Caged Lightning

by Marina Finlayson

  “A new generation, who all owe you their fealty for giving them their stolen powers?”

  “Now you’re catching on. A new generation who all revere one god and one god alone. Since none of you cared to share your powers with me, I’ll take them instead.”

  “And Zeus is next?”

  She laughed. “I rather think you’re next, Arti, dear. You and that stupid, trusting brother of yours. Once I’ve added your powers to the tally, I should be strong enough to take on Zeus, weak and disoriented as he will be when I finally extract him from his hidey-hole. You don’t know how pleased I am that you both decided to deliver the missing bolts in person. If only you’d brought Poseidon with you, too. Still, we mustn’t be greedy, must we? All in good time.”

  Jake’s wall of flame dipped alarmingly, and I drew in a shocked breath. He was staggering, his face unnaturally pale even in the red light of the flames. Fireshapers were immensely powerful, but normally, they used their powers in short bursts. This kind of sustained effort, against a goddess no less, was draining him alarmingly.

  “Jake, stop,” I said.

  He ignored me, of course. He hadn’t looked at me the whole time he’d been holding Hestia off. The task took all his concentration.

  “He probably can’t even hear you,” Hestia said conversationally as he staggered again. “His body is shutting down, cannibalising itself to feed his fireshaping. Senses will be the first to go, then the vital functions. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  “No!” I sprinted toward her, or tried to, at least, but the wall of flame held me off to one side, angled toward the shed but unable to reach the goddess who stood before its door. I let fly an enraged arrow, but she batted it aside with her wind power. Where were those damned wolves? “Jake, stop!”

  His eyes met mine at last, full of a desperate determination. The flames roared too loud to hear him, but his lips moved, and I could read the words he spoke: “Lexi, run!”

  In helpless agony, I watched his eyelids flutter closed as he collapsed in on himself. Was he dead? He hit the scorched earth, one arm outflung toward me.

  Blinded by tears, I threw myself behind the garden shed as his fire died and Hestia’s flames roared free.

  19

  If he hadn’t been dead then, he must surely be dead now, burned to a crisp by Hestia’s fire. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain, drawing deep, gasping breaths of the hot air. My ears were filled with the roar of flame and Hestia’s mocking laughter. Hate for her flared in my heart, but what could I do? I didn’t even dare peek out from behind the shed to look at Jake’s body, because sure as shit the crazy bitch was just waiting for a chance to roast me, too.

  And she wouldn’t have to wait long. I turned my head, opened aching eyes to gauge the distance between me and the shelter of the forest. Too far to run before the flames caught me—but at the same time, this shed wouldn’t shelter me for long. It was made of sheet metal, and already, the sides were buckling and groaning from the heat of the flames.

  Part of me just wanted to lie here and let the flames take me. If Jake was gone, I wasn’t sure what the point of continuing was. But the other part of me clamoured for revenge. Hestia had to pay for what she’d done, for all the lives she’d taken, for stealing my love from me when I’d only just found him.

  But how? She was facing the shed now, no longer standing with her back to the trees. The wolves wouldn’t be able to sneak up on her, and I had nothing against a goddess who could wield both wind and flame. Arrows couldn’t find her, and there were no animals that could stand against her fire either …

  Except one.

  I sat up, heart pounding with renewed purpose, and scrubbed the tears from my face. He’d answered my call once before, when I’d needed him most. I bent all my will to the summons, forcing the call out until I reeled with dizziness.

  “Come out, Arti, before I burn you out,” Hestia said in a wheedling tone. “I hear that’s a very painful way to go.”

  Would he hear me? Was he close enough to Hades for his master to open the way in time if he did?

  “Why should I?” I could barely spare the attention to answer her, but keeping her talking might buy me a little extra time. “You’re only going to kill me anyway if I do.”

  “But a quick slash of the knife would be so much nicer than burning, don’t you think?”

  “You’re a shit negotiator. You could at least offer to spare me if I give up.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s so cute! If you give up? You think your wolves can save you now? You’re a dead woman walking, and your only choice is how you want to go.”

