The fact that Asmodeus had let her have this much time with Zeus was a testament to how much the Demon liked her. She had to admit, he was growing on her as well, in an annoying-brother kind of way. An annoying brother that happened to be ridiculously beautiful and a mind-blowing kisser. She didn’t want to think about it. Kala was just grateful that Asmodeus allowed her to stay.
No time like the present.
Kala stood up and then kneeled in front of Zeus.
“Zeus?” She tried to stop his ranting.
After repeating his name a few times, the god finally went silent. Zeus stared at Kala with wide, child-like eyes. “I’ll tell you something, but we have to be alone.”
She looked over at Asmodeus, but he shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”
“He can turn around, turn around, turn around,” Zeus sang as if these were the words to his favorite song.
Kala pleaded to Asmodeus. “I’m not sure how long he’s going to be coherent. Could you just turn your back or something?”
“Fine,” Asmodeus sighed. He flipped his chair around and sat with his back to Kala and Zeus.
She focused back on Zeus. “Okay, he’s turned around. Now what can you tell me? Can you break this curse?” She still didn’t think she was above consuming him if she felt it necessary. Kala didn’t want an insane Olympian stuck in her brain, but if it meant breaking the curse, she had to consider it.
Zeus motioned her forward. “Come closer. Secrets. Secrets.”
Kala leaned in, her face only inches from his.
He whispered, “The prophecy. I know the rest of it. He can’t know.” Zeus nodded toward Asmodeus. “He doesn’t want you to know. Neither does Daddy.” He giggled. “But Daddy knows. He knows what you are.”
Kala carefully took his hands in hers and their eyes met. “What is the prophecy? What am I?”
Zeus stared down at their touching hands. When he looked back up at Kala, his eyes were crazed. “Fix me now.”
The words sounded strange to Kala’s ears. She was about to ask him to repeat it when she felt an excruciating pain flood through her hands and to the rest of her body. She tried to move, but found that she was paralyzed. Not even her voice would work. With all her strength, Kala tried to scream out to Asmodeus, but Zeus had her locked in place.
His voice was barely above a whisper, “This won’t kill you.”
Small comfort.
The pain intensified. Kala tried to tap into the power inside her. To swallow him, to fight him, anything to stop the agony.
She found it right away. The spot where she had pulled her strength from before. But Kala couldn’t touch it, couldn’t use it, couldn’t do anything with it.
Because Zeus was draining it dry.
The silent horror of what was happening made Kala feel completely useless. The pain started to wane, but so did her energy. She was losing consciousness. It was as if Zeus had tapped into her life-source. He was recharging. Healing himself. Kala could see it in his face. His eyes cleared up, his skin de-aged until he looked about thirty-something, his hair turned from white to brown.
And then Zeus had apparently taken what he needed, because he dropped Kala’s hands. All of her functions returned to her, but she was so exhausted she could barely move a finger. She struggled to keep her eyes open. She wanted to stay awake. Zeus had used her. Sapped her. She was going to lose him.
Zeus cleared his throat to grab Asmodeus’s attention. When Asmodeus didn’t turn Zeus replied. “You really do have an affection for the girl. Such loyalty.”
Asmodeus turned around at that.
Kala could see the terror and shock in Asmodeus’s face at seeing Zeus fully restored and capable. Then worry and anger at Kala flopped out on the floor.
But Asmodeus was smart. He put his hands up in peace. “What did you do to her?”
Zeus laughed. Not the crazy-insane laugh like before, but an honest mirth at Asmodeus’s words. “Nothing Ms. Hicks can’t handle. She’ll be back as new in a few hours.”
Somehow that didn’t make Kala feel any better. She could barely stay conscious.
“Asmodeus, you must choose. Me or my father?” Zeus put it to him candidly.
“Can’t I be Switzerland?” The Demon raised an eyebrow with a hopeful smile.
