Battle for the Blood (21 page)

Still, if I’d thought it through, I would have brought something to cover my wings when I wasn’t using them. As it was, I was going to be far too conspicuous. The streets might be mostly empty, but I doubted the woman in the window was the only one looking out. And cameras… I groaned as I thought about cameras. Traffic cameras, police surveillance, ATMs. Hopefully, Hera and I had flown high enough to avoid most of them, but
all
…that was probably pushing it.

We hadn’t been able to see the Pick Your Poison Pub from the rooftop of the building we’d landed on, and we couldn’t see it from the street. Hera’s GPS directed us around a corner, onto one of those streets that did nothing but connect two others that were meeting at an angle, forming a triangle in the middle. The pub was at the apex of the triangle. I didn’t know my magical theory. Hells, all I knew of magic was that some had it and some didn’t and that mine had rules that were changing by the day. But I suspected that being at a confluence might be important somehow.

I pulled Hera into a garbage alcove for one of the buildings nearby as we studied the pub. She nearly gagged at the smell wafting in from somewhere nearby. It was…fertile…as if entire civilizations of microorganism had risen and fallen in the area, leaving their dead to rot.

The pub was shaped something like a church, with a rounded peak at the top like a bishop’s hat, but inset with stained and painted glass panels representing various bottles, all looking old and some more apothecarian (if that was even a word) than spiritual (in the alcoholic sense of the word). Rather than brick like so many of the buildings around, it was made of irregularly shaped blocks of a lighter stone mortared together. The few windows were narrow and had wrought iron bars over them which matched the iron bands vertically marching up the door. It looked vaguely medieval, making me expect trestle tables and benches inside, ale served in tankards and drunken renditions of…whatever men sang drunkenly while grabbing for tavern wenches back in the olden days.

“After you,” I said to Hera.

We’d already decided not to play it coy. I wasn’t going to skulk around and peek in on the meeting and risk getting caught, totally blowing any potential trust before it could be built. We were going in together. Two for the price of one. After all, Hecate
had
invited me.

I couldn’t see the wards on the pub like I’d seen the barrier to Tartarus in Hades’s realm just before it blew, unleashing the titans. But I could certainly feel them, even from the stoop outside. They tingled on my skin, vaguely threatening. And that was new. If I’d encountered wards before, I’d certainly never known about them. Maybe it wasn’t the wards themselves pricking me like I was bathing in Pop Rocks. Maybe it was my ever-strengthening precog letting me know they were there.

Either way, I was very aware and more than a little nervous as Hera reached for the door, even though we were invited and I didn’t see what they had to gain by doing her damage before hearing her out.

Nothing happened. Or rather, the door handle turned as she twisted it and the door opened and no lightning or hellfire or demon shot out of anywhere to prevent our entrance. Hera stepped over the threshold, all of her parts still in place. She held the door open, inviting me to take it from her and do the same.

I’d come this far. I took the fatal step across the threshold and lived to tell about it.

Inside there was none of my imagined drunken revelry. There was hardly anyone at all. Only a few tables were occupied, and those entirely by women, all of whom watched us as we entered. Another seemed to come out of nowhere to fly toward Hera, though not literally as I would have done.

She was stunning—straight, gleaming golden hair, an ice-blue dress with a modern, above-the-knee cut but with belled sleeves that hearkened back to another time. And silver gladiatorial sandals that complemented her silver filigree necklace set with the most amazing moonstones.

“Sigyn?” Hera asked, stopping dead so that I nearly crashed into her. She sounded stunned, nearly breathless.

Sigyn?
As in Hermes/Loki’s wife…well, one of them anyway. Could it be? Just how big was this cabal?

“Hera!” Sigyn gushed, grabbing her right up in the hug of old friends too long apart. “Hecate said you’d come, but I couldn’t believe…”

As they were embracing, I noticed that the pub’s patrons were no longer seated, but had risen and begun to close around us. One even moved toward the door and lowered a bar across it, cutting us off from the outside world. I eyed them nervously, but didn’t make a move. I was here to join their band of merry (wo)men. Freezing or turning them to stone would probably start me off on the wrong foot.

Hera finally put Sigyn away from her, but Sigyn wouldn’t quite let go. “Let me look at you,” Hera said. “You haven’t changed in eons.”

“Neither have you.” Sigyn’s gaze swept her, eyes lighting with amusement when she noticed the suit. “Well, maybe you’ve gotten a little stodgier.” She turned toward her minions surrounding us. “Search them.”

Those talons she was holding on to Hera with—long, sharp and silver to match her accessories—only let go when two of the women moved up behind Hera and began the pat-down.

