Battle for the Blood (28 page)

I didn’t count on Amphitrite being ambidextrous. She passed the trident off from one hand to another and immediately aimed the triple tines right for my battered body. She shouted something loudly enough that I could almost hear it over the crash of the ocean, and then let me have it.

There was a pop and a sizzle—a jolt went through me, quickly cut off, but not quickly enough that my nerves didn’t melt down like plastic under a plasma rifle. I spasmed uncontrollably, everything contracting inward, and I lost my grip on Amphitrite. I fell toward the ocean, staring wide-eyed up at her, my last thought the awareness that her trident was gone.

It was satisfying. I could pass out now. The thought flashed across my mind, comforting. A relief.

But then the frigid shock of the waters stole that away. My muscles were still seized. It hurt to move, but it hurt more not to. My stupid alarm bells were firing on all cylinders, even if my mind wasn’t, and my feet started to kick. They were the first part of me to respond.

When something bumped against my feet, fear stopped my heart for a split second, then I went on kicking twice as fast. The adrenaline spike got my arms moving again too, but sluggishly. There was no way I could outswim any beastie in the water with me.

It bumped again, and this time rose with me on top of it. I panicked and thought to roll off, only to realize that on top it couldn’t eat me. In the water…

I spread my hands out across its body, looking for a handhold and felt the bony plates of one of the water dragons. I found purchase as it breached, the sucking waters wanting to take me with them, unwilling to surrender me.

And then…

Nothing. The bony beast I was riding swam through the ocean and I risked opening my eyes against the icy sheets of rain to see that it was headed back toward the piers…to smash me into them? That was my first thought, but my alarm bells had gone quiet—as had the storm, except for the rain, wind and still-churning ocean. Looking behind me, I could no longer see Amphitrite on her sea spray commanding the fray. And no trident aiming TASER-like blasts.

There was a sound behind me, almost a nickering—the sea dragon?—and then a set of oversized claws seized me by the shoulders and carried me off. I held on to the claws as they held to me, and looked up to see Eu-meh’s bronze belly and outspread wings.

It was over then? Truly over? Had the stretch placoderm actually saved me now that Amphitrite no longer had the trident to command it?

Eu-meh swept over the ocean to the pier and bypassed that to get onto more sturdy footing, since a good portion of the pier had already been washed away. She dropped me from the height of a few feet into a jumble of soggy, battered-but-still-breathing heroes, one of whom— Oh great gods no—
Hermes
held the trident.

I watched in horror as he leveled it at the ocean and wondered
what now?
Would the trickster god decide it was time to remake the world in
his
image? I prepared to dive for the trident when a cool misty vapor started to issue from the end of it, flowing toward the crazily churning ocean, but Apollo sensed what I was about and grabbed me by the hand to keep me in check, apparently having a lot more faith in Hermes than I’d ever been able to muster. I watched as the vapor settled over the angry waves and they slowly seemed to become less angry, less violent, just
less
.

With the hand not holding me back, Apollo reached out to the sky, closed his eyes and chanted something under his breath. I fed him my belief through our connection and reached out to Hera as well. She winced as I connected, and I remembered about her arm. We had to get her to help, but first—

The clouds directly overhead moved, blowing ever so slightly apart, and the thinnest halo of sun gilded them with gold. In the next instant, a pinprick of light reached us, and we all raised our faces to it. The rain still fell, but moderately now, and I had hope that it would soon become a sun shower. Complete, I hoped, with rainbows, puppies and healing.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Eu-meh arrived then with Lau, whom she’d flown back for as soon as she’d dumped me off. Lau slid to the ground when Eu-meh landed, eying the sky and then each of us. “Nice teamwork,” she said.

A compliment from Lau…wonders might never cease. Oh sure, it wasn’t personal, but then what had I really done but keep Amphitrite busy while others did the heavy lifting?

“We still have demons to round up,” Apollo said. “And Hecate to hunt down.”

