Rise of the Blood

Chapter Three

I surveyed the wreckage of my apartment. Well, the apartment I was housesitting for Detective Helen Lau, Armani’s former partner, until her return from traveling with honest-to-gods dragons. I knew I’d forgotten something. I just couldn’t think what it was.

“It’s not like they don’t have stores in Greece,” Armani said, frustrated. He’d been fully packed before we went to bed last night. That’s right, I said “we” and “bed”. Couldn’t wait to see the look on my mother’s face when she heard we were sharing a room or the inquisition my father was likely to unleash on Nick. Nick, I had to practice that. Bad enough we’d be shacking up. If I couldn’t even convince my family we were on a first name basis….

“I can’t kick the thought that I’m forgetting something important.”

Then it came to me. Oh, Hermes’s hairy arse—it wasn’t the thought I had to kick, it was the habit. The ambrosia. I still hadn’t thought of a way to take it with me. Without it—sweats, shakes, loss of concentration, cramps, pain and a better than average chance of death. So, nothing serious then.

“Me!” Came an announcement from the doorway to the apartment. “You’re forgetting me. But now I am here, and all’s right with your world.”

Oh hell to the no. Jesus?

I stared at him and his flaming-red luggage.

“How did you get in?”

“Nick buzzed me up.”

I looked at Nick.

“I did ask first, but you were sort of…frantic at the time.”

“But…but…” I stopped, took a deep breath and said, “Jesus, you are not going to Greece with us. I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t fit in my carry-on. Hell, I’m not even sure your personal items would fit in my carry-on.”

“Not to worry.” From the man-purse slung over his shoulder, he produced a colorful piece of paper with a barcode. It looked suspiciously like a boarding pass. “I have my own ticket.”

“But—”

“You said that.”

“But—”

“Chica, it does not bear repeating. Apollo said that he had it covered, and he does. I am here to run your interference.”

“What interference?”

“At the airport.”

I could feel steam about to come out of my ears. If I built up any more, I could power my own way to Greece. I gave him my dead stare, the one that brooked no resistance…if only my power ran that way. “Why would there be interference at the airport?” I asked through clenched teeth. One more evasion and I was going to blow.

Jesus cut his gaze to the side, a sure sign that he was about to prevaricate.

“Tori,” Nick cut in, “I think he’s going to have to explain on the way. Our cab’s here.” He looked up from his phone to me. I hadn’t even heard the alert, I’d been so focused on Jesus.

“Fine, but this isn’t over,” I said, trying to impress it on him with my look. Hard to do when he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I nearly gave myself a hernia swinging my carry-on over my shoulder. I was no wilting flower, but somehow by the time I was through loading it up with all my electronics, enough books to get me through umpteen excruciating hours spent in airports and on planes, and things like jewelry I couldn’t risk putting in checked luggage, it weighed a ton. Armani—Nick, dammit—didn’t risk a direct hit with it by offering his manly muscle.

He did, however, hold the door for us all, and I allowed it. After all, I’d have done the same for him, only he got there first.

I held my questions until we got into the cab—Jesus chose to sit up next to the driver, so my laser-like stare had no effect on him. I had to make do with my words. “Spill,” I ordered.

He looked back at me over his shoulder. “This is your interrogation technique? Spill? I think I deserve a bit more effort.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned back around.

“Would you like me to move on to threats? I can, you know, starting with your job.”

Jesus gasped and gave me the stink-eye in the rearview mirror. “You wouldn’t dare.”

I nudged Nick, who sat beside me in the back merely watching with amusement. The cabby, for his part, was still trying to fit our luggage into the trunk. The car rocked as he finally slammed the trunk shut and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s much she wouldn’t dare,” Nick said, catching on to his cue. “You’d better tell her. You know she won’t leave it alone until you do. She’s like a…um…a PI with a lead.”

He’d been about to say “a dog with a bone”, I just knew it. Lucky for him he’d held back.

