He laughed. “I’ll take you next time.”
“Over my dead body!”
Zeus rolled his eyes. “Adrasteia, you have to let the girl live a little. If Ares says he’ll take her, he’ll be there to keep an eye on her.”
Something definitely had to be amiss, because Zeus recommending Ares for a task—any task—spelt “fishy.” And not at all something she had the strength or the patience to deal with right then. She couldn’t tell them the truth about Sera.
The whole lurid situation engulfed her and she stopped fighting the irritation. The anger and fear for her daughter’s safety got the better of her, and she crashed inside.
“Trust him to do his job?” she threw out. “Like he’s been doing these past few weeks? Seems to me I heard rumbles of the Hamas about to sign a peace treaty with the Israeli government, so much the god of war has been otherwise occupied lately.”
Ares narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. “Low blow, sis.”
“Deal with it.”
He engaged her in a battle of wills while they both stood there and glared at each other.
“Father, have you heard? Adri has fallen in love.” He paused. “With a mere, insignificant mortal.”
She gasped. “How dare you—”
“Is that true?” Zeus asked.
“No, it’s—”
“His name is Des.”
Adri drew to full height and stared her brother down. How dare he let her secret out like that? And she wasn’t in love with Des!
“Fae skata kai psofa rae malaka,” she threw out. Eat shit and die, you wanker. Not poetic or grown up at all, but when riled up, especially by Ares, she reverted to the lowest of the low from her Greek upbringing.
“Ante gamisou,” he said on a snort.
Go fuck yourself? He couldn’t do better? Up yours, she wanted to sling back, but settled for go to hell. “Ai sto diaolo.”
“Enough!”
The loud bellow made the crystal chandeliers rattle. Rebuked, both Adri and Ares lowered their gazes. Sera concealed her laughter behind a snort.
“We have more critical matters to attend to,” Zeus stated. “Ares informed me of what happened to you two. Are you okay?”
She whipped her head up to glower at her brother. How dare he bring him in this?
A muscle ticked in his cheek, and he inclined his head softly. “Something bigger than all of us is at play here, Adri. We need all the help we can get.”
Yes, but not his. How to say that without sounding like a petulant child? “Fine,” she bit out.
“How are you two doing?” Zeus asked.
She shrugged. “Good. We’ve managed for one hundred and twenty-four years, you know?”
She couldn’t resist throwing the barb. Where had he been all her life, when she had needed him the most? And since she’d had Sera, other than brief visits to see her over the years, enough to convince the impressionable girl the sun shone out of his arse, he’d been totally missing in their existence.
And today he wanted to act all concerned and like he cared?
“Adri,” Ares said on a sigh.
True, though—she had to think of her daughter here. So she took a deep breath. “We might as well all sit down. Shall I ring for tea?”
Zeus laughed as he folded his hulking body into a Louis XV sofa. “If your cook has any of those lemon scones in your kitchen, I wouldn’t say no.”
She rang for tea. In strained silence—at least what felt like strained silence to her, as Sera babbled a thousand words a minute—they took their tea and settled back into their seats.
“So Ares told you?” she asked.
The big man nodded. “Vampyres were involved?”
“And soul stealers.”
“Any idea why they came after her?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“I’ll look into it. Hecate might know something.”
“That egocentric bitch? She wouldn’t know her arse from her backside!”
Sera giggled. “Sheesh, Mom. You on a roll or what today?”
Adri jumped to her feet. She’d had enough of the chiding and the tension and the implications that she didn’t know squat of what she was doing. Yes, she had no clue, but she didn’t need to have that thrown into her face at every turn.
“I expect you’ll be staying?” she asked Zeus.
“If you’ve got a little space for me.”
Sera plopped herself into his lap and hugged his neck. “Of course we’ll always have a little space for you.”
Adri snorted. The whole chummy affection made her sick. The god was the biggest traitor to have ever walked this earth; why couldn’t anyone recognize that?
“You’ll never fit into a ‘little space’,” she said on a sigh as she made inverted commas with her hands around the words. He had to be at least seven feet tall and weigh more than four hundred pounds of solid muscle, despite his age and white hair and beard. “I’ll have them ready a room for you.”
She’d started toward the door when he called her.
“What?” She whirled and stared at him.
“There’s another reason why I came today.”
She crossed her arms. “Other than to make my life hell?”
“Come on, Adrasteia.”
She sighed, and released her arms. “Fine. What is it?”
“Your father is coming here soon.”
At that revelation, she threw her hands up. Just what she needed. Vampyres, Hecate, and now Dionysos. No wonder the third component of that unholy trinity would make his appearance in the picture.
“Perfect,” she bit out. “One more complication I don’t need.”
On that, she turned and exited the room. Let Sera do what she pleased. As long as she was on castle grounds, in Shadow Bridge—temporarily excluding her cottage—and with Zeus, she’d be safe.
On her part, Adri still had a cottage to spell-cast, runes to place, and sigils to draw to ensure her daughter would finally—if ever—be safe.
*****
The quiet in the garden soothed her. Rain pelted the windows and glass panes of the roof in a soothing lullaby that called to her blood.
