Wonder Woman: Warbringer Page 31

  Helen had won a race, before anyone knew what sorrow she would bring to the world, before she was Menelaus’s bride or Helen of anything but herself. She’d run side by side with the boys who would someday don armor and fight to their deaths in her name. She’d run barefoot with the wind at her back, and when the gods had granted her victory, she’d gone to the banks of the river Eurotas and laid a lotus wreath on the great tree that grew there; she’d poured a libation of oil upon its roots. Libation. An offering. These were old words, old ideas, but Alia knew them in her very bones. For years, girls had come to that site to worship Helen and to sing for their friends.

  Alia tried to catch her breath as they reached the bottom of the footpath and sprinted across the paved road, then stumbled down a gentle slope, dense with brush and whispering plane trees. Their trunks were gray as stone, the thick, twisting arms of their branches bowed low over the water as if trying to drink, and the blaze of the late-afternoon sun made their leaves look curiously weightless, as if clouds of green butterflies had alighted in their boughs but might vanish at any moment, leaving the trees bare.

  Somewhere far in the distance, she heard the rumble of engines. The voices of the girls grew louder, drawing her onward. They were fifty now, one hundred, the sound so lovely it brought tears to Alia’s eyes. When had she stopped being a child? The first time a guy had whistled at her out of a car window when she was walking to school? The moment she started wondering how she looked when she ran, what jiggled or bounced, instead of the pace she was setting? The first time she’d kept from raising her hand because she didn’t want to seem too smart or too eager? No one had sung. No one had told her how much she would lose until the time for grieving was long over.

  But now they’d reached the sandy banks of the river and there was no more time or breath for sadness. She followed the girls, running beside them, caught up in their joy. They would always be young and unafraid. They would forever run this race.

  “They’re coming!” Theo shouted, but he didn’t mean the runners. On the road above, armored vehicles screeched to a halt, men in gray camouflage emerging and crashing down the slope toward the water. A Humvee was charging down the riverbed, a wide, menacing military jeep with tires that seemed to eat up the ground.

  “There!” Alia cried. A tree on the banks, its massive trunk giving way to heavy branches. The water at its base was flat and smooth like no other part of the river, reflecting the image of the tree so brightly it might have been a mirror. Alia blinked and saw girls dancing on the riverbank, the tree’s trunk laden with wreaths of lotus blossoms, its roots crowded with tiny offerings.

  “The water by the tree!” said Diana, taking her hand, pulling her forward. “Alia, you just have to reach it.”

  But the soldiers were in the river now, surrounding them, blocking their path to the spring, their boots splashing through the water and kicking up plumes of silt. A hard breeze shook the leaves of the plane tree as a helicopter descended, hovering over them. Alia could swear she heard Eris’s wings in the steady whir of its propeller blades.

  “Please!” Diana shouted, throwing her arms out to shield Alia. “Listen to me! This girl is no danger to you. The river is sacred. It can purge the Warbringer line and end this madness forever!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jason from behind them. “I can’t allow that.”

  He seized Alia’s arm and yanked her tight to his side, backing away up the banks.

  “Jason,” said Diana. “We just need to make them understand.”

  “They understand just fine.”

  Alia tried to break free of his grip, stumbling in the soft sand. “What are you doing?” she said, the voices of the girls’ song lost, fading on the wind.

  “It’s okay,” her brother said gently—his voice as steady, as familiar, as controlled as ever. “You are just as you were meant to be. This is all as it was meant to be, and no one will hurt you.” His eyes were bright. His dimple creased his cheek. She realized he looked happier than she’d ever seen him. “You must live, Alia. And war must come.”

  Diana stared at Jason, at his fingers digging into Alia’s arm, at the soldiers fanned out around them. Their eyes were alert, scanning the area, but they kept returning to him—not as if assessing a target, but as if awaiting a command. They looked a bit like the boys Jason had spoken to at the gala—paler, sterner, but with that same smug ease. The Humvee rumbled to a stop half in and half out of the river, and only then did Diana realize that aside from the rhythmic whir of the helicopter blades, the air was still. Eris and the twins had gone. Had they retreated in defeat or because their victory was secure?