“We’ve got the demons covered,” Lau said with pride. “Namtar slipped through our net, but Eu-meh’s network rounded up a good many.” Of course, she didn’t know we’d already taken care of Namtar.

“Network?” Hera asked.

“Sure, you didn’t think she was the only dragon in North America, did you? She’s not even the only one in the Northwest. Or New York, for that matter. Lots of mountains. They like that.” Then Lau spotted Hera’s arm. “I think we’d better get you some help.”

The Hummer was trashed. Every other vehicle on the street was in the same condition. They’d been lifted by the storm, dropped down again, slammed around, flooded… I knew just how they felt…or would have felt if cars could feel anything.

Hermes was barely able to hold himself and the trident upright. A portal was out of the question. Eu-meh could only take four people at a time, and it was a no-brainer to send the others on ahead. Apollo insisted on staying back with me, as I knew he would.

Anyway, we had to talk.

We watched the others fly away and then stood there in the rain like the end of some romantic movie. When they were a mere mote in the sky, Apollo turned to me and brushed soggy hair out of my face. It wouldn’t stay. I knew that. He knew that. But even wrung out and feeling like a drowned rat, I felt the zing of his touch, and, of course, he felt me feel it.

“So,” he said, his voice deep and full of churning emotion he was trying to keep out of it, pretending that we had any secrets between us. “What’s it going to be?” he asked.

I knew what he was talking about. Him. Nick. Me. Love triangles always seemed like so much fun when you were reading about them or watching them on television, but when you were in one…someone was getting hurt. And doing the hurting was every bit as painful as being the odd man out.

“You know,” I said. He did, I had no doubt. But he needed to hear me say it.

He kept his gaze steadily on me, and my heart flip-flopped, my breathing went shallow, as if I were fighting for breath all over again. It was fear, pure and simple. Terror, actually. Plague demons, zombies and killer goddesses had nothing on commitment.

“It’s you,” I said, breathlessly. “Okay?”

I couldn’t believe that last word had slipped out, along with all of the vulnerability attached. I wanted to take it back. Or argue things logically— Nick was human and I was, very decidedly not. Not anymore. Where I would go, he couldn’t follow. Not safely. And I cared too much… It was all true, as far as it went, but it wasn’t the whole story. I loved Nick. But I was inexorably drawn to Apollo in a way that would always preempt any other relationship. I’d gone from one addiction (ambrosia) to another (him). I knew it, and I was sunk. I didn’t
want
to be in love. It felt a lot like a tornado or a whirlpool, something that caught me up and swept me away. Something I couldn’t control.

I’d fought long and hard against it, but I’d lost that war. Apollo had finally defeated me.

Apollo stared, and I had the worst panic attack of my life waiting for him to say something. I hated this.
Hated it.

And then he picked me up and whirled me around, screaming a
“whoo-hoo!”
at the sky.

A
whoo-hoo
. Over me.

The look in his eyes was everything. Like I’d given him the world. It was so surreal, so impossible, that I laughed nervously, sounding very nearly hysterical…until he shut me up with a kiss. Through our link, I felt that same terror, that same love, that same wonder over the whole thing, and it gave me back my equilibrium.

That was, of course, when a zombie pulled himself out from under one of the trashed vehicles and began crawling toward us. I stopped him in his tracks with the gorgon glare, but, still, the moment was gone. Apollo and I didn’t dare get distracted again.

Instead, I tested out my wings, just in case they were back in business, but the remaining wind sheered right through them.

The sound of wings flapping—wings far larger than mine—riveted our gaze on the sky, to the coolest dragon I’d ever seen or even imagined. It was, quite literally, a dragon-fly—a blue-green iridescent lizard-like body but with a beak instead of a snout. It had a double set of wings, just like a dragonfly, gossamer and moving so quickly they blurred. It came in for a landing beside us and buzz-clicked something to us that I thought was language, even if it wasn’t one I understood. Or maybe I did.

