Kardionisi
AS SOON AS Theo and Sasha heard the Myrmidons approaching, they sought cover. The cypress maze was near to hand, and they dashed to its entrance and took refuge just inside.
Peering out, they saw the Myrmidons quick-marching past, with Hélène Arlington in their midst, being dragged along by one of them.
“Shit,” Theo said. “They’ve taken her hostage.”
“What for?”
“Leverage, I guess. They think they can use her to smoke us out.”
“‘Show yourselves or the simpering bimbo gets it.’ Maybe we should call their bluff. See how that pans out.”
“You really don’t like her, do you?”
“Men are fools, but the woman who encourages them in their foolishness is worse. Why pander to male fantasies in order to control them? It may seem like domination, but it’s just another form of subservience.”
“Okay, but we’ve still got to rescue her,” Theo said. “That’s a given, right?”
“If you insist.”
“Are you ready to take on nine Myrmidons?”
“As a warm-up before we deal with Evander Arlington and Ioannis? Yes.”
Theo felt the Myrmidons were more of a threat than she gave them credit for. Each was a professional killer, bearing an artefact that could kill them...
“Then let’s do this before common sense kicks in.”
He padded out from the maze, Sasha beside him. They merged with the column behind the rearmost Myrmidon. Roy Young.
A few paces further on, Young looked over his shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Young turned back round. Theo saw his spine stiffen, his shoulders straighten.
When Young grasped the haft of Ares’s battle-axe, that clinched it. He was ready. Theo read the hand signals he made. If he interpreted right, the two Myrmidons immediately ahead of Young were friendly. Young had said at Stolby that there were a couple of members of the team who he felt could be persuaded to turn against their paymaster; must be these two.
Theo established that Sasha had got Young’s message too. When he looked back round, his gaze locked with Hélène’s.
He was about to offer her some covert sign of reassurance, but too late. She addressed the Myrmidon gripping her arm. She told him that she thought Theo and Sasha were impostors.
Theo was dumbfounded. Hélène had looked straight at him. The Myrmidon helmet did not hide his face. She had recognised him. He had seen it in her expression.
And then she had warned her captor about him and Sasha.
And now the man – big, slab-faced, pug-nosed – was drawing his sidearm.
Theo overcame his shock. Fear kicked in, a jolt of adrenaline banishing everything except the need to fight, to win, to survive.
He accelerated to a full sprint. Past Young, past the other two Myrmidons, full tilt at the man with the gun. Dionysius’s club aloft and humming in his fist, singing a song of wild abandonment, of high revels and low morals, of boundaries exceeded.
He struck before the man could loose off a shot, bringing the club down on the wrist holding the gun. He smashed every bone in the wrist. The Myrmidon shrieked in sudden agony, and the gun fell with a clatter. His hand hung limp from his forearm like a bird’s broken wing.
The club swung again, a blow to the shoulder. More bones shattering, the sound of flattened meat. Another shriek.
A third blow cracked the man’s helmet. His head snapped sideways and he crumpled to the path. Blood gushed from his nostrils, giving him a dark crimson moustache.
Affixed to his back by Velcro ties was a bident. It gave off a sombre gleam redolent of caverns and misery.
Hades’s.
A superior weapon to the club. Theo wrested it off the Myrmidon’s body – unconscious? dead? He didn’t care which. He hefted the bident in one hand, stowing the club in his belt with the other.
Sasha was running past him, her sights set on the next Myrmidon along.
Theo whirled round to Hélène.
“What the hell is with you?” he snapped. “You saw my face, you saw Sasha’s. And you outed us?”
“A new Trojan War, Theo,” she replied.
“A new – ?”
“Stannard!”
Roy Young lurched past Theo to intercept a Myrmidon running at him, trident levelled at Theo’s midsection. Young diverted the trident with a swipe of his battle-axe. The weapons clanged against each other.
