“We fight to the end,” I tell Nessus.
“The bitter end,” the captain agrees. “I shall enjoy watching you suffer!” He backs up, giving himself room to charge.
I hope I'm not making a mistake, but this is better than fighting all ten of them. I dig my heels into the dirt, not just to brace myself, but to feel that elemental connection again:
Use the earth. Be the earth.
Nessus charges, the earth vibrating, telling me where to step, where to be. I'm ready for him, side-stepping the thrust of his barbed spear. I lash out with my sword, hitting the captain in the flank. It's a shallow cut, dripping black blood. If it hurts him, he doesn't react, just continues on his path. Nessus slows as he approaches the half of his squad blocking the way we came.
“First blood,” I taunt, flicking the beads of gore from my blade the same way Ares did.
“Your first,” Nessus says. “And your last!” He charges again, faster than I expect, and this time he's ready for my parry. His spear strikes my chest, only it doesn't sink in. It shatters instead. I look down in wonder, seeing a patch of geode crystal through my ripped tunic. It covers my flesh where my wound should be.
“More tricks!” Nessus howls. “You cheat, but you shall not rob me of my victory.” He grabs a spear from one of his brothers. “I will taste your brains!” The captain thunders toward me.
I ready my defense, only this time, he throws the spear and draws his sword. The blade isn't his; it's one of the golden swords of Ares.
I manage to dodge the spear, but not the sword. It crunches into my left shoulder. When I touch the smoking wound, I see my crystal armor is broken there. I pull my hand away and it's stained with blood and bits of crystal. It hurts, but I can still use my arm. I'm more concerned about how Nessus got the sword―what happened to Ares?
“You're not the only one with tricks,” the captain says as he wheels around to come at me again. “This blade is cyclops-forged steel! It can cut through anything―even you!”
I half-dodge, half-dive away from him. His sword slices air as I hit the dirt and roll to my feet. Breathing hard. Bleeding. I wasn't expecting this. For a second, I thought I was invincible. Now I'm just mad. The anger bubbles up in me like lava. There's no way this brain-eating monster is going to stop me, magic sword or not.
“For glory!” Nessus rears up on his hind legs, sword raised high. “For Cronus!”
“FOR CRONUS!” his brothers yell as one. Their yellow eyes gleam with excitement.
The captain charges. “Now we end this! Now you are mine!”
In a clash of steel, our swords meet; my human-forged blade is no match against his. It breaks in a shower of sparks. Nessus rears, smashing his hooves against my chest. The blows don't get past my crystal armor, but that doesn't mean I don't feel them, and they hurt.
They hurt a lot!
I twist past the hooves to launch myself at his back. All my old pankration skills come surging in as I get the captain into a headlock.
Nessus grunts and rears up, bucking wildly to throw me off. He nearly does, but I wrap my legs around his torso. Holding on. Applying more pressure to his throat. The centaur's foul breath hisses and foam flecks his bestial black lips. His blade jabs at me over his shoulder. I have to duck to avoid it and that's all the edge he needs. With a massive buck, Nessus knocks me to the canyon floor. Then his stolen sword is cleaving down, and there's no time to dodge, no way to defend.
I've lost.
There's a shrill bird call, and for a second, I think the harpy has returned, but it's too close. Too small. In a flash of feathers, Shadow swoops in to savagely claw the captain's snarling face. It's not much, but it's enough for his attack to miss.
A ghostly blur flashes into view, surrounding me in a gray cloud before I can react. I sense more than see motion, and then I'm somewhere down the trail. Past the centaurs. Just outside the cave.
The cloud turns from a girl-shaped outline to a real flesh and blood girl. Hannah. “Hello, Rock Boy.” She pauses to stretch out her arm for Shadow to perch on. She pets the bird, then turns to me. “Sorry to crash the party, and not to put down your macho moves or anything, but you were taking forever. We can't keep Hades waiting.”
I hear the distant cries and clatter of hooves, then look around wildly. “Where's Mark?”
“Right here,” he says, stepping out from behind a boulder. “She rescued me first―not that anyone noticed.”
