The Immortal Game (book 1) (25 page)

“No. I need you here.” Ares glanced to Hermes. “Take care of Ruby for me.”

Ruby looked at him, but he was staring into the trees beyond Hermes, plotting already. She thought of Ares leaving and fresh tears threatened.

“She can’t stay here,” Athena said. “Zeus will kill her.”

Ares nodded and spoke to Hermes. “Take her back to Earth.”

“I’m not going back to Earth,” Ruby said. “I belong with you.” She paused at her next thought, and then rushed on. “I’ll come with you.”

“It’s too dangerous.” He shook his head. “Even for a god.”

“I can’t wait on Earth wondering if you’re ever coming back or if Zeus is lurking around every corner.” She pulled on his elbow. The soft skin there reminded her how vulnerable his flesh was, even if once torn and broken it would knit back together.

“The Underworld has its own rules,” he said. “They can be tricky. I may be able to get you in, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get you out again.”

“But she’s right, Ares,” Athena said. “There’s nowhere for her to go that Zeus can’t find her. She’ll have less protection on Earth than she would have here and it won’t be easy either way. Hades isn’t going to just let you walk out of the Underworld with Persephone, even if you can find her. Imagine how happy he must have been when Zeus suggested this plan. He won’t let her go easily.”

“A human will slow me down,” he said with all the reasonable sense of a tactician.

“I’m not just
some
human,” Ruby broke in.

“No, I know.” Ares blinked. “It’s not that I don’t want you with me—”

Apollo strode into the clearing then. “Well, Rubes, looks like the jig is up.” He scanned the solemn faces around the grove. “Or have you heard?”

Ares shot him a cold look, but he did not respond.

“It’s begun then.” Apollo looked to Ares and Athena in quick succession. “Should I say, ‘I told you so?’”

“I don’t believe that. This is just Zeus being Zeus,” Ares said.

“That’s all it takes. All it takes is Zeus being Zeus, and the rest of us getting sucked in.” Apollo held Ares’s gaze. “The question is, what will you do now? Are you ready to drop this charade? Ready to let Zeus have her? Ready to move on?” He didn’t look at Ruby.

Ares’s nostrils flared. Ruby put her hand on his arm again. She felt a hot current run through him as he stared at Apollo. His energy had been so calm for so long that the feeling shocked her and she sucked in a breath.

Apollo sneered. “A tour of the Underworld it is, then,” he said. “Persephone won’t be easy to find. And frankly, I don’t envy you and Rubes the trip.”

“Ruby is not coming,” Ares said. His eyes bored into the taller god. Apollo’s endorsement of the idea seemed to solidify Ares’s opinion against it.

“Well, why not? She’s the reason this is coming down on us,” he said without apology.

“She’s my wife—”

“Not yet,” Apollo cut him off. “And maybe not ever.”

Ares searched the faces in the clearing for some support. Athena spoke up. “Things may get ugly up here. Zeus will know some of us helped you. Apollo’s early vision may yet come to pass. We can’t protect her.”

Could this really be happening? Could her love for Ares tear apart Olympus?

“Apollo’s visions don’t always come true,” Ares reminded the group.

“I’m not willing to stake Olympus on a chance,” Apollo said. “And frankly, Ares, you’ve always been a dark horse.”

Ares clenched his fists. He looked to Ruby. “We leave right away.”

…

“Dionysus won’t get involved,” Hermes said as Artemis and Pan followed him into the clearing. It didn’t surprise Ruby. Dionysus and Hera were close. He had always been cordial and accepting of Ruby, but he wasn’t about to go out on limb for her.

Artemis spoke in low whispers with the nymphs at the edge of the clearing. Ruby could tell by their tone that the nature spirits were not happy about this invasion of their grove.

Pan came to Ruby and took both of her hands in his. “Take my pipes. When you meet Cerberus, don’t be afraid. Play him a tune. ‘Music hath charms to soothe a savage beast
,
’” he quoted. She didn’t ask who Cerberus was, she had decided it was best to not think too far into the future, but the loan touched her deeply. She couldn’t remember a time that Pan was without his pipes. She hugged him and breathed in his slight animal smell.

Eros handed Ares a bronze torch. “It will never run out of oil. There’s a fire striker here.” He opened a latched door at the base of the torch to reveal a piece of dark metal that was shaped like a fat bobby pin and a long piece of white quartz with one bowed edge. Ruby’s father had taught her to light a fire with a flint and steel on a camping trip once. This looked like the ancient equivalent.

