The Immortal (15 page)

Seedling was always connected to the use of sexuality—the perversion of it.

Pascal's expression was quizzical. "What are you doing, Josie?"

"Just out for a bit of fresh air," I said. "Let me talk to Helen for a minute, please."

"She's lying," Helen said, staying behind Pascal. "She intends to kill me."

"Josie, give me the gun," Pascal said, holding out his hand.

I climbed down from the stone, moving closer to them. "Pascal," I said. "You know how Tom and I are 198

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sick? It's because Helen poisoned us. You're shielding a very bad person. You can't imagine how bad.

Step aside and let me take care of her."

"She's crazy," Helen said, fear entering her voice. "You can see how crazy she is, Pascal. Don't let her shoot me."

Pascal shook his hand. "Give me the gun, Josie. You don't want to hurt anyone."

"That's true," I said, being careful not to stumble on the broken pillars at my feet. "I don't want to hurt her." I raised the gun, aiming at Pascal's right hamstring. I was willing to wound him to get a clean shot at the witch. "I just want to blow her goddamn brains out!"

I pulled the trigger. The gun did not fire.

Then there was a hand on my arm, come from behind, pulling down my aim.

"No, Tom!" I cried.

"Get the gun, Pascal!" Helen shouted.

Tom was already on me, and Pascal didn't take long to reach me. A scuffle ensued, a confusion of struggling limbs and bitter cursing. The outcome was certain before the fight began. Tom and I were dying. Our strength was all but spent. Pascal, although slowed by the pressure of Seedling on his will, was still an easy match for both of us.

When the fight was done, Pascal had the gun.

He backed away from us, the weapon leveled at me.

Tom and I helped each other to stand.

"Dammit, Tom," I said bitterly.

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"Pascal, don't give her the gun," Tom called.

Helen, suddenly standing tall and proud, chuckled. "Give me the gun, Pascal," she said.

"No!" Tom yelled.

Pascal handed the gun to Helen.

"See what I mean?" I grumbled. "She's a witch."

"Pascal, she's the one who poisoned us," Tom complained.

Helen toyed with the gun, as if it were a weapon too primitive for her lofty standards. "What nasty things has Josie said about me?" she asked. "Did she tell you that she tried to humiliate me before the assembly of gods?"

"I thought it best to leave out the Mt. Olympus parts," I said.

Helen chuckled. "I understand. What are you both worried about? You're both already dead. How do you feel, Tom?"

"Bitch," Tom swore.

Helen's grin was sly. She gestured to the sea that surrounded the island. "You didn't think that last summer when you swam naked with me in the ocean beneath the moonlight."

"You didn't tell me about that," I muttered to Tom.

Pascal stared at Helen, his face awash with innocence. "What are you doing with the gun?" he asked.

Helen was intrigued by the question and touched Pascal's face with her free hand, stroking his hair. He stood entranced with pleasure. It was her eyes that held the real power over him.

"I'm going to give you the gun," she said to him 200

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slowly. "I want you to take it and put it in your mouth, Pascal. I want you to kiss it, and pretend you are kissing me." She handed him the gun. "Do it!" she hissed.

"No!" Tom cried.

Pascal smiled and took the gun and put it in his mouth.

"Touch the trigger," Helen whispered. "Touch it and pretend you are touching me, Pascal."

Pascal put two of the fingers of his right hand on the trigger. The act seemed to bring him sensual joy. He licked the end of the barrel. I would have closed my eyes, if my eyes in another life had not witnessed atrocities equally as great. Yet to watch the tragedy take place through mortal vision was particularly hard. Tom trembled by my side. He could not believe what was happening. He moved to intervene, but I stopped him. We were too feeble, and Helen could have taken us both easily. More important, he would not reach Pascal in time. He would only make himself an easy victim for her play. Helen glanced at me before she performed the next step in her sacrifice.

"Do you think my father would be pleased?" she asked me.

"I think you and your father need counseling," I said.

