Army of the Goddess: A Bona Dea Novel (Stormflies Book 2) (23 page)

“Just once, I felt so sick afterward I swore I'd never touch it again. I had a nasty headache and threw up for half a day. That was the day after my installation. Yet, here I am.” She tossed back the remaining liquid and let it pour into her stomach. She welcomed the warming, relaxing effect.

“Indeed.” Her fingers continued to travel along parts of his body, tickling in some, arousing in others. Weeks had gone by since they last enjoyed any intimate time together. Their hearts were weighted with worries and their desires wrapped up in a war. Axandra had not taken any time to enjoy herself in even something so innocent as a walk, not that Commander Narone would let her roam outside. It pleased Quinn to see her face free of tension.

“Are you getting me drunk so you can have your way with me?” she teased.

“That wasn't my intention, but I'm not above the offer. I think you're the one having your way with me.”

She smiled coyly. “I think you're right.”

“Before you do, I have a little surprise for you.”

“You do? I'm intrigued.”

Setting aside the bottle and his goblet, Quinn produced a wooden box from his pocket. “I was so happy it was delivered before this mess started. It's been burning a hole in my pocket for the last several days.”

Axandra bounced excitedly on her toes, eagerly awaiting the revealing of the gift.

“I wanted something to remember our first walk in the garden, when we picked the sparkler flowers and the suns set and you begged me to stay, and like some kind of cosmic fool, I turned you down.” He chuckled at himself to think about that evening. Had he known what would happen in the weeks that followed, he would never have walked away from that night. “So I had this crafted.”

“I'm not holding a grudge,” she promised.

Opening the box, Quinn offered her a necklace fashioned of platinum leaves and pink stones in a setting that mirrored the real-life flowers.

“Oh my!” Axandra gasped with delight. “It's gorgeous. You designed this?”

“The general idea. We can thank Viola for putting it together. She made a superb piece. Let's put it on.” He draped it around her neck as she lifted her long hair. “Dazzling. It's just what I wanted for you.”

“Thank you,” she said with extreme gratitude, draping her arms around his neck and combing her fingernails through his short hair. She graced his lips with a long luxurious kiss. “You didn't even need the wine.”

13
^th
Quadrember (Hundsday)

Axandra ventured from the Palace with her entourage of aides and four guards in one silver solar car to visit the construction site on Dell Street. Drays loaded with new stone rolled in along the avenue to each foundation. Terracotta shingles lay stacked in tall batches on each frontage, fresh from the kilns. Lumber for roof frames arrived on other trucks. Along with the materials arrived droves of construction workers. Assignments were doled out to work crews to construct each home from the fresh blueprints.

Arriving on site, Axandra was greeted by the appointed project coordinator who oversaw the construction of at least eight homes on this street alone.

“Protectress, welcome,” said Brenda from a deep bow. “A pleasure to meet with you again.”

Brenda and other coordinators had been invited to visit with the Council and Protectress the previous week to discuss the reconstruction. Brenda was a woman with whom Axandra could relate as a thirty-year-old who stumbled into her current position while intending to be somewhere else entirely –namely four hundred kiloms away in Corvette where she planned to do woodworking for cabinetry. Making a mental note, Axandra made plans to invite the woman for an informal dinner in the near future.

“It is good to see you,” Axandra agreed with a genuine smile. “Are things proceeding on schedule?”

“Currently ahead, actually,” Brenda stated proudly. “The first house may be completed two weeks ahead of plan which will be good news for the families. As long as the weather is calm, that is. We've been expecting more rain.”

“Clear skies today.”

Workers passed nearby on the way to operate a truck-based crane to move stones into place. Others mixed mortar in a tumbling metal drum, checking the consistency between mixings.

Work helmets protected heads and faces and goggles shielded eyes against dust and debris and succeeded in concealing identities. To aid the crews in identifying names and jobs, lettering adorned their coveralls and vests. Brenda had instituted the protocol on her work sites since many of the volunteers were not local.

“A bus load of workers arrived in town last night,” Brenda said, “giving us two dozen more pairs of hands. A lot of people still on the move from the flooding are looking for jobs to keep them busy until they settle down again. I feel so sorry for those who won't be able to go back to their original homes. The islands took some hard knocks.”

“Everyone wants to feel useful,” Axandra agreed even as her heart wrenched up inside her chest. She used to live on one such island, where an entire village had been washed away, as well as most of the top layer of the island. There was no place left to build anything new. Now those people tried to recreate normal lives elsewhere. No easy task.

“As you know, we weren't able to recycle as many materials as we would have liked,” Brenda explained as they surveyed the area. “The fires completely destroyed many of these building so that even the mortar was beginning to disintegrate. What stones survived without cracking, we've hauled away to clean and reuse elsewhere. Some can be used by sculptors if they want to claim it.”

