Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  “How cunning you were, my lord,” Athena said, voice low and smooth, “to have sent your hunter to give the descendants of Odysseus false intelligence.”

  Lore’s breath caught, burning in her chest.

  “I did what you could not,” Wrath said, with a condescending tilt of the head. “I drew the little bitch out of her hiding place and got her to bring my shield to me.”

  The movement was slight, but telling. Athena straightened at my shield. But when she spoke again, the words revealed nothing but deference. “Indeed. Shall I fetch it for you?”

  The hair on Lore’s body stood on end at how subtle the play was.

  “No,” Wrath told her with an arrogant smile. He spoke with the tone of a parent indulging a simple child. “You are not strong enough to bear it. I will allow you to carry it once our work is through and I’ve no need for it.”

  Lore lifted the aegis to hide that she was replacing the earbud in her ear. Her voice sounded muted as she spoke.

  “You’ve lowered yourself to work with him now?” Lore asked, addressing Athena, not Wrath, in a way she knew would infuriate him. “With one of the inferior new gods you claim to despise?”

  He stepped between Lore and the goddess, blocking Athena from her sight. His chest swelled as he drew himself to his full height, leering down at her.

  She looked past him.

  “The Gray-Eyed One recognizes her master,” Wrath said, a streak of anger in his words. “Something you have refused to do—but you’ve always been excitable, haven’t you? The little hellion who needed to be broken. From this day forward, you will serve me in every way I desire—you and that girl from the Odysseides. I’ll have one on each knee. The wait will make it all the sweeter.”

  Fury and disgust blazed in Lore, threatening to burn through her control.

  Focus, Lore thought. Her plan could still work—she could still play them off each other.

  “So you and Artemis entered this Agon with the plan to kill the new gods,” Lore said to Athena as she moved right, away from Wrath and toward the car and tank. “And you got close to me, in the hope that I would give you the aegis and that it would give you the opportunity to kill the new Apollo—maybe even some of the other new gods, too, including this one.”

  It was so obvious to Lore now, all of it.

  Wrath drew in a breath like a growl. Agitation spread over his face as he angled himself between them again, trying to force Lore’s gaze onto him.

  “She is loyal to power, and recognizes it in me,” Wrath said. “I could have molded even you, a hideous, feral little beast, into something. But you’ll die the same way you lived, as no one. Powerless and alone.”

  Focus, Lore thought again, steeling herself against her rising nausea. Her grip on the aegis tightened to the point of pain. Every muscle in her body was clenched with tension, begging for release.

  She reached up and subtly found the switch on her earbud. Whatever other smirking cruelty he was about to deliver disappeared into an unnatural, humming silence.

  The quiet concentrated Lore’s thoughts, sharpening the hunger in her heart. She wanted them to feel her pain. She wanted to watch these gods bleed and suffer the way her little sisters had, and beg her for mercy.

  Athena’s cold smile was deliberate, as if she knew each and every last one of Lore’s thoughts.

  Lore knew what she expected—that her temper would take hold and Lore would lash out. That she would be destroyed by that same impulsive streak Athena had helped to stoke.

  Instead, she held herself steady. The aegis would never tremble in her hands, not out of fear, and not out of anger. If she had to use her hate to devour those last lingering doubts, she would welcome it. But Lore wouldn’t let it incinerate her purpose in coming here, or throw herself onto it and be obliterated.

  After years of practice at Thetis House, Lore easily read the clear command on his lips. He stretched out a hand toward her, his gaze focused and face beaming with triumph, and Lore knew he was using his power. She pretended to struggle with the weight of the shield, to sway.

  Bring it to me, he was saying. For all his paint and costume, for how imposing the shadows had made him seem, she still only saw the old man he had once been, sitting on a meaningless throne. Give me the aegis.

  His body quaked with excitement. Lore forced her own to tense, as if bracing herself against the draining nature of his power. She twisted her features, straining her face to show resistance, even as she took a step toward him. Even as she used the aegis to hide that she was sliding her flashlight out of her pocket.

