Blood Hunt

by Lucienne Diver

  Then she seemed to realize what she’d said, and the tears sprang up once again. It wasn’t long before snot joined the tears. Her shredded napkin wasn’t going to do the trick, so I gave her mine, only slightly the worse for fry grease. She blew her nose loudly. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the check. I’d expense the meal later. It would be on her bill. But for now… I took some cash out of my wallet and laid it down.

  Instead of sliding immediately out of the booth, Jessica took up one of the pieces of toast and started spreading it with strawberry jelly. I saw a couple of tears hit as she spread and wondered if the salt would add to the flavor. Oh, bad me. No cookie. Probably I needed sensitivity training.

  Or another french fry.

  Two pieces of somewhat soggy toast and half her glass of orange juice later, we got out of there. Jessica had her car but didn’t want to take it, so we left it in the garage where she’d parked and took mine. A text came in as I started it up, and I checked it before pulling out of my spot.

  Apollo: Where R U?

  I texted him back, Headed home.

  His reply came almost instantaneous. Meet U there.

  But someone else beat him to it.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was about as far from a happy homemaker as it was possible to get. Oh, I wasn’t a hoarder. That would imply stuff to actually hoard, when in truth most of my possessions had gone up in flames when I’d pissed off Zeus, god of pyrotechnics and nuclear level retaliation, back when I’d first discovered the gods were real. I’d since met titans and hellhounds and dragons…oh my! I’d even met vampires, if not exactly your typical type. The deadly baobhan sidhe lured people in with their charms and drained them through needle-like nails. Not nearly as sexy as the bitey-bitey babes.

  No, I was more a squatter than a happy homemaker. My place was actually Nick’s former partner’s apartment—try saying that five times fast. She’d literally flown off on the back of a dragon, and though she’d returned to the States, it seemed she’d given up the sedentary lifestyle, and I was on a somewhat permanent sublet.

  Since Jessica had asked for it, I didn’t apologize for the dishes in the sink, the mail piled up in the foyer that I’d some day find time to sort, or the dust bunnies that hadn’t yet staged a revolt. Anyway, I figured I could take them. Apollo had suggested that he could send his cleaning lady over to tidy up the place, and I’d almost lasered him with my eyes. If my powers had run that way, I’d have been short one hot and sexy boyfriend. Somehow, hiring someone seemed too much like surrender. Waving a white flag. Admitting I had a problem. I would clean. One day real soon now. When life settled down to normal.

  Some part of me laughed maniacally at that thought, and I let it have its fun.

  “The guest bedroom is through here,” I said, closing and dead-bolting the apartment door behind us and leading her through the living room and off to the left. It was a really simple layout. Kitchen with a breakfast bar to the right, living room dead center, bedrooms to the left with a bathroom between them, all of it vaguely sand-colored to go along with former-detective Lau’s fascination with the dead and desiccated, mostly sea life. I’d packed away boxes of dried sponges, sea fans and cucumbers, sand dollars, puffer fish, starfish and shells. I hadn’t really replaced it with anything but clutter. It was cheap and effortless decor.

  I led her to the room toward the front of the apartment, which had a bare bedframe and mattress along with a single dresser and, of course, the closet where I’d stored away most of Lau’s sea life. I’d left out the sea turtle painting over the dresser and the shadow box near the light switch with more dried sea fans and shells.

  They didn’t seem to bother Jessica. She set her big designer purse down on the dresser and turned to thank me.

  “It’s not much,” I said. “I’ll get you sheets and blankets. There’s no TV in here, but you’re welcome to the one in the living room. There are bookshelves out there too with a crap-ton of books. Help yourself. I don’t have a lot in the fridge or in the cabinets, but you’ve already eaten, so hopefully that won’t be much of a thing.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, hugging herself slightly. “I really appreciate this. Really. It’s great.”

  The buzzer at my door sounded then, surprising me. Someone wanted to be buzzed up. Which meant unexpected company. I knew Jessica couldn’t be expecting anyone. She hadn’t had the chance to let anyone know where to find her. Which meant someone was here for me. Someone who hadn’t thought to call ahead.

  I pressed the intercom button on my end to ask who it was, waiting for my precog to tell me whether or not to worry. It buzzed, but didn’t kick, and I had no idea how to take that.

  “Tori, it’s Neith. I’m here to compare notes.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Was it supposed to be hard?”

  My teeth ground together as I pressed the button to release the outer door and let her up. “Who is it?” Jessica asked, having crept up behind me.

  “Someone helping with the investigation.”

  I debated what to do. On the one hand, if I invited Jessica to stay and meet her, Neith and I would have to watch our words, dance around the realities. On the other, if I sent Jessica to her room, she might only listen in anyway. I knew I would.

  I deferred judgment, going to the door to let Neith in. At her knock, I checked the peephole before opening the door.

  She breezed in without waiting to be invited and stopped cold at the sight of Jessica.

  “I thought you’d be alone,” she said, turning accusatory eyes on me, as though I’d broken some kind of promise.

  “Neith, this is Jessica, the Roland boys’ sister. Jessica, this is Neith. She’s an insurance investigator from Egypt.”

