Aphrodite

by Kaitlin Bevis

  He turned his face toward me, his lips brushing against mine. He kissed me gently, his motions featherlight to let me know I could draw back at any time. And I did what he’d done so many times for me—held him until he could pull himself together enough to stand on his own feet.

  Chapter XXXIII

  SOMETIME LATER, Artemis opened her eyes. “I found them,” she announced. “They’re looking for us. But Poseidon thinks we must be shielded, because he can’t sense us.”

  “We need to get out of here. Signal them somehow.” I stood, then realized what a bad idea that was.

  Ares jumped to his feet, reaching out stabilize me. “Easy.”

  Artemis gave me a level look. “I mean, we haven’t not tried that in the hours we’ve been here.”

  “Fair enough.” I winced as Ares lowered me to the ground.

  “How are we going to do this?” Artemis asked in an undertone.

  Ares shushed her, but not before I figured out what she meant. Even if they did escape, they couldn’t get far with me. I drew my knees to my chest, wincing at the pain, and did my best to not pass out or throw up all over the cell.

  Adonis groaned, drawing all of our attention like a magnet.

  “Told you he’d heal,” Ares murmured, shifting in front of me.

  “What happened?” Adonis’s voice sounded thick. “Aphrodite—Is she—”

  “Dead?” Artemis crossed her arms. “She was, technically.”

  Ares’s fist clenched and unclenched. “Near as I can figure, when Tantalus told her to drop dead, she wasn’t strong enough to swear over her powers, so she went for the more mundane death of stopping her heart. Lucky for you, he never said how long she had to stay dead and she had enough power left to heal the damage once we brought her back.”

  Why would that be lucky for Adonis? I glanced up and caught the murderous glare in Ares’s eyes. Oh.

  Adonis coughed, a wet hacking sound that left me wondering if Tantalus had done more damage than I’d thought. He looked over at me, waiting until I met his eyes. “Glad you’re okay.”

  “You don’t get to look at her,” Artemis explained, kneeling in front of the demigod. “Look at me. And if you try to charm me, Ares will snap your neck. We clear?”

  “Clear,” Adonis agreed.

  “Aphrodite said you were going to tell us everything? Now would be a good time.”

  Adonis swallowed hard and recounted his side of events. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” he said, wrapping up. He pushed up into a sitting position. “But Tantalus has completely lost it. It’s the curse. He’s been babbling about furies and—”

  “Wait, the Cursed House of Atreus?” I interrupted. “I thought that was ancient history.”

  “It is. That story ended with Orestes,” Artemis said, referring to the last cursed descendent in the House of Atreus, and Tantalus’ distant descendent.

  “It did,” Adonis agreed. “For Tantalus’ descendants.”

  Ares froze. “Wait, are you saying he’s the Tantalus?”

  Adonis nodded. “And here I thought you guys knew everything?”

  “There are limits,” Artemis said distractedly. “If another god withholds the information, it doesn’t travel down the bloodlines. And we’re not omniscient. I can’t tell you what you had for breakfast yesterday, what you’re thinking, or whether you’ll be alive in an hour. But if you invented something, I’d know how to use it.”

  Adonis considered that for a moment, then continued. “Tantalus was cursed with immortality with a sadistic twist. Drinking makes him thirstier, eating makes him hungrier. And every now and then, it all kind of drives him insane. His mind heals eventually. For a while, at least.”

  I knew that curse. It was one of Demeter’s favorite standbys. “He doesn’t look particularly starved.”

  “Zeus countered the curse,” Adonis explained. “It doesn’t change the way Tantalus feels, but his body can process food and drinks.”

  “Why would Zeus counter the curse?” Artemis asked.

  “In exchange for his daughter.”

  “His daughter?” I interrupted.

  “Niobe. She and Zeus had fourteen children. Seven sons, and seven daughters. And each of those daughters—”

  “Had more daughters with Zeus,” I said, realizing where this was going.

