Battle for the Blood (29 page)

Hades seemed to sense that he was being watched and whirled on us. I almost flinched from the fire of hatred burning in his eyes, safe though I was back in Cori’s apartment. “What do you want? Why haven’t you saved the world yet? What else do you have to do all day?”

I ignored the implication that we’d been at play while the world died around us. If only he knew…

“We haven’t saved it yet because
your
bitch goddess turned on us,” Hermes said, beating me to the punch.

“Hecate?”
The barrier trembled with the force of his anger, and the souls behind it grew even more agitated, many doing their best to dash their brains out to get to him. “I knew she wasn’t to be trusted. Where is she?” he roared.

“We were going to ask you the same question,” I joined in. “Wherever she is, we assume she’s either got Asclepius or is coming for him. We think he’s part of her plan.”

“Plan?”

“Yeah, it’s not just your world she wants to rule. Now, where is he? I assume when Zeus killed him he was sent to Tartarus for punishment?”

Hades looked aside, and I knew we wouldn’t like whatever we were going to hear next. “I don’t know where he is,” Hades said, his voice low and angry. Someone was going to pay for the fact that he had to make the admission. “When the titans broke out of Tartarus, they weren’t the only ones who escaped. We rounded up many. Most. But…he hasn’t been seen since.”

“Any chance Hecate helped him hide out?” Hermes asked.

“She’s capable of anything. Do you think she’s come back here?”

The others in Cori’s living room all looked to me. I’d said I could track her. I closed my eyes and checked in with my inner compass. I expected her to be long gone and, yes, underground, but… “No,” I said, shocked. “She’s actually not that far away. More toward midtown, but…”

Hades’s look was considering. “No portals in midtown. Closest you get is downtown, a place that used to be called The Vault. Track her,” he said, like he was the boss of me. “When you get close enough to get an address, let me know. I’ll send reinforcements.”

It was the best we were going to do. I nodded, and Hermes closed the communication between us and Hades, then collapsed back against Sigyn’s stone-cold body. “Poseidon’s prickly… Never mind,” he said, seeing the kids watching him, hanging on our every word. “I’m beat. When this is over, I’m going to sleep for a week.”

A trill from outside Cori’s window let us know that our ride had arrived. Eu-meh hovered right outside, doing her best to stay level.

I went to her, and she craned her neck, trying to see past me into the apartment…to Lau, I was sure. My heart broke.

“She’s okay, girl,” I said, pretty certain at this point that she’d understand. “Or she will be. I
will
make it right. But we need your help.”

She dipped her head and raised it again as I’d seen the other dragon do and then stretched out her neck for me to climb on.

My fear of heights tried to kick up again, but it had been through too much and was too exhausted to put up much of a fight. Still, climbing out the window onto the dragon’s back was harder than it should have been, even with wings of my own to help me if I slipped. It went without a hitch, and I leaned back toward the window to help the others—Nick, Hermes, Apollo—all of us about done in, except maybe Nick, fresh from his healing.

I wondered what Cori’s remaining neighbors might think if they happened to peer out their windows and catch sight of dragons right outside their building. Of course, they were New Yorkers. They might just take it in stride. By tomorrow, this whole thing could be written off as some movie promo or special effect gone wrong or… Except for the dead they’d have to bury. No, maybe not. Even New Yorkers had limits.

She took off the second we were all on board, with me using the pressure of my hands and legs to indicate right or left and keep us headed toward our target.

I could feel Hecate as we got closer, her blood calling to me. I even wanted…just a little… I diverted that thought before it could hit full acknowledgment.

I wanted nothing so much as to defeat her. That was all.

I knew right when we hit the building housing her because it seemed to glow with a red haze. One quadrant, in particular, centered, I thought, a few floors up. It was the first time my directional sense had come with a bull’s-eye… The color of blood, so I didn’t think it was a coincidence.

The blinds there were all closed, the windows still intact. Even if I knew which office, we couldn’t risk a frontal assault. Hecate could petrify Panacea and Asclepius, if she had him, with a single flick of the wrist.

This required stealth. And, perhaps, the trickster god doing what he did best.

