Battle for the Blood (3 page)

“Just wait,” Apollo said, gripping my hand harder. “Information first. Remember, many have tried to take them down. You’re probably walking on some of their bones.”

It didn’t make me feel any better. My wings ruffled, met the resistance of the shirt and reluctantly settled. I shook with the effort to restrain myself and gripped Apollo’s hand even harder in return, as if punishing him for my restraint. He could take it.

We got close enough for a good look at the sinister sisters, and I almost regretted the glamour having fallen away. Without it, the three women were cadaverous, looking more like Gollum from
Lord of the Rings
than anything semi-human. Their clothes hung on them like rags, blood and possibly other fluids dried onto them. I couldn’t see their ribs beneath the rags, but the sisters’ arms stuck out, bones visible beneath their paper-thin skin. Their faces looked half-mummified, dried-out husks with sunken cheeks. Their eye sockets were eerie for their emptiness. Only one sister held an eye to the center of her forehead, right where Apollo had tapped me to make me see. The eye was milky, like an opal without the fire, and rolled as she held it, looking from one of us to the other. The water in my stomach wanted to come up again, and I realized I
could
still be sick.

She laughed wickedly at the sight of us. One of her sisters sniffed the air like a canine, a lascivious smile spreading across her face. “I smell godling. Godlet? Godget? Hard to tell. The scent is strong with this one, but overlaying it. Human. Female human.” Her mouth curled in on itself as she talked, toothless, her words sibilant like a serpent’s hiss. She sniffed again. “Or, somewhat human. Hmm, something I have not scented in a long, long time.” She stepped out from near the cookpot and toward me. It was all I could do not to retreat from her. Apollo stepped between us, shielding me, and she snorted wetly, wiping away the snot with the back of her hand. “Musty…like gorgon.”

“Gorgon!” hissed the other sister without the eye, and I noticed that
she
bore the tooth. Not pointed and fang-like as ancient art portrayed, but one long, freakish protuberance, curved inward slightly like a shovel and serrated like a saw blade. Like a beaver’s front two teeth had been fused and sharpened to points, the better to rip flesh off bones.

“Part gorgon,” Apollo admitted while I was still worrying about whether they considered gorgon a delicacy. “And, thus, family.”

I stared at him now. The gorgons and the Graeae were related? My family tree kept getting weirder and weirder. If I looked closely, their ropy hair, like long-neglected dreadlocks, might possibly resemble sluggish serpents.

“Family,” the one with the tooth hissed. “They don’t call, they don’t write.”

“Ah, but it seems they send care packages,” the eyeless, toothless one said slyly, coming closer to me.

It was all I could do not to give ground and show weakness as she leaned in to sniff me like a bloodhound. I planted my feet instead, ready to fly into a frenzy if she tried anything more. My wings flared, wanting to stretch and prep for launch, and she fell back, searching the vicinity blindly. “What’s that? Wings? Who do you have with you? Not the trickster. He is forbidden.”

The one with the eye had held back, taking it all in. When she started cackling, my head wanted to split open right down the center. It was as sharp as a hatchet to the skull. The other sisters joined in, cackling with her, sharing a joke they hadn’t even heard. Unless they had…unless they shared some kind of unspoken communication, which was creepy on a strategic level. Between Apollo and me, we could take them, no problem. Even at two against three, they were frankly outnumbered. But three who thought as one, forming an unholy trinity… It was a concept that occurred one way or another throughout mythology. Numbers didn’t have any meaning we didn’t assign them, but there were certain numbers—3, 12 and 666 just to name a few—that held untold eons of belief to reinforce their strength. I wouldn’t say I trembled, but my certainty fled.

“This is the one!” the sighted sister crowed. “She will fight the Bringer of Plagues.”

“Ah, but will she win?” queried one of her sisters. I didn’t look to see which one. I didn’t take my eyes away from the single opalescent eye staring at me with a mix of glee and avarice I didn’t understand.

“I’ll do what?” I asked, feeling queasy. Bringer of Plagues didn’t sound at all promising. “Apollo, what do you know about this?”

