by Ella Frank
“Yes. There’s a bathroom but no other door.”
As he trailed his fingers over the surface, his gaze fastened on the stud. An archaic coin? Fuck, that one coin alone was worth anywhere between five thousand to twenty, and as he stared down the curve of the wall, the sheer amount of them was impressive.
Who studs their walls with ancient artifacts? Ostentatious fucks.
“Elias? Where’s Leo? I thought I saw him before…” Paris trailed off.
Before what? was probably what he was thinking.
“You did. Something’s happened to him though.” Elias heard Paris moving around and turned, finding him getting to his feet.
“What? What’s happened to him?”
He sighed, frustrated that he didn’t actually know. But it had to be something, right? Leo wouldn’t have offered up their lives unless he’d had no other choice, and that was exactly what he’d done. Then he remembered his friend’s words. “I made a choice. The only one I could. I chose to live.”
When he’d questioned Leo as he’d dragged him down to the two assholes—who wanted to kill him, no doubt—he’d been quick to state that he’d bargained himself with their lives in mind. Yet, as Elias looked to the ceiling, where an ominous metal hook hung in hostile surveillance, he wondered if Leo had been duped. Because, from where he was standing, their lives seemed anything but guaranteed.
PARIS FELT LIKE he’d survived a tornado, and though he’d come out on the other side, his head was still fucking jumbled.
Elias was standing across the unfamiliar room, staring at the ceiling, and when he followed his gaze, the sight made the hair on the back of his neck rise. He tried to clear the fog inside his brain and remember everything that’d happened prior to waking up wherever the hell he now was.
Two things were playing over though. Elias’s claim that the woman in his office was…a vampire. And Leo and his new guy appearing from out of nowhere, before Leo’s earnest eyes stared down at him as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Paris. So sorry.”
“Where’s the woman, Elias?”
Elias brought his gaze to his, and Paris raised his chin, refusing to back down.
Elias Fontana was an intimidating man. His appearance was deceiving. Attractive in an intellectual way. His dark hair, which sported silver flecks at the temples, combined with his odd eye color drew attention.
When people caught sight of the glasses, heard his profession, and saw the immaculate suits he always wore, they assumed he was bookish. A nerd at heart—which he was. But beneath that exterior was someone fierce and stern. A man who liked control. Both he and Leo had realized that the instant they’d sat down in his first class.
Friends from the moment they’d met, Paris and Leo would study together, hang out together, and troll the night scene down at the local gay bar on the weekends. One other thing they used to do to pass the time was weave all kinds of fantasies around their university professor. Until they’d gotten to know him better as adults, of course. That’s when it’d become clear that Elias was drawn to women. Something the two of them had secretly commiserated over because they’d agreed—Elias was hot.
“She’s not a woman. I already told you that.”
Paris shoved his hands into the pockets of his black skinny jeans and tried not to think about the way his stomach had just clenched at Elias’s words. “Cut the crap, Elias. You need to start talking, okay? This isn’t funny. It’s serious shit.”
Elias lowered his arm and walked over to him, and unintentionally, Paris backed up fast enough that he hit the wall.
“Paris…” Elias appealed.
“Stay there.”
“You’re scared of me?”
Paris wasn’t sure. No, scratch that. At the moment, he was fucking scared.
“You haven’t really given me a reason not to be, have you?”
“No, I suppose not. I really didn’t want to tell you this way.”
“Tell me what?” he shouted.
When Elias’s eyes widened, Paris realized that it was the first time he’d ever raised his voice around, or to, this man.
“Okay,” Elias said slowly. So slowly that it felt like a warning.
But what about? The fact that he really was a crazed lunatic who tortured women? Or that he was becoming pissed off? Either way, Paris wasn’t about to apologize for standing up for himself.
“Do you remember when we first met?”
Paris nodded. “Yes. I was running late to class because my mother got lost. We’d just moved to the area. I barely made it before you locked the door.”
Elias grimaced, and he wondered why. Sure, that day hadn’t been his most shining moment, but they’d come a long way since. He’d aced Elias’s classes, just as Leo had, and they’d both excelled in the advanced courses offered for extra credit. Now, as adults, they all worked together on some of the most extraordinary exhibits to come into the country.
“Exactly. I was also running late that day, because we were meant to meet. Just like you were meant to meet Leo. The three of us—it was all prearranged. We just didn’t know it.”
Thoroughly confused, he only managed to say, “Huh?”
“That night, after our first day. I had a dream about you two.”
He gave a disbelieving snort. “Come on, Elias.”
“It’s true. And the day before classes started, the woman… Well, that vampire you met? She’d just broken up with me.”
Paris pulled his hands out of his pockets and scrubbed them over his face. “You kidnapped that woman because she broke up with you over ten years ago?”
Elias walked forward, adamantly shaking his head. “You’re not listening.”
Paris pushed off the wall and met him toe-to-toe. “I am listening. You’re telling me you used to date a fucking vampire. Got it. And that you had a dream about Leo and me the night we all first met because we were meant to meet? That’s a little fucking insane, don’t you think?”
“I know. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“No?”