Helen snorted. "Squeeze me, Pascal. Squeeze the trigger."

Pascal squeezed the trigger.

The gun did not go off.

When I had used the gun a moment ago, it had also

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failed to fire. I understood in a moment what the problem was—the safety was still on. I had failed to release it because the only experience I had had with guns was with my father's, a .22 Ruger, which was ready to fire when the safety switch was up. Apparently on a Smith & Wesson, the gun was only live when the safety was down. Pascal still had the switch up. Tom had told me his friend had never used the thing.

"Pascal!" I called, seeing an opportunity to break his trance. "You almost shot yourself in the mouth.

Look at what you are doing!"

Pascal heard me. He pulled the gun from his mouth and gave it the most intense look I have ever seen a mortal give anything. His eyes turned as round as silver dollars. He sucked in a breath. Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground. He had fainted; Tom had said he had a soft side. The gun bounced out of his hand, in our direction, and fell under a flat marble square.

Helen didn't leap for the gun. I could understand her reasoning. It had gone under a large rock and she would have to go down on her hands and knees to retrieve it. Also, she probably thought the thing was broken. It hadn't gone off in Pascal's mouth when he had pulled the trigger.

Plus she had another surprise up her sleeve.

Keeping her attention focused on us, Helen withdrew a long knife from her back pocket. Demons liked to cut mortals with knives, I knew, because then the mortal bled a lot. She walked toward us, the steel blade a sliver of evil light in her hand.

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"I think it's time to get serious," she said.

"I feel the same way," I replied, jumping in front of Tom, who had fallen to his knees, exhausted. Tom struggled to get up as the witch raised the knife over her head, ready to stab down, but he was too weak.

I was a poor bodyguard for him. Helen.moved slowly closer, then sprang all at once. I lashed out at her with my right foot. The blow caught her in the shin, but it had little force behind it. Helen just laughed and kicked back at me. I dropped to the ground and rolled on my side. Helen towered over me, the moon glowing behind her head like an insane halo. She regarded me contemptuously.

"This is the end of our ancient rivalry, Josie," she said.

I crawled over the uneven ground at her feet. I was in such agony I almost wanted the end to come. But

"almost" is a long way from throwing in the towel, at least for me.

"I thought we were just getting warmed up," I gasped.

Helen smiled without amusement. "The famous mouth, with all the right words. Tell me what you think about this." She raised her right leg. Too late I saw that my left shin was lying across the space between two hard stones. Helen stomped down with strength beyond most mortals. She was using powers I was unaware of. Not that it mattered. My mind was suddenly drowned by the awareness of my leg bone as it snapped under her pounding. I let out a scream, although I hated to give her the pleasure, and writhed 203

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on the ground at her feet. She knelt beside me and grabbed me by the hair, yanking my head back, exposing my throat. The knife gleamed in her free hand.

"I don't want you to leave just yet, Josie girl," she said. "I want you to enjoy what I am going to do to your lover. Then you can go to hell with an appetite for what you will receive there." She raised the knife again, threatening me. "Do you promise not to stray while I complete my little sacrifice?"

It was not the time for a smart-ass remark, I realized.

My vision was already swimming down into darkness.

So much pain, so much grief.

All because of one story that I told long ago.

"I promise, Phthia," I said.

She released me. "Good."

Helen stepped toward Tom, who was so close to death it should hardly have mattered what she did to him. But it mattered to me because I understood the extent of her cruelty. Because I had stared a Fury in the eye, and saw how black the heart of the devil could be. But my leg was broken, and I couldn't move.

Helen reached down and pulled Tom to his feet, placing the knife at his throat. I glanced at Pascal, unconscious ten feet off to my right. He would not be coming to our rescue any time soon, I thought.

Helen dragged Tom to the south end of the summit of Kythnos. He put up feeble resistance. The south side was almost a sheer drop. She wasn't going to just

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push him off the side, I knew—that would have been too painless. She was going to make him bleed first.

