Blood Hunt (6 page)

The Set coin burned a hole in my pocket where I'd put it after I'd removed it from Viktor's forehead. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something, but I bit it back. Neith hadn't ratted me out about the coin when she'd shown him the crime scene photos on her phone, but it was probably only a matter of time. And then I'd be in deep trouble for withholding evidence. If it came to that, I'd turn it over. But not until I absolutely had to…and not before I was sure any enchantment it held had been broken. Until then, it was safer with me. Anyway, it seemed too small and too pitted to be good for prints and the police had no means of tracing the magic.

I, on the other hand, just might.

I gave my statement and then headed straight back to the office. Jesus could scan the coin and start an online search, and while I waited for that to come back, I could check in with Yiayia to see what dirt she had on Neith and show the disk to Apollo to see what he had to say. I wondered who he'd been in ancient Egypt. My first thought was Ra, who was known for being the sun god, but I thought Ra was more on the level of Zeus. Whoever Apollo had been, no doubt he'd known Set and what he was capable of. He might be able to shed some light.

The coin might even kick up a prophecy or two that could help us catch our killers. One could hope.

Chapter Five

I hadn't had anything since the latte and croissant that morning. It was amazing how much of a hunger two crime scenes and a little hand-to-hand combat could work up.

Apollo'd had to go into the management office he owned since his partner Circe—yes,
that
Circe, who'd long ago turned Odysseus's men into uncultured swine—had been murdered in the case where we first met. He'd mentioned being due in around lunchtime. It was significantly after that now. He might be up for a late lunch. Or an early dinner. My precog couldn't tell me a thing, but then, that was why man had made cell phones.

I wondered if there'd ever been a deity responsible for the gift of gab. If so, he or she had blessed L.A. inordinately.

Apollo's secretary answered, twice as perky as Jesus. She put me on hold as she checked in to see if the big man would speak with me and sounded three times as cheerful when she discovered I was worthy. Apollo came on the line a second later.

“Good news,” he said without taking a breath after “hello”. “I've just signed Thalia Day. I'm meeting her on set later to sign the papers. We have to celebrate.”

“
Thalia
?” I asked, like we were on a first name basis. “As in
Silent Solace
,
Tilting at Windmills
, and, like, every single Clairol commercial ever?”

“The same. I'll tell you a secret.” He dropped his voice, though I had no idea who he expected to overhear. “She's one of mine.”

“Yours?”

“The muse of comedy and frivolity, though she's pretty damn good at drama as well.”

“Why didn't she come to you sooner?”

“She was worried about nepotism. And also, she loved her agent, but he's retiring, and so…”

“Great! Something to celebrate. How about you order in and I swing by for a late lunch? I need your help.”

He let out a breath. “I didn't even ask about your client. Cheating husband? Stalker? Search for a long lost heir?”

“Murder,” I said, ready to kick myself for the little thrill I had in throwing that into his mix.

It wasn't that I was glad of the killings. It was that all the rest were so insignificant after all we'd been through. Since Apollo and I had gotten back from stopping yet another apocalypse, the small stuff just wasn't cutting it with me. Panacea and Asclepius were changing lives, making and distributing the drug that had brought the world back from the brink of zombification. They were mass producing miracle cures, and what was I doing with my life?

I couldn't save the world every day. I knew that. I didn't even want to. The stress was too great. What if I was out that day with the flu or Apollo was filming or our sometimes-helper Hermes was in a snit… Still, I'd discovered I wanted to make a difference.

“Murder?” he asked before I could continue along my mental track.

“I'll tell you all about it when I get there. Actually, I have a bit of show and tell.”

“What kind of food do you want?”

“Surprise me,” I said.

“Salads?”

I blew him a raspberry. A wet one. He knew better.

He laughed, and it made me tingle straight through the phone.

“How about Thai?”

“Now you're talking.”

I hung up. He knew what I liked, and with L.A. traffic, there was no telling how long it would take me to get to him.

As it turned out, avoiding the freeways meant I was able to make it just inside a half hour. Apollo's perky receptionist greeted me. She looked sent from central casting to play the part—stylish black and gray tweed skirt, black silk top, dark hair with thick bangs, librarian-esque glasses and a smile that could have booked her tooth-whitening commercials. And maybe had. She did look vaguely familiar.

