Venus Rising: Book 3 Aphrodite Trilogy (The Daughters of Zeus 6)
Page 21
“Well, I got some good news for you.” I spread my arms, indicating I was still alive if only barely. “Now,” I said with forced brightness. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”
“What’s the plan?” Adonis took a moment to find his balance, his limbs creaking as he stood for the first time in gods knew how long. He glanced at Medea. “What’s she doing? Who is that?”
“A friend.” I spared her a glance. “Medea?”
She took a long breath, talking obviously draining for her. “They keep breaking the shield. I can’t keep this up much longer.”
I patted her slim shoulder. “Just keep it up until we get back.”
“Are you okay to walk? You look—” Adonis broke off when I stumbled, but I managed to right myself before he could help me. “What do you need me to do?” He followed me out the door, the harsh fluorescent lights ricocheting off his silver hair in a flurry of sparkles. “How did you get here? How do you plan to leave? And what is that?” Adonis’s eyes caught on the graying skin on my arm. “I felt it happen and man, it never quite stopped.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Most cuts this shallow dulled to a throb after a few minutes. But this one seemed caught in the moment, perpetually frozen at its most painful point. Fortunately for a cut this small, that hadn’t been debilitating. Not until my powers came back. Now it screamed in agony in time with my pulse.
Scowling down at the cut, I thought again of Hephaestus’s proposal. “Long story.” I caught him up as best I could as we moved into the main corridor. The air was fresher here at least. Though the flickering fluorescent lights were not helping the ground feel any more steady under my feet.
“I found him,” Otrera called from a room across the hall.
“Check the other rooms,” I told Adonis. “If you see another human, call out for me. Okay?”
He nodded, looking confused by the instruction.
I staggered across the hall to the small room opposite Adonis’s and found Hades. My heart seized in my chest when I saw him lying unconscious on the cold metal table, attached to an IV and a bevy of intimidating-looking machinery that beeped in time to his pulse. Hades and I were never close, never really friends, but he tolerated me for Persephone’s sake. So, it was through her eyes I saw him looking pale and disturbingly fragile.
Gripping Otrera’s shoulder in silent communication, I slipped past her. With shaking hands, I disconnected his IV and all the other wires attached to him. My mind numbed as I recognized what each was for, how hard they’d worked to keep him unconscious and vulnerable. How much they must fear him. Swallowing hard, I studied his sleeping form, resisting the urge to brush his dark hair out of his face. He was so handsome, even now. But I’d never seen him look so vulnerable.
His eyes fluttered open, revealing an ice blue so intense they took my breath away.
He flew up, hand latching to my throat, toppling over on the table, but pulling me beneath him onto the cold floor. “Where am I?” he demanded, his voice rough with disuse.
“Hey,” Otrera yelled, grabbing his shoulder. She held a piece of Steele menacingly in her hand. “Get off her right now, and I let you live.”
“Glamour,” I gasped, pressing my back into the tile floor, as if I could somehow burrow away from him. Hades could be damn intimidating when he wanted to be. Even half-conscious. “I’m—Aphrodite—in glamour.”
Gods couldn’t lie, but demigods were certainly capable. Hades loosened his grip enough to let me speak. “Prove it.”
“Your wife has an unhealthy obsession with the Dusk series.” Dragging in a deep breath, I rubbed at my neck. “And that’s not the first time you’ve done that.” I scooted out from underneath him, my mind flickering to the last time Hades had tried to choke me. To be fair, I’d just helped Zeus abduct Persephone. Unwillingly, but he hadn’t known that. “But it sure as hell had better be the last.”
“I didn’t recognize you.” He struggled to his feet, gripping the edge of the shining metal table for balance and studied me through narrowed eyes. “Is Persephone okay?”
He wouldn’t need to ask me if he could feel her through the marriage bond. Contacting Persephone through Hades was out.
“Aphrodite?” Otrera said, still holding the Steele in a defensive position. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I croaked, answering both of them. Gods, even talking hurt now. “Are your powers working?”
He quirked a brow at the stupid question. “You’re not dust.”
Well, damn. Also yay. “You wanna shed some light on how a first generation demigod managed to abduct the Lord of the Underworld.”
Hades scowled. “Did you know they could teleport? There was a lot more than one demigod once he ‘ported with me. Here.” His thin, blue hospital shirt rustled as he pulled it off and passed it to me.
For a second, I was too distracted by the sight of shirtless Hades to make the connection. He’d certainly looked better, but gods, he set the bar high.
“Your shirt.” He waved an armful of blue fabric at me.
The action confused me until I looked down and realized I was still wearing the shirt Calais had torn earlier tonight.
“What’s the matter, too distracting?” I joked, stripping out of the torn, smelly shirt and pulled on the blue scrub top Hades passed me. The starchy fabric crinkled as I pulled it over my head.
Hades didn’t dignify that with a response. “Do you know what they did to me? Something is off with my powers.”
“Yeah, you’ve been poisoned.” Talking fast, I caught him up on everything that had happened, especially the poison and how it worked. “If you stop your powers from healing you, it helps you feel better. But you have to be careful to balance it against any powers you do use. You want to allow the damage to heal enough to not be fatal, but not escalate into a cycle. The more power you use, including healing . . .”
