Rise of the Blood

Chapter Fourteen

My vision wasn’t just double, it was Ferris wheel—an image in every car, all circling around, making my stomach lurch along with the ride. Blinking just seemed to send the wheel spinning faster. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing.

Three calming breaths were all I could stand. I had to know what was going on. I had to get back in there.

My stomach gurgled as I opened my eyes once again and the images shifted, slowly coming together into focus. I was laying on top of a behemoth chest, very human except that the hair covering it was more like fur, bunny soft. It was…disconcerting. I sat up in a shot, anxious to make sure the titan wasn’t about to squash me flat, but it looked like he’d gone down badly. His head was at a funny angle and his eyes gazed up unseeingly at the sky. No one who’d seen death could ever question how you could tell. There wasn’t just a stillness. There was a light that went out of the eyes, almost a film or a shade drawn across them. They just looked dead. There was no poetic way to describe it. Not that I could think of.

I didn’t even know him. Likely, if he’d been alive he’d have been trying to kill me. But, oddly, he reminded me of Pappous—my grandfather, the strongman with the weak heart. Maybe it was that the titan was so massive and seemingly strong, yet the bunny fur and the bad fall made him seem so vulnerable. So dead.

Bile burned its way up my throat, and I quickly slid off the titan’s cooling chest toward the ground before I could lose it.

I knew what had to be done. Separately, we were vulnerable. Each part of this battle from Zeus on down was so used to being powerful in his or her own right that they weren’t thinking about working together. Not really. Zeus had seen what I’d been trying to do with Rhea’s hair and played off of that. It was a start, one we’d have to build on.

We were going to need a strategy. A coordinated plan of attack.

I was still in shock over my wings, didn’t know what to feel about them or how I’d get them home on the plane, but they were good for getting a bird’s eye view on the battle. I rose, keeping a watch on Rhea, who had now completely risen out of the earth and faced off with two bearded figures—Zeus and Poseidon, who’d managed to pull themselves up off the ground. Serena, who’d clearly joined up with her lord of the deep, wasn’t so lucky. She lay beside them like a doll who’d been tossed aside. I could tell she still breathed, but she hadn’t yet regained consciousness. Hermes hovered beside the brothers in his winged sandals. My movement caught his eye as Rhea swept downward with an outstretched hand to swat them like flies. With no hope of stopping her, he zagged out the way and flew to my side, staring at my wings.

“Tori—what—when—how?”

I shook my head. “No idea. We need a plan.”

“You got one?” he asked.

“Maybe. How do I know I can trust you?”

“Tori,” he said, a hand to his heart. “How can you ask?”

I gave him my best gorgon glare. “I know, okay? I figured out about the thing you’ve got going with Eterné. ‘Where’s the real money?’ you asked. I’m going to say pyramid schemes and youth serums. What’s in your product? Nectar? Ambrosia?” I don’t know when I’d guessed, but suddenly it was all crystal clear. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it ends. You promise me. If I save the day, no more trying to hook humans.”

Hermes’s eyes blazed, and for an instant, I could see his relationship to Hades. “And if I don’t agree?”

“Then I’ll do this without you and let the whole ancient world know what you could have helped and didn’t. If that’s not enough, I’ll come after you myself.”

He eyed me sourly, but we didn’t have the time for a battlefield sulk. “Yes or no?” I asked, staring straight into his eyes, looking for a lie.

“Yes,” he spat.

“Swear.”

“Swear? What are we, five? Swear on what?”

“On something you care about, beyond mischief and mayhem. Swear on your blood and your balls.”

“My balls?”

“Do it.”

“Fine,” he said, quickly. Rhea was swinging around toward us now, Zeus and Poseidon clutched in her fist. I presumed we were next. “I swear by my blood and balls I’ll carry your messages faithfully. Happy?”

“Unbelievably.” I grabbed his shirt and flew him up, up and out of even Rhea’s immense reach, and then I told him. Everything but my part of the plan. He dashed off the second I lowered him back to Earth, and I flew off too, sweeping the battlefield for those I needed. Hades. Apollo. Castor and Pollux.

Three of them—Hades, Castor and Pollux—were in about the same position on the field as I’d left them. Closer in, of course, but bashing it out with two titans who’d, like them, survived Rhea’s blowback. The one titan, spiderlike, was already down to about half its legs, and as I watched, Castor grabbed one side of its huge, clashing mandibles and Pollux the other, and they pulled with everything they had, cracking it open, breaking its jaw. The spider spit something out of its mouth as it collapsed to the ground in pain, and the something hit me square in the chest, burning like a firebrand, but I didn’t have any time to worry about it.

“You two ever play bait and switch?” I asked them.

They looked at each other, grinning.

“Good. Think you can do that with Rhea? Distract her, taunt her, make her come for you, see if you can get her so riled she forgets to finish off her sons?”

They exchanged another glance, like they had some sort of mental twin speak going on.

“Where will that get us with you?” Castor asked.

“I’ll introduce you to a siren,” I told them. “You’ll forget all about me.”

“Done!” Pollux answered for them. “Come on!” he called to his big brother.

They were off like this was the greatest fun they’d had in a long time. Maybe it was. Maybe peace and quiet was overrated. I’d like the chance to find out.

I turned in time to see Hades leap into the air, slashing his sword for his opponent’s throat. The titan’s hand lashed out, and I could see that Hades was going to get knocked on his ass. I swooped in to save him, but Hypnos came out of nowhere and grabbed him up first, taking him to safety with Hades hollering the whole way. I’d have been tempted to drop the ungrateful bastard, but that was me. Anyway, I needed him—needed them both.

I flew to their side and landed as Hypnos did.