Hermes lent them his winged sandals for the third time. Athena, ever practical, gave them each a leather backpack, a bag of dry-looking biscuits she called hardtack for Ruby to eat, and Ambrosia Bars for Ares and Persephone. She handed Ares another small sack that jingled softly. “Obolus,” she said. “To pay Charon.”

Ruby loaded her leather backpack with the hardtack, the sack of coins, the Ambrosia Bars, and Pan’s Pipes. She slung the pack onto her shoulders.

“Remember, only eat the hardtack I gave you and drink the water you’re bringing,” Athena cautioned. “If you eat or drink anything from the Underworld, you will be trapped there. There will be nothing any of us can do to help you.”

Ruby nodded. These words should have shaken her, but her fears were set aside by this show of support from their friends. Friends she was determined to make her family.

Hermes took Ares aside to tell him where to find the entrance to the Underworld. Ruby heard a rustle in the woods behind where the two gods stood. All the gods that she and Ares could count as friends were already in the clearing, even Apollo. Ruby’s heart rate doubled in an instant. Had they waited too long? Was Zeus coming?

But it was Aphrodite who stepped out of the woods and into their midst. She had been on Earth dealing with Mark
.
Ruby hadn’t thought she’d get to see her before they left.

Aphrodite wore jeans tucked into knee-high black boots and a tight pink sweater. She held a sword in one hand and a leather scabbard in the other. It was an incongruous picture of the prettiest girl on campus mixed up with a warrior princess. The goddess walked to Ruby and smiled as if she didn’t have a sword held out between them.

“Dionysus told me where to find you. Don’t worry.” The goddess paused and Ruby wondered if she had good news. Zeus had changed his mind, maybe. Or perhaps Persephone had returned on her own. Somehow they were going to be all right. But instead she said, “I’m taking good care of your friend.”

“Oh,” Ruby said, deflated. Mark hardly seemed to matter now.

“We need to go.” Ares walked to Ruby. He wore jeans, a flannel shirt, and Hermes’s magic sandals, with the wings tucked up against his ankles. He held a pack similar to Ruby’s. It held skins of water and hiking boots for later.

“I’m ready,” she said. She felt for the pouch around her waist and readjusted the leather pack. Her jeans had dried substantially, but her shoes were still soaked from running through the river.

Ares glanced at Aphrodite and stopped short. She looked gorgeous in modern clothes. Ruby felt a pang of envy. But it was the sword and scabbard he reached out for.

He sheathed the sword, but he didn’t buckle the straps around his waist as Ruby expected. Instead he secured it across his chest, with the scabbard at an angle on his back. The hilt of the sword stuck up, within easy reach, over his right shoulder. He slung the leather pack over the sword.

He made eye contact with Aphrodite. Ruby saw something old and deep pass between them. He nodded at the goddess of beauty, but neither said a word. Ruby’s envy threatened to become jealousy.

Artemis stepped close to Ruby. “Take my bow and my arrows.”

“I … I can’t,” she stammered.

“Release your energy into the bow. If you give yourself over to it the arrows will shoot true. You will need that.”

The goddess was right. Ruby had never used a weapon before in her life.

Ruby took the silver bow and the arrows in their quiver. She felt a slight tingle run up her arm as her hand wrapped around the cool metal. The bow weighed less than she expected. The arrows were fletched with the grey and white striped feathers of a falcon.

“But …” She hesitated. “… what if I don’t bring them back? I mean, what if I don’t come back at all?”

“You will,” Artemis said with confidence.

Ruby smiled at the show of faith.

“Ares is too great a warrior to let Hades best him,” the goddess said, without smiling back.

Ruby nodded.

Artemis tied the quiver onto Ruby’s pack and hung the bow over it. She showed Ruby how to reach the bow and then the arrows in quick succession by pulling them forward from behind her.

Ruby tried it but she fumbled the job badly and dropped the silver arrow before she could nock it. She looked at Artemis, who wore a tight expression.

“I’ll practice on the way,” Ruby said.

“Yes. You should.”

“Time,” Ares said.

“Be careful,” Athena’s heart-shaped face was tense with worry.

Ares took Ruby’s hand and looked around the group again. “We won’t forget your help.”

