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

  “Voices?”

  “I don’t know much about that. She said there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of them. Whispering in her head. Screaming. Begging for help. Offering praise.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It does?” Between Icarus, Actaeon, and Cerberus, none of them could offer any solutions.

  Aphrodite looked up from Lexi. “They’re prayers. It sounds like the dead were seeking her even before Hades was destroyed.”

  “Prayers.” Icarus let the word fall flat between them. “That’s anti-climactic.”

  “Sorry to spoil the plot.” She stood.

  “What do we do? How do we get her and the others back?” He’d been focused on Lexi, but she’d be upset to be pieced back together, only to discover Actaeon and Cerberus hadn’t returned.

  Icarus might be a hint upset too. Especially if he lost Actaeon for good.

  He stashed the stray thought aside, with all the others like it from the centuries.

  “We find her,” Aphrodite said.

  She was right here. “That’s not as helpful as I hoped for.”

  “I wish I had better answers. I came here to fill you in and check on her. I don’t know what else to tell you. I doubt you can build a machine to fix this.”

  “I’m not qualified to do much else.” That lay at the root of his frustration. Icarus invented machines; he didn’t have any idea how to help the woman on his bed.

  If he could see... What? An idea hovered in the back of his head, out of reach. He frowned and grasped at it. “Wherever the rest of Lexi is, she’s probably connected to herself still?” Icarus asked.

  There weren’t just red threads that indicated who a person loved. Those were fleeting. There were also cords that tethered a person’s soul to their body. Immortals had different gifts. Most could see auras, no one but Lexi could see through illusions, and a handful could see that lifeline. If Icarus were one of them, he might be able to follow it to the other side.

  Aphrodite held her hands out, palms up. “I assume. But if the lifeline hooking body to soul is like the threads of love I see, it may currently be impossible to see where the line goes.”

  The lines went somewhere, though. A place Aphrodite couldn’t follow.

  Icarus didn’t have another lead. Who would be willing to help Hades’ brat of a daughter? Who didn’t have the hang-ups of most immortals? “I need to talk to Conner.” He was already reaching for his phone.

  Two great things about post-Enlightenment kids—they weren’t put off by the idea of magic plus tech, and they didn’t have the same prejudices as their parents.

  “That’s my cue to go.” Aphrodite stepped toward the door. “You don’t want me here when he’s around.”

  That didn’t make sense. Conner was her grandson. Eros and Hermes’ son. “He get tired of you playing glorified matchmaker with his life?” Icarus laughed.

  Aphrodite’s scowl spoke volumes. “Perhaps.” She held up her index and middle finger, and a piece of paper appeared between. “Skip the temple if you need me. This is faster.” She handed him the phone number, written in flowing script.

  “I will. Thank you.” He let his gratitude show. The situation was frustrating, but not a lot of gods would climb off their pedestals for something like this.

  He saw her to the front door. The gesture was as much decorum as her choosing to leave the property before vanishing was. It was rude to pop in and out of other people’s homes, rather than using the door.

  The gears in Icarus’ head were turning smoothly and with minimal squeaks. He had the portal he set on a ley line, which allowed heroes and mortals to travel through invisible gates without assistance from a god. Could he build something similar that followed Lexi’s ties to herself? To the others? He had no idea how to tap into that specific current, but he’d figured out more obscure solutions.

  He dialed Conner, who answered on the second ring. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Are you available for a little brainstorming?” Icarus asked.

  Conner was a tenured professor at a nearby university. Growing up around the gods didn’t wear on him as well as he’d implied to Lexi. He decided he preferred people and higher learning over sacrifices and empty prayers. He taught computer science and cyber security. “Always. When and where?”

  “My place. The sooner the better.” Icarus appreciated Conner’s willingness to jump in without details. Part of the fun was in the discovery.

  The knock on his basement door was lost in the sound of the proximity alarms blaring.

  The kids didn’t have any of the manners their parents did.

  Icarus snapped the sirens off and let Conner in.

  “You sure I’m not imposing?” Icarus tried to keep his tone light and teasing. “You didn’t have to drop anything?” Though he appreciated it.

  Conner shook his head. “I need something to occupy my mind. Hoping this is the solution.”

  “It’s a blast from the past. Have you talked to your family recently?”

  “Yeah. That’s kind of what I’d like to distract myself from. Not much was said, though.” He paused and sniffed the air. “Is that jasmine? My grandmother was here.”

  “She left. Didn’t want to piss you off. I’m going to assume you don’t know anything about what’s going on, but stop me if what I say gets repetitive.” Icarus led him toward the bedroom. “Really short version—Hades is dead, his daughter is taking his place, and she’s not coping well.”

  “His daughter? Not...” Conner paused in the doorway, mouth agape. “Zee.” He let out a long sigh. “This definitely fits my definition of distraction.”

  Icarus gave Conner a brief rundown of what he’d discussed with Aphrodite.

  “She pulled that fated mates shit with you, too?” Conner’s gaze never left Lexi.

  “Yeah.” Except Icarus was willing to accept there was something to it. “Who’d she pair you off with?”

