Apollo, unsurprisingly, was up with the sun.
He tried to get up without waking me, but my body was apparently on high alert. I jerked awake as soon as his weight shifted, looked over to see what was going on and groaned at the realization. I kept my eyes open only long enough to watch his naked form head for the bathroom, glorious in the light teasing through his sheer curtains. Then I grabbed his pillow, yanked it over my head and rolled with it into my favorite position.
I must have fallen back to sleep, because the smell of bacon woke me up some time later.
Bacon…
I lay there a moment longer. The bed was so comfortable. And warm. And easy to face.
Apollo not so much.
But…bacon.
I groaned again, even though there was no one to hear me, and reluctantly I tossed his pillow to the side and made myself get up. My body no longer ached. On the contrary, it felt alive, healthy, like I’d just gotten a B-12 shot and lived on a diet full of protein shakes and fruit smoothies with wheat grass kickers…or whatever the starlets-in-training were drinking this week.
I cursed, went to the bathroom to take care of a few things, like personal hygiene, and walked out into the living room wearing a robe meant for someone Apollo’s size rather than mine. I swam in his robe, feeling small and yet sexy. What was it about wearing a man’s shirt…or his bathrobe? I’d only sniffed the collar, which, of course, smelled like him, once or twice while slipping it on.
The television was going in the living room, but I barely noticed.
A stupid smile crept over my face as I peered over the breakfast bar into the kitchen where Apollo was heaping plates full of food.
He turned when he heard me or sensed me, flashing me his million watt smile. “Good morning, beautiful.”
The food wasn’t the only thing that looked good enough to eat. Apollo had left the robe for me, and stood there shirtless in nothing but black draw-string pants riding a little low on his hips.
I heard myself gasp and tried to play it off. “The food smells good.”
“I figured that after last night… Well, we’ll certainly need our strength today.”
He turned with the plates and put one in front of me. Omelets. Honest to gods omelets, complete with diced tomatoes, onions and green peppers, and folded over a nice thick layer of cheese. On the side, three slices each of thick-cut bacon and two slices of dry toast.
I raised a brow at the sight of that, and Apollo shoved forward two little jars of jam and a stick of actual butter on a cut crystal dish. Silverware and placemats already sat in front of two of the stools, so I propped my butt up on the one in front of me and asked, “Coffee?”
“But of course.”
Apollo set his plate down and headed for a carafe full of the most wonderful scent in the world, second only to bacon and the smell of Apollo himself, especially when a little bit sweaty with exertion…
I had to close my eyes and breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Too much. It was all just a little too much. Too perfect.
He set the mug down in front of me, the sound popping my eyes open.
He watched me as he also placed down a half gallon of milk and a glass container holding packets of every sweetener known to man. White, pink, yellow, blue…
“Green?” I asked.
“Stevia in the Raw,” he said. “All natural.”
“Sounds dirty,” I said.
He grinned and leaned in for a kiss, stopping right before our lips touched to say, “So it does.”
My libido and my heart were both doing jumping jacks, vying for attention, and I shoved them both aside for bacon. I always liked to save the best for last, but with three slices, I didn’t have to entirely delay gratification. The first bite was almost better than ambrosia, better than nectar. I knew, I’d tried both. It was crunchy and salty and applewood smoked and…just the way I liked it.
“Marry me,” I said. It slipped out of my mouth, which immediately fell open in horror. “I mean…”
Apollo laughed. “If I’d known bacon was all it took to make you fall for me, I’d have cooked for you sooner.”
I made sure my mouth was free of food and then stuck my tongue out at him, glad he was making light of the moment. “Now you know my Achilles’ heel. I’m sorry, it’s too dangerous for me to let you live.”
“I understand. If I could have one last request?”
I flashed him a considering look. “Perhaps. Ask.”
“Wait until after breakfast to kill me? No point in wasting all this good food.”
“You just want to lull me into a food coma,” I protested.
“Guilty as charged.”
I cut into the omelet and took a bite. It was ridiculous. Really. An omelet was an omelet, right? Maybe it was whatever kind of cheese he used. Nothing should be allowed to taste so good.
