Battle for the Blood (14 page)

“Tea for me,” Lau said. But it didn’t take her long to add, “And it could probably do with a splash of whiskey.”

Hermes patted her on the back, and I thought she was going to remove his hand…or his head. It was a toss-up. I’d have paid money to see it, either way, but she settled for a glare.

I checked for my phone, hoping I hadn’t lost it in all the action. Or that it hadn’t melted to slag. I still had it on me, but it was deader than my hopes of a normal life.

“Does anyone have a phone?” I asked. “I need to call Nick’s sister and see what’s going on at the hospital, see how he’s doing. Make sure—”
they’re still alive
. I thought it but couldn’t say it.

No one else had battery power, but Cori called from the kitchen. “There’s a landline. You’re welcome to use it. Or I can give you my cell.”

“Charger?” I asked.

Now that my brain was starting to engage, I realized that without my phone, I didn’t know Nick’s number. Not in these days of voice dialing and all.

“In the kitchen.” She nodded the way.

There was a charging cord right there on the counter, already plugged in and, luckily, compatible with my phone. I attached it to my phone to get the charge started, but the sense of urgency wouldn’t leave me. Downtime was seriously bad. It gave me time to think and worry and KNOW that I should be doing something. I just didn’t know what. And now that we’d lost the sword. That
I lost us
the sword
…

I collapsed onto a divan, my forgotten wings bumping the back. Agony ripped through them from their earlier abuse that hadn’t had time to heal, but I ignored it and dropped my head into my hands, raising it only when Cori appeared with the scotch. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to down it in one shot, not after the first taste. It deserved sipping, enjoying…it deserved better than me.

I felt Apollo’s gaze on me, felt his concern. “You okay?” he asked.

“Next question.”

“Do you think your phone has enough charge now to turn on and grab that number? I know you. You’re not going to be okay until you’ve checked in.”

It did have enough charge and I made the call, praying it would connect. During the first rush of the hysteria there’d been so many calls into the city they’d jammed up the system. Now…it depended on how bad things had gotten. How many people were still taking calls rather than trying to eat each other’s faces off?

The call went right to voicemail, and even though I knew there might be a perfectly logical reason behind it, I started to panic.

I called 4-1-1 to find the number for the hospital and paid the extra fee to be connected directly, but the phone just rang and rang at the switchboard. My sense of something wrong ramped up to an eleven. Even if no actual person was available to answer, the automated system should still have been in place.

I got quickly back to the others, only to be stopped in my tracks by the scene of devastation on the television someone had turned to a news channel. Behind the newscaster, probably projected on a green screen, was something straight out of a disaster film or the L.A. Riots. In fact, it looked like the L.A. Riots all over again. Looting, running, people loaded down with stolen goods, other people lying behind them on the ground, damaged or dead… In another clip, people spray-painting cameras, tossed off fiery cocktails, which exploded into smoke and fire, destroying evidence left behind…

“So the problem isn’t limited to New York then,” I said stupidly. Every time the footage shifted, it was a different city or borough mentioned at the bottom in the teletype.

“This isn’t just about the plague,” Lau said, something frighteningly…suspended about her voice, as if she didn’t dare let herself feel. “You missed the footage on the huge tsunami headed for L.A. We’re talking disaster on the level of Japan and the Philippines. Everywhere people are looting and panicked, sane people turning into doomsday preppers.”

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“More than we know,” she said in the same deadpan voice. “More than we can handle.”

“Plagues, an overflowing underworld, Hecate gone rogue, now riots and natural disasters…” I couldn’t even put the full scope of the horror into words.

“Wait, Hecate gone rogue?” Cori asked, her voice going from high-pitched to shrill. “You’d better start talking. Tell me everything.”

We owed her that much. I started with the Grey Sisters and went on through Hecate’s betrayal, finishing with, “She said something about controlling the outcome. She’s perfectly fine with the world devolving into rot and ruin as long as she’s the one to pick up the pieces.”

“Do you think she’s under Hades’s orders?” Apollo asked.

“I think she’s done taking orders. She wants to be the top dog. And she’s recruiting. She tried to get me to join up.”

“Skip to the important stuff,” Lau cut in. “Did you get through to Nick?”

