RedFire
Chapter 22
Leonidas sank heavily onto the edge of his bed. Over the past few days he’d spent the bulk of his time guiding the warriors, strategizing. It always drained his solitary nature to go so long without a quiet moment alone with his own thoughts.
His heart beat heavily in his chest. What River had asked of him had been radical indeed, and although he’d consented, his approval now weighed on him like a bad omen.
The young warrior planned to shape shift into weapon form before Ajax created the portal that would trans port them back to Savannah. And, not only that, but he intended to remain in that altered state for the mission’s entire duration. They had no precedent for what such a long-term transformation might do to River’s immor tal body. Or how it would impact his return, that feral berserker nature that literally served as River’s double edged sword. So long transformed and the young war rior might return to human form insane, fully berserk, without a hope of regaining his rational mind.
There was even the possibility that he’d never be able to revert to his human body again; that he’d be cast for ever as a silver knife or dagger . . . whatever clandestine form he chose to assume for the journey.
But Leonidas had given his okay, because the gravity of the mission demanded it. With a sigh he rose to his feet. Perhaps a warm shower would calm him, he thought. Many things had changed over the eternal years—one of them being that the Spartans did allow themselves minor measures of comfort, like long, soak ing showers or satisfying meals. Still, he knew that none of their recently acquired pleasures would satisfy his current restlessness. No, there was only one person who could work a spell over him right now, and she was quite literally nowhere to be seen.
Stripping out of his shirt, he wished his lovely Oracle carried a cell phone. If she did, he would make an exception and use his own that generally sat untouched on his nightstand. More than that, he wished that she lived in the realm that he walked on a daily basis. As otherworldly as his own plane was, the Oracle tripped her way along on another one entirely. He smiled, think ing of the joyous bounce she almost always had in her step, the way she made that constant heaviness on his shoulders a bit lighter.
It wasn’t that he yearned to take her out dancing or to a pub, or any of those predictable courting sorts of things. All he really wanted was to curl beside the fire with her in his arms and make love to her. To stroke her crazy blue streaks and kiss them; to entwine his heavy body all about her petite one.
He laughed to himself chidingly. I need a shower, all right, but not a warm one.
Walking toward his bath, he caught a glimpse of his bare chest in the mirror and winced at the image that met him. There were more scars on his body than he could count, the worst of which was a brutal band that encircled the top of his right arm. Of all the Spartan immortals, his body had been most abused at his death—and after. He’d been put on display as a war trophy, carried and tossed among the Persian throng. Or so he’d been told. His essence had already been deep into its journey toward Elysium before all of that happened. Thank the gods he hadn’t truly lived it.
As for the thick scar about his arm, it was a memento of the blow that had ended his life. A gleaming Persian sword had sliced the thing right off. The arm had been restored, of course, like the rest of him, at the moment when Ares had dipped him into the River Styx. But the pain and the evidence of his mistreatment would linger throughout eternity.
He continued staring at his reflection, at the ribbed and puckered war wounds that he carried with him like threadbare baggage. The other Spartans had been luckier, their wounds healing neatly at their moment of immortal transformation. Not so for him. This battered form was the best he’d ever get.
Normally he didn’t mind the facts about his appear ance. Maybe it was the edgy expectation he felt about the Savannah mission that had him so unsettled. Maybe, if he dared to admit his deepest fear, he worried that the Oracle would never find him physically appealing: not like this, stripped of his armor, out of his linen shirt.
“You’re much too old to be thinking about all of this,” he told his reflection, laughing faintly to himself.
“Old, shmold, I’m so tired of hearing that talk from you.”
He jolted physically, actually lifting onto his tiptoes as the Oracle appeared just beside him in the mirror’s reflection. Spinning to face her, he immediately remem bered his half-naked state and folded both arms protectively across his chest.
“You said . . . you came to my chambers sometimes, but . . .” He let the words dangle, not even sure how to finish.
