The second Apollo had told me that the twins had claimed her, I knew where. They were, as always, obsessed with the stables, and after looking in all the stalls then the tack, when I’d found the office locked with the faint sound of voices coming from behind its closed doors, I’d known they were inside.
From the relative calm of the post-coital glow to word of impending disaster, I’d ruined the mood, but then, when didn’t Apollo have a habit of doing that?
He tended to make everything about himself.
Lux and Tor had claimed our wife, had put a concrete tie on her to us, and he’d morphed that into being about him.
Fuck him.
“Yes. I didn’t know I was doing it,” Apollo admitted, and his voice had a dream-like quality to it that had been there since I’d stormed into his office after watching the lights flash on and off several times before hearing the craccckk that was unique to the sound of the fuses in the building breaking down.
“Doing what?” Tor’s voice was as controlled as it could be under the circumstances, but I heard the anger buried within, the anger he wouldn’t show when Apollo was off in La-La land.
“Every time I healed her, the aneurysm responded to my powers.”
“How did it do that?” Lux didn’t sound pissed, more curious than anything else.
“I’m not sure. Aneurysms occur when there’s a weakening in an arterial wall. It was quite large and I had to drain the mass, but because it was tied to her blood, and because of what she is to us, I think her blood responded by absorbing my gifts.” He hummed under his breath. “Quite interesting if you think about it.”
“So, I can do what you can? Heal people and shit?”
Apollo laughed and reached down to rub his thumb along the line of her cheek. “I don’t think so. I believe you can mirror my talents.”
“Wait a minute,” I spat. “Are you trying to say that the two of you caused the solar flare?”
Apollo shot me a look that told me yes, he did think so, but verbally, he murmured, “No, of course not.”
Ella, with her arms around Apollo’s waist, shook him. “Dammit, Pol. Don’t prevaricate. You don’t need to protect me. What did we do?”
“Nothing you could stop,” he assured her softly. “The links between us are powerful. Tying yourself to Castor and Pollux triggered something that I responded to.”
“You felt it happen?” she squeaked.
“I did.” He sighed. “It feels good.”
“What does?” she inquired, her tone wary.
“Not to be alone anymore.”
It was an admission that had all three of his guardians shooting each other startled glances. Apollo was too cocksure of himself to make a statement like that, and it was a testament to whatever the hell was going down with the sun that he’d uttered such words, period.
Something was going on here, I didn’t have a clue what.
Running a hand over my head, I moved closer to Lux and Tor who were trying, and failing, to look at the sun without crying.
“There’s no point in trying to look up there, idiots. Didn’t you see how the electrics responded? He burned out the fuses. I don’t even know if an electrician can fix them without needing to rewire the entire place.”
“We were otherwise occupied,” Lux said dryly.
“Lucky bastards.”
Tor clapped me on the back. “Your turn soon.”
“There’ll be no soon if Apollo doesn’t get his head out of his ass.” I frowned over at him. “What’s going on with him?”
“I think he’s trying to stay calm and it’s making him weird,” Lux commented.
“He’s being nice,” Tor argued. “That’s not weird.”
“Isn’t it? The sun revolves around Apollo, not the other way around,” Lux drawled. “He’s known for his arrogance, Tor.”
“Yes. But I think he’s trying not to be that way at the moment.” Tor fidgeted with the collar of his tee, and the way he rustled the fabric had the scent of sex flaring to life around us.
When his cheeks grew ruddy and his eyes heavy, I sighed. “For God’s sake. Control it, Tor.”
The other guardian winced. “Maybe if he claims her, it will sort things out?”
“It’s an idea,” Lux stated.
“What if they…” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Shit. What if they make the solar storm worse?”
Tor’s jaw turned white as he clenched his teeth. “We have to hope that doesn’t happen.”
“The crystals…” Lux threw out those two words like a fireman shot water over flames.
“What about them?”
“She focused on them, remember? Hecate was—”
“I was wrong.” Three words that never fell from Apollo’s lips.
We turned, as one, to face him. Saw that Ella had pressed her face into his chest and the two were clinging to one another like shipwreck victims clung to the vessel’s detritus in a stormy sea.
“She is not a daughter of Hecate.” He grimaced. “I mistook her powers, but Hecate was like Artemis, was she not? She followed her chaste ways. She is a child of Helios.”
A hiss stuttered from between my lips. “You’re fucking kidding me?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Helios?” Ella rasped.
“The sun works in two ways, ó chrýsion.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “There is the power of it surging into being every day. The sun crosses the sky, pushing the moon out of the way in its endless need to shine light upon the Earth. Helios is behind that drive. But I am the light. The energy.”
She gulped. “Yeah, but, any powers I have are super watered down, right?”
“Essentially.” He hummed and pointed to the sky. “This is the super watered-down version.”
“What’s the shit with the crystals?” Lux asked.
“Our powers converging. They weren’t focuses, but conduits.” He grimaced. “It’s a working theory. I’m not sure why the crystals react to her so well. It doesn’t make much sense, but none of this does. How you three created this sun storm simply because Ella’s powers are unchecked is beyond me.”
