My Date From Hell (4 page)

My mind reeled. If only he’d just trusted me with all of this in the first place. But no. He wouldn’t have. Even
my
limited exposure to gods clued me in to that. Backstabbing, manipulation, and destruction, bring it. Trust, friendship, and communication, not familiar with those concepts.

A little late, but he was trusting me now.

That was something. A pretty big something.

Unless he was just playing me. Argh!

I was so busy avoiding Kai’s gaze that he managed to get the drop on me. He brushed his lips against my ears. I swear he made my cartilage flutter. “Stop over thinking me, Goddess. You’re gonna make your head explode.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” My voice sounded impressively cool given the millions of champagne bubble sensations tingling through my body.

Amazing.

From annoyed to aroused and back to deeply annoyed again in minutes. Kai was an emotional roller coaster and I was the idiot on the all-day pass.

Kai arched his neck and shoulders as if easing the stiffness in them. He really had nice shoulders. “So whatcha in for?” he asked in a 1930’s gangster voice.

“Zeus wanted the location of the ritual you were planning. Do you know it?””

Kai swore. “No. But that’s top of the list after getting out of here.”

“Preaching to the choir, buddy. When is it supposed to go down?”

“Spring equinox.” At my look of total incomprehension, he explained. “It’s the balance of light, above, and shadow, below. So for you and me? Olympus and Underworld? Off the charts power surge. We’ll be able to seize control of the minions.”

His right shoulder cracked as he stretched it back. “See, a few other gods openly sided with Hades or Zeus, but most couldn’t bother to get involved. Nothing in it for them. So really, the only soldiers fighting on Earth, fighting this war at all, are the Photokia and Pyrosim. When we combine our power through this ritual and make the minions ours, Zeus and Hades no longer have armies. Earth is safe.” His eyes glittered. “And if we turn that unending supply of fighters on our fathers? Even those gods can’t battle them forever. Eventually Zeus and Hades will weaken, and Olympus and the Underworld will be ours.”

I didn’t want Olympus. I just wanted Earth to be left alone. That was a discussion for another time, though.

“Our ‘have sex, save the world’ plan is gonna require some pretty amazing foreplay to overcome the stress of facing them.” I was only partly joking.

Kai rolled onto the outsides of his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets. “About that.”

I eyed him, highly suspicious.

His lips twisted wryly. “The ritual is us declaring our love. Not having sex.”

My reaction was a bit tri-polar.

Relief that we didn’t have to have sex to save the world.

Disappointment that we didn’t have to have sex to save the world.

And a massive WTF! that we had to fall in love to save the world.

My mouth actually fell open in stunned shock.“You lied to me?”

“Hey, sex was
your
assumption,” he said. “My words were ‘two become one.’”

He had the audacity to look superior.

I shoved him, making him stumble sideways. “That’s me pushing you off your moral high ground, asshat.” I began to pace.

The enormity of this hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. My temples pounded. “No, no, no. It’s one thing to have sex. Fleas have sex.” I was gesturing madly in agitation by this point. “Love is supposed to involve choice. You can’t force people to fall in love and then
hinge saving the world on it
. Who does that?”

Kai eased himself up onto the table, his legs dangling. “So choose to do it.” He sounded frustrated.

What part of this didn’t he understand? “It’s not that simple. There’s no blueprint for falling in love. Sex, well, it’s a physical process.” I bounced on my toes, distraught. “Love is an emotional one. You can’t force emotions.”

Kai gave me a half-grin. “You get mad at me all the time.”

“Well, yes. But love? That’s … everything. I was willing to lose my virginity for this. Take one for the team.”

“Gee, thanks.” Kai leaned back onto his elbows.

“But love? It’s impossible.” I could deal with sex. That just involved performance anxiety, not the potential having my heart broken into a million sharp shards.

I wrapped my arms around myself because I had suddenly gotten very cold. With my accelerated healing skills, my body was actually feeling a bit better, but my emotional well-being was going through the wringer big time.

“How are you and I ever going to fall in love, Kai? And why would you even want to? You don’t even like me.”

