Aphrodite (26 page)

Chapter XXXV

ARES NODDED IN understanding, a grim expression on his face. “Pressure,” he reminded me, pressing the shirt to my side and putting my hand over it. His voice sounded hollow as his words echoed through the metal cell, and my heart wrenched for him. For the guilt written across his face.

I break everything I touch,
his voice whispered in my memory.

That’s not fair,
I wanted to tell him.
This wasn’t your fault.
But I knew better than most how empty those words rang.

He glanced at Adonis one more time, then seemed to realize there was nothing he could do for him. He joined Artemis at the bars of the cell, took the spear, then

threw himself at the bars, sliding his spear against them. Artemis kicked the Olympian Steele from Tantalus’s hand and worked on keeping him down while Ares broke down the door. The sound of metal slamming into metal filled the cell, and my chance to reassure him was lost.

My thoughts slowed and I knew I was in shock. Everything around me occurred in stop motion, like gruesome snapshots that came complete with scent and sound.

Warm liquid pumping from my side.

Ares breaking through the bars, blind with rage.

Adonis’s blood soaking through my dress, plastering the fabric against me and the cold metal floor.

The copper scent overwhelming in this small space.

“Don’t.” Adonis lifted his hand to touch my cheek, and his fingers came away wet with my tears.

I hadn’t realized I was crying. Hadn’t realized the low, keening wail permeating through the room came from me. Hadn’t realized I was capable. No, I couldn’t trust him, and yes, I still felt furious with him, but not a single bit of that rage felt strong enough for me to want him dead. There’s a league of difference between being angry at someone and hating someone enough to do nothing while they bled out. And that difference had nothing to do with the other person. “I should be able to heal you,” I sobbed, clutching him tighter.

Adonis shrugged, the movement costing him. “Kind of fitting.” He coughed, blood so bright it didn’t look real bubbling from his lips. “After what I—” His eyes closed as he lost the battle with consciousness.

“You don’t get to do this,” I said, hating how my voice warbled. “Do you hear me? You don’t get to
do
this.” I’d spent a third of my life feeling indebted to him for saving me, and less than twenty-four hours hating him for poisoning me. I wasn’t done being angry yet. I couldn’t add guilt into the mix. Not on this level. I wouldn’t be able to survive it.

He couldn’t die. Not for me. He couldn’t die.

A cell door slammed and I glanced up, surprised to find Tantalus slumped over in the cage across the hall. Given the lack of death deities or Reapers, Tantalus wasn’t dead yet. “What are you doing? Why haven’t you—?”

Ares slammed the door of the other cell and pocketed the key. “He’s immortal,” he reminded me. “And we can’t break the immortality curse on Tantalus while the drugs are in our system. Persephone or one of the others will have to lift the curse. I need to make sure no one else is here. The demigods are armed, remember?”

He had a point. If they snuck up on us, it could be fatal.

“Artemis, go left?” Ares called.

“Yell if you need us,” Artemis called over her shoulder, dashing down the hall.

“I’ll be right back. Keep pressure on that,” Ares motioned to my side as he headed down the hall in the opposite direction as Artemis.

The pain in my side when I did just that intensified beyond belief. I stared down at the streams of blood mingled together. The stuttering fluorescent light illuminated a warped reflection of the macabre scene in the growing pool of viscous fluid.

Blood.

I was a goddess. A drug
couldn’t
change that. And now, thanks to Tantalus’s bragging, I knew how the compound worked.

My powers weren’t gone, just diverted, an involuntary reflex linked to healing. But gods didn’t have truly involuntary reflexes. Powers weren’t the only difference between god and man. We differed on a physiological level. We were fundamentally different beings.

And so were demigods.

My breath caught as I realized what I could do. Apotheosis had only been accomplished once before, and at great cost. But the process was possible. Even without my powers, because I didn’t have mortal blood flowing through my veins. I had ichor.

And so did he. I just needed to activate the ichor in his blood and imbue it with divinity. He’d heal on his own because ichor was the frickin’ blood of the gods.

Adonis shuddered in my arms, reminding me I didn’t have much time.

Taking a deep breath, I called my powers up from deep within myself. With a grimace against the pain, I diverted my power away from keeping me healed. I dipped my fingers in my blood, then flicked droplets into his wound. My blood flowed into his, indistinguishable despite all our differences.

