"Good tuna fish sandwiches; he's the tallest man I've ever seen."
Tory laughed at Pam, who was gawking at Ash.
Ash shook his head at what had to be Pam's most commonly uttered phrase since she'd walked into the house with him. She'd said it four times already.
"Pam," Kim chided as she set the pizza on the coffee table. "You're going to make him self-conscious."
Pam set the beer next to the boxes. "Well it's not like he doesn't know. I mean at five nine, I know how tall I am. Tory's six one so we're allowed to gawk. It's not every day we meet a man who actually makes us feel like we're short, right Tory?" Pam stood up on her tiptoes next to Ash. "Kim, you're tiny and barely crack five feet. You have no idea what it's like to be tall in a world of average height men. I could finally wear heels!"
Ash laughed before he scooped her up in his arms and moved her over by the couch.
"Oh, good grief!" she said as he set her down. "I've never had a man pick me up before and not grunt like he's dying. I'm in heaven. Marry me, Ash, please!"
"I would say yes, but I come with more baggage than even Samsonite can cover."
Tory ignored them as she entered the room with her dig journals. She pushed the pizza boxes aside on her coffee table, then set them down. "All right, this is everything over the last year."
Ash knelt down and started flipping pages.
Tory leaned over his shoulder as she reviewed what he was looking at. "See, mostly pottery shards and fragments. A few friezes and some bottles."
Ash paused as he found one familiar piece that made his breath catch . . . it was Ryssa's hair comb that matched the one he'd found centuries ago. His heart clenched as he ran his hand over the photograph, remembering how beautiful she'd been with them in her blond hair.
"It's incredibly well preserved, isn't it?" Tory said, unaware of how much this one piece meant to him. "The pearls are even still set where they'd been. It looks like something you could buy today. The workmanship on it's incredible."
"Yeah." He forced himself to turn the page to see more pottery before he betrayed himself with misty eyes.
Then he found it . . .
"Where's this piece?"
Tory frowned at the deep, firm tone from Acheron. Looking over his shoulder, she saw an ornate gold dagger that Bruce had excavated. "That one is still being tested in the lab, why?"
"We need it."
Wow, his tone was more commanding than a general calling for war. "Is it that valuable?"
Ash hesitated. Not from her standpoint, but since it was a weapon that could kill anything that breathed it was extremely valuable to him and to other nonhuman entities who'd do anything to possess it. "Yes."
Pam rolled her eyes. "I don't understand you people and your old stuff."
Kim patted her shoulder. "It's okay, sweetie. We don't understand you and your BeGoth doll obsession either." She looked at Tory. "You should have been with us on our Leda Swanson quest. She dragged me to three states until we finally found the doll in a boutique in Alabama."
Ignoring them, Ash finished looking through the book, but he couldn't find anything other than the Atlantean dagger that could be important. But given that, why would a human in a car be after it?
No human would understand its significance . . .
And no nonhuman would have made this kind of mess and left it. They'd have simply attacked and tortured Tory until she told them where to find it.
It was baffling. But what else could they want?
More importantly, how far were they willing to go to get it? It was one thing to break into a house. Would they kill for it as well?
Ash stood up. "I'm going to walk around outside for a bit and check things out. I'll be back."
Tory nodded. "We'll save you some pizza."
Ash didn't comment as he left the house and used his powers to leave New Orleans and venture to Savitar's island where the sun literally never set. Magical in nature, the island constantly moved around the world as Savitar searched out the "perfect" wave.
As expected, Savitar was lying on his back on a surfboard out in the water, staring up at the clear bright sky as the waves rocked him.
Unlike the omniscient Chthonian, Ash wasn't a water baby. He hated surfing and lying under the sun. But he also knew that when in Rome . . .
He popped himself onto a board beside Savitar who laughed when he saw him sitting on the longboard. "You look so out of your element."
"I am out of my element. Much like you in a Seattle Goth club."
Savitar gave him a wry grin. "I'm never out of my element, Atlantean. And it must be dire indeed to get you in shorties and on a board. One day I'm actually going to get you to say 'Rad four-mill steamer, dude!' "
Crossing his arms over his chest, Ash laughed. "Not likely."
Savitar tsked at him before he returned to staring at the sky. "I've heard that before. So what brings you here, Grom?"
Ash ignored the surfing term that was usually reserved for kids under fifteen. Only Savitar could get away with calling him a youngster. "There's a woman-"
"Isn't there always?"
Ash chose to ignore the sarcastic comment. "She's being pursued by someone and I don't know who."
Savitar arched a brow as he floated one heavily tattooed arm in the ocean. "Then you know I can't tell you anything."
Those words and his condescending tone set Ash's temper on fire. "Dammit, Savitar, don't play this game with me. Her life is in danger . . . maybe."
Savitar grabbed Ash's board and snatched him closer. "Like you, I won't tamper with fate."
"Bullshit. You tamper with fate all the time."
He shoved Ash's board away from him. "But I won't tamper with yours. Ever."
