The first half dozen times anyway. Once the director had stopped and restarted them, moved them and the cameras into different positions and made them go through it ad nauseum, the scene had lost its charm.
Tina began tap-tap-tapping on Andre’s shoulder, ending more on a thump than a tap. I could see an argument brewing, when the director finally turned and smiled through his scraggly beard. “And now for the bride.”
I let out a breath, praying we’d be done and gone before whatever tension I felt building sprung on us like snakes from a can.
Someone snapped in my face, and I blinked at Andre’s fingers an inch from my nose. I thought about breaking them, but I was pretty sure it would piss Tina off and, anyway, the police were watching.
I settled for glaring and going where he arranged me. We all stood at the steps of the Tholos, apparently not cleared, like the famous people, for use of the platform. A photographer and videographer both moved in to shoot us. Traditional poses first—boys on one side, girls on the other flanking the bride and groom. Then variations. Just the girls. Just the boys. Guys holding the bride vertically and her looking exasperated. Girls gathered around the groom, all leaning in to kiss his cheek. And then the wedding party was off the hook and it was just the bride and groom in the spotlight.
Tina was gazing up into Jason’s face, looking like she’d just won the lottery when my precog kicked into high gear. I looked around at every face, including the face of the mountain above us, searching out the danger. But my vision jerked suddenly as a tremor started up the mountain, radiating down the side. Rocks began to cascade down, knocking larger rocks loose and starting a shearing. The stones sounded like gunfire as they struck, broke apart and ricocheted down the mountain toward us.
“Back to the limos!” Andre yelled to be heard above it.
No one needed to be told. Already, Tina clutched Jason’s hand and was running blindly away from the Tholos, back toward the road. I lurched for Nick just as the whip end of the tremor hit us like an explosion, sending me skyrocketing into him. He rocked with the impact of my body blow but managed to keep us upright…until the ground bucked beneath us again, harder this time, like the earth was a bed sheet being snapped out of its orderly folds. Nick and I were knocked apart. I fell hard, striking my butt bone in a spine-numbing impact with the ground.
I lay momentarily stunned, until something began to rise from the ground before me and true fear kicked me in the gut—a monstrous snake with fangs the size of steak knives. The head was triangular, which somewhere in the back of my jibbering mind I knew meant that it was poisonous. Its yellow-green eyes gleamed with intelligence and malice.
Around us was chaos. There were screams and running feet. Someone clutched clumsily at my shoulders, and I looked up into Tina’s terrified face, but she had eyes only for the snake—hence the clumsiness—and when it darted its head at her, fangs fully extended, she shrieked and ran. I didn’t blame her. I gave her props for coming back for me at all.
The upheaval of the snake’s eruption from the earth upset one of the huge stones atop a Tholos column and it came crashing down. I shouted a warning to anyone still in its path and covered my head, as if that would do any good against a two-ton stone, but for one brief shining moment luck was with me. It missed, falling onto the stone platform in an explosion of sharp projectile fragments. The snake’s head whipped around at the crash, and I seized the moment to roll away toward Nick.
He reached for me too, a “What the hell!” coming out of his mouth, but I presumed it was rhetorical, because even if I had the answer, I didn’t have the breath to offer it.
Gunfire started up around us, and Nick pulled my head down to the ground, covering me with his body to protect me from doing anything stupid like trying to get into the line of fire. I’d forgotten about the police officers and their weapons, but I blessed them now.
I squirmed enough in Nick’s grip to be able to see what was going on…and to be very, very afraid. The snake barely rocked with the impact of the bullets. Instead of recoiling, he sprang at one of the officers and bit down hard before the man could even cry out. I flinched my eyes shut as the officer’s blood spurted and his gun fell to the ground.
Within me, deep within as if it had burrowed there, an alien part of me reveled, glad to see the serpent rise again. The Pythian serpent resurrected? Rhea’s avatar that Apollo had fought for control of the sanctuary back in his glory days? Would Apollo have the power now to do it all over again? I couldn’t imagine it. The thing was bigger than a football field—not end-to-end, but circled like a boundary line. It was twice as thick as a person, too thick to wrap arms around and too deadly.
