The Return (Titan 1)

Dumbfounded, I stared at the god. “So, you’re telling me that not one of you considered that this might happen?”

He returned my stare with a glare.

I coughed out a dry, humorless laugh. “This is great, Apollo. We have Titans roaming around?”

“They are somewhere. Where? We have no idea. They are blocked from our viewing.” Apollo reached up, scrubbing a hand through his blond hair. “They are plotting to overthrow us.”

“You think? I mean, I’m sure they’re still pissed about being overthrown by Zeus and the douche-canoe crew in the first place.” I wanted to laugh again, but none of this shit was funny. If I cared about much of anything, I’d probably be more concerned than I was annoyed. “So you guys want me to hunt them down or something?”

That had to be the reason why he was here. As twisted as it was, I was pleased by this request. Dealing out Remediations was getting boring, and locating the Titans would most likely end in me ceasing to exist on this level. As powerful and awesome as I was, I couldn’t take down a bunch of Titans without ending up dead. All that meant was that I’d be dying sooner than I expected.

Oh, well.

Due to the deal I’d made over a year ago that put my ass on the eternal chopping block in place of my second-least-favorite person’s ass, there was a giant ticking clock counting down above my head. When the gods no longer thought I was useful to them, they’d find a way to end me. Then my eternity as a servant to Hades began. But the deal…yeah, it had been worth it. Not for him, but I’d owed it to her.

Apollo watched me closely, intently. “No.”

My eyes narrowed. “No to what?”

“I’m not sending you after them. Not yet,” he said, surprising me into silence—a rarity. “I have another task for you. You need to leave for southern Virginia immediately. I’d snap your sunshine-and-rainbows ass there, but now that you’ve annoyed me, you’ll drive the twenty or so hours to get there.”

Okay. That was irritating, but I kind of liked road trips, so whatever. “What’s in southern Virginia?”

“Radford University.”

I waited.

I waited some more, and then sighed. “Okay. You want me to enroll in college?” I asked, and Apollo tipped back his head and laughed so loudly, he actually whooped. I frowned. “What the hell is so funny about that idea?”

“You. College. Using your head. That’s what’s funny.”

I was seconds away from blasting him with akasha.

The smile slipped off Apollo’s face. “There is someone important there you must protect at all costs, Seth.”

My lips curled into a smirk. Sending me to be a guard—how cliché. “Well, that’s very little detail.”

Apollo’s grin turned cheeky. “You will know who it is when you see them.” A puff of smoke appeared as he waved his hand, and as it faded into the night, I saw that he had a slip of paper. Neat ability. “This is their schedule. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.”

Frowning, I took the paper and quickly scanned it. It was a class schedule—a boring class schedule full of psychology and sociology classes. “Okay. And what exactly am I supposed to do with this person?”

“Keep them alive.”

I exhaled noisily. “No shit, Apollo.”

“You will both need to go to the Covenant in South Dakota— to the University there.”

My spine straightened as if someone jacked me up. That was the last place I wanted to go. There were people there I didn’t want to see. “Why? Who is this person?”

Apollo’s smile returned, he winked, and then he was gone. Just like that. Poof. There one second and gone the next. Son of a bitch, I also hated that. More than just a little annoyed, my gaze dropped to the slip of paper. There were initials on the schedule.

J.B.

Sounded like a dickhead name.

Turning to the ocean, I let out a string of curses directed toward Apollo, and as the wind lifted the shorter hairs that had escaped the leather thong holding the hair back from my face, I swore I heard that bastard laugh.

I couldn’t say I was surprised that Apollo hadn’t given me a lot to work on. The jerk was known for delivering little to no information, or handing out what he did know in doses at the most inopportune moments, usually after the information would’ve been helpful.

One thing for sure; whoever I was supposed to keep safe really got the shittier end of the deal, considering the last person I’d been tasked with protecting had ended up with a titanium bullet in his forehead.

Chapter 2

MOM HEAVED a huge sigh, causing the connection between us to crackle in my ear. “Baby, I wish you weren’t so far away, where I can’t help you or be near to you when you need me.”

My mom was mentally unstable.

Not in the “ha ha, your mom is so cray cray” kind of way, but in the way she was one hundred percent convinced that, twenty years ago, an honest-to-God angel had visited her in the middle of the night and gotten her pregnant with me.

Yep.

A diagnosed schizophrenic, she’d been doing okay the last couple of years because she’d stuck to her medical regimen, but all those years before then had been rough, sometimes scary, and always exhausting.

It didn’t help that Mom had been young when she’d gotten pregnant, barely seventeen, and in the small town I’d grown up in, people hadn’t been kind to young, unwed mothers. And the community sure as hell hadn’t been understanding of her mental illness, either.

“Mom, I really need to go,” I said into my phone, glancing over as the door to the dorm room sprung opened. Erin Fore sashayed in, practically glowing from her morning run along the New River Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She preferred to do her runs outside even though we had a fitness center in our residence hall. I preferred to lollygag on an elliptical machine. Screw the hard, running-outside crap—that required effort.

“I really wish you’d come back home. You’re all the way across the world,” she said.

I fought the urge to sigh. This was hard for Mom. I kept telling myself that. “It’s not ‘all the way across the world.’ You’re in Missouri. I’m in Virginia. It’s not that far, Mom.”

Erin’s dark brown eyes caught mine and sympathy filled her gaze. We’d been roomies for the last three semesters, almost two years. She knew all about my mom troubles, and she totally understood why I was majoring in psychology. Because of my mom’s illness, I was fascinated with how the human brain worked—and all the things that could go wrong with it. Growing up dealing with mental illness had given me a unique perspective on the ripple effects on other family members. I wanted to help those with the illness, and I also wanted to help those who were caregivers.