“Sure,” Kiran parroted. “Makes perfect sense.”
“Do you feel any attraction?” Eden asked Kiran. She was calm while she waited for his answer. Too calm. I wanted to laugh except they were both wearing wedding rings and clearly had a solid relationship. If I got between them and ruined something real and lasting, I would never forgive myself.
“Nope,” he said honestly. “None at all.” Then he looked at me. “No offense.”
“Nothing at all?” Eden narrowed her eyes on her husband.
“Nothing, Love.”
“I wonder why that is?” Her scrutinizing gaze swung to me.
“Well, they are from different worlds,” Ryder put in. “Whoever created us probably didn’t expect our paths to cross.”
That was true. We were definitely from different worlds. I thought the whole Greek mythology thing was weird. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around Magic.
Let alone Zombies.
I cleared my throat. “Sometimes when there’s real love between a couple, the guy is immune. And sometimes I can shut it off.”
“Is it shut off right now?” Eden asked.
I shifted uncomfortably and avoided any kind of eye contact with Ryder. “Well, no. I can’t really choose when it shuts off. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t shut off very often. Although, believe me,” I looked at the door that separated us from way too many Zombies trying to get to me, “I wish more than anything I could control it.”
“I’ve had that before,” Eden said sympathetically. I quirked a brow at her and she waved a hand in front of her body. “Powers you can’t control or that won’t cooperate. I’ve been there.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “For sure. I used to cause all kinds of problems. I would blow things up. Flood things. There was this incident with insects… that one was not pretty. I was out of control.”
“So out of control,” Kiran commiserated.
I found myself smiling despite these insane circumstances. “Ever make boys fall in love with you?”
“Just the one,” Eden laughed.
Kiran’s eyes lit with laughter when he said, “Actually there were two of us.”
“What happened to the other guy?” Ryder sounded truly concerned.
Eden glared at Kiran for a second before explaining, “He moved on. He wasn’t under a spell or anything. He just had a thing for me for a short while. He’s happily in love now. With someone else.”
“Love triangle,” Kiran reiterated.
“Ah.” I felt a wave of relief. “I’ve never been in a love triangle before. They seem awful though; I’m not going to lie.”
“My one saving grace,” Ryder muttered.
“Count yourself lucky, Mate.”
Eden and I shared a look and a mutual feeling of “oh, brother,” for the men in our lives. Not that I had claim to Ryder like she did to Kiran. But, still. They were so helplessly pathetic when it came to us. That much was obvious.
Something smashed into the door next to us. I jumped out of my skin and my heart exited my body through my mouth. Or that was what it felt like. I screamed at the top of my lungs and then had to remind myself I’d been thrust into a horror movie.
Eden gave the door a wary glance and then surveyed the dark room where we had found sanctuary. “Kiran and I infused the door with some Magic to keep the Zombies at bay, but I’m not sure if it will last. These aren’t our usual enemies.”
“What should we do?”
“I say we go up,” Kiran suggested. “They won’t be able to scale the building and they’re not smart enough to understand they could break inside and use the staircase.”
This seemed like a terrible idea. Had he never watched a scary movie before? Going up the stairs was always the best way to get killed.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea…”
“Okay,” Ryder said slowly. “It might not be a good idea. But do you have a better idea? I agree with him, Red. If we stand here, they’ll just pound away on that door until they get to you. At least on the roof we’ll be further out of their reach.”
“Okay, up it is.”
Eden shot me a reassuring smile and led the way through the small laundromat. She held an orb of light in her hand that seemed to come directly out of her palm.
Weird.
The blue light helped us find a path through the square building to the back hall that led us to a staircase.
I jumped every time something smashed into the outside of the building. And there was plenty of that. I had no doubt that the entire structure was surrounded with Zombies and that they were beating the stucco walls to get in.
Could the building hold them out there indefinitely? Was there a scenario in which enough Zombies could bring something like this down?
I didn’t know anything about buildings or how safe we really were.
For not the first time, I really wished being a mythological creature with intense powers would translate into something tangible and useful. This stupid curse. If it wasn’t one problem, it was another.
Only this thing, with the Zombies, seemed larger than most of my other problems.
I had to admit, though, there was this small part of me that entertained the idea of getting bit. I mean… I didn’t want to be a Zombie. At all. But, how pissed would Nix and my mom be if I ruined all their precious plans by joining the undead?
So pissed.
It would be pretty awesome.
I could hear the Zombies screaming and groaning. Their guttural moaning pierced through the thick walls of the building and coated the air inside. It was both low and high-pitched, both screeching sound and an ugly growl. It was the worst sound I had ever heard.
It crawled along my skin and scratched at my bones. I hated it. And I hated a lot of things in this life, but that awful sound had to be one of the things I hated most.
In the stairwell, I pressed closer to Ryder and avoided the look he shot over his shoulder. I wasn’t equipped to deal with Zombies or end of the world craziness or really my own craziness. I needed something familiar.