  “You wouldn’t burn me. You wouldn’t be able to steal my powers that way.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetie. Your powers really aren’t worth bothering with. I just want you out of the way.”

  Her voice was coming more from the left now, as if she’d begun circling the shed to get at me. Carefully, I edged to the right. She probably wouldn’t come all the way around, for fear of leaving the door unguarded. She didn’t want me anywhere near that lightning bolt. Did she still have the other two in her hands, or had she dropped them at the door? If I could get to them, maybe I could use them as leverage.

  I took another step, and the ground trembled ever so slightly. If I hadn’t been looking out for it, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. My heart leapt with hope.

  *Shit, Lexi, what do you want us to do?* Syl’s anxious voice sounded in my head. The situation must look pretty hopeless from her vantage point in the woods. But she didn’t know what that tremor beneath my feet signified.

  *Don’t show yourselves,* I said urgently. *Tell the wolves to stay well back. She’s too dangerous.*

  *But you’re—*

  The earth trembled again, more noticeably this time. *I’ll be fine. Trust me.*

  *I make it a point never to trust anyone who says ‘trust me’.*

  “What was that?” Hestia’s voice was sharper. “Have you got an earthshaper hidden back there? It won’t do you any good, you know.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I muttered, and then the time for words was over.

  The shed heaved to one side as the ground beside it erupted. I staggered back, narrowly escaping falling into the giant hole that appeared. A familiar, beloved figure leapt from it, his great heads swinging around.

  *BOSSY GIRL NEED?* he boomed in my head.

  Hestia shrieked and threw flame at him, but it washed over him as harmlessly as water. Fire wasn’t a problem for a hellhound.

  *Get her,* I said flatly.

  She buffeted him with wind, but it made no difference. He leapt at her and bowled her to the ground, the jaws of his middle head closing on her throat. Her hands scrabbled at him, but she had no chance of moving him. When Cerberus caught you, you stayed caught. She kicked desperately, but he ignored her, patient as a mountain, one enormous paw holding her down.

  *WHAT DO?* he asked. *EAT NOW?*

  The left head looked at me hopefully. I opened my mouth to say yes when a voice spoke behind me.

  “Is that my sister in the jaws of death? What is going on here?” He was wearing his Hades form, the greying older man who looked like everybody’s favourite uncle. He was certainly mine. His mild gaze met mine inquiringly.

  Hestia kicked harder and shrieked something that was probably meant to be a plea, but the pressure of Cerberus’s teeth on her throat made her speech unintelligible.

  “That’s not your sister,” I said, my voice steady, though my blood thrummed with the passion of the hunt, the need to see Hestia’s lifeblood spurt from her dying corpse. “That’s our traitor, unmasked at last. The leader of the shadow shapers.”

  “Ah.” He strolled closer and stood looking down at her. “What a shame we don’t have those shadow shaper collars here, then.”

  “What a shame she’s still breathing, you mean. We don’t need collars. Let’s kill her.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Before we find out t
he names and locations of every last one of the monsters she’s created? I know killing things is your jam, as the mortals say, Arti, but let’s not be hasty.”

  “Hasty?” I drew an enraged breath, prepared to argue, but then I caught the steel in his gaze. “Fine.”

  I marched across the scorched earth to the back door, gaze carefully averted from Jake’s body. A world of grief waited there for me in the dark, but I couldn’t let it sweep me away yet. There was still work to do, and I had to be strong.

  When I returned with the collars from the kitchen, I thrust them both into Hades’ hand. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he bent to fit one around Hestia’s rather chewed-on neck. “Ask and ye shall receive, they say.” He stepped back. “All right, Cerberus, you can let go. Our lady of the hearth won’t be doing any damage now.”