“The more the poison attacks your powers.” Hades’s jaw twitched. “That’s . . . innovative.
“Guys,” Adonis called, voice echoing off the high ceilings.
Hades gave a double take when he saw Adonis in all his newly divine glory. “How—?”
“Later.” I tried not to stumble as I helped Hades cross the narrow hall. Hades was on his feet, but barely, and I wasn’t in great shape, so it wasn’t like I was much help.
Otrera noticed my struggling and started toward us. “Here, let me help.”
A muscle twitched in Hades’s jaw, but he allowed the demigoddess to assist him. “What did you find?”
“There’s a girl. She’s . . .” Adonis ducked back into room. “You’re going to want to see this.”
I led us to the small room with glass walls, each step a lesson in agony.
“I don’t recognize her, but . . .” Adonis swallowed audibly, stepping aside so we could see the skeletal figure lying atop the metal table. “She doesn’t look good.”
“Who is that?” I demanded with a gasp as we crowded into the room. The smell of infection almost overwhelmed me.
The goddess was connected to an IV, lying unconscious on a metal table, just as Hades had been. But unlike Hades, she was skin and bones. Pockmarked scars crisscrossed her flesh. Scars. The age of them told me just how long it had been since she had any access to her own divine healing abilities.
Hades worked a muscle in his jaw as he looked her over. “Aglaia.”
The name clicked into place. She was a Daughter of Zeus, one of the Graces. Her sister, Thalia, had told us she was missing back before Zeus died. We’d assumed he killed her.
Gods, this poor girl. Her gaunt skin rose and fell with shallow, pained breaths. The Graces were harmless, alive only because Zeus had passed on token amounts of charm.
Hades put a hand on her forehead and closed his eyes. “She’s gone.”
“That says otherwise,” Adonis said, pointing at the beeping machines monitoring her.
Hades gave him an icy look. “I know death when I see it. Her body and soul are disconnected. I’ve seen this fixed once, but only on a human.”
He was talking about the time Persephone had healed Orpheus’s wife. Persephone had been able to use Orpheus to heal Eurydice because he was the other half of her soul. Gods didn’t have soulmates. Not like that. We could fall in love of course, but our souls were complete all on their own.
“Did you find anyone else?” I asked Adonis, my voice still hoarse from Hades’s rough treatment.
Adonis shook his head, his silver-white hair sticking to his face. “I checked the whole lab. All four rooms. We’re alone.”
I shot Hades a helpless look. “Her soul, has it already moved on?”
“You need to summon Persephone.” His blue eyes widened as he realized how much trouble we were in. “Is she our only way out of here?”
When I nodded, feeling sick at what I was asking, he swore. The Lord of the Underworld stared down at Aglaia, his face solemn. She wasn’t just a name to him, but a goddess he’d once known. I didn’t know how well, but I knew she predated me. She’d been around when Olympus stood. Before the gods were all but forgotten. After a moment, he let out a long breath and touched her forehead. “I’ll check.”
Adonis looked between the two of us in confusion. “How do you summon Persephone?”
I couldn’t meet his eyes. My nails bit into my palms as I fought back a wave of nausea. “Death by a divine hand requires a divine response. It’s a checks and balance thing.”
Horror dawned across his face as he realized what I meant. “You’re talking about killing her.” Adonis’s voice rose. “She’s sick. She’s defenseless. She’s one of you! You could heal her or—Or—”
“There’s no healing her from what they’ve done,” I argued. “Trust me, at this point, death would be a mercy.”
“How can you say that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hades interrupted harshly, his fingers brushing the top of the Grace’s forehead. “Her soul has already clawed its way free.”
I shuddered. There were ways to sever one’s own soul without the assistance of a Reaper. Only a god would have the know-how to pull it off, but it wasn’t pleasant or easy. The amount of pain she must have been in for that to be a preferable solution was impossible to comprehend.
It also meant we didn’t have a way to summon Persephone. “Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “New plan. Medea dropped the shield around the island . . . which means the Pantheon can find us. They know a general-ish location, but the island isn’t tethered to the ocean floor, so that complicates things. All we can do is fall back and wait for them to rescue us.”
“That’s your plan?” Hades asked, incredulous.
“I get being powerless is new to you,” I snapped, “but for me, this is old hat. There’s nothing cowardly about knowing your limits. The three of us—” I motioned between myself, Hades, and Adonis, my side screaming at even that small movement “—can barely stand without help. If we try anything else, we’re just going to get everyone killed, or worse, we’ll give Narcissus hostages to use against your wife.” I met Hades’s eyes. “What do you think she’d be willing to give to save you?”
He paled.
“We don’t give them leverage if we can help it.”
“Medea’s not going to be able to hold that shield forever.” Otrera tugged on her braids, face grim.
“I know.” Medea wasn’t just struggling to hold her shield against Steele-wielding demigods. The very ground beneath her fought to tear itself apart. “That’s why we’re going to lock the doors.” The exterior door was thick, metal, and as old as the hospital. “Do you know how to break a lock so a key won’t open it?”