“Yes, a group should be doing just that,” the Protectress said. “We were approached about a memorial park for the victims where they will use those stones for carving the focal points.”

“Oh, that's right. Wonderful. These gentlemen and ladies are preparing the previous footprint of the home with new plumbing mains. The cistern was contaminated and had to be drained, sanitized and resealed.”

Three men finished heating a large wax seal over the open draw pipe. Collection pipes protruded at well-placed intervals where guttering would dump fresh water into the cistern. Filters in the guttering collected leave and large debris. Filters within the cistern removed bacteria and microbes harmful to humans as well as smaller sedimentary particles. These filters were cleaned and replaced at regular intervals by maintenance volunteers.

Until the house was constructed and interior plumbing in place, the cistern would remain capped and sealed. The last opening sealed was the man-hole where a person could enter the cistern for cleaning and repair.

Each cistern held enough water for the household to use for six months with average rainfall. Overflow from household cisterns accumulated in community cisterns for emergency water. If a household cistern ran dry, or needed to be sanitized, water could be pumped from the emergency supply.

The three men moved away from the finished product, momentarily admiring their work. They moved off of the copper plating of the cistern back onto firm land.

“Irons?” Axandra read from one of the vests on a tall man with his back to her.

“You know him?”

“Oh, I doubt I know this man. It's just I once knew someone—but he lived on the far side of Westland.”

“Actually, Jon Irons came from Westland—Gammerton, I think. One of the islands where they lost everything. Are you all right?”

Axandra felt awash with heat as she blushed, yet she froze still as ice. What was she going to do? She truly never expected to see him again, and she had no idea what to say to him. She wanted to disappear. If he didn't see her, she had no reason to say hello.

When he turned he paused, staring directly at her. Pulling away the goggles, his eyes beamed like lasers. She couldn't avoid him now. He wavered on his feet. An internal battle waged between his two choices: facing her or walking away without a word. She inflated her chest defensively as he approached.

“Jon,” she addressed first, not sure why except to demonstrate that she felt no ill-will toward him. She didn't feel she had a right to be upset with him, not after walking out on him without explanation. “It's good to see you.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, fidgeting with the strap on his goggles. Finally, he performed a slight bow, avoiding eye contact, and addressed her by her title, “Protectress.”

“Um, I'm going to go…over there,” Brenda awkwardly excused herself from what was obviously an unplanned reunion between people who were closer than just friends.

“You don't have to be formal,” Axandra told him in a soft voice. Her guards stepped back discreetly, widening the circle and allowing ample privacy. “You may still call me Axandra.”

A pained guffaw escaped his throat, “I don't think so, Your Honor. I'm going to defer to protocol this time. You know, you left me in an awful lurch. I had no idea what was going on—I actually thought you'd gone mad and drowned yourself. Half the village trolled the harbor looking for you. At least until your face showed up on the front page.”

“I'm sorry,” she apologized, but the sincerity fled under his verbal assault. “But you had already put distance between us, and I didn't have much time to make a decision. I needed you, and you just left me by the side of the road.”

Axandra kept her volume low, hoping to avoid drawing any additional attention than she already warranted. Stray eyes cast in their direction.

Between them they kept ample space, a full arm's length and then some.

“Because you felt so strange,” he hissed vehemently. “Like—like someone completely different than before. I got scared.”

“And now you know why. Everyone knows why,” she pointed out, referring to the Stormfly epidemic. She stepped slightly closer, entering the sphere of his emanations. The familiarity struck a harmonious chord within her. Despite her denial, she missed her longtime lover. One could not live with another for seven years and expect it to wash away in any less time. She sought any sort of reciprocation in his feelings. The slightest ember lay buried in the ashes of their burned-up love. “You didn't even write.”

“To you? How would anything I said mean a thing to you, Protectress? I cut my losses and stayed home. Looks like you wasted no time in cutting yours.” He forced himself to sound this angry. He wanted to show her a seething hatred for a purpose. Underneath, he was frightened. Underneath, something else stirred up feelings of the old passion.

Axandra bit her tongue, refusing the fight. “I wish you well. Good luck and thank you for volunteering.”

She sensed that for the briefest moment after she turned away, Jon wanted to call her back and make amends, but it wouldn't change their relationship. She was married and lived a life far different than before. Jon was not suited to her life, not when she needed to appear strong and conscientious. His presence did not foster such behaviors in her. And she no longer desired him. That hole had been filled.

His urge faded the farther away she traveled. She hoped she would not see him again, unfortunately he saw her face frequently and unavoidably.

She lamented aloud to herself, “I hope the rest of my day goes better than this.”

+++

“Did she believe you?”

“I think so,” Jon replied to his companion when he returned to the inn. “It was hard. I'm not a very good actor.”

