by Jamie Wyman
“Good day, Miss,” he said, his accent light. He offered me a folded piece of paper. “I have a message for you.”
“Did you try calling?” I asked sheepishly.
Miklos’s smile was easy and courteous. “Yes. Several times.”
I winced. “Um, I’ve got a problem with my phone. It seems to be…broken.”
“I will have it replaced right away. Is there anything else I can get for you, Miss?”
“Room service? I’d do horrible, naughty things for a cup of coffee, a short stack of pancakes, and a few strips of bacon right about now.”
He bowed his head. “I’ll put in the order myself. Have a pleasant day, Miss.”
Miklos the Awesome turned on his heel and took to the path at a jaunty, purposeful pace. I shut the door and unfolded my note. A slanted hand had written:
Word from our friend H this morning says multiple visitors have tried to come in, but have been turned away. He put out a rumor that we are bound for the Far East. Dogs have stopped knocking on the door, but you might want to keep your head down today. Also, I’ve changed my mind: the dress code for tonight is now formal. No blue jeans allowed. If you’ve need of anything, let Malcolm know and he’ll take care of it. Or charge it to my room.
Sunset. Bungalow 3. Bring your appetites. -M.
I read the note a few times over, my stomach flopping with a nervous joy I’d not felt since…well, too long. My step light and my head in the clouds, you’d think I’d have just gotten a note in study hall from my crush asking me to prom. Circle yes or no.
Ridiculous. Next I’d be dotting the I in Marius’s name with little hearts.
Breakfast arrived soon thereafter, along with a new phone and a brochure of all the resort’s amenities. I took my food and the pamphlet out to the balcony. Santorini by sunlight was even lovelier than I’d expected. Turquoise water lapped at the sugar-white sand below. Colorful umbrellas dotted the beach. Sunbathers lounged in chairs, and in the distance I saw boats sailing to the center of the crater.
When my belly was full, the sting of my nightmares abated. I closed my eyes and let the sea breeze toss my hair. For a moment, I could relax.
“Good morning, Cat,” Heph’s deep voice chimed.
I jumped. When I saw him smiling at me from the path a few feet away, his steel eyes hidden behind sunglasses, I hissed. “Dammit, don’t sneak up on people!”
He laughed, a sound like a merry foghorn. “I was wondering if you’d assist me today.”
“Me? How so?”
“Working with Marius’s amulet has proven to be irksome.”
I nodded. “Par for the course. Eris and Marius both have a knack for that.”
“Truer words,” Heph said, gold tooth peeking out from his smile. “It’s Eris’s magic that I am having trouble unraveling. Then I remembered that Marius had said you once wore Discord’s brand.”
“Sadly, yes.”
He eyed me over his shades, mischief playing at his expression. “Care to hack through her spells?”
I glanced at the spa pamphlet. A hot-stone massage would be amazing, but… “Will it piss her off?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where do we start?”
His titanic hand was cool and gentle over my wrist, and in a blink, the balcony was gone and I stood in his volcanic lair again.
“Seriously,” I said. “That’s smooth.”
“I’ve had time to perfect certain things,” he said humbly.
I followed his lumbering form down one of the obsidian tunnels toward a flickering amber glow. The deeper into the cave we walked, the heavier and more oppressive the heat became. I suddenly remembered every documentary about volcanoes ever filmed.
Shouldn’t my pants be spontaneously combusting right about now?
“Um, do I need a fire suit or some other protective gear or something?”
With a shake of those verdigris locks, he called over his shoulder, “No need. You are my guest. That is all the protection you will require. However, a word of caution: do not touch the fire.”
I laughed. “I think I can manage that.”
The cave opened onto another vast space like the one we’d lounged in the previous night. In one wall, the stone gave way to form a circular window larger than a two-car garage. Beyond that hole, a river of molten lava churned and flowed. The black rock walls and floor shone like glass, reflecting the gold-and-orange glow of the volcano’s beating heart.
My breath caught in my chest.
