Mortal Gods

by Kendare Blake

  “She doesn’t want my comfort.”

  * * *

  Cassandra let Athena get her up and guide her back through the catacomb caves of the underworld. She let her load her back into the skiff and push off the shore. They’d come so far. Crossed worlds. She’d been so sure she would see him. Only hours ago, she’d been sure they would bring him back.

  “Take care,” Athena said. “Don’t fall out.”

  Aidan wasn’t there. Not in the boat beside her or in all of the underworld. He was nowhere. Not even a shade of him remained to wander. He had been blotted out with no stain left behind. But that couldn’t be. Aidan was too bright, too bold, too beautiful to disappear. He was too much a part of everything she was.

  “I love him,” she said.

  “I know,” Athena replied. She paddled slowly, sadly. Mournful paddling.

  Cassandra’s hands began to burn.

  Before they were through, the gods would take everything. They would spear Henry and Andie onto wooden pikes to buy themselves another ten minutes. They blew up buildings full of people and burned homes to the ground. All to extend lives that had gone on for too long already.

  Aidan. She loved him as much as she ever had. As much as she hated his family.

  “We’re almost there, Cassandra. The light’s returning.”

  Yes. She could see that. Athena said such stupid things. Dying bitch, taking too many others down with her. Hades’ death alone would cost a city. Thousands of innocents dead, choking on phlegm or full of sores.

  Once, a long time ago, the gods had murdered her whole family. All of her people.

  The Styx disappeared, replaced by the steel blue of the lake. Cold wind slipped down her collar.

  “We’re home, Cassandra.”

  She was supposed to kill them.

  Cassandra turned and stared at Athena. Shadows crawled across her face.

  She was supposed to kill them all.

  25

  ALL THE HOURS THAT REMAIN

  On the drive back to Kincade, Athena treated her carefully. A gentle touch here, a soft word there. No pushing. No questions. Stupid goddess, playing at sympathy. But Cassandra took it, so she wouldn’t have to talk. So she wouldn’t have to scream. She didn’t say a word until they passed the Motel 6 where Athena, Hermes, and Odysseus had stayed when they first hit town that fall.

  “What day is it?” Cassandra asked.

  “Still Thursday, I think.”

  “If you don’t know, don’t guess. Just drive me to school.” But Athena was right. Almost no time had passed. They’d gone so far, and it had been nothing. Been nothing, and for nothing.

  “What time is it?” she asked. She glanced around the Dodge, but there was no clock display on the radio. She pulled her phone out of her backpack and looked at the dead screen, then tried to power it off and back on again. It did neither. The fucking underworld had fried her phone.

  She squeezed it hard in her fist, to no effect. She could kill a god but lacked the strength to crack a Samsung.

  “There’s only one thing I’m good for,” she whispered. “Only one thing I can change.” And it was a good thing. An important thing. It would save the lives of strangers and those she loved.

  “Cassandra,” Athena said.

  Cassandra ground her teeth and threw the phone hard against the dash.

  “Don’t touch me!” she shouted when Athena pulled over. “If you touch me now, you’ll be feathers to the elbow. And I still need you to get me onto Olympus.”

  “It’s ‘into’ mostly, rather than ‘onto.’”

  “Are you still talking?”

  Athena stared straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel. Her fingers twitched, and her throat worked like she might say something about the brother she’d lost, the one her war had gotten killed. If she did, Cassandra would go for her face. She’d spear long feathers though her eyes. Through her tongue.

  “Listen,” Athena said, “you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

  “Where else would I go?” Cassandra opened the door. “When do we leave?”

  “When you’re ready to,” Athena said.

  “I’m ready now.”

  * * *

  The goddess of war never slept the night before a battle. As the rest of the house slumbered, storing strength for the fight to come, Athena stood in her quiet kitchen, peeling an apple with a paring knife and feeling all the blood in her veins. She was full of blood and life, her lingering death forgotten in the face of a more immediate, and much more violent, end.

