by Gabby Fawkes
The creature was a bear. At least, it would have been – if it had been normal-sized. This bear was as big as a woolly mammoth, and riddled with green-pulsing veins. Rank, too; it smelled like something long turned rancid and foul. And, most of all, it was enraged.
With one massive paw, it was ripping its claws through the giant M of a nearby McDonalds, while letting out a growl that had my very brain shivering.
“What is that thing?” Demi said. “Not a… bear shifter?”
“Not one I’ve ever seen,” Artemis said grimly. Her toned arms were busy getting out her bow and arrow as Apollo did the same. “Bear shifters are normally, you know, bear-sized.” Her eyes were half-disgusted, half-horrified as she shook her head. “That thing is… not natural.”
Already, she’d loaded an arrow onto her bow, and, in time with her brother, let an arrow fly. Both buried into the bear’s furry butt. It reared up, twisting around with an ear-shattering roar.
“Looks like all the reggies got away, at least,” Axel said, looking around. Seeing us, he shoved us back behind a steel garbage can. “You three stay here.” He ran back to join the battle, his hand already formed into a punch-ready fist.
“Why have us come if we can’t help?” Kian muttered to us.
“Because he doesn’t trust his old BFF not to lure you away,” the blonde sneered before taking off at a run.
She was referring to Hades, I assumed, which was fair enough. But why was she being a bitch about it? It wasn’t my fault the Olympians were all part of one big, unhappy, supernatural, and super dysfunctional family. Maybe it was the whole thing about her and Axel having a past.
“Uh, is that a belt?” I asked, watching as she took some sparkly magenta fabric thing off her waist and began swinging it over her head.
Next instant, it was airborne and slicing into the bear’s leg, taking off a chunk of fur and some flesh too.
“Looks like it works, whatever it was,” Kian said in an impressed voice.
“Maybe too well,” Demi said, yanking us to the side as the bear charged the blonde’s way – which was unfortunately our way too.
Dion and Axel were on it. First, Axel slammed punches into the bear’s front paw. It withdrew it. Then, Dion aimed what looked like some sort of price scanner at the beast.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked rhetorically.
“A taser!” Dion turned to wave it at us, smiling with apparent disregard for the imminent danger he was in. “Cool, right?”
Next second, the bear’s giant paw struck him, sending him flying like a ball punted by a lion.
Oh, crap.
Dion landed on a lit-up advertising screen and smiled, waving at us again. “Don’t worry, I’m okay!”
And that was when the bear charged into the screen.
Oh, shit, shit, shitake. Seeing the others risk their necks while we just hid here was unbearable. I itched to get involved. And the voice inside me burned.
LET US FIGHT! JOIN! BURRRRRNNN…
-Yeah, no.
My PV tried a different tack: By now we could’ve been having roast bear.
-You’re gross, you know that?
And you’re weak.
I couldn’t argue with that.
The screen Dion was on toppled. Axel took off at a run and leapt onto the beast’s back. Artemis and Apollo pelted it with more arrows. The blonde flung her belt thing at it.
It looked like they were doing decent against it, but still.
Perhaps you mean to intervene only once your friends have all perished and are demolished beyond all recognition? PV simpered.
This time I ignored it, along with the way my birthmarks were scalding as I clenched onto my pant leg.
My PV was wrong anyway. The tide was turning in the Olympians’ favor. Under the onslaught, the bear was staggering off, its head drooping our way. Green drool dribbled out of its fanged lower lip.
Ridiculous, but I almost felt bad for the monstrous thing. It almost seemed sad. I mean, looking into its forest green eyes… I…
Hold up.
I gasped. Its eyes were green - Forest green – just like Jeremy’s. And then it sneezed – once, twice, three times…
No, no, please John no.
But my gaze was horror-struck, enrapt. There was no denying it. The monstrous bear’s eyes – the color, the shape – they were just a bigger version of Jer’s. And how it had sneezed three times.
