Ungodly Page 8

  “What the hell have you been up to?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She looked at Ares. “Thank you.”

  “I had to go far enough to get it,” Ares said. “Sneaking back onto that mountain. It felt like robbing my own house. You should have thought of that yourself, Athena. Instead of getting stuck in Uncle Hades’ web.”

  “There wasn’t time,” Athena said. “He’d have died before I got him there.”

  Ares snorted again. In truth, the waters of Olympus hadn’t even crossed her mind. Not until the moment Ares mentioned them. When the sword went through Odysseus’ chest, it was as if Athena had disappeared.

  Or maybe she had disappeared even before that, when she convinced herself the Fates were with her, and she was invincible.

  Ares watched his wolves pad lightly in a small perimeter, red fur and black.

  “Speaking of Uncle Hades,” he said. “You know how he gets, when someone tries to pull the dead out of the underworld without permission. He had a claim on that one”—he pointed to Odysseus—“and he’s not going to like what we’ve done. We’re going to need leverage, and fast.”

  “What do you propose?” Athena asked.

  “I propose that you and I ford that river and take Persephone.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” Ares asked.

  “Are you?”

  Athena walked side by side with him through the Styx. The river of hate rose up to her thighs and rippled away like oil no matter how hard she kicked. There was no froth. No splash. Its scent hung heavy and sweet, like old pennies tossed into bad wine. She remembered the taste of it from her trip with Cassandra. At least then they’d had a boat.

  Another few moments and they’d be forced to swim, necks strained to keep the water out of their eyes and mouths. Athena felt Ares’ eyes on her bruises and scabs and wondered if she’d have enough strength to take on both him and Persephone if he double-crossed her. She doubted it. Whatever had transpired on Olympus, Ares didn’t look any worse than he had the last time she’d seen him.

  He wore a black T-shirt and no visible bandages. The only cut showing was on his forearm, and it had healed to a dry, red line.

  “Hurry up.” Ares pushed out and started to swim. “I don’t want to be in this river without my feet touching sand for long. Who knows what might drag us under.”

  Athena pushed off. She knew what might drag them under. Enormous deepwater serpents, their fins and sides lit with phosphorescence. And once they were down there, other things would fight the serpents for possession. Bigger things. Things with gullets big enough to swallow them whole.

  She kicked her legs hard, and smiled when Ares kicked his harder, trying to stay ahead. When their feet touched the bottom on the other side, both breathed heavy from exertion and relief.

  “Where’s Persephone? And where’s the dog?” Athena asked, referring to Cerberus, Hades’ three-headed hound. Though he’d been down to two heads the last time she’d seen him. The third head had already died and been picked clean of meat and fur by the other two.

  Maybe by now he’d be down to one.

  Athena looked farther inland, deeper into the caverns and tunnels of the underworld. Persephone was nowhere to be seen. And she hadn’t sent anything across the river after them during the dark hours the night before.

  “She knows we’re here.” Ares pushed water off his arms as though his hands were squeegees, and shook them dry with distaste. “But she doesn’t know why.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, we. You didn’t think I’d leave her alone above, did you?”

  Aphrodite’s slender leg poked into Athena’s peripheral vision, as if she’d only been waiting for her introduction. Athena turned and took her in: the mad goddess, still marred with purple bruises, her blue-green dress torn and stained with mud.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “Not happy to see me, sister?” Aphrodite asked. “It’s all right. I wasn’t expecting tears and embraces.” Aphrodite smiled a small smile; it shivered sadly in her beautiful face. “But you have accepted our offer?”

  “I have. But you both know it doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  Athena ground her teeth. Aphrodite knew damned well why. The minute Athena burst into that chamber on Olympus and saw the Moirae, she knew that they were finished. The Moirae were gods to the gods. Gods to her father.

  But Aphrodite’s innocent, stupid face sang of denial.

  So let her hold on to it. She’ll be more use busting out of here if she has hope.

  “Because you killed Aidan, that’s why,” Athena said. “You killed Apollo, and the girl who can kill every one of us loved him. She wants you dead more than anyone, and she might not care too much what my opinion is.”

