Omega (26 page)

Well handled.

I risked a look at the creature, who was
watching with his arms crossed, exposing roped forearms. The
muscles of his athletic frame were perfectly defined under tight
gray skin. I caught myself staring too long and shook my head. “You
seriously look like this every night?” I managed finally.

He bowed his head.

“
I see why I called you
Mismatch. Your ears and face are …”

He growled.

“
... lopsided but
beautiful. Like, you are incredible, Adonis.” I cleared my throat.
“Never mind. I think I destroyed the cots. Hope you don’t mind
sleeping on the floor.”

He extended a wing.

I eyed it.

I sleep on them.

I hesitated then touched the inside of one
wing carefully. The downy fleece lining it was softer than anything
I’d ever felt. “Wow.” I ran both hands through the strange fur,
smiling despite being weirded out by everything that had happened
recently. “I can see why. These are incredible.” I also innately
understood little-me’s fascination with the creature. Stunning did
not begin to describe him, and the wings made me want to melt into
them and sleep forever.

I was finally beginning to feel the drain of
the insanity I’d been through.

You are tired. I can feel it.

“
Bad monster!”

Mismatch moved the dead cots to the back of
the cell and wrapped himself in one wing then lay down, spreading
out the other on the ground. Oddly enough, I was less nervous
around the monster. He was scary, yes, but something about Adonis
left me self-conscious and rattled.

“
You don’t bite do you?” I
asked.

Only when warranted.

I rolled my eyes. The monster that so gently
picked up Mrs. Nettles and me was less scary than the man I
couldn’t read.

“
I won’t hurt them will
I?” I asked, pulling off my shoes and socks. I sat down with a
grimace, my back hurting.

No.

I rested my hands on the wing then let them
sink into its plushness, soon grinning from the softness. “This is
amazing!” I stretched out carefully onto my belly and rested a
cheek against it. His scent was everywhere, and I sighed.

The wing rolled around me, and I went with
it, surrounded by warmth and softness unlike anything I’d ever
experienced. The rolling stopped and loosened, easing out from
around me without releasing.

“
I’m a human burrito!” I
said cheerfully. “Do you eat humans?”

No.

I closed my eyes, intending to relax for a
few minutes, but ended up toppling into deep slumber.

Gentleness is the antidote
for cruelty.

–
Phaedrus

Banging on the door jarred me awake. I
blinked, not recalling where I was until I saw the dreary concrete
walls. I was warm despite the damp chill of morning underground in
a place with no central heat or air conditioning and lifted my
head. My body was sore, my back aching and feeling like the wound
would tear if I dared move. The sound of metal trays sliding on
concrete floors came a second before the door clanged shut.

Falling asleep with a monster wasn’t as
strange as waking up with Adonis. One of his arms was draped over
me, and we were spooning. He was wearing pants, thank the gods, or
I would’ve totally lost it. I did sneak a peek at the smooth,
rounded muscles of his chest and biceps. There wasn’t much about
him that didn’t amaze me.

“
How’s the back?” he asked
without opening his eyes.

I really despised how he did that. “Awesome.
Ready for another go!”

“
Good.”

I wasn’t fooling either of us, but I didn’t
care. I pushed to my knees and moved away from him, sweeping one
last look down his body. Ugh. He was perfect. Aside from the
homicidal tendencies, the mental games and the fact he had access
to too-much-information when it came to me.

I got to my feet, and groaned aloud. “Oh,
gods that hurts!”

Adonis said nothing. He stood, displaying
none of the aches and pains I did. I straightened all the way. I
didn’t feel remotely ready for another day in the ring.

Someone had brought us a mushy breakfast. I
bit back another groan as I picked up both trays from the door and
brought them to the center of the room. Adonis was dressing, and I
sat heavily.

“
You know you snore?” he
asked.

Awkward did not begin to explain the close
quarters. I ate without responding and willed my body to stop
aching quite so much.

“
You ready for
today?”

I continued to ignore him, not in the mood
for shape shifting grotesques or their annoying SISA chief
personas.

“
Not talking.” Was he
amused? I didn’t dare acknowledge him with a look.

We ate, and he pulled out the first aid kit.
I watched for a split second as he rolled up a sleeve and prepared
to bandage the nasty looking wound on his arm.

“
I can do that,” I
said.

He said nothing about me breaking my silence
but held out the bandage. I shifted forward and took it. I wrapped
his forearm carefully, how Herakles taught me. When finished, I sat
back and admired the work briefly.

“
Your guardian taught you
well,” Adonis said.

“
Yep.” I looked at him for
the first time this morning. It was true. I had already begun to
reap the rewards of his training. And yet …

My parents. Today, after some good rest, I
was starting to think differently about the issue I brushed off
yesterday. I was good at denying things I didn’t want to deal with.
Or … emotional issues, because I’d been taught by example to ignore
feelings in favor of action. Was that because Herakles himself
didn’t know how to deal with what he’d done?

Lost in dark thought, I was gazing into
Adonis’ eyes. Heat warmed my cheeks. He was too enigmatic for me to
begin to guess if he knew what I was thinking.

“
You razed my forest.” I
needed the reminder that the man before me was no better than the
man Herakles had been. I was kind of afraid of learning to trust
someone to find their secrets unbearable, and Adonis struck me as
someone who had a lot to hide.

“
I did. No better way to
drive out a herd of deer than to take their home away.”

“
I saw you at the lake. I
gave away the location, didn’t I?”

He nodded. “I can sense more than how you
feel. I can sense where you are, when the red cord is off.”

