Read Aphrodite's Secret for Free Online Page A

Hieronymous’s clutches before. And yet Mordichai had never seen Hieronymous pursue his quarry with such vengefulness. Something else was going on, something personal, and Mordi had no idea what it was.
    Under the circumstances, though, it didn’t matter. At the moment, he didn’t have any choice but to go along with his father’s plan. To do otherwise would blow his cover. And while Mordi didn’t have any clue why Hieronymous wanted the boy, one thing was certain: whatever the reason, it couldn’t possibly be good.

    Jason frantically searched the park, but he couldn’t find any sign of his son. He wanted to leap from the tower, to search, to turn over leaves and ransack buildings until he found the boy, but he couldn’t. Right now, the lives of about fifteen people trapped in the Sky Tower were in danger.
    Beneath him, the tower pitched and swayed with the raging storm, and the trapped mortals screamed again.
    In one fluid motion, he dove from the Tower, hoping like heck that the propulsion properties of his cloak hadn’t short-circuited when the invisibility feature had gone kablooey. They hadn’t, and he gathered speed, zipping toward the lagoon, the closest body of water he could find.
    If this were a movie, he’d simply hover beneath the Sky Tower, the bulk of the structure’s weight resting in one hand while he fought off an army of bad guys with his other.
Not likely
. He was strong, but not
that
strong. Maybe a few Protectors could pull off a stunt like that, but not him. No, his powers were subtler. He liked to think of
them
as classier. But he could still get the job done.
    He broke the surface of the lagoon in a perfectly executed dive, the familiar feel of the water boosting his confidence. Almost immediately he flipped, turning 180 degrees until he was aimed back toward the surface. Without even pausing, he pushed off from the lagoon’s sandy bottom to spring up and out of the water, determining his plan of attack as he did.
    When he surfaced, the tower was listing even more to the left, pressed down further by the weight of several wide-eyed mortals who’d shifted to watch his plunge into the water. A sharp, cracking noise ripped the air; this time not thunder but the sound of metal twisting and breaking. A cacophony of sounds followed, topped by the frightened screams of the mortals in the tower.
    Jason tuned out the noise, hearing nothing except the sounds of the water in which he dipped his fingers, dragging his hand through the storm-roughened surface of the lagoon. He took a deep breath, knowing he couldn’t hurry the process, his body tense nonetheless. Around his fingers, the water molecules shifted, spinning and humming as they conformed to his will.
    Almost. . .
    The structure groaned, the noise mimicking a cry of human pain.
    Almost. . .
    Jason held his breath.
    Just a little more. ..
    In front of him, the Sky Tower gave one last gasp of protest and lost its valiant fight. Down it went, plunging toward the solid earth below.
    Now!
    With lightning speed Jason drew up his hand, then splayed it sideways, sending a solid stream of water shooting out from the lagoon toward the falling tower. The timing was perfect and, with a few yards to spare, the stream slipped under the tower, cushioning its landing. Slowly the water melted away. Soon it would dissolve completely, leaving the tower to settle gently on the ground.
    The mortals inside had grown surprisingly calm. Instead of screaming or fainting, most were simply goggle-eyed, staring and pointing at their salvation as if they’d never seen anything like it. Jason supposed that was true. Water rarely solidified and moved of its own accord. And even if the adults had watched James Cameron’s
The Abyss
—Jason’s all-time favorite movie—chances were they’d never actually seen a solid column of water up close and personal.
    He suppressed a grin, pleased with his solution: subtle and classy, if a little bit wet.
    Of course, the mortals