“Works for me,” Nick said, and Aidan and Liam nodded.
“Good.” Connors turned his attention to Barnard and his Eastern European muscle. “What about you fellas?”
Barnard’s expression was bland, but his eyes burned. “Of course, sheriff. Nicholas.” He nodded shortly to Nick, and there was a wealth of unpleasant promises in that one gesture. “We’ll pick this up later, pet.”
He headed for the rear gate, Pitor and Milan in tow. Once they were gone, Nick wiped his sweaty palms off on his jeans as surreptitiously as possible. “Thank you, sheriff,” he said quietly.
The sheriff pushed his sunglasses down with one finger, revealing sharp brown eyes. “I take it those boys had an issue with you, Mister Gardiner?”
“Doctor.” He grimaced. “And you could say that.”
Connors grunted. “And your friends are?”
The mers looked uncomfortable at the sheriff’s scrutiny. “Aidan and Liam O’Connell,” Nick lied quickly. “They’re friends of mine from Chicago. We just rented the cottage next to Ian’s.”
Connors glanced at his deputy, then back at them. “You don’t mind if I check that out with Miz Kuttner, do you?”
“Not at all. Although she hasn’t met Liam yet.” He glanced at the tall mer. “He was kind of an unexpected addition.”
“Mm-hm. And your buddy with the meat walls?”
Nick tried to think. Quite apart from avoiding any possible law enforcement homophobia, he was pretty sure Ian didn’t want the local authorities paying closer attention to the cove. “Former associate of mine,” he lied. “I just ended a joint project, and he didn’t like it. He has a problem taking no for an answer.”
“I know the type.” Connor sighed. “Is he likely to hang around?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. I don’t want to cause trouble here.”
Both of the officers snorted at that. “Doc, this is a beach town,” Connors said drily. “Between drunken college students and drug runners, we’re kinda used to trouble. If he shows up at the cove, give my office a call and I’ll send a couple of deputies out.”
Nick was aware of Aidan and Liam moving to flank him. “Thank you. Uh, we better get going.”
The officers escorted them to the front entrance, pointedly checking the street. Barnard and his bodyguards were nowhere to be seen. “You have a car around here somewhere?” the sheriff asked.
“Ian’s waiting for me at The Lady’s Touch.”
“We’ll walk him there,” Aidan offered.
“Good idea. You have a good day, doc, boys.” Connor gave them all a last nod, then set off towards the beach with his deputy in tow.
Nick sucked in a deep breath, closing his eyes. He’d known Barnard was possessive, but this had gone well beyond possessiveness into psychotic behavior. I need to talk to Ian. Maybe Bythos can do something about that crazy bastard.
Norma’s leash tugged at his wrist, and he opened his eyes to see Aidan crouched down next to the terrier, scratching her behind the ears. “Good girl,” the mer crooned softly. “Thank you for finding us.”
“Yeah, about that.” Nick coughed, clearing his throat. “What are you two doing here?”
“We came back a little early,” Aidan shot a look at Liam.
“We missed you,” Liam said simply, hazel blue eyes shining in the sunlight. “So we came looking for you.”
Warmth spread through his chest, and the purest sense of relief. “How did you know I was here?”
“Lord Bythos said you were with his mate, so we figured we’d search for his car.” Liam reached down and rubbed Norma’s head. “And then this little beauty found us and led us to you.”
Norma was going to be one spoiled terrier for the foreseeable future. “Thank God for that,” he muttered. “And thank you for coming after me.”
Aidan reached out and rubbed his shoulder. “Still don’t want me to kill him for you?”
Nick coughed out a startled laugh. “Let me think about that again, okay?” He shuddered, and Aidan slid an arm around him. “Shit. I’m sorry. I really thought he was going to take me.”
“He’s not taking you,” Aidan said, pulling him closer. “We swear it, Nick.”
“We do,” Liam said. “He’ll have to go through us first. And we’re damned hard to kill.”
Nick leaned into the comfort of Aidan’s arm. “Can we just get out of here?”
