Red Mortal (41 page)

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Authors: Deidre Knight

Tags: #Man-woman relationships, #Goddesses, #Gods, #Paranormal, #Delphian oracle, #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal romance stories, #Immortalism, #Daphne (Greek deity), #General, #Leonidas, #Contemporary

BOOK: Red Mortal
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“Sable, what’s the plan?” Cishpi asked in ancient Persian.
“King Leonidas will explain,” Sable told him, folding both hands behind his back. He rested them along his withers, thrusting his chest out proudly. Leonidas, the greatest king of all time, had entrusted him—him, a lowly fallen Djinn—with an important part of this plan.
“The same Leonidas who routed so many of our Djinn brethren at Thermopylae?” Cishpi asked, his voice like rasping leaves as he spoke in their native tongue.
Cishpi, unlike Sable, still had his wings, but that was the only attractive element to the creature. From his face to his voice to his hulking body, the male was nothing short of ugly, with a hawkish, beaklike nose that was far too big for his plain face. His red eyes seemed to burn like coals, giving him a deadly, cruel appearance. When Ahriman had been handing out the gifts of beauty, old Cishpi had been most decidedly overlooked.
“Yes, Leonidas of Sparta.” Sable had waited until getting Cishpi to Cornwall to reveal that minor detail.
“I don’t see why this fight concerns us, then,” the other Djinn said hotly.
“Because Ares, God of War, has manipulated each and every Djinn at some time or another—me, you, all our brethren. For his own pleasure and gain.”
Cishpi growled, but assumed a physical stance of compliance—only his wings hummed softly along his back, the sign of a reluctantly agreeable Djinn.
“You’ve done well, Sable.” He turned and found Leonidas striding toward him, one hand gripped about a gnarled walking stick. But the king wasn’t feeble or defeated; his head was held high, and he drove that cane into the ground like a spear with every step he took. Beside him, Daphne hurried to keep pace, her gaze riveted on her lover. Sable blinked for a moment; it was the way he wished for Sophie to look upon him, with pure and unmitigated adoration. Here the king was aged and gray-headed, but the Oracle stared at him as if he were a youth of five and twenty. It was as if she couldn’t see the imperfections, the years lined into his weathered face.
But didn’t Sophie gaze upon him in just that way sometimes? As if she were utterly unaware of how large his horse’s rump was, and as if she’d never seen his hideous horns and beady red eyes.
That was what love did; he didn’t understand the emotion, not yet—but he knew it looked a lot like the way Daphne beheld her king.
Leo reached his side and surveyed the ragtag band of demons. “My troops, it seems.” Leo drove his walking stick into the ground as if marking the land, claiming it as yet another acre that belonged to him in every way—and claiming these demons as his soldiers.
Leo studied them shrewdly, then one by one, he walked down the line and introduced himself. At the end of the formation, he announced, “Now, let me tell you of the battle plan, and the role you shall play.”
 
