Her Immortal Harem Book Two

by Savannah Skye

  I took a deep breath and pushed open the door to my mom's room. There was a low light on over her bed but Mom appeared to be asleep, or out of it - sometimes she needed drugs to sleep. She looked peaceful, which was probably the most I could hope for. I sat down next to her and took her hand, as I always did when I visited. If anyone asked, I would always say that it was to make her feel better, so that even if she couldn't hear or understand my words, the physical contact let her know that there was someone there, someone who cared. Truthfully, it was to comfort me. I needed to touch her, to feel that she was still there on some level.

  When I was little and I had trouble sleeping, then she would sit with me holding my hand until I went to sleep. Even with my eyes closed and sleep closing in, I would still have her hand in mine, and I would feel safe because I knew she was there with me. Doing the same for her now was a comfort to me, but also a horrible reminder that, at too young an age, we had been robbed of that mother-daughter relationship. Even now, there were still days when I would have given anything to have her hold my hand at night, when the demons came.

  "Hey, Mom."

  She didn’t stir as I reached over and brushed the hair from her forehead. For the next while, I chattered in a low voice about nonsense, the sort of thing people say to a loved one in a place like this, hoping that the sound of their voice is all that's really necessary, before getting on to recent events.

  "So, some shit's been happening."

  I paused - even with Mom in this condition, I wasn't sure how to begin. "I have to say sorry. To you. For ever thinking that... for thinking there was something wrong with you. I guess you must have thought it, too - and the doctors sure as hell did - but..." I found I was crying again. "There was nothing wrong with you, Mom. There was nothing wrong with you. You weren't hearing voices. Or, at least, you were hearing voices but they were real. They were voices from Mount Olympus calling you to save the world. And I know that actually sounds crazier than just having voices in your head but it's true. You were the only one who could hear them but they were real."

  I shook my head bitterly.

  "If I'd believed you at the time, if I'd only known what I know now..." But there wasn't an end to the sentence. It was what it was. You can't change the past. "I met the guys who did it to you. They work for Dad. Which figures. Guess he found another way to screw us. I mean... They didn't mean to hurt you - the guys. That's not what they were setting out to do. They were the voices and they drove you crazy by accident, trying to get in touch with you. Not that I'm making excuses for them. I'm not. Fuck them all. Fuck the lot of them." I looked up at my mom's impassive face. "I... I slept with them, Mom. I mean, not all of them. Two out of three. I guess I would have gone for all three if the opportunity had... Doesn't matter. I wanted you to know. I didn't know - when I slept with them - what they had done to you. Although, I did know they worked for Dad so maybe I should have known better. I thought they were... Doesn't matter what I thought. I just didn't want you not to know what I did. But I'm never going to see them again. Actually, I probably will see them because they'll try to track me down. But I won't... You know. They're dead to me. I'll never forgive them for what they did to you. What they did to us."

  It's selfish, I know, but right at that moment I would have given pretty much anything for Mom to wake up and tell me that she understood and it was okay and she completely forgave me for screwing the men who had driven her out of her mind. But that was never going to happen. I would just have to live with the guilt.

  "Cat?"

  I nearly jumped out of my skin, and for one heartbreaking moment, I wondered if it was my mom who had spoken, with the voice of a man. I turned and saw Remi at the door.

  “Hey, kitten! I thought you were on vacation. You shouldn't be back for weeks yet."

  I nodded. That was the lie the guys had implanted in Remi's mind when they blanked his memory of all the Greek god stuff that was going down. They had done it on my instructions, to protect Remi from being involved, and it had seemed a good idea at the time. It had only been a few days ago. How quickly things can change.

  "Yeah," I stammered - I lie easily to strangers but lying to Remi is like lying to myself. "I wasn't feeling it so I changed my plans. I'm flying out again in the morning to someplace else. But as long as I was here for one night, I couldn't not..."

  I indicated Mom, and Remi nodded, understanding instantly.

  "Sure. You got the money for all this travel?”

  I grinned my best grifter's grin. "I made arrangements."

  "We should vacation together more. How come the first one was a bust?"

  Until all this Dolos business, I had told Remi everything, he was the only person in the world I trusted. Keeping something from him hurt me almost physically but it also left me without a confidant when I wanted - needed - advice.

  "Remi," I tried to shape my words into something I could say without getting him involved, "I did something dumb."

  "Who is he?"

  "What makes you think it's a guy?"

  Remi frowned. "You back on girls?"

  "No." That had been a summer of casual experimentation - fun, but not repeated. "I mean, why do you assume it has to be a lover at all?"

  Remi raised his hands. "I know you. You're not a jerk magnet, Cat. You're a jerk-seeking missile. In a room full of decent guys, you will locate the asshole every time."

  "Bullshit," I replied. "I've been out with lots of nice guys, too."

  "There's been some," Remi admitted. "And when you do hook up with a nice guy, you turn asshole yourself to make up the deficit."

  "What do you mean 'turn asshole'?"

  "I mean, you do everything you can to sabotage the relationship so it doesn't ever become a 'relationship'. You make a point of picking the wrong guy, and if you pick up the right one by accident, then you make damn sure that you're the wrong girl."