I hug him. “I'm glad you're all right! I would have gone back for you. You know that, right?”
“I knew,” Hannah says. “That's why I rescued him first. Well, that, and I'm not a total bitch. Didn't I tell you not to bring him?”
“Yeah, I know. It's complicated.”
“It sure is,” she says. “Speaking of complicated, that jackass priest sealed the cave entrance you made. It's our ticket to Tartarus, so if you don't mind…”
“Tartarus,” Mark says. “Of course! We're going to save Hades.” He shakes his head. “Why not?” Then he grows serious, and I can tell he's thinking of his mom and Lucy. Justice and revenge. “Whatever happens, you can count on me. The Titans have to pay for what they've done.”
“First, we rescue Hades,” Hannah says. “Then we'll worry about settling up with Cronus and his kind.” She gives me a weird look when she says it. When I stare back, curious, she shrugs impatiently. “The seal, Andrus! It's warded against Gods and Demigods, not just ghosts and monsters. I can't break it. Only you can.”
I try to summon my energy to break the seal. But no matter how hard I try, nothing happens.
“What are you doing?” Hannah demands. “What's taking so long?”
“I don't know, I―”
Hannah slaps me. Hard across the face.
“Ow! Hey, what was that for?” I ask.
She slaps me again. “You lost your anger! Now focus. Concentrate your rage.”
I scowl. “No need to worry. It's concentrated, all right.”
“Um, guys,” Mark says. “You hear those hooves? The centaurs are coming!”
I turn toward the cave and summon my power. It comes easily this time. The ground ripples. A crack forms at my feet, then zig-zags toward the sealed entrance. The magic symbols in the bricks glow with arcane power, then shatter.
Captain Nessus and his centaurs round the bend. Seeing us, they howl their hate and charge.
“We need to go,” Hannah says. “Now!” We rush into the cave and once we're inside, Hannah commands me to seal the entrance.
I focus, feeling myself become one with the cave. And just as the first of the centaurs enter, I collapse the entrance. Their screams end in thudding stone and crushing doom. My only regret is Captain Nessus wasn't among them. The bastard knew better, and he'll know better next time. I saw it in his hateful yellow eyes.
42
EVERYTHING I NEED
We head deeper into the cave. Mark and I use the flashlights Ares gave me to pick our way through. When we get to the chasm, we stop. It's fifty feet straight down with no rope or climbing gear. “No problem,” Hannah says. “I can float down, and I know what you can do, Andrus. Your friend here can ride on your back.”
“My name's Mark.”
She sighs. “Fine. Mark can ride down on your back. Not a very dignified way to travel, but when you're human, you don't get a lot of options.”
“Wait,” Mark asks her. “You mean you're not human either?”
“Demigod,” Hannah explains. “Daughter of Hades. My name's Hannah Stillwater.” The raven on her shoulder croaks a greeting. “And this little fellow is my familiar, Shadow.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mark says. “I'm confused. How do you know Andrus and Mr. Cross?”
“You mean Ares, son of Zeus. He's my cousin.”
“Yeah, Ares. It's kind of weird to find out my gym teacher is a God.”
“An avatar.”
Mark runs his fingers through his hair. “Right… So can you just answer my questions without co
rrecting me every five seconds?”
Hannah opens her mouth to say something―something I assume will be sarcastic―so I step in and answer for her. “I met Hannah here in the cave while you were knocked out. She saved your life.”
She grins. “See? I'm not so bad after all.”
“Well, it wasn't her so much as the ghost of Herophilos that saved you. He's a surgeon―at least he was before he died.”
Hannah coughs politely.
“But she summoned him,” I add hastily. The raven scolds me, forcing me to say, “Shadow helped.” It caws and bobs its head up and down.
“So Hannah is the 'cloud-girl' we saw the other night. OK, things are beginning to make sense. But why didn't you tell me, Andrus?”
“Because I was freaking out, and I didn't want you freaking out too. You had to stay focused on the rematch. I couldn't burden you with… with all this. I thought about it, of course, but there was never a good time.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And now is?”
There's a far-off rumbling from the front of the cave.
