Battle for the Blood (15 page)

I turned back for the kitchen to check in with Yiayia. I needed to make sure she and the rest of the family were okay anyway. Getting the Goddities hot sheet would be a bonus.

She answered before the first ring had even died away. “Tori?” she answered, voice telegraphing her panic. “Tori, tell me this is you and not that
trelós
god Apollo calling to tell me that something has happened to you. I will snuff him like a candle. I will get ten-ton Trina to squash his head like a grape and pour libations from his blood. I will—”

“Whoa, Yiayia, it’s me, Tori. I’m fine.” Well, relatively speaking.

“Fine?”
she asked, her voice rising to a ludicrous level. I winced and held the phone slightly away from my ear. “Fine? I have left you forty-two million messages, which you haven’t returned, and you tell me you are
fine
?
I expected you to be dead. Dying at the very least, possibly in some ditch somewhere. For you to be
fine
and not call your yiayia, it is as sure a sign of the apocalypse as I’ve seen.”

“Like what?” I cut in.

“What, what?”

“You said ‘as sure a sign of the apocalypse as I’ve seen’. What signs have you seen?”

“Tori, Fergus has boils.
Boils.
Turn on the news. There have been plagues of locusts, reports of winged demons, the dead rising, even one of the Horsemen of the Christian apocalypse. Lenny had to fly back to deal with a problem with the circus animals. Mad cow disease or something, but jumping species. The whole world’s gone mad. What are you doing to stop it?”

Now I held the phone out to stare at it like I could see right into her insanity and face it down. Stop it? I could barely comprehend it.

“All I can,” I said finally. Which was little enough. The odds seemed overwhelming, and I didn’t even know the full scope of the problem. Or who all the players were and where to go now that I’d lost Perseus’s sword. “I need some information. Where are Poseidon and Zeus?”

“Still here, for all I know,” she said. “The CIA caught up with them after the big battle. I guess they tracked them down because of their hospital stay. They’re in Greek custody, fighting extradition back to the US.”

“So they’re not, say, out in the Pacific stirring up deadly storms?”

“I thought you were in New York,” she said.

“I am in New York,”
I answered, impatiently. “Just answer the question.”

“No, they’re here.”

That’s what I’d been afraid of. “Yiayia, could you shoot me any contact information you have or any known whereabouts for every single god on your watch? We’re going to need reinforcements. And we need to know who we’re facing. Hecate’s gone rogue.”

“You were
working
with Hecate?” Her voice rose. “
Anipsi
, you have to tell me these things. I could have warned you.”

“Warned me of what?”

“There have been rumblings of unrest. Rumor has it Hades is worried about a coup. I told you she was untrustworthy.”

In deference to present company, I didn’t tell her that it hardly needed to be said when it came to the Olympians, who all seemed to have their own agendas and considered them more important than the greater good.

As far as the rumored coup, I could well believe it. Hades had previously suggested to us that he expected something of the sort. Knowing what I knew now, it seemed more than likely that he’d sent Hecate to work with us on the demon situation just to get her out of his hair and out of his kingdom while it was in turmoil. We had to let him know that his plan had failed dismally and that she was now on the loose with a legendary weapon, possibly headed his way. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to her hell phone and I doubted Hermes’s windows would penetrate into Hades’s realm. He was hyperparanoid about infiltration and had his kingdom well warded against other gods.

“Does Hecate have any particular allies that you know about? Anyone we can flip?”

“They are gods, not houses,” she scolded. “But you’d asked about Poseidon. Have you considered Amphitrite?”

“Amphitrite?”

“His
queen
. Estranged, of course. He’s as bad as his brother about chasing every piece of tail… Anyway, she’s got powers of her own and is, of course, mother to Triton, so there’s no question of a divorce. Can you even imagine trying to divide
those
assets?”

“Okay, Amphitrite. Any word where she is now?”

“Based on your killer storm, I’d have to say off the coast of California, but… I’ll see what I can find out. And also whether I can connect her to Hecate.”

“Thank you, Yiayia, you’re a lifesaver. Would you send whatever you find as quickly as possible? Our power is going a little mad.”

