Apathy's Hero: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Truth's Harem Book 3) Read online

  Apathy’s Hero

  Truth’s Harem Book 3

  Allyson Lindt

  This book is a work of fiction.

  While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Allyson Lindt

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Acelette Press

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Apathy's Hero (Truth's Harem, #3)

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  THE END

  CLARITY’S HAREM | (A Truth’s Harem Spin-off Series) | Sneak Peek

  Also By Allyson Lindt

  About the Author

  For my eternal dragon

  CHAPTER ONE

  Actaeon didn’t wake up with headaches often. After three thousand years, he could count the occurrences on one hand. All of them had happened after huge fights—the kind that drained the spirit and body equally.

  Then again, the last thing he remembered was fighting for his life against Hades. Arguably the most powerful god in existence.

  That would explain the hammering in Actaeon’s skull. The rest of his situation didn’t make sense. All he smelled were the blood and sweat that coated his clothes and skin. The only sounds were his breathing and the steady thrum of his heart. Nothing stretched in every direction.

  And then there was a new scent. Mountain air tinged with exhaust.

  “Morning, Sleeping Beauty.” The voice came from behind him.

  Actaeon turned, taking in the vast stretches of nothingness. Hermes stood in the middle of the blank space—was there a middle? Actaeon’s head pounded at the attempt to grasp logic.

  Hermes was the only thing in here with any color. He wore skinny jeans, Converse, and a neon green fitted T-shirt with the letters FTW across it.

  “Where are we?” Actaeon asked. It didn’t look like the underworld. “Where’s Lexi? Icarus? Cerberus?”

  “Nowhere. Everywhere. Earth. I don’t know.”

  Everywhere? That sounded bad. “I have to get to her.” He stood and stumbled. Fuck, he hated feeling weak. Why hadn’t he recovered? It usually only took a few hours of rest for him to heal from even the gravest injury.

  “Hold on, hero. We need to talk. Then I’ll deliver you.”

  There were some things Actaeon rarely had patience for. The gods and their vague bullshit always made the top of the list. “Nope. I have to get back to Lexi. To Hades—”

  “Whom you killed.” Hermes’ short mohawk matched his shirt, but it had been decades since he wore his natural hair color.

  Actaeon backpedaled over the words. “Wait. Hades? I didn’t kill Hades.”

  “Probably not alone. And if you did, don’t let that shit get out. The last thing we need people knowing is that it only takes one of you to kill one of us.”

  He hadn’t been alone. He was fighting side-by-side with Cerberus. Lexi was there. She did something. He remembered a siren’s scream. Cassandra’s pain.

  He had to get to Lexi.

  This time he managed to stand and started walking. “Which way is out?”

  “No place you’re going to find on foot. Traveling that way is only going to make you more exhausted, and you need a little time to heal.” Hermes strolled next to him.

  “It’s better than sitting on my ass.”

  “Since when?”

  Irritation spiked through Actaeon, and he clenched his fists. His annoyance was directed as much at himself as Hermes. Actaeon spent far too many years not meddling in the business of the gods, for all the wrong reasons.

  “Are you going to answer my questions, instead of speaking in bullshit and riddles?” he asked. Right about now, it sure would be handy to have Lexi’s gift for seeing when people were lying.

  “I’m trying. If you’d chill the fuck out for about two minutes, I’d tell you everything I know about the situation. No cryptic twists. No holding back.” Hermes sounded sincere. Almost somber. This wasn't like him.

  Actaeon paused and faced the god again. “Why?”

  “Why not?” Hermes’ hair drooped, falling in straight curtains around his face, and the green wilted to something closer to the color of dead grass. “This is bad. That’s why.”

  Actaeon tried to shrug off the serious tone, but bad sent goosebumps racing over him.

  Hades recently took an interest in humanity, after being locked away for several decades. After being content for millennia to stay in the underworld. That interest meant killing millions, to grow his power—the dead dying in his name made him stronger—then resurrecting key figures, to spread the message of his greatness.

  If the current situation was bad compared to that, Actaeon was almost sorry he’d asked.

  Almost.

  He sat on the nothing. If he was sticking around, he might as well use the chance to recover. “I’m listening.”

  “Where to start?” Hermes sighed. He crouched, forearms resting on his knees. “There was a fight. Hades died. According to Icarus, you played a big part in that.”

  “So you’ve talked to Icarus?” That was promising. Relief trickled in. Not for an old friend, but carried on a more intimate emotion. A desire Actaeon didn’t have time to examine. He didn’t care to, either, after their last conversation.

  “I haven’t. Aphrodite has. And since you’re so concerned, she spoke with part of Lexi as well.”

  Fuck. He’d failed her. Failed them. “Part of? How’s that supposed to ease my concern?” Aphrodite’s involvement was the only bit that didn’t have Actaeon concerned. Hermes was married to Eros, Aphrodite’s son, and the family was close. For gods, they were almost well-adjusted. Still, how long had Actaeon been out, that the news had time to spread?

