Blood Hunt

by Lucienne Diver

  “No, but… Well, yes, actually. They’ve done it before. Kind of.”

  “You’ve met the Fates?” he asked, an odd note to his voice. “And lived to tell about it?”

  “Uh, I was in pretty bad shape at the time. I’m not sure they expected me to remember.”

  “Tori!” Apollo said.

  “Hello!” a female voice piped up from the front seat.

  I whipped my head around. The privacy screen was down, and instead of the driver, who’d been most decidedly male, there was a woman in his cap and coat craning around in her seat to face us, dark corkscrew curls spilling around her face. She had olive skin, a pert, upturned nose, and a look of girlish glee.

  I recognized the voice. I didn’t know which of the sacred sisters she was exactly, but I had a good idea from the smile on her face she wasn’t my nemesis Atropos.

  “Well hello,” Eros said, his voice dropping seductively. “You here to even out our numbers? Not that I was threatened by the odds, mind you.”

  The goddess blinked at him. “Eros!” she said delightedly. “You do keep us guessing. It’s so good to see you…in the flesh. Not enough of it, I’m afraid, but then, I’ve seen it all before.”

  “How are you here?” I asked. “And…which one are you?”

  I was worried she’d take offense. It seemed pretty ungracious after I’d called her, but with Hermes popping in and out whenever he pleased, I was starting to get the sense that I was never quite alone, which put a completely different complexion on the things I did with Apollo in our free time. I blushed just thinking about it.

  “Oh, please,” she said, cheerfully. “Gods and goddesses have been possessing mortals for time out of mind. Plus, this isn’t a real possession. I’m just…borrowing him temporarily. I’m Clotho, by the way. I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced.”

  She reached a hand through the privacy window and I took it to shake, fairly bemused. Apollo did the same, but Eros kissed it, hairy knuckles and all. She hadn’t bothered changing the driver’s appearance down to the knuckles.

  She giggled a little on contact, “My sisters are going to be so jealous to have missed you. Lachesis, especially. She’s a big fan. We don’t get out much, you know, with all our extra duties. Theatre hours, you know.”

  I vaguely remembered from my past visions of the Fates that their day jobs involved costuming for Broadway shows. I didn’t know how they found the time, but maybe it let them flex their more fanciful sides. Clotho, if I remembered right, was the spinner, Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos, the old hardass, was the cutter. All three played a hand in fate, in setting the weave.

  “Clotho, you must have been watching, following along, since you showed up so…fortuitously. We need your help.”

  “Ooh, do I get to go undercover?” she asked, clapping the driver’s hands together gleefully. “Or spy on someone? Or, oooh, maybe serve as a diversion while you neutralize a threat?”

  My mind boggled, just like in the game where you shake up all the letters and they spill out nonsensically. I was still trying to form words. “Uh, do you want to do those things?”

  “Oh yes, please!” she answered, every bit like a five-year-old asked if she’d like a puppy.

  “We’ll, uh, keep that in mind.” I exchanged a glance with Apollo, who looked a little dazed. “What I need is actually a little more in your wheelhouse.”

  She looked hopelessly disappointed at that. “Oh.”

  “It’s…there are two brothers on the loose, killing people. Now they’ve recruited others. One other at least. You must have seen all of this. Your weave may be getting out of control. Worse, the brothers are tied to Set, and if he gets loose… We need you to tell us what you can of their threads…where they’re going. Where we can find them.”

  She had the most expressive face I’d ever seen and now it was the model for dejection. “I can’t. The future isn’t set. Even at the best of times, and these…aren’t. We can nudge, guide, but there’s free will. And humans are such contrary creatures. Plus…it just wouldn’t be fair.”

  I boggled at that. Again. “Fair? Since when is life fair?”

  “Life might not be fair, but the Fates—we play with everyone in equal measure. Test, challenge…”

  “What about help or hinder?”

  I remembered how ready Atropos had been with her scissors when I was hovering between life and death. I remembered Clotho and Lachesis intervening. They might not play God with a capital G, but they did play favorites. She couldn’t tell me they didn’t tinker.