  Movement under the trees caught my eye—werewolves, their eyes blazing golden, slinking out of the cover of the woods. Syl walked with them, her hand on the back of one of the largest. I ran my eye over them all, mentally checking them off: Norma and Ray, the alphas, with their sons Joe and Lucas—the big black one with Syl—and Ophelia, almost as well muscled as the alpha, striding tall on Syl’s other side. All there. Briefly, I closed my eyes in relief. All there, though Joe was limping.

  That meant our only casualty was Jake.

  My throat constricted. Jake. Finally, I looked toward where his body lay, but it was only a dark shape on the ground. The killing fury returned, and I clenched my fists. He’d died for me, and Hestia had to pay.

  “What do you want us to do?” Syl asked as she reached my side.

  The werewolves gathered around me, brushing against me like cats, anxious for my touch. Stroking their soft fur restored a little calm to my battered heart. Cerberus sniffed at them, his tail wagging hesitantly. They might not be hellhounds, but he clearly considered them the next best thing.

  The whole scene felt surreal. The stench of blood and smoke was in my nostrils, and heat radiated up from the scorched ground. Hestia lay on it, still prisoned by Cerberus’s huge paw, her baleful gaze switching between Hades and me. Hades was unperturbed, but I wanted nothing more than to drive a knife right into her hateful face.

  “Winston and Apollo are inside. Kill everyone else,” I said.

  On this, Hades didn’t gainsay me. He was just as keen as I was to destroy every last shadow shaper. The wolves loped away to do my bidding, moving as with one mind.

  Syl glanced at me uncertainly. “Where’s Jake?”

  I jerked my head in the direction of the body. She sucked in a sharp breath and half ran towards him. As she fell to her knees beside him, I turned away, bending to gather the two lightning bolts, which had fallen on the ground.

  Not yet. Still more to do.

  “What do we do with these?” I asked Hades.

  He gave me a troubled look, as if he could tell what a tight grip I had on my emotions. “I think once we bring them together with the main branch, our worries will be over.”

  We both turned to look at the shed. It had fallen onto its side, shoved away by Cerberus’s grand entry, its panels mangled and warped by the heat of the fireshaping battle. The lightning bolt within still stood proudly, rammed into the ground though the shed around it was more than half destroyed. The light of the bottom half, which was all we could see, lit the scene.

  “Let’s get this out of the way.” With one hand, Hades flipped the shed into the air, sending it sailing towards the trees. It tumbled across the ground with a series of metallic crashes. Uncovered, the lightning bolt blazed brighter than ever.

  “Lexi, I can’t find a pulse,” Syl called, her voice tinged with dread.

  A pulse? Why was she checking a charred corpse for a pulse? Unless …

  A sudden vision of Jake, standing half naked in the holy fire of Apollo during his initiation as Ruby Adept, came to me. Already a powerful fireshaper, he’d been changed by that fire, made even stronger. Had that baptism of fire strengthened him beyond the normal reach of mortals, enough that he could withstand Hestia’s flames?

  My feet were moving before I was aware of what I was doing, flying across the smoking earth to his side. I dropped to my knees next to Syl, a wild hope fluttering in my heart. There wasn’t a mark on him; he looked as though he was only sleeping.

  “Jake,” I breathed, bending over him.

  Syl’s fingers were pressed to the pulse point in his throat. She looked at me and shook her head. “I think he’s gone.”

  “No.” Fierce determination burned inside me. I would not lose him again. I placed the heels of my hands on his chest and began to pump, willing his heart to start beating again. This was what the humans did in a crisis. If only I had a hospital here, and people who knew what they were doing. Despite my long life, I’d only ever seen this done in movies.

  Syl tipped his head back and pried his mouth open. I bent to breathe into his mouth, then resumed pumping, keeping a steady rhythm going. Syl watched anxiously.

  Light as bright as day flashed over me and I looked up without pausing my rhythm. Hades had brought the three parts of the lightning bolt together. It looked as though they had fused somehow, but I no longer had any interest in the lightning bolt, or the fate of Zeus. Only the fate of a certain beloved mortal.

