Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (13 page)

The air conditioner in the wall seemed to cough and rattle and shut off. I looked over to be sure that it was just resting and not dead, since that seemed to be the theme of the evening, and saw something glowing behind the curtains. Had the hounds of Hades found me already?

Paranoid
, I told myself.

Duh
, myself whispered back.

I had to know. Bracing myself to come face to face with the stuff of nightmares, I got out of bed and crept to the curtains. I took a deep breath, counted to three, and twitched them aside.

It was a car.
Just
a car. Or an SUV, actually. Someone had forgotten to turn off the headlights, and they were aimed straight for our room. Huffing at the lack of consideration, I pulled my shoes on—they coordinated
so
well with my ducky and bunny sleeping pants—and opened the door as quietly as I could. I realized as the air conditioner noisily kicked back on at the flood of hot air I’d let in that the way I’d chosen to deal with things was not necessarily quieter than picking up the phone and calling the front desk from the room. But I was committed now, and Christie was still asleep, so no harm, no foul. I grabbed my keycard off the desk by the door, eased myself out and the door shut behind me.
 

I knew almost immediately that something was wrong. I couldn’t have said exactly how. Just that the night seemed…dead. There was
no
movement. Not even the breeze from my dream. The early warning system in my mind went on alert, flashing lights at me if not setting sirens wailing.

This time when my brain taunted me about paranoia, I was able to tell myself to
shut it
in no uncertain terms.

thought, to be caught without a weapon. No gun, pepper spray or so much as a pocket knife. I was armed only with my keycard and my wits. I wasn’t exactly oozing with faith in either. I debated ducking back into the room. Probably it was the safest survival strategy, but if whatever was out there didn’t care for locked doors and Do Not Disturb signs, then I’d be inviting trouble in to meet Christie.
Stupid, stupid, stupid,
I

If I continued on to the front office, would I be leading danger away or leaving her defenseless?

I decided not to find out. Do the unexpected.

I stepped out into the parking lot, right in front of the headlights glaring straight at our window, making it impossible to see beyond them.

“You want a piece of me?” I asked the night. “Well, here I am, all defenseless.” I hoped my very bravado would make whoever was there think I protested too much and second guess the wisdom of attack.

It came out of nowhere. One second I was standing, daring danger. The next a ten-ton truck flying-tackled me to the ground, and I was kissing pavement. Tiny little stones ground into my cheek and diced the hands that I’d flung out to catch myself. The ten-ton tackle landed hard on my back, making my skin and those rocks seem to occupy the same space. The weight on my back was too much for me to fill my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The parking lot lights seemed to blur and recede away from me. I realized that it was my consciousness fading, and I fought it, desperate to turn my gorgon gaze on my attacker…only I could no more move than breathe.

A whistle split the air, and the weight on my back shifted, at first painfully. I could hear ribs groaning in protest. A sharp agony ripped through me as one didn’t creak so much as crack. Another jumped on the bandwagon. I gasped as the weight disappeared from my back to settle less completely and painfully on my legs…like a dog coming to heel.

I tried to twist, to get an eye on my attacker, but piercing pain shot across my chest, reminding me of the broken ribs. I was terrified I’d puncture a lung if I pushed it. I settled for moving as little as possible, just my head and shoulders off the ground looking instead for the source of the whistle. Not that I thought for a second the person on the other end of it was a friend. Someone had halted the attack, but I was willing to bet they’d started it as well.

The lights from the SUV shut off, but it didn’t stop the sight of the figure walking toward me. The parking lot lighting was enough.

Sauntering toward me was a man well over six feet, with wild Jonas-brothers hair, a back broad enough that he looked like he could take over for Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. I wouldn’t have minded terribly getting a look at the rest of his body, but the shape was obscured by a pastel-blue jacket over a pale yellow shirt with a bright yellow cartoon sun ordering “Have a sun-shiny day!” I’d have laughed if I didn’t know how much it would hurt.
 

