For four thousand years, evil has existed all around me. From the moment of my conception and my entire childhood were spent hiding from those who would kill me without a second of remorse afterward. The story of my life has been a series of encounters with evil, never-ending, always present, lurking. Just when I started to relax a bit, the evil began again.
Rain fell in heavy sheets, forcing Eli to drive at a crawl. Fortunately, the traffic wasn’t very heavy at 3:00 a.m. on Interstate 64 East. He increased the wiper’s speed to maximum. Then, he turned the CD player off, like people do when they need to concentrate while driving. A sudden gust of wind pushed the Corvette closer to the left shoulder and Eli wrestled it back into the driving lane. “Dammit,” Eli swore under his breath.
“I can’t see anything,” Eli said and then swore again using words I hadn’t heard for a few hundred years. He slowed the car a few more miles per hour. A large truck passed us on the right and splashed water onto the windshield. If that wasn’t enough, lightning struck something nearby and the sudden boom and bright light startled me.
“Eli, maybe you should pull over until the rain slows down. Shouldn't take too long,” I said. The weather didn’t scare me, but it seemed prudent to take precautions.
“I think we can keep going.” He slowed the Corvette a little bit more. Then, the headlights on the Corvette went out and the dash darkened, but the engine still rumbled.
A second later, a car hit us that must have been going 70. It just clipped the rear bumper, but it was enough to push the Corvette into the median. The Jeep that hit us slid off the road and into a tree beyond the breakdown lane on the right.
Eli skidded to a stop and turned off the car. He tried the emergency flashers but they remained dark.
He opened the door and said, “Stay here. There’s no reason for us both to get saturated.” He glanced at me and asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” He smiled, gave me a quick kiss, and then stepped out of the car into the beating rain.
A moment later, he stuck his head inside the car and said, “Minimal damage to this car, but the other one is toast. It hit a tree. I am going to check it out. I need a flashlight,” he said to me. He leaned across the seat to remove the small LED light from the glove box. Cold water from his hair dripped onto my legs. He saw my shiver, shrugged his shoulders, and then closed the door.
I watched out of the window as he ran across the highway to the car that hit the tree. Something felt off. Why did the Corvette’s lights go out before we were hit by the Jeep?
In spite of the rain, I got out of the car and trotted across the highway to the red Jeep Liberty. It was as dark as the Corvette. Only Eli’s flashlight provided illumination.
Eli’s frown was deep as he contemplated the scene in front of his face. He pulled the driver’s door open and shined the light inside the car. I could see blood trickling down windows that were opaque with the stuff.
I opened the passenger door. Blood dripped from the door onto my shoes. I could taste the vile coppery flavor on the back of my tongue. Vile liquid covered the car’s interior. Blood even dripped from the headliner. The limp airbag was strangely blood free as if the blood appeared before the crash.
There was no one in the car. Just the blood and grotesque things that resembled the floor of a butcher’s shop. Something thick and wet dropped onto my shoe. I shook my foot to remove it.
Eli said, “I didn’t see the driver get out of the car, but maybe they did.”
He shined the light into the tree stand near the car, but I could see nothing that looked like a person.
“It doesn't seem possible for that much blood to come from one person,” Eli said. “There must be three or four gallons of the stuff in here.” Closer inspection by the flashlight on my cell phone showed me a lumpy tshirt, a pair of jeans where a driver would normally sit, and even shoes on the floor. But where was the driver? What happened that they would leave their clothes behind?
“Are you sure it’s blood?” I asked him.
“It can’t be anything else. Whoever did this has a wicked sense of humor,” he commented.
A sudden gust of wind brought a chill to the air that wasn't present before and with it, a sense of foreboding. I wrapped my arms across my chest to hold in body heat. The cold wind felt unnatural and evil, like the coming of an unseasonal storm. A feeling of dread gripped me from behind. I turned to watch a car that passed slowly by the wreckage but didn't stop. A flash of lightning showed me a pale face and mounds of red hair. In the after-image created by the flash of lightning, I still saw her pale face. Circe? Or someone who looked like Circe. The car continued on its way without stopping.
Nothing could be done at the scene of the accident. The driver of the Jeep was beyond anyone’s help.
