Master and Servant

by



Ann Marie Olson





Story © 2000 Ann Marie Olson

Chapter 1

      "If you don't let me go. I'm going to kill you, you sadistic son of a bitch." She hissed between clenched teeth. Gregory had her wrists in his vice like grip. Not that she couldn't have broken his hold if she tried, but Jeanine didn't want to waste the energy. Jeanine had had enough of Gregory's attitude and just wanted to be alone for an evening.
      "I'm not the sadist with wolves in her ancestry, Jeanine." His self satisfied grin made her seethe. "Do you actually believe I would hold you to living in this place of my own choice." He looked around with enormous contempt.
      Jeanine flushed, not wanting to acknowledge the hit but damned to it by her pale skin. Dust motes danced in the thin shaft of late golden light coming through the lone scratched and stained window. "It isn't a pack. At least I have time to myself." She flipped her black hair out of her eyes irritably. Somehow Gregory had managed to talk her into letting it grow out. Although at this point Jeanine would have almost welcomed some company, at least then she would have someone to talk with. Trying to talk with Gregory was about as enjoyable as talking with a hamir.
      "Anatoly's place is at least clean." He began pulling her towards him. With a snarl she broke his grasp and turned to the door.
      "Then go back to him if you love living with all those people." She sneered. "I don't." Jeanine certainly didn't want to have to share Gregory with a dozen or so other battle servants. Horrid as he was, at least she had him to herself, even if he wouldn't leave her alone when she wanted it.
      "Listen to me for once, Jeanine."
      "No you listen, Gregory." She turned back to him and glared at him. His beautifully sculpted features no longer seemed anywhere near as attractive as she once thought. A feather tree is beautiful too, and about as intelligent.
      He crossed his arms across his chest as if to ask, 'Now what?'
      "I can't live like that. I tried. I'll starve before I go back to living in barracks, with you or anyone else." At this point anyone else was starting to sound like an excellent idea.
      "There's no one better for you than I am." His ego was also something Jeanine could well live without. "Besides, you have no idea what its like to live in barracks." Jeanine had to bite back a scathing reply to this young snot's arrogance.
      "Maybe you think you're better for me in bed." She snorted derisively, trying to get the subject away from her past. "Just because you're the strongest battle master I've ever met here doesn't mean I there aren't ones stronger." Of course there is that problem with being on my own again Jeanine debated the merits of remaining under Gregory's thumb versus the constant struggle not to starve for the emotional energy and attention she needed, as a battle servant, to live.
      "Ones who can make you howl like a wolf in bed, my little servant?" Gregory was getting more and more disgusting.
      "I don't give a damn about sex, Gregory." She flung the door open, careful not to pull it off its hinges in her fury. Sex was only the easiest and least emotionally intimate way to get the energy she required. When she had first met Gregory, he seemed like a reasonably easy master to tolerate. At least he was easy on the eyes. Its been a long time since I've been this stupid Jeanine recognized the great breakup scene finally.
      "What are you going to do?" He stalked towards her with the lazy grace of a giant cat, as if he had been designed as a predator and not her. "Go back to killing humans?"
      "If that's the cost of freedom, I'll pay it." Jeanine lied and slammed the door behind herself, this time not giving a damn about wasting energy. Never, never would Jeanine kill a human who meant her no harm. Once, too long ago, a human had cared for her and she would never violate his memory. She didn't even look back as the crash of rending wood rang in her sensitive ears.
     
      Anatoly paced in his rooms. The smooth wood underfoot insultated his feet from the chill cement beneath it, but it did nothing to relieve his growing tension. "Damn you, Gregory." He snarled at the absent battle master. While Gregory was hardly competent at his life, he could at least give Anatoly some company with all the childish battle servants surrounding him.
      It wasn't their fault. He looked down at them laughing and dancing in the gardens below his window. They were so exquisitely beautiful. In his mind, he could sense each and every one of the nearly three dozen servants dependant on him for their very life. The burden of years weighed on him like stone. Once upon a time, the battle servants had a purpose, defending mother Russia from the ravening hordes threatening her life.
      Now that life had been shattered and reconstructed in ways unimaginable to the humans who had caused such destruction. He leaned his elbows on the high window ledge. With a sigh, he saw a trio of coppers baiting a bull. *That prey is not worth your time.* He sent to them.
      *Master?* The petulant whine grated on his nerves. He sent back a firm negative and one of them reluctantly dashed in and slit the animal's throat. Soon there were nearly a dozen servants gathered around it. In an orgy of activity, they drained it dry of blood and quickly had it skinned and butchered. He hated seeing any creatured tormented for mere amusement.
     
      With a savage yank, Gregory snapped the master's bond he held on Jeanine. "What an arrogant little bitch." He muttered, kicking over a battered wooden chair. It shattered into countless pieces under the impact of his fury now that his anger had no servant to feed. At least living around numerous other battle servants, he could feed them the excess.
      "Now what?" He asked himself, sitting on the edge of the old, but scrupulously clean mattress and putting his head in his hands. "Why in hell did she have to pull this stunt now?" He rolled his shoulders as if to try to settle an itch. Without some way get rid the excess emotional energy battle masters used to feed and control their charges, Gregory would age unaccountably until he looked as old and decrepit as any human nearing their century mark. Gregory was far too fond of his own looks to let a battle servant make him look old.
      "Didn't think of that, did you, Lord and Master Ilya?" He snarled at the icon of his own, ultimate, creator on the altar in the corner of the room. The image's blank blue eyes stared back at him. "You probably think I should go get her back." He thought about the idea. Thinking was not Gregory's strongest suit. Gregory had no desire to shepherd around a whole flock of battle servants all the time the way his brother, Anatoly, did. Even though right now he could probably feed at least three times as many servants as Anatoly ever got at his services.
      Only someone of Jeanine's power or above could satisfy him alone. Gregory snorted at the thought, "Yes, right, there are no more powerful servants than the platinum." He used the street label for the most arrogant and yes, most deadly of the battle servants. All of them had eyes with metallic flares to the irises, a result of the light intensification mechanism bred into them. Lord Ilya's sick sense of humor had led him to use precious metals for the reflective backing, copper for the least powerful, then silver and finally gold for the normal battle servants. The almost mythological platinum battle servants instead had flares of the manmade, or grown, he thought wryly, adamantine, which was a dull silvery grey, thus the nickname platinum.
      With a sigh, Gregory realized Jeanine had been merely acting out her normal servant's irritation at having to submit themselves to their master. Not even humans, as close to mere animals as they were, liked being dominated. Battle servants, utterly dependant on their masters for their very lives and far more self aware than any human, often tried to rebel against their genetically mandated inferiority. He stood up and pulled a heavy cloak around his shoulders. It would hide his unusually heavy physique far better than a coat. With a flicker of power he reached out to find Jeanine to draw her back to him and met with absolutely no success. Blinking in surprise, he tried it again. Still nothing. "Damn," he thought for a moment. I might as well go visit my brother. At least he always has tea on.
     
      Jeanine barely made it into the darkened alley before she doubled over, throwing up everything she had eaten in the last day it felt like. Heaving again and again, helpless in her body's torment, Jeanine fell to her knees in the horrid muck of the dank alley. Burning knives twisted in her gut. Before she could do anything about it, her sphincter gave way under the onslaught and scalding hot filth ran down the backs of her legs inside her pants. I knew there was a reason to wear underwear. Her black sense of humor worked overtime. Giving up entirely on any sense of dignity, Jeanine simply let her body writhe in its horrid torment for her disobedience to Gregory.
      The stench of it all made her retch long past the time she was truly empty. Battle servants couldn't digest solid food without the constant linkage to a master, a fact Jeanine had conveniently forgotten. She was shaking with cold as well as shock by the time her body had rid itself completely of all foreign matter. A heavy fog had rolled in off the nearby river. Grateful for small favors, Jeanine stripped off her soiled clothes and threw them against the far wall to land with a wet smack. They hung there for a long moment and Jeanine couldn't help but grin wryly as they finally fell into the pile of other garbage.
      Gagging still over the rank odors assaulting her sensitive nose, she blinked to readjust her eyes. Looking around she found a heat source three meters up and almost five to her right. Too bright. As she focused, it resolved into a rubbish fire. She snorted, thinking it would probably smell better than she did right now. No warm blooded animals were within her visual range, not that she expected to see anything different through the fairly well insulated buildings surrounding her. Slinking out of the alley, all her senses set to maximum gain and spectrum, she heard the high pitch whine of itrians, tiny scavengers a big as her thumb, exalting over the feast she had left them.
      "Feast well, little friends." She whispered under her breath, thinking of their actually quite beautiful, iridescent carapaces and freezing cold pincers. They lived on heat and as she looked back, she saw the warmth she had left behind fade with amazing speed. There must have been an entire horde of them. She placed the image of the smouldering fire she had seen in the forefront of her mind. Many of the strange creatures left behind in the wake of the Great Biowar were telepathic to one degree or another. Jeanine had no idea if itrians were, but figured it didn't hurt to try.
      Kin to the tiny scavengers, Jeanine, one of the survivors of the Great Biowar, thought back to her birth age as she headed for the Moskva river.
     
      Tiny flashes, like lighted beads on a string trailed behind the jet. The sonic boom hit just as the breeze brought the first wave of death from the laydown of yet another bioweapon. This one wouldn't kill immediately, as even the great Weapons Masters had yet to create a bioweapon capable of such a thing. The timing was irrelevant though as Jeanine's first lover coughed out his life in her arms in a spray of stinking black blood.
      She tried to wipe her eyes clear with the back of her hand, only spreading the putrescent mess further. Tears streamed down her face as she howled to the moon on the orange lit horizon. Jeanine damned her own immunity to the biologic horror surrounding her on the immense battlefield of the entire world. Why in hell can't they find something to take down battle servants? She longed for death. Unable to even close Misha's staring eyes as they were already pooled with dead blood, she tried to lay him back gently on the broken soil, to only have his entire body disintegrate in her hands. She remembered his laughing grey eyes, so exquisitely beautiful and soft after they had made love.
      "I love him!" Jeanine screamed her loss and pain. It was overshadowed by a booming crash. A sheet of fire appeared directly overhead. Some instinct for survival forced her to run for the cover of the nearest building. Only later did she realize she had taken Misha's gold wedding band with her.
     
      Centuries later, Jeanine looked down at that same simple gold band on her own finger. After Misha's death she had also bathed herself clean in the great river Moskva. Although now the scenery was quite different. Warped and scarred beyond any possible recovery by the humans' insane warring, the bioweapons created by humans had changed the face of the earth to such a degree no one but another who had actually seen for themselves the pre-War earth could ever know the true extent of the damage.
      Jeanine washed her face again in the cold water. A huge river fish, distant kin to the great pike which had once lived in these waters, swam by with a wary eye to the animal on the shore. There was no chance for clothes there, she eyed the fish in return. Finally loping off, Jeanine searched the now abandoned streets of Moskva for a likely clothes provider.
     
