Armani wrecked the moment by asking suddenly, “Is it getting really dark outside or is it just me?”
The question had to be rhetorical, because there was no way he needed confirmation of what was perfectly clear. Or rather, perfectly unclear. The sky had darkened, thick steel-wool clouds moving in to blot out the sun. I’d been so focused on talking to Yiayia I’d never even noticed. A flashbulb of light went off out the left side window, just caught in my peripheral vision. I turned too late to catch the freaky fork of lightning, but only a few heartbeats later thunder rocked the car.
“Demeter mourning her daughter’s abduction,” Apollo said, at the same time Nick kicked in. “Ten Mississippi. It’s about two miles away.”
“I thought lightning was Zeus’s bailiwick.”
“She can make sure the conditions are right for it,” Apollo said grimly.
“She said she’d give us time,” I protested.
“Did she say how much?”
We were all silent at that, which made the shock of a sheet of water hitting our windshield that much more deafening. There were no warning droplets. It was more like someone had simply thrown several buckets full of water straight at our car. The heavens had opened like a sluice gate.
We fishtailed down the street. Apollo cursed and struggled for control of the car as the fishtail threatened to morph into a full on spin out. The back of the car seemed to want to overtake the front.
“You want us to get your daughter back, you have to stop trying to kill us,” I yelled at the heavens.
Both men winced at the volume in the small car, but miraculously—or maybe just coincidentally—the rain slacked off from deluge to downpour.
“Thank you,” I said, just in case Demeter was actually listening.
“It’s like déjà vu all over again,” Nick said. He was thinking, like I was, about the night we’d gone up against Poseidon and Zeus. We’d survived that. Demeter’s hissy fit probably wasn’t going to destroy us, but I didn’t want to take the risk.
“Underground caves, possibly with underwater entrances are going to be pretty treacherous if this continues,” Apollo said.
“Maybe it’s localized,” I answered hopefully.
“We can hope.”
“We’re going to need supplies,” Nick cut in. “Unless you can make like Aquaman and call fish to our aid or whatever. We’re going to need special equipment, a map of the caverns as accurate as possible. We can’t just rush in.”
“Give me my phone,” Apollo said, reaching a hand back for it.
“You’re driving,” I pointed out. And given the slick streets, I didn’t really want him dividing his attention.
“Fine. Call Hermes. He delivers everything to everybody all over the world. He’ll be able to put us in touch with someone who can get us what we need.”
Hermes being helpful? I’d never even considered the possibility.
“You sure he’ll help?”
“A potential war brewing between Hades and Demeter, possibly pulling in Dionysus, you, me, your boyfriend…” Petty emphasis on the boy, although Nick was hardly that, though if we were comparing our lives to the centuries Apollo’d lived, I guessed I was a mere child as well. “He’d probably pay for front row seats. Chaos is kind of his thing,” he reminded me.
“But he runs a worldwide business. That’s got to take organization.”
“Even Hitler made the trains run on time,” Apollo said, “and he was about the most destructive force I’ve ever seen.”
“Mercury wasn’t…” I couldn’t even finish the thought.
“In character at the time? No, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been somewhere behind the scenes. Manning the supply lines at the very least.”
“Great galloping gorgons.”
Apollo smirked. “I like that one, you should keep it.”
“Thanks.”
Nick cleared his throat to break up the moment. “Hate to intrude, but rescue mission. Special equipment, phone call to make, caves to spelunk.”
I blushed and looked down at the phone, because Nick was right. Apollo and I had been having a moment. There’d been too many of those lately, and that was dangerous. I felt like a shit over it, but I’d been right before. After this was over, no more contact. It was the only way. I didn’t trust my willpower.
Apollo called his people, who called other people, and inside a half hour we were in a dive shop being outfitted in wetsuits and warnings. According to the pros, we were either: A: crazy—the weather made visibility nearly nil and the churning waves would be doing their best to smack us up against the rocks, or B: suicidal—neither Nick nor I were scuba trained, so they refused to rent us that equipment…something about licenses being revoked. We’d be counting on whatever breath we could take on the way down and our senses of direction to find the way back up for more. It was easy to become confused with no visibility to light the way back to the surface.
