by Aja James
Cloud resisted the reflex to slap at his own cheek, because he felt the caress intimately.
She planted a big, smacking kiss on the stallion’s nose and chuckled at the long lick she got from his tongue.
“Go on, you big flirt,” she said, stroking her hand in his thick mane, along his smooth back and ending with a smart swat on his muscular rump.
Cloud’s own buttocks clenched in reaction at the saucy pat.
He ground his teeth. Whatever this confounded link he shared with his horse where Aella was concerned, he was getting it “fixed” the moment they were back in NYC. Perhaps Rain could help.
“Do they know where they’re going?” Eveline asked dubiously, watching the horses begin the journey back down the mountain. “Will they find us on the other side?”
“Of course,” Aella answered before Cloud could. “White Dragon is Cloud’s eternal familiar. They share a special connection, isn’t that right, ‘big guy’?”
She winked at him as she nudged by, heading through the opening in the mountain.
But not before she slapped his ass with a resounding smack.
He turned to glare at her but held his tongue. He would not engage in childish antics to amuse her!
“Wonder what else you share,” Aella quipped, gesturing for Eveline to follow her through.
Cloud heard the two women converse easily, much more freely than before, as he ducked into the cavern as well, catching snippets of “favorite parts” and “hung like one,” followed by feminine laughter and lowly spoken words, no doubt too scandalous for his ears.
Perhaps they were becoming too good of friends. Aella was obviously polluting Eveline’s mind.
As they went deeper into the cavern, Cloud kept his senses honed on their surroundings, even as he half-listened to the women talk. A chill of danger raced down his spine.
Something evil had been here.
Could still be here.
His eyes blazed laser blue, his powers burgeoning to combat it. The pearl in his headband burned against his brow. But it wasn’t actually the pearl that burned; it was the skin beneath.
The females walked on, oblivious.
“Did you know that Parau means full of water?” Eveline was telling Aella, plodding along at a brisk pace.
Now that she was no longer riding a horse, she seemed more energetic, more sure of herself. She took no offense to the animals themselves, Cloud knew, having watched her stealthily feed Bai Long many a carrot or apple. But Eveline would definitely never be an accomplished horsewoman, and she didn’t seem heartbroken about it.
“There are twenty-six wells in this place, the deepest one over forty meters. Can you imagine?”
“Really, Eveline,” Aella remarked, easily keeping pace with the much shorter Seer, “you are a font of information. The future, the past, the present too. Is there anything you don’t know?”
“I Googled this when we still had satellite reception. The cell networks stopped working a third of the way up the mountain.”
“Ah,” Aella murmured. “Resourceful as well as knowledgeable and smart.”
Eveline gave her a look.
“You’re teasing me.”
“I am,” Aella agreed.
Eveline smiled, taking it in stride.
The past couple of months had indeed been like a “road trip” that brought long-time acquaintances and comrades closer together. She’d known Aella for almost a century, but she’d never truly known her.
“Did you also know that the Parau cavern is one of the deepest caverns in the world? At over three thousand meters. And it’s also one of the highest caverns above sea level,” Eveline went on.
“Can you imagine? All of this, this entire mountain range, was submerged under the ocean tens of millennia ago. Hundreds, perhaps. The Zodiac Scrolls hinted of creatures that lived in these caves even back then.”
“What kind of creatures?” Aella prompted. “Sea monsters, perhaps?”
“No more monster than you or I,” Eveline said. “They were described as serpents, but sometimes, they had the upper body of men. I suppose the Scrolls captured one of the many stories about ‘merfolk,’ as modern lore would call them. But instead of fish tails, they are described as having more snake-like characteristics.”
Aella scrunched her nose.
“Ugh. I’ve never liked snakes. So slimy and ugly.”
“Actually, snakes aren’t slimy. Their scales give off a sheen that looks moist, but the skin is dry to the touch. In fact—”
“Let’s not expound on this subject, shall we?” Aella interrupted, then shuddered as if to shake the image of snake-like men out of her mind.
“But Seth told me from his intel sharing with the Cove that Maximus recently thwarted an attack on animal spirits in Siberia,” Eveline related, speaking of the leader of the Dark King Ramses’ Chosen guards.
“Or was it that he escaped the abduction afterwards, I can’t recall…”
“Maximus and the animal spirits escaped after Medusa successfully executed the attack,” Aella supplied. She’d been briefed as well, of course.
“Yes,” Eveline remembered now, “and there were animal spirits who took humanoid forms, as well as predatory cats, eagles and snakes. Maybe that’s what the Scrolls described—the serpents that used to live in these caves.”
Cloud caught up to the females and interjected, “We should find a safe area to rest for the night.”
He projected the holographic map briefly and pinpointed a small in-ground pool a quarter of a mile away from their current location.
“There. A good source of fresh water. I can build a small fire and cook the salted meat we have left over.”
“And I can finally have a nice long bath,” Aella drawled, stretching her body with catlike grace, emphasizing her curves in the most aggravating way.
“Just don’t let the snake-men get you,” Eveline teased with a smile.
