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

  She smiled. “It’s true.”

  Would she go to the same lengths for Actaeon?

  Would he bitch about her putting herself in danger if she did?

  Probably.

  That didn’t make him a martyr, as Icarus had accused; it meant Lexi’s safety was important to him.

  “Are you ready?” Morpheus asked.

  Not really, but they might never be. “Yes.”

  Lexi nodded. “Me too.”

  Morpheus took their hands. The scenery shimmered, then reappeared, unchanged.

  “Oh.” Lexi gasped.

  Actaeon followed her gaze. A door was behind them, carved from marble and engraved with ancient Greek characters.

  Seeing the gate again sent goosebumps racing over him. He’d spent several long, torturous months in that place, fighting past damned Titans and others who had the nerve to piss off Zeus.

  “Good luck,” Morpheus said. “And, Alexandra—”

  “It’s Lexi,” Actaeon corrected him without thought.

  The corner of her mouth tugged up. “Hmm?”

  “A moment?” Morpheus pulled her aside. He and Lexi moved far enough away to speak without Actaeon hearing.

  Lexi did a lot of nodding and shaking her head, and in the end, she gave Morpheus a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you.”

  “Come out of this all right,” Morpheus said. “You have the potential to be a good mistress, and I don’t know if there’s another spare.”

  Spare. Actaeon’s chest tightened at the phrasing. As Morpheus vanished, the door swung open.

  It didn’t look like as though it led anywhere, but Actaeon knew better. He held out his hand. “Shall we?”

  Lexi hesitated, then accepted the offer. Her skin was cool. The fit of her palm against his was perfect.

  They stepped through the gate, and the door vanished, taking their previous location with it.

  Tartarus was a gray landscape of rocks that stretched for an eternity. With fires and the scent of brimstone dotting the land, and screams punctuating the air, it resembled Dante’s Hell.

  “Which way?” Lexi asked.

  There was no telling, but so far, picking a random direction had worked in their favor. “That way.” He pointed.

  The cries of tortured voices didn’t get any easier to hear, the longer he and Lexi walked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a movement caught his attention. Before he could locate the source of the shadow, another flickered in his periphery.

  “This isn’t good, is it?” Lexi’s voice was tiny.

  He spun around, keeping her at his back. Several figures—dozens—circled them, closing in quickly.

  Women in tattered lace and torn gowns studied them. They were disheveled but whole. No torn skin or broken bones. Their faces were intact but marred with scowls.

  Actaeon remembered this legend. It stood out in his mind from all the others, because of the magnitude of the death involved. He should have told Lexi this story last night. The Daughters of Danaus—fifty sisters, all promised to be wed on the same day. All but one of them killed their new husbands on their wedding nights.

  “Hey. Howdy. Hi.” Lexi waved. “We’re not here to fuck with anyone. We’d just like to get in and out, and be on our way.

  The woman in front of them replied in a dialect Actaeon hadn’t heard since he was young. He repeated a more polite and formal version of Lexi’s greeting, in Ancient Greek.

  The woman in front introduced herself as Hypermnestra, the oldest sister, and smiled sweetly at Actaeon. “I know you, child of the moon. Do you serve the new mistress of the neighboring realm?”

  “Yes.” It was best not to get into the details like no, not really. This was politics. The tiny voice in his head insisted he’d give anyone the same answer.

  “What are they saying?” Lexi asked under her breath.

  “I’ll translate as soon as we’re done,” he said to her. He turned back to Hypermnestra “We’re looking for someone.”

  “Kerveros. The gatekeeper. We know.”

  Lexi tensed at the name. Cerberus rolled off the tongue differently, but it was obvious who they were talking about.

  Actaeon grabbed a polite reply. “If you would direct us to him, we’ll let you get back to—”

  “An eternity of suffering? Quite generous of you.” Hypermnestra’s reply was sarcastic.

  Actaeon kept his muscles loose and his body prepared for the looming fight. It would be nice if, this once, he and Lexi could have a polite conversation and then leave.

  Hypermnestra gazed at her sisters, then back at Actaeon and Lexi. “No. You can’t have the gatekeeper.”

  Actaeon was disappointed by the answer, but not surprised. Could he take all of them without too much effort? Unlikely. “Any particular reason?”

  “We’ve suffered for eons, deprived of love. Hades had no interest in alleviating that, despite his loathing for the brother that put us here. Because we cannot leave, we demand the new mistress of the neighboring realm to share in our futility. We’ll kill her mate and force her to join in our suffering.”

  “Why does it feel like someone walked over my grave?” Lexi hissed.

  Actaeon didn’t want to be the one to tell her it wasn’t her grave they were concerned with. He couldn’t go hand-to-hand with this many combatants. And he didn’t like being surrounded. The only chance for escape was to keep the sisters at range. He summoned his bow.

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to work for us.” He spoke in English, for Lexi’s benefit. The weapon should convey his meaning regardless of language.

  Hypermnestra snarled, and charged.

  He buried an arrow in her shoulder. The wound made her pause but didn’t stop her. “Stay out of their range and behind me as much as possible,” he said to Lexi.

