Chapter 09 | The Devil of Siren City

Adrian

Skylar takes the shopping bags from me and plows through the apartment door. “Sit down,” she says. “I’ll grab some bandages.”

She drops everything on the floor near the couch and sets her flowerpot down on the kitchen table. With a pause, she looks at me, her gaze quickly falling as she turns toward the hall.

“Take your shirt off,” she says.

I don’t argue with her. Truthfully, I rather enjoy getting bossed around by a woman. Now and then. And I’m very interested to see my new employee in action.

Kind and gentle.

A healer.

I sit down at the kitchen table, the witch’s warning still fresh in my mind. A maiden with two faces? Could be nothing. Could be bullshit. In fact, it probably is. But stranger things have happened in Siren City. I’ve seen many of them with my own eyes.

Dark and seductive.

An alluring temptress.

I eye the flower on the table as I wait. White petals with deep pink centers, the dark color subtly clawing its way along the small pristine petals.

Pretty.

I press her ruined shirt against my arm and wait for her to return. When she does, Skylar has her hands full. Bandages. Rubbing alcohol. A needle with sutures and other things. She sets it all down and slides her steady hands into a pair of latex gloves; her focus already on my arm. “All right,” she says. “Let’s see.”

“No,” I say, my eyes on her neck. “You first.”

“Adrian, I’m fine,” she says. “It’s just a scratch.”

“You should clean it.”

“I will. First, I’m going to do my job. Now, sit still.”

I obey, allowing her to remove the shirt from my arm. “Next time,” I say, “you first.”

She eyes me curiously. “You think there’ll be a next time?”

I watch her as she inspects my wound. “You never know in Siren City.”

She grabs a washcloth from her pile and takes it to the sink, returning with it damp. Clearing the dried blood away, she shifts closer to me, close enough that I can feel her body heat. The cut still stings, but not badly enough to distract my focus away from her trained eyes.

“It’s a clean cut,” she says after a minute. “A little deep, though. I should do a few stitches just in case.”

“No stitches,” I say. “Just patch it up.”

“Adrian…”

“It’s not bleeding anymore.”

Skylar glares at me. “Are you always going to be this fussy?”

“I am not fussy.”

She raises a brow.

“Patch it up, Skylar,” I say, the end of the discussion.

To my surprise, she smiles. “Fine. But if you soak through your bandage, I’m knocking you out and stitching it anyway.”

I blink. No one’s ever talked to me like that before. Except Candy, of course. But he’s a special case.

Her terms, however, are reasonable.

“Understood,” I say.

Skylar reaches for the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“Though, out of curiosity,” I say, “how would you knock me out?”

She chuckles. “You have enough ketamine in that cabinet to take out a racehorse,” she says. “You wouldn’t feel a thing for days. Or ever again, if I screw up the dosage,” she adds with another sharp smile.

I regard her, oddly impressed. But I suppose one could assume that the person in charge of keeping a man alive would also know the most efficient ways to kill him, too.

“Adrian,” she says after a minute.

“What?”

“Do you...” She hesitates, her hands working steadily with butterfly bandages. “Do you know who Ares is?” 

My chest clenches, sending a dull pain through my sternum. “Did they mention him?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“What did they say?”

Skylar slows her hand. “They said they were going to take me to him,” she says. “That I belonged to him now.”

“No, you don’t.”

She pauses, her breath held tight. “I don’t know what I did,” she says. “They just...”

Her voice falls as another sound rises. A police siren wails, a cruiser speeding down Aurora Avenue somewhere nearby. I watch her closely, her eyes growing wider. Her touch locked in place. Her posture stiff.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” I say to assure her. “If it wasn’t you, they would have jumped someone else.” 

She nods as the siren fades into the distance. “Right,” she says as she goes back to work, tearing off a few pieces of tape for my bandage.

“Don’t worry about Ares. Or his thugs.” I bite down hard. “They won’t touch you again.”

Skylar says nothing for several minutes, her focus on my arm. “Okay.” She finally leans back. “All done.”