Jesus sighed dramatically, the way he did everything. “Okay, but if he asks, you beat it out of me.”

I grinned. “We could make it very convincing.”

Jesus stuck his tongue out at me. Then he made me wait. He adjusted his seat, his belt, his cuffs, he cleared his throat, and just as I was about to launch myself over the center console and throttle him, he finally condescended to answer. “You know how Apollo said he was going to put to rest those rumors about you and him being you and him?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what that had to do with Jesus and Greece.

“Well, he has a plan.”

A public affairs rep from the airline descended on us the second we set foot out of our cab. She snapped her fingers at someone behind her before we could so much as wrestle our luggage to the curb. I glanced over at Jesus, sure I saw Apollo’s fingerprints all over the suspicious red carpet treatment, but he only smiled and shrugged. Goldilocks, because that was how I was going to think of the blonde in the shapeless blue suit, seemed in a horrible hurry to get us off the sidewalk, past the crowd I could see gathered just inside the doors, and through security.

When the mob shifted, I understood exactly why.

Apollo’s plan apparently involved nearly six stunning feet of brunette bombshell. Only part of that height came from her sky-high rhinestone heels…or were those diamonds? Surely not diamonds. Whatever they were, there was no question about the breasts currently defying gravity in her strappy silver gown more suited for walking the red carpet than catching a flight. Although, perhaps that was what one wore in first class. I wouldn’t know.

Most stunning of all, she wore the ultimate accessory—Apollo Demas, looking more gorgeous than I’d ever seen him before, and that was saying something. He was dressed all in black—shirt, tie, suit, wingtips. His leonine golden hair stood out against it like the rays of the sun. His turquoise eyes were even bluer in contrast. And the glint in them as they gazed down on the bronzed beauty beside him and up again at the cameras flashing all around was luminous. Not to mention devastating.

I looked to Jesus. “Tell me they’re not on our flight,” I growled quietly, trying not to attract any attention as we veered very widely around the paparazzi pile-up.

He avoided my gaze.

“Tell me,” I repeated.

“I can’t,” he said. To his credit, he sounded like he felt badly about that. “He’s apparently coming out of retirement to do a very special film. There’s some wealthy financier putting up a lot of the money for it, hoping it’ll help revitalize the Greek economy. I think maybe you know him—Hector Papadopolous.”

“Uncle Hector?” I asked, stunned.

“Is he?” Jesus asked disingenuously.

“Let me guess,” I continued, “Brunette Barbie is Apollo’s co-star.”

“Serena Banks,” he said, with something like awe in his voice. “Hottest thing to hit Hollywood since…since maybe ever.”

He blushed at the glare I sent him. “I’m just saying,” he continued lamely.

I felt a pang of envy, which was as selfish as it was stupid. I’d wanted Apollo to move on, and yet… And yet what? There was no and yet.

I shot a sudden glance at Nick and caught him looking back over his shoulder, even though Apollo and Serena were now well out of sight. He jerked guiltily when he noticed me watching.

“What?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

“Just wanted to be sure none of the paparazzi had caught sight of you and that we were in the clear.”

“Uh huh.”

“Really.”

I let it go. After all, I’d ogled Apollo a time or two, so I had no moral high ground here. Our airline rep escorted us straight to the gate, where we got to board with the first wave, passing cushy first class seats where Serena and Apollo would probably be sharing champagne and caviar. Served them right, being faced with fish eggs.

“You okay?” Nick asked me as we got seated…back in coach.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You tell me.”

I gave him my very most level look. “I’m fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

And with that, I snapped open the Sky Mall magazine and prepared to mentally spend money I didn’t have on things I didn’t need. Mental retail therapy.

Nick sighed and pulled the airline magazine out of the seat pocket in front of him. I glanced sidelong as he did it and came face to face with green cat’s-eyes staring at me from the cover. Serena Banks. Of course. She had the feature story.

I buried myself in Sky Mall, trying not to care as Nick, I was certain, turned straight to the article.

