Chapter 12
Hermes
Circe outplayed me. Again. I’ve been running circles around the Thirteen and the legacy families for so long that I’ve lost my edge. It’s something I never would have thought possible, but here I am…trying to move my feet.
I glare at my boots. “Come on, feet.” At least I have access to my mouth and tongue again. The rest of my body is coming online much more slowly. If I have even a chance at escaping, I need to be able to move. And, you know, maybe not fall face-first into Circe’s mouth the first chance I get.
After the last time she kissed me and drugged me, I really should know better, but my brain goes a bit fuzzy around her. Or maybe she’s got some kind of pheromone perfume that drops my IQ dramatically every time I get within touching distance.
Or, damn it, maybe I never stopped loving her. It’s inconvenient in the extreme. The only way forward is to put as much distance between us as possible. With the threat she offers, I have decent leverage to convince the Thirteen to actually leave Olympus, but I can only do that if I’m free.
A thump on the other side of the door brings my head up—hey, I couldn’t do that a few minutes ago—but the movement shifts my body just enough that I overbalance and do a slow, pathetic slide down to a prone position. “Fuck,” I say against the fabric of the couch.
I hear the door open, but I can’t see who just walked into the room from my current position.
I can’t see much of anything but the awful pattern of this couch.
It had to have been donated to the university because the original owner bought it in a drug-fueled haze.
It’s the only explanation why someone would own such a horrid creation.
A soft inhale. “Damn it, Hermes.”
I blink. Surely I’m hearing things. I must be because there’s no feasible way Atalanta would be in this room with me.
Except it is her. I know those strong hands that find my shoulders and haul me up into a sitting position.
I know that scarred face, perpetually pinched in concern for my reckless decisions.
What I don’t recognize is the fucking knife sticking out of her upper chest. I lurch forward, tipping again, and she has to slam a hand into my shoulder to keep me in place. “Who?” I snarl.
“Your girlfriend isn’t just a pretty face.” Her complexion is waxy, but at least she’s still on her feet. “She missed hitting anything vital or I’d already be dead. We have to go.”
“I can’t.”
Atalanta glares. “I did not infiltrate this fucking warren of a building, fight your sorta-ex, and get stabbed for you to tell me you’re staying here. Get the fuck up so we can get out of here.”
“I can’t.” I blink a few times. “Circe dosed me with a paralytic. I’m getting feeling back in my body, but it’s coming too slowly to be helpful for this escape.”
Atalanta huffs out a strained laugh. “Absolutely nothing about this has gone according to plan, so why would we start now?” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”
I don’t miss the way she moves stiffly as she bends down to yank my arm over her shoulders. She’s hurt, and hurt bad if she’s showing any evidence of the injury. Which, of course, I already knew because she has a knife in her chest. “Go without me.”
“Shut up.”
“Atalanta, if you bleed out because you’re trying to save me, I’ll bring you back just to kill you myself.”
She stands, hauling me up with her. “You’ll have to be alive to do that, so I’m not worried. Your dumb ass is going to get killed while you’re distracted mooning after that woman.”
“I’m not mooning.” I manage one staggering step, but it’s like being the worst kind of drunk and high. Everything feels even and normal, but my body isn’t getting the message. “And Circe won’t kill me.”
Atalanta curses. “You are too smart to be so naive when it comes to her. Even if I believed that she won’t kill you, her people might very well do it behind her back.” She half drags me to the door and pries it open.
The woman from before lies on the ground, her eyes closed.
I catch sight of the steady rise and fall of her chest. Good.
She’s not dead. Realistically, it’s one less soldier for us to fight, but with the whole city mobilizing, it wouldn’t make a difference now anyway, and…
Circe cares for this woman. I could hear it in her voice when they spoke earlier.
Damn it, Atalanta is right. My head goes a little funny where Circe is concerned. I lean my temple against Atalanta’s shoulder as she pulls me over the fallen soldier. “I can’t be trusted.”
