“Right. Somehow.”
“Will you shut up? We have to find her first.”
Hermes shrugged. “Maybe if we tell her we can prevent the war. A war between the gods means a dirty, bloody mess, and not just for us.”
“So we should lie.”
He shrugged again. “Maybe not. If we have to go down, I wouldn’t mind if the mortals went down with us. It sort of eases the blow. Is that wrong?” He took another long swallow of beer. “To tell the truth, I sort of thought that it was the humans who were doing this to us, somehow.”
“We still don’t know what is doing this to us. This whole thing feels strange. I’m dying, and I feel like something’s starting. Like something is on its way. But maybe that’s just how it always feels. Not like we would know.”
Hermes took a swallow of Rolling Rock.
“A war against our own. Killing each other to survive. I wonder who we’ll go against?” He started to say more, and then summed it up with a shake of his head. The truth was, the gods had never really cared that much about one another. Bonds were fickle and morality generally nonexistent. They changed sides constantly. “Those bastards.” He looked at her incredulously. “How could any of them think of killing me? Me! All these millennia, all I’ve done is be helpful. Deliver a message here, fetch a hero there.”
“Necessity is a strong motivator.” Athena rubbed her tongue across the bump of feather on the roof of her mouth. The others were dying too, in various ways and shapes. She knew that much. And killing each other wasn’t really such a strange way to survive. Their grandparents, the Titans, had eaten their own children toward the same end.
“Another round?” The bartender stood directly in front of her, an impatient stare on his face like he’d been there for days waiting for her to notice.
“Yeah,” she said, and reached into her wallet for a twenty. He took the money and their empties. They waited to speak again until he’d brought the fresh drinks. He still forgot the waters.
“Are you sure the oracle isn’t in Delphi?” Hermes asked.
“She called it a ‘she.’ Which I guess rules out Tiresias.”
“Not necessarily. There’s no rule that says you have to be reincarnated as the same gender.”
“How would you know? You should hope there is. Or our task becomes harder. So rattle off some female prophets.” She took a long drink and set her mug down hard with a heavy clink. “All I can think of is the Sybil, but she was never one person. She was a line passed down over time.” She took another drink. The temptation to let this business rest rose up, strong and cloying. Her back hurt, and her eyes hurt. There were feathers seeding her internal organs. Beside her, Hermes’ labored breathing hadn’t abated. Maybe it never would. They could just drink here, in this small, comfortable bar, and forget about things. They could stretch out across the land like Demeter and sink into the dirt.
Haven’t I lived long enough? Shouldn’t a goddess have the grace to accept this?
“She also said you screwed the girl over.” Hermes squinted while he thought. “The three of you, she said. That mean anything?”
“I’ve screwed a lot of people over.”
“Yes, you have.”
“So have you,” Athena snapped.
“But we’re talking about you. So think.”
Think. What prophetess did I screw over with the help of two other gods? A prophetess strong enough to help us now, somehow …
“Oh, shit.” Athena turned to him. “It’s Cassandra.”
Hermes’ eyes glowed brilliant blue and stood out like methane torches against his dirt-streaked face. “Of course it’s Cassandra,” he said. “She’s talking about Cassandra. God, we’re idiots.” He clapped a hand to his chest.
Cassandra of Troy. A princess and prophetess during the Trojan War. She’d warned her city that they would fall to Achilles and the Greeks, but no one had listened.
Because she was cursed. Someone cursed her to never be believed.
Not just someone. A god. Their brother, Apollo.
“It’s so simple,” Hermes said. “Cassandra of Troy.”
Athena blinked. Hermes was getting ahead of himself, as usual.
“Don’t get too excited. We might be wrong. And you should hope we are.” She took a drink.
“Why?”
“Because I fought against her, last time. I sided with the Greeks to burn down her city and murder her family. I started the war.”
Hermes waved his hand dismissively.
“Sides change all the time.” He tightened his thinning fist, spread his fingers, and watched them tremble. “But I guess … Even if we find her, she won’t be the same person we knew once. She’s probably happy and not a part of this anymore.”