“I don’t understand that reference, but I’m assuming you don’t want to decide just yet. I’ll give you a few days to think it over, weigh your options. But know this: I plan on uniting everyone and everything against my father and if you don’t stand with me, you will pay the consequences.” Zeus’s words were filled with power.
Kala tried to slap herself awake, but it was no good. Her body was completely depleted. She wanted to speak. To ask him questions. If he was at full strength he could break the curse. The obvious war that was coming didn’t faze her. She didn’t care about any of it.
Kala just didn’t want to do horrible things anymore.
As if Zeus had heard, he peered down at her. “I’m sorry, little one. I’ll need you on my side, so don’t take what I did personally. My father will try and convince you to side with him, but you mustn’t listen. He should not rule. He should never have ruled in the first place.”
It took every ounce of strength for Kala to speak. “What… did you… do… to me?”
Zeus leaned down. Though his eyes were full of hope and kindness, Kala still wanted to punch him again if she were capable. “I’ll let you discover that on your own. I’m sure my father will tell you as a way to gain your trust. You have something very old and very powerful inside you, Kala Hicks. Even before you consumed Atlas no supernatural being would have been able to harm you.” He sighed and smiled warmly. “The Fated One. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“What… about the curse?” she croaked out.
His face turned sad and he shook his head. “As crazy as I was, I was telling the truth. A girl born three hundred years from now will be the one who breaks it. I would if I could but, if truth be told, I don’t know how I created it in the first place. It was born of anger and madness. I had no control. But this girl. She will be very special. Like you.”
Kala wanted to cry. She didn’t want to believe the Olympian. She wanted him to be lying. Three hundred years of doing the unthinkable. It hurt her so deeply she couldn’t stay awake any longer.
She just wanted to be unconscious so she wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.
So she wouldn’t feel anything.
Kala closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
That didn’t work.
Kala woke up encased in dirt.
She could breathe, though, which quashed her initial panic. Figuring it was because of her Atlas-side, Kala tried to find a way out.
Maneuvering her hands and arms was easier than she thought it would be. The dirt was loose so she was able to dig in an upward motion. Even though her nose, mouth, and eyes were caked in soil, for some reason it didn’t bother her.
Normally, the mere thought of being buried alive would have terrified her, but for reasons she couldn’t explain Kala felt comforted. It was as if the earth was blanketing her from all the horror she had faced her whole life.
After a few minutes of digging, Kala stopped. She wasn’t making any headway and the longer she stayed in the dirt, the more at home she felt. For someone who despised nature, this sensation was completely foreign. Breathing made all the difference. It made her understand that the real fear was suffocating to death.
Kala didn’t have that.
She knew she couldn’t die like this.
Kala had no proof, but deep down, she just knew.
The longer she stayed, the stronger she felt.
She was recharging.
It was such a strange notion that she almost dismissed it entirely, yet the more she thought about it, the more she knew it was true. She could feel it. Literally, feel the part of herself that Zeus had drained gaining strength, pulling energy from the
earth, from the life within it.
Was this a skill that Atlas had? But her secret-power-source was the part of her that devoured Atlas, so it had nothing to do with him.
Why would lying inside the dirt heal her?
Kala hated dirt.
She hated bugs. She hated camping. She hated all of it.
Give her a city and the girl was happy. Take her out to the woods and she was miserable. It had always been that way.
Now, she was buried alive and… loving it.
A part of her wanted to stay down there. If the world ended, she doubted she’d feel anything. She could just sleep. It would be so nice to rest. Really rest.
But like all good fantasies, Kala awoke from hers as two hands yanked her out of the earth.
She could barely see because of the cake of dirt covering her face. The sun was so bright she had to squint to focus on anything. When her vision finally adjusted, she stared up at the man who pulled her from the ground.
Cronus.
Fantastic.
Kala replied warily, “Could you not electrocute me right now? I’ve had a very hard day.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m the one who buried you. To heal you.” Cronus’s voice was calm and what was worse… nice.
