The Gatekeeper's Promise: Gatekeeper's Saga, Book Six (The Gatekeeper's Saga 6) (22 page)

Taking care of two defenseless babies was not the least of her worries, either. She decided she would not be having children of her own. Not only was the birth horrendously painful-looking, but dealing with the minute-to-minute needs of them once they were born was exhausting. She
wasn’t sure why any mother ever went through a second pregnancy.

“But none of you have your powers,” Jen objected. “I may as well be going, too.”
She couldn’t really see why the least experienced at taking care of babies would be the one left behind to do it.

Hip pushed her h
air from her eyes and wrapped a strand behind her ear, kissing her softly on the forehead. “You and Marvin have no experience fighting monsters. You’ll help us more here, caring for the babies.”

“Can’t you stay, too?” she asked him, already knowing the answer.

He kissed her on the lips. “I’ll be back soon.”

“
I need you to keep the babies safely hidden,” Therese said. “I’m counting on you.”

Jen wasn’t so sure who had the harder job, and as the babies squirmed awake in her arms, about to make their next demands, she thought she’d much rather be battling monsters.

Chapter Seventeen: Let the Battle Begin

Therese searched for the next foothold along the canyon wall as she followed Apollo and Artemis up to the platform, where the Olympians had watched her fight McAdams four years ago. Callisto wasn’t far below, taking up the rear. Therese never thought she’d see this place again, much less fight another battle here. The memory of Hades thrusting her sword into the helpless body of McAdams made her shiver.

Her belly was still sore
, and her breasts were tender, but she grabbed the furthest rock she could reach and pulled herself up. She and the other gods didn’t have the luxury of taking their time. They needed to incapacitate the monsters, build their rope, and get the hell out.

Not that things on the outside would be any less dangerous. In fact, even though she agreed one hundred percent with Ares and Athena’s plan, she worried her babies would be in more danger out there than they were in here. If the Underworld was the last stronghold of the Olympians, and if zombies were terrorizing the mortals, where on earth could she take her children to safety?

When they had at last reached the summit, she ran to her position, looking out over Poseidon’s river from one of the longer sides of the oblong platform. Artemis stood with her back to Therese about twenty feet away keeping watch over Demeter’s woods. These two areas—the river and the woods—covered more ground than the rocky caverns on both ends of what was shaped like a racetrack. Apollo was positioned north of them and was scanning the pink granite peaks. All three had their arrows fit and bows drawn, ready to strike.

Callisto had no
bow or arrow, but she did have a spear, which she often used for hunting in the woods with Artemis back home, and she stood looking out over the grotto and the deeper canyon, keeping watch for possible invaders. It had been hard for Therese to relinquish that job to the nymph, to not be able to keep her own eyes on the place where her babies were hidden, but she knew she was needed for her skills with the bow where Scylla was most likely to be.

Therese could see another
of their three teams getting ready at Poseidon’s river, where they planned to cull out Scylla. That team consisted of their strongest swimmers, aside from her: Ares, Hecate, and Thanatos. The remaining gods—Athena, Hypnos, and Hermes—had gone to Demeter’s woods to hunt any monsters that might be hiding there. If Artemis could get a visual, she’d shoot.

It was possible that the monsters were all in one location, making plans to attack the gods. If that was the case, the most likely meeting place
was the river, since Scylla’s ability to navigate over land was limited.

Therese believed
the other monsters, not having gills, would prefer land. She imagined Echidna, Chimera, and Ladon had taken to Demeter’s woods, where there was ample food.

Apollo had disagreed with her speculation and was sure the serpents were more likely to have set up camp in the granite mountains
, where they could maneuver more easily over smooth rock. He believed the caverns and crevices offered safer hiding places than the woods, which were set with Therese’s old traps and had already harmed Chimera.

Eventually both
of the other teams would end up there, at the granite mountains, if they found no monsters in the woods or the river. The plan was to incapacitate the monsters and then retreat. Simple enough, right?

Therese chewed on her bottom lip as she watched Thanatos dive into the river, with Ares and Hecate on either side. They started south, near the falls, and would swim the length of the river
—about a hundred yards—toward the granite peaks. She chewed and chewed, even after she drew blood. She held her breath and waited.

***

Hypnos and Hermes guided Athena past the traps in Demeter’
s woods. Fortunately, they weren’t trying to be quiet. Hermes and Athena might have a knack for stealth, but Hip had never needed to develop one.

Taunting, however, was something Hip could do—and he could do it well. Everyone who had ever known him would probably vouch for that.

“Oh, I doubt we need to worry about Chimera,” Hypnos said in a loud, arrogant voice. “She’s probably off licking her wound. And Echidna doesn’t have the balls to attack us. She’s used to hiding behind her mommy and daddy.”

Hip froze at the snap of a twig—they all did. When they heard no more, they glanced around the trees. Finally they continued walking.

“What about Ladon?” Athena asked. “He does have a hundred heads.”

“No worries,” Hermes said. “
He couldn’t be less bright.”

Hip heard another snap. Now he was sure someone was in the woods, but whether it was Pudding, the brown mare, or something else, he didn’t know.

“Tsk, tsk. What a shame,” Hip said. “To have all those heads and not one brain.”

Athena and Hermes laughed.

“You’re funny
and
poetic,” Hermes said.

