Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  “Okay.” I pushed myself to a sitting position, crossing my legs. The beige duvet crinkled beneath me. Drawing in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and focused.

  “Three,” I texted. Teleporting an entire boat from one place to another was hard. The first couple of times I tried, I fried the engines. But Jason was nothing if not persistent, and money was no object when charm was involved. We could replace whatever we broke.

  The tricky part was not accidentally breaking the people I dragged along with it. Although, I’d never done that. Keeping everyone intact seemed mostly instinctual. But I couldn’t help worrying that one day, I’d summon someone to me and they’d pop up looking like a misshapen blob of flesh with limbs sticking out in all the wrong places.

  My stomach lurched. Wow, I needed to not think that visual ever again. Particularly not now. Drawing in a deep breath, I forced my mind to clear, visualizing the boat and the little golden people on board. I couldn’t see them, not really. But I could sense them, and that was almost the same. Two unfamiliar . . . not shapes, more like impressions, were on board the boat.

  “Two.” Nails biting into the palms of my hand, I drew them to me. Well, not to me. A boat crashing through the wood plank walls of my bedroom would be problematic on a lot of levels. Fortunately, the island’s shield stopped anything from actually teleporting past them. The boat would arrive just far enough away to avoid slamming into the invisible barrier before Jason could signal Glauce to take the shield down.

  “One.” Hot washes of agony sang through my nervous system as I drew the vessel toward the edge of the shield. Oh gods. Gasping, I lurched off the bed and into the bathroom just in time to heave my guts into the toilet. Pregnancy or teleportation? Ugh.

  Jason kept saying that using our powers was like strengthening a muscle. But he was wrong. Maybe my accuracy was improving, but my body wasn’t any happier tolerating the strain of using that much power, no matter how much I practiced.

  My gaze landed on the trashcan filled with nearly a dozen pregnancy tests, mocking me with their lines of blue and pink. My stomach lurched again.

  Spent, I pulled my dark hair into a ponytail and carefully gathered all of the evidence into a plastic bag. I couldn’t risk the tests or empty boxes being in the house. Jason couldn’t find out. On a whim, I grabbed my journal and hurried down the street. I’d swing by the hospital so that I’d be there when Jason oriented the newbies to the island. Then he’d probably be busy the rest of the day. As long as I put in an appearance at dinner, he’d never know anything was amiss.

  I circled behind the hospital and tossed the bag into the medical waste bin, ignoring the twinge of guilt for the improper sorting. Trash collection on the island was a complicated affair. It didn’t take more than a few sorting errors to leave us drowning in garbage.

  A flurry of voices from around the building disrupted my thoughts.

  “Get the doors!” Jason called.

  Rushing to the front of the hospital, I grabbed one of the doors just as Otrera grabbed the other. She nodded at me over the stretcher that was being wheeled in.

  I gasped when I saw the girl on the gurney. Her face was a mass of bruising and swelling, her dress crusted in blood. The sheer violence of her wounds twisted my stomach.

  “What happened?” I asked Otrera, running into the hospital on her heels.

  “Tantalus went off the rails,” she said, panting as she rushed through the lobby. “You know that call Jason got from Tantalus last night about the gods taking our places and using glamours?” She met my eyes, and I nodded, though I hadn’t heard about that call at all. “He thought she was one of them.”

  “. . . presenting with broken ribs, lacerations, and internal bleeding,” a person in scrubs yelled as they whisked the girl down the hall.

  An unfamiliar demigod, his face an identical mass of swollen bruises, tried to follow the stretcher, but the nurse pushed him back before hurrying through the set of swinging doors.

  “. . . can’t go back there,” Jason’s calm voice reasoned. “You’re injured. We need to—”

  “I’m not leaving her!” the demigod protested in perfect Greek.

  Jason couldn’t have understood what the demigod said, but he moved in front of the swinging doors, speaking in calm and soothing tones. “She’s going into surgery. There’s nothing you can do for her right now. Let’s get you taken care of, and—”

  The demigod moved to get past Jason, but Jason could be an effective wall when he had to be.