She beamed up at him, slipping both hands onto his forearms, rubbing his sore muscles. “I also said I never peeked.”
He lowered his eyes. “Fortunately enough.”
Gently she pried at his arms, trying to get him to relax his physical stance. “So this is my big chance,” she announced brightly, even as he resisted her efforts.
He gulped despite himself. “Big chance for what exactly?”
She slapped him on the chest. “Let those mighty arms drop, Spartan.”
He smiled slowly, still gazing into those pale, mysterious eyes. “I won’t.”
He shivered; it was so unlike his Spartan nature to react to any change of temperature. But the chill of his room made a sharp contrast to the heat of her hands—hands that seemed absolutely determined to slide across his chest in a truly wanton manner. They wrestled to gether for a full minute, a playful battle of push and pull, a forbidden dance between the king and his Oracle.
Until she changed her tack. Quite suddenly she stopped her tussling, wide-eyed. Staring at his disfigured upper arm, she reached out and touched his thick scar.
He jerked away from her. “Don’t do that,” he snapped in shock.
But she made such a soft, soothing sound as she reached toward him again—and her fingers felt so tender as they came into contact with that always-heated mark—that he fell right under her spell. Somehow it no longer mattered if she saw the vicious scars that covered his body.
“My dear, beautiful king,” she murmured, fingers still massaging his worst mark. “Why did they treat you so cruelly? This body of yours was worth more than any human treasure. Much beyond its weight in gold. Oh, my sweet, brave Leo . . .”
The words seemed to catch in her throat. She bowed her head for a moment, coughing slightly. When she did meet his gaze again, her eyes—those normally joy-filled, playful eyes—were brimming with tears on his behalf. He reached for her, unable to tolerate that kind of pain in her sweet gaze.
“Don’t, please,” she murmured, the tears falling freely down her cheeks.
By the gods, he’d not wanted her to know his private pain. Then again, what had he expected? She was his Oracle, after all—of course she’d experienced all his memories when she’d touched his scar. With her higher vision she’d known every moment of his torture, how viciously the Persians had treated him. The triumphant way they’d paraded his dead body among their throng ing masses, passing it from shoulder to shoulder in jeering victory.
“If you cry, my lady, I just might cry, too.” He cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him.
She forced a halfhearted smile. Then all at once it grew much brighter and genuine. “Kiss me,” she commanded.
“Is that why you came here, to my bedchamber? Be cause of what you wanted me to do to you, wanted me to touch you?” His heart thundered like a pack of wild horses as he thought about how close his bed was to them. How easy it would be to take her, finally, to strip her clothes off and slide inside of her. “You came for me to bed you,” he whispered hotly, one hand already moving toward his belt.
“Alas, no.” She gave a graceful little bow and his hand froze. “I’m here on official business, but you can’t blame me for trying to steal a kiss . . . or, or . . . whatever I can.”
She wasn’t even finished talking before he’d covered her mouth with his, wrapping her fast against his bare chest. In an awkward walking tangle, he moved them toward the bed, neither of them breaking the kiss. They hit the mattress like a body slam, collapsing backward in each other’s arms. As they bounced from the fall, she bit his lower lip upon impact, and he wanted to laugh when the tangy taste of blood filled his mouth.
She gasped in horror, sitting right up on the bed. “I am so sorry,” she told him earnestly.
He leaned on one elbow, watching her, heat absolutely boiling in his blood. “For what?”
“I bit you. Okay, that’s beyond awful. I bit—bit—the great King Leonidas.” She shook her head and bounded to her feet, blurting, “Gotta go, gotta go.”
“Oracle!” He reached for her, laughing. “I don’t mind that you bite!”
She buried her face behind her hands, clearly so mor tified that nothing he said would rescue the situation. “I came to say that Shay should remember these words,” she rushed, never dropping her hands. “Shay should remember to ‘tell thee fair.’ It’s in the scroll, but remind her of those words in particular. If I’d told her, I would have been trespassing too much on the compact with Ares. So I’m telling you, Leonidas. You. Be sure to remind her, please.”