The moors were blanketed in a late-afternoon, crawling mist, one that crept over the craggy rocks and grasses, moving like a surreptitious warrior. It was just the kind of Cornish mist that Leo loved most of all; the sort that could hide many a hidden act . . . including a bit of clandestine lovemaking. He had no interest in grieving over their destiny with Daphne, or in arguing over the mistakes that he’d made in the past days. He was on the most limited kind of time now, feeling his age deep in the marrow of his bones. All he wanted in these hours leading up to the battle was to hold his beloved. The woman who would’ve been his wife . . . should’ve been, had fate not been so cruel.
She held his free hand, guiding him across the thick heather and grass to a hidden place. It was obvious that she had the same plans in mind as he did: for them to make love beneath the open sky. The very thing they were robbed of doing when Ares had appeared to them the other day.
“My lady,” he said, still surprised by how husky his voice had turned in the past day, more of a growl with as deep as it had become. “It seems you’ve a destination in mind.”
She stopped, spinning to face him. “I do. You know I’m always planning.” She gave him a devilish, downright impish smile.
“And that plan . . . involves me.”
She reached a hand and slowly stroked his beard, leaning up onto her toes. “Very much so.” With the tip of her tongue, she licked the scar along his bottom lip. “Every part of you, my love.”
He growled in earnest then, and she tugged on his hand, leading him beyond some rocks and into a clearing that was hidden by standing stones. “Here,” she pronounced, and Leo saw a large picnic spread. Blankets and even throw pillows and flagons of wine.
“You prepared ahead.”
She smiled again, tossing her long dark hair over one shoulder. With a suggestive glance—and never taking her eyes off of him—she lowered onto the blanket, kneeling before him. She held out a hand. “Come, my king.” She didn’t move to assist him, or to make over his knee; she waited with perfect confidence that he remained youthful enough to accommodate the request.
Leo issued a quick prayer to the Highest God, and was grateful when he managed to kneel without fumbling. And then, she launched herself into his arms, all formality gone, and they fell together onto the blanket, twining together. His hands were all in her hair, skimming over her body; he’d never needed her as much as he did then. After telling her good-bye forever, she’d still come to him. Despite all the ways in which he’d hurt her and tried to drive her away, she’d still come rushing to his side.
“You won’t be able to keep me away, Leo,” she murmured against his lips, unbuttoning his simple linen shirt. It fell open, exposing his still very muscular chest to the chill air of the late day. But it was the only cool thing between them because he was sweltering, burning up for her with a primal heat. It flowed in his blood, pulsed in his loins.
Fumbling with his pants, he moved atop her right as she hiked her gown up. This was no leisurely taking, not today; they needed to join and quickly. To be as one, no separation between them at all.
If he’d worried that he was moving too quickly for his love, she ended that question by taking hold of his erection and guiding it toward her opening. “Take me,” she urged, eyes drifting shut. “Now, Leonidas. Please.”
He growled in her ear, thrusting into her deeply. “No need to ask twice,” he said, sinking all the way inside of her.
Daphne sprawled beneath him, one hand drifting into the high heather beside the blanket, the other gripping his shoulder. How in Elysium’s name had he thought to forego loving her this way. . . .
“I’m an idiot,” he panted against her cheek. “I’m sorry for leaving you, for hurting you.”
“Just remember”—she drew in a sharp breath as he plunged deeper inside of her—“that I am your wise guide. When it comes to us, don’t act without seeking my counsel.”
“I’m seeking it now, between your thighs, atop your gorgeous, exquisite body.” He squeezed his eyes shut, a cascade of pleasure washing over his body.
She shifted beneath him, wrapping both thighs about his lower back. The position allowed him to sink more deeply inside of her, until they both were gasping, tensing. “I need more,” she cried, arching beneath his big body. “Come for me!”
Anything else, and he could have held back his orgasm. But those words, well, they were his utter undoing. He burrowed his face against her shoulder and released and thrust until he had nothing left. Until there was only the two of them, breathing heavily, sated, and surrounded by the whistling wind along the moors.
 
