Nathan had just taken a bite and slanted his eyes to me wordlessly.
“Don’t say nothing either. You’ve been a grouch all afternoon,” I added before he tried to deny it.
“There’s a lot on my shoulders right now,” he said tightly, forcing himself to stay calm, though he looked close to snapping himself. It seemed I had managed to piss him off more than he already was. Not that I cared.
“You don’t have to be here,” I hissed. “I didn’t ask you—”
“No, you didn’t.” He pushed away from the counter and shot me a scathing look before he turned away.
“You can go if you want,” I called to his retreating back.
“Oh, really?” He spun around to me. “You think you could manage by yourself?”
“I’ll be okay. I don’t need you.”
Lies. All lies.
From the iciness of his glare, I figured he was considering walking out the door and never coming back. I wanted to take my words back, to tell him I didn’t mean it. I did need him. I knew that.
I also didn’t want him here against his will and taking the unfairness of the whole situation out on me either. I didn’t know what was going on; didn’t know why he was here, why he felt like he had to be here, why he thought he had to help me.
“I know you don’t want to be here,” I added softly, suddenly more sad than pissed off.
He stared at me and some of the chill in his eyes thawed. “You don’t know anything.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed, “because you won’t tell me anything.”
“You know a lot more than you should.”
“You tell me just enough to shut me up,” I countered.
He raised his eyebrows at my choice of words. “What more do you want to know, Kris?”
“I want to know everything.”
He lowered his eyes to the floor and shook his head. When his eyes flicked to mine again, they were hard and unwavering.
My anger surged. “Fine. Don’t tell me a damn thing. I’ll figure out how to manage without you. I don’t need your help.” I shouldered past him in a rage-induced march to the door. “I need some air. I’m going for a walk.”
“Kris...”
I stopped in the doorway, but didn’t look back at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t go far.”
I was sure that was what he had been about to say. Not an apology, not an explanation, nothing I wanted to hear. I didn’t give him a chance to prove me wrong before I slammed the door shut behind me. I knew I would only end up disappointed.
* * *
It was almost twenty-four hours before we spoke again.
Last night, being the big, bad, tough girl that I was, I sat on the porch as long as I could stand the cold, which had been, maybe, two hours. Nathan looked up from the couch as I sauntered back inside, gathered the shorts and t-shirt I had bought to serve as my pajamas, and made my way to the bathroom to change. Though I could feel his eyes on me as I crawled into bed, he didn’t say anything, and neither did I.
He was gone—playing outside in the shed—when I got up, and didn’t come back inside until late in the afternoon. From my seat on the couch, I watched as he retrieved a change of clothes. “Get ready. We’re going into town,” he called over his shoulder as he retreated to the bathroom.
I hadn’t moved when he emerged a moment later, dressed in jeans and a black thermal long sleeve shirt that made it irritatingly impossible not to notice how his biceps strained against the fabric. I forced myself not to stare and, when he saw me disobediently sitting on the couch, my gaze met his crisply.
He sighed. “Please?”
I resisted the urge to laugh and buried my nose in the five-year-old Sports Illustrated magazine I was reading for the third time today. “How’d that taste coming out of your mouth?”
“Like shit,” he muttered. “Now, come on. We have to go.”
With no intention of doing as he requested, I looked up at him and waited. I was done following him blindly. I wanted answers, explanations. I could be a reasonable person.
He shifted and stuffed his hands in his pockets uneasily. A small smirk lifted the corner of my mouth. I was getting far too much enjoyment out of witnessing his distress.
“Did you know Tiger Woods started golfing when he was only two years old?” I licked my fingers and flipped the page. “I had no idea.”
“Kris...”
“He was three when he played his first nine holes. Now that’s impressive.”
“I tried to call Gran yesterday,” he blurted out.
With that one statement, he had my full attention, and I looked up as I felt the color drain from my face. The mysterious phone call had been to Gran? I should have known. That should have been my first assumption. Not some secret girlfriend. Not some other commitment. I felt like an idiot.
Worse, she didn’t answer. What did that mean?
“Is there a way for us to find out what happened to her?” I asked.
“That’s why I want to go into town.”
Oh. Great, now I really felt like an idiot—giving him a hard time when all he wanted to do was check on Gran.
Way to go, Kris.
But how was I supposed to know? He doesn’t tell me anything. I can’t read his mind.
Have faith in the guy. He’s never led me wrong.
Not yet. Not that I was aware of.
Only after I shut the bathroom door behind me did I realize I was having a conversation with myself in my head. I stared at the optimistic version of me in the mirror, and told her to shut up. I didn’t want her opinion, and I most definitely didn’t want to hear her defending him.
Besides, crazy people had conversations with themselves, and I’d prefer to think I wasn’t crazy. She was going to have to keep her thoughts to herself.
* * *
A dingy sports bar on the outskirts of town provided us not only with a phone from which to call Gran—really I have never seen a place with more payphones in this day in age than this town—but also an assortment of big screens on which to watch the news when that call was met by an endless series of rings.
