“Good idea.”
I glanced outside. The difference in the darkness was faint, but dead of night had tipped over into pre-dawn. Which meant Zeus could return at any time.
I grabbed Kai’s upper arm, panicked at the thought.
And maybe because it was important to objectively check that my best hope out of here was in fine working condition. His muscles still filled out his ragged clothing quite nicely without being steroidly obnoxious, so three cheers for that.
Kai waited expectantly for me to say something.
I was still distracted by his biceps. “Um, what’s the plan?”
Kai quickly strode over and retrieved a set of manacles. “I’m going to stretch the chain out as wide as it’ll go. Lay them across as much of the entrance as possible.”
He knelt down and busied himself spreading out his manacles on the ground just outside ward range. “These puppies both call power forth and absorb it. In theory, they should suck the ward in and contain it. Then we can step over them and get out.”
Kai stood and brushed off his jeans then pushed me back a few steps. In a blur of motion, he kicked the manacle into the doorway.
White light flared. I blinked rapidly to clear my vision. “Did it work?”
“Sure.” He leaned forward peering at it.
I crossed my arms, doubtful. “But you don’t actually know. Here’s a thought. Maybe you should have saved a minion to test it on.”
“Yup,” he replied with a grin, “that would have been smart.” He stepped forward into the night.
I yelped then relaxed as he turned, totally unharmed. “You coming or what?”
“Since you asked so nicely,” I muttered and followed him outside.
I took a deep breath. The dawn was cool and fresh. It felt amazing. “Why Earth?”
Kai laughed. “Compromise. Neither Zeus nor Hades would let the other be our host jailer.”
I scanned the area. “Joshua Tree at four o’clock. Let’s get back to Hope Park.”
“Right,” he murmured, then he shoved me. “Run!”
The sky had filled with Photokia and Pyrosim. Our display had not gone unnoticed.
I froze. Kai shoved at me again with his right hand and began slashing at minions using his black light from his left. There was no sign that he was anything other than absolutely powerful.
I couldn’t join in since I had no power to blast yet, but being outside, even in these early rays, I was slowly recharging. Kai wasn’t getting out of here without me, and he definitely wasn’t taking them on himself.
“You stay, I stay.”
Kai muttered some choice words about my stubbornness, shot out a shield of black light to protect us and then almost tore my arm from its socket as he ran toward the tree, holding on to me tightly.
Infernorators thrust out their flaming tentacley arms to blast fireballs that quickly took root in the dry desert scrub. A rapidly blazing wall of flame sprang up, gaining on us. We had to make the tree before we were toasted.
Or before the Gold Crushers took it out with their strikes of lightning, as the Joshua tree was very obviously our destination.
My feet burned. My chest heaved with exertion, but we’d almost made it, mostly intact, when a wall of minions landed between us and the tree.
Kai sliced through most of them with the point of his black light, momentarily clearing a path. “Get out of here.”
I shook my head. “Being outside is recharging me. I can feel it.”
Kai’s eyes flashed as he spared me the briefest glare. Big deal. Like I hadn’t seen that annoyed look before.
I was prepared to fight him. And fight with him. My power was coming back. Not a lot, but enough to help.
What I didn’t expect was Kai to press a single gentle kiss to my lips and murmur, “Trust me. I’ll be there before you know it.” Then he leapt us over the minions, whipped around to face them, and shoved me toward the tree with the admonishment to “Stay alive.”
I stumbled, hands out, prepared to catch myself before I hit rough bark, but instead flew through the tree and straight out the other side.
I was back at Hope Park Progressive School in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, my index finger to my lip, pressed against the spot where Kai had kissed me.
I stared at the cypress that I had emerged through, but Kai didn’t materialize.
I shivered. It was January. This was Canada. And I was cold.
I sat back on my knees and took a moment to drink in the familiar peak of Mt. Baker in the distance. My eyes landed on my school. The rambling, three-story, brick building that had been home for most of my life. What a relief to see it.
Another glance at the cypress. Continued lack of Kai. I pushed to my feet and brushed myself off.