  “I thought you were her friend,” Aphrodite said.

  “I am her friend. But she isn’t mine.”

  Ares reached out and pulled Aphrodite close to his side.

  “You’ll do whatever you can, Athena,” he said. “For now, let’s worry about our uncle. And our half-corpse aunt.”

  Athena cocked her head. “You seem less crazy here, Aphrodite.”

  “You seem less bitchy,” Aphrodite said, and Athena curled her lip.

  “Persephone is strong,” Athena warned. “Maybe stronger here than we are.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” said Ares. “The hardest thing is going to be finding her. But don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.” He and Aphrodite headed farther in, toward the labyrinth of tunnels.

  I might be an idiot, following those two. Or we might all be idiots, going in there.

  Athena looked over her shoulder to where Odysseus lay propped against a stone, watching. Oblivion sat by his side. Panic paced near the edge of the river.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Ares. “They’ll make sure he’s safe. And they won’t kill him, either.”

  “If they take so much as a nibble, I’ll eat my fill of red and black wolf.” Athena said it loud, and saw Oblivion flash his fangs.

  It felt stupid to go. To leave Odysseus in a den of enemies.

  But she had no other choice.

  * * *

  Athena stayed behind them by a few steps, feeling safer with Ares and Aphrodite in her sight line. Except that meant that she would be the one Persephone sank her teeth into first, if she came upon them from behind. There was no winning.

  The walls of the underworld stretched up on all sides, translucent, pale, and cut through with dark veins of rock. Or was it oil? Red-orange light played off the surface and made the whole thing seem to move. It reminded Athena of an old person’s skin, or of Persephone’s decaying half. As she watched, a shadow passed close to the surface and made her jump.

  Ares heard, and chuckled over his shoulder.

  The dead roamed the walls in numbers beyond counting. But they were only shadows. Stuck shadows.

  “You all right back there?” Ares asked.

  “Shut up, Ares. And that goes for both of you. The way you’re walking you might as well be a herd of cattle. Have you forgotten how to hunt?”

  Ares made no attempt to lessen the audible crunching of his shoes on the ground. If anything, he got louder.

  “I never learned to hunt,” he said. “I learned to kill.”

  “Whatever you say, Chuck Norris.”

  Aphrodite looked back, but when she spoke it was to Ares, not Athena.

  “She’s gotten so adorably human, hasn’t she? In love with a mortal. Perhaps not even a virgin anymore.”

  “Where are we going?” Athena asked, ignoring her. “Not past the palace?”

  If Hades had returned home, that’s where he would be. And if he was pissed, he’d have called the Judges home as well.

  The Judges. If we manage to get out of here without facing them, I’ll hug Ares. Hell, I’ll hug them both.

  “No,” Ares replied. “We’re going to the lake.”

  The dead tended to gat
her near the lake to wander, to try to drink, and to remember who they were. It was a sad, horrible place, the air choked with equal parts frustration and despair.

  They were close, if the scenery could be trusted. Small sprigs of asphodel had begun to crop up along the walls, having twisted their way through cracks. The banks of the lake were covered with it: small, pale blossoms of delicate beauty with no scent. The sight of the bloom filled the dead with hope only to tear it away when they buried their noses in the flowers and smelled nothing.

  When they came upon the lake, it lay still and coldly black, stretching out into the distance. Asphodel carpeted the banks. A few ambitious sprouts had even flowered in the shallows. Athena kept herself from sniffing. It was difficult, even though she knew better. After a few seconds, she moved her eyes to the water, unable to look at the flowers anymore.

  “What are we doing here, Ares?” she asked. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “We’re looking for some dead to do a job for us.”

  Athena scanned the lake. They were alone. No shades. Perhaps their presence had frightened them off.

  “I don’t see any dead.”

  Ares smiled and drew a knife from his pocket.

  “That’s because we haven’t called them.”

