Chasing Adonis (29 page)

Because she wanted to be the noble one. She thought her
sudden disappearance would protect the Griffins from Cherry’s vengeance. And
while it had done just that, it also hastened her own death. She mentally
slapped herself. If stupidity had an award, she’d win first prize, hands down.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Now, Shane would never know how she really felt about him.
So many times she’d run away from a blossoming relationship without a backward
glance or the slightest twinge of guilt. Less painful to be the abandoner,
rather than the abandonee.

Although she’d been the abandoner yet again with Shane—and
with Tyler and Pauline, too—remorse overwhelmed her. Losing Shane wasn’t just
about losing a man or ending a relationship. She’d lost a family. And her one
chance for love.

Why hadn’t she told Shane the real reason she didn’t regret
making love with him? Scared he might laugh at her, she’d feigned that easy,
breezy attitude. Denying the truth, even to herself, so fearful he would
cringe, or scoff, or worst of all, tell her he didn’t care for her “…in that
way.”

Oh, God, if she could live that night over again, knowing
what she knew now, she’d shout it out for every guest in the motel to hear: “I
love you, Shane Griffin.” Wouldn’t that have set the normally implacable police
detective off-kilter?

“So this is Adara Berros.” Cherry’s sneer shattered images
of Shane’s surprise at her unexpected declaration. “We shall have done with
this nonsense here and now.”

Instinct kicked in, and Adara turned away. She took a quick
step. Then another and another. She ran with no destination, no idea where to
go, only the simple concept of escape spurring her on.

“Halt, Adara Berros,” Cherry shouted.

Immediately, her knees locked, and her feet stilled as if
cemented to the floor. Terror enveloped her. What was happening? How did he
manage to paralyze her? She struggled to raise an arm, a hand, a finger. But
her limbs refused to cooperate.

Cherry stalked closer, a feral look sharpening his piggish
face. He resembled a wild boar, and she became a rabbit, too frozen with fear
to flee. Now what? Without the use of her legs or arms, no karate move could
save her.

“Touch her, and you’ll bring the wrath of Zeus upon your
head,” Ted warned. In two long strides, he blocked Cherry’s path, shielding
Adara with outstretched arms.

“I do not intend to touch her,” Cherry snarled from around
her guardian. “Just as before, I’ll simply allow her own weakness to be the
means of her destruction. Do you remember, Adara Berros? Think back. The memory
lies deep within you. Call it forward and remember…”

Pushed into her head by Cherry’s prompting, a new vision
fueled Adara’s imagination. A forest glade, cool and green, spread out before
her. From a short distance away, she saw a man, lying on the ground, bleeding
profusely from a gash in his side. Leaves and moss, slick and wet with his
life’s fluid, shimmered scarlet beneath the rays of a setting sun. A face
hovered above the fallen body, a face of such exquisite beauty, grown men wept
in her presence. Tears streamed down the beauty’s brilliant cheeks as the man gasped
for his final breaths of air.

“I begged you to beware the hunt,” the beauty sobbed.

“Farewell, my beauteous one,” Adara heard the man’s voice
rasp out. “I loved you as no other.”

Dots of blackness swirled before Adara’s eyes, growing
larger and larger until they obliterated all light.

“Farewell, my Adonis,” she heard the beauty reply as the
veil of Death descended.

Horrified, she squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to extinguish
the vision and its meaning from her psyche.

“You remember, do you not?” Ted probed.

Eyes still tightly sealed, Adara shook her head. “No. Yes.
I-I don’t know.”

“She remembers,” Cherry said. “She simply does not wish to
believe it was real.”

That statement caused her to open her eyes in awe. “You
mean, I…” No other words came forth. Speech became a task more difficult than
one of Hercules’s labors.

“A long time ago,” Ted said, taking her arm, “you were my
beloved. My dear Adonis. My inspiration for the anemone.”

From somewhere deep inside her will, she found the strength
to tear away from Ted’s grip. Her gaze locked on his simpering face, and her
flesh crawled as if a colony of ants had taken up residence in her body. “There
is no Tedior Pha, is there?”