  “What is this?” said Diana. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jason repeated. He sounded sincere. “I didn’t really believe we’d get this close. I hoped I wouldn’t have to intervene, that we could just let the clock run out and the sun set.”

  “Jason, man, what are you talking about?” said Theo. “You got us on the jet that brought us here.”

  “I know. It wasn’t what I wanted. But you have to understand how hard it’s been to keep Alia safe.” He turned to his sister, his grip still secure on her upper arm. “First you run off to Istanbul and board a boat before I can send anyone to intercept you. When the Thetis went missing…I nearly lost my mind.” He expelled a long breath, and his brows rose in that bemused look that had become so familiar. “But then you show up in New York, safe and sound, with an Amazon in tow.”

  Diana flinched. “You knew?”

  “From the first moment we tangled in that hotel hallway. Did you really think you could pretend to be an ordinary mortal, Diana? There’s nothing ordinary about you.”

  Anger unfurled inside her. That was why he hadn’t asked about where she came from or what she was. Not out of respect, but because he already knew.

  “What better bodyguard could I dream of for my sister?” Jason said. “An immortal warrior willing to stop at nothing to keep Alia alive.”

  “So we could reach the spring,” Alia said, her dark eyes dazed and lost, as if she was waiting to be told this was all a joke.

  “The spring.” Jason said the word as if he wanted to rinse its sound from his mouth. “You two were set on trying to reach it, so why fight you? We’d go to Greece. I’d let you chase your tails, and all the while Diana would be using her strength and skill to protect the Warbringer.”

  Diana’s hand inched toward her lasso, and Jason held up a scolding finger. “Easy now. There are snipers on the ridge. You might survive a bullet to the brain, but I doubt Nim or Theo will.”

  Alia winced. “Jason, have you lost your damn mind?”

  “I’m just being cautious,” he said softly. “The way I always have.”

  Nim planted her hands on her hips. “But you helped us! You could have flown us anywhere on that jet and—”

  “My team was waiting for us on the ground in Araxos, but our enemies had other plans. After the crash, there were too many hostiles in the area. If I’d called in my forces, they might have led Alia’s pursuers straight to us. So I had them track us and follow at a safe distance.”

  “The tracker for the parachute packs,” said Theo suddenly. “It wasn’t just receiving signals. It was transmitting, too.”

  Jason lifted a brow. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out before now.”

  Nim pointed her finger at Jason. “That’s why you didn’t want Theo to use his phone to start the car. You weren’t afraid of us being found. You were trying to slow us down.” Her eyes widened. “Oh God…That first day driving, you were handing me soda.”

  Diana remembered Jason digging through the medical kit on the jet, pocketing pills. “You drugged her?” she asked incredulously. Could he have done such a thing to a girl he’d known his whole life? Who was this boy standing before her? This boy she’d whispered secrets to in the dark?

  “I’m not proud of it,” he said, and he sounded ashamed. “But I had to do something. You were al
l so determined.”

  “To stop a war!” shouted Alia, her voice fraying.

  “Humans aren’t made for peace,” said Jason. “We’ve proven it again and again. Give us the chance and we’ll find something to fight over. Territory. Religion. Love. It’s our natural state. Ask Diana why her people turned their backs on us. They know what humans are.”

  “Diana?” Alia asked.

  Diana wasn’t sure what to say. She had been taught her whole life that mortals hungered for war, that they couldn’t resist the urge to destroy one another, that there was no point in trying to stem the tide of bloodshed.

  As if he could read her mind, Jason said, “Don’t look to her for answers. Her people don’t care about us. And why should they? Look what we’ve become. Cowards and weaklings playing with weapons like they’re toys.”

