Warrior Ascended

by Warrior Ascended (lit)

  He felt Ava’s calming touch on his forearm, amazed that something that simple could feel so good.

  “Your twin?”

  Kane brought the rest of them up to speed on what they’d discovered. The paperwork had matched what he and Brody carried. They’d even looked at security footage and seen someone who looked just like Brody coming into each museum and retrieving the stones.

  “Is that a power you have?”

  “What, Ava?” Quinn was the first to respond, sharp interest in his tone.

  “Morphing into another person. Is that a skill you all have?”

  Lots of head shaking and a few nos.

  “Is it a skill Enyo has?”

  Brody looked thoughtful. “Theoretically, if she wanted to, she could try it. But granting a power like that would be a huge drain on her resources.”

  “But why?”

  “It all goes back to the basic laws that govern our bodies. The energy that makes up our life force. Everything lives in our life force. Therefore everything must balance. If Enyo gave that power to someone else, she’d have to give up something of herself.”

  For the first time since this all started, Ava felt the loss of time as it slipped away.

  If they were fighting an enemy who could take the form of anyone, they’d never catch them.

  “Well, one thing’s clear,” said Brody, interrupting her thoughts.

  “What is it, Talbot?” Quinn’s sharp gaze immediately found Brody.

  “We need to get to the museum and get the New York stone under our guard.”

  Brody ported them into Ava’s office. Ava looked around the darkened room, the place she’d spent so many endless hours of her life, and barely recognized it.

  It was a part of her old life.

  A life she wondered if she’d ever get back to.

  Or if she even wanted to.

  Without any time to analyze what they were doing, Ava and Brody took off at a run for the gem wing. “I’ll know, Brody. I’ll know if it isn’t real.” She shot him a goofy smile. “Clearly, my chosen status can come in handy from time to time.”

  They ran around a group of schoolchildren, several nannies and their charges, and a businessman or two before they hit the gem wing.

  “Take it easy, Ava. It won’t do us any good for you to run up to it and pass out. Here. Take my hand. That will mitigate the effects.”

  As his strong fingers closed around her own, Ava felt a warmth suffuse her. This was real and oh so right. She’d finally come home.

  They walked up to the stone, waiting their turn in line. From the corner of her eye, Ava could see Brody’s furtive glances as he tried to identify if anyone suspicious was already there waiting for them.

  When he gave her a reassuring hand squeeze, she figured they were clear.

  Three people to go. Then two. And then she and Brody stood before the case.

  Had it only been a matter of hours since she’d last stood here?

  “You ready?”

  “Yep.” She nodded, squeezed his hand one last time and then let go.

  Ava waited. Waited for the writhing snakes and the horrible metallic taste of blood, but nothing came.

  It was a fake.

  “Oh my God, Brody. It’s gone.”

  He nodded, then took her hand and pulled them toward the exit. “Your office. We’ll port from there, away from any security cameras.”

  As Brody practically dragged her the last fifty yards to her office, it didn’t register on either of them until they were through the door that they hadn’t turned on the lights.

  Ava sensed it a moment before she felt it. Dr. Martin had her in a choke hold and had dragged her across the room before she could blink.

  Brody watched in helpless frustration as Dr. Martin dragged Ava across the room and out of his range so he couldn’t port her to safety. A knife glittered in the doctor’s free hand, already wobbling dangerously close to Ava’s body as he shoved her across the room.

  Shit. Fuck. Damn.

  Dr. Martin smiled at Brody. “I can see by the looks on your faces that you’ve finally figured out we have a problem. Bravo!”

  “Who are you?” Ava fought at the arm around her neck, but the slight man held her steady, belying a strength Brody normally wouldn’t have associated with a man of Dr. Martin’s size.

  Brody willed her to be still, even as fiery rage bounced through his system like a caffeine buzz on crack.

  Some asshole has his hands on my woman.The thought ran through his head on a loop, driving him into a deeper frenzy with each playback.

  Forcing the anger back, Brody tried to take account of what he knew.

  The man standing across from him was not Dr. William Martin.

  Whoever was standing across the room was burning a lot of fuel to keep the appearance of Martin.

  The stone wasn’t in the room. Ava’s lucid features told him that, and the fire in her eyes confirmed it. Instead of the fear and horror he’d seen in her previous exposure to the death stone, now there was only the will to fight and claw her way free.

  “Where’s the stone?”

  Martin shook his head. “I think I’d like to play a different game first. It’s a game I like to call guess who.”

  Brody wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He’d waited long enough for answers, and he was going to get them, even if he had to puzzle them together. “Were you in Egypt for the discovery of the prophecy?”

  “I did spend a bit of time in the Valley of the Kings recently, come to think of it.”

  “So it was you who killed Ahmet, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t keep worthless, squealing spies on my payroll. Especially once their family legend about a silly little prophecy is on the verge of discovery.”

  Brody decided to explore that one, see if he could hit a nerve and get a response. “Enyo’s not very fond of anyone who wants to call the shots for her. She knows you were there?”