  Conner laughed. “It doesn’t matter; it’s not Zee. She’s in a bad way, though. What do you need from me?”

  “Can you see the tether to her soul?”

  “Yeah. At least, this side of it.” Conner squinted as he stepped closer to the bed. “The rest of it is twisted, like an ethereal knot. I can’t tell where it goes.”

  Icarus allowed a sliver of hope to trickle in. “Can you point me toward it and help me connect to it, the way we did with the ley lines? I need to follow it, somehow.”

  “Yeah.” Conner knelt next to Lexi, his face pinched. “I missed you after we parted ways, Zee. But you’re lucky you didn’t go with me.” His voice was low. “I always hoped that, since you steered clear of our kind from the start, you got the better end of the deal. I guess not.”

  Icarus felt a little guilty, eavesdropping on the one-sided conversation. Lexi and Conner would probably be different people if they’d grown up together. There was no telling if that would have been better for them.

  Conner cleared his throat and stood. “Sorry. The nostalgia slapped me in the balls. Let’s get to work.”

  Lexi’s aura flared vibrant and dense, filling the room to the point where it was impossible to see through.

  Icarus struggled to draw breath through the weight of her energy.

  Then the blinding light vanished. Purple and pink twisted faintly around her body, flickering out of sight before dancing into view again. Lexi let out a light laugh but didn’t move.

  This was as creepy as it was concerning. The cocktail of emotion swirled through Icarus. Whatever was happening, it couldn’t be healthy. She’d deteriorated to this in just a few hours. “I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Actaeon followed a winding path of cobblestones. He had no idea where he was going. Experience told him answers never sat right on the trail. Instinct argued this was the best direction.

  He was wary when it came to his instinct. It had led him good places—back to Lexi in a bar, to buy her a chocolate martini she di
dn’t order.

  Other times, it fucked him over in a serious way—sending him after Heracles for killing Cassandra.

  Who did he need to offer a favor to, for this to be one of the good times?

  The air was still, and heavy clouds of dust kicked up by the quakes hung in the air. The faint scent of death clung to everything.

  To the uninitiated, that would be expected. The underworld took the shape of the people who occupied it, though, and those souls left the rotting corpses back on earth.

  He stepped over another crack, this one running several meters in both directions but fortunately only a few centimeters across.

  Shapes faded in and out around him. Unanchored souls, he assumed. The place was eerily devoid of any dead who’d settled in and called it home.

  A sharp breeze kicked up, shifting the dust and pelting him with dried leaves and twigs. He winced against the onslaught and pushed forward.

  A gust slammed into his chest, knocking him back several feet.

  He steeled himself and drew more energy, to stay stable. He was still weak from the fight with Hades, and that bothered him.

  Then, as if he’d stepped from one room into another, the air was clear and pleasant.

  An Old West town stretched in front of him. Not a historically accurate one, though. This was a single street, lined with about five buildings on each side. The facings were flat and wooden, like stage props or a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  The cobblestone path was gone, replaced with dirt packed so hard, it barely stirred as he strolled into town.

  There were no people on the street.

  Ghost town. Great. His bad pun both irritated and amused him.

  Music reached him. It spilled from the building with the big Saloon sign on top. The letters were carved in sturdy wood, but they looked as though they came from a digital display. Like what old calculators and clocks had.

  He stepped through a set of double swinging doors. Really? This was cliché meets all sorts of wrong. The music was a 2050’s synth pop remake of Hey, Jude, and it spilled from an upright piano in the corner.

  Being played by... a goblin?

  The building was filled with people. A man in a vest and bowler hat stood behind the bar running along the far wall, a mirror reflecting his back.

  “You made it.” Lexi’s happy squeal drew Actaeon’s attention. Her voice was the most glorious thing he’d heard all day.

  He turned, as she tossed her arms around her neck and buried her face against his shoulder.

  He squeezed her tight and inhaled her familiar scent. This wasn’t so bad. Trials. Pshaw.

  He let go and stepped back to take her in. She wore a peasant blouse, cinched in place by a bustier, and cut low enough to show off her cleavage. Her slacks were dark-brown suede, and her boots were knee-high, polished black leather.

  “You like it?” She gestured and spun. She looked like she’d taken her outfit from a video game character.

  “It’s not exactly period appropriate.” Just like the rest of the place. “It’s stunning, though. You look incredible. Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Worried about all of you. Where are the others?”

  She didn’t sound like someone suffering the psychological trauma of being torn into pieces as she became a plane of existence.

  “I don’t know. We were tossed to the four corners of the earth, more or less. I woke up alone.”

  A frown whispered across her face, before vanishing again. “That’s okay. I mean, it’s not—it sucks—but I had a feeling finding the three of you was part of the quest. That means, since I have you now, the first task is complete.”

  “The quest?”

  “That’s probably not what it actually is, but it’s the best term I could come up with. I’m starting to figure this out.” She grasped his hand and led him to a table at the back of the room. “I built this place myself. Do you like it?”

  This wasn’t the Lexi he knew. There were similarities—not just her appearance, but also the way she held herself, the way she spoke. This woman was more carefree, though. Lighter.

