“Calm down,” he snapped. “I’m not going to kill you…yet. I said we have to talk, and I meant it. Life is too short to play word games. I should know. Eternity, though…in eternity we have nothing but time. You have stolen from me the one person who made it palatable.”
He let my hand drop, and I tried to roll to sitting, futilely hoping to dislodge his furry friend.
“I wouldn’t,” Hades said. “I haven’t healed you. My powers don’t run that way. But I have put your system in a kind of stasis until you can heal yourself. You won’t bleed to death internally while we speak.”
“But I didn’t—” It took an immense amount of strength to force the words out.
He put a hand to my lips to stop me, and it burned like dry ice. I guessed I could still feel something. “It doesn’t matter whether you contributed materially or not. You are what passes for the law here. You failed to stop the desecration of my kingdom and the kidnapping of my queen. You will return her to me or your world will suffer the consequences.”
I couldn’t feel enough to know if my eyes went wide at that.
“I’m not…law—“
He stood abruptly, causing me vertigo as my bruised brain tried to follow the movement. “You ARE.” His voice cracked like lightning, just like in my dream. “You may not be their law enforcement,” he said, burning eyes boring into mine, “but you’re ours. Olympus buzzes with word of your exploits. You captured my brothers, but failed to stop their damage, which means I am now your supreme god.”
I begged to differ. Silently.
He continued. “You will do as I say. You will find Persephone for me. Or I will do it myself. Churches, hospitals, homes—they are all like pebbles before me, and I will leave no stone unturned to find her.”
Cerberus—or whoever was cutting off all the blood circulation to my legs—growled and the earth quaked. A couple walking out to their car took one look, turned tail and ran.
Hades flicked a negligent hand in the hound’s direction, and I screamed as his weight lifted and blood returned to my dying cells. The hound ran after the retreating couple. He was easily the size of Hades’s SUV, and probably twice as fast.
“No!” I coughed up the word from the depths of my soul, glaring at Hades, at the smile of anticipation on his face.
I tried to rise, but could hardly move.
Out of sight the woman screamed. The man howled—his cry cut off by the crunch of bone. It was a terrible, horrible sound. My imagination supplied what I couldn’t see. Rage started to burn away the cold numbness Hades had sent through my system. I tried again to rise, to fight or run or help, but he was able to pin me to the ground with one hand.
“You’re a monster,” I said. Even less wisely, “No wonder she ran away.”
He started to crush me with that hand on my chest, grinding my broken ribs into fragile organs. The world faded to the blazing coals of his eyes. “I had a point to make. Cerberus guards my gates. My power keeps the souls contained. What do you think will happen if he and I are away too long looking for my love and the inmates realize that no one is running the asylum?”
Oh Hell. On. Earth. All those souls lose in the world, some probably fractured or tormented, angry or confused… For once my imagination failed me.
The havoc they could wreak…
“I see that you understand.” He smiled, and I thought of his shirt. Have a sun-shiny day! Yeah, right. “You have my card.”
He snapped, and it appeared in my hand.
Hadrian Boss, it said in fiery red letters. Acquisitions. It gave two numbers, the same two Jesus had given me.
“I’ll be waiting for your call.”
He snapped again, and suddenly his spot was vacant, just like his soul.
A car pulled into the Inn parking lot, headlights slashing across my broken body—and probably those the hellhound had mauled. Just like the bodies on Mount Lee, my brain supplied. I tried to call out, not so much to save myself from being run over as to warn the car off in case Cerberus hadn’t vanished along with Hades.
I didn’t manage enough sound to be heard over the car’s engine. At least, I didn’t think so, but it stopped short anyway and a woman jumped out, half-hysterical.
“Ohmagod, ohmagod, ohmagod. What happened? Are you hurt?”
It seemed like an odd question, since perfectly healthy people didn’t generally have a lie-down in the middle of hotel parking lots, but I kept my snark to myself.
