by Amie Gibbons
“I already told you-”
“Blah, blah, blah, party line.”
“Can you guys make a map of where the portals have popped up?” Millie asked, staring at the map. “I…” she pointed and apparently finished whatever it was in her head.
“What is it, Lassie?” Tyler teased. “Come on, speak!”
Mille shot her a dirty look and grabbed a handful of the thumbtacks. “Apollo, give me your list.”
Apollo raised his eyebrows at her but handed it over. “These are just the ones we know about.”
“We can put up the others when you find them.”
She started pinning red thumbtacks to random places on the board, head going back and forth between the list and the map until Mira took the list from her and started reading the places to her.
“Will you let this go, please?” Apollo asked me, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes. “I thought we dealt with this whole Natives discussion.”
“We never dealt with this. When it came up, I just found something else to be pissed at you about. I want to know what happened.”
“Too bad.”
I got up in his face, my backup making me brave. “Not good enough after the shit you guys pulled today.”
“I’m sorry, saving your life is qualified as shit now?”
“Wanting to kill me in the first place does. Because what? Because I disobeyed your precious orders? Because I dared to think for myself!” I slapped my wrist. “Bad human.”
“Not my orders! My father's. One of us, not all. You don’t get to group us all together. We’re individuals, just like humans.”
“Exactly!” I jabbed my finger at his face. “You keep grouping us all together. Humans can’t handle this, humans can’t know, humans don’t deserve to know.”
“I never said that last one. As a group, humanity can not handle it. There would be mass hysteria. If they all knew, what would happen?”
He stared at me and I crossed my arms.
“That’s not a rhetorical question. I want to know what you think would happen if people knew this was even a possibility.”
My mouth worked.
“I’m waiting.”
“I don’t know!”
He clenched his jaw, looking in that moment more like an evil god of the underworld than his uncle ever did. “Then what the hell were you thinking when you went on the news to tell everyone?”
What had I been thinking? It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now? Not so much.
I tossed my hands up. “I don’t know.”
It was his turn to get up in my face, and he pulled it off a lot better. Being able to loom over me helped.
“May I suggest if you don’t know, you err on the side of caution and keep your mouth shut.” He bit off the last four words like peanut brittle.
I looked away, saying softly, “I was trying to help.”
He backed off. “I know. Just, don’t help things you don’t understand.”
When I looked up he was back at the map, pinning up the last few defectors we’d found. Millie and Tyler were both looking at me. For what? Maybe just waiting for a hint of what to do now.
Tyler raised an eyebrow, mouthing something at me.
“What?” I mouthed back.
She moved her mouth slower. It looked like natives, maybe?
Oh duh.
“No, no, no,” I said. Apollo turned.
“You don’t get to distract me,” I said. “Nice try, putting me on the defensive. Let’s not forget how this argument started. You lied to me. You bound me to you in this ridiculous one-sided transfer of power that messes with my emotions, and you apparently did something pretty damn bad to the Native American gods that you really don’t want to tell me about. Is it perhaps because what Ravena’s afraid of is what you did to them?”
“Cassandra, I already said I can’t tell you.”
“Because of your father. You know, I’m getting really sick of that guy.”
I walked up to him. “You can’t tell me,” I said, searching his face. “Then show me.”
“What? No!”
“Dammit, Apollo, you drugged me with chemicals to fundamentally change how I feel and think about you so I can’t fucking trust myself ever again. You owe me!”
Something almost like fear flashed in his eyes and he looked lost. “I can try. Cassandra, you won’t like what you see.”
I shrugged. “I kinda figured that.”
He licked his lips and walked us over to the table where remnants of dinner lay forgotten. We sat in chairs facing each other and he scooted his closer.
“I've done this before, but I don’t know if it will work with you,” he said, putting his hands on my knees and leaning in, kissing close. “You won't like this.”
“You want me to trust you? To be on your side? You have to be honest with me. Even with the bad stuff.”
“Just remember you said that.”
“I think how fast he gave in on that is very telling,” Millie said.
“Millie!” I turned to glare at her over the back of the chair. “Don't point stuff like that out when he's giving me what I want.”
“Ohhhhh, dirty,” Tyler said, taking Millie's shoulder and guiding her back to the map.
“If we could somehow get a tracer on the ones we know of, we could track down the others,” Millie started, launching into an explanation of a magical tracer potion her group came up with last month.
Something about how getting DNA from one and then leaving the potion somewhere would leave a trace amount on the people that came into contact with him that you could see from anywhere with a spell.
Apollo closed his eyes and rested his forehead on mine, taking my hands.
I closed my eyes, too, waiting.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nothing happened and I opened my eyes.
Whoa.
The world danced grey around me, all different shades flowing and dipping, like a dog probably viewed the world. A dog that liked dancing. The people were dressed strangely. Not strange clothes though, strange ways of wearing. The outfits slipped on and off, leaving the people naked half the time.