Plus, one did not laugh at the god of the dead. He was not reputed to have a sense of humor. Based on the T-shirt, his sense of irony might be another matter.

“Good dog,” he said as he neared. He lobbed something the size of a softball over my head, and I heard teeth snap together as something snatched it out of the air. My legs were starting to go numb, but I was fresh out of Hound of the Baskervilles-sized biscuits to lead the monster astray.

“Mizz Karacis,” Hades began, fire in his eyes taking the place of those dowsed headlights. Literal fire, flaming on like CGI effects around the irises, which were as dark as an underworld night. “I understand we have much to discuss.”

I had to spit to clear my throat. It hurt like, well,
Hell
, and I knew this was no mere nightmare, because those were supposed to be in black and white and what I’d hacked up was definitely red. As in
blood
. I knew that for a bad, bad sign. On reflection, the golden color of the field in my dream should have been a warning sign as well.

“Can’t…talk,” I managed. There was a wet gurgle to it that I didn’t like at all. My head was swimming, and Hades was starting to become a Dali-esque figure with a melty head that was no longer quite on straight.

He looked peeved, as if I’d been wounded just to thwart him.

In two strides he was by my side, squatting beside me, his whitewashed jeans just inches from my face. If I’d ever thought about it at all, I’d have guessed Hades would look like a badass biker or a metal-head—a cross between Ozzy Osborne, Dave Navarro and Alice Cooper. I’d never have guessed Don Johnson from
Miami Vice
with boy-band hair. It was too weird.

He took one of my hands in his, and a chill numbness started to seep outward from the contact to spread throughout my body. In two blinks of an eye, the pain was gone, but so was all other feeling. I couldn’t feel my heart. I couldn’t tell if it was still beating. I started to panic, yanking my hand back from his, but he had it in a death grip…
literally.

“Calm down,” he snapped. “I’m not going to kill you…yet. I said we have to talk, and I meant it. Life is too short to play word games. I should know. Eternity, though…in eternity we have nothing but time. You have stolen from me the one person who made it palatable.”

He let my hand drop, and I tried to roll to sitting, futilely hoping to dislodge his furry friend.
 

“I wouldn’t,” Hades said. “I haven’t healed you. My powers don’t run that way. But I have put your system in a kind of stasis until you can heal yourself. You won’t bleed to death internally while we speak.”

“But I didn’t—” It took an immense amount of strength to force the words out.

He put a hand to my lips to stop me, and it burned like dry ice. I guessed I could still feel
something
. “It doesn’t matter whether you contributed materially or not. You are what passes for the law here. You failed to stop the desecration of my kingdom and the kidnapping of my queen. You will return her to me or your world will suffer the consequences.”

I couldn’t feel enough to know if my eyes went wide at that.

“I’m not…law—“

He stood abruptly, causing me vertigo as my bruised brain tried to follow the movement. “You ARE.” His voice cracked like lightning, just like in my dream. “You may not be
their
law enforcement,” he said, burning eyes boring into mine, “but you’re
ours
. Olympus buzzes with word of your exploits. You captured my brothers, but failed to stop their damage, which means
I
am now your supreme god.”

I begged to differ. Silently.

He continued. “You will do as I say. You will find Persephone for me. Or I will do it myself. Churches, hospitals, homes—they are all like pebbles before me, and I will leave no stone unturned to find her.”

Cerberus—or whoever was cutting off all the blood circulation to my legs—growled and the earth quaked. A couple walking out to their car took one look, turned tail and ran.

Hades flicked a negligent hand in the hound’s direction, and I screamed as his weight lifted and blood returned to my dying cells. The hound ran after the retreating couple. He was easily the size of Hades’s SUV, and probably twice as fast.
 

“No!” I coughed up the word from the depths of my soul, glaring at Hades, at the smile of anticipation on his face.

I tried to rise, but could hardly move.

