Volcanoes (24 page)

The kid came clunking in wrapped up in another one of those suits. He was trying to run but the boots were a little too big to keep him steady.

"I'm not going anywhere. Take your time. It would suck if you fell and knoc
ked yourself out."

He scowled at me from behind his face mask, but slowed down.

I patted the side of the bed I wasn't laying on and said, "You know, I feel like I spend a lot of time on tables and in beds. Does it feel like that to you?"

He nodded. "You a
re pretty accident prone, Mom."

"You got that right." I patted his arm as the bed sank under his weight. "See, I promised you I'd be here today. I almost
never
break my promises."

"It sure did look like you were going to, Mom. I was scared."

For all of his
manly posturing, he was still a little boy and it was easy to forget that.  He needed me to nurture, love, and coddle him still.

"What did I tell you yesterday?"

"That you weren't going anywhere," he whispered.

"Damn straight I did. This is nothing
compared to what we've been through. It's just some much needed rest, right?"

He chuckled, but didn't lean in close like he normally did. "Hey there," I said, chucking him on the arm. "Why are you sitting so far away?"

"Mom, you look so fragile and tired.
I'm afraid I'll break you if I lean in."

I looked down at my arms and they were frail and bony. "Good point there. Let's try to not break me before your grandpa can fix me."

That term startled him. "I forget he's my grandfather. He just doesn't seem very g
randfatherly does he?"

I'd just watched a movie where everyone had looked to be around twenty eight years old and it seemed surreal how you couldn't tell the difference between mother, child or grand-daughter. I guess this was similar.

Zeus didn't look mu
ch older than I. If I would have had to guess his age it would have been mid-thirties. Diana was the same. I shrugged. "Yeah, but he sperm donored your sperm donor so that does in fact make him your gramps." I smiled at him and he grimaced. I probably nee
d
ed to brush my teeth.

"Did you just call me a sperm donor?" Drew called from across the room.

I gave him wide innocent eyes and shrugged before turning back to Dylan and winking. "He hates it when I do that," I whispered.

The phone on my bedside started ri
nging and I asked the kid to hand it to me. The caller ID said that it was Em, my lawyer. I held up a finger and said, "I gotta take this."

I pressed the accept button and said, "Hey Em. What's up?"

"What's up?" she asked incredulously. "I just redid your
Will, restructured your estate and gave guardianship of your kid to some woman I've never even heard of. Are you being coerced?"

"I love it when you use big words like that," I said with a smile. "No. I'm not being coerced. I'm down in South America. I con
tracted a virus and my chances are nil." Dylan tensed beside me and I grabbed his hand and squeezed, shaking my head at him.

"You sound pretty spry for a dying woman. Does this have anything to do with the investigations into Brandon's death? I've had inv
estigators and D.A.s contacting me for the last week, Grace. It doesn't look good. There is circumstantial evidence all over your house and now his wife is telling the cops that you trapped her in the mud outside of her house and threatened to bury her al
i
ve if she fucked with you."

I choked on a laugh. "Oh my God, she really said that? Did someone send her to a psychiatrist? I think she's lost her mind."

"She was sent in for evaluation on my recommendation. She's obviously hallucinating. Needless to say,
this doesn't look good for you."

"Em, I had just arrived back in town hours before the police called my
house to let me know that he'd died. How could I have killed him and then staged some car accident?"

Dylan abruptly stood up and backed away from me. O
ops. He wasn't supposed to know about his.

"Grace, you need to come home and clear this up."

"Em, I told you. I can't. I am literally dying. They have me shut up in a hermetically sealed room. You want me to send you photos?"

"Yes," she said very matter o
f fact.

"Damn. Okay. Hold on. I'll take a snapshot of myself now and text it over to your cell. Did you get the papers drawn up? Those are really important."

I held the phone out and tried to snap a picture of myself. The image came back lopsided so I hel
d my arm out as far as it would go and tried again. Dylan leaned over and straightened my hand so that I could get a good shot. I smiled gratefully at him and then pressed the send button.

Em had been talking the entire time. Oops. I hope I didn't miss any
thing important.  “…
and yes, they're available for your courier whenever he's ready to pick them up. I've signed them and I'm recording this call as proof that you are in fact requesting the changes to your estate." She paused for a moment and I almost s
a
id something to interrupt the awkward silence.

"Tell me you're not lying to me, Grace. I know you're a horrible liar. If you tell me that you didn't kill Brandon and that you're really dying in some crappy South American room, I'll believe you."

"Em, I di
dn't and I am."

"Shit," she breathed.

"You're telling me."

"Okay. I will see what I can do about getting you exonerated - just in case you make it through."

That was my Em, professional and collected right to the end. She also had a wicked sense of humor
and I was going to miss that. However, this conversation made me absolutely certain
that I'd have to die even if I did pull through.

"You're a rock star Em. A Rock Star!"

"Yeah, I know I am." She hung up without saying goodbye and I was okay with that. I
had to deal with an angry pre-teen.

I put the phone down and looked up at Dylan. "Tell me what you're thinking and I'll tell you whether it's the truth."

"You killed Dad. You killed him and told me that it was an accident because he wouldn't let me stay he
re in Olympus."

