by K. F. Breene
“What about Alexis? She’s a level five and didn’t even know her magic until she met you. She was fine, and you’ve basically given her a death sentence.”
Kieran spread his hands in a sudden flash of rage. The thunderclouds rolled back in, boiling and building. Electricity filled the air from Dylan, but fog moved in around them, easily turned to liquid if Kieran required it.
“Why the fuck do you think I’m here?” Kieran yelled, losing his cool. “Why the hell do you think we went after Jerry? The most important person in my life is in danger constantly, and she’s not strong enough to handle it on her own. By the time I was smart enough to send her away, I wasn’t strong enough to go through with it. And now I question whether I can protect her. So yes, I’m here, begging help from people who hate everything I stand for. That’s the situation I have to bear, and I will bear it, because I’m the one that created it.
“But don’t fool yourself into believing you’re safe. Alexis used her magic constantly to contact and communicate with spirits. She had access to the Line before she knew what to do with it. You don’t have enough of a release. You crave the power in your blood, and the effort to keep it at bay is messing with your mind. Deny it until this whole town burns. I don’t care. It’s nothing to do with me. But if you let us leave without hassle, I’ll transfer that house to you. No strings. No paperwork leading back to me—or anyone. Sell it and pocket the money, if you want. Get the local government to accept Airbnb and start a business, whatever.”
“I don’t want your house or your dirty money.”
“I don’t give a shit, you arrogant twat.” Kieran threw up his hands and turned away. He was done. “Fuck me, how does Alexis deal with people? What an annoyance.”
“Why weren’t you strong enough to send her away?” Dylan asked, sounding suddenly unsure.
“Because I loved her too much. A good woman has the power to make a strong man helpless. She is my world, and I will skin you alive if you go after her.”
15
Alexis
“After what Kieran said, I feel like we should’ve warned the townspeople or something,” Mordecai said the next morning as the small motor brigade left the Chester village, headed for the airstrip that housed Kieran’s private jet. Amber drove an old, beat-up Bronco at the front, with everyone else following in various newly acquired vehicles that couldn’t be traced back to real identities.
“If they are too stupid to see a magical person in their midst, then it’s their own fault,” Daisy said, riding in the back seat. She’d been too slow with calling “shotgun” to procure the front. “The only reason that guy didn’t show up at our door this morning is because Kieran messed things up. This is why Harding told Kieran to let us handle it. We turned Dylan’s mood all the way around last night. He relaxed a lot. If we’d just gotten one more chat in…”
In an unexpected burst of chattiness before they’d left that morning, Jerry had told us what had gone down on the mountainside last night. Dylan had apparently sat on a rock for a long while afterward, staring at nothing until the small hours of the morning. He hadn’t bothered telling Jerry to get lost.
Despite what Daisy said, I didn’t think anyone could’ve talked Dylan into joining us. If I’d been in his shoes, I doubt I would’ve even kept my cool long enough for a chat. So no, I didn’t think Kieran had made or broken anything. From what I could tell, Dylan would never be willing to work with another Demigod.
Maybe, though…just maybe, meeting us, experiencing our dysfunctional but loving dynamic, would change things for him down the line. Maybe he’d venture out and try to live a magical life again. A good life, with a boss who treated him well and deserved his respect. I hoped I’d get to meet him if that ever happened. I’d definitely say, “I told you so.”
“Is Amber set on going after the ones on her list?” Mordecai asked, his hands clasped in his lap.
“Yeah. We still need a bigger, stronger crew,” I replied, somewhat dismally. “I don’t think we’ll get it by the time we need to meet Demigod Lydia, though. So…”
“Demigods are a serious hassle,” Daisy said, falling back against the seat. “All the maneuvering and strategizing…”
A line of shiny black SUVs passed us, headed toward the Chester town, starting with a Hummer and decreasing in expense and awesomeness down the line. Chrome sparkled in the climbing tangerine sunlight. Fresh paint and dealership plates gleamed.
“It’s only a hassle when you’re the one lacking power and prestige,” Mordecai replied. “For them, all the strategizing is probably a nice break in their monotonous, never-ending lives.”
“Yeah. But since we always seem to be the ones lacking power and prestige—”
Thane, driving the Ford pickup in front of me, swerved into a pullout area on the side of the mountain road. His brake lights screamed red, and dust and rocks blew up behind him. Amber had stopped just in front of him, and behind me, Kieran pulled in as though he’d expected the sudden stop.
My phone rang, patching through to the Jeep’s speakers.
“What’s up?” I asked Kieran.
“Demigod Flora just passed, leading a train of seven SUVs.”
The kids and I both turned in our seats, looking behind us. “That was a Demigod?”
“The Demigod of New York, yes. She has a pinched face and wears her hair in an outrageous beehive. Amber and Bria both agree that it was definitely her. First six SUVs are full. The last is probably carrying supplies. She has a large team on the ground, and I wouldn’t doubt a helicopter will be flying over shortly. She doesn’t do things by halves. Never has. There is no way she is up here for a holiday.” He paused for a moment. “She’s a Demigod of Zeus, Alexis. She’ll want Dylan like Aaron wants you.”