Puzzles of memory slid into place. Jeremy’s voracious appetite toward the end. His penchant for wandering. How he’d growled at Jenna.
My gaze dug into the bear, willing it to be anything else. But this monster – this enraged killer the Olympians were fighting - was Jeremy. I didn’t know why I knew, I just did. The bear was Jeremy.
Which meant, as class A insane as it was, I also knew what I had to do.
“Jer,” I said, stepping out. “It’s me.”
“Tala.” Demi said sharply, grabbing at me, but I continued ahead, lifting my arms.
Jeremy had stopped moving. Maybe he was considering his next attack, but he had stopped, cocking his head to the side. He was watching me.
I stepped forward. Whatever happened, I had to try. I had to do this. For Jeremy.
“Jer,” I said. “You can stop now. It’s okay. It’s us. It’s me, Demi, Kian.”
I gestured back to my friends, who had lunged forward to tug at me. I broke free. Took another step forward.
“Tala, stop,” Axel snapped. He was still on the bear’s back, paused too.
“Just give me a chance to talk to him,” I said, then shifted my attention to Jeremy.
For a few seconds, everything stopped. No one moved. Even the far-off sounds of panic and traffic seemed to die down too.
I took another step forward. Held up both my hands.
“Jeremy, it’s all right now. We’re going to help you,” I said.
Sure, Jer was a giant murderous mutant bear, but we’d be able to help him. He had to see that.
Jeremy cocked his head to the other side, then bared his teeth. And charged straight for me.
22
“No!” Axel roared.
He rushed down the bear’s face. Punched it in the nose.
The bear let out a whine, stopping short. It swiped up. Axel plummeted to the pavement.
An alarm went off. I clapped my hands over my ears, but it shrilled straight to the brain.
The sky swarmed with darkness. The black-clad agents were everywhere – spilling out of a steel aircraft hovering above, landing on the ground and racing past us. Their guns were raised.
“No!” I cried, trying to grab one of the men racing by me.
My hands slipped on the slick fabric of his coat. He kept on running without a look back.
“Jeremy!” Demi wailed.
Great, so now she freaking believed me.
But it was too late. The agents were already raining a barrage of needled bullets at Jeremy’s fluffy brown pelt.
“They’re trying to stun him,” Axel said, pulling on my arm. “C’mon!”
“That’s our friend!” I yelled, grabbing onto Demi and Kian so I wouldn’t be dragged away. “I’m not leaving without him.”
“There’s no time for this,” Axel barked, then lowered his voice, “If you stay, the DSA will catch you.”
So that’s who these agents were. Still, I didn’t budge. Tightened my hold on my friends.
“We can’t go,” Kian said steadily.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” One of the agents had stopped. Its voice was metallic, genderless, ageless. Probably because it was coming through the weaponlike helmet on its head.
Axel stepped in front of us. “We came to help.”
“Unnecessary.” The agent gestured back to the scene, where poor Jeremy was tottering, about to collapse. Looks like he’d been put down, after all.
“Who are you?” the agent repeated.
“I’m Axel. But you might know me better as
Ares, the god of war,” Axel said smoothly. “I’m looking past all that, though. New millennium, new me.”
“Yes.” The agent didn’t even look at him, had its weird helmet turned to my friends and me. “Who are your companions?”
Oh shit. The DSA agent had us now.
Damnit, I should’ve just listened to Axel and run when we had the chance. We were surrounded by all sides by the agents now. If this one didn’t like our answer… there’d be no getting out of here. Not with it being four against hundreds.
I looked around for the other Olympians, but there was no sign of them.
“We’re Mary, Olivia and Bethany,” Demi said coolly. “Axel's reggie friends.”
Whether the agent bought it was hard to say, since just then we heard a whoop.
It was Dion. He stood on top of a huge lit-up screen, one of the few that had been left undamaged – and that now showed a beautiful leg with a pretty purple razor against it.
Somehow, he’d gotten twenty or so people up there with him. They looked slightly dazed, but happy enough.