  Athena’s eyes narrowed, the word Wait on her lips, but Wrath had never been the kind of man to listen to a woman, and immortality hadn’t changed that.

  He held out his other arm, blocking Athena and all but pushing her back from the shield as Lore approached.

  Give it to me, he said again, holding out that hand . . . stretching out a long, powerful arm . . . his face already exalting in his victory. Give it to me, give it to me, good girl.

  She had meant to momentarily blind him with the highest setting of the flashlight. Yet, as hot as her rage had flashed in the moments before, it had condensed and iced over at those two words, good girl.

  Lore jammed the flashlight’s switch up to its brightest beam and watched both gods turn their faces away.

  He was never going to touch her again.

  The seconds dragged as Lore dropped the flashlight and ripped Mákhomai out of its scabbard, then sped up again as she made a decision. The hide of the Nemean lion protected Wrath’s back and draped down over his bronze chest plate—but neither it nor his gauntlets covered the exposed joint of his elbow.

  Lore brought the razor edge of her sword down hard, and, in one clean stroke, severed his entire right forearm from his body.

  Wrath staggered back as blood sprayed from his open wound.

  “This good girl,” Lore spat out, “is waiting for you to come and get it.”

  She pulled the aegis flush against her body, but as she spun away from his thrashing form, sound rushed back into her left ear. The small earbud had somehow popped out.

  Shit, she thought, searching the surface of the water. But it was gone.

  Wrath expelled a bark of pain from where he’d dropped onto one knee. His lungs worked like bellows as he brought his remaining hand up to stanch the flow of blood. A vein throbbed in his forehead as he leveled a look at her that promised pain beyond agony.

  “Bitch . . .” he gasped out, “little bitch—”

  “He’s all yours,” Lore told Athena. “Might as well take out the competition while he’s down. We both know you’ll never let him carry the aegis.”

  The goddess smiled as she came to stand beside Wrath. “Do not listen to her, my lord. She seeks to divide us. Rise, and prove how strong you truly are.”

  Wrath did, sweating and cursing as blood pumped out beneath his fingers. At the sight of him, his teeth bared and expression livid, Lore wondered if all she had really done was drain the last bit of humanity from him.

  “Your false god healed you, I assume,” Athena said, a taunting edge to her voice. “Where is he now, Melora? Did you lose him to the dark?”

  He’s alive, Lore told herself. He’s alive, and he’ll come.

  Another thought occurred to her then, breaking through all others.

  Lore had assumed that Athena wanted the shield purely for the poem and what it revealed—but Athena had that information now, and yet she had stayed with Wrath and kept up this act.

  She still wants it, Lore thought, brow creasing. She still wants the aegis.

  Then why not use her unconquerable strength to rip it from Lore’s hands, the way both she and Lore knew that she could?

  Because, a small voice whispered in her mind. She’s become part of his plan.

  “Tell me why you want the shield,” Lore said as she backed up—not out of fear, but to bring herself close enough to the train carriage and tank to steal glances
at them. There had to be a way to disable whatever motor was attached to the car.

  One corner of the goddess’s mouth curled up.

  Lore’s heartbeat grew louder in her ears.

  “My great lord,” Athena began, a look of clear derision on her face, though the new god couldn’t see, “has discovered the true meaning of the new lines, and my father’s instructions—I did not realize it myself, until he reminded me of the story of Deukalion and Pyrrha. You are familiar with it, I presume?”

  The dark air seemed to press in on Lore from all sides as Athena’s words settled in her mind.

  Deukalion and Pyrrha had been the only two survivors of the flood Zeus had sent to end the warring mortals of the Bronze Age, having been warned by Deukalion’s father, Prometheus. Deukalion and Pyrrha had been the ones to repopulate the world by throwing the bones of the mother—stones—over their shoulders.