The other officers fell back toward their cruiser, emptying their clips into the creature, who spat their compatriot to the side and went after the next.
We had to do something.
Suddenly, an arrow lodged in the roof of the serpent’s mouth, catching it in mid-strike. It seemed to shriek as it spasmed in pain, looking around for the source of its torment.
I did the same, and found Althea and Junessa poised by our limo, its trunk open, making it clear from whence their weapons had come. They closed on the serpent in unison, as if they’d been hunting together forever, stopping to fire arrows, advancing again as they reached for another.
The other limo was on the move, carrying everyone who’d piled in to safety. But as it made the turn to head back down the road, a door was suddenly flung open and Apollo bailed out, flying past the hands trying to grab him back inside.
I pushed at Nick, desperate to get up and join the fight, but before I could do a thing, the serpent launched itself at the new moving target, its tale lashing into Nick and I, sending us rolling over the ground, skinning arms and legs, tearing up my bridesmaid’s gown something fierce. It blew past the officers still standing, slamming its oversized body right over them to get to Apollo and the girls.
The girls? Women. Huntresses. Right now our best hope.
The belt radios of the downed officers all came to life at once, and I didn’t know the code coming through, but I recognized the address involved. Something was happening back at the hotel.
What in the holy hells was going on?
I rose up and dove after the snake with no real plan but to end things. Thinking only to launch myself on top of it, distract it long enough to keep it from eating Apollo and to allow Althea and Junessa to finish him off. I landed on top of the tail. Beneath me, bands of muscles worked, terrifying in their power, but the snake didn’t so much as swivel at my extra weight. The tail did flick, and I couldn’t find a handhold on the smooth scales. I went flying. My vision went cloudy with a chance of blackout.
Someone called out and suddenly, instead of going dark, the world lit up like from a massive lightning strike, only there was no electricity in the air, and when I blinked the now gold-limned clouds away, I saw that it was as though a beam had shot straight from the sun, a laser-like solar flare targeted on the serpent’s face. The smell of ozone and burning flesh filled the air. The snake made an indescribable noise, thrashing and coiling back on itself like a spring that had bounced back, trying to escape the burning light.
The beam seemed to follow it, and the snake’s tongue darted out, started to smoke, and flicked back. Blindly, it sprang again, striking in Apollo’s direction, but it didn’t come even close.
“Now, aim for the eyes!” Apollo shouted.
Arrows arced through the air, striking the serpent again and again. Left eye, right. Everything about it screamed in pain, its contortions like the desperate throes of a worm that’s been hooked, and I actually felt sorry for the creature. If I was right, it was following Rhea’s compulsion, no less than I had the other night. It was blameless. It didn’t deserve this.
“Stop!” I ordered, before I knew it was coming out of my mouth. “Just stop. He’s retreating.”
And he was—drawing back and back. I’d never seen a snake move that way before. It was spastic
and terrible to see, but the arrows halted and the world went back to its former lighting, which now seemed impossibly dim, maybe because I’d burned out some rods or cones or whatever in my eyes.
Momentarily, silence reigned, as we all watched to be sure the monster didn’t renew the attack, and then one of the downed officers said, “What the hell was that?”
Another rolled over, struggling to his feet. “We called it in. I don’t know why help isn’t here yet.”
“I’m not sure we’re getting our backup,” said the first. “There’s some kind of disturbance back in town.”
“Damn.” The second officer plucked the radio from his belt and started talking into it as he squatted beside his two compatriots—the one the serpent had attacked and the other who hadn’t gotten up after he’d been crushed when the snake went for Apollo. The one who’d been bitten was swollen up around the face, his skin the color of a bruise. It didn’t look like he was breathing. The other groaned when his fellow officer put a hand to his neck to check his pulse.
