Rise of the Blood lo-3

by Lucienne Diver

  “Who died and made you boss?” Nick asked.

  “No one, yet. I’d like to keep it that way,” I answered.

  “Oh the drama. I think you might have missed your calling,” Apollo said helpfully.

  I gave him the stink-eye. “Hey, this is your drama. I’m just along for the ride. Everyone has their assignments. We’ll reconvene later.”

  “It’ll have to be a lot later,” Apollo said. “Sounds like I’ll have to talk with security, and then I have to get into makeup. We’re doing some of the sunset shots tonight. The conditions are supposed to be perfect. With any luck, the half lighting will hide my…condition.”

  “You get gorgeous,” Nick said. “Don’t worry, we’ll do all the heavy lifting.”

  I rolled my eyes. The testosterone levels were starting to get cloying.

  I pushed Nick out ahead of me, but thought of something just as we were leaving and turned back.

  “Have you noticed any priestly types hanging around, all dressed in black, none-too-subtle?”

  Apollo looked surprised. “You mean like Greek Orthodox priests?” Because they too wore the black cassocks.

  “Not exactly. Kind of hermit-y looking, really, like they might only come to civilization now and then for supplies?”

  He had his thinking face on, eyes up and to the left, as if he were visibly reviewing his mental files. “I don’t know about the various sects anymore. Back when our sanctuaries were held sacred, each god and goddess had their acolytes. Now…the men in black could be anybody.”

  “Well, keep an eye out. Nick and I were followed today.”

  “I will. And, Tori, thank you.”

  I blinked. “Just evening the score.”

  “Still.”

  “You’re welcome,” Nick called from the doorway, a reminder that he hadn’t been thanked—for his help or the sidelining of his girlfriend.

  “Thank you too,” Apollo called. “I owe you a boon.”

  “Just stay away from my girl,” Nick said.

  My girl—like there was some ownership involved.

  “I keep trying,” Apollo said, “but apparently our weaves are intertwined.”

  Before I’d “met” the Fates—Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis, that would have seemed like poetic drivel. But the three sisters wove our destinies. I’d seen my thread nearly cut from the great weave, the pattern more complex than I could ever follow. I knew that what Apollo said was true. If our destinies were interwoven, it was beyond even his power to untangle them. And it was clear to me that Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis had watched way too many soap operas in their time. They enjoyed the drama.

  I didn’t want to think about that. I finished pushing Nick out the door, followed him through and shut it behind me as best I could

  “Seriously,” Nick asked, once we were alone, “what do you see in that guy?”

  “I don’t see anything in him. I’m with you.”

  “Uh huh. Try telling him that. Anyway, I guess I’m off to interview a gorgeous, green-eyed starlet. But not to worry, I’m with you.”

  Jealousy kicked me in the gut even though the interview was my idea. “Fine. Point taken. I’ll try not to be an ass about it if you aren’t.”

  Nick smiled, and it lit up those midnight blue eyes of his. “Deal.”

  Serena would never know what hit her.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Hermes. “Where are you?” I demanded.

  “The hotel bar,” he answered, amusement thick in his voice. “Where are you? And while we’re on this path, what are you wearing?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “And to the second question?” he asked.

  “My butt-kicking boots.”

  “Nothing else?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, I’m prowling the hotel au naturel.” A cleaning lady I passed looked at me, startled. “You’ll see for yourself in a moment. Stay where you are.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” he said and hung up.

  He wouldn’t believe me, as well he shouldn’t, but maybe I’d intrigued him enough to stay put. We needed to have words.

  Thank gods this hotel bar was on the ground floor rather than the rooftop with a grand view out over the clouds. I still hadn’t managed to catch a full breath, and felt on the verge of hyperventilating or blowing up into a full-on panic attack at any second. If Tina had picked some mountaintop chapel for her ceremony—and, really, what other options were there here at the top of the world?—I was going to lose it. Maybe it wasn’t ambrosia I needed. Maybe it was Xanax. Or a cyber-café where they could just Skype me in for the ceremony.