If this…if we continued, I wondered if he’d keep cooking for me or whether he’d start to take me for granted. Or expect quid pro quo.
“Stop,” he said.
“What?”
“Sometimes an omelet is just an omelet,” he said.
“And if it’s the best omelet I’ve ever had in my life?”
“That’s a metaphor for sex, right?”
I gave him a look. “You fishing for compliments?”
“Honey,” he said, bringing a warm hand to my leg where the robe had fallen away, “I was there. I don’t need you to tell me it was amazing.”
His hand slid up my leg, and he leaned in to kiss me again…when suddenly Hermes’s face appeared right between us, shocking us both back.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, glancing at the little vee of skin at my throat revealed by the robe. I pulled it tighter around me and he clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth, the sound carrying through the window he’d created. He turned his gaze on Apollo and swept him bare stomach to chest. “Nice. Very nice. You know, Sigyn and I have an awfully big bed… No?” he said at the look on Apollo’s face. He glanced down at himself, even though we couldn’t see the rest of him through the small message window he’d created. “Perhaps I should get to the gym a bit more. Or maybe I can get the abs airbrushed on, as they did in that 300 movie, hmm? That certainly sounds like a lot less trouble.”
“Hermes,” I said, exasperated. “Do you have a purpose in calling?”
He sighed. “I do. We’re all set up. Sigyn has set runes to trap the brothers when they come through the central hallway. You might want to get dressed…or not. We’ll let you know as soon as they take the bait.”
He winked out, and I stared at Apollo in disbelief. “Did he really just…”
“He really did. It’s Hermes. Are you surprised?”
I didn’t answer, because the truth was I probably shouldn’t be. I had no idea what my friend Christie had seen in him, even if, despite his comment about the gym, he was built like a Greek god.
I turned back to my food, not about to let it go to waste. “Guess we’d better eat fast. As you said, we’re going to need our strength.”
I was used to eating on the go or wolfing down fast food during a stake-out, so it was hardly difficult for me, and with Apollo’s size, he had his omelet finished off in about three bites. I then took the world’s fastest shower to get rid of the remains of yesterday’s sweat, grime and any possible remains of poison and dressed in a track suit I kept at Apollo’s place—black with a hot pink stripe up the side of the pants. I decided it was too hot for the jacket, and I was just going to have to go with the matching jog bra. L.A. camouflage when you couldn’t afford high fashion. Everyone was always coming from or going to the gym, off on a jog, doing pull ups, weights, yoga-lates or crazy acrobatics on Muscle Beach… All I needed was a high ponytail, which I managed, and a sheen of sweat, which I knew would come the second we stepped out into the L.A. heat.
Apollo took his cue from me, changing into dark gray sweatpants, a lighter gray tank top, a baseball hat and sunglasses to hide his identity. I didn’t suspect it would matter. Apollo had a certain presence, even when he damped it down. He’d draw attention wherever we went.
I grabbed my phone, the pepper spray and my ID out of my small clutch from the night before and shoved them into pockets.
“Anything on the news before I got up?” I asked. The television had been tuned to one of those soft news morning shows when I’d trudged through the living room seeking bacon.
Apollo was standing in front of what looked like a buffet table—flat on top, just the right height for serving, drawers in front. I wondered why until I saw him lift the top to reveal satin fabric inlaid like the padding of a coffin, only instead of a body, short swords were strapped to the top and more weapons gleamed from the inside.
“Ooh,” I said, approaching.
“Nothing much on the news,” he said, answering the question I’d nearly forgotten I’d asked. “A lot of confusion about what went on yesterday, everyone with theories—including mass hysteria, something in the water, killer-slash-hallucinogenic smog like something The Joker might cook up, Mercury in retrograde…”
“Is it?” I asked.
“How should I know. I don’t keep track of these things. Anyway, choose your weapon.”
I tried not to feel like a kid in a candy store, but, really, the array of weaponry was pretty impressive. But then I remembered… I looked down at my sports bra and tight track pants. I didn’t exactly have anywhere to conceal anything. Damn, I guessed I was going to have to deal with my jacket after all.
I reached for a triangular sort of dagger that called to me and a blade not quite long enough to be a sword or short enough to be a dagger.