  She stepped by his side instead, two swords appearing in her hands. “I can handle anyone who gets close.”

  “Since when?” This was a bad time for this conversation. He let his attention fall in as many places as he could at the same time, turning and firing at each target before moving to the next.

  Two of the sisters reached them and grabbed. He moved between them and Lexi. Their fingers dug into his skin, leaving welts that blistered and tore.

  “Let me help.” Lexi swung and sliced a nearby sister’s shoulder. The sister howled in agony but recovered in a blink.

  Actaeon wasn’t doing so well. There were too many limbs, and he only had one set of eyes. He stumbled over Lexi’s feet and lost precious seconds recovering. “I’ve got this.” He spoke through a clenched jaw. “You need to be as small a target as possible.

  It was partly because he needed to protect her, but as much that he didn’t have a rhythm with her. Fighting with Cerberus was bad enough. He couldn’t anticipate Lexi’s next moves.

  She put several feet between them, moving in an intricate sword dance that severed a sister’s limb, disemboweled another, and decapitated a third. They all healed before she stopped moving.

  Holy fuck. “Where did you learn that?” He fired off several more arrows, but two more sisters grabbed at him, leaving more smoldering wounds behind. Where they healed instantly, he wasn’t recovering. The energy drain of using the bow, combined with his injuries, wore on him.

  “The barber is a Japanese sword master. He trained me,” Lexi sliced through another target.

  He spun and shot at someone getting too close to Lexi, and fingers gouged his spine.

  “You’re the guy with the ranged weapon. You need to back up,” Lexi said.

  “You need to learn to read my moves better. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have.”

  Claws dug into his calf, and he stumbled. Another sister bit his other ankle, and he clenched his bow until his knuckles ached. He had to get back up. They needed to finish this fight.

  Lexi dropped to one knee next to him, but her focus was on the sisters. She crouched, pressing one fist into the ground.

  Pain l
icked at his senses, spiking over every inch of his body. He needed to get up.

  “I’m not a delicate flower,” she muttered. “Are you really the guy who can’t handle a woman as strong as him? You?”

  “No.” Why weren’t the sisters attacking? It was as if something held them at bay.

  “Then what’s your problem?” Lexi asked.

  He didn’t have the strength to vocalize that and finish this fight.

  “Great answer.” Sarcasm dripped from Lexi’s voice. The wind kicked up around them, sending debris flying and tearing at the sisters’ hair. None of it reached him or Lexi.

  The sisters vanished.

  Lexi jumped to her feet. “I did it.”

  “Did what? Where did they go?” Even talking hurt.

  “I sent them to the other side of Tartarus. It will be a while before they make their way back here.”

  “Awesome.” He wasn’t sure if he said the word or just thought it. Darkness licked at the edges of his vision. And then his world went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Icarus could put out the dragon’s fires all night, but that didn’t help them get rid of the creature.

  Conner was backed against the far wall, doing a combination of avoiding the tail and trying to grab anything in order to do damage. He wasn’t successful with either.

  Should they call someone? Did he know anyone who could fight semi-tangible beasts who weren’t supposed to exist?

  The dragon vanished in a shower of translucent glitter. The alarm stopped.

  “What the fuck?” Conner stared at the empty space between them.

  Icarus didn’t have any words. His workshop was a wreck. It would take weeks to put things right again. And none of that mattered until he could pull Lexi from whatever had her trapped.

  Conner looked as disheveled as Icarus felt. He raked his fingers through his hair. “What now?”

  “You tell me how you ignore prayers, and you let me stay in her head until she comes out with me.”

  “I wasn’t the one who pulled you out last time. What if that fucking alarm goes off again?”

  The only things in the house that couldn’t be replaced were in this room. So many ties to his past. He let his gaze trip along the shelves. It would hurt to lose it all, but he’d still have the memories.

  A glint caught his attention. He studied the silver chain with a cross that hung from a hook on his wall. A pang echoed in his chest. A past he thought he’d left behind, returned to engulf him. He looped the chain around his wrist three times, letting the cross dangle loose.

  Icarus glanced at Lexi’s prone form. Was he willing to give up all of this for her? This woman he’d just met? This fascinating creature whom he might or might not fall in love with?

  These were things. She was more valuable than all of them put together. Maybe Lexi and he wouldn’t work out, but he suspected they would. If they didn’t, it would be another memory to add to those he cherished. He’d stow it with those of Actaeon.

  “Well?” Conner asked.

  Icarus steeled himself. “If the alarm goes off again, and you can’t get rid of whatever caused it, get us out of here, please. Take us someplace safe, and don’t risk yourself in the process.”

  “You’re sure.”

  Icarus nodded.

  “All right. This is what you need to tell Zee about listening to—not ignoring—prayers.” Conner blew out a puff of breath. “It’s something most of us are born into. I don’t really put a lot of thought into it.”

  “Try?”

  The seconds that ticked away while Conner thought seemed to take an eternity. “Okay. Best I can come up with.”

  Icarus listened intently through the explanation, adding his own mental footnotes as needed. “Anything else I should know?” he asked when Conner was done.