She peeked out at him from behind fanned fingers, face bright red. “I wasn’t supposed to come,” she added, “so it’s not just the biting. I must go before . . . he finds out.”
And she did, just as swiftly as she’d arrived. Only, with her absence, a hollow sensation filled Leonidas’s chest. He sank back down against the mattress, imagining that the Oracle was still there with him, that she was kissing his scars, caressing his ruined body. Then, with a flick of his tongue, he tasted the metallic bite of his own blood one more time.
“No way, Kassandros. No bloody way I’m letting you do it,” Jax said.
“Leonidas has already given his approval,” River re plied sharply. “You plan to defy the Old Man?” River stared at him, clearly aghast. But Jax wasn’t about to allow his friend and servant to risk what he’d just suggested.
“We have no precedent for this.” He clasped River by both shoulders, staring hard into his familiar eyes. “We don’t know what might happen to you, and I won’t risk your life. Not for mine, not like this. And I won’t risk your sanity either.”
River wriggled free, pacing first one direction, then another in front of the fireplace, his extreme anxiety more than obvious. A blaze roared in the stone hearth; so many times Leonidas’s great room had meant safety and protection. But tonight Jax wondered if it would be the last time he ever warmed himself by the hearth.
If he found the Looking Glass of Eternity, Jax would step into the afterlife. He would finally be at peace as he waited for Shay, as he counted off the days until he could be with her for all time. But if he failed in his mis sion, the result was almost unthinkable: Sable would be freed from his desert exile permanently, and no doubt his first order of business would be finding a way—some way that none of them had yet imagined—to end Jax’s life for good. When an immortal died at a demon’s hand, it was an extinguishing, not simply passing to Elysium. The immortal’s soul existed no more.
If Sable defeated him that way, snuffed out his life force, then undoubtedly the Djinn’s next move would be to strike Shay down out of pure, evil spite. Suddenly the words from the Oracle’s prophecy rang in Jax’s ears, and seemed to refer not only to Jax himself, but now to Shay, too. The words buzzed in his head like flies on a slain warrior.
There is a crown of death about your head. The High est God calls upon you to fight the ancient evil, the force who stormed the Hot Gates.
“. . . it’s a risk to her, as well,” River was saying. “D on’t forget Shay’s place in all this.”
“A risk, you say? As if I’ve given no thought to my Shayanna?” Jax seethed, circling the younger servant, who didn’t so much as flinch.“Watch yourself, Kassandros. And know this: When it comes to Shay’s safety and welfare, I refuse to risk breaking the very rules that Ares himself es tablished for this engagement.The potential consequences for defying them are too dire to even contemplate.”
With an intentionally nasty glance, Ajax dismissed his servant with a sniff. “I’ve made my decision and it stands,” he said.
He knew River’s buttons and could play them like a melody when he had to. The chief hot spot for the younger man was his uneasiness about their eternal relationship as master and servant. Not that Jax liked doing it one bit, but talking down to his warrior friend would serve his purpose for the moment.
He tried to ignore the blatant hurt that flashed in Riv er’s eyes—and the way the man dropped his head, word less, staying still as a statue. Great, now one of the last memories River would ever have of him was this sharp display of his bastardly streak.
Jax marched to the far side of the room. Shay sat in one of the large leather chairs in front of the fire, and he felt her gaze on him as he moved. It was as though his wings had been clipped, as if some spiritual collar had been put around his neck. No matter what direction his mind went, the end result was the same: They were trapped.
Jax pretended to study Leo’s library of leather-bound books, thumbing through them, but his senses were on full alert. Behind him he was aware of Shay’s curiosity and unvoiced questions. For the first time in his warrior’s life it wasn’t enough to be decisive, brutal, fierce, brave. The importance of all his fighting attributes shrank in the face of what he needed most right now: He had to be wise. Shay’s life and the lives of all he cared about depended on it. When all was done, he just hoped his choices would be the right ones.