I was sure that Eu-meh had sent the dragon-fly and that it was there to take us to her. But there was no place to sit on
this
smaller dragon. The back was entirely taken up with the wings. We had to let ourselves be grabbed, one in each set of claws, front and back, and be carried aloft like prey. It was a little harrowing, but I was too exhausted to tense up over the whole thing. I even might have dropped off to sleep for a second or two, until my precog kicked me in the head and I heard Apollo curse in old Greek, something that I thought translated to “Zeus’s flaming sack”. I didn’t really want to know.

I looked around wildly for the source of the danger. We were nearing Cori’s apartment. She must have been watching for us, because the window blew open…

Blew
being the operative word. In its place was a whirlwind, and I could just make out two figures within it—one all in black leather, her dark, wild hair whipping around her like lashes, and another whose colorful headscarf was whipped away by the cyclonic winds, revealing short black curls. Hecate…with one arm wrapped around Panacea, the other holding the Sword of Perseus to her throat.

Holy hells.

“Follow that whirlwind,” I yelled, hoping that our dragon-fly friend would hear and understand, but there was no change in our trajectory. We were still headed for the now-open window.

I squirmed like a worm on the end of a hook, trying desperately to get free of the dragon-fly’s claws, and it must have gotten the message because it let out a questioning sort of trill and then opened one claw, the one holding my legs. Instead of kicking and screaming and panicking, I pushed against the other claw with my hands, trying to release my wings and squeeze my upper body out as well. That seemed to be all it needed to know. The second claw opened, and I started to plummet.

I flapped my wings crazy hard, fighting my exhaustion. The rents in them must have healed up somewhat, because in what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few milliseconds, they caught the air. Not perfectly, but enough for me to soar toward that whirlwind, which was headed for the ground. Hecate couldn’t keep it up forever, especially not with her concentration divided between the spell and her captive.

I dove as they landed, headed straight for Hecate…or the sword, I wasn’t too particular at that moment, but she anticipated me, whirling so that Panacea was in front of her like a shield and pushing the sword-point right up under her chin so that it dented the skin. Even a nick might be fatal, given that the blade was eternally coated in Medusa’s blood. I stopped cold, except for the slow beat of my wings that kept me hovering without getting any closer.

“Stay right there or she dies,” Hecate said, as if the threat weren’t clear enough. “The fate of the world dies with her. You might have stopped the demons, but the plagues have already been unleashed. More will die. Thousands. Billions. Unless you back the hells off and let me finish what I started.”

“Selling life…at a price.”

Hecate’s face was a marble mask of unconcern. “Just like our entire health care industry. Just like doctors and nurses, hospitals and clinics.”

“But in this case, you’ll have a monopoly.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Now,
back the hells off
.”

I didn’t for a second doubt that Hecate would do it—kill Panacea and seal the fate of the world. Maybe she thought her blood or body parts would be good enough. Maybe she just didn’t care, but I beat down with my wings, rising up and up into the air, farther and farther away from Panacea and her rescue. I wasn’t giving up, not by a long shot, but I couldn’t risk a frontal assault. I had to catch Hecate by surprise.

“I’m going,” I said to reinforce my actions. “Don’t hurt her.”

“That’s up to you,” she called back.

She waited until I was in Cori’s window, looking down at her, before yanking Panacea away and disappearing. I didn’t know if they’d vanished behind a vehicle or into one of the portals to hell, but they were gone.

Luckily, I knew I could track Hecate, given that taste I’d had of her blood. But I didn’t know if I could defeat her alone, especially not with a hostage situation. I ducked back inside and asked before I could think to phrase it better, “What the hells happened?”

Lacy and the younger kids were sobbing. Nick and the oldest boy, Jeff, were trying to comfort them. Michelle, Hera’s assistant, had rushed to her side in time to catch her as she collapsed onto the couch. Her arm was now almost entirely eaten away, the remainder putrid and stinking. It extended all the way up to her shoulder and by the way she was holding herself, might be starting to creep across her chest. And Sigyn…Sigyn was a statue. Stone through and through. Hecate must have struck her with the sword.

