I nodded stiffly, but my eyes were busy scanning the room for likely weapons or tools. From the corner of my eye, I saw Morales execute a curt nod. But I had a feeling that, like me, he didn’t plan on giving the asshole a chance to get a shot off when he struck.
“Rise,” the psycho demanded. The gun’s unblinking eye moved back and forth between us. “Slowly.”
I rose unsteadily. This part was not faked. Between the seasickness and the aftereffects of the knockout potion, I felt watery. Morales reached over as if to help me.
“Ah ah ah,” Dionysus said. “Hands to yourself.”
Morales glared at him and rose to his full height. Dionysus didn’t look impressed by the display, but then he was the one with the gun and the complete lack of moral compass.
Dionysus flicked the gun toward the room’s only exit—the stairs leading up to the deck. Morales moved first. I guessed this was some noble move on his part to be the one who faced whatever was waiting up there first. I didn’t argue. As it happened it worked well for my plans.
I took a couple of uneasy steps in my partner’s wake. But just as I started to pass the galley, I feigned a stumble. I sprawled sideways into the low, laminate counter.
A flurry of activity erupted behind me. Morales shouting my name. Dionysus telling him to stand back. Rough hands on my shoulders, forcing me upright.
“Watch yourself, bitch,” Dionysus snapped.
“Sorry,” I said breathlessly. “I got dizzy.”
He grabbed my arm and pushed me roughly forward. I stumbled a couple of steps, hunched over as if defeated. But really this just gave me a chance to shove the corkscrew I’d nabbed when I fell into my pocket. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to get the rope off my wrists without Dionysus seeing, but having something pointy made me feel light-years better.
We made it up the steps without further incident. But the instant Morales stepped out, he cursed. Not a good sign.
I stepped out behind him and let out a curse that made his seem like saying grace.
It had been a while since I’d seen her without her makeup, but I recognized the priestess the instant I laid my eyes on her.
“What the fuck, Shayla?” I snapped.
She stood at the back of the boat, just beyond the awning covering the wheelhouse. She used both hands to hang on to a Glock .22, as if she expected it to jump out of her grasp at any moment. The tight jeans, stilettos, and bright red boob top seemed a tad much for boating, but who was I to judge a whore’s fashion sense?
“Surprise,” she said with a serpentine grin. When Dionysus stepped up to join her, Shayla’s posture transformed into the practiced movements of a professional seductress. She slowly swiveled her aim toward me. “Let’s kill them and go have some fun,” she said, her tone kittenish now.
“Two people are definitely dying tonight, sweetheart,” Morales said, “but Kate isn’t one of them.”
Dionysus kissed her forehead. “We’ll get to that, but first we need to have our pre-party.”
Her face fell into a pouty moue. “All right.”
“You framed Aphrodite,” I said, as my mind played catch-up. We’d originally thought Dionysus worked alone, but if Shayla helped—
“She made it easy. She was dumb enough to keep a file on the mayor with pictures in case she needed to blackmail him. I stole them and showed up at the mayor’s apartment one night with a bottle of my master’s wine. The rest was easy.”
“So you started working for Dionysus after the robbery?” Morales asked.
“Ha!” the priestess mocked. “Who do you think left open the window in Aphrodite’s lab?”
The pieces clicked together. Dionysus had gotten to Shayla before he attacked the temple—just as he’d gotten to Little Man and Mary. I clearly hadn’t given her enough credit if she’d managed to fool Aphrodite and the MEA about involvement in the robbery.
“You should have followed your mom into the business,” Shayla said. “You can’t possibly suck in the sack more than you do at police work.”
I pressed my lips together in a bitch-please expression. “I wouldn’t imagine trying when you got the market on sucking dick cornered.”
“No, that was your mama.”
Another door opened by accident. Mom on her knees. Pulling back in surprise. A line of drool from the tip of a white penis to her too-red lips.
My hands tightened into a fist. “Watch your mouth.”
“You should ask your uncle.”
“Ask him what?”
“How good your mama sucked dick.”
A red haze propelled me forward. All thoughts of cool heads and strategy dissipated under the heat of my anger. But before I could launch myself at the bitch, a male fist plowed into my gut.
The air whooshed from my lungs. Pain radiated from my navel in concentric circles of agony. I fell to the deck in a heap. Preoccupied with the fire in my belly, I curled into a ball.
Rough hands grabbed my chin and suddenly I was forced to look into Dionysus’s fevered eyes. Something glowed in their depths—excitement? “Do you want your partner to die?” he asked in a reasonable tone.
I swallowed the curdled pride in my throat and managed a stiff head shake.
He patted my cheek. “If you do anything like that again, I will put a bullet in his skull and then fuck that hole while the bomb destroys your precious city. Am I clear?”
The mental image he painted made me want to scrub my brain with bleach. “Yes,” I said in a gravelly tone.
He jerked me off the ground. “Chair,” he snapped at Shayla. “Put the other one there.”
I was still too foggy from pain to track their movements, but before I knew it, I was forced to sit in a deck chair. Directly across from me, Morales received the same treatment.
Dionysus placed his hands on my shoulders. His fingers massaged the tense muscles, which only served to make them contract until it felt like he was kneading rocks under the skin. “Now,” he said, close to my ear, “we’re going to play a game.”
Across the way, a grinning Shayla produced a syringe with a long, gleaming needle. Inside the syringe’s barrel was iridescent green liquid. Movement behind me indicated that Dionysus was mirroring her. I jerked my neck away from him, but it was too late.
The sting of metal through the skin, the burn of magic seeping into tissue. My heart skipped and then took off galloping like a spooked horse.
On some level I was aware of Morales fighting a similar battle not six feet from me, but I was too busy gulping in air and willing my heart not to burst to pay it much mind. Magic sizzled through my neck and down into my chest. Sweat bloomed on my forehead, and my vision went all hazy.