The Unclaimed (University of the Gods Trilogy Book 1) (9 page)

“I am not your personal property”, Cassandra replied through gritted teeth. “I don’t like being pushed into things.”

The son of Zeus laughed a bitter laugh.

“You don’t say”, he said, then indicated to the servant to get going. “Think about it. It is a good offer.”

Cassandra knew it was. She saw him wheel away and this time it was her who had to ask him to stop.

“What’s in it for you?” she asked, a little out of breath when she was at his side again.

“Besides the pleasure of your company?” he said, indicating to the servant’s to stop once more. “You are a Cassandra, aren’t you?”

Cassandra, the original one, had been a truthseer who was cursed never to be believed. Cassandra carried her name for a reason but whenever she was asked about it, she denied that connection with her namesake and even now Cassandra was tempted to lie but knew that Alexander would see right through her if she did.

“Yes, I am”, she said hesitatingly. “Iit is a very weak streak in me. There is no way for me to control it and no, I can’t predict the future by looking at your palms.”

She tried to make it sound light but Alexander didn’t laugh or smile, not this time.

“When you touched me, you saw something.”

It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. She nodded, carefully trying to keep her expression neutral.

“I saw something too”, he said.

Cassandra involuntarily felt her cheeks go hot when she remembered him standing beside a tall girl with long hair that could very well be her in a couple of years.

“I am sure it was just a misunderstanding”, Cassandra muttered and remembered how flustered she had been when she had seen them standing so close together in her vision.

He looked at her shrewdly.

“I hope not”, he replied. “I saw you saving me. I am not sure when or how or from what but save me you did. So I am not happy to see you risking your life. You see, all I want to do is to make sure that you stay with us long enough to save my life. Do you agree now that there is a lot to gain for both of us?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. He wished her a good recovery and then left her standing there, wondering at what had just happened. Once he was gone from sight, the itching started again and Cassandra made herself walk home and beg Summer to give her something for the pain. Then she went up to her room and into her bed and fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

The room inside the palace was lit by three solitary flames that cast ghastly shadows on the wall. Crouching on the floor was a small figure sitting in front of a mirror, rocking back and forth and chanting in a way that sounded weird and unnatural.

“Stop that”, another figure hissed from somewhere in the shades but the one crouching on the floor didn’t seem to hear it. Finally, the mirror came alive.

“I told you not to contact me.”

The voice was dark, haughty and clearly bothered by the late night call.

“It worked. It came”, the figure with the unnatural voice said and suddenly stopped rocking. “But it didn’t kill it. It is still alive. They all are.”

The woman raised her eyebrow just a fraction. To anyone else this would have been a terrifying indicator of extreme displeasure but the creature didn’t even register it.

“We thought it would be bigger. We blew it three times. It should have been bigger.”

Now the woman’s eyebrows contracted to a thunderstorm.

“You did what?” she asked, her voice livid with suppressed rage. She tried to get a look at the figure in the background, but it was too dark. “Why didn’t you stop her? You should have blown blow it once.”

The woman made a visible effort to calm herself.

“Never mind”, she said when the other one still wouldn’t answer. “We will see what comes of it. Make sure to do as I tell you from now on. No more mistakes. You know that those abominations need to die.”

With that she vanished. The crouching figure moaned.

“She didn’t tell us what to do next”, it moaned. “Shall we blow it again?”

She drew out a small pipe. The figure in the back was upon her faster than a shadow and snatched it from her.

“I told you to hide it”, it hissed. “You shouldn’t carry it with you. If you get caught with it, it is over for us.”

The figure on the floor shrank back and started chanting something that sounded like “mean, mean”.

“How did you manage to control the hydra, sedate the guards and keep the doors locked at the same time?” the tall figure asked. “I thought your magic wasn’t that strong.”

The creature on the floor didn’t answer, only kept moaning.

“Of course”, the tall figure said. “She helped, didn’t she? “

The creature on the floor didn’t react to that, only started to chant louder.

“Go take your medication”, the tall one hissed, kicking the figure on the floor in anger. “Get out before I lose it.”

