Ungodly Read online

  “You have to go,” Andie said. “We have to find them. Besides, you can’t stay here by yourself. We don’t know where Ares is, or that asshole Achilles.” Her fists clenched when she said his name.

  “Andie, will you shut up for five minutes?”

  “Not effing likely.”

  Henry took a breath to quell the urge to throw her in a headlock and roll her around the yard.

  “I’m pulled in a lot of different directions right now, if you haven’t noticed,” he said. “My parents, school, the parts of my life that aren’t freaking insane.”

  “You’re not the only one. But we have to go. There isn’t a choice.”

  “There’s been a choice this whole time. Just nobody’s made the right ones. I’m not going.” He frowned. It was a shitty situation they were in. That they were all in. “I’m sorry. My parents would worry themselves to death. With Cassandra missing … and then me…”

  Of course, they’d forgive him if he could bring Cassandra home.

  Andie’s glare made him hold his breath.

  “Of course I noticed,” she said. “You idiot. What do you think I was doing here?” She opened her door and ducked inside.

  “Andie.”

  If she heard she didn’t show it. She just backed out and drove away.

  3

  UNDERNEATH

  The dark is not total. There is some light still, and movement of air that isn’t my breath, and isn’t yours. There’s still time, before the light sets on another passing day, or week, or hour, whatever arbitrary chunk of time she’s decided to turn into a cycle. There’s still time for you to open your eyes.

  Athena trembled, cold despite the warm blood on her arms. Odysseus lay before her on soft, slate-colored sand. His eyes were closed. Achilles’ sword was still lodged in his chest. She’d tilted him onto his side to accommodate it.

  “I can hear his blood, singing down the edge of that blade.”

  “Shut up, Persephone.” Athena jerked her head in time to see the trailing edge of her cousin’s dark dress. Persephone laughed, and Athena bit her tongue, saving whatever strength she had inside a body that felt clammy and pliant. Persephone couldn’t hurt him here. Not where Athena had set him, on the far bank of the river Styx, in the hinterland between the living and the dead. Not while he still breathed. Even the queen of the underworld had limits. But Persephone could send things: shades, and worse than shades, across the river in the night. Athena swallowed. The light around them faded like a waning candle, and when it was gone, she’d have to be ready to fight again.

  “You can’t keep this up forever, Athena.”

  “Watch me.”

  “He won’t live here.”

  “But he won’t die, either.” Odysseus would breathe, and lay unconscious and shivering, with a monster’s blade through his chest. A bead of sweat, or a tear, rolled down Athena’s cheek. She held his hand gently and there was no letting go. Over and over her mind replayed those last seconds inside of Olympus. She saw Achilles walk to Hera and the Moirae. Saw him smile. Had it been a sudden betrayal? Or had he played them all along?

  It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, it came easy. And I should have known.

  “Is that what you really want?” Persephone asked. “For him to linger here, half dead and always dying?”

  Athena laughed weakly. “Half dead and always dying. He’ll be just like you. And you don’t seem to mind it much.”

  The wind changed, and carried the scent of sweet decay to Athena’s nostrils. She kept her breath shallow to stave off gagging. It hadn’t come from Odysseus. His wounds bled, but were no worse. He remained trapped in between. The smell could have been from anything else in the underworld. From whatever beast Persephone intended to send across the river that night, or from Persephone herself, from the half of her body that was still wet and rotting. Or perhaps it came from the Styx, the river of hate. Often Athena thought she caught a hint of what she imagined hate must smell like. Hot and metallic.

  She passed a hand across Odysseus’ forehead. She was so tired. Bone tired.

  When the light returns I’ll lie down beside you. I’ll lie beside you, and you’ll keep me, for a little while.

  The light would return. She didn’t know when. Sometimes the blackness felt so long, and the cuts on her arms and throbs in her joints weighed her down until she wanted to scream. Until she did scream. And then she would blink, and the light would be back. She could see what it was she fought, and she would fight on. Athena didn’t know how long they’d been there. It wasn’t worth trying to measure the cycles of light and dark. The light wasn’t morning. It was barely real light. And it didn’t matter. She and Odysseus were there, and there they would remain.