  Adonis nodded. “For generations. But then a couple of years ago, Zeus decided we were strong enough to steal our powers back through fealty. He started murdering us. Tantalus, Jason, and Narcissus banded together and started DAMNED to find the descendants, and protect as many of them as they could find.”

  “Where are they based?” Ares demanded. “What—”

  “This trip was all about recruiting me and Elise,” Adonis interrupted. “I got the sales pitch, but not much else in the way of details. Especially since I made it pretty clear I wasn’t interested in joining any group Tantalus was a part of. I met him a couple of years ago when he just got into modeling. I didn’t get the whole backstory then. We didn’t exactly didn’t get along.”

  My mind flashed to Tantalus’s comment about Adonis’s little sister being a great lay and auditioning for a role on Teen Mom. Not getting along seemed like a pretty massive understatement.

  “Jason asked me to hear them out, and in terms of gigs, the cruise didn’t suck. I didn’t actually plan on joining them. The only reason I even knew about the weapons is because she showed up.” He motioned to me.

  “Back up.” I rubbed my forehead, trying to keep all the names straight. “You’ve mentioned Jason a few times now. Who is he?”

  “He’s—”

  Down the hall, a door slammed. Artemis stepped between me and the bars, Adonis pushed himself to his feet and more or less shambled to the front of the cell, and Ares pulled me off the ground and placed me in front of him so I faced away from the bars.

  I collapsed against him. “If they dosed you, you might not be immune to his charm, either of you.” I lifted my head, intending to look to Artemis to make sure she heard my warning, but Ares stopped me.

  “We know.” He tilted my chin up and met my gaze.

  “Now that you’re all up.”

  I glanced over my shoulder as Tantalus came into view, carrying an ancient-looking spear in one hand.

  Ares jerked my chin back to him.

  “We can get started.”

  All up? How would he know?

  Ares read the confusion in my face and glanced up, casting a significant look at a small black dome hanging from the ceiling. I’d mistook the camera for a burnt-out light. He’d been watching us. Did he have audio, too?

  “Recognize this, Ares?” Tantalus asked. “Agamemnon ripped it from your hands at the fall of Troy. He was strong, so strong. But it wasn’t enough to save him.”

  “You,” Ares said to Tantalus, keeping his eyes locked on mine, “are either the bravest, or the stupidest demigod I’ve yet to encounter.”

  “And that’s saying a lot,” Artemis added. “We knew Hercules.”

  Tantalus ignored them. “Adonis. You’re looking better. So either the compound doesn’t work on demigods, or we need to up your dosage. Interesting implications, either way.”

  “What dosage?” Adonis’s voice became wary.

  “You betrayed our cause. So we’re using you to test the chemical compound’s effectiveness on demigods who prove unworthy of their powers.”

  “You’re doing what?” Adonis demanded.

  I resisted the urge to comment on Adonis’s apparent shock and horror at the prospect of being drugged.

  “Compound?” Ares’s dark eyes flickered, and I yanked on the neck of his shirt to keep his gaze down. “What sort of compound?”

  “Oh, it’s quite remarkable.” As Tantalus spoke, I winced at the disti
nct sound of metal scraping against the floor. “Our scientist broke down some of the more unusual properties of adamantine. It takes power to invoke, but we have that, so it was just a matter of isolating the isotopes that acted as a catalyst for the severe reaction your kind experiences upon contact.” He sounded so smug, I itched to punch him. “I’m sure you’ve all noticed the effects by now. We developed a highly effective lipid soluble solution for the perfect desired outcome.”

  I snorted in disgust. “Do you actually understand any of that, or are you just parroting what you’ve been told?”

  “Was my explanation too complex?” Tantalus asked, his tone snarky. “Sorry, I forgot I was talking to Goddess Barbie.”

  “Desired outcome?” Ares interjected before I could come up with a witty response. “Which was . . . ?”

  “To leave you powerless, of course.” Tantalus seemed surprised we hadn’t put that together, as if the answer should be obvious. “There are some in our number who don’t want to resort to anything as drastic as murder, but you’ve proven you can’t be trusted with your powers.”

