by D. S. Murphy
The beam of energy hit the chariot squarely and it erupted into fire, knocking it off course. It fell like a flaming meteor, streaming black smoke across the sky. The air screamed as the scorched craft ripped through it, and all of Alexandria was lit up in fiery red light. Then it hit the sea and was swallowed up by the depths. The horizon seemed to wobble, like the earth had shifted its axis, and the sky was suddenly darkened.
I looked up to see thousands of hunters, their white wings standing out clearly against the dark storm clouds that had appeared out of nowhere. A rumble of thunder sent a shiver down my spine.
***
“We’ve got company,” Sitri said, drawing his sword. Isis had her back to us, captivated again by her glowing ball. Her face was illuminated with eerie green light against the darkening sky. Lightning forked in the distance.
Puriel appeared at the top of the stairs, his sword raised.
“Zeus knows we’re here,” he said. “We have to go.”
“What do you see?” I shouted to Isis. “Can you find the spell?”
She ignored me, her lips mumbling a language I couldn’t understand. A battalion of hunters filled the sky behind her. I watched as they dove towards us, perfectly arranged like fighter jets. I ran to the edge of the tower and slashed at their threads with my armored fingers. I felt a sizzle as the tips of my iron glove touched their threads, it felt like putting steaks on a grill. Their brightly burning threads turned dark as they were cut off from Zeus’s power. I watched them plummet in horror as gravity seized them. A handful recovered before they hit the ground, but I heard the rest smash against the foundations of the lighthouse with a sickening squelch. With their armor, it sounded like a can of soup getting run over by a car.
Another formation was already on its way, and I saw more behind them. They were just going to keep coming. This time I grabbed all the threads with one hand, and held them tightly. I closed my eyes, feeling them squirm in my palm as they tumbled towards the sea, squeezing tightly until they were deep under the fatal waters and grew still. A tear slid down my cheek, even though they were the enemy. Even though they were trying to kill us. They reminded me of Puriel, and they thought they were doing the right thing. They were just following orders.
“How much longer?” I shouted. This time I heard Isis respond over the rumbling thunder.
“I need more time,” she yelled, without taking her eyes off the orb. The wind grew furious around us, hurling a storm of winged hunters at us from all sides. Sitri and Puriel stood on the edges of the tower, fighting them off with swords and spears. I saw Jessie toss a Q-bomb into the wall of feathers. It took out maybe a dozen hunters. They were close enough I could see the shocked expressions on their handsome faces as they fell. A hundred more filled their space immediately. No matter how many hunters I took out, there were always more. I cut through their threads with my glove, like I was lifting a beaded curtain, and caught a glimpse of the horizon and the city below us. Far below, Isis’s Djedi were casting defensive spells as hundreds of hunters rushed the tower with giant hammers. I felt the tower tremble, as a few of them slipped through, smashing the foundations with us still inside. We were trapped and massively outnumbered.
I heard a steady beat over the thunder, and a cool wind lifted the hair on the back of my neck. I turned to see a black helicopter carving a tunnel through the maelstrom of wings and armor. Heph waved from the cockpit and hope flared in my chest. Dion and Tori stepped out of the vehicle, plummeting towards the hunters below like ballistic missiles. Sam was behind them, and he jumped towards us. He landed on the back of a hunter, plunging his thin sword through its neck, and took out three more, using the hunters like a floating staircase before stepping lightly onto the platform.
“Your ride awaits,” he said with a bow. “We’ve got to go. Now.”
“But we’re so close, we don’t have the secret to the spell yet.”
“We’ll figure it out later, but only if we don’t all die today.”
“Um, guys?” Jessie says. “What should we do about that?”
It had suddenly gone quiet, and her voice echoed in the domed tower. The wall of hunters was gone, and Jessie pointed towards the sea. I gasped and grabbed Isis’s arm. I was rewarded with a vision of her severed head, and I snatched my hand away quickly. Isis broke her concentration, staring deeply into my eyes, a question on her lips. Then she looked past me at the swelling sea, and we joined the others on the ledge. Down below, the shore of Alexandria had retreated several hundred feet, leaving some of the ruins bare for the first time in two thousand years. In front of us was a solid wall of water, an impossibly high wave, with white water foaming at the crest. It curled upwards, clawing at the sky, blacking out the sun and casting a deep shadow. Through the translucent blue water, I could see the remains of a dozen ancient ships, gathered up from the ocean floor, which were about to come crashing down into us.
Near the base of the lighthouse, Dion was tossing the remaining Djedi into the helicopter as Tori fought off dozens of hunters. She looked up and I saw her eyes widen, just as Heph started taking off. She dove and caught the landing gear. Dion helped her inside as Heph spun the vehicle wildly up towards the top of the tower.
There was no more time. In less than a minute, the tower would be submerged, and the emerald tablet would be buried under a mountain of rubble and an ocean of water. Even if we made it out alive, the entire quest would have been a waste of time. I caught Sitri’s gaze across the tower. He shouted at me and waved towards the helicopter, which was hovering just higher than the platform, its two large propellers barely clearing the top of the tower. I could see his thread, being pulled up at a sharp angle, towards the dark storm clouds above the massive wave, where I knew Zeus was watching from above. If I ran now, one way or another, Sitri would have to die.