His eyes flicked to the torture machine. Went soft and sad. His voice was quiet as he said, “Sometimes you gotta go into the dark to find the light.”

I didn’t understand him, but I also didn’t want him retreating into his head, dwelling on whatever horrible acts had gone down. “Kai.”

He shook his head and sat up sharply. “Despite you thinking I’m a complete asshole, Hades is worse. So is Zeus. And if that means you and I need to suck it up for the greater good, then guess what? That’s what we’re gonna do.”

That’s honesty for you. I scraped my toe over a tiny scratch on the floor. Eyes fixated on the motion. “So romantic.”

“No. It’s not.” He jumped off the table and clasped my chin in his fingers, just tight enough to force me to look at him. “I’m praying Zeus didn’t show you what he’s really capable of. Because the manacles? A fun afternoon out. Hades is just as bad.”

He paused and released me. “And I do like you.”

I scowled. Both because I didn’t want someone loving me to be a duty
and
because he was right. “Okay. Sucking it up. Lives are on the line. We have to try and take whatever’s between us and turn it into something more. But why didn’t you just tell me this from the start? Why lie
—
”

He opened his mouth to protest and I held up a hand to cut him off. “By omission if nothing else. And then try to take on Hades yourself, knowing that this,” I gestured angrily at the torture machine, “was a possibility?”

He glanced away. I could practically hear the wheels in his brain spinning as he spun another lie.

I shook my head emphatically. “No way. For us to have any chance, there needs to be trust. Be honest with me here.”

“Honest?” His voice hardened. ”Did it ever occur to you, even once, to see this from my perspective?” His face twisted with pain. “What it was like for me? When Persephone died? Or disappeared or whatever the hell you did, leaving me without you?” He smacked the table so hard it sounded like a gunshot. His eyes glittered more with anguish than anger.

I flinched in reaction. I opened my mouth, but no smart retort came out. Because it hit me that I never had. Not once. I raised bleak eyes to him.

Kai watched my shoulders slump and laughed bitterly. “No, of course not.”

“I can’t remember,” I protested. Even to me it sounded weak.

Kai’s expression turned grim. “But you never even bothered to try and imagine it.”

He was right. I hadn’t. So I did.

What must it have felt like to suddenly lose the greatest love of your life with no concrete explanation of what had happened to her? To have lived, wondering if she was really dead, or just gone all those years, only to find her again and realize she had no idea who you were.

That in fact, she wasn’t even herself anymore. But she was.

My chest felt empty. Even from what little I knew about their relationship, I imagined that had it happened to me, I would have felt like my soul had been ripped out.

Dully, I felt all our previous encounters fall into a new kind of clarity. I gnawed on my lower lip, uneasy. “It was never about mind games with me, was it? The attraction, the pushing away.”

Kai didn’t agree, but he didn’t refute it, either.

“It was because you’d been hurt.” I stroked his arm. He tensed under my touch. “I’m sorry.”

“There you were,” he said, his voice hollow, his gaze focused slightly past me, “insisting you were both. Sophie and Persephone. That I had to accept you as both. But where was a little bit of freaking understanding that maybe you saying you were Persephone wasn’t enough? That it wasn’t easy to accept you as her, on your say-so. That even being around you was
so
hard.”

He closed his eyes in resignation. “I tried to go after Hades a different way, didn’t come clean about the ritual, because I didn’t want to have to love you.”

Because you weren’t her
… I bit my lip.

“I’m sorry. There was no good way to say that.” He stared at me intently, then brushed a lock of hair out of my face. “What are you thinking?”

I threw up my hands, then gave a mocking laugh and mimed putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. “
Pow
.”

Kai smiled. “Guess that’s a start.”

I wasn’t about to share that the thought trumpeting around in my brain was that when I did get Persephone’s memories back, did learn what it felt like to be that loved, how was that going to make
me
, Sophie, feel when it came to Kai? It was one thing to intellectually know about their grand passion, but feeling it? Remembering it?

If Kai and I fell in love, I’d forever be making comparisons between Kai having loved Persephone because he wanted to and loving me because he had to.

