Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (28 page)

“Can you make it out?” I asked the men.

“It’s all Greek to me,” Nick quipped.

“
Really?
” I asked. “You really went there?”

He just shrugged. In all honesty, it’d been bound to come out some time.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

“You know, I have better uses for that,” he said, leering.

“It’s an argument,” Apollo cut in. “A lot of name-calling. Nothing helpful like ‘it’s too bad we’ve left the north gate unguarded’.”

No, of course not, because that would be too easy.

“Any way of tracking where this tube goes?” I asked, but not with any real hope.

All three of us tracked with our eyes where the pipe disappeared into the ground.

“Not without schematics,” Apollo answered.

“Then I guess we’re going in.”

There was a family of four roaming the ruins, two kids under ten having a field day climbing the rocks, and a lone fisherman casting his line, probably futilely, into the turbulent waters. I didn’t see any sign of whoever might belong to the third car. Of those I did see, none looked terribly interested in us until we started stripping down to our bathing suits, purchased at the dive shop on Apollo’s titanium card, in prep for getting into the wetsuits that would protect us from the cold. At that point, the father of the family kept an eye on us, part suspicion and part interest, I guessed, from the way his wife playfully swatted him when she saw him staring our way. She caught my eye and shrugged, like “men, can’t take them anywhere”. I smiled back. It helped distract me from what we were about to do.

Mostly, though, a nearly naked Nick was distraction enough. Because the man was
fine
. His shoulders were every bit as broad as Apollo’s.
Damn
, I immediately killed the comparison. His chest was peppered with dark hair that only seemed to emphasize his abs. His really rock hard abs, as I had reason to know. His legs were about as finely formed as those of a marble statue. I couldn’t help but watch as he tucked himself inside his suit and had to squelch the urge to offer my assistance. I don’t think his suit would fit any better for my contribution.

Apollo watched it all in silence, then looked away, purposefully looking
anywhere
else, scanning the horizon.

“The storm is headed this way,” he reported ominously. “You’d better go now, while things are relatively calm.”

“Ready?” Nick asked.

“No, you?”

“Hell no.”

“Great, let’s do this.”

I fastened the latch on my utility belt, trying to tell myself I felt like Batman with my dive knife, spear gun and other suddenly inadequate-seeming gear we’d picked up at the shop.

We carried our flippers and walked barefoot over to the closest entrance to the water from the tube we were interested in. The stones beneath our feet were cool enough to numb them…or maybe that was fear giving me cold feet. When we were right up on the water, Nick and I sat to put on the flippers, and the father came up to talk to us.

“You sure you want to do that?” he asked. “In
this
weather?”

The splash as Nick hit the water made me jump, but I slid my mask into place to follow him in before I could come to my senses, leaving Apollo to answer for us.

The water hit me like a Heimlich, nearly shocking the breath I’d taken right out of me. Unlike footy pajamas, wetsuits didn’t cover
everything
, and the areas of exposure were enough to rip away at my body heat. I knew wetsuits were about protecting core temperature, and that I’d get used to the cold, but in the meantime…
day-um
!

Nick turned to smile at me before breaching the surface for a new breath. I did the same, catching the tail end of his “Whoo hoo!”

I didn’t have the breath to answer it, so I just tried and failed to smile back before pointing back down. Nick winked and dove back under. I took off after him.
 

The masks made things as clear as possible. As long as we stayed close, we could see each other, though silt floated between us, and very little light penetrated. It was easy enough, anyway, to tell which way was back to shore, because the waves wanted to smack us right into it. We swam down deeper, arms close to our sides to streamline ourselves and kicking hard, but I couldn’t sustain it. I was afraid to smack head first into something I couldn’t see, and had to reach out, slowing myself. We bumped around and resurfaced, explored crevices that went so far and no farther, found the outlets to some of the pipes, covered over with mesh to keep anything from swimming in and getting trapped inside. I’d just felt a strange current I wanted to follow, something that seemed to suck at me and only reluctantly give back when the water ebbed away in the traditional flow pattern when my air gave up. As I breached the surface, Nick was just diving again. I took a deep breath and chased him, tapping his foot and miming for him to follow me with the hand signs we’d been taught at the dive shop. He nodded and changed directions, following me.

Instinctively, I found the current again and followed it as far as I could with my hands. It was big enough, I thought, to follow whole hog…or whole PI anyway. The risk was that I might go too far and not be able to make it back to the surface in time. I’d faced the fear intentionally, waiting for my precognition to go off with sirens wailing, but nothing happened, which I took to be a good sign.

I signaled. I was going in. Nick grabbed my mask and shook his head, the universal sign for
oh
hell
no
. But this was what we were here for. I nodded and shook him off. Probably I could have used a fresh breath, but the mystery was calling to me, and I had to follow.

I kicked furiously, leading with my hands to keep myself out of trouble, but I didn’t hit anything. It was dark now. I reached for a dive light at my belt and turned it on, aiming it before me, but all I could see was silt and, beyond, darkness.

Still, the push of that current, like a hand to my back, kept me going. Armani swam up beside me, and I had a moment to fear for him. He’d dived before I had and would run out of air that much sooner. Already, my lungs felt squeezed, as if the lack of air was creating a vacuum. I desperately wanted to take a breath to fill it but couldn’t. Instead, I kept swimming dead ahead. There were no alarms but my own panic. We’d be okay. I had to believe that.

