Page 44 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

“ Yes ,” Thanatos laughed louder as Danny crackled and glowed with his power, summoning all of the lightning that had diminished before. “Isn’t the darkness beautiful, Zeus? Can you see it now? The power that Death brings out in all of us!”

Howling once more, Danny’s vision turned gold from the sparks flowing through him. Thanatos’s shadows tried to beat his lightning back, to subdue it like so many times before, but for every inch the darkness overtook, the brightness of Danny’s lightning lashed back with a vengeance.

It was so bright in the darkness with half the city powerless, Danny could only see Thanatos’s silhouette. He kept pulsing brighter, brighter , until his lightning exploded out of him with a blast much louder than the power station explosion.

Gasping for breath, Danny rolled across the pavement in the aftermath, but he didn’t pause; he lurched to his feet and lightning jumped to where Thanatos had been thrown the other direction.

The Dark Elemental’s shadows had dwindled but still churned around him like mist. Danny didn’t care.

He fell upon Thanatos and yanked him up by the front of his suit.

The man laughed at Danny again—always laughing —but Danny’s adrenaline was too high, his anger spiked, his mind empty of anything other than rage.

Lightning pulsed from his hands into Thanatos’s chest, and the Elemental in black seized with a jolt as if he’d been shocked with a defibrillator. He struggled for air, but it only made him laugh harder.

“Shut up !” Danny screamed and shocked him again.

His lightning circulated through Thanatos like a Tesla coil going haywire, funneling into him over and over.

He’d never discharged so much power before, and never into a person.

He hadn’t dared, always afraid he’d hurt someone if he let so much of himself go.

Now, hurting Thanatos was all that mattered.

As the minutes passed, the man’s laughter slowly died and screams took its place instead. Danny liked those screams. He thrived off of them; they spurred him on to shock Thanatos again. Again .

He didn’t realize the police had arrived and that Andre and Lynn were the ones screaming now until the smell hit him. Thanatos was long silent, still and limp in Danny’s hold. There were no more shadows, just the smoke rising off of Thanatos’s suit from how he was…cooking.

As Danny realized what had happened, he tasted bile in his throat, but when he turned to throw up, he could see officers headed his way, guns drawn, with his father among them, and he couldn’t let them see this.

He couldn’t let his father see what he’d done after failing to save his mother.

With Thanatos’s charred suit still clutched in Danny’s fingers, he lightning jumped to the morgue.

Lynn’s scream was much louder in person, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as Danny appeared in the middle of the main room with an electrocuted corpse in his lap. Andre threw up before Danny did. Lynn was used to bodies, but her expression… Danny couldn’t look at it.

He had to tear his mask off so he could breathe, and only then did he realize how much he was sobbing and retching and oh god, what had he done?

The only thing he managed to say, the only thing he could say was, “I couldn’t stop.”

?

Mal stared. He hadn’t known. People had speculated that Thanatos was dead, but there had never been any confirmation. There had never been any recorded deaths at Zeus’s hands.

“You…”

“I killed him,” Danny said again. He’d looked far away after saying it the first time, like he was remembering the details of that night. “He didn’t leave. I didn’t run him out of the city. I killed him.”

Finally, Danny looked at Mal, though he had to see a giant blur for all the wetness in his eyes. Mal’s hands were motionless but remained steady on Danny’s skin.

“ZEUS KILLS SUPERVILLAIN doesn’t make a very good headline,” Danny said numbly. “Nobody outside my family or the team knows. We had to clean up the body afterward.”

Mal shivered as a chill ran through him, and that never happened to him.

“He’d killed so many people, and he just kept laughing about it.

When I got the upper hand, I put everything I had into that lightning, and finally…

finally he stopped. But it wasn’t enough.

I kept shocking him, over and over, electrocuting him until the air smelled like…

” Danny’s nose wrinkled as if catching a whiff of that smell now.

“He stopped laughing. Stopped screaming. Just laid there smoking . We couldn’t even pull his mask off later, it was so fused to his skin.

We still don’t know who he really was. But the worst part? ”

Fresh tears pooled liberally as Danny’s gaze turned distant again. “Sometimes I don’t even care that I killed him. Sometimes I don’t feel anything. And then, when I think I’m okay, I’ll dream about that smell and the way Lynn and Andre looked at me…

“I’m supposed to be better than this, better than…” He sniffled pitifully. “I’ve never killed in the line of duty, but even if I had, this wasn’t like that. Now, I’m afraid I’ll lose it again and kill somebody else, and my friends keep trying to help but nothing helps .”

“Nothing?” Mal asked, squeezing Danny’s ankle until he looked at him.

What was he thinking, psychoanalyzing, trying to make Danny feel better because he couldn’t stand to see the kid in pain? It left him too open, his own mask falling away by telling Danny he preferred him without one.

He was risking too much, but he couldn’t leave Danny a whimpering mess.

Danny was better than this, better than him, better than what he thought of himself.

Danny wanted to make a real difference, save lives, be a hero.

People weren’t like that. Didn’t he understand how rare and precious he was in a world filled with monsters like Thanatos?

Danny had been a light for this city when it was plagued by darkness, and outside of his suit he offered a rare softness to Mal’s life too.

That’s why Mal had anticipated snuggling last night, but Danny had proven to be the opposite of his expectations and curled into a ball on his side of the bed like he was trying to hide from the world. Now Mal knew why.

