Antigoddess (8 page)

“I’ve waited too long for Cassandra.” The fear he felt ran down to his fingers; he could feel feathers trembling. “I’ve waited so long, and now I finally have her. And I’ll kill every one of you if you try to ruin it.” He looked down at the poor dead owl. “Even you, Athena.”

6

FAR JOURNEYS

Athena jerked awake, back tensed taut as a bowstring. There had been a dream, a flash of vision, something breaking. Something awful. She couldn’t remember what it was. All that remained was the adrenaline, sparking through her veins and driving sleep far, far away.

“What is it?”

She glanced over at Hermes, ever the insomniac, even in his weakened condition.

“Are you all right?” He came and knelt beside her. His bony hands on her shoulders were warm to the point of being feverish. “Is it the feathers? Can you breathe?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice was clipped and terse. He took his hands off and rolled his eyes; she muttered an apology. She was never a bitch on purpose, but accidents were happening more and more frequently where Hermes was concerned. Taking out her frustrations on him wasn’t fair.

“I don’t know what it was.” She sighed. Talking was starting to be uncomfortable. The feather in the roof of her mouth pressed down insistently, and the flesh that covered it was tender and inflamed. Soon a bit of it would break through the skin, and she would wriggle it loose and tear it out. They say the mouth is the quickest-healing part of the body. She wondered who “they” were. Mouth wounds seemed to take forever to go away. And a torn strip the length of an owl’s wing feather would be one hell of a canker sore, if it turned to that.

“Maybe just a bad dream,” Hermes said softly.

“We don’t have ‘just dreams,’” she replied. “At least, I don’t.”

“I don’t either. It was just something to say. Anyway, if you don’t remember it, then it isn’t much use.” He gave her a piercing look, making sure nothing was flooding back. “Might as well call it ‘just a dream.’”

“I guess.”

Hermes stood up and stretched his thinning back. He was starting to look like a PSA against anorexia. She held in the soft snort of bitter laughter that accompanied the thought. It wasn’t funny. Nothing was all that funny anymore.

They had traveled hard over the last two days and made it out of the bleak extremes of the desert. Their camp was set on a quiet curve of the Green River in eastern Utah. A soft patch of grass made for a decent bed, and the water was drinkable enough. A scraggly coniferous tree provided shelter. They were living like vagabonds or fugitives, with as little human interaction as possible. Such a lifestyle had always suited Athena, but Hermes was a house cat, and she could tell sleeping on the ground was getting on his nerves. He didn’t hide it well. He constantly tossed and
hmph
ed and stretched his back.

“Are you hungry?” Athena asked.

“Usually,” he replied sulkily, and she tossed him a can of peaches from her pack. He cracked the tin cover off and ate them with his fingers. Dawn was about to break over the river, beautiful and pastel. At least she’d managed to sleep through the night. It hadn’t been an easy task since the encounter with the Nereid.

Her mind constantly returned to the vision that the poor creature had shown her. She saw it again and again, the blood-cloud whipped up in the saltwater, heard the gurgling and panicked currents of fins in death throes.

And the glimpse of him. Of Poseidon. Twisted beyond imagining. She could’ve sworn she’d seen a piece of coral cutting through his shoulder, like it was growing into his skin. Or out of it. Perhaps their deaths were eerily similar.

Regret, stronger than she’d imagined, clenched down on her stomach. They’d never been close, but seeing him that way still felt wrong.

Would he feel the same way? Seeing me pull feathers from my throat?

Probably not. He was weaker than she was and always resented that. He resented that Zeus had made her so strong. He resented that Zeus had that much strength to give her.

But it still felt unfair.

He should be on the sand somewhere, tanned and golden. He should be in the ocean, on a fucking surfboard with a nymph on each arm.

That was what might have been, if fate were kinder. Instead he was a monster, on the opposite side of a war.

Trying to humble me, as usual.
She allowed herself a rueful smile. It lasted only a second before dropping off her face. Poseidon was ahead of them, after all, and setting traps too clever to come from his mind alone. He had help, and she suspected she knew who it was. Who
they
were.

“When can we go to a
city
?” Hermes thumped the dirt with his fist. She supposed it did make for a shitty mattress.

