Secret Worlds (290 page)

“I’ve had other things on my mind,” I said. “Despite what you think, my thoughts don’t revolve around you.”

“Are you sure about that?” He pulled me closer until the scent of olives and patchouli enveloped me, and his thumb massaged the softness of my inner elbow.

“Positive.” Though, my voice came out husky, with the pitch elevated. “I should have known. Mercer is a dead giveaway.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice it sooner.” He smirked. “So, do I play the millionaire play boy well?”

“Perfect. But that’s not surprising, given who you are.” I swallowed hard as his thumb continued its caress up my arm. “So what is Hermes doing in a small school like this?”

“I have my interests,” His breath ruffled my hair.

“Did you kill James because he was in Serenity’s way?” I asked softly.

His fingers tightened on my arm. “I told you I’m not your enemy.”

“You’re also the god of liars and thieves.” I swallowed, trying to ignore the way the tingling raced through my body and awoke my loins. “Besides, you’re all enemies. You come here, take what you want, and damn anyone who gets in your way. The gods don’t care about humans.”

“I do care.” His hand dropped to his side. “I actually like humans.”

I rounded on him, crossing my arms. “No, you have a few favorites, but as a whole, we’re nothing to you. Troy proved that. Thousands died, all because three of you got into an argument over who was the prettiest.”

He raised his hands. “Hey, that was Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. Not me.”

“You screwed over plenty of people. Countless women you slept with and left.” I burst into a bitter laugh. “You haven’t changed much as Mercer, either.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Stop being so uppity. Humans aren’t much better.”

I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at her. “Humans don’t have the power a god has.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t they? Maybe not before we left, but now, you have the ability to cause as much devastation as any one of us with the push of a few buttons.”

“You’re talking about bombs.”

“In particular, yes, but humans have come up with quite a bit, all I the name of killing each other. The ones at the top used the masses to further their power.” He smirked. “When you think about it, sweetheart, we’re not that much different.”

“Not all humans are like that.”

“And neither are all gods.”

I locked eyes with him. “But you are. You worked with Zeus to create Pandora and help spread the daimones in that box.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, causing a lock to fall over his left eye. “I did what my father asked, and that was a long time ago. I’ve changed.”

“It doesn’t really look like it,” I said. “What have you done since you got here? Besides bother Serenity and seduce me?”

“If you remember correctly, I was on that roof with you, trying to stop James. And who, exactly, did the seducing?”

He leaned closer to me so that we were only inches apart. My heart pounded in my chest as my fingers itched to run down his chest. I shuddered, took a deep breath, and stepped back. Concentrating was all but impossible with him so close to me.

“You never answered the question,” I said. “Did you kill James?”

“You already called me a liar. Why would you believe me if I said no?”

I stared up at him and sighed. He had a point. What had I thought I could achieve by confronting him? It’s not like I could tell if he was truthful. He’d fooled way better than me, from what the stories said.

“Tell me who the daimon is. You should know since you were talking to him a few weeks ago,” I said. “Give me a name, and I’ll believe you.”

As he opened his mouth, my tattoo erupted in an inferno of pain. This was nothing like the tingling current I felt in his presence. This felt as though my entire arm was on fire. I grabbed my wrist and doubled over with a grunt. He grabbed my shoulders in a gentle grip. The echo of a gunshot from down the hall echoed through the air. Both of us jerked to attention and snapped our heads to the door. He’d obviously hidden his speed. By the time I reached the door, he’d made it down the hall and inside our auditorium. He flung his hand up when I came up behind him.

“Don’t,” he said.

Students were screaming and scrambling from their seats. Serenity sat in hers with her eyes locked on the body on the floor with her hands gripping the armrests so hard her knuckles had turned white. Sheridan lay on the floor with blood spreading from beyond the podium that hid her upper body.

I wrapped my arms around myself as I sat on the steps of the building and tried to push down the sick feeling in my stomach. A flashing of blue and red glowed faintly from the parking lot, casting the courtyard in an eerie ambiance.