“Ribs,” the hurt officer gasped, face contorted with pain.
“ETA on the ambulance is less than five,” the other officer assured him, but he exchanged a worried glance with the other cop still standing.
If there were broken ribs, and if one of them had punctured a lung…
“Don’t move,” the officer said, as if the downed officer had seemed at all inclined. Then he looked around at all of us…all of us still there—minus the director, film crew, Andre, Serena and most of the bridesmaids and groomsmen who’d gone in the other limo. “None of you go anywhere. We’re going to need to take statements.”
“But the hotel,” Tina cried. “I heard—”
“We’ve already got officers on the scene,” the first cop said. “Nothing you can do there but get in the way.”
“Hell with that,” I said. “Who’s with me?”
Our limo still waited, and I raced toward it, not bothering to see who might be following. I could guess at some. As for others…well, the cop was right. They’d only be in the way. But stopping them would take time I wasn’t sure we had, and anyway, they had the right to make their own decisions and do what they could. It wasn’t like I could guarantee their safety anywhere; that was clear enough.
I hit the car and yanked open the driver’s side door. Our driver Viggo was still there, but looked to be in some serious shock. “Move over,” I ordered him. He didn’t have to be told twice. I don’t know if he’d heard from across the way and knew we’d been ordered by the police to stick around, but it didn’t seem to matter to him as long as someone else took control. Doors opened all around us as I quickly adjusted the seat and mirrors. Nick, Apollo, Althea and Junessa piled in, Tina and Jason tumbling quickly after.
“What are you waiting for?” Tina asked as she slammed the door behind them. “Go!”
I went, wishing I’d stolen a police car so that I could have peeled out with lights and sirens clearing our way, but whether it was the quakes or whatever that kept people off this part of the road, we had almost a straight shot down the mountain. Well, straight but for the crazy switchbacks. Luckily, adrenaline or ambrosia had my reflexes reacting better than ever and I didn’t have anything left over for panic.
Our driver felt differently, based on the way he kept trying to stomp on an imaginary passenger’s side brake. He crossed himself and started muttering a prayer as I took another corner in a way that a roller coaster car might have envied.
“Tori, what the hell?” Tina asked from the back seat.
“What the hell, what?” I asked back. We weren’t far from the hotel. I’d had plenty of interrogation practice with Armani. I could avoid a direct answer for far longer than our drive.
“The snake,” she said. “And you girls—” She turned on Althea and Junessa “—bows and arrows. How the hell—”
Hell was getting a lot of credit here.
“I thought maybe that was part of the movie,” I said. “I missed the rehearsal, remember.”
She looked confused for a second, as though working through whether I might actually have a valid point.
“No,” she gasped, still shell-shocked. “No way. Phone,” she said, holding a hand out to the car at large, waiting for someone to hand her one. Apollo obliged, and immediately she was dialing. “Uncle Hector?” she asked, voice sharp. Then, even more sharply, “Uncle Hector!”
There were screams coming from the phone, and we all heard him yell, “Stay back,” before the call ended.
Tina looked terrified.
“I’m, uh, I’m sure everything’s fine,” Jason said, convincing no one. “The cops said police are already there.”
She gave him an “are you crazy?” look as we pulled up in front of the hotel…but not into the parking lot. We couldn’t. Something had destroyed it. The center had been blasted out like something had exploded up out of it. Chunks of asphalt lay like volcanic rock in the road, denting car hoods, piercing windshields.
Tina was out of the car before anyone could protest, dodging the worst of the damage in a mad dash toward the reception, toward everyone we loved who wasn’t already with us. Jason took off after her.
I cursed and did the same, vaulting the debris and trying to catch them. There was a sick, sharp feeling in the pit of my stomach about what we’d find inside, but as it turned out, I’d had no idea. None.
