Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

  “With it, or upon it, right?” Lore said lightly, adjusting the aegis’s straps so she could carry it on her back.

  With it, or upon it. It was what countless Spartan mothers had said to their sons and husbands as they handed them their shields before battle. For a society that loathed rhipsaspides—shield droppers who turned coward and threw them down to escape, or those men who lost them in the fight—there were two avenues for returning home: victorious, or carried home dead upon your shield.

  Castor gripped her arm, forcing her to look at him. The station was dark, making the sparks of power glow brighter in his eyes as he said, “Don’t say that. Please—don’t say that.”

  Not even the Spartans were Spartan, her father had told her. It’s not always the truth that survives, but the stories we wish to believe. The legends lie.

  “Then I won’t,” Lore said.

  How they were remembered would never be as important as what they did now. Her father had been right about that, too.

  They splashed down onto the tracks from the station platform and fought their way forward through the water.

  Lore switched on her flashlight’s lower setting. Her sword bounced against her hip as they walked along the rails.

  She couldn’t resist looking over at him then, drinking the sight of him in deep to ward off the chill growing along her spine.

  “If we’re wrong about your immortality and somehow they take you,” she whispered, “wait for me at the dark river. I’ll bring you home.”

  “Hades himself would turn me back at the gates knowing you’re coming,” Castor told her, “and that I’d fight like hell to meet you halfway.”

  Lore relished the feel of his hand in hers for just a moment more before letting it go. Both she and Castor would need their sword hands free.

  She slid the aegis forward, but kept her flashlight aimed at the track. It was a slow crawl, the tunnel making it feel as though they were trapped inside a bleak eternity, that they would be walking forever toward a place they would never reach. It was the kind of punishment the gods used to love.

  They followed the curve of the track up from Thirty-Fourth Street to Times Square, settling into a careful silence as they waded through the ankle-high pool of water. The air in the tunnel was still and heavy, and the walls around them were slick with moisture. Lore strained her ears, trying to catch the sound of voices or footsteps, but heard only the scurrying of rodents and the steady dripping of water falling all around them.

  “The GPS just cut out,” Castor whispered, showing her as much on her phone. “But we’re nearly to the Bryant Park station.”

  They walked for a few minutes more before Castor stopped suddenly, reaching back for Lore’s flashlight—not to aim it, but to switch it off. Lore tensed, stepping forward to see what had brought him up short.

  Her eyes adjusted again to the dark, and each slow second revealed a new detail of the gruesome scene. The bodies of police officers, along with uniformed National Guardsmen, littered the track in front of them. Their bodies were locked in anguished poses, as if they’d been dropped down from a great height.

  Red light flooded the chamber as a flare was lit and tossed down onto the back of a dead woman.

  Dozens of hunters peeled away from the dark edges of the tunnel,

  perched up on the slight, narrow platforms that lined either side of it. They turned their masked faces toward Lore and Castor one by one—serpents, horses, and Minotaurs.

  Seeing them lined up that way, like sentinels, Lore felt as if she was standing at the start of a gauntlet. Their grunting chants echoed, swirling in the air like wraiths.

  “I do not like these odds for you, new god,” one of the hunters said.

  “Really.” Castor lifted his chin, taking the measure of them in one look. “You seem certain about that.”

  Each second that passed felt like a cut to her skin. Lore stepped in front of him, raising the aegis toward the bloodred glow of the flare.

  These, she thought, are our enemies.

  Yesss, the voice hissed in agreement.

  The hunter nearest to her swore, lifting his mask in shock. Others began to shake, dropping down from the ledges and onto the tracks, cowering.

  “Steady—” the first hunter called. “Don’t look directly at it!”

  Those toward the back shielded their eyes.

  Castor slid something into her back pocket. Her phone.

  Her heart slammed up into her throat. Lore knew—she knew that she couldn’t stop, not even for an instant, not when they were so close and time was so short.

