Page 2 of Patron of Mercy

A few seconds, they waited, but Hermes didn’t come. All Olympians could call him—what kind of messenger god would he be if they couldn’t contact him? It was a modulation in their throats, a power in their blood. Lach had to rely on his cell phone and the often-spotty radio when he was out at sea.

“I haven’t seen him around lately. He’s avoiding Dad. I’ll try again,” Dionysus said. “Hermes,” he called.

By the time the second syllable left his lips, Ariadne slid up to him and wrapped her arms around Dionysus’s neck. She pulled him down into a kiss—the kind of kiss that was like a crash—asexycrash—you couldn’t help but stare at. Lach saw way more of their tongues than he ever wanted to.

Suddenly, Hermes was there. He groaned, throwing his hand over his eyes. “Please tell me you did not call me here because you’re feeling voyeuristic.”

Dionysus and Ariadne didn’t disengage from their searing kiss, so Lach leaned around them and held up his hand. “Nope. Actually, you’re here for me. I needed you.”

“Did you, Lach?” Hermes’s bright blue eyes turned appraising. He was cut from the same cloth as Zeus—with golden hair and eyes like the sky. Most of his children were similar, like gingerbread men who’d all been shaped the same but had small variations from baking.

“I need to talk to Thanatos.” At once, the wind went out of the god. Hermes had a certain reputation. If someone said they needed him, they usually got him—not that Lach was judging. There had definitely been some kind of appeal in living like that. Right up until the moment he’d realized he was three thousand years old and completely alone.

Ariadne pushed Dionysus into the bar. Raising her eyebrows, Cleo stared at the pair of them.

“Why don’t you two lovebirds take it into the office?” Lach suggested.

All he got in return was a grunt, but they shuffled their feet, hips bumping into barstools as they made their way toward the back room.

Cleo looked at Hermes and cocked a brow. She signed to him. Without a beat, he signed back. Some gods, those most connected with humanity, picked up languages fast. For Lach, it’d always been the hardest part of being immortal. He’d gone from ancient Greek to Norse. There’d been a time when, sailing the Atlantic, it’d been in his interest to learn French. But languages came slower to him—just another way he wasn’t as good as the gods around him.

Lach wasn’t a god at all, but something else. He had the immortality—and the considerable prowess—of a cow, bought on accident. Poseidon had shown the world people like him could die. Men from Odysseus’s boat had slaughtered Helios’s cattle too, and when their ship had capsized in a storm, Poseidon had torn them apart. Lach had done the god of the sea a solid, so he’d made his way back to shore when Helios had meant to kill him. That was it—chance and the mercy of amused gods kept Lach alive.

It didn’t make them like him—he’d broken the rules without bending over for Zeus or some other lusty god—and there weren’t many immortal humans to keep him company. Most mortal ones were more trouble than they were worth.

Cleo set a Sprite in front of Hermes and turned away from them to restock shelves with liquor enough to get them through the weekend. Left to their own devices, Hermes propped his elbow on the counter and turned to look at Lach.

“Okay, you know I like you, Lach, but uh, Thanatos isn’t going to want to talk to you.”

No surprises there. Frankly, if their positions were switched, Lach would’ve sailed to the other side of the globe to get away from Thanatos. Hell, he practically had, though that was only because he was a piece of shit who hadn’t known what he had until he lost it. Okay, and then he’d aged a couple thousand years. Even the biggest asshole in the world got a little perspective over the course of millennia—Lach would know.

“I know. But it’s life and death.”

Hermes stared at him like he’d gone crazy.

“I’m serious,” Lach insisted. “I need Thanatos’s help, or a lot of people are going to die.”

“You’ve completely lost it,” Hermes said. “Honestly, you’re sitting here at a night club, day drinking, and you think I’m going to buy that the fate of the world hangs on me playing telephone with your ex? He’s busy, Glaucus.”

The last, Hermes said gently. Almost no one called him that anymore. That Hermes was now meant he was speaking to the man Lach had been, the one who’d made more mistakes than a hecatoncherie could count on all his hands. A man who didn’t deserve to call on Thanatos.

“He’ll be a lot busier if everyone dies.”

“Did the math on that one, pal. Only for a little while. You’d be amazed how many spirits Charon can fit on his train at a time.”

Lach stared at him. “Seriously? Gods, you’re a dick.”

It wasn’t especially godlike to give a shit when mortals were in peril, but Lach was out on a limb here, and he’d made promises.

“Give me your damn fancy phone,” Lach said, holding out his hand.

Hermes rolled his eyes as he dug it out of his pocket. “You have got to get your own smartphone, Lach. This isn’t nineteen-ninety.”

“My phone works fine.”

Grudgingly, Hermes passed it over. It didn’t take more than a cursory search of NPR to find the problem—it was spring, and plants weren’t growing. The trees were blooming feebly, but the plants that returned every year, the ones farmers had to sow in loamy soil, that fed people and animals, weren’t.

“Okay, there’s a drought. That’s hardly—” Hermes broke off when Lach snatched his phone back. He searched the BBC next. The problem wasn’t only in the United States. It was global. Nothing was growing anywhere it should be. He shoved the phone back at Hermes.

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