Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (17 page)

For just a moment, something changed in Achilles’ eyes. The crook of his mouth faltered, and he looked somber, almost soft. They could shake hands and walk out of there. Things could change. For just that moment, Achilles considered it. Maybe he even wished for it.

“Come on,” Henry said. “Don’t let them collar you.”

Achilles’ teeth flashed white.

“Collar me?” he asked. “You just don’t get it, do you? We could have been friends. Lived our mortal lives. I could have forgiven you.” He smiled. “But now I don’t have to. I get to be a god.”

“Cassandra was right about you,” Andie said. “You’re a real shit.”

Achilles chuckled, but his jaw flexed hard. The fierceness of him made Henry take a step backward.

“Hephaestus!” Hermes shouted from the far corner. “You said you would forge us a new shield!” Poor, hurt Hermes. Sometimes he sounded as innocently disappointed as a child.

“Does it look like I’m in any condition to forge a new shield?” Hephaestus asked, and held up his gnarled hands. “With this damn death?”

He looked at Henry meaningfully.

“The only shield by my hand that will ever exist,” Hephaestus said, glancing upward, “is that one.”

Achilles followed the god’s gaze. When he saw the shield, greed and joy transformed his features. He ran to the wall and jumped, latched on to a ladder, and climbed to the first-level railing. He kept going that way, leaping from rail to rail, until he reached the third floor. But the distance between the third and fourth levels was too great, and the surface of the joining wall was carefully smooth. Achilles slapped his hands against it in vain.

Henry looked up at the shield, and at the door on the fourth floor near the crisscrossing system of steel girders.

“It’s not yours anymore, Achilles,” he shouted, and ran back the way they’d come, into the maze of hallways and rooms.

*   *   *

Hermes watched Henry go, still frozen. Andie called after him, but he yelled for her to stay with Hermes, which wasn’t a bad suggestion. Hermes had no desire to be left the only fly in a room full of spiders.

“Wait! What are you doing? Where are you going?” Andie shouted, but Hermes suspected that she knew. Her shouts were reactionary. Henry was going to find his way back up to the fourth floor for the shield, to beat Achilles to it and claim it for his own. It would be one brief, shining moment of sticking it in Achilles’ face.

But that’s all it would be. One shield wasn’t going to save them.

“How could you do this?” Hermes asked Hephaestus. “We met as friends. We’ve always met as friends.”

“And we are. But none of that matters in the face of the Moirae.” Hephaestus sat motionless in his chair, but as the Moirae drew close to him on their jerking legs, he had to stiffen to keep from recoiling. Atropos reached out and touched his hand. Hermes saw the joints stretch and pop back into place. He saw the wonder in Hephaestus’ eyes as he flexed his rejuvenated fist without struggle or pain.

Hermes glared at the Moirae, at Lachesis, and it almost seemed that she looked back. Even as her head lolled on her wrinkled, sunken neck, it almost seemed that she winked.

Above them, Achilles still fought the wall, trying in vain to climb it or tear it down. His impotent rage drowned out almost everything else.

(ON YOUR KNEES, MESSENGER.)

Atropos thundered between his ears, and Hermes’ knees hit the marble with a sharp crack. He hadn’t even felt his muscles give way.

“Get out of my head,” he whispered, and heard Andie’s footsteps as she ran to his side.

“Leave him alone!”

He wanted to drag her down, clamp his hand over her mouth, and provide what cover he could. He waited with held breath for her to hit the ground, too, or worse, to explode in a mist of pink. Instead, she smarted off, as insubordinate as ever.

“Can’t get into my head, can you!” she taunted. “And with your guardian hanging orangutan-style from the walls, maybe I’ll just shove a spear through your faces.” She ran to one of the standing lamps and yanked it from its socket. If any one of the Moirae got a hit in, even one who wasn’t much more than an emptying bag, they would take her head clean from her shoulders. Hermes couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

Under pressure, these mortals rose up. They became something more.

*   *   *

Henry ran through the house as fast as he could, back to the foyer where they’d started. He had to start at the beginning, or he’d lose his way. But he had to go fast, or he’d never beat Achilles to the fourth level. And if they both started climbing girders at the same time, he knew which way it would go.

