by Jenn Stark
Then I felt a pair of eyes on me—Kreios’s. His dark amusement went a long way toward helping me release my sudden and unwanted insecurity, and I schooled my expression more fiercely.
The Hierophant, for his part, just gazed at Hera as if she were a creature under glass. I didn’t know if he’d learned that trick from the Magician, or if it just came standard when you leveled up.
Eshe, never one known for her patience, moved irritably after the worst of Hera’s tears had subsided. “I take it you two know each other?”
The Hierophant’s expression remained neutral, but he smiled. “In traditions older than time, yes. The goddess known as Hera, born of Light and subsumed by Light, reincarnated into a dozen other forms, but still part of the One.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “English maybe? Specifically regarding her enemies her last time through?”
Michael heaved another heavy sigh, but his gaze met that of the Magician’s. “To share such knowledge would be to interfere with the balance,” he said, his soft words as close to a warning as they could be without a robot rolling into the room, flailing its arms.
The Magician, still comforting Hera, nodded at him, however. For a fleeting moment, I stared at Armaeus, suddenly skeptical about this little scene and its origin. Michael had been cooped up in his Tower of White Isolation for days, and the Magician had tried everything under the sun to woo him out, to no avail. And now, not three days after he brought back a goddess from administrative leave, the recluse showed up with information no one else could have, information born of his incredible age and powers of observation as he spent a thousand lifetimes buried willingly in the depths of Hell.
Was all this some kind of game of the Magician’s? Had Hera been chosen as the new potential Empress based solely on her own merits, or because of her collateral benefits as well?
Those thoughts were derailed as Michael spoke, his voice as gentle as the tide breaking on a distant shore.
“The birth and death of any goddess is chased round with myths and stories intended deliberately to obscure the truth and hide the beginning and the end, in order to keep alive the religion that they spawn. So it was with Hera, born of ancient gods beneath a lygos tree, goddess of marriage bound to her equal and yet subservient to him, her consort a god who became a caricature of ungoverned male spirit.”
Hera had grown still now. She pulled away from Armaeus’s hold, the pulse of her anger swelling in the room.
Michael had to be feeling it, but he moved on. “In the mythology of Hera, there is no death story of the goddess, but her power waned with the onset of new beliefs, and the stories which followed shifted over time. Her acts of jealousy and rage triumphed over her acts of love and loyalty, birth and triumph. She became a laughingstock of the mortal men who once revered her, a symbol of all that was unattractive in a woman.
Another pulse, this time strong enough that the furniture in the room shifted, emanated from Hera’s body. “Be careful, light warrior. I am older even than you,” she breathed.
“The warriors who were able to alter the course of such sacred tales were known in mythology, but only in the briefest of manners, a footnote to larger stories,” the Hierophant continued. “Hera herself set their fury in motion, then mocked them further, their name crystalizing into an allusion of stalwart action, blind dedication to their rules, and unwavering loyalty. She who took so much from them ensured that even in their triumph they would be mocked. They repaid the favor when their opportunity came, and have continued repaying it in all the long millennia thereafter, ensuring Hera’s legacy remained in tatters.”
Hera’s eyes flared. “The Myrmidons,” she breathed. “You cannot be serious.”
Eshe scowled. “Myrmidons? You mean the ant men?”
Michael nodded. “The eldest of these mortal warriors are as old as Atlantis, lost in the mists of time. They walked this earth before the Fall, and before the veil. In truth, they helped construct that veil, in no small part in vengeance against you, Hera, personally, both for your acts against their people and your slurs against their name. Now, you have returned. It appears…so have they.”
“The Myrmidons,” Hera breathed again, her gaze turning to the skyline of Vegas, but this time, not really seeing it.
“Yes,” Michael sighed, and his gaze then turned to me. “Who now call themselves Trident. Or, more appropriately named, all that is left of the House of Wands.”
Chapter Twenty
In the middle of the stunned silence, four cell phones rang.
Two of us reached immediately for ours, while the Council members all continued staring at each other with varying levels of interest and excitement and, in Hera’s case, I noticed, something approaching horror. So she did remember something of her banishment at the hands of this earthly House—a House that, unlike all the others, did not change hands and morph into other forms over the course of history, but remained in its original incarnation.
Which still begged the question: why were they hammering on me?
I couldn’t ask that question right now, however. Nikki and I both had calls coming in from the same number—Ma-Singh. Presumably so did Simon and Armaeus, which was testament to the general’s desperation.
“Dawes,” Nikki barked into the phone, pulling me with her as she turned away. “Hang on.”
She fished in her bra and pulled out a thumb drive, tossing it to Simon. He caught it midair, his eyes going wide with delight as he examined it. Apparently, no instructions were needed.
Nikki and I took off again. We strode into the hallway where the elevators stood, then angled into another room…a room I couldn’t remember being there before, but such was the nature of Prime Luxe. “Sara’s with me. What’s up?”
“Have you been monitoring the news?” The Mongolian’s voice was heavy with worry, but his question startled us both.
