Antigoddess (22 page)

Odysseus stirred by her side and shifted against her hip. She tensed. The bed was small. They were completely wrapped up in each other. How had that happened? She’d been so deeply under it had felt like oblivion. He was lucky she hadn’t shoved him off onto the floor.

Why did I ask him here in the first place?

She couldn’t remember. A deep breath brought aftershave to her nose, and she didn’t know if it was his or Craig Melville’s. It was probably Craig’s. If it had been Odysseus, it would have smelled like cinnamon massage oil from The Three Sisters. The corner of her mouth twisted into a smile, and she pushed dark hair back off his forehead.

In the shadows, he looked softer, relaxed and innocent, the working of his brain reduced to slow clicks and whirrs. He looked almost harmless, almost gentle, nothing like the swashbuckling liar she knew he was. She leaned closer and studied the curve of his jaw, the easy pulse at his throat. His fingers rested on the small of her back; she’d turned men into stone for less. But she didn’t move. Something grew inside her chest and stomach, some new, unnamed need, unfurling and trying out its wings. She let herself press closer, and shivered.

This is what men risk so much for; this shiver, this acute heat and desire. This is what they think eternity feels like.

The words moved through her mind without warning. Thoughts like that were not meant for her. She was removed from it, completely outside the jurisdiction of Aphrodite’s lasso. But she had to admit it was intoxicating. It took over completely.

I should move away.

Except when she did move, it was her hand, slipping mindlessly up underneath the fabric of his shirt.

Even the touch of my ungainly hand makes him tremble. This is dangerous. It rebounds on everything. I’ve seen it ruin lives.

Athena held her breath, but couldn’t stop. Or she wouldn’t. Boundaries blurred as he woke beneath her hands. His fingers squeezed down on her hip. His eyes opened.

Odysseus pushed the veil of her hair back and drew her closer, nothing but the sound of his quickened breath and moving fabrics in her ears. He was practiced and she was new, the Don Juan of the Aegean and the Virgin Goddess, but it was all instinct, all sensation and response. The heat of his tongue, the firm strength of his body and the way he moved her, they might have done it all a hundred, a thousand times before.

This isn’t real, this feeling. I’m not made for this.

He rolled her onto her back, their fingers entwined. The desperation in his movements filled her with a strange sense of power, and the way he shook and sighed. In her mind an image flashed from long ago: Odysseus in the middle of an ocean, standing on the deck of a ship. He stared out over the water, his expression determined but desolate, skin bronzed by decades of sunlight far from home. He grasped onto the ship’s railing and shouted something, the same word, three times. Penelope. Penelope. Penelope. He screamed for his wife, the wife he loved and continually tried to return to. The ship’s hull had been painted with a depiction of Athena’s eyes.

“Athena,” Odysseus whispered, and kissed her neck.

It was just an image. One brief flash. She didn’t even know if she had really seen it, or if it was her own invention. Penelope was dead, she had to be, she’d used up all her devotion two thousand years ago. And besides, it didn’t matter. Athena was a goddess. She took from mortal women as she liked. Odysseus was hers. He always had been.

Stop. Stop this. Those are Aphrodite’s words, Aphrodite’s justifications. Penelope might be gone but I’m not. He and I are separate. Divided. Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I give up what I am.

“Stop,” Athena whispered. Odysseus’ arms clenched tight around her, his fingers in her hair.

“Stop,” she said again, and when he hesitated she shoved him, harder than she wanted to. His shoulder struck the wall over the foot of the bed.

It was embarrassing. She could see the mortified expression he wore in the shadows as she pulled herself up.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t know what happened. We were asleep—I half thought I was dreaming!” His hands moved roughly over his face. “Look, just don’t do anything drastic, all right? Don’t turn my eyes to stone in my head or—” He glanced downward. “Or anything worse.” He leapt up and turned toward the curtain. “I’m going to go find a soda or something. I’m sorry.”

He pulled back the curtain and light cut through the sleeper.

“Odysseus,” she said, and he paused. “It’s all right. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He wouldn’t look at her. She hadn’t thought he would be so ashamed. He acted like he’d been cut open.