Leo had always heard it said that there was healing power in love, and lying naked amid the heather, Daphne nestled and sleepy in the crook of his arm, he believed there must be truth in that statement. His strength felt more renewed than it had in days, his sex drive raring at full throttle. It was as if he were a man of many younger years—perhaps no more than fifty!
“Daphne,” he whispered, “you’ve renewed me.”
“You should never have tried to part from me.” The words were muffled, her face hidden against his shoulder, her body curled up against his side as if they’d been made to fit together this way.
“You’ll keep telling me that, won’t you?”
“Until you admit I’m right.”
“You, my brilliant, gorgeous Oracle, are right—we belong together. And I won’t leave again.”
She grinned sideways. “You are wise, after all.”
He stroked her hair and stared up at the slate-gray sky; the fog was creeping in much more forcefully now. Soon they should head back to the castle, but he was greedy, and wanted a few more moments of holding her in his arms, the two of them alone like this.
As he threaded his fingers through her hair, he happened to glance at his hand. It was younger, much more so, the wrinkles vanished. He gaped in delight, studying first one, then another. Perhaps Daphne had been right all along! It seemed that she could feed him her demigoddess’s power, simply from the act of making love.
“Daphne,” he said excitedly. “Please, love, look at my face. Tell me what you see.”
She kept her own face averted, snuggling closer. “There’s time for that soon enough,” she told him sleepily.
“Daphne, I believe . . . I’ve
youthened.
My hands are those of a much younger man. My body—my energy—I feel fully transformed.” He urged her to sit up. “Please, tell me what I look like.”
Finally, with a sigh, Daphne rolled out of his arms and sat slowly to face him. Leo gaped back, dismayed—panicked—by the sight that greeted him as she looked up into his eyes. She no longer appeared eighteen, but more a young woman of twenty-five, at least. Perhaps even older.
And then, as she searched his face, he realized the truth.
He seized hold of her shoulders. “You’re not surprised. You knew this would happen . . .”
She swept her long hair over one shoulder, shrugging. “I had a plan, Leo. Just as you wanted to protect me, don’t think I wouldn’t want to do the same for you.”
He stared at her, unable to even find the words. But then he recalled one very important word, and it didn’t escape him at all. “Sacrifice,” he whispered. “That’s what the prophecy meant. This. For you to give me your strength, your youth . . . your life. You knew what you were doing when you led me out here to make love.
You knew.”
“I’d hoped to take on some of your years, yes,” she said softly, brushing a long lock of hair out of her eyes. “Apollo had given me the knowledge.”
“It never happened any of the other times we made love.”
“Because I hadn’t been taught how to
access
this power.” She smiled impishly. “Didn’t mean it wasn’t there inside me, all along.”
“Apollo told you that, too,” he said, understanding the full weight of her decision. “Your love for me has, once again, cost you so much.”
She stared past his shoulder, seeming very vulnerable. “Tell me I’m still beautiful to you.”
He dragged her into his arms. “As gorgeous as ever! More so, even.” Leo’s vision blurred with tears. “But I won’t let you do this again. Not for me. Not with your own life and youth . . .”
“Leonidas, I’ve appeared eighteen for thousands upon thousands of years. What does it matter if I age a little?”
He shook his head, clasping her by the bare shoulders. “I won’t rob you of your life in exchange for mine.”
She flung herself into his arms. “We will meet in the middle! Perhaps we’ll both become thirty-five. You’ll never have to claim you’re too old for me, not this way.”
“You could die. There’s no controlling this, and you know it.” Leo bounded to his feet. “I won’t risk your life for mine. That’s not a trade I will ever be willing to make. Not again.”
Daphne leaped to her own feet, following after him. “In this one thing, you won’t be able to make a unilateral decision. I want to help you, and I’ll die before I let you stop me. You promised me that you’d listen to me from now on!”
He spun to face her, gripping her elbow in his hand. “Is that what you want? To die? Because of me?”
Daphne’s pale blue eyes swam with tears. “If it means I follow you? Into Elysium? That I spend eternity with you? Yes, then maybe that is what I want.”
He stared at her for one long moment, and at first, he thought to make her promise that she’d never do such a thing again. But there was something in the way she stared up at him, waiting. The acceptance and love he saw in her eyes swept away any fear or hesitation. He knew then, beyond any doubt, that whatever cost it required, they had to be together. Even if they stepped into the afterlife holding hands.
He reached for her wordlessly, and pulled her into his arms. “We’ll face your brother together,” he promised quietly. “Even if it brings our end.”
Chapter 32
 
T
he next morning everyone gathered at Leonidas’s massive dining table; someone murmured something about it having once belonged to King Arthur—just as the castle had. Sophie barely managed to restrain herself from squealing. Wasn’t it crazy enough that she was on a first-name basis with one of the greatest kings and leaders of all time? To find out that said king’s castle had once belonged to one of the other great kings of history, well, it was almost more than her enthusiastic little heart could bear.

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