Rise of the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

  With one monumental tug, I/Rhea freed the bow from Althea’s grip, whipping her aside with the force of my torque and wielding the bow like a bat, straight at Junessa’s head. My heart clenched, hoping she’d duck in time. I saw the indecision in her eyes—fire or duck. At the last possible second, she dropped out of position and tossed her weapon aside, now in too close for it to do any good. Instead, she recovered and went for a flying tackle, aimed at my midsection. Rhea pivoted me out of the way, right into Althea, who’d recovered and showed it with a sucker punch to my solar plexus. I didn’t know if Rhea felt it any more than I did, but she didn’t let it stop her. She grabbed for Althea’s head and was, I was afraid, about to snap her neck, but the serpents got there first, going for her throat and coming up with mouthfuls of hair that had fallen in their path. They yanked Althea by the hair, dragging her toward them, the better to bite her.

  But Nick had grabbed Junessa’s discarded arrow. I could feel his torment. He couldn’t bear to use it on me, but the monster…that was another matter. He lunged forward like a Maori warrior and thrust the arrow hard, right into the closest dragon’s eye.

  It hissed back, and another head swung around to its aid, biting the shaft and snapping it in half. Other heads went straight for Nick.

  I tried to jump in front of him, but Rhea had complete control. Apollo darted in to grab the bow in my hand, shouting, “Tori, if you’re in there, let go!”

  I tried, but there were no signals getting from me to my body. Junessa grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back suddenly, and I snarled as Apollo swept my legs out from under me. I landed hard on my back with Apollo on top of me, but I didn’t surrender the bow. He had to knock the upper curve of it into my chin so hard I saw stars before that would happen.

  When he had the bow, he rose up, getting it far, far away from my grasp, “Hermes, you coward, get out here and keep her down!”

  I couldn’t see what happened next—whether Zeus and Poseidon were still alive, whether Nick had escaped the hundreds of fire-shooting faces he was far too close to with no defense. My heart pounded like it would explode and still my body wouldn’t obey.

  My brain seemed to spin, and my stomach rebelled with the nausea of vertigo, and then, somehow, I was seeing the room from another angle.

  Typhoeus still struggled weakly, a handful of heads trying to get the rest of the body moving. The heads I’d frozen were waking again, sluggishly, about to rejoin the fight. But Rhea must have decided he’d had enough, because I let out a high-pitched whistle that meant something to the beast. He jerked to attention, listening, and then sprang toward Tori…me…knocking me down like a bowling pin.

  And that was when I realized that I wasn’t me. I’d forgotten in the insanity that I was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes—someone who hadn’t been brought low by Apollo and the huntresses. I was trying to think who I’d seen hiding where around the room when a voice called in shock, “Christie!”

  My sight swung toward the one who’d called out—Hermes, staring in horror at the eyes through which I was seeing—and I realized that Rhea had gotten to Christie and that somehow we were now linked.

  But as the serpent withdrew, racing toward his tunnel, so did Rhea, with a final proclamation in Christie’s voice. “This isn’t over. The titans are coming. Your time is through.”

  My vision snapped back to my own body, retracting with a force that left my brain bruised. The world was fuzzy and purple, but I fought through it, needing to know who was still standing and who could be helped.

  Chapter Ten

  Somehow I battled back the dark clouds obscuring my vision, only the first thing I saw was even darker…Nick down. And not in the way that someone falls who has any control over it. He was lying pretty much on the left side of his face. The right side was so swollen and blackened that I could only tell it was him from his suit.

  I crawled to him, but when I got to his side I hesitated to touch, afraid to hurt him. Distantly, I was aware of sirens and commotion, but all I could see was Nick. My hands quaked as I held one in front of his nose to see if I could feel him breathing. My heart was in my throat, choking me. I couldn’t tell. Dammit, I should be able to tell.

  In that instant, I understood Apollo entirely. I’d have dosed Nick right then with ambrosia if I had any on me, to spare him pain, to bring him back to me and heal him up. I’d slit open my own wrists and let him drink if I had vampiric blood or if I thought there was enough ambrosia still running through me to help. I’d pay any price to save him.

