Antigoddess gw-1

by Kendare Blake

  Not anything. She glanced down at the boy, then back to the trees. The shadows had shifted. Something had changed. A tree that was there before wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Not a tree.

  She stood still and stared for so long her eyes started to go dry. Cold wind whipped across them and made them water, but she didn’t blink. She wouldn’t blink and let it fool her in that moment. Eyes wide open, she stared into the dark. Until the darkness lost its patience.

  It moved, picking its way from shadow to shadow. Slowly at first, and then faster.

  Cassandra’s stomach fell through her feet and her mouth tasted bad suddenly, like she’d gargled with cemetery dirt.

  “Get up.”

  The boy didn’t move. Even as whatever waited in the trees came closer, close enough to hear the sounds it made, insect clicking, like jointed legs and jaws. An image flashed in the dark part of her mind: one red, faceted eye above a disturbingly human nose. A human mouth that opened to reveal a second set of mandibles.

  “Get up!” Whatever it was in the woods, it was almost out. And when it came from the trees it would spring. She didn’t want to see its face. She looked down at the sleeping boy. Maybe it was better this way. Better that he sleep through his throat being torn out. If he woke he’d be afraid, and he could never outrun it.

  Cassandra backed up, the wrong way, back into the dying coals. This is not the way out.

  The smell of caves and mold scented the air. She couldn’t remember where she’d come from, or how long she’d been there.

  A face broke through the trees, pale as the moon, with a ruined mouth and one red eye. It saw the boy and scrambled forward, on him before she could stagger back, before she could think of finding a weapon or what she would do if she had one.

  The boy’s eyes flew open. He pushed against the chest of the creature as its fingers sought his eyes and mouth. A flash of silver showed through the blanket, and he dragged a knife across the thing’s eye cluster.

  Dark blood sprayed across his face and arm, and the creature rolled and curled in on itself, hissing and clicking its mandibles. When it came back to all fours, its head twitched and one of its forearms kept flicking at its mangled, dripping eye, or what was left of it.

  The boy drew himself up from underneath his blanket. His eyes never left the creature, and his knife never left his hand. He slipped quietly to the left, and Cassandra moved out of the way.

  You weren’t sleeping. You were never sleeping.

  He smiled. “You know I don’t have all night.”

  Cassandra turned toward the boy in surprise just as the creature sprang, and it knocked her down as it passed. Rolling onto her elbows, she watched the two struggle. The creature’s back pressed down into the smoking embers and it screeched. The boy kept his face away from the clacking jaws, and his arm jerked hard, once, then twice. The creature twitched and gurgled.

  “I suppose it wasn’t exactly fair,” he said as he continued to stab. Dark blood coated him up to the wrist. “Robbing you of your one”—stab—“stupid”—stab—“eye.” The creature lay limp, and the boy pushed it away and sat back on his haunches, breathing heavily. “But fair is overrated.”

  “Who are you?” Cassandra shouted, looking from the boy to the dead monster and back again. He’d killed it. Feigned sleep and killed it, with no fear. His voice was accented, London-street, but not strained. He might’ve sounded more upset if he’d just come out of a scuffle in his local pub. Cassandra pushed off the ground and stood beside him. They watched silently as the body of the creature stiffened. Its pale, blood-streaked face stared up at the sky accusingly, and its arms and legs drew in and curled like an arachnid’s carapace. He’d left the knife in its chest. When he reached forward to pull it out, it made a sick sucking sound that made Cassandra want to retch. She swallowed hard.

  The boy studied the blood on the knife and wiped it on his sleeve.

  No surprise in your eyes. You knew it was hunting you. You knew what it was.

  She studied his profile.

  I know you. I knew you. I liked you, and I hated you.

  “Glory of Athena,” the boy whispered, and made a reverent gesture before bowing his head.

  The next attack came too fast. The second Cyclops leapt onto his shoulder and drove him forward, facedown into the stiffening body of the first. Cassandra screamed as it dug its jaws into his shoulder and neck, tearing skin, but it was his screams that finally drove her away, out of the dream.

