Page 80 of Hercules

“It’s a string. Like from an instrument. And it belongs to a major god of the Greek pantheon. Don’t laugh—”

“Does it look like I’m laughing?”

And does it look like this pack has all day for this little chat?

Herc succeeded—barely—in issuing it with his scowl instead of a snarl, though he wondered if the sound registered with either of the women. Lois looked pinned beneath a vertical torture rack, with Natasha clearly ready to crank the screws.

The comparison wasn’t what he needed right now—but if the subject really was torture, he couldn’t shake it off like a bad dream by just kicking off the bed sheets. He could keep paying attention to the hunches that were spreading rapid roots through his system, punching the topsoil of his logic, and flourishing into a tree of total astoundment.

A sapling that was dropping some ugly damn fruit.

Especially in the form of the subtle changes across Natasha’s face as Lois hurried on.

“These assholes…they want that string, Nat. Because of that, they’re after you. Anything and everything they have to do to you to reveal its location…” She swallowed hard as her shoulders tensed by jittery fractions. “They nearly got away with doing all of it to me, okay? Before the speed dating thing ever started, I was jumped by ninjas, corralled under tables, and forced to sneak out the DeLux’s back door. Unbelievably I made it back to your place, only to stumble on a dead body in the foyer and then dodge bullets from a deranged ninja queen, swinging at me from your living room chandelier!”

The following silence, a few beats too long, hyperactivated his awareness of Wen’s whispered throwback. “Should I take a bow or call my lawyer?”

“You stay right the hell here,” Apollo growled at a similar volume. While any other circumstance would have Herc matching that vibe, directly addressing his brother’s overprotective tone, there was zero room for stupid stabbies now. Yeah, despite his stress that Apollo’s attention to the pretty headhunter couldn’t come with worse timing.

But if his brother’s new god flexing meant that Lois was exposed to more danger here…

The dickhead was going to lose more than a fucking lyre string.

And there was a mental logjam he didn’t need right now. There was already enough on the mental burners with Natasha’s ongoing fixation on Lois; an image of an armless Apollo was useless to him. Besides, his brother would eventually grow a new limb. The barbs in his gut weren’t about to be so lenient.

It was time to end this coy bullshit. To show Ms. Korra the monster behind her Ito-san. To make her understand the layered danger they’d come to intercept her from. Because clearly, as the woman pressed dainty fingertips to her forehead, that comprehension was still a long way off.

“Lo, honey…I’m so confused. I mean, full-on migraine time here. Why is there all this drama over one little lyre string?”

Wrong.

The “confused” little thing…wasn’t that at all.

And if anyone around here was warding off a new headache, it had to be Nao Ito himself. The man’s glare, sticking to sleazy and predatory until now, darkened by three shades in just as many minutes. What was all that in his unblinking eyes? Shock? Dismay?

Both.

Herc identified it so easily because the same shit had attacked and conquered Lois—right down to her energy fields. The electricity that radiated from her and into him, zapping with terrifying intensity…

Crackling in every syllable of what she next stammered at Natasha.

“I never said the string belonged to a lyre.”

CHAPTER 22

Mom always said ice baths fixed everything. If it was a scraped knee, a huge zit, or a broken heart, Lois found herself turned into a human iceberg in the name of Mom’s remedy for it.

Not one of those dunks stung worse than this one.

Plunged her bloodstream so fast from normal to numbing.

Made her more disgustingly aware of the contrast from the backs of her eyes, hot and horrid. Tears she somehow battled into submission, if only temporarily.

“Oh, my. You’re right. And here I was, thinking you never missed important details, darling.”

That temporarily.

It wasn’t just Natasha’s cop to the indictment. Like the star of her own psycho fangirl thriller, she was through with playing doe-eyed grace and jetlagged confusion. It wasn’t a chore to guess the reason why.