by Amie Gibbons
Apollo slid his arm down to my waist and around it, securing me to him.
Something told me it was just as much for his comfort as my safety.
The gods and demigods kept coming until they took up the free space around the front of the monolithic table. There were probably a few hundred.
Zeus took the chair at the head of the horseshoe, Hera on his right and Poseidon and a woman I didn’t know on his left. Hades, Persephone, and Henry were next. Apollo pulled out the chair next to Henry and I took it, letting him roll me in. He sat down next to me and Artemis sat next to him. The chair next to her stayed empty.
The gods took chairs and spots like they were assigned. Shouldn’t us humans have been sitting back from the table or at least further away from the head of the table like second class citizens?
“How did you know?” I asked Apollo. “Some kind of magic phone?”
Apollo gave me a look. “Yes,” he said the same way Millie did when she thought I was being slow. “It’s called psychic powers. You didn’t know I was psychic? Why do you think I’m the god of psychics?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even line up all the questions I had before Zeus started speaking.
“My son tells me some have decided to be early… led by the lower beings. He also said they are planning to betray us.”
Mutters filled the room and I took the opportunity to lean over and whisper in Henry’s ear, “Is he talking about gods?” Henry nodded. “Betray them in what?”
“The deal the gods made at the last… roughly translated, it’s magical alignment,” Henry whispered. “To take magic and go to sleep until this one.”
My confusion must’ve shown because Henry shook his head. “Apollo hasn’t told you anything, has he?”
“Please.” Zeus raised his hands and the room instantly quieted.
Zeus looks like a college professor. One of the ones you got a crush on when you were a flighty freshman. Black hair fell as a cloud of waves to his shoulders, dusted with grey at the temples. He has a strong face with twinkling blue eyes and full lips just like his son’s. He’s nearly as tall as Hades and all solid muscle.
“Even without their help, we will still be successful on the solstice,” Zeus said. “This is to be a cordial meeting. No one is to break the treaty and attack, no matter what provocation. We will not give them any excuse to weaken us before the alignment.”
Gods popped into existence inside the horseshoe, maybe thirty of them.
They looked… powerful. One was in a loincloth. Another was stark naked except for a bright yellow belt with knives hanging off it like pleats. How did she walk without cutting herself? They all had weapons clipped to their hips and over their backs, and I was betting there were more hidden. One even decided to embrace the modern era and had a giant rifle strapped to his back.
The air in the room changed, became solid, like I could’ve scooped it out with a spoon and licked it up.
Apollo took a hold of my hand and I didn’t try taking it back. Henry dabbed his face again.
“Greetings Zeus,” one of the new gods said, stepping forward from his crowd.
He was maybe five six, with the smoothest cinnamon skin I’d ever seen and eyes so dark I couldn’t tell where the pupils ended and the irises began.
His features were pleasantly masculine, good looking but not too much so. His suit emphasized his wide shoulders and was probably very expensive despite being tomato red. The suit, bright blue shirt and yellow tie with little elephants on it all clashed in some eclectic, actually seemed to go together kind of way.
“Greetings Ravena,” Zeus said. Neither of them bowed or so much as inclined their heads.
Ravena? The Hindu demon with ten heads?
This one had only the one head, but a lot of stuff had been blown out of proportion or outright changed in the years the gods had been asleep. I doubted his status was much different than in the stories, though. Why was he leading this pack? He wasn’t even one of the major deities.
Maybe that’s what Zeus meant by lower beings?
“The nine days starts in fifty minutes,” Zeus said. “Is there a reason you are early?”
“We’re here as a courtesy, to tell you we disagree with this plan.” Ravena’s voice was light and pleasant, a tenor with an Indian accent. It really didn’t go with the suit.
“We all agreed to this at the last alignment,” Zeus said, voice flatter than an unsalted cracker. “What seems to be the problem, demon?”
“We don’t think we should stop it. You forget, oh great Zeus, the world will not end, just humanity’s part in it. Look around. Humans have run amok while we slept so we’d have the power to save them.”
World ending? They put themselves into hibernation for the power to save us? Huh?
“You know why we’re saving them, Ravena.”
Ravena’s lips twitched. “Yes. And we think you’ll be successful even without us.”
I squinted at him, red streaks slashed across his face and disappeared so fast I may have imagined it.
He’s lying.
Zeus clenched his jaw as whispers erupted around the table. “If you think you can keep your full powers and still reap the benefits of humanity’s survival, you are severely mistaken, demon.”
Ravena lost his friendly businessman face and broke into a full smile. Arrogance flowed around him like fine champagne to my psychic vision, bubbling up near his eyes.
“If you challenge me, you challenge all of us. You will win, but you won’t have the power to pull off the spell at the alignment.”
“You will go through with the power joining,” Zeus said, voice the low rumble of thunder at the height of a storm. It rattled my teeth like a bass had been implanted in my jawbone.
I shivered and Apollo squeezed my hand then reached up to stroke my arm. I’d actually forgotten he was there.
“You will keep your word,” Zeus continued, “or you will be called oath-breakers.”