The trident holder rounded on Young. “Showing your true colours at last, huh, Roy?” he said in an accent from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon. “I knew all along you were a slippery son of a bitch. Guess Stannard musta turned you, back there in Russia. Offered you even more money not to kill him.”
“You have no fucking idea, Travis,” said Young. “Money is the last thing this is about.”
“Could be I don’t give a flying fart what this is about. Could be I see myself getting a nice fat bonus if I run you through with this here pig-sticker.”
The Myrmidon called Travis rammed the trident – seething with Poseidon’s numen – at Young. Young deflected with the battle-axe. The two of them swung, thrust and parried.
Sasha was engaged with another of the Myrmidons, this one wielding a scythe. He was deft with it; the long, curved blade flashed in criss-cross patterns, keeping Sasha at bay, giving her no opportunity to land a blow with Hephaestus’s hammer.
Theo spotted yet another Myrmidon drawing a bead on Sasha with a bow and arrow. He yelled out a warning, and Sasha ducked. The arrow zinged past her head with centimetres to spare.
The two Myrmidons who were Young’s allies started shooting at their own team. The gun reports were as loud as thunder. The other Myrmidons scattered. Some returned fire.
“You?” said Theo to Hélène. A new Trojan War. It could mean only one thing. “You instigated all this?”
“Theseus, my love, my first love,” she replied, tenderly. “Aren’t you thrilled? Isn’t it exciting? Doesn’t it get your blood pumping? It does mine.”
Theo tightened his grip on Hades’s bident. Its twin points shone darkly.
“You wouldn’t,” Hélène said.
“You have no idea what I would do.”
“Your sense of fair play is too strong.”
“After seeing Heracles die – cut down like a dog – my sense of fair play isn’t what it was.”
“Would you really destroy this?” Hélène indicated herself with a sweep of her hand: her face, her figure, her exquisiteness. “The body you once worshipped and adored? Desecrate it with that thing? I think not.”
There was an abrupt scream close by, to Theo’s left.
He saw one of Young’s two allies – the man, not the woman – hurtling through the air as though thrown. He could not make out who or what had struck him.
The man landed with a crunch against an abstract bronze statue. He rose awkwardly, crookedly to his feet.
The woman cried out, “Gavin!”
Gavin had lost his gun but he was armed with a sickle, which he drew from his belt. Theo could feel Hermes’s numen emanating from the weapon, an aura of swiftness and sharpness.
Gavin waved it in the air. From the way he was standing, favouring his left flank, he appeared to have several broken ribs on that side.
Suddenly he was flat on his back, as if an unseen cable had pulled him over.
The sickle flew from his grasp...
...and disappeared into thin air.
It was then that Theo finally realised what was going on. A broad grin on Hélène’s face told him that she knew too.
He leapt forward, shouting, “Chase! No!”
At the same moment, Gavin’s belly seemed to unzip itself. A scarlet gash opened at his crotch and travelled up to his sternum. Innards spilled out over its jagged lips. Gavin screamed in helpless, wretched agony.
Theo, with his free hand, made a grab for where he knew an arm to be. His fingers closed around the limb and he hoisted it upwards.
&n
bsp; “Chase, didn’t you hear me? I told you not to. That man isn’t –”
“I know what he is,” said Chase’s voice from somewhere about half a metre in front of Theo’s face. “Or rather, was. He was the bastard who had my sickle. And now I’ve got it back.”
Gavin, neatly eviscerated, shook and shuddered on the ground. His eyes were fading. He was passing beyond help, beyond everything. Blood dripped from a point in midair, where the tip of Chase’s sickle must be.
“I mean he was on our side,” Theo said.
“Oh, I know that as well,” said Chase, yanking his arm out of Theo’s grasp. “It’s what you don’t know, cuz, that really matters. That’s the big deal here.”
Chase sounded unlike Theo had ever heard him before.
He sounded serious.
“Take the Helm off,” Theo demanded. “Let me see you.”
“I’d prefer to stay invisible, if you don’t mind. It’s working for me.”
There were grunts and cries behind Theo, gunshots, the uproar of battle.
