“You. Killed. Brotherrrr,” it groaned in a piercing wail that rose in pitch.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “He tried to kill my friend.”
“Sad. Mad. Hungrrrry.”
“It’s Artemis’s fault! We’re her victims.”
The lion shook its mane and let go of my vine. “No victim.”
The shaggy beast jumped around and raced toward Artemis. Before it reached her, it stood on its hind legs and roared an agonizing cry of loss and suffering.
Arrows flew. They took the beast down. The great, sad lion-bull stumbled and fell with a watery whoomph in the bog. The mist rolled over the massive cretan, shrouding it from view.
I clung to my vine, heartbeats away from death.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
My hands bled from the rough vine. If I let go, I’d fall into the bog with the swarm of hydriads waiting to feed unless I commanded the water in time. Death by hydriad or Artemis. Not good choices.
“You won’t give in?” She spread her hands out. Leandro cocked his head at me with a questioning look, as if why not?
I shook my head and closed my eyes, hanging on with my final spare energy and waited for death by witch or tusk. Minutes ticked by like fingernails tapping a table. The air grew cold. My hands slipped again, I adjusted my legs that cracked as they squeezed the rope.
“Perhaps they’ll change your mind,” she said.
I opened my eyes to see dozens of kids packed in wagons making their way to the bog. Their wide eyes and hands grasping prison bars, revealing their fear at what new terror awaited them. My arms shook, unable to hold on much longer.
“Last chance to show your powers or all my slaves die.”
Her soldiers raised their arrows. The hydriads circled, waiting for my decision.
“Why?” I said the one word my energy could muster.
“I’ve been waiting centuries to lead Nostos!”
“Hekate!” I called her out.
She smiled and flung her fingers at me. Blue sparks rippled along the tips. “Yes, I’ve come back. My ashes still had life and blew here. Lucky me to take up residence in the Black Heart Tree. Poor scaredy-cat Queen Artemis should be glad. I lured her weak spirit to the tree. It was so easy to snake my spirit inside her body, and in her body we can rule Nostos. She no longer has to be afraid of the woods … or use her heart to lead.” She glanced at Leandro, but he stared at me without expression.
“How could you make Leandro into your nasty brother?”
“It’s as Artemis wished—and I. Two wishes granted for the price of one. I planted my memories of Cronag in Leandro’s body, but my brother’s live spirit will never return, thanks to you.” She smiled grimly.
“You can’t replace family!”
“Why not? It’s perfect. Artemis can love Leandro like a brother again and I have my brother back.”
“He’s not your brother. He’s my friend!”
“Enough! So what will it be, Oracle? Sacrifice yourself and none die. Don’t and they all die. Then I’ll round up the Wild Childs for execution.”
One for the many.
One choice to make now.
My hands let go.
I fell into the bog of thrashing monsters and swept the churning water and beasts up with my last dregs of power to fling a tidal wave at the enemy. The giant wave crashed over Artemis and her men, dashing them aside like dolls. Screams shredded the air as soldiers rode a river cast through the forest. Some escaped death and clung to branches—Artemis was one of them.
Trembling with exhaustion, I collapsed in the water. Tusks raced toward me in a blur, but instead of being pierced to death, a nudge tossed me in the air. I landed on the back of an agrius beast and clamped a hand to its fur with a renewed surge of energy.
“Agri,” I cried out as he charged out of the bog, stomping on hydriads. We reached the edge and he plunged into the woods. Faces poked out overhead. Wild Childs!
Ash appeared and threw me my bow and quiver I’d left behind in Artemis’s chambers. They meant nothing to Leandro now. I was glad he’d left them there. I caught them by surprise.
“I followed you after I found you gone and snuck in the castle’s passageways. I found them on the queen’s room’s floor. I knew you’d go there to get your orb. And I know how to sneak in!”
She grinned at me. She brought her Wild Child family here to risk everything for the hope of something better. They were betting on me.
Across the bog, Artemis stood with her remaining men. Gray clouds boiled above and the air turned glacial.
