Bad Blood

by Lucienne Diver

  I could only pray that Tracy had seen it all from her window and that someone was out looking for me. Surely whatever else she made of the scene it would be clear enough that I’d been carried off. It was a cold comfort, since I could probably rot under the docks until summer before the discovery of my skeleton would ruin some poor tourist’s whole day.

  “Hey,” I said, just to be friendly.

  “Tide’s coming in,” he answered, voice like a boat being dragged over sand.

  My lips twisted and I tasted salt. “Gee, thanks for the warning.”

  “I’m going to watch you die.”

  “Nothing good on TV tonight, eh?”

  He snarled, revealing jagged teeth, too many of which came to a point.

  I swallowed and it hurt to get past the constriction in my throat. “So, you’re going to drown me like you did Sierra Talbot?” Couldn’t hurt to ask. I mean, what was he going to do, kill me? At least maybe I could solve the case before I died.

  “Don’t try your mind games on me, witch. You know very well I didn’t kill Sierra.”

  “No? Well, you’ll pardon me if I’m a bit skeptical, since my lungs are about to fill with that same saltwater.”

  Another wave came in as if in emphasis, and it was no longer just my lips that were chattering. My whole body had begun to shake, trying desperately to generate its own heat. I wondered how long I had and whether I’d actually have the chance to drown or whether hypothermia would shut me down first.

  “What are you talking about,” he growled. “She was drained.”

  Even half-numb and all terrified, I recognized sincere confusion. The scaled menace really believed as I had at first. Which meant there were two killers and I was still going to die with my curiosity less than wholly satisfied.

  “Not according to the autopsy. Sierra drowned in her bathtub. Drowned. With saltwater in her lungs. Very strange. A locked-room mystery. I’m thinking it had to be one of your ilk.”

  The snarl was back, along with a second glimpse of all those pointy, shark-like teeth. He lurched forward and grabbed at my hair, nearly tearing it out by the roots. I screeched, straining to move with the pressure, to ease the pain, but it was no good. I scissored my legs, trying to catch his to no avail. His arm was angled so there was no way even to take a bite out of crime.

  “You lie!”

  I nearly gagged on the scent of rotting fish that wafted over me, but I didn’t think now was the time to shill Tic-Tacs.

  “Check it out. If I’m wrong, you can kill me later. Something to look forward to. But I’m not wrong.”

  He stared at me, trying to read the truth, I guessed, all the while upping the abuse to my scalp. I tried not to think about the fact that waves were no longer required for the water level to hit my chin.

  “He told me it was Circe.” But fish-boy wasn’t talking to me. I had a feeling that I’d already ceased to exist for him, which was just as dangerous as being the center of his attention.

  “I’m already investigating, so if you would simply—”

  “You have already done enough. There are things— No. I will confront him on my own. You will die.”

  The pressure on my scalp vanished and pinpoints of pain stabbed at me.

  “But—” My captor had vanished along with any hope of reprieve.

  I continued to shudder and squirm, lips compressed as the water lapped at them, but whatever he’d bound me with was tougher than I was. I couldn’t even hope that somehow one of my forbearers’ immortality had been passed to me. Eternity in a watery grave seemed strangely unappealing.

  Stretching my neck as long as I possibly could to rise above the water, I risked taking on water to shout and got off two good hollers before choking on a wave.

  My vision was starting to do a disturbing fade to black. I strained upward trying to build height where I had none, to raise myself above the surf, but I’d lost feeling in my lower body and could no longer tell if my muscles were responding. My teeth were chattering so hard I nearly bit my tongue, and my brain kept bibbling.

  I tried to think, tried so hard to focus on some plan, some object I carried that would help, but my thoughts were like the surf, surging and retreating, impossible to pin down. “How do you pin a wave upon the sand,” my brain sang at me. And nuns. Were there nuns dancing around in my head? If that didn’t signal the end, it certainly should. The four flying nuns of the apocalypse…

  Something flickered before me—golden instead of the ominous blue-green of the surf, but I couldn’t focus in. It was just an impression.

