Love, War, Myth, and Legend

"Not a word, Helena," I replied. "We're done when I'm ready to be done." I hoped that I could get her to agree with that for our entire relationship and not just the blaze of glory in which it might be ending, but she at least got the point for now. She went still, but for her sensuous breathing. I drew in a breath to savor the moment. I didn't intend to put the last stroke off for very long, since another part of my was fully at attention and eager to move onto the next, even better, item on the agenda. But I did intend to savor this moment. There was a decent chance I'd never get another.

And in the silence, I heard footsteps and movement from downstairs that were definitely not Lance's, and even more definitely not Stacey's. I stilled myself and my own breathing, praying I had heard wrong. I hadn't. And I had learned to trust my ears without question in the months since Chechnya. The weight and stride were all wrong, not to mention Lance would have let me know if he were coming home, with or without Stacey. There was another sound, too, something that sounded almost like wings flapping, that I'd never heard inside before.

We were supposed to be alone in my home.

We were not alone in my home.

Chapter 2: We Shall Fight on the Landing, We Shall Fight in the Living Room and in the Kitchen

Instantly, a very different form of heightened emotional state switched into place in my mind. I took the paddle and quickly felt behind me to reorient myself as to where the dresser by the bedroom door was. Once I reoriented, I knew what I was doing again. Lance and I had actually converted the top "drawer" of this dresser into a weapon safe, with steel lining and a biometric lock. I pushed my thumbprint down on the scanner. Unfortunately, most of what was in here, I couldn't use anymore, let alone the far larger and more impressive collection in the capacious weapons locker in the basement. I did have a couple of things I could use, though, and I found them quickly—they hadn't been moved since I put them in that dresser drawer-safe, but on the other hand, I didn't open that drawer much, either. I'd put them all in a small satchel together, though, so I could grab them all at once if I needed, which is just what I did at that moment.

"Callie, stay here," I said, switching back to her real name to give a signal that playtime was over. Or at least needed a break. I also loosened the bindings on her arms as much as I could in a few seconds, but I sure as hell hoped this wasn't over, because if right there was where I had to leave things forever with the only woman I'd ever loved this much, whoever was downstairs was going to get planted so deep that they'd be launched into orbit on the far side of the Earth. "Need to check something. Urgent."

"Sir?" I heard her call, softly but urgently. "C-Carson?"

"Stay. Here. Quietly." I slipped out of the room and shut the door, quietly refamiliarizing myself with my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency gear by touch.

I knew my way around my brother's house almost effortlessly now. But I wasn't about to let whoever was here when they shouldn't be know that. So I brought my white cane with the red tip with me, too.

Also, it had a retractable blade. Never know when you might need one of those.

I slipped down the stairs as quietly as I could. They were hardwood, unfortunately, not carpet. Also unfortunately, the bottom few steps were not flush to the wall. They stuck out a short distance into the living room, where the bottom step flared out slightly. That meant that it was going to be all but impossible to remain hidden once I went that far down, and if he were off to the right, where the staircase was open, he would have already been able to see me coming down the stairs. It sounded like he was off to the left. Just walking around like he owned the place and had all the time in the world, in fact. No sound of valuables being thrown into a bag, for example.

Was this someone Lance actually let in here? There's no way. He'd have told me. But he also got in here without tripping the alarm and he's just walking around. No smash and grab. And he might even have seen me already and he didn't even react.

I considered swinging first and asking questions later. But I also considered that this could somehow be a mistake. Also, most thieves wouldn't stick around once they were spotted. The fact that I couldn't actually spot him made that principle somewhat suspect in this case, but hopefully apt enough.

I descended the last few steps into the room, and listened for that intake of breath or curse words that would signal that things were not going according to plan. There was almost no way that whoever was there couldn't see me at this point unless they were blind themselves. He was still some distance away, but I was now in the open part of the living room and most of the floorplan between here, the dining room, and kitchen was also open. No reaction at all. No running, no swearing, not even standing still. Just nonchalantly walking. But in my direction. Now that made me a bit nervous.

