Mortal Gods (33 page)

“I won’t leave you. I promise.” Hermes smiled. “And if I do, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Athena turned her back on them. Now wasn’t the time for her to comfort mortals.
She
was mortal. And inside the cave, she would take her godhood back.

She filled her lungs with cold air and felt it rush into her blood. Her heart pumped. Her muscles wound tight.

I am the goddess of battle.

*   *   *

Cassandra squared her shoulders and followed Athena into the cave. As the shadow fell over her head, she knew how it must feel to be a clown loading into a car. Any minute now, she’d run into Athena’s back, and then Achilles into hers, and so on and so forth until they were all swearing and squirming in the dark, wedged into a twelve-foot-deep hole with no back exit.

But that didn’t happen. They walked and kept walking, and Cassandra couldn’t tell when the cave stopped being the cave in the state park and started being part of Olympus, but it did. She breathed deep, expecting to smell salt and wet rock, but the air was cool and scented softly with sweet herbs. She could see, too, and not because her eyes had adjusted. Eyes didn’t adjust to the total dark of a cave. But as they went farther she could see more and more.

Walls shifted gradually from jagged stone to smooth, and then from stone to white marble. The ground beneath her feet became an actual floor, and it was fire-warmed and comfortable.

Of course it was. It was the home of the gods.

“Does the old Trojan princess inside you want to fall to her knees and tremble?” Achilles whispered.

“Not one bit,” she said back.

“Here. Up this way.” Athena turned up a short flight of stone steps. At the top they opened on a small room, the walls covered in relief sculpture depicting gods in flight and in ecstasy, slaying beasts and creating them, storms and victories. Cassandra thought she recognized Hercules and the Hydra. The room was a tapestry of greatest hits.

Athena looked around, and then turned to face them.

“Tell me you know where we are,” Cassandra said.

“Of course I do.” Athena’s voice left no echo, despite standing in a circle of enclosed rock. She sounded sure, but the way she looked around searching the walls seemed confused. Or maybe she was just admiring the sculpture.

Hermes turned in a small circle.

“It’s weird, being back,” he said.

“It’s weird, period,” said Andie. The spear shook in her hand. “Where do we go now? Back the way we came?”

“No. Not the way we came. Through the door.”

“What door?” Andie asked. There wasn’t any door. Not until Athena turned and pointed to the open passageway.

“There are doors everywhere,” Athena said. “So be on guard. They’ll send things for us, through the walls. Pick us off, one by one.”

“How do you know?” Andie asked.

“Because it’s what she would do herself,” Odysseus replied. “We should get moving. They already know we’re here.”

“Of course we do.”

Aphrodite’s bright blue dress fluttered in the open doorway. Her arms braced against either side, and her face emerged from shadow like a cracked porcelain doll, white and painted, framed with hair so golden it seemed artificial.

“Aphrodite,” Cassandra growled. Aidan’s murderer. Rage seared down to her toes and fingertips. Good. She wanted Aphrodite to be first.

Cassandra ran too fast for Athena to stop her into the hallway as Aphrodite giggled and fled. Her hands were on fire. Her feet pounded so hard it felt like she could crack the marble floor.

Athena shouted, and ordered Hermes and the others to stay behind. But Athena couldn’t stop her. Not this time. The heat in her hands would flow over Aphrodite’s face. Those wicked blue eyes would fill with blood. The golden hair would melt off her skull.

Cassandra turned a corner. The hall was empty. No scrap of blue dress to follow and no mocking laughter to track. She slowed, listened for footsteps, and heard nothing.

“Don’t run off like that.” Athena stood beside her and looked for signs of the other goddess. “Follow orders.”

“Where the hell is she?” Cassandra shouted. “Where did she go?”

“Where she went isn’t the problem,” Athena said, and ran her hands over the walls of their small stone chamber. “The problem is, where did
we
go?”

“What?” Cassandra asked. Pissed off as she was, she hadn’t noticed at first that the hallway they’d run down was gone. Shut. Disappeared.

*   *   *

“We should go after them. It’s been too long.”

“Athena said to wait here,” Hermes said. He paced at the doorway’s dark mouth, but Odysseus was right. It had been too long. Athena should’ve been able to grab Cassandra by the shirtsleeve and drag her back minutes ago.

“What are we waiting for?” Odysseus growled.

“This is bad,” Andie whispered. “This is bad.”

