Van clasped his prosthetic hand with his other, letting both rest in front of him. It would have been a relaxed posture if he hadn’t been gripping it so tightly. “You always knew exactly who you were and who you were meant to be. Everything seemed to come easily to you because you wanted it so badly,” he said. “I used to think that if I could find a way to want it as badly as you did, I could find something buried deep in me. Something that would make me run as fast, hit as hard. To want to pick up that sword.”
“I was a stupid kid,” Lore told him. “I thought I knew everything, but I knew nothing.”
Van gave a faint smile. “And you know what the truly ironic thing is? Even as I ran after you, trying to catch up, you did the one thing I wanted more than I wanted my next breath. The thing I told myself was impossible. You got out.”
Lore drew in a sharp breath, her stomach giving a painful clench. “I did it because I had to.”
“You did it because you’ve never known fear,” he said. “Because you wanted to live.”
“I know fear,” she told him. “I know it better than my own reflection.”
“I don’t know what happened to you,” he said. “I used to wonder about it all the time, but I never doubted that you were still alive.”
Van moved toward the room’s attached bathroom, likely to the waiting shower. It released her from the quiet pain of the moment before it suffocated her.
“You know, some people get so used to looking out at life from the edge of their cage that they stop seeing the bars,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten them, I’ve just learned how to live inside on my own terms. Don’t . . . don’t let your friend get trapped in here with the rest of us.”
Her throat tightened at his words. She reached up, smoothing a loose piece of hair away from her face, unsure of what to say.
Van had grown up with financial comforts, but he had never completely fit in as a hunter. She felt guilty for the way she had judged him for it, both in the past and even a little in the present. His attitude toward Miles made more sense to her now, and a part of Lore wondered if what she had sensed as a kid wasn’t a dislike for her, but his own frustrations—with himself, and with their world.
“It’s just one job,” Lore said finally. “After tonight, I’m going to figure out how to convince him to leave.”
“Good,” Van said.
But just before he closed the door to the bathroom, Lore heard herself say, “You can still get out. It’s never too late.”
“I chose to stay in,” he told her. “I’m not leaving before I get the ones who caged me.”
The words followed Lore back downstairs, all the more unsettling for the way they echoed her own circumstances. She thought about going back upstairs, about telling him what the last few years had taught her—that the cage was only as strong as your mind made it.
She had chosen to make the vow to Athena. She had chosen to step back inside the cage this one last time to get to the man who had taken everything from her.
Not lost, Lore told herself. Free.
Lore reached the bottom step and stopped.
Castor had taken the settee, stretching his long body out over it and letting his feet hang off its edge. He’d laced his fingers together and rested them on his chest. Now they rose and fell with each deep, even breath.
Athena stood over him, watching. Her hands rested open at her sides. Her face wasn’t cast in its usual mask of hatred. What Lore saw there now scared her more.
Curiosity.
“What are you doing?” Lore asked sharply.
As Castor opened his eyes, Athena made her way over to the line of makeshift weapons she’d neatly arranged on the wall. He sat up, looking between them.
“Making preparations,” Athena said smoothly. She held out one of them—Lore’s former curtain rod, she noted with a grimace. “Have you been trained to fight with such a weapon? I won’t let you dishonor it with incompetence.”
Castor snorted at the question, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’ve never known Lore to be incompetent at anything she’s tried.”
“Potential incompetence aside,” Lore said. “We are at least a thousand years past when it was socially acceptable to casually carry one of these around on the street.”
“You will not leave this sanctuary without a weapon with which to defend yourself,” Athena told her. “Not while our fates are bound. So I ask again, have you been trained to fight with this weapon?”
It wasn’t a mere spear—it was a dory, the weapon carried by the ancient armies of Greece, and many of its greatest warriors. Athena had created the leaf-shaped spearhead out of some shred of metal, but she’d balanced the weight of the weapon using another metal spike as the sauroter. The construction was crude, but thoughtfully made. Lore had no doubt that the weapon would feel as solid and deadly in her hand as any that had come from a trained blacksmith.
“Yes,” she said, letting her annoyance drain with the word. “I trained with one for over six years. I will take care of it.”
Athena eyed her, two silver flames burning in her gaze. Whatever she saw in Lore’s face convinced her. She passed the weapon to her.
Lore tested the weight and grip, hating how familiar and good it felt in her hand.
“It is not a gift born from the anvil of Hephaestus, he of many devices,” Athena said, “but I will hold you to your word.”
“How are we going to get around with these?” Castor asked, retrieving the dory Athena had given him earlier from where he’d left it near the door. “Are we supposed to tell people we’re going spearfishing in the Hudson?”
That wasn’t half bad, actually.
“I think I have a plan,” Lore said. An extremely stupid one, maybe, but a plan nonetheless.
She took the stairs to the basement two at a time, only to reel back a step when she realized she wasn’t alone.
Miles was pacing down a narrow pathway between the boxes, hands on his hips. He seemed to be muttering something under his breath.
“You okay there, buddy . . . ?” she asked.