"Whoa!" I
’
d expected him to accuse me of lying. I
’
d never thought he'd come to the conclusion that I'd killed his dad. "Hypnos killed your father and pinned his skinned body to our foyer wall like a butterfly."

He gasped in horror and his f
ists started shaking. Subsequently the room temperature dropped about fifteen degrees.

"Hey!" I barked. He started and looked at me with tears in his eyes. "I didn't tell you this for a reason. I cannot survive a blizzard in my room right now. Pull it toge
ther!"

Drew came up behind him and hugged him close and whispered something against Dylan's helmet. Dylan nodded and took a deep breath. "I understand why you lied to me. But Mom, we promised that there wouldn't be any lies. You broke that promise."

I nodd
ed and swallowed the lump in my throat. "I know and I would do it again. Nobody should have seen what I had to see and you didn't need to know how he died, just that he did. It's my job as your mother to protect you from the shit that you just don't need
t
o know."

His fisted hand rose up and he pointed a finger at me. "I'm going to kill that Bastard and nobody is going to stop me." He had angry tears falling and I wanted so desperately to wipe them away.

"He's already been taken care of."

At once they both
said, "What?"

"I punched a hole through his throat and buried him in my backyard," I said calmly. They gaped at me. I thought I'd been pretty clear.

"Hey," I started, yawning. "I'm pretty tired. Could I get some more water and a nap?"

"Mom, you just woke
up and you owe me an explanation."

"Yeah but I've been fighting all night. I'm beat. Drew, can you send Diana in? I have a question for her."

"Sure," he replied. "I'll get her right here. C'mon Dylan. I'll make you some breakfast."

"Why doesn't anyone eve
r listen to me? I said that she owes me some answers."

He looked angry and I didn't blame him. How could I?  There was a reason I wasn't a very good liar. Most of the time, I just don't remember what I'm supposed to be lying about.

"I gave you the answer y
ou need to know.  I took Hypnos out as far as I can tell. He's buried somewhere in my back yard."

He looked away from me.  "Can you take me home?" he asked quietly.

"No," I said.

"Why not?" Dylan asked angrily.

"Because it's still not safe and I need you
here."

"Fine, whatever." he sighed and stomped toward the door.

"I'll take care of him," Drew mouthed at me.

"Hey, I need someone to pick up those papers from Em's office. Can you take care of that?"

"Yep. Try to stay out of trouble would you? I swear I
can't leave for five minutes without you creating some kind of catastrophe."

Talk about a cluster of epic proportions. The kid was going to be neurotic at best - vengeful at worst - at this rate. I needed to figure out how to redirect his emotional maelst
rom before it was too late.

I was just about to close my eyes and give them a tiny little rest when Diana blazed through the door without a suit on.

"What are you doing?" I pulled the sheet up to my nose and mouth. "You're going to catch this virus!"

"Goo
d! If I do maybe Zachary will speed up this cure he says he's concocted. I'm tired of waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"I don't know," she threw her hands up in the air. "Tired of waiting to spend time with my daughter. Tired of waiting to see if we're all go
ing to get wiped out. Just tired."

I lowered the sheet. "Fair enough. Come on over and breathe me in."

She chuckled and lowered herself to sit next to me on the bed. "So are you going to tell me what happened after you unceremoniously kicked me out of your
dream last night?"

"YES! Finally! I've been dying to tell someone since I woke up."

I explained the turn of events to her and nodded, appropriately wide eyed, when she gasped and gave her the 'You bet your ass I did' looks when she hooted with joy.

"So he
's buried in your backyard?"

"Well he's buried in
some
backyard. I have no idea where his real body is or if it's affected. But he didn't seem to be able to escape me in there. I wonder if after all this time that was the way to take him down and nobody re
alized it because they were trying so hard to keep him out of their dreams. The weird thing is - he insinuated that he wasn't in my dream - that I was in his. If that's the case, how did I get you and Heph in there?"

"That is something we're going to have
to ask Zachary.  I'm starting to wonder what the hell he really did to you.  Did you recognize the woman?"

"No. She was tall with long black hair."

"Well, that could have been any of Nyx's daughters. They all look pretty similar."

"Except Lyssa," I snorted
and grinned at her.

She chuckled. "Yes, except her. Boy does she look like Hell. You and Zachary did a number on that girl. I don't know if she'll ever pretty up."

"She won't have time to," I said with dead seriousness. "Because I'm going to kill her ass.
I'm going to kill her dead."

"Aren't you a writer? Kill her dead? Really?"

"It's as permanent a sentence as I could think of. I'm going to wipe that bitch off the face of the planet."

"Now
that
I understand. This is my fault, really. I should have taken c
are of her when I had the opportunity. But I was soft back then."

I whipped my head around to look at her in shock. "I don't believe it. You're a hard assed bitch. Everyone walks around on egg shells when you're around. They're either afraid to piss you of
f or are busy trying to impress you."

"Not you."

"Well, I'm not smart enough to do either," I said with a smile.

"I think you don't give yourself enough credit," she said, smiling back.

"Mmm maybe. Maybe I'm the most brilliant of them all and I've lured
you all in with my daring acts of idiocy. Now you won't count on me for anything and my last days will be spent on Easy Street sipping mimosas and eating Cadbury crè
me eggs."