Fighting Fit (14 page)

Chapter Twelve

A
urelia gave me a beseeching look as she and Lucilla were led away.

I could feel the air seething with confused vibes. The PODS were seriously alarmed. No way did they want these sisters in Nero’s arena. But the Emperor had spoken and he had to be obeyed, unless they wanted to blow their cosmic cover.

Orlando had gone white, and Reuben looked as if he might be sick. This was so not how any of us had pictured this reunion.

In his madness Nero was also deeply cunning. Determined to force Star to perform, he’d come up with the perfect scenario. The gladiatrix could never stand by and watch as her sisters were slaughtered. She’d rather die defending them.

For the first time since they were babies, the triplets were only metres apart. For a moment no one moved, and then in one supple movement Star rose to her feet and she did this touching thing. She walked right up to her long lost sisters and looked wonderingly into their eyes, the way a trusting small child would do, and her sisters gazed wonderingly back at her.

I thought my heart was going to burst.

“They’re remembering each other’s vibes,” Reuben said softly.

Star briefly closed her eyes. I saw tears spill down her face. Aurelia and Lucilla spontaneously reached for their sister’s hands and as the three girls touched, a gigantic
whoosh
of cosmic electricity went through me.

We all sighed with relief. We’d done it.

The amphitheatre was in total confusion. Some gladiators charged at the triplets, then thought better of it. Others just gave helpless shrugs and let their swords fall to the ground.

The audience was outraged. They started stamping and chanting, “Kill! Kill Kill!”

The girls were oblivious to all of this. Their rapture at finding each other had enclosed them in a kind of joyous force-field. To them, nothing else existed. The mad Emperor, this toy arena and the audience of baying upper-class Romans, was a meaningless illusion. Only their love was real.

When human love is that pure, it can move mountains. It can stop the murderous onslaught of trained gladiators. It can send such beautiful, electrifying shock waves through the air that an evil dynasty finally begins to crumble.

I became aware of disturbing grinding sounds far beneath the earth, as if the tectonic plates or whatever, were shifting. Hairline cracks appeared in the palace walls and a marble statue of the Emperor wobbled briefly on its plinth. None of this cosmic upheaval registered with the humans obviously. Not yet. It was more like an angelic trailer of things to come.

Is this what happened when you finally reversed a hideous Ancient Roman curse?

I glanced at Orlando for reassurance, but he was watching the sisters’ reunion with a dreamy expression. His mission had worked out just like it was supposed to. Against all the odds, we’d succeeded in getting these three extraordinary sisters into the same space, and their combined energy was awesome. I could literally feel it pulsing through me like light from a star.

Aah,I thought blissfully. This is just the best job in the universe.

That’s one major difference between us and the Dark agents. PODS operatives are never ever moved by human emotions. And by this stage in his career, Titus Lucretius was three-quarters of the way to being a POD. I vaguely registered him edging stealthily towards the barrier, but I didn’t see him reach inside his toga.

Reuben did. Frantic thoughts zoomed from his mind to mine. He’s got a dagger! He’s going to kill Aurelia!

Vaulting over anyone in his way, Reuben launched himself wildly at Titus. In my desperation to reach Aurelia, I hurled myself over the barrier into the arena and landed heavily on my knees, taking off a layer of skin.

Star was faster than any of us. She saw the dagger flash towards her sister and simply stepped in front of her to block the blow.

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but somehow all the pain and shock stayed trapped inside. My mouth opened but no sound would come out.

Titus’s dagger looked all wrong sticking out of Star’s body. Stupid, grotesque and wrong. A crimson flower of blood came welling up around the hilt of the dagger, soaking through the white linen of her tunic.

The gladiatrix quickly pressed her hand to the wound and tried to smile. “I thought it would be today,” she managed to say. “I told Juno I would die today. Don’t look so sad,” she told her horrified sisters softly. “I’ll be waiting for you in the Elysian fields.” Then she crumpled in sickening slow motion.

Lucilla and Aurelia tried to catch her, but Star sagged emptily in their arms and all three of them ended up sprawling on the ground.

