Discord's Apple

by Carrie Vaughn

  He leaned on the car, near the window where Frank Walker sat. The Wanderer stood nearby, his arms crossed.

  “What did she promise you to get you to join her?” the Greek said.

  “Perhaps I was just curious.”

  “Thought you could learn a few tricks?”

  “No. Not many left to learn at my age.”

  “You’re old?”

  “Relatively.”

  “How old?”

  “I met Christ.”

  Conversationally, the Greek said, “I saw him once, preaching at a village near Tyre.”

  “He was a good preacher.”

  “And a hell of a wizard.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause; then the Greek said, “Your friend in there doesn’t look well.”

  “I’m fine,” the old man grumbled through the closed window.

  “No,” said the Greek. “I think you look ill. Are you sure you don’t want to step out and get some air?”

  The Wanderer said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Hera wished she could see. This was turning into quite the little show. Perhaps she’d make herself a sparrow next time.

  “No,” Frank said, his voice thoughtful. “He’s right. It’s a little stuffy in here. Do I look pale?”

  “A bit,” said Alex.

  “I might be nauseated.”

  “Come on, I’m not a fool,” the Wanderer said.

  “Nor do I take you for one, which is why I think you’ll allow this fellow to vomit outside the car rather than inside.”

  Hera couldn’t believe it. The Wanderer was actually going to fall prey to the charade.

  The car door opened. Footsteps crunched on gravel as someone climbed out of the car.

  Hera emerged from under the bumper, a gray cat racing around the Greek. She padded to a stop in front of the Wanderer, who held Frank Walker by the arm, outside the car. Out of her hiding place, she spotted a hulking warrior running toward the car.

  She made herself whole and human and, crossing her arms, regarded the three men. “That will be quite enough,” she said.

  ________

  Evie saw a startling flash of light, and the cat who’d made a dash along the driveway became Hera. She stood only a pace or two away from Alex and her father, who’d been leaving the car.

  Alex had a plan. He’d been trying to get her father out of the car. He really had been trying to help.

  Arthur shielded his eyes and slid to a stop. Merlin had disappeared. The other man sprang at Alex, who fell back, slamming against the gravel drive, and rolled, slipping out of his attacker’s wrestling grasp. Arthur drew his sword and lunged forward as if to run again, but he didn’t move. He stood like a statue, balanced on the balls of his feet, frozen. Hera pointed at him. Her power was stronger than the ancient king’s will.

  They needed Merlin now. If Evie shouted, maybe he’d hear and come running. Unless the others found a way to stop him, too.

  Alex’s attacker recovered quickly, with enough speed to grab Alex from behind and wrap his arm around his neck. Alex thrashed, struggling to break free. Her father sat in the car, gripping the edge of the door, looking bewildered.

  So much for the distraction—they’d missed their chance. Evie had her ransom payment. She could end this.

  She knew this corner of the cemetery because she’d visited here every time she’d returned to Hopes Fort over the last five years. She knew the grave markers here without looking at them. Irving and Amelia Walker, her father’s great-grandparents. Frank’s grandparents, her grandparents. Then Emma Doyle Walker. She walked across the dead grass like she was walking to visit her mother’s grave, like she knew where she was going and what she was doing, like this was any other walk. She reached the road leading to where the car was parked before any of them noticed her.

  Alex, fighting the grip his opponent held him in, saw her first. He stopped struggling, which made his captor pause to look, and in moments, their attention drew the others.

  “Evie, go back!” Arthur said through clenched teeth. His body trembled, fighting against the invisible grip that held it.

  Hera stepped forward to meet her. Evie stopped ten paces or so away, before she came too close. Hera followed her lead, maintaining enough distance between them that they had to raise their voices to hear each other.

  “Did you bring it?” Hera said. She wore high-heeled boots on the gravel drive, and her balance never wavered. Did she use magic to achieve her beauty and poise, or was she just that elegant?

