Page 57 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

Keeping the many reflections in their sights, Mal and Danny instinctively moved back to back. “If I turn on the cold field, you’re protected as long as you stay close to me,” Mal spoke beneath his breath. He could feel the heat from Danny’s body behind him.

“Wait. If we can find the real him, I can lightning jump to grab him,” Danny muttered back. But which reflection was the real one? Were any of them something they could catch?

“I’ll admit,” the sound came out of the mouths of their reflections—or at least out of Mal’s since Danny wore a mask—only…

only it wasn’t just Ludgate’s voice but theirs too, “it was a surprise to find out that the local superhero and the city’s most notorious criminal are engaged in an illicit affair. But it does make for a juicier story.”

The images rippled, changed, and suddenly Mal was looking at himself and Danny from a few minutes ago, moving footage of them embracing, kissing , and then of Danny lightning jumping away as only Zeus could.

“It’s a shame you’re not wearing your signature suit, Zeus, but I think the people will see the truth with the right evidence. Imagine the headline? ZEUS AND PROMETHEUS SEX SCANDAL LEADS NEW SUPERVILLAIN TO GLORY.”

“We disabled the cameras,” Mal whispered as he and Danny pivoted, shoulder blades nearly touching, watching the reflections for any signs that might tell them how to attack. “He must have turned them back on.”

“Or he can capture images in reflections.”

“Now, now, no fair keeping secrets,” Ludgate said as the puppet images of Mal and Danny returned. “You’ll find it’s hard to keep secrets from me anyway.” All at once, the images turned into copies of Danny alone. “Nice name, Zeus. Danny , is it?”

Shit . Careful as Mal had been after he realized Ludgate could be listening, it was already too late.

“You’re harder to track, of course, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the detective on my case is Daniel Grant, do you?

Operating right under the OCPD’s nose as a vigilante.

Of course they turn a blind eye to Zeus’s activities, but do you think they still will once they learn your real identity? And who you’ve been screwing ?”

Mal felt a gust of air behind him as Danny lightning jumped into action. “Wait!”

One of the reflections shattered as Danny appeared in front of it and punched it with everything he had. The pressure sensors were silent, but not the cases. Alarms blared to life, and a suit of armor inside the destroyed case toppled over and clanged to the floor.

Ludgate’s voice returned as a sinister laugh, still multiplied by the reflections but now his voice only, as his own image finally replaced Danny’s.

He had a costume. A silver cowl covered his face with a black outline for eyes, not that his identity was any secret, and black and purple accents framed a mostly silver bodysuit with a black and silver belt.

He was a showman, like Mal. He wanted the notoriety.

He wanted to be introduced to Olympus City with a bang.

Danny was panting again, shaking , when Mal reached out to pull him away from any reflective surfaces. “Keep it together,” Mal hissed but squeezed Danny’s arm in support, waiting for him to look at him before he nodded. Danny nodded back.

“The police more than suspect me,” Ludgate said, “but they can’t find me, and they never will.

This night will seal my place as the city’s ultimate threat.

” His many reflected images spread their arms wide, giving the impression that Mal and Danny were surrounded.

“You see, Zeus, I owe you, and that headline will look even better next to a photo of bodies .”

Owe him? Mal turned that over in his mind, but he didn’t get the time to dwell because all at once the reflections vanished.

Blinking light spots from his eyes after Ludgate’s display, he pressed his back to Danny’s as they turned.

The room was dark again. Only the alarms and the faint sound of police sirens could be heard.

But Mal knew how to gauge the distance of sirens.

Even if the cops could be of any help to them, they wouldn’t get there in time.

“Danny, get ready to jump. You can—”

“ No , we can catch him.”

“ Danny .” Mal risked a glare over his shoulder, but Danny wouldn’t look at him.

“There!” Danny called and lightning jumped toward another case.

“Stop!” Mal saw an image of Ludgate within, but it ran away when Danny reached it, like an awful game of tag. Danny only just barely stopped himself from slamming into the glass. When he whirled around, Mal realized what was about to happen seconds before it did. “Danny—”

An arm reached out of the glass behind Danny and hooked around his throat, trapping him against it in a tight choke hold. Mal didn’t hesitate; he blasted the arm with ice, even if some of it ricocheted onto Danny.

“Ah!” Ludgate’s voice cried out as his arm recoiled.