  Brody saw Ava’s eye flick downward to the crook of the doctor’s arm and realized his diversionary tactics were beginning to work. Dr. Martin’s sleeve, over his elbow, was changing colors. The tweed suit he appeared to be wearing had started flickering at the elbow—tweed to gray T-shirt material and back to tweed again. “She doesn’t control me.”

  “Of course not. A smart fellow like yourself should be calling the shots.” The flickering stopped as the guy’s temper returned to normal.

  “And what about that attack at the cemetery? Who’d you get to do that job? Those guys couldn’t hit the broadside of a fucking barn, their aim was so bad.”

  The flickering started again, and with it the doctor’s pants began to flare between black polyester and jeans.

  Hang in there, Talbot. You just need to get him distracted enough for Ava to move. Distract him a little bit longer.

  “So tell me, were they your men? On assignment for you? And does Enyo know about that job, too?”

  “I told you,” the doctor said, gritting his teeth, “I call my own shots.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “You know . . . ,” the doctor began, his eyes narrowing. With the back of his free hand, he stroked Ava’s hair. He still held the knife, wrapped in his palm with the blade pointing down. It barely missed Ava’s sleeve each time the doctor stroked downward. “I had a brother once.”

  Brody barely heard him through the thundering waves of fury roiling through his body.

  He had to find a way to get Ava out of here.

  “He was younger than I. Weak, too. He never grew as large as I did. Never matched where I was at the same age. My father detested him. Thought he was a little pussy.”

  “Good for him.”

  “No, not really. But I suppose that’s a story for a different day.”

  This guy really was nuts. He knew Enyo liked to use the dregs of society, but this little trip down memory lane was a psychiatrist’s dream.

  “Where’s the stone?”

  “In a safe pla
ce.”

  Ava’s gaze darted around the room as if searching for it. When she’d made a full review of the room, those dark brown orbs narrowed.

  Had she found something?

  But how could she have? She hadn’t shown any reaction to the presence of the stone.

  With a blink, Ava caught his attention again. Her lips formed a silent command: Be ready.

  Before he could give Ava a signal to stay the course, her voice rang out in the room. “Okay, this is boring. The two of you are talking in circles and I really don’t give a shit. Can we get on with it?”

  The tweed to T-shirt ratio increased as the doctor jerked at Ava’s neck. “No one asked you.”

  “Well, I’m asking. In fact, I have one question in particular. It’s been bothering me since you started this. Does it bother you you’re such a pussy that you take orders from a woman?”

  As a strategy it wasn’t the best one, but Brody knew when to take an order. The insult was strong enough and the asshole dropped all pretense of being Dr. William Martin as anger overtook his ability to maintain the disguise.

  As his body morphed into an oversized man with a gray T-shirt and jeans, Ava took her shot, shoving at him in the confusion and breaking free.

  Brody leaped toward Ava, pulling her into his arms, while he maintained a constant visual on the fake Dr. Martin. As the last glimmer of the doctor’s body faded from view, Brody sensed the truth before his brain could process the now-familiar form standing in front of him.

  The last thing Brody saw as he and Ava ported from the office was the face of his dead brother, Ajax, staring back at them.

  Brody dropped them into the dining room with a heavy thud. The shock of seeing Ajax had nearly broken his concentration and they both felt the impact of a free fall upon landing on the floor.

  At least they were away from there.

  “Brody! Who was that?”

  Ava reached for him, but he pulled out of range, moving to pace the room in long strides. He sucked in a deep breath.

  “My brother.”

  “You mean your real brother? But he’s dead. You told me.” She tried to touch him, but he ripped his arm away and increased the length of his stride.

  What was going on here?

  “I’d say he’s clearly not dead. Didn’t you see him? With your own two eyes. Proof, right. Isn’t that what you wanted of me when you questioned my whole life? My entire fucking existence?” Brody’s voice rose with each word until his shouts were echoing off the walls, rattling the delicate chandelier above the dining room table.

  “What you can see with your own two eyes and make sense of. Isn’t that fucking right?”

  Ava tried to touch him again; she wanted to reach out and wrap her arms around his waist so they could hold each other.

  When he didn’t move, she walked closer. Like someone comforting a wild animal, Ava kept her voice low and her movements simple.

  “Please come here, Brody. Let me touch you.”

  When he didn’t move, she thought he’d given in. But by the time she reached out her hand for him, all she felt was a rush of air.

  Brody ported back to the Natural History Museum before any of them could stop him, the righteous fires of hell at his heels.

  His brother?

  What had Themis been thinking?

  Ajax had been dead. He’d seen it with his own eyes. He had seen his mother killed because of it and he himself had nearly been killed by his father because of it.

  The only one who could have brought him back was Themis. Even Enyo didn’t have that power, though she’d no doubt dearly love that little benefit. A shudder ran through him at the thought.

  Nope, this was Themis. And the bitch had done it without ever telling him.

  Talk about manipulation.

  Ajax had already left Ava’s office, so Brody ported again, into Dr. Martin’s office.

  And came face-to-face with his brother.

  Ajax’s features flew through an erratic series of changes, from the face Brody had known well over ten thousand years ago to the face he’d come to know as Dr. William Martin and back again.

