Rise of the Blood (22 page)

“Good,” Nick said, handing it over. “Then it’s all yours. Goes much better with your outfit anyway.”

Althea looked over her shoulder to where clipboard guy was heading for us. “I’m supposed to be rounding you up,” she said. “Andre wants us to stick to the schedule. The fire department has things under control here, and we’re due at the Tholos for pictures.”

“But—” I said at the same time Nick said, “Tholos?”

As Althea started to explain, “Well, the guidebooks call it the Sanctuary of Athena, but really it was designed to celebrate some old military victory…” Apollo walked over to one of the glowing luminaries and passed a hand over it. The candle inside flared and started to engulf the paper. Before anyone around could react, Apollo reached into the purse and pulled out a little stick doll, an effigy, and dropped it onto the flames. Off to the side, Serena screeched, but it was too late. The little stick figure caught fire instantly, and as Andre arrived, Apollo stomped out the tiny bonfire, crushing the effigy beneath his feet. Instantly, I could see his face relax. The smile he turned in Serena’s direction was chilling.

“Come, come,” Andre said, bustling up, oblivious to everything. “We’ve got to keep to our schedule. The fire department has things well in hand here.”

As the others started to move, I said to myself, “Yes, by all means, let’s go film a movie,
then
stop the titans and save Greece.”

There was a sudden gasp, and my head whipped around to see that Hermes and Christie had reached us and that she’d just heard me loud and clear. I was looking straight into her widened eyes, her gaze willing me to deny what I’d said, turn it into a joke. I’d kept everything I could from Christie thus far, but she’d seen things that were hard to explain away and it was clear that all the pieces were suddenly falling into place for her.

But Andre was shepherding us toward the limos waiting back at the hotel with a nudge here and there from his clipboard. I could have avoided the accusation in her eyes if his herding hadn’t pushed me closer to Christie, who hissed quietly. “
Save Greece?
What’s going on? How could you not tell me?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You’re not my mother, and you’re not my keeper, so cut it out.”

Beside her, Hermes grinned, but it faded when she turned on him. “And
you
. You knew too, didn’t you? That’s why you locked Jesus and me away in that bathroom in San Francisco, isn’t it? To protect us?”

Hermes didn’t look a bit cowed in the face of her anger. “You needed protection. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“What about you?
You
didn’t need protection?”

Hermes met my gaze, and I bit my lip, not willing to lie to Christie anymore and not quite ready to rock her world.

“No, I didn’t.”

Christie waited, trying to dig in her heels but being pushed along by the crowd.

The ground shook again, like an aftershock, and we all grabbed each other to steady ourselves. I felt something pass to Christie when she gripped me, an electric shock that arched between us, zapping us both. She looked at me, startled, and then Andre pushed us on, talking into his Bluetooth. “But the Tholos is still standing? The quake didn’t— No, no, you tell them it’s already been approved. The tremor is over, and we have insurance. What we
don’t
have is a lot of time in the production schedule. Yes, ten, twenty minutes. Make sure it’s all ready.”

“Do you feel all right?” I asked Christie, worried about that zap.

“Perfect,” she answered. It was too serene to be reassuring. She should still be angry at me. Or hurt. But she sounded strangely calm now. I thought about my fellow prisoner back at the jail and started to pull away, to try to drop to the back of the group. What if I was like patient zero, spreading Rhea’s infection? What if Christie’s calm was every bit as unnatural as it seemed?

But Andre pushed me again and nothing happened this time but an overwhelming urge to deck him, which I was pretty certain was all mine.

Back in the hotel parking lot, the makeup staff waited to touch us up as Andre directed us toward our limos, all the better to drive to the Tholos and the stunning vistas with the Delphi temple complex in the background. They could do remarkable things in post-production now, including, I hoped, smooth over any still-smoking or singed wedding finery. I envied the regular guests who got to stay behind at the hotel and drink away the horror of the wedding chapel going up in flames during the cocktail hour. I just hoped the shoot would go more smoothly than the wedding and that when we returned the bride and groom would make a triumphant entrance and put all the rest behind them.

