Chapter Forty-Nine

Sengul

The old church shook violently waking four of the five occupants from sound but uncomfortable sleep.  Jack stumbled to his feet holding onto his flank which was still sore and weeping blood. On unsteady legs he made his way to the closest stained glass window to peer out at the darkness and the animals keeping their vigilant watch outside. “Was that an Earthquake?”

Daniel and Nick just stared at each other for a moment each trying to catch his breath and the other’s thoughts. “No,” Nick said quietly, “it wasn’t an Earthquake.”  His leg throbbed like a son of a bitch and it showed no signs of healing, if anything it was beginning to show signs of infection which was something Nicholas Jackson, Prince of All Olympians, had never had to deal with in his life. Head to toe his entire body ached and he felt overly warm. It took him a while to realize that he had a fever. While he’d managed to get himself back into his fatigues they only had one whole leg anymore the other had been cut off so that it didn’t move against the wound. The calf below the half-leg was caked with his muddled mix of blood and Ichor.  Out of curiosity Nick turned his head toward Jack who was still standing with his back to them. The General’s wound looked like it hurt but it was clean and the bandage, while a bit blood-stained, showed no signs of puss as his mangled calf did.  Even with the concentrated compound still in his Nick thought he should be healing better and faster than his Commanding Officer who was, after all, merely mortal.

In his sleep Ares started to cry out. “Calla! Calla! No! You can’t have her!”  His massive body was bathed in sweat as he tossed and turned on the two uncomfortable pews he’d put together earlier to form a bed. “Calla!”

“Dad?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said harshly, “don’t look at me like that. I don’t know!”  That wasn’t entirely true. He did know or rather something in him did.  The loud banging of Ares’ thick fist against the hardwood caught his attention.  At first Daniel thought he was knocking on something in his sleep but that wasn’t it, Ares was punching someone and that wood was about to splinter into a thousand sharp shards.

“Is someone gonna wake him?” Jack asked with agitation as he spent considerable time turning from the stained glass window to Ares who wasn’t very far away. The pane was cracked but not broken. The animals were getting braver. Last night four of the hideous birds had taken up the time honored tradition of kamikaze and flown, at full speed, into a different piece of stained glass. The one cracked but the others held. All four birds were dead on the grass below their remains picked clean by the larger animals.

Nick snorted. “Not me. You can if you want to.” Daniel nodded his agreement as he gestured toward the tossing Ares inviting Jack to give it a shot.

Jack just rolled his hazel eyes and turned back to the window. Yeah, waking the Big Guy from what was obviously a horrible nightmare could prove fatal, at the very least it didn’t bode well for one’s immediate health.  One might inadvertently but kicked, scratched, punched, bitten or otherwise mauled by the sleeping God of War.

Nicholas made an off-handed suggestion. “Maybe he’s got a fever.”

“A what?” Daniel returned in an incredulous voice. “Ares? A fever?”  What would ever give Nick that idea? He took a closer look at his son in the dim light of the old church. “You feeling all right, Nick?”  He looked pale, like Danny did the last few days.  “Let me look at your wound.”  Not wanting for consent Daniel hauled his body off the floor where he’d been sleeping and dreaming about Calla just as Ares was he knelt down by the pew where Nick was sitting.  The wound was even worse than it was when it was fresh. It showed absolutely no signs of healing and was leaking puss so badly that a great white gob of it clung to the wood where Nick had been laying.  The stitches, fresh and clean only yesterday, were crusted with blood and losing their grip, they looked weeks old rather than a few hours. “How much does it hurt?”

“I dunno,” Nick mumbled and tried to pull his leg away. “It’s fine.”

“Calla!” Another slam of that hefty fist and the wood of the pew, a pew that probably sat in this church for the last 200 years or more, finally gave way. Bits of wood flew out from the back in Jack’s direction as a hole appeared where none had been before.

Nick looked over at his Grandfather and Daniel wasn’t sure he liked the expression on Nick’s face. “What?”

