Blood Hunt

by Lucienne Diver

  I cursed, went to the bathroom to take care of a few things, like personal hygiene, and walked out into the living room wearing a robe meant for someone Apollo’s size rather than mine. I swam in his robe, feeling small and yet sexy. What was it about wearing a man’s shirt…or his bathrobe? I’d only sniffed the collar, which, of course, smelled like him, once or twice while slipping it on.

  The television was going in the living room, but I barely noticed.

  A stupid smile crept over my face as I peered over the breakfast bar into the kitchen where Apollo was heaping plates full of food.

  He turned when he heard me or sensed me, flashing me his million watt smile. “Good morning, beautiful.”

  The food wasn’t the only thing that looked good enough to eat. Apollo had left the robe for me, and stood there shirtless in nothing but black draw-string pants riding a little low on his hips.

  I heard myself gasp and tried to play it off. “The food smells good.”

  “I figured that after last night… Well, we’ll certainly need our strength today.”

  He turned with the plates and put one in front of me. Omelets. Honest to gods omelets, complete with diced tomatoes, onions and green peppers, and folded over a nice thick layer of cheese. On the side, three slices each of thick-cut bacon and two slices of dry toast.

  I raised a brow at the sight of that, and Apollo shoved forward two little jars of jam and a stick of actual butter on a cut crystal dish. Silverware and placemats already sat in front of two of the stools, so I propped my butt up on the one in front of me and asked, “Coffee?”

  “But of course.”

  Apollo set his plate down and headed for a carafe full of the most wonderful scent in the world, second only to bacon and the smell of Apollo himself, especially when a little bit sweaty with exertion…

  I had to close my eyes and breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Too much. It was all just a little too much. Too perfect.

  He set the mug down in front of me, the sound popping my eyes open.

  He watched me as he also placed down a half gallon of milk and a glass container holding packets of every sweetener known to man. White, pink, yellow, blue…

  “Green?” I asked.

  “Stevia in the Raw,” he said. “All natural.”

  “Sounds dirty,” I said.

  He grinned and leaned in for a kiss, stopping right before our lips touched to say, “So it does.”

  My libido and my heart were both doing jumping jacks, vying for attention, and I shoved them both aside for bacon. I always liked to save the best for last, but with three slices, I didn’t have to entirely delay gratification. The first bite was almost better than ambrosia, better than nectar. I knew, I’d tried both. It was crunchy and salty and applewood smoked and…just the way I liked it.

  “Marry me,” I said. It slipped out of my mouth, which immediately fell open in horror. “I mean…”

  Apollo laughed. “If I’d known bacon was all it took to make you fall for me, I’d have cooked for you sooner.”

  I made sure my mouth was free of food and then stuck my tongue out at him, glad he was making light of the moment. “Now you know my Achilles’ heel. I’m sorry, it’s too dangerous for me to let you live.”

  “I understand. If I could have one last request?”

  I flashed him a considering look. “Perhaps. Ask.”

  “Wait until after breakfast to kill me? No point in wasting all this good food.”

  “You just want to lull me into a food coma,” I protested.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  I cut into the omelet and took a bite. It was ridiculous. Really. An omelet was an omelet, right? Maybe it was whatever kind of cheese he used. Nothing should be allowed to taste so good.

  If this…if we continued, I wondered if he’d keep cooking for me or whether he’d start to take me for granted. Or expect quid pro quo.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes an omelet is just an omelet,” he said.

  “And if it’s the best omelet I’ve ever had in my life?”

  “That’s a metaphor for sex, right?”

  I gave him a look. “You fishing for compliments?”

  “Honey,” he said, bringing a warm hand to my leg where the robe had fallen away, “I was there. I don’t need you to tell me it was amazing.”

  His hand slid up my leg, and he leaned in to kiss me again…when suddenly Hermes’s face appeared right between us, shocking us both back.

