OF WAR Anthology Novels 1-3

by Lisa Beth Darling

  Massive wings beat furiously in the air as the two collided again. Raven, lacking the advantage given to his Brother, Eros, and to Morpheus, had to fling his talons in front of his body and beat his wings backward to avoid being stabbed a second time. The sharp claws sliced through Morpheus’ wrist, wrapped around it, and flung him upward toward the glowing orange moon.

  “Stupid bird,” Morpheus growled as regained control and fluttered high in the air waiting for Raven to attack but he only hovered a few yards away blocking his path. Each time Morpheus moved left or tight, Raven dodged with him keeping him at bay while Ares and Rose approached the entrance to the palace. “You’re still bleeding you little shit, you’re getting weaker by the second.”

  Unable to speak in the form of his totem, Raven let out a loud caw as he dared Morpheus to try to get past him. Wings flapping hard, he nodded his head toward Morpheus’ wrist and let out another caw when the King of Dreams realized how badly he was bleeding. In the attack, Raven managed to slice through Morpheus’ ulnar artery on the underside and left a deep gouge around the entire circumference. Raven’s bird eyes watched as Ichor bubbled from the top of Morpheus’ head, the wound caused when Raven’s beak drove straight through flesh and bone into whatever passed for his brain. Morpheus’ long dark hair was matted with Ichor, glistening with its deep crimson hue as it dripped across his bare chest. Morpheus looked down at it as he ran his hand over the wound at his wrist already weakened by Raven’s spear. The wound didn’t heal; it just kept bleeding. Seeing Ares was right and Morpheus was weak, Raven pulled his wings back and flew in for the kill.

  At the last second in the Divine Game of Chicken, Morpheus didn’t dodge or zig or zag, he dipped down and flew under Raven to get past him. Seeing his chance to reach the tower well ahead of any of them, he took off for it flapping his wings as hard as he could as he kept his lanky body straight as an arrow and sailed through the cold wind. The parapet near, Alena’s constant cries filling his ears, Morpheus flew lower to glide in through the slits.

  Ares and Rose made it to the doorway ahead of Morpheus. Seeing Raven struggling to catch up to his Cousin, the God of War morphed back into his own form and let loose a barrage fireballs that ripped through Morpheus’ wings. Unable to fly he tumbled to the ground at Ares’ feet. “Now you’re mine,” Ares growled, leaping high into the air. He crashed down hard on the King of Dreams and began pummeling him. Left hook, a right cross, a roundhouse kick to the face, Morpheus was bloody and staggering but Ares didn’t let up. “Give me back my woman!’ The God of War roared and let loose with a powerful uppercut, sending Morpheus flying backward a hundred feet and skidding through the snow. His burnt black wings splayed out against the white snow, glittering beneath the pumpkin moon. A trail of Ichor followed him like the rail of a train. Ares let go with a small round of fireballs as he charged at the wounded Morpheus to pounce upon his chest. Grabbing the King of Dreams by his bloody hair, Ares raised his throat up to meet the edge of the sword in his sword. “One more time, give me my woman or I’ll kill you.” To accentuate his point the cold steel came to life with fire.

  Up in the air, Raven was weakening, but seeing his Father had Morpheus well in hand he flew to the parapet where his Mother was being held captive. Zipping through the narrow opening he found her on the cold snowy floor balled up and screaming. She looked up at him just before he changed back into his own form but she didn’t seem to see him. She was dreaming with her eyes open. “Mom? Mom?” Raven approached cautiously but she didn’t respond. Stooping down next to her, he took up her wrists to take them away from her face to allow her a better look at him but was horrified by what he saw. Ten vertical lines marred her face from where she’d raked her nails from forehead to neck. Patches of hair were pulled out from her head and the tufts were tumbling on the stone floor. Whatever she was dreaming, it was driving her insane. “Mom, Mom, it’s ok, wake up. You can wake up now, it’s over.” She just kept screaming, crying, shrieking, and whimpering. Out of instinct, he put his arms around her, bringing her close to the wound in his chest just above his heart. His muddled Ichor pooled against her icy cheek.

