Battle for the Blood (22 page)

“Hecate?” I asked, confused.

“Sigyn. This is her handiwork, right? I feel her touch all over you.” He was Hermes enough to waggle his brows at that, like there might be another meaning that would involve nudity and perhaps JELL-O. Or maybe pudding. “Her wards are strong. She always was a rune master. Or mistress, I suppose you’d say.” Again the brow waggle. “But no. I learned ages ago to get around her runes so that I could sneak out and—well, never mind all that. But getting out myself is one thing. Getting in or tinkering remotely…I’m trying, but I can’t make any promises. I just wanted to see if you were okay. Apollo had a bad feeling…”

“I’m not doing well, but I’m alive. For now. Tell Apollo not to give in. Tell him to find Panacea, but not turn her over. Save the world. I’ll take care of myself.”

“He’s already looking. We found something on that phone you filched from the hospital. Something about a miracle healer in Uganda. Whoever’s phone it was didn’t believe it, but the hospital admins were grasping at straws, willing to try anything. And your grandmother sent a message, about a Doctors Without Borders group that had encountered the same thing. We’re trying to trace the leads.”

Hermes hesitated before saying more, and my heart sank. “One more thing you ought to know. Just before I opened this window, something happened. Some kind of call went out or something. Suddenly Lyssa went insane. I mean really insane. Insane even for her.” Okay, I got it. “Her eyes went all-over red and she fought like a Fury.”

“And?” I said.

“Lyssa escaped. Your friend Lau wanted to get her dragon and go after her. Nick told her no. Even he can sense it. There’s a war coming. We need to stick together and not spread our troops too thin.”

“You think Namtar put out an APB, like
Calling All Demons
.”

“Something like that.”

“It makes sense. Hecate, Sigyn and their minions are on the warpath. If they’ve gone after Namtar, he may be calling in reinforcements.” My teeth were starting to chatter now, which made it seriously hard to talk. It was a good and bad sign—good that my body had the energy, bad that it needed to expend it so uselessly. I was losing heat faster than I could generate it.

“What are the chances the two sides will wipe each other out?” I asked.

Hermes eyed me, and not, per usual, like a piece of meat. “You’re blue,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve got to get moving, get your blood pumping until I can find a way around these wards and get you out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said wryly. No point telling him what he couldn’t do anything about, like the fact that I was effectively paralyzed and that my blood was pooling rather than pumping. I couldn’t tell him anything he might pass along to Apollo that would distract him from what needed to be done. “Tell Apollo…and Nick… Hell, just save the world, okay. I’ll tell them myself when we come out the other end of things.”

“Tell them what?” he asked, eyebrows raised, leaning forward in anticipation.

“Tell them to play nice,” I hedged.

“Is that all?” Nick asked, suddenly in-frame, pushing Hermes out of the way.

“No,” I said, “but you’ll have to wait on the rest.”

Coward,
I called myself. But I’d either have to live with that or I wouldn’t.

The portal started to contract suddenly, and I called out, “What’s happening?”

“The wards are shutting me down,” Hermes said, only his lips visible in the window now. It was disconcerting. “More soon…I hope.”

And with that, the window popped out of existence, and I was left alone in my meat locker of doom.

The shivering got bad then. Crazy bad. My arms, my legs, even my stomach seemed to jitter with the attempt to stay warm. I tried again to move, and this time my hands clenched, but that was as far as I got.

I lay there bemoaning the loss of my ambrosia. I’d have done anything to kick the addiction back when it had its hooks into me, but now that I’d unnaturally been “cured” by whatever was making me into the winged wonder and turning my blood to magic, I was no longer susceptible to its more amazing properties, like the miraculous healing. My body could heal itself now. I only wished it were quicker about it. But maybe coming back from paralysis and near death took a little time.

The trembling became absurd, its own exquisite torture. I wasn’t thinking about the guys anymore. Or escape. Or anything but surviving the cold. I had to shut my eyes to protect them from freezing, hold in what warmth I could. Already they felt like mere marbles—dry, glassy and going on useless. My hands were so cold they burned, and I hugged them tightly into myself, feeling a moment of elation when I
could
do that, realizing that movement was coming back. I curled into a fetal position. Just long enough to get my core temperature up, I told myself. Just to get warm enough to make myself sit.

But with my eyes closed and myself all curled up on the floor, I was in danger of falling asleep, going out like a light that might never be relit.

Cranky about it, I forced myself to uncurl. It felt like the hardest thing in the world. I hissed in pain as my fiery-cold left hand hit the concrete to push myself into sitting, and I had to work every muscle to help myself along. Every single one of them screamed. Along with the popping and realignment of several vertebrae that had gotten nicked by the blades, I was my own one-woman horror show.

