Battle for the Blood (4 page)

My wings ruffled at that, and I wasn’t sure why. Was that some kind of key? My wings existed because I remained aware of them? It made much more sense that I was aware of them because they were there. I put that aside for later, when I wasn’t facing down the god of the dead and the dominatrix of the damned. Okay, not quite fair. Hecate was the dominatrix of the undamned as well and the mother of witches. She’d once brought Apollo back from the brink of death…or the godly equivalent.

“So what do you want us to do?” Apollo asked, cutting to the chase.

“There are rumblings that Namtar has risen again, the bringer of plagues, purveyor of death and destruction, and that the apocalypse has begun. If this is true, we are all doomed. Cassandra has come to me—”

Pain rippled across Apollo’s face, and his eyes closed, as if what went on behind the windows to his soul was just too raw and private. Was Hades talking about
the
Cassandra? The prophetess of Troy, whom Apollo had granted the gift of prophecy, then cursed to be powerless in the face of her visions when she spurned his advances. It was one of the tales that had kept me from giving in to my attraction to him for so long. I kept a watch on his face. Hades and Hecate watched just as avidly.

When Apollo opened his eyes again and saw all us staring, he tried to glare back, but the pain was still too present. “How is Cassandra?” he asked.

Hades ignored that. “She said that you—you two—are to fight. And win. Or die. Apparently, the future is unclear. Also, she says to tell you that you’ll find what you need at Mycenae.”

“Of course, Mycenae,” Apollo said.

“Why of course?” I asked.

“The founding was attributed to Perseus. It makes sense he’d be buried there with his sword.”

I’d always wanted to see Mycenae, which I knew best for the legendary Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, the brother-in-law and sister of the notorious Helen of Troy, with the face that launched a thousand (battle)ships when she ran off to Troy with Paris. As usual, the whole trouble was started by the gods and paid for by humanity. Well, started by goddesses, anyway—some petty squabble between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite over who was the fairest of them all. Poor Paris had been roped into judging, as if there were any
right
answer, and let himself be bribed by Aphrodite with the hand of the most beautiful woman on earth. Never mind that she was already married. School children learned of Aphrodite as the goddess of love. Lust would have been a lot closer to the truth. Physical slaking of thirsts, maybe, but Aphrodite had never contributed to
anyone
’s happily-ever-after.

But I digressed. Again.

“Hecate will stay with you to make sure the job is done,” Hades said. “Don’t fail me in this.”

I started to protest that we didn’t answer to Hades and
certainly
didn’t need a babysitter, but Apollo got to Hades first, putting a hand to his arm to stop him as he turned for the door.

Hades stilled, making the stop-motion somehow threatening, like he’d had to leash all kinds of potential energy that might not be a ton of fun if
un
leashed.

Apollo was undaunted. “Tell Cassandra…” he began, then seemed at a loss. “Just tell her…that I’m sorry.”

Hades took his arm back and glowered at Apollo. “She knows. She’s had centuries to get over it. Probably time for you to do the same.”

And with that oh-so-helpful pronouncement, Hades was out the door, and we were left with Hecate, who stared at Apollo’s chest while we stared at her. “Well, this is fun,” she said wryly. “Where do we start?”

“First, we get you your own room,” I said. “Three might be a crowd.”

“Done,” she said. A room key appeared in her hand as if she were a magician producing a bouquet of flowers. “Now what?”

“Asclepius?” Apollo started. “I know he’s deceased—Zeus lightning-bolted him for raising Hippolytus from the dead,” he said as an aside to me, “but surely you have access. The god of medicine seems the perfect ally for countering supernatural plagues.”

Hecate averted her gaze, studying her nails, which made
me
study her nails, which led me to discover that they were sharpened to points. Note to self: Avoid catfights with Hecate…or invest in a nail file of my own. “He’s, um…indisposed,” she said without looking up.

“Indisposed?” I asked.

“Gone, okay? When the titans busted out of Tartarus, they weren’t alone. We’ve rounded up most of the escapees, but Asclepius…we’re still tracking him. If stopping the plagues were that easy, why would I even be here? Anyway, what about your granddaughter Panacea?” Hecate asked. “This sounds right up her alley.”

Panacea! I nearly smacked myself upside the head. “That’s perfect!”

I ignored the twinge about Apollo being a grandfather.
A grandfather!
Hell, he was probably a many-times great-grandfather thousands of times over by now. Which made us, what—a
January
/December romance.

“Disappeared,” he said sadly, “into Africa. The AIDS epidemic.”

“But—” so much I didn’t understand, “—if she’s there, why is it still raging?”

