by Richard Amos
There were deep gouges in the wood of the door. With a trembling hand, I knocked on the door. A buzz of energy ran across my knuckles.
“Rose? Randy?”
The door flew open.
“Oh my goodness!” Rose cried.
The goblins were standing in their hallway, terror on their little faces. Rather than run at me and hug my leg as she normally would do, Rose collapsed into a heap, sobbing. Randy fell down too, throwing up blood all over the carpet.
I went to them, crouching down to their level.
“Oh, Jake,” Rose whispered, body trembling.
Randy threw up more blood.
“Do you need something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The spell took it out of me. I need to sit.”
Randy could be nifty with goblin magic—Rose always praised him for it, while chiding his lack of a romantic bone in his body. But now he crawled to her and held her like a husband should. She leaned back into him, holding onto his arms that wrapped around her body.
“Fiona …” Rose struggled. “She …”
“She didn’t make it,” Randy finished. “She tried. She ran as hard as she could but she … she stumbled and … they got her.”
“I’m so sorry,” was all I could manage.
“We should’ve gone out to her,” Rose wailed. Her sobbing intensified to hysteria. “We failed everyone!”
“No, no.” I tried to soothe her. “You mustn’t think like that.” But I thought like that almost every day about the people I couldn’t save or protect.
“We need time,” Randy said. “We need time to … to rest.”
His normally stoic persona was cracking. A tear ran down his right cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I was too late.”
“No,” Randy countered. “We know what you were doing. The wolves told us through the door. You had no choice.”
“But—”
“But nothing. You were doing the job you were sent here to do.”
“You’re my friends, even if that makes you uncomfortable, Randy. I hated not being able to get to you.”
He sighed. “You have been a good friend. I haven’t been easy on you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He was silent for a moment. “Kill them, Jake. I can hear them through the walls.”
I could too, the piggy fuckers clawing at the plaster.
“We need to rest,” he said again.
I nodded and stood, leaving the flat and heading for the one next door.
Throwing the door open, I charged at the first beast, its bones broken. I killed it quick, then did them all, the flat alive with panicked squeals. There were six in total, seven when counting the one I’d put down on the stairs.
Seven fucking beasts against the unsuspecting people who lived on this floor. Randy and Rose could never have dealt with them by themselves. Piggies were savage but also cowardly. Once the wolves had turned up, the tables would have turned. The goblins had some nice tricks up their sleeves, but they weren’t a match for a gang of piggies.
“This is all on Lilisian,” I said to Greg. He was behind me—I could feel his presence.
“Jake …”
“I don’t know what to do.”
He put an arm around me. The tears started to fall then, the weight of the world pushing down on me. “I’m here, mate,” he whispered.
“We can’t keep running around the city like this from situation to situation. This is what she wants.”
“I’ve just checked in with Bliss,” he offered softly. “There’s more hyenas showing up at the mansion.”
I straightened, wiping at my eyes. “Then we go back and fucking kill them. Then we need to know who this beast guy is. This has to end.”
“Leave this mess to me,” Claire said. We both turned to face her at the same time. “You go and do what you’ve got to do. I’ll radio Danny to take you there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ll deal with it; we’ll deal with it. As you said, times are changing. And as I said, we can help.”
“Maybe I should’ve left the bodies as evidence.”
“No need after what we’ve seen today. Go, don’t spend another minute here.”
“Thank you.” I hurried past her.
“We’ll help the cops,” Ben said as we got to the stairs. “Then I think we need a big arse meeting now that things have … changed.”
“Yes, mate,” Greg responded, clapping him on the back. “And nice one, yeah?”
“Sure thing, bro. See you real soon.”
Greg gave Cassie a really quick briefing as we hurried past.
“Okay!” she called after us.
I jumped most of the stairs, desperate to get to Danny and back home.
As I took the last steps into the entrance hall of the tower block, the white eye guy stepped into my path.
I came to an abrupt halt.
“Hello, Jacob.” He held something behind his back.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” I demanded.
“You—” Before Greg could finish, the white eye guy swung something at my head, sending me tumbling into darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
Greg’s distress down the SOS bond dragged me out of unconsciousness.
Red velvet met my eyes, then a rocking sensation brought me further back into the land of awake.
Where the hell was I?
My senses started to focus, and I realized that I was strapped down to something soft. Crap. I struggled against the bonds at my wrists, chest, and my legs. They were fixed good. But I could turn my head left and right.
I was inside a large carriage —like something out of another time. It was red and gold and opulent, smelling a little like strawberries. There was seating to my left. This thing was big enough to fit the bed I was now strapped to. Had to be for really posh people who liked a lot of space and luxury when they traveled.
White light from my hands danced across the red and gold. Make that posh beasts, then. Red curtains were drawn across the windows.
I could hear the trotting of horses.
“Hello?”
The last thing I saw before this was the white eye guy taking a swing at me.
“Where are you, knob head?”
“Oh, he’s awake.” His voice came from outside.