“Nothing.” Nick mumbled and again tried to pull his leg away this time Daniel let him.

“You know what he’s dreaming?”

“Don’t you?”

“He’s dreaming about your Mother.”  Big deal. Daniel had been dreaming about her too and so what if Nick was, it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing occurred.

“They put her to sleep,” he said flatly. “Colleen made the Decree and they put her to sleep without us.”

Daniel’s heart sank. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah I do, so do you and so does he.” Nick pointed at Ares still thrashing about. “When are you gonna just give in to it all, Dad? Ever?  Just accept that you’re one of Us and we’re not like normal people. Mom isn’t a normal woman.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“How long she’s going to sleep, wish I could tell you that or that we’d be there when she wakes up.” He turned his big body to face Daniel and narrow his eyes on his Father. “She’s in a bad place right now. They don’t know it, I’m sure they think they’re helping her…or us.” His dark eyes rolled as he took in the church around them. That was probably it; they found the other pathway on Earth but couldn’t open it. Calla was too weak to do it in her current condition so they put her to sleep hoping she would be stronger when she woke. Strong enough to open the pathway and bring them home. The time between now and then was fraught with danger for Calla Jackson. “Wolfgar can get to her…wherever she is.  We’re not there. This is what he wanted and he got it.  Slick little shit, isn’t he? I’m sure if he could have pulled it off that Uncle David would be sitting here with us too.”

“She’s got Morpheus and if she’s sleeping then he’s with her. Hades and Poseidon are there too, Colleen, Duncan, Morgan.”

“All of them and more,” Nick agreed thinking of the younger Jacksons. “But he’s already thought of that, he’s miles ahead of us.”

Was Wolfgar that intelligent? Had every base covered every possible contingency already anticipated and met?  The kid was 15! Even if he did have Raven and Tula, not to mention Rasputin the Mad Monk on his side that didn’t make him invincible. “They won’t let anything happen to her.” Or so he hoped.

“You don’t get it. He doesn’t want her dead, not yet anyway.”

Daniel shook his head, “Nick, they tried to kill her with an overdose of Xerinium.”

“Yeah…they tried to kill her.”  Again he gestured around at the church then pointed toward the door. “They wanted her dead. He was working with them that’s for sure but Wolfgar has got plans for her still but what they are I don’t know. He didn’t kill these people because they failed to kill Mom, he killed them because they tried to kill her.”

“How do you know any of this? It’s all conjecture.”

Nick laughed a haughty sound that echoed throughout the cavernous walls of the sacred space around them. “Because he’s my Son.” Nick whispered his eyes alight. “I know I never rocked his cradle but I know him. More than that I know just how I’d feel if I were him, if I were the one whose Father turned his back on him and cast him out like yesterday’s garbage.”

“That’s not what you did.” Daniel protested hotly.

“No, it’s what we all did.” Nick said nodding his head his eyes still light up like two dark Christmas trees. “We knew about him before he was born and we did nothing. We wanted him and his mother to just go away. Problem is we didn’t figure they’d ever come back.”

“So why go after your Mother?  She didn’t know anything until a few years ago and she wanted to find him, I know she tried to.”

“Because he’s got plans for her, something that he needs her to do or that he needs from her. C’mon, Dad, Bacchus created Wolfgar for a reason. I don’t think it was a good one, do you? I mean considering what an asshole he turned out to be and all.”  Nick mused.  “What do you wanna bet that reason has something more to do with Mom, not to bring life back to Altair Ain that was just a rouse something to keep Mom quiet and all the rest of us looking in another direction.”