“I’m aware,” she grits out. “This isn’t going to work. Get on my back.” She doesn’t give me a chance to protest—or point out that I won’t be getting anywhere on my own. She just shifts down and pulls me over her shoulders in a damned fireman’s carry.
“Not very subtle,” I gasp.
“Yeah, well, if we get out of this alive, you can yell at me about it later.” She staggers to her feet again and starts down the hallway—deeper into the university.
Smart. If we go outside, we’re sure to draw attention. We’re not exactly subtle in our current state. Even so, this is dangerous in the extreme, and if they won’t kill me, they will kill Atalanta. “You have to leave me.”
“Fuck off.” She turns a corner and nearly overbalances, stumbling a little before she finds her feet again.
I can only lift my head a little bit, so my face is pressed against the back of her neck.
Now is not the time to notice how damned good she smells.
Being hit with the nearly overwhelming urge to follow her spine with my lips is not particularly helpful, either—and not just because I’m more likely to drool all over her instead of do it properly.
Focus. “Atalanta, you’re leaving a trail of blood behind you. We’re not moving fast enough to get out of here before they follow it right to us. You have to leave me.”
“And I’m telling you, woman, that I’ll die before I leave you in her hands.” She keeps going, dogged step after step. “And no matter how good you are, not even you can stop death.”
She will die if I don’t get my shit together.
The thought is unacceptable. My grief for Eros lurks just on the edges of my mind, waiting to pounce the moment I’m not in crisis mode—as if that will happen anytime soon.
But if Atalanta dies? My brain bounces off the very concept.
She can’t die. Not from violence. Not now, when we’ve barely had any life to live for ourselves. Not when we haven’t…
We reach another corner and stumble down the next hall.
It’s a damned miracle that we haven’t run into anyone.
Circe must have sent the majority of her people out into the upper city to round up the legacy families and whatever members of the Thirteen remain.
She had no reason to expect someone would launch a rescue attempt.
I swing my arm off Atalanta’s shoulder, nearly sending my half-limp body to the ground before she grabs me. “Hermes, I swear—”
“I can walk.” Hopefully. “And you need to bandage that wound before you bleed out.”
“We don’t have time.”
“We sure as fuck do,” I snarl. “Not like this, Atalanta. Not like this.”
She curses but lets me slide off her back. “What are you on about?”
I might have been a wee bit overconfident in my ability to walk, but I manage to keep my feet. Mostly. I veer into the wall like a drunken college student. “You are dying in some rocking chair, sixty years from now, surrounded by grandchildren.”
She leans against the wall across from me, panting lightly and pressing her hands to her chest around the knife. “I’m a lesbian.”
“There’s always adoption. Or IFV. Or maybe they’ll be neighborhood kids.
Don’t be difficult. You know there are ways if you want children.
” I wave that away, my hand flopping unfortunately on my wrist. We’ve never talked about kids.
Why would we? Our future ended with the fall of Olympus.
Nothing after that could be taken for granted, and if we got too focused on the after, we ran the risk of skipping a couple steps and being happy now.
Happy people don’t bring down governments. “Take off my shirt.”
Her brows wing up. “I hardly think—”
“For a bandage.” Even with the circumstances, I can’t help grinning at the way she stammers. “Hurry.”
I’m not much help as she pulls my sweatshirt off, and then my T-shirt after it. The shirt goes over the wound and the sweatshirt ties around her chest and shoulder to keep things as stable as possible. It’s not a great option, but at least she’s not actively bleeding all over the floor now.
In the distance, shouts sound. They know we’re free. “Time to go.”
“Yeah.” Her voice has gone thready. She’s not going to be able to keep this up. Not for long.
I stumble my way to her and do my best to wedge myself under her uninjured side. “Good thing you’re so tall. Otherwise this would be awkward.”
“Hermes…”
I don’t like the way her voice dips when she says my name. As if she’s apologizing. As if she’s giving up. “Let’s go.” It feels like the time I let my legs go to sleep and then tried to walk. I can see my legs and feet. I just can’t feel them properly. At least my brain is working better. Mostly.
