Surprisingly, my brother had brought two companions with him. Winston, I’d expected, and I gave the elderly priest a welcoming smile. The Ruby Adept had also accompanied Apollo, which I hadn’t expected, after his little speech in the jungle.
They must have been together when Winston had tracked down my brother, but surely it would have been less painful for Jake to stay away? Perhaps he’d seen it as his duty to come. I’d never met a man so dedicated to placing his duty above all other considerations.
Jake was every bit as beautiful as I remembered. I loved him and wanted him just as much, and yet … a new note of melancholy was mixed in with my usual whirl of desire, longing, and frustration. Now I remembered what it meant to be a goddess, to walk through eternity essentially alone. I’d had a thousand lovers over the centuries. I’d even been married once. Never again. This was the reason Artemis slept alone most nights—not because she was a cold bitch, but because she knew the pain of becoming too attached to the short-lived mortals.
Staring at his beloved face, I could already see how it would change, how jowls would form on that strong jawline, how the bags would droop under his beautiful blue eyes, and the jet-black hair lighten and recede. He would weaken and stoop, and in barely more than the blink of an eyelid, I would be putting him into a hole in the ground, just like the others.
All this flitted through my mind in a moment, and I had no more than that for such miserable reflections, because Apollo saw the bolt on the dining table and shouted with delight. “You really found it! You are a legend.”
Then he swept me into his arms and danced us both around the kitchen in a giddy whirl of relief that left us both breathless and had everyone else joining in the laughter. It felt so good to have something worth celebrating at last.
“Have you told Poseidon yet?” he asked, his eyes alight with the same excitement that boiled inside me. I shook my head and he frowned. “Why not? Call him on your shell phone thing.”
“My shell phone thing?”
He flapped his hands in an impatient gesture. “Whatever you call it. You know what I mean. Hurry up!”
Grumbling that my first thought had been to tell him and he was an ungrateful bastard, I went into the lounge room, the rest of them trailing me, and dug the shell out of its hiding place in the deer’s neck. Everyone jumped—including me—when Poseidon’s voice boomed in the air around us after I’d called his name. After the way we’d parted, I hadn’t even been sure he’d answer.
“Artemis? What do you want? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.” He didn’t sound exactly delighted to hear my voice, but at least he wasn’t openly hostile.
“I wasn’t expecting it either, but something’s come up.”
“Something good,” Apollo put in.
“Apollo’s there, too? What’s going on?”
“We’ve found the missing piece of the lightning bolt,” I said, unable to hold it in a moment longer.
“You haven’t.”
“I bloody well have.”
“Well, that’s … that’s astonishing. So quickly?” There was a hint of suspicion in his voice.
Apollo and I shared a look. Poseidon had better not accuse me of lying to get my hands on his stupid piece of the lightning bolt.
“She’s a marvel,” Apollo said, with gushing enthusiasm. “I’m staring at it right now. This is the end of all our troubles—we can finally release Zeus.”
Apollo’s support would make it a lot harder for Poseidon to imagine I had any nefarious purposes, unless he was prepared to assume that we were both traitors. It was smart of my brother also to remind him that this meant the ordeal with the shadow shapers was nearly over.
“Where was it?” Poseidon asked, after a nerve-wracking pause.
“You won’t believe it—I had it all the time.”
I told him about Zeus’s hint, and how I’d gotten my memory back. This was the first Apollo had heard of it, too, and there were many exclamations and questions to field. But eventually, I got the conversation back on track.
“So, will you bring your lightning bolt to Hestia’s house?”
“Not on your life,” my uncle replied promptly.
My heart practically stopped beating for a moment. What the hell? All this effort, and he still refused to let go of the damned bolt?
But then he added, “That’s too far inland for me. But you can take it. I’ll bring it to Berkley’s Bay for you.”
The breath whooshed out of me in a great gust of relief. “Good. When can you be there?”
“Tonight.”
Tonight. We could get Zeus back tonight.
About bloody time.
16
It was only mid-morning when we arrived back in Berkley’s Bay, though so much had happened already it felt as though it ought to be much later. Winston and Jake stayed at the temple, while Lucas took Ophelia to meet the local werewolf pack, since she’d insisted on coming back to Berkley’s Bay with us. Now that we’d been reunited, she wasn’t prepared to be left behind again. Syl went with them, leaving me alone with my brother for the first time since I could actually remember our relationship. We spent a carefree day, mostly at the pub, drinking and reminiscing about the old days.
And when you were thousands of years old, there were a shit-ton of old days to reminisce about. We could have been sitting there still, but eventually, the call of the moon alerted me to the fact that it was time to make our way down to the wharf to meet Poseidon. I’d felt it in the sky all afternoon, but its power surged after dark.
It was a warm night, with the promise of the coming summer in the air, unusually still for the coast. A breeze nearly always sprang up after dark here. We sat on the end of the jetty with our legs dangling over the water like a couple of kids, and I remembered all over again what good company my brother was. He slipped a companionable arm around me and gave me a little squeeze as I lay my head on his shoulder.
