by Ella Frank
Leo looked across at him and said, “This is the Chamber.”
The…what? Chamber?
“This is where Elias and I were with all the others before—well, before whatever happened happened.”
“The others? As in, the vampires who were in Vasilios’s room before?”
“Yes,” Leo said. “All of them, plus the council members. They’d all gathered and we were talking about the new image in the book—” Leo came to an abrupt halt. “What happened, Paris? Where are Thanos and Eton?”
Paris shuddered as the Ancient’s name fell from Leo’s tongue, and he stood and walked away from his friend, unable to look at him in that moment.
“Paris?” As Leo said his name, Paris squeezed his eyes shut and willed him not to ask anything else. But he knew the likelihood of that happening was slim to none.
“Paris,” Leo shouted, his tone harsh this time. “What the fuck happened before you woke up here?”
Paris closed his eyes as he thought back, trying to recall his last clear memory.
Eton.
His eyes blood red.
His teeth bared.
His claws extending.
And then him, attacking Thanos—
Paris remembered. It had felt like the rumbling of thunder as his fear and worry had vibrated throughout his body, and the next second it had exploded from his palms. A cloud of black fog that engulfed the Ancient and wrapped around his body before it sucked from his mouth everything that had made him whole.
As Eton’s body had torqued at a warped angle, Paris had watched Thanos fall to the ground beside him and shout, as though what was happening to the Ancient was being done to himself.
Thanos’s blood had been running down his neck from the wounds Eton had inflicted, his fangs were bared, and when Eton finally lay limp before the two of them, nothing more than a withered shell, Paris had passed out and woken up here.
“Paris?”
Paris opened his eyes, trying to banish the thought of the pain he’d caused Thanos, when all he’d ever wanted was to help and protect him. And then said in a voice he barely recognized, “I think I killed Eton.”
LEO FIGURED HE must’ve misheard what Paris had just said. But as he stared into his friend’s haunted eyes, he knew that he hadn’t.
Fucking hell. Paris killed Eton? Killed him? What did that even mean?
Leo brought a hand to his mouth and clamped it over the top of it, worried that if he didn’t he might let out a cry, or shout, or some sound that expressed how fucking terrified he was to think that what Paris had done might have just killed the two males he loved.
“Leo…” Paris said, and took a step toward him.
Yes, loved, Leo thought as the realization of that, and the possibility that he might not ever see them, hit him all over again.
“Leo.” When Paris took another step, Leo staggered back. He caught the hurt his response had caused Paris, but didn’t know how else to react.
What if… What if his friend had just killed—
“Ugh…”
The groan from behind them had Leo turning to see Elias coming to. He was rubbing his temple and surveying the area, and when his eyes landed on Leo and Paris, he frowned. “Where the hell did everyone go?”
Leo opened his mouth, about to tell Elias he wasn’t sure, but nothing came out. He was still too busy trying to wrap his mind around what he’d just learned. Elias got to his feet and swayed a little. Then, once he steadied himself, he walked over to Leo and looked just beyond his shoulder to where Paris was standing.
“What’s going on?” He brought his eyes back to Leo and asked again, “Where is everyone?”
Good fucking question, Leo thought, his panic making his chest tighten and his pulse go fucking nuts.
Think, Chapel. Think. But nothing was coming to him. Before they’d woken up here, they’d been sitting in the Chamber full of vampires, and now… Now they’d all vanished—or worse.
“Paris?” Elias asked, when it was clear he wasn’t going to get anything out of Leo, and Leo couldn’t even bring himself to look at the man behind him, because he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from strangling him.
How could Paris have done this?
“I…I think I might have done something—”
“He killed Eton,” Leo blurted out.
“I didn’t mean to,” Paris said, and Leo turned around to stand side by side with Elias as they watched the man now wringing his hands together. “Thanos and I, we were in that room. You know, the one with no way out.”
Leo pressed his fists to his forehead as Paris spoke, becoming more and more upset by what he was hearing.
