Battle for the Blood (6 page)

“What’s with the skeleton army?” Apollo cut in, getting us back on track.

Hecate eyeballed him, and there was nothing like a witchy moon goddess to make that expression seem absolutely accurate. “You don’t know about Irkalla?” she asked, waiting for one of us to say it wasn’t so. When we didn’t, she
tsk
ed as though she expected better. “Well, I told you about all the levels of their afterlife. Here’s the crazy thing—once you get through them all, paying your bribes every step of the way, your soul gets to live on, but you keep decomposing, just like your body. Some eternity, right? So after a few thousand years or so, bones are all you have left. I’m surprised she was able to pull anyone together to fight. I ask you, is it any wonder their worship died out?”

It sounded like a pretty lousy afterlife to me, but also like we were getting off topic. None of this explained how Hubistank—I really was going to have to learn her actual name—knew where to find us and what she wanted with the sword.

Before I could voice any of that, a voice called out, “Stop right there!”

It was almost full daylight now, and I whirled right into a blast of the rays from the rising sun. “Drop the sword,” the voice continued.

“Officer, I’m sure we can work this out,” Apollo said.

Officer.
Oh thank the gods. Then there was hope. Maybe not of escaping an arrest record, but…

My eyes started to clear, and I blinked away the last of the sunspots, making an abrupt movement the second I could see to draw the officer’s attention. As soon as it riveted on me, I commanded, “Freeze!”

Unlike with the skeletal goddess, this time it worked, and the newcomer went as still as a statue. I shouldn’t have been caught flat-footed back in the battle. I
knew
my mojo didn’t work on the really old gods…and they didn’t get much older than Hubistank, but I’d become so used to relying on my gorgon glare to get me out of trouble. Next time I’d know better.

“Let’s go!” I said. “I’m not sure how long it’ll last.”

We ran back toward the Lion Gate and Hecate did her whirlwind trick again. I would have flown us out, but my wings were gashed, my hands still weren’t working, and I was afraid I’d drop them.

“What’s wrong with your hands?” Hecate asked as we ran for the car.

They were hanging like dead weight, flopping as I ran. “I don’t know, I can’t feel them!”

“Then I’m driving,” she said, like I was going to fight her for it. We’d given Viggo the night off rather than involve him in grave robbing and defacing a historical site.

“
I’ll
drive,” Apollo cut in. “You heal.”

Hecate grumbled at that, but when we hit the car, she opened the back door to let me in and slid next to me.

Apollo leaned the sword up against the passenger seat and took off.

“Let me see,” Hecate ordered.

I raised my hands to show her, but it was getting difficult, as if the feeling…or lack thereof…was creeping up my arms. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to get things into place, which made my forearms and hands seem longer than they were, but finally I flopped them into Hecate’s lap, where she and I both noticed at the same time the blackening of the flesh. My hands were becoming clawlike, constricting and hardening…dying.

“Necrosis,” she said. “Shit.”

It seemed so funny coming out of her mouth. I didn’t know why. Gallows humor, maybe. I needed something to laugh at or I’d cry. I couldn’t feel my cells dying. I had a vague sense that it should be horribly painful, but it was as though they’d already winked out, switched off like a light.

“Can you save them?” I asked.

“Shhh, I’m concentrating.” Even with her eyes closed it looked like they rolled back into her head. I didn’t dare say another word, but I feared. Necrosis…dying cell by cell…it was about the most horrifying thing I could think of.

“Pull over,” she called out suddenly.

“What? Is everything okay?” Apollo asked, worry coming across loud and clear.

“Just do it. The creeping death hungers. I can’t stop it, but I can redirect. Right there, that olive tree.”

The car stopped, and Hecate dragged me out of it, toward a tree, beautiful in its contortions. Old, gnarled, laden with leaves and fruit.

“But,” I said as she reached out for it.

“It’s you or the tree.”

She thrust the hand she held against the trunk of the tree and then grabbed my other as it flapped uselessly at my side. She held both in place with one hand over both of mine and put her other palm directly to the bark of the tree beside them, which had her leaning intimately against me. She muttered low and constantly, emphasizing certain words and nearly dropping others.

The air around us became charged, and my hands started to tingle and then to come alive with pain, nerves suddenly raw and screaming as if someone were holding them to a fire. I cried out, and she held my hands tighter to keep me from drawing back. The pain raged through me, rippling from my upper arms on down, washing the numbness and the death before it, pushing it out toward that poor olive tree, which I could practically see sagging with the onslaught.

Leaves dropped around us, browned, dried, dead. Fruit fell heavily to the ground, exploding with the sickly sweet smell of decay. Smaller branches cracked as the weight of the dying fruit suddenly became too much for their brittle state.

And then I sagged to the ground, residual pain and tingling still strobing through me, like limbs that had been slept on wrong just waking up. But the relief of feeling anything at all, of commanding my fingers to move and having them obey, was immense. I let my forehead rest on the trunk of the now-dying tree, saying a prayer to Ceres to apologize and beg for the tree’s renewal. I hoped there was no truth to the legends of dryads and such. Poseidon and his minions—the water divinities—were already against me. Adding earth, or at least an aspect of it, would really ice my cake.