“Zeus said you’d be sucking up.” Kala always used to feel jealous of powerful people because of the way everyone would always swoon and give them what they wanted. Now that the head Titan and the head Olympian were both vying for her favor: it felt gross. Fake. Annoying.
“You do feel better, don’t you?” Cronus prodded.
She did.
Kala didn’t want to give him the satisfaction though, so she cut to the chase. “What do you want?”
“Don’t you want to know why you feel better?” Cronus watched Kala’s reaction carefully.
Yes, she did, but she really hated it when people “fished.” Lali used to do that. Of course now Kala knew her former team member was a Demon, so maybe it had been Lali’s way of irritating Kala. Lali would always leave voice mails, such as I have huge news, call me or You’ll never guess what? Call me. So the only way Kala could find out what happened is if she phoned back and asked. It was a serious pet peeve of hers.
Kala viewed her surroundings. An enormous mansion towered behind them. It looked like it was built hundreds of years ago, definitely European in its architecture. It reminded Kala of a BBC mini-series for a Jane Austen or Dickens novel. She had been buried in the back yard of this gigantic estate. The place where Cronus had pulled her up out of the earth ruined the perfectly manicured lawn.
“Well, don’t you want to know?” Cronus lost his patience.
“You obviously want to tell me and I’m not going to beg.” Kala shook her head. “I’m sick of being pulled back and forth between sides. I don’t care what you people do to yourselves, just leave me out of it.”
Cronus examined her with an unreadable expression.
Kala could tell he still wasn’t used to her giving him attitude. She just hoped he wouldn’t throw another lightning bolt in her chest.
“It makes sense, you know. Your attitude, your power, your abilities. I don’t give much thought to prophecies unless they involve me, but I should have paid attention to yours,” Cronus began. Then he motioned toward the house and a small garden area with table and chairs. “Would you like to sit?”
Kala glanced down at herself and comprehended how crazy she looked. She had a thick layer of mud and dirt over every inch of her body. “I think I need to wash up.”
Cronus snapped his fingers. She was clean from head to toe.
“Nice,” she approved. “Look, I’ve been dicked around since I met you and your little family. Just tell me what you know about me and the prophecy.” She was tired of waiting. Tired of these superbeings lording over their knowledge. Knowledge about her.
Cronus nodded slowly. “Very well. I’ll show you the prophecy and we’ll see what you make of it.” He waved his hand slightly and an old parchment appeared. Handing it to Kala, he said, “The complete prophecy.”
Kala carefully took the parchment paper from him. The prophecy wasn’t that much longer than Penny’s, maybe a paragraph. But the last sentence that referred directly to her didn’t make sense to Kala. It only confused her more:
One cannot live while the other one exists. A new Atlas shall reign and the potential must die. A beginning to the end and an end to the beginning. A new paradise shall be born. The Fated One will be the last.
The cost will be great, and the immortals will reign. The one that knows death will release the curse of balance. She will be born from the man with the power of death. He will sacrifice his life and his gift to save the balancer.
The Fated One is the first. The first of us all. The mother of us all, born into a human.
“What does it mean?” Kala peered up at Cronus.
Cronus smiled gently. “It means you were born with the power of Gaia.”
Crickets.
“Who?”
Irritated, he accused, “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“I’m sorry if I’m not a history major. Just tell me who the hell Gaia is and why she’s stuck inside me?” Kala felt a flood of relief, finally hearing some answers, but it was rapidly morphing into stress because she had more questions.
“Gaia is my mother,” Cronus answered. “She’s the Earth. As in Mother Earth.”
Kala could see that she had stretched Cronus’s every last nerve. “And I’m her?” This was going nutzoid fast.
