Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (12 page)

With free munchies
, I’d bet,
the better to brainwash you with, my dear
.

“Oh,” she said brightly. “That sounds great. I’m only here for a few days, but I might just give you a call.”

She’d made his night. That was clear enough. I gave them a moment, looking away toward the hacienda-style building illuminated on the outside by small white lights that twinkled like stars and—and froze at what I saw. Coming around the building and getting into a white van half-blocking the exit out of the parking lot was my office attacker. Or someone who looked an awful lot like him.

“Christie,” I called, flinging out a hand to hit my window and making them both jump. “We’ve gotta go.”

The van started to roll out.

Christie said a quick good-bye and closed the door between them, hefting the bag into the back seat. Martin continued to stare after her, ignoring his other customers inside.
 

“Where to?” she asked.
 

“Follow that van,” I said.

“What van?”
 

Darn it, the vehicle had already disappeared down the hilly drive. “Straight ahead. Just drive!”
 

I was ready to reach my foot over the central console and step on the gas for her, but Christie didn’t even pop the parking brake before she was backing out. Still the van had vanished by the time we hit the street.

“Which way?” she asked.

But the trouble was headed away from rather than toward me, and my oracular powers were no help at all.

I sighed deeply. “I have no idea. Might as well head back to the hotel.”

“Yay!” she said. “So we have the rest of the night to ourselves? Chick flick and ice cream?” Her eyes glowed, but not in the supernatural sense.

“Like you eat ice cream.”

“I eat ice cream like you watch chick flicks. We’ll compromise.”

“Chick flick with action?” I asked.

“Fat-free frozen yogurt?”

I stuck my tongue out. “What’s the point?”

“Sorry about losing the van,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. At least I got the partial plate.”

“So what’s wrong with the food?” she asked. “And what are you going to do with it? Take it to a lab? Go all CSI?”

Questions I didn’t have answers for. How I knew…that one I could sidestep. But what
was
I going to do with the samples? I didn’t suppose the police generally tested for ambrosia or even knew it existed.

“It’s…something I’ve encountered before. As soon as I tasted it, I knew. The Rustic Potato is putting an additive into their food that makes it highly addictive.”

“Can they do that?” she gasped.

“Not legally. But this is so new, I don’t think the FDA’s even aware of it yet.”

“But you are?”

“I came across it during another investigation. It’s bad news.”

“So if it’s not illegal, how do we stop them?”

“You know the Feds I was telling you about?”

She nodded.

“Maybe they can help.”

But did I want to go there
? That was the question. If the Feds already knew about the ambrosia, it was no harm, no foul. Maybe linking it to Back to Earth would give them an excuse to raid the whole set-up and free the cult members.

On the other hand, raids on cults had been known to mean Very Bad Things for the members. I thought of Waco, particularly, but other cults, like Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown weren’t far behind.

I’d have to get assurances… But even then, what if their investigation led the Feds to Apollo and my supply line? That’d be one way to quit, but as ambivalent as I was about Apollo, I just couldn’t throw him under the bus. Not when he’d given me that first dose of ambrosia to save my life, by his way of thinking. Apollo had a habit of doing the wrong things for the right reasons and totally mucking them up for the mortals involved, but that didn’t make him a bad person…god…whatever.

I was afraid I was starting to think like an addict, making excuses to perpetuate my use. I couldn’t be sure my motives were pure, and that scared the hell out of me. Was I reasoning or rationalizing? There wasn’t anyone to ask.

“Tori?” Christie prodded.

I wondered how long I’d been pondering and whether she’d said anything in the meantime when she saved me by repeating herself. “I asked if you were going to call them.”

“Who?”

“
The Feds
.”

She shifted suddenly across two lanes to take a left hand turn she’d nearly missed. I braced for an impact that never came. I sometimes wondered if she had her very own guardian angel. Why not? I had a god on speed dial.

“I’m too busy praying for my life,” I answered under my breath.

“What’s that?”

“Car!” I shouted.

For a second, I thought we and the SUV next to us were going to try to occupy the same space. I didn’t think it would go well for us. Christie yanked the steering wheel back to center, and I swallowed my heart, which had jumped into my throat.

“Sorry!” Christie said, shooting me a glance.

“Eyes on the road!”

“Okay, jeez. What was
in
that food?”

Clearly not Valium.

Christie and I ended up back at the hotel with some froufrou wraps. Hers included alfalfa sprouts and other greenery that only a rabbit could love. Mine…didn’t. We also ended up with not one, but
two
pints of ice cream—one for each of us, since Christie stuck to her guns on the no fat/no fun version, and I insisted in quadruple fudge decadence. I figured the heart attack she’d nearly given me on the drive over had probably goosed my metabolism to the point where I could take it. And anyway, ambrosia gave me the munchies.
 

“I don’t know how you can eat that crap and stay so skinny,” Christie said, eyeing my spicy Italian wrap—salami, pepperoni, ham and provolone with salt, pepper and a dash of vinaigrette dressing.
 

I looked down at myself, as if to double-check her perceptions. “Um, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, which should we watch first?” she asked. “
Romancing the Stone
or
True Lies?
”

“Which has the higher body count?”

She rolled her eyes at me, and we settled down for a girls’ night in.

Chapter Nine

“The difference between a mare and a nightmare is one you ride, the other rides you.”

—Gus Karacis, head of the Karacrobats

The nightmares closed in on me like a pack of rabid dogs with the decaying flesh of the last person they’d torn apart still trapped in their teeth. Poisonous breath laced with the stench of death.

