Part of me tried to keep track of where we were going, in the hopes of having some control over the situation. In order to have at least some sense of how to get back. We’d left the bounds of Rome in a vaguely east-ish direction, but that was all I could figure. Beyond the city’s vicinity, nothing looked distinguishable to me.
A collection of buildings appeared in front of us, some sort of town. I didn’t think much of it until the pegasus swooped down with a suddenness that had my stomach roiling. The lingering headache from the strike I’d received flared up, and through the haze of a miserable nausea, I saw us fly over a large green park or garden-like area. Our trajectory glided us down towards one building in particular, enclosing a courtyard on all four sides. A sharp, lurching dive landed us in that courtyard.
With barely a moment to take a breath, to try to calm my system, I was toppling off the horse. My legs hit the ground and buckled, sending me into a rough sprawl, my hands bracing me against a jagged, rocky floor. I may have blacked out for a few seconds, because the next thing I knew, that floor was pressing against my cheek. The stone was warm from the touch of the sun, and I almost decided to stay there instead of dealing with reality. But I couldn’t.
I struggled to a half-sitting, half-crouched position, trying to get my bearings. A good two stories of building locked us into the courtyard. Three of four walls consisted of porticos encroaching into the space, looming over us.
With a powerful flap of wings that nearly blew me backward, three pegasi sprung into the air. I caught sight of a thin frame with reddish-brown hair taking off on the horse that’d brought me here, leaving me alone with—I made a sweep of the room with my eyes, fighting off a bout of dizziness—the Hercules, standing a few feet away. And, to my dismay, Tony. Tony, who was crumpled behind me, who must have been forced onto one of the other horses. A retching sound came from his direction.
In that moment, a middle-aged woman rushed into the space, coming up to the Hercules. She was tan, blond, and absolutely furious. “What did you do?” she cried.
The Hercules’ eyes locked on hers, narrowing. “How dare you ask me that? Why not explain to me what you did?”
The woman turned to me and Tony, her expression cold enough to freeze my blood. “We should kill them,” she said, as matter-of-fact as if she were talking about something simple—like the weather, or the identification of prey animals through bone structure.
And it hit me, really hit me, that we’d been taken by the people who’d been trying to kill us. That I had no idea what they wanted with us now. That we were trapped in an unknown location and I didn’t know how to get out.
“I am cleaning up your mess, you know,” the Hercules replied tersely. “Which would be easier to do if you explained the full extent of what you have brought down on my House.”
When she returned her attention to him, her posture was challenging, her shoulders squared. “If it had been up to you, would we have stood by and allowed these humans to act like the world is theirs?”
He let out a frustrated sigh, then glanced towards us. “I must apologize,” he said, with a cool politeness he hadn’t exhibited towards the other woman. “You must understand that you—you, personally—have been ranging out further and further with your group, without any fear. Naturally, it is worrisome to see humans behave this way.”
The woman snorted. “Worrisome, he says.”
The Hercules ignored her completely. “You really would be better off staying inside your safety zones. Some members of my House seem to have taken matters into their own hands.” He shot a glare at the woman. “Their incompetent hands, seeing as how you are still alive.”
I heard someone make a strangled sound, and it took a second to realize it’d been me. But the way he spoke to us, the dichotomy between his politeness and the casual way he talked about our deaths—he really didn’t care whether we lived or died. Just whether it was convenient for him. And that terrified me.
“However,” he said, “you have discovered their plan. Having you, or your associates, reveal it to the other legends would only cause problems for us. Therefore, you will remain our guests—”
“Hostages,” the woman corrected.
“Quiet.” And in that word his icy politeness finally broke, a sudden fierceness taking over him. When his eyes met mine, I couldn’t suppress a flinch. “Your associates should refrain from taking any drastic actions so long as we have you here. Until then, please, make yourselves comfortable.”
Yes, please, be comfortable under the threat of imminent death. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. Or maybe dissolve into a trembling wreck of both.
“Someone will come get you for dinner.” The Hercules turned to the woman. “Please, Xanthe, escort our guests to their rooms.”
Xanthe rolled her eyes again, before signaling with her hand for us to follow her. Since they could drag us without any real effort—what, with this being the House of Hercules—I decided a veneer of civility was better than nothing. We’d better comply.
My hand groped for my bag as I rose, unconsciously. Only when I didn’t make contact with it did I realize what I was doing. That of course my bag wouldn't be with me—sometime over the course of being grabbed and the long flight here, I must have let go of it. Probably pretty early on, because I couldn’t imagine having held onto it the whole time I was up in the air, terrified that I might fall off the pegasus.
Still, becoming aware that I didn’t have my bag—that I didn’t have my tablet, where I kept notes and contact information and everything important to me—brought on an intense feeling of vulnerability. It was absurd. I’d been abducted by people who wouldn’t mind seeing me dead, but somehow, not having my tablet had the power to make me feel even less safe.
Pushing that feeling away, I concentrated on getting my legs to hold up my weight, on keeping any potential shaking under control. For now, all I could do was follow Xanthe. After a quick glance at Tony to make sure he was following my lead—not that he had any other options—I headed towards her.
