“It's not as impressive as it sounds.” I shrugged. “I killed Aphrodite and took her magic so I got to take her place on the council.”
“You did what?!”
“She had me chained to a wall and was beating me to death. Well, whipping me to death. I did what I had to do.”
“Oh, sure. As one does.” Austin rolled his eyes. “Just kill the Goddess of Love.”
“Why does everyone get hung up on Aphrodite?” I grumbled. “Even Mr. Texas Christian over here.”
“Well, there's that painting.” Austin grinned and waggled his brows.
I gave him the look that statement deserved.
“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Azrael declared.
“No, I think it's called Venus de Milo or Venus on the half shell or something like that,” I said.
“It's called the Birth of Venus. How do you not know that, Carus? You're an artist.”
“Just because I'm an artist, it doesn't mean that I know the title of every painting,” I said in the same way that I'd replied to Trevor about the Greek myths. “You're the collector; that's your job.”
“Fair enough.” Azrael chuckled. “But I wasn't talking about that painting, I was answering Trevor. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is about leaving the Greek Underworld and not looking back. Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, died but Orpheus convinced Hades to allow Eurydice to leave the Underworld. Hades put one condition on her leaving: Orpheus couldn't look back. He had to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld without checking to see if she was following. He had to have faith in her and trust Hades to let her go. They were just a few steps away from freedom when Orpheus began to have his doubts and looked back. Eurydice was whisked back to Hades.”
“Right. That's the one!” Trevor exclaimed.
“Of course, that isn't true either—” Azrael started to say.
“Not today, Son of Satan!” Austin sat up and smacked the table. “I will not allow you to ruin another story for me. I already know they're not real, you don't have to rub a pillar of salt in my wound and tell me the ugly truth. Keep it to ya damn self.”
“I thought you like knowing the truth?” Azrael asked in surprise.
“I'm plumb full of truth; that's enough for one day,” Austin declared. “A single kernel more and I'll be fallin' over from it.”
“You sound like you could use a good night's sleep,” I said gently.
“If it were night here, sure.” Austin chuckled. “But I'll settle for a good day's sleep.”
“We'll find you a room,” I offered. “When you get up tonight, we can call in the Squad and discuss our next move.”
“I need to go back to Earth later,” Austin said, then blinked. “Now, there's a sentence I never 'spected to say. Anyway, I work in the mornin'. Which I guess will be the evenin' here.”
“We're on African time—Rwandan, to be exact,” Azrael said. “It's about 7 hours ahead of Texas.”
“It's a good thing I brought my cellphone then, wat'nit?” He pulled out his phone and tapped at it. “I have it set to Texas time and it has my alarm scheduled.” He frowned at his phone suddenly, then looked up at me. “How do cellphones catch service if we're in another realm?”
“As I told you before, service is sketchy for phone calls, that's why we do texts,” I explained. “But we have Internet service because of Torrent, I think I told you about that too. Torrent's the Internet God, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Austin shook his head as if to clear it. “Like I said, I'm plumb full. So full that information is startin' to leak out of my ears. I need to hit the hay.”
“I'll find him a room,” Kirill offered.
“Thanks, honey.” I lifted my head for a kiss from Kirill as he passed by. To the sleepy cowboy, I added, “Goodnight, Austin. Sleep tight, don't let the god bugs bite.”
“God bugs?!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
My husbands gave Viper and me some time alone after breakfast, which was more like dinner. Even though I was tired, I decided to stay up; I wanted to spend some time with my children before I had to check on Texas again. But first, I needed to reconnect with Viper and before I did that, I wanted a shower.
