The Heart of War (19 page)

The children fell silent and then looked at each other before their eyes dropped to their feet, the toes of which were wiggling inside dirty white sneakers. “Such tales children tell, Mr. Ares.” Michael broke the silence. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Such a tale indeed,” Ares mused. The outside world would never believe such a fantastical tale, they would think the children outright liars, or they were covering for something or someone. It was lucky for them that Ares was very well acquainted with a man with bronze skin and golden wings.

Eros.

“No one believes us,” Sha’Quanda muttered with quiet sadness.

“Ah, but I do believe you,” Ares countered and smiled at the girl who could be pretty if she only had enough to eat and clean water to drink. He turned back to the adults in the room. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with these two further. Also, I would like to see Maggie’s room.”

“Room?” Augustine asked with a little laugh as though such luxuries as one’s own room were an everyday occurrence here. “Maggie slept in the girls’ dorm.”

Thinking briefly of the communal room his women shared back on his island, Ares let out a rush of air that was almost a laugh as the irony of it settled in. “Of course she did. Would you allow them to take me there?”

“All right,” Michael agreed. “She had a small footlocker and a nightstand; they may have personal items in them that she would like to have. Please take them to her.” He still wasn’t sure the strange man was telling the whole truth but he did believe Maggie was alive and the stranger was doing her no harm. “They may have more information they’re willing to share with you.” The Good Father stood up and extended his hand. He watched as the man calling himself Mr. Ares stood up and towered over him. Ares reached into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and produced a small sack made of black velvet.

“It’s not much, I know, but,” he put it in Michael’s outstretched hand. “A donation, hmm? For all the good you do here.” Ares folded the man’s open fingers around the coin sack. “Thank you, you’ve been most helpful.”

The children led him out of the room. Behind them, Michael opened the small sack in his hand only to find it filled with gold coins. He just stood there staring at it wondering if the coins were real. The only time he’d seen coins like that was in a movie when someone went treasure hunting. Plucking one from the sack, he held it up to see a stamped image of Apollo above ancient Greek writing.

“Whoa. Would you look at that?” It was more money than either of them had seen in their lifetimes and the stranger just handed it over as though it were mere pocket change. By the looks of it, the small sack of gold coins could be worth more than their weight in gold on the open market. Coin collectors would surely go out of their minds for these.

The coins were over a thousand years old. Ares had them in a pile just hanging around the cave. The God of War was a very rich man; when one lived two or three or four thousand years, one had little choice but to accumulate wealth in the Mortal World. As such, Ares had several bank accounts, stocks, bonds, credit cards. He owned several luxurious homes, cars, and even yachts in the outside world. He had to have something to play with and some place to stay when he ventured off his island. Those things took money. Trouble was Ares wasn’t sure what passed for legal tender in this crap-pile part of the world. Drachmas were passé. Euros probably weren’t any good. American Green Backs? Maybe, but no. The one really good thing about gold was that it was always worth something. More than that, it was always worth the same amount in one place as it was in another. That made it a bit better than cold hard cash. He’d been certain that the Good Father would find someone to turn his gold into something more up to date and useable for him.

“Who do you think he is? Really, I mean,” Augustine whispered as she wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and looked down at the gold in his hand.

“Ares,” Michael replied flatly. “I think Maggie is finally finding her own way home.”

“Is it a good home?” Augustine worried.

“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, kissed the top of his wife’s head, and then looked at the gold between them. “Can’t be all bad,” he mused and bounced the sack, making the coins jingle. He meant the remark to make her smile but her face remained sad and concerned. “I think, maybe, Mr. Ares has feelings for our little Maggie, don’t you? You’d like it if she found a man who would love her, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”

Augustine nuzzled her head against his chest. “Yes,” she nodded. “So long as he’s good to her. I don’t think he’s a good man. I think he’s dangerous.”

Michael got the same feeling from the stranger but, being a man, he was willing to give Mr. Ares the benefit of the doubt until or unless he proved unworthy of it. “I wasn’t exactly a saint when you met me, was I, Auggie? Bad Boys need love, too.”