The figure seemed to completely fold in on itself, then stood up and limped outside. When it was gone, the tall one went to the window and looked outside. The wonderful view of the gardens and the seaside that started where the gardens ended was completely lost on her. Instead, she was wondering what else they had called. A hydra was a vicious creature but she hoped that the others would be even more terrifying. And certainly more effective. The woman only wanted the Unclaimed to die but she had bigger aims. She couldn’t wait until he was finally gone, until she would be rid of them all. And then it would be her time. Her time alone.

After her encounter with the hydra, Cassandra often woke up screaming. Summer offered her some tea to make the dreams go away but that only helped a little. Hector, who had developed an ugly rash and had trouble breathing, was still staying at the infirmary and it would be a while before he would be allowed to come home again.

Whenever Pandora and Cassandra went to see Hector, Cassandra also tried to put in a quick visit to River but found it impossible to talk to him because he was always in the company of either Wolf, Ben or Sol. River had his arm in a sling and was looking awfully pale; his armor had saved him from worse damage but she could see that the process of healing was slow and painful for him. To Cassandra’s surprise, it was Wolf who came to visit most. Maybe because he was feeling guilty that his friend had been hurt because of him or maybe it was also something else. Once, she saw him shaking with sobs when River was asleep, but what was even more surprising was that when Ben came back in and saw the state his friend was in, Wolf accepted that Ben laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. There was a connection between the demigods that reminded her of the one she had with Pandora and Hector, a deep bond that went beyond being friends and she respected that.

On the fourth night after her fight with the hydra, Cassandra couldn’t take it anymore. She had woken up drenched in sweat, her heart beating like it was going to explode and she knew that she needed to get out, to run it off.

She slipped into her clothes, put on her shoes and started running the moment she left the door. After a while she began to feel a little better, so she ran even harder. Without knowing how she ended up there, she came to a halt at the edge of the cliffs where the three servant girls had been killed.

Panting heavily and feeling sweat trickle down her back, she remembered how she had gone to talk to the dead girls’ families the day after the incident. She had taken Pandora because her sister was good with people. And she spoke more than twenty languages fluently. That often helped as well. When they had entered the servant’s quarters, everybody had gone on about their business but they had stopped talking, watching them walk past with barely concealed hostility. It didn’t help that their clothes weren’t in much better condition, nor that they had come with good intentions. They didn’t belong here and weren’t welcome.

It hadn’t been difficult to find the house where grief had taken over. The wailing of the mother could be heard from afar and only then had Cassandra found out that all three girls had been sisters. One of the remaining two siblings was trying her best to console the mother, but the other, a boy of maybe seventeen, with hardened eyes and a cold, dismissive demeanor, was clearly bothered by his mother’s crying. He seemed to be torn between wanting to run away and throttling her. When Cassandra had started asking questions – whether anyone had seen or heard anything unusual, noticed anything different lately, strange sounds, noises or smells in the past few weeks– the brother told them to leave his family alone.

Cassandra told them that they wouldn´t stop looking for the monster that killed the girls. There was a glimmer in the boy´s eyes before he turned away from them and finally they had left again..

Back in the present, Cassandra breathed in the cold, salty air and listened to the calming sound of the waves. There were a million stars above her and a bright, almost full moon that lit up the sky. She went down to the beach and took a closer look at the spot where the girls had died the other day.

The ground was rough and uneven and there was driftwood everywhere. To the side, there were entrances to what must have been the extensive cave system of the island. It was a complicated and intricate structure of tunnels and caves, some so small you could barely stand in, others so big that a palace could easily fit in there. Cassandra felt strangely drawn towards those caves but just when she was about to take a closer look, she felt the hair on her neck rise. She spun around but there was no one. When she turned back, Ben was standing right in front of her.

“Trouble sleeping?” he said and grinned.

Cassandra gave him a push – or would have, hadn’t he swirled to the side at the exact same moment as if he had expected her to do just that.

“Stop doing that”, Cassandra hissed, wishing she knew how he could be so damn fast.

He looked like he had been running as well. He was dressed in black, no surprises there, but this time it seemed like it was his version of casual, which meant black sweat pants and a black hooded sweater that he was now drawing up to shield himself against the soft but cold wind blowing so close to the water. Before he did that, she could see the dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately either.

“One moment you are there, one moment you aren’t”, Cassandra said and tried to read his face under the drawn hood. “Why didn’t I feel your presence? That is… unusual.”

