Healed by Fire (24 page)

Ares growled, but after killing two more
vampires he stepped forward to break the circle around me. A
vampire charged in and I brought my sword up, slicing him cleanly
in half. My blood pumped harder and my body quivered in excitement
as I started fighting. The men moved out a little farther, opening
their circle and killing faster as they plowed deeper into the
advancing enemy. My wings retracted due to the now limited space,
but my body stayed glowing as I fought with everything that I had.
Bodies piled up around us and I realized that the vampires weren’t
just fighting, but fighting their way towards me. That realization
didn’t frighten me like it would have years before. Instead, it
made me smile and renewed the vigor with which I fought.

We had to move deeper into the swarming
masses due to the immense amount of dead bodies around us, which
were making it impossible to walk. Achilles stayed beside me while
Ares, Koda and Theseus were separated from us by the crowding
enemy. I reigned in my power to keep my reserves up and laughed
joyously as I killed again and again. When I thought I was human I
never would have enjoyed killing. Now I knew what I was made for. I
was made to end the evil in the world and right the balance.
Dhampirs backed away from me when they got too close and I followed
after them, cutting off whatever was closest to me and finishing
off the being as it screamed in pain.

I turned to find Achilles and Apollo
battling each other, but surprisingly Apollo was holding his own
against Achilles.

I turned around in time to decapitate a
dhapmir running at me. I battled with vampires while trying to
watch the fight between Achilles and Apollo at the same time. A
vampire grabbed my sword hand and twisted, trying to break my
wrist, which only pissed me off. Sunlight began seeping out of my
pores and the vampire burst into flames and then turned to ash,
drifting along the wind.

Achilles gasped in pain. I spun around and
stared in shock as a blade was shoved through his chest and its
bloody end dripped out the back. I moved towards him, but it was
too late. I was always too late. Too slow.