“Thank you,” I said to Hecate, my voice creaky and weak. “I think you saved my life.”

“Damned straight.”

“I owe you,” I said, dreading it, but failing to acknowledge the debt wouldn’t make it go away.

“I know.”

Chapter Six

I turned my phone back on as we got into the car and it lit up with buzzes and bleeps like a carnival game. My heart nearly stopped when I saw that one of the texts was from Nick. I stared at it a minute and then over at Apollo, then back down at the phone, afraid to open the message, but knowing I would anyway.

“What?” Apollo asked, alerted to my emotions through our weird empathic link.

“Nick,” I said, voice strangled.

“What does he say?” Apollo’s voice was carefully neutral.

“I don’t know yet.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and I swallowed down a panic attack. Last I’d heard from Nick had been when he said good-bye. In a message left for me at my hotel. Not even a text, something I could have gotten quickly enough to rush to the hospital and try to change his mind. He was going back to the States, he’d said, to get treatment for his extensive burns and to heal. He’d already ended things between us, told me that I was walking a path he couldn’t walk, but I’d hoped that it was the pain talking or the drugs…or anything but the truth. But leaving me with no chance to say good-bye—that seemed pretty final.

But what if it wasn’t? What if I’d rushed into Apollo’s arms too soon, trying to deal with the pain while also giving in to whatever had been growing between us? Nick had reason enough to hate me. What if—?

I opened the text. Nick deserved the chance to beat me up himself and here I was doing the job for him.

But it wasn’t Nick.

Of course it wasn’t. He couldn’t text. He could barely move without massive amounts of pain. If my common sense had overridden my guilt for half a second I’d have realized.

Tori? This is Amanda, Nick’s sister. Nick’s doing…as well as can be expected. He wanted me to tell you that weird things are going on here. The hospital’s under a quarantine and…he said to say it’s not natural. I guess that means something to you? Anyway, you won’t be able to visit. I’m not supposed to be using the cell phone even, so I’m not sure how well messages will get in and out, but, well, he seemed insistent.

I stared at the message, horror creeping throughout my entire body. I didn’t know if it was my danger sensors or just natural-born fear, but…

Where are you?
I texted back.

Five seconds later came the response:
Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, but you can’t get to us.

Fear flooded my system with toxic chemicals. Cold, so cold. My heart threatened to ice over.

“He’s in New York,” I said out loud. “Right where the first victims were discovered…or at least the first we know of.”

“But he’s okay?”

“For now. That was his sister writing. Nick wanted us to know what’s going on. The hospital’s been quarantined.”

“I think we knew that already.”

“Yes, but
Nick’s there
,” I said, since he was missing the obvious.

Apollo slid a glance at me in the rearview mirror, and I realized that if the horror and fear didn’t kill me, the guilt would. I could sense his pain through our link. He didn’t know if I felt responsible for Nick because he was Nick or because I loved him and would go back to him in a heartbeat. I didn’t know myself. Apollo and I had something powerful, something primal and undeniable, but…was there a
but
? Nick was normalcy and sanity and… And he’d made his feelings clear. Nick couldn’t walk my path with me and I couldn’t walk any other. That didn’t mean I could just shut off my feelings for him. So, I was torn, and there was no hiding it from Apollo.

“You two are giving me a headache,” Hecate sniped, as if she could sense the undercurrents. “So what’s the big deal? You were already planning to save the world. What’s the movie quote? ‘This time it’s personal.’ Very motivational.”

I glared. She was right and she’d saved my life, but she was also really, really wrong. This changed everything. Now I didn’t only have to worry about an epidemic, I had to worry about Detective Lau. She was going to kill me.

“We’ve got to get to New York.” There, I’d mastered the obvious. “But we’re never going to get the sword on a plane, not to mention my wings. What are we going to do?”

“Hermes?” Apollo suggested. “He’s got that private jet.”

“Even with that, we have to go through security, don’t we?” Although, maybe not. Money could grease a lot of wheels.

“One way to find out,” he said.

Lord, I could only imagine what Hermes would extract in payment. Last time it had been my best friend’s phone number and now they were dating.
Hermes
, the trickster god, and my BFF. The trickster god who was apparently at the center of the illicit ambrosia trade and had been starting up a little something else on the side when I’d shut him down. I didn’t want to make the call, but I couldn’t see that we had a lot of options.

I dialed the phone. After two rings, a strange voice picked up.

“Hello?” he said. It was gruff and deep, and I got a strange tingle at the sound of it. Something was going on here.

“Hello, is…” Crap, what name was Hermes going by these days? I knew him alternately as Thom Foolery, the humor columnist, and as head of a worldwide messenger service, but under what name?

“Herman,” Apollo whispered in my ear, “Molyvos.”

“…is Herman Molyvos available?” I asked.

There was the briefest pause on the other end of the line before the response. “May I ask who’s calling?”