Miles spun, nearly knocking over a stack of tubs. “What? Sorry—yes, I mean—”
Lore hopped down from the last steps, giving him a sideways glance. “Are you positive you’re up for doing the meet? It’s not too late to back out.”
“Yes!” he said, then lowered his voice. “Yes, I’m fine. And contrary to Evander’s opinion, I will continue to be fine.”
“Don’t let Van get to you,” Lore told him. “He’s right about one thing, though. It’s only going to get more dangerous from here. You have nothing to prove—not to him or to me.”
“I know,” Miles said. “I won’t get in your way.”
She shook her head, her throat tight. “That’s not what I mean. After tonight, I need you to leave. Go visit your parents. Take a trip. Just get out of the city. Promise me.”
“I’ll promise you one thing,” Miles said. “And that’s a new broom. Okay, two things, because we need a new mop. And, actually, you’re going to need a new rod in your closet.”
“Anything else?” she asked, pained.
“I promise I’ll check in with you,” he said. “If you start sharing your location with me again.”
She pulled a face. “I don’t like feeling like I’m being watched.”
Miles picked that old argument right back up again. “It’s a safety thing—wait, what are you looking for?”
“This, actually.” Lore retrieved an unused shaggy mop head and a container of feathered yellow duster sleeves. “Have you seen that old box of rags Gil refused to let me throw out?”
“Yeah, it’s over here. . . .”
Miles pulled Lore’s phone out of her back pocket as he followed her upstairs. “Password? I’m setting up the location sharing.”
She sent him an annoyed look, but told him. Upstairs, he handed it back to her and watched, alongside Castor and Athena, as Lore slid one of the dories’ ends into a yellow feather duster an
d fixed the mop head to the other.
“Are we— What is that?” Van asked as he came down from upstairs.
Lore held up the dory, sweeping a hand down beside it. “Ingenuity. We good to go?”
Athena held one of the duster sleeves up to her nose and smelled it, then touched her tongue to it. Her face twisted in disgust. “What creature was this shorn from?”
“A Big Bird,” Lore told her seriously.
“Are we . . . pretending to be a cleaning crew?” Castor guessed.
“Do you think a bucket would help sell it better?” Lore asked. She bent to tie several rags around one end of his dory.
Athena held out the other weapon to Van, but he shook his head. The goddess visibly bristled at the rejection.
“I’m off,” Miles told the others. “I’ll see you guys in a few hours.”
Van moved to block his path to the front door.
“Don’t screw this up,” Van warned. “I need to keep this asset.”
“Get out of my way,” Miles said, shouldering past him. He looked back at Lore one last time and said, “Don’t forget to text.”
“I won’t,” Lore said. “Be careful.”
“Take a cab,” Van told him.
“And pay in cash,” Miles finished. “Yeah, amazingly enough, I grasped the concept the first time you explained it to me.”
He lifted a hand in farewell, stepping outside and shutting the door behind him.
“So where is this place?” Castor asked her.
“Broadway and Thirty-Sixth Street,” Lore said. “Let’s go.”
But as they made their way to the street and hailed the first cab, she suddenly looked back at the town house, just in case it would be for the last time.
THE ODYSSEIDES OWNED ONE property in Manhattan large enough for the entire bloodline to use for meetings during the Agon. It had been a recent acquisition, purchased during the first year Lore had lived with them. The only question left was whether or not they might have sold it in the meantime.
She had her answer as soon as her and Athena’s cab stopped at Thirty-Seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and she caught a glimpse of the building a block south.
Lore and Athena carefully slid their weapons off their laps in the backseat, ignoring the way the cabdriver stared in the rearview mirror. Athena cast her gaze around, searching for threats as they walked to the neighboring building. Castor and Van’s cab pulled up behind them.
The Odysseides property, Baron Hall, had another name within the family: Ithaka House. The landmark building had been created in the ancient style, both of its gray sandstone faces decorated with Corinthian columns. In its last life, it had been a bank. Now, in the years between the Agon, it was rented out as a grand event space as a cover for its true owners.
Parked beside its Sixth Avenue entrance was a large bus with blacked-out windows. A tent had been erected to connect the door of the bus to the entrance, but Lore could see the light inside shifting as people were hurried through. The bus rocked as it was loaded.
Castor came up alongside her, keeping his back to the wall.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“They’re moving something?” she guessed. “Or evacuating?”
Van approached them. “What do you know about the building?”
“There are two entrances, one on Sixth Avenue and the other on Thirty-Sixth. A few small windows on the facade,” Lore said. “It’s a converted bank, so it was built with security in mind—there’s one large central hall and smaller lounges off that, including a vault they were planning to convert to a safe room.”
“Is there a way to see inside the building without exposing ourselves?” Athena asked. “We must assess before Evander approaches the entrance.”
“There’s a large glass dome that looks down into the hall, but they would be stupid not to cover it,” Lore said. “And I’m sure they have hunters up there to keep an eye on things.”
Van slipped his sleek leather backpack off his shoulder and dug through it until he retrieved a small case. He popped the clasp on it.
