Red Mortal (48 page)
Authors: Deidre Knight
Tags: #Man-woman relationships, #Goddesses, #Gods, #Paranormal, #Delphian oracle, #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal romance stories, #Immortalism, #Daphne (Greek deity), #General, #Leonidas, #Contemporary
As he continued, Daphne glanced around the grove. She saw Ajax and Shay, nestled together against the base of a peach tree. Sable leaned against the same big tree, his daughter Leah upon his lap, and he listened intently to Leo’s words. Sophie had managed to sit down beside him, pregnant and all, and was furiously crocheting a pair of baby booties in bright pink.
The rhythms of their life, the peace of it, was in every direction Daphne looked. Touching her own belly, she thought of the tiny child already growing within, one she’d not yet even told Leo about. She had been waiting until today. Liberation Day. The perfect moment to celebrate bringing another rare and beautiful life into the world. Perhaps he—the baby was definitely a boy, she felt it with her Oracle’s gift—would look like Leo, and Apollo, too, of course.
“The future is ours!” Leo declared, to a resounding cheer of applause. “We own it now, and are owned by no man”—he glanced at River significantly—“and by no god. Anything is possible, and our path wide and long. The future . . . a new beginning, every day.”
Leo finished, and as he concluded with wise words about unity and brotherhood and alliances, his gaze kept flicking back to her. She smiled, nodding him on.
Yes, any future was possible, any path an option. So long as she walked into the centuries and years with Leo by her side, forever thirty-five and hers—their—children with them, she would welcome any adventure or battle that came.
For one thing was true, on this Liberation Day and every one to come: The future, however it might be written, was theirs to own.
Read on for an excerpt
from Deidre Knight’sRED FIREA GODS OF MIDNIGHT NOVELAvailable from Signet Eclipse.
C
offee. Nectar of the gods.
Or at least it should be, if Ajax had any say in the matter. Which he clearly didn’t.
offee. Nectar of the gods.
Or at least it should be, if Ajax had any say in the matter. Which he clearly didn’t.
Strike me down for that, why don’t you?
he challenged with a glance at the granite sky overhead.
Come on and fight me.
he challenged with a glance at the granite sky overhead.
Come on and fight me.
No arrows or lightning bolts scorched the sidewalk café, and slowly Jax lowered his gaze.
Too bad,
he thought with a dark laugh, sipping his coffee. Quite the cure when you are nursing a pounding hangover. Sure, it was a taste that he’d acquired in modern times, this era of coffee shops and triple-mocha everything, but he didn’t mind being modern on occasion. In fact, he relished it, much to his brothers’ chagrin.
he thought with a dark laugh, sipping his coffee. Quite the cure when you are nursing a pounding hangover. Sure, it was a taste that he’d acquired in modern times, this era of coffee shops and triple-mocha everything, but he didn’t mind being modern on occasion. In fact, he relished it, much to his brothers’ chagrin.
He’d lumbered in heavy armor, worn a cravat when fashion had required it, had even donned a kilt for about a century. So drinking a bit of women’s coffee hardly qualified him as an impostor, he rationalized, and took another sip.
You have to live in the era where you find yourself.
It was his number one rule, and so far it hadn’t misled him on his winding passage through the corridors of time.
It was his number one rule, and so far it hadn’t misled him on his winding passage through the corridors of time.
The King’s Road bustled, shoppers from nearby Sloane Square hurrying home, with countless others making their way back toward the tube. He registered the foot traffic, the creeping chill of twilight that was so common for London in mid-April, the throngs pulsing and pushing their way past his table. And he noted every detail without once glancing up from his copy of the
Evening Standard
. No
Independent
for him. He remained a simple man to the core; it didn’t matter if his well-heeled feet now walked hard pavement and not the fields of ancient Greece.
Evening Standard
. No
Independent
for him. He remained a simple man to the core; it didn’t matter if his well-heeled feet now walked hard pavement and not the fields of ancient Greece.
Scanning the paper’s headlines, he could hardly focus. There was too much noise coming at him, an overload of sensory detail in every direction. And it wasn’t the usual human clamor, like car horns or rap music. No, it was the mental din that hounded Jax year after year, century after century, growing louder every day. Lately he’d been choking on it, nearly drowning beneath the mental voices of London’s entire population.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
Kalias. Jax rolled his eyes as his big brother slid into the seat beside him. No invitation was ever necessary for the hulking warrior; he just took what he wanted and possessed every inch of land he walked or occupied.