“At the height of our power maybe she could have controlled it, but almost no one believes in miracles anymore. Everyone is suspicious, even of modern medicine. And why not? Medical disclaimers are longer than the ads themselves—touch this and you’ll go blind. Take that and risk depression, thoughts of suicide…impotence. Unlike germs, her cure doesn’t spread. She needs to heal individually, and she’s only one woman. But, still, it’s something. She’s still a miracle for some.”

“So even if we find the epicenter of the problem and take her to it, she can’t magically save the day?”

“We’d only be stealing her from one epidemic to face another.”

“Well, damn,” I said eloquently. “So, the Sword of Perseus.”

“Tonight?” Apollo asked. “First we have to reconnoiter, eat and rest. Mycenae is many hours from here.”

“Does the great god fall with the sun?” Hecate taunted.

“Does the mother of witches fail to realize that the sun never falls, the Earth simply turns away, unable to stare too long at its glory?” Apollo fired back.

Hecate snorted.

“All right, children,” I said, both annoyed to have Hecate foisted upon us and amused to be the mature one in the group, at least temporarily. “We reconnoiter, eat and sleep. It’s not like we need a lot of sleep anyway. Five hours enough?”

Apollo and Hecate both gave me a surprised look, maybe expecting me, reasonably enough, to be the weakest link. “You’re enough changed now that you no longer need sleep?” Apollo asked.

“I didn’t need much last night.”

A look passed between us, and Hecate groaned. “Oh, get a room.”

“We’ve got one,” Apollo answered. “Unfortunately, you’re in it.”

“So no threesome then?”

Chapter Four

But Hecate didn’t push it. She and Apollo sat down at the desk in the room and pored over the Mycenae maps she’d produced out of thin air, talking about ancient burial sites and the most likely spots for Perseus’s grave. After Cassandra’s pronouncement, Hades had questioned Perseus himself about the whereabouts of the sword, but, unfortunately, he had no recollection of those events. He’d been alive and then he was dead—or so he’d figured out when he appeared on the bank of the River Styx with a coin for the ferryman.

Apparently, the underworld was spelled against swords and other weapons, as the newly dead were sometimes known to take exception at their sorry state and attempt to fight their way out of it. Hades stockpiled the only weapons allowed in his realm and kept them under lock and key. And while Cassandra could point to Mycenae, she couldn’t pinpoint the tomb more exactly, as it seemed to be protected by some kind of concealment. I hoped it wasn’t any stronger than the illusion used by the Grey Sisters, but if Perseus’s final resting place hadn’t been found in all this time, I suspected I was destined for disappointment on that score.

In the meantime, I had minions. Well,
a minion
. My assistant, Jesus (pronounced
Hey-Zeus
), but he was worth his weight in gold. We’d left him back at the hotel in Delphi, probably sleeping, probably with my brother. I didn’t want to think about that. Luckily, it was only seven in the evening. I likely wouldn’t be interrupting anything. Probably. Maybe. With Spiro’s libido and the way those two looked at each other…
avert, avert, avert
…the alarm Klaxons in my brain went off, popping up pictures of LOLCats and red pandas pouncing on pumpkins and other cutesy Internet memes like a shiny, happy firewall. Things that had nothing to do with sex and my sibling.

In deep denial, I called Jesus. He picked up on the first ring, talking a mile a minute before I could even get a word out.

“Boss lady, where are you? The police and press are having a field day. They say you’ve disappeared, just like that. Poof.” I could hear him snap, as if that were the sound that went with
poof
instead of, you know, the word itself. Onomatopoeia and all that. The nymph herself would be so disappointed. “Where are you?”

“We’re on a case. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to tell you. But I need you on the clock. Code red, got that? I need you to get me everything you can find on the zombie virus or whatever it is and see if you can figure out where it struck first. Find out if the experts have narrowed it down to any sort of epicenter or patient zero. I don’t want links or crazy conjecture. Just pull together whatever you can find right from the sources—police and rescue, medical personnel, specialists. Also, I want you to find anything you can on Namtar. He’s an ancient Sumerian or Babylonian god of plagues.”

“Boss lady?” he asked. The
are you crazy
behind it coming through loud and clear. Zombie viruses and plague demons. Yeah, sounded crazy even to me.

“Just do it. You know that bonus you’ve been campaigning for?”

“Yes,” he said, drawing the word out dramatically, as he did everything.

“If we live through this, it’s yours.”

“Live through this?” he asked, but I hung up before he could expect an answer.

I had one more call to make, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

I hit the speed-dial button for Yiayia and took a deep breath to prepare myself for what was to come. Such a stream of profanity, all in Greek, hit me as she answered that I let the breath out again. I wasn’t going to need it until she wound down. I wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise until then.

Finally, my grandmother took a breath, used it instantly for questions and demands. “What are you thinking, running off with Apollo? Didn’t I warn you against him? He hasn’t kidnapped you, has he? Turned you into some kind of sex slave? If not, you’re in big trouble, young lady, for worrying everybody like this. Your mother is beside herself.”

