Chapter Fifteen
Once Wen let go of Apollo after he closed the portal between the Underworld and Haneda Airport’s International Arrivals terminal, she stumbled while the scrambled eggs of her senses returned to normal.
But only if normal meant keeping her ears open, her head on a swivel, and her vision on full alert, ready for any number of scenarios.
Between Apollo’s place and here, it had realistically only been about ten minutes. But every second of them represented another challenge for which she tried to formulate a viable action plan.
Of course, the last plot twist on her list had been this one.
Even when the what-if had hit her mind, she’d nearly replaced it with something else. Because even now, her gut twisted like an F1 circuit over how to handle it right. Then again, maybe a right way for this one didn’t exist.
The pain in her stomach bubbled into nausea.
She clenched the sick down as she and Apollo approached the spot where his brother Hercules ducked his head next to a planter which easily dwarfed any normal person, including the pretty woman next to him.
Even before they got closer, Wen recognized the beauty with the diamond-shaped face and gold-beryl brown eyes as Lois Lance, the writer who’d passed herself off as Natasha Korra at the charity event in the DeLux club last night.
The woman was much more gorgeous as herself, a conclusion owed in part to the adoration on her face while gazing at the demigod who’d taken up a firm explanation to her.
“ . . . Polo Pony’s already too cheeky with all his modern entertainment ideas,” Hercules all but growled. “We really don’t need my brother thinking—”
“What?”
Apollo’s interjection was as deceptively smooth as his expression.
Lois almost vocalized true thanks to Hercules and Lois for reacting so fast and whipping their heads up, especially with harsh frowns reflecting her own dogged confusion.
To everyone else on the concourse, they simply looked like a pair of ethereally beautiful brothers and their lucky companions; the reality was so much different.
A reality that shouldn’t exist at all.
They stood here waiting on the yakuza boss who’d extorted her into his search team for a superpowered instrument string, or the pop star who actually possessed it. Quite possibly, both.
And if that was the case, then what?
Apollo owed her nothing anymore. With his team’s report of Genny in this area so recently, she had a fighting chance of finding her sister soon.
At that point, her own debt to him would be fulfilled.
According to the Arrivals screen above their heads, the string and its thief were on approach over Tokyo Bay right now.
But Lois and Hercules didn’t need to know all that.
They didn’t even care. Their glowering faces already told that tale.
To them, Wen was clearly still the crazy girl who’d shot at them while riding Korra’s foyer chandelier like a sci-fi lunatic on a rogue dragon.
A mercenary with a soul as black as the spots on her battle gear.
As she perused her tattered ensemble, secretly pining for the plush red track suit in which she’d never get to luxuriate, Apollo jacked both brows and prompted his brother, “Adelfós? What exactly do I not need to be thinking?”
No immediate answer from the big guy. Not until after Herc veered his sights over, draping Wen in a full seethe from head to toe.
She kept her head high and her features neutral, sticking to the theory that not even Zeus himself could actually kill a mortal with one look.
Not that the demigod and the woman at his side refused to give up trying.
“Why don’t we try you first?” Hercules finally flung back at his brother. “Where the fuck are my thoughts not supposed to be going now?”
Apollo blurted a Greek profanity beneath his breath, audible only to Wen. Or so she guessed, since Hercules didn’t falter his glower. The poor sun god at her side now squirmed like a nerd at a frat party.
“Brother,” he muttered. “I know what you must be th—”
“No.” Hercules spat an acidic laugh. “I don’t think you fucking do.”
“Hey.”
She almost opted not to go so hard about the exclamation, but as soon as the guys backed off and calmed their stances, she inwardly lauded herself for making the right call.
There was no time to waste about capitalizing on the point, so she didn’t.
With a confident stomp over, she framed her hips with fisted hands.
“You guys serious about finding Natasha before Reks Byrd does, or should I just set up targets for the pissing match?”
Finishing with a deliberate glance toward Apollo also spun up as a smart choice.
His covert nod was the approval stamp on her decision to pretend like they still didn’t know where “Reks” had turned up.
He likely harbored the same apprehension as her: despite the rapport Lois and Hercules seemed to have achieved since their standoff at Korra’s mansion, was the pretty little writer still on the pop star’s payroll right now?
Was Lois making heart eyes at Hercules as a fleece because Natasha had retained her as a spy, keeping tabs on how much the gods knew about her stealing the lyre string?
For the time being, the less they showed of their hand, the better.
A shame, really, because back at the mansion, Lois had impressed the hell out of her in the girl guts department.
When the room’s marble surfaces had become crazier ricochet points than Wen anticipated, Lois hadn’t run off and locked herself in some powder room.
If anything, she’d fired back, in her own way: with a look close to the expression she wielded now.
Feral. Furious. Eyes ablaze with dark gold fires.
A bizarrely eerie match to the energy burning from the big guy at her side.
Well . . . shit.
Now it really was time to help Apollo out a little more.