A heavy weight settled in my chest. Almost like sorrow or loss. But that was crazy, right? Because I didn’t even want Kai to love me. It was a high school crush. I wanted him out of my system.

Kai held out a hand. “No more games between us. No more betrayals. Deal?”

I eyed it for a second before taking it, feeling the warmth of his grasp. “Deal.” My hand remained in his, both of us staring at each other. I sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

Kai laughed, the first genuinely amused chuckle I’d heard from him here in the trailer. “Sweetheart, that’s the understatement of the century.”

Three

Kai cocked his head at the door. “What’s the situation out there?”

“Far as I know? Heavy wards. Two guards. A Photokia and a Pyrosim.”

“Together?” He sounded incredulous.

“I guess Hades and Zeus decided hating us trumps hating each other. There’s some level of playing nicely going on now. Any ideas?”

He nodded. “I have a plan. But I need eyes on the minions. Which means blasting the door open. It’s the frame, not the door itself that’s warded,” he explained. “Give it a go.”

I gave it my best shot. Sadly, using my vine on Kai had left me tapped. I couldn’t call up any light beyond a dim glow on one palm. The door didn’t budge.

“Guess I’m up.” Kai’s body tensed, his jaw tightened and he took a sharp breath before silently sending a blast of his sharply pointed black light toward the door. If pointed light wasn’t scary enough, it gave the impression of deadly things wriggling in its depth. Every landed strike resulted in toxic ashy obliteration.

I jumped out of the way of the deadly dust falling to the ground.

Kai’s show of power was impressive, as always, but his tension only seemed to confirm that the Prince of Darkness was not yet right as rain.

I hoped he could fake it because the door was gone. I registered the exact second that our captors realized we were free of our manacles and tensed to do something about it.

Kai sprang into action.

Okay, not so much sprang as stared.

The minions slowed to a dazed stroll, eyes downcast, a deep sigh shuddering through them.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, coming to stand beside him.

Looking utterly inconsolable, the Infernorator and the Gold Crusher headed directly for the warded up entrance. And us.

I tensed.

“Don’t worry,’ Kai chuckled, “I’m just helping them realize that their miserable lives are not worth living.” A self-satisfied grin spread across his face as our guards hit the ward one after the other and fried into oblivion.

Cool. “How did you guide them into offing themselves like that?

He smiled humorlessly. “Hades’ son, remember? I have a gift for death.”

“You don’t use it, though. I mean, you could have. I’m sure you wanted to turn it on me a few times.”

“Five or ten,” he agreed.

“But?”

“Takes a lot of energy. And I can’t use it on more than a couple of beings at a time.”

I didn’t buy it and I guess that showed because his voice constricted. “It would make Hades proud.” He looked away from me, ending the conversation. “Give me a sec.” He bent over, hands on his thighs.

I could hear his breathing, heavier than usual. This didn’t bode well. “You okay?”

He brushed off my concern with a dismissive wave. A moment later he straightened. “Let’s roll. Get Persephone’s memories and get the location.”

“Then we ward it.” I bounced on my toes excitedly. “The location. Theo is a warding whiz kid. We ward it up so it can’t be destroyed before the equinox.”

“Good idea.”

I glanced outside. The difference in the darkness was faint, but dead of night had tipped over into pre-dawn. Which meant Zeus could return at any time.

I grabbed Kai’s upper arm, panicked at the thought.

And maybe because it was important to objectively check that my best hope out of here was in fine working condition. His muscles still filled out his ragged clothing quite nicely without being steroidly obnoxious, so three cheers for that.

Kai waited expectantly for me to say something.

I was still distracted by his biceps. “Um, what’s the plan?”

Kai quickly strode over and retrieved a set of manacles. “I’m going to stretch the chain out as wide as it’ll go. Lay them across as much of the entrance as possible.”

He knelt down and busied himself spreading out his manacles on the ground just outside ward range. “These puppies both call power forth and absorb it. In theory, they should suck the ward in and contain it. Then we can step over them and get out.”

