Walking into the yard after the battle, he stabled his horse first. A young, terrified boy was waiting to care for the animal, which would be groomed and fed, given the best of care. Because horses were valuable. More so than blessed warriors, it seemed.
He went directly to his cottage after that, pausing outside to drag off his bloody clothes and armor, to leave them in a blood-stained basket. The priests would come before dawn to collect them, cleaning the armor and burning the clothing, leaving a clean basket of replacements near the door. Dragan didn’t know where the fresh clothing came from or who cleaned his armor. It didn’t matter, as long as it was there when he needed it, when the next battle horn sounded and he rode off to slaughter a new band of invaders.
He washed himself next, drawing bucket after bucket of cold water and sluicing his naked body, not caring who might see. His yard was discreet enough, protected from the castle’s overview and invisible from the village. Secret enough for lust-filled visitors in the night. But it also afforded him the privacy to bathe—a small, if coincidental, courtesy. Perhaps the only one.
Once he’d scrubbed his skin until it burned like a thousand bee stings, he walked into the cottage and pulled on his night clothes, then sat before the fire and ate the dinner left on the hearth for him. That was another duty of the priests, though he doubted they did their own cooking. As he ate, he drank flagon after flagon of ale, until his body began to relax and his anger to fade.
It was as he was finally crossing to his bed that he heard the call to battle.
He jerked to a halt, every muscle tensing, his throat straining to swallow the howl of anger that threatened to force its way to his lips. He’d killed enough enemies for one day. But when he went to cover his ears against the inevitable horn’s blare, he realized this call was different. It was a voice on the wind, a warm draft of air that snuck through the cracks of this cold night, and sought him out, as if it carried a message for him alone to hear. But it wasn’t from the goddess.
It was, however, a summons to war, a call for the finest warriors on earth to fight for the very soul of mankind. To battle an evil that would crawl over the land until there was nothing else.
Dragan was no fool. As a creature of magic, he knew sorcery when it touched him. But this sorcerer wanted more than a lone fighter. He wanted Dragan to join with other great warriors like himself, to form a brotherhood against evil. He stumbled back to sit on his bed. Was this a trick? An enemy trying to lure him away? Or a test from the goddess? But as the summons came again, he tasted its magic and found nothing familiar, nor anything of deception or guile. He stared around the cottage where he’d lived most of his life, where he’d live the rest of his life, if he did nothing to change it. And he thought about a brotherhood of fellow warriors, standing side by side with him against the enemy. Brothers who’d watch his back and share his ale at the end of the day.
He stood and began packing. Better to die young as a warrior standing with brothers, than to live forever alone as a monster.
Chapter Six
On the road to Manhattan,
New York City, NY, present day
SOTIRIS’S FOOT SLAMMED his brakes while his hand pounded the horn when a huge truck cut in front of him, using its size to demand the right of way as it took a last-minute exit. Humans. A necessary but inelegant part of his life. But perhaps they wouldn’t be so much if he could bring his new project to fruition. His thoughts returned to memories of his early planning stages and the realization that Dragan, the warrior imprisoned and at his mercy, was the perfect answer to his power problems.
Others might have studied the trapped warrior and seen nothing but stone. But Sotiris had known better. He’d known there was warm blood flowing beneath the stony exterior, a desperately beating heart and straining lungs. It made him smile again, just thinking about the torture it must have been. But then he remembered that Dragan was gone, and his rage roared into life once more.
He’d designed the damn device, spent months perfecting it. He’d been ready for the final test, for the infusion of magic to power it. And that was where Dragan had come in. He’d never intended to do more than lock away that fucking monster in a place where Katsaros would never find him. But then, he’d thought . . . why waste all that potential? His device needed power. And Dragan was not only powerful, but goddess-blessed. His magic wasn’t quite the same as a sorcerer’s in-born power, but it was close. Dragan had been gifted by the goddess at the moment he emerged from the womb, his power vested in every cell of his body, just like a sorcerer’s. The warrior might be trapped in this magic-starved world, but his magic still came from the goddess, not the earth or the sky, or even simple genetics. The goddess had blessed him upon birth, creating a direct line between Dragan and her personal power. He could benefit from whatever magic was floating freely about, but he didn’t need it. As long as he was alive, there was an engine inside him, ready to tap into the goddess and draw down more magic.
Granted, the people of this world didn’t seem to believe in the gods anymore, but their belief wasn’t necessary in this case. Sotiris had tested Dragan and confirmed the existence of his magical reserve, even after being held dormant for so long, though it was somewhat depleted by time and neglect.
The memory of that moment, of the confirmation of his theory, still had the power to make Sotiris smile, but he no sooner had the thought than his mood plummeted once again.
Dragan. Just when Sotiris had been ready to begin, when the necessary device was complete and he’d only been waiting for his own magic reserves to return to their peak, Dragan had been freed by a silly girl who had no idea of the forces she was taking on.
She’d find out soon enough, once his investigator managed to track her down. But it might already be too late. Sotiris had sensed the moment of Dragan’s release and knew that his enemy would have done the same. Unfortunately, that also meant he’d begin searching for his warrior using both magical and mundane means, which would very quickly draw the warrior straight back to his master, fucking Nicodemus Katsaros.
Unfortunately, it didn’t matter where Dragan went now. Freed of his stone prison, he’d be useless for Sotiris’s purposes. A powerful monster trapped in stone was useful. That same monster on the loose and looking for vengeance was a nightmare.
Sotiris drew up in front of his Manhattan high-rise on that thought. Leaving the Maybach running, he swung out of the driver’s seat and strode into the lobby through a door held open by the doorman, while the valet rushed out to drive the car over one block to the building’s private garage. As it was still mid-afternoon, the tower’s elevator was empty. Stepping inside, he inserted his key, ensuring a high-speed flight directly to the penthouse level.
Once there, he went straight to the bar, poured himself a generous three fingers of very fine scotch, then sat in front of the living room’s big window to stare at the sky and think. Power. Magical Power. He needed it to make his device work, and he needed his device to ensure his place on top of the power hierarchy of this world. He sat silently and sipped.