I was in a field, the same one I’d tasted in that single bite from The Rustic Potato. In the way of dreams, I knew it was the same, even though there was no way I could have. Also in the way of dreams, seasons didn’t matter. I stood in that field chest high with golden wheat—golden something, anyway—even though it was spring, and there was no way it would be more than a gleam in the sun’s eye.
 

I spun around in the field, my face turned toward the sun, my arms flung out, the breeze blowing my pitch-black hair into my face like a lash. It stung, and I brushed it back only to find that the sky had darkened. Clouds replaced the strands of hair blotting out the sun. They were thin dark wisps, like fingers, skeletal and reaching. It sent a chill over my heart, and I looked around for shelter, as though the darkness was a danger and my life would be snuffed out along with the light.

The sun was no longer warm on my face. The wind no longer blew. It blasted, picking up debris as it whipped through the field, throwing it into my eyes and mouth. I tried to breathe through my nose, but the stench of death came to me on the breeze, choking me. It poisoned my every breath, as if I took in shards of fiberglass, ripping their way through my sinuses, tearing through my lungs. I started to panic.

My frantic search for safety turned up nothing but a solitary figure far off in the distance. He waved to me, calling me over, and I started to race toward him. The wheat stung me like switches, but I didn’t stop. My face and arms turned slick with blood or sweat; my lungs labored.

Behind me the thing with the charnel house breath pursued. Teeth snapped, tearing at my clothes, nearly taking me down. I jerked with each snap, tearing myself free again.

The figure I was racing toward was just coming into focus. Familiar. So familiar. And yet, I didn’t dare hope. I knew that. The gasp of breath I took in at the sight of him hurt like hell—no longer shards, but throwing knives of cutting pain. Uncle Christos. Alive. Calling for me.

The sight gave me wings. I put on an extra burst of speed, only to rear back like a startled horse when another, darker figure rose up out of the ground between us. He was cloaked and cowled.

And this time he’d brought his sickle. He swept at the wheat between us, cutting it down like he’d cut me down in another step.

My recoil brought me into range of the dagger-teeth pursuing me, and the agony as they clamped down put all the rest to shame. The teeth tore into my shoulder, and I could feel the flesh shriveling away from them on contact, dying, their poison shutting me down cell by cell. The sickle flashed in the last shards of sunlight, streaking straight for me.

“No!” I cried. “Christos!”

“A life for a life,” a voice cracked like lightning across the sky. Not thunder, which was a rumble, but truly lightning, electric and deadly.

“No!” This time the cry was cut short by the biting blade.

My whole body spasmed as I screamed and thrashed, as if I could stop death with a badly aimed blow. The darkness was complete, the chill my world.
 

I made impact with something, though, and it shrieked.

“Tori, Tori, WAKE UP!” Christie said. “Tori, you’re having a nightmare. And you
hit
me.”

My heart stopped.
Christie
?
What was she doing here? It was too dangerous.

“Christie, run!” I said. The shards of air had scored my throat. The words were barely intelligible.
 

Then the blow landed across my cheek. “I said
wake up
, dammit!”

My eyes popped open, but couldn’t make sense of what they saw. “Christie?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious.

“In the flesh,” she said.

What happened next was the most startling thing of all—I burst into tears. Huge, great, gasping sobs. Each breath still hurt, but the fact that I could take them…

Christie dropped down on the bed next to me and folded me up in her arms like I was her child. “Shh, Tori, it’s all right. Whatever it is.”

“I almost died,” I choked out, sure it was true, even if it didn’t make a bit of sense. “Christos…he’s waiting for me to ride to the rescue, and I was never going to get there.”

She pretended I wasn’t a babbling idiot whose very sanity she was questioning and rocked me like a three-year-old with the night terrors. I was so shaken that I let her. I hadn’t cried in…possibly ever. But this time there’d been no Fates intervening on my behalf. If I hadn’t woken up…

I wondered how long Christie had been calling to me, and if she’d just saved my life.

I got myself under control, wiped my nose on the back of my hand like the classy broad I was, and tried to turn it into a joke.

“Sorry, Chris. I guess I’m the worst roommate ever.”

“At least you don’t snore,” she said, looking terribly serious about it.

Our eyes met, and we both broke into stupid hysterical giggles.

Chapter Ten

“When you’re sane, they call it prudence, not paranoia.”

—Christos Karacis

The digital clock said 3:16 a.m. It taunted me with its cheerful glow.

After a while, Christie went back to her own bed, pretending to believe my repeated assurances that it was nothing but “an undigested bit of beef.” Yes, I quoted Scrooge. I had enough to worry about without wondering what that said about my character.

In contrast to Christie, I laid awake staring at the ceiling or the wall or the clock or
anything
but the back of my eyelids. I spent all that time cursing Apollo. Before his “gift” of prophecy I could sleep in peace, knowing that a dream was just a dream. I didn’t have to wonder what it meant that death would strike me down in a field of gold. That dog breath would be my downfall. That Hades was coming for me. Anyway, that much I already knew. I guess if…when…I met him, I could compare his true voice against the one in my dream. Of course, by the time I could do that and know whether the dream held deeper meaning I’d probably only have seconds of life left to give a damn.

“But it wasn’t me!” I said aloud. “I didn’t open any damned portal to hell.”

Christie mumbled something and turned over in her sleep, and I instantly regretted my outburst. I’d already woken her up once. At least one of us should be getting our beauty rest. She had the best chance between us that it would take.