Ravena spread his hands wide, staring Zeus straight in the eye. Even I knew that was an insult of the deepest kind, a demi-god staring a king in the eye like they were equals. His grin widened.
“So be it.”
I expected more whispers or for Zeus to answer or... something. Silence filled the room like clouds, making the world fuzzy around the edges. My ears buzzed like they needed something to do.
My eyes jerked around, looking for motion. No one else so much as blinked. It was like the room had been captured in a painting, and I was the only one aware time hadn’t stopped, or maybe time had and I was the only one who didn’t stop with it.
The air didn’t even move. If anyone else was breathing, I couldn’t tell.
Motion. Sound. Something!
There! My head moved with my eyes like a whip. The elephants on Ravena’s tie moved. The grey and white beasts, no bigger than a tablespoon each, crawled around the tie. They climbed over each other, disappeared at the ends, and came back. It was like they were looking for the world of sight and sound to pick up again, too.
My breaths were too loud and fast. I tried to move again, to squeeze Apollo’s hand.
I couldn’t.
My eyes inched up like a magnet captured them until I met Ravena’s eyes.
Black pits struck me like I fell into them and hit a granite bottom. An ache built between my eyes and I tried to move to rub it away.
The Hanged Man from my cards appeared upside down, dangling in each of the demon’s eyes.
His smile grew. It was almost too wide, like his lips were actually lengthening instead of just pulling up.
“Well, well, well,” he almost seemed to sing, but his mouth didn’t move. “The human has teeth. Hello, mongrel. This is your warning; stay out of this. You are dealing with forces beyond your ken.”
Huh?
“You know I can not let such an insult go,” Zeus said, the words a slap on my ears.
The world moved again. Breeze and breath filled the air. The cent
aur shifted on his hooves. Henry mopped his forehead. Apollo was rubbing my arm like he’d never let up. Artemis stroked her bow next to him, in the same rhythm as her twin.
And Ravena was still staring at Zeus.
What the hell just happened?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Then challenge us,” Ravena said. “You could squash me like a bug. I know that. But all of us?” He waved at the crowd behind him. “This is a fraction of our numbers. No. You barely have the power you need now. I do not believe you would risk not having the power to save humanity, but challenge me if you wish.”
Why did they keep saying save humanity? Since when did we need saving?
Apollo moved his hand and I turned to look at him. He stared past me up at his father. I didn’t need to be psychic to know he was telling Zeus something.
Zeus nodded, still staring Ravena down. When was the last time either of them blinked? “After the alignment, I will kill you, demon.”
“You will let this slight pass for now?” Ravena’s tone was a challenge itself.
“You know I can not.”
“Perhaps one of your people then?”
Apollo took my hand and drew me close.
“None of us can fight without weakening ourselves,” he whispered so low and fast I didn’t know if it was a breath on my ear or inside my head. “One of our… humans could fight one of theirs as surrogates, without us losing power we’re going to need on the solstice.”
I met his eyes. He couldn’t be asking what I thought he was asking.
“I challenge you by surrogate,” Zeus said.
“This is all about to happen very fast,” Apollo said. I was pretty sure he really was in my head this time. “You’re the perfect deception. You look harmless and your powers aren’t overt. Accept your place as my minkati, agree to work for me, and to fight for us tonight. It may discourage some of Ravena’s followers.”
“What?” I hissed.
“You will use a human in your retinue that you can bring here quickly,” Zeus said. “And they must match our human physically.”
“You...” I started and my mouth clacked shut as Apollo shook his head.
“Think it,” he said inside my mind.
“Get out of my head, you bastard.”
“This is not the time. This is the end of your world if this goes badly.” His eyes bore into mine.
“Oh please. Don’t pull that shit on me. This is a tiny pride match. You can’t just put me on the spot like this and tell me to suck it up because the world could end.”
Apollo shrugged. “I am.”
The conversation took maybe four seconds.
“All right,” Ravena said. “Show me your human and I will do my best to match.”
“No, I’m not a fighter!” I thought at Apollo. “I haven’t been in martial arts for two years and I practice maybe once a week. I’ve never even been in a real fight. You can’t make me fight for you.”
“If you agree to this, I’ll bring your mother out of her coma.”
I sagged like I’d been sucker punched. “What?”
“I can and I will. You work for me, you get her. Deal?” The urgency in his tone hurt my brain.
My mom. I could have her back. Gods didn’t promise things like that if they couldn’t deliver.
“I thought you couldn’t drain yourself that much.”
“The power I’ll gain from joining with you will far outweigh what I’ll lose from bringing her back. You are o… You are that powerful. If you knew how, you could have woken her yourself. That’s why I’ve waited until the last minute to get you instead of settling for someone else.”
“Can’t I give you power without joining?”
“Not as efficiently.”
Zeus waved his hand in our direction. “Stand, our champion human,” he said formally, with an incline of his head. A great show of respect for a god king to make towards a human.
“Cassandra, we’re the good guys here, I swear.” Apollo squeezed my hand. “Choose. Now.”
I closed my eyes for a second that was a year.