My stomach clutched in anxiety. No. I couldn’t think the worst. He was more than capable of taking care of himself and if I went back, I’d only get into trouble. The safest place for me right now was behind the wards at my school.
He wanted me here, so here I’d stay. I uttered a wish for his safe return and tried not to feel like a coward. Because truth be told, I didn’t want to go back.
Didn’t want to be in danger.
A tingling on my neck made me glance up. Sure enough, a couple of Gold Crushers and Infernorators were already hovering in the sky, just outside the invisible demarcation of my school’s safety wards.
Let me rephrase. I didn’t want to be in immediate danger. Supernatural creatures loitering outside school grounds were nothing anymore. Funny what you could get used to.
Especially since my human classmates couldn’t see them.
A fact I was hugely grateful for seconds later when I was rushed and enveloped in a giant Hannah hug.
I was so pathetically glad to see my best friend that I almost burst into tears. Instead, I planted a smooch on her lips. “Baby, I’m home.”
“How very Katy Perry of you, love.”
The sound of a sexy British voice startled me out of my homecoming euphoria.
“Well, she isn’t wearing cherry Chapstick. So there’s that,” I said, as I turned to scope out the pretty, pretty boy standing before me. With his green eyes and sun-kissed, tousled hair, slightly shaggy like a surfer boy’s, he looked like he should have been on the cover of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue in board shorts, not standing in my school yard, dressed in a warm wool coat.
While this mouthy stranger was model material, I, on the other hand, looked like I belonged in a dumpster. I wanted to get to my room, shower in scalding water, and sleep for the two weeks of winter break that I figured were about to happen.
Give or take daylight savings time in Olympus.
Yeah, and get cracking on the memories. But damn, I was just so very tired from the emotional and physical minefields I’d waded through.
New dude grinned at me with this beautiful smile and I felt meltiness. Not like with Kai. I doubted anyone would be like Kai for me, but more in a “I’d have to be dead not to feel something” kind of way.
He was mushy happiness personified.
I turned toward Hannah to check her reaction to him but was unable to see her expression because she’d placed her hands on my shoulders and was killing my warm fuzzy by shaking me into concussion city.
“Quit it.” I pulled myself loose. “People go to prison for shaken Sophie syndrome.”
“That’s babies,” she shot back, punching me on the shoulder, “which is exactly what you acted like, leaving school.” She flipped her long, blonde hair out of her face to better send me a grey-eyed glower of death.
Then she noticed the blood on my face. Her glower ratcheted up a few notches.
Hannah gave damn fine stare, and on most other people, the look combined with her five-foot-ten height would have them conceding whatever point she wanted. Years of proximity had made me immune.
I felt bad because she seemed really worried. Her “tell” being the calming, deep breaths she took under her wint
er coat.
Pretty boy had noticed too. He was pretty fixated on making sure her chest rose and fell okay. His concern was touching.
“It wasn’t willingly. I had to, uh,” I glanced at pretty boy, “visit with my dad. For maybe four days. You’re acting like I was gone for—”
“Two months, Sophie Magoo,” Theo said, arriving at my side, looking comfortingly rumpled and spiky-haired. He draped me in my heavy winter coat. “We’ve been keeping watch for your return.”
I staggered back a step. “Two months?” How long had Zeus been drugging me?
“Theo found out where you were,” Hannah said. “But we had no idea …” She swallowed hard. “We knew whatever going on with you was bad.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt terrible that my friends had gone through that worry. And even more upset that Zeus had stolen a chunk of my life away. Absently, I pulled the coat tighter around me, pondering payback.
“Sophie.” I blinked back to attention. Hannah had scrounged around in her pockets and located a small pack of wet wipes. She handed one to me so I could scrub my face. “You can’t go inside like that.”
Theo sighed. Even though I knew my other best friend was really Prometheus, currently stuck in human teen boy form, he always reminded me of an anime character brought to life. He pushed his black, fat-framed glasses back up his nose in a familiar gesture. “I’m tempted to let Saul kill you.”
