“What?” I looked at him again, but this time I kept my gaze on his face. “Shiny things?”
He was fully grinning now. “Yeah, shiny things. Like ADD. Your dad has a mad case of it.”
“My dad…” I trailed off as the last couple of hours rushed to the surface. “Oh my God!” Here I was, sitting here and staring at this guy, arguing about shiny things when my entire world had imploded with crazy.
Seth moved closer to the bed. “Are you going to freak out and run again? If so, I’d like to put some shoes on.”
Ignoring him, I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead as I stared at the comforter again. My head spun like I’d drunk half a bottle of tequila in less than an hour. My stomach roiled and I swallowed down the sudden rise of nausea. I remembered being outside the library and the odd way Jesse had looked as Seth had sent him off. I remembered every insane thing Seth had said, and I remembered running to my dorm, to Erin… and holy crap, what had she turned into? A giant bat?
Start small. That’s what I told myself as my heart rate picked up. I needed to start with the small stuff. “Where am I?”
“You’re in my hotel room. We’re about a mile off campus.” He paused. “You’re safe here.”
Safe from what? Oh yes, flying creatures, Titans, and guys with creepy, all-black eyes. “Did I…pass out?” That was kind of embarrassing.
He nodded. “You hit your head. Kind of got in the way of a wing. I know it’s a lot to deal with,” he continued, his voice low, as if any loud noise would send me scurrying into a panic. “Everything you thought you knew about the world is wrong and blah, blah, but we really don’t have time for another freak out. Like I said, you’re safe, but just for now. That thing back there—it was a shade, a soul that escaped Tartarus along with the Titans. They’re dangerous in spirit form and they can also ride mortal bodies. It wasn’t the only one here, but that’s beside the point. It knows you’re here, so that means they know you’re here.”
Lowering my hand, I looked at him sharply. “Wow.”
One shoulder rose. “It’s the truth.”
My gaze dipped, and I pursed my lips. “Can you put on a shirt?”
A small grin formed. “No.”
Frustration rose, mixing with confusion, as my head sought to catch up with everything. Denials formed on the tip of my tongue, but as I looked away, I shook my head slowly.
“Do you think none of this is real?” he asked, and the bed dipped as he sat beside me. I hadn’t even heard him move. “You’re awake. And you’re holding a conversation with me again.” He reached out, trailing his fingers over my forearm. “And you feel that, right? It’s real.”
I sucked in an unsteady breath. Yeah, I felt the wave of tingles that traveled to the tips of my fingers. “My mom is sick,” I blurted out, and he pulled his hand away as he tilted his head to the side. Damp strands clung to his cheek. My fingers tightened on the edge of the green comforter. “She has a mental illness— schizophrenia. And there were times when she’d have episodes that lasted days and she would hallucinate people and locations. And schizophrenia—it can be hereditary.”
His golden gaze swept over my face, intense and strange. “And you think that is what this is? That you have this sickness?”
A moment passed as embarrassment scaled my cheeks. Developing the illness was one of my greatest fears, because I knew firsthand how hard it was to deal with. “I don’t know what to believe.” My head felt woolly, my throat dry. I remembered hitting a wall. “Maybe it’s a concussion and—”
“You don’t have a concussion. We checked you over.”
We. A cold air swept through my chest as the events in my room replayed in my mind. “Erin. Oh my God. What…what is she?”
Seth placed one hand on the bed next to my legs as he raised the other, shoving his fingers through his damp hair. “She’s a furie. They usually go after those who’ve escaped judgment, and the gods use them as a warning system. Your friend can get pretty vicious, as you saw. Furies are no joke. They aren’t a big fan of me.”
A furie. My friend and roommate was a furie. A laugh escaped me and it quickly faded as an empty feeling opened up in my chest. “Is she really my friend?”
His brows rose. “I’d say so. She’s rather protective of you. You should’ve seen her when I took you. Not fun.”
I didn’t say anything, because I doubted he’d understand, but everything Erin had told me had to have been a lie if she was some kind of furie. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. “Where is she?”
“There was a bit of a mess to clean up, and she’s gathering up your stuff, but that’s not really important right now.” He shifted closer and our gazes met. “I’m going to try this again, okay?”
Pressing my lips together, I nodded. My knuckles started to ache from how tightly I was clenching the blanket.
“Your father is Apollo, and that does make you a demigod.”
“But…I’m not special,” I said, and then realized how lame that sounded when he grinned. “I mean, demigods have powers, right? I remember reading about Hercules and some others. They were super-strong, and I can’t even jog a mile without getting out of breath or having a leg cramp.”
“Well, that’s good to know, in case I need you to run fast.” He cast a bland look in my direction. “Your abilities were bound at birth, along with those of the others.”
“Others?”
He nodded. “I don’t know how much you know about Greek mythology, but only half of what they teach in the mortal schools is true. The one thing you do need to know is that the gods are very powerful, but they suck at cognitive thinking skills.”
“Um.” An ache started at my temples. “Alrighty, then.”
“They do things without really thinking them through, which is how we’re in this situation now,” he continued as he turned his gaze to the open window.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about this situation. “And, you’re not a demigod. You’re the pollen-ann?”
“Apollyon,” he said, sighing. “Like I told you before, my mom was a pure and my father was a half. I didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t know my dad, either.” When he glanced back at me, I felt my cheeks heat. “Well, duh. You know that.”
“Well, I guess we also have that in common, don’t we?” His eyes flashed a bright amber, startling me with their intensity. “You and I might have some things in common, but we’re nothing alike and there’s nothing to bond over.”
Drawing back against the headboard, I was stung, and I wasn’t quite sure why, but the tone of his words had been harsh. “I wasn’t trying to bond with you.”
He turned his gaze back to the window and didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Not every pure and half who get together create an Apollyon. Usually there’s some kind of divine intervention, but relationships between pures and halfs were forbidden because of the threat of an Apollyon being born.”
Pushing away the sting of his earlier words, I focused on what was important. “Why?”
“There’s only supposed to be one Apollyon in a generation. We’re as powerful as a demigod, able to control the four elements— air, water, fire, and earth—and we control the fifth—akasha. But when there are two Apollyons, we can…we’re connected in a way that’s hard to explain. We can pull energy from each other, and one of us, if we do a certain ritual on the other, can become a God Killer, something a demigod cannot do. And being a God Killer basically means what you’d think it does. Needless to say, the gods aren’t thrilled whenever there are two Apollyons, because of that potential.”
All of this was Greek to me. Literally. But it was fascinating.
Twisting at the waist, he faced me again. “I’m going to give you the CliffsNotes version of what went down.”
I was surprised he hadn’t said he was going to give me the version for dummies, but I kept my mouth shut.
“I shouldn’t have been born,” he stated pointedly.
“Whoa.” My eyes widened. “That’s a bit harsh.” And also a bit too close to home for my liking.
He shrugged, but there was a hardness to his jaw that said it affected him more than he led on. “There was already another Apollyon lined up to be born. All of them are descendants of Apollo, one way or another. But I was born before…before her, and I was raised to be the Apollyon—schooled, trained to fight from the moment I could walk. My duty was to step in and handle situations the Sentinels couldn’t handle.”
“Sentinels? Isn’t that a Transformer?”
He chuckled, smiling slightly. “Sentinels are halfs and pures who train to keep things in order—to make sure no one gets out of hand and that the mortal world remains oblivious to what coexists among them. There’s a whole society—schools, universities, communities, clubs—you name it. It’s out there and mortals have no idea about any of it, Joe.”