by Amie Gibbons
I raised my eyebrows. “And yet. You want to pull my heartstrings? Want to convince me the gods you’re fighting really are the bad guys? Want me to hand over the bulk of my powers? I’ll do it in exchange for my life, but you’ve got to show me. I don’t think I’ll be able to betray them even if I want to if I don’t have a good reason, my subconscious won’t let me.”
Something like fear flashed across his face. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“You sound like Apollo. And I think I do. I think I’m still alive because you really would prefer me on your side. I think my power is much more useful to you when it’s in me, that some gets wasted if it has to be extracted. So why don’t you show me the piece of the puzzle I’m missing? Because right now all I see is an evil, wannabe comic book villain that wants power for power’s sake.”
I looked him in the eyes. “I get why you’re scared. And you don’t have to watch, I won’t judge or anything. Just show me.”
Ravena pulled his lip back, a silent growl. I kept my face sympathetic. No woman would ever fall for this trick, but a guy like Ravena, yeah. I’d just called him a little bitch baby, basically.
The shriveled, beaten Ravena appeared in front of us, the real Ravena pulling his lips tight. A wave of bugs rose from the desert, marching straight for him. An army of mouse sized beetle things marching as one. Hurrah, hurrah.
I looked away.
A hand grabbed the back of my neck, yanking my head forward. I didn’t fight it.
“You wanted to know, psychic,” Ravena hissed. “Don’t say you want to be shown and then look away.” His voice shook. “We’re just getting to the good part.”
“They punished you.” I looked, keeping my eyes on the area in front of me, refusing to focus on it, to acknowledge it. Even with that barrier of denial, I knew I’d have nightmares if I lived through this.
“I dared to rebel,” he said, words falling like shards of that crystal. “This was my punishment. Forty days with no water nor food, the sun, the sand, and the b…” He covered the break with a cough. “The bugs.”
Tears backed up in my eyes and I gulped. I didn’t have to fake the sympathy now.
“Why did you do it?” I let the tears coat my voice. “Didn’t you know then what they’d do to you?”
He didn’t answer. We kept watching.
“Can that crystal take out only some power?” I asked finally, not looking at him. “Just not enough to kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.” I turned my back on the horror show, tensing.
Wait for it.
I felt the crystal appear in our not-reality. It pulled at me. It’d already had a taste of me, wanted me back.
Wait for it.
His arm came up, triumph naked on his face.
Now!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed, loud and panicked as a horror movie ditz.
It wasn’t hard to bring up the terror. I brought up my Sight almost as easily, like a stagehand pulling back the curtain.
The real world of the gods’ dimension was still there, lush green around Ravena and me staring each other down.
I pointed in front of us. I believe.
Another wave of bugs appeared on the flat land, marching towards us with a single-minded need to eat. Merely a shimmer to me over the real world. My eyes hurt from holding both lands in at once.
Had to stay here, to believe it, to make Ravena believe it.
I screamed again, whirling and pointing.
Ravena held up the crystal like a knife, looking around with quick jerks of his thick neck. “They’re everywhere!”
“What did you do!” I shrieked, high and thin. I breathed tight and fast, arms shaking, tears leaking. I wrapped my arms around my middle like I wanted to puke the fear out. “I thought this wasn’t real.”
“No, no!” Ravena turned and ran. The wave followed him. The one on his past self poured off of, out of, the ruined shell. I gagged, covering my mouth. They ran by me with no prompting.
This was Ravena’s nightmare. His own private hell. He’d opened himself up when he showed me the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Made himself vulnerable to his fears.
I opened my eyes in the real world, yanking my hair out of Ravena’s grasp. I took the crystal from his hand. It must’ve materialized in this world just as it did in the mental one.
I licked my lips, took a deep breath and met his blank eyes, picturing myself in his world again.
I opened my eyes to the desert again. Ravena ran at me, bugs behind him, catching up but not quite there. They could chase him around forever in here, but that kneejerk fear response would quell soon, and he’d be able to get himself out as easily as I had.
“Ravena, how do I stop them!” I yelled as he got closer. “What’s happening?”
He met my eyes and I held out the crystal to him, like it was a weapon he could use. He looked at his hand quickly, like he was wondering when he lost it, and ran faster.
“It’s the bad power, isn’t it?” I said. “The power we put in you. I’m so sorry. Get it out of you! Can you get it out with this?”
I looked past him, letting my own bug phobia break through, letting my eyes grow wide. I pulled back my hand, starting to cross myself and Ravena looked back.
Just for a second, he looked at his fear.
I switched the crystal to my left hand and rammed it sideways into his chest as he turned and lunged at me, his momentum bowling us both over.
We hit soft grass in Olympus, Ravena half on top of me, the crystal sticking out just past the side of my breast. I rolled him off and he grabbed at the crystal, trying to pull it out, his hands sliding off again and again as he squirmed under it.
Like a pinned bug.
I sat up, watching him fight and lose.
I watched the power flow out of him, the strange first. He had opened himself up to losing it after all, but it yanked his power along with it.