Athena laughed. “I knew it. Missing your pillow top and manicured nails?”

Hermes threw a peach at her; she dipped low, birdlike, and caught it in her mouth. He curled his lip. “Excuse me if I’d like to have some comfort during my final days.”

“These aren’t your final days,” she said, but he seemed not to hear. He was looking off to the west with his back to the breaking dawn, his fingers suspended over the jar of peaches.

“Maybe we should just live it out,” he said quietly. “Just enjoy what time we have left. Haven’t we had enough?” She turned away from his glance and watched the water of the river pass. It moved without pausing, without taking notice. It was indifferent to them. That was how she had been for a long time. The world forgot her, and she forgot it, passing through cities and existing on the fringe, an observer rather than a participant. But now it was different. She couldn’t explain it to Hermes, who had lived among the humans and, she suspected, lived right up to the hilt, but dying to her felt strangely similar to waking up.

“No.” He sighed and ate another slice of peach. “Not for you. I can see that. I can see it turning in your brain. You’ve got your old cape of Justice on again. You’re getting it in your head that you could be a hero. Athena and Hermes, last of the sane gods, saving the humans and righting the wrongs.” In the soft-hued light of morning, with the sun coming up over his back, she couldn’t tell how serious he was.

“Don’t sound so high and mighty. You’ve played the hero before.”

Hermes snorted. “Rarely. And never front and center. Face it, sis, I was always the Green Lantern to your Iron Man.”

“Don’t be such a nerd. Besides, you’re mixing Marvel and DC.”

“Who’s the nerd?” Hermes arched his brow. Then he softened. “My point is, there is no point. We’re dying, so we panic and band together. So what? What the hell are we trying to save, anyway? We have no purpose. We’re obsolete gods in a destructive world. The earth wouldn’t shed a tear, not even for withered old Demeter.”

“There was a time when we mattered,” said Athena, but Hermes shook his head.

“No. There was a time when we
lived
. Rather than just existed. But that hasn’t been for centuries. I walked with mortals, played with them, ate with them. I’ve used up more of them than I can count or remember. But I stopped living. Look at us, Athena. No family, no friends—”

“You’re my family. You’re my friend.”

He squinted at her and smiled sarcastically. “You need a helping hand and I’m afraid of dying. You can’t fight alone and I don’t want to
be
alone. We call each other ‘sister’ and ‘brother,’ but I don’t know if it means anything. Maybe it never did. Gods are cold. War, killing, and stabbing each other in the back is really what we do best.”

What he said was true enough. What they were probably wasn’t worth saving. But it didn’t mean she would let herself go. She sat peacefully a few moments, watching the water pass, swirling and dark in the early dawn. Then she sighed.

“I want you to stop it.” They locked eyes. “It’s the talk of the dying, and I won’t hear it. I know you, Hermes, whatever you might say. You’ll sing a different tune when this is over, if we come out on top. You’ll fly again, you’ll laugh again.” She tore her eyes away and looked back toward the river. “You’ll call me ‘sister’ and mean it.”

“Athena,” he said, but she stood up and started to gather her things, rolling her thin blanket into her pack and walking toward the water to fill her leather cask.

“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s just get moving.”

“Moving where? Why do we even need to find this girl? Prophets. What good is foresight? We know we’re dying. We know that Uncle Poseidon will try to kill us so he can live.”

Athena crouched by the river, filling the water cask and letting the cold river slide over her fingers, over her wrists with their bracelets of tattoos. The reflection that looked back at her was a girl’s face.

Not a warrior’s face. Not a general’s face. But it will be again. Soon.

“Demeter said she’s more than a prophet.” She stood and shook her hands dry. “And Poseidon wants her; that has to mean something. That trap of Nereids—”

“Might’ve been just laid for us. Maybe he doesn’t want her at all.”

“But he’ll kill her to thwart our plans. It’s the only lead we’ve got,” she said. “At the very least, we’ll be headed in the same direction Poseidon is going.”

“We might want to run the other way.”