“Um, no?” I offered up. “Something else you gotta know, though, we’ve—”
“Forgive me, Madame Wilde, but I must provide my report first. We have received word from every outpost—those reaching out to us, and then through our own agency as we have secured status of the House of Swords. There is a storm coming of grave concern.”
I frowned at the phone, then shot a glance at Nikki, who stared back at me with equal confusion. “A storm,” I said, remembering Simon’s mention as well. “Like…a weather storm? Hail? Electricity?” Frogs? At this point, after learning that a legion of ant men had it in for the Empress and, apparently, me, I was willing to believe about anything.
“All of the above. It’s being treated as a weather threat of no consequence, but the sons and daughters of the sword, those who have trained most assiduously in the arts of warfare, are all reporting the same call to arms in their dreams boiling out of these storms. They assumed this call was from you. We assured them we have not summoned them, but that something is in fact coming, and they must all prepare for war.”
I hesitated a beat. “And they’re on board with that?”
He grunted. “Exceptionally so. However, we need to secure you immediately, Madame Wilde, particularly in light of the recent attacks on your person. Attacks which we still have not—”
“It’s the Myrmidons,” I said. I couldn’t help it, I liked the sound of the word.
Ma-Singh was silent for a quick moment. “The Myrmidons?” he repeated. “The Ant Men of Greece?”
I grimaced. No wonder these people had a chip on their shoulder. “Yeah, well, they’re a lot bigger deal than that, or at least they used to be. They’re the House of Wands and if something is truly coming on the scale you’re talking about, we need them to stop firing spitballs at me and to get on our side. Gamon too.” I passed a hand over my eyes. “What’s her status, anyway?”
“We received word from Dr. Sells after you left. Gamon is resting comfortably in the wake of your…visit to her. She appears to have no recollection of damaging you.”
�
��Well, let’s try to keep it that way. I’d rather avoid a repeat. What about her generals, are you in contact with them?”
“There are two factions,” Ma-Singh said, and I could practically see him turning to a new computer screen, surrounded by the information in his command room at the lakeside mansion. “Those that Gamon brought with her, loyalists who have served her reign of terror for the past several decades, and the previous generals of the House of Cups—a faction of the Templar Knights. Their roles as warriors were primarily ceremonial, while Gamon’s were most assuredly not.”
“So they’re at odds.”
“It would be better to say that Gamon’s generals are running the House now, under her command. The fact that she has not been seen or heard from since she entered Las Vegas has not at all changed their processes. They are apparently used to absences from their leader, and will operate on her last instructions until given new ones.”
“Let’s hear it for loyalty. Okay, then with the House of Cups, our only shot is to convince Gamon to fall in with us, at least temporarily.”
“You did save her life…” he began skeptically.
Nikki’s snort was even louder than my own, and Ma-Singh’s next words were flat. “Agreed. But if the external need is great, perhaps she will see the value of engagement.”
“If her livelihood is at stake, then she will. Plus, we have no idea how strong she’s going to be once she recovers. She had enough in the tank to come at me when she was still half delirious with pain, and she’d only just been healed. Her strength will grow, and I’m not exactly sure of my abilities yet in that department. She could be the same—or stronger. She could be a whole lot weaker. Our best hope for her cooperation, honestly, is that she’s the same. That will avoid her being either furious or cocky, neither of which we want.”
“Dr. Sells is monitoring her,” Ma-Singh said.
“Then try to impress upon Sells the importance of getting that information for us. We’d like to know how strong Gamon is ideally before she knows herself.”
I looked back toward the Council chamber. It had grown a little too quiet for my taste. I knew the Council members never actually took elevators if mortals weren’t around, but it still seemed odd that they could go poof without being seen when they scattered. Then again, Prime Luxe was like a spontaneously growing Escher painting. New rooms and corridors sprouted almost at will, whenever the spirit moved Armaeus. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d built in skyways to the nearest casinos, just to keep Kreios from wearing out his loafers. “I have to find out more about this weather disturbance. Where’s it hitting?”
“That’s the issue, Madame Wilde. There are storms building off the coast of London, over central France near Paris, in the seas near Japan, over India, off the coast of New York City and in the Pacific approaching Los Angeles—and a dozen other cities as well. Taken separately, they seem like typical storm fronts, but they didn’t exist on any weather maps three days ago. Now they are emerging with sudden strength, prompting calls for hurricane watches, tornadoes, tsunamis.”
“The Weather Channel must think they’ve died and gone to heaven,” Nikki said wryly, and I nodded.
“Could be nothing, but you’re right, the timing is suspect. And Armaeus did just collect Hera after she entered earth through what I have to assume was a rip in the veil. If there are other gods pressing close and we’ve got these storms brewing…”
“Electrical storms in particular can’t be good,” Nikki put in.
I winced. She was right. I’d had my fill of the Council and electricity recently, and this building weather pattern had all the earmarks of a Council level of crazy. “Agreed. The Council will be able to stop some of it, I think, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to stop all of it. And we don’t have any straight-up mortal tools in place to combat this.”
Ma-Singh grunted. “I suspect the storms are a distraction for what will emerge behind such clouds. I fear that is what we will be forced to combat.”