  “Shut up, and I’ll tell you.” Hermes’ shout rocked the nothingness.

  Now was probably a bad time to mention that the whole shout-and-shake-the-room thing the gods did stopped being terrifying about twenty-five-hundred years ago. “I’m listening.”

  “Apparently, Hades wasn’t just a god of death; he was every bit of the underworld. Nice of Zeus to let anyone know, right?”

  Actaeon wanted to be surprised. “Lovely.”

  “You killed Hades. His realm crumbled with him. It threw the non-dead out—you
, Lexi, Icarus, and I assume Cerberus—because it didn’t exist anymore. I found you. You’re more or less nowhere. Limbo? No one can find Cerberus. It should have thrown the dead free, too. But... something—someone—stopped it.”

  “Lexi.” Actaeon wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he had no doubt.

  “Yeah. Turns out Persephone was keeping a very old secret. She was born without an aura—without any visible power—so everyone assumed she was mortal. She figured out she was a goddess and hid it.”

  “Why?”

  Hermes shrugged. “Are you going to ask her?”

  Unlikely, since she’d been destroyed, her soul wiped from existence by a vessel of Hades. Actaeon didn’t want to dwell on the details of confrontation that killed her. If Persephone was a goddess, and Lexi wasn’t mortal... a god and a goddess didn’t have hero children. “So Lexi is a goddess?”

  “The new goddess of the underworld, as far as we can tell. What she thinks of as her body is with Icarus. The rest of her...”

  “Is where?” Actaeon wasn’t letting him cut things off now, when they were to the information he wanted.

  “Charon can explain it better than I can.”

  Actaeon should have guessed there was a catch. He stood and stretched. Muscles that should be healed by now protested. Why wasn’t he better? “So much for telling me everything I want to know.”

  “I’m taking you to the source. It’s more than you’d get from most of the gods.”

  Actaeon couldn’t argue that. He didn’t want to see Charon. He owned the ferryman a favor and had been promised he wouldn’t leave the underworld the next time they crossed paths.

  He’d deal with the problem when it presented itself. He needed to get back to Lexi.

  “Off we go,” Hermes said. The nothingness vanished, replaced by a river.

  Trees lined the shore, and a dock stood a few feet away. A heavy enough haze covered the water that the other side was hidden. Was there still an other side? Actaeon smelled trees and dirt and mist.

  This was Styx, and Charon ferried souls across it, to their afterlife.

  Hermes ensured the dead made it here in the first place.

  A boat rippled into view at the pier, and a cloaked figure stood at the bow. The oar clasped in his gnarled hand vanished into the water below. “Good.” Charon’s baritone rolled over the landscape. “I was hoping he’d find you.”

  “I’ll leave you two to it.” Hermes vanished.

  Actaeon’s headache was subsiding. “I’m not in the mood for theatrics.”

  “Fine. Take a guy’s fun away.” Charon pulled back his hood, revealing a nondescript, human-looking face.

  “Hermes said you could explain why he thinks Lexi is in pieces.”

  “You want something from me? If I remember right, you still owe me a favor from the last time we talked. And you don’t have anything new to offer in exchange for information.”

  It was tempting to punch a hole through the nearest tree. If Actaeon wasn’t impressed with the displays of power, Charon wouldn’t be either, so the poor tree would be the only thing to suffer.

  “But since you’re here, it seems like a good time for me to call in that favor,” Charon said.

  Moonlight with no source crackled over Actaeon’s skin. “This is exactly the opposite of a good time for that.” A growl rumbled from his chest. He’d been spending too much time around the hellhound.

  “You don’t have a choice.” Without magic to make his voice boom, Charon might as well be the guy talking too loud on his phone while he waited for his coffee. “You offered a favor. I’m calling it in.”

  The sooner Actaeon got this over with... “Name your favor and your terms.”

  “Find Alexandria. Help her.”

  Actaeon barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding me with this drawn-out, melodramatic bullshit? That’s what I’m trying to do. Tell me where she is, and I’ll go get her.”

  “No.”

  Actaeon was going to yank his hair out over this. And that tree was looking like a really tempting target. His fingertips twitched, begging for him to summon a weapon. Something, as an outlet for this frustration. “Why not?”

  “It’s not as simple as here’s a map. Go forth and find her. Even for you, hunter.” Charon stepped from the boat and onto the pier. His oar vanished, but his vessel stayed moored by an invisible line. Two wicker chairs materialized on the dock, looking too stark and ludicrous in this place. He sat in one and gestured to the other.

  Actaeon moved closer but remained standing.

