Caged Lightning

by Marina Finlayson

“Lucas can also hear every word you two are saying,” he called. Damn werewolves. Keeping secrets around them and their exceptional hearing was bloody impossible. There was a clatter as he got plates out of the cupboard. “If you don’t want this breakfast to get cold, you’d better get your arses out here.”

  Well, that was a plan I could get behind. I marched down the short corridor into the lounge room. “Smells good.”

  Lucas stood in the kitchen, bare-chested, on the other side of the bench that divided the tiny kitchen from the lounge room. It was a pretty nice view, if a very hairy one. Werewolves had almost as much body hair in human form as they did as a wolf. The male ones, at least—I’d seen rather a lot of Holly’s body when she was giving birth, and she hadn’t had anything like the same carpet effect going on.

  Lucas thrust a plate at me, loaded with bacon and eggs swimming in butter, but his eyes were on Syl. “No one’s leaving anybody. If you guys are leaving town, I’m coming, too.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, when Syl didn’t answer. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “I think the pack might have something to say to that,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to hear any more about the pack and their moon goddess fixation.

  “And besides, someone’s got to make sure you remember to eat.” He grinned at me. Well, there was one werewolf, at least, who’d lost his awe at the moon goddess.

  “I assure you, I never forget to eat—just sometimes there’s no time.” I shovelled bacon into my mouth and almost moaned at the explosion of salty, greasy goodness.

  “That’s settled, then.” Syl sat down beside me. “We’ll pack everything up while you’re off with Apollo, ready to go when you get back.”

  “Go where?” I mumbled around a mouthful of bacon.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Somewhere that’s not here. It’s time to get out while we still can.”

  ***

  By the time Apollo arrived half an hour later, the bacon was just a beautiful memory, and Lucas had his shirt on, more’s the pity. I mean, I wasn’t about to poach on Syl’s territory, but I had eyes, didn’t I? I could certainly appreciate a well-built man, even if the man whose chest I would most like to see was being stupidly uncooperative.

  Apollo wore a black T-shirt and tight black jeans, as usual, which reminded me of my plans for his wardrobe.

  “One day, when this is all over, I’ll have to take you shopping,” I said, brushing my lips lightly against his cheek in greeting. I felt weird even doing that much, but his hug was much more certain. Guilt pricked at me, that he was so obviously happy to see me when I couldn’t even remember him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “So you can go into a shop a grim, black caterpillar and emerge a beautiful butterfly.”

  He frowned in confusion.

  “There are more colours in the world than black, you know.”

  “But you were the one who told me I should wear black more often. Make up your mind, woman.”

  Syl laughed. Dammit. I knew someone must have told him to wear a lot of black. Hadn’t counted on it being me, though.

  “It looks good on you,” I admitted grudgingly. “But don’t you get bored of wearing the same thing all the time?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just clothes. This way, everything goes with everything else and I don’t have to think about it.”

  Syl rolled her eyes. “Only a man could say that.”

  “It sounds perfectly logical to me,” Lucas protested.

  “My point exactly.”

  “Are you ready to go?” Apollo asked, ignoring her.

  “Sure. Ready when you are.” I was nervous as hell, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He was taking me to the martial arts school in Albany he’d told me about, where Artemis had lived, and I was tense with excitement mingled with dread. Would it bring memories rushing back? Would I meet people who had been important in my life? He’d mentioned a business partner—would she be there?

  “Where’s your bow?”

  Crap, I’d nearly forgotten it again. I ducked back into the bedroom and emerged with bow in hand and quiver slung over my shoulder. “Lugging this thing everywhere is going to be a pain in the arse,” I muttered. “And I’ll probably get arrested.”