“Of course,” Liam said. The three of them started walking back to the shop, Norma trotting at Nick’s side and the mers flanking him. Aidan constantly scanned the street as they strolled, looking over his shoulder every so often to make sure no one was following them.
As they approached The Lady’s Touch, Nick saw Ian pacing on the sidewalk, a panicked look on his face. “Where the hell were you?” he yelled when he spotted them, waving his phone. “I’ve been trying to call you, goddamnit.”
“Crap. I left my phone at the cottage,” Nick admitted.
Ian growled under his breath. “By said Chiron is having a meltdown. Apparently you’re in some kind of danger.” He eyed the mers. “Or were, anyway.”
“I just ran into Barnard and his bodyguards. He decided he was going to haul me back to Chicago,” Nick said. “Luckily Aidan and Liam found me first, and then your Sheriff Connors ran him off.”
Ian’s lips pulled back in a rictus grin. “Thank God for Jimmy. Okay, we’re going back to the cove now and figuring out how to deal with that fucking lunatic. All of you, get in the car.”
The mers looked to him, eyes wide. “You heard the man,” Nick said, nodding at Ian’s Corolla.
****
“You moron,” Chiron snapped. “Why the hell did you decide to wander off on your own?”
“And hello to you, too,” Nick replied sourly. He, Aidan, and Liam stood in the middle of Ian’s cottage, and the translucent centaur took up the other half. Ian hovered in the hallway leading to the guest rooms and kitchen, arms folded across his chest. “Just out of curiosity, when did you find out I was going to be in danger? Because some advance notice that Barnard was in town looking for me would have been nice.”
His teacher threw his arms up. “I didn’t find out until it was happening, dammit. I’m a centaur, not Miss Cleo.”
“How did you find out?” Liam asked.
Chiron made a decidedly horsey-sounding snort. “Grandma decided to drop some knowledge on me. Since I can’t go among the slobbering masses I laughingly call humans anymore, I had to tag the Tiny Titan,” he jerked his head at Ian, “for an assist.”
“Back up,” Nick cut in. “Grandma?”
“Gaia. You know, the earth goddess, the avatar of the whole goddamn planet? For some reason she decided to step in and save your narrow ass from getting hauled off to Chi-town and turned into Barnard Whitfield’s personal pumpkin.”
Gods, mermen, crazy Nereids, crazier ex-Doms. Now apparently the planet itself had an interest in him. It was all suddenly too much. Nick’s knees went watery, and he dropped onto the couch. “Shit,” he whispered. “Shit. Why is this happening to me?”
Distantly, he heard Chiron say, “You two, get his head between his knees.”
Arms curved around his back and a large hand slid into his hair, gently cupping his skull and pushing it down between his knees. He found himself hunched over, staring at his sneakers and the area rug underneath them.
“Just breathe, Nick,” he heard Liam say softly, hand still in his hair and rubbing his scalp. Aidan performed the same motion on his back, rubbing in wide, gentle circles. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“Lying to him isn’t going to help, tadpole.” A pair of translucent hooves appeared in his line of sight. “As to why this is all happening to you, it’s part of your fate as the Bearer.” Chiron sounded gruff but genuinely sympathetic. “I know that doesn’t help at all, but those three old bats seem to think you’re strong enough to handle it.”
Taking in a deep breath, Nick slowly sat up. The mers’ hands tactfully
disappeared, Liam and Aidan leaning back to give him space. He wished they hadn’t stopped touching him. It helped keep his panic at bay. “Who do I look like, Superman? I can’t do this,” he said, almost pleading. “I’m just an ER doc. I’m not a god, or a merman, or anything special like that. I can’t do this.”
Ian stood next to the mers, looking mournful. “Nick, I know just how confused you are right now, trust me,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, you’ve got a lot of people who will help you figure out what you’re supposed to do.”
“Listen to blondie,” Chiron said. “As for not being anything special, you’re the Bearer of Asclepius’s Rod. That makes you a pretty powerful player in this game.”