“It’s good to have you back, Arti,” he said. “Really back, I mean.”
“It’s good to be back. Life won’t be so confusing anymore, a fact for which I am most heartily thankful. I was getting bloody sick of being in the dark all the time.”
The gentle sigh of the waves lent the scene such a peaceful air I could have stayed there all night. The moon was waxing; it hung in the sky like a giant, glowing pearl, if slightly misshapen, its light silvering the tips of the waves. Its power filled me with warmth and contentment.
“Do you regret becoming human?”
I leaned back so I could see his face in the moonlight, and smiled. “Not a bit. If I hadn’t, I might have lost my favourite brother.”
“There is that,” he agreed. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you properly for that. It was a great sacrifice, and I can never thank you enough.”
I wouldn’t have met Syl either, or the other friends I’d made in Berkley’s Bay. Or Jake—and that was unthinkable.
“It wasn’t so bad. There were compensations.” Not bad at all, actually—apart from all the people trying to kill me. But I guess they would have still been trying to kill me if I’d stayed a goddess, and I might not have been able to inflict the same damage on them. So it had definitely been worth it.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me you had the lightning bolt as soon as it arrived. Perhaps a lot of drama could have been saved.”
He spoke lightly, but I knew him too well. He was hurt that I had kept this secret from him.
“The timing was all wrong. Remember, I was away visiting Poseidon when Zeus disappeared. I was there when his piece of the lightning bolt arrived, but I didn’t discover until I returned home that there was another waiting for me there. And unfortunately, I didn’t go directly home. By the time I found it, you had gone missing, too.”
“Then why didn’t you at least tell Hades, when you went to him to ask him to make you human?”
“Because by then I had decided there must be a traitor in our ranks.” I held up a h
and as he began to protest. “No, of course I didn’t think it was Hades, but I realised that he was as vulnerable as everyone else. And he already knew where one lightning bolt was. If I told him I had the other, and he was caught … Well, I didn’t want the shadow shapers to have that kind of information.”
“Hmm. Why do you think Zeus sent it to you, anyway?”
“I wondered that myself. We both know I’m far from his favourite child.” I shrugged. “I suppose because I’m the huntress. Perhaps he hoped it would encourage me to go hunting for answers.”
We fell into a companionable silence after that. It was very relaxing, sitting there, listening to the soft shush of the waves and watching the moonlight glitter on the surface of the sea. Way, way out on the horizon—so far out, in fact, that I could probably only see it because of my superior night vision—was a bulk container vessel. Closer in, still in the arms of the bay, a light marked the progress of one of the local fishing boats heading out for the night. I watched the light’s steady journey, enjoying the salt scent of the air.
Another shape began to grow on the horizon, an odd, triangular shape, like a mountain sticking up out of the sea. Almost as soon as I noticed it, it faded from sight. I nudged Apollo. “Looks like Poseidon’s on his way.”
“Where?” Without the benefit of enhanced night vision, he squinted uselessly into the darkness.
“He just activated the mist. He’s a long way out to sea still.”
It was another ten minutes or more before tendrils of mist began to creep inland, reaching their hesitant fingers toward us. They were cool and damp, and little beads of moisture collected in my hair, sparkling like tiny diamonds in the moonlight. Gradually, the mist built up, forming soft walls around the wharf, blocking our view of the sky but glowing with the moon’s muffled light.
Apollo stood up, and I took his proffered hand and let him haul me up, too. For long moments, nothing happened, and then the iceberg loomed out of the mist, suddenly almost close enough to touch. As it bumped gently against the wharf, the hidden door slid open, and Poseidon himself appeared with the lightning bolt in his hand.
“Where’s the other one?”
“Right here.” Apollo opened his coat to display it. “Relax.”
He stepped onto the jetty, his face full of misgiving. Anyone less relaxed it would be hard to imagine. He offered me the bolt, but I could tell he was reluctant to let it out of his sight. “Be careful. Between you, you’re carrying two-thirds of Zeus’s power. Don’t screw this up.”
“We won’t.” I was fully aware that Zeus would be toast if the shadow shapers managed to waylay us before we made it to Hestia’s house, but I was confident that the risk was low. We only had to go to Winston’s little temple, transfer to the one near Hestia, then walk to Hestia’s, and no one knew we were coming, so there was no possibility that we would run into an ambush.
The shadow shapers’ inactivity, strange as it was since they knew they could find at least some of us in Berkley’s Bay, worked in our favour now. Whether they were regrouping or planning something horrendous didn’t matter; the fact that they had left us unmolested so far meant we were in no danger now, and in a couple more hours, we would be in such a position of power that their schemes would make no difference.
Poseidon lingered on the jetty, looking as if he regretted giving me the lightning bolt already. I tightened my grip on it.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Apollo asked, sensing Poseidon’s disquiet.
He shook his head. “Being that far inland would give me the willies. I’d be no use to you in a fight. My power is here.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to a fight,” Apollo said.
“I’m sure it won’t,” I cut in. We needed to get out of here before Poseidon lost his nerve completely and tried to take the lightning bolt back. “Let’s go,” I said to my brother.
