A particular shade of blue eyes and an uncertain past were not enough to brand someone an immortal. The pure elixir could not be found in time. Inventing phantom immortals who might possibly lead them to it, this would be an intolerable way to spend their final days, they'd insisted.
Undeterred, their siblings had sent news clippings to their next port of call, clippings they had now spread across the dining table in the yacht's central cabin. MUMMY'S CURSE KILLS STRATFORD SHIPPING MAGNATE, "RAMSES THE DAMNED" STRIKES DOWN THOSE WHO DISTURB HIS REST, and then HEIRESS DEFIES MUMMY'S CURSE, "RAMSES THE DAMNED" TO VISIT LONDON.
But when they had first read these articles, they had remained unconvinced.
Their master had granted them two centuries of life. No more. And he had never hidden this fact from them. He had even nicknamed them accordingly, his fracti, the final fracti. For when they perished, there would be no one left who knew of his island tomb. No one left to expose his withered form to the sun. And so their death would ensure a kind of death for him.
This had been the plan for two centuries. And they should continue to honor the pact they had all made; they should resign themselves to their fate. Within months, their bodies would begin to crumble and disintegrate, a process that would take only a few days. If only their brothers and sisters hadn't remained in London, if only they had also taken to the seas to enjoy as much of the world as they could before they decayed, they would not have fallen prey to such hopeful fantasies.
With such assurance they had said these things, by letter, by cable, and even by telephone, when the cables about this Reginald Ramsey and his strange connection to Ramses the Damned did not stop.
And of course, they had balked, their brothers and sisters, insisted that they were going to place the house in Mayfair where this Egyptian allegedly resided under constant surveillance. So be it, they had said to them.
Spend your final days in vain hope if you wish.
> And then, they too had spotted a man they believed to be an immortal, an immortal they didn't recognize. An aristocrat, a skilled gambler. The Earl of Rutherford. So skilled, he seemed to possess senses heightened by the elixir. The purest version of it, or the corrupted form that had granted them two centuries of additional life? This they did not know, and now, in the wake of the young prostitute's account, they were desperate to find out.
But had they too now fallen prey to the same trap? They spent the hours at sea debating this and had come no closer to an answer by the time they reached their destination.
As they approached the island where their maker slept, they moved out onto the deck so they could watch the pile of rocks appear out of the dawn.
A special bond knitted them together, and always had. They had often lived separately from the other fracti. They were not surprised when their siblings declined to join them on their journey around the world by sea. The three of them, Jeneva, Callum, and the giant Matthias, had all been made on the same night over two hundred years before, plucked from their deathbeds in the same London slum. Provided with wealth and a new life by their maker.
And so if he was to be awakened, it should be the three of them to do it. And yet...
"His command was clear," Jeneva said. "We were to wake him only if the pure elixir was found. Not for the mere hope of it."
"Perhaps after two centuries of sleep, he will thirst for life," Callum offered.
"You believe he wishes to be awakened just in time to watch us perish?" Matthias said. Even when quiet, his voice seemed like a rumble from the depths of his giant body. But he did not speak of his eventual death as a mortal would, for he had lived two centuries and more.
"We wake him because there is a chance we will not," Callum said. "Not now, not ever."
"A slim chance," Jeneva said. "A ghost of a chance, really."
"Nevertheless," Callum said, "it is enough."
Matthias was apparently convinced as well. He went to help as their skiff was lowered into the water.
The island had no beaches and nothing resembling a dock, so they would be forced to row to its rock-strewn coast.
They maintained the smallest crew they could, a captain and a single deckhand, both paid small fortunes to turn a blind eye to all of their peculiarities. These men had assisted with the kidnapping of Michel Malveaux's mother as if it were one of the transfers aboard of prepared foods they made in every port.
It was a short and quiet journey to the tomb.
The oars dipped gently into the still waters. Their boots made scraping sounds here and there as they walked with balance and precision over the giant rocks.
Matthias, their patient giant, climbed to the top of the island by himself, removed the three boulders that had sealed light from the cavern below. Then he returned to the closest thing the island had to a shore, and the three of them rolled back the great stones blocking the tomb's side passage.
By the time they entered the central cavern, sunlight was pouring down onto their father's remains.
The regeneration had begun.
Strands of their master's great, leonine mane sprouted from a head that had been withered flesh only moments before. There was a fullness now to the face that rendered it something between pure skeleton and animate man.
The tomb in which he'd slept, however, was as empty as when they'd left him here a century before. It was perched above the highest tide, so only the faintest dappling of seaweed was visible along the bottoms of the rock walls. He had granted all his earthly possessions to them, his children. His final fracti. But now, Jeneva saw this desolate tomb for what it was. A temple to his despair, and all that he had lost.
For millennia he had tried to discover the formula for the pure elixir. Each attempt had been met with failure. As a result, every two centuries, he was forced to grieve for another generation of his children. This ceaseless loss had broken his immortal spirit, he claimed. He had once described it as being tormented by the gods themselves. To be able to extend the lives of those he had made, but for what was only a mercilessly short period in the life of an immortal.