Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (27 page)

“Where’s Athena?” Henry asked.

“And Cassandra?” Andie added.

“Athena went out for food,” Ares replied calmly. “As for Cassandra, Thanatos dragged her out of here. I guess that means I owe him one.”

“Thanatos?” Andie asked.

“The guy Cassie came home with,” Henry said.
The god she came home with.

“Yeah,” Ares said. “Thanatos. You know. God of death.”

Andie glanced at Henry. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Where the hell had Cassandra hooked up with the god of death? And why?

In the five seconds since Cassandra had been back, they’d barely had a moment with her that didn’t involve one of their parents. She hadn’t told them anything. That morning she’d made pancakes before Henry left for school, and he’d practically choked on them, sitting across from her pretending to be nothing more than her relieved brother.

“She really doesn’t tell you much, does she?” Ares smirked.

“She will,” Henry said. No matter how curious he was, he had no desire to hear anything from Ares.

Hermes shuddered beneath the blankets, violent as a seizure. Every one of them moved closer, ready to do who knows what. Andie nudged past Ares and stepped over Panic’s back. Henry started to tell her not to get so close, but she edged her toe underneath its rump until it whined and jumped away to lay someplace less pokey. She pressed the back of her hand to Hermes’ cheek.

“He’s so hot.”

Henry stood over the back of the couch and looked down. Hermes’ cheeks and eyes had fallen in. Had he really been so healthy yesterday? Or had they imagined it, refusing to see how much of him had wasted away? His skin was so pale. Almost blue.

How can skin that color be hot? How can it have any blood in it at all?

“What happened?” Andie asked. “He seemed fine when we left. He was so happy to see Athena.”

“They had a nightmare,” Ares said. “From what I understand, they saw the Moirae kill old Demeter.” He flipped the cloth on Hermes’ forehead to the cool side. “I guess it set him off. Or maybe he was just waiting for his big sister to get home.”

Henry gritted his teeth. What was that in Ares’ voice? Resentment? Regret? He wanted to shove him, take the damp cloth and throw it in his face. Being nursed by Ares was the last thing Hermes would want.

“Is there anything we can do for him?” Andie asked. She tucked the blankets tighter around his chin, and his eyes fluttered.

“Not unless you can kill the Moirae.”

“So you believe it then,” Henry said. “I know Hermes does. But you do, too?”

“Believe what?”

“That if the gods kill each other … if you kill the Moirae, you’ll get better. He’ll get better.”

Ares shrugged. “Maybe. But fuck, why not? I haven’t heard any better suggestions. And even if we don’t get better, with them dead at least we can live out the last of our days without worrying about a pair of shears to the guts.”

“So how do we find them?”

“Henry,” Andie whispered, like she didn’t want Hermes to hear. But Hermes couldn’t hear anything. Henry could’ve shouted it point-blank into his ear and he wouldn’t have flinched. He was so close to gone. And Athena wouldn’t take that sitting down. She might be playing nursemaid with chicken soup and Tylenol for now, but soon enough the goddess of battle would remember who she was. They’d be on the road after the Moirae before they had time to pack socks, and they’d better have a good idea about which way to go.

“If they were in the desert last night, do you think they’ll stay there?” Henry asked.

“Henry, shut up!”

He couldn’t. He wished he could hold Andie and tell her he was still scared, that he knew Achilles would be waiting. Maybe he would later, when Ares’ mocking eyes weren’t assessing every inch of his frame for signs of trembling.

“Hermes is our friend,” he said. “It’s going to come down to it sooner or later, so why not now, when some good might come out of it?”

Ares smiled, cockeyed. For a second, he looked a little like Odysseus, only dim instead of clever. He stood. With his knees locked, he and Henry were almost the same height.

“You look a little like me,” Ares said. “I didn’t notice until you grew some balls.”

“He doesn’t look anything like you,” said Andie, but she had to be blind to think that. They had the same broad shoulders and deep chest. They’d even dressed in similar T-shirts. With the scar on Henry’s face, and the fresh cuts surfacing on Ares’ neck, they looked more like brothers than Ares and Hermes did.

“He looks a
lot
like me,” Ares said. “But that’s where the similarity stops. I’m the god of war. You’re just a kid. And I don’t know what they think you’re going to do against Achilles except die.”

