by Nicole Thorn
He swallowed. “I nearly doubted me.”
“Well that’s what you get.”
His forehead touched hers. “I love you.”
“I love you too, and I had complete faith in you.” She whispered, “You made us immortal.”
Jasmine rubbed her hands together, and then gave a goodbye to her hydra. “Okay, now comes the time where we all break apart and pretend like we don’t know we’re about to go have a ton of sex.”
Jasper closed his eyes, sighing. “You had to say it?”
“I did, but it’s fine. I’m gonna ride this high out as long as I can. Oh! I have to be careful with you now, don’t I, Zander?”
He made a fake nervous face. “Yeah actually.”
Verin put his arm around Juniper. “The house is a mess. I did some cleaning, but I wanted to get to you. When you see it, don’t be upset. I’ll get everything fixed.”
She waved her hand. “I don’t even care right now. Well . . . I sort of do. But . . . ”
And then she started running. Verin grinned, and went after her. All those things I’d seen in my head while I’d stared at their bodies, they came back. I saw those scenes, but they looked different now. They were no longer a death rattle, but this dim thing that wouldn’t happen. Now our seers would be endless, like our children.
“Time to go,” Jasmine declared, and then she leapt up onto Zander’s back. She smiled again. “Whoa, that was so fucking easy. This . . . is going to be amazing.”
Zander agreed. “Let us retire to the bedroom.”
“Let’s.”
Then it was just me and Jasper in the backyard. And Nemo. Jasper gave him a quick hello, letting him know we would be back later. Then he turned back to me.
“I can heart your heart,” he said.
I grinned. “Yeah, weird, huh?”
“Very. Do you get used to it?”
“I’ve never been human, so I wouldn’t know. The really strange thing is going to be accepting that you and the girls are the strongest people in this house. You’re . . . like . . . a fucking god, Jasper.”
He nodded, but I didn’t think he really believed it.
I smiled nervously at him. “You probably wanna sleep it off for a while . . . maybe get something to eat.”
He stepped closer to me, smiling also.
“Watch TV,” I suggested, going on. “Work in the studio . . . ”
Jasper’s hands went to my hips, and I jumped him. He didn’t react to what used to be an effort for him. I wasn’t a small girl, and while he could hold me before, it hadn’t been easy. Now, I couldn’t have felt like much to him. My arms went around his neck, and my legs around his middle. I kissed him, and it finally felt like this might be real.
He started walking with me, but I didn’t pay much attention. I heard his feet crunching on glass and forced myself not to think about what we had found there today. It was over, and everything had turned out well. Very well. If I focused on that, then I wouldn’t have to be afraid.
We ended up in our room, and the door closed before Jasper laid over me on our bed. I kicked off my shoes and scooted back so I could get flat.
I laughed when Jasper went to remove my sweater and tore it all to hell. He threw it aside, and went for my pants. It took him about three seconds to break the zipper, but to be fair, my clothes had been ruined with blood. It didn’t really matter that he tore them.
“We’ll have to work on that,” I said between kisses.
Then I started going for his clothes. They were even worse off than mine had been, so I wasn’t all that careful with his. A shredded pile ended up on the floor, but that could be taken care of later.
I ran my hands down Jasper’s chest, remembering what it felt like to think I wouldn’t ever do this again. I had been ready to shut down and never be anything again. I couldn’t imagine leaving my room or trying to function without him. My state of mind had always been fragile, but with that final crack, I couldn’t have gone on. I shuddered to think what would have happened if the gods turned us down. Wait, no, I knew what would have happened.
I would have shut down if we never got a meeting in the first place. But if we had gotten that meeting and they didn’t bring our people back . . . oh, earth wouldn’t have survived. Verin would have reacted a certain way, and my brother and I would have been more than happy to help him tear everything down. We would have gone until we died, and reunited with people who wouldn’t have been able to recognize us anymore.