And it was all his fault.

No . Mal couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t give Danny that kind of power over him. But he couldn’t deny how much he wanted to say he was sorry for not being there like he promised.

“Danny…the reason I—”

“Shut up, Cho. Come here.”

Reaching for him, Danny tangled his fingers in the fabric of Mal’s zip-up and tugged downward to get him to obey. Mal wanted nothing more than to listen if that’s what Danny needed. After everything, he could offer that much.

Shifting on the sofa, Mal crawled up and over Danny’s legs to settle in his lap. He dipped down as Danny pulled him closer, descending slowly until their lips brushed. Danny tasted like cinnamon.

“I didn’t know,” Mal said, breathing the words against Danny’s lips. “But I do know Thanatos isn’t worth your grief.”

Danny grimaced, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” and tried to recapture Mal’s lips.

“Danny—”

“I can’t talk about it.” His tears were drying, but there was something dark in his eyes.

“I can’t talk to my dad because he just smiles and pretends it’s okay when he knows it’s not.

I can’t talk to my sister because she always gives me this ‘poor Danny’ look like I’m pitiful, and I am.

My foster brother thinks I’m either crazy or a flake.

And Lynn and Andre…” He shook his head, mouth curling into a sneer. “I’m just their damaged superhero.”

Mal’s eyes felt strangely hot as he slid his hands to Danny’s face.

“Those are a lotta words you’re putting in people’s mouths, Sparky.

Don’t they deserve to think for themselves?

You’re so sure you’re the bad guy in this story, but if you weren’t paying attention,” he grinned, “that role is already taken.”

Danny broke into a short, bitter laugh.

“Besides, your friends keep trying to help. People don’t go out of their way to help someone who doesn’t deserve it. Well, maybe you do. But normal people? We’re selfish. If all your friends see you as more than you see yourself, then maybe they’re not the blind ones.”

For a moment, Danny seemed to look right through Mal. “What if someday I snap and do something I’ll regret?”

Mal smirked to lighten the mood. “You saying I should be careful if we cross paths in the near future?”

“You mean for your heist ?” Danny called him on his bullshit, not that Mal was about to admit anything. “As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you’re safe.”

“A deal’s a deal.”

“Until it stops suiting you, right, Cho?”

“For now, I have no intention of hurting anyone. And it’s Mal .”

Danny chuckled, and whatever tension remained eased into something else. He squeezed Mal’s sweatpants-covered ass, which was far too much of a tease on a Tuesday morning quickly nearing 8AM.

“Mal…” he purred.

“Time for work, Sparky.”

?

Work, damn it. Danny had almost forgotten.

A morning romp would have done wonders to rid him of the lingering ache in his chest. But even without one, the twist in his stomach, the ease with which his tears had formed, seemed distant now, like all he’d needed was to let some of the pain out, and for once it hadn’t immediately nudged its way back in.

Logically, Danny knew that talking things out would help, but he hadn’t wanted that with anyone else.

With Cho, it didn’t matter how the man looked at him afterwards.

Cho was bad to begin with. Why would he care if Danny was headed down a dark path?

If he’d killed someone? He probably welcomed it and hoped for a team up having Danny carry out his thefts.

Only Cho would never want that. Having Danny’s powers in his pocket would spoil the challenge.

At least Danny hadn’t confessed the entire story.

Cho still didn’t know that Danny’s mother had been the intended target that night, that she’d died with all the others.

Danny had to be careful or he’d give away every secret he had without putting up a single fight.

While Danny was up in his head, Cho climbed off of him. If he hadn’t been distracted, he would have clung to the other man a little longer.

“Danny…” Cho chided.

The long game , Danny thought as he accepted the hand Cho held out to help him from the sofa.

Cho couldn’t have any fun with a blubbering mess, so of course he’d want to cheer Danny up.

It didn’t mean anything. It just felt nice that Cho didn’t pry the way the others did.

He’d never look down on Danny. He was a liar, a criminal, a scoundrel—he was the reason Danny had been forced into that position with Thanatos to begin with—but while the rest of his life felt like an open wound, somehow Cho was a balm.

Danny made a show of changing out of Cho’s clothes and into his Zeus costume right there in the living room. Leaving the sleep pants and T-shirt folded on the sofa, he started to put on his boots at the door.

“Interesting choice of work clothes.” Cho crossed his arms with an amused eyebrow raise.

“I’ll change when I get there. And next time I’ll call. Or text. Promise. Thanks for breakfast.” Danny made to walk toward Cho off the rug, then gave an abortive gesture like oops, stuck now with my boots on.

Cho rolled his eyes, but he still moved closer to accept the kiss Danny pulled him into. And let linger. And linger ... Maybe a little longer than necessary.

“Have a nice day at work, dear,” Cho said, sickly sweet in his familiar drawl.

Danny found himself smiling—and meaning it.

Cho was a bad man. He was. He… he was . But he made things lighter. And easier. And even though Danny knew that soon he’d have to end this or risk getting in too deep, for now he could enjoy the lie for just a little longer.

?

He deserves this , Zeus had said. Interesting.

Prometheus should have been there the night Zeus murdered Thanatos. But he wasn’t. Zeus resented him for it, that was clear, yet they’d still ended up in bed together. This affair had more layers than Hades realized. Zeus was planning something of his own.

For now, Hades filed the information away for later. The city’s hero and his nemesis were making this far too easy.