Prophecy of the Most Beautiful (18 page)

The boy slapped her again to get her attention. He was an average looking guy with blonde hair, pale skin and paler lips. He was kind of skinny, standing over six feet tall with a pointy nose and far set black eyes. He wore simple jeans and black t-shirt and showcased a grisly leer when she spit the blood in her mouth out on his boots.

"Aw, don't be like that, baby," He said, circling her, "Maxie knows how to treat the ladies."

She wanted to shove that smile of his down his throat. "Your name is stupid," She snapped, "Better suited for a lap dog."

He smacked her with the back of his hand. Though her face screamed with pain, she refused to let out even a sliver of a whimper. "
Maxie
is an awesome name. But insults to my moniker aside, you still haven't told me how to make you scream yet."

"Go to hell," She spit.

"With pleasure," He replied with a sly smile, "since I already live there. How would you like to come back with me? If you're good, I'll let your corpse eternally rest at the foot of my bed."

She dodged his next attempt at hitting her and ran for the door. But he was so fast and got there before her. "Where do you think you're going, baby?" He said, shoving her back. "I'm just getting––"

A kick straight to the groin cut off that sentence.

She pushed him to the floor and started for the door but he grabbed her leg. She tried to shake him off, but his grip was firm.

"Ace––!" She started to shout, but she felt her other leg jerk from under her and his name became a grunt of pain on her lips as she hit the ground.

Maxie had a hold on both of her legs now and as he stood, his hands slid to her ankles. He dragged her across the floor as she struggled, and kicked her in the side when she tried to scream for Ace.

"Shut up!" He hissed. "I said,
I
was going to make you scream.
My
name, preferably."

Maxie stepped back, dropping her legs, and that's when she saw a small opportunity for escape. He was standing on top of her towel. One good yank on it and maybe he would go down. She'd seen it work in the movies and since she felt like she was in one more times than not nowadays, she didn't see why it couldn't work for her, which meant it probably wouldn't.

"The picture I saw of you didn't do you any justice, baby," Maxie said, looking down at her. "You're hot, chick, real hot. Well, at least you will be when your face heals." She opened her mouth to call out to Ace, but Maxie cut her off. "Scream his name, Chloe, and I'll lose all male courtesy and kick you in the puss."

"
Male courtesy
?" She retorted. "You're
hardly
a man if you'd slap a girl around."

Maxie laughed. "What have they been telling you about us demigods around here? Bet they gave you the impression that being a demigod was all daffodils and
sunshine
, didn't they?" He laughed again when she didn't reply, but she had made a mental note that Maxie was a demigod too. "Girl, guy, makes no difference to any of us. If I'll hit a guy, I'll hit a girl, and
every
demigod thinks like me. Even the Sun Prince."

"You're
nothing
like Strafford!"

He reared back his head and laughed. She took the opportunity to pull herself closer to the towel he stood on. "Already got a thing for Strafford Law, huh?" But she could tell the idea irritated him. "Do you even know why he's disgraced? Doesn't matter, huh? He's got a crown and a few muscles, and now you're all goo-goo gaga over him. But know this, sweetheart, with a reputation like his, it's gonna take more than good looks to get his honor back." He glanced at himself in the mirror. She inched closer. "He's nothing special. I could dye my hair black and get a tan, get a stupid piercing in my lip, talk with a funny accent, and the ladies would love me too. And what's his tattoo of? A dragon? How
stupid
. I would get a tattoo of something much more––-"

THWAT!

His head made a solid connection with the edge of the marble basin as Chloe jerked the towel from under his feet. He crumpled into a motionless heap on the marble floor. It had actually worked.

"Now you've got something Strafford doesn't," She muttered to the unconscious Maxie, "A cracked skull."

She pulled herself into a sitting position up against the wall, and when she was settled, sucked in a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs, "
ACE!!"

She heard something crash to the floor, who knows what, heard his hurried footsteps, then the loo door was flung open.

Ace surveyed the scene with wide eyes. She gestured at the unconscious boy. "Ace, meet Maxie. Maxie, Ace."

