Mortal Gods (19 page)

“Just pull it.”

“Even with the bone broken?”

“Just pull it, or I’ll jam it in myself, on the wall.”

He blew breath out, but he stood and grasped her arm between the elbow and wrist. “Bloody stubborn,” he whispered, and yanked hard. The cracked bone in her arm sang a friggin’ aria, and fire burned up the whole side of her body as the joint popped back in. But it went in. The bone was only cracked, after all. It wasn’t like it was sticking out of the skin.

“Okay?” He touched her shoulder gently.

“Okay.” She took a breath. The adrenaline had begun to fade. It would be an extremely uncomfortable flight home, followed by perhaps a few days off her feet. But just the same, she couldn’t help feeling excited. She’d found the other weapon. She looked again at Achilles, where he stood waiting patiently. He was a sharp new knife indeed. Sharp enough to cut her stepmother’s head off. The invincible brute would plow a path straight through to the gods, and Cassandra would walk unharmed in his wake.

“The Fates are still with me,” she whispered.

“What?” Odysseus asked.

“Nothing. Just taking stock.”

“And you’re pleased?”

“Yes,” she said. “And that’s as close to an apology as you’re going to get.”

“Well. It’s shitty, but it’ll do.” He hadn’t moved away. He stayed close, half-kneeling, bent toward her. “What you said in the car. About Calypso. About us. Is that really what you want?”

Her eyes moved over his familiar form. The muscles in his shoulders. The way his hair fell across his cheek.

“Yes,” she said.

“But what if I can’t?”

“Don’t be difficult. You can do—” She stopped. He’d picked up the bowl of water and blood and stared down into it. Something floated in the center, small and dark and speckled. A feather. There’d been a feather in her blood.

I don’t like to be dying. I don’t think I’ll like to be dead.

“Athena,” Odysseus said.

“Sorry.” Achilles walked abruptly back in and headed to the corner of the shelter to dig through his stacks of books. “I didn’t want to forget this.” He held up a thin white volume and flashed it at Odysseus. A book on trap building. “Best book you ever got me. Did you get her patched up?”

“Could you give us a minute, Achilles?” Odysseus asked, but Athena grabbed him by the arm.

“Hang on. You got him that book? The book that taught him how to make the traps?”

Achilles ignored them and flipped through pages.

“I thought it’d come in handy, and it did.”

“You knew there would be traps, and you didn’t warn me.”

“I didn’t know for sure,” Odysseus said. “And besides, you wouldn’t have been killed.”

“I might’ve been maimed.”

“You could’ve been maimed; he could’ve stayed dead. All that’s in the past. Let it go.” Odysseus stood and rolled his shoulders back.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get him home.”

*   *   *

Odysseus wanted a beer before the flight, so they pulled up at the first bar they found along the concourse and wedged their way into a corner table. Odysseus ordered a round of Guinness, and all three flipped open their passports for the waiter.

“It must be strange,” Achilles said to Athena. “Getting carded. You’re what, five thousand? That’s got to be legal everywhere.”

“It’s the purple streaks,” Athena said, and pulled a few locks over her shoulder. The last of her punk highlights. “I should cut them out.”

“Don’t,” Achilles said. “It looks good. Wild. Besides, it isn’t your hair. They’d card you anyway.”

Athena didn’t know, really, how old she was. Passing years weren’t something immortals paid attention to. Or at least they hadn’t been.

She watched Achilles as he waited for his beer, talking to Odysseus amiably about cricket, of all things. His eyes darted this way and that, taking people in. All the harried travelers speed walking down the concourse. It was probably more people than he’d seen in a year.

Athena tried to remember what he’d been like, in his other life, but she didn’t know. The only thing that mattered was the way he fought. Achilles had been able to take down twenty, thirty armed and trained soldiers by himself. She couldn’t wait to find out what he could do now that he was truly invincible.

But Henry and Cassandra. It felt wrong to ask them to see the sense of it.

It was a lot to ask.

“How long until we get to Kincade?” Achilles asked.

“Too long,” Odysseus muttered.

“About twenty hours to Philadelphia, and then we connect to the Kincade Airport.” Athena stretched her back. A full day of travel, with a torn-up foot and a cracked arm.

“I hope they have a good in-flight movie,” Achilles said.

“I hope they have
eight
good in-flight movies,” Odysseus said, and took a long drink. If he kept drinking like that, he’d be passed out for most of the trip. Which was probably his plan in the first place.