“Couple,” I said, spitting blood in order to get the words out. “Around the corner. Check on them?”
The woman looked where I looked and ran off in high-heeled boots to see what I was talking about. Her scream told me she’d found it.
“Ohmagod, ohmagod, ohmagod,” she said again. Then, into her cell phone, “Hello. Ohmagod, you have to help. There’s been…I don’t know…a blood bath. The Residence Inn—“
By which I figured that help would be on the way and it was finally okay for me to pass out.
I opened my eyes to another nightmare…only this one I was awake for.
Rosen and Holloway stood over me as I lay prone in a hospital bed. It was the second time tonight I’d been stuck lying down while powerful men looked over me. I didn’t like it one bit.
“Wanna tell us what happened?” Holloway asked as soon as I blinked him into focus.
“Why, I’m feeling fine. Thank you so much for the concern,” I responded wryly. “And you two? How are the wife and kids?”
“No wife,” Holloway answered.
“No kids,” Rosen chimed in.
I rolled my eyes. Even that hurt. “Why do I waste my sarcasm?”
“For that matter, why waste time with rhetorical questions,” Rosen asked, “when the standard variety is already on the table?”
I tried to sit up—to look for a nurse or a few shots of espresso. Not necessarily in that order. Dealing with these two on a full bladder and empty stomach was more than I could handle.
I quickly gave it up. My ribs were no longer screaming at me, either due to really good pain meds or the miraculous effect of the ambrosia, but someone had bound them so tightly I felt like a mummy. I could move, but it took a buttload of effort, and my reserves were nil.
“Will you call a nurse for me?” I asked, ignoring them for now.
“Will you answer our questions?” Rosen asked.
“I promise, if you let me pee and come back to me with caffeine and something I can hold down, I’m all yours.”
Holloway looked like I’d just waved a dissecting frog under his nose. Must have been the reference to pee. Rosen just looked amused. “Fine, we’ll be back in five minutes. You’ll get a sip of coffee for every question you answer.”
I looked at him with new respect. “Damn, you play hardball.”
“Believe it.”
He herded Holloway out ahead of him, and moments later a plump nurse with red hair and freckles came bustling in. She gave me the option of the bedpan or hobbling with help to the facilities, and I chose option B.
I was pretty sure it took the allotted five minutes just to get there, let alone back. Rosen and Holloway were waiting when we returned. They got an eyeful of thigh and probably a little more as I got up onto the bed and adjusted the covers. Why on earth did they have to make hospital beds so huge and gowns so short?
The nurse left, closing the door behind herself and shutting me in with the agents. I was now entirely focused on the cup in Rosen’s hand. The contents of the pastry bag could wait.
“Coffee,” I said.
“You haven’t answered a question yet.”
“Coffee,” I growled.
I sounded suitably zombie-like, and I think he thought I might return from the dead if he let me have my way…or that I’d reinjure a rib lunging for the cup if he didn’t. Rosen stepped toward the bed and held the cup along with me as I tipped it to my mouth. I resented the lack of control, but forgave him the second the too-hot beverage hit my tongue. He let me take two
scalding gulps, then pulled it away.
“I thought our constitution outlawed cruel and unusual punishment,” I accused. “Caffeine deprivation is crueler than water boarding.”
“Wanna try it and see?” he asked.
Okay, so I’d pushed him as far as he was going to go. The last time I’d had to give an official statement (that one to the LAPD), I’d had to describe the perp as green and scaly, looking something like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. This time, at least my story sounded a lot more credible. Maybe someone else had seen Hades. Per his threat, maybe he was staying topside for a while and a hotel canvas would turn him up. Even as I thought that, though, I considered what it would mean for all those restless souls he guarded. When I got to Cerberus I stuttered to a halt, lost in the memory of the screams of the couple he’d killed and the sound of his teeth crunching bone…
I reached claw-like hands for the coffee, needing the heat to counteract the chill stealing over me. Rosen surrendered the cup this time, and I held tightly to it to keep my hands from shaking.