  "This time it wasn't my fault."

  Remi pulled a wan, sympathetic smile. "I guess it had to happen sometime."

  "What?"

  "You got your heart broken."

  "I did not!"

  Mom stirred in her sleep and it occurred to me that perhaps this was neither the time nor the place for this conversation.

  "Doesn't matter."

  "Of course it does."

  "It doesn't."

  "If it matters to you then it matters to me."

  I shook my head, trying to stop the tears and failing. "I let her down."

  "Your mom?"

  "I..." I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell him that I had slept with the men who had driven her mad. He'd probably get me an adjoining room in the institution. "Can you come and sit with us?"

  Remi unquestioningly joined me next to Mom. Mom liked Remi, she remembered who he was most of the time and was glad that I had found someone in the world who I cared about and trusted - someone who could do all the things she had not been around to do. When the three of us were here together, I liked to make believe in my head that we were a real family, and that one day Mom would get out and we would all be together, and everything would be perfect. The crushing weight of the knowledge that that would never actually happen weighed down on me now as never before, squeezing fresh tears from me.

  Remi held me close and whispered in my ear. "You don't have to tell me, but I'm here, Cat. I'm always here."

  For an hour or so, we sat, the three of us, in comparative silence, comfortable in each other's presence. The strangest family that could be conceived, but the only family I had ever wanted. Eventually, I made an excuse about my flight leaving and Remi and I walked out together.

  "Thanks for coming to see her while I'm away."

  "Of course I come. Mostly during the day."

  "Well, I'm glad you were here tonight."

  "I wish you could tell me what was bothering you.”

  I nodded sadly. “I wish I could, too."

  "You really can’t?” he pressed, his brows knitting with concern.

/>   "Not this time."

  "I might be able to help."

  "You have helped, Remi, more than you can know.”

  We hugged it out, and a short while later, I was heading out the way I’d come.

  That night could have crushed me. That whole damn day could have crushed me. I had lost the men I was starting to love, I had been betrayed by those I cared about, I had inadvertently betrayed my mom through my ignorant intimacy with her worst enemies, I had been stabbed and I had been unable to share any of it with my beloved brother. And yet, somehow, that hour spent with Remi and my mom had galvanized me. And I was pretty sure someone was trying to kill me because they didn't want me to save the human race.

  Well, fuck them.

  Their attempts just meant that I was getting to them, and I was now more intent on completing the tasks than ever.

  Saving the human race is an oddly abstract thing - it's hard to care about “the human race”. But put a couple of faces to that race and everything changes. I was going to save mankind because I was going to save my family. And I was going to save mankind as a massive “screw you” to whichever pathetic excuse for a god was trying to stop me. Call yourself a god? You can't kill one girl. And I was going to save mankind because it would allow me to ascend Olympus one more time and tell those gods what I thought of them. Particularly one. I had been quietly grateful that Dolos had not been there on my first visit, well, next time, he had better be there, because I had some things to say to him. I didn't know how or by what means, but I was going to find a way to hurt him like he hurt me. I was going to make the god of tricksters wish he had never been born - or however it works with gods.

  The first step to all that was the six tasks of Zeus. Admittedly, that was likely to be more difficult – or, at least, more dangerous - without the guys to help me, but I had done most of the work and all of the thinking on the first two. How hard could it be?

  Then it occurred to me that it would, in fact, be very hard, because I didn't have one essential ingredient. In my haste to get out of the apartment, I had left the damn scroll behind. I didn't even know what the next task was.

  Son of a bitch.

  Chapter 3

  Having sworn that I was never going to see the guys again, the last place I wanted to be in the wee hours was in the elevator, shooting up towards the top of the tower block in which my father lived. The red-suited attendant smiled at me pleasantly.

  "Late night?"

  "End of a long day." It was now four in the morning and I hadn't been to bed yet. On the other hand, I'd spent eleven hours of the day in a hospital bed, so that presumably counted as sleep.

  The thought made me touch my side where I could still feel the line of stitches beneath my clothes. I had felt the occasional twinge when I had been in with my mom, when Remi had hugged me and squeezed too hard, but other than that, I hadn’t even noticed the injury that had almost killed me less than twenty-four hours earlier. They might not be gods but, clearly, the guys had used their magic on me while I was unconscious and it was some pretty good shit.

  Once I got upstairs, I made my way along the plush corridor to the door. Then, I stooped to my knees, reached into my pocket and got out a roll of cloth in which I kept my lock pick tools.

  Picking locks is one of those skills that is useful for a grifter, or, indeed, any career criminal to have, even if you have no intention of “robbing” anyone, per se. Personally, I never go anywhere without them; you never know what's going to happen. Cracking a card lock is a little tougher than the old-fashioned sort - and lacks the romance, I feel - but it's a very useful skill to have, particularly around hotels.

  There was a risk, of course, that there might be a burglar alarm on the door, but then again; why? You had to be an ambitious and confident burglar to target the apartment on the top floor of a block this size, and you'd have to be very lucky to get this far. An apartment as inaccessible as this one was likely to be pretty light on security.

