Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (6 page)

“She’s in the underworld. Fighting my daughter.”

The underworld. The words flickered into his head in neon lights. But that was so easy. He could get there. He could get there in less than a day. All he needed was water, a river maybe, and a boat … and blood. Always blood. Only there had to be more. Something else. Demeter never spoke so plainly.

Except when it doesn’t matter. When there’s nothing to be done about it.

“Is she dead?” His voice trembled. “She’s in the underworld. But is she dead?”

“If she’s dead…” Andie whispered.

“We’ll pull her out anyway!” It had been done before. By him, on occasion. Of course, that had been under orders. Demeter’s eye narrowed and she scoffed.

“You? Pull her out? Messenger of skin and bones is going to stand against my daughter and the king of the underworld? Hades doesn’t let the dead go. And you’ve never been anything, compared to him.”

You old rag. You don’t know what I would do for her. What I could still do, for any of them.

Rage bubbled up his throat and sang down to his toes. He could tear her to ribbons before she knew what was happening. Before she had a chance to pull her edges in. His anger was hot enough to almost make him believe it, but his knuckles rattled in his hands like dice and kept him still. He could only lie to himself until he looked in a mirror.

Andie crossed her arms over her chest and shouted down at the eye.

“Why did you bring us out here, then, if there’s nothing we can do? Where’s Cassandra? Where is she, you … saddlebag made of E.T.—”

“Andie!” Henry grabbed her and pulled her back. “Fricken zip it!”

“Don’t tell me to zip it. She’s my best friend. I’d be crying right now if I had any liquid left in my body!”

Henry looked at Hermes angrily, demanding he do something, but aside from grabbing them both and whisking them off of the skin, and dropping another two pounds in the process, there was nothing Hermes could do.

Demeter took a deep breath and lifted them five inches.

“Cassandra is alive,” she said. “I told you that much. And I didn’t bring you here. That was your idea. If Hermes told you there’d be easy answers, or the answers that you wanted, then he’s still the same silver-tongued liar I was always so fond of.” She glanced his way. It was as close to an olive branch as he was likely to get.

“But where is she?” Henry asked. “Why doesn’t she come home?”

“Because she has work to do. You’re thinking too much about these errant girls. You have work of your own.”

Hermes bent down and rested his knee against her warm surface. The day had grown hot again, and bright, and relentless. He pitied her, stretched thin every day to bake, and for dry winds to rake over.

“Our work is to find our sisters,” he said.

“Your sisters will find their ways home. Your job is to still be alive when they get there.” Her eye narrowed again. “Do you not dream, Messenger? Do you not sleep and see the shears shining in the dark? Can’t you hear the sound they make when they cut down through your skin and bones?” She sighed. “That is all I dream of, now. Atropos and her blood-ringed eyes.”

“Atropos?” Andie asked.

“Atropos,” Hermes replied. “The Moirae in the middle. The black-haired one, sucking life from her shriveling sisters. The Moirae of death.” He brushed pebbles and grit from Demeter’s skin. “I wouldn’t be afraid of those shears, if I were you, Aunt. I’ve seen the Fates, and as they are, they’re not much of a threat to anyone. Joined at the legs, their limbs grown together like a pile of melted plastic dolls. It’s one sad-looking potato-sack race. They could certainly never catch me.”

“Your own blood will catch you. It races through your veins and feeds on every tissue it touches. It’s the water of a riverbed, carrying away sand and wearing down rock.” She let her eye move over his chest. “If you took off that shirt, I’d be able to see your organs.”

He pushed back on his haunches. “You could not.” He looked at Andie and Henry, who were trying to learn X-ray vision. “You can not.”

“And who will save Hector and Andromache, when you’re dead?” Demeter went on. “You have to do it now. While you have the strength.”

“You want me to lead a fight against the Moirae, when Athena couldn’t?”

It was more than ridiculous. It was impossible.

“You must want me to end up with a pair of shears in each eye.”

“Athena didn’t know what she fought,” Demeter said. “You will.”

“I’m not a leader. I’m the god of thieves.”

“Hermes. There’s no one else. There’s no one left.”

Just him. Only him, until Athena made it back. If she ever made it back.

