Blood Hunt (20 page)

I fell—felt myself falling and couldn't even gather enough sanity to care. My biggest fear was no longer heights. It was that I
wouldn't
crash and die and would have to endure this agony forever.

The wind screamed in my ears as I fell or I screamed to the wind, my wings now dead weight. The only messages getting to and from my brain involved pain and the ending of it.

And then something halted my fall. It wasn't the ground. The pain was still as horrifying as it had been. The source hadn't changed. Or cut off.

Something was trying to reach me through the screaming. Some still-sapient part of me stopped it long enough to listen.

“I've got you,” said the voice.
Hermes?

“Dying,” I said. I thought I said it. Maybe it was only in my head.

“It feels like that, I know.”

I worked hard to focus. The battle wasn't over. I couldn't check out and leave the others to fight it, but I couldn't hold a weapon. Couldn't—

“Tell Apollo and Eros to coat their arrows in my blood,” I said.

“Tori—”

“Do it,” I ordered.

I forced my eyes to open. They'd been squinched shut against the pain. I'd thought I'd gone blind, and certainly the world was vague, watery. From tears in my eyes or the creeping venom, I had no idea, but I saw that we were back in the clouds, saw Set change yet again, his stone tail now weighing him down, a liability. He took a shape in which his tail was negligible, at least for maneuverability. He was back in the form of the red boar, with bristled fur instead of tough exoskeleton. The arrows would penetrate, and while he could thrash, the chains still held him in place. He wouldn't be able to dodge.

But before the gods could drench their arrows in my blood, I saw Neith leap up from the far side of Set where she must have fallen or dodged during my attack. She dove under Set's tusks as he would have gored her and thrust her javelin through the soft base of his throat straight up through his jaw. The point came out through the top of his muzzle, pinning his jaws together like a toothpick through a club sandwich.

He twisted violently through his forms—crocodile, serpent, scorpion and back, but in none of those forms was he able to open his jaw and loose the javelin.

He seemed to realize it, and his head drooped momentarily before he slowly seeped into his more human form and yanked the javelin out with his hands. He stood glaring us down, dressed in nothing but a short black skirt belted at the waist, his skin as white as old ash, the chains stark against it, and his hair as red as the coat of the bristle-backed boar. It flared outward around his head like wildfire and matched the red still dripping from his jaw and in the furrows scraped raw by his chains.

I burned with hatred even fiercer than the pain in my hands. I didn't know why we all paused. He was vulnerable now. Or at least more so than he'd been in any of his other forms. If we struck now we could rid ourselves of a lot of trouble later on. But he was still wrapped in chains. They'd morphed along with his every shift. Maybe it was the captivity, or the fact that he stood before us in human form or that he'd already been beaten…for the moment…but we couldn't strike him down. Not in cold blood.

Then he started to laugh. It made my skin crawl as if I'd been overrun by a swarm of fire ants. His very laugh was chaos—somewhere between that of the creepy bad guy from
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
and…I couldn't think of a suitable comparison… As if the bad guy had laughed down into the abyss and the abyss had laughed back.

“I suppose we are at an impasse,” he said. “I am not currently in a position to kill you. You cannot kill me, for without chaos there is only order and, ultimately, atrophy.” He shuddered, and, oddly, I felt an answering shudder in the depths of my soul. “I am already imprisoned. You can do nothing to me that has not already been done.”

“We can petrify your ass,” I said, glaring through my pain.

That laugh again. “You tried that, little gorgon girl. Only it was not quite my ass you stung. And so, we have all tested my chains. We have found that I cannot break free.”
Yet
, I supplied mentally. But he'd sure as hell tried. Hermes had sounded nearly panicked when he'd called us in, and Set had been more than a match for all of us combined. The moment he gathered enough power…

“Will you stay?” Set continued. “Are you to be my new jailors? I get so tired of seeing the same old faces day in and day out, and you really have been quite amusing. Something different to while away my days.”

“Where's Tawaret?” Neith asked, challenge in her voice, as though she'd jump him again in a New York minute with or without her weapon.

“Merely sleeping,” he said, waving vaguely into the cloud cover, “after a vigorous night. You see, I am not totally without my charms.” He adjusted his skirt in a way that left no doubt about what he considered his charms. I wondered if Tawaret felt the same way. I didn't plan to take his word for it that she was “merely sleeping,” especially through the noise of our battle.

“Can someone check on her?” I asked…anybody in a better position than I was. The burning sensation had moved up my arms, leaving my hands behind feeling merely numb…disconnected…useless, as though the strength to move on had been drawn straight out of my own muscles and sinew.

