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“Not you,” Scylla cried. She raised her hands, her tentacles following suit, each horrible, glistening appendage poised to strike. The waters around her roiled and frothed, stirred into a frenzy by her anger.
I whirled in the water, searching for the object of her ire, and found him standing waist-deep in the sea. It was a man I could have only described as statuesque, his silver hair slick with seawater, his tanned, muscular frame unmoved and unmolested by the churning waves Scylla was sending forth.
“Get the hell out of there, Dust!”
Again I turned to look, catching the glint of light against Herald’s glasses as he stood on the shore. The others were clustered around him. Prudence looked between the normals and us weirdoes gathered in the water, considering her next step. Artemis was eating calamari out of a bowl she’d carried all the way from the jetty. Apollo wasn’t looking as relaxed, though. He was staring at the man in the water, this brazen, bronzed new distraction.
“Uh-oh,” Apollo said.
Uh-oh was right.
Chapter 3
I stared out at the water, specifically at the fact that both the silver-haired man and Scylla were now barking at each other in a language I couldn’t understand. Their fingers pointed threateningly at each other. That was a language I most certainly did recognize: someone was about to launch some very powerful magic. I was just going to haul ass when a pair of strong arms hoisted me off my feet and lifted me into the air. I yelped, kicking and thrashing.
“Will you settle down?” Gil growled, throwing me over his shoulder like I was a sack of potatoes. Really cute, dumb potatoes that never knew when to turn tail and run. Gil’s legs powered us through the water, and within seconds he had us back on dry land. He dropped me in the sand with what I thought was a little too much roughness, but hey, I’d be mad at me, too.
I recognized Herald’s sandals before he even started accosting me. I looked up sheepishly into his furious face, damp with sweat as he scolded me. “But do you ever listen?” was the only bit of his lecture that I caught. I pushed myself up to sit in the sand, dragging my legs closer and clutching my knees as I took my verbal beating and, more importantly, watched what was happening in the water.
It started with waves, massive, crashing ones that ran perpendicular to the natural flow of the ocean, alternately following the man’s command, then bending to Scylla’s will, like the push and pull of tides. Civilians screamed as they rushed for the shore. The spectacle wasn’t so exciting anymore, not when the very real risk of drowning was so near.
“Welp, I’m out,” Apollo said. He looped his fingers around Artemis’s wrist, tugging her away from the shore. Artemis waved at me, too focused on her calamari to be upset by whatever had Apollo so scared. Damn it. We could have used a god’s help in this – two of them, even.
The waves turned into bizarre shapes as they roared at each other – fists, at first, then huge, galloping horses, as the two tried to either drown their opponent or pulverize them in the terrible crush of so much water. Then Scylla went with a different approach, directing the flow of water into slender, pinpoint jets that sliced across the waves with so much force that they pierced the tanned man’s skin. He recoiled as the first streams of his blood poured into the water.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, leaping to my feet. “Should we be doing something? Holy shit.” Around us the normals were shouting, scattering, but enough of them were sticking around to record the battle with their devices. Fucking typical.
“Don’t move,” Herald growled. “Don’t get involved,” he said, even as he stepped forward, dangerously close to the water.
“Igarashi,” Prudence said. “Don’t.”
“Something has to happen before someone gets killed,” Herald said, as the enormous waves threatened the sands, greater and greater swells approaching the jetty as the bizarre duel continued. “This ends now.”
He fell to one knee, slamming his open palm into the wet sand. The purple glow wreathing his skin pulsed once, then vanished as Herald unleashed the full fury of his magic into the water. The effect was immediate, awe-inspiring, and terrifying. The waves stopped in place, as if halted in time, crystalline and frozen. The sea, or a very large area of it close to where Herald touched, was chilling at a tremendous rate, turning to ice under the weight of his power. Herald was freezing the ocean.
And it didn’t take very long for the only two people left in the water to feel the effects. Sheets of liquid emanating from the man’s hand froze and splintered in midair. Herald’s frost reached far enough to build a stifling, translucent cocoon around Scylla’s tentacles. She screamed, enraged, her eyes filled with venom as she stared at the bronzed man, then at Herald.
Herald glared back at her, lifting his chin in defiance. The battle was over, sure, but at what cost? Somewhere near us, a man with huge, excited eyes held his phone in Herald’s face. “Wow. Are you some kind of superhero?”
Prudence closed her fingers around the man’s phone, the strength of her grip augmented by her blue flames, crushing the device into a twisted mess of plastic and broken glass. “No superheroes here, buddy. Show’s over.”
The man stared at his empty hand, then at Prudence, a kind of awe taking over his features, more impressed than frightened.
“Great,” I said. “Now if you could just go around the entire beach and destroy every cellphone in sight, then that would be perfect.”
Prudence glowered. Just behind her, Mason shrugged, then sauntered up to the nearest normal, snatching away his phone and chucking it into the ocean. I mean – at least he was trying, right?
“We’ll deal with the fallout later,” Herald said. “What matters is that we put a stop to this stupid water fight.”
The sound of cracking ice surged across the frozen water. Scylla shouted as her tentacles broke free. “It has begun, mortals. Heed our warning. Don’t say that the Great Beasts only stood by.” She threw the silver-haired man one last baleful glare, then sank into the icy water.
The man was seething, too, that much was clear, but he seemed better able to contain his rage. The sun was setting above us, casting a fiery orange glow across the ice. The spires and points of frozen waves looked like flames stopped in time. The man’s eyes reflected the burning light. It only made him seem angrier, more menacing.
“Dustin Graves,” he boomed, his voice even more impressive over the ice. “We thought it rumor, hearsay, but now we have proof that you, in your hubris, have thought to consort with the Great Beasts, the harbingers of the apocalypse.” He pointed directly at me as his lips drew back. “The gods are watching. You will pay for your transgressions.”
With the same hand, the man smashed a fist into the ice, cracking the entire surface of the lake-sized area Herald had single-handedly frozen. The ground trembled with the force of the man’s blow. Herald staggered away, his mouth half-open at the sight of his handiwork smashed into so many little floes of nothing.
“The gods are watching, Dustin Graves,” the man boomed again. “Pray that you do not live long enough to see our justice.”