  10

  FURY

  The Fury railed against the chains in the basement. Her rage shook the foundation of Thanatos’ house, and every time she screamed, Cassandra’s spine tried to crawl out of her back and take up residence on the ceiling.

  “Maybe we should have taped her mouth,” Calypso suggested.

  Thanatos leaned against the bookshelves in his living room.

  “Make a note for next time,” he said.

  They closed their eyes as she shrieked again. It felt indecent. Cassandra imagined the Fury down there, bound and writhing on the floor. Kicking her claws into the stone walls, the chains cutting into her skin. While they sat upstairs on leather sofas and chairs, sipping lime water.

  “You’re sure no one can hear her screaming?” Cassandra asked.

  Thanatos waved his hand; a don’t-worry-about-it gesture. He hadn’t spoken to her since whatever spell Calypso had used to make them lust for each other had worn off. He hadn’t really looked at her, either, which was the only reason she felt safe looking at him. Whatever Calypso had done, it was strong. It still tingled in her chest. It made her fixate on the details of his face: the darkness of his lashes against his cheek. The muscular curve of his shoulder.

  Calypso sat alone on the sofa with her legs tucked up, pleased as a cat despite a quickly forming bruise along her jaw.

  “I think I’m going to go outside for a minute.” Cassandra set her water glass on the table. “It feels cold in here.”

  Outside, the sun baked into her arms and face. She wished she’d worn a black shirt. White reflected too much heat. She walked through the yard toward the pool and looked out over the hills. In the basement, the Fury’s screams grew less insistent, and less frequent.

  “Your stomach doesn’t want to hold still, does it?” Thanatos asked. He walked up behind her, along the stone tiles beside the pool. “You can’t keep your mind off her,” he said, “can’t help but pity her a little. Even though you think she’s a monster.”

  His words weren’t cruel, nor were they an accusation. It struck her as strange that he wouldn’t see pity as weakness.

  “She is a monster,” Cassandra said.

  “No. She’s a Fury. She is as she was made. But you don’t fool me. Your feeling for that creature borders on compassion. It’s not what I was expecting. Not what I had heard about the girl who kills gods.”

  “What have you heard about me?”

  “Whispers.” He shrugged. “Most of which I ignored. Some tales of a reincarnated prophetess. Rumor had it that gods were looking for you. I didn’t really pay attention until the gods showed their hand. That they were dying. Then my ears pricked. And then you started killing them. Imagine my delight when a satyr whispered you were headed my way.”

  Cassandra cursed under her breath. “Satyr David.”

  “Of course. But I don’t know why he thought he had to warn me about a young girl from small-town New York.”

  “Because you weren’t sure,” she said, scrutinizing him. “Not a hundred percent. I might have been able to kill you. I might be able to still, one day.”

  “Don’t be so full of yourself. You’re not that different from a thousand angry girls before you. Tracking me down with bloodied, broken hearts clenched in your fingers. Wanting someone to pay. Wanting to pay yourselves.”

  Psych 101 from the god of death. What a treat.

  “You know about Aidan,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “Well excuse me for saying so, but you don’t know shit about Aidan.” She turned to face him, and her heart pounded to her fingertips. Not with anger. If her skirt had pockets, she’d have stuffed them inside. Anything to keep her hands from his shoulders, and her arms from snaking around his neck.

  “Damn Calypso,” he whispered, staring at her lips.

  “It’ll wear off, won’t it?” Cassandra asked, and clenched her teeth. She was getting angry now, and the anger made it worse.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Good. Because I really want to—” She paused and looked at his chest, rising and falling fast with his breath. “Put my hands underneath your shirt.”

  “And I want to throw you to the ground. But it’ll have to wait. We’ve got a Fury to bleed.”

  * * *

  The candles in the basement had burned down to nubs. A few had gone out. The torches, too, burned low. Instead of relighting them, or exchanging the candles for fresh ones, Thanatos pulled a chain and lit dusty, yellow sixty-watt lightbulbs screwed into the ceiling. Cassandra didn’t know why they hadn’t used them before. Maybe because it changed the entire mood—from ritualistic to interrogation chamber in the pull of a cord. Two detectives from the ’70s might come out any minute and straddle backward chairs.