“The xiphos,” Apollo commented. “Good choice.”
Xiphos. I’d have to remember that.
I gave it a few test sweeps, checking out the balance, how it moved in my hands. It felt good. Much better than my gun ever had. Practically like I’d been born to the blade.
Ours was a rescue mission though. If all went well, I’d never have to use it. I didn’t want to examine the fact that it disappointed me the same way I didn’t want to examine our relationship.
“We should get started,” I said to Apollo, retrieving Sigyn’s sundial/compass. “That way we can be on the spot to rescue Thalia and the others as soon as the boys take the bait.”
“If they spot us, that will blow the whole thing,” he said.
“They won’t. Besides, we’ll need to do some recon, and I’m antsy.”
He studied me. “Okay, fine, but I’m taking a cup of coffee for the road.”
“Get me one too?” I asked. I went back to the bedroom for my jacket and came out to an offering of a travel mug’s worth of Apollo’s amazing coffee made just the way I liked it. I tried not to tear up, but after the bacon and omelets, I was feeling a little emotional.
“Okay, already, you’re perfect,” I grumbled. “Will you just stop?”
“All right, more coffee for me,” he said, reaching to take back the mug.
“Do it and die,” I said, hugging it protectively to me.
He laughed. “Thought so.”
Then my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I saw Apollo reach for his as well. When I drew mine out, I saw I had a new text from Hermes. Boys have breached perimeter.
“Looks like we’re on,” I said.
We didn’t waste any time getting to Apollo’s car in the garage beneath his building. It was a silver Lexus and a thing of beauty, but it was going to be a tight squeeze getting all of our rescuees inside. I shrugged. If need be, I could fly back, even bring a passenger if the brothers had kidnapped more than our count. I let Apollo drive, since he was most familiar with the car…and anyway, I had to concentrate on the tracker.
As he pulled out—only one exit, so no mystery which way to go until we were out on the street—I nibbled on a hangnail until it bled. Mom would have slapped me upside the head for it, but she wasn’t here, and Sigyn had said the little rune disk activated with blood. I smeared what little welled up on the dial, closed my eyes and thought really hard about Thalia, the one missing person we were absolutely certain the brothers had taken. If they’d managed to kill her and dump her body this whole thing would be in vain, but I couldn’t think that way. As Set had shown, the old ones were fiendishly hard to kill, and anyway it seemed like the world would be a sadder place if such a light had gone out of it. I couldn’t believe we wouldn’t all feel the loss.
When I opened my eyes again, it was to see the dial turning, turning… “Right out of the garage,” I said.
My precog hit me like a physical thing, like a slap in the face, wanting to whip my head around to the left.
I looked to Apollo.
“I feel it too,” he said.
“What do we do?”
“We already know the brothers are at the museum, maybe Jessica too. We know there’s danger. Hermes will call if they need us.”
The dial in my hand swung a complete one-eighty. “Turn left as soon as you can,” I said. I hoped Sigyn’s little dial would work. It was something like a GPS, but with no warning at all on upcoming directional changes. Worse, it pointed the way, but that only went so far. Roads weren’t straight lines. They veered or dead ended, became one-way streets. I really didn’t like this plan. My precog was only amplifying my need to be in on the action, on the capture.
Even as Apollo drove, looking for the next left, I pulled out my phone.
“Eyes on the prize,” he said. “You don’t want to lose focus on the kidnap victims. If you start thinking about what’s going on back at the museum, that dial might lead us right there.”
“So I’ll multitask. Women can do that, you know. I’ll focus on Thalia while I put in a call to Hermes, just to make sure everything is okay. Plans can change.”
I dialed Hermes, but the phone just rang and rang. I hung up before it got to voicemail.
“No answer.”
“He might be busy,” Apollo said.
“Might be.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “This precognition didn’t come with a training manual. But I guess you’re right. They’d call. Hermes might even drop in. We stick to the plan. I guess. But I feel like a mama whose teenage daughter missed their meet-up at the mall. Or blew curfew by a huge margin. Something’s wrong.”
“Danger doesn’t mean destruction.”
