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Thalia
She watched him go from the window. Straight into the woods, of course, and from the look on his face, she’d be lucky if he came back. She tried to convince herself she didn’t care if he got eaten by a bear or not, that it would just make her life easier if he got lost out there and she never saw him again, but the haunted look on his face when she told him what had happened to Theseus, and the pain in his expression when he’d left...
It was more convincing than his show of strength in the parking lot, though that hadn’t been anything she could write off, either. He’d crushed the base of the light and bent it like butter. When they’d walked past it to get back to the car, she could see his handprint in the metal. Delusion didn’t explain any of that. And the way his eyes glowed? No. There was definitely something else going on, something bigger. And if he was from the past, it put his complete lack of understanding when it came to all things modern, his attitude toward women, the clothes he’d been wearing, even the way he talked into a context that made a lot more sense—nobody was so backwater off-the-grid they didn’t know how zippers worked.
But how on earth had he learned English if he were some three thousand year old Greek? Unless he hadn’t known it until he’d met them. She frowned, staring at the fire pit where he’d tossed his food the previous night, instead of eating it. The alphabet song started playing in her head again and she sighed. The guy could bend steel and she was worrying about how he knew English.
What was she going to tell Nikki? She’d had to fight with her for an hour just to get her to leave the house for any period of time, and at that she’d been lucky that Nikki had already made some appointment she didn’t want to cancel. Before he’d made his admissions about stealing women, Thalia had been looking for an excuse to get in bed with him. And if she told Nikki anything about the rest of this mess, Alex would find out. Thalia could see it already. Alex would rant and roar at her, and years from now he would still go on about how irresponsible and reckless she was. The story of Kristos the scam artist would be nothing compared to this. Not that Kristos had been her fault. But they wouldn’t understand, and it had been fun while it lasted.
No. She couldn’t tell Nikki. She didn’t dare.
Damn it.
She jerked the door open and skipped down the stairs. She’d just told him his best friend had been pushed off a cliff, then let him wander off where he could get himself killed, son of a god or not. And if he really was three thousand years old, it wasn’t entirely his fault he didn’t realize kidnapping women was wrong. Even she knew Zeus took women left and right, and Hercules wasn’t exactly known for his self-restraint, either. The fact that Pirithous hadn’t forced himself on her yet spoke volumes in that context. Didn’t it?
“Pirithous!”
He didn’t answer, but she hadn’t really been expecting he would. She crashed through the brush at the tree line, cursing the blackberry bushes and wishing she’d thought to put on jeans first. She should have warned him about the deer ticks. The last thing either one of them needed was Lyme disease. All of this was unreal enough already without adding the risk of neurological dysfunction brought on by illness.
“Pirithous! We need to talk. Before Nikki gets back.”
A snake slithered across her path and she swallowed a yelp. With all the noise she’d been making, the thing couldn’t have gotten out of the way before she almost stepped on it? She kept going, heading for the stream. The old paths she’d made with Alex as kids were so far overgrown she couldn’t have found them if her life depended on it, but she could follow the stream in either direction without worrying about getting lost.
She searched the trees when she reached the water, wondering which way he would have gone. Away from the road, she decided. And he didn’t strike her as the kind of person who didn’t know his way around, even if it wasn’t his land. She started upstream, sticking close to the bank.
“Pirithous!”
Something splashed in the water, but she didn’t see what. Probably just a turtle.
“Thalia?”
She spun. It had to be Pirithous, but she didn’t see him. “Where are you?”
“Here, Thalia!” He was calling from the other side of the stream, she was almost certain of it.
“Pirithous?”
Something else crashed through the trees behind her. A deer, frightened by all the noise, maybe.
“Come to me,” he called, but it sounded like he was moving away, deeper into the trees.
She hesitated at the bank, not just because crossing the stream would require going knee deep in ice cold water, but because if she left the stream she wasn’t sure she could find her way back.
