by Julia Mills
Watching as the remaining color drained from the foreman’s face, Lee took a threatening step forward just as Bain’s hand landed on his shoulder, keeping him from taking another. The King demanded, “Is she…?”
Frantically shaking his head, the foreman took off his hard hat and wiped the sweat from his brow as he explained. “No, no sir. Nothing like that. She’s…well, it’s just that she’s…”
“She’s what?” Lee roared.
“She’s gone.”
The foreman pointed to the far side of the cavern they had cleared. Achilles could see the main cavity where Juliette’s crew had been trapped and then about sixty feet to the left – another, smaller, almost cube-shaped hollow that still held the beautiful fresh scent of his mate. It reminded him of the tiny pink hebe flowers that grew outside a villa he had stayed in while visiting New Zealand many years ago. He thought of the way the butterflies gathered around the nectar-bearing blooms and decided right then and there that sometime in their long lives together they would visit that exact spot.
Struggling against the hold Bain had on him, Lee growled through gritted teeth, “What. Do. You. Mean?” Giving up his fight, the archer glared. “Where is she?”
Taking a step back, the foreman stammered, “W-w-well…it’s just th-th-that…s-s-she wasn’t th-th-there when we removed the muck.”
That was the last straw. The tiny thread holding Lee’s sanity in place broke and the King lost all control. Ripping his shoulder from Bain’s grasp, he spun on his heel, raced to the spot containing Juliette’s scent and jumped into the hole.
Dirt, rock and mud flew over his shoulders as he clawed at the sludge, roaring Juliette’s name, searching for his mate. Handful after handful, first one wall and then another, he dug until finally the harsh truth crashed down upon him…she really wasn’t there. She was gone….just gone. Not dead…but not there.
Falling to his knees, Lee let his butt hit the ground and leaned back against the cold, wet walls of the cubicle that just a few hours before had held the woman who meant the world to him. Closing his eyes, he brought up his favorite image of her. He could see his Juliette, standing atop a mound of freshly unearthed soil examining an artifact she had just discovered. The setting sun highlighted her ample curves. The wind blew her long dark hair, streaked with golden-blonde, away from her angelic heart-shaped face as her dark eyes glittered with happiness.
That’s what he’d hoped to find when he arrived, not an empty hole and even more unanswered questions. Looking up, he saw Bain crouched at the edge of the hole. Shaking his head, Lee sighed, “He’s right. She’s just not here.”
Nodding, his brother said, “But something else is and if you had not been throwing a temper tantrum you would have seen it.”
Trying not to jump out of the hole and throttle the other King, Lee ignored the comment about him throwing a temper tantrum and asked, “Tell me, oh wise one, what did I miss?”
With a single raised eyebrow, Bain pointed to the farthest corner and replied, “That, a dagger.” Then with a satisfied smile, “Looks old, huh? Maybe like something we’ve seen or maybe even used before?”
Getting to his feet, the archer rolled his eyes, “No need for sarcasm. I admit to losing my cool but dammit…” He stopped talking, unable to continue and just too tired to care about anything but finding his mate.
Bending down to retrieve the dagger, he wiped the blade on the material covering his arm, and then moved to his shirttails when his sleeve was covered in muck. The bronze began to hum. Magic filled the cavern and with his enhanced vision he immediately recognized the light of the gods radiating from the tarnished metal.
Spinning in the mud, he almost lost his balance as he held up the dagger and looked at Bain. “Son of a bitch, you were right. The gods have been at it again.”
Reaching to help him out of the hole, Bain reassured, “At least you know she is alive and that you can get her back.”
“True. But for how long and at what cost?”
Chapter Five
Going from a hole in the ground to the clouds above Mt Olympus gave Juliette little to no comfort. Not only was being sucked through time and space a major pain in the ass, but it also left her with a hell of a headache and a woozy stomach that the enchantment and mysticism filling the air only exacerbated.
