There! She heaved a big breath as every last scrap of sheet and bed hanging was tied together. She secured one end to the balcony rail and hoisted the whole works over the edge. Home free!
Triumphantly, she leaned over the balcony to admire her handiwork. Her heart stopped.
Ahhh, crap! She would have screamed if she hadn’t known it would bring any number of people and, probably Ronan himself, running to bear witness to her gargantuan fail. The end of her sheet rope stopped short midway down the side of the villa wall. It was way too high still to jump from. A light breeze stirred the white fabric and it looked more like a pitiful sign of surrender than the daring escape she’d envisioned.
She slid down and thumped to a sitting defeat. Now what? It was getting late and she was running out of time. If she didn’t make it to the cliffs before sunrise, she could be stuck here forever. She closed her eyes and tried to come up with another plan.
Her head bumped against the railing and she opened her eyes with a jolt. The sky was fully black with shimmering stars and a moon so bright it nearly hurt her to look at it. It all seemed 3D and she flinched when several of those stars began falling toward her. They swooped in so fast that she covered her head with her arms, waiting to be pelted or set on fire or something biblical. When that didn’t happen, she lowered her arms and looked to find herself staring at her little lightening bug friends.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “You guys scared me!”
They hung in the air twinkling at her before darting inside the room. Just as quick, they were back outside, coming in closer, fluttering their tiny wings all around her, then they took off again. They repeated the action once more and, this time, one caught her under the nose with its wing, making her sneeze.
“Hey, stop it!” she said and stood up to follow them back into the room. “Look, you guys are cute and all but I’m really in no mood to play around.”
They swarmed behind her then chased her across the room to the door. When she stopped, they zipped around in front of her face and fluttered in…what was that she saw on their tiny faces? Annoyance?
They flurried toward the door knob then back up into her face.
“What is up with you?” she whisper yelled. “There’s a really big man out there and he’s not going to let me set foot out of this room. Besides, I’m kind of in the middle of something and I’m a little short on time so why don’t you all flitter off somewhere else?”
They lifted up in unison and dropped down in a small arc. Was that their interpretation of an eye roll? They went to the doorknob again and looked back at her.
“Fine, but you’ll see. I only hope he doesn’t have a fly swatter on him because then you’re all in trouble.”
She reached out tentatively and turned the knob as she pushed the door open just enough to peek around it. As soon as she did, the sprites flew out and buzzed around Bas’s head. He swatted at them but they kept after him. What were they up to? One of them flew up into her face and paused in the air. Its tiny hands came to its hips and its eyes widened as it looked at her.
“What?” Cindy mouthed then looked at the hell the bug-fairies were raining down on Bas. They were literally chasing him down the hallway.
Her little saviors had provided just the distraction she needed to make her get away. She tip-toed out the door and slunk down the hall as Bas ran the other way being dive bombed by moon sprites. If she’d have taken any longer to figure out her little friends’ motives she might have missed her opportunity.
She felt her way down the stairs in the darkness. It would have been nice if a couple of the little flying nightlights had stayed behind so she could see where she was going. Just as that thought came to her, her foot missed a step.
She let out a yelp as she half-slid, half-toppled the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Ow,” she squeaked when she landed with a thump at the bottom.
From her sprawled position on the landing, she looked up and saw a torch glowing on the wall illuminating the entryway’s fountain. Cindy scowled at the two laughing little boys that played in the water there. She pulled herself up off the floor and stuck her tongue out at the statue children who’d just witnessed her clumsy-assed descent, then reached up on her tip toes yanking the torch out of its holder and scurried away.
Every second she expected Ronan or one of his men to come stomping out of the woodwork but, luckily, there was no one around. As quietly as she could, she crept out of the villa and into the night air.
Making her way down to the beach, she headed towards the cliffs. She knew she shouldn’t trust Thema but she was counting on the nymph wanting her off the island bad enough to keep her word and get her home.
As she walked, a fierce wind blew in from off the water. A rumble like a mini-quake threw her off balance and she lost her grip on the torch. It fell into the wet sand and she just about cried. What was it with this place? All this shaking and storming couldn’t be good. The sooner she left the better! Trudging the rest of the way in the moonlight, she made it to the base of the cliff to wait for Thema.
She had just started to sit down on a rock when she heard voices coming from up above her.
She stopped to listen but couldn’t make anything out over the wind and the roar of the surf. One of the voices belonged to a woman and the other was a man’s, both sounded angry. Cindy moved away from the cliff enough to look up and try to see.
Thema was there, standing atop the cliff with her back to the drop off. Her robes and dark hair swirled around her in the wind and she held something in her hand.
Another figure came into view. Though cast in shadow, she’d know that silhouette anywhere. It was Ronan standing on the cliff facing the nymph goddess.
What was he doing here? Cindy had to get up to the top of that cliff! She looked at the length of the rock face and knew she stood no chance of climbing up. It was too steep. Through the dim glow of the moon, she saw a trail leading up behind the cliff. As long as she didn’t fall from the way the ground was shaking, she thought she could manage. She felt her way over the trail and started the hike up.
