“But it was the sixteen-hundreds, right? I can imagine something like that would’ve taken a lot of courage. Maybe it wasn’t a love thing, but a fear thing.”
“You conquer fear if you’re in love, Zara; if the love is true.”
Zara nodded.
“You’re afraid that Arwen does not or will not return your affections, correct?” Cassia asked her.
“Yes.”
“But here you are, pushing that fear out of your mind, helping me achieve my goals of getting Iro back and no longer hiding in the shadows when we should be ruling the world. You’re undoubtedly even a little afraid of me, no? By now, you know I have no issue killing anyone, vampire or human.”
“Yes,” Zara confirmed.
“And you know that if you weren’t loyal, which I know you are, that I would have to do something about that.” She poked her in the nose and smiled at her. “But that won’t be an issue for you and me, Zara, because we’ll be honest with one another. We both have common interests: we both want the ones we love. Nothing else matters.”
Zara nodded again.
“Now, I told you before that I wanted to tell you everything. Before I do, I need to know that I can trust you, Zara. Are you in this with me? Really in this? You’ll see it to the end with me? I’ll have Iro. You’ll have Arwen. You can run off with her and happily never work another day in your lives; make love on the most beautiful private beaches in the world; live on a massive estate with people willing to serve you in any way that you wish. I’ll see to it.”
“I want that,” Zara replied.
“Excellent,” Cassia stated and climbed on top of Zara, straddling her hips. “Have you given any thought to how life began, darling?”
“Human life? You mean evolution?”
Cassia just laughed and squeezed Zara’s breasts. They weren’t Iro’s small and firm breasts that fit perfectly in her hands, but they would do.
“Humans and your binary views on things… Everyone seems to think that it’s either scienceorreligion; that one has it right, and the other is wrong. That’s not true, and it’s a silly way of looking at things, Zara. It can be both. Or, it could be neither, I suppose.”
“Okay?”
“You can have humans made by an all-knowing deity and have them evolving as well.”
“I don’t–”
“Have you read your Bible, Zara?”
“Not recently?” Zara asked more than said.
“Well, I’m sure you know your Adam and Eve, at least.”
“Yes. Why?”
Cassia held out her hand and said, “Hello, dear Zara. I’m Eve.”
When Zara’s eyes went wide, Cassia laughed. She had no idea what possessed her to tell this woman her most well-kept secret. She’d never told Iro because it hadn’t mattered. Cassia had lived for millennia by the time she’d met Iro, and she had changed her name and her history so many times that there didn’t seem to be a point in confessing that she was the one they talked about being tempted by a serpent and ruining her home, Eden, for everyone else.
“You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not Eve from the Bible.”
“Well, I’m Eve, even thoughlater, a bunch of men got together andwrotethe Bible. Deciding I was evil, they made upa whole story to blame me. Men…” She rolled her eyes. “Would you like the real story?”
“I…”
“Great. Now, bear with me here; I’ve never actually told anyone this. Oh, this is exciting!” Cassia clapped a few times. “The story isnotwhat the Bible tells you. The first thing I remember is waking up, and it was all very confusing. I was naked, on the ground in the dirt, and there was a boy next to me. We were what we now call teenagers already – not children, but not yet adults, either. We woke upnotin a garden paradise, like the story says. It was a harsh jungle where animals tried to huntus, and we had to learn how to hunttheminstead. I remember noticing right away that he looked different from me, and he seemed to enjoy howIlooked. One night, he came upon me, wanting something I didn’t want to provide. I fought him off me and ran. You have to remember, we had no voices at first; those came later. But we were hungry, and we had to hunt and forage to survive. When we could finally talk, he found me, and we knew we needed each other to make it out there. We had no idea where we were,whowe were, what we were supposed to be doing; nothing. We only knew that when we didn’t eat, we got weak and sick, and when we didn’t drink, the same. One day, years later, we ran out of food. There were no more animals to kill, very few plants that didn’t make us sick when we tried to eat them, and the boy you know as Adam found a snake in a tree. We had never seen a snake before, but something told me that we shouldn’t touch it. I can’t explain it. Maybe it was your God or something, but there was a voice inside my head saying no, and I was not tempted, Zara.” Cassia took a deep breath. “I did not touch the snake. Adam did. And when he did – when he killed it – immediately he became a snake himself. He took on the characteristics of the beast. I ran. He caught up to me, and he drank my blood. He feasted on me as any vampire would, and hemade me drink his blood after, as if he knew something I didn’t know. Maybe he did; maybe another voice told him something different than the one in my head.”
