Page 43 of Wildfire

She was dying.

Swatted

He wasn’t ready.

That was the mantra that kept cycling through his head, over and over, even as he raced toward the man. The monster? He didn’t look like a monster, but it was clear enough that he was.

He looked like any other big tattooed man, but he was a monster, and Wilder had just watched him murder an innocent student. He couldn’t let it pass.

Fire, Ares had said. Cleanse it with fire, until you were sure the infection had been burned out.

Before he could toss the first flame, though, Hermes had rushed ahead of him, and shoved himself between the monster and the student. Quick as a blink, he tossed her over a shoulder and ran off.

Even more suddenly, Wilder didn’t know what to do.

He wasn’t a soldier, dammit!

He knew how to do tricks, to juggle fire and wow an audience, and throw fireballs with—he thought—rather impressive accuracy. But that didn’t prepare him to face down an angry monster-man all by himself.

He didn’t know if Hermes could save the student, but if there was any chance, he wouldn’t begrudge the man’s flight for a second. Even though it seemed likely that flight was going to spell Wilder’s own doom, as he froze and stared at Typhon in dread.

The mountain of a creature, who looked like the bad boy biker every teenager’s parents feared they would bring home as a date, glared after Hermes. He didn’t seem interested in giving chase, or even all that put out, just sort of vaguely irritated. Like Hermes was a fly he’d like to swat if he got the chance.

For a moment, Wilder thought perhaps he should just melt into the background. Typhon hadn’t acknowledged his presence, so maybe he didn’t even know Wilder was there. He could get away, regroup, and kick his brain back into gear, because it felt like a car that had been left too long in the garage. He was turning the key, and it was giving a wheezing little attempt at a noise, but the engine was refusing to engage. So he was standing there like a statue, flames twirling around his fingers.

He couldn’t, though. He couldn’t slip away and leave this monster to attack his students. Even if it killed him, he couldn’t allow it to continue without trying to do something.

No sooner had he made his decision than the creature turned to him, lips curled into a nasty sneer, and held his arms out to his sides.

He looked Wilder over, head to toe, an appraisal if he’d ever seen one, and given the smirk that followed, one that found Wilder lacking. “Are things so dire on Olympus, then, that Zeus sends his children after me?”

Wilder scowled at him. Now, maybe being assumed to be some random child of the insatiable god of Greek myths should be an insult. They were all beautiful, even miserable, scarred Ares. But damn it, Wilder was no child of Zeus. “Guess again, viper.”

Oh no. He’d been spending far too long around Hermes, if he was assigning poor puns as epithets to random strangers.

The monster raised a brow at him. “Not spawned of the golden fool? He has so many, you know, it’s easy to lose track. Perhaps you should check with your mother.”

Wilder laughed at that. And then again, louder. Was Typhon trying to goad him into anger? The notion of his prim, prudish mother having a fling with Zeus was hilarious. He’d rarely been more sure a thing was untrue in his life, and if it had been, he might have thought better of her instead of worse.

Even if his body was stuck in neutral, trying to recall the years he’d spent training it for just such a moment as this, apparently his mouth still worked. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Whether I’m the son of Zeus or a sheep herder, I’m the one who’s here.” He held up his right hand, pulling a tiny ball of flame to the center above his palm. “You get me, or you get to run away.”

Excellent. He’d always known this was how he would die. He would spout off to the wrong person, anger a sleeping giant. Or in this case, one who’d just broken out of a prison he’d languished in for millennia.

“Human,” Typhon said, lightly, on a chuckle, as though the word itself were a joke. “Do you have any idea whom you address, child? With that toy flame as what, a threat? As though the children of Prometheus pose any threat tous. It took Zeus himself to imprison me, and even he only barely managed that much.”

Wilder gave a little shrug and increased the size of the fireball. “Better?” When Typhon’s eyes narrowed at him, he gave his best haughty smile, well learned at his mother’s knee, and her best patronizing queen-bee of the charity committee voice. “I’m sorry, are we feeling a little underappreciated in our mediocrity today?”

Typhon jerked his head back as though he’d been slapped, eyes narrowed in confusion and anger. No doubt he was used to the people he was about to kill either not realizing it, or falling to their knees and begging mercy.

“Marco was an arrogant ass who thought he needed to compete with everyone,” Wilder told him. “But he was my student, and he was a good man.”

He tossed the first fireball. He didn’t expect it to hit, but after dodging it and turning back to face Wilder again, the monster seemed just a little less all-consumingly confident, eyes narrowed in irritation or concentration. So Wilder thought he’d give him something else to concentrate on.

“And Matt.” He tossed another.

Without waiting for that one to land or miss, he threw another into the space Typhon would have to dodge into, to avoid the first. “And Rebekah!”

The last grazed the monster’s cheek, searing a line across the cheekbone, and Typhon dropped to his knees, teeth bared in feral anger as he leaped at Wilder with all the grace of a tiger.

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