A chill froze my blood. “How could they know about him? You said we were careful.”
“We were. But not everyone around us has taken a blood oath. Amber will be looking into this when we get back, trust me.” A growl rode his words. “I’m calling because you promised Dylan that if someone found out about him, you’d show up and save the day, correct?”
“I mean…not in those words, but…yeah, I did promise I’d help if we were the reason he came under fire. If we led people to him, we owe it to him to help. This is crap, though. We obviously have a rat.”
“I agree, but here’s the thing: given how well he knows that mountain, there is a strong possibility that he’ll be fine. Much of her force is of Zeus’s line. They won’t be able to feel through rock—if he stays hidden, Demigod Flora will go home empty-handed.”
“If we show up, will we just aggravate things?”
“The problem is that, traditionally, the people of Zeus’s line don’t hide,” Kieran said. “They are brave to a fault and their ego is maddening. They’d rather stand and fight in pure bullheaded stupidity than resort to what they deem cowering in a bush.”
“Careful, your rivalry is showing,” Daisy murmured.
“Okay, but Dylan is hiding from the magical world,” I said. “His life is basically cowering in a bush.”
“Right. Which is why I give him a strong possibility of being fine. The issue is…Demigod Flora is arrogant to a fault. It’s easy enough to get fake IDs, but I doubt she’ll try to sell the identities, like we did. She’ll raise suspicion without trying. Unless, of course, she has already called the local government and alerted them to a magical person in their midst. If that’s the case, they’ll provide her with an escort and she’ll be free to hunt the mountain.”
I stared at the speakers for a moment. “How does any of this result in him being fine?”
“The more resourceful magical types, like Jerry or Amber, have the training to escape situations such as these.”
“Dylan wouldn’t have done a bang-up job of escaping you.”
“I am not the average Demigod.”
“Are you sure Zeus is the only one with a penchant for an ego?” I muttered. “You’re talking in circles. Will h
e be fine or not?”
“I don’t know. The odds seem evenly split.”
“Well…I mean, we have to help. What if he’s rusty with his magic against so many people? What if he doesn’t escape? Hell, what if he does escape? Then what? His whole life has been turned upside down. This is our fault. We have to fix this.”
“Fixing this will mean taking on another Demigod. A strong Demigod.”
“Would you stop stalling? All we do anymore is take on Demigods, it feels like. I made a promise. Let’s go!”
“Sounds good. Follow Amber. Just in case Demigod Flora rats me out to the Chester officials, we’ll go around their checkpoint. We will not be heading to the house. We’ll meet up in the cabin in the woods and go from there.”
The cabin had been another property Kieran had purchased in the area. A moment later, Amber pulled ahead, going another half-mile before she could turn around.
“They got here just one day after we did,” Mordecai said as we cut off an oncoming car to pull into traffic. The honk nearly drowned out his words. “Careful, Lexi.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”
“All those SUVs must’ve been bought in advance, but not far enough in advance for them to get all the same kind,” Daisy said, nodding as she continued to lean toward the front.
“They had one SUV just for supplies, Kieran said, which means they expect to be in the wilderness,” Mordecai said, and it was clear the kids were treating this as a sort of high-stakes training session. “They expect to hunt for their prey. They know more than just a generalized location.”
“Could Harding have told other people?” Daisy asked me. “He seems like a dirty player. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“I wouldn’t either. He likes to watch me in action,” I replied, having already considered the matter. “But he is tied to that pocket watch. I know he is. Besides, I can hear spirits, but there is only one of me, and Demigod Flora doesn’t have any Hades hard hitters on her team. It can’t be Harding.”
“Well then, it is someone that is in deep with Kieran,” Daisy said. “None of the secretaries have oaths. Red and Bria don’t. Aubri—she’s a snoop. She’s always listening for gossip. Mordecai and I don’t.”
“Jerry,” Mordecai said softly. “For the first week or so he still didn’t have a blood oath, but he was always around.”
I shook my head as our SUV train turned off onto a small road following a cliff face on one side. “Why would he double-cross us when he’d have to deal with the fallout?”
“Yeah, true.” Daisy chewed her lip. “Red and Bria don’t necessarily have to deal with the fallout, though. Not if they are still double agents.”
“There is no way Bria is double-dealing,” I said. “We’ve been through too much.”
“Maybe she’s just giving you the shove she always thinks you’ll need?” Mordecai said, and goosebumps spread across my skin.
We turned off another road, and then another, turning onto a seemingly barely used dirt road. My ability to think about the problem evaporated as I caught sight of the swiftly moving river directly ahead of us. “What in the holy—”
Amber slowed to a crawl before venturing in, the Bronco’s front right end lifting as it encountered a submerged rock and then splashed down into the water. The front bumper bobbed as the current lifted the vehicle. In a moment, the chassis lowered again, the water pulling back from the Bronco and then lifting over the top in an arc before touching down on the other side again.
