Love & War

by Kaitlin Bevis

  Glauce tossed me a towel when I showed up on her doorstep after lunch. I’d gotten better at dashing from one cabin to another in a downpour, but I was still soaked enough to look like a drowned rat.

  “Any idea what’s up with her?” Glauce asked in an undertone, tilting her head toward the kitchen where Medea sang along with the blaring music over the whir of the blender. “She’s acting weird.”

  I was more curious about how Medea had beat me here by enough time that she’d already made herself at home, but before I could ask, the door flew open behind me, and a bedraggled Otrera burst into the room, carrying a sodden box.

  “Why does it have to be freezing?” Otrera demanded. “Like, fine. You wanna rain so damn bad, rain! Enjoy! But couldn’t it at least warm up first?” The athletic demigoddess slammed the door behind her, dropped the box, and snatched the towel out of my hand. “By the way, everything on the island is backed up. The septic fields are totally flooded so I hope you’re not planning to use that sink, Medea.”

  “Huh?” Medea peered out from the kitchen. “Oh, hey. You made it. Elise was worried you’d still be asleep.”

  A rumble of thunder shook the house. “Who can sleep through this?”

  Medea laughed and exited the small kitchenette, carrying a tray of drinks with her. “This should make you feel better.”

  Otrera took one of the drinks and glanced Medea up and down. “What’s with you? You’re being all domestic.”

  I grabbed one of the drinks and took a sip. Wow. This was like straight vodka with maybe a thimbleful of cranberry juice.

  “That didn’t sound like ‘thank you,’” Medea joked, taking the drink away from Otrera.

  Otrera faked a grin. “Thank you.”

  Medea handed her back the drink. “Glauce?” She moved toward the demigoddess, deftly kicking a pile of laundry out of the way.

  “Um, sure.” Glauce glanced at the clothes Medea had moved. “I’ll just . . . put those away.” She scurried to grab the clothes then moved down the hall, opening a door and tossing them inside.

  “Why’s everyone just standing here dripping?” Medea demanded when Glauce returned. “Come in, all the way in. We’ll go through our boxes in the living room. Except Elise, of course, since she still didn’t order anything after we spent all that time picking stuff out.”

  I shrugged, unsure when I’d stopped being the goddess who didn’t give a flying flip about charming some random retail employee into letting me walk out the door with half the store on my back. Instead, I’d become this meek girl who couldn’t bear the thought of using an extra drop of the demigod’s resources before I stabbed them in the back. It was probably Persephone’s fault that I’d developed enough of a conscience to be truly stupid with.

  “Lucky for you,” Medea continued, “I got you some presents.”

  Once, that would have made me brighten, but now it just made my stomach sink in guilt. Still, I faked a smile and joined the girls as they moved into the living room to check out the boxes, oohing and aahing at each other’s new clothes.

  “You’ve got to try this on,” Medea insisted, pushing a dress into Glauce’s hand. “It’s the one Elise picked out for you. The color! The cut! My gods, you’re going to look amazing.”

  “Yeah?” Glauce took the dress and smiled down at the fabric. “Be right back.”

  When she disappeared into the room, Medea dug through Glauce’s box. “What is this?” Medea giggled. Her mouth dropped open when she shook out the silky material, her mask cracking. “Lingerie?”

  Otrera tried to whistle, failed, and burst out into drunken giggles. “Who do you suppose she’s wearing that for?”

  I kept my eyes on Medea. “It doesn’t have to be for anyone. Maybe she just wanted to feel sexy. Put it back, Medea.”

  “No, no, no.” Otrera reached for Medea’s box, pulling it away from her. “Fair’s fair. I’m sure we all ordered something humiliating. Except Elise, because she’s boring as hell.” She grinned at me to show she was joking.

  “Stop.” Medea’s voice was scary firm. She reached for the box, but Otrera pulled it out of her reach. “Oh, I remember when you picked this one out.” She tossed a shirt at Medea. “Try it on and let me see how it looks in real—” She broke off, pulling something out of the box. “Medea. You’re—”

  “Shut up,” Medea warned.

