The Return

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  day for several months before my granny took it away from me. The skirt was red with white ruffles, and the shirt had a red vest attached to it, also full of white ruffles that formed a “V” on each side. When I’d been four, this outfit had been cute—adorable even—but as a twenty-year-old, not so much.

  Mom was sitting across from me, looking so very young and so very vulnerable as she stared into her teacup. My breath caught as she tilted her cup to the side.

  Oh God, I remembered this morning. I would never forget this morning.

  Closing my eyes tightly, I reopened them to find my mom staring at me. Her lips parted, and every muscle in my body strained to give flight, but I was rooted to my seat in that damn cowgirl dress, reliving the morning from sixteen years ago.

  “You’re destined for something great, baby.” Her deep-brown eyes roamed over my face, unfocused. “You have to be. I keep telling myself that’s the reason why you’re here. There has to be a reason why my life ended when yours began. There has to be a point to all this.”

  Like before, when I first heard those words, a very real pain sliced through my chest, cutting deep through tissues and organs. At four years old, I didn’t understand that those words meant I was unplanned and a mistake, but I had felt their meaning, and I had known in that moment that my mom hadn’t wanted me. I knew she loved me, but she hadn’t wanted me.

  The kitchen blurred as the dream faded away before Granny entered. Even as I was pulled out of the dream, existing somewhere between asleep and awake, I remembered that Granny had overheard Mom, and it hadn’t been pretty. Mom had spent the rest of the day in her bedroom, and my grandparents had taken me out for ice cream.

  Consciousness pressed against me as I dragged in a deep breath. It got hung up around the messy ball in the back of my throat, but there was a nagging suspicion that there was something more important that I needed to pay attention to, something other than what my mom had said so many years ago.

  Nearby footsteps tickled my ears, and I forced my eyes open, blinking my surroundings into focus. The ceiling was unfamiliar. Satiny-white, with polished, exposed beams, it was a hell of a lot more fancy than the drop ceiling in my dorm. My gaze crawled past a huge ceiling fan to a flat screen the size of a small car mounted to the wall, and then to the large desk under it.

  This was so not my dorm, and come to think of it, the bed in my dorm wasn’t this fluffy-cloud comfortable, and neither were the sheets or the blanket practically tucked up to my chin.

  Holy crap.

  My gaze darted to the left, to a door that was ajar. I caught sight of a massive bathroom. Heart thumping, I checked out the scenery to my right and my mouth dropped open.

  Seth stood by a large window. The blinds were up and the curtains were pulled back. It was night out, but who cared about that? He was missing a shirt. Looking out the window, he had his back to me and all that golden skin was on display.

  Muscles along his back and his shoulders rolled, flexed, and did a myriad of fascinating things as he dragged a white towel through his wet hair. When he lowered his arms, the ends of his blond hair brushed his shoulders. He turned around, and goodness, the nylon sweats he wore hung so low on his hips it was almost indecent.

  That boy worked out—and then some.

  On either side of his hips, there were these indentations that begged to be touched, but then there were his abs. Six-pack? Was it possible to have an eight-pack? I think he had one. Smooth skin stretched over tightly rolled muscles. I bet I could’ve done a week’s worth of laundry on his stomach. Probably would be a heck of a lot more fun way to wash clothes. The near-perfect, if not completely perfect, body came complete with actual pecs, and I’d never really seen a guy in real life with actual pecs. They were unreal, but totally—

  “Do you want to touch?”

  Eyes darting up to his face in surprise, I felt my body burn red-hot. “E-excuse me?”

  His lips curved up and his bicep tensed as he tossed the towel across the room. He stood at the side of the bed, arms at his sides, completely comfortable with how much flesh he was showing off. Then again, I’d walk around naked if I were a dude and had a body like that, so…

  “You were staring at me for so long, I was asking if you wanted to touch,” he repeated, and my face started flaming.

  “I don’t want to touch. And I wasn’t staring.”

  The half-grin spread. “You weren’t?”

  I shook my head. “No, I wasn’t. I was just…lost in thought.” Blowing a strand of hair out of my face, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. “And it’s rude to point out if someone is staring at you.”

  He arched a brow as he folded his arms across his chest. Yikes! More interesting muscle movement. “Isn’t it more rude to be staring at someone?”

  I could see a nipple peeking out from where his arms were folded. Who knew a nipple on a guy could be so…attractive? The skin was flat, dusky, and the nip—

  “I think you’re wrong,” he replied dryly. “And you’re staring. Again.”

  Crap! I was. I forced my gaze to the forest-green comforter. “I was not staring. I dazed off again. I have a habit of dazing off. So don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I’m totally flattered.”

  I huffed.

  “So, let me guess. You like shiny things?”

  “What?” I looked at him again, but this time I kept my gaze on his face. “Shiny things?”

  He was fully grinning now. “Yeah, shiny things. Like ADD. Your dad has a mad case of it.”

  “My dad…” I trailed off as the last couple of hours rushed to the surface. “Oh my God!” Here I was, sitting here and staring at this guy, arguing about shiny things when my entire world had imploded with crazy.

