Mortal Gods

by Kendare Blake

  The air smelled of warming dirt, wet leaves, and smoke. Organic smells. Nostalgic smells of past fires where Aidan had kept her warm. Now she stood by herself, watching Hermes laugh with Sam and Megan, both of them smitten with him to varying degrees. He told them stories about his fictitious dorm at his fictitious college. Or maybe it wasn’t so fictitious. He’d been alive a long time. He’d probably gone to lots of colleges.

  Behind him, Calypso spoke when spoken to. Hermes seemed annoyed to have her there and ignored her. Most of the girls were too intimidated to say hello, and the boys just stared. She looked alone. Alone, but not lonely. There was a difference.

  “Should Hermes really be getting drunk?” Henry asked. “When he’s supposed to be watching out for Ares?”

  Cassandra smiled. Maybe not, but who had the heart to tell him so?

  “Don’t worry.” Andie gestured toward Calypso. “She’s here. If those wolves come back, she’ll just sing them stupid, like last time. Do you need anything?” She tugged at Henry’s jacket, carefully arranging it around his sling. The shoulder was healing well. The sling would be off soon, and he’d start to train. Start to use a sword. Start to learn how to kill.

  “It’s going to be a hell of a scar,” Andie said.

  “Yeah,” Henry replied. The scar on his face was brutal and ugly, a red, stitched stripe just below his cheekbone. “The docs did a real Frankenstein job of it.”

  “Makes you look like a warrior,” Andie said.

  “Don’t say that,” Cassandra said. “You wouldn’t say that if you remembered what it was like to watch a spear go through his chest. And stop … touching him all the time.”

  “What? Gross, I’m not touching him all the time,” Andie protested, but Cassandra turned and walked away.

  “It will all happen again,” she muttered. “They’ll get together. Henry will die. I’ll swallow an axe, and Andie might live just long enough to wish she hadn’t.”

  “That’s no prophecy. That’s only your fear.”

  Cassandra turned. Calypso blinked innocently and sipped from her cup.

  “How do you know?” Cassandra asked.

  “I don’t. It was just a guess.”

  Just a guess. But it did make Cassandra feel better somehow.

  “You’re thinking about him,” said Calypso. “Your Aidan.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve seen that face on lots of girls. And in the mirror, when Odysseus is gone, and I’d give anything for him to walk through my door.” She shook her head, and pretty braids fell across her shoulder. “It must be difficult to believe. That someone eternal as Aidan could be truly dead and gone forever.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cassandra said. “But no one knows where he went. Not even Athena.”

  “Athena doesn’t know everything. I’ve guided my share of mortals to the underworld. Almost as many as she.”

  Cassandra stared at Calypso intently. With the fire reflected in her sea-glass eyes, she appeared entranced.

  “Is that where he is? Is there a way to get there?”

  Calypso blinked away the fire and turned her face to the shadows.

  “I don’t want to give you false hope,” she said. “The way to the underworld has been closed for more than a thousand years. And I don’t know if your Aidan is there. But if he is, it doesn’t matter. Because we can’t reach him.”

  “False hope,” Cassandra whispered. But if it was false, it didn’t stop her head from filling with possibilities.

  * * *

  Athena sat on Achilles’ lonely cot while Odysseus knelt on the floor, tending her crushed ankle. The shack was extremely well fortified. Shelves warped beneath the weight of canned food and bottles of water. He had plenty of first aid supplies, too. And, of course, weapons. Nothing so rudimentary as his hammer, either. He had blades of all kinds. He had a longsword, for Pete’s sake.

  “The boot’s ruined,” Odysseus said. The steel trap had bitten all the way through the leather. It flopped sadly when he pulled it off her foot. “Might as well cut it down and make a bootie.”

  “As if I’d ever wear a bootie.” Under the boot, Athena’s sock was all blood from lower leg to heel. When Odysseus plucked the fabric away and rolled it down, dark holes in her ankle and foot were plainly visible.

  “Sheesh,” he said. “You should probably have stitches.”