  “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, glancing at the little vee of skin at my throat revealed by the robe. I pulled it tighter around me and he clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth, the sound carrying through the window he’d created. He turned his gaze on Apollo and swept him bare stomach to chest. “Nice. Very nice. You know, Sigyn and I have an awfully big bed… No?” he said at the look on Apollo’s face. He glanced down at himself, even though we couldn’t see the rest of him through the small message window he’d created. “Perhaps I should get to the gym a bit more. Or maybe I can get the abs airbrushed on, as they did in that 300 movie, hmm? That certainly sounds like a lot less trouble.”

  “Hermes,” I said, exasperated. “Do you have a purpose in calling?”

  He sighed. “I do. We’re all set up. Sigyn has set runes to trap the brothers when they come through the central hallway. You might want to get dressed…or not. We’ll let you know as soon as they take the bait.”

  He winked out, and I stared at Apollo in disbelief. “Did he really just…”

  “He really did. It’s Hermes. Are you surprised?”

  I didn’t answer, because the truth was I probably shouldn’t be. I had no idea what my friend Christie had seen in him, even if, despite his comment about the gym, he was built like a Greek god.

  I turned back to my food, not about to let it go to waste. “Guess we’d better eat fast. As you said, we’re going to need our strength.”

  I was used to eating on the go or wolfing down fast food during a stake-out, so it was hardly difficult for me, and with Apollo’s size, he had his omelet finished off in about three bites. I then took the world’s fastest shower to get rid of the remains of yesterday’s sweat, grime and any possible remains of poison and dressed in a track suit I kept at Apollo’s place—black with a hot pink stripe up the side of the pants. I decided it was too hot for the jacket, and I was just going to have to go with the matching jog bra. L.A. camouflage when you couldn’t afford high fashion. Everyone was always coming from or going to the gym, off on a jog, doing pull ups, weights, yoga-lates or crazy acrobatics on Muscle Beach… All I needed was a high ponytail, which I managed, and a sheen of sweat, which I knew would come the second we stepped out into the L.A. heat.

  Apollo took his cue from me, changing into dark gray sweatpants, a lighter gray tank top, a baseball hat and sunglasses to hide his identity. I didn’t suspect it would matter. Apollo had a certain presence, even when he damped it down. He’d draw attention wherever we went.

  I grabbed my phone, the pepper spray and my ID out of my small clutch from the night before and shoved them into pockets.

  “Anything on the news before I got up?” I asked. The television had been tuned to one of those soft news morning shows when I’d trudged through the living room seeking bacon.

  Apollo was standing in front of what looked like a buffet table—flat on top, just the right height for serving, drawers in front. I wondered why until I saw him lift the top to reveal satin fabric inlaid like the padding of a coffin, only instead of a body, short swords were strapped to the top and more weapons gleamed from the inside.

  “Ooh,” I said, approaching.

  “Nothing much on the news,” he said, answering the question I’d nearly forgotten I’d asked. “A lot of confusion about what went on y
esterday, everyone with theories—including mass hysteria, something in the water, killer-slash-hallucinogenic smog like something The Joker might cook up, Mercury in retrograde…”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  “How should I know. I don’t keep track of these things. Anyway, choose your weapon.”

  I tried not to feel like a kid in a candy store, but, really, the array of weaponry was pretty impressive. But then I remembered… I looked down at my sports bra and tight track pants. I didn’t exactly have anywhere to conceal anything. Damn, I guessed I was going to have to deal with my jacket after all.

  I reached for a triangular sort of dagger that called to me and a blade not quite long enough to be a sword or short enough to be a dagger.

  “The xiphos,” Apollo commented. “Good choice.”

  Xiphos. I’d have to remember that.

  I gave it a few test sweeps, checking out the balance, how it moved in my hands. It felt good. Much better than my gun ever had. Practically like I’d been born to the blade.

