Alex slid down the wall, holding the book in his hands, horror twisting in his stomach as he looked at the words in black and white in front of him and listened as Thanos read from his copy. "How many other people know what Dareios wrote?" he whispered, grief and exhaustion in his voice. He looked up as Thanos stopped his reading and took off his glasses slowly, staring blindly at the words on the page before him.
"Myself. There is another translation in a private collection held in England, Lord Morgan's collection for Oxford University, and now you."
Alex let the book fall to the ground, the English words spinning in his head, tears falling unbidden down his cheeks. He pushed back his sleeve, the fingers of one hand tracing the marks that circled the opposite arm. He knew he was different, unique even, but to be this close to maybe finding out why he was different was a terrifying prospect. He knew what he was feeling was a very real fear: to learn the reason his past before the age of seven was a blank haze. Now, to read these words in ink on parchment, each word as heavy as lead in his heart. He knew what he was reading, and it just underlined his difference. They spoke of a child dying, sacrificed, who would return with the power of the Oracle. Him. It had to be him.
"I have these dreams," Alex began. "The only thing that would stop them was when Edward held me." He wasn't embarrassed to admit this to Thanos—after all it was true. "In the dream I'm a small boy and I'm being held down while these men carve patterns into my side, and they use fire to burn me. It's unimaginable pain and when I'm trapped in the nightmare I don't know which way to run. The men who hold me wear dark clothes and I never see their faces."
"What else is in these dreams?"
"A woman. There is always a woman dressed in white. She's crying and trying to reach me. She calls me, the boy, Athanasios. Then the men in dark clothes drop me. I don't know what happens but I see her screaming and then there is a man there. I never see his face but he has a knife and she pulls it to herself and stabs herself in the heart. Right here." Alex pressed against his chest right over his heart and inhaled. He was feeling as panicked now as he was in his dreams. Forcing back the panic he concentrated on what he was saying. "She falls back into a pit and in my head I can see her in the pit—in oil and fire—and she is burning. Then she is gone."
"Are you still dreaming this here in Greece?"
"Yes, but…" he paused. How did he go about explaining what else he saw to the man looking so intently at him. "I met this man in London, a historian, a translator of ancient languages. His name was Luke Mac something. He is in my dreams now. He's there holding me and telling me not to go and when he does that the nightmare visions are less." Alex wasn't sure where to start with explaining the fact that the scent of the sea lulled him to sleep with Luke's arms around him and that instead of burning in fire the woman in his dreams floated above his bed dressed in white silk like some kind of angel.
He levered himself up the wall, stumbling to his feet and crossing to where Thanos sat, leaning heavily on his arms on the desk, his head bowed. He was going mad. He groaned as pain formed a tight band around his head. Alex tried to let go of what he had imagined inside the darkness of himself, and the images faded until sharp memories became nothing more than mere suggestion. He stored what he could remember—a cavern, torches, chanting, pain, blood, fire, and the cries of a small child—alongside the woman in white silk.
"Alex? Talk to me," Thanos asked quietly.
"Who are you, Thanos? Who are you really? Why am I here with you now? Why was it you that found me that day?" Alex asked. Desperation colored his voice. Maybe he knew already, but he needed to hear it from the older man's own lips. "Is the translation I read in the book true of the words that were written back then?"
Thanos didn't hesitate, pride underlining every word. "I am descended from an ancient family," Thanos said, pausing dramatically to let that sink in before continuing. "My family can be traced back to ancient Greece to the bloodline of Dareios and his lover Elysia. To the boy you describe in your nightmare—the child that was sacrificed—Athanasios, son of Elysia and Dareios."
"Then who am I?" Alex asked. "Am I related to them somehow?" It was a rhetorical question, one Alex only voiced out loud so his head didn't explode with the emotion that shot agony through him. Were those only echoes of memories that invaded his dreams? And where did Luke fit into all of this?
"Alex, if this is all true, if it is to be believed, then I think we can say that you could be the boy they carved and burned in the temple."
"Athanasios, you mean."
"Yes. Born again after fifty generations."
