BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

59.

AFTER CHANGING, which takes absolutely forever because what the fuck are you supposed to wear to meet Hercules, Perfect Jason summoned the wind to carry him, Kaleidoscope, and Eden ashore.

The man in purple was waiting for them.

Eden had heard tons of stories about Hercules. She'd seen several cheesy movies and cartoons with Connor. Before today, if she had thought about him at all, she'd just roll her eyes and imagine some stupid hairy dude in his thirties with a barrel chest and a gross hippie beard, with a lion skin over his head and a big club, like a caveman. She imagined he would smell bad, belch, and scratch himself a lot, and speak mostly in grunts. And be blond. Very. Blond.

She was not expecting this.

His feet were bare, covered in white sand. His robes made him look like a priest, and so did his beard, honestly, which kinda looked bad. But also, Eden wasn't attracted to men, so.

He was well built, but not too stocky. His ebony hair was close-cropped, Roman style. He had startling blue eyes like Perfect Jason's, but his skin was coppery, as if he'd spent his entire life on a tanning bed. The most surprising thing: he looked about twenty. Definitely no older. He was handsome in a rugged but not-at-all-caveman way.

He did in fact have a club, which lay in the sand next to him, but it was more like an oversized baseball bat — a five-foot-long polished cylinder of mahogany with a leather handgrip studded in bronze. Coach Hedge would have been jealous.

Eden, Perfect Jason, and Piper landed at the edge of the surf. They approached slowly, careful not to make any threatening moves. Hercules watched them with no particular emotion, as if they were some form of seabird he had never noticed before.

"Hello," Piper said.

"What's up?" Hercules said. His voice was deep but casual, very modern. He could've been greeting them in the high school locker room.

"Uh, not much." Piper winced. "Well, actually, a lot. I'm Piper. That's Eden. This is Jason. We—"

"Where's your lion skin?" Perfect Jason interrupted.

Eden wanted to elbow him, but Hercules looked more amused than annoyed.

"It's ninety degrees out here," he said. "Why would I wear my lion skin? Do you wear a fur coat to the beach?"

"I guess that makes sense." Perfect Jason sounded disappointed. "It's just that the pictures always show you with a lion skin."

Hercules glared at the sky accusingly, like he wanted to have words with his father, Zeus. Eden related. "Don't believe everything you hear about me. Being famous isn't as fun as you might think."

"Tell me about it," Piper sighed.

Hercules fixed his eyes on her. "Are you famous?"

"My dad . . . he's in the movies."

Hercules snarled. "Don't get me started with the movies. Gods of Olympus, they never get anything right. Have you seen one movie about me where I look like me?"

Piper nodded, gripping onto Eden's arm, which made her happy. "I'm surprised you're so young."

"Ha! Being immortal helps. But, yes, I wasn't so old when I died. Not by modern standards. I did a lot during my years as a hero . . . too much, really." His eyes drifted to Perfect Jason. "Son of Zeus, eh?"

"Jupiter," Jason said.

"Not much difference," Hercules grumbled. "Dad's annoying in either form. Me? I was called Heracles. Then the Romans came along and named me Hercules. I didn't really change that much, though lately just thinking about it gives me splitting headaches . . ."