by Amie Gibbons
“Guys.” I skidded to a stop next to Apollo and grabbed his arm. Hey, it worked on the fireman without dire consequences.
Apollo jumped like he was woken from a nightmare. His eyes darted around and he flailed like a drowning kid. I backed up fast.
“Cassandra?” he said after a moment, lunging and hugging me. He said something into my hair.
I pulled back. “What?”
“It’s a trap. Once you try to use magic on it, it sucks your magic and consciousness into it. It’s like a black hole for magic.”
“Shaking works?”
“Apparently.” He ran to the next god, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. She stumbled and he nodded, going for the next. I ran down to the end, got that guy with a body check.
Not intentionally, I slid on the rubble. Soot and ash are pretty slippery on slabs of building. Who knew?
I got the next one just as Apollo got the other. We met in the middle of the line of gods. They looked around, one ran around in a circle as fast as me on my best day, shaking his arms out.
“Hermes, calm down,” one of the women yelled. “It’s okay.”
Ohhhhh, god of messengers, and obviously a speed demon like me. Hermes ran into the building, popping people out left and right.
The woman tossed up her hands. “Whatever.”
“Where’s Millie?” I asked Apollo.
He shrugged. “No clue. I… I tried to put out the fire and lost time. Lost my magic.”
He met my eyes, his wide. The arrogant god, the goofball, the man who claimed to want me, all were wiped away.
Leaving a scared young man.
My heart lurched. I’d never seen Apollo look so helpless.
“All of it?” I asked.
“It will recharge but I’m pretty low now.”
The pieces snapped together like a puzzle clicking into place and my legs shook as my stomach dropped out.
“It’s a trap!”
“I think we’ve established that,” Apollo said tone dryer than the flames.
“So where’s the hunter if the trap was sprung?”
He looked around. “Good point.”
I looked around with him. The firemen were taking some chemical to the fire now, probably the big version of fire extinguishers. It seemed to be doing the trick.
“Maybe they wanted us low on magic in general?” Apollo said.
“I know you don’t believe that.”
“No.” He gulped. “I don’t know. But here we are, and vulnerable. And… Not in Olympus!”
“Go,” I said, nodding at the firemen. “We’ve got this.”
He looked like he wanted to say something and I pushed his arm.
“Go!”
He ran for the others, grabbed them, and took off after a moment of conferring. Hermes buzzed by a few seconds later.
I still had no clue where Millie went or if Tyler was okay. Millie had been heading inside and had the reflexes of a spider when it came to those wings of hers. Tyler was psychic enough to usually get the jump on things, but then again, so was I.
Where is she?
Millie flew out of the top floor, a kid around five in her arms. Well, she glided more than flew, but touched down fairly well, only a few stumbling steps. She put the kid down and took his hand, walking him over to the table before coming up to me.
“Table’s spelled to protect it,” she said. “So he should be good til we can find his parents. Why is he in a student apartment building anyway?” she shook her head. “Not important, right? I think I’m in shock. Where’s Tyler?”
“No clue. You take left, I take right, get anyone you can to safety.”
She nodded and we both took off.
The next few minutes were a blur of smoke and digging through rubble. My lungs had given up coughing and just worked at half capacity, my hands were scratched and bleeding like I ran them through a paper cut gauntlet more ruthless than three years of law school combined.
I didn’t stop looking through the ruins of Corner Pub’s backyard until something big and vaguely Marshmallow Man shaped in yellow grabbed me and hauled me out of the yard to the street where a fleet of ambulances waited.
I got plopped on a gurney and the fireman who’d grabbed me pointed a finger down in a clear order to stay before he went back to the backyard.
Back to the backyard. That was funny.
I swayed and someone grabbed me, helping me lie down before putting a mask over my face.
I breathed deep and felt a little less crazy. Ah, oxygen deprivation from the smoke.
Poor Millie must’ve been in Hell with her already weak lungs and dirty, singed wings. She’d told me once if they were dirty they itched when they went back down, like the dirt got stuck under her skin and irritated til she got it out.
I couldn’t imagine what burning would do to her fluffy white feathers. Maybe they healed like any other part of the body? But maybe not?
I sat up after a few more breaths and kept the mask on as I looked around.
There!
Wings stuck out on either side of a gurney about five down. I hopped off my gurney and put the machine the mask was connected to on it so I could roll it over. It was lighter than it looked. I probably could’ve carried it.
I rolled up next to Millie, keeping my gurney a few feet further down so I wouldn’t run into her wings, and got back on it.
She wasn’t conscious, but she looked okay besides the soot and dirt. Maybe flushed, maybe a bit crispy, but nothing worse than me after a day on the lake. Her breath made her oxygen mask cloud in a steady pulse so I was pretty sure she was okay.
“Hey,” I snagged the scrub arm of a woman inching by.
How many people had I grabbed in the past ten minutes?
“Have you guys pulled out or treated or seen a woman with red hair? She’s tall, porcelain skin, I mean this girl could be an Irish beauty queen in a Neutrogena ad, has an expensive suit on. Oh, one green eye and one brown.”
