Lucienne Diver - Rise of the Blood

I didn’t want to go through the shakes, distraction, sweats, cramps and fainting spells I knew would come in front of my family. I was already the black sheep. I didn’t want to become the pariah.

After, I swore to myself. After Zeus and Poseidon were safely recaptured and Tina married off. Then…

In the meantime, I did have another god on speed-dial. If I got desperate… Desperate enough to become further indebted to the trickster god? Willingly? The conviction that I wasn’t an addict was getting harder and harder to maintain. I had to be going through withdrawal to even consider such idiocy.

“Go ’sleep,” Nick murmured when I’d shifted for the one zillionth time since takeoff. Fidgety, unfocused, barely able to sit in my seat…yeah, I recognized the symptoms. Maybe I hadn’t taken enough ambrosia to hold me over. Maybe I was building up a tolerance.

“Sorry,” I whispered back, endeavoring to be still.

If I wasn’t careful, this ambrosia addiction might kill me and save the greater gods the trouble.

We had a three-hour layover in New York. I was dead tired by the time we got there and yet wired, as though if anyone touched me, I’d flare up and short out. It was a fragile feeling that I didn’t like one bit.

After an internal slugfest between my id and my ego, I decided on an over-the-counter sleep aid for the nine-hour flight from New York to Athens. I’d already been up for almost twenty-four hours at that point, and I knew that if I didn’t get some sleep soon, I’d be insufferable…assuming that ship hadn’t already sailed. Plus, Nick deserved me passed out on his chest so that he could sleep himself. Jesus was on his own. Yes, he’d left drool on my shirt. I showed him the pic I’d snapped with my cell phone on airplane mode. All I’d had to say was “company website” for all the lost color from earlier to flood back into his face in a furious blush.

I grinned evilly.

“You’re a wicked, wicked woman,” he said.

“Don’t I know it.”

The sleep aid didn’t kick in until well after takeoff on the next leg of the trip, but once it did, I slept like a baby until the wheels touched down in Athens, jarring me awake. I cried out, and Nick’s arm tightened around me. I was crushed up against his chest, seatbelt buckle digging into my hip and no armrest between us. When I lifted my head, I saw that Jesus wasn’t the only one to drool. I wiped my mouth, trying to look like I wasn’t swiping away spittle, and patted Nick’s shirt as if I could blot it dry with my bare hands.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said. “I’m not.”

That was the other great thing about him. As a police detective, he’d been faced with all manner of bodily fluids. A little spittle was nothing.

There was no coffee between us and customs. None. There was a terrifically long line of people. But it moved surprisingly swiftly. I understood why when we got to the front. After looking over our paperwork and asking a perfunctory question about the nature of our visit, the customs agent rubber-stamped us and sent us through. I didn’t really know what it was supposed to accomplish. Did they really expect someone to give “terrorism” or “smuggling” as the reason for their visit? Was it just to be able to say, “Ah ha, caught you in a lie!” when people were nabbed later?

Anyway, we were through and on to the baggage claim area when I spotted a placard with my name on it—last name at least—in the oversized hands of a suited-up chauffer who looked like the right-hand man of some Bond villain.

Of course, we were in Greece, where the name Karacis wasn’t exactly the oddity it was in America, so I wasn’t necessarily the target audience.

“Here!” Jesus said before I could think it through. He waved a hand so there could be no mistake where “here” was. “We’re Karacis.”

“Vittoria?” the chauffer asked, turning toward me.

“Tori,” I answered. “And you are?”

“I am Viggo. Your Uncle Hector has sent a car.”

My shoulders dropped about half a foot in relief. We weren’t about to be spirited off to some evil lair. (“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”)

But my Uncle Hector . He was nearly a myth, a barely remembered figure tossing me in the air and giving me pony rides until my sides hurt from laughing. But then there’d been some scandal with some princess or contessa or something, and he’d dropped off the face of the earth. I’d been too young to remember the details, and no one was going to share such secrets with me then. By the time I was old enough to ask the right questions, I was busy getting into trouble of my own. But rumor had it that he was richer than Midas and at least twenty thousand times cooler. I felt a childish glee about seeing him again…even if he was the one financing Apollo’s return to the big screen and, at least temporarily, my life.

“He’s here?” I asked stupidly.

“He sent a car and waits for you at the hotel, where he’s throwing a special reception.”

“A reception?”

I hadn’t gotten the memo. In fact, my plan had been to rent a car, drive to the hotel and fall facedown onto a bed to sleep the night away before making the two hour trek up to Mount Parnassus the next day for some sightseeing before the wedding festivities got under way. At the moment, I was most excited about the facedown, quickly unconscious part of that whole equation. I was hot, I was tired, and I probably still had slobber tracks on my face. I was not ready to face the family in my current condition.

Nick took in my shell-shocked look. “Yes on the car, pass on the reception,” he said for me.

“I’m afraid it’s a package deal,” he said with a smile.

“Now wait—” I was jet-lagged, and the heavy-handed tactics were making me cranky on top of it. Jesus held a restraining hand to my arm to keep me from unleashing a can of verbal whoop-ass.

“Did I mention that your uncle is picking up all accommodations and has arranged a limo to take you all to your destination on the morrow?” Viggo asked, sweetening the pot.

On the morrow … Who talked like that?

Before I could speak, Jesus jumped in to accept on our behalf. I gave him a completely ineffective death glare. “What?” he asked. “We go, we sip champagne, we vanish into the night. Quelle horreur .” He was Spanish…speaking French…in Greece. Well, why not.

I sighed. “Fine, I’m too tired to argue.”

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Nick said. “But I’m noting it for future reference.”

I smiled tiredly at him and led the way to our baggage carousel, where for once I let someone else wrestle my baggage from the belt. Viggo was built for it, after all. In fact, in his huge hands, my big, hard-sided bag looked like a mere briefcase.

The car, when we got to it, was a sleek white thing with what looked like a boomerang mounted on the front. I knew that meant something about the make or model, but I was too fuzzy headed to think what. But the long and short of it was that it was fancy-schmancy, and where it swooped inward at the sides it was accented with silver-gray paint. It almost looked like one of the clouds that had practically smothered us on the trip over. I shivered.

“Cold?” Nick asked, already shrugging out of his shirt.

I shook my head, but I didn’t explain. I should be thankful about Uncle Hector’s generosity. I didn’t have any rational reason to distrust it, except that in Greece we knew the expression wasn’t, “ Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” but always . After all, we’d taken Troy that way.

Just to be on the safe side, I called Yiayia as soon as we got into the car.