Chapter Twenty-Five
So much for the breathing exercises that’d brought her heart rate back to something half-normal.
Ohhh, Wen. You just had earth-rocking sex with the god of the sun. Were you really expecting rational sinus rhythm any time within the next twenty-four hours?
Not a second to spare for existential contemplation on that. Apollo had her rushing into the guest bedroom, where the Jpop boy love was as wild as he’d promised, to climb into a pair of baggy black jeans and a T-shirt with a Hatsune Miku yelling Sugoi Beatzzz.
As soon as she finished putting on the garments, he scooped her up against him. Within seconds, he revved the fire hurricane travel cone into deafeningly high gear.
Just as fast, similar chaos crashed her thoughts.
Had they hit the fast lane back to the Underworld again? And why? Ito had never actually gotten his hands on Apollo’s string, but who knew what kind of “sneak preview” Reks Byrd, or even Natasha Korra herself, granted the man to sway him.
And if the henchman with Genny had been on that VIP tour . . . and was sly enough to pay attention about getting back into the purgatory maze . . .
Well, shit.
That definitely answered both questions, didn’t it? Whether she liked it or not.
Because if she were a fresh-in-love yakuza lackey who wanted frisky times with a new love toy, wouldn’t a cozy rental cottage in a corner of Lucifer’s kingdom be the totally perfect call?
Before they came to a full landing, she squirmed against Apollo’s hold. “Damn it. Damn it. Where is he? Where is he?”
“Irowen.” Glow Worm’s tone vibrated through her skull via her forehead, as stern as his continued grip. “Wait until the ride comes to a full and complete stop before disembarking, Sweetheart.”
Such a huge part of her senses craved the perfect retaliation, just to find out what he’d do about it. Dip his head to teethe her neck? Slide his hold down to tweak her ass? Maybe alter his grip to pinch one of her very braless breasts?
But despite all the tingling temptations, she grimaced and shoved away. “I can take the bump, Fancykins.”
Except the ground really was farther away than it looked.
Thankfully, she figured out the fact before she crashed down in full. At the last second before impact, she managed to crouch her knees and hunch her shoulders.
“Oof!”
Didn’t stop the goddess Gaia and her pal, terra firma, from reminding her who was truly in charge of bossing gravity.
She lay still, struggling to recover her breath for a few seconds, before registering her left shoulder would resemble an aurora borealis by tomorrow morning.
Maybe she could charge admission to bolster the soon-to-be challenged bank account . . .
Nothing like the enraged roar of a sun god to temper a girl’s financial fantasies.
“Irowen!”
Sure enough, as soon as she rolled back up to her haunches and lifted her head, her furious Phoebus on high blew her back onto her ass with a shout that might as well have been a dagger to the chest.
“Glow Worm? What the—”
“Fuck?” he cut in, stomping over like one of the lizard monsters to which he kept comparing her. “Are you insane? And are you even fucking listening to a word I’m saying?”
“Honest take?” She managed to wobble her head, uncaring if it committed itself to a nod or a shake. “Not really.”
“Right. Of course not,” he spat. “Because you just thought I was another swinging chandelier, eh? Not Your Godship, channeling the power of the sun and the light to get you here in minutes? Damn it, Irowen. If you’d unhooked yourself a second sooner, you’d have landed—”
“Where?” She wasn’t pulling a kill-bill-gotcha on him; the interruption would’ve emerged eventually. Now, at the height of her brittle confusion, was just as good as good a second as any. “Here? Really?”
He had the tact to expose a little color, his jawline turning ruddy.
“All right, I didn’t exactly stick the landing.
” But his color heightened as his glower reemerged.
“Because you’d started fighting me, damn it.
” The solar rockets, still not powered down all the way, blazed at the center of his greens. “Wriggling and writhing like—”
“A girl waiting to be dropped there?”
She wasted no more time about pointing at the black and red plaster sculpture, easily seventy-five feet high, behind him.
Yes, it was a scarily accurate replica of Godzilla’s head and shoulders.
Ohhh, yes; that Godzilla.
Eyes bulging. Spiked humps rising. All sixty teeth bared. Black skin rippling and even glowing in several places.
