Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (22 page)

“He died a mortal’s death. Demeaned on the side of a road.” Alecto burrowed into Cassandra’s mind again and pulled the memory out by the root. “A branch shoved through his chest. Sputtering about love on a cloudy day.”

“Shut up!”

“You made him nothing. Made him fallible.”

“I didn’t ask for any of that!”

“But it’s your fault. He died for you. Because of you.”

“I never asked him to,” Cassandra screamed. “He never listened to anything I wanted. He was a god! A stupid, stupid god!” Fire licked up and down her arms. Pure, clean hate. “He didn’t die for me. To save me. He died to clear his own conscience, and he got what he deserved!” Tears rolled down her cheek. “For what he did. For what they all did.”

“Cassandra,” Calypso said, her soothing voice, like music, pale as an echo. Everything spun and burned before Cassandra’s eyes, ready to explode. To send glass and disease flying.

“And now Athena returns,” Alecto whispered. “Alive and well. With Aphrodite and Ares by her side. Friends. Allies. Your Aidan forgotten.”

“Athena?” Calypso asked. “Alive? But how?” She stepped closer to Alecto, looking for a miracle, but Cassandra couldn’t see her. Her world had turned red. Athena was with Aphrodite. She was with Ares.

I always knew it. I always knew she’d go to them.

Cassandra’s palms bled where her nails dug in.

“Cassandra, we have to go! We have to see.” Calypso was in her ear, imploring and so damn hopeful. “We have to—”

“You want to help them!” Cassandra whirled and grabbed Calypso by the shoulders. Thanatos screamed for her to stop, but it was too late. Angry as she was, it only took a touch.

And Alecto laughed, and disappeared.

PART II

TWO WARS

17

STAIRS UP, ALL TOGETHER NOW

Hermes led Andie and Henry deeper and deeper into the belly of Hephaestus’ house. The only sounds were their footsteps and rapidly huffing breath. He held the Shield of Achilles ahead of them at chest level. What must they look like? What would Hades think when they burst into the underworld, a scrappy army of three?

Doesn’t matter. Just get them down.
He looked back.
And be ready to catch them if they stumble.

They had run over two hundred stairs and still saw no sign of the bottom. If they took a fall, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Slower,” he said. “We’ve gone far enough now. We can take it easy.” He thought of his friend above, Hephaestus in the grip of the Moirae. But when Hephaestus had told them to go, he’d meant it, knowing what it would cost.

“How much farther?” Andie asked.

“Don’t know.” He cupped his hands and hooted down into the dark, heard it echo five times before going out of earshot. “Long way.”

Andie puffed, hands on her knees. “Guess I shouldn’t have stopped going to hockey practice.”

“It doesn’t help that much, actually,” Henry puffed beside her. “Can I see it?”

It took Hermes a minute to realize he meant the shield.

“Of course.” He handed it over. “You won it. It’s yours.”

His. But not his. He saw it in Henry’s eyes the moment he held it, studying the intricate carvings. It took Henry two arms to keep it aloft. Achilles could have flung it like a discus.

“Andie,” Henry said. “Do you want to see it?”

“No.” She turned her shoulder. “I don’t care.”

Henry frowned, and Hermes took the shield back. Of course she didn’t want to see it. It wasn’t hers. Her lot was to be the war wife, all over again.

But it might turn out different, this time.

“Did you hear that?” Henry asked.

“Hear what?” Andie asked.

“It sounded like someone shouting, from down there.” He pointed down the stairs.

Hermes stilled, and listened.

“Did it sound like torture?” He asked. “Maybe we’re closer than I thought, and coming in on the Tartarus side.”

They started forward again, this time easy and ambling. Apprehension grew in Hermes’ chest with every step. They weren’t much of a match for anything that might crawl up to the gates. The sound of tramping feet reached them and Hermes wished for more light, or a few stretched-out shadows to serve as warning. Judging by the noise, they were about to be overtaken by a herd of Cape buffalo.

“Turtle up,” he said, and set the shield in front of them. No time like the present to find out what it was worth.

Ares’ face, smeared with blood, came into view first. There was just enough time for Hermes to think,
Oh, shit,
before Athena shouted, “Get out of my way,” and pushed past him. Hermes let the shield roll, let Henry scramble to keep it from bouncing down the million or so remaining stairs.

