Broken God (3 page)

It was easy and effortless to lean into my sister’s power, and
for her to lean into mine.

Together, we were as strong as Father and his brothers, and none
dared touch us.

And we were never not together.

Chapter 4.

When I wake up, Artemis has deserted my bed. She’s changed into
one of my t-shirts, an old band shirt I picked up at a concert a decade or so
ago. It hangs
off
one of her shoulders, and I see the massive stag head tattooed on her back. She
got that done a few years ago, when I got my raven. It’s a massive, gorgeous
piece that makes me smile every time I see it.

I watch her now,
and it feels like the stag watches me back.

“Don’t annoy him,”
she says, without looking away from where she’s dicing onions. I can smell the
fatty bacon she’s frying and my stomach rumbles. I didn’t eat yesterday, more
content to wander around the city without pausing for anything more than coffee.

She nudges a loaf
of bread at me. “Make toast.”

I do, and avoid
staring at her back tattoo. My arm brushes hers, and she shivers a little—my
raven greeting her.
 

Most people get a
tattoo and it’s just that. A tattoo.

But Artie and I
aren’t most people. We’re gods, and the raven on my shoulder, the stag on her
back. They’re symbols and living pieces of our power.

She tilts toward me
a little, nudging my raven and I feel the ruffle of satisfaction as it eases in
me, settling next to my sister as I slice the bread and feed it into the
toaster.

It doesn’t take
much to coax Artemis into going to
 
a
coffee shop. She’s
been here for a few hours, and I’m lazy and sleepy with the food she fed me,
but I’m not stupid enough to think she isn’t biding her time. I prefer we do
this outside my apartment. If we’re in public, surrounded by mortals, she’s
less likely to reach out to her power.

So we go to a tiny
coffee shop. A new one, that Artemis picks. It’s about four blocks from my
apartment, and I bounce my head to a beat only I can hear as we walk, my sister
tugging me lightly when I wander off the sidewalk, away from her side.

I grin at her, as
she reels me back in, and I’m grinning when we enter the cafe.

Artie orders for
us, and while she waits for my iced coffee and her tea, I look around the room.

There’s a girl, in
the corner, strumming a guitar. Her body sways, a little, her eyes closed. A
tiny smile curls her lips.

Mine
.

I lick my lips and
take a step, almost without realizing I’m moving, before Artie is there,
nudging me back to our little booth.

The girl’s eyes
open and she smiles, a secret thing, as she catches my gaze
, through a
curtain of dirty blonde hair
and I almost hit my knees.

Del
.

Mine.

I moan, and Artemis
looks at me, worry in her gaze. “Apollo?”

“I saw our uncle,”
I whisper, looking at the girl who is turning away from me now, her attention
back on the guitar.

Artie frowns.
“Which one?”

Madness ruffles my
hair, a lover’s stroke along my brow and I shiver a little as the girl’s music
slips through the room.

“Poseidon.”

We don’t talk as I
sip my coffee and she watches me, and the girl in the corner plays her song.
The sun shivers across the sky and I want to find it, bask in it, even as I
know that I’m not leaving this coffee shop until the coffee is gone and the
girl humming soft and sweet in the corner is silent again.

Maybe not even
then.

“I think you should
come home with me
,”
Artemis says, abruptly and unexpected and startling enough that I let my gaze
dart to her, confused.

“Why?”

She has that look.
The one I know too well. The one that is all sister and not a single speck of
goddess. The one where her silver eyes turn steely gray and fierce and I know
we’ll fight before the day is over, if I even consider arguing with her.

“I’m worried about
you,” she says, instead of giving me an order. I almost laugh at that. My
sister worrying is amusing.

“I’m the fucking
Sun God,” I grin at her, sprawling in the seat and letting my fingers tap a rhythm
against the table. The girl with the guitar is still playing and my fingers tap
out an accompaniment to her song. “What the hell do you have to worry about? Nothing
can touch me.”

“Brother, you’ve
been touched for centuries
,” she
says.

Another girl,
another sister might have said it gently. With understanding.

But this is
my
sister, and she says it with utter
disbelief and a little bit of exasperation.

