by Amy Braun
And because I was traveling with Persephone’s personal driver, I got to the shop even quicker. I told him to stop five blocks away from the shop and I would call him when I finished my meeting with Gwen. I was fully aware that this could be a trap or that it could go sour fast, and I wanted nothing to trace back to me or Derek.
The night wind was chilly and tugged at my pale blond hair. I hunched my shoulders up to my ears. My light jacket didn’t block the breeze as much as I wanted.
A cold night in Old California was never a good sign.
Finally, I reached the occult shop. Gwen’s Emporium. It was the only shop that still had its lights on, even though the sign had been flipped to Closed and the curtains were drawn.
I stopped at the front door and rapped my knuckles against the frosted glass. A shadow moved beyond the window and darkened as it got closer. I blinked my eyes shut and focused my Sight.
A shadow behind the curtain. A metal baseball bat. Angry eyes.
I stepped back as the door opened. The woman who stood in doorway appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties. Dark-brown hair coiled at her shoulders. She wore a cute, deep purple off-the-shoulder top, black jeans, ankle boots, and chunky jewelry. Her eyes were big and dark and soulful. If I hadn’t just looked into my future, I would have been caught completely off guard by her.
“Cassandra,” she said.
I set my jaw. I hated that name. It might have been my name once, but it felt wrong for the person I was now.
I folded my arms across my chest. “You want to tell your buddy to lower the bat, Gwen?” I tapped my temple. “I can See he’s not exactly welcoming.”
She scowled, clearly unhappy that I’d foiled her surprise. So she launched one of her own. Gwen punched at my face. She was taller than me, her arms longer. But I sparred against Derek and Liam on a regular basis, and I was just as fast as she was.
I blocked her punch and kicked her in the stomach. She staggered back, and the man with the baseball bat let loose a roar and charged around the corner.
I ducked the bat and heard the heavy woosh of it splitting the air over my skull.
I dove for his knees. I pulled him off balance and drew myself up, blinking and using my Sight. I opened my eyes and caught the bat on its way down. The metal stung my hand, but I brushed away the pain and ripped the bat from his hand. He hit the sidewalk, and I jabbed the end of the baseball bat between his eyes.
It was as light a tap as I could make it––I didn’t want to kill him––but he was knocked out cold.
“Sean!” screamed Gwen.
Hairs rose on the back of my neck. I opened my heart to magic and sought to craft invulnerability as fast as I could. Being the heir of Athena meant I could borrow certain spells exclusive to other scions. It wasn’t instant, but it was better than being hit with aether.
My skin hardened just as the spike of dark magic hit my lower back. The pain was lessened, but its force still threw me to the ground. I pressed my hands to the pavement. My chin scraped against the road, but I barely felt the sting. I glanced over my shoulder. Gwen roared and rushed at me.
I nearly grinned at her mistake.
I waited, waited…
She got too close. I whipped my leg under her ankle and knocked her off-balance. She landed hard on her back, and her skull cracked against the pavement, but she was still conscious. I scrambled on top of her, grabbed her arm, yanked it between my knees, and dropped my leg across her neck. She was pinned, and though she punched at my leg, all I had to do was bend her elbow. She couldn’t dislodge me unless she wanted to break her arm.
“Why are you trying to kill me?” I growled.
She snarled and dragged her eyes over to me. I’d never seen anyone stare at me with such hatred.
Black smoke crept in the corner of my vision. I leaned back.
But not far enough.
The aether bolt slammed into my ribs and wrapped around my stomach. I gritted my teeth as the gnawing, acidic pain ate at my nerves. I tried desperately to hold on to my crafted Adaptation, but the pain was too much. My nerves bucked, and I collapsed, losing my grip on Gwen. I heard scrabbling feet and twisted to see who had struck me.
It was Sean, the man I’d hit with the bat. His left eye was swelling and going to be grotesque, and he did not look pleased about it.