My eyes met Apollo’s. He could hear everything through the line and feel my spike of panic, but he didn’t have any better answer than I did about what to do. I’d called Hermes’s cell phone, so whoever was on the line would have my number and could easily find my name, even if I didn’t give it. Anyway, I didn’t have anything to hide…exactly. Beyond defacing ancient graves and making off with a priceless artifact.

“Tori Karacis,” I said, “PI. Who’s this?”

“Carsten Bremmer,” he answered. “Interpol.”

“Is Mr. Molyvos in some sort of trouble?”

“He’s helping us with some inquiries. Might I ask how you know Mr. Molyvos?”

I had a feeling that was a loaded question. Interpol was an international police force. They’d have access to all kinds of records, I thought. But while Hermes had played a part in every case I’d recently been part of, none of it had ever been official. I was pretty sure his name had stayed out of the reports, just like he’d managed to vanish when it came down to any real conflict…except for that last time when Rhea had risen and it was all hands on deck.

“He’s dating my friend,” I said innocuously.

“That would be Ms. Christie Farris?”

“Listen, what’s going on here? They’ve only just started dating, so whatever he’s in to, she wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“Why do you assume he’s involved in anything?”

My blood pressure was rising. “You’re freakin’ Interpol. My keen PI powers tell me he’s either a suspect or a witness and either can spell trouble.”

“You’re quite perceptive, Ms. Karacis. Perhaps we should be calling you in to help with our inquiries.”

I hung up on Agent Bremmer. Special Agent Bremmer? I had no idea how Interpol worked and no desire to find out.

“
Skata
!” I said, looking from Apollo to Hecate. “I think Hermes is grounded for the time being. Interpol is with him.”

“Why?” Hecate asked.

“They wouldn’t say, but I think we can count him out. Even if he shakes loose, we don’t want to be under that kind of scrutiny, not with a stolen sword, a ransacked historical site and no plausible deniability.”

“My winds won’t take us that far,” Hecate said. “They’re strictly ground based.”

I snapped my fingers. “Lau!”

Before she could ask who, what or where, I was punching her name into my phone and summoning up her number.

I was prepared for it to go to voicemail, when she finally picked up on the fourth ring. The whooshing sound of wind, like she was driving in a car with all the windows down, nearly drowned out her greeting, but I knew it was a lot cooler than a car ride. She was on dragonback. Soon, I hoped, we would be too.

“Helen, we need a ride,” I said loudly, assuming she’d have as much trouble hearing me as I had hearing her.

“You…what?”

“We’re in Greece. Mycenae, to be exact, though we should probably get the hell out of here as soon as possible. We’re headed to the same place you are, and we have…something…” cagey, just in case Interpol or someone had already found a way to listen in, “…that should help, but we can’t get a flight.”

I hoped she’d read between the lines.

“We’re somewhere over the Middle East right now. It’s going to take us another day to get to you. I don’t exactly know when. There’s no GPS on this thing. Where can we meet that a dragon landing would go unnoticed?”

So much for circumspection. And that was a damned good question.

“I’ll get back to you. Right now, veer toward Greece. I’ll call or text you coordinates.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “But, Tori, you save my partner or you and I will have a reckoning.”

“No less than I’d expect,” I told her.

She hung up on me. I couldn’t blame her.

Once again, everyone was looking at me.

“First step, we blow out of here before anyone connects us to Mycenae. Second step, find a place to land a dragon.”

“Dragons,” Hecate said with a shake of her head. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Apollo didn’t see the headshake…or anything else. He had his eyes closed and looked almost as though he was meditating, murmuring something under his breath like a mantra.

“What are you doing?” I asked. If it were Hecate, I would have worried about interrupting a spell, but Apollo didn’t roll that way.

He opened those eyes, the stunning blue of Mediterranean waters. I wasn’t clear on how a Greek god had ended up with such crazy eyes or that mane of blonde hair, but then there were so many rumors of his origins it was hard to know truth from fiction, and I’d never asked. He’d been many things in many cultures and pantheons, some of which must have decided that the sun god should have hair that caught fire in the sun…figuratively speaking.

“I’m communing with the winds,” he said. “You asked for a place to land a dragon. I’ve found one.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Not far from here, a mountaintop near Olympia.”

“
The
Olympia?” The origin of the Olympic games, which, interestingly, were originally played in the nude. I could only imagine what kind of viewing audience that would get today.

“The same. There’s a summit that has not been settled.”

“There’s actually a peak we haven’t built on?” I asked. As previously noted, we Greeks were sort of obsessive-compulsive about such things.

“Building was abandoned. The winds don’t know why.”

“Sounds ominous,” Hecate said. “I like it.”

“Well, I don’t. How about a nice field somewhere? What about the one at Olympia?”

“You want to defile
another
heritage site?” Apollo asked, eyebrows raised as if they too doubted my sanity.

“We’re just talking about landing a dragon.”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?” Hecate asked.

“Frequently. Sometimes I even make sense.”

She snorted dryly.

I sighed. “Fine, lead on.” I wasn’t crazy about scaling yet another summit, but Olympia or a private peak, I guessed it didn’t really matter where I had my panic attack over impending doom.