  “Weaklings,” Alia repeated. “Every generation weaker than the last….” She reared back as realization struck. “Our parents’ work. You didn’t continue it.”

  “I did. Our father’s work.”

  “What does Dad have to do with any of this?” Alia asked desperately.

  “The files,” said Diana, remembering the missing pages, the blacked-out passages. “You redacted the text.”

  “Dad saw the potential for what our blood could do, what it might mean for the world, before Mom interfered.”

  “You mean before she talked sense into him?” Alia shot back.

  Jason gave her arm a slight shake. “Vaccines. Gene therapy. Supercures. That’s what they ended up using our bloodline for. The blood of heroes like Ajax and Achilles. To prolong the lives of those who had no right to their strength.”

  What had Jason said on that winding road through the cliffs? It’s just biology. I’m not saying it’s good or bad.

  Alia tried to pull away from him, and Diana stepped forward. A bullet struck the water by Theo’s feet.

  “Shit!” shouted Theo, backing up and nearly falling. Nim shrieked.

  “Jason,” pleaded Alia, “call them off!”

  “Behind me,” commanded Diana, spreading her arms wide, eyes scanning the road above and the ridge of the ruins beyond it for snipers.

  They stood in strange formation: Jason and Alia on the sandy riverbank, Diana with Nim and Theo crowded against her in the shallows—as if she could protect them when they were surrounded by men on all sides.

  Theo held his hands up. “Jason,” he said, voice reasonable. “Think about what you’re saying. Who are you to decide who’s weak and who’s strong?”

  Jason blew out a breath. “I don’t expect you to understand, Theo. You’d rather hide from the world behind a screen than face it.”

  Theo’s head snapped back as if Jason had struck him. “Is that really what you think of me?” He lowered his hands slowly, his face bewildered. All of Jason’s jibes and judgments—they hadn’t been the teasing of someone who wanted more for his friend, but actual contempt. “I thought—”

  “That we were friends? Because we collected comic books together when we were twelve? Because we liked the same cartoons? What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been wasting your life on games and make-believe?”

  “If you say ‘growing up,’ I’m going to punch that smug expression right off your face.”

  Jason’s smile flashed again. “Do you even know how to make a fist?”

  Theo’s lip curled. “If I’m such a loser, why waste your time on me?”

  “It was an easy way to keep tabs on your father.”

  “My father?”

  “He was always trying to track expenditures at the labs, monitoring the projects I wanted to approve. He thought it was about money. It’s never been about money. It’s about the future.”

  The future. Jason’s words by the waterfall came back to her. I wanted to remake the world. The ferocity in his eyes when he’d said, I still do. A boy who’d lost his parents in a single terrible moment. A boy who longed to be remembered, who longed to see his gifts recognized. Diana could see him standing at the party at the museum, like a soldier surrounded by enemies. She’d thought she’d understood, but she hadn’t come close to grasping the scope of his vision. The tension she’d sensed in him as they’d drawn closer to Helen’s tomb hadn’t been fear for their safety. He’d just been afraid he would have to reveal his true goals before he was ready.

  “You were never with us,” said Diana. The betrayal was worse for the shame it brought, the feeling that she should have known, anticipated the wound, stanched the bleeding. “You never wanted to stop this war.”

  “We can’t stop war,” said Jason. “But we can change the way wars are waged.”

  “War is war,” said Alia. “People will die.”

  Jason rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and took a deep breath. He released Alia’s arm and put up his palms as if in surrender. “I know how this looks,” he said, gesturing to the artillery and the stone-faced men gathered around him. He gave a short laugh. “I know how I sound. But think for a minute. What if we weren’t fighting one another? What if the monsters from the stories were real and we had to band together to face them? What if war could bring us together instead of tearing us apart?”

  “Monsters?” said Alia.

  “Real enemies. Scylla, Charybdis, the Nemean Lion, Echidna, the mother of all grotesques.”