“What game?” Nick said, almost yelping the words. “Fighting a crazy goddess who’s pissed off at humans and wants to destroy the Earth? That game? Jesus, I don’t even know where to start!”
“I believe I can help with that,” an urbane voice said.
Ian and Chiron turned, revealing a tall, sleekly muscled man with curly auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard standing behind them. The man wore a plain cream Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up and linen slacks over topsiders, but the sheer amount of power that radiated from him was overwhelming, crawling over Nick’s skin and clamping down on his lungs. He grabbed at his chest as he started panting shallowly, growing dizzy from the lack of oxygen.
Ian glanced at the newcomer. “Could you turn down the god thing? He can’t breathe.”
The tall man blinked. “Ah. My apologies.”
The pressure in the room disappeared. Nick whooped in a deep lungful of air. “What—what was that?” he gasped.
“Godhood, apparently.” Ian frowned. “I didn’t have that reaction to you when we first met.”
The tall man lifted his chin. “You were already a god by that time, even though you didn’t know it. And even if you’d still been mortal, your role as agapetos to my sons would have given you, how shall I put it, a natural tolerance.” His attention turned to Nick. “My apologies, Bearer. I didn’t mean to distress you. It’s been some time since I appeared to a mortal.”
Nick struggled against the urge to start screaming. “Who are you?” he said raggedly.
“I am Poseidon, Lord of the Seas.” The man—god—gave him a regal nod. “You may have heard of me?”
Nick mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “…yes?”
Poseidon’s eyes held a faint gleam of amusement now. “Your coming has resonated around the world, Bearer. I’m hoping that with Chiron and Pythia’s guidance, you can help us with our current situation.”
Once again, that pressure behind the title of Bearer. “But I don’t know what to do,” Nick said. “I keep saying that, and nobody is listening to me.”
The god thought for a moment, then nodded. “Stand and give me your hands, Bearer.”
Part of him wanted to refuse, terrified of touching a being who could obviously blast him out of existence. But there was a bone-deep tone of authority in Poseidon’s voice that would have commanded automatic obedience from any human on earth, not just the submissive ones.
Shaking, he stood and put his hands into the god’s. They felt warm and strong as they closed around his own in a protective grip.
Nick twitched. It was as if a switch had been thrown. All of his anxieties were gone, smoothed out into a calm, even plain. “That’s better,” Poseidon said conversationally. “You’ve been through a great deal of turmoil in the last few days, Nicholas.”
His new mellowness was holding, but the name still pricked at him. “Call me Nick,” he said absentmindedly. “Barnard calls me Nicholas. I hate it.”
“Nick, then. I thought it might be easier to explain things if I brought you here.”
He blinked. Ian’s living room had disappeared, and the two of them stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Overhead, the sun had already passed its meridian and was headed for the west, and the sky behind them was edged with twilight. “Where are we?”
“Between worlds. A sort of viewing place.” The god nodded at the rippling waves below. “Watch the waters.”
Nick did. The waves settled, and images began to surface like slides projected on a blank wall. A beautiful dark-haired woman with huge blue eyes and a wide smile stepped into the ocean, her thin tunic quickly becoming transparent as she sank into the water. The woman dove under the surface, swimming down with an efficient full-body stroke that reminded Nick of dolphins.
He realized she was a goddess, a sea goddess. With no apparent need for air, she glided along the sandy, rock-strewn bottom until she came to a collection of boulders. Working her way between two of them, she came to a natural chamber and curled up, shutting her eyes like a waterborne Princess Aurora falling into her magical slumber.
The image changed. The clear water darkened as thick, sticky-looking tendrils drifted through it, glazing the boulders and the goddess’s chamber. As time passed the oily coating thickened, layer by layer. It sparkled once, as if reflecting tiny pinpoints of light from overhead.
And then a hand emerged from the chamber. The thick liquid coated it as well, and what flesh he could see was pale, almost grey. Long fingers that now ended in ragged talons clawed frantically at the rock, dispersing the oily coating into the water.