I needed to get the gun. But I didn't know where it was exactly. The stone slab it slid under was six feet long. The moon was bright, but the shadow beneath the slab was deep. I realized I would have to spend several minutes on my belly feeling for the gun. No wonder Helen was unconcerned about it. I glanced over my shoulder. She had Tom at the precipice, holding him up as if he were a straw scarecrow before a flaming torch. She mocked him.

"No," I whispered.

I had to stop her.

There must be something I could use to stop her.

These thoughts were prayers.

I prayed for a miracle to happen as it had before when I was battered on the stormy sea.

A desperate idea came to me.

Desperate because I knew it would only postpone the inevitable a minute, if that long.

My camera was in the pocket of my windbreaker. It had a powerful flash attached to it. The light might startle Helen, bring her back after me. If I was fortunate, if I had the luck of a million mortals combined, perhaps she would stumble over the edge and die.

But that was not going to happen.

Still, I unzipped my pocket and pulled the camera free. It was a new model and threw a red beam on the subject before taking the picture. I focused through the lens on Helen. She was raising her knife to stab 205

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Tom. My red light touched her head like an accusing finger.

I pressed the button. The flash went off.

Such a flash the world had never seen.

Suddenly the light of the midday sun exploded over Delos.

Kythnos could have been struck by a meteor of solar origin.

We were blinded, all of us, none more so than Helen, who never could take the sun. She staggered away from Tom, dropping her knife.

But she didn't stagger over the edge.

I didn't know the source of the light, but as swiftly as it came it began to fade, as if it were atomic in nature, and the fusion of atoms above our heads was now complete. In the dying yellow glow, I turned once more toward the slab. Now I could see the gun clearly, wedged beneath the stone in the corner closest to me. I crawled toward it and my fingers closed on the butt of the weapon just as the flare died completely and the moon once more reigned. But how weak the moonlight now seemed, with our eyes so startled. Nevertheless, I could see enough to find Helen. I removed the safety from the pistol and scampered to my knees, my broken calf howling in pain.

"Phthia!" I shouted. "I want to hear your story. The one you were going to tell the gods the day of the contest."

Helen stopped her staggering to look at me. With each passing second her form assumed more definition, a shadow across the black outline of the night. I

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wanted her to speak, to hear her words so that I could use them to sharpen my aim. Close by me, Pascal stirred.

"It was a story about your adultery," Helen said.

"I thought so," I replied.

I shot her, six times, in the chest. Each bullet pushed her back a step. She seemed surprised as the lead tore through her mortal flesh. The last bullet pushed her off the edge. She didn't scream as she fell. I believed her soul was already in hell before her body hit the ground.

I dropped the gun and lay down and closed my eyes.

It was my turn to die—to sleep, to forget for a while.

I don't know exactly how much time passed. When I opened my eyes next, Tom and Pascal were by my side. Pascal was crying. Tom had tears on his face as well. He touched my head, running his fingers through my blond hair. Yes, the hair of the blond girl, I thought, the daughter of the writer. In heaven, during the trial, I had watched the images and thought how fine the young mortal was—for a mortal.

Now I knew she had been divine before I entered her body. Her life was a gift from God to the world.

But now it had to end.

There was blood in my hair. My blood.

It reminded me of the blood in the statue.

How foolish that I had not realized before what it was.

My blood. My
immortal
blood.

A great god had left it for me to drink.

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"Is it over, Josie?" Tom asked wearily.

"Not yet," I said. Using the last of my strength, I pulled the crystal statue of Sryope from my pocket.

There was a slight indentation near the neck that I had not noticed before; it probably hadn't been there until now. The boys followed as I pressed the indentation with my finger and the head of the statue came off. Yet not a drop of the precious red fluid spilled. It was all in the body of the goddess.

"This is my blood," I whispered.

"Josie?" Tom asked.

"I want you to drink this," I said.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Wine," I said.

"The blessed wine," Pascal said suddenly.

I nodded and held the glass close to Tom's lips. "Drink and be well," I said.