“NO!” I screamed as Achilles’ light faded
and then my own body dropped to the ground. Darkness surrounded me
and cold spread through my limbs. The last thing I heard was Ares
scream my name as I died beside Achilles.

~~~

My soul split in two, sapping half of my
strength and making me stumble forward. Koda’s heartrending howl
confirmed what I knew had happened before I turned. I spun around
and screamed Artemis’ name, but it was too late. I watched in
terror and dismay as my beautiful mate dropped to the ground beside
Achilles and both of their lights faded. My body rippled as I took
a half-shift and ripped through everyone and everything blocking my
path to her. Vampires and dhampirs fled in terror and Sidhe and
halfbreeds dove out of my way as I ran to her.

Koda made it to her body first and kept the
vampires at bay, snarling and slashing at them in his half-shift. I
dropped to the ground and picked her limp body up into my arms. Her
head lolled to the left and her arms hung limply by her sides
instead of wrapping around me as they should have. I howled in pain
and cradled her against my chest as tears streamed down my face. My
body reverted back to man and my throat changed with it.

“NO!” I screamed as the loss of her presence
began to resonate within my body. “Please, Artemis, wake up,” I
whispered as I stroked her hair.

Not a single sound came from her. Her
beautiful voice was gone. She was gone. I screamed and heard the
keening sound I was making, which I knew sounded pathetic, but I
didn’t care. My mate was gone. I had nothing now.

The sounds of fighting ceased and Hera and
Zeus dropped to their knees on the ground beside Achilles’ body.
Hera placed her hand against Achilles’ face and screamed her
despair.

Zeus looked from Artemis to Achilles with
tears in his eyes, but made no sounds of loss. He stood up and
said, “This battle is over for today.”

Artemis’ body was beginning to lose its
warmth. I rubbed her arms to try to warm her and cradled her head
against my shoulder, but she remained cold. Koda shifted to his
wolf form and howled in grief. She was the love of my life, magical
influence or not, I loved her more than anything else in the world.
She was the greatest gift I’d ever been given and now she was
gone.

I couldn’t lose her! She had just come back
into my life. I’d waited one hundred years to find her again and
we’d only just been reunited. This couldn’t be happening. I
wouldn’t let this happen!

“Hades!” I yelled as loud as I could.
“HADES!”

A Sidhe as dark as night itself walked
through the crowd and dropped to his knees in front of me. “I am
here, Ares,” he said in a voice as deep as the night was dark.

“Send me,” I whispered.

The crowd which had been murmuring quietly a
moment before instantly went silent.

“Ares, I don’t think…” Hades began
softly.

I growled at him and stared into his eyes.
“SEND ME!” I yelled.

“We can’t do it here. We need to wait until
we’re somewhere safe so that we can protect your body as well as
Artemis’ and Achilles’,” said Zeus from beside me.

Koda wrapped his furred body around me in an
attempt to comfort me and I pushed him away. Comfort meant there
was something to be sad about. I couldn’t be sad about this because
that meant that she was dead and I couldn’t get her back. I would
get her back. “I won’t let her die. I promised her that I wouldn’t
let anything separate us, not even death. I have to go!”

“I understand. Hades will send you once her
body is protected,” Zeus said. I nodded my head in understanding
and then he started to reach down towards Artemis.

I growled at him and spun up and around to
protect her body from his touch. “Mine!” I yelled angrily. I held
her body against mine, wishing my warmth would bring her back.
Wishing this was just a dream.

Zeus raised his hands in the air. “I’m
sorry,” he said sadly, “Come, let’s leave this place.”

Hera picked Achilles up in her arms and let
her wings out. She flew up above everyone’s heads and wailed as she
cradled her dead heir against her bosom, just as she’d done over
one thousand years ago when he had been born.

Zeus waited until Victor was beside me and
then took to the skies after his wife.

“Let’s go, Ares,” Victor said quietly. “We
need to hurry before the vampires change their minds and come
back.”

“Let them come. I will tear their hearts
from their chests and feed it to them,” I said as I started
walking.

The sound of someone softly sobbing a few
feet away made me turn. Apollo sat on the ground staring at
nothing. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know,” he repeated over and over
again.

“Didn’t know what?” Victor asked
angrily.

“I didn’t know she was bound to him. If I
had known…I wouldn’t have told them to…I never wanted her to die. I
just wanted to scare her and make her stay off the battlefield. I
didn’t know who he was to her,” Apollo whispered as tears flowed
down his face.

Koda snarled and lunged at Apollo who made
no move to protect himself. I stepped into Koda’s path and said,
“Bring him with us. Alive.”

Victor grabbed the halfbreed by the back of
the neck and forced him to walk in front of us. The crowds parted
as we walked and I growled at anyone who came too close. She wasn’t
going to be dead for long. I had to save her. I had to save her or
give my life in forfeit.

We’d known about this prophecy and yet it
had been forgotten in the hectic life that we led. I might have
been able to save her had I remembered it and consulted the other
Sidhe. I might have kept her from dying if I’d only forced her to
stay at Hera’s Court. How could I have forgotten the prophecy?!

Anger stirred within me and I wanted to
break something or someone. She had been taken from me again! I was
