Chapter 29 August 25, 2025
Steel
They walked into the suite hand in hand later that morning, and they were late. Because after she’d told him what she wanted, he dropped to his knees in the shower and worshipped every fucking inch of her.
Twice.
Which had given them approximately three hours of sleep.
And she was still fucking glowing.
Demon was smirking behind the computer monitor, likely talking to Midas back at the office, updating him on the change in status for the final deadman.
Midas was on the television screen, and he glanced behind himself at a whiteboard he kept there. On it were several columns of swear words, all in very small print because there were so many of them, and all with a varying number of hash marks next to them.
“Okay, ladies and jellyspoons, time to pony up your money.” Midas checked the bottom right corner of the board behind him. “Cough it up to God. Two hundred apiece.”
There was general moaning and groaning, but the hazing was good-natured. Daleyza looked around the room, mystified at the money changing hands. “What’s going on?”
Steel hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand.
“They’re paying their wagers.”
“Wagers?”
“I should have known.” He groaned. “Look. It’s a terrible habit we’ve had for years. We bet on everything. Like how long it takes before TB can make one of us talk, or how many marshmallows Flame can stuff in her mouth at once. It’s… stupid, juvenile shit. Just ignore it.”
“What was the bet?”
Nemo had at least four pieces of bacon he’d shoved into his mouth, and he talked through them on his way back to the couch, where he’d been on his tablet talking to Cerberus. “On the two of you.”
Daleyza frowned in confusion.
Gem punched Nemo in the stomach as he bent over to sit down, causing the man to grunt in pain. She said, “These idiots were betting on how long before you two got back together.”
Nemo had finally swallowed the food in his mouth. “Don’t act all innocent. You placed a bet as well.”
Impishly, she grinned. “I figured with the way he was playing all ‘brooding Heathcliff,’ it would take at least another week. Happy to be wrong.”
The look on Daleyza’s face was still one of confusion, but something else lurked there as well. “Leeza—”
“There were a lot of bets on when people would have sex, too, or where. Ask him.” Nemo motioned to Steel.
“Ildefanso!” She gasped, half shocked, half laughing.
“Told you it was stupid,” he muttered.
“Ask him who won all the time.” This time, Nemo was talking around a piece of toast he stole from Gem’s plate.
Daleyza’s eyes found his.
He rolled his eyes.
“You did, didn’t you?” Now there was genuine mirth in her eyes. “You never told them about your mother?”
He made a motion to be silent, looking sheepishly around the room.
“Tell us what?” TB asked, suspicion rife in his tone.
“Livia Ortiz has the glimmer,” Daleyza told him.
“The what?” Menace loomed in the question.
“The glimmer. That’s what she called it anyway. She often seemed to know things before they happened. She said she’d get this shiny aura, and she could see what was going to happen. A glimmer of truth.”
“C’mon, TB,” Steel interrupted. “You know there’s no truth to that crap.”
TB took a step in his direction. “I never believed in Midas’ hocus-pocus, either, until I watched him do it with Mouse.”
“That’s different. That’s hypnosis.”
“Uh-huh.”
Laughing, Daleyza shook her head at Steel. “Taking advantage of your friends like that is not nice.”
She was teasing him, but he still felt the need to defend himself. “Hey! They never asked. Besides, it gets boring waiting around for shit to happen. Once we bet on which direction a beetle would move if we put a stick in front of it.”
Her laughter rang out loud and long. “You and your friends need hobbies.”
“I do have a hobby,” he grumbled.
“Assassinating people is not a hobby. It’s simply something you’re good at.”
Startled, he whipped his head around. “What?”
“I’m not dumb, Fanso. I know what you can do with only a junk drawer at your disposal.”
“Leeza, I—”
She put a finger to his lips. “You were a SEAL. You were an enforcer for your father. Now you do”—she gestured around the room—“this. I’ve always known. It’s never bothered me.”
He slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He didn’t deserve her. Then again, who really got what they deserved? Bad guys had to be hunted down and justice served to them. Nice guys were too ethical to pursue what was owed to them. The world was an unfair place.
As he hugged her, she faced the television screen where Midas sat, once again talking to Demon. “What do all the marks next to the words mean? And why is he keeping a tally?”
