The elevator door pinged open and he stepped off onto the main floor. Night had settled over the lake, and the tall arching windows stared out at nothing but darkness. Seated on a couch in the middle of the room, Max glanced their way. At Titus’s side, relief whipped through Callia, and she stepped around him, heading for her son. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
Max shrugged. Picked at a thread on the arm of the sofa. “Zander told me to wait out here.”
Zander. Not Dad. Titus didn’t need to read minds to pick up the animosity.
“Where is he?” Callia asked in a stiff voice as she sat next to her son, obviously picking up on it too.
Max nodded toward a cracked door across the room. “In there. With Theron and Nick.”
Happy for any reason to get away from Callia and her son, Titus turned in that direction, pushed the door open, and stepped into the space. Nick sat behind an intricately carved Russian desk, dwarfing the piece of furniture as he flipped papers. Theron and Zander stood in front of him, hands on hips, shoulders tense. No one looked up when Titus stepped into the room. No one even noticed him.
“You’re not going,” Nick said. “End of story.”
“I have an Argonaut down there,” Theron said.
“I don’t care if the queen of fucking England’s down there,” Nick snapped, “The hole’s being sealed as we speak.”
“You can’t do that—” Zander started.
“I can do whatever the hell I want,” Nick tossed back.
Theron braced his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “You son of a bitch.”
Nick glanced up at Theron, and his amber eyes were as steely as Titus had ever seen them when he said, “Let me make something clear to you, Theron. You don’t have any authority here. I allow you and your Argonauts to use the colony as a stopping ground when you’re in the human realm out of simple courtesy, but I don’t have to. You have no say in how the colony is handled or maintained. The tunnel’s being filled in for security reasons, and that’s that. You don’t like it, you can poof back to the mother ship for all I care.”
Nick cast a glare Zander’s way, then pushed back from his chair and rose to his full height. At six and a half feet and close to two hundred and eighty pounds, he was a force to be reckoned with, but then so was Theron. And as a descendent of Heracles, there wasn’t much that made Theron back down.
“My guardians and I are going into that cavern to look for Gryphon,” Theron said. “That, my friend, is the end of the story. Come on, Z.” He signaled Zander, turned for the door, caught Titus’s gaze, and clenched his jaw. Behind him, Zander’s thoughts were easy to pick up. This is so fucked.
Titus had rarely seen the leader of the Argonauts so worked up. Something big was going down here. His gaze jumped from face to face, trying to read each of their thoughts, but emotions were too close to the surface to get an accurate picture of what was happening.
“If you do that,” Nick answered before Theron and Zander reached the door, “you’re signing your death certificates. We’ll close up the cavern whether you’re in there or not.”
Nick wasn’t lying. Titus’s adrenaline inched up a notch as he read the Come on, challenge me, I dare you thought coming from Nick.
Zander’s eyes narrowed. He looked Nick’s way again. “What’s down there in that cavern?”
Nick clenched his jaw but didn’t answer. But Titus heard the lies racing across the half-breed’s mind as he fished for something to get them to back off.
“Where the hell did Gryphon and Maelea end up?” Theron asked in an accusing tone. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”
They’ll find out soon enough. Or they’ll make things worse for the colony. You don’t have a choice here.
Nick’s thoughts echoed in Titus’s mind, piquing his own curiosity. This was about more than just Gryphon and—oh, great—Maelea now.
The half-breed leader clenched his jaw once, twice, then finally muttered, “Fuck,” followed by “Get in here and close that damn door.”
Titus closed the doors at his back. Caught Theron’s Read his mind and tell me if he’s telling the truth thought.
Nick moved in front of his desk and rubbed his hand across his forehead as if he had the mother of all migraines. “I told Isadora there were extenuating circumstances to relocating the colony here after our location in Oregon was destroyed.”
“I remember,” Theron said. “The Russian Misos colony loaned you the property.”
“Right. This place had been sitting empty for quite some time. It wasn’t being used as a residence. Turns out, there’s a reason for that.”
“What reason?” Zander asked.
Tell them, don’t tell them. Nick’s thoughts bounced around as he debated his options. Shit, if I don’t tell them, they’ll just go down there and fuck things up.
Nick scowled and motioned them to follow as he stepped toward the wall at the back of his office. “This way.”
He touched the molding high on the right side of a bookshelf. The entire unit swung out, revealing a secret passageway.
“Sweet,” Zander muttered. “Where the hell does it go?”
“Just shut it and keep up,” Nick said, stepping through the open doorway and into a steel-walled tunnel. Titus followed Zander and Theron inside. At his back, the massive bookcase snapped closed with a clack. Titus was too far back to read Nick’s thoughts, but he picked up Zander’s and Theron’s, and both were wondering what the hell was going on.
No one spoke as they reached a circular staircase that seemed to go on forever. Nick started down without a word. Theron followed. Zander turned back to Titus and whispered, “You okay? You’re sweating. Maybe we should go find Callia.”
Titus wasn’t missing this. He needed to know where Gryphon had gone. He stepped past Zander. “I’m fine.”
Before Zander could press him for more, they reached the bottom of the stairs. The floor was concrete, the walls cinder block.
Titus wiped the sweat from his brow, ignored the pain in his side. “What does this place have to with Gryphon?”
“You’ll see in a minute,” Nick answered.
The panel lights flicked green, then the steel door hissed open and disappeared into the wall. He stepped into the dark room, lit by only a glowing orange lamp somewhere in the center of the space. The rest of them followed.
“Skata,” Theron muttered when he came to a stop.
Titus read his No fucking way thought before he moved out from behind Theron’s massive body and stopped next to him. Shock registered first as he stared ahead at the glowing orange rocks rotating on a pedestal in the center of the room with what looked like a heat lamp hovering above. “Is that—?”
“Therillium,” Nick answered, dragging a hand over his close-shaved head. “It glows orange when heated. In its normal state it’s green.”
“Skata,” Theron muttered again. “You’re housing your people over Hades’s personal stash of invisibility ore?”
Nick shot him a look. “Trust me, it wasn’t my first choice. But when our colony in Oregon was destroyed, we didn’t have many options. The Russian Misos colony agreed to loan us this location with the provision that we keep the therillium mines secret and continue to provide their colony with enough ore so their location remains hidden. I had my doubts at first, but Hades doesn’t know we’re here. He doesn’t even know this castle exists.”
“How the hell not?” Theron asked.
“Because the therillium”—Nick motioned toward the slowly turning chunk of glowing orange rock—“keeps the castle invisible. The tunnels are sealed with only one way in or out, which is known only by me and one other person. Hades uses kobaloi to mine his therillium, but they can’t come out into the sunlight, so they’re no threat to us. As for Hades himself, he doesn’t dare venture into the mines.”