“Keep the flame low,” Jason said.
Alia lit the wick and turned the little bronze key as low as it would go. By the dim light, they could see whitewashed walls reaching up to a blue enamel dome and a packed-earth floor beneath them. Rusted hulks of farm equipment and piles of rotting pews had been stacked haphazardly in the apse, but there was still plenty of room.
“We can spend the night here,” said Jason.
“We’re far enough from the farmhouses?” said Diana.
“I think so.”
“And we’re stopping for the day?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said. In a single movement, she freed the lasso from her hip and slung it over Jason’s shoulders. “Then what exactly are you, Jason Keralis?”
Diana snapped the lasso tight, and for a moment, its fibers seemed to glow in the dim light of the church. Jason stumbled but kept his footing, thrashing at the end of the rope like a fish on a line. Despite what she’d seen on the jet, the reality of his strength still came as a shock.
“Diana!” Alia yelped.
“Oh dang,” said Theo.
“What is that thing made of?” said Nim.
Diana ignored them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you?”
“I’m exactly who I said I am,” Jason said through gritted teeth.
“How did you catch hold of the jet’s wing at those speeds? How did you hang on? What are you, Jason Keralis? Speak.”
Jason gave an angry growl, his muscles flexing, the tendons in his neck drawn taut. But he was no match for the lasso’s power.
“What’s happening to him?” Theo asked, a frantic edge to his voice. “What are you doing?”
“He’s fine,” said Diana, though she wasn’t entirely sure that was so. “The lasso compels the truth.”
Jason grimaced. “I am a descendant of Helen and Menelaus, just as Alia is.”
Of course he was—he was Alia’s brother—but that didn’t account for his abilities. “Another Warbringer?”
“Something…else.” He spoke the words as if they were being torn from him. “I carry hero’s blood. The blood of Menelaus and the Spartan kings before him. My mother and father helped me keep my strength secret.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Alia said. Diana could sense the worry she had for her brother, but the hurt in her voice was clear, too.
“Mom and Dad didn’t want anyone to know,” said Jason. “It was dangerous for all of us.”
“You held back when we fought at the hotel,” Diana said as realization dawned.
“I’ve been holding back my whole life,” Jason snarled. “Now get this thing off me.”
“Let him go,” Alia said. “This is wrong.”
Diana narrowed her eyes but let the rope slacken.
Jason pulled it over his head, casting the lasso away from him like a snake. “What the hell is that thing?”
Diana yanked the lasso back. “A necessity in the World of Man. You’ve been lying this whole time. To all of us.”
“And you’ve been so forthcoming?” He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You come out of nowhere. You shrug off bullet wounds like they’re paper cuts. You can outfight my best security guards.”
“I’ve made no attempt to hide my gifts,” Diana replied. “The secrets I protect do not just belong to me.”
“You think that lets you off the hook?” Jason made a sound of disgust and stalked through the chapel door. He looked back once over his shoulder. “If you want the truth so damn much, maybe you should think about offering it in return.” He vanished into the dusk.
Alia moved to follow, but Theo laid a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe give him a minute. If there’s one thing Jason hates, it’s feeling out of control.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Alia said to Diana. “You shouldn’t have used that thing on him.”
Diana coiled the rope at her hip, using the time to quell some of her anger. Alia was right. Maybe Jason was right, too. But he was also a hypocrite. The whole time he’d been badgering her for information, he’d been keeping his strength a secret.
“Well,” said Theo into the silence. “I guess now I know why he always wrecked me at basketball.”
Alia cast him a skeptical glance. “I’ve seen you play basketball, Theo. He beat you because you’re terrible.”
With great dignity, Theo stated, “I’m good on the fundamentals.”
Nim hooted. “And I’m the queen of the Netherlands.” She glanced in the direction Jason had gone. “It kind of makes sense, though. Alia, has Jason ever been sick a day in his life?”
Alia shook her head slowly. “No. Never missed a day of school. Never took a day off work. I thought he was just…I don’t know, Jason being Jason. Like a cold wouldn’t dare be caught by him.”
