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

  “Yes.” Her smile was bright. Captivating. Innocent, but having seen too much. “You can’t touch it, though. You can try, but it won’t work.”

  “I don’t need to touch it. It’s incredible.” He adjusted on the mattress, so he could examine it from different angles.

  “What the fuck?” A woman’s voice startled him from behind.

  The blade vanished.

  Cerberus looked to see a young man and woman, about Lexi’s age, in the doorway.

  “What was that, and where did it go?” the guy asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re drunk. High. It was a hallucination. You didn’t see anything.” The words tumbled from Lexi’s mouth at high speed.

  The other girl was glowing. Why didn’t Cerberus see that before? Her aura was faint, which meant Lexi might not have noticed until now either.

  The girl took a step closer. “You’re one of us. Daughter of war, with a knife like that? Duplicity?”

  Lexi shook her head. “I’m no one’s daughter. I’m homeless and destitute.”

  “You’re a hero.” The girl sounded certain. “Holy shit. Your dad... The gargoyle claw...”

  Lexi crawled closer and knelt in front of her. “Please don’t tell. You can have all my food. My room. Please?”

  The guy stepped between them. “We’re not going to tell anyone. We don’t need one of those assholes coming down hard on us.”

  “You’re supposed to get her stuff, first.” The girl pushed him aside. “Before you make the promise.”

  He shook his head. “She’s a good roommate. I’m not risking someone else coming in and taking her place.” He looked at Lexi. “No worries. Your secret is safe with us.”

  “Thank you.” Lexi stood and backed up.

  The instant they were gone, she grabbed her backpack. “He was telling the truth,” she muttered. “She was lying. I have to go.”

  She shoved a handful of things into her backpack but didn’t touch the food or bedding. “I promised him he could have it. He’s not the one who will sell me out.”

  Cerberus walked out the back door with her, cringing at the feeling of her panic as it crackled in the air around them. The instant they reached the street, she ran.

  This was like being trapped in a bad dream. Where were they supposed to go? She sprinted for a few blocks, then ducked into a crowded Chinese restaurant.

  She looked different. Her clothing was the same, but an image of something cleaner and tear free hovered above it. Another face floated in front of hers too.

  This must be what it was like for her to look through an illusion.

  The host showed her to a table and asked if anyone was joining her. He never looked at Cerberus.

  Lexi said no, as Cerberus sat across from her.

  She ordered one dish, but as hers was delivered, his appeared as well. He was eating the same thing as her.

  He was almost getting the hang of the rules down here.

  The chair next to them creaked across the floor, and Aphrodite sat down.

  “Aphrodite?” Lexi sounded scared. “What are you doing here?”

  Lexi recognized her as a goddess here, but years later, she didn’t know this was Aphrodite. That didn’t make sense.

  Aphrodite took her hand. “It’s all right.” She looked at Lexi’s wrist, then where Cerberus sat. The goddess looked through him, but he swore she was trying to see him. She shook her head, then turned back to Lexi. “You can’t be here. Gaia, I hate screwing around in your head, but I don’t have a choice.”

  “Sure, you do,” Cerberus said. “You could just not do it.”

  Lexi raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  Aphrodite didn’t flinch. “The girl in the house is a child of the ocean.”

  “Poseidon?” Lexi’s terror was back, amplified by a thousand.

  “Yes.”

  Why hadn’t Cerberus smelled the salt water?

  Because Lexi hadn’t.

  “She’s not strong, but she can walk between realms on her own,” Aphrodite said. “I was with him when she found him.”

  “That was only ten minutes ago,” Cerberus said at the same time Lexi said, “It’s only been a couple of hours.”

  He glanced outside. The sun was much closer to the horizon than it should be. Fucked up memory clocks.

  Aphrodite stroked the back of Lexi’s hand with her thumb, tracing the same path back and forth along her wrist. “I’m guessing she sought him out immediately. We were having breakfast in New Zealand. She appeared and told him she’d found that Hades-girl.”