He was still next to me, but also not. His gaze had unfocused, and it was clear he was miles away, maybe entire continents. “Prophecy,” he said, largely to himself, caught up in suddenly inspired foreseeing.

“Give me the eye,” the toothless sister insisted. “I want to see her. Does she look good enough to eat?”

I stared at Apollo and debated slapping sense into him or just grabbing him and running, but settled for shaking him by the shoulder. I met no resistance. He wobbled but didn’t go down.

The toothless one plucked the eye right from the forehead of the other, and a fight ensued. The third chomped on the arm of the one now holding the eye, blood gushing out as she shrieked and dropped the orb, which splatted on the ground and rolled in the blood, taking on a rose-red cast.

My wings were desperate to unfurl, and this time I gave them free reign, tearing my shirt off so that they could reach their full extension and facing the sisters bare-chested as a harpy. I gathered my legs and leapt up into the air, making a beeline for the bouncing eye, the demented little deejay in my brain playing “On Top of Spaghetti”, imagining the eye as the lost meatball.
That’s all it is,
I told myself, diving for it and trying to ignore the gory, gooshy feel of it in my hand as I flew with it back to Apollo. Two of the sisters were scrabbling about on the floor, trying to find the eye by feel. The third was listening to the wing beats, sniffing the air, figuring it out.

“She’s stolen the eye!” she wailed to her sisters. “Stop her.”

She lurched my way blindly, driven by her other senses, and I knocked her aside with a wing as she came close, sending her nosediving into the bones of her previous meals. The second sister fell over her feet, and the third mystically veered around them, heading straight for me. The eye in my hand rolled, and I shrieked but held tightly. Could she still be connected to the eye? Seeing through it? I wanted to be sick, but later. No time now.

The Grey Sister still standing leapt as if the rolling bones were springboards and flew in my direction. I instantly rose into the air, winging my way to the top of the cave, leaving Apollo behind, still locked in his vision. I dove as she would have hit him, knocking her to the ground in a literal flying tackle. We went down in a daze of brittle bones snapping beneath us. She fought like a rabid dog, kicking, screaming, snapping at me as if she would bite, but, luckily, she wasn’t the one with the tooth. I wondered, though, if her nails might be toxic enough to do me in all on their own. They were ragged and filthy, and she herself smelled of vermin droppings and decay, the sweet-sour scent of death and body odor. I choked on the cloud of stench and pulled back the hand fisted around the eye to let it fly hard at her jaw. She went limp beneath me as my fist connected, her arms falling to her sides.

I breathed out a deep sigh of relief. I didn’t dare take a corresponding breath in, not until I got some distance from her.

Apollo snapped back to himself suddenly and flashed a gaze around to catch himself up on what he’d missed. A look of amusement crossed his face. “Chick fight? And I missed it?”

I had a sharp retort ready, but the other two sisters were collecting themselves and skittering toward us on hands and feet.

I fixed them with my gorgon glare and debated hitting them with it, stopping them in their tracks, but I needed information. Silence and stillness were all well and good, but they couldn’t solve everything. Instead, I held the eye above my head and threatened with all of my body language to smash it to the ground.

“I have the eye,” I told them, realizing that while I held it they couldn’t appreciate the full effect of my posturing. “All I want is information. If you tell me what I need to know, you get the eye back in one piece. If you hold back or you make one wrong move, I’ll stomp it to paste.”

“It’s ours,” the toothy one protested.

“Yes, it is, just like the flesh you want to rip from my body is mine. I’d prefer to keep it, thank you very much. I’ll do the same with your eye unless you tell me how I can control my wings. Is there a way to banish them until I need them? Get rid of them entirely?” Though I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to do that last. As annoying as they could be, especially for my wardrobe, they were proving very handy.

“You’re naked,” Apollo said with amusement, but quietly so as not to ruin my moment.

“Only from the waist up,” I countered.

“I like it.”

“Later,” I told him.

“Is that all?” asked the sister who’d originally worn the eye. She cackled. “No world peace? No end to strife? Riches beyond your wildest imaginings?”

“The wings,” I repeated. “I have no confidence in world peace. The only true peace lies in death, isn’t that right?”