I indicated for Eu-meh to take us down. She landed on the sidewalk down below, and we all slid off her back on touchdown. “Stay close?” She bobbed her head.

We were going in. We’d come to a boxy medical building. The sign on the front read
Caduceus Medical Associates
. The door to the foyer was locked, of course, and while there was a security desk, I couldn’t see anyone behind it to let us in. But locked doors meant nothing to Hermes. The doors that wouldn’t even budge for me opened wide for him. I took a look at the directory on the wall, focusing especially on the fifth floor. There was just one company there, a medical lab.

“Of course,” I said. “Even working together, Panacea and Asclepius will probably have to test their cures or their dispersal methods. Hecate must have hijacked an office.”

Not hard, I was sure, considering that all nonessential personnel had probably been kept home by the state of emergency. Or maybe there was more to it than that. Hecate was a healer herself when she wanted to be. For all I knew, she owned the place or a share in it.

“Okay, so we know where,” Nick said beside me. “What about how?”

“I’m going to call her out,” I answered, giving him the look that he’d given me earlier, the one that said I wouldn’t be swayed.

“You can’t,” he said. “She’ll slaughter you.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” I said wryly.

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Right now, I look like something the cat dragged in. I feel like it too. She’s going to think the same way. We’ve gone head-to-head several times already. In the shape I’m in, I suspect she’ll be up for a final battle, winner take all.”

“And if you don’t win?” Apollo asked.

“You too?” I glared, but not with any real force. “It won’t matter if I win or lose. While I’ve got her distracted, you all will be spiriting her hostages away.”

“It matters to me,” Apollo said, at the same time Hermes said, “Do you think she’s dumb enough to fall for that?”

“I think she’s arrogant.
And
I have absolute faith in my ability to be annoying enough to get her to throw caution to the wind, especially if she already thinks she’s won.”

“She’ll never be convinced you came alone,” Nick said, leaving Apollo’s comment behind.

“I’ve got it,” Hermes said, snapping his fingers. “We’ve got a secret weapon. You.” He was looking right at Nick, and I wasn’t sure I liked the gleam in his eyes. “You’re right. She’ll suspect something. She’ll assume Tori is a distraction. We’ll give her exactly what she suspects. Apollo and I will sneak in to get Asclepius and Panacea out.
And we’ll get caught.
Inevitably. She’s expecting us, after all. When she or whatever minions she has are busy dealing with us, that’s when you come into play. As long as she doesn’t see you, she’ll have no reason to expect you. You’ve been injured. Yes, healed, but you’re
only human
. If she thinks of you at all, it won’t be as a threat.”

“You know, Hades’s helmet of invisibility would help with this a whole helluva a lot,” I said.

“Do you think he’d lend it out,” Nick asked.

“Only one way to find out. Hermes, call him,” I said, and he raised his brows at the order. “Give him the address. I’ll go up now, though. Hera can’t afford for us to wait. Follow me in five, with or without Hades and the helmet. I don’t doubt that I can hold out at least that long.”

Three men stared at me. I wanted to kiss them all good-bye…just in case. Even Hermes, pain in my ass that he was. But…

I went for the stairs. The elevator would ping and alert Hecate when I arrived, and while I wanted to challenge her, I didn’t exactly want to alert her to any ambush potential.

I didn’t run, knowing pounding steps would echo and be heard long before I hit the proper floor. But I didn’t dawdle either. I went as quickly and as quietly as I could. On the landing, the door was going to make noise opening. It was unavoidable, but…it opened onto the hallway outside of and across the hall from the lab’s office door. No one was there to greet me. There were no windows onto the hallway from the lab so that I could see in and scope out the situation. Just blank industrial-white walls.

I tried the office door, but it wouldn’t budge. I hadn’t really expected it to. So I did the next best thing to opening the door myself…I knocked and then pressed my ear to the door to see if I could hear anyone inside.

No one answered. I knocked again before I noticed a buzzer mounted on the wall beside the doorframe. I pressed the button. Waited. Pressed again.

“Hecate, I know you’re in there. Don’t make me huff and puff and blow this door down. You know we’re just going to keep after you. How ’bout we settle this, here and now?”