Something cracked outside of the room, followed by Jasmine yelling, “Fuck! Don’t worry about that, guys!”
Jasper stilled on me, frowning. “This hearing thing is going to be a problem.”
I squinted, and then went for the nightstand. I had to turn over to reach it, and I got happy goosebumps when I felt Jasper’s lips on my back. He kissed me as I messed with the phone he’d left there. With a few presses, music played. It wouldn’t have drowned anything out completely, but it was the loudest thing in the room, so people would have had to strain to hear something they didn’t want to.
“Thank you!” several people yelled out.
I turned onto my back, wincing. “Why did you guys get a place with all the bedrooms on the same level?”
Jasper pressed his lips to my stomach before looking up at me. “Yeah, that’s not good.”
“You’ll eventually learn to block out a lot of the noise. Otherwise you’d go crazy.”
He laid over me again, but his smile came back. “I’ll worry about it later.”
My legs opened up, allowing him to settle between them. “Oh, do you have more pressing matters?”
“Maybe I do.”
I felt Jasper slide into me, and my fingers bit into his shoulders. I couldn’t hurt him anymore, and that made me feel a little better. Eventually, he would figure that out too. For now, I wanted to focus on this. What we had gotten back. All the rest could wait.
***
I woke up with Jasper shaking my shoulder. I sat up gasping and needed to rub my face with my hands. Blinking, I looked at him. “Again?”
He nodded. “Your heart was racing.”
We hadn’t left our room for two days at this point, and I had been naked for just as long. Jasper snuck out a couple times to get us food, and I listened for every one of his movements downstairs. While I knew he was a god now, I had Argus haunting my mind. Jasper always came back, and then I settled down.
Every time I fell asleep, Jasper had to wake me up. I only dreamed about that day when I found him in the studio. In that place we spent so much of our time. I dreamt about seeing him hanging there, and I couldn’t make it go away.
“I’m fine,” I promised.
“Hungry or anything?”
“Not right now.”
We wouldn’t be able to stay in there for much longer. The others even got up and did stuff. I heard Jasmine and Zander when they went to feed Nemo, and spend a little time with him. The poor baby was so upset, and he needed time with his mama. I even heard Verin get up without Juniper. Jasper told me that he’d cleaned up the house for Juniper. Verin didn’t want her to see all the blood. Zander helped too, because it hurt him to see the damage. I didn’t want to see it either.
“I don’t want to get dressed,” I told Jasper.
He smiled at me, though the betrayer had clothes on. “I don’t want you to either, but we’re running out of time.”
We were, so I made myself get up and shower. I put on a pair of shorts and one of my shirts. I would have picked a sweater of Jasper’s, but he didn’t have full control of his strength when we started getting snuggly, and I didn’t want him running out of clothes.
“Let’s go be people,” I said in a pouty voice.
Jasper smiled at me, and then we went downstairs. We found Juniper pacing in the living room, and Verin on his phone.
“Hephaestus texted me,” he said. “He’s going to try and come by in an hour and fix up some of the stuff I can’t get to. Then the ho
use will be perfect.”
“He texted you?” I asked.
Verin put his phone away. “I don’t know how he got my mobile number, but I didn’t ask. If you see Zander, tell him he needs to get food for payment.” As Jasper and I headed into the kitchen, I heard Verin say, “With all this cleaning, I still haven’t found my bloody drumsticks . . . ”
Juniper giggled.
Jasmine sat on the counter, and Zander stared at her, running his fingers up and down her arm. She was telling him about almost breaking the shower nozzle, but he didn’t look like he paid attention. I hoped he would come back soon.
“Hey,” Jasmine greeted us with cheer. “Haven’t seen you in a while, sis. You can walk?”
Zander sighed. “Why is this my life?”
I ignored the question from Jasmine, because I thought it was for the best. To be honest, Jasper and I got a little . . . passionate, I’d say. Thankfully, I healed up pretty quickly, but there had been a few seconds where I wouldn’t have been able to walk.