      Anatoly looked dubiously at the young battle master who called him brother. They weren't actually brothers, but Anatoly wasn't going to say anything about it. His putative relationship with Gregory gave him a degree of anonymity he couldn't get any other way. Finally he set down his tea and sighed in disgust, "You idiot."
      "What?" Gregory sucked in his flat middle even more, as if he posing for a photograph. Admittedly he was a pretty man; blond hair, blue eyes, and built like something out of a pre-War bondage flick. "She was making all kinds of demands on me." He preened in the only mirror in the room, a silver platter over the mantle. "Servants don't have any rights."
      Anatoly rolled his eyes to heaven, now truly glad Gregory wasn't actually his brother or he would have feared for his own degree of intelligence. "Haven't you learned anything about women yet?" He thought about adding a shot of vodka to his tea. If nothing else it would dull the young man's voice whining in his ears.
      "I fuck her often enough. If that's what you mean." His blue eyes reminded Anatoly of crystal. They were almost as vacant of thought.
      "Put that way, I can well understand why she left." Anatoly gave in to the temptation to adulterate his drink, even if he did have to go on stage in under an hour. Without some kind of anaesthetic he was going to smack this child. Why do I put up with this idiot? Anatoly realized if too many knew who he really was he would have battle servants coming out his ears and Anatoly had never been one to turn away a hungry heart. If it were widely known he had both been a confidant of Lord and Master Ilya and one of the first generations of battle masters, he would end up having to spread himself so thin trying to satisfy everyone, no one, including himself, could be content. Contentment had become far more Anatoly's goal in life than anything else. Calm, quite, contemplative peace was now the life's focus of the most powerful battle master alive, as far as Anatoly knew. And know very much, indeed he did.
      Gregory looked at the bottle. With a sigh and a grimace, Anatoly poured some into Gregory's cup. The cup stayed there. Anatoly poured some more in until Gregory put up his hand. Maybe I can get him drunk and shovel him out into the alley for some lucky silver to find.
      Gregory took a big gulp of his well doctored tea. A whiff of the overpowering fumes hit his nose and Anatoly had to hold back a sneeze. Slumping back into a big, green, overstuffed armchair, Gregory whined, "I was so good to her. She didn't want for anything."
      "Except possibly a little consideration." The situation finally struck home. There was a platinum loose in the city. Setting his tea down, Anatoly rubbed at his temples. He was getting too old for this kind of nonsense. "Do you even have any idea where she went?" Anatoly doubted it.
      "She locked me out after I broke our bond." Gregory took another big gulp of his tea. With the way he was slugging down the overproof mixture, it wasn't going to take too much longer before he was flat on the floor.
      "You broke the bond?" Anatoly snapped.
      "What about it?" Gregory leaned forward suddenly. "She walked on me."
      "Didn't you even stop to think she might come back if you left the bond in place?" As soon as he said it, Anatoly realized Gregory never thought. He didn't have the equipment to do any such thing. What a mess! He glared at his own tea. He would far rather spend this evening in the baths in the basement than out on the streets trying to track down the most dangerous predator ever created, out of the hundreds of monstrosities, all created to kill humans and humanoids like himself.
      Gregory shrugged and leaned back again, "No, the bitch'll just have make her own way in the world. I mighta taken her back, if she apologized."
      "For what, Gregory?" Anatoly glared. Then he began pushing at Gregory to finish off his drink. Mindlessly, obviously unaware he was being controlled, Gregory slugged back the rest of the tea. He was still vertical.
      Disappointed, Anatoly examined the remaining vodka in the bottle. I can always get more. He poured the rest into Gregory's cup. "Fer pissin' me off. Damn bitch has no right to nothin'" Finally Gregory finished off the almost pure ethanol and slumped into the chair.
      "Damn, almost a liter." Anatoly tossed the bottle into the rubbish bin. Even the shatter of breaking glass didn't disturb Gregory now. *If you would?* He sent to his single gold servant.
      The young man looked around the edge of the doorway timidly, "Yes, my master?"
      "You don't have to bow and scrape in private, young Dimitri." He smiled fondly at the youngster. One of the far too rare, born battle servants, Dimitri had been the pet of far too many people and never had really managed to grow up.
      "But it gets me fed when someone decides to truly feel pity for me." He gave a very mature wink. Anatoly had never been entirely certain if Dimitri were actually slow, or simply very, very clever in having found his unique niche.
      "Get on with you. Feed on him when he wakes, if you like." Anatoly waved his hand at Gregory. "Don't kill him though."
      "I haven't yet." Dimitri grinned, looking almost twelve despite the fact Anatoly knew he was well over eighty. "Don't worry. He's a bit hefty for me to kill anyways. Probably won't even scare him. Think he'll like the poor little urchin waif who needs to be taught a lesson?" He said the last arching his back and sticking out his rear end.
      "Oh God, Dimitri!" Anatoly had to wipe up the tea he had sprayed all over the place when Dimitri had made him laugh. "You are a bad little servant."
      "Wanna spank me?" He danced out of range. Brilliant blue and gold eyes danced with bright good humor.
      "You'd enjoy it too much." he shook his finger at the youngster. No, there's nothing slow about Dimitri. The young servant's good cheer and obvious intelligence was like a draught of ice cold spring water on a hot summer day after dealing with Gregory.
      "True." Dimitri winked. "Hey, how else am I ever going to grow up big and strong like you?"
      "By eating your greens." Anatoly teased.
      "Not on your life, Anatoly." the young man grimaced. "I forgot once and the next morning was horrible." Dimitri's face was white with remembered pain.
      "How did you forget?" Anatoly laughed. "It isn't like you couldn't have known."
      "Well, maybe not forget." Dimitri grinned, "More like I really wanted a salad and the watercress was soooo very good." He sighed. "I might do it again some time too."
      Unrepentant as usual. Anatoly shook his head. "Are you ever going to grow up, Dimitri?" he laughed.
      "Not if it'll turn me into a drunk like this one." Dimitri carefully set Gregory's much greater mass over his delicate shoulder. It looked odd, the tiny Dimitri carrying the far larger Gregory, but as long as Dimitri kept him balanced, he would have no problems managing. Particular with as good a feeding as Gregory would provide for incentive. Fully fed battle servants could accomplish incredible feats of pure strength and endurance. Letting Dimitri take Gregory, who overpowered him by at least a factor of two, would keep Dimitri at full strength almost two months if Dimitri husbanded his resources.
      Anyone but Dimitri, Anatoly would never allow so much leash. Battle masters controlled their servants by restricting their feeding. If the servant had to return every week or starve, they became quite docile. Most of them anyways. Platinums were always a rule unto themselves. Maybe I should see if I am up to ... oh hell, I don't even know her name.
     
      Even with all the experience humans now had as prey animals, they still rarely looked up. Jeanine jumped across the three meter gap between one crumbling building and the next. Closer to the city center, she had started seeing the occasional human, but none of them were wearing anything she would ever want to be seen in. Almost at the end of her reserves, she finally spotted someone almost as tiny as she was.
      Jeanine jumped to a light standard. It was broken and black. All the better for my purposes. Handily, like the upright predator she was, she slid down the post. Almost faster than thought she scurried into a sheltering doorway. Her prey walked down the sidewalk, completely unaware of her presence as she tested its mind. It was thinking of getting home to its boyfriend and Jeanine almost blew her stalk as she fed on its lust.
      Shaking her head in irritation, as the amount of energy she could get off a human's emotions alone without injuring it, were hardly enough to even whet her appetite, she silenced the gnawing hunger in her body and mind. I need camouflage, not a snack. There was no one else in sight in the heavy fog, even to her broad spectrum vision. A human wouldn't be able to see its hand in front of its face. Jeanine's prey didn't even get a chance to see that. She lunged across the street, taking the animal with her, and landed in another doorway.
      It struggled in her arms. Feeding on pure terror, she licked her lips and looked down at what she'd caught. Its huge grey eyes stared back at her, so much like Misha's, but for copper flames outlining the pupils. "No mere human can kill a battle servant." He finally sputtered as her surprise relaxed her strangling hold on his mind.
      "I'm no human." She purred and fed on his returning terror.
      "What are you?" He hissed as she moved her hands down his body, now drinking in both terror and the first beginnings of lust. This is so much better than a human. Why didn't I think of this before? For while Jeanine would never kill a human, a battle servant was certainly fair game. Of all the great bioweapons created in the war, battle servants were the most deadly, and to Jeanine's mind, the most expendable for the risk they posed to what remained of, what could almost be called, natural, ecosystems.
      She looked into his eyes and smiled a slow smile, "You don't know?" Jeanine was unaware of how much she resembled Gregory at that moment. She would have been disgusted if she realized it.
      "You can't exist!" Before he could scream she covered his mouth with hers. She could tell his body knew death was approaching from his hardness. Wishing she had far more time to simply enjoy his sweetness as well, she mouthed him in a parody of a kiss.
      "But I do." She whispered, snapping his neck neatly. The cracking sound echoed in the empty streets. "I know you can still hear me. When you reach hell, expect company." With a final, silent, scream, his deathshock filled the black void of her hunger far better than the meager gleanings she could ever have gotten by simply scaring a human senseless.
     

Chapter 2

      Anatoly raised his hands over the kneeling servants. As one, the few dozen members of his congregation raised their faces to him momentarily. Yosef is missing! He thought and the sensitized servants hissed in unison as Anatoly lost control of his own emotions for an instant. Returning his concentration to his flock, he told them "Lord and Master Ilya made you."
      "Blessed be his name." They murmured together, returned to their state of preparation. Anatoly eyed them carefully, making sure he hadn't miscounted. No, there were almost forty battle servants arrayed before him, but one was a stranger.
      "Lord and Master Ilya makes your orders righteous." Anatoly continued the ritual. The hooded and robed figures were indistinguishable, one from the other at this point, as they all clamored at his mind to be fed.
      "Our orders come from our God, Lord and Master Ilya." Their voices strengthened together.
      "Worship him." Anatoly told them, pushing at them to unite and feed with his mind.
      "We do." A subliminal growl began to underscore their words.
      "Worship him." Anatoly raised his voice slightly, trying not to loose physical sight of his servants this time. He had never managed before, but thought it was worth a try with a stranger present.
      "We do." This time the growl was more than subliminal. It would have made a human's hair stand up on the back of their neck. Anatoly drank it in like the finest vintage wine, further inflaming the congregation with his reaction.
      "Worship him!" He prodded the battle servants.
      "We do!" They shouted back, a clamoring pack calling for his life. Like the baying of hounds on the line of their prey, "We do!" They belled.
      "Then worship the master!" Anatoly loosed the energies he had hoarded for the past week. As a spray of rain on parched ground, the battle servants soaked up every mote they could find. Rarely had any of these servants been fed fully, particularly after the end of the war. They were but a small fraction of the nearly twenty units originally stationed in Moskva itself. There were a few other battle masters with their units still surviving in the city and its environs, but most were in control of fewer than a handful of servants.
      The one stranger, however, did not feed and left a bare trace of energy to be fought over by the others.
      The fury of his servant's battle over the infitesimal motes ripped Anatoly from his trance. He looked down to see grey eyes, almost the eyes of a human, staring back at him. The platinum! He desperately tried to lock her down. She snarled in hate and snapped the attempted bonds with contemptuous ease.
      Now frantic to control his servants, Anatoly let his warring fear of the platinum and his anger at her interference come to the fore. An almost orgasmic moan rose from the remaining servants as they fed on Anatoly's emotions. By the time he had them calmed again, the stranger had left.
     