"That's far enough," I said. "Pretty sure you're not supposed to be here."

That finally got a reaction. Not what I was hoping for, though. In a light and youthful but resonant voice with a faint foreign accent, the intruder spoke. "Well now, this is interesting."

That was not the reaction of a thief that got caught in the act. He should have either run or tried to bluff his way out of it, pretending this was just a mistake or he was a repairman or something. It was also not the reaction of someone who had a right to be here. I relaxed into a fighting pose. This was not the way Valentine's Day was supposed to go.

"I don't know if that's the word I'd pick. Out."

If anything, the man's voice sounded even brighter than it had a moment earlier. "Impressive ears you've got!" What the hell did that mean? "Well, I can't leave now, I haven't been this excited in forever." He made no move to come closer, but he was clearly doing something. I listened for anything that sounded like a weapon.

"Last warning," I said.

"Excellent!" he replied. "That means the fun's about to start! Though I do apologize, it looks like the fun for you was already about to start before you came down here."

A chill went down my spine. He knew about Callie.

And while I was distracted by the chill of that thought, I missed the change in the air of something whistling across the room, and there was a sudden, precise, and powerful impact on my sword-cane, knocking it out of my hands and far across the living room, well out of reach.

Shit. I guess we're doing this. "Kid, you picked on the wrong blind man."

I let whoever it was come forward from the doorway, sliding my hand into my satchel as he moved.

Then I tossed a flashbang grenade right in front of him at point blank range. I was braced for the concussion—and had no need to care about the flash. There was a snarl. And then whoever it was made no move to run. That was not a good sign. Any common thief would have bailed at that point. Which meant that I needed to hit hard and quickly, because whoever had come here wasn't afraid of a real fight.

I lunched straight for where I guessed his center of gravity would be. If he already had a gun ready and aimed at me, I was a dead man either way, but if he didn't have any weapon he might be carrying already trained on me, the first order of business was making sure he didn't get that chance. As it turned out, I aimed too high, meaning my intruder was a head or more shorter than me. I connected with his face, at the same time a slender, blunt object of some kind rammed me in the stomach. I staggered back and sideways, and my hip connected with an end table. Fortunately, the satchel at my hip absorbed a lot of the impact. I still grimaced, but I heard a hollow thump from the other guy, too. That hollow thump meant that he had just hit the entryway closet door, which also meant that for the next second, I knew where he was. I surged forward again, this time aiming lower to block whatever that object might be, and sure enough, I felt a hard impact on my arm. I grabbed it, first with one hand, and then with the other, and only with two hands on it did I finally understand what he'd just hit me in the stomach with.

A fucking recurve bow?!

I was shocked enough that I missed the shift in his weight, until his surprisingly heavy foot came down on top of mine. A curse burst out from my mouth, but I also felt the next shift in his weight, and damn glad I did, because he was totally about to throw a knee kick into my balls that would have definitely had me down for the count. I twisted wildly to one side, but also took advantage of the shift in his balance to push the bow down with both hands.

The little bastard kicked straight through it, shattering it like it was made of balsa wood, and caught me in the side that I'd twisted to expose to him. Again the satchel on my hip took a lot of the impact, but this time the force of the blow rattled it completely free of my shoulder, and I had to let it go to avoid getting tangled in it. I was also worried that the second flashbang in there was about to go off, and it seemed like those were surprisingly ineffective against this guy, anyway. Taking the hit on my hip was better than getting hit in the junk, but the bastard could hit. I cursed again, and was almost insulted by the fact that he cursed even louder. Apparently losing his bow meant more to him than scoring a hell of a hit on me, or than taking that hit did to me.

I had managed to hold onto one end of the ruined bow. I didn't think I could take many more hits like that, and the flashbang had obviously not slowed this guy down as much as I hoped, or in fact, as much as it should have. So I wasn't going to get a better chance than this. I twisted forward, upending the end table into his path as I did so in case he was about to swing at me with his feet again—which a hard thud told me he had indeed done—and got behind him. A moment later, I had the bowstring looped around his neck.

