He kicked at one of the sets before turning an accusing glower on me. “You were cuffed?”
I shivered at the menace in his voice. Kai was barely civilized at the best of times, but right now the expression on his face made me think he’d fallen a few rungs lower.
Not that it scared me. I poked him in the chest, hard. “Not willingly, idiot. I was an exalted guest of Zeus’ for a few days.”
I waited for his snarky comment about how stupid I’d been to let myself get captured.
It never came. His jaw tensed. “Did he hurt you?”
I crossed my arms. “Wow, Kai. I could almost believe you care. The saying must be true. Absence does make the traitorous manbag’s heart grow fonder.”
His eyes went flat black, the way they did when he got angry.
My heart sped up. Sadly, not in fear.
“Are you accusing me of something?” he asked.
Was he kidding? Anger and adrenaline from everything I’d experienced hit me like a freight train. “You’re a jerk.”
Mr. Broody didn’t like that. He prowled toward me, forcing me backwards.
I scooted back, ignoring the pain on the cut up soles of my feet, until eventually my spine hit the wall. I spread out my arms and legs, attempting to create a large bubble of personal space that even he would get the point to stay clear of.
He knocked my right leg aside and got in close.
I willed my body to stay relaxed.
The picture of indifference.
“Think carefully about insulting me.” He leaned forward.
My choices were press myself back further into the wall or let his body cover me.
Ooh, actually, I had a third option.
I called up whatever tiny amount of power had managed to recharge. It was enough for one weak vine to snake out. I wrapped it around his waist and flung him clumsily against the metal table with a satisfying thunk.
The dummy gave a low laugh as he rubbed his hip. “Foreplay? Better give me a sec to recuperate.”
That was it. I would have attacked him again but my power gage had hit empty. I lunged across the space to pummel him. “You think it’s funny?”
Kai winced and I felt a spasm of guilt about hitting a guy who was already so battered. But he only allowed me about a punch and a half before my hands were grasped in a steel grip and my body arched backwards against the table. “What is your problem? And keep your bitching down to a murmur. We don’t want to attract attention.”
I lowered my voice. “While you may not have truly betrayed me since—I guess—you were rectifying the poisoning situation—”
Kai’s brow creased in confusion. “How do you know that?”
The fact he didn’t remember being all sweet and honest with me minutes before made me even angrier. “You still abandoned me.” I yanked myself free and shoved him away from me.
“What?” He did sound rather surprised. His face was all scrunched up in confusion. “I was coming back.”
I glowered at him. “To gloat on my grave? Which wouldn’t have existed because there wouldn’t have been any of me left to bury. Last time we saw each other, you left me to die in in a rapidly unravelling alternate reality forged by an insane dragon.”
Kai reached for my throat and I tensed, thinking he wanted to choke me but all he did was angrily grab my sapphire pendant and hold it up for me to see. “And you didn’t use this because … ?”
I stared at him blankly.
Kai blinked, incredulous. “You don’t remember that either? Theo didn’t tell you?”
I snatched the pendant away. “I’m sure had Theo known to tell me something, he would have. His life was on the line, too.”
“Then I was the only other person who knew?” He roughly ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
I leaned in, letting him see my resentful anger. “Yeah, in about five seconds.”
That only made the infuriating boy grin. He hooked a finger into the necklace and tugged me close.
I went, shuffling forward. But only because I didn’t want my chain broken.
“Sophie,” he purred, “this little baby isn’t just a pretty trinket. You can transport via trees. If you’d touched one of the laurel trees there and thought of Hope Park, it would have brought you through to a tree on your school’s property. I figured that’s why you lifted it.” He released the pendant and the sapphire thunked against my chest.
“It was a gift from my mom,” I mumbled.
I bowed my head and traced the cool edges of the table with my fingertip, following the path until I’d walked around to the other side. I gripped the lip of the table, needing something solid between the two of us, something to ground me since having my understanding of reality thrown for a loop had severely disoriented me.
My righteous indignation had been knocked out of me in one fell swoop. I didn’t like the feeling. This whole time I’d thought he’d betrayed me and left me for dead. When all he’d really been guilty of was taking Theo’s chain.
My mind reeled. If only he’d just trusted me with all of this in the first place. But no. He wouldn’t have. Even my limited exposure to gods clued me in to that. Backstabbing, manipulation, and destruction, bring it. Trust, friendship, and communication, not familiar with those concepts.
A little late, but he was trusting me now.
That was something. A pretty big something.
Unless he was just playing me. Argh!
I was so busy avoiding Kai’s gaze that he managed to get the drop on me. He brushed his lips against my ears. I swear he made my cartilage flutter. “Stop over thinking me, Goddess. You’re gonna make your head explode.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” My voice sounded impressively cool given the millions of champagne bubble sensations tingling through my body.
Amazing.
From annoyed to aroused and back to deeply annoyed again in minutes. Kai was an emotional roller coaster and I was the idiot on the all-day pass.
Kai arched his neck and shoulders as if easing the stiffness in them. He really had nice shoulders. “So whatcha in for?” he asked in a 1930’s gangster voice.
