“Quickly,” Athena urged.
Lore nodded. As she made her way down the slick metal ladder, she eyed the way the space was rapidly filling with more water. By the time Athena had joined her and shut the hatch, it was up to Lore’s knees—but it was moving, flowing away from them, heading down the length of the tunnel.
Lore switched on her phone’s flashlight app. The pathway was crudely constructed, but wider than Lore had originally imagined.
The tunnel stretched on and on, winding right, then left, seemingly without reason, until, finally, it split. She stopped at the juncture, shining the phone’s light down one tunnel and then the other.
“Which way?” Athena asked quietly.
Lore was about to speak when she heard it—a distinct thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud. Almost like . . .
A heartbeat.
Her hand tightened on her knife. She turned right, tracing the sound through more turns and splits.
How far does this go? she wondered. All the way to the East River?
Their path was cut short by another, this one perpendicular to the one they were on. The thud-thud continued, louder and more insistent. They were close.
Lore switched off the phone’s flashlight. She flipped the camera lens and, crouching at the very edge of where the paths met, leaned the phone out just enough for it to capture the image of the hunter there.
The man looked familiar to her, but not familiar enough for a name. Thud-thud. He bounced a small rubber ball against the ground, then against one of two metal doors in the wall opposite from where he sat on his stool. A lantern-style flashlight glowed at his feet.
Lore let her head fall back against the wall, rolling her eyes at herself. Not a heartbeat. Not a monster.
Athena stood over her, eyes narrowed on the screen. Lore switched it off, storing the phone back in her pocket. Pressing a finger to her lips, she motioned for the goddess to wait, then stepped out.
“Excuse me,” Lore said loudly. “Could you tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty?”
The man startled, jumping to his feet with a sharp inhalation. Lore started to throw her knife toward his heart, but Castor’s face flashed in her mind. At the last second, her hand shifted and she struck his shoulder instead.
“You—” the hunter howled.
Lore dove for the stool and smashed it over his head. The hunter fell face-first into the water pooled on the ground, forcing her to roll him onto his back so he wouldn’t drown.
Her heart was still pounding as Athena stepped over the hunter, pulling Lore’s blade from his shoulder and passing it back to her. Lore had a fleeting memory of what her mother used to tell her and her sisters, the old superstition that a knife passed between people would invite conflict between them.
“Kill him,” Athena told her. “He will be a problem.”
Lore frowned. The man was unconscious. “Yesterday’s body count wasn’t high enough for you?”
“I do not keep tally of such things.” The goddess turned suddenly on her heel, spotting the hunter’s dory leaning against the nearby wall. She made a small noise of pleasure as she lifted it, testing its weight and balance.
Lore returned her focus to the first of the two metal doors in front of them, pressing her ear to its cold surface. Athena guided her back out of the way, then jammed a hand against the heavy padlock. It broke in two, falling heavily at their feet.
The door moaned as she pulled it open.
The chamber was larger than it had seemed on the outside. Metal supports, almost like feet, had been left behind along with a few scattered tools.
Lore retrieved the lantern. “Weird. Why leave a guard down here if there’s nothing to guard?”
Athena’s head tilted back toward the door, catching the sound before Lore did.
“Hello?” a voice called faintly. “Is someone there?”
Lore’s pulse spiked with sudden adrenaline. “Who’s there?”
Athena stepped back over the guard and approached another door on the opposite wall, one Lore hadn’t noticed, which the hunter had been leaning against. She followed close behind the goddess, raising her knife and lowering into a defensive stance behind her. Athena broke the lock, ripping the heavy door open.
A woman cowered at the back of her cell. She was streaked with grime, her dark skin shining with it as Lore lifted the lantern in disbelief.
Struggling onto her feet, the woman shielded her glowing eyes as she rose to her towering height.
This, too, was a face that Lore recognized. This time, however, she knew the name.
Tidebringer.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING here?”
Tidebringer’s voice was hoarse, but the melodic undertones were still there, each word rising and falling like the endless pulse of the sea. The embers of power in her dark eyes flickered as her gaze moved from Lore to Athena. Confusion crimped the new god’s face. Lore wondered if Tidebringer was afraid that she was hallucinating.
“We’re . . .” Lore’s voice trailed off as she stared back.
While Lore was the last of Perseus’s mortal descendants, the new god had once been Rhea Perseous, the ruin of her bloodline. It took Lore’s mind a moment to actually understand that Tidebringer was real, that she was right in front of her—a living, breathing being, not simply the cautionary tale Lore and the other hunters had reduced her to.
“This is Melora Perseous,” Athena said. “And I am—”
“I know who you are,” Tidebringer snapped. The chains attached to her ankles dragged against the damp floor as she took an unsteady step forward. She looked past the goddess to Lore, as if to say, I know you, as well.
Lore moved to examine the new god’s restraints. Athena blocked her path.
“Tell me,” Athena said. “Why is it that you agreed to serve the false Ares?”
“Just as the sea has no master,” Tidebringer growled back, “I serve only myself.”
“Then why did you bring the flood?” Lore demanded.
The new god regarded the thought with outright disdain. “The Perseides were weak and foolish, unwilling to accept change. That which refuses to grow destroys itself.”