  Several missing pieces collided in Cerberus’ skull. Poseidon had known about Lexi? He stared at the side of Aphrodite’s head. “How many memories have you taken from her?”

  “I need you someplace safe. Cheyenne is landlocked. You set up there about a week ago.” Aphrodite cupped Lexi’s cheek. When she drew her hand away, something appeared in it. A delicately crafted rose with a pearl nestled in the middle. She pressed it into Lexi’s palm. “This will pay for your room for the next few months. You need to forget today ever happened. For your own safety.”

  Lexi nodded. “I didn’t care for most of it, anyway. How did you find me here?”

  Aphrodite stroked Lexi’s wrist one more time, then kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll tell you someday. And this is the last time I can dig in your head this way. If something happens again, if I need to make you forget one more time...”

  “What?” Lexi asked.

  “Nothing, child. Enjoy Wyoming.”

  The Chinese restaurant was gone, and Cerberus stood with Lexi in a new apartment that put the old one to shame.

  Polished hardwood stretched in all directions. He knew without looking that the fridge was stocked. The neighbors were quiet. The front door locked, and Lexi had the key.

  “The next time I see Aphrodite, she’s got a lot to account for,” Cerberus said.

  Lexi crossed her arms. “I can’t argue that.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Icarus got in once. He could do it again. He needed to curb the panic that Lexi might be fighting for her life alone, and calm himself long enough to get back into her head.

  “What are you going to do about the chimera?” Conner had dragged a stool in from the other room and sat in the corner, watching and nursing his beer.

  Icarus didn’t know. “If Lexi’s illusions didn’t work, I’m tapped. I’m only taking my brain, and it can do amazing things, but summoning objects from thin air isn’t among them.”

  “Did you look around last time you were in there?”

  A sarcastic answer flew to Icarus’ lips. That wasn’t what Conner was asking, though. He wanted to know if Icarus had seen any electricity. Auras. The kind of thing Icarus worked with. “I didn’t notice. I’ll take better note next time, but even if there’s something there, I’ll need a physical object to bind it to.”

  “You talked to Zee while you were in there, though. Right? She’s your muse. She might spark something if you bump your heads together.”

  She was a hell of a lot better as a sounding board than Conner. “I could try that.”

  Conner took a long drag off his drink, then set it on the dresser with a thunk. “She ever tell you her favorite class as a kid?”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You need an answer before you go back in.”

  “Fine. English lit?” Icarus was grasping, but she loved to read, so that made sense.

  “Character class, genius.”

  That made even more sense. “I haven’t known her long enough to get that intimate. It’s not the kind of thing a guy asks on a first date if he’s not descended from gods of love and sex.” Not that Icarus had a chance to take Lexi out. He owed her a date. Or as many as she wanted.

  “Touché.” Conner smirked. “She liked to play an illusionist. Go figure, right? Talk about hiding in plain sight. So the year I went to school with her, she invited me to play wit
h her and her friends one night.”

  “You rolled dice and crawled dungeons?” Icarus couldn’t picture it. Conner might be fighting with his grandmother, but he had the same traits as the rest of his family. Oozed sex appeal and knew it. Role playing games, at least the D20 kind, didn’t really sing sexy.

  “Zee was the only other immortal in town. She was also a fine piece of ass. I did a lot for her.”

  Icarus didn’t care that the two had a history. He didn’t like the objectification, though. “She was sixteen.”

  “So was I. Anyway, we’re out questing, and we reach this room in the basement of the castle. It’s kind of half-castle, half-carved out of the cave, and there are spikes hanging from the ceiling. Our thief steps into the room—after checking for traps, of course—”

  “Of course.” Icarus bit back his impatience, along with the urge to ask if this had a point.

  Conner raised his eyebrows. “He steps into the room, and one of the spikes falls. It barely misses him. High dexterity. Turns out the spikes are alive.”