My thoughts flowed like water, not quite able to grasp what was going on around me. There was a field, and way too many bright lights.
I had a headache.
The world focused and I blinked, wobbly and drunk. The world tipped over, taking me with it. But nope, I was upright again.
This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t right.
The men in front of me seemed to be wearing something old and musty. I couldn’t see long enough to get a hold of it, but I could smell it. Everything smelled bad, unwashed. Wild.
The gods sat around me, talking, planning. The alignment! Right.
“We have no choice,” one said. Zeus maybe?
“Father, I can’t.”
The scene shifted. We were in America. I knew that without knowing how. This wasn’t real. Wasn’t real. And yet…
A naked woman stood in front of me. No, she was coming at me with a spear. She disappeared. Another one popped up. This one male, maybe. Too hard to tell, they were naked, but their bodies wouldn’t stay still long enough to tell.
The man melted into a wolf and charged, others followed.
Skinwalker, flew through my mind like I was supposed to know what that meant. I know from TV, a tiny voice echoed through my brain and I brushed it off. Not important right now.
The skinwalkers flung themselves at me and I disappeared, running back to safety, to the light. They shouldn’t have done that. I was trying to help them.
“See?” a voice asked.
The light changed. It was daylight. My domain. Nothing here was pretty, though. These people were the wild formation of magic, not sentient as I knew it. Maybe not at all.
But I doubted it.
The land spoke through them. The land didn’t like us. Didn’t much like humans either. It wanted them gone. Wanted to start over.
&nbs
p; There was light, and blood, and fighting. It seemed to go on forever. Nothing was right here. Nothing wanted us here. But we would take it. We would make it see things our way.
What did it mean when it said the humans needed to start over? Who was it to decide that? What were we but humans with longer lives and powers?
It would hurt. That magic could be lost. We could live without it.
But it cost us.
The battlefield flowed away like paint on the sea when the tide rolled out. I didn’t know where we were, but the voice was quiet. The angry one that hated humans. That wanted them pushed back down to before they drew on walls and thought that made them know.
It cost us.
The rains came without bidding. Without our magic. They just were. They washed away the blood on our hands.
We cried for the loss. It was weakness and Father would not approve, but we cried. Our sister understood and cried with us. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t okay, and we were allowed to mourn the loss of anything that spoke and sought form.
My love came to us. She was beautiful. A slip of a girl. Our sister hated her but kept that to herself. She wanted us to be happy. The girl with big blue eyes and straight black hair kissed our tears, let us hold her. Let us have her. Let us seek comfort in her.
She was gone.
We searched. There were more. More who listened to the voice of land across the giant sea. More that believed we should let the humans die.
How could we? We promised them. Our legends spoke of our children, our love for them, our duty to protect them.
Some of us wanted to leave. Others said no. They argued. The demon spoke out of turn. He gathered an army to take Father. The Easterners punished him. He was one of theirs and he was not allowed to attack a king. They lost followers with that act.
We found our love. She wanted to leave. She wanted to join the others. To become more powerful and leave the humans to their fate. She couldn’t. We spoke to her, tried to explain.
Duty meant little to her. She’d drank her fill and found it sour.
She said no.
She betrayed us.
She died with the rest of them.
# # #
I pulled out of the vision and lunged away from Apollo, falling off my chair to my knees and crawling for the pantry.
“Trash can,” I said.
Millie hopped to and pulled it out of the pantry and arms lifted me from behind so I could get my face in it.
I puked, food coming up in at least five swells of my stomach as tears flowed down my face.
Dinner wasn’t nearly as good coming back up, and my stomach howled to have to dump it out, but my brain didn’t give it any choice.
I dry heaved over the can a minute or so and sank back. The hands under my arms moved, putting themselves around my middle, cuddling me back into a very not male chest.
“I thought you were Apollo,” I said, voice raspy and thin.
“Ha,” Tyler said, hugging me to her. “He tried, I was faster.”
How was she faster than a god?
“You’re pretty freaking strong,” I said.
“Are you okay?” Millie asked. “Do you want some Sprite or Ginger Ale?”
My stomach rebelled at the thought of anything going in there ever again and I swallowed thick bile back. I really didn’t want to go into another round of the dry heaves.
“I think some water and something like Sprite would be good. Does he have Sprite?”
“Yeah, I saw some earlier.”
Millie grabbed me a Sprite and popped open the top with a bottle opener on her keys. It was one of the bottles, the sodas made with real sugar that tasted amazing and made me wonder why anyone bothered drinking the normal stuff.
Tyler repositioned me, leaning me against the kitchen cabinet and sat next to me as Millie handed me the bottle. I took a sip and waited to see what my stomach had to say about it.
A few seconds confirmed the cold, carbonized goodness was cool with my stomach and I took a few longer sips.