I give her a tight,
angry smile. Because I am mad and have been for centuries and I know it. Half
the time I embrace my insanity.

I knew the price I
would pay even when I asked for the knowledge.

But—

“You forget who I
am, sister,” I purr, and her eyes flicker over me. Watching. Assessing.

She is my twin and
my best friend, but she’s never been stupid enough to think I wouldn’t turn on
her.

I’ve never made
that mistake either.

“I know exactly who
you are,” she says, and now she sounds tired. Refusing to rise to the bait of
my anger. “I know you’re my brother and I love you and that you aren’t well,
despite what you would have us all—even me—believe.” She hesitates. “I know
that you are weaker than you would have us believe. I know that you are,
despite what you say, lonely in this city by yourself.” She quiets and then
blurts out, “For
gods
sake, Apollo,
you’re
depressed. I keep expecting to feel your power go out.”

“Oh, for fucks
sake, Artie,” I snap, furious suddenly. “I’m not fucking suicidal.”

She stares at me.
This infuriatingly blank slate that makes me want to snarl at her, and that
would just prove her point.

That I am as unstable
as she thinks I am.

I miss, suddenly,
furiously, Del.

As much as I love
my sister, I miss
my
Del. I miss the
girl who would challenge me and make me laugh, who would listen when I spoke
and keep all of my fears tucked away. The girl who served her god, but loved
her friend.

Fuck.

It’s been almost
two thousand
years
that I have
wandered without her, and I keep thinking that it will get easier. That one day
I’ll wake up and nothing will remind
me
, that I won’t hear a line from a poem and
see her, laughing in her gauze covered bed, or smiling serenely from the cloud
of smoke that always clung to her.

I keep waiting.

“Come home with
me,” Artemis says again, and I know my sister means well. That she has always
meant well.

But I can’t.

Because her forest
isn’t home.

Home is Del’s
laughter and smile and flashing eyes.

It’s a thousand
girls who are all the same and utterly different.

And it’s fucking
gone.

Artemis leaves me
after her coffee is gone. She mutters something about wanting to see Poseidon,
paying her respects while she’s in the city. It’s a thin excuse—she really just
needs some space from her insane brother.

Can’t really blame
her for that shit.

There’s a reason I
left Olympus, after all.

I sit there,
slumped for a long time, while the coffee shop empties and the girl in the
corner plays her guitar. Until there is only us and the barista, who’s happily
ignoring both of us in favor of her phone.

“Am I bothering
you?”

I blink out of my
daze and look at her.

The girl with the
guitar is staring at me, a grin on her face. “I can quit, if I’m bothering you.
I do that, sometimes.”

She even
sounds
like Del.

“No,” I murmur, and
her eyes go wide and startled. “No, please, continue. It’s lovely.”

She gives me a
nervous smile and I stand, walking over to the couch she’s perched on. I sit on
the other end and pull my legs up, looping my arms around them, and she laughs,
softly, before she returns to strumming lightly on the guitar.

For a few seconds,
sitting next to her, while the music thrums like a heartbeat and my sister’s
power fades away, I can close my eyes and I am back in that long forgotten
temple, and Del is laughing.

“Your girlfriend
looked pissed, Sunshine,” she says, I laugh, blinking my eyes open to grin at
her. I can feel the edges of insanity clawing at me, drawn by this gorgeous
girl and her enigmatic smile.

“She’s my sister.
And she is. We’re having a difference of opinions.”

Guitar Girl’s
eyebrows hitch up and she grins. “Siblings can be a pain the ass.”

I snort a laugh and
nod. “That is putting it very mildly, sweetheart.”

She goes still and
watches me, and then leans forward, offering her hand.

I hate shaking
hands. I eye it for a moment. Shake it quickly. “I’m Iris,” she says, grinning.

Iris. The name
sighs through me, and I know that this girl, whoever the hell she is, will
matter to me.

Not unusual. I find
a girl to matter every few months. Sometimes boys.

But this one has
caught my eye and snared me close faster than any in recent memory.

“You know, usually
this is where you say, I’m Bill.”

I cock my head and
frown. “I’m not Bill.”