“So they can kill the girl, take all our advantages, and hunt us down later?” Athena shook her head. How could he talk of running, of retreating? The fight had barely begun. “Besides, do you really want to let our uncle tear some poor reincarnated prophetess to bits? You’re not that cold, and I’ve got my cape of Justice on, like you said. So let’s go save her.”

Hermes shoved onto his feet and stuffed his unrolled blanket into his own pack.

“How are we supposed to find her?”

“We go to those in the know,” Athena replied. “Those who can track her. Circe’s witches. Chicago.”

“That’s halfway across the country.” Hermes groaned and stared east, like he was trying to catch a view of the Sears Tower. “Do you remember when the world was smaller? When we could get anywhere at the snap of our fingers? God, I miss Olympus.”

“Yeah, well, it’s gone.” She shouldered her bag and started walking.

“Can’t you send another owl? What if Cassandra’s in Arizona and we have to come all the way back here?”

Athena shook her head. She could feel the owls, like she always could. And they knew what she sought. But they weren’t trained spies. They were birds. The chance that one would happen to see Cassandra as they hunted their nightly mice was slim. And even if they did, who knew how long it would take to get back. She looked up at the sun, rising hot over their shoulders.

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

*   *   *

If this guy looks at my chest even once more, I’m going to crack his rearview mirror into a thousand pieces.
She stared at the reflection of the driver, a middle-aged man with a tan, fading widow’s peak of hair, hair that looked as fragile as strands of sugar. The backseat of his ’90s model Caprice Classic smelled like stale aftershave and dirty socks, but it was comfortable. Soft, cinnamon-colored velour, with their packs sitting on either side of her, serving as armrests.

Hitchhiking had been Hermes’ idea. A fast, comfortable way to travel, but as soon as the maroon sedan had stopped for them on the shoulder of Highway 40, she’d gotten an uneasy feeling. Not a feeling of danger, but rather of sliminess. The driver welcomed them in with a coffee-stained smile, yellow to match the old stain spots around his collar and armpits. His name was George, and he was in sales for a company that manufactured air filters. Athena had jerked her head for Hermes to sit up front, and when she made herself reasonably at home in the backseat, George had adjusted his mirror to roughly the level of her breasts and his eyes had lit there like flies ever since.

In times past, a mortal caught ogling would have been treated to a fairly nasty fate. The loss of all his teeth, perhaps. Or his eyes turned to stone inside his head. But times weren’t what they once were. Her power over mortals had dwindled to the point of near nonexistence. She couldn’t even give him a migraine.

Hermes chatted away in the passenger seat, asking lots of questions about George’s travels and the air filter business. It took a few minutes, but gradually, George’s attention shifted from Athena’s rack to Hermes’ curiosity. As he tried to explain the complexities of the perfect air filter sales pitch, Hermes snuck Athena a wink. She smiled and leaned back, trying to cool, trying to relax, trying to think of what exactly they were going to do once they found this girl, Cassandra.

To be honest, Athena barely remembered her. It had been so long ago, and she’d been sort of preoccupied managing the
entire
Greek Army. Back then she had fought for the other side, hadn’t cared whether Cassandra lived or died. An image of the princesses of Troy rose through the mists of memory: two girls, one tall, one shorter, both graceful in fine woven robes. Trojan gold sparkled around their necks and on their wrists. One had dark hair, the other a rich honey color. One had to be Cassandra, and the other the eldest, Polyxena. She had no idea which was which.

Doesn’t matter,
she thought.
When we find her, I’ll know.

“You kids got parents waiting?” George asked with his eyes again in the rearview mirror, this time finding Athena’s face. “I’ve got a daughter not much younger than you, and I think I’d have a heart attack if I knew she was out hitching.”

“We’ve just got our dad now,” Hermes said. “And he’s pretty liberal.”

“Besides.” Athena smiled. “We’re older than we look.”

“Can’t be that much older.” George took a moment to scrutinize each of them. “I’d say you’re barely out of high school. Am I right?”

Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “According to our fake IDs, we’re twenty-one.”

George laughed. “I don’t want to know about any of that. Though I can’t believe—” He looked from Hermes to Athena in the mirror. “They must be some pretty good fake IDs.”

Athena smiled. If he’d look into their eyes for more than a moment, he’d see their true age. The forever behind them. But he didn’t.