There was no answer, but I could feel her inside. We’d come to the right place.

She wasn’t opening the door, even after I’d asked so nicely. I wouldn’t have either, of course, but there’s one thing I
would
have done. Only one visible way in, arrayed against a trickster god for whom locks were child’s play…I would have rigged the door.

I tested this against my precog, cursing that I had to even ask for it to tell, but right now the door was a passive threat. No doubt if I’d begun to open it, the alarms would have deafened me, but by then it would have been too late. The thought of bursting through the door set all of my nerves on fire and those alarm bells to ringing. Sure enough.

I retraced my steps, back to the lobby, where I met Apollo, Nick and Hermes on their way up. I stopped them on the first-floor stairway. “There’s no going through that front door. She’s got it rigged to blow. We’re going to have to go in through the windows.”

Nick looked at me in alarm. “Are you sure they’re not booby-trapped too?”

I tested that out in my head…smashing through the windows like commandos on a mission… My heart beat double-time, but it didn’t threaten to burst.

“No,” I said out loud. “She didn’t get the windows. Change in plan. Nick, you head for the door. Rattle it, yell, make a fuss, but whatever you do, don’t open it. It’s locked anyway. I want her focused on that door, waiting for the explosion. If we’re lucky, it’ll take a second when the windows burst for her to realize it’s not the explosion she was waiting for.”

“Who’s going to get everyone out?” Nick asked.

“We’ll improvise.”

Back out on the street I stuck my fingers in my mouth and gave a whistle, hoping Eu-meh would recognize it as a call. This would be so much easier if I spoke dragon. I expected her to come from the air, but she was already on the ground, just a block away, waiting. She was not nearly as graceful on land as in the air, but a beast that size doesn’t have to take too many steps to get where she’s going, and she was with us in no time.

The fifth floor,
I tried to convey and mimed breaking in the windows. She looked at me steadily, blinked once and then sank down to the ground for us to climb aboard. I didn’t know if she understood, but she’d gone where I guided her before. The smashing was going to be the tricky part.

We climbed onto her back and held each other. I gripped Eu-meh tightly as she sprang into the air. She circled away from the building first, to get momentum and height, and then aimed right where I directed her at the fifth-floor windows. She hit them head on. Even though I suspected they were hurricane glass, given their survival in the face of the storm that had passed, they shattered, tinted glass flying everywhere. She flapped and lowered her neck toward the floor for us to slide down.

I’d just hit the floor and looked around for something to use as a weapon when Hecate and two minions came running into the reception/office area we’d blown into. I recognized one of them, Thanatos, the god of death, whom I would have called Hades’s right hand. But one of Sigyn’s sigils glowed on his forehead, and I didn’t think his heart and soul belonged to Hades at that moment. He looked a little less like the Grim Reaper this time, since his hood was pushed back and you could actually see his face with its prominent brow and even more prominent nose.

The other I didn’t recognize—a woman, dark hair tightly coiled all around her head, wearing an outfit that looked like something out of Mad Max, all futuristic road warrior with spikes and leather, buckles and zippers going every which way, part of the badass-biker collection.

We were in an office. The closest thing I could find to a weapon was a letter opener that looked like a small bronze dagger. I grabbed it from the nearest desk, flicked it hard against my palm and drew blood. I was as ready as I was going to be. It was three on three. Except
her
three were armed.

“Eris, Thanatos, take them,” Hecate ordered. “But the girl is mine.”

Eris
? As in the goddess of discord? Just what we needed.

Thanatos, of course, had his trademark huge honkin’ sword. Eris swung something that looked like a nunchuk with a chain and spiky ball on the end. A mace? Truly?

They advanced on Apollo and Hermes and I wanted to jump in to save them, but I had problems of my own. Hecate was whirling the Sword of Perseus in front of me like I might be impressed. If I were Indiana Jones I’d have pulled out my gun and shot her in that moment. But all I had was my little letter opener. If I handled it right, that was all I needed. But with the size of her sword, she had reach on me, not to mention an actual honed blade. Even if Medusa’s blood wouldn’t have the desired effect on me, the weapon itself was enough to kill me dead.