Rise of the Blood (27 page)

He took the flashlight out of his mouth and handed it to me so that he could answer. “Of course.”

Of course
, I mimicked under my breath, wiping the flashlight off on my jeans. I had a bad feeling about this. I didn’t want anyone else hurt because of me. The Underworld was supposedly booby-trapped so that mortals could get in but they couldn’t get out. And gods…they weren’t even supposed to get in. Hades wasn’t crazy about how he’d made out in the dominion lottery, but he
was
crazy dedicated to guarding what was his.

“Apollo,” I began, ready to voice my concerns.

“Stop,” he said firmly.

“But—”

“No.”

Now he was just pissing me off. I was going to say my piece.

“Yes,” I said adamantly. “You make whatever call you’re going to make, but listen first.”

He looked up from messing with the lines, straight into my glare. “Okay.”

“When the titans were defeated, weren’t many of them banished to Tartarus?”

“Yes,” he said, brows furrowed, wondering what I was getting at.

“So there’s a good chance that if they’re rising, Hades has his hands full.”

He nodded.

“That could mean that he’s too busy to take any notice of our approach or that he’s already on high alert for trouble, which will make this infinitely harder. Even if he’s fully occupied, I’m not sure that sneaking up on him is our best idea ever.”

“I don’t see what choice we have. There are no cell towers in Hell.”

“I’m just saying…this is your chance to change your mind. Show me how to use this junk and get back to the others. I won’t…” my voice broke, “…I won’t be responsible for your death.”

Apollo’s whole face lit with…something. I turned away. It was too much. Like staring at a solar eclipse. I felt rather than saw him rise and take the few steps toward me. When he grabbed my chin, I looked up at him reluctantly, and he pulled me toward him with his free hand. I expected him to come in for a kiss and shook my chin out of his grasp, ready to turn aside, but he just wrapped that arm around me and hugged me to him. My arms were trapped at my sides. My face pressed to his chest, and I felt…warm, safe and disappointed all at the same time. I’d been ready to avoid that kiss, but on some level I’d wanted it…or wanted him to try it, anyway. Screwed up, that was me in a nutshell.

He rested his chin on top of my head and we just breathed together for a minute.

“Tori, I’m a big boy. I can make my own decisions. You’re not responsible for them. What’s more, I’m a god, and that comes with certain responsibilities…it’s in the handbook.”

I pulled back enough so that I could see his eyes. “There’s a handbook?”

“Sure. I wrote it. It’s in graphic novel form. I figured more people would read it that way. I’ve even got a small cult following.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

He shrugged, his eyes glimmering with mischief. “Maybe. You’ll have to live through this to find out.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, feeling better, respecting him for not trying to kiss me while I was vulnerable.

A graphic novel as a reason to live. Well, why not?

“Come on,” he said, eyes still shining. “Let me hook you up.” He paused for a second, then added, “Huh, I always thought that when we got to play around with ropes we’d be having a lot more fun and wearing a lot less clothing.”

And there went that respect, evaporating into the evening air. Or not, because I couldn’t help but smile, which I’m sure had been his intent. If nothing else, the banter was keeping my mind off my fears and recriminations. Someday I’d thank him for that. If we lived that long.

“Ready?” he asked, holding open a section of harness that I guessed was supposed to be a leg hole. I gave it a dubious look and stepped through. He repeated the procedure with the other leg and then buckled something around my waist, tugging a section at my back to make sure all was secure.

“I feel like a marionette,” I said.

“Trust me, you are much too pretty to play Pinocchio.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“You’re very inspiring.”

I snorted, and he left it alone, though I wouldn’t have minded if the banter lasted a little longer, postponing our descent into the abyss.

I winced as he drove an anchor, or whatever they called it in mountain-scaling lingo, into the ground. I knew the site had already been violated and that we weren’t exactly standing on undisturbed ground. Still it hurt to deface an ancient site this way. Like kicking over a standing stone.

