Pan washed his hands in the kitchen's new stainless steel sink. Since departing from the hotel, he had been steadily working on restorations to the house in the Pine Barrens. He'd forged documentation making him the legal owner by today's standards, and replaced the downstairs bathtub, toilet, and the kitchen appliances. He had even brought in a washer and dryer. The repairs to the grand staircase were his current mission. He could bring in help, but he didn't want strangers in his home. Having to call the utility companies to come out and hook the place up to modernize it with cable and Internet had been enough trespassers for his liking.
He dried his hands on a dishtowel. The house was slowly starting to look like a home again, at least from the inside out. It would take months, perhaps years to do it all. He ambled to the table and lightly kissed the top of Katerina's coppery head. She jumped at the contact, torn from her thoughts.
"I didn't mean to scare you."
She smiled and rose to her feet to. She hug him around his shoulders. "It's okay."
"Oh?" He wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her close enough to feel the hard ridge in the front of his jeans. Because of the utility workers coming and going, he felt it better if he stayed disguised during the daylight hours, until things settled down enough that he could cloak the house from human view once more. The last thing he needed was to stir another panic about cryptids, as Katerina called them, in the Pine Barrens.
"I can't stop thinking about our conversation with Dionysus."
Pan extracted himself from her arms and fell into his restless routine of pacing. He seemed to do so a lot lately. "I know you want to think the best about the situation, Katerina, but I don't trust his motives. Why would he randomly decide, hey, Pan seems lonely, I'll find him a mate? No. There is a catch somewhere. A god that selfish does not wake up one morning playing matchmaker."
"I know. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Although, he did make explaining things to Cindy and Rick a little easier."
Pan snorted. Rick had calmed down enough to go home, but only Cindy seemed to think his feelings for Katerina were genuine. Even though he didn't particularly care for the idea, he'd promised once the house was in better condition that they could invite the Martinezes back to visit. Katerina called Cindy every day to assure her she was alive. She hadn't made a decision, but every conversation ended in an argument with Rick on the line. He'd noticed the disagreements had become shorter recently, and he wanted to believe the other man might be coming around.
She hasn't made a decision.
Pan couldn't quite understand how he could know he loved her, but Katerina wasn't sure she loved him back. To be fair, she had a lot to consider at the moment. She'd been utterly repulsed when she learned she'd been drinking Dionysus' blood—who could blame her? She'd called herself a vampire, said Buffy should slay her and be done with it. It was meant as a joke, but Pan couldn't help but wonder if she regretted her decision to stay with him and was hoping for an easy out.
"I've been thinking about the blood in the wine," she said suddenly. "Why couldn't I just drink yours to become immortal? Why does he think it has to be his?" Katerina scrunched up her nose and made a show of shuddering. The diluted blood hadn't been enough for a human to turn immortal, but it gave her some of the effects, such as her increased stamina. It had passed from her bloodstream already. She was once more entirely human, unless she drank the undiluted substance. True ambrosia of the gods was blood straight from the veins of an immortal, of a specific bloodline of Olympians.
"It's only been proven to work by those sharing Zeus' bloodline directly: his siblings and his children. Dionysus is his son. Since Zeus is my grandfather rather than my father, I am one generation shy of being able to successfully create an immortal that way. My blood would have repercussions or may not work. It's not worth the risk to find out."
"I didn't realize you were Zeus' grandson." Katerina raised a brow, looking him over with renewed curiosity. "I had forgotten how, um, close the gods' family tree was."
Pan snorted. "Don't look at me. I never slept with a goddess. I wasn't one of the culprits."
"What happens if you share your blood?" She'd asked him many times before, but he'd suddenly become interested in her breasts in order to distract her. Discussing ambrosia was a subject he'd rather not dwell on, and he wished to the gods Dionysus never brought up the topic.
"Well? You said there were repercussions, and you've been dancing around the subject for weeks now." He heard her foot tapping against the wooden floor.
"I've never shared my blood. As I haven't needed to create an immortal, I've never seen it done firsthand."
"But you know someone who has?"
"I do." He sighed and decided he might as well tell her. "Any time a god or goddess who didn't directly share Zeus' bloodline attempted it, disaster arrived in its wake. Sometimes it didn't do anything at all. Other times it made the drinker deathly ill. While I have not seen this instance, the blood could make the drinker...dependent. Some developed a taste for it, and blood became the fruit of which they survived."
"That sounds remarkably like vampires."
Pan lips twitched.
"Oh God. They were vampires, weren't they?"
"They were. In a sense. Though the Greeks called them vrykolakas and had their own theories as to their existence. They were rare though."
Katerina put her head in her hands. "I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce that, let alone spell it. But...were they like Dracula? With fangs, widow's peaks, and swooshy capes?" She looked up expectantly.