She showed me back and I tried not to be jealous of how well she could walk in her four-inch heels or the fact that her calves could have been carved out of stone. My boots had heels—the nice chunky kind. I
could
wear stilettos—would probably be forced to for Apollo's red carpet shindig—but the world had better watch out. I was just as likely to step on a foot or fall into someone as I was to make it without mishap. Oh, who was I kidding. The odds were
not
ever in my favor.

Apollo rose to greet me when receptionist-lady—I really should learn her name—showed me in. He put hands to my shoulders and gave me a kiss to each cheek.

I pulled back in shock and fixed him with a look that said if that was the best he had, I'd take my order to go.

“Sorry,” he said with a laugh. “I get in the zone. It's office brain as opposed to, well,
Tori
brain.”

He pulled me in again and this time the kiss curled my toes and stopped my breath. When I remembered the need for oxygen, I tried to take it in discretely but ended up sounding something like a vacuum hose that had suddenly cleared an obstruction.

I looked over at his desk like we might continue things there, but it was covered in papers.

Our link kicked in, and his eyes flashed. “Nothing important,” he said. “I can have Victoria sort them later.”

Ah, Victoria. I'd have to remember.

“Lunch will get cold,” I said.

“Do you think I care?”

“Besides, there's that great big picture window behind your desk.”

He walked over to it and grabbed a remote from a drawer. Pressing a button brought a curtain across the window, blotting out the view while still allowing some light through. Things suddenly took on a cozy intimacy.

My stomach chose that moment to growl and the emptiness I'd been too busy to feel hit me all at once. “I, uh, might need sustenance first. I don't think that croissant is going to get me much further.”

Apollo sighed. “Just as well. I lied. Some of the papers are important, but I didn't think it would be terribly sexy for me to move them off in nice orderly stacks. Might kill the moment.”

“I think I've already done that.”

He grinned, and it was wolfish. “Nah, eating can be sexy. Haven't you ever seen
Nine 1/2 Weeks
?”

“I think crystal noodles might be a little too messy to eat out of a belly button.”

“What about
Lady and the Tramp
?”

“You think
Lady and the Tramp
is sexy?”

“Romance is always sexy.”

Gods, when he said things like that…suddenly, my hunger could wait. I stalked toward him and he stood his ground, waiting. He realized he still held the remote and tossed it into a drawer. When I got close, he slid his arms around me and I stood on my tiptoes to reach him, fitting my mouth to his and forgetting to breathe again as he devoured it. My heart did all sorts of complicated dance moves. I pressed my body into his and felt more than heat rising between us. Just to be absolutely certain, I swept one of my hands down his sides, across his washboard abs and then let it dip a little lower.

There was a firm knock at the door before I vaguely heard a click and a much less vague gasp. “Oh, uh, sorry. I should have waited… Your food is here.”

Apollo had turned toward the door, but didn't let me go. “Thank you, Victoria,” he said, and I was pleased to hear that he sounded every bit as breathless as I felt. “Just, leave it by the door.”

She did and retreated, her face aflame.

My stomach growled again. “Rain check?” I asked.

Apollo smiled at me, and the effect was devastating. I fought it.

“Rain check,” he said, voice full of promise, as though there would be interest attached. I shivered at the thought.

He could sense it, even though I managed to keep the shiver inside rather than out, and I felt the full force of his arousal echoed back at me. It hadn't bothered him at all that Victoria had walked in. And why should it? I reminded myself, as always, how different we were. Apollo dated back to the time of orgies and offerings. Before he'd made the move to more mainstream theatre and then dipped into management, rumor had it (and I'd since confirmed) that he'd been a star in the adult film world. If I lived ten lifetimes, he'd still have more experience. It was shocking I hadn't bored him already.

“Stop,” he said.

I wished the Gray Sisters had taught me to hide my thoughts as I could my wings.

“You know it's true,” I said out loud, since it really wasn't my thoughts he could read so much as my feelings. Everything else was context.

“I know no such thing. First off, you are anything but boring, and if ever there was someone
less
predictable and more faceted, I'm not sure I'd like to meet her. I don't think I could keep up.”

I didn't answer.

“Do I have to do you right here on this desk to prove my feelings? It's a sacrifice, but one I'm willing to make…for you. Though your stomach rumblings may be a bit distracting.”

