Warrior Ascended

by Addison Fox

  Chapter Twenty

  Enyo watched Ajax preen around the bedroom, a length of chain still wrapped around one wrist. He’d ported in a half hour ago, toppling her to the bed as he landed and inside of her before she could scream.

  And then she had screamed.

  Over and over and over again.

  And now she had to put an end to it. For years he’d been an amusement, a diversion.

  Now he was a liability.

  What was it with men? They always betrayed you. Always thought they knew better when, in reality, they knew nothing.

  She had thought sexy, muscle-bound Ajax had been following her orders. But he’d just been trying to double-cross her all along, playing puppet master behind the scenes, chasing Harrison’s niece. One step ahead, plotting to get the power of the stones for himself.

  To take what was rightfully hers.

  Just like her father.

  Always believing he knew best. Always ready with a pat on the head and a conciliatory word. Always manipulating.

  Fuck it.

  She put a little coo in her voice before shooting Ajax a saucy grin. “You’re awfully happy today.”

  “I have much to be happy about, my love. Soon all the power in the world will be ours.”

  “Ours?”

  Ajax slowed his roll around the room, stopping to take a seat opposite her on the bed. “Yes. Ours. I have something for you.”

  “For me?”

  “A present, just for you, lover.”

  Well, this was interesting. She knew him well. If he was taking this tact and was actually about to show her the stones, he had to have an angle. So what was his game?

  The supple leather case he’d arrived with still lay by the door of the bedroom. She watched the long, lean lines of his body as he fetched the oversized leather duffel, then walked back toward the bed.

  The loss of such an outstanding sexual partner would be a shame. It was hard to find someone who had her same appetites and who was such a fine specimen. And such a willing participant in whatever devious activities she could think up.

  But he wasn’t her match.

  In the dark, muted light of the bedroom, she watched as he opened the bag and withdrew three tightly wrapped bundles.

  “There are five stones, Ajax.”

  Impatience tinged his voice as his gaze remained locked on the stones. “I know. But this is a start.”

  “A start, maybe, but none of the stones truly means anything without the others. All are required.”

  With swift fingers, he had the stones unwrapped and laid on the bed before her. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Her gaze ran over them. She supposed so, but she didn’t really care. They were a tool, nothing more. She wouldn’t look at a hammer and see beauty. This was no different.

  The sight of the stones had him breathing hard, just as he’d done earlier when she’d scored marks with her fingernails down the insides of his thighs. He was almost moaning at the sight of the stones where they lay on top of the satin duvet.

  And that’s when she knew.

  Her liability had become a disaster. And there was no waiting for it to happen.

  He needed to be dealt with.

  With swift movements and not a moment of remorse, her fingers found the jeweled handle of the sword she kept between mattress and box spring. Fast came the light rush of air as she lifted her arm to strike, and then the quick slice of the blade as it met flesh. Ajax’s head rolled toward the pillows as his body crumpled backward to the floor.

  As she pulled the stones toward her, she marveled that he’d never even looked up.

  Brody lay on the floor in the corner of Dr. Martin’s office, willing himself to stay conscious. He pictured Themis’s cottage on Mount Olympus, but his body refused to cooperate.

  Refused to port.

  And he’d refused to call Quinn before he’d come back to confront Ajax. Why? He was above backup?

  Why had he fought calling for help?

  And as he lay there in the corner, hard linoleum under his cheek, Kane’s words from the day before came back to him.

  “You want to run the show, Leo. And the moment someone crosses you or tries to do it differently, you get all bent out of shape. We let you work alone for a reason.”

  But he wasn’t alone. He had Ava.

  And he had his brothers.

  With agonizing movements, he dragged his cell from the back pocket of his jeans and dialed Quinn.

  “What?”

  “Quinn.” Brody winced inwardly at the weak-ass voice.

  “Where are you?”

  “Mar-Martin’s off-office.”