Ace looked from her face to Maxie's motionless body and back again. "Bloody hell…Are you okay?" He was at her side in two strides, helping her to her feet. "Wha'
happened
here?"

"He attacked me. Slapped me around a little."

"A
little
?" Ace examined her bruised face. "Your face…Strafford is gonna bust me yockers good for this," He groaned.

"No, he won't. It's not your fault." She cringed at his touch.

"I'm the one tha' let this wanker, whoever the hell he is, slip past me," He said, "
I
let him in here to hurt you. Strafford will blame me."

"I won't let him. I'll talk to him."

Ace snorted. "You let me know how tha' goes, eh? I'll be the one with the two black eyes."

He went and stood over the unconscious boy. After staring at him for a few seconds, he pulled the pair of drumsticks out of his back pocket.

"What are you going to do with those?" She asked, "
Drum
him to death?"

He twirled the drumsticks in his fingers like batons and they turned into two black daggers. "Somethin' like tha'," He said.

"What are
those
?" She questioned, moving closer.

"
Gadget Morphs
," he replied, dropping into a crouch, "Magic weapons. They can be of any sort, actually. Objects, animals…people…" He raised a dagger over Maxie's chest.

"Wait!" She shouted. "You can't
kill
him!"

Ace frowned. "The hell I can't. I'm one of your guardians and this unlucky bastard put his hands on the wrong Oracle. No doubt he would've done more if you hadn't knocked him clean out." He tightened his grip on the dagger. "And simply for showin' his ugly mug here, he has to pay," with a hard jab, the blade of his dagger disappeared into Maxie's chest, "with his life."

Maxie's body shuddered once with his last breath, then became motionless. Chloe couldn't find the oxygen she needed to scream. She just stood there, shocked beyond belief that Ace had just killed Maxie in front of her,
despite
the fact that the demigod had beat her up and deserved death a million times over. She watched his blood spill out onto the floor, creating a massive puddle around him, and realized with a sense of terror that fun time with the demigods was officially over.

"His blood is black," she mumbled, not even knowing where she found her voice.

Ace pulled his dagger out of Maxie and wiped it clean on the dead boy's pants. He twirled the daggers back into drumsticks. "Only children of Hades have black blood…" He looked up at her, saw the horror on her face. "All demigods are born to kill, Chloe. Try to always remember––
watch out!
"

Before she could react, an arm looped around her neck and snatched her through the open door, dragging her back into the bedroom as she struggled and shouted curses. Ace ran in after her, but two large boys seized him as soon as he appeared. He struggled, but they had him outnumbered and outsized. The arm holding her grabbed her shirt and jerked her around to face them. A cold hand gripped her face.

"So you're the little red-headed harpy that's got Olympus all in an uproar," said the girl whose nails were cutting into Chloe's face. She snorted. "You're not even as pretty as they said you were." She was a girl of equal height, but like Summer had been, of unmatched strength. Her grip on Chloe's face was almost bone crushing. She had waist-length raven black hair and chalk white skin, but her lips were as red as a rose. She was beautiful––like a corpse is beautiful after visiting the mortician. Her eyes were of the blackest black and they chilled Chloe right to her core.

"Hurt her and you're dead, Varney!" Ace threatened.

She's the Bane Princess,
Chloe thought with dread.
This can't be good.

Varney turned and looked at one of the big oafs holding Ace. He nodded his ugly head, then punched Ace right in the gut. She heard the air leave his mouth with a
whoosh
as he doubled over, but they forced him straight again, not giving him a chance to catch his breath. He coughed and sputtered for air.

The Princess turned back to her. "You killed our brother."

"No, I––"

Varney slapped her,
hard
. "I didn't ask you to speak. You are a
murderer
. You killed our brother and you will be judged for it."

"
I
killed your brother," Ace gasped, "and was glad to do it. The prick deserved wha' he got." That statement earned him a knee in his groin, but he took the pain like a man and didn't make a sound.