“You’ve known the risks all along. And you’ve taken them.” Apollo said. He and Ares locked eyes. “Now it falls to us.”

NINETEEN

The wings of Hermes’s shoes beat against Ares’s ankles. The soft grass in the clearing fluttered with the movement. Ares took Ruby in his arms and they rose gently off the ground. The gods below waved and then looked to one another. Ruby wished them well in her mind, hoping she would see them again.

They lifted above the green treetops. She hadn’t seen Olympus from this vantage since Ares had brought her to meet his family months ago. What was foreign then was now familiar. Athena’s amethyst abode, and Ares’s red-veined marble one. Aphrodite’s pink alabaster, covered in red roses, stood in contrast to Hephaestus’s dark iron.

Past those were the abodes of lesser gods, Eros and Psyche, and Pan. They looked like mere cottages compared to the impressive homes of the Olympians, but Ruby had been inside many of them and knew that they were as big and as well-appointed as any of the finest homes on Earth. In the middle of it all was the golden Great Hall, the abode of Zeus, and off to the side was Hera’s platinum one.

Ruby took it all in, trying to see the beauty of it, and not the politics and gossip that she now knew ran deep through the heart of Olympus, as entrenched as Oceanus itself.

From the corner of her eye she saw a group of gods entering the Great Hall. Hera’s auburn hair shone in the sunlight. Her long yellow peplos flowed out behind her. She was followed by Poseidon, whom, like Hades, Ruby hardly ever saw on Olympus. She had the impression that Zeus’s brothers didn’t like to leave their realms. Hephaestus was a short distance behind Poseidon. His lopsided gait was unmistakable, even from this height.

Trailing Heph were three hulking creatures Ruby had never seen before. They were taller than the other gods, and there was something strange about their faces. She squinted to make out their features. They
—
she jerked back—they had only one eye in the center of their foreheads. “Cyclopes.”

“Huh?” Ares was concentrating on moving forward, not saying good-bye. Now he looked down too.

“Damn oracles,” he said quietly, more a rumble in his chest than anything.

She searched the ground below them. Other gods moved toward the Great Hall but she and Ares were too high for her to make out faces or details.

They approached the entrance to Olympus. Ruby saw the Seasons, with their youthful faces and long flowing hair. They waved in recognition.

Ruby ignored them.

Ares didn’t say more about the Cyclopes, but she knew. Zeus was gathering his forces, as Ares had informally done in the grove before they left for Hades. Her throat started to close with tension. “It’s me,” she said. “I’m the cause of all of this.”

The weather changed as they passed through the gate of clouds. Cold mist collected on her rain jacket and dampened her jeans. She shivered.

“The balance of power on Olympus has been shifting for a long time,” Ares said. “You and me, our love, it’s brought the tensions that were already on Olympus to a head. The gods are beginning to see through Zeus’s flimsy excuses to the real reason we are forbidden from mortal realms: he can’t control himself.

“I’ve never been a favorite on Olympus,” he said. “I don’t have Hermes’s charm, Pan’s talent, or Dionysus’s ability to command a room, but the gods are coming to my defense. To
our
defense. They want to feel that if they fell in love they wouldn’t be denied because of Zeus’s lust, the way others already have been.”

“Like Apollo and Kissiae,” she said. They flew over the tree covered mountains of Washington and Oregon; the coast to their right, wide dormant valleys to their left.

“I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’m willing to fight for you.” He kissed the top of her head.

His words rang in her ears. He
was
about to fight for her. She was about to fight for him. She thought of the silver bow and quiver of arrows hanging over her pack. She wasn’t a fighter. She wasn’t brave. Who was she kidding?

…

The sun came out in patches as they left the Northwest behind and headed into California. Even as it became warm, the ground below remained brown and barren. She knew that there was more to spring arriving than just temperature and sun. It had to do with an awakening in the Earth, and the energy Demeter worked to bring the seasons about.

Soon the full strength of the sun blazed down on her, hot enough to make her want to pull away from Ares. She lifted her head from his chest and tried to get air between their sweating bodies. She felt Ares and the winged sandals slow.

“Where are we?” She wiped at her sweaty face.

“Badwater Basin in Death Valley. Hermes says there’s an entrance here below a peak called Dante’s View. We need to look for a crevice in the rock at the peak’s base.”