Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  “Leave that to the Odysseides,” Iro said. “We will discover when they mean to attack, and we will cut them off at the knees.”

  “The remaining Achillides would help with any sort of assault on the Waldorf Astoria,” Van said. “We’ll still be greatly outnumbered by Wrath’s forces, but if we can catch them off guard and preempt their plans, the element of surprise will level the playing field somewhat.”

  “All right, all right,” Castor said. “But there’s still Wrath to contend with. And Athena.”

  “That’s the uncomplicated part,” Lore said. “I have something they both want, and now they both know it.”

  Castor sighed. “You want to use the aegis as bait?”

  “I don’t know. . . .” Van shook his head. “He needs it for something. Is it really wise to bring it to him? If he finds a way to force you to use it—”

  “That will not happen,” Iro said firmly.

  Lore looked at her, surprised by her old friend’s show of faith.

  “It won’t,” Iro insisted.

  “It won’t,” Lore agreed. “Both he and Athena are deluding themselves if they think they can use it once they’re in divine form, I really do believe that. And I will never give it to them willingly.”

  “Haven’t we tried this plan a few times already?” Castor asked gently. “What makes you think it’ll end any differently?”

  “Because of the aegis,” Lore said. “It’s about more than setting a trap—it’s about playing them off one another. Wrath is obsessed with it, and Athena will never let him have it when she’s so close to having it herself. Cas, if we can draw them into a one-on-one fight, we’ll be able to take care of whoever emerges from it alive.”

  Van seemed to run the scenario through his head, but he didn’t immediately shoot it down. Castor wore his familiar look of worry.

  “There are still a lot of maybes and uncertainties,” Van said. “But at this point, it’s probably the best we’re going to come up with. Our goal is to ensure the device never goes off and that Castor is the final god.”

  “That won’t be enough to end the Agon outright,” Miles reminded them. “And we still don’t know what the new lines mean.”

  “I know,” Lore said. The thought filled her with bitter frustration, but what could they do? They were out of the one thing they needed most—time. “If we can get you through today, tomorrow, and Saturday, then we have seven years to figure it out before another Agon begins.”

  Iro rose from her chair. “If we are to attack tomorrow, I will need to move quickly to learn the timing of their plans.”

  “And how are you going to do that, exactly?” Miles asked.

  Iro’s eyebrows rose. “I only need to find one of Wrath’s hunters who knows these details. I will enjoy . . . discussing it with however many it takes to find out.”

  “Text me when you learn anything,” Lore said.

  “Yes, I will,” Iro said. “I nearly forgot. . . .”

  She moved toward the stairwell, retrieving the heavy black duffel bag that she had left there as she’d come in. “I thought you might need weapons, given all that’s happened.”

  Iro removed them from their wrappings, laying them out on the floor. Castor unsheathed the sword Van handed to him, inspecting it.

  “You remember how to use that thing?” Lore asked.

  He sliced it through the air, admiring the flash of the pristine silver blade. “I think I’ve still got the gist.”

  It was a xiphos, the shorter straight blade that the ancients had traditionally favored. Only, the bloodline’s weapon makers had long ago substituted iron and bronze for superior steel. Decorative silver vines were inlaid in the hilt; that small bit of artistry was a signature of their metalsmiths.

  “These are from your own stores?” Lore asked, surprised.

  Iro nodded. “It would not do to fight with our enemy’s steel. I wouldn’t be able to trust it.”

  Iro passed Lore her own xiphos, the scabbard, like Castor’s, attached to a baldric—a long leather strap that cut from her shoulder to hip to allow the blade to hang there. Her sword had no real embellishments, but Lore liked the feel of it in her hand.

  When Iro rose to go, Lore followed her to the stairs.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Lore asked her.

  Iro nodded, seeming to struggle with her thoughts for a moment.

  “I meant with everything,” Lore said. “This isn’t just stopping Wrath. It’s the end of the Agon and the destruction of everything you know. Everything you’ve wanted.”

