Queen of Kings (30 page)

The senators, he noticed, were quiet in their seats, watchful. What did they await?

“I present to you Cleopatra Selene, Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, children of Rome and special favorites of your first citizen. I've forgiven them their parentage, and so shall you.

“And now . . . a unique entertainment, never before seen in Rome.”

The emperor smiled in satisfaction. This would draw her if nothing else would.

“You may remember a betrayer of Rome,” Augustus said. “A man who left his country behind in order to woo a foreign queen. A man who abandoned his soldiers, abandoned his wife and family, for that same queen.”

The crowd booed on cue.

“The gods blessed Rome and struck our foe down. Tonight, our former enemy visits this arena from the Underworld.”

There was a hush of expectation, a nervous giggle, quickly quieted.

Augustus inadvertently caught Selene's gaze. She was staring at him, bewildered, her eyes wide. It occurred to him that perhaps this had not been a perfect plan. Children were unreliable. But there was no turning back now.

“I give to you Mark Antony!” Augustus shouted.

Chrysate opened the silver box she held in her lap, and the ghost of Antony unfolded from it, fully armored, his eyes dark and unwilling, his wound visible even from the floor of the arena.

There was a moment of total silence and then the audience erupted in applause at the wondrous illusion.

“Father!” Selene screamed a bloodcurdling scream, high and terrified. Ptolemy joined her. Alexander reeled, staring at his father, disbelieving.

Antony, his body controlled by Chrysate, bent at the waist to bow to Caesar, and with that gesture, the lions were released.

C
leopatra opened her throat and roared into the brightness, her body vibrating with the sound. She was still in the tunnel's mouth, and could not see what was happening in the arena. She could hear only the emperor's voice claiming her children, mocking her husband. The other lions surged forward with her, the dust flying behind her paws as she charged into the Circus Maximus.

The bestiarii awaited her, each with his sword and trembling knees. Some were brave, standing firm in the face of the wall of charging wild cats. Others tried to flee, though there was nowhere to go. A trench surrounded the fighting floor. Cleopatra judged it, assessing the leap.

There.

High in the stands, his toga shining, the evildoer. And beside him, on either side—

Her children.

Selene in the center, her hands grabbing the boys, the little one wide-eyed, and the elder, looking equally startled. Selene grappled with them, tugging their hands.

The emperor, between them, looked straight at the fighting, his gray eyes glinting and lustful. Beside him, a dark-skinned man stood, his dagger drawn, his face watchful, a serpent twining about his arms.

What was standing on his other side? A very young woman, glowing with some strange inner light, had her hand on the shoulder of a man. Cleopatra could not quite see him. He flickered, transparent. An actor, painted to look like Antony. It must be.

Cleopatra lashed forward with a paw, clawing the arm of the bestiarii before her. She did not desire to kill him, and so she dodged his sword. He did not wield it well, in any case. Some of the fighters were screaming and slashing with their eyes closed. Dust flew up and obscured the bleeding lion beside her. The rhinoceros heaved his way up from below the stadium, its great ivory horn as sharp as a dagger, and its eyes flashing black and beady as it began to run, thundering across the circus.

Cleopatra caught sight of a sword, slicing directly at her head, and leapt forward to tear the fighter's throat, savoring, even if only for a moment, the heat of his blood.

She gathered her haunches and lunged at the stands, feeling the dead weight of a lioness beside her, anchoring her to the ground.

She gloried in her invisibility, straining at the chain that bound her and feeling the links stretch, the metal protesting. They did not know her. They had no idea she was coming. At last, she felt the chain break, whipping out from her throat and lashing across the ground. Red splattered her eyes and the moans of the dying rose around her.

Her muscles tensed for the leap over the trench, and for a graceful moment, she was in the air, high above the crowd, higher than any true lion could leap.

Augustus's face was shocked and upturned. She could see his heart beating through his throat. Terrified of her at last. He had underestimated Cleopatra.

The force of her landing threw the emperor to the ground, and he cowered on his back before her.

