“What’s wrong with you?” Zeus asked.
I tried to answer him, but it wasn’t my voice that came out. “My son,” Rhea spat. I listened helplessly, mentally clawing at my own throat. “Your days are over. Typhoeus was a warning. The titans are rising. You couldn’t even hold your world against the humans. How will you hold it against us? Your time is through.”
I braced for another quake or explosion, but none was forthcoming. Rhea’s serpentine minions were off licking their wounds or whatever giant mythological beasts did when they’d been beaten. At a guess, she didn’t have any more tricks currently up her sleeves. I imagined it would take time to gather more monsters. There couldn’t be too many in the immediate vicinity. Which meant we had time. But how much when a titan could probably chew up the landscape like a 2 Fast 2 Furious car in a no-holds-barred race?
Zeus stared into my eyes, but I wasn’t the one glaring back.
“I defeated you once,” he said. “I’ll do it again.”
“You and what army?” Rhea asked. “The giants have largely faded from the world. The cyclopses haven’t been heard from in ages untold. Your allies are no more. Your strength is no more. If you’d been alone tonight, Typhoeus would have destroyed you. You can’t stay surrounded forever.”
Zeus’s eyes blazed like one of his infamous bolts. “If you’re so sure you can defeat me, why waste time talking about it? Do you expect me to concede?”
“No,” she responded calmly, my mouth forming the words. “If you did, I could hardly use you as a rallying point. I expect the promise of vengeance will overcome anyone’s reluctance to awake. I’ve only come to say good-bye, my son.”
He lunged for me, straight across the bed between us and I fell right into his hands as Rhea suddenly withdrew from me and Zeus latched onto my throat, thumbs digging into my windpipe, cutting off my air. I stared, terrified, up into his bloodshot eyes, struggling to tell him that she’d gone. I wasn’t sure it would matter, and anyway, I didn’t have the breath. I dug deep for the energy to throw my head forward, crashing my forehead into his. His grip loosened, and I forced my hands in under his forearms and thrust, freeing myself from his grip.
I choked and coughed, my eyes watering, and whirled for the counter, grasping for anything I could use as a weapon. But there were no handy scalpels laying around for just such emergencies. Only tissues, a box of sanitary gloves, a plastic container of tongue depressors…
I spun back around, ready to find him closing in on me, prepared to use my body as a weapon, but he seemed to have gotten ahold of himself. He hadn’t rounded the hospital bed, but was watching me like a hawk from the side of it.
“You see,” I said. It came out, well, strangled. “She’s dangerous. We didn’t call her, but we’re going to have to work together to put her back to rest.”
“Work together?” You would have thought he’d been strangled by the sound of his voice. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You think you can stop her alone?”
His glare was answer enough.
“Talk to Poseidon and meet us back at the hotel. I promise you, we defeat her together or we go down separately.”
He didn’t say a word as I edged cautiously past him, but neither did he grab me again.
As I stepped out of the treatment room an intercom crackled and snapped, then a voice came over asking for Tori Karacis to report to the ER front desk.
My heart gave a thump. Fear and hope battled it out in a cage match in my chest to see which would win in regard to Nick. I’d lied and told them I was his wife. I prayed they weren’t calling to tell me I was a widow.
I rushed back the way I’d come, back toward the waiting area. As I burst out of the inner door to the treatment area, I nearly collided with an orderly, who turned just in time to catch me before I could overrun him.
“Mrs. Armani?” he asked.
Close enough. “Yes,” I answered.
“Your husband’s out of surgery if you’d like to see him.”
“He’s okay?” I asked, for the second time today, feeling like I wanted to collapse as the tension went out of me and relief flooded in. Relief was not nearly so rigid as fear.
“He’ll need skin grafts and reconstructive surgery, but as long as we can keep infection away…”
Skin grafts and reconstructive surgery…and I’d brought this on him.
“I’ll follow you?” I asked.