Hera looked like she could chew nails. “I may have gotten stodgier, but you’ve gotten a helluva lot more paranoid. Is this how you’re treating friends these days? Maybe you noticed, but I came under my own steam.”

“You brought a plus-one. You were told to come alone.”

Hera looked at me. “You try getting rid of her. I promise you, it’s harder than you think. Besides, Hecate invited her.”

I was being searched. Thoroughly, but not any more intrusively than any standard pat-down. I was glad I’d suggested leaving weapons behind. In any case, I still had my gorgon glare and my biting wit. Of course, having weathered Hermes for longer than any sane person should, Sigyn was probably immune to all that.

The problem was that when the pat-down was done, two of the women still held me. One on each arm. Under normal circumstances and if these had been normal women, I’d have broken the hold, no problem. Especially with my wings to help. But these women were like crazy bodybuilder types—not a one of them under five ten or eleven. Their arms were like steel girders. Their hair was all slicked down or braided back or barely there. Nothing to grab hold of in a fight. Sigyn’s shieldmaidens? Was I off on my mythology? Norse wasn’t quite my thing.

“So is this how it’s going to be?” Hera asked.

Sigyn stepped up to her, licked her finger and traced something on her forehead. A rune? A saliva rune? Gross.

Hera glared at her the whole time.

My precog was kicking and screaming and demanding that I not let Sigyn anywhere near me. I wished it could be a little more helpful. A little guidance on exactly what would happen if I allowed it would have been great. For instance, was I worried about cooties or full-scale bending toward Sigyn’s will, which was a whole lot more terrifying.

I flinched back when she got to me. I couldn’t help it. My wings flashed out, striking the women on either side of me, who had to take steps back, but they didn’t let go. My arms ached from the way they were holding me, stretching me between them like a wishbone. My feet started to rise up off the ground.

I could use that. The thought flashed as quickly as action, which I took, using my arms like pivot points, like I was the front line in a foosball game, my legs kicking outward, catching Sigyn in the chest. She staggered backward, and while I was off my feet with no leverage, the two who held me took me down to the ground. I slammed hard onto my wings and immediately started to thrash, determined that they wouldn’t hold me or that if they did, I wouldn’t be still enough for any runes to be laid on me.

But a third woman dropped beside my head and grabbed it in a viselike grip, holding me still as Sigyn recovered. She glared down at me and then dropped to my chest, knees to either side of my neck, making it hard for me to breathe. The urge to fight revved up stronger than ever. Yet she had me completely immobilized and gasping for air.

Sigyn licked her finger and drew the rune on my forehead just as she’d done with Hera, and I couldn’t do anything to stop her. When she was finished, she stood and got quickly out of the way of any thrashing feet.

The woman holding my head stood as well, and slowly those holding my arms released me too.

Was I harmless now? Powerless.

Hecate already knew about my gorgon glare. I had nothing to lose by trying it out. I started with the first of the women to meet my eye, the one who’d held my head.

“Freeze,” I told her fiercely.

She did, going so still she could have been a statue. I turned on Sigyn, who looked on me with amusement rather than anger. I hated that. “Freeze!” I said more forcefully.

She laughed.

Laughed.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t make you toothless. How would that serve our cause? But you can’t act upon me. Or Hecate. Or…anyone else to whom you’ll answer.”

“
Answer?
I don’t answer to anyone. Look, I came here—”

“For reasons all your own. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. We’re none of us altruists. We’ve seen enough to know there’s no such thing as selflessness in this world. Well, maybe once in a generation we get a Mother Teresa, but even she had her detractors. And now I don’t have to worry about turning my back.”

She looked at me, still sitting on the floor glaring up at her while I caught my breath. “You can get up now.”

I snarled at further evidence that I was subject to anyone’s will. I hadn’t expected things to go easily, but neither had I expected to get my forehead spit shined with a rune to prevent rebellion.

“Great,” I said, rising and brushing myself off, waiting for my dignity to return. And waiting… “So what now?”

“Now we talk about why you really came here and how we can help each other.”

We settled at one of the long tables, which were just as I’d expected them to be. She didn’t offer us refreshment. We weren’t breaking bread, which might have conferred on us some kind of guest status and accompanying obligations. We weren’t guests. For now, we were prisoners.

“I can’t speak for her,” Hera said, nodding my way, “but I’m here because this can’t continue. This plague hit even the women and children I vowed to protect. I thought they were safe; I thought I could keep them that way. I was wrong. If you have a way to stop all this, I want to be part of it. Whatever it takes.”

Sigyn eyed her before turning to me. “And you?”