“Aren’t we all?”

I didn’t answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me.

“Also, if there’s anyone or anything else you can think of. There’s so much going on up here, I don’t know what’s tied together and what isn’t. Who’s allied and who’s in it for themselves. We’ve got gods from the underworld and the waters running amok, plague demons, looters and loonies. Is someone taking advantage of the chaos or masterminding it?”

“These are rhetorical questions?”

“Unless you have answers. What about Hera?” I asked. She’d mentioned how like his brother Poseidon was. Were the wives similarly disillusioned and taking advantage of the power void created by their husbands’ capture?

“Hera?” Yiayia asked. “I don’t think so.”

“Why? What is she up to these days?”

“I can’t tell you. It would compromise the integrity of—”

“
Yiayia
,” I said sharply, “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

I could practically feel her internal struggle through the phone, though I didn’t understand it.

“She’s not involved,” Yiayia said. She sighed, knowing I’d want more
.
“Okay, she’s a lawyer. On the surface, she does a lot of women’s advocacy—divorce cases, child custody. She makes sure women get what’s coming to them. Does a lot of
pro bono
work. Beneath the surface…she runs an underground railroad for abuse victims.”

“She hardly sounds like she has time to take over the world.”

“Time, no. However, if she thought the world had gone too far wrong, possibly I could see her pulling a Great Flood or something to wipe the slate clean, but… No, she would hurt too many of those she’s tried to help.”

My brain raced. I didn’t know what it said about me that
I
could imagine it. Noelle’s Arc. No men allowed but those chosen to carry on the human race? Hera had always been a vengeful goddess. I was surprised to hear she was now a women’s advocate after throwing so many of Zeus’s mistresses to the wolves way back in the ancient days. Like his seductions and dalliances were all
their
fault. Of course, people
could
change. It sounded like maybe Hera was a prime example. But I’d prefer to see for myself.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“Wait a second,” she said. It was more like ten. I counted doomsday scenarios as I waited, getting more and more spooked with every second that passed. We were going to need help. Big help. Monstrous help. Not just to fight Namtar and Hecate and whatever allies they’d amassed, together or separately, but to put the world back to rights afterward.

Yiayia finally came back on the line, but it was her sudden wet, hacking cough I heard first, followed by a massive blowing of the nose.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, worry rushing me like a pro defensive lineman.

“Nothing some vitamin C and some of that horrible zinc stuff won’t take care of. But, Tori, I don’t know if you’re going to want to hear this. Hera is right now based in Brooklyn. Isn’t that—”

“Just outside of Manhattan? Yes, it is.”

With the city on lockdown, it might as well be a continent away, but somehow I was going to have to find a way to question her. Because even if Hera wasn’t part of the problem, it seemed unlikely she knew nothing of the goings-on in her own backyard. Hell, Hecate had tried to recruit
me
. A disgruntled goddess with
real
power seemed a no-brainer.

Yiayia promised to send me the address asap, along with all other godly current whereabouts, and we signed off. I felt Apollo in the kitchen with me even before I turned to see him there…which I almost didn’t. I wasn’t ready to deal with him. I didn’t know what to think or feel or do. I didn’t want to face him while I tried to figure it out. But avoidance wasn’t an option.

“What?” I said when I turned. It came out as belligerent. Challenging. I hadn’t meant it that way.

“You’re beating yourself up for this. For Nick,” he answered, meeting my gaze and not flinching away from the heat. He was the sun god. He could take it.

“Yeah, I am. But there’s enough upset to go around. You might want to step out of my line of fire.”

“No,” he answered.

“No?” I was incredulous. What was the other option? Either he got out of my face or…what? I made him? We had a knock-down, drag-out fight right here in Cori’s apartment, midapocalypse?

“I’m putting an end to the pity party.”

My glare rivaled Lau’s. It rivaled the sun surge Apollo had called down on the attacking zombies in Central Park. He didn’t even flinch.

“Really?” I asked dangerously.

