Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  It turned out Zeus had been creating demigods, then breeding with those demigods for generations in a twisted experiment to see how many generations it took to create a new god. Zeus was Adonis’s grandfather on both sides, going all the way back to Galatea. But technically, neither one of Adonis’s parents were gods. So what did that make him? I’d eliminated the uncertainty in his case by activating the ichor in his blood and transforming him into a god. But there were others like him that defied classification.

  “Not like Adonis.” I tore my gaze from the shifting colors of the dreamscape and returned my attention to Ares. “There’s more than one god in their mix. I didn’t get much else out of Medea before I fell asleep.” I gritted my teeth in frustration. I’d tried to stay awake, but the medicine had other ideas. “But I did manage to ask about her lineage. “Medea claims her father was a child of Helios, and—”

  “Apollo,” Ares corrected.

  I waved away the distinction. Apollo assumed Helios’s role as sun god way back when the Titans were overthrown in a war that pre-dated the entire planet. But Apollo kept the name around as insurance. Gods lived off worship, and people arguing which god did what counted. Most of the gods had a whole slew of names and personas from different cultures and belief systems, so Apollo was hardly unique in that regard.

  “There’s more,” I said. “Her mother was another full-bred demigod.” Which meant both her parents had been demigods. “But go back further and her grandparents include both Hecate and Poseidon.”

  Ares’s eyebrows shot up. Hecate hadn’t bothered to return to the Pantheon, keeping company with her witches instead, most of whom were her demigods or gifted humans. “Hecate or Poseidon didn’t know about Zeus’s experiments until recently,” he murmured, as the room took on a decidedly more orange cast.

  “Nope.” I swiped at my forehead, where the skin pricked with the gentle heat generated by the dreamscape. “But Jason’s lineage is similar. Both of his parents are full-blooded demigods, but Aeolus is his grandfather on both sides.”

  “So that’s how we’re seeing abilities that aren’t charm,” Ares said. Charm was all Zeus tended to pass on to his demigods. “Zeus experimented with more than his own offspring. Who knows what other powers traveled through the bloodlines to these demigods?”

  The power of a demigod wasn’t supposed to last longer than one generation. Human blood was designed to win out, and a demigod’s children would be normal. Mostly. But Zeus screwed all that up. Literally. By inserting himself into their genealogy generation after generation, Zeus didn’t allow humanity to dilute the bloodline.

  “And it’s the reason why we’re seeing demigods without the markers,” I added, referring to their golden coloring. “Do you think he did it, Ares? Really made new gods?”

  Ares waved his hand, as though trying to summon something into the dreamscape. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen what Jason can do.” Swearing, he made a sharp motion and glared at a spot on the floor. The dreamscape flickered and rivulets of black spiked through it like static. “Is a chair too much to ask for? Really?”

  “I’m okay without a chair.” I took his hand and gave a sympathetic squeeze, all too familiar with the sensation of having power that had once come easily now out of reach.

  He pulled his hand free, his jaw working in frustration. “I’m just tired of the rules changing.”

  I shrugged. To me, the rules were a lot like the walls of Ares’s dreamscape: living, writhing things that changed shape the more you looked at them. The rules had been changing since I’d been born. I was getting used to the flux.

  “Did Medea tell you anything else?” Ares asked.

  “Maybe? I get gaps.” I waved vaguely at my head. “I just hope they’re from the meds, not that I’m being charmed to forget anything.”

  It was scary, living without powers. I never used to worry about someone charming me. But now my biggest fear was that some demigod would walk in, charm me, and force me to tell them everything. I could blow my cover and Ares’s and not even realize I’d done it. Speaking of which. . . . “I’m really sorry about the language slip.”

  Ares reached out and squeezed my hand, and a flare of warmth washed through the dreamscape. “She must have already noticed it with me. It was only a matter of time before she mentioned it to someone hearing us in English. Your quick thinking laid the groundwork to cover that.”

  I bit my lip. “I just . . . I’m so scared I’m going to screw up, Ares. If you get hurt because of me—”

  He drew me to him, his burning fingertips tracing the outline of my face. “I chose to be here. We need to know what we’re up against, all of us. Let me take credit for my own choices, yeah?”

  Nodding, I resisted the urge to close the gap between us with a kiss. When his thumb grazed against my lips, my breath caught. The glow of the dreamscape dampened, going soft as candlelight.

  His hand skimmed my side and I flinched. It was instinct—my side didn’t hurt in dreams. But the effect on Ares was instantaneous.

  The dreamscape flared to life as he dropped his hand and stumbled backward. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I moved toward him, but he stepped away.

  “Stop saying it’s okay!” Red spikes flared around us. “I stabbed you. I chased you down, backed you into a corner, and stabbed you while you begged me to stop. You were crying and screaming and bleeding and I did that!”

  “Tantalus—”

  “Should have never been able to control me. I’m supposed to be stronger than that. Poison or not, all I had to do was not look at him and I couldn’t—” He broke off, taking a deep, steadying breath. “I hurt my best friend. Threw her into the wall like she was nothing. I killed Adonis and I nearly killed you. I mean, gods! You’re worried about hurting me, about getting us both caught. You keep thanking me for being here. Do you really think I’ve forgotten why we’re here? You were dying. Because of me! We couldn’t heal you, we couldn’t teleport you. This was your only chance and, as you keep so astutely pointing out, you’re still in a hell of a lot of danger. It is not okay that I put you there. None of this is okay.”