“Leave it to the gods to screw up paradise,” she scoffed, climbing to her feet and stretching her limbs. “At least I’m out of my five-by-five cell.” She smiled, “But now I’m talking to myself.” Rolling her shoulders, she added, “Which considering who I could be talking to is not such a bad thing. At least I’m nowhere near the Pantheon.”
Juliette thought about all her mother had done to get her away from the home of the gods and everything she herself had done to be a ‘normal’ human through all her lifetimes and sighed, “Sorry mom, I tried. Just when I thought I was out, they sucked me back in.” Laughing out loud at her reference to the Godfather trilogy, three of her all-time favorite movies, the demi-goddess bent over and touched her toes before taking in her surroundings.
Drawing on her dormant, seriously underutilized god powers, Juliette let her enhanced senses slowly reach out across the atmosphere. It didn’t take long for her to confirm that, at least for the moment, she was completely alone and nowhere near the gods.
“Well, I guess that’s something to be thankful for,” she snorted, stepping forward. “Now, to figure out where I…” Unfortunately, the demi-goddess never got to finish her thought as she bounced off a very strong magical barrier and landed with a loud, “Oomph,’ on her already sore derrière. “Oookay, guess whoever brought me here would like me to stay put. Since I’ve never been one to follow the rules, let’s see what I can do about that.”
Getting to her feet, Juliette focused the power awakening deep within her from being back in the land of her birth and imagined a large red ball of swirling energy floating in the air before her. It took a few minutes but her vision became a reality. Her powers had come back to her as if they had never been forced into dormancy all those many years ago.
Using her hands, she gently pushed the mystical sphere towards the shimmering boundary, now visible with her enhanced sight. Slowly at first and then gaining speed, her magic sought out its opposing force like a magnet to metal, one positive, one negative, irrevocably attracted. Sparks flew as one metaphysical mass met another. Brilliant shocks of bright, white light lit the air above her as lightning shot in all directions. The smell of ozone burnt her nose while heat, dark and oppressive, bit at the exposed skin of her arms and legs.
Spreading her feet to shoulder width apart, the demi-goddess planted her feet and bent her knees while summoning her goddess given strength to stay upright. Her limbs shook. Sweat dotted her upper lip and ran down her spine. Her head pounded from the extreme exertion it took for her enchantment to battle its opposition. Static electricity filled the air as her long dark tresses floated in the air, while the two mystical forces roared and snapped with a readily combustible power.
Juliette gasped as the pressure from the cataclysmic collision reached epic proportions, sucking the air from the atmosphere. Holding her breath, she poured every ounce of strength she had left into one final push. The shimmering wall of her cell bowed away from her fiery ball of power. The ground beneath her feet shook. A roar of thunder reverberated off every surface immediately followed by a loud pop and the demi-goddess found herself once again bouncing on her butt, this time with a loud exclaim of, “Son of a bitch!”
Several long minutes passed while Juliette simply sat where she’d landed and enjoyed being able to breathe freely once again. All too soon, her curiosity and her temper got the best of her and she was back on her feet, assessing the situation and trying to figure out who had chosen to save her from the landslide, only to lock her away in a magical cage. Walking the boundaries of her cell several things became clear.
First of all, there was no blasted harp music. Juliette could remember her f
irst and only year on Mt Olympus like it was yesterday. Being a demi-goddess, she had grown and matured at an exponential rate and thus had many memories of her brief time with her mother in the land of the gods. Most were happy and she held them close to her heart, along with their brief encounters throughout the centuries, but the constant and incredibly irritating drone of heavenly strings being constantly strummed was one she had never looked forward to reliving. There was just something about it that set her nerves on edge and made her want to run screaming from the room.
Thinking of running brought back images of the many days she’d spent playing with the servants’ children as her mother attended to her daily duties taking care of the other gods and goddesses. Juliette thought about how many times they had splashed in the crystal-clear rivers that flowed freely throughout the Pantheon’s kingdom. She missed the beautiful floating flowers and the fish of every size, shape and color whose scales shimmered and shone as the rays of the sun touched their glistening bodies.
