by Aja James
“Ere,” she said, rolling his name off her tongue the way it was meant to be spoken. “Is Ere short for Erebu by any chance?”
He didn’t move, but she felt his sudden stillness as if he had.
“Did you know that Erebu means ‘sunset’ or ‘evening’ in Mesopotamian? That’s the happy interpretation. The other one is that it means ‘darkness’.”
She paused for a beat, then added, “Not that it’s a negative meaning or an unhappy one. Darkness can be beautiful too, don’t you think so, Ere?”
His expression was shuttered.
“Yes, I know that.”
He didn’t clarify whether he meant that he knew what Erebu signified or whether darkness could be beautiful too.
“Of course you do,” she said, not needing him to elaborate, understanding him perfectly well.
“You know more about ancient cultures and languages than I do, isn’t that right, professor? How many PhDs do you have again? How old are you? You must have graduated from college at ten years old. So brilliant.”
Instead of addressing her comments, he asked in return, “How do you know the meaning of Erebu, Sophia? I wasn’t aware you’ve studied Mesopotamian civilization at length.”
She shrugged, beginning to walk back toward their group.
He kept pace beside her, keeping a few feet of distance between them.
“I am full of surprises,” she murmured.
Then, she looked at him curiously, her gaze both penetrating into him and through him, as if she was looking at him and beyond him at the same time.
“Just like you, Ere,” she added
“I think you must be full of surprises too.”
*** *** *** ***
That night, Cloud didn’t return to the females after securing their perimeter by the small, natural spring.
His way of securing the perimeter meant that he used his Gift to erect a mental force field around the area so that anyone who might pass by wouldn’t even know Eveline and Aella were there unless they stepped right on top of them. And even then, the trespassers wouldn’t comprehend what was underfoot, because mentally, the females would be invisible to outside observers.
As long as Cloud was within a half mile radius, the shield would hold.
He wanted to be farther away from Aella than half a mile. It wasn’t enough distance to keep him from being affected by her.
Hell, he could go to the opposite end of the earth and it still wouldn’t be enough distance.
He sent Eveline a message via their wrist-coms that he was going to explore the caves for a while longer, that she and Aella should rest as much as they could before their long trek through miles of underground cavern tomorrow. Eveline had messaged back that they were both fine, and that he should take care.
Cloud cut their connection and only left the GPS on.
He didn’t want to be reached. He didn’t want to “take care.” He wanted—no needed—to go a little (a lot) berserk, truthfully.
Aella had gotten through his defenses yet again. He was losing control more and more easily around her.
In the hundred years of his current form as a Pure One, he’d never once come remotely close to losing his cool. But in the past few days, and especially the past few hours, he didn’t just lose control, it was as if he didn’t have any to begin with.
He shook his head with frustration and rolled his neck and shoulders.
Though the ceiling in the cavern was so high in places, there didn’t seem to be one, being enclosed by rock on all sides made him feel incredibly claustrophobic. Only when he was near water did he find some semblance of calm.
But because the females were resting by the nearest natural spring that his 3-D holographic map could detect, and because he wanted to avoid Aella like the plague, he walked farther away from the water, not closer.
Cloud reached up and snapped off the thin strip of cloth he always wore around his head like a crown to keep his hair in place. He rubbed at the spot on his forehead that the headband hid.
He could feel the heat of the mark, burning like a freshly scorched brand.
It hurt like hell. His blood was broiling in his veins, along with his temper and all kinds of other emotions that made him seethe with pent-up frustration and fury.
He couldn’t find his inner peace. His body, mind and soul—all of him desperately needed release, craved the freedom and flight that he only felt when he was in heaven, in his original form.
And one other time…
He couldn’t recall the details of that other time, but he knew it was different.
A different kind of freedom, a different kind of release. But just as freeing. Full of joy and passion.
He recalled the sensation of soaring, physically, emotionally, spiritually. It had been better than heaven.
Until it was worse than hell.
Until he’d crashed to earth, his wings broken, his heart shattered, his soul splintered into a million pieces that he never recovered…
193 A.D. Altai Mountains, Amazon stronghold.
The moment Aella stepped into Queen Hippolyte’s yurt, the older woman dismissed her usual cadre of guards.
But she didn’t immediately speak when they were alone. She simply stared at Aella and drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair.
Finally, she stated, “You’re enamored with him.”
It wasn’t an accusation; it wasn’t a rebuke. Hippolyte said the words with a strange sadness and resignation.
This was not what Aella expected.
She’d been bracing herself for getting hauled out to the whipping post by her hair. At least a brass-knuckled punch to the face or solar plexus.
Instead, the queen looked every one of her forty-some years. Older, even.
And tired.
Aella squared her shoulders and replied, “I love him. This is not a fleeting infatuation.”
“After a few days together?” the queen raised a brow, though her words were soft, not challenging.
“How long did it take for you to fall in love with my sire?” Aella quietly pushed back.
