I should have known it would be easy for them to take me in the aftermath of the attack. People barely had their heads on straight. There was no way they would notice a woman being dragged away through a crowd of injured, screaming, and dying people. Smoke had still covered the entire block, the fire still roared, emergency aid still not able to get in to help.
We'd slipped through narrow streets, my two captors looking around as if we were being hunted at every moment. If it weren't for the fact I was getting dragged around on a chain, anyone who saw us probably would have thought we were all together. I tried bringing up this reasoning and was rewarded with a slap across the face and an order of silence.
The city was far behind us now, left to deal with what I was starting to feel like might have been my fault.
Why else had I been kidnapped twice?
At least Arsenio seemed to mean me no harm, but he wouldn't break any orders the brute Cristos gave him. I had the feeling he was as confused as I was as to why I was being brought along as a prisoner.
The two men walked ahead of me, clad in warm winter gear. Cristos's long black hair, tied back with a simple band, hung down past his shoulder blades, splayed over the beat up bag I knew was holding some unearthly weapon.
Maybe they were aliens? Perhaps Moscow had become tied up in some intergalactic mess and . . .
Yeah. That was impossible.
But so was ferociously lighting on fire and not even feeling the heat from it.
Was I an alien?
My body shivered harder, trying to desperately warm up as it froze. I hadn't even been offered a towel, let alone a jacket of some kind. Snow was falling down on my frosted hair and skin, my scrubs the only protection I had against the weather.
Too bad they'd been soaked through as well. At least I still had my boots on. They were only kind of frozen, still saturated with water.
"Can I at least get a coat or something?" I asked through chattering teeth, wondering if Cristos just didn't want to talk.
"No!" he roared out, spinning around to face me, yanking me forward with the chain in his hands at the same time.
The force of the pull toppled me over into the deep snow, my shoulder knocking into one of the close trees, which piled more of the powder on top of me.
"You're going to kill her!" I heard Arsenio hiss as I sputtered and tried to get back on my feet.
"It's fine," Cristos growled, tugging on my restraints and watching as I fell back into the snow. "It's a fire monster."
"Look at her!" Arsenio yelled. "Does that look like fire to you? She's turning blue for Zeus's sake!"
"I said it's fine."
He pulled me forward again and I slipped into the tree once more, still trying to get my frozen limbs to do their job and hold me up.
Arsenio didn't argue any more, but I could tell from the grim look on his face he wasn't happy with what was going on.
Silently pleading with him, our eyes met for a moment before he looked away. Maybe he just hadn't wanted to watch me lay in the snow any more.
"Get up," Cristos grunted, walking over and hoisting me to my feet. "You're only slowing us down."
"Where are we going?" I asked breathlessly as he set our pace again, much faster than before.
"Be quiet," he spat over his shoulder.
After a few moments of silence, Arsenio cleared his throat.
"So, where are we going?"
Cristos stopped, turning and glaring at him.
"To our campsite," he said smartly. "We should be there by the end of the day."
Arsenio looked back at me and smiled apologetically, shrugging slightly before turning and starting to walk again.
Shaking, I slowly followed, resigned to the fact I wasn't going to learn anything from either of them.
The rest of the day passed in maddening silence. The longer we went on the less possible it became for me to talk, due to the chattering of my teeth. I desperately wished my hands weren't cuffed together so I could try and rub heat back into my arms. If I didn't already have frostbite, it sure felt like it. By the time the sun started to set, I'd been dragged more than walked myself to our destination. Desire to take my boots off and rub my poor chapped and freezing feet was almost all I could think about.
"We better stop here," Cristos said, looking up at the sky. "We should be far enough away that it's safe."
"S-safe f-from what?" I asked, my barely heard voice the loudest sound I could muster.
"You stay here," he said gruffly, wrapping the chain around a thick tree trunk next to me and confining me to the spot.
Walking away, he motioned for Arsenio to follow, heading to a small-ish clearing about a hundred feet away.
I watched as they set up camp, pulling unimaginable things from the bags on their backs. There were things that shouldn't have even fit in there, let alone be light enough to carry on their backs. As the sun set and even colder conditions rolled in, I wasn't able to follow their movements. It was only when the fire was started that I suddenly couldn't look away.
"P-please," I whispered, hoping they would come get me and set me by the warmth.
Eventually, after what appeared to be a very short meal, Arsenio headed over my way, glancing over his shoulder a few times before he reached me.
"Here," he said quietly, holding out a chicken bone to me. "It was all I could get away from him. I'm sorry."
I stared at the bone, hardly any meat on it, and my stomach rumbled.
"It's okay," I mumbled, too cold now to even shiver. "Thank you."
He set it in my unmoving hands for me, frowning as he looked me over.
"Surely it won't be bad to let her sit by the fire for a bit," he yelled over his shoulder, anger in his voice.
"And let it gain control over it?" Cristos yelled back. "Not a chance."
Arsenio's face twisted into one of rage and his fist punched into the ground, body shaking from something much more dangerous than the cold.
"Be careful," I laughed softly. "You'll hurt your shoulder worse."
