Odd that she didn’t know him, but he knew enough about her to be aware she could scroll back through his lives if she concentrated hard enough.
“Aethalides?” she asked, startled to discover beneath all those layers of other lives someone she had known so long ago. Other than Jason, she seldom encountered anyone from those early times. For a moment she forgot her anger at being deceived.
Aethalides managed an awkward bow. “At your service, Princess.”
“I have not been a princess in millenniums. Call me Medea.”
“I have not gone by Aethalides in millenniums. In this life I am Gregory, or Greg if you prefer.”
“Gregory sounds more fitting for one with such a distinguished past,” said Medea.
“Ah, but Greg sounds more like someone you might consider having a beer with,” he said, giving her a smile far warmer than his imitation vampire one had been.
Medea began to remember her previous anger, but curiosity kept it in check for the moment.
“I have never met anyone without magical skill who developed it in a subsequent life. How did you come by your gift?”
“Dear old dad,” he replied, giving her a wink. “You’ll recall my father is Hermes. He gave me this.” Gregory slid the caduceus smoothly out of his sleeve and waved it theatrically, letting the glow make patterns in the air.
“This isn’t the original, of course,” he added. “Hermes still has it. This is a fairly good copy, though, and more than powerful enough for my needs. A little while before the old gods were separated from us forever, Apollo gave Hermes some fearful prophecy about me, though Hermes never told me what exactly it was. He did give me this caduceus for protection, and it’s saved my life more than once.”
“You are quite proficient for one who must work through an object,” said Medea.
“Remember that Hermes had long before given me the gift of retaining my memories, even after death. That came in handy when I became one of the first Greek mortals to reincarnate. Since I can retain my memories even through the process of rebirth, I can accumulate knowledge and experience across many lives. I ought to be good. I’ve had about three thousand years to practice.
“Speaking of which, let me provide a more suitable environment for our conversation.” He waved the caduceus again, and the dreary cell vanished. Instead, they were sitting at a table in the Public House Gastro Pub at the Venetian. Medea had been there before and recognized the dark golden piping curving across the ceiling and then down to taps at the bar, the elaborate black-and-white pattern of the floor tiles, the pervasive smell of beer. The windows gave a view of Restaurant Row inside the Venetian, not the sky, but the people around them were having dinner, so it must be evening. How could so much time have passed during their brief conversation?
“Was this wise?” she whispered. “To have us appear—”
“Illusion,” said Gregory quickly. “I could never have physically transported us this quickly. I had always intended to reveal myself and have a conversation outside that dark room, so I worked out the details for this scene in advance.”
Medea had to pause and admire the craftsmanship. If she looked really closely, she could tell the people around them were moving in a set pattern, like video on a loop, and that they spoke little and quite repetitively. They could have appeared more natural if he had used her own mind to provide substance to the illusion, but for that, he would have to have cast a spell directly on her. For a prefabricated illusion, the detail work was exceptional.
Another wave of the caduceus produced two beers.
“Try it,” said Gregory. “There’s an actual taste.”
Medea would have much preferred wine, but Gregory looked so proud of himself that she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. She picked up the bottle of Budweiser, which felt cold to the touch, and took a sip. The feeling of the beer on her tongue and the taste were both weaker than she expected, but to get any kind of taste into an illusion without using mind control was exceptional.
“It works better like this,” he said, taking her hand. She felt a mild link, and from a security standpoint she should have broken it, but she didn’t. Taking another sip, she got the full flavor, yet she could tell he wasn’t pulling it from her memory. The protections she had cast on herself would have prevented that kind of probing.
“The taste flows gently into your mind from mine,” Gregory explained. “I figured your mind would reject anything more aggressive, but this is quite subtle and just sends sensory information—more a message than anything your protections would interpret as threatening.”
Again, Medea had to admire the sophisticated nature of his magic. Something else surprised her as well.
“I’ve never really liked beer, but this actually tastes good.”
Gregory smiled again. “That’s because you’re experiencing the taste the way I do.”
“Thanks for the experience and for all the trouble you went to,” said Medea. “However, there is still the matter of your deceiving me. I don’t take kindly to being tricked.” As she spoke, she let magic flow down her arm, and she tightened the grip on his hand until it began to whiten. Just a little more magical force, and she could easily break bone.