Apollo couldn’t come with. As he explained in the car, Hades had his kingdom warded against other gods. Humans not so much. If a soul wandered in unannounced, well, it was just too bad for them. One more subject to add to his rolls. But a god, that was a clear threat and distinctly unwelcome. Whether an Olympian wanted to rescue a lost love—their loves were always falling prey to this misfortune or that wrongful death—or stage a hostile takeover, any infiltration was seen as an act of aggression and treated with extreme prejudice.
Apollo’s presence would only make ours completely conspicuous…and actionable. I didn’t realize until he said it how much I’d come to count on his back-up. Now was a good time to start tapering off my Apollo addiction. He promised to keep an eye on things topside so that we wouldn’t emerge into an ambush. It was something anyway.
We were quiet on the ride to the Wave Organ jetty. Even with the GPS on Apollo’s phone confidently spitting out directions in a voice that seemed specially chosen to give geek boys wet dreams, I wondered whether we were on the right track. I didn’t see a thing as we approached but a discreet sign and a parking area long before we hit the end of the jetty. From here it looked like any other—a spit of land jutting out into the San Francisco bay, the skyline of the city off in the distance on another, much larger, spit of land. I guess I’d expected to see, well, something like a pipe organ, now that I thought about it, rising from the earth like a churchly instrument and sounding like whale or dolphin song.
Apollo pulled off into the parking area where only three other cars sat.
“This is it?” Nick asked, as if we had the answers.
“I guess so. They probably have people park here to keep the car sounds from interfering with the ambience,” I said. I sounded half-convincing even to myself.
We got out. Armani and I hefted our dive packs onto our shoulders, even though Apollo tried to take mine from me, and started trudging down the jetty. Despite the lack of cars in the lot, the path was well trod. Not paved, exactly, but sand, shell and stone had been compressed almost to the point of concrete.
I kept waiting for some monumental construction to come into view, but we were almost to the end of the jetty when instead I saw cut stone stairs leading downward. We took them, and I caught my breath as we descended into ruins…or anyway, a sculpture park made to look like ruins. Artfully tumbled stones, terraced walls with wildflowers and weeds growing up between them. It looked like a cross between an old armory and a Greek temple. Doric columns here and there, half crumbled or carved into the stone walls should have contrasted with the rest of the feel, but strangely they seemed in harmony with the site. But more than that, they gave me the strong sense that we were in the right place. There was no point at all to those columns in this place unless they’d been inspired, consciously or unconsciously.
The breeze whipped my dark hair across my face, saturating it as well so that the strands bound together into a lash. I spat the hair out as it flew into my mouth before gathering it up and twisting it into a knot at the base of my neck that I
knew wouldn’t hold. It never did. But it would give me a temporary reprieve so that I could listen.
The whole place was the organ. Among the ruins, pipes stuck out like gun muzzles or canon barrels, and I realized that was what had given me the impression of an armory. I tried to tune out the wind and listen for the sound of the sea, which was all around us. The pipes acted as speakers, amplifying the music of the deep, some sounding like, yes, whale or dolphin song, others as though the sea breathed into underground cave entrances like a flutist into his instrument. Only the sound was deeper than a flute. More melodic than a tuba. It was a sound all its own. I was entranced. Whoever had built the wave organ was a genius. There’d been a sign back toward the stairs that had probably said, and I vowed to pay more attention on the way out, assuming I was in any condition to do so.
“Everybody pick a pipe,” Nick directed, “and start listening.”
I gave him a saucy salute, even though I’d been about to suggest the same thing.
My first two tubes were a wash—like holding giant seashells up to my ears. Beautiful but completely unhelpful. I was about to move on to the third when Apollo announced, “I’ve got something.”