“You don’t know jack about what troubles me,” Ajax answered coolly, his clipped British accent sounding particularly nasty. One good reason for having affected it during this recent London venture.
“I know that you’ve got a job to do, Brother.” Kalias’s own accent remained unchanged despite almost a century in the British Isles, as ancient and authentic as the Greek blood that pulsed through their veins.
“I know my place, and I do my work.” Ajax gazed up at his eldest brother with a cutting glare. It was like staring into a mirror: the olive skin, the long, aquiline nose, the black hair. Except Kalias wore his own hair buzzed short, military-style, while Jax kept his long and loose, free, as he had in the olden days.
Kalias gestured toward the half-consumed cappuccino. “It’s five o’clock. Surprised to see that’s not Scotch you’re drinking.”
“I only woke an hour ago,” Ajax replied, taking another lazy sip. “Even I have my standards.”
His brother leaned closer. “So the only code you’re still clinging to pertains to the satisfaction of your basest desires. Very commendable, Jax.”
Ajax rolled his eyes. “Oh, bloody hell. When you put it that way”—he waved to the server, a leggy Polish blonde—“who can resist?” Then, turning to the waitress, he said, “Irish coffee, darling.” She smiled back eagerly and he added, “A double, and heavy on the Irish.”
Kalias leaned in toward him. “You ignored our king’s summoning. Twice.”
Leonidas. Their once and future general. Their commander for eternity.
“The Old Man told you that?” Ajax ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. Silky as midnight, that was how his most recent lover had described it. They’d spent hours in that well-appointed Mayfair hotel room having sweaty, wall-bumping sex. Once done, she’d called him a god—and he’d answered by swiping a hand across her face, clearing every memory of the dark event from her mind.
He kept his gaze down, avoiding his brother’s blazing, angry one. If Kalias knew that he’d taken to sleeping with mortal women in his warrior form, oh, there’d be hell to pay—and straight to Hades he’d go, no doubt about that.
And then there was the matter of Ares. Always out there, hovering on his eternal horizon like a sky full of enemy arrows.
Kalias clasped his shoulder. “So, baby brother, don’t you want to know what Leonidas asks of you?”
“An assignment, no doubt.”
“Not just any assignment.” Kalias settled back in his chair, sipping from Jax’s own glass of water without permission. “The Oracle calls you.”
“Bollocks to that woman and her scheming.” Ajax muttered a few choice vulgarities, thinking of the hidden prophetess and her affection for him. Too bad he liked her so damned much—and called her a friend.
He had known her, literally, for thousands of years. Back when the Spartans were originally transformed at the River Styx, the young, black-haired beauty had been assigned to the warriors as their guide. She was the Oracle of Delphi, the youngest and purest prophetess of Apollo’s Oracles. Her prophecies assisted them in all their missions, but only Ajax was able to hear or see her.
“Something dire is afoot, or she wouldn’t be asking for you.” Kalias scrubbed a palm over his spiking hair.
“Did you tell her I’d retired from the game?”
Kalias flashed him an impatient glance. “Since you’re the only one who can hear the Oracle, no, I did not tell her that you’re on unofficial—and unauthorized, I might add—leave.”
“Well, if I stay gone a bit longer, perhaps she’ll cozy right up to you, Brother. She’s quite the looker; trust me on that.”
She had often determined how they drew their strength, their very life source, with her vague predictions. The supernatural law that she would be their guide in all things had never made sense, not from the beginning of their pledge more than twenty centuries ago. Still, immortal vows were lasting vows, and that had been one of Ares’ rules at the outset of their agreement.
Kalias eyed him hard for a long moment, then continued in ancient Greek: “Her words maintain our warrior unity, give us needed direction. Perhaps I should mention Thermopylae . . . Gettysburg . . . Berlin . . . Omaha Beach. Do you want me to go on?”
“Names, nothing more.”
“Oh, keep telling yourself that. But we share the same memories of battles waged. Of comrades lost.” Kalias sighed, his eyes filling with dark recollections. “If you won’t answer our Oracle, and you refuse our king’s summons, then try this on for size, little brother,” he said, dropping back into English. “You do remember the name Shayanna Angel?”
