Grace's steps slowed as though she were trapped in molasses or cement or simply caught in the gaze of a vampire goddess who could squish her like a bug, thus bringing her full circle in a distinctly unpleasant way from her original meeting with Rhys na Garanwyn, the lousy rat who'd deserted them.
Everyone in the room started screaming and shouting and cowering at the sight of the goddess. Anubisa shone with a terrible, hideous beauty, but evidently she didn't much like Grace's dress, because with one negligent flick of her wrist, she sent Grace smashing into the front door. Hard.
Possibly all-my-ribs-are-broken hard. So Grace started praying, also hard. To Diana, who'd had reason in ages past to want to kick a little vamp goddess ass, or so Grace had heard. But her prayers were silent and her body was crumpled, so Anubisa dismissed her as nothing to worry about.
Grace only hoped to live to prove her wrong.
Satisfied, the goddess turned toward Alexios and beckoned him forward with one finger. “Oh, how lovely,” she purred. “One of my own coming back to me. We will have such fun together this time, and I'll know better than to ever let you go.”
“I don't think so!” The Russian was nearly guttural in his rage, and as he limped into view, pointing a pistol directly at Alexios's heart, Grace could tell why. Evidently he hadn't escaped the Bane altogether whole. The entire left side of his body and head was simply gone, leaving a charred mess of twisted flesh on what was left of him. The sight was hideous; a burned manikin limping along on one remaining leg. Grace felt like she was going to be sick from the smell of burnt flesh, and the sight of his half-incinerated head was pushing her farther over the edge.
Anubisa turned toward the horrible meat puppet and shuddered delicately. She was so beautiful that she probably even ripped the wings off flies delicately. Bitch. But a flash of heat and power trailed across Grace's crumpled legs just then, so she instantly released her rage and redoubled her prayers to Diana.
“What are you?” Anubisa asked, her voice filled with crumbling bones and rotted death.
“I am Prevacek, and I worked too hard for that tyrant for too long to give up the jewel,” he blubbered out of the remaining side of his mouth.
Anubisa almost casually knocked him to the floor and he lay there, snorting and howling, but he didn't stand up again. He still had his gun aimed at Alexios's head, though.
Another flash of heat shot through Grace, and she cautiously, ever so slowly, straightened her legs and arms, rolling slowly and carefully toward the planter that was only about a foot away from where Anubisa had so considerately tossed her.
Toward her bow and the arrow that she would aim so exactly. The arrow that never, ever missed. Carefully, oh so carefully, she lifted an arm high enough to retrieve her bow and an arrowâluck was with her, or Diana was, and she drew a silver-tipped arrow on the first tryâand she carefully fitted it into her bow, not even daring to breathe.
But evidently even the stealthiest movements of humans were no match for the hearing of goddesses. Anubisa swung around to face Grace, smiling that hideous smile, with her fangs fully extended and her eyes brightly, vividly scarlet.
“Oh, lovely,” she said, clapping her hands. “A choice. I am delighted to have a game to play with your human whore, Alexios. Did you tell her how you begged me to hurt you?”
Grace heard a growl coming from her own throat, and she aimed the arrow directly at Anubisa's lying, nasty, torturing face. “I will kill you, you filthy bitch,” she said clearly. “I will make sure you never, ever hurt an Atlantean again.”
Anubisa, clearly insane, clapped her hands again and pealed out a joyful laugh. Everyone in the room tried to clap their hands over their ears, because the sound of her laugh caused eardrums to pierce and brain aneurysms to burst randomly throughout the crowd. The screams and cries seemed to make Anubisa even happier.
“A choice,” Anubisa repeated. “You can save Alexios, your true love, with that arrow, or you can shoot me with it. But let's make it interesting. I know how noble you humans like to pretend to be.”
She cast her glittering gaze out over the crowd and then squealed with such unholy glee that several people fell to the floor, unconscious or dead, from the sound. “I know! If you choose to shoot this miserable burned husk of vampire to save Alexios, I will murder every human in this room. But if you choose to shoot at me, I will simply order Alexios's death and let the humans live. There! Isn't that fun?”
