Omega Series: Omega Part 27

"Then I'd like to show you one more thing." He drew too close once again, entering my personal s.p.a.ce. He was wide and athletic, and his body heat made a chill run through me. I craned my head back to see his face. "But I need you to promise you won't reveal what I show you."

Even when attempting to be serious, light and laughter glowed in his gaze. I didn't think I could turn down such a request if I wanted to, not with his light cologne and presence so near me. It was easy to believe he was the son of a t.i.tan. Like Adonis, he had five ribbons and an air of something not quite normal.

I nodded.

He slid his arm through mine. "We move through shadows."

I had no idea what that meant. We walked through the garden to a small building sandwiched between the Congress and another official government building. At first, I thought we were headed to a toolshed and started to worry. Until I saw the guards. Herakles had taught me that guards didn't stand in front of a place or person of no importance.

I slowed as we approached, but Lantos urged me on, upbeat and unconcerned that we were about to run into two heavily armed men.

But we didn't. We walked right past them. Neither so much as flinched as we strolled into the building, past another one, through a metal detector and down a hallway. He led me to an elevator, and we stepped in.

"Simple," Lantos said. "Right?"

Puzzled, I met his gaze again. He was smiling. "How is that possible?"

"My father is the t.i.tan of the Unseen. I inherited some of his skills, like the ability to move as a shadow, to hide what's in plain sight from being seen."

"That's amazing."

"Not as amazing as your skill."

"I can't figure out how to use it."

He smiled and motioned me out of the elevator.

The first thing I noticed in the dark room: the scent. I breathed it in and felt like I was melting again like I had in the shower. Amber incense, tinged with exotic smells I couldn't quite name, ignited a fever inside me and made me nearly giddy. I stepped deeper into the room, wanting to experience more of the scent.

"The fumes are like catnip for an Oracle," Lantos said, amused.

"What is it?"

"You know the origins of your kind? How the Oracle of Delphi used to sit over a cavern, one whose fumes helped put her in a trance?"

"Yes. They said she ..." I breathed in and felt like floating away. "... could use it to help her communicate with G.o.ds." I had never felt so good.

"Exactly. They moved those caverns here. What they learned after some time was that the bridge that let her speak to the G.o.ds could be enlarged into a portal that let them walk across it into our world. But the portal must remain open or the G.o.ds cannot access the magic whose source is on their world."

I didn't care. I wanted to lose myself in the smell. It was warm and comfortable, as if I was being hugged all over. "Oh, my G.o.ds! I want to live here!" I all but sang and began to twirl. Ribbons encircled and swirled around me, and I laughed.

"Be careful what you wish for," Lantos warned with a low chuckle. He caught me and wrapped an arm around me to steady my body.

Pressed to him, I grinned, enjoying the sensation of his strong form and the giddiness of the aroma. "Can you feel it?" I asked.

"Not like you do." He grinned down at me. "Do you like it?"

"I love it."

"Good. Now I must show you something you will definitely not love." Lantos scooped me up in his arms and walked with me across the room to a railing overlooking an empty s.p.a.ce. He set me down. I gripped the railing to keep from dancing off into oblivion and waited eagerly, praying it was something as amazing as the Oracle catnip.

Lights flipped on into the empty s.p.a.ce, and I froze.

"Let the catnip calm you," he said quietly. This time, his humor was missing. He leaned into me, keeping me in place against the railing, his hands on either side of mine. "I'd like to introduce you to the current Oracle, Cecilia."

I couldn't breathe for a moment. "No. This can't be real!"

Chapter Seventeen.

There will be killing till the score is paid.

Homer The body if it could be called that before me was straight out of a horror movie. A naked woman was suspended in what looked like an oversized petri dish with wires and tubes running out of her. Each limb had been severed and connected by a tube to the rest of her body, and her head the same. She was in pieces yet alive, glowing with the green ribbons I had witnessed over little-me's head. She was awake, her eyes the only sign she was still alive as she occasionally blinked.

"To keep her alive, they use computers and drugs. She must be kept on the verge of horrific pain, for that is when the mind is sharpest. Her body is torn apart over the course of thirty years, and she remains in the level of pain one experiences when having limbs torn off. Drugs keep her immobilized and her body functioning. Meanwhile, her magic is used by G.o.ds and men to do whatever they wish. The G.o.ds simply need the portal behind her open at all times. Men ... it's never that easy with men."

