Battle for the Blood (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

I hefted her over my shoulder just as the air did that ripply thing in front of me and suddenly Apollo’s voice was coming through it, before the window was even big enough to see.

“Tori! Are you okay?”

“Apollo,” I called, so relieved I could collapse. Superhealing be damned, I’d been through a lot today and wasn’t sure I could make it the whole way back to Cori’s place with a plus-one. “Can you open a portal?”

“Hermes?” I heard him say over his shoulder. There was a discussion that didn’t make it through the window, and then the window grew from a pinprick into a mailbox into the size of a large doggy door and Hermes’s face appeared. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but no one had asked me.

“Sigyn…is she gone?” Hermes asked. “Her wards have fallen. It’s the only reason we were able to get through to you.”

“She’s down,” I told him. “If that’s a full-blown portal, can we talk about this when I’m on the other side?”

“I’m coming through,” he answered.

The protest hadn’t even formed on my lips when a leg was pushing through with an arm to help it on its way like he was climbing in a window. His head and torso were next.

He was looking around as he came—not frantically, but not casually by any means. They might be exes, but the thought of Sigyn down clearly had him worried.

His gaze seemed to snag on Sigyn almost immediately, as if there was still a connection after all these years. He ignored me and my passenger to head straight for her.

I didn’t know what to do. Would the portal work with his attention elsewhere or would it snap closed on us if we tried to step through?

“Hermes?” I started.

He held up a hand to silence me and crouched beside Sigyn, gently turning her over and brushing away the hair that had fallen over her face. The demon’s sting had swollen her up to the size of a carcass that had been floating for days in the water, and her skin was gray, her veins starting to blacken as if the blood was clotting inside them. It was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen, next to Nick with burns over a third of his body. Hermes cradled her to him and glanced at me with such a look of seriousness and desolation in his eyes that I wouldn’t have recognized him if I’d met him on the street.

“She’s coming with us,” he said.

It was his portal. I wasn’t in any position to disagree, and yet. “She’s got some kind of rune on me. She’s too powerful and she can’t be trusted.”

“I’m not leaving her like this,” he said. He wasn’t asking. He was telling me.

With Sigyn in his arms, he rose and walked to the portal, which had telescoped down to almost nothing. A dime-sized oddity floating in midair. He adjusted Sigyn so that he could reach a hand out to it, and at his touch it expanded. More like a door now.

“Go,” he ordered. “I can’t hold it like this for long.”

I went, carefully tucking myself and Hera through. I stumbled as I came down on the other side, but arms caught me, and slid Hera away from me as a second set reached out to make sure I wouldn’t fall on my face.

Apollo held Hera. Lau held me.

Lacy still had Nick in a death grip. But he rose with her at the sight of Hera’s limp body and let Apollo have the couch to lay her out on.

I got my balance and stepped quickly out of the way so that Hermes could come through.

“Incoming,” I told them. Unless they’d heard through the portal, it was all the warning they were going to get because Hermes was already coming through, Sigyn clutched to his chest.

Cori looked from Hera and the blood soaking no doubt irrevocably into her couch to Hermes and Sigyn. “I don’t know where you’re going to put her.”

“Bathroom,” I said. “In the tub. I know we have to help her, but we’ve also got to chain her up. She’s too dangerous to let loose.”

“Not in her current state,” Hermes said.

I couldn’t argue that.

“There’s only one bathroom,” Cori said. “It’s going to make things…interesting.”

“We’ll make do,” I told her. “No showers until all this is done, and we’ll just draw the curtain across the tub. Anyone with a shy bladder is out of luck.”

Apollo was studying Hera as Hermes carried Sigyn off. I watched him, waiting for the verdict.

“I could cauterize the wounds to stop the bleeding,” he said, “but that would really just trap any poison in with her and slow the healing. It’s going to take some time, and she’ll probably be in a coma in the meantime, but she’ll come out of it.”

That was all I needed to hear. There were no chairs or couches left, so I collapsed down onto the coffee table.

Nick tried to put Lacy down and come to me, but she clung like one of those puppets whose arms and legs Velcroed around you. He finally gave up and said, “Your hands.”

