"I can't," he said through sobs. "I can't. You can't expect ... I can't. I just can't."
I looked at the clock. We were almost out of time.
"If there were any other way, I wouldn't," I swore to him fiercely. "But there isn't. I don't like asking this. I hate it. I'm used to being able to do everything myself. But now I can't. I need someone's help. Your help. You're the only one who can help me. I wish things were different. But they're not. They're just not."
I took a breath. I fought back my own tears. "This isn't for him. This is for all of us. For everyone you love. For everyone in the world."
Jason shook his head. He just kept shaking his head. I didn't know what else to do. But it couldn't end like this.
"Jason, don't help Darren," I finished. "Help me. Help us all."
Jason let out a single, heart-rending cry, sinking down to the ground on his hands and knees. Rage. Frustration. Grief. It was so raw, so heart-breaking, I took a step back. I couldn't imagine someone so small making a sound like that.
Then Jason went quiet. He bowed his head. He'd resigned himself to his cruel fate. I knew I'd won. I'd never felt so sickened by winning before.
"It's not for him," he said.
"It's not for him," I agreed.
"It's not," he repeated.
I nodded.
"We have ten minutes," I told him. "It's now or never."
Jason nodded. "Let's just get this over with."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ten minutes.
So little time.
As I opened the door to the backroom where Maria had disappeared, I heard a man's voice.
"Come in, Hera, come in. Time be wastin'."
Jason and I stepped inside.
The room was a big storage closet of some kind. Cluttered shelves lined the walls, overflowing with boxes and bottles, but the middle of the room had been cleared. On the ground burned seven white candles in a semi-circle. In the centre of the semi-circle were two more candles, one white and one black, but these candles were shaped like people. Between the two human-shaped candles was a wooden dish full of smoldering herbs. The thick, aromatic smoke blanketed everything in a dizzying haze, making it hard to see.
I finally spotted Maria through the smoke. Only it wasn't Maria. Not exactly. It was her body, dressed all in white. But the way she sat, the way she looked at me, the smile on her lips, none of that was her. Not the thin black cigarillo she was smoking. Not the open bottle of dark rum that burned my nostrils with its sweet, pungent smell. Nothing.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
Maria laughed. Well, someone laughed through her. "Hera, Hera, ya no heard of me? I heard of ya. My name be Erinle."
He patted the ground next to him. "Now sit yaself down, Hera. Maria tell me we got business, ya and me."
Jason and I both sat on the floor near Erinle.
"Did Maria tell you what I need you to do?" I pressed. "There isn't much time."
"No ya worry yaself, Hera," Erinle chuckled. "We got plenty of time.
He pointed to a clock above the door. It was still the same time as when we'd entered the room. Not a single second had passed.
"My watch has stopped," Jason confirmed.
Whatever Erinle was, he had a lot of power. Controlling time was dangerous. Very dangerous. It had to be done exactly right, or it would transgress the Necessity.
"Now to business," Erinle said.
"Maria already told me what needs to be done," I replied.
"Maria tell ya what the ritual requires," Erinle explained. "But not the price."
"The price," I echoed, my eyes narrowing. "You want to be paid for doing the ritual."
"Balance gotta be kept," Erinle said. "You gotta give to get. This always been the way."
"Well, what do you want?" I demanded.
I didn't like being extorted. I was used to being obeyed, usually without question.
"Ya know as well as me," he responded coyly, "the thing no matter. It's all about the heart."
"Give him something," I ordered Jason. "Anything valuable to you should do it."
"I don't really have anything," Jason replied. "Just my wallet."
"Would you take money?" I asked.
Erinle shrugged. "Money be precious, Hera. Mortals sweat for it. They bleed for it. Money itself? Just metal and paper. Nothing at all. But the sweat and blood? That be precious."
Erinle looked at Jason, and he emptied his wallet into Erinle's outstretched palm.