"Two murderers then," Varney snarled, yanking Chloe by the hair. She followed Ace's example and didn't voice her pain. "First Oracle in forty years. My father Hades is going to just love this."

"Today's not the day Chloe gets to meet your highly disturbed father," A voice said from the doorway. Chloe looked up to find Swindle there, but then the next second, he was gone and sprinting around them so fast he was like a human smudge on the canvas of her suite.

His movement confused the two oversized halfwits, who let Ace go to try and catch Swindle.
Big mistake
.

With a twirl of a drumstick, Ace's firmly buried his dagger in the stomach of the big ape closest to him. He roared and fell back against the wall, holding his bleeding wound which did little to stop the black blood from squirting everywhere. Swindle took down the other goon, slicing his throat with quick precision. The big boor didn't even see it coming.
Chloe
hadn't even seen it coming. Swindle was
fast.

"I told father you two dolts were
worthless
!" Varney screamed, as her brothers fought pointlessly to stay alive. Chloe took advantage of her sudden distraction to break Varney's hold on her. Ace took the liberty of knocking her out with one
very
solid right hook. Guess boys really did hit girls in this world. Boy, was she grateful for that.

"I draw the line at killin' Royals," He said, standing over Varney, flexing the fingers on the hand he'd used to K.O. her. "My brother's a Royal. I can't kill her."

Swindle came to an abrupt stop in front of them. "How honorable of you," he said, his accent thick with annoyance, "but I hope that doesn't mean you're not in the killing mood anymore."

Ace groaned. "Don't tell me Varney brought more of her family members with her."

Swindle nodded. "Strafford and the twins are holding them back in the Great Hall. But we won't hold them for long. There are only six of us," He wiped his knife clean, "and there's a small army of them."

*****

XIII. Chloe

They had sprinted through the halls of the Chateau to arrive at the Great Hall in record time. All she'd managed to put on was a pair of shoes and Strafford's hoodie he’d left behind before the demigods had dragged her away.

"What about Mystic and the other girls?" She had asked on the way. "Are they gonna be okay?"

"You don't have to worry abou' them, wan. They can handle themselves," Ace had replied, then added as an after thought. "And they couldn't find Dr. Life if their half-breed lives depended on it." She hadn't had time to question what that meant.

Chloe could only remember being in the hall on one other occasion. It was a big open space of black marble walls and floors with mounted golden statues of Apollo and giant marble pillars holding up the ceiling. There was a wide marble staircase leading up to a set of gold double doors that hadn't been there before and two corridors leading in opposite directions out of it. The obscure door beside the stairs led to Melody Hall, and in the middle of this great room, a very lopsided brawl with Hades' children had ensued and only the sounds of clashing metal and battle cries could be heard. Bill swooped down, probably to let them know he was nearby, before returning to his perch above the battle zone.

"Bloody hell!" Ace exclaimed of the scene and turned to block a sudden attack on his right from a member of the enemy clan of siblings––a short girl with two daggers of her own. Two more girls joined in, and Ace was quickly outnumbered three to one. Swindle blocked Chloe with his body to protect her from harm, but she watched over his shoulder. Ace eliminated the first girl with a deep cut to her abdomen. The second girl made an ugly gash in his arm and he gave her an even uglier wound to the chest. The third one was a better fighter than her two sisters and put up a bit of a fight. She dodged and blocked most of Ace's attacks and left a couple of slashes across his cheek. But she couldn't match him for strength. He eventually overpowered her in a showdown of metal to metal where a massive slip caused her to impale herself on her own dagger.

Chloe watched with a mixture of horror and fascination. This was a real fight, a
battle
, and people were
dying
. She had known death was a part of battle, but seeing it firsthand was something different entirely. Seeing the blood, the lifeless bodies, the expressions of coming death––it was all a bit affecting. But it was clear this was something that she would have to grow used to whether she could stomach it or not.

Swindle took her by the arm and led her away when Ace engaged in a second round with a new opponent, all the while primed for a sudden attack on his end. The attack came in a barrage of hot coals that exploded in midair so its searing bits could cover more area. In the chaos, it was impossible to see where they had come from.