I guide us left at the next intersection of hallways. “There should be a… Ah, here we go.” I lean Atalanta up against the wall so I can wrestle open a door marked STAFF ONLY. A quick glance back the way we came verifies that there’s no trail to track us this far.
Circe has a lot going for her right now. She’s smart and she was forced to learn the city the same way I was when we were young. You figure out the paths to take, how to keep your head down, how to walk a certain way to be practically invisible. To escape notice.
But she hasn’t had ten years with her fingers digging deep into Olympus’s secrets. Into its blueprints. If she had, this would have been over a long time ago. “We’re almost there.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe you.” Atalanta allows me to slip under her arm again and move us through the door. The hallway here is worn and gray and generally depressing, because why would the university care about its staff existing in nice spaces?
My body is slowly coming back online. There are some pins and needles, but I’ve powered through worse with less on the line.
“Well, getting out of here is only the first of our problems. I don’t exactly have a doctor on call for stab wounds.
” I do have first aid kits stashed all over the city, but I don’t think those will do the trick.
Atalanta is still on her feet through sheer determination—and she’s got a lot of determination.
I suspect a normal person would have been down-and-out a long time ago.
“Just get us out of here,” she grits out. “We’ll figure out the rest once we don’t have to worry about being taken captive or killed outright.”
There’s no time or energy to argue. I find the door I’m looking for, and we make a truly precarious descent down a set of stairs to the maintenance tunnel running under the campus. Olympus’s determination to appear perfect at all times really works in my favor. Especially now.
“Almost there.”
“You keep saying that.” She’s allowing me to take more of her weight now. Atalanta has a good six inches on me, and she wasn’t such a fierce competitor in the Ares tournament because she’s a waifish creature.
I slow to a stop at the bottom of the stairs at the other end of the tunnel.
“These should take us into the science building on the far side of campus. I highly doubt Circe has people there, but we can’t exactly be sure.
” I glance back the way we came. So far, there are no sounds of pursuit, which means they’re still looking for us aboveground. Good.
Atalanta sighs, the sound rattling in a truly worrisome way. She sinks down onto the second stair and carefully stretches out her legs. “I can handle a set of stairs, Hermes.”
“Don’t start lying to me now.” I scrub my hands over my face. My list of allies is significantly shorter than it was a few months ago. If I’m being perfectly honest, it’s downright nonexistent. “Do you have your phone?”
She gives me a long look and passes it over. “Who are you going to call? Anyone who would be even remotely inclined to help us is on the other side of the barrier.”
“I know.” It’s a long shot—the longest shot—but I dial a number from memory and listen to it ring.
He might pick up, but even if he does, he’ll hang up the moment he realizes it’s me calling.
And why not? We were the best of friends for years and years, and through it all, I was plotting to bring down the city he loves.
Worse, I used our friendship as a cover for nefarious deeds.
“I don’t know who this is, but if you’re trying to sell me something, I may crawl through the phone and strangle you with my bare hands.”
Despite everything, I smile. I missed hearing his voice, that slow drawl as if he can’t be bothered to speak quickly. “Dionysus, I’m in trouble and I need you. Atalanta has been stabbed.”
He’s silent for a very long time. Long enough that I have to bite my lip to keep from begging. Finally, he says, “I am very, very angry with you.”
“I know.” I can’t help the way my shoulders droop a little. “Saying ‘sorry’ doesn’t mean much and wouldn’t change anything.”
“That might be true, but it’s still a good place to start.”
A ragged laugh bursts from me. I’ve missed him so much. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve been a terrible friend, and you deserved better.”
He sighs. “It’s very silly how much I needed to hear that.”
“Maybe not so silly at all.” I glance at Atalanta. She has her eyes closed and is breathing in a very intentional, steady way that makes me worried. “We’re in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m on my way.”