Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  Copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Bracken

  All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by Marci Senders

  Cover art © 2021 by Billelis

  Marble image © 2021 by Stone/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Marci Senders

  ISBN 978-1-368-00231-8

  Visit www.hyperionteens.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Living Lines

  Dead Lines

  The Origin Poem

  Prologue

  Part One: City of Gods

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Ten Years Earlier

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Part Two: Carrying Fire

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Seven Years Earlier

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Part Three: Deathless

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Part Four: Dark Rivers

  Seven Years Earlier

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Seven Years Earlier

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Seven Years Earlier

  Forty-Three

  Part Five: Mortal

  Forty-Four

  Seven Years Earlier

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Cast of Characters

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my Greek family. Σας αγαπώ όλους.

  The lord of sky stood bright against the fall

  of twilight and spoke: Hear me, blooded heirs

  of those proud men who ventured into the

  darkness to slay those monsters and kings past.

  I call you to a final agon to

  win your own lasting glory. Nine gods have

  betrayed me and now demand cruel revenge.

  For seven days at the turn of seven

  years will they walk as mortal so you men,

  and all your heirs henceforth, may break your own

  fated path and turn your thread of life to

  immortal gold. Reveal your strength and skills and

  I will reward you with the mantle

  and the deathless power of the god whose blood

  stains your bold blade. For this chance I ask much.

  Gather at the navel of the known world

  and begin your hunt when the day is born.

  So it shall be until that final day

  when one remains who is remade whole.

  Zeus at Olympia,

  translated by Kreon of the Odysseides

  He woke to the feeling of rough ground beneath him and the stench of mortal blood.

  His body was slower to recover than his mind. Unwelcome sensations burned through him as his skin tightened like newly fired clay.

  The dew of the grass seeped into the back of his thin blue robe, and he felt the dirt splattered on his bare legs and feet. A humiliating shiver passed through him, sweeping from scalp to heel. For the first time in seven years, he caught a chill.

  The mortal blood that flowed through him was like sludge compared to the liquid sunlight of the ichor that had burned away all traces of his mortality and released him back into the world. For seven years, he had swept through lands near and far, stoked the vicious hearts of killers, nurtured the embers of conflicts into flames. He had been rage itself.

  To feel the boundaries of a body again . . . to be poured back into this weak vessel . . . it was torment enough to make him pity the old gods. They had lived this atrocity two hundred and twelve times over.

  He would not. This would be his final taste of mortality.

  His senses were dulled, but he recognized the city and its grand park. The smell of mowed grass mingling with faint sewage. The sound of traffic in the near distance. The electric, restless feel of its veins deep beneath the street.

  The corners of his mouth stretched up awkwardly, forced to remember how to smile. It had been his city once, in his mortal life; the streets had offered him riches, and the greedy had sold him pieces of power. Manhattan had once knelt before him, and would again.

  He rolled, shifting into a crouch. When he was certain of his limbs, he rose slowly to his full height.

  Dark blood flowed in rivers around him. A young girl, her mask ripped from her face, stared at him with unseeing eyes from the edge of the crater. A knife was still buried in her throat. A man’s head, severed from his body, bore the mask of a horse. A dagger was balanced in a limp hand that was missing fingers.

  There was a faint shuffle of footsteps to his right. He reached for a sword that was no longer at his side. Three figures stepped out from beneath the shadow of the nearby trees. They crossed the paved trail between them, their faces hidden by bronze masks that each bore the visage of a serpent.

  His mortal bloodline. The House of Kadmos. They had come to collect him, their new god.

  He stretched his neck until it cracked, watching their approach. The hunters were awed, and it pleased him. His predecessor, the last new Ares, had been unworthy to hold the mantle of the god of war. It had been an unspeakable pleasure to kill him and claim his birthright seven years ago.

  The tallest of the three hunters stepped forward. Belen. The new god watched, amused, as the young man plucked the arrows from the bodies in a ruthless harvest.

  A shame that his only surviving offspring had been born a bastard. He could not be the heir of Aristos Kadmou, the mortal the new god had once been. Still, his lips curved, and he welcomed the glow of pride at the sight of the young man.

  Belen lifted his mask and lowered his gaze respectfully. The god reached up, feeling along the lines of his face. The boy’s was so much like his own now. The scarred husk of decades had been peeled away from the god when he had ascended, leaving him young again. In his prime, forever.

  “Most honored of us all,” Belen said, kneeling. He offered the new god a rolled bundle from the bag at his hip—a crimson silk tunic to replace the hideous sky-blue one he wore now. “We welcome you and offer the blood of your enemies in tribute to your name, as a sign of our undying loyalty. We are here to protect you with our lives until the time comes for you to be reborn again in power.”