  Next thing I knew everything shifted and I fell forward into oblivion.

  I was heartily sick of this oblivion crap. I didn’t wake suddenly this time—in fact, I didn’t so much wake at all as drift for a while in that semi-dream state where all is cozy contentment. Something niggled at the back of my brain. Somehow all was not as it should be, but I forced the thought away. If the fantasy felt this good, I saw no reason to rush the return of reality. Until I heard the soft snore behind me. The lassitude vanished in the face of a full-frontal adrenaline assault.

  I tried to bolt upright, but something heavy anchored me to the bed. And it was a bed. My eyelids had lifted even if nothing else had. Not again, I thought.

  The room was completely unfamiliar. Beautifully decorated in Mediterranean style, like something out of MTV’s Cribs. A warming tingle started in the vicinity of my, ah, stomach. I looked down at the arm. Yup, sun-kissed bronze, fine golden hair covering it. The fingers disappeared beneath my ribcage—my very naked ribcage!

  I squirmed, trying to turn at least, hoping to wake him with the motion. Uh oh. Oh, something was awake all right, something long and hard and—I froze. What I really wanted to do was rub myself up against him like a cat, bask in his heat and, now that my senses were up and running, his musky, salty scent. My breathing got ludicrously heavy just thinking about it. But if Apollo were to wake, he’d take it as an invitation and, frankly, not one I’d have the willpower to withdraw.

  “Apollo!” I said sharply. Once again I sounded like a rusty gate. I was dimly aware that I should feel that way too, a creaky old gate complaining with every move, but I didn’t. Maybe the adrenaline rush was overwhelming my pain receptors. I felt oddly abuzz.

  Apollo’s fingers flexed against my ribcage, driving all thoughts straight out of my head, especially once he snuggled in, erection unerringly pressing between my butt cheeks. Warm breath stirred my hair, which was nuzzled aside a second later and replaced with lips and then teeth, nipping their way up my shoulder to my neck. The hand holding me swept upward, brushing the underside of my breast.

  I said Apollo’s name again, but it came out as breathy encouragement rather than rebuke. Then he’d fully palmed my breast, and I found myself pushing back against him, nearly riding his shaft. He moaned.

  What was I doing?

  Now that his arm no longer pinned me down, I turned.

  “Apollo, no.”

  But his lips closed on mine before I could say more and instead of pushing him away, my hands buried themselves in his ridiculously lush hair. I practically kneaded his head as he rolled me under him and skimmed a hand from breast to hip and back up again to lift my chin so that he could nibble his way down my neck. God, I was already wet and aching. Unable to help myself, I rocked against him, teasing myself against his hard shaft. Mercifully, he’d retained shorts or I would have spread my legs right there and pulled him inside me.

  A little part of me tried to reassert sanity. For all I knew his eyes still weren’t even open and this was just the continuation of some erotic dream. I raised my head to search out his eyes but all I could see was the crown of his head as he moved down my body. A spike of heat, more liquid than lightning, molten like lava raced through me as his teeth clamped down on one nipple, just on the pleasurable side of pain. I cried out.

  He raised his face, finally, to look at me and my heart literally missed a beat. His features hadn’t changed
and yet there was nothing human in them. He was dangerously, wildly, elementally powerful. Gorgeous was too tame and passive a word. His eyes glowed like the sun reflected off the water. I was so overheated I felt I would spontaneously combust.

  “Stop,” I said.

  It was weak, but he did. His whole body stilled, even the rhythm I hadn’t realized we’d set. My body throbbed, so close. I couldn’t look away from those eyes that still held mine, though I was sure I’d see sunspots into the next century. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more. I didn’t want Apollo to take me at my word, but I didn’t want to be devoured. There seemed no third option.

  “What do you want, Tori?”

  I had a lot of answers for that, but none that I wanted to share.