  It felt wonderful.

  She was nervous, of course, and she always felt a small measure of fear. But that was secondary. Leaving Cassandra in the school parking lot that afternoon, she’d never felt such power. Clear, pure force, radiating off Cassandra steady as a beam of light. The girl was ready. Somewhere across the trees and yards, Cassandra was lying in her bed. But Athena doubted that she was sleeping, either.

  She bit into the apple and swallowed the juice, sweet and sour. This was the fight of her life. It would save her brother and retake their home. It would make them gods again.

  And all it would cost were the lives of other gods.

  She set the knife on the counter. War came with a price. There was nothing she could do about that. All day long, she had waited for doubt to creep in, to tell her there was another way, some other destiny hanging in the stars. But it didn’t, and there wasn’t. No matter what Odysseus said.

  He was there somewhere, in the house. She took her apple and sought him out, needing his voice suddenly. She walked down the basement steps.

  “Odysseus?”

  The basement was empty, the heavy bag still, weapons in their place. Even Achilles took the last night to rest, or to revel. She had no idea where he was, either.

  She walked back up the stairs, finished the apple, and tossed the core. Every inch of her hummed and vibrated like a taut bowstring. Her body was ready to fight, ready to kill, but it would have to wait until morning.

  As she passed by the sliding doors, she saw Odysseus standing in the backyard. He was alone, in the breeze, under the moon and the yellow light cast into the grass from the porch. Stubbornly freezing without a jacket on. He had half of Hera’s statue propped on top of the other half and balanced on the ends like a skateboarder. Just watching him calmed her. Only not enough.

  He could, if she let him. He could make her sleep the sleep of the dead, like he had in the back of that truck, in his arms.

  The muscles of his back flexed as he adjusted his balance, and her lips parted, remembering what he felt like pressed against her. The long, lean hardness of his body. His hands on her hips and the heat of his mouth. Odysseus was a boy whom girls devoured, and he looked at Athena a way no one had ever looked at her. Like he wanted to make her lose her mind. Like he could.

  Inside the house, beside the table, she imagined walking up behind him. He would be confused at first. Surprised. But then she’d hold out her hand, and her fingers would stop trembling when they touched. He’d say her name in that way he had, and his fingers would push into her hair. His lips against her neck. All of him at once, making her dizzy, so fast she could never change her mind.

  Her heart pounded into her fingertips, and she reached for the sliding door.

  “What are you doing?” Calypso asked.

  Athena spun, her cheeks red hot.

  “Calypso, what the hell?” She checked to make sure Odysseus hadn’t seen them and pulled the other girl farther into the kitchen. “You creep like a cat.”

  “What are you doing?” Calypso asked again.

  “Nothing. I … I need to talk to Odysseus.”

  “Talk. About what?”

  Athena squinted at her.

  “None of your business,” she said.

  “None of your business, you mean,” said Calypso. “What do you think you can do for him in the middle of the night? Goddess of battle. You’d use up these hours talking in
circles.”

  “You caught me,” Athena said wickedly. “Talking isn’t what I’m after.”

  If she meant to shock, it didn’t work. Calypso didn’t budge. But she did shift her hip, such an easy, naturally seductive motion that Athena blushed darker.

  “What kind of comfort can you offer?” Calypso asked. “Awkward embraces and frustration?”

  Athena looked back out through the sliding door. Even balanced ridiculously on a broken statue, Odysseus was the best thing she’d ever seen. The lines between them had blurred once. She’d told herself she wouldn’t do it again. Yet here she stood.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” said Calypso. “Tell me the virgin goddess of war is finally ready to take him into her bed, and I’ll get out of your way.”

  “If I were, it wouldn’t matter if you stood in my way or not,” Athena said. She refused to blink, to acknowledge the way her eyes stung and watered. Calypso would never see her cry.