“What did you do, Achilles,” Athena asked, “in the middle of nowhere for so long?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Clearly, I made traps.”

“I’m serious.”

“Athena,” Odysseus said.

“I’m just making sure he didn’t go Unabomber out there. A year’s a long time to spend whittling and playing the harmonica.”

“What’s a ‘unabomber’? Never mind. I get what you mean. And I assure you, I’m sane.” Achilles looked around awkwardly. “Not sure how I’m supposed to prove it, though.”

“You put up all those traps,” Athena said. “And you hid. So why join us now?”

He took a drink and nodded thoughtfully. “I hid. I did. I thought it was the best thing, and so did Ody. He can be right convincing, I’m sure you’ve noticed. But a year is a long time, and I know what I can do. What I’m supposed to do. So when you made it through the traps, I figured, she must be the one. She must be the side to fight for.”

“You’re not angry at me for killing you?”

“Not at all. I guess it doesn’t bother me as much as it would someone else.”

She snorted. “I suppose it wouldn’t.” She watched him closely. “What about Hector?”

He swallowed and set his glass down, hard. “What
about
Hector? I ran a spear through him a few thousand years ago. He burned on a pyre.”

“Listen, mate—” Odysseus started.

“Hector is with us,” Athena said. “In Kincade. He fights with us.” She waited for the glass to break, for Achilles to launch across the table. Thousands of years and a lifetime later, Hector’s name still made his blood boil.

“It can’t be,” he said. “Why would he be brought back? Why would fate put him here? He was nothing. Less than nothing.”

“He was second only to you,” Athena said.

“Patroclus was second to me,” Achilles spat, referring to his best friend who had meant more to him than a brother. The one Hector had killed.

“Hector killed Patroclus. That makes Hector second.”

Achilles scowled, and veins stood purple in his forehead. Odysseus was seconds away from punching Athena in the face to shut her up. But she had learned what she needed to. The old wound still bled. Long ago in Troy, a warrior named Patroclus had shown too much pride. He’d disguised himself in Achilles’ armor and tried to run up the walls of Troy. But Hector threw him down and killed him in the dirt.

“This won’t work,” Athena said. “How will we keep them apart?”

“You won’t,” Achilles growled. “You need me more than you need him.”

“Hey,” Odysseus said, and grabbed his shoulder. “This isn’t about you and Hector anymore.”

Athena pushed her beer away. “We’ll leave him here and go back on our own. Move Henry first. For all we know, Henry would want to kill him, too.” But that would be a sorry attempt. A fly attacking a tarantula.

“Who the hell is Henry?” Achilles asked.

“Henry is Hector,” Odysseus replied. “Only he isn’t. Not really. He’s not like you and me. He doesn’t remember anything. He’s not the same person. He’s just a seventeen-year-old kid with bad skin and too much homework.”

Henry didn’t have bad skin. But Athena didn’t correct him. Across the table, Achilles tried to get a hold of himself. He didn’t want to be left behind. And maybe he didn’t want to be so angry.

“Things aren’t the way they used to be,” Odysseus said.

“How do you forgive?” Achilles whispered.

“You just do. Hey, they forgave me, and I’m the one who thought up the Trojan Horse.”

“They’ve forgiven me, too,” Athena said. “And I helped Hera tear their city down because a Trojan said I wasn’t pretty. We all made mistakes.”

“He really doesn’t remember?” Achilles asked.

“He doesn’t,” said Odysseus.

“Then he isn’t Hector.”

Athena took a breath. “Okay, then.”

*   *   *

Ares trailed blood wherever he went. He ruined furniture as fast as Hera could replace it, and his wolves followed behind, trying to lick up the mess. Damn that girl. Cassandra. He didn’t understand how a formerly useless prophet could touch him and make his blood burst from his skin like a filled balloon.

“Ares,” Aphrodite whispered, and pressed into his back. Wetness soaked into the front of her dress, mostly crusted over crimson now instead of blue and green. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” Ares lied. It did hurt. But the weakness was worse. Blood flowed out and took his strength with it. At night he could barely keep from shivering, and he felt so weak and anxious.

