Darker Than Night Read online

  He makes a noise that I would mistake for a sob if I thought he could cry and tips his head to mine.

  I thought I was alive before, when I opened my eyes, but when his lips meet mine—that’s when I live. The rich, clear taste of him. It’s a hot, searching battle. I found you. I was right here, waiting for you. My heart breaks, comes back together, and he shoulders himself closer. Yes. Get closer. Never leave me again.

  A door opens and the air in the room shifts to admit a lady in a white coat, dark hair and dark eyes and a quirk to her lips. She holds a clipboard with a thick stack of papers. “I expressly told you not to wake her up.”

  Zeus draws my bottom lip between his teeth and bites, one last gift before he pulls away and stabs a finger in her direction. ”I expressly told you not to fuck around with me.”

  “You were a danger to yourself and others,” she says calmly, coming around the side of the bed and squinting at the machines. “How are you feeling, Brigit?”

  “Fine, I think.” More than fine, really, as long as he’s touching me. A distant nervousness tolls in the back of my mind. “What happened?”

  “You sustained some injuries in an incident at Olympus,” says the doctor, eyes settling on me. “How much do you remember?”

  A mirror on the top of my head. Zeus, looking at me, horror in his eyes and a smile on his face. “Not much.”

  “Not your arrival at the hospital, then?”

  Zeus glares at her. “The point, Carina?”

  “That’s Dr. Jain to you.” She adjusts something on one of the machines. “We’re finishing the last drip now.”

  “And then what?” He smiles now, and a shiver rocks my shoulders. This is the only man in the world whose smile is more dangerous than his frown. “Unless you’re planning to drug us both and do away with the bodies.”

  Dr. Jain—she sounds familiar, somehow—puts a hand to her chest. “I took an oath, Zeus.”

  “And you took my money,” he reminds her. “I’d stay within the terms of our agreement.”

  I get the sense they’ve been bickering for quite some time, but I’m missing a piece of the puzzle—bickering about what? “I was well within the terms,” she shoots back.

  “It was against my express wishes, Dr. Jain, and you—”

  “And you signed a form.” She’s come prepared with the form and whips it off the clipboard, dangling it in front of Zeus’s face. “In the space reserved for an emergency contact, you wrote, and I quote, Call my brother Hades and tell him I’d rather die.”

  He gazes toward the ceiling, long-suffering and gorgeous. “A blanket statement for—”

  “For the eventuality when you came in here on the verge of an overdose, covered in blood, and scared six people out of the waiting room?” My face gets hot thinking about it. “People don’t rush the emergency operating room, Zeus. It’s not done.”

  He slides a hand down and takes mine, squeezing it lightly, almost as if he’s afraid he might hurt me. “I own this building,” he says. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”

  “Yes, well.” Dr. Jain lets out a long sigh. “Someone had to stand up to you.”

  “Where’s the form I sign if I don’t want you to ambush me with my bastard brother?”

  “Let me reiterate that you were about to interrupt a surgical environment, and you signed a document that specifically requested his presence.”

  Zeus’s eyes narrow. “It was a joke, Jain. I would never invite him anywhere unironically.”

  “Fine.” She tosses a blank page in his direction. “Sign whatever you want. But it’s not the painkillers or either of your brothers we need to talk about.”

  Zeus’s face darkens. “What, then?”

  Dr. Jain leans against a countertop and rubs at her forehead. “I ran the tests you wanted.”

  He straightens up. “What did you find?”

  “Both of you had relatively high concentrations of a substance we can’t identify. Someone in your house—”

  “Not possible.” He moves again, putting his body between me and her. His doctor.

  “Someone who might have had access to the food?” She shrugs. “I can’t guarantee it’s Demeter. Have you located her?”

  Zeus turns back toward me and blinks. I’m still here. “No. I have no plans to find her.”

  “Someone has to find her,” the doctor insists.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” It’s a bizarre question to ask, but her voice is so familiar that I can’t let it go.

  Her dark eyes meet mine. “The two of us haven’t technically met.”

  Zeus pushes a hand through his hair. “Brigit, meet Carina Jain. Jain, obviously this is Brigit, but conscious.”

  She extends a hand and we shake. “The poison incident,” she says.

  Oh. Someone had to rescue me from that, I guess. It makes sense that it was her. The next heartbeat forces worry into my veins and dread curls itself around my throat. I lived. Zeus brought me here, and I lived.

  But what else is burning to the ground?

  “Zeus,” I whisper, and he brings his golden eyes back to mine. The relief I saw there moments ago has been hollowed out. All of him has been hollowed out. I didn’t see it before because it was so bright. Because I wasn’t really awake. “What happened?”

  He pushes my hair back from my face. His pulse ticks at the side of his neck. “We’re leaving within the hour, Carina.” Not a single glance in her direction. Not a one. “I’ll sign whatever you want.”

  She moves around the room, checking equipment with a brisk silence that says we’re not done with this conversation.

  “Where are we going to go?” I ask him. For a long, unsettling moment I’m not sure there’s anywhere to go. If his building is gone—

  “Home,” he says. “We’re going home.”

  3

  Brigit

  Zeus says nothing on the way home.