The look I turned on her was empty-eyed. My insides felt like a great void, a vacuum that could only be filled by my deepest, darkest fears, and I couldn’t invite them in. I’d collapse under their weight.

“No. I couldn’t get through to the hospital or his phone. No one’s answering.”

Everyone shared a look, and I knew what they weren’t saying—that the hospital was overrun. The dead outnumbered the living. I refused to believe it. I’d seen
The Walking Dead
—wounded cop survives the zombie apocalypse, comatose in his room. Nick was at least as tough as Rick Grimes, who was certainly no slouch. I looked to Hermes, struck with a sudden idea that had pushed its way into the void. “You can get me in,” I said. “How many times have you tuned in to me, teasing me with information or just invading my privacy? The spa, my laptop… You open a window or whatever it is you do. Let me talk to Nick.”

Lau’s head swiveled to look at him too. Oh, it was on now. No way was he going to refuse to do
her
bidding. Not and live to tell about it. And she was nearly as concerned about Nick as I was. “Do it,” she said. Having a target to focus on brought some scary intense life to her eyes.

“Who are you to tell me—” he started, but Apollo cut him off.

“Cut the crap, Hermes. This isn’t about your ego. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Get it done, so we can move on.”

Bigger fish… The fact that Apollo was right, that we had a whole world to save and not just one man, didn’t make me feel any warmer and fuzzier toward him at that moment. He had never liked Nick…or had never acknowledged it anyway. Too busy trying to come between us. But was he being brusque to move Hermes along or because he was insensitive to the situation? It would help to know how much to hate him at that moment. My emotions were in turmoil.

Hermes looked away from Apollo as if he’d ceased to exist and turned to us women. “Just acknowledge how much you need me and I’ll be happy to help.”

“Truly, madly, deeply,” I said. “There, is that better? Can we do this now?”

“
Agape
, you know I would do anything for you.” He shot a glare Apollo’s way and I was suddenly so tired of male posturing I could scream. “For you, I will try,” Hermes continued, “but your Detective Armani, being merely mortal, does not have the signature that you do, and I haven’t studied him nearly so intently. He will not be as easy to find.”

“Do you need—” What? My sense of him? To follow whatever bond we might still have? I needed to know that Nick was okay more than I needed to keep Hermes out of my head.

“It would help,” he agreed, somehow knowing what I’d left unsaid.

I gritted my teeth and reached out a hand to him, realizing I hadn’t yet had time to wash it clean of Hecate’s blood. The sight of it brought back the memory of the strange rush I’d had when tasting it and the sense— I thrust that out of my head quickly, before Hermes could get ahold of it. Instead, I tried to focus on Nick. First, as I’d last seen him—burned, fragile, hospitalized and horrified by all that had happened. So horrified he’d had to break from me. But that wasn’t the true sense of him. Nick was…duty-bound, dedicated, brave, ready to face things he couldn’t possibly understand or defeat because it was the right thing to do. Tears streamed down my eyes as I focused on his essence. Not what he might look like with or without new skin grafts or still-raw burn wounds surrounded by a surgically sterile tent. But on
who he was
beyond all that.

“Tori?” a voice asked, barely recognizable as Nick’s.

It was low, cracked, dry as the desert. I opened my eyes to see Nick’s bandaged face. He looked something like
The Phantom of the Opera
, his bandages forming a half mask, his eyes bloodshot and his character lines deeper than ever, as if etched by the pain. His lips were as dry and cracked as his voice.

“Nick,” I answered. There were worlds of things unspoken in that one word. So many things they created a logjam and none could get past the lump in my throat. “I’m so sorry.” That was the one thing that came out.

Nick closed his eyes, took a moment to breathe down some pain, physical or emotional, and met my gaze again. “Where are you?” he asked. “Are you coming? There’s been…trouble here. Have you seen Amanda?”

“She’s not there with you?” The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach was growing like a weed.

He started to shake his head, but his whole face convulsed in pain and he stopped immediately, moving only his lips. “Went out. Yesterday? This morning? Haven’t seen her since. Not anyone.”

