For Love or Vengeance (18 page)

Chapter Thirty

Miguel was on his knees before Gold, his face dripping blood. His hands were bound in front of him, but Gold had a solid grip on his hair and a very big gun against Miguel’s temple.

“Special Agent Alexander. So nice of you to come for the big finale,” Gold said, and laughed, the maniacal sound bouncing off the walls of the room.

“Mr. Gold.” She inclined her head, keeping him in her gun sight, weighing her options.
Human weapon, or goddess energy blast?
“So nice of you to put on such a spectacle.”

He laughed again and turned his wheelchair slightly, yanking Miguel’s head sideways so it blocked her shot. He jammed the gun tighter against his temple. “Actually, this is new for me—a live audience.” His eyes brightened in delight. “One who will decide who gets the happy ending.”

“Do
not
let him go,” Miguel immediately ordered.

They were too close together to use a lethal blast of power. It could kill Miguel, too.

Gold’s bushy brows rose. “Which will it be, Agent Alexander? Can I take my show on the road? Or is this your favorite star’s last performance?” He cocked the hammer on the old-fashioned revolver.

Justice
, she reminded herself. There would be no justice if she let Gold leave.

But if she didn’t—

Her finger itched on her trigger. She was a crack shot, but would her bullet take the bastard down before or after he pulled his own trigger? Justice would be served—but Miguel could die. And if Miguel lived, he would hate her for violating the code of ethics he held so dear.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

She couldn’t let her lover die. But she couldn’t live with the consequences if she exacted her due vengeance and killed Gold.

She had to trust human justice to work its course.

But that didn’t mean she would sacrifice Miguel. She would do whatever she had to in order to save him. Anything.
Anything
.

And with that knowledge came an unexpected calm. It settled around her like the comforting warmth of Miguel’s embrace.

She didn’t need vengeance. She wanted true justice, as he had taught her.

Even if it meant losing her life here on Earth and returning to the eternal hell of Mount Olympus. And losing Miguel forever.

“Drop your weapon and kick it here,” Gold said, seeing her hesitation.

“Don’t do it, Helene. Don’t let him get away,” Miguel pleaded.

But she bent down, laid her weapon on the floor, and kicked it over to Gold.

Surprise registered on his face for a split second. He glanced down at her discarded weapon.

At that exact moment, Miguel surged upward and grabbed Gold’s arm with his bound hands, grappling for the gun. Gold fired. The sound exploded through the room, but the shot plowed harmlessly into the ceiling.

Helene leaped forward just as Gold jerked loose and backhanded Miguel across the temple with the gun. Miguel fell back as she jumped on Gold and fought for control of the revolver.

Gold was strong from years of pushing around the wheelchair. Helene struggled desperately to keep the weapon pointed away, but Gold managed to turn the gun around at her. Summoning her immortal strength, she forced it to the side and tried to strip the pistol from his grip.

Gold pulled the trigger, firing just as another shot rang out.

Gold struggled against her for a heartbeat longer, eyes wide with shock. Then his body went limp, and slumped back in his wheelchair.

Dead.

Good riddance
.

She ripped the gun from his grasp, flung it aside, and stepped away. Lifeless eyes stared straight ahead as blood welled from the round hole in his chest.

Behind her came the
thud
of a body hitting the floor. She whirled.

Miguel lay on the floor, eyes closed and unmoving, a river of blood spilling from the gunshot wound in his neck. He still held her discarded weapon in his bound hands.

He’d saved her life.

“Miguel!” She dove to his side, lifted him into her arms, and pressed her hand to the wound in his neck, desperate to staunch the flow of blood. “Hold on, Miguel. Hold on!”

He didn’t move. Barely breathed.

“No! You can’t die! I won’t let you.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. Hot, wet blood slipped through her fingers. She had to save him. But she would be punished if she used her goddess powers.

“Promised to…keep you…safe,” Miguel whispered, struggling to speak past the blood clogging his throat. “Can’t let…it happen…again.”