  Raven was jolted just as surely as if Zeus struck him with a lightning bolt. He was jarred and shaken. Broke out in a cold thick sweat and his head began to swim as he was overcome first by powerful emotions not his own and then by the images flooding into his head. Gruesome. Terrifying. His mind and sensations in his body merged with those of his Mother locked in the vice-grip of Morpheus’ twisted game.

  He heard the hollow sound of hooves clanking against the ground just before he felt the sting of sharp antlers slice across his cheek. He thought he was being attacked by a deer but it soon turned into the shape of a man with a stag’s body; Cernunnos. “Tell me!” The God of the Forests demanded, “Tell me where they are!” He shook the Willow Tree Medallion in front of his face. “You’re mine! You’ll do what I tell you. Where are they?”

  He wouldn’t tell because he didn’t know, he didn’t even know what the Stag God was talking about; if he did, during the beating he would have told. He would have done anything to make it stop but he couldn’t. Cernunnos just went on hitting him and stabbing him with those great horns, leaving him battered and bloody.

  Then he was running, running for his life, blazing a path far into a dark night.

  He ran straight into a black man with green eyes who was hacking off the hands and arms of children with a machete. The sounds of gunfire echoed in pops and small booms in all directions. Off in the distance, and nearby, people screamed, they moaned in agony and despair under the blazing hot sun in a place that smelled like living death.

  Then there were hands all over him; it seemed like dozens of them holding him down, grabbing, poking, and prodding every inch. Voices, they laughed, they laughed so hard, so deep and with so much venom that it almost made him vomit. Then he saw them, a dozen drunk, horny black men each one a strapping buck, standing around him cheering each other on as their rough hands seized bare tender flesh and stroked their hard cocks. Their eyes gleamed with debauchery as they wiped the saliva away from their dirty chins. The anticipation on their faces soon turned to anger then frustration and then utter rage as they pulled and tugged at his waist and at a chastity belt that no longer existed.

  Whimpering with pain and exhaustion, wanting the sweet release of death to take away the lingering touch of the hands on his body he felt a thick liquid sliding down his throat, it tasted vile, he wanted to retch but he forced it down. He woke screaming with the knowledge he was still alive.

  Without any warning he was flying, soaring high into the sky. For half a second it was peaceful but then Apollo’s face appeared before him. The Golden God was even rougher, more demanding, than the dozen men before him as his nails sank deep into quaking flesh, ripping it apart, leaving his victim vulnerable as he forced him to his knees. Night after night and day after day it went on without an end in sight. Apollo hit, bit, scratched, kicked, even whipped and burned sweet skin with a hot metal spoon. He bound wrists and hung him up like a side of beef for hours while his hands roamed all over supple skin until every inch of alabaster was covered with a heavy layer of golden dust from his palm. Tweaking it, caressing it, pinching it, licking it, and piercing it with a long needle. He stuffed his golden cock down a slender throat, choking off all air as he slammed the head of the mouth around against a hard wood floor. All the while, he barked out the same question as Cernunnos; “Where are they?”

  For the first time in his life, Raven felt small, he felt helpless, and defeated. Again, he felt the wish for the sweet release of death rise up within him until he was begging for it; “Kill me, just kill me.” While his mouth moved to speak the words, it was his Mother’s voice that resonated from his throat.

  Then he was falling from a great height to land in the cold ocean. Fighting fiercely to keep his head above water although his hands were bound, the tide around him swelled to a great wave and pushed him along toward the shor
e of a small island.

  “Grab the headboard.”

  Ares’ voice, deep, dark, and threatening as Raven had ever heard it. Then there was a sharp pain in his stomach as though some large snake was trying to force its way through his intestines. Raven clutched his tight stomach and doubled over in pain as the serpent pushed its way deep inside, retreated, and came back with a vengeance, making him bite back the cries of agony and the deep seated desire to beg for mercy. Those things would only spur on the God of War.

  Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a Pagan Altar staring down at an ancient Book of Shadows bound in human skin. The page was open to a powerful binding spell. He turned to see Cernunnos looming over him. “You shouldn’t have run, Maggie. You should have stayed here under my protection and guidance, and then you would be so much more than the old pitiful waif I see before me. You’d be a Queen, young and beautiful forever.”