5

The girl’s dorm turned out to be a long rectangular room with two neat rows of beds totaling thirty in the room. Sha’Quanda led Ares to the bed on the right side at the top of the row. At the foot of it was a small lock box that Michael said was a footlocker, but Ares would not give the little box such a prestigious name. “You can’t open it,” the girl said to him.

“No?” Ares got down on his haunches and looked at the little lock. He could probably pulverize it in his hand but there was no need for such a display. “I think this lock is broken,” he said as he took it in his hand and looked up at the children with him to make sure he had their gaze. Ares used his powers to bust the lock but all the children saw was him give it a good yank and then it opened. “See?” He turned back and rummaged around in the small chest to find it divided into two sides. On the right were personal items. On the left were containers of varying sizes filled with different liquids. Next to them was a basket full of small varying stones. He looked up to the children.

Dae’Jave explained. “Maggie spent many hours out in the brush collecting herbs and flowers and things, when she came back here at night she spent many hours brewing her potions.” He pointed to the bottles in the chest.

Alena brought many plants into Ares’ home, but so far she had yet to set up shop and begin potion making. “For what?”

“Medicine,” he explained easily as though the question itself made no sense to him. “For pain, for fever, for…” he patted his hand against his chest, “con-ges-tion.”

Feys and their herbs, he thought to himself as he plucked a small glass container from its resting place and uncapped it. The odor was pungent; valerian and passionflower, this was to help people sleep and by the smell, it was a very strong concoction. Putting it back, he picked up another vial. It was very small, half-empty, and had a fresh wax seal around the top. Ares broke the seal and opened it, the second the cap came off and he drew his head back away from the stench that made his dark eyes water. Holding the vial very carefully, as though it might explode, he dipped his pinky into the murky liquid and then tapped it to his tongue only to spit it out on the ground.

Poison.

“Indeed.” No longer satisfied by the potions, he turned to the items neatly folded and piled on the other side of the chest. On the top was a dress; it was tattered and dirty but at one time it had been a lovely shade of pink. The maker’s label read; Channel. Expensive. Below it was a pair of high-heeled shoes, also pink, and a pair of tattered nylons, not pink but what the Mortals called ‘nude’, as though there were such a color. Near the bottom of the chest he found a small pink purse. Within it was Alena’s wallet; it contained her credit cards, her bankcard, her Massachusetts driver’s license—that was good enough to give him her old address in Boston—checkbook and a few photographs. One was of the children in her class back at the school where she once taught. One was of a black cat with big yellow eyes. The last one was of Alena, all dressed up for a grand gala in a tight fitting black dress, black stockings—not tattered—sparking diamonds on her ears and around her pretty neck. She was smiling, laughing in fact. Ares couldn’t recall seeing her smile so during her time on his island nor could he remember hearing her laughter. In the photograph, on her arm was a man. At least in appearance he was older than Alena—but certainly not chronologically. With her arms around his waist and his hand over hers, he was smiling brightly. Looking down he felt a bright bolt of jealousy as he wondered who the lucky man was.

The purse also held a set of keys, a cell phone with a long dead battery, a crushed pack of Newport cigarettes, which surprised him, a nearly empty tube of lipstick, and a bottle of something called Obsession that was also nearly empty. Ares uncapped the small bottle and held it to his nose to catch the deep heady scent. It was not what he expected; it didn’t smell in the least like honeysuckle. Instead, it had a spicy-floral aroma highly reminiscent of the Orient. Taking in another breath, he thought he smelled vanilla, orange blossoms, black oak moss mixed with amber that gave it its spicy quality. It was very powerful and passionate, instantly bringing less than pure thoughts to his mind as he wondered what she was like when this was all she was wearing. He could imagine it mingling with her sweat and the musky scent between her legs as he hovered over her.

Before he knew it, he had capped the bottle and slipped it into the pocket of his sweatshirt, not wanting to leave it behind by mistake.