  “Odysseus,” Athena whispered, and watched him as the dark came. When she could no longer see him, she got to her feet and clenched her fists.

  4

  THE GODS OF DEATH

  The doors of the bar stood wide open and let in a swath of bright light. Which was good, because there wasn’t much light from anywhere else. Just a green glass lamp hanging over the pool table and a few yellow bulbs behind the cash register. Cassandra looked at herself in the slivers of mirror visible between bottles of Pucker and vodka. She looked as young as she suspected she looked.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Calypso said into her drink. “You might as well be a blinking neon underage sign.”

  “Sorry. There aren’t a lot of bars back in Kincade where sophomores like to hang out.” Cassandra wrinkled her nose. The interior smelled like smoke and old wood, open doors or not.

  “As long as you don’t order your beer in a red plastic cup, you’ll be fine.” Calypso smiled prettily at the bartender. Cassandra wouldn’t order anything, but as long as Calypso kept flirting, it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Where is this guy?” Cassandra glanced around the room. It wasn’t exactly a happening scene in the middle of the day. Maybe it never was. The place was a dive, with chipped tables and a Metroid pinball machine in the corner. The kind of bar that saw the same two dozen regulars on rotating nights.

  “He’ll be here.” Calypso took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Don’t look too eager. You’ll chase him away.”

  “I’ll do my best.” The knowledge of Cassandra’s powers had spread surprisingly fast through the gods’ subculture, considering how disjointed they were and how poorly they kept in touch. This was the third lead that Calypso had tracked down. The first two had hissed and scurried for cover, burying themselves deep within human crowds before she could even tell them what she wanted. It was a lot of trouble to go through for fake IDs and passports. A lot of trouble for the trails of gods.

  But it would be worth every minute when she found them.

  Frustrated, she eyed the bartender and considered ordering a beer. He might let her slide, if for no other reason than to curry favor with Calypso. And Cassandra could use it. The tension of waiting was getting on her nerves. The guy was twenty-five minutes late already. Maybe he’d seen her from the door and changed his mind. Maybe she shouldn’t have come.

  Cassandra sighed and looked at Calypso. The nymph stirred her drink listlessly.

  “What? Is it Odysseus?”

  “No,” Calypso replied. “Yes. But I’ll be with Odysseus soon enough.”

  “Then what is it?” Cassandra asked. “You look really depressed.”

  Calypso smiled. “It’s stupid. But it is depressing.” She fingered the brown and white twist in her hair. “I look my age.”

  “You do not.” Cassandra snorted. “If you looked your age, you’d look like dust.” She laughed, relieved that it was something so foolish. Of all the things to worry about. Though she supposed that to Calypso, it was important. Beauty defined her. Cassandra watched her tap her hair, almost distractedly. Saying she was still beautiful would do no good. What bothered her was the fact that she had changed. She had changed, and she would change still more. When she died she would wear an aged face. A stran
ger’s face.

  “Tell me about your friend,” Cassandra said. “Something besides that he’s afraid of me. Should he be afraid of me?”

  Calypso shrugged and brightened a little. “He’s a satyr. He doesn’t kill. But he does have appetites.”

  “What kind of appetites?”

  “He sleeps with lots of girls and doesn’t call them in the morning. Is that something you can forgive?”

  Cassandra shrugged. “He sleeps with girls.”

  “Lots of girls.”

  She shrugged again. “So would Hermes if Athena wasn’t watching him all the time. And not just girls, but boys and probably congressmen.”

  Calypso shook her head slowly. “But you’re going to kill Hermes, too. Aren’t you?”

  Cassandra said nothing. She’d pushed the idea of killing Hermes into the back of her mind. Aside from Aidan, he was the only god she loved as well as hated.

  It doesn’t matter. All gods must die. Whether I love them or not.

