Page 77 of Lovesick Titan

“Yes,” Vaughn nodded.

“Where is it?”

“In the main room, my computer. We just need to turn it back on.”

“Then let’s go. We turn it on…then wait for Danny. With my amplifier—”

“Cho!” Shan’s voice blared over the comms, causing Mal to wince.

“What is it?” he held a hand to his ear.

“You better be ready. Grant just left.”

“You got that, Hephaestus?” Mal said. “Tell us the second you see Zeus or any lightning through those camera feeds.”

“Got it,” Priestly said.

“Move,” Mal told the others.

While Dom helped Rivers from her chair, Mal bee-lined for the door, but Stella caught his wrist, suddenly behind him as if she were the one with superpowers.

“He’s been better. Even when he wasn’t…he was never like this. What do you think Ludgate did to him?”

Mal paused before looking back at her. “I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. And we will get Danny back. We owe Ludgate now—all of us. So first we need to make sure he can’t get inside. Then we’ll save Danny.”

Stella nodded as she released him, wholly trusting, which Mal wasn’t used to from so many seeming strangers.

Like a human train, one after the other, they made for the door to return to the hallways. Mal had to wave his hand in front of the opening to see clearly, since the frozen ashes were still drifting downward, creating an odd sort of smoke shield, and the main lights were still out, casting everything in blue.

Then, just as he was about to step through to the other side, he choked—literally, as a hand caught him by the throat and a tall, familiar figure started to push into the room from out of the ash.

“Dann—” Mal tried to speak, while the others gasped. Why hadn’t Priestly warned them?

“Tell me, Cho,” Danny said with a terrible, manic grin on his face and a cold look in his eyes as he held Mal aloft without any effort. “Did you miss me?”

Chapter20

Danny’s grip was sostrong. Mal struggled to get even a modicum of air as he stepped into the room through the ashes of the doorway.

Then Danny stiffened, glanced at his arm outstretched between them, and recoiled. He disappeared back outside the door with a snarl on his lips, leaving Mal to drop to the floor.

“Mickey!”

Mal coughed into the floor as his windpipe opened, cringing at having landed roughly on his knees. Lucy and Dom appeared at his sides to help him, while Dom looked ready to barrel through the doorway after Danny.

“He just fuckin’ with us?” she spat.

Mal gripped his friend’s arm to make sure she didn’t do anything rash. It was too much to ask that Danny might have recoiled from hurting Mal. “Must have noticed the reflections...and worried the real Miasma Maker was on. Hephaestus,” Mal rasped over the comms, “where was my warning?”

“What? He’s there? There wasn’t any lightning!” A sound of rustling came over the channel as Priestly checked the camera feed. “I’ve got the full view here, boss. I swear, there was nothing, and no sign of him now.”

“No lightning…” Mal repeated.

“Should we call in Hermes?” Lucy asked.

“Hermesis with you too?” Grant Senior said with a scowl. They were all huddled too close together, Stella having taken Dom’s spot helping Rivers, while Grant’s son looked far too young to be part of this at all, eyes wide as he took in the Titans there to rescue them.

There wasn’t time to explain; Danny could come back at any moment. “We can’t use our trump card carelessly,” Mal said, then snapped to Vaughn. “What’s the process for turning on your program?”

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