by Meg Xuemei X
Both sides threw offensive powers and magic at each other. The sharp sound of crossing blades ricocheted off the bridge and vibrated in the air.
While we were in the heat of the battle, the sky tore open.
The barrier between the two worlds lifted, and the Olympian armies, mixed with the human and mage armies that had betrayed their own kind, poured through the portal into Central Park and every street in New York City.
CHAPTER 19
As Earth Goddess, I sensed all activities in my own realm. I could see things now even without my eyes.
I saw the gods’ armies battling the immortals in Central Park, the earthlings’ magic matching godly power, steel crashing against steel.
Human soldiers from our side fought the humans who served the Olympians. Mortals faced each other with bombs and guns, bullets flying everywhere in the streets, ripping holes as they hit anything. Mages fought with magic and spells, since bullets didn’t really work on magic users.
Buildings toppled from the bombs. Fire, smoke, and dust clouds rose into the air.
Screams of pain, battle cries, frantic shouts for help, and profane curses rose in a cacophony from the city that once rang with state-of-the-art opera and musicals.
Drumbeats rose to a frantic pace as the battle raged on all fronts, in every corner, every park, every street, every commercial district, and even in schools.
I could no longer shield everyone. I drew back my powers to focus on defeating the major gods.
Blood heated in my veins and pumped in my ears as the battle called me. I pushed down grief as I saw a battalion of good soldiers fall and sensed lives leaving the boundaries of Earth. I’d lost friends and warriors I cherished, but I couldn’t grieve for any of them right now.
I must find a way to end this costly, brutal war before more of my people perished.
Gaea shimmered into view, in a solid form this time. A gown of ivory velvet flowed around her, hugging her voluptuous shape and impossibly slim waist. She held a torch of Earth’s blue fire that illuminated her creamy face and raven-black hair. She radiated serenity and timeless beauty.
Yet I saw red.
The primal Earth Goddess had turned my mother into a zombie-like creature. She’d wished to break me, too, and she may have succeeded if I hadn’t had my four mates, who guarded, protected, and loved me with every breath they took.
She played an elaborate, duplicitous game and endeavored to sacrifice her own bloodline. For what? She could have just asked us to fight the Olympians if she was too much of a coward to fight her own battle, and we’d have gotten our hands dirty and bloody to defend Earth.
I was burning to destroy her right here, right now, along with the Olympian gods, but I shouldn’t focus on her in the heat of the battle against the aliens.
At least for now, she was on my side.
With her appearance, I knew instinctively it was my cue that an opportunity to take down the gods was coming. The opening was close, and I needed to pay attention.
“Grandmother,” I asked with a saccharine smile. “Come to help me fight? I do need a hand. Could you shield our people in the city?”
Her intense gaze fell on the duel between Alaric and Ares.
My demigod mate had locked Ares’s spear, and Apollo wasn’t watching the war god’s back.
“Now, Cass,” Gaea said.
The blade vibrated in my hand, eager and glowing red. Let’s kill some evils, Cass.
I moved like a flash, and a shocked expression twisted Ares’s hard face. He hadn’t expected I could move this fast and match his top speed.
I’d upgraded my power level because of my mother’s sacrifice. She’d made me stronger and faster in every aspect. She’d ensured I could take on any god.
In an instant, I reached Ares’s back. I flew at him, stabbing the Blade of Five Elements deep into his heart through the backdoor.
The God of War stumbled and dropped to his knees.
“Now you die,” I told him with certainty.
The battle on the bridge froze as everyone ceased to fight for a second, as if by silent agreement, and watched the demise of the God of War.
Even the gods held their eons-long belief that none of the major gods could be killed.
But there was always a first. I didn’t mind breaking their record and shattering the myth.
Time stood still as we waited for the mighty God of War to crumble to dust. But he did none of that. The blood merely drained from his face as he winced in obvious pain.
Then he laughed.
“Fuck! It didn’t work!” Alaric shouted.