I did care when the rumbling started.

Despite the fear of heights that kept me out of the Karacrobats, my family’s acrobatic troupe, I wasn’t generally phobic about flying. Oh sure, my heart raced and I white-knuckled the armrests on takeoffs and landings, but I had a really advanced case of denial for the intervening air travel. My best guess was that it was a control thing. When I was close to the ground, I had the illusion of some sort of control. Sitting still while the plane jittered and banked and got underway took monumental amounts of willpower. Once we hit cruising altitude, I figured my only options were live, if things went well, or kiss my ass good-bye if they didn’t. But I had a bad, bad feeling about this flight. I hoped it was just nerves and not my Apollo-granted foresight, because we’d already taken off, and the control I’d never actually had was well out of my reach. But the feeling grew and grew as the sky darkened around us and seemed to charge with some ominous energy. I stopped paying attention to the Sky Mall and took to staring out the window.

Rumbling rattled the windows and a flash fork of lightning chased itself from one bank of clouds to another. The plane veered sharply away, trying to escape the storm, but gale-force winds pushed at our tail in hot pursuit.

An announcement came on about turbulence and returning to our seats. It was getting harder and harder to stay in mine. My internal alarms were now blaring full force, and I wanted to shout for the crew that the plane needed to be brought down now, now, NOW for an emergency landing while there was still a chance to control our descent. This was no natural storm. There’d been no warning before takeoff about rough weather ahead, and a storm like this would have been hard to miss on the radar.

Paranoia? Maybe, if not for my internal alarms and the fact that Poseidon Stormbringer and Zeus of the fateful lightning were on the loose and that the people most responsible for their incarceration were all on this flight. Coincidence? Didn’t seem likely, but there was no time to think about that right now.

To our left came a sudden crash like two monstrous hands clapping together and then bursting apart. The resultant shockwaves buffeted the airliner like a kite. Panic had me reaching for the armrest, but since Nick’s hand was already there, I nearly shredded him with my newly manicured nails. He hissed with pain, but didn’t draw back his hand. Instead, he turned it over to take mine. He looked into my eyes. I stared into his, and thought well, if the world ends, at least we’ll go out together. It was a shockingly romantic thought for me, and that, more than anything, snapped me to. We were not going to die. My cousin Tina would kill me. It would make her wedding party lopsided.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and started to rise, to demand that we make an emergency landing or something, not caring how crazy I’d sound, when the lightning flashed again, cracking across the sky like a whip. The plane flinched as it struck, bucking like a thing alive desperate to escape the pain. I was flung forward, bashing myself on the overhead bin and falling into Nick’s lap. He gripped me close and held on tight.

“Stay put,” he ordered. “There’s nowhere to go. We’ll get through this. It’ll be okay.”

But I knew he was wrong. I struggled against him as the plane banked sharply. No, not banked. Sheared off, beginning to fall, as if something was off on one side…like an engine.

“We have to land,” I yelled. “Now!” As if this was a newsflash.

There was so much screaming going on—babies crying, grown men and women praying or wailing or whatever—that no one heard.

Another crash of thunder came from the side of the plane, and punched into us like a fist, knocking us even farther off-kilter. The metal of the plane groaned in defiance, but it wasn’t a victorious sound. It was more like, “You’ll never take me alive.” And that’s exactly what I was afraid of.

“We have to do something!” I shouted at Armani. Nick, dammit, Nick. Even as we rushed toward death, I couldn’t get it right. But that’s how I’d thought of him when I’d first met him, a defense mechanism against my attraction, one I’d never gotten over.

“Like what?” he shouted back.

I didn’t want questions, I wanted action, but I didn’t have any to suggest.

Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling as the plane continued to drop altitude and the pilot was too busy, I supposed, trying to stop it to comfort his panicking passengers…as if an announcement would have made any difference. As if they, like me, couldn’t feel the ground rushing up to meet us.