Out of sight the woman screamed. The man howled—his cry cut off by the crunch of bone. It was a terrible, horrible sound. My imagination supplied what I couldn’t see. Rage started to burn away the cold numbness Hades had sent through my system. I tried again to rise, to fight or run or help, but he was able to pin me to the ground with one hand.

“You’re a monster,” I said. Even less wisely, “No wonder she ran away.”

He started to crush me with that hand on my chest, grinding my broken ribs into fragile organs. The world faded to the blazing coals of his eyes. “I had a point to make. Cerberus guards my gates. My power keeps the souls contained. What do you think will happen if he and I are away too long looking for my love and the inmates realize that no one is running the asylum?”

Oh Hell. On. Earth. All those souls lose in the world, some probably fractured or tormented, angry or confused… For once my imagination failed me.

The havoc they could wreak…

“I see that you understand.” He smiled, and I thought of his shirt.
Have a sun-shiny day!
Yeah, right. “You have my card.”

He snapped, and it appeared in my hand.

Hadrian Boss
, it said in fiery red letters.
Acquisitions
. It gave two numbers, the same two Jesus had given me.

“I’ll be waiting for your call.”

He snapped again, and suddenly his spot was vacant, just like his soul.

A car pulled into the Inn parking lot, headlights slashing across my broken body—and probably those the hellhound had mauled.
Just like the bodies on Mount Lee
, my brain supplied. I tried to call out, not so much to save myself from being run over as to warn the car off in case Cerberus hadn’t vanished along with Hades.
 

I didn’t manage enough sound to be heard over the car’s engine. At least, I didn’t think so, but it stopped short anyway and a woman jumped out, half-hysterical.

“Ohmagod, ohmagod, ohmagod. What happened? Are you hurt?”

It seemed like an odd question, since perfectly healthy people didn’t generally have a lie-down in the middle of hotel parking lots, but I kept my snark to myself.

“Couple,” I said, spitting blood in order to get the words out. “Around the corner. Check on them?”

The woman looked where I looked and ran off in high-heeled boots to see what I was talking about. Her scream told me she’d found it.
 

“Ohmagod, ohmagod, ohmagod,” she said again. Then, into her cell phone, “Hello. Ohmagod, you have to help. There’s been…I don’t know…a blood bath. The Residence Inn—“

By which I figured that help would be on the way and it was finally okay for me to pass out.

I opened my eyes to another nightmare…only this one I was awake for.

Rosen and Holloway stood over me as I lay prone in a hospital bed. It was the second time tonight I’d been stuck lying down while powerful men looked over me. I didn’t like it one bit.

“Wanna tell us what happened?” Holloway asked as soon as I blinked him into focus.

“Why, I’m feeling fine. Thank you so much for the concern,” I responded wryly. “And you two? How are the wife and kids?”

“No wife,” Holloway answered.

“No kids,” Rosen chimed in.

I rolled my eyes. Even that hurt. “Why do I waste my sarcasm?”

“For that matter, why waste time with rhetorical questions,” Rosen asked, “when the standard variety is already on the table?”

I tried to sit up—to look for a nurse or a few shots of espresso. Not necessarily in that order. Dealing with these two on a full bladder and empty stomach was more than I could handle.
 

I quickly gave it up. My ribs were no longer screaming at me, either due to really good pain meds or the miraculous effect of the ambrosia, but someone had bound them so tightly I felt like a mummy. I could move, but it took a buttload of effort, and my reserves were nil.

“Will you call a nurse for me?” I asked, ignoring them for now.

“Will you answer our questions?” Rosen asked.

“I promise, if you let me pee and come back to me with caffeine and something I can hold down, I’m all yours.”

Holloway looked like I’d just waved a dissecting frog under his nose. Must have been the reference to pee. Rosen just looked amused. “Fine, we’ll be back in five minutes. You’ll get a sip of coffee for every question you answer.”