Rifts (19 page)

"Why would you do that? You consume more energy fighting the elements. It's better to work with them." He looked at me like I was obviously an idiot. Maybe I was.

"Fair enough. So what is out here to eat?" Maybe if I pretended to get it, he'd take me to a nice Italian restaurant. Hell, I'd settle for McDonalds at this rate.

"Dinner after your teeth stop chattering. I'll be back in a few hours. You have that long to figure it out."

"Are you kidding me?" I bellowed. He was deserting me on this frozen rock? "What if a polar bear eats me?!"

He simply quirked his eyebrow at me, waved and then disappeared.

Son of a bitch.

I thought of Drew and Dylan sitting in my cozy house, playing videogames in my cozy living room. They were probably drinking hot tea and eating hot soup. I could have been there. But no – I had
a thing
.

I couldn't get the jingle 'What would you do for a Klondike Bar?' out of my head. "Would you kill a bitch?"

"Yes," I answered myself. "I'd kill two bitches to get off this rock."

I was mad. My skin sizzled where it was hit by the ice. Sure, Heph had said to cool it down, but I was pissed so it was harder to control. I'd been wearing sandals in Olympus and my feet were sinking into the ice and snow. Rivulets of freezing water gushed between my toes with every step, reminding me not only how much I hated Hephaestus right now - but how much I really hated being cold.

I was afraid to stand still because, with my luck, I'd sink too far to get out and they would find me in a thousand years on some crazy expedition, frozen like some cave-woman. They would give me some crazy Latin name which would really mean
Idiot Popsicle
.

"Quit whining, Grace!" I yelled it out to no one in particular. It made me feel better, though. I'd turned into some kind of whiny kid in the last year and it wasn't suiting me. What I needed was to
think
my way out of this.

Brilliance was certainly not my claim to fame, but if I couldn't come up with a way to get out of this situation – I deserved to freeze to death.

My first instinct was to reach out to the earth…see if I could pull something up to make a cave of sorts.  Nothing happened. The ice was too thick to reach through to the dirt beneath. I briefly wondered if there was
anything
but ice here.

But that was good. At least I was thinking now, not just reacting. Okay, what else did I have up my sleeve? The answer? A growly stomach. Heph had said that I'd use up more energy fighting against the elements. Looked like he was right.

I huffed over to a snow drift, trying to imagine myself in deep water with each step. I could tell when my body hit its normal temperature, my teeth started chattering again. Taking a deep breath, I pictured myself sinking further into the pool of water where sunlight couldn't reach. It was dark and cold there. People caught hypothermia all the time. It stood to reason, imagining that kind of cold reaching my body would cool me down.

Ice crystals clung to me like little parasites, biting my flesh just to annoy me. I was pretty annoyed by the time I figured it out. I'd spent all of this time trying to visualize the effect when all I needed to do was reach inside me and think – cold.

Dur, Grace! Of course I was over-thinking it. I over-thought
everything
.

They say that women have stronger imaginations than men because we can take a concept and visualize it to its completion. I think I'm proof that this isn't true. I'd prefer to get a video play-by-play of the shot.

Who knows how long I sat buried in a drift of snow, thinking about my situation. The events of the last six months continued to play in my mind. Simplicity was what I strove for and nothing had been simple for so long. Not wanting to delve too deeply into the personal stuff, I focused on the recent spate of not-so-natural disasters.

I just didn't understand the catastrophes, the appearance of my sister or her continued interest.

If she had a human father and my mother's powers to draw from, she shouldn't be able to knock my proverbial dick in the dirt every time we met. I know that my mother had super-human reflexes, but no more so than I did. Her gifts were illusion, healing, spell-casting and Rifts. She was an excellent Hunter because she trained
constantly
.

What was making Hope so good? I'd read the reports kept on her and there was nothing to suggest that she was ever anything other than a mediocre Hunter. Her biggest claim to fame was her romance with Adonis and the fact that she was Diana's daughter.

There had to be an outside source at play, here. But who or what could it be? My mind wandered back to Persephone. We'd all assumed that she was working for Geb. What if the timing was all a coincidence?

Something that Drew had mentioned earlier popped into my head. He said that he'd registered Dylan at his birth. Where would I find this registry? Would it have all of the Alancean births and deaths recorded? What kind of information was provided?

Better yet, who had access?

I needed to get into those records and find out if there was anyone who could be directing all of these events.  Okay, first I needed to get out of this cold. I wasn't freezing anymore, but my mind wasn't staying on topic for more than a few seconds at a time. Why in the Hell would Heph just leave me here?

I got tough love training, but this was ridiculous. The sun was sinking below the horizon and I was still here. Was anyone missing me? Were they at least looking for me? Now would be a good time to tap into the teleportation powers.