  “I can’t think when you’re on top of me.”

  He grinned wolfishly.

  “That was not supposed to be a compliment,” I snapped.

  He lowered himself for another kiss, but kept it brief. Even so, it nearly collapsed my resolve. As soon as he moved, I rolled to the side of the bed, taking the sheet with me. Apropos of nothing, I realized they were green with some stylized wave pattern and nearly as soft as a kitten’s fur.

  “Why am I naked?” I asked, not daring to look at him lest he be doing something terribly provocative, like stroking himself. Whoa. I shoved that mental image straight down into my little black box, possibly to be examined later under very low light.

  “I couldn’t leave you in your wet clothes. You were soaked through. And before you ask, I laid down next to you to share body heat.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “You’re going to interrogate me now?” There was an edge to his voice and a very reckless part of me wanted to make him angry. I wasn’t sure if it was to push him away or make him touch me again. Either way, I didn’t like it.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to keep my thoughts out of my voice.

  “Police scanner.” I heard movement, the slide of fabric, but still couldn’t bring myself to look. “I got one when the oracle failed on Circe’s death. My assistant monitors it.”

  All those lovely endorphins were ebbing now and I had the urge to lay myself down on that wonderfully soft bed, but I didn’t dare. The strange thing was that I still didn’t feel wrung out and shaky as I did after my last bout with the water, just languid. Yet another mystery to ponder. “Okay, so you’d know there’d been a kidnapping. How would you know it was mine or where to find me?”

  “No more questions until you answer mine. Tori, look at me.” It came out as much plea as command, and it seemed more revealing to refuse than to look him in the eye. “Why won’t you let me love you?”

  My heart seized, even though I knew he hadn’t meant it that way, and I told the damned thing to make up its mind. First Armani, now Apollo. I’d never been the fickle type. Damn—Armani. We were supposed to have a date tonight. Did he even know what had happened or that I was safe?

  “Armani—” I realized as soon as it was out of my mouth that it sounded like an answer to the question—and I wasn’t even sure it wasn’t. I was so confused.

  Apollo’s face went hard. “He’s a mortal.” As if that was an argument.

  “Apollo, I’m a mortal.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Either I am or I’m not.”

  “As you say.”

  “Don’t clam up on me now. You don’t get to drop a bomb like that and go all shirty.”

  “Shirty?”

  I bit my lip to keep from screaming and counted to ten. “Let’s not start that ‘I don’t get your newfangled slang’ crap. You understand me.”

  His eyes looked inhuman again, not hot like the sun but cold, like glacial ice. I was an idiot. I’d known what a very bad idea it was to play around with a god. It didn’t matter that I’d stopped. I’d given out mixed signals, I’d nearly taken things too far and now I’d hurt his ego if not his feelings.

  “Understand me,” he said, voice thick with power.

  The phone rang.

  “I will not be ordered about.”

  It rang again.

  “You have refused any claim—”

  And again.

  “Damn.” Apollo stalked to the receiver and swiped it from the cradle. “What?”

  The voice coming through was loud enough to be heard at a distance if not understood. Female and all het up about something. I looked around for a bathroom, hoping to find my clothes hung up to dry. I was getting the hell out. If I had to I’d lock myself into my apartment until I got my head on straight or until lack of funds got me booted, whichever came first. I was through with gods, through with men in general and pretty disgusted with myself as well. Not to mention pissed off at my own pity party. Oh yeah, I was in a fine state.

  And still naked. As far as I could tell, my clothes had vanished.

  It killed any chance of a dramatic exit—or even of slinking out unseen—but I had to go back to Apollo to ask the whereabouts of my clothing.

  Apollo didn’t react as I reentered the bedroom. He was too busy watching the flat-screen television mounted on the wall. I groaned. Someone had gotten video of the rescue. The news footage exposed Apollo, half-naked, his impressive chest exposed and my flaccid, waterlogged body clutched to it. Apollo looked cinematically heroic. I looked like crap. If the contrast didn’t dampen his libido, I didn’t know what would.

