“What?” I said. “It’s from Gil. Has to be.”
And it was. He’d taken Banjo back to the Boneyard, something he explained in a text that began with a very colorful string of expletives kindly asking where in the fuck we’d gone to. Sterling called him back as we snuck – sorry, ambled our way out of the Nicola Arboretum, just to assuage him.
“Artemis won’t help,” Sterling said into his phone in a bored monotone. “The Convocation hates Dustin. She didn’t want Banjo in her domicile – said he’d be trouble, whatever that means – so she blocked the two of you out.”
I couldn’t exactly make out what Gil was saying, but I definitely caught one or two obscenities in his reply.
Sterling rolled his eyes at me and chuckled. “Gil says he had to go dog and rush Banjo out of here, didn’t want to risk running into demons again. He thinks he’s developing a taste for corgi.”
My mouth dropped, horrified. “That’s not what I said!” Gil’s voice roared from the cellphone.
“Whatever, man, shut up, this is more interesting,” Sterling said. “Artemis’s domicile? Not dark and set at night like you’d expect. It was bright and sunshine-y. The sun appeared right in front of us, Gil. I didn’t burn.”
I had to smile at the wonder in Sterling’s voice, never having heard him be quite so, well, vulnerable. It was definitely something I hadn’t considered, ever. What would it be like to never see the world in daylight again, to start burning on contact with something as innocent as sunshine?
But Sterling stopped talking just as soon as a golden glow appeared a couple of dozen feet away from us. It was approaching, too, and considering our experiences of the past few days, I was starting to distrust anything that pulsed with an even remotely golden color. Fucking Mammon, again, and so soon? Or did Donovan break out of the Prism and come to attack us with another hit of bottled sunlight?
Donovan, I realized in horror, as Sterling grunted, then screamed, covering his face with his arms.
“Crouch down behind me,” I shouted, shielding him as best as I could with my body, wishing more than ever that I could shadowstep again, to save Sterling by taking him into the Dark Room. “Get down or you’ll burn.”
But it wasn’t just a random splash of sunlight, a quick burst from a shattered crystal phial. The glowing, moving orb was unmistakably a burning star. I watched, my mouth dry, as the sun itself approached us. Sterling screamed.
Chapter 25
My reflexes took over, and I hurled a fireball at the oncoming sphere of light before I even really had a chance to think. What the hell was that going to accomplish? I was literally fighting fire with fire. But then the golden light wavered, and an annoyed and very obnoxious voice called out from it.
“Hey, watch the paint job!”
It wasn’t anyone I recognized. The light faltered, leaving in its place the gaudiest car I’d ever seen in my life. It was metallic gold, from the body down to the rims. Even its headlights burned with gold light, which I was positive would be illegal, like, everywhere, but something told me that the car’s occupant didn’t care much for human laws.
The rear passenger door swung open, and out stepped a man, fuming so hard that I had to check that steam wasn’t coming out of his ears. The only way I could describe him, really, was sun-kissed. He was deeply tanned, his hair the kind of blond that almost passed for spun gold, his pearly teeth bared in anger. A surfer, essentially, judging by his build, dressed in a lot of white linen, his shirt opened nearly down to his navel.
“Watch where you throw those fireballs,” he said, patting the hood of his car, making babyish cooing sounds. “There, there. The bad man didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I threw my hands up. “You almost killed my friend.” I turned to check on Sterling. Poor thing was still huddling. I pulled him up gently by the elbows. “You’re good, buddy. You’re all good.”
“N-not exactly,” Sterling said. “I know this guy.”
The surfer with the campy car went wide eyed at the sight of Sterling. “Hey, I know you, too. Listen, sorry about that one time. Misunderstanding.”
Sterling pushed his hair out of his face, his whole body leaning forward as he shouted. “You burned a hole in my torso, you bastard.”
The man blinked. “Okay, so it was an accident.”
I put the pieces together. Sunlight, golden god, and a car – well, a chariot, once upon a time, that burned like the sun.
“Apollo?”
The god adjusted his shirt, the way that only a man who showed so much damn skin in a button-down would, and he flashed a smile somehow even cockier than anything Bastion could deliver.
“The one and only,” Apollo announced, his chest thrust out.
“And you two have history?” I said.
“We needed something from a sun god,” Sterling said, sulking. “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have come along for the communion, but I was younger then. Dumber.”
“It happened last year,” Apollo said.