“Doesn’t it?” That had certainly been my experience.
“Right!” I said suddenly, as the road started to veer left and the needle on the blood dial swung pointedly in the other direction.
“Highway entrance coming up. Should we ignore the dial momentarily and get on the highway, since it heads that way?”
“Yes.” I didn’t even have to think about it. Both Nick’s map of mayhem and my flying canvas had indicated that the brothers had fled somewhere outside the city.
At the highway entrance, the dial pointed us distinctly northbound and then seemed fairly happy with our progress until we were right on top of an exit. All the while my gut was churning, no longer sure which way the danger lay—forward or back. Now that we were getting close to our quarry, it was clear that not all the trouble was behind us back at the museum.
A few more hairpin twists and turns and one long stretch where we blew past anything commercial and even the real residential areas. Houses grew farther and farther apart. More isolated, more run-down. Finally the dial pointed us not toward another turn but toward a house standing off all by itself. It was an old Mexicali style one story that had seen better days. A great golden-orange wall of crumbling stucco with the crumbled parts still lying in the overgrown grass blocked the view of the house except through an arched entrance into the courtyard. It looked like a home time had forgotten.
Apollo and I shared a look. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of place you’d find the Roland heirs,” I said.
“The police would have investigated any property linked to them.”
“Do you think—” that the owner was one of their victims, I thought but didn’t finish. We’d find out soon enough. “Nevermind. Let’s go.”
The nearest neighboring house was probably a quarter to a half mile away and there was no one strolling the street. No reason to wear the jacket any longer to hide my weapon and risk it getting in the way. I left it behind as I got out of the car, took firm hold of the xiphos and slid the dagger into my waistband at the small of my back, hoping not to stab myself before anyone else. I wanted my dagger hand free to open doors or hold back cobwebs. I didn’t absolutely know we’d be faced with the latter, but from the state of the house, I couldn’t rule it out either, and with both hands bearing weapons, I was in danger of slashing myself if something multi-legged dropped on me from above.
I’d gotten better about heights. Spiders were never going to give me the warm fuzzies. Especially not after Arachne and her minions had scarred me for life.
“Watch yourself,” Apollo said as we approached the arch. “It could be warded.”
“Can you tell?”
He edged a little closer and went very still, sensing. “I don’t think so, but there’s something off here. I can feel it.”
I felt it too. I waved my xiphos through the archway first, figuring that if anything was going to trigger, better on the blade than on us, but nothing happened, so I let it lead the way, following it onto a cracked walkway with grass growing up through the fractures. The yard itself was more weeds than grass, all overgrown, almost to the point of swallowing a child’s three-wheel bike that tilted up against a large palm with drooping fronds. If it hadn’t been bright blue, it would have blended right in. Two big, colorful pots of agave plants stood as prickly sentinels to either side of the doorway—a smaller stucco arch over a staunch wooden door. Bright blue and gold tiles inset over the doorbell to the left labeled the house number 207, which seemed odd, since there were less than a dozen houses on the whole street.
My precog kicked me again. Inside, it insisted. As if we didn’t know.
“How do you want to handle this?” I asked quietly. “You want the front and I’ll take the back? Vice versa?”
He looked around at all the high grass and higher weeds. “I’ll take the back,” he said. “Give me a thirty-count.”
I knew he was being chivalrous, thinking of what might be lurking in and among all the growth. Spiders, fire ants, sharp, rusty pieces of metal. Tetanus I could handle, but the rest… I didn’t argue.
But as instructed, I did wait, none too patiently. My precog didn’t understand caution. It understood danger, and whether I chose fight or flight, it wanted me to give some indication I’d gotten the damned message already. Passivity was not an option.
My thirty-count might have been a little fast. I might have rushed my Mississippis. Still, on thirty I tried the knob, which—no surprise—did not conveniently turn in my hand. On thirty-one-and-a-half, I backed off far enough for momentum and kicked the door in with a great, huge blow right above the knob where I’d found it did the most good.
The door bucked and gave, and in the next instant, I heard glass break from the back of the house. Anyone inside would know they were being invaded.