“No,” he replied, sounding defeated. “This is all so fucked up. You were supposed to be better prepared. Both of you. It wasn’t supposed to happen until your birthday.”
Paris searched for the patience he usually had in abundance. “My birthday.”
“Yes, it… The gene, I guess. It’s dormant until your twenty-seventh birthday. Like some diseases are. It’s always there—it just has to be triggered.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Elias?”
Elias spun away from him, and Paris clenched his fists. He wanted to yell at him to just fucking say it. But, before he could demand it, Elias was talking again.
“It happened to me first. I had a dream about you two standing with me in this massive hall. And, Paris, tonight it happened.” He whirled back to face him, and his eyes were wild. “It wasn’t exactly how it had been in my dream, but it was the same room, and both of you were there and…and...”
“And what?”
“And two of the three who’d been sitting behind an altar in the dream. They’d been there too. But there was one missing. One with shorter, blond hair. He was missing.”
Paris walked over to him and reached for his friend’s arm. Elias was obviously suffering from some kind of mental breakdown. His head was bent as if he were studying his shoes, and Paris gave his arm a gentle squeeze.
“Elias, I think maybe you should sit down.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen,” he repeated.
Paris decided to humor him. “What’s not?”
“This whole thing. Us. We’re supposed to be stronger, more powerful than they are. Why isn’t it working?”
When he raised his head, his eyes were so piercing that Paris couldn’t seem to find his tongue. The silver irises of his eyes were shining at him.
“You don’t understand yet, but you will. Soon, it’s going to happen, and you’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”
A
nervous sheen of sweat broke out on Paris’s forehead. He was anxious as shit. “I still don’t know what that is, Elias. You haven’t said.”
Elias grabbed Paris’s wrist tight. He was close to frantic now as his eyes roved his face. “You, Leo, and I—we are their descendants.”
Paris narrowed his eyes. “Whose descendants?”
Elias licked his lower lip, and when he spoke, Paris knew he’d never forget the words.
“The gods, Paris. Apollo, Artemis, and Hades. We are their descendants, which makes us…”
Elias didn’t have to say the word; Paris was well-educated. He knew everything that could be known when it came to Ancient Greece, gods, and myths, and when their eyes met, he murmured disbelievingly, “Demigods.”
DIOMÊDÊS TENDERLY STROKED a palm down the satiny skin of the female who lay in silent repose by his side. As his blood coursed through Isadora’s veins, destroying the toxins and rejuvenating her, the shadows around her eyes were disappearing, and come morning, she would be close to full health.
Her long lashes were resting against her cheeks as she slept peacefully for the first time since she’d arrived back at the lair. He wished he could take the torment of the last several hours from her, but he was more than aware she wouldn’t allow it. One thing he’d learned early on about his Isa was that she was no shrinking violet.
Knuckles swiftly rapped on his chamber door, and when he shut his eyes to seek out who was there, he felt Eton, haggard and worn. With Isa healing at a rapid pace, his own strength was coming back to full capacity, but apparently, Thanos’s recovery was taking much longer.
Rolling to the edge of the mattress, he was careful not to disturb her. Then he walked to the door. After opening it, he had to modify his initial reaction to the male standing opposite him. Eton looked grim. Worse than earlier, if that were even possible, and Diomêdês was quick to reach for the Ancient’s arm.
“What has happened? Has Thanos’s condition deteriorated?”
Eton’s fine cheekbones, the ones that used to give him that young, boyish appearance, now seemed to jut out painfully against the taut skin stretched across them.
“No. He’s mildly improved.”
“Then I do not understand,” Diomêdês said as he ushered his brother to one of the chairs inside his bedchambers. “Why are you so weary, so drawn? You should be improving.”
Eton ran his fingers through the waves of burnished blond hair that were sweeping across his forehead and sighed. “He has awoken.”
As Eton sat, Diomêdês let out a sigh of relief and straightened. “That is a good thing, I would think.”
“I would’ve thought so too. But he is angry, Diomêdês. Very, very angry.”
“Well, that is understandable. What happened to him would make anyone—”
“No. He is not angry at what the human did. He is angry that I saved him.”
Diomêdês knelt by the chair and placed his hand on his brother’s knee. “What else could you have done?”
Eton’s tired eyes found his, and he grimaced. “Died.”
“No,” he disagreed. “Thanos understands that that would never be an option. He dies, you die. Surely he doesn’t expect that you would’ve made that kind of sacrifice.”
Eton pressed his fingers hard against his temple. “As I said, he is very angry.”
“Let me talk to him. Maybe I can explain your actions.”
Eton gave a humorless laugh. “Oh, he knows. But once he caught sight of his face…” His left eye began to twitch. “Or what is left of it, he has heard nothing of what I have had to say.”
Diomêdês stood and turned away from the downcast male. He knew what it was like to go through such trauma. To come out on the other side of something heinous and realize you will never be the man you once were. He’d never spoken of what had happened to him to anyone other than Isadora. Vasilios knew merely by default. However, if this would help Thanos and heal Eton, then he would lay his soul bare.
“Perhaps it would be wise to let me have a talk with your first-sired. I have been in a…similar situation.”
Eton frowned as he tipped his face up to him. “What do you mean?”