“C’mon everybody!” he was exclaiming. “Can-can time!”
“Is that Dionysus?” I heard one agent hiss to another.
“Yes,” the other confirmed. “He’s banned. Which means…”
“Arrest him,” the first said.
“C’mon,” Axel said, tugging me and the others along.
It was only a few seconds of shoving through the wall-to-wall agents that we heard the far-off cry, “Hey! Stop them!”
The agents got the memo too late. Already, Axel was bulldozing us through the last of them, sprinting back toward the building we’d come in.
“Please tell me we’re not going back to the fountain.” Kian groaned.
“We have slightly bigger issues right now, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I hissed.
A look back found a wave of agents giving chase. And they weren’t all that far off either.
Demi took my raised hand. “Don’t.”
But flames would slow them down so nicely…
“Demi’s right,” Kian said, as we entered the building. “That’ll just prove we’re not who we said. Anyway – look.”
In between us and the agents, Artemis, Apollo and the blonde had reappeared, and were blocking them from continuing.
“Thank God there’s still some respect for the gods,” Axel said, rushing through the building’s revolving door. We made for the fountain and he lunged up and onto the coin-filled fountain’s edge. We reluctantly followed.
And then we were in and the water was swirling again. I heard a strangled yell, and then just the bubbling hiss of flowing water.
“What do you mean about respect for the gods?” I asked once I got my breath and we were out in the bathroom.
“Not for me, of course,” he said. “Or Dion. Just generally, many of the gods are still held in esteem since they’re seen so rarely. Kind of like reggie celebrities. Especially Apollo, since he’s interfered a few times to save some magical beings in trouble. Even a few reggies too, making sure it’s passed off okay.”
“Uh, what are we doing in the Flying Narwhale?” Kian asked as I clocked the unmistakable plank walls and grimy ceiling of the magical watering hole. The footed bathtub we’d gotten out of looked clean enough, at least.
“Avoiding Hera,” Axel said. “She’ll have heard about the incident and be…royally pissed.”
“Because she…” I began.
“Doesn’t like interfering, exactly,” Axel said. Glancing at his reflection in the shattered mirror shard on the wall, he smoothed some wild waves down. “Which is smart, considering how tight a ship the DSA and the ruling body tries to run. Sure, they show us a bit of token deference and all, but at the end of the day, they have sovereignty over the earth.”
“What was Dion doing though? Was that a…?” Kian asked.
“Distraction, yeah. The DSA would love the chance to catch him, since he’s been banned. Although if he’s caught…” Axel’s lips spread into a thin line.
“But why was he banned?” she said. “Doesn’t sound very deferent.”
“Ah, that.” Axel smirked a little. “Served him right, really. He was organizing these insane parties. Drinking until you collapsed… among other things.” His gaze flickered my way and I dropped mine to my feet. No way could he know what I’d imagined doing with him, what I was imagining doing right now...
“He was doing pretty well in the 60s for a while too there, with all the free love and that. But they were too intense for most reggies. Some came away with brain damage, others mental illnesses, dissolved marriages. All temporary, of course. Except the marriages. Anyway, that was a few decades back, and when he wouldn’t let up, the ruling body finally had to ban him for life.”
“Wait –you mean…?”
“He’s never allowed on Earth again. At least, not legally.” Axel walked over to the bathroom door and paused. “Of course, Dion still finds ways to sneak back from time to time. Glastonbury, Coachella, or to crash one of his old buddies’ birthdays. Stuff like that. He’ll have to lay low for a while after this one.”
“For years, most likely,” Dion said glumly, clambering out of the bathtub. The water had plastered his curls onto his head like a fluffy helmet, which he shook to no avail.
Regarding the three-legged tub, he scowled. “When’s Cruestacio ever gonna fix this mess? I’ve offered to buy him a new one at least six or seven times now.”
“Yeah, not going to happen,” Axel said.
Already Dion’s gaze was elsewhere, a vague smile on his face. “Oh, how I miss reggies.”