  From inside the Humvee, Diana heard a slithering thump, as if something massive had shifted its weight.

  And then Diana knew. The thing Tek had faced in the Oracle’s vision, the monster with the jackal’s head—it was one of Jason’s creations. She remembered the images on the laptop. How many of those creatures had he found? How many would he bring back?

  “You don’t understand what you’ll unleash upon the world,” said Diana. “This won’t be like one of the stories you loved. It won’t be a heroic quest. I’ve seen the future you speak of, and it is not glorious. It’s a nightmare of loss.”

  Jason waved her words away. “Whatever vision the Oracle showed you was only one version of the future, one possible outcome.”

  “It’s not a risk worth taking!”

  “An immortal has no right to make that choice for humanity,” he said, a bitter edge to his voice, as if he resented his own mortality, as if he resented her for being something more. “You say we deserve a chance at peace, but why not a chance at greatness? The biological material my parents found at those ancient battle sites, the work they did on gene therapies. They didn’t know it, but it was all for this.” Jason threw his arms wide, encompassing his troops. “These are soldiers like no others, warriors to rival Odysseus and Achilles. They will do battle with creatures born of myth and nightmare, and the world will rally behind them.”

  “You guys are gonna die,” said Theo, glancing at the grim-faced soldiers. “You get that, right?”

  “Yes, we’ll die,” said Jason. “But we’ll live on as legends.”

  “Like a hero in a story?” Diana asked.

  “They aren’t just stories. You and I both know that.”

  We’ll live on as legends. Jason wanted an opportunity to be the hero he was born to be. He wanted to live in a world that made sense. He wanted the death his parents had been denied, a death with meaning, a chance to be remembered. Immortality.

  “And what about me?” asked Alia, anger seeping through her disbelief.

  Jason touched her arm, and she batted his hand away.

  “Alia,” he said, “I’m the one who wants you to live.”

  “With thousands of deaths on my conscience?” Her voice cracked on the words. “Knowing that I was the reason so many innocent people had to die?”

  “So a new age of heroes can begin.” Jason turned his gaze on Diana. “I lied to you. You lied to me. But there’s only truth between us now.” He stepped forward, and for a moment, the world dropped away. They were standing once again on that rocky hill, the stars wheeling above them. “The Amazons are warriors. They’re not meant to live out of time, is
olated on that island. You know it’s true. You left Themyscira for the chance to be a hero, to give meaning to your life. Don’t you think humanity deserves that, too?”

  The late-afternoon sun glittered off the water and made a mantle of gold that shimmered over Jason’s features. Diana saw in him the blood of kings, of heroes, the daring and the ambition.

  “Stand with me,” he pleaded, “as we were meant to—side by side, seeking glory as equals.”

  She’d thought her path would lead one of two ways: to the stifling familiarity of home or the terror of exile. Jason was offering her another future: a life lived without caution or fear of reprisal. One drenched in blood and glory, and she could feel her warrior’s heart fill with hunger at the call.

  “Humans can’t hold to peace, Diana,” Jason said. His gaze was steady, certain, and in his words she heard the echo of her mother’s voice. “We’re brutes and have been since our beginning. If we can’t have peace, then at least give us a chance at a beautiful death.”

  “Diana,” Alia said desperately. And in that moment, Diana knew that Alia was pleading for her own death; that frightened as she might be, Alia would rather die than see the world fall to Jason’s vision. That was courage. That was its own kind of greatness. Diana had not been raised to be just any warrior. She was an Amazon, and she knew true strength when she saw it. If Jason wanted this glorious future, she would not simply hand it to him; he would have to fight for it.

  She met his gaze, and when she spoke, she heard her mother’s voice, Tek’s voice, Maeve’s. “You may well be my equal in strength,” she said. “But you are no match for Nim’s ingenuity, for Theo’s resilience, for Alia’s bravery. Might does not make a hero. You can build a thousand soldiers, and not one will have a hero’s heart.”