward.

“Open your eyes, little one.”

The words were whispered, surprisingly tender, from the terrifying creature holding her. She looked up into the beautiful woman’s face who was looking down at her, assessing her injuries. It was evident she was not pleased with what she saw, but her anger was not directed at Ryan. Ryan was genuinely frightened of the creature, but this seemed only to amuse the woman who forcibly soothed her. Ryan felt the pressure like a powerful sedative and the tension drained from her body.

The woman stood upright without effort, cradling Ryan like a child. She shot a scathing glance to her chief soldier.

“Fix this,” she paused, her disgust obvious, “this mess.”

And with that, she strode through the rip in the space-time continuum, carrying her grandchild with her.

CHAPTER 33

RYAN WAS IN A TRANCE, half asleep, half dead. The rhythmic rocking motion of being carried added to her trance-like state, and she was only vaguely aware of her surroundings.

It was probably a good thing because what little she could see out of her peripheral vision was hideous. Scaly, clawed, tentacled creatures writhed in the shadows. Great fanged monsters snaked outward, then snapped back into their dark alcoves. The ground beneath her slithered in constant motion. When she turned to focus on something specific, however, reality shifted and all she could see were sterile walls that shimmered, then blurred.

Ryan closed her eyes for a moment, or what could have been many moments, or perhaps even a year. Their motion finally stopped, and Ryan felt the woman sit down, still cradling her. She opened her eyes.

They were in the blood-red world, although in this manifestation, it was considerably smaller. They sat upon a great throne that seemed to wrap itself about the two of them, enveloping them in a cocoon-like embrace. Ryan gazed about her in wonder. The room appeared to be alive, as if they were inside some great creature. Portions of it seemed to writhe and pulsate, more solid parts were covered with the intricate hieroglyphics.

“What is this place?” Ryan asked.

“You don’t know?”

Ryan shook her head. “I thought I did, but apparently not.”

“And where did you think it was?”

Ryan stared out into the darkness. “I thought it was the edge of death.”

The woman laughed. “Well, for most it is.” She glanced about the room. “This is my inner sanctuary.”

Ryan felt a shiver of fear as the woman tightened her grip. She was stunningly beautiful, but her mannerisms were odd, almost animal-like. She would occasionally sniff the air, like some great beast picking up on signs and cues to which Ryan was oblivious. She even leaned down to sniff Ryan, like a lioness verifying its offspring. She moved with a reptilian grace, as if she had far more bones in her limbs than normal. She stroked Ryan’s hair, but there was a predatory, possessive aspect to the gesture. Ryan knew whatever alien creature she was facing was not even close to being human, and just hoped it was not a species that ate their young.

The woman read her mind. “Actually, we do quite regularly. But I did not come across light years to eat you, my dear.”

“Then why did you come?” Ryan asked carefully.

The woman was pleased by her boldness. “Let me show you,” she said simply.

She leaned down, placing her lips on Ryan’s throat. Ryan’s skin split like tissue paper beneath her teeth, and Ryan shifted in pain. In her weakened condition, if the woman took even more than a single draw of her blood, Ryan was certain she would die. She was also certain she did not care, because she had never felt anything so extraordinary as the instant union with this creature.

The woman took only a single drink, leaning back with a look of intense pleasure. “Let us hope that at least one of us possesses some sort of discipline, otherwise my journey will have been in vain.”

Ryan shifted once more. She was not certain she had any discipline at the moment. Fortunately, the creature holding her did.

“Here,” the woman said, touching her fingers to Ryan’s lips. Ryan grabbed her wrist, stopping the motion.

“That will kill me,” Ryan said.

Ryan knew the woman was so immeasurably strong the Ryan was not restraining her in any way, but the woman did not force her.

“It might,” she said, amused, “but I don’t think so.”

Ryan released the wrist, and the woman touched her finger to Ryan’s sharp teeth. A tiny drop of blood appeared on the fingertip and the woman touched it to Ryan’s lips.

Ryan’s vision exploded, and had her consciousness not continued unabated, she would have surmised her head had exploded as well. Pictures, images, experiences all began to flood her senses. Instantly she saw and understood an extraordinary history.

The woman’s name was Ravlen and Ryan’s mind staggered to comprehend how old she was. The time scale by which she existed was foreign to Ryan, so it was impossible to know her exact age, but Ryan understood Ravlen was at least a hundred thousand of her years. As if that were not terrifying enough, Ryan grasped that this woman was far more than just the leader of her species. This creature was the undisputed ruler of an empire that stretched across the cosmos. Ravlen’s power and control did not span mere planets, but entire galaxies.

