Battle for the Blood (27 page)

Apollo motioned back for Sigyn, and Hermes guided her forward with his free hand, trying to tell her with his eyes to go. She seemed reluctant to leave him, but Apollo took over, grabbing her and pushing her through before she could hold things up.

I was next. Apollo and Hermes were the portal movers and shakers. I let go of both their hands, praying they’d be able to keep it together, and swam for the portal, pushing feebly off the backseat with my feet. I fell through onto storm-sloshed streets, coming down hard on my hands and chest, too out of control to duck and roll.

Hera yanked me out of the way of whoever was coming through next, which was a good thing because for my part all I could do was double over coughing, my throat a raw mess and my lungs bleeding for air. I staggered on my feet, the footing treacherous with water up around our ankles and an undertow that wanted to rip them out from under us. The winds were whipped into a frenzy, playing “Blow the Man Down”.

Sigyn… I looked around for Sigyn, and realized that we were on the docks. Or one particular dock anyway, this one not so much meant for big ships, but for shopping. The glass-fronted mall area had already been reduced to iron beams, all of the glass blown out and lashing around our ankles with the swirling waters like stinging nettles. Eu-meh was perched atop the infrastructure, roaring defiantly but musically into the storm.

Sigyn stood apart from us, frantically tapping her shell pendant and yelling at the storm. “Stop!” she called, choking on the water the storm threw at her, breathing droplets as she should have been breathing air, then coughing spasmodically, even as she continued to try to communicate. “Amphitrite, you have to stop! You’ll kill us all!”

The storm whipped away her words. There was no way Amphitrite could hear or understand her.

Apollo and Hermes came tumbling through the portal together, falling into the churning water. Hermes came up first, spitting and bleeding. He’d landed badly on a piece of glass, and his shoulder was covered in blood. It was hard to tell how much or how serious it was with the water sloshing it all over. No time to worry about it now anyway. We ended this or it was over for all of us.

“What’s she doing?” Hera asked, looking toward the dragon in awe.

Calling,
I thought. Maybe she was trying to reach her sea sisters. Or…I didn’t know. I only knew that I usually had some kind of plan, however tentative, but in this… Water wasn’t my element. I was lost.

“One way to find out,” I said. “I have to get to her.” Maybe with a bird’s-eye view, I could come up with something. I looked at Apollo, who was pushing himself up, his chest working like a bellows, coughing and choking and looking like something a wildcat had dragged in. Water was no more his element than mine. “I don’t know how much you two have left in you, but see if you can find the center of the storm. Even if you can’t port Amphitrite somewhere else, like an active volcano, maybe you can get the trident away from her. Sigyn, you keep trying to reach her. Hera, stay with Sigyn. Watch her.”

Hera was holding her gangrenous arm in her other hand. She looked like she was half in shock, but she nodded. Made of sterner stuff and not about to give in. I respected that. If the battle could be won on will alone, we had it in the bag.

I tested my war-torn wings, and while they were shivery and only half-healed, it was as much as I was going to get. I launched myself into the air. The wind instantly tried to blow me back, but I thrust hard with my wings and then pressed them to my body, did it again. It was a herky-jerky movement, but I did my best, beating hard against the wind and then making myself as small a target of resistance as possible.

But I was flying into the wind, and it was all I could do to go forward rather than get blown back. My hair whipped my face, and I had to let it, no effort to spare for pushing it aside, especially when it would only whip back. I fought until I was exhausted, my lungs burning again, but I could see the top of the mall’s iron infrastructure. I could see the bronze dragon atop it. I was almost there.

Almost…

Eu-meh’s tail lashed out, and I grabbed on to it, as I thought I was meant to. She brought me the rest of the way in, landing me on a beam beside her. Beside Lau, who crouched close against her body, sheltered from the wind and lashing rain.

From up there, I could see the goddess of the seas, rising above the tumult on a cone of sea spray. Her white-green hair flew all around her with the force of the storm, alternately covering and revealing her form, which didn’t sport so much as a clamshell bikini, though she did wear strands of pearls and coral that dipped to her navel. And, yes, she held the trident aloft, directing the storm like a virtuoso. She’d grown, as I’d seen the other old ones do when full of their power, to three times her former size. The trident itself was easily my height or larger.