  “We can take him to the operating theater,” I suggested, approaching the stranger. “You can’t cross that line.” I motioned to a red line in front of the doorway. “But there’s a room upstairs where you can keep an eye on her.”

  The demigod whirled on me and I jerked back. His face clouded in confusion when he saw me, a common response since I’d come to the island. What are you? the quick once-over seemed to demand. You’re not one of us.

  Nope, I wasn’t a demigod. Not exactly.

  “You could watch,” I prodded, intentionally misinterpreting his look of incomprehension, switching to Greek. “You’ll be able to see her the entire time.” It probably wasn’t proper protocol, but I had a way of making people bend the rules.

  “That’s a great idea,” Jason said at the same time, moving between me and the angry stranger. “You’ll be able to see her the whole time,” he explained, echoing me in English. “And we can get someone to patch you up.” He flagged down a passing nurse to charm her into making it happen.

  I stared at Jason for a moment, my mind flashing back to that trashcan full of pregnancy tests. Did you do this to me on purpose or am I just being paranoid? “Patched up?” I asked instead, my eyes dropping to the hand the demigod kept held against his side. “What—?”

  The demigod moved his arm and I drew in a sharp breath when I saw the long, shallow gash on his side. “Yeah, that’s probably going to need some stitches.”

  Mollified, the demigod let me lead him to the windowed room, looking over the operating room. “Are you a doctor?” he asked when I pressed some gauze against his wound.

  “I’m only seventeen.” I laughed. “I’m lucky they trust me with Band-Aids.”

  Jason paused in the doorway, flanked by a doctor and nurse. “Medea,” he called. “Let’s give them some space to work, yeah?”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I promised. “And don’t worry. She’s in good hands.”

  The demigod nodded, his eyes never leaving the girl lying on the table below.

  The second Jason and I stepped out of the operating theater, I turned to Jason and forced myself to focus on the crisis at hand. “What happened?”

  Jason leaned against the wall, hands resting on the wooden railing. He wasn’t the tallest demigod on the island, but he was by far the most muscular. A fact his black, fitted T-shirt showed off almost as well as it enhanced his dusky gold skin. “Tantalus thought she was one of them in disguise. Last night, he called, ranting and raving about how the gods are using glamours to replace us and infiltrate our camp. He said some new goddess threw him in Tartarus—” He broke off, misinterpreting my look of confusion for ignorance. “A hell realm in the Underworld. And he claimed that Ares was walking around wearing his face.”

  “Tartarus has cell reception?”

  “I know, right?” Jason snorted, but couldn’t quite manage to laugh. There was nothing funny about this. He glanced down at the floor, squinting against the harsh light that bounced off the tile. “He was not forthcoming on how he supposedly got out of the Underworld, much less back onto a moving ship.”

  “He couldn’t have.” Tantalus was the only other demigod who could teleport. But his ability had been granted by Zeus and had weird limitations, like he couldn’t be touching land or water and he couldn’t bring anyone with him. “Landing on a moving target, t
hat’s . . . impossible. He’s got to be lying.”

  “Well . . . ,” Jason hedged. “At that point, the boat wasn’t moving. But still, he clearly snapped. I told him to evacuate the other demigods on the ship, scrap the mission, and not to do anything until I got to the meeting place,” he said, referring to the other secure island, the one Tantalus had used, that we sometimes met new recruits on before teleporting here if we were worried there was a high risk of being followed. He glanced at me in mute appeal. “I couldn’t risk him losing it out there and bringing the whole Pantheon down on our heads.”

  “You made the right call,” I assured him.

  “Except that he didn’t listen.” Jason gripped the wooden railing so tight his knuckles went white. “Our people are still on that boat, and all I’ve managed to piece together from Adonis is that Tantalus thought he and Elise were gods in glamours and nearly killed them both.”

  I tilted my head. “He told you that?”

  “In bits and pieces. I’d like a more complete picture, but . . .” Jason let out a frustrated sigh. “Getting that much out of him wasn’t easy.”