“Hold on,” Henry said. “Why don’t we just wait for Athena? And my sister, if they’re coming back?”

Demeter regarded the boy warily.

“This is how a warrior speaks?”

“Yes,” Henry said, eyes dark. “If he wants to win. If waiting is smarter, then we wait. And if running is smarter, we do that, too.”

“Stop.” Hermes closed his eyes. The flat plane of the desert seemed to tilt. They’d come for solutions and instead found another fight. Another set of odds. And bad ones at that.

This isn’t real. The Moirae are a puddle of twisted bodies. I haven’t dreamed about them, and even if I had, they can’t come through my dreams and shear me in my sleep.

“You’re trying to push me into something,” he said. “Something where there’s no winning.”

Demeter chuckled, and her eye scrunched up. Somewhere in the distance, what remained of her mouth was smiling.

“I can’t fight the Moirae,” Hermes said. “Nobody can. Not Athena. Not anybody. Definitely not me.”

“Why not?” Demeter asked.

“Because you just don’t. Because you can’t.”

“Because my brother Zeus said you couldn’t?”

Hermes pursed his lips. Zeus deferred to the Moirae. They all deferred to the Moirae. It was how a god learned to bow his head. Their only hard limit.

The very idea of fighting them seemed mad.

“I can’t win,” he said quietly.

Demeter lifted, and flopped back into the dirt: the rug’s equivalent of a shrug.

“You might not,” she said. “But sometimes you don’t fight to win. Sometimes you fight to fight.”

6

OUT OF THE BLACK

Athena knelt beside Odysseus, watching his chest rise and fall around the blade that still protruded from his chest and back. In the strange red-orange light of the underworld, the blood around the wound was visible, and still wet. He’d bled no more once they’d landed in Hades. It was the same blood in the same pattern, the same rhythm to his breath. Nothing changed, and he never spoke. She couldn’t remember why she’d thought he would.

Sometimes she whispered to him, mostly nonsense and foolish promises, apologies for slights and mistakes she made thousands of years ago. But the words died inches from her lips. The air ate the sound so quickly she wasn’t sure if it ever reached his ears.

Athena brushed his dark hair gently away from his eyes and paused at the sight of her fingers. Three of her nails were cracked. The one on her index finger had split down the middle, a casualty of an unlucky grab. It had slid against some water-bound creature’s scales. Slid, and then scraped and then split.

“But no feathers.” She fluttered the wounds before Odysseus’ closed lids. The feathers were fewer, if there were any at all. Being in the bounds of the underworld seemed to slow them.

“We should have come here from the start,” she said. “We should’ve come here, all of us, and left you alone.” But they hadn’t, and Achilles had put a sword through Odysseus’ chest.

That was my decision. My choice to bring Achilles back with us. My plan to force Hera into a fight. And now my choice to hide from everything that happened.

More often, her thoughts turned to the others. To Cassandra, and Hermes. Andie and Henry. She’d left them. But they survived. Somehow she knew that. Persephone would have been quick to gloat if they hadn’t.

Athena stretched herself out on the cold sand and rested her head against Odysseus’ shoulder. His warmth flowed into her, and she felt his heart thumping. But it wouldn’t forever. She couldn’t let him linger between worlds.

You’re already dead. And no matter how stubborn I am, or how many monsters I fight, I can’t change that. You were dead when I put my arms around you on Olympus. You’re dead now, with your heart beating against my cheek.

She took a deep breath. Her head felt heavy as lead when she tried to lift it from him, but she did it.

“I could deny this forever,” she whispered. “And I might, if it wasn’t for my brother and the others. I’ll never really know if I would’ve been strong enough to do this if not for them.” Her hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword.

I’m sorry.

The sword dragged free in one long, slow motion. It yanked him toward her and fresh blood splashed across his skin. He screamed. She hadn’t thought he would scream, and by the end Athena’s face was soaked in sweat and tears, and she was screaming, too. Odysseus gulped air and stiffened. His hands hooked into claws, and she pressed him back into the sand, shushing him with the blade raised over her head.

His eyes fluttered open.

“Remember this,” Athena said. “He didn’t kill you. Do you understand? It was me. It was my fault, and I let you go.”