Grace said nothing, just calculated the time it would take her to reach for a second arrow. Before she could decide, the bag behind her, carrying her arrows and Alexios's gear, burst into flames.
“No cheating,” Anubisa said, giggling wildly, like a demented child.
Grace turned toward Alexios in despair and locked gazes with him, hoping he could read everything she felt for him in that one last glance. It was a choice, but it wasn't a choice. There was no option. The lives of dozens of innocent humans or Alexios's life, freely given as the warrior he was.
He nodded, and she knew that he understood. That he was encouraging her to make the worst choice in the world. The one choice she would never be able to live with, instead of the choice that neither of them would be able to live with.
Anubisa started to say something else, but in one smooth motion, Grace drew back her bowstring and shot the vamp goddess directly in the heart. Expecting nothing. A puff of smoke, maybe, as Anubisa destroyed her arrow mid-flight.
Instead, the unthinkable happened. The arrow hit home.
The arrow
hit home
.
Anubisa started shrieking as smoke poured out of her chest and she yanked at the arrow, trying to get it out. Grace yanked herself out of her shock to leap up with some idea of running to Alexios, but a single gunshot stopped her in mid-step. Tears poured down her cheeks; she was afraid to look.
“It's okay,
mi amara
. The old man has a few moves left in him.”
She whipped her head up to see Alexios, gun in hand, standing over the body of Prevacek. Anubisa still writhed and screamed on the floor, smoke roiling out of her.
Grace decided it was time to make a dash for it. She jerked her head toward the door and Alexios shot down the hall toward her, both of them nearly to the door when a thunderclap of force boomed through the hall and forced them, almost against their wills, to stop and see what had happened.
Behind her, almost too faintly to be seen, a silvery female form fired arrow after arrow from her own phantom bow into the vampire goddess, who was screaming and shouting vile curses.
“It's Diana,” Grace whispered, and for an instant, the silvery goddess seemed to meet her eyes. But then Anubisa screamed and the moment was broken. Grace and Alexios ran out of the building and into the moonlight, followed by a river of people escaping the titanic struggle between goddesses going on inside. Another thunderclap boomed through the air, and then the mansion shook and imploded, collapsing into itself, hopefully burying Anubisa for all time.
“It's too much to hope for,” Alexios said in response to her unspoken wish.
“I know, but so were you,” she said, throwing her arms around him and knowing she would never, ever let him go. “So were you.”
They stood together for a long time, well after the sun had set and the moon rode high in the night sky, watching the pile of rubble for signs of disturbance. The firefighters, police, and EMTs had come and mostly gone, although there would be flashing lights and investigators around long into the night and in the days to come. She and Alexios had even answered a few questions, professing a complete lack of knowledge about the cause of the explosion.
After all, it's not like they could tell the police that a clash between the vampire goddess and the moon goddess had blown up Primator Vonos's mansion. Even P Ops would have had a tough time with that one.
“Should we go?” Alexios finally asked.
“Go where?” she replied, dull with exhaustion. “Home? I don't even have a home.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “Your home is with me. I think it's time you see Atlantis.”
“I think not,” whispered a voice that shimmered with light and rang with the music of a thousand symphonies. “Rather it is time that my descendant met her ancestress.”
Grace froze, then slowly pulled away from Alexios and turned. A woman stood between them and the sea, her feet in the water and her hair whipping in the cool sea breeze.
But, on taking a second look, Grace quickly realized that this was no woman, but the goddess. Power sparkled around her, crackling and sparkling in the long, waving strands of her hair, and the silver gleam of the moon itself shone from her eyes.
Grace dropped to her knees. “My lady.”
Diana, for it must be she, laughed and the sea tides crashed on the shore and splashed a fine mist on Grace at the sound. She dared to look up only to find Diana untouched and completely dry in the center of the swirling waves.