“Do you remember what you saw?” Apollo asked, making me jerk.
“Ugh,” I said, holding my stomach as it rolled in protest. “Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.”
Why did I have a feeling that word was meant to encompass so much more?
“I couldn’t make sense of it. It was all a mess. Like being drunk, or in a dream, or both.”
“Yes, your mind... Ladies, will you excuse us for a moment? Cassandra can tell you afterwards but I am still bound by my father’s spell to not let you hear.”
“Won’t she be bound then?” Millie asked.
“No, because she never agreed to be.”
“Okay,” Millie said. “You going to be okay if we leave you?”
“I think so. I smell like puke, he isn’t going to try anything.” I tried a smile and Millie’s grimace told me it didn’t come off well.
They left, closing the door behind them.
“I thought your brain might have a difficult time interpreting things seen through my eyes, my perspective, but I did not know how else to show you,” Apollo said.
“So, the Native American spirit gods weren’t individuals per se, they were part of a big earth mother goddess?” I asked.
“Not quite accurate, but a close enough depiction to fit your understanding of the world.”
“You guys killed them. She was one of the ones who did the curse to begin with? Do I have that right?”
I wrinkled my forehead like I could squeeze the answers out of my brain.
“As much as I know. We aren’t sure exactly what happened back then. There was a war. Many of our ancestors were killed. We didn’t know the gods of this land were all part of her. That they were part of this thing that helped start the curse in the first place until we tried to negotiate with them. They killed”–Apollo paused, eyes bouncing around like he was doing the math–”I think about two dozen of us in the initial ambush.”
“Why can you talk about it now?”
“Because the part my father did not want told was the part you saw, as soon as you did, you were considered in the know by the spell. It can’t differentiate. It just knows two of us are speaking about it like we both know.”
“I felt… like she didn’t die.”
“She didn’t.”
“So she went to sleep with the rest of you?”
“No.”
I jerked and my brains tried to slide out of my skull. “Ughhhhhh. What?”
“She didn’t sleep. She was severely weakened, but we couldn’t find her. When we took magic to sleep, we took all but hers.”
“So Native American magics were real? They weren’t just stories left over from when magic was around like old world ones?”
“Precisely. But as I said before, energy dissipates over time. And that little magic being the only in the world? It spread and dissipated until it was practically non-existent. After that, their magics became myth and religion. They still worshiped the earth, but forgot why.”
“But she’s still there? Here, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re okay with this? Why haven’t you guys stopped her since you’ve been back?”
“If you can find her, be my guest.”
“Why does she want us dead?”
“She wanted to wipe out humans who were growing too great for their gods. Humans started to build, to cultivate the earth, to conquer it.”
“Not fifteen thousand years ago, we hadn’t.”
“She saw your potential. Humans have surpassed her greatest fears. One reason she’s not a high priority is because she’s not much of a threat. Humans have all but killed her.”
“Hey! We haven’t destroyed the earth. It’s fine.”
“No, you conquered it. Nature is tamed, humans have no natural predators, you are not beholden to the seasons, you have domesticated everything from plants to animals. You won. Human technology rules this world, not nature. She is not
worshiped, she is not acknowledged, and her people were all but wiped out a few hundred years ago by disease and invaders.”
“And we’re sure she’s not a threat? Sounds like she has a lot of reasons to hate us.”
“If she had any amount of power, we’d be able to sense her. But her curse? That is a threat.”
I nodded. “I have another question. Who was the girl? Was she…” I can’t believe I’m asking this. “Was she me?”
“She was Cassandra. The one from the stories you know. Her name wasn’t actually Cassandra, that was the more modern Greek interpretation of it. She was psychic. The stories say I cursed her to have powers but I did not. I did the opposite. I helped my father strip her powers with the other defectors and left her on Earth to live and die as a mortal when we went into hibernation.”
“Apollo, was she me?”
He didn’t say anything.
I was about to ask him again when he said, “When I first met you, I was positive she was. But now? No. I’m sure her spirit is somewhere. But… I loved her, but she was not a strong woman. She was not a selfless woman. You may look similar and have psychic powers like her, but you are nothing like her.”
“So what? I’m a coincidence?”
“I think you might be a descendant of hers. And the name could merely be a family name that popped up every few generations, or was just extremely common. You look like her, yes, and I think that’s where the initial attraction came from, but you are so much better than she ever was.”
“Do you still love her?”
He didn’t say anything for a few beats. “I do not know. For me, this was all merely a few years ago. I went to sleep and woke up in this new world. And lo and behold, a few months later, there was this woman who bore a remarkable likeness to her. But this woman was spunky and brave.”
I rolled my eyes and he chuckled. “And she offered me her beer when they ran out of the good kind. I begin to suspect right then you could not be her.”
He paused, finally coming around to my line of sight and kneeling in front of me. “Are you going to be okay?”