Ravlen’s history began to unfold before Ryan, rushing by with blinding speed. Ryan began to perceive Ravlen commanded an unstoppable predatory species, one that moved across worlds, subjugating, assimilating, or destroying everything in its path. It was a violent and powerful race, one without equal and possessing very little conscience, at least in terms of human understanding. It consumed, it absorbed, it obliterated.

The species was capable of extraordinary methods of reproduction, some sexual, some asexual, some so strangely foreign Ryan had no concept of. It appeared Ravlen’s species was capable of exchanging genetic material with almost any other species, the results of which ranged from the monstrous to the sublime. The subordinate species had no say in the matter, experimented upon if Ravlen’s species so chose. The results of that union might determine whether a world would survive, be enslaved, or be annihilated.

Ryan struggled to make sense of the images, shifting uncomfortably in the woman’s embrace. “And so you came to earth.”

The woman smiled and Ryan realized she had Victor’s perfect smile. Her smile. Her son’s smile.

“Yes,” Ravlen said with pleasure. “Oh, make no mistake. We had no hopes for such a small, backward planet. We thought to strip-mine it for raw materials.”

“But something changed.”

Ravlen again smiled. “I became quite intrigued by these fragile, bipedal, carbon-based life forms that were superficially similar to our own species. Specifically, I became intrigued by your grandfather.”

The sibilance of the “s” in that semi-alliterative sentence distracted Ryan, but only for a moment. Ravlen’s Memories flashed through Ryan’s mind like a blinding light. Two images, separate until this moment, linked and became one. She saw the young Roman boy whose family was slaughtered by barbarians. She saw him meet Ravlen for the first time as a youth, then again as a man. She saw his actions, brave and strong, as he fought for decades to keep Briton from the Saxons. She saw him become a legend, and then a king. And Ryan saw that although he achieved almost everything in his life, the one thing he desired most eluded him.

“Ambrosius Aurelianus,” Ravlen said, reliving the memories herself. “He was magnificent.”

Ryan sorted through the Memories, both those of Ravlen and those of her grandfather. She felt a profound sadness and was uncertain if the emotion belonged to her or the man in her mind. “He loved you very much,” she said quietly. She looked up at Ravlen, the creature she was just beginning to grasp was her grandmother. “Why didn’t you Change him?”

Ravlen gazed down at the girl she held in her arms. Her tone was casual, noncommittal. “Several reasons. Our initial scouting parties ‘explored’ the possibility of reproduction with the human species. The results were disastrous.”

Ryan had a flash of the hideous results, and blanked the memory from her mind as Ravlen continued.

“Assimilation was also explored. Absorption, or what you refer to as ‘the Change,’ was just as catastrophic. No one initially survived the transition.”

Ryan again had a vision of the failed experiments, the pain and suffering of the chosen humans vividly clear. The attempts, both at reproduction and assimilation, had been horrific.

Ravlen’s gruesome recount was still entirely conversational. “And so we thought to mine the planet, using the human species as slave labor.”

“But then you met my grandfather,” Ryan said slowly.

“Hmm, yes,” Ravlen replied, enjoying the memory. “As I said he was magnificent. I think part of the attraction was the dominance of the human male, a very unusual occurrence. In the vast majority of species we encounter, the entity that bears young prevails.”

This surprised Ryan only for a moment because she had the flash of insight from Ravlen’s immense bank of knowledge. There seemed to be a pivotal moment in the development of any species in which the offspring-bearing entity acquired the ability to consciously control fertilization. Although the full effects might take decades or even centuries to unfold, at some point it became a zero sum game for the non-bearer. Without the option of forced reproduction, an organism’s options for passing on genetic material became limited.

“In your species,” Ryan said, searching the Memories, “the female is rare, but far stronger. And extremely dominant.”

“Yes,” Ravlen said, “although the human definition of female is not entirely applicable.”

“The females bear young?” Ryan asked, still trying to understand.

“Yes,” Ravlen said, “the females alone bear young. But we are capable of multiple methods of passing genetic material, not all requiring a male. And we give birth in multiple ways, not always bearing live young. So ‘female’ is not entirely an apt description.”

Ravlen was thoughtful. “As I mentioned, we also occasionally eat our offspring, and generally kill our mates once we are finished with them.”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably. What Ravlen was describing reminded her of the black widow spider, or other, equally unsavory creatures on her planet.