“We have to pick out a new bed,” Jasmine told me. “Did you know that god strength was real and alive? We broke our dresser too.”
Jasper and Zander were then on the same, sad boat where they knew too much about something that they didn’t want to know anything about. They didn’t look at each other.
“Hephaestus is coming to fix this,” I said, gesturing to the broken room. “Zander needs to cook up something for him later.”
As the others strolled into the room, Juniper said, “I think we have something a little more pressing. Like the fact that we have five more days to pick the new human seers.”
We’d found out that they kept their powers from before, but they needed the bloodline to go on. That meant picking out humans to carry it out. It would be a curse on them, choosing people to carry such a thing. Getting involved with the gods never did anything good for anyone, and we knew that better than most.
“I’m not too keen on helping the gods,” Zander said. “They can go fuck themselves.”
Jasmine put her hand on his chest. “I agree with you, but some of the gods were really helpful, and this would mess with them too. We have to get this done. I don’t want to know what happens if we disobey them.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “It might only get worse from here, and I would rather things run smoothly.”
“If that’s possible,” Jasper said.
Juniper sighed, leaning against Verin. “How do we pick these people? We have to find people to literally curse. It’s not fair.”
“No,” Verin agreed. “But since when are the gods fair?”
Never. I couldn’t even think about speaking with my mother again. I’d always known her preference for Persephone, but I thought that she at least loved me. She knew that our seers would die, and she didn’t tell us. She didn’t give us a chance, and I couldn’t forgive her for it. For as long as I lived, I would remember the choice she made. Every time she could have saved me, she didn’t.
Jasmine sat up a little straighter. “I for one, am very annoyed that I died. I didn’t even get to fight. I want to try and right that wrong as fast as I can.”
Verin pointed at her. “I’m with that one. I would like nothing more than to hunt Argus down and cut every single eye off of his body. That son of a bitch stole both of my people from my life, and I say he gets a little slow torture.”
Me and Zander were clearly in full agreement as we looked at each other. “I should get my sword,” Zander said.
Jasmine purred, but stopped him by taking his wrist. He jerked to a stop, looking surprised before he remembered she could do that now. “But we can’t go trolling the streets all weaponed up. We have to make sure we know where he is.”
“You have an idea?” Jasper asked his sister.
She smiled and hopped gracefully to her feet. “I do. Zander, write Hephaestus an IOU for when he comes by, because we’re gonna be out.”
“Out where?” he asked.
Jasmine cracked her knuckles. “I don’t know where the hell that bitch Argus is hiding out, but I know that Erebus has an idea. Those two are sort of working together, so all we have to do is find Erebus.”
Juniper’s eyes opened wider. “Oh, you want to just go and find him? Because it’s easy? What happens then? Because Argus already killed us once.”
I winced with Zander, and Jasmine said, “Yeah. He thinks that we’re dead right now. He has no idea that we’re gods. The only ones that do are those who were in the room, and Callie. We have a very small window before people start finding out, and I think we need to take this chance we have. We find Argus and get him when he’s not expecting it. And because I’m so nice, I’ll let your boyfriend get the second hit in.”
Verin narrowed his eyes.
I nodded at the goddess. “I agree with you. But Erebus is going to know what you are, and then our time is gone. We have to be careful with this.”
“I will be. We can go get Erebus, and then take care of all this pretty quick. It’ll be fun.”
Zander stopped her from leaving, pulling her to him by her hips. “And how are we going to lure him out, sweetheart?”
She smiled. “He likes chaos, so how about we give the fucker a little chaos?”
Everything about her tone terrified me, but I wasn’t in any position to stop her. Neither was Zander or Verin, not that any of us would have. I wanted Argus dead as much as anyone else in the room. That man took everything from us, and he didn’t care. He did it as revenge, and to keep us away. He thought he broke the rest of us, and I wanted him to see his mistake. I wanted to look into his many, many eyes, and I wanted to be there for the moment Argus figured out that what he did got him killed. He needed to suffer, and realize that it didn’t need to happen.
