Rifts

by Nicole Hamlett

  I laughed without humor at my own stupidity. "We've been living like a family this whole time and I had no idea. I guess I didn't want to know." I stopped and ran my fingers through my hair. Shaking my head, I continued, "I can't do this anymore. I don't care where you go, but I want you out of my home and out of my life." The words were soft but laced with steel.

  "Grace, we can talk about this. I can explain everything. You just have to trust me."

  A surprised bark of laughter escaped my lips. "Trust you? Are you serious?" I shook my head and went into safe sarcastic mode. "What, you have a thing for Diana's kids and since you couldn't have the one, you settled on the other?"

  "It wasn't like that."

  "It feels like that. Why choose this-" I gestured down at my body, "when you had the paragon of virtue? Hell, I was even less when you pity fucked me. Christ, Drew." I ran my hand through my hair again and a mocking laugh burst from my mouth. "I was drunk but I would think I'd have remembered fucking you."

  The anger turned to hurt and self-pity. I knelt down next to him so we were closer. My fingertips trailed over his cheek, the flesh sizzling where my skin touched his. I wanted one last look. I wanted to remember every feature because it was my intention to never set eyes on him again.

  His oh-so-blue eyes stared at me, begging me to listen to him. But I wasn't having any of that. My eyes traveled across his plush lips that I wanted to perpetually kiss and down over the cleft in his chin that I daydreamed about. I'd buried most of the rest so that was as much as I was going to get. I sighed and closed my eyes to seal the memory.

  "I haven't forgotten about you, bitch." My voice carried over her mad laughter. "You're on notice. If I see you again — if you come near my child again - I will kill you."

  I looked up to gaze into her eyes. There was a new uncertainty that hadn't been there before. Good. She should be very afraid. I'm not going to pretend that I was tougher, faster or better than she was. But, I had a new determination and an unlimited supply of rage to fuel me.

  My hand dropped from Drew's face and I stood up, taking one last glance before I stepped through the entryway to the house. Scooter circled around me before standing at attention in the doorway, an unearthly growl reverberating in his throat.

  "You'll get your chance at her next time, buddy. Let's get packed."

  I left Drew buried in the front yard. He wouldn't stay there. Like his father, he packed some serious juice. It said a lot about my mental state and how well he knew me that he'd stayed there in the first place. The heat from my skin evaporated the tears before they could reach my cheeks. Good.

  The door slammed shut behind me with a force that rattled the windows. I pretended that I didn't notice Mrs. Johnson staring agape at my front yard. Crap.

  ***

  "Let me get this straight, you buried him in your front yard. What are you…five?"

  Athena was sitting on my bed kicking her feet as I packed and gave her the rundown on what had just happened. Saying that she was amused was an understatement.

  "Like you couldn't have told me the what's up with the what's up? Why does everyone feel like they need to keep secrets?"

  "Whoah there! When would I have had time to tell you anything over the last few months? Between training, trying to put LA back together and ferreting out the rest of Geb's minions, we've been a little busy, babe."

  "Point to you," I said, slightly annoyed.

  "Don't you think that you may be over-reacting a bit? I mean, they haven't been a couple for three hundred years."

  I punched a pair of leggings into my gym bag with enough force to tear a hole in the bottom. "Crap. I don't know where my other bag is."

  "You know you don't need any of this stuff. You have an entire wardrobe at Olympus in your chambers," she drawled.

  "Yes, but packing angrily is dramatic enough to make me feel like I'm doing something useful with my rage."

  "I see."

  "I'm not pissed that they were a couple. I'm pissed because he just happened to knock me up one night and didn't bother to say 'oh hey, by the way, I'm your baby daddy.’ That is what I'm pissed about. "

  I dumped the bag out next to her and threw it under the bed. Now I had to find a new one. I had luggage - but packing luggage meant that this wasn't just some overnight stay. Luggage meant that I would be there for a while. Luggage showed intent. I wasn't ready to admit that I may be in Olympus for an extended period.

