Mortal Gods

by Kendare Blake

  Cassandra clenched her fists.

  “Then let’s get going. You want help to find Achilles? You got it.”

  Athena glanced at her, surprised.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” she asked. “I didn’t think you’d want to help. You know I’m going to find and destroy him.”

  “He murdered my brother,” Cassandra said.

  “In another life.”

  True enough. In this life, Achilles was probably no different than Henry. Just as innocent. In this life, they could be friends.

  Athena pursed her lips.

  “No,” she said. “Not yet. I told Odysseus I would wait.”

  Cassandra groaned through her teeth.

  “If you were half the god you’re supposed to be,” she said, “Aidan would still be alive.”

  Athena didn’t react. Whenever Cassandra lashed out, she took it, like Cassandra’s pain was her burden. Athena reached for the heater controls and tried to push them farther into the red, as if that would make a difference.

  “Are your feet getting warmer?” she asked.

  “Shut up. You don’t give a shit about my feet.” Cassandra tucked them up closer, away from the blowing vents. “You just want to use me to kill the other gods, like Hera did. So you can live. You’ll probably find Achilles and decide to use him, too. You didn’t listen when Aidan asked you to leave us alone and fight your own battles.”

  “They were coming for you.”

  “They followed you here!” Cassandra shouted.

  “Of course it must seem that way. But they would have found you eventually. And Ap—” Athena sighed. “And Aidan wouldn’t have been able to protect you on his own.”

  “Don’t talk about him.” Fire rushed into Cassandra’s chest, intense as an itch, but clouded and red, not clear like it had been with Hera that day on the road. “Don’t tell me what he could and couldn’t do. He could’ve done anything. He might’ve done a thousand things if you’d never come here.”

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “I want you to go.”

  Athena nodded. “I will. And I won’t come here with you Tuesday if you don’t want me to.”

  “No. Not just the cemetery. I want you gone. Out of Kincade,” Cassandra said. “Hundreds of people died in the explosions in Chicago and Philadelphia, from bombs that Hera planted. Hundreds of people! Can’t you go and pretend to protect other cities?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Cassandra asked. “I haven’t had a vision of a dying god in months. I haven’t had a vision of anything since we killed Hera. Since I killed Hera. And I’ll kill Aphrodite, too, all on my own.” Cassandra’s heart thumped, and the heat in her hands flickered. She heard Odysseus in her head. Big talk. Big, tough talk, but talking isn’t the real thing.

  “I promised my brother I would take care of you,” Athena said quietly. “It’s the only promise I made to him that I intend to keep.”

  “Shut up. He wasn’t really your brother.”

  “He was my brother long before he was your love,” Athena said, showing anger for the first time. But she couldn’t sell it. She shook her head guiltily.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. You were the most important thing to him. But he died for you, and I’m not about to—”

  “Shut up, I said,” Cassandra screeched. “You want me to do this, and you want me to do that, but you don’t care what I want. You don’t give me Aphrodite and you don’t give me a way to find Aidan and bring him back!”

  For a second, they both sat silent, struck dumb by the request.

  “Is there a way?” Cassandra asked quietly. “Where do gods go? To the underworld? Somewhere else? Is there a way to go there, and bring him back? People used to. And gods could. I remember that. So is there? Is that where he is?”

  Athena’s eyes went glassy.

  “We’re not those kinds of gods, Cassandra.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind who know everything.”

  Cassandra closed her eyes. As usual, Athena was no damn use. All at once Cassandra’s frustration reared up in her chest and ran hot to her hands. She had to let it go or she would burst. She reached across the seat and grabbed Athena’s wrist.

  Athena jerked the wheel hard. Someone screamed, and Cassandra wasn’t sure if it was Athena or her as the Dodge jumped the curb and narrowly missed a signpost. She rocked forward into the dash as Athena hit the brakes.

