Gunfire sounded back in the compound, rapid, like in a frightened burst.
“The agents!” Damn, I’d forgotten all about them. I should have known Hades would’ve come in full force, not just a man and his dog.
Apollo took the lead, racing in the direction from which we’d heard the shots, but Armani and I weren’t far behind.
We burst on to a scene behind the buildings that looked like something out of a horror film. An entire pack of dogs, dark as nightmares, were chasing people through the vineyards. As I watched, one overtook a young man and pounced on his back, driving him to the ground and out of my sight. I couldn’t bear to think what might happen next. Only Rosen seemed to be still standing, defending a woman and a group of frightened kids who were pinned down against one of the longhouses. He was backed up with them, firing away at the dogs taking turns drawing fire and darting in. The bullets didn’t seem to have an effect.
Apollo put two fingers to his mouth and gave an ear-piercing whistle. Immediately, every hellhound froze, their ears pricked forward and heads turned his way. Then he did something that shocked the hell out of me—and them too. He began singing. Singing. To the dogs. In the middle of a massacre.
Well, he was the god of music, and they did say it soothed the savage beast, but… I’d never thought of putting it to the test. Certainly not in the middle of a battlefield. Of course, my singing would be more likely to incite than stop a riot.
But Apollo’s voice…it was…there were no words. Painfully beautiful. Haunting. The song was something like a dirge mixed with the hope of Heaven…or the Elysian Fields. It made you want to cry and laugh and fall to your knees and rejoice all at once. I’d never heard Apollo sing before, and it was…transformative.
I didn’t know what Armani saw in my face, but when he clamped his hands over my ears, I nearly took him down. Hard.
Instead, I chopped his hands away by throwing mine up between them and rounded on him.
“What is your problem?” I demanded.
His eyes bored straight into me. He was that intense. “You looked mesmerized, and we’ve still got a god to find and a girl to save, from what I’ve overheard.”
My face flamed. “Right.”
Only I had no idea where to start.
On the last lingering note of Apollo’s song, the dogs all dropped to the ground, dead or dead asleep, then faded away before our eyes. Just…gone. I tried not to look on Apollo as…well, as a god.
“Where did they go?” I asked, not looking at him directly. I wasn’t sure I could do it and keep my distance. I wanted…but I couldn’t have.
“They are nightmares made flesh,” he said. “And when they dream, it’s not of this place. They’ve gone back where they came from. Hades has what he wants. I don’t think they’ll be back.”
“They didn’t leave when he did,” I pointed out.
“No,” Armani said grimly. “He wanted Dionysus’s people to suffer for his loss.”
“We can’t let him win,” I said. “We have to find Persephone. Demeter’s threatened all kinds of chaos if she isn’t found.”
“No more than Hades, from what you’ve told me,” Apollo answered.
Armani gave me a look. He’d only just heard everything in the car on the way, which meant he knew I’d confided in Apollo first. But it hadn’t been like that.
“Hold it right there!” Rosen shouted at us.
Other agents were closing in now, herding people who’d run off into the fields or hidden in other buildings. I saw no sign of Dionysus, but someone had obviously called for an ambulance or three, because now that Apollo’s song had ended, I could hear the sirens. So close. They’d be here any second, and from the number of bodies not rising from the ground to be rounded up by the Feds, they were going to be needed…or well beyond being needed by some.
Hades was going to have a hell of a head start by the time we extricated ourselves from all this. And he’d have the home court advantage. I didn’t even have the directions to get onto the field.
“Do you think the…food additives will help them?” I asked Apollo, eyes still on the downed cultists.
“Some,” he said. “It depends on how their bodies are holding up to it and what changes were—”
Rosen was right up on us now, and Apollo clammed up.
“What the hell is going on? Invisible assailants, ghoulish great Danes. I’m sure I even saw some ladies rip one to shreds with their bare hands. No one is going anywhere until I get some answers.”
“You can’t handle the truth,” Armani said under his breath.
“Try me.”
We all looked at each other, and Rosen stepped in the midst of us. “No!” he said. “No eye contact. No getting your stories straight. If this is some kind of doomsday cult, it’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some strange things.”
Paramedics flooded around us, and still Rosen held our gazes, one right after another, and wouldn’t let us move.
We had only one hope that I could see of making him believe and convincing him to let us go while there was still time to catch up with Persephone’s kidnapper. “Follow me,” I said.
He gave me a hard look, as though sure I was up to something. Another agent came running up, whispered something in Rosen’s ear. His face went angry/sad at the same time. Whatever he’d heard, I was pretty sure someone was going to pay. “Handle it,” he snapped. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Show me,” he said to us.
I swallowed hard, nodded and led the way—back to the guard house and Demeter and, hopefully, a three-headed dog still wrapped up in magically growing vines.
I led the way, but Rosen kept Apollo and Armani in his sights as well, and brought up the rear. All was eerily quiet in the guard shack as we approached, to the point where I had a sinking suspicion that we were going to find it empty, Cerberus vanished like the hellhounds. But just inside the open door was a great big furry butt, smelling of wet dog fur and sulfur. Such a lovely mix. The tail was still, and the great hound let out such a snore as we approached that it rattled the building around him.