She laughs, a light
noise that sounds fucking heavily when she strums her guitar and music twists
with laughter.

“
Okay
, Not Bill.”

She leans over the
guitar and she plays, and I lean against the couch and let my eyes closed,
listening to her.

And even without
touching my power, it feels like I’m flying.

It feels like I am
sane, and what I once was.

“There are rules for a reason,” Del says, frowning at me. She
looks lovely and troubled, and I hate seeing her like that. Del should always
be laughing and happy.

She’s my girl. My favorite. She deserves nothing but happiness.

“I know, Del. But—”

“No,” she says, and her voice shakes. “This is my curse. You
gave it to me, Father.”

“I’m not taking your gift, sweetheart.”

She snarls and rolls away from me, moving with that uncanny
grace that always surprises me in Del.

She’s reeling, a little, under the weight of the drugs the
priests feed her. It lets her cling to sanity, when the future hangs too heavy
on her.

It’s not a gift, this thing I
gave
to Del.

It’s a curse.

They know it, even when I give it to them.

I know it and I love them, and I break them anyway.

What kind of Father does that make me? What kind of god?

A poor one.

A broken one.

“You’re doing it again,” she says, and I blink at her. “The
guilt thing. Guilt doesn’t look on a god.” She stands and stamps her foot, all
petulant disgust with me. “You don’t get to be guilty about this. You don’t get
to be weak. I chose to take the curse, Father, because I serve a powerful god.
You will not belittle my service by dismissing it or feeling guilty. I won’t
allow that.”

I grin at her, the flash of temper pulling me from my guilt. I
stand with her and let some of my power slip out, and she shudders, this almost
orgasmic move that makes me reach for her.

“Apollo,” she whispers against my skin and I pet her hair back.
My guilt and mad plan forgotten because she is silky and soft in my arms, and
mine.

“Del,” I murmur into her hair. She tilts her head back and I
kiss her, and for a time, I can forget everything but her, laughing and
breathing into my kiss.

Chapter 5.

I spend the next hour sitting next to Iris, and feeling that
familiar tug of
mine
every time she
flashes a smile at me.

“What does it
mean?”
she
asks, nodding at
the tattoo on the inside of my wrist.

I got that one
without Artemis, after my raven, one particularly awful week of visions and
being barely able to function. When I was finally lucid again, I was in a small
town in Arizona, and a girl with hair the color of fire was asleep next to me
in the bed, and my wrists were both throbbing with the familiar sting of a
fresh tattoo.

On the inside of my
right wrist was a bow with a simple arrow. It was tiny and delicate, and almost
feminine, and it felt like a shackle for my power. Not binding me
from
it, but binding it, wild and
elusive,
to
me.

On the left was a
laurel, wrapping around my wrist like a cuff, as intricate as the one I wore
when I walked the walls of Troy with Cassandra. It drags my power to me as
surely as my raven, a buzzing brilliant thing that I can ignore more often than
not.

When you live for
thousands of years as the Sun God, with power beyond measure, it becomes easy
to ignore it. Like a wild living thing, trapped beneath my skin, waiting for me
to shake off mortality and revel in my power.

It itches now, and
my raven shifts under my skin, anxious and impatient.

We want to hunt, I
realize, abruptly and startled. Want to stretch my power and force the sunrise
and throw disease like a barbed weapon.

I shiver, and Iris
touches my hand, just below the arrow and power jumps, between us. Her eyes
widen just a little, and her pulse jumps under my thumb.

When did I take her hand in mine?

“You’re a strange
one, aren’t you, Not
Bill
?”

I smile at her, and
try to control my heartbeat. It’s pounding too hard. My power screaming and
every instinct in me wants her.

Wants to make her
mine.

I haven’t had a
response like this since the last time I saw Del.

“I have to go.” I
say, abruptly. Her expression stutters and closes, but I can’t focus on that.
Can’t focus on anything but the want burning through me and the girl with
bright
,
bright eyes
watching me.

I hesitate. “It’s
who I am.” I say, softly. Nodding at the tattoos. Against my better judgement,
I offer her my hands. Try not to shiver when her fingers smooth over the lines
of the laurel, when she traces the simple bow with a fingernail.

