Page 11 of Creatures that Breathe

It doesn’t matter which way I turn. Dark alleys, light-flooded corners, murky stretches between, the entire world blurs to hues of blue. Swirling, winding, mocking, distorting until I’ve escaped the confines of reality. Here the air is blue and tastes like someone dropped a Mento in a fine red wine. I can’t breathe and I can’t get my lungs full enough.

It’s not the first time the world’s flipped on me. Not the first time a stranger and a handful of words have obliterated all I know.

Who says no to immortality once they learn the ancient creatures of myth exist? Gorgons, Furies, the Lycaon.

Olympians.

Hidden and devastatingly powerful.

I was never pious, but that—learning the Gods, and legends, and Olympus were not only real, but living amongst us—struck harder than getting bucked off a horse in Hyde Park and landing ass up on the continent.

There was only one secret left in the world, before she showed up. Now ...

My power didn’t work on her. She didn’t forget me. Not a flicker of confusion.

Who is she?

The same twisting riddle has ransacked my thoughts since those pale blue eyes first chased me in the hotel lobby. Every step across the terrazzo, from the door to the elevator, she held me in her crosshairs. Not Lev, not the bellhop, not the dark power flowing from our cursed tattoos. Me.

No one good searches out the Blackguard. No matter how sweet their smile.

Is she an assassin? Posing as a seductress to disarm me?

It’d work.

That’s the same MO as Sinis. Flirt, lick, stab. How does my brother describe himself?

A total smoke show honeypot panty-melter with a heart of liquid lust.

I hate that I’ve memorized his word vomit.

I shut my brother’s mental file and update hers. Teal, aqua, and cerulean hair in short choppy waves, lips a too delicate shade of blush, darker when pressed, a nest of tangled gold necklaces, and most interesting, a tattoo slicing down the bone of her wrist. A series of square edged numbers.

A cipher? Does she have information about Kadmos?

Is she cursed too? Is she an Oracle? I’d meant to question her. To interrogate and threaten until she quaked with fear, abandoned her pursuit, and left us forever. Her head barely reaches my shoulder, but she stared me down, threw me off my game.

Even now, I struggle to focus as random details force themselves into her file. How striking she is in her hot pink coat. The slight hitch in her breath before she skewered me with exactly what was running through her mind.

Unnecessary details.

I keep them.

Most of my mental files cover killers, combatants, warlords. Abilities, weapons, alliances, families, vendettas. Weaknesses.

Targets.

Collateral.

Black files, side by side in my head, organized for easy referencing. Never know how quickly negotiations will necessitate extortion, or how often an ally will turn foe.

Her file is blue. The spine reads Leni in such a ditsy script, I might as well dot it with a heart and fireworks.

Fuck.

She’s come at the worst time in the worst way. Atlas is verging on tin foil hat paranoid, Lev’s smashing tallboys in his sleep again, and none of us know how long we have before the curse strikes again.

I rake a hand through my hair and cut down a dark alley, heaping distance between me and Leni.

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