Rise of the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

  “Her what?” As if I’d misheard.

  “Anipsi!” Yiayia’s voice rang out behind me, cutting through the babble of the party all around the terrace.

  I turned and…and…stared. Every bit as paralyzed as if she’d hit me with the gorgon glare. Yiayia and a young man. Young for her, anyway, by at least twenty years, and with a beard fully as long as her own, starting from some truly impressive mutton chops, flowing down over his chest and out to the sides in a thick handlebar mustache. All of it flaming red. He wasn’t wearing a kilt and a tam, but he might as well have been. He looked like he’d stepped straight away from the Scottish highlands.

  Yiayia embraced me, her beard tickling my ear as I hugged her back. She took after the gorgon side of the family for sure, which was how she’d gotten the bearded lady gig with Rialto Bros. When I stepped out of her arms, I noticed that her eyes were glowing. Not literally, like Serena’s, but with happiness.

  “Anipsi, let me introduce you to Fergus. Fergus, my favorite granddaughter, Tori.”

  Fergus smiled, or so I assumed by the twitching of his facial hair. I couldn’t actually glimpse lips or teeth. I held out a hand and he used it to pull me in for a bear hug, thumping me gently on the back.

  “Any relation of Lorelei’s…” I’d known they must be on a first name basis, but still hearing her given name on his lips sounded odd.

  Plus, my brain stuck on the question of how on earth they found each other’s lips to kiss. While I tried to steer quickly away from that thought (avert! avert! avert! I insisted, scrambling all my brain cells to turn that ship around), I couldn’t help but wonder about the Velcro effect. Did it take real effort to disengage? Ack!

  At least I was no longer thinking about my fear of heights.

  “We met at an extreme beard and mustache competition,” Yiayia continued, heedless of the mound of mental floss I was adding to my shopping list. “Fergus beat me. The first time I’ve faced a worthy opponent since puberty.”

  “Yiayia!”

  “What? I can say puberty. There, I said it again. Puberty, puberty, puberty. Speaking of which, where’s your young man?”

  I didn’t even want to think how those two things—Armani and puberty—connected up in her brain.

  “He went to freshen up. I’d, ah, better check on him,” I said, retreating like the hounds of Hades were nipping at my heels.

  I hurried back through the restaurant and to the elevator, using the time it took to arrive to collect myself.

  Yiayia dating.

  Hermes and Christie dating.

  Apollo and Serena…dating?

  My brother on the prowl.

  What was it about weddings?

  As I stepped into the elevator and contemplated which number to press, I realized I had no idea what room I was going to and no way to call Nick. Yes, finally, finally, it was Nick. With my whole family gone crazy…er than usual, he was the most familiar and least insane thing in my world. Unfortunately, we’d only arranged for one of our phones to work in Greece, figuring we’d be together the whole time and didn’t need the extra expense. I rode the elevator to the lobby, calling Jesus on the way down, knowing he had an international calling plan already.

  “Hey, where’s Nick,” I asked, burning to get to him and a semblance of normalcy.

  “In your room, I’d guess,” he answered.

  “Right, which would be?”

  “Oh, number 501.”

  “Thanks.”

  I disconnected, rode the elevator back up to floor five and knocked on the first door to the left—501. Right next to the elevators. Oh joy. I hoped they were quieter on the outside than on the inside. Nick opened the door at my knock and stood in the entrance in a white dress shirt open down the front, exposing an incredibly nice chest with equally nice abs. I stepped right up to that chest and wrapped my arms around him. Nick eased back into the room, pulling me with him and closing the door behind us.

  “You okay?” he asked. He stroked my hair and held me to him, resting his chin on the top of my head, because while I was not diminutive, Nick was tall enough to make me look semi-petite. Or maybe it was being overwhelmed that made me feel small. I listened to his heartbeat and let his breath stir my hair, so content for a moment that I forgot he’d asked a question that required an answer.

  “I am now,” I said.

  I felt him smile against the top of my head. It made me smile back.

  “But—” he said for me.