“
That’s creepy.” Adonis
wasn’t the kind of man to offer condolences or sympathy, but at
least he wasn’t messing with me. In fact, he’d been brutally honest
when we spoke last night.

I didn’t know what to think about the people
around me or what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn’t about to
trust him. If my own guardian, who I spent twelve years treating as
a father, had a past that horrified me, what had this … creature
done?

“
I will protect you,” he
said quietly. “I make few promises in life, but this is
one.”

I’m not sure I believe
him.
I sensed he felt my turmoil. My body
probably gave me away, and I rolled my shoulders to loosen the
tension between them.

“
I’m ready.” I stood and
stretched back. “You think the monster will be bigger
today?”

“
Much. And we’ll know how
mad the Supreme Priest still is.”

Fifteen minutes later, we found out.

“
What in Hades is that?” I
whispered, staring through the gate into the arena at the monster
facing off with no less than eight men armed with lances, swords,
knives and axes.

“
A sign the Supreme Priest
isn’t going to forgive me this time.”

I searched his face. He was tense, but this
was different than the man ready for battle. This was the tension
of a man who was worried.

“
I’m sorry,” I
murmured.

“
For what?” He appeared
genuinely curious.

“
For you being punished
because of me.”

“
Why would you apologize
for someone else making a decision about his life?”

“
Because I’m a nice
person, you asshole!” I sighed. “Why are you so
difficult?”

He studied me, the half-smile back. It never
quite reached his beautiful eyes. “Obviously I enjoy baiting
you.”

I hadn’t really found the side of him
capable of being truly human yet. I rolled my eyes and tested the
swords. My back was quaking, my strength half what it was
yesterday. I went through several slow exercises.

“
Thank you,” he said
softly.

“
For what?” I
grumbled.

“
For caring about my fate.
No one I can remember ever has.”

My anger crumbled. Then he said something
like this. Or rescued me. Or defied his boss, a member of the
Triumvirate, and ended up in a death match with a monster. I began
to suspect he simply didn’t know how to be human, because he was
good at it when he tried.

“
That was a very good,
human response,” I told him. “People are supposed to care for one
another. They aren’t supposed to send their friends to face
monsters.”

“
This is foreign to
me.”

I glanced at him to ensure he wasn’t baiting
me again. To my surprise, the self-admitted butcher of who knew how
many people was serious. “You’ve never loved anyone? Been
loved?”

“
Only you.”

I flushed.

“
As a child, when you
loved Mismatch,” he added with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“That is all I know of love. Friends.”

How did he do this? How could I want as far
away from him as possible one moment and to hug him the next and
assure a mass murderer that he, too, deserved to be loved?

“
You never had a chance to
be a real human, did you?” I managed.

“
Why does that make you
want to cry?”

“
Stop with the body
reading!” I sighed and swallowed the tightness in my throat.
“Because … you might make a good human if you were given the chance
to learn. You can be very kind, very thoughtful.”

“
And yet my kindness makes
you tense.”

“
Yeah. Your bluntness,
too.”

“
Thank you.”

“
You’re welcome,” I said.
“Now we just need to teach you some eating manners, and you’ll be
set.”

“
And get you laid so you
stop tensing up whenever I touch you.”

I pushed him.

This time, his smile was real. It was
dazzling, more beautiful than his eyes, and revealed dimples in his
cheeks.

“
Can you manipulate its
ribbons?” he asked.

I blinked out of my surprise, grateful to
focus on something outside of the two of us, even if it was the
largest monster I’d ever seen.

The crowd was already twice as loud as
yesterday when we’d won. People were on their feet, cheering on the
creature shredding men two at a time in the arena before us.

The Typhon possessed four ribbons. I stepped
forward and lifted a hand. Where I was able to grip the ribbons of
anyone or anything, I couldn’t quite grasp these. Whenever I tried,
they shifted just out of reach. “This is weird. It’s got some sort
of defense mechanism.”

“
It’s a Typhon. It’s
supposed to be buried beneath a mountain. It wouldn’t surprise me
to discover he’s under the protection of some god or
other.”

“
Looks like he got out,” I
said, distracted.

“
Zeus alone was able to
subdue him.”

My hand dropped, and I faced him. “You can’t
be serious.”

Adonis said nothing, and my eyes returned to
the arena. I believed him. The massive monster had the upper body
of a man and the lower body of an octopus, except each tentacle was
a snake with fangs that exceeded the size of my hand.

The crowd burst into a frenzy.

The beast was tearing through the men as if
they were standing still and not hacking at the snakeheads darting
towards them. What the snakes didn’t sever in two, the creature’s
double-headed axe did.

I had never seen men die. In my dream or
memory was one thing, but here, watching their blood spray into the
air and coat the ground, hearing the crowd roar louder the more
blood was shed …

I felt a little ill. It had never occurred
to me to imagine what the inside of a human body looked like, and I
was disgusted to see it didn’t look much different than beef.

“
I think I want to be a
vegetarian,” I whispered, not entirely certain how to handle the
sight.

“
You’ve never seen a man
die?”

“
No. Definitely never seen
one torn in two.”

“
It’s a quick death. There
are many worse ways to die.”

“
You would know, wouldn’t
you?” I meant the words to be said too quiet for him to hear, but
they came out normal. “And it’s my fault you do know.”

“
Your fault?” I felt his
eyes on me.

“
I brought you to life. I
unleashed whatever you did. Whatever you are.”

“
You make it sound as if
I’m like this thing.” He lifted his chin towards the
arena.

“
I don’t know what you
are. I’ve heard a few things about what SISA does to people,” I
replied. “Everyone is terrified of you in particular. Niko
–”