  “An insurance investigator?” she asked.

  Neith grabbed one of my upper arms. “Can I talk to you in private?”

  I looked pointedly down at her hand on my arm. “No.”

  She let me go.

  “Well, okay then, since we’re being polite. In here,” I said, waving her toward the kitchen.

  It wasn’t entirely closed off, and Jessica would probably be able to hear if she really strained, but it should be private enough if we kept our voices down.

  As soon as we entered the kitchen, Neith marched over to the faucet and turned it on.

  When I protested the waste, she said, “This way we can’t be overheard.”

  “Seems pretty cloak and dagger. What’s so urgent?”

  “I need you to teach me how to flirt.”

  “Say what?”

  She looked like she’d sucked on a lemon and swallowed one of the seeds. “I… You…” She stopped, chewed some more on that lemon. “You’ve been with Detective Armani. You know what he likes. I…don’t. I need you. To teach me. How to flirt.”

  “Now? In the middle of a murder investigation?”

  “When it ends, he’ll have no more reason to be in my company. It’s like any campaign. You plan, then you strike.”

  “This isn’t a military campaign.”

  “Strategy is strategy.”

  “Really? So what are you planning? A frontal assault? Flanking maneuvers? Guerilla warfare?”

  “You mock me.” She turned away, but not before I caught a fleeting vulnerability.

  Well, damn.

  “No,” I lied, trying to make it so. “I’m sorry. It’s just…do you have any idea how weird it is being asked to help someone cozy up to your ex-boyfriend.”

  Boyfriend. It seemed too juvenile a word for what we’d been through together. Been. Past tense. I had to get used to it. I’d moved on. He deserved the same.

  “Then you’ll help me?” she asked hopefully.

  “I will. I promise. But first…do we really have to leave the tap on? It’s making me have to pee.”

  W
e both looked over at the sink. Neith cracked a smile. An actual smile. “No,” she said, “I suppose not. But I don’t think your houseguest needs to hear our lessons.”

  “Then we’ll start with the business at hand.” I turned off the tap and then faced her with arms crossed. “What did you learn at the station?”

  It was no good. I really did have to pee. “Wait, hold that thought.”

  I headed for the bathroom, which left Neith alone in the kitchen. When I came back, Jessica was sitting at the breakfast bar, staring through to Neith and quizzing her about what an insurance investigator from Egypt had to do with the investigation. Neith told her the absolute truth—about the stolen artifacts. When she got to the part about the girl, Jessica whimpered and put the back of her hand to her mouth to keep any more from escaping. When she pulled it away, she asked, “And you think my brothers did that?”

  Neith studied her. “I think…they may not have been in their right minds.”

  “That’s what I think!” Jessica said. “I just don’t know how. Or why.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out as well,” she said. She turned to me. “You asked what I learned at the station. I translated Viktor’s ramblings.”

  She pulled a couple sheets of paper from an inside pocket of her vest and unfolded them, handing them to me.

  Jessica hopped off the stool and came into the kitchen to read over my shoulder. I saw no reason not to let her. The translation sounded like the ravings of a religious fanatic, all about the glory of Set. Viktor asked that his deeds of chaos and sacrifice—he used the word sacrifice rather than murder, proving that he was nothing if not delusional—strengthen the god and weaken his detractors. He commended the blood and the fear to Set, as if they were offerings.

  Jessica’s eyes widened, and she looked to Neith, then to me. “What’s going on here? Is it…some kind of cult? Is that what my brothers got sucked into? And they drew Viktor in as well?”

  Neith and I exchanged a glance. It was as good an explanation as any.

  “Probably something like that,” I agreed.

  Neith took up then. “Set is the god of chaos. The artifacts they stole were representations of Set. It may be that the theft was some sort of initiation.”

  “And the woman they…hurt?” She clearly couldn’t bring herself to use the real words.

  “Maybe that too. Or maybe she just got in their way.”

  Jessica’s eyes clenched shut, squeezing back tears. Pain was written all over her face like one of Sigyn’s runes.

  “Do you have any Tylenol?” she asked me. “Or maybe a good stiff drink?”

  “I think Tylenol will do you better,” I said, going to the cabinet for it. “And maybe you want to lay down? Without a lead, there’s nothing more we can do tonight. We’ll pick up first thing in the morning.”

  “Viktor…I want to talk to him. If anyone knows what my brothers are thinking…”

  “They’ve taken him to the hospital. Detective Armani’s partner says they’ve sedated him. Even if he was talking sense, you wouldn’t get anything out of him tonight. Probably they wouldn’t even let you near. He’s clearly dangerous.”

  Jessica didn’t like that at all. She took the pills I held in one hand and the water I held in the other and downed them both. She thanked me and handed the glass back. “I just feel so helpless,” she said. “But also exhausted. I’m going to lay down. Wake me if anything happens.”

  “I will,” I promised. “In the meantime, maybe you can keep trying to contact your brothers. Try to arrange to meet. Somewhere very public.”

  She nodded and disappeared back into her borrowed room, leaving Neith and I alone.

  “What have you learned?” she asked.

