A popping noise went off in Ari’s brain, releasing a whirlwind of fury and reaction. Only eight days, he thought, feeling like his chest was tearing open—like his skull was expanding. His body clicked into a terrible, reactive overdrive as the words drilled into him like the cadence of a battle march. Eight days . . . eight days.
He’d lose her again—he was definitely going to lose Juliana, and it was going to hurt a thousand times more this time. He knew it already, same as he’d recognized his moment of death at Thermopylae, felt the slice of that Persian’s sword as it took off his arm.
Juliana was like that Persian, wielding a scimitar into his chest, cutting out his heart.
“It’s nine days from tonight, eight as of tomorrow morning,” Jules rushed to explain, holding him tighter. “Her name is Layla; that’s what she told me.”
Ari shook his head vigorously. “Wouldn’t give her real name,” he said tightly. “Gives you too much . . . power.” No Djinn ever willingly gave its spiritual name. They’d learned Sable’s true name of Elblas only because Ares allowed it.
“She made me the offer, to return to you, while I was lingering by the town house. But I didn’t know, didn’t understand what she was or the bargain’s short duration. Nor that she’d endanger you. I truly believed that she was an angel, come to help me.”
His body was in a full-scale nuclear buildup, one unlike any he’d experienced to date. The emotional distress he felt was so intense, the power was swamping him, overwhelming him faster than he could even process the changes. Vaguely he was aware that the lights all around the room were exploding. The acrid smell of smoke filled his nose, and he heard raised voices from upstairs. But he couldn’t rein himself or his body back in; all he could do was submit to the rapid escalation, reeling first in one direction, then the other, as it overtook him.
“When?” He barely managed to squeeze the question out.
“When did I know?” she asked.
He tried to force the words out but finally gave one firm nod.
She wrapped her arms about his neck, and he shook like a storm-battered barn in her arms. “Shh, my love. I’m here; it’s okay.”
He clutched at her, trying to get her even closer, wanting nothing more than to hold her for eternity.
“I only found out after we made love this afternoon. She came to me in my dreams while I slept next to you. That’s why I was so upset when I woke.”
Still, his voice failed him. He wanted to beg her to cheat her bargain, throttle her for having made it at all. But he pressed his face against hers, feeling their tears mingle against his own cheek.
There was a disastrous explosion from the entertainment center, and Ari didn’t have to look to realize it wasn’t just the Wii this time, but the Xbox, the DVD player, and every other piece of electronics housed inside it. The whole room was dark now except for a dim light over the bar of the kitchenette.
Nikos came down the stairs, and taking one look at him, declared, “You’re not all right. I suspected as much when I smelled the smoke. Let me help you to your room, brother. Come now, ease up.”
Ari shrugged him off and didn’t even look up. “Mason. Now.” He kept Jules close against his chest, trying to ignore the humming in his skull and the silver in his eyes. “Need Mason . . . help.”
Ari heard his retreating footsteps on the stairs and clung to Jules even harder. If he could just focus, will himself to feel her—smell her—he could stave off the waves of painful power. He knew it; he’d seen River regain control numerous times.
By using sex, some part of him thought. But that was after River’s shape-shifting. This? The overdose of pain and power and transformation being rammed down his throat right now? There was no fighting it; he was almost sure.
“Aristos, look at me,” Jules said, pulling back to touch his face. She placed a soothing, warm palm against his cheek. “You’re shaking all over, like earlier today. Are you all right? I know this is upsetting. . . .”
Ari blinked at her, suddenly unable to see anything except silver—rivers of it, floods. He’d gone blind with it, and his ears rang so sharply, he could barely hear anything at all. He struggled to his feet, dragging frantic breaths into his tight lungs.
He stumbled back toward Juliana blindly. Clearing his throat, and determined to ask the most important question in his heart, he regained control of his vocal cords. “Tell me you believe we can free you,” he demanded slowly. “Tell me you’ll fight to stay with me. . . . I can’t survive losing you again.”