  The burning in her hands was gone. It had disappeared and left them cold and clammy. Beside her, Athena pulled up the sleeve of her coat and held her wrist up to her face. A broken red ring, cracked and enflamed, marred the skin where Cassandra had grabbed her. Small, speckled feathers protruded in a grotesque bracelet, pushing through the flesh like blossoming seeds. As they watched, a few more tore through the surface and twisted outward, tinged with blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassandra blurted. The anger that had seemed so fresh a second ago felt a million miles away. “I didn’t mean to … I don’t know why—are you—” She took a hitching breath and opened the door. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

  “It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s stopping.” Athena stared at the wound as the feathers took over her wrist. A trickle of blood ran; one of the quills must’ve nicked a vein. It had to hurt like a bitch, too, like a thousand bee stings, but she watched it as if it were happening under glass. “There’s a first aid kit in the trunk,” she said, popping it, and Cassandra took wobbling steps around the back of the car and brought it back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, I said.” Athena rolled gauze around the wound and tore the strip to tie it with her teeth. Her movements were brutal and efficient. It was that, and the lack of feeling on her face, that made Cassandra start to cry.

  “What?” Athena asked. “It’s fine. I’ll just pluck them out with tweezers later.” She took a deep breath. “The one in my lung isn’t any worse. Whatever you did, it was localized.” Cassandra exhaled, relieved to have the wound covered. Seeing it even for those few moments had made her nauseous. Athena patted her back awkwardly. “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right. And you’re an idiot.” Cassandra wiped her eyes. “Odysseus made me promise not to turn you into a feather pillow. But I almost did. And I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t mean to.”

  “He said that? A feather pillow?”

  “Will you shut up?” Cassandra asked. How could she make a god understand? Until just recently, they were creatures without consequences. And even now, the way Athena studied the feathers in her arm, more curious than scared, as if it were a science experiment. As if it weren’t real.

  “Aphrodite killed Aidan, do you understand? She killed him. And Hera almost killed me.” Cassandra remembered the stretch of road beside Seneca Lake. The blackness behind her eyes after her head struck the pavement. “I’m sixteen years old. And I’m two thousand. But none of that means anything to you.”

  Athena paused a moment. “You can kill gods with your bare hands,” she said. “A prophetess who died at the end of an axe. But you’re also a brown-haired girl in a red wool coat, with flushed cheeks and frozen toes. I see you, Cassandra. I see that you’re young.”

  “But it doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  “Yes it does.” Athena hesitated. “I know what it means, to be too young to die. Whether you believe it or not. And I am sorry about all of this. I wish I didn’t have to use you. But I do.”

  Cassandra watched her carefully.

  “What did Demeter tell you, in the desert?”

  “That it wouldn’t really be over until I’m dead,” Athena said. “So I have to survive the longest, do you understand? And then I’ll go. And it will be over.”

  Cassandra wiped her face. Athena gripped the wheel hard with her unspoiled hand.

  “You think you’re going to win, don’t you?” Cassandra asked.

  “I think we are. Yes.”

  “I jus
t want all of this to go away.”

  Athena sighed. “It will. After.”

  “I am sorry about your arm.”

  Athena tucked the bandage under her sleeve.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do. If you can’t stomach giving me a feather rash, how do you expect to kill Aphrodite?”

  “That’s different,” Cassandra muttered.

  “Maybe,” Athena said thoughtfully. “But it would be better if you had more control.”

  “I can’t control it,” Cassandra snapped, angry again in an instant. It came and went, ebbed and flared, all on its own. “Every time I think of Aphrodite I want to watch her burn.” She paused. “And sometimes when I see you.”

  “It wasn’t like that on the road, with Hera.”

  “No. But that’s what it’s become.” Cassandra let out a long, shaky breath, scared by her own words. Her own thoughts. One second she didn’t want to be a killer, and the next, rage flooded her heart and mind, washing everything red.

  “What it’s become,” Athena repeated softly, and to Cassandra it sounded like a warning. What it had become. And what she was becoming.

