OF WAR Anthology Novels 1-3

by Lisa Beth Darling

  Until now.

  Cerci just shook her head. She didn’t smile. She didn’t say a single word. She just stared at him as he rowed past her before retreating into her cave by the sea.

  Feeling confused but relieved, Raven let the tension out of his sore shoulders grateful to see nothing passing but an empty shore until he reached the very end of Cerci’s island. Gliding past the tip, he was met with the sight of Daphne standing in the tall grass of the dunes with Jilios. She had a black eye and swollen lip. The girl waved, she looked very sad, he wanted to call out to her, say something, maybe even row over and talk to her a moment. There was nothing to say.

  Raven rowed on until he passed through the Pillars of Hercules out into the open sea and black night.

  Tired and hungry, he secured the oars and opened his small pack for dinner; several strips of jerky, a hunk of fresh bread, and a red ripe apple. A few gulps of water from the canteen before stretching out the bottom of the boat and he felt a little better but he’d sure be glad to get back to Life on Olympus and all of the wonderful food that accompanied it. Once his Trials were done, Raven was looking very forward to never eating another piece of beef jerky.

  Laying there with heavy eyes letting the gentle rolling raves rock and lull him to a happy daze as the sea breeze caressed his tired body, Raven gave no thought to fighting against Morpheus and a few hours of well-earned and much needed rest.

  Not surprisingly, Raven dreamed of manatees, mermaids, and wondrous kingdoms under the sea aglitter and aglow with magickal light. A whole new world to explore and possibly exploit when he was done putting his stamp the Mortal World. He dreamed of adventure, of pirates, and treasure, of grateful damsels in distress and sea shanties singing out his praises.

  The songs telling of his daring deeds grew clearer in his dreams. They were sung by the most heavenly voices he ever heard, maybe even more pleasing than the voices of the Muses on Olympus. Songs with vibrant words of worship and glorious chords plucked on a Lyre. The sheer passion in the voices carried to him on the wind pierced straight through to his soul. They called to him as they wrapped around his head, sunk into his brain through open ears, beckoning him to come closer and look up the glory of the women so enrapt in singing his praises for all to hear. He had to see them, they had to be so beautiful as to shame the sun.

  Here, in the darky murky kingdom of the sea, they were hard to find. Unable to resist, Raven swam and he wandered and he swam some more always in the direction he thought them to be but the journey was so long, so arduous and tiring. The vest and his weapons weighed him down, they were keeping him from his goal. In heated frustration, he dropped them into the sea. Lighter than before, he swam and dove some more frantically searching for the source of the song. The searching seemed to go on for hours before his feet finally stumbled into wet sand where he staggered up the shores of a distant island only to collapse from exhaustion. Soaking wet, covered in seaweed and sand, Raven felt desperation wash over him as the sun overhead beat down.

  He felt certain that he would die sad and lonely never knowing the faces belonging to those magnificent voices.

  Two long and lovely shadows descended on him, sheltered him from the sweltering sun with blessed shade as four silky hands slid beneath his tired wet body to lift him from the sand and carry him away. Off the rough gritty sand of the beach, out of the blistering sun, to a place dark and cool where they laid him down on a thick pile of animal skins. Exhausted, barely able to open his eyes, Raven tried to look up and thought he saw the two most beautiful women in the world; one with flowing nearly platinum blonde hair and the other with tresses of midnight. They were naked, their long lanky bodies made bronze by the constant steamy kisses of the sun. “Who are you?” Raven croaked, his throat parched and his lips so dry they split open, he hadn’t the strength to sit up. He didn’t have the desire either, all he wanted to do was to lay there out of the scorching sun listening to the songs they sang as they wandered around him, songs telling of his adventures, his battles, and his conquests on and off the battlefield.

  The blonde one settled her heavenly body next to him, picked up his head gently in her head and held it to her bare breast even as she held a gold chalice of icy water to his lips. She smiled, as did her sister, as they watched the young God drink greedily. J ust as much water spilled down his chin to wash away the sand clinging to him as rushed down to his throat to alleviate his nearly unquenchable thirst.

  The one with the dark hair settled her own sexy body on the other side and smiled at him when she saw his eyes were still open. As her sister removed the chalice, she brought forth a juicy bunch of red grapes and popped them into his mouth one by one.