“I apologize for that,” said Gregory, grinning despite the pressure. “Can I help it if I take after my father? He pranked his big brother Apollo on the very day he was born. At least I come by it naturally.”
“Do you think this is funny?” asked Medea coldly, upping the pressure just a little.
Gregory’s grin vanished. “I know I could have handled this better. You have my most sincere apology and my promise to never do anything like this again—no matter how many more lives I have.”
He sounded sincere, and she reduced the pressure—just a little.
“I take it you don’t really work for the Collector.”
“No, I don’t. As modern mortals say, he’s a scumbag. I didn’t want you to discover I was joking before I got to the punchline, though, so I used someone who really exists as my employer—easier for you to believe than if I just made someone up. Rumor has it he’s even looking for a way to switch from vampire to immortal human, but as far as I know it hasn’t occurred to him to use your magic for that purpose.”
“And Franklin Reynolds?”
“He’s one of my previous lives, though of course he didn’t actually become a vampire. Again, I wanted to use a real person for the sake of authenticity, and since I had been him, you can’t get much more authentic than that.”
“You surely didn’t go through all this elaborate planning just to introduce me to the joys of Budweiser,” she said, leaning forward. “What do you want?”
“It’s going to sound silly, but I want to make you happy,” he said, looking down at his trapped hand.
“Aethalides…Gregory, you haven’t seen me in three thousand years or so, not since we sailed together on the Argo—and we were comrades-in-arms then, but hardly friends. Why are you suddenly so interested in my welfare? That just doesn’t ring true to me.”
“I admit I didn’t even think about you at all for the longest time. To be honest, I didn’t even realize you were still alive. I learned about you by change three or so incarnations ago, and since then I’ve tried to find you in each life—not an easy feat, even with the power of the caduceus.”
“You don’t live as long as I do by being easy to find,” she replied. “After that hatchet job Euripides did on me, I wouldn’t exactly be welcome anywhere, even among spell casters. The good ones would think I was up to no good. The evil ones would either fear me, try to beat me to enhance their own reputations, or try to find some way to manipulate me into an alliance. No, for me the place to be is comfortably flying under the radar, or whatever that mortal expression is.”
“Euripides was hard on you,” agreed Gregory. “Be fair, though. You always did seem to prefer a violent solution to a peaceful one.”
“I was young in my craft then,” said Medea. “Now I could find many less violent, more creative solutions to problems.”
“Even now most people would think of you as a serial killer,” said Gregory. “You keep killing the same guy over and over, but otherwise—”
“And don’t you think he deserves death?” she asked, increasing the pressure on Gregory’s hand again. “I gave up everything for Jason. I betrayed my own father for him. He swore an oath by all the gods to marry me and stand by me—and as soon as I became politically inconvenient, he discarded me in favor of a princess who could make him an heir to the throne of Corinth. Could any betrayal have been more despicable than his?”
“Hand!” whispered Gregory. Medea let go but did not apologize for being so rough with him. He rubbed the hand and flexed the fingers to make sure nothing was broken.
“I didn’t seek you out to defend Jason,” he said after completing his examination. “He should have stood by his oath, but by the time he broke it, your hands were red with blood.”
“Blood I shed for him,” she pointed out. “Had I been a man slaying foes on the battlefield, I would have been praised for my deeds, not damned. How many men did Heracles slay? Far more than I—yet he became a god, while I became a cautionary tale with which to frighten disobedient children at night.”
“I didn’t come to debate your guilt for actions long past and best forgotten,” Gregory said, sliding a lobster mac and cheese appetizer across the table for her to try. Perhaps it was peace offering, but Medea ignored it.
“You didn’t know this all those centuries ago, nor did I fully realize it at the time, but in the moments when you first gazed on Jason, and Aphrodite was making you fall in love with him, I was falling in love with you, at least a little. I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. All these lifetimes later, I still do.”
“You sought me out to declare your love?” asked Medea. “That emotion has brought me only pain. I have no intention of traveling that road again.”
She had a momentary flashback to her wedding night, snuggling with Jason under the golden fleece she had won for him. With a shudder, she drove that memory as far from her consciousness as she could.