  Athena's hand caught me as I was pacing around, looking for a replacement. "Grace, you need to pull your shit together and admit two things to yourself. One – you're going to be in Olympus indefinitely. You not only need to get Dylan's stuff addressed, but you need more training. I don't like that Hope knocked you around like a rag doll. It means that I wasn't training you right. And two — you need to recognize that you have some pretty strong feelings for your sister's husband and it's not just him lying to you about Dylan. There are other emotions running around in that crazy head of yours. The sooner you come to grips, the better."

  "Sister's husband… Aww crap." I slumped against the bed in defeat. She was right. I hated how she was always right. But she wasn't the Goddess of Wisdom for nothing. "I've been trying to ignore those."

  "Riiiiight. That's why you've let him play house with you for three months longer than was necessary."

  I threw her a sidelong glance. Athena's humor was always fairly hard to decipher but it had been harder to figure out if she was being helpful or just a bitch lately. "Shut up and help me find my suitcases," I groused.

  In forty-five minutes, the suitcases, the kid and the dog were packed and ready for the trip. We stood in the living room and I looked around at my home. The fact that I was running away from my home made me angrier than anything else could have. I'd worked hard for this. I'd fought tooth and nail for this patch of dirt and timber.

  We'd been to Olympus a few times over the last three months but no longer than a night or two at a time. This felt more permanent. I was pretty sure I disliked that thought.

  "Why does this shit happen to me?" It wasn't a question to anyone in particular but two voices piped in.

  "Because you lead a complicated life?" Athena quipped.

  "Because the Universe hates me?"

  The last voice was my son's. Another twinge of guilt shot through me. One thing after another was changing his perfectly ordinary life.

  While packing in a rage, I'd called his school and left a voicemail. I used a dying member in the family as an excuse and said I wasn't certain when Dylan would be back. It was possible that I'd home school him for the rest of the semester. Did they teach kids geography and science in Olympus? I hoped so. This kid was going to college if it killed me.

  "Let's go."

  Scooter popped out of view first and I just stared with my jaw on the floor. "He can teleport?"

  "Grace, you're the only one who can't at this point," was the dry response.

  "Shut up and take me to Olympus," I replied.

  Chapter 4

  Bodies were in motion, setting a frenetic pace through the halls of the living quarters of Olympus. I shot a questioning look at Athena and she just shrugged. "Things were quiet when I left."

  "Well something is obviously up." I looked at Dylan and nodded toward his rooms. "Hey kid, go get unpacked and hunker down. I want you to read for an hour and then we'll talk."

  "Or, we could talk now? I'm kind of in the Land of Clueless here, Mom, and it doesn't feel so great."

  A pained sigh left my body. "Yeah, I know. It's…complicated. I want to talk to you about it, but right now, I want to find out what's got everyone so butt hurt, ‘kay?"

  He slumped and gave me a look that clearly stated that he thought I was an asshole. He wasn't entirely wrong. So I was chickening out. This was a surprise? Whoever said I was brave was gravely mistaken. I just did what was necessary to get by when the proverbial crap hit the fan. I widened my eyes at him and nodded toward his room.

  He si
ghed loudly and huffed, "Fine" before walking to his adjoining suite. I stuffed down the guilt and nodded at Athena.

  "Let's figure out what's got everyone in a tizzy."

  I expected to have to hunt down information. Yeah, I may have forgotten who I was travelling with. Athena grabbed the closest body, pulled the startled Hunter to her and barked, "Report!"

  Athena is the Alpha of all Alphas. She has a presence that belies her petite frame. You forget that she probably only stands at about 5'4 and weighs less than 130 pounds. I guess I always thought of her as being bigger. Because, if you are looking at the real her - her inner self - you see an Amazon Goddess who stands over six feet tall with a bright gold aura of Truth and Might. She was beautiful…and terrifying.

  Drew was wrong. Hope wasn't Wonder Woman, Athena was. She was also the matriarchal presence in Diana's stead. Honestly, I wasn't even sure that my mother out-classed Athena. She simply didn't need to assert her dominance over my mother out of respect and love. I guess that was a scary thought.