“No, my love. There is only Aphrodite. She who loves you
above all others. And if you tell me that you love me still, no one will ever
hurt you again.”

~~~~

Aphrodite’s temple in Cyprus might have been constructed
from Legos for all the attention Shane paid to it. Only one thought reigned
supreme in his brain: finding Adara, and getting the hell outta there. As
Nemesis had predicted, they arrived in, literally, the blink of an eye. One
minute he stood inside the hotel suite in Florida, the next he searched around
the massive pillars and twenty-foot-high statue of Aphrodite for any sign of
Adara. Every minute without a clue to her whereabouts drove another icicle of
fear into his heart. “Adara!”

While his shout echoed around the cavernous temple, Nemesis
shushed him with the effectiveness of a cross librarian. Heat crept up the back
of his neck, but he pushed it down again, refusing to feel foolish for his
concern. After all, Nemesis was the one who made him admit his love for Adara.
Now she’d have to deal with the repercussions of her nosiness.

“You said she was here. So where is she?”

“Patience, Shane Griffin. You will not see Adara until you
have defeated Ares.”

“Then how the hell do I know she’s even here?”

“She is safe, Detective,” a familiar voice said from behind
him.

Shane whirled around and came face to face with Pha once
again. Raw anger seethed in his veins and shot fire through his eyes. Here was
the individual responsible for Adara’s current predicament. The one besotted
fool who caused them all so much grief.

“You bastard. You couldn’t let her go, could you? After all
this time, you had to keep chasing after some fantasy, risking the lives of
your precious Adara, me, and two members of my family. How much time has
elapsed, Pha? How long has it been since Adara was Adonis?”

“Five thousand thirty years, seven days, and sixteen hours.”

For the first time ever, Shane saw pain on Pha’s flawless
features. His eyes squeezed shut, and his lips pinched together in a wince. The
expression might have moved others in the temple, but Shane saw it as too
little, too late.

“Over five thousand years.” He waited for the enormous
figure to penetrate his tormented mind. “In five thousand years, you couldn’t
find anyone else to heap such passion on?”

“You love her too, Detective,” Pha said. “Tell me. How long
do you intend to love her?”

“For the rest of my life, if she’ll let me.”

“How fortunate for you, then, that a mortal life is only
eighty years or so. What if you lived forever? Would you only love her for your
eighty years? Or would you love her forever?”

“You’re twisting my words, Pha. I said, ‘if she’ll let me.’
If, after this is all over, I learn she doesn’t love me, I’ll leave her alone
and never see her again.”

“You say that because of Cassia.”

Hearing his sister’s name from this rat’s mouth transformed
anger into sheer hatred. His hands balled into tight fists, and he took a
menacing step forward.

Ted held his ground. “Adara is
not
Cassia, Shane.”

“She’s not Adonis, either, Pha, or Aphrodite, or whatever
you call yourself. Adara is Adara. Beautiful, funny,
unique
Adara. Who
she might have been in another life has absolutely nothing to do with the
person she is now.”

“Yes, on that we agree.”

“Enough of this,” a thunderous voice snarled.

Shane’s concentration swerved to the scowling stranger
behind Pha. The long anticipated Ares, he supposed. “Where’s Adara?”

Ares snorted. “Look to the heavens to find what you seek,
Shane Griffin.”

Shane’s gaze traveled toward the ceiling high overhead, and
his heart sank. A large golden net suspended from the rafters, at least three
or four stories up. Adara struggled inside the mesh confines, a beautiful fish
wriggling to regain her freedom.

Jesus.

“Adara, are you all right?”

“She cannot speak, Shane Griffin. I have temporarily
rendered her mute. I do not wish her cries to distract you from the business at
hand.”

“You bastard. You think to leave her up there for eternity?”

Ares shrugged. “She may release herself at any time. I have
given her a knife with which to cut the ropes that hold her.”

“And if she does, she’ll fall to her death on the marble
floor.”

“Unfortunate, but true.”

Disbelieving, Shane scanned the other gods in the open
atrium. Solemn faces met his gaze. No one moved. Even Zeus, Adara’s supposed
father, did nothing. Some almighty gods these three turned out to be. Well, if
they wouldn’t help Adara, he would. “Cut it, sweetheart,” he shouted up to her.
“I’ll catch you.”

Without warning, the force of a speeding truck plowed into