  Language barriers tended to have that effect. I’d taught Jason a little Greek, but he was by no means fluent. “I’ll talk to him,” I promised, glancing back at the door to the operating theater.

  “Thanks.” Relief was evident in Jason’s voice. “I don’t think I’m Adonis’s favorite person right now. Find out anything you can. At this point, I don’t even know if I can trust Tantalus’s report that there was a goddess on the ship. Narcissus and the others will be back in a few days. Hopefully we’ll get a full report from them, but in the meantime . . .”

  “We have to assume the worst.” Crossing the hall to lean on the wall next to Jason, I laid my head on his shoulder. “You need to tell everyone else what happened. We’re not in any shape to face the Pantheon right now, but if Tantalus set them off, we might not have the luxury of waiting anymore. They need to know, Jason.”

  “I know.” His gold eyes darkened.

  “Where is Tantalus now?”

  Jason squeezed my shoulder. “Hell if I know.”

  “Do you want me to summon him?” I winced at the thought. Summoning the boat had taken a lot out of me. “Find out for sure? I’ll need some time to recover, but—”

  Jason shook his head. “Not yet. The last thing we need is for Adonis”—he jutted his finger toward the door we’d just walked out of—“to see Tantalus and completely lose it. Do you know how damaging this could be to our cause?” He clenched his fists. “We’re not supposed to get hurt by each other. I hate to ask . . . but if you heal Elise—”

  “Absolutely not.” I shook my head, ignoring the guilt blooming in my chest. “Never again.”

  “Okay,” Jason said.

  I couldn’t suppress my sigh of relief, even though I knew he was never going to strap me down and take my blood. “Tantalus is insane, not stupid.” I reached down and laced my fingers through Jason’s to give him a reassuring squeeze. “He’ll hole up somewhere like he always does and howl at the moon for a while. He’s not going to come back here anytime soon. He went against your orders.” I eyed Jason. “Didn’t he?”

  “Of course he did!” Jason pulled away from me in shock. “Do you honestly think I’d condone that?” He pointed toward the operating room. “I told Tantalus not to do anything until I got there and evaluated the situation. So what the hell was he thinking? Can you imagine if he’d been right? If he’d done that to an actual goddess?”

  Shivering, I stared down at the shadows we cast on the floor. “We’d be dead by dawn.”

  “Ah, it’s not as bad as all that.” He shot me a sideways grin and recaptured my hand. “I’ll need you to summon Tantalus eventually, but let’s talk to Narcissus and the others first. Hopefully, Elise will wake up by the time they get back and we can find out a bit more about what set Tantalus off. In the meantime, I’ve got to call a conference. Can you wait with them?” He motioned to the operating room and gave me an apologetic look. “I know you hate hospitals.”

  I flushed. He’d rescued me months ago, and I was still having a hard time getting used to such thoughtfulness. “I’ll be fine.” Feeling guilty for doubting him, I drew him to me and planted a kiss on his lips. “You take care of yourself.”

  He grinned, the stress on his face melting away. “You, too.”

  Chapter III

  Aphrodite

  “SHE’S MY PROXY!” Persephone’s angry voice pulled me into her dreamscape. “It’s bad enough that you kept the fact that Aphrodite could potentially die if I channeled power to her, now you want to—”

  “I’m just making a suggestion.” Poseidon sounded calm as a tempest.

  “What you’re doing is overstepping,” Persephone said hotly. “And I’m—I’ve got her!”

  The dreamscape materialized around me for a fraction of a second before it shuddered into darkness.

  “No you don’t.” Persephone gripped my hands, pushing more and more power into me to tether me to the dreamscape.

  The dreamscape stabilized, though I still felt fuzzy, disconnected. My vision sharpened on the goddess clutching my hands. She was short and blond with sun-kissed skin and brilliant green eyes. By far the most harmless and adorable-looking god in the Pantheon and easily the deadliest.

  I groaned, reaching for my head. “What’s happening to me?”