“You just miss how brainless and easy to control they are,” the blonde said, primly getting out of the tub and striding by all of us and out of the bathroom without another look.
“Ah, Aphie,” Dion said, pressing a hand to his heart in mock sincerity. “Such a joy.”
“Has she been like this…” Axel began.
“Since you left and Hephaestus separated from her, yeah, basically,” Dion said.
“That’s Aphie?” I said. “So you mean…”
“Aphrodite can be moody,” Apollo said, one leg out of the bathtub, Artemis beside him. “But she’s on our side.”
Kian tipped her head to mine, whispering, “How much you wanna bet Aphro and Ares got it on big time?”
I said nothing, although my heartbeat ramped up.
That still didn’t mean that now… I mean, hell, Axel was looking at me right now!
Not that it mattered. Even if Axel was attracted to me too, now wasn’t the time to go exploring that. Not when I still didn’t know if I was a permanently murderous dragon shifter or not. Plus, there was the whole age difference thing. He was immortal, and I was all of eighteen…
“Anyway, we might as well have some soup and warm up,” Artemis said, shivering. “Haven’t been here in a while.”
“It’s been too long,” Dion agreed, eyeing the bar hungrily.
“The whole family be gracin’ me!” Cruestacio said, beaming at Apollo and the others. “What’s th’ occasion?”
On the edge of the bar, an antique box TV sputtered an image that made my blood run cold. On it was Jer in his bear form, being swarmed by the DSA. The caption read: Monster Terrorizes Time Square.
“Aye, yeh’ve heard?” Cruestacio nodded to the TV. “Bastards made me get it out, they did.”
At the word ‘bastards,’ he swept his arm out. Unlike the last time we’d been here, the room was packed, buzzing with agitated discussion. There was a nervous energy to the place. It was unsettling.
“Never seen anything like it, what do ya wager?” a pointy-hatted old man asked his blobby companion.
“A thing that ugly?” her fleshy lips said, her bulging eyes rapt on the screen. “Has to be some kind of spell gone wrong.”
The old man pounded his hand on his table. “Always blaming the witches, ya are!”
“Well, what else could it be?”
; “Our school,” I said quietly to my friends.
We separated ourselves from the crowd and went somewhere more private to talk.
“You don’t think…” Demi began weakly.
“C’mon,” I said. “That was Jer, you saw him.”
“I know,” she said sadly. “But couldn’t there have been some kind of mistake, like…”
“Like what?” Kian said acidly. “They accidentally dropped the become-a-monster goo on him at his new school?” She got out a silver lipstick tube, eyed it angrily, then slid it back in her pocket. “Guys. We know what the likeliest explanation is.”
“That whatever was going on at school was bad,” I said quietly. “Really bad. And has to be stopped.”
“We still have to save Jer, too,” Demi said.
“Of course,” I agreed. “That’s our first priority.”
“But how? It’s not like we can just waltz right into wherever the DSA headquarters are-”
“No one knows where the DSA base is, my dear,” a woman with a pinched nose and cat-eye glasses chuckled from a nearby table.
“Thanks for that,” I muttered, moving away. My heart sank. It had been a slim hope – after all, we weren’t exactly going to break into an armed, guarded base. But now even that tenuous lifeline was gone.
My gaze returned to the TV screen and my heart fell. The camera was panning up close to Jer’s livid drooling face, with the caption, MONSTER, flashing in and out.
Kian looked away. Demi winced. But I didn’t let my gaze leave the horrible sight. That was no monster. That was my friend. And the Jer I knew would never have hurt someone by choice. Which meant something horrible had happened to him – was still being done to him. And we had to stop it. No matter what.
“I say, why’d they no’ kill ‘im and be done with it,” Cruestacio called to the crowd, who voiced their hearty approval, with upthrust beacons and calls.
“Because maybe it’s not his fault!” I protested, my fire burning inside me.
The room suddenly went very quiet. Seemed like every head in the room turned my way.