Watching the news had been my idea. If I weren’t so desperate to learn of Gran’s fate, I would have led the way back to the motorcycle. Creatively titled Johnny’s Bar, this wasn’t the type of place I would have ventured into alone. The dark lighting may have been an open invitation for criminal activity but, for Nathan and me, it was a perk.
We sat at the bar, me with my hair tucked up under the stupid hat, and Nathan ordered a beer for himself and a soda for me. The bartender barely looked at us. He didn’t seem the type to pay much attention to his customers, let alone missing person’s reports.
Two middle aged men who looked like they had just stepped off the golf course sat on the other side of the bar, engrossed in whatever sport they were watching on the screen in front of them. A couple sat at a table in the corner, heavily making out. No one paid us any attention and, after a few minutes, we both relaxed.
Until the news program started. Every muscle in my body went rigid with anticipation as we watched a string of weather, sports, and local breaking news. Thirty boring minutes drug by with no mention of either me or Gran.
I couldn’t believe it. Nothing.
Nathan glanced at me with a shrug. “It was worth a shot.”
“I can’t believe there wasn’t anything,” I muttered. What if I really were missing, lying in a hole somewhere, dead or dying? No one would even know to be looking for me.
Nathan finished his beer. “They probably covered it up.”
“Who? The Skotadi?” I hadn’t considered that they could do that.
Nathan flagged down the bartender, ordered a six pack to go, and then turned to me. “They have connections that can keep things from going public.”
I thought about Callie, who I couldn’t imagine keeping quiet under any circumstance. What would they do to someone like her, who wouldn’t buy whatever cover story they came up with?
He studied me for a moment before he answered, “I don’t know.” He was lying.
“I need to check on Callie.”
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Just let me call. I won’t talk to her,” I pleaded. All I needed was to hear her voice.
He actually looked sorry for me. Unyielding, but sorry.
“Would they hurt her?” I asked.
He thought about his answer and, when he finally gave it to me, I knew he was giving it to me straight. “I doubt it. Covering up you and Gran would have been difficult enough for them. They wouldn’t want to make things too messy for themselves. Secondly, they’re probably watching her, waiting for you to contact her.” He studied me as I registered his words and softly added, “I’m sure they figured out something for everyone, including her, to believe.”
I stared back at him and saw the sincerity in his eyes. He wasn’t sugar-coating anything for me. I only hoped he was right.
And I hoped, just this once, that Callie had managed to swallow bullshit.
CHAPTER 13
Back at the cabin, Nathan twisted the caps off two beer bottles and handed one to me.
“I think it’s about time we have a chat,” he said and motioned for me to follow him onto the back porch.
He claimed a seat on the top step and slid over to make room for me. The steps were narrow enough that our shoulders touched, but I got no comfort from that. I sipped my beer nervously, afraid to know what he had to tell me if he thought I needed a drink to hear it. This was what I had been waiting for, wasn’t it? So why was I so anxious?
Night was closing in fast and the tree line was barely visible, but Nathan stared at it like it had him captivated. I knew that wasn’t the case. He was stalling.
“Want to do that I ask and you answer thing we did last time?” I offered.
“I don’t think that will work this time.” I was about to ask why when he asked me a question of his own. “So, what all do you know so far?”
“Hmm, well, I’ve learned some people aren’t completely human,” I said conversationally, to mask the jitters. “That was a bit of a shocker. You age slowly, are super strong, and are at war with a bunch of guys that are after me, but no one knows why. How’s that for summing it up?”
He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “Do you still want to know what I am?”
I swallowed to clear the lump in my throat. “Among other things.”
Nathan took a swig of beer. “They still teach Greek Mythology in school?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know what I had been expecting, except that was definitely not it. “Uh, yeah. Sophomore year.”
“Did you get a good grade?”
Was he kidding? Why did that matter? “I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember anything about it?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He finally looked at me. “Trust me.”
I sighed loudly, not seeing the point, and struggled to remember something I had figured as pointless to know two years ago as I did now. “There are gods,” I said quietly, peeking at Nathan for encouragement.
He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s all you learned?”
So much for encouragement.
I tried again. “They were immortal.” I looked at him, hopeful. He simply nodded and waited for more. Boy, he was tough. “Didn’t they all have their own special powers or certain things that they were known for?”
Nathan’s eyes lit up. “What kind of powers?”
I scoffed. “You expect me to remember that?”
“Zeus?” Nathan probed. When I shrugged, he continued, “He was the leader of all the gods. Poseidon, his brother, was ruler of the oceans. Hades, his other brother, was ruler of the underworld. Remember them?”
“Now that you mention them,” I mumbled.
“There were others. Pan, the god of nature, Aeolos, the god of air, Apollo, the god of prophecy...” He trailed off and looked at me as if he were willing me to figure it out on my own.