As soon as Danny lightning jumped back to Mal’s side, he made a point of grabbing the idiot by the back of his neck. “Stop fighting blind,” Mal warned. “Be smarter. Or I’ll blast you again myself. Now get us out of here!”

“And leave him to show up again—when? Where?” Danny shot back, shoving Mal’s arm aside. “The next time we’re with everyone we know? Everyone we care about? We have no idea the extent of his powers. Right now it’s just you and me. And we can end this.”

“End this?” Danny sounded like he was ready to—

“More lovers’ quarrelling?” Ludgate called to them, prompting Mal to spin Danny around and position them back to back again. “Don’t make this too easy on me now.”

“First sense you’ve made all night!” Mal yelled, then spoke hushed to Danny, “You don’t wanna run, fine, but if you got any bright ideas, now’s the time.”

“That trick with your amplifier,” Danny whispered.

“The cold field?”

“Turn it on. He’ll reach for us again, he’ll have to. When he does, it’ll slow him down.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll turn on the suit to go invisible and jump over to grab him. You turn the field off before it affects me.”

It wasn’t perfect, and their timing had to be exact, but Mal wasn’t coming up with any better ideas.

Flipping on the switch for the cold field, he expanded it to fill the room.

“It’s up. Keep my pace,” he said, turning them one step at a time, shoulders touching again, like some morbid, backwards dance, “and warn me before you do anything stupid.”

“Okay. Let’s give him some bait. Ludgate!

” Danny reached a hand back to place on Mal’s hip, startling him.

He tugged Mal backward, pivoting but also bringing them closer to one of the panes of glass.

“I thought you said something about a name when we first met! You have many names, as it turns out, right… Cassius ? So who are you, huh? I hope your villain title is better than…Reflector or…Fun House!”

Mal held back a snort; the kid really needed to work on his banter sometimes.

“Oh, you’ll remember my true name, Zeus. For as long as you have left to live.” Ludgate’s voice was everywhere again, but definitely loudest coming from the glass in front of Danny. “My name…is Hades .”

“Now!” Danny cried just as Ludgate yelped in surprise at encountering the cold field.

Dropping the field, Mal spun, only to see Ludgate’s frost-covered wrist struggling to pull back into the glass against an invisible force.

Danny should be stronger than that, he was stronger than almost anyone Mal had ever met, but not in whatever world Ludgate controlled inside the reflections.

Mal couldn’t blast him; if he did, Ludgate would just retreat again.

Ludgate’s hand remained silver, clearly his own, but the rest of him shifted until the image in the glass was Danny.

The mirror copy used its free hand to pull the mask from its face, and it was Danny’s face, plain as day.

But the expression was wrong, the sneer there, the fury.

Then its eyes sparked with familiar lightning, only it wasn’t yellow.

It was black.

Mal felt Danny tumble into him, knocking them both to the floor as Ludgate’s arm snapped back inside the mirror.

Hurrying to right himself, Mal felt around for Danny’s invisible form to get him to his feet as well.

But as soon as he had his footing, he saw the reflection of Danny in the glass vanish—and felt a hand grip his ankle.

The hand yanked, and Mal’s foot flew out from under him.

This time when he fell, he slammed his head into the side of one of the cases.

His cuff unlatched as it struck the floor and went flying off of his wrist. Somehow the switch for the cold field was flipped on, because the chill was instant and far too numbing, even with Mal’s natural resistance.

He pushed up, blinking the haze from his vision, but he couldn’t see properly, could barely move, as he struggled to focus on where his amplifier lay on the floor.

Only distantly did he notice another set of Ludgate’s hands reach out of a mirror near the first case Danny had shattered and pick up a shard. The hands disappeared back inside as Mal hurried forward to reach his cuff.

Sitting where he’d tumbled to the floor, Danny was visible again, staring at his hands, not moving.

“Danny!”

They were both already covered in frost, and Danny was too close to another pane of glass. The shard reached out of it in Ludgate’s grasp. He hissed as the cold field affected him too, but he was still close enough to stab Danny.

Reaching for his cuff, soothed by the instant feeling of warmth within the eye of the field, Mal rolled onto his back. He simultaneously replaced the amplifier on his wrist and turned the cold field off while blasting Ludgate with his powers, not caring that he was still seeing double.

He missed Ludgate’s arm but hit the pane of glass—it shattered. Mal wanted to see the bastard’s arm drop to the floor, severed by the disconnection, but he pulled it back just in time.