Diomêdês looked away from the male he’d known longer than most civilizations had existed and whispered, “I have been through something equally horrendous. My scars just happen to be where no one can see.”
Eton’s eyes moved down his fully clothed body, but Diomêdês said nothing more.
“You would do this for me? Give up a secret so personal that I do not even know of it?”
Diomêdês gave a quick nod. “It is to help you, Thanos, and, in the end, all of us. So, yes, I would do this.”
After pushing up from the chair, Eton walked over to him and patted his arm. “You are not so temperamental deep down inside, are you, brother?”
Diomêdês scoffed, disagreeing with that wholeheartedly. “I believe Isadora would beg to differ. I keep thinking back to before the three of them went on their foolhardy search. I was so angry with her for blindly following Alasdair’s impulsive ways that I punished her. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so cruel.”
Eton gave a forced smile that seemed to hurt his face. “Your Isa knows exactly who you are, Diomêdês. Better than anyone else within these walls, I daresay. If you punished her, she no doubt deserved it and knew she did. That female worships the ground you walk upon. So, whatever you are doing, you are doing it right.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely.”
Diomêdês glanced over his shoulder to the canopied bed then back to Eton. “I will go and see your Thanos once she wakes and we have dealt with the prisoners.”
Eton walked to the door and reached for the handle. “I appreciate that. Though I’m not sure what good it will do.”
Diomêdês knew that reliving his secret would be like a corpse being dredged out of a watery grave, but if it would help his brother and Thanos, then he would resurrect past demons—if only to slay them once again.
Lake Kopais—250 BC
THE DISTANT SOUND of a drum beat out a heavy and foreboding rhythm. It was keeping time with the nervous pounding of Diomêdês’s heart as he was dragged alongside the executioner’s horse.
When his sentence had been passed down the previous night, it hadn’t quite hit him. It wasn’t until he’d been thrown below the palace in the rat-infested cell to await his death that the finality of his life truly hit him.
Two nights earlier, Prince Alexios had finally stripped away the beast beneath the man, or so he claimed. For years, the wretched son of the king had been searching for a way to dispose of him. Ever since the man had invited him, a mere footman, to his bed and he’d refused. It was almost comical that having seen him in it was now the act that had condemned him.
Every word that had been uttered at his hurried trial had been twisted. Mangled to point to his guilt of sinful perversions.
All he was guilty of was capturing the prince’s unwanted attention. His unusual-colored hair was what the man had said had drawn him in. It was unlike any he’d ever seen, and he’d had a desire to touch it. The only problem was that Diomêdês had not been interested. Although he liked the act itself, preferably with females, his unhealthy obsession with observing any sexual act had landed him in this predicament. It just so happened he’d realized too late that he had been observing the prince and one of his councilmen’s sons, something the prince did not take too kindly to. That truth had, of course, been left out at the hearing.
“Pick up your feet, prisoner.”
Instead of quickening his pace, Diomêdês tripped and cursed as a jagged rock sliced open his bare foot. The black hood they’d placed over his head made it impossible to see as he was led down a dirt road towards the lake.
Lake Kopais. A serene spot under normal circumstances. Today, it was anything but. The grey morning had greeted him through the bars of the lower dungeon, and he’d wondered if it were a sign of things to come as he waite
d until the sun started to set—dusk. The chosen death that awaited him was not a quick one, nor was it painless. He’d heard it described as a true hell on Earth, and he thought perhaps he did deserve it for the perversions he found himself drawn to.
The rope binding his hands was tugged to the left, and as the horse canted in the same direction, Diomêdês had no choice other than to follow. The hushed sounds of voices met his ears as he took one doomed footstep after another.
A crowd. Of course the prince would make a spectacle of this.
As the horse drew to a stop, the whispers became more and more frenzied. Excitement. Warped excitement over a public execution. Something he’d never quite understood.
The water lapped at the edges of the bank, and as the man who’d been astride the horse took the hood from his head, the crowd collectively gasped over his appearance. His long, silver hair was a muddied, tangled mess from the night he’d spent incarcerated, and his clothes were hanging from his tall, thin frame.
The sweet smell of honey and milk hit his nose, and when his eyes locked onto several barrels tied to the back of a wagon, he knew that that was where it was coming from. His stomach convulsed from the sickly odor, as he knew exactly what it was to be used for.
“Quiet, everyone. Please remember: This is a somber occasion,” someone said behind him, the voice horribly familiar.
It seemed that Prince Alexios had made sure he was there for this particular show. It was likely the one act in his reign he would be proudest of. Sad, really, considering that, in the scheme of everything, he was really a nobody, just a thorn and a threat in this particular man’s side.
“The King has decreed that, as punishment for his depraved and less-than-holy behavior, Diomêdês Romanos shall be put to death on this day by way of schapism. That means that, come dusk, he will be tied upon his back to this boat and doused with the honey and milk brought in the barrels atop this wagon. The second boat will then be modified so that only his head, hands, and feet protrude. He will then be pushed out upon the lake, where his body will float atop the waters, so the insects, vermin, and creeping anomalies, much like himself, will crawl within the openings made for his limbs and feed from him until he perishes.”