“Come on.” He guided her towards the main road, where his bike was waiting, and hailed a cab instead.
Keras was right.
She was in no condition to teleport, and she was definitely in no condition to ride on the back of his bike with a damned… whatever was in that case she clutched like it was her baby.
He opened the door of the taxi for her, and she turned to face him. He held his hands out to her, expecting her to place the case into them so she could get into the cab.
Her tropical eyes suddenly brightened.
Her lips parted and the three words that fell from them struck him hard.
“I know you.”
And then she promptly passed out.
Cal caught her, and somehow managed to catch the case too before it hit the pavement. He stared down at her where she leaned backwards over his arm, out cold, rain bouncing off her pale cheeks and darkening her golden hair.
It wasn’t possible that she remembered him. The waters of the Lethe worked on mortals without fail, erasing everything that had occurred in the timeframe chosen by the one who had given the water to them. His father wouldn’t have made a mistake. Hades could see memories as easily as Keras could, would have carefully chosen the moment where the wipe began.
A thought surfaced, accompanied by a flash of that blood-soaked street.
Stirred a feeling inside him as he gazed down at the beauty in his arms.
Maybe he should have let Keras take a peek at her memories.
Because they had both been wrong about her.
Whatever she was, she wasn’t mortal.
She felt like one. Acted like one.
But only an immortal could have ripped apart those daemons in the way she had.
And only an immortal could resist the waters of the Lethe.
And the only immortals capable of that came from one realm.
The Underworld.
Chapter 8
“You’re heavier than you look,” a male voice muttered close to her ear, sliding like silk over her senses to rouse a hazy heat in her veins, fire that licked over her skin in the blissful moment between sleep and waking.
Weight pressed down on her chest, dragging her violently back into the world.
Panic lanced her as a faint memory flashed across her mind, gained clarity and hit her like a wrecking ball.
A dead body draped over her, pinning her beneath its weight.
It was on her again.
She blindly shoved, dislodging the weight, and someone—the man?—pressed it back down on her.
“Careful. I think you’d be pissed if you broke that. Clutched the damned thing like a baby.” He spoke in English, his accent strange. Somewhere between London and something else.
A word popped into her head out of nowhere.
Greek.
A sudden flash of a black-walled bedroom filled her mind and then it was gone, leaving her rattled.
“What’s in that thing anyway?” he continued, curiosity tingeing his voice now. A voice that was warm—and familiar.
Did she know him? There were a few English people in her class. Was he one of them?
She immediately discounted that. Someone from her school would have known what was in the case.
“Not a violin that’s for sure. There’s that other one… fuck… what’s it called?” He huffed. “What’s it matter? Not like sleeping beauty is listening to me. I can appear as ignorant as Marek and Keras paint me to be without tarnishing my rep.”
Sleeping beauty? Marek? Keras?
Keras.
She vaguely remembered that name.
Another one had followed it, spoken in a regal voice that had held a note of anger and irritation.
Calistos.
She frowned as she tried to recall what had happened. How had she met this man? Where was he taking her? Why was he carrying her?
She felt that should have panicked her, but her body felt heavy, as if someone had drained every last drop of energy from her. Thick fog shrouded her mind, memories peeking through now and again. One of them tore a cry from her throat.
Her father.
Covered in that dreadful white sheet.
Gone.
“Woah there.” The man paused and cradled her closer. “I’m not going to hurt you. Quit struggling.”
Struggling? She stilled as she realised she had been fighting him and had come dangerously close to dislodging the case on her lap. She clutched it to her.
“Cello.” She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to tell him that. She just needed a moment, five seconds of normal again, and her cello was now the only thing in her life that still made sense to her.
That was still the same.
“What now? That some fancy way of saying hello… oh… cello. It’s a fucking cello. Thanks. Would’ve bugged me for days.” He started moving again, and added under his breath. “Fucked if I would’ve asked Marek. Old git would have known the answer but then I wouldn’t hear the end of it.”
He put on a brusque voice.
“Cal is so dumb. He does not even know the instruments of an orchestra, or Botticelli’s sonata.”
Marinda bit her tongue but the words escaped her anyway. “Botticelli was a painter.”
“Fuck me,” he muttered and her feet suddenly dropped, hitting the floor.
She fumbled with her cello, fear rushing through her, sending a wave of prickles dancing over her skin as she felt she might drop it after all.
Only it didn’t fall.
She finally cracked her eyes open as his hand held her arm, keeping her upright.
His other hand clutched the neck of the cello case.
He had strong hands. Large.
“Sorry.” She hugged the cello to her chest, tugging it out of his grip. “If you could just… I can go.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
She tensed.
He bit out a ripe curse. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I mean… you’re safe here. You’ve had a hell of a night and my big bro was pretty clear that I have to take care of you while he lets my brothers know what went down.”
He stepped in front of her and leaned over, so their eyes were level.
Eyes like a storm.
They looked grey one moment and blue the next.