It was then she realized nothing around her was shimmering. There was a definite lack of all things golden and magnanimous. No portraits hung on the walls and no statues cluttered every available inch of floor space. It was as if the gods never even visited the place she’d been dumped in.
Climbing to her feet for the second time, Juliette carefully walked the perimeter of her prison, looking for any weaknesses or means of escape. “I probably should’ve done this before trying to use my powers. You’d think at two-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-two, give or take a hundred years, I would know better than to leap before I look.”
Shaking her head at her own impatience, the demi-goddess groaned when she failed to find even one tiny chink in the magic keeping her contained. “Well, hell, what am I going to do now?” She mused, flopping into the chair in the corner and throwing back her head to look at the transparent ceiling overhead. “Lookie there, I have a view,” she grumped. “I guess it’s the least my captor could do.”
Trying to think of who would want to kidnap her and right on the heels of that, why anyone would want to kidnap her, Juliette thought about Lee and immediately tried to contact him. Chastising herself for not thinking of him sooner, she focused on the ever-present image of him that stayed permanently embedded in her mind and called out, “Lee? Lee, are you there?” Waiting a few long seconds without a response she added, “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Sitting upright and massaging her temples, she poured a bit more power into the connection she shared with her King and spoke again, “Achilles? Please answer me.”
Although pleading had never been her thing, she put everything aside when it came to her mate. She had watched him for so many centuries, waiting to be reborn into the lifetime where they would finally be together as Destiny had always intended, that now was not the time to stand on pride. Smiling to herself, she remembered the first time she’d caught sight of him trying to act coy across a tiny street fair outside of Manaus, Brazil.
She had just graduated summa cum laude with her doctorate and had been given the prestigious honor of being in charge of a dig looking for the remains of the Fort of São José do Rio Negro in the center of the Amazonian rainforest. Her crew had been so supportive, working day and night for weeks uncovering centuries old relics from the indigenous tribes and even proof that the area had once been called the ‘Heart of the Amazon’.
Receiving the news earlier that day that their findings were to be published in the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Magazine, Juliette decided everyone needed a break and after cleaning off the several layers of dirt and muck covering their bodies, she and her crew headed into Manaus for the yearly Festival Floclorico de Amazonas or Amazonas Folklore Festival celebrating the city’s birthday.
Eating some of the best food she’d ever tasted, drinking Caipirinha – the national drink made with Cachaça, sugar and lime- and dancing until she thought she would fall down, the demi-goddess had spotted her errant King nonchalantly watching her every move from across the dance floor. Her mother had told her all about the Kings of the Blood and the code of their kind during many of their brief visits every hundred years, so she knew Achilles was breaking the rules by being that close to her, but had to admit it felt too good that he was as affected by the pull of their bond as she was.
Juliette knew it was up to her to go to him when the time was right and admitted to herself there had been several times over the years since her recent rebirth that she’d contemplated doing just that. However, in this lifetime, the last one she would have before becoming the mate of one of Zeus’ mighty warriors, the world had finally caught up to the demi-goddess’ aspirations for an education and a career and she felt like she’d be doing herself a disservice if she didn’t at least try to fulfill some of the dreams she had carried throughout the ages.
All of her other lives had been in times when women were little more than possessions, condemned to keep the home fires burning while being barefoot and pregnant, neither of which Juliette ever truly aspired to be. She had faith that being a mother would be an absolutely amazing event in her life and would come in its own time but she also wanted to put her practical knowledge of the past with the theoretical knowledge of an advanced education and make real strides in archaeology. So, that was what she had done but that didn’t mean she couldn’t tease her King just a bit.
Pulling her assistant, Gerard, onto the dance floor, Juliette made quite a show out of teaching her very gay, very taken friend to salsa dance. She could feel Lee’s jealousy, had laughed out loud when he took several steps towards the dance floor before cursing aloud and resuming his spot at the bar, partly hidden by a large banana plant.