Inside was a black device, shaped like a bird and no bigger than the size of Lore’s fist. Leaving it in place, he retrieved his phone, entered the longest password Lore had ever seen, and pulled up an unfamiliar app. He scrolled through the images of a prosthetic hand and selected one, which changed the shape of his grip. Then he opened another. After tapping a few more buttons, the mechanical bird whirred to life and lifted out of its case.
Athena looked away in disgust. “Of course. I should have expected your . . . technology in the place of cunning and skill. This is truly the worst age of man.”
“Of course, anything not gods-given is terrible,” Lore said, rolling her eyes. “Well, I’m impressed.”
“Thank you,” Van told her as he flew the drone up toward the roof of Baron Hall. She and Castor leaned in closer as the device’s camera switched on. “I designed it myself.”
Heat radiated from Castor’s body as he hovered near her. “I count three hunters. No masks.”
A prickle of dread slid along Lore’s spine.
“That seems unusual, given what I know of the cowardice of the hunters,” Athena said.
“It is unusual,” Van confirmed.
“And unhelpful,” Lore said. “It may simply be that the Odysseides didn’t want their masks spotted by people in the nearby buildings. . . .”
“Or they might not be of the House of Odysseus,” Athena finished.
Lore had been right about another thing. The Odysseides had constructed a cement cover to sit over the massive stained-glass dome. “Is that a door?”
“Looks like it,” Van said, bringing the drone closer.
There was a small hatch embedded in the cement structure. There would have to be, she realized, to give access to the dome’s backlights. It was secured by an electronic keypad and what was likely a blast-resistant door.
“There’s no other way to see in?” Van asked her. “The infrared sensor is only going to tell us if there are people there, not who they are.”
Lore shook her head. Whatever windows existed in the building would have been reinforced and fogged.
“All right, then,” Castor said. He strode over to the ground-level glass doors of the neighboring building. The door handles glowed under his grip, the metal locks going soft enough for him to pull them open.
“Cas!” Lore hissed, but he had already disappeared through the entrance.
“At last,” Athena murmured. There was an eager gleam in her eye as she took several long strides to the door.
The building had no security guard, let alone elevators. They took the stairs at a full run until they reached a dark room on the top floor. When they entered, Lore startled at the shadowy outlines of mannequins and dress forms. Of course—they were in the Garment District. The building wasn’t made up of apartments, as she’d assumed, but fashion studios and workrooms, all seemingly empty on a Sunday evening.
Castor crouched beneath the line of windows that overlooked the roof of Baron Hall.
The two buildings were nestled together, side pressed to side. It would just be a matter of opening a window and jumping down two or three feet.
Lore ducked, moving to stand at one end of the windows, just out of sight of the hunters below. Athena took her position opposite Lore, shaking the dusters off her dory’s blade with obvious petulance.
“How are we going to do this?” Lore asked, stealing a glance at the hunters as they paced from end to end.
“Just like tag in Central Park,” Castor said. Lore snorted at the memory, but knew what he was talking about. They’d have to cluster the hunters together while still keeping them turned away. “If one spots us and radios it in, we’re done.”
“Got any new godly tricks up your sleeve on the distraction front?” Lore asked him. “A little razzle or dazzle?”
Van tapped a few buttons on the phone.
Castor and Lore turned back towa
rd the window as the hunters, cloaked in their black robes, drifted together, drawn by the sight of the bird drone bobbing through the air in strange, irate patterns.
One of them reached to press his earpiece, making to report the strange sight. Before he could, the drone froze in the air and shot out three darts in quick succession. The hunters staggered away from one another, but then collapsed.
Athena turned toward Van as he calmly ran his finger over the surface of the phone, guiding the drone back to them. “While I do not approve of this false bird, I appreciate its lethality.”
“They’re not dead,” Van told her. “Just knocked out for the next hour or so.”
Castor broke the seal on the window frame and opened it. The bird buzzed inside, settling back into its case.
“What else do you have in there?” Lore asked him, eyeing Van’s backpack.
Van raised his brows as he pulled out a small dagger.
They made the jump between buildings and kept their steps light across the roof. Lore gripped the dory hard enough for her fingers to ache. Castor and Athena went to solve the problem of the hatch while she and Van approached the unconscious hunters. He passed her several zip ties.
With a grunt, Lore flipped one of the hunters over onto his back, pushing up the loose sleeve of his robe. A tattoo of the Kadmides’ mark, a serpent, coiled up his arm.
“Damn,” she whispered.
Van met her gaze, holding up another hunter’s arm to reveal the same.
They were already too late.
“We’re in,” Castor called softly.
Lore bound the hunters’ hands and feet together, then rose, her heart stuttering in her chest. As she turned, a faint buzzing caught her attention—muffled voices, crackling with static. Lore pulled the earpiece from the closest hunter and, after cleaning it, put it in her own ear. Van did the same, then retrieved the third and pocketed it.
They rejoined Castor and Athena at the cover’s hatch, which now looked like a half-crushed aluminum can. Lore stopped at the sight of it, almost unable to understand it. The sheer, brutal strength that would take . . .
Her eyes drifted over to Athena. The goddess stared down through the massive glass dome, her tight-lipped expression grim.
Lore Page 17