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“Before Ares shows up.”
I laugh. “Definitely before Ares shows up.”
I head out, clapping Sean on the back as slips past me into The Banshee carrying in the last box of liquor. I find Ya-ya’s bag on the back seat of the town car, and I’m turning back to the pub with a grin on my face when the blast shatters the world.
The explosion punches out the windows and blows the door off The Banshee, slamming me back against the car so hard I see stars as I drop to my hands and knees.
No.
I stagger to my feet, my eyes wide in horror and a ringing sound echoing in my ears. It’s all I can hear as I stumble like a drunk toward the gaping black maw that not four seconds ago was the front of my sister’s beautiful new pub.
NO.
I start to run, heedless of the shards of glass and flaming bits of wood raining down around me. Heedless of the blood pouring down my face. Heedless of anything as I charge into the burning wreckage.
Where my family was just standing.
33
HADES
At first,all I know is pain.
The white noise of distant screaming and faint sirens. The frantic and yet numbing task of clawing through rubble and fire, heedless of the way it’s burning the skin from my hands. The roaring sound that I finally realize is my own voice when the firefighters try and pull me out of the wreckage of the Banshee.
It’s finally Castle that manages to do that, and he does it in his own way: by punching me in the face. It’s probably the only way I’d have ever left that smoking black hole.
It dazes me and quiets the monster raging within me enough that he can drag me from the smoldering building and shove me against the side of a car. Then he physically yanks my head to the side to show me where they’re loading my grandmother, my sister, and Eilish Kildare into the backs of three ambulances.
Callie climbs into hers herself.
Dimitra and Eilish do not.
That sets me off again, roaring and screaming pure, blind rage and hatred at the sky as Castle forcibly throws me into the back of his car as the scent of death curls into the air around us.
* * *
“I’m so fucking sorry, brother.”
Ares hugs me tightly, his jaw clenched as I cling to him.
Callie is already up and moving around. Eilish is going to be okay once she’s out of surgery to remove the pieces of shrapnel in her shoulder and her leg. Our grandmother, miraculously, is okay, fuck knows how. They’re keeping her for observation, despite her protests, because they want to watch for internal bleeding from the hit she took. But she’s okay.
They’re all alive.
My eyes squeeze shut.
Sean Farrell isn’t.
The firefighters are saying it looks like he took the brunt of the blast when he used his body to shield my sister and my grandmother from the worst of it.
They’re calling him a hero. And that’s fucking great and all, but I don’t want to eulogize a hero.
I want to thank my fucking friend for what he did and then go buy him a beer.
I grit my teeth against my brother’s shoulder and take a deep breath before I pull away, my face grim.
“Fuck,” Ares hisses, looking away.