“I asked you for answers, not a soliloquy,” Lore said.
Tidebringer leaned back against the wall, snorting. “If you want the story, you’ll have to bring me the keys from the guard.”
Lore ignored the warning look Athena sent her way and went to do just that. As she stepped back into the small, dark hell of the prison, the smell of human waste emanating from a nearby bucket almost overpowered her.
The new god’s body shook, and she never once, not even as Lore approached, took her gaze off Athena. Lore started to kneel in front of her to unlock the restraints, but quickly thought twice.
Even chained, Tidebringer was still dangerous—she could snap Lore’s neck before she’d registered the pressure of the woman’s fingertips on her skin.
She passed the keys to the new god. “I’ll give you the pleasure.”
Tidebringer nodded. “I will gladly take it.”
“The rest of your tale?” Athena prompted, impatient.
Tidebringer slid back down the wall, motioning for Lore to bring the lantern closer, so she could better see. The new god’s brown skin had shrunk tight to her muscles, and there were distinct hollows beneath her high cheekbones. Judging by her appearance, Lore couldn’t begin to guess the last time Tidebringer had any sort of food or water.
“The Kadmides swarmed me at the Awakening. I was brought here and given a simple choice—die, or serve with my power when Wrath required it. I thought it best to live, discover what his plans were, and take my revenge in the next cycle.”
“And you were foolish enough to believe that he will allow you to live?” Athena said.
“He does not see himself as needing to be the last god,” Tidebringer said. “Merely the one who will bring about the end of the Agon. He believes he’ll usher in a new age once his divinity is permanent and he h
as access to his full power.”
Lore rubbed her arms, trying to dispel some of the cold crawling along them. Standing between the burning gazes of the two gods felt like being trapped in the path of two stars about to collide.
“Does he mean to overthrow my father?” Athena asked.
“He thinks your father has completely retreated to the realm of the divine and left this world to be claimed by the victor of the Agon,” Tidebringer said.
“Preposterous,” Athena said sharply. “My father does not control the whole of the world. There are many lands and many gods.”
“Well, how many still reign now?” Tidebringer asks. “Wrath seems to be laboring under the impression that he will crush all of his rivals and their worshipers through war.”
Athena recoiled at that, pulling back like a snake poised to strike. Rather than let her, Lore pushed on.
“That’s only if he gets the aegis,” Lore said. “And he won’t. Do you know anything about the inscription on it? How to read it?”
Tidebringer stared at her, and the slow, dawning horror in her face, plain as anything, set off a shrill noise in Lore’s ears.
“Oh gods,” Tidebringer said. “You think he still needs to find the poem. That he doesn’t know how to read it.”
The feeling left Lore’s hands. Her body.
“They had the shield for years—you really believed they didn’t comb over every inch of it? The inscription is on the inside of the interior’s leather lining. All they had to do was remove it.” Tidebringer shook her head, releasing a noise of frustration. “You’re already too late. He didn’t spend this week searching for the shield—he’s been putting his plan into motion. He’s within days—hours—of winning the hunt.”
“I just—” Lore replayed it all in her mind, everything Iro had told her, her conversation with Belen, the message on the wall. Vomit rose in her throat, leaving a bitter tang in her mouth. She swallowed it, and her fear. “No—it’s not too late. He still needs the aegis, otherwise he wouldn’t be searching for me.”
“I pray that you’re right,” Tidebringer said. “He does need you. I can’t wield the aegis or give it to him, even if I were of the mind to. It can only be done by the last of the mortal bloodline.”
“And you don’t know what he needs it for?” Lore asked. “He didn’t give any kind of indication?”
The new god shook her head. “By the time he found me, he was already well into his plans. He’s a hundred steps ahead by now.”
“We can still stop him,” Lore insisted. “We can kill him.”
“It won’t be enough,” Tidebringer said, prying off one of her cuffs. “His followers will just continue whatever work they were doing down here.”
“Work?” Athena questioned. “Of what kind?”
“I can’t be certain—it was chemical, based on what I could smell and hear. Explosives of some kind, I think,” Tidebringer said, prying off her other cuff. Her eyes shifted quickly to Athena, then back to Lore. “Whatever it is, it killed a few of them while they were working. A few hours ago, before the flood, they took their work out through the tunnel.”
Athena’s nostrils flared. “That information is useless—”
There was a panicked intake of breath outside the cell, followed by quick steps splashing through the water coating the ground.
The guard.
Shit, Lore thought.
She started toward the door, but Athena was already there.
“No,” the goddess said. “I will take care of the problem you have failed to.”
She took off, not needing to run. It would be a slow, confident pursuit.
A hand clamped over Lore’s wrist and wrenched her back. Pain shot up her arm and her wrist bent as it hit the ground.
Tidebringer lunged forward to block the door. Lore scrambled up onto her feet, lungs squeezing tight as she reached for her knife.
“You stupid girl!” Tidebringer hissed to her. “What are you doing with her?”
“I— We have a deal,” Lore told her haltingly.
“What could she offer you that could ever be greater than what she’s taken?” Tidebringer shook her head. “Go now, before she comes back!”