The sympathy in his voice edged just nearer to sorry for himself. Death was softening him up. Athena didn’t remember him having an excess of compassion for mortals in the past. It was sort of touching. And they didn’t have time for it.
“You’re not even half right. She probably is happy, but she’s also the same prophet we knew once, and that means she always has been, and always will be, a part of this.”
She took a long pull of her beer, but it tasted bad. Cold water was what she’d craved since they’d come in. She looked at the bartender to order, and found him staring straight at her. When she opened her mouth, he opened his in a broad, strange smile. A smile that quickly stretched until it split into bleeding cracks across his cheeks.
Beside her, Hermes took a drink and crinkled his nose. “Yuck. Did someone salt this while I wasn’t looking?”
“Hermes.” Athena put her hand on her brother’s arm and together they looked around the bar. The baseball game was forgotten. Every pair of eyes was on them.
As the seconds ticked by, the flannel shirts and thick, tanned flesh of the bar patrons hung looser. Blue and silver scales began to show through at their temples and cheeks like harlequin-painted sequins. One moment she was looking at a middle-aged man dressed in a John Deere ball cap and tan shirt, and a blink later seeing a clawed, finned thing in a melting human costume.
Athena’s eyes did a full sweep and came back to rest on the bartender.
Who wasn’t the bartender anymore. Only the slightest resemblance to his previous form remained. The bone structure around the eyes and cheeks was still intact, and there was something about the curl of aquatic lip, peeled back against piranha-jagged teeth, that was reminiscent of the way he had smirked when he dropped off their beers. Beyond that, everything had changed. Black, speckled scales peppered his skin. His irises were gone. Slight webbing fluttered between his fingers, and his legs had molded into one long, muscled appendage. He stood balanced on it like a snake’s tail curled beneath him. At the end a broad fin waved lazily.
All of this she saw in an instant, and in her silence, Hermes looked as well. He reacted with more force, spinning off of his stool and sending it swiveling unevenly to the floor with a sharp thud.
“Nereid,” she said lowly. They had of course seen the oceanic creatures before, swirling about their master, Poseidon, the god of the sea.
“Make that plural,” Hermes added. The other bar patrons had almost finished shedding their human makeup: shirts and jeans slid down scaled and rubber-skinned legs. When the Nereids stood, they made a wet squelching sound like they’d been sitting in a mud puddle, and a look at the seat of their chairs revealed a flesh-colored pool of water. Their disguises ran off of them in rivulets.
“Neat trick,” Athena said to the bartender. “Who taught it to you?”
She glanced around. It was hard to believe that these monstrosities had once been jewels of the sea. That they swam in swirling patterns and entranced fishermen from their boats. The silver hair and shining body was gone, evolved into cracked scales and oily eyes. They reeked of salt and old blood.
The bartender didn’t answer her question. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out the Nereids had been planted there. They’d been wa
iting, and they’d listened to everything she and Hermes said. Once the two of them got to the interesting part, it was time to lose the masks and get down to business.
“Six of them, two of us,” Athena said.
“I think Uncle Poseidon’s trying to send us a message.” Hermes kept his eyes on the group of Nereids clustered around the television, still droning out a baseball game in the seventh inning.
Athena flexed her muscles. I’m tired, I’m tired, I just crossed the fucking desert, they protested, but beneath the protest was springy strength.
“I guess it’d be rude if we didn’t reply.”
The attack came all at once. The group darted forward, knocking over whatever tables and chairs got in their way. Their movement reminded her of a pod of fish, fast and synchronized, as if they shared one brain. Athena was up instantly, moving almost as fast as Hermes, who had grabbed the first of the pod by the throat and didn’t waste any time tearing its gills out and throwing them to the floorboards where they bounced like bloody, rubber filters. Athena drew her legs up to perch on the seat of her stool. With a grimace, she flung herself headlong into the bunch, and felt a sharp fin slice through the skin of her underarm. The wound barely registered. Claws gripped her legs, her shoulders, and the strength in them was almost enough to pop her joints. The air filled with the smell of salt and a watery, raspy sound that the Nereids made from their lampreylike mouths.