  “But…you know that part in a story summary where it pretty much boils down to and wackiness ensues?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s ensuing.”

  He pushed me back from him gently and smoothed the hair away from my face—pushed it aside, anyway. Actually smoothing or taming my vipers’ nest of hair would probably take years of training, not to mention a bullwhip. If Nick could truly accomplish that, he’d fit right in with my family of circus folk. Thank gods he didn’t.

  He looked straight into my eyes, his own deep blue lit with amusement and, possibly, a four-letter word I wasn’t yet ready to contemplate. It began with an “l” and ended with commitment.

  “Let me just button up, and I’ll help you face the insanity. I’m looking forward to it, actually.”

  I smiled back at him, all gorgeous and refreshed as he was, and realized that as little as I usually cared about appearances, I was going to have to step up my game. “Give me a minute to regroup,” I told him.

  I dragged my suitcase into the bathroom and did the best I could to make myself presentable, including the world’s fastest shower. At least Christie’s spa day had given me a head start. Even my eyebrows were more or less under control.

  When I stepped out twenty minutes later, I was wearing a dress the color of a tawny port that made my amber eyes seem almost gold, low wedge sandals Christie had made me buy, and some smoky eyeshadow. I looked as good as I was going to get, which, even I had to admit, wasn’t half bad. I was no Serena Banks, but I would do.

  Nick whistled, and I forced myself not to look around for the cause.

  “Thank you,” I said, flushing. Not blushing. “Shall we go?”

  Nick got to the door of the room before me and reached for it. “Anything I should know?” he asked.

  “I think I’m going to let it be a surprise,” I said mischievously. “Jesus coming with us?”

  “He’s right across the hall. He says to knock when we’re ready.”

  We knocked and, for a wonder, Jesus was ready. He wore a shirt the color of which I didn’t know how to describe—as if lavender had a pinker twin sister—and a diagonally striped tie the same shade, but deeper and darker, together with bands of deep blue and white. He looked like an Easter egg, but then, what did I know? No doubt it was all designer. Certainly, it fit him like a glove, the shirt like it was tailored for him, showing off the many hours he spent in the gym doing Zumba or hot yoga or whatever the cool kids were doing this week.

  “Oh wait, my cuff links!” he said when he was halfway to the door. He was back a second later with a pair of silver and blue cufflinks that…

  “Is that lapis?” I asked him. Because the swirl in the Greek key pattern of the cuffs was the exact blue of the stripe in his tie, the color of Armani’s eyes, and the gorgeous lapis lazuli Greece was famous for. “Did you buy those just for the trip?”

  Jesus looked away, and I had a sudden suspicion. “It was a bribe, wasn’t it? To work for Apollo.”

  He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Maybe.”

  I rolled my eyes, since staring him down wasn’t doing any good.

  “Jesus.”

  “Bosslady,” he said with the same amount of exasperation. “You don’t pay me enough to afford nice things. And anyway, he didn’t have to bribe me. Who could resist a free trip to Greece? I just didn’t want him to think I was easy.”

  Nick snorted, and I shot him a look. “You’re not helping.”

  He held up his hands as if to say that I should
leave him out of it, but his amusement didn’t ebb.

  I threw my own hands up into the air, an expression that always made me think about having to catch them on the way back down.

  Then I grabbed each man by the crook of the arm and escorted them to the terrace—until the narrowness of the stairs forced me to let them go. When we got to the top I regained Nick’s arm and let Jesus fend for himself.

  Nick didn’t slow as we hit the terrace and saw Yiayia with her young man, but he did mumble an, “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” under his breath.

  I smiled. As I’d known it would, having him there, even more disconcerted than I was, relaxed me. I could enjoy his reactions instead of focusing on my own. Meeting my family was definitely a spectator sport.

  “You’re enjoying this,” he accused me.

  “Yup.”

  “Madre de dios,” Jesus said behind us, and I turned, already anticipating the reaction I’d see on his face.

  And…it wasn’t what I’d expected.