“You took my family!” she screamed, her voice still that of a lioness. She dug her claws into his shoulders, relishing his terror. “You took my country!”

“Get it off me!” the emperor shrieked. His eyes were wide, and reflecting in them, Cleopatra could see two female figures. First an old woman, and then a young. The elder had a distaff in her hands, and she raised it in the air, spinning it so swiftly, Cleopatra could scarcely see it move. The old woman looked into the queen's lioness body and
saw
her. Her eyes flashed silver-white, and Cleopatra felt her body begin to weaken as though she was suddenly bound with ropes, caught in a web.

The young girl rose up from her seat, smiled and lifted her hands, throwing some glittering substance into the air.

It showered over Cleopatra, and for a moment, Cleopatra was no longer a lion. She felt herself melt back into her human form, crouched atop Augustus in his laurel crown, her fingers bloodied.

She did not care.

Everything ceased to matter as she finally saw the face of the man who stood beside the witches, the man she'd thought an impersonation of her husband.

“Antony!” she screamed.

The knowledge ripped through her. It could be nothing but dreaming—but she reached out her hands to touch him. Did she imagine it? Did he cringe back from her?

She did touch him, an almost him, a faint him, with her fingertips, just as someone leapt upon her and tore her from her husband again.

A
grippa and Usem both threw their bodies between that of the emperor and the monster. Agrippa locked his hands about Cleopatra's throat, feeling the woman's flesh in his fingers, even as the lioness growled before him. Her fangs grazed his shoulders.

He clung to her, screaming wordless obscenities against a world wherein something that should not exist, that
could
not exist, could suddenly be before him, attacking his emperor. He howled invective against magic and its unpredictability, the witches surrounding the emperor even now, and yet here he was, fighting the monster, and he was not a witch at all, but a soldier. Agrippa did not believe in magic. He did not believe in witches.

He did not believe in the thing he was doing.

Usem attacked the lioness from behind, his arms locked about her shoulders, his dagger seeking purchase. Would its poison kill her? He had no way of knowing. The Psylli clung to her back, feeling her toss him from side to side, feeling her sandpaper fur and, at the same time, her silken skin.

She was one moment a lioness and the next a woman, and Agrippa held her ferociously, pressing his thumbs into her jugular vein. Even a monster could be killed. Monsters died in the stories, their heads chopped off and buried, turned to stone by the sight of their own hideous aspects, poisoned by their own venoms.

He would kill this queen, this beast, this fury.

Her lips were pink, and then black and feline. Her eyes were golden and slitted, and then dark and long-lashed. Her fingers were dainty and pale, and then curved and taloned. Her waist was tiny and her hips were round, and her thigh came up beside his and wrapped around his back. He gasped, feeling suddenly deranged, and losing his grip on her throat.

Was he killing a woman, a defenseless—

No. He was killing a monster. He saw her jaws opening for him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Agrippa saw the man who was and was not Antony lift his hand in a gesture of command.

“Now!” Antony yelled, and suddenly there were men running toward them. Soldiers. Agrippa could see the flash of their swords.

He felt the Psylli pressing the hilt of a weapon into his fumbling hand. Agrippa looked up and saw Usem yank Cleopatra's head back. Agrippa thrust the serpent-poisoned dagger deep and hard into the monster's breast, feeling nothing but her demonic body engaged with his, hearing nothing but her shrieking roars. Her breast. At once creamy and bare and tawny-furred, both lioness and queen, and the blade had struck true, he knew.

He felt the dagger penetrate deep into her chest, and he twisted it, grunting with the effort. Surely, she would die. Surely.

He could hear swords clashing, men surrounding them, his own men, he thought, but he was not sure. Someone tried to wrest Cleopatra from his arms.