  “Are you serious? Sentient stalactites?”

  “I didn’t write the adventure; I was just a quester. Everyone in the party panics and starts discussing what to do. We have to go through the room. The thief wants to risk running across. He rolls against his dexterity again and gets... I don’t remember—whatever not quite good enough is. He sprints, a few of the spikes fall, and he breaks a leg.”

  “The spike didn’t tear it off?” How did that work?

  Conner tilted his stool back on two legs and knocked his head against the wall. “You’re being too literal. This is role playing. Keep up. The entire party is discussing strategy. See, arguing at the top of our lungs. Zee says, I cast an illusion on the floor, about... How tall do we need to be, to crawl? Three feet above the existing floor. She has to roll her intelligence versus the spikes’. They’re a three, she’s a seventeen, it doesn’t take much to beat them. She casts the floor illusion, we all crawl underneath to the other side of the room, and bing-bang-boom—no one else gets hurt.”

  “There are so many flaws in the creature construction—”

  “Zee liked First Edition rules. Focus. Chimeras aren’t the brightest creatures in the world. You run into another one, or the same one, and it doesn’t have to know Zee’s illusions aren’t solid, as long as she casts them right.”

  “You’re scary. I love it.” Icarus couldn’t believe he didn’t see the answer himself, but it was good to have one.

  Conner winked and blew him a kiss. “I get that from a lot of guys.”

  And now the conversation was deteriorating. “You’re not my type.”

  “I know. You’re keen on the brunette passed out on the bed. Or would you prefer my hair was lighter, and I looked more like a marble statue carved in the moonlight?”

  An entire immortal bloodline of irritation. Icarus turned to Lexi. “I’m going back in.”

  There was no give-and-take this time. Icarus nudged, and the door opened. He found Lexi at another funeral. She looked up when he appeared. Sadness marred her face.

  It was a lot better than chimera burns. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and she leaned into him while they watched the mourners.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. She bit me, you vanished, I felt like I was being torn to shreds, and then I was here. Can you hear them?”

  “Delivering the eulogy, yes. Asking for comfort? No. I think that’s only you.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder. “Why do you say that?”

  “Aphrodite told me the voices you were hearing were prayers. The whole goddess thing, and all that.” Was it disrespectful to have this conversation while they watched someone else’s funeral? Or just eerie?

  “Did she tell you how many times she wiped my memory when I was a child?”

  That was a random question. “I take it that means it was more than twice?” He knew about the erasure the night Lexi and Conner slept together, and the one Aphrodite had a siren help with.

  “I think...” Lexi pulled away and looked at him with a frown. “I can’t remember. Go figure. What’s going on?”

  He wished he had some long, drawn-out story to tell. It would mean they had information to dig through. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “You told me I was a goddess, and that you’d teach me how to make the ceiling disappear so I could watch the stars from inside. Did you find Cerberus and Actaeon?”

  She was halfway to caught-up.

  “I didn’t. Hermes found Actaeon.”

  “Cerberus?” Sadness spilled from her.

  It sank into his pores and infected his thoughts. This was potent shit. Icarus wished he had better news. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. What I do know so far is you’re becoming the underworld. You’re taking Hades’ place.”

  “How does that work?”

  “I suspect if we had that answer, this wouldn’t be an issue. You don’t know how to deal with it, so you’ve fractured. Actaeon is supposed to be helping from the underworld—”

  “But I’m the underworld? Does that mean he’s in me? That should be sexier.” Her smile looked forced.

  Icarus wished he could laugh. “Now you know what I know. I need you to come back with me.”

  “I can’t. Not I won’t. I don’t know how. I feel these pulls, these pleas, and I’m drawn to them without my permission. I don’t know how to help, but that doesn’t stop me from being anchored here. It’s like I’m required to watch their mourning through their collective thoughts.”