“What’s she doing?” I asked Lau, cocking my head at Eu-meh.

“She can’t reach the sea dragons,” she said. “They can’t hear her above the trident’s call, but she has others like her looking out for the plague demons, rounding them up.”

“Great,” I said without the enthusiasm it probably deserved. Rounding up the plague demons was awesome. It still meant I had to get through sea dragons and other nastiness to get to the queen of the seas.

I looked out over the insane waters, churning and foaming, lashing at where we stood, and took a deep breath. “I’m going in.”

Lau turned on me like I was insane, her foot slipping on the beams with her speed. She had to grab Eu-meh’s side to recover her footing.

“You barely got
here
through the storm. How are you going to fly into the heart of it?”

“I don’t have a choice. We’ve got to get that trident or we’re lost.”

Before she could stop me, I launched myself off the roof. No plan. No weapon. Probably no hope, but the very idea just made me ornery and want to prove that wrong.

The storm lashed at me, and for a second I went nowhere, hovering right where I’d started. Going
mano a mano
with the storm in an epic battle. My wings felt as substantial as tissue paper, the barely healed rents in them growing by the second.

Then Eu-meh’s tail came up again, swinging into me this time, like it was the bat and I was the ball. I went flying through the sky, fighting for control, but at least moving in the right direction. I flapped furiously until I got my wings beating fast enough to keep up. I was moving like a rocket, straight for an angry, naked goddess bent on destruction.

She saw me. I knew she did, but she couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge my flight with more than a flick of a finger, and suddenly the ocean burst upward in a confusion of tentacles.
Huge
, terrifying and angry-red, in contrast to the churning gray-blue color palette all around us. My brain noticed inconsequentials like that when it was trying not to gibber in abject terror and shut down all together.

I beat my wings harder, trying to rise above the tentacles.
Kraken?
I wondered. And a part of me thought,
How cool is that?
But I got my inner six-year-old under control. Unfortunately, my wings weren’t as easy. I was running on empty, and the tentacles struck before I could rise, one knocking into me, sending me sideways, straight into another that started to curl around me, but too slowly. A third was more successful, wrapping around my waist and squeezing me tight. The constriction choked the last of my air out of me, so I knew that when I hit the ocean I wouldn’t have any reserves left. It pulled me down, faster than I could escape.

The shock of the cold water hit me like a punch to the gut, and my mouth opened. I didn’t have any breath left, and the icy, churning water that rushed in choked me instantly. I coughed and sucked more water, until it was a vicious cycle, and all along the tentacles were tightening, tightening. I thrashed, half a dozen ideas flashing through my head and discarded just as quickly.

I could bite down on the tentacle holding me, but that was no help unless my saliva had the same properties as my blood…and if so, Apollo would already be one helluva handsome statue. So no help there. If I bit the creature, all I’d have to show was a mouthful of sushi. I thrashed around for other ideas. I could bite my tongue to draw blood and
then
bite the monster, but as tightly as it was wrapped around me, I might not be able to get free before it turned to stone and sank with me to the bottom of the ocean.

Being rescued by a SEAL team—unreliable and massively unrealistic.

Kicking, screaming, flailing, panicking, drowning—already doing all that. Incredibly sucky plan.

I had to hope that those on land were having more luck. Hera and Sigyn. Hermes and Apollo. Lau and Eu-meh.

The tentacles around me suddenly squeezed even more tightly, and I felt like they’d meet in the middle, snapping me in half. But it was a recoil. Instinctive. It loosened up a second later, and I didn’t wait to see if it was a fluke, but pushed my hands down hard on the tentacles and propelled myself out of its grip, kicking as hard as I could once I was free and swimming frantically for the surface. My muscles were all oxygen deprived now, and swimming was harder than it should have been, but terror was very motivating.

I burst upward, gasping for air, coughing and treading water for all I was worth. The tumultuous waves washed over me, swamping me once, twice, again. I flapped my wings hard against the water, but all that did was make me splash around like a wounded animal. Like prey, attracting any predators around. I stopped the wings instantly, swiped wet hair momentarily out of my face and tried to get my bearings. I could see Amphitrite ahead. I was no judge of distances, and things looked closer across the water than they actually were, but I thought I could get to her if the kraken didn’t grab me again.