“This is wrong,” Eli said. The wind grew strong enough to pull leaves from the trees. They swirled around our heads and took flight into the darkness. “Athena, we need to get out of here. Do you feel that? There is something pernicious riding the storm front.”
“We have seen this kind of thing before,” I said, waving toward the car. “Who is responsible, do you think?” I asked without really expecting an answer. Eli knew as much about this as I did. That is to say, we knew nothing.
“Let’s go now before someone gets too interested in us and this,” Eli said as he shut the driver’s side door. I completely agreed with him, so I shut the passenger door. We ran across the road and got into the Corvette, not caring that we soaked the inside with our wet clothes. He started the car and the headlights flared into life. He pulled onto the practically deserted highway.
He answered the question I asked. “There are several individuals who could accomplish that, but I haven’t heard of anyone doing it for a couple of thousand years.”
“The real question is, was that a random incident, or the start of something bigger?” I asked.
“We can hope it was an isolated event. I shudder to think what it may portend, sinister storm notwithstanding,” Eli replied.
Right on cue, the rain slowed and then stopped altogether, but did nothing to ease the dread I felt in my chest. “Something wicked this way comes,” I said, quietly.
“Ray Bradbury novel?” Eli asked me.
“Yes, but the title seems to define this day, especially with the unnatural feeling still hanging in the air. I don't believe we have seen the last person die so badly.”
“Something bad has started and I think you are right. I think we are seeing something that should be left unseen.”
“Who can we report this to? Who can stop whoever this is? Is this going to be ours to accomplish?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
“I don’t have an answer to those questions, either.” Eli frowned at the road ahead, literally and figuratively. We had no way of knowing that we would soon be embroiled in the evil that had to be destroyed once and for all time.
Chapter 1
Tuesday, October 13, 11:15 a.m., Newport News, Virginia
I sat in the small and dingy cafe, waiting for Bill to arrive. I glanced at my watch for the tenth time. Another five minutes, then I intended to leave. I sighed, frowned at the coffee, and reached for it, anyway. The coffee tasted old. It had been sitting in the pot since early morning judging the way it assaulted my tongue.
The cafe’s floor needed a good scrubbing. I tried to ignore the smudge of dried catsup on the tabletop in front of me and the greasy cobweb that dangled from the fluorescent light fixture. Bill suggested we meet at this hole in the wall. Maybe it was simply convenient for him. I didn’t imagine he liked the ambiance.
He burst through the door and immediately sat at the table beside me. I faced the door and he put his back to the wall just like nearly every lawman I had ever known and I had known a lot of lawmen.
Bill Townsend didn’t look like a detective. His blonde hair fell all over his head in an unruly mess, as if he had forgotten to comb it. The dirty shade of blonde matched his pale brown eyes. But it wasn’t his hair or his eyes or the cut of the suit that seemed to hang badly on his frame that made him seem out of place on the police force. At ten or eleven inches over six feet, he towered over everyone. He seemed to belong on a basketball court and not in a police car.
“Athena, how you doing? Nice to see you again.” If his significant height made him stand out in every crowd, his Brooklyn accent added to the effect. Everything about Bill seemed incongruous as if he should have been somewhere else, doing something else.
“Why did you want to see me?” I asked him.
He glanced at the girl who magically appeared beside the table. I had nothing to do with that. Really. “Coffee,” was all he said to her and then to me, “We need your help.”
“We?”
“Don’t make me beg, Athena. I need your help. This one has gotten me completely stumped. There is something weird going on and I need your advice.”
“Weird? And you decided to call me. Look, Bill, I have consulted with the police before and what did it get me? A bad reputation. I know what they call me. ‘That psychic weirdo chick,’ and that’s only when they are being nice. Your police pals don’t believe me and don’t take me seriously. Why would you?” I started to rise from my chair, quite willing to leave my half-drunk coffee and my too-skinny companion.
Bill’s hand shot out to grab my wrist. “Athena. Wait. Hear me out. Look, you drove all the way here from Norfolk. The least you could do is listen for a minute.” Something upset him because his Brooklyn accent was thicker than normal.
I sighed and looked into Bill’s eyes. “All right. What do you have?” I plopped back into my chair and avoided the smudge of dried catsup when I leaned on the table with my elbows.
