The Trouble With Heroes.... by Jo Beverley Read Free Book Online

air was
denser than it should be.
    "What do you mean, no one’s left to
call?"
    "They're all gone." Plop. "The staff from
Hellbane." Plop "The fixers down south." Plop.
    A chilly emptiness weakened her, and she sat
where lawn met the lake's shingled edge.
    Dan stopped tossing the stones. "There's just
the ones in the northern and southern settlements. We've decided we
might as well have a go, as they used to say."
    It was like listening to nonsense. "Who used
to say?"
    He turned to her and she thought he looked
more relaxed than she'd seen him in weeks. But thin. Too thin.
    "Men in war stories. It's usually men.
I've been checking out books and films about war. Lawrence of Arabia . The Dam Busters . Reach for the Sky . I thought I'd see if they had
any suggestions."
    "Did they?"
    "Be brave, don't give up, and have the right
weapons."
    Tempting to think him mad, or joking like the
old Dan, but he was deadly serious. Bad adjective, Jenny.
    "What's going to happen, then?"
    "I'm going to die. But," he added with an
almost Dannish smile, "in the best tradition of English heroism,
I'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and take as many with me as I
can."
    Jenny wanted to say, No, to deny reality, but
she knew it was the flat truth. "We're all going to die, I suppose.
Is there anything the rest of us can do?"
    "Give us reason to try, perhaps."
    "If you fail, you die. Isn't that reason
enough?"
    He sat on the grass facing her. "I'm worn out
by the waiting. In a way, I want it over."
    She shivered, recognizing a reflection of her
own state.
    "Living and dying don't seem particularly
important any more," he said, "but Gaia is. I mean us, the people
who've made Gaia home. I'm going to fight for that as long as I
can. Perhaps I can make a difference.”
    She reached out and touched his hand.
    “ I know what it'll cost, though, Jen.
You probably know, too. How it seems easier to die now. Get it over
with."
    It was the ashes in the wind put into
words.
    Praying she read him right, she moved close
and grasped his tense hands, then raised one for the lover's kiss,
as he had done to her, so long ago.
    His hand flexed slightly against her jaw.
"Are you preparing to sacrifice yourself for the cause?"
    "No." If he could face the blighters, she
could face honesty. "Just hoping."
    He closed his eyes, then drew her hand to his
mouth. "I called you. Tonight. Bad form when you'd not taken up my
offer, but... I need you, Jen. You. Now."
    Breathtakingly, she didn't doubt it. There'd
been no reason for her wandering search, and in fact the search
hadn't wandered, but had drifted here like a feather on the
wind.
    "How. How did you call me?"
    He drew her close, and his lips traced her
cheek, her ear, her jaw. "I'm practicing rusty skills. If I'm going
to fight, I'm going to fight dirty."
    "I don't understand."
    "You don't need to...."
    And she didn't. There was nothing rusty about
his lovemaking skills and she sensed the something extra. It was
little to do with her, no matter what he said, but everything to do
with magic, with death. With more than death.
    It sprang from hovering annihilation. Fear of
that surrounded them and played in the magic of their minds. Fear
of a void, that he fought with fire.
    She let him undress her because he wanted to,
and because each incidental brush of his hands on her skin was like
liquid pleasure. It flowed over her and into her so she pushed off
his shirt to get to his skin, to give back, to draw more.
    When she was naked, she stripped him, stroked
him, cradled him. Then he was in her, slow, relentless, building a
dizzying power. She might have been afraid of dying if things like
that mattered any more. All that mattered was the cauterizing
conflagration and the drifting postapocalyptic dream.
    She came back to reality to find she was
lying on her back on soft grass with Dan half over her, his head
cradled on her breasts. He seemed relaxed, replete, and she felt
the same way. What a fool she'd been. They could have been