She tilts toward me a little, nudging my raven and I feel the ruffle of satisfaction as it eases in me, settling next to my sister as I slice the bread and feed it into the toaster.
It doesn’t take much to coax Artemis into going to a coffee shop. She’s been here for a few hours, and I’m lazy and sleepy with the food she fed me, but I’m not stupid enough to think she isn’t biding her time. I prefer we do this outside my apartment. If we’re in public, surrounded by mortals, she’s less likely to reach out to her power.
So we go to a tiny coffee shop. A new one, that Artemis picks. It’s about four blocks from my apartment, and I bounce my head to a beat only I can hear as we walk, my sister tugging me lightly when I wander off the sidewalk, away from her side.
I grin at her, as she reels me back in, and I’m grinning when we enter the cafe.
Artie orders for us, and while she waits for my iced coffee and her tea, I look around the room.
There’s a girl, in the corner, strumming a guitar. Her body sways, a little, her eyes closed. A tiny smile curls her lips.
Mine.
I lick my lips and take a step, almost without realizing I’m moving, before Artie is there, nudging me back to our little booth.
The girl’s eyes open and she smiles, a secret thing, as she catches my gaze, through a curtain of dirty blonde hair and I almost hit my knees.
Del.
Mine.
I moan, and Artemis looks at me, worry in her gaze. “Apollo?”
“I saw our uncle,” I whisper, looking at the girl who is turning away from me now, her attention back on the guitar.
Artie frowns. “Which one?”
Madness ruffles my hair, a lover’s stroke along my brow and I shiver a little as the girl’s music slips through the room.
“Poseidon.”
We don’t talk as I sip my coffee and she watches me, and the girl in the corner plays her song. The sun shivers across the sky and I want to find it, bask in it, even as I know that I’m not leaving this coffee shop until the coffee is gone and the girl humming soft and sweet in the corner is silent again.
Maybe not even then.
“I think you should come home with me,” Artemis says, abruptly and unexpected and startling enough that I let my gaze dart to her, confused.
“Why?”
She has that look. The one I know too well. The one that is all sister and not a single speck of goddess. The one where her silver eyes turn steely gray and fierce and I know we’ll fight before the day is over, if I even consider arguing with her.
“I’m worried about you,” she says, instead of giving me an order. I almost laugh at that. My sister worrying is amusing.
“I’m the fucking Sun God,” I grin at her, sprawling in the seat and letting my fingers tap a rhythm against the table. The girl with the guitar is still playing and my fingers tap out an accompaniment to her song. “What the hell do you have to worry about? Nothing can touch me.”
“Brother, you’ve been touched for centuries,” she says.
Another girl, another sister might have said it gently. With understanding.
But this is my sister, and she says it with utter disbelief and a little bit of exasperation.
I give her a tight, angry smile. Because I am mad and have been for centuries and I know it. Half the time I embrace my insanity.
I knew the price I would pay even when I asked for the knowledge.
But—
“You forget who I am, sister,” I purr, and her eyes flicker over me. Watching. Assessing.
She is my twin and my best friend, but she’s never been stupid enough to think I wouldn’t turn on her.
I’ve never made that mistake either.
“I know exactly who you are,” she says, and now she sounds tired. Refusing to rise to the bait of my anger. “I know you’re my brother and I love you and that you aren’t well, despite what you would have us all—even me—believe.” She hesitates. “I know that you are weaker than you would have us believe. I know that you are, despite what you say, lonely in this city by yourself.” She quiets and then blurts out, “For gods sake, Apollo, you’re depressed. I keep expecting to feel your power go out.”
“Oh, for fucks sake, Artie,” I snap, furious suddenly. “I’m not fucking suicidal.”
She stares at me. This infuriatingly blank slate that makes me want to snarl at her, and that would just prove her point.
That I am as unstable as she thinks I am.
I miss, suddenly, furiously, Del.