“Okay…” Elias said, sounding far too calm to Leo.
“Okay? What do you mean, okay?” Leo said. “He killed Eton, and now everyone else is gone.” Leo was aware his voice had risen several octaves. But he couldn’t help it. He was freaking the fuck out. “Aren’t you worried that Isadora is, oh, I don’t know, dead?”
Elias reached out to him and placed his hands on his shoulders, grounding Leo both physically and with his steady stare. “You need to calm down.”
“I don’t need to do shit,” Leo said, and glared at Paris. “How could you do this? After everything I told you.”
“Leo,” Elias barked, and Leo looked back into the silver eyes focused on him. “If you calm down for a minute and think about this, you will realize you are forgetting something very important. Eton was no longer connected to anyone, not even Thanos.”
So? What the fuck does that even mean?
“You and I,” Elias continued, as though he were explaining things to a five-year-old, “we are connected to those vampires by blood. If they die—”
“We die,” Leo whispered, and Elias nodded.
“Exactly.”
Leo’s breathing calmed slightly as that bit of knowledge settled in his brain. “But what if they changed the rules?”
“The gods?”
“Yes.”
Elias let his hands fall away, and as he shoved them into the pockets of his pants, he shrugged. “I don’t think it works like that. They wanted one thing, and one thing only. Annihilation of the vampire race. But I think they’ve realized that to do that, they had to alter their course.”
“How right you are, Elias Fontana.”
The voice that echoed around the mammoth hall sounded as though it had manifested from the front of the Chamber, and as it wound around the three of them and they turned in its direction, Leo knew exactly whom it had come from. That voice belonged to his god—Apollo.
Leo swallowed as he saw the silhouette of a male appear upon the dais, and then all of his fear and fury bubbled within. Earlier, when Apollo had pulled him away, Leo had called him a coward, and still the god hid behind smoke and mirrors.
Leo was sick of this shit. Frustrated with his inability to do anything for Vasilios and Alasdair, and damn it, for himself.
What the hell did they do that was so horrible they deserved to die?
“Nothing of late, is the answer to that question, Mr. Chapel. You, it appears, have had some sort of effect on the two you were sent to eliminate, and it is most perplexing, to say the least.”
Huh? What does that mean?
From the get-go Apollo had been a pompous ass, and true to form, he was continuing with his high-handed authority and circular speech. Why didn’t he ever just say what it was he meant? And why did he never show himself?
“How very odd,” Apollo said. “That you are so curious over how I look. Would it make a difference in how you think should you see me?”
“It wouldn’t do shit,” Leo said, done with being silent. “But I was told we resembled one another.”
“Were you?” Apollo said, and then the Chamber was illuminated as though the roof had been ripped off so the sun could pour inside, and there, standing upon the dais, was a man who resembled Leo, right down to the grey eyes and short blond hair. It wasn’t until Elias said, “Fucking hell,” that
Leo realized he’d been rendered mute.
“Eloquent as always, Elias,” a female said, and when a woman with raven hair appeared beside Apollo, Leo saw Paris edge closer to his side.
If that was Apollo, then this must be—
“Artemis,” Elias said, by way of greeting. “So sorry to disappoint you by still breathing.”
“No need to be sorry. You have, in fact, enlightened me about something I always wondered.”
Elias took a step forward. “And that is?”
“If you really loved her, could she love you in return?”
“And you achieved that by almost having me killed?” Elias asked.
The woman shrugged, and Leo was curious how these beings believed that they were superior to the vampires they’d created, when to him it seemed they were more ruthless and uncaring than the ones they wanted dead.
“And that is where you are wrong, Leonidas. Isn’t he, Paris?” As Apollo addressed the silent man by Leo’s side, both he and Elias turned to see the blood drain from Paris’s face as the brightness of the Chamber dimmed and a forbidding shadow overtook the space.