  Loud, almost clanging footsteps snapped her out of her thoughts. Beside her, Calypso smiled and gestured for the figure in the doorway to come closer. After a second of staring at him, Cassandra did, too, with a slight nod of her head. Come on. It’s safe. I won’t put my hands on you and turn you into mutton. And she wouldn’t unless he gave her real cause. He was only a satyr. Not a god. Not even a nymph like Calypso. His death was probably so accelerated that he only had a few more years anyway.

  As he hugged Calypso and kissed her cheek, Cassandra studied his body and every inch of exposed skin. All seemed healthy and California tan. His olive undertones made his brown T-shirt look green.

  “David. This is Cassandra.”

  Cassandra held her hand out, and watched him debate whether to touch her or to risk pissing her off by not touching her.

  “It’s okay,” she said, and put her hand back on the bar.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He gave no excuse as to why, and signaled to the bartender for a beer. “Should we get a table?”

  They moved to the back, out of the shaft of sunlight and into the dusty yellow of the billiard lamp. David slid into a chair and tossed a small manila envelope onto the table. Calypso opened it and took out a stack of fake passports and driver’s licenses. The way she flipped through them so casually made Cassandra glance back to check the bartender. But he had his eyes where they should be, on the glasses he was washing. He knew what it meant when his patrons retreated to the back corner.

  Calypso frowned.

  “You made me twenty-seven.”

  David shrugged. “The photos you sent looked twenty-seven. It’s a good age. You want them to last, don’t you?”

  Calypso passed Cassandra hers.

  “He made you twenty-one.”

  “And that was a stretch.” David took a drink. “You look all of about fifteen.”

  All of about fifteen. But she was almost seventeen. And could have killed him by caressing his cheek. She tucked the IDs into her pocket and looked David over, noting the faint lines around his mouth and the looseness of his skin. A burly patch of chest hair was visible at his collar, shot through with gray. Cassandra scrutinized his head. That black hair of his wasn’t quite so naturally black anymore. Poor David. He would be sleeping with and not calling fewer and fewer girls in the coming months.

  “So. Ladies. Is that it? Because not that it isn’t a kick to see you, Cally, but…”

  “No, that’s not it.” Cassandra interjected. “What have you heard of the other gods? And—don’t lie. And don’t make me ‘bad cop’ you either. I’d feel ridiculous.”

  David paused. He looked sort of amused, but no less nervous.

  “I’m just a satyr,” he said. “A lower being. Why would I know anything?”

  Cassandra glanced at Calypso. As a nymph, she was half a lower being herself. And the farther down you were on the godly ladder, the closer you paid attention. Lowers minded the uppers, in case the uppers decided to cause trouble.

  “What have you heard?” Cassandra asked again.

  “What have I heard?” David snorted. “What have you heard?”

  “I’ve heard that Artemis is dead,” Cassandra said. “Not by my hand. And Poseidon is dead. Not mine either. Aidan—” she swallowed. “Apollo is dead. Hera is dead. She was mine. Athena’s probably dead, too.” She couldn’t tell if any of it surprised or saddened David. He wore his masks well.

  “Who do you want?” he asked.

  “I want Aphrodite. And Ares, since he’ll probably be there anyway.”

  David shook his head. “Not a chance. Those two took off so fast they left behind a dust trail. Nobody’s heard a thing from them. Besides, by all accounts, Aphrodite’s in pretty bad shape. She’ll probably die on her own. Save you the trouble.”

  No. Aphrodite would die screaming at her hands, and it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. Cassandra’s palms burned quietly, and she brushed them against the cool fabric of her jeans.

  “He’s not lying,” Calypso said after a few seconds.

  “I know,” Cassandra replied.

  He was too afraid to lie. Nothing he would protect could hurt him worse than she could. Still, the idea that Aphrodite had gone to ground, out of her reach, made her stomach twist.

  We’ll find them, someday. They can’t hide forever. Someone will have seen them.

  “What about Hades?” she asked. God of the underworld. God of death. When she’d gone to the underworld looking for Aidan, Persephone said that Hades’ death would be a blight on the world. That he would die in a blast of virus and disease. An entire city would fall around him to some unspeakable plague. One last tribute, she’d called it. But not if Cassandra could help it. If she couldn’t have Aphrodite, then she’d settle for him.