  Could it be? Did I have enough ambrosia running through my veins to heal him? Was it even safe to give a person human blood? I didn’t know his blood type or how important that might be. I didn’t know anything.

  The EMTs arrived and pushed me out of the way before I could give in to temptation. I moved back, still squatting there, though, as closely as I could. Part of me was furious that they’d pushed me away when I could have helped him, but the other half knew they’d come just in time. If I’d helped Nick with ambrosia, I’d be making him an addict. I was almost certain he’d rather die.

  Still, my heart broke at the missed opportunity, and I let out a sob that had been building.

  I forced myself to turn away, to see if there was anywhere I was needed. Off to the side, Tina cried uncontrollably, a puddle in Jason’s arms, both collapsed together on the floor. Wedding guests were coming out of hiding. Paramedics were helping others who’d gone down—one figure with a prodigious beard among them. Fear filled me that it was Yiayia, and I felt terrible about being relieved when I looked beyond and saw her wringing her hands, watching Fergus with the EMT much the same way I’d watched Nick. She seemed to sense my gaze and met it from across the room. She looked desolate. Neither of us mouthed a word.

  The EMT working on Nick got my attention and asked if I was his wife. I nodded, lying in silence, willing to admit to anything if it kept me by his side.

  “Want to ride along? He’s alive, but badly burned. It may be touch and go. Decisions may have to be made.”

  Hope and dread warred. Alive, but badly burned. Decisions? I wasn’t actually authorized to make any medical decisions on his behalf. What if it came down to—? I ruthlessly clamped down on that thought and nodded again.

  Our EMT signaled another to help him get Nick onto a gurney. I felt a hand on my arm as they started to count in order to synchronize the lift, but I didn’t turn.

  “I’m sorry,” Apollo said. He sounded sincere, but I didn’t know if he was sorry for Nick or for taking me down earlier when I was possessed. I nodded again. It didn’t matter.

  “We have to plan,” he continued. “Let them care for the wounded.”

  I turned now to stare at him, shocked that he’d even suggest it. “I can’t leave him.”

  He tried to pull me aside and I dug in my heels, but he was stronger, and I owed him, even if I was only just realizing how much. I moved off with him, but only far enough for the EMTs not to overhear. Then I repeated. “I can’t leave him.”

  “You can’t do anything else,” he countered, eyes soft with understanding. “You can’t do anything for him, and if Rhea comes back—” I won’t be able to control myself. He didn’t need to finish the thought. He seemed to sense it and moved on. “If Rhea really is raising the titans it’s a world-ender. Truly. No one will be safe. The best thing you can do for him and everyone else is to help us stop it.”

  “How?” I asked. “So far I’ve been part of the problem, not the solution.”

  “Even more reason for you to be with us. It’s safer for Nick, and I keep thinking there must be some way I can use our mind link to get through to you when Rhea’s in residence, or at least piggyback on her thoughts so that we can learn her plans.”

  “What if there isn’t?”

  “Then we’re no worse off than we are now.”

  I knew in my head that he made sense, but my heart—the pieces that remained—didn’t agree.
<
br />   “Give me an hour,” I said. “Let me get him to the hospital. Let me be there in case he wakes. After that, they’ll probably have him on sedatives and in surgery. But for now—”

  Apollo’s eyes were indescribably sad. “Go. I’ll get everyone together.”

  I looked around suddenly. “Where are Zeus and Poseidon?”

  We both looked to their last known position, but we couldn’t see them with the EMTs in the way. At least one was alive enough to refuse treatment and have the EMT argue with him over the extent of his burns. I didn’t hear any more after that and could only assume that the belligerent one had either passed out or been knocked out by some kind of painkiller.

  “Seems they’ll be going to the hospital as well,” Apollo said. “Maybe you can talk to them.”

  “Talk to them?”

