Rise of the Blood (24 page)

“I don’t know, but he was at full power then.”

The…Tyhoeus gave up on the flames and lashed out with its many heads, coming from every angle. Zeus cried out—or Poseidon, or both—and I could no longer see them, covered as they were in the serpent-head swarm.

A sense of triumph bubbled up from within me that I knew wasn’t mine.
Two down
, Rhea crowed.
More to come.

“Do something,” Tina cried.

She was right. Even knowing exactly what Zeus and Poseidon had come for, I couldn’t let them die like that. I didn’t know that Rhea would stop there anyway. Her anger seemed bigger than that. If they went down, I didn’t know that she’d call off the monster rather than turn it on the rest of the guests.

I whirled on Apollo. “Nothing we need to know here, right? If we cut off a head, it won’t grow back?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Hell’s bells, I was risking it all on a
guess
?

“Get back,” I told the others, knowing they wouldn’t listen. I summoned my inner loudmouth and all the power I could draw. I sensed something deep within…some hole that had been drilled or some dimension that had been tapped when Rhea moved in. I dove into that too, thrusting her aside as I sensed her try to get in my way. She was so stunned, she didn’t react in time, and I dipped a toe into her power stream. The torrent of energy that flooded me was uncontrollable. I let it overwhelm me and screamed at the top of my lungs, stomping and waving my arms to get the attention of its many hideous heads, “Hey,
you
.
Worm
. Come and get me!”

Some of the heads turned. Not all, not by a long shot, but I’d take what I could get and hope they’d drag the others down. I swept the faces with my gaze—those I could see through the steam—and screamed, “FREEZE!”

The power blew out of me in a bomb blast, and the heads looking my way
froze
, dropping like stones. But the other heads, by far the majority, now knew that something was off. Others began to turn toward me. Althea and Junessa, now that I’d entered the fray, took up positions to either side of me and began to fire off arrows. I knew when they hit by the recoil of some of the heads, but there were too many of them, and they were coming on too quickly.

I prepared to freeze more, when inside me Rhea revolted, throwing herself on the power I’d tapped and cutting me off, wresting control back to herself. My body seized up at the struggle like my brain had short-circuited. My eyes rolled up into my head and then…

A Rhea reboot.

My vision righted itself, only I was no longer in control of it. I watched in horror from within and without as I turned and stuck my hand right in the path of the latest of Althea’s arrows. She saw it too late, already releasing the bowstring. The piercing pain hardly registered as the bolt went right through my hand, fletching shredding my flesh on the tail end. With my good hand, I reached for her bow and yanked it away, only Althea hung on with a huntress’s power. While they fought, Junessa turned her bow on me, but hesitated to shoot it.

With one monumental tug, I/Rhea freed the bow from Althea’s grip, whipping her aside with the force of my torque and wielding the bow like a bat, straight at Junessa’s head. My heart clenched, hoping she’d duck in time. I saw the indecision in her eyes—fire or duck. At the last possible second, she dropped out of position and tossed her weapon aside, now in too close for it to do any good. Instead, she recovered and went for a flying tackle, aimed at my midsection. Rhea pivoted me out of the way, right into Althea, who’d recovered and showed it with a sucker punch to my solar plexus. I didn’t know if Rhea felt it any more than I did, but she didn’t let it stop her. She grabbed for Althea’s head and was, I was afraid, about to snap her neck, but the serpents got there first, going for her throat and coming up with mouthfuls of hair that had fallen in their path. They yanked Althea by the hair, dragging her toward them, the better to bite her.

But Nick had grabbed Junessa’s discarded arrow. I could feel his torment. He couldn’t bear to use it on me, but the monster…that was another matter. He lunged forward like a Maori warrior and thrust the arrow hard, right into the closest dragon’s eye.

It hissed back, and another head swung around to its aid, biting the shaft and snapping it in half. Other heads went straight for Nick.

I tried to jump in front of him, but Rhea had complete control. Apollo darted in to grab the bow in my hand, shouting, “Tori, if you’re in there,
let go!
”

I tried, but there were no signals getting from me to my body. Junessa grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back suddenly, and I snarled as Apollo swept my legs out from under me. I landed hard on my back with Apollo on top of me, but I didn’t surrender the bow. He had to knock the upper curve of it into my chin so hard I saw stars before that would happen.

