The Gatekeeper's Promise: Gatekeeper's Saga, Book Six (The Gatekeeper's Saga 6) (23 page)

“So which goddess are you?” Marvin asked. “Aphrodite?”

It was the woman’s turn to blush. “How sweet. I like you already, Marvin.”

Jen climbed to her feet, too, beginning to feel uneasy over this woman’s reluctance to reveal her name.

“May I?” the woman pointed to baby Hestia.

Jen gripped the baby protectively against her. “She’s a bit fussy right now, so maybe not.”

“I’m sure I could soothe her. I’ve had many babies of my own.”

“No offense,” Jen said. “But I don’t know you. So…”

“You never did tell us your name,” Marvin added.

“Echidna,” the woman said. “Have you heard of me?”

Jen thought the name did sound familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She thought she heard the gods refer to her several times, but…wait a minute. Just as Jen began to recall who Echidna was, a serpent’s tongue lashed out of the woman’s mouth, like a whip, and coiled around Hestia, pulling the baby free of Jen’s arms.

Jen ran toward the monster
, but the serpent’s tail, long and massive, with a snake’s head on the end of it, jerked up from the canyon wall and swatted Jen like a fly. Her body was hurled against the back wall of the grotto. Pain radiated throughout her body, and she fell in a heap on the ground. She tried to blink, but the world was spinning, spinning, and then it was black.

Chapter Eighteen: Mercy

Hypnos dragged Athena across the dead leaves of the woods to a thicket that backed up against a large boulder. He could hear the smaller falls, so they couldn’t be too far away, but he didn’t want to risk taking the injured goddess out in the open without Hermes to help him fend off monsters. So he crouched on his backside, knees pulled up close,
gripping Athena’s sword, ready to strike. Athena lay curled on her side between him and the rock, holding his bloody shirt against her wound. She was deathly quiet.

“Are you in pain?” he whispered.

“I’m not allowing myself to think of it,” she replied. “But you shouldn’t remain here with me. They need you.”

“Without your godly abilities to heal, these monsters could do serious damage to you.”

“This is about more than me. This is about more than you.” She coughed up blood, sputtered, took a breath, and then added, “This is about the world.”

“I understand that, but I can’t leave you.
” Then he added, “The world isn’t here. You are.”

Hip then heard a terrifying scream from the platform, and he stiffened and held his breath. The scream came again, followed by the sound of someone running toward him from the granite side of the battlefield.
He gripped the sword, ready to defend Athena.

“Hypnos?” Hermes called.

Hip sprang from the thicket.

“Good,” Hermes said in a low voice. “Stay with her. I’m headed to the falls.”

The scream came again, ringing out over the entire woods. Hermes took off for the grotto with Athena’s spear in hand. Hip wanted desperately to follow. As he crawled back into the thicket to guard the wounded goddess, all he could think of was Jen. He knew no god could hear him, but he prayed, begging and pleading for her safety. At that moment, he realized he couldn’t exist without her. He’d rather die and dwell as a soul in the Elysian Fields with no memories than to ever be parted from her.

“Go,” Athena said. “I know you want to.”

He did want to. More than anything. “I won’t leave you,” he said again, gripping her sword.

***

When Therese heard Callisto’s wail, she knew it could only mean one thing: the grotto was threatened. Without thinking of anything else, she ran and ran and ran. Grass may or may not have hit against her legs. The sun may or m
ay not have shone down on her. The wind may or may not have whipped her hair against her face. She was aware of nothing but getting to Callisto.

As she reached the nymph
, who screamed repeatedly with her spear lifted on the end of a shaky arm, Therese was horrified by what she saw slithering down the canyon wall opposite them. She dropped to her knees.

Echidna dangled little Hermes and Hestia
over the deeper canyon and the falls below—holding them each by a foot. The babies’ screams could be heard, like bleating lambs, despite the thundering falls.

“What do you want?” Therese jumped to her feet and waved her open hands above her head. “I’ll do anything! Please!”

“The surrender of every god here, of course,” Echidna hissed. “Can you promise me that?”

Therese glanced around at the battlefield below, fo
r the first time aware of anything other than Echidna and her twins. To her right, she saw Hermes rounding the corner from the woods. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the beast. To her left, she saw Than, followed by Ares and Hecate, rounding the corner from the river. All were immobilized by the terrifying sight of the babies dangling over the dangerous drop below.

Apollo and Artemis had now caught up to her
and Callisto. She looked at them with her mouth hanging open, unsure if the gods would be willing to surrender the fate of the world in exchange for her babies. Tears streamed from her eyes and into her mouth as she searched their faces, hoping for their support. Her stomach twisted into one hell of a knot.

“Help me!”
she begged.             

***

Thanatos stopped when he saw the beast with his babies hanging from each of her hands over the raging falls. Hate and bile raged up to his throat, and he knew in that moment that
, whatever it took, he would kill Echidna.

He heard Therese make her pleas to the monster and the monster’s reply
.

“We surrender!” Than shouted with his arms in the air. “You win!”

“No, we don’t!” Ares growled as he hefted his spear toward Echidna, apparently forgetting his lack of godly strength.

The spear graz
ed her tail and fell into the water below.

Therese screamed.

Echidna slithered down the canyon wall and, with the babies curled against her breast, scurried across a cliff edge toward the smaller waterfall.

Than dr
ew his sword and ran after her, full of rage and terror.