Saul being his nickname for Hannah. It had mutated since childhood from Hannah Solo to Solo to Saul. No one else could call her that. Just as only Theo could call me Sophie Magoo.
Hannah frowned at me. “Do you know how many possible horrible scenarios I calculated in the time you were gone? Six hundred and thirty seven. And that was before I factored in—”
I drowned out her reasonings behind all the ways I could have bit it. All I could think about was Kai. Two months? For how much of it had Kai been clamped to the torture board? What kind of strength had it taken for him to resist the pain and the madness? To come back from being manacled?
And why hadn’t he shown up yet?
I realized Hannah had trailed off and everyone now stared at me.
“So how did you get out of Olympus?” Pretty boy asked.
I strode off, irritated, toward the school building. “No. No longer want to know who you are. You obviously have some connection to the Greeks and that’s enough bad news for me.”
“You wound me, Sophie Bloom,” he said, keeping pace beside me.
“Stay back.” I made the sign of the cross.
Pretty boy’s eyes glinted with amusement. “That’s vamps, love. Fictional creatures.”
“Then pick the appropriate ‘screw off’ sign and stand down,” I said.
Hannah placed a hand on my arm. “I get that you’re traumatized, but it’s not his fault.”
I sped up, not caring if my anger was misplaced. Every new Greek character I met just meant trouble. And I was exhausted.
“How did you get out?” Theo echoed, hot on my heels.
“Kai.”
Theo made a rude sound, but noticing that I looked very close to the edge of sanity, didn’t push things.
“Hannah found your disappearance rather off-putting,” Pretty boy said. “You made her quite upset.”
I squeezed her hand in genuine remorse. “Sorry.”
Hannah glanced at Pretty boy and blushed.
Huh? I took a closer look at her.
Under her open winter coat, I saw she had ditched her uniform of science pun T-shirt and jeans for, well, a cute purple cap-sleeve top and jeans, but still. This was huge. Who was this guy? I stopped walking. “Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll bite. Who are you?”
“Sophie, Pierce. Pierce, Sophie,” Hannah introduced.
Pierce stuck out his hand. I shook it, but only because of the fond smile he’d given Hannah when she spoke. Then I looked to Theo for further clarification.
“Eros,” Theo said. “My ‘cousin’ who is staying here for a bit.”
I shook my head. Not computing.
Theo sighed. “Cupid.” He hated that I only seemed to know the “fake” Roman names of the Greek Gods. I often knew more than I let on, but he was so fun to taunt.
“No freaking way!” I exclaimed, once again striding briskly across the back lawn. And not just because I was still barefoot and now risking serious toe-loss. January in Canada and all that.
Pierce scowled at the “Cupid” name. “Back off, Thesi,” he warned.
“Hey, if I could burn the Roman names from her brain I would. She’s Greek learning disabled.”
And then it hit me. I stopped dead, causing Hannah to almost plough into me. “Cupid! Arrows!” I turned to Pierce. “Could you make me and Kai fall in love?” This could be the answer to all our prayers.
“Are you insane?” Theo rounded on me angrily.
I winced, knowing Theo was going to freak right out when I told him. “It’s about the ritual.” I paused, trying how best to say this.
“You don’t have to be in love with Kai to have sex with him,” Hannah said, annoyed and totally forgetting Theo didn’t know about the ex-say and blurting it right out. She remembered a split second later when I glared at her and she clamped her hand over her mouth.
Too late.
“Sex?” he sputtered. “With Kai? That was your big plan as Persephone? A giant orgasm to Oxytocin the supreme gods into submission?”
“Actually,” I snapped, “it was the lung cancer they’d get from the huge cigarette they’d want to smoke after. It was a long term game plan.”
Theo glared at me. “I gave up my powers for the stupidest idea ever?”
“What?” Hannah exclaimed.
I poked him in the chest. “Next time, coach, you draw the play. Or hey, don’t saddle your star Quarterback with a memory spell so she can’t remember all the details.”