“Shay,” Ajax corrected hoarsely, his entire body jolting in reaction to the familiar name. Along his back, a compulsive sensation began, a ripple of power. That itchy-fingered probing of his true nature. “She goes by Shay.” The burning in his shoulders spread, began to tear across his spine, threatening to burst forth from beneath his skin.
“Calm down,” his brother cautioned, apparently seeing his darker temperament expose itself.
Ajax nodded, swallowing, and surreptitiously slid his palm over the center of his tailored slacks, where a swelling hard-on had quickly formed. It was impossible to think of Shay Angel and not feel that kind of achy, thick need—and he’d never met her or even glimpsed her. In fact, her name was just one out of many. But what the Oracle had said of the woman was far more than a simple name, and whenever he recalled the prophecy about what the promised human would mean to him, he couldn’t help but react—physically and otherwise.
“You shouldn’t talk to me about Shay out here on the street—you know better.”
“I’d have figured that more than two thousand years would be plenty of time for you to master your other nature.”
“Not when it comes to that little minx of a mortal.” Ajax groaned, shifting in his chair.
“You have no idea who she even is.” Eyebrows like winged midnight furrowed, Kalias’s fury barely contained. “So I shall repeat—calm down.”
Ajax blew out a breath, drew another. He crossed one expensive Italian loafer over his knee, watched a black taxi drive by. At last he observed, “You’re right. This isn’t about some murky future that was once foretold to me; it’s about my duties.”
“Well, I’m glad you concur with me, little brother.” Kalias leaned back in his chair, toying with a Zippo lighter that he’d retrieved from his hip pocket.
“Why must you do that? Honestly?”
“Do what?” His brother extended the lighter questioningly, his face a mask of pure innocence.
“Not the lighter, you bastard. Why must you remind me—constantly, I might add—of our birth order?”
“Perhaps because it is my only means of containing you.” Kalias’s mouth turned up at the corners in a subtle grin of triumph.
“You won’t
ever
contain me,” Ajax shot back, staring at the darkening sky overhead. A perfect evening for flight, for soaring above the clouds, banking like the bird of prey that he was. If this conversation didn’t right itself, then he would take matters into his own hands—or wings, as the case would be. He would shape-shift and leave his obnoxious and condescending eldest brother here on the street and rise to the very heavens.
ever
contain me,” Ajax shot back, staring at the darkening sky overhead. A perfect evening for flight, for soaring above the clouds, banking like the bird of prey that he was. If this conversation didn’t right itself, then he would take matters into his own hands—or wings, as the case would be. He would shape-shift and leave his obnoxious and condescending eldest brother here on the street and rise to the very heavens.
“When our king requires your presence, Ajax, you comply. Immortality doesn’t grant you the privilege of impudence, not with Leonidas.”
“And with you?”
His brother fixed his attention on the Zippo, flicking it open and closed. “I’m not sure you ever respected me.”
“Oh, please,” Jax snarled. “Save the sorry guilt trips for Aristos. At least he still buys them occasionally.”
Ari kept himself positioned between the two of them like the rocky pass that had once determined their battle at the Hot Gates. Their middle brother’s way was always peaceful, like a trench drawn between two enemy sides.
Kalias glanced at the busy street, seeming to gather his thoughts. When he turned back to face Ajax, his expression was naked, open. “I don’t understand what happened to you over these many centuries. What went wrong? You were our strongest. Our bravest. The very best of us.”
Something savage broke loose inside of Ajax, the millennia peeling away as if time had never existed. He lunged forward, grabbing his brother’s shirt sleeve. “ ‘May eternity’s arms hold you,’ ” he pronounced coldly, repeating Ares’ words from that August day so long ago. “It was a curse, not a blessing, dear brother. We’re no better off than the slaves we once kept.”
Kalias made a grunting sound of disapproval, but Ajax blustered on. “Haven’t you ever looked at yourself in the mirror while transformed? At the blackness of your wings? At your raptor’s hands, the twisting talons? We are Ares’ own vile playthings, Kalias, and I am done—done dancing to his battle calls.”
That was why he focused on the sex, the lusty, driven need to bed human women in his transformed body. It made him feel less dirty, less abominable. That they could worship his wings, caress his curling claws—well, it was the only redemption he knew anymore. Unless he nurtured the name of his supposed and future beloved—Shay Angel. He’d never sought her out, never tried to discern which century she might live in. That it might be this current epoch, well, it wasn’t something he was ready to entertain. And yet . . .
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