  Seth moved closer to the bed. “Are you going to freak out and run again? If so, I’d like to put some shoes on.”

  Ignoring him, I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead as I stared at the comforter again. My head spun like I’d drunk half a bottle of tequila in less than an hour. My stomach roiled and I swallowed down the sudden rise of nausea. I remembered being outside the library and the odd way Jesse had looked as Seth had sent him off. I remembered every insane thing Seth had said, and I remembered running to my dorm, to Erin… and holy crap, what had she turned into? A giant bat?

  Start small. That’s what I told myself as my heart rate picked up. I needed to start with the small stuff. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in my hotel room. We’re about a mile off campus.” He paused. “You’re safe here.”

  Safe from what? Oh yes, flying creatures, Titans, and guys with creepy, all-black eyes. “Did I…pass out?” That was kind of embarrassing.

  He nodded. “You hit your head. Kind of got in the way of a wing. I know it’s a lot to deal with,” he continued, his voice low, as if any loud noise would send me scurrying into a panic. “Everything you thought you knew about the world is wrong and blah, blah, but we really don’t have time for another freak out. Like I said, you’re safe, but just for now. That thing back there—it was a shade, a soul that escaped Tartarus along with the Titans. They’re dangerous in spirit form and they can also ride mortal bodies. It wasn’t the only one here, but that’s beside the point. It knows you’re here, so that means they know you’re here.”

  Lowering my hand, I looked at him sharply. “Wow.”

  One shoulder rose. “It’s the truth.”

  My gaze dipped, and I pursed my lips. “Can you put on a shirt?”

  A small grin formed. “No.”

  Frustration rose, mixing with confusion, as my head sought to catch up with everything. Denials formed on the tip of my tongue, but as I looked away, I shook my head slowly.

  “Do you think none of this is real?” he asked, and the bed dipped as he sat beside me. I hadn’t even heard him move. “You’re awake. And you’re holding a conversation with me again.” He reached out, trailing his fingers over my forearm. “And you feel that, right? It’s
real.”

  I sucked in an unsteady breath. Yeah, I felt the wave of tingles that traveled to the tips of my fingers. “My mom is sick,” I blurted out, and he pulled his hand away as he tilted his head to the side. Damp strands clung to his cheek. My fingers tightened on the edge of the green comforter. “She has a mental illness— schizophrenia. And there were times when she’d have episodes that lasted days and she would hallucinate people and locations. And schizophrenia—it can be hereditary.”

  His golden gaze swept over my face, intense and strange. “And you think that is what this is? That you have this sickness?”

  A moment passed as embarrassment scaled my cheeks. Developing the illness was one of my greatest fears, because I knew firsthand how hard it was to deal with. “I don’t know what to believe.” My head felt woolly, my throat dry. I remembered hitting a wall. “Maybe it’s a concussion and—”

  “You don’t have a concussion. We checked you over.”

  We. A cold air swept through my chest as the events in my room replayed in my mind. “Erin. Oh my God. What…what is she?”

  Seth placed one hand on the bed next to my legs as he raised the other, shoving his fingers through his damp hair. “She’s a furie. They usually go after those who’ve escaped judgment, and the gods use them as a warning system. Your friend can get pretty vicious, as you saw. Furies are no joke. They aren’t a big fan of me.”

  A furie. My friend and roommate was a furie. A laugh escaped me and it quickly faded as an empty feeling opened up in my chest. “Is she really my friend?”

  His brows rose. “I’d say so. She’s rather protective of you. You should’ve seen her when I took you. Not fun.”

  I didn’t say anything, because I doubted he’d understand, but everything Erin had told me had to have been a lie if she was some kind of furie. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. “Where is she?”

  “There was a bit of a mess to clean up, and she’s gathering up your stuff, but that’s not really important right now.” He shifted closer and our gazes met. “I’m going to try this again, okay?”

  Pressing my lips together, I nodded. My knuckles started to ache from how tightly I was clenching the blanket.

  “Your father is Apollo, and that does make you a demigod.”

  “But…I’m not special,” I said, and then realized how lame that sounded when he grinned. “I mean, demigods have powers, right? I remember reading about Hercules and some others. They were super-strong, and I can’t even jog a mile without getting out of breath or having a leg cramp.”

  “Well, that’s good to know, in case I need you to run fast.” He cast a bland look in my direction. “Your abilities were bound at birth, along with those of the others.”

  “Others?”

  He nodded. “I don’t know how much you know about Greek mythology, but only half of what they teach in the mortal schools is true. The one thing you do need to know is that the gods are very powerful, but they suck at cognitive thinking skills.”

  “Um.” An ache started at my temples. “Alrighty, then.”

  “They do things without really thinking them through, which is how we’re in this situation now,” he continued as he turned his gaze to the open window.

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about this situation. “And, you’re not a demigod. You’re the pollen-ann?”

  “Apollyon,” he said, sighing. “Like I told you before, my mom was a pure and my father was a half. I didn’t know him.”

  “I didn’t know my dad, either.” When he glanced back at me, I felt my cheeks heat. “Well, duh. You know that.”