      "So you literally had her eating out of your hands and then you let her go." Gregory sneered at his incompetent brother. It had been a week since Jeanine had escaped. There hadn't been a sign of her until tonight, then his brother had to go and botch the catch.
      "I didn't let her go." The older battle master settled his grotesque carcass on the chair. Gregory had no idea why his brother had let his body become soft, like some kind of human. Anatoly even had a roll of fat at his waist. Making sure it wasn't genetic, Gregory looked in the tiny mirror over the fireplace again to be certain he hadn't gained even an extra hundred grams. They both had blond hair and blue eyes, but there the resemblance ended, a fact for which Gregory gave thanks again. "She snapped the bond I tried to place on her like it was made of cobwebs."
      "You tried to bond her?" He snapped and his new toy, Dimitri, rolled his eyes in ecstasy at this morsel. Gregory stroked the youngster's down soft hair. The touch reminded him of sinking into Dimitri's so pliant flesh. The battle servant moaned and licked at his hand. Dimitri's hot wet tongue between his fingers made him lust to take Dimitri here and now. *Later* He promised. With a tiny nip, Dimitri stopped and kneeled to lean against Gregory's leg.
      "I tried to bind her in place to capture her." Anatoly seemed to smirk at the interaction between Gregory and Dimitri.
      "I wouldn't expect a breeder to be able to deal with a platinum." Gregory scowled. Dimitri looked up at him with huge, desperate blue eyes. "It's all right little servant."
      Dimitri shivered against his thigh. "I thought platinums were a myth?" His high breathy tenor teased at Gregory's control.
      "They are no myth, simply very rare." Anatoly glared at Gregory. "And I am no breeder, Gregory."
      He snorted in disgust, "I see no maker's mark on you, Anatoly. You are my brother, which means you had at least one living parent."
      "Then you are a breeder as well." Anatoly sneered, catching Gregory out again.
      "I've never sired a child." Gregory sniffed in disdain. Only clones and offspring of the original battle masters and servants could sire or bear a child. They had originally been created in laboratories to fight the now long forgotten great war and were created sterile. Something had gone wrong, as with so many other creatures bred to fight the war, and now some, a very few, were fertile. Those who were fertile, were objects of contempt and disgust to the normal masters and servants.
      "That you know of." Anatoly seemed to be almost amused by the situation from the half smile he wore.
      "Do you think Jeanine is pregnant?" he scoffed. Gregory looked down to see Dimitri lick his lips. Something had aroused Anatoly's emotions. "What do you know about Jeanine?"
      "Nothing, other than her name and the fact she can pass for human." He gave an airy wave with his hand. "Most servants, even platinums, aren't so lucky in their eye color." Gregory couldn't tell if he were lying or not. Even Dimitri shrugged when Gregory asked him silently if he knew.
      "So, how much did she feed off you?" Gregory didn't believe Anatoly could have resisted his ex-servant.
      "None" The single word dropped like a stone into still water, sending silent ripples of fear through Gregory.
     
      Jeanine's laughter rang from the silent trees surrounding her. After almost being caught by the fool priest, she realized she no longer needed to feed from a battle master. Completely free for the first time of their dominance since her foggy memories of her childhood in the lab creche, she ran at full speed through the forest. Glorying in her power and strength, at its sated maximum for this first time since the fighting finally ended, Jeanine exalted in her physical capabilities. Her skin was bare to the cool night air, having left her clothes safely stashed in a tree.
      Freed by the dark, moonless night from having to limit her vision, she looked about her. Easily separating out the heat signatures of lesser creatures, she spied a toron. This will be fun. She purred silently to herself. Toron were sapient, barely. An unholy mixture of leopard, horse and human, they stood almost two meters at the shoulder, and close to a ton in weight. Omnivorous, they barely classified as prey, but for sport they were quite well suited.
      Silent to her own ears, she must have made some infitesimal noise. The toron snorted and broke off its feasting on the hamir it had caught. Maybe it caught my thoughts. She padded into the huge clearing. The broken body of the luckless hamir, a flint axe lying next to its six fingered hand, lay spread before the toron. "You killed it to simply feel it die." She accused with a silent chuckle. "Bad toron."
      "You no diffffferrrnnnt." The creature purred, almost incomprehensibly.
      Jeanine blinked in surprise. She hadn't known toron could speak. While she was distracted, it lunged. With a convulsive flex of her feet, she managed to clear the toron's charging body. Twisting in the air, she landed facing its rear and tried to swipe for its hamstrings. She missed. It kicked at her, almost catching her in the head with a wickedly clawed hind foot.
      From her crouch she bolted after the fleeing toron.
     
      Blinking sticky blood from her eyes with her nictitating membranes, Jeanine finally looked up from her grisly feast. The toron had been so huge, when she finally slashed its jugular she had been blinded by the spray of blood. It had almost managed to disembowel her with its dying slash. The two cent deep gouges on her flank closed almost instantly as she fed on the creature's blood and mind death. It had been no where near as mentally satisfying as the coppers she had fed on, but in some ways, emotionally, far more satisfying.
      Covered in gore, she looked at the vanquished creature. Jeanine had killed it honestly, unlike the battle servants. They, she had betrayed after a silent ambush. The toron had had a chance to fight back. Gently, now lovingly, she closed the animal's staring gold eyes. "Thank you for your life that I may live." She prayed as she had been taught as a child. Licking her lips clean, she kissed its brow.
      Warmed by the life and blood she had won from the toron, she made her way to the stream she heard nearby. Not noticing the still icy chill to the water, she washed herself off. The scent of ozone reached her nose as violet fimas, a quasi-plant, filtered the blood out of the shallow rivulet exiting the pool she had found. She let them finish the job of cleaning under her reinforced fingernails, their infitesimal shocks scrubbing them to the translucence of polished crystal. Ducking under the water one last time, she looked around at the streaming water weeds, now in all colors of the rainbow. She kicked at an impertinent grasping dimar who was trying to cram her foot into its root mouth. It let go with a flail of silvery red tentacles.
      Even Jeanine eventually needed to breath and she came back to the surface. Shaking the water out of her short black hair, she walked to the edge of the pool. The night was still, but for the constant murmuring and clicking of numerous living things and a faint breeze rustling through the budding trees. Sniffing the air, Jeanine oriented herself again to the city. Even with the kilometers she had run tonight, the scent of Moskva still reached her sensitive nose. She snorted in amusement, "Why did the toron run almost all the way around the city?" Oh well, it was better than having to make her way back from hundreds of kilometers distant. As she ran, she thought long and hard about her discoveries over the body of the toron she had slain.
     
      Anatoly sighed and leaned back against the stone wall. His entire body ached, but he couldn't let it stop him.
      "Master, would you like to play?" A young copper bounced on her toes, grinning from ear to ear. She was incredibly cute, if you liked women who looked more like girls. Although the impression of light streaming through her mobile ears and out her eyes was quite disconcerting.
      "Go on ahead." He nodded, clasping his hands in his lap. The leaves on the trees rustled in the wind. "I'm enjoying the spring sunshine."
      She giggled, high and shrill. "But I didn't even get to tell you what game we're playing."
      "Then tell me, little one." He couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm despite he own lack of desire to join in.
      "We're playing tag." She reached out with lightning speed and tapped him on the nose. Still giggling, she ran off and slid behind a tree. Anatoly had to hide another pained sigh. They want so to please. He levered himself to his feet. The battle servant scurried up the tree.
      With long practice, he reached to his flock. There. He gave a wry grin and caught another copper trying to slide around behind him. Deftly, he borrowed her vision and body. Another amused chuckle came over the link. Soon he had four servants all gathered around the base of the tree.
      Oh you little ones. He chuckled despite himself. Irregardless of the fact most of them had fought in the war, their memories were such that they could not remember the terror of playing these games for real. The first copper jumped from one tree to another. Anatoly sent his four up after her. He kept the youngest at the wall in reserve.
      Seeing through five other pairs of eyes was no challenge to him. Although their enjoyment was such it almost made the game sweet to him again. Three more coppers and one of his silvers joined in. Eventually he had all eight of them up in the trees chasing the first lass. The sounds of high pitched yips as the servants began calling to each other rang from green, late spring foliage. Finally he had her herded towards the wall.
      His reserve caught her up and gave her a big, sloppy wet kiss. "Caught you." He used the servant's lips to speak the words and let him run off to be chased by everyone else.
      No, not quite alone. He sat back down. It had been fun to play as if this had been a game, but memory caught up with him.
     
      The smell of burning stone and glass singed his sinuses. Charon Fire had destroyed these buildings weeks ago, but only now were they cool enough to pass through. "The objective is the port." Anatoly formed the image with his mind to send to his half unit. Thirty-eight pairs of eyes gave him vision of all his surroundings. An airplane sped by overhead so fast it seemed quick even on the ground.
      "This is the woman you are to retrieve." The pale haired and eyed director of nano-enginnering for Kiran Corporation floated in his mind's eye. "Or give mercy to if she won't come back." Too many retrievals ended these days with a mind shattered husk. Anatoly was not going to risk his servants for a hunk of breathing meat.
      "I understand." Vanya sent him with a caress of wordless affection. All his servants focused on him in a dazzling array of absolute loyalty. "About it." Vanya pumped his fist in the air. They scattered like so much shattered glass. A chill breeze tugged at Anatoly's loose shirt before he backed himself into a relatively safe cubbyhole.
      Giving himself over to his servant's senses, he watched as they infiltrated the building. "On your two, Vanya." He sent, spotting a hole in the coverage. "Keep your eyes up as well as forward." He sent young Sasha. A knife whistled down. "Duck." Anatoly grabbed Haris and pulled him to the floor so his team mate could slit his opponent's throat with a slash of razor sharp nails.
      The rattle of high speed caseless shattered the false peace of the low breeze. Pain lanced through Anatoly's mind as Sasha collapsed, nearly cut in two by the vicious rounds. "Go, go, go." He sent. Almost faster than thought the remaining servants converged on the site they thought the director was being held. Vanya threw the door open and swore violently. A lump of shapeless meat was strapped to a chair. It had light blue eyes.
      His knife whisted forward, cutting off the thing's rattling breaths. "Up." Vanya called to his team. Another burst of caseless shattered the raid. "Damn." Anatoly swore to himself. Although this time it only caught Vanya's flank. His team mate crushed the skull of the gunman and grabbed the weapon.
      A long string of caseless destroyed the walls, bringing the roof down on the corpse as the servants fled to the ceiling. Steady on the disintigrating stone and glass, they bounded over the roof. "Three high!" Anatoly sent. A knife winked in the grey sunlight, flicking end over end. It nearly went through the sniper's skull as the now dead woman fell to the street below.
      Afterwards, Anatoly held Vanya as his side knitted itself closed. The servant had lost an incredible amount of blood. He smoothed Vanya's chestnut hair back from his now pale face. "I failed, master."
      "No, love, we were given bad intelligence."
      "As usual." Vanya turned his face away.
     
      Jeanine looked up from her tasteless beer. Actually this stuff would be better if it were tasteless. It actually tasted more like river water. Scared, timid, humans huddled together, as if numbers would make them safe from the horrors they had visited on the earth. The sour smell of stale sweat and fear nearly outdid the rank smells of urine and vomit on the rushes of the floor.
      Wrinking her nose in disgust, she finally had to give up. Sometimes there was enough emotional energy, even emotions of dispair and hopelessness, to give her some little something to feed upon. Her chair scraped and rattled across the uneven floor as she stood.
      "C'n I give ye a hand?" A wave of the horrid smell of rotting teeth nearly made her vomit.
      "No, thank you." She said coldly, glaring at the man's grease lined, cracked nails.
      "Too good for me." His snarl tried to be intimidating.
      Jeanine looked up into his bloodshot, blue eyes, "Yes." Her bootheel ground against the floor as she turned her back on him. Certain her hair covered her ears, she let them turn back to make sure he didn't try anything. A meaty hand descended towards her shoulder. This'll do. Her elbow met his solar plexus with crippling force. He doubled over and sprawled in the filthy rushes. "Anyone else?" She looked over the room calmly.
      "Yea, thatun's my partner." Another beefy man stood, nearly dropping the blowsy woman he had held on his lap. "Yer gonna pay fer hittin' him." Two more men stood, as well as one rather extrordinarly aggressive, and large, woman. The barkeep slammed down the grate. No help from that direction. Jeanine stepped forward.
      "Anyone want to start the betting?" She let a small smile play across her lips. Someone chuckled as the rest of the people backed up against the walls. Want to talk about cheap entertainment. Her grin grew.
      "Whatcha laughin fer?" And idiot number one came charging at her. Like the bull fighters Jeanine had watched centuries ago, she let herself cut a small slash in his shoulder as he went by. The pain of even the tiny injury was sweet. She licked her lips and listened for him to make sure he wouldn't surprise her from behind.
      The woman backed down, slinking into the rest of the crowd. Jeanine gave her an ironic little bow. The scrape of metal on hard leather warned her. Jeanine ducked. A knife flew by. She grabbed it out of mid-air and flicked it into the ceiling. No fun that way. "Demon," the other two men hissed and faded back into the crowd.
      The first was charging for her. Since he was the only entertainment she had left, she neatly dropped him to the floor by hooking his ankle. He sprawled his length in the filthy rushes. Yuck Jeanine's mouth worked to try to remove the imagined taste from her own. He came up spitting. I bet She looked up at him. "Want to try again?" Her hair fell back from her ears and she let them prick forward. Sweet, sweet fear fed the gnawing hunger in her belly. His sweat now smelled of terror as well as anger. Not wanting this to end too soon, she jumped up and retrieved the knife.
      The whole group of humans crushed themselves back against the wall. Their panicked fear fed her even more. Quickly, Jeanine flicked the knife to her opponent. He stared at it. "I would like to play some more." She spread her hands wide, trying to look as innocent and harmless as possible. He growled and rushed her again. "Yessss." Hissed from her lips as the heady mixture of fear and hatred reached her.
      "I'm gonna kill you, demon." The man snarled. It was almost cute and she chuckled. "You bitch!" He rushed her again. Soon she had him running around the room like that long dead matador with the bull.
      Finally the other humans came out of their fear trance. They chanted, "Kill, Kill, Kill." Her head fell back and she howled. Now it was bloodlust feeding her. She rode the passions of the humans. Letting it fill her and feed her.
      A final snap kick dropped the man to his knees. Jeanine let her eyes meet the crowd. "Kill him." They hissed, lost to their own lusts.
      "You, are no Mikhail." She growled and snapped the man's neck. His deathshock rocked her back on her heels. It was as sweet as honey. Then the crowd's response hit. A glorious flash of heat and light drove her to her knees. Her body trembled as she fed and fed. Finally she came to, blinking sleepily. The humans were still dazed. Jeanine slunk off into the night.
     

