“You try?” he offered, gasping for breath.
“No,” I said. “We’re out of time. We’ll never get through that way. You have to jump to the Dreamlands and then jump back behind the doors.”
“I’m too weak,” Justin argued. “I can’t take us both.”
“You don’t have to,” I replied. “Just take yourself.”
The shaking at the door became pounding. Dents were starting to appear. Soon there’d be holes.
“I’m not leaving you,” Justin said firmly.
I’d never seen his eyes so intense and determined before. But it didn’t change anything. I couldn’t let it.
“You have to go,” I said. “You have to stop this. We’re talking about saving existence. Me. You. Everything.”
“I only care about you,” he replied. “I won’t leave you.”
“If you don’t, I’ll be erased along with everything else,” I reminded him.
“If I go and you die, I won’t care if everything’s erased,” he replied.
I sighed.
“Everything I am is protecting existence. That’s my duty. That’s me,” I answered. “So, if you really do love me, then go. Save existence. For me.”
Justin looked deeply into my eyes. I could see the tears welling up in his. He pulled himself away reluctantly.
“The sooner you’re gone, the sooner you’re back to save me,” I said. I gave him my bravest smile.
He tried his best to smile back, his eyes never leaving mine, like he was trying to drink me in. Then he took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes.
I stepped back. His body quivered. But nothing happened. He opened his eyes.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m too weak.”
“No, you’re not! You can do this!” I said. “Just try again.”
He concentrated. He quivered again. This time, his body began to flicker.
“You’re doing it!” I said. “Keep going!”
A metal hand burst through the door. It was feeling around for the lock.
“Now!” I shouted.
Justin flickered once, and then he vanished.
Just as the doors opened.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I recognized the man who walked through the door
“Ian?” I asked.
I hadn’t even realized he was missing from the metal shop. He smiled. It wasn’t his cocky grin, but it was a smile I’d seen before. On a much different face.
“Not exactly,” he replied.
I knew that voice, too. I lifted my chin, forcing back tears.
“I can’t believe it’s you. It’s been you the whole time,” I said.
Ian sauntered into the metal room, a machine on either side of him. “Yes, it’s me, Mother. Now, where’s your friend?”
“Not here, Hephaestus,” I said.
He gestured and the two machines scraped out of the room.
“Your creations, I take it?” I said.
“Who else’s?” he replied.
“I should’ve known the moment I saw them,” I replied. “But I just couldn’t bring myself to actually believe it was you.”
My mind was whirling. I needed to buy time for Justin to get the artifact and get back. It wasn’t too late to put an end to this. If I could reason with anyone, it was with Hephaestus. He had the kindest heart. Just like Demeter. I’d never suspected him. I’d sooner have suspected myself. This was all so surreal, so impossible.
“When I didn’t hear from my mortal, I knew you must be on your way here,” he said. “So I came to meet you.”
“But how?” I asked.
“When I first recruited this mortal, I convinced him to say the oath and drink the potion that would allow me to take his body,” Hephaestus explained. “I knew I’d need to at some point. And he was only too willing. He actually thought he’d be the one in control of all my power.” Hephaestus laughed. “Typical mortal. Hungry for power when he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”
“You have to stop this, Hephaestus,” I told him. “It’s madness.”
“True to your duty to the end.” He smiled fondly at me, the way he always had. As if nothing had changed. As if he hadn’t betrayed me, betrayed all the gods and everything we stood for. “You never change. That’s why you’re the one. You’re perfectly single-minded.”
There was such genuine warmth in his smile, in his eyes. I couldn’t understand. He seemed so . . . himself. So quiet. So gentle. So sane.
“The one?” I echoed, bewildered. “You tried to kill me.”
Hephaestus looked shocked. “Never! I’d never let you come to any harm.”
“Giants. Harpies. Pythons. Ekhidna. Those machines,” I shot back. “I barely survived.”
“But you did survive,” Hephaestus pointed out, perfectly--irritatingly calm. “I knew you would. There was never any doubt in mind. I know better than to underestimate you. I’m sorry if my . . . crude tools gave you any trouble. Monsters don’t listen well. But there was no other way. I needed to stop you until everything was ready and I could explain.”
“Explain? You can start by explaining how you could kill Athena! You know her! You love her!” I replied sharply.
“This is going to be hard for you to accept, Mother,” Hephaestus said. “It was hard for me too at first. But the time for mortals and gods is past.”
I blinked. He sounded so rational. He was actually trying to reason with me. I thought I might faint.
“Things have gone too far,” Hephaestus continued. “Genocide. Pollution. Torture. Poverty. Greed. Atrocity after atrocity. Humanity has become cannibalistic. Vicious. Defective. Mortals are selfish and violent animals. You’ve seen the evil they do. We’ve all seen it. And yet we’ve stood by and let their crimes go unpunished. The other gods have become tainted by their love of mortals, and they’ve lost control.”
I saw a fanatical light in Hephaestus’s eyes, one I’d never seen in him before. I recognized it from the mortal world though. It was the same light that had blazed in the eyes of some of the most sadistic mortals in history, ones that put even monsters to shame. I shivered.