  “Distract her from the voices. Give her anything to focus on besides them, and that will help her slide over them. I don’t understand how the two of you are sharing thoughts or dreams or whatever, but draw her into a story she doesn’t want to escape. Take her on an adventure, if you can talk her into it. Something that forces the prayers to be background noise.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Icarus lay down next to Lexi, arm pressed against hers, and took her hand. “Thank you. For everything.” He closed his eyes and dove back in.

  He found Lexi at a pub. She sat at a corner table, watching a large group sing loud songs and knock back shots and beers. A casket rested at the far end of the room.

  He took the spot next to her on the bench, facing the off-duty police officers—the photos on the casket gave it away.

  “I’ve never understood wakes.” She slid her hand under his. “I guess they make more sense now than in the past, with Hades’ bringing a couple of people back to life. But the dead are gone and moved on. They’re in a different place. Why drag them back here?”

  It was in interesting way to say hello. “You walked into the labyrinth, knowing it could kill you, to meet your dead mother.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?” He wasn’t accusing; he was genuinely interested.

  “First of all, she asked me to come, and second, I wasn’t trying to resurrect her. I wanted the opportunity to say hello.” Sadness spilled into her voice. “To tell her once what a difference she made in my life.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Maybe I do understand it. Wanting that one last chance to say those things they never got to say.”

  “Is that what these people are asking for?”

  Lexi shook her head. “Some of them, but not most. Several are happy it wasn’t them, but others wish it had been. They’re all mulling over what it would be like to be in his place, whether they know it or not. It’s so loud. It’s more deafening than their singing.”

  The grief pressed in, as it had before, gripping like a fist around Icarus’ lungs. He knew this sensation—the sadness that accompanied the end of a life, the snuffing out of all of that potential—but he’d learned to ignore it centuries ago.

  “That’s a person.” Lexi’s statement caught him off-guard. “Not a collection of what they could have been if they’d lived longer. They already were something. To every single officer here, the man in that casket was already defined.”

  Icarus shifted in the bench to face her. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. But you do have to stop defining people as what they could be, and start accepting they’ve also got some glorious features as they are.”

  He didn’t quite understand the words, but she believed them, so he tucked away the thought, to let his mind gnaw on it. “You can’t stay here.”

  “I won’t. Someone else will mourn or beg or plead louder, and I’ll be whisked away.”

  He cupped her cheek and forced her gaze to his. “You have to stop letting these voices lead you. You’re losing yourself in the individual.”

  “I have to do something. I’m a goddess now. I’m not going to be like the others. I have to help.”

  “You will.” He traced a thumb along her cheek. “I don’t want you to stop. But you’ll do more good if you learn how to control this.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I don’t suppose you came back with any brilliant advice on how to do that.”

  “I did.”

  Some of the lines in her forehead faded but didn’t vanish. “Fill me in. But if you tell me to ignore them, I’m not going to listen.”

  Was that irony or just appropriate? “According to Conner, you have to stop focusing on the single voices.” He wished he had a good analogy for this. “It’s like... when you’re standing in a rainstorm. If there are a couple of drops, you can feel each one. When it starts to pour, if you try to pick out the individual spatters, it’ll drive you nuts. You have to focus on the entire storm.”

  Their world changed, and they were sitting on hard pews in the back of a chapel. A man in a suit stood behind the podium at the front of the room, reading verse and praising Hades
for seeing his wife to the next world.

  “That sounds like ignoring,” Lexi said.

  “It’s not. You still feel the water, and part of you knows... Okay, this was a shitty analogy. Conner says if you can let it wash over you, your subconscious will learn to pick out those voices you can actually help. All of these people you’ve seen so far... Have you done anything for them?”

  “Acknowledged their grief.”

  “Do they know that?”

  Lexi wrapped her arms around herself. “I’d like to think they feel the comfort.”

  “Do you need to be here to offer comfort?”

  “I don’t know.” Frustration leaked into her voice. “I have to do something.”

  So she’d said. “I understand. I’m not telling you otherwise.” He tried to structure his thoughts. For the most part, he didn’t explain how things worked, he did what needed to be done. This was something he couldn’t even do for himself, and he had to put it to words. “As I understand it, if you’re letting all the prayers rush around you, instead of stumbling over the one-offs, there’s a part of you that will know how to help. To comfort. To soothe. To do those things you know are appropriate, without interfering or granting unreasonable requests.”

  “Just like that, huh?” She looked at him skeptically.

  “I don’t know.” Three of his least favorite words, regardless of the language. “You’d have to give it a try and find out for yourself.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Help me?”

  He didn’t have any idea what he could do, but since she was going into this almost as blindly as he was... “Of course. Always.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Don’t focus on the individual drops, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  She closed her eyes. Seconds ticked away, turning into minutes, as the man at the pulpit recited from the New Book of Ares.

  Non-denominational. Wonderful. Not.

  Lexi looked at Icarus again. Frustration radiated from her, mingling with the sadness that filled the room. “This is all I can feel. It’s the loudest.”

  “No, it’s not. Before this happened, you heard all of them at once.”