I'd moved fast enough that I didn't have time to process what I felt on my face as I got behind him, and even after I processed it, I didn't want to think about it.

The fucker had wings. And if they were just props, they were damn good ones.

He tried to step back and stomp on my foot, but the fact that his own wings pushed me back made that harder. Of course, it also made it way harder to leverage the fact that I'd managed to garrote him with his own bowstring, too.

So instead, I got both hands on one of his wings and twisted. He roared and cursed some more. I had been hoping for more of a yelp of pain at that point, but of course, I was also getting to the point of hoping that I'd wake up and this was all just a bad dream.

"Carson? What's going on? You OK?" Callie's voice floated down to me from upstairs.

Shit. If I went down, there would be nothing between whoever or whatever the fuck this was and the girl that, whatever else had happened or was in fact in the process of happening, I was still going to be in love with for the rest of my life. It wouldn't even matter if she had managed to wiggle out of those soft silk ropes. If this guy could put up this kind of fight against me, she wouldn't be able to do anything unless she could get her hands on ...

"Callie, get my gun! Top drawer!"

"Oh, come on," my home invader suddenly spoke again. His voice was amused, which was all the more terrifying under the circumstances, because it meant he wasn't even breathing hard. "Tell me it isn't more fun like this?"

"You have no fucking clue," I replied, as Callie cried out something in the background, unintelligible, though her voice was clearly rising in pitch.

I threw an elbow into the back of this guy's head, or tried to, but he literally blocked it with a soft part of a wing. No prop. The movement was organic. This was really happening. I was fighting a home invader with functional wings, and one that fought through a flashbang and a garrote with his own bowstring.

"I have some fucking clue, and many clues about fucking," the guy replied, and twisted sideways. I held on, but my feet tripped over the overturned end table—dammit, I forgot about the end table on the floor!—and I lost my balance. The best I could do was hold onto this bastard's wings and back and bring him to the floor with me.

No such luck. As soon as my feet weren't firmly planted anymore, he spun harder into a hell of a martial arts throw, and with no leverage, the difference in our height was immaterial. He threw me sideways over the back of the sectional, and I crashed hard first into the front of the sectional, including the hard section where the drink holders were, and then onto the coffee table. Sheer adrenalin kept the pain at bay, but I knew that wouldn't hold for long, and that was going to leave a hell of a mark. I grasped desperately for anything to hand, and came up on Callie's purse.

A desperate, probably futile thought came to me: I'd given Callie a carbon-steel switchblade for her birthday (don't look at me like that, it was romantic and she loved it), and she usually kept it in her purse. I quickly reached my hand into every pocket I could—the damned purse had to have more pockets than a Levi's factory, but I got lucky and got it on the third try, and fortunately grasped it by the hilt.

I felt a stir in the air and quickly turned away, and promptly absorbed the impact of the end table sailing through the air on my upper back, fortunately some of the strongest on my body. I said a quick prayer that my little winged intruder hadn't moved right after throwing it, because that again told me where he was. I bounded back over the sectional, and came close enough—I hit his arm, though unfortunately not with the knife.

Then his other arm hit me in the stomach, and I staggered.

This guy really knew what he was doing. Which meant his next hit was probably going to go for my exposed face. I took a hell of a risk, but it was all I had left to do. As soon as I felt him move, I put the knife, pointed outward, right in front of my face. And the bastard punched straight into it as hard as he could. This time he cried out in pain for real. Unfortunately, I had been forced to hold my wrist at an awkward angle to get it in position. The blow was so hard, and my bracing bad enough after the blow to the stomach, that the hilt of the knife was driven back into the bridge of my nose. My wrist went numb. I shifted the knife to my left hand, but it probably wasn't going to do much more good. I leaned back against the frame of the doorway to the kitchen.