  Grief weighed on his chest and soul, suffocating him. Was that from her or the mourners? It was a good thing magic was a valid answer for why, or Icarus would go insane, figuring out how this made sense. “You need to be more selective and learn to block them out.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any advice on how to do that? And I swear to me, if you say meditate...”

  “Clever.” He managed a smile at the underlying joke. “I’ve never lived through it, so I can only guess.” He settled his hands on her hips and stepped behind her. Intellectually he knew this wasn’t physical contact—it was literally all in their heads—but it felt good to be close.

  It felt better when she leaned more of her weight against him. “I don’t suppose you have a god on speed-dial who you’re on speaking terms with, who isn’t currently fucking with our lives, who wouldn’t balk at helping Hades’ brat...”

  “Conner is with me.”

  “No shit.” Relief trickled into her laugh. “Tell him I said hi, and that he owes me a trip to Germany.”

  “Tell him yourself.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t be clever and hyper-positive, and say, you’ll tell him when you pull through.”

  This felt good. Incredible. Stimulating. Swapping thoughts with Lexi was already on the top of his list of favorite things. “That’s not what I’m doing. You get to deal with him pretending to take the offer the wrong way.”

  This time her laugh vibrated through her back. It didn’t lift the sadness that saturated the air, but it made it easier to breathe through.

  A loud blaring cut through the sky, drilling into his thoughts and making his brain shut down. Concern shoved aside everything else. That wasn’t good.

  “What the fuck is that?” Lexi covered her ears.

  “Proximity alarm. I need to go. I’ll be back if you don’t find me first.” He kissed her on the cheek, then forced himself back to his room.

  No one else was in here with them. Where was Conner?

  A wince-worthy noise came from the other room, like several objects scraping across stainless steel, then clattering to the ground.

  Icarus sprinted toward the sound.

  Conner stood several meters away from Icarus, and between them was a... dragon? Not one of the originals. This was more like Smaug, but with green and blue scales.

  “What the fuck?” Icarus’ question drew its attention.

  As t
he dragon spun, its tail whipped out in Conner’s direction. Instead of knocking him back, it passed through him.

  The beast was transparent, like a weak hologram. “I don’t see any aura. Or anything,” Icarus said.

  Conner backed out of its way. It didn’t seem focused on them. It was thrashing and roaring, but only occasionally made contact. “I don’t, either. But I don’t think it’s attacking us.”

  “It's more scared of us than we are of it doesn’t make me feel better.” Icarus had never seen anything like this outside of a movie screen. He’d worry about it being a hydra, but heads growing back didn't matter if he and Conner couldn’t connect with it long enough to cut one off.

  And he needed to shut off that fucking alarm. He snapped, but it didn’t go silent.

  The dragon flapped its wings, and Icarus jumped away. Scattered puffs chased stray papers, and then his laptop flew across the room.

  “Could you make that stop?” Conner shouted.

  “I'd like to.” If the alert wasn’t stopping, it knew he felt like he was still in danger.

  The dragon reared back and opened its jaw, and a rush of flame shot out. It passed through everything.

  Icarus would have to turn the alarm off completely, rather than resetting it. And it would take days to get it back online again.

  Was it worth it, to shut off a little irritating sound?

  Considering his eardrums might liquefy and leak out his ears if he didn’t... though, probably only figuratively.

  But it wouldn’t get rid of the dragon.

  The beast shot another breath of flame at a shelf, and about half the contents burst into flame.

  Icarus grabbed the nearest thing to him—a coil of insulated copper cable. He maneuvered to the side of the dragon and tossed one end of the wire to Conner, holding tight to the other.

  Maybe they could clothesline the beast.

  “On three, charge it and pull it tight,” Icarus yelled.

  Conner nodded. They’d done smaller scale versions of this and knew how to insulate themselves against each other.

  “Three.” Icarus gathered all the ambient electricity and forced it through the cable. The power that crackled along his skin, raising the tiny hairs on end, said Conner had done the same.