“Also, his sweat smells like pinecones,” said Nim.
Alia’s gaze snapped to her. “What?”
Nim blushed and shrugged. “Why do you think I liked his dirty T-shirts so much? He smells like a sexy forest.”
Jason did have a pleasing scent. Almost better than new car. But Diana didn’t intend to discuss it.
Alia gagged. “You’re disgusting.”
“I’m honest,” Nim said with a sniff.
“Well, there’s no way I’m going to stop giving him crap about his cologne,” said Theo.
It was almost fully dark now. Diana sighed. “It would be best if Jason didn’t stray far.”
“I’ll go,” Theo said.
“Great idea,” said Nim. “Maybe you can find a ditch to fall into.”
Alia pulled the parachute-tracking screen from her pocket. “Here,” she said, handing it to Theo. “The screen is pretty bright. You can use it as a flashlight.”
“I wish I could use it as a sandwich. Next time we throw ourselves out of a plane, remind me to grab a bag of pretzels.”
Alia pointed toward the grove. “We have olives and also olives.”
“Maybe we can cook and eat Nim,” he grumbled as he headed out the door.
Nim ran a hand through her black hair. “I would be delicious.”
Diana considered offering to go after Jason instead of Theo, but she knew she wasn’t quite ready to apologize, and she doubted he was ready to hear it. Besides, someone needed to remain with Alia.
At least there was one apology she could make and mean. “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” she said quietly.
Alia blew out a long breath. “I’m mad at him, too,” she said. “I’m just so glad he’s alive, I’m having trouble staying mad.”
Maybe that was part of what Diana resented, that horrible moment of watching Jason vanish, of believing he’d been lost for good. She thought of the soldiers they’d left behind on the jet, of Gemma Rutledge, someone she’d never met, a blond girl in a party dress lying dead beside Nim. She thought of Ben’s chest pocked by bullet holes. She’d never known someone who had died. She’d barely known Ben, and yet she felt the weight of loss pressing down on her, all that courage and easy humor gone forever. Jason was right. Death was too easy here.
They bedded down against the cold, packed earth. Eventually, Theo returned with word that Jason would take the first watch.
“Let him sulk,” he said with a shrug, curling onto his side a short distance from Nim and Alia.
Diana wasn’t quite ready to trust Theo. Once the others were breathing deeply, she slipped out of the chapel and crept silently through the trees and underbrush until she spotted Jason’s shape in the dark. His back was to her, his head tilted up at the stars. He looked like a figure carved in stone, a statue of a hero, still standing as everything around him fell to ruin. Or maybe just a lonely boy keeping watch with the stars. What had it been like for him to hide the truth of himself even from his best friend, his sister?
Diana didn’t ask. Without a sound, she turned and made her way back to the chapel. She lay down beside Alia and let herself fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
—
Jason woke her sometime after midnight. He said nothing, and wordlessly, Diana left to take up the watch as he bedded down on the chapel floor.
The hours passed slowly with nothing but her thoughts and the ceaseless buzz of the cicadas to keep her company, but at last the sky began to brighten, and gray dawn light spilled across the grove below. Diana made her way back to the chapel, eager to begin the day’s journey. She pushed open the decaying door and saw Alia sleeping peacefully on her side, Jason on his back, brow creased as if expressing disapproval even in his dreams.
And Nim crouched on top of Theo, her hands locked around his throat. Theo was clawing at her arms, his face red with suffused blood.
“Nim!” she shouted.
The girl turned her head, but the thing looking back at her was not Nim. Her eyes were hollows, her hair a mane of star-strewn night, and from her back sprang the filthy black wings of a vulture. The image flickered and was gone.
Diana launched herself at Nim, knocking her off Theo and rolling with her over the chapel floor.
“What’s going on?” Jason said blearily as he and Alia came awake.
But Theo was already shoving to his feet, coughing and gasping. He roared and rushed at Diana and Nim.
In a heartbeat, Jason leapt up and seized Theo’s arms, holding him back. “Stop!” he commanded. “Stop it.”