I entered cautiously, xiphos prepared to slash. The front entrance was crowded with shoes—sneakers, sandals, flip-flops from kid-sized to adult. Enough to trip over. I brushed them aside with my foot and kept going. The foyer opened immediately onto a small living room covered in laundry, as though someone had been folding and sorting when they’d been interrupted.
Apollo met me a second later, coming from the back of the house, the kitchen entrance. He shook his head as our eyes met to let me know there was no one back there. Together we stopped and listened to the rest of the house. All was eerily silent, but my precog insisted that to be misleading.
At least we didn’t have much to search. There was only one way to go. Off the living room was a hallway lined with closed doors. Four of them. Two on one side, one on the other and a door at the end which was probably the master bedroom.
I took the lead. The first door I came to was on the left. I opened it quickly, poised with my xiphos in case anything jumped out, but it was just a bathroom…with a patina of red staining the sink and suspicious dark stains on the towels tossed to the side of the sink and onto the floor. The incongruously cheerful ducky shower curtain was yanked back and half off its rings, so it was clear no one was hiding behind it.
I didn’t venture any farther. The police forensic team would want to sweep it for clues, evidence to wrap their murder cases up with neat little bows. I was interested in saving the survivors.
Apollo looked over my shoulder, saw that there was nothing to see and moved on to the next room. I closed the door behind me to maintain the scene the best I could and waited to one side of the next door while he stood to the other side. My precog was going crazy as he turned the knob, but there was no need to say a word. His senses were even more developed than mine and we couldn’t be any more ready than we already were.
He thrust the door open as soon as the catch released. The sight that greeted us was horrendous. Inside what was clearly meant to be a kids’ room—red with auto-racing details everywhere from the race-car runner to the checkered and yellow flags crossed decoratively on the walls—were twin beds sporting material that would definitely be disturbing to younger viewers. Bodies. Two of them. Both female. One with golden curls falling over the pillow and onto the floor like abandoned party streamers. The other with scads of dark hair that glistened wet with blood.
Both had their chests laid bare. Not in the sense of clothing pulled back or ripped off, but in the sense of flesh rolled back like sod to reveal what was underneath—only I couldn’t see what that might be through all the blood. The sternum…the heart…I couldn’t tell what was still there and what wasn’t. Bile rose, and a vision started to rise up. I fought it down. My precog was still going insane, alarm bells now ringing loud enough to rattle my brain. I couldn’t afford to be distracted or out of time in my own little blood-slicked world.
Apollo stepped toward the beds. One step, then another. My alarm bells were deafening.
“Don’t,” I called, not sure why. Surely neither of these women—Sulis of the golden curls and perhaps Aphrodite’s missing nymph with the darker hair—were in any condition to harm him, but as he reached them, something whipped out from beneath the one bed and grabbed Apollo around both ankles, yanking his feet out from under him.
He cried out as he toppled toward the other bed, about to, literally, fall on his sword. I lurched forward to catch him, knowing I’d be too late, when a shriek from behind warned me of my own danger. I whirled, instinctively raising my xiphos to ward off an on-rushing blow. A cartoonishly large kitchen knife caught on the cross guard of my blade just before it would have buried itself in my neck.
I forced my gaze past it and looked beyond…straight into the crazed eyes of my client.
“Jessica!” I cried, shocked.
She answered with a snarl that sounded anything but human, crushed my hand around my hilt with her free hand and ripped loose her kitchen knife, swinging her freed blade for my gut. I tried to leap back, but she held me there with that hand bruising mine, and I only managed to get enough distance to lessen the depth of the slash, but the sharp pain in my abdomen and the sudden heat of gushing blood shouted that I hadn’t done enough. I whipped the dagger from my waistband, now doubly armed, and slashed it at her knife hand as she pulled back for another attack.
I felt my blade slice, and took instant advantage of her reaction by pressing my trapped hand and xiphos toward her. She was prepared for me to try to yank the blade free, not to swing for her and she wasn’t able to adjust quickly enough. I twisted as I pushed so that if I hit her it would be with the blunt of the blade rather than the edge. She was my client and clearly not herself. I didn’t want to kill her. It wouldn’t do good things for my professional reputation or my conscience.