There was silence as we processed the impossible, then Tor broke it by clicking his fingers. “You could do that again. Harness the power you’ve triggered into being and use crystals as conduits as well as storage.”
“Storage?” Ella rasped. “And conduits, for what?”
“The energy you collect from the sun. The excess.”
I blew out a breath. “Poseidon is going to be pissed.”
“Why?” Lux mumbled, shooting me a wary glance that said no one wanted to piss off the God of the Sea.
“Because the only place such power could truly be corraled is if we dump it in the ocean.”
Chapter Six
Ella
“Not to be alone anymore.”
Hours later, those words were still ringing around my brain, and, let’s face it, there was plenty of other shit to be ricocheting around inside there.
Anything from the fact he and I had created a sun storm so powerful Achilles looked concerned. That dude didn’t really ‘do’ expressions. He had the least expressive face I’d ever seen, and to go from zero reaction to the concern I was seeing now? Didn’t bode well, did it?
None of that was helped by the fact I’d watched a documentary on sun storms recently and knew what havoc they could cause on the planet.
Apollo and I had just triggered a catastrophic event and we hadn’t even fucked. I mean, I’d fucked his guardians, and as a result, this had happened. How? Your guess was as good as mine.
What would go down when we bumped uglies?
Jesus.
I wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or excited.
Terrified because, ya know, a potential Walking Dead situation would be in the making. Excited because the two of us together could create a storm so powerful it would affect the Earth itself.
For someone who’d been dealing with
what I had lately, I really shouldn’t find this so enthralling, but I did.
Sue me.
“Ella?”
Tor only grabbed my attention when he held my hand and squeezed my fingers.
I blinked at him. “Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really.” I winced. “I mean. I guess I am.”
“You know what we’re doing, right?”
I’d watched the four of them call on all their considerable reserves for the past few hours. I didn’t have any contacts, so had just stared at them, feeling useless until they’d looked at me, their concern morphing with relief that I was there.
It was like I recharged them or something.
When they were drained, when they were tired or weary, they’d look at me and get a spurt of energy that helped them in their endeavors.
My very presence was helping them fix the cluster fuck I’d caused.
Seriously, if I could do over my day, I would. I mean, I wouldn’t change much of it. I was relieved as heck to know about Cressy, and I had zero complaints about being fucked on the desk by the twins. But the whole apocalypse winging its way toward us?
Yup. I’d do that over in a flash.
Not that I’d done much to trigger it in the first place.
I hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t put in a damn request. But it was coming because Apollo’s reserves lowered around me, and, somewhere in my lineage, a God had sired me.
Go me, right?
I thought about the question though, and while the answer made no sense to me, it did to them. “You’re going to put us in a circle of geodes. Then, together, we’re going to work on Apollo’s self-control, and attempt to harness then capture the fluctuating solar energy in the air and store it in the crystals. That about, right?”
See, I could listen and process while totally freaking out.
Women. The ultimate multitaskers.
“Oh, and we have to do that within the next twelve hours, no?”
Tor’s smile was strained. “You got that right.”
“How many geodes have you found?”
“We’re trying to find large ones. That’s what we’ll need if we’re to corral that much power,” Achilles informed me, looming over me before he dropped a kiss on my forehead.
We were in Apollo’s rooms still, but we’d graduated from hovering by the windows, gaping at the sun, to hanging out around the sitting area. I’d spent a good half hour in bed, just trying to come to terms with what had happened today.
It had made me feel useless, sure, but I wasn’t much help anyway.
I mean, I bought crystals. I knew which ones could help, but in the face of it? I didn’t have any contacts in the area aside from the local crystal store which wasn’t exactly big—I’d seen walk-in closets that were bigger than that tiny retail store.
Even though I figured they’d mock crystals—because big, butch dudes tended to, didn’t they?—they hadn’t asked me once for advice. They seemed to know what they were doing, and I was glad because I sure as shit didn’t. Just because I’d made two crystals glow a few days ago didn’t mean I had magical powers over them, and it seemed to me like they were throwing a lot of eggs in one basket but hell, I had no alternatives to offer up.
I’d moved away from the bed an hour ago and, even though the move should have been alien to me because I wasn’t exactly accustomed to nuzzling into anyone, it was surprisingly easy to settle myself beside the God who was my husband, and cuddle.
The minute I’d taken a seat beside him, he’d lifted his arm to let me get even closer.
When he’d done that?
Jeez, I’d felt like my heart was about to explode, and I’d never have said I was the exploding heart kind of gal. Who knew?
“How long until we can try to sort this out?” I was on edge because I didn’t have a damn clue what we were about to do, just knew I needed to bring my A game.
“The helicopters will start arriving in ninety minutes.”
“Helicopters?” I squeaked. “You’re getting all this stuff flown in?” Why that surprised me, out of everything that was happening here, I’d never know.
“It’s not like we have many alternatives, Ella,” Tor explained. “We need this stuff here and fast.”
“Speaking of fast,” Apollo stated, his tone grim, “we need to get moving.”
