Omega Series: Omega Part 32

"She's never spoken since."

I said nothing, overwhelmed by the idea I'd let a little girl suffer for twelve years. I'd dealt with Phoibe as the queen, neither of us knowing who the other was. As a child, she knew only my Mismatch form and I had been forced to forget everything about her.

The protective instinct surging inside me was the same I felt for Alessandra. It had first emerged in the responsibility of a ruler charged with the welfare of his people and was later tempered by my duty as a stone guardian of a temple. Ingrained into me, I didn't understand its source and strength until this moment.

"You were hurt. Lantos saved you. Your memories were likely deemed ... dangerous," Artemis said, pulling me from my thoughts.

Lantos wiped my memories. I saw these images, too, of him erasing my mind as I lay helpless and dying beneath him.

"You swore once to serve me."

"An oath that turned me to stone." I faced her.

"The oath to me did not do this. Your word was given to fight a battle on my behalf."

I was struggling to contain the beast side of me that wanted to fly, to lose itself in physical sensation.

"Lantos is your friend. Your master. But he's not your ally when it comes to a particular issue."

"What exactly would you have me do to fulfill my oath? Kill him?"

"No. I'd have you protect Alessandra."

"Alessandra." Another thought occurred simultaneously. "She can save them!" I motioned to the members of my Bloodline trapped forever in stone.

"Not yet."

I paced. "Then our purposes are aligned. Protect her so she saves my kind."

"Protect her so she saves all peoples."

Anger was crowding out my surprise. The G.o.ds and their priests had cursed me and every ruler of Greece for ten thousand years. What did I care for her cause? If I protected Alessandra, it was because she had truly acted out of a desire to help me and in doing so, had lifted the curse on one monster otherwise doomed to an eternity in stone. If she did it once, she could do it again and stop this nasty curse that imprisoned feeling, thinking, sensing men and women in stone.

"I don't care about other peoples," I said at last. "I owe them nothing."

"And Lantos?"

Lantos wasn't bad. He was driven and desperate enough to use Alessandra in a way neither of us wanted simply to reach his end goal. Without my ability to strategize, he looked for the quickest method to succeed, no matter what the risk and cost ultimately was. Erasing my memory ... sending me after Alessandra when he knew what she was to me ... they were the means to his end. I didn't fault him for doing what he felt necessary, but I did fault him for his insistence earlier this day that Phase Two was the only option we had.

"He's a misguided friend," I replied. "One whose purpose no longer serves mine."

"I hear the voice of the ruthless prince of Greece you once were."

I touched my forehead. The familiar headache was back. "That man is dead, his brashness tempered by four thousand years trapped in stone. I have no desire to become him again."

"But you may need to if you are to take your place in this prophetic end of times."

I lifted my head, liking our discussion less and less. "Alessandra is the Oracle. I'm nothing to the Triumvirate, and Phoibe is the current heir to the Bloodline and crown. What place does a rogue monster, awoken by the good humor of Tyche, hold in prophecy?"

"The place beside her. I don't need to tell you this. You've felt it since you became reacquainted."

What I'd felt had been too unclear for me to understand, except that I knew I couldn't let anything happen to Alessandra. How deep that dedication ran, whether or not it was more than grat.i.tude and fidelity for her rescuing me, I didn't know. But I suspected it was more than I was ready to handle at the moment. "You're wrong," I said.

"Then let me prove it to you." Artemis sat on the back of one of the stone creatures. "Do you remember your real name?"

"Of course. It's ..." I stared at her. I recalled every moment of my life before being stone, every military campaign, every slave I slept with, even the names of politicians I'd ordered a.s.sa.s.sinated and my forefathers for a hundred years before me. Adonis was a name given to me when two police officers found me in an alley shortly after Alessandra awoke me.

But it wasn't my name. Not originally at least.

"Your name is written on a plaque buried beneath the beach where you turned to stone, a memorial of sorts to the great warrior prince," Artemis said. "Go there. Find it. Tell me what else is written. When you see it, you will understand."

Usually it was me who toyed with others, but the G.o.ddess was having her day or perhaps, more accurately, her latest day the past four millennia to play with me. I didn't like it one bit.

And I didn't have a choice either. If I wanted to know what secret she hid, I'd have to do as she said. "What of Alessandra?" I asked uneasily. "She's not safe here."

"No, she is not, and I fear her fate will become much worse soon. Like you, she needs to learn. Those lessons will be painful."