  “You understand now,” Athena said. “For so long, I thought this hunt a punishment when it was merely a test. All this time, my father desired us to prove our loyalty by ending the worst age of man. To begin a new race that pays devotion to its gods.”

  Lore was shaking her head, fighting the anger that threatened to suffocate her. “You’d need Poseidon’s power over the seas and rivers to pull off something like that.”

  “Are they not already rising as this race of men slowly poisons this world?” Athena asked. “Will they not continue to, as the god of war inflames their hearts and spurs them on and on until the air is choked by smoke and the ground bleeds?”

  “Her fear,” Wrath said, suddenly behind Lore. “It feels like wine in the blood.”

  “It is only a taste of what will come,” Athena said, not bothering to look at him. “When the world realizes its fate.” She took a step toward Lore, her eyes flicking toward the aegis, just for a moment. “But it is not water that will purify the lands. It is not water that will cleanse this world. It is fire.”

  Lore spun toward the car, the tank, her sword raised.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Wrath taunted her. “It contains sea fire and will ignite on contact with water.”

  Sea fire. Lore sucked in a hard breath through her nose. A legendary weapon of the Eastern Roman Empire. Once ignited, anything the chemicals touched would burn, and rather than stop it, water would help carry and feed the flames. It would boil the streets from below, causing massive destruction as it fed on the raw material it encountered. In a flooded city, it would take days, if not weeks, to be fully smothered. And by then . . .

  They weren’t burning Grand Central. They were burning the whole city.

  “Yes,” Wrath breathed. “The fires will spread below the streets, through all of its many tunnels, devouring from below.”

  “Igniting it now will also take out both of you,” Lore said, drawing back Mákhomai’s tip, ready to try to pierce the tank’s metal shell. “Is that supposed to be some kind of deterrent?”

  “Only,” he sneered, “if you want to save your friends from the inferno set to explode above us.”

  LORE’S PULSE SURGED AGAIN, her nostrils flaring.

  “That’s an empty threat,” she forced herself to say. “They’ll figure out what’s going on as soon as they see that your hunters have left.”

  “Child,” he said. “Whoever said all of my hunters have left? I needed but two to trap the rest inside and start the blaze.”

  Shock whipped her from all sides.

  “You’re—” Lore began. “You’re going to—”

  “You’re, you’re, you’re,” he repeated, over and over, mocking. He came to stand near Athena again, using his belt as a tourniquet for his arm. “All of them must die eventually in order for the world to be reborn. They should be honored to know they are the first sacrifices to a new, glorious age.”

  Lore turned toward Athena, but the goddess was unmoved.

  “You can’t do this,” Lore begged. “You wouldn’t just be killing hunters—if his plan succeeds, you’d be killing innocent people.”

  “There are no innocent mortals,” Athena said simply.

  “I will enjoy tearing your life apart, to watch the true end of Perseus’s line,” Wrath told her. “Kneel to me, and summon the Cloudbringer with the aegis to bear witness to the blaze.”

  “You really think it’ll summon Zeus to come watch you destroy a city?” Lore asked. “It doesn’t work like that, asshole!”

  “It works the way I say it does,” Wrath said through gritted teeth.

  Lore lowered herself into a defensive stance as both gods came toward her, Mákhomai suddenly heavy in her hand. Her arm shook with the effort to keep it raised. A fresh fear swirled in her as the subway car suddenly rattled to life, an unseen engine starting.

  “Do you feel it now?” Wrath asked her. Lore fumbled for her one earbud again, but it was too late. The power coating his words turned her limbs to rubber.

  Lore staggered as sensation left her body. Her grip on the aegis eased against her will, and, for the first time, she could barely support its weight.

  “Do you really believe she’ll allow you to live?” Lore asked Wrath, fighting to draw the words out of herself. Her body shook as she planted her feet on the ground beneath the water in one last attempt to keep from falling. “That Zeus and the others will let you have this world?”

  “Fool,” Athena growled. “You know nothing.”