The carriage slowed down a little. When the door opened I saw stars in a night sky, smelled pine and felt a balmy breeze waft in, and then he entered.
He had a fuller beard, his face paler than I’d seen if before, his hair dark and greasy and past his shoulders. Despite the warmth outside, he was still in his long black coat. He smelled of coal tar soap.
“I take it you’ve dragged me to the beast realm,” I said. “Bit stupid, eh?”
“How are you, Jacob?”
“Been better.”
“Glad to see I didn’t leave a mark.”
They were leather straps that held me down, really tight and constricting. There was no wiggle room.
“Bit early for all this, isn’t it? Thought you didn’t need my blood until March.”
“Things have got too risky now,” he responded. “The plan was always to never let Lilisian be free. Now she’s become a huge problem, and we can’t risk you dying.”
“You’re planning to hide me away. Is that it?”
“You’re certainly ripe enough now anyway after killing Lache. I can smell it. Stupid Supreme bitch. Helped us out when she thought she was being a big bad. How did Lache taste?”
“Fuck off. Still a month to go until you can use me, so plenty of time for this plan of yours to go to shit. I knew I’d find out sooner or later.”
He smiled. “Were you surprised?”
“I thought you hated stupid questions.”
“Well?”
“I knew you had plans for me, so no. It just makes me hate you even more. Who would’ve thought that was possible?”
The fin
gers on his right hand tapped his left knee in a repetitive sequence, some sort of quirk I’d never noticed before. Probably because I was too busy visualizing his messy end.
“So, Jacob. Karla. Now I bet that was a surprise.” His grin went all the way up to his eye, a malicious white twinkle in that ghostly pearl.
Man, if I wasn’t tied down … “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“I don’t think, Jacob. I know. And what I also know is that I’m done with having my heart in my mouth every time you step outside the door. It’s exhausting keeping an eye on you. How the hell do your guardians not have a drinking problem? How do you not have one … or at least another drug one?”
“Come closer, I can’t quite hear you.”
He chuckled. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I would actually.”
“No matter what Karla told you, there was no way I would’ve let her renege on our deal. Not that I have to worry about that now, eh?”
“I guess you don’t.” If only he’d fallen for that come closer line like a sucker. He’d get one of my best head-butts.
“She was a fool,” he said. “A serious fool. And arrogant. She thought she was in control of this, that she could really pull off the ultimate betrayal. But she was nothing more than a puppet in my game.”
“Your game?”
“That’s right, Jacob. My game.”
“To bring this Claec back?”
“Wake him up, yeah.”
“But you’re not a beast, right? Unless you’re really good at hiding it.”
“No, that would be Brother Bennett. You’d be amazed how close he’s been to you at times. He’s Gentry level after all.”
“Oh, so now you’re spilling secrets.”
“I like talking to you.”
My forehead creased into a frown. “You find pleasure in the weirdest places.”
“If you say so.”
“Not that I give a shit, but after everything you said about not wanting to kill me, you actually do, right? I mean, you want to drain the blood from my body.”
“I’d rather not kill you.”
“Why?”
“You’re a handy source of godly energy I think we should keep around.”
“Right.”
“You are a risk, though.”
“Great.”
“Ah, you know you are, Jacob. You’ve got a knack for fucking things up.”
I turned my head away from him, eyes on the ceiling. “You saved the city.”
“What?”
“Lache would’ve … you and the beasts stopped him. If you hadn’t then that would’ve been it.”
“It would. Care to extend your thanks?”
I didn’t answer him.
“I would’ve killed Michael anyway, regardless of Karla. She was right, he had to die.”
“Don’t say his name.”
“Why not? Michael was his name.”
My head snapped back to him, and I yanked on my restraints. “You shut your fucking face!” Spittle sprayed across the carriage. “I don’t care what the reasons were. You’ll pay, and Karla would’ve paid if I’d been quicker than that bullet!”
“Calm down.”
“Fuck you!”
He sighed. “This is why I hate all that love shit. Clouds all reason. But it also worked in getting you motivated. Well, the loss of love did.”
I took some deep breaths, not wanting to rise to him again. “Stop talking.”
“The priests and I really respect you. Even though you loathe me and can kill them, there’s a lot of admiration there. You’re my savior.”
“Care to elaborate? What am I saving you from?”
“You’ll see.”
“Oh, so I won’t be dead by then?”
“Who knows. Hopefully not.”
“You know not one scrap of nicety will stop me killing you, right?”
“I admire your tenacity.”
“Your voice is pissing me off.”
“Shame.”
“My guardians will come for me.”
“Yeah, but they won’t find you.”
I chuckled, thinking of the SOS bond. “Okay. Whatever.”
“Jacob, you should know by now that I’m one smart bastard. They won’t be able to trace you—all two of them.”
Shit! “Okay.” I tried to be aloof about it.
“You’ll see. Poor you, losing two guardians in quick succession like that.”
“Dean’s not lost.”