Adri pressed her forehead against a closed window and shut her eyes. She could hear his call, the compulsion woven into the water, drawing her in. The string music of 800BC pealed in her head, growing stronger the more rain skittered down the glass in sheets.
How she hated this need to give in to the call of water, to draw her power from it. As much as she loathed her capacity to pull sustenance from a crowd, she hated the other side of her even more. Water lay everywhere; there was no hiding from it. And with Dionysos around, the enticement of the seductive energy thrummed even stronger.
What was he doing around here? Shadow Bridge couldn’t be closed to anyone, otherwise she would’ve blocked him from entering the town. Like she’d stopped him from touching her life. Not that he’d cared about her. She huffed. He’d been ready to accept her in sacrifice to his magnificence, the improbable child a human maenad had borne him. She’d barely been minutes old when Zeus had saved her from that sacrificial altar.
Zeus. Between her breasts, the long, smooth water stone pendant hummed with energy. She clasped the unique jewel in her hand, her mind automatically returning to the moment when she had received that gift.
In a sun-drenched garden, she’d been a little girl barely two feet tall. Everything had towered over her—the Greek columns, the looming marble pots and ceramic vases. Even the flowers had been bigger than her head, brighter than anything she had ever seen. Soft, diffuse light radiated from everything, something she would learn was a feature of Olympus. She remembered hearing heavy footsteps, and turning to see a big, oh so big, man with tanned skin and long white hair approaching her. He had smiled, and opened his arms while he went down on his knees. She had run into that embrace, giggles pouring out of her mouth like the gurgles of the small waterfall next to them.
A part of her had known
she owed her life to him, because he had saved her. Brought her here into this paradise and given her a chance to exist. She’d snuggled into his embrace at realizing this, conveying her gratitude with a hug because she didn’t even know how to speak properly yet. Smells of sunshine and pure air had filled her nose, along with that faint, unique scent that clung to him, that she’d later learn was ozone and sulphur from his lightning bolts.
When he’d released her, he’d sat her on his knee. From his pocket, he’d pulled a long, delicate chain with a smooth, crystal-clear pendant in the form of a teardrop dangling from it. He’d dipped the jewel into the water, and its color turned to deep blue. Then he’d placed the chain around her neck, telling her she could always count on that stone to protect her, as long as it remained blue.
Adri tightened her hold on the pendant, then let it drop as if singed. She hadn’t known who he was back then. Simply her savior, the man she started to see as her father, who brought her up. Years later, she would learn he was Zeus, mighty and supreme ruler of Olympus.
And not at all her father.
The tang of ozone burst through her nostrils at the same time she heard the zing of a bolt of lightning.
His presence filled the room, reducing the airy conservatory to the size of a sardine tin.
She tucked the pendant under her blouse. He shouldn’t see her wearing it. He shouldn’t even know she still held on to that gift as if her life depended on it. Why hadn’t she thrown it away, she’d always wondered in so many years? A part of her had held on to her very first memory, and she’d never had the heart to obliterate that part of their relationship from her memory. No one knew that, though. She’d stowed the chain into a spell-cast corner of her refuge in the castle’s gardens when it wasn’t on her. Throughout her life, the water stone had never been far from her.
“Beautiful place you have here,” he said.
The structure was a replica of Marie Antoinette’s Petit Palais at Versailles. She’d loved that lavish edifice, having always been on the guest list of the queen’s private parties held there. She’d told herself she would get such a place, too, one day, and the opportunity arose when she returned to Shadow Bridge post one of her jaunts to Europe. After putting the horrors of the French Revolution behind her, her petit palais became her sanctuary, decorated inside like the apartments and boudoirs she had occupied throughout the ages. Since she’d moved here permanently with Sera following the tragedy with William, she’d made it a point to enjoy this space as often as possible.
Now even her safe haven had been breached, with him here. Too bad no sigil existed to keep Olympian gods at bay.
“You wouldn’t know, would you, having never visited and all that in the past century,” she threw out.
He sighed. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you, daughter?”
“I’m not your daughter. I think you claimed that loud and clear that day, am I right?”
Another reason why she hated meeting with him—he always brought the topic back to that fateful episode, the one thing she wanted to forget above anything else.
He closed the distance between them and placed a hand on her cheek. She flinched from his touch.
“How much longer will you make me grovel? I said countless times I was sorry.”
She turned away and stepped farther into the room, away from the windows, from the lure of the sluicing rain water. One compulsion at a time.
Adri risked a glance at Zeus. For once, he didn’t look formidable, appearing, for all intent, like a weary old man. Her heart squeezed...before she remembered.
Sorry might be the hardest word for him, but that changed nothing. She’d still been thrown down onto Earth, a land she hadn’t even known existed, let alone fathomed how to survive in. He’d publicly announced from the top of Mount Olympus that he’d withdrawn his protection from her, that she wasn’t to set foot in their realm ever again. She was a traitor, because she had dared take Ares’ side in a petty argument between father and son. Ares had berated his father for loving his demi-god sons Perseus and Hercules more than him; the sons who wanted nothing to do with him while Ares begged for a slice of attention. She’d thought he’d been right—he deserved his father’s affection, too.