As much as I love my sister, I miss my Del. I miss the girl who would challenge me and make me laugh, who would listen when I spoke and keep all of my fears tucked away. The girl who served her god, but loved her friend.
Fuck.
It’s been almost two thousand years that I have wandered without her, and I keep thinking that it will get easier. That one day I’ll wake up and nothing will remind me, that I won’t hear a line from a poem and see her, laughing in her gauze covered bed, or smiling serenely from the cloud of smoke that always clung to her.
I keep waiting.
“Come home with me,” Artemis says again, and I know my sister means well. That she has always meant well.
But I can’t.
Because her forest isn’t home.
Home is Del’s laughter and smile and flashing eyes.
It’s a thousand girls who are all the same and utterly different.
And it’s fucking gone.
Artemis leaves me after her coffee is gone. She mutters something about wanting to see Poseidon, paying her respects while she’s in the city. It’s a thin excuse—she really just needs some space from her insane brother.
Can’t really blame her for that shit.
There’s a reason I left Olympus, after all.
I sit there, slumped for a long time, while the coffee shop empties and the girl in the corner plays her guitar. Until there is only us and the barista, who’s happily ignoring both of us in favor of her phone.
“Am I bothering you?”
I blink out of my daze and look at her.
The girl with the guitar is staring at me, a grin on her face. “I can quit, if I’m bothering you. I do that, sometimes.”
She even sounds like Del.
“No,” I murmur, and her eyes go wide and startled. “No, please, continue. It’s lovely.”
She gives me a nervous smile and I stand, walking over to the couch she’s perched on. I sit on the other end and pull my legs up, looping my arms around them, and she laughs, softly, before she returns to strumming lightly on the guitar.
For a few seconds, sitting next to her, while the music thrums like a heartbeat and my sister’s power fades away, I can close my eyes and I am back in that long forgotten temple, and Del is laughing.
“Your girlfriend looked pissed, Sunshine,” she says, I laugh, blinking my eyes open to grin at her. I can feel the edges of insanity clawing at me, drawn by this gorgeous girl and her enigmatic smile.
“She’s my sister. And she is. We’re having a difference of opinions.”
Guitar Girl’s eyebrows hitch up and she grins. “Siblings can be a pain the ass.”
I snort a laugh and nod. “That is putting it very mildly, sweetheart.”
She goes still and watches me, and then leans forward, offering her hand.
I hate shaking hands. I eye it for a moment. Shake it quickly. “I’m Iris,” she says, grinning.
Iris. The name sighs through me, and I know that this girl, whoever the hell she is, will matter to me.
Not unusual. I find a girl to matter every few months. Sometimes boys.
But this one has caught my eye and snared me close faster than any in recent memory.
“You know, usually this is where you say, I’m Bill.”
I cock my head and frown. “I’m not Bill.”
She laughs, a light noise that sounds fucking heavily when she strums her guitar and music twists with laughter.
�
�Okay, Not Bill.”
She leans over the guitar and she plays, and I lean against the couch and let my eyes closed, listening to her.
And even without touching my power, it feels like I’m flying.
It feels like I am sane, and what I once was.
“There are rules for a reason,” Del says, frowning at me. She looks lovely and troubled, and I hate seeing her like that. Del should always be laughing and happy.
She’s my girl. My favorite. She deserves nothing but happiness.
“I know, Del. But—”
“No,” she says, and her voice shakes. “This is my curse. You gave it to me, Father.”
“I’m not taking your gift, sweetheart.”
She snarls and rolls away from me, moving with that uncanny grace that always surprises me in Del.
She’s reeling, a little, under the weight of the drugs the priests feed her. It lets her cling to sanity, when the future hangs too heavy on her.
It’s not a gift, this thing I gave to Del.
It’s a curse.
They know it, even when I give it to them.
I know it and I love them, and I break them anyway.
What kind of Father does that make me? What kind of god?
A poor one.
A broken one.