He led me back the way I’d just come and used a keycard to get us beyond the general ER area and back to the trauma treatment rooms. Nick was in the first one on the left, and I had to keep from throwing myself on him as I spotted him laying there, looking so helpless. One side of his face was loosely bandaged in white gauze pink with blood. The eye on the bandage-free side rolled to look at me, so blue and perfect in contrast.
I gasped and approached the bed tentatively, as if even displacing the air might cause him pain. My vision went blurry, and I realized there were tears in my eyes.
“I’ll give you a minute,” the orderly said, “but he may not be awake long. He’s on some pretty serious pain meds.”
Nick raised a hand, again on the uninjured side. The left, I noticed, which meant it was his dominant side that had taken the hit. I reached gently for the hand and stood by his bed, afraid to perch on it and cause him to shift.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. My damaged throat and the tears made it a hoarse whisper.
He shook his head. “Not your fault,” he whispered, as soft as spider’s silk.
“It is,” I insisted, not allowing myself the relief of looking away from his pain.
“Tori—” Saying my name recalled my gaze to his one good eye, and I realized I was lying to myself. I had let my gaze wonder down to his chest where the skin was less angry.
“Yes,” I said, wiping tears away from my eyes with my free hand.
“I’m out.”
I blinked. “Well, of course. I’m so, so sorry. No one expects you to come back to the fight. I should never—” a sob stopped me, and I had to swallow it down before I could continue, “—I should never have drawn you into any of it.”
He started to shake his head and stopped as it sparked pain that flashed across his face and made his body nearly arc off the bed. He breathed shallowly through the pain for a minute before his muscles untensed and he relaxed back onto the mattress, looking smaller than before somehow.
“No, I mean I’m out of everything. I can’t be…part of this.” He sounded like he was drowning on his words, and I could see a single tear welling in his good eye. “I’m not…equipped for these battles, and now…can’t even fight for those I’m meant to fight for, back home.”
He wasn’t a god…or a gorgon. Hell, I wasn’t equipped for this and that was with ambrosia and my gods-given gifts. But I suspected he was saying something more…something I desperately didn’t want to hear.
His eye kept closing, and it looked like it took more effort each time to reopen it, like the medicine was dragging him down into sleep. I wanted that for him, the freedom from pain, but he squeezed my hand to hold me there as he sensed me start to pull back to leave him in peace.
“Come with me,” he said, finally letting his eye shut and stay that way. “Not your fight either. I’m not sure…” He trailed off, and for a second I thought he was finished. Then his lips moved again, though his eyes stayed shut. “Not sure you’re helping the situation. Not sure things aren’t worse.” My heart stopped beating. I wondered if it was the medicine talking. Or confusion from the pain. But deep down I knew. He meant every word. I knew it, because he was voicing my very own doubts. Only, he was my touchstone. He was supposed to believe. And he’d cracked under the pressure.
I was so torn up and tangled up in my own pain that it took me a second to realize he wasn’t quite finished. “If this is…your path…can’t walk it with you.”
His hand went slack in mine, and I checked to see that he was still breathing. He was, and I str
uggled to feel something at that, but I’d gone numb with the stopping of my heart. I didn’t know what to process first—that he blamed me as I blamed myself or that it sounded like he was cutting me free.
Because that’s what he was saying. I couldn’t turn my back on the fight that had begun. I couldn’t. My responsibility was here. Now. With my friends and family and this mess I hadn’t started but had been sucked into nonetheless. His responsibility, his job, his identity was back in L.A. with the people he’d vowed to protect and serve. And because of me—I’d said it myself—because of me right now he couldn’t even do that. All he could do was hurt and heal. He couldn’t stay and I couldn’t go. After all I’d put him through, that felt like a betrayal. Yet I couldn’t see any other path.
I walked out of there like I was walking the Green Mile, already dead inside.
The tears didn’t start until I was in the limo Uncle Hector had sent to collect me, and then they wouldn’t stop.
