Many millions of years ago, back when the earth was young, the planet's atmosphere was hot and harsh and hostile.  Then one day during a raging thunderstorm, a flash of lightning struck lava rock.  Bam, a reaction is catalyzed between nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and the heat present in the atmosphere.  The combination of organic molecules creates a single celled life form.

 Evolution makes a shift from unicellular life, jump to multicellular life, jump to life above water, jump to reptiles then eventually mammals.  This is the natural scale of evolution.  Around the year one thousand BCE, a group of Phoenician scholars inalterably changed Mother Nature's plan for progress.  They began a secret society to promote the advancement of a race of superior humans. 

Thus the familiars were created.  While the selective breeding began as a peaceful endeavor the plans of the familiars changed, and shifted, became darker in purpose.  Then on the cold crisp dawning of December 21st, 1959 a boy child was born of familiar parents, a child who would once again irrevocably change the course of human events.  Were men meant to play with such raw forces?  I was that boy once, the one who stuck my finger in the dam and plugged the natural flow of the tides.  Now as I watch all of my careful plans crumble before my eyes I wonder if this is nature's way of setting things right again.

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My lover maneuvers me slowly too my feet, and moves his body instinctually to shield mine.  All around us familiars begin to stand, coming out of the trances that they'd been faking.  Sig Sauer 45, my brain classified the weapon automatically and the gun struck me as oddly anachronistic surrounded by daggers and ceremonial robes.  "Move your feet, both of you, we're going for a little walk."  She motions us towards the doorway with the gun.  "Uh, uh, don't get too close now, you animals move too fast for my tastes."

His arms are strong and substantial as he guides me down the stone steps, supporting me.  Pounding hard and fast, the frantic beating of my own heart almost overwhelms my transgenic hearing.  Three steps down, forty-four paces down the hall, a cramp shoots down my left leg, from blood loss or maybe the weak beginnings of a seizure, it causes my foot to snag in a crevice in the floor.  Without stopping he lifts me into his arms and carries me the other sixty-seven paces to a little alcove off the main chamber.

"Over there, on the bed, set her down.  Now stand up and turn around, slowly.  Hands above your head, fingers locked behind your neck.  Good.  Now I hate to do this.  Not because you filth don't deserve to die, no I have no such illusions.  But because I believe in always making it a fair fight, even if it is an animal that I'm killing.  Unfortunately neither of us has that luxury tonight.  You see, while the council was willing to go along with my little scheme in postponing the ritual.  Let me pass around bowls of wine instead of the hallucinogen, even at the cost of the three brothers whom you killed while they sat back and did nothing.  Their patience has a limit.  By our laws the ritual must be completed before the dawn of tomorrow."

"What does that have to do with the two of us?  Shouldn't you be out there wreaking murder and mayhem with the rest of your brothers and sisters?"  Loathing fills me for what I am doing, trying to save my own skin.  Honor and instinct demand that I be out there fighting and dying beside my people.

"You are the chosen ones.  As long as the two of you live, so does the cure.  I'm afraid I have no options in your death.  I know my own skills, but even I would not chance the ascension of my people on my ability to kill the two of you in proper combat.  Now please don't waste my time by trying to tell me I have the wrong transgenics.  Her arms are covered in the runes where you held her earlier.  You have my apologies, this is not a warrior's death."

Alec stands steadfastly before me, shielding me.  We both know that it's a useless gesture.  She has wisely chosen to stand a good distance away from us.  At that range there's a good chance that the bullet will go through both of us, and even if it doesn't my energies are too depleted to even consider engaging her in combat.

One click to adjust the clip, a second to lock the hammer.  Her left hand steadies the gun's base as her right index finger tightens on the trigger.

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She lies as still as death on the dais, her dark hair and blood red dress stand out like a bruise on her blanched skin.  Only she could lie undisturbed while a battle for possession of the earth rages on around her.  Once we'd been lovers, and she'd given me the most powerful gift of my life.  Detachment, not to care when I aided in the murder of my mentor and friend, she had offered me power for a price.  If you have to ask the price you don't want to know.  Even bloodied and bruised she retains a spectacular raven beauty.  Slipping unheeded across the chamber, my body is drawn magnetically towards her.  At any moment the fall of dagger or misfired bullet could end me, but I make it to her side without a mark.

Sliding my body up the surface of stone I come to rest where her sister had lain only minutes ago.  I'd betrayed her sister, given her and her lover to Charlotte.  But she was mine now.  My fingers brushed across my own cheek to touch the still healing tracks which her nails had laid on my skin.  "I'm sorry Lela, you've given me all that you promised and more.  I know you saw things turning out differently for yourself, but if you refused to be my queen I had to find another.  You know with all your planning you never once thought this would happen.  Who's damn stupid now?  You should have guessed, you should have known, because you know what?  You made me you bitch."  The last part is whispered in her hair.  I feel a pang of regret that she probably didn't even hear me.  She shows as much life as a corpse lying there.  A small pang of regret fills me as I look at her stillness, but she'd taught me better than that.

Leaning over her body I pressed a last kiss to her cheek.  My fingers reaching out to caress her slender neck, one hand cupping her chin, the other bracing the back of her neck, one jerk and it would be over.  A small flutter of breath touched the back of my neck and ruffled my hair.  I had a momentary impression of the pressure of her arms wrapping around me, before a sharp shooting pain seared through my back and stomach.  She had a really lovely voice, husky and darkly sexy.  Now it rasped thinly at my ear.

"Remember lover, always draw blood."