Police officers stood at the edges of the yellow tape that surrounded the building with stern, blank expressions. Their compatriots were inside, investigating the scene of the accident. A bitter laugh burst from my lips. A crime had happened here, but the police would never know that. This was just another tragic accident to be closed by the end of the night.

“Miss Wayne?” A detective looked down at me with a concerned frown in his hazel eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss, but I have a few questions, then you are free to go.”

I licked my dry lips and nodded to him. “Sure.”

“You were friends with Miss. Hayes?” He pulled out a small notepad and a pen.

“Yeah, we hung out,” I said.

“Was she acting any different? Do you know of anything that could have triggered this?”

The dryness moved to my throat, and I trembled. “She’s been attacked on a date. I tried to get her to report it, but …”

His brow furrowed, and he frowned at his pad. “I see. Did she tell her the name of her assailant?”

“What difference does it make? There’s no one to speak against him.”

“I’m just trying to gather all the information available.”

“Marcus Baxter.” I sighed. “But he’ll never admit it.”

“Unfortunately, you’re probably right.” A brief touch of sympathy entered his tone. “I understand you were present for the suicide of James Thorne?”

I nodded, staring at the sidewalk as my chest squeezed. Another death at the daimon’s hand that I failed to stop. I pressed my finger into my tattoo, trying to revive the burning, hell even the tingling, that had been present. Nothing happened. The burning had disappeared soon after I’d entered the auditorium, too quickly for me to narrow it down. The tingling had faded when Mercer—no, Hermes—and Serenity had left a short time ago. My interview was one of the last ones the police were conducting.

“Were you present when this one happened?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Uh, no. I was speaking with Mr. Chaplin in another room. We heard the gunshot.”

“What were you discussing?”

I glanced up at him with narrowed eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He gave me a bland smile and brushed a lock of brown hair back from his face with the hand holding his pen. “I’m just trying to get all the facts, ma’am.”

“We were discussing aspects of the project,” I said.

“And what is your role?”

My jaw tightened. Did he treat all these interviews with these questions? Maybe my paranoia was overblown. After all, the police would still mark this as a suicide case. Sheridan had shot herself, and there was no physical evidence the police could find that would say otherwise.

“I’m the journalist assigned to the project,” I said.

“Do journalists often speak privately with Mr. Chaplin?”

I gave a harsh chuckle. “Well, he is funding and heading this project. He’s the man to go to for the best story. I really don’t see what this has to do with Sheridan.”

He leaned closer and studied me with a hard gaze. “You have extraordinary hair. Interesting color.”

I stiffened. “Oh, that’s not weird at all. Look, do you have any more questions? I’m ready to go now.”

He pulled out a card and handed it to me. “That’s all for now, though we may be in touch.”

I pocketed the card and headed to the tape. After a wave from the detective’s hand, the policeman lifted it up for me to duck under. I hurried into the parking lot and to my car, squinting in the glare of the flashing lights. The few police milling about barely spared me a glance.

I slid in my car and drove to the parking lot on the other side of campus. It was deserted, as I thought it would be. One or two cars were parked with a sea of spaces between them. I sighed and gazed at the buildings then down at my wrist. Only my pulse answered my silent question. Why was I even here? The daimon had probably long left the school altogether.

Despite this, I climbed out of my car and walked to toward the dorms. A group of students gathered around the stoop and talked quietly with each other. They glanced my direction and continued whispering as I trudged by them. As I passed another dorm, my wrist began to tingle, like tiny pinpricks uncoiling. Another murmur of voices floated on the air from my left. I pivoted and marched the direction with quick, determined steps.

Hermes’s voice drifted from around the corner of the building. “This would have happened if I came here or not.”

The gritty bricks dug into my back as I pressed against the dorm and peeked around the corner. Serenity stood in front of Hermes with her shoulders stiff and her fists clenched while he stared down at her with an almost sad, pitying look. Once again, I had walked in on another argument between the two of them. I sighed and stepped out from the building, clearing my throat. Serenity spun around, and her already stormy expression darkened.