I could just see the tops of his three enormous heads settled on his front paws. No surprise, I suppose, that at least one of them snored. Demeter, however, had vanished.
“What the hell is that?” Rosen asked, but not entirely like he didn’t know. More like he needed confirmation to truly believe.
“Well, you had it in one. Hell. What you saw outside were what you’d probably call hellhounds, but what we like to call the hounds of Hades. This is Cerberus. He’s sort of the watchdog of the underworld.”
Rosen looked to Apollo and Armani to see if I might be pulling his leg. Neither cracked a smile. Apollo nodded. Armani looked bemused, like he was seeing what he himself looked like the first time he’d heard about all the insanity.
“But…” Rosen stepped forward, hand outstretched, to touch the beast’s flank when the building rattled again, and he froze. “How on earth do I—”
“Animal Control?” I suggested. “And an elephant stampede worth of tranquilizers.”
“But—”
“Don’t you have a division to deal with this sort of thing?” I knew there had to be something, because Zeus and Poseidon were still in custody, and I didn’t think that was just good fortune. If they wanted to bust out, they had ways, and no namby pamby prison was going to keep them in line. Oh sure, the gods had lost a lot of their power when they’d lost their worship long ago, but things like Xena, Clash of the Titans, Percy Jackson and even Yiayia’s Goddities website kept them alive enough in peoples’ minds and hearts to feed them a certain amount of strength. If only they’d use it for good. But the gods always had been petty.
“Don’t you get it yet?” Rosen asked. “Why we’ve been investigating? Why we’ve been interested in your cases?” He looked around to see who might be close enough to listen in and, finding no one, continued. “Power we’ve seen—remote viewers, clairvoyants, telemetrics who can
’t move anything bigger than a bread box. Not much more than sideshow stuff. But this—three-headed dogs that can be sung to sleep. Hell, you say?”
So he wasn’t just a spy guy, he was a spook. It explained so much. But it didn’t bode well for actually blowing his mind. He wouldn’t mentally explain away any of the weirdness. No, he’d want to investigate.
I’d said too much already. “Look, we have to go. Someone’s life depends on it.”
“I can’t let you do that. You need to be debriefed. We need to be fully in the loop. If someone’s life is at stake, you tell us, we’ll handle it.”
Wasn’t. Gonna. Happen.
They had procedures and protocols…and no idea what they were dealing with.
“Rosen?” I said, making sure he met my eyes.
“What?”
“Freeze.”
I put everything I had into it and saw his eyes go slightly panicked, but they didn’t widen. Didn’t move. And neither did the rest of him.
“Let’s go,” I said to Armani and Apollo.
I didn’t run away. That would be too obvious. But I walked quickly. With purpose. Armani cursed and followed, Apollo silently taking up my left flank.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Armani murmured.
“And that I didn’t just screw up your career,” I added, something I should have thought about earlier. But what else could I do? Lead the government straight to the secret of gods among us? What would they do with that kind of information? Or to control that kind of power? They might consider it a national resource to be harnessed for the greater good. Armani aside, I never had really trusted people in power. Maybe it was all those stories of gods and demigods using people like playthings. I wanted to believe it could be different, but look at what I did with my one and only power. I used it to stop men in their tracks, and not just the bad ones. I decided when it was convenient for someone else to be subject to my will or free to act.
With paramedics now dashing back the way they’d come with those who could be saved and the Feds either interrogating witnesses or caught up in a turf war with the local law enforcement that had arrived, we made it back to the car. One officer tried to stop us as we pulled out, but Armani flashed his badge, and even though he had no jurisdiction or even standing here, it was enough for the officer to let us go.
“Where to?” Apollo asked as we were cruising down the long drive, going the speed limit or a little below to look like law abiding citizens, certainly not fleeing the scene of a massacre.
“I was hoping you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Paths to the underworld, the closest entrance.”
He took his eyes off the road to stare at me in the rearview mirror. In deference to his longer legs and my guilt over various Apollo-directed thoughts, I’d given Armani the shotgun seat.
“Seriously? First you think all Olympians have each other on speed dial, and now you think I’m on the VIP list for Club Hades? You have a better chance getting the intel from your crazy grandmother than with me.”
“So you do know my grandmother.”
I’d wondered at times, the way she always seemed to know everything about everybody. I knew she had a secret source, sure, but in the way of secrets, I didn’t know who it was.
“Tori, we may not all know each other, at least not on sight, but we all know your grandmother. She’s…”
“Crazy?” I asked, using his word.
“Yeah, that,” he said unapologetically. “You know, when you and I were seen together last year, she threatened to put my address and unlisted phone number on the web and sell it to those people who make maps of the stars’ homes.”
“Like they don’t have it already?” I scoffed.
“You ever been on one of their self-guided tours? It’s all stars’ former homes or whatnot. They don’t want to be liable for any psycho stalkers getting ideas.”
“Well, there you go—they wouldn’t use it anyway. It’s an empty threat.”
“The point is that she had the info to begin with. Your Yiayia is a scary woman.”
He had a point there…a very good one.