“I’m the only one who can kill him,” Henry said, and hated the way his voice sounded.

“You?” Ares shook his head. “Not you. Hector of Troy maybe, but not you.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Henry said calmly. “And I’m not doing it. This is as close to Hector of Troy as you’re going to get.”

“Not even if it would give you the juice you need to stay alive? Haven’t you noticed that you past heroes who die and come back with your old memories tend to wake up … supercharged?”

“Supercharged,” Henry whispered, remembering how Odysseus had taken out Famine in the tunnels of Olympus. How he’d managed to survive a sword through the chest long enough to fall all the way to the underworld. Achilles, Cassandra, and Odysseus. They were all more than they were before. They weren’t just heroes. They embodied their myths. Odysseus, once only clever and quick, was now fast enough to take down wolves, clever enough to hide Achilles and his own strength for most of a year. Cassandra, once a doomed prophet, was now the doom of gods, with eyes to the future that rivaled the Fates’.

And Achilles. The myths said he was invincible, and now he was impossible to kill.

The myths also said that of all others, only Hector could stand against him. What would that Hector be now, if not the one who could truly destroy Achilles?

Henry looked at Andie. She stared at him with wide brown eyes and shook her head.

“Why would you tell me this?” Henry asked Ares.

Ares shrugged.

“You seem to care about my brother, so maybe I want you to live. Or maybe I could just tell that you didn’t want to know.” He shrugged again. “I just do things. Let other people figure out the whys.”

*   *   *

Cassandra was so angry she thought her fingers might melt together. She wanted to hurt something so badly she was moments from hurting herself. Her fingernails were bloodied and cracked from breaking across Athena’s door, and their sharp edges dragged up and down her wrists. But it wasn’t enough. Her wrists itched down deep. She’d have to claw her way under the skin if she wanted to scratch it.

“Why did you bring me here?” she shouted.

“This is where you needed to go,” Thanatos said quietly.

“I’d almost gotten it down. I’d almost swallowed it.” She wasn’t making sense but it felt good to yell. To hell with the right words. Screaming eased the itch in her chest. Yelling loosened the tightness in her throat.

In the car she’d started to feel better. Breathed deep and closed her eyes, let the cold wind come in through the window and blow Ares right off her shoulders. Calypso, too, had helped. She’d closed her eyes and thought of Calypso.

Then Thanatos turned the car into the cemetery and pulled her by the wrist to Aidan’s grave.

“You can’t swallow it,” Thanatos said. “You almost killed them back there, going after Ares. You’d have gone through Athena. You’d have stepped on Hermes’ chest if it would’ve gotten you closer. Did you really want to kill Ares so badly?”

“Yes, I wanted to kill him! I want to kill all of them. Athena, Hermes, Odysseus. All of them. I hate them.” She paced in front of Aidan’s grave. The letters on his headstone curved down in pity. She ran at it and shoved it hard. Two hundred pounds of marble fell over in the grass. It seemed to Cassandra that it flew.

“I hate you,” she said, and then she screamed until she thought her vocal cords would rip, would snap like weak twine. “I hate you!”

What else she said in the next several minutes, what expletives, what names, what elaborate curses, she didn’t know. Maybe it was none of those and she stood screaming nothing in an empty, sunlit cemetery.

Thanatos stood to the side and ignored her until she was through.

Wrung out and guilty, she felt sort of ridiculous, and her broken fingernails throbbed. But when she glanced at Thanatos, his expression was neutral. Her lip curled to say something like,
What was that? Death therapy? Should we hug it out now?
but her voice was too tired for it. Instead she asked, “Am I crazy?”

“If you are, people have gone crazy for less.” He looked at Aidan’s headstone, helpless on its back. It reminded Cassandra of a lobster she’d seen in a tank once, hopelessly flipped over, no longer trying to right itself. Why bother? It was headed for a pot of hot water anyway.

“Thanatos?”

“Yeah?”

“Am I evil?”

He looked at her with calm eyes. This was what he’d been trying to puzzle out this whole time. What she was.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said.