Neith started in the direction Set had indicated and called Hermes over almost instantly. “You're going to have to hold her down while I realign this break.”

“Field medicine,” Apollo said to me. “Neith's well-versed. Don't worry, Tawaret's in good hands.” To them, he called, “You two good here? Can you handle things until Artemis and her huntresses arrive for reinforcements?”

Hermes nodded distractedly, and a second later, I heard the snap of bone and a cry of pain I felt in my soul. And then I had my own pain to distract me as Apollo scooped me up. I mumbled the spell to draw my wings back, and he cradled me to his chest, my burned hands bumping against him, sending agony screaming up my arms. I blacked out for a second, the world gone purple with pain.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked when I was able to form the words.

We didn't know any healers. Panacea was off battling a new and virulent outbreak of the flu. Hecate was no more than a living statue.

“To Sulis,” he said.

It didn't make any sense to me. She mentioned she'd been a localized deity and that her healing waters were back in Bath…hadn't she. I couldn't remember anymore. Everything was pain.

Chapter Twenty

I was only dimly aware of things after that. Together, Hermes and Apollo must have opened a portal to the spa, because the next thing I knew I heard voices—someone shrieking in surprise, demanding to know what we were doing there. Apollo asked for Sulis, and the response came that she'd gone out mid-afternoon and never returned. None of it made any sense. It was still night, wasn't it? I couldn't understand why anyone should be at the spa at all.

There was more discussion, and jostling and pain like my arms were all funny bones that someone kept striking with a firestick. And then I was lowered into something warm and enveloping like a hug. It didn't make me hurt any less, but it relaxed my muscles enough to drive me into something like sleep so that the pain seemed part of a nightmare rather than my reality.

“Poison,” I heard Apollo say distantly to whoever was listening. “This should draw the impurities out, right? Give her the chance to heal.”

“If she's been poisoned, she needs a hospital, not a mudbath,” the voice protested. Female. Kind of stick-up-her-butt-y. Like an accountant. Or a librarian. Maybe that was it, someone burning the midnight oil working on the spa's books.

“Trust me, I know what she needs,” Apollo said.

“
Of course
,” she said with derision, “being a man and all. Maybe we should ask her. Anyway, the spa is closed, and I can't be responsible—”

“
I'll
be responsible,” Apollo answered, power in his voice. I'd heard him use that voice before with the slight godly resonance. “Sulis is an old friend. She'll understand. Get her on the phone.”

There was a pause. “I told you, she went out and never came back. We've been trying to reach her all day.”

That didn't sound good. Not at all. Not with one of Aphrodite's nymphs missing and Thalia kidnapped.

What if,
I wondered…and then my thoughts wandered away. I'd been going somewhere with that, but the pain… I worked harder to focus. This was stupid. I was made of sterner stuff. Definitely not sugar and spice and everything nice, but maybe salt and spice and a cockatrice…it seemed to fit given that we both had a paralyzing affect. But I was digressing. What was I thinking about?

Nice…cockatrice…ah, mythologicals, that was it. What if the brothers had decided that killing more powerful beings gave greater glory to Set? It seemed logical that the longer-lived might leave behind a greater gap in the world…or the weave, as the Fates would have it…with their passing. Or that they'd have more power to be channeled for Set's use.

But that assumed the brothers even
could
kill them. The gods had condemned Prometheus to have his liver eaten out again and again by a giant eagle for the sin of bringing fire and innovation to mankind. Atlas supposedly held the weight of the world on his shoulder, which I knew to be as true as the myth of the world tree or the earth growing on a turtle's back, but the point being that he could lift things that would crush a mortal man. I myself should have been dead at least ten times over.

But…what if Thalia and Genie and possibly even Sulis were being sacrificed over and over? I tried desperately not to remember the crime scene photos Neith had shown me of the poor woman back in the museum in Egypt, but… What if they were being sacrificed and worse. I couldn't forget that Set wasn't the only psycho in the mix here. There were those two sarcophagi and Neith's theory that they'd been bound with restless, evil spirits denied the afterlife who may have found new homes in the Roland brothers. They'd undoubtedly spread chaos and destruction in life and now, it seemed, were driving it in death.

The mud no longer felt warm or soothing. It felt restrictive. I had to do something. Before I even remembered about my hands, I tried to use them to pull myself out. The pain that shot through me blacked my sight for more than a second this time, and I felt Apollo's alarm like a zap from an electric fence.

“M'okay,” I mumbled when I could speak again. “Do whatya gotta do.”

At least, that's how it sounded in my head. In the real world it might have been sheer gibberish.

