Apathy's Hero: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Truth's Harem Book 3) Page 5

  Cerberus wouldn’t have been certain, but when she moved, Actaeon did as well, focusing on Artemis.

  “He’s in pain,” Lexi said, “but she doesn’t care. I’m not sure what she wants, but it’s not for him to heal. This is why I don’t deal with the gods.”

  Artemis sighed. “I don’t know how many more times or ways I can say this, your suffering hurts me too, so I’m going to try again. You can’t save the world. You want to. It’s admirable, but it will destroy you, and you won’t be the only casualty.”

  “But—”

  “Remember Las Vegas?” Artemis cut him off.

  Lexi’s expression soured, and she pushed aside the last few bites of her sandwich. “I’m done.” She stood and walked out the door, without waiting for Cerberus.

  He jogged to catch up with her, passing two-dimensional blurs until he was by her side again. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Dad told me once that there was an old saying. A stupid marketing motto. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. They should have thought that one through a little better, because it’s utter bullshit.”

  “The battle. I know. Did you lose someone?”

  She glared at him. “You know I did. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Great. What kind of minefields would they navigate while he was here, and how was he supposed to get out?

  How did he get here in the first place? Were he and Lexi both stuck here? Did Hades send them here? Have one of his accomplices do it for him?

  Was Cerberus capable of having any conversations with her that extended beyond what she knew at this point in her life?

  There were too many questions.

  Lexi stumbled, and Cerberus wrapped an arm around her waist out of instinct.

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t pull away. “Tripped over an invisible crack in the sidewalk. Clumsy me.”

  He’d never seen Lexi as clumsy, but everyone had their moments.

  A crack of thunder split the air, and they both jumped. She let out a nervous giggle.

  Lightning lit up the sky.

  That wasn’t right. Thunder didn’t come first.

  Fear spread through Lexi. Heavy and tangible, it clung to Cerberus’ skin and coated his tongue.

  “It’s Zeus.” Her voice cracked.

  Zeus didn’t make entrances like this unless he wanted everyone to know he was in town. New Orleans was Poseidon’s—or it had been—and the brothers didn’t infringe on each other’s territory.

  Lexi pulled from Cerberus’ grip and ran toward the nearest alley, and he followed without hesitation.

  “He’s not supposed to be here.” She fidgeted with the cuffs of her jacket. She pressed her back to the brick, as if she wanted to fade into the dingy-blue and cracked yellow paint. “Why is he here? Is he looking for you?”

  “No. I can guarantee that.” Why was Zeus here? “We have to get you someplace safe.”

  “No shit, Shifter-Boy. Any bright ideas?” Despite the sarcasm, her voice wavered, and she cast her gaze around the alley every few seconds, not focusing on anything for long.

  He knew, because he only saw things move if she paid attention to them. “No.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Lexi. Come on.”

  Cerberus didn’t recognize the voice. A girl about Lexi’s age stood next to them, tugging on Lexi’s arm.

  Where did she come from?

  She looked directly at Cerberus. “You too. Let’s go.” She led them further into the alley and through an oversized metal door.

  Was Cerberus playing the part of someone else in this memory? The girl was familiar, but he couldn’t place her, and with Lexi’s unique interpretation of auras and lack of a sense of smell, identifying her was more difficult.

  “Where’d you come from?” Lexi asked in a stage whisper as they passed through an industrial-grade plastic curtain into a room filled with conveyer belts.

  “I’ve been looking for you since Zeus showed up. I was worried about you,” the girl said.

  Cerberus took in the room while they walked. To his right, hung a row of uniforms that swayed each time an invisible breeze blew through.

  Lexi touched his arm, drawing his attention. “Cerberus, this is Clio. She’s my best friend.”

  “Hey.” Clio wiggled her fingers in a wave. “The Cerberus? Wow.”

  Was she being sarcastic?

  Lexi slapped her arm. “Be nice. So far, he’s not a bad guy. And he’s not Zeus, so there’s that.”