“You know it’s not that simple,” I replied. “There is the Necessity. Free will.”
Hephaestus beamed. Somehow he thought I was buying into all of this. Like there was a thread of logic in his insanity.
“Exactly!” he said. “And that’s why we need to start over with no Necessity but our own.”
He was right about one thing. I was losing control. Of this situation.
“Wait,” I said desperately. “If you’re blaming the gods for this, what about you and me? Haven’t we failed, too?”
“You’re always too hard on yourself,” Hephaestus replied. “I know that the others have been holding you back, just like they’ve been holding me back. I blamed myself for a while, too. But it’s not our fault, Mother. You have to make peace with that. Besides, who else can start over, start fresh? Who better than us? We’re the best hope for the new worlds. We’re the purest. You and I are the only ones who see.”
“You can’t solve the problems of the mortal world by eradicating all of existence!” I insisted. “This is our creation.”
“This is not our creation!” Hephaestus answered. His voice rang with passion and conviction. I’d never seen him like this. He was on fire. “We inherited this flawed design. We’ve done the best we could, but it’s time to accept that this existence is a complete failure and move on. We can make our own creation! We can start again! Build a new order, one where we don’t have to wait for mortals to grow and learn from their mistakes. We can make them beyond mistakes, beyond imperfection. Or we could not make them at all! It makes so much sense, if you just give yourself permission to think about it, actually think about it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. And you’ll see it, too. I know you will. Just let yourself. Me, who can build anything, and you, who can rule anything. Together, we can finally make things right.”
; “This isn’t the way,” I said.
“It’s the only way!” Hephaestus replied. “Nothing else has worked. Nothing else will work. Mortals are getting worse, not better, and they’re dragging everything else down with them. We’ve waited long enough. On some level, you feel it, too. No one hates mortals more than you do. I’ve listened to you. You started me on the path, and now it’s my turn to repay the favour and take you the rest of the way.”
I felt a terrible sinking sensation. Guilt.
“You think this is what I want?” I asked. “A massacre? There are good mortals too, Hephaestus. What about them?”
“You can’t dwell on the past,” Hephaestus said. “What’s being swept away is nothing compared to what we can build. This world is an obstacle to perfection. We can remove that obstacle. We can make perfection. We have the power. That’s all that matters.”
“This is my fault. I did this to you,” I realized bitterly.
“Try to be happy, Mother,” Hephaestus encouraged. “You gave me the greatest gift of all. Purpose.” He paused. “I thought you’d understand.”
“You thought wrong,” I breathed. “So wrong. This is not . . . I could never do what you’re proposing. Hephaestus, can’t you see that this is wrong?”
“We are above right and wrong. We can make a new right and wrong,” he replied.
“And if I refuse?” I asked.
Hephaestus was upset. Disappointed. Confused, even.
“I . . . I never thought about that,” he admitted. He laughed. “It’s the one thing I never thought of.”
“Think about it now,” I said.
It was a thick, tense silence. The world--no, all of existence--waited for the verdict. Life? Or death?
“This will happen,” Hephaestus answered. “You can’t fight it. You can’t fight me.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked.
I locked eyes with him. I didn’t want it to come to this. To use my powers against my own son. But I would. For existence, I would do anything.
He was beaming again. He wasn’t afraid of me at all. “You’re a fighter, Mother. That’s what I love about you. That’s the kind of spirit that will give energy to our new order, you’ll see.” He sobered after a moment, though his eyes still shone with excitement. “Your powers won’t work on me, you know. I chose the power of mimicry to bring from the Heavens--I can copy the powers of all the other gods in this world. But I don’t want to fight you, Mother. And I don’t want to have to call for reinforcements.”
Hephaestus had planned this out carefully. I had to give him that. He was methodical, even when he’d clearly lost his mind. He’d made sure to build himself a small army before ever coming to the mortal world, just in case. How he’d done it without alerting the rest of us, I couldn’t begin to guess. It had to have been Ian. Somehow, he’d used the mortal. And Hephaestus had the perfect cover: he wasn’t just above my suspicion, he was above everyone’s. We all took his loyalty and compassion for granted.
He sighed. He walked toward the storage area. I didn’t move.
“Ian should’ve finally drained enough power from the Fates to begin the process,” he said. “I’ve waited so long for this moment. Now, please step aside, Mother. It’s time.”
“Hephaestus,” I begged.
“Enough!” he snapped. His voice softened. “Enough. Clearly you won’t see the truth until I show you. That’s all right. I’m not angry, Mother, don’t worry. I’m just surprised. And I don’t want you to make this any harder on yourself.”
“I can’t let you do this,” I said, backing against the storage doors with my arms spread. It was futile. But I’d die trying, no matter how futile it was.
“I’m beginning to see that,” he admitted.
He snapped his fingers. Two machines scraped into the room. Wordlessly, they came toward me and lifted me out of the way.
“Gently,” Hephaestus told them, as he bent to unlock the storage room doors. “That’s my mother. And your queen. And future empress of a brand new order.”