“Paris has seen the darkest of them all, and set in motion the beginning of their end.”
THE CHILL THAT swept throughout the Chamber alerted Elias that the third and final god—Hades—had just entered the sanctuary. As Leo and Paris stood rooted to the spot, he made his way in between his two friends, ready to do whatever he had to in order to protect them.
“Oh, how very noble,” Hades said, and the voice sent a shot of terror up Elias’s spine. “But there is nothing you can do to save them now, Elias. And though you are correct, and things have been somewhat altered, you are now all exactly where you are required to be for this to come full circle.”
Elias saw Paris wrap his arms around his waist as though he was cold, and he felt the same as his body shuddered.
“What do you mean, full circle?” Leo asked. “Did you kill them?”
The laugh that rumbled around them was menacing as a shadowed figure formed on the other side of Apollo. A black robe cloaked the god from head to toe, and when he raised his hands to push the hood back from his head, a face full of sharp angles and dark features came into view, framed by long, dark hair that spilled over his shoulders, much the same as Paris’s.
“We killed nobody, Mr. Chapel,” Hades said in a voice that practically slithered along the stone floor and swirled around them where they stood. “But your friend, Paris, he started what now must be completed.”
Before Leo or Paris could say anything in response, Elias said, “You mean with Eton?”
“Do I?” Hades asked.
“Yes. Otherwise Leo and I would be dead.”
Artemis chuckled, and the familiar sound made Elias want to curse at her for her deception over the years and the final betrayal she had laid upon him when she’d left him to die.
How he’d ever believed her lies of Isadora, Elias would never understand.
“It is because you know them to be true, Elias,” she said. “The ones you and Leonidas have foolishly tied yourselves to, the ones you have fallen in love with. They are evil. They do not possess the ability to experience emotions in the way that is needed for them to exist among other living beings.”
“That’s not true,” Paris shouted, and had everyone in the Chamber looking in his direction. “They can feel compassion, grief, and…even love. But you already know that,” he said, turning in Hades’s direction. “You’re the one who showed me when you were trying to prove your point about Eton. Yes, there’s darkness and evil, as with all thinking creatures. But there’s so much more to them, and if you truly are the mightier of the beings then it is in your hands to bend. Be the ones to admit when you are wrong and show mercy to those you created. Apollo started this,” Paris said, shocking the hell out of Elias when he stepped forward and pointed at the really fucking scary one, “and you perpetuated it. Surely one of you can stop it.”
“Hmm, maybe not stop it. But perhaps it could be altered…” Apollo said, as he walked forward, away from the other two upon the dais, and Elias had a flash of recognition.
He’d been in this moment before. Standing between Leo and Paris in this Chamber in front of three figures. Originally, he’d assumed those three were Vasilios, Diomêdês, and Eton. But now, as he watched the scene unfold, he knew the Scriptures of Delphi had been leading him to this moment. When they were face to face with their true descendants.
“You see,” Apollo said. “Elias was right when he said this has all been planned. Since the day of your conception, we have been working towards this moment, and even with the death of Eton, the darkness still lingers with the capability to resurface. It is time to rid the world of the vampire race once and for all.”
“No!” Leo shouted, and when he lunged forward, Elias was quick to grab him and Paris was right there to help.
As Leo crumpled to the floor and continued to shout the walls down, the three beings before them vanished, and as with everything when it came to these gods, all around them faded to black.
THE SUN SLIPPED through the shades and flirted with Leo’s eyes as he rolled over in bed and pulled his pillow up over his head. Ugh, his alarm had gone off several minutes earlier, and he knew he had a big day and night ahead of him, but really, five more minutes wasn’t going to hurt, was it?
“Leo! Get your ass out of bed.”
As his name was called from the kitchen, a smile stretched across his face. God, five months in and he still couldn’t believe they were actually doing this. But there was no way he’d just hallucinated that deep, sexy voice, and, with a ridiculous grin, he rolled to his back just in time to see the bathroom door open.