“Maybe we should twist the blade,” Reys said, striding toward us and leaving his twin to watch the sea god in case the fight resumed, while Demeter was right there with Pyrder.
“Just die, Ares,” Artemis shouted and lunged, cutting between Ares and me.
She grabbed the gold hilt of the Blade of Five Elements. The virgin goddess intended to twist the blade. I wondered what feud lay between them that she wanted to be the last face he saw before his final death. Maybe Ares had attempted to violate her or some maidens under her protection?
I’d let her have the sweet revenge she craved, for she was my friend. She’d stood by me to go against her own kind.
Artemis pulled the blade out of Ares and turned, faster than anything, faster than my eyes could track, faster than my hands could rise to fend it off, and thrust it up toward my chest.
The Blade of Five Elements pierced my flesh between my ribs and came to rest in the center of my heart.
Oops, the blade whispered in my mind. I thought we were going to kill the evil gods. It sighed. I was misled.
A shocked silence rippled across the bridge and the battlefield of Earth, only to be pierced by my mates’ devastated, enraged, and agonized roars.
They lunged toward me, their flaming swords slashing and cutting anyone between us.
Artemis had dashed away as soon as she’d plunged the blade into me, dragging Ares behind her with unbelievable strength.
We had been a split second too late to prevent the assassination.
I was stunned by the betrayal of friendship.
Alaric had warned me, “They’re the god race. They don’t think like us. They never will. No matter how hard some gods and goddesses try to be your friends, we can’t trust any of them.”
And I had wanted to believe there were good guys in every race and species.
“I’m sorry, Cass,” the bitch virgin goddess said from the distance. “I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone, but Apollo is my twin and Ares is my brother. And I can’t let you take down our kind. The Olympians shall stand forever.”
She’d played me right from the beginning.
They’d all played me, yet I’d thought I’d gotten through to them.
What a tenfold fool I was.
I had failed. I hadn’t just wasted my own life. I’d doomed us all.
“Now we’ve eradicated the worst threat to the gods,” Athena breathed in satisfaction.
“The Blade of Five Elements was never meant to kill an Olympian god, idiot girl,” Apollo called from the sidelines with a sigh of regret. “It was meant for you. It’s always been meant for you. I tried to spare you this horrific fate, yet you had to charge blindly down this path of no return.”
Burning, tearing pain blossomed in my chest. I screamed as agony shattered my soul.
CHAPTER 20
Reys caught me before I sank to my knees. My fae prince cradled me in his trembling arms.
His hot tears dropped onto my cold face, and he kissed me in an attempt to place my focus on him instead of the knife in my heart.
“Cass baby, love,” he said. “Hang in there. Please hang in there. We’ll get you help.”
But we all knew this was it. There was no help. There wouldn’t be help. Not for this. My enemies had planned well.
This was the end.
This was the final farewell.
As my
life essence gradually seeped away from me, Reys’s faded, too. He had no will to continue to breathe after I was gone. He was utterly heartbroken. He didn’t even have the heart or mind to avenge me. He’d leave that to my other mates.
When I left this realm, he’d just follow. He’d accompany me in death, follow anywhere I went, so I’d never be alone.
But I didn’t know if that was possible and if my mates would be with me in the afterlife. I might end up all alone in my spirit form.
I wasn’t like anyone else.
I wasn’t a human, an immortal, or a demigod.
Most likely, where I went, no one could follow. I probably wouldn’t be in the Underworld, either.
I suspected that I wouldn’t have anything left after I exhaled my last breath.
So I held on to life as long as I could, even though my every cell hurt so goddamn much. I held on to the light from our mating bond, knowing I would eventually sink into damp, cold, and empty darkness.
Pluto, Celeb, Jonah, Hector, the fae king, the shifter alphas, and our elite warriors formed the second defensive line between the gods and my mates and me, grief and dismay etched in everyone’s faces. They didn’t cede an inch to the Olympian gods.
