Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (45 page)

Agrippina snapped her head at me in what seemed like
surprise at my quick response, but Helena’s reaction was still a mystery, her shrouded head jerking left, right, up, and down repeatedly in confusion.

“Say
it again,” Agrippina ordered.

“Don’t,” I said in a manner that failed to convey th
e confidence I’d hoped it would.

Agrippina turned back to Helena and moved the knife threateningly
, but not dangerously, around her neck.

“What do you see here?”  She asked.

“What?”  I asked in return.

“What do you see??”  She yelled angrily.

“I don’t under…”

“Oh for…” Agrippina started to say
, and I feared this was the moment when she would finally slit Helena’s throat, but instead she took two long and imposing steps toward me and placed her knife against my groin.  I jumped in my chair at the contact but she didn’t press the point.

Literally –
thank God.

“You see the woman you love, don’t you?
”  Agrippina asked, her voice silky smooth.

“Ye…” I struggled to
come up with the answer, but something inside me was beginning to believe Agrippina’s announcement, and found it odd that I needed her of all people to remind me that I did in fact love Helena with all my heart.  I looked up at her.  “Yes, I do.”

“You do,” she conf
irmed.  “You put a baby in her belly, and that is proof enough for me.”

“W
hat’s your point?”  I asked, confused.

“You asked what you possibly could have taken from me to make me hate you,” she
said before shifting to the side so that I could more clearly see Helena.  Agrippina looked at me as she pointed her knife at Helena.  “That’s what you took from me!”

I looked at
Helena’s hooded head again, not understanding what Agrippina was trying to say, but when I looked back at the enraged empress of Rome, I saw in her eyes such anger and hate that I immediately understood what she meant.

“Caligula,” I said.

Her expression went from angry to stern to disgusted confusion in a heartbeat.

“Caligula??”  She asked with disdain.  “My brother Caligula??  The man I despised?  How dare you even say his name
!”

I shook my head again.  “I
… I don’t understand.  Really, I don’t.”

Her
brow was creased and her eyes blazed, and I wasn’t sure if she was angry with me or simply exasperated.  Finally, her demeanor softened and all the frustration and built up ire simply melted from her face.  She sighed deeply and closed her eyes, whispering just one word:

“Claudius.”

“Claudius?”  I asked, still confused.

“You love this woman,” she said
, pointing her knife meekly at Helena again, “and I loved Claudius.”

“You did
?  Your uncle?”  I asked rudely, and I winced at my tone.

“Since I was girl,” she answered softly
as she crouched beside me, placing a hand on my knee almost distractedly.  “It was a child’s crush at first, an infatuation with an older man who seemed like a god to me.  He had always been so handsome and vibrant and he always took an interest in me.  He taught me Etruscan and tutored me in politics, economics, and history, and always taught me to use every tool I had at my disposal to get what I wanted, and to stop at nothing to achieve my dreams.

“
He was always so clever, he was.  Before you arrived in Rome, he’d even developed a ruse to make himself appear feeble and inept in order to convince others to underestimate him.  He’d gone to great lengths to rewrite history and convince those around him he’d been as he was for decades, but only in me had he confided the truth.  But then you arrived and murdered my dear Claudius, the father of my son… so
of course
I despise you, Jacob Hunter!”

“Father?
!”  I exclaimed, so much information being thrown at me that it was easy to misinterpret context and come to muddied conclusions, but the historian in me was always on hand to tackle historical inaccuracies.  “But Nero is your husband’s son, not Claudius’.”

She scoffed.  “
My useless husband Gnaeus couldn’t impregnate a bitch in heat under a spell woven by Venus herself, but Claudius… oh, what a man he was!”

I cringed at the thought of
an uncle and niece doing such things, but I suppose that was better than a sister and brother doing the deed.

Barely.

I shook my head to push the historian away. “But I didn’t kill Claudius, Ca…”

“Caligula did,” she finished, “and
my brother’s fate was well deserved.”

“But…” I started, but then I saw everything she was driving at
as clearly as if I’d said it myself.  Because I
had
said it myself.  I’d said it to myself over and over and over again for the past five years.  I already knew why she hated me because it was the same reason I hated myself.

“Everything’s my fault,” I whispered.

She nodded.  “Indeed.  You are correct.  Everything that has happened since your arrival has been your fault, Jacob Hunter, and while the rest of your friends are not entirely without blame, you were the catalyst, the facilitator, and therefore the only one I care about.  Without
you
, Caligula never would have murdered the man I loved, and none of us would be here today.”

As her
words trailed off, I barely had time to remember how guilty I felt over how truthful her words were, as her sexual aggression suddenly returned and her entire demeanor transformed once again.  She leapt forward and mounted me, wrapping her long, strong legs around my waist tightly, and reached out a hand to grip my head.  With a quick pull, she burrowed my face into her chest, while at the same time I felt her bare lower section sitting warmly atop my thighs, and I felt an unwilling sense of arousal seep into me.

“Claudius always knew what to say
or do to intimidate and manipulate those around him,” she said as ground against me, her movements growing ever more intense and arousing.  I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything else but this gorgeous creature seated upon me, but it was hopelessly impossible as she continued. “And he taught me everything I know.  There isn’t a thing I won’t do to see those who set out to destroy me destroyed in turn, and I will take every kind of pleasure I can as I go about it.  In whatever way I can.”