“Spent a lot of time thinking about this, haven’t you?” Although he hadn’t been thinking about things from quite this angle, Daniel had spent hours reading the notebook or trying to anyway. Most of it was pictographs and drawings that didn’t make much sense to him save one; Oblivion. It was a very prominent image throughout the pages of the little handwritten book. They were accompanied by text which looked like ancient Greek but it was a dialect he didn’t recognize. Up until now he’d been loathed to ask Ares to help him, figuring instead the he would decipher it with the use of one of the computers at home—when he got home…if he got home.  Although it had been a very long time, as they sat here now Daniel reflected back to his very first meeting with Bacchus and how interested the God of Wine had been to discover Ares had a Daughter.  How Bacchus wanted to return to Earth or so he said before the Blood Moon Ritual took place and everything turned into one big orgy. Years later he appeared on Earth begging Calla and Daniel to forgive him saying that he wanted only to live a quiet life in Altair Ain with his Family and the rest of his kind. The idea that Wolfgar was anything more than an unwanted side-effect of a misguided sexual encounter didn’t occur to Daniel until now.

“More time than you, I guess.” Nick said and turned away. “You know, for a guy who spends most of his time digging in the dirt looking for clues to the past you spend way too much time in the present.”

Daniel frowned but he tried not to show how insulted he was by his Son’s statement. “We’re going to get back soon. They’ll get us out of here.”

Nick let out a deep sigh. “Then what?”

“And we’ll sort it all out.” Daniel retorted not liking the tone of Nick’s question and liking the glare in his eyes even less.

“Dad, do you have any idea…any idea at all…what you’re asking of her?  Me?” Nick wasn’t that worried about himself, hell he couldn’t get it up for his wife, why should he be able to do so for his Mother even if he wanted to?  Even if he could, even if he did, well then he’d find a way to deal with it later but someone else wouldn’t. Again he looked over at Ares this time the empathy was clear in his dark eyes. “Or him?” Nick leaned in a little closer to Daniel to whisper secrets. “He loves her, you know that right? Both of them went through hell for it but he’s tamed that demon—he’s been a good, kind, loving Father to her and she’s just,” he shrugged his broad shoulders, “she’s just loved it, every minute of it.  He could have been a real shit, ya know, he could have. That would be more his style but he didn’t. He proved us all wrong. Now you want him to let that demon loose from its cage but just for one night. Just one night he can hold her, he can touch her and make love to her—in front of us,” he added and nodded his head to indicate the small drawback. “I know you hate him—I do too most of the time— but, as a man, how can you ask him to do that? Do you really think he can just turn it back off if you make him turn it on again?”

In shame, Daniel looked away from his Son. No, he hadn’t thought of it that way. All along Daniel figured this was Ares’ big opportunity to have Calla one last time, something Daniel thought Ares would jump at.  It hadn’t been.  Ares hadn’t been forthcoming as to why.  Perhaps this was it and Nick was right. Extraordinary times calls for extraordinary measures and in that there was something Nick was definitely right about; his Mother wasn’t a normal woman.  Daniel would do anything to keep her.

“Calla! No! Go!”

“Would someone please shut him up?” Jack railed. Daniel was more concerned with talking to his Son than waking his Father in-law but Ares was making a hell of a racket and he didn’t show any signs of waking on his own. “I’ll do it myself—what are you? Nuts? Get away from him.”

Daniel and Nick turned to look at the big man caught in the clutches of a nightmare and the much smaller creature approaching him.  “Adoy!” Daniel hissed.

The little old creature weaved a path toward Ares’ big boots and stood on his tiny tiptoes to peer over them.  Holding on to the pew with one hand he raised his cane over his shoulder, slid it between the boots and firmly poked Ares in the chest with what could only be described as a grin on his aged face. Half a second later the God of War was up and blindly throwing punches.

“Get away from her!” Ares demanded as he swung out twice. On the third swing his already bloody fist connected with what was left of the back of the pew as he brought it forward. What was left of the wood gave way with a hearty crack. His fist went through the hole with sharp shards of wood digging into his flesh as it went. Ares howled in pain as he pulled his fist back and sneered at those around him.

O’Neill.  He saw O’Neill first. The man was standing on a pew looking out of a broken stained glass window. “Hi.” He smirked. Ares snarled in return.

Adoy.  The bothersome little creature was between his feet looking up at him with an oddly pleased stare in his strange wide eyes.  Ares felt of his chest and the rather dull ache there before he saw the cane lying next to him. “All right you are. A dream it was.”

