A.K.A. Goddess (32 page)

I drilled my cell phone at the attacker. It ricocheted off his head, distracting him. Lex elbowed him in the throat, then punched him in the face, one-two, and the man dropped. As he fell, his bloody knife threw droplets across the white wall.

Lex bit back a cry of enraged pain as the blade sliced free. He clutched at the gash, stomping viciously downward—

I didn’t have to watch that; I saw a second black-clad figure on the stairs. I lunged forward, vaulted the wrought-iron banister, kicked outward with my swing before he could leap on to Lex. Both feet connected hard with his face. He stumbled.

I landed, crouched, on a wedge-shaped step above him.

Then someone heavy landed on me. Crap. They were coming down off the terrace. The very large, very private terrace.

I ducked under and past this attacker, swinging my foot around, tripping him as I passed, then kicking him from behind. Balance gone, he rolled over the railing and plummeted.

“Mag,” grunted Lex, below me. “Get out.”

Right. I raced upward, flowing under and around another masked attacker in my need to reach the top. I felt him surge up the stairs behind me, saw a fifth figure filling the doorway—

I hit the door hard, knocking it and him backward. From instinct alone, I kicked out at the man behind me. I connected.

I heard the faint clang of him falling against the stairs.

The man on the other side of the door bulldozed forward, his brute strength more powerful than mine. All I had was the ability to use my body as a brace between the ground and the door. I did that, despite the threat from behind which…

Which was ignoring me. Oh no. Lex!

A line of flame traced across my shoulder—another knife, wielded blindly, trying to cut me away from the door. Making a point by squeezing my fingers together, I jabbed at an exact spot on his exposed wrist.

He yelled—and his hand reflexively opened, dropping the knife. Shoulder still holding the door, trembling legs bracing against the floor, I slowly slid downward, reaching for it. My boots were starting to slide, with reluctant squeaks, on the wooden landing. Finally, crouched almost in half, I caught up the weapon with my fingertips. I flipped it in my hand—heavy, a seven-inch fixed blade, serrated at the bottom.

If this was what they’d hit Lex with…

No time to worry. I struck outward from my crouch, through the open doorway, and hamstringed my attacker’s near leg. It felt like slicing a piece of steak. He fell away from me.

I shut, rose and bolted the heavy wooden door.

Immediately, the pounding against it began.

Who had unbolted it? How did it get open? How did they get on the roof? Did Lex know about them all along?

Darting to the top of the stairway revealed that, if Lex had known, he’d been murderously misled. They had him down. One man rolled with him, leaving smudges of blood across the gleaming floor. That one had been disarmed; they were wrestling. Another pushed himself to his feet. A third crouched over them, ready to deliver a final blow with another death knife. The fourth, the one I’d dodged past, watched it all from the stairs.

Four against one? Against Lex? I didn’t think so.

The pounding above me continued, but that could wait. I vaulted the top railing, bypassing the middleman to land on the guy crouched over Lex. I rode him to the floor, defaulting into protective, deeply instinctive rage.

Anyone who thinks females aren’t naturally violent never met a mother bear. Women rarely fight for fun, but we can still be the most dangerous creatures in the animal kingdom—and I was channeling that. No, Lex wasn’t my child; nothing like it. But he was mine. On levels beyond understanding, he was mine.

Morta. Hecate. Kali. There are goddesses of death, too.

It was easy to catch this assassin under the chin with the crook of my elbow. It was simple to slide the borrowed death-blade across the front of his throat, deep and deadly.

It stopped him, didn’t it?

If a cry escaped my own throat as I did it, that was the price I paid. His head lurched farther back in my grip. A wave of red fountained across the wrestling confusion at our feet.

“Maggi!” grunted Lex, half plea, half warning.

Hearing the fourth man—now the third?—land behind me, I spun and dodged, danced backward. He followed me. I caught his wrists and pulled. He fell forward, hard, with his momentum.

I kicked the knife from his hands, toward Lex. “Lex!”

Lex, straining beneath his attacker, caught the weapon midskid, then expertly thrust it upward. The man fell off him with a soggy grunt. The second tackled him.

“The panic room, Maggi!” Lex yelled. “Please…”

He was a billionaire in a New York penthouse. Of course he had a panic room. And of course I knew where it was.

