Today.
He would come today.
Luke paced back and forth, his powerful legs striding the great distance of the marble hall and making it small. He was an impressive specimen, tall with a face that could have been carved by one of the great Greek sculptors. His eyes were wide and intelligent, his nose straight and well formed. If one was given to critique one might have said that he had a certain haughty look about his mouth, but few ever had the chance to criticize Luke and even fewer would have dared given the opportunity. In the tension of the moment, his handsome face was narrow with a nervous concentration. His long fingers fiddled with the middle button of his suit jacket as he paced back and forth. Everything had to be perfect. Everything had to be just so…
“GAURDS! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!”
A commotion at the front gates interrupted his meditation on perfection. There was a great deal of shouting and the occasional howl of pain, indicative of a brawl in progress. Luke hurried towards the altercation, his leonine frame moving with the restrained power that is always associated with men of strength no matter how gentle or relaxed they may be.
The sight that met him at the gates shocked him. His long awaited servant hung between two guards, blood sliding thickly down his face, dripping from his brow and nose. He was badly beaten, but rebellion continued to burn in his hazel flecked eyes. He’d given his captors a run for their money, Luke could see that instantly. As he took in the bruises and cuts the young man had sustained in his struggles, anger clouded his handsome features. When he spoke, his tone was clipped and curt. “This was not what I had in mind when I told you to make sure he came, Fallstaff.”
“Sorry sir,” the guard had the grace to look ashamed. “Things got out of hand.”
“I can see that,” Luke snapped impatiently. “Take him to the sitting room.”
The sitting room was not the sort of room that usually saw a great deal of blood. It was a monument to overstuffed furniture and velvet drapes, to an older, more genteel age. Blake was carried into it, every fiber in his body visibly twitching with the desire for escape. Luke watched him as he tried to free himself with the very last dregs of his strength and sighed inwardly. This was not the introduction he’d planned for the young man whose destiny eclipsed him. His heart felt as though it might break when the hazel eyes settled upon him with desperation written in their gaze.
“Let me go,” Blake croaked between bloodied lips. “Let me go home.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, young man.” Luke spoke firmly. There was little comfort to be offered, Blake was far from the place he’d known as home and he would remain so for the foreseeable future.
Blake did not like the answer. He began struggling in his captors’ arms once more, though he barely had the strength to do so. His determination to be free was as admirable as it was futile. Though he was barely conscious, it was clear he’d attempt to drag himself home if he had the chance.
Luke placed a calming hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Please Blake, I beg you, allow your wounds to be treated. You will only hurt yourself more by fighting.”
“What do you care,” Blake spat blood onto the carpet and looked at him balefully. Rage burned in the young man’s eyes, not merely the rage of recent indignities and pain, but the rage of centuries, rage the bearer neither understood nor knew how to control.
“I care a great deal as it happens,” Luke said gently. “But that is for a later conversation. Lay on the couch and let your wounds be attended to.”
Perhaps Blake had grown tired of fighting, or perhaps he’d simply reached the end of his strength. He slumped in the guards’ arms and allowed himself to be placed on the couch. The doctor had been called and was hovering in the background. He came forward only when he was sure that he would not be drawn into the violence of the situation. The guards stayed close by, ready to leap on the young man if he showed any further signs of aggression. When all was said and done several full grown men in their prime were stationed around the room for the benefit of the young man who was barely twenty and fading in and out of consciousness.
“I’m going to have to sedate him to stitch those cuts,” the doctor murmured under his breath.
When the needle drew near Blake jerked back to life and Luke was forced to press him gently back down onto silk pillows that were becoming increasingly bloodied under his body. “You are in good hands,” he reassured his captive patiently.
“Fuck off I am,” Blake grunted as consciousness slipped away from him once more. The physician moved quickly and sedated him fully with enough intravenous tranquilizer to take down a small tiger. Only then did Luke dismiss the guards. Whilst the doctor disinfected and stitched the wounds he remained with Blake and called for a towel and a bowl of clean water with which to clean the young man’s face. He’d been barely recognizable when he’d come in, but as Luke dabbed the blood and muck away, the old profile emerged strong and clear. The lines of Adam had been crossed and crossed again over the centuries, but Blake bore the same strong chin and brow that had marked his ancestors. A thrill of excitement rose in Luke’s belly as he gazed at the young man. Finally, the seventh son was home.
Though his speech was common, his appearance coarse at best, Blake was no ordinary young man. From birth his fate had been determined by his bloodline, a line that stretched unbroken back to Adam himself. For centuries the seventh son in each generation had been entrusted with a sacred duty not of the natural world and for centuries the sons of Adam had done their lineage proud.
Luke had trained many of the sons of Adam in his time, which was lengthy indeed. In the old days the sons had come willingly, presented themselves in shining armor and laid down their lives in his service. In the old days they had been awed by him. He had been known by many names, all of them honored. His likeness had been carved into walls and on statues. But the world was changing, and the house of Adam had changed with it. It had been many years since a seventh son had been born, too many years in fact. It was only through the machinations of fate and a particularly lax attitude to birth control that Blake had come into being and the young man’s upbringing had hardly been auspicious. His father had abandoned the woman impregnated with his seed almost before conception occurred. There were foster homes and records, so many records, each of them recounting another incident of violence, of theft, of public disturbance. There had been many appearances before judges and magistrates, many nights in cells, many bonds broken, sentences carried out. Though he was strong minded and able bodied, the young man lying insensible on the couch had been discarded by the society that had raised him. Luke would have liked to have intervened sooner, but the laws were clear. The seventh son was his when he reached the age of majority, not before. Prior to that he was subject to the fates and fortune both. Suffice to say, neither had been kind.
“He must be kept quiet,” the doctor said when he was done. “Or he will tear those stitches and we will be back at square one.”
With a nod to the physician, Luke tenderly swept Blake’s insensible figure up in his arms and carried him to the bedroom that had been set aside for him. With careful hands he removed the young man’s outer clothing, revealing a body that showed the scrapes and marks of repeated fighting. He had not been well nourished in his lifetime, but nevertheless his musculature was well developed.
He pulled the covers up over Blake and tucked him in then he stood for a time and watched him sleep. The bloodline had seen some changes over the centuries but much remained. Clearly the young man retained much of the fighting instinct that had made his ancestors such fierce warriors. The familial likeness remained in his visage too, sharply drawn dark brows, hair as black as night with a hint of a widow’s peak and that strong, square jaw.
“Welcome, Blake,” Luke pressed a gentle kiss to the young man’s brow. “Though you do not know it, you are home.”
Blake Adams has been summoned to serve his immortal master, a mysterious man who goes only by the name Luke. Unfortunately for his master, Blake is more than a little bit of a handful, he is an aggressive, angry young man who has never known a day’s love or care in his short and brutal existence. He is less than impressed by finding himself pressed into eternal servitude and spends all of his time in outright rebellion against his all powerful master. In spite of many threats and punishments Luke finds that correcting Blake is all but futile, after all, how can one hope to tame a servant who owns his master’s heart?
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