“It’s another Kubrick thing. She’s got a creative swearing habit. Midas started keeping track the day we met her, and he’s never stopped. It’s just a joke.”
“You’re all a little bit in love with her, aren’t you?” she asked.
“What? No! She’s Waters’ woman.”
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she said. “But what you’re doing here, it’s just as much for her as it is for Waters, isn’t it?”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “She was… I don’t know how to explain it. We were all going about our lives, day in, day out, just sort of… existing in this weird stasis. We weren’t happy, but we weren’t unhappy either.
“Then she barreled through the door, and everything changed.” He snapped his fingers.
“Like that. It was like she gave us CPR and put life back into us. She was also the reason all the rules changed. Why there are women now at Tribe, other than Cherry, that is. Why the guys dared to take something they wanted, in some cases, after a lifetime of not feeling worthy enough to have it.”
“Sounds like someone worth burning the world to the ground for.”
Putting his lips to her ear, he whispered, “So are you.” He kissed her temple, then gave her a gentle shove toward Loki and Gilgamesh, who were still poring over maps at the large table.
He watched as they greeted her with nods of respect. Not polite ones—genuine ones they would give to anyone else on the Tribe or Mythos teams. They accepted her.
God walked over to her at the table, said something Steel couldn’t hear, and she blushed as she nodded at him. When he left her, he walked past Steel to the kitchen and clapped him twice on the shoulder, continuing on to get himself coffee.
Several minutes went by as each of the Tribe members in the room greeted her in some way.
Demon gave her a smirk and a wink as she walked to the desk for pencils.
TB handed her a plate with breakfast food on it.
When Nemo had to pass her for another serving of bacon, he walked up to her and gave her a bear hug that lifted her off the ground.
Gem, following right behind him, pinched him to let go of her, the elfin grin on her face one of delight at whatever teasing thing he was saying. Then she cracked some sort of joke with Daleyza in response.
Even Scheherazade got in on the act, standing on her hind legs to give doggie kisses, though that could have been because she had bacon on her plate. But somehow he didn’t think it was the bacon.
One person was missing.
“Where’s Medusa?”
God scowled from behind his coffee cup. “No idea. She told Loki she needed to check on something and left. Some days I wonder who’s in charge around here. All I can say is, her ass better be back here by the time we leave tonight, or she’s going to get the cranky side of Janus.”
Gilgamesh looked at Loki. “There’s an uncranky side to Janus?”
“Fuck off, you two. It was bad enough when I had to put up with these idiots and all their fucking around. Now they’ve infected the team I thought was the alpha team.”
“Aww, did you hear that?” TB grinned with delight. “We’re the alpha team now. That suits my Dominant personality much better.”
“I’m nobody’s submissive,” Loki jabbed back. Steel was pretty sure he saw a glint of humor in the man’s eye, despite the grumbly voice.
“All of you fuckwitches are fired,” God announced. Then he amended the statement. “Once we get Waters and Ka-Bar back.” Then he stomped out of the room.
“Was it something I said?” Steel asked. “All I did was wonder where Medusa was, and he erupted like Mt. Vesuvius.”
Loki and Gilgamesh shared a look, then bent back over their maps. He turned to look at Nemo and Gem, his hands outstretched in a what gesture.
It was Gem who answered. “Medusa’s been…” She looked at Nemo, as if searching for a word.
“A right cunt, I think is what you called her last night.”
She smacked him again. “Shush! That was supposed to be between you and me, not shareable information.”
Loki grunted from across the table. “No secret from us. She has been a right cunt, even more so in the last twenty-four hours. As for where she is, she’s probably off tweaking the engine on that damn boat to make it go faster.
I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s more than capable of taking care of herself.
And she’ll be at the boat and ready when we need her,” he tacked on quickly.
“Her eyes have been bothering her,” Gilgamesh said quietly. “Headaches. Blurriness. Loss of depth perception.”
The woman’s eye condition had never been discussed in detail.
All they knew was that she wore sunglasses at all times, even at night.
When she did take her glasses off, most of them froze to the spot at her nearly colorless pupils glowing from her eye sockets.
Only the barest tint of light sea green lurked in the iris, hence her nickname.