“Yes.”
He frowns, sitting back. “Has reverting changed sides for you?”
“Like it did for you?”
“Yeah. My girl’s good, so I want to be good too.”
Huh. The way he says it makes it sound so simple, but my situation is more complicated than that. My girl is neutral. She takes pictures of the good and the bad. “Nah,” I tell him. It’s not a lie because I’m not changing sides because of Monika. I was never a hero.
He gives me a dark, skeptical side-eye. “That right?”
“Yeah.”
“And have you found your map?”
“What map?”
He gestures to his arm, to the runes that seem to be lightly carved into his granite skin. “Led me to my weapon.” He tilts his head as his gaze moves over my bare chest. How the fuck is he sitting here, the better dressed one between the two of us? He’s a slob, last I checked. “Yours are different.”
I nod, stretching out one arm between us. The glittery patterns that form over my skin only turn bright white in natural light. “Yes. Seems like it. What do the weapons do? Other than open a gate for the Elders to pass through when combined.”
“What weapons do,” he answers with a shrug. “Have you found yours?”
“Map didn’t lead me anywhere,” I tell him, and there’s truth in it.
He picks his coffee cup back up and squints. “Bullshit.”
“Whatever.”
He repositions himself in his chair and cocks his head. “Look, Taranis, I don’t care if you’re lying to me. I don’t care if you have your weapon. I don’t care if you’re dating Monika, and I don’t care if you’re a hero or if you’re a villain. All I know is that if I have to kill you to ensure that the Elders don’t make it here, I will.”
“You can’t, Sixty-Two.”
He just shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Feeling strangely magnanimous, I decide to give him something. “I don’t want the Elders here either.” My tail lifts to curl around my cupof coffee. My arms remain crossed as I sip from it. “I don’t like having a master. And since you’ve been absolutely annoying, I only have one last question.”
“Shoot.” He tosses some bills onto the table. What looks like forty bucks. I glance at it, and he says, “I’ve got a sugar mama.”
“How do you get the weapons to work?”
“Thought you didn’t find yours?”
“Theoretically,” I say with emphasis, “how would one get their weapons to work?”
“Yours doesn’t?” He’s wearing another damn smile, this one more mischievous than any of the others.
“Theoretically, no. It doesn’t.”
“Then maybe, and I’m just theorizing here ...”
“Of course.” Fucking annoying monstrous prick.
“Maybe your weapon doesn’t belong to you.”
The Marduk. That fucking dick. Iknewit. Why I ever thought he’d give me my own weapon, even though I gave him his, is fucking stupid and so am I for harboring the trust I had in him. After all, he is a villain.
“What?” the Wyvern asks me.