supposed to be one of the most powerful beings on Earth! Only two
generations from the original beings and yet I could not protect
her! When the wolves had kidnapped her for the Vampire Queen I’d
wanted to tear down every building in search of her. Then Hera had
stolen her and blocked her memories. Of all the times I’d wanted to
kill that woman then had been the only time I might have actually
done it. And now Artemis was actually dead. Her cold, lifeless body
lay in my arms as evidence.

Every part of me ached and I shook in misery
as her loss and distance became more evident. If I couldn’t get her
back, I would never see her smile again. I would never hear her
laugh. Never see her blush. I’d never run with her in the
forest.

She was my world. Nothing else mattered, but
having her beside me. Not the fate of the world, not even the fate
of my pack. How could I possibly continue to live without her hand
in mine?

Dmitri led the way, claiming to know a place
that was safe for us as well as him and not visited by other
vampires. We walked for two hours before finally stopping at a lone
building in the middle of a flower field. It was an old cathedral
that had somehow survived the uprising of the preternatural world.
Surprisingly even the stained glass windows were still intact. I
looked up to see the gargoyles staring out across the field as
though to ignore our presence. The saints carved around the
entrance glared accusingly, but I ignored their prejudice. Zeus
pushed open the doors, which groaned angrily at him for disturbing
their peace.

“Koda check inside,” I said as I adjusted my
hold on Artemis’ body.

Koda walked into the cathedral and came out
a moment later, sneezing.
Only rats and dust in there.

We walked into the cathedral and I stopped a
moment to admire the building. The stained glass windows cast
multicolored shadows upon the wooden pews. A wide red carpet led to
the front of the cathedral where a skeleton sat in a chair. Judging
by his robes he must have been the priest.

Victor leaned over a basin of water which
stood at the entrance and whispered, “I’ve always wondered if this
worked on us or not. Father told us that it didn’t, but none have
been willing to test the theory in front of me before.” He put his
hand into the water and splashed some onto his face. He frowned a
moment and then smiled. “Guess not.”

Dmitri led us through a side door which
opened to a hallway where saints carved into the stone watched our
passing with great sadness. I wanted to yell at them and tell them
her death was not permanent, but remembered they were only stone
carvings and did not understand our situation.

We rounded a corner and started down a
narrow set of stairs which led underground to the catacombs I’d
heard about long ago, but never visited.

Zeus’ body glowed as we descended into the
darkness, giving us enough light to see. Koda snapped up a rat
which squeaked its disapproval of our presence.

I looked at Koda and asked, “What are you
doing?”

I’m hungry
. He said just as his
stomach growled.

“That’s disgusting, Koda. You don’t know
where that things been,” Victor said as he kicked another rat out
of his way.

The ground was dirt, but it was packed down
so tightly that it resembled stone. Despite the exquisite cathedral
above us, there was no architecture in the catacombs to speak of
save the wooden skeletal structure that kept the earth from caving
in on itself.

We weaved our way through the catacombs,
following behind Dmitri, who stopped at a tomb with an x marked
over it.

Dmitri broke the door open and walked
inside. “X marks the spot,” Apollo said softly.

Despite the circumstances a soft chuckle
slipped past my lips, as well as Victor’s. Victor nudged Apollo
forward into the tomb and we filed inside.

Dmitri sat beside a stone sarcophagus with
an image of a young woman carved into its lid. He rested his hand
on top of one of her carved ones and whispered softly in
French.

“Who’s that?” I asked Victor softly.

“His wife. He was turned while he was still
with her and he could not control the bloodlust when he went back
to visit her.”

“Is that why this cathedral hasn’t been
destroyed?” I asked.

Victor nodded his head. “My father agreed to
leave this building intact at Dmitri’s request.”

A second sarcophagus sat beside Dmitri’s
wife, but its lid was blank. “Who is that?” I asked as I motioned
towards it.

“No one lies there. That was supposed to be
Dmitri’s burial place when he died.”

I walked to it and laid Artemis’ body along
its cold stone lid. Dmitri was still whispering quietly beside his
wife’s sarcophagus and I felt immense pity for him and a
determination not to be in the same situation. I arranged Artemis’
body comfortably and placed her hands on her stomach. She looked
like an angel.

I could hear Hera elsewhere in the
catacombs, wailing through the wall of the tomb and felt her power
beating against the stone walls. I knew I should be mourning the
loss of my brother, but I couldn’t think of his death while I held
Artemis’ lifeless hand in mine.

I walked with Victor and helped him secure
the front door so that any passersby wouldn’t walk in.

“Ares think about it before you do anything
rash,” Victor pleaded with me as he followed me back into the
room.

“I’ve thought about it enough. I’m going to
get her and bring her back,” I answered.

“Let us discuss it first. Seek council from
Koda and your father. Please,” Victor said with such concern in his
voice that it made me stop to look at the vampire.

We’d known each other one thousand years and
he’d never spoken to me with such evident worry. “Very well,” I
answered quietly. I turned to Koda who had been listening
passively. “Koda?”