“She’s right.” Narcissus leaned against a wooden support beam in a way that was meant to look casual while showing off his figure. “We’re not ready to face the might of the Pantheon head-on. Not now. I assume Jason’s evacuation plan is still in place?”
I took a deep breath, relieved beyond measure that he was, for once, exhibiting common sense. “Yes.”
“Well, change it.” He tugged at the sleeves of a perfectly tailored shirt that had to be killing him in the muggy heat. “Because they never promised not to torture him.”
Oh, gods. He was right. I swallowed hard, gripping and releasing the rim of the table behind me nervously. “I know a place.”
“We can’t just leave Jason!” Calais objected.
“Even Jason would realize this is the most logical solution.” Narcissus adjusted his other sleeve. “Though I’m sure he would have left someone less valuable in his place.” He cut me a glare. “We’ll make do. Now get us out of here.”
As much as I hated his tone, I could see the sense in getting out of the god’s range until we accepted the Pantheon’s terms.
But to get everything I wanted without getting killed in the process, I needed a liaison. Fortunately, I knew just the person. If Elise was a goddess like I suspected, or even just a traitor, that meant she had the contacts I needed. Which meant she couldn’t be allowed to escape.
Closing my eyes, I focused on all the people on the island. Then I searched for Elise. I didn’t try to think of Elise because I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake I’d made with Adonis. If the girl I knew as Elise was someone else, I didn’t want to risk leaving her behind. Instead, I focused on the impression left by her soul, seeking until I found one in the water on the periphery on the island that felt familiar. Once I was sure it was her, I latched on to her glowing soul and dragged it along with us.
“He won’t know where you’re taking us?” Narcissus asked in an undertone.
“Nope.” I’d come up with this idea back when I was still trying to impress Jason. Fortunately, I’d never brought it, or the coordinates I’d found, up to him for fear the whole idea sounded too stupid. But now . . .
Drawing in a deep breath, I mentally pictured our island encased in a bubble. Then I imagined myself plucking the entire thing up.
The ground lurched beneath my feet, snapping out of place. I dropped to my hands and knees as my vision swam. Dimly, I was aware I was retching. Blood, by the taste of it. I rode the pain, waiting for my healing to kick in.
Around me, people shouted in confusion. The daylight streaming in the windows dimmed to the darkest of night. Rain appeared out of nowhere to rail against the tin roof as the temperature dropped dramatically. It was a lot to take in, even for demigods.
I shouldn’t have done that, I realized.
Once I’d figured I was just so damn powerful, my ability to move things set me apart from the gods. But now that I’d met Persephone, felt her power, I knew that wasn’t the case. She could teleport the entire planet if she wanted to. What I’d always assumed to be a divine limitation probably just meant they knew something I didn’t.
The cost.
“Did she just move the island?” Narcissus demanded, shock coloring his voice. “Does that work?”
“Medea!” Otrera sounded terrified.
I felt like my insides had been ripped out of me then tossed back into place after a side trip through a blender. Nothing quite fit together right.
Otrera’s arms wrapped around me as my body tried to choose between going limp and seizing. She was screaming, but I couldn’t make out the words, only the sheer terror beneath them.
The world slanted as more hands joined hers and carried me toward the hospital.
No. I wouldn’t go back there. I’d never go back. I’ll heal! There was no need to take me there! Panic clawed at my chest, fighting past the pain so I could tell them to stop!
But all that erupted from my lips was an incoherent scream. I wasn’t healing. Why wasn’t I healing?
The pain reached an apex, singing through my cranium until I feared my head would explode. Then mercifully, everything went black.
Chapter III
Aphrodite
“I CAN DO THIS.” My numb fingers, still glamoured gold, scrambled to keep hold of the sheer cliff face. The Island of the DAMNED was a shaped like a tall, mutated teardrop—only a jagged curve sloped into the ocean. I’d edged my way around to lower ground. Unfortunately, the cliff still wasn’t low enough for me to climb, given the rough shape I was in.