  Raven ate and drank as though he’d never get another chance, ate until he was past full and his stomach rumbled not from hunger but in protest. He didn’t care, the breast upon which his head was laying was ample and soft and the woman across from him, singing her song so beautifully, was staring at him with passionate intent. Soft butterfly kisses began covering his lips and cheeks from both sides while wisps of their silken hair brushed against his refreshed flesh. “Who are you?” Raven asked again as he began fearing the daze that was enveloping him. It was inviting, enticing, but it held the promise of dark delights.

  The two women didn’t answer them, they just kept singing, their hands roaming freely across his bare skin, kneading mounds of muscle as they wound their way down him. The blonde laid him down him on the bed with its thick covering of hides. She straddled her naked body over him as the brunette made for the double-ring belt at his waist.

  They were beautiful, so incredibly, unearthly beautiful, he wanted them as much as they wanted him. Raven settled against the soft furs at his back ready to give in to those come-hither stares let them take him away to pleasures and heights unknown. As his eyes began closing, he noticed that although they sang the most glorious song in the most glorious voices, their lips weren’t moving. Their rich full lips were open and the song was coming from somewhere deep within them. “Who are you?”

  The women just kept on singing, touching, groping, kissing, and removing his wet jeans. Below which lay one very hard and young cock.

  III

  “He’s done for now,” Aphrodite hissed victoriously, “say good-bye to your Son, Ares.” Her eyes were wild with delight as she gazed down at the sight of Raven in his deep daze with the Sirens hovering over him just waiting to take him inside and trap him forever. “Get him girls, get him good. Ride him hard and long.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Ares advised although he was beginning to doubt Raven would recover himself in time. Like Aphrodite, and Ares himself, Raven had an ego a mile wide. All anyone had to do was stroke it long enough to get any of them to purr like a kitten and be putty in their hands.

  The Sirens were very adept at doing just that.

  “Does the fact that he spurned your charms really burn you that much…Lover?” Ares mocked.

  “No one refuses me, no one.”

  “Well, in that case, perhaps you shouldn’t have given him that tasty morsel, Jilios.” Ares looked her up and down as he mocked a sigh and shook his dark head gesturing at her voluptuous frame with his hand. “I mean, what did you expect? After all…she is so much…younger and hotter than you.”

  “I didn’t give her to him! He did!” She pointed rudely at Morpheus as she tossed her honey-blonde head on her milky shoulders to look away from Ares with her nose high in the air.

  Morpheus readied himself to answer the inevitable question about to fall from Ares’ lips but it never came. Ares never even looked at him, just like the rest of the Olympians, Ares simply preferred to ignore Morpheus. While that never failed to piss off the God of Dreams, on this evening it was to his great advantage to be so disdained by his relatives. He just stood there watching and listening as they bickered.

  “I see, poor Aphrodite, even you know you’ve lost your touch, “Ares crooned, knowing in her younger days, Aphrodite would have
done exactly the same thing. She would have been the one to give Jilios to Raven, expecting him to be grateful and to split the tender little virgin with him. Not now. Not anymore. At Raven’s Bacchanalia, Aphrodite’s gift had been gold and not girls.

  “You know that’s not true, Hunter is proof,” she snarled.

  “Proof of what, Lover? That you’re so old and bitter a man needs to be coerced into your bed now?”

  Aphrodite stomped her foot on the floor of the Council Chamber so hard that the columns holding up the marble ceiling shook. “The Sirens have captured their prey so you…you watch now, you watch helplessly as your wicked Son surrenders to them never to leave their island again. Never to complete his Trials and be an Olympian.”

  Apollo wasn’t about to the let the two ex-lovers get into a pissing match when there were more important matters at hand. “Other than having known Maggie as a child what does my Sister have to do with this?” Gazing down the table at the others, his question was met with a rumbling grumble of approval.

  “She was my Sister, too,” Ares growled, “and why would I know what games that old sea witch is playing with Raven?”

  “That was no game, no illusion” Zeus interjected, “it was a memory. Why would Artemis, trapped in her crystal vial, use whatever power she had to make Cerci speed that Dark Fae bitch on her way to your island?”