Cassandra smiled shakily. “Me neither.” She flexed her hands. They didn’t feel like her hands. So much power in little bones and skin. It was strange to have that power and still feel so powerless.

“I’m angry about everything,” she said softly. “Angry that Aidan’s dead. Angry that he deserved it. Angry that these people, these
gods,
showed up one day and made everything
hard.
Athena stuffed a bad life into my head. Made me fight when I didn’t want to fight. Hurt my friends.
Became
my friends.

“And I feel guilty for being so angry.” She sighed. “And I can’t control it. And I killed Calypso.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier that she wanted to be dead,” Thanatos said.

“No. And she wouldn’t have wanted to die, if she knew that Odysseus was alive. She hoped, at the end. I saw it in her eyes. Maybe that’s why I did it. Maybe I killed her on purpose because I hated her hope. I wanted him to be dead because Aidan was dead. So I wouldn’t be alone.”

“You’re adding to your own memories,” Thanatos said gently. “You weren’t really thinking that. It happened too fast.” He said those things to comfort her. But he didn’t say it was an accident, or that she hadn’t meant to do it. He didn’t lie.

“I have to learn to control this,” she said. “I have to learn to swallow it.”

Thanatos bent to retrieve Aidan’s headstone. He lifted it one-handed and set it carefully back into its place.

“You can’t swallow it, Cassandra. You have to let it go.”

22

THE WAR UNSEEN

Thanatos dropped Cassandra in the Applebee’s parking lot to meet her dad for an early dinner and a movie. Her idea. Making up for time lost being a jackass, she told herself. Not a tactic to avoid Andie and Henry, though that was a bonus. She didn’t know what to tell them about Calypso, or about almost murdering everyone in her path.

She remembered testing her touch on Andie, when they’d visited Henry in the hospital after the wolf attack, and her stomach twinged with shame.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Thanatos asked. “We can go somewhere else. Talk.”

“I’m fine. And thanks. But what about you? Where are you going? Think Athena will let you back in the house?” Or perhaps he was leaving. Back to California. It surprised her how much she wanted him to stay.

He can’t go. He’s my only witness. The only one who knows what we did.

He ran his hand through his hair and ruffled it like he was tired.

“You won’t leave?” she asked. “Town, I mean.”

He touched her shoulder lightly. Just a fast touch from cold fingers. If he’d lingered any longer, she might have walked into his arms.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “But I won’t go back to Athena’s. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find her staring down at me with a hatchet. I’ll find someplace else to stay.”

“There’s not much to choose from. There’s a Motel 6 off the highway that seems pretty popular with gods.”

Thanatos chuckled and pulled a face. “Or maybe I’ll rent a house.”

He pulled out of the lot just as Cassandra’s dad pulled in. They honked at each other and did the guy salute.

Throughout dinner her dad did a good job pretending that she hadn’t been gone at all, and pretending that meeting at Applebee’s for smothered chicken and potato skins was something they did often instead of never before. Sometimes he went overboard with cheerfulness and she had to force her cheeks to go along with it. But it made her sad that he tried so hard to keep her happy, as though keeping her happy would keep her home. He blamed himself, and he’d do it again the next time she ran away to fight in one god’s struggle or another.

“Do you want dessert?” he asked. “Or would you rather get something at the movie?”

“I’m stuffed. Maybe some Sour Patch Kids at the movie. Or some Cookie Dough Bites.”

“And probably some popcorn,” he added. “Medium soda.”

“Dad?” she said. “Thanks for not locking me in a basket.”

She could tell the word choice confused him, but he smiled anyway.

“Sure, kiddo. But do it again, and I make no promises.”

*   *   *

When they pulled into the driveway, Andie’s Saturn was parked on the street. As she went up the stairs Cassandra thought of ways to dodge uncomfortable questions, but when she reached the second floor hallway, Henry’s door was pulled firmly shut. A lucky break.

She could hear them inside, and was briefly grossed out before she realized they were arguing.

I should find out about what,
she thought, but instead turned and went through her bedroom door.

In her room, she twisted the knob tight and leaned against her door, grimacing even at the soft
whuft
the wood made sliding into place. But no one came. Andie didn’t burst from Henry’s room like a Valkyrie demanding answers. Lux didn’t even bark.