The other two sisters joined in the cackling now. “Oh, she’s good. Wise beyond her years. Medusa was like that…”

Great, Medusa and me…just like two peas in a pod. But where she could turn men…or women…to stone, all I could do was stop them in their tracks. And only temporarily. Hell, Hollywood starlets could stop traffic without even the gorgon glare.

“Enough with the laugh track,” I snapped. “Tell me about the wings.”

The sisters turned blindly toward each other, seeming to communicate without words. I was certain they made up for a lack of the usual senses with others of an extrasensory sort.

“There is a way,” the toothy one admitted finally, “but it must be taught. There is no snapping of fingers, no potion.”

“Then teach me.”

“For a price.”

“The eye—” I began.

“Make no mistake,” said the toothy one, “we will get the eye if we have to rip your arm off with it.” The other two licked their lips at the very thought. “But the teaching comes at a cost. It takes time you don’t have…that the world might not have.”

The eye rolled again, and it was all I could do to hold on to it. When I turned my hand over and opened the palm to see what it was up to, the disembodied orb stared back at me. No, not
stared
…glared. If it could shoot lasers, I’d be toast.

“So dramatic,” another sister cackled. “Death, destruction. Sickness, sadness, chaos, killings… It sounds divine.”

“And when the hunger comes for us?” another sister asked. “When there is nothing left of the world but the bones?”

The first hissed. “We will eat like queens.”

“For a time,” she agreed.

“What is this about death and destruction?” I demanded. “What about this price and the world running out of time? Stop speaking in riddles.”

The toothy one stared at me. Or rather the eye stared and she seemed to look right through it. “Namtar, God of Plagues, has risen. Even now he calls his followers to him—the nosoi, the demons, the djinn. Already they converge. The apocalypse has begun.”

“Apocalypse?” I asked, not happy when it came out semistrangled.

“That is the cost,” agreed the so-far-silent sister. “You defeat Namtar and we will teach you. Otherwise, none of this will matter.”

I looked to Apollo, hoping he’d tell me that they were pulling my leg, that they did this to everybody, but he met my gaze gravely. “It’s true,” he said. “I’ve seen it.”

“Your vision?” I asked.

“Cities laid waste. Billions dead. The Black Death, the Spanish Flu, cancer, AIDS…they are nothing by comparison. It has to be stopped.”

“And
I’m
supposed to stop this thing?” I asked, horrified.

“
We
are,” he said, taking the hand not holding the bloody eye.

I stared at the sisters. “So, basically, I save the world and you’ll teach me how to control my wings? It hardly seems like a fair trade.”

“There is one more thing,” the toothy one told me, ignoring my protest. “You will need Perseus’s famed sword, forged by Hephaestus and coated with Medusa’s venomous blood when the hero severed her head from her body. It is the only chance you have against Namtar.”

“And where am I supposed to find this legendary sword?” I asked, torn between stunned disbelief and abject fear. I’d been through so much already. Karma seriously owed me some downtime before saddling me with an apocalypse.

“You’ll have to pry it from his cold, dead hands, of course,” one of the other sisters said with glee.

“Now,” hissed the other toothless sister. “The eye!”

She said it with such longing, such desperation, that I felt mean for what I was about to do, but only for a second. Only until I thought about the fact that we were standing in a cave loaded up not with treasure but with the remains of their kills. Then I felt much better about lobbing the eye between the sisters and watching it disappear into the pile of bones. They screeched and dove, scrabbling with hands and feet, pulling each other’s hair when it got in their way or gouging flesh.

Apollo and I fled. We didn’t run, not with bones sliding beneath our feet with every step, but we hit the ledge as quickly as possible.

“Can they be trusted to teach me?” I asked. “Once I’ve defeated Namtar—
if
I defeat him—can I trust them not to go back on their word?”

“If you defeat Namtar, do you really think they’d dare get all up in your grill?”

That put a feeble grin on my face. Apollo’s slang was years out of date. It was cute that he tried.

“Besides, bargains are sacred. There’s no saying they won’t try to eat you afterward, but, by gods, you’ll know how to use your wings when they go in for the kill.”

