“Not anything serious,” I rushed to assure him. I didn’t tell him that I felt sick because I knew, if I did, he wouldn’t leave. “I just know that I’m not up to a hundred percent, and even though I want to help and I hate staying back, I know . . . I know I need to stay. Going out there with these damn bands on my wrists and feeling like I do would be the stupidest decision ever.”
His eyes searched mine, and then he nodded. “Thank you.”
Before I had a chance to ask him what he was thanking me for, Aiden stepped out into the hallway. Based on the messy dark hair and the swollen appearance of his lips, I was guessing he and Alex had argued, and then made up.
“Ready when you are,” he called.
“And Alex?” Seth asked.
The tips of his cheeks flushed. “She’s agreed to stay behind.”
“Uh-huh.” Sliding his hand to the nape of my neck, Seth kissed the center of my forehead and then his lips found mine. The kiss was intense, flipping and twisting my insides into a pleasant, heady mess. My hands found their way to his chest and my fingers curled into his shirt. As he lifted his head, I wished we had enough time to go somewhere private and finish what we’d started in his bedroom.
“Be back soon,” he said, kissing the corner of my lips.
I nodded and nearly slumped against the wall as he let go of me. He swaggered down the hall to where Aiden waited. Goodness, that was a kiss. Snapping out of the daze, I stepped forward. “Seth?”
He looked over his shoulder.
“I love you.”
Seth’s response was immediate. The smile that raced across his face was wide and beautiful, and the look he sent me turned my insides to goo. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he placed his hand on Aiden’s shoulder.
A second later they were gone.
Grinning, Deacon strode forward, hands in his pockets. “Ready to meet our guest?”
Chapter 27
Seth
We made a pit stop in the weapons room before we went to Texas. Although I really didn’t need them, I grabbed two daggers and a belt mainly because the daggers were fun to use.
Aiden hooked on a set and also grabbed one of the Glocks that was loaded up with titanium-capped bullets. His demigod abilities, much like Josie’s, weren’t infinite. He’d eventually tire out.
I, on the other hand, pretty much just wanted to stab something.
“You ready?” I asked, amused by the fact that we were actually working together again. “I don’t want to be gone too long.”
“Understandable.” Aiden walked over to where I stood but stopped. His steady gaze met mine. “What’s the plan if we come face to face with a Titan?”
If only we’d get that lucky.
One side of my lips kicked up. “Kill them.”
Aiden crossed his arms as an eyebrow rose. “That’s not exactly a plan. The gods—”
“I really don’t care what the gods want.”
“Killing the Titans causes pretty catastrophic consequences,” Aiden reasoned just like the good saint that he was. “We might’ve gotten lucky with Perses, but we have to take that into consideration. Our actions impact the lives of innocent people, Seth.”
I wondered if saying I really didn’t care would make me sound like an ass.
His eyes narrowed. “I can tell what you’re thinking. You have to care about this.”
“See, that’s the thing, Aiden. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. I’m not you,” I told him. “I’m not here to save the world. That’s not who I am. I will never be that.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Then what are you?”
“You know what I am.” I cocked my head to the side.
“A selfish, arrogant prick?” he replied blandly.
My smile spread. “There is only one person I truly care about. Only one person I would go to the ends of the earth to keep safe. You’re not that person. It would be wise to remember that.”
Aiden lifted his chin as his eyes flashed silver. “You need to remember that I would do anything to keep Alex safe, and if killing Titans put her in danger, then I will do whatever it takes to stop you.”
“I think you will try to stop me,” I corrected helpfully. “Look, what do you want me to say, Aiden? What would you do if Hyperion had gotten hold of Alex and did those things to her?”
His lips thinned.
“I know what you wanted to do to Ares. I know what you wanted to do to me,” I pointed out. Aiden looked away. “I’m not completely irresponsible, contrary to popular belief. If there is a way to entomb those Titans without putting Josie in harm’s way, I’m all for it, but I will not let Hyperion live. There is no convincing me otherwise. So if you have a problem with that, then you should probably sit this one out, because if I come face to face with him, he’s a dead motherfucker.”
A moment passed and Aiden said, “That I can understand.” His gaze lifted to the ceiling. “Hyperion is the god of heavenly light—one of the pillars of earth. The east, I believe. Not sure what taking him out would do.”
Whatever his death caused was worth it to ensure that Josie never had to live in fear of his return. Cronus was also on my to-kill list, but I wasn’t sharing that at this moment.