“You’re not responsible for Nick or his condition.” He mowed over the protest that sprang immediately to my lips. “Stop feeling and
think
. When all this began, way back at the beginning when you realized the gods were real, what would have happened if you’d bowed out of the battle and decided not to fight Zeus and Poseidon? Would Nick have been safe? Would
any
of your friends have been better off?”

One of Zeus’s thunderbolts couldn’t have struck with more force. I didn’t answer him, because the answer was
no
. If I hadn’t stopped their plot, if Nick and I hadn’t foiled them, Poseidon, Zeus and Hephaestus would have set off the quake to end all quakes…or to end L.A. and the San Fernando Valley anyway. It would have been destroyed, shaken apart, split from the coastline, the ocean rising up to swallow it whole. Nick and everyone else I knew, myself included, would have been history.

But it didn’t feel right to let myself off the hook.

“And what did you do in Delphi? How was it your fault that Rhea rose or that she woke the titans?”

“It was my fault Nick was
in
Delphi,” I yelled, thrilled to have a clear-cut answer.

“And it was my blood Zeus’s priests used to raise Rhea. So is all of this
my
fault? Should I be castigating myself? Should I be cutting you out of my life to keep you safe?”

“Do it and die,” I raged, my glare ratcheting up.

“Exactly.” Apollo’s eyes blazed back, but in triumph, not anger. I could feel it through our link, and it set me off-balance.

“Exactly
what
?” I challenged.

“Nick would have given you the same response if you’d shoved him away to ‘protect’ him.”

I took a step back, bumping my spine against Cori’s kitchen counter.

“If you had tried to keep him safe, as a mere mortal or as your lover or whatever, you’d only have pissed him off,” Apollo pounded away at me. “He would not have seen danger and left you to face it alone. Rival or not, I give him that much credit. Did he ever once try to hold you back? To forbid you from facing down danger?”

I couldn’t answer.

“No, he had too much respect for you. Or for your wrath if he’d ever even suggested such a thing. You owe him that respect in return. Your Detective Armani is no milquetoast. He didn’t blindly follow you into trouble. He made his own decisions for the good of all. To protect and serve. That’s his job.
His
decision. You didn’t bribe or blackmail or browbeat him into joining you. If we hadn’t stopped Rhea’s return and the titans’ rising, the whole world would be in trouble.”

“You mean, like it is now?” I asked, the heat starting to ebb away, leaving me empty.

“Like it is now. And again we must fight. We don’t have time for self-flagellation.”

I could feel his sincerity through our link, but also an inexplicable flare of anger. “In other words, this is war, there are casualties. Just get over it?” I asked. “Would you ‘just get over it’ if I was the one who fell in battle?”

Apollo stepped up to me, invading my personal space, but the counter was already at my back and I had nowhere to go. “I would make it count. I would make people pay. And then I would mourn you for the rest of my years.”

It took my breath away, the intensity. And then he was quite literally stealing my breath, his mouth on mine, breathing in my release of pent-up feelings…rage and frustration, love and fear and blame. I tasted his fear that I would do the same with Nick—mourn and blame myself for the rest of my life, never let myself forgive or forget. Never be his. He’d waited, and even though he’d lived forever, he’d never learned patience. It was not one of his virtues. I felt it all and it overwhelmed me.

I had to break off. I pushed at his chest, but he didn’t let me go, not at first. I was tempted to bite his lip, step on his foot, but it would be a rejection I didn’t want him to bear. Not when he’d given me so much. He’d given me perspective, which was priceless. But also the realization that my blame was selfish, maybe even gratuitous.

Finally I broke off by the simple expedient of dropping my chin so that his lips met only forehead.

“Thank you,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t entirely grateful just yet.

“You’re welcome,” he said, kissing my forehead. “You ready to rejoin the others?”

“Give me a minute.” I needed more than that, but it was all I would allow myself. Time to clean off Hecate’s blood and hope the dregs of my emotional overload followed it down the drain.

Chapter Thirteen

By the time I’d put myself back together, I had a text message from Yiayia with two addresses and two phone numbers for Hera, one at a law office and the other for a women’s advocacy group.

No one but a machine answered at the first number. My heart started to pound as I dialed the second, as if my precog had grown stronger and I could sense trouble right through the line. No one picked up. It just rang and rang.