Wild beasts came from the woods. Cretans. Agrius beasts. Cadmean beasts. I clung to Agri and begged him to flee but he snorted. “Friends.”
With all of the Wild Lands behind me, I faced Artemis and death across the bog, and Leandro with the bow he’d carved for his son. Could I save him from Hekate’s evil spell before we killed each other? Could I convince her to release Leandro from his spell? There’d be one chance to steal the orb from him.
Through the hoard of warriors, Apollo, Ash, Charlie, and Oak flashed between the tree branches. My heart swelled with the power of friendship. I was no longer alone—I never really had been.
“Free-dom. Re-lease us,” the animals grunted.
Artemis adjusted her sunglasses and swung up on a nearby horse, pushing her men through the dangerous waters. Swords slashed the hydriads. The water churned with red foam. The kids cheered us on from their wagon cages on the bog shore. Agri stomped at the bog’s edge as the other wild beasts raced toward the enemy.
“We’ve got you covered, mon ami!” Charlie yelled down from his tree, shooting arrows as I did. His hair flopped about wildly as his crazed eyes darted about.
Through the misty bog, Leandro headed right for me on his horse.
“Leandro!” Oak’s desperate call rang out to stop him, but Leandro didn’t hesitate and plunged through the water, dodging arrows and wild animals from all sides.
The decimated army pushed us into the woods. The Wild Childs scrambled back through the trees. Agri turned and fled into the woods with me clinging to him. “Keep. Oracle. Safe,” he grunted.
I hung on, peering back at Leandro who still kept coming, his fierce gaze fixed on me. Blue light flew from Artemis’s fingertips as she zapped animals with Hekate’s ancient evil power. We soon left the madness behind.
The air grew colder and snow swirled down. Flakes fell heavier in white gusts, obscuring the battle in the distance.
“Agri, stop!” I pulled on the great beast’s fur, trying to steer him back to help my friends. He slid on snow-covered leaves and skid around. “Agri, go back!”
“Keep. Oracle. Alive,” he said.
“My friends need me!” Then Leandro was upon us. Agri dug his feet in the ground to face the man who’d once been my hero and now came at me like an assassin.
Leandro pulled his horse to face me and we circled each other, my bow armed and drawn back against his sword. He shook the snow off his long hair. The blizzard flung its bone-chilling fingers at me. I shuddered and a flash of silver swung at me. I missed death by inches. Agri lunged at Leandro, who dodged the beast’s snapping jaws.
How could I fight a sword with a bow?
How could I wound the man I loved?
He’d once told me we must pass over what is evident and search deeper for the truth. And I knew the truth about Leandro the lionheart.
I lowered my bow. “Leandro, don’t do this. I know you’re in there. I am the Oracle. I can find a way to bring you back!”
He kept silent, his fierce gaze ensnaring me with his dark mission. “Artemis says you must surrender your powers and die. I will rule by her side as brother and king.”
The blizzard raged, enclosing us. We sidestepped around each other in the blowing snow. A gust of wind blew a clear view open behind Leandro to see my friends take on a group of soldiers from the treetops while an agrius beast nipped at Artemis as she dodged her horse left and right. The window
closed and my friends disappeared in the white.
Snow clawed at my face, throwing sleet in my eyes, and I didn’t see the sword swing—but Agri did. He tossed me off his back and took the knife to his own heart. Leandro’s sword plunged into the beast’s chest as I crashed to the ground.
“Noooo!” I crawled to Agri who lay on his side, panting in distress.
“Be. Who. You. Are.” The great beast’s chest slowed its pumping and fell still.
Leandro ripped his sword from Agri and pointed it at me. Blood dripped down the shaft onto the newly fallen snow, painting a crimson ring.
I knew what I must do.
Fight lion with lion.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
My bones cracked and stretched into beast. My muscles exploded into massive limbs of rock and power. Rough fur rippled along my skin.
Leandro stumbled back, fear cutting his face.
I shook my mane and lunged at him with a great roar, curling back my lips to reveal spiked teeth.