Nick was closest, and he got there first. The look of concentration on his face as he listened was nearly comical, only I didn’t laugh. I hadn’t been in water, beyond the daily shower, since I’d nearly been drowned by the twin of the Creature from the Black Lagoon just weeks ago. Oh sure, I visited the beach, but I stayed well away from the surf. When I needed to cool down, I went with a rum punch.
Creature—Glaucus—was no longer a threat, but he had friends. He was far from the only water divinity, none of whom were happy with me after my part in taking down Poseidon. If they came gunning for me…well, water wasn’t exactly my element. I preferred the much more breathable air.
“Let me listen,” I ordered, pushing Nick gently out of the way. He went, but not far, standing beside me with a dazed expression on his face. He’d been exposed to enough weirdness now that he knew. He believed, but every once in a while, the evidence still seemed to strike him dumb.
There were definite voices, raised, heated. But what they were saying wasn’t immediately clear. There was too much interference.
“Can you make it out?” I asked the men.
“It’s all Greek to me,” Nick quipped.
“Really?” I asked. “You really went there?”
He just shrugged. In all honesty, it’d been bound to come out some time.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You know, I have better uses for that,” he said, leering.
“It’s an argument,” Apollo cut in. “A lot of name-calling. Nothing helpful like ‘it’s too bad we’ve left the north gate unguarded’.”
No, of course not, because that would be too easy.
“Any way of tracking where this tube goes?” I asked, but not with any real hope.
All three of us tracked with our eyes where the pipe disappeared into the ground.
“Not without schematics,” Apollo answered.
“Then I guess we’re going in.”
There was a family of four roaming the ruins, two kids under ten having a field day climbing the rocks, and a lone fisherman casting his line, probably futilely, into the turbulent waters. I didn’t see any sign of whoever might belong to the third car. Of those I did see, none looked terribly interested in us until we started stripping down to our bathing suits, purchased at the dive shop on Apollo’s titanium card, in prep for getting into the wetsuits that would protect us from the cold. At that point, the father of the family kept an eye on us, part suspicion and part interest, I guessed, from the way his wife playfully swatted him when she saw him staring our way. She caught my eye and shrugged, like “men, can’t take them anywhere”. I smiled back. It helped distract me from what we were about to do.
Mostly, though, a nearly naked Nick was distraction enough. Because the man was fine. His shoulders were every bit as broad as Apollo’s. Damn, I immediately killed the comparison. His chest was peppered with dark hair that only seemed to emphasize his abs. His really rock hard abs, as I had reason to know. His legs were about as finely formed as those of a marble statue. I couldn’t help but watch as he tucked himself inside his suit and had to squelch the urge to offer my assistance. I don’t think his suit would fit any better for my contribution.
Apollo watched it all in silence, then looked away, purposefully looking anywhere else, scanning the horizon.
“The storm is headed this way,” he reported ominously. “You’d better go now, while things are relatively calm.”
“Ready?” Nick asked.
“No, you?”
“Hell no.”
“Great, let’s do this.”
I fastened the latch on my utility belt, trying to tell myself I felt like Batman with my dive knife, spear gun and other suddenly inadequate-seeming gear we’d picked up at the shop.
We carried our flippers and walked barefoot over to the closest entrance to the water from the tube we were interested in. The stones beneath our feet were cool enough to numb them…or maybe that was fear giving me cold feet. When we were right up on the water, Nick and I sat to put on the flippers, and the father came up to talk to us.
“You sure you want to do that?” he asked. “In this weather?”
The splash as Nick hit the water made me jump, but I slid my mask into place to follow him in before I could come to my senses, leaving Apollo to answer for us.
The water hit me like a Heimlich, nearly shocking the breath I’d taken right out of me. Unlike footy pajamas, wetsuits didn’t cover everything, and the areas of exposure were enough to rip away at my body heat. I knew wetsuits were about protecting core temperature, and that I’d get used to the cold, but in the meantime…day-um!
Nick turned to smile at me before breaching the surface for a new breath. I did the same, catching the tail end of his “Whoo hoo!”
