SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Forty
Duccio’s melancholy found its way deep into a bottle of red wine that night. He had been aloof the previous night when we returned from the Pantheon, but tonight he didn’t pull away when I came to sit beside him.
“Can’t you tell me what’s done this to you?” I whispered with a kiss to his cheek.
“They’re just memories,” he answered me with a sigh. “Happy memories are fleeting by nature, so we hold tight to them. But sad memories are like demons that refuse to release their grip on our minds. Just when I think I’ve overcome their pain and suffered long enough, they come flooding back. Tonight, it’s like half a century doesn’t stand between them and me.”
Though I understood his words, I grasped how I couldn’t know their implied severity. Time heals all wounds, doesn’t it?
Duccio sighed again, having heard my clichéd thought, and he kissed my cheek to return the gesture.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
“Why were you so affected last night in that building? Why did you take us to those ruins this morning?”
“It reminded me of another place my father built: our home above Lake Como. He modeled the front entry after the Pantheon. He made his version even more beautiful somehow. Father was here in Rome when they constructed the first version of the Pantheon. He was a young man, and his father had commissioned the temple for Rome.”
Duccio took a deep sip of his wine and closed his eyes.
“And so, when we ran into it by chance and saw it looming over us, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Father and our home. It’s why I took us to the Palatine Hill ruins this morning. It’s where he was born and lived as a boy. He told me about it a dozen times—showed me his memories of his life there. And walking through the grounds, I felt like he was with me again. I was unsure if I would have the courage to go there.”
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
Duccio knew what I meant—he’d seen Gabrielle’s tears in my mind when he spoke to me in Chastain’s dungeon. He’d felt her anguish when she confessed how Duccio had murdered their father, that he was the reason they’d hunted her and Maximillian all their time in France.
Duccio took more wine in response.
“Sempronius mons Palatinus. My father was the greatest of all living men,” he began. “He was the son of a Roman senator and a nobleman’s daughter—the youngest of four boys. He was lycan nearly from birth, younger than even one of his brothers, his mind opening when he was only weeks old.”
“His brothers were lycan? Isn’t that unusual? I thought we’re born to humans—that it happens at random.”
“Yes,” Duccio nodded, “very unusual. Most lycan have trouble producing offspring once our wolves are released. Father believed it has something to do with a male’s seed, how our wolf alters us when it extends our lives. I’ve bedded women thousands of times, both lycan and human, including my wife, and what few pregnancies ever started all ended by the second month.”
The statement shocked me. I’d never expected Duccio might sleep with women, that he was even capable of such a thing, or that he’d been married. Perhaps I only felt that way because I knew I couldn’t do the same.
Duccio heard my thoughts and placed his hand on my leg.
“She had I are no longer together. But yes,” he acknowledged, “I’m deeply attracted to both men and women. As I was saying, even fewer lycan give birth to children who also become lycan. So, Father’s parents were unusual and fortunate in their union.”
It was all too much for me to keep up with for a moment.
“But wait, how does that work? The children who remain human—they grow up and live with the secret of our existence?”
“In ancient times, they were loved and raised until they were of sufficient age, three or four years old, to determine they wouldn’t become lycan. They then separated the humans from their families as carefully as possible. An arranged adoption to a human family who’d receive money to ensure their care.”
“Wasn’t that a terrible thing to do? Their mothers gave up their children willingly?”
“Of course, it was painful, but there was little they could do. How would someone live among our kind who isn’t telepathic? Wouldn’t they be driven mad to see their parents never age while time ravaged their frail human bodies? Placing them with their own kind was much kinder—they might flourish with their own kind. In any event, it was far kinder than what lycan do to human offspring now.”
From Duccio’s mind, I saw a nightmare. A glimpse of a ceremony where lycan murdered their children. Their parents devoured the corpses in a grisly ritual that made my stomach clench with nausea.
“This is a different time, Esprit. Christianity brought with it the end of ancient ways throughout Europe. The lycan of today view humans as food, placed in the world by God to nourish us. Lycan regard giving birth to a human as a punishment from God for our sins. And so we’re expected to consume human children as penance to atone for our wickedness.”
I was aghast by Duccio’s words. When the Marquis de Archambault threatened to send Thérèse to the kitchens to be butchered, I never believed lycan would truly eat humans. But the scenes playing in Duccio’s mind left no room for misinterpretation. Even after he stopped the images, closing off his thoughts, the hideous ritual played again and again in my mind.
“Regardless of where you go in this world, the lycan there perform some version of separation of human children. In the far east, they drown and bury them in nameless graves. Across the western ocean, they’re made slaves. The southern Africans merely send their humans to another town or village.
“But religion bathes this continent with brutal violence, so we practice ritualistic slaughter. My father found such cruelty disgusting and intolerable. And as the world changed around him, he held to the ways of his ancient people, never allowing such rituals to occur within his borders. But it was more than that. Father disagreed with the notion that humans live in this world to feed us or even be subject to our whims. He believed lycan are meant to protect the innocent and helpless. We are their guardians, he insisted. It’s our place to destroy evildoers, not become them ourselves. And for his belief, Father was hated and feared.
“He left this continent nearly to my age and traveled the world, seeking to expand his knowledge and escape the changing world at home. And as Christianity grew over the centuries, so did his strength. When he returned from his travels, his mind hungry again for the world of his childhood, he found only a Christian world, both for lycan and humans alike. Bearing no resemblance to what his heart craved, he set out to rebuild it for himself.
“He took possession of a small region in northern Milan where he built a castle overlooking a vast lake surrounded by towering mountains. And there, in isolation, under the replicated dome of his beloved stone temple, he restored the logic and decency of his family.
“Many came to challenge Father over the centuries, determined to extinguish his light, and all died on account of that mistake. To them, he was a heretic—they called him the Devil of Milan. In the first centuries, they came compelled to rid the world of Father’s ‘evil’ ways. Then they came because they wanted the secret of his inestimable powers.”
“They never got his secrets,” I said, remembering what Duccio said about Gabrielle’s powers to Archambault and Chastain—that she must have stolen them from their father.
A momentary sparkle lit up Duccio’s weary eyes.
“Because there is no secret,” he replied. “Father might have carried his family’s ancient secrets for building, but every lycan power he possessed came to him over vast ages. He waited for them to arrive. He waited so long that, one day, his powers were all but meaningless to him. What difference did it make that he could destroy anyone, shatter their very bones into pieces with a simple thought? For centuries, no one would dare step foot on his land or molest the humans who lived there.”
Duccio went silent as if to ponder it all.
“You still haven’t told me why you did it,” I whispered. “But now I want to know how you did it. How could such a thing be done?”
“I did it for many reasons, Esprit. I did it out of anger. I did it because I was cast out and alone. I did it because a miserable vanity conned my mind. I did it because I’m a fool!”
I inhaled to ask three more questions, but Duccio raised his hand and shook his head.
“No. Every answer will lead you to more questions,” he said. “The only hope of satisfying yourself is to listen to the rest of the story. You’ll understand everything once I’ve said it all.”
I released a dissatisfied breath and reached to take his wine cup. Downing the contents in a large gulp, I handed it back to him once I’d refilled it.
“Go on, then,” I said.