Chapter Forty-five
Ramone’s Party Cove
Exhaust pipes rumbled down the side alley, drowning out the muted sounds of music that drifted out of his club. Adam sighed. They were here. He was on the loading ramp where deliveries were brought into the club. The winds had picked up again and the smell of the coming storm was pungent. He’d just had another row with his current ‘house guest’ and had stepped out to clear his head before he went against his creed and actually murdered a human being. Now he had more company.
Two old bikers rolled into the alley, parking just beneath where he stood. Only when they finally cut their engines and stepped off their bikes did Adam push up to greet them. He’d been expecting them, the famed Time Keepers of the Rockies, the ones he called “hill people.”
They set their helmets on their bikes. One was heavy-set like a great big bear, the other long and lean, but strong looking no matter his age. Aside from their physical differences, they had the same eyes, mouths and bone structure. Brothers, Adam thought and nearly snorted for no other reason than the word itself.
“Harbinger,” the lean one addressed him by a code name as he strode up the ramp, the other man followed, “we meet at last,”
The man known as Commander 1 over their unique communication lines extended a hand.
“Commander,” Adam acknowledged, shaking his proffered hand then looked at the other man with a raised eyebrow.
“Just call me Shep when we’re on the ground,” the commander said, “this is my brother, Lloyd.
The bear stepped forward to shake hands with a mumbled greeting. Loud noises from the club’s patio carried back to them.
“Come inside,” Adam said, more parts order than invitation.
They might look older but he had seniority over the two Keepers by a few thousand years. The events of the past few days had put him in a surly m
ood to say the least, so he was a little short on social graces.
They followed him in and down the back stairs. This was probably the only building on the beach front strip that had a basement but, considering what it led to, it was safe enough. They passed into a storeroom and went through yet another door continuing down until they came to a stone arch passageway that shimmered across its expanse with what looked like water.
Adam placed his hand against the blurry mist and it cleared. He stepped back and motioned the two men inside. They walked in with masked hesitancy, especially the big one. Ahh, mountain people, Adam thought with a smile, always so distrustful of the sea. They had the right of it.
Once they made it into the fountain room at the end of the corridor, Adam stopped.
“Welcome to Vortex 1 gentlemen, hub of the Bermuda Triangle.”
The men looked around the great room, stunned by the ancient world opulence. Their awe was fleeting though and the next words out of the commander’s mouth were all business.
“We’ve come to get a handle on things down here and bring Aura back under our protection. We sent her here under the direction of Eagle Eye. I don’t think the oracle realized that this place is a powder keg.”
“Maybe not,” Adam conceded. He didn’t have a whole lot of faith in oracles. “Perhaps the prophecy is playing out according to plan though,” he shrugged. “First order of business though, I have something of yours that I’d very much like for you to take back, then we can discuss everything else.”
The commander shifted, about to argue, but at that moment, an alarm went off somewhere and running footsteps were heard. All three men turned toward the corridor just as a Nubian giant came rushing into the fountain room.
“Anax,” the man called out, addressing Adam. He clutched a bleeding spot on the side of his head.
“What is it Solomon?”
“We’ve been infiltrated up above. I didn’t have the chance to erect the shield.”
The guard pulled his hand down staring at the blood on it then shook his great head.
“She got me, my lord,” he said, bewildered.
Adam didn’t have to ask who ‘she’ was. The agent had been a burr in his ass since she’d come here and started snooping around his beaches. Now she’d somehow bested his guard but he didn’t have time to ask the man how that had happened. He tossed an irritated glance over his shoulder at the two Keepers.
“Your agent is a menace,” he gritted out and strode from the room to punch a code into a keypad on the wall.
“You have Six?” Shep asked, relief in his voice.
Menace, Adam confirmed in his mind again. Her leading officer couldn’t even keep tabs on her. He’d tried keeping her locked away for her own safety but, after today, he was done babysitting! He nodded at Shep just as part of the wall in front of him slid away to reveal one of many hidden arms rooms.
He pulled a pair of pistols off the wall and tucking them into the waistband of his tailored black pants, no time for a holster. Then he reached around the back of the door and took out a long machete, highly polished as was necessity. The Miserians couldn’t stand bright light aimed directly at their eyes ─ one of the misfortunes of being born in the depths of Tartarus. He held the blade in his hand.
“We lost communications with her over a day ago,” Shep was saying, “she’s been known to go off a little half cocked at times.”
Lloyd snorted then added.
“A real live wire, that one.”
“She was supposed to enlist your help in guarding Aura while they were down here…”
“She’s been stirring things up ever since she got off the plane,” Adam cut in, the very conversation irritating him, “and now it would appear that she’s disarmed the shield I had up around my bar and let half of Hades in. She never asked for my help. As for your princess, I found her right before she hopped worlds through the Tides. Don’t worry,” he said when Shep and Lloyd started to protest, “she has her protector. It looks like she’s safer where she is than she would be here.”
