Prison of Hope (31 page)

CHAPTER
32

London, England. Now.

I
got out of the SUV and walked toward one of the two guards standing outside the lengthy driveway that curved up toward Hera’s mansion in St. John’s Wood. The large metal gates, a
nd a
nearly ten-foot, red-brick wall with spikes on top, stopped people from gaining easy entry to the property; the guards were just a nuisance, albeit, if their jackets were any indication, an
armed one.

I stood well back while Olivia spoke to them, showing her credentials. One of the guards, a large man with a South African accent, made a call on the radio and nodded as the reply came back in his earpiece.

“You can go in,” he told us and opened the gate without another word.

We walked up the drive to the massive white house that sat in an elevated position above the main road we’d pulled up on, as if the owners wished to be able to look down on everyone around them. A lofty goal in a place with as many million-pound
properties
as St. John’s Wood.

Two more guards met us at the front door, and once again Olivia showed them her ID before allowing us inside. We were immediately surrounded by opulence and grandeur. The reception area held only the finest of furniture and artwork. A large spiral staircase sat at the end, with two doors behind it and two more on either side of us.

A man appeared from one of the doors behind the staircase. He wore a black suit and white shirt, with a black tie. “Please come this way,” he told us.

We followed without question, through the door he’d arrived from and down a corridor to a door at the end. The man knocked on the door and then opened it, motioning for us to go inside.

We all did as we were asked, and I felt a slight trepidation as he closed the door behind us with an audible click.

The room was some kind of living room, with a large TV in front of a couch that could probably sit a dozen people comfortably. A cabinet behind the couch held enough bottles of alcohol to drown the sorrows of a substantial number of people.

Tommy walked over to some doors that led out to a patio and stared at the immaculate garden outside. “How much do you think this place is worth?”

“Lots,” I said. “Lots and lots.”

“I thought my house was impressive, but this is a GDP-of-a-small-country kind of price.”

“Hera will be glad you like it,” said a woman from the side of the room.

I turned to the direction of the voice and found myself smiling. “Eos,” I said as I crossed the room to embrace her. “It’s been a long time.”

Eos’s smile was a sight to behold. It lit up her face and put a sparkle in her eyes. In many ways she looked a lot like her sister, Selene, although her skin was slightly darker and her hair cut shorter. Unlike her siblings, she wasn’t dragon-kin. She was a dusk walker, someone who could use shadows as a method o
f transport.

“It’s good to see you, Nathan. I’ve missed our sparring
sessions
.”

“You’ve had no one’s ass to kick in the last few decades, I assume?”

“On the contrary. I just preferred kicking yours.”

I moved aside and Eos embraced Tommy before being
introduced
to Olivia, who went to shake her hand but was dragged in for a hug anyway.

“I hope you’re prepared for this,” she whispered to all of us.

Eos led us through the door into a large room with
windows
along the rear and a large meeting table between the windows and us. Around one side sat Hera, Demeter, Ares, Deimos,
Aphrodite
, and Selene. It took everything I had not to glance her way, not to acknowledge that she was even there. It was made easier when another door opened behind them, and Hyperion w
alked in.

Eos instinctively grabbed my wrist hard enough to remind me where I was. She could have broken it if she’d desired, and I took the hint:
Behave
.

Hera looked as attractive as ever, in a long green dress, with her natural light-brown hair highlighted with blond and cascading down her back to just above her tailbone. The dress hugged her in all the right places, and it was easy to understand why Zeus had fallen for her. It was less easy to understand once you’d actually
met
Hera, but Zeus never had thought with his brain when it came to members of the opposite sex. She stood and embraced Hyperion, offering him a seat at the table. I didn’t point out that she hadn’t even offered
us
a seat yet, but decided it probably wasn’t the time.

I glanced at Aphrodite, who sat next to Hera and could have easily graced the front cover of every magazine and newspaper in the world ever. Hell,
Gardeners World
would have put her on the cover to sell a few copies. There was something about her that wasn’t quite right, though, as if the beauty you were seeing was so total that it couldn’t be real. But most people ignored that aspect and settled for being intoxicated by her presence. She’d dyed her hair a bright red since I’d last seen her. It matched the rubies in her dangling earrings and the lipstick on her full lips, and her black, low-cut dress clung to her curves in a way that made my internal man do a little happy dance. I dug a nail into my palm; as a succubus, she could have made me take my clothes off and dance around a little if she’d really turned on her power. Reminding yourself of the viper hiding behind the façade was a pretty good way to stay alive.

Ares sat on the other side of his mum, Hera, and my anger rose considerably at his presence. But I knew that diving over the table to grab him for his backing of Mordred’s twisted experiments would get me killed.

Ares had married Aphrodite years ago, after her last husband, Hephaestus, divorced her when he caught them going at it like rutting dogs in his bed. Word was that the much smaller man scared Ares. For all of his biker-looks, his huge physique, and imposing personality, it made me wonder what had really happened between him and Hephaestus. Because ever since then, Ares will happily prove just how manly he is to anyone who questions it, usually by beating the guy so badly that he can’t talk for a few days.

The fact that Hephaestus wasn’t at the table wasn’t a surprise. He’d never been much of a politician and had preferred to work with his alchemy, creating things for himself and those he cared about. I always thought that he was a creepy bastard, but anyone who scared Ares couldn’t be all bad.