Behind her were the glowing edges of a portal.

I blinked, wanting to believe I'd been thrust into a dream, that this tortured woman wasn't the fate everyone wanted me to accept. The Oracle's eyes were on me, and I tried to back away, to run, to return to the surface where I wasn't struggling to control the effects of the drugged air.

"Stay, Oracle." Lantos took my wrists and pinned each to my chest, his strong arms defying resistance. "You need to see this. You need to understand."

"Understand what?" I gasped, unable to look away from the woman before me.

That you cannot follow in my steps, came a soft, strained female voice.

"Cecelia is different. Stronger. She was never displaced from her own mind, so to speak. She wrested a piece of her mind and power from the machines the day they did this to her, gathered her strength over the course of thirty years despite the anguish of her existence and five years ago began to act. She started to level the playing field between men and G.o.ds. The portal to the G.o.ds is open, but they cannot move through it. It's made them desperate. It's the source of their fighting. In case they're trapped here permanently, each wants his or her own kingdom to rule over. Ostensibly, my job is to help them, at least until it's my turn to act."

That I could end up here, torn apart slowly, in agony ... I was almost panting and on the verge of panicking.

"Talk to her. She is you, Alessandra. She is your destiny, if you trust Cleon."

Lantos released my hands but maintained one arm around my body as if he could feel my insides quaking and my knees about to give. I placed a hand on the cool gla.s.s separating the Oracle from me.

"Who ... who did this to her?" I asked hoa.r.s.ely. Tears p.r.i.c.ked my eyes.

It is the way it has been for millennia, came the airy voice once more. There is not one person to blame but a tradition accepted as necessary.

"I don't want this." My throat was too tight to finish.

The Old Ways. The time before the G.o.ds became the puppet masters of mankind.

I listened.

I have been dying for two years. I am nearly too weak to hold the portals open, no matter what they do to me. You must leave this place until I am dead. Avoid capture. Trust carefully. Act faithfully. Our power comes from this world. Once the G.o.ds are cut off, you can execute them. One by one.

A trace of fury was in her thin voice. Her eyes closed, and I sensed more than saw that she was weakened by the speech.

I trembled in place. How could anyone do this to someone else? How could anyone think of doing this to me? I no longer questioned why Herakles drilled me so relentlessly. He wanted me to have a chance to avoid this. He wanted me to survive.

He knows this is my fate. The second secret he kept from me was as d.a.m.ning as the first, and I began to crumble. My emotions were spinning out of control once again, egged on by the amber scent wresting control of myself from me.

"Oh, G.o.ds," I whispered. Monsters, my forest, betrayal ... nothing compared to this moment, when I was finally able to see my fate, when the secret no one wanted to tell me revealed itself at last. "We have to save her. We have to get her out of there!" I was vaguely aware of the hysteria in my voice, vaguely aware of struggling against Lantos and him trying to speak to me. "Let me go!"

But he didn't, and I began to cry, overwhelmed. I collapsed against the stranger who dared show me my fate. His arms went around me, and he hugged me to him tightly. Aside from Adonis, I'd never been touched like this by a man but I liked it. I liked his strong frame, his masculine scent and the sense he could support me.

It was hard for me to cry for long with the catnip pus.h.i.+ng me higher. I began to lose some sense of reality, to slide into a state of heightened dreaming, and calmed, clutching Lantos' suit jacket.

For all I knew, he was going to be the one to strap me down and flip on the computers that would tear me apart. A man with magic like his had to be powerful. I was no closer to knowing who to trust, or what to do, than I was when I left the forest with Niko.

"We must go before you are missed," Lantos said quietly. "Do you understand that this is what Cleon wants? What all the people attending your little party really want for you?"

I couldn't answer. I eased away from him without looking up, embarra.s.sed to cry in front of someone else.

"Do you?" he repeated, gaze intent.

"Y...yes." And I did. Cleon had admitted this much already, only I hadn't known exactly what it meant to follow the path he wanted. "What do you want?"

"Later." He winked. Stabilizing me, he kept one arm around me and as we walked to the elevator.