  I covered his lips with my own again, breathing into his mouth. Syl took over the chest compressions, and I bit my lip. He wasn’t moving.

  “It’s not working,” I choked. We needed a doctor or, at the very least, a defibrillator to shock his heart back into life.

  Wait a minute.

  I looked up again, squinting into the glare of the renewed lightning bolt. The damn thing was practically fizzing with electricity. Okay, so it wasn’t a defibrillator, but what other choice did I have? It was Jake’s only hope.

  “Hades! Give me that!” I leapt up, vaulted over Jake’s body and practically snatched the lightning bolt from Hades’ hand. “Get out of the way, Syl.”

  Syl scrambled aside, and I slammed the tip of the lightning bolt down onto Jake’s chest.

  20

  “Zeus’s balls, girl,” Hades shouted. “Are you trying to kill him?”

  Blue fire snapped and sizzled. A powerful smell of ozone and burnt flesh filled the air as Jake’s body jerked.

  “I’m trying to save his damned life.”

  I held my breath as the moment stretched into eternity. Then Jake shuddered and began to cough. Syl dropped to her knees and rolled him onto his side. Her eyes were shining when she looked up at me.

  “Interesting first aid technique,” she said. “Not one to try at home.”

  All the lights in the house suddenly turned on and off, on and off, flickering like something out of a horror movie. The motor of an air-conditioning unit turned over with a thud, and through the back windows of the house, I could see every light on the front of the oven start blinking.

  A power line stretched from the roof above the back door out to the burning barn, and it began to hum. Blue fire danced along its length. I glanced at Hades and found him grinning.

  “Looks like big brother’s on his way,” he shouted over a rising wind.

  The lightning bolt in my hand hummed in tune with the power line and every hair on my body stood straight up. Power coursed through me until I felt as clear as glass, lit up from the inside. The buzzing of the lightning bolt felt as though I held a hive of hornets in my hand, and I drove it into the ground and backed away.

  Wind moaned through the trees behind the house. I helped Syl drag Jake further away from the lightning bolt. He was barely conscious, his head lolling as if it were too heavy for him to hold up.

  Cerberus barked. His fur was standing up, too, and little sparks of static skittered across his black body. I tilted my head to the sky and saw clouds gathering above us, swirling like a film of a storm watched on fast forward. The air felt alive, charged with tension.

  A drop of rain fell on my upturned face, big and fat, swollen with the prom
ise of storms to come. The wind’s voice rose to a scream, and the blue fire leapt from the power line to the roof of the house, dancing along the eaves and flashing at the windows.

  “Is he trying to kill us all?” I shouted to Hades, tearing the hair from my mouth so I could speak as the wind whipped it around my head. Syl hunched protectively over Jake, and I dropped down by his side, too, supporting him against me.

  “You know Zeus,” Hades shouted back, his voice competing with the shrieking of the wind and the zinging of the blue lights as they spread, each a tiny flicker of lightning. “He likes to make an entrance.”

  It was still night, but the scene was as brightly lit as day time, though with a bluish cast to the light. Hestia had curled herself into a ball on the ground under Cerberus’s watchful eye, her arms wrapped around her head, as if she expected to be struck by lightning at any moment.

  Blue sparks began leaping from the power line, arcing through the air to land on the tip of the lightning bolt. It quivered like a live thing as each one struck, and they rained faster and faster. A shriek like a finger run over the rim of a crystal glass, only a hundred times louder, rose from the lightning bolt. A column of blue light shot from its tip into the sky, and the rest of the blue sparks screamed back as they coalesced around it, spinning faster and faster. Every light in the house blew in a shower of sparks, and lightning arced up into the sky, so bright I was momentarily blinded.

  When I had blinked my vision back again, the wind had died, and a figure stood in the eye of the storm, the blue lights flickering in his hair like a caress. He was massively built, with a grey beard, his shoulders so big he looked as though he could wrestle Cerberus and win. He was also completely naked, which allowed me to see that the hairiness of the beard extended over quite a large expanse of flesh.