  I found Hermes drinking alone at the bar, two tall glasses in front of him full of clear liquid. Water? Surely not.

  He slid one toward me as I sat down on the stool next to him, and I gave him the hairy eyeball. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Try it and see.”

  I looked around for the bartender, hoping for a straighter answer, but no one was in evidence. I held the glass up to my nose and sniffed. My eyes nearly rolled back into my head at the scent. When I tried to chase down a comparison, the smell seemed to shift on me—jasmine and honeysuckle one minute, then vanilla and sandalwood, cinnamon and cloves… In short, heaven.

  “What is it?” I asked again, unable to wait for his answer before tipping the glass back to let just a drop touch my lips.

  The taste exploded on my tongue, starting small and then overpowering my taste buds like one of those kids’ toys that expanded exponentially in water. It was—

  “Nectar,” he said, the glint in his eyes jollier than Old Saint Nick’s and at least a hundred times more mischievous.

  My heart kicked, and I would have spat it back, but it had disappeared, seemingly straight into my being, skipping mundane things like my stomach.

  “Nectar as in…nectar. Of the Gods?”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “But—”

  “Oh, the bartender won’t mind. I slipped him a very nice tip to assure he wouldn’t notice me pouring from my own flask.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “A god? Well on your way, I’d say. You’ve survived the ambrosia. And you know what they say—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  My hands trembled as I pushed the glass away. It took all my willpower to actually let it go. I knew, knew nothing would ever taste the same again, and considering that everything had already gone to ashes…

  I glared at Hermes. “What’s happening to me?” I asked him. He always seemed to know more than he should. Maybe he had answers he shouldn’t.

  “You tell me.”

  “Why are you trying to suck me deeper in?” I asked.

  “Why are you trying to get out?” he countered.

  “None of your business,” I said. This wasn’t going at all the way I intended. I had to retake control, if I’d ever had it. “Look, I do want to get out, but not until after this whole wedding thing and—” I couldn’t say it. Bad enough going to Apollo, but he was the one who’d hooked me, and I felt that in some twisted way he owed me, even though the ambrosia had saved my life. But this—this was like meeting my dealer. I’d lied to Nick…or anyway left out a critical part of the truth…and I felt like I was about to make a deal with the devil.

  “And what?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Forget I mentioned it.” I started to stand, and Hermes grabbed my arm, stopping me. I was afraid he’d feel me shaking and tried to pull back.

  “Wait,” he insisted. “You came here for a reason. Here, I’ll buy you a drink more to your liking.” He snapped his fingers, and the bartender appeared like magic from a narrow doorway in the back wall, practically hidden behind a wood-latticed area with wine bottles filling every slot.

  “What’ll you have?” Hermes asked. I was surprised he’d bothered to solicit my opinion, he’d been so high-handed so far.

  “Diet Coke,” I ordered.

  “Come,” he said, “you can do better than t
hat.”

  “You asked. I answered,” I said, waiting to see if it took before retaking my seat.

  The bartender waited, looking for Hermes’s approval before making a move. Either he was a male chauvinist by nature or that’d been a helluva tip Hermes had given him. Hermes gave the bartender a wink and a nod, and I watched carefully to make sure there were no special additives. Even then, I took only a small sip before committing. Seemed fine. Tasted like swamp water. I sighed and looked longingly at the nectar.

  “So, you came for more than my scintillating company?” Hermes asked.

  “What did you know about the Back to Earth movement, and when did you know it?” I snapped.

  “Is that the question you really want to ask?” he said, downing the last of the nectar in his glass and pushing it aside, just like my question. “What’s done is done. No longer relevant.”

  “It’s relevant to me.”

  “What’s relevant to me is that you sit here in a bar discussing a case that is closed instead of looking into what ails my friend Apollo.”

  “Fine, what do you know about that?”