Hephaestus’s smile painted his voice. “It stirs you, too, doesn’t it?”
I nodded, mute with awe. My gaze danced over this sacred space—the very seat of Hephaestus’s power. Rough-hewn ingots of metals were strewn about in massive blocks. Tools hung from racks along the walls. Some I recognized—tongs, hammers, and spikes. I saw crucibles of varying sizes near the Forge itself. And an anvil. The unmistakable shapes of swords and axes lined the farthest wall. I saw helmets, breastplates, and other pieces of armor. Wheels and axels. Silver spheres. A marble urn.
Carefully, reverently, I crossed to this collection of Hephaestus’s creations. “Amazing,” I breathed.
I felt his presence behind me. Pride radiated from him like heat from the furnace. “Some of these are commissions that have yet to be picked up. Others are things I will never give away. Or cursed objects that must be destroyed. Then there’s this,” he said, his black stone hand caressing a rectangle of silver about the size of a shoe box.
The thing had the shape of a treasure chest, but if it was one, where was its lock? Its lid? There were no hinges or lines. The otherwise-perfect surface of the thing was marred by a single charred glyph.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Pandora’s box.”
I blinked in astonishment. Despite the fact that I was standing in a volcano, gooseflesh prickled over my skin and my hairs stood on end.
“The Pandora’s box?” I muttered.
“The one and only.”
I reached out a hand and let my fingers glide over its smooth surface. The metal was solid and cool. With the same sense I used to pop locks or fix computers, I felt the structure of the box. There was a hinge inside. A groove. A divot. The mechanisms of the chest were cleverly concealed. Power thrummed through my arm as I examined it. A heat beneath my fingers. Then something rattled furiously inside the seamless chest. I jerked my hand away.
“And now you see why I cannot destroy it,” Heph said. “To throw it into the fire is to kill all hope. But to open it… Well, that way lies folly.”
“How…? How could Pandora open this?”
“Pandora was the first of your kind.”
“The first woman, yeah.”
His face split into a grin, those strange, sightless eyes taking me in. “The first mage with the ability to commune with machines.” When I didn’t speak, just gaped at the box with a mixture of reverence and temptation, the god went on. “There is a little bit of her in every one of your kind. The same fire that burned in her cast sparks into creation. One of those embers burns in you, Cat.”
For the first time in my life, I felt like I was part of something greater. Oh, sure, I knew that I was part of an exclusive circle, being a technomancer. But this…this was special. There was a magic to knowing that somehow Pandora was a sort of ancestor.
I straightened my spine, full of pride. “You said you needed help with that amulet?”
Heph’s easy smile widened as he gave a sweeping gesture toward his Forge. “This way.”
The god led me to a long worktable made of the same glassy stone that formed the rest of the place. Numerous projects were strewn about in various states of completion. Marius’s ridiculous necklace glinted in the firelight, and next to it was a black sphere. This one had a visible hinge and seam. The hasp had been popped, and I could see a golden shimmer coming from inside.
“How much experience have you had with Eris’s magic?” Hephaestus asked.
“Other t
han being on the receiving end of a bitch slap or two, not much. Well, and her brand, if that counts.”
“It might.” He slid the amulet over to me. “Look and tell me what you see.”
I opened my mind and gazed with that other sense. The gold necklace illuminated with filaments of dark energy that resembled Eris’s lightning bolts. These black threads of power undulated with purplish light, making the spellwork look like a pulsing bruise. Beneath that sickly web, a holy white light gleamed with steady radiance.
“There are two kinds of magic at work here,” I said. “Hers is encasing the other.”
“Very good. The spell that allows Marius to god-step is permanently affixed to this object; however, Eris has woven two strands of her own work around it. One of them allows her to change the appearance of the talisman.”
“Let me guess, the other is a tracking spell.”
“Correct.”
I stared intently at the snarl of Eris’s spells. “Can’t you just snip them off?”
Hephaestus took a seat next to me and shook his head. “Her magic is alive.”