  * * *

  Aidan’s footsteps fell heavy on the bridge. Frost crunched beneath his feet as he walked down the center of the road, listening to the whisper of the river water thirty feet below, barely perceptible as it flowed lazily past downed trees and rushed against a steadily spreading sheet of ice. He didn’t bother to listen for cars. It was late and the road was quiet. His ears were on the sky, on the branches creaking above his head. He was listening for feathers. For wing beats.

  An owl’s feathers made no sound. That was how they hunted. They watched silently, heads spinning round, eyes wide as dinner plates. They watched, and they swooped without warning, talons breaking the backs of an unsuspecting rabbit, or mouse, or unlucky house cat. It seemed cowardly. It seemed like a cheat. And he expected better, especially from her.

  He stopped in the middle of the bridge and stared up at the blank spot in the sky that the road left, cutting through the vast forest that surrounded Abbott Park. It was there somewhere, the owl that had flown up against Cassandra’s window. He had to find it.

  That’s a weird coincidence, Cassandra had said. But it wasn’t. No matter how much he wanted it to be. Their time of calm would end. Unless he stopped it.

  The moment Cassandra spoke of feathers breaking through skin, he knew. He knew that somewhere his sister was dying, with feathers cutting through her body. His self-righteous, battle-ready sister. And now she wanted something. Something that had to do with Cassandra.

  “You can’t have her,” he said, and his breath left his throat in a cloud of steam. He had to find the owl. It wouldn’t be hard. It was Athena’s servant, but it was still just an owl. It wouldn’t race to her side to whisper in her ear. It would fly, and hunt, and sleep, and reach her in its own time.

  The wind came up hard and sudden; the sound it made moving across the bridge and over the river was like a scream. The river would be covered over soon, locked down under ice and snow, only breaking through in the spaces where it sped up, past rocks and through spinning eddies. Aidan breathed the cold in deep but couldn’t feel it. Cold had never been able to touch him. Not in all his long, immortal life. He was a golden glow. He was light, and heat. He was Apollo, the sun, and he’d burn down anyone who tried to hurt her.

  Movement high up in the pines caught his attention and he moved, darting off the bridge, running low and quiet. He reached the owl in moments, watching from beneath as it swooped from branch to branch. He watched its brown speckled belly, its flight feathers stretched out on the wind like fingers. It didn’t pay any attention to him, so far below on the ground. Not even when he leapt up to catch it when it dove.

  The sensation of being pulled down out of the air had no time to register in the bird’s brain. Neither did the feeling of its wings being crushed, or its neck being broken. There were no final thoughts. Only vague surprise and no regrets.

  Aidan looked down at the feathery mess in his hands. The owl was dead. Silenced. He stroked the feathers.

  “You didn’t feel it. And it wasn’t your fault.” The bird was so light in his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed it. Maybe they could have caged it and kept it as a pet. Cassandra might have liked that.

  But how many more would she send? He couldn’t cage them all. His hands tightened. Questions filled his ears like they’d been shouted. What did she want? And how many others would she bring with her?

  “I’ve waited too long for Cassandra.” The fear he felt ran down to his fingers; he could feel feathers tre
mbling. “I’ve waited so long, and now I finally have her. And I’ll kill every one of you if you try to ruin it.” He looked down at the poor dead owl. “Even you, Athena.”

  6

  FAR JOURNEYS

  Athena jerked awake, back tensed taut as a bowstring. There had been a dream, a flash of vision, something breaking. Something awful. She couldn’t remember what it was. All that remained was the adrenaline, sparking through her veins and driving sleep far, far away.

  “What is it?”

  She glanced over at Hermes, ever the insomniac, even in his weakened condition.

  “Are you all right?” He came and knelt beside her. His bony hands on her shoulders were warm to the point of being feverish. “Is it the feathers? Can you breathe?”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was clipped and terse. He took his hands off and rolled his eyes; she muttered an apology. She was never a bitch on purpose, but accidents were happening more and more frequently where Hermes was concerned. Taking out her frustrations on him wasn’t fair.