But all he paid attention to was Chase.
Chase and the terrible understanding he could feel dawning inside.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he said. “Tell me you aren’t in league with her.” He jerked a thumb in Hélène’s direction.
“Cahoots,” came the reply. “Can’t you use ‘cahoots’ instead? It’s so much funkier.”
“How...?”
“How could I? How did I? How dare I? Which is it?”
“All of them.”
“Come on, Theo. You’re the smart one. Famous for it. You’re the Holmes, I’m the Watson. You figure it out. Meantime, while you’re doing that, I’ll be... over here...”
Chase’s voice was suddenly fainter, further away.
“Me and my sickle and my helmet, together again... just like old times.”
Theo lunged after him.
“And keeping me out of your reach... so you can’t grab me and beat the crap out of me... like you’re itching to.”
Theo ran on, following the dwindling sound of his cousin’s voice.
“Chase! Chase, get back here!”
No reply.
“Chase!”
The fighting was now a good distance behind him. Theo halted, listening intently.
There. The merest whisper of a footfall, dead ahead.
He set off again at a sprint.
“Chase, I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to – to understand. I just want you to explain.”
“And then you’ll hurt me,” Chase said. “I know you, cuz.”
The words were coming from beside the entrance to the cypress maze.
Theo made a beeline for it.
A corner of square-trimmed cypress shivered, rustling.
Chase was gone into the maze.
Theo, barely pausing, hurried in after him.
FORTY
Kardionisi
ROY WAS HOLDING his own against Travis Laffoon, but only just.
The Louisianan was fighting like a man possessed. Like he had everything to lose and everything to prove.
Back and forth they went, jabbing, feinting, clashing. The battle-axe and trident were a match for each other, and so were the men wielding them.
Except – the painkillers were wearing off. Roy’s limbs were getting clumsy and tired. He was stiffening up.
Laffoon, on the other hand, was in fine fettle.
And he could tell that Roy was weakening. He redoubled his efforts. The prongs of the trident came ever nearer, ever closer to spearing Roy, while the battle-axe grew ever heavier in Roy’s hands.
Finally Laffoon got past his defences. One tip of the trident cleaved through the flesh of Roy’s upper arm. Roy recoiled, panting, gasping. The battle-axe sagged, blade meeting the ground.
“Got a boo-boo, huh?” Laffoon jeered. “Well, it ain’t nothing compared to the boo-boo you’re about to have.”
He pulled the trident back for a finishing thrust.
Well, Roy thought, if I die, at least they’ll have to let Josie go. No point in hanging on to her if I’m not around anymore.
It was some consolation.
It was also an unrealistic hope. The simpler course of action for Badenhorst would be to kill Josie and dump the body far from where anyone might find it. That way she would tell no tales.
Roy had to live. For her sake.
He hoisted up the battle-axe. Somehow he got the haft of it in between two of the trident’s prongs, halting the thrust. Laffoon drove harder. Roy resisted with everything he had.
“Can’t you just goddamn die?” Laffoon snarled.
“Not while arseholes like you still get to suck air. Wouldn’t be right.”
Roy shoved, and Laffoon staggered backwards, tripping over one of the pathside lights and crashing back onto his behind. Roy twisted the battle-axe to tear the trident out of his clutches, then lofted the axe and brought it down on Laffoon’s head.
A hand darted out and caught the haft before the blade hit home.
The hand was slender, delicate-looking, with flawlessly manicured fingernails.
But phenomenally strong, too. It pushed the battle-axe back up at Roy, and all he could do was twist out of the way of the oncoming blade, which sheared past his head so close it almost lopped off an ear. Next thing he knew, he was no longer holding the weapon.
Hélène Arlington was.
“You’ll be my third tonight,” she said. “I’d rather watch killing than do it myself, but needs must. Sometimes a girl can’t just sit on the sidelines and spectate. Sometimes she’s got to muck in with the boys.”
The axe blade shimmered through the air, destined for Roy’s neck.