It was Athena. It was his sister.

Hugging her felt so good it seemed imaginary, even if the impact of her rattled all the bones in his body.

*   *   *

When Athena threw her arms around her brother, she thought she’d never let go. She was afraid it was all an illusion, that they’d never escaped the underworld at all and any moment Hermes would dissolve into molecules right beneath her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Shut up. You’re here. You’re back. I found you.” He squeezed her tighter. “Though admittedly I wasn’t really looking.”

“Odysseus?
Odysseus!
” Andie shouted and stumbled on jelly legs down the steps to put her hands on his shoulders in disbelief. “You’re alive.”

“Thanks to her.” He grinned at Athena. “And him, if you can believe it.”

Ares tipped an imaginary cap with his mangled hand.

“What are they doing here?” Henry asked, glaring at Panic and Oblivion.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Athena said. She held Hermes at arms’ length. He looked thinner. More pale. And weary. He looked incredible.

“Where’s Cassandra?” Odysseus asked. “And Cally?”

“Finding their way back,” Andie answered. “At least that’s what Demeter said when we went to see her in the desert. We haven’t seen them since the fight on Olympus. We thought they were dead. We thought you all were.”

Athena nodded. So Cassandra and Calypso were together. Good. At least they weren’t alone. And it was good, too, that Cassandra wasn’t with Hermes. She’d have killed Ares if she was, and Athena owed him more than half a trip up the underworld’s stairs. But they would find her. And soon.

I won’t pick sides.

But that felt like a lie.

“If you weren’t looking for me,” she asked Hermes, “what are you doing down here?”

“The Moirae,” he said. “They’re up there with Achilles. In Hephaestus’ house. They’ve got him. We were after the shield and we got it. But we had to run. Athena.” He grabbed her arm. “I stood against them. They’re weakening. Hephaestus told me to come back, if I found help.”

Athena thought quickly, remembering how it felt to have the Moirae in her head on Olympus. How easily they’d forced her to her knee. But Hermes had faced them down.

And I stood, too, when I had to. When Odysseus fell.

“We have to go back up.” Hermes tugged her gently. “Hephaestus was trying to help us.”

“Then we won’t lose him.” She nodded to Ares, and he sprinted ahead at once. Athena choked down the urge to tell him not to do anything stupid. Wasted words.

Odysseus flipped his sword in his hand, but Athena pressed it to his side.

“Don’t face him,” she said.

“Not going to face him. I’m just going to give back this sword, and we’ll call it quits.”

“I mean it. You’d lose.”

“Yes,” he said. “But it’d be closer than you think.”

*   *   *

Athena knew long before she got inside Hephaestus’ house that it was over. Ares hadn’t even bothered to battle cry.

The sight when she reached the top of the stairs was sad and strangely empty. The fireplaces still burned. Hermes pressed a hand to a motorized chair and declared it still warm. No doubt the blood was warm, too, where it lay in streaks and puddles. Everything about the scene felt immediate, as though if they’d gotten there a blink sooner they’d have seen it all. But Hephaestus was gone. Vanished. Not even a twisted body remained for them to mourn.

“I can’t tell if he left alive.” Ares studied the tracks of blood covering most of the floor. If Hephaestus left alive, he’d done so in pieces. “There’s too much corruption to the trail. The Moirae dragged themselves through it. Maybe they dragged him along behind. Or maybe he dragged himself, and got away.” He leaned in and sniffed a spray of red. “Not all of it’s his. Good on him.”

“Will you cut the CSI,” Hermes snapped. “Goddamn it.”

“I’m saying he might be alive,” Ares snapped back. “Look here, at the palm print. There was weight behind that.”

“Do you want me to get you a black light and those little flags with numbers on them? And get your damned wolves out of it!” Hermes darted to the desk and threw a paperweight at Panic and Oblivion. It landed among their paws and shattered. They whined and trotted away licking red muzzles.

Ares set his jaw and squeezed fresh blood from his mangled hand.

“Hermes,” Athena said. “Someone should try to track him, if he can be tracked.” She nodded reluctantly at Ares, as if to say,
Let him do it.
She didn’t want to leave the others, in case the Moirae or Achilles decided to double back.