What was the scientific principle? Something about an object at rest tending to stay at rest. I wanted to be that object and at the same time I knew it for a death sentence.

And sitting, as monumental as it felt, was only the first step. I knew I had to stand, to move, to keep myself awake and the blood pumping, like Hermes said. But it was going to have to wait. I was still breathing through the pain. With things snapping back into place, the nerves seemed to be reknitting or newly able to get their messages through, and they mostly seemed to consist of profanity and pain signals.

I tried the in-through-the-nose and out-through-the-mouth thing, my breath coming out like I was Puff, the Magic Dragon. The cold seemed to crystallize any moisture in my nose until I could picture little icicle stalactites dripping down from the top of it, cutting off airflow.

Enough!
I could live or I could die, but I was not throwing myself a pity party on the way out.

I got my legs under me and tried to rise, but they were having none of it. I was going to have to alligator-crawl to a shelf and pull myself up, which meant bare skin touching subzero metal and likely losing that very skin.

I tried one more time to get myself to stand on my own steam. Two deep breaths, trying through force of will to send strength and energy to my lower extremities. Okay, two more breaths. And then…

I forced myself up in a rush and miraculously I rose, but not steadily. I stumbled into the door, catching myself on my hands and pulling them back with a hiss when they freeze-burned on the frozen door. I blinked several times, trying to wet my eyes enough to see in more than blurs. It would work for a fraction of a second and then my eyes would cloud over again like a frosty windshield.

I couldn’t see whether my hands were chapped red or growing dangerously white, but I had a sense. I prayed my superhealing would keep them from frostbite. I didn’t want to lose my hands. My wings, maybe, but not my hands. Or my feet. Or…

I pushed all of that out of my mind and reached half-blindly for the door, running my hands over it for a protrusion of any kind. Surely there was some kind of fail-safe for anyone who might get locked in. My hands were so frozen I couldn’t feel what was beneath them, but I would know if they bumped into something like a knob or a handle.

Which they did. I could hardly believe it was anything so simple. A push bar. A freakin’ push bar, like a school or a library might have to allow people to get out in a hurry, say in the case of fire. My heart leapt, suddenly upping my blood flow and giving me hope.

I pushed into the bar with everything I had, just in case the freezing temperature made it stick, and…nothing. It barely even compressed. It certainly didn’t spill open the door, releasing me into the pub and escape.

Locked.
Well duh. Had I really thought it would be that easy? Had brain freeze set in already?

My legs wanted to give out and slide me back to the floor, but I wouldn’t let them. I pushed myself back from the door before my hands became permanently attached and stood, alone and chattering in the center of the freezer, wondering what next.

I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and then chafed my upper arms and shoulders as best I could with them as I shuffle-paced the small space.

I don’t know how long I chafed and froze and paced, growing slower with every turn until I was hardly moving at all. A snail could have run circles around me. It seemed like an eternity. It could have been an hour or two or five…when my internal alarms started going off. Like I didn’t know I was in danger.

Then suddenly something slammed into the door with enough force to shake my foundations and I realized danger of another kind had come to my door.

Chapter Twenty

It came again, something huge knocking into the freezer hard enough to, I imagined, dent the outer door. But inside, nothing changed.

My hands were frozen into claws without any feeling left, but I bumped them up against the push bar, trying to budge it. Again nothing.

Outside, a battle raged. Maybe the cabal had retreated and Namtar had followed them back to base, ready to eradicate. I was torn about that. The bad guys came out on top, no matter which side won. And I was in no position to stop it. But where was Hera in all of this? And whose team was she playing for?

That question was answered a minute later when the meat-locker door opened and she stood there staring in.

“Quick,” she said. “The fighting has moved into the main room, but…” She grabbed my arm and propelled me out of the freezer, chafing my arms quickly to try to warm me. I’m sure it would have hurt if I could still feel. “Tori, they’re not winning. Even with the arrival of Hušbišag and her army, there are too many demons. And your blood was only good for the first three or four. They need you.”

Wait, Hušbišag, the skeleton queen? Last I knew, she and Hecate were trying to kill each other over Perseus’s grave. Had that all been pageantry to allow Hecate to gain our trust and learn our secrets? Or had Hušbišag been recruited later? Gah, so many questions, so little time.

I could hear the crashing and fighting and cursing coming from the main part of the pub, but I couldn’t move yet, certainly not fast enough to save myself from any onrushing danger.

“You said
they
need me,” I pointed out, working it through for myself more than for her. Presumably,
she
already knew which side she was on.