When he had the last bill, Erinle tossed them all onto the bowl of smoking herbs. The money burst into flame, glowing a dark purple. Erinle poured some dark rum over the burning mound. Then he breathed in the smoke and smiled. He reached for the stereo behind him, half-hidden under a mound of dishtowels.
Drumming filled the air. My breath caught in my throat. It was just drumming. And yet it was so much more than that.
It was power.
The rhythm moved through me. Pounding. Energizing. Commanding. I couldn't stop my head from nodding with the music. I couldn't resist that beat. No one could. It was the throbbing, pulsing beat of life itself.
Erinle smiled. "We not so different, ya and me. There be many powers, Hera. None better. None worse. All just there."
Erinle didn't wait for me to respond. He took a jar full of white powder and unscrewed the lid, pouring it on the ground around us in a pattern of circles and spirals. As my eyes followed the shapes, I could feel my mind being drawn into them, surrendering to their cosmic design.
Singing filled the air, and the pull of the music grew stronger. It was almost unbearable. It called to the deepest part of me.
"Let it take ya," Erinle whispered.
The choice wasn't mine. The music broke through all resistance and took me over. I was swept away.
"We gonna give this boy years, ya and I," Erinle whispered. The music filled the room, but his strange voice cut through it with impossible clarity as if he were speaking from the eye of a great, incomprehensible storm.
"Now, Jason," Erinle continued, "ya made ya choice. So light the black candle and whisper the number of years ya going to give up. Then, Hera, light the white candle. Ya going to take the years and give 'em to Darren."
"But I won't get there in time," I pointed out.
Erinle smiled. "We'll see."
Jason knelt by the black candle. His face was pained. His eyes shone with tears. But he forced them back.
Erinle was watching him just as closely as I was. Jason took a deep, shuddering breath, and then he nodded. Erinle handed him a matchbox.
In the background, the music was fevered now. I could imagine what that frenzy must look like in person: worshippers singing wildly, dancers flinging themselves in time with the rhythm. A wild ecstasy. A hurricane of power.
And then I saw it. Movement. Out of the corner of my eye. Shadows of people who weren't there. Whirling. Vaulting. Bursting with primal energy.
Jason struck a match and lit the black candle.
The singers were screaming now. I couldn't hear Jason over the crashing waves of their primordial shouts.
Jason whispered.
I quaked with the force of it all. It filled my senses. I couldn't hear. I could barely see. The world was a spinning blur.
It was my turn now. I felt someone press the matchbox into my hands. I struck a match. I lit the white candle.
I didn't even think about what I was doing. It just happened. I couldn't ignore the command of the music, the call of the dance, the tide of power.
It should've been terrifying to lose control. I was a queen. The Queen of Gods. I was power. I was control. But instead I felt a strange bliss. There was no room for worry, or doubt, or failure, or responsibility. The music, the movement, took up all the space. I was free.
Something pressed into my hand.
"Go to the boy," Erinle urged. "Save your Hero. Save us all."
A strange rushing sensation surrounded me. I felt like I was flying and fallin
g at the same time. Up, down, left, right, inside, outside: nothing made sense anymore. It all melted together.
And then I was there. Beside Darren.
His eyes opened and he looked right at me.
"How..." he asked. But his lips didn't move. It wasn't his voice I was hearing.
I felt the weight of something in my hands. I looked down. It was some kind of bundle of raw leather, tied with black string. It was getting heavier with every moment. And warmer. Hot. Painful. Soon, it'd be too hot and too heavy to hold at all.
I slipped the bundle under Darren's pillow and waited.
Nothing happened.
Darren must have read my expression, because his head sunk back against the pillow and his eyes closed in defeat.
It was so soft I could barely hear it at first, but soon it filled the entire hospital room. Music. The same music from Erinle's room. It shook the walls. Fierce chanting. Furious singing. Begging. Cajoling. Commanding.
It was coming from me. I was singing.
The bed began to vibrate. Darren's eyes flew open. He looked at me, eyes wide with panic. But I kept singing. The bed shook even harder.