I waited. Watched as it drew the power out of him, like sucking out poison.
Maybe it was to him, maybe the power had twisted him, twisted his ideals.
Maybe that was what I’d turn into. I’d given in to my powers, let them infuse me and it felt good, right, maybe too much so.
Ravena stopped squirming, the darkened power all gone, his quickly dwindling. I gave it another beat, just to make sure, reached forward and pulled the crystal out.
“Ah,” Ravena sighed, slumping to the grass.
I pictured the shackles that had been on Tyler, searched the dimension. They blazed from the left. I plucked them up as easy as putting on shoes and they materialized on Ravena’s legs, clicking shut around his ankles. If he ran, he wouldn’t be going fast.
He sat up, glaring at me. Purple streaks of betrayal speckled with blue sparked around his head.
“That was you. You tricked me. You… you…” He sputtered out a spiel in another language.
“You told me how.”
He gaped then closed his eyes, shaking his head. “When I held your friend. Said I could make her relive her fears.”
I nodded. “That it didn’t matter if it was real or not, just what she believed. I won’t let them put you back there. Put you in jail, sure. But we have rules in this country they’re going to start following.”
He looked at me, disgust dripping from his eyeballs. “You can’t stop them. Kill me. Do it now, because they will do that to me again. If you’re so moral, kill me!”
I shook my head.
“Then you are dooming me to the prison of their choice. You can’t make them do anything.”
“I’m not going to. I’m going to convince them to.”
“You can’t convince them to do anything.”
I looked him in the eye. “I convinced you bugs from a memory were after you. I can’t convince them to hold a trial and jail you? Watch me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“You want a trial?” Zeus asked, deadpan.
“Y
es,” I said, remaining upright even though all I wanted to do was sleep. We were back in the horseshoe room. Zeus sat at the head of the table like a king and I stood in front of him inside the horseshoe.
Gods gathered around us, most sitting, exhausted from their battles, more than a few looking pretty banged up. Henry sat next to Hades, grinning at me with a split lip and his arm in a sling.
Millie sat against the wall, holding her head. She’d refused when Apollo offered her a chair, said she felt better on the ground.
What the hell happened to the healing powers of this place?
Apollo caught me up once he found me. The gods poured most of the negative energy into Tyler’s old reality, sucking the people still alive there into ours. It was all over in minutes. Once Apollo had the idea and they caught Tyler’s new friend so he could sense the wormholes, it apparently wasn’t too difficult to implement.
Much easier to sweep stuff under the rug than to get on your hands and knees to scrub it up, I guess.
The gods got a few thousand of the beings left out, all of the sentient beings there as far as they could tell, and sucked in who knew how much magic. The newcomers were taken to the great hall, whatever that was, to be fed and questioned.
The Greeks were already calling up the German gods and making plans on what to do with the refugees.
Refugees. Ha. Like they’d had a choice to come here. They were kidnapped and taken across reality lines. It was like federal crimes, only inter-reality instead of inter-state.
“You’re ridiculous,” Zeus said, shaking his head.
I jerked. He heard that?
“We know he’s guilty,” Zeus said. Oh that was what was ridiculous. “Why would we bother with a trial?”
“Because that’s what we do here. And you guys did say you wanted to blend in, to make up your own court systems. You’re supposed to be the good guys, right? Well, this is what the good guys do.
“We hold trials, we make damn sure the person is fully culpable, and we let objective people, someone other than the damaged party, make the decision. Here, the case is very easy to make, there’s a lot of witnesses to what he did, so it will be an easy trial. Consider it just for show, a test run for a new court system. One that values fairness and justice.”
I paused. “You keep saying you want to make a system that lines up with the modern world, our modern sensibilities. This is your chance. A chance to set a good example. To show not only the other gods, but the world that you are going to-”
Zeus raised his hand and I shut up. So apparently I did learn sometimes. “You expect us to try a man we know is guilty, to waste those resources, just to make a point?”
“No. You make the court system and then this will be our first case. Again, it’ll be an easy one. And then you put him in prison. He has the barest of magic left in him. He’s not a danger.”
Through all this, Ravena stood silent next to me, arms and legs shackled, staring straight forward. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.
“This is not how we do things, you know.”
“But it could be. This is a new start for you guys, right? This is where you set precedent. Everything you do, everything, will be followed by others. It’s a blank slate, don’t you want to make sure the outline of the design is a good one?”
He smirked. Okay, so he didn’t like my analogy, oh well. At least he was listening.
“Where do we keep him?”
“Put him in Hades, I mean, it is the jail, right?”
“For mortals. You can’t hold gods.”
“Sense him.” I couldn’t think of a better term. “He’s mortal now. I sucked out most of his magic. He could probably be shot and killed.”
“But he still has the potential of getting his magic back.”
“Not just the potential,” Apollo said. I didn’t look at him. “His power is growing back as we speak; I can see it flowing. If we allow him to live, he will regain his powers within years. If he does, he will kill you, Cassandra. You’re the one who defeated him. He wants nothing more than to kill you.”
