Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (25 page)

“Twenty minutes,” Nick replied, “give or take.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Apollo said, overhearing.
 

“Wait! That’s not why I called. Do you have a number for Dionysus? He’s got to get his people away to safety. If Hades comes with back-up it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

“Dionysus is perfectly capable of using his followers for cannon fodder. You forget that we were in power during the time of sacrifices and tribute. Calling will only ensure an all-out war.”

“Then what do we do?”

“I’ll come up with something on the way.”

“Great,” I said unconvincingly. The phone rang in my hand as I hung up.

“How is she?” the voice asked. “
Where
is she? We went to meet you at the hospital, like you said, and you were gone. The staff will only tell us that she left against medical advice. I thought she was
fine
,” Jesus said, putting his special emphasis on it.
 

“Jesus, it’s me.”

“
Dios gracias.
Wait a minute—you don’t sound so good. Where are you? Are you…drunk?”

I guessed I could add slurring words to my blurred vision and crashing headache.

“Don’t worry. Nick’s got me. That’s how I come to be answering his phone.”

“Protective custody, that’s what you need,” Jesus sniffed.

I shot Nick a look. “Oh…right. Listen, we’re a little busy right now.” Trying to figure out how to stop an Olympian civil war. “Can we call you later?”

“Wait, boss lady—” I was already pulling the phone away from my ear when I thought I heard him say something about tying a cowbell around my neck. Yeah, like that would help.

“So, do we have a plan?” Armani asked as I hung up.

“Apollo says he’s working on it.”

“
Great
.”

“Do
you
have a plan?”

“I’m working on it too.”

“As long as we’re all on the same page.”

I ran over about a gazillion potential scenarios in my mind as we drove, but nothing prepared me for seeing the gates of the fenced-off complex crushed to the ground as though a Mack truck—or a three-headed dog the same size—had barreled right over them. Several feet of fence on the right-hand side had gone down with the gate. And there were bodies strewn across the yard. We could see them from just outside.

Armani stopped the car before we hit the fence, afraid he’d drive over people along with the mesh if he continued. The Feds had apparently feared the same. Not one, but two dark, unmarked sedans also sat abandoned outside the gates. We jumped out, and I overran the fence on foot. I didn’t see any bodies where I stepped, but just beyond lay a blonde woman whose hair had half escaped her ponytail to catch in the blood matting her face. I bent down to take her pulse and shook my head at Nick.
 

From the buildings to the left came a sound like gunfire, but my brain quickly processed with more clarity—something had cracked, all right, but it sounded more like wood, like something being put to use as a battering ram. There were screams and snarls.

I took off running in that direction, Nick hot on my heels. Any extra speed or prowess the ambrosia might have given me had been worn away by everything I’d already been through, most recently the concussion. My head felt like it would split every time a foot hit the ground. Any impact could crack me open like the San Andreas Fault. My vision was cutting in and out. I was running on instinct and adrenaline.

A body came flying out of the door of the guard shack or whatever I’d been trapped in last night and crashed to the ground in front of me with the fearful bonelessness of a rag doll. I vaulted it to get to the source of the trouble, suspecting the girl was already beyond help. But as if I had a third eye at the back of my head, I sensed Armani stop to offer aid. I hoped he didn’t judge me and that there’d be a later when I could explain.

I was barely through the door when I was blown back by a gut-busting whack straight to the chest. It sent me flying. My healing ribs cracked. Pain exploded so that the impact of my butt with the ground barely registered. I was struggling to breathe, every inhale torture. A gurgle sounded with each exhale…not good. So not good.

I tried to blink my vision back into being, as if I was in any condition to avoid a threat even if I could see it coming. But the world had gone dark, like a stage when the show’s over. I’d never been so afraid in my life.

Someone was calling my name. Or maybe it was “Toro!” and not “Tori”—someone wanting to play raging bull with whatever had smacked me around. I hadn’t gotten a good look, but I suspected Cerberus’s tail had delivered the whack that had sent me flying, which meant I hadn’t even met the really dangerous end and already I was no match.

Someone grabbed for my jaw, and I gurgled something at him—probably blood. Then something was being shoved into my mouth, and I was choking. Or so I thought. There were definitely hands at my throat, but my breathing wasn’t any worse than it had been…as if there was any room at all on the scale between “No breath” and “oblivion.”

A strange tingle went through me, and my entire body arced up off the ground as the pain that hit doubled…quadrupled. I had a flash of vision. Two faces staring worriedly down at me. Two fallen angels. Eyes two impossible and entirely different shades of blue—midnight and Mediterranean. Then it was gone again, ripped away by pain. Every available nerve stolen away so that my body could scream with everything it had that Things Were Not All Right.

It went on forever…my forever…because I was sure at the end of it would come death. I even welcomed it. But when my round on the rack ended, I was left panting and spent. Distantly, I heard screams and forced my eyes open; those faces were still there. One looked anxious but relieved, the other relieved and furious all at once.

“What did you give her?” the furious face asked the other.

They had names. I knew they did. And they meant something to me, but right then it was as if my whole brain needed to reboot, like I had the files and the operating system, but couldn’t remember how to make them work together.

“It’s enough for you to know that she will be fine.”

“It’s that
stuff
, isn’t it? The stuff I found in her fridge?”

“Do you think now is the time for this discussion?”

I gave up trying to think and decided just to act. I gritted my teeth, expecting pain, and found none as I sat up. There was a body beneath me, badly broken from what I could see, and in front of me—beyond the arguing men—was a doorway completely taken up with…a gigantic dog’s behind? Could it be?