“Zeus wanted the location of the ritual you were planning. Do you know it?””
Kai swore. “No. But that’s top of the list after getting out of here.”
“Preaching to the choir, buddy. When is it supposed to go down?”
“Spring equinox.” At my look of total incomprehension, he explained. “It’s the balance of light, above, and shadow, below. So for you and me? Olympus and Underworld? Off the charts power surge. We’ll be able to seize control of the minions.”
His right shoulder cracked as he stretched it back. “See, a few other gods openly sided with Hades or Zeus, but most couldn’t bother to get involved. Nothing in it for them. So really, the only soldiers fighting on Earth, fighting this war at all, are the Photokia and Pyrosim. When we combine our power through this ritual and make the minions ours, Zeus and Hades no longer have armies. Earth is safe.” His eyes glittered. “And if we turn that unending supply of fighters on our fathers? Even those gods can’t battle them forever. Eventually Zeus and Hades will weaken, and Olympus and the Underworld will be ours.”
I didn’t want Olympus. I just wanted Earth to be left alone. That was a discussion for another time, though.
“Our ‘have sex, save the world’ plan is gonna require some pretty amazing foreplay to overcome the stress of facing them.” I was only partly joking.
Kai rolled onto the outsides of his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets. “About that.”
I eyed him, highly suspicious.
His lips twisted wryly. “The ritual is us declaring our love. Not having sex.”
My reaction was a bit tri-polar.
Relief that we didn’t have to have sex to save the world.
Disappointment that we didn’t have to have sex to save the world.
And a massive WTF! that we ha
d to fall in love to save the world.
My mouth actually fell open in stunned shock.“You lied to me?”
“Hey, sex was your assumption,” he said. “My words were ‘two become one.’”
He had the audacity to look superior.
I shoved him, making him stumble sideways. “That’s me pushing you off your moral high ground, asshat.” I began to pace.
The enormity of this hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. My temples pounded. “No, no, no. It’s one thing to have sex. Fleas have sex.” I was gesturing madly in agitation by this point. “Love is supposed to involve choice. You can’t force people to fall in love and then hinge saving the world on it. Who does that?”
Kai eased himself up onto the table, his legs dangling. “So choose to do it.” He sounded frustrated.
What part of this didn’t he understand? “It’s not that simple. There’s no blueprint for falling in love. Sex, well, it’s a physical process.” I bounced on my toes, distraught. “Love is an emotional one. You can’t force emotions.”
Kai gave me a half-grin. “You get mad at me all the time.”
“Well, yes. But love? That’s … everything. I was willing to lose my virginity for this. Take one for the team.”
“Gee, thanks.” Kai leaned back onto his elbows.
“But love? It’s impossible.” I could deal with sex. That just involved performance anxiety, not the potential having my heart broken into a million sharp shards.
I wrapped my arms around myself because I had suddenly gotten very cold. With my accelerated healing skills, my body was actually feeling a bit better, but my emotional well-being was going through the wringer big time.
“How are you and I ever going to fall in love, Kai? And why would you even want to? You don’t even like me.”
His eyes flicked to the torture machine. Went soft and sad. His voice was quiet as he said, “Sometimes you gotta go into the dark to find the light.”
I didn’t understand him, but I also didn’t want him retreating into his head, dwelling on whatever horrible acts had gone down. “Kai.”
He shook his head and sat up sharply. “Despite you thinking I’m a complete asshole, Hades is worse. So is Zeus. And if that means you and I need to suck it up for the greater good, then guess what? That’s what we’re gonna do.”
That’s honesty for you. I scraped my toe over a tiny scratch on the floor. Eyes fixated on the motion. “So romantic.”
“No. It’s not.” He jumped off the table and clasped my chin in his fingers, just tight enough to force me to look at him. “I’m praying Zeus didn’t show you what he’s really capable of. Because the manacles? A fun afternoon out. Hades is just as bad.”
He paused and released me. “And I do like you.”
I scowled. Both because I didn’t want someone loving me to be a duty and because he was right. “Okay. Sucking it up. Lives are on the line. We have to try and take whatever’s between us and turn it into something more. But why didn’t you just tell me this from the start? Why lie—”
He opened his mouth to protest and I held up a hand to cut him off. “By omission if nothing else. And then try to take on Hades yourself, knowing that this,” I gestured angrily at the torture machine, “was a possibility?”
He glanced away. I could practically hear the wheels in his brain spinning as he spun another lie.
I shook my head emphatically. “No way. For us to have any chance, there needs to be trust. Be honest with me here.”
“Honest?” His voice hardened. ”Did it ever occur to you, even once, to see this from my perspective?” His face twisted with pain. “What it was like for me? When Persephone died? Or disappeared or whatever the hell you did, leaving me without you?” He smacked the table so hard it sounded like a gunshot. His eyes glittered more with anguish than anger.
I flinched in reaction. I opened my mouth, but no smart retort came out. Because it hit me that I never had. Not once. I raised bleak eyes to him.
Kai watched my shoulders slump and laughed bitterly. “No, of course not.”
“I can’t remember,” I protested. Even to me it sounded weak.
Kai’s expression turned grim. “But you never even bothered to try and imagine it.”