I didn’t have the breath to answer it, so I just tried and failed to smile back before pointing back down. Nick winked and dove back under. I took off after him.
The masks made things as clear as possible. As long as we stayed close, we could see each other, though silt floated between us, and very little light penetrated. It was easy enough, anyway, to tell which way was back to shore, because the waves wanted to smack us right into it. We swam down deeper, arms close to our sides to streamline ourselves and kicking hard, but I couldn’t sustain it. I was afraid to smack head first into something I couldn’t see, and had to reach out, slowing myself. We bumped around and resurfaced, explored crevices that went so far and no farther, found the outlets to some of the pipes, covered over with mesh to keep anything from swimming in and getting trapped inside. I’d just felt a strange current I wanted to follow, something that seemed to suck at me and only reluctantly give back when the water ebbed away in the traditional flow pattern when my air gave up. As I breached the surface, Nick was just diving again. I took a deep breath and chased him, tapping his foot and miming for him to follow me with the hand signs we’d been taught at the dive shop. He nodded and changed directions, following me.
Instinctively, I found the current again and followed it as far as I could with my hands. It was big enough, I thought, to follow whole hog…or whole PI anyway. The risk was that I might go too far and not be able to make it back to the surface in time. I’d faced the fear intentionally, waiting for my precognition to go off with sirens wailing, but nothing happened, which I took to be a good sign.
I signaled. I was going in. Nick grabbed my mask and shook his head, the universal sign for oh hell no. But this was what we were here for. I nodded and shook him off. Probably I could have used a fresh breath, but the mystery was calling to me, and I had to follow.
I kicked furiously, leading with my hands to keep myself out of trouble, but I didn’t hit anything. It was dark now. I reached for a dive light at my belt and turned it on, aiming it before me, but all I coul
d see was silt and, beyond, darkness.
Still, the push of that current, like a hand to my back, kept me going. Armani swam up beside me, and I had a moment to fear for him. He’d dived before I had and would run out of air that much sooner. Already, my lungs felt squeezed, as if the lack of air was creating a vacuum. I desperately wanted to take a breath to fill it but couldn’t. Instead, I kept swimming dead ahead. There were no alarms but my own panic. We’d be okay. I had to believe that.
Spots started to swim in front of my eyes, blotting out the silt, darker than the darkness, and then I felt something change. To the right, the water was…colder. I should have been too numb to notice the difference, but… I turned toward it, hoping Nick followed, trying to signal him with the light I could myself barely see. It was getting hard to hold in what breath I still had, harder still to move, but I forced myself. It was easier to kick my legs than move my arms, which floated uselessly now at my sides. And then even they stopped. I began to float upward. Up, up…or maybe down? I didn’t know. My eyes closed, and I thought that it was peaceful here. Like the wave organ up above. A watery grave.
There was still no panic. Peace, acceptance, but no panic.
Then I broke the surface of the water, and the breath I’d held gave out. My mouth gasped open, and no water flooded in. It took me a sluggish second to grasp that fact, certain it was a dying dream, but beside me was another gasp, and then a choking, coughing fit. Nick!
I blinked away the spots before my eyes, but they weren’t so easily moved. They continued here, but around them I could begin to see things in the faint glow of my dive light. We were in an underground cave. Honestly, it looked like something out of Scooby Doo, where they’d find glowing webbed footprints or a guy in a sea monster suit. The roof of the cave wasn’t high above our heads, but high enough to let us breathe and look around a bit.
I pointed Nick in the direction the water seemed to want to flow, and he nodded. Neither of us wasted the breath that suddenly seemed very precious. We swam on top of the water instead of under it until we came to a kind of shelf where the cave seemed to balloon up and out and where we could pull ourselves out of the water. My muscles were shaking almost too much to accomplish the job, but I managed with a strong kick to gracelessly flop myself onto the shelf like a beached whale. Nick’s exit wasn’t much better, and we both lay there for a minute just breathing, oxygenating our muscles so they’d support us when we decided to rise again.
Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) Page 20