Wrong and wrong,
my inner alarms insisted. But why? How? And what was I supposed to do from here?

I ripped my phone off the charger and carried it with me into the living room.

“Hermes, you need to open a portal to Hera.”

He was staring at the television, where some kind of kraken, a multi-tentacled monster of mottled blue-green, was trying to take down a ship. My first thought was that he’d switched over to some movie on the Syfy channel, but then I saw the network news logo… At my entrance, he stared at me instead, “Huh, what?”

“Hera. She’s in some kind of danger. Or causing some kind of danger. Hurry. There’s no time for your little games.”

“I feel it too,” Apollo said, rising to stand beside me in support. “Do it.”

Hermes looked from one of us to the other. “I don’t know if I can. I need a person or place to center on, and I haven’t seen Hera in a god’s age.”

“What about an address?” I asked.

“I can only try. Hera doesn’t exactly keep up with the trends. If she hasn’t changed too much, maybe… But you realize it’s only like a window, right. You can talk through it, but that’s it.”

“What about your little disappearing trick. I’ve seen you pop from one place to another.”

“That I can
see
. And just me. Okay, and smallish objects just to mess with people’s heads, but I’m no kind of troop transport.”

“Do your best,” I ordered.

Ordering Hermes was a dangerous business. I was sure to pay for it at some point, but right then my alarm klaxons were drowning out my common sense. Something about what was happening was not only urgent, but important and NOW.

Hermes rolled his shoulders, cocked his head from one side to another, cracking his neck. He linked his fingers together and did the same with them. Just as I was ready to throttle him for the delay, he went still, his gaze centering on a spot just above Cori’s coffee table and going unfocused. The air rippled and popped, a pinpoint of space expanded rapidly. There was a nose, then a cheekbone, an eye, pretty soon a whole face and then another right beside it, sweat sheening both as they added their weight to the barricade they’d set up in what appeared to have been a classroom, based on the desks and chairs piled up in the barricade.

Cori gasped, and the second woman in the window screamed as she turned and saw all our faces staring in at her.

“Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch,” Cori said nonsensically. “Hera!”

The woman whose nose and cheekbones had first been revealed looked up in response to her name. It was a wonder Hermes had been able to home in on her. She didn’t look like the perfect and unapproachable mother goddess pictured on urns and ancient statuary. She didn’t appear aloof or pissed off or poised or any of her usual expressions. She looked frantic and overwrought. Her hair was escaping what looked to have once been a tight updo, to straggle over her face and cling wetly to the sweat there. She wore just a silk shell for a shirt and every muscle, tendon and blood vessel stood in high relief as she pushed with all her might at the barrier between her and whatever was trying to get in. Pounding, snarling, kicking. There were no words. No “come out or I’ll kill you”, using totally the wrong conjunction, which led me to believe that whatever was beyond the barricade wasn’t human…or not fully. Not any longer.

Something hit the barricade especially hard, and a desk at head level to Hera started to topple. She deflected it from braining her with an upraised hand, but it was one less item between her and danger, and I could see the incremental backslide of the barricade. It wasn’t going to hold much longer.

“Terpsichore?” Hera asked, staring straight at Cori. “How are you here? Never mind. However you’re here it isn’t safe. It isn’t safe anywhere. Find shelter. Top of Olympus…somewhere. Just go!”

“Get us through!” I yelled to Hermes. The enemy of my enemy was my friend, right? Even if I could stand to watch Hera and her associate mobbed by whatever was after them, we couldn’t afford to lose potential allies.

“I told you it’s just a window,” Hermes growled at me.

“And I told you to try!” I yelled. “Apollo, it’s daylight. Can’t you…amplify him in some way? There’s got to be something we can do!”

Apollo didn’t waste his breath telling me he’d try. He rounded behind Hermes and put his hands to his shoulders, staring fixedly out Cori’s beautiful windows and drawing power from the sunlight streaking through. There was a flare and momentarily everything was intensely bright. I had to look away, through the window into Hera’s world, where more desks were toppling now, like an avalanche. There was a huge blow to the barrier, and the rest of the desks exploded outward. One hit our portal and punctured right through with a metal leg.

