The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (35 page)

For the gods, her appearance marks the
beginning of the end – their end. They and the Triumvirate –
leaders of the human elite – who serve them will stop at nothing to
preserve their power.

Alessandra emerges from the forest where she
spent her life hidden from gods and men and immediately plummets
into a race against time, gods, and herself to discover who and
what she is in a world where everyone she meets has a hidden
agenda, and those pulling the strings remain in the shadows.

Before she can determine exactly what kind
of savior her world needs, she must first master her power by
completing three trials devised by the Triumvirate to enslave
her.

One lone girl stands between warring gods
and the people she’s destined to protect, but it’s the battle to
understand who she is that she must win first.

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No man or woman born,
coward or brave, can shun his destiny.

–
Homer

For once, Tyche, could you grant me a little
luck?

I slowed before reaching my favorite meadow
in the forest, my heart racing and chest heaving. A grin stretched
my cheeks, and I stopped to listen for the boy I’d challenged to a
race. I heard … voices. Male and at least two females.

“
I guess not,” I muttered
aloud.

The damn nymphs had him. My
giddy excitement faded. I was the one who managed to lure a teen
boy from the nearby campground into our forest and, as usual, the
nymphs stole him. I couldn’t compete with the beautiful women.
There were thirty of them my age, all unusually perfect, feminine
and graceful. Even my guardian said they weren’t normal, and we’d
coined the term
nymphs
to describe the other girls at the isolated orphanage where I
lived under the thumb of strict priests. The other girls were all
my age, too, each of them destined for positions befitting their
beauty, according to the priests.

It was disgusting. I couldn’t stand
them.

Then there was me. I was an athlete,
uncomfortable in anything but tennis shoes and yoga pants, terrible
in school and bearing a scar from childhood across one cheek. No
matter how much makeup I plastered over it or how far forward I
brushed my dark locks, I wasn’t able to hide it. I was always late
to class, always the last to understand whatever torture the
priests were teaching us, always trying to catch the first light of
Aurora in the reflecting pool or scaling a hill to watch the last
rays of Hersperides.

The nymphs laughed at me. I hated them for
it and me for not being able to fit in no matter what I did. I
couldn’t change the fact I was shorter, smaller and otherwise
imperfect compared to them.

“
Lose another one,
Lyssa?”

“
Yeah.” I heard my
guardian’s approach and looked up into his scarred, ugly face. A
mountain of a man with bright red hair, Herakles had never once
understood why I was so disappointed to lose every guy I looked at
to the nymphs.

“
If a man can’t outrun you
– ”

“–
I can’t bring him home
with me. House rules. I know.” It was a stupid rule. Surely there
had to be one man somewhere who shared my deer-like
agility.

My guardian chuckled.

“
He was so handsome!” I
whined with a sigh, recalling the gorgeous brown eyes and smile of
the teenage boy I’d met today. When he had looked at me, my insides
turned fluttery and warm. “He almost outran me, too.”

“
Only because you slowed
down.”

I rolled my eyes and spun away, headed
towards the compound in the middle of a forest where we all lived.
“So what? Everyone here has kissed a boy and I can’t even look at
one without the stupid nymphs taking him away. They just bat their
eyes and the boys fall all over them.” I made a show of shaking my
hips and blinking rapidly in mockery.

“
I’ve never kissed a
boy.”

“
You know what I mean!”
Herakles was a jerk sometimes. His rules were designed to prevent
me from ever having a boyfriend. There were moments when I didn’t
think I’d care; my interests lay in martial arts and sports. If not
for the nymphs conspiring to steal any boys I lured away from the
campground and always taunting me about everything, I wouldn’t look
twice at a boy. But I shared one sole trait with the nymphs:
competitiveness. I wanted so badly to best them at something and
earn enough respect not to be bullied every day for the rest of my
life.

“
You could try studying
harder,” Herakles suggested.

“
Right. Like that’s going
to get me a boyfriend.”

“
There is more to life than
boys and whatever else it is your head is full of,” Herakles
reminded me. “You don’t need a man anyway. You can take care of
yourself. I’ve trained you to survive anything.”

“
I know I don’t
need
one. I want one so
the nymphs stop laughing at me. Just for a day, then I’d let him go
like you free the rabbits I catch.”

“
You noticed.”

I arched my eyebrow at him. “I figured it
out after I caught the same one every day for a week when I was,
like, sixteen. You know the nymphs don’t have to hunt rabbits,
don’t you? They don’t have to run every day or build their own
campfires and shelters on the weekends. They get to go to town,
Herakles, and see movies!” I sighed, tortured by my miserable
existence. “Can I be normal? Just for one weekend?”

“
Normal people aren’t
prepared for their world to change or to face the trials awaiting
them.”

“
The zombies apocalypse
isn’t coming. The priests say the world has never known a time of
greater peace and prosperity and the gods are happier than
ever.”

“
An apocalypse is not
required to announce itself,” he stated.

I bit my tongue. I knew better than to argue
with Herakles. He was of a singular mind and convinced the world
was going to end any day. Nothing I’d ever said over the past
twelve years had dented his obsession with self-reliance and
survival. I learned to hunt game bigger than me, forage for
berries, survive in extreme weather conditions and other skills the
nymphs – and even my teachers – often ridiculed. Sometimes he
blindfolded me or hobbled one leg or arm so I had to survive for a
weekend alone in the forest with simulated physical impediments. He
first dropped me off in part of the forest alone with no compass
when I was nine. I bawled for a day until he came to get me.
Instead of taking me back, we stayed in the forest, and he taught
me to navigate by the stars.