  “Yes.” Evie felt scruffy in her coat and jeans. But she had something Hera wanted. She had to remember that.

  “Excellent. I’ll gladly release your father. I’ll even set your knights-errant free, though you disobeyed my instruction to come alone. But I want to see it first.”

  Evie took the apple from her pocket. She kept a tight grip on it, not knowing what tricks Hera might use, whether she could yank it through the air with her mind, like any number of comic book superheroes.

  Hera’s gaze softened, an awe-filled smile easing her features. Evie caught sight of Alex in the corner of her eye. He looked like he was going to scream.

  “Mr. Walker, step out of the car, please,” Hera said.

  Her father pulled himself out of the car. He didn’t look happy.

  “Now, girl, toss me the apple.”

  “Let Alex and Arthur go first.”

  Hera nodded at her minion, who let Alex loose. Alex made a jump; whom he could attack or what he could get away with, Evie had no idea. But a man—the young man from the motel parking lot—moved in front of him, his arms crossed. He’d appeared from nowhere. Like magic. Alex froze.

  Hera had trapped them all very well.

  Next, she made a twisting motion with her hand, and Arthur fell forward, snarling. He raised his sword.

  “Arthur! Stay back, please!” Evie said.

  Scowling, he lowered his sword.

  “Now, please,” Hera said, her waiting hand outstretched.

  The apple felt firm in Evie’s hand. She didn’t want to let it go. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Hera’s smile changed, turning thin and sly. Evie had the feeling she was being made fun of.

  “Why, take over the world, of course.”

  Evie’s grip on the apple tightened. She didn’t understand how such a little thing could rule the world.

  It isn’t the tool or thing, but the one who wields it.

  Then something happened. Hera misinterpreted her hesitation.

  The goddess continued, “I could use your help, Evie. I need as many allies as I can find. While you may not think you have any power, you hold—or will soon hold—the stewardship of a great collection of treasures. You could be my Keeper of Treasures. I would honor you.”

  She made a gesture that encompassed Alex and Arthur.

  “They may have told you that I want to break this world. What else would I do with the apple of Discord but cause strife and turmoil? And they’re right. I do want to break this world. The storm of violence has already begun. All the props are in place. But I would break it so that I could make a new one. An ordered one.”

  Evie had heard such claims before, many times. Every time a separatist group drove a truck bomb into a hospital, whenever terrorists crashed a plane into a building or a suicide bomber stepped into a crowded marketplace, it was in the name of a new world, or a better order that would rise up from the ashes of the old.

  Evie stood twenty feet away from the grave marker of Emma Doyle Walker. Fifty-three years old, playing tourist at the Pike Place Market in Seattle when a twenty-year-old misguided activist blew herself up and murdered eighteen people.

  “There’s a place for you, Evie Walker. We can work together.”

  Hera didn’t use bombs, but she took hostages. She had different tools and she’d been working at it longer, but the rhetoric was surprisingly similar.

  Evie had often wondered what sh
e’d say to the woman who killed her mother, if she ever had a chance. More often than not, all Evie wanted was to punch the bitch out. She’d spent the last few years using Tracker and the Eagle Eyes to stop as many terrorists as she could.

  She didn’t have a gun. She couldn’t just walk up and shoot them, as Tracker had. So if Tracker didn’t have a gun, and her compatriots and a hostage were still in danger—what would she do? If everything depended on her, and she had the confidence to act, what would she do? Because she’d be damned if she was going to give in to this woman.

  She took a step, then another. Hera might have thought Evie was moving toward her. But really she was moving toward the space between Hera and the car, where her father stood. The driver’s seat was empty. The key might still be in the ignition. She didn’t dare look behind her, where Arthur stood. He could take care of himself. She looked at her father and hoped he knew her well enough to guess what she was doing. She looked at Alex and bit her lip. She needed his help. She needed him to keep Robin away.

  Approaching Hera, she hefted the apple, testing its weight, getting ready to throw it. Hera lifted her chin, rounded her shoulders, getting ready to catch.