My eyes widened, and I stared at him incredulously. “You’re going to have to help me with that one.”
“Think of it like music. When you play a single note, it is over in an instant. Yet, if you record that note, you can listen to it again and again. Manipulate it, shape it, repeat it. So it is, too, with magic.”
“So the original magic of the talisman is the single note?”
“Yes. It is a permanent, immutable moment. It endures over time, but—”
“—but it just is,” I finished. “That’s why the light doesn’t flicker. The spell was cast and done.”
Heph nodded.
“But Eris’s spells appear to change because they are fluid.”
“Precisely. Which is one reason we can’t just, as you say, snip them off. They are slippery, constantly in motion.”
“What’s another reason?”
His silver eyes narrowed. “That kind of magic has ways of defending itself. Also, it tends to bleed when cut. It will leave…stains.”
I looked back to the pulsating fibers. My lip curled. “Ick.”
“Quite.”
I closed my eyes, willing away my techie sense. Opening them again, I saw just a simple, tacky necklace. “Okay,” I muttered to myself. I circled the table, pondering this particular puzzle. “The magic will bite back if we just try to cut it, so it’s not a simple matter of red wire-green wire like in the movies. On the one hand, that’s good news, because it opens up our options. But we’ve got to get Eris’s cooties off without getting the pretty white light dirty.”
Heph said nothing. He just watched me, a hint of amusement on his face.
“We’ve got to separate it from her somehow, like a dam,” I said. “Block the current from her to the spell.”
“To what end?” he asked. Now he was a teacher questioning the student.
“Well, once we do that, the spells might wither and die. Then we’ll be able to cut them away, easy peasy.”
“Eris is quite old, Cat. And Marius has carried this for a long time. For the spells to atrophy could take centuries.”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Okay, maybe not.” I tapped my forehead, an old habit that manifests in my more pensive moments. I ran through a few ideas, shooting down the lame or impossible ones. (No, Cat, chocolate will not help. Nor can we just take Eris’s head off her bony-ass shoulders.) Right about the time I started rehashing movie plotlines, rifling through them for ideas, I wondered what Flynn would do. And that’s how I got to “Trojan rabbit.”
“Pardon me?”
Christ, hasn’t this guy seen any Monty Python? I shook my head, clearing away the extraneous thoughts so the solution blazed in my mind. “Okay, so, it’s like a closed-circuit feed. Eris pours juice into the spells on this thing, and it sends signals back to her. Right?” When Hephaestus nodded, I continued. “So, what if we intercept one of those signals?”
“I think I understand your meaning. Go on.”
“We catch the current coming from Eris and—using the trace elements of her magic already in this thing—we send dummy messages back to her, so she doesn’t see someone tampering with her spell. Then, with the spells completely cut off, we can sort of…transplant different signals into it. We bleed out her magic while filling it with our own.”
Heph nodded. “And from there we can either alter the enchantments or break them entirely.”
“Yes!” I said, hissing with excitement. “And when we’re finished, we throw Eris a false signal that Marius is somewhere in Tibet or something and sever the link. Then the bitch is confused and beaten.”
Hephaestus bared his teeth. “Clever plan. I offer one small adjustment.”
The god laid his hand over the black spherical container. The hinge protested with an ominous creak as he opened the lid. Gold flared with brilliant light. My guts churned, and my skin prickled as a slimy, sticky energy reached its tentacles into the air. As Hephaestus drew his hand away, I saw what might easily be mistaken for a golden ball. Except for the small stem and gilded leaf sprouting from the top, that is. Greek symbols were etched into the side.
My jaw dropped. “Is…is that…?”
“The one and only,” Hephaestus rumbled. “The Golden Apple of Discord.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Shadow Stabbing”
Staring down at Eris’s actual, factual Golden Apple filled me with a new kind of spine-melting dread. Its tangible surface glittered in the amber glow of the Forge, those carved symbols darkening with the shifting light. Beneath that surface, however, was bad juju. I didn’t dare open my senses to it. I didn’t have to. The dark chaos of Discord slithered within, a ball of vipers pressing against my senses. The thing hissed into my brain, its icy scales writhing over my mind. At the corner of my vision I saw bared teeth dripping venom. A flash of anger. A wail of rage.