  “Well, I guess we also have that in common, don’t we?” His eyes flashed a bright amber, startling me with their intensity. “You and I might have some things in common, but we’re nothing alike and there’s nothing to bond over.”

  Drawing back against the headboard, I was stung, and I wasn’t quite sure why, but the tone of his words had been harsh. “I wasn’t trying to bond with you.”

  He turned his gaze back to the window and didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Not every pure and half who get together create an Apollyon. Usually there’s some kind of divine intervention, but relationships between pures and halfs were forbidden because of the threat of an Apollyon being born.”

  Pushing away the sting of his earlier words, I focused on what was important. “Why?”

  “There’s only supposed to be one Apollyon in a generation. We’re as powerful as a demigod, able to control the four elements— air, water, fire, and earth—and we control the fifth—akasha. But when there are two Apollyons, we can…we’re connected in a way that’s hard to explain. We can pull energy from each other, and one of us, if we do a certain ritual on the other, can become a God Killer, something a demigod cannot do. And being a God Killer basically means what you’d think it does. Needless to say, the gods aren’t thrilled whenever there are two Apollyons, because of that potential.”

  All of this was Greek to me. Literally. But it was fascinating.

  Twisting at the waist, he faced me again. “I’m going to give you the CliffsNotes version of what went down.”

  I was surprised he hadn’t said he was going to give me the version for dummies, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “I shouldn’t have been born,” he stated pointedly.

  “Whoa.” My eyes widened. “That’s a bit harsh.” And also a bit too close to home for my liking.

  He shrugged, but there was a hardness to his jaw that said it affected him more than he led on. “There was already another Apollyon lined up to be born. All of them are descendants of Apollo, one way or another. But I was born before…before her, and I was raised to be the Apollyon—schooled, trained to fight from the moment I could walk. My duty was to step in and handle situations the Sentinels couldn’t handle.”

  “Sentinels? Isn’t that a Transformer?”

  He chuckled, smiling slightly. “Sentinels are halfs and pures who train to keep things in order—to make sure no one gets out of hand and that the mortal world remains oblivious to what coexists among them. There’s a whole society—schools, universities, communities, clubs—you name it. It’s out there and mortals have no idea about any of it, Joe.”

  I frowned. “Don’t call me Joe. I’m not a dude.”

  Seth ignored that. “Anyway, I was raised believing I was the only Apollyon. Until I was brought to Deity Island—a small island off the coast of North Carolina. Then I met the other and… Well, everything sort of went downhill from there. The gods knew that I wasn’t supposed to be the Apollyon, and they knew one of their own was seeking to betray them. Turns out that Ares, who made sure I came into existence, wanted to take over the world, bring it back to the glory days where gods ruled not just Olympus but also over the mortal realm.”

  Surprise shuttled through me. Ares was real? Goodness.

  “The gods took precautions when I was born. They knew they needed a backup plan in case one of the Apollyons became the God Killer, so they created twelve demigods, bound their powers, and left them alone. You’re one of them.”

  My head was spinning again. “So, I’m virtually Plan B?”

  “Actually, you’re virtually Plan C.”

  Well, damn. My birth was Plan C?

  “We fought Ares a year ago. One of the ways we battled him was by releasing one of the Titans from Tartarus,” he explained, and all I could think was holy crap, Tartarus is real? What about the guy who ferried the boat? “It was a crap plan from the get-go. Perses ended up freeing more Titans after we defeated Ares, because all the gods were weakened when we took Ares out. Due to some kind of cosmic bullshit, only the demigods can put them back in their place. So Plan C is being put into play.”

  “Um, I’m… I’m supposed to do what? Send a Titan back to hell?”

  “Tartarus isn’t hell. It’s a mixture of good, bad, and something in-between. And yes. Once the six remaining demigods are together, your powers will unbind.”

  “Wai
t. Remaining six? I thought there were twelve?”

  “There were twelve. Ares took out some of them.” He placed his hand over mine, causing me to jump. A slight, knowing grin appeared on his lips as he easily pried one of my hands free from the blanket. His hand slid off mine, leaving a shiver in its wake as he moved onto my other hand. “There are six, but it appears the Titans got to two of them. They aren’t dead. Not yet.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I asked the question. “What do the Titans want from them?”

  His lashes lowered, shielding his gaze. “The Titans are weak, and they can feed off of gods and demigods to regain their strength.”

  “Feed? Oh my God.”

  He cocked his head to the side and lifted his lashes. “They can drain the demigods of their aether, which is what makes our blood different from mortals’. Gods have the most aether, followed by demigods, the Apollyon, pures, and then halfs.”

  Now that my hands weren’t clenching anything and he was still holding onto one of them, I didn’t know what to do with them. “That’s a lot to deal with.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve got to deal with this.”

  “I am,” I replied. “I’m trying.”

  His hand slid up to my wrist and the simple caress sent a ripple of warmth along my arm. “I’m not sure if you are, or if you still think you’re hallucinating pink elephants. Well, in your case, it would be a pink Pegasus. And yes, Pegasus is real. I’ve never seen it personally, but it’s around.”