That feeling stirred again.
“Do I know you?” she whispered, frowning at him, trying to place him. Whenever she felt she might remember him, the memory slipped through her fingers like water.
“Maybe.” He tilted his head and frowned right back at her before sighing. “You shouldn’t. That’s for sure.”
“What does that mean?” She risked a glance around her, charting her surroundings.
Knowing the nearest escape route seemed like a good thing.
He shrugged wide shoulders, rolling them beneath a wet, dark green T-shirt. “Forget I said it.”
He cracked a smile, as if he had made a funny joke.
She couldn’t find anything funny about her current situation.
Apparently, she was in a rather glamourous living room that was bigger than her entire apartment, and then some, with a strange but familiar man, who had to keep her with him for some reason.
Because his big brother had ordered it.
A frown flickered on her brow as she remembered another man. Neat black hair. Expensive dark suit. Incredible green eyes. The bone structure of a supermodel.
Or a god.
Her father’s words pinged into her head.
The fairy tales he had told her about gods were real, and that meant he had foreseen her meeting one. Impossible. She barked out a laugh and the man looked at her as if she had gone insane. Maybe she had.
Nothing made any sense anymore.
Except maybe one thing.
She looked at the man towering over her, right into his stormy eyes as he brushed the tangled strands of his blond hair back from his face, slicking it into his ponytail.
“I know you.�
� She narrowed her eyes on him, seeking something in his. A denial? An admission that he knew her too? She peered deeper. He averted his gaze and ran a hand around the back of his neck. That feeling grew stronger inside her. Surer. This time, she sounded more confident. “I know you.”
And then it hit her.
Sent her scooting backwards to place as much distance as possible between them.
“You’re that drug addict that grabbed me in the hospital and used me as a human shield!”
He grimaced, and followed it with a scowl in her direction. “Drug addict? What gave you the idea I’m on drugs?”
“You jacked up off that gurney like you were high on something.” Not that she knew what people looked like when they were high. Only what she had seen in movies and television shows, and he hadn’t been anything like that. “You were crazy strong for the amount of blood you had lost… and then you took me hostage.”
She looked around herself at the plush furnishings, the elegant antique cabinets that lined the walls, and the expensive looking cream couches that faced a solid marble fireplace.
“Did you bring me here to rob this place? I don’t have much money, but I’ll give you what I have if you forget about stealing from this place and let me go.” She tugged her cello tighter against her. “But I won’t give you this.”
Her voice cracked and tears burned the backs of her eyes, had her throat closing as she thought about her father and everything crashed down on her again. Her nightmare just kept getting worse and worse.
“Please. Just let me go.” She gathered her courage and looked at him.
Rather than looking angry, or close to hurting her, he looked… affronted.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and she tensed. Was he going for a weapon?
He noticed how she stiffened and his look soured further.
“For starters, I’m not a drug addict. I was in a lot of pain and someone gave me something they shouldn’t have given me. It wasn’t my fault. I was… messed up.” He eased his hands out of his pockets and held them up beside his head, revealing a phone in his right one. “I just wanted to call for backup. I didn’t sign up for several rounds of crazy cellist.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you for a second. Backup? You’re probably calling more of your junkie friends.”
He huffed again. “I. Am. Not. A. Junkie!”
She flinched with each word as he hurled them at her. His eyes grew tempestuous, deep grey seeming to swirl among the tranquil blue. Like a lightning storm brewing.
And was she imagining it or was there a breeze in the room?
She looked down at her dark jeans. They shifted as if wind was buffeting them. She glanced over her shoulder at the tall windows in the cream wall. The drapes swayed but the sashes were all closed.
The man muttered something, and when she looked back at him, he was looking at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His jaw flexed and tensed, his expression darkening, and then he reared back and cursed again.
“I’ll try this one more time before I call in the big guns.” He sucked down a hard breath, held it for a few seconds, and then exhaled slowly, as if he was seeking calm. Strangely, the odd breeze settled as he did that. “I’m not an addict, but I can’t have human medicine…”
Everything he said after that was lost on her as she was hurled back into a black-walled room, faced with a beautiful scarlet-haired woman dressed in layers of sheer onyx fabric.
Her soft voice rang in Marinda’s ears.
No human medicine.
She was launched forwards, to that dreadful evening when she had knelt in her father’s blood, watching him slip away from her.
She stood there, numbed as she replayed everything he had told her, as much as she could remember of it at least. He hadn’t been her biological father, and he’d had the power to see the future. Her mother had come to him for help and he had hidden her, and had kept Marinda secret, because someone wanted her.
She looked at the man standing on the other side of the room as he kept talking, his mouth moving soundlessly as she sank deeper into her own thoughts, trying to piece them together.
Was he that threat to her?
Part of her screamed that he was, but another part of her felt drawn to him, just as she had done that night she had met him in the hospital. It all came back to her. She had felt drawn to him, hadn’t been able to stop herself from going to him.