“What if Aphrodite got them? What if she got Athena like she did Aidan?” Henry asked, holding his spear at the ready. “We’ve got to go after my sister!”

Hermes pressed his hands against his skull. His voice grew louder with every progressive word. “
My
sister said that we should wait, and we will give her another goddamn minute!” He closed his eyes. But he above all the others should keep his eyes wide open. He was what they had, if Athena didn’t come back. It would be up to him to lead them farther in, or beat a hasty retreat.

But he couldn’t retreat. He couldn’t leave Athena and Cassandra stuck inside. He looked at Calypso. She could take the mortals out, and he and Achilles could go on alone.

“They’re picking us off, one by one,” Odysseus said. “Just like she said they would. They’ll kill her if we don’t hurry. I’ll go by myself if I have to.”

“You will not.” Hermes stared him down and silently cursed Athena for leaving them. For getting him into this. The god of thieves was never meant to lead.

*   *   *

“Well?” Cassandra asked as Athena walked the edges of their chamber.

“Well, what?” Athena snapped. “They’ve separated us. Granted, if they had to do it, this is the way I would’ve wanted to be broken up. But Hermes and the others…”

“They have Achilles,” Cassandra said.

“Yes. At least they have that.”

“Look, can you get us out of here or not?” Cassandra flexed her fingers. The heat inside them ebbed with Aphrodite out of sight.

Athena stopped pacing and stared over Cassandra’s left shoulder.

“Don’t need to,” she said. “The doorway’s back.”

Cassandra turned. The doorway
was
back, leading to a familiar marble hall. But somehow she knew that it didn’t lead back to the others.

“Starting to think it was a bad idea to come here?” she asked.

“No,” Athena replied stubbornly. “There was only ever going to be one way out of here anyway.”

*   *   *

Leading Calypso and the mortals through the halls of Olympus, Hermes had never felt quite so glaringly inadequate. Athena would say a god should never feel inadequate.

“Athena,” he whispered. “Where are you?”

He turned a corner, and the hall changed from white marble to black. Sconces lit the way every few yards with small flames. An ominous hallway. Dark and gold. So ominous that when the growling started behind them, it almost felt appropriate.

“Do you hear that?” Andie asked. She shoved and twisted and tried to see.

“Andie, come up here by me,” Hermes said. He held his hand out.

The wolf struck as Andie moved through the line, clogging any route Hermes might have taken to get to the back before it did. And it was so fast. A flash of mangy gray fur, matted together with blood and pus. It rose onto two legs just as it hit Calypso, to sink its teeth into her shoulder. She screamed as it pulled her down.

The close corridor became a cacophony of shouts and shrieks, growls and the sounds of claws on marble, fangs ripping through skin. Hermes pushed Andie to the side, against the wall. Henry jumped for the gray wolf.

It was an impressive jump. He cleared ten feet with barely any momentum and landed straddling Calypso’s torso. He jammed the spear down, but the beast dodged, and instead of finding a home in its spine, the spear tip sliced deep along its rib cage. Henry pulled the spear free to try again, but the wolf leaped and fled through a door that hadn’t existed a moment before.

“Pain,” Calypso hissed through clenched teeth. Henry knelt to help her up, and Odysseus was by their side in an instant.

“I know,” Henry said. “Is it bad? Hermes, bring the med bag!”

Calypso waved him off and leaned against Odysseus.

“Don’t waste a dressing on me,” she said. “I meant that the wolf was Pain. Revenge for my saving you in the woods.” She put her hand on Henry’s chest. “Thank you.”

Odysseus glared at the blood. “This is bollocks. We can’t keep on strolling through their funhouse. We came to fight.”

“I’m all right.”

“You might not be, next time. None of us might.” He glanced at the shifting walls. Somewhere not far away, Pain growled again. Odysseus pulled Calypso closer. The damned wolf hadn’t given up. It wouldn’t give up, not until it got what it wanted, or until it was dead. And it could come from anywhere. From up under the ground, for all they knew.

More snarls sounded from the walls. And then a breathy howl behind Hermes.

“I’d lay odds that was Famine,” Hermes said. “And the other growl was Panic. That makes three.”

“What about Oblivion?” Henry asked.

“It won’t make any noise. But it’s here.”

“What do we do?” Andie asked.

Hermes clenched his fists. “I know how to kill a couple of elongated dogs!” Of the four wolves, only Oblivion was likely to give him much trouble.

