Huntress (25 page)

"Sounds like he busted through the wall," I said casually.

"Yep," Zachary answered.

"I’m calling this house a national disaster. Beyond the Christmas presents being ruined, the foundation is probably wrecked and there’s no way I’m spending less than a few grand to get the carpets replaced." Closing my eyes, I sighed. I was comfortable, but I didn’t make a ton of money. This was going to be pretty expensive.

"I’ll take care of it."

"Oh so you have a couple hundred grand just lying around?" Sure it was a flippant question.

"Grace, I’m a god. This is child’s play." He snapped his fingers like it would fix the world.

"So, one – you aren’t a god. You just set yourself up to play with the poor mortals and B - I don’t trust you to not mess up my foundation." Sometimes it was important to get to the root of the matter here.

"Do you realize that you just went from numbers to letters in your list? Do you do that often? That’s a sign of low intelligence, you know. Besides, I am the closest thing to a god that you’ll ever see.  Just who do you think built Olympus?"

"Yeah and who sunk Atlantis? You’ve
really
got to get over yourself. You’re starting to sound pitiful at this point."

That smack to my head must have really given me a bit of brain damage because it didn’t even occur to me that he could do what he did to me next. I had literally forgotten what he was capable of.

Electricity surged from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. It wasn’t a nice little zap link you got from a tiny static charge. No, it was blow the hooves off the cow, hit by lightning, electricity.

"Holy Christ!" I thought that the pain I’d experienced at his hands before was bad. It was a day in the sandbox with your best friend from kindergarten compared to this pain.

Adding insult to injury, the electrical charge blew the granite off of his body and shards buried themselves into my skin. That was going to leave a mark.

Part of me wondered how my eyes had stayed in their sockets after that strike. The other part realized that Zachary had been standing in my granite trap because he’d wanted to. That was a little scary. Okay, that was a
lot
scary. I am not sure why I kept underestimating him again and again. Maybe somewhere, I had hope that he was a decent guy who just spent too much time alone in his lab and was a little quirky. It would behoove me to remember - for future reference -that you didn’t become the Deity to end all deities because you were a doddering fool. This man had some serious juice.

My face must have given away my thoughts because the look of smug satisfaction on his was enough to piss me off all over again. As soon as my tongue went back down to normal from its current swollen state, I was going to give him a piece of my mind.

His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear the words yet. I shook my head at him to let him know that his breath was being wasted.

He threw his hands up in the air and pantomimed a phone. What did he want? I didn’t know where my phone was so I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head again.

He rolled his eyes and I’m sure if I could have heard, his words would have made me blush. He looked really annoyed right now as he searched through the debris for something.

As he passed me in his searching, he flicked my ear and the noise that entered sounded like a canon firing next to my head.

"Oww Fuck"

"Ladies don’t swear. Where is your phone?  I hear it ringing. It seems to be coming from this general area but I can’t see it."

We both started searching in the area that the sound was coming from. The last place left untouched was under a decapitated body lying halfway into the hall. I grimaced and gave the body a shove with my foot.

The phone was covered with bodily fluids that I could only guess at. "I wish I had a cleaning genie. I don’t want to touch that much less put it next to my face."

"Speaker?"

"Smart!" I leaned down and pressed the speaker button and answered. "Hello?"

"Grace? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last twenty minutes. Where in the hell have you been?"

"The last I checked, I wasn’t required to answer to you anymore, Brandon. That responsibility ended when I signed the divorce papers. Now, if you’d rather bitch at me, I have better things to do."

Leaning over to press the end button, the panic in his next words gave me pause. "Grace, it’s Dylan. Something is wrong. I can’t believe that I’m going to say this out loud, but Dylan’s skin feels like it’s on fire and it’s snowing inside of my house."

"Brandon, have you been drinking?" I stared at the handset gaping. "What do you mean it’s snowing inside your house? Have you taken Dylan’s temp? Do you know how high it is? When did it start? Did you bother calling his Doctor?"

To be fair, Rose was Dylan’s doctor so I can imagine that she wouldn’t be the first person he called. But still.

"I tried to take his temp and the thermometer melted."

"I’m sorry what?"

"The thermometer melted. He keeps asking for you. He won’t talk to me and now he won’t let me in his room. He’s got the door barred or something. I’m at my wits end here, Grace. Could you just come over?"

I looked at Zachary with my eyebrows raised. He shrugged at me and shook his head.

"Yeah, give me twenty minutes and I’ll be there. Tell him that Mommy will be right there."

Where were my car keys? I couldn’t remember where they’d ended up when the fighting started. Drew had been driving. I couldn’t remember where he’d put them. I started to panic which meant that my mental shields were completely down. A jingling near my ear caught my attention and I turned to see what it was.

Drew stood next to me - hair standing on end and still smelling like my bath wash - jingling my keys. "I’ll drive."

  Profound relief rushed through me. If anyone could help me get through this, it was going to be Drew. Biting my lip, I nodded. "Let’s go."

"I’m coming too," Zachary piped in.

"I don’t have time for this Zachary. We have to go now. Are you ready?"

"Of course," he replied disdainfully. "I’m always ready."

I looked at Drew, the unspoken question on my face.

"We may as well let him come. The gods only know what he’ll get up to if we leave him here."

"Good point," I responded. "Let’s go."

We piled into the car before Drew backed out of the drive and sped down the streets like a bat out of hell. Who was I to complain about his driving? I was glad.
 
We couldn’t get to my baby fast enough.

"Grace?"