“What are you talking about?” Lore demanded. That cold dread, the one that seemed to have awakened in her the first time she laid eyes on the dying goddess outside her home, slithered through her blood, whispering, You know.
“After I learned what happened I searched for you across the world, but you had vanished—I could never find you,” Tidebringer said.
“I was with the Odysseides at their protected estate, and then Hermes gave me an amulet,” Lore said. “It hid my presence from gods—”
Tidebringer swore viciously. “He should never have tried to protect you alone, the fool!”
“Is that why you were looking for me?” Lore asked, trying to understand. Tidebringer had been a god for so long that Lore was shocked she even cared to remember her mortality, let alone the last remnant of her doomed family.
“No, child, to warn you—I would have come to you days ago if I hadn’t been taken at the Awakening,” Tidebringer said. “I only agreed to Wrath’s terms because I thought it would keep me alive long enough to escape and find you. To tell you that Hermes saw you that night, and that he told her. He told her, knowing how badly she wanted it back—how she thought she needed it—”
“What?” Lore asked rolling up onto her feet. “What did he tell her?”
You know.
Tidebringer’s eyes widened as she released a thick, wet gasp. Blood poured from her mouth as the jagged metal tip of a dory punched through her chest. She struggled, her body lashing back and forth in the doorframe like a fish caught on a hook. As her gaze locked on Lore, the sparks of power there faded.
“Everything,” Athena said, pulling her weapon free. Tidebringer’s lifeless body collapsed to the ground. “He told me everything.”
IT WAS EASIER THAN she had ever imagined.
Lore had hated the Kadmides for a lot of things over her ten years of existence, but just then, standing in the cramped back courtyard behind the Phoenician, she hated them most for acting like they didn’t have to try. That no one would dare to take what they themselves had stolen.
There was a narrow, fenced-off gap between the restaurant and the building beside it. They’d made the mistake of leaving its gate unlocked to bring their bags of trash up to the street level for collection in the morning. Lore had slipped inside and crouched behind the rows of trash cans, watching as hunters came and went like bees to their hive.
Between their trips, the restaurant’s back door always shut firmly behind them. They all entered the same code on its keypad.
3-9-6-9-3-1-5-8-2.
She repeated the series in her head again and again. She wouldn’t forget it.
The moon was nearing its pinnacle in the sky when she felt a prickling at the back of her neck.
Lore turned, searching the courtyard and nearby windows for another shadow. The only camera that she could see was the one posted above the door, and that was easy enough to avoid. She and Castor—well, really just her, but Castor kept watch—had practiced staying outside the field of security cameras to slip inside Philip Achilleos’s chambers at Thetis House. She hadn’t been caught then, and she wouldn’t be now.
She would be like the heroes in the stories. She wouldn’t fail.
“Just do it,” Lore told herself, pulling the hood of her sweater up over her ears and tucking her wild hair inside. When no new people came or went for another ten minutes, Lore approached the door, keeping her back tight against the wall to avoid the camera’s eye. She input the code and, with a deep breath, let herself flash across the camera’s sight to slip inside.
The kitchen was still steamy from the dishwashing and smelled of damp onions. A young man kept his back to her at the sinks, softly singing along to the radio. Lore moved slowly around the darkened edges of the room, her steps light and her
breathing lighter.
A rumble of voices sounded nearby. Lore slipped beneath one of the stainless-steel worktables and retreated into its deep shadows. She pressed a fist to her mouth and waited.
Several hunters entered the quiet kitchen with a roar of laughter. They’d taken off their masks, but all were still armed within an inch of their lives. One waved to the boy at the sink as they made their way toward the large freezer.
“How’d it go?” the boy asked eagerly, trailing after them, eyes wide.
“Disappointingly quiet for the last night of an Agon,” said one of the hunters. “Though I don’t know that our newly divine lord would have appreciated a rival deity in the family.”
Lore’s top lip curled at the thought of that disgusting old man as a god.
Another hunter shushed him, but the sound ended on a drunken laugh.
“What?” said the first. “He got what he’s always wanted, but he still doesn’t have ears everywhere. At least not yet. I can’t wait to see what his commands are.”
Lore leaned forward again, squinting to see what code they entered on the security pad to the right of the freezer. 1-4-6-9-0. She smirked as they disappeared into it and reemerged a few minutes later with no weapons or robes.
That answered her biggest question. As he’d taunted her father, Aristos Kadmou had revealed that they kept the aegis somewhere beneath the restaurant. And here she’d thought it would be a challenge to find where to access their vault.
“Let’s go, Chares. I’ll take you home to your mother,” the first hunter said to the boy as the others shuffled off toward the side entrance. As they passed by Lore’s table she shrank back and held her breath.
“But the dishes—” he began, his voice cracking.
“There’ll be time to finish in the morning before the ritual,” the man said gesturing to them. “The restaurant will be closed for our celebrations.”
The boy nodded, untying his apron and eagerly hanging it on a wall hook. Lore’s hands curled against the cold tile floor as she counted their footsteps toward the door. She waited for the telltale click as it shut and locked, and then counted to a hundred before sliding out from beneath the table.
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