  Clotho sucked her lips into her mouth, chewing on them in thought. “I can’t, I’m sorry,” she said finally. “My sisters—”

  “Do they know you’re here?”

  She looked away. “I can’t,” she repeated rather than answering. “Even I don’t know how this pattern will complete. It is…chaos.”

  “If you don’t want the chaos to grow, you have to give us something. Perhaps what strands…whose strands are closest to the Roland brothers. Something we can use to track them.”

  She considered. “I will do what I can. Also, I may be able to put others in your path. Look for—”

  Her head whipped suddenly around, and she stared out the front window of the car, though I had the idea what she was seeing was half a world away. “Coming!” she called in a harried voice. “Just…finishing up!”

  She turned back toward us all. “I have to go,” she said. “Back in New York, it’s nearly showtime… Yes, yes, I’m coming!”

  Without so much as a goodbye, she winked out, leaving the baffled features of the chauffeur staring back at us.

  “Sir?” he asked Apollo.

  “Drive, please,” he said. “Back to…”

  There was a sudden echoing shout in the car, and we all looked at each other. It hadn’t come from any of us. And then a tiny little window none of us had noticed expanded to the size of a dinner plate, revealing a scene that looked like someone had gotten heaven and hell confused. There were clouds all around, so thick they were more a mist than separate entities shaped into nice safe puppies and bunnies. And in the midst of them, a dark figure fighting its chains in the form of…a giant serpent, then a crocodile, then…

  Hermes face appeared in the window. “Come quickly. I’m not sure how much longer we can hold him. He’s—”

  In the background, the figure—Set, I assumed—had taken on yet another form, that of a giant bristle-backed boar. Another figure, barely seen in the mist, leapt onto his back like one of the bull-riders of old. And like those ancient bulls, the great boar thrashed, trying to throw her off, growing tusks that looked more like scimitars.

  “Apollo!” I cried.

  He knew what I was asking. It was night. He wouldn’t have the power of the sun to draw on, but I hoped he’d have enough stored up to turn Hermes’s window into a portal as he’d done in the past. There was just one other problem, we were geared up for the red carpet, not for war.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “Christian, pop the trunk? Hermes, hold the window, we’re coming!”

  Our driver popped the trunk, as asked, looking somewhat stunned as Apollo ran around to the back of the limo and grabbed out weapons he must have arranged for earlier. To my shock, he lifted out a classic recurve bow and a quiver of arrows and then…a sword. Not Perseus’s famed sword, still magically coated in Medusa’s blood, which I’d used to take down Hecate and her cabal. That one had been anonymously returned to the Greek government. But this one was about the same size and shape, its hilt wrapped in leather for a sturdy grip rather than carved of bone or uncomfortably inset with gems. It had an equally plain cross-guard and a blade with a lovely channel down the center for the blood to run. This blade meant business.

  Apollo appeared back with them, looking to Eros. “Sorry, I didn’t realize we’d have you along.” The
n he did a double-take, making me look to Eros as well.

  “No problem,” Eros answered with a chilling smile. “I always come prepared.”

  Sure enough, he now sat awkwardly in his seat, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back and a bow in hand. The arrows had three different fletchings—gold, silver and black. I understood two out of the three. Myth said the gold arrows inspired love…or at least lust. The silver-fletching probably indicated the lead arrows, meant to cause revulsion, but the black…

  “What are the black arrows for?” I asked. I had to know whether he’d be any good to us in a fight. I couldn’t imagine love, hate or their close proximities were going to help us.

  “War.”

  Well, okay then. I hoped he could make more of them appear as he’d made the bow and quiver appear out of nothing, because there didn’t seem enough to do reasonable damage to that giant boar…not unless he got in a really lucky shot.

  Apollo strapped on his own quiver and leaned into the car to hand me the sword. I tested the balance as well as I could in the close confines without cutting Eros off at the neck, and Apollo reached his freed-up hand out to Hermes’s window, closing his eyes in concentration. It began to expand, but not quickly. When it reached about the size of a doggie door, his eyes popped open.

