Battle for the Blood (16 page)

Hera might not be the literal goddess of vengeance, but she was certainly well known for it, and Cori, being one of the Muses—Zeus’s supposed love children with the titaness Mnemosyne—probably already had one strike against her. On the other hand, Hera’d had eons to get over it, and it was hardly the kids’ fault.

Hera drew herself up to her full haughty height and reached a hand down to Apollo to allow him to help her off the coffee table. She’d just set foot on the floor and turned her steely stare on Cori when all hell broke loose from the back of the apartment.

Chapter Fourteen

The snarling and cursing could only come from a full set of vocal cords and unmitigated rage.
Lyssa
was awake.

The door to the bathroom blew open on its hinges, taking part of the doorjamb with it, and Lyssa appeared like an apparition, feet not even touching the floor, hair flying out around her, crackling with power that couldn’t be contained. Her torn dress and exposed limbs were streaked with dirt and blood.

She looked like a pissed-off Fury, and she was laser-focused on Hera.

“You!” she howled.

Hera’s face went white when she saw Lyssa, and she immediately stammered, “I promise, I don’t do that anymore. Since I split from Zeus, I’m a whole lot more centered. I help women now. I’m making amends!”

Michelle stepped in front of her, like Hera had done back at their office, but her wispy figure barely hid the goddess’s statuesque form. “It’s true.”

Regardless, Lyssa’s eyes had begun to bleed, and I could feel her rage reaching out, sweeping the room, raising my blood pressure and my bile. Rage bubbled up inside me, boiling, percolating, threatening to make me blow my top off—and not in the fun way Hermes would probably appreciate. I took a step toward Hera, half ready to rip her limb from limb myself.

Cori leapt first, but Michelle saw her coming and jumped to protect Hera. Cori’s body hit hers, sending her crashing to the coffee table. If this had been a Hollywood set, the table would have been glass, and the impact would have shattered it, sending blood and shards flying, but it wasn’t. The sharp thud of the bodies hitting barely impacted my brain. What did register was that I now had a clear shot at Hera.

My wings whipped out instinctively to help propel me, their abject failure and the pain that shot through me at the attempt didn’t stop me. Neither did Apollo’s arm, which lashed out to intercept. I thrust it aside, whirling to dodge as he tried to turn it from a block to a grab.

“Tori!” he yelled.

I didn’t hesitate, but sent myself at Hera in a flying tackle. I didn’t know why Apollo could even think to stop me. Myths had it that Hera had chased Apollo’s very own mother Leto (pregnant with Zeus’s twins) out of Olympus and made it so no place would accept her for fear of incurring Hera’s wrath. She’d had to deliver her twins all alone on a deserted island and could very well have died in childbirth, which was no doubt the intention. I couldn’t believe there was enough therapy in the world to get over something like that.

The second I should have crashed into Hera with the weight of Tornado Tori, the world glitched, flickered—

—and suddenly I was stumbling, full momentum and nothing to take the impact but a wall that was a lot closer than it should have been. I crashed into it, knocking the bottom of the framed play poster askew so that it swung dangerously, threatening to come down on me.

I turned, lightning fast, only to find I’d somehow been transported across the room and Hera wasn’t even within range. I glared toward Hermes and Apollo, who looked fully prepared to port me again if necessary.

“Everyone just stop,” Apollo commanded. “Lyssa, I know you have more control than this.”

I doubted that. Her overflowing anger, her consuming madness made me feel as though my flesh would boil off my bones if I didn’t act to relieve the pressure.

“I…can’t…” Lyssa gritted out. She was going to break her teeth if she clamped them together any harder.

“You can,” Hermes insisted. “Just remember Megaera and the kids. You don’t want to go through all that again.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Lyssa let out an animalistic wail—pure pain. She was weeping blood again, and in the blink of an eye, flying across the room toward Hera, hands outspread, fingers like talons, as though she’d rip her to shreds, like the zombies or Dionysus’s blood-frenzied followers.

Everyone was focused on Lyssa. I saw my moment and took it.

One step, two, and I’d built the momentum to spread my damaged wings to at least carry me over the back of the sofa that now stood between me and the action. I landed hard on Hera’s back, knocking her to the ground and intercepting Lyssa. It was all I could do to lock with her instead of my intended target, meeting her madness for madness.

“No,” I managed. “I mean yes. Maybe. Later. For now, we need answers.”