Someone familiar.
Even if the last time I’d seen him, he had begged me not to leave him. And I had anyway. I’d left him and everyone I knew behind.
“You okay, Red?”
His words shook me out of my dark memories and jolted through my system. I looked up at his face shrouded in shadows and tried to see him, like really see him. I wanted to know what was going on in his head. I wanted to know what he thought about me.
Or, really… how he felt about me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back honestly. “This is scary, Ryder.”
He stopped walking unexpectedly and we ended up on the same step. I didn’t know what else to do other than stand there and stare at him. Ever since our relationship ended, I had become decidedly less smooth around the opposite sex.
He put two strong hands on my shoulder and seemed to gather some courage or tact or something. “We’ll get through this, Ivy. Hermes isn’t going to lose you to Zombies. So he wanted to teach you a lesson. You’ve learned it, obviously. He’ll be back to get you, soon.”
“Us.”
“What?”
“He’ll be back to get us, Ryder. Hermes isn’t going to leave you here.”
He made a disagreeing sound in the back of his throat. “We’ll see. Those Greek bastards are a little fickle when it comes to humans.”
“He wouldn’t leave you here,” I insisted. “And you’re not a normal human.”
Ryder’s thumb rubbed a slow trail over my collarbone; my stomach flipped and spun and twisted until it was hard to breathe. I tried not to react outwardly, but my breath caught and my body instinctively leaned into him.
He pulled back immediately and retracted his hands. I felt the loss of his touch like a physical pain. Even in the lack of light I could see his attention shift from places he had just been touching to my face and then back again
.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they left me, Ivy. And you probably shouldn’t be either.”
I growled. Actually growled. “They’re not going to leave you. I won’t leave you.”
I felt whatever warmth he’d given me in the last few minutes disappear completely. His attitude turned icy and crept over my hands and arms like frost. I still couldn’t catch a breath, but this time it was because my lungs had frozen.
“You already left me, Ivy. And you already told me that once before.”
“You guys coming?” Eden asked from up a flight of stairs.
“Yep.” Ryder turned away from me and marched on.
I struggled to stay present, to stay breathing for several more moments before I finally followed after him. And when I finally did, it was only because the pounding against the walls increased and I feared for my life.
I scurried after Ryder trying not to hate myself. It wasn’t easy. I was rather an expert on self-loathing.
I also needed to figure out how to get us out of this mess. “Hermes,” I whispered into the darkness.
Nothing.
I kept whispering the name of my supernatural travel agent all the way up the stairs. He never showed.
The sun burst bright and blinding through the rooftop door. I blinked against the evening sun and let my eyes adjust. It wasn’t harsh light but after the darkness of the building, my eyes seemed unwilling to open.
When I could finally see again, I wished I couldn’t.
Zombies stretched out from the building in every direction. They flooded the streets and alleyways of this small town and surged the building.
They fought, clawed, wrestled, did anything they could to get to us. To me. And they smelled so bad.
So freaking bad.
Eden and Kiran stood super close to the ledge and stared down over it with a hungry kind of vengeance. Their Magic seemed to zing back and forth between them and light the air with invisible fire.
Ryder didn’t seem to notice the electrical current they brought with them, but I felt it all over. It shouldn’t be this easy for me to sense their Magic or trust them at their word. But it was and I did.
I couldn’t explain it, but it was easy for me to trust Eden. I felt this inexplicable connection to her. I wanted to blame it on the cosmos or some great psychic event, but it was probably much simpler.
Probably something as little as we were from the same hometown or something.
I joined them at the edge and tried not to gag. “Oh, my gosh, are they…? Are they eating each other?”
Eden sucked in a breath. “Looks like it. I’ve heard of that before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it up close and personal. That’s just disgusting.”
“I don’t think they’re going to give up, Red.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Ryder and then followed his gaze down to where Zombies were trying to crawl up the wall or use each other as step stools. Their bloodied hands left dark streaks on the bumpy stucco. Their half-gone faces sneered up at me and they bared their blackened, gunky teeth with clear intention.
“I hate this place,” I whined. “Out of all the places and all the worlds and all the things, this one is the worst. The very worst.”
“I concur,” Kiran laughed. “This one is by far the worst.”
“So do we have a plan? Er, more of a plan than just sitting up here and Zombie-watching?”
Eden and Kiran shared a look. They seemed to do that a lot. It was like they were so in sync they didn’t even have to speak in order to convey thoughts. They just looked at each other and knew.
It was super obnoxious.
But also, really sweet.
I wanted to hate them for it. And I did feel an intense amount of jealousy. But it also strangely gave me hope.
Maybe if they found their happy ending, Ryder and I could too.
But then he accidentally brushed against me and recoiled like I was a poisonous snake. I watched in horrified awe as he moved across the roof to stand on the other side of it, as far from me as he could get.
So maybe that happy ending was more of a pipe dream than reality.
Ugh.
