Chapter 217 - Romulus et Remus

They were Romulus and Remus, and Pompeii was the she-wolf from which they suckled, their milk the blood of the brutal men who swarmed like fleas in her alleys and backstreets.

The murder of the beggar girl had a terrible effect on the magician. He hunted every night for weeks, scouring the city for evildoers, and dispatching them in the most violent of fashions. His cruelty was shocking to the boy, who until then had only known his new master to be a generous and soft-spoken man. Yes, he killed. He killed the wicked and depraved, the rapist and the murderer, but always before he had done it in an pragmatic manner, sending them to the underworld quickly, and with as little cruelty as possible.

Now he tormented them. He terrorized them, and he drew out their suffering as long as it was possible. Apollonius had considered himself the pitiless one—tainted by his years of brutal servitude to Laevinus—but the magician's sadism was shocking, even to him.

Take Junius Sissero, for example. They found him on the fifth night following the boy's transformation. The man was with his friend Camillus, again, and they were drunk, again, and having their way with a young slave boy in one of the forum's latrines. The boy couldn't have been more than ten or eleven years old, but they were having at him like he was a seasoned prostitute. He was begging them to finish it, blood running down the insides of his thighs, tears running down the contorted planes of his face. Gon tore out Camillus's throat with his fingers, then blinded Junius by jamming his thumbs into his eye sockets. It was dark, the forum sparsely occupied, most of the shops and booths closed down for the day. Nevertheless, Gon clamped a hand over Junius's mouth, holding him in his iron-like grip, so that he could not scream and attract any witnesses.

"Feed from Camillus," the magician said to him, dodging the blind man's wildly swinging limbs. "Junius here shall live, though he might wish otherwise when I am finished with him."

Apollonius fed from Camillus as the slave boy huddled against the wall, too terrified to look at them, arms crossed over his trembling head. Apollonius got down on his hands and knees and sucked the blood still dribbling from the man's ragged throat. It was distasteful to him, feeding in such a wretched place, but he was hungry. When he had drunk his fill, he rose, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He turned to address his maker, wondering what the magician planned to do with the senator.

He didn't have to wonder long.

"Finished?" Gon asked, grinning cruelly.

Apollonius nodded.

Gon glared down at Junius. The blind man's nostrils flared as the wind blew in and out of them.

"You will not force yourself upon any more children, Junius Sissero," he said, and then with his free hand he grasped the man's cock and balls, flaccid little organs that they were, and tore them from between his thighs.

Junius screamed, the sound muffled by the striga's palm. The man's face turned beet red and his sandals slithered to and fro on the bloody concrete floor.

"I should make you devour your own diseased prick, but I will show you some small measure of compassion tonight," Gon said, and then he flicked his hand and cast the senator's organs into the pit. The bloody flesh splashed into the trough below and was swept away to the sea.

He released the man, who collapsed at their feet, wheezing and fumbling between his thighs for anatomy that no longer resided there. Apollonius felt sorry for the senator, writhing on the floor of the latrine, blind, castrated, begging his attackers to put him out of his misery.

Gon lifted the slave boy into his arms and said, "Come, Paulo. Don't waste your pity on the likes of those two. There are others far more deserving of your sympathy."

Even the earth seemed to echo the magician's wrath. Twice in one week the ground shook violently, frightening the citizens of Pompeii. Tiles fell from the roofs of the buildings, killing one man and injuring several others. Statues fell and sidewalks cracked. The basilica of a prominent aedile collapsed when several of its columns shook free and toppled over into the street. Fortunately it was a holiday and no one was inside the building at the time.

The tremors were fierce but brief, and the people of Pompeii, long used to their city's perpetual quiverings, went on with their lives as if little of import had happened. A joke made the rounds that Venus, the patron of Pompeii, had caught her husband Vulcan cheating with the harlots down at the House of Psyche.

The magician had the beggar girl interred in the necropolis in a beautiful white sarcophagus. He seemed ashamed of his sentimentality, of the lavish expense of it, but he did it all the same. He also purchased the slave boy who had been raped in the latrine by Junius. He bought the boy from the city (he was a city slave assigned to clean the public latrines) and employed him in their household.

After freeing him, of course.

"You cannot save everyone, you know," Apollonius said to the magician one evening. "We already have too many servants."

Gon, sitting at his desk writing in his journal, smiled guilty at the boy. He put aside his quill, clasped his hands together, index fingers touching his chin. "I know, Paulo."

"We will have to build an addition to the villa just to house them all."

"You are probably right," he laughed. He looked at the sky through the compluvium, the rectangular opening of the atrium roof. It was a starry, cloudless night. "I think we'll have young Aetius tutored. He is a clever boy. When he's old enough, we'll send him to the academy. I'm certain he'll do well for himself with a proper education."

"You have it all planned out," Apollonius said.

"I have nothing but time," his master replied. He looked at the boy, serious now. "As do you, Paulo. The blood has made you a powerful immortal. You will live for millennia. Perhaps, like me, forever. I cannot be certain that you are an Eternal. It is too close to tell. But you are strong. You need not fear death. Not for a very, very long time. You should ponder what you'll do with a life as long as that."

"I shall do as you do, father," the boy said. "I shall give succor to the innocent, and feed upon the wicked. Is there anything better to do with these powers?"

The magician smiled proudly. "No, Paulo. There is nothing better than that."

The next day, they heard that Junius Sissero had killed himself. Blind, mutilated, the man had thrown himself upon his sword, an honorable death for an dishonorable man. They heard this from Herminia, the cook, who'd heard it at the market that morning.

The news displeased Apollonius, who was sorry the man's suffering had come to an end. Gon seemed shaken by the gossip, and he retreated to his chambers with a grim look upon his face.

Apollonius sought him out.

"You feel guilty," the boy said, shutting the magician's chamber door. "Why?"

"Because I was self-indulgent," his master answered, lying in his bed. "I felt anger and disgust for the man, so I made him suffer. But Paulo, do not think that men come to wickedness of their own choosing. Not always. Evil is a sickness. Most men cannot help that they are wicked. It is a condition they've contracted, like the pox. Look within your own heart, Paulo. There is viciousness there. I see it in you from time to time. In your eyes. In your actions. But that bloodlust is not of your own making. And it is not something you were born with, like your blue eyes or your curly blond hair. You contracted it from Laevinus, like a sickness. You were infected by Domitianus, and all the rest who treated you so brutally."

"Perhaps," Apollonius responded. "But I choose not to act on my darker impulses. Most people do."

"You choose because you know you have a choice," his master responded. "You choose to follow the good in you because I took you in, I nurtured you, showed you the nobler path. Not all men know they have a choice. Some have never been shown kindness. Most are simply products of their society, their cruel behavior supported by the culture in which they are reared. Do you think you'd be so kind if I had never killed your master? Imagine your life if I had never come across the man. If I did not choose to feed on him and his appalling associates."

"I would be dead by now, surely," Apollonius said softly, looking away. "I planned to assassinate Domitianus that night. Regardless of whether I'd failed or succeeded, Laevinus would have had me crucified."

"And your final act would have been a violent one."

"Justified."

"Justified, yes, but violent nonetheless."

"So what is your solution? Tell me your philosophy concerning these things."

"My philosophy is a simple one. When a dog goes mad, you kill it. You dispatch the cur as quickly and as mercifully as possible, but you rid the world of the beast. You do not torment it. You do not mutilate it and leave it squirming in agony, as I did to Junius Sissero. I have disgraced myself."

Apollonius went and sat beside his master. He took the magician's white hand and held it in his own. "We are only human, Gon," he said. "Even you."

His master smiled and nodded. "Yes. Even I."