The storage doors exploded outward. They smashed into Hephaestus and he flew across the room and out into the hall.
“Justin!”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The machines dropped me and lunged at Justin. Their blows glanced off him harmlessly. Eyes glowing with golden power, he grabbed each of their heads, one in each hand, and crushed them like aluminum cans. They fell to the ground with a clang.
“You did it!” I said. “You found the artifact!”
He smiled. He took my hand, and I felt a warm glow. Apollo’s glow. As the healing light flowed into me, I felt my bruises disappear.
“You look . . .”
I had no words. Justin was radiant. Inexpressibly beautiful. This was Justin. But as a god.
“Clever.” It was Hephaestus. A soft glow shone from his hands as he walked back into the shop. Before my eyes, the blood and bruises on his face and arms vanished. “But now I have all the powers you do, mortal.”
“Then this should be interesting,” Justin said, and he threw himself at Hephaestus.
Their blows cracked like thunder, making the room shake, but neither Justin nor Hephaestus seemed affected at all. Not with Zeus’s power running through them. They were too evenly matched for either of them to gain the upper hand. Still, they grappled and twisted, throwing each other around the room, smashing into the walls and demolishing the tables that got in their way. They were oblivious to everything except the fight. Including me. It was all I could do to keep out of the way.
They could’ve continued that way forever--and I might have let them, too, except we still hadn’t found the Fates. We had no way of knowing if Hephaestus’s plan required him to do something more, or whether it would simply take place on its own unless we stopped it. The only way to be sure to end this was to free the Fates.
“Hera! Fates!” Justin shouted between blows.
The divine power he’d absorbed was already beginning to fade. It was so subtle that he probably didn’t even notice, but I did. And from the smug smile on Hephaestus’s face, he saw it, too.
I headed for the door out of the shop. If Justin lost his powers, Hephaestus would lose them, too--except for mine, which he could use against Justin to devastating effect. I had to get far enough away that he couldn’t mimic my powers.
“No! Look!” Justin managed to call out before Hephaestus grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the ground.
I scanned the area around me. Look at what? I needed to get far away and find the Fates. They clearly weren’t here.
And then I remembered. The Oracle. Mortal eyes. Justin. Maybe a part of him was still mortal enough to see something I couldn’t.
“Where?” I demanded. “I can’t see them.”
“There!” he shouted.
But as he raised an arm to point, Hephaestus grabbed it and hurled Justin over his shoulder and onto the ground with pulverizing force. Justin was too distracted, and getting weaker by the second. If I kept distracting him, Hephaestus would kill him.
“I can’t . . .” I repeated, looking around helplessly.
“You can! Focus!” he pressed.
Hephaestus grabbed Justin from behind and tried to smash his face into the wall. Justin managed to put up his legs at the last second and push off the wall, knocking them both to the ground.
Focus. Great advice. I was entirely focused. Nothing mattered to me more than finding the Fates. Nothing.
Unless . . .
Justin didn’t mean focus on the Fates. He meant focus on something else.
Mortal eyes may see what gods cannot.
Mortal eyes.
I couldn’t focus on mortal eyes. I didn’t have them.
Or did I? Justin seemed to think, if I focused, I'd be able to see the Fates, and that took mortal eyes.
Mortal eyes.
Maybe Justin didn't have them either. Maybe he wasn't mortal anymore. But he'd still found a way to pierce the
spell. He'd found a way to see through mortal eyes.
That's what he wanted me to do. To see through mortal eyes. By focusing on my mortal side.
There was a time when the very idea that I had any mortality in me would’ve been unthinkable. Me. Queen of the Gods. One of the most ancient and powerful beings in existence.
But I had to try.
I concentrated. I focused on mortality. On everything I’d been feeling since I came to the mortal world to search for the Fates. On the weakness. On the emotion. On the grief and anger and doubt. On the helplessness.
“It’s not . . .” I began.
And the world rippled. It was slight. But it was enough for me to know it was working.
Hephaestus had pinned Justin against a table with a saw against his neck. So far, Justin had been able to keep back the blade with his bare hands--but if his powers wore off, he’d die. Unless I did something. Now.
I focused.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it. Not the Fates. Something else. Something small. Something worse. A tiny trickle of blood ran down Justin’s hand. His powers were almost gone. He was going to die.
I felt panic and sickness and anger and grief and regret. The emotions collided and spun inside me. But instead of fighting them, I rode them. I let them take me down, deep into myself, into a part I never acknowledged, let alone explored. Into the heart of my mortality.
Love.
The world shattered. I saw a new world. An identical world. Except for one thing.
There was a grate at the bottom of the storage room where before there’d been nothing--or, at least, I’d seen nothing.
I ran to the storage room.
“No!” Hephaestus roared.
Justin took advantage of Hephaestus’s distraction. He punched him as hard as he could in the throat. Hephaestus fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Justin rolled off the table and staggered toward me.
I pulled at the grate, but it was locked with a padlock. I couldn’t see anything inside, but there was definitely something down there. I could feel it. Finally.
Hera, Queen of Gods (Goddess Unbound) Page 36