“You’re doing it again,” she says, and I blink at her. “The guilt thing. Guilt doesn’t look on a god.” She stands and stamps her foot, all petulant disgust with me. “You don’t get to be guilty about this. You don’t get to be weak. I chose to take the curse, Father, because I serve a powerful god. You will not belittle my service by dismissing it or feeling guilty. I won’t allow that.”
I grin at her, the flash of temper pulling me from my guilt. I stand with her and let some of my power slip out, and she shudders, this almost orgasmic move that makes me reach for her.
“Apollo,” she whispers against my skin and I pet her hair back. My guilt and mad plan forgotten because she is silky and soft in my arms, and mine.
“Del,” I murmur into her hair. She tilts her head back and I kiss her, and for a time, I can forget everything but her, laughing and breathing into my kiss.
Chapter 5.
I spend the next hour sitting next to Iris, and feeling that familiar tug of mine every time she flashes a smile at me.
“What does it mean?” she asks, nodding at the tattoo on the inside of my wrist.
I got that one without Artemis, after my raven, one particularly awful week of visions and being barely able to function. When I was finally lucid again, I was in a small town in Arizona, and a girl with hair the color of fire was asleep next to me in the bed, and my wrists were both throbbing with the familiar sting of a fresh tattoo.
On the inside of my right wrist was a bow with a simple arrow. It was tiny and delicate, and almost feminine, and it felt like a shackle for my power. Not binding me from it, but binding it, wild and elusive, to me.
On the left was a laurel, wrapping around my wrist like a cuff, as intricate as the one I wore when I walked the walls of Troy with Cassandra. It drags my power to me as surely as my raven, a buzzing brilliant thing that I can ignore more often than not.
When you live for thousands of years as the Sun God, with power beyond measure, it becomes easy to ignore it. Like a wild living thing, trapped beneath my skin, waiting for me to shake off mortality and revel in my power.
It itches now, and my raven shifts under my skin, anxious and impatient.
We want to hunt, I realize, abruptly and startled. Want to stretch my power and force the sunrise and throw disease like a barbed weapon.
I shiver, and Iris touches my hand, just below the arrow and power jumps, between us. Her eyes widen just a little, and her pulse jumps under my thumb.
When did I take her hand in mine?
“You’re a strange one, aren’t you, Not Bill?”
I smile at her, and try to control my heartbeat. It’s pounding too hard. My power screaming and every instinct in me wants her.
Wants to make her mine.
I haven’t had a response like this since the last time I saw Del.
“I have to go.” I say, abruptly. Her expression stutters and closes, but I can’t focus on that. Can’t focus on anything but the want burning through me and the girl with bright, bright eyes watching me.
I hesitate. “It’s who I am.” I say, softly. Nodding at the tattoos. Against my better judgement, I offer her my hands. Try not to shiver when her fingers smooth over the lines of the laurel, when she traces the simple bow with a fingernail.
Try to ignore the way my power shudders and preens under her touch.
Who is this girl, and am I really going to walk away from her? Artemis will shoot me for this. Set her hounds on me and hang me in her forest by my entrails.
I smile, a fond little smirk because annoying my sister will never lose its appeal.
Iris sways closer to me, and her strange eyes are almost lazy as she lowers my hand in hers, until they’re both hanging at our sides, and she tucks something into my pocket and licks her lips.
I try very hard to not track the motion.
“It was nice meeting you, Not Bill. I hope I see you again.”
I open my mouth to answer her, and reality shudders and shatters, splintering into a thousand possibilities and in every one, flashing before me like a cruel promise, I am breaking her.
Kiss her. Break her. Love her. Destroy her. Claim her. Curse her.
I gasp and yank away and I don’t bother to see what’s on her face.
I bolt out of the little shop and fumble for my phone. It will work better than my prayers at the moment.
“Apollo,” Artie says, her voice sharp and alarmed.
“Hunt,” I gasp. “Need to hunt.”