Bill lowered his voice. He glanced around the cafe as if checking for eavesdroppers. The only other person in the place busied herself with a cell phone call that had nothing to do with business. Satisfied the waitress was ignoring us, he said, “Last night, there was a murder, making nine people who died the same way in the last month. The bodies aren’t intact. Just like they were blown up by swallowing a bomb. The first one was just outside of Williamsburg. The Virginia Criminal Investigations Department took over investigating when the second and third murders occurred in Virginia Beach. Number four was in Hampton, number five in Newport News, number six in Virginia Beach, number seven in Poquoson, and number eight and number nine back in Newport News.”
“Why tell me? It could be a terrorist attack.” I said those words aloud, but inside I knew exactly how those people died. I had given it much thought since Eli and I found the destroyed body near Williamsburg. Was it just six weeks ago? No one had performed that particular trick for a very long time that I knew about, but that didn’t mean the ability didn’t exist. In fact, the people who could do it were all very much alive.
“This one had a witness right before she exploded.” He reached into the pocket of his pale gray suit jacket. The suit’s color drained the color from his face until he resembled the cadavers he investigated as if he needed more sun. The notebook he removed from his breast pocket was small, spiral-bound at the top, and looked like it had seen a lot of action. Bill flipped through a few pages and then stopped and read the notes he had taken. “Okay. The lady was in a grocery store with her daughter. The daughter is twenty-five and an ER nurse at Riverside. She sees a lot of things in the ER, but this one has her spooked. Anyway, the lady gets this look on her face and says to the daughter, ‘Something’s wrong.’ Then, all of a sudden, there is blood and guts everywhere. Daughter says it sounded kinda funny. Not like a real explosion, but like something humming in her ears right before it happened. Then, the mom is all over the whole damned store. Plus, the lights in the store went out just before all this happened, but there was light coming in from the glass doors in the front when Mom died. The daughter saw it all.”
I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach like I shouldn’t have drunk the coffee. “Sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie,” referring to this death and the wreck on the Interstate about six weeks previously.
“I know, right? Now, this is where it starts getting really weird. Some of the blood all over the place ain’t the lady’s. It isn’t her blood type, but it is human blood. Once we got it cleaned up, there is enough stuff for like three people.”
“And they call me a weirdo.” He shot me a look that said he didn’t appreciate my dry humor. Maybe he didn’t like it when someone called him a weirdo. I know it didn’t make me happy at all. That term made me unhappy enough that I already had one foot poised and ready to make my getaway from the whole situation. In retrospect, I probably should have followed my gut feeling in those first moments.
Bill said, “This one is number nine in the six weeks. Nine in a month and a half that all died the same way. Body parts in a huge pool of blood. And we have no clues. We have no witnesses except the daughter. They don’t seem to be connected in any way. All the victims live in different parts of Hampton Roads.”
“That doesn’t explain what you want with me.”
He took a deep breath and then said, “As I said, I think there is something paranormal going on. No one at the department seems to agree with me. At least, not yet.” His eyes narrowed and his voice dropped two or three notches. “No human being is doing this.”
The grave tone he adopted made my breath catch in my chest. “I don’t know how I can help you, Bill,” I told him.
“You own that book store and you seem to know things others don’t.”
“That’s right. I own a bookstore. I am not a psychic investigator. I am not a ghost hunter. There are groups around here that specialize in this stuff.”
Bill chuckled under his breath. “Yeah, and they also believe in UFOs and the Loch Ness monster. You ever talk to one of those guys? It won’t be ten seconds before they start telling you about crop circles and cattle mutilations. I need hard evidence, not Area 51 or Big Foot. I need someone with a good head and not another psychic weirdo.”
“You forget, Bill. That’s what they call me, too.” I rose from the hard, uncomfortable chair and walked to the register to pay the girl for my cup of bad coffee. I handed her my debit card and turned to face Bill, who had walked to the register with me. “I am sorry I can’t help you.” I dismissed him with voice and demeanor and proceeded out of the door and into the bright October morning.
The air felt like fall, complete with the smell of leaves and chrysanthemums. Up and down the street, paper ghosts and real pumpkins decorated nearly every storefront. Halloween was still two weeks away, but the town got ready early. I wondered if Bill’s killer used the dramatic deaths to prepare for Halloween, too. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I shivered in the autumn breeze. I walked a little faster toward my Blazer.