  “Nothing. If I’d wished him harm, I would have taken a backseat when Dionysus and his bacchae were out for his blood. Or when Hades and his brood…”

  “You didn’t exactly help.”

  “No, but I warned. As far as the fight, what would have been in it for me?”

  I wanted to hit something. Him, by preference. But I had the feeling that wouldn’t go well. Not in my current, shaky, under-oxygenated state.

  Hermes was playing some kind of game. He was always in the thick of things—warning, needling, riddling. Never quite helping or hindering. But he’d just given something away I don’t think he’d intended. Whatever he had done, there’d been something in it for him. I just had to figure out what.

  “You tell me,” I said, echoing his earlier words. “What’s in it for you now?”

  “No,” he said simply. Cheerfully. “That’s for me to know and for you to figure out. So much more fun that way. Here, we’ll play twenty questions. By my count, you’ve already used, hmm, let’s say ten, so choose the rest wisely, Grasshopper. And for every question I answer, I get to ask another.”

  Gah! More games.

  “Fine. First question: did Dionysus get his ambrosia supply from you?”

  “Yes. My turn.”

  “Wait, yes? Just like that. Did you know what he was planning to do with all that ambrosia?”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk, you’re really not very good at this, are you? That was two more questions already. You are down to seven and I haven’t even asked my first.”

  I was afraid my teeth would crack from me grinding them.

  “Fine,” I said again. “Shoot.”

  “How many gifts has Apollo given you?”

  It took me a minute to process. I’d expected Hermes to go for something crazy personal, like my bra size, or grill me about Christie and how best to get into her bikini briefs. I’d never expected a serious question. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why he wanted to know, but thank goodness I wasn’t oxygen-deprived enough to let it out and waste yet another of my questions. Which meant the strategy of answering a question with a question was right out. No playing dumb for me. And I didn’t know Hermes well, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that if I didn’t answer his query, he’d be finished answering mine.

  “Just the one,” I said. He hadn’t asked me what the gifts were. Just how many. Two could play at his game of minimalist responses.

  “Very good,” he said, eyes glittering.

  “Now, about that ambrosia,” I prompted.

  “I never asked Dionysus what he intended with it,” Hermes said.

  Ah ha. “That wasn’t my question,” I told him, pinning him with my no-nonsense gaze. “I asked what you knew, not what you inquired or what you were told.”

  The glittering in his eyes took on a more sinister glint, like snake venom.

  “I knew that it was too much ambrosia for personal use. Beyond that, I could only speculate.”

  Damn, and double damn. Hypothesizing didn’t count as knowing. I was going to have to start thinking like a lawyer. Or a snake-in-the-grass trickster god.

  “Now,” he said, “what exactly has Apollo given you and what have you given in return?”

  He cupped his hands together under his chin and stared steadily at me, awaiting my response.

  “That’s two questions,” I said, “linked together by an ‘and’.”

  He gave me a crocodile smile. “Why, so it is. Which brings us neck and neck at seven questions remaining.”

  “Fine. He’s given me precognition and I haven’t given him a thing.” Except grief, but I was pretty sure that didn’t count.

  I had to think carefully about my next questions. “So let me be really clear,” I said after a moment. “The Back to Earth plans to addict people to ambrosia are no more.” I made it a statement. “Do you have plans to pick up where they left off?”

  “You’re getting better at this,” he commented. “There is far too much regulation in the food industry. No, I have no intention of picking up their mantle. Now, back to Apollo. You haven’t yet given him anything in return. But what do you owe?”

  The question chilled me, because the answer was more complicated than it should have been. Overtly, I didn’t owe anything. I hadn’t asked for my precognition, and Apollo had never mentioned any strings attached, but I knew the story of Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy. Apollo had given her the power to see the future, only to curse her never to be believed when she spurned his advances. Hermes had centuries more knowledge of Apollo than I had. Could it be that my bill had not yet come due? Or could Apollo have learned from his mistakes and outlived his past? I knew what I wanted to believe. But wanting didn’t make it so.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Ah,” he said, unhelpfully. “Ah.”