I gasped. Was Heph the one behind all of this? Besides Athena - who spent a great deal of time with him - nobody really knew him. He'd blocked himself off from the social scene of Olympus and was inadvertently shrouded in mystery because of it.

He had the juice. But, could he do it? He was a smarmy bastard, to say the least. I could imagine him doing it after this entire episode. The thought left me shivering and not from the cold. What if he was behind all of this and he'd left me out here to starve to death. Who would find me in this mess?

Wait! Georgie would find me, assuming that she still had me tagged. I prayed that she did.

Within no time I had myself worked up into a frenzy of paranoia and conspiracy plots. It completely destroyed my ability to regulate my temperature and I was back to shivering and crying. The tears froze before they could drop onto my cheeks, making it difficult to see.  

Was it painful? Yeah, it was. Even if Hephaestus wasn't the criminal mastermind behind all of this destruction, I hated him for this. I understood that he didn't want to hold my hand, but this cruelty was uncalled for.

My shoulders shook as I sobbed harder. I'd stopped saying that I was just a Romance Writer and actually started believing that I was something more. He’d stripped that pride from me and left me feeling vulnerable and helpless.

I cupped my hands over my eyes and warmed them enough so the ice would melt. The last thing I needed was frozen eyeballs. How would I write and read my favorite books without eyesight?

He came upon me hunched over and shivering, muttering obscenities and death threats.

"You were supposed to learn how to control your body temperature. All I see right now is a crybaby freezing to death."

That voice. I hated that voice. I wanted to attack, but my body was weak and my spirit broken. I had nothing left in me. "You're an asshole of epic proportions. Just in case nobody has ever said that to you.
Epic proportions
."

"I was going to take you back home but if you're going to be that way, I'll be on my way."

"Fine! Leave me here, you puke-faced shit encrusted asshole!" I was shrieking like a fishwife. It didn't matter. I was so mad that he could have left me here. As long as I was able to tell him what I really thought of him, it would be worth it.

"That's it? I've heard you spit out much worse in the last few hours. That's all you could come up with to say to my face?"

I stopped screeching. My eyes widened in surprise. He'd been here this entire fucking time? I took a few deep breaths trying to control the rage, because my body heat was rising to nuclear capacity.

Screw control - I was going to fire-bomb his smug face even if it meant obliterating Greenland. Who the fuck cared about Greenland, anyway?

"I especially liked the conspiracy theories. I can see why you're a best-seller. You have quite the vivid imagination."

My body hurtled through the air towards him at a speed I hadn't thought I’d possessed. We both hit the ice and fell into a skid. I hoped that he was getting an ice burn. "You've been here the
entire time
?" I yelled incredulously.

Before I could punch his stupid face into a pulp, he grabbed my fists and smirked. "Do you really think I'd leave you alone to freeze and starve to death? This is training, Grace. I needed to see how well you’d cope in harsh climate conditions."

"Not well, you heinous fuck!"

"I don't know about that." He flipped me over and straddled my waist, effectively pinning my arms against my sides. No amount of bucking would dislodge him.

It didn't help that he had a few hundred pounds on me. I still thrashed and flailed my legs. After the realization kicked in that I was just expending energy, I stopped and stared mutinously at him.

"Are you done?" he asked calmly.

"Why would you do this to me? Why would you do this to
anyone
? Is this your idea of a sick joke?"

"What have you learned?"

"To never trust YOU again." I punctuated my remark with another attempt to thrust him off of me.

"That's it? Your brain is more dense than a black hole if that's it, Grace Murphy. If that truly is the case, I have nothing more to teach you. You can go back to Zeus and tell him that I refuse to train you further."

That stopped my bucking. I didn't want to disappoint Zeus. He believed in me and so far my ass had been kicked, drowned and nearly frozen.

"I see that you have Daddy issues to add to your list of neuroses. Why does it matter that you live up to his expectations?"

"It doesn't," I answered.

"Oh, I think it does. You spend way too much time thinking about whether others will like, respect and believe in you. You've had 2 hours out here to pull your shit together and learn how to become self-sufficient. You spent one of those hours blaming me, your ex, your mother and everyone else you could think of for being stuck here. It's time to put on your grown-up pants, Grace, and stop expecting everyone else to save you or make you feel worthy."

"You don't know anything about me. You have no right!"

"I know that you had more spirit when you were a kid than you do now. It's disappointing to see how you've grown up." He shrugged. "Are you ready to get up and go home?"

I looked away from him. I didn't want him to see me cry again. I was horrified that he'd heard all of my words and seen me in my weakness. I was dismayed because he was right. I was a whiny brat with a chip on my shoulder – expecting everyone to like me because I'd had it rough. That shamed me more than anything.

What kind of lesson was I teaching my kid?