I couldn’t move. All I could see was me and Eryx back in Michigan, in that wired-up house with Myron and those men. Bad as the Haidou Hotel was, that place was worse.
Lucian waited. He was going to make me ask. I hated him for it, and I hated myself for giving in, because I knew I had to.
“What did you tell him?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Lucian gave a little smile. “I said I’d wire him five thousand for each of you. He was good with that. Ten K will buy him enough time to find a new kid or two. Myron doesn’t need—or even want—either of you back at Lake Trichonida, so there’s no point in trying to go back there.”
“What about my mom?” The words spilled out faster than water tumbles over a dam. “Did you talk to her?”
“Yeah.” Lucian’s words were slow as cold turtles. “She said she was glad I could take care of you and if you didn’t come home, that was fine with her. She didn’t really want you around much anyway, not now that she’s got a new husband and all.”
The words stabbed me with a sword made of snow, all clean and white. My heart continued to beat and I wondered how it managed.
“You’ll have to work off the five thousand,” Lucian continued, as if he hadn’t just drained the last drop of my blood. “And that guy you were just with? He’s the sheriff of DelMar County. I give him a discount, and his boys in brown watch my property in return. That means you shouldn’t get any ideas about running off or reporting the hotel. Not unless you want to get arrested for prostitution. Now go home—you’re done for today.”
I didn’t wait for him to say it twice. I changed out of my prison clothes in Room 8 and ran all the way back to the Pieria Nursing Home. It felt good to run, even if I got heat stroke. The heat from the setting sun was soft and heavy, though clouds invaded from the west. I passed people in the street and realized they had no fucking clue what had just happened to me that day. I felt sick and used, like a snotty Kleenex.
Panting and sweaty, I rounded a corner at the nursing home and almost plowed right into Phillip. He was still wearing that fisherman’s sweater despite the heat, and he put out an arm to catch me. I skidded to a halt and backed away from him, not wanting to feel his hands on me.
“There you go, young man,” he said. “Watch your feet, watch your feet.”
“Sorry,” I said, automatic as a robot.
“Running from the storm?”
I stared at him blankly. “What storm?”
“The big one. Huge! It’ll strike any day now.” He started to wave his hands, and his gray hair stuck out from under his cap. “Clouds first, then heavy wind and rain. Waves as tall as a ship! Mark me, boy. It’ll be monumental!”
I remembered the forecaster in the Guy’s hotel room. Hurricane Tyler wasn’t coming anywhere near Florida. “Sure,” I said. “Okay. I guess I’d better go get ready.”
“Good idea, good idea.” He nodded to me and wandered away, still waving his hands. I stood in the shadow of the building, hands stuffed into the pockets of my used shorts. What was wrong with me? Everyone in my life took advantage of me, pushed me around, used me, abandoned me. Mom. Myron. Lucian. Even Uncle Zack, who had gotten me to mow the lawn around his fucking cottages and then died before he could pay me. What the hell was a canoe ride worth? Less than nothing. Horrible feelings I hadn’t known I was carrying tried to burst out of my chest, and I ran and ran to keep them inside. I was mud, I was dirt. Uncle Zack died before I could tell him how much he meant to me, and now I could never tell him. I should have known there was something weird about Myron because no one normal would take an interest in a loser like me. It was my fault Mom didn’t believe me because I told her too fast, didn’t give her a chance to see it. I fucked up, and all I had left was hotel rooms with those Guys in them.
I wandered inside the ruined building with my shirt sticking to my back and under my arms. It was cooler inside, and the geckos that ran away from me skritched in the dim light. Broken windows gaped, showing their bad teeth. In the old waiting room with the rotten furniture I smelled tobacco smoke. A single red eye glowed in one of the moldy chairs. June was smoking one of her cigarettes.
“Back from work, kid?” she asked. Smoke ghosted with the words in her mouth.
“What do you know about it?” I snarled.
“I know you’re still running,” she said. “Check out the sweat stains on your soul.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I didn’t feel like talking to her, but I didn’t storm out of the room, either. I don’t know why.
“Life on the street is fucking hard,” she said. “You’re learning that lesson fast, at least. But you’re still running away, just like I did. It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you everything.”
