Aphrodite (20 page)

Chapter XXVI

I COULDN’T BREATHE. Tears swelled my throat, and the pressure of having him on top of me, crushed against my lung, made it impossible to take a single breath.

“Oh, sweetheart,’” Zeus murmured. “Don’t cry. Never cry. In fact . . .
”
He sat up, and the pressure on my chest eased. Something dark glinted in his unearthly blue eyes. A cruel grin spread across his face. “Don’t just lie there. Enjoy yourself.”

I had no choice but to comply.

I bolted up in the bed, Ares’s jacket sliding off me and onto the floor. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe!

“Aphrodite?” Adonis reached for me, and I batted his hands away, still desperate to draw in air.

“Don’t
touch
me,” I gasped, ripping the covers off and stumbling out of bed. When he reached out to steady me, I shouted, “
Stop!”
I tried to throw up a shield between the two of us, but failed to summon enough power. Right. My powers weren’t working, and I could be charmed, and I couldn’t heal.
Helpless.
I felt completely helpless and I couldn’t
be
helpless, not again, not ever again. My heart slammed against my chest, beating so hard and so fast, my stomach twisted with the wrongness of the sensation. Dizziness overwhelmed me, and my head felt as if I’d bounced too high on a trampoline. Wind rushed past my face as I fell backward through the sky, only I wasn’t landing. Jitters buzzed through me, making my extremities feel the way static looked. Why couldn’t I pull enough oxygen into my lungs?

You’re fine. You’re going to be fine. You just had a bad dream. Zeus is dead
. I was. . . . I was. . . . I was going to be sick!

I dashed to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and throwing the lock. My stomach heaved, and what felt like everything I’d eaten in the last year splashed into the toilet. Trembling, I sat back.

Adonis pounded on the door. “Are you okay? Hey, answer me.”

I flushed the toilet and climbed to my feet. Mouthwash would help. After a long minute of gargling, I spat into the sink, then swished some water to get rid of the burning, mint sensation. As I raised my head, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Oh, this wouldn’t do at all. Ignoring Adonis’s persistent pounding, I grabbed the washcloth and ran the white square under the water. I wiped my face, then my hands, then my arms, but the skin where Zeus had touched me still burned, as if he’d left some kind of a brand on me, and no amount of scrubbing helped.

I could still feel him, his breath hot against me, his sweat stinging my skin, his weight pressing against my chest. Gods, I couldn’t breathe. Y
es, you can,
the rational side of my brain pointed out.
If you couldn’t breathe, you’d be unconscious by now. Stop overcompensating; you’re going to make yourself sick. Control this. Breathe in, one, two. Out, one—

No! That’s not enough.
My body was long past rational reasoning. I tried in vain to drag more air into my lungs as darkness threatened to overtake my vision.

“Aphrodite!” The door shuddered under Adonis’s blows.

I had to get the memory of Zeus off me. My hands shook as I edged past the Jacuzzi tub and to the shower stall. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand, then climbed into the stall, bikini and all. Grabbing the loofah on a stick, I stepped under the scalding spray, scrubbing my skin raw.

All the scrubbing in the world wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. Sinking to the floor of the shower, I drew my knees to my chest, ducking my head so the scalding water didn’t hit me in the face. Tears pricked my eyes but never spilled over. I felt broken, hollow, as if all my tears had been stolen from me, leaving me empty and soulless.

Steam filled the bathroom, thickening the air and obscuring the gleaming white tiles. The water dulled the sound of Adonis pounding on the door again. Buzzing with over-oxygenation, I felt detached, numb. My shoulders slumped, muscles relaxing against the shower wall. I didn’t feel real.

I heard a crack, and then a splintering boom as the door burst open. Adonis reached into the shower and shut the water off, sucking in a pained breath when the hot water dripped on his arm. He yanked a towel off the rack and pulled me up and out of the shower.

“By the Styx.” Adonis wrapped the towel around me. “You really got burned. Hang on.” He moved toward the counter, steam swirling around him. “I think there’s some aloe in here somewhere. What happened?”

“Bad dream,” I managed to gasp.

“Must have been one hell of a dream.” The steam cleared a bit, escaping through the open door, and I could just make out Adonis rummaging through the cabinet, a warped reflection of the demigod looming over himself in the foggy mirror. Adonis held out a green bottle of goop. “This will help.”