Then a Myrmidon rammed into Hélène from the side, shoulder-barging her. Caught by surprise, she stumbled, and the blow from the battle-axe flew wide.
She recovered to find herself face to face with Jeanne Chevrier.
A grim-faced, very pissed-off Jeanne Chevrier.
Who plucked a combat knife from her belt and raised it in an icepick grip, thumb on pommel, tip down.
“No gun, my dear?” said Hélène.
“Out. No time to reload. This will do.”
“Careful, Jeanne,” said Roy. “She’s one of them.”
“I figured.”
“And you don’t have an artefact,” Hélène sneered. “Just a bog-standard army knife. Might as well come at me with a potato peeler.”
“It’ll be enough.”
“In your dreams. I have an axe with the essence of a war god in it. I can see this fight going only one way.”
“Bitch, please. Just shut up and give me your best shot.”
The battle-axe whirred, lightning-swift.
Jeanne reared back out of its path.
Hélène swung again. The axe seemed bamboo-light in her hands. Her speed was breathtaking.
But she wielded the weapon with a kind of disdain, as though loath to touch it. She had every intention of killing Jeanne with it, but at the same time appeared uncomfortable with the whole messy business of murder. She was Jeanne’s physical superior, but lacked her skill and experience.
Jeanne ducked under the axe swing and slashed with her knife. Hélène was too quick for her and avoided the attack, but the evasion threw her off-balance, giving Jeanne another opportunity. Jeanne pivoted and delivered a backhand strike, opening up a slit in Hélène’s nightgown at waist level and drawing blood from the flesh beneath.
Hélène hissed, more in outrage than pain. “Oh, you unmitigated cunt. I can’t believe you did that.”
“Cut you?”
“Ruined my Oscar de la Renta. Evander loves me in this. A chunky great oaf like you wouldn’t understand the importance of designer sleepwear. I bet you go to bed in boxer shorts and a tanktop. You look the type.”
With a grunt Hélène launched herself at Jeanne again, the axe above her head.
Roy would have waded into the fray, but Laffoon was back on his feet and had p
icked the trident back up. All at once Roy was grappling with him, the two of them fighting for possession of the weapon.
Roy couldn’t carry on much longer; there wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t taut and aching and begging for rest.
Only the thought of Josie kept him going.
And in the end, even that wasn’t enough.
Laffoon prevailed. He wrenched the trident free from Roy’s hands, simultaneously booting Roy in the chest so that he collapsed in a heap.
“’Bout time this was done and dusted,” he said.
Roy fumbled for his handgun even as the trident descended.
Then there was a deep wet crunching sound.
The trident halted in midair, quivering.
Lafeyette stood rigid with a look of incomprehension on his face that deepened into incredulity.
He had been impaled on a scythe, entering him through the spine and emerging from his solar plexus like an upturned talon, glistening with his blood.
As he sagged, Roy saw Sasha Grace standing behind Laffoon. She lowered his body to the ground with the scythe, then slid the blade free with a single deft tug.
Roy offered her a look of profound gratitude.
She barely registered it, instead turning towards Hélène and Jeanne.
Roy turned too and saw to his dismay that Hélène had gained the upper hand in the fight. Jeanne had somehow lost her knife. Hélène was propelling her backwards with rapid to-and-fro swipes of the battle-axe. It was all Jeanne could do to stay clear of the axe’s double-bladed head as it whipped left to right, right to left, in front of her.
“Hélène!” Sasha bellowed.
“What?” Hélène replied.
“I have a bone to pick with you.”
“Can it wait? Little busy right now.”
“It was you, wasn’t it? Rosalind and Melina. I heard you: ‘my third tonight’. You killed them, you cow. You.”
“And if I did? What are you going to do about it?”
“What do you think?”
Sasha charged at Hélène with the scythe.
Hélène spun to meet her.
Helen of Troy, a princess of Sparta, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, both brandishing god-powered weapons, clashed together.
Age of Heroes Page 33