Try to ignore the
way my power shudders and preens under her touch.

Who is this girl,
and am I really going to walk away from her? Artemis will shoot me for this.
Set her hounds on me and hang me in her forest by my entrails.

I smile, a fond
little smirk because annoying my sister will never lose its appeal.

Iris sways closer
to me, and her strange eyes are almost lazy as she lowers my hand in hers,
until they’re both hanging at our sides, and she tucks something into my pocket
and licks her lips.

I try very hard to
not track the motion.

“It was nice
meeting you, Not Bill. I hope I see you again.”

I open my mouth to
answer her, and reality shudders and shatters, splintering into a thousand possibilities
and in every one, flashing before me like a cruel promise, I am breaking her.

Kiss her. Break her. Love her. Destroy her. Claim her. Curse
her.

I gasp and yank
away and I don’t bother to see what’s on her face.

I bolt out of the
little shop and fumble for my phone. It will work better than my prayers at the
moment.

“Apollo,” Artie
says, her voice sharp and alarmed.

“Hunt,” I gasp.
“Need to hunt.”

And because my
sister is a good sister, she doesn’t question me. “
Okay
,” she says simply.

Hunting with
Artemis has always been a favorite thing. And tonight is no different. When I
get back to my apartment, she’s already there, in black jeans, scuffed, and
ripped along the thighs. She’s wearing a long
-
sleeved, tight
-
fitting black
thermal
threaded
through with silver
. A silver pendent hangs at her throat, and a feral smile plays
along her lips. With her hair cut brutally short and her boots, she looks ready
to fuck a rock star—or to be one. She fairly reeks of sex.

Amusing, since
she’s a virgin.

There are a few
things that are unchanging. I rule the sun. She rules the moon. I deal death as
easily as I heal. She hunts the things that I kill.

I fuck the world.
And she is the eternal virgin.

She’s almost
vibrating with energy, a smile bright on her lips. I shiver, my power cracking
through me.

Bloody hands, bloody lips, bloody jeans, so much blood.

“Successful hunt,”
I murmur because in
every
shattered possibility
,
there is only one outcome to hunting with my sister tonight.

I dress, as always
with my sister, to compliment her. Black leather pants, a loose
,
black button
-
down left more
unbuttoned than not, and muscle shirt under it, so bright it almost
gleams
in the moonlight.

It was stronger
than normal, and I am pretty sure Artie is having a hard time controlling her
powers tonight as well.

I slid a ring onto
my finger, a sunburst worked into the gold band, simple and old. And then I
smile at her. “Lead the way, lady hunter.”

This is how it
works.

Artemis is goddess
of the moon and the hearth and the hunt. I’ve never known her to not be able to
hunt something down, when she really puts her mind to it. When I first fell
from Olympus, I took my favorite cousin. Hermes had no use for the gods and
their petty games.

But Hades didn’t
want to let the messenger god go. He was the only one of us with power slight
enough that he wouldn’t threaten my uncle and who didn’t flinch at the sight of
Hades’ domain or his big fucking dog.

With Hermes missing
and Hades pissed because of it, he called on Artemis to find him.

It took her three
weeks.

Hermes was dragged
back to Olympus by his winged slippers, cursing the whole time that my twin was
a whore and a witch and a fucking nuisance.

I think she’s even
forgiven him for all those insults, except the whore one.

She loops her arm
through mine and leans her head against my shoulder. “What are we hunting
tonight, brother?”

“Killers,” I
whisper. Guilt rises like a thick vine, threatening to choke me as I let her
study me and then her smile turns cunning and cruel and she nods. Looks at the
crowd.

“A club, then,” she
murmurs. “Can you control—”

“I’m fine,” I snap
and she arches an eyebrow but doesn’t argue. Instead she leads us through the
streets to her car, a sleek
,
gray thing that growls like her hounds
did, so long ago and she shrugs when I give her a look. “I like it. Some of us
don’t ride in sun chariots, brother.”

“I haven’t done
that since Troy!” I protest, and she laughs, sliding into the car with the
sound of moonbeams and silver.