  “But you aren’t,” Calypso said. “I am. I love him, like you do. Only I can say it out loud. And I can give him everything you can’t.” Calypso’s hair fell in a perfect frame of her face. The curves encased in her clothes outpaced Athena’s by miles. Even Aphrodite would be jealous.

  “Shut up, Calypso,” Athena said. She stared at Odysseus, wishing she still had the godly will to make him turn and see them. But who would he choose? Calypso was right. He would go with her, back to her room, and Athena would be left standing alone.

  “You want him, you don’t want him. You tease him, but you won’t take him,” Calypso said. “Just go away, goddess. Stop being so unfair.”

  Athena tore her eyes away from Odysseus and shoved past the table. She grabbed her jacket off the hook and threw open the front door.

  “Calypso.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tomorrow, after this is over, you are out of my fucking house.”

  * * *

  Cassandra left Andie sleeping in her room and snuck out through the backyard, into the woods. There was a special thrill to it, and not just the chilly night air and stealthy movements, but because Athena would have been furious. Cassandra out alone, unprotected, the night before the goddess’ big battle. She looked up into the barely visible branches of the trees, but there were no owls. No yellow eyes tracking her. It was nice.

  For a while.

  But after the first half mile, Cassandra started to wish Andie and Henry hadn’t needed their rest. The woods were lonely and too quiet. If only one of Ares’ wolves would pop out from behind a trunk, so she could blow it up into blood and fur and wolf bits. If only she’d brought Lux to throw his ball around.

  A branch cracked to her left, and leaves rustled with unmistakable footsteps. Achilles came through the trees, moonlight and stars on his bright blond head.

  “What’s this?” he asked. “The other weapon of fate? Fancy meeting you here.”

  “What are you doing out?” Cassandra asked.

  He stretched his shoulder, rolled his neck back and forth.

  “Same thing you are, I imagine. There isn’t a lot of sleep to be had the night before you storm Olympus.”

  “I didn’t figure you’d be nervous.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “Not exactly. But even a hero as great as me has never been inside Olympus before.” He nodded back toward her house. “The other two sleeping?”

  “Finally.”

  “Good. They’ll need it. Athena said you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

  Of course she hadn’t. Did he see Aidan standing next to her? Anger balled fast in her throat, and she swallowed hard.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and shrugged.

  He seemed so easygoing. Not unlike Odysseus. But there was more ego to Achilles, and less reason. And of course the rage, bubbling beneath his skin. There was always that. Cassandra supposed she could relate.

  They walked together a while without talking, and her dislike of him faded in the face of her hatred of the gods. He hadn’t harmed Henry yet. He hadn’t even threatened him. And he was going to be her human shield on Olympus. They were a team, the pair of them. He was the brawler, and she was the finisher.

  “It’s going to be an interesting day tomorrow,” he said. “All that glory.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “And so many dead gods.”

  * * *

  Athena walked out of her neighborhood and into the outskirts of Kincade. She’d have liked to go miles away, until the house was little more than memory. Until she stopped imagining what was going on inside it, in Calypso’s borrowed bedroom.

  She swore loudly, and the night was cold enough that it appeared in front of her as a little cloud. Except for her cursing and the sad, steady scrape of her boots against the gravel shoulder, it was quiet. She hadn’t seen a car for miles.

  She stopped. She had no idea where she was. Tree-lined pastures surrounded her on all sides, some fenced in with white boards. Crusted patches of snow clung tenaciously to freshly green grass. A horse whistled; large and white. He stood beside the road, staring at her with his head over the fence.

  She walked over and slid her fingers up under his forelock, smoothed his mane and smelled grass on his breath.

  “You remind me of someone I used to know,” she said. Poseidon. Back when he was more man than monster, he would turn into a great white stallion and run thundering down the beach. “Earth shaker, they called him. Poseidon, earth shaker.”

  The horse regarded her with wide black eyes. But he was only a horse. Poseidon was gone.

  “If you’re planning on running, Henry’s Mustang is a better choice than that one.”