Its entrance lay through the den.

The pounding above us sounded crunchy, as if the door was giving. Lex’s second “Please,” a sobbing groan, decided me.

I ran for the den, a black-clad figure close behind me. Hands caught at my waist, but I twisted free. I pushed through the door into the panic room, slapping the red button to alert building security and the police of a problem—

—and turning—

—and catching the top of the doorjamb to swing through, kicking my pursuer solidly in the head.

He fell hard while I landed catlike. Instead of ducking back into the panic room and shutting the impenetrable door, I ripped a saber off the wall and stepped after him.

As if I would’ve hidden with my old boyfriend in jeopardy.

He crabbed backward, eyes widening behind his ski mask.

I grabbed the katana with my other hand, still walking.

He twisted over into a crawl, found his feet and ran.

I followed into the carnage of Lex’s living room. A second body lay sprawled next to the man whose throat I’d slit. Lex had regained his feet but swayed, barely staying there. He’d hooked his left elbow through the wrought-iron stairway to hold himself up as he wielded his knife. Blood drenched half his body.

His attacker, though injured, darted in for quick stabs which Lex was deflecting—so far. With that blood loss, he couldn’t keep it up. The man I’d chased from the den hesitated.

I worked to free the saber from its old scabbard.

“What if he is the one…?” the man asked, panting.

“Then we’re already dead,” warned his companion, stumbling back with a groan. “Do it!”

So he attacked—while my blade slid free.

“Here!” I threw the saber, hilt first. Lex dropped the knife, caught the sword and skewered the man who lunged at him.

Just in time to hear a crash above us as the door gave way.

“Why aren’t…?” he gasped, glaring upward through blood and messy hair, clearly furious. At me.

Three more black-clad figures poured down the spiral staircase, reinforcements for their remaining comrade. And Lex was mad at me, just for being here. Why wasn’t I hiding in the panic room while he fought to the death?

“Because,” I called, charging up the stairs to meet this latest onslaught with the katana, “I’m a Grail Keeper!”

“Teach comparative mythology,” repeats Lex, leaning back on the railing of his family’s yacht. This late at night, on the edge of the Atlantic, the air is bitter cold. But from there we have a great view of the New Year’s fireworks display.

I’ve just told him what I’m doing with my doctorate.

“Sure,” I say. “Why do you think I’ve been going to Sarah Lawrence—just to be closer to you?” Sarah Lawrence College—where famed comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell once taught—is only fifteen miles north of the city.

“No. Not you.” His wry tone surprises me.

I’ve spent a semester in Paris. He’s spent a year at Cambridge. At our closest, we were never joined at the hip. I ask him, “What happened to accomplishing great things? Epic?”

“That’s just it. How…?” Maybe he senses that he’s on dangerous ground, but he goes for it. “How do you accomplish great things as a college teacher?”

The Statue of Liberty is behind him. “As opposed to your executive MBA, degree of choice for philanthropists everywhere.”

“When has creating wealth not been a good thing?”

“When people hoard that wealth?” He turns away from me, plants his hands on the railing, lifts his face to the wind.

I lean on the railing beside him, my shoulder against his. “I didn’t mean to imply that you hoard anything. I know you donate to charities.”

Lex says, “There are more jobs, and cheaper technology, and higher standards of living because of families like mine. What else can help as many people as business opportunity?”

I say, “Education?”

He slants his gaze toward me, searching for…something.

“It just seems…passive,” he admits. “For you, I mean.”

I laugh. “Just for me?”

“I didn’t choose you for your passivity.”

“I didn’t know you’d chosen me at all.”

He looks down, scowling, but I duck under one of his arms to stand between him and the railing, facing him. Wind whips my hair into both of us.

“Not that I need to explain myself to you,” I say, “but I happen to think that what our world needs most right now is a sense of direction. We’ve lost our faith in ourselves.”

“And mythology can help?” he challenges me.

“Myths give shape and…and meaning to the world around us. What if, to choose your reality, all you really have to do is choose your myth?”

He stares at me, and for a moment I think he’s dismissing me as naive, idealistic…passive. Then he leans forward and kisses me. Deeply. More desperately than he’s kissed me since the last time he tried to win me back, after another breakup.