The blunt of the xiphos struck her dead center of the forehead, and her eyes seemed to roll up to look, but I hadn’t hit her hard enough to knock her out. Not with her own hand still crushing my fingers to the hilt.
I didn’t wait for her to recover, but jammed my foot down hard on her instep, whirled around, torquing to the side so her hand and body would have to move in unnatural ways that would put her off balance if she wanted to stay with me. She let go instead, which was what I’d been hoping for. I finished my spin, coming full circle and slashing the blade down toward her calves. Hoping for hamstrings or her Achilles’ heel, willing to settle for anything that took her down.
But she wasn’t where I’d expected her to be. She danced back and now held her knife in front of her like a street fighter, the look on her face just as feral.
“Jessica,” I said sharply, trying to break through her Set-induced fog. “Jessica, this is Tori. I’m here to help. Don’t—”
She ran at me, stabbing with her knife, going for my center of mass. I jumped back, but there was no space to maneuver in the small room, and I didn’t want to trip over Apollo, who was fighting his own battle, kicking and flailing, but seeming as reluctant as I was to use his blade. I thought I heard him call, “Thalia!” but I couldn’t spare the attention to look. Anyway, it couldn’t be. Couldn’t.
Dammit, there was not going to be any reasoning with Jessica. I waited for her crazed gaze to meet mine again and yelled, “Freeze!”
She stopped dead, not so much as a twitch to her snarl. I didn’t wait to see if she’d shake herself out of it. If chaos could trump paralysis with her as it had with her brothers. I quickly stepped behind her and cold-cocked her with the hilt of my blade. She dropped like a stone and I whirled to help Apollo.
His upper body was still free, but some slasher film version of Thalia had climbed her way up his legs from the ankles she’d grabbed to his thighs, her face now level with some very sensitive spots.
Apollo had called on the force of the sun, which burned straight through the lowered shades of the room’s solo window and were focused on Thalia’s back as though she was an ant and someone outside held the mother of all magnifying glasses. I could see the smoke rising from her skin, but she didn’t appear even to notice. Her hands were covered in blood, which made me wonder whether she’d opened the other women’s chests with her bare hands…but then I noticed that her red carpet dress itself was laid open at the chest. Blood covered the skin and the fabric that now hung in shreds and yet…and yet, she still lived. Moved, anyway. But she, like Jessica, was not herself.
I walked over and brained her like I had Jessica, feeling terrible about it. I could only hope I hadn’t given either of them a concussion, but at the moment, it seemed the least of their problems.
“My hero,” Apollo said with no discernible resentment at being rescued by a woman.
“It was my turn,” I said with a shrug.
I helped him roll Thalia off his body and then crouched down to study her. The huge gash in her chest was bloody, but no longer raw. Already the skin at the edges showed signs of reknitting, the scars pink and raised. But in the midst of the wound itself, something caught the bright stream of sunlight just as Apollo shut it down.
“Wait!” I said. “I mean, don’t burn her, but can you kind of shine a beam right at her chest.”
I realized how that sounded the second it was out of my mouth, but neither of us made a joke of it. The light hit something again, and held there. I leaned in, careful not to overshadow her, and… I started to reach for the spot.
“Don’t touch it!” Apollo said, grabbing my hand back. “Just wait.”
He looked around for something and apparently didn’t find what he was looking for. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t protest as he left me there with the four unconscious women. Instead, I did a little exploration of my own, looking for something to tie up Thalia and Jessica before they could come to. I really wanted to check on Sulis and Iphigenia, but there was time for that once I made sure our threats were neutralized. I found two boys’ robes shoved into the bottom of the closet—one brown and one blue—and used the belts to bind Thalia and Jessica’s hands. Apollo was back before I found anything for the feet, and he carried a pair of those yellow plastic kitchen gloves that made the hands sweat but supposedly protected them from the rigors of dish detergent. He also came with a pair of tongs, the kind used for turning meat on a grill.
“What are you going to do with those?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.
“Here,” he said, handing me the tongs and donning the gloves himself, thank goodness.
“I need you to use the tongs to hold back the edges of the wound,” he said. “I’m going in.”