  The horse jumped as Hermes made the scene the way he liked best: out of nowhere in a cloud of dust.

  “Hermes.”

  “Who else? What are you doing out here?”

  Athena shrugged. “Killing time. He looks like our uncle, doesn’t he?”

  Hermes scrutinized the horse. “He’s got more dappling on his hocks. Quit fussing over the steed and answer the question.”

  “Night before battle. I needed to walk.”

  “Or you needed to get out of the house before Calypso and Odysseus started to make it rock. I heard your little exchange.”

  “If you were so sure you knew already,” she said, “why did you bother to ask?”

  “I wanted to know if you would be honest. I should have known you wouldn’t be.” He leaned against the fence and stroked the horse’s neck. “You should have let me throw her out of the house when I offered.”

  “No. She’ll still come in handy tomorrow.”

  Hermes looked into the sky. “Later today, you mean. The sun’s almost up.” He sighed. “I suppose it is difficult to think about love when there are so many estranged family members to kill,” he said, and patted the horse solemnly. He draped his arm across the animal’s withers. “Athena?”

  “What?”

  “Are we really going to kill them? Kill them for real? I mean, they’re still … our family.”

  “Hermes, they’d do the same to us.”

  “Yeah, but,” he said, and tried to smile, “I thought we were the good guys.”

  Kid brother, she reminded herself. It did no good to tell him to stop being childish. To grow up.

  “There are no good guys,” she said.

  “It matters, though, doesn’t it? That we feel bad? That it makes us sad that it’s all over?”

  “Maybe,” she lied. But it did make her sad. No matter how twisted they were, and what pain they caused each other, the gods had once had forever. Forever to fight and hate and make up, to switch loyalties and regain trust. They’d been at it so long they didn’t really understand what it would mean for it to be finished. They wouldn’t, until it was far too late.

  She couldn’t say any of that to Hermes. Underneath his selfishness and sarcasm he had the biggest heart of all the gods. One more ounce of sympathy, and he’d hesitate in the fa
ce of his family. And they would slice him in half for his trouble.

  “We’re going to kill them tomorrow, little brother. All of them. Just like we killed Poseidon.” She pushed the horse’s face away, toward the open pasture. “We’ll kill them for real, and if there’s regret to feel, we’ll feel it later.”

  She slapped the horse on the hindquarters, and he tossed his head and galloped away. Together they watched him go and pretended the snow scattering beneath his hooves was beach sand. Pretended he was Poseidon, running for the surf.

  26

  IN WAIT

  Ares and Aphrodite stood together on one of the many slopes of Olympus. The mountain had infinite surfaces, infinite tunnels and pathways and exits, more plateaus and edges than any mountain should contain. It wasn’t a real place. It wasn’t a real mountain. Olympus belonged to the gods, subject to only their will, strength, and fancy.

  The slope Aphrodite chose that night was black with rocks and overlooked the sea.

  “Storms are on my mind tonight,” she said. She twined her arms around Ares’ shoulders. Below them, waves crashed against the cliff in shades of blue and graphite under overcast skies. “The kind of storm I was born in. I didn’t emerge on the half-shell from a gently rising wave, no matter what they say. It was nowhere near that calm. Birth never is.

  “I was born from a raging swell, from water breaking on sharp rocks. I was flung onto the sand amidst a kill of sharks and silver fish, tied with seaweed ripped from its bed.”

  Ares stroked her hair and wondered if it was true. It made sense: birth in exchange for death, the life of a goddess for the blood of a cove. A hell of a lot more sense than a giant clamshell opening and poof! There she was. But he couldn’t know for sure. Aphrodite sounded coherent, but she often did until she started to scream.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, and lifted her head.

  “Nothing, pet.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  He kissed the top of her head.

  “Fine. I was thinking that Athena could arrive any day. With Hermes and her brats. I was thinking how we have to kill them and eat them.”

  Aphrodite’s pert nose wrinkled. “We won’t have to eat them, silly.”