“Thalia!”
She swore, stripping off her sandals. And what was she doing trudging through the woods in sandals anyway? He’d better appreciate it.
Another crash, followed by a grunt she barely heard over the gurgle of water freezing her toes. Oh god, she hoped that wasn’t a bear.
Then a hand closed on her arm and she screamed as she was jerked back from the water. An arm wrapped around her waist and a hand clapped over her mouth, holding her tight. She bit and kicked until she heard his hiss, but instead of letting her go, his grip tightened, making her ribs ache.
“Quiet.” Pirithous.
She managed to twist one arm free to pull at his hand over her mouth, but he hissed at her again and she stilled. Immense strength, she reminded herself. If he didn’t want to let her go, she had no chance of freeing herself. Unless she wanted to wind up like that crumpled light post. Her stomach twisted and her heartbeat kicked up another notch, hard and fast.
“When I pull my hand away, call my name, as you did before,” he breathed in her ear. “Nothing else.”
She nodded, but his hand didn’t move.
“Trust me, Thalia. Please.”
She swallowed, inhaling through her nose. His hand dropped.
“Pirithous!” she shouted.
All she heard was the roar of blood in her ears, and Pirithous’s indrawn breath, his arm around her waist a band of steel and his body so tense she could almost feel him vibrating.
“Come to me, Thalia!” The voice was still far off. Pirithous’s voice. But Pirithous stood behind her.
He muttered something in his not-Greek that sounded a lot like a curse and then he was half-dragging her back downstream. She tripped. His hand on her arm kept her upright, but only barely.
“Come, Thalia. Hurry.”
“I can’t. Ow.” Something stabbed into her foot. “Pirithous wait. Let me put my sandals on at least.”
He growled, jerking her forward and then knocking her legs out from under her with the sweep of an arm behind her knees. He had her in his arms before she could protest, and she clung to his neck to steady herself when he broke into a run.
“What are you—”
“I have no sword, no knife, and something in those trees calls to you with my voice.” The fury beneath his words gave her goosebumps. “Persephone promised me safety only if I reminded others to pray, and I have not yet done so, nor made the sacrifices I promised her when she led me from Hades.”
They broke out of the trees, and Pirithous all but dropped her back to her feet. She hopped on one leg, steadying herself against the railing to pick the splinter out of her foot. She was still trying to figure out what he was on about, never mind the shock of his appearance, but his eyes flashed white when he saw her stop.
“Inside, Thalia. Quickly.”
“I don’t understand—”
He pulled her up the stairs before she could finish, though his grasp had gentled enough that she didn’t feel bruised by his fingers. He pushed the door open, not releasing her until it shut behind them.
“Will you please,” she said, falling into a chair at the kitchen table, “tell me what the hell is going on?”
Pirithous stood at the window, his gaze locked on the trees. “I am not certain.”
“You scared the shit out of me, Pirithous!”
He glanced back at her, his eyebrows rising. “Would you prefer I let you run off to your death?”
“I wouldn’t have been out there shouting for you if you hadn’t charged out of here like you wanted to throw yourself off a—” She bit her tongue before she put her foot in her mouth. The last thing he needed was a reminder of how his friend had died. “Listen. It was probably just the neighbor kids playing in the woods, jerking me around.”
“With my voice?”
She shrugged. “I was listening for it. I’m sure it was just wishful thinking.”
He shook his head, turning back to the window. “It was a reminder. I owe Persephone a sacrifice, a feast day, and a temple. Gifts I might have given her with a word as king in Thessaly. Here, now, I have nothing of my own, so she will take you. Your life for mine.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” She bent to check the scratches on her legs, reminding herself firmly that she was Greek Orthodox. God didn’t make bargains or require sacrifices. Baptism, confirmation, confession, the Eucharist, attending mass, that was all God asked, and she’d done it all religiously for years. Mostly.