The woman’s face registered recognition and I sighed before she hooked a thumb over her shoulder and said, “Over there, about a block down. You friends with her?”
“Yes. Why?”
“She’s insane.”
“Oh that.” I nodded. “Yeah, she knows. Thanks.” I got down again and pushed my gurney into the road, trusting the flashing trucks and ambulances were keeping traffic away.
Obviously if Tyler was up and giving the woman a hard time, she was fine. Or at least alive. It took a while for me to see the flash of red hair because it was almost as black as mine under the soot.
“Cassandra!” She pulled off her mask long enough to talk, though it was more of a hoarse whisper.
I slid my gurney to a stop and hugged her. “Hi,” I said through my mask and she made a face. I pulled the thing off. “How are you? What happened?”
She was covered in soot and looked like a law school refugee in a parody video. Her suit skirt split nearly down one side, jacket long gone, and top ripped and torn. It was almost fashionable. Grunge chic.
“Ran in to get people out,” she said before putting back on her mask. These things weren’t exactly made for people wanting to hold a conversation. Mask off. “Too much smoke.” Mask on.
“Yeah, that happens with fires.” I sat next to her on her gurney, watching the movements around us, just taking a minute for my brains to come back.
The road was chaos, but that organized kind that came from massive amounts of emergency personnel being on the scene. People hustled past us and the sirens shrieked down the street as the trucks started to pull away with their cargo.
We were walking distance from three hospitals. If there was going to be one place to attack people, this was pretty much the best one for the victims.
There didn’t seem to be much of a leader in the mass, but they all knew their jobs. People in EMT whites and hospital scrubs went from gurney to gurney checking on people. More trucks pulled up. There were probably more people being p
ulled from the building.
So much noise and activity, it didn’t seem real.
I put an arm around Tyler and she leaned into me, a testament to how bad she must’ve been feeling. She wasn’t the cuddliest of the species.
I pulled of my mask. “Did you get hurt? Did things fall on you? You seem okay.”
She pulled the mask up just enough to talk. “Not really hurt. Just can’t breathe. I think I was only in for a few moments before something came down. I didn’t even have the chance to grab anyone. I just ran and tripped and next thing I knew, a marshmallow puff man was carrying me outside.” She put the mask on, breathing in and out so fast it fogged up completely.
Isn’t that what I called the firemen? Great minds think alike. I nodded. “One second.” I took off my mask and put it next to its machine.
My lungs felt shriveled. Like when I’d jog in sub-freezing temps back in the Rockies after months at hardly ever hit thirty degrees sea level.
Maybe leaving my mask off for a few minutes was a bad idea. Maybe I should lay down and leave it alone.
Nope.
I put on the mask and took a deep drag before putting the mask down and bee-lining it back to Millie.
I grabbed her gurney by the handles and pulled back to get her out of the line of beds. I turned, one degree at a time, trying to keep her from bumping another gurney or the curb.
“What are you doing!”
I whirled. A woman built like a linebacker but half as tall stomped up to me from around one of the ambulances. She crossed her arms and planted herself in my path like I was trying to kidnap Millie or something.
“She’s my friend. I’m moving her down to where our gurneys are.”
“You’re not moving anybody. We have a system.”
It’d been a very long day and I had a feeling it wasn’t over yet.
“Your system can go fuck itself. Move or I’ll use magic on you. See that,” I pointed at the crispy shell of a building, “I can do that to you.”
The woman looked at me like I’d turned green and I bit my lip.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Of course I’m not going to set an innocent person on fire. It goes against everything in me to even threaten like that. Could you just move? I want my friend with us. Or I could move the other one down here. But we have more room down there. Here it’s like a clown car… only filled up with gurneys instead of clowns. That’s stupid, I know. Just move.”
She must’ve had some compassion because she actually moved. Or she figured it was a bad idea to mess with a magical person who was obviously having a bad day.
I got Millie out of the line and pushed her down the street.
Wonder if the wings make her heavier? They don’t look like they weigh much.
The nurses had been nice enough to tuck Millie’s wings in so they weren’t hanging over the gurney anymore. I didn’t know they were poseable.
“Hey,” I said once I got to Tyler. “Delivery. Is this your siren?”
I put Millie on Tyler’s other side and grabbed my mask, taking about a minute full of deep breaths. I almost passed out from the sudden influx of extra oxygen.
I lay down next to my friends. I couldn’t close my eyes, but the relative peace of waiting to be treated gave my brain time to mull.
What was going on in Olympus right now? Were the gods okay?
Was Apollo okay?
I rubbed my chest between my breasts, the entire area sore. With the adrenaline slowing, the aches had a chance to come through. My lungs burned with a lifetime’s supply of smoke and my legs hurt. My arm twinged with the memories of past pain.
How bad was this going to be? Were we going to need surgery or medication to get the soot out of our lungs? What about the soot we’d swallowed?
I wished Millie was awake so I could ask her.
If the gods handled whatever it was quickly then they’d be back here soon, right? How long had it been since they’d left? Maybe five minutes, but I didn’t have the tightest grasp on the movement of time right now.