But he couldn’t hear her answer, just the storming tide that filled his ears. He sank to the edge of the sofa and, groping with his hands, he felt her face, her neck, her hair. Needed to be connected to her even though he couldn’t see her at all. She pulled his head against her breast, holding him and rocking him—trying everything in her power, he could tell, to soothe him.
It did nothing to stop the tide of change. His muscles bunched and bulked across his shoulders and back; his spine began burning with sharp fire. Staggering out of her grasp and to his feet, he felt his wings emerge, cutting through his T-shirt, shredding it.
He was uncontrolled, rabid . . . utterly berserk. The force in him, the demigod’s pressure . . . was overtaking him. Which meant there was only one option left, and he’d die taking it—die loving the only woman who could help him.
“Jules,” he cried in a voice that barely sounded human. “Juliana.” A shriek; a shrill hawk’s song.
He reached for her, trying to protect her from his talons, and hauled her toward the guest room. The only way to stop this tide was by taking her sexually. River’s old cure; it had to work—or he’d never survive, he was certain.
Chapter 33
“Aristos, tell me how to help you,” Juliana begged, as he pulled her toward the bed. He’d become much larger in the past few moments, his wings broader than she’d seen them yet, gleaming a pure shade of midnight. And yet, silver seemed to move across the feather tips, just as she could see it move through the bulky muscles of his forearms.
He blinked down at her but couldn’t seem to see her; even the pinpoints of his pupils had vanished. She reached for his hand—and pulled back instantly. Talons replaced his fingers, just as his voice had morphed into something truly raptorial.
“This is my fault. It’s the things I told you,” she said.
He said nothing, already struggling to unfasten his pants.
“Shh,” she murmured gently, covering his twisted, hawk’s hand with her own. She kept her palm there for several seconds, willing him to feel soothed, loved. “I’ll unfasten your pants for you. Is this what you need to help you right now?”
His head fell forward heavily, and he pressed his face against hers. “So . . . sorry,” he told her in that scraping voice. “Berserk.”
Working with gentle urgency, she tugged his zipper, peeling his pants down. He breathed in quick, huffing pants, the heat of it blowing against her cheek as he obviously tried to still himself, to settle down a bit—but at the same time he’d begun a powerful, needy motion with his hips. They were still separated by clothing, and his pants weren’t all the way off, but he’d started a wild kind of thrusting.
Reaching between them, she yanked the folds of her dress upward—thank goodness she wore no undergarments this time—and then worked his pants all the way down his hips.
With a sharp intake of breath and another eerie cry, he sheathed himself inside her, full hilt, without even pausing. She flinched, still tender from earlier, and yet she needed all of him. Craved having him full inside her this way; that need overcame any physical pain.
She angled her much smaller hips, taking him as deep as she could, knowing instinctively that her body was his cure; that releasing his seed, spending himself inside of her, could possibly remedy the wild heat raging all through him.
“Yes,” she urged as he began rocking inside of her, raising his hips, them crashing into her again. “Take all of me, Aristos. I’m yours,
yes. Lose yourself inside of me.”
She tightened around him, a kind of ecstasy that she’d never known, not even in their previous joinings. Not until this moment. Perhaps because what they were sharing now was so raw and wild and dangerous. Suddenly she felt a clutching spasm of pleasure deep inside, a rapturous sensation that had her crying out his name with no care that anyone else might hear. He mimicked the sound with a beautiful hawk’s song, pitched low in her ear, even as his hips’ tempo became frenzied.
So quickly this time, she felt his seed pulse inside of her, that shudder of release, as suddenly his fingers were stroking all through her hair. The talons were gone, and as he brushed her hair back from her eyes, she saw that his gaze wasn’t silver anymore. And he was smiling, downright beaming at her, with the sweetest, giddiest look she’d ever seen on his face.
“Oh, dear God above,” he whispered in his own, normal voice, still breathing heavily atop her. “You’re magic, Jules darling. Sweeter than Elysium, better than love itself.”