  He looked gobsmacked, all right, but he wasn’t looking in the right place. I followed his gaze across the terrace, tracking the source of his distraction. As far as I could tell, he was looking across at Christie, Hermes and Spiro, who were chatting away in a corner. Spiro was laughing at something one of them had said, the hearty sound carrying easily across the other conversations, just as Christie’s laugh had earlier.

  Jesus had met Christie and Hermes before, but Spiro? Was he…oh hell to the no.

  I snapped my fingers in Jesus’s face.

  “Jesus. Jesus, snap out of it!”

  He shook it off and turned on me with irritation. “What?” he asked. “I can look. You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Technically, I am. Anyway, trust me, you don’t want him. Spiro’s a heartbreaker.”

  His irritation ebbed away in the face of pure, unadulterated lust. “You must introduce us. Wait, you’re not speaking from experience, are you?”

  I nodded very gravely. “Sadly, yes. He’s my brother.”

  Jesus’s mouth opened and closed, and I grinned at the sight of him speechless for the second time in two days. It had to be some kind of record.

  “Come on, let’s get a drink,” I said, turning for the bar, but keeping toward the inner wall, well away from the view and the drop off.

  But when Nick and I reached it and turned to find out what Jesus wanted to drink we discovered he was no longer with us. Instead, he was back across the terrace staring in to my brother’s eyes as they shook hands.

  Worse yet, my brother didn’t immediately surrender the hand he’d been given.

  Chapter Five

  “My family’s never met a stranger…or, at least, anyone stranger than them.”

  —Tori Karacis

  Yiayia and her—friend? boyfriend? passing acquaintance?—Fergus joined us at the bar, mercifully cutting off my line of sight to Jesus and my brother and the moment they seemed to be having. At least there wasn’t any sappy music playing. Or a dance floor, though the sun was cooperatively starting to set…the mood. It wasn’t the fact that they were both men that bothered me. I didn’t give a damn about that. It was the fact that either one by himself was a handful. Together, it would be like kerosene poured on a chemical fire.

  Maybe I was upset because they were both mine in totally different ways, so they couldn’t possibly become each other’s, but I was pretty sure my concern was more noble than that. Spiro was the king of hook-ups and heartbreaks. Not only didn’t I want to see Jesus hurt, I didn’t want to live through the diva-sized meltdown should Spiro stomp all over his heart. And he would, unless he’d changed a helluva lot since I’d last seen him.

  “Fair warning, Lenny Rialto is on his way up,” Yiayia said next to my ear. “I’m sure you will both be on your best behavior, yes?”

  “I will if he will,” I answered her, not looking forward to the meeting, despite my casual response. Really, none of the problems had been my fault. If Spiro had just kept it in his pants…or not lied to me about where he was going and who he was meeting so that I hadn’t been so all-fired curious to find out. Or if he’d been any good at discretion. Yet, as good as Spiro was at causing trouble, he was equally good at smoothing it over and staying on good terms with his former lovers, hence the fact that he was still in and I was out.

  “If he will what?” Nick asked.

  “And this must be your young man!” Yiayia gushed before I could answer him. She grabbed Nick by both shoulders and leaned in for a kiss on each cheek.

  Nick looked slightly stunned as she pulled back. I could tell only because I was watching for it. His policeman poker face shuttered his expression almost instantly.

  “And this must be yours,” he said to Yiayia, holding a hand out to Fergus.

  Fergus gripped his offered hand in a meaty fist and used it to pull Nick in for a chest bump sort of man hug, thumping him on the back before releasing him.

  “Nick, eh?” he said, voice gruff. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Although it came out, I’ve ’eard a lot aboot ewe. “If you’re ordering, I’ll have an Oban, straight up.”

  “Make that two,” Yiayia said, smiling up at Fergus, an odd twinkle in her eye. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Lorelei,” a voice boomed from off to the side.