  “Go,” he said. “This is the best I can do right now and with Hermes so far away. I’ll…hold it.”

  I could tell from the sweat on his brow and the difficulty of his speech that it was costing him, and I didn’t waste his effort arguing. I plunged through the portal, careful to keep everything I had within the confines, not sure what would happen otherwise. I didn’t want to be cut off at the toes or anywhere else.

  I hadn’t thought about the fact that I was stepping out into nothing. Nothing but clouds, anyway.

  Sheer terror hit me as soon as I was through and I started to plunge, my fear of heights coming back with a vengeance. It was one thing to overcome it while standing on a mountain or a few flights up on a hospital ledge, but…

  I started to mumble a prayer and turned it into the spell for my wings, which were already unfurling, called by my necessity. I pulled up short, looking around in case Eros was falling as well and needed to be saved, but before I could spot him, Hermes called my name, sounding terrified.

  “I’m here!” I called back, choking down the bile that had risen in my throat. I forced my stomach to unclench and my hand to loosen from the death-grip on my sword threatening to imprint the hilt permanently on my hand. Paralyzing fear wasn’t going to get me or anyone else through this fight.

  I flapped back upward toward Hermes’s panicked call. I lied to myself that there was no such thing as down. No buildings or cold hard earth waiting to break my inevitable fall…and every bone in my body.

  I rose up, through the mist-like clouds, up until I saw dark shapes above me and then to the point where I could make them out—Eros and Apollo standing on the clouds as though they were something solid, both taking aim at the great boar, concentration hard on their faces as they analyzed which way he might jump and how best to attack without hitting Neith, who had grown to match Set in size, as I’d seen some of the older gods do. She now clung to his back like a champion bull-rider, hands wedged under his chains to the point where they cut into her hand. She had a javelin or spear in the other, and jammed it down into his red bristled back every time his bucking allowed. Each time he squealed and bucked all the harder.

  Apollo let his first arrow fly, and in a blink Set changed again, this time into a flame-red scorpion, darkening to black at the tip of his deadly tail, which glistened with venom. Apollo’s arrow bounced off his tough exoskeleton.

  The chains had tightened magically around Set’s new form, so there was no slack. Neith’s hand was still trapped under the chain where she’d wedged it, and she had nowhere to go as Set’s stinger arced toward her.

  I yelled a warning to Neith, hoping there was something she could do to break free, but I didn’t count on that. I flew straight for that stinger, sword out before me ready to cut it off.

  But my cry caught Set’s attention, and he whipped one of his front pinchers at me, catching me hard in the stomach. Given our relative sizes, it felt like I’d been hit head-on by a Mack truck. I went flying, and this time not of my own volition, headed straight for Eros and Apollo.

  Apollo transferred his bow to his off hand and caught me before I could fly too far, as if leaving the cloud would be stepping off the edge of the world. Maybe for him it was. I didn’t understand the rules here and didn’t have time to learn. Maybe it was more of that belief-based reality I kept hearing about. Apollo and Eros saw the clouds as physical manifestations and thus they were. I had no faith in their ability to keep me from falling to my death and so they’d almost certainly let me down. As much as I liked being right, I liked being alive even more. I wasn’t going to test my theory.

  Instead, I flapped my wings to regain control and keep myself aloft, afraid my extra weight or my lack of belief would sink Apollo. Every movement was agony. Something bad was happening inside. Maybe internal bleeding from the blow Set had dealt me, but it wasn’t as bad as what Neith faced.

  Neith! I shot back toward her, afraid I wouldn’t be in time to do anything but witness her death.

  To my shock, she’d heeded my warning and thrust the javelin deep into the scorpion’s tail. Her muscles strained visibly as she fought to hold that tail at bay on the end of her javelin. Meanwhile, the bead of poison on the end of the stinger grew and gathered. It had about reached critical mass and was ready to drip straight into Neith’s face. It probably wouldn’t kill her—not right away—but at best she’d be burned, maybe blinded. At worst, well, there were too many ways into the blood stream from there—tear ducts, mucus membranes… If the poison didn’t kill outright, the pain would certainly distract, maybe even critically.