The illumination was clearly just stage lights beneath textured windows in the plaster, but was the guy going to blame her for feeling skeeved about it?
He’d evoked half the Kaijuverse for nicknaming her in the last fifteen hours, so what the hell was this?
His version of a cute side quest, instead of taking her straight to Genny?
“And where is here?” she went ahead and muttered. “How far off did you ‘not exactly stick the landing’, Apollo?”
He rolled his shoulders and peered around, gazing over the trees surrounding the wide paved path next to the gigantic fake monster. She did the same, only to startle when a pair of yellow objects flew past at screaming velocity.
Whoa. No.
Not objects.
The flying flashes were people, clothed in costumey yellow trenchcoats and dangling from a zipline that led into the prop Godzilla’s mouth.
And their “screaming velocity” was real, since they laughed and shouted at each other until touching down on the zipline platform inside the looming sculpture.
According to the Katakana letters on the chain link fence along the path, they’d just completed their Godzilla Interception Mission, complete with a cinematic soundtrack and dramatic lights that flashed inside the big lizard’s maw.
As Wen whipped her scrutiny the other way, toward the “launch bay” in a logo’ed-out building atop a high hill, Apollo unfurled a puzzled glower.
“I . . . I’m not exactly sure,” he offered to her question. “This has never happened to me before.”
“What?” Weirdly but maybe not, she countered with a spurt of an exhausted giggle. “Putting in the wrong address for the tornado transporter GPS or pulling a surprise drop on pappy daddy Gojira?”
On the subject of surprises, his own soft laugh came as a more pleasant one than she expected. “Both,” he commented. “Though this is all so strange. I wonder if I’m overdue for a session with Psyche.”
She arched a brow. “How long ago was the last?”
He bunched both his own. “I think it was cold. I had to wear a sweater. Psyche made me compliment the space buns in her hair, and I didn’t get it. I mean, it was just hair.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, you’re definitely due.”
He looked around again, scowled harder, then scrubbed a hand down his face. “Right now, I’ve got to ping Kaw. Little shit told me they’d made it to Awaji Island—”
“Not Godzilla Island?” she couldn’t help quipping.
“Well, it’s also known as that. Except the illustrious Captain Kawstenos told me the coordinates would land us at a storage hut for a luxury rental villa, not a theme park runway.”
New noises blitzed them.
The first: a distinct thrum of massive wings, precursing the ebony crow to whom they belonged.
The next: a high but exuberant scream, all but muting the shrill zwip of the zip line pulleys.
I told you I’d activated the advanced locators, so that you’d land within scalable distance to Miss Steed and her beau, came Kaw’s telepathic reproof. I also mentioned that you might alight inside that storage shed, and to be careful about giant movements because . . .
Irowen didn’t listen beyond that. She’d eat crow to Kaw later for it, even evoking the hideous idiom, if he happened to finish the lecture with an awesome needs-more-cowbell take—but at the same time he started his chide, her gray matter gears kicked into high velocity.
Because the shriek from the zipline . . .
Hadn’t been just any young woman out for an adrenaline rush date with a cute crush.
“Genny,” she rasped, already sprinting toward the landing platform.
Exhilaration had her breathing rough before dodging around the ten-foot-high black lizard claw protruding from the ground, adding to the illusion of the Monster King erupting from captivity, before she was forced to stop at a locked gate.
Luckily, the same gate from which her sister and a clean-cut hunk emerged a minute later.
They were so busy laughing, elbowing each other, and jabbering in fluent Japanese, they didn’t notice Wen standing at the side of the path. In this case, that was a good thing. She could freely observe them in their wild and unguarded state. Formulate a few observations—and questions.
Bizarre query number one: since when did Genny know Japanese this well?
Less bizarre query number two: did Quil and his guys misinterpret friendly teasing gestures as public PDA?
Much better query number three: was Ito’s guy simply hiding Genny on behalf of his boss and keeping her distracted and compliant as a friend?
“A friend.”
Though she issued the echo as barely more than a breath, the theory already sounded good.
Really good. Way better than the idea of her sister laughing like that as the tattooed gang boy did not-friend-zone kids of things to her.
Things like everything she and Apollo had just done to each other in the rain. No. Just no.