Where would she be today if Ares hadn’t defied the parental authority and followed her to where she’d fallen somewhere in a land of empty green plains and great stone structures?
What else could I have expected from the offspring of Dionysos, except for her to bite the hand that fed her, Zeus had stated....
No, she couldn’t forget. Wouldn’t forget. A century later, Zeus had apologized and welcomed her back home, but Olympus was no longer home for her, and never would be again. She hadn’t set foot into that realm ever since.
He could beg all he wanted, she’d done nothing to deserve his wrath.
“Have you found anything?” she asked.
He remained silent, before heaving a mighty sigh that rattled the glass panes.
“You break something, you repair it with your own hands, you hear?” She turned and crossed her arms in front of her chest. The thin cashmere did little to buffer the rapid beat of her heart as the organ pulsed against her wrist. “So, what did you find? Hecate coughed up or not?”
He went to stand near a window that he opened. The smell of rain rushed in on a heavy breeze redolent with moisture and cool.
No, not that. Not now. She ducked past him and slammed the window closed. The humidity in the air hovered over her like a cloak. To fight would prove too draining, so she ceded and opened her pores to the message of power in its cold comfort.
Snapping her mind closed on any connection that may have established itself between her and Dionysos, she faced Zeus again. “So?”
He let his arms hang to his sides. “There are a lot of things you don’t know, Adrasteia, and I fear the time has come to let you know about one of them.”
Shivers danced across her spine like drag racing cars taking off from the start line. “What are you talking about?”
“Hecate, Dionysos, and vampyres. You know the myth?”
She nodded. “The idiot who fathered me got embroiled with Hecate then went on to fall for Empusa, which pissed off Hecate to no end. She went on a rampage, and the creatures that resulted were vampyres.”
Zeus clasped his chin and ran a hand through his bushy beard. “There’s a bit more to it than that.”
She cocked her right hip and stood straighter. “Pray tell.”
“Hecate, as you know, is the goddess of necromancy. On that rampage that created what we know as vampyres, she brought some dead souls to life.”
Not anything good. “Dead souls of what?”
He moved to the window again, tilting his head to stare out in the distance.
“You know how the portal should always stay closed, right?”
He must be gazing at the hint of the bridge, from where the town got its name.
“Does this have anything to do with the evil that got closed behind that gateway?” More shivers took flight up her back.
Without turning to her, he continued. “A long, very long time ago, demons and angels walked this land. Engaged in a perpetual fight, the angels were losing the war that had raged from the start of time itself. An evil power lent its support to the demons. They were so alike in so many ways. Hedonistic, sadistic, thinking themselves at the top of the food chain with humans at the very bottom, theirs to enslave. That evil drank blood for its power, and they walked the night, unable to bear the light of the sun.”
“You mean vampyres.”
He turned, and she saw his eyes. The chaos of that time reflected in their depths. Fire, death, suffering. Endless shades of sickly red...like the palette across Sera’s painting of the day before. Adri gasped.
“They’re worse than the creatures you know, daughter. That evil is the original vampire race as this world has never known. Brutal, savage, living only to enslave humanity and all other races. The Vampy
re Federation you see today is but a shadow of what that race could come up with in its twisted existence.”
And if they ever managed to breach the gateway... “That’s why the portal must be kept closed at all costs.”
He nodded. “Be careful, daughter. There are forces bigger than you can understand at work here, and you need to protect her.”
Sera. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“This, we don’t know. After what happened the other night, I wouldn’t take any chances.”
He drew closer and placed his hands on her shoulders. For once, she didn’t shrug his touch off.
“Be very, very careful,” he said before dropping a kiss onto her forehead.
Then, he was gone, Adri finding herself alone in her abode once again.
No, not alone.... A presence lingered in the shadows of the doorway to one of the rooms inside.
She whirled to face the creature as he emerged from the darkness into the crystal light of the conservatory. Rain might be falling but the cover of clouds hung high and white, not low and menacing grey to smother all the brightness.
The shock that rumbled in her system when he emerged rode side by side with the stupefaction Zeus’ revelations had stirred up in her. She could barely do more except watch him as he tread toward her on a light step, to stop a foot from her.
“Des.” The name dripped from her lips on a moan.
What was he doing here? How did he get in? And how long had he been in the dark doorway? Zeus must’ve felt him, right?
He inclined his head. Locks of blond hair broke from the swept-back style to brush his wide forehead.
“Adri. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“Thanks for the car, and my coat,” she heard herself saying. What? She must’ve lost her marbles to be engaging in idle chit chat with him.
She searched his face, seeing nothing but worry in the deep frowns and intense eyes. If he’d been there for a while, why didn’t he seem shocked?
“You heard?” she asked.
He nodded.
She hitched in a breath. “Then why don’t you look any more surprised?”
Silence met her question, and an absurd thought flitted in her mind. The words simply popped out. “You knew?”
Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1) Page 9