Unlike the omniscient Chthonian, Ash wasn't a water baby. He hated surfing and lying under the sun. But he also knew that when in Rome . . .
He popped himself onto a board beside Savitar who laughed when he saw him sitting on the longboard. "You look so out of your element."
"I am out of my element. Much like you in a Seattle Goth club."
Savitar gave him a wry grin. "I'm never out of my element, Atlantean. And it must be dire indeed to get you in shorties and on a board. One day I'm actually going to get you to say 'Rad four-mill steamer, dude!' "
Crossing his arms over his chest, Ash laughed. "Not likely."
Savitar tsked at him before he returned to staring at the sky. "I've heard that before. So what brings you here, Grom?"
Ash ignored the surfing term that was usually reserved for kids under fifteen. Only Savitar could get away with calling him a youngster. "There's a woman—"
"Isn't there always?"
Ash chose to ignore the sarcastic comment. "She's being pursued by someone and I don't know who."
Savitar arched a brow as he floated one heavily tattooed arm in the ocean. "Then you know I can't tell you anything."
Those words and his condescending tone set Ash's temper on fire. "Dammit, Savitar, don't play this game with me. Her life is in danger . . . maybe."
Savitar grabbed Ash's board and snatched him closer. "Like you, I won't tamper with fate."
"Bullshit. You tamper with fate all the time."
He shoved Ash's board away from him. "But I won't tamper with yours. Ever."
Ash cursed as he paddled back to Savitar's side. "Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be the final fate of the world and to have no control over your own?"
"Sure you do, little brother. Every decision you make causes your fate to unfold or to change. Have I taught you nothing?"
Savitar was right, but it wasn't that simple. Especially not when there was another person's life involved.
What would it take to make the Chthonian care?
Ash narrowed his eyes. "They've uncovered an Atlantean dagger."
Savitar sat up on the board to glare at him. "I hope you're planning to destroy it."
"I have to get it first. But that's the plan." Ash returned his hostile glare tit for tat. "Can you please, just this once, give me some insight into the future?"
Savitar shook his head. "You know what the Fates decreed for you. Through your own actions you will be saved."
"That could mean anything."
Savitar was silent for several heartbeats before he pierced Ash with a sinister look. "All right. I'm screwing with things here, but I'll tell you this much. It's not the dagger the thieves were after in her house. There's another journal her people found."
Ash cringed over that bomb. "Ryssa's?"
He nodded. "It's not the one Soteria showed you. This one was found yesterday by one of her buddies. And it was written after Ryssa became Apollo's mistress. In it is the truth about him and Artemis and their need for blood. It also tells how to kill them."
Ash felt sick. Yeah, that would cause a global annihilation that would impress even his bloodthirsty mother. "And me? Am I in it too?"
Savitar sighed. "Trust me, you don't want that in the hands of anyone else."
Ash's gut tightened. "Where is it now?"
"I can't tell you that."
Ash flashed himself to Savitar's board so that he could tackle him. Unfortunately, Savitar popped himself and the board out from under him and appeared on the other side of Ash's abandoned board before Ash could grab him.
"Hitting me changes nothing."
Ash swam to his board and glared at Savitar. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You of all beings know how fate works. What happened to you as a human happened because everyone from your parents on down tried to circumvent what was supposed to be—which ultimately was the destruction of the Atlantean pantheon. There was no changing that prophecy. But the way you suffered was completely unnecessary. Had your parents embraced their true destiny, you would have been saved years of torment. Fate will not be denied. We can sculpt it, but in the end we're all pawns to our final destinies. Good, bad or indifferent."
Those words offered him about as much comfort as one of Artemis's beatings. "I'm going to be exposed, aren't I?"
"I don't know. You planning on dropping your pants around me? If so, warn me first. I don't want to go blind."
Ash pulled himself up on his board. "You know what I mean. After all the battles I've fought to save the world and all the sacrifices in dignity and blood I've paid to set free so many Dark-Hunters, they're all going to know that I'm nothing but a pathetic whore, aren't they?"
Savitar's look was sharp and angry. "You have never been pathetic."
But they both knew he'd been a whore. That at the end of the day he was still one. Ash wanted to scream at the injustice of it all.
You can't outrun your past.