Athena reached for the nearest body, and her fingers slid against the slick mucous coating the skin. She almost didn’t get a grip, but with a deep breath she twisted her arms and tore the head free. The body fell to the floor and flopped, webbed hooks still grasping. Then she used the head like a bludgeon, swinging it wide and knocking three of the others back. The head flew out of her hand and knocked into the TV. It crashed to the ground and sparked.
“Don’t kill them all,” she hissed, and Hermes shot her a disbelieving look.
“I’m killing until they stop,” he shouted, but he pulled his fingers out of the gills of the creature atop him and punched it in the face instead.
Athena feinted backward as the hooked finger-claws of the last Nereid in front of her passed dangerously close to her face. There had been a time when no god or mortal would have dared try to disfigure her cheeks. The attempt now struck her as incredibly rude. She reached out and smashed Hermes’ bottle of Rolling Rock against the bar, feeling cold beer fizz over her knuckles. The jagged edge went right into the Nereid’s belly, and she sawed her way up to its chest. The thing fell, jerking, at her feet. Her breath came fast and light, angry but not labored, and unfettered by feathers, which was a relief.
With most of its patrons now dead and the TV broken, the interior of the bar was quiet. The sound of Hermes struggling with the last one, on his back against the rough wooden floor, was oddly magnified. So were Athena’s steps as she walked calmly over to him. She scooped a chair up in one hand, the legs scraping along the wood as she used her other hand to flip the Nereid off of Hermes, planting it on its back. She drove the legs of the chair through its shoulders, through the floorboards, all the way into the tightly packed dirt beneath.
Hermes got to his feet and brushed himself off.
“That was fun,” he muttered, staring down at the Nereid as it hissed and thrashed and tried to pry the chair loose. Black blood oozed from the punctures in its shoulders and pooled on the floor. Hermes reached for Athena’s arm. “You’re hurt.”
She jerked away. She was looking down at the carnage, counting bodies. And the count was off.
“Where’s the bartender?” she asked.
“God,” Hermes said.
The door to the bar hung open, literally. It had been opened with enough force to rip the top hinge off, and swayed back and forth at them like a shaming finger. Without sparing each other a glance, they ran to the door and through it, into the black. Cold wind prickled their skin as their eyes searched the dark for movement. The bartender could be miles away. He could be anywhere.
Stupid, stupid. She was becoming careless, sloppy. It was a mistake she never would have made two thousand years ago.
“Wait,” Hermes said. He sniffed the air. Athena sniffed too, once, tentatively. The breeze carried the scent of salt back to them.
“Go,” she said, and he ran, faster than she could, though she ran too. His footfalls grew fainter as he raced ahead of her, god of thieves, faster than a Nereid, faster than an antelope. Soon she could only hear her own breath and the wind in her ears. The scent of salt grew fainter. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she made out the landscape, shadowy buttes and clusters of cacti. Stars sparkled brightly overhead, witness to their embarrassing chase. When she heard a faint whisper, her legs pushed harder. It was the whisper of water. They were too late.
When she caught up to Hermes he had already stopped by the edge of the creek. It was black and tiny, barely more than a four-foot stream, but it moved fast over the sandy bottom and swirled in rippled eddies against rocks. The Nereid had slid into it like a sharpened blade and disappeared. It would find its way to an ocean in less than a day, and then it would spill its secrets to its master.
“Don’t go in,” he hissed when she stepped into the water. He yanked her backward, and her feet splashed angrily, but he was right. They would never catch it now. And who knew what might come after them, who knew what was waiting in some darkened underwater cave.
“Poseidon,” Athena said darkly, and then she screamed his name, her battle cry ringing out into the empty air, vibrating into the sand and water, and she hoped he heard it before his little guppy got home to whisper.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Hermes asked, walking briskly by her side. “Athena! It knows everything. We don’t know anything!”