“Bullshit,” Shep growled, “the safest place for her is at The Mountain. If you know where she went, you have to help us bring her back.”
Adam pierced the other man with his stare.
“The list of things I ‘have’ to do is fairly short right now,” he said and turned to check a monitor on the back wall that showed the front part of Ramone’s.
Shep and Lloyd leaned forward so they could see the screen too. A group of demons sifted through the hysterical crowd up above them.
“What the hell are those?” Lloyd asked, squinting at the images on the monitor.
“Long story,” was Adam’s reply.
One of the demons had already ripped the throat out of a young blonde woman and dropped her body onto the floor. Evidently they weren’t wasting any time on the romance of disguising themselves, before they took a victim tonight. Human’s were screaming and running. The demons were targeting all the club’s fair haired female patrons as they just slashed and slammed everyone else out of the way. They were hunting someone.
“Shit,” Shep said, “they’ve come for Aura.”
“She’s a pawn,” Adam said, still watching.
“She’s my daughter,” Shep ground out.
Adam turned back around from the screen to find Shep and Lloyd with their weapons out, ready to follow him up into the club. They each had a pistol. He nodded at them.
“Grab a blade off the wall,” he said as he shouldered his way through them. “Take their heads and we’ll worry about clean up later, nobody leaves the building until every intruder is dead.”
Chapter Forty-six
Isle of Gades
When Cindy made it to the top of the cliff she could see both Ronan and Thema. Fury flared in the goddess’s eyes and she held a strange looking knife in her hand
“I had a small glimmer of hope held out for you Gadeiros,” she was saying, “that you really were as cold as I convinced that simpering fool woman you were.”
She shook her head and feigned a sad expression as she twisted the blade she held.
“But you’ve turned out to be just as pitiful as the gods hoped you would with their ‘kings’ curse of atonement.’ You’re beyond redemption, coming here to sacrifice yourself for love when you could have had power over all the realms with me!”
“I am here as you say,” Ronan’s voice boomed across the space, “to die in her stead to appease the gods. But make no mistake; I am the one who pities you, Thema.”
“Pity me?” Thema laughed, “I hold the universe at my fingertips.”
“Perhaps,” Ronan went on, “but you are a creature who cannot love. For that, you will always be as empty as those demons you lead. As for the beast’s heart you tried so hard to awaken in me, I may have failed to tame him, but rest assured, he has been leashed and only rages on my command.”
Then he ripped the front of his shirt open and bared his chest.
“Let’s get on with this before the sun rises so that my men can send the woman home.”
Thema’s mouth twitched and Cindy could tell that Ronan’s words had gotten to her, pushed her over the edge, but she covered it with a wicked smile that said it all. This was another of her tricks Cindy realized, just as Ronan had tried to tell her. That kiss on the balcony, their agreement in the cave and whatever heroic terms Ronan had come to with the witch now – they were all deceptions.
As comprehension hit Cindy like a ton of bricks, Thema raised her face to the wind and uttered some words in another language. She held the clear stone dagger by the hilt and raised her arm up to wield it as the storm and the ground’s quaking began to strengthen, then, all of a sudden, there was a huge explosion that rocked everything.
Cindy crouched down and looked out at the crash of the waters. A huge wall of ocean jutted up. It peaked and then funneled back down like a great geyser and it looked like every image she had ever seen of the atom bomb, but with water.
> “What have you done?” Ronan roared over the noise, standing up from where the rumble had knocked him to the ground.
“I’ve started it,” Thema cried, shrill and insane, “I’ve started the war! My armies are filtering through the Tides into the earth realm and soon I will join them. All there is left now is for you to die!”
He charged toward her. Maybe he thought he could force her to reverse what she’d just done or maybe he just wanted her blood like Cindy did. A gust of wind circled Thema like a hurricane and she flew at him with the crystal blade held high in her hand, her teeth bared in a snarl.
“Nooo!”
Cindy’s cry carried across the cliff top and both Thema and Ronan turned at the same time to see her struggling against the wind. She wasn’t going to let Ronan sacrifice himself.
Her eyes met his across the expanse of the cliff and she could see the truth. He’d never betray her. He was hers. He filled that cold space inside of her. Without him, she’d be just as empty as he’d accused Thema of being. They were halves of the same whole. Two as one.
“Cindy, stay back! Run from here, go back to the villa. Finn will help you get home!” Ronan shouted.
“Ronan, don’t…!” she cried out to him but the wind stole her words.
“This has all been very touching,” Thema said, “but I’m afraid that we have no more time.”
With that, she reached out and clasped the top of Ronan’s shoulder.
Cindy watched in horror as Thema and Ronan shot up into the air. Lightening crackled above them and the Nereid queen’s eyes flashed. She drew the dagger back and then sank it deep into his chest. It lit up as soon as it pierced his skin and a golden beam penetrated through the dark. His head reeled back and he arched up against the blade. Another lightning bolt cracked, the surge from it electrifying the air. Cindy fell to her hands and knees, immobilized as she watched the life drain out of Ronan’s body and siphon into the crystal blade.
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