It wasn’t something they ever talked about openly, not once during Aella’s life. But she observed the signs of the queen’s lasting attachment to one man in particular, though Aella had certainly never met him.
Hippolyte never entertained lovers during her travels afar, even for the sake of forging alliances with other tribes. She never chose another stud after giving birth to Aella, even though she’d been young and fertile.
Aella had heard rumors, secretively whispered, that Hippolyte had birthed a male child before Aella by the same man. As their laws dictated, she’d sent that boy away as soon as they discovered his sex. But then, two years later, after the queen had taken a mysterious trip in commoner disguise with only two personal guards, she was pregnant again.
No one had seen Aella’s sire before. Hippolyte had never brought a stud to the Amazon stronghold. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that she was immaculately conceived.
Aella didn’t think her mother would answer, but Hippolyte surprised her.
“A moment,” she murmured.
“A moment is all it takes.”
Aella gave one brief nod in agreement. A moment was all it took for her with Yun as well.
Hippolyte released her breath in a long exhale and regarded her First General with the loving gaze of a mother, not the commanding one of a queen.
“You are my successor, you know that.”
“I do.”
“You not only have the birth right, but you have more than earned that position by being the fiercest warrior of us all.”
“I am.”
“And so you have chosen duty over selfish love,” Hippolyte surmised. “Are you at peace with your choice?”
Aella looked down at her boots, weighing her reply.
Yun had galloped away on her horse a quarter of an hour ago. She’d seen him tear out of the stronghold like a demon po
ssessed, clothed only in a pair of borrowed trousers, the cloak, and riding Aella’s stallion bareback.
She’d watched him ride away dry eyed and numb.
Because she had to have a heart for it to bleed and send tears to her eyes.
He’d taken her heart with him. There would be no more tears.
“The choice is made,” Aella said, not really answering Hippolyte’s question.
“Will you regret it?”
Aella took a deep breath and met her mother’s piercing gaze.
“I already do.”
Hippolyte did not speak for a very long time, simply watching her daughter intently.
“Blasphemy,” she declared softly.
Aella bowed her head, fully expecting to be sentenced to a severe punishment for everything she’d done.
“Look up, Arpada,” Hippolyte commanded. “Speak.”
Aella did so and said, “Punish me for my transgressions. I will take it all willingly. But the moment I am able to, I will go after him.”
“And if you don’t find him?”
“I won’t give up.”
“And if he doesn’t want you now?”
“I will convince him otherwise.”
“And if he changes his heart in the future?”
“It has no bearing on my heart. I will have no regrets.”
Hippolyte said nothing, merely staring.
Aella took a deep breath and pressed on, “This has been my home, my family. But Yun is everything. I do not know how to live in a man’s world on a man’s terms, but I will try for Yun. I must, or I will regret it forever. He is life.”
She didn’t say “he is my life,” and Hippolyte knew the difference. She knew that her daughter didn’t feel alive without her man. It wasn’t that her past hadn’t been happy or well-lived, but that after knowing what it was to truly love, her life had fundamentally changed.
There was no going back.
“Then so be it,” Hippolyte stated clearly.
Aella stiffened, held her breath, and awaited her indictment.
“You are henceforth exiled forever from the Amazons,” the queen pronounced. “This is your punishment. Leave here immediately and never come back.”
Hippolyte rose to her feet and faced her daughter one last time.
“I will not embrace you. You do not deserve it. From this moment onward, I have no daughter. Deianeira is now Arpada.”
Mercilessly, she turned her back, her shoulders straight and proud.
Aella realized that she was wrong. She did have a fragment of her heart left after all. And in that moment, it broke forever.
But this choice she did not regret, no matter how it hurt her.
“Goodbye, mama,” she whispered.
Then, she turned and walked out of the yurt as fast as her long legs could carry her.
Dali, Deianeira and Atalanta were already waiting for her by the outdoor stables.
“Take my horse, Aella,” Deianeira offered. “He’s the fastest.”
“You’ll find him,” Dali said, clapping a hand on Aella’s shoulder. “He has a head start, but you can follow the tracks like I taught you.”
“Don’t worry,” Atalanta added, “just because you can’t come back here, doesn’t mean we can’t run into each other someplace else. This isn’t the last you’ll see of us.”
Aella looked from one woman to the next, never more grateful for her sisters than now.
“I love you all,” she said fervently. “I love you always.”
They all clasped arms and put their heads together, as they did before every battle and after every victory.
Dali was the one who pulled away first.
“Now stop dithering and go after him.”
Aella gave a sharp nod and was astride Deianeira’s stallion in a flash.
Without another word, she urged the horse into a breakneck gallop, racing across the steppes like the whirlwind she was.
She read the signs of Yun’s passage along the way, just like Dali had taught her. She was gaining on him, even with his significant lead. She was the better horse master. She knew how to get the most out of her steed. And being a lighter load helped as well.
Soon, the Amazon stronghold was a small shadow behind her, as night seeped into an orange dawn.
