The Blood of the Hydra (13 page)

“It won’t be a problem,” he said confidently. “I’ll tell her that we need to leave, and she’ll listen to me.”

“I’m not sure it’ll be that easy,” I said. “When people eat the lotus fruit, it makes them never want to leave the island.”

“So what are you saying we have to do?” he asked. “Drag her out of here screaming?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” I looked around at how peaceful and happy everyone was. If someone started screaming and fighting, it would rouse suspicion. That was the last thing we needed. “But if it does, then yes, that’s what we’ll have to do.”

“She’s over there,” he said, pointing across the bonfire. I spotted Rachael surrounded by a group of children, who were laughing as she threw lotus fruit at them and they tried to catch it in their mouths.

“She might be more willing to come with us if you tell her it’s part of a game,” I said. “Don’t tell her that we’re leaving the island. Just tell her that you found something super cool that you want to show her, but that she has to be quiet because it’s a secret.”

“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s go get her.”

But right when we stood up, a booming voice echoed across the entire area, and we froze in place.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A huge man in a toga stood up and snarled at Kate. She hid a bag full of lotus fruit behind her back, but it was too late—everyone had already paused what they were doing and had seen it. The laughing and chattering had stopped completely. Now their mouths were dropped open, horrified, as if they’d just witnessed a murder.

“Nothing.” Kate looked at the ground, her voice shaking.

“Show me what’s in your hand,” he said, slamming his wooden pole into the ground.

She did as he said, and he stared at the bag full of lotus fruit, his face twisted with anger.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” she said. “I was just keeping it so I could have some more tonight. It’s so delicious that I wanted to make sure I had enough.”

The others in our group surrounded her now, their backpacks full as well. Danielle’s hand drifted to the hilt of the sword hidden beneath her clothes, and Blake reached for his lighter.

“Edith,” the man in the toga called, and the flapper lady who had blown lotus smoke in my face stepped to his side. “Is she telling the truth?”

“No.” Edith shook her head, her bobbed hair hitting her chin. “She isn’t.”

“Edith is a demigod—a daughter of Aletheia,” the man explained. “Aletheia is the goddess of truth. So Edith here can sense when someone is lying. And she’s always right. We were so lucky when she found us recently.”

Judging by Edith’s clothes, she must have gotten to the island a hundred years ago. But I supposed, given how some of them seemed to have gotten here over a
thousand
years ago, that their sense of time was extremely warped.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Kate said, holding her hands up. “I promise.”

“Except that you were.” Edith smiled sweetly, but her eyes were anything but kind. “Because no one is allowed to leave the island with the lotus fruit in their possession.”

The man tightened his grip on his wooden pole and said, “At least, they’re not allowed to leave while still alive.”

The Lotus Eaters’ eyes, which moments ago had been glazed over and hazy, were now sharp and livid. They stood up and clenched their fists, hissing with what appeared to be the intent to fight.

Not wanting to bring attention to myself—I could help my friends more if I wasn’t being targeted—I stood up with everyone else. But my mind was spinning. The Lotus Eaters were supposed to be lazy and spaced out. Why had no one warned us that they would go crazy if they realized we were trying to take the lotus fruit off the island? If we’d known, we would have taken more precautions than one weapon each.

I glanced over at Ethan, who at least had the wits to follow my lead and stand up as well. But he appeared as surprised as I felt.

I slowly stepped closer to him, careful not to make any sudden movements. “This is going to be a problem,” I whispered. “We
need
that lotus fruit.”

“Then we’re going to have to fight them for it,” he said. “You’re all demigods, right?”

“Only me,” I told him. “But the others are just as powerful—or more so.”

Doubt crossed his eyes, but he nodded, his jaw hard with resolve.

The big man in the toga picked up his stick and swung it at Kate, but Blake raised his hands and the bonfire exploded, covering toga-man and the nearby Lotus Eaters in flames. They screamed and jumped around, running to the ocean to extinguish themselves. A few of them didn’t make it, and they collapsed into wailing, burning blobs on the beach. Then a gust of wind rushed through the beach, knocking most of the Lotus Eaters onto the ground.

“That’s our cue,” I said to Ethan. “We’re going to hold them off. Grab your sister, and follow us back to the yacht. And hurry!”

I ran to join the others, but a pair of hands reached for me out of nowhere, pulling me to the ground. My bow was squished between my body and the sand, impossible to reach. I tried to push against whoever was holding me down, but there were two of them—one was holding me by the neck, the other pinning down my legs. They were so much stronger than I was that struggling was futile.

“We have you now, girl,” the man clawing my neck hissed in my ear. His breath was sickly sweet with lotus, and he tightened his grip around my neck so that I couldn’t breathe. “This is what you get for trying to take the lotus off the island. Stop struggling, and this will be nice and easy.”

My lungs screamed for air, and I tried desperately to suck in a breath, but it was impossible. I dug my nails into his hands, trying to pry them off me, but he just cackled, his eyes wide and manic as he suffocated me. A haze danced over my eyes, and all I could see was his rotted, blackened teeth hovering over me as my vision started to dim.

This was it. He was going to kill me. So without the physical strength to stop him, I did the only thing that I
could
do. I thought about all the hate I currently felt for this man—this man who was laughing as he strangled me—and I pulled as much black energy as I could into my body. I was already drained from healing Ethan, so once I’d gathered as much as I could manage, I reached up and touched the man’s face, pushing the black energy straight into his soul.

His eyes went blank, and he dropped to the ground. Dead. I didn’t have to check. I just knew.