And because my sister is a good sister, she doesn’t question me. “Okay,” she says simply.
Hunting with Artemis has always been a favorite thing. And tonight is no different. When I get back to my apartment, she’s already there, in black jeans, scuffed, and ripped along the thighs. She’s wearing a long-sleeved, tight-fitting black thermal threaded through with silver. A silver pendent hangs at her throat, and a feral smile plays along her lips. With her hair cut brutally short and her boots, she looks ready to fuck a rock star—or to be one. She fairly reeks of sex.
Amusing, since she’s a virgin.
There are a few things that are unchanging. I rule the sun. She rules the moon. I deal death as easily as I heal. She hunts the things that I kill.
I fuck the world. And she is the eternal virgin.
She’s almost vibrating with energy, a smile bright on her lips. I shiver, my power cracking through me.
Bloody hands, bloody lips, bloody jeans, so much blood.
“Successful hunt,” I murmur because in every shattered possibility, there is only one outcome to hunting with my sister tonight.
I dress, as always with my sister, to compliment her. Black leather pants, a loose, black button-down left more unbuttoned than not, and muscle shirt under it, so bright it almost gleams in the moonlight.
It was stronger than normal, and I am pretty sure Artie is having a hard time controlling her powers tonight as well.
I slid a ring onto my finger, a sunburst worked into the gold band, simple and old. And then I smile at her. “Lead the way, lady hunter.”
This is how it works.
Artemis is goddess of the moon and the hearth and the hunt. I’ve never known her to not be able to hunt something down, when she really puts her mind to it. When I first fell from Olympus, I took my favorite cousin. Hermes had no use for the gods and their petty games.
But Hades didn’t want to let the messenger god go. He was the only one of us with power slight enough that he wouldn’t threaten my uncle and who didn’t flinch at the sight of Hades’ domain or his big fucking dog.
With Hermes missing and Hades pissed because of it, he called on Artemis to find him.
It took her three weeks.<
br />
Hermes was dragged back to Olympus by his winged slippers, cursing the whole time that my twin was a whore and a witch and a fucking nuisance.
I think she’s even forgiven him for all those insults, except the whore one.
She loops her arm through mine and leans her head against my shoulder. “What are we hunting tonight, brother?”
“Killers,” I whisper. Guilt rises like a thick vine, threatening to choke me as I let her study me and then her smile turns cunning and cruel and she nods. Looks at the crowd.
“A club, then,” she murmurs. “Can you control—”
“I’m fine,” I snap and she arches an eyebrow but doesn’t argue. Instead she leads us through the streets to her car, a sleek, gray thing that growls like her hounds did, so long ago and she shrugs when I give her a look. “I like it. Some of us don’t ride in sun chariots, brother.”
“I haven’t done that since Troy!” I protest, and she laughs, sliding into the car with the sound of moonbeams and silver.
The club we find is perfect. There is a DJ, spinning out music and cutting it together to make something different, something that pounds through my veins and demands I dance, and because I am a whore for good music, I do.
I abandon my sister, as she prowls the crowd, searching for killers that I will kill, and I…. I give myself over to my first love.
Sunlight and music and poetry.
Prophecy and visions.
Death and pestilence.
I wish, desperately, that I could be god of one without the others. If that were true, I would always deal out music and poetry, and revel in the sunshine.
The problem isn’t that.
It’s everything else.
With the beat pounding into me, I can remember Iris. How her heart had pounded, but her eyes were fearless and questioning. How her fingers had twisted around mine as I held her still and the world shattered around us.
I wonder what Del would think of her? Would she laugh and call me mad for wanting her? Would she smile with gentle approval and breathe a sigh of relief because finally she could lay down her curse?
Pass it on to another.
Del did that, twice. In all the years Delphi served me, there was only twice that they left me. And both times, Del had lived. Had grown old and died, natural, smiling bright and happy at me when I sat at her bedside, all the long years later.
Broken God Page 3