What emerged from the chamber could only be called monstrous. The flesh of the goddess’s body sagged like a candle left in hot sunlight for too long. Gaping holes had been eaten into her skin, revealing muscle and yellow bone. The patches of her remaining hair was nicotine-white and ragged, and her face—
Nick tried to understand what had happened to that beautiful face. It was as if someone had unhinged the jaw and broken it, leaving it to swell and heal crookedly. Inside her mouth he could see blackened, jagged teeth that gashed against the thin lips, splitting them and releasing an ichor into the water. Her nose was now a gaping hole bisected by a sliver of cartilage, bordered on either side by swollen, distorted cheekbones, and her eyes were now a solid greyish white with no sign of blue.
Bony hands felt at her body, then her face. Those terrible eyes widened even further, and she threw her head back and screamed into the water. Nick could feel the vibration prickling painfully against his skin, and his heart clenched in horrified pity.
“Thetis,” Poseidon said quietly. “Once the First Nereid, goddess of the sea and protector of sailors. And now, she has been turned into this.”
“How?”
“We don’t know. It was an oil spill that fouled her chamber, but it shouldn’t have caused something this … drastic.” Poseidon’s tone was subtly angry, but Nick couldn’t tell if it was due to the Nereid’s injuries or his own confusion at what had caused them. “Something changed her, turned her into the walking nightmare you now see. It drove her mad, Nick.”
The misshapen creature surged upwards from her fouled bower, jaw gaping as she continued to shriek. The image changed, pulling back to show an old fishing boat floating on a still expanse of water. Waves suddenly churned under the craft, tossing it back and forth like a toy in a child’s tub. From his vantage point he thought he saw a man fall overboard.
“The protector of sailors, turned their hunter.” Poseidon sighed, and the watery image disappeared as waves covered it. “She was clever in her madness, however, evading my notice until she’d grown strong in her new form. It was only then that she started stealing mermaids, poisoning them with her new venom and turning them into ravening beasts from mer legend.”
Nick remembered Aidan’s comments about protecting pods from distorted monsters. “Ilko—”
“Ilkothelloi—sea wolves. I set my son Aphros to hunting them, and he has done a fine job of thinning their numbers. But I suspect Thetis won’t stop with ilkothelloi.” His lips thinned. “She always did like to tinker.”
Nick imagined mutant sea creatures crawling through the depths, and shuddered. “Do you know if she’s done anything else yet?”
“No,
but I wouldn’t put it past her. She came very close to bringing Bythos over to her side. If it hadn’t been for Gaia and Ian, we would have lost him.”
This was the first he’d heard of an attack on the twins. “What did Ian do?”
Posiedon looked grim. “Purified him, under Gaia’s instruction. But it took a long time and was a drain on Ian’s strength. We can’t rely on him being able to stop the spread of Thetis’s madness to other creatures.”
A thought slammed into him, making his knees wobble. “Oh, my God. That’s why you need the Bearer, isn’t it?” he said. “You need someone to figure out what’s wrong with Thetis.”
“And determine a way to cure her, if possible. If not, to stop her.” The god inclined his head at Nick. “I suspect that is why Gaia has allowed Asclepius’s Rod to come back into the world at this time. As to why you’ve been chosen to bear it, you would have to take that up with the Fates.”
The thought of what he was being asked to do was mind-numbing. “Why don’t you ask Asclepius to do it? I mean, he’s actually a god,” Nick said. “He’d have a much better chance of getting close to her than I would.”
Poseidon squinted at the setting sun. “If I knew where he was, I would do just that. But the modern world has not been kind to the gods. Some of us have managed to retain our power, of course, but others have faded, grown weak and listless over the millennia.”
“Like Chiron?”
A sea-blue eye focused on him. “Chiron is a special case. In too much pain to live, his unique half-existence was the best my brothers Zeus and Hades could do for him. No, gods who fade become much like humans, but ones who drift along without purpose or identity, condemned to an immortal life that is utterly empty.”
Olympic Cove 2-Breaker Zone Page 16