I took the bottle of aloe vera gel from him, twisting the top. “Persephone, Ares, the others,” I remembered, heart slamming in my chest. “Something’s wrong.” The bottle bit into my hand as the lid clicked uselessly without opening. “What happened?” I yanked on the lid. “Where is everyone?” I gave up on the stupid lid. “And why can’t I open this?”

“Aphrodite, breathe.”

“I’m trying.” I gasped. My heart beat against my chest in jerky flutters, and I felt all keyed up. I wanted to run for my life, only there was nowhere to go, and, even if I got there, I’d be screwed anyway. “Why?” My voice cracked. “Why is this happening to me? What’s wrong with me? I can’t . . . I can’t do this, be like this. I’m a goddess, I’m supposed to be a
goddess.”

“Look at me.” He took the aloe and set the bottle on the countertop behind him. “Take a minute; calm down.” Adonis gripped my shoulders, careful to avoid the worst of the burns.

I shook my head. Couldn’t he see that I was
trying?
Calm was eons away. I’d be calm when my world made sense again, when the rules of my reality stopped getting rewritten.

“Stop.” Adonis’s golden eyes bored into mine. He moved my hand to his chest. “Breathe when I do.” Charm. I didn’t have to be able to sense power to recognize the effect. I took a deep breath and exhaled when he did. “Okay.” Adonis tucked my hair behind my ears. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Calm—”

I clapped my free hand over his mouth. “D . . . don’t do that. Don’t tell me how to feel. Please. You don’t know what that’s like, losing that line between what you think and feel and, and what someone else tells you to.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he assured me, guilt, pity, and horror flashing through his eyes in quick succession. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—Just breathe with me, okay?”

That, I could do. The gleaming white tiles of the bathroom seemed to fade away as I looked into his eyes.
But he’s charming you,
the panicked part of my mind objected, but Adonis’s power was too strong for panic to hold much sway. Besides, I could trust Adonis. Between the mind-numbing charm and his arms around me, I felt safe.
This isn’t real. Eventually, he’s going to remember he can’t stand you, and he’s going to look away. And then where will you be?

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, and I ached to believe him.

Extreme steam and hyperventilation don’t play well together. My knees couldn’t support my weight. We sank to the floor, leaning against the damp wall, huddled and wet and clinging to one another. I don’t know how long it went on, but for a few minutes, all that seemed to exist were his eyes locked onto mine, his heart beating beneath my hand, his arms wrapped around me.

“Better?” he asked, once my breathing evened out. When I nodded, he said, “Everything’s fine.” His voice sounded soothing, and his eyes never left mine. He took another deep breath, waiting until I followed suit. “Persephone and the others are fine. Last I heard, they were looking for Hades.”

My back stiffened.
Looking
for Hades? Persephone and Hades were connected. They could sense one another. She should never have to
look
for Hades.

“Take a breath, relax.” Adonis reminded me. When I complied, he continued. “Narcissus and his assistant went missing before Hades and Athena could make the switch. Poseidon shielded our room and everyone is searching the ship. But without Artemis and Ares to help—”

“Wh—what happened to them?” I asked, panic breaking back through. “Why can’t they help?”

“It . . . would blow their cover.” Worry flickered in Adonis’s eyes. “Remember?”

Oh yeah. They were disguised as Tantalus and Elise. Right.

“It’s going to take a while to search the ship,” Adonis continued. “Persephone said she’d swing back by in the morning, whenever they finish. Still okay?”

I nodded.

“Good. It was about ten, last I looked, so we have a long wait until morning. How about we find you some dry clothes?” He tried to move away from me, but I held on to him.

“Please,” I whispered, not even sure what I was asking for. Adonis mattered to me. I could trust him. I needed something real.
Someone
real.

“Aphrodite . . .” Pity flickered in his eyes.

“
Please
, Adonis.”

“Okay. Just . . .” He leaned back, shifting positions. “My foot’s asleep.”

Once he got comfortable, he pulled me back to him. I leaned my head against his chest, soothed by the sound of his steady heartbeat.

His hand stroked my hair. “You’re okay,” he said again. “Everything is going to be okay.”