  “Clio, like the muse?” Cerberus asked. A lot of parents gave their hero children classic names, but this was a very specific name.

  The girl shrugged. “My mom thought I was inspirational.”

  “Where are we?” Lexi hovered her hand above a conveyer belt.

  Cerberus hadn’t noticed before, but the room had a faint blue glow, as though ethereal dust had settled over everything.

  “It’s an early Enlightenment facility. They wanted to blend electronics with god magic, but they couldn’t figure it out. The residual energy should keep us from standing out to Zeus while he's in town.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Lexi might be fine with the explanation, but Cerberus wasn’t. “Why is that a concern today, but not most days?” He asked.

  Clio narrowed her gaze. “Because Zeus is in town.”

  Zeus could be in any town at any given time. Then again, he rarely made it a point to announce his arrival.

  Their settings changed. Instead of being in the warehouse, they stood in the middle of a crowd, in an amphitheater. Several large screens surrounded the stage, displaying an empty podium.

  “We should move to the edge of the crowd.” Cerberus didn’t like being confined this way.

  Lexi grabbed his hand. “We’ll be fine.”

  “No one would be king after him.” The voice in his head was hers but not, and overlapped her spoken words.

  He didn’t agree with her assessment that they’d be okay. “Do it to make me feel better.” He pulled her toward the entrance.

  “Let’s stay.” Clio stepped into their path.

  He moved around her and guided Lexi through the crowds. They walked for a couple of minutes but didn’t get any closer to the edge of the field.

  “I really feel we should stay,” Clio said.

  How did she keep up with them so easily? He growled. He was tempted to shift. The alert bells were screaming fifty shades of red in his skull. He reached for his hellhound form but couldn’t grasp it.

  Lexi squeezed his hand. “We’re only sticking around to hear the highlights. The instant he’s covered the high-level stuff, we’ll be gone.”

  “Right.” Cerberus looked at the people around them, while Lexi focused on the stage. A sea of faces, all talking and jostling each other. And the smells were so potent. Twenty kinds of beer and weed and mustard. Sweat mingled with sex mixed with vomit.

  It was enough to make his stomach churn.

  He expected to sit through an hour or two of live music and choreography. Poseidon liked his stage shows.

  Poseidon’s face filled the screens at the front of the stadium. “It’s always great to have such a huge turnout.” His voice boomed over the auditorium without the use of a microphone or speakers. “I think you’re going to like what we have to say today. And without further fanfare, give a warm welcome to everyone’s king—Zeus.”

  A great thing about living a memory, apparently—fast forwarding to the important bits.

  Zeus took the stage to a chorus of cheers.

  Also a little odd. These events drew mostly believers, but there was always a pocket of people who were there to heckle, regardless of the consequences. Sometimes they just had a death wish, other times they’d decided showing the world their disdain in a public forum was the most important stand they could take.

  Cerberus expected those people to stand out more distinctly to Lexi, rather than vanishing completely.

  “We’re rolling out a new progr
am around the world.” Zeus was already diving into the meat of the speech. “And I’m pleased that we can make this wonderful city the home of our announcement. This is a program that’s been in the making since the start of The Enlightenment. Another way we give back to you, as a thank you, for everything you’ve done for us.”

  Standard rhetoric. Cerberus wanted to fast-forward through this part, too.

  “This new program will make sure everyone is taken care of.”

  Cerberus actually might be sick. He remembered this event now. He hadn’t cared for watching it on TV the first time around. Living the in-person version wasn’t any better.

  “Everyone who’s part of the system will be provided for. Food, work, education, entertainment—all of it covered, regardless of your status. But in order to do this, we need everyone registered,” Zeus said. “We’re at ninety-percent today, but we’d like to be at one-hundred.”

  According to people Cerberus knew on the inside, they were actually closer to about seventy-five percent. The thing about registration was it made it difficult to track those people who didn’t register. Lexi, for instance.

  Zeus continued. “If you have friends, neighbors, or colleagues who are heroes, especially those not as gifted as the heroes who help us keep you safe, please urge them to register.”

