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  Propelled forward while facing the chair, Allegra had little choice but to straddle the seat, facing the backrest.

  Removing a jagged knife from his pocket, the high priest walked around Allegra. She shifted in her seat, wondering what he intended on doing when he gripped her neck.

  "Face front," he said, his hot breath trailing across her ear.

  She shivered and straightened, half ready for him to plunge the blade into her spine.

  Without warning, he ripped open the back of her shirt with a hard upward thrust. The shirt flapped to each side, hanging limp, still moist with perspiration after her workout.

  Allegra was unable to hold back the shudder of disgust when the High priest lifted the strap of her brassiere and cut through it.

  She steeled her body against revealing the fear that now coursed through it. What was he going to do?

  Allegra shivered with fear and revulsion. But he didn't touch her skin again. Instead, he went to the silver case and flicked open the locks. Bent over the contents, he took his time, his flair for the dramatic continuing even without a proper audience.

  If he thought he was scaring her, or impressing her, he'd be wrong on both counts.

  Even when he withdrew the cat o' nine tails from the case, Allegra wasn’t afraid. Perhaps having had a vision of what her future looked like, she knew she couldn’t avoid it.

  The thing with seeing the future is there was no point in fighting what one knew was completely unchangeable.

  Just as the child had said.

  Chapter 35

  Apart from transforming into a Minotaur and blasting her way through the walls of her cell, Allegra had no choice but to strengthen herself against whatever the high priest had in store for her.

  He shook out the cat o' nine tails, allowing the six individual whips to drop with gravity. Each separate whip contained six small knots, of varying sizes. Allegra didn't need to look at it to know that it was going to hurt like Hades.

  The high priest looked at her and smiled. “My dear, it’s time you told us what we need to know.”

  Allegra raised her eyebrows and glared at him. “I’ve already told you what you need to know.”

  Her voice was frigid and the high priest shook his head, his smile disappearing, anger blazing in his eyes. “It’s in your best interest to help us. I need to know more about this epidemic you mentioned. How do we prevent it? Where will it start?”

  Allegra laughed. “I hate to break it to you, but we’ve been trying to find that out for the last week. I’m new to this whole Seer business. My ability isn’t under control yet. I can't access my sight just because you want me to.”

  The look of frustration on the high priest's face was almost comical.

  He exhaled harshly. “There's no point in stalling, dear girl. Give me the information I want and save yourself the pain. I promise you will not be leaving this room without telling me what I want to know.”

  Allegra wanted to laugh. She knew very well that she wasn’t going to leave this room at all, not if the high priest had anything to say about it.

  When she glared at him and refused to speak, he sighed and walked around her, spinning the whip around and around.

  He didn’t give any warning. Just struck, using all the power behind his upper body.

  The pain was incredible.

  She let out a scream as the knots on the leather scraped and cut into the soft skin of her back. A part of Allegra was curious; what would her body look like after he was done? The skin that high on her back had always been pale and smooth. She’d never even suffered from acne the way Xenia had.

  Allegra's vanity was only a small part of her horror.

  After the wave of pain from the first blow had faded, the high priest asked her again, “You going to tell me what I need to know? How do we stop this epidemic? How do we avoid contracting the disease?”

  Allegra shook her head. “There is nothing that I can tell you. Nothing except that the epidemic will not start in the New Germanic States.”

  There was no point in keeping that information from him, especially since Allegra had already begun to suspect that this man would already know about it. If he didn’t know now, he'd find out soon enough.

  Not satisfied with her response, the priest struck her again. Another wave of pain hit her. She tried to protect herself, tried to close her mind against the agony.

  As she sobbed through the pain, her consciousness shifted elsewhere, her mind freezing. She watched from above as the high priest struck her again.

  She’d shut out the pain so well that every blow struck her without eliciting a response. She simply endured the whipping. She couldn't bear the sight of her tortured body anymore, and she looked away.

  Allegra blinked, startled.

  She was no longer in the cell.

  She stood at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by fig and olive trees. Above her, on a hill, sat a beautiful temple of Apollo. Allegra suspected she’d gone back in time because she knew there wasn't a single Apollo Temple in existence that remained undamaged.

  There'd been a time in the past, when followers of Apollo had been persecuted to such an extent that every single temple built in the god's name had been destroyed, and almost every confessed worshipper sentenced to a horrible death.

  That had been almost four hundred years ago, and proof of that horror still remained in the destruction to be seen at every temple complex around the world.

  Allegra stood in front of this beautifully-intact temple and felt more empty than she’d ever felt in her life. She walked up the hill and entered the cool confines of the building, staring around her, her heart heavy.

  “Please. If you are here, please hear me. You’ve chosen me to be your voice. Why then do you allow me to experience such torture? My body cannot withstand such pain. Help me to survive so I can serve humanity. Please put an end to this torture."

  As Allegra prayed she wondered about the high priest and his Order of Hermes. Surely Hermes himself would not tolerate the actions of the evil man and his followers.