She led us into a hall, continuing through a couple of rooms covered in paintings. I looked around me and up at the ceiling, racking my brain for any clues the images might provide about where we were. When Xanthe brought us to a spiral staircase descending somewhere I couldn’t see, I hesitated.
Were there any exits down there? Were we going underground? But even if going down there was a terrible idea, I didn’t have a choice. My stomach sank with each step, with the fear of getting trapped. Of imprisonment.
When we turned into another room, my attention immediately went to the daylight pouring in through the window, relieved that we weren’t locked in some sort of tomb. The room itself was covered with paintings from floor to ceiling, landscapes and patterns everywhere I looked. A small bed and assorted furniture lay scattered across the floor, an hourglass sitting on one of the tables. A comfortable coolness filled the room, courtesy of the open window.
“One of you may stay here,” Xanthe said, moving towards a doorway covered by a curtain. She moved the fabric aside and held it out of the way, ostensibly for us. “The other can use this room.”
Entering the second room, I found the walls equally painted over, a similar level of furnishings peppered through the space. A second doorway obscured by a curtain lay on the other side. A rustling behind me made me turn back, to find that Xanthe had left. I waited a few minutes as her footsteps drifted away, before giving Tony a pointed look.
He caught it, responding with a shaky laugh. “Nothing I’ve come across suggests that the House of Hercules has enhanced hearing. So go ahead and talk.”
We needed to get out of here. I knew that, and every part of me wanted it so badly. That was what I needed to focus on. Neither my dad nor Tommy would have known anything useful about this kind of situation. But my mom was different. One thing at a time, she’d say. Start with small goals.
“Where are we?” I asked. I was familiar with some of the mythologi
cal stories, especially when they pertained to animals of interest, but I didn’t know anything about the structure of modern legend society. There’d never been a reason for me to need to, before.
“In the territory of the House of Hercules.”
Well, duh. “And where is that?”
He shot me an exasperated look. “Someday, you should maybe consider not being so ignorant.”
A shot of anger pulsed through me. Because, really? Did I look like a human encyclopedia? Was there any reason in the world to think that a zoologist would need to know about legend societies, of all things?
“I’m sorry, who’s the one we’re counting on to get us out of here?” I snapped, unable to stop myself. I’d been keeping it together through two assassination attempts and an abduction. I had limits. He wanted to bitch? I could bitch right back at him.
But just as I was readying myself for a sporting fight, Tony’s aggression drained out of him, a glimmer of hope shining from his eyes. “You really think we can?”
The sudden desperation in his voice was what made me let the earlier comment go. Any other reaction from him at all, and I might’ve been trying to tear his face off. But the expression of vulnerability reminded me that he was depending on me, that I was still responsible for the jerk.
Which meant I couldn’t afford to let either of us down.
With that thought, something inside of me stabilized. I gave him a nod. “Tell me where we are, and we’ll figure this out.”
Tony wasn’t the type to subsist off of baseless optimism, and his features settled into a guarded scowl. But that was normal for him, so I’d take it. “Tivoli,” he said, after a moment. “We’re in Tivoli.”
I blinked. “Why are we in Tivoli?” The town was some 15 miles away from Rome, but I’d never been there before—of course, that made sense, since this was apparently the House of Hercules’ base.
“Are you joking?” Tony looked at me incredulously. “Tivoli was the site of a large cult of Hercules. There was a huge Temple to him here.”
Which I didn’t know, because again, zoologist.
Okay. We were in Tivoli. I’d never been here before. And the House of Hercules had the home field advantage. Worse, we were far off from any other society. If we’d been kidnapped by the House of Anna, for example, we’d at least be walking distance from safety. But this was a completely different town, no safe settlements in sight. How were we going to get out of here?
Don’t panic, my mom would have advised. Just because you don’t have an answer yet doesn’t mean you won’t come up with one once you know more.
Tony was watching me. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the Villa d’Este,” he said. “From all the frescos. The Temple nowadays would be in ruins, but it’s pretty much right next to the Villa.”
“Okay, so we’re in the Villa d’Este.” Also unhelpful, because I knew nothing about it or its layout. The news was not getting better.
It wasn’t a question, but Tony nodded anyway. “Look outside.”
Alright, why not. I rested my hand on the window sill, squinting against the light. Below me was a sea of green, obscuring the stone paths that wove through the plant life. Further towards the distance stood a collection of buildings and a couple of hills, extending out to meet the horizon. Leaning over the sill to see immediately below me, I noted a large stone balcony overlooking the tree-filled garden, with something that looked like a large sundial set up towards the center.
Then some movement between the greenery below caught my attention. A humanoid shadow peaked out from behind a large bush. Alarmed, I ducked away from the window.
“What?” Tony asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just not really comfortable where the members of this House can see me right now.”
“Jordan,” he said, disconcertingly serious. “My mother thinks I’m working. She has no idea about the chimera, or the assassination attempts. If she never sees me again, she’ll spend the rest of her life wondering how she hadn’t known.”