  The Fury had also altered the room: She’d heated it to the point of being suffocating. But the heat had a used-up feel. It must’ve been ten times worse at the height of the Fury’s rages. Now she knelt at the ends of her chains, having somehow gotten her legs underneath her. Her wings and sinewy veins were nowhere to be seen. She was just a girl in a short black dress and boots.

  The claws would come back soon enough, though. When Thanatos took her blood.

  Cassandra could hardly blame her.

  Calypso drew Cassandra to the side and nodded toward the Fury.

  “Don’t be fooled,” she said. “Don’t get too close. Let Thanatos take the lead.”

  “Okay.” Cassandra poked her arm. “But you and I are going to have words about whatever it was you did to us down here.”

  “I did what I needed to do,” Calypso said innocently. “You should be glad I did it. Or we’d never have gotten Megaera.”

  “That’s Megaera?” Cassandra blinked. That twisting creature of blood and rage was the Fury they called the Jealous One?

  “Of course that’s Megaera. If she was Tisiphone, I’d be sporting more than a bruised chin and a cut leg. And if she was Alecto”—Calypso shrugged—“I’d probably be dead.”

  Cassandra felt a tickle on the back of her neck. When she looked back, Megaera was watching. The Fury’s eyes were still full of blood—so much blood the irises had been completely obliterated. Only the black dots of her pupils remained.

  She’d thought the eyes were part of the creature’s form, like the wings and the veins. Now it seemed more likely that the eyes were some kind of wound. Another symptom of the deaths of the immortals.

  “Who are you?” Megaera asked.

  “Don’t answer that.” Thanatos pulled on the end of the chain and drew the Fury to her feet. Her arms were bound tight to her sides, secured twice with shackles at the wrists. When she stood, she wobbled.

  “I know who you are, boy.” Meg
aera’s eyes swiveled toward him. “I can smell the death on you. I can smell the death in this room. And just as I know that, I know you didn’t call me here for you. So who is it? The nymph?” Megaera’s red eyes twitched to Calypso. “No. The nymph is along for the ride. So it must be the girl.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t talk to her,” Thanatos cautioned. “We don’t need to talk to her.” The Fury shuffled backward as he continued to tug and shorten her chains. It was strangely sad to see her so bound. So powerless.

  “No need to talk?” Megaera bared her teeth. Rope-like veins popped beneath the skin of her face, but disappeared again. “There aren’t many reasons to summon one of the Erinyes. Someone must need punishment. Tell me who, and quickly, and I’ll forget how rude you were in the asking.”

  “No one needs punishment,” Thanatos said soothingly, and took a knife off of a shelf, along with a smooth, black bowl. He sliced into Megaera’s wrist before she knew what he was up to, and blood ran down her fingers. It splashed against the sides of the bowl and collected in a fast puddle, flowing so thick and so quickly it made Cassandra’s head spin. But it was worse when he decided he had enough, and withdrew the bowl to let the blood drip and spatter onto the dirt floor.

  “You’re healing slower these days, Megaera.” Thanatos wiped the blade of his knife on a towel and set it back on the shelf. “I figured on having to cut you twice. But look. A bowl full, and you’re still bleeding.”

  The Fury’s bloodied eyes followed the bowl.

  She knows what we’re after. But how can she? There have to be other uses for the blood of a Fury.

  Or perhaps not. Megaera jerked toward Cassandra with such sudden force that they all stepped back, half-certain the chains would snap. They held, but the walls shed dust from the effort.

  “You. You’re the girl who kills gods. And you think now to track back to him. To Hades.” Before Cassandra could say anything, Megaera screamed. The sound was terrible, infinitely worse than what they’d heard through layers of stone and floorboards. It was a million gears ground backward; it was silver fillings come loose and gnashed between teeth.

  Cassandra’s knees buckled. She felt Calypso’s arms around her, catching her just short of hitting the cold dirt floor. And then she was back on her feet, and Thanatos held her by the shoulders.