  “I don’t know what it was.” She sighed. Talking was starting to be uncomfortable. The feather in the roof of her mouth pressed down insistently, and the flesh that covered it was tender and inflamed. Soon a bit of it would break through the skin, and she would wriggle it loose and tear it out. They say the mouth is the quickest-healing part of the body. She wondered who “they” were. Mouth wounds seemed to take forever to go away. And a torn strip the length of an owl’s wing feather would be one hell of a canker sore, if it turned to that.

  “Maybe just a bad dream,” Hermes said softly.

  “We don’t have ‘just dreams,’” she replied. “At least, I don’t.”

  “I don’t either. It was just something to say. Anyway, if you don’t remember it, then it isn’t much use.” He gave her a piercing look, making sure nothing was flooding back. “Might as well call it ‘just a dream.’”

  “I guess.”

  Hermes stood up and stretched his thinning back. He was starting to look like a PSA against anorexia. She held in the soft snort of bitter laughter that accompanied the thought. It wasn’t funny. Nothing was all that funny anymore.

  They had traveled hard over the last two days and made it out of the bleak extremes of the desert. Their camp was set on a quiet curve of the Green River in eastern Utah. A soft patch of grass made for a decent bed, and the water was drinkable enough. A scraggly coniferous tree provided shelter. They were living like vagabonds or fugitives, with as little human interaction as possible. Such a lifestyle had always suited Athena, but Hermes was a house cat, and she could tell sleeping on the ground was getting on his nerves. He didn’t hide it well. He constantly tossed and hmphed and stretched his back.

  “Are you hungry?” Athena asked.

  “Usually,” he replied sulkily, and she tossed him a can of peaches from her pack. He cracked the tin cover off and ate them with his fingers. Dawn was about to break over the river, beautiful and pastel. At least she’d managed to sleep through the night. It hadn’t been an easy task since the encounter with the Nereid.

  Her mind constantly returned to the vision that the poor creature had shown her. She saw it again and again, the blood-cloud whipped up in the saltwater, heard the gurgling and panicked currents of fins in death throes.

  And the glimpse of him. Of Poseidon. Twisted beyond imagining. She could’ve sworn she’d seen a piece of coral cutting through his shoulder, like it was growing into his skin. Or out of it. Perhaps their deaths were eerily similar.

  Regret, stronger than she’d imagined, clenched down on her stomach. They’d never been close, but seeing him that way still felt wrong.

  Would he feel the same way? Seeing me pull feathers from my throat?

  Probably not. He was weaker than she was and always resented that. He resented that Zeus had made her so strong. He resented that Zeus had that much strength to give her.

  But it still felt unfair.

  He should be on the sand somewhere, tanned and golden. He should be in the ocean, on a fucking surfboard with a nymph on each arm.

  That was what might have been, if fate were kinder. Instead he was a monster, on the opposite side of a war.

  Trying to humble me, as usual. She allowed herself a rueful smile. It lasted only a second before dropping off her face. Poseidon was ahead of them, after all, and setting traps too clever to come from his mind alone. He had help, and she suspected she knew who it was. Who they were.

  “When can we go to a city?” Hermes thumped the dirt with his fist. She supposed it did make for a shitty mattress.

  Athena laughed. “I knew it. Missing your pillow top and manicured nails?”

  Hermes threw a peach at her; she dipped low, birdlike, and caught it in her mouth. He curled his lip. “Excuse me if I’d like to have some comfort during my final days.”

  “These aren’t your final days,” she said, but he seemed not to hear. He was looking off to the west with his back to the breaking dawn, his fingers suspended over the jar of peaches.

  “Maybe we should just live it out,” he said quietly. “Just enjoy what time we have left. Haven’t we had enough?” She turned away from his glance and watched the water of the river pass. It moved without pausing, without taking notice. It was indifferent to them. That was how she had been for a long time. The world forgot her, and she forgot it, passing through cities and existing on the fringe, an observer rather than a participant. But now it was different. She couldn’t explain it to Hermes, who had lived among the humans and, she suspected, lived right up to the hilt, but dying to her felt strangely similar to waking up.