He looked at his wolves, lounging on all fours. Pain, its gray tail twitching as its infected tongue lapped Ares’ blood from the floor. Famine with its skinny snout resting on its bare paws. Panic pacing a red line through the room. And Oblivion, barely visible in the shadows. They didn’t look half as ashamed as they should be for failing him. He’d sent them on an easy job. Kill the boy hero as the Moirae ordered. And they’d failed. They hadn’t even managed to kill the dog.

“I failed the Moirae on two fronts,” he said. “Is that why they let me bleed out?”

“They won’t let you bleed,” Aphrodite said. “Mother won’t let you bleed.”

Ares clenched his fists. It was hard to be with Aphrodite sometimes, because of the madness. Her voice wasn’t her voice. It was vacant. Nonsense. And he wished she’d clean his blood out of her dress. Not out of her hair, though. It raced through her gold hair like ribbons. That he liked.

“Hera’s not your mother,” he said. “She’s mine. Like Athena is my sister.”

Aphrodite threw her arms around his neck.

“Your most irritating sister,” she said.

“When did she become so terrible? She wasn’t always so bad.” He pulled Aphrodite into his lap. “She defended me once, to our father. When he said I was his most hated child. And then she goes and says the same thing to me.”

“Words, words, words,” Aphrodite said. “Sticks, sticks, sticks. Stones, stones, stones.”

Ares snorted. Yes. Athena had said it to get a rise out of him, and it worked.

“You’re really in there today, aren’t you,” he said, and tapped Aphrodite’s temple. She smiled, but her eyes were glazed as donuts. “I still understand you, through your babble.”

Her brows knit, and she tensed, trying to concentrate. Sometimes she’d be herself for hours at a time. Sometimes she was nowhere to be found. And other times Aphrodite skated just below the surface, her beautiful, intelligent face drowning under the ice.

“It’s all right,” Ares said. Only he was beginning to suspect it wasn’t. If the Moirae were truly the gods of gods, they would heal Aphrodite’s mind. They would heal Hera’s stone fist, or at least the stone parts that were less useful. But they didn’t. And Hera still refused to let him see them, instead keeping them secreted in the heart of the mountain.

He kissed Aphrodite gently and pushed her hair behind her ear.

“Don’t tell Mother,” he said, “but I don’t really want Athena to die. I don’t really want to kill her.” Gods shouldn’t kill one another. They’d become desperate, grasping leeches, cracking each other open like the Titans had.

“Ares,” Aphrodite whispered, “I know what’s happening to me.”

He wiped tears from her cheeks. “I know.” Aphrodite was trapped inside her own rotting mind. “Don’t worry. I said I didn’t want to kill Athena. I didn’t say I wouldn’t.” He called for Oblivion, and the wolf came on silent paws.

“Take the others,” he said. “Go out hunting again. Don’t come back without pieces of heroes.”

The boy?
Oblivion asked.

Blood leaked from Ares’ back.

“No,” he said. “The hell with the boy. The hell with the Moirae.” Aphrodite hissed. “I want you to take a piece out of the prophetess. The so-called god killer.”

He watched the wolves go, snapping at each other, standing up on hind legs, forelegs stretching in their sockets.

“You and I, Aphrodite, are going to see the Moirae. Right now.”

15

HOMECOMING

Hermes finally let Andie use a sword. Sure, it was blunted, wooden, and designed for kendo, but when she held the weapon aloft, her grin took up half her face. Cassandra sat on the back patio, and watched them practice, listening to every “Ow!” and “Hey!” and “Not so hard!” She watched Andie feint and dodge. Even bogged down with protective gear, she was fluid and strong. Fast, sure, and well balanced. Nowhere near a beginner. Bruises painted her face, and streaks of early spring mud made her ponytail filthy. She looked at home in her skin.

Lux pressed his nose into Cassandra’s thigh. Henry’d brought him along that afternoon, unable to bear leaving him behind, barred off on the ground floor. The poor dog couldn’t climb stairs for another week, when his last stitches came out. Henry’d been sleeping on the downstairs couch with him.

But Henry wasn’t by Lux’s side now. He was in the mud with Andie. He and Calypso practiced one-armed moves and blocks. Like Andie, he learned faster than a normal student. He was stronger than an ordinary high school senior, too, and had better instincts. Like Andie, his muscles remembered.

In the yard, Calypso ducked Henry’s arm and smacked him around a little, just for fun. He laughed.

“It’s all games to you,” Cassandra whispered. “All games, until the swords are real. Until Athena gets back, and gods come hunting.”