  I froze, my hand outstretched. That was my pain in his voice.

  His ragged breathing filled the dreamscape as he looked anywhere but at me. “I never wanted to feel that way again. Controlled, powerless. I never wanted to hurt—” He broke off. “I’d forgotten. Gods help me, I’d forgotten what it was like to feel this way.” He stumbled back until he met the wall and slid to the ground, putting his head in his hands. “I didn’t want to remember this.”

  “Ares . . .” My mouth moved, forming empty, silent words. I knew how he felt. I knew exactly how he felt, and there was nothing I could say to make everything better.

  He looked up, anguished eyes meeting mine for a split second before his mask slipped back into place. His lips parted to say something, but then the dreamscape shuddered around us. “Babysitter’s here,” he said instead, climbing to his feet as his dreamscape dimmed to more muted shades of red. “Look, I’m sorry I lost it. I just . . . let me take responsibility for being here, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice hoarse as I watched his hands move to his hair to smooth it out. I’d pieced myself back together too many times not to know what it looked like.

  Ares flashed an easy grin over my shoulder. “Took you long enough.”

  I turned to find Athena, leaning against an indistinct yellow-orange wall, arms crossed, a tight smile on her face. “Shall we get going?”

  “Now remember, no sweets after ten,” Ares said sternly, holding up a finger. “Do you know all the emergency contact numbers?”

  Athena ignored his jest, marched over to me and took my hand. “If I were you, Ares, I’d try to get some actual sleep. Who knows what the morrow will bring.”

  The morrow, Ares mouthed to me
, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

  I just stared at him. Once upon a time, I’d been able to snap myself back into place just as quickly, but Adonis’s betrayal had put one crack too many in my facade. My walls had shattered; I couldn’t pretend anymore.

  Athena yanked me into her dreamscape. The yellow-and red-toned backdrop melted into an impressive array of bookshelves that looked like they came straight out of that movie with the chipped teacup.

  “This isn’t what I was expecting,” I told Athena, trying and failing to force my mind off Ares, when she released my hand and vanished behind one of the shelves.

  She shrugged, emerging with a book. Athena couldn’t possibly read in the dreamscape, but then I glimpsed the cover. A graphic novel.

  Athena pulled out a chair from one of the wooden tables and sat, flipping open her book.

  “What do you do when there’s dialogue?” I asked, trying to avoid looking at the shelves. The book titles swirled together in an alphabetic mishmash that gave me a headache.

  “Not all books need words.” She arched a brow at me, clearly waiting to see if I was going to interrupt her reading any further.

  “Got one for me?” I asked, pulling out a chair to sit across from her.

  “Perhaps.” Athena’s eyes flitted up to me and a frown marred her face. “Goodness, you look terrible.”

  I bristled. “I’m glamoured to look like a lesser being. What’s your excuse?”

  A smile curved on Athena’s lips. “No.”

  “No?” No what?

  “I don’t have one for you,” she said, returning to her book.

  I sighed, this was going to be a long night.

  OVER THE NEXT two weeks, Ares and I cautiously felt out our unspoken boundaries. The things he wouldn’t say, the things I couldn’t. Topics to avoid and embrace. It was a balancing act between the two of us as we licked our respective wounds. In the meantime, I couldn’t help feeling bored in the waking world. After all, I was still stuck in the hospital. Fortunately, Elise had a considerable online presence, so I spent my free time studying her.

  Getting to know Elise like this was strange. She was nice to me on the cruise, and I’d gotten the sense that we could have been friends. Now I just felt like her stalker.

  No, I was worse than a stalker. I’d stolen her identity. Sure, I had her permission while she hid in the Underworld, but still.

  At least she has great taste, I reflected, shifting to a comfortable position in my hospital bed as I browsed her online bookshelf.

  “So, I finally caught up to you on that show you were telling me about,” Medea said by way of greeting as she burst into my room, slinging the door open so hard it hit the wall before slamming closed. She winced. “Crap, sorry. But yeah, the one with the clones. And you’re right, that actress is incredible.”

  I sat up, a grin lighting up my face. “I know, right? It’s such a mind trip. They’re all the same person, and the parts where she’s playing a clone playing another clone . . . I mean, come on!”

  “She’s so in character that if I walk out of the room, I know exactly who’s talking.” Medea sat in the chair beside my bed, and propped her feet up on the railing. “They all have the same voice, Elise. They’re played by the same person. How is it possible I can tell them apart by voice? Is the next episode up yet?”

  I shifted. “Oh,” I said in surprise, folding back the thin, scratchy covers.

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t hurt as bad anymore.” The bed squeaked as I twisted back and forth, gratified when my side didn’t scream in agony. “How did I not notice that was getting better?”

  Medea shrugged. “Good sign though, right? Any word on when they’re letting you out?”

