It was so hot. I felt like I was going to faint. I pushed away the warm mug. Only my hands didn’t move.
“Justin, what’s going on? Where are we?” I demanded, trying to stay calm. “We need to go back. The pythons--”
“Pythons?” he interrupted. “Did you fall asleep? You must’ve been dreaming.”
“Of course I’m dreaming,” I snapped. “You brought us to the Dreamlands, Justin. Again. But I don’t have time for these games.”
Justin came over and took my hands in his. His eyes were full of concern. But his hands were too warm, like everything else, and my head was starting to pound.
“You’re burning up,” he said. “Go lie down. I’ll call the doctor’s office to make you an appointment.”
It was then I noticed his face. It was Justin: same brown eyes, same half-smile, same everything. But it was lined with age. He had to be at least fifty years old.
“Justin, what happened to you? Why are you old?” I demanded.
“Hera, try to calm down,” he urged. “You’re running a fever. I think it’s making you confused.”
“I’m not confused!” I shot back. “You’re confused! Now take us back to the apartment!”
“Hera, you’re scaring me,” he replied.
“Stop this. Just stop it,” I said. “You can’t keep me here. The others need me.”
“No one’s keeping you here,” Justin replied, trying to keep panic from his voice. “This is our home. Don’t you remember?”
“Our home?” I repeated. “Our home?”
“Yes, we bought it,” he reminded me. “After we got married.”
I jerked. My body was my own again. At least I had that much. I bumped the table. My mug tipped, spilling coffee everywhere.
“Hera, watch out. Don’t get burned,” he warned. “I’ll clean this up.”
“I don’t care about getting burned!” I shouted. “I just want to know what’s going on!”
I shot out of my chair, but as soon as I did, I began to sway. Justin caught me--but it wasn’t old Justin. It was young Justin. The Justin I remembered from the apartment. He looked terrified.
He was calling my name, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was too exhausted, and it was too hot.
After trying several times, I finally managed to will my eyes back open.
I wasn’t in Justin’s arms anymore. I was sitting in a restaurant. Well-dressed servers in black and white suits moved between tables. Classical music drifted gently in the background. Across from me sat Justin, but he wasn’t old anymore. He was young. Younger, anyway, but still older than in the apartment. He was dressed in a suit.
“Happy anniversary,” he said. But then he frowned. “Is everything okay? Did I say something wrong?”
Yes! I shouted. Or wanted to shout. But instead, I said, “No. Nothing. Just a bit warm.”
I was trapped inside myself again. I struggled to get up, to say something, to do anything to show how wrong this was. But nothing happened. I was a prisoner.
“I’ll get them to turn up the AC,” Justin offered, trying to catch a server’s attention.
“No, it’s fine,” my voice assured him.
“So, any big plans for tomorrow?” he asked.
“Full day of meetings. I’m coordinating the Women’s Chamber of Commerce fundraiser again,” I found myself replying.
Justin chuckled. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? Always gotta be in charge.”
“It’s my nature,” I replied. “Would you really want that to change?”
Justin took my hand in his. It was then I noticed the large diamond ring around my finger. “Never,” he assured me.
“Good, because it’s not going to happen,” I replied.
Justin laughed again. “You’re the boss,” he said. “I knew that when I married you.”
Impossible!
“Hera!” It was Justin shouting, but not the Justin in front of me. He was still smiling at me, squeezing my hand. He didn’t seem to hear anything at all.
The voice was coming from behind me. “Don’t move! Stop running!”
I heard crashes behind me, cries from servers and customers. Something was getting closer. I tried to turn, but I was frozen, helpless.
The lights went out.
When it finally brightened, the restaurant was gone. And so was Justin.
I was lying in a big bed, half-buried under a mountain of pillows and blankets. The sun flooded through a big bay window. I was dying of heat.
I pushed off the covers, hoping for some relief, but there was nothing but heat everywhere.
I heard something. I turned my head. It took such monumental effort. Everything felt like I was trying to push a car uphill.
I spotted a flicker of movement in a room to my right.
I forced myself up. To my horror, I realized I was naked. I spotted a robe nearby and, after trying for what felt like forever, I managed to grab it and put it on. Then I headed for the room to my right. Very slowly.
I saw the sink and tiles from the doorway. It must be a bathroom. But there was no sign of whatever I’d seen moving.
I lost patience with all of this. The strain. The heat. The shifting Dreamlands. Justin’s mindgames. All of it. I was going to put a stop to it. Now. I headed inside.
I saw Justin kneeling by the bathtub. He straightened and turned. He was naked. Completely naked. When he saw me, he grinned.
“I was only going to be another second,” he told me. “You’re so impatient.”
I ignored that, because my attention was elsewhere.
“You . . . are . . . naked!” I told him, horrified. I averted my eyes. My cheeks heated. I didn’t know it was possible for me to get even hotter.
“You didn’t seem to mind last night,” he said. “Or this morning.”
I gaped, speechless.
“Round three?” he suggested, winking. He began to come toward me.
Someone grabbed me from behind. But I was too shocked and hot and confused to fight back.
“Hera, stop running,” Justin said fiercely in my ear. “We have to go back.”