Looking back at Zachary who was jammed into the back seat, I replied, "Yes, Zachary?"

"How old is Dylan?"

"He’s about to turn twelve, why?"

I didn’t miss the look that passed between Zachary and Drew.

"Why?" I repeated, now suspicious.

"Well, this sounds familiar. I just want you to be prepared for what may be happening."

"What is happening to my son, Zachary?" I was moving into full blown panic at this rate.

"Zachary, you don’t need to freak her out. It could be nothing."

"Yes, just like it was nothing when it happened to you and your mother thought that you were cursed," he responded wryly.

"Irrelevant. Persephone already told me that it wouldn’t happen."

"Well it sounds like Persephone was wrong, now doesn’t it?"

"What?" I screamed. "What is happening?"

"Puberty," they both answered.

“Well Duh! He’s already started showing signs of that. All boys go through puberty. Life. Remember?"

Drew bit his lip to keep from chuckling and refused to make eye contact with me. Zachary just leaned back into the cushion further and gave me a smug look. "Obviously you’ve never seen Alancean puberty."

His meaning finally clicked. "Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. As if my mother being kidnapped, my house being destroyed and Drew dying tonight weren’t enough…" I stared Drew down. "You told me this wasn’t going to happen."

"Correction. I said that
Persephone said
that this wasn’t going to happen." He adjusted the mirror and kept his eyes on the road.

"We are
so
going to talk about this later." I looked back at Zachary again. "What do we do?"

"We’re going to have to take him to Olympus. The girls aren’t quite as bad and can stay here during this period, but the boys don’t have the control at first to keep a lid on their powers."

"That is unacceptable. The court will never go for it and I’m not telling Brandon what’s going on here. I’ll lose Dylan faster than you can say Loony Bin."

"Well," he looked at me speculatively with a gleam in his eye that made me uncomfortable. "We could always take care of Brandon…" The words trailed off and my jaw dropped. How casually this man spoke of "offing" the man I’d been married to for so many years.

"Listen, I’m not going to say I haven’t fantasized about his demise a million times, but you aren’t killing my son’s father to make this easier. I’m going to call Rose. At the very least, she may be able to get his fever under control if it’s just the flu or something," I finished lamely.

Who was I kidding? I knew as well as the next fool that this wasn’t some kind of flu, but it made it a little easier to deal with as we sped toward my Ex’s house. I made the call and Rose promised to meet me there. She lived closer so we would arrive around the same time.

A few minutes later, Drew pulled the car into Brandon’s driveway. I didn’t think about how Brandon had a nice, non-destroyed house with his nice non-freak girlfriend. No, I didn’t think of that at all.

I knocked and he answered almost immediately. "Yes?" he asked.

I would have laughed out loud had the situation not been so serious. "You called me? I’m here to calm our son down and find out what is wrong with him."

"Grace? Oh my God! You look fantastic."

Raising an eyebrow at him, I looked down at my thrown together all too baggy clothes and then back at his curious gaze. "Yeah, thanks. Wanna let us in so we can deal?"

"Who are these men?" He barred the doorway and I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling. He was so out of his league here and he had no idea.

"Zachary is my step-father and Drew is our au pair. He’s spent a lot of time with Dylan lately and may know if he’s been exposed to something that could be causing this." Hoping that logic won out over brute force, I waited. Actually, I stared him down. For the first time in as long as I could remember, he broke first and stepped away from the door.

The first thing I noticed was the temperature.  The house was
freezing
.  "Where is his room?" I asked as I passed through the doorway.

"Down the first hall on the left."

"Thanks." I headed toward Dylan’s room and noticed the blowing snow right away. Oh my poor baby, I thought. A soft keening sound led straight to his doorway and I knocked softly.

"Bubby, it’s Mom. Can you let me in?" I leaned my head against the door and tried the knob. It twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge.

"I can’t," he whimpered. "There’s a block of ice in front of it."

His voice sounded so small.  My heart clenched. "Okay. It’s okay. I want you to take a few deep breaths. Remember when the earth started shaking and Drew told me to calm down?"

"Uh huh."

"Well that worked. The earth stopped shaking as soon as I took a few deep breaths. As soon as I can get inside we can talk about what upset you so much, okay? Your Auntie Rose is on her way too just in case you’re sick."

"Is Dad there?"

"No baby, it’s just me and Drew here."

The sobbing began again and the air grew colder with ice pellets stinging against my skin.

"Hey," I admonished. "What happened to taking a few deep breaths?" I turned back to look at Drew with pleading eyes. He leaned in close so that I was the only one who could hear what he said.

"Grace, he needs to learn how to deal with this on his own. If I phase through this door and fix it for him, he won’t know how to control it."

My face was a mask of cold fury. I turned into him, ready to start yelling and screaming when the sobs turned into gulps, quieting with each breath.

"Are you breathing?" I asked with parental authority.

"Yeah." I heard another gulp before the air started getting warmer.

Drew leaned toward the door and in a calm voice started talking him through the process. "That’s good. Keep breathing. When you’re calm, I want you to touch the ice on the door and think about a warm summer day, Dylan." Drew had started rubbing my back while he talked and I noticed that I was calming down too. I hadn’t realized that beyond the cold, the ground was starting to grumble too. I tossed him a grateful smile and placed my hand on the door, feeling for the change in temperature.

It took fifteen minutes of solid coaxing and eventual joking before the ice had melted enough for me to open the door. As soon as he could fit through the crack, Dylan threw himself into my arms and started crying again. I rocked him back and forth, stroking his hair and murmuring words of nonsense into his ear.