  “My child?”

  Unhappily reminded of the parasite growing inside her Cernunnos’ eyes turned cold once more as they narrowed on her. “You want to know the truth, Maggie? I’ll give it to you; I will tell you what Ares has not. That thing in you is an abomination. A diseased creature that will bring glory to Ares but to you it will bring nothing but pain and heartache even before it draws its first breath.”

  Then Raven witnessed his birth, felt himself moving, clawing, scratching, and kicking inside a womb he didn’t have. The agony was unbearable and he was not ashamed when he screamed out to release it. He saw Ares, worried and panicked, standing over him asking him if he loved him? When Raven answered ‘yes’ in his Mother’s voice, he felt fire shoot through his hips as Ares grabbed them in both hands, pushed with all of his considerable strength, and broke them wide open.

  The dream changed again, now he was standing face to face with a younger version of himself. “What Fey do you think they’ll give me?” He heard himself chuckle and felt himself delight in the terror he saw reflected in his Mother’s eyes. “I’ll show you the meaning of the word whore. Just like the rest, Ares’ whore, Cernunnos’ whore…Apollo’s whore…next you’re mine. Then, when she’s ready, my sister,” his hands lowered to reach for the baby bulge in her stomach but Alena kept backing away. So he kept coming forward with long slow steps. “Don’t worry mother, I promise I’ll break her in right. Me, Ares, Eros…Apollo, yes, she will be very well…loved.”

  Raven tried to push away the images and overpowering emotions that accompanied them but they would not go. He tried to tell himself it was just a dream but staring into his own gray and amber eyes, seeing the determination there and listening to the same in his own voice as he took a step closer to himself. He turned to run and he was suddenly falling.

  Unable to hold on any longer, Raven’s arms fell limp and drifted away from Alena’s body. A little harder than he wanted, he pushed her off him as he fell back on to his side and then skittered away from her on his hands and knees like a crab. His head swimming, his eyes blurry and his heart pounding, Raven rose up on his knee and turned around just in time to vomit over the side of the tower.

  Down there in the snow, he saw Ares wrestling with Morpheus far away from the doors of the castle. Though it was clear Ares was winning, Raven couldn’t tell how long it would be before his Father was able to make it up here. He looked back to his Mother still crying and whimpering in her sleep. It was best to get her out of here while he could but Raven was doubtful he could do it. What if those images and those voices came back while they were flying, he might drop her or cause both of them to crash into any of the stone walls of the canyon around them. If he tried to carry her, he would be vulnerable to the same invasion of his mind. “Mom, wake up,” Raven called out desperately, “you have to wake up!” It was no good, she didn’t even look in his direction. Again he looked over the side of the tall tower, it was a very long jump but if he held her as tightly as he could, kept her up in his arms when they hit and then tucked her to roll, they could make it unharmed. In the second or two the fall would last, the dreams in her head would have no power over them no matter how much they flooded into his mind they wouldn’t stop gravity. He wouldn’t have enough time to lose it completely, if he just snatched her up quick and then…

  No more thought, on his knees, Raven reached out quickly, grabbed Alena by the hem of the tattered black velvet gown and yanked her over to him. She gave no resistance she didn’t even seem to notice she’d moved. Steeling himself with one big breath, Raven grabbed her up in his arms, turned, and hurled himself over the side of the parapet just as the dream turned back to its beginning.

  Falling through the air, holding her tight, he saw a woman he’d never seen before, she was a Fae, she was strung up in chains, her arms and legs wide to hold her firm and readily accessible. She was naked and very pregnant. Around her neck, over her milky skin covered with whip welts from shoulders to ankles, she wore the gleaming silver necklace of the Willow Tree.

  Before Raven knew it, his bare feet slammed into the cold snow, drove deep into the white, until they hit solid ground below. With his chance to tuck and roll behind him, he felt as his legs driven up to his throat as his teeth gnashed together, chomping into the sides of his cheeks and drawing out the Ichor over his tongue.

  He let out a cry so loud it drew Ares’ attention from a few hundred yards away.

  The hard landing also put the two of them right behind Rose who’d been banging on the door trying to make it open, when it she heard the thud of the impact she turned to see her Brother chest deep in snow. “Ma-ma!”