  Ours was a rescue mission though. If all went well, I’d never have to use it. I didn’t want to examine the fact that it disappointed me the same way I didn’t want to examine our relationship.

  “We should get started,” I said to Apollo, retrieving Sigyn’s sundial/compass. “That way we can be on the spot to rescue Thalia and the others as soon as the boys take the bait.”

  “If they spot us, that will blow the whole thing,” he said.

  “They won’t. Besides, we’ll need to do some recon, and I’m antsy.”

  He studied me. “Okay, fine, but I’m taking a cup of coffee for the road.”

  “Get me one too?” I asked. I went back to the bedroom for my jacket and came out to an offering of a travel mug’s worth of Apollo’s amazing coffee made just the way I liked it. I tried not to tear up, but after the bacon and omelets, I was feeling a little emotional.

  “Okay, already, you’re perfect,” I grumbled. “Will you just stop?”

  “All right, more coffee for me,” he said, reaching to take back the mug.

  “Do it and die,” I said, hugging it protectively to me.

  He laughed. “Thought so.”

  Then my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I saw Apollo reach for his as well. When I drew mine out, I saw I had a new text from Hermes. Boys have breached perimeter.

  “Looks like we’re on,” I said.

  We didn’t waste any time getting to Apollo’s car in the garage beneath his building. It was a silver Lexus and a thing of beauty, but it was going to be a tight squeeze getting all of our rescuees inside. I shrugged. If need be, I could fly back, even bring a passenger if the brothers had kidnapped more than our count. I let Apollo drive, since he was most familiar with the car…and anyway, I had to concentrate on the tracker.

  As he pulled out—only one exit, so no mystery which way to go until we were out on the street—I nibbled on a hangnail until it bled. Mom would have slapped me upside the head for it, but she wasn’t here, and Sigyn had said the little rune disk activated with blood. I smeared what little welled up on the dial, closed my eyes and thought really hard about Thalia, the one missing person we were absolutely certain the brothers had taken. If they’d managed to kill her and dump her body this whole thing would be in vain, but I couldn’t think that way. As Set had shown, the old ones were fiendishly hard to kill, and anyway it seemed like the world would be a sadder place if such a light had gone out of it. I couldn’t believe we wouldn’t all feel the loss.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was to see the dial turning, turning… “Right out of the garage,” I said.

  My precog hit me like a physical thing, like a slap in the face, wanting to whip my head around to the left.

  I looked to Apollo.

  “I feel it too,” he said.

  “What do we do?”

  “We already know the brothers are at the museum, maybe Jessica too. We know there’s danger. Hermes will call if they need us.”

  The dial in my hand swung a complete one-eighty. “Turn left as soon as you can,” I said. I hoped Sigyn’s little dial would work. It was something like a GPS, but with no warning at all on upcoming directional changes. Worse, it pointed the way, but that only went so far. Roads weren’t straight lines. They veered or dead ended, became one-way streets. I really didn’t like this plan. My precog was only amplifying my need to be in on the action, on the capture.

  Even as Apollo drove, looking for the next left, I pulled out my phone.

  “Eyes on the prize,” he said. “You don’t want to lose focus on the kidnap victims. If you start thinking about what’s going on back at the museum, that dial might lead us right there.”

  “So I’ll multitask. Women can do that, you know. I’ll focus on Thalia while I put in a call to Hermes, just to make sure everything is okay. Plans can change.”

  I dialed Hermes, but the phone just rang and rang. I hung up before it got to voicemail.

  “No answer.”

  “He might be busy,” Apollo said.

  “Might be.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “This precognition didn’t come with a training manual. But I guess you’re right. They’d call. Hermes might even drop in. We stick to the plan. I guess. But I feel like a mama whose teenage daughter missed their meet-up at the mall. Or blew curfew by a huge margin. Something’s wrong.”

  “Danger doesn’t mean destruction.”

  “Doesn’t it?” That had certainly been my experience.