  “Do you know how to stitch?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then just bind it up. Either they’ll close, or feathers will pop out of them.”

  Odysseus turned slightly pale at that.

  “Hey.” She toed him. “No time to get queasy.” She glanced out the door at Achilles, who had put all the clothes he owned in a rucksack, along with a couple of his favorite books, and waited for them in the yard. “Are you sure about him?”

  “As sure as I was the first twenty times I told you to leave him alone,” Odysseus snapped, and tugged the bandage just a bit too tight.

  “If you’re waiting for me to say you were right—”

  “I’d never wait for that.”

  “I’m still not sure that you were right,” she snapped back. “What about Henry? How can we bring Achilles face-to-face with Hector?”

  “Henry isn’t Hector,” Odysseus said. “But I’ll talk to him about it. Make sure he understands that Henry isn’t the enemy.”

  Athena chewed her lip and watched the progress on her foot.

  “Make sure you use enough bandage so the blood won’t show through at the airport.”

  “You’re the boss.” Odysseus poured water into a bowl and sponged most of the blood off, but the wounds still bled, and in no time the water was thick and crimson. “I’m going to clean it a bit, all right? I know you don’t have to worry about infection, but—it’s nice to be tidy.”

  He lifted and turned her foot with gentle fingers, dabbing the gaping holes with iodine. It stung like hell, but it was the kind of pain she could take. The kind she knew she’d heal from. Not like the feathers.

  “Odysseus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That thing you said—that you kept saying. Being a kid caught up in our shit,” she said. “I never believed you meant it. I didn’t see how you could. You were always my Odysseus.”

  “I am your Odysseus.”

  Only he wasn’t. Despite the same wavy dark hair and mischievous eyes, the same crooked smile, this Odysseus wasn’t that Odysseus. This Odysseus had a future and choices the other hadn’t had.

  “I think oaths expire when you die,” she said softly.

  “Then you don’t know much about oaths. There.” He set her ankle on the ground and reached for the padding and bandage. “Hold this.” She bent and pressed the white pad to her foot. Where her fingers touched, blood seeped through immediately. “I didn’t mean it, right?” He wrapped gauze round and round. “I mean, not for me. It was just something to say to keep you from killing Achilles. Not one of my most successful lies.”

  “Well,” Athena said. “Not everyone’s as stupid as a Cyclops.”

  “Not everyone’s as hardheaded as you.” He rubbed his hands together and eyed the sheets of the cot. “Now, how to get that shoulder back in the socket? Maybe we can tie off some of those sheets.”

  “Just pull it.”

  “Even with the bone broken?”

  “Just pull it, or I’ll jam it in myself, on the wall.”

  He blew breath out, but he stood and grasped her arm between the elbow and wrist. “Bloody stubborn,” he whispered, and yanked hard. The cracked bone in her arm sang a friggin’ aria, and fire burned up the whole side of her body as the joint popped back in. But it went in. The bone was only cracked, after all. It wasn’t like it was sticking out of the skin.

  “Okay?” He touched her shoulder gently.

  “Okay.” She took a breath. The adrenaline had begun to fade. It would be an extremely uncomfortable flight home, followed by perhaps a few days off her feet. But just the same
, she couldn’t help feeling excited. She’d found the other weapon. She looked again at Achilles, where he stood waiting patiently. He was a sharp new knife indeed. Sharp enough to cut her stepmother’s head off. The invincible brute would plow a path straight through to the gods, and Cassandra would walk unharmed in his wake.

  “The Fates are still with me,” she whispered.

  “What?” Odysseus asked.

  “Nothing. Just taking stock.”

  “And you’re pleased?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And that’s as close to an apology as you’re going to get.”

  “Well. It’s shitty, but it’ll do.” He hadn’t moved away. He stayed close, half-kneeling, bent toward her. “What you said in the car. About Calypso. About us. Is that really what you want?”

  Her eyes moved over his familiar form. The muscles in his shoulders. The way his hair fell across his cheek.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But what if I can’t?”