“Now is the only time,” Hannah says. “So are you coming with us, or staying here?”
Mark doesn't even think about it. “Are you serious? Of course I'm coming with you!”
We descend the wall, each of us in our own way. It feels good to sink my fingers into the the rock wall. It feels nourishing. When we get to the bottom, Hannah leads us to the tunnel Mark and I left unexplored the last time we were here. There's still a rancid, monster-y smell coming from it.
“Ugh!” Mark scowls. “What's that stink?”
“Sulfur, methane, some other toxic gasses. Perfectly harmless to Andrus and I, but not so much to you.”
“Hannah, we can't just leave him,” I say.
“We won't.” She reaches into her strange dark cloak and rummages through an inner pocket. She pulls out a wispy ball made of mist and tosses it at Mark. It flows over his head, conforming to the shape of his face but giving him a decidedly skull-like, undead appearance. “It's a ghost-mask,” she explains. “It won't hurt you. It filters the gasses into breathable air. You'll need to keep it on while you're in the Underworld.”
Mark fidgets with it. “How do I get it off?”
“You don't,” Hannah replies. “Not unless you want to choke to death and become a zombie.”
Mark pales beneath the translucent mask and I know he must be seeing his mother hanging from the rafters.
“Probably best not to mention zombies right now. Is there anything else he should know about the ghost-mask?”
Hannah shrugs. “Just that mortals aren't generally welcome in Tartarus. Few who enter ever leave. That mask will let you blend in with the local spirit population.”
“You mean ghosts,” Mark says. “Great. What about you and Andrus?”
“Oh, we'll fit right in. Not just with the ghosts, but with everything else that's down there.”
“Everything else? Like what?”
“Only one way to find out.” Hannah winks and walks into the tunnel. “Come on, Rock Boy. We've got work to do.”
Following her into the tunnel feels weird, and not just because we're marching into Tartarus. My lungs begin to sting, then burn. “H-Hannah!” I choke on her name. “Something's not right!”
She pauses ahead of me. “Sorry, I forgot. It takes a minute to adjust if you've never used your lungs this way before.”
Mark comes up and puts his hand on my shoulder. “You OK?”
I try to answer, but double over in a coughing fit. It feels worse than ever, until suddenly, it doesn't. I stand up, surprised by how fine I am. “I'm all right. You?”
Mark nods. “The mask works. What does it look like?”
“You don't want to know.”
He smiles, making himself look even more ghoulish. “So how do we get to Tartarus, Hannah? We just go down this tunnel?”
“Not that simple. We take the tunnel to the River Styx, then hitch a ride with Charon, the Ferryman of the Dead. From there, well, Tartarus is a big place… but don't worry. I know where to get off and exactly where we need to go.”
I have to wonder what she's not telling us about the trip or the dangers we'll face. “Do you think Ares is all right? He stayed behind to hold the monsters off. The centaur captain took one of his swords.”
Hannah looks alarmed. “Really? That's not good.”
“Yeah, I know! He could be hurt or captured or―”
“That's not what I meant. Ares can take care of himself. But with one of his magic swords, the monsters could be chopping their way through the cave-in.”
I let that sink in. “Even so, they're half-horse. They can't climb the chasm wall.”
“They don't need to,” Hannah says. “That's what the harpies are for.”
“But I got rid of them!”
“You got rid of the first wave, dumb ass! There are always more.”
As if on cue, the familiar shrieking cry of the vulture-women echoes down the tunnel. They're in the cave. “Give us your eyes!” the harpies shriek. “Your eyes! Your eyes!”
I hesitate, shuddering at the memory of the eyeball necklace the one harpy wore and how she wanted to add mine to it. Hannah tries to slap me, but I grab her wrist. “No,” I say. “I'm OK. I think I'm getting the hang of this.” She smiles and steps back.
I touch the wall, channeling my anger into the power of the earth, directing the energy into another cave-in. It's a spectacular collapse that blocks the way back to Othrys. A wave of dust billows from the blast, covering us.
Hannah coughs and brushes her tunic free of the worst of it. “Way to go, Rock Boy. You saved the day again.”