As steam billowed into the bedroom, Alasdair walked out with a towel wrapped around his waist and another slung around his neck. Leo silently tracked him as he made his way across the hardwood floor to the tallboy in the corner, and couldn’t help the way his body responded to all the naked flesh it was seeing.
“Good morning,” he said, and Alasdair looked over his shoulder.
“Good morning. I’m surprised you’re awake. God knows you didn’t get to sleep until late last night.”
“Or early morning, depending how you look at it,” Leo said, and waggled his eyebrows.
Alasdair let loose a sensual smile that had Leo’s heart thumping almost as hard as the erection now stiffening beneath the sheets, and when those emerald eyes drifted down to the proof of Leo’s desire, Alasdair chuckled.
“I swear, Leo. You have the libido of a teenager.”
Leo scoffed, and pressed a hand against his aching length. “Are you complaining?”
“Not ever. I think we fit together perfectly,” Alasdair said, as he dropped the towel from his shoulders onto the floor and grabbed the pressed white shirt he’d hung out the night before. As he tugged it over his broad shoulders and began to button it, the silver chain and diamond cross Leo had given him for his birthday the night before disappeared behind the proper attire. “So, we didn’t tire you out too much, huh? That’s good to know. I’d hate to think you were too exhausted for your big night.”
Leo stretched beneath the sheet as Alasdair pulled on a pair of tight black boxers, and decided it might be wise to keep his hands behind his head if he planned to get up and head to the museum on time this morning. They still had to put the final pieces of the exhibit together for tonight’s benefactor, and there was no way he was going to be late.
He was nervous. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about that, but he, Paris, and Elias had been working their asses off for this night, and Leo had to believe it wasn’t all for nothing.
Things would go smoothly. It all felt so…right.
“I’m just fine, thank you, Mr. Kyriakous. You’re the one who got older last night, not me.”
Alasdair arched a brow and walked over to the bed, and when he placed a knee on the mattress, Leo couldn’t help but lick his lips.
“Old, you
say?”
“Uh huh. One step closer to the grave,” Leo said, and just as he reached out to touch, the bedroom doorway filled and the man, standing fully dressed in suit and tie, held two coffee cups in his hands.
“I thought I told you to get your ass out of bed, Leo. Not drag Alasdair’s back into it.”
Leo’s eyes connected with the jade ones now trailing over Alasdair’s back and tight ass, and he aimed an inviting smile to the man now shoving off the doorjamb to cross over to them.
Vasilios Panayiotou. He had taken over the position of director at the National Historic Museum around six months ago, when Elias had decided to scale his duties back and become assistant director.
Leo remembered the night of the welcome function when Vasilios had introduced his partner Alasdair to him…and God, like a sixth sense or some shit, the moment he’d locked eyes with the both of them, Leo had known they would somehow change his life.
He hadn’t been wrong, either. He’d broken every rule in the book after that when it came to these two men. From dating a coworker—my boss, no less—to dating two men at the same time.
All he knew was that if he and Alasdair fit perfectly together, then this man was the final side to their perfect triangle, triad, or whatever one called a harmonious relationship between three.
Leo laughed a little as Alasdair pressed a kiss to his lips and then rolled to his back.
“What are you thinking about that’s so amusing?”
“Ahh, none of your business. That’s why I’m thinking it,” Leo said as he reached across Alasdair to take the mug Vasilios was holding out to him. But before Vasilios let it go, he asked, “How are you feeling this morning?”
Leo rolled his eyes, but when Vasilios said his name softly, it was like some sort of hypnosis, and Leo found himself giving in. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known how protective these two could be before he moved in. Especially when it came to his well-being.
“I’m fine,” he said, and when his fingers brushed Vasilios’s, he added, “fantastic, actually. I’m not sure how what occurred between these sheets last night was a birthday present for Alasdair. But I’m more than happy to be unwrapped and eaten any night of the week.”