I closed my eyes and let myself believe the lie.

Chapter XXVII

HOURS LATER, A blast of thunder so strong the entire boat shook sent the lights in the bathroom flickering in one bright flash before they died. I lifted my head and looked around, blinking in confusion as my eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. “Adonis?”

“Hmm?” he asked, hand still rhythmically stroking my hair.

He fell asleep,
I realized, ducking under his arm and standing. “Are the lights on a timer?” Stupid question. I’d heard the pop of the bulbs before the power failed. My fingers crawled over the bumpy wallpaper until they reached the light switch.

“Dunno,” he said with a jaw-popping yawn. “Why?”

I swallowed hard as the boat lurched back and forth with a nauseating frequency and flipped the switch a couple of times, but nothing happened. “The lights went out.”

“It’s night time.”

Sound logic, that. “Maybe it’s just these bulbs.” I groped for the doorknob, and ended up banging my knuckles. I couldn’t adjust to this level of darkness. Even my eyes couldn’t work in the total absence of light. I tried to open the door, but Adonis’s weight held it closed. “Can you move?”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Adonis stretched and climbed to his feet. “Gods,” he muttered as the boat was hit by a strong wave. I heard a hollow
thunk
, indicating he’d bumped into the hot tub, followed by some cursing. He jerked in surprise when his hand brushed mine and something clattered off the countertop to the floor.
Aloe,
I realized as the bottle bumped against my foot. I kicked the plastic container out of the way so neither one of us would trip over the bottle of green goop.

Adonis found the light switch and flipped it up and down. “What happened to the lights?”

“I don’t know.” I got the door open and breathed a bit easier. There wasn’t much light from the windows, but the starlight did provide enough to make the complete blackness fade into more of a fuzzy, navy blue. The furniture even gained outlines. Major improvement.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the suite in white-hot light for a span of three eye-blinks. “Rain dance?” Adonis joked.

“Maybe later.” I laughed. The rain hit the window with so much force, each individual drop sounded like it weighed a ton.

Making my way along the wall until I reached the nightstand, I groped blindly for the lamp. The clicking sound of me twisting the knob filled the air, but no light. “Power’s out.”

“Can’t be,” Adonis objected. “We’re on a ship.”

“Listen.” I took my own advice. Not a single sound rose over the rain and wind. “No A/C, no fans, no background noise. Everything is down.”

“No, it’s a cruise ship.” Adonis still sounded befuddled. “They have generators and stuff to keep this from happening. We can’t lose power.”

“Afraid of the dark?” I teased.

“No. You don’t get it.” Adonis’s voice took on a panicked edge. “
Everything
runs off power on ships like this. We’re lucky enough to have windows so the darkness isn’t total. What about the interior rooms? Or the elevators, or—” He broke off, probably remembering we’d spent the last couple of hours curled up on the bathroom floor, thanks to my
un
divine panic attack. “It’s probably nothing,” he corrected, clearing his throat. “Everything will be fine. I bet they’ll have it fixed in no time.”

If even a fraction of the people on board thought along the same lines as Adonis, there would be mass panic. And Persephone and the others were out there, wandering around a dark ship packed full of scared people who could be armed with Olympian Steele. I dropped to the ground, groping blindly until I found Ares’s jacket, slipped it on, then stood and picked my way across the room toward the stairs.

“Aphrodite.” Adonis caught my hand as I walked by, but I tugged free. “Where—?”

“Find your phone.” I clung to the banister, my toes pointed in search of the next step. “We can use it for light.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe there are some candles or something in the kitchen.”

“Oh, there’s an idea, add
fire
to the equation.” Gods, I hoped no one had brought candles on board. The last thing we needed was to be on a boat, without power, in the middle of the ocean—on fire. I stumbled over the last step but caught my balance and headed for the door.

“Right. Hang on, don’t the life vests have some kind of flashlight on them?” Adonis’s phone lit up in his hand and he moved to the cabinet that held all the life preservers and pointed the phone down at the floor. “Do you see this?”

I didn’t have to glance at the floor angling beneath us to feel the boat was tilting.

Adonis swore, dropping to a crouch as the floor rose to meet him.

