Page 5 of Apollo

Well, well, well. The new psychic-level remark belonged to Quil, with a bullets-for-breakfast rumble that always tempted Apollo to jam a cigar between his maxillaries. Guess we aren’t picking up Ari from the playground, after all.

Apollo cocked a brow. “But you ate your beans and carnage anyhow, yes?”

Damn right, bringer of light.

Quil again, though Kaw was ready with his own comment.

Geh. You mean together?

No answer expected, evidenced by the crow’s new focus on the female on the floor. Correction: the female skewered by the chandelier on the floor. If Kaw had eyebrows, they would’ve tightened atop his round black eyes. He substituted well by flaring his crest feathers high enough to convey he already understood the assignment—and its urgency.

Okay, mother-squawkers. Let’s move out. He flicked his head, directing the team into formation, before glancing up again. I’m guessing you need her up and off that thing? And alive?

Quil scritched and postured his wings. Where’s the fun in that?

Apollo whipped the tip of his loose arrow at the old corvid. “Not a peck until I finish questioning her.”

He ignored Quil’s version of a glare, instead ordering himself to move back as Kaw directed the team into place. He was their patron not their keeper, because none of them needed one. At the moment, they might even be his glue, giving him no choice about keeping his shit together—

Especially as his little monster lost hers.

Holy fucking ninth circle, her screams.

Yes, right this second.

Why had he assumed the freedom from her modern-day bed of spikes would bring her tears of relief instead of torture? Worse, why had he expected her to just hang free, quiet, and complacent once Kaw and his boys began their unconventional airlift? Worst of all the worsts, why had he envisioned them just gently flying her over and lowering her at his feet like morning doves delivering a sweetly submissive princess?

No way did this female even know the word submissive, let alone its meaning.

To the team’s credit, after several all-for-one-and-one-for-all heaves, they cleared her from the wreckage, though not by far. Not with the female twisting in their beaks and swearing into the air, ensuring the room didn’t resemble a cheap movie set anymore. How the tiny thing still had that much blood left to spill was beyond his reckoning. The place had become a killer clown’s wet dream. Or a homicide team’s biggest nightmare.

And he had to go there with the metaphors.

Kaw, Quil, and the team had no sooner delivered the sputtering female than a cacophony of sirens sounded in the night. While Apollo registered the noise—three police cruisers and a pair of LAFD rescue rigs, if he recognized everything right—he shirked his concern beyond that. Though this was the land of celebrity castles on kingdom-sized lots, the cops could be responding to anyone in these hills, for any number of reasons.

Errr, Anax Apollo?

Except Kaw wouldn’t have inserted the ancient Greek honorific if he thought the same thing. And the badass bird hadn’t become his corvid commander because of instincts that missed the mark. Damn it.

Should I send out some cautionary recon?

“Yeah. Probably. Fine,” he groused back, feeling like a parent snapping at a kid for a drink of water after bedtime. But why? For once, Kaw was acting more the grownup here.

Fuck. This wasn’t how the night was supposed go.

Not close.

He knew Kaw understood that. The bird had better eyesight than anyone in the room, his god commander included. He knew a woman was bleeding out at their feet: the female Apollo had to save now. Holy shit, maybe more like ten minutes ago. Though she could still breathe, her air came on shallow bursts. She kept her eyes soundly shut. From her lips only thin gurgles emerged, borne on pale rivulets.

He spat out more profanity, this time reverting to his filthy Greek favorites. Was he already too late? Even if he healed her body, had her brain waved its last white flag on coherent thought? Had he already hit a dead-end and just didn’t know it yet?

Not an option.

He had to believe that part. To haul it closer with the same frantic intensity with which he fell to his knees then hauled her into his lap. To embed it into his psyche as hard as he wrapped his hands around to her two largest wounds, one at each side of her lower spine.

To let it burn his synapses just as he scorched his fingertips with healing energy, fusing her flesh together as fast as her biology would allow—and her new shrieks would permit.

Fuck. Her pain.