  Apollo eyed the golden bow thoughtfully. “You know, you never would tell me what your avatar was before. For the longest time, I thought it must have been your hunting horn, because you always seemed to have that slung on your belt. But then you went through a phase—I don’t know, horns must have been out of fashion, or something—and you never had it with you anymore, so I was stumped. I figured it couldn’t have been your bow, since I often saw you without it, but I’ve just had a thought …”

  “What? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “You sometimes wore a silver charm of a bow and arrow on a chain around your neck. I would have assumed that was your avatar, except you didn’t wear that all the time either. Now I’m trying to remember if the times you didn’t wear it were also the times you carried your bow.”

  I was still waiting for further explanations when Syl snapped her fingers. “You mean the bow’s her avatar, but sometimes she transformed the bow into a silver charm?”

  Oh, right. Now I saw what he was getting at. “That would certainly be much easier to carry around.”

  “Easier to hide, too. You could just tuck it under your shirt.”

  “Your ring gave me the idea,” I said absently, staring at my bow. For centuries, it had been fine to walk around with a bow and quiver in plain view, but it had been a couple of hundred years since that kind of behaviour would get you arrested in most places, so I’d had to adapt.

  “You remember that?” His voice was eager.

  “Ah … yeah.” But that was all I remembered. “No idea how I did it, unfortunately.”

  “It shouldn’t be difficult. Your avatar is simply a physical manifestation of your power, after all. It’s really a part of you. Just focus on what you want and direct some of that power into achieving your vision.”

  That sounded easy. Doubtfully, I shrugged off the quiver, then glared at it and the bow, trying to envisage a tiny silver charm on a chain. No one was more surprised than I was when they shimmered out of existence, leaving a charm swinging from the necklace in my hand. I nearly dropped the damn thing.

  “Impressive,” Syl said as I fastened it around my neck. “Now, don’t forget what I said. We’ll be waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?” Apollo asked as the two of us headed out the door. At the bottom of the stairs, we emerged into warm sunshine. Winston’s “temple” was only two blocks over. Apollo strode off in its direction, and I lengthened my stride to match his.

  “Syl wants to leave Berkley’s Bay straight away. Go into hiding again.”

  My heart rebelled at the thought. I’d had enough of hiding, and especially of running. I liked Berkley’s Bay and the friends I’d made there. I wanted to stay. But perhaps I’d felt that way about Albany once, too.

  “She’s right. I won’t be making any more public appearances after this. Where will you go?”

  He seemed to think it was settled. I wasn’t stupid—I knew Syl was right, though it still struck me as odd that the shadow shapers hadn’t already appeared. But I couldn’t rely on them to leave me alone forever. We had to go, at least until we’d managed to defeat them. I just didn’t want to. If only we could find Poseidon and get on with things. The waiting was killing me.

  “I don’t know. I think Syl expects us to go to Albany, but I’m not sure if that will work.” I was hoping to find some information today to help me decide. Maybe Artemis had other properties. A little cabin in the woods somewhere would be nice.

  “You know you’re welcome to stay with me. Syl, too.”

  “Are you sure your places are secure? You told me once you’d gone to bed one night in your own bed and woken the next morning as a captive of th
e shadow shapers.”

  His face darkened at the memory. “That’s true. The underworld may be the safest place for us both for the moment. Although I’m not sure I could stand it as a long-term option. At least we know that’s one place the shadow shapers can’t infiltrate.”

  And we knew we could trust Hades. “I just don’t want to go to ground. We should be moving, going on the attack, not hiding away. Have you found Poseidon yet?”

  “I would have mentioned it already if I had,” he said, a little acid in his tone. Apollo was just as frustrated at our lack of progress as I was. He drew a deep breath and forced a smile. “But I’m hoping for a breakthrough today.”

  Ah, yes, the special secret method Artemis supposedly had to contact her Uncle Poseidon. He was pinning his hopes on a broken rod if he was expecting my memory to come through for us. “Are you sure Hades can’t find him? He’s his brother, after all, and I know they at least talk to each other.” Unlike many of the Greek pantheon. There was always plenty of infighting to enliven things among the gods. But Hades and Artemis had been with Poseidon when the piece of Zeus’s lightning bolt had come lancing down out of the sky, enjoying a fairly cordial visit, according to Hades’ description of it, so I knew they got along all right.