“Also agreed. We’ll be out soon.” We clicked off the phone, and I pointed mine at Nikki. “Call Brody and let him know what we just found out about the, um, Myrmidons. They’re on his turf now. Tell him that they’re dangerous. Really dangerous.”
“Can I tell him they’re ant people?” she asked, her brows going high. “So we may need an exterminator?”
“I think that would be a very bad idea.”
“You’re totally no fun.”
“I’ve heard that.” I stowed my phone and turned back toward the conference room as Nikki made her way to the elevators.
The room was quiet. As I suspected, most of the Council members had already departed for their homes, apparently to consider separately the juicy tidbit of this new, fourth House of Magic. But there was the ability to know a thing and the ability to do something about it, and one did not necessarily follow the other. What was the Council going to do, now that they had some inkling of who and what these people were?
And more to the point, what was I going to do? They’d tested me now three times, and despite my ridiculous shoe display, I’d survived all three times—and arguably beaten them the last two. Did that mean they’d stop now? Did that mean they were pointless in the battle we seemed about to face? I didn’t think so, and yet—I had survived their attacks. Three times.
I was still ruminating on this as I crossed the threshold of the conference room—noting the door at the far end. I moved toward it and realized almost too late that the room on the other side of that door wasn’t empty.
Almost, but not quite. I finally pulled up short and approached more cautiously, flickering open my third eye and going as silent as I could. Drawing again on the sensei’s trick of creating something out of nothing, I remembered the Magician’s magic bubble of invisibility back on Samos. I drew upon that memory and formed it around myself as well. Then I crept forward.
Inside the second room were two figures, Hera and the Magician. And they stood very close to each other.
Unbidden, a weird spurt of jealousy snaked through me, but in this state, shrouded and gazing with my third eye, I wasn’t prisoner to it. I could see it as a current of fire racing along an otherwise slowly moving river, there and present, but separate from myself. I almost wanted to be able to feel it, revel in it, but my reactions were not what was important here. What was important was whatever was going on between Armaeus and Hera.
The goddess stood still as a statue as the Magician framed her face with his palms. His face was very near to hers, and though they were not kissing, it seemed as if they should be, so intimate was their positioning. As I watched, Armaeus murmured words in a language I didn’t know. I could see the shift in Hera as he did so. She became somehow less corporeal, her essence beneath the thin veneer of her skin lightening, her energy quickening.
I watched with fascination. Armaeus could be doing any of a number of things to Hera right now. I’d never seen the ritual to bring a Council member to ascension, and this could be that. When he’d assisted with me becoming immortal, his acts had been far more sensual, far more intimate—but who knew what a goddess required versus a mere human?
Then again, this could also be some form of mental healing, though usually Armaeus employed a decidedly more hands-on approach for that.
“Your abilities have grown significantly. You know that’s incredibly alluring, right?”
The voice that sounded at my side should have scared me into the next continent, but somehow in my veiled state I could accept the sudden appearance of the Devil as easily as I could watch the bolt of my own misplaced jealousy course its way down the stream. I glanced his way, and flinched.
With my third eye fully opened and focused on him, Aleksander Kreios was no longer the beautiful male I’d come to know so well. Instead, he evinced far more of his Devil underpinning—more than I’d honestly supposed he’d ever had. His face was a shifting roil of shadows, never ceasing to move beneath the steady
gaze of his still-green eyes. His torso, arms, and hands were still corporeal, but the rest of him hazed in and out, barely maintaining the smokiest outline of a human form.
“You see me,” he said, and his voice didn’t contain indignation, irritation, or even dismay. Instead it edged toward relief.
“You’re beautiful,” I said spontaneously, and his eyes went crystalline hard for a moment, as if I’d shocked him, before easing back into his usual indolent gaze.
“What is it you seek to know, Sara Wilde?” he murmured, and I didn’t hesitate.
“Does he love her?”
Whoa, check that. This was not the question I’d intended to ask at all, and embarrassment bloomed within me, full and mortifying.
Kreios merely chuckled. “Armaeus is a creature of sexual magic. He can only perform that magic with the intimacy you are seeing now. But is that love? Not even close.”
“That’s not what I wanted to know,” I said quickly, and before Kreios could respond to that, I pushed my real question to the fore. “Will she become the next Empress? Is that what he’s doing?”
“That is not what he’s doing. He’s giving her a taste of immortality without the protection of her godhood. It is a temporary state, and an incomplete one, but it’s the best he can do until she makes the decision to pursue the path to the Council in earnest. In her case, much like Michael, it would be a demotion. But then again, she’s been a goddess for a very long time, and not a particularly benevolent one. She may be ready for a different experience.”
“Could she become a goddess again?”
“That’s…unknown,” Kreios said, and it was now his turn to regard the tableau before us. Armaeus was even nearer to Hera now, and her lips were parted, her neck taut, her body angled toward him as if to fall into a kiss. Armaeus kept talking, but every muscle in his body appeared clenched, poised, as if with the slightest push he would take that kiss, losing himself in the wonder of the goddess’s power. I suddenly knew he wouldn’t, though…wouldn’t, even though he could.