Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (5 page)

The latter was situated
on a small hill with clear sightlines all around the camp.  It was a good location for our concealed Listening Post/Observation Post, or LP/OP, and Bordeaux could call in a threat from two miles out if he had to.  With Santino’s UAV for aerial reconnaissance I was confident we were quite secure, although after Madrina’s not-so-proficient handling of it a few days ago, it wasn’t nearly as reliable as it once was.

That left the three women.

Madrina, Bordeaux’s German wife, was still recovering from a bout of unconsciousness suffered on the day we’d failed in our mission against Agrippina.  She’d been little more than an ordinary house
frau
months ago, and hadn’t nearly been prepared for the shit we’d put her through.  She’d been lucky, and while Bordeaux had rarely left her side since, I suspected the big fella could still use the time alone after what had happened.

And then there were two.

As I grew closer to my tent, I couldn’t help but overhear the faint giggles of two women laughing hysterically at something I was sure no one with a Y chromosome could ever find even remotely humorous.  I stopped and did everything I could to build up some courage for what was to come.  Taking a deep breath, I pushed into the tent.

Their c
onversation ended when I stepped through to loom in the entranceway, and both turned to regard me with smiles on their faces, heaving for air.  The woman to my right was clearly the more attractive of the two, but I had to admit that I was slightly biased.  The other woman, after all, was my sister, and while she had a cute smile with round cheeks and long, fine brown hair, I could never bring myself to admit that she was attractive.

Not that that it mattered, because
the other woman was more than simply beautiful.  She was gorgeous.  Radiant.  Ethereal.  I could have come up with a slew of other descriptors, but I didn’t need to, because she was the love of my life and the mother of my unborn child.  I smiled as I looked at her, remembering just how lovely her face was when she wore a happy expression, one she didn’t wear very often anymore.

Her
jet black hair, when she stood, flowed like a waterfall past her waist and framed a face with sharp but lovely features upon chestnut skin, but it was her large, vibrant eyes that everyone always noticed first.  A bright, glowing green, they were so intense they often seemed capable of piercing right through solid objects.

“Am I interrupting something, ladies?”  I asked casually, ho
ping I was.

The two women glanced at each other and snickered.  Both were dressed for bed in loose shirts and shorts, and had I not known any better, I could
have almost imagined the two as young preteens throwing a slumber party.

Helena looked at me happily with her green eyes and reached a hand in my direction.  I gripped it and let her pull me to the floor beside her.

“Oh, not much, Jacob,” she said, turning back to her new friend.  “Artie was just telling me a story about how you found a naughty video once when you were children, but you were too embarrassed to watch it and told your mom.”

I shot a glance at
Diana “Artie” Hunter – my little sister.  “I was, eight!  And you were like six and a half!”

She ignored me and leaned in closer to Helena.  “See what I meant about the ‘like’ stuff?  He’s got the worst poker face.”

Helena clapped her hands and rolled onto her side in laughter, finding something – I wasn’t sure what – extraordinarily funny.  I watched her, but couldn’t help but feel amused as well, finding myself mildly surprised as I’d never seen her like this before.  While we’d found time for happiness in the past, rarely did I see her cut loose with such raw emotion like this, and even if it was at
my
expense, I was happy to see it.  There’d been too little opportunity for laughter in our lives, and if anyone could use it, it was Helena.

“Oh… I’ve…
” Helena managed around bursts of laughter, “…noticed that,”

I scowled at them both, but turned to Artie. 
“What else have you told her?”

She shrugged mischievously and didn’t answer.

I turned to Helena who was still on her side.  “Don’t listen to anything she says, Helena.  She’s been waging a smear campaign against my good name since high school.”

“There’s a reason for…”
Artie started, but I cut her off with a raised finger and a very nasty look.  She smiled at me smugly and flicked her eyebrows, and I knew it was only a matter of time since I couldn’t chaperone these two forever.

“
Just get out, Artie,” I ordered.  “I want to have sex with my girlfriend.”

“Eww!”  She said, recoiling in disgust before smacking my arm.  “That’s disgusting, Jacob.  I don’t need to hear that.”

“What?”  I asked.  “How do you think I got her pregnant?  First…”

“Just stop!”  She nearly yelled, before looking at Helena who had finally calmed down.  “How did you put up with him a
ll this time?  I mean… I had to.  I’m his sister.  But you?  You had a choice.”

Helena smiled at her
from the floor, but the wink she offered was directed toward me.  “Well, the sex really is quite…”

“Stop!” 
Artie said again, cupping her hands over her ears as she made her way toward the exit.  “I can take a hint.”

I smiled again.

This Artie might not have been my Artie, but she was obviously still my sister.

“Same time tomorrow night?”  Helena asked hopefully.

Artie glanced behind her as she reached the tent’s exit and smirked.  “Definitely.  I’ve got a great spin the bottle story about Jacob and another bo…”

“
Out!”  I said, my finger pointing toward the exit.

Her smile grew before she crawled
away, taking the time to zip the tent closed behind her.  I lifted a hand to my head and shook it, realizing just how much dirt my sister really had on me.

Luckily,
Helena proved a quick distraction, taking my hand in her own so that she could pull me to the floor beside her.  I let her, lowering myself so that I lay behind her on my uninjured side and scoot myself in close.  I tried to wrap my weakened arm as carefully as I could around her, but I couldn’t quite extend it around her abdomen, so I simply left it lying atop her hip.  My right arm, however, was beneath her head and wrapped around her chest, gripping her left arm tightly.  I held her against me snugly, taking a joyous moment to inhale the smell of her hair.