  “Nothing much. Since we parted, I’ve been looking after Jessica.”

  Neith glanced to where she’d disappeared. “She seems fragile. Still, she’s bent but not broken.”

  “I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Nick says he can have someone walk you through the Roland crime scene tomorrow. Us through,” she amended, “because I’m coming along.”

  “Great,” I said. At this point, I wasn’t sure what I could learn from the scene, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? If I knew, I wouldn’t need to visit.

  My door buzzer went off again, and I thought, Saved by the bell. Another second or so and I probably would have had to give Neith those flirting lessons. Of course, she might consider it a blessing if we had a real, live man to practice on. Probably it would be wrong to tell her that men were like cupcakes—you licked them to stake your claim.

  I went to the door with a smirk on my face and, sure enough, it was Apollo. I buzzed him up and waited by the door to let him in. I no sooner opened it than he backed me up against the wall and gave me a kiss that curled my toes and unfurled a heat deep in my lower stomach that spread throughout my body.

  Neith cleared her throat.

  I was too strong to whimper when Apollo stopped, but it was a close thing. He whirled around toward her and froze. “Neith?” he said.

  “Apollo?” she asked. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still catting around, I see.”

  “Tongue still as sharp as your sword,” he responded.

  They eyed each other for a second and then broke out into smiles. It might have been the first time I’d seen Neith smile. It was…nice. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and her entire face lightened up.

  “That,” I said, turning them both suddenly toward me.

  “What?” they both asked.

  “Do that,” I told Neith. “Smile. It changes your whole face. Makes you…approachable.”

  Apollo was staring at me, baffled. So was Neith for that matter. “You don’t think I’m approachable?” she asked.

  “You’re a bit…fierce. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I said. “But it’s better against an opponent than an ally.”

  She gave that some thought. “You’re telling me to be other than I am.”

  “No, I’m saying show another side of yourself. I know you can smile. I just saw you do it.”

  Of course, she was scowling now, but the comment still stood.

  “I’ll consider it,” she said grudgingly, then changed the subject. “So, you have nothing new to tell me?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  “Then I will go…for now. But I will see you tomorrow. And you will remember your promise.” It wasn’t a question.

  She was out the door an instant later, leaving Apollo and I alone…well, mostly.

  “What promise?” he asked.

  “Oh gods, just kill me now,” I said in answer.

  He didn’t leave it at that, of course. Not when we shared that damned empathic connection and he could sense my discomfort. I had to tell him.

  When I did, he laughed so loud, I was afraid he’d wake Jessica. I glared, and he only laughed all the harder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally, taking in great gasps of air to replace what he’d lost. If he hadn’t been a god, he might have actually died laughing. “It’s just…the great ice goddess herself, finally falling in love…with a mortal.”

  “Hey, I’m a mortal,” I grumped. “Or something.” I wasn’t really sure anymore.

  “You don’t get it. All these eons she’s dodged Eros’s arrows—”

  “Eros,” I cut in. “You don’t think…”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think he’s here, do you? That he’s behind it? That would be just the thing, wouldn’t it? The god of chaos and the god of…well, it’s supposed to be love, isn’t it, but he’s gotten people in trouble more often than not.”

  “Eros,” Apollo repeated. His voice had gone flat, unreadable, but that wasn’t my only cue, and I could feel everything he wasn’t saying through our bond. T
hey had history. Eros had once turned Apollo’s love against him, shooting the nymph Daphne with the lead arrow of revulsion so that she ran and even begged to be turned into a tree to escape him. “People have gotten into and out of plenty of trouble without his help throughout the ages.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Tori,” he said gently. “Nick’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Tori.”

  “Okay, okay, but how on earth am I supposed to teach the goddess of war how to flirt. I mean, if she hasn’t learned it in all these years, I don’t see what hope I have. I’m not exactly a prodigy.”

  “You caught me, didn’t you?” he asked, reaching to pull me toward him once again now that we were alone.

  “You mean I let you catch me,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Hmm.” And then the hmmm turned into more of a hum as he started to nibble on my neck and that warmth that had spread through me sparked into a raging fire. When my knees seemed about to give out, he picked me up and carried me to my room, kicking the door shut behind us.

  After that, I sincerely hoped Jessica was out for the count, because quiet didn’t seem remotely within the realm of possibility.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, I stretched like a cat, only to find a gloriously naked god in my bed. For a moment, I forgot about chaos, death, murder and other madness. It was hard to focus on anything but the hot body molded to my back and the growing issue between us.

  “Good morning,” he said, voice raspy from sleep. He managed to make even those two words sound suggestive.

  I answered him by rocking back against him, very interested in dealing with that pressing issue. The arm draped over my waist tightened, and he sucked in a breath. I could feel his arousal through our link. It was fueling my own. That, and the fact that the hand that had been hanging casually as we slept was now stroking my stomach and up just under the curve of my breasts…enough to tease, but just that. I growled and moved my arms so that he’d have better access to anything interesting, but he seemed content for now. I could feel his wicked smile against my shoulder. He knew what he was doing to me. He knew what I wanted. He wasn’t inclined to give it to me. At least, not when I wanted it right freakin’ now.