  He bundles me into the car, clicking the seatbelt into place himself, and climbs in next to me.

  And then...

  Silence.

  He’s so still that it makes each of my thoughts seem louder. For instance: where are we going? Where is home? I’ve never once heard him talk about a separate house. He owns a building the size of a city block.

  Now he owns what I assume is a field of rubble the size of a city block. We don’t pass the whorehouse on the way to where we’re going. I have no idea what to look for. A glassed-in penthouse? The whorehouse in miniature?

  The SUV comes to a stop in front of a brick building set back from the street. Most of the front lawn—if there was ever a lawn here—is covered in concrete tiles. A paved entrance, I think it’s called. A swoop of stone bordered by manicured grass. The shape of the building is all wrong for a house. It couldn’t have been a house in any of its past lives. It must have been—

  “A theater,” Zeus says, like he’s read my mind. “It used to be called the Ephesus.”

  “You live in a theater?”

  “One of my residences. I own several properties around the city.”

  I don’t buy that this is one of many indistinguishable properties—not entirely. Zeus might own the hospital, he might own half the city, but something about this place is different.

  There’s no luggage to carry inside. No clothes or “get well soon” balloons from my very-short stay in the hospital. I’m the only cargo. He helps me down with a hand on mine and leads me distractedly to the front door, which opens before we’re finished climbing the steps.

  His head of security, James, waits inside.

  I hold my breath.

  I knew what to expect at the whorehouse. Everyone did. I don’t know what to expect out of this place—or out of Zeus. It’s unsettling, seeing him so singularly. There were times he was alone in his office, yes, but never like this. He’s always at the center of a crowd.

  James closes and locks the door behind us, and I get my first look at the lobby in what Zeus calls his actual home. Home,
he said in the hospital.

  It sounded like he meant it.

  Could this be the place that Zeus really belongs?

  The lobby has been left mostly intact, with original wood paneling and two ticket windows. Behind the windows coat racks have replaced the ticket counter and attendant shelves. No one can buy a ticket to the show anymore. A set of poster display cases opposite the ticket windows have been stripped of their posters. Instead, they have—

  “Brigit. Come.”

  There’s a set of intriguing double doors I’m forced to ignore for the time being. Zeus puts a hand on the small of my back and leads me up a wide, curving staircase. This would be mezzanine access if we were in a real theater.

  It’s only the illusion of a theater.

  At the top of the stairs, the floor opens onto a balcony, but there’s only one set of doors. Zeus pulls them open and gestures me in. Everything still and dark and...peaceful. It’s strange after the blinding glamour of the brothel.

  “You’re very quiet,” I tell him, because I have to say something. How many nights did I watch him hold court at Olympus, and now he’s like this?

  “I don’t… I don’t bring people here.”

  My cheeks flush. I want to say something snappy and brave, but this doesn’t feel like the first night at the whorehouse. The stakes are so much higher now. So I say nothing and go where he leads me.

  Which turns out to be a foyer with a plush rug and a three-legged table. Zeus reaches in his pocket for something—his wallet, decorated with my teeth marks. The wallet goes into the bowl. He kicks his shoes off into a narrow closet off to one side and holds the door open for me to do the same. It’s so particular and fussy that I have to swallow a laugh. The act of suppressing it hurts my back.

  From the foyer, we step into a living room.

  It is the most incredible living room I’ve ever seen. The ceiling is high and round. The original art—

  He’s left the original art intact. It’s a springtime scene divided into panels framed in cream and gold, and the whole thing looks down over a sunny den writ large over the space. A set of armchairs rest by a fireplace with exposed brickwork. A giant sofa, big enough for even Zeus to sprawl out on, takes up one corner and faces a paneled wall that probably hides a television. Huge windows reach up toward the ceiling, and below those windows are rows of built-in bookshelves coming to waist height.

  I have never once imagined Zeus reading a book. But the shelves are dotted here and there with cushions that make their function clear—to sit on them while you read. Round rugs in neutral colors form islands in a sea of hardwood. I would never, not in a thousand years, think to put all these things in here.

  Zeus would. Clearly.

  His shoulders let down as he crosses the room to the other side, then turns back to beckon me along with him. “The living room.” He gestures with one hand, then steps into a hallway. “Kitchen.” I get a glimpse of the kitchen through the interior doorway. Stainless steel. More hardwood cabinetry. I add cooking to the list of things I’ve never imagined Zeus doing. Past the kitchen there’s a bathroom, and then we turn another corner. This hall runs along the back of the theater, with big windows that look over a view of the city I’ve never seen.

  From here, there’s no sign of the whorehouse.

  “Bedroom,” he says, and for the very first time since I almost got blown up, there’s heat in his voice. Zeus pushes open double doors—a necessity, for a man his size—and goes in.

  This room is nothing like the other bedroom—the whorehouse bedroom. Nothing. No black furniture, only the same polished hardwood I’ve seen in the rest of this house. A massive bed. Two bedside tables. One of the tables holds three books.

  And the walls are covered in paintings.

