Page 86 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Chapter Twenty-Five

I just sat there since there was nothing else to do, waiting for Faerie to provide some inspiration—only she seemed to have gone off somewhere—and trying to find the calm I didn’t have right now.

Seeing Zeus again, even as a bad TV-type broadcast, had been terrifying. I’d told Pritkin the truth; the old bastard wasn’t here, probably couldn’t be, considering that he and his current avatar were facing invasion by Caedmon’s forces. I wondered how that felt, being besieged by your own son.

Of course, with Zeus, it probably wasn’t the first time.

But he had a thousand tricks up his sleeve, and with someone like Feltin, he probably didn’t need to be on site. He could play puppet master from the other side of Faerie, dangling rewards and punishments as a carrot or a stick for his latest donkey. And doing a bit of mind control when that wasn’t enough.

And the fact that he wasn’t even having to break a sweat to ruin our plans was just—

“There she is,” the incubus said, watching me through a crack in his lids. “Your mother, peeking out of your eyes. I saw her in London, and I’m seeing her now. The difference is that you’re starting to see her, too. And that scares the hell out of me.”

“I’m not my mother.”

“Yes, so you keep telling people. But has it occurred to you that most of us would be gibbering right now? You’ve just seen Zeus for the first time since that complete debacle in Romania, where you literally died. If you had any sense, you’d be looking for a bed to hide under—”

“I’m done hiding!”

“So it would seem,” he murmured, and I suddenly realized that I’d swooped on him like Feltin had that fey in his office.

For a second, both of us froze, barely breathing. Then, I slowly crawled backward and sat down, working to get myself under control. It didn’t go so well.

Yeah, I should be scurrying away and searching for a bolthole, but I already had one. It was buried somewhere under the stables, where nobody ever went except for the demigoddess who ran this place and her stooges. I was as safe as anybody could be in this world, but I only wanted to get out.

And put Zeus’s head on a goddamned pike.

“You sure your mother is dead?” the incubus asked dryly. “And not doing a little puppeteering of her own?”

“She’s dead,” I said harshly. “This is all me.”

He thought about it. “Why doesn’t that reassure me?”

I crawled back over, getting into his face slowly this time because I wasn’t Zeus and wouldn’t act like him. But I wanted Pritkin’s alter ego to get this. And we didn’t have time for subtleties.

“We will die in here,” I told him. “Not our bodies, maybe, not yet, but our chances. Any hope of beating this bastard is ticking down with the clock. And if we don’t win this, he will come for us—me, you, everyone we care about. We’re at the top of his hit list, and you know it. So get over whatever this is, right freaking now, and help me!”

The incubus’s eyes narrowed to the point that I could barely see the stars anymore. And his expression blurred the lines so that I wasn’t sure who I was talking to or if it mattered. Because on one thing, at least, both men agreed.

“I am helping you, even if you can’t see it,” he said shortly.

“Martyring yourself is not helping me!”

“Martyr—my dear. I am an incubus. That word isn’t even in our vocabulary.”

“Then what the hell is this?”

“Demon practicality. Humans always see things in black and white, with no shades of gray. It’s been your problem all along and is one my “brother” unfortunately shares.”

“So, how should I be seeing it?” I demanded.

“Simple. We miss the race. Bodil is satisfied. Winning two out of five challenges would make us the odds-on favorite and upend everything. But not even bothering—or daring, as it will be believed—to show up will effectively tank our chances. The main thing the fey look for in their leaders is courage.

“So, she comes to let us out, either then or at the end of this farce. I explain what that bastard Feltin did and that if she will be so good as to use her demigoddess abilities to lift the curse, I will show my gratitude by retiring from her lands forthwith—”

“And then what?” I demanded. “Watch the world burn? Two of them?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, give it a rest. Do you remember that camp? How close it was? Or Romania, where you—at best—managed a draw? And that only because of an ability the Pythian library had that Zeus didn’t know about, coupled with your unparalleled ability to piss people off.

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