Rise of the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

  “We can start there and see where it takes us,” he answered.

  I didn’t ask if that meant I was forgiven for fear he’d say “no”. I stepped into the water and just went with the flow, so to speak.

  We made it down to breakfast with twenty minutes to spare before the end. The fresh fruit plate had been picked nearly clean but for a few grapes, but there was still coffee and croissants, and I was all for carb-loading after that shower. Honestly, I was shaky, and I didn’t think it was for lack of food or caffeine withdrawal. I was going to have to find a source for ambrosia, stat. I probably should have asked Apollo about it last night, but, well, seeing him au naturel like that played havoc with my mind.

  The terrace restaurant was deserted when we arrived, except for Hermes and Christie, who still lingered over coffee. She’d gotten hers iced and was drinking through a straw, her trick, I knew, to avoid staining her teeth.

  She jumped up when she saw me and gave me a huge hug. “I was just waiting to say good-bye,” she said in a rush. “I’ve got to get to my shoot, but if there are no delays, I’ll be back for the wedding. Hermes invited me to be his guest…if that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course!” I said, putting mock enthusiasm into my voice, not because I didn’t want her there, but because I’d rather have her safely away. I didn’t want her becoming collateral damage if…when…Zeus and Poseidon came at me again, which made me wonder whether I should be here at all, drawing potential fire down on my friends and family.

  “Good, I’ll see you in two days then,” Christie said, oblivious to my turmoil. She was happier than I’d seen her in a good, long time. Since Jack(ass) had broken her heart. “Tell Apollo I hope he feels better.”

  “What did you hear?” I asked, maybe a little too sharply.

  Enough so that Christie picked up on it instantly. “Why, what do you know?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Uh huh. You will tell me. But later. We have to get going.”

  She kissed me on both cheeks to say good-bye. Hermes rose from their table and did the same, saying into my ear as he hit my second cheek, “You are okay? You look a trifle…piqued.”

  “I’m fine, which is more than I can say for you if you pull one wrong move with my friend, capisce?” I was about to say you break her, you bought her, but that might just give him ideas.

  “Of course, agape. She is safe as houses.”

  Yeah, I knew what Vesuvius had done to them and Hermes was just as much a force of nature.

  “Safer,” I insisted.

  He winked and was gone, making no promises.

  Nick stood holding his plate, looking between me and their retreating backs. “Why didn’t you warn her off if you didn’t approve?” he asked.

  “Tried that. Didn’t work.”

  “She has a thing for bad boys, huh?”

  I nodded, biting the head off a croissant that had never done a thing to me but dare to be light and flaky.

  “Seen a lot of that,” Nick said. “Rarely ends well.”

  I swallowed the bite of croissant that had turned to ashes in my mouth and glared. “That your idea of comfort?”

  “You want comfort, you don’t come to a cop. Hey,” he added, grabbing my hand before I could decapitate a second pastry, “does Christie seem the typical type to you?”

  I eyed him. “No,” I admitted.

  “Then there’s a good chance her results will vary.”

  It was exactly the right thing to say, and he must have read that on my face.

  “I made it all better?” he asked.

  “Mostly.”

  “Good.” Then he mumbled, “If only Apollo’s petrification was as easily solved.”

  I went a lot easier on my second croissant and gulped coffee to wash it down. “We’d better get going before our transportation leaves without us,” I said once I’d consumed enough caffeine to care.

  We retrieved our bags from the room and met up with the others in the lobby.

  In front of the hotel, two gleaming white stretch limos waited and Odd Job…er, Viggo…stood, directing people toward one or the other based on the list he held. It turned out the film people were going in the first limo, family in the second. There’d be no chance for me to interview any of the suspects, Serena top of the list, regardless of what Apollo thought. But the two-hour ride was the perfect opportunity for me to catch up on my missed sleep.