  Apollo shrugged. “He says not.” He gave me a shrewd look. “Don’t worry so much. I have a good feeling about today.”

  Well, that made one of us.

  “Nobody there will know who I am, looking like this,” I pointed out. “They’ll probably just chuck us out.”

  “They may not know you, but Ophelia knows me. She knows I’m your brother, and what we are. She’ll believe me if I tell her who you are.”

  “Will you tell her?” What would be the reaction of this friend I didn’t know when she learned I’d completely forgotten her? I felt the pressure of other people’s expectations weighing on me. “I can’t help thinking it would be easier if I could just break in and steal this thing, whatever it is.”

  Apollo grinned, a flash of real amusement. He looked a different person—a far more likeable one—when he smiled like that. “You picked up some terrible habits from your time as a human. You can’t solve all your problems by stealing things.”

  “Do I look very different now?” Maybe she’d recognise me anyway. Although, if my own brother hadn’t, that probably wasn’t very likely.

  He considered me, blue eyes thoughtful. “Not very different, but enough. The shape of your face has changed, and your hair is black, now, instead of dark brown. And there’s something about your eyebrows that’s not quite right.”

  “My eyebrows?”

  We’d arrived at Winston’s house, and he held the front gate open for me. “Maybe it’s just because they always seem to be frowning at me.”

  Smart-arse. I pushed past him and strode up the concrete path to the front door.

  “You’re a little shorter, too,” he added, “and not as well-muscled. But more tanned.”

  “Are you calling me flabby?”

  “You asked,” he reminded me.

  I paused on the front porch. “How would I change my appearance back? Not that I want to. I’m just curious.”

  He gave me a disbelieving look, and I lifted my chin defiantly. I liked the way I looked, even if my muscle tone apparently wasn’t up to goddess standards. I felt comfortable in this skin. But it was a fair question.

  “You just …” He paused, an odd look on his face, as if he’d never thought about it before. “You have to want to. And then it happens. I don’t know. It’s like asking me how my muscles make my arm move. They just do. I don’t have to do anything special. It just works. Like this.”

  In the blink of an eye, his face transformed. There was no melting or reshaping, no transitional phase. Just one moment, he looked like Apollo, and the next, he looked so like Lucas that I leapt back, startled, and banged my elbow against the door behind me.

  “That is … that is freaky,” I breathed, reaching out to poke doubtfully at his face. It felt exactly the way it looked, even down to the stubble that grazed my knuckles as I ran them along his jawline. This was no illusion—his face really had changed shape, colour, everything. A thought struck me. “Why don’t you do this, then? This would be the best way to hide from the shadow shapers. Beats running and hiding. They can’t find you if they don’t know what you look like.”

  His face resumed its normal appearance, and he leaned past me and opened the front door, gesturing me inside. “Because if they get close enough, they will sense my divinity, whatever face I’m wearing. And besides, it takes effort to hold another form for an extended period of time.”

  I stepped into the small house, making room for him to shut the door behind us. “Even though you don’t know how you’re doing it?”

  “Even though I don’t know how I’m doing it,” he agreed. “It gives me a filthy headache right here.” He gestured at a point between his eyes. “And you can’t keep it up when you’re asleep. It’s more of a party trick than anything—it doesn’t fool other gods, only mortals. Zeus used to use it all the time to seduce women. Apart from that, there’s not much advantage to it.”

  Not much advantage to it? There spoke a man who’d never wanted for anything a day in his life. What a boon such an ability would have been to me in my, ahem, previous line of work. No more clambering over rooftops and sneaking around. I could have changed my face, become someone with a right to be there, and walked boldly in wherever I wanted to go, secure in the ultimate disguise. Taken anything I wanted. There would have been no stopping me.

  “How have I done it for so long, then?” I asked. “I don’t have any headaches.” And I was sure I didn’t change appearance when I was asleep. Syl would definitely have mentioned that.