“Hercules.” She uncoiled her hands and raised her arms, only high enough to validate her new point. “I’m not carrying this time, okay? And whether you believe it or not, I’m here for the same reason as you. Because of the person who matters most to me.”
Okay, she didn’t plan on blurting out that part.
But none of it was a lie.
Even her, the girl who could tell more when a gun needed cleaning than a pal needed hugging, was fully conscious of the new emotions between Hercules and his new friend.
Even equipped with that sole thread of awareness, she had to consciously control a giggle when Lois reacted to the remark with a horrified collision of her active eyebrows.
“Wait,” Lois blurted, also throwing up both hands. “What the—” Then gawped at the air like a fish without water. “Oh, I’m not—I mean, Herc and I aren’t—I mean, this isn’t—”
“Uh-huh,” Wen drawled, cracking a gloating smirk over Hercules’s tighter frown.
Not that Apollo let her enjoy the moment any longer.
After five seconds, he grabbed her hand to the point she abandoned the grin—and any thought about pulling free.
She knew when to surrender when an effort was already lost.
Too bad Apollo didn’t.
He still braced his stance and met his brother’s incendiary energy, as if his new alignment with her would wave some stupid magic wand and make Hercules forget about their battle in Beverly Hills. About being on the very wrong end of her gun barrels.
To be real, she didn’t begrudge the big guy’s attitude about it all. Even respected him more for it. But Herc was a demigod who excelled at wrestling lions and hellhounds, not properly expressing his feelings. Eventually, Apollo had to accept that too.
It just wasn’t going to be right now.
Hercules took another pair of chafing steps, bringing his worn combat boots nearly toe-to-toe with Apollo’s streamlined club kicks.
“The point,” the demigod finally bit out. “Want to get to it, Betty Boop?”
Unbelievably, Apollo closed the distance between them by another significant step. Wen had no choice about stumbling along, since she was pretty sure he’d channeled some solar strength and welded his fingers around her knuckles.
“She has a name, damn it,” he retorted. “This is Irowen Steed.”
Only a rough jaw clench held back her eyes from fully rolling. “But call me Wen or you’ll get stabbed,” she added, praying her sarcasm would weave in much-needed levity.
“Just like Lois, she came to LA with not much but her dreams and her family,” Apollo went on.
“But that family has now dwindled to only one other person. Her sister, Genny. A person, Herc, just like Lois. And now she’s been taken captive by some shitty bastards who want my lyre string as payment for his months-old gambling debt. ”
A spiky breath tore out of Lois. Her stunned stare wasn’t any smoother. “Okay, I don’t get it,” she said to Wen. “Why your sister if Rizon’s the one who owes?”
Here came the part they couldn’t gloss over so much.
Apollo squeezed her hand and added a small but encouraging nod, backing her up to deliver the bullet points of the story he’d already heard.
About how it sucked to be an accomplished headhunter when the yakuza were after a rock star who owed them a lot of money and somehow gotten an ancient Greek artifact to cover the debt.
About how the oyabun of that bōryokudan knew her ultimate weakness, her little sister with anxiety challenges, and used that information to blackmail her into the quest to find Reks Byrd.
About how she’d been tracking that rock star’s “girlfriend” as the best way to get to Byrd, figuring the charity speed dating event at the DeLux would have lax security protocols and easier ways to move in on the woman.
She also relayed that she had no idea about Byrd’s true identity, or about how Natasha employed Lois to assume hers.
And while it felt damn good to confess those facts, she stopped short of spilling more: a wise move, since Lois and Hercules had obviously come through their own portal out of concern for Korra, not because of her.
Maybe that meant Natasha would behave a little better.
With her kind and concerned doppelg?nger servant right here, maybe the little twit would be too concerned about keeping up “good behavior” to wonder about the semi-entourage with which Lois had also arrived, or question how they’d all arrived ahead of her.
Lois would also be the unknowing but ideal distraction for the woman, long enough for Apollo to manufacture a “blast of sunlight” through one of the windows and search where she had the lyre string hidden.
It was a wild plan of action, but she watched in awe as the Glow Worm already rehearsed the sequence in his own mind, plotting different ways to search Korra’s luggage, purse, and person with the speed of a lightning-infused sunbeam.
She didn’t miss the correlation with another celestial metaphor: that this scheme might bring an actual rainbow at the end.
If she helped with recovering Apollo’s string, perhaps Hercules and Lois would thaw the squalls of their animosity a bit.
Only one giant question remained about the grand finale of their impromptu script.
Would their confrontation with Korra be enough leverage to draw Ito out into the open?
And why the hell was she framing that as a good thing?
If she never saw that old bacon oyabun again, her waffles would be just as fluffy, her coffee just as hot. She only cared about finding the goons who’d shuffled Genny out of this airport not long ago. The thugs assisting the terrorist who still held her sister hostage . . .
“Ito-san? Oje?”
Holy shit.
The exact monster to whom Lois Lance now shouted, emerging onto the concourse in his tailored yakuza boss finery, with a dozen of his wakagashira lieutenants keeping step right behind.