his side. Ares knocked him to his knees, jarring his teeth and nearly breaking
his back. “Have you ever wrestled, Shane Griffin?”

“Yeah.” He quickly scrambled to his feet to keep Ares from
pinning him to the floor. “In high school.”

“Our Greco wrestling bears little resemblance to your
collegiate prancing,” Ares sneered, gripping Shane’s shoulders with vise-like
strength. “Still, you have the stamina to make this challenging. The third time
I pin you, you will die, mortal. I hope you’ve made peace with your life, for
before this day is out, you shall be Charon’s newest passenger.”

Shane locked his knees to keep Ares from using his own
weight against him. “We’ll see about that. The third time I pin you, you’ll
release Adara and get the hell outta here and never come near us again. You
hear me?”

Ares grunted. Shane took it as a sign of agreement—not a
moment too soon because Ares barreled into him from behind, knees against his
thighs, and thrust his head into Shane’s shoulder blades. Shane struggled to
free himself, but the harder he fought, the tighter Ares’s hold became. In
three quick seconds, Ares had Shane pinned to the cool marble floor.

Humiliation burned inside Shane, and he quickly got to his
feet. If he wanted to win, he’d have to ignore the lessons from his coach all
those years ago, forget about fighting fair, and simply fight to win. To save
himself and Adara.

When Ares’s strength began to overwhelm him again, Shane
unlocked his knees and wrapped one leg around his opponent’s thigh in a
grapevine hold. Pushing with his arms while his coiled leg kept Ares
off-balance, he thrust downward. The moment Ares landed on the floor with a
thud, Shane pinned him there.

Ares retaliated by tossing Shane into the air, pinning him
in thirty seconds flat. Shane countered with a foot prop, raising Ares’s ankle
almost to knee height and knocking him backward to the floor.

With the score tied at two pins each, tension thickened the
air. The smell of male sweat overpowered the floral fragrance near the altar.
Ares, however, was no high school competitor, and the last round tried both men
nearly to the breaking point.

After what seemed like hours locked in battle, every one of
Shane’s muscles screamed in agony at the continuous exertion. Soon, Ares gave
one tremendous shove, which sent Shane hurtling backwards and slammed him
against a stone pillar, crunching his spine. Stars burst across his field of
vision.

Winning this match was impossible. He couldn’t best a god in
a competition of strength. Whatever made him think he had that much power? Regardless
of what Zeus and Nemesis said, no pure heart could withstand the pummeling he
was taking. The desire to give up consumed him. It would be so easy to sink
down now and forget all about this crazy scene.

One glance upward into Adara’s whitened face, however,
strengthened his resolve to not only fight, but to win. Shaking the dazed
feeling from his brain, he charged Ares, ready to deliver a deathblow by any
means possible.

“Shane,” a soft voice whispered from nearby. A voice he
hadn’t heard in nearly a year.

Looking across the altar, he saw her standing before the
statue of Aphrodite and halted in mid-stride. Shivers, part joy and part
confusion, wrapped him in an icy grip. It couldn’t be her. He blinked and
looked again. She still stood there, as real and alive as he.

She wore the last dress he’d ever seen her in. The pale blue
one he and his mother picked out to clothe her for eternity. The color almost
perfectly matched the shade of her eyes, and the style took full advantage of
her slender figure.  Her bruises and scars had faded into nothingness,
leaving her as beautiful as always. 

Stupefied, he could do little more than whisper her name.
“Cassia?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Trussed up like Charlie the Tuna.

Adara hovered high above the marble floor, watching the
battle, yet helpless to fight beside the man she loved. When she’d first
spotted Shane enter the temple, she wanted to shout, “Run. Before it’s too
late. Get out of here.”

But damn that Benjamin Cherry, or Ares, or whomever he
thought he was. He’d stolen her voice somehow. Now, she could do nothing to
help Shane, and that scraped her independent nature raw.

Still, being mute didn’t stop her from attempting to scream
a warning when Ares first slammed into him. Of course, nothing came out of her
mouth but air. And then the battle began, while she watched, powerless, like
some fairy tale damsel in distress. A mute Rapunzel, she was reduced to
floating on high, waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her.