He retraced their steps through two rooms and hallways, turning right at a vase painted with Chinese shar-peis, bred to be protectors of the Chinese royal family, Hephaestus said. He ran fast through a study with a bust of Homer, and took one quick left and another right down the hall. Sweat stood out on his forehead, but his legs felt fresh, springy and steady as a rubber tire. Remembering the way was easier than he’d thought. He’d paid attention to Hephaestus during the tour. In each room, he’d singled out a piece of art or furniture. The stories played out in Henry’s head as he went, laying an invisible thread through the house.

“Faster,” he said, and willed his legs to run.

*   *   *

Henry burst through the fourth-floor door before Andie had a chance to try out her lamp-spear on the Moirae. Hermes watched him start to climb, and almost whooped, but the weight of Atropos’ will sat on his shoulders like a stone, pressing him to his knees. Her words in his mind were law.

Andie shouted to Henry and switched her target. She launched the lamp at Achilles’ back and struck a clean blow, knocking him off the railing to land face down on the third-floor carpet.

“Hermes, get up!”

Andie grabbed books off the shelves and began to lob them at Achilles as hard as she could. He batted them away and screamed in fury as he watched Henry climb closer and closer to the shield.

“I can’t,” Hermes whispered. Was she mad? It was the Moirae that held him. His own gods who held him down.

“Yes you can! They’re dying. They’re nothing. Now get up and help me!”

Hermes shook his head. He didn’t know what was greater, the fear of them or the weight, but he couldn’t move. The thought of their eyes on him made him want to weep. Andie was wrong. In the face of the Moirae, all any god could do was obey.

Hephaestus knew it. He knew it, and I can’t blame him for that.

Something flew past Hermes’ ear. A book. Flung end over end like the blade of a hatchet. It struck the Moirae with a heavy thud and a flutter of paper.

“Look at that!” Andie hissed. “Look at them! They’re nothing now, Hermes! They’re monsters.” Her voice went low, menacing, and full of hate. “And they’re afraid. They’re more fucking afraid than all of us put together.”

He listened to her voice. Saw another book fly and heard it hit. Andie. Andromache. Her name meant “man of war,” and she earned every letter.

She fights my gods for me.

“They can’t hold you down anymore, Hermes,” she said. “They’re nothing.”

Hermes swallowed hard. Sweat ran down his nose and he hadn’t even started trying to rise yet. He breathed deep, and felt Andie’s strength in his own guts. He raised his head and looked into Atropos’ eyes. He saw the way they blazed at Andie’s words.

It’s true. They’re less. They’re not our gods anymore.

He clenched his teeth and pushed hard against the weight on his shoulders.

(STAY DOWN.)

“No.” It might have been easier if he still had muscle in his legs, but cartilage and bone would have to do. He pushed and kept pushing, and the longer he did, the lighter he felt. He rose, hunched over, and inched his feet forward.

“Go, Henry!” he shouted. “Climb!” The elation at getting his feet under him was so great that he laughed, even though just inching forward felt like walking on Jupiter. The Moirae were less, but they were still the Moirae. Atropos still held him down.

But not on his knees.

“Not like that, Achilles!” Hephaestus called up toward the third level. “You’ll never get to it that way. You have to go through the house!”

Hermes looked up and saw Achilles dart through the doors on the third floor.

“Hephaestus, you shit!” he shouted, and glared at his friend. Hephaestus said nothing, but winked slowly with his right eye. A real wink. Impossible to miss.

*   *   *

Henry didn’t look down. Even when he heard Achilles slamming his way through the opposite side of the house. Any minute he’d burst through the door on the fourth floor and start climbing for the shield. Henry needed to have it in his hands by then.

Climbing the girders wasn’t that difficult. His balance was good, and better on adrenaline. But it wasn’t fast. The shield was still twenty feet and nine girders away. He braced in the center of a steel
X
and jumped across to an inverted
T.
His arms wrapped around the base. Just once, he allowed himself a glance to the ground and was rewarded by seeing it spin. Andie was in his ear, shouting encouragement. Hermes, too. They were still alive. He still had time.

Across the house, Achilles bellowed. Something shattered that sounded like pottery, or plates. He was lost. His footsteps sounded across the third floor, back and forth and back again.