“Friends,” she repeated, using her locked teeth to underline the emphasis. Yeah, yeah; that had to be the explanation. Genny hardly liked hanging out with school buddies she’d known for years, let alone guys who flaunted tight satin shirts, designer black sneakers, and openly overprotective glares.
Except for the moment when the guy swiveled his stare back down to Genny—and overtly exposed another side of himself. The side extending beyond watchful and attentive—with an expression exposing a bold fucking truth about himself.
“Shittt,” Wen practically hissed—as the guy’s adoring stare struck her in all its awful verity. But by this point, there was no writing off the point as any other fact.
The young yakuza was goo-goo-ga-ga in love with her sister.
“Wennie?”
Genny’s stunned spurt jolted her spine and bugged her stare. She had all of two seconds to steel herself before her sister lunged over with a fangirl-style hug. Yes, complete with tears and a string of Ohmygawds that matched Genny’s personality as well as a rimfire round in a Beretta cartridge.
“Shit-shit-shit-shiiit. What is even going on right now? You are here, aren’t you? But how? Why? Wennie? What are you doing here?”
“And why?”
The addendum, issued by Ito’s man, was as ominous as a silencer introduced into the comparison of the minute. He snapped in a punctuating frown with equally clear intention.
“How’d you find us?” Satin Shirt intoned, showing off the rest of that notable attire along with his ink-black Calvins while handing his zipline gear to the attraction attendant. “Who sent you?”
“And who’s asking?”
Apollo moved in, matching the guy growl for intimidating growl. He stepped over with purpose, until they were eye-to-eye. Wen ticked off an invisible box of respect when Satin Shirt hardly flinched. Not an easy accomplishment when squaring off with a bit of solar glow from her sun god’s greens.
No. Not your sun god. Not now. That escape is over, girl. Head back in the real-life game, whether you like this shit or not.
“My name is Jun Matsuda.” He backed off far enough to proffer a respectful bow for Apollo, earning him another of Wen’s reluctant approval marks. Yet as soon as he rose, his deep brown eyes flashed with fresh suspicion. “And you did not answer my question yet, Mister . . . ”
“Jun.” Genny wrapped both hands around the guy’s firm forearm, bobbing her long whisky curls as if that’d mitigate a speck of tension between the glaring males. “You already have your answer, silly. I told you, my sister can find a tick on a deer in the Outback.”
“Especially if she has decent help.”
Apollo extended a hand, palm up, but before Wen could warn Jun about accepting the handshake, the poor guy whomped back with alpha-coded force. Shit on an Outback shingle. Within seconds, the poor guy’s face contorted. His arm tatts did the same as he twisted to the side as if hit by a truck.
“Hey,” Wen gritted. “Phoebus baby? Want to take it easy before I find some new things to twist?”
She didn’t know whether to scream or snicker when the Glow Worm replied with a slow, smooth grin. What did that freaking mean?
“Jun Chan? Hani?” Genny, toppling all the way over with her new friend—damn it, maybe that box would need to be unchecked, after all—threw out the words like half-chewed candy, broken and wet and unsteady.
“What are you doing to him?” She wheeled around on Apollo with newly wild eyes.
“Yamete! Kisama!” Then drew out the vowels with mounting volume while laying into his shoulder with raging pounds.
Oh, no.
“Genny.” Wen pushed in, fighting to keep her own tone firm and fair. “Honey, you’ve got to calm down. You’ll work yourself up—”
“Then tell your baka to fucking stop,” her sister screamed back. “I love this man, and I will kill any chikushou who dares harm him.”
Wen groaned. Oh, hell. Genny was already at full samurai-scenery-chewer about the mission statement; her ire doubled when Apollo dared react to his beating with a reprise of that mortifying—yet-oh-so-magnificent—smile.
Terrible worm.
Beautiful god.
Even more so, as soon as he cocked his head to align with Jun’s grimace and drawled one line of charming greeting.
“Hajimemashite. Very nice to meet you, Matsuda San. I’m Apollo of Olympus, and I believe we should take this conversation elsewhere.” He tilted a glance back toward Kaw. “Mister Kawstenos, we’re all ready when you’ve got the coordinates locked.”