Chapter 3

      Anatoly watched the dense blue smoke rise from the censer. Absently, he reached out his hand to brush away an itrian attracted by the heat. A hand like a burning hot steel vise clamped onto his wrist. A feminine, fine boned hand with crystalline nails. "I would appreciate it if you did not kill me here at the altar." He sighed, knowing the futility of trying to talk with a rogue servant. Still, he didn't wish his own servants, his friends, to have to clean up the resulting mess.
      "Why would I kill you?" Her voice was honey sweet. Surprisingly, she released his wrist and picked up the insect before it could burn itself on the heated brass of the censer. Anatoly turned, very slowly, to see her stroking the creature's back as it flattened itself in utter contentment against her hot palm. "You'll get fat." She told the iridescent insect with a gentle smile. The tips of its blue green antennae wavered downwards till the feathery sensors were almost horizontal.
      Jeanine's lips made a crimson Cupid's bow against her pale skin. With her blue black hair and simple black leather singlet, pants and boots, Jeanine looked like an artist's study in black, red and white, but for the brilliantly colored insect resting on her hand.
      "Because you've killed two of my friends already." He couldn't help but think of how much he missed the youngsters. Young Misha with his ready smile and Yosef of the laughing blue eyes.
      "They were battle servants, coppers at that." She set the itrian on the stone floor. It promptly tried to run up her pants leg. "None of that." She shooed it off towards the nearest wall and it finally scurried off.
      "You treated that itrian better than you treat people."
      "It hasn't harmed any one." Her adamantine eyes grew flat and hard. "Battle servants kill. Battle masters make them kill."
      "Misha never harmed another soul." A scalding hot tear tracked down his face.
      Anatoly thought she flinched for a moment. "Yet" She then sneered and leaned against one of the empty window casings. As Anatoly saw her move, he knew he was wildly outclassed. Anatoly had not been around any battle servant on a combat high, for a long, long time; much less a platinum. Jeanine's quicksilver motion brought back memories of that time.
     
      A young man in loose cotton pants and the barest sketch of a shirt looked up at him expectantly. The wind chilled Anatoly to the bone despite his heavy, fur lined wool coat. The youngster was oblivious to the lack of warmth on the frozen expanse, warmed by his active servos. "So, do you think you can manage the jump without breaking anything this time, Vanya?" Last time he had tried the seven meter wall obstacle, the fool had smashed his nose. Only the critical stress planes of the bones of battle servants were reinforced.
      "Yes, master." He bowed his head, looking like a whipped puppy with his tail between his legs.
      "I didn't mean to snap, youngling." Anatoly stroked the lad's head. Bright brown eyes with startling silver-grey flames looked up at him. Valentine, or Vanya as Anatoly called him, was still very young, barely into his teens. Battle servants didn't gain complete control over all their augmentations from human norm until they were well into their twenties. This was all to the best, to Anatoly's way of thinking. A true child with the massive strength and speed of a battle servant would be a horror worse than even Anatoly could imagine, and he had seen far more horrors in his century and a half of life than anyone could have imagined before the War.
      "I didn't mean to snap my nose almost off either." Vanya grinned, showing white, perfectly even teeth against his fair skin. Although the sharp edges on his incisors were so thin, they were translucent. Vanya then loped off towards the obstacle course, looking like the sleek predator he was and not at all human.
     
      Jeanine moved far more smoothly than Vanya had as that long ago youth. "You fought in the war?" Born battle servants never moved like their elders who had seen combat. It was something far beyond their never having the chance to fulfill their physical potential. The first faint flickers of longing for the exquisite woman, arrogance and self-confidence in her every move, made Anatoly question his sanity.
      "Do you know of a platinum who has ever been cloned?" She sniffed at his seeming ignorance. Actually there had been rumors of trying to clone all the battle servants at the end of the war in a desperate bid by both sides to create something at least close to human who might be able to survive on the horribly altered earth. Surprisingly, at least to Anatoly, humans had managed to survive and multiply also, despite the monstrous conditions they now lived under.
      "No, but that doesn't mean no one did it." He shrugged. "Do you mind if I get off my knees? They're beginning to ache." As were other things. Under her harsh, if exquisitely beautiful, exterior, Anatoly began to sense her hunger for any kind of contact. The strength of his response to her desperate, if unspoken need for conversation surprised him. Although thinking about, her desire was not at all unexpected after having been bonded to an idiot like Gregory. Jeanine could certainly not be stupid. The abattoir of the War's end would have never released her otherwise.
      "Sure." She licked her lips hungrily. "Wouldn't want you crippled for a chase."
      With a creak of stiff joints, he got to his feet and realized he now towered over her. Cautiously, he sat on the seat near where she was leaning. Trying to act nonchalant, he rested his chin on his hands so his head would be much lower than hers. "I wouldn't be worth chasing, I'm afraid." Anatoly shrugged looking up at her again.
      "I can make you run." Her grey eyes narrowed.
      "No, Jeanine." He said and she jumped as he used her name. Damning himself for giving away anything more than he had to, he grimaced. "Anyways, I suppose it doesn't make much difference."
      "What?" her voice softened again. "What doesn't make any difference?"
      "My knowing your name." He sighed and closed his eyes. Although in some ways it had, since it let him know she was not of Russian manufacture and so not likely to have been one of the platinums he had helped train. Now with her here before him, he almost wished she had been. Although as Anatoly well knew, all of them were dead, Vanya in his arms. A shiver ran through him at the memory and he tried to rub away the goose bumps on his arms. The toron he had been hunting had been far more clever than even Vanya could deal with. The fact it had killed him right in front of Anatoly had only reinforced his desire to have no more with anyone who desired such excitement in their life.
      "You aren't afraid of me." She whispered. "Why?"
      He shrugged again and looked up into her dark grey eyes, "Wouldn't do me any good." Not that he would wish it to or that he had any desire so strong to live as all that.
      "I could kill you and strew the body around your nice clean church." The faintest hint of a smile lit her eyes. Almost literally with the sheer power of the energy and personality surrounding her like a parody of a halo. Anatoly had to hide his grin at her now playful threat.
      "You could. Nothing I can do to change it." He met her eyes, letting her know he was calling her bluff with a wink.
      "You could fight back." She rested her chin on her hand not half a meter from him on the back of the window seat.
      "Why?" He actually did grin at her. "I trained three platinums. I know you could kill me without even trying."
      "Who?" She reached out for his hand, then pulled back.
      Anatoly captured it and stroked his face against her palm. Her burning hot touch felt so exquisite after his self imposed denial. No one knew his entire past anymore. Possibly by telling Jeanine, it would live on beyond him. "Ilyan, Katrina and Valentine." he closed his eyes to see their faces again in his mind. "Ilyan was the first ..." he rattled on for well over an hour. Telling her of his students and reliving that time so long past. He missed them still, as he did with all the young men and women he had sent out to die to defend Rodina. By the time he was done his face was wet with tears. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to turn into a water faucet on you. Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?" Anatoly tried to return the conversation to its earlier, less personal, tenor.
      "Don't you want to live?" Her hot grasp squeezed his hands. Then, completely unexpectedly, she freed one of her hands from his and brushed the tears from his face.
      "Yes and no." His jaw clenched. "I've loved and lost so many times, I don't know if I can cope with losing all my servants again. This time for no damn good reason." Anatoly glared at her. "Misha and Yosef were good people and never deliberately harmed anyone in their lives."
      "I'm sorry" She whispered and her lips left a scorching kiss on his forehead.
      "No you're not." He saw through her defenses. "You've figured out you can live by killing battle servants. They were prey."
      "And prey deserves to be killed and eaten." She completed the aphorism. "At least I wasn't killing humans."
      "Humans breed." He pleaded with her. Although no one could replace a life lost. Jeanine seemed to flinch at his retort.
      "So do battle servants, now." She countered, but her eyes slid to the side.
      "Not enough to survive." He pointed out. "Maybe one out of ten living battle servants are fertile, and fewer than one in ten of those even replace themselves."
      "It's for the best." She seemed to be trying to convince herself of this fact from the way her jaw clenched.
      "No, Jeanine." He shook his head. "Battle servants are one of the most beautiful creations of the war. I can't agree the world would be better without them."
      "If we had never existed ..." Her eyes narrowed at him.
      "If you had never existed, China would have completely annihilated us." He tried to rein in his memories of the absolute terror when China had first begun claiming their terrorist acts against Russia. At the time Russia had only a fair degree of competence in black microbiology and very little practical experience with macro bioweapons at all. Early battle masters and servants, like himself, were the result of one madman's love of science fiction, of all things.
      "So we annihilated each other." She snorted again. "I don't know if what he have now is so much better than if we had given in."
      "I wanted to live, Jeanine." He took her hands in his. "The world was so beautiful and life so wonderful then, and now even."
      "I remember green trees and lush grass." The matte adamantine of her eyes allowed for no reflections, but still Anatoly knew she was looking at the violet and blue shrubs budding outside the window. "Running through the woods without having to fear for my life at every moment for other predators. People who had grown old in peace being slaughtered with the rest for living in the wrong place. Humans who could love ..." she broke off suddenly and stared at him. Anatoly could see the first glimmers of tears in her eyes.
      Anatoly gently stroked the wedding band on her finger. "You loved a human who died in the war?"
      But she was gone and only the heat of her hands and the ache in his heart remained behind to let him know she really had been there.
     