  “Anesthesia.” Poseidon paced behind Persephone. “Only we’re not sure if it’s going to work on you. If it does, you should be beyond dreaming in a matter of seconds, if not . . .” He trailed off.

  “We’ll keep you here.” Persephone’s green eyes narrowed in determination. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fuzzy.” I brushed my hair out of my face with my free hand, pausing when I noticed the strands of hair were gold, not red. “And weird. Really weird.”

  “That’s probably all the meds.”

  Meds? I shook my head, trying to gather my thoughts. “Is Adonis—”

  “He’s fine.”

  I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. “Artemis?”

  Persephone smiled. “We got her out. She can access a sliver of her powers already, so it looks like Tantalus was telling the truth about the poison being temporary.”

  Which meant Ares could only use a portion of his powers, too. My insides went cold as I realized just how vulnerable he was. I glanced between Poseidon and Persephone and realized someone was missing. “Where’s Hades?” He’d never leave Persephone alone with Poseidon.

  She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m not putting that on you.”

  Poseidon rolled his eyes. “You’re going to have to tell her if she’s going to—”

  She’s in the hospital!” Persephone snapped. “Because of me. I’m not—”

  I shook my head, trying to shake away the fuzziness. “What hospital? I don’t—” I grasped for the right words, confusion overwhelming me.

  “I don’t know,” Poseidon said. “We tried following you, but my agents lost track of the boat.” He flashed me a look that was equal parts apology and aggravation, as if his difficulty tracing us was my fault. “I’ve got everyone I can spare searching the area where they last saw the boat. There’s nothing there. No shield. No power signatures—”

  “We didn’t sense any power signatures on the cruise ship either,” Persephone reminded him. “I don’t think all demigods leave them.”

  “We don’t have much time.” Poseidon’s voice brimmed with impatience. “If she loses consciousness completely, her connection here will fade.”

  “Lose consciousness?” Hospitals, anesthesia. Those words all had meaning, but I couldn’t decipher them. “What? What’s going—?”

  “We think they’re prepping you for surgery.” Persephone squeezed my hand. “I’m trying to strengt
hen your connection to the dreamscape,” she said, referring to the shared “room” we all occupied within our dreams. “But if you drop out of a viable dreamstate, I can’t keep you here.”

  Well, I was already feeling the effects of the anesthesia, so unconsciousness should be a matter of when, not if, right? How much longer did we have? I should already be out, I realized, knowledge clicking into place. A human would be. Powerless or not, I was physiologically different from humans, and right now, that was a bad, bad thing.

  Swallowing hard, I realized there was a very good chance I’d wake up mid-surgery. No wonder Persephone was trying so hard to keep me dreaming. If I went unconscious, no big deal. But if I woke up under the knife?

  “Focus on where you are,” Persephone demanded, tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear.

  The strain frayed at the edges of Persephone’s voice, and I realized what a delicate balancing act she was maintaining. My body couldn’t handle power right now. If Persephone pushed too hard and bridged the gap between my mind and body, she could kill me. But if she didn’t push hard enough, I’d slip through her fingers.

  I focused on expanding my awareness. The dreamscape slowly filled in with details I must have seen before fading into sleep: bright lights, screens filled with numbers and lines, a cold metal table, and blue cloth. Sounds and what little awareness I had while slumbering leaked into the dreamscape.

  “Yeah, they’re prepping her for surgery.” Persephone’s hands crushed mine as she looked around. “Poseidon, do you see anything that can tell us where she is? Anything you can link to?”

  Poseidon frowned. “Nothing. This doesn’t feel like my realm. You?”

  Persephone shook her head, worry pinching her features. “Names? Charts? Logos? Come on Poseidon, look.”

  “You can’t read in dreams,” Poseidon reminded her, pacing the dreamscape. “The only logo I’m seeing is Asclepius’s staff. Hardly unique.” He studied a wall decorated with a giant snake wrapped around a roughhewn staff. “If we’d sunk the boat, none of this would—”