  “I was there the day she was born,” Charon said. “If you’ve never seen a god come into creation, it’s literally miraculous. I was in the next room, but I felt her the moment she took her first breath. I knew she would become this. The details—the how and when—were a mystery, but there was no doubt in my mind she would replace her father.”

  This was a lot to process. Lexi wasn’t even half a century old. Other heroes and gods born during the enlightenment were still securing their place in the world. Tartarus, so was she. Actaeon sank into the empty chair. “How many people who aren’t her hold pieces of information about her fate?”

  “I can’t tell you. I don’t get out much.” Charon’s chuckle was weak. “I can feel her. Everywhere. Hades was obliterated, and the underworld started to crumble. She took his place before it all fell apart. I don’t think she knows how to handle it, though. Her body is with Icarus. I can’t tell you where her mind is. He can’t reach it. I believe her soul is down here, somewhere.”

  “That’s appropriately vague.” Actaeon was trying to be nonchalant, but his thoughts were racing.

  Charon gave him a thin smile. “This setting molds to the person who inhabits it. You know that. I suspect, wherever that part of her is, she’s created it to be hers. You know her. You have to find her and stay with her.”

  That hurt. “Do you think I’d do anything contrary to that?”

  “Becoming the underworld pushed Hades past the edge of sanity he teetered on. He was never the same afterward. Lexi doesn’t know what’s happening to her, and I can’t say what’s out there. This transition could be as simple as walking down to the corner market for a pack of smokes, or she could encounter trials that would make Heracles cower.”

  It didn’t matter. Actaeon would face it all for Lexi. “I’ll find her, regardless. Point me in a direction.”

  “I can take you across the river. No toll today.” Charon stood, and his robes swished around him. He returned to the boat.

  The offer made Actaeon wary. Charon never broke the toll rule. “Why are you doing this?” Actaeon asked. He stepped into the craft and took a seat.

  “For everyone else, Styx is a temporary layover. Heroes come to me when you need to prove your valor on the other side. People only stop by long enough to take the trip. For me, this is my home. It exists because the underworld exists. If she dies—or worse, goes insane—my world is impacted.” Charon pushed away from the shore, steering them into a dense expanse of fog and darkness.

  His answer was difficult to argue with.

  The shore behind them vanished, and there was no wind rushing around Actaeon. It was impossible to tell how fast they moved or how far away their destination was.

  “Where should I start my search?” Actaeon needed a direction.

  “I can’t say. Yes, can’t, not won’t. You love her. You must know her heart. Her mind. You have a better chance of finding her that almost anyone.”

  Cerberus would know exactly where to look. Icarus might have a better idea than Actaeon as well. Their last conversation—argument—echoed in Actaeon’s thoughts. The accusations that he wanted to be a martyr. That he only wanted Lexi around because she was a lost soul with a tortured life.

  All complete and utter shit.

  They reached the far shore more quickly than he expected, and he found himself standing on solid ground.

  “Good luck, hero. Don’t fuck this up,” Charon boomed and disap
peared back into the mist.

  “Thanks.” Actaeon sneered at the empty space where the ferryman had been.

  Where was he supposed to start?

  Lexi was on this side of the river, so that was one direction eliminated. He walked toward the spot he’d most recently seen everyone—Persephone’s old house.

  Large cracks ran along the ground, vanishing into half-crumbled buildings and partially scorched fields. It looked like things deteriorated a little before Lexi claimed this place.

  A sobbing woman appeared out of nowhere and bumped into him. “Help me. My home...” She gestured vaguely.

  Before he could thing of a response, she vanished. In the distance, he saw other forms blinking into sight before disappearing again. Displaced souls.

  Actaeon had no idea where to look. The landscape was eternally vast. What would Lexi call it? A Tardy? She liked those geek references. She, Cerberus, and even Icarus, swapped them without pause.

  Actaeon didn’t have a lot of use for pop culture. He knew other things about Lexi, though.

  She was strong.

  Tortured.

  Lost.

  A fantastic lay.

  Fuck. Icarus was right. Actaeon didn’t have any clue who she was. He’d meant to rectify that. They were supposed to go out. Have dinner a few times. Get to know each other. As soon as they dealt with Hades.

  Actaeon knew more about the layout of the underworld than he did about Lexi, and this place was all but unrecognizable in its current condition.

  But that didn’t mean Actaeon was attracted to her because her fate bordered on hopeless. He truly cared about her.

  Why?

  He didn’t need to explain it. He just did.

  Which didn’t him where to look for her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Are you all right?” Lexi’s voice seeped into Cerberus’ consciousness, and she brushed her fingers across his cheek.

  He felt her aura. Smelled the lilacs and ozone. He didn’t hear her in his thoughts, though. Was she keeping him out?

  He forced his eyes open, then squeezed them shut again until he could adjust to the sunlight. More of his surroundings trickled in—grass and hard-packed dirt digging into his side, the sound of laughter and cars, and the tang of blood on his tongue.