  All the things she, too, would have to face.

  “We all cast votes on whether or not to help you, and it was unanimous,” Iro said. “The Agon has never been a kind master, but this hunt nearly destroyed us. Everything has changed now. Wrath tore down all of the rules and beliefs that carried us through the centuries, only to reveal the rot that has always been there, just out of sight. If we do not end the Agon, it will end us.”

  Lore nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “I didn’t tell you this before,” Iro said when she reached the door to the street, “when you asked me about her. My mother is alive after all.”

  “What?” Lore breathed. “You’re sure?”

  Iro nodded.

  “She wrote to me at the start of the Agon. In her letter, she told me that she could not stay within our world, that it would have strangled the life from her,” Iro said. “She knew she could not take me with her without the Odysseides coming after us. I suppose I did not understand how I felt about it until this week, maybe not until you told us about your own family wanting that same thing. To me, she hadn’t achieved freedom, but shame. How could I believe that about my own mother?”

  Lore let out a soft sigh. “That hits close to home.”

  “All I can do now,” Iro said, “is tell you that I am sorry for everything that’s happened, and come when you call.”

  Lore drew in a deep breath. “The other bloodlines won’t willingly give up the Agon.”

  “It’s a good thing, then,” Iro said with a small smile, “that neither of us has ever been afraid of a fight.”

  She opened the door, only to turn back. “By the way, that sword has a name. Mákhomai.”

  I make war.

  Lore smiled.

  LORE SLEPT AND DREAMED of death’s gray world.

  A river drifted lazily by. Memory bled into reverie as she made her way forward over shards of stone that littered its banks. The air turned to ice in her lungs and assaulted her bare arms and legs. A simple shift, the kind the hunters used when burning their dead, scratched at her skin.

  She heard a soft voice, a whisper of her name, and looked up. Across the waters of the river were seven golden forms, their outlines blazing against the bleak, craggy landscape.

  Lore sat straight up, ripping herself out of the dream. The word echoed through her. Seven.

  Their faces had been indistinct—more impressions than anything else, but Lore had recognized them all the same. Hermes, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Poseidon, Artemis, Ares, and Dionysus . . .

  If they were truly the gods of the Agon, if it hadn’t all been a hallucination . . . there should have been eight. But that would mean—what? That she’d been right, and that Apollo had somehow escaped death?

  Lore shook her head, pressing a cool hand to her temple. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She scanned the office space, her eyes landing on where Van sat awake in one of the chairs.

  Castor slept on the ground beneath him, his fingers woven through one another and resting on his chest, but Van’s gaze was fixed on where Miles slept sprawled out on the couch. As Lore’s eyes adjusted to the low light, Van’s look of longing developed like an old photograph in the darkness.

  Finally noticing her, he stiffened. After a moment, he seemed to decide something and rose, motioning to her to follow him across the room, to the far window.

  Lore approached slowly. As she came to
stand in front of him, she leaned her shoulder against the glass and crossed her arms. In the end, she was the one to break the silence.

  “Listen,” she began. “I know . . . I know things between us have always been hard.”

  “That’s one way of describing it,” he murmured.

  “I’ve never been that good about talking about feelings—” she began.

  “Or listening,” he interjected quietly.

  She gave him a wry look. “Or listening. But I respect you, and I don’t want things to be that way between us anymore. We care about the same people, and regardless of how you feel about me, I care about you, too. I’m sorry if I’ve ever made you feel that I didn’t.”

  He sighed. “It’s not like I’ve ever been that fair to you, either. Though, for the record, you still have an unhealthy relationship with trouble.”

  Lore let out a soft laugh, and followed Van’s gaze as it turned back toward Miles.

  “It’s okay to want good things,” she whispered. “And to believe that you deserve a good life.”

  Van shook his head slowly, his left hand adjusting his prosthetic one. “I don’t know about that. I’ve never let myself consider it—maybe in those few moments where I believed the Agon could really end, but then there was always more work to do.”