I sucked in a long breath, feeling the sweet burn as it filled my lungs. I’d never been so grateful for something as simple as breathing. My hands rushed to my neck, to the swollen skin where the man had choked me. It was going to bruise, but I couldn’t expend the energy on healing it right now. That would have to wait until later.

The man holding down my feet stared at his friend, his mouth dropped open. “What the—” he said, looking at me in shock. “What did you do to him?”

I sat up and looked him in the eye. Judging from his garb, he and his friend had both been pirates before landing on the island. And from the murderous glint in his eyes, I could tell that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, either. “Nothing that you have to worry about,” I said, grabbing an arrow from my quiver at the same time as he lunged for me. He barely had time to realize what was happening before it pierced through his skull.

The life drained from his eyes, and I pulled out the arrow, letting his body collapse on the ground. Then I stuck the arrow back in my quiver. After all, there was no need to lose a perfectly good arrow.

I stood up and brushed the sand off my clothes, surveying the damage. More people were ablaze, wailing and screaming as they tried to run for the ocean. Danielle held her sword in front of her, swinging it at anyone who got in her way. Kids squirmed in the trees, vines wrapped around their wrists. I recognized the girl—Marion—who had greeted us when we’d arrived. Her eyes were raging mad, like the other Lotus Eaters, and she struggled against the vine to free herself. But she and the other kids appeared unharmed. Thanks to Kate’s quick thinking, they would be fine once we were off the island and they returned to their normal, peaceful selves.

Ethan ran towards me, carrying Rachael in his arms. “She tried to attack me, so I had to knock her out,” he said. “I hated doing it, but I had to.”

“It was your only choice,” I told him, and he nodded in affirmation. “But the others can’t hold the Lotus Eaters off forever. Come on. We have to go.”

We ran for the others, and relief washed over Blake’s eyes when he saw me. He ran to me and pulled me in a huge hug, holding me so tightly that I thought he would never let go. “You’re okay,” he murmured in my ear. “You have no idea how worried I was.”

“Of course I’m okay.” I said it lightly, as if it should be obvious that I could defend myself, even though that man had been moments away from strangling me to death. I pulled back to look into his eyes, my breath catching as I saw how he was looking at me—as if I meant more to him than anyone else in the world.

“We can’t hold them off for much longer!” Danielle yelled, ending the moment between me and Blake. “Come on! We have to get back to the yacht.”

Chris held his hands out, and a gust of wind rushed across the beach, pushing all the Lotus Eaters back towards the woods.

“That’s all the energy I’ve got,” he said. “Let’s go!”

We ran back the way we came, with Kate and Blake at the tail, shooting at anyone who got too close.

“Everyone get on the dingy!” Danielle said once the raft was in sight. We followed her instructions, jumping in without a second thought. Ethan laid Rachael down in the front. Since we were two more people than when we began, the fit was tight, but we all made it.

A few of the Lotus Eaters got closer, but Kate, Blake, and I were able to hold them off. We were careful to hit in places that weren’t fatal—like their legs—since we didn’t really want to
kill
these people. It wasn’t their fault that they were trapped here, under the spell of the lotus. We just wanted to get off the island—with the bags of lotus fruit that we’d collected.

“I’m going to count to three,” Danielle said. “Brace yourselves.”

She started the count off, and I gripped the side of the dingy, planting my feet firm on the floor. Once she reached three, the water around us swelled into a huge wave. It lifted us up, and moved
away
from the shore, so we rode the crest toward the yacht. We arrived in seconds—just as the last sliver of the sun sunk below the horizon.

“I was just about to go after you all.” Hypatia peered down from the railing, her mouth dropping open when she saw us.

I looked around at the others—who had ripped clothes and were covered in soot and dirt—and I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. I imagined that I appeared to be in a similar state as well.

Panic crossed Hypatia’s eyes when she noticed the two additions to our group, but she pressed her lips together, as if holding back her thoughts. “You all look like you’ve been to Hades and back,” she finally said. “Let’s get you on board and cleaned up, and then you can fill me in on what happened on that island.”

We all got showered and changed, and met back with Hypatia in the living room area of the yacht. We were all there except for Rachael, who we’d had to lock inside one of the staff rooms. She’d been given yellow energy water and had stopped trying to attack us, but since she’d been eating the lotus for over a year, she was still doped up on it and begging for more. She needed me to heal her to clear it from her body, but I wouldn’t be able to do that until tomorrow, when my energy would be replenished. For now, she had to stay locked up, so she wouldn’t try to attack us or eat the stash of the lotus fruit that we’d taken from the island.

It didn’t take long to catch Hypatia up on everything that had happened to us in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. We each took turns telling different parts of the story. Of course, I left out the part where I killed the pirate with black energy—I said that I attacked both pirates with my arrows.

No one could ever know the truth about what had really happened.

“You could have warned us that the Lotus Eaters turned murderous if anyone tried to take the fruit off the island,” Blake said. “Then we could have been prepared.”

“I’m sorry,” Hypatia said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know. No one who’s landed on the Land of the Lotus Eaters has ever returned.”

“Except for Odysseus and his men,” Kate pointed out, patting her copy of
The Odyssey
that she’d laid out on the table.

“But Odysseus and his men didn’t try to take the lotus fruit with them,” Danielle said. “So the Lotus Eaters didn’t turn psychotic on them.”

“Those people were pretty determined to kill us,” Chris added. “If we didn’t have our powers, and our weapons, and if we hadn’t been training to fight… well, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“The gods wouldn’t have sent you on this mission if you didn’t have a chance of succeeding,” Hypatia said confidently.

“So you’re saying that we have nothing to worry about?” Chris asked. “We’ll make it out of this—even the part where we have to fight the hydra—and be fine?”