Page 21 of Love, Nemesis
“Looks like it.”
“You scared?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Jasper rubbed the back of his neck. “Scary person.”
“We won’t find him,” Ana said. “If I thought we really would, there’s no way I’d let you come along.”
“You seem pretty confident—and don’t act like this is all your choice, you know.”
“He’s a legend,” Ana said, gazing out at the town. “There’s no way we’ll find him.”
We won’t find him. Never,she thought.But I will.
Jasper didn’t know it yet, but he would eventually have to stay behind.
If John Hailey was the grim reaper, Ares was the door to death itself.
Chapter 6: Statesboy
IT WAS LIKE the ocean, a distant, churning sound, voices upon voices of all inflections. Then came the first subtle wave, creeping up the shores of Lethe’s mind, close like breath in his ear.
The force muttered something inarticulately, and then louder, like a hot tide rising, bringing the waves closer to him. He knew he was standing on the edge of something vast, and his mind took him to a picture of himself, feet in the sand of a boiling, red and black ocean.
He heard the words clearer now, from a thousand souls.
Let me have your breath, they said.Give me your skin. Again, like a wave.Let me have your spine. The ocean would pull the wave back again, the drawing of the tide answering its own request with another.Give me your sight.
For a while, Lethe just listened, feeling the warm lust of the whispers like water brushing his toes, his heels, and then his ankles.
The Eating Ocean had many descriptions, human language trying its best to frame up the intricacies of an immortal, abstract force. It lived in a place outside of time, reaching through otherworldly spheres to stroke the human soul.
If it had eaten other worlds before theirs, Lethe didn’t know, but he knew it had eaten other souls, millions of other souls.
Looking out into the endless waters, Lethe didn’t see death. Death was a natural stage in the cycle of life. A dying body decayed and gave way to something else. The Eating Ocean was not a stage in the cycle of life. It was an interruption of it. It was made of pure madness.
The sand sucked him in. Lethe felt a thing he could not describe, but it extended beyond revulsion. His body reacted with so much violence he drew back hard, a blackening nausea blasting through his brain and scattering his essence like dust. His body lurched.
He woke up with sweat on his brow under the cover of a tree. He looked around, searching the vacant, grassy hills around Fort Row. He had a clear view of the entire fort from where he’d dozed off in the hills.
He inhaled, reaching for his flask before drinking a measured sip and returning it to his belt. He leaned forward, wiping his forehead on his sleeve as he sighed.
He could hear his horse pulling up the grass farther down the hill, eating near where it had been when he fell asleep.
He lay back, looking up at the sun through the trees, closing his eyes against a breeze. After a few more minutes, the tension in his chest passed. He sat up again, watching the grassy plains and the snow-capped mountains beyond.
The trees at the base of the hill shook with powerful winds that came off the plains, and the sound vaguely reminded him of the ocean. He blamed it for his dream.
He scanned the hills again, spotting one boy from his class waiting on his horse. A few more were nearby.
It was a patrol drill today, the easiest and his favorite as it didn’t require much instruction on his part.The boys had to move back and forth along a designated perimeter, reporting to one another at specific touchpoints along their routes. It went on for several hours, simulating a legitimate shift.
He rubbed his face just as a screech whistled into the air, removing his hand in just enough time to see a flare pop and sizzle over the trees below.
The wind rustled the branches above him, and a breeze caught the grass in the plains, brushing up into the sky and clearing the flare into the clouds.
He sighed.
