Battle for the Blood (26 page)

Panacea put a hand to Sigyn’s forehead and closed her eyes as she mouthed ancient words that seemed to mean “open sesame”, since Sigyn’s eyes fluttered open in response. They went from dazed to alarmed in literally the blink of an eye, and she tried to push herself upward on her elbows, but Panacea held her down. “Best not yet,” she said, and Sigyn tore her gaze away from me to stare up at Panacea.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Plague poisoning,” I said, cutting straight to the point. There was no time for sugarcoating. Outside, the sky had grown dark, the clouds sitting right over rooftops like the ceiling of the world was coming down on us. They were thick and angry-gray, and there was a grumbling sort of sound rolling back and forth between them. Not thunder. Not yet. More like the building disgruntlement of a crowd before full-on riot. The storm was coming.

“You’ve been out for a while, so here’s how things stand,” I continued. “You fought the demons and lost. Hecate fought Janus and lost. I understand that if things didn’t go your way, the cabal had arranged for Amphitrite to swamp the city, but here’s the deal—the plague demons have flown the coup, off to the ends of the earth. If you were hoping to gain control of them through battle or threats of death and destruction, you’ve failed. Only one part of Hecate’s plan has come to fruition—Panacea is here. But a fat lot of good that’s going to do if Amphitrite kills her when she wipes Manhattan off the map. If Panacea goes down and the plague demons continue unchecked, life as we know it will end. Oh, there
might
be some survivors for you to lord over, at least to start, but with so many diseases running rampant, no one can possibly be immune to them all. Maybe not even the gods.”

As if to punctuate my statement, the thunder that had been threatening suddenly crashed with enough force to rattle windows. Outside, the wind rushed loudly enough to drown out the television and then a flash of lightning lit the sky, forking spectacularly over a building not so far away. Kids cried out, the lights and television snapped off, possibly even in that order.

“Crap, is she—” Sigyn began.

“She is,” Apollo said, holding out a cell phone. “Call her. Call it off.”

Sigyn was shaking her head. “Not that way. Underwater. She can’t—”

She seemed incapable of finishing a sentence.

“What then?” I asked in frustration. “There has to be some way to reach Amphitrite.”

“Shell phone,” she said, and I was about to get really angry, thinking she was making a joke at a time like this.

“No, really,” she continued, spotting the thunderclouds gathering on my face. She touched her hand to the chain at her neck, and I noticed that there was a little shell dangling from it. And a skeleton. And a key. Direct dials for major players in the cabal?

Sigyn tapped the little shell and muttered a single word under her breath, and then called loudly, “Amphitrite, can you hear me? You’ve got to stop this. We’ve got Panacea. She’s here in the city. You’ve got to call this off. Amphitrite?”

She waited for an answer. We
all
waited. And waited.

“If you’re playing games…” Apollo threatened.

“I’m not,” Sigyn swore, looking frightened enough at the lack of response that I believed her. I didn’t think she’d like the picture I’d painted. Or the idea that the high-rise she was in might come down around her ears. “She’s not answering. Too caught up in battle plans, maybe.”

“Or maybe Hecate got to her first,” I said. “Damn, we’ve got to do this the old-fashioned way then. We’ve got to go right to the source. Where is she?” I asked.

She looked away. Apollo loomed as if to command answers, but Hermes pushed him out of the way.

“Sigyn.” He squatted down beside the tub where she rested so that they were practically chest to chest, faces close. She turned to him and their gazes locked. “You don’t want to die. You don’t want
me
to die unless you get to kill me yourself. You won’t get that chance if we don’t stop this.”

Oddly enough, that made her lips crack upward in a half smile. “You’re right there. But she could be anywhere. I just don’t know—”

The rain hit us then, not starting gently and working its way up to impressive, but with a sudden wet sheet slapping against the windows, making us all jump. Between the wind and the torrent, the glass rattled in its frame, threatening to shatter and let the outside in. The others had joined us now, everyone standing in the hallway, listening in. Lacy plastered herself once more against Nick, and the littlest boy was pressed against his other side, the damaged one. Nick winced, but wrapped an arm around him just the same. It was about the sweetest thing I’d ever seen, and…I had to look away.

“We have to call Helen,” Nick said, bringing my gaze reluctantly back to him. “Make sure she’s okay and see if Eu-meh’s been able to reach out to other dragons.”

I recovered my cell phone, but found a
No Signal
warning before I could even attempt to dial. “Damn, it looks like relays are down. Can anyone get a signal?”

The rain sloshed again at the windows and the wind rattled them so hard in their frames that if they were teeth they’d have fallen out by now. It didn’t bode well.