Ash cursed as he paddled back to Savitar's side. "Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be the final fate of the world and to have no control over your own?"
"Sure you do, little brother. Every decision you make causes your fate to unfold or to change. Have I taught you nothing?"
Savitar was right, but it wasn't that simple. Especially not when there was another person's life involved.
What would it take to make the Chthonian care?
Ash narrowed his eyes. "They've uncovered an Atlantean dagger."
Savitar sat up on the board to glare at him. "I hope you're planning to destroy it."
"I have to get it first. But that's the plan." Ash returned his hostile glare tit for tat. "Can you please, just this once, give me some insight into the future?"
Savitar shook his head. "You know what the Fates decreed for you. Through your own actions you will be saved."
"That could mean anything."
Savitar was silent for several heartbeats before he pierced Ash with a sinister look. "All right. I'm screwing with things here, but I'll tell you this much. It's not the dagger the thieves were after in her house. There's another journal her people found."
Ash cringed over that bomb. "Ryssa's?"
He nodded. "It's not the one Soteria showed you. This one was found yesterday by one of her buddies. And it was written after Ryssa became Apollo's mistress. In it is the truth about him and Artemis and their need for blood. It also tells how to kill them."
Ash felt sick. Yeah, that would cause a global annihilation that would impress even his bloodthirsty mother. "And me? Am I in it too?"
Savitar sighed. "Trust me, you don't want that in the hands of anyone else."
Ash's gut tightened. "Where is it now?"
"I can't tell you that."
Ash flashed himself to Savitar's board so that he could tackle him. Unfortunately, Savitar popped himself and the board out from under him and appeared on the other side of Ash's abandoned board before Ash could grab him.
"Hitting me changes nothing."
Ash swam to his board and glared at Savitar. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You of all beings know how fate works. What happened to you as a human happened because everyone from your parents on down tried to circumvent what was supposed to be-which ultimately was the destruction of the Atlantean pantheon. There was no changing that prophecy. But the way you suffered was completely unnecessary. Had your parents embraced their true destiny, you would have been saved years of torment. Fate will not be denied. We can sculpt it, but in the end we're all pawns to our final destinies. Good, bad or indifferent."
Those words offered him about as much comfort as one of Artemis's beatings. "I'm going to be exposed, aren't I?"
"I don't know. You planning on dropping your pants around me? If so, warn me first. I don't want to go blind."
Ash pulled himself up on his board. "You know what I mean. After all the battles I've fought to save the world and all the sacrifices in dignity and blood I've paid to set free so many Dark-Hunters, they're all going to know that I'm nothing but a pathetic whore, aren't they?"
Savitar's look was sharp and angry. "You have never been pathetic."
But they both knew he'd been a whore. That at the end of the day he was still one. Ash wanted to scream at the injustice of it all.
You can't outrun your past.
His own words were coming back to bite him. "How long do I have before I'm found out?"
Savitar let out a long, tired breath. "There are three outcomes for your journey, Apostolos. In one you're exposed and you lose everything, even your life, and your mother destroys the entire world in a fit of anger. In the other, you're exposed and the Dark-Hunters turn on you and Apollo's enemies destroy the god, then they wreak untold horrors on mankind as they enslave and abuse them . . ."
Ash hesitated to even ask for more. "And the third?"
"In one word, grisly."
Ash cursed. "So no matter what I do, the world is fucked?"
"I didn't say that. There's always hope, Apostolos. Of all men, you know that. It's only when you stop trying to affect the outcome of your life that you're truly defeated. What will come will come. It's how we deal with the shit in between that shapes us."
Ash snorted at his words. "You don't deal with anything, Savitar. You sit out here in the sun, catching waves, spewing bullshit philosophy you don't follow."
"You're right. I gave up trying to affect my destiny a long time ago. But that's because every time I tried to change the future, I fucked it up worse. Eventually the rat gets tired of pulling the lever and sits down in his corner to lick his wounds. So if you're ready to hang it up and come sit on the beach with me-"
"I'm stuck fighting."
"You're stuck fighting." Savitar lay back down on his board. "But you're welcome to come share my beach any time you get tired of the brawl."
Ash let out a long sigh as he considered it seriously. "Save me a spot. If this blows up in my face, I'll be back with my tail forever tucked between my legs." Because deep inside he knew the truth-he'd been through enough ridicule. He couldn't stand to see the people he loved look at him the way Ryssa had when she'd found him in the stew in Didymos. Even though she'd loved him and had forgiven him, the disappointment in her eyes was still seared into his soul.
He couldn't take that again.
"Wave's coming," Ash warned his mentor.
He didn't move as Savitar popped up on his board with one perfect flip.
The moment the wave struck, Ash returned to New Orleans. Water sports had never been his thing. He preferred freefalling through the air or speeding on the ground.
And he hadn't been a spectator in over eleven thousand years. If he'd learned anything in his godhood, it'd been to fight until they dragged him down.
Even then, he didn't know how to not keep battling.
There was another journal out there. Fine. He was going to find it and make sure no living human or other being ever read it.