It
was comforting and relaxing, but as it sometimes did, her long hair tickled my nose so much that I had to pull away to keep myself from sneezing all over her.  I felt her body bobbing slightly in well humored giggles at my sensitive nose.

“What?”  I asked, already knowing what.

“It’s just that I’ve always loved how romantic you are,” she said, kidding around, although she had a point.  Romance was something I wished I was better at, but considering our current life circumstances, I could never find the energy or will to try.

But
I tried now as I caressed the soft skin of her leg gently with my hand, while Helena shifted contentedly in my arms, enjoying the touch.  She hummed pleasingly to herself, so I shifted my hand lower on her leg, but then I touched a patch of slightly rougher skin and everything stopped.  Even Helena’s excitement ceased as quickly as flipping a switch.

I touched the scar on her leg gingerly, as
if pressing against it too hard would somehow make it worse.  I traced my finger along the length of it, moving my finger from the outside of her leg upwards along her hamstring.  My finger stopped just below Helena’s backside, and I heard a sharp intake of breath from her as my fingers brushed against a more sensitive area.  The scar was long and thick, and an obvious blemish upon her otherwise flawless leg, but it wasn’t necessarily the sight of it that disturbed me. 

I lowered my
other hand from around her chest and lifted her shirt, peeking down to notice another pair of scars along her abdomen and lower back that mirrored each other but were no taller than a wallet.  With a slow breath, I lowered her shirt and gently removed my arm from beneath her head.  She didn’t try to stop me as I pulled away from her and carefully maneuvered myself into a sitting position so that I could hang my right arm over my raised knee.  I sat there, contemplative, before Helena leaned up as well and wrapped an arm around me.

She didn’t say anything, nor did she ever have to.  She knew what to do.  She rested her cheek against my
arm and waited patiently, but something was different this time and she seemed to know it. 

She pulled
away and rested her chin atop my shoulder.  “You’re not upset?”

I wasn’t actually.
  Nor, was I really all that sad.  I was barely even introspective, just… contemplative.

I nodded.

“Feel any responsibility?”  She asked.

I shook my head, but with
slightly less confidence.

“That’s good,” she
whispered.  “I think that’s progress.”

“Maybe,” I said just as quietly
, feeling better already.

Helena lifted her chin
and kissed my shoulder, scooted away from me, and started searching for something, but couldn’t seem to locate what she was looking for. 

Finall
y, she turned to me.  “Where are the orbs?”

My eyes look
ed away guiltily.  “Uh… I left them by the rock.”

“Jacob…”

“I’m sorry!”  I said defensively.  “I couldn’t help myself.  You know what they do.”

She nodded as she
stood, all too aware.

“
Well, that’s it then,” she said.  “You’re
done
with them.”

I watched her walk past me.  “Where are you…”

“I’m going to have Jeanne destroy one and I’m going to hide the other!”  She snapped at me, but not angrily.  “I don’t know if they’re making you worse or what they’re doing to you exactly, but I’m not going to let you grow addicted to them, and we certainly don’t need
two
of them.”  I rose as well, but she pushed me back down and pointed at me.  “You stay here.  I’ll be back.”

I winced at a spike of pain in my side, but it wasn’t too bad
, and looked at Helena as she looked at me.  There was nothing to indicate she was angry at me in her eyes, just horribly, horribly concerned.  She turned and left the tent, her long shirt that reached halfway to her knees billowing at the movement.

When she was gone, I looked at my feet.

Even without the orbs, I still felt constantly overwhelmed by just about everything.  There was more on my mind than ever before, including Agrippina’s continued existence, the orbs themselves, Archer’s unexpected arrival with his troops, the drastic changes to Roman history, and so much more.  Often, responsibility for Helena’s numerous injuries weighed on my mind just as heavily, but it seemed like I was beginning to lose that one.  She’d never blamed me to begin with, and after five years, letting go of at least that responsibility felt good.

I thought about all thi
s is as I scooted to the back of the tent, and slowly lowered myself onto my back.  I stretched my legs to work the kinks out, and rested there peacefully for a few minutes until an explosion off in the distance jolted me upright again.

Like the last time we’d destroyed an orb, I wasted a moment of thought wondering if something would happen to us, but like last time, nothing did.  Slowly
, as my heart rate steadied, I lowered myself to the ground and raised my right arm to drape it across my forehead.  I was quite comfortable in that position and felt myself growing sleepy.

Helena returned sometime later, but I wasn’t sure how long she’d been gone.  I’d just about drifted into sleep during that time,
but it was the noise from the tent’s zipper being closed that roused me awake, and I lifted my head and peeked through droopy eyelids to see Helena standing before me, gazing down at me.  She stood with her hands on her hips and looked at me without betraying her emotions, so I lowered my head back to my pillow of bunched up clothing.

“Find a good place to hide it?”  I asked.

“Find a good place to hide what, Jacob?”  She asked.

I lifted my head
again.  “The o…”

“A good place to hide…
what
, Jacob?”  She asked insistently.

I smiled.  “Never mind then.”

She smiled back and I found myself staring at her as she stood there in her loose shirt that looked more like an exceptionally short dress, the scar on her leg barely even noticeable now.  She cocked her head coyly at my inspection and placed her hands on her thighs, and slid them up past her hips to rest along her waist.

“See something you like, Lieutenant?”
  She asked.

My grin widened
.  “Maybe.”

She raised her chin and looked at me with smoldering eyes
, and reached under her shirt with both hands before slowly lowering them, her shorts coming down with them.  She kicked her shorts in my direction but I managed to dodge them.  She took a step forward and lowered herself to the ground, positioning herself over me so that she could lean down and kiss me while I reached up to comb a hand through her hair.