“I have a landline,” Cori said.

“Try it,” I answered, as though she needed to hear it from me. She was already headed back for the kitchen and the phone mounted there.

Wall mounted,
I thought stunned.
Still with cord.
I barely knew those kinds of phones still existed.

“Dead,” she said. “I guess with the power out…”

“Hermes?” Apollo asked, “Will you do the honors?”

Hermes was holding Sigyn now, and I wondered what that meant for his relationship with my best friend, Christie. I wouldn’t exactly be crushed if they ended it, but Christie might feel differently. She deserved happiness. I just didn’t think the trickster god was the one to supply it.

“Fine, whatever,” he said, waving a free hand at the air and opening a tiny pinprick of a window that grew into a view of Lau stroking Eu-meh’s neck, her cheek to the dragon’s muzzle. It was the second sweetest thing I’d seen today, ranking nearly up there with Lacy’s attachment to Nick.

I had a pang, my second of the day, for the easy adoration, the domesticity. When things died down, I wanted that for myself. Maybe not forever. I wasn’t a cuddly, casserole and dishes-doing kind of girl, but for an evening or more—curled up on the couch with a warm, wonderful man. Fuzzy socks. A blanket. A good movie on the television or in front of a roaring fire… I thought I could trick my brain into supplying which man would be there with me, but the fantasy flickered from Nick to Apollo.

Apollo…there was no way that we’d make it to the end of the movie with clothes still in place. Nick…right now all I could think of was his wounds and how I was partly responsible for them. I wanted to nurse him back to health. I wanted to care for him and protect him and, yes, curl up on the couch with him. But Apollo—

I realized that my gaze had strayed to him and I had to look away. He couldn’t read my mind, but my emotions were another thing, and that fantasy had mutated into something else altogether. Something he could probably sense and which was completely inappropriate while we still had to face down death and destruction. Afterward, if we survived…

I wondered if that meant I’d made my decision. Apollo and I shared a connection that Nick could never be part of, which was completely unfair to him. Maybe it was time to let him go like he’d let me go back in Delphi.

I focused on Lau. It was easier. She’d spotted me—us, anyway—and was staring back through the window. Sound was coming through, and I could hear the wind in Central Park whipping all around them, whistling through a piece of loose siding. Lau shivered.

“What’s going on with this storm?” Lau asked, the first to speak.

“Long story short— You know that cabal we’ve talked about? They had a kill switch. In other words, if a few major players don’t check in, Amphitrite, Queen of the Seas, tears the city apart.”

I expected horror, concern, something, but Lau was made of sterner stuff. She just nodded. “That jibes with what Eu-meh’s learned. The sea dragons and other creatures are amassing at the South Street Seaport.”

I wondered how Eu-meh communicated. Were her kind telepathic? I didn’t imagine cell phone or shell phones or whatever came into play, but there were more pressing questions.

“Can she get the sea dragons to hold off?”

“This is far bigger than them.”

“But can they help? Not just bow out, but stop the others?”

“Turn on Amphitrite? She controls the seas, the oceans.
Where they live.
”

“Save her from herself,” I protested. “Save their waters. They must feel it—the taint. With the plagues that have already been unleashed, things will wash into the ocean, poisoning it. Gas from cars and plants, sewage, decaying batteries, diseases… Sure, the waters are huge. Things will be diluted, but eventually, with enough death and destruction…”

“I’ll try to communicate that,” Lau promised. “But in the meantime, we’ve got to get down there. We’ve got to stop this.”

I didn’t know that we had anything in our arsenal that
could
stop it, but we weren’t left with any choice but to save the day or die trying. I just hoped it was the former and not the latter. Assuming I went to the afterlife of my gorgon ancestors…well, I’d been there, done that and not bothered to buy the T-shirt, so a one-way ticket held no appeal.

“We’ll meet you there,” I said.

The portal snapped shut on my final word. I looked to Hermes, and he looked wiped, as though one more portal today would knock him straight out. He rested his head on Sigyn’s chest, and she allowed it to stay, even bringing a hand up to rest on his temple. She stopped short of stroking his hair back, but it looked like it took effort.

“How do we stop her?” I asked Sigyn.

Her gaze met mine. “I don’t know. The trident, I guess. Go for the trident.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“We heal Hera first, take her with us. You think she has access to Zeus’s bag of tricks?” I asked Apollo.

“If not, she has tricks all her own,” he answered. “As for the healing, Panacea took care of that while you were out fighting Janus.”

“Did someone call my name?” Hera asked, standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall, still clearly weak.

“You’re not sleeping,” Panacea gasped.