“Where are we?” she asked, and hoped no one gave the obvious answer of Hephaestus’ house. That much she could tell. From the welded girders decorating the ceiling to the double fireplaces burning hot, the whole place felt like him. Blacksmith of the gods. It even smelled faintly of iron, though that might have been the blood.

“Buffalo,” Henry supplied.

Buffalo. So close to home. So close to her own bed she could practically feel the pillows rising up to meet the backs of her shoulders. She wouldn’t even make them hitchhike. They’d spring for a car. Hell, they’d spring for a driver.

She took a deep breath, and doubled over coughing. Minutes out of the underworld and the feathers came on fast. A bundle of them in her chest all at once, twisting through lung tissue and rib meat like flowers blooming in time-lapse photography. She hacked and spat and bled down deep, holding Odysseus at arms’ length when he tried to help. He couldn’t help. It had to run its course.

When she finally caught her breath, she’d worked up three medium-sized feathers and crunched them in her fists. Another wormed its way out through her third and fourth ribs. That one she yanked, foolishly and too hard. The gash it left was twice as big as if she’d been careful.

Odysseus finally got close enough to put his hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him with bloody teeth.

“Welcome home.”

*   *   *

Ares couldn’t find a trace of Hephaestus. There were no real clues as to whether he had managed to escape, though the sheer amount of blood on the walls and floor suggested he hadn’t. Ares returned empty-handed from following the trail ten minutes after leaving, and a search of the massive home had to be abandoned when they realized they’d be lost in the labyrinth in minutes.

Athena gritted her teeth. Another friend missing and probably lost. Her death of feathers returned with a vengeance. Not a great way to return to the world above. Adding insult to injury, they could not, as it turned out, get a car with a driver. That was thanks to the wolves. Nobody would allow them in a vehicle without being secured in crates, and Ares wasn’t about to secure Oblivion and Panic in crates. So Athena rented an SUV, and drove home with Odysseus sitting shotgun. Ares lounged in the rear seats and smeared blood over everything. The wolves they stuffed into the back cargo space.

Athena glanced into the rearview mirror at Hermes, behind the wheel of the Mustang with Andie and Henry. She wished he’d ridden with them, but he didn’t want to leave Andie and Henry by themselves. And no one could’ve convinced Henry to let Ares or his wolves set finger or paw inside his car.

Then again, maybe it was better. Even with steel and road between them, she couldn’t think of what to say. Part of it was tension, and Ares’ presence like a big, bleeding elephant in the room. But mostly there was simply so much. Where to begin? And once they started, where would it go? Farther, probably, than any of them had the energy for at the moment.

*   *   *

The house. Her house. Athena watched it grow larger as they approached, eyes wide and fingers hugging the steering wheel like an excited child. She wanted to stick her head out the window like a dog. Ares and the wolves had slept on and off during the drive back, but she couldn’t have, even had she not been driving. Odysseus didn’t sleep either. He’d spent too much time unconscious and she’d been below for far too long.

I never want to leave this place again.

But she would, if she survived. She’d seen enough things change during her long life to know that change was the only certainty. Just then, though, she let herself believe that pulling into her driveway was truly coming home. She and Odysseus and Hermes were home.

“I’m ordering from Stanley’s Wok.” Hermes popped out of the Mustang and pulled out his cell. “Any requests?”

Odysseus leaned his head back and moaned. “God, I missed Stanley’s Wok! Just get … the entire left side of the menu.”

“So the usual, then, plus sesame beef for Athena.”

“How are their chicken wings?” Ares asked, leaning on the open rear hatch. He’d let the wolves out to stretch. Panic and Oblivion loped side by side in the yard, snapping jaws at each other. They looked like dogs, except that when they stretched their necks, their shoulders popped out a bit too wide.

“Find somewhere else to eat,” Hermes snapped.

“Hermes. Get him some chicken wings.” Athena stood in front of her house and breathed in deep. Spring had sprung. The yard smelled of loamy earth and wet roads and bands of warmth woven between layers of chilly air.

Henry and Andie got out of the Mustang and stretched their weary limbs. The Mustang was many things, but it wasn’t roomy, and Henry had been cramped in the backseat the entire ride with the shield across his lap. It took a minute to wrangle it out of the car, and when he got it loose, it slipped from his fingers and clanged onto the driveway to wobble like a fallen top.