Otrera scoffed at the ridiculous question. “Um, no?”
“I’ll show you,” Hades offered, shuffling toward her.
“Do that first.” I leaned back on the Grace’s table when standing up straight hurt more than I could bear. “Then get Medea and come right back here. The three of us can help her hold the shield, so Otrera . . .”
“I’m on grunt work, got it.” She flipped her braids over her shoulder. “You know the doors leading to the lobby are like, basically plywood, right?”
“Then that’s the only entrance we need to worry about. Block it with anything you can.”
Hades glanced around, his blue eyes thoughtful. “We should secure this room as well in case they break through.”
It would be easier for Medea to hold a smaller shield, too. I hummed in agreement and immediately regretted it. Hades had done a number on my throat.
“Anything else?” Otrera asked, cracking her knuckles.
“Yup. Get any Steele, poison, any biological bits of Medea they’ve got to make more. Whatever you can’t destroy, bring in here.” There was no reason to put more weapons in their hands.
We sprang into action. Well, Otrera sprang. The rest of us more or less shuffled. How pathetic we’d become. We can do this, I told myself. Besides, I thought, looking down at my graying arm and wondering how long I had left, there’s always plan D.
Chapter XXXVIII
Medea
MY EYES OPENED as my shield snapped. No.
“Come on!” Adonis shouted in Greek as he rushed into the small observation room. His ice-white skin had healed completely since I’d last seen him. But that only made the dried blood look that much more garish.
I jerked away from him in shocked surprise before my brain caught up with his instructions.
Adonis didn’t even slow down. He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the hall.
A gust of fresher air cleared my head as he yanked me along at a run. “Where are we going?” I demanded, trying to pull my arm free.
Between the buzzing in my head from using so much power in such a short span of time and the pure intensity of the situation, I felt like my brain was lagging worse than an online role-playing game on public Wi-Fi.
He pushed me into the doorway of an identical observation room. Same pale blue cinderblock, same cabinets lining the walls, same two-way mirror, same thick metal door. The only difference was the skeletal goddess lying on the metal table. I’d seen her before when I first ventured into the hidden wing and thought she was in rough shape then.
Now she was worse.
I could make out every single bone and blood vessel in her bare arms and face. She was so frail, I worried she’d be crushed by even the slight weight of the blue hospital gown and light blanket lying atop her. Angry red scars crisscrossed her body. Before, they’d been cuts and bruises. Now they were inflamed. Her chest rattled as she breathed, each inward gasp sounding as though it took a herculean effort.
My people had done this to her. And they’d used weapons made of me, to do it.
A shirtless, dark-haired god I’d only seen unconscious stood next to her, and beside him was Aphrodite, wearing a blue hospital top that was several sizes too large for her. Otrera rushed in behind me, carrying a bundle of Steele, then bolted the door.
“Can you ‘port us out now that the shield’s down?” Aphrodite asked gently, steering my attention away from Otrera.
Closing my eyes, I tried to get my fuzzy mind to focus, even though I knew the answer. I hadn’t recovered enough to take six people off the island. The short distance from the cabin to the lab was one thing. But we were leagues away from the nearest mainland. “I can get myself and maybe one other person out of here, but that’s it.”
“
Take Hades,” Aphrodite ordered, rattling off a set of coordinates. “The Pantheon will come for the rest of us and—”
“I’m not leaving you.” And I sure as hell wasn’t leaving Otrera.
“Not that,” Adonis cautioned, his attention shifting to someone over my shoulder.
I glanced over to see Otrera propping a cart full of Steele in front of the door with so much force the silver stakes rattled ominously.
“Right,” Otrera said with a laugh. She rolled the cart to the back corner of the room. After a frantic glance around, she started throwing open cabinets.
“Okay, okay, fine.” Aphrodite said without missing a beat. “Hades and I are going to try to give you a boost. Let’s see if we can all get out of here.”
Hades. My stomach twisted with the realization that I was standing in the same room as the Lord of the Underworld. Intellectually, I’d known that the second I saw him in the room. I mean, who else could it be? But my brain had refused to acknowledge it.
Hades.
The Hades.
Aphrodite knew Hades.
Like, well.
And we were rescuing him.
“There’s no time to experiment,” Hades argued, running a frustrated hand through his dark hair. “She doesn’t know how to direct power. But if she swears fealty to me—”
“Swear what?” I demanded, beyond confused. And this time, I didn’t think my aching head was to blame.
“We don’t know if she can even swear fealty,” Aphrodite said hotly. “Like you said, there’s no time to experiment.”
“What are they talking about?” I asked Adonis, still taken aback when I saw silver features instead of gold.
He shrugged, looking as clueless as I felt, and I tried not to be weirded out by the foreign expression on such a familiar face.
“Besides,” Aphrodite said, drawing in a deep breath. “All she has to do is focus on teleporting. I can do the rest.”
Hades’s voice was so low, he might as well have been growling. “You can’t handle that kind of power right now.”