Rise of the Blood

Dedication

This one is for my husband, Pete, the most amazing man in the world.

Chapter One

“Sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re that sticky tape they get all stuck on. I’m pretty sure that’s worse.”

—Pappous, the strongman with the weak heart

“Diminutive. DIMINUTIVE? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m five-seven, for gods’ sake.”

I was staring down at a national tabloid “newspaper” that Jesus—part-time office assistant (when no auditions demanded his attention) and full-time diva—had just thrown onto my desk. My very own face stared back at me. Or, more accurately, gazed across a dinner table at Hollywood hottie Apollo Demas. The photographer had used some kind of filter or something to make the whole thing appear dreamy. A filter or magic, because I knew exactly where and when the pic must have been taken, and I’d been mad as hell at the time.

“Really?” Jesus asked wryly. “
That’s
your take-away from this?”

“My take-away is that if the rumors about me and Apollo won’t die,
someone
has to. I’m perfectly willing for it to be him.”

Jesus looked at me in horror. He lived in hope that he could matchmake the two of us and that, in gratitude, Apollo would launch his acting career…at which point he’d bid me a sayonara sister and leave me entirely without office support. It was a terrifying thought, considering he was the only one who understood his filing system.

“You think this was his doing?” he asked.

I took a huge swig of the coffee from the to-go cup sitting on my desk to give myself time to think. The coffee was a lot more palatable than the headline, even with the scalding.

“I don’t know,” I said finally.

“You could call him and find out.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“I know you won’t.”

But he didn’t know why, and I wasn’t about to enlighten him.

“Anyway, the damage is already done. Do you suppose Armani has seen—”

On that note, all three of our phone lines lit up at once.

Jesus snagged the phone on my desk. “Karacis Investigations,” he said, putting on his professional voice—one-third less ennui than his norm. “Hold please.” He punched another button. “Karacis Investigations,” he repeated for the benefit of whoever was on line two.

“No,” he said as I crooked an eyebrow at him for a sign as to our sudden popularity. “Miss Karacis is not available for comment.”

My head fell back against the headrest on my chair. I couldn’t wait for the universe to rescue me. I was going to have to kill Apollo myself.

“Italian stallion on line three,” Jesus said, making me realize I must have missed something while I was plotting Apollo’s death.

Armani
. Crap.

I shooed Jesus out to his own desk to deal with the lit up lines and answered my phone, punching the button for line three.

Quickly, before Armani could get a word in, I said, “Listen, whatever it looks like, it’s not what you think.”

Dead air.

“Armani?”

“
What’s
not what I think?” he asked, voice tight and contained.

“Uh, that’s not why you called?”

“
What’s
not why I called?”

“The article.”

“
What article?
” he asked in a strangled voice that indicated how hard he was working to stay patient with me.

I swallowed hard. “The one in the
National Informer
.”

He was silent again.

“Someone get me a copy of the
Informer
,” he suddenly roared, which told me that he was at the station. Whoever got their hands on that copy would know even before he did what the ruckus was all about. It would spread through the station like wildfire. The whole police force would know by noon. In L.A. that was no small thing. I pulled the receiver away from my ear to bang it against my temple.

“Tori,” he said loudly, calling me back to the conversation before I could give myself a concussion, “that’s not what I called about, though you
will
tell me everything.” The speed with which he got back to business told me that it was serious. “Zeus and Poseidon have escaped.”

My heart stopped. My own gorgon glare couldn’t have turned me to stone any more effectively.

“Hephaestus?” I asked.

“Still behind bars. The other two called up a humungous storm. The prison had to be evacuated. They escaped during the transfer. Hephaestus wasn’t so lucky.”

“So they’re…loose?”

“Yeah.”

“Since when?” The facility was hours away, but with gods that could be the blink of an eye. “Do I need to be worried?”

“No, we can take you into protective custody, get you to a safe house until they’re caught. With any luck, it won’t be long.”

My precognition kicked me in the gut at that statement, and I knew otherwise. They weren’t going to be caught within the next few hours or even days…maybe not at all by conventional methods.

“No,” I answered, before I could lose my nerve. “I’m not running. If they want to, they’ll find me anyway, and I still haven’t finished packing for the wedding.” Or started. “Wait—” For a second I wondered if a threat to my life would be enough to get me out of the whole thing. Watching cousin Tina star in the role she was meant to play—Bridezilla—was so not my idea of a good time. But in my crazy clan, weddings were sacred, and Yiayia’s wrath was a little more terrifying even than the greater gods. “No, never mind. Yiayia would kill me if I didn’t show.” And she’d talk me to death first. Zeus and Poseidon would probably just kill me outright.

“Still, you weighed the risk, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Wait until you meet my family, then you’ll understand.” Armani was my date. Poor man.

“If they’re all as…wonderful as you…”

I snorted, one of my more graceful habits. “What word were you really going to use?”

“Quirky came to mind.”

“Well, they are that.”

There was a pause, during which I heard the distinctive sound of newspaper crinkling, and then, “Um, do you want to tell me about your intimate little dinner with Apollo?”

I let my head hit the desk. It hurt.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I’m trying to brain myself.”

“You sure you’re equipped for that?”

“Some boyfriend you are.”

“At least I don’t make headlines with other men.” Wouldn’t
that
be something?

“You knew all about that dinner. I called you from the porch, remember, asking if murder was still a crime.”

“You don’t look ready to kill him here.”

But I could tell he wasn’t seriously concerned. He had far bigger worries.

The second we hung up, my buzzer sounded again. “
E! News
on line one,” Jesus said gleefully.