“Just the gods I needed to talk to,” I said. “Hades, I don’t suppose you can access the River Lethe from up here.”

“You suppose wrong,” he said, with a glare that was more, I thought, about the fact that I’d seen him rescued than that I’d questioned his powers.

“Good. And Hypnos, you’ve still got the power to send people to sleep? You haven’t used it up or anything?” Riling them up just like Hades had riled his troops. Now they’d both have something to prove. Anyway, it was a valid question. I had no idea how these things worked.

“No, I haven’t ‘used it up’,” he answered. His look asked me why on Earth I was wasting their time with stupid questions.

“Good. Here’s the plan.”

When I finished, both eyed me dubiously, but it was Hades who voiced it. “Why should we take orders from you, who have so far been nothing but trouble.”

“Because this time I’m on your side, sending my trouble her way. Don’t you want to see how it turns out?”

They considered. I didn’t have time for them to make up their minds.

“Anyway, this is all Hermes’s idea,” I lied.

Their looks cleared right away. “Ah, the trickster god,” Hypnos said. “This might just work.”

“Good, get with Zeus and Poseidon.” The three brothers, together again. Mythologically speaking, there was power in threes—the Muses, the Gray sisters, the gorgons, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, Larry, Moe and Curly.

I prayed it would work, but I still didn’t know who I was praying to.

“Ready?” I asked Hypnos.

He nodded grimly, and we both stretched our wings, primed for takeoff. It was still strange, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that now. I had a goddess to face down.

I flapped my wings and rose up into the air, Hypnos right beside me, and we headed straight for Rhea.

Castor and Pollux had gotten her to drop her sons, but they were all now running for their lives as she bellowed, trying to stomp them out. Very god-like.

I flew up into her face, startling her, but she was too smart to hit herself trying to be rid of me. Instead, she flapped her hand in front of her face, as if brushing off a fly. It was all I could do to stay airborne when she missed me by a hair, the displaced air nearly enough to send me pinwheeling through the sky.

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t have the capacity for actual words. Flight was winding, and I wasn’t used to it.

Hypnos held back, as he was supposed to, waiting for his cue.

Pest blown away, Rhea ignored me to continue after Zeus and Poseidon, but I couldn’t let that happen. I dashed in again, flying just outside Rhea’s peripheral vision until she suddenly howled and clamped a hand to her nose as an arrow pierced it for her.

“Ha, gotcha, you old bat!” Cupid said, already nocking another arrow.

The first one didn’t look like much more than a splinter given Rhea’s huge size, but it seemed to enrage her all the same. Rhea went for him, and I grabbed for her ear, hoping to pull her up short, but I had nowhere near the power. She swatted at me, and this time caught me in a full body slap. For an instant of mind-bending pain, I swore the front of my ribs met the back, and then I was falling, still chanting hurryhurryhurry in my head.

There was no air left inside of me when I hit the ground, and for a moment the pain seemed stunted, twisted up somehow and unable to get from my back to anywhere else. I stared up at Rhea’s rampaging form, wondering if Apollo was still alive in all this, wondering if my plan would come together, when the sky started to blacken.

Yes, I thought. Finally.

I shifted my gaze, the only thing I could move, to track along the ground, looking for the brothers—Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.

There. Being defended by Castor and Pollux, Hermes and…was that? Apollo!

Apparently, my eyes weren’t the only things I could move. My heart could leap. And did…very quickly meeting the cage of my compressed ribs and nearly shattering against them.

They formed a human shield around the brothers as they pulled together a massive storm, fueled by the River Lethe, accessed by Hades, whipped into a frenzy by Poseidon and molded by Zeus into a funnel aimed like a spear point right for Rhea.

She laughed as she saw it. After all, she’d already turned Zeus’s tornado against him. But this was another beast entirely. Again, she inhaled deeply, lungs stretched to capacity, swallowing the storm into herself, only to sputter and choke as it went down. A coughing fit seized her, blowing the brothers down, but the funnel was now a force all its own and was still raging, still on-rushing and—the River Lethe, invading, stealing her memory, her anger, her thirst for vengeance.

Hypnos was up next. He got up right into her face, wings flapping and flapping. That strange distortion where the night seemed to grow darker and deeper emanated outward from him, rolling over Rhea like waves.

She started to sway, shook her head hard trying to clear it and instead grew more disoriented with the motion. I had an instant of fear that she would shake it off, but the head shaking only seemed to make her dizzy. Between Hypnos and the waters of forgetfulness washing away her agitation, she seemed to shrink in on herself, eyes watering from her coughing fit and still trying to rediscover her breath.

“Get back!” I tried to yell as her swaying became frightening. It was either that or “Timber!” but neither actually made it out of my mouth, which wasn’t obeying me at the moment, though already I thought I could breathe a little easier—without ambrosia or Apollo’s intervention. Like the wings, I didn’t know what it meant, but apparently what didn’t kill me made me stronger.

And then Rhea teetered my way.

I had just time to think, “Oh, shit!” because my last words would be that classy, when someone swooped in out of nowhere and swept me out of the way.

Behind me, the concussion of Rhea striking the earth blew out eardrums and shook stones free of the ruins.

Hermes held me aloft until the earth stopped shaking. When it did, he looked into my eyes and grinned a wicked grin. “Now who owes who?”

I half heard and half read his lips, my ears still ringing from Rhea’s impact.

I was too relieved to rise to the bait.

“Put me down.” My lips formed the words, but I wasn’t sure they were understandable.

Hermes flew me jerkily toward Apollo and let me slide down his body toward the ground. Apollo caught me as I started to fall forward.

“You did it!” he said.

Then Rhea started to snore like a buzz saw.