“Did you do what I told you?”

“Yes,” he growled. “I tried to draw on how angry I was when she left.”

“Jon, don't lie to me. You weren't angry then. You were sad and scared. I remember. I was there,” Lilsa scold, her light brown hair tossing as she shook her head. “Why are you really angry?”

Spinning away, Jon screwed his face into an asymmetrical snarl. “That was the reason.”

“Liar” Lilsa accused again. “You're angry because she moved on, she got married. She forgot all about you.”

“You're wrong. I'm happy for her. She deserves to have someone like him. He's more attentive than I ever could be. He worships her. I can't begrudge her that.”

He was lying. He knew it; Lilsa knew it. But if he kept lying to himself about his feelings, he reckoned he could change them. He didn't want Axandra back, he just wanted her—and everyone else—to be safe.

“You were right, though,” he continued, shifting his weight back toward his companion. “She doesn't suspect anything from me. She was no idea why I'm here. I'm just another volunteer.”

“Good. That's what we need her to think. Until we figure out where the Goddess is hiding, Axandra needs to be ignorant. Now, come here. It's time for me to check on your…guest.”

Jon felt an uncertain tug in his conscience. On one hand, he knew that without Lilsa, he would succumb to the parasite and its plans for him. The Stormflies wanted someone who would get close to the Protectress, someone she would trust, someone who would then…remove her from consideration. He was supposed to seduce her, re-win her heart, then stab it. He didn't want to, but he wouldn't be the one in control.

On the other hand, Lilsa's plan was no less devious, but certainly less deadly for the woman they once called their friend. When Lilsa found him, writhing in pain on the floor in the warehouse, she immediately dove into his mind and separated the parasite from his brain tissue. She, in essence, amputated its tendrils, leaving it unable to attach. She did not remove the parasite completely, but it could not affect Jon in the same way, not directly. It could still apply its emanations to affect his emotions and mood. Lilsa continued to act as a barrier. Frequently, she entered Jon's mind and erected a wall. These walls were temporary. They crumbled as the Stormfly fought back, but each successive erection, the Stormfly weakened its offensive, thus protecting Jon's mind and trapping the creature.

Lilsa intended to locate the host of the Goddess and destroy the creature. She decided it was the only way to have enough impact to stop the attacks. Everything the Stormflies did centered on their Queen, like a hive of colony insects. They did not act without the Queen's orders. They protected their Queen with a vengeance.

How Lilsa knew that the Queen was still alive and in Undun was mystery to Jon. The ultimate mystery, however, was how Lilsa appeared to be immune, impervious to infestations, unaffected by the broadcast the Stormflies emitted. The Stormflies could not and did not hurt her. She meant to use this immunity to her advantage.

Jon eased onto the divan beside her, tension aching his shoulders and neck. He dreaded the interaction, despite its familiarity. Allowing Lilsa access meant giving up something of himself, his privacy. Lilsa saw too much of the feelings he kept carefully concealed. She watched his memories of making love to Axandra like a voyeur. She chided him for his lustful thoughts of other women. She made him feel guilty about every small thing he did that did not suit her needs.

But he did not want the Stormfly to feast on him. He wanted to be free and live. She promised that he would.

When Lilsa finished her task, Jon opened his eyes to find night stretching like an indigo canopy across the ceiling of the world. Only a coral hue graced the western sky where the second sun set.

He needed dinner.

Downstairs, he ordered the soup of the day, wild mushroom and cream. He tasted the heat of gray peppercorns at the edges of his tongue. The tang of dried orange trail leaf married with savory homoclaire root. There was another flavor in the mix, one he wasn't familiar with, a surprise to him since he prided himself on knowing flavors by heart. He memorized the nuances of scores of herbs, spices, and other culinary treatments.

“Excuse me,” he asked the server the next time the young man passed by. “Can you tell me the ingredients in this soup.”

“Sure. Dime cap mushrooms, bustle cream, red barely, gray pepper, orange trail, homoclaire, bailywort and just a squeeze of bell nut oil, from sautéing the mushrooms.”

“Bailywort? You cook with that?”

“Absolutely. It adds a flair that my patrons find appealing.”

Jon snickered to himself. The mild barbiturate properties of bailywort probably had a lot to do with the affection for the recipe. “Thank you. It's delicious.”

“You're welcome, sire. Do you need a bowl for your companion upstairs? I noticed she isn't dining with you this evening.”

“Uh, please,” Jon confirmed. Even if Lilsa didn't want it, he'd be happy to take a second helping.

“I'll bring it out in a few minutes,” the server promised.

Returning to his room with the soup, Jon found the space empty. Lilsa had gone. He panicked at first—she hadn't said anything about leaving—then he decided he would take advantage of her absence and find another glass of beer.