I grabbed Nick’s hand and kept him close to my side, dragging him into the limo with me before the primping posse could get their hands on me. Andre started to protest, but I stopped him with a look. I must have put some kind of freaky force behind it, because he let it go. I’d been able to stop men in their tracks before, flash freeze them temporarily, but never make them compliant. If this was some new thing Rhea or nectar or whatever had awakened inside me, I was glad for it.

It was a tight squeeze with Nick in the limo with the wedding party. When it came time for my escort, Ernest, to climb in, he offered to catch the next limo, the one with the talent, but we pushed in and made room for him.

Then we were off. Andre slammed the door on us, still talking nonstop into his Bluetooth. He slapped the side of the limo like a trail horse, and it bucked forward, taking us to the peak of Mount Parnassus.

I squeezed Nick’s hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “About…just everything.” I wasn’t going to go all George Bailey in
It’s a Wonderful Life
and say he’d have been better off if he’d never met me. He was a big boy and could make his own decisions. Unlike Christie and Jesus, he’d
known
what he was getting into with me, almost from the start. But the fact remained that if he’d stayed away from me, he wouldn’t constantly be in any crazy kind of danger.

“Stop,” he said. Not
it’s okay
. Just
stop
. “I’m a policeman. I accepted trouble a long time ago. Hell, crossing the street in L.A. can be dangerous enough, and it doesn’t come with any of the perks.”

Great, so I was trouble with benefits—friends with benefits only with more potential for bloodshed. Go me.

Still I smiled. “What about—” I couldn’t say it. Not in a carful of people. Maybe not at all.
What about me killing people and leaving the scene of the crime?

But he seemed to know what I’d left unsaid. “We’ll…get past it. If the options were you dead or you alive and the bad guys taking your place, I don’t see that you had any choice.”

It hadn’t been my choice at all, but he was so close to acceptance I didn’t argue. Maybe he’d forgive, but I wondered if he’d ever be able to forget. And he hadn’t even seen me in action.

I hoped he wouldn’t get a second chance. I had a very bad feeling about heading back toward Rhea’s place of power with the people I loved all around me, with Nick at my side. What if Rhea manifested again and decided they were in her way? What if I was right about the titans rising? What if Nick got to see my possession up close and personal?

Nick pulled me closer, as if he thought from my shiver that I was cold. Instinctively I pulled away, like that little distance could save him if something happened.

My gorge rose, and the limo stopped just in time. I popped the door open and climbed over Nick to get out. I stumbled off only a few feet before the contents of my stomach made a reappearance, burning their way up and out.

Everyone else exited on the other side of the car, as far away from me as possible, except for Nick who, like a good boyfriend, came to hold my hair.

I was gasping by the time my stomach was empty, still too horrified even to be embarrassed.

“Who has that flask?” Althea asked.

Junessa handed it over and Althea rounded the car to make me drink.

“Usually, I don’t agree with spirits, but every once in a while, they have their uses,” she said. “In moderation.” As if I might take it as a license to party. Gorgon Girls Gone Wild. It was both the nearest and farthest thing from my mind.

I took a decent swig from the flask, more to kill the taste in my mouth than because I thought it would do any real good, and then tried to breathe through the nausea as the whiskey hit my stomach.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Thank you.”

I handed the flask back to Junessa and saw that everyone was staring at me as if I might grow a second head or start clucking like a chicken. “Really,” I added, smiling to show conviction.

Andre got out of the second limo with the others, passed a disapproving look over me, by which I knew he’d seen everything, and then made flapping motions to move us toward the Tholos. Two other cars were already parked on the shoulder of the road near the site—I assumed the production people that Andre had been chatting up on his Bluetooth.

Apollo hung back, refusing to be wafted toward anything. He scanned the area, looking up to where his defiled sanctuary could be seen on the pinnacle of Mount Parnassus overlooking the Tholos and everything on down.

There was an official car parked up there, but we were too far away to see what was going on. Apollo scanned downward, toward the Tholos and across to where I was lagging behind. Nick stayed with me, maybe sensing like I did that there was a verdict to await.

Apollo met my gaze, caught Nick’s, and then looked back to me. “Something’s wrong,” he mouthed so the others couldn’t hear.