I looked down at them. The formerly frozen skin, dead now, was starting to slough off. I’d been frostbitten, most definitely. It was as though my body was self-amputating. Nick should never have drawn it to my attention. Now I’d want to pick at it like a scab, and I knew that the skin underneath would be pink and new and hypersensitive.

“They’ll heal too,” I said.

“What’s happened to you?” he asked. He wasn’t just talking about the eerie healing. It was the wings he was looking at now, as if seeing them for the first time.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I think I’m becoming…other.” I looked away. I didn’t know if I was finished changing or where it would stop. I knew I didn’t want it, and at the same time, I did. I wanted the power. Needed it to fight what we faced. I was tired of being the human with the lame power in the face of overwhelming odds.

That stopped me. Was that how Nick had felt, especially after the burns. And he’d never had even the lame power. Just his heroism and a badge that didn’t get him anywhere with the horrors he faced. “Let’s talk about something we have answers to,” I suggested. “Where are we with Panacea?”

Apollo pushed back from Hera and rose to his feet. “Your yiayia sent a message while you were gone. Coupled with the information we got off of that phone, we’ve been able to trace her down to a village. If Hermes is able to open a portal to her, I can have her here by dinner…if she’ll come.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“It’s not like she isn’t dealing with an epidemic there. And if the plague demons hit Uganda as well, there’s no telling how crazy things might be.”

“But—” Dammit, I didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to even think it, but it was too late to cram the thought genie back in the bottle. “But if she’s been unable to stop that epidemic, why did Hecate seem so convinced that she can stop these plagues? She’s only one woman and you said it yourself, she needs to be hands-on to heal. One person at a time. But plagues spread faster than that, exponentially.”

“Hecate must have some kind of ace up her sleeve. She must have some plan,” Apollo said.

I hardly dared hope. “Okay, so we find Panacea. We find Hecate and we force her to spill the beans. I’ll go with you.”

It was Lau who spoke up at that. “You can’t just walk into a village—any village—with your bat wings and steal away their healer.”

“We’ll return her,” I protested.

“Even so.”

I looked at Apollo in appeal. With everything at stake, my wings seemed the least of our issues.

“I’ll take Nick,” Apollo responded, shocking the bejeebers out of me. Him too, it looked like. “He’s wounded. Panacea won’t be able to resist helping him and it will give us a chance to talk.”

“Why wouldn’t she talk to you?” Lau asked suspiciously.

“She’s never forgiven me for not being able to save her father. Or the rest of the Olympians for condemning him to death.”

“What did he do?” Lau asked.

Apollo paused before answering, a look of
eureka!
crossing his face. “Asclepius was bringing the dead back to life. Hades was worried it would stop the flow of souls into his realm. Zeus was pissed at him for usurping the power of the Olympians. He killed him with a lightning bolt to the heart.”

“So he would have died and gone to Hades…where Hecate would have access to him,” I said.

“Well, the legend is that he was made into a constellation, but that’s just an old wives’ tale.”

“Holy shit,” Hermes said. “Why didn’t I think of that? Asclepius found a way to bring the dead back to life. If he’s escaped the underworld, or if Hecate’s smuggled him out…there’s no telling what he might do.”

“But not without Panacea,” Apollo said, picking up where Hermes left off. “Clearly they need her…her healing, anyway. Maybe Asclepius is working on some way to disseminate the miracle cure.”

“Hecate did mention controlling the cure,” I added. It all made horrible sense. Mankind had been searching for the elixir of life for as long as there’d been death.

“I’ll go along,” Nick said suddenly, stepping up. “Anything to help.”

I didn’t protest that he was in no condition to go. The protest wouldn’t have worked if our situations were reversed. I knew it wouldn’t work on him. And if he was able to bring Panacea back, there was every chance she could make him whole again.

“Great,” Apollo said. “Now, Hermes, can you open us a portal?”

Hermes rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck from side to side, like he was getting ready for some heavy lifting. “I can try. Come here,” he said to Apollo. “I haven’t seen Panacea in a lifetime or ten. I’ll need to draw on your memories.”