From the branches above them
, a huge, green serpent’s head darted down and wrapped its neck around Hip’s waist. Athena was fast with her sword, slicing the neck in half. But other heads descended down upon them. Hip drew his dagger and went to work, his heart pumping with fear and excitement. Hermes used Athena’s spear. The last thing any of them needed was to become incapacitated without their godly abilities of quick healing. After three of Ladon’s necks had been sliced completely through, the entire beast writhed in pain, shrieking as parts of his great serpent body began to fall from the branches. Hip jumped out of the way, barely missing being squashed. Then, one by one, like angry birds, arrows flew from the platform and lodged themselves in the thick green skin of the beast. Hip and his companions backed away as the enormous serpent finally fell, defeated, on the ground.

Before they had time to move on, Athena gasped.

Hip spun toward her, but not in time to stop the spear that was put through her waist by Chimera.

“Who’s laughing now?” the monster roared with her lion’s head.

Hip had known he would come to regret carrying that beast to heal. They should have left her to suffer.

As Athena collapsed on the ground
beside Ladon, Hermes ran after Chimera. He wouldn’t have caught up to her had she not tripped on a vine and fallen, lion’s head first, onto the ground. Before she could clamber to her feet, Artemis’s arrows came once again, like automatic artillery, one after another into Chimera’s flesh. Hermes took up Athena’s spear and impaled the eye of the goat’s head for good measure.

“That’s for Athena!” he growled as he pulled the spear back out.

Hip had remained guarding Athena, who lay on her back, still and pale, on bloody leaves, the spear sticking up through her belly between the breast plate and girdle of her armor.

Hermes turned her body over
, gently, so he could see the back of the spear. It was one of Therese’s sticks, sharpened at both ends, no doubt dug up from the ground by Chimera. Hermes laid Athena back down, and without any warning, grasped the spear and pulled it from her gut in one quick sweep.

Athena shrieked and then was still and quiet again, her
gray eyes open, her face pale.

“Let’s get her to the stream,” Hip said.

In a barely audible voice, Athena murmured, “Complete the mission.”

“We can’t leave you here,” Hermes argued.

“Hide me and go,” she ordered. “Come back for me later.”

Hypnos pulled of
f his shirt, wadded it up, and pressed it against her wound. “Hermes will go. I’ll stay. There’s no telling what those beasts would do if they discovered you.”

***

Thanatos searched the waters high and low for Scylla
as he swam in line with Ares and Hecate down the river. Without his godly vision, he was unable to see more than twenty feet in front of him, even though the water was clear and filled with very few fish and plant life. It was exhausting, for the water ran from the bigger waterfall near the grotto all the way to the granite mountains for a hundred yards, and he was constantly having to lift up his head for air. There wasn’t much of a current to help him along, either. He sincerely doubted Scylla could stand to be anywhere else, though, especially after he had watched Therese attempt to maneuver in the beast’s body. Water was the only logical place for Scylla to be.

And yet, here they were, nearing the end of the river, where it hit up against the pink granite banks, and they’d seen no sign of her.

When he emerged from the river onto the banks, gasping for breath, he heard a sharp scream from the platform. He turned to see Therese running at her top speed from her post toward Callisto. The scream came again. It was Callisto. Something was wrong at the grotto!

Thanatos climbed from the river and scrambled along the bank back toward the falls. Ares and Hecate were right on his heels. He kept glancing up at the platform, expecting Therese to glance down at him as she ran parallel to him, but she never did, not once.
She was singular in her focus, precise and driven in her stride. She reached Callisto while Than still had fifty more yards to go. He expected to see Therese fit an arrow and draw her bow, aimed at whatever monster must be waiting for him just around the bend, but, instead, Therese dropped her weapons and fell to her knees.

***

Jen
knew it did no good to keep watch on the edge of the grotto, especially when she risked being seen, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know what was going on.

“What do you see?” Marvin asked from where he sat with
baby Hermes, who’d been restless and fussy and wearing Jen out.

“Nothing. Just Callisto on the platform.”

Hestia gurgled from her makeshift bed on the cavern floor.

“Uh-oh,” Marvin sighed. “Guess who’s waking up.”

“That wasn’t much of a nap, was it?” Jen said without inflection.

“They can probably sense our anxiety,” Marvin mused.

Jen lifted her arms in the air and then dropped them. “Well, I don’t know what to do about that.”

“Maybe we should sing.”

Jen resisted rolling her eyes as she waited to see if Hestia might fall back to sleep, but instead, the baby pinched up her face and took a deep breath just before she began to wail.

“Lord, not again.” Jen took
the baby in her arms and paced.

She was surprised when Marvin started humming—not by the fact that he was humming, but by how beautiful his voice was. Hestia stopped squirming and opened her blue eyes, listening.

Jen turned a smile of astonishment to Marvin. “It’s working.”

She
had to admit that his voice was amazing, and something about it began to calm her, too. She sat against the wall of the cave across from him and allowed herself to relax to the sound of his voice.

Suddenly
Marvin stopped and his jaw dropped open. Jen followed his gaze to the opening of the grotto. A dark-haired woman with turquoise eyes peered over the cliff edge below the falls and smiled at them. The water streamed down her hair and face like water from a shower head. She must be a goddess, Jen thought.

“Don’t stop,” the woman said. “Your voice is lovely.”

“Who are you?” Marvin asked.

“I should ask the same of you,” the woman replied. “You are apparently mortals and friends of the gods?”

“Yes,” Jen said, bouncing Hestia, who’d begun to whimper. “I’m Jen and that’s Marvin. And you are?”

“What a lovely little family you make,” the woman said.

Jen scoffed. “It’s not what you think. These babies aren’t mine. Thank God.”

Marvin climbed to his feet, blushing and shaking his head. The guy was in his thirties. How could this woman think they were together?

“My mistake.” The woman smiled—a little too big, in Jen’s opinion.