  “It’s different,” he said.

  “That’s what people say when something is ugly and they don’t want to be mean.” She didn’t sound upset.

  “I love it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  She grinned and dropped into a wooden chair. He took the one across from her. The table setup resembled the one in the bar where he’d bought her that drink. The wood grain was polished, with only a few rough spots against his arms.

  “Thank you. These people needed a place, and I wanted a tavern, because questing, right?” she said. “But I’ve never seen an old-school tavern, and the sketches in Dad’s books weren’t really the kind of thing I could build from, so I went with what I know.”

  “So when you say you made all of this...” He looked around. The details were mismatched, but the structure was sound overall. “You mean literally?”

  “It’s like what Icarus taught me, but it doesn’t disappear.”

  Actaeon tried to make sense of the words and ignore the pang that came with her casual mention of Icarus. It wasn’t jealousy. More, anger. Possibly the tiniest hint of longing. “What did he teach you?”

  “How to make illusions real.” The duh was implied in her tone. “So I’ve been thinking. The only reason we’ve been plopped in the middle of something like this must be to defeat a great beast.”

  He wasn’t sure he followed her logic. “Is the beast coming here? Is that why you built it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s a quest. We have to do it right. Go out there and find the monster. This place is for mood. And so everyone has somewhere to stay, even after we leave. I have a plus-one dagger of slaying, and I’m pretty sure I can cast magic missile, but I don’t know what version of the rule set we’re using, so I can’t say yet how many times per day I can cast.”

  “Lexi.” He covered her hand, and she focused on him. How to put this kindly? “You know this isn’t a game, right?”

  If she’d already stepped off the deep end of sanity, he didn’t know if he could pull her back from that.

  She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Spoil sport. Yes. I know we’re not playing a game. But we actually do have to go on a quest, and we might as well enjoy it while we’re out there. Sprinkle a little magic on top.”

  He wanted to argue that he’d had enough of a little magic sprinkled on his life, but her request wasn’t a taxing one. He gave her a tight smile. “We’ll try it your way.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Better. We have a long journey ahead of us, and you look a little beat up. We should rest before we head out. But there’s only one room left, so we have to share.”

  “How are there not more rooms?” He was missing a big part of where she was going with this, and was unsure how to ask.

  “Most of the people go home when they want. But Bob is the manager. That’s him behind the bar. He needs a place to sleep. Greg is in back, washing dishes. Jim”—she nodded at a table next to them—“is the house blackjack dealer. They all need beds.”

  “And is that a goblin on the piano?” Actaeon was getting distracted.

  Her smile grew. “Stair troll. I didn’t even know those were a thing, but she wandered in here and needed a place to stay. She’s good, isn’t she?”

  He’d never seen Lexi so carefree. And he wasn’t sure stair trolls existed. Was that the troll a creation of Lexi’s as well?

  “You could have made more rooms.” Why was he hung up on that, of all things? Maybe because he desperately needed something to cling to that he understood.

  “I could have. You were listening when I said we should enjoy ourselves?”

  That was innuendo he couldn’t argue with. He was lost in this narrative of hers, but he’d catch up. “I was. Show me this room.”

  She led him up the stairs—solid wood with no creaking or give—to a hallway that ran in a direction that should be imposs
ible in this building. Two doors were on each side. Her structure might be physically sound, but it didn’t appear to be physically possible.

  He should be appreciating the view, watching her ass in those trousers, as she showed him to the farthest doorway.

  They pushed inside, and he blinked several times, to make sure he saw correctly. The bed was king sized and covered with a stark-black comforter that didn’t have a speck of dirt on it, the furniture was stained as dark as possible without being black, and posters of dragons hung on the walls.

  “I like your room,” he said.

  She tugged him in, kicked the door shut behind him, and draped her arms around his neck again. Her body molded to his, singing to his memory and fantasy. “How are we going to keep ourselves occupied until tomorrow morning?” she purred.

  Fuck, she was tantalizing. He dipped his head and drew his nose up her neck, not making contact, but feeling the heat crackle between them. “I really should rest.”

  “That’s a euphemism, isn’t it?” She pressed into him.

  Was it? She felt good. She smelled incredible. Desire floated from her, calling to something primal inside him.

  “We need to make a plan.” That was a lot harder to say than he expected. “Figure out what we’re doing on this quest.”

  “Do we?”

  He kissed along her collarbone, down to the top of her breasts. This was ridiculous. He knew how to control himself. How was she undoing him like this? “We do.” He pressed his lips to her skin.

  “But that’s not us.” She shifted her weight, and her hip rubbed against his erection.

  He summoned a sliver of restraint, unclasped her hands, and put some distance between him and her. “What is us?”

  “We fight—each other or something else. We fuck. You save my ass. Rinse and repeat. We’re not currently fighting, though we’re closer than five minutes ago. I don’t need to be rescued. What’s left?”

  He rested his hands on her hips, keeping her at arm’s length, and guided her back to sit on the bed. He pulled up a chair, straddled it backward, and faced her. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it was the representation that mattered. “We talk, too.”