Viggo looked at me in the rearview mirror and asked, “The man, he’s going to be okay?”
I wiped the tears out of my eyes. “Eventually. Nothing skin grafts and time away from me can’t cure.”
He looked sad, like he could read between the lines. “Back to the hotel?”
I thought about asking him to go by way of a liquor store, but I needed my wits about me.
“Yes,” I said finally. “Thank you.”
“It’ll be okay,” he told me.
I wished he had the power of prophecy.
I was too emotionally exhausted to fear the hairpin turns on the way back up to the hotel…or maybe I was getting used to them. Exposure therapy.
Like before, we had to stop short of the actual parking lot that looked like an explosion site. I thanked Viggo and raced out, ready to find the others and plot away my sorrows. Nick had pulled away from me. I didn’t think it was just his painkiller talking. My touchstone was gone. That voice that told me not to do the crazy things I usually did anyway had given up on me. But more than that…I hadn’t said as much, not even to myself, but the truth was that when Nick and I finally got through the bantering and dancing our way around our relationship, I thought we’d…settle down sounded too tame. Be together forever sounded too romancy. But somewhere in there lay the truth about what was slipping away from me.
The lobby of the hotel was all but deserted when I entered. One lone receptionist was holding down the checkin desk. I realized I didn’t know where to go. The banquet hall would be a crime scene, although what crime the police could prosecute I could only imagine. I headed for the elevators while I pulled my phone out to call Apollo, feeling stupidly guilty as I did it, even though this was hardly a social call. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I had a relationship anymore to worry about. The thought didn’t cause me anything but pain.
I was not going to cry again. Big girls don’t cry. I’d heard it in a song once. The wisdom of Fergie.
I heard a phone play out the first few bars of “Black Magic Woman” in the elevator coming into the lobby and knew I didn’t have to look any further for Apollo. I’d found him. He accepted the call just as the doors opened, and then dropped his hand to his side at the sight of me.
“What happened?” he asked immediately, stepping toward me. I took a step back. “Are you okay?”
I looked at the hand reaching out toward me, the phoneless one, and he stopped. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not the one hurt.”
“Then what was all that I sensed?”
Damn and double damn, I’d forgotten our weird, unwanted bond that meant he’d had a front-row seat for the breakup. But he could sense emotions, not read minds. He might guess, but he couldn’t know anything I didn’t tell him for certain. And I wasn’t about to tell him. He’d been wanting me to break up with Nick since we’d met. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it was done or appearing pathetic because Nick had been the one to end it.
“Zeus is a douchebag, so what else is new? But I think I talked some sense into him and Poseidon both. I don’t think they can fight Rhea without us.”
“Without Zeus and his idiot priests, we wouldn’t have to fight her at all.”
“Where is everybody?” I asked, before he could whip out any more questions of his own.
“Strategizing,” he said, “in the bridal suite.”
“Oh, Tina must love that.”
“She volunteered it. She’s pissed that ‘that bitch goddess’ ruined her wedding. We had to fill her in. Pretty hard to keep her in the dark after everything.”
I felt oddly pleased. If she knew the full story, she’d have to know that none of this was my fault. Oh sure, Rhea would never have awakened if Zeus and Poseidon hadn’t come after me and Apollo and bolloxed up the whole thing, but I hadn’t put them up to the vengeance. As far as incurring their wrath to begin with…what was I supposed to have done? Let them drop L.A. into the ocean? Maybe some day she and I could sit down over a pint and I could tell her about my heroic adventures where I wasn’t possessed by a mother goddess.
“Lead the way,” I told him.
Inside the elevator I stood as far away from him as humanly possible—toward the front while he stood in the back—but I could feel his gaze on me. He hadn’t bought my explanation for the emotional turmoil for even a second.
I was out of the elevator the instant the doors opened, but then I had to wait for Apollo to catch up.
He led me to a room at the end of a long hallway. I could hear even before we reached the door that we were in the right place. There were a lot of voices talking over each other. I would have thought “party” if I didn’t know better.