I reviewed the clues. Leader, rulers of oceans and underworld, nature, air, prophecy. I have heard him mention some of those words before—a few days ago, walking through the woods, talking about the twelve specialties he and the others of his kind had.
“Was there a god of fighting?” I asked timidly.
His voice was soft when it reached my ears. “Ares, the god of war.”
I swallowed the lump that had returned in my throat. “Was there a Mr. Fix It? And a Rainman?”
“Hephaestus and Coeus.” I saw in his eyes that I was on to something.
My jaw dropped open. “Are you trying to say you’re a god?”
He stared at me like he hoped I was joking. “Humans can’t be gods. They’re immortal remember?”
“But you’re not...” I stopped, widened my eyes at him. He wasn’t all human. “Part-god mutt?” I whispered.
Was that possible? Were there such things as part-gods?
He swallowed a gulp of beer and said, “Demigod.”
For being only one quietly spoken word, it packed a hell of a punch. In the recesses of my memory, something was triggered. There had been a test question. What is the name given to the offspring of a god and a mortal, who has some, but not all, of the powers of a god? The answer had been demigod. I had gotten it right. I had also been under the impression Greek Mythology was, well, a myth. I now assume I had not been right about that one.
“You know what a demigod is?” he asked. He looked nervous when his eyes met mine.
I nodded. “Is that what you are?”
“Demigods are my distant ancestors. My kind is a type of hybrid part-god human. Over time our bloodlines have become more saturated with human blood, making us less powerful, but god blood is still in us, giving us certain strengths.”
He was part god. That was definitely not what I had been expecting. He looked at me anxiously and I racked my brain for something, anything, to say.
“So you got those specialties you told me about from the blood of your ancestors, from gods?” I stammered.
“I’m descendent of four different bloodlines. Some hybrids have more than me, some have less. We’re all of varying degrees of strength, depending on how strong our bloodlines are, but we’re all much more human than god-like these days.”
“These days?”
“In the beginning, when the blood was more pure, our kind was very powerful. Human blood has weakened us over time.”
I scoffed. If he thought he and the others were weak, I would hate to see what the earliest ones had been capable of.
“How long has your kind been around?”
He shrugged. “The beginning of time.”
So it wasn’t a myth. Gods were real, and I was in the presence of a not all human, part-god. I wasn’t sure what I should think about that, but I knew it didn’t freak me out. It was better than the other possibilities I had considered: part-alien, part-robot, top secret government experiment, science fair project gone bad...that sort of stuff.
“Okay,” I said and sipped my beer.
Nathan stared at me. “Okay?”
I offered him a timid smile. “What do you want me to say?”
He looked both puzzled and astonished. “I don’t know. I’m sure you have questions.”
And he was going to answer? I kept my head down to shield the smile on my face from him. “Why are you telling me all this now?”
He pulled on his beer, postponing his reply. “Because you were right,” he finally admitted, like the words were foreign to him. I doubted he had ever muttered them to anyone, ever. “You should know since you’re involved. That doesn’t mean I know why you’re involved, but I will keep you in the loop as we try to figure it out.”
I bit my lip to hide the huge grin on my face. “We?”
He let out a long sigh as he rolled his head side to side. “Yes, we. Don’t make me regret this.” He fixed me with his gaze. “What questions do you have?”
There were so many I didn’t know where to start. I aimed to review what I knew and build from there. “You said before that there were twelve specialties.” He nodded and I continued, “Why twelve? I know there more gods than that.”
“So you did pay attention?”
I shrugged. “Only enough to pass the class. But I remember being forced to learn nearly a hundred of them.”
“More than that even, but not all of them procreated with humans. From the ones that did, dozens of demigods were made. All but twelve of them were killed at the start of the war. That’s where the bloodlines come from. Those twelve demigods. ”
“What war?”
“The war I told you about last night.”
“They’ve been fighting the same war since the beginning of time? Why?”
He took a drink as he considered his answer. “You remember how I mentioned the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades?”
“Yes.”
“A very long time ago, Hades grew power hungry and he rose up against Zeus. He used the aid of his children, the demigods born to him, and he almost overthrew Zeus, but Poseidon came to Zeus’s aid and, together, the two of them defeated him. Hades was banished to the Underworld, never to return to earth. But his demigods could, and so they did his dirty work for him. Using humans, they created the hybrids, the Skotadi, as their army.
“The demigods descended from both Zeus and Poseidon rose against Hades’ army and created their own, the Kala. Somewhere along the way, someone discovered the use of diamond as a weapon. A lot of demigods were killed before its effect was realized. Only twelve demigods remained in the aftermath, and they have been in hiding ever since.”
I nearly laughed out loud. “They’re hiding?”
“The balance between the two sides is very unstable. There are eight demigods on the side of Zeus and Poseidon, four on the side of Hades. Thanks to his manipulative nature, Hades more than makes up for the lack of numbers. It’s a close battle. Neither side can afford to lose a single demigod. So they sit back and let us hybrids do the fighting for them.”
Ignited Page 11