“That’s comforting,” I said.

“Isn’t it?”

Chapter Three

“Buttons aren’t rocket science.”—Tori Karacis

I realized as soon as we got out into the sunlight that I’d left my shirt behind. I was full frontal with wings unfurling out of my back. Anyone looking up at that moment would either see me for an angel or a flasher, depending on the strength of their faith and their eyesight.

“Shirt!” I demanded of Apollo.

He didn’t take his eyes off me until he absolutely had to in order to pull his shirt over his head, but at least he didn’t dawdle. Undressing wasn’t exactly rocket science. It didn’t require his full attention. Apparently, my near nudity was another matter.

Thankfully, it didn’t last. As soon as he handed me his shirt, I slipped it on, wrestling with my wings and finally accepting his help.
He
was now naked from the waist up and I totally understood his distraction. I might have breasts, but he had washboard abs and pecs to die for, not to mention broad shoulders and strong arms… I had to look away before I tore the rest of his clothes off and gave Metéora’s tourists and pilgrims some destination photos that would never make the family album.

“So, up was fun,” I said, looking pointedly to the left of him. “How about down?”

“Same way we came.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

If I weren’t afraid of exposing myself to the world, I’d have tried out those wings again. As it was, our descent was slow going, and I slid the last ten feet or so, but I managed to make it to the bottom with more than half the skin I’d started with, which I counted a victory.

Finally at the car, Viggo looked us over, Apollo in particular, because how could you not, and asked, “It’s good we find a hotel close by?”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that we’d need a hotel, but, of course, there was no way we were driving hours back to Delphi now. For one, I was pretty sure we’d be violating some kind of labor law with Viggo, and for another we needed to figure out our next move before we went anywhere. No sense going backward to go forward, and I had no idea where to even start looking for Perseus’s cold, dead body.

And so we drove into Kalambaka, a place dimly remembered from my childhood and occasional trips back for family. If I’d thought ahead, I could have called someone and found us a place to stay, but then I’d have had to explain why I brought one date to my cousin’s wedding and was there with another. And a visit was never just a visit. It was a reunion, an excuse for a gathering that turned into a party, with much drinking and more storytelling, most of it likely at my expense.

I was tired and still shaken from the heights and the homicidal sisters. I vowed that after Namtar, after I learned to control my wings, I would do something about the Graeae. No more tourists were going to go missing on my watch. It had killed me to walk away from them. No, bad choice of words. It hadn’t killed me. That would have been noble, going down fighting. Instead, I’d run and lived to fight another day.

We got two rooms. Viggo took one, and Apollo and I the other. Shacking up, and so soon. I pushed the thought aside. We had way bigger things to worry about than whether I should be ashamed of myself. (I was.)

As soon as we got into our room—nice but not large, with a town view rather than one facing the stunning vistas of Metéora—I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, looking for news. If the grand high poobah of plagues had risen, surely there was news. There was always something—swine flu, Ebola, E. coli outbreaks, hepatitis, brain-eating bacteria. It wasn’t like Namtar’s henchdemons had taken time off in his absence. But I was looking for something bigger. I had a feeling I’d know it when I saw it.

I found a news station, but it was on the financial segment, so I flipped around again, finding mostly commercials before going back to the program, determined to wait it out.

In the meantime, I commanded Apollo, “Tell me about this Namtar.”

He eyed me, as if he could see my breasts
through
his shirt, which maybe he could since I was braless. I crossed my arms over my chest so he could focus. His gaze rose to mine, disappointment in his eyes. “Like the sisters said, he’s an ancient bringer of plagues. Babylonian originally, I think, though he certainly didn’t confine himself. Ugly as sin, slothful by nature, hence diseases that self-perpetuate. All he has to do is start up an infection, then sit back and watch the carnage. I hear he’s partial to popcorn.” He and Hermes had that in common. Chaos and properly popped kernels of corn.

“You’re acting calm now, but I saw your face back at the cave,” I said. “Even the Grey Sisters were afraid, not savoring the death and destruction. What did you see?”