“Move,” I shouted, jerking him away from the closet as the life vests and shoes tumbled out. We scrambled up the incline. I threw open the door and smacked into Poseidon’s shield with enough force to push me back into Adonis’s arms. The shield! I’d forgotten about the shield.

“No!” Slamming my hands against the barrier did nothing to combat the overwhelming weight of the darkness and ocean surrounding me. The boat continued to tilt. If we capsized, we were screwed. “Poseidon,” I gasped. Poseidon had to drop the shield. I scrambled for Adonis’s phone, snatching the slim device out of his hand.

“What do we do?” Adonis demanded. “We can’t get out! What do we do?”

I dialed Poseidon’s number. No signal. “Crap.” I passed Adonis the phone, thinking fast. The crashing sound of dishes thudding against the inside of the kitchen cabinets gave me an idea. “Keep trying to call him.”

I dashed to the small bathroom under the stairs, struggling to keep my feet under me as the boat continued to rise. Blasts of lightning illuminated my path. Reaching the bathroom, I pawed through the darkness until I found where the small water glass had landed, unfortunately still whole, beneath the sink. Slamming the tumbler into the tile until the glass broke, I grabbed a shard and dashed off toward the balcony.

“What are you doing?” Adonis yelled as I struggled to pull the balcony door open.

“Getting help!” I ran onto the balcony, pausing as the full force of the wind hit me. Cold raindrops hit my skin like dozens of tiny, stinging needles. I took a deep breath and made my way to the edge of the balcony, slicing my palm against the glass as I walked.

My hand shook as I held my palm over the rail, letting my blood, glittering maroon in the darkness, drip down to the sea, and hoping against hope some actually landed in the water.
It’s not enough.
A drop or two hitting the ocean
would
be enough, but the wind whipped toward me, nullifying the odds of the tiny droplets of blood reaching the sea. Gritting my teeth, I edged down to the corner of the balcony where the boat dipped closest to waves and dug my nails into the cut.

“Poseidon,” I yelled, pouring as much power into the invocation as I could.

The wake my powers left hurt so badly, my insides seemed to shatter into shrapnel, tearing through my body in search of escape.

“I’ve got you.” Adonis’s arms wrapped around me, pulling me to him as my knees gave out. “Watch out!” The boat continued to tilt and the deck furniture pitched toward us. Adonis yanked me down, covering my body with his as the wicker furniture tumbled off the deck. He grunted as a table leg slammed into his side before clattering over the bars and crashing into the shield.

The boat stopped. Hovered. My breath came in pants as I stared at the sloped deck floor. After what felt like an eternity, the deck leveled out.

“Oh thank gods,” I gasped, still clinging to Adonis. He held me just as tight, his fingers biting into my sides.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“It’ll heal . . . eventually.” The waves batted the ship back and forth like a volleyball. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Adonis helped me up, and we made our way back into the suite to see if we could get out the door.

It was still shielded. “I hate this,” I whispered, pressing my forehead and hands against the shield, my shoulders slumped. “I feel so useless. What if the others need help? How can you stand feeling like this all the time? Being so helpless.” My voice caught on the last word.

“We’re not helpless, and I’m sure the others are fine. Just . . . busy. This might even be good.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Yeah, we can’t get out, but no one can get in, either. So long as the boat doesn’t sink, we’ll be fine.”

The fact that Poseidon hadn’t shown up or broken his shield didn’t bode well for his control on the situation. Something big was happening. “Olympian Steele can break shields.”

“I doubt anyone will break into this room when ‘Elise’ and ‘Tantalus’ are making themselves easy to get to, and a bunch of gods are wandering around on board,” Adonis said. “But even if they did, Poseidon would know, and he’d teleport here, and—” He broke off. “I don’t want to rely on Poseidon.”

I laughed. “You and me both.”

“So let’s not.” Adonis took a deep breath. “Look, we know what we can’t do. You can’t charm, but even with charm, you couldn’t break the hold on the passengers last time, right?”

He had a point. Even if my powers were working, I’d never figured out how to charm someone already under another god’s influence. “I can’t heal you or me if anything—”

“You wouldn’t be able to heal from Olympian Steele, anyway.” Adonis shrugged. “No big loss. What is Olympian Steele, anyway? I mean, I get it’s a type of metal, but beyond that? I don’t know much.” He kept moving as he spoke, shifting around, balancing on his heels, and running his hand across the shield, as if the barrier might vanish at any time and he wanted to be ready to rush to the lifeboats. His gestures were nervous, keyed-up. But he was trying to hide his fear.