There was a silence so total, that it was more shattering than any sound. I felt as if I’d been murdered too. I couldn’t believe this vibrant girl was dead.

Just as I thought my head would explode with the horror, the scene became oddly fixed.

It was like in Sleeping Beauty,when all the inhabitants of the castle get frozen in really dumb positions. Romans wearing laurel wreaths and clutching lumps of roast chicken, craned forward to get a good view of the dead gladiatrix. Titus was exchanging a frozen grin of triumph with Aurelia’s brother. A horrified gladiator continued to stare down helplessly at the stricken girls cradling their dead sister.

Was this some bizarre side-effect of the curse? I wondered. And if so, why weren’t
we
frozen too? I could hear Reuben breathing unevenly. Plus I could feel my own heart hammering behind my ribs.

Someone else was moving too, making his way shakily past these bizarre human waxworks and into the arena.

Orlando looked like he was trapped inside a bad dream and couldn’t wake up. He knelt beside Star and his face was grey with shock. “Why couldn’t I save you? I should have saved you,” he whispered.

My throat ached for him. “You couldn’t know,” I told him painfully. “They were so happy. It didn’t seem possible anything bad could happen.”

Reuben was nervously looking around him. His sharper senses had picked something up.

I felt a powerful disturbance in the air, like the beating of invisible wings. A shaft of light came down.

Wouldn’t you know it, I thought bitterly, now it’s too late, the Agency’s stepped in.

Next minute Michael appeared beside us

I wanted to throw myself into his arms and beg him to take me home. I wanted to kick and scream like a bratty little kid. “Why did you let it happen? Why did you let Star die?” But my inner angel just quietly watched and waited to see what would happen next.

In his despair, Orlando didn’t seem to register Michael’s arrival. When he didn’t look up, Michael touched him very lightly between the shoulder blades. The whoosh of cosmic energy seemed to jolt Orlando out of his trance. “They were together for less than three minutes.” Orlando’s voice was flat with misery. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

“I know how it seems,” Michael said softly. “But everything is completely as it should be. Now we must get these two girls to safety.”

Michael bent over Lucilla and Aurelia and I saw a flicker of celestial light go through them. If I’d been them I’d have wanted to stay frozen forever.

When the two remaining sisters saw Star still lying dead in their arms, their faces were pitiful.

“I have to take her now,” Michael told them.

I heard them gasp and their eyes filled with a mixture of terror and awe. I wondered what they were seeing. Could they see Michael’s crumpled suit and his beautiful archangel eyes? Or did they see some anonymous figure with shining wings?

Michael effortlessly lifted Star’s lifeless body in his arms. A pearly haze of white light began to form, softly enfolding the sisters, growing more and more intense until they were completely hidden from view. Once again I felt that odd thrumming disturbance as Time switched back on. But by this time Michael and the girls were nowhere to be seen.

There was major pandemonium as the amphitheatre returned to life. Obviously the humans didn’t suspect that an angel had spirited the surviving triplets through a gap in time. But they knew they’d witnessed some kind of supernatural event.

Nero became totally unhinged at this point and started screaming at the guards. “It’s sorcery! Taming lions! Vanishing triplets! I won’t allow it! Search the palace from top to bottom!” Guards came running.

Thanks, Michael, I thought. How do we get out of this?

“Go through every box room and latrine until you find those two sorceresses,” Nero was ranting. “And those other prisoners!” he added vaguely.

Other prisoners?
I glanced down at myself in confusion. Could he possibly mean us?

Orlando gave me a wan smile. “Relax. We dematerialised a few moments ago.”

Reuben blew out his breath with relief. “Then let’s get out of this hellhole!”

But someone had stepped in front of us, deliberately blocking our exit. Even in our non-material forms Titus Lucretius could see us perfectly. “I’ll find them if I have to move Heaven and Earth!” he hissed. “Make no mistake, those sisters will die and their blood-line will die with them.”

“Time for a reality check, Titus,” Orlando said quietly. “Haven’t you noticed? You and your masters lost this one.”