“We do?” Now I was seriously lost.
“Yes.” He retracted himself from my hold—clinging hold, I’d lie about it in court, though—and climbed to his feet. The minute he was standing, he helped me up and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “We need to get on the boat.”
The next forty minutes were probably the most surreal of my life.
Of course, that would mean shit over what was going to happen in the course of the next twenty-four hours.
See, you might be accustomed to harnessing the sun’s energy, but I sure as fuck wasn’t.
I was bustled down to a small dock on the property, where a speedboat was waiting. As the salty air licked at my skin, the lake opened up to Shinnecock Bay, and we were out on open waters.
Now probably wasn’t the time to tell them that I figured I was getting seasick, right?
Even as I could feel my face turning green, I reached up and began to twiddle with my necklace. The smooth texture of the quartz felt good against my palms, and as I closed my eyes, I let the cold air try to soothe my nausea.
It was for that reason I missed the huge boat looming in the distance.
Only halfway to twilight, if it had been dark, I’d have seen the lights up ahead, but only when I felt the speedboat slowing down did I open my eyes, figuring we were wherever we needed to be.
I guessed it made sense we were meeting up with a bigger boat.
How the hell were helicopters going to drop off the geodes on a speedboat, for Christ’s sake?
Jesus. Where was my brain?
Had Tor and Lux fried it with too much sex? Or had it been fried by whatever the heck I’d done with the sun’s energy to trigger a storm of such potential devastation Achilles’ usually calm face was as turbulent as the water around us.
“The ocean’s preparing itself for the hit,” I heard Tor say under his breath. “Poseidon knows.”
Apollo hissed but just said, “Nothing much we can do about that. We have to act on what we know.”
Poseidon?
I mean, Apollo was Apollo, and I knew Hades, but Poseidon? Like with the trident? I tried not to be freaked out by the fact that underneath me there weren’t just bottomless depths, but someone’s freakin’ house.
The boat was huge. Like Russian billionaire big. I mean, it figured. Apollo was filthy rich, as were his guardians, and if the estate hadn’t been proof enough of that, then this was.
I hadn’t even known boats like this existed outside of magazines, but here I was, being led onto a vessel that could have been a mini cruise liner.
Dazed, I looked around at the environs and managed to see the helicopter pad on the boat’s roof. Did boats have roofs? Well, I wasn’t about to ask that, but I guessed I could Wiki it later on.
The minute we were on board the men got to work. There was a crew, but they dismissed them and told them to stay in their quarters for the rest of the night.
I wasn’t surprised that the crew was Greek, but then, what was more surprising here? That Apollo just happened to have a boat moored in the open sea? Or that the crew weren’t American?
“Is this like a vacation home?”
The words were blurted out but as I took in the deck with its sun loungers and chill out areas, it seemed to be the only thing that made sense. We hadn’t moved from the deck to the interior, so this was pretty much all I could see.
It was old-school in a way. Kind of reminded me of Leo and Kate’s Titanic with all the varnished wood, and there were a lot of brass tools that looked period in age. Inside, I almost dreaded the prospect of that infamous staircase with all the stained glass around it.
Channeling the ‘unsinkable’ vessel wasn’t my idea of fun when I was in the middle of the open sea.
“It’s a toy,” Lux said dismissively.
“A toy?” I repeated blankly as I peered around the opulent area that was surrounded by mile after mile of wet stuff.
Okay.
This was…
I let my hands prop me up on my knees as I bent over and tried not to hyperventilate.
I mean, this would be too much for anyone, right? Sure, the money was cool and the boat was awesome if you didn’t get seasick, but I was supposed to help save the Earth in a matter of hours and I wasn’t exactly Superwoman material.
I could barely run two feet without falling over, and going upstairs was beyond me somedays—I couldn’t be the only person who fell up stairs, could I?
A hand settled on my lower back, and I didn’t even question who it was—Achilles.
“You are well, ó glykýtaton?”
“Just peachy,” I gasped, not sure if I was gasping out the words because I wanted to puke or because it was the first time he’d uttered something in Greek to me.
“I think you’re lying to me, wife,” he replied, but there was a low thread of amusement rumbling through his words.
“White lie. Maybe.”
He snorted, then squatted in front of me. I didn’t have it in me to look at his handsome face. This was a guy who’d gone to battle more times than I’d had hot dinners—and I’d had a lot of hot dinners. He’d fought in countless wars, been a soldier for only God knew how many armies. He was brave and fierce and strong, yet here I was, freaking out because my ‘husband’ owned a boat that would make a dictator turn green with envy—not seasickness—and because I was about to channel the sun’s energy itself in an attempt to keep the world from turning 28 Days Later chic.
How had my day veered off course so crazily?
“We will be with you through every step.”
His calm voice would have reassured me if I was about to head on stage for public speaking, or, ya know, I was freaking out about a visit to the doctors. But this wasn’t that.
Oh, how I wished it were.
The Sun Revolves Around Apollo (The Gods Are Back In Town Book 2) Page 18