He looped a rope through the anchor, tested things out, did some voodoo with the equipment and a harness of his own, and we were apparently ready to go…way too soon. I wondered if his harness cut into him the way mine cut into me. Or, maybe not in the
exact
same way. I wondered if I was wondering to keep my mind off the amazing stupidity of what we were about to do—descend into the Underworld, hotbed of Hades, restless titans, Thanatos and Hypnos and Cerberus—oh my!

“Let’s go,” he said, when he decided all was in readiness.

“I liked our last date better,” I said, before I could consider my words.

“Duly noted. When all this is over, I’ll buy you a nice dinner at a beautiful upscale restaurant. You can wear that wrap dress again…and maybe something other than a scowl this time.”

I scowled at him. It was nostalgic. “I’m taken,” I said, even though I wasn’t so sure it was true anymore. It was still true in my heart.

He shrugged. “You’re the one who brought it up.” But his expression wasn’t nearly as casual as his words.

“How do we do this?” I asked.

“I’ll go first,” he said. “That way I can get to ground level, make sure it’s all clear and hold the rope so that you can repel down. Just like climbing a rock wall.”

Right. Just like that thing I’d never done. But, hey, I’d seen it on TV, so that was the next best thing, right?

“Bombs away,” I told him. He looked at me funny from his perch on the edge of the abyss, but I was used to that. If I took exception every time someone looked at me funny, I’d spend my life in righteous indignation. Sounded exhausting.

“A kiss for luck?” he asked.

“Yeah, cause I’ve been so lucky so far. Look at Armani. Um, Nick.”

He held my gaze a moment more, letting me know he’d caught that.

“Right,” he said. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

And then he was. He pushed off the side and was sliding down into the abyss, holding his own rope with gloved hands. I watched him go, but with the sun now set, it wasn’t long before he disappeared.

Yes, I missed him. But more because I was squatting on the edge of a big black hole, waiting for my own journey to the center of the earth.

When he yelled, I learned over the abyss, got vertigo and stopped.

“What,” I yelled back.

“Slide down. I’ve got you.” It seemed to come from a long, long way away. If I hadn’t been straining, I’d never have heard him.

The shakes set in. My pits grew damp. It was like ambrosia withdrawal, only without the fun hallucinations. The horror before me was real.

I took a deep breath, counted to ten, let it go. I’d seen people do that on television too, or maybe in infomercials to calm stress. They were full of shit.

“Tori?” he called.

“Coming,” I yelled down impatiently.
Geez, give a girl a chance
. “Okay,” I said for my own sake. “Here goes.”

I sat down on my butt and scooted myself toward the edge, shaking the whole way. Terror rose up, choking me, making me feel like I couldn’t catch a breath or let one out. My heart was pounding so hard I expected my chest to explode. But I didn’t stop…until I hit the very edge and small rocks started to skitter out from under me, raining down into the abyss. Probably coming down on Apollo’s head. He’d flinch. I’d fall.

“Are you
sure
you’ve got me?” I yelled.

Suddenly, something started to fill me, like a humming in my head. Soothing, calming. My heart rate started to slow again. I wanted to panic at the invasion, afraid Rhea might be taking over again, that she might use me to close the tunnel behind Apollo—bring it down on his head. But—

“Better?” Apollo called up.

“Are you messing with my head?” I called back.

“I’m inspiring peace.”

“Well—keep it up.”
Cut it out
, the fiercely independent part of me wanted to say, but she was vetoed by sanity. Not a frequent visitor to my world, so we tended to listen when she spoke. Yes,
we.
Me, myself and Rhea. One more personality and we’d make a blockbuster film…or at least a made-for-TV movie. Ah, there, I knew the sanity wouldn’t last long.

I took a deep breath, swallowed hard and let myself go. I didn’t drop far. A body length, maybe, and then the rope pulled taut.

“Good girl,” Apollo called, making me wonder if there were cookies in this for me at the end, or a good ear scratch. “Now, I’m going to let you down easy.”

Easier than Armani
. No, no, I wasn’t going to think of that. Now was no time for distractions.

Hand over hand, Apollo lowered me down into the darkness while I tried not to think of Nick, creepy crawlies or falling to a deadly death. Yes, I knew it was redundant. But any scenario where I didn’t just go quietly into that good night at a ripe old age struck me like that.