  I’ll catch up, he mouthed, his powerful body tensed in preparation. His eyes flashed dangerously as he turned back to the other hunters. Those who had seen the aegis were struggling against its terror, but the rest began to beat their swords and spears against the shields they carried. The tunnel seemed to press in around them.

  No, Lore thought. Not yet . . .

  Because if she left him here, against all the hunters . . . she might never see him again.

  “Go,” he whispered. Then, louder, “Last chance to leave. Any takers for walking out of here alive?”

  Lore brought up the aegis, drawing in a deep breath. At the faint smell of fire, of burning hair, she lowered herself into a ready stance. The hunters nearest to her had gone through the same fear and pain conditioning she’d been subjected to, but now sobbed with horror, cringing away from her.

  She looked back one last time at Castor. She let his hard expression of determination, of confidence, sear itself into her memory.

  Then the screaming began.

  The two hunters nearest to her began to burn from the inside out, the heat of Castor’s power incinerating bones, sinews, muscles, skin.

  Lore leaped forward, her blade slashing through the spears of the hunters, still howling as they died. The aegis absorbed the hammering blows of their swords and small blades as she shoved her way through. A spear tip cut across the back of her neck, but Lore pressed forward, hacking her way through the melee exploding around her.

  Lore looked back in time to see one hunter break through the lines of bodies falling to ash, jumping as he brought his sword down. The steel caught the strap of Castor’s vest, slicing through it into his shoulder.

  Castor staggered back, his concentration momentarily shattered as he flipped his sword around and began his own attack.

  More hunters spilled down into the station from the street above, swarming the platform behind her. Lore’s mind screamed for her to turn back, but she kept her gaze forward, fixed on the darkness ahead, running until Castor’s presence no longer burned at her back and the light of the flare disappeared like a dying star.

  HER PHONE DIDN’T LINK back up with its cell service until she reached the knot of tunnels beneath Grand Central Station. Lore hadn’t considered how confusing it would be underground as three different subway lines intersected with the Metro-North rail.

  “Shit.” Lore struggled with trembling hands to get her text messages open. The new one that loaded was from Miles, saying he was in position in the building above her. They had fifteen minutes until noon.

  Cas in trouble, she typed on the thread with the others. 5th ave 7 Train. Going ahead now.

  The GPS map wasn’t detailed enough to tell her which tunnels to take, just that she was moving in the correct direction.

  By the time Lore found the last tunnel, her whole body was rigid with frustration. As she stood at the head of it, staring down its silky darkness, Lore hesitated, suddenly uncertain.

  Lore had lost herself so many times before she didn’t completely understand how she’d found herself here. For a moment, she knew how Theseus must have felt in the Labyrinth, only she didn’t have Ariadne’s thread to guide her back out again.

  She forced herself to take a breath. One hand choked the hilt of Mákhomai, while the other curled into a fist behind the aegis. The shield’s vibrations fed the roiling mass of dread in the pit of her stom
ach.

  Her first step forward took as much effort as dragging herself through a dark tide. Lore didn’t know a prayer to help her now, or who might hear it. She felt the air stir around her, as if beings moved there, unseen, watching, waiting.

  She pressed the curved edge of the aegis to her forehead, closing her eyes. She gripped the necklace, the feather charm, until the metal edges left an impression in her palm.

  I can be free.

  She was not Theseus in the Labyrinth, or Perseus in the gorgon’s lair. She was not Herakles, laboring in his tasks. She was not Bellerophon, who rode across the sky, Meleager on his hunt, or Kadmos fighting the serpent. She was not even Jason, triumphant at the edge of the world with the Golden Fleece in hand.

  There was nothing fated. Lore had not been chosen for this; she had chosen to come here herself. Every step she’d made, every mistake, had led her here.

  She was here because her father had taught her to hold a blade, because her mother had raised her strong and proud, because her sisters were forever unfinished people.

  She was here for the city that had raised her, and she came with the pride of her ancestors and the strength of her heart, and neither would fail her.