Apollo looked away, like maybe that would help him hide the truth. “Madness,” he said. “Madness and ugly, violent death. People ripping each other to shreds. Blood, so much blood. Rivers of blood.”

His words had a tremor to them, which made them that much more powerful. If Apollo was worried…

On the television, the news anchors were back, and something they’d said swung my attention back to the set, where they were showing an external shot of a hospital in a city setting. It was big, brick and blocky with lots of small windows…and cordoned off by police vehicles. I turned up the sound. Apollo came to sit beside me on the bed and took my hand.

“…in front of Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where both perpetrators and victims from yesterday’s so called ‘zombie attack’ have been brought for treatment. We’re being told that all involved are being kept in an isolated area of the ICU until the cause of the incident and any possible contagions are evaluated. While the police have said only that they won’t comment on an ongoing investigation, and the hospital has yet to release any statement, witnesses have made reference to the ‘Causeway Cannibal’ case a few years ago in Florida, where a Miami man attacked and ate the face off another man before police were forced to shoot him dead. Drugs were blamed for that incident, though official toxicology reports didn’t find drugs in his system that would have explained such extreme and irrational behavior.”

The scene in the inset window behind the anchor changed to that of a park and a grainy stop-motion picture of a man and a child, looking wild and unfocused. “This was the scene yesterday in Riverside Park.” The obviously amateur video began to animate, and the figures jerked in a disturbing fashion, as if their brains and bodies weren’t communicating with each other. The child, a girl, had long, lank hair. As she shambled along, the videographer made a comment for the camera, speculating about whether this was a zombie crawl or promo for another upcoming show, when the girl suddenly raised her head and lurched in his direction with an inhuman sound that made all the hair on my body stand on end. Then she jumped as though someone had shot her out of a sling, and the camera spun and landed face up at the trees while howls of shock and horror echoed off to the side. Not a millisecond later, it caught the other figure in midair, the herky-jerky man launching himself right over the camera to join the attack.

The scene stopped, and even the news anchor, who must have seen it time and again already, was stunned to silence for half a second. When she started up again, the horror lingered in her voice. “The man taking the video was rushed to the emergency room, but unfortunately died of shock and blood loss on the way there, his throat apparently ripped out. His girlfriend, who was with him at the time of the attack, is listed in critical condition.”

The camera pulled back to show a male coanchor at her side and then panned entirely to him. “Since then, other reports have come in, of a woman, a tourist from the Netherlands visiting the United States, discovered perched over her husband’s bloody body when the maid came in to service the room, his throat reportedly torn out. Trouble on the L Line when a commuter, apparently covered in blood, dropped a heart rolled up in his morning paper and people fled in panic, one falling between cars.

“No official link has yet been made between the cases, but according to our affiliates in New York—”

There was a knock on the door, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Are you expecting anyone?” Apollo asked me.

I shook my head and reached into my bag for my pepper spray, tossing it to him. He caught it one-handed on his way to the door and looked out the peephole.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Trouble.”

Apollo opened the door and stepped out of the way so that I could see. There stood Hades. Not the flaming-haired, James Woods, Disneyfied version of him from
Hercules
, where Hera is a wispy little blonde and Megaera is the heroine rather than a crazed killer. But the real deal. Dark hair, eyes as black as kohl, overtall and unmistakable in light-wash jeans, a sunny orange Pirana Joe T-shirt and a white blazer with rolled-up sleeves. His aboveground wear. Possibly he would have blended in back in the original Don Johnson
Miami Vice
days, but in the twenty-second century he was an anachronism.

Behind him walked Hecate, all in black leather—pants, biker jacket, knee-high stiletto boots. Even her hair was jet black, twisted and uncontrollable, sticking out like live wires around her head. She looked like a badass biker/dominatrix. Strangely, it worked for her.

Hecate slid down her sunglasses—black, of course—as she entered the room. Light seemed to disappear into her eyes with no escape. My brain dithered, as it sometimes did, wondering how she’d fare as a manga character with no little white wedge of light for her oversized eyes. My mind worked in mysterious ways.