  Calypso and David stared.

  “Hades?”

  Cassandra nodded. The idea of him walking in a city somewhere, ticking down like a biological weapon, had been in the back of her mind since she’d returned from the underworld. More than once she’d dreamed of a man clothed in black, surrounded by thousands of corpses, blackened and bleeding from the eyes. The first time she woke in a panic, and flipped through every news channel she could find. But it hadn’t been a vision. Only a nightmare. It was harder and harder to tell the difference.

  David laughed and drew his hand roughly over his chin.

  “Cally, your friend has big balls for such a little girl.”

  Calypso made a face. “Don’t be gross, David. Have you heard anything about Hades, or not?”

  He sighed. “He’s not on this continent. He doesn’t like it. Except for Mexico, when the Aztecs were there, and then he came north for the frontier. That’s the last I heard of him here.”

  Cassandra rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter if Hades wasn’t in the United States when David had just supplied them with passports.

  “I can’t get you to Hades,” he said finally. “But if you’re after the god of death, why not try the real thing?”

  “The real thing?”

  Cassandra searched the whole of her mind all the way to Troy and back but couldn’t discern who he referenced.

  “Thanatos?” Calypso asked, and David nodded.

  “Thanatos. Death embodied. If you want Hades, he’ll know where to find him.”

  “And?” Cassandra snapped. “Where is this … Thanatos?”

  David finished his beer and stood. “You’re in luck. He loves Los Angeles.”

  * * *

  “Don’t you know how to do your hair? I thought all girls today would know at least how to do a fancy ponytail.”

  Cassandra stared at her reflection in the hotel mirror. The girl who stared back had a face clean of makeup and slightly tanned shoulders from time spent under unfamiliar sun. Brown hair hung down to her elbows. It hadn’t been cut in months.

  “I don’t want to do my hair. And I don’t want to wear this.” The dress Calypso had put her in stuck to her in every place that would make her self-conscious. I
t was black, but a shadow of gray patterning across her chest and down her hip suggested a leopard’s spots. They might have stripped it off of any wasted Hollywood socialite.

  “We won’t get in if you don’t wear that.” Calypso stepped behind her and swept her hair back over her shoulders. Four quick twists and what felt like a dozen bobby pins threaded through Cassandra’s scalp made it almost presentable.

  “I don’t like the idea of that, either.” She squirmed as Calypso applied makeup to her eyes and lips. “I don’t need this. You’d be enough. I could sneak by in your shadow.” Calypso wore light blue silk. Somehow it made her eyes greener and her skin more honeyed. She patted Cassandra’s cheek.

  “This is the price to meet the god of death.”

  Cassandra frowned. The price to meet the god of death was animal print. But she would bear it to get close to him, so he might get her closer to the other gods. Her heart hammered at the thought, and her hands hadn’t stopped itching all day. She’d had to watch herself to make certain she didn’t touch Calypso and accidentally add another line to her face.

  “Come on. The cab will be here in a few minutes.” Calypso’s warm smile was almost infectious. But not quite. Not so very long ago, a night like this would have been thrilling. To hit the clubs in a strange town. Not so long ago, it would’ve been Cassandra in the mirror, trying to get Andie to put on at least a little eyeliner.

  But I still wouldn’t have worn this stupid dress.

  She glanced down at her chest.

  Might’ve been fun to get Andie to wear it.

  The name of the club was Haze Park. On the drive from the hotel, Cassandra tried to track the streets, but lost the thread after four turns. Every inch of Los Angeles looked the same to her, especially at night. It was all so dry and spare compared with back home. She never thought she would miss the mud and gray slop of a Kincade spring. By now the whole yard would be wet. Lux would roll around in the melt puddles and come out smelling awful. Their mom would shriek and chase him off of the furniture until Henry caught him and threw him into the tub.

  The cab pulled up to the curb, past a long line of people waiting behind ropes. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Calypso they could just wait with everyone else, that they’d never cut to the front of the line. That it only happened in movies. But the second Calypso stuck a leg out the door, the bouncer motioned with his fingers for them to come ahead.