  Lore recognized them then—the shadows moving along the tunnel walls beside her.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered, taking that next step. She repeated the words until they became the prayer she’d needed, and armor for her soul. “Please stay with me.”

  Lore sprinted forward, shooting down the tunnel like an arrow released from the steadiest of hands. “Stay with me. . . .”

  The air changed, and Lore knew she was close. An undercurrent of power licked at her senses, guiding her off that line and into a smaller tunnel.

  Lore’s focus intensified as she ran along the tracks, water splashing up around her. Sooner than she’d expected, she reached a section of the subway divided off from the rest—the one that led beneath the Waldorf Astoria.

  At the sound of voices, she slowed and switched off her flashlight.

  “Listen to me, please!”

  Belen, she thought. Lore reached up and removed one of the noise-canceling earbuds to better hear.

  Indistinct shapes took form at the end of the line, in the cavernous space that was Track 61. Lanterns had been hung around, spotlighting sections of the otherwise pitch-black station.

  It was nothing like the other subway stops she and Castor had walked through to get here. As Lore made her way forward, she struggled with her footing over two different sets of tracks hidden beneath the water. There were no raised platforms around them, leaving a generous amount of space to the right of the single flatbed subway car that waited ahead. A large silver tank, as big as the car itself, had been strapped atop it. If it was a bomb, it wasn’t like any she had seen.

  “Do you doubt me?”

  Wrath’s voice carried over to her, low and menacing. He moved around the flatbed and came into view. Nearby, a massive elevator loomed—one that no doubt led up into the hotel’s parking garage.

  He was monstrous in his dark sublimity, his body rigid with muscle. He would have towered over even Castor, just as he towered over Belen now.

  The young man backed away from him, holding his hands up. He was dressed in what looked to be a ceremonial robe, crimson embroidered with gold. Both of his hands were bandaged in a thick layer of white gauze.

  The sheen on Wrath’s skin had to be some sort of gold paint. It covered his entire body beneath the ivory silk of his tunic. He wore polished bronze armor over his chest, as well as gauntlets and greaves. Worse, there was a familiar, spikey tan hide draped over him. Its head had been long ago cast in bronze to be worn like a helmet, as Wrath did now. It belonged to the Nemean lion, and it would make any skin it covered impervious to blades.

  Panic gripped her. If he was dressed for battle, hours before sunset . . .

  The information had been wrong again. Wrath’s plan was happening now.

  Lore pulled out her phone, but there was still no service. She debated leaving, trying to get to higher ground to warn the others if they hadn’t already discovered it for themselves, but Belen spoke again, this time more desperate.

  “You are the most powerful being in this world,” Belen said. “You have us, and we are devoted to you. All of us, my lord.”

  “Is that so?” Wrath asked coldly. He circled his mortal son slowly, forcing Belen back toward the flatbed without ever needing to draw a blade.

  “You don’t need her,” Belen continued, his voice pitching up.

  Lore’s blood turned to ice in her veins at that single word. Her.

  “Ask yourself why she would agree to help you—why she has come to you now, when you are so close to all that you have dreamed of,” Belen said. “She and her sister planned to kill you and all the other new gods, and now she wants to pay deference? She is cunning—she will take your plan, she will take it, and she will kill you—she will destroy you, Father. Please—”

  “Father?” a soft voice repeated.

  Athena stood at the edge of one of the lantern’s lights, her eyes glowing in the darkness.

  Lore’s pulse spiked and sweat broke out across her body. Belen’s head whipped toward the goddess, his breath visibly catching.

  “Father?” Athena repeated again. “My great lord, I would not have expected one as powerful as you to have a son so sniveling and weak of will.”

  Athena moved to stand beside the new god, a dory in her hand. She, too, was dressed in a short ceremonial robe, this one of the purest white, her skin coated in that same shimmering gold. Her armor was as substantial as Wrath’s, as was her helmet. It was studded with what looked to be diamonds and sapphires along its white plume.