  “I don’t think it’s you doing it,” he said. “This is some work of Hades’. He’s even better at such things than Zeus—look how often and how easily he slips into the likeness of Alberto.” Admiration filled his voice. “He is a master.”

  “Maybe I should talk to him, then.”

  “Maybe you should. But I thought you said you didn’t want to change?”

  “I don’t. Let’s go.” I held out my hand to him, eager to change the subject. It wasn’t that I wanted to change back to my old appearance; it was more a natural urge to have every weapon possible in my arsenal. Though, I guess if shadow shapers could sense my divinity regardless, it might not be all that useful.

  He took my hand. There was no sign of Winston or his acolyte, though the tiny sacred fire was burning in its bowl in the middle of the living room. Apollo nodded, and we took a step forward. The cramped living room of the little “temple” in Berkley’s Bay disappeared, and I swayed as we transitioned to a place I hadn’t seen before.

  It was a temple, of course. Only a small one, but in good repair, unlike the little shack of a thing we’d travelled to when we had gone to see Hestia. Obviously, someone took the care of this one to heart. A bright flame flickered in the central pit, and fresh flowers stood in a vase at the foot of a life-sized statue of Apollo and Artemis holding hands and smiling at each other. Like the Great Temple in Crosston, this room was circular, but unlike that cavernous place, this one was flooded with light from the floor to ceiling windows around three-quarters of the circle. The rest of the room was taken up by large wooden doors of some glowing timber, carved with climbing roses.

  Outside the windows was a sea of green. Dappled sunlight filtered through trees whose leaves swayed gently in a light breeze. A path leading away from the temple disappeared among tall trunks of silver and brown. The whole scene looked so idyllic that I half-expected to see rabbits and fauns come gambolling out of the forest.

  “Where are we?” I asked. When he’d said we were going to a martial arts gym, this wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Perhaps we still had a long way to go. He was limited to travel between temples, after all, and they weren’t always situated very conveniently for his purposes.

  He o
pened the carved door and led the way through a small antechamber. The outside door stood open, showing more greenery, and the breeze that ruffled the leaves brought a whole range of forest scents to my nostrils.

  “On your estate,” he said, setting off along the narrow path through the trees. It was dirt, crisscrossed by the roots of the trees that crowded in close on either side, and littered with small stones and leaves. A tension in my shoulders loosened as I stepped under the shelter of the overhanging branches. The place felt welcoming; the silence of the forest, broken only by bird calls and the sounds of our footsteps, was like music to my ears.

  “Really? I own this?” Considering I’d been living from pay packet to pay packet in a rented apartment, the idea of owning a whole forest seemed absurd. Of course, I knew that the gods were rich, but this made that wealth more concrete in my mind.

  “Yes, although no one but Ophelia knows that. Everyone else thinks that some big corporation in Crosston owns the gym and you are a kind of manager and live-in caretaker. Your cottage is that way.” He waved a hand at a smaller path branching off to the right. I stopped to peer down it, but all I could see were trees.

  “I live in a cottage?” I had enough money to buy a whole forest and I only lived in a cottage?

  “Not all the time.” He shot me an amused glance, as if he could read the confusion in my mind. “But it’s a handy base for hunting, and you always used to laugh at my luxuries and tell me I was a sybarite. You said no one needed more than one toilet because they only had one arse.”

  I grinned. That sounded like me. “Clearly, I had never shared a house with Syl when I said that. When she’s in human form, she hogs the bathroom like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve never known anyone who takes such long showers.”

  “I don’t think you’ve shared a home with anyone since we were children. You certainly like your alone time. Even your lovers rarely got asked to stay the night.”

  Now that didn’t sound like me. What was the point of being in a relationship with someone if you didn’t get to hang out with them? If I ever got—when I got—Jake straightened out, I would spend as much time with him as I possibly could. That was the whole point of relationships, wasn’t it, to share your lives?