  Now I was torn. As much as I wanted to ask him about the consequences of doing the little dance Apollo and I were doing, I only had six questions left. I suspected that Hermes was trying to sidetrack me, which meant I couldn’t let it happen. Plus, the wedding rehearsal beckoned and I still had to change. I needed to start asking essay questions. Yes and no answers were getting me nowhere.

  “What’s your present scheme?” I asked him.

  “Scheme? Singular? Oh ho, girl, I’m hurt. You underestimate me.”

  “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “I’m trying to play fair. Do I tell you about my very explicit plans for your charming friend or do I share with you…no, no, I think I’ll keep that one to myself. Let’s just say that Back to Earth, in addition to showing poor judgment, thought too small. Health food, bah. Some will want it, yes, but not enough. Ask yourself, what is it that everyone wants? Where’s the real money?”

  My heart clenched. People were dead because of the Back to Earth cult. If Hermes was thinking even bigger we were in trouble. Was he still trafficking in ambrosia? Nectar? Either one was more addictive than crack and twice as deadly to kick, at least for mere mortals. Even granted that the gods weren’t known for keeping it in their pants, so traces of their bloodline would be flowing through a whole lot of veins, it still left tons of people in danger. Even those with a smidgen of divine blood weren’t guaranteed to survive the kind of changes ambrosia would make to their system. And should access to the drug suddenly stop for any reason, death was the likely end game.

  “You can’t,” I gasped.

  “My dear, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I surely can. Also, you still have no idea what exactly we’re talking about.”

  “So enlighten me.”

  Hermes clicked a finger against his teeth thoughtfully, annoyingly. “Have you not heard all the doomsday prophecies?” he asked. “They’re not really about the end of the world. They’re about the end of this incarnation. Out with the old, in with the new. The system’s broken. Rapt
ure or zombie apocalypse, either way things aren’t intended to stay the same. I’m just planning to—” he pretended to pluck the right phrase out of mid air “—guide the course of future events.”

  He was a maniac. Unconsciously, I’d distanced myself, leaning away.

  “You’re insane,” I told him.

  He looked me dead in the eyes. “Am I? If you saw a train wreck coming, wouldn’t you wrest control of the train to avert the crisis? I know you. You’d do it in a heartbeat. We’re the same.”

  “We’re not.”

  “I assure you, we are. And you don’t want to be a thorn in my side on this. Thorns get removed. With prejudice.”

  I stared, stunned, unable to form a response. Suddenly everything—Apollo’s petrification problem, my ambrosia withdrawal and overcomplicated love life—seemed petty. What was Hermes up to? What was his end game? Was there—

  My brain stuttered to a stop, and it took everything I had to force it to go on.

  Was there a chance that I’d somehow been a pawn in Hermes’s game, whatever it was? Had he helped me before so that I would remove the greater gods from the playing field—Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus, Hephaestus, even Hades to the extent that he was still sulking? Who was left to stop him? Little old me? My gorgon glare didn’t work on the older gods. What else did I have? My precognition was no good without the power to stop my visions.

  “Are you responsible for what’s happening to Apollo?” I asked suddenly.

  “You’re getting colder. As I’ve said, I don’t have anything against Apollo. Even if I did, I’d hardly need to waste my time on him with Zeus and Poseidon on the loose and happy to run him down.”

  Hermes reached in front of me and grabbed my glass of nectar, tossing back the remainder. Then he returned the glass to the bar and rose from his stool.

  “By my count, there are still questions to be asked and answered. However, I believe you have a rehearsal to get to, and I have a…thing. So, we’ll have to pick up again another time.”

  He threw money down on to the bar to cover my soda—too much—and strode out as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, he’d just rocked mine, and not in the good way. I tossed back my soda like it was something a helluva lot stronger and sat there stunned as it bubbled its way down.