His first task was to make love with every woman in Eden. This was his first Reasoning, which would be repeated quarterly. Curtis assured him it was not only necessary, but expected. These women were all his. She’d brought him to pleasure them, to give them children. He was a perfect specimen, and they were all thrilled to be with him.
There were fifteen sacrosancts, as the women of childbearing age were known. Fifteen was a sacred number in Eden. The sacrosancts were divided into three sets of five, lived in three small cabins with five small rooms and one large great room in each, and every night for two weeks he fulfilled his duties in each of the bedchambers.
He learned that women were very different. Sizes, shapes, smells, movements; all unique, all precious. His mates ranged in age from twelve to nearly fifty. Some he enjoyed more than others, but he did his duty for all.
At each hearth, he was fed and given sweet homemade wine. He was in fact treated as a king. And he liked it. He liked the attention from these women. He liked the idea of spilling his seed in them, knowing that coupling with him brought them joy. The small whispers in the night told him things he needed to understand about his new life. Eden was a utopia, and he was going to be their greatest asset. If they could have his children—big strong strapping young men—their lives would be blessed by Curtis, and they would bless him in return.
At the end of the Reasoning, sore, tired and happy, he was sent back to Curtis’s chamber. She was naked upon the bed, the sun playing off her glorious hair, and she asked him if he was interested in killing anymore.
The question caught him off guard, and it must have shown, because she told him to be completely honest with her, for she would know if he was lying.
He wanted to lie, to tell her what he thought she wanted to hear. He needed to stay. For the first time in his life he felt as though he belonged somewhere, to someone. He felt loved, and cherished, and desired.
This woman knew what he’d done, and she still wanted him. It was more than a benediction. It was the ultimate forgiveness.
And because she’d been honest with him, he was honest with her.
“Yes, I still want to kill. I won’t, for your sake, but I can’t tell you honestly that I wouldn’t want to. There is something very different here that satisfies part of what I crave.”
“Which is what, my Adrian? What do you crave?”
“Feeling the life of a person leave their body.”
She was up in a flash, and he thought she meant to slap him, but instead she kissed him and smiled. “You have answered well, Adrian. You will kill again. But you will not do it for yourself. That is wrong. You’ve spent a year removing people from this earth who have done you no harm, who are innocent. Instead from this moment forward, every kill you make will be in my name. You will do this for me.”
“Anything, Curtis. I will do anything for you.”
They settled into life on the farm. He was happy. Happier than he’d ever been. They lived a good life. His previous urges were mollified. All he wanted was to retain Curtis’s favor, to make her happy, to work hard and have the respect of his fellow Edenites. He was the first to sit when Curtis stood to speak, the first to clap, to allow his eyes to roll back, to accept the Wafer of Life, which gave him insight into Curtis’s explanations of the great Mysteries of the Universe.
After a month of excelling, it was time for him to be fully accepted into Eden. Accepting the Mark, as they called it, was a brutal, all day and all night process. His entire back was tattooed with a triskele, the symbols of Eden, as a base. It was an important ceremony. Everyone participated, all the members of Eden spilling their own blood into the ink for the marks they were going to make.
It made them one. They shared all things. The blood of one was the blood of many, and together they were consecrated.
The next day, he was in pain, but happy. All of Eden gathered for a feast to welcome him as a true member of their fold.
He hadn’t connected his coupling with the fact that there were no young children or babies in Eden. It was only nine months later, after six of the women he’d been with swelled with new life and gave birth to healthy, squalling children, that he saw any infants. He wondered why there were none before he came, but he soon found out why.
Within a week, all the newborns were gone.
He asked Curtis about this, and was shocked when she flew into a rage. She swore at him, cursed him, punched him, then had three men drag him down the stairs, to the dark, dank cellar below the farmhouse. Things crawled on him, bugs and rats and spiders, but he’d been tied down and he couldn’t move to get them off. He was there for three days in his own filth, with no food and only the barest trickle of water from a broken pipe sticking out from the wall, which he could reach if he rolled, straining, to his right.