Page 43 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

Danny laughed. The slow, constant pressure of Cho’s thumbs and fingers on his foot was better than any massage he’d ever received.

The man really knew how to use his hands, but then, Danny knew that.

Cho even worked his way higher, up Danny’s ankle beneath the borrowed sweats, and further up Danny’s calf where he tensed from being ticklish, before moving down and attending to each individual toe.

Then the ball of Danny’s foot, the arch, the heel, the arch again.

When Cho moved to the other foot, something inside of Danny shifted, as if the loosening of his muscles shook something else loose too.

It took opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling above for him to realize he was blinking back tears.

He touched a hand to his eyes. Why was he crying from a stupid foot rub?

“Letting your guard down has its perils,” Cho said, never ceasing his motions, his voice soft and without judgement. “Sometimes we don’t even know what we’re holding onto until it slips out of us.”

Danny glanced at Cho, but he kept his eyes on Danny’s foot, concentration and sadness on his face that Danny didn’t understand.

“You don’t always have to be okay,” Cho said. “You don’t have to be anything when you’re here. Outside these walls you’re plenty. I don’t need Zeus in my home. In fact, I’d prefer he stay far, far away.” Pausing, he reached up behind him and patted the suit hanging over the sofa with a brief smirk.

Danny choked out another laugh. But he was choking on too much, so much more than laughter, as unforeseen emotions caught in his throat.

“Zeus in my bed, now, that is something to brag about. But I know where the real power is. All the parts I like to see bare, that’s not Zeus. Zeus is your mask. I like what’s under it.”

“You don’t know what’s under it,” Danny said without thinking, because Cho didn’t know, not really, and he wouldn’t want the truth if he ever found out how low Danny had sunk.

“Think you’re such an enigma, huh?” Cho pressed his thumbs into the arch of Danny’s foot again and held them there, applying firm pressure that hurt, but the pain was good, solid.

His eyes looked so blue when they met Danny’s gaze.

He was flushed and damp with sweat, casually dressed in his own home, attending to Danny when this time Danny had done nothing to earn his keep.

“Tell me. What’s so terrible about Danny Grant? ”

Danny stared for far too long. At Cho’s eyes. At his face. At his hands ever moving. The words wouldn’t come to him, because there were too many of them, right on the brink of flooding out of him, and he couldn’t, couldn’t let all of them out at once.

His tears fell more steadily—he couldn’t stop them—as he slowly drifted his eyes to the ceiling again and focused on the pain more than the pleasure of Cho’s touch.

“I almost snapped a man’s arms last night.”

Cho’s rhythmic rubbing stuttered, but only for a moment.

“He didn’t even do anything. He was trying to break into a store, but it wasn’t a big deal, ya know?

No dangerous Elemental. He didn’t have any weapons on him.

But I was so angry .” The tears streamed faster down Danny’s face.

“I saw Ludgate, the Elemental responsible for these heists, and he…he made me look like a fool , and I just…I wanted… something to make sense.”

“We all lose our cool occasionally, Sparky.”

Danny shook his head. “It wasn’t the first time. A couple weeks ago I broke a man’s nose. Gave him a concussion. Beat him until he begged for me to stop. If my last hit had connected, I would have killed him. Just like…” What was Danny saying ?

“Like…?” Cho prompted when he trailed.

It was the last thing Danny ever thought he’d confess, especially to Cho, but the words found their way out of him anyway. “The night I killed Thanatos.”

?

Danny had sent the message to Cho just like they discussed—a call into Haven that would be relayed to Cho describing the time and place for them to meet.

Where was he? Thanatos had taken control of the power station almost an hour ago, but he had more than just the workers inside held hostage.

Danny had received a call to his own desk phone at the precinct from Thanatos himself.

He never could have anticipated hearing his mother’s voice on the other line.

“Danny, don’t listen to him—” she’d said but cried out before she could finish.

Danny had barely explained the situation to his father, Andre, and Lynn, before he raced out of the precinct.

His father’s eyes had looked so panicked.

Danny couldn’t lose somebody else— he couldn’t lose anybody else.

Not his mother. This had to end tonight, but he’d failed to stop Thanatos so many times. He needed Cho’s help.

Where was he?

The sirens in the distance were growing closer as Danny stood before Thanatos, who barred entrance into the power station. He was up in the air a full story high with his shadows whipping about, maddening and menacing.