Guess he didn’t pay attention on the tour. Or maybe he didn’t get one.

Maybe Hephaestus hadn’t betrayed them after all. Henry crawled and climbed across three more girders. Then another. One foot, and one grip at a time. Until his hand closed on the edge of the shield.

*   *   *

The Moirae advanced, ready to put Hermes on his knees for good. He edged his feet out to a wider stance.

Fine. Let them come. Give Andie and Henry a chance to get out with the shield.

Up close, they were massive. A mountain blotting out the sun. Especially since he still stood hunched. Hermes made himself study every inch. They would know he wasn’t afraid. Beneath Clotho’s dangling arm, and between waves of wild red hair, he could see Hephaestus, and smiled.

Hephaestus smiled back. He threw off his blanket and rose from his chair. The braces on his legs were smaller than the ones he had worn during Hermes’ first visit, and better balanced. He could walk without arm supports. He could run, and leap, straight onto the backs of the Moirae.

“Hephaestus!”

“I’ll hold them as long as I can! Get them out! Go where they won’t follow!” He gripped Atropos’ black hair with his freshly repaired hand. How kind of her to fix it for him.

“Hermes!” He looked up and saw Henry waving the shield. “Catch!”

The shield fell, a heavy, shining circle, and Hermes caught it and swept it up to his chest. With it before him, the influence of the Moirae was weaker. He could stand straight and even advance. He could bash Atropos in the face.

The Moirae stumbled back, facing an onslaught from Hephaestus behind and an armed Hermes in the front.

“It’s a great shield, friend,” Hermes said, and bashed her again.

“Of course it is.” Hephaestus used his good hand to punch Clotho in the temple. He shouldn’t have let go of Atropos. She reached back and dragged his legs over her shoulder. The sound of his joints stretching and popping was almost as terrible as his scream.

“Hephaestus!”

“Henry!” Andie shouted. “Over the rail! Dangle and drop! I’ll get the ladder to you!”

Henry had climbed down from the girders. He threw his legs over the fourth-floor railing and dropped down to hang before letting go and sliding across the smooth wall to the third floor. It was a long drop; he shouted when he hit. But when Andie rolled the ladder to him he was on it, climbing and sliding the rest of the way down.

“Hermes, come on!” They ran toward the way they’d come in.

“No! Not to the car!” Not to Kincade, where they were still defenseless. He looked at the dark rectangle of stairs, cut into the marble floor. “There! Go!”

They changed direction and made for the staircase.

“Hermes!” Andie waved for him to follow.

“I can’t leave Hephaestus!”

“Go, friend,” Hephaestus said. He struggled with Atropos, but the fight was lost. In the scant seconds it took for Henry to reach the ground level, she had already turned one of his elbows around the wrong way, and stripped him of one of his leg braces. He looked at Hermes sadly, and smiled. “Come back for me, if you find her.”

“I will,” he replied.
I will.

“Move, move!” he shouted to Andie, and she and Henry fled down the stairs. Down, and down, and down into the dark. The house had not near so many floors above as it had below, Hephaestus said. Hephaestus had no shortage of escape routes, and the stairs would take them far away from the grip of the Moirae. They would take them all the way to the underworld.

15

HADES

“It’s like being inside a snow globe.”

“What is?” Athena asked.

“This place.” Odysseus gestured around, careful to keep his eyes from lingering too long on the black forever above their heads. “It feels contained. I can’t stop thinking about up there. Or out there. The real world. I’ve never wanted to smash through something so much as I do these walls.”

Athena studied the underworld, tall rock in uneven colors of red and orange, gray and rotten purple. Blue and black in the shadows. The creeping, silent river that ran to nowhere in both directions. The dying gods who sat nearby, one of whom looked like a pet corpse they’d been dragging around for a month in warm weather.

“It’s only an illusion,” she said. “The world still exists outside. It still breathes. It’s still green. The edges do touch, in places.”

“That’s what makes it so maddening, I guess. The memory of it. Knowing that it’s there. Death would be kinder if we forgot.”

Across the river, a few shades lingered, hopeful of another taste of blood. Just one more drop, to quicken them and give them will. They circled and sniffed like dogs beneath an empty table.