Alex denied it, shaking his head vehemently even as he recognized—knew—that seeing into people, seeing events seconds before they happened, knowing things that were to happen, it all made him different. It didn't make him this lost Greek boy of mythology though. It didn't mean the designs on his body were the work of a priest. He knew his thoughts would have sounded infantile if he said them aloud, but his mind would not accept what his ears heard.
Thanos continued. "Dareios wrote in this book that the gods themselves had taken and hidden the sacrificed boy in the heavens until the time to return him had come. You're special, Alex," Thanos whispered. "And you're hunted by the same people that wanted to kill you then. I wish with all my heart it was otherwise, but if you want to live you need to go and find a place you can call home, where you are safe."
Alex couldn't process what Thanos was saying, his head was splitting between a desire to run and a need to stay. As Thanos was telling him this it was impossible to focus on anything except the single word 'go'.
"Go? Leave Greece? What good would it do?" Hopelessness filled his voice. "They'd find me again, just like they found us in England when they killed Edward." Anger and confusion was building inside him, threatening to break down the last barrier of his resolve.
"We don't know that they killed Edward," Thanos said.
"Yes, we fucking do. Why else would he have died? No matter where I go, these people want to track me down! Edward was my friend, my lover, and my only line of defense. Who are they, Thanos? Who the fuck are these bastards?" He thumped a fist on the desktop, the only way he knew to release the tension.
Thanos shook his head sadly. "I don't know. I wish to hell I did. My family is the caretaker of the prophecy but I didn't know it would be my generation who would be tasked with helping you. I will research this, find a translator who can read the rest. You need to go; I have enough money that we can hide you until we know more."
Unbidden, Luke was there at the forefront of Alex's thoughts. The memory of serious brown eyes sparking at him from the shadows in the British Museum, of a professor, a man who touched the tail of his tattoo, haunted even his waking thoughts. Luke's touch had sent awareness skittering up Alex's arm and into his spine, and the man's casual caress had sent guilt into Alex's heart as he felt lust coil in his belly at the contact. He didn't discount how he felt; he had an instinctive awareness of people, of trust, and curiosity, of laughter, and of surprise.
"I'm not going anywhere," Alex finally said. "I can hide myself. I have…" His voice trailed off, not sure why he stopped himself from telling Thanos about the abilities he had.
"Control?" Thanos finished softly. "The ability to shift out of people's minds, to heal?"
Alex shook his head. Summarizing what he could do when even Alex didn't fully understand it himself was a long way past difficult. Thanos placed a hand on Alex's arm, sympathy welling from inside him, filling Alex's senses until he had to break the connection. Thanos couldn't be aware of Alex's growing discomfort at being touched with such raw emotion.
"Did you watch me all the time?" Alex asked curiously. He had never sensed he was being observed and it unnerved him that people had been watching and he hadn't known.
"No, Alex, no. But your parents, they were good people, Alex, they loved you and Andrew was my friend. He told me how you were doing."
They sat quietly, Alex's mind churning over what he had learned of his past. Impatiently he corrected himself, his possible past. Maybe what he had heard and read was really nothing more than a book of stories, myths, some great dark cosmic trick laid to confuse him. Yet, when he'd stood in front of the mirror in his room earlier in the day, tracing with light touches the markings that adorned his naked skin, he knew they had been carved into his body deliberately, although he could not recall the precise moment nor the pain that had to have accompanied it.
He wanted to know why someone would do that to a child. Wanted to know who had inflicted the markings on him. And he wanted to find the people responsible for Edward's death, whether the culprits were Xanos or someone else. He needed to find them, avenge Edward, and, above all, get answers.
Alex had no intention of running or hiding, but he needed more information, translation, knowledge, and he knew where to start. He needed the man with the brown eyes and the touch that sent lust thrumming through him faster than conscious thought. Whatever part he was going to play, Alex needed this Luke.
He needed him in Greece.
Purposefully, he turned and looked at Thanos. "The man I met in London, the one who won't leave my damn dreams. I need to find out who he is and bring him here. It can't be coincidence that I meet him, and then can't shake him from my mind, and he happens to be a translator."
"Fate is intervening, Alex."
A tingle shot through him and Alex shuddered.
He looked back out over the sea, sinking into the restful rhythm of the endless waves. He couldn't wait to meet the professor again. Whatever the reason for it.