  I cut myself with my sword, a small slice across my arm, just enough to coat the blade with my blood. My gorgon glare didn’t work with the old gods. I knew that from experience, but the petrification power in my blood was a lot more concentrated. One slice with the bloodied blade and Set would start to go stony. I hoped. It had worked on Hecate, but I still didn’t know if it would last…or if it would work on a god of Set’s stature. There was only one way to find out.

  I swung for that stinger with all I was worth, and the blade sank deep. Blood and ichor burst out, joining with the drop of venom at the end of the tail to gush over my blade, racing down the runnel meant for other things. I thrust the sword away just as the ghastly flow reached me, but I was too late to save myself. The venom that hit had me screaming in agony. It felt like my hands been burned in acid, set on fire and crushed into claws all at once. They shriveled, the effects then racing up my arm.

  Set gave an inhuman cry of pain as well and swung his stiffening tail in reaction, catching me in the temple with his hardening stinger and knocking me a great blow, sending me spinning out into space. I couldn’t grab on to anything. Couldn’t even see, I was so blinded with pain.

  I fell—felt myself falling and couldn’t even gather enough sanity to care. My biggest fear was no longer heights. It was that I wouldn’t crash and die and would have to endure this agony forever.

  The wind screamed in my ears as I fell or I screamed to the wind, my wings now dead weight. The only messages getting to and from my brain involved pain and the ending of it.

  And then something halted my fall. It wasn’t the ground. The pain was still as horrifying as it had been. The source hadn’t changed. Or cut off.

  Something was trying to reach me through the screaming. Some still-sapient part of me stopped it long enough to listen.

  “I’ve got you,” said the voice. Hermes?

  “Dying,” I said. I thought I said it. Maybe it was only in my head.

  “It feels like that, I know.”

  I w
orked hard to focus. The battle wasn’t over. I couldn’t check out and leave the others to fight it, but I couldn’t hold a weapon. Couldn’t—

  “Tell Apollo and Eros to coat their arrows in my blood,” I said.

  “Tori—”

  “Do it,” I ordered.

  I forced my eyes to open. They’d been squinched shut against the pain. I’d thought I’d gone blind, and certainly the world was vague, watery. From tears in my eyes or the creeping venom, I had no idea, but I saw that we were back in the clouds, saw Set change yet again, his stone tail now weighing him down, a liability. He took a shape in which his tail was negligible, at least for maneuverability. He was back in the form of the red boar, with bristled fur instead of tough exoskeleton. The arrows would penetrate, and while he could thrash, the chains still held him in place. He wouldn’t be able to dodge.

  But before the gods could drench their arrows in my blood, I saw Neith leap up from the far side of Set where she must have fallen or dodged during my attack. She dove under Set’s tusks as he would have gored her and thrust her javelin through the soft base of his throat straight up through his jaw. The point came out through the top of his muzzle, pinning his jaws together like a toothpick through a club sandwich.

  He twisted violently through his forms—crocodile, serpent, scorpion and back, but in none of those forms was he able to open his jaw and loose the javelin.

  He seemed to realize it, and his head drooped momentarily before he slowly seeped into his more human form and yanked the javelin out with his hands. He stood glaring us down, dressed in nothing but a short black skirt belted at the waist, his skin as white as old ash, the chains stark against it, and his hair as red as the coat of the bristle-backed boar. It flared outward around his head like wildfire and matched the red still dripping from his jaw and in the furrows scraped raw by his chains.

  I burned with hatred even fiercer than the pain in my hands. I didn’t know why we all paused. He was vulnerable now. Or at least more so than he’d been in any of his other forms. If we struck now we could rid ourselves of a lot of trouble later on. But he was still wrapped in chains. They’d morphed along with his every shift. Maybe it was the captivity, or the fact that he stood before us in human form or that he’d already been beaten…for the moment…but we couldn’t strike him down. Not in cold blood.