I sprinted towards the center podium, grabbed the glowing sphere with both hands, and disappeared. I was everywhere, and nowhere. At first, looking through the sphere, I could see the glowing green tablet down below. Etchings, and pictures, and formulas, engraved microscopic scratched and embedded on multiple layers like a reel of slides. Ancient Egyptian and other antique scripts I didn’t recognize flashed in front of my eyes, filling my vision with a green wall, like a chalkboard stretching out in every direction, forever. I couldn’t understand the languages, but they were coming out of my mouth, like I was speaking in tongues. It was too much knowledge, a torrent of information. It reminded me of scrolling through a hundred thousand Wikipedia pages at once, or watching a thousand channels at the same time. But I couldn’t look away. My grip grew firmer on the stone, and it heated beneath my palms, as my eyes widened – opening involuntarily to the mad rush of knowledge. My brain felt like it was on fire. It felt like a revelation, an omniscience. I could see everything but understand nothing.
Someone was shouting my name, and a hand seized my chin and pulled it to the side sharply, breaking the connection. I blinked in confusion. Sitri was gripping my arm, dragging me towards the helicopter. His face was half wolf, and his claws dug into my arm, drawing blood. Behind him was the roar of the ocean, ten thousand hunters in golden armor, and a wave as tall as a mountain. Isis was holding it back like she’d done with the fire, but blood was dripping down her nose.
I knew I should let go. I was putting everyone in danger. Jessie was hurling Q-bombs, setting them to explode in midair. She turned and grinned at me. Fearless, savage. I’d never loved her more. She was the hero I’d never be. Puriel was hanging off the ledge like an ape on a skyscraper, skewering hunters with his sword. Something was wrong with him. White light shone out of his eyes and mouth as he slashed through a dozen hunters at once, faster than I’d ever seen him move. He grabbed a hunter and tore a chunk out of its neck, then tossed the body aside like an empty beer can. Silver blood dripped down his chin. He was incredible, and terrifying. Then he scooped up Jessie and launched himself through the sky towards the helicopter, latching on with one hand and holding her
with the other.
I watched them dangling in the air and felt a splash of water on my cheeks. The wave was nearly above us now, and it was raining ocean. Somehow the roof of the tower had been torn off, and I realized we were standing under the open sky. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I broke out of Sitri’s grip, reaching back to grab the eye of Horus. He was waiting for me at the ledge, his eyes frantic, his arms outstretched, reaching for me. I saw him shift, his upper half going fuzzy, his sharp teeth snapping a warning as he dove towards me. I thought we were going to make it. But suddenly a blistering bolt of lightning tore the sky in half. It eviscerated the base of the tower, and I was weightless, as we fell, tumbling towards the sea.
22
I could feel the light behind my eyelids, long before I could open them. Then the voices started. Arguing, but they seemed far away. For a long time it was quiet, the gentle murmur of a stream, whispers in the darkness.
When I finally blinked my eyes open, I was wearing a simple white dress and covered with a heavy blanket. My limbs felt heavy, but I reached out and flexed my fingers. Sarah was in the bed next to me. Her eyes opened when I stirred.
“You’re back,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I smiled. “Were you worried?”
“A little,” she said. I opened my arm, and she smiled and ducked under the covers with me. We used to do this all the time at JDRI, but it was different now that she was so much bigger. Soon she’d be as big as me.
I reached my arm up to brush her blonde hair out of her eyes, but froze when I realized my iron glove was gone. I turned my wrist, marveling at the whirls and spirals marked on my flesh in light pink. It was subtle, but definitely there. Lighter skin, raw where Heph’s armor had seared into my flesh.
“I did the best I could,” Alice said, coming into the room with a tray of food and a bronze teapot.
“I like it,” Sarah said, tracing a finger around the spirals.
My stomach growled loudly, and Sarah laughed.
“We’ll take it easy today,” Alice said. “You haven’t eaten for a while, so just toast, butter and chamomile tea.”
“How long is a while?” I asked, stretching my arms. My joints were stiff, but not painfully so.
“Three days,” Alice said. I tensed, then shifted myself forward until I was sitting upright. I was back at Nevah. The trickling of the fountain, the floral scent of the gardenia and rose bushes, glass windows of the infirmary – it was all exactly as I remembered it, but I wasn’t sure how I’d actually gotten here. I had a vague recollection of lightning, stones, water.
“Where’s Isis?” I asked, “And the emerald tablet?”
Alice frowned and I felt my blood go cold.
“What is it?” I asked. “Tell me.”
“We barely got you out alive,” Alice said. “The lighthouse crumpled with you still inside it. You’re lucky Sitri’s a tough son of a bitch. He took the brunt of the blows, protecting you until we could get you into the helicopter.”
“But he’s okay, right? And Puriel?”
“They’re both back safe. Mostly. You’ll see them soon enough, and you can ask them yourself. However, right after Zeus took down the lighthouse, a tsunami wiped out the whole city. Most of Alexandria is still underwater, and it’s swarming with hunters now. Isis hasn’t been seen since.”