“Yeah,” Mark says. “Say, what are you, Andrus?”
“I'd like to know too. Hannah promised she'd tell me.”
“Did I?” She walks away, forcing us to hurry after her. “You mean you haven't figured it out on your own?”
“I've figured out what I'm not. I'm not a God, Demigod, or monster, and I'm certainly not a ghost. I couldn't have broken through the cave seals if I was any of those things.”
“That's right. So what's left?”
“I don't know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don't! Quit playing games and tell me!”
“Holy shit,” Mark gasps. “I think I can guess: You're a Titan.”
I laugh and feel sick at the same time. “What? But that's crazy! Look, man, I get that you're supposed to be smart and all, but you're way off-base.”
“Why not?” Hannah asks. “It's no crazier than me being a Demigod, and you didn't question that.”
“But we're fighting the Titans. I can't be one of them!”
“Of course you can,” Hannah says, “that's what makes you an ideal ally. Remember how some of the Titans sided with the Gods back in Ancient Greece?”
“You mean like Prometheus? That didn't work out so well for him. After they won the war, Zeus chained him to a rock and had an eagle rip out his guts over and over again!”
Hannah smirks. “They let him go eventually. Anyway, aren't you curious who your parents are?”
“I know who my parents are,” I say stubbornly. “George and Carol Eaves.”
She rolls her eyes. “Not your adopted parents; your biological ones. Especially your father. Who is he?”
I think of the original twelve Titans, and pick the worst possible one just to spite her. “Cronus?”
“Yes, you're the son of Cronus.”
“That can't be. You're lying!” I punch the tunnel wall and don't even feel it. “Cronus is pure evil. Everything that's happened is his fault.”
“And everything that happens next can be yours,” Hannah says. “But nothing is pure evil, Andrus, just like nothing is pure good. You'd do well to remember that.”
All my dreams make sense now… climbing Mount Olympus in anger, in hatred. Somehow, I was reliving Cronus scaling Mount Olympus during the Gods War. I was trying to kill Zeus and the o
ther Gods.
I was trying to kill my own children to hold on to the past, to my own power. Just like I'd killed my father, Ouranos, to seize it. I flash back to a lifetime ago in Mrs. Ploddin's history class. Everything I need to know was in her lecture. Everything I need to know and nothing I want to hear.
Mark lays a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, it's gonna be all right. Titan or not, you're still my friend.”
“Thanks,” I grumble. “Just give me a minute, OK?”
“Sure.” He jogs to catch up to Hannah, then they disappear around a bend in the tunnel. Leaving me alone. Alone with my darkness. Alone with my hate.
I stay there for I don't know how long. Trying to process, to accept what I am. A Titan. But no matter how hard I try to put it together, something's still missing. Something I have to know.
I come out of the tunnel and join Mark and Hannah in a narrow cavern. A river cuts through it. The water is still and black. It reeks of sulfur and death, a stench that gets in my nose and makes me wince.
“Don't mind the smell,” Hannah explains. “This is the Styx, the River of Hate and Promises. I get my last name from it, you know: Stillwater.”
Looking into its shadowy depths, I sense a disturbing movement under the surface… but what's down there, I can't exactly say. All I know is I don't want to find out.
“Don't look too closely,” Hannah warns, “and whatever you do, don't fall in.” She pulls off her cloak and carefully dips it into the black water.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Recharging my cloak's power. It taps into the river's magical properties.”
“And its stink,” I add.
“Not all magic items can be as glamorous as Ares's swords,” Hannah says curtly. “My cloak might not be pretty, but it gets the job done.”
“Just as I suspected,” Mark says. “Did Hades make it?”
“Of course.” Hannah pulls the cloak from the river, mutters a spell, and the fabric is instantly dry again. She whips it around her shoulders and fastens it. “Got any more questions, you two? Charon will be here any minute.”
Mark starts to ask her about being a witch and if she can teach him any magic spells, but I cut him off. “Hang on,” I say. “I've got a question! A big one: If my father is Cronus, then who's my mother? Rhea? She's Cronus's wife.”
Titan: An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology (The Gods War Book 1) Page 20