  “Don’t be difficult. You can do—” She stopped. He’d picked up the bowl of water and blood and stared down into it. Something floated in the center, small and dark and speckled. A feather. There’d been a feather in her blood.

  I don’t like to be dying. I don’t think I’ll like to be dead.

  “Athena,” Odysseus said.

  “Sorry.” Achilles walked abruptly back in and headed to the corner of the shelter to dig through his stacks of books. “I didn’t want to forget this.” He held up a thin white volume and flashed it at Odysseus. A book on trap building. “Best book you ever got me. Did you get her patched up?”

  “Could you give us a minute, Achilles?” Odysseus asked, but Athena grabbed him by the arm.

  “Hang on. You got him that book? The book that taught him how to make the traps?”

  Achilles ignored them and flipped through pages.

  “I thought it’d come in handy, and it did.”

  “You knew there would be traps, and you didn’t warn me.”

  “I didn’t know for sure,” Odysseus said. “And besides, you wouldn’t have been killed.”

  “I might’ve been maimed.”

  “You could’ve been maimed; he could’ve stayed dead. All that’s in the past. Let it go.” Odysseus stood and rolled his shoulders back.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get him home.”

  * * *

  Odysseus wanted a beer before the flight, so they pulled up at the first bar they found along the concourse and wedged their way into a corner table. Odysseus ordered a round of Guinness, and all three flipped open their passports for the waiter.

  “It must be strange,” Achilles said to Athena. “Getting carded. You’re what, five thousand? That’s got to be legal everywhere.”

  “It’s the purple streaks,” Athena said, and pulled a few locks over her shoulder. The last of her punk highlights. “I should cut them out.”

  “Don’t,” Achilles said. “It looks good. Wild. Besides, it isn’t your hair. They’d card you anyway.”

  Athena didn’t know, really, how old she was. Passing years weren’t something immortals paid attention to. Or at least they hadn’t been.

  She watched Achilles as he waited for his beer, talking to Odysseus amiably about cricket, of all things. His eyes darted this way and that, taking people in. All the harried travelers speed walking down the concourse. It was probably more people than he’d seen in a year.

  Athena tried to remember what he’d been like, in his other life, but she didn’t know. The only thing that mattered was the way he fought. Achilles had been able to take down twenty, thirty armed and trained soldiers by himself. She couldn’t wait to find out what he could do now that he was truly invincible.

  But Henry and Cassandra. It felt wrong to ask them to see the sense of it.

  It was a lot to ask.

  “How long until we get to Kincade?” Achilles asked.

  “Too long,” Odysseus muttered.

  “About twenty hours to Philadelphia, and then we connect to the Kincade Airport.” Athena stretched her back. A full day of travel, with a torn-up foot and a cracked arm.

  “I hope they have a good in-flight movie,” Achilles said.

  “I hope they have eight good in-flight movies,” Odysseus said, and took a long drink. If he kept drinking like that, he’d be passed out for most of the trip. Which was probably his plan in the first place.

  “What did you do, Achilles,” Athena asked, “in the middle of nowhere for so long?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Clearly, I made traps.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Athena,” Odysseus said.

  “I’m just making sure he didn’t go Unabomber out there. A year’s a long time to spend whittling and playing the harmonica.”

  “What’s a ‘unabomber’? Never mind. I get what you mean. And I assure you, I’m sane.” Achilles looked around awkwardly. “Not sure how I’m supposed to prove it, though.”

  “You put up all those traps,” Athena said. “And you hid. So why join us now?”

  He took a drink and nodded thoughtfully. “I hid. I did. I thought it was the best thing, and so did Ody. He can be right convincing, I’m sure you’ve noticed. But a year is a long time, and I know what I can do. What I’m supposed to do. So when you made it through the traps, I figured, she must be the one. She must be the side to fight for.”

  “You’re not angry at me for killing you?”

  “Not at all. I guess it doesn’t bother me as much as it would someone else.”

  She snorted. “I suppose it wouldn’t.” She watched him closely. “What about Hector?”

  He swallowed and set his glass down, hard. “What about Hector? I ran a spear through him a few thousand years ago. He burned on a pyre.”