  “Right!” I said suddenly, as the road started to veer left and the needle on the blood dial swung pointedly in the other direction.

  “Highway entrance coming up. Should we ignore the dial momentarily and get on the highway, since it heads that way?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t even have to think about it. Both Nick’s map of mayhem and my flying canvas had indicated that the brothers had fled somewhere outside the city.

  At the highway entrance, the dial pointed us distinctly northbound and then seemed fairly happy with our progress until we were right on top of an exit. All the while my gut was churning, no longer sure which way the danger lay—forward or back. Now that we were getting close to our quarry, it was clear that not all the trouble was behind us back at the museum.

  A few more hairpin twists and turns and one long stretch where we blew past anything commercial and even the real residential areas. Houses grew farther and farther apart. More isolated, more run-down. Finally the dial pointed us not toward another turn but toward a house standing off all by itself. It was an old Mexicali style one story that had seen better days. A great golden-orange wall of crumbling stucco with the crumbled parts still lying in the overgrown grass blocked the view of the house except through an arched entrance into the courtyard. It looked like a home time had forgotten.

  Apollo and I shared a look. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of place you’d find the Roland heirs,” I said.

  “The police would have investigated any property linked to them.”

  “Do you think—” that the owner was one of their victims, I thought but didn’t finish. We’d find out soon enough. “Nevermind. Let’s go.”

  The nearest neighboring house was probably a quarter to a half mile away and there was no one strolling the street. No reason to wear the jacket any longer to hide my weapon and risk it getting in the way. I left it behind as I got out of the car, took firm hold of the xiphos and slid the dagger into my waistband at the small of my back, hoping not to stab myself before anyone else. I wanted my dagger hand free to open doors or hold back cobwebs. I didn’t absolutely know we’d be faced with the latter, but from the state of the house, I couldn’t rule it out either, and with both hands bearing weapons, I was in danger of slashing myself if something multi-legged dropped on me from above.r />
  I’d gotten better about heights. Spiders were never going to give me the warm fuzzies. Especially not after Arachne and her minions had scarred me for life.

  “Watch yourself,” Apollo said as we approached the arch. “It could be warded.”

  “Can you tell?”

  He edged a little closer and went very still, sensing. “I don’t think so, but there’s something off here. I can feel it.”

  I felt it too. I waved my xiphos through the archway first, figuring that if anything was going to trigger, better on the blade than on us, but nothing happened, so I let it lead the way, following it onto a cracked walkway with grass growing up through the fractures. The yard itself was more weeds than grass, all overgrown, almost to the point of swallowing a child’s three-wheel bike that tilted up against a large palm with drooping fronds. If it hadn’t been bright blue, it would have blended right in. Two big, colorful pots of agave plants stood as prickly sentinels to either side of the doorway—a smaller stucco arch over a staunch wooden door. Bright blue and gold tiles inset over the doorbell to the left labeled the house number 207, which seemed odd, since there were less than a dozen houses on the whole street.

  My precog kicked me again. Inside, it insisted. As if we didn’t know.

  “How do you want to handle this?” I asked quietly. “You want the front and I’ll take the back? Vice versa?”

  He looked around at all the high grass and higher weeds. “I’ll take the back,” he said. “Give me a thirty-count.”

  I knew he was being chivalrous, thinking of what might be lurking in and among all the growth. Spiders, fire ants, sharp, rusty pieces of metal. Tetanus I could handle, but the rest… I didn’t argue.

  But as instructed, I did wait, none too patiently. My precog didn’t understand caution. It understood danger, and whether I chose fight or flight, it wanted me to give some indication I’d gotten the damned message already. Passivity was not an option.

  My thirty-count might have been a little fast. I might have rushed my Mississippis. Still, on thirty I tried the knob, which—no surprise—did not conveniently turn in my hand. On thirty-one-and-a-half, I backed off far enough for momentum and kicked the door in with a great, huge blow right above the knob where I’d found it did the most good.