“Next time we see you, this will all be over,” Apollo said.
Poseidon nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. We walked away, our boots clomping hollowly on the wooden planking. I looked back before the mist hid him from view, and he was still standing there, looking grim.
“He doesn’t have a lot of faith in us, does he?” I said when we regained the shore.
“The loss of Zeus has changed him. He’s really rattled by this whole thing.”
“Shame he wouldn’t come with us, then. It would do him the world of good to see Zeus again.”
“You know how he is—a lion at sea, but a mouse on land. He hates leaving the ocean.”
“Manannan didn’t seem to have any trouble.”
“And that’s probably why Poseidon wouldn’t take us to Athena’s island until he offered to go ashore for us. All that stuff about him having to stay back to protect the lightning bolt was just an excuse. He’s the biggest coward around without his precious ocean to back him up.”
We passed a handful of people as we walked along the foreshore. Apollo had his lightning bolt hidden under his coat again, but I carried mine in my hand, and got some strange looks. Still, we arrived at Winston’s temple without seeing a sign of any shadow shapers, so that was all that mattered.
A surprise awaited us inside—the tiny lounge room was crammed full of werewolves. Not only Lucas and Ophelia, who I’d expected, but Holly and Joe, too, with baby Mireille, and Joe and Lucas’s parents, Norma and Ray, who were the alphas of the local pack.
Syl, of course, was there, too, perched on Lucas’s lap in lieu of any better place to sit. “There you are,” she said. “Did it all go smoothly?”
“Fine,” I said. “But what are you all doing here?”
Jake and Winston came in from the next room, and then the room really was chockers. Apollo moved away from the door so I could shut it, and he had to tread carefully to avoid everyone’s feet. Once the door was shut, the wolves all stood up at once, and the effect was claustrophobic, with so many large bodies looming at once. They gazed at me with expectant faces.
“The whole pack wanted to come,” Norma said, as if that explained everything, “but we thought we’d keep it to just the immediate family.”
“Come where? To wish us luck?”
She snorted. “No. We’re coming with you, to Hestia’s place.”
“Except me,” Holly said in an apologetic way, as if I’d be disappointed at the news. “I’m staying here with Mireille.”
“But …” I looked around at their eager faces, bemused. What did I need a pack of werewolves for? Why had Lucas and Ophelia even told the pack where we were going? I guess I should have known that they would; packs were very tight, and shared information all the time. And here I’d thought they were just going to pay a courtesy visit on the alphas, to introduce Ophelia as a visitor to their territory.
“There’s no need for any of you to come,” Apollo said, as surprised as I was by this development.
“You need a bodyguard,” Syl said to me. “I told you I was going to work on that.”
“And we want to help,” Norma added. “Werewolves have always followed the Moon. We would be proud to aid you now.”
“But I don’t need a bodyguard now. We’re in the home stretch. In a couple of hours, this nightmare will finally be over.”
“But what if Zeus’s power draws the shadow shapers?” Norma countered. “Syl told us they can sense divinity, the same as the gods.”
Syl gestured at the lightning bolts we carried. “And the power in those babies has got to be broadcasting for miles: look at me! I’m a god! Come get some yummy power! It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“You’d be surprised, actually. I had to get right up close before I could sense the one in the gym.”
She looked a little disappointed at this news, but undeterred. “Well, it doesn’t matter. There’s still a traitor somewhere among the gods, so you need someone to watch your back.”
Apollo was starting to look affronted, so I cut in. “Guys, this is really touching, but you’re a
bunch of werewolves.”
“And a cat,” Syl said, stubborn to the last.
“And two fireshapers,” Winston added, with unusual daring for him.
Jake said nothing, but his folded arms and glowering expression said it for him: he didn’t think anyone could protect me the way he could.
“And a cat, and two fireshapers. We’re two gods, in full possession of our powers. There have been plenty of times lately when I really could have done with a team to back me up, but this isn’t one of them.”
“What if there’s an ambush?” Lucas said.
“Nobody knows we’re coming, not even Hestia. We’ll be fine. Go buy some champagne and have it chilled for when we get back. We’ve got this.”
There were plenty of disgruntled faces in the room as the werewolves looked at each other, but to my surprise, no one argued any further.
I should have realised that was a dead giveaway.
17
The night seemed even darker when Apollo and I stepped out of the tiny, rundown temple that was the closest access point to Hestia’s house. The absence of streetlights or other buildings meant the only light came from the dim red glow of the sacred fire behind us, and once the door was shut, even that was gone.
Apollo began to glow himself, until he was bright enough to cast light several paces away.
“Dude, you’re ruining my night vision,” I grumbled as we picked our way across the uneven field toward the road.
“Would you rather I broke my ankle stepping in a rabbit hole in the dark?”
“Don’t be such a drama queen. And what if someone sees you?”
“Who’s going to see me here, in the arse-end of the universe? The only people who use this road belong to Hestia.” The road was dirt and scarred with deep ruts, but it was smoother going than across country, so he let his light die down to a less eyeball-searing level.
Caged Lightning Page 17