Apollo closed the doors behind them. With everyone else standing, I felt at a disadvantage as the only one sitting, but I wasn’t about to reveal my discomfort. Hades stopped by the desk and leaned casually against it, studying Apollo and me. There was no missing that I was in one of Apollo’s shirts or that Apollo…wasn’t.

“Don’t you two look cozy,” Hades began.

“We are,” I said. “Not that it’s any of your business. I suppose you’re here about this.” I gestured with the remote toward the television, but already they’d moved on to some trouble in the Middle East, face eating forgotten.

“You’ve got to do something,” Hades said. But it wasn’t me he was looking at.

“About?” Apollo asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Hecate clicked her tongue in disappointment.

“Look, I was about to call in that favor you owe me, have you turf-sit the underworld while I go on a well-deserved vacation. I’m thinking maybe an active volcano somewhere, get a front row seat for the panic and destruction. Reconnect with an old flame.”

Hades and Pele?
The mind boggled.

“But there are rumblings. Your blood woke Rhea. She woke the titans. Whatever fallout exists, it’s
your
job to fix it,” Hades continued, giving Apollo his best stare-down.

“First of all, it was
Zeus’s
priests who spilled my blood and performed the ritual, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, I’d start there. Second of all,
what rumblings
? For Olympus’s sake, you sound like one of my Oracles. Can’t you talk in a straight line?”

Hades’s dark brows raised, and I thought I saw the hellfire spark in his eyes. “Be glad I don’t strike you down where you stand.”

“Hit me with your best shot,” Apollo fired back. I tried not to laugh as I heard Pat Benatar in my head singing backup. Death threats from the god of the dead were no laughing matter. But still.

“Boys,” Hecate said, stepping between them, drawing all eyes. “Apocalypse first, grudge match later.”

I latched on to the important part of all that. “What do you know about the apocalypse?”

Hades looked from Hecate to me to Apollo again. Yes, there was definite hellfire in his eyes. “Souls started arriving yesterday. Well, souls are always arriving, but these…these were mad. Stark, raving mad. No humanity left, just appetite. Hunger, thirst. We have a place for damaged souls like this, of course. It is a dark place, howling and unhappy. Dante would have called it the seventh circle of hell, although his
Inferno
is about as accurate as the
National Informer
. If he’d ever had a tour, he’d never have lived to tell about it. But now, the lost souls batter against their barrier, ravenous, hungering. Our boundaries wear thin as it is, with the damage of the titans rising and all of our energies going to repairs. With the world’s population explosion the various underworlds are stretched to their breaking points.”

“Wait,” I cut in, “
various
underworlds? You’re not just talking about the Elysian Fields versus Tartarus, are you?”

Hades’s eyes blazed as he turned them on me, twin infernos that looked about to explode. He was
not
happy about what he had to say. He was not happy that he had to say it to
me
, a mere mortal…or something. In fact, if looks could kill…

“No,” he growled. “I am sure you’re aware by now or have been told…” he shot a glare at Apollo, “…that belief and worship fuel our power? They also shape reality. There are many different beliefs and many different afterlives, with divinities for all. Sometimes there are turf wars as one faith is lost and another rises or is usurped or stamped out. Holy wars, plagues, ‘missionary work’—all change the landscape of not only your world, but ours. You have overcrowding on Earth because of all those who live. Imagine the overpopulation in the underworlds due to all those who have died.”

“But—but I’ve been to the underworld, the caves. There’s room for expansion,” I protested.

“Ever closer to your living world and discovery. Remember, much like the Hotel California, you can check into the underworld anytime you like, but you can never leave. Even as it is, a few of the living find their way every year. There are some missing-persons cases that will never be solved. If we keep expanding at this rate, there will soon be no barrier, no boundary between the living and the dead.”

“I’m not sure I understand what that means,” I said, “or why souls take up space.”

“Then you understand nothing. Remember,
belief
fuels reality. So much of the human imagination or religious teachings have focused on what comes after death. Except for the atheists, for whom there is nothing, all involve elaborate setups. Pearly gates, harps and wings, scales and a great book in which deeds are weighed or recorded, servants or grave goods, beloved pets or virgins aplenty. Belief takes
shape
.”