Spots started to swim in front of my eyes, blotting out the silt, darker than the darkness, and then I felt something change. To the right, the water was…colder. I should have been too numb to notice the difference, but… I turned toward it, hoping Nick followed, trying to signal him with the light I could myself barely see. It was getting hard to hold in what breath I still had, harder still to move, but I forced myself. It was easier to kick my legs than move my arms, which floated uselessly now at my sides. And then even they stopped. I began to float upward. Up, up…or maybe down? I didn’t know. My eyes closed, and I thought that it was peaceful here. Like the wave organ up above. A watery grave.

There was still no panic. Peace, acceptance, but no panic.

Then I broke the surface of the water, and the breath I’d held gave out. My mouth gasped open, and no water flooded in. It took me a sluggish second to grasp that fact, certain it was a dying dream, but beside me was another gasp, and then a choking, coughing fit. Nick!

I blinked away the spots before my eyes, but they weren’t so easily moved. They continued here, but around them I could begin to see things in the faint glow of my dive light. We were in an underground cave. Honestly, it looked like something out of Scooby Doo, where they’d find glowing webbed footprints or a guy in a sea monster suit. The roof of the cave wasn’t high above our heads, but high enough to let us breathe and look around a bit.

I pointed Nick in the direction the water seemed to want to flow, and he nodded. Neither of us wasted the breath that suddenly seemed very precious. We swam on top of the water instead of under it until we came to a kind of shelf where the cave seemed to balloon up and out and where we could pull ourselves out of the water. My muscles were shaking almost too much to accomplish the job, but I managed with a strong kick to gracelessly flop myself onto the shelf like a beached whale. Nick’s exit wasn’t much better, and we both lay there for a minute just breathing, oxygenating our muscles so they’d support us when we decided to rise again.

He looked at me and rolled to brush a long strand of hair out of my face. I’d been trying to work up the energy to do it myself. “I take you to
all
the best places,” he said.

I laughed and coughed.

“When you said
underworld
, I thought you were talking about the movie,” I quipped when I could talk again.

“Fiction, bah,” he answered. “I prefer the source material.”

Then we heard it…
them
. Voices. Bouncing around like pin balls.

“—don’t want to be here when she does,” a voice was saying.

Hades.

I strained to figure out directionality.

“That way,” Nick said, sitting up and pointing. Break time was over.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Eagle scout,” he announced proudly. “I’m sure.”

My muscles shook and threatened failure, but I managed to sit slowly and creak to my feet. I kicked off the fins and grabbed for the small spear gun at my belt.

“Let’s go.”

Nick didn’t like the idea of me leading, but he’d seen the gorgon glare in action, and he knew what it could do.

I crept forward, pointing the dive light at the cave floor, afraid to send it out ahead of us and alert anyone to our presence.

But I didn’t think they were too worried. Hades wasn’t just making plans to bug out and fall back to his well-defended stronghold, he was giving orders to collapse the tunnels behind them.
 

The same tunnels we were in.
 

Nick and I shared a glance, and I shut off the light. We were close enough to the source of the voices that it could give us away.

Blind, we had only our hearing. We moved ahead. I couldn’t see Nick, and he was quiet enough, but not so quiet, as close as we were, that I couldn’t hear him moving beside me. The air seemed to shift ahead of us, take a dogleg, and I reached out to confirm the impression with my hands. Sure enough.

“Left,” I whispered to Nick. It was eerie, but I could almost feel his nod.

Left it was, and only a few steps before I heard a low rumbling growl. Then another. And a third.

Cerberus, back where he belonged? Hellhounds? We should have come armed with Scooby Snacks, not spears. My warning system flared up. Actually had been trying to get my attention since we’d gone dark. But at first it had been polite, like a tapping on my shoulder. Now it was a cattle prod to the heart, sending volts of electricity through me, trying to goose me into flight.
Away
it seemed to say.
Ahead there be dragons
. Or at least their canine equivalents.

I ignored it.

“You can’t!” Persephone pleaded ahead of us, off to the left. “Thanatos, you can’t do it! Listen to me, I’m your
mother
.”

“Yes, but he’s my Lord.”

There was the sound of a slap, of flesh hitting flesh hard enough to leave a mark, and a woman cried out.
 

“Silence,” Hades bellowed. “You’ve done enough on your own. Now you encourage mutiny?”

I’d heard all I needed to hear. Hades and Persephone were not alone. At the very least, Thanatos was with them. And canine companions. We were beyond outnumbered, but we’d known that was likely going in.

The growls rose in volume, became ominous, and caught Hades’s attention. “You hear something boys?” he asked. “Go—hunt!” Over the sudden sharp baying of the hounds we heard him order Thanatos, “Set the charges.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Bravery is being too stupid to know fear. Courage is standing firm in the very face of it.”

—Christos Karacis

The precog kick to my chest urged me to run, but I stood my ground, aiming my spear gun for the point where I thought the dogs would appear. I let my hearing guide my aim on my first shot and released the bolt. A yelp upon impact nearly deafened me, bouncing around the caves and battering my ears from all sides. Beside me, Nick yelled, “Close your eyes!”

It was immediately followed by a sizzle as he lit up a flare, which…
flared
into life, lighting up the room beyond my lids, which I’d gotten shut just in time. The dogs howled in distress and seemed to stop their rush. If sound could be trusted, one even slid into another, sending them sprawling across the floor. But I couldn’t keep my eyes shut for long. I was going to have to let them adjust before the dogs’ did or I’d be a sitting duck.

I blinked away the tears that formed at the pain of the sudden brightness after all the dark and looked toward the hounds. Away from the flare. One was already shaking its head, trying to clear its vision to focus in on us. The other two were getting to their feet, lips pulled back from their teeth to show wicked-sharp canines bared against us.

I reached for another bolt, but didn’t have time to load it before the closest hound leapt for me.