  We all turned, except Nick, who stepped up to place our order. I thought I might recognize the voice calling out for Yiayia, but it had been so long…

  Sure enough, Uncle Hector steered toward Yiayia like a ferry to a dock, their meeting inevitable. He was smaller than I remembered him. Or maybe I’d grown. The last time I’d seen him I’d been just a child. But he was no less powerfully present. He looked, in fact, like the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man Alive”—incredibly tan, his silver hair and dark eyes contrasting nicely, and his teeth whiter than white, showing in a smile that invited everyone in range to smile with him. Or better yet, laugh, even though he hadn’t yet told the joke that sparked in his eyes.

  He held his hands out to Yiayia and froze for a moment as she took them. Suddenly I felt extraneous, just like with Jesus and Spiro. Fergus cleared his throat, and Uncle Hector swept us all with his overpowering attention, as if the pause had never taken place.

  “And my favorite niece!” he said to me, drawing his hands back from Yiayia to hug me and kiss both of my cheeks before putting me back from him at arms’ length. “Stunning!” he proclaimed me. The old liar. “Why, you are every bit as beautiful as I knew you would be.”

  He treated Nick and Fergus to handshakes—no cheek kissing or chest bumping—and turned back to Yiayia. “And you, Lorelei, you haven’t changed a bit.”

  She fixed him with a dubious look. “In what? Twenty years? Fifteen? When was it you last saw me?”

  “It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s been far too long.”

  Nick rescued us then, turning from the bar with our drinks in hand and passing them around. He asked what Uncle Hector would have, but he held up a flask all his own and wrapped an arm around Nick to move him away from the bar as he would have tried to pay.

  “The whole thing’s on me,” he said proudly. “Have to impress the investors, you know.”

  “Investors?” I asked, pings of curiosity driving away the jet lag that was starting to tug at me.

  “You know about the film, yes? A romance, and it opens at a wedding! We have a wedding, the film has a budget, and voila! We kill two birds with one stone.” Before I could ask any of my million questions, he exclaimed, “Ah, here’s one of our investors now!”

  We turned to follow his gaze—straight into the smiling face of Hermes. Of course. I’d been wondering what he was up to at the party. Apparently, he’d been up to helping bring Apollo to Greece and partially financing his new film. But what motivated him—mischief or patriotism? It was hard to believe that he’d invest for completely unselfish reasons. Setting a blockbuster film among Greece’s impressive sites would certainly stimulate tourism and help the flounderin
g economy, but I doubted he was free of ulterior motives. There had to be something in this for Hermes. Were the financial rewards enough? Or did he have something more mischievous in mind, perhaps tapping Christie for a role in the movie, to cozy up to her or to make her indebted to him. Gods thought like that—sacrifice, tribute, tithes. Debts.

  “Surprised?” Hermes asked, seeing the look on my face. Before I could respond, he turned to glad-hand my uncle. “Hector, it’s good to see you.”

  They did the whole hail-fellow-well-met greeting, shaking hands, pulling in for a chest bump, kissing on both cheeks. And yes, it was a lot of physical contact for a country where the forecast generally called for hot and sweaty with a better than even chance of deodorant fail. But the nice breeze blowing across the terrace made the heat bearable. Truthfully, it was a gorgeous night and, unlike in L.A., you could actually see some of the stars that had appeared in the sky as the sun went down.

  “Where are the man and woman of the hour?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Tina and her fiancé.

  “Apollo and Serena?” Hermes asked. “Probably still,” cough, “freshening up.”

  “I meant the bride and groom,” I said wryly, refusing to let him tweak me.

  “Oh,” Uncle Hector answered, “they’ve gone on ahead to Delphi to meet with the set designers and dressers. It all has to be perfect for the big day, you know.”

  Apparently, that was Serena’s cue to stumble into the party and collapse into Uncle Hector’s arms, her face drained of color, eyes rolling like a spooked horse.

  Chapter Six

  “Two things a man will always catch—a cold and a swooning woman.”

  —Yiayia’s words of wisdom

  Uncle Hector was trying to revive her when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my cleavage—there’d been no place else to put it in this dress, and I’d forgotten a cute little evening bag—and answered it.

  Apollo.

  “Tori, I need you. Not like it sounds. I need you down here. Now. Room 527.”