Gregory chuckled, but with less than his usual humor. “Look at me, Medea. This life’s body appears almost old enough to be that of your father. Besides that, I’m not even wealthy or important—at least as the superficial judge importance. I’m a simple mathematics professor from UNLV.”
“Really?” said Medea. It was hard for her to visualize an Argonaut finding happiness at the front of a classroom. “You don’t miss the adventure?”
“I’ve had my share of adventure. Besides, I was once Pythagoras, and I’ve loved mathematics ever since. Anyway, I came with no illusions you’d be interested in me trying to romance you. Our lives are too different for that to work. I just want to stop your pain.”
“Can the caduceus really prevent Jason from reincarnating?” she asked, leaning closer.
“To be honest, I’ve never tried to use it for that, but, combined with your own magic, I’m sure it can. I’d like to make another suggestion, though. Just walk away.”
“So the offer of the caduceus was just a game? You had no real intention of giving it to me?” Medea’s rising anger was palpable, like hot wind rolling in from the desert.
“Call it a test, not a game,” he said, sliding his chair back so he was just a little farther away from you. “I hoped you would be unwilling to do business with someone like the Collector, and you did not disappoint me. That suggests there are lines you will not cross, not even to be rid of Jason forever—and it means that maybe you would be receptive to a better way.
“In one of my lives, I knew Francis Bacon, a sage who once wrote, ‘A man who studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal.’ You’ve kept your wounds green for three thousand years, Medea. Isn’t it time to let them heal?”
“As Pythagoras, you had better logic,” said Medea coldly. “Who are you to test me? Who are you to judge me?”
Gregory sighed. “I never meant to judge, but only to help. I will lend you the caduceus if that is really what you want. My advice would be worth far more in the long run, though.”
Medea thrust her open hand in his direction, waiting for him to hand her the caduceus. However, he looked so dejected that she pulled back a little.
“Is keeping Jason dead really the only thing you care about?” he asked, his voice quivering a little. To her surprise, she saw a tear slide down his cheek.
“I think perhaps you were hoping to romance me after all,” she said, her voice softening just a little.
Gregory wiped his eyes with a napkin. “I suppose the adolescent in me hoped for something…if not now, then perhaps in my next life. I will inevitably be young again, and maybe handsome. With the caduceus I could probably find ways to make myself rich as well…if that is what you desire.”
That raised an interesting question in Medea’s mind—what did she really want? Besides Jason’s head on a spike, she hadn’t given the matter much thought. For the better part of three millenniums, she had hunted down each successive incarnation of her disloyal mate. She had done many other things as well, but they had been incidental. Not since she first learned of reincarnation had she ever thought about a post-Jason life—and certainly not a life in which Jason was somewhere out there, and she just ignored him.
“When I fell in love with Jason, he was a penniless adventurer,” she said softly. “Oh, he was the rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus, but he might not ever have gotten it. I didn’t love him for what he had, but for who I thought he was. Aphrodite makes fools of us all.”
Gregory raised an eyebrow. “Does that mean you might think about…about being with me?”
Medea laughed, but not at him. “My dear Aethalides, it is not any failing on your part that would keep me from my side; it is my own inability to change. After so long on one path, I cannot so easily take another.”
With a wave of his hand, Gregory made the caduceus appear. “If you still want it, I will lend it freely—with one condition. I must stay with you while you have it, for it is charmed to return to me if I am too far separated from it.”
Medea laughed more warmly. “Sly dog! If you can’t be with me one way, you will find another.”
Gregory smiled. “I won’t force myself upon you. I’ll leave as soon as your need for the caduceus is done…but perhaps I may call upon once each lifetime…just in case you’ve changed your mind.”
Medea surprised herself by smiling back. She hadn’t even felt friendship for anyone in a long, long time, let alone love—but it was hard not to at least like Gregory. She had to remind herself that children of Hermes were almost invariably likable, though not necessarily trustworthy.
“How could you find me?” she asked. “I am seldom in one place long, and I make very sure no one can track me through my business dealings.”
“I’ll have the caduceus. When I’m reborn, it will find me. It always does. Then I can use it to find you. That’s how I found you this time, after all.”
Medea found herself distracted by odd shadows behind the bar.
“Gregory, where are we right now? I mean in reality, not the illusion.”
“In my apartment on East University Avenue. Why?”