“We know that,” Achilles said. “So could I. But these close quarters are a problem. Not even you could move fast enough to stop all of them before they bit through Henry’s neck. We could hurt someone ourselves, just shoving them out of the way.”

They waited and listened to the beasts.

“What are they doing?” Henry asked.

“They’re holding us,” said Achilles. “They’re only playing.”

“No,” Odysseus said. “They’re keeping us from Athena and Cassandra.” He pushed through the line to the front before Hermes could stop him.

Famine materialized out of the wall and dove for Odysseus, long white snout parted to tear his throat out. On two legs it stood taller than any man. Hermes tensed to spring, to intervene, but he’d be too late. The wolf would have Odysseus’ jugular stripped before Hermes closed half the distance, before anyone even had time to shut their eyes.

Odysseus twisted out of the way. He brought his knee up into the diving wolf, and the strength in his leg sent it rolling. He leaped after it, and his knife blade flashed as it slid under Famine’s thin jaw into its brain. Odysseus lifted the corpse. One jerk of his shoulder flung it neatly to thud against the marble wall.

He looked back at their shocked faces. “One down. Three to go.”

29

FATALISTE

“How did you do that?” Henry asked.

Odysseus led the way down the hall, walking fast up stairs and around corners, headed always toward the growls and snarls of Ares’ wolves. But none attacked. They must’ve gotten the message.

“You’ve never shown that kind of skill before,” Hermes said, “that kind of movement.” He wondered if Calypso knew, but she seemed as astounded as he was. Achilles, too, watched Odysseus warily, with a dark look on his face.

“That was only practice,” Odysseus said. “Why strain yourself training?”

“You didn’t show it in the field, either,” said Hermes. “When we faced down Ares in the rain forest, you were as much use as a dishrag.”

“Hey. I never said I could stand against the god of war.”

Achilles narrowed his eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything,” he said in a low voice. “All this time.”

“What? So she could run me to the ground in training like she does you?” He nodded over his shoulder at Henry and Andie. “Listen. I did it for you, right? If she knew what I could do, she’d figure it out. And you don’t want her to figure it out, Henry.”

“Figure what out?” Henry and Hermes asked together, and Odysseus smiled.

“Later. After we find your sisters. And after we all make it out of here alive.”

*   *   *

Cassandra’s legs thrummed with an impatient pulse. The halls of Olympus went nowhere. They walked down twisting halls, through doorways and rooms painted gold, filled with sculpture and ornately carved tables.

“How did you ever live here?” she asked Athena.

“What? You don’t like it?”

“I hate it. I feel like a mole trapped underground after some asshole tamped the opening to my burrow shut.”

“Yeah, but look at all this museum-quality shit,” Athena said, her voice dull. She walked partially crouched, ready for anything and only paying slight attention to Cassandra’s words. “Besides, we’re not underground. We’re in a mountain.” Athena threw open a door and stepped out.

They were outside. Under blue sky and yellow sun, with grass thicker and softer than Cassandra had ever felt beneath her shoes. All around them hills rolled and peaks soared, none higher than the one they had climbed.

“Cassandra, are you all right?”

“All right?” she breathed. “I’m in damn Narnia.” She gestured outward, to the green splendor, silver mountains capped in mist. “What could be so abysmally, unnaturally wrong?”

“Good. Then let’s go.”

“Look,” Cassandra said, “I’m as impatient for a kill as you are. More, probably. But let me get my head straight.”

“All right,” Athena said. “But don’t take too long.”

Up the hillside a simple wooden door led back to the interior of the mountain. Cassandra wondered where Andie and Henry were. But they had Hermes, and Achilles, and Calypso. And she had Athena. She looked at the goddess, waiting impatiently.

The sooner I kill the lot of you, the sooner they’ll be safe.

Cassandra started to walk up the hill, and the voices came. Crashing through both ears.

(CAREFUL OF THE EDGE, CASSANDRA. THOUGH THERE ARE SO MANY WONDERS TO SEE ON THE WAY DOWN. MILES AND MILES AND MINUTES AND MINUTES BEFORE YOU BREAK ON WATER AND ROCKS. SO MANY WONDERS YOU WOULD NEVER SEE UNLESS YOU JUMPED. UNLESS YOU DOVE AND HELD YOUR EYES WIDE AGAINST THE WIND)