  The words were gravel in the new god’s throat. “Beyond that.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Belen
said.

  More hunters approached from behind Belen, all cloaked in a hunter’s black. They dragged a figure also wearing a tunic of sky blue.

  “Bring him to me,” he told Belen.

  Two black SUVs, their lights off, approached from the nearby street and drove over the grass to reach them. The Kadmides then began their work. They unrolled tarps on Central Park’s grass and rolled the dead hunters onto them. They overturned the soil. Replaced the bloodied grass. Loaded the brutalized carcasses into the trunk of yet another SUV pulling up behind them.

  This same ritual, he knew, was being performed by the other bloodlines across the park.

  The captive lashed out again as he was drawn forward, battering the nearest hunters with his skull like a rabid animal. They had cut the tendons of his ankles to prevent him from using his heightened speed to escape. Good.

  The hunters forced him to his knees. The new god reached down to rip the hood off his head.

  Gold eyes burned as they glared up at him, the sparks of power there swirling with fury. Blood poured from a wound at his forehead, staining his once-luminous skin and tunic.

  “Your last useful power has been taken from you,” the new god said. He clutched a fistful of the old god’s curling brown hair and wrenched his head back, forcing his gaze up.

  “I know what you desire, Godkiller,” the old god said in the ancient tongue. “And you will never find it.”

  He’d only needed to know that it hadn’t been destroyed. The new god’s rage was its own kind of euphoria. He brought the razor-sharp edge of his blade to the old god’s soft mortal flesh.

  The new god smiled.

  “Trickster. Messenger. Traveler. Thief,” the new god said. Then he slammed the blade through the ridged bones of the prisoner’s spine. “Nothing.”

  Blood burst from the wound. The new god drank deep the sight of the old god’s fear—that pain, that disbelief—as his power faded. A shame the new god could not add it to his own.

  “It’s the way of things, is it not?” the new god said. He leaned down, watching as the last flare of life left the old god’s eyes. “The way of your father, and his father before him. The old gods must die to allow the new to rise.”

  The park was silent around them, save for the wet sounds of the new god’s sawing blade, and the invigorating crack as he finally separated the head from its body. The new god thrust the head of Hermes high enough for his followers to see.

  The hunters hissed in pleasure, banging their fists against their chests. The new god took one final look at it before tossing the head onto the nearest tarp with the other remains. Come morning, there would be no sign of the eight gods who had appeared like lightning within the boundaries of Central Park, or those hunters who had fallen in their attempts to kill them.

  The city thrummed around him, aching with barely constrained chaos. It sang to him a song of coming terror. He understood that longing—to be unleashed.

  “I am Wrath.” The new god knelt, dipping his fingers into the bloody mud. “I am your master.” He dragged them down over his cheeks. “I am your glory.”

  The hunters around him lifted their masks to do the same, smearing the damp earth across their eager faces.

  A new age was in reach, waiting to be seized by one strong enough to dare.

  “Now,” the new god said, “we begin.”

  HER MOTHER HAD ONCE told her that the only way to truly know someone was to fight them. In Lore’s experience, the only thing fighting actually revealed was the spot on their body someone least wanted to be punched.

  For her opponent, that spot was clearly the new tattoo on his left breast, the one still covered with a bandage.

  Lore brought up her fourteen-ounce gloves and let them absorb another sloppy hit. Her sneakers squeaked over the cheap blue mats as she bounced back a step. The lines of silver duct tape holding the makeshift ring together were, after five fights that night, beginning to peel from the moisture and heat. She grunted as she stamped the nearest one flat with her heel.

  Sweat poured down her face until all she could taste was the salt of it. Lore refused to wipe it away, even as it stung her eyes. The pain was good. It kept her focused.

  This—the fighting—was nothing more than a recent bad habit, one that had brought her a desperately needed release after Gil’s death six months ago. But her original promise of just this one match had vanished as she’d felt that familiar surge of adrenaline.

  One fight had been enough to break the deadening grief, to get her out of her head and back into her body. Two fights had disconnected the deep ache in her heart. Three had brought in a surprising amount of cash.

  And now, weeks later, fight fifteen was giving her exactly what she was desperate for that night: a distraction.

  Lore told herself she could stop at any time. She could stop when it no longer felt good. She could stop when it dredged up too much of what she’d buried.

  But Lore wasn’t there. Not just yet.

  The cramped basement of Red Dragon Fine Chinese Food was sweltering. The hot press of too many bodies surrounded the mats. The crowd shifted

  as the fighters did, forming the unofficial boundary of the ring as they clutched their Solo cups and tried to keep from spilling their top-shelf liquor. Bills and bets flowed around her, hand to hand, until they reached Frankie, the ring organizer. Lore glanced to him as he adjusted the order and bets of the next two fights, forever less interested in the winner than the winnings.