Now came the hard part. Focusing, I connected the ichor in our blood back to the Before. To a time of darkness and chaos and power. That void, that insanity, was my birthright because I was more than a daughter of Zeus. The blood of Chaos ran through my veins. The raw power of the primordial deities. And no one could take that from me.

Adonis’s blood glittered, red flickering to molten gold. Bright light blazed from his wound, enveloping both of us. My hair floated in the light, and, for a moment, time seemed to suspend. Then the gold light sucked into his wound. The pigment leached from his skin, drawn inward to heal the damage within him, completing the transformation. I watched with a stunned fascination as his torn muscle tissue reconnected to his bone, and a sliced artery zipped closed with a golden shimmer. The light moved outward, healing everything in its wake until finally his skin knit together. His skin and hair turned sheet white. When his eyes fluttered open, they were pale silver.

“What?” he gasped, sitting up. “How?”

“You’re a god,” I managed to say, my vision wavering as I slumped over him, consciousness fleeing my body yet again. “I saved you.” Now we were even.

Chapter XXXVI

I SHOULDN’T BE able to see my body, sagging against the wall or the blood, red and gleaming against the silver floor. As a rule, unconscious people don’t see much, and I’d know, given the inordinate amount of time I’d spent unconscious lately.

But I saw it all through pale, silver eyes.

Aphrodite? Adonis thought, panic saturating his thoughts. He reached out, pale hands trembling as he shook my shoulder, as if he could just shake me back into my own head.

It’s temporary, I assured him, curiously devoid of feeling. I felt relaxed. Untethered. The “being in each other’s heads” part only lasts a few minutes. Or at least, it had with Hercules. Then the connection will be reduced to powers flowing back and forth, and after that? I gave the mental impression of a shrug. You’ll have yours and I’ll have mine.

You made me a god. His mind flashed back to our conversation about apotheosis. You saved me. Why? I mean, I’m not complaining, but after what I did to you . . .

I could feel the explanation he hoped for. The idea that saving him had been part of some grand romantic gesture, filled with forgiveness, love, trust, redemption, gratitude, and a thousand other meanings too loaded for one action to contain, glimmered in the corner of his mind. I could love you. His mind seemed to bleed the thought.

But then he untangled my thoughts from his own and saw the truth. There was a difference between being angry with someone and being spiteful enough to let them die. And the difference had nothing to do with what he’d done and everything to do with what I could live with.

I could feel the regret and pain swirling through his mind. The truth behind his intentions. His desperate need to make this right. I’d been there, and knew the feeling all too well. Maybe I could forgive him, but I couldn’t trust him. And that meant I’d never be able to love him.

I had no choice, the thought looped through his mind, along with a million other justifications.

So I opened my mind and for one second let him feel exactly what it was like to have no choice. There was a world of difference between being conflicted and forced.

He pushed to his feet, staggering back from me, as though putting physical distance between us would somehow lessen the impact.

Don’t talk to me about choices. I slammed a mental door on the memory.

Footsteps rounded the corner. Ares came running in, carrying a first-aid kit. He came to a full stop, staring at Adonis for a solid minute.

Artemis, coming from the opposite side, skidded to a halt beside him.

“Did she—?” she asked.

Adonis held up his hands. “I didn’t—”

“Brilliant,” Ares said, sounding as though he meant it. He rushed into the cell, knelt beside my body, dropped the spear on the ground, and pulled bandages and gauze out of the first-aid kit.

Adonis slumped to the floor, relief flooding his mind.

What did you think was going to happen when they saw you? I asked.

More like when they saw you, he explained. Sudden death? I’m not an idiot, Aphrodite. If you die, somehow I doubt I’ll be far behind you.

Artemis regarded him carefully for a moment, then seemed to decide he was surprised but not otherwise injured, and moved to Ares’s side. “Brilliant? You’re going to have to walk me through that one.”

Ares tore a bandage. “The stuff he gave her—”

“That we really need a name for,” Artemis added, taking the bandage from Ares and passing it beneath me to hand back to him.

“That we really need a name for,” Ares agreed, unrolling more gauze from the first-aid kit. “Attacks her powers. If hers are in him . . .”

