Coveted by the Infinite

Prologue

The ocean is black and shimmering, an unending writhing mass of bottomless water that makes Alistair think of oily snakes. He shivers, feeling the cold biting through his jacket and made worse by the damned English damp.

The smell of rot overlays the scent of brine in the air, and there is some substance under his feet that he doesn’t want to examine too closely. Alistair takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The ocean has always scared the piss out of him. Who knew how many men had died down there? And he could become one of them. Immortality is no good against the ocean. How long would it take before he died? Before some sea monster ate a necessary part of him and ended his miserable existence?

You came, Leander says. Alistair whirls around, annoyed at being taken by surprise, but relieved to be distracted from his morbid thoughts. He smiles, attempting to hide how he really feels.

Of course I did, and he has the unhappy pleasure of watching Leander nod, a point struck. An expectation fulfilled. He would call, Alistair would come. Like a dog, really.

Cassandra is better now, Leander says.

Alistair sighs and leans back, resting his weight along a wooden pillar. Who is Leander trying to convince? Tell me about it, he says flatly. Leander looks at him as though he’s been slapped, perhaps not expecting Alistair to be so upset about it still.

Have you given up on her, then? Leander asks, trying to look Alistair in the eyes.

Alistair watches his shoe scuff the slimy, wet wooden dock under his feet. He has to speak up and he’ll be damned if he does it while staring at the ground. Leander’s eyes are squinted against the wind, his brows drawn low. I fear that Stephen was right. She is beyond hope.

Cassandra is my sister. Your love. For decades. Leander’s response is so quick Alistair wonders if it’s prepared, if Leander had suspected that he’d hit a breaking point.

Alistair laughs, but the sound chokes in his throat. And so that means she will be ‘better’ forever? For centuries? What sort of eternal hell do you envision for us?

You won’t go, then? He crosses his arms.

No. I didn’t say…Dammit, Lee. I want to talk to you about this. She is our responsibility. I’m not trying to get out of it—

The hell you aren’t, Leander growls.

Alistair swallows, has to do it again before he can speak. Good heavens, is he actually so revolted and saddened that he can’t get the words out? How can he make him understand that Cassandra is a monster? And always will be. He fears it is impossible. That Leander will never accept it. But he must try.

The children. I know it shouldn’t make a difference. I know I’m a killer just like she is and of course I like a virgin or three, who doesn’t, but…doesn’t everyone have a line? A small something that they keep in reserve, sacred almost, like the last flicker of a candle in the dark?

How poetic. Leander’s tone is biting.

The insult is petty and inconsequential. Alistair lets it go. That’s how it is for me, then. My last bit of light is children…and what she did…. Even now he feels the bile rise in his throat.

I know, Leander says, softly. His eyes are dark, his shoulders hunched. Is he miserable? Alistair really fucking hopes so.

But that doesn’t mean— Leander starts.

"Fuck you. You weren’t there. You don’t know. I’m the one who had to drag her away. I’m the one who had to finish what she started and burn the building down. I cannot do it again. I will not. And if you were really my friend, my brother, you wouldn’t want me to. You’d show me a hint of the care you show for her."

She’s weaker than the both of us, Leander protests. As if it makes a difference. As if it were true.

I don’t buy it anymore. That’s crap and you know it. She’s strong enough to kill. To scheme and to plot. She’s only weak when it suits her. When she feels like one of us is slipping away from her.

And so what do you want to do? Leander demands.

I don’t know.

Do you want her dead? Do you want me to kill her?

A pause. This is the moment. I wouldn’t make you do it alone.

The look on Leander’s face is tortured. Stunned.

"I didn’t think you would want that," Leander says, finally.

Alistair laughs bitterly. So that’s why you mentioned it? Because you thought it was an offer I wouldn’t take you up on? Ever the manipulator. Even now.

It’s not manipulation. We knew it would be difficult, that there would be times when we might regret making this decision…but I never thought you’d contemplate killing her.

Don’t put words into my mouth. I don’t know what I want. But I don’t know how much more of it I can take. And I think of Stephen, turning his back on us, leaving to start over again, and I wonder if he was right. Alistair laughs again, another choked sound. Can you imagine? After all this, that twat being the one who’s right?

Leander’s eyes flash, and he grabs Alistair’s arm. "He isn’t and you know it. And that’s why we’re here. I’ve come up with a plan," he says, and gestures to the sea.

Unless it’s drowning, I have no idea what you’re getting at.

A ship. I bought one. We will go to a new land. Find somewhere to begin again.

Alistair feels his mouth open in shock. Are you mad? We would have to go to the other side of the bloody world! We would never come back here. We would be cut off.