“Who could sleep with all this noise?”

“Good, how do you feel about helping us save the city?” I asked.

“My city? Damn right I will.”

“I’m going too,” Nick said.

“Nooooo!” Lacy moaned, gripping him tighter, until the pain finally broke him and he moaned out loud. She immediately loosened her grip. “I hurt you,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.” She kissed her first two fingers and then held them out to him. “Where did I hurt?”

Panacea, watching the whole thing, looked from Lacy’s kissed fingers to Nick and spoke up before he could, taking Lacy’s hand and guiding it to his burned shoulder. “Right here,” she said, gently applying it along with her own hand.

Nick’s eyes got really big and then rolled up into his head as a blue glow rolled off Panacea’s fingers and the healing began. Lacy whispered an awed “oooh” but we couldn’t see the results, hidden as they were beneath the bandages. But it was clear when the lines of his face relaxed and his shoulders slumped and his whole body went slack at the relief of what must have been horrible and constant pain that he’d been hiding heroically. Apollo caught Nick as he started to fall, and Panacea grabbed Lacy out of his arms before he could take her with him. I grabbed Nick’s legs to help carry him to the newly vacated couch.

“What was that?” Lacy asked, awed.

“Healing. Your friend is going to be okay, but he needs some sleep and no hugging for a little while.”

I was so stunned and amazed at the thought that Nick would be whole again, and in such a way that he couldn’t protest, that when the first tear fell, I thought the ceiling was leaking. Then I realized it was me.

“Let’s go,” I said gruffly to the others. “Before the storm gets worse.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

We got down to the garage—only five of us—me, Apollo, Hermes, Hera and Sigyn, the only ones with any sort of battle skills. Five of us against an angry sea goddess and her legions. Or four, if you didn’t count Sigyn, and given what I’d been through with her so far, I didn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her. But if Amphitrite was going to listen to any of us, it would be Sigyn, and we had to take any advantage we could get.

Cori’s happy-yellow Hummer waited for us in the garage like vehicular irony.

“I’m driving,” Apollo said. “You and Hermes keep an eye on Sigyn. Hera, up front with me.”

I instantly wanted to argue, not because he was wrong, but because I didn’t like anyone else calling the shots, but it was petty and I let it go, except for a “sir, yes, sir” and a mock salute. Hermes gave him a similar salute, only it involved a single finger, right in the middle of his hand. If we didn’t have smart-assery in times like these, what did we have?

I climbed into the back on one side of Sigyn while Hermes bookended her on the other side.

“Try Amphitrite again,” I told her.

She pressed her hand to the shell pendant and muttered the trigger word, cocking her head as if to listen, but once again nothing happened.

“Not answering,” she said.

I sighed. “Fasten your seat belt, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

And that was
before
I saw who was waiting there when the garage door went up…Namtar, larger than life, seething with fury and dripping wet. I didn’t know how he’d tracked us. I didn’t even know how he’d survived not being paralyzed by Medusa’s blood on Perseus’s sword. The last I’d seen him, his tail was already starting to petrify from the blow I’d dealt him.

Then his tail came up as if in reflex, and I noticed the stinger no longer attached. In fact, it was half what it used to be. Namtar or one of his minions had cut it off before the stoning could spread. Somehow, the sacrifice made him more terrifying, not less.

Apollo apparently felt the same. He hit the gas hard. The Hummer lurched forward, grinding as if the parking brake was still on. Apollo quickly jammed it down, and the truck roared like the beast it was, headed straight for Namtar. The lord of all plague demons leapt into the air, coming down hard on the hood of the Hummer, denting it. He broke off the windshield wipers scrabbling for a handhold on the truck, but as soon as we were out in the storm, the force of it bore down on him, and Apollo torqued the wheel to one side to throw him off.

Namtar stared death at us, fisted one giant hand and punched it straight through the windshield at Apollo, who swerved again trying to avoid it. The Hummer, even as massive as it was, lost traction on the ground and for a breathless moment, we were sliding down the street with no control whatsoever, the truck fishtailing into another car.

The impact set us straight again, and Apollo took back control of the Hummer while Namtar continued to grab for him, his arm elbow deep in broken glass with a busted-out center where his fist had gone through and cracks radiating out from that. The window hadn’t shattered, but between the cracks, the loss of the wipers and the storm, I couldn’t see a thing, and I couldn’t imagine Apollo could either, unless he had X-ray vision he’d been keeping from me.

Namtar shrieked something at us, but I couldn’t understand the words, just the fury behind them. Likewise, Hera sat beside Apollo, a chant gaining volume as she went, but not enough to make out the details over the raging storm outside. And not from where I sat helpless in the backseat.