I take a look. All bandaged up. Clean and perfect.

Not bad.

Skylar shifts away, aiming to clean up her supplies. I stand up and she flinches in surprise, our bodies close.

“Your turn,” I say.

She exhales slowly, then tilts her head to one side. I douse a fresh cotton pad with rubbing alcohol before reaching out to touch her.

Skylar inhales sharply.

“This will sting,” I say. “I should have said.”

“No, it…” She shakes her head once. “Your hands are cold.”

I flex my fingers. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

My pulse skips with a subtle pain as I drag the pad across her neck, her skin soft and warm. She’s right. It is just a scratch. Not even an inch long. But that’s one inch too long.

They hurt her. She belongs to me. And they hurt her.

As if I needed another reason to kill Kris.

I unwrap a small bandage and place it on. “You’re fine,” I say once I’m done. “Just don’t go strolling down anymore alleyways for a while.”

“Believe me. I won’t.” Skylar smiles, grateful. “Thank you.”

She gathers her supplies and takes them back to the bathroom.

And the pain in my chest subsides.

***

ROUGE RAN.

HE RAN FROM THE ALLEYWAY as fast as he could, easily overtaking Mark and Ezra before reaching the next street. They called after him, but he didn’t stop. He knew he had to reach Olympus and tell Ares himself what he just saw.

The decrepit streets of Old Town a blur around him, he raced toward the bridge, following the guiding beacon of The Tower on the other side of the river. Knowing that no one would stop him, he leapt over the barricade and continued north into Olympus.

When he reached the busy streets of bright buildings and shiny new cars, he kept going, ignoring the angry horns and annoyed shouts around him. It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. This was too important.

His lungs burned. His legs ached. Block after block, he ran. When the entrance to The Tower finally came into view, he rounded the corner, angling toward the War Room across the street instead. That was where Ares spent most of his time, and Rouge was more likely to find him there.

Within a few breaths, the guard on duty waved Rouge inside with a respectful bow of the head. Rouge walked in, his pace still brisk, and made his way to the black elevator in the center of the room.

As the elevator ascended, Rouge caught his breath. He searched his mind, second-guessing himself. Did he really see what he thought he saw? It wasn’t possible, right? In fact, it was very much impossible.

Either way, the risk was too great to ignore, and Ares would want to turn over every stone in Olympus to be sure.

The elevator doors opened on a square-shaped room with black walls. A blonde woman sat in front of the door, her legs tightly crossed behind her desk. As Rouge approached, she shifted her hand, releasing the handgun she had strapped to her thigh.

“Welcome back,” she said.

“I need to see him,” he said. No time for pleasantries.

Her red lips pinched as she pressed a button on her desk, her eyes skimming over the sweat and dried blood caked across his cheek. “You have a visitor,” she said.

A moment passed, then the black door behind her unlocked with an audible click.

“Ares will see you now,” she said.

Rouge entered the War Room. He blinked to adjust his eyes to the dim light; the room surrounded with tinted windows on all sides. A large pentagon-shaped table sat in the center of the room.

One man sat in the head chair, his wide muscular form hunched over an open book. He wore a jet black suit with a scarlet red tie, his salt and pepper beard recently trimmed and perfect. He raised his head as Rouge approached the table and set down his pen with one sharp eye locked on the boy. The other was obscured behind a deep red eyepatch, the ends of a jagged scar clawing out from around its edges.

Rouge took a knee and bowed his head. “Sire, we have a problem.”

Ares stared. If one didn’t know him better, they would think his figure was nothing but a bronze statue.

Rouge swallowed hard. “I saw him.” He winced, the memory of the Devil’s glare still as sharp as an ice pick deep inside. “We don’t speak his name,” he added with a whisper.

Ares rose from his chair, making Rouge flinch at the sudden noise. He walked around the table and stopped, his red laced black shoes mere inches away from the boy.

Rouge looked up into Ares’ good eye and shuddered.

“Where?” Ares asked.