He was right. I hadn’t. So I did.
What must it have felt like to suddenly lose the greatest love of your life with no concrete explanation of what had happened to her? To have lived, wondering if she was really dead, or just gone all those years, only to find her again and realize she had no idea who you were.
That in fact, she wasn’t even herself anymore. But she was.
My chest felt empty. Even from what little I knew about their relationship, I imagined that had it happened to me, I would have felt like my soul had been ripped out.
Dully, I felt all our previous encounters fall into a new kind of clarity. I gnawed on my lower lip, uneasy. “It was never about mind games with me, was it? The attraction, the pushing away.”
Kai didn’t agree, but he didn’t refute it, either.
“It was because you’d been hurt.” I stroked his arm. He tensed under my touch. “I’m sorry.”
“There you were,” he said, his voice hollow, his gaze focused slightly past me, “insisting you were both. Sophie and Persephone. That I had to accept you as both. But where was a little bit of freaking understanding that maybe you saying you were Persephone wasn’t enough? That it wasn’t easy to accept you as her, on your say-so. That even being around you was so hard.”
He closed his eyes in resignation. “I tried to go after Hades a different way, didn’t come clean about the ritual, because I didn’t want to have to love you.”
Because you weren’t her … I bit my lip.
“I’m sorry. There was no good way to say that.” He stared at me intently, then brushed a lock of hair out of my face. “What are you thinking?”
I threw up my hands, then gave a mocking laugh and mimed putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. “Pow.”
Kai smiled. “Guess that’s a start.”
I wasn’t about to share that the thought trumpeting around in my brain was that when I did get Persephone’s memories back, did learn what it felt like to be that loved, how was that going to make me, Sophie, feel when it came to Kai? It was one thing to intellectually know about their grand passion, but feeling it? Remembering it?
If Kai and I fell in love, I’d forever be making comparisons between Kai having loved Persephone because he wanted to and loving me because he had to.
A heavy weight settled in my chest. Almost like sorrow or loss. But that was crazy, right? Because I didn’t even want Kai to love me. It was a high school crush. I wanted him out of my system.
Kai held out a hand. “No more games between us. No more betrayals. Deal?”
I eyed it for a second before taking it, feeling the warmth of his grasp. “Deal.” My hand remained in his, both of us staring at each other. I sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
Kai laughed, the first genuinely amused chuckle I’d heard from him here in the trailer. “Sweetheart, that’s the understatement of the century.”
Three
Kai cocked his head at the door. “What’s the situation out there?”
“Far as I know? Heavy wards. Two guards. A Photokia and a Pyrosim.”
“Together?” He sounded incredulous.
“I guess Hades and Zeus decided hating us trumps hating each other. There’s some level of playing nicely going on now. Any ideas?”
He nodded. “I have a plan. But I need eyes on the minions. Which means blasting the door open. It’s the frame, not the door itself that’s warded,” he explained. “Give it a go.”
I gave it my best shot. Sadly, using my vine on Kai had left me tapped. I couldn’t call up any light beyond a dim glow on one palm. The door didn’t budge.
“Guess I’m up.” Kai’s body tensed, his jaw tightened and he took a sharp breath before silently sending a blast of
his sharply pointed black light toward the door. If pointed light wasn’t scary enough, it gave the impression of deadly things wriggling in its depth. Every landed strike resulted in toxic ashy obliteration.
I jumped out of the way of the deadly dust falling to the ground.
Kai’s show of power was impressive, as always, but his tension only seemed to confirm that the Prince of Darkness was not yet right as rain.
I hoped he could fake it because the door was gone. I registered the exact second that our captors realized we were free of our manacles and tensed to do something about it.
Kai sprang into action.
Okay, not so much sprang as stared.
The minions slowed to a dazed stroll, eyes downcast, a deep sigh shuddering through them.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, coming to stand beside him.
Looking utterly inconsolable, the Infernorator and the Gold Crusher headed directly for the warded up entrance. And us.
I tensed.
“Don’t worry,’ Kai chuckled, “I’m just helping them realize that their miserable lives are not worth living.” A self-satisfied grin spread across his face as our guards hit the ward one after the other and fried into oblivion.
Cool. “How did you guide them into offing themselves like that?
He smiled humorlessly. “Hades’ son, remember? I have a gift for death.”
“You don’t use it, though. I mean, you could have. I’m sure you wanted to turn it on me a few times.”
“Five or ten,” he agreed.
“But?”
“Takes a lot of energy. And I can’t use it on more than a couple of beings at a time.”
I didn’t buy it and I guess that showed because his voice constricted. “It would make Hades proud.” He looked away from me, ending the conversation. “Give me a sec.” He bent over, hands on his thighs.
I could hear his breathing, heavier than usual. This didn’t bode well. “You okay?”
He brushed off my concern with a dismissive wave. A moment later he straightened. “Let’s roll. Get Persephone’s memories and get the location.”
“Then we ward it.” I bounced on my toes excitedly. “The location. Theo is a warding whiz kid. We ward it up so it can’t be destroyed before the equinox.”
My Date From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy Book Two) Page 4