Of course he did win me back. He always does.

I drape my arms over his shoulders, sinking into him, relaxing into his kisses and his apparent adoration of me. He unbuttons his long coat and draws me inside it, and we kiss some more until the first blast of fireworks draws our attention away from our shared warmth and strength and identity.

I turn in the cocoon of his embrace to watch the show. Lex’s cheek presses against mine from behind. Surrounded by a profusion of bright blasts and falling sparkles, he calls into my ear, “I’ll love you forever, you know.”

I’ve never hesitated to say I love him, except during breakups. But I’ve often hesitated to commit to a time frame. This moment feels so powerful, so magical, that it’s easy.

“Me, too,” I shout. Vow. “You. Forever and beyond.”

He ignores the fireworks to kiss my ear, which allows me to arch back into the sensation and still enjoy the show. “I’ll hold you to that,” he warns, voice husky and happy.

I think, There are far worse fates.

W hile Lex held off the last of our original attackers, I faced off against the reinforcements.

You have to practice Tai Chi for at least a year before you get to use a sword. I’d been working with a sword for four years. Not a katana—katanas are Japanese. But in this serious a fight, such a supersharp blade sure wouldn’t hurt.

It’s still Tai Chi, almost like push-hands with props. Instead of the dramatic clank-clank and thrust-parry of a pirate movie, this kind of sword fighting was almost…sinuous.

I touched my blade to the fighting knife of the first man on the stairs. When he tried to push it aside, I let the blade wind around his. He stumbled. His arm, as he caught at the banister to keep from falling, blocked his two companions.

“Who are you?” I demanded, letting my blade flow across his, diverting his thrust. “Why do you want Lex dead?”

A heavy scream gargled to silence, below us. Don’t be Lex. Please, don’t be Lex.

“Out of my way,” growled my opponent. With a hard parry, he tried to push by me.

His parry only dispersed his energy, not mine. Instead of falling aside, my sword circled his knife and stayed where it had been. In his downward lunge, he impaled himself. Heavily.

His fall jerked my sword and wrenched my wrist. Crap.

“The hell with this!” exclaimed the man at the top of the stairs, and jumped the banister. That left me with one masked intruder—and a wounded man crumpled awkwardly across the stairs between us, still weighing down my sword.

Double crap. I backed up—as in, down. Stepping deliberately on the wedge-shaped steps, I yanked my blade free. “Lex?”

I heard metal strike metal, never so glad of a sound in my life. It meant he was still alive. He was still fighting his own attackers—in a more classic, fencing style, à la Yale.

“Mag…” His voice wavered, probably from blood loss. “Go….” But then he growled his frustration, with another metallic clank. He wasn’t down yet.

“I’m okay,” I assured him. Better than you, you idiot.

But they hadn’t come for me this time.

“That’s what you think.” The man who stepped over his fallen companion to stalk after me had a distinct, deep voice.

“I know you.” I caught his blade with mine before he could lunge at me. My wrist still burned from being wrenched, but I’d live with that. “You held a gun on me at the college last week.”

“You should have listened, little girl.” He parried one way. My blade slithered around his, undaunted. He knocked it, hard, and I sliced his arm without even trying.

“Why? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman?” I laughed at him—this time, on purpose. I wanted him angry and clumsy. I wanted him annoyed. “My blade’s longer than yours, college boy.”

He lunged. When I darted out of his way, off the stairs and into the living room, he nearly fell.

So did I, skidding on bloody floor. I caught my balance, kept moving. At least from here, I could see Lex again.

He still hung, still desperately anchored on the stairway to keep his feet, holding off his last two attackers. One, bent and staggering, seemed almost as badly injured as Lex. The other, fresh and fast, was clearly one of the newcomers.

Only the saber gave Lex a fighting chance—his blade was longer, too. But I heard a dangerous gurgle to his breathing, saw a glazing in his eyes.

“Why,” I repeated loudly, “are you after Lex?”

“What’s it matter to you?” College boy lunged.

I stepped out of the way, elbowed him hard in the nose as he staggered past, then whirled and sliced the katana across his knife arm. More blood splattered white walls and a window.