“No one’s come to check on you?” That bad feeling grew fangs and claws and took on a life of its own. Nick was in no condition to care for himself. If no one was looking in on him…things were seriously wrong at that hospital. And his sister…

“Nick, we’re coming. Just…hold tight. Try to rally. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” But what to do first—save the man or stop the apocalypse? I wanted to do both. Track down Hecate, recover the sword, find Namtar and his minions, take them down, save the day…but all with Nick safe. Did he have that kind of time? A man could go without food for weeks, but without water for mere days. If one had already passed… And what about antibiotics, pain meds and all the rest?

“I’m coming,” Lau said, stepping right up beside me, her chin practically on my shoulder so that we looked two-headed. “Just hold on.”

“But, you can’t go alone, and we need—”

She spoke right over my protest. “I won’t be alone.” She turned her no-nonsense gaze on Hermes. “Trickster God Guy, from what I’ve gathered, you got us into all this with whatever you transported. You can get us out. Starting with Nick.”

I looked to Hermes for his reaction, and he gave me an
are you effing kidding me?
look back. “You remind me of someone,” he told Lau. “Let me think. Could it be…Hera? Yes, that’s it. Queen Bee-atch of the gods. So, if I go on this rescue mission, what’s in it for me?”

“I let you live,” she said, glaring daggers.

“
Aaaanh
,” he answered, voice going off like a buzzer. “God, remember? Try again.”

Her glare could superheat stone. “What do you want?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“Dragon scales, nail clippings, baby teeth, whatever you’ve got that your dragon can spare.”

I thought Lau’s eyes were going to fall out of her head. “
WHAT?
”

“Huge on the black market. People think dragon parts cure all kinds of ills. Doesn’t matter if they work, but I pride myself on authenticity.”

“You would sell her for parts?” She was spitting mad now. If she were Hecate, she’d be building hellfire.

“Relax, I’m not out slaying dragons, am I? I’m happy with leavings. Hmm, I wonder if there’s a market for
those
. Maybe if I wait for them to fossilize. Coprolites, I think they’re called…”

We were all staring at him now. But this was Hermes. On the scale of one to weird, this hardly tweaked the needle.

Nick coughed, and as weak as it was, it brought our attention immediately back to him. “I’m okay,” he said, unconvincingly. “Just find Amanda.”

“Fine,” Lau spat at Hermes out of the corner of her mouth. “You have a deal. Just help me get to Nick.”

My stomach twisted itself in knots.
Are you coming?
he’d asked. Did he even remember that he’d dumped me back in Greece? A note left with our hotel concierge, no less. Had that been the pain meds talking? Was it pain and dehydration talking now? If he didn’t remember… I couldn’t even look at Apollo right then. What if our whole…whatever we had started…was a betrayal. What if…?

“Nick, we’re coming,” Lau said. “Hang tight.”

It should be me
, I kept repeating over and over in my head. It
should
be me. I owed him. For so, so much. He was lying in that bed because of me. I should be the one to get him out. At the same time, my precog was screaming. I had to get that sword back. I had to stop the onrushing apocalypse. And I had to do it now.

The lights flickered in the apartment, then went absolutely dark before coming back at about half light. The television winked out and returned with some kind of rebooting screen.

Hermes’s window into the hospital snapped shut along with it, as if he’d been drawing from the electricity for his illusion.

“This happen often?” Hermes asked, looking to Cori, who’d been watching and listening to everything with wide eyes. She was the muse of choral music and comedy. This had to be way the hell out of her comfort zone. Although, there were black comedies…
Pulp Fiction
,
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
,
Shaun of the Dead
…

“We have roving blackouts sometimes in the summer, but this… We lost power for hours yesterday. I was shocked when it was restored. If it goes out again, I’m not sure it’s coming back.”

“Crap on a cracker,” I said, hearing Hecate in my head about my way with words. “Lau, I promise we’ll get in there to save Nick, but we need all kinds of intel first. And it has to be now. While we still have power…and cell towers. Who knows how long that’s going to last.”

Because when I thought tsunamis, I thought Poseidon, especially when it came to threatening L.A. He’d already conspired with Zeus and Hephaestus once to set off the San Andreas Fault and drop L.A. and its surroundings into the ocean to announce their second coming. Apollo, Nick and I had foiled that and they’d never forgiven us. But, last I knew, Poseidon was in Greece…and a federal fugitive. If he weren’t a god with all the arrogance that entailed, I couldn’t imagine him coming back to the States, but…