  * * *

  “This place is a constant facial,” Hermes said, and pushed aside a vine. “The heat, the mist, the aromatics.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Odysseus. They were deep into the rain forest, far from worn paths and tourist excursions. He couldn’t tell how far they’d traveled. Their pace had been fast and uneven. Hermes led by choosing directions seemingly at random. He’d walk for miles steadily, and then reach back and grasp Odysseus under the arm to take off at breakneck speed, so fast Odysseus had to huddle close to Hermes’ neck for fear of catching a tree in the face. When he stopped, it was just as quickly as he started, and he never gave an explanation.

  “I don’t believe you,” Hermes said, and peered at Odysseus’ face. “No mortal has pores that small naturally.”

  Odysseus took a deep breath as he stepped over a rotting log. The smell of decaying meat and blood filled his nose in a cloud, so strong he almost puked.

  “What is that?” he asked. He scanned the ground for a corpse, hoping to see half a rotted monkey, or a gutted tapir. Anything but a tanned leg and long silvery hair. Anything but Artemis.

  Hermes took a whiff. “No need to panic. There’s nothing dead. It’s the rafflesia. Corpse flowers.” He pointed to an obscenely large blossom, fat red petals speckled with white. It looked more like a fungus than a flower. He sniffed again. “It doesn’t smell anything like death, really.”

  “Smells exactly like it to me.” Odysseus walked carefully around the plant, like it might bite. It was oddly beautiful. He wouldn’t have touched it for all the tea in China.

  “Not to my immortal nose.” Hermes sniffed the air again. Odysseus ran up against his back. He had his hand over most of his face to filter the smell.

  “Can we get going?”

  “Hang on. We’re coming up on something else, and it won’t do to startle them.”

  “Them?” He couldn’t see or hear anything living, except for the constant chorus of insect chirps.

  Hermes took off again, slightly to the right. “People. A village. There’s a little bit of smoke and something cooking.”

  “Are you sure we should approach them? Are they safe?” Odysseus asked, and Hermes gave him a look. What group of natives could stand against the god of thieves? Odysseus shrugged. “Right.”

  They walked through the trees, Hermes following his nose until the village became visible through the dense growth. It was an oblong stretch of cleared land, crowded through with huts that reminded Odysseus of “The Three Little Pigs”: small, rounded, and made from sticks, reeds, and woven plants. Smoke rose from several fires, and the smell of roasting meat drove the memory of the reeking corpse flower far away.

  A group of children huddled in the dirt, playing some kind of game with stones. At their approach, the children raised their heads. Odysseus paused, but Hermes smiled broadly and opened his palms. The children smiled unabashedly back.

  “Are you using some kind of god trick?” Odysseus asked. “To make them unafraid?”

  “That’d be a pretty good trick,” Hermes answered. “But no. Look at them. At their fat bellies and rounded arms. Listen to the quiet of this forest. What reason do they have to be afraid?”

  “Instinct. You know. Fear of the unknown. Of the strange.”

  “If we had fangs and claws, they’d scream soon enough. But we don’t. We walk on two. Like them.” They emerged from the trees and were greeted by a grizzled black and gray dog, who thumped her tail and snuffled their pants pockets. One of the children raised an arm and said something too fast for Odysseus to make out, but Hermes said it right back.

  “A greeting,” he explained, as the children surrounded them.

  Curious hands tugged at Odysseus’ sleeves and tried to get into his rucksack. Two of the children ran for the center of the village. “Should we go? Are they—?”

  “Relax, will you? Look around.” Hermes gestured toward the huts and their wide open doorways. “Do you see any bones? Any trophies? Look at their clothing. As much woven from plants and bartered cloth as leather. These people hunt for sustenance. It’s not like we’ve stumbled into an Aztec city. Believe me, I could tell you stories.”

  The two children were on their way back, with several equally curious adults. A woman with long black hair and rosy cheeks came up close and pushed a green, rounded fruit into Odysseus’ palm.

  “Smile. Show your appreciation. If we play our cards right we can get a cooked meal and a cozy straw bed.”