My head was swimming from her abrupt turnabouts. Which was worse—the sex-slave thing or the running off of my own volition? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, there was no recourse but the truth.

“Yiayia, I didn’t run off with Apollo. That’s not what this is all about.” Although it sounded a whole lot better than the reality. I debated how much to tell her about that. As a career, my grandmother was the bearded lady in the Rialto Brothers’ sideshow. As an avocation, she ran the Goddities website, like a hot sheet on contemporary Greek gods. She knew everything there was to know about the latter-day Olympians, especially the more salacious parts of their histories…which meant she knew better than I about Apollo and the dangers of becoming too attached.

“So what is it about then?” she asked. “What is so important that you would leave your family, who you haven’t seen in far too long?”

I wasn’t going to debate that. They could have come to see me at any time, far more easily than I could have gone back to the circus to see them, especially with Lenny Rialto still hot for my blood.

“Yiayia, forget that you’re my grandmother for a minute. I need your expertise.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone and then. “Something is up? Tell me all.”

“Not for your website,” I said immediately. “Completely off the record. We don’t need to cause a panic.”

“A panic?” she asked, more delighted than concerned.

“What do you know about the nosoi?” I asked. Of all the things the Grey Sisters had said, that was the one word I hadn’t quite grasped.

“The nosoi? Pfft,” she said. Just like that, as though it was a word and not just a sound. “They’re like the wind. Nowhere and everywhere. I can’t keep track.”

“I haven’t even gotten to current whereabouts. I’m still on
what
are
they
?”

“What are they teaching children in school these days?” she asked. I’d been homeschooled, as she well knew, so any gaps in my education… “The nosoi are the demons of plague and pestilence that escaped Pandora’s box. But if you don’t know, why are you asking about—” She stopped, and the silence had weight, as though she’d just come up with the answer to her own question. “Are they stirring? Do we have to worry about the plague?”

Damn, she was far too perceptive. I didn’t dare ask her now about Namtar, probably not a great loss, since ancient Babylonian wasn’t exactly her bailiwick, but still.

“Tell me,” she insisted. “You know something.”

“I don’t
know
. But I fear. Listen, if you hear of any strange movement from the gods you track or you’re able to trace the nosoi doing whatever voodoo you do, would you let me know?”

“Just tell me,” she begged, “are we safe? Is your family safe here in Delphi?” Her fear practically vibrated through the phone. “Is there somewhere—”

“I don’t know,” I said, hating it. “But it’s a tourist spot, which means people converging from all over the world, having ridden together on public transport—planes, trains, busses. I don’t know a helluva lot about these things, but I’d say that increases the chance of contagion. It might be best…” To what? Barricade themselves in their rooms? Bug out? And go where? Using what means? “Either we stop this thing or I’m not sure there is a ‘safe’.”

“So we are up schist creek?”

I loved the way Yiayia always got slang twisted up. For a moment I missed her so fiercely I could cry.

“Not if I have anything to say about it. I’m on it. And Apollo…and Hecate.”

“Hecate?” I braced myself for an earful. “Say hello to the old bat. We raised some hell in our youth. Well,
my
youth. Helpful hint, do
not
gamble with that woman. She could teach that Lady Yiayia a thing or two about the ‘Poker Face’.”

“Lady Gaga,” I said automatically, the main part of my brain struggling to banish visions of Hecate and Yiayia raising hell and what exactly that might have entailed. I wondered if Yiayia’s beard was shorter then. Or if she’d waxed.

“Tori, are you still with me?”

I snapped out of the reverie. “One more thing—I don’t suppose you know where Panacea might be keeping herself these days?”

Despite what Apollo had said, I thought there had to be a way she could help. If nothing else, an epidemic sounded like an all-hands-on-deck situation. Maybe Yiayia knew something more specific than “Africa”.

“She’s not one I track,” Yiayia answered regretfully.

“Too tame?”

“Yes,” she said without embarrassment. “But I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you. And, Yiayia?”

“Yes, Anipsi?”

“Stay safe.”

“You too. You and Apollo, you are using the protection?”

My heart stuttered in my chest. “
Yiayia…
”

“Don’t tell me it’s none of my business. If you won’t protect your heart, at least protect your body. You don’t know where that thing has been.”

I held the phone away from my head to stare as though it were her face and she could actually see the reproach. I realized how silly that was. “I’m hanging up now.”

“
Anipsi
—”

But I was as good as my word. I loved Yiayia, but she should have been one of the Fates the way she liked to meddle in peoples’ lives.

Apollo caught my gaze as I put the phone away. “She loves and approves of me, yes?” he asked with a twist of his lips to let me know he was being ironic, at least in the Alanis Morissette way.