“I’m not running,” I moaned. He was scalding hot. But I was too weak to push him off.
“You are running,” Justin insisted. “Just when I catch up to you. I don’t want to keep using my powers. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not running,” I insisted stubbornly. “I want to go home.”
“No, you don’t,” Justin replied. “What I can’t figure out is why. I don’t want to force you back, Hera. Not until we figure out what part of you is fighting so hard to keep you here.”
“Let me go,” I said. “You’re too hot.”
“Not a chance,” he replied. “If I do, you’ll run again.” He paused. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I tried to think, but the heat made it impossible. I shook my head.
“We were attacked,” Justin reminded me. “Pythons. You were shot with a poisoned arrow. Apollo’s doing his best, but there isn’t much time. He needs you back in your body to help him. You have to stop running.”
“It’s so hot,” I murmured. I couldn’t concentrate with all the heat.
“I know,” Justin admitted. “I feel it, too. It’s the fever. Your body is trying to burn off the poison, but it’s killing you. You need to get back, so you can cool yourself down. But first we need to figure out why you’re keeping me from taking you back.”
“I told you. I’m not,” I insisted.
“And I told you some part of you is,” Justin replied.
“I don’t mean to,” I said.
“I’m getting that,” he sighed. “It must be your subconscious then. Think back. How were you feeling in each dream?”
I struggled against the heat. It was so hard to clear my head. “Hot. Confused. Frightened.”
“Anything else?” Justin asked.
The dreams were hazy. “Familiar.”
“Familiar?” he echoed.
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“Yeah. Like I’d been there before. Like I belonged there,” I admitted.
“Like you were . . . happy?” Justin suggested.
“I don’t remember,” I said. Then I felt the heat fading away. “Justin, I think I’m getting better. It’s cooler now. Can you feel it?”
“Focus, Hera, please!” he begged. “It’s not cooler. You just think it is. You have to figure out what was common in each of the dreams.”
“Justin--” I started.
“Hera, think!” he shouted.
The coolness was spreading. At last--relief.
“You,” I breathed, letting the coolness take me.
I felt his grip relax. “Hera, did you . . .” He paused. “Hera, are you . . . do like me?”
I broke free. It took all my strength but I did it.
And then I ran.
I ran. And ran. And ran.
Before, everything took effort. But running was somehow easy now. Natural. Right. The coolness had restored me.
I was incredibly fast. Images flickered. Scenes flew by. Everything around me was a blur of colours and sounds.
But then I slammed into something hard. I fell backward. Something caught me. I looked up.
Justin.
Pale and wreathed in crimson fire. His grip was merciless.
“Let me go!” I demanded.
He didn’t even flinch. “You’re going back, whether you like it or not.”
The world around me began to fade. The coolness was replaced by boiling heat. I screamed. Justin let me go. But it was too late. The Dreamlands were disappearing.
As Justin pulled away, his eyes shone with something I’d never seen in them before. But then they were gone, devoured by crimson fire.
I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t let the Dreamlands take him away, take him from me.
I grabbed Justin. I pressed my lips against his. The crimson fire recoiled, replaced by surprise.
Then our world rippled one last time and disappeared.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Apollo was looking down at me. So was Justin. I was back.
“Hera, can you hear me?” Apollo asked.
I wanted to respond, but I couldn’t. If the heat had been intense in the Dreamlands, it was an unbearable inferno here.
I nodded. It was the best I could do.
“Good,” Apollo replied. “Listen very carefully to me, Hera. The pythons laced their arrows with venom from Ekhidna’s claws. You know that venom. It’s deadly. And only Ekhidna can cure it. But I can contain the poison if you help me. Can you do that?”
I nodded again.
“Good,” Apollo said. “I need you to concentrate. Your powers give you control over the minds of mortals, and right now, there’s a mortal mind asleep somewhere in that body. The two are still connected, so you should be able to use your powers to tell that body what to do. I want you to tell it to cool down as much as it can.”
I took a deep breath, as deep as my burning lungs would allow, which wasn’t very deep at all. I summoned my power to my eyes. I shut them firmly and tried to direct the power inward.
I’d never looked for the mortal mind locked away with me. I was content to let it slumber. But now that I concentrated, I felt it. Gently, I enveloped and cradled it with my powers.
I envisioned cold. A sweating glass of iced tea, filled with ice cubes. A barren Arctic tundra. A snowstorm.
It was working. I felt the heat start to vanish. I shivered and then I opened my eyes.
“Perfect.” Apollo smiled. “Keep it just like that. It’ll slow you down and make you weaker, but it’ll keep the poison from spreading. I’ll do my best to block it, but I can’t stop the poison forever.”
Apollo’s gentle face was lost in light as he channeled his power into me. It spread through me with delicious coolness.
I blinked. I breathed. Almost like normal again.
Apollo helped me to my feet, but then he almost collapsed. Justin caught him before he fell. Apollo had drained himself completely to heal me.
I walked over to the others, glad Justin was busy helping Apollo. I wasn’t ready to talk to him about what had happened in the Dreamlands. I wasn’t even sure I knew what had happened in the Dreamlands.