Nurses ran in. They grabbed the bed. They shouted at each other. They stared at the machines. Stared everywhere but at me. Because to them, I wasn't there.
I kept singing.
The bed stopped shaking. Tendrils of light rose out from under the pillow. One. Two. Twenty. More. The shining years snaked into the air and then froze, waiting. The nurses didn't see them, but I did.
I sang to the light, and it danced. One by one, the ribbons of light plunged into Darren's mouth.
His body spasmed with each one. The nurses grabbed him, but they couldn't stop him from convulsing. Finally, as he swallowed the last of the light, Darren lay perfectly, eerily still. One of the monitors started to wail.
And then Darren sat bolt upright in bed, coughing.
The nurses grabbed him and tried to force him back down. He fought them off. They ran from machine to machine, checking and re-checking the readings.
"You better get back."
I turned. Ana was standing in the doorway. Her lips didn't move. "They're going to want to know how this happened, how a dying man is suddenly in perfect health. I don't think you have time for them to keep him here for that. I'll take him downstairs as soon as I can. Meet us in the back parking lot. Hurry."
I nodded.
The next moment, I was flying and falling back through the air, splitting into a thousand pieces, each going a thousand miles an hour in a thousand different directions.
Then, I was in the storeroom. It was achingly silent. Empty. Drained.
"It worked," I said. "We have to get Darren out of there."
I got to my feet, but I swayed dangerously. My legs ached ferociously from sitting in the same position for so long.
Erinle stood and steadied me.
"Good luck, Hera, Queen of Gods," he told me solemnly. "I know that what you do be for us all."
"Perhaps you can remember that the next time you charge a fee," I replied archly as Jason took my arm and helped me walk to the door.
I gave Erinle one last long look as I closed the door behind us.
But Erinle didn't meet my eyes. Instead, he drank from the open bottle of rum and finished his cigarillo.
But just before the door shut behind me, I heard him whisper softly. "Whoever said the payment be for me?"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"What does that even mean?" I demanded irritably, as we waited in the car at the hospital. "The payment wasn't for him? Who else could it be for?"
Ares chuckled, but Demeter leaned forward and smacked him in the arm from the back seat.
"Maybe he meant that the act of sacrifice has its own ... value," Jason suggested.
It was the first time he'd spoken since he'd given up half his life for the person he hated most in the world. There was no bitterness in his voice though, only curiosity. But his eyes. His eyes told a different story. I avoided those eyes.
I didn't say anything. Jason was starting to remind me more and more of Justin. He had that strange, mortal way of looking at things and seeing them in new ways, noticing things that gods missed.
"I guess there's something special about giving up something you love," Demeter admitted.
"I've given enough," I said, crossing my arms.
My happiness. My dignity. My pride. All wasted staying married to Zeus, just to keep the Heavens in balance and the world safe. Then there were the loved ones I'd lost: Athena; Hephaestus; Justin.
Justin. The one person who'd loved me without reservation, without exception. Just loved me for me.
I'd given enough. I'd given everything I had.
"Maybe it's not about how much you give," Jason said slowly. "Maybe it's about not regretting the sacrifice. Because that's the price of loving something. You have to be willing to sacrifice everything else for it."
Jason and I met each other eyes. I saw myself in his eyes. The bitterness. The anger. The indignation at the unfairness of it all. And then something else. The resignation. And the will to keep on going.
I straightened in my seat. "They're here."
I opened the door and got out. Ana was guiding Darren out of the hospital. He was wrapped in a blanket. His head was bent low, but as he slipped into the back seat next to Demeter, he flashed me a grateful smile.
I turned to Ana.
"I appreciate everything you've done for us," I told her.
"I don't know what you're doing, but I do know it's important, or Erinle wouldn't have helped you," Ana replied.
She handed me a bag.
"Take these," she said. "They're macutos. Carry them on you, and they'll help protect and heal you. I don't have Maria's power, but it's better than nothing."