“My motives are a lot less noble. Someone I lo—care for is seriously hurt. I can’t heal him. At least not in any way he’d thank me for.” It came easily because it was true. Ambrosia was always an option, but it was addictive as hell and it changed a person. Without any old blood running through his veins, Nick might not even survive the transformation it wreaked upon a person. And if he did…he’d never forgive me getting him hooked on it. Never. I could live with that if I had to, but the fact that he’d hate himself, or at least what he’d become…an addict…
that
I couldn’t do. But I could sacrifice myself. I could join these women if that’s what it would take. I could even convince myself enough to convince them. But I couldn’t leave the world in their hands. Not ultimately. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I didn’t think any of the conspirators were blameless to begin with.

“That’s it? You’re doing this
for a guy
?” The sneer in Sigyn’s voice was nearly absurd. Like I’d just dropped to the level of gum on her shoe. Good. Maybe she’d underestimate me at some point. It could be useful.

“Not just any guy,” I protested, knowing it wasn’t going to help my case.

“Of course not,” she said.

I remembered the…myth? story?…about Loki/Hermes being tied up in a cave somewhere for something horrible and Sigyn thanklessly catching the poison from a venomous snake in a bowl before it could drip onto his head, every once in a while having to desert him to empty the bowl. It had to have been a horrid existence for both of them, and, unlike Loki, she’d never done anything to earn it.

“You heard?” Sigyn asked suddenly, looking past me, past Hera, back toward what I assumed was the kitchen area, right now unlit and lost in shadows.

Hecate formed out of those shadows, or maybe just stepped forth from them. “I did.”

“What do you think?”

“That she’ll be very useful to us…as a hostage.”

Chapter Nineteen

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

—“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost

I tried to turn, and the sigil on my head flared, making me feel like my forehead was on fire. I ignored the pain, fighting to move through it, but it was too much, like the pain signals were disrupting everything else and no messages were getting to my arms and legs. I gave it up—momentarily anyway—to think of a better way. As soon as I did, the pain stopped and my body wanted to slip into bonelessness at the relief. Drying sweat soon cooled me down, maybe even too much. I sat there with the chills, glaring at Hecate.

“How could you think for a second that I’d make a better hostage than an ally? I want to end this more than anyone. I may not like you,” I said, knowing she could sense my complete sincerity on that score, “but I’ve worked with mortal enemies in the past to get things done. You know that. Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—”

“And what do they have to show for it?” she asked.

“Not being under Rhea’s thumb,” I bit back.

“So you woke the titan and you put her back to sleep. And no one’s thrown you a ticker-tape parade? I can hardly believe it. Sigyn, call the mayor!”

If I thought my gorgon glare would get through, Hecate would be as stiff as a bathroom brush.

“I stand by what I’ve said. You’ve seen me fight. You need me.”

The Grey Sisters had said as much. Hadn’t they? I thought back. They’d said I needed to get Perseus’s sword and defeat Namtar before they’d help me with my wings. They never actually said I
would
defeat him. Or that I was the only one who could.

Hecate was completely unmoved. “Fighters I have. I’m not worried about fighting our demons. What I need is a cure for any lingering effects.”

She reached into her wicked leather jacket and I tensed, thinking she was going for a weapon, even though my precog didn’t send out any warning signals. What she came up with was a cell phone, which she handed to me. I looked at her blankly.

She wiggled it in my face, indicating that I should take it. “Call him,” she ordered.

I took the phone, still unenlightened. “Call who?”

“Apollo. If anyone knows the whereabouts of his granddaughter…if anyone can get her here, it’s him.”

“Panacea?”

A million thoughts raced through my mind, from
but he doesn’t know
to
does she seriously think if he did, he wouldn’t have called her in by now.
But Hecate looked deadly serious. I couldn’t say any of it. I didn’t know what Hecate would do if she thought she had no more use for me. Plus, she wasn’t wrong about our needing Panacea. Maybe Yiayia had found some leads. Or maybe there was something on that smartphone we’d taken from the hospital… At worst, at least Apollo would know the situation.

I dialed his number and didn’t have to wait long for him to pick up. “Hecate, what the hell?” he asked. I could imagine steam coming out his ears. “What do you mean by running off, taking the sword, betraying us all—”

“It’s Tori.”

His tirade cut off midsentence. “Tori? What’s going on there?”

“I’m—”

Hecate grabbed the phone out of my hand and pushed her wild hair back so she could hear. “Hello, Sunshine.”

“Hecate, what the hell?”