“Listen, you old—”
“No, you listen, you young fill-in-the-blank,” she interrupted, and I didn’t feel like I could say another word. “For years I thought my husband fucked around because there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t until he died that I realized the problem was with him. You’re doing the same thing, kid—blaming the wrong person for what’s bugging you.”
My throat thickened out of nowhere. “How do you know what’s bugging me?”
“It’s my job as an old bitch to know this shit. Listen, kid—you need to use your own strengths, confront the fuckheads in your life instead of bending to them. Otherwise they’ll always control you. Just like they always have.”
Her words made the building walls lean inward. They threatened to crush me, chew me, swallow me down. With a cry I didn’t know I could make, I ran down the hallway, out of the building, off the overgrown grounds. I ran and ran and ran toward the beach. Toward the ocean. Toward death.
The giant woman lunged at Ganymede. He leaped over her huge hand, somersaulted off a boulder, and leaped again.
“Hurry!” he shouted.
Light flashed behind him. Iris’s fingers carved another piece off the crystal she was holding. Her eyebrows pulled together with concentration as the bit of bright crystal flaked away.
“I think I’ve got it!” she shouted.
The giant woman hissed and drew back a fist the size of a horse. From the waist up, she was beautiful. Her long black hair gleamed in the hard golden sunlight, and her emerald eyes glimmered with bitter malice. Her arms were well-muscled and her bare breasts were tanned. But from the waist down, she was a terrible serpent, with poison-green coils that slithered over stone and looked stronger than steel. Her name was Echidna, and she lived in the only pass that would take them to Prometheus.
It had been eight days since they’d left Olympus, eight long and dangerous days of walking to avoid the eye of Zeus. In those eight days, they became close friends, and Ganymede’s romantic feelings for Iris deepened as well. Together Ganymede and Iris had encountered earthquakes and landslides, hot sun and flooding rain. More than once, Ganymede had saved Iris, and more than once, Iris had saved Ganymede.
Echidna slammed her fist downward. Ganymede licked dry lips, waited until the last second, and leaped out of the way. He felt the air fan past him as the fist missed, and he exalted for a tiny moment. Then he realized what Echidna was doing. She had missed on purpose. Her punch smashed into the ground, and violent tremors ran in all directions. Ganymede’s feet came out from under him, and he landed on his ass. The crystal flew out of Iris’s hands and bounced along the shaking, rocky ground. Echidna roared and reached down to snatch Ganymede up. He yanked the knife from his belt as her grip closed around him and slashed at her hand. The skin looked womanly-soft, but was tough as boiled leather, and Echidna only laughed as she hauled him into the air.
Below, Iris regained her own feet and scrambled for the crystal. She reached it, but a green coil slashed around and slapped her away. With a thin scream, Iris flew into the distance.
“Iris!” Ganymede shouted from Echidna’s fist. Anger rushed through him. He felt the oily blood pulsing just beneath Echidna’s skin and with his new-found power, he reac
hed into her veins and stopped it from flowing. Echidna screamed and her fist spasmed open. Ganymede caught hold of her thumb and yanked himself up onto her forearm. Not knowing what the hell he was going to do next, he sheathed the knife and scrambled up her arm.
A bit of color streaked low across the sky. Iris looped back into view, skimming along the front of a new rainbow like a surfer. Relief flooded Ganymede. Even though he knew Iris was immortal and couldn’t be killed, she could still be hurt or captured or lost. The rainbow rushed down toward the crystal, which still lay gleaming on the ground. Echidna, who had recovered from Ganymede’s trick, saw where she was going and lunged for her again. Iris dodged, weaving her bright ribbon in and out and around. Echidna lunged again, twisting her coils in fury. Ganymede clung to her arm with all the strength of an acrobat. Iris swooped down to the crystal again, and again Echidna lunged like serpentine lightning, forcing her back. Iris couldn’t get close enough Without thinking, Ganymede snatched Zeus’s goblet from his belt with one hand and flicked it toward Echidna.
“Water!” he ordered.