“That couple…are they…” I was too afraid of the answer to finish the question.
Rosen and Holloway exchanged a look. “Dead,” Holloway supplied. “I’m sorry. Did you witness it?”
I shook my head. “I saw what did it, but not the actual…mauling.”
“Describe what you did see.”
For once my mouth had no urge to run away with me. I’d never actually seen the extra heads, so I left those out of the equation, but when I described Cerberus as being the size of a horse but twice as wide, they exchanged a look that said maybe my head should have been examined along with my ribs.
“Wait, what time is it?” I asked.
“Eight a.m. Why?”
“I have to get to the morgue.”
I started to rise, already feeling better than I had on my trip to the facilities. I was surprised when neither one tried to stop me.
“That’s where we’re headed next,” Holloway said. “We can give you a ride.”
“Only you haven’t been released yet,” Rosen added.
As if he’d summoned her, the nurse appeared in the doorway. “Agents, if you’re finished here, Mizz Karacis’s friend is going to stage a revolt if we don’t let her in here soon, and regulations limit visitors to—”
Christie appeared behind her. “Tori!” she called over the much shorter nurse. “They wouldn’t let me in to see you. I’ve been so worried!”
“No need to concern yourself with regs,” Rosen told the nurse, “Mizz Karacis was just about to check herself out.”
Holloway and I both gave him a surprised look. “Well, weren’t you?” he asked.
The nurse’s freckled face tried to do disapproving, but wasn’t really made for it. Now, if Jesus had been here, we’d have had a world class stare down.
“I’ll get the doctor,” she said.
“Don’t bother. Just the forms. Now, where are my clothes?” I muttered.
That was apparently Christie’s cue. “All right, everybody out. My girl’s got to change, and she doesn’t need an audience.”
The nurse sidestepped past her, and Christie took advantage of the unrestricted room access to come in and shoo the agents out.
“I may need some help,” I said quietly when she was close enough I could believe no one would overhear.
“No problem.” She pulled the privacy curtain shut behind her, but neither of us could find my clothes. A voice hailed us from the other side of the curtain. When Christie pulled it aside, we found the nurse standing there with blue-gray scrubs in hand. “Her clothes had to be taken for evidence. I can offer her these.”
“Uh, thanks,” Christie said, taking them.
“No shoes,” she continued. “I don’t think she’ll get far in paper slippers, but I’m sure we have something better in the gift shop downstairs.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. At least that much of me didn’t hurt. “Why are you suddenly helping me out the door?”
She turned red enough to hide her freckles and dropped her gaze to her toes. “I just realized where I’d seen you before.”
“Me?” But Christie was the famous one.
She looked back up at me. “Aren’t you the girl Apollo Demas rescued from the ocean a few weeks ago? I mean…I must have watched that clip on-line, like, half a dozen times. So romantic. I don’t know how it took me so long to recognize you.”
It was my turn to…well, not blush, because I didn’t do that sort of thing, but… Yeah, no surprise she hadn’t recognized me out of context, grimacing in pain, probably being cut out of my stylish ducky and bunny sleeping pants.
Christie grinned at me and back to the nurse. “Yup, that’s her.” She leaned in toward the nurse confidentially and said, “They have a thing.”
If I’d had anything to throw at her at that moment, I would have.
“We do NOT have ‘a thing’.”
Christie winked at the nurse, who beamed like the sun on Hades’s shirt. At least someone was having a sun-shiny day.
She turned back at the door. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone else. I don’t want you to get mobbed.”
“Thank you,” I said, well and truly embarrassed now by the whole thing. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. I’ll be back in a flash with your paperwork. I checked in with the doc, and he says it’s amazing you didn’t reinjure your ribs. You’re healing fine, and he thinks you’re good to go. Otherwise, I might have had to be a hardcase.”