  Hera asked the question still lingering in the air, “How would she even be able to do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Ares retained tight control of his voice, “I don’t even know that’s what happened. All I know for sure is that Eros snatched her from that camp, Apollo abused her, and then Eros dropped her into the sea when she was no longer of use to them.”

  “That’s not true! I was trying to save her from him,” Eros hissed and pointed heatedly at Apollo. “I wasn’t trying to kill her and you know that, Father.”

  Ares knew something else, something the others didn’t; Artemis came to him as he stormed Cernunnos’ Keep. She begged him not to harm Alena but to free her and get her out safely. When Ares told her that he would because he was in love with her Maggie, Artemis didn’t seem surprised, she smiled at him as though she’d been hoping for the news and his confirmation had been greatly anticipated by the Goddess of the Hunt. No one here needed to know those things. Ares turned an icy stare to Poseidon. “By the way, I want them back. The vest and the weapons are mine.”

  For a moment, Poseidon thought about telling Ares to swim to the bottom of the ocean and collect his shit himself but it was better to pick your battles with Ares and make them count. If you pissed him off over too many small things, one day he just walked up and stabbed you in the back. With a wrinkled aged-spotted hand, the King of the Seas made Ares’ items appear on the Council Table, brought up straight from the depths of his realm.

  “Nice,” Ares groused as he reached out to pick up his favorite leather vest drenched in saltwater and cover in seaweed, “thanks.” The God of War flicked long strands of seaweed from the vest sending them flying through the Council Chamber towards the Olympians on the other side of the table. “What is that?” He pointed to the handle of a dagger sticking out of the heavy battle leather.

  “A barnacle,” Poseidon returned, trying not to grin.

  IV

  Hot, passionate kisses on his eyelids, cheeks, neck, and on his quivering lips brought Raven to full arousal even when he realized the woman whose mouth was so delightfully clamped over his was still singing. The heralding tune telling of Raven’s glorious deeds reverberated in her chest and rippled against his heart making his skin turn cold. Just below his waist, a warm hand wrapped around his hard cock as a waiting mouth took it inside. Again, the song vibrated against him, even with her mouth full of cock she was still singing in a voice clear as summer’s day. Nearly weak as a newborn, Raven’s eyes rolled down to see the brunette pumping and blowing him while the blonde kissed his mouth wiggling her round hips to its goal. “Get off me,” he groaned without strength.

  They didn’t talk. They just kept singing.

  Raven struggled against the song calling to him body, mind, and soul, to give in, give over, and to let pleasure be his guide. “I know…I know what you are.”

  Their lavishly rich, decadent, and hypnotic aria grew louder as their touch grew in urgency and greedy.

  Raven tried to block out the sound of the song but it took every bit of effort he had left just to raise his hands to his ears and then it didn’t help. “Stop,” he croaked, “stop it, shut up.”

  The brunette at his waist buried her face in the coarse patch of hair between his legs, doing her best to take him all the way down even as she reached up to guide the blonde into position. Her breasts pressed against his thighs, that tongue dancing around his hard shaft, and the hand massaging his balls were enough to make Raven want to blow his load but he fought against it. When the blonde rose up on her knees over him and the brunette slid a finger into her Raven’s resolve was severely tested.

  Tempting as they were no pussy was worth spending eternity as someone’s captive.

  The blonde let out a squeal as she rocked on her sister’s hand, grinding on it with those full hourglass hips as she continued pushing her firm ass backward, jutting it out behind her, searching for the target the brunette wasn’t quite ready to give up.

  Trying not to give in to the carnal pleasures offered, Raven held his breath and waiting until the brunette surrendered the task to her sister to take over. When she backed off his cock and just before the beautiful blonde could settle on it, Raven dodged, he bucked and then pushed the blonde away. “I said I know what you are, both of you, you’re Sirens,” he hissed as he rolled off the bed to hoist up his pants and put away his cock before clamping a stack of hides against his ears. “You can’t have me.” While the thick furs helped to block out their growing melodic song sung from still lips they didn’t stop all of it and he couldn’t get by them without dropping the hides.