I rubbed my chest plate again. It was so tight in there, like my organs swelled up.
I turned to the side so I could see my friends. I couldn’t just lay here, no matter how hard breathing was without the mask. I could get up and do something and haul my new face growth along on the gurney.
“No,” Tyler said, giving me a look over her mask before dropping it back on.
Mask off. “What?”
“I can read your face.”
I stared at her and she stared back, neither one of us blinking. I wasn’t the only one itching to get up and do something.
“I get it,” she said. “I do, but they’ve got professionals here to take care of people and neither of us is running at even half tank right now. Not your monkeys. Just wait for them to get to us.”
I sighed and lay back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I must’ve fallen asleep because I blinked my eyes and Apollo was next to me, sleeping on a gurney on his side, facing me. I sighed a breath I didn’t have to give and my arms shook as tears filled my eyes.
He was okay!
He must’ve been exhausted to be sleeping out here in the open where anyone could strike, but then again, we were surrounded by at least a hundred people, police roping off the street, ambulances, doctors and nurses. It was all an organized mess with us near the edge of it, some of the last ones to be seen.
I had a feeling Tyler put herself out on the edge on purpose.
I lay there, watching the bustle occurring behind Apollo’s head.
“Hi,” he said so soft I almost didn’t hear it.
I lifted my hand to pull off my mask and he reached out, catching it. “Think it. I want you to keep that on. Your lungs don’t look good.”
“You can see them?”
“Yes. I’ll heal them if I need to, but I’d rather save my magic if human means can do it.”
I sniffed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m glad you’re okay too. When I felt your fear this afternoon, I wanted to come.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Someone attacked Olympus. Crazy lesser demons playing terrorist. We caught them pretty easily.”
“But you were draining me?”
“I was testing how the connection worked while I was under stress. Though I didn’t need it then, I wanted to make sure it works for when I do need it.”
“You-”
Something sounded, a bell or a clap or… something. It wasn’t real almost.
Apollo shot up and I followed suit, looking around like I was expecting… I don’t know, a rain of toads or something.
Everything looked normal, well, normal for a disaster scene. A news van was parked across the street and people unloaded equipment at an alarming rate. Maybe the sound was the van braking to a fast stop or someone opening a squealing door?
Apollo shook his head like he heard me and gestured in the other direction. I half turned to look behind me.
Oh shit.
Zeus, Hades and Artemis were about a quarter block away, looking everything from worried to pissed. I couldn’t handle this right now.
Zeus picked his way over, careful not to touch anyone as he passed. When he disappeared for a second to let someone by and the person didn’t even blink, I figured we were the only ones who could see him, and probably the others.
“You need to come home,” Zeus said to Apollo, giving me a quick nod.
“What happened?” I asked before remembering the mask was blocking my speech.
Zeus must’ve heard it well enough because he looked at me with a question in his eyes. “Who?”
I pulled off the mask. “Ravena, or whoever blew up this building? We thought it must’ve been a trap or something.”
“If it was, it wasn’t for us.” Zeus turned back to his son. “Come on. Leave the humans to their jobs. You have to do yours.”
Apollo sagged. I’d never seen him look so defeat
ed. “Father, we should tell magical humans what’s going on. We can tell all of them through a projection spell. They can help. Ravena’s trying to recruit them, and without us there to counter his propaganda, they’ll likely join him.”
Zeus’s face showed the gathering storm and I shrank away but Apollo talked faster. “I know it seems counterproductive to tell them we’re not as powerful as they think, but if they knew and wanted to help, just think what the collective magic of an entire planet could do, Father. We could cut this off at the quick.”
“No.”
No other explanation needed apparently.
“Why not?” Apollo asked.
“Because they will panic. We can tell a few at a time, in controlled circumstances. Telling them all at once and leaving them to their own devices is inviting disaster. We can not risk it.”
“This is their war too, Father.”
“I said no. As have the other leaders. Don’t argue with your king.”
“But-” Apollo’s mouth snapped shut and his face went red as he tossed up his hands.
Did his dad just silence him?
Can you say controlling?
Zeus turned to me. “Cassandra, are you alright?”
Well, that was kind of sweet, even if he was asking so he could ignore Apollo. I nodded.
Apollo gestured at the husk of the building and turned to me. “We think this was meant to kill you specifically. It wasn’t a trap for us. It merely wasn’t as grand an explosion as they were planning. Something wasn’t as powerful or they aimed for the wrong building.”
“Me?” I said, feeling incredibly small.
“Ravena. It must be.”
“But… why?”
Apollo shrugged and Zeus clasped his shoulder. “We need to regroup, my son. Come.”
I met Apollo’s eyes, resisting the urge to lunge and hug him.
To ask him to stay.
“Go on,” I said. “Listen to your dad. Let the humans deal with this.”
He looked at me, searching my eyes for something.
“Go with your dad. I’ll be fine.”
Zeus apparently got sick of being ignored because he tightened his grip and disappeared with Apollo along for the ride.
“Oh boy,” I whispered, sliding off my gurney. I glanced backwards to see if my friends were up. Tyler was.