“They’ve got nothing to attack,” Artemis finished, moving on to my face with an assortment of alcohol swabs and bandages.

“So long as he stays alive, anyway.”

Adonis took a moment to digest that.

Can you look anywhere else? Watching them mop away my blood was a bit much.

Gladly. He glanced up at the ceiling, his gaze snagging on the camera. We’re going to have to do something about that.

“Oh my gods!” Persephone’s voice echoed through the cell.

Adonis jerked in surprise to find her standing at the entrance with Poseidon.

Where’s Hades? I asked.

I don’t see him.

Kind of my point.

“Ship approaching,” Poseidon reminded Persephone.

That snapped her out of her shock. Persephone rushed to my side. “Let me—”

“Don’t,” Artemis and Ares exclaimed at the same time.

“You can’t heal her,” Ares continued. He caught her up, his eyes never once leaving me.

“Okay.” Persephone stood, chin tilted up with determination. “So we can’t heal her, and we can’t teleport. We’re going to need another way out of here.”

“There’s a ship approaching,” Poseidon reminded her. “For all we know, it’s full of armed demigods immune to everything we can throw at them. They”—his outswept hand took in Adonis, Artemis, and Ares—“aren’t in any shape to make a stand. We have to get them out of here.”

“So I should just leave her?” Persephone’s green eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that’s not gonna—”

“Yes.” Ares glanced up. “You’re going to leave both of us.”

“What?” The word burst from Adonis, but I couldn’t tell which one of us had spoken.

“She needs help. If they can get her to a hospital, then—”

“Why would they take her to a hospital?” Persephone demanded.

“They wouldn’t. But Elise is a different story.” As Ares spoke, his features shifted, his dark hair lightening to gold. Within seconds, he looked just like Adonis, pre-apotheosis. “I can’t keep this up for long.” He locked gazes with Persephone. “So I’m going to need your help. Can you make her look like Elise?”

No, I thought, realizing where Ares was going with this. Adonis didn’t seem to hear me. Adonis, don’t let them—

My—no, his—vision blurred for a moment, then went black.

“I thought using powers would hurt her,” Persephone’s voice objected. “I thought—”

My hearing cut out, but then all my senses kicked back in, like a television clicking back on after a power failure. Given Adonis’s lack of concern, I realized this wasn’t happening to him. The connection, this phase of it anyway, was fading.

“Internally,” Ares explained. “External stuff like shields and glamours shouldn’t affect her at all. Artemis, can you deal with the camera?”

“On it. Come with me.” Artemis rushed out of the room, pulling Poseidon with her. “Just in case Ares missed someone.”

Persephone knelt to the ground beside me.

“Perception only,” Ares cautioned. “Not a full glamour. She’s the right height and close enough in build. Given what she’s been through, no one will expect her to carry herself the same way.” A thought occurred to him and he turned to Adonis. “Can any of the demigods see through glamours?”

“No.” Adonis struggled for words to explain. “Your powers don’t work on us, erm, them. We can walk through a shield unharmed and any power you throw at us don’t affect us, but we still don’t see anything through shields or glamour until we pass through, or hear, or whatever. Perception-wise, we don’t differ.”

When Persephone touched me, I felt the glamour settle over me through a fog of unconsciousness.

No, I wanted to object, but the word wouldn’t form.

“I’ll make sure she gets help,” Ares promised Persephone. “And I’ll collect as much information as I safely can. But you have to keep up the glamours for both of us. Can you do that?”

“Yes. I mean—” Persephone hesitated. “For her, yes. She’s still connected to me through the bond, but you . . . distance is going to—”

Ares didn’t hesitate. “I swear fealty to you.”

“They’re coming.” Poseidon’s voice rang through the room, and I could hear Artemis just behind him. “We need to go.”

“You up to teleporting?” Ares asked Artemis.

“It’ll hurt like hell, but I’m pretty sure I’ll survive it.”

“Take her some place safe, one trip only. Oh, and Poseidon—” I felt Ares pick up the spear beside me. “I’m gonna need you to stab me.”

The End

It’s not easy being a goddess
 . . .
and Aphrodite has it rougher than most.

Don’t miss her upcoming adventures, amorous and otherwise.

Available in the fall of 2016, only from ImaJinn Books.

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