“Why can’t he just stop it from flowing for a few minutes? Why does he have to make it go over our heads?” I whispered, nearing the glistening riverbed. “What if he passes out or loses his grip? We’ll be swept along.”
The larger rocks rolled out of the way, Jerry helping out, leaving big holes in their wake. I followed Amber with trepidation, never having off-roaded in my life. The tire instantly found one of those holes, and I screamed, making both of the kids jump. The car crawled out with steady pressure on the gas, then the underside scraped something hard.
“Please keep going. Please keep going,” I urged the Jeep.
The other wheel dipped, and the Jeep tilted forward wildly, as if we were on a ride in an amusement park. The forward right wheel clipped the side of a rock Jerry hadn’t moved, and we slipped sideways, the rock battering the underside of the Jeep. The top corner bit into the stream of water overhead, showering us.
“I can’t see!” I hollered.
“Use your wipers, Lexi,” Mordecai yelled, clutching the dash. “It’s just like rain.”
“It is a freaking river, not rain,” I muttered, fumbling with the wipers. The Jeep dipped into another hole. Water sloshed off the windshield. “I can take on a freaking Demigod in the middle of the night, and I’ll run to the aid of a perfect stranger against another Demigod, but driving through a river is not my idea of awesome. Why couldn’t we take the road like normal people?”
My grumbling got me the rest of the way across the riverbed. I urged the Jeep up the small incline and onto a mostly grown-over set of tracks leading into the trees. Either that riverbed dried up at certain times, or someone had bigger balls than I did, because there was no way I could have made the crossing without Kieran.
After another half-hour of taking back roads that were increasingly easy to traverse, we emerged onto a small highway nestled into the thick canopy of the mountains—sugar maples, beeches, hemlocks, and tulip poplars all struggling for a place in the sun. Below, ferns and ivy tangled together in the brush, creating a few little patches of brightly colored flowers to help decorate the beautiful tableau.
“What can Demigods of Zeus do?” I asked Daisy as we drove.
“They’ll also be able to manipulate lightning, of course,” she said, sitting back and looking upward, thinking. “They can either throw it from their hands or, for more power, use the sky. Kieran can combat their ability by messing with the weather, although Zeus’s descendants are likely more experienced with storms. They can mimic people’s voices and apply glamor to look like other people, so watch for mannerisms—”
“I can just use the soul,” I said.
“Right, yeah. Nice. You can get around one of their most sneaky magics. They can also force land creatures to shift or stay shifted unless the creature is strong enough and can resist. Watch yourself, Mordecai. You probably have the power to resist, but not the experience. They won’t have any power over your shifted form, in any case, so it is probably only an issue for people like Thane. Hopefully he’s strong enough to resist.”
“I’m sure he’s trained for it,” Mordecai said.
“We’ll know soon enough, I guess,” she murmured.
I bit my lip, remembering Thane on the mountain. Or even Thane in training. When he went Berserk, he was never a fun time.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Big schlong, big ego, very brave, and a distinct rivalry with Poseidon and Hades. Zeus thinks he’s the best, and while he’s a little more powerful than his brothers, it’s offset by his tendency to think with his big schlong instead of the thing between his ears. That trait has been passed down in his lineage, and it goes for the ladies, too. Big lady schlong. It shows in their attitude.”
“I think you have to be born into the magical world for any of this to seem remotely normal,” I said, the incline growing.
“Probably,” Daisy said.
“Any idea what lesser magics are traveling with Demigod Flora?” I asked.
“No idea whatsoever,” Daisy replied. “I’m not there yet. Zorn says I need to learn all the magics and how to combat them first.”
“How would you combat Zeus?”
“Personally, I’d look helpless and fragile and pretty and let him play hero or else take pity on me. A mortal taking on a god is just stupid. Anyone taking on a god is just stupid, actually, unless it’s another god. It’s best just to make sure they don’t kill you. Although I am curious about the schlong issue. The internet didn’t have any
pictures. I mean, of his. They had plenty of pictures—”
“No!” I held up my finger and made eye contact in the rearview mirror. “You are barely fifteen. No thinking about schlongs, no matter how big. Do we need to have another sex talk?”
“Nah. Your embarrassment embarrasses me. I know how that stuff works. But honestly, don’t you wonder if it is as big as the legends say?”
“No,” Mordecai and I said together.
Daisy shrugged.
“How would you combat Demigod Flora?” I asked.
Daisy’s mouth twisted to the side. “In this situation? Do whatever Kieran says and hope he has the experience to take on the most powerful line of Demigods in the world.”
16
Alexis
A cool evening breeze kissed my exposed skin as I sat in a lonely fold-out chair in front of a small, two-room log cabin deep in the trees. It might’ve been serene if not for the beat-up SUVs and mighty fine Jeep choking the isolated property. Daisy sat at my feet with a collection of five cell phones piled in front of her. They belonged to the people in the group who hadn’t taken a blood oath. Including me. No one had objected to the confiscation, except for me—I would’ve really liked to play a game to calm my nerves.
A motor cut off somewhere behind the cabin. Bria jogged in a moment later.