      Gregory looked into the tiny chapel to see his brother not working, again. "You know we need to catch Jeanine." he glowered. He saw Dimitri's ears swivel slightly, and Gregory looked up into the choir now behind them. "Do you hear something?" He asked the battle servant.
      "No, nothing master." The very young looking man blinked at him. "Why do you ask? I always scan the choir when we come in here."
      He's only a boy. Gregory stroked Dimitri's soft golden hair. "I'm just a suspicious old man, Dimitri." He reassured the youngster. The sheer rush of power it gave him to have Dimitri so dependant on him was headier than the strongest Vodka.
      "I also have to keep my friends safe." Anatoly grimaced, clenching his hand on empty air. "She's killing them, remember."
      "Believe me, I know, Anatoly." He sniffed. "I keep tripping over coppers every time I come out of my rooms. Why can't they just go home."
      "Because they don't want to be prey for Jeanine." Anatoly looked like he didn't understand the situation.
      "Predator, prey, what's the difference?" He shrugged off the trivial matter. "They're just battle servants. Coppers at that. If you loose too many them to keep you happy, go find some more. Even the three silvers who look to you are scared witless."
      Anatoly looked like he wanted to strangle someone. "Good, you should be mad about the bitch making your life uncomfortable." Gregory tickled Dimitri under the chin. He looked like something was bothering him. "I'll take care of you, Dimitri." Gregory cooed.
      "I'll be good for you." Dimitri looked up at him from under long, lush eyelashes. The gold and blue of his eyes barely showing through their thickness. "I promise."
      Gregory couldn't quite decide if Dimitri's voice was a treble or simply a very high tenor, but whichever, it inflamed him like nothing else. He hugged Dimitri, trying not to betray his sudden, quite physical desire to Anatoly. "Please, we were talking about a rogue platinum." Anatoly sighed, seeming even more irritated.
      "I only wanted to reassure little Dimitri here." Gregory had worried briefly about Dimitri's constant fever, but when there seemed to be no ill effects from it, he had dismissed his concerns as irrelevant. Now he lusted after the hot feel of the lad, so unlike Jeanine's often almost cold skin.
      Anatoly opened his mouth as if to say something, then rubbed his thumb alongside his ring finger. "Go right ahead." He studied the backs of his age spotted hands. Gregory didn't have to be invited twice to a party. He crushed Dimitri's slight form against his heavy chest. Dimitri moaned, teasing at him and Gregory silenced any words he might have wanted to say with his almost violent kiss.
      "I wish you could take me on the bench." Dimitri purred as they broke off their kiss. The lad is even better in some ways than a woman. Gregory loved the way Dimitri always seemed to be willing, no matter how suddenly or where the urge might have come on him.
      "So do I." He let his desire darken his already low voice. Dimitri shivered and looked up at him with those huge, innocent, eyes. "Later, pretty one." Gregory reluctantly set Dimitri back on his feet. Instead, Dimitri kept going to his knees, kissing him softly in passing and ending up with his cheek pressed against him. Gregory knew they presented an incredibly obscene tableau, but didn't really care anymore. This is my brother, after all. He consoled himself with the fact Anatoly had probably had the lad more times than he could remember. "Yes, Jeanine." Gregory said absently, not really thinking about the bitch at all.
      "Never mind. Get out of here if all you want to do is display your libido." Anatoly complained jealously.
      "Sure. As long as you do some of the work around here." Gregory couldn't help but press Dimitri even closer for an instant. Although when Dimitri slid up his entire front, he had to close his eyes to savor the sensation. As they left, an itrian scurried out from beneath one of the statues. Damned irritating things! Gregory tried to stomp on it but it turned around and skittered back under shelter before he could manage. Dimitri stroked his palm with a wetted finger and Gregory forgot all about the insect.
      Even before they could get back to their rooms, Gregory spotted a darkened alcove covered by a tapestry. Dimitri giggled as Gregory pulled him behind it. Without even waiting for an order this time, Dimitri returned to his knees, this time with no cloth between him and the object of his desire. Gregory leaned back against the cool stone and didn't even bother to try to cover his moans as Dimitri satisfied him as Jeanine never would.
     
      Disgusted at Gregory's lack of control Jeanine could very clearly overhear his new little toy fellating him in the hallway. She had never cared for his attempts to force her into such things, so had refused. Chuckling softly to herself, Even Gregory wasn't going to let a battle servant's sharp teeth anywhere near his equipment if he had any doubts about their loyalty. It seemed Dimitri had no such compunctions. Biting at her lip to try to distract her body from its sympathetic reaction to her ex-master's sex play, she looked down into the church again from the choir. Jeanine couldn't leave until she knew everyone had gone, so she was stuck here for a while it seemed; at least from what she knew of Gregory's past insatiability. Battle masters typically had much higher sex drives than servants or humans so they could feed a number of servants comfortably, but Gregory's was extreme even for his kind.
      With a silent sigh, she leaned on the railing, trusting in the shadows to continue to hide her from the old battle master. He was sitting quietly on a bench along the wall. What is he doing? Curious, she walked along one of the great beams under the ceiling.
      Sitting directly beneath her, murmuring little nonsense sounds, was Anatoly. Moving forward another meter, she finally spotted what had him so intent, an itrian. Focusing more closely on it, she noticed it was the same one she had saved earlier. After leaving Gregory, Jeanine had discovered the tiny creatures actually made quite delightful pets. They were clean, very affectionate to anything warm, pretty, and not as stupid as she had once thought. Itrians, even single ones, seemed to have about as much intelligence as a tiny songbird, but with the added advantage of understanding very, very simple mental commands. Large groups of itrians almost seemed as intelligent as small rodent, but without the fleas.
      This one now held by Anatoly was well on its way to becoming a pet. Jeanine had almost been spotted when it had run out in front of Gregory and she was going to warn it back. She knew he hated anything created, but it looked like Anatoly had warned the creature first. Now, this unusual battle master was petting the little thing.
      Jeanine had no idea what to make of Anatoly now. Everything he had said led her to believe he might actually care for something or someone other than himself. Look at the way he's taking care of the itrian. She watched as he checked the temperature on the censer which had gone out.
      "Its safe for your new friend." She murmured inadvertently.
      "Thank you, my lady." Anatoly whispered, without looking up. She blinked in surprise. He was being so dreadfully polite, not acknowledging her presence physically in case someone were to come in through the now open door, but thanking her for the information anyways. "Is there anything else I should know about this wonderful little animal?" If anyone had come in, they would have only seen the elderly battle master whispering his prayers. After thinking over the situation, Jeanine realized she had truly enjoyed talking with Anatoly earlier. His emotions had not been focused on her, so they hadn't fed her, but in some ways it had been even better. Simply talking with someone, not for any alternative intent, had been far more delightful than Jeanine remembered.
      With a grin, she ran along the beam and lightly tapped on the wood. Anatoly looked up, instantly caught her eye and gave her a silent laugh. *Pretty one.* For the first time in over a century she felt a gentle mental caress. Gregory had never stooped to such frivolity, using his mental voice for commands only and certainly never expecting a response.
      "Not me." She shook her head sadly at his flattery.
      "It's not flattery when it's true." He whispered to his hands as a copper slunk into the room. Aghast, Jeanine watched her faltering process with new eyes. The young woman was terrified, slithering from shadow to shadow clumsily. Almost human in her inexperience and fear, Jeanine dug her nails into the wood under her fingers.
      I did this to her. Jeanine grimaced. I didn't mean to terrorize children like her. She thought than realized it wasn't true. She had meant to terrorize the lesser battle servants. Hiding behind one of the larger beams against the ceiling, she looked down and watched Anatoly with the young woman. Now looking almost like a human sixty year old, he gathered the slender, tall, copper haired and eyed battle servant into his arms.
      "What is it little Filia?" he murmured into her hair, stroking her back.
      "Its ... its ..." she stuttered through sobs. "Alyana ..." Filia sniffled. Anatoly simply waited patiently and handed her a kerchief. She leaned back and blew her nose. "I'm sorry, papa." Anatoly seemed to have enormous patience from what Jeanine had seen so far. Too good to be true She fretted.
      "Its quite all right, little one." He led her over to a bench. "Now tell me what's the matter."
      "Its Alyana. She says I'm no good and she wants to go back home without me 'cause I'm scared, Anatoly." Her last words trailed off in almost a panicked wail. "I really am scared. There's something out there killing us."
      "Hush, lass, hush." Anatoly's distress was clearly evident to Jeanine, even if the copper wasn't sensitive enough to pick it up.
      *Tell her they'll be safe now.* She sent the words as clearly as she could after so many years of mental isolation. *From me, at least.*
      *You'll starve on only humans Jeanine.* He sent back, his strong mental voice clearing out cobwebs left from disuse of the facility with someone who opened a bilateral channel.
      *If you let me ...,* tentatively, she proffered the first, faintest intimations of interest in him. Actually she found herself more than slightly interested in him. He was actually quite pleasant to look at, although some might well have called him age worn. Jeanine felt far more than slightly worn by her years more often than she cared to think of. Being close to someone even older than she was had a unique fascination for her.
      His surprise rang on the mental level, almost enough to disturb Filia, "You'll be safe little one. An angel promised me this. Now I have to pray, alone, to repay the angel for her protection."
      "Thank you, thank you!" Filia chirped as Jeanine almost fell off her perch for trying not to laugh. The young copper bounced toward the back of the church. When Filia almost ran right into Gregory and bubbled at him, "Good day to you, bright master." Jeanine did fall off the ceiling beam to land on the floor. Landing on her feet of course, but still. Someone closed the doors to the church and Jeanine howled with laughter.
      "Come on, Jeanine." Anatoly tipped his head towards the door behind the pulpit. Comfortingly actually, he didn't try to touch her. Now that she had committed herself, she wasn't at all sure this was such a good idea.
      "Bring your pet. It'll get too cold in here for it." She knelt down and gave the mental command to come. The bright little thing scurried into her hand, turned around three times, and flattened itself against her palm. It was surprising cool and she let even more heat radiate from her hand.
      "So, I take it they need heat, anything else?" Anatoly asked her, opening the door.
      "From what I've learned, which isn't all that much, they seem to also require company. Either of their own kind, or it seems, other animals." She stroked its back and it gave off a delightful, if inaudible purr.
      "Like people do?" She thought she heard him say. "Is it purring?" Anatoly asked, his eyes wide.
      "You can hear it?" She let him stroke the creature. It looked absolutely silly, with all four of its antennae going every which way. The little greedy beast sucked even more heat from her hand. Good thing I can't get frostbite She noted.
      "It's incredible." His grin went from ear to ear. Eventually he led her to a suite of rooms off in one upper corner of the sprawling complex. "I don't much care for being close to too many people all the time." He ducked his head shyly.
      "Neither do I." She said and gasped as he opened the door. Unlike so many other dwellings she had lived in over the centuries in Moskva, this was the first one she had seen, designed by someone else, which didn't make her feel like she was going to be overwhelmed by the adornments. Rather than the complex, often competing and bewildering collection of brightly colored and decorated icons, paintings, lights and other wall decorations, there was only simple wood paneling, with a number of clean, clear glass windows.
      "I'm afraid I can't use this room much in winter, as with the shutters closed it is horribly dark, but I thought you would like it."
      "Why so?" she looked at the brazer in the corner. It was only warm, so she set the itrian up a little nest next to it. "They also need access to water. Any kind will do." She grinned. "Mine seem to prefer the dirtiest stuff I can find, as long as it contains a lot of organics."
      "I think I can provide that in a bit." He grinned back. "Insofar as your taste in decorating, I know you are not Russian."
      "Am I so transparent as all that?" She laughed, and stroked the polished woodwork. The fine grain was smooth and warm feeling to her fingertips. Jeanine felt herself relaxing in the clean, warm room with its calm decor. She had not stayed in any one place long enough to want to bother with such luxurious surroundings, and now she wondered if she had not, indeed, been truly missing something.
      "Please, make yourself at home." He waved to the pile of pillows in the corner and a chair.
      "If I curl up in your nest, I may well fall asleep." She yawned, surprising herself. Jeanine didn't want to leave just yet, but knew she probably should. When I crash from this high it's going to be hard.
      "Will your little friends be all right if you are gone for an extended period of time?" He sat down on the edge of yet another chair.
      "Yes, although they may wander off on me." She shrugged, again more than a bit surprised at Anatoly's consideration for others. "I've been gone for days at a time and they eventually all return. I think they appreciate a free lunch." Almost as much as I appreciate his so diplomatic maneuvering. His way of coming at things from angles was so reassuring after being slammed around by circumstance and necessity, it was incredibly disarming.
      With a glance at the door to be sure it was locked, Jeanine curled up into a little ball in the pillows. They were absolutely spotless but for the very faintest scents of musk and lilac. I'll only stay for a little while. This is so very wonderful. Lulled by the warmth of both her surroundings and her companion, she let her mind drift.
      "Insofar as your being transparent, I was of the first generation of Ilya's experiments. I knew, personally, every single platinum created in Russia." He looked at her with hooded blue eyes. His silver streaked gold hair reflected the low light coming in through the windows. Jeanine realized he was actually a even more attractive than she had first thought, and far more comfortable looking than the more muscular specimens she had been dealing with. "I would guess from your looks and your name, you either originated at Pasteur or Fermi?"
      "Pasteur, actually." She grinned wryly. "Grew up in Paris during the first long lull in the war." Which had lasted for almost thirty years. The Great Biowar had been nothing like even the War of the Twentieth Century, what with the decades long pauses while both sides worked feverishly to replenish their arsenals in time for the next surprise offensive. "I was transferred to the front with," Jeanine paused for a deep breath, "with Misha, Michael as I thought of him at the time, just in time for the Friday offensive. He was infected during the counter attack and died in my arms shortly before the final wave of fire bombings of the last phase of the war." Of all the microbioweapons, Jeanine hated the long killers like that which Misha had finally succumbed to. It was one thing to catch a virus and die, if in the worst agony known to mankind, relatively quickly. It was quite another, and far worse, in Jeanine's opinion, to know you were doomed sometime from now to as long as over fifty years, with no way of knowing when.
      During this Anatoly didn't move, for which she was incredibly grateful, but simply nodded sympathetically. "So you ended up abandoned, what, a hundred kilometers east of Moskva at the end of the war?"
      "Something like that." She shrugged, fingering her wedding band. "I miss him still." The gold blurred in her vision into a shimmering cloud. "I love him still."
      "If you wish to talk, I'm here to listen, Jeanine." Anatoly told her in halting, broken French.
      She bit back a sob to hear her milk tongue after all this time. In the same language, "I think, that if you please, I would rather be left to collect myself for a while."
      "Certainment" With hardly a whisper of sound, he left the room.