  It came to her like a slip of sunlight breaking through the clouds—the real reason Athena had come here. Why she had done everything in her power to retrieve the shield.

  Wrath forgot his injury and tried to swing that phantom arm forward to strike her. Lore didn’t flinch, not even when Athena’s dory fell between them, cutting Wrath’s second advance short. Her eyes burned in the darkness.

  “You’re right, I am a fool,” Lore told her. “And you were right before, too, to mock me for believing you. The truth is, I didn’t just believe you—I believed in you. When you kept those people safe from the explosion and the debris. When you told me about Pallas, about your city, about the role you were born to, and the one you wanted for yourself.”

  A flinch, almost imperceptible, moved through Athena.

  “Your temples fell. Men no longer feared you. Your legend, once sung, became a whisper,” Lore continued. “But I still believed in you.”

  Athena’s nostrils flared, her hands strangling the staff of her spear.

  “This isn’t a test, it’s a lesson,” Lore said. “Why would Zeus ever want you to kill innocent people—worshippers of other gods—when that was one of the reasons you were punished in the first place? Even after everything he’s done to you and the others, I never heard you speak about him in anger or resentment. In your eyes, he has no equal. He would never give the world to the victor of the Agon.”

  “Silence!” Wrath roared, striking at her.

  Van’s words from that morning came back to Lore in a rush, and she pushed on, unafraid. “A sacrifice has to mean something. You only understand sacrifice as something done for you. But Zeus was speaking to mortals at Olympia, and we’ve always understood it a different way. We make sacrifices to honor gods, to thank them, to request their blessings . . . or to seek forgiveness.”

  “I will cut the tongue from your head,” Wrath said, “as I should have done when you were nothing but a whelp.”

  “Have you ever done that?” Lore asked Athena. “Have you truly sought penance for what happened all those centuries ago? Or have you spent over a thousand years trying to justify what happened by blaming it on the Fates—all because you can’t stand knowing that you—and only you—are to blame for losing your father’s love?”

  Athena’s expression was disguised by the darkness, but Lore knew she was unmoved, and it stole the last of her faith. There was no way to reach her, not now.

  “You’re supposed to be the protector of cities,” Lore said, “not the cause of their destruction!”

  Wrath snarled as he lunged forward again, k
nocking Lore back as water splashed up around them.

  Each blow pushed her farther and farther from the tank and car. Struggling against the drain of his power, Lore dropped to a knee, lifting the shield; she couldn’t do anything but let the aegis be battered by the maelstrom of his strikes.

  Her arms shook with the effort of absorbing each relentless blow, her teeth gritted.

  Help me, Lore thought. Please!

  Yes, it whispered.

  She slammed her fist against the front of the aegis, and it roared.

  The sound shook the walls of the tunnel, sending loose pieces of stone raining down over them. As Lore drew in her next breath, she felt its power fill her—fill her and fill her, even as Wrath tried to take that strength.

  All at once, it stopped. Somehow, Lore knew what was coming.

  There was nothing human left in Wrath’s face.

  “Was that not enough for you, little bitch? Even your father knew when to submit,” Wrath said in amusement. “By the gods—sea, fire, and women are the three evils.”

  Lore hated that saying more than she hated even him.

  She drew toward him. He raised his sword once more, undaunted by the blood that still flowed from his other, severed arm.

  He’s feeding on my strength, Lore realized. It was the only way he could still be on his feet. The high of the fight only buoyed his bloodlust.

  Even if Lore could force him back into regular combat . . .

  She stilled.

  Regular combat. As if she needed to fight on his terms, as a hunter would.

  “I’ve got another ancient proverb for you,” Lore said, sliding her arm out from the interior straps of the aegis. “Go fuck yourself.”

  She flung the shield at him. Wrath reached for it, his booming laugh cut off as the shield hit him, cracking bones as it smashed into his chest. Breath raged out of him and he was knocked onto his back, momentarily trapped beneath the shield’s impossible weight.