  Sometimes late at night when Rose was little she would cry and scream. Sometimes Ares went to her and sometimes he didn’t. When he didn’t and stuffing his head under a pillow wasn’t enough, Raven developed the skill the Mortals called Selective Hearing. He developed the ability to simply block her out, she wailed and screamed in distress, but Raven couldn’t hear her. Knowing there was little choice, he called on that ability to get him out of here.

  I can’t hear them. I can’t hear them.

  Raven dropped the hides from the sides of his head and was met with silence. Their mouths were open and he felt their vibration of their song but he couldn’t hear it. Recovering his wits, he reached out swiftly and pushed the nearest one as hard as he could. The force of the shove lifted the blonde Siren off her bare feet and sent her flying across the cool cave twenty feet where she crashed into the stone wall and fell to the dirt floor. Her voice was temporarily silenced as her head drooped forward and she fell over onto her side. The brunette stopped singing, instead she hissed at him, showing great long fangs as she pulled back both hands, her fingers turning into talons ready to strike. “Come get some, bitch,” Raven dared. When she leapt at him, teeth and nails at the ready, he put his hands together and swung out in a double axe handle that split open her cheek as it brought her crashing to the ground. “I said you can’t have me,” Raven spat and then sprinted to the opening of the cave and the sandy shore beyond looking back to see if they were following him.

  He made it to the empty beach and waterline before they stumbled out behind him. “Shit!” His little boat was floating away from him with the current nearly a quarter mile away. The Sirens screeched and shrieked in voices so savage they shook his bones as they ran at him like bleeding Banshees. “You asked for it, you got it, bitches!” On the shore Raven turned to face them and drew up his right leg, crossed it in front of his body, tilted his body backward, his right arm extended far behind with all the expertise of a pitcher on the baseball mound. Fiercely slinging forward again, he sent an icy boulder wh
izzing straight down the line. The Sirens were too slow to hit it out of the park. Instead, it crossed right over the center of the plate taking them both out with one mighty blow. Raven didn’t stop to inspect his work, he turned back to the boat floating away from him, threw his hand out in front of him and sped it back to the shore with his mind. Meeting it before it could land on the beach Raven jumped in and grab a hold of the oars.. “I don’t sleep with whores!” he called to the Sirens still on the sand trying to sit up. “I sure as hell won’t be mastered by one!” He rowed with all of his might under the late morning sun until the Siren’s island was nothing but a tiny dot on the horizon.

  V

  In the Council Chamber, Ares grinned at Aphrodite. “What have you got to say now?”

  “Fuck you,” she returned from lips that didn’t move. “He has nothing now but his bare hands to kill the Ketos and be victorious in Poseidon’s Trial.”

  The smirk faded from Ares’ face as he looked down at his weapons and armor soaked in seawater. Magick was allowed in Poseidon’s Trial, the Kingdom of the Sea didn’t have the same effect as the Underworld on the Powers of an Olympian. Everyone around him knew that while magick could be used against the creature, it wouldn’t kill the Ketos. To kill it, one had to behead it, and for that one needed a blade. “That doesn’t mean he will be defeated.”

  “No, but he will have to be a lot smarter,” Aphrodite quipped. “With you as his Father…what do you think the chances of that are?”

  VI

  Not knowing where he was going or how long it would take to get there, Raven just kept rowing with the wind, sailing across the big bright blue with the sun beating down upon him. Cursing himself for being stupid, weak, falling for the Siren’s ploy that cost him his weapons and nearly all of his provisions, Raven vowed never to be so gullible again. No woman was worth dying for.

  Strong arms worked the oars for hours until they creaked in their sockets then he pushed onward still. There was nothing around him now, absolutely nothing but the vast expanses of sea and sky. The islands along with the safety of their shores were so far behind him they weren’t even dots any longer. Looking ahead of him, out toward the horizon, gigantic ships swiftly cut a heavy line through his sight. He’d gone so far that he’d rowed straight into international shipping waters. If he wasn’t careful he’d have freighters like that to contend with, them being so big and so tall, he being so little and so small, not even the most seasoned ship’s captain would see him in time. They’d just sail straight over him and Raven would be lucky if they even felt the bump of his sinking boat. It wasn’t easy but Raven did his best to steer a straight course while avoiding the huge ships floating around him as he made his way through the channel. He floated past oil tankers and cargo ships for several miles until the ocean opened up again.