When he had the bow, he rose up, getting it far, far away from my grasp, “Hermes, you coward, get out here and keep her down!”

I couldn’t see what happened next—whether Zeus and Poseidon were still alive, whether Nick had escaped the hundreds of fire-shooting faces he was far too close to with no defense. My heart pounded like it would explode and still my body wouldn’t obey.

My brain seemed to spin, and my stomach rebelled with the nausea of vertigo, and then, somehow, I was seeing the room from another angle.

Typhoeus still struggled weakly, a handful of heads trying to get the rest of the body moving. The heads I’d frozen were waking again, sluggishly, about to rejoin the fight. But Rhea must have decided he’d had enough, because I let out a high-pitched whistle that meant something to the beast. He jerked to attention, listening, and then sprang toward Tori…
me
…knocking me down like a bowling pin.

And that was when I realized that I wasn’t
me
. I’d forgotten in the insanity that I was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes—someone who hadn’t been brought low by Apollo and the huntresses. I was trying to think who I’d seen hiding where around the room when a voice called in shock, “Christie!”

My sight swung toward the one who’d called out—Hermes, staring in horror at the eyes through which I was seeing—and I realized that Rhea had gotten to Christie and that somehow we were now linked.

But as the serpent withdrew, racing toward his tunnel, so did Rhea, with a final proclamation in Christie’s voice. “This isn’t over. The titans are coming. Your time is
through
.”

My vision snapped back to my own body, retracting with a force that left my brain bruised. The world was fuzzy and purple, but I fought through it, needing to know who was still standing and who could be helped.

Chapter Ten

Somehow I battled back the dark clouds obscuring my vision, only the first thing I saw was even darker…Nick down. And not in the way that someone falls who has any control over it. He was lying pretty much on the left side of his face. The right side was so swollen and blackened that I could only tell it was him from his suit.

I crawled to him, but when I got to his side I hesitated to touch, afraid to hurt him. Distantly, I was aware of sirens and commotion, but all I could see was Nick. My hands quaked as I held one in front of his nose to see if I could feel him breathing. My heart was in my throat, choking me. I couldn’t tell. Dammit, I should be able to
tell
.

In that instant, I understood Apollo entirely. I’d have dosed Nick right then with ambrosia if I had any on me, to spare him pain, to bring him back to me and heal him up. I’d slit open my own wrists and let him drink if I had vampiric blood or if I thought there was enough ambrosia still running through me to help. I’d pay any price to save him.

Could it be? Did I have enough ambrosia running through my veins to heal him? Was it even safe to give a person human blood? I didn’t know his blood type or how important that might be. I didn’t know anything.

The EMTs arrived and pushed me out of the way before I could give in to temptation. I moved back, still squatting there, though, as closely as I could. Part of me was furious that they’d pushed me away when I could have helped him, but the other half knew they’d come just in time. If I’d helped Nick with ambrosia, I’d be making him an addict. I was almost certain he’d rather die.

Still, my heart broke at the missed opportunity, and I let out a sob that had been building.

I forced myself to turn away, to see if there was anywhere I was needed. Off to the side, Tina cried uncontrollably, a puddle in Jason’s arms, both collapsed together on the floor. Wedding guests were coming out of hiding. Paramedics were helping others who’d gone down—one figure with a prodigious beard among them. Fear filled me that it was Yiayia, and I felt terrible about being relieved when I looked beyond and saw her wringing her hands, watching Fergus with the EMT much the same way I’d watched Nick. She seemed to sense my gaze and met it from across the room. She looked desolate. Neither of us mouthed a word.

The EMT working on Nick got my attention and asked if I was his wife. I nodded, lying in silence, willing to admit to anything if it kept me by his side.

“Want to ride along? He’s alive, but badly burned. It may be touch and go. Decisions may have to be made.”