“Honey, if the snake-men have the right equipment and know how to use it, they can come get me all night long,” Aella grinned back and winked, all the while holding Cloud’s gaze.
He turned his back and walked passed them.
All that female thought about was cock. All she wanted was sex. Everything that came out of her mouth was flirtatious nonsense.
How many men had fallen under her spell? Cloud wondered. He didn’t think she toyed with Pure males’ feelings given the Cardinal Rule, but there were many ways around it.
Woe to the male who succumbed to her charms and gave her his heart. That way lay ruin. She didn’t seem capable of committing to one Mate.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to fall at her feet. Even if he was looking for a Mate, which he wasn’t, she’d be the farthest from his choice.
As to this inexplicable chemistry between them…he’d exorcise it somehow.
Surreptitiously, he glanced back over his shoulder.
She was staring right at him, immediately catching his eyes.
She quirked her mouth in a challenging smirk, as if she was daring him to do something about their attraction.
Are you scared you’ll like it too much, gorgeous? He could almost hear her saying, even though hers was one of the only minds he couldn’t reach into.
Afraid you’ll lose complete control when you let your baser instincts run the show?
She blew him an exaggerated kiss before he faced forward again.
Maybe a long, hard fuck was exactly what both of them needed to get it out of their system.
Cloud had had enough.
“The boy has all of the necessary ingredients, if he is indeed the Tiger’s spawn, except for human. He has Dark, Element, Pure (if my guess about the Tiger is correct) and animal; the last remains to be seen. But the human ingredient…I cannot think of how to infuse this missing piece into his body. Damnation! He cannot grow into what I want to make him. I will have to be patient and breed him with a human to obtain that ultimate prize…”
—From the secret journal of th
e Vampire Sorceress Circe
Chapter Nine
Something was going on with Cloud.
Aella could tell.
She’d learned to read him over the three years they’d known each other. (It wasn’t as if he gave her opportunity to do more than look and observe.)
He was always calm and in control, thoughtful about every uttered word and considered in every action he took. He exuded so much peace and innate confidence that he easily projected his tranquility onto others through his Gift.
Well, except for Aella.
He set her on edge and gave her headaches, though none as splitting as the one she’d suffered when they first met.
It was her own fault for being so helplessly drawn to him. He did nothing to encourage her and everything to keep her at a distance. But she couldn’t dampen her infatuation, which, over time, had metamorphosed into full-blown obsession.
It wasn’t simply sexual attraction.
If it were that simple, Aella could have satisfied her desires with other males. Sex was sex. Pleasure wasn’t owned by any one male for her. She knew her own body better than anyone, and she knew how to use it to bring both her and her partner exquisite pleasure.
It was Cloud.
Yes, she was intrigued by his mystery, his unknowability, and the imp in her loved to see how far she could push him, to tease and taunt a reaction from him. It was as much a part of her personality as unflappability and tranquility were part of his.
She was a whirlwind of energy and passion, and he was…
Well, he was a careless white cloud, floating breezily across calm blue skies.
She just needed to stir him up, see him darken with temper, flash with lightning and boom like thunder.
It must be a magnificent sight to behold!
Before, she hadn’t been sure he was capable of so much emotion, but over the past couple of months, especially the past few days when they traveled in such a close-knit group, she’d amended her summary of him.
He was capable of feeling and showing emotions, possibly much deeper than she knew. He just kept everything under an airtight lid.
But he was starting to crack. She could see it.
It was in the way the muscle in his jaw ticked. The way the vein in his temple raised beneath his skin. The way his startling blue eyes blazed or darkened. The way he slowed his breathing on purpose to keep his semblance of calm.
She knew it had to do with her relentless poking and prodding, a touch here, a look there.
But now, something else was bothering him. She just didn’t know what it was.
She didn’t sense any danger in their vicinity. There were no traces of recent visitors in the cavern. No trace of any visitors at all. Everything looked untouched, and she wouldn’t be surprised if tens of thousands of years ago, it looked exactly the same as it did now.
The path they took and the tunnels that they sometimes squeezed through seemed naturally made, not carved out by human implements. There had been explorers in this cave, and some tourists and climbers as well, but that was at a much lower elevation, through public access tunnels. After several reports of people plummeting to their deaths in the upper part of the cavern, the section they were currently treading had been closed to the public long ago.
Still, Cloud was definitely uneasy about something. Aella wished that he would confide in her.
But they didn’t have that kind of relationship. They didn’t have a relationship at all beyond being comrade in arms at best, civil adversaries at worst. She was a nuisance to him, and he was an enigma to her.
But Goddess above, how she wanted him!
It was insane!
She was insane!
An obsessive compulsive nymphomaniac when it came to Cloud Drako.
And this version of her was so not the First General of the Amazons that she cringed at herself. She really needed to get over this unhealthy fixation.
If only he’d play along and let them both bang it out of their system.
Together. Not separately.
That would defeat the purpose and might make her “itch” for him, which had already turned into a full-on rash, become a blood-poisoning hive that drove her to do something crazy.