“Yes, will you come?” she asked.

There was a massive crash and a chunk of wall blew out between the kitchen and pub area. A beast came hurtling through it that I couldn’t make any sense of at first. There were fledgling feathers and a beak of sorts, but also a reptilian sort of tail with a sailfin at the back. Not quite archaeopteryx or pterodactyl or winged serpent, but something of all of these. About the size of a goat. It flapped furiously, fighting its trajectory and getting itself straightened out. As soon as it did, it spotted us with eyes that were primeval and filled with malice. It snapped its beak menacingly at the sight.

“Weapon?” I asked Hera.

She held up the handle she’d apparently ripped off the freezer door to liberate me.

“Great,” I said. I looked the beast straight in those evil eyes and ordered, “Freeze!” through still-chattering teeth.

It faltered for a second in the air before plummeting toward the ground, but the paralysis wore off just shy of a crash-landing, and it pulled up at the last second into a glide, gaining momentum in the short space. It quickly turned the glide into a strafing run and swooped up toward our heads.

“Get down!” I told Hera, throwing her to the floor to be sure she obeyed.

I ducked with her, and the beast sailed over our heads, but wheeled in the air like a remote-controlled copter to come for us again.

Down was apparently the wrong decision. It made us sitting ducks. I realized it the moment I twisted to see the beast incoming, beak out like a lance.

I jumped up into its path, shielding Hera, and reached out my frozen-claw hands. If it pierced me—and there was little chance that it wouldn’t—maybe I could bleed all over it and affect something that way.

Already coming in low, the beast couldn’t correct quickly enough and crashed into me at thigh level.

I was still frozen enough to numb the pain, but not stop it entirely. I caught the beast’s body in both my hands before it could veer off for another run at us. The thing thrashed and struggled so that I could hardly hold it in my frostbitten hands, but I managed to hang on and launch toward one of the food-prep stations. Stainless steel. Sturdy as they come.

The demon craned its neck and bit down on one hand holding it, catching the fleshy part between my thumb and fingers. It ripped away nerves, tendons, muscle. My grip started to slip but I held on long enough to slam the body down on the prep table like I was cracking open a coconut.

The beast’s body stiffened suddenly, and I realized my blood was taking effect. Within seconds, it had turned to stone in my hands.

One fight was over, but others were ongoing. Quickly, I pulled open drawers, looking for a knife or, better yet, a bazooka. But all I found was a set of kabob skewers. They would do. I was already bleeding, so I rolled two around in the freely flowing blood, sucking air in between my teeth to keep in the howl of pain and focusing hard to keep my grip on them with my frozen fingers.

Hera was up now, peeking through the busted wall into the main part of the pub. I joined her there, in time to see a monstrous thing, nearly the size of Eu-meh, looking half man, half winged demon. Like something out of Revelations.

There was no doubt about the half man, because he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, but was almost hairy enough not to need it…almost. He had several sets of bony protrusions, something like horns, across his head, poking up out of the mane that, coupled with his somewhat feline mouth, made him look leonine…though one done up in the colors of night and shadow. The hair covered his body, thinner over the extremities and thickest in the ruff over his shoulders and down his chest. His legs were back-bent like a lion’s as well—or like the typical conception of a goat-legged demon. A tail thrashed, but there was nothing leonine about that. It was a scorpion’s tail. Segmented, sinister, and with a gleaming poisoned tip that made me quake just looking at it.

As we watched, that tail struck at a woman on the floor before him with her arm raised as if it could protect her. I hadn’t even noticed her before in my shocked awe over the creature, and with her back to us. I wouldn’t have recognized her now, but for that dress. Sigyn.

Without thought, I hurdled through the hole in the wall, wings flapping as soon as they were through, desperate to save her from a nightmare. All thoughts that maybe they’d destroy each other gone from my head. I couldn’t watch it happen.

But I was too late. The stinger bit deeply into her side before I could reach her. She convulsed around it, practically hugging the spike to herself momentarily, before her whole body went slack and she seemed to melt into the floor.

I hit the beast with a bloody skewer in each hand, aiming for the heart, but those eyes—odd rectangular irises gleaming like twin forges—burned into me, branding me with scorn for my puny little effort. He batted me away like I was nothing, and I went flying, straight into…Lyssa.

I didn’t register that at first, only that I’d hit a woman rather than a demon…or so I thought. Then her arms clamped around me, and I could feel the madness bleed into me. A red haze overtook my vision, and my heart began to race—too fast, like it might burst out of my chest. But it was the violence that most wanted to explode out of me. I wanted to kill. I didn’t much care what. Everything in my path seemed a place to start.