“Too bad we can’t get the Oracle to come back and translate her own prophecy,” Ari boomed as he entered the great room, tossing his field jacket across the back of the sofa.
Jax kept his nose in a book. “If it were that easy, big brother, we’d have solved all our problems aeons ago.”
“Nobody’s seen her then, I take it?” Ari asked.
Why did his elder brother have to look so damned jovial right now? “Obviously not,” Jax nearly snarled back.
“Temper, temper, Jax-ass.” Ari laughed, warming his hands by the fire.
Shay burst out laughing at the insult, and Ajax wanted to kiss Ari for his reliable comic skill. It always had been the Spartan way: pithy humor when things were bleakest.
His heart clenched. He would miss his brothers—not just his natural ones, but his Spartan ones—when he passed into eternity. It was the main reason he hadn’t told them the rest of Ares’ promised reward for finding the looking glass. All of his brothers would open Hades itself in an effort to hold him here on Earth. He blinked quickly, wrestling aside the unwelcome regrets.
Ari shoved his chest out and did a little pass-by of the room. Kalias always called that strut Ari’s “turkey jaunt,” and Jax smiled wistfully as he watched it—perhaps for the last time.
With a grand, sweeping gesture, Ari addressed all of them. “Yeah, so if you see any pixies running around here with blue streaks in their hair—”
“I did,” Shay volunteered, raising her hand. “Earlier, when I woke up that first time. This fairy woman came and bandaged me up.”
“I thought Ajax did that,” River said, scratching his jaw perplexedly.
Arichuckled, raising an eyebrow dramatically. “Huh, and I figured on Kalias for such . . . ahem, careful tending.”
“Nobody sees the Oracle but me,” Ajax stated as he replaced the book and moved back toward where the others were gathered by the fire. “And sometimes Leonidas. That’s it.”
Ari began to laugh. “Somebody’s getting replaced,” he sang in a gloating tone. “And looks like the list is growing longer every day.”
Jax whipped around and glared at his brother. “Why would a mortal be able to see our Oracle?”
“Beats me.” Ari shrugged. “Maybe she’s bored by your sorry ass. There’s a guess.”
Shay sat up tall in her chair. For the first time since Jax had been acting sour and temperamental, she matched his tone. “I saw her. I’m not an idiot—oh, and thank you very much, but I already have two grown men back in Georgia who have a corner on the market of treating me like I’m fragile and stupid. Don’t join their ranks, Jax.”
Ari tossed his head back and let loose a belly laugh. “No wonder the gods prepared this one for you, Brother. Sweet.”
Jax scowled at his brother. “Outmatched and outclassed. A paradise for a fool like me.” Then he glanced at Shay with a sheepish smile. “I get moody sometimes. Should have warned you about that.”
She smiled back and reached for him. He settled on the edge of her chair and began stroking her hair. To gether they stared into the fire, quiet while Ari and River sparred verbally about an upcoming soccer match.
Tugging on his arm, she pulled him closer, and he bent low. “Why did I see her, though? If only you and Leonidas are supposed to . . .”
He sighed. Just one more unsolved riddle among all the many others. “I really don’t know. But maybe we’ll find the answer to that in Savannah as well.”
She gave a nod, but he could see even more confusion in her pale blue eyes. He would make sure of one thing, he vowed, and that was to heal the sadness and pain inside of her before he passed into eternity. Somehow he’d find a way to ease all the hurt he was causing her.
“When do we leave?” she asked.
Jax gave a nod in River’s direction. “We’re waiting until nightfall. Makes forming the portal a little easier—why, we’ve never known. But our recovery time should be much shorter if we wait to leave then.”
An hour. They had one last hour when he could sit with Shay like this. Just be in her presence. He’d take every second the gods granted.
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