  “Hot damn,” he said under his breath.

  “Um, my clothes?” I asked uncomfortably from just within the doorway—far enough in that I could see the screen but close enough to a speedy retreat.

  “I sent them out,” he answered without pulling his eyes away from the screen. “That ought to convince the damned studios I’m still leading-man material.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, look at Connery. How old was he when he played opposite Zeta-Jones?”

  “Right. Before you go staging your comeback, do you think you can find me something to wear so I can get out of your hair?”

  “I need to call my publicist back. Damn, you can’t pay for publicity like this. Can’t believe she’s teed off I didn’t tell her first— What did you say?”

  My fuse was lit. “Are you saying you rescued me as some freakin’ publicity stunt? That’s why you wouldn’t answer my questions. You probably didn’t even know it was me in trouble, just some random damsel in distress.”

  His face twitched in irritation. “I did know it was you, and before you go concocting some crazy conspiracy theory, it’s called scrying, okay? Damn, you’re suspicious. As far as the camera goes, that was just luck—paparazzi, maybe, or some tourist with a handycam.”

  He rose in all his nekkid glory and headed for a door I’d missed in my avoidance of the bedroom. I tried not to ogle, but really, wow. And I mean wow. The big screen did not do him justice. He needed intimate spaces and natural lighting. Oh hell, my hormones were getting all supercharged again.

  The sheer vastness of his walk-in closet momentarily distracted me, and I had to fight down the ugly green-eyed monster—jealously, not lust. The blasted thing was the size of my kitchen.

  Apollo’s phone was ringing again, but he ignored it from the depths of his closet.

  “Do you want me to get that?” I called.

  “No. I don’t have a damned thing here to give you to wear. I’m going to have to call someone. There are going to be a million questions, and I’ll need to coordinate with the police. They’ll probably want a press conference.”

  Phantasmagorical.

  “Just give me a T-shirt and some sweats. I’m sure if I roll them they’ll stay up long enough to get me home.”

  Apollo emerged to stare me down. He looked like he was taking calming breaths. “Do you not realize that there are going to be paparazzi everywhere? You can’t just walk out the front door. We’ve got to have a plan, a story. If they recognize you, you’ll be shark bait. The fact that I brought you here rather than a hospit
al will raise questions.”

  “And heavens forbid you be linked to me.”

  Tension was rolling off Apollo in waves. “Is that what you want—your fifteen minutes of fame?”

  It was too bad Christie and I had such different coloring and I couldn’t get her in to be my stunt double. She would eat this up.

  “No,” I answered.

  I knew he was baiting me. He hadn’t forgotten my earlier slight or his anger, but for right now he needed me for his impromptu publicity campaign. I wondered if I went along whether I would escape retribution.

  “Fine, then I will call Maria. You can call Armani. And, by the way, it is quite interesting to me that you use his last name and my first. So, perhaps you think more of me than you realize.”

  I hated myself for the thrill that sent up my spine. It didn’t sound as if Apollo had given up the chase. One would think the first-hand demonstration of what it meant to run with not just a god but an actor would have knocked some sense into me. But common sense and my family, if they’d ever been acquainted, had fallen out ages ago.

  Still, I was not so far gone I’d agree to perform for a media circus.

  Several phone calls, one reaming out from Armani and a Mission Impossible-style escape later, I was locked in a car with a repressively silent plainclothes officer in an unmarked sedan heading toward my apartment. Armani and Lau had wanted to be nowhere near Apollo’s dog-and-pony show lest the media make the logical leap between the kidnapping and rescue and Circe Holland’s high-profile murder case. Some LAPD spokesman had been delegated deflection duty.

  I wasn’t surprised to see Armani waiting for me when I let myself into my apartment. I didn’t ask how he’d gotten in himself. My super was nothing if not mercenary. If the badge hadn’t worked, bribery certainly would have done the trick.