The shadows were becoming more distinct.
“What kind of protections do you have up?”
“Concealment, mostly. In this life I’m of no interest to the supernatural community, but the caduceus might be, so I, like you, fly under the radar as much as possible.”
“I think someone has found you,” she said, standing up quickly. Unless Gregory’s illusion was glitching somehow, those shadows were looking suspiciously solid—and sinister.
Gregory waved the caduceus, and the Public House melted away, replaced by his apartment. Unfortunately, he hadn’t moved fast enough, and what Medea had seen as shadows intruding on the illusion turned out to be vampires. They were on him before he could cast another spell, and one of them easily knocked the caduceus from his hand. From the sound, Medea feared that his bones really were broken this time, though he didn’t cry out.
Medea tried to destroy them with another sunburst, but all she got was a pale flicker far less than moonlight.
“We have been keeping discreet eyes on you for some time,” said one of the vampires. “The master surrounded this area with a spell that counters your sun magic.”
“Do you know who I am?” she asked in what she hoped was a threatening enough tone to get them to back off.
“A sorceress,” said the vampire in a tone that suggested he could care less. “More to the point, do you know who our master is? If you did, you would tremble with fear.”
“The Collector,” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. He was reputed to be especially adept at tracking people who mentioned his name—even through magical concealment.
Damn! Gregory had caught the attention of someone whose radar he really should have stayed off of.
Without the caduceus, he couldn’t break free from the three creatures holding him. Even one of them would have been more than enough to counter the strength of five men.
Medea hadn’t been in too many tight spots these last few centuries, but she was still able to assess a situation in seconds. The room had no garlic, nor anything she could use as a wooden stake. Nor were there any holy symbols, and even if there had been, she doubted she would have the faith to use one. She should, however, be able to use Hecate’s power over the dead to make these vampires wish they had never crossed her path.
However, the three vampires holding Gregory were watching her closely. As soon as she started to mutter a spell and build power to send them screaming to the Underworld, one of them twisted Gregory’s arm, and he screamed.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said the fourth vampire, who had just retrieved the caduceus from the floor. “They can kill him far faster than you can weave your spell. They can also probably move fast enough to kill you too before you finish.”
To Gregory he said, “This will teach you to insult the master by pretending to be one of his servants. As the price of his insult, we will take your toy. The master thinks he can find a buyer for it quite easily.”
As he talked, Medea tried to think of a way to stop them without getting Gregory killed. They were faster than humans, and she probably couldn’t speed herself up without their noticing. She certainly couldn’t match their strength—giving herself a little extra grip was quite different from matching the might of an inhuman warrior—so physical combat was out. Even an Amazon could never have beaten one of them. She would have to think of some magic that she could use quickly and discreetly.
Apparently, the vampire spokesman decided she might be able to do something like that, because he ordered two of the three holding Gregory to kill her. Fortunately, one of the protections she had woven around herself prevented such creatures from getting too close. As they lunged, they slammed against what amounted to an invisible wall.
Unfortunately for her, they kept dashing themselves against the wall with all their strength. Their vampiric flesh was taking a beating, but so was the wall. She could feel it shuddering and cracking under the assault. It had been hastily cast and was not built to withstand a prolonged offensive. She could reinforce it, but she feared not as fast as the vampires could tear away at it. Worse, the spokesman was fiddling with the caduceus. If he could tap into that source of magical power, he might break her defenses even more rapidly.
She probably had enough time to cast an offensive spell, but not without risking Gregory’s life. She knew he would reincarnate, and she had no idea whether she would or not, so the decision seemed simple enough. Still, she hesitated.
Then she noticed Gregory eyeing the caduceus. She knew what he was thinking, and she wanted to yell at him to stop, but she didn’t. That might get him killed.
On the other hand, he would certainly get killed if he tried something. Why didn’t he just stay still? If they had wanted to kill him, they would have already. Now that they were attacking her, Gregory’s value as a hostage for her good behavior had declined, but he presented no threat to them, either.
She willed him to just stay still and have some hope of surviving. Instead, he found some silent way to signal the caduceus, which jumped from the vampire’s hand into Gregory’s in a heartbeat. Perhaps she was wrong, and the caduceus did that automatically. Either way, he now became a serious threat to the vampires.