I balled up a piece of paper from his desk, hoping it wasn't one of the important ones, and threw it at him.

He caught it and lobbed it back at me.

“I'll get the food,” I said as though it were an answer.

Really, it was. These very same thoughts had chased around in my head ever since I'd met Apollo and yet I'd fallen into bed with him anyway. I'd resisted him long enough to prove I could. And now… Now it was too late. I'd been hooked ever since, just as I'd been with my first taste of ambrosia.

Anyway, the food smelled heavenly. I wasn't sure I could resist
that.
Not for much longer. Hunger was an even bossier than my hormones.

While I carried it to the desk, Apollo was shifting piles of paper away and off to a side area with a small buffet—coffee maker, sugar, creamer, minibar—under which was a mini-fridge containing, I knew, various kinds of water, sparkling and otherwise.

I set the delivery containers out on his desk, making sure the shrimp and crystal noodles were closest to me, although the Khao Phat smelled mouthwatering as well. I took some of each, leaving enough for Apollo. There was also some kind of soup, which I ignored entirely.

I was half way through my plate with barely a word spoken. I was
hungry
, dammit, when Apollo said, “So, you promised me show and tell?”

I would have smacked myself in the head if I wasn't afraid of stabbing myself through the eye with a chopstick.

“Right!” I answered. I'd pulled off my jacket at some point when the heat of the meal had started sweat beading on my forehead. Now I reached for the pocket, forgetting my aversion to touching the coin with my bare hands. My precog kicked hard, though, and I yanked my hand back, going for a napkin and using that to grasp the disk and hand it to Apollo.

He put his chopsticks down and took it, setting the napkin in the palm of one hand and opening it up gingerly like the corners were delicate flower pedals.

All the color drained from his face. No mean feat when he was so California tan.

“What is it?” I asked. “Apollo, are you okay?”

He looked up at me without really seeing and back down at the disk.

Alarm was coming through our connection and…something else. Shame? Horror? Immediately, I felt him crash down on those feelings, trying to lock them away, but it was too late. Like closing the cage door after the lion had escaped, as Pappous would have said. Circus folk, go figure.

“Apollo?”

He swallowed something down, possibly bile, and looked at me again. This time there was a little more awareness there.

“How did you get this?” he asked.

“You recognize it?”

“Not the piece itself, but the symbol. It's Set.”

“That's what Neith said.”

“Neith? She's here?” He looked around as if she might actually be there in the office and he'd somehow missed her.

“In L.A. I met her at the crime scene where I got this. Apollo, what's going on? Your emotions are all over the map.”

“Are they?”

“You know they are.”

He put the coin down and covered it back over with one corner of the napkin. When it wouldn't stay down, he grabbed a penholder from his desk and placed it overtop.

Finally, he looked up at me again, but his eyes were…shadowed was the only way I could put it, as if clouds had moved between me and the sun, dimming its brilliance, hiding its face.

“How much do you know about Horus?” he asked.

I blinked. “Horus?”

“You know that most of us have been many things in many cultures, sometimes doing double duty, since civilizations don't rise and fall like dominos.”

“Yes.”

“In Egypt, I was Horus.”

“The falcon-headed god?”

“The sky god. He…
I
…was portrayed as a falcon. It was said my right eye was the sun and my left was the moon and that they traveled the sky when I took to the air. Poetic more than strictly accurate, but it worked just as well as a golden chariot or anything else. But…okay, Set…there's history there.”

I waited for him to continue. When he didn't, I jumped in tentatively. “I know some of that, I think. Set supposedly killed Osiris, right? He dismembered him and sprinkled his parts all over the earth. Isis, his wife, recovered them all. All but his penis.” Take that, Neith. “And she resurrected him. Or, wait, was Osiris the one who was tricked into lying down in a coffin, which was then locked up and thrown into the sea and then grew into some kind of tree that Isis, um…that somehow impregnated Isis to produce…uh, you?” Okay, it sounded crazy when I said it like that.

Apollo's lips twitched. Not quite into a smile, but almost enough to chase away the shadows still hanging over him.

“There's truth here and there,” he answered, which was completely unenlightening. “Anyway, Set did plot against Osiris. And kill him. And Isis, who was a powerful sorceress as well as a goddess, did resurrect him. But…Osiris wasn't the only one he plotted against.”