Between waves, I sputtered specifics, locking myself into the promise, forcing the words true. Now there was no choice in the matter. I had to survive.
Poseidon, I thought, drawing my palm against a rock jutting from the face of the island. The sharp edge pierced my spongy palm without resistance. Blood could pass through the weak shield surrounding the island as well as water. Mine was still divine enough to get Poseidon’s attention.
I hoped.
Shivers racked my body, hard enough to threaten my tenuous hold on the cliff face. Exposure, I added to my mental list of ways I could die. When the entire frickin’ island teleported across gods knew how many time zones, it traded the sun-kissed warm placid water for dark, icy choppy waves.
“She moved the island.” I spat out the sentence with as much disgust as I could muster. “That stupid . . .” A litany of curse words followed, but not a single one of them made me feel better. Medea had probably killed herself doing this. And for what?
I squinted against the utter blackness, wishing for a moon, stars, or light of any kind.
Some part of me knew my thrashing could attract creatures living in the water, but that fear had to move aside for the more practical need to keep air in my lungs.
Lightning cracked across the sky, cruelly granting my wish for light in a blinding slash. Of course, Persephone was enraged. The meeting, ostensibly to establish peace with the demigods, had gone horribly wrong when Ares had been outed as an imposter. He’d gotten away, but I’d been dragged along when the island teleported.
So now, not only did the demigods have a weapons cache that could end every god in the Pantheon, they had two hostages. Me and the frickin’ Lord of the Underworld.
Maybe my cover isn’t blown. They didn’t know I was a goddess. Just that Ares was a god.
And I’d been living with him.
And that we’d arrived on the island at the exact same time.
Yeah, they’d be idiots not to at least suspect. And since gods were physically incapable of telling lies, all it would take to confirm their suspicion was a yes or no question.
Assuming I didn’t drown first.
Something slick brushed against my legs. What was that? I twisted in the water, limbs jerking in all directions like a tangled marionette, but the waves might as well have been made of midnight. Between the pitch-black night and churned-up bits of relocated island, I couldn’t make out my own flesh beneath the waves. I lost my grip on the cliff face and felt a wave of dizziness as my feet kicked into the endless depths.
Probably just a scared fish, I tried to convince myself. My fear of the ocean depths was mostly instinctive, bred into me by design to keep me from visiting Poseidon’s realm. Having his permission to be here should have quelled my fear. But in the dark of the night, with gods knew what swimming around me, fear no longer listened to reason. I was someplace foreign. Other. I didn’t belong here.
“Just keep moving,” I told myself through gritted teeth, kicking toward the cliff face.
A wave slammed into me, shoving me beneath the inky blackness. I pushed to the surface, gasping for air, but just as I inhaled, another wave slammed into me. Then another. Then another.
I can’t do this, I realized as my outstretched toes brushed against somethin
g quivering. But my promises held. No matter how desperately I wanted to give up, to sink beneath the waves and rest, my body wouldn’t let me. I kicked to the surface again, and again, and again. Compelled by the promises I’d just made.
“Ooof!” A wave slammed me into a bar of sand, knocking the wind out of me. The granules scraped my body as I slid along an unnatural ocean floor.
I pushed off the silt and surfaced, recoiling at the alien way the sand shifted beneath me. Everything within the shield must have teleported with the island. The shield ended with land along the back and sides of the small island, but the front used to extend enough to include a beach and a swimming area.
Not anymore. The beach had been swallowed by the ocean. This isn’t stable. Somewhere inside my exhausted shell of a body, I knew the shifting sand didn’t bode well for the island. But I couldn’t think about that right now. I crawled forward, losing my balance on the lurching ground beneath me and splashing into the shallow water. After what felt like an eternity, I dragged my tired, battered body onto the thin strip of land made up of rocks, sand, and barrier plants that had once separated the beach from the rest of the island.