“They’re pinning us down here on purpose,” Artemis was saying to Hermes.
“Then we need to go,” Hermes said. “If they want to keep us here, there must be a reason, and that reason can’t be good.”
“The question is how,” Artemis replied. “We’re on the fifth floor. We can’t just jump out the window. Well, you can’t.”
“I can just turn invisible and sneak out,” Hermes said.
As he spoke, he hurled a kitchen knife out one of the gaping holes in the door. There was a shriek of pain outside.
“That doesn’t help the rest of us,” I said.
“We could form a human chain out the window?” Demeter suggested. “Artemis and Hermes could stay at the top and then use their powers to escape once the rest of us make it to the ground.”
I shook my head. “It’d take too much strength for the one at the top to support all of us. The chain would break before any of us could drop to the ground safely.”
“Wait,” Justin said. “Demeter might be on to something.”
He pointed out the window.
“It’s a tree,” I said.
“Exactly.” Justin smiled.
The tree was two stories tall, a mass of branches and leaves. But we couldn’t jump down to it safely. Even dropping down from a human chain, we could impale ourselves on a sharp branch or plummet through the foliage straight to the ground.
“A tree!” Demeter exclaimed, excited.
She ran to the window and reached out her hands, and the tree reached back. It stretched higher and higher as the power built. But there was a limit to how much Demeter could force it to grow. Then she cupped her hands, and the tree obediently wove its uppermost branches into a crude platform.
“That works,” I said. “Artemis and Sarah, hold the pythons back. Hermes, you’re the acrobat. You go first and then help the rest of us from below.”
Hermes bowed with an elaborate flourish. And without further ado, he grabbed a nearby chair and hurled it with all his might at the window. The window cracked, but it didn’t break. The chair just bounced off.
“Wow. I really expected that to work,” Hermes said.
“Try this,” Artemis said, tossing him a metal bar.
“Where--” Hermes began.
Artemis ignored him. In battle, she was all business. She flung two more knives out the door. But her pile of kitchen knives was rapidly dwindling.
Hermes smashed the window with the metal bar, sending down a rain of glass. He slipped off his shirt, wrapped it around his arm, and cleared the rest of the broken glass from the window. Leaving his shirt on the sill to guard against any slivers, he leapt up, perching with mind-boggling balance. Flashing us an incorrigible grin, Hermes black-flipped out the window.
My heart stopped as I watched him fall. But when I ran forward and looked out the window, he landed square in the middle of the platform.
“Jump down,” he said, spreading his arms wide.
“Apollo and I will make the chain,” Justin said. “You go first and help Hermes with Beth. Demeter will guide the tree as much as she can.”
I nodded. It made sense. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t go wrong in a million ways, and I was currently imagining each and every one. In vivid detail.
“Wait!” Sarah called from the doorway, where she threw occasional barriers to ward off the pythons’ arrows. “There’s rope in the kitchen closet.”
Demeter rushed to the kitchen and returned with a coil of nylon rope. Apollo cinched it around his waist and then tied one end around a couch leg. He and Justin exchanged a look. There was only about a foot of rope left.
“We can switch,” Apollo offered.
He wasn’t lying. He’d give up the rope for a morta
l. That was Apollo. All heart and precious little sense. Just like Demeter.
I smiled wryly. I was the complete opposite. Between the three of us, I guess we struck some kind of cosmic balance.
Justin shook his head. “Maybe it’s Hera talking, but you’re a god--if you die, that’s a pretty big deal. You know, cosmically-speaking and everything.”
Justin risked a sidelong glance at me. What he really meant was the loss of another god would be a pretty big deal to me. It’d destroy me. And he knew it. And as long as he lived, he wouldn’t let that happen.
Apollo just shrugged, and then climbed out the window.
“Ready?” Justin asked.
I took a deep breath and lifted my chin. My kingdom for more rope.
“If you want, there’s always the Dream--” Justin offered.
“I’d rather jump out the window,” I replied. “I’ll take my chances with gravity.”
Justin flashed a quick smile, and then slowly lowered himself out of the window, climbing down Apollo. He coiled what remained of the rope around his wrist a few times. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
It was up to me now.
How far down was it? How far could a mortal body fall and live? If Apollo could get down quickly enough and heal me, maybe even if I did fall . . .
I shut my eyes and willed my mind to stop. I didn’t need fear. I wouldn’t tolerate weakness. It was a simple task. I just had to climb down.
I went to the window and lowered myself down. I moved slowly at first. I alternated, hand over hand, holding onto Apollo as tightly as I could. To his credit, he remained motionless the entire time. It was like climbing down a ladder.
But it felt like I was only moving a few inches at a time, and my arms were already starting to burn.
“Use your legs,” Justin said.
I wrapped my legs around Apollo, giving my arms some relief. Then I shifted my hands downward, released my legs, and then re-wrapped them lower. An inchworm. The Queen of Gods had become an inchworm. If the other gods could only see me now.
I shivered. There was at least one god who’d love to see me now. And he’d be hoping for me to fall.
That infuriated me enough to fuel my strength and determination.
Hera, Queen of Gods (Goddess Unbound) Page 22