Kai stood and brushed off his jeans then pushed me back a few steps. In a blur of motion, he kicked the manacle into the doorway.

White light flared. I blinked rapidly to clear my vision. “Did it work?”

“Sure.” He leaned forward peering at it.

I crossed my arms, doubtful. “But you don’t actually know. Here’s a thought. Maybe you should have saved a minion to test it on.”

“Yup,” he replied with a grin, “that would have been smart.” He stepped forward into the night.

I yelped then relaxed as he turned, totally unharmed. “You coming or what?”

“Since you asked so nicely,” I muttered and followed him outside.

I took a deep breath. The dawn was cool and fresh. It felt amazing. “Why Earth?”

Kai laughed. “Compromise. Neither Zeus nor Hades would let the other be our host jailer.”

I scanned the area. “Joshua Tree at four o’clock. Let’s get back to Hope Park.”

“Right,” he murmured, then he shoved me. “Run!”

The sky had filled with Photokia and Pyrosim. Our display had not gone unnoticed.

I froze. Kai shoved at me again with his right hand and began slashing at minions using his black light from his left. There was no sign that he was anything other than absolutely powerful.

I couldn’t join in since I had no power to blast yet, but being outside, even in these early rays, I was slowly recharging. Kai wasn’t getting out of here without me, and he definitely wasn’t taking them on himself.

“You stay, I stay.”

Kai muttered some choice words about my stubbornness, shot out a shield of black light to protect us and then almost tore my arm from its socket as he ran toward the tree, holding on to me tightly.

Infernorators thrust out their flaming tentacley arms to blast fireballs that quickly took root in the dry desert scrub. A rapidly blazing wall of flame sprang up, gaining on us. We had to make the tree before we were toasted.

Or before the Gold Crushers took it out with their strikes of lightning, as the Joshua tree was very obviously our destination.

My feet burned. My chest heaved with exertion, but we’d almost made it, mostly intact, when a wall of minions landed between us and the tree.

Kai sliced through most of them with the point of his black light, momentarily clearing a path. “Get out of here.”

I shook my head. “Being outside is recharging me. I can feel it.”

Kai’s eyes flashed as he spared me the briefest glare. Big deal. Like I hadn’t seen
that
annoyed look before.

I was prepared to fight him. And fight with him. My power was coming back. Not a lot, but enough to help.

What I didn’t expect was Kai to press a single gentle kiss to my lips and murmur, “Trust me. I’ll be there before you know it.” Then he leapt us over the minions, whipped around to face them, and shoved me toward the tree with the admonishment to “Stay alive.”

I stumbled, hands out, prepared to catch myself before I hit rough bark, but instead flew through the tree and straight out the other side.

I was back at Hope Park Progressive School in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, my index finger to my lip, pressed against the spot where Kai had kissed me.

I stared at the cypress that I had emerged through, but Kai didn’t materialize.

I shivered. It was January. This was Canada. And I was cold.

I sat back on my knees and took a moment to drink in the familiar peak of Mt. Baker in the distance. My eyes landed on my school. The rambling, three-story, brick building that had been home for most of my life. What a relief to see it.

Another glance at the cypress. Continued lack of Kai. I pushed to my feet and brushed myself off.

My stomach clutched in anxiety. No. I couldn’t think the worst. He was more than capable of taking care of himself and if I went back, I’d only get into trouble. The safest place for me right now was behind the wards at my school.

He wanted me here, so here I’d stay. I uttered a wish for his safe return and tried not to feel like a coward. Because truth be told, I didn’t want to go back.

Didn’t want to be in danger.

A tingling on my neck made me glance up. Sure enough, a couple of Gold Crushers and Infernorators were already hovering in the sky, just outside the invisible demarcation of my school’s safety wards.

Let me rephrase. I didn’t want to be in
immediate
danger. Supernatural creatures loitering outside school grounds were nothing anymore. Funny what you could get used to.

Especially since my human classmates couldn’t see them.

A fact I was hugely grateful for seconds later when I was rushed and enveloped in a giant Hannah hug.