I spat the words, every one a struggle. I had an opponent within my grasp. I wanted to grip, tear, rend. But in the back of my mind—the very back—I heard Apollo. His recognition that this was all
wrong
. His prayer for peace and sanity. He was thinking it
at
me, almost an attack by itself, meeting and grappling with my bloodlust and insanity. Cold water dashed on the bubbling cauldron of my rage, threatening to sublimate me into steam. I was going to be lost in the crossfire. Unless I took some control. Unless I
directed
the force.

I used that force to hold Lyssa in place, tried to transmit some of that sanity and calm Apollo was radiating to her, but she didn’t have our connection, and—

Lyssa’s bowstring-taut body started to slacken in my grip. I didn’t trust it, sure it was a trick to get me to let go, but when I looked into her eyes, the blood was once again pulling back, draining away. I was getting through.

“Okay,” she said. “You can let me go now.”

I checked within myself first. If I let her go, would I lunge for a new target? But the sharpness of my mania had drained away as well, and I now felt like I needed a good sleep—like for a year and a day. I was wrung out.

I let her go and collapsed onto a nearby chair. I fixed Hera with a look powered by any leftover aggression and said, “Talk. And you’d better make it worth our while. Because I
felt
what being in your service did to Lyssa all those years ago, and if I had a hit list, you’d be on it.”

Hera looked at me, and for an instant I saw the haughty queen bee she’d once been, and then it ebbed away. “I’m sorry,” she said to Lyssa, to the room at large. “I’m not that person anymore.”

“Prove it,” Hermes challenged.

“I’m willing to tell you everything, but I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t know nearly as much as you think.”

Lyssa growled.

From the floor, Michelle gasped as Cori let her up and the blood flow returned painfully to parts of her body. I ignored them both, riveted on Hera, impatient to get at the truth or, if she was recalcitrant, to beat it out of her. My inner hothead demanded it.

“Amphitrite came to me...” Hera began, but then she stopped herself and turned to Cori. “About that coffee?”

It was Cori’s turn to growl now, but she did go to the kitchen and come back with a tray laden with a coffeepot, cups, a sugar bowl and little loose packets of various sugar substitutes, along with a variety of fancy creamers.

“All out of milk,” she said, as she set the tray on her remarkably still-standing coffee table. “You’ll just have to make do with crème brûlée creamer or whatever.”

Ah, the deprivations of a zombie apocalypse.

“Still like your coffee like you like your heart?” Lyssa asked Hera. “Black?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hera said, “I do.” She poured herself a white porcelain cup of coffee and sat on the edge of the couch to down half the cup before she said another word. It would have taken a master carver to cut the tension in the room. When Hera made as if to set the cup on the table, Michelle took it from her and topped it off.

“Anytime now,” Hermes growled.

Hera fixed him with a stare. “Sorry, I needed a minute. I’ve just seen women I’ve helped and grown to care for turned into mindless eating machines, with me and my assistant on the menu. I’ve had to cut their strings and escape through a portal, only to be attacked by a demon and her friends. I needed a jolt.”

“I’ll give you a jolt,” Lyssa said.

I concurred.

In fact, I took the seat on the couch beside Hera before Michelle could snap it up. Unless she was made of stone, she’d feel the menace coming off me in waves. If she had any sense of self-preservation, it would hurry her along.

“Amphitrite came to me,” she said again, picking up her coffee cup and staring into it rather than at any of us. “She and the others had a proposition for me. They didn’t start the apocalypse, but they were going to take advantage of the chaos to retake the world.”

“What others?” Apollo asked.

“Amphitrite and the oceanids, Hecate. She didn’t say who else. She said the gods had tried and failed to rule the world. Zeus and Poseidon tried and failed to take it back. But now…with trouble and turmoil everywhere, now was OUR chance. Amphitrite could take the oceans, the seas, everything else. She’d already begun seizing the reins while Poseidon was away in prison. Hecate could take the underworld. She practically ruled it already.” I wondered if Hades would agree. “And if I helped them, I could have the heavens and earth…as long as I was willing to share.

“I was tempted. Men have done a crappy job of things so far. Glass ceilings, abuses, slavery, sweatshops, legislation to control our bodies and who we can and can’t love. Crappy. But it’s not as if women are any better. Look at Michele Bachmann or what’s-her-face…the one with the big hair and the “drill, baby, drill”. And, anyway, Amphitrite and Hecate don’t have to deal with the real world. Souls, sure. Shipping lines, okay. But it’s not the same. Here on Earth the lunatics are running the asylum and no shrink in the world, no matter how amazing, is going to restore sanity. I know. I deal with the craziness on a daily basis. I’m trying to help the victims of abuse and the best I can do is triage.”