I sank back into the mud and prayed that Apollo was right, that it would leach out the impurities and help my body heal that much faster.

In my semi-conscious state, I heard him making calls—to his sister Artemis, to Hermes, to Nick.

And then he was waking me. “Tori, how do you feel. Are you ready for the baths?”

I blinked my eyes open. A bath sounded pretty good, especially if Apollo was volunteering to wash my back or any number of other areas, but then I remembered about my hands. I tried to move them, and to my surprise, they clenched and unclenched. It hurt, but in a way I could live through.

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” He reached down, and I reached up with my muddy arms, looking like some kind of swamp monster.

“
Sexy
,” he said.

“Thank you, I try,” I answered wryly.

This time when he grabbed my arms—going for the upper arms where the venom hadn't quite reached—I didn't black out. My quick intake of breath was more about the pain I expected rather than the reality. Between us, we got me to standing.

“Let's get you cleaned off.”

I stepped out of the mud bath onto the tile. My brain started to click, as though now that the pain signals weren't jamming the switchboard, other things were coming back on line.

I let him towel me off, but
let
was about all I was doing. I wasn't helping, because something was nagging at me. Something else needed to be done. I flipped mentally through the calls he'd made.

“We need to call Yiayia,” I said suddenly. “Right away. The other gods and godlets, godlings, whatever, need to be warned. If the Roland brothers are finding them through her site…or even if they aren't. I think they're hunting more-than-human prey now.”

The towel froze in Apollo's hand.

“If we post a warning, the brothers will know we're on to them. We lose any advantage of knowing something they don't know we know.”

Apparently, I wasn't yet together enough to process that.

“What?”

Apollo started up again with the towel. Faster, and more vigorously, catching my urgency. “I mean, we need to warn them, yes. But what if we can use the site and the fact that they're watching it to set a trap.”

“I like the way you think,” I said. “Go on.”

“Let's get you to the baths.”

“Fine,” I said, “if it will move things along, but keep talking.”

He steered me through a quick shower and into a room I hadn't gotten to before—one with several round pools, more like hot tubs than the original waters at Bath. But I wasn't complaining. I groaned in relief as he lowered me in. The spa might not quite have the healing waters of the famed Roman bathhouse, but something was definitely at work to finish drawing out impurities and to renew and invigorate. Herbs? Oils? I had no idea, but if they had a shop where I could get a consumerized version for my bath at home, I was going to treat myself when all this was over.

“So,” he continued, “if we know they're looking for gods, that's what we have to give them. Plant a new story that gives them a target they can't refuse.”

“You mean use someone as bait? They already know about me. And you. And Neith, through Jessica. If we make it any of us, they'll see it coming and know it's a trap.”

“I was thinking about Eros.” He gave me an evil grin.

“Might work,” I admitted. “If he'll agree, but…I think they prefer more feminine targets.” I was
not
going to say softer, because I knew plenty of women who could rip a man's head off—and would at any suggestion that they might be the softer sex. Some might even eat their innards. The Gray Sisters came to mind.

“What about Sigyn?”

That question, those three words hung there for a minute.

“Maybe.”

I knew from painful experience that Sigyn could take care of herself. Her runes were powerful. If we could draw the brothers out…or get them to capture Sigyn while she was armed with some kind of tracker, magical or otherwise, like a signal rune that could be triggered that we could trace back to her and the other kidnap victims…

“We need to talk to Sigyn. Also, I need to call Yiayia. We need to warn the others in the L.A. area. Not overtly,” I said, before he could protest again, “but maybe she's got some kind of code she could use or maybe even a phone tree.”

Apollo snorted.

I stood and started to wade out of the pool, ignoring Apollo's disapproving look. “We need a council of war. We need to call those boys out and put them down before they can do any more damage.”

My arms felt merely weak now. And tingly. And still numb, but no longer totally useless. I'd take it over the mind-sucking pain any day. I tried to raise them to grab a towel for myself from a shelf on the wall, but they'd only rise so far, and actually gripping and lifting a towel was still beyond me. It would come.

I missed the old days when I could down ambrosia and be miraculously healed. Oh sure, ambrosia had come with an addiction, complete with horrible withdrawal symptoms and the very real possibility of death, but… Well, I supposed I was an instant gratification junky. Now that I'd experienced healing at ludicrous speed, merely super felt like a come-down.

Apollo had to towel me off again. I barely even had time for a wistful thought of how we could defile the pools while we had the place to ourselves.

“Everyone's meeting at my place for a council of war,” he said, handing me a fluffy white robe.

“Your place?” I asked.

“It's the only one big enough.”