"You're freezing to death and can only tell me to watch after myself," he said humorlessly. "Yeah, you're real evil."
"Why don't you stand up to him?" I asked suddenly, desperately hoping he would.
"He'll kill me." He said simply.
"You would stay with someone so uncaring?" I inquired, shocked.
"I've never seen him like this," he said, standing. "If it were anything else, I could reason with him. My instincts tell me to protect myself on this one, though. I'm sorry."
"I understand," I said softly.
"You're going to be dead in the morning," he said mournfully. "I don't think you deserve it."
"I know," I said, feeling more than just my body go cold at the thought.
With very little movement, he flicked his fingers toward me and I flinched, not knowing what he was doing. To my surprise, the water that had frozen into my clothes pulled from the fabric, falling to the ground in front of me.
“I wish I could do more,” he said to my newly terrified, but grateful face.
Slowly, he turned and walked back to the camp, agitation in each step. At this point, it seemed I would be lucky to be free of this in the morning.
Silence encased me then, joining with the darkness I was slowly fading into. Cuddling as best I could into the tree, I laid my head against it and closed my eyes, hoping I would live to escape this nightmare.
"Avalon," a voice whispered to me, stirring me from my slumber.
"Who's there?" I asked, my voice cracking.
Looking around, all I could see were the smoldering coals from the fire, almost burned out, and the two men sleeping next to it. There was no sign of the woman whose voice I'd heard.
"Hello?" I called again softly, afraid of waking Cristos and having to face his anger again.
"Avalon . . ."
The voice seemed to whisper to me on the wind, falling with the pretty snow and mingling among the mostly bare branches above m
e.
Adjusting myself against the tree, I stood up the best I could, trying to look around to the backside.
"Do not be afraid," the voice whispered again.
"Where are you?" I asked, eyes straining in the darkness.
Branches around me began rustling and I looked around in confusion, still not seeing my new companion. Try as I might to find her, she just wasn't there.
A branch poked me in the back and I jumped, not realizing there had been any that low. As I turned to brush it away, I was greeted with yet another impossible thing.
The tree I'd been chained to was moving, twisting in on itself, becoming a more human like form. Panicked, I tried to back away, but the chain that had fallen loose was picked up by one of the wooden hands.
"Do not be afraid," the tree said again. "I'm here to help you."
The tree was talking to me. Well, it wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened to me so far.
"Let us warm you," she said, motioning for me to come closer.
Looking around, I could see a few of the other trees had changed as well, one of them an evergreen that was now holding what appeared to be a blanket made from her foliage.
Immediate gratitude filled me and I collapsed into the arms of the woman who'd spoken, sighing contently as they wrapped around me.
"You were not long for this earth," the one with the blanket said, her voice flowing like a song as she wrapped me in the green warmth.
"We had to wait for Adrastia and his companion to be in a deep enough sleep that we could come to you without waking them," the third, a man, said. "I slipped a draft into their dinner, but was worried it wouldn’t be enough. Luckily, they kept you so far from themselves."
"But that is also a great danger to you," the first said again, rubbing her hands up and down my arms for me. "The Titans are closer than they think. The beasts could have snatched her away from them and they wouldn't have known till first light."
"I'm sorry," I chattered, interrupting whatever the man had been about to say. "Who is Adrastia? I know Arsenio and Cristos, but no Adrastia."
"Adrastia and Cristos are one and the same," the man said, adding his own warm embrace to the circle. "The son of Zeus."
"Wait, Zeus?"
It felt like it should be so simple, understanding what they were saying to me. At the same time, the information was hitting a brick wall in my head.
"The King of the gods," the evergreen woman said, nodding her head.
"What do they want with me?" I asked incredulously. "I'm just a regular girl . . . Who can catch on fire and be fine, apparently."
"You are much more than that," the man chuckled, his voice rumbling in his chest against my back. "You are a demi-Titan."
"The only demi-Titan," the first woman said.
"And quite possibly the last," the evergreen added.
"Is that important?"
"The Titans want you for themselves, to use you in their crusade against the Olympians and all of mankind. The Olympians want you destroyed, at least Adrastia does. He is the only one who knows of your existence at this moment in time."
"How do you know all of this?" I asked, befuddled. "You're a bunch of trees in the forest."
Their laughter tinkled softly on the breeze, still quiet enough to not wake the sleeping gods.
"Adrastia has been searching for you. Capturing Titans and questioning them. Word travels quickly when it is news such as this," the man answered.
"We are not confined to the two forms you've seen us in," the first woman said. "We can appear human if we like. We thought it best to remain blended in while we helped."
"Why are you helping me?" I asked, feeling the mountain of questions I had growing. "If I'm a Titan, aren't I a . . . Monster?"
"Beings are not born evil," the evergreen said forcefully. "They choose that path for themselves. Being half Titan does not make you like them."
"But I could be."
The almost silent statement surprised even me, like a confession I'd always known was inside me and was just discovering.