  “No.” He sighed and ate another slice of peach. “Not for you. I can see that. I can see it turning in your brain. You’ve got your old cape of Justice on again. You’re getting it in your head that you could be a hero. Athena and Hermes, last of the sane gods, saving the humans and righting the wrongs.” In the soft-hued light of morning, with the sun coming up over his back, she couldn’t tell how serious he was.

  “Don’t sound so high and mighty. You’ve played the hero before.”

  Hermes snorted. “Rarely. And never front and center. Face it, sis, I was always the Green Lantern to your Iron Man.”

  “Don’t be such a nerd. Besides, you’re mixing Marvel and DC.”

  “Who’s the nerd?” Hermes arched his brow. Then he softened. “My point is, there is no point. We’re dying, so we panic and band together. So what? What the hell are we trying to save, anyway? We have no purpose. We’re obsolete gods in a destructive world. The earth wouldn’t shed a tear, not even for withered old Demeter.”

  “There was a time when we mattered,” said Athena, but Hermes shook his head.

  “No. There was a time when we lived. Rather than just existed. But that hasn’t been for centuries. I walked with mortals, played with them, ate with them. I’ve used up more of them than I can count or remember. But I stopped living. Look at us, Athena. No family, no friends—”

  “You’re my family. You’re my friend.”

  He squinted at her and smiled sarcastically. “You need a helping hand and I’m afraid of dying. You can’t fight alone and I don’t want to be alone. We call each other ‘sister’ and ‘brother,’ but I don’t know if it means anything. Maybe it never did. Gods are cold. War, killing, and stabbing each other in the back is really what we do best.”

  What he said was true enough. What they were probably wasn’t worth saving. But it didn’t mean she would let herself go. She sat peacefully a few moments, watching the water pass, swirling and dark in the early dawn. Then she sighed.

  “I want you to stop it.” They locked eyes. “It’s the talk of the dying, and I won’t hear it. I know you, Hermes, whatever you might say. You’ll sing a different tune when this is over, if we come out on top. You’ll fly again, you’ll laugh again.” She tore her eyes away and looked back toward the river. “You’ll call me ‘sister’ and mean it.”

  “Athena,” he said, but she stoo
d up and started to gather her things, rolling her thin blanket into her pack and walking toward the water to fill her leather cask.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Let’s just get moving.”

  “Moving where? Why do we even need to find this girl? Prophets. What good is foresight? We know we’re dying. We know that Uncle Poseidon will try to kill us so he can live.”

  Athena crouched by the river, filling the water cask and letting the cold river slide over her fingers, over her wrists with their bracelets of tattoos. The reflection that looked back at her was a girl’s face.

  Not a warrior’s face. Not a general’s face. But it will be again. Soon.

  “Demeter said she’s more than a prophet.” She stood and shook her hands dry. “And Poseidon wants her; that has to mean something. That trap of Nereids—”

  “Might’ve been just laid for us. Maybe he doesn’t want her at all.”

  “But he’ll kill her to thwart our plans. It’s the only lead we’ve got,” she said. “At the very least, we’ll be headed in the same direction Poseidon is going.”

  “We might want to run the other way.”

  “So they can kill the girl, take all our advantages, and hunt us down later?” Athena shook her head. How could he talk of running, of retreating? The fight had barely begun. “Besides, do you really want to let our uncle tear some poor reincarnated prophetess to bits? You’re not that cold, and I’ve got my cape of Justice on, like you said. So let’s go save her.”

  Hermes shoved onto his feet and stuffed his unrolled blanket into his own pack.

  “How are we supposed to find her?”

  “We go to those in the know,” Athena replied. “Those who can track her. Circe’s witches. Chicago.”

  “That’s halfway across the country.” Hermes groaned and stared east, like he was trying to catch a view of the Sears Tower. “Do you remember when the world was smaller? When we could get anywhere at the snap of our fingers? God, I miss Olympus.”