“I thought you took care of that.”

“Honey, that was line two. Some rinky-dink San Fernando Station. This is
E!
”

“Tell them they have the wrong lady.”

“Chica, I’m fairly certain they have better facial recognition software than the LAPD. I don’t think they’re going to believe me.”

“You’re an actor…act. Make it convincing.”

He huffed. If
E!
had been calling for Jesus, I was sure
he
wouldn’t be dodging the call. I just hoped they wouldn’t offer him enough to sell me out. Maybe I ought to rethink that bonus he kept hinting about.

Lines two and three lit up
again
while he was dealing with
E!
. I was considering my escape when Jesus’s voice suddenly rose, and I heard his composure slip.

“Come again?”

There was a pause as he listened to the person on the other end of the line before he sputtered, “Well, you…you just… Hello?
Hello?
”

I didn’t worry too much until Jesus flew into my office, ignoring the still-ringing phones. He
never
did that, lest it be his big break calling, unable to reach him on his cell. He looked pale, his eyes were wide and, even more shocking, I didn’t think he was acting.

“Tori,” he said. Not
boss lady
or
chica
or even his signature sniff. “I think we’ve just received our first death threat.”

It wouldn’t be my first threat, actually, but I hadn’t seen fit to worry him.

“We?” I asked, more curious than alarmed. I already knew that Zeus and Poseidon would probably come gunning for me. It was actually fairly considerate of them to issue a warning. Maybe Armani could trace the call.

“Well,
you
, really, but who knows who he might go through to get to you?” He clutched his hands to his chest. “I’m too young to die.”

I ignored the histrionics. “Calm down. What did the caller say?”

“Well,” he said, rolling his eyes to the heavens as if it helped him remember, “the connection was horrible, mind you, so I didn’t catch everything, but the gist of it was, ‘Tell her there’s nowhere she can run that we can’t find her’.”

I blew out a puff of air. “You call that a death threat?” I’d had worse. The god of the dead, now
there’s
a man who knew how to issue a threat. As for Zeus and Poseidon, why bother warning me? Wouldn’t it be easier to ambush me if I wasn’t on my guard? Not that I wouldn’t be after their prison break. But there had to be more to it. To convince me there was no point in protective custody? They couldn’t know I’d already come to the same conclusion. Reverse psychology? Wanting me running scared? In the end, it didn't matter. I was going to do what I was going to do. I’d have to fight them either way, I might as well do it on my own terms.

“What would you call it?” Jesus asked.

I passed on that one.

“Call Armani. Let him know about the call in case he can track it.”

I picked up the phone myself.

“Who are
you
calling?” he asked.

“Apollo. You happy now? I’m pretty sure that call was about a case we worked on together. I may want to kill him myself, but he deserves to know I won’t be the only one gunning.”

“Be gentle with him,” Jesus said, leaving and closing the door behind him like I might actually want privacy while I gave Apollo hell. Because that’s what I was planning to unleash.

But all I got was his voicemail.

“
Kali mera
. Please leave me a message. If this is the press, lose this number. If this is Tori, I’m on it.”

Well, so much for that, except that he’d now given my name to anyone who didn’t already have it. I left him a message about Zeus and Poseidon. I didn’t bother reading him the riot act. He was one step ahead of me there. If I was lucky, which didn’t seem terribly likely given my morning so far, he really was on it and all I’d have to worry about was two escaped gods with a grudge.

Lucky me.

Chapter Two

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lucky for me your Pappous has a ’stigmatism.”

—Yiayia

An hour later I hesitated in the entrance to Chi Chi’s, the upscale spa Christie insisted on taking me to for wedding prep. I gave it one last try. “You do realize that the last time I set foot in one of these places, someone got killed.”

Christie, my BFF and absolute polar opposite, gave me a
look
. “Your point being?”

“I’m just saying, there’s precedent.”

“So you want me to believe you’re superstitious about spas?”

I shrugged. “It could happen again, you don’t know. Might even be me who snaps.”

I wasn’t a mani-pedi sort of girl. I wasn’t
any
sort of girl. Somehow I’d managed to achieve total womanhood without any of the L.A. rites of passage—no wax on or wax off, no shellacking, seaweed wrapping or other creative forms of torture in the name of beauty. I believed firmly in “don’t file what ain’t broke”.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said wryly. “Tori, you’re going to be a bridesmaid in a destination wedding in one of the most romantic places on Earth. What kind of friend would I be if I let you go with raggedy-ass nails and pores the size of champagne bubbles?”

“Champagne bubbles, really?” I asked, pleased.

“Honey, that’s not a good thing.”

My smile fell. “I did mention there’ve been death threats, right? Armani wants to put me into protective custody. I probably shouldn’t be out in public at all.”

“I thought it was
Nick
these days. Anyway, the man just wants you in
his
custody, probably with handcuffs and other restraints. Safest place for you is in public with lots of witnesses. And before you start in on the expense, don’t. Just don’t. It’s my treat.”

“But—”

“No buts.” She put her hand to my back and virtually propelled me through the doors, knowing I wouldn’t dare hip check her after she’d helped me take down a killer cult and rescue Uncle Christos just last month.

A woman with the longest, straightest, whitest-blonde hair I’ve ever seen rushed out from behind a counter at the sight of Christie, gripped her by the shoulders and gave her an air kiss to each cheek, which Christie returned. Me, I was too busy watching to be sure she wouldn’t accidentally puncture Christie’s flesh with her dagger-like nails—gold swirled with black.