Armani lifted me off him to grab two masks before pushing me down into a seat and manhandling me to get my mask into place. I didn’t fight him, only because the sooner he knew I was okay, the sooner he’d see to himself and I could lunge past him.

The second he was distracted, I did just that, avoiding his grabbing hands to lunge down the aisle. Down was the operative word. We were now at a forty-five degree angle, nose to the ground—falling, falling.

I canted left and then right as the plane lurched, the pilot battling to level off. I apologized as I went, gripping a man in a very personal place when a really bad thunderclap threw me off balance and I had to catch myself.

I hit the curtain between us and first class to the curses and cries of my fellow passengers. A flight attendant strapped down into her jump seat and counting off frantic prayers on a rosary tried reflexively to stop me from crossing the sacred threshold, but I stopped her with a look. The look. I froze her in place. She’d space right through at least a few minutes of panic, long enough for me to invade first class.

Apollo was already out of his seat and met me halfway down the aisle.

“You okay?” he asked. It was a silly question, so I ignored it.

“What do we do?” Scratch the we. If there was anything I could do, I’d have done it. “Don’t you have some power to stop all this?”

But I knew the answer before I heard it from his lips. I could see it in his eyes.

“I’m the god of the sun, and they’ve cut me off from it. Even if I could harness it still, I have no control over storms. There’s nothing—”

“Screw nothing!” I said. I looked around frantically for something, anything. But there was nothing physical to fight or fight with.

A male flight attendant risked life and limb to close in on us, coming from the front alcove.

“Sir, ma’am, you’re going to have to return to your seats!” he yelled over the noise of the screaming plane and howling passengers.

The aircraft bucked again, and I screamed myself. Apollo’s arms went around me, and we fell hard into the seat beside us, into the laps of an elderly man and woman who looked dumbstruck. The armrest between them dented my side. As we scrambled to right ourselves, the plane started to roll. I screamed again and gripped Apollo for dear life. If only I could freeze the air like I could people, but I couldn’t stare it down. Eye of the Storm was just an expression and anyway, we were locked tight in its abusive embrace.

Thunderclaps crashed to our left and right as if trying to crush us between them. The plane was blown forward and shot ahead like a torpedo, momentum giving it momentary stability.

Then the miracle happened… We stayed that way. The plane rocked from side to side, but the gut-wrenching roll had halted, and we started to level off.

Apollo and I looked at each other, as close as lovers on the bony knees of the old couple we’d crashed into. The man bounced his knees upward at that moment as a prompt to move, and Apollo helped me stand. We both held to the back of the surrounding seats, sure the reprieve was only temporary.

Someone snapped a picture with a cell phone camera, which I knew only because it took the pic with the totally unnecessary shutter sound. I whipped my head around to look for the source and was stopped by Serena’s death glare. She was turned around in her seat, glowing green eyes taking us in.

Glowing green.

Crapcakes.

I turned back to Apollo. “Um, about Serena…is there anything you want to tell me?”

Apollo looked toward the woman in question, but the glow in her eyes was gone. Now she looked more miffed than outright homicidal. Had I truly seen what I thought I’d seen or was I now imagining monsters where none existed? Was my mind playing tricks on me, turning simple jealousy into a literal green-eyed monster?

“Serena?” he asked, “What do you want me to tell you? You wanted the press off your back, the new film’s PR guy wanted a little off-screen romance to help sell the movie…it seemed like a win-win. Surely you’re not jealous.” He was watching me closely. Too closely. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

He was right. It was what I wanted. Maybe. Possibly. Anyway, it was what had to be. There was Armani. And besides, Apollo would swallow me whole. With those turquoise eyes and that toned…everything…and the sparks that flew between us… It was amazing the oxygen in the air hadn’t ignited on our spark. But he was also a god, and even if ancient history wasn’t full of cautionary tales about trifling with gods, my own experience would have been enough to warn me off.

“Yes,” I lied. “That’s what I want.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

“Great,” Serena cut in, rising from her seat. “Then if everything’s back to normal, perhaps you’ll unhand my co-star and return to your…class.”