  The Hunter stuttered, "We just had an explosion off the coast of Greece. We're not sure what exactly caused it, but we've got water casters headed down to head off the Tsunami."

  "Does it feel like the L.A. incident?" Athena's question was brief but the words weighed heavily on me. The Hunter shook her head, dread filling her face. I saw Geb's body fall through the Rift. It couldn't be him. If he was back – well, I didn't even want to think about him being back.

  "It didn't have that sort of power signature, there's no way it was an Earth power. Honestly? It felt like a nuclear blast of rage hit the coast." The Hunter stopped and tilted her head as if listening. "Only 10 lives were lost. Sinnan and Poly got there in time.”

  "You can hear all of that? Are you telepathic?" I asked in awe.

  She nodded briefly and concentrated harder. Athena looked at me and nodded at the Hunter. "Georgina is a telepath and one of the Hunters in our Early Warning Unit. We have a team that keeps a net of sorts around the world and alerts us to any magical disturbances. She's the one who caught your little temper tantrum last year." She threw a smug look at me and I scowled in return.

  "Call me Georgie," the Hunter said and held out her hand.

  "Um, nice to meet you." I grasped her hand and her smile brightened.

  "You should forgive him," she said briefly before returning her attention to Athena. "We've got it covered but Sin and Poly are going to investigate further. I'm sending a healer down just in case."

  "Excellent, keep me up to date as things progress."

  Georgie nodded before turning to jog down the hall. I scowled at her back. Everyone had an opinion.

  "Is it always like this?" I asked Athena.

  "No, things have been ramping up the last year. We haven't had this much action since Dad sank Atlantis." She furrowed her brows and turned her gaze to me. "Actually, it started ramping up just before you came out of hibernation."

  "Geb's been gone for three months now. There's no way he could be affecting things." My brows knit in a frown. If my father wasn't doing this, then the game was changing.

  "No, he couldn't be. I have to wonder at his culpability in all of it, actually. L.A. didn't feel like his signature, either. Sure, there was the earthquake, but the things running through the streets preying on humans wasn't really his style at all. He simply caused the initial destruction, then sat back to watch and wait for Diana to come beat him up."

  "Masochist much?"

  "He took what he could of her attention." Athena shrugged as if this were an ordinary thing.

  Causing quakes and tsunamis wasn't sane. It made me give her a double take. My perceptions of humanity had superimposed themselves on the people around me, and I had to remember that they weren't necessarily human no matter how much they looked the part. In the grand scheme of things, neither was I. So who was I to throw stones?

  "Could it be Hope?" Yes, part of me wanted it to be Hope. Giving her the persona of Evil Bad Guy made it easier to hate her. It wasn't enough that she'd attacked me, threatened my kid and turned my entire world upside down – again – but something on this level would make it a valid hate. Yes…I'm petty.

  "As far as I know, Hope didn't have that kind of juice. She got some of your mother's powers - like the Rift calling and she can entrance someone, give them an illusion – but no, she doesn't have this kind of juice."

  "Damn."

  "Don't be petty."

  "Whoah, did you just lay harsh truth on me?"

  "Yeah, I guess I did." She threw a beauteous smile at me and I smiled in return.

  "Fair enough. Okay, so if it wasn't Hope or Geb, who could it have been? I mean, there are only a bajillion of you guys running around."

  "Actually no, we've just taken on a bajillion personas. In reality, only about eight our kind came over in the first wave and they’re the only ones with this sort of power. None of them spring to mind as someone who could cause this mass level of destruction. "

  "Well, what about someone who didn't come through on the first wave?"

  "Others came after but not really anyone with the kind of power this would take. We would have felt the Rift and the wave of power from someone this big. It's what we do."

  "Have you ever made a mistake?" She scowled at me and I knew that I'd hit a nerve. Calling Athena on her mistakes was always a bit scary. It wasn't that she frightened me on a personal level. Sure, she could break my puny body into tiny little pieces that nobody would ever find, but our relationship was very new. You didn't want to insult your potential new bestie before you gained enough background to get through it.