Thunder cracked and the clouds opened in a deluge of water. Rain pelted against my back, but I couldn’t coordinate my trembling limbs enough to move. For a time, I couldn’t hear anything over the crashing waves and my own ragged breathing, but eventually, I picked out distant voices. Lifting my head, I struggled to get my bearings.
A lit building further inland caught my eye. Everyone on the island had gathered at the dining hall to watch the broadcasted truce meeting with the Pantheon. They were probably still there.
It wasn’t that far away.
Did I want to approach the demigods, or should I try to hide on the island until Poseidon and the others found me?
Hide where? The island used to be shaped like a teardrop, with the designated swimming area and dock on either side of the pointy end. Now the sandy border between the two had been swallowed by waves. As the island rounded, the coastline grew steeper, culminating in a high cliff at the back of the island. One-bedroom cabins bordered the steep drop-off in a semicircle that had sprung up around the island’s hospital: a relic left over from the island’s past life of being a medical spa. Auxiliary buildings and a dining hall stood on the west side of the island. A few trails featuring picturesque landscapes and waterfalls ran up the east side of the island, but there wasn’t enough plant life to actually hide in. I could walk the entire island in less than an afternoon.
To what end? Even if Poseidon found me, I doubted I could survive another round of teleportation. Teleportation hurt now because of the Steele in my system. I needed time to heal.
So, what? Throw myself on the mercy of the demigods and hope it didn’t occur to them to ask yes or no questions? That didn’t seem like a great alternative either.
I needed to . . . I needed. . . . My eyelids flagged as my body lost the war against complete and utter exhaustion and crashed straight into a nightmare.
Chapter IV
Persephone
IT HURT COMING back to my old home in Athens, Georgia. Nothing had changed in the past year. I hadn’t let it. Even though I didn’t spend much time here, I couldn’t bring myself to sell it. Mom’s priestesses maintained the property, and somehow, they’d made sure it still smelled the same. Floral, of course. My mother and I had always been strong on theme. The house worked well as an emergency meeting place for the Pantheon. There was even an entrance to the Underworld in the backyard.
I ran my hand along the familiar kitchen counter, flicking on the warm yellow lights. Rose-print wallpaper adorned the walls of the bright, open space, and white cabinets lined the room. Mom’s kitchen had been the heart of our home. If I didn’t turn around, I could almost pretend she still sat at the table behind me, flipping through one of her gardening magazines.
Salt and water burned at my eyes as I hunched over the pine countertop, my breathing jagged. Almost twenty years ago, my mother got disgustingly close to the biggest jerk in the entire Greek Pantheon—Zeus. And she’d done it for one reason.
Me. She knew that Zeus always passed on a power that gave his children a fighting chance in a world that didn’t believe they existed—charm. Basically, divine mind control. Gods lived off worship, which was increasingly hard to come by unless you had the ability to look a human in the eyes and brainwash them into doing whatever you wanted.
My mother raised me human without any knowledge of the Pantheon outside what little mythology I learned in school. Her deception had far-reaching consequences on my psyche. But she’d done it for the same reasons she’d chosen Zeus to be my father. Most of the gods had failed to blend into human society, becoming more and more isolated from a world they understood less and less as time went by. And for beings who needed worship to survive, isolation was death, charm or not.
Everything she’d done, every choice she’d made, had been with my best interests at heart. She’d given me the best of her powers: rebirth, renewal, spring—all super-poetical ways of saying I made pretty flowers grow—with none of the responsibilities. Mom had this entire life envisioned for me. One where I got to grow into adulthood as a “human” with all the experiences and rites of passage the upper-middle class had to offer. Then, once she deemed me ready, she’d sit me down and show me all the wonderful gifts she’d given me.
I slid to the distressed wooden floor in a rustle of fabric, clutching my knees against my chest. The faint smell of laundry detergent filled my lungs as I took a sharp breath. It would have been a great life.