"Then I'll stay."

"You can never truly help her if you don't find the plaque."

I clenched my jaw. A G.o.ddess was offering to help me for reasons I didn't understand. This same G.o.ddess was the only one rumored to be trapped on Earth who hadn't spoken to Lantos. And she wanted me to help Alessandra, the person who could awaken the other members of the Bloodline and perhaps prevent Phoibe from being turned into a temple guardian.

My personal feelings held no place in this discussion. I detested being manipulated or lied to. I hated being sent away from the action knowing full well I left Alessandra in danger.

"I have guided you the best I can the past few years," she added. "Like Mnemosyne, I have spoken to you as well."

"Through Mrs. Nettles?" I asked. The double possession. The sense that Mrs. Nettles was two people living inside her, one of which only responded to flashy items. The other was wiser. Different. "I wish you all would leave her alone." I had no way of knowing if my long time companion experienced pain when overtaken by a G.o.ddess, and I loathed the knowledge I'd been spied on.

"The faster you go, the faster you return," she baited.

"I will do it for them," I motioned to the statues, "and for her. Not because I gave you an oath."

"Very well."

My head snapped in the direction of Alessandra's villa, and my body went rigid. It wasn't yet comfortable to feel what she did, despite teasing her about it. Fear slid through me her fear followed by her pain.

Without saying another word to the G.o.ddess, I leapt into the air.

Chapter Twenty One: Alessandra.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

Alexander the Great It happened too fast for me to react.

Hands yanked me out of slumber, bound and gagged me and tied a hood over my head. Hushed voices were too soft for me to understand, and I was slung roughly over the shoulder of someone I didn't need to see to know how big he was. His jarring gait smashed into my ribs with each step, waking me further. Immobilized, I did what Herakles had taught me and trained my senses on anything I could identify: sounds, smells, touch.

And I tried not to panic. It was one thing to be tossed into an arena with a monster and provided weapons. It was something else to be blinded and helpless. I hated the feeling of being out of control of my own body.

I identified four people by the different pitches of their voices. I was slung into the backseat of a car that peeled out fast enough for me to be pinned to the backseat. Struggling to make sense of what was happening, I heard two men in the front seat. They had bound me with duct tape, and I almost smiled.

Noob move. Herakles had trained me for this, too, for getting out of bindings of almost any sort. Sometimes, I wondered if he knew what I'd face one day or if his paranoia was simply paying off.

Face planted against the seat and seatbelt fasteners jabbing me in the ribs and thigh, I stretched backwards until I could reach the tape around my ankles. With some embarra.s.sment, I realized they'd snagged me in nothing more than underwear and a t-s.h.i.+rt. I wasn't even wearing a bra.

It made me hate them more, whoever they were.

I prodded the tape with my fingers, searching first for any tears I could exploit and second for any single layers that would be easier to rip. I found one, and ripped it. Duct tape was the easiest of all bindings to get free of for the simple reason that it was more vulnerable to tears. A good tug, and it'd rip down the center to free my legs.

The hands would be harder since I'd need leverage. Behind my back, it was almost impossible. I s.h.i.+fted with some effort until I was on my back and began sawing at the tape with the seatbelt fastener. I didn't need a clean cut just a hole in the integrity of the tape.

The car turned several times, and the men were silent. The journey was longer than I expected; they had a specific destination, which could either be good or bad. In my head, I began to drill myself on the different scenarios that might occur, all the while praying for this to be some kind of huge misunderstanding or joke or similar.

The long drive ended about twenty minutes later. The driver parked, killed the engine, and seconds later, the large man who carried me was hauling me out of the back. Stairs came next. Lots of them. The cool night air brushed my exposed legs, and I sought some explanation as to why there were so many stairs outside.

The footsteps of several other men sounded on the solid, cement or stone steps behind us. We reached the top finally. Thank G.o.ds, the giant didn't run again. My ribs were burning from the jolting trip out of the villa. I was slung into a chair somewhere outside.

I listened. It was impossible to count the number of people moving around me, but it had to be more than five or six. Heart throbbing, I began to think my chances of escaping weren't going to be good. I tested the bonds as discreetly as possible, unwilling to act until I could see what I was up against.

The hood was ripped off. A man with crossed arms stood before me, flanked by four more. A quick look around revealed three more lingering in the shadows.

But it was our location that left me the most surprised.