I looked around for it, and it thrashed behind me, as if grappling with something. I didn’t wait to find out what could take on a giant squid. Colossal squid? Supersized?

I swam flat out for Amphitrite, calling mentally to Apollo with everything I had.
Now. Grab the trident. Do it now!

I hoped and prayed they’d be able to port the trident, but Amphitrite was thrusting her hands forward forcefully as if to lob some new threat. If they were too busy fighting for their lives, they’d never find the focus. I had to distract her.

“Yo, sea skank!” I yelled. It was probably unfair. She might be a very nice person when she wasn’t playing on the homicidal side of the street. But none of it mattered, because she couldn’t hear me over the raging storm. Or she just didn’t care.

Around me, the ocean was still just as furious, the rain coming down in sheets rather than droplets.

My arms were beyond tired, and my legs felt like they had anchors tied around them. I was very afraid I was getting nowhere, when suddenly something burst out of the water nearly beneath me.

My fear-o-meter burst its casing, and I thought my heart was going to go with it. Something had me on its back, rising out of the water, rising up into the air. I grabbed for a hold and cut my hand on a scale.

A scale
.
I focused on what was beneath me. Bronze. Beautiful. More beautiful than anything I’d ever seen before in my life. Eu-meh had been the beast fighting the kraken, even though water was no more her element than mine. And it looked like she’d won. I wasn’t much of a prize, but she’d come for me. I dropped my forehead to her back and reveled for a millisecond in breathing. The sheer joy of it.

“Can you understand me?” I asked. “A million times thank you. And I hate to ask one more thing, but we have to get that trident.”

I didn’t know if she understood or not, but she didn’t immediately veer with me back toward the pier. Instead, we headed right for the sea witch. Goddess. Whatever.

We flew in, and I forced myself to grip Eu-meh with my legs, hanging on to her with only one hand, holding the other out as though I could outstretch a dragon’s reach and get to the trident. It wasn’t going to happen. Her wingspan alone…

And as we swept in, Amphitrite took note, swinging the trident our way. Eu-meh was better at evasive maneuvers than I was. She turned herself at the last second, avoiding a direct blow from whatever blasted out of that trident but nearly dumping me off, as I wasn’t expecting to suddenly be perpendicular to the waters. I clung tightly, desperate to stay on, and then wondered why. I couldn’t do any good from where I was.

Eu-meh flashed past the trident and wheeled in midair, ready to dive back in, this time aiming for the goddess herself. While Amphitrite could ignore little ole me, a dragon her size was a whole other matter. The trident swung around again, this time aiming a blast at the ocean itself.

Not half a second later, tentacles rose again out of the depths, and two gnarled heads poked up at us from the deep, one looking like an oversized sea dragon—head like a sea horse or kelpie crossed with a plesiosaur, long muzzle opening on dagger-sharp teeth—the other like one of the great armored fish of old, only with the body elongated like a stretch limo…a stretch placoderm? The sea monsters came right for us, rising out of the depths.

Eu-meh made a sound that I translated as terror and flapped her wings hard to propel herself higher, out of reach of massive jaws or tentacles, and as she strafed the great goddess, I did the dumbest, bravest thing I’d ever done in my life…I let go. I fell through the storm, reaching out to catch myself on Amphitrite’s upper arms and struggling to keep hold of her rain-slicked skin. I had to wrap myself around her, my body nearly the full length of her arm, but it was her
trident
arm, and while I was hugged to it, she couldn’t wield it properly. She shook me hard, and my eyes rattled in my head. My brain crashed against the sides of my skull, but I held on and began inching myself down her arm toward that trident.

Tentacles grabbed me around the waist again, tried to drag me down, but I was pulling Amphitrite’s arm with me, and she barked an order that had the tentacles retreating. Instead, a spiky head bumped me hard. My back contracted at the pain of it. My nerves wanted to seize up, but I wouldn’t let go. I kept shimmying down, down. I was going to get to that trident if it was the last thing I did...which it might very well be.