For me
, I realized. He felt terrified. Who wouldn’t? But he was trying to stay calm for my sake.

“They’re um, they’re made of adamantine, which almost everything divine and metallic is. Gates, thrones, Poseidon’s trident, you name it.” I dove head-first into the distraction of explaining obscure facts as much for myself as for him. Once I began to talk, the words kept coming, flung free from my tongue by nervous energy. “Steele refers to the type of a weapon. It’s, you know—” I outlined the stake-like shape in my hands then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Like a type of dagger. Or pick. Hephaestus came up with a pretty no-frills design because they were just prototypes. But he had a whole line planned. Chthonic Steele, Primordial Steele, Elemental Steele. ’Course, he never got that far, once he realized what he’d created.”

Adonis leaned against the shield, his shirt brushing against my side. “So, if the materials don’t make it deadly, what does?”

“They don’t channel power like most divine weapons. They have their own, and it kills us.” Feeling my way to the couch, I took advantage of the darkness to adjust my bikini. I moved forward, feeling along the floor for my luggage and found my bag caught against the couch. “Gods have one weakness. Our own powers. We can’t turn them against ourselves, instinct shuts that down, but we can’t heal from them either. When we pass on our powers, we pass on our weaknesses. That’s why our kids can kill us.”

Adonis nodded. “Hence every myth ever.”

I snorted. “Pretty much. Something in that metal resonated with the power it was infused with and that confuses our ability to heal. It’s as if we’ve been struck by ourselves, no matter who made the weapon. Only it spreads like—like venom. Specific details about how Hephaestus created the Steele didn’t pass down the bloodlines, for obvious reasons. All I know is, the way he forged the power into the metal circumvented the whole immortality thing. He took the power back into himself and destroyed them all to protect us.” I shuddered, remembering the writhing mass of Hephaestus’s face. “Really messed him up, too.”

“But if he destroyed them all, where . . . ?” Adonis trailed off, waiting for explanation.

“And that is the million-dollar question.” I smiled at him. “To say we were surprised when Steele popped back up is an understatement. Our best guess is that Zeus figured out how to make it.”

Adonis tapped on the shield, filling the air with hollow-sounding thunks. “Okay, back to the problem at hand. Being powerless doesn’t make us helpless. People get by without powers every day.”

“Against other
people
. The scales are kind of tipped here.” I felt his gaze on me, heavy and expectant, and I turned away, digging through my bag. “I’m not even strong enough to leave the room.”

“You’re smart. You’d have to be to have survived Zeus. And what did you do to Poseidon? He’s afraid to look at you now. Your powers didn’t help with that, so what did?”

“I don’t know. A willingness to do things that would never occur to anyone with any comprehension of right and wrong.” I sat on the couch, drawing my knees to my chest and told him all about the forced promises. “I’ve hurt people, Adonis. I’ve done terrible, terrible things. But before, I could always say I was under Zeus’s control. What I did to Poseidon was like Zeus-caliber bad . . . only, that was all me.”

“To hell with Poseidon. If there’s any justice in the universe, bad things will never stop happening to that dickwad.”

He didn’t get it. “But
I
still did it. And I’d do it again. Because that’s how I survive. I hurt people, and I get hurt, and I run away from fights I can’t win.”

“Sometimes, being nice and doing the right thing is a luxury.” The couch dipped as Adonis sat beside me. “Sometimes, you have to use whatever advantage you’ve got.”

“Funny, that sounds kind of like the exact opposite of everything you’ve ever said about me using my powers before now.”

“Against
people,”
Adonis clarified. “People you already have the advantage over. I’m not saying you should starve or end up on the streets instead of using your charm. I get that you just kind of popped up in the world with nothing. You have to get by until you have something behind you. It’s the frivolous stuff you do that I can’t stand. What you did to Poseidon isn’t like that. You didn’t have a choice.”

I shook my head. “Persephone wouldn’t have done it, even before she came into her powers. Ares didn’t do it when he had the chance. As far as I can tell, it didn’t even cross his mind.”