Bill didn’t give up easily. He followed me down the street. “Athena, please. Give it some thought. Nine people. Nine people, Athena, and there is no one I can point to and say, ‘You’re under arrest.’ Nine dead people. I need help. I am grasping at straws here.” Bill stopped me before I could get into my car. In the bright sunlight, his skin was pale, like a day-walking vampire. My skin crawled across my neck.
“Call me,” he said, pushing a tattered white business card into my hand. Again. “I’m waiting for your call,” Bill Townsend said as he folded his incredibly tall frame into an ancient 1990s sedan. Who owns a car that old? The once-blue car’s paint was worn down to the primer on the hood, trunk, and roof. Rusty patches lined the bottom of the door and the edges of the fenders.
The inside of the car resembled a poorly organized file cabinet with stacks of paper, books, folders, and old Styrofoam coffee cups tossed on the dash. The one-time blue seats faded to pale gray. Bill tossed me a wave and started his car. A cloud of black smoke came out of the back and the engine rattled and clattered, but didn’t fall to the street. I was shocked. Out of the open window, he shouted over the roar of the stuttering engine, “Call me, Athena. This is important.”
So, I had a real question in front of me—Did I want to help Bill? I do know about paranormal phenomena, weird occurrences, and extraordinary behavior in those who appear human. Most had rational explanations. I know this because I can do a lot of things people think are weird. Some of the things are weird by human standards, but mostly it is a matter of performing parlor tricks—telekinesis, telepathy, mental projection, hypnosis, and a hundred other abilities. The power of the mind and not magic, wizardry, witchcraft, or focused crystal power.
Why did William Clarke Townsend, Detective, with the Virginia Criminal Investigations Department call me? I really own a small bookshop in Norfolk with the predictable name of The Psychic Book Store. I encountered many of those people Bill talked about who believed in UFOs and Area 51 because of the types of books I sold—namely books dealing with the unexplainable. And when people came into the store seeking advice, most of the time, I quoted some author or other and did not try to impress anyone with my knowledge or abilities. I try very hard to stay off the radar, quietly going about my business without calling attention to myself. I’ve had the fame thing and it gets to be extremely annoying.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Bill’s car left a cloud of obnoxious smoke behind. I simply stared at the diminishing smog long after Bill vanished around a corner. I needed time to think about all he said.
I climbed into my ordinary SUV—a dark blue Chevy Blazer with a spare tire on the back and no distinguishing decals or vanity tags—and eased my way up the street. Days of calling attention to myself are long gone, which is one reason I was so hesitant to help Bill Townsend. Working on a high-profile criminal investigation was not a good way to stay anonymous.
Bill’s card was in my pocket and I reached for it as I was crossing the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel near Fort Wool. I glanced at the name and phone number on the card as I pondered the situation; a phone number I memorized a long time ago. I think I know who is behind the killings. If I am right, then Enyo and Phobos will have to die.
Because of the extreme danger these two presented, did I want to involve Bill? My role has always been protecting people, not placing them in more danger.
Chapter 2
Tuesday, October 13, 10:00 a.m., Caucasus Mountains
5:00 p.m., Norfolk, Virginia
“It has to be one of them,” I told Eli. “It smacks of something they would do.”
“I agree. Phobos, Enyo, Deimos, and Eris have, in my opinion, shown remarkable restraint until now,” Eli told me, only half paying attention to my tirade. He carefully brushed one of his four horses and often, he paid them more attention than he did me. Eli had kept the four as his loyal companions longer than he has known me; since before my birth. He took exceptional care of them because they were the only horses from antiquity left—Bronte, Abraxas, Euos, and Sterope. He loved them dearly, and he enjoyed taking care of them.
These four horses achieved legendary fame of their own when the god of the sun, Helios, hitched them to the chariot of his invention and pulled the sun across the sky every day. Or so said the myths, but like many myths, the stories have grown with the telling.