"We see goodness in you," the first woman said kindly. "That is why we came to help. Adrastia is being blinded by something else, something that made him come searching for you in the first place. We don't know who told him about you, but I imagine they were probably very important people to know about you at all."
"The sun will be rising soon," the man said, breaking away from the group. "I need to teach you how to warm yourself now."
"I know how," I laughed. "I just can't do it tied up."
"I meant how to do it with your powers," he said, smiling widely. "You have fire within you, but lack the ability to call it forward."
"How do you know how to do it?"
His face fell then, a look of shame flashing through his eyes.
"I didn't always choose the path of good. It saddens me to say I have walked with Titans. I served many of them, among them your father, Typhon."
He paused, looking up at the sky as he took a deep breath, his bark skin rustling against itself.
"If I can use those dark times to bring about something good now, then it will have been worth it."
Glancing over his shoulder quickly first, he looked at me and sighed again.
"They will wake soon, so we won't have time to practice. You must remember everything I say, it's very important."
"Okay," I said, nodding.
"Titans draw their powers from rage. In the beginning, that is what you will have to do as well. Allow yourself to become angry, use it to unleash the force within you. Over time, you will learn how to use them without feeling that way. For now though, in situations when you must use them, get angry. Your instincts will take over now that they've been unleashed, just as they did in the fire."
My head was spinning. Half of me still felt like I was going to wake up and find the whole horrible thing had been a nightmare. Another voice whispered that it was there, tucked away under my foolish human side.
I could feel the Titan within me, waiting to be freed again, waiting to unleash whatever it was I had bottled up on the world. She was angry, but locked behind a wall it seemed, one I held up with my feeble mortal hands.
"Will I see you again?" I asked as the two women released me and began to take their tree forms once more.
"It is not likely," the man said, doing the same. "You will be okay."
"I don't feel like I will," I said, panic seeping in again as I watched them transform. "You basically told me everyone has it out for me."
"They are waking," the evergreen said, her voice just a whisper through the sky again.
"Trust yourself, Avalon," the man said, now a complete tree again. "Only you can decide what path you will take."
Chapter Eight
Cristos
I could hear it, crunching through the snow behind us, teeth chattering so much they could have worn away completely by now.
Two months. That's how long it'd taken me to track the beast down. Now that I had it, I almost wished I didn't.
Once I'd located Arsenio and his camel after the sand storm, we'd returned to Olympus. He never knew what had happened while we were separated, still didn't know in fact. I preferred it that way.
At first, I had no intention of leaving Olympus any time soon. It seemed if I stayed there, the fate I'd been cursed with would never come to pass. The longer I thought about it, the more I felt I needed to leave, though. I still had no idea what The Purge was, which was probably going to be something terrible if its name was any indicator. Informing someone else would be of no use, not if I couldn't tell them what was coming.
I knew I could change my fate, was positive it could be done. All I lacked was the demi-Titan destined to destroy me. So, Arsenio packed blindly as usual and we left, myself not even knowing where to start.
Traveling to places Titans had been known to inhabit took too much time. More than ever, I wished we could use the portal system freely again. We could have flashed to e
ach place, taking seconds to travel, but it didn’t seem like the most covert option. Eventually, we reached our destination, captured a few of the beasts, and I questioned them alone.
Our path finally landed in Detroit, Michigan, where a number of the Titans claimed Typhon had resided for many years, taking on a human form. He'd had a few dalliances there before leaving to join with his relative scum and fight in the war. It was there that I found Emily Gemmings, the mother of the abomination I was now dragging through Russia.
Unfortunately, it now appeared that the Titans were aware of their half breed and were coming to take it away. I couldn't risk them teaching it how to destroy me.
I refused to accept I could ever betray my father.
"We need to stop for supplies," Arsenio said, breaking into my thoughts.
"That's a first," I sighed disapprovingly, knowing he meant provisions for our captive.
"We've been gone much longer than I thought we would be," he said defensively.
"It doesn't need anything," I countered. "It lived through the night, just like I said it would."
"Do you even hear yourself?" he whispered, moving in closer to me so It wouldn't hear. "You aren't acting like she's human at all! She isn't an 'it,' she's a person with a name and a life."
"It is a Titan," I said, emphasizing every word roughly. "Not a human. A beast. Our enemy. Or have you forgotten that?"
"Have you forgotten she was raised as a mortal? She knows nothing of our world or even how to use the powers she was born with. Look at her, Cristos! She didn't even know she was anything but human until yesterday!"
"It could be an act," I said simply. "One you've obviously fallen for."
"Right, because a Titan would go pretend to be a doctor in a country that's being led to war by Erebos. That makes sense."
"It could have been there waiting for the war to start. That's what the terrors want. Why does that seem like such a stretch?"
"Because I've never seen you this way," he said sadly, putting space between us again. "You aren't yourself and I don't know why."
His words bit at me for some reason and I frowned, quickening the pace we had set. Arsenio was my best friend, but I didn't want to tell him of my curse. It was insulting to think anyone would ever accuse me of losing my loyalty, or even know I'd been accused. This was something I had to face on my own.
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