Off in the distance the very first shimmers of light were seen in the sky by Jack’s eyes. They made it through another night here in paradise. “Almost daylight.” As if they heard him the animals turned toward the rising sun and understood their time was up for the day.  They stretched, yawned and growled as they stalked around the old church always looking for a way inside.  Five minutes later the first of them started wandering off towards the forest. Ten minutes after that there wasn’t a malevolent creature in sight.  “Any ideas on how to get out of here yet?”

Daniel rifled through the supplies on the altar and gave Nick a few antibiotics and pain killers for his leg.  He brought the same to Ares.  “How are you doing?”

“What are those? Drugs?”

“The good kind.” Daniel assured and held them out to him. “Go on take them.”

“For what?”

“Infection and pain.” Daniel asserted starting to get peeved as he looked into the distrusting eyes of the God of War. “What do you think? It’s poison? I brought you all this way just to kill you?”

“I am not in pain.”

“Wouldn’t say if you were.” Daniel retorted and peered down at Ares who was half sitting and half lying on the mashed pews. Puss seeped through the bandages on his flanks. “Take them.”

No, he wouldn’t and yes he was in a great deal of pain from the wounds on his side and the ones on his fist. Ares plucked bits of wood from his knuckles before plucking the pills from Daniel’s hand.  He wasn’t healing very well at al and his stomach was in knots, he hadn’t felt this bad since he was a child and eaten an entire orchard of green apples. Ares popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry. “Don’t poke me again.” He warned Adoy who only grinned back at him.

“You think you can get us out of here?”

“I’ve already told you,” Ares said as he shook his dark head and licked his teeth to try to get the acrid taste of the pills out of his mouth.  “Perhaps if I wasn’t under the influence of this compound of yours I might be able to access my Father’s memories and his knowledge of the pathway…assuming he learned it before I was born.” Ares added with a bit of emphasis. “Under the circumstances I think it’s futile.  So what do you suggest, Jackson? Because we can’t stay here much longer.” Sooner or later those prowling hungry beasts would find their way in here and then they’d all be lunch.

“What about you, Danny?”  Jack came down from his perch now that he was certain all the animals had fled for the daylight hours.

“Me?”

“Yeah, she made you an Olympian so…” Jack led.

“Interesting theory,” Daniel mused. “I don’t think I got her memories when we went through the Ritual.” Now he looked to Ares for clarification. Ares shook his head. “So then I wouldn’t know how to do it.”

“It was worth a shot.” Jack ventured.

“Sure.” Daniel agreed and stared at Ares’ wounds once more.  If this kept up they were going to have make another supply run sooner than he thought, there weren’t nearly enough antibiotics or pain killers here. After all, they only picked them for Jack anyway. Neither Ares nor Nick had any reason to believe they would need them.  From the looks of things they needed the most powerful antibiotics Daniel could lay his hands on.  That compound could be interfering with their natural healing abilities but, Daniel thought, if that was the case then they should be progressing about as well as Jack. Jack was better off by far, Ares and Nick looked as though they’d just crawled off the battlefield with a bad case of gangrene. He didn’t think that was going to improve any time in the near future.

“What’s on your mind, Danny-boy?”

“A supply run,” Daniel said softly. Other than a few bandages and gauze Jack and Nick managed to glom from the hospital, the only medical supplies they had were those they’d brought with them and they would rapidly run out.  Ares and Nick, well, they didn’t look good at all.  Since Daniel was the only one among them who had more than a passing knowledge of the Sengul language then it made sense that he should be the one to go and rifle through the medical supplies.  They’d need more clean bandages and suture material as the stitches needed to be replaced on both men. “I’ll wait another hour just to be sure they’re gone then I’ll head back to the hospital and see what I can find.”

End of Chapter Forty-Nine of
Golden Years
by Moon Mistress
a/k/a Lisa Beth Darling
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Chapter Fifty