The power station was coal-fired with a steam boiler.

The steam drove the turbine and generator to produce electricity for half of Olympus City.

Gas waste alone could be dangerous if tampered with, but Thanatos’s shadows were infecting more than just that.

Danny could see them coiling around the smokestacks.

It painted such a bleak picture juxtaposed against the bright colors of the circus in town set up just outside the power station’s perimeter like some awful parody of a horror movie.

“Do you really want to take yourself out too?!” Danny cried up at him. “You’re putting the entire city at risk!”

“Explosions can be contained,” Thanatos said, a reverberation in his voice to mask the sound of it, like he was speaking through a modulator.

Maybe he was. Maybe it was simply part of his powers.

“Crippling the city for days— weeks —by taking out this power station is just a bonus, Zeus. Losing your partner, why...that made things interesting, didn’t it?

It birthed you. It started all of our fun.

What will losing your mother do, I wonder? ”

His shadows were expanding, covering the entire building. Danny had to act. He couldn’t lightning jump into the air, he needed solid ground, but a bolt of lightning discharged toward the power station could be just as dangerous as Thanatos’s shadows. He needed Cho’s ice.

“Please, don’t do this,” Danny said, hands held up, hoping he could stall, that Cho would show up in the nick of time and maybe this was all part of some grand plan Danny would thank him for later. “If you want me, I’m right here. Just let these people go.”

“Oh, I want you, Zeus. I want you to feel the strength of Death before it comes for you too.”

“Danny, you have to take the shot,” Andre spoke over the comms. “You have to risk it. His shadows, the pressure he’s building in the generator…”

“You can do it, Danny,” Lynn added in support.

The two of them had been with him since the beginning. Danny thought Cho would be here tonight too, but now he knew his nemesis wasn’t coming.

Summoning his lightning, he felt it spark from the coil in his gut and spread outward like a shockwave. His white and yellow suit lit up the dark of the night, electricity arching further from his body, higher, stronger . Danny was going to hit Thanatos with everything he had.

“That’s what makes you so pathetic, Zeus. You think Death will wait for you,” Thanatos said with a subtle flick of his wrist.

The explosion was quieter than Danny expected. Contained inside the building by Thanatos’s shadows, it was muffled, the way movies sometimes show an explosion in space. But the eruption still came— before Danny surged his lightning forward.

The windows along the top floor of the station blew out, and Danny could see the fire inside. In moments, every building and street lamp went dark for blocks on end like a great blanket had been dropped and the only light left was from the flames and Danny’s sparks.

When his powers diminished in his shock and the sound of the muted blast faded, all Danny could hear was screaming .

He tried to lightning jump inside, but he’d never been in the power station before; he didn’t have a clear enough picture in his head to reach it. He bounced off of Thanatos’s shadows and fell to the ground practically at the other Elemental’s feet.

“Danny!” Andre and Lynn called out, but Danny barely heard them. He had to get inside. The police sirens were getting closer. His father would be there soon. Danny had to save his mother! The screams were already fading…

“Do you know what that sort of explosion does to a person?” Thanatos said as he descended from his towering height, the shadows spiraling around him like tentacles as his feet gently touched down. “The heat. The intensity.”

Danny snarled and blasted fresh bolts of lightning from his hands, but Thanatos’s shadows deflected them like annoying gnats.

“Danny, the police are almost there,” Lynn said. “We still have power at the precinct. Just hold on.”

Danny didn’t want to hold on . He wanted to get his hands on Thanatos and slam him into the pavement. Lightning jumping forward, he dug his fingers into Thanatos’s black and purple suit, but the shadows dove at him like an extra pair of hands and pried his arms back.

Thanatos laughed at him. “There’s nothing left to save, Zeus. Whatever might be clinging to life in there is too busy choking on smoke.”

Danny lunged at him with a broken howl ripping from his throat even as he was held in place.

His lightning snapped around him like a whip, refusing to be snuffed out by the shadows he’d been chasing and fighting and hating for six long months since they’d first choked Rick from the inside out. And now Danny’s mother…

With a flinch, Thanatos stepped back as if the electricity had finally started to hurt him. Danny couldn’t hold back. Couldn’t concede. Couldn’t stop no matter what.