Her arm swung down, ready to strike clean, and she held her eyes wide open. But the blade never hit. A hand grabbed her wrist and jerked it back.

“You’ll thank me for this later,” Ares said, and struck Athena hard across the face.

7

THANATOS

“I don’t want him to come. He can’t come.” Cassandra pushed wisps of brown hair away from her face. The beach wind kept blowing it into her eyes and into her mouth when she talked. What people loved so much about the beach she’d never understand. The sand burned her feet when it rose past the edges of her sandals, and the sun made her squint. Every time the wind changed, it smelled like fish. She missed home, and mild silver light with maybe the trees and ditches starting to green. Beside her, Calypso didn’t feel the same. She looked like a girl in a ’90s music video, traipsing along the surf as though she’d just been borne of it.

“You want to find Hades, don’t you?” Calypso said. “Thanatos can help. And besides, he isn’t giving us a choice.” She cocked her head and kicked sea spray toward Cassandra with her toes. “And you have no power over him, so…”

Cassandra winced from the water.

“Stop doing that.” She crossed her arms. “I didn’t start this quest to kill gods to make another one my ally. And the god of death, no less.”

“But since you can’t kill him…”

“Yet. I get stronger every day.”
But probably not strong enough to kill fricken death.

“We can go home if you want,” Calypso said gently. “To Kincade.”

A tempting idea. The urges to throw her arms around her mother’s neck, to kiss her father’s cheek, and to punch Henry were starting to weigh heavy. The urge to see them all, somewhere other than in her memory.

She shook it off.

“None of them are safe,” she said, “until the gods are dead.”

Calypso sighed and whispered something disapproving. Cassandra turned on her.

“How can you not want them dead?” Cassandra shouted. “After what happened to Odysseus!”

Calypso grew still. Her eyes darkened. It was the closest she’d ever come to looking truly dangerous.

“Don’t speak to me of Odysseus,” she said, “when you have not shed one tear for him.”

They stared at each other a long time. But it was Cassandra’s shoulders that slumped first, and her feet that awkwardly kicked the sand.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Cassandra said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Calypso. “I know that you can’t cry. That the anger is a mask for tears. The anger will carry you through.”

“The anger will carry me through. And when it’s over, when they’re all safe, then I’ll weep for Odysseus. I’ll weep buckets, for him and for everyone that I’ve lost.”

“For him and for yourself, then?” Calypso asked.

“Calypso,” she said, and turned away to scan the beach, and the depths of the water besides. Thanatos was coming, and she wasn’t going to allow him to snake his way up to her again undetected. “There’s no going back now.”

Calypso raised her chin.

“There he is.” She nodded toward the sloping path from the parking lot.

He looked different than he had at the club. With his black hair blowing lightly back from his face and the sun lending color to his cheeks, he looked younger. Almost her age. Cassandra bristled, and felt fire rush to her palms. But her power couldn’t do anything to him. The heat in her hands, the tingling, was embarrassing. She tried to make it go away, discreetly flexing her fingers.

“You look younger today,” he said. “Without the makeup and your leopard-skin dress.” He looked at the white shirt she wore and she wished she hadn’t chosen such an innocent color.

“I was thinking something similar about you,” she said. “It made me want to punch you in the face.”

He laughed. “This trip we’re taking … it’s going to be interesting.”

“You invited yourself along. I never said you could come.”

Calypso cleared her throat. “This day of sea salt puts me in mind for a fish taco. There’s a stand across the street. I’ll bring some back.” She brushed past them, her skirt gathered in one hand and her sandals hanging from her fingers.

“She has excellent ideas,” said Thanatos. “Do you like fish tacos? I can’t help getting the impression you’re not from around here.”

“We’re not going to stand around and talk about fish tacos,” Cassandra said, glaring. “Though for the record, I’ve never had one and they sound disgusting.”

“All right. Should we take a walk then, or go up that hill and get a table?” He pointed toward tables and chairs in the distance. Both options sounded too congenial, but she stalked toward the tables. As she went, she felt his eyes on every inch of her as clearly as if they were his hands. But when she snapped her head back to look, he was staring serenely out at the ocean.