She wound her fingers through his damp hair, equally satisfied. “You’re sure you’re better now? That the . . . berserker”—she said the word carefully—“is gone?”
He captured her mouth with a kiss, answering her with a gentle, tender pressure that was thoroughly unlike the aggression he’d just displayed. As he did so, she felt for his wings, wanting to stroke them, only to realize he’d absorbed them, as well.
Aristos Petrakos was thoroughly human again. She relaxed slightly, sinking back against the pillow, only then realizing how his stormy, threatened state had worried her. Not out of concern for her well-being, of course, but for his.
She sighed, breaking the kiss, and forced him to look into her eyes. “You promise me that you’re well now, Aristos? That you’re not suffering or hurting or—”
“We’re going to work this all out,” he told her, cupping her chin. “I am fine, and you’re going to be, too. I get like that because the power in me—it goes thermal when I’m upset. If I’m on edge or emotional, it amps up. I just haven’t learned how to keep it contained, but I will. I swear that I will, cause I don’t want you having to put up with that every time we have a fight or, gods forbid, hot sex.”
She blushed. “It’s all right, Ari, so long as you’re safe. But you seemed to be in a most terrible amount of pain out in the other room.”
“Not once we got in this bedroom,” he growled, rolling her onto her side. They nestled close, facing each other, but she missed the fullness of him inside her. A trickle of what he’d left behind coursed down the interior of her thigh, and it was an odd thought, but she wondered whether they’d conceived a child, some permanent gift from that moment of breathtaking communion.
Sliding his fingers along her leg, he traced his finger along the rivulet of his own seed. “It’s miraculous, isn’t it? What happens when a man and a woman join? That I leave my stuff behind like this, then maybe, eventually, it does another very miraculous thing,” he said softly, as if reading her thoughts.
“Do you know my mind?” she asked, and he trailed that slickness up into her pubic hair, spreading it around.
“Nah.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m just proud to be your man. I’d love to have lots of redheaded babies with you some day.”
She thought of his three sons, the ones he’d never seen again, and how he’d grieved that separation. Perhaps she could make him another beautiful son, one he could love in this lifetime.
He slid a large hand along her bare hip. “So, I’m okay—but how do you feel?” Slowly he lifted his gaze, and his lovely eyes seemed very vulnerable. “Do you sense . . . well . . . her?” He whispered the last.
She hated the reminder of the limit to their time together, realizing that all their dreamy thoughts about babies and a family would be only that—dreams—if Layla had her way. She had to fight tears back but refused to let Ari see her pain, not when he needed her strength.
“I don’t feel her inside of me right now, but she’s proving difficult to anticipate or predict.”
He grunted. “Probably likes it that way. Her strategy, ya know?”
“Do you believe Mason has the power and ability to free me from her? I want to hope, and I’m praying so very hard, but . . .” She stared at the ceiling of the dark room, the only illumination the lights from the outside porch. “But I am frightened, Aristos, and not of dying again or roaming this earth, restless for eternity.” She lowered her gaze, staring right at him. “But of being separated from you.”
He cupped her face firmly. “Hear this, Juliana Tiades. We haven’t come this far, waited this long, only to be driven apart now. I will not lose this battle. I will find a way to keep you—and for as long as the Highest God will allow.” Suddenly he seemed to remember something, his eyes growing narrow. “The Oracle told me we’d face a great trial. She said this was coming; she saw it—but she also prophesied about defeating the evil within.”
Juliana sat upright. “Yes!” She patted her chest. “She must have been talking about me and . . . and Layla,” she whispered, with a quick glance around. She obviously feared the demon’s reprisal, the way she held her breath for a moment after speaking.
Then slowly she exhaled. “She has less control right now,” Jules said very quietly. “I think our lovemaking . . . the intensity or something, forced her into submission.”
He opened his mouth to comment on that idea. That they could use sex to battle demons was, after all, a really appealing idea. But he was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. “Ari, it’s River,” his friend called out. “I just got back—are you all right? The house is in chaos.”