Hope and dread warred. Alive, but badly burned. Decisions? I wasn’t actually authorized to make any medical decisions on his behalf. What if it came down to—? I ruthlessly clamped down on that thought and nodded again.

Our EMT signaled another to help him get Nick onto a gurney. I felt a hand on my arm as they started to count in order to synchronize the lift, but I didn’t turn.

“I’m sorry,” Apollo said. He sounded sincere, but I didn’t know if he was sorry for Nick or for taking me down earlier when I was possessed. I nodded again. It didn’t matter.

“We have to plan,” he continued. “Let them care for the wounded.”

I turned now to stare at him, shocked that he’d even suggest it. “I can’t leave him.”

He tried to pull me aside and I dug in my heels, but he was stronger, and I owed him, even if I was only just realizing how much. I moved off with him, but only far enough for the EMTs not to overhear. Then I repeated. “I can’t leave him.”

“You can’t do anything else,” he countered, eyes soft with understanding. “You can’t do anything for him, and if Rhea comes back—”
I won’t be able to control myself
. He didn’t need to finish the thought. He seemed to sense it and moved on. “If Rhea really is raising the titans it’s a world-ender. Truly. No one will be safe. The best thing you can do for him and everyone else is to help us stop it.”

“How?” I asked. “So far I’ve been part of the problem, not the solution.”

“Even more reason for you to be with us. It’s safer for Nick, and I keep thinking there must be some way I can use our mind link to get through to you when Rhea’s in residence, or at least piggyback on her thoughts so that we can learn her plans.”

“What if there isn’t?”

“Then we’re no worse off than we are now.”

I knew in my head that he made sense, but my heart—the pieces that remained—didn’t agree.

“Give me an hour,” I said. “Let me get him to the hospital. Let me be there in case he wakes. After that, they’ll probably have him on sedatives and in surgery. But for now—”

Apollo’s eyes were indescribably sad. “Go. I’ll get everyone together.”

I looked around suddenly. “Where are Zeus and Poseidon?”

We both looked to their last known position, but we couldn’t see them with the EMTs in the way. At least one was alive enough to refuse treatment and have the EMT argue with him over the extent of his burns. I didn’t hear any more after that and could only assume that the belligerent one had either passed out or been knocked out by some kind of painkiller.

“Seems they’ll be going to the hospital as well,” Apollo said. “Maybe you can talk to them.”

“
Talk
to them?”

He gave me a very serious look. “If the titans are rising, we can’t do it alone. I’m not even sure we can do it together. When Zeus beat the titans before he had help—the cyclopses and hecatoncheires. It wasn’t a battle, it was a war.”

This kept getting better and better.

“Fine, I’ll talk to them, but I have to go.”

The EMTs hadn’t waited for me, but were wheeling Nick out on their cart. I ran to catch up with them.

He didn’t moan or shift as they hoisted him into the ambulance and bumped him into place. He barely looked alive.

And
I’d
done this. Or at least I’d been too weak to stop it from happening, to stop Rhea from taking me over, using me to commit human sacrifice and awaken her fully into her power. This was the second time Nick would be in the hospital because of me. There wouldn’t be a third.

I had to quickly get out of the way as another EMT came through with another stretcher and they loaded that into the ambulance as well. I couldn’t tell who it was with his face as blackened as Nick’s, but from the suit it looked like another wedding guest. Poor man.

The medic got up into the ambulance; his partner motioned me in as well, then slammed the doors behind us. There was barely room for me and the medic between the two stretchers, and he had to shift back and forth between patients, starting IVs, checking heart rates. I tried to stay out of the way and prayed to anyone and everyone—Christ Pantocrator straight through to Rhea herself—with everything I had for Nick to be okay. For
everyone
to miraculously be okay. And for them to send Nick home where he’d be safe. He had no part in this war, but I couldn’t see him accepting that. If people were in danger he’d fight until his last breath to save them. That’s exactly what I was afraid of.

The medic fired questions at me as he worked on Nick, and I did my best to answer, remembering that I was supposed to be his wife. It was amazing how woefully ignorant I was. Finally, I patted him down for his wallet and pulled out his blood donor and insurance cards, which answered some of the questions I couldn’t.