Rise of the Blood (31 page)

We met up with Hypnos and the others at the Archeron…or at least a riverbed with not much more than a trickle of water left at the bottom. The remains of what looked to recently have been a mighty river were splashed about the banks, wetting the barren rocks all around and slowly slinking back into the earth. Whether there had been a massive battle, the titans had drunk it dry or we were seeing the result of hundreds of feet, claws, tentacles and hooves crossing in a frenzied rush, I couldn’t tell. One way or another, the titans had bypassed the barrier and were headed into trouble.

Hades stared in horror at the destruction of the Archeron, and when he looked to his son and the reinforcements he’d been able to gather, there was a fire in his eyes. Literally hellfire, and he gave off the stench of brimstone like he bathed in the stuff. Hypnos had managed a dozen or so hellhounds and a few unassuming gods in house black who I presumed to be relations based on the family resemblance. Now that I thought about it, myths had Hypnos breeding at least once—his son Morpheus, the Shaper of Dreams. But beyond that, my knowledge failed me.

“They
will
pay for this,” Hades growled.

He whirled, giving us the back of his hydra armor, and led the way through the nearly nonexistent river to the other side.

The ground started to climb and the walls narrowed in as we passed by it, until we were moving only about four across. Part of the ceiling had come down where the larger titans had knocked their heads, so that smaller stones turned ankles and made the way somewhat treacherous, but no one went down. No one complained.

The tension in my stomach ratcheted up with every step. I didn’t like this setup at all. A huge rockfall ahead or behind…or
both…
and we’d be cut off. Surely the titans would expect pursuit and leave us with a nasty surprise somewhere along the way.

Apollo had slung his bow over his back in favor of another, more modern weapon. He had his cell phone out and was fussing with it.

“I thought you said there were no cell towers in Hell,” I said, nudging him to get his attention.

“There aren’t, but the way we’ve been climbing, I keep hoping we’re close enough to the surface to get messages in and out. We need to know what’s happening up there, and they need to know the situation down here and that help is on the way.”

“Anything yet?” I asked.

“No, dammit. I’ll keep trying.”

Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to see the twins. “How ’bout now?” the green-eyed one asked. He seemed to be the ringleader.

“Might be your last chance,” said the other. “We might not survive the battle.”

Wow, were they the princes of romance or what?

“I thought you were already dead,” I said wryly.

“Do we
look
dead?”

I really didn’t know how to answer that.

A huge rumble up ahead saved me the trouble. The ceiling seemed to jump, like an ancient elevator finally hitting its floor, and then it buckled right overtop of us. I screamed like a girl and from the choral effect, I wasn’t the only one.

A man lunged forward to catch the center of the dipping ceiling, his muscles bulging where his lion pelt exposed them—Hercules, once again taking up the mantle of the earth as he had from Atlas. I hoped he hadn’t gone soft in the intervening millennia.

“Go!” he grunted at the rest of us. “I’ll hold it up. Just go!”

“You heard him,” Hades said. “Go!”

The army moved around Hercules. Sweat was breaking out across his brow, and I could make out not only every muscle, but every vein and artery.

“Can you hold out?” I asked with no clue what I’d do if the answer was, “No.”

He must have gotten the gist of what I was saying, “Don’t worry about me,” he answered. “Just get out of here. The sooner you go, the sooner all I have to worry about is me.”

“We’ll be back for you,” I promised. I hoped I lived long enough to follow through.

He nodded, as though another word would break him, and jutted his chin toward where the others had disappeared, signaling us to go.

Apollo grabbed me, and I ran after the others, trying to ignore the creaks and groans of the stone ceiling above, the jagged shards of rock still falling here and there like icicles to shatter on the ground.

I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of a phone ringing. Apollo grabbed it out of his pocket and answered on the run. “Yes?” He listened for a second. “We’re on the way. We should come up behind them. And for Olympus’s sake, tell Zeus to stop shaking the earth—at least until we’re above it.”

He hung up. I guess whoever was on the other end already knew the titans had broken free.

“Who was that?”

