“I think you will try to stop me,” I corrected helpfully. “Look, what do you want me to say, Aiden? What would you do if Hyperion had gotten hold of Alex and did those things to her?”
His lips thinned.
“I know what you wanted to do to Ares. I know what you wanted to do to me,” I pointed out. Aiden looked away. “I’m not completely irresponsible, contrary to popular belief. If there is a way to entomb those Titans without putting Josie in harm’s way, I’m all for it, but I will not let Hyperion live. There is no convincing me otherwise. So if you have a problem with that, then you should probably sit this one out, because if I come face to face with him, he’s a dead motherfucker.”
A moment passed and Aiden said, “That I can understand.” His gaze lifted to the ceiling. “Hyperion is the god of heavenly light—one of the pillars of earth. The east, I believe. Not sure what taking him out would do.”
Whatever his death caused was worth it to ensure that Josie never had to live in fear of his return. Cronus was also on my to-kill list, but I wasn’t sharing that at this moment.
Aiden drew in a shallow breath. “I don’t agree with you nine out of ten times, but this . . . this thing with Hyperion, I understand. If I’d had a chance to kill Ares, I would’ve taken it.”
My gaze met his. “And if you’d had a chance to kill me, you would’ve taken it.”
“Yes. Yes, I would’ve.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.” I clapped a hand down on Aiden’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t wait for Aiden’s response, taking us to the location where the Sentinel Aiden had been in contact with had told us to meet. Within seconds, we were in the sticky, murky air of Houston.
“Gods!” a deep male voice boomed in shock from behind us.
Turning around, I smiled as I eyed the group of Sentinels. “Yes?”
The Sentinel in the middle, the one who had spoken, took a step back. His eyes were wide as the sun glistened off his deep brown skin. The other three Sentinels looked like they were close to passing out.
Aiden moved to stand beside me. “Torin?”
He nodded. “You warned me that he . . . he was a god, but I just wasn’t prepared for that.” The half glanced in my direction. “You’re really a god.”
My smile kicked up a notch.
One of the Sentinels behind him blanched.
Aiden sighed. “Yes, he’s really a god. And yes, he can do all the cool god things, but we really have limited time. So, if we can get the shock and awe out of the way, that would be great.”
I slid Aiden a long look. “Well, that takes the fun out of everything.”
He ignored me. “What do you have for us, Torin?”
Torin appeared to snap out of his shock as he ran a hand over his closely cropped dark hair. “As you know, we have had quite a lot of pures go missing recently, but we’ve had few daimon attacks.”
“We’ve actually barely seen any daimons,” another Sentinel spoke up, a younger brunette who barely looked old enough to be out of the Covenant. “So that right there was suspicious.”
“We have mandatory escorts in place when the pures leave the communities. It was on a recent shopping trip that we learned we were dealing with shades. They’d possessed several mortals that attacked one of our groups,” Torin explained, resting one hand on the handle of a dagger. “There was only one survivor. They confirmed what happened.”
“So why are we on this roof in the baking sun of Houston?” I asked.
The female Sentinel strolled forward, walking past us to the cement edge of the roof. She easily hopped up. “See the office building three blocks down? The tall one with the pyramid-shaped roof?”
“Yes.” Aiden followed, squinting.
“As we told you, we’ve been tracking what we believe to be the shades. Other than their . . . smell, it’s not easy identifying them if they want to blend in,” she said, turning to the building. “We’re pretty positive that’s where they’ve been holing up.”
“Is it an active office building?” Aiden asked, and of course, he sounded concerned. “Are there mortals working in there?”
“Yes.” Torin joined the female. “That’s why we’ve been holding off. Looks like the upper two floors are actually penthouse-type rooms. The rest is office space. They’re in this building, surrounded by what appears to be mortals who aren’t possessed and probably have no idea what is going on.”
“Plus, those mortals those shades are riding are innocent,” the girl tacked on. “If they haven’t hurt those bodies, the mortals can be saved if we can get the shades out of them.”