  He gave me a very serious look. “If the titans are rising, we can’t do it alone. I’m not even sure we can do it together. When Zeus beat the titans before he had help—the cyclopses and hecatoncheires. It wasn’t a battle, it was a war.”

  This kept getting better and better.

  “Fine, I’ll talk to them, but I have to go.”

  The EMTs hadn’t waited for me, but were wheeling Nick out on their cart. I ran to catch up with them.

  He didn’t moan or shift as they hoisted him into the ambulance and bumped him into place. He barely looked alive.

  And I’d done this. Or at least I’d been too weak to stop it from happening, to stop Rhea from taking me over, using me to commit human sacrifice and awaken her fully into her power. This was the second time Nick would be in the hospital because of me. There wouldn’t be a third.

  I had to quickly get out of the way as another EMT came through with another stretcher and they loaded that into the ambulance as well. I couldn’t tell who it was with his face as blackened as Nick’s, but from the suit it looked like another wedding guest. Poor man.

  The medic got up into the ambulance; his partner motioned me in as well, then slammed the doors behind us. There was barely room for me and the medic between the two stretchers, and he had to shift back and forth between patients, starting IVs, checking heart rates. I tried to stay out of the way and prayed to anyone and everyone—Christ Pantocrator straight through to Rhea herself—with everything I had for Nick to be okay. For everyone to miraculously be okay. And for them to send Nick home where he’d be safe. He had no part in this war, but I couldn’t see him accepting that. If people were in danger he’d fight until his last breath to save them. That’s exactly what I was afraid of.

  The medic fired questions at me as he worked on Nick, and I did my best to answer, remembering that I was supposed to be his wife. It was amazing how woefully ignorant I was. Finally, I patted him down for his wallet and pulled out his blood donor and insurance cards, which answered some of the questions I couldn’t.

  As soon as we hit the hospital, I was sidelined again, shoved off on someone with a computer and a no-nonsense attitude to answer questions, many of them the same as I’d already been asked, and to fill out paperwork that seemed endless. I asked every time I could catch a break whether I could see him, but I kept getting, “Just one or two more things,” until I wondered how the data entry lady had ever passed kindergarten math.

  Finally I was allowed into the emergency area waiting room. No further. When I tried to ask the nurse who’d occasionally call someone in what was going on, she insisted that someone would be out to talk to me.

  I tried to wait. Really I did. But it didn’t take. I’d told Apollo I’d be back in an hour. After twenty minutes had passed, I glanced around at my fellow waiters—reading magazines, playing on their smart phones, worriedly pacing the floor. All wrapped up in their own stuff. No one was concerned with me. I got up out of my seat and without rushing or doing the “casual saunter” that never looked anything but suspicious, I approached the door that would take me into the treatment area, turned the knob and simply walked through. No one was there to stop me. I dodged doctors and nurses, desperately willing them not to see me…or at least not to care if they did. Whether it worked or whether the craziness of the ER was on my side, I didn’t know. I peeked behind curtains and dodged into and out of treatment areas with impunity. But no Nick. No sign of him. At a guess, he’d had to go straight into surgery or some super-sterile area because of his burns and exposed flesh.

  Tears welled up in my eyes, and I would have let that last curtain fall, seeing only the barrel chest and gray mane of hair, knowing it wasn’t Nick, but a voice lashed out with venom, “Gorgon-spawn.”

  I froze, torn between ignoring it to continue searching for Nick and stepping inside. I recognized that voice. Poseidon. He’d spoken to me once—threatened me, really—through the mouth of a singing fish I had mounted on my office wall…just before he attempted to drown me and succeeded in flooding my office. And that had been before he’d tried to explode a charge in an offshoot of the San Andreas fault to set off the quake to end all quakes, dropping L.A. into the ocean to announce his (and Zeus’s) second coming. Oh yeah, and he’d tried to kill me then as well when I got in the way.

  Talk to them, Apollo had said. Yeah, right.

  I stepped inside and let the curtain drop behind me. “Poseidon,” I said, as neutrally as possible. “You’re looking…well.”

