Volcanoes (26 page)

I could describe in detail the boring two weeks that followed my bath, but I wouldn't want to subject anyone to that. Needless to say, I slowly recovered. I began walking again and soon after, training my hum
an-like body to fight again.

I wouldn't die if someone stabbed me, but it hurt like a bitch so I wanted to avoid that if I could. The nanites were making it possible to lift and stretch more than I had been and my strength was returning, as was my speed,
but only in fits and spurts.

It may be a little narcissistic of me, but I was mostly glad that my hair was growing back. In just two weeks, I had a cute a-line cut bob. Dylan said it made me look badass. Heph said it made me look bitchy.

I don't think it
was the bob. I think it was the attitude behind the bob that was doing it. With me pushing him away so much I shouldn't have been surprised by his sudden lukewarm reception. I was. It made me bitchy.

I hate to admit it, but I didn't like this version of
Hephaestus. I think he knew it because when he thought I wasn't paying attention, he would smirk at me as if to say 'I told you so.
’

I was more snappish with him than usual. I think I was hoping he'd react but he didn't and I just looked like an asshole.

I
’
d received the paperwork from Em and signed everything accordingly. Signing my life away was most likely one of the hardest things I'd ever done.  I just couldn't see any other solution to the problem that Hypnos had created.

Speaking of Hypnos, I hadn'
t heard anything from him since he'd been buried.  Where was he? Had I defeated him after-all? When I was alone, I would try meditating to make sure he wasn't planted in my subconscious. Nobody wanted me to start channeling Hypnos and I
’
ll admit to a litt
l
e fear that there was a piece of him inside of me just waiting to surprise everyone.

My internal searches kept coming up empty, but I wanted to stay cautious. I also wanted answers from Zeus. If Hypnos weren't nesting like a snake in my brain
–
how had I
come up with the power to pull people into his dreaming state? I didn't recall being given that particular bit of mojo.

So, beyond my normal level of neurosis, everything was moving along according to plan. We just needed to find Rose and I could rest eas
y.

I refused to believe she was dead even though there was an eighty-five percent chance she was. "I wouldn't be surprised if they killed her and dumped her on my lawn at this point," I said aloud as I dodged a swing from Drew's blade.

"Who?"

"Oh. Just th
inking out loud. Rose. It would further their cause to keep me out of the way by framing me for her murder as well."

"Didn't your lawyer clear you of all suspicion with Brandon's death?"

"She did. Thank God I had a travel itinerary. But now the government
is involved because of the unexplained DNA. I went from coals to furnace on this one. I can't explain what that tissue is without telling them about all of this," I gestured around me with my blade.

"Yeah, that would be counterproductive. It's hard to kee
p them safe if they're panicking and launching nukes at us."

"Or dissecting us in a secret military base," I continued.

"Right."

"Mom!" Dylan came running up to me as Drew was swinging in a downward arc. My kukri stopped his short sword just in time to pre
vent him from slicing off Dylan's nose.

"Watch it!" I bellowed at Drew.

"Dylan!" He shouted. "You know better than to run onto the field when we're using live weapons."

"Sorry," he stammered. "I just really need to talk to Mom."

"What is it?" I dropped my
sword arm and faced my son.

"We need to go right now. Dad just called me."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Dad just called me. I just talked to him. He's not dead. He just called me."

Fury unlike anything I've ever experienced rose within me. I looked at Drew with the
unspoken question. Could they do this? Could they replicate him? Could he be alive still?

"C'mon," my son prodded. He pulled on my shirt trying to spur me into action. I didn't budge. Instead, I held my place and grabbed a hold of his wrist.

"What did he
say? Did he want you to come to him? Baby, you know that Daddy is gone. I want you to stop and think about this. It
’
s probably a trap."

"It's not a trap," he answered belligerently. "He told me that he tried calling you but got voicemail. He wanted me to
come to see him because he missed me, but I didn't want to go without telling you first. I thought you'd want to see him. Why can't you ever just believe me?"

White. Hot. Rage.  Hadn't they done enough to my child? Hadn't he suffered more than enough?

"Mom
? You're burning me. You need to let go."

"Grace," Drew was shouting in my face. "Let go."

My fingers opened and I looked down to see the reddened skin of my son's wrist. "Shit. I'm so sorry, baby."

"Mom, you have your powers back!" D
ylan exclaimed, happy despite my insistence that his dad was worm food.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Drew said.

"Drew, I
saw
his body. You saw his body. He cannot be alive."

"What if we just
thought
we saw it?"

His words sent me into a spiral of panic.
I had no idea what was real anymore. Sometimes I wondered if I had finally cracked and all of this was just my imagination. What if I was in some sort of mental ward somewhere drugged up and
straight jacketed
?

My body didn't just catch on fire. I became
a walking river of lava. I looked down at my skin and screamed. It flowed across my skin cooling and cracking before melting and turning into liquid heat once again.

It hadn't been a conscious desire turn into the Flaming Tower of Grace. I hadn't had so m
uch as a puff of smoke come from my fingertips much less full blown scorching inferno. The ground beneath me remained silent so it wasn't a restoration of the powers.

"Don't move!" Drew yelled and disappeared.

"Dylan stand back," I called. "I don't want
you to get burned."