  For the second time in as many days, I drooled on Nick’s shoulder…until we hit the switchbacks and I was catapulted upright and knocked awake by my head hitting the window. From there on up the mountain it was an unending thrill ride. And by thrill ride, I mean sheer heart-stopping terror as each time it looked like there was no possible way the limo could make the turn in the space provided and we’d go shooting off a cliff, cinematically falling end over end down the mountain, ending in a fiery wreck at the bottom.

  By the time we reached the top and pulled into the almost forty-five-degree angle of the parking lot of our mountain-view hotel I had nearly shredded the leather interior with my fingernails and was seriously in need of a drink. Or ambrosia. Or all of the above. And then a way down off this deathtrap. Times like this, I doubted my ancestry. We Greeks had a habit of building on the very tippy top of impossible places. They were the holiest, the most strategic…at least, that was supposed to be the reasoning. Heights were certainly religious experiences for me. Nothing made me pray so much—ohgods, ohgods, ohgods—as being perilously close to cliffs, summits, high wires and other insanity.

  I felt a prayer coming on now.

  No one was happier than I was to come to a complete stop, but Nick had to be a close second. I noticed as he helped me out of the limo that his hand had gone nearly white from my squeezing of it and that he was flexing and tightening his fist in the hope of getting blood to circulate back through.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “You going to be okay?” he asked.

  I sampled the air outside the limo, trying to breathe deeply and failing. It felt thin, frail, too cool, as if it could barely sustain itself, let alone actual life. I remembered Apollo speaking to the West Wind back in San Francisco. I wondered which wind spirit might rule the roost on Mount Parnassus and whether it might be prevailed upon to pump up the volume. I’d have to ask Apollo when he wasn’t too busy turning into a tree.

  The thought was like a slap in the face. I had to get it together. People were counting on me—my cousin to fill out her wedding party, Apollo to solve a mystery. Apollo—now there was someone with problems.

  Breathing…yeah, I had this. No problem.

  I tried again and managed to breathe a little deeper this time, taking in maybe enough oxygen to get to my next breath.

  “Totally,” I lied to Nick.

  Fake it ’til you make it, Pappous had always said.

  I grabbed my luggage from the back of the limo like the others, and Viggo held us back until the important people in the other limo were swept in ahead of us.

  We were met inside by two women in hot pink suits and even brighter smiles. Their skirts stopped right above the knees. Their smiles stretched from ear to ear. Tina’s friend Junessa, and her other boss, besides Lenny Rialto, Althea Fielding. The three had become thick as thieves after Junie had recruited Tina to sell Eterné, sort of like Avon or Mary Kay but focused on eternal youth and beauty, just like the name implied. Both women were wearing Eterné’s signature color—fuschia—and were bedecked with sample bags they handed out to the wedding guests as we arrived.

  Junie squealed when she saw me and swallowed me up in a backbreaking Amazonian hug. Actual Amazons were mythical, so far as I knew. So, no, the female warriors hadn’t had breasts removed to better aim their bows. But if they had existed, Junie would have fit right in. She was wearing ballet flats right now, but even so she was nearly six feet tall, all of it lean muscle. Her gorgeous cherry-wood skin glowed with health and her dark hair shone under the overhead lobby l
ights. I thwapped her on the back and coughed to signal my surrender, and she let me go.

  “Sorry. I forget you’re not a hugger. You look fantastic!” she said, pulling back to study me more critically. “Except—” She wet her finger and scrubbed at the drool stains at the corner of my mouth. I jerked away, and Armani laughed.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that myself.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Junie asked.

  “I didn’t want to lose a hand.”

  Junie grinned at him. “Oh, she’s more bark than bite.”

  “Really?” Althea cut in, handing her last bag to Yiayia as she sailed by. “Don’t you remember the time in that bar where the good ol’ boy wouldn’t take no for an answer and Tori almost made him eat his arm?”

  “You brute,” Nick said, proudly.

  “Oh, we have some stories to tell,” Althea promised mischievously. “Catch us later.”