No. Trust me. We will be fine. We will have a new paradise. There are islands still. Near the ones Captain Cook found. With idyllic weather and land for miles. We can bring people with us, build our own cities. Hell, we can be gods if we want to. And the sea air, the fresh start, it will be good for all of us. But especially for her.

Alistair’s chest is tight. He feels like he’s being strangled. "I can’t do it. I don’t want to go with you. I don’t want to live on an island for years because of her. I hate the fucking ocean." He’s quite certain he hears his voice wobble at the end.

Leander blinks. Surprised, perhaps, at being told ‘no’ by the one person he counted on more than any other. His hand slides off Alistair’s sleeve, and he takes a step back. A gust of wind whips past them, lifting Leander’s dark hair, as if the very elements themselves are urging him to a new world. "I’m going. She’s going. Several families are coming too. You don’t even know where Stephen is now. You could look for years and not find another of our kind."

As if I care about anyone else besides you and Cass.

Exactly. That’s how it is. How it always has been and will be. The three of us. Think of it as an adventure. An opportunity. And I promise, we can make sure there are no children. In fact, she’ll be easier to control, he says.

Alistair gives him a bleak look. How could he guarantee that? Children are the natural result of men and women living together. They would go, find somewhere new, and there would be people, and they would all need to eat. She would eat.

And she would play.

And Alistair would be the one to clean up her mess while Leander went off and did something important, probably somewhere else. Leander just doesn’t understand the toll Cassandra takes on Alistair. The accumulation of exposure. Alistair fears for his sanity. When he opens and closes the squeaky upstairs window, it sounds like a screaming child. When he closes his eyes at night, the first thing he sees is a splash of red. He knows himself for a monster, and yet she is other. Cassandra is worse. A darkness that corrupts and slaughters. And his best friend wants them all to get on a boat and sail to the edge of the fucking world and recommit to each other for all of eternity? Fuck that. He wants to say it. Why isn’t he saying it?

I don’t know. I have to think about it.

Leander exhales, nodding unhappily. Does he get it now? Does he understand that Alistair is genuinely uncertain of whether or not he’ll go? You won’t stay here, Alley. You know you’ll go with us. We are your family. Go home and pack your things. Settle your affairs. We’re going.

Alistair blinks, the sea air making his eyes sting. This is a moment he’ll remember, a small voice in his head tells him. This is a defining moment of his life. Leander doesn’t really care about Alistair. How can you be so certain I’ll go with you? he asks, desperation in every word. "I don’t know what I’m going to do. Why are you so sure? How?"

And if Leander hears Alistair’s anguish, he doesn’t show it. Hell, maybe he doesn’t even care. He claps a hand on Alistair’s shoulder and smiles, a baring of white teeth. Because you’re loyal, Alley. You’re our hero, our man. We can’t do this without you. We’re family. The three of us.

Alistair wants to punch his oldest friend in his smug face, wants to weep and beg him to not do this to them. To him. But he won’t. Leander is right. He’ll go. Of course he will. His deal is made. There is no out, no future beyond Cassandra and Leander and whatever lies at the end of the world. He’ll go.

Even if he hates them all for it.

1

I jerk awake, Alistair’s memory so vivid in my mind I can still hear the screeching of seagulls overhead. His history with Leander and Cassandra is complex, I knew that, but somehow that snippet of memory makes me even more worried that I’m making a mistake by coming back to the island.

Alistair has been trying to escape the Marchants for hundreds of years. And yet he went to the island. Even when he knew it was bad for his sanity. The similarities are tritely obvious.

And it’s rather ridiculous really, that the plane hasn’t even landed and I’m pretty sure I’m making a mistake of epic proportions. The sort of mistake that one feels they should be able to undo. Go back to a moment just before the choice is made and choose a different course. But that only happens in science fiction shows.

My decision was to go home. Back to the island I’d grown up on. The Infinite (glorified vampires, really) rule us humans and keep us cut off from the rest of the world. They bleed us, kill us, fuck us (although they try not to talk about that too much) and keep us as slaves.

I’d gotten away from that world, taken to New York by their leader, Leander Marchant, to start a new life. He has the hots for me. And I’ve always been in love with him. It’s the sort of thing that I know instinctively, like turning right at the fork on the top of the hill because that’s the way home.

He’s my right-hand turn.

Probably because he saved me when I was a child. I should have asked my therapist, Dr. Brown, about it when I had the chance. I guess the question would have been something like, ‘how much does it mess a kid up to have a hot immortal guy save you at a formative age?’

I don’t think he’d answer. Dr. Brown didn’t like it when I went off topic. His questions were paramount and had only ever had one purpose: to get me to remember what had happened on the island. Why I had scars on my arms and had jumped out of a window in the first place. He’d assumed I was suicidal. It was a reasonable conclusion for someone who didn’t know about the Infinite and compulsion.

Now I know the truth. About why I had the scars, why I’d had