  Odysseus did as he was told; the woman blushed and grinned behind her hand. It was a sweet and bashful gesture, and his stomach started to relax.

  Beside him, Hermes nodded at the people and spoke in their language.

  “You speak this? What’d you say?”

  “Always ask for the oldest woman. If she likes you, you’re golden.”

  They were herded through the village, past curious faces sitting in huts or beside fires.

  The oldest woman in the village had to be the oldest by about fifty years. She wore a shift beaded with blue and yellow, and her hair flowed around her rickety shoulders in a peppered curtain. But the hand that held her machete had an iron grip.

  Hermes said the greeting and waited. The old woman was slower to smile than the others, and when she spoke her voice was cautious.

  “We can rest here,” Hermes said when she was through. “And eat. They’re roasting a monkey.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Odysseus said. He looked up into the canopy, at the slanting light. “But the resting part sounds fantastic.”

  * * *

  They ate communally, sharing between fires. And even though he doubted Cassandra would approve, Odysseus ate plenty of the monkey. The villagers glazed the meat with some kind of fruit juice, and it tasted a little like rich pork. Beside him, Hermes tried to show restraint, but the village children kept bringing him bits of roasted yam and nuts, amazed at how much he could put away.

  “How do you know this language?” Odysseus asked. He dragged a woven straw mat beneath the shelter of a lean-to, a short distance from the main fire.

  “I don’t know all of it. Their dialect is a little different. But I’ve been to this part of the world before. And I’m good with languages.” Hermes crunched through some kind of root, sitting on his own mat. “She said she dreamed of me.” He gestured toward the old woman, who sat watching and not watching them from across the flames. “She said she dreamed of me long ago, and today, and tomorrow.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Hermes shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s the tribe’s shaman. Maybe nothing. But it was nice. And she said something else.”

  “What?”

  “She said she heard the ravening beasts. Not long ago. That way.” He pointed across the village, to the east.

  “The ravening
beasts? You mean—?”

  Hermes nodded. “Artemis. We’re close.”

  7

  RUNNING RED

  The carpeted stairs that curled around from the library were just far enough from the clanging of plastic trays in the cafeteria to feel private and separate, though it was anything but. Voices echoed down the hall like it was a megaphone, unless you were the ones tucked farthest back into the stairs. That honor went to Andie and Sam, who sat sharing a pair of earbuds.

  “Cassandra, you want some of my chips?” Megan asked, holding out a plastic baggie. “Dill pickle.”

  “Sure.”

  Megan plopped down beside her and stretched her striped stocking–clad legs. Underneath a few shades of blue eye shadow and thick black liner, her eyes were tired.

  “You look rough,” Cassandra said, and crunched a chip.

  “I got zero sleep last night.” Megan jerked her head up toward a boy in a too-tight Abercrombie t-shirt. “Jeremy kept me on the phone until three.”

  “Talking about what?”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “Isabelle, as usual.”

  “You’re half-dead because you lost sleep listening to him moan about his ex-girlfriend? There’s a lesson in there somewhere.”

  “What? That I should stop letting him bounce around on me when Isabelle isn’t feeling generous?” Megan blew her bangs out of her face. “I know. But it’s hard, when he needs someone to talk to. When she’s being a bitch.”

  “It’s still a crappy deal, Megan.”

  “I guess,” she said, and stared into her chip bag. “You were really lucky, you know? To have Aidan. A real, decent guy. Even if it was only for a little while.” She stopped and looked at Cassandra, horrified. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “No,” said Cassandra. “You’re right. It’s true. I was really lucky. For a little while.” He should’ve been there next to her on the stairs. She tried to imagine him there, and it was just that close. Like if she closed her eyes and fell asleep, she might wake against his shoulder.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I made you sad.”

  “No. It’s okay. I—” She paused. Blood soaked Megan’s shoulders and dripped down her knees. Finger tracks of red smeared and streaked across her face. Cassandra held her breath as buckets covered them both, hot and heavy as a cloak. The carpet squished beneath her shoes.