He dodged aside and sliced at me with his sword. It flew past my ear. Snow bashed angrily at us with mad flakes. The pounding of my lion heart pumped loud in my ears. We circled one another. Man and beast.
Slice. Dodge. Slice.
I backed up to a tree and lost my balance. The second I caught my footing, Leandro swung—and so did I. My hefty paw swiped his sword away, but I overshot, slashing his chest with a mighty blow. He fell. And didn’t get up.
My massive knees buckled, and I dropped to Leandro’s side in the snow. He gasped for air, palm to his heart. He pulled away a shaky hand red with blood.
“Kill me now, beast or boy, whatever you may be.”
I became the boy again. Tears ran down my cheeks as I bent over him, the wet snow shooting ice through my clothes that had returned to me. “Hekate came back. Like you warned! She put you under a spell. Fight it, Leandro!”
He couldn’t die. Not now. Because of me.
He shook all over, his hand dropped to his side. “No fight left. I am what Artemis created me to be. Nothing more.”
My tears fell harder. “So much more.”
I pulled my mother’s picture from my wallet, crumbled and worn, and held it up to Leandro. The one photo I possessed of her face forever smiling at me. “My mother. Your wife.”
Something passed across his face. A memory. A spark of recognition. I saw the glimpse of the man I knew but it faded. “I am no one. An instrument of war. My battle is over.” He pulled the orb from his pocket with a grimace and handed it to me. “Use it on me. Quickly.”
He inhaled a deep breath and arched his back. A great groan rose from him. He tried to sit up, grasped my arms, and looked deep into my eyes with pain and regret—a look of the lost Leandro. “Joshua … you are the Oracle … forgive me.” He closed his eyes and fell back.
“No. No!”
Don’t die now!
The snow melted on his eyelashes and cheeks, so white in the cold. I pressed my hands to his chest. It rose once. Rise again! I bent down to hear his breath, but only the shouts of battle and the scritch-scratch of biting snow filled my ears. I thought of the last time I’d pressed my head to his chest, waiting for him to come back to me. The lonely wind screeched around me as I inhaled his chocolate leather smell, wanting to hold on to it—to him.
The battle cries died away and so did my friend.
Ash! She had the Moria plant. There was just one way to save Leandro—become the lion that killed him.
With giant paws, I scooped him up and carried him across the snow as he’d once carried me to safety.
Snow swirled gently around us, then stopped. The sun came out. Through the woods, it was clear my friends won the battle. Artemis and her handful of men hung over the bog from vines lassoed around their waists, handiwork of the Wild Childs who sat in the branches above with arrows aimed. Artemis dangled in the middle, writhing about, unable to free her murderous Hekate vape fingers. Hydriads poked their tusks in the air at the soldier snacks wriggling an arms-length out of reach.
Ash paced the bog shoreline while Oak yelled at Artemis. “Where’s Joshua and Leandro?”
“My brother drove him to the Black Heart Tree where he’ll be cut down forever,” Artemis gloated.
“That better be a lie or Ash here will cut you down,” Oak growled, shaking a fist at her. “The hydriads can feast on your evil flesh!”
Ash stopped pacing and aimed her arrow above Artemis’s head at the vine keeping her from death. Charlie dashed about between the trees calling my name, and Apollo worked to unlatch the wagon cages and free the kid slaves. He’d removed his Wild Child clothing and shone out in his kingly garb.
They all stopped when they saw me staggering along on my two back feet as I carried Leandro.
“Ash! Help!” I roared from my lion chest.
Charlie ran toward me and slid to a stop. “Joshua?”
Why didn’t they understand me?
“The Oracle is mine!” Artemis shook her head, twisting in her vine net. “Help me, Wild Childs! You’ll never need to go to the WC again. I can make it so. Not Artemis but me, Hekate!”
They laughed at her and shook her vine from above, sending the hydriads in a frenzy as they tossed their tusks closer to her. She shrieked and twisted her legs up.
I placed Leandro on the ground before them, careful to lay him on his cloak as protection from the snow, and willed myself to be a boy again. The gasps of my friends cut through the silence.