"Mom, why are you on fire?"

"I don't know bubby. I'm not ruling out sheer panic, though."

"We need to go. Dad needs to see us. He told me it was urgent."

I couldn't grab him and tackle him to the ground without incinerating his body and
Drew had left. All I could do was try to reason with him.

"Well you can
’
t teleport me right now, can you? You're certainly not going by yourself. Dad can wait. If he's alive, he'll understand why we're not speeding to him. Besides if we didn't have telepo
rtation abilities then we'd have to drive anyway, right? So let's just take a breath and think this through."

I crossed my arms over my body and thought, 'cool down.
’
I didn't. I was certain that this had nothing to do with panic and everything to do with
rage. The thought of Dylan walking into a trap all by himself sent me into a place that nobody wanted to see.  I couldn't calm myself down and it was only making matters worse.

I was shaking so hard, I didn't notice Hephaestus behind me until I was doused
with a bucket of water. It had little effect and I probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if it hadn't made mud out of the dust below me.

I turned on him. "Are you nuts?"

"I thought it would work. When I submerge, my fire goes out."

I'd never actually s
een Heph on fire. He had a lot of control. More than I could ever imagine myself having, actually. "Have you ever had this happen?"

His bemused expression told me no but I waited for an answer anyway. "I cannot say that it has. However, I haven't been tamp
ering with ancient fault lines, dormant volcanoes and genetic mutation."

"Think if you dumped her in a pond or lake she'd go out?" This was from Poseidon who had ambled up to see what the ruckus was.

"I think we'd have to dump her in the ocean. She'd oblit
erate a pond and I don't want to kill off an entire lake
’
s eco-system."

"Well she's going to do damage to my ocean, Hephaestus and I don't appreciate that thought either."

"It will only be a small amount of damage. We'll stick her at one of the Poles. She'
ll cool off in no time."

"No!" I yelled, "The icecaps are already melting enough."

"She has a very good point," Poseidon agreed.

Dylan decided that this was a good time to try and slip away. "Hephaestus! Grab that kid and don't let him out of your sight!"
I yelled furiously.

Dylan turned on me with a mutinous glare. "You can't keep me here away from my Dad. I don't care if you hate him and don't want to see him!"

He couldn't see my expression which was probably a good thing. It would have scared the shit o
ut of him. I'd never wanted to spank him more in my life.

Poseidon stepped in, "Here let me handle this." He picked Dylan up by his upper arms until they were face to face. "I grasp that you think your father is alive. Even if he were, for you to imagine
that we would let you go alone into a possible
–
no, probable - trap is ludicrous. So, for one, I want you to apologize to your mother for your outburst."

"I'm sorry," Dylan muttered
–
not really meaning it but trying to get out of the hot seat as fast as
he could.

"I don't think anyone believed you were actually apologetic. Do you think he's sorry, Grace?"

"Poseidon," I warned.

"Second
–
where did your father say he was?"

"He said he was at home."

"At his home?" I asked.

"No, at ours."

Why would Brandon
go to my house? I looked at Hephaestus for answers. He shrugged. "There's only one way to find out."

He grabbed me and just as we blinked out, Drew and Diana appeared where we'd been standing. "Home!" I yelled but I didn't know if they had heard me.

We lan
ded in the front yard. The normal sounds of summer surrounded us and when I took a deep breath to voice my relief, my house exploded.

The four of us were blown backward into the street by the blast and wreckage showered down on us as I scrambled to cover D
ylan from the worst of it.

Hephaestus pushed me out of the way and yelled, "You're still on fire!"

His own hulking mass covered my son and we waited for the fallout to cease. Sirens were blaring down the street and people had come out of their homes to st
are at what was left of my house. Flames shot sky high and Poseidon said, "Grace, get into the house."

"What?" I asked incredulously. "It's
on fire!"

"So are you! People aren't going to understand that you're a walking, talking bundle of lava. Get into the
fire."

"Oh! Right!"

"If we're lucky, the fire trucks will put her out," Hephaestus muttered sarcastically.

"I've got a word that rhymes with truck that I'm saving just for you," I shot back.

I walked into the blaze and Dylan started screaming. "No, Mommy,
NO!" I'm not sure what he was going on about. I couldn't even feel the heat, although looking around pissed me off even more.

A second explosion rocked the house and I hit the floor to avoid being flattened by my refrigerator. What the fuck had they used
to blow up my home?

This had gone way beyond personal now. It was the last straw in myriad haystacks and I'd had enough. So far they were winning. I'd lost my home, my reputation, my career. Hell, I was about to give up my entire identity! I wished someo
ne could bloody explain to me why their ire was raining down on me - along with washing machine parts.

A crowd surrounded my son and his protectors. I could hear Poseidon explaining that they were my brothers and that we'd just flown home from the hospital
in Ecuador. I'd walked into the house to retrieve something and suddenly they were on the street.

It sounded plausible. Dylan was still crying out, making it more believable that his mother was dead in the house.

Well, I'd said I was going to die. I gue
ss I was right. Grace Murphy was going to be declared dead.

The spray from the fire hose hit me with such force that it sent me flailing backward. The lava running over my skin hardened to blackened coal. I felt myself stiffening up, so I lay down on the f
loor in an appropriate dead man's pose and waited.