Aiden drew in a shallow breath. “I don’t agree with you nine out of ten times, but this . . . this thing with Hyperion, I understand. If I’d had a chance to kill Ares, I would’ve taken it.”
My gaze met his. “And if you’d had a chance to kill me, you would’ve taken it.”
“Yes. Yes, I would’ve.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.” I clapped a hand down on Aiden’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t wait for Aiden’s response, taking us to the location where the Sentinel Aiden had been in contact with had told us to meet. Within seconds, we were in the sticky, murky air of Houston.
“Gods!” a deep male voice boomed in shock from behind us.
Turning around, I smiled as I eyed the group of Sentinels. “Yes?”
The Sentinel in the middle, the one who had spoken, took a step back. His eyes were wide as the sun glistened off his deep brown skin. The other three Sentinels looked like they were close to passing out.
Aiden moved to stand beside me. “Torin?”
He nodded. “You warned me that he . . . he was a god, but I just wasn’t prepared for that.” The half glanced in my direction. “You’re really a god.”
My smile kicked up a notch.
One of the Sentinels behind him blanched.
Aiden sighed. “Yes, he’s really a god. And yes, he can do all the cool god things, but we really have limited time. So, if we can get the shock and awe out of the way, that would be great.”
I slid Aiden a long look. “Well, that takes the fun out of everything.”
He ignored me. “What do you have for us, Torin?”
Torin appeared to snap out of his shock as he ran a hand over his closely cropped dark hair. “As you know, we have had quite a lot of pures go missing recently, but we’ve had few daimon attacks.”
“We’ve actually barely seen any daimons,” another Sentinel spoke up, a younger brunette who barely looked old enough to be out of the Covenant. “So that right there was suspicious.”
“We have mandatory escorts in place when the pures leave the communities. It was on a recent shopping trip that we learned we were dealing with shades. They’d possessed several mortals that attacked one of our groups,” Torin explained, resting one hand on the handle of a dagger. “There was only one survivor. They confirmed what happened.”
“So why are we on this roof in the baking sun of Houston?” I asked.
The female Sentinel strolled forward, walking past us to the cement edge of the roof. She easily hopped up. “See the office building three blocks down? The tall one with the pyramid-shaped roof?”
“Yes.” Aiden followed, squinting.
“As we told you, we’ve been tracking what we believe to be the shades. Other tha
n their . . . smell, it’s not easy identifying them if they want to blend in,” she said, turning to the building. “We’re pretty positive that’s where they’ve been holing up.”
“Is it an active office building?” Aiden asked, and of course, he sounded concerned. “Are there mortals working in there?”
“Yes.” Torin joined the female. “That’s why we’ve been holding off. Looks like the upper two floors are actually penthouse-type rooms. The rest is office space. They’re in this building, surrounded by what appears to be mortals who aren’t possessed and probably have no idea what is going on.”
“Plus, those mortals those shades are riding are innocent,” the girl tacked on. “If they haven’t hurt those bodies, the mortals can be saved if we can get the shades out of them.”
“And that’s stopped you because . . . ?” I asked, genuinely curious.
All the Sentinels turned and looked at me. Not Aiden. He just stared at the building, probably weeping inside because he knew what I already knew. There was no helping those mortals.
“I hate to break it to you guys,” I said. “This isn’t an episode of Supernatural. Once the shades get into the body, the mortal is as good as dead. There is no coming back from that. You’re not saving them from shit.”
The girl turned to us, her face paling. “There’s no exact proof of that, because the shades—”
“Because the shades almost always kill the mortals before they leave the body,” Aiden answered, turning to face us. “We need to get in there and see what we’re dealing with.”
Torin nodded. “That’s why we’re here. We’re your back-up. And if we can save those mortals in there, we’re going to try to. We’re not going to let them die.”
I smirked but said nothing. If they wanted to think we needed back-up and that they could play superhero to a bunch of already dead mortals, then whatever. I strode forward and leapt onto the edge. The buildings were tucked up against one another, all the way to the office we needed to get into. I could easily pop myself to the building, but then I’d have to wait for the rest of them, and I knew better than to think I’d actually wait. I looked over at Aiden, saw that he was gauging the distance between the rooftops. It would be a series of impossible jumps for a mortal to make, but not for us.
Not for trained Sentinels.
“Let’s do this.” Torin backed up a few steps and then took off running. His booted feet launched off the ledge. He vaulted over the gap, landing on the roof of the next building in a roll. He popped up and took off again, moving faster than the mortals on the ground could track. The other three Sentinels followed.
Aiden was next.