  “I only got a glimpse of it before,” Lore said. “I see that now. I was happy, but the past, the Agon—there was always something that held me back from fully embracing what I have here, and seeing how truly good it is. Don’t make that same mistake.”

  Van shrugged, but his eyes instinctively drifted back toward Miles, who was murmuring softly in his sleep.

  “I had a weird dream just now,” Lore whispered. “A memory, maybe.”

  Zeus had blocked the flow of prophecy, but hunters had always believed that dreams could bring omens and messages. She wasn’t at all surprised when Van said, “Tell me.”

  “You think the missing god might have been Apollo?” he asked when Lore had finished.

  “They might not have been gods at all,” she reminded him. “Blood loss is a hell of a thing.”

  “There’s something else I’ve been thinking about,” he began.

  “While you’ve been gazing at Miles? Do I want to hear this?” Lore shut her mouth at his look.

  “It’s the idea of sacrifice,” Van said. “I don’t know if we’re thinking about the new lines the right way.”

  He worked his jaw back and forth in thought. “Summons me with smoke of altars to be built by conquest final and fearsome . . . A sacrifice has to mean something. It entails something necessary. . . . Couldn’t you argue that it’s the act of giving that necessary thing up to the gods that makes it worthwhile?”

  Before she could answer, Lore’s phone vibrated against the external battery Miles had given her to charge it. The cracked screen glowed as she opened Iro’s message.

  Confirmed—attack at sunset tomorrow.

  She and Van exchanged a look.

  “Up to you,” he said. “We’re going to need a few hours to find some last supplies.”

  Lore wrote back one word: Noon.

  The hours passed at a slow, steady march. Lore thought she might be able to doze off, if only to pass the time, but her nerves were jumping too hard beneath her skin. She drilled with Castor, careful as they used their real swords. Even that wasn’t enough to steady her.

  Finally, at half past ten o’clock, Miles returned from an errand he’d insisted on running.

  “For you,” he said, handing Van a stack of external batteries.

  Miles reached into his tote bag and handed Castor a long black shirt and black jeans, and, to Lore, a dark sweater to pull over her shirt. “These should all fit, hopefully.”

  Castor disappeared into the storage room to change.

  When he returned, Miles passed him body armor, then turned to give Lore hers. “That’s from the Odysseides. Iro sent a runner to meet me. Just in case you thought I suddenly had access to army supplies or drug cartels.”

  Lore immediately tried to give hers back to him.

  “Absolutely not,” Miles told her. “All I’m going to do is run into Grand Central and shout Fire! to get people to evacuate the building. I’ll be fine.”

  She offered it to Van, who shook his head.

  “I’ll get one from the Odysseides when I meet up with Iro and the others at the hotel,” he said.

  “All right,” she said, opening the Velcro straps and sliding it over her head. Castor reached over, adjusting hers for a better fit.

  “So . . .” Miles began, taking two sets of wireless earbuds out of his bag. “These are noise-canceling earphones. There’s a switch on the right earbud that actually turns the noise canceling on, otherwise they’re going to be regular earphones and mostly useless.”

  Castor held one up, studying the small device, but Lore was still confused.

  “For Wrath’s power,” Miles reminded her. “I don’t really know how it works, but maybe if you can’t hear him he can’t worm his way into your brain to affect your strength?”

  “Right . . .” she said, somehow having forgotten that would still be a problem. “Right.”

  “Did the Odysseides’ runner have the other things I asked Iro to get from my stash?” Van asked.

  “She did indeed,” Miles said. He handed them both a small wire cutter and a pen-size flashlight.

  “This is a lot more powerful than it looks,” Van explained, taking Castor’s flashlight. “At its highest setting, it’ll momentarily blind someone, but it’ll be fine to use as a flashlight at its lower setting.”

  Lore tucked both her flashlight and the wire cutter into the back pockets of her jeans.