Bronte is a dainty female if a horse that stands over twenty-eight hands tall can be called dainty. When compared to her fellows, she is the smallest. Her coat looks white at first glance, but in the sunlight, a riot of color crossed her skin just below the surface of white. A large blue patch covered one shoulder, red along a leg, green on her rump, purple across her nose, and yellow on her neck. Bronte defined color. Even her eyes sparkled in a rainbow of colors.
Euos is a great black stallion. His black is so deep it’s hard to see him clearly. Darker than shadows. Darker than night. Euos proved to be the opposite of light. Even his eyes are solid black. He appeared to be chiseled from the darkest obsidian instead of a living breathing creature. The only person who can ride him is Helios. Euos stands thirty hands tall and is truly a powerful, beautiful beast.
Sterope stands taller in the shoulder than Bronte, but not as tall as Euos. Her dappled gray coat is pretty and her eyes are soft brown. Her coat may be ordinary, but she is far from ordinary when compared to modern horses. Her size alone makes her extraordinary. Plus, she can fly.
Abraxas is a red horse. It seems simple when I write it that way. Most get an image of a roan or even a chestnut-colored horse. When I say Abraxas is red, I mean true red. Candy cane red. Holly berry red. His eyes soften the effect because they are soft black, relieving the red expanse of horse. His mane and tail are a darker red than his body. Sanguine. Blood red. At first glance, most fear Abraxas, but he is a nice horse.
Watching Eli groom his four distracted me. With his teasel in hand, he carefully brushed coats, petted, and talked to his beauties. They jealously vied for his affections taking turns nuzzling him and sweetly asking for a special treat. Helios always carries apples and carrots in his pockets to give to the four. He finished with Abraxas and Bronte danced toward him for her turn. She kissed his cheek and he hugged her great neck.
In the morning light in the valley in the Caucasus Mountains, everything looked serene and peaceful. A few clouds dotted the bright blue sky. The sun defeated the shadows and before Eli completed his task the whole valley was bathed in the bright autumn light. Even here, the air smelled of the march of seasons, foretelling big changes coming.
I shook my head to clear the beautiful images created by the scene. “Eli, please, this is important.”
He stopped grooming Bronte and fully regarded me. His eyes are golden and sparkled more than any human’s eyes. Eli’s eyes mimicked the sun. When he walked among the ordinary people of the world, he wore contacts that turned his eyes dark brown. Before the age of contact lenses, Eli wore glasses with tinted lenses and before the age of eyeglasses, he kept his head hidden under a cloak. It seemed a shame he had to do that because his hair is bright red—the color of a sunrise. I couldn’t resist. I put my hand on the heavy braid that trailed nearly to his knees. The hair felt almost like a living creature of silken threads. He gave me a quick smile and kissed my forehead in a chaste flutter of butterfly wings.
He loved that I admired his hair so much. He wore his hair cut short for a thousand years or more and finally let it grow, at my urging. The rope of sunrise grew to its current length in just over twenty years, a paltry span of time in people who are as long-lived as us—long-lived enough to be considered immortal.
My own hair is a much paler shade of red, and my eyes an unremarkable gray. That he found me interesting enough to stay in my company for ten lifetimes or more still surprises me.
“OK, dear heart,” he said. “Tell me what the detective said.” I followed him into the barn where he stabled his horses at night. As he busied himself with cleaning the stalls, I told him my story. Eli listened carefully, nodded when appropriate, and finally looked grim. He sat on a convenient bale of hay and gave me a heavy sigh. “I think we need to talk to Ares.”
The name shocked me down to my soles. Ares, my long-time nemesis. I had spent a thousand years cleaning up the messes he made and I wasn’t eager to get involved with him again.
“Eli,” I pleaded. “Ares is bad news.”
“Not any longer. He’s remarkably sedate since the Battle of Orsha in the early 1500s. He’s been a solitary wanderer for the most part since that time.” I must have given Eli a shocked look because he added, “I check up on him from time to time. He is one of the stronger ones and it is always nice to know where strength is. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, you know.”
After six hundred years of marriage, Eli still managed to surprise me. What other secrets were locked away in his head? “What is he doing now?” I asked Eli, challenging him to prove that last statement.