  And then Quinn was in front of him, Ava by his side.

  “Why’d you . . . br-bring her?” Gods, he hated the sound of his voice. He hated the vulnerability.

  In an instant he was Brody the Meek again. Except now it was so much worse because the woman he loved had to see him fail.

  Before he could protest any further that Quinn shouldn’t have brought her here, Ava was barking orders. “Themis. We have to get him to her.”

  With a loud sucking noise, Quinn left them, his body on its way to Mount Olympus.

  Brody’s gaze roved over Ava. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t gone haring off like that, neither of us would be here. I was so worried about you.” Ava dropped to the ground next to him and, with the most exquisitely gentle fingers, drew his head onto her lap.

  “Needed to confront Ajax.”

  “No, you needed to soothe your wounded pride. There’s a difference.” Ava continued running her fingers over his cheek in light, soothing waves.

  Although it galled him to admit it, she had a point.

  Before he could acknowledge as much, she continued her monologue. “You really are an obnoxious Leo; you know that? Self-centered. Egotistical. Arrogant.”

  He conjured up a grin. While it wasn’t quite up to his usual cocky standards, he did get an answering smile for his efforts. “You’re stuck with me.” For as long as I can have you, you glorious woman.

  “I suppose I am. It still doesn’t change your need to share things, Brody. With your brothers and certainly with me.”

  Brody felt another wave of pain wash over him. The physical torment of the poison. The mental torment of Themis’s actions. “She never told me.”

  “She who?”

  “Themis. She never told me she turned Ajax.”

  Themis’s voice filled the room. Warm. Knowing. Reasonable. “Well then, maybe we should discuss it.”

  Brody saw Ava’s eyes go wide first, then turned his head to face the goddess.

  Themis’s robes covered her tall and stately body while a sword hung on a belt at her hip. She rarely traveled outside of Mount Olympus with her scales, but he could see the calculating light in her eyes. He’d often wondered if she simply carried them for effect.

  The damn goddess could take everything in with one sweeping gaze.

  Themis nodded her head. “Quinn. Ava. Would you leave us, please?”

  Quinn moved to the door and waited, sentinel-style for Ava. Brody watched as Ava leaned down and pressed her lips to his forehead before disengaging him slowly from her lap.

  As soon as they were gone from the room, Themis bent down, laying a hand on his chest. Immediately, great healing light filled him.

  “What—,” he gasped as the tendrils of pain spun out of his body, through his bone marrow, out of his muscles, through his skin.

  “Shhh. First things first.”

  He knew the moment the poison was gone. All pain receded while he regained full use of his thoughts. No longer disjointed from the agony of the poison, he could think through the situation. Muster up his questions.

  And damn if he didn’t have a lot of them.

  “Why did you turn my brother? You had to have known what he was like.”

  “I was foolish. Drunk on the power of what I’d created, Brody.”

/>   He saw the honesty in her eyes and saw the pain that crinkled the corners when she spoke of those days. “But you are incapable of abusing power that way.”

  A small bark of laughter flew from her lips as she turned away from him to stalk across the small office. “Hardly true. Everyone is capable of abusing power.”

  “But he was dead.”

  “Further evidence of my abuse.”

  “I don’t understand. What made you call him in the first place? I know my brother. Justice and compassion aren’t exactly his hallmarks.”

  “I believed I could make him care. Could make him believe in justice and compassion. I believed my work was invincible.”

  “And then you lied about it.”

  Her gaze remained level on his. “Yes. I kept the information from you, convinced you’d never know. And in the process I put you in jeopardy.”

  “You put Ava in jeopardy. I can take care of myself.” He looked down at the ragged stains on his jeans and T-shirt and ran a hand through his hair—still damp at the crown from where he’d sweated through the poison. Well, it might not be entirely true, but it was close. He could take care of himself. Had been doing so for thousands of years.

  “He has the stones.”