I didn’t think Apollo had seen her any too recently either, but if I remembered my mythology, he was Panacea’s grandfather. Maybe blood made all the difference.

Apollo offered his hand to Hermes, who took it. Cori snorted, and when I looked at her sidelong, she said quietly, so as not to break anyone’s concentration. “Sorry, they’re just so cute. My friend Ben would eat them up with a spoon.”

I didn’t say a word. The air was going wavery again, and in a moment we had a view of dirt. It expanded on more dirt. And pebbles. And then…it looked like maybe the outer ring of a well.

“Come on,” I said gently to Lacy, holding my arms out to take her from Nick. “I’ll take care of you.”

She shook her head vehemently and tightened her grip around Nick’s neck until he choked. It had to hurt—not just because of the fierceness, but with all the burned flesh. It had to be excruciating, but only a fraction of it reached his face.

“Lacy, honey,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ll be right back. Go to the nice lady.”

He tried to pry her off and I reached for her at the same time, putting my hands to her sides.

“No!” she yelled, and I was blasted off my feet. I came crashing down on the coffee table, reducing it to firewood. For a moment, pain overwhelmed all thought and hijacked every signal going through my body. I couldn’t move. I could only stare dumbfounded.

Everyone
was dumbfounded, and stared at Lacy like she’d grown a second head. But she had just the one and right now it was buried in Nick’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,”
she kept repeating breathlessly, sobs in between. “I didn’t mean to.”

Nick recovered first. “Lacy, it’s okay, honey. You were scared. We know you didn’t mean to… What did you do?”

“I have a feeling I know what messed with me opening a window to Nick back at the hospital,” Hermes said in a hush. He had the tone of one who doesn’t want to disturb and set off a wild animal.

“Don’t know,” Lacy said, raising her huge Precious Moments eyes to look at Nick. There were tears in them, which made them seem almost luminous. “It’s just something that happens sometimes…when I’m scared. Mommy says I’m not ’sposed to tell.”

“It’s like a force field, isn’t it?” Hermes asked. “Like a shield.”

“Don’t know,” she repeated. “Mommy—”

“Where is your mommy?” I asked gently.

She turned those eyes toward me, and my heart nearly broke at the look in them. So vulnerable and devastated. “She’s…one of them.”

We’d already thrown the word zombie about or I might have softened things. It hadn’t occurred to us in the midst of everything that some of these kids might have lost families. “One of the zombies?” I asked.

She nodded and hugged Nick even tighter. He winced and I thought I saw his knees start to buckle.

“We’re trying to help,” Nick said. “We want to bring her back to you. But for that, you need to let me go.”

She pulled back to look at him, studying his face to be sure, as if to be
absolutely sure
this was the way it had to be before she relented. Finally, she loosened her legs from around his waist and allowed him to slide her to the ground. She hugged herself rather than me or anyone else.

“Do you like cartoons?” Cori asked. “I have some Looney Tunes.”

Of course the goddess of comedy would have some good, old-fashioned Bugs Bunny. It only stood to reason.

“Can’t hold this portal much longer,” Hermes said, strain in his voice.

Nick bent and gave Lacy a kiss to her forehead, so quickly she didn’t have time to change her mind and grab him again. Then he was through the portal with Apollo. It closed so quickly after them that I worried it would cut them off.

Hermes’s shoulders slumped, and he looked a little ragged around the edges. He wasn’t used to creating portals, and even with Apollo’s help they must be taking a lot out of him.

“How will you know when it’s time to bring them back?” I asked.

“I’ll open a window to check as often as I can. They have no way to signal me from there. I can’t keep the portal open, especially not where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Cori was settling the kids in front of the television, sitting cross-legged on the area rug in front of the broken coffee table, which was in front of the long couch on which Hera rested, blood still seeping from her chest.

“We’re going to see a man about an artifact,” he said. “Remember I told you about Javier, the rich collector who’d hired me to transport Namtar in the first place?”

“Yeah.”

“I still haven’t heard back from him, but I think I’ve uncovered his location, thanks to your yiayia.”

“You have?”

“I could be wrong, but I think he’s one of us.”