She knew that in a fair fight, he’d win for sure; she’d seen his skills. But crazy-ass, lustrated Aella took no prisoners.
And the worst part was—she liked him.
The feeling might not be mutual, but she truly admired and liked him.
There had been an instant connection—he’d seemed so familiar to her. She’d joked with Sophia that he looked just like the video game character she liked to play, except more exotic, a mix of Asian and Slav. The character’s name was…
At that very thought, Aella staggered on her feet. She blindly threw out a hand to steady herself against the cavern wall, as the mother of all headaches split her skull.
“What is it, Aella? Are you all right?” Eveline asked, laying a hand on her arm with concern.
Cloud looked over at her and narrowed his eyes.
Aella could tell that he wasn’t frowning because he caused the headache but because he hadn’t.
Was he concerned for her wellbeing too?
She might have celebrated a little if that were true, but she was too busy reeling with nausea.
It was something in the air. Something in the cavern.
She felt suffocated under its weight.
Under the weight of her own memories.
Distantly, she heard Eveline calling her name, but the sounds grew fainter and fainter.
A thin line of blood trickled out of her nose, her eyes rolled back, and she fell weightlessly into oblivion.
193 A.D. Altai Mountains, Western border of Gansu Province.
“All dead. Last count at two hundred forty-seven.”
Aella, Dali, Atalanta and Deianeira were on their way home from a difficult negotiation with one of the Sarmatian tribes that sought to marry their men with high-ranking Amazon warriors.
In truth, the tribal warlord wanted the Amazon queen as his “prize,” and to absorb their entire people into his tribe, both as front-line warriors and as bedmates for the men. Marriage and partnership had little to do with it.
Throughout the talks, there were thinly veiled threats of rape, abduction, invasion, enslavement and slaughter, even as the four Amazon representatives were surrounded by dozens of leering, brutish men.
Aella’s mission had been instigated by several instances of rape and murder of Amazons by the warlord’s troops. There was no definitive proof, else the two forces would be at war already.
Queen Hippolyte didn’t fear war; she lived for battle, like the rest of the Amazons. But she wasn’t foolish. The Sarmatian tribe numbered warriors ten to one against the Amazons. As skilled as they were, Aella’s battalion had no chance of winning in a full-on war.
The other part of Aella’s expedition was to seek allies in other Sarmatian and Scythian tribes that abutted the Amazon’s territory. Not surprisingly, they all wanted something in return for their aid, and that something was usually the Amazons’ freedom—becoming wives to tribal men and mothers to their offspring.
It wasn’t the Amazon way.
No men ruled them; that was their law. But if they didn’t find a solution soon, they wouldn’t simply be ruled and conquered. They’d be obliterated.
“What happened here?” Deianeira asked rather rhetorically, surveying the aftermath of a mighty battle.
Or carnage, depending on how one looked at it.
Dali traced her steps from one cluster of bodies to another, then crouched in the dirt beside a soldier with his eye shot through and enough arrows in his chest to mimic a porcupine.
“Ambush, at a guess,” she said, knowing that the Second General was asking for a detailed breakdown of events.
“A caravan was passing through. There were a few dozen armed guards. Their attackers swarmed them from the hills above, hidden from sight. They took out half the
guards with their archers…”
She moved to another cluster of bodies, including the fallen horses the dead rode.
“The attackers cut the caravan into half, charging through on horseback, then quartered off each section. This wasn’t a random attack. It was well planned and executed. But they suffered an unexpected setback…”
Aella and the other women watched Dali do her work. She was the best tracker and analyst they had. She could easily picture how a battle went down based on the distribution of bodies, their wounds, and the evidence of struggle they left behind.
“Here,” Dali said, arriving at a concentric circle of bodies that radiated from a single point in the epicenter.
She lowered herself on one knee and looked over the body that was at the very middle of the massacre.
“This warrior was tough as hell to take down. He was on horseback at first, likely targeting the enemy soldiers with his own arrows. All of the bodies in the outer ring—about fifty or so—were taken down with exactly one arrow each. All on target in critical death points, the eye, the neck, the heart, the temple. He was an expert archer.”
The other women gathered around Dali and the body in the dirt before her as she took in additional details.
“The second ring of bodies he dismantled on horseback. He never went far from his position; they came to him. My guess is that he was defending someone in particular.”
“Did they get away?” Atalanta asked. “Or are they one of the dead bodies, do you think?”
Dali shook her head.
“There is evidence that they got away. See those marks there? Someone was carried out of this mess on a fast horse, likely the warrior’s own horse, because none of these other horses belong to him.”
“But they left the warrior who defended them to the end behind?” Deianeira growled on behalf of the fallen soldier, who’d obviously been extremely brave and skilled. “Lily livered cowards.”
The other women concurred with disgusted grunts and murmurs of their own.
But Dali wasn’t done enumerating the fallen warrior’s incredible feats.
“These last two rings around him—there must be over a hundred enemy soldiers—these he took down on foot. He used this spear.”