  “Listen, mate—” Odysseus started.

  “Hector is with us,” Athena said. “In Kincade. He fights with us.” She waited for the glass to break, for Achilles to launch across the table. Thousands of years and a lifetime later, Hector’s name still made his blood boil.

  “It can’t be,” he said. “Why would he be brought back? Why would fate put him here? He was nothing. Less than nothing.”

  “He was second only to you,” Athena said.

  “Patroclus was second to me,” Achilles spat, referring to his best friend who had meant more to him than a brother. The one Hector had killed.

  “Hector killed Patroclus. That makes Hector second.”

  Achilles scowled, and veins stood purple in his forehead. Odysseus was seconds away from punching Athena in the face to shut her up. But she had learned what she needed to. The old wound still bled. Long ago in Troy, a warrior named Patroclus had shown too much pride. He’d disguised himself in Achilles’ armor and tried to run up the walls of Troy. But Hector threw him down and killed him in the dirt.

  “This won’t work,” Athena said. “How will we keep them apart?”

  “You won’t,” Achilles growled. “You need me more than you need him.”

  “Hey,” Odysseus said, and grabbed his shoulder. “This isn’t about you and Hector anymore.”

  Athena pushed her beer away. “We’ll leave him here and go back on our own. Move Henry first. For all we know, Henry would want to kill him, too.” But that would be a sorry attempt. A fly attacking a tarantula.

  “Who the hell is Henry?” Achilles asked.

  “Henry is Hector,” Odysseus replied. “Only he isn’t. Not really. He’s not like you and me. He doesn’t remember anything. He’s not the same person. He’s just a seventeen-year-old kid with bad skin and too much homework.”

  Henry didn’t have bad skin. But Athena didn’t correct him. Across the table, Achilles tried to get a hold of himself. He didn’t want to be left behind. And maybe he didn’t want to be so angry.

  “Things aren’t the way they used to be,” Odysseus said.

  “How do you forgive?” Achilles whispered.

  “You just do. Hey, they forgave me
, and I’m the one who thought up the Trojan Horse.”

  “They’ve forgiven me, too,” Athena said. “And I helped Hera tear their city down because a Trojan said I wasn’t pretty. We all made mistakes.”

  “He really doesn’t remember?” Achilles asked.

  “He doesn’t,” said Odysseus.

  “Then he isn’t Hector.”

  Athena took a breath. “Okay, then.”

  * * *

  Ares trailed blood wherever he went. He ruined furniture as fast as Hera could replace it, and his wolves followed behind, trying to lick up the mess. Damn that girl. Cassandra. He didn’t understand how a formerly useless prophet could touch him and make his blood burst from his skin like a filled balloon.

  “Ares,” Aphrodite whispered, and pressed into his back. Wetness soaked into the front of her dress, mostly crusted over crimson now instead of blue and green. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” Ares lied. It did hurt. But the weakness was worse. Blood flowed out and took his strength with it. At night he could barely keep from shivering, and he felt so weak and anxious.

  He looked at his wolves, lounging on all fours. Pain, its gray tail twitching as its infected tongue lapped Ares’ blood from the floor. Famine with its skinny snout resting on its bare paws. Panic pacing a red line through the room. And Oblivion, barely visible in the shadows. They didn’t look half as ashamed as they should be for failing him. He’d sent them on an easy job. Kill the boy hero as the Moirae ordered. And they’d failed. They hadn’t even managed to kill the dog.

  “I failed the Moirae on two fronts,” he said. “Is that why they let me bleed out?”

  “They won’t let you bleed,” Aphrodite said. “Mother won’t let you bleed.”

  Ares clenched his fists. It was hard to be with Aphrodite sometimes, because of the madness. Her voice wasn’t her voice. It was vacant. Nonsense. And he wished she’d clean his blood out of her dress. Not out of her hair, though. It raced through her gold hair like ribbons. That he liked.

  “Hera’s not your mother,” he said. “She’s mine. Like Athena is my sister.”