Chapter 4

      Anatoly had kept a deft, gentle. mental touch on Jeanine when he had left her to go take care of things in his bedroom. Her heartbroken sobs tore at him, but he knew she was not ready to talk things over yet with a relative stranger. He wished there were some easy, and most particularly, fast, way to convince her to trust him. Finally she drifted off to an uneasy sleep. Knowing what he did of battle servants, Anatoly knew far better than to try to move silently around her, while she was only dozing.
      He returned to his sitting room when he felt her chill as the combat high of her past few months began to fade. Gently he placed a light throw over her in place of taking her in his arms. He had always been very much a one to touch people. Both his culture and his own inclinations had only enforced the tendency. Thinking back through his memory to those hazy days of his own youth, he remembered Jeanine, not being Russian born, would probably not be as casual about physical contract. That's probably some of why she is so very defensive. Anatoly sighed, wishing he could even simply stroke the outside of her bare arm with his fingertips, but feared very much having it taken amiss.
      To keep his mind from its meanderings, he looked to his new pet. Now there were three itrians all piled on top of each other in the nest Jeanine had made for the first one. Anatoly grinned and put down the tiny plate with what he thought an itrian would appreciate. It was still quite warm and all three of them, soon to be joined by a forth made quick work of his offering.
      "I hadn't thought of such a, well, personal solution." Jeanine grinned at him, her nose twitching. The mahogany red throw had fallen to her lap as she sat up.
      He shrugged, "They seem to like it." His mind insisted on trying to figure out if her skin of her smooth throat was really as soft as it appeared and it made his voice harsher than he liked.
      "That's important to you." She whispered, slowly reaching out her hand.
      Overjoyed at her overture, Anatoly delicately stroked her fingertips. "How many do you think I'll end up with." He looked at his growing collection, now joined by a fifth. They were busily grooming each other's antennae, looking like a group of insectile, miniature metallic cats. For a long while they sat, watching the itrians while Anatoly concentrated on the feel of her slender fingers against his own broad digits.
      "Probably not more than one or two in addition to the five." She stroked the palm of his hand with a feather light touch. "They seem to pack up in groups of six to eight. I think that's a family for them in the wild." The sensations traveling up his arm were nearly enough to make his heart stop. Not even with Dimiri had Anatoly been so close to any of his servants.
      Emboldened, Anatoly moved over next to her on the pillows, watching the little creatures arrange themselves in what looked to be a rather awkward pile. "They probably can't find food for too many more."
      "True enough." She reached over him and added a small lump of coal to the brazier. "I'm already freezing and if they decide I'm tasty I might hurt one of them trying to stay warm."
      "Would you like something to help you warm up?" He didn't want to push things too fast. The feel of her body sliding over his had made him bold, though.
      "After what I saw this afternoon, I get the feeling I'm going to have to get used to being cold all the time again." She shivered convulsively. "Pardonez moi" Her free hand rubbed at her other arm.
      "Gregory kept you cold?" Anatoly couldn't help the revulsion in his voice, even though he tried.
      "I've been cold since the end of the war, more or less, Anatoly." She grimaced. "Either I was living on prey like toron and hamir, or occasionally making do for a few months here and there by stealing from battle masters. Gregory was at least willing. Humans never could do a whole lot for me, and, well, because of Misha, I couldn't kill them." Another shiver and her teeth chattered. "Coming off a months long combat high, well I'm afraid I'm simply far too sensitive to it right now."
      Her fingers had become like icicles. He leaned down and blew on them to warm them slightly. "I don't want to push, but I could help."
      Jeanine nodded her head slightly, "If you could get me a heavier blanket?" She pulled the light one around her shoulders, much to Anatoly's envy of the inanimate object.
      How can I get her to understand I would much rather warm her myself. Without letting go of her hand, he pulled a heavy throw off the chair next to him and wrapped it around her shoulders. She shuddered violently, her whole body now shaking. Anatoly looked into her eyes and she flinched, looking away. But she didn't manage before he saw them pin in the low light. "You're going to have to feed, Jeanine." Her stress would only get worse the longer she waited.
      "I'll live." Her chattering teeth made her statement almost incomprehensible.
      "Maybe so" He chafed at her hands, now still and passive in his own, so unlike her earlier advances. It was true a servant wouldn't starve to death so quickly, but he knew the hunger could be violently painful. "Are you sure there isn't any thing I can do?" Anatoly was surprised she couldn't sense his own desperate desire to hold her and warm her.
      "I won't!" She huddled in on herself, forming a tiny ball. "No!"
      What have I done? "No, what, Jeanine?" He desperately wanted to draw her out before she succumbed completely to shock. All thoughts of seducing her fled before her rapidly disintegrating condition.
      "I swore I wouldn't kill again." She wailed. "No, NO!" Her panic wrenched at his control. All his heart and soul wanted to feed the aching chasm of Jeanine's hunger.
      "Easy lass." Giving in to temptation, he pulled her into his lap, blankets and all. She was so tiny and frail feeling, despite the fact he knew she still had the energy reserves to snap even his largest bones like dry twigs. It was only the sudden withdrawal after the long term spent at full power which was affecting her this way. She didn't need a complete feeding, but only enough to rebalance her mind with her body. "Is there anyone you want?"
      "MISHA!" she screamed, shattering the nearest window. The itrians huddled into a gordian knot against the brazier.
      Anatoly felt a sharp tearing pain at her shriek. Blood trickled from his ears. "Jeanine, Jeanine!" He couldn't even hear his own voice now. Fear for her welled up inside him and he allowed his power as a battle master to feed it to her. Mindlessly she latched on to him. The black undertow of her perceived near starvation almost pulled him under until managed to shift his emotions to something less dangerous to himself. It would be too easy to loose my self in her fear and have her drive me mad with it.
      Desperate for anything, he resorted to a battle master's fundamental stock in trade, lust. It was not too horribly difficult with her incredible beauty and strength of spirit. Much less her sitting on his lap. There had been times in the past when Anatoly simply couldn't manage the interest in some of his charges no matter how he tried. Jeanine was a far different story. Concentrating on her body against his, the long banked fires of his own physical desire flared into being with an overwhelming rush of heady power.
      Leaning down, he felt her lips soften and open under his.
      Although they only shared a single, almost chaste, kiss, the hot magnesium fire feel of her response made it the hardest thing he had ever done to stop. It had been so very long since he had felt a battle servant of her strength he almost fell on her body like a ravening beast. Shame at his own, overwhelming, visceral reaction finally allowed him to free her. Panting as if he had run the perimeter of the city, some tiny, sane part of his mind held him back from disgracing himself in an attempt to force her with claws of diamond.
      Her free hand reached up to stroke the side of his face. She said something he couldn't hear. Anatoly shook his head, "I can't hear you." He ducked his head and tried to smile. Shaking inside, he slowed his heartbeat closer to normal. It skipped a beat, then two. Looking inside himself with the feedback techniques he had been taught, he spotted the stress causing the irregularity and shunted it aside.
      Jeanine's brows knitted together in a frown. Slowly she leaned forward and delicately licked the blood from the sides of his neck. The feathery feel of her tongue on his skin made him lean back his head and moan involuntarily. Wanting her as he had never wanted anyone before, he barely managed not to push her on her back and take her whether she will it or not. "If you don't want me to rape you here and now, you should stop." He warned her through teeth clenched with the strength of his own self denial.
      She looked away, as if embarrassed. Anatoly took her face in his shaking hands and made her look at him. "I don't want to force you." His entire body quivered at the contact. Be still. He forced himself not to shift his weight to relieve the binding of his member in its straining. Crossing her arms over her breasts, she turned her eyes down. Shame pulsed through the tentative link they had formed. "No little one, I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
      Flattening her hands to her chest, she grimaced. "I don't like cows." He mooed loudly, grinning, trying to convince her of his sincerity. Actually her tiny breasts and slender hips made his hands itch to be able to touch them, even through the leather she wore.
      Anatoly slowly, tentatively, ran his hands through Jeanine's short black hair. The silky soft curls forming at its very ends grasped at his fingers. *Feels good.* Her vibrant mental tone also, disappointingly, still held enormous reservations. He had no idea why she was refusing him, as he could also feel her response reflecting in his own body, making him ache with longing. The very scent of her initial arousal blended with the earthy scent of the leather she wore. *Just hold me?*
      "What do you think I'm made of, Jeanine?" He wanted to cry out his pain at her denial, but did as she bid anyways. Tucking her head under his chin, he desperately tried not to think of what her smooth, pale skin would feel like under his hands. The itrians made tiny chirring and clicking sounds as they settled back down to their interrupted nap after the earlier disturbance. Watching them closely let Anatoly at least manage to get his body back under control, relieving at least one source of pain, even when she settled even more closely against him.
      *You are a battle master. Someone made to control and dominate battle servants.* Her mental voice was clearer every time she used it, although she obviously did not truly comprehend his question.
      Dizzy with wanting and not being able to have, "I'm also flesh and blood."
      *As am I.* She stiffened, beginning to resist his hold.
      Before she could truly struggle though, he released her and turned away, hugging his arms to his chest. Resting his forehead on his own knees, "Then go." The pain and disappointment of the aborted consummation of her feeding off his desire shattered his dignity. It had been so very, very long since he had even wanted more closeness than he had with the members of his congregation. "I won't force you, Jeanine. I'm not Gregory." Anatoly damned the fucking bastard to hell for his mistreatment of Jeanine. You destroyed her heart! He screamed in his mind at the incompetent bastard.
      *You'll chain me and bind me.* Her tone was that of a shrieking falcon. *I'll not be bound again!*
      "No Jeanine, I won't" He sighed, wishing he had time to heal the wounds Gregory had left in her soul. "I don't want a slave. If you wish to go, then go. I'll be here to feed you if you wish." Anatoly's voice tore at his own throat with its harshness. "I just, well, I wouldn't want to push my luck, so I would ask you not wait till you are truly starving before you come to me."
      *Why?* Her implication was far greater than the single word.
      "Because I too have lost too many of those dear to me and want you more than I can ever say in words." He turned back to see her looking down at him with her wonderful silver grey eyes wide. Anatoly did not dare even think about how very much he wanted her body and soul next to his. She was close enough he could make out the adamantine flares against their backing of lighter silver.
      *You'd have me without the bond?* She stroked the side of his face.
      It was all he could do not lie to her and tell her anything she wished to hear to be able to sway her. Instead he was brutally straightforward, "I'm honest, I'd rather bond you." Tearing pain filled his heart at her increased distance with his words. "You would be healthier that way. Battle servants are far more limited without a bond to some master or another. I told Ilya it was a bad idea, but he wouldn't listen to me."
      *You knew him?*
      "Yes" He confirmed. "Not as well as some, but yes. Even with the bond though, you would be free to do as you please as long as you don't kill my friends."
     