My throat tightened with painfully, as I remembered the girl with the flowers and the baby. I saw her death before it happened. I assumed it was just a drowning accident. I thought, if she just stayed out of the water, she might survive. I wonder how many other people I’d killed, trying to find a way to break Isis’s spell.
“So we failed,” I said softly. “It was all for nothing.”
“Well, you did bring back that big crystal thing.”
“The Eye of Horus?” I asked.
“Sitri said you wouldn’t let it go, even to swim to the surface.”
“But it’s just a lens,” I said, pulling at the hem of my dress. “Without the emerald tablet, it’s worthless.”
“Maybe not,” Alice said. “From what I hear, it had enough power to take out Hera. At least for a little while. Heph is running tests on it.”
“Wait, Hera’s still alive?”
“Able thinks so. But she took a hard crash after you zapped her. She’s probably holed up somewhere recuperating, like you should be. She won’t underestimate you next time.”
I shivered, remembering Hera’s look of rage and fury as she attacked the lighthouse. I could understand her going after Isis, but what had I ever done to her? The first time we’d met, she was almost cordial. What changed?
“Why don’t you go take a shower, and get dressed? You’ll feel better. Sarah, will you walk her up to her room?” Sarah nodded and jumped up, leading the way upstairs.
I showered and put on a fresh pair of jeans. The air was chilly, so I put on socks and a slim pair of jeans, and then a black tank top, purple sweater and then a leather jacket. I almost felt like myself. I looked in the mirror, admiring the marks on my arm. I remembered reaching for the threads, pulling down the hunters from the sky. How many had I taken, a dozen? Maybe more? I felt guilty about each one, but not as guilty as I felt for the people of Alexandria. I tried to remember the faces of all the people I’d met in the city. The drivers, the servants working for Isis, the street vendors. If they were still alive, they were picking through the wreckage, searching the waters for lost family members.
I didn’t know exactly what Isis was going to do, but when we’d taken out Hera, I wasn’t concerned with collateral damage. All I cared about was saving Sitri; finding a loophole so I wouldn’t have to make any hard choices.
Look where that had gotten me. By trying to save one life, I’d killed thousands of innocents. I was playing with fire, and forces I couldn’t possibly understand. Still, it wasn’t all bad. I twisted my wrist, admiring the golden bracelet Sitri had left me after our night together.
Someone knocked on the door, and I turned to open it. Jessie was standing in the hall, and smiled shyly when I answered. We hugged silently, holding each other for a long time before pulling away.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said finally. Her eyes were wet, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.
“Me too,” I said.
“When the lighthouse fell, that wave destroyed everything. You and Sitri were gone. Heph was already flying away. I wanted to stay and search for you, but there were too many hunters. We barely escaped.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was my fault. I went back for the Eye. I couldn’t leave it, and I thought there was more time. It was stupid.”
“It’s a good thing we had help,” Jessie said. “Puriel grabbed me at the last second, and Sitri kept you safe until the daughters of Triton picked you up.”
“They were there?” I asked, my eyes widening.
“They brought you to Cyprus,” she said. “That’s where we picked you up.”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
She bit her lip, and I knew there was something else she wanted to say.
“You should talk to Puriel,” she said. “He’s been weird since we got back.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know. Moody. Distant. He’s spent the last couple days out in desert, building something. It’s like he’s still stuck in Egypt, like part of him didn’t come home.”
“I’ll find him,” I said.
“Don’t take too long,” she said. “It’s cold out there. Also, I had Heph set up one of his wide-screen monitors in the family room, we’re going to get sick on popcorn and binge-watch romantic comedies tonight. Sarah says she’s old enough to watch all the PG-13 stuff now.”
“That sounds amazing,” I smiled. “Count me in.”
It was snowing by the time I made it out over the hill and through the large boulders marking the flat, rocky stretch of land the torches had claimed as their own. The last time I’d been out here and seen the hive –
the massive, perfectly round entrance leading into the underground cave complex – it had been for a funeral. Sitri wanted me to see the torches as individuals, especially after they’d given their lives to protect mine. It was also when he first told me about the leeches. Fallen angels, who try to earn redemption by continuing Zeus’s commands, even after being cut off from his power. After centuries of loneliness and isolation, they go mad and start consuming their victims.
I’d hoped Puriel would be different. I thought living at Nevah, with the other torches, would help. But as soon as I saw the tower, standing all by itself away from the deep entrance to the hive, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.
It was built like a prison, or a fortress. Thick stone walls, tall iron gates. It was much rougher than the lighthouse had been; probably because Puriel didn’t have Isis’s Djedi to help him cut the stones with magical lasers. It was partially unfinished, so I walked around the structure until I could see inside.
Puriel was shirtless, his upper body glistening with sweat despite the cold, tearing great chunks of stone out of the ground and piling them up around himself, like some kind of burial cairn.
Near him on the ground were a thick set of chains and iron restraints; I wondered if he’d pulled them from Able’s dungeon.
“Stop playing in the dirt and come give me a hug,” I said.
He smiled when he saw me, though his eyes were guarded. A gust of wind blew my hair, and I pulled a snowflake out of my eyelash.