Everyone.
“That’s what I thought, too. It’s what we were all told. Yet I know what I saw, Medea. I met her when she lived in the commune. Many times when I went there with Urian.” He wiped at his thigh, smearing the blood over his skin. “I swear to the gods, it was Phoebe. I know it was. I even felt her scrambled thoughts while she fed from me.”
She sank down on the bed to sit beside him. “Was she brought back somehow?”
It could happen. In their world? Weird was normal. Impossible doable.
“I don’t know. I mean how could they? We disintegrate on death, right? But that was her body. Not someone else’s they used to host her soul.”
Yeah. Daimons turned into a gold dust that quickly scattered whenever they died. While their souls could be brought back from the grave, they required a new body to house them in. It was impossible to put them back into their disintegrated body, since it was gone.
To her knowledge, not even the gods could do that.
Scowling, she looked over at him. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Chicken Little,” he repeated. His features were even paler now. His expression turned sinister. “This will destroy Urian when he finds out. There’s no telling how he’ll cope with the news.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. “Will it? All he wants is Phoebe back.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t her. I mean it is. But…” He ground his teeth. “She’s not right anymore. That wasn’t the same woman he knew.”
“Gallu?”
He pulled the blanket back so that she could see the bite mark on his thigh. “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t I be turning into one by now if she was one of them?”
She had no idea. That wasn’t her pantheon, so she didn’t know what rules governed their species. “I need to get you to Falcyn. He’ll know the answers.”
“Falcyn?”
“He’s the one I brought here to help us. Get dressed. He’s with my father right now, healing them. I’ll take you to him and we can ask. If anyone knows about gallu, he will.”
After all, his brother, Dagon, was part of their pantheon and Falcyn was older than dirt’s second cousin. Surely he’d been around when the gallu were originally active and fighting against the Charonte and gods.
Her thoughts skipping and dancing over this new turn of events, she went outside the room while Davyn pulled his clothes on. Yet while she waited, only one thought kept playing in her head on an endless loop.
Phoebe is alive.
It boggled her mind. This changed absolutely everything. She had no idea how Urian would react to this. He’d hated her father for so long now because they’d all been told Stryker had killed Urian’s wife in a fit of anger.
But what if he hadn’t.…
What if something else had happened to her. Something Stryker couldn’t stop?
Damn.
What would Urian do then? Who would he hate more?
*
Sitting at a small round table at the Café Du Monde in New Orleans, Dikastas looked up from his coffee and beignets as a shadow fell over him and blocked his view of the pedestrian mall where he liked to watch the tourists while they shopped and strolled along the busy street.
It was even worse than what he’d initially imagined for the interruption—some poor panhandler begging for spare change or an annoying ass wanting directions.
A pouting Girl Scout peddling some overly sweet cookies.
Oh no, those nightmares would be far preferable to this pestilent beast who brought with him a sickening sensation that caused Dikastas’s jaw to fall slack. Indeed, he wouldn’t have been more shocked or stunned to find Apollymi herself standing there, glaring hatred at him.
He choked down his bite of the sugary confection and took a drink of coffee to clear his throat. “Apollo … to what do I owe this…” He searched for an appropriate word.
Honor definitely didn’t fit.
Horror, not really.
Inconvenience would be the most apropos, but since Dikastas was the Atlantean god of justice, moderation, and order, he had a bit more tact than to say that out loud, as it would cause conflict and strife. So he left it open to the Greek god’s interpretation while he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then gestured at the small metal chair across from him.
Apollo accepted the invitation without hesitation. “What a peculiar place to find you. I actually thought Clotho was lying when she told me where you were living these days.”
Little wonder that, given the fact that the vast majority of his pantheon was currently frozen as statues beneath Acheron’s palace in Katateros—the Atlantean heaven realm. Because Dikastas had had the good sense to not cross Apollymi’s wrath or Styxx’s sword arm, he was one of the extreme few who’d been left free to roam the earth after Styxx, Acheron, Bethany, and Apollymi had broken buck wild on them all a few years back. “And how are my dear half-Greek nieces?”
“Worthless as always.”
Dikastas didn’t comment on that. Mostly because he agreed about the three Fates. What with their great stupidity and rash actions, they had accidentally damned the entire Atlantean race and pantheon in the blink of an eye. Jealous words spoken in a moment of fear against Acheron that had played out with devastating consequences for all the rest of them, especially the triplet goddesses.
He cleared his throat and pinned Apollo with a cool stare. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
After all, they weren’t friends, or even friendly. In fact, they hated each other with a fiery zeal. Their pantheons had been mortal enemies, back in the day. And the only thing the two of them had in common was their blond hair.
Literally.
And even it wasn’t the same shade. Apollo’s was far more golden and his tended toward brown.
“I want information.”
Dikastas cocked his brow. “The Fates couldn’t give you what you wanted?”
Apollo snorted. “As I said, they’re basically worthless. What I need to know predates their births by a number of centuries and has to do with Apollymi and Kissare.”
Interesting …
A waitress came up to ask Apollo for an order.
He sneered at her. “Do I look like I eat or drink shit? Begone from me, mortal scum!”
Dikastas sighed at his angry words. So much for Apollo being a god of temperance. “That was unnecessary.”
“So is wasting my time!”
Yet Apollo had no problem intruding on his zen and wasting his. Typical. But then Apollo had always been a selfish prick that way.
All that mattered was his life and his wants.
Everyone else could go to Kalosis and rot.