Titus turned purple with rage. “I killed the gladiatrix, you fool! The sisters have been separated for ever. WE defeated YOU!!”

Orlando shook his head. “You’re still part-human, though not for much longer at the speed you’re mutating,” he added drily. “So you haven’t yet grasped that Time essentially has no meaning.”

“Oh, spare me the angelic hogwash!” groaned Titus.

Orlando smiled; a real full-on smile this time. I could still see the shock and sadness in his eyes, but our brave beautiful angel boy was back.

“You really should get your evil masters to educate you,” he said calmly. “From your limited human point of view the sisters’ reunion was so brief as to be meaningless. But from a cosmic perspective, this event will resonate through human history until the end of Time itself.”

Titus stared at him open-mouthed.

“I’ll explain,” said Reuben in a friendly voice. “What Orlando means is that Star might be dead, but she still changed the world. Love is cool like that!”

“Come on,” said Orlando. “Let’s go home.”

Three days after we returned from our Roman mission, I scored a professional first and ended up in the hospital.

I was suffering from a massive overdose of PODS toxins, but I didn’t know that, so after a hot shower and a change of clothes, I just went to my classes as usual. Well, that’s what you do when you’re a professional. In my opinion I was the same as normal, better actually.

OK, so it was harder to sleep at night since I came home, and when I finally managed to drop off, my dreams were v. disturbing. And OK, so for some reason it felt like there was a sheet of frosted glass between me and my mates. But that didn’t mean something was
wrong
with me.

The bad nights meant I persistently slept through my alarm. Three mornings in a row, Lola had to go jogging without me.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I complained when I caught up with her after morning school.

“I figured you needed the rest,
carita
,” she said.

I gave her my brightest smile. “I need to wake up my dozy angelic metabolism, that’s all. Let’s grab a salad then we can at least go and work out in the gym.”

“Mel, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your tank is running on empty.” Lola said anxiously. “No, actually I think you’re running on pure fumes. You should slow down. Give your energy system a chance to recover. You guys went through a lot.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with me,” I told her huffily. “If you don’t want to come that’s fine. I’ll go by myself!” And that’s what I did.

I was doing all right, until I went on the treadmill. There’s something v. hypnotic about running on a never-ending conveyor belt. Maybe that’s why I started having Ancient Roman flashbacks. Strangely, most of them were flashbacks to experiences I hadn’t actually registered at the time. Like I could hear the exact tune the musicians played for the dancing girls as our litter bearers carried me and Aurelia past a sleazy bar.

And I kept seeing all these unknown Roman faces; the sunken eyes of an exhausted slave, as he used his last ounce of strength to help fellow slaves winch a giant slab of marble into place, the animated expressions of teenage girls at the baths, as they argued about which of their favourite charioteers was the best looking. Then I’d see my own hands fastening pearl hairpins into Aurelia’s hair, as I dressed her for that horrible banquet.

I never said goodbye
, I realised. Aurelia was my human and I really respected her and I never
even said goodbye.

Still the disturbing flashbacks still kept coming: bloody executions, Christians chanting, the rungs of a wooden ladder sticking out of a newly dug burial pit. They were coming faster and faster and they wouldn’t stop. My heavenly surroundings began to whirl around me, then suddenly, like the fadeout at the end of a movie, everything went totally black…

When I came round, I was lying in a white bed, surrounded by gauzy white curtains. An angel in pastel-coloured scrubs was calmly checking my pulse.

“You’ll be fine,” he told me. “You just need to rest, but we’d like to keep an eye on you for a couple of days. Would you like me to leave the curtains open?”

I tried to nod.

Drawing back the curtains, he went back out into the garden.

Sunlight and air came streaming in through the stone pillars and I could hear birds singing. I lay back weakly on my pillows and felt a soft breeze blow over my face. For the first time since I came back, I could smell the heavenly air, with its scent that is almost, but not quite, like lilacs. For absolutely no reason, tears began to seep from under my eyelids.

I cried on and off all the rest of that day, as my more distressing Roman memories floated to the surface. When I finally started crying about Star, the angel came in from the garden, smelling of rain and flowers, and silently held my hand.