Oh, no. I didn’t know how to deal with this. Tony never confided in me, and I barely knew how to comfort the people I actually got along with.
“Shinji knows,” he continued. “I told him everything. He wanted me to get on a plane and stay with him until this blew over—or if it didn’t, to just stay. It wasn’t how we’d wanted to finally live together. We both wanted to get to a certain point with our research topics, to accomplish something, first. But at least we’d have had a future. If I’d listened to him...”
I was at a loss. This whole time, I’d been convinced Tony didn’t have the option of walking away. He was driven to understand our local legend communities, and the cultural differences between them. What else would he do?
But the answer to that was simple, wasn’t it? Cultural differences were everywhere. There were a thousand other gaps for him to bridge besides the ones here.
“Why did you stay?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Pride, maybe. An attachment to my work. Or maybe I didn’t want to go to him as a failure. It doesn’t matter now, does it? I just want to make it back to my family, Jordan.” He took a deep breath, visibly grounding himself. “How do we get out of here?”
That was an easier problem to tackle than figuring out how to make Tony feel better. “It’s probably bad that they left us by ourselves,” I said. “With no locks or anything. Trying to leave before we know why they’re not worried about containing us isn’t necessarily a good idea.” I thought for a moment. “We need to explore the area.”
Okay. Easy enough.
“Explore the area,” Tony repeated dryly. “That’s your plan?”
Knowing I needed him to have confidence in me, I rolled my eyes, deliberately trying to seem casual. “Please, Tony, it’d be irrational for us to escape without knowing the layout. We need to get away, but we also need to stay away.” That much was true at least.
With reluctance, he conceded my point. I could work with that. I just had to keep Tony from flipping out completely, while figuring out a way to escape a town full of super strong people with flying horses. I could do that, right?
Oh hell, I had no idea how I was going to do this. They’d probably kill us, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them this time.
But they hadn’t yet. And I had to try.
THE OBVIOUS PLACE TO start was by lifting the curtain over the doorway we hadn’t passed through yet, and seeing what lay beyond it. I headed for it, Tony just behind me. Maybe we didn’t have a clear idea of how we could escape, but we hadn’t gotten our bearings yet, hadn’t tested our boundaries. A world of possibilities was still open to us. And the wider they let us range, the more opportunities we’d have.
I was actually starting to feel hopeful, when I lifted the curtain. It didn’t last long, not with the sight that greeted me.
Streaks of blood were spattered across the room, covering the frescoes on the walls, spotting the floor. Even with the window open, with the light breeze tickling across my skin, a faint metallic scent lingered in the room.
Everything in me stopped dead.
Only a moment ago, the cool air drifting in through the windows was comfortable against my skin. Now it felt freezing, goosebumps rising against my skin. That bit of hope I’d built up for myself turned into a deep-seated dread. Any sense of control I’d felt over my own fate dissipated like it’d never been.
What the freaking shit had they done in this room? It looked like the sight of a grisly murder with the body gone, and the worst part was that I had no idea why. Then again, maybe the worst part was that I had no idea who.
My mind scrambled for a reasonable explanation. They could have been butchering animals for food...in a beautiful room filled with frescoes hundreds of years old. Right next to where they’d set up sleeping quarters. Somehow managing to get blood over everything, including—I realized in horror as a speck of red dripped onto my arm from above—the ceiling.
Nope. No reasonable explanat
ion to be had.
I took a trembling step back from the room, because I could not deal with the fact that blood was literally dripping on me. Vaguely, I realized that I hadn’t collided with Tony, who should’ve been right behind me.
“Don’t fall for my brother’s intimidation tactics,” a calm voice stated, cutting through my shock. I spun around to see Xanthe. No Tony in sight. He must have retreated while I was too busy freaking out to notice.
Xanthe had left, hadn’t she? A suspicious part of my brain flared up, noting that she’d come back just in time to catch me off-balance, reeling from this.
Her arms were crossed as she leaned back against the wall, a grimace on her face. “This is why I didn’t want him involved,” she said. “It would have been done cleanly, and been over with quickly. None of these mind games.”
Those were words coming out of her mouth, but I didn’t understand any of them. All I knew was that some unknown thing had happened, leaving the room next to one our bedrooms looking like the sight of a massacre. And Xanthe had shown up to witness me encountering it.
“The next room is covered in blood,” I said. Stating the obvious, but it was as much as I could manage at the moment.
Xanthe frowned. “I know. Don’t worry, it’s just here to frighten you. It isn’t human. It’s pig’s blood.”
“Pig’s blood?” I repeated, still suspicious. I’d already ruled out the butchering animals for meat theory.
“Yes,” she said, almost gently. “He wants you too scared to make trouble. And should he eventually find a way to bargain you back to your people, he wants you to bring to them the conviction that our House is too dangerous to cross.”
Psychological warfare, she meant. He’d set up that scene just so we’d see it. He must have instructed someone to do it sometime since he’d first grabbed us, though hell if I remembered when it could have happened. Granted, I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to notice anything over my sheer terror.
Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1) Page 16