Somebody has seen way too many horror films. Pan decided he dare not mention that King Lycaon had been the first lycanthrope and that werewolves existed as well. The world harbored a great deal of monsters of legends, but humans couldn't handle the truth of it. "No, well, I hear their canines were longer, but I can definitely say no to the capes. I never met one, and in some circles they were considered a cautionary tale not to give mortals ambrosia if you were not of the right bloodline. Supposedly they looked like normal humans as long as they fed regularly, yet they became immortal as the ambrosia intended. They only experienced extreme side effects. Like replacing ice cream with immortal blood as their favorite snack. They drink human blood too but prefer the other." Immortal blood sustained them for longer periods of time.
Kat seemed to digest the information rather well. "Did they start creating legions of vampires to do their evil bidding?"
Her imagination was going overboard. "No. They couldn't create new vampires with their blood."
"Was becoming a vampire the side effect Dionysus alluded to?"
"No," Pan said warily. "Ambrosia given by any god other than Zeus has a fifty-fifty chance of working. Magical beings, like nymphs, often had no reaction at all. But human genes cannot always support the changes. If the mortal is not susceptible to immortality, they become ill and can die. Sometimes death is only a catalyst to changing them into one of the letum. Living corpses."
"Zombies are real!"
He laughed. "You're so excitable." Then he became serious. "Which is why I was pissed off when he admitted to risking you like that. Letum actually do create more of themselves with their bite. The so-called zombie apocalypse humans are obsessed with lately is a very likely event. Luckily, it's always been prevented any time one almost occurs."
Katerina stared at him, mouth agape. "Remind me to tell Rick he may need the zombie apocalypse survival kit he has in his basement after all. Was there a close call any time recently?"
"The last one was in the colony of Roanoke, Virginia."
"Holy shit! Croa-freakin'-toan. The crazy nerd theories are actually true."
Pan started to walk away when Kat grabbed his arm and said, "Let's go outside. You've been cooped up all day. I've noticed you seem more at peace out in the open with the trees around you."
It was true. Being indoors felt unnatural to him. He figured it was part of the reason he'd never fit in on Olympus. Even though it w
as realm with its own sky and land, he'd always felt trapped there when the mortal realm was so much bigger and just beyond the gates.
Kat held Pan's hand as they neared the front door. The fountain had become their favorite place to sit, and they often sat beside it at night and discussed anything and everything, catching up on years of not knowing one another.
"Do you think he put different blood in the bottle, and I would become a vamp or a zombie if I drank it?"
He stopped in his tracks. "You're not drinking it. Pour it down the drain when we come back inside. I hadn't even thought him capable of doing such a thing, but now...I don't know. I thought..." His jaw clenched.
"Pan." Katerina rested her free hand on his cheek. "You've been keeping something else from me. Every time ambrosia comes up, you look away and change the subject, or you try to distract me with sex. What is it you don't want me to know? If you didn't think he'd trick me into becoming a walking corpse, what were you worried about?"
"If you drink it, you will be tied to Dionysus. It is rumored that should he choose to, he could call you to his side and could locate you whenever he wished. I'm not sure if that is entirely true." He hesitated. "And, um...I have heard some stories about those Dionysus has given blood to. It drove those people mad. That is, sadly, fact."
"What! Do you know how close I was to drinking that blood tonight?"
* * *
"You were really going to drink it?" Pan paused, hand hovering above the doorknob. He didn't even blink. It was like his life depended on the answer.
"I was."
"What does that mean?"
She bit her bottom lip. What did it mean? She knew she'd been so terribly close to chugging some type immortal-O and throwing caution in the wind for this man. She didn't even notice when he was in his satyr form or his human one anymore. It didn't matter what he looked like, as long as it was him.
"It means... Pan? What is it?"
He was standing in the doorway, gawking at something in the yard. Kat followed his gaze and gasped. The fountain had been destroyed. Syrinx's likeness was shattered into dozens of pieces. Who could have done it, and how had they not heard something like that happening? The statue had been whole a few hours ago. She'd seen it from the front window.
Pan didn't say anything, but he moved toward the wreckage as though pulled to it. Kat followed, searching around warily but could find nothing suspicious. When they reached the debris, Pan picked up a chunk of marble and stared at it. Syrinx's face.
Kat folded her arms and looked away. She'd suspected Pan hadn't really loved Syrinx, but seeing him there looking so miserable... Tragedy surrounded the nymph, even in death.
He stiffened suddenly and returned to his feet. "We have a problem."
"What? Why?"
"Hoof prints. Recent. Made by a satyr, not an animal." He pointed. There were clear depressions in the soft dirt where something had left a trail coming from the woods, passing the fountain and continuing to the right side of the house.
"How do you know they aren't yours?" Kat thought it was a reasonable question as they had seen no other satyrs besides Pavlo and Melancton, both of whom left with Dionysus weeks ago. But she knew Pan wouldn't return to his house until he found the source of them.
"I don't leave footprints where I tread."
Kat stared down at his feet. He shifted to satyr form and hopped around the other tracks. Nothing, not even a slight indention.