“I have no idea how long we’re going to be stuck here,” I told the group. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to hang out and enjoy the sunset though. We have no idea how long it will take Hermes to get here, if he decides to come back at all.”
“You’re probably right,” Eden groaned. “I usually think things through better than this.”
Kiran practically choked on his laughter. “She doesn’t think anything through,” he told us. “Not anything.”
Eden tried to look irritated, but her embarrassed smile killed the effect. “Okay, but usually, you talk me out of my dumbest ideas!” Kiran raised his eyebrows and waited patiently for her to amend her story. “Okay, fine! But you at least make a protest!”
Kiran cleared his throat but wisely stayed quiet.
“Ivy and I have no weapons,” Ryder stated obviously.
“And we have Magic, but it doesn’t exactly do you any good,” Kiran commiserated. “We’re going to have to find a way to keep moving.”
Kiran’s gaze moved to the building next door. There were at least fifty feet of space between the ledge we peered over and the next building. The other building was shorter than this one, at least. We overlooked the mayhem below from two stories high. The next building over was only a one-story little thing.
It wasn’t the worst jump in the history of building-jumps.
But there was no way in Hades I could clear it.
I would be Zombie food in no time.
“I can’t make that. My supernatural powers are restricted to looking pretty and acing an American Idol audition. That’s it. I don’t have go-go gadget arms or super speed or witchcraft! I just have this!” I gestured at my face and bugged out my eyes. Ryder didn’t have those things either, but he could probably still make it. He was like that.
He was just naturally good at everything he tried to do.
Obnoxious, right?
“We’ll help you,” Eden piped up with more enthusiasm than I thought the situation called for. “We’ll, um, propel you over there with Magic. We’ll keep the force-field, too, so they can’t nip at our heels.”
“Nip at our heels?”
“Just to be safe.”
I looked at Ryder, but he was busy judging the distance of the jump. I could see his wheels spinning and his gray eyes tumultuous with thought.
“After that building, then what?” I looked down the small main street lined with quaint little buildings on one side. The other side was beach only and led straight to the ocean. The sun sat just above the horizon, a shimmering half-circle of orange that let off little light.
Overhead the stars had started to twinkle and hazy gray clouds had rolled in. The air caressed my skin with a sultry breeze, at complete odds to the craziness beneath us.
It was really a perfect evening. In the normal world, I would have loved to wander through these little shops and step foot in the ocean. I would have enjoyed the warm night and getting lost in a place I didn’t know and in a town full of people that didn’t know me.
But I wasn’t here on vacation.
I was here to be taught a lesson by a stuck-up, entitled god, and I didn’t get to window shop or be anonymous.
I got to jump from building to building and hope that I didn’t miss.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s do this.”
“You’re going to jump it? Red, have you lost your mind?” Ryder was at my side in a second, practically vibrating with anger.
“What else are we going to do, Ryder? We don’t have another option.”
“So you’re just going to jump to another building and hope their Magic can boost you across?” He sounded absolutely incredulous, and I didn’t exactly blame him. “You honestly trust them this much?”
Eden and Kiran waited patiently for me to get my thoughts togethe
r. “Honestly? I don’t even know them. Mainly I’m hoping this is some stupid dream, and I’ll wake up from it before I can do any real damage. If I just open my eyes, everything will be back to the nightmare I know.”
Eden tsked softly. “Sorry, Ivy. Dreaming is our thing.”
“Your thing?”
“You get the whole looking pretty act going on though. That’s apparently enough to write a whole book about. You’ll be fine.”
I decided not to respond.
I hopped up to the wide ledge and swayed a little bit from the precarious height. “All I have to do is jump?”
Eden scrambled up next to me and gave me a winning smile. “This is the easy part.”
My mouth fell open as I watched her jump across the too-far expanse. She landed on the flat roof across the alley with the grace of a cat. She didn’t even fall or trip or anything.
As I stood there, she spun around and grinned at me some more before bowing low with a flourish.
“She’s such a showoff,” Kiran muttered.
“Right.” She was just showing off.
“Ready?” he asked. “Just jump. Eden and I will help you across.”
I held my hand out to the side and wiggled my fingers. I kept my focus on Eden when I said, “Jump with me, Ryder? Don’t make me do this alone.”
Several heavy beats of silence had pounded by before he said, “Fine, Ivy. We’ll do it your way. We always do it your way.”
I tried not to smile. “At least you’re finally getting it.”
His big, warm hand grasped onto my wrist a little tighter than I expected. He yanked me over to him and then slid his arm around my waist. His chest pressed into my back, and his body seemed to envelop me in comfort and familiarity.
I wanted to cry from the closeness, from how right his touch felt. From just touching him again after so long.
I wanted to stand here and weep and sob my apologies and tell him that I would never leave him again.
Except I knew that wasn’t true.
I couldn’t keep that promise. And we both knew it.
“I’m getting you out of this, Red. And then we’re going to act like it never happened. Yeah? We’ve got shit to work out, but that can wait till the other side.”