I shook my head and it rattled my brains, but I was starting to remember—Apollo, Armani, Cerberus…

The latter’s back end was thrashing around like he was striking at something with his front, and I said, “Someone give me a gun.”

That ended the argument. Both men stared down at me dumbfounded.

“No gun?” I asked them.

Both shook their heads. “I don’t even have my arrows,” Apollo lamented. “Couldn’t get them through airport security.”

“There’s always UPS,” I said.

But it was too late for that now.

“Ideas?” I asked.

Both looked at me blankly.

“Right. Super.”

I started to rise to my feet, but Armani jumped me…and not in the good way.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going? You nearly died.”

I shoved his hands off and pointed to the downed girl beside me. “There was no ‘nearly’ for her.”

I rose to my feet, tested their steadiness, so glad to have them under me again and my head and eyes in working order. Later I’d deal with the fact that Apollo had saved me—
again—
and that it was him I looked to, knowing without asking that we were on the same page. “Ready?”

He nodded.

I darted for that door, ready this time for the tail. I paused, watching the swing so that I could time it just right, and then I leapt, letting it catch me under the arms and hanging on for all I was worth. As it swung toward the body, I leapt, grabbing hanks of that thick, matted fur to use as handholds to pull myself up onto the beast’s broad back. The hound shook like a dog after a bath, but I clung tightly and managed to hang on, even when the eau de pooch threatened to choke me all over again. But that was the least of my worries. I was most afraid one of the heads would snap back for me at any second, but now that I had the high “ground” I could see why they weren’t.
 

Men and women lay scattered about the floor in front of Cerberus like discarded dolls, but a woman I’d never seen before still stood facing off with him. Her hair was wild and white, lighter in color even than her wheat-toned cult clothes. Her eyes were equally wild, but contrastingly dark and not the least sane-looking. One of Cerberus’s heads was lashed to the floor by some kind of thick green rope, but the others still snapped at her as she faced him fearlessly. I yelled at the woman to run, but she ignored me, raising empty arms toward the beast and chanting furiously. She had to be crazy to choose prayer over retreat, I thought, but suddenly Cerberus shook again, more violently. Terrified, I hunkered down, holding on for dear life. It was then I realized that it wasn’t
him
shaking, but the ground. Something erupted through the floorboards… A vine. Thick and shiny, growing as it erupted like Jack’s beanstalk.

Cerberus snapped at it, snarling and lunging suddenly, so that I almost lost my seat. I clamped down with my legs and held tight to keep from falling. The left head noticed me then and looked back, baring its fangs, but the middle head gave a yelp of startled pain and its partner whipped back around to bite at the vine that had wrapped itself around the central mouth. As it got close, a tendril from the vine snaked out and drove itself right up into one exposed nostril. The head reared back, howling pain, nearly deafening me.

I looked at the crazy woman with new respect. No mere mortal then.
Demeter?

“Where’s Persephone?” I asked. “Hades is here for her.”

“He has her already,” Demeter shouted so that she could be heard over Cerberus’s increasingly panicked noises. Her mad eyes met mine. “Karacis girl?” she asked, as if confirming something she already knew. “Your grandfather was a good man. You find Persephone and bring her back for me and I won’t have to take your world apart to do it myself.”

“My world?” I asked, voice strangled.

“All the current entrances and exits to Hades’s realm are protected against us gods. I’d have to make my own. It would be…messy.”

One of Cerberus’s heads got free and he lunged forward to snap at her again. I used their mutual distraction to slide down off Cerberus’s back. Strong hands caught me as I landed, and I looked up into Armani’s killer blue eyes, shaded by his dark brows and overhanging thatch of hair.
 

Neither man had been able to get past Cerberus’s bug ol’ butt.

Gunfire sounded back in the compound, rapid, like in a frightened burst.

“The agents!” Damn, I’d forgotten all about them. I should have known Hades would’ve come in full force, not just a man and his dog.

Apollo took the lead, racing in the direction from which we’d heard the shots, but Armani and I weren’t far behind.

We burst on to a scene behind the buildings that looked like something out of a horror film. An entire pack of dogs, dark as nightmares, were chasing people through the vineyards. As I watched, one overtook a young man and pounced on his back, driving him to the ground and out of my sight. I couldn’t bear to think what might happen next. Only Rosen seemed to be still standing, defending a woman and a group of frightened kids who were pinned down against one of the longhouses. He was backed up with them, firing away at the dogs taking turns drawing fire and darting in. The bullets didn’t seem to have an effect.

Apollo put two fingers to his mouth and gave an ear-piercing whistle. Immediately, every hellhound froze, their ears pricked forward and heads turned his way. Then he did something that shocked the hell out of me—and them too. He began singing.
Singing
. To the dogs. In the middle of a massacre.

Well, he
was
the god of music, and they did say it soothed the savage beast, but… I’d never thought of putting it to the test. Certainly not in the middle of a battlefield. Of course,
my
singing would be more likely to incite than stop a riot.

But Apollo’s voice…it was…there were no words. Painfully beautiful. Haunting. The song was something like a dirge mixed with the hope of Heaven…or the Elysian Fields. It made you want to cry and laugh and fall to your knees and rejoice all at once. I’d never heard Apollo sing before, and it was…transformative.

I didn’t know what Armani saw in my face, but when he clamped his hands over my ears, I nearly took him down. Hard.

Instead, I chopped his hands away by throwing mine up between them and rounded on him.

“
What
is your problem?” I demanded.

His eyes bored straight into me. He was that intense. “You looked mesmerized, and we’ve still got a god to find and a girl to save, from what I’ve overheard.”

My face flamed. “Right.”

Only I had no idea where to start.