  “Not all of them. Learn what you can about the one you do have. Draw out the knowledge it holds. Prepare yourselves for the final battle.”

  “You haven’t touched more than three bites of my food.” The Warriors’ housekeeper, Callie, hovered above her with the largest bowl of mashed potatoes Ava had ever seen.

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Which is the exact reason you should eat.” Callie added another scoop of mashed potatoes to Ava’s plate, even though she hadn’t finished the first serving.

  Ava smiled as the woman bustled about her. The two of them were alone in the dining room, which had given the Warriors’ housekeeper/den mother/cook ample opportunity to fuss over her.

  Callie set the overloaded bowl on the table, then dropped into a chair. She looked about twenty-two, her long, dark hair nearly overpowering on her five-foot frame, but Ava suspected Callie, like the rest of the Warriors, had stopped counting birthdays long ago.

  Ava had learned two things quickly after she and Quinn had gotten Brody back to the mansion to recuperate.

  First, Callie had been at the Warriors’ compound in Texas until today. And second, the moment she walked back into the mansion, every one of the Warriors had begun to bow and scrape toward her, proving, without any doubt, who actually ran the show.

  Ava was amused to realize this included Quinn.

  Brody was resting and Quinn was working through some test parameters for them to run on the one remaining stone in their possession. The love stone, she was sure of it.

  So she and Callie were all alone in the dining room. Apparently, the woman was letting her inner cook play diva this evening, if the huge pile of plates covering the table was any indication. The Warriors’ housekeeper—if that was even the right term for her—was channeling Paula Deen and Julia Child in a big way.

  Callie pointed at the mountain of starch with the serving spoon. “Come on now. Stop picking and eat.”

  The urge to protest was strong, but the overwhelming feeling of love and safety at being presented with the heaping mass of mashed potatoes had another effect.

  She burst into tears.

  “Oh, Ava, Ava, Ava. Shush, honey. It’s okay.” Callie dropped the bowl and spoon on the table and rushed to her. She wrapped her arms around her, surprisingly strong for such a small woman. “Hush now. It’s okay. You can tell me what happened.”

  As Ava took comfort in the warmth of Callie’s hug, her thoughts took her back—back to days that were easy and warm and golden. Days where she knew she was loved and protected. Days that were buried so far in her past, she wondered that she could even remember them.

  “I was so worried about Brody. What if he hadn’t made it? What if Ajax had truly killed him?”

  Callie hugged her close. “Shhh, now. Brody’s so stubborn and hardheaded, you didn’t think a little worm like Ajax could get to him, now, did you?”

  “But Callie,” Ava half hiccupped, half whispered, into the other woman’s shoulder. “It was so bad. So horrible.”

  “I know. Shhh, now. You’re strong. You can handle this. He’s fine now.”

  Ava knew Callie was right. She knew the immediate danger had passed and, no matter how horrible it was, they were all far more prepared because of what Brody had gone through. With that, came another thought: the whispered remembrance of her mother’s love as she’d stood near the love stone.

  More hot tears rimmed her eyelids and Ava took a hard swallow.

  “I saw my mother.” At the woman’s blank stare, Ava added, “My mother who has been dead for well over twenty-five years.”

  “Oh my God.” Callie shifted back to look at her, made the sign of the cross, then dropped back into an empty chair next to her, taking one of her hands. “Tell me about it.”

  “The stone. The remaining one we have in our control. Whenever I’m near it, I see my mother. The last time it was with me, I had a conversation with her.”

  At Callie’s puzzled expression, Ava added, “With my dead mother.”

  Callie made another sign of the cross. “Did she seem the same?”

  “Same?”

  “As when she was alive.”

  “I don’t remember that well. She died when I was five.”

  “Yes, but from your memories. Did she seem the same?”

  Ava thought back to those moments in Lorna MacIntyre’s office. The warmth that filled her at the sight of her mother. The deep well of love that beat under her skin as Marie Harrison spoke to her, encouraged her, offered her words of wisdom.