It was Hermes who answered me, his voice sounding broken and his gaze never leaving Sigyn. “She jumped in front of me. Just like she’s always protected me. Even from that acid way back when, even when some of it ricocheted back out of the bowl, catching her, burning her hands.”

Cori took it from there. “Hecate appeared with that sword of hers and threatened the kids to get Panacea to give herself up. Lacy did that force-field thing, and protected everybody, but she was weakening. When Hermes and the others arrived, they fought Hecate, but, well, you can see how that turned out. Panacea gave herself up to prevent anyone else from meeting Sigyn’s fate.”

“And you let her?” I asked, stunned.

“She didn’t give us the chance to stop her.”

“We’ve got to go after them. I can track her, but I’m going to need backup.”

“I’ll go,” Apollo said at once.

“And me,” Hermes added. “I’m going to make her pay.”

“So am I,” Nick said, glaring at me, daring me to knock him out again.

I started to protest, and he cut me off. “You’ve got nothing to say about it and no time to argue. I don’t know how much longer Hera can hold out.” We all looked at her. The sickness creeping through her veins was turning her gray and green. It wasn’t a good look for her. If the gangrene had progressed this quickly already, it wouldn’t take long for the poison to reach her heart.

“And besides…Lau.”

I hadn’t seen Lau, and it only now occurred to me. I’d assumed that she and Eu-meh had flown off, maybe before they realized trouble had arrived.

“What happened to Lau?”

He waved behind the couch, and I rounded it, dreading what I would see. I’d missed her because she’d fallen down behind it, arms up as though she’d been wrestling someone for something. Hecate for the sword, at a guess. From the defensive wounds, it looked like she’d caught part of the blade on her hands. One slash would have been enough to turn her to stone.

“Holy hell” escaped my mouth. “Eu-meh?”

“Lau waved her off.”

I looked out the window to our dragon-fly friend, wondering… One way to find out. “Can you call Eu-meh?” I asked. “Get her back here?”

The dragon-fly stared steadily at me, and it was disconcerting to see the compound eyes in the dragonesque face. Then it looked away, off, I thought, toward Central Park. A second later it looked back to me, bobbing its head in a way I hoped signaled the affirmative. I didn’t know what kind of reward might be suitable for dragons, but if we lived through this, I was going to find out. And come through in a big way…assuming it didn’t take the kind of budget I didn’t have.

I hoped I was right about the dragonspeak. And that Eu-meh hadn’t gone far. While we waited, we had to let Hades know what was going on. Maybe he could even help. The more I wondered about my certainty that I could track Hecate from her blood, the more it started to make sense. My precog had started to get directional some time ago, and the changes happening inside me seemed awfully bound up with blood. But knowing which way to go didn’t necessarily tell me how to get there. The tracking thing was new to me, but I suspected it wasn’t any respecter of walls and other barriers, like the River Styx and its fearsome ferryman, assuming Hecate had fled back to the underworld.

But Hades could open doors and speed things along. The longer things took, the farther Hecate got away from us and the more Hera struggled to survive.

There were no cell towers down below, which left us with just one choice. “Hermes, do you think you can reach Hades?”

I wasn’t asking for a portal this time. I hoped he had enough left in him for this.

“I’ll try,” he said. No
what’s in it for me
or
what’ll you trade me for it
. All the mischief had been wrung out of him.

He closed his eyes and focused. We all watched the air as it rippled and then seemed to rip down the center, not a graceful pinprick irising open, but a tear that opened onto a scene of chaos. Hades faced an invisible barrier, behind which souls were howling, slamming through each other and into the wall, gnawing at their own incorporeal limbs or trying for those of others. He’d told us of souls going mad, of the underworld overrun. It looked like he finally had things locked away…or so I thought before I realized that several of his hellhounds had been caught behind the barrier and that not all of the souls were gnawing on the incorporeal. I could see at least three of the once sleek black bodies nearly hollow from having their insides torn out. Focusing in, the stark white of bones that had been ripped out of their bodies was a contrast to the translucent gray of the souls. There was no more meat, but the blood left behind coated the mouths of several lost souls.