“Need the Moria plant to bring him back!” I said.
Ash shook her head. “It dies in the cold and loses its power.” She stood fast and looked around. “Maybe Agri can find some elsewhere–”
“Agri died to save me … from Leandro.”
Ash’s face fell and she knelt beside me, tears ran down her face. My own sobs engulfed me as I stared down at Leandro’s still face. Open your eyes!
“If you’re the Oracle, Joshua, you can bring him back,” Oak said quietly.
“Maybe the true Leandro will return to us,” Ash said to me in a broken voice. “He would never have killed Agri, or you.”
But we had no Moria plant to save Leandro. We only had me.
I put my hands on his chest, willing him to wake. I thought of his organs healing inside and his lungs breathing in and out and his heart—his good lion heart—pumping with life. I thought of all his words of wisdom along the way. You must trust on faith. Believe in yourself and you will have the power to be whatever destiny drives you to be.
Destiny sent me here on a lightning road.
I looked up at my audience who watched and waited and believed.
Even Artemis was silent. I felt her hateful eyes glaring at me from behind her sunglasses.
Chapter Forty
I clasped Leandro’s strong hand and pushed his shirt up, revealing the broken arrow scar on his arm that the queen mother had fire branded him with long ago. It pressed against the arrow slave mark on my arm. His brand, a more permanent reminder of his refusal to kill human slaves for the thrill of the hunt. He couldn’t refuse the powerful spell that marked him here, though. Marks on the outside do not always make the man on the inside, he’d once told me. Even with all he’d done to hurt me, those acts weren’t committed by the man inside. Hekate used my hero to take me down. Was her ancient immortal evil so great no one could defy it?
I cried at the unfairness of my friend dying when we’d been brought together again. “By the gods, come back to me, Leandro!”
Fingers touched my arm.
Leandro smiled up at me with his green-blue eyes, and his one eye bluer than the other twinkled in the bright sun that chased the storm away. The air in my lungs seized as I choked with gladness. A rippling murmur ran through the crowd before us.
I took Leandro’s hand to help him up, but he held me down. “I saw all while under the spell.” His voice caught in a tormented whisper, and he clutched my hand tighter. “I had no control. The things I said … the things I did.” H
e looked up at Ash. “And Agri … ”
“I knew it wasn’t you,” Ash said in a quiet voice.
“Hekate did this to you,” I said. “She did it to Charlie too. She’s taken over Artemis and put a spell on you and the soldiers. But how did the spell leave—”
“Death ends it. You brought me back.”
I nodded. He gripped my hand harder. “Thank you.” He glanced at Artemis and her men hanging from the vine. I pulled at him again, but he kept me down. “My wife.”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t begin to express all that boomed in my heart.
“The photo,” he whispered.
I tugged it out. He held it up and stroked the corner with his calloused thumb, then looked at me with shiny eyes. “Your mother. My Dee Dee … you called her Diana. Of course! Dee Dee was a nickname … yet you’re not my—”
I shook my head. “I’d wished though.”
“So had I, Joshua.” He pinched his lips together. “My wife … she loved another. But who?”
“I don’t know.” All my life I’d wished I known, and, until recently, I’d wished my father were Leandro. Wishing didn’t get you much.
He nodded once and stared at the photo again before handing it back to me. “You look like her. How come I never saw it?” His eyes grew shinier, holding my gaze. “She’s dead.”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
His mournful cry cut through the bog. After he’d let it go, he blew out a shuddery breath, staring at the pendant hanging out of my shirt. He reached for it and we opened it together. “My wife … my son.”
His shoulders heaved as a great sob burst from him, raging against the gods. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, it seemed a great peace fell around him and he spoke calmly. “A lost wife and mother. A lost son and brother. Now we have them between us.”
I closed up the pendant and slid it back under my shirt, afraid I’d cry if I spoke.
He squeezed my hand. “We must find our family.”
We now shared a mission to find our missing family. The words floated in my head new all over again. I had a brother!
Joshua and the Arrow Realm Page 18