The Hanged Man made a hell of a lot more sense now. Then again, so did the rest of the cards.
“Deal.”
I shoved my chair back and stood. “Alright, Ravena. Show me what ya got.”
The demon broke the line of sight with Zeus and it was like the air lost ten pounds of tense around its mid-section.
Zeus smiled at me, inclining his head again as Ravena turned slowly.
This time, his eyes were just eyes as they met mine, and I knew whatever had happened before hadn’t been my imagination as something close to hatred flashed in them.
Ravena pulled his lips back, teeth whiter than a movie star’s. “This little thing? She’s built for pleasure.” His eyes lingered on my pushed up breasts, making my stomach churn. “Hardly a champion, and not even all human.”
“She’s a psychic,” Zeus said, “but she’s as human as any other magical being reborn.”
“Wait.” My head snapped towards Zeus. “Did he just say magical being reborn? What does that mean?”
If Apollo heard me, he didn’t show any signs of it.
“You may pick a human with similar powers if you wish, but it will be one physically similar since this will be a fight of flesh and blood.”
Ravena held my eyes and I swear I saw the Hanged Man in each of his for a split second before he said, “You have chosen poorly.”
I had no clue if he was talking to Zeus or me.
# # #
“Cliffnotes it,” I said three minutes later as Apollo and I appeared at the edge of a stadium.
It looked like something from the Olympics: a long oval track of plain dirt with hurdles along the way and lights hanging above, making it bright as day.
In the real world, the lights would’ve been on posts. Here, they just floated. Was this place for races? Did they put their humans through their paces here like dogs?
Were we just pets to them?
And I did mean we. I signed over my soul in a second. I was part of Apollo’s retinue whether I liked it or not. I quite possibly doomed myself. And I’d do it again if it meant bringing my mom out of her seven year sleep.
Apollo led me behind a sky blue partition by the stone wall encircling the track. There were gi pants and a red sports bra that looked my size hanging from nails in the wall.
Oh, how convenient.
“About five thousand years ago, the last time magic aligned, we foresaw the end of the human race,” Apollo said. “In almost exactly nine days, the magical forces in this universe will align again. That is and always has been a pivotal point. It is a time when anything can happen, can change. Fifteen thousand years ago, the alignment was used to cast a curse.”
“This is the Cliffnotes?” I asked, reaching behind me and pulling out the bow at the bottom of the corset.
“Here.” Apollo got behind me and my heart rate picked up as he went to work on the ties, fingers loosening them far faster than mine could’ve. “How did you get this on? Magic?”
“Tyler helped me. I don’t know how to do magic. It just kind of happens.”
“I’ll teach you.”
I didn’t even want to deal with that right now. “Keep going.”
“Of course,” he said, working out the top of the ties. “This curse on humanity reaches critical mass when magical forces align because the alignment acts as a focus.
“Five thousand years ago, we used the alignment’s power to fight off the curse, and see what it would throw next. We saw this year. Magic will burst forth fiercer than when it woke back up and that will trigger seismic activity, causing earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, all at once.
“In short, it’s your Christian Armageddon. Some of humanity would probably survive considering their technology and sheer numbers now, but society would have to start over.”
I pulled the top apart at the back and looked over my shoulder at him. “Turn around, and
keep talking.”
He grumbled something under his breath about puritanical modesty as he turned, and I peeled off the top with some more tugging. He probably peeked, but I didn’t take the time to turn and check.
“We won’t survive without humans.”
“What!” I barely remembered not to turn to look at him as I wiggled out of my skirt.
Apollo sighed. “Without people to worship us, we’ll fade. Not quickly, but eventually.”
My jaw dropped as I unhooked my belt, but I didn’t say anything. They sure liked to keep that close to the vest.
So why the hell is he telling me now?
“We calculated how much power we’d need to stop this destruction. It was more than we could hope to have after five thousand years. We figured out if we took magic into hibernation, it’d stay at current levels instead of dissipating.”
“Dissipating?” I took off my shorts and gun, putting them on the ground.
“Basic thermodynamics. All things tend towards entropy. All energy is constantly spreading out; with every transfer, some is lost, usually as heat. The same goes for magic. Every spell that would have been done over the past five thousand years would have made energy dissipate, making it disappear through the atmosphere. We wouldn’t have had enough.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling on the pants.
“But our spell kept magic trapped in a closed system, like...”–he snapped his fingers–”like a chemical reaction in a sealed jar. The extra energy is stuck inside unless it grows too great, which is when the jar explodes. Which didn’t happen here… luckily.”
But it could have?
“We’re going to pool our magic over the next nine days so we can stop the destruction on the twenty-first. We will tap the energy source of the curse and funnel the magic stored in it to help us end the curse, hopefully once and for all, instead of ending civilization.”
I can’t deal with this. “Wasn’t this supposed to happen a few years ago?”
“No, we have no idea where humans got that twenty-twelve thing from.”
“Mayan calendar.”
“Damn Mayans, couldn’t keep a secret to save a sun god’s life. They were correct, though humans must have miscalculated the years.”