“If he’s in jail, how would he?” I took a deep breath, turning back to Zeus.
“Father,” Apollo said.
Zeus held up a hand and nodded at me to continue.
“I’m not asking for any kind of mercy. I’m not saying he deserves it. I’m asking for justice. I’m asking for you to look at the bigger picture. Beyond what he did, to what you want your new system to be.”
“A system I’m assuming you will help design?” Zeus asked.
I held up my hands. “That’s up to you. I’m offering my services. Apollo wanted me to help with this. It’ll be a conflict of interest, having me help design the system while representing the Defendant, but that’s really your call.
“The bottom line is, the overall system has to at least strive to be fair and just for all. Killing someone because the government”–I gestured towards Zeus–“says you’re guilty, is depriving those that have pissed off the government from receiving a fair outcome. Just give it a shot. If gods after a trial looking at all the evidence find he should die for his crimes, then so be it. But don’t make that decision unilaterally. Just try.”
Zeus regarded me over laced fingers.
“Why?” he finally asked.
I closed my eyes. Was I explaining this that badly, or did he just not want to hear it?
“Because giving everyone a fair shot, even when all the evidence says they’re guilty, protects against tyranny. By implementing a system that allows for checking your power, you are telling everyone that while you are the leader, you are and always will be against tyranny.”
He just stared at me and I threw up my hands. “It’s the right thing to do!”
He pointed at me, grinning. “There it is, I knew it was coming eventually.”
I bit back a scowl. It was hard. “Soooooo?”
He stared me in the eye and I gulped, not looking away. Should I look away?
He nodded.
“You will have your trial, Ravena. As will the other defectors we caught alive.” Zeus projected his voice through the room with a tone of formality that reminded me of a judge giving a ruling. “You will be tried in a system set up by the gods over the next few months.”
Zeus leaned back in his chair, the moment over, and said to me in his normal tone, “We do want to adjust to this modern era, after all.”
“So we’ll try him, and the other defectors,” I said. “How many?”
“The ones that still live are few and far between. Your plan was most effective.”
I rocked back on my heels, looking down.
“I know,” I said, forcing myself to look him in the eye again.
If I couldn’t face what I’d helped do, then I shouldn’t have done it.
“I know this seems hypocritical now because so many were killed in battle with my plan. But, we’re not in the middle of a fight. There’s a difference between what you do in the moment to protect your life and what you do as a governing body to punish those same people.
“It’s different. In battle, it’s life and death. It’s in the moment where you have to do what you have to do to live. It’s more matched. In the legal system, it’s one tiny person against an entire system, an entire people. You have to be more restrained because you have the power to crush them if you aren’t.”
“At least we know you have the speeches down,” Zeus said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s your idea to try Ravena, so it’s your job to convince our people it’s a good idea.” He leaned forward on the table, lacing his fingers again. “I like the idea of a gods’ TV channel and its own news station. We’ll put you on the air.”
I had to smile. “I’ll work on the speeches.”
This was happening. We were actually building a new justice system, media, practically a whole government for the gods. It was going to be a whole new world in a few years.
And I’d get to help
shape it.
“For now,” Zeus said, “Ravena, you will be held in Hades and will work. Whatever Cassandra requires done for this venture, you will be helping with. Hopefully giving your magic something useful to do will keep you from using it to escape. If you attempt to escape, or do anything to harm your attorney, we will kill you.”
Ravena opened his mouth and I turned to tell him to zip it.
Pop, pop, pop, zinged across the room, barely audible, like a suppressed gun, and something whooshed by my ear.
Three little red holes appeared in a cluster on Ravena’s forehead and he looked at me, holding my eyes with no power save the power all humans have looking at another.
His body wobbled and he crashed to his knees, falling forward almost in slow motion.
Screams filled the room and I looked up at Zeus. He stared at something off to the side of the table, face unreadable. I turned, slowly, because this time, I knew exactly what I was going to find.
Tyler lowered the rifle from her shoulder, rested its butt on the ground and leaned on it a little too heavily. Her naked body was splattered with patches of dried blood and scratches.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said, shaking her head.
“We were going to do this right!” I said. “We were going to try him, treat him like a human being. What did you do!”
“What you couldn’t,” she said with a flat tone. “What you shouldn’t have to.”
“But, but…”
She dropped the gun, the clatter making me flinch. “You want to build a government that treats everyone fair? Good. And as part of that, you have to be fair.”
She paused. “I don’t.”
“Tyler, that’s n-”
“And I wasn’t going to let someone who’d kill you the second he had the chance get that chance. You heard Apollo, he was going to get his magic back and kill you.”
“Possibly! But that’s what we do, Tyler. We put people in jail and make sure they have a good defense. We don’t-”
“No, that’s what lawyers do, that’s what governments do. That’s not what people in the real world with real life and death threats do. He would’ve gotten out again. He was held before, in a magic binding prison, may I add. He’s done it before, he could do it again. And he would have killed you. I know how people like him think. He would’ve hated you for beating him and waited years to kill you if that’s what it took.”