I undid my seat belt, ready to catch Namtar with the gorgon glare, but Hera got in my way, leaning forward and grabbing his wrist in her hand. Her fingers barely closed around it, but the contact was apparently what mattered, because immediately Namtar’s wrist started going gray, lifeless…limp… Namtar’s gaze shot to Hera’s.

He gave her the scariest smile I’d ever seen, and then turned his wrist in her hand so that his fingers could latch on to hers, his nails digging into her skin, the sickness he carried with him transferring like germs in a public restroom. Hera turned green. I saw her hand begin to slacken before she realized it herself and reinforced her grip.

It was a battle of death versus disease. She was trying to steal his life, and he was fighting to do the same to her. But she’d already said back at the pub how little effect her power had on the demons of disease. Their powers over life and death were too compatible. It was a losing battle.

Apollo pulled another crazy maneuver to dislodge Namtar, but it was no good. His lower body flopped about, but his upper was riveted by his hold on Hera and hers on him.

“Namtar!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, but he was totally focused on Hera. He didn’t so much as turn to look at me. I had to do something.

Cursing fluently, I rolled down my window and climbed out. The wind threatened to whip me away, and there was nothing to grab on to that wasn’t slick with moisture and icy with cold. I did my best, beating my broken wings and trying to ignore the pain from the wind reopening the rents. Apollo slammed on the brakes at the realization that I was gone. Namtar nearly went flying, bringing Hera with him so that her head hit the dashboard.

I slammed into the Hummer as it stopped and grabbed on, pulling myself over the roof to get to Namtar. When he looked up, I bit my tongue and spit in his eyes. It was the lowest kind of fighting, but my bladed weapon hadn’t made it out the window, and if my blood did what it was supposed to do…

He howled and let go of Hera’s hand to claw at his eyes as they began to petrify in his face. As soon as he let go, Apollo whipped the Hummer into Reverse. It squealed and spun its wheels on the wet asphalt until they caught and the truck flew backward. Namtar went crashing and rolling to the ground.

Apollo threw the Hummer into Drive again, and sped forward, straight into Namtar, who was raising himself up on his front arms. It hit him hard, caving Cori’s grille. The sound was terrible, and I wondered if everyone cringed as I did. Apollo backed up again and then accelerated as quickly as he could in a short space to drive again right over the plague demon with a sickening thump that I felt from my toes to my temples and all the way through my gut, particularly since I was holding flat to the roof, trying to stay on myself.

As soon as we were at a safe distance, Apollo stopped and I climbed back in through my window, soaked and chilled to the bone. Sigyn scooched as close as she could to Hermes and as far as she could get from me.

“Are you okay?” I asked Hera.

She held her arm out for me to see. It was green-black. The flesh looked eaten away, even down to the muscle. And it stunk to high heaven.

“Can you—” I started.

“Brace yourself!” Apollo cut in with an urgency that had us all paying attention.

I fastened my seat belt again without a question and the next thing I knew, we were crashing into more things, but from the sound and feel of it, these were vehicular. Apollo was clearing road obstructions by simply barreling through.

“Can you even see?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer. In the rearview mirror the concentration on his face was clear. He didn’t have any attention to spare.

“No,” he said finally, when we were through the worst…or at least carrying a good part of it along with us, based on the perpetual scraping and grinding noises from below. “We’re going to have to bail at some point. Or find new wheels. I can barely see out of the windshield, and signs are a no-go.”

“That way,” Sigyn said, pointing to her right. In the opposite direction I would have guessed for the seaport, but what did I know? With no landmarks or sun to steer by, I was utterly at a loss.

“How do you know?” I asked suspiciously.

“I just do. Directions. Winds, weather. I could always tell.”

“She—” Hermes began, then ducked instinctively at a shadow swooping toward us, despite the fact that he was within the Hummer with a roof over his head. “What was that?”

The Hummer rattled at the air displacement overhead as the huge shadow blew over us, and we all looked to see the distinctive shape of a dragon, gold against the angry-gray clouds.

“Eu-meh,” Apollo said. “I guess you’re right about the direction.”

He turned the Hummer to follow the dragon and Sigyn’s directions, though we quickly lost the former. She was traveling too fast for us to follow. I had a pang for Lau, dragonback in the midst of this storm. I hoped she had some kind of weather flap or, I don’t know, ancient dragon storm-repelling stone to keep her out of the elements and safely on board. I didn’t envy her…or particularly want to face her mood after traveling in this madness. Amphitrite had better watch herself.