“Don’t feel so bad.” She tried to smile. It had been her fault. She should say something to make it right. “This is—well—it’s what you always do.”

“What I always do?” he asked, and his eyes darkened. “What I always do. Like on Circe’s island, you mean. Or dallying with Calypso.”

Athena blinked. When he was angry, his accent got thicker. Her neck stiffened as he pointed a finger at her.

“That was a bloody lifetime ago.”

“I was trying to make you feel better.”

“Feel better? By making me sound like a dog? It was thousands of years ago!”

“I found you two
days
ago in a naked tangle of whores!” Her mind winced at defaming the witches of The Three Sisters, but she couldn’t take it back. They were nice whores, very lovely people, but she was trying to make a point. “I suppose that was just an innocent game of Twister in between readings from
Macbeth
?” She held up her hands before he could explode. She used to be so good at de-escalating. But then she never would have allowed herself to be in this position. “I’m not saying that it’s wrong. I never judged you. I was never even annoyed; I was amused, mostly—”

Odysseus shook his head. It wasn’t helping.

“Don’t you get it?” he asked. “This is different. You’re not like them.”

Athena swallowed. Not like them. No, she wasn’t like them. She wasn’t beguiling. Enchantments and seductions were mysteries to her. They were ridiculous wastes of time. A heavy feeling built in her chest, just at the base of her throat. The image of Aphrodite’s golden apple rippled into her mind.
To the Fairest
, it had said.

“I’ve always shown you respect,” Odysseus finished lamely, and she looked away. He said her name and got no response. She might as well have been a statue. So he turned and left, slamming the door of the cab behind him.

*   *   *

Athena stepped out of the Freightliner and took a breath of Toledo. It smelled about the same as South Bend, only colder. The wind had come up too, and it whipped her hair into her eyes. She couldn’t tell what time it was. The clouds blocked out the sun.

They were parked in the loading dock of a long, navy blue and white warehouse. Half a dozen other trucks were lined up beside Craig’s, a few of them idling, most of them turned off. Workers passed by on forklifts, moving pallets of white boxes. She looked around. Odysseus hadn’t made it far. He stood about fifty feet away, near the hot lunch truck, talking to the driver while he ate a hot dog. She walked up behind him.

“Once you start eating you just don’t quit.”

He turned. Uncertainty floated over his features, like he still half-expected to be turned into a toad. He cleared his throat and his brows lifted.

“I’m a bottomless pit. Can I get you anything?”

“Maybe just a Coke.”

He paid the worker and handed her a cold can. Athena walked away and motioned with her head for him to follow, past the line of parked trucks and over to the end of the lot, where a lonely picnic table stood in the middle of dead brown grass.

“Well,” he said and threw a leg over the bench, “this is awkward.”

“Talking about why Hera and Poseidon are after you?” Athena asked lightly. “Why would that be awkward? Is it that awful?”

She looked him in the eyes.
Deal with the problem at hand. The rest we can worry about later.

Odysseus nodded slightly and Athena took a long drink of her soda.

“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” he asked.

“Looking for tools to help them eat us, you mean?”

He gave her a weird look, and she waved her hand.

“I don’t think the eating part is literal. But who knows? They’re just trying to save their own skins.”

“For them to live, other gods have to die.”

Athena nodded. “So everyone keeps saying. Though nobody seems to be able to say why.”

Odysseus shrugged. “Because that’s the way that it’s been fated to happen. No one escapes Fate. Not a single one of us, after we’re born. Not even you.”

Athena rolled her eyes. He sounded like her father. “So why even bother fighting? If we’re fated to lose, then we lose. If we’re fated to win, then one way or another, we’ll come out on top. Right?”

“Don’t get philosophical on me. For the record, I don’t believe in Fate. I believe that the pieces have been placed. The ending hasn’t been written yet.”

Athena ground her teeth. She did believe in Fate. It was almost impossible not to, after having the king of the gods drive it into her head for so long. But she’d always hated it. It made her feel powerless. Why people saw it as a comfort, she would never understand.

She twisted the tab off of her Coke and flicked it into the recycle bin. “So what are they doing, right now? Do you know?”