Sitting on the hay bale, Eli looked comfortable, with one foot propped on a knee. He leaned back until his broad shoulders touched the wall of Bronte’s stall. She nickered and nuzzled his head and Eli absently reached around to rub her nose. His eyes lost their focus as he sought Ares among the billions of people on the Earth. As the god Helios, it was said that he could see all. That wasn’t entirely true, of course. But, his talent was formidable, nonetheless. “Your brother is hunting. He has an old single-shot rifle in his hand and is stalking... ah, there it is. A deer. Mountains all around. A deep Boreal forest. It is near sundown, so that puts him in the Western Hemisphere, in the Canadian Rockies.”
“You know where he is?” I asked.
“Of course,” Eli responded as if it was simply a known fact.
“Look, instead of contacting Ares, can’t you just look and see if Phobos or Enyo are involved in this?”
“I can’t see either one of them. I never have been able to.” That was news to me. Like most of us, I simply assumed that Helios could see everyone.
I sat beside him on the hay bale and he slipped an arm across my shoulder. “Who else can’t you see?” I asked.
“The really bad ones—Eris, Circe, Perseis, Deimos.”
“Wait. You were once married to Perseis and Circe is your daughter.”
“Correct. When Aphrodite cursed them, they both changed. Both are at least as dark-spirited as Phobos. No, dear Athena, I can’t see the dark ones.”
I nodded because I completely understood. “Their brains don’t work like everyone else’s,” Eli continued. “Everything about the four worst of them—Phobos, Deimos, Enyo, and Eris—is only bad all the time. I cannot see them. Possibly because I don’t want to see them. Possibly because we are so opposite from each other. I am light. They are darkness.”
I snuggled my head against his large chest. “I know, love. I know. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Listen, Athena. I agree that Phobos and the others have to finally be stopped, but we need help to do it. They are not weak godlings. They are evil, cunning, and dangerous. Your detective friend will get himself killed if he goes against them alone. But, I can’t find Phobos. I need Ares. Ares knows how they think. Maybe, he can help.” At some point during our conversation, he lapsed into the ancient language of Olympus to better sway me, I think. Or maybe he wanted to be absolutely certain I was paying attention.
“Helios,” I said in the same language. “Ares and I have always been at cross purposes. He’s the little brother who always landed in trouble or made a mess of things, leaving me to clean up after him. I’m the one who taught humans to defend against him. He played with them and I tried to help them.”
“He’s not the same Ares.”
“A god of war doesn’t lay down his arms and refuse to fight.”
“This one does.”
“Helios, he is dangerous. I know Ares, probably better than anyone except Aphrodite.”
“Athena, you don’t know him anymore. Something happened to him during that last battle and he refuses to fight anyone.”
I thought for a moment and realized Eli was correct. Ares had not cropped up anywhere that I knew about in a very long time. “He has appeared to be remarkably sedate for a couple of centuries. I thought he was just taking a break. Do you know what happened to him?” I asked him.
“I wasn’t watching at that particular moment. I can’t see back in time or forward in time. Only at the moment the event is happening. You know that. You will have to probe his memories if you want to know.”
“My talent for that is almost non-existent. If you want someone’s memories, you’ll have to talk to Mnemosyne.” I stood up from the hay bale and continued. “I don’t like it and I don’t like Ares, but if it is Phobos who is doing this, then he has to be stopped. I don’t want Bill to get himself hurt and if he gets too close to Phobos, that one will simply kill him and not worry about the consequences.”
I switched back to English. “Let me call Bill and see if we can get some additional information. It may not be Phobos, at all.”
“Agreed.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head, making him look much taller than his six-foot-six frame. He reached a hand toward me and I grasped it. “My horses are happy and they will be alright until tomorrow. I am going to let them wander in the valley today. It is beautiful outside and they know enough to come into the barn if anything changes.” He gave the horses another smile of affection.
Then, “Come, love, let us go home.” He held his other hand toward me and I clutched it, too.
Traveling by teleportation is a little disconcerting. There is always a moment or two of disorientation as if I am spinning at about a thousand miles an hour, and just before my body flies apart we arrive at our destination. Swirling through matter just plain hurts, but only for a fraction of a second. That moment makes the trip nearly unbearable. It doesn’t seem to matter how far we are traveling. The time to travel from the Caucasus Valley where Eli’s horses are stabled to Norfolk where we live in a small apartment above the bookstore is the same amount of time it would take us to cross the street by the same method. I can do it, but I prefer to let Eli. His transitions are a little smoother than mine. Sometimes my arrivals stir up dust or knock vases over.