“Great,” she said. “Now the two of you are going to start making out or something.”

I frowned as a guilty feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “What are you doing out here?”

She jabbed her finger in the direction of Hermes. “Ask him. He’s the one who dragged me out here.”

Hermes rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I was hoping we could trace the thing responsible. I thought if Serenity witnessed it, she could vouch for me.”

I crossed my arms with a smirk. “She already has, in a way.”

Serenity shot me a death glare and I shrugged. Hermes looked between the two of us with raised eyebrows.

“Really?” he asked Serenity.

I tilted my head with a raised eyebrow. “Anyway, if you’re out here chasing it, then you know who the daimon is.”

He gave me a mysterious smile. “Maybe.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“What will you give me?” he asked.

“I won’t kill you.”

He yawned and tilted his head at me. “You weren’t going to anyway.”

Serenity threw up her hands. “Oh, just tell her. I’d like to go home instead of standing here in the dark looking for something I can’t find.”

“What exactly are you?” I asked. “I thought any god should be able to sense others.”

“I’m Serenity,” she snapped.

“That’s not any god I’ve heard of,” I said.

“You also took two months to figure out
him
.” Serenity jabbed her thumb in Hermes’s direction. “Honestly, you need to brush up on your mythology or something.”

“I don’t need to memorize it,” I muttered. “That’s what Google is for.”

Hermes chuckled. “Serenity is my daughter.”

My jaw damn near hit the pavement. “No way.”

Serenity sighed and crossed her arms. “Unfortunately.”

I studied the two of them with narrowed eyes. They both had dark hair, but his was almost black and hers had hints of brown and gold in it. Her face was more rounded at the cheek in comparison to his angular bone structure.

“I’m failing to see the resemblance,” I said.

Serenity rolled her eyes. “He took this form so he could try to win me over and a friend or something.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “How else could I do it? You refuse to accept me as your father.”

She turned his direction and balled her fists up again. “You ignored me for seventeen years. What kind of father does that?”

He let out a long sigh and took a patronizing tone. “We’ve been over this before.”

“Not knowing I existed is a shitty excuse,” she said. “You go around fucking whoever you want, even my best friend here, and you don’t give a damn to what happens to them afterwards.”

His hot gaze locked me in my spot before he looked back to her. “This really isn’t the time to talk about this.”

She laughed bitterly. “It never is.”

Yeah, this was getting just weird. I glanced behind me, trying to resist the urge to back away from this little drama slowly. My heart pounded in my chest as my emotions went to war inside me.

It felt wrong to want him on so many levels, especially with Serenity here yelling at him for being a bad father. Yet, when I looked at him, my heart squeezed in my chest and my body craved his warmth.

I shook my head. This is what happened when gods became involved in mortals. And beneath it all was the empty hole that Sheridan once filled. I swallowed the lump in my throat as the reality of it hit me. She was really gone. I had failed her.

I clapped a hand over my mouth to stop the sobs from rising in my throat and spun away from the both of them. Their continued arguing faded into the background as I stumbled back to the parking lot. I slammed my fist on my trunk and leaned over as a strangled cry left my throat. My breath came out in strangled gasps as tears streamed down my cheeks.

And in my moment of another emotional breakdown, my tattoo burned. A figured stepped out of the shadows and under one of the streetlamps.

James’s pale, dead eyes stared at me, and his lips curled in a twisted, predatory grin.

My blood froze in my veins, and an ill feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Beyond the murkiness of James’s eyes lay a squirming darkness filled with a never-ending hunger. If any human had seen him, they would have screamed zombie. I knew better.

A ker stood before me. When Pandora opened the jar, the keres, the daimones of violent deaths, escaped in droves. They enjoyed trolling battlefields and preyed upon the dying. I don’t know what the ancient Greeks were thinking when they spun stories of the keres all those centuries ago. Maybe they wanted to sleep safe in their beds with the belief that everything served a purpose, so they told their children that keres sent the dying souls to the underworld before feeding on their blood. The keres never cared about blood.