  They’re uniform in size, but otherwise the subjects are completely different. One is a beach scene—a single wooden chair, half-buried in sand. One is a portrait of a woman in profile, sitting in a window seat. Dark hair, pulled up into a bun on the top of her head. She has a book in her lap and an apple in one hand. “These are like the paintings in your closet.”

  “Funny. I don’t recall giving you permission to go through my closet.” Zeus steps behind me and pulls me into him. It’s a simple, unguarded motion, and my brain kicks into high gear. Remember this. There might not be many of these moments left. My heart races, but I’m being paranoid—I’m being foolish. He doesn’t bring people here, but he brought me. There’s no reason to think this will end.

  “I didn’t have permission,” I admit. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” he whispers. “Yet.” And then he picks me up and takes me to the bed. Zeus tugs the shirt over my head, leaving me bare from the waist up, then eases me against pillows with great care. It hurts. I feel like I have incipient wings. But there’s nothing, honestly, nothing more I want in the world than to stretch out on soft covers and let him have his way with me.

  I’m not sure what his way is—not here. For the moment he’s working the pants down over my hips, and then the silky underwear, and then I have nothing on at all.

  When he’s finished with the clothes, he stacks them on a chair next to the window and comes to sit on the edge of the bed.

  It’s only then that he lets out a long breath, eyes lingering on mine. Zeus reaches out a tentative hand and strokes my hair away from my face. His fingertips trace a path over each cheekbone.

  There’s a sheen over the gold in his eyes.

  I have never imagined Zeus crying.

  He doesn’t cry now, but I close my eyes against it anyway. It’s too much to look at. Too much to feel. I still don’t know what happened to his building, in the end, and I have the sense that we’re in the eye of the storm.

  That something else is coming.

  But for now, nothing bursts through the door. He left James waiting in the lobby without a backward glance. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the place is surrounded with people I can’t see.

  Doesn’t matter now, not when he’s guiding the back of his fingers down each side of my neck.

  I have never imagined Zeus being gentle. It’s happened before in a perfunctory sort of way, but never like this.

  He works his way down over my breasts, over each rib, over the plane of my belly. Over my hips. The outside of my thighs. Lower, to my knees, my shins, my feet, my toes. When he tests those with his fingers, a feather-brush of a touch, a sob escapes me.

  Because.

  He’s making sure nothing is wrong. Something is still wrong—my back is still healing—but for all his money and all his confidence, he hasn’t been sure that I’m really all right.

  “Almost done,” he murmurs, and this is a lie if I’ve ever heard one. Zeus is not going to be done with me any time soon. He rolls me over onto my belly, tucking a pillow under my arms, and arranges my hair so it’s not falling in my eyes. Then he repeats this process on my shoulders. Every notch of my spine. Back down until he’s assured himself of every inch of me. I let tears spill from under closed lashes while he does it.

  It’s like being splayed out on an altar in some holy building. I don’t bring people here, he said. This is private worship. My mind wanders back through his rooms, all sunlit and comfortable.

  “This place is you.” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but now it’s out there in the open. Zeus’s hands are down by my ankles. “You made yourself into a house.”

  “A theater,” he corrects. “It was abandoned, and now it’s mine.”

  He was abandoned, and now he’s mine.

  More tears. I’m so tired, so floating. The pills they gave me at the hospital are no joke. They’ve made a mockery of my inhibitions, at least now, when we’re behind closed doors. His closed doors. “Your brother came to the hospital?”

  “He did.”

  Questions come hard and fast and I pluck one out of the river of my thoughts. “Was the doctor kidding when she said you were dangerous?”

 
“What do you think, sweetheart?” There—there’s the man I know. “Was she kidding?”

  “No.” My mind turns this over. “But she meant that you were more dangerous than usual.”

  “I was out of my mind.” His voice drops to just above a whisper and it cuts into my heart, a million knifepoints. “I was out of my fucking mind.”

  “Because of Olympus?”

  “Because of you.” I press myself against the covers. The pad of his thumb travels a lazy circle around the bone of my ankle. He’s just holding it. If he tightened his fist he could drag me across the bed, and I like the thought of that. I like the thought of being consumed by him. “They were taking you away from me.” There are fractures in his voice. Fractures in the shape of a broken heart.

  “Your brother—”

  “I’m not sure why he was still in the city,” he muses. “He tackled me like the crazy bastard that he is.”

  I can imagine that scene. “How is the hospital still standing?”

  “Because he didn’t fight fair, sweetheart. He gave me one of his painkillers.”

  I’ve stopped crying, but only because this is the most fascinating story I’ve ever heard. “And you took it?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  I can’t help it—I laugh. “You always have a choice about everything.”

  “Not that.”

  “And then what?” Another circle around my ankle. “You were high and cooperative?”

  “I might have been high, but there’s no way of knowing, because it took me out completely.”

  “One pill?”

  “One.” His tone has turned thoughtful. I’ve heard all the usual rumors about Hades. But when Persephone said that he has an extreme sensitivity to light, I still didn’t know what she meant. Not truly. This piece of information joins the others. Zeus’s brother is in so much pain that even one of his pills is enough to level Zeus, who is a match for his size. I don’t know how he does it. The dull throb in my back is already driving me crazy.