I caught up to Tina, who followed the path of destruction toward the banquet hall. As we burst inside, I didn’t know what to process first. Tables were overturned and wedding guests were hiding behind them, using them as oversized shields. That was the upside. The down was that the center of the room was taken up not by one giant snake, but three—two of them in human form. Zeus and Poseidon…both larger than life, grown as much as they could with the high ceilings and facing (and facing and facing…) off with more heads than I could even process at first. Not the hydra. That serpent had only nine heads, one of them immortal. This beast had dozens, maybe a hundred, a seething mass of dragon-like heads on neck stalks bent to fit the room, all deadly as hell and spitting fire. I’d been so distracted by the heads that I only just now noticed the legs—far too many of them. So, not a serpent then. More like a militant millipede.
“Typhoeus,” Apollo said behind me, voice hushed in awe.
“You know him?” I hissed back, not wanting any of those heads to swivel our way.
Flames shot toward Zeus and Poseidon, and suddenly water burst forth from the sprinklers in the ceiling and wedding guests shrieked anew. The central combatants didn’t seem to notice. Except for Poseidon, who was doing something…grabbing the moisture out of the air as quickly as it fell around them and using it to create Super-Soaker blasts back at the spitting heads. Where fire met water, the dragon-thing hissed, and the air grew thick with steam. In seconds no one would be able to see to fight.
“I know of him,” Apollo said. “Gaea sent Typhoeus after Zeus during the rise of the titans. Zeus won.”
“How?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around what I was seeing.
“I don’t know, but he was at full power then.”
The…Tyhoeus gave up on the flames and lashed out with its many heads, coming from every angle. Zeus cried out—or Poseidon, or both—and I could no longer see them, covered as they were in the serpent-head swarm.
A sense of triumph bubbled up from within me that I knew wasn’t mine. Two down, Rhea crowed. More to come.
“Do something,” Tina cried.
She was right. Even knowing exactly what Zeus and Poseidon had come for, I couldn’t let them die like that. I didn’t know that Rhea would stop there anyway. Her anger seemed bigger than that. If they went down, I didn’t know that she’d call off the monster rather than turn it on the rest of the guests.
I whirled on Apollo. “Nothing we need to know here, right? If we cut off a head, it won’t grow back?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Hell’s bells, I was r
isking it all on a guess?
“Get back,” I told the others, knowing they wouldn’t listen. I summoned my inner loudmouth and all the power I could draw. I sensed something deep within…some hole that had been drilled or some dimension that had been tapped when Rhea moved in. I dove into that too, thrusting her aside as I sensed her try to get in my way. She was so stunned, she didn’t react in time, and I dipped a toe into her power stream. The torrent of energy that flooded me was uncontrollable. I let it overwhelm me and screamed at the top of my lungs, stomping and waving my arms to get the attention of its many hideous heads, “Hey, you. Worm. Come and get me!”
Some of the heads turned. Not all, not by a long shot, but I’d take what I could get and hope they’d drag the others down. I swept the faces with my gaze—those I could see through the steam—and screamed, “FREEZE!”
The power blew out of me in a bomb blast, and the heads looking my way froze, dropping like stones. But the other heads, by far the majority, now knew that something was off. Others began to turn toward me. Althea and Junessa, now that I’d entered the fray, took up positions to either side of me and began to fire off arrows. I knew when they hit by the recoil of some of the heads, but there were too many of them, and they were coming on too quickly.
I prepared to freeze more, when inside me Rhea revolted, throwing herself on the power I’d tapped and cutting me off, wresting control back to herself. My body seized up at the struggle like my brain had short-circuited. My eyes rolled up into my head and then…
A Rhea reboot.
My vision righted itself, only I was no longer in control of it. I watched in horror from within and without as I turned and stuck my hand right in the path of the latest of Althea’s arrows. She saw it too late, already releasing the bowstring. The piercing pain hardly registered as the bolt went right through my hand, fletching shredding my flesh on the tail end. With my good hand, I reached for her bow and yanked it away, only Althea hung on with a huntress’s power. While they fought, Junessa turned her bow on me, but hesitated to shoot it.
Rise of the Blood Page 18