I barely hear
d a thing she said as she continued to thrust against me, but then she stopped almost as abruptly as she’d began.  I opened my eyes as she pulled on my hair, craning my head back and my face up.  She leaned in to place her mouth centimeters from my own, whispering, “I should do far more than just this to you, and have your Amazon watch just so I can take pleasure in both,
but
…”

Without finishing, s
he dismounted and took a step back and stared into my eyes as I slowly tilted my head down to its normal position, too frazzled to do much else.  When I settled myself, Agrippina smirked and glanced down at my pants, flicking her eyebrows up and setting her mouth in a way that suggested she was impressed.

“It appears your integrity is more intact than I thought,” she said.  “Most men wouldn’t have… maintained themselves so efficiently.

I didn’t respond as the tension in the room dissipated, and I sat there as Agrippina studied me, Helena still gagged and silent.  For the briefest of seconds, I thought Agrippina was done with me, that she’d made her point and that we’d somehow reached some kind of understanding.  I almost thought she would just let us go, willing to let me wallow in my own self-disgust – which her affirmation of my responsibility for everything would surely exacerbate.

But then
Agrippina rushed at Helena and the knife in her hand flicked out again as she thrust it toward Helena’s throat.  The love of my life couldn’t possibly have seen it coming, but I did, and all I could do was yell out, already knowing there was nothing I could say that would stop Agrippina from doing what she must have been waiting all these years to do.

“Please!!” 
It was all I could think to say, but the knife flew straight and true, striking Helena’s throat right at the jugular, and then the blood started to flow.

Agrippina and
her Praetorians stood motionless, and Helena could do little but kneel with the knife at her throat, although she did not seem to feel any pain.  The scene seemed frozen in time, like a sadistic still-life painting I had somehow walked into.  No one moved, but then Agrippina straightened, her knife still buried in Helena’s throat.  She didn’t say anything at first, and I sat there too stunned at the sight to wonder why there wasn’t more blood.

H
er hand steady and the knife remaining where it was, Agrippina looked at me. “I ask you to understand that I do this to prove what kind of person I
really
am, Jacob.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I immediately knew what that meant
, having known exactly what kind of person Agrippina was from the very first time I’d read about her back in college.  She withdrew the knife from Helena’s neck and I stared in disbelief, unable to understand why the bag over her head only had a single spot of blood upon it, but my tears flowed regardless.

“Perhaps you are human after all.”

I heard Agrippina utter these words but hardly registered them and barely saw the nod she offered to her Praetorians.  They seemed to understand, however, and removed the hood from over Helena’s head and took the gag out from her mouth.  Upon her neck was a pinprick of a wound, with only a single droplet of blood falling from it.  As the blindfold came off, Helena already had her vibrant green eyes staring directly into my own, as though she had been able to see through the mask the entire time.  But what surprised me was how distant they were, appearing so unemotional and rock hard that she didn’t seem in the least bit concerned for her life…

As though
she had been welcoming an end to it completely.

They
suggested that she’d knelt there waiting and ready for the end, perhaps hoping it would come, and I knew exactly why.  But then she saw me for the first time as well, and must have noticed the utter concern on my face and the tears streaming down it, because those perfect eyes of hers brightened, the set of her mouth softened, and I could see sympathy in those green gems now.

“And perhaps your Amazon has learned to forgive
as well.”

Helena looked at Agrippina angrily, but Agrippina held her gaze steadily like a mother offering her child a look that said, “I told you so.”  Once again, Helena’s
expression softened as she slowly looked away, but before either us could think on it more, Agrippina flicked her head toward the tent’s exit.

“Escort her out and unbind her hands,” she ordered.  “Give her and the rest of them food and water and allow them to make camp with us.  Treat them as friends.”

Now it was Helena’s turn to look at Agrippina in confusion.  “Why?”  She asked, her voice far steadier than I thought possible, but Agrippina’s only answer was to close her eyes and shake her head.

The Praetorians seemed to understand
again, and gently pulled Helena to her feet and ushered her from the tent.  She looked over her shoulder at me before she disappeared, her short hair making her look almost childish, and there was a moment where again time seemed to slow and I saw her mouth three words very clearly:

I love you
.

I smiled at her
, feeling my chest swell with happiness instead of pain, elation instead of sorrow, peace instead of torment, and even more tears fell from my eyes.  I was so happy in that moment that I forgot all about the pain and darkness that had gathered within me since the last time I’d come face to face with Agrippina, not caring where it had gone or what had released it.

When Helena was gone, Agrippina turned to face me, wearing a sad expression.

“The orb has affected you, has it not?”

My head
jerked back at how random her question had seemed, but then it dropped against my chest as yet another realization finally set in.  “It has.”

“Negatively?”

“Yes,” I whispered, vague memories in the form of scattered images materializing in my mind now.

“Do you wish to kill me?”

My response came surprisingly quick and honest as I lifted my head. “No…”

She nodded.  “That is good, Jacob, because I no longer wish to kill you anymore either.”

“You don’t?”

“I do not.”

“If you don’t want to kill me, then… what?  Work together?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer, but leaned down to place her head beside my own, her mouth just beside my left ear.  She reached around me as though to hug me but instead o
f touching me, she simply used her knife to cut the bonds around my wrists.

“Because I have something to give you,” she whispered into my ear.