“A part of you, yes. But my mother has been sleeping for thousands of years. She is still very much alive. So, no, it’s not like when you devoured Atlas. She simply placed a part of her power inside of you. But it was enough to consume Atlas, and it would be enough to consume any of us. Gaia’s powers are endless, even a small piece of it. But, Kala, she gave you her power so that you could save the world from the Grigori.” Cronus was dead serious.
Kala shook her head. “Oh, no. You’re not going to rope me into this little battle of yours. Owen is my dad and Talan is my… well he’s my… friend. And he doesn’t attack me with lightning bolts!” Cronus was a professional manipulator. Zeus had warned her and he was right. Cronus was trying to twist the prophecy so he could get her to do what he wanted her to do. It aggravated her immensely. “AND…the prophecy doesn’t say anything about stopping the Grigori, so you’re full of it!”
“It may not say it directly, but it’s implied,” Cronus argued. He didn’t like the fact that Kala didn’t automatically fall in line. She could see that he expected it of her.
“You haven’t been around humans in a really long time. You need to brush up on your persuasion skills. It’s implied?! That’s ridiculous. There was nothing about the Grigori implied or otherwise in that prophecy. You’re scared they’re going to take your power away and you want them sent back to their prison. Just be straight with me, I’d respect you a lot more.” Kala wasn’t going to put up with Cronus’s bull for a second. If he thought she’d turn against the only father she had ever known, or the one being who had her back at every turn? Forget it. “You’re delusional,” she added for measure.
“I’m delusional?” Cronus was taken aback. “The immortals will reign,” he quoted back to her. “Who do you think makes the immortals?”
“What are you talking about?” Kala wanted to slap some sense into this guy. “You’re the immortals, all of you freakazoids, including me now that I wolfed down one of you. Grigori can’t make immortals.”
“Can’t they? Let me show you what will happen if you do complete your mission.” Cronus’s eyes were full of fury and intensity.
It made Kala take a step back. “I don’t want to see…” That was a lie. Kala desperately wanted to see why destroying the cure for cancer was a good thing.
Cronus cut her off. “You do. I can see it in your eyes. That pet of Talan’s, John Fortski, invents something much more dangerous than a cancer cure. Because
his research is destroyed, he has to start from scratch. It’s because of that act that he discovers the formula that he’s been working his whole life to make.” Cronus’s eyes were wide with dread. “Kala. He gives humans immortality.”
Kala knew this was supposed to horrify her, but it gave her a sense of relief. If humans were immortal then they’d be cured of all diseases. “That’s kind of cool,” was her honest answer.
“Kind of cool? That could be the end to true immortal beings, including yourself, and you think it’s kind of cool!” Cronus was furious.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m pretty sure you’ll be just fine. Zeus said I’d be doing my job for another three hundred years. Yay. So, I think we’re all going to be okay.” Kala felt like she was dealing with a serious drama queen. A suit-in-tie-Titan drama queen, but a drama queen all the same. So what if humans found immortality? They’d certainly been looking for it for a long time. And it made Kala feel a lot better about her job. She still hoped Roberta could do it for her, but if she had to do it, now she knew Fortski would invent something even better. Balance. It was finally making sense.
“Do you want to see this wonderful future you think you’re going to be living in?” Cronus had a look on his face that pretty much told Kala she couldn’t refuse him.
Kala had seen what would happen if she didn’t wipe out the cure: mayhem and destruction. There wasn’t anything that Cronus could show her that would be worse than that. But she hadn’t seen the future of what would happen if she did destroy it. Her curiosity could never say no to a future vision, so it made it easy for her to say, “Sure.”
Cronus held out his hands and Kala tentatively took them. Trusting the Titan didn’t feel natural. Considering the only time she’d had contact with guy ended up in some kind of super-battle, she felt pretty justified in her wariness.
But he held onto Kala without zapping or attacking her.
As with Talan, the vision flooded over her like she was watching a holographic movie. As the years flew by it was like watching humanity on fast-forward. And Kala saw the real problem with immortality.
Grigori Returned (The Atlas Series Book 2) Page 17