Gwen grunted and grimaced, rubbing the back of her head. She staggered to her feet and stomped on my middle. Even with the aether binds ripping down my nerves, I felt that blow. It robbed me of breath. Gwen knelt next to my head and gripped my hair in her fist. She yanked my head up and looked me dead in the eyes.
“Why are we trying to kill you?” Gwen rasped. “Because you tried to kill us, bitch.”
She punched me with her free hand. It was a hell of a hit. By the time she ripped her hand from my hair, I was slipping into blackness.
***
Everything was wrong when I woke up.
My head was pounding, like it had been the snare drum for a heavy metal drummer. The pain was so bad that I was literally seeing things upside down.
Wait.
I blinked slowly, squinted, and tried to focus on my surroundings. Things were worse when the clarity did come.
Everything was upside down because I was upside down.
My hands were bound behind my back with handcuffs. My feet were chained to a pipe on the ceiling. The tips of my hair skimmed the floor. I didn’t know how long I had been hanging like this. I could only hope that all the blood rushing to my head wasn’t doing any lasting damage.
“The lying bitch is awake,” snarled Gwen.
She stalked around me, bending at the waist to look me in the eye. “And here I thought you were supposed to know everything, See every outcome.”
“I haven’t been at my best,” I confessed.
Gwen huffed and stepped back then kicked me in the stomach.
The blow nearly went through me. I felt my stomach heavy and my body sway, chains pulling at my ankles and pinching nerves. Now I know how a punching bag feels. Gwen returned, slamming hooks and punches into my middle. I coughed and choked and tasted metal.
“Relax, Gwen,” drawled Sean. “Don’t want you to spend too much energy right away.”
She didn’t look happy about it, but she scowled at me and stepped away. Sean came into view. At least, I think it was him. It was hard to tell with the giant purple swelling covering his left eye like a mutating tumor.
He stood next to Gwen, who looked similar enough to him to be his sister. Sean rolled the bat in his grip. I was not liking how it gleamed like the only bright thing in this dry, empty basement.
He set the tip of the bat on the floor. It clanked, and I liked that even less.
He tilted his head and considered me. “You don’t remember us, do you?”
I licked my lips and swallowed a cough. “You’ll have to forgive me. My head’s a little fuzzy right now.”
Sean chuckled. “You didn’t have a sense of humor the last time we met. About six years ago, it was. You were looking to pay us for a big job. All we had to do was take some trinkets and hide them around Néo Vasíleio. You knew all the spots, had all the tricks ready. Just needed a little extra manpower.” Sean’s eyes darkened with rage and pain. “There were ten of us that were hired to go with you.”
And suddenly, it all came back to me. The broken pieces of memory clicked together, though jaggedly.
These were the people I had hired when I was still Cassandra to help hide the Trinity Weapons and the Cronus Shards from the gods. These were the people who helped me construct my traps.
There had been ten of them, Sean said, and slowly, I was remembering how they had died. I couldn’t See the details of where or how. All I saw were ten faces screaming, begging, turning bloody and desperate as my traps destroyed their minds and lives.
And when Sean and Gwen were the only ones left, when they asked me for the truth of what was happening and when the final payment would come
…
“I never came back.”
“No,” snarled Gwen. “No, you fucking did not. Sean and I were lucky to be alive, but we’ve been struggling ever since. Months of therapy, thousands of dollars lost because you didn’t pay us enough, countless nightmares, and trauma we’ll never be able to forget. You made us go through hell, promised it was for a good cause and that we’d be rewarded, but all you did was ruin our lives and leave the bodies of our friends in the dirt.”
Gwen’s words were like knives, and I let them cut me. She was right. As I put my memories back together, I could see that I had betrayed her, Sean, and all of them because I knew they would be unlikely to survive. I was so desperate to hide the Cronus Shards and the Trinity Weapons that I simply didn’t care who or what I left behind. I wanted to stop the Olympian and the Titans, to stop the apocalypse I had Seen, and I didn’t care about the people who were harmed along the way.