Theo thrashed in his grip. “I’ll kill that little bitch—”
“You should have died in the crash!” shouted Nim, hissing and spitting as Diana attempted to restrain her without hurting her. “You shouldn’t even be here! You’re as worthless as your father says!”
Theo snarled. “Fat, ugly, stupid co—”
Jason snagged Theo’s jaw in his hands and clamped it shut, silencing him forcibly. “Shut your damned mouth, Theo.”
Diana hauled Nim off her feet and slung her over her shoulder, hearing the breath go out of the tiny girl in a disgruntled whuff. At least she couldn’t keep shouting insults. But Nim did not cease her snarling and struggling until they were several hundred yards away in a stand of cypress trees.
Diana dumped her onto the scraggly grass.
“Nim,” said Alia, coming up behind them. “What the hell?”
“I…” Nim panted. “I…” She unballed her fists, a look of horror dawning on her face. Her shoulders slumped, and she burst into tears. “I wanted to kill him. I tried to kill him.”
Alia met Diana’s gaze. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
Diana nodded. Maybe the terror of the past few days had made Theo and Nim more susceptible to Alia’s power, or maybe it was simply the coming of the new moon. Only one thing was certain: They were running out of time.
“We have to find some way to keep them separated,” said Alia.
“You’re not leaving me here,” Nim said, wiping the tears from her eyes.
Alia offered her a hand. “That wasn’t what I was suggesting, you nerd. But we have to do something before you guys murder each other.”
“We’ll just have to try to keep them apart as much as possible,” said Diana.
“Being near you helps,” Nim said.
Alia’s brows rose. “Are you saying that because you enjoy being carried like a sack of flour by a cute girl?”
Nim planted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious. As soon as she separated me from Theo, I could feel my mind start to clear. It just took a little while for the rest of me to catch up.”
“It’s possible,” said Diana. “Remember how you were healthier when you were near me on the island?”
“Okay,” said Alia. “But we have to watch them. I’m not going to be responsible for my friends killing—”
Diana caught a flicker of movement from the olive grove below. “Silence,” she whispered.
There were dark shapes moving through the trees. They were still far enough away that Diana could just make them out, but they were drawing closer, and Diana could only whisper a prayer of thanks that they hadn’t overheard her conversation with Alia and Nim. She needed to be more cautious. They all did.
Diana gestured for Alia and Nim to follow, and as quietly as they could, they traced their steps back to the chapel.
“Maybe they’re not looking for us?” Nim murmured.
“Yeah,” whispered Alia. “They’re probably going to use those guns to shoot the olives off the trees.”
Theo and Jason were seated near the entry. Theo’s eyes narrowed as they drew closer, but Diana laid a hand on his shoulder and some of the tension in his body seemed to ease.
“There are armed men approaching the chapel,” she said.
Jason was on his feet instantly. “Damn it,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”
“We need a car,” said Alia.
Jason shook his head. “What if they’re watching the roads?”
“He’s right,” said Diana. “They may even have set up roadblocks. We’d be better off continuing on foot until we can get farther from the crash site.”
They did their best to hide the evidence of the night they’d spent in the chapel and hurried down the south slope of the hill, keeping away from the main highway, scurrying over fields that offered little cover, through orchards where they plucked their breakfast from the trees, and past a scrubby pasture where a scrawny goat bleated furiously at them as they passed. In a small backyard, they found a clothesline strung with damp laundry, and Nim and Theo exchanged their Keralis Labs shirts for a linen undershirt and a bright-blue button-down.
The previous night, they’d tacked east, but now they moved back toward the coast, where campers and beachgoers might provide some camouflage for their oddly dressed crew. At one point, they crested a series of low ridges and Diana caught a view of the bright waters of the Ionian Sea. The blue was more like her home waters than the sullen slate of the Atlantic, but it was still nothing compared to the coast of Themyscira. She was closer to home than she’d been since she’d crossed into the World of Man, and yet she’d never felt farther away.
