“Why did you not tell me?”
I seriously considered giving up the glare, for all the good it was doing me. If I spent much more time around Apollo, my face might freeze that way. “Did you miss the part where me and mine are none of your business?”
His eyes narrowed. “It seems to me you’re my business when it’s convenient. When you need ambrosia or a way into the Back to Earth complex you have no problem calling me up. When my usefulness is over, you dismiss me like a servant. And you call me insufferable.”
“If I’m so insufferable, don’t suffer me,” I countered rather than admit he’d made a very palpable hit. My voice must have risen, because several diners looked over at us disapprovingly.
Our waiter appeared and offered to take our drink orders, probably hoping that would mellow us out. I was sticking with water.
The way Apollo had put things, I was a spoiled rotten brat taking advantage of his feelings for me. But he…what? Did what he thought was right only to have it blow up in his face and have you blame him on top of it? I didn’t know what was right anymore. That was the thing with gods. They’d had eons of practice running circles around us mere mortals.
Still, I hated myself just a little bit.
“Dinner’s on me,” I offered instead of an apology.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because you’re right,” I mumbled into my water glass.
“Come again?”
I put the glass down. “You’re right. I’m wrong. But we’re still done. I don’t think we’re good for each other.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Apollo answered.
“Therein lies the problem.”
I ignored him then to study the menu, afraid that if I looked his way again, he or my conscience would get the better of me, and I’d take it back, find some way to make amends that would really be a veiled excuse to remain in his presence. Because no matter how angry he made me, no matter how much I wanted to ignore him, it wasn’t really possible. And now I knew there was no hiding those feelings.
“Are you reading me right now?” I asked, tense.
“No,” he answered. “It doesn’t happen all the time. When it does, it’s a single, clear, strong feeling striking me like a bolt to the heart. Right now all I feel is churning.”
“So it’s really my emotions you read, not my mind?”
“I don’t read, I receive.”
“Whatever.”
“Yes.”
It made surprisingly little difference to my feelings on the matter. Churning was a good description of my emotions and my gut. If there was anything rising to the top it was wanting not to want him. As clear as mud and pure as the L.A. air.
It was a relief to get back to the room and prepare to head into danger. It was clear cut with no messy ambiguity. I wondered whether Apollo was feeling that and what he’d make of it. It pissed me off that I bothered to wonder, but I put the anger to good use. It kept the fear at bay. Because as tough as I liked to pretend I was, the thought of sneaking into a cult compound by the dark of night after seeing what had been done to that reporter was enough to shiver me timbers.
But first, I had to face down Christie.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she said. “I’m putting my foot down.”
I looked at her foot. I was unimpressed.
“Christie, this is what I do. If you weren’t here, you wouldn’t even know I was in danger.”
“But I am here.”
“Same deal then, I’ll check in by text or phone every hour, or you can call in the cavalry.”
“You mean the cavalry almost an entire state away?” she protested. “Unless…maybe Apollo can go with you.” I knew she was seriously worried if she suggested throwing the two of us together again.
“No,” I said sharply. Then, at the hurt on her face, “Sorry, it’s just…no. Things are complicated with us.”
“Then take me.”
“You don’t think that two of us sneaking in are more likely to get caught than one?”
“I can drive getaway.”
“I thought you had to get up early tomorrow for some sort of greet-the-dawn, cleansing ritual with Martin.”
“I do.”
“Well then, you stay. I promise, I’ll be all right.”
“I’m going to hold you to it.”
“Deal. I’ll be back in plenty of time to take you out for a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs after your cleansing.”
“Make it egg whites and turkey bacon, and I’m your girl.”
“Turkey bacon—really? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“Don’t knock it until you try it.”
I scrunched up my face. “Pass.”
“Child.”
I finished checking the gear in my fanny pack and adding in a few things, like camo face paint and lock-picking tools. If I was caught there’d be no way to claim innocence, but I figured that was the least of my worries.
Part of me wanted to get an hour or two of sleep in before setting out, but I knew I was too hopped up on adrenaline for that. Anyway, I didn’t want to risk waking up groggy. I was going to need all my wits about me.
Christie hugged me like she was saying good-bye. I shook off the thought, sure it was just that and not premonition.
“I’ll check in,” I said again in reassurance.
She nodded and pushed me toward the door. I took a glance back and caught her still looking after me, concern written all over her face.
I called my new friend Alonzo on the way and asked him to meet me at an Internet café I’d spotted on an earlier drive. I needed copious amounts of caffeine, since I might be up all night; I needed to research the dead journalist, and I wanted to hear more about Alonzo’s sister. I could kill three birds with one stone. Typically, it was two birds, but I was an overachiever.
He was available but on duty, so I told him I’d pay him as if he’d taken me for a ride, and he wouldn’t even have to use up the gas. Plus, I’d tip generously. He had no problem at all with my terms.
I spotted a white SUV following me. Either OJ was taking another leisurely run from responsibility or Hades was on my ass. I didn’t like either thought.
But I was almost at the café. I pulled off the road and watched the SUV roll right past me. Maybe I was paranoid.