Oh God
. He was talking about the woman he had accidentally killed. The woman he still felt guilty about not saving. Was that why he’d sacrificed himself to save her? “That wasn’t your fault, Miguel. This wouldn’t have been, either. It’s my job—”

“Couldn’t…let you…die. Couldn’t…fail again.”

“And neither can I,” she said, and tightened the pressure of her hand across his wound, groping for her cell phone to summon an ambulance. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be. But she couldn’t get a signal.

Her tears fell on his lips, and his mouth struggled to curve in a ghost of a smile. “Love…you,” he whispered so softly she could barely hear. Her heart soared as it was breaking into a thousand pieces.

His eyes fluttered closed.

“I love you, too,” she said through stinging tears.

But he would never hear the words. In her arms, his body had already gone limp.

“
No
!” she wailed, and bent her head down against his. She kissed his face, his eyes, his lips. “You can’t die! You can’t!”

Not now, when she had finally found the true meaning of love.

Damn the punishment
. She called up her goddess powers and sent a blast of healing energy to close his wound. But no energy zapped between them. No power filled her hand.

Desperately, she summoned her special powers again. But try as she might, nothing happened. Sobbing, she reached deep inside, again and again, but no immortal spark came to life.

And suddenly she realized why. The vow her father Zeus had demanded of her had been a trick.

Helene had chosen Miguel’s way. Justice had prevailed, but not through her. She had deliberately chosen to fail her mission.

And this was her punishment. Her time as a goddess on Earth was done.

She had thought Zeus meant she would simply be banished to Mount Olympus. She should have known better. Her father had always been cruel and deceitful.

He’d taken her powers as well.

“No! This isn’t right,” she wailed.

She held Miguel tight as his last stir of breath left his body and life fled from his parted lips.

Desperation clawed at her chest. She lifted her head and cried out to the skies above, “This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

But no one answered her cry.

She looked down at the man she loved with all her heart. And she knew what she had to do.

Taking a deep breath, she screamed her plea to the clouds of her father. “
Please, Zeus!
Father! I will do anything you ask if you just let him live!”

Nemesis’s scream reverberated through the clouds, louder than the cries and shouts of the gods and goddesses gathered before Zeus and Hera.

Miguel’s death on Earth had taken only seconds, but on Mount Olympus, those seconds stretched to days as Zeus’s immortals argued and debated Nemesis’s plea for her mortal beloved.

Hera faced her husband. “It’s not right. You tricked her,” she accused, snapping fire at him with her eyes as he sat on his golden throne above the throng.

With a shrug, he said, “It’s my way, wife. Anyone who deals with me knows the bargain may not always be as it seems.”

But despite his words, Hera could see that he had been moved by their daughter’s cry as well as by the changes in her. Nemesis had always been hard and unyielding. The mortal man had brought out a different side of her.

“You can see she has changed,” Hera argued. “Those changes will enhance her ability to mete out justice. True justice, not just vengeance.”

“Listen to her plea, brother,” Hestia called out from beside Hera, where she was flanked by the other goddesses.

“As if she would really sacrifice anything for him,” Zeus scoffed.

“Offer her a choice. Her powers for his life,” Apollo yelled from the other side of the room. At his words, a chorus of cheers rose up from the gods around him.

“You would all turn on me so?” Zeus challenged, rising and glaring at the men.

Poseidon took a step forward and Hades came to Poseidon’s side. Hera was surprised to see her husband’s brothers there, especially Hades, since he rarely ventured out of his underworld. That he had done so spoke volumes about this revolt.

A surge of optimism rolled through her.

“Nemesis has served you well and deserves a chance for happiness,” Poseidon said.

Hades was more to the point. “When you show her mercy, we can all go back to bedding our women.”

Hera smiled. There was the real reason for the challenge from his gods.
Bless Lysistrata
.

Zeus’s gaze pinned her and the goddesses surrounding her, looking from her to Athena to Persephone at the far end of the line. Not one goddess was missing. There were even some demigoddesses standing behind them for backup. The face of each and every woman held determination. To ignore them all would tempt the Fates, even for the king of gods.