  "Yes." The response was brief and it indicated that a big nerve had been hit.

  How do you get around that mine field without blowing up yourself and your entire platoon? Normally, the Grace way was to plow right through, laying waste to myself and everyone around me. Trying for delicate never worked well. I could be charming and engaging when it was absolutely necessary, but there was a reason I was a solitary writer with only a handful of friends.

  I sighed and plowed through. "So it is quite possible that you made a mistake, some baddie got through and is causing a ruckus."

  "It's possible, but despite past mistakes, I feel certain that we would have gotten a pretty significant power signature. Enough to track whoever did it."

  "I don't understand this power signature talk."

  "That's because you have about as much training as a newborn." The last sentence should have raised the hackles, but she was right. I was a total newb out of my element. There was a reason we'd escaped to Olympus. In a knock down drag out fight with anything tougher than an interdimensional out for a joyride, I got my ass handed to me.

  "Well instead of stating the obvious, genius, why don't you explain it to me?"

  She glanced down the hall with longing. Her place was in the middle of the action, giving commands and staying on top of what was going on - giving every detail far more personal attention than things were currently receiving. I got that, but someone had to teach me this stuff and she was here.

  "I simply don't have the time to teach you right now. I want to help you. We are going to start training as soon as possible. I just need to be focused on this right now. Do you understand?"

  How could this person even be real? Most people would have gotten frustrated and blew me off. Athena wasn't like that. She could be fairly obnoxious when the situation called for it, but most of the time she was very respectful of my feelings and other's needs.

  I had the feeling that as much as I was tiptoeing around this fragile new blossom of a relationship, so was she. So, I did the only thing I could do. I nodded.

  "Of course I do. Go, I'll find Zeus and figure out if he's made any progress with Mom. I wish things weren't so crazy right now."

  "Well, things were much quieter before you hit the scene." She smiled as she said the words letting me know that she was teasing.

  "Great, just call me the Destroyer of
All Things Good and Wholesome in the World."

  "Don't be an idiot," she said wryly. "You're amazing and wonderful but you're not all that important in the scheme of things."

  "Good to feel loved. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  She shook her head. "No, this is just beyond your abilities right now. Go, talk to Zeus. See if he'll take the time to give you some of the basics. I have a feeling that he's going to make you do something you're not going to like."

  "Yeah, that's a surprise. Okay, call me if you need anything." I nodded and turned to head down the corridor, but her hand stilled my movement.

  "Georgie is right. You should forgive him."

  "Athena, opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got them." She choked back a laugh and I headed toward the Lab.

  Olympus is…fuck, it's Olympus. How do you describe the home of the gods in a way that doesn't sound trite? You can't. It's gorgeous, airy - and filled with shit that would cost me a large fortune to decorate my house with. The marble in the hallway leading to the Lab alone would fund a small Third World Country.

  The Lab, which was capitalized now because – frankly- giving a place of power over you the respect it deserves is okay in my book. Being tortured, killed and brought back to life still heebed me out but it was important to be brave. I'd been there once since the Episode and Zeus hadn't been around. In fact, I hadn't seen him since he ported me out of that hole in the ground.

  I had a few things to say to him. Namely, thank you for saving my life and fixing my house. I'd left with a house in ruins and come home to pristine tidiness. He'd even planted a bit more greenery around the house along with the wards that had kicked Hope out. Yeah, I had some thanking to do.

  I was also looking forward to bitching him out. I hadn't set eyes on him in three months. You don't just fix a girl's shit, then leave her to stew with zero information. It was super that he was looking for my mother, even better that he'd taken a more active role in running Olympus, but I had some questions for him. I needed to know what caused the transformation from a raving mad lunatic – hell bent on ending my life - to the guy who'd saved my life, fixed my house and was trying to keep me from danger. This was important stuff. I needed to talk it out to make it all okay.