  Part of his silvery mane had burned away, and that lovely smell of burnt hair clung to him. Oxygen hissed softly as it fed through a tube up into his nose. His face was blackened, but miraculously not too burned. Possibly there was some protection against fire in being a water god. But a dry, wracking cough overtook him as I approached his bedside. It continued for the better part of a minute, which wasn’t such a long time in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re listening to someone cough up a lung, it seemed like forever.

  “What have you done?” he asked when he could talk again.

  Why was everybody always asking me that?

  “Me, nothing. Why don’t you ask Zeus what his priests set in motion at Delphi? No, wait, I’ll tell you. Their attempt at human sacrifice woke Rhea, your loving mother. Apparently, she’s not happy to see you.”

  Poseidon glared. It hadn’t been him she’d saved from Chronos, after all. She’d let him be devoured, along with the rest of her children. It had been Zeus alone she’d saved. Talk about mommy issues.

  “I should kill you,” he growled, which set off another, longer coughing fit, which ended on a wheeze and a rattle in his chest.

  “You tried that,” I answered when it died down enough that he could hear. “You’re welcome to try again, of course, but I don’t recommend it. Right now I’d say you have two options. You can keep threatening me and I can raise holy hell, bring people running and alert them that they’ve got an international fugitive on their hands. A terrorist, no less.”

  He snarled.

  “Or you can agree to join forces with us to put Rhea back in her place. She’s already come after you once. If she and the titans make a triumphant return, I’m going to be the very least of your problems.”

  Poseidon was silent but for the rattle in his chest.

  “Think about it,” I said.

  “Have you talked to Zeus?” he asked gruffly.

  “Does he speak for you?”

  He started to growl again and had to stifle another bout of coughing. “Up this high,” cough, “he’s the one with the power.”

  The cough that burst out this time went on for so long I thought he’d break a rib. Poseidon was left gasping like a fish out of water, his barrel chest working like a bellows, trying to make up for the deprivation of air.

  “Think about it,” I said again, turning to go. “You’re with us or you’re on your own.”

  A man in scrubs with some kind of breathing machine on a wheeled cart nearly crashed into me as I exited, and I moved quickly away to let him do his job. Poseidon was right—this far from the oceans and his base of power, he was probably pretty near human in his abilities,
but the titans weren’t just land creatures. If this thing got out of hand, if Rhea got down off the mountain or if she was able to move through followers who could we’d have a worldwide awakening on our hands. We’d need an army. And even that might not be enough.

  I stood there trying to figure out how I’d missed Zeus and where to find him. A pair of hands clamped down on my shoulders and yanked me into one of the treatment alcoves. The hold shifted, and I stomped down on an instep, threw an elbow back and then pivoted out of reach—or out of reach in a perfect world. In a cramped treatment room I pivoted into the bed and rolled myself up over it instead, coming down on the other side. The bed between us, I now faced my grabber, staring into the crazed and hate-filled eyes of the king of the Olympians, Zeus Earthshaker.

  “You called my mother?” he asked.

  I was so stunned that it took me a second even to laugh. But as soon as I did, I realized it was the wrong move.

  Zeus, enraged, shoved the bed at me. Luckily, the casters were old and clunky and the bed didn’t go far.

  “Maybe you didn’t notice, because you were so far over your head, but we saved your ass back at the hotel,” I spat back. “I’m not sure why. But to answer your question, no, we didn’t ‘call your mother’. Your priests did that.”

  He was breathing hard, looking from the hospital bed to me, as if he might give up trying to shove it and just lift and launch it instead, but that caught his attention.

  “What?” he asked sharply.

  “When your priests tried to gut Apollo in that stupid ceremony, the power unleashed with his blood woke her up. And I think she got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  He fell back a step, like I’d slapped him, and man did I want to.

  Anger bubbled up at that thought, but it wasn’t his…wasn’t mine. Inside I was like a boiling pot with the top about to blow off.

  No, no, no.

  I gasped, trying to release some of the pressure, trying to fight Rhea down.