It was working! I didn’t wait to see what else might come flying through, but knocked the desk aside and dove in face first, ducking and rolling to come up into a fighter’s stance as the first nearly skinless hand pushed its way through the wreckage of the barricade.

Hera put her assistant, or whoever the other woman was, behind her and grabbed up one of the tumbled chairs, holding it like she was a lion tamer. As if on cue, the once-human creature coming in snarled and snapped at her and then lurched for the women. Others pushed in from behind, knocking the first one through off-balance and trampling right over her as she fell. Most grotesquely of all, the zombie now in the forefront was hugely pregnant, like seven or eight months. My attention was all on her stomach, waiting to see if the mass of it moved or if…I couldn’t even contemplate. Either way was too horrible to dwell on.

Then a clawlike hand grabbed me and whipped me around, blessedly diverting my attention, even as it slavered in my face. Human jaws weren’t meant for ripping into things, but zombies didn’t have enough going on upstairs to realize it.
See, want, eat
was about as far as they got, so while the thing held me in her grip and snapped uselessly toward my neck, I pulled back a fist and cracked it in an uppercut to her jaw as hard as I could. Her teeth snapped hard together and something flopped to the ground. A piece of tongue? I couldn’t look. I followed the blow with a move I’d learned in self-defense to get loose of an attacker, and knocked the hands away. Others reached in to replace them. I quickly grabbed up a fallen chair and swung it around like a caber I was going to toss. But I didn’t even make a whole circle round. Heads cracked, stopping my momentum, and a pair of hands ripped the chair away.

Another set reached for my back, ripping into my wings, and I felt a piercing pain. Then something exploded outward behind me, knocking me to the ground. Immediately the weight rolled off, and I turned my head to see Apollo.

But I didn’t have time or breath to curse him. He had a massive sword in his hands—something he’d no doubt gotten from Cori. I hoped it wasn’t just a stage prop or museum replica. He thrust upward with it as he burst to his feet, driving it straight through the zombie’s back. So no prop then. At least not cheaply made.

He ripped it from the zombie’s stomach, but it only made her lurch for him. “Aim for the head,” I called. I’d seen enough zombie films to know. And Hollywood was bound to be at least as accurate as Wikipedia.

Apollo cleaned the sword off on his pant leg and yelled, “Catch!”

I did as he said, catching the sword by the hilt as it arced toward me and immediately stabbing it over my shoulder at the zombie trying to tear my wings off and climb my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Apollo pull something else out of his belt, one of the flip knives I’d grabbed off the Central Park zombies, but I couldn’t spare the attention to watch him wield it like a pro. The thrust of my sword miraculously hit my target, zombies not having the self-preservation instinct to dodge. My blade bit into his skull…but only by a couple of inches. And it stuck. I pushed back on the sword with all my might, trying to pry the zombie away and yank the sword free.

“Do it!” someone yelled, a shrill female voice raised in panic. “They’re not people anymore, they’re—”

I don’t know what she was going to say, because the zombie on the other end of my sword suddenly threw himself forward, heedless of the blade, which sank in another inch, bringing the creature in just close enough to grab me by the collar and try to pull me in. He wasn’t the only one now. We were surrounded, and my wings were a disadvantage in the close quarters. Already, two more were grabbing and pulling at me like I was a wishbone.

I met sword zombie’s eyes and yelled, “Freeze,” but it didn’t do anything to the ones behind me, pulling me away.

Beside me a voice raised rhythmically, sounding a lot like Hecate mid-chant. I turned my head to see Hera, surrounded by a nimbus of light. Apollo was fending zombies off her with the flip knife, buying her time.

“Duck!” she yelled suddenly, dropping to the floor to show us how it was done. Such a flash burst out from her that I was blinded. So painfully bright it took me a second to realize that the other pain and pressure—the attackers pulling me apart from behind—had stopped cold. When the brilliant flare died down, I blinked at the suddenly still room, all the zombies fallen like someone had cut their strings. I didn’t know if zombie chests would rise and fall, but these weren’t. They were dead. True dead, I thought. But I was no expert.