  Evie threw, Hera reached, but the apple never left Evie’s hand.

  She ran, shoving the apple back in her pocket. In her other pocket, she found the sprig of rowan Alex had given her. She threw this instead. Hera grasped at it, flinching when the leaves hit her face, stumbling—actually losing her poise—when her hands flailed for a target that wasn’t there.

  She had to trust the others to do their parts and couldn’t take a moment to watch for them. She barreled into the sedan’s front seat and groped for the ignition.

  No key.

  She gripped the steering wheel, wondering if she could start the car through sheer willpower. Whenever Jeeves hot-wired a vehicle, Bruce just showed him fiddling with wires on the steering column. Evie didn’t have to actually know how to do it.

  One of the back doors slammed. There was Frank, clicking the lock on.

  Her father leaned over the front seat. “No keys?”

  “No,” she said, a wail creeping into her voice.

  “Evie! The window!” On the other side of the car, Arthur held Hera’s well-dressed henchman in a headlock with one arm, twisted at such an angle that the man had to struggle to keep his balance. Arthur raised his other arm, like he was getting ready to throw something.

  The car had automatic windows that didn’t work with the engine off. She scrambled to the passenger-side door, and as she opened it, Arthur tossed. As he did, his prisoner wrenched out of his grasp and ran.

  A car key on a rental company keychain landed in her lap.

  She couldn’t think about how many bad guys were out there or what the others were going through to oppose them. She had her task: Take the key and get her father out of here.

  As she slid the key into the ignition, her hand shaking, her mind numb, a hand slapped onto the windshield in front of her. The well-dressed man who’d been with her father, Arthur’s former prisoner, pressed his hand flat to the glass and caught her gaze. Caught it, and held it.

  . . . what he’d seen over the years, the centuries, would make a man weep with despair, and he was cursed to see it all, to wander for all time, until the Second Coming of him called Christ the Lord, and that was the real curse because the wizard who named himself so would not return—he’d sacrificed himself and was gone. But the one he’d cursed had found a power of his own: He could take what he had seen and he could show others. The horrors, the despair, plague, massacre, torture, enough to shock the strongest of men, more than enough to chill a modern girl, and this showed through his eyes, and Evie felt cold, her joints aching, her muscles cramping, her eyes filling with tears.

  Then she saw nothing.

  “Drive, Evie.” Reaching from behind, her father covered her eyes with his hands. By feel, she turned the key, sparking the engine to life. Her muscles were her own again; the man’s hold on her was broken. Her father sat back, and she could see to shift into drive. Tires spun on the gravel and the car jolted forward. The man fell away.

  She drove, hoping she stayed on the straightaway, uncertain of her bearings. She needed to find the others. Alex was wrestling Robin among the gravestones. Arthur was chasing after that strange man again. Where was Merlin?

  The goddess appeared in the middle of the lane, standing in front of the oncoming car, wholly unconcerned.

  Evie pushed on the gas as hard as she could.

  The car stopped as if she’d slammed into a wall, and the passengers fell forward. Evie’s foot leaned on the gas, the engine revved, the tires kicked up a spray of gravel, but the car didn’t move.

  Hera didn’t have to raise a hand. She only stared, lips parted in wonder.

  Frank picked himself off the floor, where the sudden stop had thrown him. He put his hand on Evie’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “What do I do?” she said, bracing herself on the steering wheel. What did destiny think it was doing, trusting the Storeroom to people who had no power to face such magic?

  “I don’t know.”

  A feathered thing rocketed from above, toward Hera. The goddess saw it at the last second and flung an arm to shield herself against the falcon that came at her, talons outstretched. She was distracted only a moment, and she struck back with a hand that had grown claws of its own as the falcon veered away. Their battle took them off the road.

  Hera’s concentration was broken. The sedan leaped forward, free from her grip. They continued on the road out of the cemetery. The falcon—Merlin, a shape-shifting wizard—screeched and veered out of sight. Hera looked after the car, then after the falcon, and seemed uncertain which to attack first.