  The lock clicked open and I held my breath for a few moments, waiting for alarms or flashing lights or something. Of course, if there was an alarm then it was probably silent so I would just have to chance it and trust to my own luck. Gently, I pushed the door open and peered in. Would the guys be asleep? Would they even be in? They might be out searching for me. Perhaps I should have asked the attendant in the elevator but it was too late now.

  The vast lounge room spilled out before me, silent in the night and lit by the moonlight that came in through the vast windowed wall. There was not a sound to be heard but a look to my right told me that the guys were probably in residence as their shoes were scattered carelessly on the floor. Well, I wasn't planning to stop for long.

  Truth be told, if I had woken them up and asked for the scroll, then they would probably have given it to me. I wasn't sure exactly what power I had over them, but being Dolos's daughter did seem to make me the boss on some level. They were happy to tell me what to do but powerless if I said “no”. It wasn't a fear of not being able to get the scroll that had driven me to breaking and entering, it was a fear of seeing them. I didn't want to think about them or what they had done. I didn't want to think about what I had done with them before I found out the truth. Above all, I didn't want to be tested. My loyalty was to my mom, but that loyalty could get scrambled when I was around the guys.

  Into the room I crept, closing the door behind me, careful not to make a sound. On tiptoes I padded across the floor to the coffee table where I had left the scroll. It was still there, though it looked like it had moved.

  Had the guys been reading ahead?

  It didn't matter, I picked up the scroll, shoved it into my coat pocket, and turned back towards the door.

  The lights came on and I started around to see the three guys standing there, staring at me. However much I hated myself for doing it, my first reaction was to take a good long look at them. Alexei wore jogging pants, Christoph pajama bottoms and Nico just a pair of tight shorts that I forced myself not to stare at too closely. None of them wore anything over their torsos and I could not quite stop my eyes from roaming briefly over the landscape of hard male flesh on display.

  "Silent alarm?" I asked.

  Alexei shrugged, his muscles moving enticingly beneath his skin. "Of sorts. Magic. Nothing you could have done about it."

  "Hardly seems fair," I muttered.

  "Perhaps not."

  "How does it work?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.

  Alexei nodded to the ornately framed picture of my father, above the mantelpiece, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as it waved to me.

  "There're a few pictures about the place that can do it," said Alexei. "And they can talk to each other. There's one in each of our rooms, so if someone breaks in, the pictures yell at us until we wake up."

  "Mine's a picture of a cow," confided Nico. "It has a Spanish accent, for some reason."

  "Dolos got the idea after reading Harry Potter," Christoph added.

  "My father - the ancient Greek god of trickery and deceit - reads Harry Potter?"

  "Big fan."

  As always, it was the normal stuff that ended up seeming the most surreal.

  "Well, it was deeply unpleasant seeing you all, but I'm afraid I have to leave."

  I strode towards the door with a fake, tight smile. Admiring them was no betrayal of my promise to my mom, but stopping any longer was out of the question.

  "Please don't leave." Alexei held out a hand. "At least give us a chance to explain."

  "Explain?!" I don't think I knew how much I had been holding my temper in check, until then. "You destroyed my mother's mind. You robbed her of her life. You cost me a mother and a childhood. And you want to explain? You want me to sit here and listen while you explain? What the hell do you think you can say that would justify that?"

  Part of me wanted a good answer. Part of me wanted Alexei to be able to explain it all so well that, at the end, I would just say; “Well, that makes sense. I fo
rgive you.” I wanted to like them without feeling guilty. I wanted to go back to how things had been before I found out what they had done. I wanted to be happy with these guys. I wanted not to feel like the worst daughter in the world for thinking all that.

  Not that it mattered, because one look at the guys told me that Alexei wasn't about to say anything of the sort. They all looked like I felt, red-eyed, pale-faced, sick and tired.

  Alexei shook his head. "I can't justify it. What we did to your mom is unforgivable."

  "We didn't have a choice," ventured Nico.

  "You always have a choice," I snapped back. But was it true? How did it work with the minions of gods?

  "Quiet, Nico," Alexei admonished him, but gently. "We're not trying to make excuses or pass the buck. What happened is on us and we're not asking for forgiveness."

  "You're not going to get it."

  “Please, Cat. Don't leave." Christoph didn't say much but what he said was always to the point.

  "Give me one good reason."

  "You're in danger."

  That was hard to deny but I wasn't that easy. "And I hope you all feel crappy about putting me in a position where I have to face it alone."

  "You said you'd let me explain," said Alexei.

  "No, I didn't."

  "Will you? I can tell you what happened," said Alexei. "The truth."

  "And you think that will convince me to stay?"

  He shook his head. "No. But you've been lied to all your life and you deserve to know."

  If I was pulling a grift, that is exactly what I would say to manipulate a person. But I'm pretty good at spotting when people are playing me, and I wasn't getting that feeling now. Although these guys were the minions of, basically, the god of grifters, they themselves were as guileless as newborn babies. They weren't good liars. However much it sounded like manipulation, Alexei was sincere.