      Jeanine was now well and truly trapped. Anatoly had simply set this whole thing up to force her into accepting another bond. Until now she had desperately wanted to be able to give in to his obvious desire for her body. If she refused now, he would most likely assume she was planning on going back to killing battle servants. Feeling sick at her complicity in her own capture and bondage, she grimaced. I had thought he had truly wanted me and not only what I could do for him. Jeanine held her hands out to him. "Take my bond then." She barely remembered to send this as well as speak it. At least I'll be able to heal him when we are bonded
      "Damn you Jeanine." His blue eyes darkened with rage. "If you hate me so much, then I won't take your bond."
      "I don't hate you, Anatoly." She tried to explain at his shocking reversal.
      "No?" He snarled. "Then why do you insist I'm just like Gregory?" His body was trembling at her very touch.
      "Because every single damn battle master I've ever know was." She got to her feet to try to keep from throwing herself at his feet and doing anything he asked. At the very moment of his ultimatum, she had been going to throw herself at him so at least one of them could have their desires fulfilled. "I don't know you Anatoly. I wish we could have the chance to get to know each other, but not if you keep trying to blackmail me."
      His hands clenched into fists, then he took a deep breath. "Ah" He said softly. "You think I want to bond you to control your actions."
      "Why else?" She put her hands on her hips. Jeanine truly thought this was the only reason any battle master would want her bond. Living on her own had taught Jeanine well that battle masters would not desire her body for Jeanine's pleasure as well as theirs. Sex was simply an easy way for them to raise their emotions to a high enough pitch to feed her.
      "Do you think it might be because I could possibly want you to be as healthy as possible?" The corner of his mouth turned up in half a smile. His words were honeyed and smooth, as so many of the others had been before they had bonded her. "Really, Jeanine. Of course it could also be the fact I would like to ravish you thoroughly here on the floor. But if I were to say such I thing I would be a boor and certainly no gentleman."
      "What?" Her heart pounded and she wasn't sure if it was lust or fear. No man had ever admitted such a thing to her so openly. The difference left her off balance and unsure again.
      "I thank you for your sweet words, kind sir." She grinned, feeling far lighter than she had in quite a while. "But I am certain your regular partner would have things to say to me if I were to usurp their place in less than a day, without even giving them a chance to prove their worth." Safe Jeanine figured any battle master as sweet as Anatoly seemed to be would have to already have more than a few servants to satisfy his physical needs. Many of them probably far better endowed than she was.
      "I have had no true bond mate since Valentine died, Jeanine." He held out his hand. "Even golds do relatively little for me. After having had the best, well, I did not wish to settle for anything else."
      "So instead you try to seduce me as I am the only platinum available." She snorted, covering her stark terror at having her ploy misfire so completely. Of course he would grab at the only platinum he could get his hands on.
      "Not true. There are two others in the city and one living immediately south of the white sea." He shrugged. His broad shoulders made her lick roof of her mouth, thinking of how very much she wished to taste him. Her physical desire for his person had not lessened one iota for all her words of denial. His desire to bond her, now after having given the idea time to sink in, also did not seem so horrible as it once had. Jeanine certainly was not going to kill another battle servant to feed off of, no matter what she said to Anatoly.
      The time they spent together seemed to be healing for the old battle master, as he moved far more gracefully already than he had in the church earlier today.
      "Then why me?" she looked down at her immature appearing body. Early battle servants, like herself, far too often reflected Ilya's favorite perversion, that of pedophilia. The charitable had said it was from the bonding and empathic abilities which he had amplified from those of very young infants, but Jeanine seriously doubted it. If nothing else, the reminder she looked like a child might well cool his ardor. Not that she truly wished for such in her heart. Although better to have him deny her now than later when he saw how poor a specimen of a female he had gotten.
      "Because you are beautiful, knowledgable, and quite mature." He smiled sadly. "Remember, I knew him. Some of the earliest battle servants he attempted, he stopped their growth before puberty to feed his perversion. They died, horribly. All the created ones who survived, although they may look anywhere from twelve to sixteen, are certainly physical adults. Hopefully, some of the born servants will mature completely."
      "So you want me for my body." Jeanine wasn't entire sure of this either. Gregory had wanted her for her body but certainly had had no interest in her mind. Jeanine hadn't been able to find Gregory's mind to know if there was anything there to be interested in.
      "Yes and no, pretty one." he smiled softly. "None of the platinums ever made were anything but physically beautiful. I would like the chance to get to know you better. What I have seen so far I liked."
      "You can do that without the bond."
      "So I can." He blinked slowly. "But I would rather not."
      "Again, why?" this time she simply wanted to know. Completely open, she waited for his answer.
      "Because I would want to know you in other ways as well." His voice dropped to a gorgeous dark purr. "It has been years since I have known anyone as I wish for you."
      "How long?" Now she knew why he looked the way he did. Battle masters who denied their abilities aged far past the point where their body had originally reached stasis.
      "Since the end of first century after the war." he looked away. "I didn't want to risk it after him." Anatoly grimaced. "Why am I telling you all this? Go on with you. I'll take care of myself, like I have for all these years."
      Shocked at his dismissal for a moment all she could do was gape. "Possibly because you are as lonely as I am?" She sat next to him again and stroked his thigh through his heavy leather pants. His thighs were still heavy and firm under her slender hand. Slowly she slid her hand up to caress his hip. The feel of his passivity under her touch made her so bold she almost missed his next words.
      "Get out, Jeanine." He said wearily. "You're no different than the rest. I had been mistaken."
      "As you wish, battle master." Another tear trickled down the side of her face. I pushed him too far. She figured he would never accept her now. Her hasty actions in the past had gotten her into trouble, but never anything like this. Jeanine's heart felt like lead in her chest. Getting up, she looked at the itrians, now a total of eight of them and smiled sadly. "At least you have something to remember me by." She whispered purely physically, her lip quivering as she bit back tears and let herself out the door.
     
      Anatoly drummed his fingers on his thigh. The joints were hot and painful. "Now I know why humans conquered aging as one of the first things they did with their biotech." The personal experience of growing old was not something he would have ever thought to have to face himself.
      His steps creaked and faultered as he walked along the path. He looked around. "I could have sworn I felt Jeanine." His voice was hardly louder than the breeze through the trees. Only silence returned from his commentary. The battle servants who looked to him were scattered all over the buildings, having restocked the larder yesterday and many of them still sleeping it off. Bright flickers of presence nearly reassured him he wasn't alone. Although the nightingale singing his heart out on a tree overhead gave lie to the feeling.
      Most song birds and other potential prey avoided the complex of building which had once housed the great university. Too many battle servants were rather catholic in their tastes and the local fauna had learned to avoid them. Standing still, so he could be silent, he watched the rather brilliantly colored bird as he flipped his indigo wings to his back and sang even more enthusiastically. It was late, nearly dawn, but Anatoly couldn't sleep.
      His heart skipped a beat and he sat heavily on a convenient bench. The nightingale flew off. Panting, he clutched his chest. It hurt, all the way down his arm. Is this it? He asked the now silent night. "No, they can't find me like this." With all his will, he forced his heart to resume its normal pace. Sweating and shaking, he sat for nearly an hour as the nightingale resumed his call for a mate. I wish it were only that simple. Anatoly thought of Jeanine.
     
      Jeanine padded along the high stone wall of the garden. None of the other servants knew she was there. They were all off somewhere. She really didn't care. Her belly cramped with hunger. Fortunately it was not physical hunger and no betraying sounds could lead another servant to her position.
      As long as she didn't reach for him, Anatoly couldn't know she was here. He sat beneath a spreading, silver leaved, oak tree. The light of the moon was bright enough she didn't need any amplification to see easily in the early dawn. His face was lined and drawn. Dark shadows beneath his now closed eyes made holes in his skull.
      He does not look well. She figured it was the temporary absence of his servants. Jeanine lay on the top of the wall, resting her chin on her hands, watching him. She really didn't know why she continued to be so fascinated by the man. He was only another revanant of the great war.
      Moonlight flashed on the silvered leaves, turning them a riot of color to her sight. Stars spangled her vision. He looked so lost and alone sitting in the empty garden. His silvered hair echoed the leaves. A lock of it fell forward on his forehead. Her hand itched to brush it back.
      Finally he tipped his head back and opened his eyes. Jeanine could see his jaw clench. The grating sound of his teeth banished her from her cozy perch. I have to do something to win him. She padded off into the night.
     
      Gregory snorted in absolute disgust. "Now you want me to take your place with your little pets. What if I say I don't have anything left for them after Dimitri?"
      "Please, Gregory." Anatoly begged. Any other time, or for any other reason, Gregory would have been overjoyed to have his older brother begging him for almost anything. "I can't go out there today." Admittedly, Anatoly did look horrible, with dark circles under his eyes and deep lines in his face, but then Gregory usually thought Anatoly was no great prize.
      "On one condition." He held up a finger, enjoying Anatoly's torment.
      "What?" He bit off the word with a click of obvious irritation. It sounded like an ancient human whose false teeth had come loose.
      "I want to know why you haven't done anything about the killings." He looked down his nose at his brother.
      "What!?" Anatoly sat bolt upright in bed. "There's been another one?"
      "Yesterday, a silver down near the market." Gregory stroked Dimitri's back to reassure himself of Dimitri's continued presence. He could have done it mentally, but didn't want to spoil the youngster by too much intimate contact. "I have no idea what their name was." He shrugged, not caring much, one way or the other. To his way of thinking it was relatively pointless to even name most battle servants, one was very much like another. Just like the awful bugs Anatoly insisted he not get rid of, like any normal person would. Ugh, letting vermin live with you.
      "Matritya" Dimitri told him. "The housekeeper was talking about it." The youngster looked like he was going to start bouncing with joy to be able to help.
      Anatoly leaned back with a sigh, "I remember holding her in my arms when she was tiny."
      "What was that?" Gregory didn't quite understand what that had to do with anything, other than the fact she might have been another potential breeder. Although while he had Dimitri, Gregory didn't much care about that either.
      "Nothing." The old fool was going senile. Gregory hoped he wouldn't go crazy like it seemed Anatoly was. "If Jeanine is out there ..."
      "I'll kill her." Dimitri piped up.
      "No lad, she might hurt you." Gregory ruffled the young battle servant's hair. "I don't want you to cross her."
      "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of Jeanine." Anatoly got out of bed with an audible creaking and popping of joints. "You deal with the service and I'll take care of everything else."
      Even to Gregory the man was obviously in a great deal of pain. "What do you need, Anatoly?"
      "Take care of them till I get back."
      "All right, just this once." Gregory gave in with a sigh at being tricked into doing something he didn't want to do, again.