  Evie could only drive and hope.

  In the rearview mirror, she saw Alex running after them. No sign of Robin. She slammed the brakes. Her blood rushed painfully in her ears for the few moments it took him to reach the car. When her father opened the door and helped pull him inside, Evie was already moving again.

  A thump crashed on the trunk of the car, then sounded on the roof. Evie craned over the dash, trying to look up through the windshield to what had jumped on the car.

  Above her, Excalibur glinted in Arthur’s outstretched arm.

  She hit the button to open her window. His hand gripped the edge of the roof.

  “Drive!” he shouted. “Don’t look back!”

  “Bloody hell!” Alex said with a laugh.

  In command of the fiery steed, Evie drove.

  The highway was destroyed because of the earthquake. In her mind, she mapped out the way she’d have to take to get home, the dirt roads around the back of town that would get her to the farmland near the house, and from there she’d have to hope for tractor paths.

  She still had to get to the other side of town, which meant she still had to drive through town. A block away from Main Street, emergency lights flashed ahead. The police had the way barricaded.

  “I’ll go around,” she said, thinking aloud. Front Street to Third Street, along the neighborhood—

  “Stop!” Johnny Brewster ran toward her, flanked by a pair of deputies. He had his gun drawn. Evie braked, swerving sideways as the car slid to a halt.

  Arthur knocked on the roof of the car. Alex opened a door and leaned back as the warrior slipped inside and tried to look natural, his sword resting on his lap.

  Now that wasn’t conspicuous.

  “What do I do?” she said, glancing at her father in the rearview mirror.

  He looked pale, his lips pressed nervously together. “Stop, I suppose. It’s Johnny. He won’t give us trouble.”

  But there was a woman following the police, walking calmly, knowingly. She was lithe and predatory. Evie’s stomach churned. She was the one who’d come to the house to tell her her father had been kidnapped.

  Johnny didn’t lower his gun. Even when Evie met his gaze, when he had to know it was her, his friend and harmless, a
nd that Frank was in the backseat.

  Alex said, “You’re going to have to drive, Evie.” He stared ahead at the oncoming troopers.

  “But it’s Johnny, we just have to explain—”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “Evie, get out of the car! Keep your hands up!” Johnny called. The other officers moved around to flank them.

  “Dad, that woman with him is working for Hera. I think Alex is right. She might have told them anything.”

  Her father’s car window hummed open. He leaned his head out. Alex held his arm, like he wanted to pull him back, and Evie nearly screamed at him.

  “You, too, Frank! Out of the car!”

  “What’s the problem, Johnny?” Frank said.

  “Those men in the car, I need to take them in.”

  “Why? What have they done?”

  “They’re wanted. I’ve got warrants.”

  Evie shouted out her own window, “Whatever that woman told you, it isn’t true. She’s lying. They haven’t done anything.”

  Johnny glanced back at the woman. She didn’t move; her expression never changed. Three cops held guns trained on the car.

  “I could arrest you for harboring terrorists. Both of you! They’re terrorists, Evie. You don’t want to help them!” His jaw clenched. He was close enough that Evie saw sweat on his face.

  “I can’t do much against guns,” Arthur said softly. “Not that many of them, at least.”

  “I can take as many bullets as you need me to,” Alex said.

  Arthur muttered something that sounded like, “Good God.”

  She’d gotten a citation from the President recognizing her patriotism. She couldn’t believe she was about to do this.

  “Dad, get down,” she said, and put the car into gear. She stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the car screeched forward, hit the curb, bounced onto the sidewalk, then off it again as she cranked the wheel around. The officer who’d been standing there lunged out of the way.

  Shots rang out. Evie flinched, ducking reflexively while still trying to steer. She hadn’t expected them to shoot. These were Hopes Fort cops—how often did they have to shoot in the line of duty? When did they ever have to stop runaway cars?