Turning to Poseidon, Zeus clasped his brother’s shoulder. “You are right. Nemesis has served me well. Although I am loath to intercede in human affairs, I will heed Apollo’s advice and offer her a choice as to what she desires most.”

Holding her head at a respectful angle, Hera stepped forward, sensing victory. “And you will spare the mortal man?”

Zeus laughed, and it sounded like thunderclaps throughout the chambers of Olympus. “Spare him? Only Nemesis can decide if the human will live,” he said.

He reached downward. A soft glow began at his fingertips and grew stronger until it stretched the distance between the clouds and the Earth, then spread, creating a whirlwind of light centered at where Nemesis held Miguel in her arms.

The light bathed them and whisked them up, up, until she was sitting on the marble floor of the throne room in Olympus, her lifeless beloved sprawled in her lap.

“Hello, daughter,” he greeted her.

Helene—no, Nemesis—looked up at her father and mother and the circle of immortals surrounding her, gods on one side and goddesses on the other.

They’d heard her plea!

Hope seared through her.

Before she could speak, her father demanded, “You said you would give up anything for this mortal, Nemesis. Do you truly mean that?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I do, Father. I would sacrifice anything, even my life, if only you will grant him his,” she said, and glanced in despair at Miguel’s deathly still face.

Zeus just laughed.

Anger poured through her. With shaking hands, she gently laid Miguel down and surged to her feet. Balling her fists, she said, “You think this is funny, Father? The pain? The loss?”

“It is but the start of those things for you, daughter. In exchange for this man’s life you must live as a mortal and die as a mortal, suffer their pains, endure their losses.”

Life as a mortal?

At one time she would have disdained becoming a pitiful human. But she had learned so much from Miguel. She had learned what it was to love and be loved. She had learned that her strength came from within, from the choices she made, and not from the magical powers of a goddess.

The choice was easy.

“I will gladly give up my powers in exchange for his life, Father.”

A roar of approval shot up from the gods and goddesses gathered around them.

Her father’s voice boomed across the heavens. “So be it, daughter. Say your farewells.”

A groan came from Miguel as he lay on the floor, and then a movement.

Nemesis—no, Helene—rushed to the man she loved with all her heart and laid a hand on his chest. A strong and steady heartbeat pulsed beneath her palm. His eyelids fluttered open and he tried to glance around, but she cupped his cheek and urged him just to look at her.

“All will be well, Miguel,” she promised, joy rushing through her whole being. “I just need a moment.”

She pushed to her feet, and rushed to her mother. She threw her arms around her and hugged her hard, then stepped back to bid her farewells to the others gathered around. Finally, she paused before her father’s throne and gave him a respectful nod.

Then she hurried back to Miguel and kneeled beside him. Looking into his awestruck eyes, she once again gathered him in her arms and said, “I am ready, Father.”

The light became so bright it nearly blinded her, and for a moment they were falling, but then the ground materialized beneath them and she suddenly found herself kneeling on the floor in the room where Miguel had died, with him in her arms.

Alive.

A footstep sounded behind her.

Diana hurried in, two uniformed officers at her back.

“Oh my God.” She rushed to Helene’s side and kneeled beside her, shouting to the officers, “Call in an officer down. We need immediate medical assistance.”

Helene touched the wound on Miguel’s neck, but there was no blood flowing beneath her fingers. Just a strong, insistent pulse, and Miguel’s steady breathing.

“We’ve got to stop the bleeding,” Diana said, reaching toward him to help her.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on them, his look quizzical.

“I’m…alive?” he asked uncertainly.

“You’re alive, thank the gods.” She moved her hand away to reveal smooth, perfect skin where moments before he had been bleeding. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and sat up, though he reached for her to steady himself. He pulled his blood-soaked shirt from his chest.
No pain
. “Nope, I’m good.”

“Okay then.” Diana stood and shook her head. Looking from him to Helene, she said, “I think it’s time I left you two alone. You’ve got about fifteen minutes before the ME gets here.”