  “It’s a date,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said sourly, waving good-bye to them as I pushed Nick toward checkin.

  “Jealous?” he teased.

  I snorted, only because I couldn’t honestly tell him he was wrong. Junie and Althea got more than their share of attention—not the least of which from my brother, who’d tried to score with them ever since Tina had brought them around. As far as I knew, it was still girls two, Spiro zip.

  Where Junie was tall and muscular, Althea was smaller and coltish with one of those natural size-zero bodies…maybe size two, tops. She could wear spaghetti straps without worrying about completely unnecessary bra straps. In other words, she was sleek like a model. She had big brown doe eyes, wheat-gold hair pulled back into a complicated braid and perfect sun-bronzed skin. No freckles, no wrinkles. It was enough to make me an eensy bit interested in what was in the little pink sample bags they’d handed out.

  “So, what’s the story there?” Nick asked as we waited our turn, jerking his head to indicate our fuschia-wrapped friends.

  “Beauty cult.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, like the Back to Earth movement, only not. Less digging in the dirt and more miracle makeovers.”

  “O-kay,” he said, smiling.

  I huffed. “You know those sell-from-home cosmetic companies? They’re like legal pyramid schemes. You recruit ten people, and they recruit ten people… The cultish part comes in with the rules on how you should appear in public, because you’re always representing the brand. It’s not just a product, it’s a way of life…that sort of thing. Tina got drawn in a few years ago.”

  Nick rummaged in his bag and came up with a catalogue featuring a smiling woman in a faux fur wrap. “Oh, I see, very ominous,” he said.

  “Go ahead, laugh. But don’t come crying to me when you get suckered in by their manscaping gel or anti-aging aftershave.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. Spiro has a whole duffle bag full of product. At one point, I think he was going for customer of the year.”

  “How’d that work out for him?”

  “Well, he does have some pretty smooth skin. I think Jesus can attest to that.”

  Speaking of whom… “Chica, have you seen the stuff in here? Do you know what these samples are worth?”

  “No, why don’t you tell me in extreme detail.”

  “Sarcasm does not wear well on you,” he answered with a sniff.

  “Really? Do they have a cream for that?”

  “Don’t make me separate you two,” Nick cut in.

  Then it was our turn at the reception desk, where we were very efficiently set up with adjoining rooms.

  “Like I’m your child or something,” Jesus complained.

  “Heaven forefend,” Nick answered.

  The reception guy, thank goodness not another model of female perfection but a maître de sort of man with a mustache that looked anemic next to Yiayia and Fergus’s facial hair, gave us a map and a schedule along with our keycards. I glanced down at the schedule—production meeting, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner… Production meeting? Were they kidding? All told, it looked like they’d left us maybe an hour and a half to ourselves over the next few days.

  “Oh, and you’re expected to dress for dinner,” the reception guy said. “I’m sure they’ll explain everything in the meeting.”

  Dress…as opposed to undress? I was about to ask when Nick elbowed me as if he could read my mind. I stuck my tongue out at him, and Jesus looked mildly disgusted at my immaturity. I could live with that. I was on vacation and, anyway, Christos was the head of the PI firm again now that we’d sprung him from the crazy Back to Earth cult, so I didn’t have to be the big boss.

  And while I was reminded… “Has Christos Karacis checked in yet?” I asked the reception guy.

  He typed a few keystrokes into his computer and said, “Yes, would you like me to connect you to his room?”

  I told him I would and ended up leaving a message. He owed Apollo as much as I did…almost. He’d want to repay the debt, and considering that I had no idea exactly where to start my investigation, I could use all the help I could get. Normally, I’d start digging into the victim’s past, but when that comprised centuries and many of the tales had been lost or mutated by time and retellings…it was a tall order. I couldn’t begin with his routines and regular encounters, because he was away from all that here in Greece. He’d traveled from his present back into the land of his past.