Demeter and her team of minor goddesses formed the first defensive line. They were the Olympians who still stood with us, yet none of our people wanted them to get close to me.
“Artemis, how could you?” Demeter scolded, her voice colder than steel and ice.
Artemis didn’t answer.
“You and your man whores killed my youngest son, little bitch,” Ares said. “You made my son Phobos wake screaming from his nightmares every night. Now I’ll hear your scream.”
I bit back my screams as excruciating pain, the final tearing agony before my death, shredded my every fiber.
My mates’ knuckles were bone-white and nearly bleeding on the hilts of their swords, yet they wouldn’t deal with the gods now while our team held the line to give us this final moment.
None of them could say goodbye.
They didn’t call Gaea, the primal Earth Goddess, since now we all knew that two-faced bitch had been the biggest betrayer of all. She initiated all of this, pushed us to get the only blade that could truly kill me, deceived us with the prophecy, then sold the dirty secret to the gods and used the hand of the virgin goddess to kill me.
I’d thought she desperately wanted me to kill the gods.
I’d never thought she considered me as her competition.
Then why had she bred my mother and me in the first place?
“Hang in there, dulcis.” Lorcan’s voice pulled me back to him, to all of them. “We’ll find a way to heal you. We’ll get you well.”
“Cass baby, love … don’t leave us.”
They begged and pleaded and sobbed, asking me to hold on to them, and I tried with every ounce of my remaining strength to do just that.
My mates poured their energy into me, but I couldn’t take any from them. The Blade of Five Elements was like a new magical cage to me.
Lorcan sliced his wrist and fed me his pure, potent vampire blood, but my system wouldn’t take it, either. The blood choked me, and Pyrder had to carefully drain it from my mouth.
“Tell us how to help you, my love,” Alaric said in a broken voice. The hardest male on Earth was now falling to pieces in front of me. “How can I give my life to you to save you? Let me die in your stead. I can’t bear to see you hurt, baby. My love, sweetheart, just tell me. Tell us.” He buried his wet face in the hollow between my shoulder and neck.
Our mating bond still held, though it started to stretch thin as I faded. Their panic, pain, grief, and rage seared my soul. But at least they knew I was still with them. That I still fought to stay in this realm with them.
I knew that when our mating bond finally broke, they’d turn to the gods and the Earth Goddess to rain down their wrath and revenge, and then they would follow me to wherever I went, or to nothingness.
I had to tell them to find a way to keep going, even though I knew they wouldn’t listen. When my Reys had been taken to Hell, it’d nearly broken me. It was worse now for my mates.
None of them would stay on this plane without me.
I wanted to touch their faces, but I had no strength to lift a hand. As if knowing what I wanted, Pyrder held my hand with his shaking one and placed it against his tear-streaked face.
I let out a ragged breath and muffled my next scream. I wouldn’t give my enemy any more satisfaction.
My leather top felt sticky and cold despite the blood still seeping from my wound. We all knew that if we retrieved the blade from my chest, the blood would spurt out and I’d die quicker, but the pain would leave me.
Ares was still laughing at us and our misery. Poseidon joined his giddy, cruel mocking. Our fuming warriors snarled at them, ready to charge again, but they were guarding us and buying me these last moments with my mates.
“Ares, stop,” Artemis hissed. The back-stabbing bitch had steel in her voice, yet her sorrow didn’t move me. “I did it for you, for our race. There’s no joy in my heart from killing my new friend. So, just stop!”
Her pathetic words were drowned out by Hades’s roar. He’d jumped onto the bridge as well.
“Gaea, show yourself and explain this to me! How could it happen like this?!” he yelled in black rage. The primal Earth Goddess had vanished after she’d led me into the trap. “How dare you betray me?”
It was all about him. He hadn’t given any thought as to how I felt about my own grandmother’s treachery.
“I planned this for an eon.” Hades continued his tireless bitching. “Cassandra was supposed to be my ace. How could she also fall? You double-crossed me with my brother Zeus. You conniving, traitorous old bitch, come face me!”