She didn’t reply, just kept walking, stiff-legged, back to the bar. Hermes’ questions bounced annoyingly around her ears and echoed in her head. Telling him to shut the hell up was tempting. But instead she silenced her own mind. Somehow, she had been elected captain and commander of this damned little enterprise, and as such she didn’t have time to indulge in panicked, useless questions, or snapping at her sibling. Her focus was on one thing: the Nereid trapped back at the bar. She hoped beyond hope that it wasn’t dead. An image popped up behind her eyes: the creature straining, twisting the chair loose and scrambling out into the night. The idea made her break into a sprint.
It was their only link, their only chance to find out what Poseidon knew, to find out why he had obviously allied against them. They needed the Nereid to talk.
When they burst into the busted bar, she thought they were sunk. The Nereid lay motionless, tacked to the floor like some bizarre crucifixion. A blood puddle surrounded it at least three feet wide. But then the mouth moved. It looked like it might be swallowing.
They went to it and knelt. Hermes gripped the chair, but Athena stopped him and shook her head. If they removed the chair, the wounds would only bleed faster.
“Hey,” she said, not terribly gently, but at least in an even tone. When the Nereid didn’t respond, she patted its cheek softly. Then with a little more force.
“Can it even talk?” Hermes asked, grimacing.
“The bartender could talk. And the rest could whoop it up over that damned baseball game,” she replied.
“What if that was part of the enchantment?”
“If it was, then it’s an even better trick than I thought.”
The Nereid was coming to, swiveling its eyes slowly to the left and right. It was disoriented and weak. Whether it would be able to impart anything useful before it cacked off, Athena wasn’t sure. But neither she nor Hermes had any powers of healing, aside from basic first aid, so there was nothing to be done about it now.
“What were you doing here?” Hermes asked loudly and slowly, like he was talking to a simpleton, but Athena gave him a shove. Why waste time on the obvious? The thing was bleeding out all over their feet. In another five minutes, there’d be nothing left t
o do but wrap it in yesterday’s newspaper.
“What does Poseidon want?” Athena asked instead. “How did he know we would come?” Although she figured she knew the answer to the last one already. Demeter was wise, and easy to find. Demeter had also been Athena’s ally before, and not terribly fond of her sea-ruling brother, Poseidon. There were probably similar surprises planted around every god she might have approached: Artemis, Apollo, Hephaestus. Heaviness squeezed her heart. They were so far behind. A war that she had no idea about was already being fought. For all she knew, those who would have been her allies had already been found and killed, or turned to the other side. And now Poseidon would find Cassandra and use her prophecy for himself, or worse.
“Who does your master work for?” She shook the Nereid by the shoulders. Its lips pulled back in a hiss as the rods of wood pressed back and forth inside its wounds, but it didn’t answer. It even appeared to be smiling. “I can make this last forever,” Athena lied.
“Time to talk, Swamp Thing,” Hermes growled. “Or we’ll do things to you that will make those piercings in your torso seem like Shiatsu massage.”
The Nereid looked at him fearlessly, and Athena ground her teeth. It was humiliating to be so weakened. It was humiliating to be chasing Poseidon’s tail. He was an overgrown puffed-up mermaid. He had never bested her in anything. And now her pompous, fish-eyed uncle was six moves ahead. He had to be working for someone else. He’d never been strategic before. He would never have had the foresight to plant spies.
“You think I fear that?”
Athena blinked down at the Nereid. Its voice was a thin, rasping croak. Air squeaked from its mouth as it tried to laugh.
“You can’t stop what’s coming, battle goddess,” it said, and peered at her with black eyes. “You’ll die, and he’ll die, we’ll all die! We’re all dead!” It grinned. Purple-black blood coated its teeth in a thin slime. Then it quieted and grew somber. “But my god will live. He will live a slave, but he will live.”
“A slave?” Hermes snorted. “Who could turn that trident-bearing prick into a slave?”
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