  I glanced between them, not sure what was going on, then I caught sight of what Otrera held in her hand. Prenatal vitamins.

  Oh gods. I felt like I’d been slugged in the stomach. I’m just here for some lab work, I remembered Medea telling me back in the hospital. How far along was she? She didn’t look pregnant.

  “Sorry.” Otrera dropped the vitamins back in the box. “I didn’t—good gods, Medea. What are you going to—?”

  “I said shut up,” Medea yelled. “I didn’t even order that, okay! Jason must have—”

  A loud thud erupted from the bedroom.

  “Glauce?” Otrera called, her forehead crinkling in concern.

  We followed her down the hall. She cracked open the door to reveal Glauce thrashing around on the floor, her back arched, her face contorted in a smile too wide to be natural.

  “Glauce,” Otrera shouted, lurching forward.

  “Don’t touch her!” Medea yanked her back through the doorway. “If you try to restrain her, she could break something. Go get help.”

  Otrera took off.

  Everything there was to know about seizures clicked in my head and I squeezed around Medea to shove the dresser back out of Glauce’s path before she could smack into it. When scanning the area around her revealed no other potential dangers, I glanced at Medea. “Is she on any meds?”

  Medea stared at her with an expression of horror on her face, then abruptly snapped out of it. “I’ll check her medicine cabinet.”

  “Someone should stay with her.” I cleared my throat. “Check her box, too. This shipment was delayed. Maybe she ordered some refills or something.”

  “On it.” Medea rushed to the bathroom where I heard her digging through the cabinets.

  I should move her to her side, I thought, walking toward Glauce. But then she stopped thrashing and her body went rigid. Her head and heels rested on the floor, the rest of her body arced to the ceiling.

  Don’t touch her, I remembered Medea shouting.

  Knowledge of a dozen poisons that were absorbed through touch rushed to my mind. I swallowed hard and moved back until my back touched the wall. Medea healed. She wouldn’t be in danger from poison, but until my powers came back, I would. I slid down the wall and sat, staring at Glauce helplessly.

  Screw it. I tried to call up some modicum of power within me, desperate to help. Pain ripped through me. Crying out, I slid forward, my hands clutching at the carpet. I couldn’t heal you if I wanted to, I realized watching Glauce writhe. Some goddess.

  Chapter XXXII

  Medea

  THE POISON HAD worked even faster than I’d expected. As soon as we got Glauce to the hospital, I took off for the restroom, claiming nausea. Then, when I felt the shield around the island drop, I teleported to the pharmacy in a good-sized town on a nearby island. I’d had one of the charmed doctors call them this morning and even had them pre-paid. Jason wanted to cheat, to have his secrets? Fine. I was entitled to mine.

  I took the first round of pills, then teleported to the secret wing of the hospital. I’d take a quick look around then rush back to the ER and let them take my blood to heal Glauce. She’d be fine. Better than fine. If she was anything like my stepbrother, she’d never get sick again. Not even the flu. So, really, I was doing her a favor.

  Kind of.

  My skin prickled as the shield around the island went up. Jason must have called in the few demigods who could cast a shield to replace Glauce’s
. I walked to the door that led to the dumpsters and pushed. There was no shield keeping me in. Good. They didn’t have enough power to fuel an extra shield . . . or they didn’t know about this one.

  The door by the dumpster led to a research lab bookended on either side by four rooms with windowed walls covered by curtains. The hall came to an end at the shielded door connecting to the main lobby. I peeked into two of the observation rooms on the way to the lab, but found them empty.

  I continued, walking the perimeter of the lab, my hands trailing on the slick, empty countertops. Further searching revealed bagged blood and other matter, labeled neatly as mine, along with samples of the GodKiller compound. A lot of the GodKiller compound. There were also dozens of glittering stakes along with other sets of vials with names just as ominous that I didn’t recognize.