  “Assuming I don’t catch the plague, it shouldn’t be too much longer.” Turned out, healing was complicated without divine powers. My immune system wasn’t used to working, like, at all. Much less working under the stress my poor body had endured since I drank that first fateful bottle of water. I kept picking up infections, and not just around the stab wound.

  “I can’t wait. But for now, come on.” Medea leaned forward, thumping her hands against the plastic railing of my bed. “I’m dying to know what happened to the little girl.”

  Laughing, I started the next episode, ignoring the stab of guilt I felt for enjoying Medea’s visit. On the outside, I looked like an ally, but if she knew what I really was, she’d never be this nice to me.

  Medea visited every day at sporadic times. The nurses, on the other hand, dropped by like clockwork. As soon as I’d become mobile, I started taking advantage of the twenty-minute gaps between check-ins by searching the hospital for Hades before Ares dropped by.

  Hades had to be being held somewhere in the hospital. At least, that was my theory. Hades wouldn’t go down without a fight, even if they managed to drug his powers away. If he was here quietly, they must have him unconscious. If they’d developed something that could keep him under, they’d have to monitor him, right?

  Ares could have helped, but I didn’t see any reason for him to risk it. I was a fixture at the hospital. If anyone caught me wandering around, I could believably claim boredom. That excuse wouldn’t fly so well when I had company.

  Calling this place a hospital was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more like a clinic that happened to have a random surgical wing. The facility was always staffed, but not well. And given that I was the only patient who required ’round-the-clock medical care, unlike the occasional demigods who walked in with a sprained ankle or whatever, I rarely worried about running into someone. Once the nurses checked on me, they went back to the clinic on the other end of the floor, leaving the rest of the place empty and ready to explore. It was the perfect opportunity.

  As long as I made it back within twenty minutes. Moving still hurt, so I had to take it slower than I liked.

  Medea lingered after the episode finished, chatting and theorizing what would happen next. After she left, I waited patiently for the next nurse check-in.

  “Everything looks great,” the nurse, a perky redhead who was always way too cheerful, exclaimed. She studied the machines for a moment and made a few notes in my chart.

  I smiled and nodded, itching for her to leave already. As soon as her footsteps faded down the hall, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, grabbed my tablet, and set off exploring.

  I’d long since checked out all the rooms on my floor and the floor above, so I made a beeline for the stairwell.

  My room was located on the ground floor. There was one floor above me that held the surgical wing and the high-needs patient rooms. As a sign of how much better I was doing, they’d moved me down to the main floor where the lobby, what looked like a gutted gift shop, a walk-in clinic, and a few other patient rooms were located.

  The first sub-level must have been used for physical therapy. Exercise equipment and squishy mats filled the entire floor. Now, the demigods used it for a gym: open twenty-four seven and always busy. I slowed as I passed, keeping my footsteps soft until I reached the second sub-floor where the labs were.

  I listened from the stairwell for a moment before pushing open the wooden door. The lights were off, indicating the area wasn’t in use. Unfortunately, that meant most of the doors were probably locked.

  There were several locked doors within the hospital. To me, locks screamed “start searching here,” but Ares said otherwise.

  “Sometimes the most damning evidence is the thing someone didn’t think to lock up,” Ares had explained when I’d told him about the doors. “You can’t just look for him. We need to learn everything we can about these people. What weapons they have. What contacts they have off the island. That’s information that might not be hidden. We have to search the open rooms anyway. Start there. You can explain walking around the hospital, not
picking a lock and being somewhere you don’t belong.”

  I saw the sense in not doing something that could completely blow my cover until we at least had an exit strategy, so for now I stuck to the unlocked rooms. The first four doors I tried were locked, the fifth opened. Ducking inside, I set to work searching the drawers and cabinets. “Ugh,” I said when I pulled out a box of hospital gowns. Who looked at this crumbly, ugly blue mess and went, “now there’s something I can force sick people to wear?” Like they weren’t going through enough already.

  My tablet vibrated, reminding me I only had a few minutes left. A quick survey of the room revealed nothing of interest, so I headed back upstairs.

  Just before I hit the landing with the gym entrance, voices filled the stairwell. Swearing under my breath, I doubled back down the stairs around the corner and out of sight.

  “. . . don’t see why I have to come with you, Otrera,” a girl’s voice protested.

  “Because Medea’s busy,” another girl, presumably Otrera, snapped. “Besides, she comes here enough. You know how she feels about hospitals.”

  How did she feel about hospitals? If she didn’t like them, I hadn’t noticed. Medea visited me all the time. I rested my hand on the cinderblock wall, trying to keep my breathing quiet.

  “But it smells gross in there,” the first girl argued. “And I always feel like I should be doing something and I don’t want to. Seriously, just work out alone.”

  The footsteps stopped on the landing. “There are some places,” Otrera said, “I don’t feel safe alone.”

  I heard the crack of the door opening then slamming closed behind the girls. Drawing in a deep breath, I counted to ten, and made my way past the gym. The delay had cost me my padding. If I didn’t beat the nurses back to the room, I’d have some explaining to do. Hand clamped to my screaming side, I rushed up the stairs and down the empty hall until I reached my room.