  “Couldn’t find leather straps, but here’s some tape, if you think you’ll need it to support your wrists and hands,” Van said.

  When they’d trained in hand-to-hand combat, they’d always worn himantes, strips of leather wrapped to protect their knuckles and wrists. The tape would be more flexible, making it easier to keep her grip on her sword.

  “Thank you,” Lore said, taking it from him.

  “And last but not least,” Van said, pulling out two little devices on key rings, one gold, the other silver. They would have looked like garage openers if not for the indentations that marked the speakers. “If you pull the cord out of these and hit the button, it lets out a one-hundred-and-forty-decibel alarm.”

  “What, no mace?” Lore joked.

  “Oh! Actually . . .” Miles slid a small tube out of his jacket. He opened her hand and closed her fingers around it. “I thought you’d enjoy using it.”

  “You know me so well,” Lore said.

  “We should be able to track you by sharing locations with Lore’s phone,” Van said. “Service may cut out, though, depending on where and how deep you are.”

  Lore nodded. “Thank you for this. All of this.”

  “It may not be enough,” Van said. “But it was the best we could do, under the circumstances.”

  The group held off on their good-byes until they reached Forty-Second Street and Eleventh Avenue. Miles would be heading east, toward Grand Central, Van would be meeting Iro and the combined remnants of the Houses of Odysseus and Achilles to the west, near the piers, and Lore and Castor would be entering the subway at Thirty-Fourth Street and walking the 7 train’s line to approach the station from underground.

  Just before they split up, Lore drew Miles away from the others.

  “Once you warn everyone, try to get off this island,” she said. “If something happens and you’re caught in the blast . . .”

  “I won’t be,” Miles told her. “But please promise me you’ll be all right.”

  Lore hugged him tight. “I’ll be fine. After this, we’ll go do all that stupid tourist stuff I never wanted to do, okay? So you need to be fine, too.”

  Miles managed a small smile. “I hope you’re hungry for some Coney Island cotton candy.”

  Lore’s face twisted at
the thought. He hugged her one last time, then turned. Castor and Van were across the street, clasping one another’s arms in the bloodline’s secret greeting and farewell. Van’s face turned serious at whatever Castor was saying, and he visibly struggled to keep his expression in check.

  When they were finished, Lore and Van each raised a hand to one another in farewell.

  “Oh, to hell with it,” she heard Miles mutter. “If there’s a chance we’re all going to die—”

  He crossed the street in long, purposeful strides, passing Castor without acknowledging him. The new god looked back as he came toward Lore, apparently just as confused as her.

  Van had his back to them and was rooting through his bag, searching for something. Miles stopped behind him and reached up to tap his shoulder.

  As he turned, Van’s brows rose at the sight of Miles and a small, expectant smile lit his face at something Miles said. There was a beat of utter stillness, then Van took Miles’s face between his hands and leaned down for a searing kiss.

  Lore’s mouth fell open as she watched it all unfold. “Oh.”

  “Oh,” Castor echoed slowly. “Well . . . well.”

  Van wrapped his arms around Miles, giving himself over to the embrace, but Miles reluctantly pulled back and straightened.

  “Now,” Miles said, “we can go.”

  Castor whispered what sounded like a soft prayer in the ancient tongue as the two of them parted, heading in opposite directions. As Van passed by them one last time, his expression was still dazed.

  “I guess that’s our cue, too,” Lore said.

  He nodded.

  They had covered the aegis in a bedsheet for the walk over, but now Lore removed it, drawing the shield tight to her body.

  She looked up at Castor, lacing their fingers together as they continued in silence, moving through the floodwaters until they reached the 7 train’s Thirty-Fourth Street station.

  Castor melted the lock that kept the security gate in place, lifting it enough for them to pass beneath. Water rushed down the steps into the station, but Lore was surprised to find that it wasn’t completely submerged. The subway must have had some way of slowly draining; there was only about three feet of water on the tracks themselves.