“They’re looking for a weapon.”

“I figured on that. What weapon? It can’t be Cassandra. You didn’t even know about her.”

He hesitated, which was good. The fewer who knew the better. But she was the leader of the damned resistance. He needed to cough it up.

“There’s just the one weapon that I know about,” he said softly.

“Okay.” She waited for him to talk. When he didn’t, she nudged him with a finger. “So what is it? And why do they need you in particular to get it?”

Odysseus swallowed. “Because I’m the only one who knows how to find it.”

“How to—?” she asked, and stopped. Suddenly she knew. It was just like it had been before. During the war against Troy. Greece had needed a weapon, and only Odysseus had been able to convince it to come out and fight. Only Odysseus had known where it was hiding.

“It’s Achilles,” she whispered. “They’re looking for Achilles.”

Achilles. The greatest warrior the world had ever seen. She hadn’t thought of him in ages. During the time of the Trojan war, he’d been necessary, but even then she’d wished he hadn’t been. He was cold, smart, and narcissistic. He knew the price of glory and he didn’t care. The slaughter he left in his wake was red and spread with entrails. He knew nothing of pity, and when he was angry, even the gods were afraid.

Of course, the standard for brutality had changed over time. In the twenty-first century, Achilles might actually be comparatively sane. But somehow she doubted it. Somehow she knew that he’d only gotten worse.

I’ve seen mortals do horrifying things. Impale people on pikes, stretch their limbs until the joints blew apart. I looked into the eyes of those torturers, searching for just one spark of recognition, wondering if it was really him, come back again and again.

“When the Cyclops jumped me in England, they weren’t going for the kill. That’s probably why I got the better end of it. They wanted to take me alive, so I could be Hera’s Achilles-dowsing rod. So what do we do?” Odysseus asked. “Do we find him first? I can take you there. We could leave now.”

“No. Nobody finds him.” There was no point. He’d never fight for their side; there wouldn’t be enough blood to sate him. He would fight for Hera, for glory, and a place amongst the gods. If they went looking, they’d lead their enemies right to his doorstep. “I don’t want any part of him. He’s mad, and evil. He always was.”

Odysseus sighed. “No, he wasn’t. He was just an angry boy, caught up in your struggle. Like we all were.”

Athena nodded and bit her tongue on disagreement. He had known Achilles better than she had, after all.

“What about you? Why are you looking for your weapon? Planning to ‘eat’ Hera and Poseidon before they can eat you? You trying to save your own skin?”

She sighed. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing to say yes. It would be nice if Hermes didn’t have to die.” She chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just something Hermes said back in Utah. He called us ‘the last of the sane gods’ and said I had my cape of Justice on again. Seemed stupid. But after what Hera did in Chicago…” She looked down, and her voice grew somber. “The world doesn’t need that running around, I suppose. The world has enough of
that
as it is. So, yes. I’ll take her out. I’ll handle my own, before they wreck anything else.

“We need to get out of here.” She struck her fist against the softening wood of the picnic table. How long did it take to switch loads on a truck anyway? She didn’t even know where Craig was. Eyeballing the red Freightliner, she wondered just how hard it would be to steal it and how fast it would go.

“Don’t,” Odysseus said. “Just, don’t. We’re not hijacking a semi.”

Athena smiled. Then she coughed. At first it was just a light tickle in her throat, but it got worse. She felt something moving, coming loose down in her right lung. It itched. She coughed harder, until she was bent over, hacking.

“Athena!” Odysseus held her by the shoulder. She took great, whooping breaths; her coughs sounded like someone ripping a bed sheet.

Finally she sputtered. She’d managed to dislodge it and work it up her throat. Her fingers fished around on her tongue, and held the feather in front of her face.

Just one, and mostly white, with a little brown speckling at the edges. Only the shallowest bit of the left side had any blood or tissue stuck to it. The rest was just wet.

“Don’t get upset,” she said shakily. “It’s just a small one. Hardly attached to anything.”

Odysseus stared at it before she crushed it in her fist and flung it off into the grass.

“How long do you think you have?” he asked.

Athena smiled, still a little breathless. “Forever.”