  Hermes was not a God known for accepting torture and bloodshed in his name. Nor as one who would turn a blind eye to such horror.

  Allegra repeated her plea, praying that Apollo would hear her. But her voice just echoed against the walls and pillars and no god appeared, no divine voice spoke in her ear.

  Tears of frustration slid from her eyes, burning heated paths to her chin.

  Just as Allegra let out a cry of frustration, she was flung back into her body so hard she suspected whiplash was inevitable.

  A wall of fire surrounded her with heat, burning into her skin. Allegra's heart ached as she swallowed a sob. Apollo had refused to answer her call.

  What good was it being a priestess of Apollo when he didn’t listen, didn’t help when she needed him?

  And what in Hades was with the fire burning around her like a living cage?

  It raged in a column, surrounding her body, and although the heat offered her some comfort, the pain in her back had returned with full force.

  She hung over the back of the chair, hands dangling, wrung of all her strength, unable to hold herself upright any longer.

  Voices echoed around her, hollow as if she was underwater.

  “We must be overdoing it," said her guard. He sounded disappointed. "She looks like she is unconscious.”

  The high priest snorted, and Allegra could feel the anger rolling off him. “Very well. She is much weaker than I thought she would be. So much for being such a powerful priestess.”

  The guard bent and sliced through her zip ties with a short knife, and the two men departed, leaving Allegra seated on the chair, unable to move.

  Beneath the pain humming through her limbs, fury simmered like a living thing. She felt fury at Apollo for failing to protect her, fury at having been given a gift and yet being unable to do anything to help people with it.

  Fury that there was no way she could save herself from f
uture torture.

  Allegra had never believed in ancient deities in the first place. It made absolutely no sense that she would be the one given these powers.

  Why hadn’t the gods seen fit to bestow such an ability on someone more deserving? Someone who still believed in the old deities, who cared about them?

  Because she, at this point, certainly did not.

  The pain seared into her back, throbbing lines of broken skin. She rested her forehead on the cool metal of the chair and mentally followed each strip of blood as it snaked its way down her back, counting them the way she used to count sheep as a child.

  Right now, she didn’t have the strength to do more, and she sat there fading in and out of consciousness, waiting for the pain to go away.

  Part of her knew she was almost ready to give up hope. They'd injured her so badly that there was little chance of her escaping from the cell.

  Even if she could find a way out.

  Chapter 36

  Despite the short flight, Max was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd had more than three hours of sleep. The rest of his team were in the same position, way too wired, far too worried to think about sleep.

  Max prepared as the plane came in for a landing, and barely noticed the smooth touchdown. He was already on his feet, marching to the exit as the plane rolled to a stop, ignoring the annoyed glares of the rest of the passengers in first class.

  He supposed he should be grateful that Aulus's secretary had procured him and his team flights in the more prestigious section of the plane.

  As they descended the stairs and neared the tarmac, the smell of aircraft fuel mixed with hot asphalt filled his nostrils. An icy wind blew, tugging hard at Max’s coat, reminding him of forest fires he’d fought as a kid back in Ralabia. The odor of dried burlap sacks, the frantic thudding of fabric against the brush as they hit out the flames.

  Rows of men and women, blackened by soot, hitting at the flames, throats parched, skin drenched with perspiration, fighting nature in the hopes of saving their homes, their livelihoods.

  Max blinked the memory away and focused.

  Below him, Corina had reached the ground ahead of Flavius, her shoulder length white-blonde hair whipping her cheeks while she turned her face into the wind and squinted.

  The Brittanic weather wasn’t welcoming them, that much was clear.

  As Max lifted his hand to look at his wristwatch a black Rolls-Royce drew up. A sandy-haired young man jumped out of the vehicle and trotted toward them.

  He wore a pair of slim-fitting white pants, and a powder-blue shirt, the high, stiff collar of which looked about to strangle him.

  His pale skin was littered with freckles, which accompanied by hair a strange shade of orange, was a little bit too bright and energetic for Max.

  “So glad to finally meet you, Commander Vissarion. I’m Jonathan Egent. Security attaché from the New Germanic States embassy, attached to you and your team for the duration of your stay. Anything you need, just let me know and I will make it happen.” His smile was broad and white, and a little too bright given the dire circumstances.

  Max supposed that it was unfair of him to take his fatigue and frustration out on the man. The attaché was clearly eager to help. But Max remained wary, and decided to keep an eye on him.

  Egent drove them to the hotel, making the forty-minute drive seem endless. He peppered every island of silence with questions, and eventually Max had to pretend to have fallen asleep to avoid answering. That left Corina and Flavius to field his inquiries.

  When they reached their hotel, Max and his team alighted, leaving Egent to return for them after they checked in and headed to their suite of rooms to freshen up. The embassy had booked a four-roomed suite, the likes of which Max hardly ever frequented.

  He was a man of simpler tastes.

  They hurried, settled themselves, and then Max headed to the dining area. Corina was already there, and she and Flavius were involved in a heated discussion as they leaned over a map of Londinium.