“She sends her love. The gift basket of puppies and rainbows is on the way.”

“Oh good,” Hecate said, “breakfast.”

“And Yiayia says
hello
,” I told Hecate, ignoring her attempt to get a rise out of me.

“Ah, how is the old bat?”

“Funny, she asked me the same about you.”

“Speaking of dinner,” Apollo cut in.

Right, we hadn’t eaten since… I didn’t remember the last time we’d eaten.

“I know just the place.”

Normally, I’d have taken visitors to Thea Marya’s little hole in the wall restaurant, which had the best moussaka in all the world. I might have been biased, but I didn’t think so.

Instead, I took them to Galina’s. It was well off the touristy beaten path and into the section of Kalambaka where people actually lived. It was a hole in the wall as well, a white door in the side of a whitewashed building with only a discreet sign beside it as advertising. Galina’s didn’t need it. Just like booze in a Prohibition world, which in Greece would have been called the apocalypse, locals would and could have sniffed out this place without any signage whatsoever. But here I never got the moussaka. Here I got the braised lamb, which melted in your mouth. I tried never to think of the cute, innocent animals that gave their lives for my meals. Maybe the Grey Sisters did the same. The very thought turned my stomach and right there I vowed to stick with the spinach-based spanakopita.

The young woman who seated us didn’t recognize me, but Kosmo descended on us the second we were seated. I prepared for fuss and introductions, but instantly realized that he hadn’t seen me at all. He had eyes only for Apollo.

“Lord in Heaven,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Apollo Demas, gracing my humble eatery. I can hardly believe it, and yet it must be. There can be no one like you! I heard you were in Greece for a movie, but I thought… Ah, but perhaps you are filming at Metéora as well? But where are my manners, you must have our best table!”

There weren’t that many, not inside, anyway, but following the old ways, just about every building still had an atrium or a courtyard, and I knew that Kosmo’s was beautiful—a little grotto with a small fountain made of cement and stone with a statue of the Blessed Mother set into an alcove. Greenery and creeping vines always threatened to overtake the little fountain and never quite managed it, I suspected through careful maintenance. The vines’ pink flowers that opened up at dawn would be closing with the setting sun, but the tiny white lights strung about the grotto would be winking on like fireflies. The candles on every table would be lit. It would be completely romantic for two, but three was a crowd.

“Please, don’t fuss,” Apollo said, opening his napkin and setting it in his lap as a sign that he was staying where he was. “I’m happy here.”

And, really, he should have known better. We Greeks will kill you with kindness, whether you like it or not.

Kosmo snapped his fingers, and in less than a second, the woman who’d seated us and his one other server were at our table, taking the napkin from Apollo’s lap, pulling out his chair and bustling about.

Hecate shot me a look of amusement and Apollo sent one of apology. I didn’t care about the fuss, but Thea Marya was going to kill me. If word spread, and Kosmo would be sure of it, that the famous Apollo Demas had visited his restaurant and not hers…and if Marya spoke to Yiayia…well, everyone would know who to blame. Again. Why always me?

In no time flat, we were at a grotto table, as I’d suspected we would be. The other occupied tables stared at the fuss and whispered among themselves. I wanted to disappear into the vegetation, just like the fountain.

“Nice?” Kosmo asked.

“Nice,” Apollo agreed with a sigh. “
Sas efcharistó
.” Thank you.

My phone began buzzing up a storm as soon as we were settled again, allowing me to ignore the curious stares. I studied the files that had arrived from Jesus and hid behind my phone when Kosmo came to take a picture for his wall. Me in Kosmo’s in a photo with Apollo would just cement my guilt. I was lucky enough not to be disowned already with everything I had to answer for.

I took the quick respite after the picture to share Jesus’s findings with the others. “According to Jesus, Namtar is married to an underworld goddess, Hušbišag.” The last came out as
Who-bi-sag
. I had no idea how it was actually pronounced. I looked up at Hecate. “Maybe you know her?”

She eyed me back. “Sure, we have mimosas every Wednesday and play Mah-Jongg once a month. All us underworld goddesses do.”

“So you don’t know her?”

“Now, I didn’t say that. I know of her. Back at the beginning, she more or less had the market cornered on the afterlife. But her heyday came and went pretty quickly, partially, if you ask me, because they made their afterlife so damned hard to get into. You know Dante’s nine circles of hell? Well, theirs was something like that, but you had to pay the guardian at every level. If you were too poor or your gift was unacceptable, poof, no entrance. It worked out okay when the empire was on the rise, but not so well on the fall. Haven’t heard from her in a dog’s age. I don’t even know if she and Namtar are still an item. I mean, thousands of years is a long time and those celebrity marriages never last.”