Shooting off the couch, I let the thin, soft-as-a-dream blanket fall to the floor as the rumbling became sound, a building roar that shook my chest and raised tiny goose bumps along my arms.
Eyes wide, I turned in a slow circle as books tumbled from shelves, smacking off the floor. Above me, a crystal chandelier, one that probably cost more than a car, trembled and clanked. Teardrop-shaped crystals fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. A tall, slender lamp toppled over, smashing its pale gray shade. Behind me, more books hit the floor.
“What in the world?” I whispered, voice hoarse and tired—tired from the tears that had been burning up my throat.
Something—something big was happening, and it could be anything. A horde of daimons. Another ticked-off, supercharged Titan. A wave of shades that had escaped from Tartarus. It could . . . it could even be Seth.
No.
He wouldn’t be doing this, whatever this was, no matter what Alex and Aiden believed about him. He wouldn’t put me in danger of the house caving in on me.
Snatching my titanium dagger off the end table, I darted around falling books and tore open the door, hitting the brightly lit hallway just as an explosion of thunder deafened my pounding heart. Glass shattered at the end of the hall, no doubt a priceless vase rendered to nothing more than shards. The house shook again. Art canvassed slipped from the walls as I raced into the grand atrium, my gaze immediately zeroing in on the scorched spot where Atlas had once stood.
The spot where the Titan had died.
And not too far from there, Solos had taken his final breath. That space on the floor was clear, wiped clean of blood, but for a split second I saw him staring down at his chest, at the gaping hole where his heart had been before his knees had given out. He’d been dead before he hit the floor, and he hadn’t deserved that. Solos should still be here.
Swiping the memory aside, my gaze flew to the glass double doors. They were closed, but the way the panes of glass shook I doubted they would stay intact much longer.
I gasped as another quake hit the house. The floor rolled and rippled under my feet like water, lifting me up. I stumbled to the side, throwing my arms out to steady myself.
Somewhere in the house, doors slammed open and someone shouted one word.
“Earthquake!”
Earthquake!
Relief punched me so hard in the gut that I laughed—laughed loudly and a bit crazily. Just an earthquake.
Duh.
I was in southern California.
Not everything had to be supernatural.
Lowering the dagger, I turned to the spiral staircase. Several half-asleep people stood there, and of course, I was using the term “people” loosely.
There wasn’t a single mortal in the house.
The shaking subsided as Deacon ran his fingers through his messy blond curls. “I hate California,” he grumbled.
Behind him, Luke was scrubbing a hand over his eyes. His bronze-colored hair was sticking up in every direction. Standing beside them was Gable. Poor Gable. We’d literally plucked him off a beach, told him that his father was Poseidon and that he was also a demigod whose powers were bound, and then he witnessed up close and personal what a Titan was capable of.
The fact that he was standing there and not rocking in a corner somewhere was admirable.
“We haven’t had one that bad in a long time,” Gable said with sleep clinging to his voice. “We’ll definitely get an aftershock from that.”
Deacon’s pale gray eyes widened. “Aftershock?”
Gable nodded. “Or that could’ve been a foreshock. You never really know.”
“What is that?” Deacon lowered his hand, frowning. “Like an uncircumcised earthquake?”
Aiden, his older brother, lifted his chin and stared at the ceiling, slowly shaking his dark head. There were no two brothers less alike. Well, maybe Lucifer and Michael. They were brothers.
My lips twitched into a tired smile as Gable explained exactly what a foreshock was. Aiden reached out, draping an arm over the shoulders of Alex Andros. Her hair was a mess, but a sexy mess. When I woke up, my hair looked like I’d stuck my fingers in an electrical outlet, but not Alex. Hers was a tumble of wavy locks.
She was beautiful in a wild, unfettered way, and while we’d tentatively bonded over our shared time with evil psycho gods and our truly weird relation to Apollo, I wasn’t nearly as close to her as Deacon and Luke were.
She and Aiden were legends, actual legends.
And they were so in love with one another that there was no doubt in my mind that they’d spend eternity together wanting no one else.
Aiden placed a hand on the railing as he stared down into the atrium, his silvery gaze seeming to go to the spot mine had when I’d first entered, to where the Titan Atlas had stood, holding Solos’s heart in his meaty grip—to where Seth had gone all God Killer on everyone, tapping into all our powers, our aether, and killing Atlas.
Something Seth should not have been able to do.
God, that felt like forever ago, but it wasn’t. Only about a day had passed since Atlas had come through those very doors and snuffed out Solos’s life in a heartbeat. Only the night before when Seth had become something so feared that the Olympian gods had ended Alex’s mortal life to prevent her from becoming it. Only hours since I’d done what Medusa had warned with the blade dipped in the blood of the Pegasus, knocking Seth out long enough for him to at least calm down. And it had only been this morning when Seth had escaped the panic room, found me in the library, made love to me, held me in his arms, and finally, finally told me he loved me.
Just seconds in a lifetime, and Seth had become a thing so powerful, so deadly that he’d left us, left me.
An ache lit up my chest as I blinked back tears I refused to allow to fall. I would not cry, because there was no time for that. As soon as Hercules got back from communing with the gods or whatever he’d left at dawn to do, I was out of here, gone from this house that pretty much dripped the kind of money I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around.
Locating the other two demigods was what my father—Apollo—had ordered me to do, but that had fallen way down my priority list, and I didn’t even care. Didn’t give a flying Pegasus about what that said about me, because no one, no one had ever fought for Seth before.
And I would.
I would fight till my dying breath for him.
Besides, it wasn’t like no one would be gathering up the other two bound demigods and brutally introducing them to a whole new way of life. The Army of Awesome, dubbed by Deacon himself, had promised to retrieve the demigods. One was somewhere in Thunder Bay and the other was living in some town in Britain.
I’d promised Alex and Aiden that I would wait until Herc returned before I left to find Seth. I had a strong suspicion of where Seth had gone, and getting there, all the way to an island in the Aegean Sea, was not going to be easy.
“Josie?” Aiden called.
I blinked, refocusing on him. He was standing only a few feet from me, his hand wrapped firmly around Alex’s. Everyone was downstairs. I hadn’t heard them move. “Sorry?”