  “Not the recruitment pitch,” Ares snapped. “You have to know we die without powers; you’ve been around too long not to have picked up on that. But you’ve got Steele, which is a much easier way to kill us. So, why all the rigmarole?”

  “Oh, we couldn’t actually remove your powers,” Tantalus explained. “We divert them. The compound works to break you down from the inside out, and your powers work to heal you. Our scientists discovered your powers always prioritize keeping you alive, whether you wish to use them for something else or not.”

  And how did their scientists do that? Maybe Zeus wasn’t the sole reason so many gods had gone missing last year.

  Oblivious to my thoughts, Tantalus continued. “It’s involuntary, like a heartbeat. The process is certainly not painless, but it is temporary.”

  Not entirely. Lipid soluble meant the drugs dissolved in fat, so while the brunt of the impact would be felt right away, the compound could take months, possibly even years, to get completely out of our systems. But none of that changed the fact that if the compound was based in Steele, I should have been dead ten times over. Unless the Steele they make isn’t deadly. When a god imbued Steele with powers, all hell broke loose. But demigods had never made the weapons before.

  When Ares tensed, I realized that focusing on how they could or couldn’t kill us was thinking too small. Why bother with temporary measures when their concern seemed to be that we couldn’t handle power at all? The demigods didn’t want us dead, and they didn’t want us powerless. They wanted us controlled. We could be charmed if we were powerless, and forced to make promises we’d be bound to keep when our powers returned.

  “Well . . .” Tantalus dragged the word out as if a thought had just occurred to him. Maybe he wasn’t familiar with the sensation. “There is a caveat. We have to be very careful how much of the compound we administer. Otherwise, you might not have enough power to heal. But over the last few days, we’ve gotten a much better idea how much you guys can take. Thanks for nearly overdosing, Aphrodite. You provided some very valuable data. Or should I be thanking you for that, Adonis?”

  “Go to hell,” Adonis barked.

  “Been there, didn’t take. Jason will be along soon with some of our scientists to take you all to another facility. In the meantime, there is one more test I’d like to run. You see, I promised the scientists a cadaver, and you went and brought it back to life. But I’m not picky.”

  A loud popping sound filled the cell, paired with a white-hot flash of lights and the scent of sulfur. Ares’s gaze jerked toward the source of the commotion.

  “Don’t look,” I yelled, grabbing his chin and trying to get his gaze back on me. But Tantalus’s distraction had already done its job.

  Tantalus laughed as Ares went still, his pupils widening. “Kill whichever one of them you want to live the most.” He passed the spear through the bars.

  Chapter XXXIV

  “APHRODITE, RUN!” Artemis yanked me away from Ares so fast, I lost my balance and fell to the ground, landing eye level with the spent firecrackers near Tantalus’s feet. So that’s what that noise was.

  The short goddess shoved her way between Ares and the bars in a desperate attempt to break Tantalus’s eye contact before the charm took hold.

  Run? Run where? I tried to get up. Oh, gods, I couldn’t—I couldn’t do this. My entire body sang with pain. I slouched against the wall, breathing in gasps as my vision clouded over.

  Ares stood stock still, teeth clenched together, hand wrapped around the spear so tight his knuckles turned white. Every muscle in his body looked tense as he fought Tantalus’s influence. His eyes darted to me, filled with panic.

  I couldn’t defend myself under normal circumstances, much less when I was half-dead from fever, beaten to a pulp, sore from CPR, and locked in a cage with nowhere to go. But then, I was a goddess. Even poisoned, we were a good bit more resilient than the average person. Maybe I could—

  The average person would be dead five times over by now, the annoying side of my brain pointed out. I ignored my irritating logic. Acknowledging I wasn’t just screwed, I was super screwed wouldn’t help anything right now.

  Never had I felt so keenly aware of the lack of space between four walls. I saw nothing to hide behind. Nothing to slow Ares down. Just a small stretch of empty space, illuminated by a harsh, flickering fluorescent light.