The club we find is
perfect. There is a DJ, spinning out music and cutting it together to make
something different, something that
pounds
through my veins and
demands
I dance, and
because I am a whore for good music, I
do.

I abandon my
sister, as she prowls the crowd, searching for killers that I will kill, and I….
I give myself over to my first love.

Sunlight and music
and poetry.

Prophecy and
visions.

Death and
pestilence.

I wish,
desperately, that I could be god of one without the others. If that were true,
I would always deal out music and poetry, and revel in the sunshine.

The
problem
isn’t that.

It’s everything
else.

With the beat pounding
into me, I can remember Iris. How her heart had pounded, but her eyes were
fearless and questioning. How her fingers had twisted around mine as I held her
still and the world shattered around us.

I wonder what Del
would think of her? Would she laugh and call me mad for wanting her? Would she
smile with gentle approval and breathe a sigh of relief because finally she
could lay down her curse?

Pass it on to
another.

Del did that,
twice. In all the years Delphi served me, there was only twice that they left
me. And both times, Del had lived. Had grown old and died, natural, smiling
bright and happy at me when I sat at her bedside, all the long years later.

They all deserved
that. Every single girl who every smiled and answered when I called her Del, who
bound her life to mine.

She wouldn’t want
it.

I know that. Even
if I don’t know her, and even if I refuse to truly consider it—I won’t put
another girl through what Del lived through. I left that behind when I left
Olympus. But even if I were willing—
she
wouldn’t
be.

And Del had to come
to her curse willing.

Artie laughs, this
high, beautiful sound that cuts across the music, and I look at her. She’s
hanging on a guy, laughing, all bright and happy. He’s already sunk into her
trap.

I wonder if he even
realizes it.

She dances with
him, twice, before I step in, and pull her to me, letting her grind against me
and give herself over to the screaming music that thrums harder as I dance.

On my hip, a music
note is etched in scarlet ink, a simple thing that seems to shudder and writhe
under the beat and the change of the music, the way the humans dance to it, the
way Artie sways into me.

She twists away,
and I let her. I know what she’s doing.

It’s a well-choreographed
routine, with us.

I watch her, twisting
her way to the bar.

Artemis is a
hunter, the best the world has ever seen.

The club kind of
fades away as I watch my sister laugh and flirt with the bartender. She's
ignoring her earlier playmate and I flick a look at him.

Caught. So neatly
snared in the pretty trap my sister weaves, he doesn't even realize he's a dead
man walking.

It takes her
another hour to reel him in. She likes playing with her food, likes the thrill
of being hunted by her prey even as she positions them perfectly for me to kill.

I, however, am a
hot thrum of angry want, almost shaking as I watch her tease and flirt and
ignore him except for the smirking looks she pointedly does not give.

My raven
flexes
and stirs in my
shoulder and I rub it, absently. Soon. Soon.

When Artemis
finally
lets
him kiss her, her
power flares, so bright through the club I wonder that the mortals can't see
it. I've never understood how mortal souls could be so blind to what hangs
bright in front of them. My sister is
furious
.

She always plays
the game this way. Lures them in with the promise of sex in her smiles and
touches and teasing. And when they take, even a little, she completely loses
her shit. It turns her feral and deadly in a way that maybe she wasn’t, before
they touch her.

I swallow
the
rest of my drink
;
a dark, bitter
beer that makes me wish for absinthe, and follow them.

He has my sister
pressed against the wall of the club, her hair smashed flat and her pale skin
dirty. Her eyes are opened as he sucks a bruise into her skin and fury is
there, calling my own, calling my power and I touch him. The arrow on my wrist
seems to quiver, a sharp stab of white hot pain-blurred pleasure. The man
grunts and doubles over. His lips are fat and bruised and a where Artie is
pressed against him, bruises form, so fast that one second he’s standing there,
sucking kisses into her skin, and the next he’s gasping and reeling on the
ground, doubled over in agony.

I smile at him as
Artie steps over the body that will soon be a corpse. Power sings through me
and I lean into her as she giggles and we leave him there.

We go for hours.
She hunts, toying with her boys and bringing them to her side, and I let my
arrow sting and sing, and power thrums through me, so strong that it beats back
my madness, even for a few hours.