"Whoa, that's totally eerie." She'd never noticed. Hard to focus on footprints when she couldn't tear her gaze away from the man. It explained why the Jersey Devil could remain so elusive. Nobody could track a creature that left no sign of his presence.
"Yet another perk of being a god." He grinned, but it didn't last long. Pan began scanning the area. "Stay here. Maybe the satyr who did this is still hanging around." He was there one minute and gone the next. Invisible. Even though she knew he could do that, it still took her by surprise.
Pan would find the satyr, remove the threat, and they could resume their happy getting-to-know-each-other stage without further distraction. She would be fine where she was, in the open, with no discernable threat in sight. Kat narrowed her eyes at the tracks.
The extremely obvious tracks.
All delusions of safety promptly vanished. She didn't know why she didn't think of it before, but these were purposely left in the open. Whoever put them there wanted them discovered. They had to have used magic to tear the fountain to pieces since there hadn't been a sound from the act. So whoever did it must have left a trail knowing Pan would follow it. They probably circled around behind the house, out of view, and doubled back. To the spot where she stood, alone.
Kat had just opened her mouth to cry out when a hand clamped over it. She felt the cool metallic press of a blade under her throat and knew if she were to struggle, she'd die. She wasn't ready to die. She hadn't even had the chance to tell Pan that she loved him.
Chapter 17
"Don't make a sound, or I'll slice you open from neck to navel," a rough voice gritted out. Hot, stale breath whisked across her cheek. She'd heard the voice before. Her assailant lifted his hand off her mouth and moved it to hold her steady around her waist. She prayed she was imagining the semi-hard erection poking into her hip, but she knew from experience that satyrs were ever-horny.
"Who are you?" She squeaked, determined not to ask why he was there. That was obvious: he wanted to hurt Pan. If this satyr knew Pan cared for her, she'd become leverage.
"I'm the one who's going to save you from your lover. You know everything he touches falls to ruin." It wasn't a question. He made it sound like plain fact. Kat couldn't see what he was holding to her throat, but she could make out that it was long and heavy at one end, and the handle was between his arm and across her chest.
An axe? Who in their right mind holds people hostage with an axe?
Duh, an axe murderer.
She was so screwed. Her captor dragged her into the thicket of trees. Kat had to move her feet quickly to keep up with his long strides. If she were to slip, she'd slit her own throat.
"Saving me?" She gasped out when he paused, giving her a brief reprieve. "Funny way of showing it. Pan never held a blade to my neck to get me to comply."
"Perhaps not, but he did abduct you. You only think you want to be with him now because he plays the syrinx to you while you sleep and controls your thoughts."
Kat's blood ran cold. Could he do that? Her panic was short-lived. Pan told her he didn't have the syrinx in his possession anymore. Claimed the instrument had been too powerful and tempting to keep with him. He'd been so understanding the past two weeks by letting Kat spend time getting to know him, letting her fall in love with him on her own. He'd been adamant she decide her own future. He'd never keep her there against her will...at least not since the first time he took her to his home.
"This is about the syrinx? Is that why you destroyed the fountain?" She realized a statue of Syrinx would have been a great hiding place, a little obvious, but she saw the logic in looking for it there. "Pan doesn't have it."
"Pity," the satyr said, "but regardless, Pan and I have a score to settle. The syrinx would have been a great trophy to remind me of my revenge. Guess I will have to settle on his pretty female instead."
"Silenus! Let the girl go." A new voice came from her left. She saw movement in her peripheral vision, but it wasn't Pan. It was Pavlo.
The same Pavlo who'd supposedly left with Dionysus. Did the wine god want the syrinx? Kat wouldn't put it past him. Maybe they'd intended to kill Pan all along, but why go through the trouble of making her immortal? Something didn't add up.
"You again?" Silenus sneered from behind her. "Come to witness justice being served? Pan will die by my blade this night, and nothing you do will stop it."
Pavlo approached them, hands raised. He wore only jeans and was in his satyr form. His horns weren't as long as Melancton's, but they were straight rather than curled as the Boeotians' w
ere. Kat hoped Pavlo and Silenus' hostility toward each other meant they weren't working together.
Only one way to find out.
"Pavlo, help me." Kat felt the blade bite into her flesh with a burning sting.
"Nuh uh, little human. No one will be saving you, so do as you're told, so I don't have to slit that pretty throat of yours."
Pavlo scowled. "Do you think I will stand by and watch you kill another innocent female? This wasn't the plan. I should have killed you that night for what you did to my sister."
The plan? There was a plan? One they both know about?
"Like you could have. You were such a simpering, little fool, longing for a god to notice you and make you worthy in the eyes of women. Come to think of it, the whole problem didn't start with Pan as I have believed all this time. If you hadn't been such a weakling, you never would have promised me your whore of a sister, who went off to fuck someone else as soon as she could."
Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1) Page 152