So we were playing a real, live game of Operation. My stomach rebelled. For the second time in not very long, I swallowed back bile.
I squatted down close to Thalia and forced myself not to squinch my eyes shut to protect myself from the sight. Instead, I eased the tongs into her chest cavity. Apollo crouched on her other side, reached in gingerly with the gloves and tapped something hard. Her sternum, I thought at first, but then…
Oh no, I was not going to lose my lunch.
I fought it down. I was made of sterner stuff. I repeated it to myself like a mantra, but myself was unconvinced.
He curled three fingers into his palm and used just the thumb and forefinger to grab at something inside her chest cavity.
“It’s not coming loose,” he said. “It’s like it’s become part of her.”
“What?” I asked.
“A coin. Small, about the size of a nickel.”
“One of the Set coins.”
“At a guess.”
“Embedded into her chest?” I said, just to be clear.
“More like her heart,” he answered. “It’s—”
“Barbaric,” I finished.
He nodded. “I can’t just yank it loose. It’s really in there, and I don’t know what it will do to her.”
“We don’t know what having it there has already done…or what it will do. Already she’s not in her right mind.”
“We need to get her to a healer. A real one this time. The mud bath at Sulis’s spa is not going to cover this.”
“Speaking of which—”
I rose, my knees protesting the time I’d spent squatting, and went over to the bed with the blonde hair shining in the sun. It was Sulis, as expected, and her chest wasn’t the only part of her covered in blood. More had seeped out of her nose and coagulated on her upper lip, and… I concentrated on her chest, watching to see if it rose and fell. There was no movement. I put two fingers to the pulse point at her neck and didn’t feel anything there either.
“Apollo,” I said softly.
He gave Thalia a tortured look and then stood, stripping off the rubber gloves and following my gaze.
“She’s gone,” I said. “At least I think so. I don’t know what the rule is for you gods, about resurrection and all that.”
He rose to look at Sulis himself and did something I hadn’t even thought to do. He took an untouched hank of her hair, separated out a few strands and held them in front of her nose and mouth to see if there was any air passing at all to stir them, but there was nothing. With a heavy heart, I walked the few paces to the other bed.
The woman who lay there—Iphigenia?—had clearly been through torments I didn’t want to fathom. She was all torn up. I could see her chest rise just slightly, and heard a single breath escape. Then, as if it had taken her soul with it, she lay still. I cried out and readied myself to do chest compressions and CPR when another breath issued forth, no less heart-wrenching. It was too shallow and far too slow. I didn’t know how much longer she’d hold on… And that was when I noticed that there was something glinting inside her chest as well. At a guess yet another of the insidious coins. I picked up the house phone and dialed 9-1-1 then held my hand over the receiver as it started to connect. “What do we do about Jessica and Thalia?” I asked. “Do I tell them two victims or four or…?”
Apollo looked away from Sulis to me. “I don’t like this. Any of it. But…you’d better tell them four. These ladies need medical help and right now we’re not in a position to give it to them.”
“What about the Set disks? We can’t just leave them behind for anyone to touch. We don’t know if they’re a one-time-use sort of thing or if they can still infect others.”
“What choice do we have? Doctors use gloves and all that. They should be safe enough.”
“But what if—”
“Hello? Hello,” came a voice. “What is the nature of your emergency?” Time was up. Even if I had the leisure to think it all through, I wasn’t sure Genie had that kind of time. I explained everything to the dispatcher as best I could, which was to say “not very well”. I told her we needed medical help, stat. I told her it was pretty clearly a crime scene and that based on the violence it might have something to do with that case in the Hollywood Hills and that the police might want to come along. I could only hope that this would be enough to get the disks handled with care and with kid gloves, knowing they could be evidence and all that.
I was told to stay on the line and had every intention of doing so, but just then Hermes’s frantic face appeared in the air right before me.
“We need you!” he said, looking around and catching my gaze. “Bring Sigyn’s tracker.”
“What’s happened?” Apollo asked, at the same time the dispatcher said, “Is there someone there with you?”
I ignored her, hitting the Mute button and waiting for Hermes to continue. “We’ve got Richie.” I didn’t even have time to process relief at that before he went on. “But Ian’s got Neith.”