Mom couldn’t have known that an old enemy would try to rip us apart. She couldn’t have anticipated that Hades would rescue me. That we’d fall in love. Or through a strange twist of fate, I’d become queen of his realm. She couldn’t have known that Zeus would try to suck the very powers she’d given to me from my cold shell of a corpse to help him take over the world.
But even when her best-laid plans went to hell, she protected me. She’d pushed every iota of power she had into my being, shredding her soul, to give me a chance against Zeus. And now she was gone.
A sob tore through my throat.
Take a breath, she would say if she could see how upset I was now. The kitchen would fill with the comforting smell of hot chocolate brewing on the stove. Her green eyes would meet mine with that look that seemed to pierce through my soul and lay it bare. Sit with me for a little bit. Tell me what happened.
Gods, I would do it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even roll my eyes or sigh or run upstairs to call my best friend, Melissa, and complain instead. I’d spent so much time angry with her for not telling me what I was, so much time fighting or outright avoiding her, and now I’d give anything to get her back.
My breath hitched when I lifted my gaze to the empty table. Power hummed beneath my skin, like tiny bolts of static, searching for a way out. I kept my breathing even, trying to maintain some semblance of control. Otherwise, I was going to spin out thinking about the fact that Mom was dead, Hades was gone, Aphrodite was still in danger, everything was breaking apart, and for some reason, the gods kept looking to me for answers.
In defeating Zeus, I’d become one of the most powerful goddesses there had ever been or likely would be again. Back in the days of the Primordials or even the Titans, the next deity would have only been a step or so down the ladder, but since the power of the Pantheon was at an all-time low, it just meant I had further to fall.
The gods really valued power and hierarchy. A triple realm ruler with near limitless power stood high on both totems, so now, I had a bunch of ancient, powerful beings looking to me for leadership. They didn’t care that I didn’t want it. Power and hierarchy trumped all.
But I’d stepped up to the plate, hadn’t I? I banged my head against the hard cabinet, my gaze settling on the roughhewn elm beams runni
ng along the ceiling. I’d been a handy pawn to fight their battles, to win their war, so now they’d elevated me to the frickin’ (unofficial) queen of the Pantheon.
Half the time, I thought they looked to me out of boredom. The rest of the time, I felt sure they’d just been so ready to get the world off their shoulders, they didn’t care who the burden fell to.
It hadn’t been so bad with Hades by my side. We’d split our powers with each other equally, which made our marriage bond super intense. Hades and I were in each other’s heads all the time; we could feel each other’s pain. It sounded like a nightmare, but it wasn’t. He was a piece of me, and I of him, but there were limits to even equilibrium.
We both had to be conscious.
My tears were getting ugly now. The sounds emitting from me with each sob didn’t sound human. Without Hades, I felt like I was missing a limb. I’d never wanted any of this, but it had been worth it with him.
The air rippled, stirring against the folds of my long skirt. I lurched to my feet, glamouring away any evidence of my tears as Poseidon appeared with a wave of salt-laced wind. Beside him, Ares dropped to the ground just in front of the kitchen table. He curled in on himself, crying out in pain.
“What happened?” I dropped to my knees beside him, reaching out to touch Ares’s shoulder. Heat seared my hand, and I jerked back in surprise.
“The poison’s still in his system,” Poseidon said quickly. “Teleportation takes a toll.”
That damn poison. Before we’d even realized the demigods were organizing against us, they’d managed to drug three of my people. Aphrodite got the worst of it, but Ares and Artemis had both been dosed. It affected their ability to use powers, so teleportation put them through a special kind of hell. And there was nothing I could do to make it better. Only dig my nails into my palms and watch helplessly as Ares rode out the pain. I dropped the glamour I’d kept on him and broke his bond of fealty to me just in case that helped.
Venus Rising: Book 3 Aphrodite Trilogy (The Daughters of Zeus 6) Page 3