Before Gregory could use the artifact, however, the vampire holding him ripped into Gregory’s throat with his fangs.
Medea had seen—and done—much violence in her long life, but the sound of Gregory’s gurgling scream still chilled her.
At that moment, she realized how utterly, unforgivably stupid she had been. The most obvious way to stop the vampires was right in front of her the whole time, and she had only realized it just now.
Gregory’s Public House illusion had been set at night, and he must have closed the heavy drapes in his apartment to keep anyone from seeing him and her through the windows. However, it must still be late afternoon outside.
It didn’t take much for her to reach out with magical hands—telekinesis modern mortals called it—and rip down those drapes, letting the sunlight pour into the room.
The two vampires trying to break her defenses were the closest to the light, so they screamed first. She managed to slow their retreat enough for the sun to incinerate them.
The vampire who had hurt Gregory was far enough away from the window that he might have survived—if not for Medea’s ability to manipulate sunlight. The Collector’s spell prevented her from conjuring it from nothing, but not from using what was already in the room. She speared the creature with it, and it died with a satisfying scream.
Unfortunately, the fourth one escaped through a portal that must have been their point of entry. It snapped out of existence before she could follow, or she would have been tempted to go after him and finish him, as well as anyone else she encountered.
She ran to Gregory, but healing wasn’t her specialty, and he had already lost too much blood for a potion to save him. She held his hand, and somehow, he mustered one last smile before the light faded from his eyes.
He might have lived. He died because he took a foolish chance. Perhaps he did it for her. It gave her a stabbing pain to think so, but weirdly it also gave her comfort. No one had been willing to die for her in as long as she could remember.
She thought about trying a resurrection, but the vampire’s bite had put dark magic into the wound, and she feared trying to raise Gregory might bring him back as a vampire instead of as a man. Doubtless, she could find out how to overcome that problem in time, but then he would no longer be newly dead, and so he would be beyond the help of the spells she knew.
She reached over to take the caduceus, which vanished just before her fingers could touch it.
“Gone somewhere,” she mumbled to herself. “Somewhere to wait for its master to be born again.”
She knew she couldn’t stay in the apartment long. The Collector might decide to seek revenge for the death of his minions, and she didn’t have a clear idea of how much force he might try to bring against her. It made more sense to slide into hiding as quickly as she could.
She had a few things to do first, though. Gathering up the body, she whisked it away through a portal of her own. Transitioning through another plane, which required less energy than teleporting directly, she took the remains to Mount Olympus—the one on Earth, not on the Olympian plane. She had gone there from time to time, but she knew the visit could be dangerous. After all, Jason had not been without supporters among the old gods—and she had not been without enemies.
If she became entangled with beings of such power, she might never be able to kill Jason again. Nor would she ever meet any of the future reincarnations of Aethalides. She wasn’t sure why, but the second thought bothered her more than the first one. She thought about the taste of Budweiser on her tongue and the feeling of Gregory’s hand on hers.
Anyway, the earthly version of Olympus was an appropriate enough place for her to say one of the ancient Greek ceremonies over Gregory’s body and give it proper burial. She knew someone would have made arrangements if she had just left it in the apartment, but she wanted to do it herself.
One last thing she needed to do. Deviating from ancient Greek tradition, she went to the real Public House and had her own little, private Irish wake for Gregory. She drank his favorite beer and made herself like it.
As she drank, a single tear slid down her cheek.
Note: Medea is too a character to drop after one short story. She appears (in a version closer to her Greek roots) in Fateful Pathways: A Story of Theseus and in Harmony and Disharmony: A Story of Orpheus and Jason. Aethalides also appears in the latter. See my website for more details.
I’m also in the last stages of completing The Strange Case of Guaritori Diolco, an urban fantasy novel that grew out of this particular short story. The setting is many years later. A catastrophe of unknown origins has shifted the balance of power on Earth, so that advanced technology has failed, but magic has become far more powerful. In this new world, much more dangerous to mortals, Medea tries to follow the path to which Aethalides directed her. But when a reincarnated Jason crosses her path, all bets are off.
I’ll let you know when Strange Case is published.
As for the Collector, he is the principal antagonist in Different Lee, the first book in the Different Dragons trilogy.