***

Therese scrambled down from the platform along the canyon wal
l. She was shaking so violently that she slid part way down and scraped the flesh from the back of her thigh. After the initial sting, she could no longer feel it, could no longer think, except to know that she had to get to her babies.

Once she reached the ground below—the lip of the deeper canyon—she took off running after Thanatos, but before she could make it very far, Scylla shot up from the water below, shrieking in terror. Th
erese stopped abruptly as the enormous serpentine heads flailed about, blocking her path.

Ares’s spear had pierced through one of
the monster’s four eyes. She must have been hiding beneath the falls when he had sent his weapon for Echidna.

Therese fitted an arrow to her bow and struck Scylla at one of the dog
’s heads. Arrows flew from the platform above her as Apollo and Artemis followed suit. Hecate and Ares surrounded the beast, swinging their weapons. Therese glanced up to the grotto to see Marvin looking down in horror, white as a sheet. She wondered why Jen wasn’t beside him. Had something happened to her?

She refused to allow herself to ponder such a possibility as she navigated around Scylla
’s flailing pincers down the edge of the canyon toward the smaller waterfall and Demeter’s woods after Than. As she ran, she fitted an arrow, ready for combat, as Ares had taught her long ago.

***

Hip held his breath so he could better hear the distant sounds coming from the falls and the platform. Callisto’s incessant, pulsing screams had his heart playing havoc with his ribcage.  Then she was silent
, and he heard nothing for many minutes except a dull shout here and another there—the precise words or speaker imperceptible to him. He glanced back at Athena, whose eyes were wide, as she, too, was listening. It sucked beyond measure not to have godly hearing. He wanted some sign that Jen and the others were okay.

Not long after, he heard Scylla’
s shrill shrieks and another outpouring of indistinguishable shouts. Or cries? The thought that the others were calling for his help seized him. Should he abandon Athena, just in case?

Before he could make up his mind over what to do, he heard something moving toward him in the woods.
Athena noticed it, too. They both held still and remained silent, listening. Then the bleating of lambs seemed to fill the woods all at once.

Those weren’t lambs, Hip realized. Those were the twins.

***

Than couldn’t breathe. He was wild and frantic and determined as he ran past the smaller waterfall and into Demeter’s woods after Echidna. He could think only of his babies, whose cries rang out in desperation. He would save them. He had to. He would do whatever it took. He ran in the direction of their wails.

“Echidna!” he shouted, burning his throat. “I’
ll make the others surrender! I’ll do whatever you want!” Again he shouted, “Echidna!”

Think, he told himself. Focus! The beast’s massive tail was his greatest threat. He could slice Echidna’s arms or head off
with his sword, but that tail with its serpent’s head could beat him down and keep him from reaching his twins. If he was going to save them, he had to find a way to control the tail.

He stopped short and almost
fell as the momentum carried him forward. One of Therese’s traps from four years ago had nearly made him its victim. If he hadn’t known where they were, he would have fallen and impaled himself on the dozen sticks partially hidden by the leaves in the dip in the ground. If only there was a way of herding Echidna into one of these traps.

Something barreled up behind him, and he turned, expecting another monster—Chimera perhaps—but was relieved to see Therese. She ran into his arms, her tears wetting his neck and causing his own to burst free.

She was shaking, as though it was fifty below freezing.

“We can do this,” he whispered through a tight throat.

“Back off!” came Echidna’s command from deeper in the woods. “Back off, or I’ll strangle the boy child and keep the girl as leverage.”

“Please don’t!” Therese screamed. “We’ll do what you want!”

“Get the other gods to agree to surrender, and I’ll return at least one of these brats alive!”

Therese grabbed her stomach and doubled over with a dry heave.

“Look at me.” He held her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “Be strong. We
will
save them.”

He kissed her quickly on the
mouth. Then, in one fell swoop, he wrapped his hand around one of the sharpened sticks from her old trap and pulled it from the ground.

“Can you shoot these with your bow?” he whispered.

“They won’t fly with the same precision as…”

“Your target is her massive tail. I want you to nail that bitch to the trees.”

***

Therese used her sword to create ridges in the backs of the sharpened sticks, so she could fit them to her bow. McAdams’s dried blood covered the ends of them, but she didn’t shudder or hesitate in the least at her work. Nothing mattered right now but saving her twins.

Before she had finished preparing the spears, she heard footfalls at her rear. She turned, ready to strike, only to find Apollo and Artemis approaching.

“We’re here to help,” Artemis said.

“Ares and the others are fighting
Scylla,” Apollo murmured.

“Back off!” Echidna w
ailed. “I will strangle this child!”

Therese whispered the plan to them, and they divided up the sticks and spread out.

“Echidna!” Than called. “Come out and let’s talk.”

Therese felt adrenaline coursing through her as the moment of truth advanced.
This was the most important moment of her life. She couldn’t imagine a time when anything more important would be hanging in the balance.

She reminded herself that her babies were destined to restore faith in humanity. They were going to live. She and the others were going to save them.

A voice inside her head asked, “But at what cost?”

She silenced the voice and crept into position.

***

The first thing Hip noticed after his brother asked Echidna to come out and talk was that he could no longer hear one of the twins.

With Athena’
s powerful sword gripped firmly in one hand, he crept from the thicket wishing he had more stealth, but nonetheless determined to sneak up on the beast he could hear just a few yards ahead. He weaved in and out of the trees and then went stock-still when he saw her.