I’d just retrieved my triple espresso from the counter and slid my credit card through a slot at one of the computer terminals, holding my breath about whether or not I’d hit my spending limit, when Alonzo walked in. He gave me a nod and took the insulated cup he’d brought with him for a fill at the counter before joining me.
I used the time to look up Jeremy Clarkson. He’d been the one to write the article I’d previously found calling Back to Earth a cult. More recently, he’d done a piece on a recent string of disappearances in the San Fran/Napa area. He hadn’t drawn any conclusions, but speculated that there might be something sinister at work.
Living in L.A., a city that seemed to have more than its share of serial killers, most recently Michael Hughes, Louis Craine, Chester DeWayner Turner and others, my mind might have gone that way, but together with his cult interest, I thought Jeremy’s suspicions lay elsewhere. His last article had been four months ago. Before he’d decided to go deep?
Alonzo joined me a second later, taking the lid off his mug to let some of the heat escape. Steam rose from the brew like the warning signs of an active volcano…or maybe the pits of Hell.
“How’s your sister?” I asked.
“Not good.” He took a sip of his coffee, hissing as it hit his tongue. Then, “She has no energy, no focus, stomach aches and pains, the shakes so badly she can’t drink a half full glass of water without half of it ending all over her. She’s right now in the hospital for dehydration and malnutrition.”
It all sounded familiar from when I’d gone cold turkey off the ambrosia. It had felt like an amped up case of food poisoning. Not good.
“Malnutrition?”
&n
bsp; “She hasn’t been eating.”
“You said you traced the beginning of her illness to Back to Earth?”
“She works at a nearby winery. She started on this raw foods and probiotic kick, getting her lunches and everything from the Back to Earth stand—fruits, nuts, the whole bit. Within a week she was jaundiced, sick. Her kidneys were shutting down. There was nothing she’d eaten that should have done that. Their stand was the only thing different in her world. So either those culty people were lying about being all organic and were using some serious chemicals on their crops that made her sick or…something else. I don’t know, I’m no scientist, but growth hormone or something. I’ve been doing some reading.”
He looked miserable. His eyes were bloodshot, and the bags under them were certainly not designer.
I put a hand on top of one of his where it cupped his mug. The heat radiated up through his hand to mine.
“What do the doctors say?”
“They’re baffled. I’m working nearly around the clock to pay for her care. She’s got shit insurance. I can’t pay for no kind of private lab to analyze their food and see what’s what.”
“Maybe you don’t have to.” I pressed on his hand and then took mine back. “Would you be willing to talk to a few friends of mine? They’re federal agents.” Friends might be pushing it, but they’d at least accept my calls, mostly, I was sure, because they still considered me to be a person of interest.
“FDA?” he asked.
“Homeland Security.”
He didn’t look like he thought too much of that, but he said, “I’ll do anything. She’s my baby sister.” The tears were there in his voice, but he never let them flow.
I dialed Rosen. “I have someone here you might want to talk to,” I said when he picked up. I put him on speaker and sat the phone down on the counter.
“Oh?”
“His name is Alonzo Rayez. His sister is sick. He blames Back to Earth.”
“Evidence?” Rosen asked.
“Maybe in her medical records. Look, do you want to talk to him or not?”
“What about her?”
I looked to Alonzo, who said, “I can meet him at the hospital. She’s a little tough to understand right now. They had to intubate her for a while until they could get enough nutrition into her.”
“I’ll manage,” Rosen said.
I let them work out the details and checked my watch. It was already almost half past eleven. Good little cultists ought to be snug in their beds, particularly if they kept farmer’s hours. It was time.
I dug through my purse to find money for Alonzo, but he tried to push it back at me. “I should never have agreed to that. You’re helping us. I can’t take your money for that.”
“Relax, I have a client,” I said. It wasn’t completely untrue. Hades had asked…ordered…me to look into the disappearance of his wife. He agreed to an exchange of services—he’d do his job if I did mine. He never said anything about expenses, but I’d deal with that bridge if I lived long enough to cross it.
Alonzo looked relieved. He needed that money, even though he’d been prepared to relinquish it. “I meant what I said in the cab…if you ever need anything…”
“You’ve already done a lot, trust me. If the agents can talk to your sister and find other people with her symptoms, maybe they can start building a case. We can take Back to Earth down.”
Now there was a tear, but I didn’t comment. Alonzo insisted on walking me to my car. I’d swear I could feel eyes on me the whole time. There was something about the way my spine itched. I stopped just before we hit my Camaro and took a good look around.
Nobody and nothin’. But Hades, I remembered, was rumored to have a helmet of invisibility the way Zeus had his lightning bolt and Poseidon his trident, so the lack of a visual proved nothing.
I gave the night a one-fingered salute, just in case. Alonzo looked at me funny, to which I responded, “Don’t ask.”
He didn’t.
Just like earlier that day, I parked my car on the outskirts of the Back to Earth property. Only this time I risked my suspension by driving it off road and parking it on the far side of that stacked stone wall to keep anyone from becoming too interested. In case anyone was paying attention, I thought it might be a wee bit suspicious to run out of gas twice in one day in the same spot.