I ignored her, especially since I hadn’t “handed” him to begin with, and turned back to Apollo.

“What do you think happened?”

He gave Serena an in a second look before answering. “I’d guess we flew out of range or they ran out of power. I think that last thunderclap was meant to be the coup de grace.”

“But they missed.”

“They’ll try again—themselves or…well, they have adherents still in the old country.”

“Oh joy.”

“I have to go,” he said, as Serena’s glare seemed to gather force.

He started to move past me, and it hurt, even though it shouldn’t. I was with Nick. He had the right to be with whoever he wanted, for real or for show. “Thanks for…” What? He hadn’t done anything. But then, neither had I. “For being there,” I finished lamely.

He gave me a look over his shoulder that mimicked my regret. “You too.”

Dammit.

I made my way back to Nick, who was staring intently at the curtain through which I’d disappeared. He breathed a huge sigh of relief as I came back into view. But there was something else in his eyes…pain, maybe. The pilot came over the loudspeaker, talking about the plane being damaged by the storm and an emergency landing. The passengers set up a subdued cheer at that. I wondered how many would be brave enough to continue on to their final destinations.

I dropped into the seat next to Nick, and he looked like he couldn’t decide whether to hug me or throttle me. I made the decision for him, launching myself at him and holding him as tightly as I could. After a moment, he held me back and stroked my hair. I put Apollo behind me in the reality of Nick’s strong arms and feelings I knew to be all mine with nothing ever done “for my own good” without my consent. I breathed Nick in—his spicy, woodsy scent, as if he’d just been for a run in the woods instead of a near-death experience. His body was radiating heat, and for a second, I wanted to drag him back to the bathroom, tear off all his clothes and celebrate our survival…only I’d been in there earlier and was fairly certain it wasn’t remotely possible. Not unless I was some kind of contortionist and his shoulders were a lot less broad. But since I wasn’t and they weren’t, I just held him and held him and held him.

“Don’t you dare ever do that again,” he said finally, his breath warm, almost hot, on my ear.

I almost asked, “Do what?” but really I knew. Regardless of why I’d done it, I’d run out on Nick in the face of almost-certain death. I’d chosen to spend what could have been our final moments with another man. But it hadn’t been like that. I hadn’t picked Apollo over Nick. I’d chosen to DO something rather than huddle up when the storm struck. The fact that I hadn’t made a bit of difference shouldn’t matter. I’d had the best of intentions. Still, I’d have felt a helluva lot less guilty if I’d had anything to show for leaving him alone. The fact that we were all still alive was nothing short of miraculous. I should have been there for him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking away. “I thought…I thought maybe I could do something.”

“And did you?” The hand stroking my hair had stilled.

“No,” I admitted. “It was all the pilot’s skill and maybe the gods running out of steam.”

Nick let out a heated breath. “So then we have no way to fight them if they come at us again?”

“They’d have finished us off if they could,” I answered. It wasn’t nearly as comforting as I’d meant it to be.

“Great.”

When Nick would have pulled back, I held his hand and refused to let it go. He didn’t fight me, but it was an awkward silence that fell between us, full of a million and one things we didn’t know how to express.

The emergency landing was a rough one. Really rough. But the passengers cheered again, with more fervor this time, as we touched down and slowed to a stop. Some even kissed the tarmac when the ground crew brought stairs to get us all out rather than taxi us to a gate. Others held up the line by picking a fight with the flight crew and threatening lawsuits. I felt terrible for them, especially since I knew there was nothing they could have done.

We waited for Jesus on the tarmac, since he was even farther back on the plane than we were. The lights of the runway lit his face quite clearly. All the color had fled, and the usual swing had gone straight out of his step.

“I think I found God,” he said as he approached us, eyes as big as peanut butter cups, which sounded incredibly good right then. Or, just pure chocolate, hold any pollutants like nuts or caramel.

“Which one?” I asked.