That I would have liked to see.
Then she was off, and Christie was glaring me down, holding the scrubs hostage. “Reinjured your ribs? When did you hurt them in the first place? Tell me you didn’t insist on a full day of driving up here with busted ribs. What were you thinking?”
Crap. If I hadn’t been all tied up with the Feds it might have occurred to me how my speedy healing would look to the outside world. Not that I could have done anything about it, unconscious as I was.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, unable to meet her gaze. “You heard the nurse—the doctor says I’m fine.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“How?”
“Oh, just shut it. I’m doing the driving from here on out. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“You think that will be safer?”
She threw the scrubs at me, forgetting that I was supposed to be a fragile little flower.
“You’re my best friend, and if anything happens to you… Well, I’m just going to have to go all Rambo on somebody’s ass, and I’m not all butch like you are. Remember that.”
It was all I could do not to laugh. Steam was already coming out of her ears, and I knew it was her concern making her lash out.
“All butch, huh?” I asked, fighting even a smile, afraid it might be my gateway drug to hysterics.
She broke first, a sort of sniffle-laugh escaping. “Well, comparatively.”
I looked at her sparkling white track suit with the silver bedazzled detailing. On me it wouldn’t have stayed white for the time it took to put on.
“Okay then, Sundance. Guard the door. I’ve got this.”
Christie turned away and surreptitiously wiped a tear from the corner of her eye while I got into my stylish scrubs. Together we looked like the odd couple.
When I was done, I signed all my papers and told Rosen and Holloway we’d meet them at the morgue, now that I had my very own driver.
The nurse insisted on wheeling me out in a chair, so I never even had to get my paper slippers dirty. Even though I was sure the scrubs and paper booties were perfectly appropriate morgue attire, Christie had an absolutely unreasoning terror that I’d step in something “ooky”—her word—like liquefied body parts they might leave just lying around. Nothing I said would sway her to take me to the morgue directly, though I did manage to convince her that the twenty-four hour pharmacy would be less out of the way than our hotel. It was clear
to me she had no idea until then that pharmacies actually sold clothes, and even less idea why anyone on earth would want them. That made two, because even in his absence, I could feel the glare of Jesus’s disapproval at the drawstring pants, two-to-a-pack tank top and plastic flip flops I chose based on wholly economic considerations. Lime green on the tank and thongs. Goosy-gray on the pants. Christie pursed her lips and didn’t say a word except to convince the clerk that it wouldn’t threaten their insurance premiums to let a customer into their employee-only restrooms to change.
I thought it was pity rather than persuasion that won the day. I hoped the clerk didn’t come to regret her agreement when she discovered I’d nearly decimated their paper towel supply in the effort to clean myself up a bit before putting on the clean clothes…as if I had to make myself presentable for the dead. The very thought hurried me out, putting all the filth I’d picked up in that parking lot into perspective. I was alive. The ambrosia would probably take care of any stubborn little microbes that wanted to change all that. Everything else was just vanity.
Christie tossed her purse into my lap as we got back into the car. “There’s a brush in there,” she said. “Use it…and anything else you might want.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” I said, giving her a mock salute.
She stuck her tongue out at me. “You’re famous now, haven’t you heard? You have a certain image to maintain. In case you get mobbed by the paparazzi.”
“Screw standards,” I said.
She took her eyes off the road to widen them at me. “Bite your tongue!”
I turned her head back toward the street and took advantage of her brush. I left everything else alone. I somehow didn’t think Kissable Peach or Approachable Apricot were my colors.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find a single scrunchy to tame my crazy curls, which meant I looked something like Medusa—my possible progenitor—only with hair more fright than bite.
The personal primping took my mind off things, more or less, until we reached the morgue lot, at which point any care for my appearance went right out the window. I got snapped back into my seat as I tried to exit the car without unhooking my belt. I had to force myself to take a second to just breathe.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 10