I stared into Hera’s eyes. She met my stunned, horrified gaze with a pain-filled one of her own. Whatever she’d just done, she hadn’t done it lightly.

“I’m not exactly the alpha and the omega,” she said, “but I can give life and I can take it away.”

“Why didn’t you just do that to start with?” Apollo asked.

I stared at them both in horror. These poor people hadn’t done anything short of become infected. Any of us could be in the same boat at any moment.

“I just couldn’t,” Hera said, not looking at him. “It’s not a precise thing—draining to the point of unconsciousness but not to death. And I’ve never… I just don’t know…given their state. How much is too much? Are they already halfway to dead? More? Tracy’s baby…”

She couldn’t finish the thought, and I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t even bare to look again at the stillness. Meanwhile, the woman who’d been with her dropped to the ground beside the woman I supposed to be Tracy and put her hand cautiously to the still belly. She held it there for a moment before hanging her head and reaching up for the zombie woman’s face to close the lids over the empty, filmed-over eyes.

“This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go,” Hera said, watching her. “We were supposed to be safe.”

I latched on to that instantly and pinned her down with my stare. “How exactly
were
things supposed to go down?” I asked, trying and failing to keep my voice neutral.

Hera looked up from the corpse, devastation behind her eyes. “I’ll tell you, but…not here. I can’t…I can’t take this.”

The woman squatting on the ground rose, tears spilling down her face as she glanced at Hera and immediately away. “There are going to be arrangements to make, people to notify.”

“The world’s gone crazy,” I told her as gently as I could. “We have to see what we can do to protect the living before we worry about burying the dead.”

“This is my assistant, Michelle,” Hera told us. She gestured our way. “Michelle, meet Apollo…Demas?” she asked, as though to confirm that was the name he was currently going with. He nodded. “And, if I’m not mistaken, Tori Karacis, PI to the pantheon.”

PI to the pantheon.
That was interesting on many levels—that my reputation preceded me, for better or worse, and that Michelle
knew
about the pantheon. I didn’t know what to make of that.
Any
of it, but standing in a room surrounded by sorrow and death didn’t seem the time to figure it out.

“Can we get out of here?” Michelle asked, barely acknowledging the introductions. I understood entirely.

I looked through the portal back to Cori’s apartment, which had shrunk to a mere pinprick. “Hermes!” I called. “Hermes, let us back through.”

When nothing happened, I met Apollo’s gaze, only just realizing that he’d amplified Hermes’s powers to open the window…and he was now on our side of it.

His realization came at the same time. Or maybe we were so linked that mine fed his. Or vice versa. Hera looked at us both and then at the pinprick in the center of the room. “Your portal?” she asked.

I nodded, and she poked a finger into it, probing. Then she stuck a second into it, one from each hand. She closed her eyes and began pulling her fingers in opposite directions. The portal magically opened for her, expanding until it was a circle the size of a large Hula-Hoop.

“After you,” she said, holding it open now with one hand and stepping to the side.

Michelle’s eyes were huge, but she didn’t say a word. I didn’t know just how much she knew or had seen before now. Clearly enough to be awed, but not shocked or amazed. She looked at Hera, took a deep breath, held on to both sides of the circle like it was a window frame and stepped on through. Her hands were the last things to go.

Apollo gestured that I should go next. Such a gentleman. Either that, or he just wanted to watch my butt. Such as it was. If he could even think of such things after what we’d seen, more power to him. I looked back when I got through to see a half smile on his face, like he’d read my mind. I gave him a shaky smile back and stepped away from the portal so that he could follow me through, which he did.

Hera brought up the rear, letting the portal slam shut behind her, still standing on Cori’s coffee table looking down on the rest of us.

“Well,” Cori said, breaking the sudden awkward silence, “that coffee ought to be about ready. Why don’t I bring the whole pot and you can tell us what the HELL is going on. Also, if you can give life and you can take it, maybe you can do something about Melpomene.” She sounded like there should be an “or else” at the end of that sentence, but I wasn’t sure she was in any position to make good on that.