“What? What happened?” I asked.
“Another blast from that chaos amulet or whatever it is the one is wearing. You do not want to see modern art come to life.”
Crap, crap, crap. “We’re on it,” I said. “Apollo, do you want to work with Hermes to turn his window into a portal?”
“No!” Hermes said instantly, fear in his voice like I’d not heard it before. Mischief he was up for…mischief he could control, but it seemed chaos had him spooked. “Not with this field going here. You might get turned inside out. Or end up two dimensional or… Just no. Wings or wheels,” he said.
I looked at Apollo and he at me. “Wings are faster,” I said. “Want to go for a ride? We can be like Superman and Lois Lane. Only, I wear the tights in this family.”
“Good. No one wants to see my hairy legs in tights,” he said.
The banter was a reflex. Neither of us felt very funny. I could feel his concern through our link. And it only got worse when I said, “Wait, what about Jessica and the others? We can’t just leave them. What if Ian comes back? Or Jessica and Thalia get free? Or Genie stops breathing…”
“Poseidon’s puckery posterior! Fine, I’ll stay. You go. Anyway, you’ll be faster without me. Track Ian, save Neith. But be careful.”
“But—”
“Go!” he said. “I’ve got this.”
There was no time to argue. I unmuted my phone and answered the dispatcher’s increasingly worried questions. “Sorry, I’m here! I just…I have to get out of here. So much blood…” I quickly told her about Apollo so the police wouldn’t shoot him on sight, thinking he was a danger, and handed the phone over to him.
“I’m going to check the last two rooms before I go, just to be sure…” I said quietly. By my count, at least three of the Set coins had been used—one on Viktor, one on Genie and one on Thalia. Four coins, actually, because there was no way Jessica would have attacked if she hadn’t been under the influence, though at least her coin hadn’t been implanted straight into her chest. I didn’t think so anyway. For one, there was no blood and for another, she was still kicking, while Sulis, a goddess if not one of the biggies, wasn’t nearly so lucky.
What I didn’t understand was why the brothers had mutilated the goddesses. Because they were more than human and theoretically able to take it? Because with humans Set could get into their heads, but with someone stronger he needed to seize control of their very hearts? Had Genie and Sulis been earlier experiments, before the system was perfected with Thalia? Had the shock to their bodies been too great? Too many questions, too little time.
I walked quickly through the rest of the house, toward the back two bedrooms. The one at the end of the hall, the master, was a disaster of beer cans and bottles of even harder stuff. The comforter had been yanked off the bed to create a kind of nest or pallet on the floor. The bedding reeked with the acid bite of ammonia that signaled night sweats. The scent was strong enough to reach me even at the doorway. I stepped in quickly, careful to avoid landing in or on anything, and checked under the bed before moving to the accordion doors of the closet. I opened them in a flash, flailing inside with my blade, stabbing nothing but women’s clothing.
The next room…I closed the door to the next room without ever stepping inside. In fact, I raced for the outside and only made it as far as the tall grass before losing everything in my stomach. Newsflash: bacon does not taste as good coming up as it does going down and coffee downright burns.
I was gasping for breath by the time I was done, and then blowing air out my nose, hoping to get rid of the stench of death. The horror of that third room would haunt me forever. Three bodies stacked… But no, that would imply precision or order. They weren’t stacked, they were thrown aside, one on top of the other, their blood mingling and pooling on the floor.
I bent double for another heave, this one producing nothing but a thin trickle of pure stomach acid. My gut hurt, my brain hurt, my heart hurt most of all. Three more dead. Three innocents…a woman and her two young boys. Ian was going down. Hard. I’d rip his heart out. I’d… No, I wouldn’t do any of the things I sorely wanted to do. No more death or destruction or chaos. Not if I could help it. No more glory to Set. No. This needed to end.
I wondered how close the brothers were—brother now, singular—to freeing Set. One more death, say the murder of a major pantheonic player like Neith?
My precog didn’t just kick, it performed feats worthy of my family’s acrobatic troupe.
Could Neith be the final brick in the wall…or, rather, the final blow that busted Set’s chains?