We arrived at our apartment, with the sun westering outside. Although the apartment is small, we made the most of our tiny space, placing furniture in just the right spots to optimize the area. We lived in nine hundred square feet, but it was more than ample. I particularly enjoyed walking down a flight of stairs to get to work every morning.
Eli released my hand as soon as he knew I was steady on my feet and wouldn’t tumble over. “So, who will we contact first? Ares or your detective friend?” He walked into the kitchen and put a kettle on to boil. He placed two cups on the counter and removed the teapot from a shelf over the stove. The scene was so domestic that it took my breath away for a moment. Overwhelming feelings of love for him hit me at the oddest times. The teapot moment was one of them. I walked into the kitchen and embraced him from behind. I felt the smile on his face even though I couldn’t see it.
With my face buried in his back, I could smell the manly scent of him and the odor of horses. Mostly, I smelled his hair. It reminded me of vanilla and cinnamon. What does it say about us that he can still distract me after being together for over six hundred years? I answered his question. “I am more worried about Bill. He can’t go up against Phobos alone and he is tenacious. He will try and he will die as a result.”
Eli spun on his foot and I was suddenly embracing him from the front. His arms went around me. “I don’t know which will be more difficult, convincing Ares to help or convincing Bill to back down.”
“I think Bill should be first on our list. He is in the most danger.”
“Yes. Except for the next victim.”
I moved out of Eli’s comforting embrace. The card Bill had given me lay on the dining table, soon to be consigned to the trash bin with all the others he had given me in the past few years. I lifted my cell phone and punched in the number. Bill answered the phone on the second ring, without the traditional “Hello” greeting. He plunged right into the conversation. “Athena. I didn’t think I would hear from you.”
“Bill, we need to talk. Can you come to the bookstore?”
“I can be there in half an hour.”
“Okay. The door to my apartment is to the left of the bookstore. It is unlocked. Just come up the stairs.”
“Will do.” He hung up without saying goodbye, but then he always did that.
The kettle whistled and Eli made the tea. With everything under control in the kitchen, I glanced around the apartment to see if anything was out of place. I tweaked a pillow on the small sofa and pulled the small Persian rug at the top of the stairs into place. We chose to decorate in various shades of blue. The royal blue velvet drapes on the windows that faced out to the street hung open and the drapes along the side that faced the four-storey building next door were closed. The Victorian sofa was dark blue velvet and the two chairs were pale blue brocade. A blue and cream Persian covered much of the living room floor. The walls were adorned with silver and blue flocked wallpaper from a bygone era and floral oils in dark oval frames.
Eli sat at the mahogany dining table and beckoned for me to join him there. “Why are you puttering?” he asked me.
“We don’t have many guests here.”
“I can assure you the detective is not coming here to see if everything is in its place. Once he walks out of the door, you can bet he won’t remember what color the carpet is.”
I smiled my agreement and sat. Of course, Eli was right. Bill visited as part of a multiple murder investigation and he would likely leave his white gloves at home.
“Okay. But, do we at least have some scones to serve him?”
“Does your detective friend strike you as the scones and tea type, or a beer from the fridge?”
Once again, I had to smile at Eli’s logic. “Beer, of course.”
Eli stood and announced, “I will be right back.” Watching someone vanish via tele-transportation is disconcerting. One second the traveler stood before you and the next, they vanished. Just gone as if they were never there to start with. I nearly always get an ache in my eyes from the rapid change of focus.
The convenience store was right across the street. If Eli followed his typical pattern, he would appear in the courtyard behind the bookstore that did double duty as our backyard and then walk across to the 7-11. I think sometimes he used his talent because he can and not out of necessity. Within five minutes, he walked up the stairs in front of the building.
He deposited the six-pack of Sam Adams on the shelf in the refrigerator. “You have about a minute before your friend knocks on the door.” He kissed the top of my head and then vanished from the room. A moment later, I heard him in the bedroom, obviously cleaning up. I don’t mind the smell of horses, but many people did, and smelling like a horse may be a little hard to explain.
Right on schedule, I heard a knock on the door.