  Finding the blood shouldn’t have surprised me. Jason had taken everything Mom’s hospital contained. But I’d assumed we were out when Jason asked me to donate blood for Elise. Sure, she’d pulled through without it, but the fact that he’d had plenty on hand and still asked me to do a blood draw was pretty damn infuriating.

  Grabbing a bag of blood for Glauce, my mind spun with what I’d discovered. Jason was hiding the fact that he was still researching my blood, yeah. But did it really matter? He wasn’t using it when I wanted him to, but he wasn’t forcing me to give more either. I could see why he’d keep a miracle cure-all under lock and key, and why he might be reluctant to mention this work to me. Compared to him cheating on me, this didn’t even rank.

  My stomach twisted at the reminder that I’d have to deal with that at some point. I could only pretend I didn’t know for so long. As I made my way to the door that led to the lobby, I pulled back the curtain to the first observation room I passed along the way.

  Inside, a skeletal-looking girl lay strapped to a table. Recoiling, I jerked away from the window. What the hell had he done to her? I ran to the next window, yanking back the curtain to reveal a god with dark hair slumbering on a hospital bed, an IV in his arm.

  Unlike the girl, I could tell this one was a god right away. No human could look that good, especially unconscious. “Oh gods.” He must have been the one they were looking for.

  The door to the lobby creaked open. Jason stared at me from the doorway, his eyes wide with shock. He set the medical cooler he’d been carrying down. “Medea . . .”

  “What is this?” I demanded, my voice shaking.

  “Experiments. You know we learned how to make weapons to destroy gods, as well as poisons to take away their power. This is where we test them.” He sounded so reasonable, he might as well have been talking about the weather.

  “Test?” I glanced back at the girl in the room to my left. Scars crisscrossed her body and her chest spasmed when she drew in each breath. “You’re . . . experimenting on them? That’s—”

  “What’s necessary. We’re so close, Medea.” Jason stepped forward, his eyes shining with excitement. “So close to getting out from under their thumb. The Steele. . . . It’s effective, but it’s too limited because it requires too close proximity. GodKiller compound is more promising, but it still requires delivery. It’s a huge risk. But if we could redirect their powers, even the playing field, then—”

  I was going to be sick. Spinning on my heel, I dashed down the hall until I hit the metal door and burst out into the walled-off area where the dumpsters were kept.

  “Wait!” Jason followed right on my heels. “I know this looks bad, but you have to understand what we have to gain here. If—”

  The cement walls spun around me as I retched until there was nothing left in me. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, trembling in horror.

  “Oh,” Jason said from somewhere behind me. “Right. Morning sickness. Are you gonna be okay?”

  Was I going to be okay? “You’re using me to experiment on them,” I gasped between sobs. “Cutting them, drugging them, seeing how much they can take. Not just once, with that one goddess who was a threat. Not just with that horrible sea god. You’re seeking them out and dragging them back here and—and—you’re using me to do it!”

  “They’ll heal.” He said it so casually that it sent chills up my spine. I’d heard him talk about the gods with hatred before, but never this much apathy. “And if they make us certain promises, we might even let them go.”

  I straightened my back, catching a warped reflection of Jason standing behind me in the green metal of the dumpster. “Just because they can heal, that doesn’t mean the damage you did didn’t—it’s torture! How can you do this? You were so horrified when it was me, how can you—?”

  “They’re nothing like us.”

  “They are us,” I shouted, my voice echoing off the concrete walls. “Nearer and nearer every generation. We are them! Our thoughts, our feelings, our sentience—that came from somewhere. It’s not okay to do that”—I jabbed my hand to the door—“to another living being.”

  “They—”

  “That was me!” My nails bit into my palms as the words ripped free from my throat in a wounded cry. “How can you do this?”

  “—treat us like pawns!” he exploded. “Experiment. They hunt us and hurt us and trick us. They’re—”

  “A demigod experimented on me. A demigod cut me open again and again and again. A demigod used me for profit, like I was a thing instead of a person. Gods.”