His dark eyes reflected the moonlight, telling her nothing. Instead of answering her question, he indicated towards a spot below them.

“Someone else was attacked today but fortunately no one was hurt. I was going to have a look. Care to join me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he started climbing down.

“What happened?” she asked, following him closely.

“Some of the servants were gathering wood for their fires when they heard a noise that was apparently so loud they could do nothing but cover their ears and wait until it was over.”

Down there it was a little less windy but the water suddenly looked darker and much less inviting.

“River says that the creature attacking the girls on the beach shouldn’t have been there in the first place”, Ben said and Cassandra remembered that he had promised to tell her what River had found out after his talk with the Nereids. “The Nereids were scared of it, so they didn’t go anywhere near it and it seems like they haven’t seen it since then, at least as far as I know.”

Cassandra nodded. She had gathered as much as there hadn’t been any further incidents since that day. Until today that was. Maybe the creature wasn’t gone after all. She had a fleeting feeling that someone was watching them. She saw Ben hesitate for a moment as well but when they didn’t hear or see anything, they continued further towards the labyrinth of caves.

“Do you see that?” Ben said, squinting,. “Wanna go take a look?”

He indicated to something gleaming in the moonlight a little farther up and immediately started climbing without waiting for an answer. When Cassandra drew herself up, Ben was already inspecting the object stuck in the rocks.

Just when Cassandra wanted to say that this was getting old, they heard a sound like someone was scratching their nails on a blackboard, just a billion times louder and then a bark and something big plunged into the water.

“Did you just hear a dog too?” Ben said and Cassandra nodded.

They waited but there came nothing else and eventually they relaxed again.

“That was weird”, Cassandra murmured and then remembered why they had climbed up there in the first place.

She stepped closer and saw that there were deep scratch marks in the rock at about chest level. They didn’t look natural, more like something sharp and metallic had made them. She carefully traced her fingers along the deep scratches and stopped when she came to the little metal scrap that was still glistening in the moonlight.

The scrap was evenly shaped and had a black, bluish color. When she tried to remove it, she cut herself. She breathed in sharply from the pain and instinctively wanted to stick her bleeding finger into her mouth but Ben caught her hand before it reached her lips.

“You have a tendency to get hurt”, he said and thoughtfully stroked the spot where the cut was already healing again. Then he let go and pulled out a knife.

“What are you doing?” Cassandra asked, more curious than scared.

“Have you never wondered why it turns that color?” he asked and Cassandra looked down at her hand, where a smear of her blood that had turned golden was still visible, and shrugged.

He held up his left arm. A silvery band was winding itself around his wrist like a snake. Cassandra shuddered. It seemed alive. Weird. And evil. Ben saw her looking at the band and then, with one precise move, cut his wrist. The band disappeared with an angry hiss but was back again within a heartbeat. Ben sighed, then held his arm out to her.

“It’s Ichor”, Ben said. “Blood of the gods.”

When she didn’t react to that, he indicated to his blood that was turning golden now as well.

“Only demigods bleed Ichor”, he said and waited until the reality of what he had just said hit her.

“But that would mean…”, Cassandra started but felt dizzy all of a sudden.

“Are you sure that is correct?” she asked, looking at her finger in a mixture of shock and the strange feeling that this didn’t come entirely as a surprise to her.

“But this cannot be true”, she said, shaking her head. “If… that was true, someone would surely have claimed me, don’t you think? They would have had to know. They would have gone looking for…”

She had almost said “us” but caught herself at the last moment. She had never wondered about her blood because she hadn’t been the only one to bleed golden. Hector did, too, and she had simply thought that it had something to do with their divine heritage.

“A lot of things happen up on Mount Olympus and down here on earth that we don’t really understand. Maybe they didn’t know”, Ben said slowly, watching the cut on his wrist heal itself and then hid the snakelike band on his arm below his sleeve again. “I think that there is a reason that you were left unclaimed but I also think that you have a right to know what you are.”

Cassandra continued to stare at her finger like the answer lay there somehow.

“We were told that it was just us”, Ben said, again taking her hand and stroking the spot where she had cut herself. “Nine demigods, no more. We grew up believing that we were born so that we could rule the world one day. But what if it is not just us? What does that mean then?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. Cassandra closed her eyes, trying to stop her head from spinning.