“Then find him and quit whining. He is here for a reason.” He gave her a sly look. “As are you.”
She forced herself to look into another ruined face. And another. Jasper handed her a piece of a snapped spear and she used it to turn bodies over and move battered helmets so she could see faces. Glassy open eyes stared unseeing at her. Closed eyes hid their colors from her. Broken teeth and missing jaws gaped at her. She spit bile on the ground and continued, man after man after man. Her spear poked and pushed and lifted torn clothing. Her legs to her knees were covered in blood and bits of flesh and still she kept going, man to man to man with Jasper on her heels.
And then she found him. When she turned this body over, the helmet rolled away and there he was. Marcus. The Roman. His throat had been slashed from ear to ear. If it had healed it would have left a thick white scar. But this wound would never heal. The blood that had poured from this wound colored his chest and the ground at her knees.
She knelt in the gore beside him and turned his face to her.
“Yep. That’s him.” Jasper confirmed.
She stroked the stubble on his jaw. He was warm.
“Warmth of Hell,” Jasper reminded her.
“How do I bring him back to life?” she asked him.
Jasper shrugged. “How is it always done?”
“With a kiss?”
She stared at the dead face and chapped lips. He looked like he had been marching for days. The lines around his closed eyes, though relaxed in death, could be seen clearly. He squinted as he marched, and the sun tanned his face all over but where the wrinkles were. Thin white lines radiated from the corners of his eyes now that his face was slack in death. The sight of this small bit of realism in a land of the surreal tightened her throat. She took his hand. It was calloused and rough. The fingers were thick and the thumb muscle was wide and bulged with strength. This man had carried a sword for years. He worked hard day after day, year after year. His body bore testament to his labors.
Was he the right one? Only his eyes would tell. She remembered his eyes as both the expressive brown ones and the searing yellow ones. In death he was just a man like many lying here on the battlefield.
“He’s the one. No one else has a slit throat like that. None of the others were killed that way. You are making excuses.” Jasper shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wanted his shoes. “Kiss him.”
She bent over the bloodied lips. As she pressed hers against his, she realized that in all her demon encounters, not once had he ever kissed her. Kissing is for lovers, she thought. She pressed harder, and she there was no response from the corpse, she smoothed his short hair from his brow and cupped his cheek tenderly. Even if he was a demon now, this man deserved a bit of tenderness. In the touch of his lips she felt his years of loneliness. The endless marching, the rough weather, the constant orders and incessant movement of the legion. She felt his love for his comrades and saw flashes of their games, the dice, the wrestling and the stories of adventures in far lands told across a campfire between mugs of ale and wine and beer and mead.
She also saw him killing, and raping and burning. She saw the terror in the eyes of young women as he threw them to the ground ripped at their clothing, He saw the hatred in the eyes of the warriors he killed and the hopelessness in the eyes of the old men and women he roped together to sell as slaves.
She saw all this as she kissed his lips.
She sat up in bed and looked at the clock. Eight in the morning. The sun shone through the window. The tree outside was cheerful with the sounds of morning birds waiting their turn at the feeder. She could see her closet where the harpy had messed up her line of shoes, and she could see that the silver pumps were gone. The chalk circle on her wood floor was smeared into streaks and the alarm on her clock was going off with a pounding rhythm. She leaned over, picked it up and threw it across