  “Well, well, Brody the Meek. Does this visit mean you’ve come back to enjoy a reunion with your big brother?”

  “How could you do this?” Brody wanted to leap across the room, arms outstretched and aiming for Ajax’s neck. Instead, he could only stare.

  How was Ajax alive?

  And how could Brody have spent the last ten thousand years not knowing?

  The rapidly changing visage calmed until there was only Ajax. His brother. The traitor.

  Grief slashed through him, cutting to the bone. His brother? A traitor to their family. To the Warriors. To all of humanity. Regardless of what Brody thought of Themis’s motives, she wished to cure the ills of humanity, not make them worse.

  Clearly she’d been as duped as the rest of them when it came to Ajax.

  “You set us up.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Egypt. The cemetery. The trip to London. It was never Enyo. It was all you.”

  A lascivious grin flashed across those so-familiar features. “Your girlfriend made it so easy. She’s quite a nice piece, by the way.”

  Brody held himself still, the urge to rip his brother apart a living, breathing thing under his skin. But he needed information and needed to know what they were up against.

  The one thing Ajax had never been able to do was keep his mouth shut.

  “Has Enyo done anything? Or have you been responsible for all of it?”

  “You mean besides torturing the real Dr. Martin?” Ajax snorted. “Hardly. You and your boys are always so quick to blame her for everything. She’s not quite the mastermind you’d like to believe.”

  Ajax leaned forward, his hands spread on the desk warmonger style. “She’s quite malleable, actually. Just like you were. Just like Mother and Father. Just like the villagers.”

  His brother had always had a glib tongue. Flattery came easily to him and, when coupled with his legendary charm and rough-and-tumble features, he was given a far wider berth than most people.

  How had he never seen it?

  And as soon as he thought it, Brody realized the truth. He hadn’t had to see it because he hadn’t known. Up until a few hours ago, his brother had been a distant and somewhat painful memory, buried down deep in his past.

  And in one blinding flash of awareness and insight, he’d become a nightmarish present.

  “Which Warrior were you? I never saw you. In all these years, I’ve never even seen you. Not once.”

  “I made sure of it. I didn’t want to see you ever again, so I became Asia’s Capricorn.”

  “Which is a perfect fit. Cool and calculating, a Capricorn lets nothing stand in his way.”

  Ajax grinned, that cold visage twisting Brody’s gut into the same knot it had when he was a small boy. “Not that it mattered, since I wasn’t a Warrior for that long.”

  Realization dawned, winking back to one of their earliest battles when Enyo had picked off a few Warriors, turning them to her side. “You were one of the ones Enyo turned.”

  “I was the first one Enyo turned.”

  “Always an opportunist, I see.”

  “Always, little brother.” Before Brody followed the shift in conversation—before he could even gather the subtle cues in Ajax’s stance—the sharp, pointed edge of an ancient Xiphos went winging through the air to lodge in Brody’s chest.

  Pain tore through him as the knife set his flesh on fire. Great, violent waves of it coursed through his system.

  Ajax smiled again, pure menace emanating off him. “I’m sure by now you realize I added a little something to the edge of the knife? I like to think of it as a little experiment.”

  Brody fell to his knees, his hands scrambling to hang on to the arms of one of the guest chairs in Dr. Martin’s office. “Experiment?” he managed to choke out.

  “Oh yes. I’m convinced the head isn’t the
only way to kill a Warrior. I’ve been experimenting with a few poisons to prove my point. I do hope you enjoy yourself.”

  As Ajax swept from the room, Brody reached for the knife, desperate to pull it out. With shaking hands, he got a firm grip on the handle, the sweat beading on his palms causing his fingers to slip.

  After three awkward, pain-filled tries, he finally felt movement. He felt the slow, sucking slide as the knife pulled free from where it had lodged in muscle, sinew and bone and he felt the agony of the poison as it began to feast on his blood.

  As his vision wavered in front of him, the contents of the room floating on a black, wavy sea, two thoughts consumed him.

  He had to get to Themis.

  So he could get back to Ava.

  Ajax flipped back into Doc Martin mode just before he entered the hallway. The heavy plastic bag swung from his fingers like a bag lunch. Damn, but he really was a genius.

  He wished he could port to the exhibit hall, but the energy required to keep up Doc Martin and porting was too much. He hadn’t managed to maintain both, even on a full stomach and a dirty bout of sex.

  As he walked through the doorway of the exhibit hall, he smiled at the various workmen hovering around the room. They had given him the idea in the first place. No one noticed anything in this room. There was shit everywhere—lunch bags, discarded gum wrappers, sawdust and sawed-off pieces of plasterboard. A small plastic bag stowed under a bench wouldn’t draw anyone’s attention and it’d give him the extra day he needed.

  Sure, it was risky, but worst-case scenario was someone would find it and put it right back in the case, thinking one of the workers wanted to make off with it.

  And he’d just go get it again.

  But here, hidden away from view, Enyo wouldn’t have any fucking idea where to find it. And unless she had all five stones, she didn’t have jack shit.

  He still held all the cards.

  And his hand kept looking better and better.

  Chapter Twenty