“You have served me well, my daughter,” Diana said. “You have earned a rest and are welcome to visit our allies under the waves. But beware: I will not stand for you to pledge yourself to Poseidon. I am a jealous goddess.”
“How about if she pledges herself to me?” Alexios asked. “As I do to her?”
Grace gasped and yanked at his arm to get him to kneel beside her before Diana crushed him for his daring, but the goddess only laughed again.
“Yes, you have pledged yourself to her, have you not? And a worthy companion you are,” Diana said. “Shall I gift you the removal of those scars. I wonder?”
Grace gasped again, but then stood up, not wanting to be on her knees for this discussion. Alexios looked into her eyes. “What do you say, Grace? Would I be more appealing to you without the scars?”
She smiled and then raised up on her toes to press a kiss on his scarred face. “It's not possible. I will love you no matter what happens to your face.”
He caught her hands in his and gazed intently down at her. “And so you understand why your concern about aging and wrinkles is so unimportant. I will love you until the last waters fade from the oceans of this world.”
“That is lovely and poetic beyond the telling of it, but I must away to other matters. Decide now,” Diana commanded, and this time her voice held tsunamis and crashing destruction and the weight of ages. A goddess was a goddess, no matter how appealing. Grace made a mental note to never forget that.
“I think I'll stay the way I am, if I might ask another boon, my lady,” Alexios said. “Will you offer your blessing on our union? I will promise to learn more of you, so that Grace and I may raise our children to know you.”
Grace was speechless at Alexios's daring, but Diana merely tilted her head to one side, as if considering. Finally, she smiled. “I accept your request and bless your union, now and until the moon no longer crosses the sky. You will name your daughter Penarddun.”
Grace felt like she was choking on the boulder that somehow had gotten lodged in her throat. “What? I mean, thank you, my lady, for your blessing. I will attempt to live up to it.”
Alexios's mouth had fallen open but he snapped it shut, staring at Diana. “What daughter? We're going to have a daughter?”
Diana gestured gracefully at the moon. “In about nine turns of the moon, if I remember these things correctly. You shall name her Penarddun, and she shall be blessed by the huntress moon.”
“Pregnant? Are you saying I'm pregnant?” Grace put her hands on her entirely flat stomach. “But . . . I . . . why Penarddun?” she asked stupidly, settling on the least important question of the hundreds whirling around in her mind.
“A showdown between the gods is coming. Yet another Doom of the Gods, as the wheel of the world progresses inexorably onward.” Diana's face grew grim. “The ancient prophecy foretold that only a child who has blood from all races in his veins will save the world from the folly of the gods. Penarddun is to be part of that prophecy coming true, as shall the young prince, Aidan.”
“Butâ”
“Enough!” Diana raised her hands into the air and the moonlight bathed her in a whirling vortex of spinning, shimmering light. “This is all I can tell you for now. Go to Atlantis. Meet your new family. We will talk again, my daughter.”
And then she was gone. Grace and Alexios just stared into the air, at the empty space where she'd been, for a long while until Grace realized she was going to have to face him sometime.
“So,” she began, at the same time he said, “So.
They laughed, and then Alexios put his hand on her abdomen, a look of wonder on his face. “My child? You are truly to bear my child?”
She nodded slowly. “So it appears, although I'm probably going to need a pregnancy test or two before I believe it. Modern medicine meets ancient prophecy, oh, my.”
“Penarddun?” he said doubtfully. “It's a lovely name, butâ”
“Penny,” she said firmly. “We'll name her Penarddun, no way I'm disagreeing with a goddess who happens to be my ancestress, but we'll call her Penny.”
He smiled, and it was like the dawn sunshine breaking over the waves. “Penny. I like it. Only fitting since you and she will always be my fortune.”
They kissed, standing on the beach where a goddess had just foretold their future, for a very long time. Then he raised his head and sketched a gesture in the air. A shimmering oval began to form, and Grace caught her breath.
“Shall we take the diamond home where it belongs,
mi amara
?”
She wrapped her arms around her warriorâher loveâand nodded. “Home, Alexios. Wherever you are will always be my home.”