Page 100 of Martyr
I give Ouranos an address and hang up before I can regret it.
Across the restaurant, mostly concealed by shadows, someone pushes off the wall. They give me a slow wave before they leave. The door swings shut behind them, and I turn away.
“Good luck,” I whisper.
42GABRIEL
“Letgo!”
They listen, and I’m tossed rather unceremoniously onto the floor. I take my time picking myself up, my heart hammering.
“There you are, Gabriel,” Ouranos says.
He always says that with a tone of surprise, like he didn’t expect me to turn up. I didn’tturn up—I was cornered by his goons in South Falls and dragged here. I run my fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face, and straighten my clothes. White graphic t-shirt that saysAnarchy. Jeans. Boots. I had a sweatshirt and jacket, but they got lost somewhere along the way. In the struggle.
My body aches, but the bright prick of pain comes from my cheekbone. Not the side that he ground into the glass, of course. No, now I’ll have matching mismatched wounds. The cuts have scabbed over. This isn’t a gash, its just swollen.
One of them broke the bone, I think.
Stupid sheep. They’ll pay for that one. Over and over. Their faces are imprinted in my mind. Even if I’m not the favorite?—
“You helped Artemis take her club back,” he says idly.
Oh, right. I suppose that puts me on the outs with Ouranos, doesn’t it? That’s why I didn’t go crawling back to him aftergiving Saint a little bop. I went and tried to get onto Isle of Paradise, only for Bobby to basically drive away without me. He took one look at me coming down the dock and unhooked his mammoth houseboat as fast as possible, which was kind of impressive. He was out of reach by the time I got to his section.
Dick-face.
All I know is that there’s something wrong on Isle of Paradise, the trauma center has been compromised, and Lyssa… I don’tknow. I felt something was wrong, didn’t I? I felt it when I was holding the Hell Hounds leader guy’s body under the water and watching him try to gurgle with a punctured lung. It was like?—
What if she’s dead?
What if that feeling was her saying goodbye?
“Are you with me, Gabriel?”
Back to Ouranos. If sheisdead, he’d be a good one to go to in order to also get dead. He kind of has a murderous rage about him, but it only appears at random. Like when he has to deal with me and I can’t quite focus on his words.
I blink at him.
I betrayed him, didn’t I? That usually means death. A quick shot to the back of the head—or the front, depending on how pissed he is. Except, he’s not usually the one pulling the trigger. He has guys for that. Cyclopes. And they all wentboom.
He’s blissfully unaware of that, too. Even the guys who snatched me were quiet. Confident. There’s got to be more Cyclopes in the city, but who really knows? Kade was in charge of personnel. I doubt he was keeping a literal ledger, though.
The important thing is that they took out a few. Like, thirty. Maybe forty.
That’s a lot of death swinging over the head of sweet Artemis. Kind of like a guillotine of guilt, in a way. Or a pendulum. Guillotines don’t swing.
A sharp pendulum on a fraying rope, sweeping closer and closer to her delicate neck.
Poor bird.
Speaking of?—
“I want to see Lyssa,” I say.
He scoffs. “You won’t be seeing her any time soon. Of that, I’m sure.”
“Why?”