  Sunlight streamed around him, creating a golden profile that I’d always seen as angelic. But he wasn’t the golden knight who’d come to rescue me anymore. He was every bit the monster my mother had been.

  “This is evil,” I shrieked. “And I won’t be part of it. I won’t breed it. I won’t become it!”

  Jason’s face darkened. “You’re upset right now. I knew this could be a trigger, that’s why I didn’t tell you about—” He broke off. “You’ll calm down. And when you do, you’ll see that rationally—”

  “Rationally? If this is us, if this is something we can stoop to, something we can become, we don’t deserve to win. Because we aren’t any better than they are. Don’t,” I shouted when he moved toward me, his footsteps crunching against the concrete. “Don’t come anywhere near me right now.” My arms shot up, as if I could somehow ward him off, and I realized I was still clutching the bag of blood. “And take this,” I croaked, tossing it to him.

  Jason darted for it, the relief on his face when he caught it twisting my gut. He looked at it the same way he looked at me. Like something valuable. Something rare. How had I ever mistaken that naked greed for love?

  “You damn well better use it to heal Glauce.” I backed up until I was back on the dirt path. “I’ll check on her after I pack my stuff.”

  Chapter XXXIII

  Aphrodite

  “YOU OKAY?” ARES rushed over to where I stood in the hospital lobby.

  Shaking my head, I rubbed my arms to try to force warmth back into my chilled limbs. “I couldn’t help.” A real goddess would have been able to do something. But I’d stood by while Glauce suffered, and now I was stuck here, helpless and waiting for news. How did humans cope with being this powerless?

  Ares wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. “I’m sorry.”

  “They won’t tell us anything.” Otrera sat sniffling on the bench she’d claimed in the lobby.

  “Can I get you anything?” Ares asked, directing the question to Otrera. “Coffee? Food?”

  The athletic demigoddess shook her head and rolled over on her bench, her eyes going to the ceiling.

  “You should come home,” Ares murmured, the words stirring my hair. His arms were warm enough around me to combat the chill of the over air-conditioned lobby. “It’s getting late. You’re a five-minute walk away if anything changes.”

  He was right. I knew it. I also knew I was getting perilously close to missing
a dream meeting with the rest of the gods. But . . .

  “It feels wrong to leave.” My voice sounded hoarse.

  Ares’s arm tightened around me. “Then I’ll stay with you.” He glanced around. “Where’s Medea?”

  “Talking to the staff.” I relaxed against him, vaguely aware of other demigods drifting into the lobby, the shock on their faces evidence that the news had carried across the island. “She found some meds in Glauce’s shipment. We looked them up. They were all heart stuff. She must have run out when the shipment was delayed.”

  “Glauce always got really stressed when deliveries fell behind.” Otrera’s voice warbled. “I thought she was upset about her clothes. It never occurred to me she was worried about something important. Demigods don’t get sick.”

  I shared a glance with Ares. There was no telling what impact Zeus’s breeding program would have long-term. Divine genetics didn’t work the same as those of our human counterparts, so the typical consequences of inbreeding didn’t apply. But the genetic markers we’d built in to identify demigods weren’t designed to stretch over generations.

  Ares led me to the bench next to Otrera’s. “Even if you had known, you couldn’t have handled it better. You got her help. It couldn’t have been easy for you. Seizures are terrifying to witness.”

  “It was,” Otrera agreed, her voice trembling. “I can’t . . . stop seeing it. And I feel like such a wimp, you know? I mean I’m freaked out? She’s the one who had a frickin’ seizure, and I can’t keep it together?”

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Ares said, sitting on the hard, wooden bench and pulling me down beside him. “One time, this guy I knew . . . we were in a real stressful situation, so I guess that’s what triggered it. I turned away for one second, and when I looked back, he was on the ground twisting and making these terrible noises. I’ve been scared before but seeing that, not being able to do anything, it’s a whole other level.”