“That’s right, darling. Hell on earth. Not exactly the way I would have done it, but…there it is. Yes, I have the sword and, yes, I heard that. You were talking practically loud enough to wake the dead. People always seem to do that with cell phones, don’t you find? Anyway, the sword isn’t all I have, as you may have surmised.”

She let the cursing and threatening go on for about half a minute and then cut him off. “Well, she said she wanted to help. I assume you do too. I’ve seen the way you look at each other, and I’m willing to make a trade. Panacea for the gorgon girl. All for the greater good. The countries of the world all get their cures…for a price…the people get their health back. Me and mine get all the power and money we could want. Everybody wins.”

“Don’t—”
do it
, I tried to yell, but at the first word out of my mouth, Sigyn snapped her fingers and my jaw locked. I couldn’t plead with him not to listen. I’d be damned if I’d be used as a pawn, but I couldn’t tell him. And we were too far apart for our strange empathy to work.

I lost what Apollo said next in my fight to be heard, but then Hecate jumped in again. “Time? Of course, darling. We’re looking for Panacea as well, you understand, and if we find her first, your gorgon girl will be of no use to us. So you take all the time you think you can afford. We’ll be waiting.”

Hecate hung up the phone and gave me an evil smile. “Take her to the freezer,” she ordered the brawny babes. They rose and grabbed for me when Hera finally spoke up.

“Are you sure you want to do that? I saw her defeat a demon almost single-handedly. Her blood…”

I glared and she shut up, but not before it was obvious to all that there was more to that sentence. I wondered what Hera was up to. Had she slipped up and given me away? She seemed too smart for that. There had to be some bigger game she was playing, but which side was she playing for? Did she want me to believe she just
oops
ed so I wouldn’t know her true loyalties, or did she think she was helping me by making me too useful to throw away?

Hecate raised a hand that apparently the others understood to mean halt. “Her blood what?” she asked Hera. Her dark eyes piercing and completely no-nonsense.

“Her blood can turn things to stone. She’s not as strong as a full gorgon, but she’s not wrong that you want her fighting by your side.”

“Why didn’t I know this?” she asked me suspiciously.

The sigil insisted that I answer. “Why didn’t I know you were a stone-cold bitch?” I asked in return.

Hera looked like she completely despaired of me, but I already knew whatever she was up to wouldn’t work and I had to get my licks in while I could.

“Take her away,” Hecate ordered. “And then bathe your blades in her blood.”

If I hadn’t already been chilled, that would have done it. I didn’t think she meant for them to kill me, but becoming a human pincushion didn’t sound like fun either. And what if they nicked an artery?

As they were dragging me out kicking and flapping, Hecate got a call. I stopped fighting entirely when the light of triumph flared in her eyes, the better to listen in. I wasn’t the only one waiting to hear. The women dragging me away had slowed almost to a stop, anticipating what would come. Hecate ended the call and looked at us with a feral smile, one that would frighten little children.

“Make it quick,” she said. “We’ve found him. We’re going in.”

Him?
Him who? Could it be Namtar? Were they going to do half my work for me and defeat the lord of all plague demons? Surely he wouldn’t be alone, not if Lyssa was right about hearing a call to his side, a call to action. And not if the demon I’d fought on the hospital roof was any indication. Were Hecate and her cadre ready for a war?

The dragging resumed, now at double speed.

“What about me?” Hera asked behind us.

“You’re going to have to prove yourself sooner or later. Now is as good a time as any.”

Then my guards and I were through a doorway, through the kitchen faster than I could locate, let alone grab, any knives and into…oh hell to the no…

We were headed straight to the kind of thick, reinforced metal, pull-handle door that screamed meat locker. If it was subzero—and weren’t they all?—I was in for a massive amount of trouble. Was it ironic that I froze people with my gorgon glare and that I was about to have my ass quite literally frozen off? No, I didn’t think so. Not at all. Alanis Morissette might have other thoughts on the matter.

I started to struggle again as if my life depended on it, which it very well might. They tried to thrust me in. I couldn’t reach out with my captive arms, but my wings belled out to make me too big for the doorway. Twin blows to my knees buckled me, and a powerful kick to my back tested the strength of those wings, which screamed as they hyperextended, but I didn’t give. Unfortunately, half on the ground as I was with my back bowed, I didn’t have the leverage to fight and I was facing the wrong way to freeze the shieldmaidens in their tracks.

The warrior women each grabbed a wing and twisted painfully. “Give up or we rip them off,” one threatened.

I had a moment of indecision. Could I really get rid of them that easily? But the wings had come in handy more than once, and…

Piercing pain blanked out all rational thought as something slid sharply into my back, scraping a vertebra. My wings sagged with the pain and a second slicing sensation went through me.