  The hatred Lore felt looking at them now was breathtaking. All the rage she’d told herself she didn’t need, that she didn’t want, came boiling to the surface.

  She forgot her calm, she forgot her plan, she forgot everything but the shame he had tried to use to extinguish her line and his desire to take her life away from her, even as a little girl. She saw nothing but the face of the man who had wanted to destroy her family, and the merciless goddess who actually had.

  Wrath angled himself toward Athena, setting his broad shoulders back. He gripped his helmet, but one hand drifted toward the sword at his side.

  “She will betray you—she will destroy you, the way she has all the others,” Belen said, this time with real fear. “Listen to me—she’s fed you lies! You don’t need her!”

  “I have spoken no lies,” Athena said coolly. “The great Wrath and I are meant for this—we have always been meant for this. The meeting of the old way, and the new. The first Ares was weak, too prone to tempers and madness, and the most hated of my father’s children. But now I have found a worthy partner in war—the balance of strength to my strategy—and a new king to kneel to.”

  Belen shook his head. “That—that can’t be true—”

  “Do you call me a liar?” Athena asked sharply. “I owe my lord Wrath my allegiance after he graciously told me of the new poem, of my father’s wishes. I am pleased to serve him as he makes his final, true ascension.”

  Bile rose in Lore’s throat; even after everything she had done, Athena’s words, her soft, cloying tone, felt like another betrayal. On the roof of the town house, Lore had told her everything—her past, her fears—and she had believed the goddess, she had felt Athena’s own suppressed anger and frustration.

  You may call that complicity, and perhaps it is, Athena had said. But I deemed it survival.

  It had to be an act, but it was one the goddess had willingly lowered herself to.

  “The Gray-Eyed One is the wisest of all beings,” Wrath said, preening at her words. Believing every one of them, the way only a man who saw no faults in himself could. “She has proven herself worthy to serve me. . . . Tell me, how have you? A boy—one who cannot even fight—dares to question my judgment? Dares to believe himself wiser than Athena hers
elf?”

  Belen shook his head, backing up until he hit the edge of the flatbed.

  “My great lord,” Athena said, watching the young man with a look Lore recognized. Silent victory. “As you know, all great ventures must begin with a sacrifice seeking favor from Zeus if they are to succeed.”

  The new god turned toward his mortal son.

  Every part of Lore seemed to heave forward, even as she stayed in place.

  Belen had time to whisper, “Please—” before his father drew a small hidden blade from a sheath at his forearm and slit his throat.

  Blood whipped up against the tank with the force of his strike. Belen fell to the ground, his body twitching as his frantic heart pumped the last bit of life from him.

  Wrath watched him die, dark elation spreading over his face. When the young man was finally still, he bent down and placed a hand on his son’s throat, coating it with blood.

  Athena looked on, her top lip curling.

  Rising again, Wrath pressed his palm against the tank, leaving a dark smear on it. He backed away, his gaze fixed on it. Slowly, he brought his fingers to his lips. To his tongue.

  He didn’t turn around again as he spoke, but his voice carried the words across the distance between them. “Daughter of Perseus.”

  Stay with me, Lore thought one last time as she gripped the straps of the aegis and stepped into the station.

  “How good of you,” he said, “to bring your god one last gift.”

  HIS VOICE WAS LIKE the slide of a reptile’s scales against skin, stirring an unconscious, primal sort of fear.

  Enemiesss, the voice hissed in her mind.

  Lore gripped the straps of the aegis tighter, imagining the gods cowering before her under its power. But the thought didn’t fill her with satisfaction.

  No, she thought back. I’ll need your help, but not for that.

  Lore had her own fury, her own strength, and she wanted them to fear her, to know that she had been the one to defeat them.

  Her gaze didn’t waver as she met Wrath’s eyes. He laughed as she approached, the aegis held high, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword. The sound echoed around them, multiplying until it became a roar. Lore refused to look at Athena, but tracked her at the edge of her vision as the goddess spoke.