“He. Was. Not. Supposed. To. Kiss. You.” Theo ground out.
“Blah blah blah,” I mocked back.
“Want me to smack them for you?” Pierce asked.
“You’re so sweet,” Hannah replied. “But not necessary.” She gave us each a boff on the head.
I stuck my tongue out at Theo. He tried to grab it. “Hannah!” I bleated.
“Much as I would love two best friends who aren’t royal pains in the butt,” Hannah wagged a finger at us, parent-style, “I’ve trained you two, so stand down. Otherwise I’ll have to set something awful on you.” She blinked at Pierce. “I bet you know some terrible creatures, don’t you?” she asked, all breathless with delight.
“Nightmare variety,” he boasted.
Hannah beamed and leaned in closer like she wanted to hear more.
“Oh, spare me the foreplay,” I said.
She shot me a look promising retaliation. “You planning on explaining about giving up your powers?” she asked Theo.
“Nope.”
Fighting with Theo would get me precisely nowhere. He’d suffered as much, if not more than me. I flung my arms around him. “Gimme some love, sunshine.”
“We are the Rockman-Bloom alliance. Resistance is futile.” Theo spoke in a computer voice as he hugged me back. For about twenty seconds before he shrugged me off. “Enough touching.”
I pasted an anxious smile on my face. “Yeah, so after all that, turns out the ritual doesn’t involve sex. It involves us falling in—”
Theo scowled at me and stomped off.
I ran after him, Hannah and Pierce trotting after me. “We were wrong about Kai.”
Theo stared at me, deadpan. “Really? Where’s my chain?”
“I don’t have it yet. But I’m sure he’ll be coming back with it any time now. See …” I explained the entire story of my escape and reunion with Kai as we walked back to the dorm.
Theo just looked grimmer and grimmer the further into my tale I got. The only time he didn’t look all thundercloud was when I mentioned warding up the location. By his creased forehead and intense look of con
centration, I knew Theo’d switched over to figuring out how exactly to solve that puzzle. “It’s doable,” was his only comment.
As I wrapped up, Hannah patted my hand in sympathy, just as Pierce attempted to clasp her other hand.
She swooped out of his grasp.
I threw her an “oh really?” look as I tugged on the school doors on the side of the building.
Locked.
She threw me a “not even” look back, but at least had the good graces to look like she knew she was full of it. I gave a wan smile, happy to be part of teen normality, and hurried around to the front of the school with my little entourage.
“Soph,” Theo began.
“Not now, Rockman,” I replied wearily, tromping up the front stairs.
“Code red ‘need to know’ situation happening,” he insisted.
I waved him off. I didn’t really care. I needed to sleep and get my head together.
“If she just gets up to our room, maybe it can wait a bit,” I heard Hannah tell him.
“What she said,” I echoed. I threw open the front door of Hope Park, walked into the blissfully warm foyer with its red and white tiles and cluttered announcement board, inhaled the comforting smells of lemon polish and bleach, and ran slam into Principal Doucette.
“Where in God’s blazes have you been, young lady? We’ve been worried sick!” An angry flush spiked his black skin.
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” I eeked out. There was now grey shot through his short, neat dreads. I had a sinking feeling I’d put it there.
He turned to Hannah and Theo. Pierce had made himself scarce. “Go,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument, before taking me by the shoulders with his ex-football player hands and propelling me through the front office into his.
“Sit,” he commanded in that same voice.
I slumped into my favorite chair, with no clue what to expect. This chair and I were on intimate terms, since I’d been called in to Doucette’s office way too many times. But that was usually because of some run-in with Bethany. And I could mostly get myself out of those lectures.
I wasn’t sure how to explain my two month absence. Especially when I was already on probation. Considering Hope Park was the one place warded up to keep me safe, now, more than ever, it was a no brainer that I had to stay here until we figured out exactly how I could get Persephone’s memories back and protect the ritual location. I couldn’t risk Zeus or Hades getting hold of me.
My Date From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy Book Two) Page 5