I was so pathetically glad to see my best friend that I almost burst into tears. Instead, I planted a smooch on her lips. “Baby, I’m home.”

“How very Katy Perry of you, love.”

The sound of a sexy British voice startled me out of my homecoming euphoria.

“Well, she isn’t wearing cherry Chapstick. So there’s that,” I said, as I turned to scope out the pretty, pretty boy standing before me. With his green eyes and sun-kissed, tousled hair, slightly shaggy like a surfer boy’s, he looked like he should have been on the cover of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue in board shorts, not standing in my school yard, dressed in a warm wool coat.

While this mouthy stranger was model material, I, on the other hand, looked like I belonged in a dumpster. I wanted to get to my room, shower in scalding water, and sleep for the two weeks of winter break that I figured were about to happen.

Give or take daylight savings time in Olympus.

Yeah, and get cracking on the memories. But damn, I was just so very tired from the emotional and physical minefields I’d waded through.

New dude grinned at me with this beautiful smile and I felt meltiness. Not like with Kai. I doubted anyone would be like Kai for me, but more in a “I’d have to be dead not to feel something” kind of way.

He was mushy happiness personified.

I turned toward Hannah to check her reaction to him but was unable to see her expression because she’d placed her hands on my shoulders and was killing my warm fuzzy by shaking me into concussion city.

“Quit it.” I pulled myself loose. “People go to prison for shaken Sophie syndrome.”

“That’s babies,” she shot back, punching me on the shoulder, “which is exactly what you acted like, leaving school.” She flipped her long, blonde hair out of her face to better send me a grey-eyed glower of death.

Then she noticed the blood on my face. Her glower ratcheted up a few notches.

Hannah gave damn fine stare, and on most other people, the look combined with her five-foot-ten height would have them conceding whatever point she wanted. Years of proximity had made me immune.

I felt bad because she seemed really worried. Her “tell” being the calming, deep breaths she took under her winter coat.

Pretty boy had noticed too. He was pretty fixated on making sure her chest rose and fell okay. His concern was touching.

“It wasn’t willingly. I had to, uh,” I glanced at pretty boy, “visit with my dad. For maybe four days. You’re acting like I was gone for
—
”

“Two months, Sophie Magoo,” Theo said, arriving at my side, looking comfortingly rumpled and spiky-haired. He draped me in my heavy winter coat. “We’ve been keeping watch for your return.”

I staggered back a step. “Two months?” How long had Zeus been drugging me?

“Theo found out where you were,” Hannah said. “But we had no idea …” She swallowed hard. “We knew whatever going on with you was bad.”

“I’m sorry.” I felt terrible that my friends had gone through that worry. And even more upset that Zeus had stolen a chunk of my life away. Absently, I pulled the coat tighter around me, pondering payback.

“Sophie.” I blinked back to attention. Hannah had scrounged around in her pockets and located a small pack of wet wipes. She handed one to me so I could scrub my face. “You can’t go inside like that.”

Theo sighed. Even though I knew my other best friend was really Prometheus, currently stuck in human teen boy form, he always reminded me of an anime character brought to life. He pushed his black, fat-framed glasses back up his nose in a familiar gesture. “I’m tempted to let Saul kill you.”

Saul being his nickname for Hannah. It had mutated since childhood from Hannah Solo to Solo to Saul. No one else could call her that. Just as only Theo could call me Sophie Magoo.

Hannah frowned at me. “Do you know how many possible horrible scenarios I calculated in the time you were gone? Six hundred and thirty seven. And that was before I factored in
—
”

I drowned out her reasonings behind all the ways I could have bit it. All I could think about was Kai. Two months? For how much of it had Kai been clamped to the torture board? What kind of strength had it taken for him to resist the pain and the madness? To come back from being manacled?

And why hadn’t he shown up yet?

I realized Hannah had trailed off and everyone now stared at me.

“So how did you get out of Olympus?” Pretty boy asked.

I strode off, irritated, toward the school building. “No. No longer want to know who you are. You obviously have some connection to the Greeks and that’s enough bad news for me.”