I took the bag and smiled.
"Goodbye, Hera," Ana said. "Good luck."
I slid into the backseat next to Darren, giving Ana one last smile.
As we drove away from the hospital, I turned to Darren.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
"Fine," he admitted. "Better than ever, actually."
"You have Jason to thank for that," I said. "He gave up half his life for you. That's the only reason you're still alive."
Darren's eyes went wide. Then he flushed a deep crimson. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
We drove in silence for a long time.
"Uh, Jason," Darren finally said. "Thanks, man. I know I…"
"It's fine," Jason interrupted stiffly.
"No, I'm serious. I really mean it," Darren pressed. "You saved my life. I…"
"I didn't save you," Jason said.
"What are you talking about?" Darren asked. "You just ..."
"I didn't save you," Jason repeated through gritted teeth. "I saved the world. Not you. The world. By killing myself. By giving up half of my own life. The piece you hadn't had a chance to ruin yet. And I didn't want to do it. God, you have no idea how much I didn't want to do it. How much I just wanted to let you … But I had to do it. So, just shut up about it. Everybody can just shut up about it. It didn't happen. Got it? It never happened."
Darren clenched his jaw, but he didn't say anything.
After an eternity of excruciating tension, Demeter finally broke the silence. She had ample experience doing that from my infamous and regular battles with Zeus in the Heavens.
"What's in the bag?" she asked me.
I opened it and took out five small bundles. They were covered with brightly coloured beads and cowrie shells. I passed one to everybody.
"They're charms," I said. "Ana worked magick to try to keep us safe."
"On that note, what's our next move?" Ares asked.
I considered that. "We still need to find two more Heroes. Then we'll be as strong as possible, and we can finally confront Ekhidna."
"What if she finds us first?" Demeter pointed out.
"Again," Ares corrected. "She can track us, s
o whether we like it or not, she'll find us again."
I looked at Demeter.
"You want to use magick to block her," she guessed. "Like the last time we were in the mortal world."
"We're going to need witches," I said. "We can't do magick ourselves."
"Wait. What?" Darren asked.
"Gods can't do magick," I said. "Divine power and magick don't mix. It's like, I don't know, oil and water. Unfortunately, chaos and magick work great together, so Ekhidna can work all the magick she wants."
"No, I meant, magick? Witches? That stuff's all real too?" Darren replied.
"Your world is so much more that you ever realized," Ares laughed.
"It's kind of cool actually," Jason murmured.
"Real adventure," Darren agreed. "Like in movies. No more boring school crap! It's totally awesome! Having wicked powers. I'm a friggin' kung fu rockstar! Did you see how I beat the crap out of those monsters?"
"And that's just the beginning of your powers," Demeter told him. "You can learn anything. Science. Medicine. Languages. The sky's the limit."
"And bonus: he's not totally crippled when he uses his," Jason muttered.
"Hey, I've seen telekinesis take out entire armies," Ares said. "I'm talking hundreds, even thousands, of people. All from one telekinetic. You train up, and you're the best weapon we have."
Jason's eyes widened. Despite himself, he started to smile.
"But it takes practice," I warned. "Keep taking it slow. It'll come with time."
"Where are we headed anyway?" Demeter interjected.
"Don't go home," I said sharply, guessing where Jason was driving.
"Why ...," he started. His face went pale. "My family."
"They'll be safe if you stay away," Ares assured him. "Ekhidna won't waste her forces looking for mortals to take hostage. She'll concentrate on us. A direct attack."
"It's worked pretty well for her so far," I agreed.
"Where to then?" Jason asked.
"Somewhere to rest," I answered. "The more you give your bodies time to adapt to your powers, the faster your powers will grow."
"We could go to a hotel," Jason suggested.
"With what money?" Darren argued.
"We could just take some from somebody," Ares suggested, rubbing his knuckles.
Hera, Queen of Mortals (Goddess Unbound) Page 9