Laughing out loud, despite her imprisonment, Juliette went right from that memory to another and then another, all centered around Lee’s attempts to ‘watch over her’ until the time came that she would seek him out. Each time she had known he was there and every time she’d been sure to put on a show.
There had been times when she wondered how Lee couldn’t tell that she, like him, was immortal but as with all things godly, Juliette could only assume that Zeus’ master plan took every possible situation into consideration. She figured he had made contingencies for even her unique circumstance. As time went on, it became harder and harder to resist Achilles. Not only was he handsome beyond words, but there was no denying Destiny and the pull of one’s mate to another.
It had become such a distraction after Lee’s impromptu appearance in Egypt that Juliette had decided after her next dig she would seek him out, tell him all about who she was and they would finally begin their eternity together. Of course, all the planning in the world can’t beat dumb luck or the interference of a god. Sitting in a heavenly prison without a clue of her crime had most definitely not been in the plan.
With no answer forthcoming from her King and having reached the end of her proverbial rope, Juliette, jumped out of the chair, marched to the middle of her cell and screamed, “Who in the hell are you and what in the hell am I doing here?”
Her voice echoed off not only the walls of her prison, but also down the empty white halls that radiated from her position like rays from the sun and back to her without the slightest impediment. “I like my alone time, probably more than most, but this shit is driving me mad.” Pacing back and forth, waiting for an answer, she tried to think of other ways to use the power inherited from her mother and added, “I can only imagine how freaked out Lee must be.”
With no answers coming to mind, Juliette returned to her chair in the corner, sat back down and began to meditate. It had been one of the lessons Hebe had taught her over the years. The demi-goddess had been having trouble controlling her god powers and the Goddess of Youth and Beauty had been able to teach the young Juliette to look inward, calm her spirit and focus. It had been a lifesaver more times than the demi-goddess wanted to admit. Being impatient and hot-tempered didn’t work well when her life depended upon keeping her god powers and magi
c under wraps.
Taking long deep breaths and picturing the Meadow of Orchids on Mt Olympus, her favorite place of all times, Juliette let go of all her anger and frustration and focused on the enchantment keeping her captive. She looked for a signature, or a sign of the power’s origin, remembering from her youth and her advanced studies in mysticism that each user left a trace of themselves in their magic.
Finally, after several hours of searching, a sense of familiarity pricked at her senses. She knew beyond all doubt that she’d been in the presence of the person wielding this particular power before. It was more than magic, it was godly power, from not just any god, but one of the Pantheon. Just a little farther and an image began to form in her mind.
First came the glitter of gold, then the shadow of a man so large he could block out the sun, immediately followed an influx of the raw, destructive need for battle. Juliette’s eyes popped open as she sprung from her chair, slammed her hands on her hips and bellowed, “Ares, you stupid son of a whore, what are you playing at? Show your face before I demand an audience with the Father of the Gods and invoke his retribution for the wrongs you have inflicted upon me!”
Gasping for air, Juliette counted to ten before again shouting, “Ares, I swear to the entire Pantheon that I will go directly to Zeus if you do not show your face this instant.”
The demi-goddess knew she was playing with fire and more importantly talking shit. She was only a halfling who had been away from Olympus for more centuries than she wanted to count. If Ares wanted to reduce her to a greasy spot with the snap of his fingers, she had no doubt that he could do it. But if ridding the world of her was what the God of War had wanted to do, he could have and most definitely would have done it already. The heavens knew he had thousands of years to take his best shot and hadn’t, as of yet.
No, Juliette had to believe the fickle, asshole of a god was up to something, something that would in no way bode well for her and probably not for her mate either. Early in her first lifetime, the demi-goddess had adopted the philosophy that the best defense was a good offense and since her bastard of an uncle, the same one holding her against her will, had made sure she remembered every minute of every one of her lives, she always stuck to the same rule.