“You have her number saved?” I asked. At some point, I was going to have to replace my phone.
He sighed and handed me his, still all warm from his pocket.
“Anipsi,” Yiayia answered on the first ring. “I have been calling you all night. Where have you been? And why are you calling from His phone?”
“How did you know it was me?” I asked suspiciously.
“He wouldn’t call, but you…is there something going on? Is he there with you?” She lowered her voice as if she might be overheard.
“Yes and yes, but it’s not what you think. I need to know—are there any paths into the underworld near Napa or San Francisco?”
Dead silence. “Anipsi, you are not going there. Tell me you are not going there.”
I turned toward the window so that neither of the guys could see my face as I prepared to lie to my grandmother, just in case I had a tell. “Okay, I’m not going there.”
“You know what happened to Orpheus when he tried to rescue Eurydice,” she continued, clearly not believing me.
“Nothing happened to Orpheus,” I answered. “Eurydice got sucked back into the underworld when he turned back to look at her.”
Yiayia snorted. “That’s the fairy tale version. Orpheus never made it home, not in one piece. He broke the deal he’d made with Hades. Some accounts say he committed suicide, but truly, his soul stayed behind in forfeit, and his body couldn’t live long without it.”
Oh, joy.
“Yiayia, I won’t look back.”
“So you say.”
“Yiayia, if you don’t tell me, I’ll just find out for myself.”
I could practically hear her thinking. “First, you tell me everything. There have been rumors of a three-headed dog…”
I debated. Rosen was already going to be furious with me when he snapped out of his paralysis, as he no doubt had by now. If I exposed his X-file to the world, would he use it as an excuse to lock me up and throw away the key, maybe citing something like a threat to national security?
But what if she could help?
“Yiayia, what would happen if the other gods found out, say, that one group was trying to create a new pantheon, like Latter-Day Olympians?”
I couldn’t even hear her breathe on the other end of the line. “Who?” she demanded.
“What would happen?” I repeated.
“What could happen? Who could stop them? Zeus and Poseidon are in jail; Hades is all caught up with Persephone. Who is left?”
I looked to Apollo.
“It’s all up to us, isn’t it?” he asked. “Rescue Persephone, stop the cult?”
I nodded mutely.
“Good,” he said. “You’ll get to see my heroic side.”
Nick shot him a look that, had it missed, would have melted the safety glass window beyond him. “I’ll remind you…once. Boyfriend, right here. Badge and gun. Licensed to carry.”
“But you’re not carrying now, are you?”
“I don’t need a gun to take you down,” Nick growled.
Apollo didn’t dignify that with a response.
“Guys, as much as I appreciate the dick waving—and I do—we’ve got bigger things to think about here.” They both grinned at that.
On the phone, Yiayia snorted, reminding me that she could overhear everything.
“Yiayia, save me,” I said. “Tell me where around here I can find an entry to the underworld.”
“W-e-l-l, I don’t know specifically. It’s never been a regular interest of mine, but the conspiracy boards have been abuzz lately about a few things.”
“Conspiracy boards?”
“A woman needs a hobby. Besides, often there’s some method to the madness. You’d be amazed how many leads…”
So if the conspiracy boards were a hobby, what was her Olympian obsession? A life�
�s calling? Scary.
“Yiayia, what leads?”
She huffed. “Since I knew you were out there, I’ve been paying special attention to the San Francisco area. There’ve been a few rumors. For one, that Alcatraz is haunted.”
“Old news,” I cut in.
“Hush or I won’t tell you more. A three-headed monster menacing the streets.”
“Cerberus,” Apollo said unnecessarily.
“And the Wave Organ picking up what sounds like a domestic dispute from the center of the earth. Very Jules Verne.”
“What?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“Wave Organ?” asked Armani.
Apollo just nodded, like it all made perfect sense.
“I Googled it,” she said, clearly proud of her accomplishment. “According to Alcaspaz2000, it’s this amazing sculpture park on a jetty in the San Francisco bay, where the artist engineered tubes that lead into the underground caverns or straight into the bay and act like giant sea shells, where you can hear the sounds of the deep.”
“Why don’t I know about this place?” I asked.
“Because it’s neither a mystery nor a man,” she said matter-of-factly.
My face flamed. Both men smirked at me in the rearview mirror, and I vowed to buy Yiayia a muzzle for her next birthday. Not that she’d wear it.
“Wanna start a conspiracy theory?” I asked, trying to deflect, but also inspired. “Tell everyone to stay away from Back to Earth products and The Rustic Potato. They have dangerous additives. People have gotten ill…or addicted.”
“Is this true?” she asked in horror.
“One hundred percent.”
“I’ll need specifics to make it convincing.”
“I’ll put someone in touch.” And I would, if Alonzo and his sister were up for another interview. “Thank you, Yiayia. I’ll let you know how it all works out.”
“Stay safe,” she ordered. “And you two—” She raised her voice until it bounced around the car like an echo chamber. “You see that she comes home safe or else.”
The look the men exchanged was still more glare than glance, but they said in stereo, “Yes, Yiayia.”
She disconnected.
I tried to hide my amusement.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 19