He did the same, taking several steps back before he got a running leap. He got more air then the rest, and he landed in a crouch before springing back up and going for the next building.
I didn’t need to run.
Muscles tensed. Power lit up every cell. I kicked off the ledge. Warm air whipped over my body. I landed in the center of the second roof just as Aiden cleared it, hitting the third.
We hopscotched our way three blocks up, finally reaching the building—some kind of bank—next to the office building. The female Sentinel was on the ledge, crouched between the letters of a large neon metal sign. She’d pulled a pair of binoculars out of the small backpack she wore.
A sheen of sweat covered Torin’s forehead as he stalked toward the edge. “See anything, Kia?” he asked. She held up a hand as she scanned the building. Torin faced us. “There’s a lobby on the main floor. Office spaces every floor up until the last two. She’s looking for one of the shades we’d been tracking.”
Aiden made his way up to the sign and knelt next to Kia. He said something to her as I walked over to the other edge. The building looked like all the rest, a modern-day stone fortress built with cement and glass, but there was a certain aura of darkness clinging to the gray stone. Maybe it was the godly senses kicking in, because I knew without a doubt that there were shades inside.
“Got them. They’re on the top floor,” Kia said, lowering the binoculars. “There’s at least—hell, at least twenty that I counted. They’re with the shade we were tracking. Some of them may be humans, but they’re acting kind of weird.”
I raised a brow. “Can you elaborate on the weirdness?”
“Can I see?” Aiden asked, and was rewarded with the binoculars. “Yeah, there’s a whole bunch and most of them are just kind of . . . lying around. On the floors. A few appear to be awake. They got a . . . Hell.” Aiden lowered the binoculars, exhaling roughly. “I think they’ve got regular mortals in there.”
“How can you tell the difference?” Torin asked.
Aiden looked over his shoulder. “They’ve got them tied up.”
I snickered, unable to help myself. “Well, that would definitely be an indication.”
Handing the binoculars back to Kia, Aiden rose. “I’m assuming the elevator will take you from the lobby to the top floors, but do you need a special access code to get to those rooms?”
“Yeah, so we’re going to need to get a key card,” Torin explained while Aiden nodded away. “There’s a small maintenance room off the lobby that has all the keys. We grab them and then head up the elevator. From there . . .”
Turning away from them, I scanned the glass windows in front of the top floor. Yeah, I didn’t have the fucking time for walking into the lobby and finding some damn key. I squinted at the glass floor to ceiling windows. There was no way all of our asses, dressed in black and carrying guns and daggers wasn’t going to draw some unwanted attention. We’d have to use compulsions. Someone would probably scream before we got the chance. I’d get annoyed. Then someone would end up going splat.
“It’s that section of windows right there?” I asked, cutting into their conversation. “Correct?”
“Yes.” Kia rose. “That appears to be some sort of living room.”
“Cool.” I faced them. “Can you guys keep a secret? Like, a really big secret that I’d kind of have to kill you if you shared level of secret-keeping?”
“Seth,” Aiden sighed with a roll of his eyes.
The Sentinels exchanged looks, but Torin said with a shrug, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Good.” Smiling, I pivoted around and lifted my hands. A surge of power rushed the room. “Because I’m about to straight up murder some people. See you on the flip side.”
Aiden started forward. “Seth—”
It was too late.
Centering myself, the blue sky around me faded out and was replaced by high white ceilings, slowly churning fans, and several still, musky-smelling mortals.
Jackpot.
Chapter 28
Josie
“How has everything been going here?” I asked Deacon as we walked toward the dorms. The last time I’d been at the University, it appeared as if a war was brewing between the pures and halfs.
The halfs had been through a lot and it had only been a matter of time before they started fighting back.
With his hands in his pockets, he glanced up at the cloudless blue skies. “It seems to have calmed a bit since Luke and I got back. I think a lot has to do with Marcus’s no tolerance policy. A lot of pures have been expelled.”
“Good,” I said, meaning it. Some of the pures had been doing terrible things.
“And a lot of other pures have been standing side by side with the halfs.” We climbed the steps and Deacon reached the doors first. He looked over his shoulder at me. “I’m hoping things continue to change, because the old way was one giant dumpster fire.”
“Agreed.”
We hit the common area of the dorm and passed a group of students who were sitting on the couches. I realized at once that we were walking down the same hall that Seth and I had stayed in before.
Halfway down, Deacon stopped and faced me. “Before we do this whole meet-and-greet thing, I want to know how you’re really doing.”
I drew up short. “I’m doing fine.”
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