“She did say to wet our blades,” one of the women said, her voice dripping malice.

Nothing registered but the pain. There were more knife thrusts or sword thrusts or… My vision started to swim and my strength failed. I fell on my face, just enough awareness left to turn my head so I wouldn’t mash my nose when I crashed onto the concrete. My cheekbone took the brunt of it. Broken maybe. Definitely bruised. Not important in the grand scheme of things. I lay there freezing and bleeding, internally screaming in pain until darkness set in.

I fought it back. As tempting as it was to fade out and let unconsciousness take away the pain…or at least my awareness of it…I was afraid that if I passed out in the frigid freezer I might not wake up again. My body would go into hibernation mode to conserve energy, and if no one came for me soon enough, I might never wake up. I’d die in my sleep.

I was so tired, though. So drained. My teeth didn’t even have it in them to chatter. It was all I could do to open my eyes every time they wanted to close, to blink away the unformed darkness, especially when all that did was reveal blurry shades of gray.

At least the cold would slow my bleeding, maybe enough so that my crazy healing could kick in. But I couldn’t wait for that. I didn’t know how the battle would go, whether anyone would be coming back or what they’d do when they did—wet more blades or make the poor trade to Apollo for his long-lost granddaughter.

Even if he could find her, would he turn her over?

He wouldn’t.
Couldn’t.
The fate of the world depended on it. If he gave Panacea up to the cabal, they’d use her up, sell her miracle cure at a cost. Anyone or any country unable to afford the treatment would be out of luck. Whole countries might die out. The void created—the battle over boundaries and resources—would cause no end of chaos.

To avert that horrible future, all Apollo had to do was sacrifice me. I knew he
could
do it, but would he? Whatever his faults—and I was having more and more trouble seeing them—he’d never once left me behind or not come when I called. I wondered if my
“Don’t—”
had gotten through and if he’d take that much to heart. Most of me wanted to believe he would. The rest of me wanted to want to believe, but was secretly terrified of dying this way.

The cold hadn’t been too bad at first. It had barely even registered over my pain. But now it crept in and took root. I could practically feel myself dying by centimeters, as though ice were replacing the water in my veins. I had to get up and get moving. I had to keep the blood flowing. But my body didn’t want to react to my call to action. I wondered if one of the shieldmaidens’ blades had severed my spinal column.

If I couldn’t move, at least maybe I could blush, get my blood pumping that way. I tried to summon up the view of Apollo in our last quiet moment—naked, sated, smoothly stroking his hands over my stomach and breasts, so warm and wonderful… Visions of Nick crept in unsummoned—showering, soaping, just as I’d jumped him in that hotel in Delphi, before…

My two men. The two loves of my life…

Crap. Now?
Really?
Lying prone on an icy-cold slab waiting for death to overtake me and
now
the L-word comes out? And indecisively at that. Loves. Plural. Life didn’t work like that. Apparently, death thought it got its own set of rules. If all went well…if Apollo did what he should…I’d never have to choose. They could go on for the rest of their lives mourning me as a tragic, heroic figure and I didn’t have to break any hearts.

I wallowed in that for a time. There was no telling how long. Cold had meaning. And pain. Time, not so much. But the thought of me as a tragic figure, maybe something from Shakespeare—Ophelia or Juliet or…

Hell with that.
Two critically lovesick women without the experience to realize that “it gets better” was more than a mantra. I was
not
going out that way.

I gathered up my strength, trying to pull my arms in, to get them under me so they could push me up to a seated position, so that the minimum amount of flesh was pressing the cold, cold ground. My hands twitched, but that was about all. My body wouldn’t obey. Well, I didn’t listen to anyone else. Why should the contrary stop at my own mental doorstep?

I was about to try again when the air in front of me whirled and my stomach threatened to rebel. A cyclone of icy air and then a stillness in its midst and a pinprick of light, which irised out until I could see an eye and a nose, and then an entire face.
Hermes.

“Hermes,” I said brilliantly, thrilled to hear my voice again. I was afraid Sigyn had stolen it for good.

“Tori, oh thank gods.”

“You were worried about me?” I asked, wasting what little breath I could catch in the frigid air on that bit of wonder. Hermes and I had fought on the same side, but usually it was because we had no choice…or because I’d blackmailed or bribed him.

He smirked. “
Agape
, the world would be so much less intriguing without you in it. As the God of Chaos, I approve this message.”

I knew my eyes could still roll when they did that very thing.

“Can you get me out of here?” I asked.

He looked around, as much as he could through his little window. “Freezer, huh? She wasn’t always such a cold bitch.”