I hurried my steps, wanting the warmth, but wanting to get to Zeus more. How I was going to convince him, I had no idea, but I was going to convince him. One way or another.

“There is no try. There is do or do not,” I whispered to myself, warming to the words. Yoda had it right. There was no try; I could do this. I was going to do this.

I wove my way through a thicket of frozen brambles and trees, and stepped out into a clearing where a cabin stood. Okay, “cabin” might have been an understatement. The structure was two stories high, and from what I could see it was probably five thousand square feet on each floor, and that was being conservative. I shook my head. “Hardly a hideout, Zeus.”

There was a grunt to my right, and I spun away out of sheer instinct as a spear slid right through where I’d been standing. A Bull Boy stared back at me, his eyes slowly widening as recognition settled in. I’d faced his kind when I’d first been turned into a Drakaina. Half man, half bull, they’d been Achilles’s thugs and a major pain in the patoot.

“Don’t kill me!” He threw his hands over his head and went to his furred knees.

At least he wasn’t going to try to fight me. “What are you doing here? Helping Zeus?” I asked.

“He gave me a job. I needed one after Achilles went down.” He shook where he kneeled. “You aren’t going to kill me?”

“Not unless you give me reason to,” I snapped, using my best kick-the-kids’-butts-into-eating-veggies Yaya voice. “I need to speak with Zeus.”

“He’s not going to like that you’re here,” Bull Boy muttered.

I put my hands on my hips and stared down at him. “I don’t care. Take me to him.”

He got off his knees and stumbled away from me for the first few steps. His wide eyes kept flicking back to me, as if he expected me to shift into my snake form and eat him right there. “I was at the stadium,” he said. Well, that made the weird looks make sense. The stadium had been the place of my showdown with Achilles, and the Bull Boys there had taken a pretty good beating. Mind you, I had too. But I’d put Achilles out of commission in front of everyone. Something that no monster had ever done before.

I hunched my shoulders. “I hate fighting.”

He blinked several times. “Me too. It’s why I held back. You’re good at it, though. You have a good instinct. I don’t. As you can maybe tell.” He laughed, the pitch high and wobbly. He swallowed the last of his laughter down in a large gulp.

I followed him through the open area and up onto the front porch of the cabin mansion. I thanked him and then waved him away. I could do this part on my own at least. I thought about knocking on the door. No, not this time; I needed Zeus to see me as strong, as strong enough to give me some credit. I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted it hard. It wasn’t even locked. I shook my head and stepped in.

“Well, we were wondering when you were going to get here,” Zeus called out, and I blinked at the oversized bed that dominated the main entrance of the house. There were limbs in every direction, and lots of skin. Lots and lots of skin. Oh my Lord in heaven. I’d walked in on an orgy.

I stilled my squeamish side, tried to soothe the fire burning in my cheeks. I cleared my throat. “I highly doubt that you were waiting on me, Zeus.”

His head jerked up out of the pile of bodies, his eyes as wide as the Bull Boy’s had been. “Drakaina? What are you doing here?”

How was I going to play this? How was I going to convince him that he had to help? His ego was the size of the entire world . . . the world . . . The thoughts rumbled around, bouncing in my skull like tiny Ping-Pong balls as they fought to show me the idea. And there it was. The way to convince him.

I put my hands on my hips. “I’m here to . . . to kick your ass into gear. The world needs you, Zeus. The world. Not me. Not Hera, not Seattle. The world.”

Zeus stared at me, then frowned, his brows creasing. “How did you find me?”

“I was told you’d head for the hills. Panacea said you always go north.” I didn’t want to implicate poor Hermes in this if I didn’t have to, but Panacea could take care of herself. I hoped. Surprising me, the messenger floated to my shoulder.

“I brought her. She’s right, boss. The world needs you. Not like this, humping anything that moves and managing the Blue Box Store. We need the Zeus that defeated the Titans to show back up and kick ass,” Hermes said.

I wanted to hug him for standing up with me. I had a feeling his words as a neutral party held more weight than Ernie’s would have if he’d been with me. Zeus shoved a few bodies off him and stood up. His potbelly was gone, and I didn’t look lower than that. It took an effort not to blush, to pretend only that I needed his help and he wasn’t standing there completely naked with a mass of hands and mouths working their way up his legs.

“As you can see, I’m on . . . vacation.” He pointed at the bed and then swept his hand outward. “I don’t think the world needs me at all.” That was what he said, but I heard the doubt in his voice. I forged on, as if I were making a ten-tiered cake that threatened to topple. If I got it right, I’d have a masterpiece, and if I balanced it wrong, the entire thing would come toppling down. I strode forward and met him as he stepped off the bed.

“You do care about this world, don’t act otherwise. I know you do. And we both know I’m not wrong.”

He smiled, but it was tired and more than a bit cynical with the way his lips twisted off to one side. “You are so young and stupid, Drakaina. This world wants nothing more than to be coddled. I don’t do coddling. None of the pantheon does.”