Fortunately, the guy didn't seem inclined to take another lunge at me right away. In fact, he talked again, which if he were smart, he wouldn't have—it let me know where he was. Except that again, he didn't even sounds slightly winded. For that matter, he didn't even sound like someone who just got stabbed in their knuckles. "Not bad! Even Father would be impressed. And I've learned anew today that is meant by 'love is blind.' Well, seems like I'm not as welcome here as I hoped. But I shouldn't leave my blood lying around like that. Tell you what, give me the knife, and you'll never see me again. Wait, that came out wrong. I'll leave you and Callista alone. I was mostly here for her anyway. She needs a visit from me more than you do."

Is this maniac even serious? If he escaped from some kind of lab with those wings, I could maybe get why he doesn't want DNA evidence around. The rest, though ... bastard had a bigger ego than Genghis Khan if he thought Callie "needed a visit" from him, or that I would just give him her knife because he asked nicely. "Tell you what, give me back my eyes, and you can have my whole Goddamn arsenal. Seeing as that's not likely, gonna have to pass. So you can walk away now. Or fucking fly for all I care. But you make one move towards my girl and I will end you." Mustering all the strength I had left, I licked the back of the knife as menacingly as I could, trying to convince him I could do this all day.

And ... the bastard laughed. More to the point, his laugh didn't sound like grim battle humor. He sounded positively happy. And that was not even the craziest thing happening in this living room. Because as I tasted his blood in my mouth, which actually tasted sweet and spicy and nothing at all like human blood—I saw him, blurry at first and then like a picture coming into focus.

White feathered wings. Not a stitch on him other than a heavy loincloth. Shattered recurve bow in his wounded hand, and brilliant silver arrows in the other. A faint golden and silver aura swirling happily behind him. My home invader ... I just strangled and stabbed ...

"Cupid?!?!"

He only laughed harder. But at least he wasn't trying to come at me. "Smart on top of tough! I'm impressed. And I'm also in need of a new bow. A pleasure doing business with you, then. I accept your bargain."

"You what my what?"

"You'll see. And I mean that." The darkness around him flexed and rippled. He continued, "a rather appropriate deal for St. Valentine's Day, come to think of it." Faint swirls of color began to appear in the swirling shadows.

"Pretty sure almost no one says the Saint anymore. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only Catholic in this room."

"Call me ecumenical. Do you know what St. Valentine's most famous miracle was?"

I chuckled grimly. "Restoring sight to a blind girl."

Cupid smiled brightly. "Like I said. An appropriate bargain for the occasion. Even if an odd one for me. You know I wanted my bride Psyche not to be able to see me."

I've read my Bullfinch, I thought, but the words came nowhere close to my lips amid the impossible distraction unfolding literally before my eyes. The swirls of color in what was the darkness around him became thicker and more vibrant. Then they began to slow and stabilize. I saw the knife in my own hand first, stained with faintly shimmering, silver blood. Then my clothes, looking like they had been dragged all the way through Vietnam and back. Then the carpet around his feet and my own. Then the rest of my brother's worse-for-wear living room, and the stairs, and the windows to the street.

I didn't want to blink. Blinking would be bad. For one thing, I had a volatile Greek god in my living room. For another, I could see!

"Carson!"

Staggering, hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. A moment later, Callie staggered into view. My Glock 19 was in her hand. Those beautiful heels—God, I had not forgotten how hot her legs were when locked into those things, but my first view of them in half a year set my blood on fire—were still locked onto her feet. The only other thing she had thrown on was my bathrobe. The robe wasn't closed, either. As soon as she turned at the landing, Cupid and I could both see everything.

"Carson? Carson! What the hell happened? You OK? Wait, is that my switchblade?"

Cupid had stopped speaking. Callie came the rest of the way down the stairs into the living room. She then turned towards me, which meant she turned her back to Cupid. I suddenly realized that she couldn't see him. There was no way she'd have just ignored him. Cupid, meanwhile, was giving Callie's backside a very appreciative stare.

"It, uh ..." Now how the hell was I going to explain this?

While I was distracted thinking about what to say, and with Callie in between him and me, Cupid hefted one of his silver arrows and hurled it like a dart straight into the back of Callie's heart.