When the hands reached me, I shrieked.

“Tori, it’s
me
. I’ve got you.”

Apollo
. I wanted to hug him and squeeze him…and call him a bastard for scaring me like that.

“Your hands are cold,” I lied.

“Uh huh.”

I heard his clothing rustle and then realized that I still held the flashlight, so illuminating our surroundings was up to me.

Apollo gently angled my hand to shine the light on the climbing ropes so that he could release me. “If they weren’t so awkward to move in, I’d suggest we stay in the harnesses for a quick getaway, but—”

He found the release. When the harness fell away, it felt like a weight had been lifted off me. Finally, I could breathe.

Apollo took the flashlight back from me and moved the beam slowly around the space. The snake’s tunnel continued downward at a slope, the floor of the tunnel smooth and almost polished, as if countless scales had slithered over it during the course of ages. It was creepy, and the way was going to be slippery, especially if we came across any wet areas.

“You got another of those for me?” I asked, nodding toward the flashlight.

“I have a cell phone with a flashlight app,” he answered.

“Never mind.”

Apollo kept the light and led the way, figuring, not wrongly, that if he slid from behind me with his greater bulk, he’d take me down with him, but if
I
slipped and he was in my way he had some chance of stopping the slide.

We moved slowly, and at the first branching stopped to consult our precog. It seemed counter-intuitive to head
toward
the danger, but the right path was clearly more ominous, based on the mule kick my precog landed on my solar plexus.

“Right?” Apollo confirmed. I nodded.

The tunnel leveled out almost entirely and the walls grew as smooth as the floors. Water dripped from the ceilings, though, and when I shone the light up toward them, it became clear that the drips were coming from the end of dark stalactites that looked like petrified icicles.

There were other branches leading off, though not many. Still, our guts kept telling us to move straight ahead and after a while—monotony tended to mess with my concept of time—there seemed to be a glow from up ahead, as if we were getting somewhere. I got the sense, too, that things opened up ahead, and the phantom mule gave me another kick to the gut, as if in affirmation.

Apollo felt it too. He put a hand back to slow me, silently, and together we crept toward the end of the tunnel…the
light
at the end of the tunnel. Hadn’t I heard somewhere
not
to go into the light? Unfortunately, I didn’t see that we had a choice.

When Apollo stopped, I nudged him aside, unable to let him discover anything before me. The light was coming from some kind of florescent moss covering the stalactites. Spiro would have loved it, but my attention was caught by what the light revealed. The smooth floor of the tunnel led down to a shore of equally smooth rocks, and beyond that, a slow-moving river on which sat a weathered skiff and a skeletal ferryman. Or, at least, as thin as he was there couldn’t have been much more than bones beneath his tattered cloak.

Charon.
Ferryman for the dead.

If he knew we were here, then Hades…

And yet my precog hadn’t kicked up full force—bells and whistles and migraine-inducing klaxons.

Charon turned as he sensed our approach. I couldn’t see his face inside the hood and cowl of his cloak, but the boney finger he pointed our way, which I was glad to see was covered in a minimum of flesh anyway (fish belly white) was unmistakable. He crooked it at us in the universal sign for “Come hither.”
To your doom
, my brain wanted to add, but I beat it into submission.

I pointed to my own chest to make sure he was really talking to
us
and that there weren’t some other lost souls, maybe spirits we couldn’t actually see, who he might be signaling.

“
Come here
,” he demanded, his voice as threadbare as his cloak. It sounded like the wind howling mournfully through thick marsh grasses—thin and rank with decay.

Apollo and I looked at each other. “But we’re not dead,” he said, just to be clear.

Charon sighed like a bubble of swamp gas releasing. “Hades sent me to fetch you. There is trouble afoot.”

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

I looked to Apollo for some sign. He knew the old gods better than I did. Was Hades for real? There was no way he could have missed the earth quaking. And if the titans were rising, he’d no doubt need help. I just couldn’t see him asking for it. On the other hand, Charon hadn’t exactly been
asking.

“We don’t have the fare,” Apollo said, still testing.