Page 79 of Lovesick Titan

Mal expanded the cold field further, but only slightly since he couldn’t risk going too far when he couldn’t see how wide the radius stretched. Danny had to be at the edges of the room, hiding in the med room maybe? But Mal could see in through the window. Wherewashe?

“Got it!” Priestly cheered, and almost instantly a hum filled the room as the power surged to life and the lights flickered on one by one.

Mal blinked against the brightness. If they could get to the computer terminal or were certain they had a window to call in Oz without Danny waiting in the wings to interfere…

“Never did play fair, did you?” Danny said, not any more visible than when the lights were off. “Maybe I should try things your way.”

A flicker of light was Mal’s only warning that wherever Danny was hiding, he had Dom’s amplifier and had readied it to fire with stored power. Mal turned to tackle Dom to the floor because, with the cold field on, they had no idea what flames might do.

Fire roared toward them as they landed, but when the blast reached the cold field, it poofed out of existence, erupting in a shower of snowfall. Dom grumbled beneath Mal as they struggled to get up. They were by the main desk—Vaughn’s computer was rightthere—but Mal only just managed to roll away when a foot stomped down on his hand.

Somehow Danny was there, within the eye of the cold field as if he’d appeared from nothing, with no traces of frost on his clothing.

Mal wasn’t this helpless. He’d bested Zeus before. Sure, he hadn’t been invested then. Hadn’t cared whether the kid got hurt. Hadn’tlovedhim. But that shouldn’t make him this sloppy when he was facing a challenge with a clear head. Something was wrong, more so than what he’d felt the moment he entered Pronto that morning. He knew Danny. Knew how to gauge his powers and counter him, no matter how different he was acting.

Standing over them, Danny wore Dom’s amplifier, which he aimed at her head. The cuff should only hold one or two charges, but there was no way to know if it was depleted yet or not. Dom rolled onto her back but stayed down with a glare, while Danny bent to flip the cold field off,then pulled Mal’s amplifier from his wrist as well. Wearing one on each wrist now, he hauled Mal up by the back of his neck as if he weighed nothing and slammed him down onto the desk.

“Hey!” Dom snarled.

“Danny, stop!” Mal heard fromStella. Damn do-gooders never listened.

Peeking toward the door from where his face pressed into the desk, he saw that Stella wasn’t the only one in view. Lucy stood at the forefront with vines around both arms, and Stella and Grant Senior flanked her.

“You’re not gonna attack,” Danny laughed. “You want tosaveme. You’re all so pathetic.” He flipped Mal over and lifted him from the table by the neck.

“Hermes—” Lucy began.

“No,” Mal croaked as best he could through Danny’s grip. They couldn’t risk calling for Oz now. Danny was too powerful. They needed him incapacitated, at least distracted enough that Oz could have the fifteen seconds they needed.

“Still plotting, huh?” Danny said, while Dom stood and made to pounce. “Do you really want to risk it, Helios?” he flashed her a knowing smile, increasing his grip until Mal choked.

Dom backed off toward the others, and once again Danny laughed.

“You were playing it up before, huh?” he looked at Mal. “Acting all sullen, when you were really planning a raid. Smart. That’s why Shan called me, isn’t it? I’ll have to pay a visit upstairs next. See, I’ve been playing things too nice. Should have just killed them all.”

“Shit,” Shan cursed over the comms.

“They tried to stop me, talk me down, like I’m somechild. Sweet Doctor Rivers even tried to give me a sedative, can you believe it? Organized an intervention just because I wanted a little fun. Suddenly, the gang was all here!” Danny spread his free arm out to encompass everyone while his right hand held Mal in place. “Made it easier to tuck them away. But now…I think they’re too much hassle to keep breathing.”

Mal choked further from the squeeze that accompanied the word. Lucy kept her cool, didn’t flinch, and Dom merely clenched her fists tighter, but Danny’s team betrayed their grief for what had become of him.

“Is that…whatLudgatetold you?” Mal said.

“Ludgate,” he repeated as if the name tasted bitter on his tongue. “Can’t you get anything right, Prometheus? It’sHades,” he hissed and leaned in close enough for Mal to see the gold of his eyes that, for a moment, flickeredblack.

The missing pieces tumbled into place like dominoes and Mal’s gaze hardened.

No lightning. Mal hadn’t seen it once even in this room, watching Danny jump around, divesting Dom of her amplifier, appearing inside the cold field without a shred of frost. The final piece of evidence was the most damning, because the moment he’d entered a room with its reflections closed off, he’d turned and fled.

Mal stared into Danny’s wild, cruel face and closed his own grip around the wrist of the hand choking him. He was such a fool, for all his planning and instincts about what must have happened. Ludgate hadn’t infected Danny—he’dreplacedhim.

Ramming his knee up intoLudgate’sgroin, Mal gasped when the imposter’s grip slackened, but he couldn’t take even a moment’s rest. As Ludgate keeled over, he iced his arms up to his elbows no matter how much Team Zeus called for him to stop.

“Curious thing, Sparky,” Mal aimed at the enemy before him, “but your reflexes seem a bitslow.”

Chapter21

Danny was so tired. Sohungry. He’d passed out more than once, but the scenes that played before him in the various mirrors in his line of sight always roused him.

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