Yun was close. She could feel it. He wasn’t far ahead of her now.
She urged the horse faster.
So close. She was so close!
But that was when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up in warning, a moment before dark shadows blocked out the rising sun over steep cliffs on either side of the valley she rode through.
Aella looked up to see black shapes on top of the hills, standing side by side like rows of trees.
But they were no trees.
No.
Aella caught a glimpse of the Sarmatian tribe’s banner before she jerked her steed in an abrupt turn and headed back for the Amazon stronghold.
All at once, the soldiers lined up on top of the hills descended en masse in a stampede of hooves.
Aella spurred her horse on, her enemies nipping like the demons of hell on her heels as she raced for the home from which she was exiled.
She just hoped it wasn’t too late.
“In the meantime, I will have to adjust my methods to combine the genetic materials of different Kinds. The experiments keep failing…I do not have the patience to do it the ‘natural way.’ The odds of mixed offspring are too low. How can I accelerate the process? I must find a way…”
—From the secret journal of the Vampire Sorceress Circe, added notes in the margin by an unknown hand
Chapter Fourteen
Cloud was in so much pain it was all he could do to keep his seat on Aella’s horse.
Many of his wounds had reopened during the breakneck pace he’d set tearing out of the Amazon stronghold.
He didn’t care. He hardly noticed the physical pain. Not when the emotional and spiritual agony eclipsed all else.
But there was a limit to his body’s endurance, this frail, human shell with easily pierced skin and flesh, and easily broken bones. Still, even if he’d been in his true form, nothing would have protected him from the anguish inside.
He couldn’t escape it. No matter how fast he rode that horse. He couldn’t mute it, not with the substantial physical misery he suffered.
And there was no turning back time. No going back to what he was before, when he didn’t understand these human cares, when he hadn’t known “attachment.”
When he hadn’t given all of himself to the female who’d thrown him away like so much rubbish.
Aella’s horse, probably feeling the lack of direction and strength from its rider, slowed to a sedate walk, then stopped altogether. A good thing too, because Cloud chose that moment to topple from his seat, landing in an exhausted, bloody heap on the dirt ground.
Pathetic.
He’d been one of heaven’s immortal guardians, invincible and fearless, and now he was just a pathetic, heart-broken man.
Aella’s horse suddenly perked up its ears and whinnied softly, its nostrils flaring. It danced uneasily in place for a few moments, as if uncertain what to do. It had been ordered to go with Cloud, but it now wanted to go somewhere else.
“Return to your mistress,” Cloud told the horse. “I have no more use for you.”
With a flick of its silky tail, the horse galloped off, back in the direction of the Amazon stronghold.
Cloud watched after it with a humorless tilt to his lips.
How ironic.
This was close to the place where he fell in the last great battle. He should have died then, but Aella found and saved him.
He wished he’d died then.
If he had, he’d be back in heaven now, his tour of learning in the human world concluded. He would have remembered the dragonfly girl/ woman fondly. She’d been his first and only kiss. She’d made him feel things he’d never felt before.
She’d made his
spirit soar.
But he wouldn’t have lost so much of himself to that girl. All of himself, in fact. He would have stayed whole, but with an empathy and compassion for humans that he’d never had before.
There was no turning back.
Over the course of the past few hours, the past few days, he was forever changed.
A shrill whinny from Aella’s horse focused Cloud’s attention back on the horizon, over which a bloody sun was rising.
Something was wrong.
He struggled to stand and narrowed his eyes.
It was barely visible, but he could see it—the orange flames in the distance. He could smell it too—the acrid smoke that a strong gust of wind carried to him.
The Amazon stronghold was under attack.
Aella was under attack!
And at the rate the flames were growing and the wind was churning, it would soon be burnt to the ground.
Cloud ordered his legs to move, but he merely stumbled to his knees. He was too bloody weak! He was useless in this form. He’d most likely die here in this form.
But he couldn’t. He had to save Aella!
Cloud gritted his teeth and tried to rise again, groaning in frustration and pain when more of his wounds tore open. His bandages and cloak were soaked with blood and dirt.
He couldn’t give up. He wouldn’t!
All at once, his forehead burned over his immortal mark, glowing red hot. He could practically hear his skin sizzling.
His eyes were next, blazing blue fire. He could feel it, the lightning zigzagging within him, coursing through his veins.
With a roar, he erupted from his mortal shell and shot up into the sky:
A jade green dragon with scales dipped in obsidian. Four sharp claws the size of houses attached to muscular legs. A long, serpent body ending in a flame-like tail. Large ears shaped like those of a cow. Giant antlers on top of his head. Long, flowing whiskers around his mouth. A prominent bump on his forehead, his chimu, without which he could not ascend to the heavens.
And bright, glowing, incandescent eyes like sunlight spearing through the clearest blue sea.
Freed at last, Cloud undulated his body to gain speed, traveling through the dawning skies faster than wind.