  So, the past it was. I had at least two primary sources onsite—Hermes and Apollo himself. Yiayia could fill me in on everyone’s more modern escapades. And meanwhile, maybe I could get lists from Uncle Hector and from Tina on anyone involved with the productions, wedding or film. Because with my family, it was always a production.

  Fingers snapped before my face, and somebody grabbed my arm to steer me away from the reception desk.

  “Earth to Tori,” Nick said, as if maybe it wasn’t the first time. “Lunch?”

  “What? Oh, yeah.” Because now that he’d mentioned it, the croissants and grapes I’d had for breakfast hours ago were not cutting it.

  “And shopping?” Jesus asked hopefully.

  “Have you forgotten that we have a mystery to solve?” I asked him.

  “Never fear. I’ll keep my eyes open for anything suspicious. Like a girl who doesn’t like to shop,” he added under his breath.

  “I heard that.”

  “Heard what?” he asked, all innocence.

  “Never mind. We’ll meet back down here in twenty,” I told him. Shopping might not be a priority, but food and caffeination were other matters entirely.

  “But—”

  “Twenty or we leave without you.”

  He gave a longsuffering sigh and a tight nod and led the way to the elevators. Our room was small but nice—photos of the nearby Temple of Apollo at sunset, some of the fallen columns and pedestals peeking out of a springtime profusion of flowers. Any other adornments were unnecessary. Nick headed straight for the window and twitched back the sheer curtain obscuring the view. He whistled, and I took a step back. The view looked out over…nothing. Or, more accurately, nothing but sky. We were above even the clouds, which seemed totally unnatural. Panic started to flutter against my breastbone like a frightened baby bird.

  “Could you…?” I nodded at the curtains as Nick’s head whipped around in response to the tension in my voice. Instantly, he let the curtain fall back into place.

  “Sorry. Are you sure you’re going to be all right to go out and eat? I could bring you back something.”

  “I am not going to let this defeat me. Let’s go.”

  He smiled. “That’s my girl. Just let me use the facilities.”

  He disappeared into the bathroom. I fought down the baby bird and forced myself closer to the window a step. Then two, then I stopped, told myself it was just stupid and that I could handle this, but I knew I was lying. I made myself take the last few steps without pause. My inner alarms started blaring, my heart started racing, sweat
broke out all over. What if this was my precog kicking in, telling me I was right to be afraid?

  There was only one way to know. I reached out for the curtain like it was a live snake and twitched it back, flinching as I did, feeling stupid the whole time. Nothing happened. I didn’t get sucked into a vortex or whatever I subconsciously thought would happen. It didn’t lessen the fear.

  I looked out. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and, now that I really looked, I could see that the view outside wasn’t an instant drop off. There was a lip of land where the groundskeepers had laid out a little garden with a bench to sit on and enjoy the view (ha) and a fountain gurgling away with a central figure shaped like one of the Korae pouring water out of an amphora.

  But the Korae wasn’t alone. I felt something else down there. Someone else. Malevolent, glaring. I couldn’t see him…her…it, but that expression “if looks could kill” suddenly meant something deep down in the pit of my stomach. I momentarily forgot about the height, my need to know stronger than my fear. I stepped forward one more baby step and stared down. Nothing. Paranoia? Ambrosia withdrawal? Reality? I didn’t know. And the not knowing was worse than the growing ball of acid burning its way through my stomach.

  “Ready?”

  I jumped and spun around, that baby bird all riled up again.

  Nick stood between me and the exit, hands up as though I might strike him. That was when I realized I’d ended up in a battle stance, ready to kick his ass from here to Athens and back again.

  “You scared me,” I accused.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to.”

  He had on khaki shorts and a deep blue V-neck tee that picked up the midnight blue of his eyes. Next to him, I was a rumpled mess. “Five minutes,” I promised him, looking at the room clock and knowing I’d never hear the end of it if Jesus made it to the lobby before I did.

  “But while I change—” paranoia or precognition…I had to know, “—would you look out the window and tell me if you see…anything at all?”