If Pirithous’s faith told him something different, that wasn’t her problem. She had nothing to do with his gods. If they existed at all. Just because he had some super strength and wild white eyes, that didn’t invalidate her religion. He could be some escapee from a military project, for all she knew, with some kind of brainwashed implanted delusion that he was an ancient Greek hero to round it all out. Thalia rubbed her forehead. The more she thought about any of this, the more it was all starting to sound like some kind of weird b-movie—no way this was her reality. Except there was Pirithous, and the bent light post, and the glowing eyes...
She got up, hopping toward the hallway. She was sure that she had one of her mother’s crosses in the bedroom. If he was for real, a little extra spiritual protection wasn’t the worst idea.
“Thalia.” Pirithous sounded like he was trying not to laugh as he looped her arm over his shoulders and swept her feet out from under her, cradling her against his chest. “You need not hop.”
“Oh.” She clutched at his shoulders by reflex before she forced herself to relax. “Well. Can you carry me to the bathroom then? I want to disinfect my foot. And we should both check ourselves for ticks.”
“You, perhaps.” He started down the hall, turning sideways so as not to knock her legs into the wall. “No flea will pierce my skin.”
She kicked her legs idly. “Are you invulnerable now, too?”
“Ichor is poison to them. The scent of it in my blood drives them elsewhere.” He carried her into the bathroom, flicking the light switch with his elbow, and set her down on the vanity. “Tell me what you require and I will dress the wound.”
“Um.” She twisted around to reach the medicine cabinet, popping the mirror open. Pirithous pressed his lips together, but a brief widening of his eyes told her he hadn’t realized the cabinet was there. “The brown bottle is hydrogen peroxide. And underneath here,” she thumped her heel against the cabinet below her, “there should be some heavy duty band-aids.”
He pulled out the bottle and swung the mirror shut. “So many mirrors. Have your people not heard the story of Narcissus?”
“Sure. That’s where we get the word narcissist, for people who are obsessed with themselves.” She reached down to open the cabinet beneath the sink. “There should be a box of band-aids for elbows down there. I think that will work best.”
Pirithous crouched down, rummaging through the contents for a moment. “In Thessaly, we had only polished bronze for mirrors, silver perhaps if you were very fortunate, but it was much more valuable for swords and shields. We did not have metal lying about the way you do, now. Are these the bandages?”
“Yes. Good.” She took the box from his hand, checking to make sure it wasn’t empty. “Two left, even.”
“Hold still.” He caught her foot, swinging idly, his fingers firm against her skin as he examined the wound. “It is not deep, but it is wider than I realized. What would you have me do?”
Thalia scooted back on the counter, turning to rest her leg on the vanity, her foot in the sink. “I just need to rinse it with water, then pour some of the hydrogen peroxide on. Oh. Behind the mirror there should be a green tube of ointment. To keep it from getting infected. I shouldn’t have been running around in sandals in the woods. Or barefoot for that matter.”
“You need not have followed me,” he said gently. “I would have returned before long, if only for my sword.”
She turned on the water, letting it warm up a little bit before sticking her foot under it. All the better to keep from having to meet his eyes when he looked at her like that. And she was suddenly very aware of how close he was to her, his thumb caressing her ankle, not quite tickling. The warmth of his hand had somehow settled in the pit of her stomach with a glow that radiated outward and down.
“Can you get me a towel?”
His fingers slipped free from her ankle and she hoped he didn’t notice the shiver that went through her. She heard him open the linen closet but didn’t dare look up. If she started staring now, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop. And she wasn’t going to do this. No matter how much it might irritate her brother and Nikki. No matter how attractive he was, physically. Three thousand years old, or seriously deluded, he probably wasn’t even that good in bed, considering his views on women’s rights, and it could only end badly.
He turned the water off and wrapped the towel around her foot, patting it dry.
“Okay,” she said. The sooner this was over with the better. “Hydrogen peroxide it up.”