“You do realize I was busy, right?” Ares’s growl echoed in the room made of white marble and gold. “I was kicking ass in a game. What’s so fucking important?”

“Your descendant.” Apollo stood before the well and looked into it. “She’s safe, for now, but she won’t be for long. She should be getting out of the hospital in a couple of days.”

“Hospital?” Ares’s chest tightened in fear as he rushed to Apollo’s side. “Why?” The anger from being summoned so abruptly during his game immediately evaporated when his brother told him his descendant was in the hospital. There the brothers stood one on each side of Rachael’s bed looking down at her.

“We were to meet for lunch, and when she didn’t show, I flashed to her apartment. I found her in a pool of blood and called an ambulance. She’d been shot. I assisted in repairing a bit of the damage, but you know our hands are tied on what we can and can’t do.”

“Fuck.” Ares carded his fingers through his hair angrily. “Who?”

“Uncertain. She’s not exactly out of the public eye, so it could just be some idiot human trying to destroy her.”

Ares snorted. “She’s so much like her Great-Many-Times-Over Grandmother. Always determined to ensure that the masses have what they need no matter what it costs her.”

“That’s very much Rachael. She’s more than that, however, as you should know. She’s exceptionally brilliant with tactics.”

“Has the faction in charge of her protection been mobilized yet?”

“They have. I killed one of them because he was going to shoot an air bubble into Rach’s IV line to ensure she died when she went in for her last blood transfusion.”

“Fuck.” Ares looked over the pale young woman in the bed. “So, she did inherit that genetic trait?”

Apollo nodded.

The girl could cause widespread bloodshed by causing wounds that would fester and grow, a trait she’d inherited from Ares. But because she didn’t know how to use the ability, she only ended up hurting herself: she had anemia and required frequent blood transfusions.

“So aside from that, she’s okay?”

“She nearly died, and her soul had to be tugged back into her body, but she’s a fighter.” Apollo touched the girl’s cheek. “I’m worried because she’s seen the other side, but Hades has seen her and knows exactly who she is. I saw our uncle when I pulled her soul back from the fogs of death—we’re going to have issues. If it weren’t against the rules, I would say we need to take her to Olympus where we could guarantee her safety.”

“Not even Olympus is safe, brother. You know this as well as I do.” Ares sighed and ran his hand over his jaw. “When she’s released, I will take her to the farm. In the meantime, watch over and protect her? I will see about getting the Scions here in the interim to keep watch as well.”

“You’re certain they’ll be able to keep watch over her and keep her safe?”

Ares glared at Apollo. “I believe in them. You need to as well. They have kept your descendant safe, haven’t they?”

“True. How is she?”

“Good. In love. I think her brother is ready to beat her lovers bloody, but she’s safe. She’s where she belongs. You should come and see her.”

“I can’t. Not yet. Let me ensure that Rach is safe and then I will.” Apollo looked down at Rachael and stroked her cheek again. “Your men need you—that team needs you. You’re going to create weapons for them to use in this war. Wake, sweet Rachael. Wake and come back to the land of the living.”

Ares bowed to his brother. “For all that you do, thank you.” He was gone in a flash.

****

Rachael heard herself flatline, the shrill sound of one long and seemingly never-ending tone. As she floated outside of her body, she watched the paramedics working on her. Rachael looked over her shoulder at the fog rolling toward her with a bright light in the center of it. She looked back to her body again.

Rubbing her bodiless hands over her arms, she shook her head and whispered, “Fight. Fight, damn you!” she demanded, even as the fog rolled around her ankles.

She felt the gentle touch of the past of the happiness and safety that she had at all times before any of the incidents had started. She felt the security the fog offered her, but she fought it off.

There it was.

The same shrill note.

She knew there was safety in the fog, but Rachael had never been one to go where it was safe. She reached out and latched onto her body with her soul as she was lifted and pushed into the back of an ambulance.

She watched with detached amazement as the man in the back of the ambulance with her seemed to move with the vehicle, keeping her body still even as the driver drove like a bat out of hell.

He was good, this man working on her. She had to admit to that.

She heard it again. Beat… A loud alarm… Beat… The same alarm…

“Fuck.” The man working on her stabbed her with a devilishly long needle, but as an ethereal soul floating free, she felt nothing.

Sensing a presence at her back, she looked over her shoulder and saw him: a massive and imposing man demanding she release him. He was wrong. Something about him was very wrong.

Suddenly there was something new, a bright light inside of the fog, sunshine in its purest form. It surrounded her and pulled her from the vicious shadow of a man as he screamed and raced toward her corporeal form.

****

Rachael was jerked back to reality when a jolt of electricity raced through her veins. She heard someone saying, “We have her back.”

****

When her eyes opened next, she saw her Uncle Adam standing above her.

“Water?” she croaked.

“Of course, ma petite.” He brought a straw to her lips. It was odd; for a moment, her Uncle Adam looked like he was emanating light as bright as sunshine on a rainy day. Very strange indeed.