“Hermes. He says get there as fast as you can and that it’s not Zeus doing the shaking.”

“Great.”

A rock pinged off my head, but I hardly registered the pain with all the adrenaline flooding my system. Ahead of us, people were calling out warnings and slinging boulders, pulling them away from the cave-in at the exit. We were already one hero down, but the others had it covered. All Apollo and I could do from the back of the field was stay out of the way of flying rocks.

When they’d cleared enough room to crawl out, Thanatos insisted on leading the charge, his sword raised before him to skewer anyone in his way. With a great cry, he pelted up out of the ground, the heroes echoing him as they followed.

Apollo and I climbed over the rocks in our way and blinked into the sudden sunlight, our sight clearing onto chaos. We were on the field of the Pythian Games that capped the sacred sight of Delphi at the very top of Mount Parnassus. My natural fear at the height clashed with my precog alarm klaxons for a sickening, blinding panic attack that threatened to take me down, but I didn’t have time for any of that. The battle was already in progress, the titans towering above our force of Hellenic heroes who’d rushed into the action, weapons drawn.

I couldn’t see our allies—gods and goddesses, my friends and family—all the way across the field, opposite our titanic foes, but I could feel the electricity in the air. I desperately hoped that meant Zeus and Poseidon had joined our team. I wondered who else had been recruited.

Something at the edge of my vision caught my attention, and my head swiveled as a figure rose into the air, great black wings unfurling, batlike in construct, but feathered along the struts where on a bat there might be fur. But at its core was something very familiar…

Hypnos
? It looked like him, all punked out with spikes and piercings, but the wings…they were new. Or maybe there just hadn’t been cause to reveal them in the cavelike Underworld. But now…he was magnificent. He flapped the wings just enough to hover above the battleground, and as he did, he began to sing, something atonal and…not flat, but bottomless. I blinked again as the air began to ripple, like a Hollywood intro to a dream scene or mirage. His wings beat the rippling air toward the titans. Those closest began to sway, as if he were sending them to sleep. Then there was a raptor-cry from within the melee and a second winged figure rose up, this one from among the ranks of titans—a flying female, half woman, half bird of prey.

She flew at Hypnos, and as they grappled in the air, his waves ceased. The titans shook off their strange affect, and renewed their attacks with double their ferocity. We couldn’t stay on the sidelines. I just had to figure out where we’d do the most good.

There!” Apollo said, as if he’d read my mind. He pointed to a spot of high ground that would have been a spectator section during the Pythian Games where the Amazons were already spreading out for a good clear shot at our enemies.

I nodded, took two steps in that direction, and seized up as something took control of my body. No, not something…

Rhea
.

I cried out a warning to Apollo, but it came out just a strangled sound. He whirled, though, in time to catch me as I fell forward, fighting Rhea for control. Losing.

And then suddenly I was pushing Apollo away with a strength not my own and swinging for him in a way that would snap his head around…and maybe a few vertebrae. He caught my fist before it could connect, but in that instant my other hand lashed out, aiming for something a lot more vulnerable. My hand like a talon, I caught and gripped Apollo’s bait and tackle, twisting mercilessly. His eyes got big and betrayed, and he started to buckle to the ground. I let go and used the fist he’d been holding to knock him aside. Even as he rolled, my leg shot up, ready to stomp down on him, but he did the unexpected. He rolled back toward me, grabbed the stomping leg and twisted. I went down on top of him, but kicked hard as I fell, managing to land a blow on his thigh, very close to those bits I’d already manhandled. His eyes filled with pained tears and I—Rhea—rolled away and shot to my feet, reaching for the bow and arrows strapped to my back.

Rhea loaded a crossbow bolt and pointed it down at Apollo, straight at his heart. Weapon cocked and ready, my gaze zeroed in on the sight, preparing to pierce him through.

Frantically, I fought to regain control of my body, flinging myself against invisible barriers, trying to get through to myself or even just mess up the signals, to save Apollo as he’d saved me so many times. I might as well have been a firefly beating at a glass jar.