Opening the zippered compartment to the small purse, he found a bankbook and the secret to Alena’s ability to produce the materials needed to build this place. The little passbook told him she had a savings account with The First Bank of Boston and when she arrived here some seven years ago, her balance had been a healthy twenty-five thousand dollars. Like him, he imaged Alena had amassed a fortune large enough to ensure her comfort but probably not large enough to ensure a lifetime of high living, not yet anyway. On the day she left the balance in her account read $10.15. Somehow, she’d been able to get the money from Boston to Ceres Agar or to building suppliers outside the country who would ship to this wretched place. She’d built a school and a home for the orphans but she’d gone broke doing it, at least as far as this account was concerned. She could have used that money to buy her way out of here. Why didn’t she?

Having looked through the entire contents of the small box, Ares returned to his full height and looked down at the pitiful bed. It was rusted and crooked. The mattress was so thin Ares felt the springs through it. No wonder she’d been so grateful at the comfortable bed with its clean blankets and pillows. Although the blankets resembled clean, a thin layer of sand and soil covered them—and everything else around here—and there was a bloodstain. He reached down and snatched the blanket from the bed; he scratched the faded brown spot with his fingernail before bringing it up to the keen nose.

Alena’s blood.

Suddenly, he could almost see her lying there beaten and crying. He turned to the children with him. “Where can I find this Jaakim?”

“Are you going to kill him?” Dae’Jave asked as though he were inquiring about the weather. “They said you killed one of his men on your way here.”

“I am. I did,” Ares returned in the same conversational tone. The young girl with the ebony skin who in another place or time could have been pretty, looked up at him with eyes that had already seen far too much. Eyes that should be shining, bright, full of mischief and wonder were dull and lifeless. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“Some,” Sha’Quanda muttered and looked down at her feet in their dirty shoes that were too small. “They made me watch.”

Ares didn’t have to ask why that was; they had done it so that Sha’Quanda would have a full understanding of what was in store for her should she ever cross them. Just like the punk who met his end on Ares’ way here, Jaakim was nothing but a bully, a terrorist preying on the weak. “You will tell me everything you saw and everything you heard. You will leave nothing out no matter how painful or disgusting it is,” Ares instructed. “After that you will take me to him. You will return here and you will not leave here until the screaming is over. You will do this for Maggie. Understand?” He waited a few moments for her to answer and when she did, it was only with a slight nod of her braided head. Tossing the filthy blanket back onto the bed, Ares sat down upon it and picked up the girl to put her on his lap. “You sit here,” he said to the brother and patted the bed next to him.

At first Sha’Quanda didn’t like sitting on the stranger’s lap, she was afraid, but then as she began to speak, she was happy to be sitting there. He was warm and he was very strong. If anyone could rid of them of Jaakim and his men, Sha’Quanda became certain it was Mr. Ares. For that, and most of all for Maggie, she would tell the tale of the horrible things she’d seen.

Chapter Nine

Little Women

1

Onya

The smallest and youngest of Ares’ women was in the kitchen considering what she was going to prepare for dinner that night when Kat stormed in. “Come with me,” she ordered brusquely.

Onya jumped at the sharpness of the older woman’s voice as she turned around with a large knife in her hand. “What? Where are we going?”

In no mood for questions, Kat grabbed Onya’s wrist, the one holding the knife, tore it out of her hand and waved it at the smaller woman, who was starting to cower. “Now, just come with me. I’ve got something for you to do.”

Not liking the look in Kat’s eyes or the way she was waving the knife around, Onya backed up further and away from her. She wriggled in the woman’s grasp trying to get her wrist free but Kat had it in a death clamp. Much taller and stronger than Onya, Kat just turned around and began dragging the smaller woman toward the kitchen door. Onya dug in her heels but ended up stumbling forward under the pull. Resisting still as she stumbled along, Onya tried to think of something she may have done to piss off the senior woman among them and came up with nothing. “Where are we going? I have to start dinner,” Onya protested as they neared the entrance of the cave.