  “Tantalus, why are you doing this?” Adonis’s bruised and swollen face contorted in confusion as he glared Tantalus down. His might have been intimidating, if it hadn’t been so obvious that his death grip on the cell bars was all that kept him on his feet.

  “I told you, I needed a cadaver. But I’m pleased it worked out this way. Your girlfriend nearly broke the charm on the passengers we armed,” Tantalus explained, passing something shiny and stake-like from one hand to the other. Olympian Steele. Great. If Ares failed to kill me, Tantalus would. “We need to see if breaking charm is possible with the right motivation. Also, we need a divine cause of death.”

  “Ares!” Artemis poked the war god in his eyes. “Snap out of it.”

  He winced, jerking backward and out of her reach, but the order had already been given, the charm already taken. Ares grabbed Artemis by the shoulders and moved her out of the way with a rough shove. His shaking hands filled me with hope.

  “You don’t want to hurt me.” Conviction filled my voice. “I know you don’t want to hurt me. Fight it, Ares. I know you can.”

  “Run,” he managed to say between gritted teeth before he threw me across the cell. I slammed into the wall opposite Ares and slid to the floor, stars exploding across my vision.

  Oh, gods. I pushed myself up on my arms, then collapsed. There was nowhere to go.

  “Hey!” Artemis snapped her fingers in front of Ares’s face. “You know who you should want to live the most?” She waited a beat. “You.”

  “Artemis!” I managed to rise to a crouch. “No!”

  She ignored me. “You are the most egotistical deity I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something. Admit it, Ares. You think you’re our only hope of getting out of this. You can’t be the hero if you’re dead. If you die, you can’t save us.”

  “Stop it!” My pulse pounded in my throat. If Artemis convinced Ares he wanted to live the most, Ares would kill himself. Ares couldn’t die. None of us could die. We’d lived through Zeus. I wasn’t going to sit here and let us get killed by some psychotic demigod.

  Ares lunged forward, pushing Artemis out of the way with enough force to send her sprawling to the floor. In a matter of seconds, he cornered me.

  “Yeah, kind of figured that was a long shot,” Artemis muttered, brushing herself off.

  “Stop this,” Adonis demanded, turning to Tantalus in appeal. “If he could b
reak the charm, he would have. Experiment over, okay?”

  “Not necessarily.” Beads of sweat shimmered on Tantalus’s forehead with the strain of holding the charm, and I realized something.

  He wasn’t like Adonis. Zeus’s “special” demigods grew stronger with every generation. Tantalus predated the whole experiment. He might have lived long enough to learn to control and perfect his charm, but he couldn’t be strong enough to hold it for long.

  “He could be faking.” Tantalus continued. “The only way to know for sure is if he does something that can’t be reversed. If he kills her, then—”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Adonis yelled. “This is insane! Drugging people, knocking them out, throwing them in cages, murder? You can’t—”

  “They are not people.” Tantalus’s eyes flared with indignation. “They are gods. They are wrong. Their very existence. The things they’ve done. Everything about them is wrong. How can you side with them?”

  Ares came at me, his hand gripped tight on his spear. When Artemis threw herself at him, he slammed her into the wall with so much force, I knew he’d completely lost against the charm.

  “Stop,” I begged. “Ares, please.” I twisted out of the way with a scream and the spear struck the wall, jabbing deep within the metal and sticking there.

  Adonis met my eyes. Do something, he seemed to say. He stood wheezing as he huddled against the bars, mere feet from me. But he might as well have been in another realm for all the help he was. I saw no hope in his expression, no strength. He just looked frightened and hurt. Tearing my gaze away from him, I looked across the cell to Artemis. She lay in an unconscious heap against the cell wall.

  No help there. Only me.

  My mind raced in a desperate attempt to find some way out of this. Think, Aphrodite. I watched Ares struggle to pull the spear free from the metal wall. The spear could cut through metal? Well . . . that opened up my options a bit. Turning so the bars were at my back, I watched as Ares ripped the spear free and ran toward me.