  “What’s going on?” Max asked, unbuttoning his jacket. He had no complaint about the hotel itself, but the air was flat and heavy, weighing Max down with constant pressure.

  Corina looked up, frustrated. “Flavius has a bead on the seer, but is not one hundred percent sure. He thinks it’s not enough.”

  Max met the locator’s blue eyes. “What’s the problem?”

  Flavius shook his head. “It’s just a feeling that I’m getting. I can see something, have the sense that I know where she is, but what I’m looking at feels wrong.”

  Max rubbed his arm absently as he reached the sash window and leaned against the casement.

  “I understand, but we have to follow up on every clue that comes our way. Even if it doesn’t pan out, we still have to check.”

  The locator nodded, although he didn’t look too happy.

  Max understood.

  The locator bordered on the obsessive, and hated being inaccurate. He’d often go into a funk if he didn’t find who or what he was looking for. It was a temperamental aspect of most locators, only on a much stronger scale with Flavius.

  Max was willing to put up with his fussing simply because the man demanded so much from his own abilities.

  They headed on down to the car, meeting Egent’s radiance again. Max hid a grimace and climbed in beside him, telling him to start driving.

  “Where we headed?” Egent asked, his eyes curious as he scanned Max’s face first, then looked up at the rear-view mirror to watch the other two.

  “We are not yet sure,” said Max, his voice terse. “Flavius here will direct you. We don’t exactly have an address, but he’ll guide you there.”

  Max sent Flavius and Corina a warning glance. He wasn’t sure how much Egent knew, and preferred to leave it at that, at least until they were more certain of the man’s loyalties.

  They had to take into consideration that they were in a different country, with different bureaucracies, and completely different priorities.

  In addition, after the whole fiasco of losing the Pythia, and being under an umbrella of suspicion, even their own embassy’s staff might look to thwart their search, or at least attempt to find Allegra before Max and his team did.

  That, or they might have informants already in place, feeding information to the very people responsible for Allegra’s abduction.

  The attaché remained in the most agreeable mood, stopping off first at a small tavern and procuring coffee and pies for everyone, before continuing on. He followed Flavius’s directions, taking every turn as requested, and without question.

  When Egent finally parked the vehicle, Max was surprised at their destination. He sent Flavius a questioning glance, beginning to wonder whether the locator had been mistaken.

  They alighted and headed into a large cemetery, rolling green hills dotted with black and white stone headstones, and carvings of gods, goddesses, nymphs. Here and there an owl, for wisdom, or a stylized tree of life watched over a grave, its crumbling stone or marble rendering it almost unidentifiable. The cemetery reflected some of Brittanica’s past, where strange new religions and cults had prevailed for a short time before being forgotten again.

  That was almost eight hundred years ago now.

  Flavius hurried ahead, his bearing confident. He knew where he was going. Max let him be, walking along behind him, keeping a comfortable distance. The last thing the man needed was additional pressure, especially when he was already doubting his own ability.

  Forty-five minutes later they’d searched every path and every section of the cemetery and had come up empty-handed.

  “Does he not know what’s he looking for?” asked Egent, not hiding the criticism in his voice.

  Max refrained from telling the man to shut up.

  Instead he and his team ignored the attaché, continuing their search for any sign of Allegra.

  They left the cemetery at last, having found neither Allegra’s body, nor even
the slightest indication of her presence.

  To say that they were discouraged was an understatement, but Max was careful not to reveal too much of his mind to Flavius.

  The locator was irritated, frustrated that he hadn’t been able to find the Pythia. Max knew that nothing he said would make Flavius feel better so he let him be, knowing that Corina would know how to soothe him.

  Egent, after asking various questions and receiving noncommittal answers, drove them back to the hotel in a more subdued mood.

  As they entered the lobby, a man strode toward them, his gait confident, purposeful.

  Max recognized the Londonium police insignia on the stranger’s shoulder, and wasn’t surprised when he introduced himself as Inspector Pienius.

  Max swallowed his annoyance as he shook the policeman’s hand. He’d expressly asked the States’ embassy not to inform the Londonium authorities about their mission. As much as he lacked sufficient trust in the staff at their own embassy, he was even more doubtful of the Londonium authorities’ loyalty.

  Max forced himself to smile and greet the man, figuring that he should have it in him to deal with one polite inspector.

  From the expression on Corina’s face, Max could tell that Pienius had impressed her with his blond good looks, impressive physique, and old-world manners.

  Max had to hide a smile because Corina was always a hard nut to crack.

  “So please, how may I be of service to you?” The inspector smiled genially. “On behalf of my government, I want to assure you that we are here to help as best as we can. We believe that it’s in everyone’s best interest to have the Pythia returned to us all. And you can trust me when I say that should we discover that she is in the hands of a citizen of Brittania, punishment for their crimes will be just and swift.”

  Max nodded and smiled back. Pienius sounded sincere, yet Max wasn’t entirely convinced. He knew he was being distrustful, but he would rather withhold his trust than make the mistake of handing it to the wrong person. He had already made mistakes enough in his responsibility for Allegra.