Why?
She looked more closely at him as he stopped talking and frowned at her.
What if he wasn’t with the men who had killed her father? He had taken her from that street, away from the horrible things that had happened there, and had brought her to this place and told her she was safe.
And she had the feeling he meant those words—that he would protect her.
Was this the man her father had told her about?
The god he had foreseen her meeting?
She had one way of testing that theory.
She locked gazes with him, so she didn’t miss even the slightest reaction.
His eyes narrowed. “You all right?”
“You’re a god,” she blurted and waited for him to announce that she was indeed crazy.
“Shit.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “You remember what happened after I took you. It shouldn’t be possible. The waters—”
“What do you know about the Underworld?” She couldn’t stop those words from rushing from her lips as they rose from her heart, shoving past the thousand things she had wanted to say to make it out there.
She didn’t remember what he had done with her, not really. Snippets came to her now and again, and she could remember everything that had happened at the hospital, but her memory of what had come after still wasn’t clear.
The stunned expression on his face slowly faded and he casually hiked his shoulders. “A lot, I guess. I was born there.”
Hope washed through her, buoyed her heart and had her taking a step towards him. Could he tell her about her mother? She would settle for just a few clues about her, the smallest scraps of information. She just wanted to know her.
Her father had died before he had been able to tell her what she was, and now she felt as if the only one who could do that was this man. She needed to know what she was, and why people were after her.
“My father…” She hesitated, suddenly aware of how he was watching her.
Studying her.
Could she trust him? If he was the one her father had spoken about, then she was meant to trust him. It was what her father had seen. But what if he wasn’t the one he had witnessed in her future?
“Your dad?” he prompted, the storm in his eyes giving way to curiosity.
“He told me that my… This is going to sound… a little bit crazy.” Mostly because she didn’t believe it herself, and she wasn’t one hundred percent certain the man standing opposite her was in fact a god and not just an addict with delusions of grandeur. “He said my mother was from the Underworld.”
She waited for him to laugh.
He scratched his chin, his eyebrows rising high on his forehead, and pursed his lips before he shrugged again. “Makes sense. Would explain why you remember me.”
He had said several times now that she shouldn’t remember him.
“Wait. Why am I not meant to be able to remember you?” She eased her cello down to rest at her feet and frowned at him.
“You, ah, were given the waters of the Lethe after I… might have… sort of… kidnapped you and took you to the Underworld.” He grinned, as if that would make it better, and then his expression shifted towards serious and his smile faded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let Father do that to you. It sucks when you can’t remember things. I know that. I should’ve tried harder, done something.”
“The water made me forget?” She wondered for a moment whether she could get another shot so she could forget the last two days, but guilt churned her stomach and she silen
tly cursed herself for even thinking about that.
Her father had been murdered, and it was probably normal to want that terrible memory gone, but she couldn’t forget. She had to do something to make his killers pay for their crime.
The man nodded. “But not forget. The amount of water Father gave you wasn’t enough. Whoever your mother was, she was pretty powerful.”
Marinda stared right through him as something else her father had said came back to her. “Powerful. Papa said that too. I’m more powerful than him. What does that even mean?”
She looked to him for an answer.
All he offered was another too-casual shrug. “Don’t know, but it might present a bit of a tricky problem. See, we just found out that our enemy has people from home in its ranks and that might sort of stick a suspect label on you.”
Marinda palmed the top of her cello case, hoping the feel of it would calm her as she stared at the man—the god of the Underworld—before her. Calm didn’t come, but she did get a terrible urge to use it as a weapon against him and flee.
“I’ll fight it of course, providing you give me some intel that proves otherwise. It’s hard to believe you might have been a plant in that hospital, but my brothers won’t rule anything out, not without evidence.” His words weren’t exactly comforting.
It sounded a lot like his brothers would want to lock her up, or worse.
She froze, tensing up as blood-splattered images flashed across her mind, a horrifying vision of a woman attacking her. One moment, she had been unleashing a battle cry, flying through the air with a blade in her hand. The next?
Something had torn her limb from limb, sending blood spraying everywhere. Blood that looked black.
Marinda looked down at her arms, at the black-streaked sleeves of her red coat.
Arms that matched those of the one who had ripped someone apart as if they were made of tissue paper.
She shook her head, slowly gathering speed as her heart accelerated, her blood thundering in her veins as the air around her seemed to thin. She couldn’t get enough of it, kept gasping for more. Her throat closed and the cold invaded, spreading through her body to leave her chilled and shaking.
“Hey… hey.” His voice swirled around her, wobbling in her ears as she fought for air and kept staring at the black streaks on her coat, kept seeing that woman being torn apart. Strong hands claimed her upper arms, his touch surprisingly gentle. His thumbs stroked her, fast at first and then slower, and her breathing slowed with them. “Hey… Just breathe. It’ll help. Deep breaths. Slow breaths. With me.”
Calistos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 5 Page 8