Page 27 of Wildfire

“Heya, Prof, whatcha need?” Hermes said, suddenly beside him. His voice was high and breathy, like he’d been running. Or rather, like if he were a normal person, he’d been running. Maybe as himself, he’d been going faster than the speed of light.

Wilder couldn’t even form the words, he just pointed at the door. For the first time in their acquaintance, fear flashed through Hermes’s eyes as he turned to look where Wilder was pointing.

Something had changed. Wilder didn’t know what, but this felt bigger, more important than it had been only a few hours before.

Hermes cleared his throat and announced, “Okay, coming in, so, um... Granddad, if you’re in there, please don’t eat me.”

What the hell?

Hermes was gone in a flash, and by the time Wilder looked up, the light in the room was on, and the door wedged open. Hermes was crouched over a form on the floor, that, unlike the previous victims, had been mutilated beyond recognition, more a mural of blood and bone than a human face.

It didn’t matter.

Wilder knew who it was. All he could see was the fiery wolf on one of the only remaining stretches of untorn skin. He dropped his bag and rushed for the bathroom.

Porcelain Gods

Hermes had meant to find his way back to Banneker earlier in the day, but spreading word of all that’d gone wrong... it was the kind of news that required a face-to-face talk. With every single god he could think of.

Their reactions ranged beyond the scope of Hermes’s imagination. Once Hades had given him a job to do, he had something to focus on. More importantly, he’d had somewhere to run.

At Hysteria, though it was early in the day, Dionysus greeted the news by pulling a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and gulping down half of it. When he’d found Artemis, she’d shared a look with Apollo and said they needed more arrows. Prometheus had shivered, and his vamp boyfriend had promised him that the Hunt would protect the city.

And then there was Zeus, who had stared, forlorn and subdued, out over the clouds. All he’d said was, “Bring me Ares and Athena.” Then he’d turned his back on Hermes.

He was zipping back to Banneker when he heard the soft, choked sound of his name. No, mortals couldn’t call him the same way that gods could, but he’d been listening for Wilder. He knew the sound of his own name on the man’s lips. In seconds, he was at Wilder’s side, outside a door that hid horrors.

Before he’d gone inside, he’d known he wouldn’t like what he found. But there was nothing about this situation that he did like. While he had a task in front of him, he could put it aside, but he didn’t know how long that would last. At some point, he was going to have to grapple with the fact that his cannibal grandfather had returned with a vengeance, they were all in danger, and the Olympians had failed at—ateverything.

But right then, all he had to do was open a door and save Wilder from having to do it himself.

The body in the room was gruesomely shredded. For a second, all Hermes could do was stare at it.

What an absolute waste. He was no great fan of mortals, but what sense was there in this? Another student, young and vibrant, snuffed out. Hermes didn’t have to look for his soul; it wasn’t there.

The sound of Wilder dropping his bag knocked Hermes out of his thoughts. The professor rushed away, and Hermes stared, frowning. It wasn’t until the man crashed into the bathroom that he understood. He wasn’t going to fight the murderer—he was just falling apart.

Gingerly, Hermes backed out of the room, picked up Wilder’s bag, and followed after him. For once, he was dragging his feet, even as his thumb flew over his phone’s keyboard.

Classroom across from Pratt’s office. There’s a body. You need to handle it, he sent to Athena. Then he stared at the shut bathroom door, sucked in a deep breath, and headed inside.

He found Wilder on his knees, praying to the porcelain gods. He was panting, shaking, and Hermes didn’t think he’d ever seen anything less fitting than Wilder Pratt on his knees in front of a toilet. Strange, how he’d spent days wanting to bring him low and ruin his veneer, but now that he was down there, Hermes hated to see it.

When Wilder realized he was watching, he stiffened. Braced on the toilet seat, he pushed himself to stand and turned toward the row of sinks. He washed his hands thoroughly, splashed water over his face, rinsed out his mouth and spat, and snatched brown, folded paper towels to dry his cheeks. When he turned to look at Hermes, he was glaring.

“What?” he demanded, dark blue eyes narrowed as if Hermes himself were responsible for all this.

Perhaps he was, in a sense. All of this was because of the gods. Maybe Prometheus had the right of things, giving mortals magic so they could defend themselves when things got too hairy with Olympians. But this student had magic. They’d all had magic, and instead of protecting them, it’d just put a target on their backs.

A target for Titans.

Hermes was standing still now, staring at Wilder, who was likely going to die. And for some absurd reason, it hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d probably die too. It’d taken Zeus and his brothers twelve years to defeat Cronus at the height of their power. And they weresonot at the height of their power anymore.

Hell, how much had Hermes really had to begin with, when compared to Cronus or Atlas or... Typhon?

Wilder was still glaring when Hermes stepped toward him, but there was nowhere for him to go. His backside was flush to the countertop. Still, he flinched, inching back even as Hermes wrapped his arms around his waist. He buried his head against Wilder’s shoulder and drew the man’s own down to nestle in his neck.

There, against Hermes’s skin, Wilder’s breath shook in a dry sob. Hermes didn’t know what to say. He was sorry they’d fucked up, sorry he hadn’t realized for weeks, for months even, what was going on. But sorry didn’t cover the breadth of it, and there was absolutely nothing worth saying.

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