  Because a hero who wasn’t on the records was one of the biggest dangers there were to the gods. Cerberus glanced at Lexi, who watched the news with a scowl.

  “Great. All I have to do is tell them who I am, and I’ll never go hungry again.” She said sarcastically as she turned from the stage.

  “You wouldn’t be who you are if you’d been smothered by the system. Look at that kid Hermes and Eros had. He’s a tool.” Clio spoke up before Cerberus could. She looped her arm through Lexi’s, and the girls wove their way through the crowds.

  Cerberus followed them to the exit. He was glad to be leaving. He remembered the propaganda around this campaign. The See Someone, Say Something and It’s Only a Problem if You’re Hiding.

  Lexi was hiding arguably the biggest secret of any of them—being Hades’ daughter.

  They were outside, back on the city streets again. Zeus, Poseidon, and Artemis strolled along the sidewalk. Gargoyles flew overhead.

  “How strong are you?” Lexi asked.

  Cerberus was unsure how much information to give her. In real life, he could take on two or three of those gargoyles without a problem. In here? There was no telling.

  “He’s pretty strong,” Clio said. “There’s a lot of power in a creature like that.” Something lined her voice, but he couldn’t identify it.

  Cerberus realized what they were looking for. “I’m not strong enough to kill Poseidon.”

  “Even if I give you a gargoyle claw?” Lexi reached for her backpack.

  “You still carry that with you?” he asked.

  “It’s a reminder.” The duh was implied in Clio’s tone.

  Cerberus pushed Lexi’s hand down, and her bag swung back on her shoulder. “It’s not a weapon,” he said. “It’s a sacrificial blade, meant for an incapacitated target.”

  The pain that flashed over Lexi’s face gnawed at him.

  “Insensitive much?” Clio pulled Lexi closer. “We don’t need him. Between the two of us, we can accomplish anything. Look. They’re heading inside.” She pointed to the restaurant the gods had entered. “Their beasts are on the roof. They can’t fit in there. You can see through that stupid shield they put up. In, knife in the back, and out before anyone realizes what’s going on.”

  Lexi nodded and grabbed the claw from her backpack. “All right.”

  “Whoa.” Cerberus yanked her to his side. “You can’t kill Poseidon. Are you going to take all three of them out?”

  “The other two didn’t kill her dad,” Clio said.

  Concern and confusion mingled inside Cerberus. Something about this wasn’t right. Lexi—his Lexi—was smart about how she moved in this world. She missed her stepdad, but had her grief driven her this far?

  He didn’t know everything about her past, but this didn’t make sense.

  The three gods were shown to outdoor seating, in a table away from everyone else, but appropriately on display for the world.

  He wrapped an arm more tightly around Lexi’s waist and pulled her behind the corner. “Just listen to them for now.” He didn’t know what he was doing. If she’d tried to assassinate a god, he couldn’t stop her, and she obviously hadn’t succeeded.

  But that wouldn’t keep him from trying. He refused to be a passive observer when her life was on the line.

  The gods were served. It was a habit of several of them to walk among the people like this. They claimed it was to let everyone see they weren’t above humanity. It was exactly the opposite—they did it to prove they were untouchable, even surrounded by the masses.

  At the beginning of The Enlightenment, people threw bottles and rocks, and even shot at the gods on a regular basis. None had any effect.

  “You read comics, right?” Clio was looking at Cerberus. “Registration is always bad.”

  Odd assumption to make, that he’d be familiar with something decades old that had been phased out when the gods returned. He wanted to argue this wasn’t X-men, but there were enough parallels. And she was right. Altruism that required turning in one’s neighbors and created second-class citizens wasn’t actual altruism.

  “Forget him,” Clio tugged Lexi’s arm. “No one is around them. The gargoyles are on the roof, and this is a narrow space. We can be in and vanish and leave before anyone sees us.”

  Except Lexi hadn’t known how to make herself invisible back then. And he doubted she’d told many people, even if she could.