Chapter 5

      Anatoly carefully made his way across town. His footsteps were far from silent, echoing off the buildings surrounding him. I hope I remember where they live. He looked up at the boarded up windows in abandoned apartment buildings. Almost all of the buildings from the time of the war were now derelict beyond redemption, but squatters still made use of their shelter. A few of the nicer ones had been either restored or maintained. Even a few very enterprising souls had built their own dwellings out of materials from the collapsed and truly abandoned buildings.
      As he made his way around the block where he thought he remembered them living, Anatoly realized he had no way of managing to get to the house. A building had collapsed across the alleyway in. Peering into the pile of rubble, he finally gave up. *Tanya!* he called out, careful not to verbalize. It had taken over a week for his hearing to return after Jeanine had ruptured his eardrums and he still wasn't quite up to even what he had been.
      "Anatoly!" A stunning young woman with silver grey streaked blue eyes caught him up in a hug.
      "Careful little one." He hugged her back as hard as he could, burying his face in her sweet scented white blond hair.
      The platinum battle servant laughed at his feeble efforts to crush her ribs. "You're getting old, my dear friend." She shook her head sadly. "Even more than last time."
      "Sorry, happens to some of us." He shrugged. Anatoly hadn't been doing too badly until the whole mess with Jeanine had blown up in his face. Dimitri had at least kept him somewhat stable, even if he couldn't fulfill all of Anatoly's needs. Now he was waking two and three times a night, his pillow wet with tears he had shed in his sleep. Even his ability to satisfy himself to some small extent had been taken away by his desperate longing for a woman he could never have. Now after having found out she had reverted to killing people he considered his friends and often children, Anatoly had to talk with someone.
      "Doesn't have too, Mikhail looks the same as he always has." She took his hand. "It's shaking. Are you ill?"
      "No, or at least nothing I can do anything about, just age and cares, my little friend." he squeezed her hand. *I do not wish to discuss it on the street, little one.* Tanya looked at him dubiously. Truthfully she was only a few bare cents short of his own one-ninety, but even with her battle servant joint modifications, she looked as slender and harmless as a willow wand. "You let your hair grow out."
      She brushed back the long fall of platinum blond strands. "Mikhail prefers it long. Says he likes to feel it tickle his thighs."
      "He would." Anatoly laughed. "Where are you taking me?" She tugged at his hand as she ducked under a fallen steel cross beam which looked like it would collapse at any moment.
      "Home." She waved him on and he dubiously followed. "I very carefully pulled down this building so Mikhail and I could have some privacy. When I heard about the killings on your side of town I was doubly grateful."
      "I know the killer." He said and promptly walked right into her.
      "Another battle servant?" She snorted. "You don't have to tell me."
      "Yes another battle servant, but not one I knew."
      "Some silver or gold get all hopped up killing humans and find out battle servants are vulnerable as well?" She let him into a cleared area with a small, woodframe house in perfect condition centered in it. A low white fence surrounded it, and the shutters were painted with bright flowers. It looked extraordinarily surreal in its patch of meticulously maintained classical grass and green shrubbery, while encircled by the derelict cement apartment buildings.
      "No, a platinum." He said.
      Tanya turned and stared at him with one hand on the gate, "What the hell? You have to be joking."
      "I'm not."
      "Well I didn't do it and I know Kitryan didn't do it. We all play bridge every week." She winked, letting him know she was being euphemistic.
      "How very domestic." He laughed till tears came to his eyes. "I'm sorry, its been a long time since I've laughed so hard."
      "Looks like it too, Anatoly." Mikhail called out as she opened the door for him and bowed him into the house.
      "How would you know, Mikhail?" He teased his old friend gently.
      Mikhail turned his sightless, milky white eyes to Anatoly. "The same way I see everything, very well thank you." He grinned pointing at him. "Just because some stupid lab tech screwed up, doesn't mean I can't see with someone else's eyes." He pulled Tanya onto his lap and ran his fingers through her fine straight hair.
      The long standing banter between the two friends was as old as their acquaintance. Mikhail had been born blind but had shown such incredible promise as a battle master anyways, some kind soul had spared his life. Neither of them knew who the nameless nurse was who suckled him and kept his secret until he was too old to easily dispose of, but Anatoly had always praised her name to God.
      "So, you know who this platinum is?" Mikhail asked.
      "Yes, Jeanine." He said and Mikhail blinked in surprise. They had been friends for so long, Anatoly felt secure in telling him everything. And in trusting Mikhail, he also trusted Tanya.
      "Who?" Mikhail almost spilled Tanya out of his lap as he sat bolt upright. "I don't recognize the name and I thought between us we knew the names of every single Russian platinum ever created, and not a few of the American ones." He growled the name of hated enemy who had given China the strength and ingenuity to continue the long brutal war to the point of destroying all political factions. Anatoly knew enough of pre-War history to understand China's attack on Russia. America coming in on the side of the Chinese had turned what would have become yet another stand off between the two Eastern countries into a world wide conflagration on a scale to rival God's flooding of the world in the time of Noah.
      "She was created at Pasteur and abandoned here at the end of the war." He explained why the name was unrecognizable.
      Many of the Western European countries, after having been invaded by an Albania backed by Chinese and American biotechnology, had created their own battle servants and masters from plans given to them by the desperate Russians. There were more than a few battle servants abandoned far from their homes, scattered by the diaspora created by their attempting to avoid the charnel houses most of the major world cities had become. There had been a few evacuations near the end to attempt to repatriate survivors, but they had all been based in cities. This was the first case where Anatoly had heard of a platinum who had managed to survive the diaspora intact. There had never been many of them, and they depended far more heavily on their masters for sustenance and support than any of the other kinds of battle servants.
      "From what little I know she's been living hand to mouth ever since. My, 'brother'" Anatoly put the full weight of his scorn on the word and both Mikhail and Tanya snorted. They both knew quite well Gregory was no such thing. "hid her from me until he, like the fool he is, made her mad and cast her off."
      "Why and how did he do such a stupid thing?" Tanya asked, lipping at Mikhail's dark hair.
      "Why, because he is an imbecile. If he hadn't been a born battle master he would have, quite rightly, been strangled at birth for being a moron." Anatoly growled. "I should have done it anyways, but we couldn't afford to loose anyone who might be able to pass on their genes. Now he's done far more harm than I would have ever thought possible. Insofar as how, well he near starved her to death and tried to keep a strangle hold on her." And broke her heart, Anatoly added silently.
      "No, I wouldn't like that at all." Tanya grinned. "Don't you even think of it." She tapped Mikhail on the nose.
      "I wouldn't. I love you too much the way you are, Tanya sweet." He kissed the tip of her finger.
      "On top of it all, now Gregory's gotten completely bamboozled by Dimitri." Anatoly had to fight back a surge of envy for Mikhail's easy partnership with his mate. If things had only been different, perhaps he too might have a mate, Jeanine.
      "What a mess." Tanya agreed. "So how do you know the killer is Jeanine?"
      "Because, last week, she said she wouldn't kill again." Anatoly leaned back with a sigh, fingering the lace cover on the arm of the chair.
      "Then why are you here? You never visit just for the company." Mikhail teased.
      Removing his hand from its fascination with Tanya's handiwork, "The last murder was yesterday." Anatoly looked over his steepled fingers at them.
      "It wouldn't have been Jeanine." Tanya said forcefully. "If she survived the war and this long, she's no idiot. Breaking a promise like that is something no platinum would think of doing, unless ..."
      "Unless what?" This all sounded like the words Anatoly had told himself on the way over here.
      "Unless she thinks you're as ignorant and stupid as your so called brother." Mikhail added in.
      "No. She knows who and what I am. I wouldn't have thought she would lie to me either." He hit his fist on the arm of the chair and got to his feet. Pacing, "I don't understand it and right now I feel so awful I can't even think straight."
      "Those coppers you've collected don't help much, do they?" Mikhail said sadly.
      "No" He looked up at the intricate carving on the moulding over the door to the kitchen. "And now the only one I want is her, exactly when I need the rational judgement."
      "You want her physically as well?" Tanya gaped at him. "You want to bond her?"
      "Yes" He turned to them. "I ... you know I haven't wanted anyone since Valentine. You should have seen her the first time I met her. Reaching out to save an itrian." He couldn't help but smile at the memory. "Oh, hell, she was killing coppers right and left, yet she exposed herself to save an insect. I don't know what to make of her."
      "It sounds like you want to love her, my old." Tanya smiled at him kindly. "I never would have thought I would live to see the day."
      "Neither did I." Mikhail added. "So what happened then?"
      "Well, after she saw how badly she had terrified my servants, she promised me she wouldn't kill anyone else." He looked down at his hands, wringing them. "I believed her, damn it." Shame at his misjudgment clouded his vision.
      "Did she tell you verbally or to your mind?" Tanya pointed out.
      "To my mind" Anatoly felt his eyes grow wide. "She couldn't have lied to me!" Sudden hope and joy made him want to dance despite his aching joints and slowed muscles. Jeanine isn't a killer! He wanted to carol the discovery from the rooftree.
      "Then you have a second killer on your hands." Mikhail pointed out. "Would you like our help?"
      "Please." He knelt at their feet. "I'm so damn old and tired, Mikhail." For a long while, with Mikhail's insistence, he rested his face on Tanya's leg and simply cried. Jeanine's horrid rejection still hurt like hell, but at least he knew she was no oath breaker. Maybe there was still a chance he could win her and have this victory mean more than ashes, as so much of his life had turned to dust and gall at his merest touch.
     
      Jeanine actually found herself whistling. Stop that. She told herself, but couldn't help her silly grin. It had been two weeks since she had seen Anatoly that first time. By the end of the first week, her constant remorse and regret had became unbearable. After seeing him so alone in his garden, she knew she had to do something for him.
      I was an idiot. She fingered the carefully wrapped package, setting it on the ground below the broken out window. I was a right bloody idiot. Near the end of the second week Jeanine realized she had to come up with something to try to make up for her inexcusable rudeness to him. Every time she thought of how wonderfully sweet and kind he had been she wanted to kick herself for refusing him. No matter what he asks of me, I was a fool to say no. Thinking back on the encounter, Jeanine realized Anatoly really did only want the best for her. And even if he doesn't, I would rather have one night of lust masquerading as love than to sit by myself and cry into my tea for no good reason. Finally she came up with a plan of a way to make her apologies clear.
     
      Windows, particularly clear glass windows had become next to impossible to find anymore. Jeanine had only managed to find half a dozen large pieces left over from larger sheets of glass. Looking at all the pieces she had managed to gather she came up with an idea. If I can only get them hot enough. She looked at the glass then thought of the place where she had found a huge pile of oilstone someone had abandoned many years ago. With a great deal of fuss and experimentation, Jeanine found if she were very, very careful she could create a hot enough fire with it to weld together her pieces into one good window.
      Even to her vision, the result had been indistinguishable from an original. How far we have fallen. She grinned wryly, thinking of the enormous sheet glass windows which once covered entire buildings.
     
      Her pets had loved the warmed stone beneath her work surface. Although she did regret leaving them to their own devices, she hoped she would never have to return to her solitary existence in the old building she had commandeered. Jeanine had tried to explain to them she would not be coming back, but she doubted they understood her.
      Looking up, she saw the remnants of glass had been removed from the frame and the shutters were open to the late spring night. Good, she listened for anyone stirring and heard nothing unexpected. There were a couple of people walking around in the lower part of the building, but they were far enough away she couldn't see them through the stone walls. After tying a long rope from her belt to the package, she judged her distance and jumped for the open window.
      She was ravenously hungry already, but not so starved she couldn't easily make the ten meter leap. Cringing a bit at her own sloppiness, she heard her palms smack against the window frame as she made a neat front flip into the room. Before she could adjust her vision, someone wrenched her arms behind her back and pinned her to the floor. What the hell? She cursed her idiocity at getting caught. Jeanine had certainly not expected Anatoly to have a body guard in his sitting room. Whoever it was held her in a grip of steel, although in this po