As they looked out at the water, Diana was startled to hear Nim say, “Sorry about this morning, Theo.”
Theo kept his eyes trained on the sea. “I’m sorry I called you names. You’re not fat or ugly.”
Nim cut him a glance. “I am fat, Theo, and far too hot for your sorry ass.”
A smile flashed over Theo’s face. “I think you mean my worthless ass.”
Diana couldn’t help but respect their willingness to set their anger aside. She knew those insults must have stung.
They continued on, keeping as much distance as they could between Theo and Nim without losing sight of each other, just in case the reconciliation didn’t take. The situation suited Diana just fine, since it meant she and Jason had to stay away from each other, too. They hadn’t spoken a word since the previous night, and Diana wavered between feeling that was best for everyone and crafting an apology in her head.
She matched her pace to Theo’s. He’d removed his new shirt and tied it around his head, revealing dark freckles on his narrow brown shoulders.
“Theo?” she began.
“Yes, Big Mama?”
She raised a brow at the nickname. “This morning, when Nim was—”
“Trying to kill me?”
“Yes. Did you see…anything odd?”
“You mean like a hideous winged hellbeast?”
Diana didn’t know whether to feel relieved or distressed. “Exactly.”
“Yeah, I saw it,” said Theo. He shivered despite the heat of the sun. “When I looked into her eyes, they were…ancient, and I could feel…”
“What?” Diana prodded.
“She was happy. No, gleeful.” He shuddered and shook his arms as if trying to rid himself of the memory.
“She had wings, black eyes, what else?”
“Wild hair—not really hair at all, like you were looking into the dark—and gold smeared all over her lips.”
Diana hadn’t noticed the gold
on her mouth. Her stomach clenched. “Gold from the apple of discord. That was Eris, the goddess of strife.”
“A goddess?”
Diana nodded, her stomach churning at the possibility. She had been raised to worship the goddesses of the island, to make the proper sacrifices, speak the appropriate prayers. She knew they could be generous in their gifts and terrible in their judgment. But she had never seen a god, and she knew they didn’t make a habit of revealing themselves to mortals, either. “She’s a battlefield god. She incites discord and thrives on the misery it creates.”
Again, Theo shuddered. “It was like there was a chorus in my head, egging me on. I hated Nim. I would have killed her if I had the chance. I didn’t just feel mad—I felt righteous.” He blinked. “And I’m a lover, not a fighter!”
“There are others,” said Diana. “The Algea, full of weeping,” she recited. “Até, who brings ruin; Limos, the bone soldier of famine. The brother gods, Phobos and Deimos.”
“Panic and Dread,” said Jason, catching up to them.
“And the Keres.”
“What do they do, exactly?” asked Theo.
“They eat the corpses of warriors as they die.”
He winced. “Maybe we don’t need to stop for lunch.”
“Is it possible Alia’s power is drawing them?” asked Jason.
“I don’t know what’s possible anymore,” Diana admitted. It was a frightening thought.
She loped ahead to scout the territory before them. She needed to think, and she wanted to be away from mortals for a moment, from their squabbles and hungers and wants.
The landscape here reminded her of parts of Themyscira, but there was no mistaking this place for anything but the World of Man. She could hear the rumble of cars in the distance, smell burning fuel in the air, hear the buzz and crackle of telephone lines. Through all of it, in the pulse and flow of her blood, she could still feel the pain and worry of her sisters on the island. She hated that they suffered, that she’d been the one to cause it, but she couldn’t deny that she was grateful for the connection, for the reminder of who and what she was.
Had she and Theo truly seen Eris? The gods of battle had been the creatures of her earliest nightmares. They were the enemies of peace, more terrifying than ordinary monsters because their power didn’t lie in jagged teeth or terrible strength but in their ability to drive soldiers to the worst atrocities, to drown the empathy and mercy of warriors in terror and rage so they were capable of things they’d never imagined. What if Jason was right and they were coming to the mortal world, drawn by the prospect of war?
Wonder Woman: Warbringer Page 24