  Lexi nodded.

  He grabbed her wrist and held tight.

  The hateful glare she fixed on him seared through his veins, but he refused to let go.

  Clio rested a hand on Cerberus’ cheek, and he growled at the jolt of pain. What the fuck?

  He wasn’t letting Lexi do this.

  “It won’t be a problem,” Artemis’ voice carried distinctly over the crowd. “I’ve taken care of things on my end.”

  This wasn’t right. Artemis abhorred the events of The Enlightenment. Especially the selective death and discrimination. He only had a piece of dialog, though. He couldn’t draw a conclusion from it. It also wouldn’t distract Cerberus from his primary objective of detaining Lexi.

  “I wish you’d get rid of him,” Zeus said.

  Artemis pursed her lips. “Unlike the rest of you, I don’t have hordes of them. He’s still mine. I’m telling you he won’t get in the way, and that should be good enough for you.”

  “I’ve got things covered on my end, as well. The Death girl is grief stricken and terrified. She has no parents to pursue in the underworld. Of the others on my list, one is institutionalized, three work for me and have sworn loyalty, and seven are dead.”

  They were talking about Actaeon, Lexi, and other heroes. Cerberus knew conversations like this happened, but experiencing one was a different story.

  “Now.” Clio yanked, and Lexi broke free. The girls vanished before Cerberus could grab her again.

  “Lexi, don’t,” he shouted.

  Zeus looked directly at him, and Cerberus’ blood turned to ice. “There you are.” Zeus’ smile was terrifying.

  Poseidon vanished.

  Lexi and Clio reappeared, within arm’s reach of the gods. Lexi froze, gargoyle claw clutched in her hand and raised to head-height.

  Cerberus ran toward them at full speed.

  Artemis held a blade. Where did that come from? She glanced at Cerberus, then sliced Clio’s throat.

  Blood, dark red and thick, spilled over everyone. More than there should be.

  Lexi’s scream was of fear and grief, and shook the world.

  Before Cerberus reached her, the gods and Clio disappeared.

  Lexi went limp, and he caught her before she hit the ground.

>   “Lexi?” he asked. What did he just witness?

  No one around them was moving. Then there was no one around them. The city blurred at the edges. The skyline grew closer, as their surroundings licked away into a void of blue sky.

  “Lexi.” Cerberus wasn’t prepared to find out if this disappearing scenery would make his situation better or worse. “Wake up, please. I need you here.” He might not survive if she didn’t come back.

  Worse, he didn’t know if she would survive.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Icarus studied the device on his nightstand. It was a lot smaller than the ley line portal in the other room. He didn’t need to stand on it, though. He would connect to the device, and with a little skill and a lot of luck, follow it back to Lexi’s mind.

  A lot of luck.

  “We agree this isn’t going to hurt her?” He didn’t know why he was asking. The design was his. He didn’t have the time he wanted, to think it through. If he had Lexi’s help... He shouldn’t be so reliant on her already, but she made things clearer. She helped him see answers that were previously hidden.

  Conner leaned against the doorframe, doubt splashed across his face. “It’s plugged directly into her lifeline. I’m not guaranteeing anything. Especially since there’s no telling what condition she’s in.”

  Icarus was hoping for more reassurance, but he didn’t expect it. “We know she’s breathing. Aphrodite and Hermes say she’s not hurt.”

  “What term did they use? Fractured? That doesn’t sound healthy. Psychological breaks are ugly things. Do you want me to define fracture for you?”

  “No.” Icarus wanted a guarantee this would work. He wouldn’t get one from someone else, though. He glanced over the titanium box one more time. It glowed with traces of his power, mingled with Conner’s. The infusion linked the device to an individual’s lifeline and made it possible for Icarus to see what Conner did.

  There was nothing else to check. “I’m going in,” Icarus forced confidence through his veins. “Yank the cord if either one of us doesn’t look good.”

  There was no cord, but Conner could take away his contribution and shut the contraption down.