I’d left the skewers behind in the monster’s chest. I was unarmed, facing away so that I couldn’t hit Lyssa with my glare.

Someone else hit her for me.

Hera called Lyssa’s name, and when she looked, caught her with a blow to the jaw, which made her loosen her grip on me just enough that my wings flared and busted me free. Lyssa whirled, snarling at Hera, who was chanting something under her breath. I thought I caught the word
wither
, and then Lyssa seemed to dry out almost before our eyes, shrinking in on herself.

Talons sunk into my shoulders before I could see if she fought it back, and I reached up to claw at them, to try to get them loose. Hera grabbed for them as well, repeating her spell with even more force this time, but the talons didn’t let loose. The demon uttered a trilling cry that seemed almost of triumph or mockery.

“The Maniai was one thing, but the plague demons aren’t susceptible to my magic,” she said.

The thing that had hold of me was already lifting me off the floor, my wings crushed to its chest so that I couldn’t fly off on my own. No wings, no footing meant no leverage. Squirming alone wasn’t getting me anywhere.

“See if you can find the Sword of Perseus among the fallen,” I called down to Hera. “Or anything else that will help.”

The winged wickedness trilled again, and I gripped its taloned feet to use as I would trapeze rings in my family’s acrobatic act—as something to hold on to while I swung the rest of my body upward to plow my feet into it full force.

Namtar rolled with the blow, taking me with him. I heaved myself up again, using all of my newly thawed core muscles to kick myself up and over. It would have brought me onto the creature’s back if my muscles hadn’t chosen that moment to fail. I lost my grip, crashing toward the ground, heading for it at a bad angle. I got my wings working just in time to avoid crash-landing, and as I soared just shy of the floor, I noted the bodies everywhere, mostly humanesque. The demons were finishing up their opponents…or snacking on them.

Namtar’s gaze fixed on me again, and his tail whipped my way.

“Tori!” Hera called.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something sailing for me. A sword! I hoped it was
the one
and reached out to catch it, but Namtar’s tail got there first, thrashing it out of the air and then swinging his tail back for me. I dove under it, going for the sword, skimming bodies as I flew. Claws closed on my hair, pulling me up short. The sword was within reach. I could brush it with my fingertips, but I couldn’t grasp it.

Those claws started reeling me in. I couldn’t let it happen. For the first time in my life, I wished for one more gorgon trait—serpents for hair. Poisonous serpents that might take exception to being manhandled.

But I had to work with what I had. With a monumental yell to cover my inevitable scream, I wrenched my head out of his grip, leaving half of my hair and some of my scalp behind. I fell on top of a woman with a half-eaten face and fought down rising bile as I crawled over her to get at the sword.

As soon as my hand closed on it, I rolled so that anything coming for me would get the point. I prayed that Medusa’s blood would still be strong on the sword, a thousand times more powerful than mine. When Namtar’s tail came for me again, I slashed for all I was worth, slicing into that hard, venomous tip. The sword went right through as though it were butter, and the howl that went up was deafening. It shook the walls of the pub and reverberated right through my rib cage, bruising my heart…or so it felt.

Suddenly, Namtar whirled, hitting me with his hardening tail, and took off back toward the kitchen and the wall that had been busted down when they chased the cabal back to base. He sent out another cry and all the other plague demons took off after him, screaming threats or promises as they went. I could be wrong, but I thought they promised vengeance.

I looked around for Hera and found her on her knees, swaying like she might fall over. Her eyes were glazed. One hand was clutched to her chest, trying to staunch blood that came from a wound too big to cover. Like something had tried to rip out her heart. Her other hand was held just slightly out, as though to catch herself if she fell. I didn’t think it was going to do the job.

I caught her before she could collapse, and lowered her gently to the floor. I whipped off my shirt, not really caring about the nudity, especially with no one around to see, and peeled her hand away from her chest to press the shirt into place and then return the hand.

“Hold this tight,” I ordered.

Frantically, I searched for Hecate among the wreckage, but while I saw Sigyn, downed shieldmaidens or whatever they were and Hušbišag’s skeletal warriors, the other ringleaders were missing.

I went back for Hera and airlifted her as carefully as possible. I’d get her back to Cori’s. She was one of the old ones. Goddess of home and hearth and all that. She couldn’t die. Prometheus had had his liver ripped out again and again in punishment for delivering fire to mankind and
he
hadn’t died. That didn’t mean he hadn’t suffered. I didn’t like leaving Sigyn behind. Or Lyssa. Or any of the others who might awake and still be enemies at our backs. But there was only room for one on Gorgon Air, and Hera was it.