A firehose stream erupted from the goblet, widening as it emerged, and caught Echidna full in the chest. The blast shoved her backward. Ganymede lost his grip on her arm, and he leaped free. He twisted in mid-air, landing on his feet like a cat. Echidna bellowed and turned her attention away from Iris to him. She raised both her hands above head, intending to slam both fists down and create an even more powerful shockwave that would end the fight, but Ganymede held up a hand.
“Freeze!” he yelled.
The water that covered Echidna’s skin abruptly hardened. It didn’t cool into ice, but it did stop moving, creating an iron-hard shell on Echidna’s body. The trillions of motionless droplets glittered in the sun and cast thousands of tiny rainbows across the mountainside.
“Good work!” Iris called. She grabbed the crystal. “I’ve got it!”
“Quick!” Ganymede called back. “She’s stronger than I am!”
This was true. Cracks were already appearing in the diamond shell, and Ganymede could feel it weakening. He pushed at it with his new power, trying to shore it up, but Echidna was one of the oldest, most powerful monsters in the world, a daughter of Gaea herself, and the sheer strength of her was more than Ganymede could hold. The cracks widened. Ganymede pushed harder, his power against her strength. He felt a trickle of blood slip from his nose.
“What are you waiting for?” Ganymede demanded. “I’m losing her!”
“Almost,” Iris said. “Dammit—this is harder than it looks.” She held the crystal up to the light. Sunbeams coursed through it and shattered, throwing a large rainbow on the ground beside her. “Red,” she said, and the rainbow lost all colors but that one. “No, that’s too healing. Orange! No, that’s for harvest.”
The sound of a million mirrors shattering echoed on the stones, and one of Echidna’s arms broke free. Water fell in a small rain. “Iris!” Ganymede said through gritted teeth.
“Yellow’s for air. Green is for life.”
More shattering glass that changed to rain. Echnida’s tail was free, and it lashed the ground. Ganymede swiped at the blood from his nose and was surprised to see gold, not scarlet. He was going to die—or something worse—in a puddle of gold?
“Blue is for attraction and desire. Violet is for kings and gods—and monsters. Wait! Indigo!”
Ganymede could feel his strength leaving him. He dropped to one knee, the palm of his left hand still facing Echidna in an attempt to keep the water together. But with a triumphant roar, Echidna burst free of the last bits of Ganymede’s prison. Tail lashing, she drew herself up to her full height. Ganymede collapsed, his muscles gone liquid.
“Now,” she boomed in an impossibly low female voice, “I will swallow you whole, little ones. You will live inside me and writhe as bits of you digest and regenerate over thousands of years until I consent to vomit you back forth.”
Her impossibly supple body rushed down toward them, her forked tongue leading the way. Ganymede smelled rotting meat. He didn’t have the energy to draw a weapon or even roll away.
“Indigo is between blue for attraction and purple for royalty. It’s indigo! Indigo!”
Iris pointed the crystal at Echidna and fired a beam of light that combined all colors of the rainbow into a silken ribbon. It was the most beautiful thing Ganymede had ever seen. The beam struck the newly-carved crystal, and the crystal sucked in all the colors but one. A beam of rich, pure indigo flashed out and struck Echidna in the chest. Echidna flinched, expecting pain. When she felt none, she laughed, a terrible, blackboard-scraping laugh.
“That’s the best you can do, girl?” she sneered. “I look forward to having you in my belly. I’ll never go hungry again!”
But the indigo beam continued to shine. It flowed over Echidna like purple lava, covering her from head to tail-tip. Iris poured everything she had into the crystal, and she sweated small droplets of gold.
“Come!” she called. “You know you want to, royal one.”
“I will crush you!” Echidna bellowed. “I will devour you whole.”
“Come,” Iris called, more softly this time, and then she began to sing a soft lullaby. Ganymede recognized it as one his mother used to sing. Echidna blinked and looked sleepy for a moment.
“No!” she said, shaking her huge head. “I won’t be tricked like this!”
“But you want to,” Iris cooed. “It’s quiet and warm in there, with whatever food you like best.”
“It’s a prison!”
“Where no one will bother you or try to slay you. You’re coming to it anyway. Why fight?”
Echidna drew closer to the crystal. The line of indigo light never faltered. It was soothing to look at, and suddenly Ganymede wanted nothing more than a good long nap.