I felt it too. In the churning pit of my stomach, in the way that the place was plucking at my nerves.

Something wicked this way comes
.

I looked toward Althea, who nodded to me before I could say a word. She’d seen Apollo’s warning and moved off to talk to Junessa. It was hard to be prepared when you didn’t know what to be prepared
for
.

A car pulled up behind ours as we walked to the Tholos, a small site practically within the shadow of Apollo’s temple complex, which rose in the background to dwarf the much closer Tholos.

The newly arrived car didn’t have lights flashing, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a police cruiser. Andre signaled someone to go talk with the cops, and I wondered whether they were some kind of security for the ancient site…or whether they were coming for me. But my precog warning signal didn’t point me in that direction. No, I sensed trouble beneath us, as if we were standing on the danger, and above, from the direction of Apollo’s sanctuary, but not from the road.

I couldn’t keep my gaze from being drawn up the mountain, as if the spirits of those I’d killed might rise up and accuse me or descend to take their revenge. It was stupid, I knew. The bodies would have been removed, and I didn’t believe in ghosts, but
something
was up there still. I could feel it. Maybe it was the center of awareness for the goddess we’d awakened. Maybe it was something more. Either way, it was trouble.

Nick pulled me gently along, watching our footing while I, less helpfully, watched the cliffs above.

“Keep an eye out,” I told him.

He nodded, stopping with me when Andre put a hand out signaling that we should all halt. Ahead of us, Tina huffed, “But
I’m
the bride.”

Clearly, since we only had the site for a limited time, and since the production company had arranged it, Andre was going to make sure they got their film shots first.

Up ahead, the director, who none of us hoi polloi had been introduced to, staged Apollo and Serena, who pretended the sound, lighting and film equipment all around them didn’t exist. Serena couldn’t quite do the same with her co-star, though she didn’t seem to know what
to
do with him. The fire of hatred burned in her eyes, and I didn’t think it was going to do wonders for their romantic scene or her film career. If she wasn’t careful,
she’d
be the one getting replaced. I had a hard time concerning myself about that. Apollo alternated between looking at the mountain and making enough eye contact with the director to feign attention.

They were positioned in the center of the Tholos, on the raised platform ascended by stairs and loomed over by the three columns still standing. Or restored to standing, anyway, since I was pretty sure from the mottled dark and light stone that parts of the column weren’t original. But they
were
huge and impressive, especially with the field of white sprinkled with purple flowers and other felled columns lying all around them. It was striking from any angle, whether the skyline peeked between the pillars or the ruins of Delphi rose behind them.

Andre gave us a short “silence or death” speech, and we all stood around gawping as Apollo and Serena acted out a romantic comedy scene about why each had sneaked away from the wedding and what each would have asked the ancient oracles at Delphi. It was amazing how they’d gone from enemies one moment to potential lovers the next. It was a shame Serena was a sociopathic siren. There was no debating she had talent. Together they managed to spin an entirely illusory web of magic and romance.

The first half dozen times anyway. Once the director had stopped and restarted them, moved them and the cameras into different positions and made them go through it ad nauseum, the scene had lost its charm.

Tina began tap-tap-tapping on Andre’s shoulder, ending more on a thump than a tap. I could see an argument brewing, when the director finally turned and smiled through his scraggly beard. “And now for the bride.”

I let out a breath, praying we’d be done and gone before whatever tension I felt building sprung on us like snakes from a can.

Someone snapped in my face, and I blinked at Andre’s fingers an inch from my nose. I thought about breaking them, but I was pretty sure it would piss Tina off and, anyway, the police were watching.

I settled for glaring and going where he arranged me. We all stood at the steps of the Tholos, apparently not cleared, like the famous people, for use of the platform. A photographer and videographer both moved in to shoot us. Traditional poses first—boys on one side, girls on the other flanking the bride and groom. Then variations. Just the girls. Just the boys. Guys holding the bride vertically and her looking exasperated. Girls gathered around the groom, all leaning in to kiss his cheek. And then the wedding party was off the hook and it was just the bride and groom in the spotlight.