Soul Fire (Darkling Mage 8)

Apollo chuckled. “My little baby looks different to everyone. In my eyes, she’s as beautiful as she was in the old days, an ornate, golden chariot that’s still good and sturdy enough to ride through the skies.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You mean this thing can fly, too?”

The corner of Apollo’s mouth curled into a little

grin. He patted the dashboard, whispering something foreign, ancient. The car shuddered, then jerked, and I looked out of its windows in mingled awe and horror as we sped farther, higher away from the ground.

“This is incredible,” Prudence said, a rare smile on her lips. Romira’s knuckles were white as her fingers dug into the back of the driver’s seat, but she was whooping delightedly. I couldn’t tell how Bastion looked, but he was bellowing his lungs out in a way that told me he hadn’t had this much fun in a long, long time. And me, I hung on for dear life.

Apollo’s laughter wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out the car’s roaring as it brought us rocketing through Valero’s night sky. “Hold on to your butts,” he cried out. A massive boom cracked from somewhere in the back of the car, propelling us faster and faster. The sky filled with sun and fire. I screamed.

Chapter 12

“You have to admit, that was pretty fun,” Romira said, lifting her cosmopolitan to her lips.

I ran the palms of my hands across my jeans, wiping away patches of sweat that should have stopped leaking out of my skin a half hour ago. Fun was subjective. Fun was relative. I’m all for roller coasters and amusement park rides, but Apollo’s chariot was a flying death trap.

Prudence winced as she swallowed a mouthful of her beer and set it down on the table, printing a wet ring onto the dark wood surface. “I thought it was pretty fun, too. Apollo’s a character, but you can’t say that wasn’t a wild ride.”

That was one way of describing him. Apollo had shoved us out of his chariot half a block away from the Amphora, the girls laughing and still coasting on the adrenaline of the journey, me desperately checking my jeans to make sure I hadn’t pissed myself.

I cupped my goblet firmly, as a way to steel my shaky nerves. I was the only one of our group who’d actually sprung for one of the Amphora’s signature drinks, their own house wine, personally created, I would assume, by the bar’s divine lord and master. Okay, Bastion got one, too, copying my order right after I’d placed it.

“Good stuff,” Bastion said. “I’m betting this is from Dionysus’s private reserve?”

“I mean, he’s responsible for it,” I said, “but it’s not quite the same as the wine he actually creates himself. With magic, I mean. That stuff? Best I’ve ever tasted.”

Bastion nodded approvingly. I took a sip from my goblet. Yep, I was right. It was sweet, complex, bursting with the textures and colors of nature – but it wasn’t the same wine I remembered, the kind that Dionysus had used to poison me the first time we met. The Amphora looked much the same as the last time I visited with Sterling and Gil, which had also been pretty much a work trip.

The same crimson velvet drapes everywhere, with eerie magical firelight sputtering in hidden corners and alcoves. There was the same odd crash-bang of cymbals, flutes, and drums that passed for the Amphora’s music. And with the music, of course, came the same bevy of bare-chested, nearly naked dancers that Dionysus liked to keep enthralled and mesmerized in his section of the bar, his own personal retinue of tanned, twisting revelers.

And Dionysus himself looked very much the same as the night I met him, a handsome young man with dark, curly hair, perfect dusky skin, and a tendency to leave most of his shirt unbuttoned, giving everyone a frankly scandalous view of his lean torso. My very limited contact with the Greek gods – the male ones, specifically – told me that they liked to show off. I guess it wasn’t so surprising, considering how the pantheon was so well known for its, um, extremely amorous escapades.

Here was one god, I thought. But where was the other, the one we actually wanted to talk to? I scanned the Amphora, and still no sign of Artemis, not since we walked in.

I started when Dionysus suddenly swung his head in my direction, his eyes going wide and bright as he saw me. A huge grin burst onto his face, the laurel leaves tattooed in a wreath across his temples wavering in an excitable, invisible wind.

“Don’t look now,” I grumbled, “but the wine god has spotted us.”

He rose from his divan, his tittering maenads and servant girls falling all about him, then pouting as he made a beeline for our table. Romira, Prudence, and Bastion didn’t change tacks all that much – they’d met enough gods and entities in their time with their Lorica, after all. What was another one?

But I broadened my shoulders, straightened my back, and readied an eager smile. Sure, Dionysus traded in wine and orgies. He was the party boy of his pantheon, probably the biggest lush of them all. But I knew better. Behind the tanned, chiseled cheekbones and lazy smile dwelled a cunning, alien intelligence. The gods were magnificent, radiant, and beautiful, but beneath it all they were fickle, petty, and dangerous.

“Justin Braves,” Dionysus called out, in a musical lilt that made us sound like the best of friends. Expensive perfume and the faint scent of olives filled my nostrils as he pulled me up and wrapped me in a tight, amicable embrace. I froze, fully aware that Dionysus’s bare chest and stomach were rubbing against me, looking directly past his shoulders and thinking of some way to make things a little less awkward.

“Dionysus,” I said, politely, but firmly, clapping him on the back. I wasn’t about to ask how he knew about my slightly secret but also exceedingly stupid alter ego, not just then. Romira and Prudence watched us cautiously – they probably remembered the poisoning. Bastion, on the other hand, wore something of a smirk.

“I am joking, of course,” Dionysus said, pulling away, but gripping me tightly by the shoulders with two powerful hands. “I know that your name is Dustin Graves. Of course I do. Look at that pretty face.”

I blushed.

“Look at all these pretty faces,” Dionysus drawled, turning to the rest of our table. Romira smiled coquettishly. Prudence rolled her eyes. Bastion sat a little straighter, his chest puffing out. “But surely you haven’t visited to just drink. This smells like a business call to me.” Dionysus looked back into my eyes, his own smoldering like dying coals, the leaves across his brow drifting slowly, almost menacingly.

“I have to admit, we’re definitely here about work,” I said.

Dionysus pursed his lips together, flicking his wrist and producing one of his signature goblets out of thin air. He took a long, hardy gulp, then sighed. “Surely this isn’t about some offense that I’ve committed, some slight against the magical community. I see three faces from the Lorica sitting before me, one of them a Scion.”

It was the tiniest noise, and his face hardly moved, but I actually heard Bastion gasp.