Ari was already searching for his pants, moving toward the door. “Oh, crap,” he muttered, glancing at Juliana. “I do this little thing with the lights when I’m like that.”
She smiled at his obvious embarrassment. “I think it was perhaps a bit more than the lights this time.”
He froze, looking back at her. “How much more?”
“Some of your odd inventions—the Panasonic, the other items? I think you destroyed them.”
“Oh, damn it,” he cursed, stepping into his pants.
River knocked on the door again. “Buddy, come on, need to know you’re all right.”
“Look, Dr. Feelgood, I’m coming. Hold on a sec. I had to, you know, employ the ‘River cure.’ Know what I mean?”
Silence came from the other side, then a muffled laugh. “So, in other words, I should mind my own business and come back later?”
“We’re done, dude, and I want to assess the damage to the house,” Ari said, opening the door at the same moment he zipped up his pants.
Jules dove beneath the linens, barely peeking out so much as her nose lest River see her in a state of undress.
She heard River laugh again. “Just so you know,” he announced. “I think some of the front windows blew out.”
“Oh, crap. They’re gonna break my balls over that for months, aren’t they?”
“Actually, big guy, you’ll probably get a pass . . . all things considered.” Then in an ominous tone, he added, “You should see the wards.”
Ari bounded up the stairs, unable to believe what River had just told him—needing to see the proof with his own eyes. River chased in his wake. “Calm down; look, just take it easy,” his friend tried telling him. “Don’t get worked up; it’s not helpful to you right now.”
Ari hadn’t even put on a shirt, nor had he fastened the snap on his pants. Damn, he’d barely bothered zipping them at all, but that hardly mattered. He moved ahead with a freight train’s urgency, barreling out the front door and onto the front steps. Every Spartan was gathered; Emma, Shay, and Sophie were there, too.
Jamie was the only one still missing, but there wasn’t exactly anyone taking roll call; everyone’s attention was focused on the field itself. He’d figured River was just being melodramatic, but his best friend hadn’t overstated the situation at all.
The wards were
on fire, burning in leaping, crimson flames like some neatly contained blazing strand of fuel. They were popping and sizzling with so much heat, Ari’s face burned—and he was a good dozen yards from the edge. It was an eerie, unsettling sight, running the length of the pasture as far as he could see.
Leonidas stood closest of all, rubbing his chin and appearing perplexed and deeply troubled. These were his wards; they all knew it. He felt almost fatherly toward them, not because they had a soul or spirit, but because his own energy fed their strength, fortified them, and in exchange, the wards kept them all safe from spiritual darkness.
Tidying up his appearance, Ari strode to his king’s side, wishing like hell that he’d brought a shirt. “Sir,” he announced, clearing his throat.
Leonidas’s crimson cloak billowed behind him regally as he studied the scene with a concerned, almost mournful expression. He wore a simple linen shirt and leather loin covering; of all of them, he still dressed traditionally most often, perhaps as an expression of leadership. Seeing his king dressed in the old garb, with the fires burning in every direction, Ari shivered, feeling as if they were staring at the battlefield toward the end of fighting at Thermopylae. “Sir, what happened?” Ari asked, flanking his king’s side.
“They’re destroyed. The wards are . . . they’re clearly ruined. All of you, unprotected.” Turning, Leo lifted his chin and addressed them all with a commanding air. “I have no idea what could have done this, but we don’t want to wait around to find out. We evacuate tonight and move everyone to safer ground, Spartan and human alike. We must fortify our position.”
There was only one place their king could have in mind. “To the Angel plantation?” Ari asked.
Leonidas nodded. “Those wards there are much older, going back generations. So they’re naturally stronger. Also, Jamie and I have worked on the perimeter since the attack two months ago. We’ll camp there until we can reestablish firm base operations at our own compound.” There was genuine sadness in the king’s eyes as he stared at the disintegrating protections.
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