Demeter sat on the far side of the table, her gaze at me full of evil intent. To suggest that she didn’t like me was probably akin to me saying that being shot isn’t much fun; I’d need a lot more adjectives. Demeter looks a lot like her daughter Persephone, but her face is harder, and her eyes are full of menace. You know people say that if your heart is filled with evil intent, your face will start to reflect that evil. Well, Demeter looks like she wraps herself up in that shit and never wants to leave.

I risked a glance back to Deimos, who sat on the other side of Aphrodite, and caught him looking down her top. He saw me watching him and quickly averted his gaze, glancing instead at me with total disdain and an anger that appeared barely in check, while Aphrodite smiled. Deimos still had the same beard as when I’d last seen him, although now he had tattoos on his arms, one of which appeared to be a strand of barbed wire wound around his tense bicep, noticeable because of his skintight red T-shirt that showed off every single muscle in his upper body. It also made him an even bigger dick than I’d originally thought.

I glanced at Selene, who was looking away. I hadn’t seen Selene since I’d walked away from her in Berlin in ’36. She’d grown her hair out since then and changed the color to a dark red. She looked elegant in a red and black dress, and a mixture of anger and the need to be with her flowed through me, neither one winning that particular skirmish. Deimos placed his hand on her forearm and nodded in my direction. Eos held onto my hand as if it were the only thing stopping me from exploding.

Hyperion sat on the other side of Selene and took a deep breath. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with short graying hair and a few days of stubble. He looked a lot like his son, Helios. I wondered if he’d stopped whatever awful things Hera would have had done to Helios once he was in her custody. Hyperion glanced up at me once and held my gaze, although he ignored everyone else in the room apart from Hera and his daughters.

I wanted to punch him in his face. Even after all these years, that was the overriding desire. Instead, I turned back to Hera, who was having a chat with Ares.

“Hera,” Eos said when it became apparent that Hera didn’t give a fuck about our being there. “You need to hear what these people have to say.”

Olivia stepped forward. “My name is Olivia Green. I’m the director of the Winchester branch of the LOA.”

Hera actually yawned, and I saw Tommy tense.

“Why should I care who any of you are?” Hera asked, almost bored. “I was enjoying an evening with my family and friends. Exactly what was the point in your removing me from my
pleasant
time?”

“Cronus has escaped,” Olivia said.

“And?” Hera asked, as if it weren’t something she needed to concern herself with. “I got the message from Hades. If I didn’t want to talk to him, why in the world would you believe I would talk to you? Cronus has wanted me dead for a long time.” Hera laughed. “You think he’d manage to succeed? Because I’m certain he won’t get through the gates.”

“He won’t do it here,” I said.

Hera’s eyes narrowed in my direction. “Did I say you c
ould speak?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe I imagined it. Cronus is coming to kill you. He thinks you murdered his son and wants revenge.”

“You know nothing about Zeus,” she snapped, and an angry expression crossed Ares’s face.

“
I
didn’t suggest you did anything to Zeus,” I said. “But
Cronus
doesn’t care. He won’t kill you here; he’ll wait to attack somewhere where you’re less safe. Do you have any public engagements in the next few days?”

“The book fair,” Aphrodite said, managing to make the words “book fair” sound sexy, a feat that had probably never before been achieved in the history of humanity.

“You have a book fair?” Olivia asked.

Hera glared at Aphrodite, who barely seemed to register the other woman’s feelings. “Yes, the London Book Fair. We’ll be going to have some meetings with investors. As you know, Aphrodite owns one of the world’s biggest publishers of romance books. But I assure you, we have our own security, and there will be thousands of people in Earl’s Court. Cronus would not try to attack us there—it would be suicide.”

Earl’s Court was a massive building in London. It was usually the place to hold huge conventions and the like. It meant there would be thousands of people inside that building when Cronus attacked. Thousands of potential victims.

“I don’t think he cares about such things,” I said.

“What you think doesn’t matter!” Demeter snapped. “Now, you came here to give us a message and you’ve given it. You may leave.”

“So, that’s it?” Olivia asked.

“He’s barely going to be a match for a human,” Ares said. “He’s been in Tartarus for too long; his power will be tiny compared to ours. We’ll destroy him—hell, I’ll welcome the fun.”

Aphrodite giggled, actually fucking giggled, like she was someone’s damn groupie, and Ares grinned like an idiot. From what I understood, Aphrodite held the power in that
relationship
, even if she liked Ares to think otherwise.

I turned to leave.

“Nathan,” Deimos called out.

I stopped and turned to face him as he walked around the table. “I just wanted you to know something,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Every night when I’m inside the woman you used to love, when she closes her eyes and arches her back as she comes so damn hard . . . Oh, actually that’s it, I just wanted you to know what she does
every
night.”

I glanced at him and returned his grin with one of my own. “You seem to be under the false impression that I care about who she sleeps with, but I can assure you, that ship has well and truly set sail. Enjoy your married life together.”

Hera glanced over at Selene and grinned. Selene, on the other hand, had turned away from watching her husband and me talking.

“We both know you can’t stand that I won,” Deimos snapped as I walked away. “Selene is mine, not yours. As it will always be.”

I paused at the door and turned back to the room. “Deimos, exactly who do you believe Selene’s thinking about when she closes her eyes? Because it sure as fuck isn’t you.” I walked out of the room without another word.

We’d left the mansion, and I wanted nothing more than to let Cronus come and try to kill Hera. She was so damn certain of herself and how safe she was that it was infuriating. She couldn’t see any possibility that her life was genuinely in danger. And the word of three people she considered beneath her was hardly likely to change her mind anytime soon.