No one understood why he made me do these
things, least of all me. I obeyed him because, above all else, I
loved my Herakles, as weird as he was. While we were accepted here,
we didn’t fit in at the school filled with nymphs and priests. We
had to stick together, two dented peas in a misshapen pod.

“
The man you want will be
able to outrun, outhunt and outsmart you. When you meet him, you
can marry him. Until then, no man will do,” Herakles
said.

“
I don’t want to marry
anyone,” I said. “I just want to kiss him.”

“
Then you can kiss the man
who catches you.”

His conditions for me seeing someone were
impossibilities. Herakles alone was the only man who could keep up
with me. It was his way of saying I’d never have a boyfriend as
long as I lived under his roof.

I glanced up at the green canopy overhead.
The blue sky resembled puzzle pieces from this angle, and not a
cloud was in sight on this warm spring day. What torture did he
have in store for me on such a beautiful Friday? I had to climb a
rope or navigate whatever obstacle course he built before I was
allowed to go to bed at night. Weekends were worse. I was exiled to
the forest for more survival training until Sunday night.

He was conditioning and preparing me for
something. I had no idea what, and I suspected he was just a little
off. A former Olympian, Herakles was the toughest, most honorable
person I had ever known. He swept the annual Olympics for three
years in a row before he stumbled upon me, rescued me from the
house fire that killed my parents and brought us here. He didn’t
respect anything but physical prowess. He could barely read, and he
had an almost allergic reaction to discussing anything regarding
emotions.

But he was my hero in every sense of the
word.

To this day, I was unable to recall what
exactly happened the night I turned six except it involved Herakles
catching me when I fell from the sky. Why or how I was flying, I
didn’t know. I still occasionally dreamt of falling – but no fire.
My life changed that night. Herakles was unwilling to talk about it
even after I turned eighteen and was considered an adult by
everyone but him.

Herakles tugged the sleeve I’d tucked under
my bra strap back down over the strange birthmark on my bicep that
looked eerily like a double omega. The omega was the final letter
in the Greek alphabet, or, according to Herakles, a sign of
Armageddon. “Keep this hidden,” he reminded me.

“
I know.” I pulled both
sleeves down so I didn’t look stupid with only one up.

Picking my way through the forest back
towards the compound where we lived, I considered the topic I’d
been meaning to broach to him but hadn’t quite figured out the best
way yet.

“
We haven’t talked about
graduation,” I started. “It’s in three weeks.”

“
The world might end
tomorrow. You should not think too far beyond today.”

“
Omigods, Herakles! I’m
eighteen, and I’m graduating in three weeks! I want to go home!”
Too late I realized I’d told him what I had hope to discuss in a
calmer manner. I didn’t look back at him but focused on the path at
my feet.

“
You know there is nothing
for you there.”

“
So you’ve told me every
time I asked. But I have to go somewhere,” I pointed out. “College.
Waitress at a fast food joint. Holy Zeus, I’d become an initiate at
a temple.”

“
No temple would have
you.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that,
either. The priests didn’t consider me disciplined or selfless or
motivated enough to refer me for a position in the elite initiate
corps. Half of the nymphs were headed to temples of the Greek gods
while others were being sent to the households of influential
politicians and nobles around the world. I could speak English,
Greek and French like they did – a requirement to become an
initiate – but my grades were sorry and my temperament deemed too
unsuitable to be placed in a position where diplomacy and
manipulation was required.

“
You have more freedom here
than the average person living beneath the thumb of the Supreme
Magistrate will ever know,” he said. “Why do you wish to
leave?”

“
Because that’s what kids
who graduate high school do. They get a life. Join the real
world.”

“
Where did you learn this?
Television?” He was genuinely confused. He rarely spoke of his
childhood, but I’d assessed over the years that his own upbringing
had been very different. “I must talk to the priests about
censoring the programs they let you girls watch.”

“
They already monitor
everything we watch. I guess I just want to know … where do we go
next? Because we are leaving, right?” I asked, sensing I was doomed
to work at a fast food joint the rest of my life, if he let me
leave at all.

“
We are. But I’m not yet
certain where.”

“
You’ve only had twelve
years to figure it out,” I shot back with some exasperation. “I
want to see the world, Herakles, or at least somewhere beyond this
forest.”

“
Until I know for sure
–”

“–
stay inside the
boundaries.” I wasn’t allowed to travel beyond the red cord lining
the perimeter of the priests’ quiet property. Since arriving when I
was six, I had never left. The nymphs went to town every weekend to
shop or watch movies or eat food and whatever else they did that
Herakles didn’t approve of. It had to be more fun than navigating
the forest in the rain with nothing more than a poncho and a knife
while Herakles timed how long it took me to get home to make sure I
wasn’t slacking before the inevitable end of the world.

We reached the edge of the greens where the
compound proper started. Daydreaming about what was to come when I
finally graduated, I missed Herakles stiffening.

“
This isn’t good,” he
said.

Blinking out of my thoughts, I stopped to
see him staring at the long driveway leading from the road to the
massive manor house that acted as our home and school. The priests
had erected two small temples, one for a Titan god named Lelantos
and another for the Olympic goddess Artemis, behind the school,
beside the stables.

There was an extra car parked in front of
the school, a black sedan with darkened windows. “We’ve had a lot
of visitors lately,” I said, unconcerned. “I imagine the employers
of the nymphs are coming to interview them.”