But they hadn’t forgotten me.
I closed my eyes. Tears slipped from my eyes and spiraled into my hair. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Sorry?” Gwen barked. She stomped toward me. “Sorry isn’t good enough. Sorry won’t bring back my friends. It won’t bring back my girlfriend. It won’t help me keep this business afloat. Sorry is what people say when they have nothing else to say.”
“Then what do you want?” I shouted when she reached me. “Tell me what you want from me, and I’ll give it to you. This is something we can still fix. It doesn’t have to be this way.” My eyes lifted, darting back and forth along the ceiling. The wood beams were rotting, and the pipes were rusted. “I could help you with repairs, if that––”
Gwen kicked me in the stomach. I coughed and gagged, felt bile burn my throat.
“We don’t want your help,” snarled Sean. He slung the baseball bat over his shoulder and stalked closer. “What help could a liar be to us?” He gripped the bat by both hands and glared murderously at me. “Best thing we can do is avenge our friends, who you destroyed.”
I sighed. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
Sean sucked in a breath and swung the bat wide and low. Right to where my head would be.
The moment I saw his arms move, I reacted with magic. It replaced the strength in my muscles. I crunched upward, stars filling my vision from the head-rush. Gwen screamed and reached for my hair to yank me back down. But I’d already called fire into my hands. I shot them outward, toward Sean and Gwen, not caring what I hit. I just needed to melt the handcuffs.
Like every scion, I’d learned how to control my elemental powers so my clothes wouldn’t be damaged. I liked jewelry, but the handcuffs were not suitable bracelets.
I winced at the heat of the metal cuffs melting across my wrists. I kept melting them until the metal sluiced away and my hands––while raw and blistered––were freed.
I swung downward, my stomach muscles aching from holding me up. My head spun, but my hands were free again. Upside down, I could see Gwen and Sean rushing back, brandishing aether and the metal bat. I shot my hands out, spewing flames at their legs. They yelped and jumped aside. Keeping one hand trained on them, I lifted the other and sent a gout of flame to the chains looped around my ankles. I felt my legs slipping free of the molten lava, the pipe screaming as fire ate at it.
And then I was falling.
I twisted and landed hard on my side. My head spun, and awareness tingled. I pushed back across the floor. The bat smashed into the concrete where my head had been lying. I staggered to my feet and avoided another swing from Sean. I ducked his next strike and scrambled closer. I kicked his ribs and shot another kick into his temple. He twitched and dropped to the ground. Gwen screamed and launched at me with aether covered fists. I dropped my shoulder and rammed it into her stomach. I kept her weight under me and flipped her over my shoulder. She landed hard, and I kept her down with a boot to her face.
My heart pounded, my head felt ready to explode, and the smell of smoke…
I looked up, and the fire alarm began to scream. My flames had spread along the ceiling and were devouring the old, dry wood. I needed to get out of here.
So did Sean and Gwen.
They tried to kill me, would have beaten me to a pulp and felt justified in doing it. I could have left them there to die.
But I had already caused them too much suffering. I didn’t want to be the person I had been when I was Cassandra.
Rushing, twisting my magic to harness Adaptation, I heaved Gwen onto my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I stomped up the stairs with her on my shoulder, wincing every time my boot hit the floor, and dumped her onto the street. I raced back inside and slipped my arms under Sean’s armpits. I hauled him up the stairs. He was heavier than Gwen, and it took me longer to get him up to the top floor. Fire rolled across the ceiling. Smoke burned my lungs. The entire basement was a haze of violent orange and red light.
My legs gave out when we reached the main floor. Wood bent and groaned. Coughing out smoke, I grabbed Sean’s arms again and heaved him toward the door. The blistered skin on my ankles sent shooting pains up my legs. I shuffled quickly, my heart speeding as the flames crawled out of the basement door and chewed through the carpet and floorboards. The floor cracked and caved in, right on Sean’s heels.