He’d thought this final scheme of his would get him what he’d always craved, wipe away his shame and failures, and right the wrongs and injustices that had been done to him.
Now his ultimate weapon had dulled, and his last hope of killing Zeus had just gone down the drain.
Ares clicked his tongue. “Hades, Hades. You shouldn’t have gone looking outside your own clique. Now look where it’s gotten you. I offered your daughter a chance to be my queen, yet she stuck up for her earthling man whores and nearly destroyed my house. Your old acquaintance, the primal Earth Goddess, has been working with us all along. How did it feel to be duped? We knew about the Blade of Five Elements beforehand, and poor little Cass and her whores eagerly dove headfirst into making the only weapon that could bring down her obnoxious ass.”
“What about the prophecy?” Hades demanded.
“I’m the God of Prophecy, not Gaea.” Apollo stepped forward. “There’re two sides to the prophecy—one false and one true. Gaea gave the false one to her granddaughter and the real one to my twin. Artemis was entrusted with the final task of cutting down Cassandra Saélihn after she escaped. We tried to convert little Cass to our side, but when she refused, we decided that we had to kill her. Artemis played the role well and gained Cass’s friendship, so she could finally slay the tribrid goddess.”
Artemis winced but didn’t contest her brother’s words.
Hades hissed. “What’s in it for Gaea?”
“Gaea considered Earth hers,” Ares said. “She didn’t expect her granddaughter to become so powerful. If the little brat had gotten her way and done us in, who could ever counter her power? She’d be the only powerful force on Earth. The earthlings have sided with her, calling her their only goddess, and Gaea isn’t one who loves to share fame and power. She definitely wasn’t thrilled to be replaced.”
“So the bitch switched sides and sabotaged my perfect plan for her selfish gain! Unbelievable!” Hades said. “And all this is Zeus’s fault!” In his rage and humiliation, he threw his head back and roared like a madman. “Zeus, come and fight me! Stop hiding, you coward!”
And Zeus, wearing his most magnificent crown of godly white-gold and precious g
ems that sparkled like stars, strode along the bridge. All the gods bowed to the waist before him; even Ares and his cronies lowered their heads. Hera, his queen, wearing a red-and-silver gown and a matching crown on her golden head, glided beside him.
My mate Alaric saw red, but he restrained himself for my sake. He would give up killing her to be with me.
“Hades,” Zeus chided, his eyes flashing with silver lightning, “when will you ever get rid of your penchant for drama?”
“We returned to Earth for nothing!” Hades shouted. “All this mess is because of you. You should abdicate!”
“You made all this mess with the others,” Zeus said. “You all called for a change and wanted to try it your way. You demanded to use Earth as the testing field, and you made me vow not to interfere. Even as King of Gods, I’m not above our laws and oaths. I can’t and won’t fix whatever pandemonium you have brought. I’ll follow the terms to the bitter end until we leave this planet. Pitifully, you wasted the most valuable new blood in our race. Cassandra Saélihn had such potential. She could have contributed so much and made our kind better and stronger.”
For the gods, it was all games and nothing else.
Our lives, the earthlings’ lives, were like dust in their eyes.
Zeus swept a glance at his son and me, his eyes darkening with sorrow and regret. His queen, however, smiled and reveled at Alaric’s grief. I wanted to maul her face, split her blood-red lips, and drain her before I sliced her throat to avenge my mate’s mother and appease his rage.
I could do nothing but watch their theatrics as they all thought that the game had come to an end since I was done, defeated, impaled, limp, bleeding, and broken in my mates’ arms.
“Look!” Athena shouted at Earth’s citizens below the bridge. “Your goddess is dead!”
I’d become an icon and symbol of freedom and strength to the earthlings. Yet I fell in front of them today, stabbed by the Olympian virgin goddess.
Soon, my mates would follow me.
Who was going to protect our citizens, the women, the children, and all the innocent?
Who was going to defend Earth?