“What does that mean?” Juniper asked. “What do you have planned?”
“Nothing yet, but I’ll probably get some ideas. You all with me?”
No one protested her, and Zander started to write out the note for the god on his way to fix our home. I hoped that it would look normal when we got back, because I hated the instant reminder of what we’d failed to do. While I felt constant comfort and relief when I thought about how the seers were gods, I still wished I had been there to protect them. I looked at Zander, and I saw the same thing in his eyes. Regret that we failed at our jobs. It worked out this time, but it could have gone so much worse. I wished that our seers could have become immortal in a less devastating way. I wouldn’t ever forget the feeling of finding Jasper hanging.
His hand went to my back, and I heard him at my ear. “You okay?”
I nodded, lying. “Fine.”
Yes, I wanted Argus dead now. Painfully too, if we could manage it. Something that he would remember for the next billion years he rotted away in the underworld. I hoped that Hades would make sure he suffered a little extra for what he’d done.
We took two cars, and Juniper went with Verin in the other one. Zander drove with the instruction to bring us to the swap meet down at the park. It was going on all week, but we hadn’t bothered to go, because . . . well why would we? It was always packed with people, and I didn’t like bumping into people.
When we got there, I saw the dozens of tents set up in preparation for the rain that had come and gone today. It reminded me that Jasper and I were supposed to have a lunch date that we missed because of the whole murdering thing. Another reason I wanted to kill Argus. Everyone looked happy and calm, going about their days. They didn’t just lose someone they loved. They didn’t have to worry about angry gods and monsters coming for them.
“I’m nervous,” Zander admitted when he parked the car. “Is this going to require me Charming our way out of getting arrested? Again?”
Jasmine smiled at him. “You should learn to have more fun with life. Besides, I’m a god now, and no mortal prison could hold me.” She laughed like a crazy person, and I almost wished we had stayed home. But tasks needed to get done.
We all met u
p outside of the cars, and Jasmine stared at the humans in front of us with an eagerness that had Zander trying to pull her back. She broke the hold with ease, and turned to face us.
“So, all we have to do is cause enough trouble that we get Erebus to show up. What does he like?”
“Threatening people,” Jasper said flatly. I patted his butt for that one.
“Making people frantic,” Juniper said. “Freaking them the hell out. Why the hell can’t this guy be summoned like the rest of the people we deal with?”
“Not a god,” Verin reminded her. “But we can send people into a frenzy. It’s not all that hard. Maybe Kizzy would want to use her extra special powers to cause some damage.”
I worried about how I would feel morally after doing this. These people didn’t earn being afraid, but this was for the best. Argus would do damage that fucked with them all, so was this all that much to ask? They would be afraid for a few minutes and get to live in return. I still felt icky.
I sighed. “Let’s see what we can do.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
Darkness is Kind of an Ass
Jasper
KEZIA WIDENED HER stance and took in a deep breath. Her eyes darted around the flea market, looking for a target. I would’ve thought she’d choose the man with a stall full of trees, but instead, she picked a woman. The woman had surrounded herself with chairs. Dozens of them, and each chair looked different from the one next to it. One had bright, colorful fabric done in all sorts of patterns. Others looked so old fashioned that I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to purchase such a piece of furniture.
The ground underneath the woman began to shake. She looked down from under her canopy and frowned. “Did anyone else feel that?” she asked in a voice so high pitched that it actually hurt my new hearing.
Everything hurt me, now, actually. My ears could pick up every small sound. I could hear the plane’s engines from overhead, and the wind rushing through the leaves from a half a mile away. The sound of feet hitting concrete surrounded me in a staccato uproar. People whispered to each other and laughed. I could hear the sound of nails on phones, as people texted. It could’ve easily driven me insane if I didn’t have Kezia next to me.