He stroked his chin. “I always quite liked him—seemed like the most sensible of the group. Good for you for getting your end away with him.”
I wasn’t prepared to waste any more energy on him. He was goading me as he loved to do. Let him. I wouldn’t rise. Getting the hell out of the beast realm was my top priority. I had to come up with something.
“Nothing to say, Jacob?”
I ignored him, electing for the view of the ceiling once again.
“Very well. Then that’s it. See you in March.”
I turned to him. “What?”
“Ha! That got your attention, didn’t it?”
There was a bloody huge knife in his hands. It was glowing red, matching the décor of the carriage.
“What’re you doing?”
“Time for sleep, Jake. Think of it as a little hibernation until the spring time comes.” He stood up and started humming.
“Get the fuck away from me!” That was one evil-looking blade. I brought up my shield. He cut through it with the knife as if it were made of butter and the metal was roasting hot.
Shit!
“Oh, Jacob. This is no amateur operation. We’ve been preparing for this. Granted, it’s a backup, but I always had a feeling we’d have to use it.” He lifted the blade above his head.
“You piece of—”
He brought the knife down, the deadly instrument plunging straight into my heart.
Chapter Eighteen
“The first of March,” Hecate answered the question I’d just asked her.
I was in her garden once again, sat by the pond where the shifting flower grew. Time was lost to me here. I had to keep asking the goddess how much of it had passed.
“Bloody hell. Anything? Greg? Nay?”
“Nothing. I am sorry.” The flower shifted from rose to tulip.
“Shit. I’m lost. I’m good as dead.”
“We cannot give up hope.”
“But you have no plan.”
“I do not. Yet … Do not give in, dear boy.”
I sighed. “Okay, you may as well show me some more of Hercules seeing as there’s nothing else to do.”
“Why not relax in the sunshine?”
“Sorry, but that’s not gonna happen while my body is stuck in sleep.”
And it was, some vicious spell on that blade that’d stopped my heart but hadn’t killed me. The goddess saw that, felt it. I was in stasis, waiting for the Spring Equinox. New beginnings apparently, the perfect time to pull off something like raising a powerful beast from the … wherever he was waiting. The beasts had called him Ancient One, godly. He was clearly a high ranking of his own in the beast hierocracy—higher than Lilisian’s Supreme title. Well, that was my guess anyway. Hecate agreed.
“If you wish to see more, then I will show you more,” the goddess said.
“Cheers.”
The garden melted away as wax near a bonfire, all the colors bleeding together to one big abstract mess. Then the activity stopped, reversing. The shades changed, brightening, becoming more in tune with hot sand, retaining the brilliant blue of the sky.
A new scene had reformed, a familiar one. This was, what, my third visit to Ancient Greece to see my ancestor in action?
“Oh!” I yelped, taken aback by the fight going on.
Hercules drove the sword through the big man’s face. Man, that must have hurt like a bastard.
The big bloke was an ogre, a real mean-looking sod with leat
her armor and huge arms with hands the size of dinner plates at the ends of them—skull-crushingly huge.
It had looked like a sure-fire win for the ogre against the smaller man.
But I knew better than that.
Hercules was olive-skinned and brown-eyed, shirtless, not a muscular nose-breaker like I’d imagined. He was about my build really—slim, athletic, but with a bit more muscle than me. His hair was black and messy, glistening with blood—not his.
He pulled the sword free, and the ogre fell dead with the other three human men who’d accompanied it.
A man and woman came running to Herc as he stood there gazing down at the dead monster.
I had watched the whole thing play out, a specter in the village that had been attacked by these men from the Hand of the Titans. The sun was blazing, but I didn’t feel its heat. I’d heard the sounds of battle, but not the smells. Thank God!
The man, fair-haired and olive-skinned, sporting a bow with a quiver of arrows on his back, dressed in some brown leather armor said, “Another victory.” He slapped Hercules on the back. The man’s name was Belen.
The darker-skinned woman, with her black hair in a braid, added, “Are you hurt?” She was Acacia, a blood-stained sword in her hand, also wearing some leather armor.
Hercules shook his head.
“Poor man,” I said.
This hadn’t been the first glimpse into the past the goddess had offered me.
“Yes,” Hecate replied.
Belen and Acacia were part of Hercules’s circle. There’d been a third, Calix, but he’d been killed in the last vision. God, that’d been fucked up and depressing. Poor Herc had not taken it well at all, the pain he was in taking me back to my own agony at Michael’s death. The goddess hadn’t shown me the full details of their relationship, and I hadn’t asked her to, but I think Herc and Calix had been a thing. I’d seen a few hints as I was given the chunks of my ancestor’s life.
Herc’d had a sad, lonely life before his friends had come along—an outcast, broken and full of rage at the murder of his parents by the Hand of the Titans—a cult of nasty scum. They wanted the Titans to come to power, a plague on the lands of Greece that would spread across the world. Nothing about this was ever included in any of the history books I’d read in my life. But then this was the story with the veil drawn back, the real deal.