well controlled. I ticked off the short mental list of Zeus’ known daughters. “Athena?”
The name clicked into place, sending an onslaught of images and information through my head. Goddess of wisdom, liked horses, tended toward neutrality but never quite managed it. Thousands of details flickered to life in an instant. Knowing everything kind of hurt sometimes.
Still, it was better than a cold introduction. By allowing me to guess, she’d given me the chance to pull up most of the information on my own, so recovering from the knowledge dump wasn’t as brutal as it could have been.
“Good guess.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said with a grimace.
Athena gave me an understanding smile. “And you are?” She motioned to Adonis.
A flare of jealousy flashed through me, but I dismissed it. Adonis’ opinion of me came across crystal clear on the trip home. Rejection didn’t come easy for me, but I wasn’t about to get worked up over some lowly demigod.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Adonis said with a grin.
Irritation flickered across Athena’s face, and I smiled, happy to know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like him. Melissa had hung on his every word all afternoon. It was annoying.
Athena saw my look and gave me a warm smile in return. My grin broadened. I felt a sense of kinship with her because she didn’t seem to wish I’d never been born. That pretty much made her the nicest person I’d ever met.
The doorbell rang, and since no one else moved to get it, I turned and pulled the door open. A man wearing a black leather jacket stood on the porch.
Not just any man. Tall. Dark. Handsome. And a god. Nice. I stood speechless, captivated by his fiery eyes. He seemed equally stunned and let out a low whistle.
“Got to say,” he murmured in a voice almost too low to hear. “I’m liking the newer models.”
“And just who the hell are you?”
He shot me a rakish grin. “Ares.”
God of war. Bloodshed, screams, battle cries. People dying by the thousands. A wooden horse. Fire. Blackened bodies. Sick and wounded soldiers with melting faces. The images came too fast. Too overwhelming. I tore my gaze away from him and stepped back, stumbling in my haste. He stepped forward and grabbed my arm, steadying me.
“That was stupid of me, I’m sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “It’s been a long time since I’ve met a new deity. I should have let you guess.”
“Everything all right here?” Adonis’ voice came from somewhere over my left shoulder.
“And if it wasn’t? What would you do about it, halfbreed?” When Adonis didn’t reply, Ares smirked. “Yeah, I thought so.”
He moved past me and stalked into the room. Everyone fell silent. I stood, staring at the open door, too stunned to turn and investigate the silence behind me. All those dying people…
Adonis moved between me and the door, breaking my gaze. He studied my face. “Hey, what happened?”
Behind me, Ares and Athena started arguing. I couldn’t focus on the words. I just kept seeing the bodies, the blood, the death.
“Aphrodite?”
I shook my head to clear it. What was I doing standing here in shock over the death of a few…million…humans? Humans died, it happened. War was great for gods. There’s no beating wartime worship. Fear and desperation gave it a potency that was hard to replicate in the day to day goings on of the typical human life.
But their faces…
“Aphrodite?” Adonis touched my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I pulled away from him, temper flaring. “What do you care?”
Spinning on my heel, I stalked off. Stupid humans and their stupid wars and their stupid lies and fake concern. And stupid me, for giving a damn about any of them.
Chapter XVII
Hades
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I stared at the… I could only describe it as a church, half hoping Demeter had the wrong address. Only half. It had taken Demeter weeks to track down Apollo. We’d found almost everyone else.
Persephone hadn’t turned up in the Underworld, which meant she was still alive. Zeus had to be hurting her so badly that it took all the power she had to heal, so her excess power didn’t kill her.
That was sort of good news. Gods, I hated Zeus. Only he could turn the world upside down enough for me to see a bright side to my wife being tortured.
Demeter motioned to the sign on the church. “Unfortunately.”
It looked like a church, which was odd in itself in this industrial area,