We’d gone as far as Wall Street, which even I knew to be on the southern tip of the island, which meant we were nearing the seaport when all the bells and whistles of my precog went off at once. They’d been at wake-up alarm level ever since the storm started, low enough that I could tune them out and do what needed to be done, but something had changed. Now they were going off like air-raid sirens, and I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears…or my stomach, which was roiling like the clouds overhead.

“Hurry!” I told Apollo, even though it was probably too dangerous to go any faster, with the wet roads and obstacles.

“Something’s wrong,” Apollo echoed.

And then the roar of the storm kicked up several decibels and gained direction. Not just all around, over and above, but… right in front of us. Something big was coming.

“What do we do?” I asked him.

We were all searching the horizon, which didn’t extend far in the close-in city clutter. Down this far to the southern tip, buildings closed in claustrophobically. Streets were narrow and cluttered with cars parked where they shouldn’t be. We pushed them aside with the Hummer’s sheer brute force. The clouds were so low—

As we watched, something punched through the clouds to the buildings, bursting them at the seams. Glass shattered all around us, raining down like razor-edged hail. The grandpappy of all tidal waves came towering toward shore, and we were right in its path. No time to dodge, even if something so massive
could
be dodged. I wanted Lacy and her force field more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

I reached up to clutch Apollo’s shoulder, trying to convey with a touch everything I didn’t have time to say.

Sigyn and Hermes grabbed on to each other.

Hera looked out of her mind with terror.

The wave crested and crashed down, loaded with debris it had swept along with it. We all screamed as the force smashed down on the roof of the Hummer, crushing it down on top of us, cracking door seals and windows and practically our heads. Water came pouring in through the cracked windows, quickly filling up what little space we still had for air. The whole Hummer itself lifted off the ground, swept by the tidal wave, which churned all around us. We were now part of the debris.

The Hummer was a death trap. Blasting our way out, even if it were possible, would let the torrent in, sweeping us apart and probably drowning us even faster. How could we fight something so mindless and primal?

“Can you port us?” I asked Hermes desperately, fighting to speak with my knees compressed into my chest and my lungs nearly crushed.

“I’m wrung out,” Hermes said. “Even if I could…where? Where is safe? Back to the apartment to wait out the end of the world?”

But I had an answer ready. “To Lau. Focus on her. And Eu-meh. We have to end this.”

“But I need Apollo’s power, and he’s cut off from the sun—”

Water choked off the end of his sentence, but I got the gist of it. My hand still on Apollo, I could feel his struggle. The front of the car was almost completely filled with water now, and it was all he could do to keep his nose free and hold Hera there as well.

You can do this,
I thought at him. I knew he couldn’t pick up the words, but the sentiment… I felt panic reach back for me, quickly pushed away by reassurance. In the midst of everything, he was trying to calm
me
.

The car bucked suddenly, canting the Hummer so that the rising water pooled to the back of the car. Water and debris swamped my mouth and nose. My heart kicked against my chest in panic that I knew Apollo picked up on through our link. I didn’t let go of him.

Instead, I reached across Sigyn to grab Hermes, hoping that I could be the bridge between him and Apollo, adding whatever power I had to give. I willed it to flow, even as the car shifted again and the last of the air was forced out of the Hummer. We were all underwater now. Seconds to live.

I channeled the panic, and the adrenaline and whatever cocktail of fight-or-flight hormones I had in my system. I used it all, sending it Hermes’s way. I thought I felt something, a tingle throughout, but it was hard to tell over my blaring danger alarms—like I couldn’t figure out on my own that I was screwed. Maybe the tingle was just my body going numb. Soon I’d gasp for air, despite my best efforts, and swallow water, starting the terrifying process of drowning. My worst fear come to life.

My lungs started to feel as though they would burst, and it was all I could do to keep my energy flowing to Hermes when all I wanted to do was claw my way out of the death trap. My vision started to waver, little spots appearing… And then I realized that one of the spots was different from the others. A silly little Sesame Street song from my childhood ran through my head as the window expanded, right there in the center of the Hummer, above the central console. It was a tease. I could look in on a world that while storm lashed, wasn’t wall-to-wall water.

Hermes opened his mouth and bubbles came out, but Apollo, looking back at him, seemed to make some kind of sense of it. He grabbed Hera from her seat and pushed at the portal Hermes had opened, through which storm water was now streaming. But as quickly as it flowed out through the portal, it was flowing in again through our busted windows.

My lungs burst as Hera disappeared through the portal, and air began escaping. Against my will, my mouth opened to release some of the pressure building up inside me. I choked on the storm instead and it now raged on inside me as I gagged and coughed and swallowed even more.