  Driven so deep and well into the snow, Raven was stuck with his Mother in his arms, her dream continued. The tortured pregnant Fae gave birth in her chains hanging from the rafters of an ancient Keep. Cernunnos himself delivered the squirming baby girl. Holding her up so that her mother could see, with the infant’s cord still attached, he threatened to kill it if she didn’t answer his question; “Where are they?”

  One should never make such threats against the cub of mother bear. The Fae gave out a cry worthy of any warrior as she struggled in the iron chains so hard that they gave way and she broke free. Baby still hanging from her body, she grabbed the knife in the hand of the stunned Cernunnos, they fought, he grabbed her by the throat, ripping the medallion off her neck just as she stabbed him in the throat and then she ran like the wind.

  “MaMa! Mama!” Rose called as she dropped to her knees and began digging in the snow to uncover the weeping Alena cradled in Raven’s arms. “Ray-Ray!” She pushed him to wake up and get his help but Raven just lolled there with his eyes and mouth open.

  In Raven’s unconscious head, the dream kept on going. He saw Artemis, she smiled, and he heard her laugh as he felt her marvel when she entered the little Fey Village in the Golden Lands. It was a beautiful, magickal place with its intricately carved home high in the treetops. He was looking up at her, holding onto her hand, as though he were a small child. Then the Goddess of the Hunt was screaming, she was bloody and beaten with Cernunnos looming over her.

  Everything in his head slowed, it nearly stopped, replaced by blessed darkness peaceful and serene. Then he saw his Mother, young, so young, and frail. The darkness did not turn to light as she sat on a cold cement floor her arms fastened around her, her leg chained to a wall. The smell, the reek of urine and shit and vomit and despair was unstomachable. Raven threw up in the snow as the door in his mind opened and three men dressed in white flooded into the room.

  Raven heard his Mother scream, in fact his own throat tried to throw out a banshee wail but it was cut off at his lips and exited as a whimper.

  When she realized her Brother wasn’t going to do what she wanted, Rose began digging again as she called out, “Dah-Dee! Dah-Dee! ‘ELP!”

  At his Daughter’s call for his help, Ares was torn between dashing off to Rose’s side and staying to slay Morpheus.

  “The Fae bitch is mine,” Morpheus spat as his hand wriggled into the pouch at his waist and he brought up a handful
of Nightmare Dust to blow in Ares’ face.

  The God of War brought up the flaming sword to turn the glittering dust black, rendering it useless as it fell in ashes to the snow below.

  “The bitch is mine,” Ares growled, hoisting the sword up in front of him, both hands wrapped around the hilt. He drove it down into Morpheus’ chest, splitting apart the heart of the King of Dreams. “Sleep well,” he hissed, ripping the sword out again and then charging off toward where Rose was desperately calling for him. Sprinting the distance and skidding to a stop to drop into the snow on his knees Ares helped clear it away from his whimpering Wife. “Alena? Alena?”

  “No,” Rose insisted as she reached over her Brother and Mother embedded in the snow and put her Father’s hand on her Mother’s head. Rose went to put her own hand on her Mother but a ball of energy knocked her backward.

  “You stupid little retarded bitch,” Morpheus shouted as he stumbled toward them clutching the gaping wound in his chest. Plodding an unsteady path through the snow he came at them as fast as he could. “I’m gonna kill you first.”

  Ares turned his head to glare at Morpheus as he began to rise but the sound of Rose’s firm voice stopped him. “No, you’re not.” On her knees in the deep snow, the cold wind whipping around her little body clad only in its pink nightgown, Rose put her hands together and let an energy ball of her own fly hot and hard. It struck Morpheus in the chest, driving him back and to his knees. “Not, stupid,” Rose huffed, letting another one loose. “Not reee-tard-ed. Not…bitch!” The third one she let fly hit Morpheus squarely between the eyes, blowing his head off his shoulders in a fine spray of red mist. “Ha!” she cried out in victory and raised her fist in the air so all would know she was the winner.

  Stumbling back over to where her Family gathered in the snow, Rose put her hand on her Mother’s icy cheek. “Home now, Mama, home now.”