I crept again through the orchard, the gnarled arms of the trees making it look like the Forbidden Forest or something equally imposing. I paralleled but never stepped onto the road. Once free of the trees, I was faced with a high, wire mesh fence. The whole no carbon footprint thing led me to suspect it wouldn’t be electrified, but I tested my theory by tossing a twig at it. Both fence and twig were summarily unimpressed with the exercise. So I laced my fingers through the mesh and gave the fence a good tug to make sure it was tough enough to climb. The cacophonous sound of jangling bells met the motion. I froze. Really? I thought. It was the equivalent of putting pots and pans underneath windows as a low tech alarm. Like something out of Home Alone.
But if the voices heading my way were any indication, it was pretty effective.
“—see the way he fawned all over her? I’m telling you—” a female voice was saying.
“I know, you’ve been telling me,” another answered. “But what’s one bacchae more or less? It doesn’t diminish you.”
“I’m telling you, this one’s different.”
“Can we focus here? The alarm bells sounded.”
“Probably those cheeky raccoons again.”
I faded back into the trees and watched as two women holding LED flashlights stepped up to examine the fence. One I recognized right away—Casey Olivieri. The other was a mystery. Luckily, their lights didn’t penetrate the tree line, although they shined them my way.
“Nothing,” announced the one who wasn’t Casey.
“Better organize a perimeter check, just to be sure.”
“That’s another thing,” not-Casey was saying, “these patrols. I don’t get it. What do we have to steal?”
By the corona of their lights, I saw Casey roll her eyes. “Only our freedom. Remember when Moss’s mother sent that cult reconditioner or whatever to kidnap her?”
“Or when your mother sent that PI?”
So they knew about Uncle Christos? I’d expected as much when he’d contacted Detective Beverly and then dropped off the face of the earth, but the confirmation after what I’d seen in the morgue was chilling. I willed them to say more, but Casey was silent for a moment. Guilt over whatever had become of him? My heart clenched.
“Yeah, or him. Not everyone understands. When you withdraw from the world there’s always going to be someone who wants to drag you back into it. Acknowledging that our way of life is valid means admitting theirs might be flawed. We threaten them and their comfortable consumerism.”
“You sound just like him,” the other girl commented.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Casey said, something ominous in her tone.
I hoped the other girl realized it before something happened to her.
“No,” she answered quickly. “It’s just…thank you for clarifying, sister.”
Casey studied her in the darkness. “We have enough enemies from without. We can’t afford them from within.”
“Of course not. I’ll get the others.”
“Have them bring the dogs.”
The other girl nodded and ran off.
Dogs! I hadn’t seen any dogs when I was about earlier. I did carry emergency doggie treats in my go bag, but trained canines wouldn’t be swayed by them.
But Uncle Christos’s life could be at stake, assuming I wasn’t already too late to save him. I couldn’t call things off.
It was now or never. One lone bacchae. No dogs…yet. I dug deep, trying to access whatever strength the ambrosia and my gorgon ancestress might have left me and leapt for the fence. Casey called out as she saw me, but I was noisily up and over the fence and diving down
at her before anyone had the chance to come to her aid. Her hands formed into claws—not in a shape-shiftery way, but more like a veteran cat-fighter—and she lashed out at my face with one set of spiky nails while the other pierced my scalp as she raked my hair to hold me in place. I stared down into her crazed eyes and said with force, “Freeze!”
Power flashed through me, and the gorgon glare held her still. Petrified. It wouldn’t last but long enough for me to get away. From the not-so-distant depths of the compound dogs began baying in a way that suggested they couldn’t wait to get at me. I pushed myself off the fallen girl and raced for the nearest building. I was on the wrong side of the compound from the area I’d pinpointed earlier as the likely center of operations.
There were shouts now too as I was spotted, not just by dogs but by their handlers. A cacophony split the night, loud enough to wake the dead. I reached a door on the closest building and ripped it right off one hinge. It slumped toward me, and I shoved it out of the way. I found myself in the midst of a dorm of sleeping people, some half awakened by the noise. I ran. The place was built like a longhouse. If there wasn’t another exit at the other end, I’d have to make my own.
The dogs burst through the door I’d left off-kilter. I made the mistake of looking back to gauge how much lead I had, only to see the handlers release them. It cost me a second, long enough that roused sleepers were able to grab at me. One had me by the sleeve and was yanking me in for a better grip, but I tore myself out of her grasp, hearing the shirt sleeve rip. I aimed myself at the second door and kicked it with a great crack of wood and answering pain, which reverberated up my shin to my knee. The door popped open, and I was through. There were more cultists waiting for me on the other side—one man and two women, but they were surprised by the flying splinters and just a second too slow to stop me, though not to pursue.
Something—someone hit me from behind, sliding down my body until he—she?—was hugging my butt, bringing me down to the ground in a flying tackle. I kicked out, caught something that gave, and the grip loosened but didn’t let up. Two more bodies fell on top of us, and all the air blew out of my lungs. I was suffocating.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 15