I moved fast, panic rising as his jeans caught fire.
My heel clipped the doorframe and I collapsed outside. I hauled Sean the rest of the way and slapped his legs to put out of the fire. Both Gwen and Sean were safe and unconscious. I groaned and coughed and rolled onto my back, heaving.
My throat burned, my wrists and ankles throbbed, my stomach was a massive bruise, and my head was spinning. I grimaced and picked the bits of metal out of my blistered skin. I healed myself, sighing as the warm magic flooded my damaged body.
There were sirens and screams. Emergency services had been called, which meant I needed to get out of here.
But not before one last trick.
Rolling onto my stomach––it and my face remained bruised because I did not want to waste any magic yet––I crawled to Gwen and Sean and pressed my hand to their forehands. I closed my eyes and crafted a memory enchantment.
For most scions, enchantments needed to be created with magic, herbs, potions, and often blood. That was how Derek and Liam had created the blood bond that allowed them to speak telepathically to one another.
Not so with me. As a craft scion and heir to Athena, all I needed to do was focus my energy into the spell or enchantment I wanted to use.
However, I hadn’t done this one before. It was dangerous. Too much playing around, and I could erase all their memories. Too little, and I would leave unexplainable gaps that could potentially bring them back to me. At worst, I could destroy their minds all together.
So I worked quickly, but I was careful. I didn’t want to erase their entire memory. I just wanted to erase my place in it—me, the Shards, and the Trinity Weapons. It all had to go.
It was difficult and heart-wrenching, distorting their memories and replacing them with something else. Constructing an entire new line of thought where they had never met Cassandra, never been involved with anything relating to the Olympians.
I didn’t feel good about doing this either. It wasn’t my place to enter minds and change them. But it was better than Ares finding them and ripping the truth from their screaming bodies.
They didn’t deserve to see me again, and I wanted to be free of this chapter of my past. It was the most repentance I could offer.
Finally, the task was done. I looked up and saw apartment lights snapping on and shadows moving behind curtains. Red and blue flashing lights blinked at an approaching corner. I had to leave now. I staggered to my feet, let my head spin again, and limped away from the burning emporium.
I’d come to Gwen to learn about my past, to understand the person I had been and the things I had done. And the more I learned… the more despair I felt.
The Cassandra those dark scions had known didn’t
feel like the person I was. I couldn’t align my past to my present, and it left me feeling unbalanced. I wanted to be whole again.
I never looked back, and I didn’t think about why tears were streaming down my face.
***
Persephone’s driver didn’t ask any questions when I got in the car. He let me sit there in silence. I used magic to heal the rest of my bruises and cuts. I still had some swelling in my face and stomach, but by the end, I was just exhausted. I wanted to rest and pretend my past had never resurfaced.
Rather than drive me to the main gate of Persephone’s cathedral, I asked the driver to let me out near the gardens. I needed a walk and to smell something other than smoke.
He agreed, and I strolled through the sweet-smelling grass, past the tall weeping willows, and through the golden wheat field.
That was where I found Derek.
He was alone, moving through different forms and katas with his spear, Ki̱demónas. The God Weapon caught the moonlight with every spin. Derek’s eyes were focused, his motions fluid and certain, as if he knew this was the only thing in his life he could control.
I stood there, just watching him, wishing I had the energy to do what he was doing. To clear my mind so it wouldn’t control my emotions. I still felt too raw, too ashamed of what I’d done.
I wasn’t sure that kind of hurt would heal soon.
Derek spun again, the muscles in his back and arms rippling and bunching under his shirt. He caught me staring and froze. He unbent from his stance and walked toward me. His eyes moved from bloodstains to bruises to ash to charred clothes.
“What happened?”
I could have told him the truth. Maybe one day I would. But in all honesty, I was tired and unhappy. I just wanted to rest and put the whole mess behind me. The things that were about to happen, what Derek and I would have to face… that mattered more to me than my past at that moment.