“No!” Echidna whispered, still fascinated. “It’s a trap.”
“It is,” Iris said, and threw the crystal straight at Echidna’s chest. It stuck between her breasts. Echidna clawed at it, but it didn’t move. Light beams continued to feed into it, but all that emerged was the rich indigo. It covered her in heaviness. Echidna struggled and fought, but the will seemed to have drained out of her. With a final screech, the crystal sucked her inside and dropped to the ground.
Ganymede summoned enough energy to push himself to his feet and stagger over for a look. The once-glassy crystal now swirled with a thousand colors.
“Don’t touch it,” Iris warned. “She’ll only steal energy from you to help her get out. If nothing helps her, she’ll be in there for a little while.”
“How little?” He wiped at the trickle of blood from his nose, smearing his finger with gold.
“Only six or seven hundred years,” Iris admitted. “I didn’t have time to find or make a better prism prison.”
“Long enough for us, I hope.” He put his arm around Iris, feeling both love and relief in the gesture. “I was so worried about you. I know you’re immortal, but that doesn’t mean bad things can’t happen to you.”
“Or to you, Lord of the Cup.” She stood on tiptoe and drew his chin down. “You scared me, too.”
“Will this make it better?” And he kissed her, long and lovingly and hard. It wasn’t the first time.
“A little,” she said when they parted. “But I think you’ve only made a single payment. And I charge interest.”
“I hope it’s a high rate.”
“Usurious. Now let’s get out of here before one of us accidentally breaks that crystal. I don’t want to do all that again.”
They joined hands and ran up the pass, leaving Echidna’s crystal prison to vibrate angrily on the rocky ground.
After another day’s walking under overpasses and over underpasses, Iris stopped and took Ganymede’s arm. “There,” she said, pointing. “That’s Mount Caucasus. The place where Zeus chained Prometheus.”
A tiny black speck flew toward the high peak, and a moment later, the ground shuddered a little and a thin, high
wail whipped through the wind. Ganymede’s blood chilled.
“What was that?” he whispered.
“The eagle,” Iris whispered back. “It’s eating his heart and liver.”
Ganymede’s stomach twisted. He remembered Zeus’s gentle, insistent hands on him. That was the same man—god—who had ordered the daily torture of another person over a bit of disobedience. Zeus had said he loved Ganymede even as he was torturing Prometheus. Ganymede didn’t know what to think.
“Let’s go,” he said, starting forward.
“No.” Iris pulled him down behind a boulder. “We’ve been lucky so far. The eagle didn’t see us on the way in, and Zeus didn’t see me using the rainbow when we fought Echidna. We shouldn’t push our luck, G.”
The thin scream continued as they knelt in the boulder’s shadow. Iris fixed her eyes on the distant mountain, but she reached down and grabbed Ganymede’s hand. He squeezed it, glad for the contact, and she squeezed back. Then the black speck sped away and vanished into the clouds. The screams died away.
“Let’s go,” Iris said.
It took them the rest of the day and all night to climb the mountain, but in the last few days, Ganymede had discovered that he could go quite some time without sleep if he wanted, and Zeus’s goblet produced both nectar and ambrosia, both of which were better than sleep anyway. As morning dawned, they reached the very top of the mountain. It made a flat plateau, and the entire world stretched out in all directions. Past the jagged mountains lay wrinkled green farm and forest, and past that, the bright blue sea. But Ganymede scarcely noticed. In the center of the plateau was another giant boulder. A naked man was chained to it, hanging upside down by his ankles. His wrists were chained as well. He had long black hair and, like all gods, a handsome face. His eyes were shut. Scars, some old and white, some new and pink, crisscrossed his body. The biggest one made a ragged T-shape down his breastbone and across his abdomen. Prometheus.
Ganymede stood and stared at Zeus’s handiwork. Would the king of gods do something like this to him? How could someone as wonderful and cool as Zeus do this to anyone? But then he remembered the shepherd woman, the way Zeus had tossed his own daughter Hebe aside so Ganymede could have her job, the way he’d been ready to let Hera throw Ganymede down from Olympus. What he’d done to Prometheus wasn’t much of stretch.
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