The wall. We were on top of it with the lights of DC lighting up the left side and the darkness of what lay outside on the right. The wall's width was easily ten meters, too wide for me to see what was at the bottom of it.

"This is her." His voice brought my attention back. "She's young. Little."

"She beat a Typhon."

He nodded, considering yet skeptical. I watched their ribbons for a moment, debating how far I'd be willing to go if I had to fight my way out of this. I hadn't yet killed a person, and I wanted to keep it that way.

The men were dressed in mixed combinations of fatigues, jeans, workout gear, and other non uniform clothing, although, every one of them wore the patch of Mama on their left bicep.

s.h.i.+t. Had the Silent Queen been dissatisfied with our discussion? Was this the latest demonstration of duplicity that plagued my world? Of everyone I met, she was my favorite, even if I suspected her beauty hid cunningness characteristic of the other members of the Triumvirate.

"This is it," the leader of the small gang said with pride. "The day we prevent the G.o.ds from destroying the rest of our world. The day we rise up against them and their elite!"

The men around him roared and clapped in encouragement.

In that moment, I didn't blame them for wanting me dead. But I wasn't about to die without a fight, either.

"Remember. It has to look like an accident," he added and motioned to the two men on either side of me. They lifted the chair and tilted it back to keep me in place.

Fear tore through me. I had no plan and no time to make one. They were all armed; I had to risk being shot or beaten or shocked to get to one of them.

Eyeing the edge of the wall they intended to throw me off of, I s.h.i.+fted and ripped the tape around my ankles first and twisted, las.h.i.+ng out at the man to my left with a hearty kick to the throat. He dropped his side of the chair, gagging, and I rolled onto the ground. Springing to my feet, I struggled with the tape around my wrists and instead of fighting, resorted to dodging the attempts of the second man to grab me.

Two more men came forward. I tore through the tape finally but didn't have time to remove the gag. I dived for the man on the ground holding his throat and ripped what weapons I could off his body then danced away.

A baton and a knife. Neither were going to stand up to a gun.

"So she has some fight in her left." Their leader's hand rested on his weapon. "Look, girl, this isn't about you. This is about righting a wrong."

I yanked off the gag. "I ... know that. But there's another way."

"No. There's not. Without you, the political elite lose power and the G.o.ds can't crush us."

Some part of me knew this. I had never not once in my life questioned my existence. Never contemplated suicide or whether the world was better off without me. And I wasn't about to start now. I was a fighter to the bone.

"You're wrong!" I insisted. "There are other ways of " I stopped as one man lunged at me and smashed the baton across the hand holding his gun.

"Instead of a trip to the wall gone wrong, it'll have to be a mugging," the leader said. "Or you can make this easy for me and painless for you and simply jump."

I shook my head.

"Being beat to death is not a quick way to go."

"I'll take my chances," I retorted.

"No guns," he ordered his men. More of them appeared, and I suspected I was about to enter a battle I didn't have much of a chance of winning.

But I'd always try.

The men began attacking. I did my best to use my environment to line them up, so I only faced one man at a time. The wall didn't offer much in terms of obstacles, with the exception of a couple of ventilation boxes and maintenance closets. I maneuvered close to them.

Pure instinct took over. This time, when I let go, it wasn't because someone like Adonis was capable of handling it. It was desperation and fear that drove me. I was alone again to determine my fate, to decide if I'd lie down and die peacefully or if I'd make them take me down by force.

Though well armed, none of them knew much about fighting. At least, not like Adonis, and no one moved like him. They had numbers, but I had speed and skill, and I used both.

Ducking, striking, whirling ... my lethal dance saw the first three sprawling on the ground. The next fell beneath a kick that smashed him into someone else and knocked him out cold, and the next got in one good slash of a knife before he, too, was knocked silly by the club in my hand.

"Enough!" their leader roared at last. He withdrew a gun that didn't quite look normal.

I started to dive for cover when he shot.

It wasn't a bullet but a shock wave of some sort, one that slammed me backwards into one of the obstacles I'd been using to manipulate his men's attack. My head hit hard, and I slumped then caught myself. The world was spinning, my ears ringing.

Too disoriented to move, I braced myself when he raised the gun to do it again. This time, I slashed my thigh as I sailed past the ventilation box. I sprawled onto my back, stunned, the weapons having fallen from my hands.

I stared into the night sky above me, dazed. With a start, I realized it wasn't a carrion bird silhouetted against the clouds above.