“But if you ran things…” Lau began, and the rest of us whipped our heads around to stare. Whose side was she on?

“That’s what they said—‘but if you ran things’. It’s a great theory, but one woman can’t do it all. Not even two,” she said, finally glancing up from her cup to meet Michelle’s eyes. “Not even if one is a goddess.” Michelle didn’t even blink at that, confirming my initial impression that she was in the know. “It’s too big a job. Even if I rule with an iron fist and micromanage everything, I will need minions, and they will take things too far, abuse their power or divert funds or approve black ops or other insanity. They’ll decide I don’t need to know because I’m too busy to be bothered. It will be the same thing all over again. There is no perfection.”

“But the apocalypse… Who started it? What made Namtar rise again? Did they say? Do they know?”

“I can only assume it’s someone who’s given up on the world and wants to wipe the slate clean.
Tabula rasa.
”

“The end then?” I said, the horror truly sinking in. “Really the end?”

“You sound like you sympathize,” Apollo said, narrowing his eyes at Hera.

“I sympathize with the temptation to try. The world is a painful place. Famine, disease, sociopathy. Bad things happen to good people every day. Innocents…or as close as this world produces. But there’s a lot of good too. Progress is slow, but it comes if we just keep fighting. But if Amphitrite and Hecate have their way, they will take over the world and remake it in their owned flawed image.”

I hadn’t met Amphitrite, but I already knew I didn’t want to play in Hecate’s sandbox.

“There’s no remaking me in their image,” Hermes said. “I’m too attached to my man parts.”

“Aren’t you all?” Hera said dryly.

Lyssa still stared at Hera with the intensity of a thousand suns, which had been growing hotter by the second. I kept watch out of the corner of my eye, ready to knock her out again if she risked starting another riot. “So, you didn’t become part of the problem,” she spat at Hera, “but you aren’t part of the solution. You haven’t done anything to stop them!”

Hera appealed to Apollo and to me, afraid, it seemed, to look at Lyssa, “What could I do? I’m already up to my eyeballs helping people who
want
to be helped. I’m out of the god game.”

Lyssa studied her. “Well, that’s convenient.”

“Not as it turned out,” she said.

“Look, this is all very interesting, and maybe later you can buy Lyssa a few thousand drinks or lattes or yachts or whatever you crazy kids do to make up, but right now we have people to save and asses to kick,” Lau cut in testily. “So, spill. Where can we find the conspirators? They must have given you a contact number or
something
in case you changed your mind and decided to join up.”

Hera’s eyes widened. “They did. Just as you said. You don’t suppose…” she trailed off, but our minds jumped ahead of her. Or mine did, anyway.

Michelle gasped. “You think they infected our people and sent them after us?”

Hera looked like she was trying hard
not
to think that. “It’s possible. What better way to sucker me into joining than to imperil the women I’m protecting and then take them out of the equation? No one left to save, only to avenge. I’m not exactly known for my restraint…historically. If I thought someone was behind this plague, I’d go to the ends of the earth to stop them.”

“But they didn’t convince you,” I pointed out.

“They might have. If you hadn’t shown up. If we’d been overrun, if I’d lost Michelle…there’s no telling what I would have done.”

“Or still might do,” Lyssa cut in.

But it gave me an idea. “Call them. Convince them you’ve changed your mind. Set up a meeting.” I could track Hecate, I was fairly sure of it, but this way maybe we could meet the rest of the cabal.

Angry energy was rolling off Lyssa again in waves now. The red was starting to bleed back into her eyes. “Send Hera straight to them? How do you know that isn’t what she wants? We only have her word about whose side she’s on.”

“She won’t be going alone,” I answered. “I’ll be going with her.”

My skin was starting to feel hot and itchy, my eyeballs like there was a kind of pressure building behind them. My muscles twitched, wanting to go for something, and the sword Apollo had lobbed at me was still to hand. I fought it, knowing it wasn’t my fury. I looked up to see Cori quivering as well, and Lau biting her lip, every muscle taut like she was fighting herself. Hermes, Apollo and Hera, maybe by virtue of their age or power, seemed immune.