Chrysate muttered under her breath, whispering darkness, trying to bind the queen. She was strong enough to weaken her but not to break her. She called to Hecate, but Hecate was bound herself. The priestess clutched her holding stone. The shade was resisting her, too, and beside her, Cleopatra's daughter trembled in terror, barely contained. She turned her head to look for Auðr and saw the Northerner, her hands high in the air, moving rapidly, spinning, the distaff nearly invisible between them.

Agrippa's men were fighting Roman soldiers who had come from nowhere, and who seemed to be trying to defend Cleopatra. The shade of Antony shouted encouragement at them.

Cleopatra's face was pinned upward, the general clenched about her throat like a chain, muscles heaving and sweating, blowing like a bull. She hissed, air slipping from her lips.

Something was weakening her. Cleopatra shuddered, feeling a chill rising inside her, dragging her back into her human body.

Her husband, a false vision. An illusion. It could not be Antony.

She tried to convince herself, to banish it. They were tricking her. She'd seen something that could not be true. The man she had seen could not be Antony, but with every part of herself she knew it was. The smell of mint and wine. His smell.

She could feel the magic coming from the old woman, with the strange motions of her distaff, and the other, the one whose hands rested on Antony's shoulders, chanted words in a language even Cleopatra did not know. Any sorceress who had sway over the dead had sway over Cleopatra. She was not alive enough to resist it.

She struggled against Agrippa's hands and against the other man clinging to her shoulders. How could a mortal man hold her so tightly? Usem's dagger lay in her breast like a hornet's sting, maddening. She wailed, not for pain but for Antony. She had touched him, and now he was gone. She had touched him, and yet he was dead. He had cringed away from her. His face had shown her things she never wanted to see.

She terrified him, and with good reason. She terrified herself.

She let her body go limp, and Agrippa released his grip on her throat slightly, thinking her dying. She felt herself gripped by several other men, the soldiers who had appeared fighting Agrippa's men. She shook them off.

“NO!” Usem shouted, but Agrippa had no time to move before her tail whipped up and wrapped around his torso, flinging him deep into the stands, and Usem down through the crowd. Agrippa landed on his back, feeling ribs crack, an arm splinter. He gasped, unable to breathe, and then, choking with horror, he watched as the snake's tail lashed around the paralyzed Augustus and lifted him from where he stood.

She twisted the emperor's body before hers, bringing his struggling form to a level with her eyes.

Augustus looked into them, strangely calm. It was happening at last. He should have died in Alexandria. Human. Snake. Lioness. None of these things, and all of them. He had not been mad, nor had he been preparing all these months for no reason.

As the pressure of her coils grew greater around him, he felt his heart trying to leap out of his throat. He gagged on bile. This would be the end of Augustus. He knew it with every bit of his soul. All these years of surviving intrigue, surviving Rome, for nothing. For this.

Her mouth opened wide in a hiss. Her cobra's hood spread wide, the torchlight shining through it, and where were his defenders? The circus was half empty now, he could see from his vantage point, and the people who had not been quick enough to flee the stadium were trampled and dead in the stands. His soldiers were engaged in battle with the wild animals, whose assigned human combatants had fled the circus for the streets. Agrippa lay across a row of seats, possibly dead himself. Usem crawled up the aisle.

Augustus's eyes began to close, the world dimming before him. The snake surrounded him, pressing in on his bones and blood, chilling his heart. He'd been a fool to think Agrippa would kill her with a dagger or with any of the other weapons they'd assembled. She was not of this earth.

He felt his body giving over to her.

“No,” he whispered. Cleopatra looked into his eyes, caring nothing for his life.

“
You killed my husband
,” she hissed. “
You killed my son. You took my home.”

Augustus felt his bones beginning to crack, his ribs splintering inside his chest. The serpent coiled tighter about him.

Then he saw the Psylli stand, his eyes dark and wrathful. A whirlwind hung beside him and then dispersed, whipping through the air of the circus. The warrior shook his head furiously, and a sound suddenly began to echo, swooping and whirling from end to end of the stadium.

Cleopatra, in the throes of her triumph, felt herself falter, her body transfixed. She began to lose her grasp on her prey.