Apollo knocked, and the voices hushed. It was Hermes who answered the knock, looking from me to Apollo with sharp eyes that seemed to catch everything and guess the rest.
“Come in,” he said soberly. I didn’t know he could do sober. It made the whole situation seem that much more dire.
Hermes stepped aside, and we entered. Everyone stared at me as if I might go on the offensive again. I couldn’t blame them.
“What’s the news about your young man,” Yiayia asked from across the room. Fergus, I was shocked to see, was still at her side, singed but whole. Christie was conspicuously absent.
“He’s burned and hurting, but he’s going to be okay.”
“Zeus and Poseidon?” Hermes asked.
“Healing. Not all fired up to join us, but I don’t see that they have much choice. I’d guess it’s a matter of time.” I looked around the room. “What have you come up with so far?”
Everyone stirred uncomfortably, swapping glances, meeting each others’ gazes, but not mine…until I got to Althea. She looked me right in the eyes and said, “We can’t tell you. It’s like talking to the enemy. Tori, I’m sorry.”
I felt it like a blow to the chest. Nick didn’t want me. Now neither did they. And I couldn’t convince them they were wrong when I was sure they were right. But I also couldn’t stay sidelined. There was a battle brewing of epic proportions, and I knew with that sixth sense I had that I was part of things. I had to be.
I swallowed down my first response and reconsidered my second. “Fine,” I said. It came out tight but strong. “I understand. A quick suggestion. Yiayia’s been keeping track of who’s been doing what with whom and where for at least a decade. If you’re looking to recruit allies, I’d start there.”
“Anipsi—” Yiayia began, stepping forward as if she’d embrace me and make it all better. I held up a hand to stop her. It was the only way I could stay strong.
“Let me just ask—who’s going to approach Hades? With or without Zeus and Poseidon, we’ll need him on our side.”
No one spoke.
“Fine,” I said again. “I’ll go. I’m expendable and he knows me.”
He didn’t like me. The last few times we’d met he’d actually tried to kill me. But he knew me. Maybe he’d marvel at my audacity in approaching him long enough to listen.
There wa
s something wrong with my vision again, and I fumbled for the doorknob. A strong hand, warm like someone had been soaking up the sun, came down on top of mine and twisted the knob for me. I didn’t thank him. It felt too much like he was coming to the rescue of some kind of damsel in distress, and that wasn’t me.
He followed me out into the hall.
“You’re not going alone,” Apollo stated.
I whirled to confront him and found him way too close, but I refused to take a step back.
“You gonna stop me?”
“No, I’m going with you.”
“You’re needed here.”
“I will be when things heat up again. For now I need to be with you.”
“Why?”
“I sense it,” he said, his turquoise eyes burning like sunlight reflected off the Mediterranean.
“A vision?” I asked. “What do you see?”
“I see you coming into your own. I see you having a pivotal role to play, and I know you have to survive.”
Not I know you will survive, but you have to.
“What about you? You have to survive, to fight. At my side doesn’t seem a terribly safe place to be lately.”
“Well darn, because you know how I like things nice and safe. Crossword puzzles, warm milk, in bed by nine,” he smiled.
To my shock, I started to smile back.
“You realize that if I get you killed, your sister’s huntresses are going to have my hide.”
“At the very least,” he agreed. “So don’t get me killed.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” I clicked my heels together and saluted, and his smile got wider. “You think they’ll help us out with some weapons to aid us in not getting slaughtered?”
Chapter Eleven
It turned out that it was Apollo and not Yiayia who had the intel on nearby entrances to the Underworld. Apparently, we’d already been within spitting distance of the nearest one. A cult of the dead had operated around the Tholos tomb where the Pythian Serpent had attacked. It seemed logical, I guessed. A monument commemorating a military victory would probably also involve honoring the dead. If Hades’s influence had been particularly strong there, it made sense that this would be a link to his domain.
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