Moments later, we emerged into the cool night. The Oracle catnip wore off quickly, leaving me with nothing to dull the horror of what I'd seen. We started back through the garden to the soiree. I paused when we reached the fountain and tugged free of him.

"I can't go back there," I said, eyes on the happy people at the soiree.

"You need to play your part, pretty girl." He tipped my chin up.

"Do all of them know about ... her?" I asked.

"Every one of them. They are counting on you a.s.suming your place so things can return back to the way they were before Cecilia began to fight back."

"And you?"

"I'm the son of a t.i.tan. There's no love between the Olympic G.o.ds and t.i.tans. I want to see Cecilia succeed in disrupting the order of things forever. I want the G.o.ds dead or at least, expelled from here and to restore my place with my father and the rest of the t.i.tans."

"It can't be that simple," I retorted. "Everyone I know has another side to who they are."

"You're learning how deep and murky the political waters are." He rested a hand on my arm. "Come on, I'll walk you back."

I shook him off. "Why in the name of everything holy do you think I'm going back there?" I demanded.

"Because if you let them know you know, they'll strike with force and speed even I can't counter. They'll have you pinned to that wall the way Cecilia is before you can blink." He moved closer, voice lowered for my ears only. "Right now, the elite are celebrating having found you. They will let you enjoy what they believe to be the last few days of your life in peace, if you play along."

My heart was racing. What he said made too much sense.

"Come with me," he said and offered the mask. "Play the game."

"I hate games." I gazed into his sparkling eyes. After a moment, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the mask and slid it into place to cover eyes red from crying.

Lantos took my hand with a wink and began walking back towards the soiree with me. He replaced his mask as we walked.

Every step was like being on a death march. I wanted to cry again, to break out my knife and ram it through the hearts of every person present who wanted me tortured and held for the rest of my life in misery so they could retain their fortunes. On the verge of hyperventilating, I allowed him to pull me towards the party and struggled to regain some sort of balance between my reason and emotions.

"Lantos?" I recognized Cleon's voice. "My apologies, Alessandra. He's known to be improper with women despite the t.i.tle."

"t.i.tle?" I managed to speak without screaming.

"Supreme Priest."

Wrenching my hand free from Lantos, I glared up at him. I was tired of surprises, of the two-faced b.a.s.t.a.r.ds weaving in and out of my life. Lantos was grinning again, and I couldn't even begin to fathom how he was the son of a t.i.tan a sworn enemy of the G.o.ds in the highest-level priestly position in the government.

But it fit him. He laughed at all the world and the fools who appointed him the representative of the G.o.ds. He was perfect for the role, the ultimate double agent. He hadn't shown me the Oracle out of a sense of compa.s.sion but to make me distrust Cleon.

"You're the one who sent us to the arena!" I exclaimed.

"I have a bit of a temper," he admitted. "I placed my one chance to task you in the hands of the man I trust more than myself, and he failed me." He shrugged. "But you survived." He offered another smile. "No hard feelings."

"No hard ..." I started to repeat in astonishment before stopping myself. Cleon was watching us closely. "I need to rest."

"Your time at the arena must have been draining," Lantos said.

"Yes."

"I would be happy to escort you home," Cleon said.

"Thank you." The words sounded forced even to my ears.

My mind was too busy for me to attempt small talk. I wanted to scream, and it was hard to prevent myself from racing ahead. Trailed by the entourage, Cleon was quiet, and he stopped at the doorstep of my villa.

"I took the liberty of booking an appointment for you tomorrow afternoon."

I was about to tell him to go to Hades and take all his rich friends and Niko with him, when he continued.

"The Silent Queen is eager to meet you."

Since seeing her on the television during her first appearance, I'd been intrigued by her. I was afraid to learn what she wanted with me but I was also interested in seeing her in the flesh.

"Thank you," I said once again. I stepped into the villa and closed the door behind Leandra.

Ripping off the mask, I flung it and the sandals and sprinted to my room, no longer able to bear being calm and still when I wanted nothing more than explode. I closed my door behind me and wiped my tears, crossing to the open doors of the balcony. Moonlight spilled into my own private garden and lined the flowers with silver.

All this was mine until the day they decided to tear me limb from limb. I shook with emotion and exhaustion.