I closed my eyes. “I can’t look at that.”
“I won’t ask you to, Cat,” Hephaestus said soothingly. “There may come a day when you must look at the maw of madness and deceit, but this is not that day.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you. So what do we do?”
“Exactly what you said. Only instead of sending those dummy messages, as you put it, from the amulet, I will use the Apple to direct power away from the talisman and back to Eris. This carries her signature, her purest power. I can harness it and manipulate it as you work with the electricity and technological power of the amulet.”
I pondered how I might set my plan in motion. Like pulling strands of energy apart to fuel my car, I could mentally focus on the amulet and the spells braiding about the bauble. I searched the worktable for tools, a tangible object I could use to focus my will on the spells twining about the amulet’s white core. I found tweezers, a needle, lock picks—the only things that would fit my small hands and allow for the delicate work.
“So I take the amulet and do the work on it while you use your Olympian mojo on the Apple to keep her off our scent?” I glared at the Apple, weighing the options and trying to come up with some alternative. “If she finds out, she’ll be pissed.”
“Of course. And if your hand is not steady, you could unleash potent magic. The recoil could be strong enough to crush your sanity, if not kill you outright.” He paused. “No pressure,” he added, his grin soft and reassuring.
Seriously? Those were my choices? Succeed on the first try, piss off Eris (more), die (again), or be left a dribbling idiot?
I worried my lip for a moment. “And this will help Marius?”
He nodded. “You will buy the satyr valuable time and forge a new, strong magical artifact.”
I blew out a breath, rattling my lips. “Let’s get to work, then.”
Hephaestus beamed with pride and merriment. “Take off the bracelet and any other enchanted objects you carry. Their magic might interfere.”
Slipping off the
silver cuff, I did a mental pat down of my person. “Um, I’ve got these implants, but I can’t exactly take them out. And there’s Loki’s mark.”
“Those are part of you. They will not hinder.”
“Good to know.”
Hephaestus took up the Apple and stood facing the Forge, his back to mine.
“I’m ready, Cat. Are you?”
Hovering over the necklace, I let the magic become visible. Taking up the tweezers and one of the lock picks, I licked my lips. “Let’s do this.”
Behind me, Hephaestus did something that unleashed that unsavory magic. The vipers were released, shrieking and crying out with their reptilian screams. Beneath their hissing and wailing, I heard Eris’s voice. What was it Marius had said about the sliver of a person in her magic? A bit of Eris herself had been woven into each of those snakes as if they were tentacles slithering away from her. I drew into myself, cowering at the idea that she might be able to see me here. Hephaestus, however, dampened the goddess’s energy with a force of his own. I wondered for an instant what his magic would look like, but I didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. My all-too-reasonable fear kept me facing the damn tacky amulet.
“Now, Cat.”
I pushed the sounds out of my mind. I had a job to do. I’m pulling an Ocean’s Eleven. I’m hacking her security feed and Heph is replacing it with his own false feed while I bleed out her power and sneak in with my own, unnoticed.
I bent down close enough to the necklace that the minute force of my breathing blurred the lines of Eris’s magic. I squeezed the tweezers over the black bands of her energy and mentally pinched off her power. I waited for a terrible moment, expecting the switch—the Apple for the amulet’s signals—to fail.
“I’ve got it, Cat,” Heph assured me. “Get to work.”
The deep purple of her web—now cut off from her—began to ebb, colors lightening. Using the needle and lock picks, I made the tiniest of tears along one of the strands.
A drop of oily ichor bubbled up like blood from a pinprick.
“Shit,” I hissed. Careful not to drip or apply more pressure, I lifted the pendant and quickly held it over the black box that had previously contained the Apple. The box caught the spell’s life as it spilled away.