“Working,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“Selene.” He waited until she looked up at him. “Why are you here?”
She set the mug down and then looked down at her fingers. When she was scared, she fidgeted like she was doing now. Setting his own mug down, he took her hands. She tensed. She always had when he touched her. Then, when he didn’t scream or freak out, and his eyes didn’t turn a milky white, he felt her relax.
“You’re worried. What did you see tonight about the moon?” he asked. Over the years, he’d learned to roll with the weirdness that came with her.
She took a deep breath. “The end is coming, Scott. It’s closer than it’s ever been.” Her eyes met his and he could see she was telling the truth. “My parents…”
“Typhon, the father of monsters, and Rhea, the mother of gods.” He’d done his homework after she’d told him about her first run-in with the deities. He still wasn’t sure he believed her that they were her parents. Sure, she had superpowers, but gods as parents? For some reason, his mind just couldn’t wrap around that part.
“Yes,” she sighed and leaned back on his sofa.
“And… you just happened to be in Atlanta tonight to see whatever you saw the moon do?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “I flew here.”
He tensed. “We talked about this,” he warned.
“I know.” She sat up again. “I was careful. I swear.”
“Selene, one grainy picture of a woman outside an airplane is all it takes.” He remembered the time she’d almost hit a jetliner. After that, they’d agreed that flying would be limited to short-distance emergency trips and only after confirming no one was looking.
“I know.” She walked over to look out his window. Then she jerked back around to him. “The moon was falling.”
He frowned. “Falling?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked more scared than he’d seen her before. “Yes, it was… massive. It was heading directly towards me. I… felt its power growing in me. It was…” Her eyes closed.
He walked over to her and held onto her. They hadn’t left on best of terms last time. She’d been angry at him for one stupid thing or another. Probably something he’d done. He was always pushing her away. Pissing her off.
It was a self-defense move he had when it came to her. If he didn’t push her away, he’d try to kiss her again and, after that night on her sixteenth birthday, he couldn’t chance it. Not if it meant being rejected by her again. Not if it meant losing her.
“Scott, it’s all going to end soon. Everything. Not just this world, but any other out there,” she said against his chest.
“Do you really think there are other worlds?” he asked.
She leaned back and looked into his eyes. “Yes.”
Her deep hazel eyes drew him in. They always had. Everything he’d felt for her wanted to burst out of his chest every time she looked at him. Instead, he dropped his hands to his side and took a step back. “Selene, you’d better stay here for the night. At least until it stops raining.”
He’d been an idiot back then, and he’d been one a few days ago when he’d let her walk out of his office and his life once more.
He had done a lot of research on the town she’d mentioned, Hidden Creek. It was less than a hundred miles from Atlanta. In the middle of nowhere. Yet, somehow, the small town had been all over the news in the past few years. Everything from cults, murders, to the suspected supernatural.
Which made his worry for Selene triple.
Selene wasn’t responding to his texts, so he was going to tie up some loose ends at work and head down there himself. He’d worked a double shift trying to close out his latest accounts.
He had just let himself into his studio apartment when he felt his entire body tingle.
Then, before he could react or respond, he was somewhere else.
Instead of being just inside his apartment door, he stood in a silo, the kind he’d seen on a few old movies. Only this one didn’t have a massive missile inside. There was a group of strangers standing around him in a circle, all looking at him as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he’d just… appeared out of thin air. There was another man in the middle of the circle, looking just as confused and slightly pissed as well.
Then he glanced upward and saw Selene and a blonde woman floating high above them, unconscious.
“What the hell?” he asked, just before everything went black.