  Offered her love.

  “She did. She was my mother, in every sense of the word. In fact, it felt like she was there. Right there with me. What if I see her when we run these tests and she tells me I shouldn’t be with Brody?”

  Callie reached over and brushed a hair off her forehead. “Why would she do that?”

  “We’re a danger to each other. Add to that the whole mortal-slash-immortal thing and we’re a recipe for disaster, Callie.”

  “Nonsense. You must stop being afraid. I can see in your face that you hesitate, but you mustn’t be afraid.”

  Ava tried on a smile but knew it didn’t reach her eyes. How could she be positive? She was a mortal woman. She was going to age and die, relatively quickly compared to Brody’s life span.

  How could this ever work?

  “But how can we be together?”

  “Listen to you. Look at what you’ve accomplished. Look at how he needed you today.”

  Ava thought back to Brody’s anger, before he ported back to Ajax.

  He hadn’t shared anything, then. He’d only shut her out.

  “Stop this talk. You are afraid. And fear creates bad choices. When we fear, we don’t see what’s around us—what’s right in front of us.”

  Shame filled Ava at the thought of her own weaknesses. Her stomach burned with it as more tears pricked the back of her eyes. “The fear is so much a part of me, I don’t think I’d know who I was anymore if I weren’t afraid.”

  “Nonsense. You’d still be you, but the veil that covers your eyes would lift. The sun would shine brighter and the night would not seem so dark.” Callie leaned in, her brown eyes holding dark secrets in their fathomless depths. “Believe me. I know.”

  Ava grabbed her napkin and wiped at her tears. She took a deep, cleansing breath and turned toward the older woman. “So what should I do?”

  Callie leaned forward and laid her hands on Ava’s. The woman’s hands were warm, giving. “Only love. That is what you have to give him. And that will be enough.

  “Now, there are many ways to give love. I suggest you go try one of them. I’d pick one of the fun ones.” Then Callie winked at her before she stood and walked toward the swinging door into
the kitchen.

  As Ava watched her go, the thought again struck her that Callie appeared far younger—and wiser—than her loving but stern attitude indicated. It was as if she were filled with an inner light that burned deep within. She was yet another dimension to the Warriors’ lives, to Brody’s life, and Ava was absolutely fascinated.

  “Damn it, woman. Would you just run the tests and stop fussing?” Brody muttered after swallowing the last of his lunch sandwich.

  Ava turned toward a bank of computer monitors, hollering to Quinn who sat at a matched set in the far opposite corner of the room. She’d specifically chosen this room for its configuration, the long table and even longer room the perfect size for what they needed to do.

  Quinn gave her the all clear. “I think we’re ready.” They were in the museum’s subbasement and she had the London stone on the table. With expert movements, Ava played with the calibration on the equipment from the bank of computers she was monitoring.

  Although she’d kept to her corner since Quinn had ported back from the house with the stone, she couldn’t hide the excitement. Maybe now, they’d have some answers and wouldn’t feel as though they were flying blind, without any advantages.

  Ava breathed her first sigh of relief as a small kernel of excitement popped in her belly. She loved experiments and the opportunity to learn new things always excited her.

  Brody sat behind a lab desk, shoveling a hamburger and fries into his mouth as fast as he could, grumbling again about how long it was taking them to get started. His outburst was exactly what she’d been looking for. It was proof her mother hen routine had finally broken through.

  “We should destroy it,” Brody mumbled around a mouthful.

  “I doubt we could if we tried.”

  Quinn looked up from a counter of computer monitors on the far side of the room. He had the love stone with him, and the distance seemed to be working for both of them. Other than a few random, stray thoughts of her mother, Ava’s mind was sticking to the present.

  “Why do you think that, Ava?”

  “All five of them work in unison. If—and that’s a really big if—they can be destroyed, they’ll have to be together.”