  Steam rolled down the stairs from the kitchen above them, giving the air a satin quality. The smell of kung pao chicken was a delicious alternative to the reek of old vomit and beer that haunted the boarded-up nightclubs the ring usually rotated through.

  The crowd didn’t seem to mind; whatever it took to give them some illusion of edge. Frankie’s exclusive list seemed a lot less exclusive these days: models, art-scene types, and business guys passing around their small sachets of white powder were now frequently joined by private-school kids testing the limits of their parents’ apathy.

  Her opponent was a boy about her age—all soft, unmarked skin and unearned confidence. He’d laughed, crooking a finger at her as he’d chosen her out of all of Frankie’s available fighters. Lore had decided to destroy him and lay waste to whatever tattered bit of his pride remained well before he ever called her baby girl and blew her a drunken kiss.

  “Let me guess,” she said around her mouth guard. Lore nodded toward the bandage on the teen boy’s chest, covering his new body art. “Live, Laugh, Love? Rosé All Day?”

  His brows lowered as the crowd laughed. The boy swung a glove at her head, grunting with the effort. The movement, combined with his flagging strength, left his chest wide open. Lore had a clear target when she slammed her glove into his tender inked skin.

  The boy’s eyes bulged, his breath wheezing out of him. His knees hit the mat.

  “Get up,” Lore said. “You’re embarrassing your friends.”

  “You—you stupid bi—” The boy choked a little on his mouth guard. Lore had wondered how long it would take before he melted down, and now she had her answer: five minutes.

  “I’m sure you’re not going to call me that,” she said, circling him, “when you’re the one on all fours.”

  He struggled to his feet, fuming. She rolled her eyes.

  Not so funny anymore, is it? Lore thought.

  Gil would have told her to walk away from the stupid kid—he had always been quick to remind Lore in that nonjudgmental, grandfatherly way of his that she didn’t have to jump into every fight that presented itself. The truth was, the man would have hated this, and Lore suffered the guilt of that, too. Of disappointing him.

  But Lore had tried other ways. None of them helped her move through the crushing tide of loss like a good fight did. And now it wasn’t just Gil’s death she needed to escape; there was a new dread clawing beneath her skin.

  It was August, and the hunt had come back to her city.

&nbs
p; Despite her best efforts to move on, to forget the shadowed life she’d left behind and step into the sunlight of a new, better one, some part of her mind was still attuned to the slow countdown of days. Her body had grown tighter, her instincts sharper, as if bracing for what was coming.

  She’d started seeing familiar faces around the city two weeks before, making their final preparations for tonight. The shock had come like a knife to the lungs; each sighting was proof that all her hope, all her silent begging, had come to nothing. Please, she’d thought again and again over the last few months, let it be London this cycle. Let it be Tokyo.

  Let it be anywhere else but New York City.

  Lore knew she shouldn’t have ventured out tonight, not while the killing would be at its most fevered. If a single hunter recognized her, the bloodlines wouldn’t just be hunting gods. They’d be out to skin her, too.

  From the corner of her eye Lore saw Frankie check his ridiculous pocket watch and give the wrap-it-up signal. Places to go, money to rub all over his face, she supposed.

  “Done yet?” Lore asked.

  Apparently, the alcohol had decided to hit the boy all at once. He chased Lore around the mats with his clumsy, swinging fists, growing angrier as the laughter of the crowd boomed.

  As she turned to avoid a blow, her necklace swung out from where she had tucked it beneath her shirt. The charm on it, a gold feather, caught the dim light and flashed. Her opponent’s glove struck it. Somehow he must have hooked on to its thin chain, because as Lore shifted again, the clasp snapped and, suddenly, the charm was on the ground at her feet.

  Lore used her teeth to undo her glove’s Velcro strap and slid her hand free. She ducked as her opponent swung again, quickly scooping the necklace up and tucking it into the back pocket of her jeans for safekeeping. As she pulled her glove back on, her body heated with a fresh wave of resentment.

  Gil had given it to her.

  Lore turned back toward the boy, reminding herself that she couldn’t kill him. She could, however, break his pretty little nose.

  Which, to the cheers of the crowd, she did.

  Blood burst from his face as he swore.

  “I think it’s past your bedtime, baby boy,” she said, glancing back at Frankie to see if he’d call the match. “In fact—”

  She saw the fist coming out at the edge of her vision, and turned just in time to take the hit to the side of her head, not her eye. The world flashed black, then burst bright with color again, but she managed to stay on her feet.