Something flew up into Rhea’s peripheral vision, but she didn’t blow her aim by looking. I started to release the bolt, knowing that this was it—that Apollo’s death would break his hold on Delphi, the naval of the world. Rhea would capture the lashing rein, Delphi’s power once again hers to command.

My panic meter went to eleven.

The pain struck from out of the blue—a bolt to the chest. So stunning it took a second to register anything but that I had missed the shot, which had gone wide. Rhea looked down in disbelief to see an arrow sticking out of our chest, just inches shy of my heart.

She bellowed in more anger than pain, and immediately wrapped a hand around the shaft to pull it out.

I smashed through with everything I had, knocking her hand away. The shock was all that allowed it, I was sure.

Apollo kicked my legs out from under me as I stood there wavering, my body ready to topple as Rhea and I fought for control.

I went down in a heap and my sight caught on what had moved in my peripheral vision—a winged boy, teenager anyway, all tussled hair and shining eyes, wearing little more than a bow and arrows. Cupid? I’d been downed by
Cupid
?

My vision started to swim as Apollo kicked the bow out of my hand.

“Tori?” he asked.

He looked strange from this angle—him up, me down, the rising sun behind him lighting up his hair like a halo around his head. Put him together with Cupid’s wings and he’d look like an angel.

Was I delirious with pain?

“She’s not my only one,” Rhea’s voice issued from my lips, and then she was gone.

I was left cold. So cold. Numb. I could barely feel the pain anymore, and I wasn’t sure that was a good thing with no Hecate available to heal me.

“Go,” I said, faintly. Breath was hard, and I thought I felt fluid in it, like maybe the arrow had pierced something never meant to be pierced. “Fight. Win.”

Apollo looked at me for another moment and then threw himself down on top of me, careful of the arrow.

He muttered something against my lips. It tickled. I wanted to breathe in his warmth, but that was getting harder and harder.

Then he kissed me, lips on mine, but softly, no more than a touch. For a second, he seemed to be breathing for me and something passed between us. Something profound. If he was opening up another damned gateway in my mind or another unwanted link, I was going to be pissed…though I didn’t see how that would matter for much longer.

When he pulled away, the numbness had spread, and I couldn’t even blink. If my eyes closed, fine. Otherwise, I was going to see the battle through to the bloody end…mine.

He gave a quick caress to my face, grabbed my bow off the ground as a backup for his own and ran off, Cupid flying beside him, firing as he flew.

I was left behind, staring wide-eyed at the battle, helpless.

On the field was chaos. Arrows and crossbow bolts struck the titans but not with the same success they’d had against me. Meanwhile, hellhounds were being hurled yelping through the air or being crunched between monstrous teeth. Hypnos and the eagle-woman had fallen to the ground, but he was rising again, though with tears in the membrane of his wings. Still, he was able to take to the air, if nowhere near as gracefully as before. Thanatos, Hades and the heroes slashed again and again, but didn’t look like they were gaining ground, except what the titans gave in their push forward to overrun the Olympians on the other end of the field.

From that far end, lightning flashed, but it was more electric shock than branch or ball lighting, as though Zeus was up too high to gather the full force of his storms. Rhea had chosen her battleground well.

And then my heart went cold. Figures came running toward my high ground.
Human
figures. Female human figures. I immediately recognized one of them.

Christie
…still in the dress she’d worn to the wedding, but now with a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. The women with her…I squinted, it was as much as I could do…my fellow inmates from Delphi prison. Rhea’s recruits.

My fault
.

All my fault.

They lined up along the spectator section of the stadium opposite the Amazons. I tried to get up, to distract them or fight as they started to take aim at Althea, Junessa and the others and…nothing…I couldn’t move.

I felt pinned to the ground by the arrow in my chest, staked like a modern-day vampire. I knew it was stupid. I knew it was probably the loss of blood making me so weak, but the feeling wouldn’t leave me. I had to pull the arrow. It was the right thing to do. Precognition or delusion? What did it matter when I couldn’t even move?

No
. I was
not
going to let everyone I loved down like this.

My fault
.