Mark opened his mouth, but Alex spoke first. “Forty-eight hours, and we’ll let you know.”
Apollo was clearly done, and he left without another sound. Jude’s ears were ringing, and he looked over at Mark, who wore an expression of worry and fear. Alex merely looked exhausted, as he dropped his arms and slowly shuffled over to a chair.
Collapsing, Jude followed suit while Mark disappeared into the kitchen and returned with three overfull glasses of red wine. Alex snatched the glass away, slopping some over the rim, and he gulped down half of it in one go.
Jude took his, but didn’t take a drink, his head still spinning from what had happened. He’d never experienced anything like that before, and it had been so unexpected. Even when they were attacked repeatedly abroad, Jude felt the power, the intent, the impending attack. From Apollo, he hadn’t. He’d felt desire, warmth, and while he knew Apollo wasn’t to be trusted, he realized he could not read that god’s intentions.
“Would you care to explain what all of that was about?” Mark asked after taking some of his own wine.
Alex licked at the red stain on his upper lip, but did not make eye contact with either immortal. He took a couple of deep breaths and then slowly raised his gaze to meet Jude’s. “Are you okay?”
Jude had to take a moment to think about it. Was he okay? Was he really? He was affected deeply, confused, and with Apollo’s sudden absence, he almost felt wounded, like he’d lost a lover. He gave a shiver, his arms breaking out into goose bumps. His throat felt constricted, and unable to speak suddenly, he gave a shrug.
“What do you mean is he okay? What the hell happened?” Mark asked angrily. “Who was that and how did he get in here?”
Alex took a deep breath and ran his hand over his face. “That was Apollo, Nike’s current right-hand man.”
Mark’s face went nearly purple and his eyes were wide. “What?”
“And as for how he got in, we let him in,” Alex said.
Mark sputtered, but Jude held up his hand, speaking clearly and comfortably, despite his spinning head. “Both Alex and I felt no threat.”
“Obviously you were both misled—”
“No, we were not,” Alex said. “Apollo posed no traditional harm to anyone in this house, and it was imperative that we speak with him and find out what he wanted.”
Jude, however, knew that was a lie. It wasn’t until Jude had insisted they let Apollo in that Alex had been sold on the idea. And as for physical harm, Jude wasn’t sure he was harmed, but he was affected, and dangerously so. Even now he felt a draw to the creature, whatever he was, and he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to resist it for long.
“What did he do to you?” Mark asked. It was clear the writer could sense something was wrong with Jude, but Jude didn’t have an answer to that.
“He kissed me,” Jude finally said, deciding that honesty was the best policy in this situation. Lying to Mark would only increase the danger they were in.
The anger drained from Mark’s face, replaced by confusion, and he stared at Jude with a deep frown. “He kissed you? Like…kissed you? On the mouth like…like…”
“Like a lover would, yes,” Jude said, “although it didn’t last long, and I believe there was more behind the kiss than what happens normally. Although I confess, I don’t understand it.”
Jude glanced over at Alex, but his face was unreadable. There was obviously more to it, and Alex seemed to understand what had happened, but he wasn’t saying so just yet. “The important thing is, we know Nike still doesn’t have the location of the portals, and that works in our favor. We have time now, to retrieve Ben—if we can—and lure Nike when we’re fully ready for her.”
“How, exactly, do you plan to lure her?” Mark asked.
“By offering a trade, Olivia for Persephone. She obviously won’t give us Olivia, but when Persephone passes on the location of the portal, we’ll be ready for her,” Alex said patiently.
“Why don’t you go get more rest,” Jude said to Mark in the silence after Alex’s plan. “Alex and I will take the rest of the morning watch, and then get a few hours of sleep before we start searching for Ben.”
Mark looked between Jude and Alex before giving a resigned sigh and retiring back to the room. Jude closed his eyes and waited until he felt Mark drop off to sleep before daring to speak again.
“Tell me what happened,” Jude begged. In the silence, without Mark near him, the desire to find Apollo and be close to him was stronger than ever. He was confused, no being in the world, in all of his history, had ever had such a pull on him. Not even his artist, his renaissance man that he loved more than any human could ever love another, had this effect on him.
“Let’s go outside to talk,” Alex said, casting a warning look down the hall toward Persephone’s room. Jude was curious what was going on in there, what Persephone knew and what sort of power or influence she had on people. Was she like her father? Did she have a power like that?
Jude followed Alex out onto the terrace, and as he sat, Alex shoved his untouched wine at him. “Drink that,” Alex said firmly. “It will dull your senses, and that’s what you need right now.”
Jude obeyed almost absently, taking down the red liquid in huge gulps. Alcohol affected him much the same as it did any other human, and being that he almost never imbibed, it went straight to his head. He felt the telltale burning sensation flood from his stomach down his limbs and into his face. He began to relax almost instantly, and he didn’t protest when Alex refilled his glass, though he hadn’t noticed the Norse god bring out the bottle with him.
“Okay, tell me,” Jude said, feeling his intense need to be near Apollo fade into a dull ache in the back of his mind. He tried to relive the feeling, the aching need, the absolute comfort surrounding him, a force he couldn’t see and didn’t understand. It was gone though, for the moment, dulled by the alcohol he was slowly consuming to try and stop himself from fleeing the apartment and giving up everything he was fighting for.
“Apollo is not a Greek,” Alex said slowly as he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “You don’t mind, do you? I hardly ever, but this situation calls for a couple of bad decisions.”
“Go ahead,” Jude said, staring down at his feet and barely registering what Alex was saying. He took another gulp of the warm liquid and he realized he could no longer feel the biting chill of the early morning wind.
Alex took a long pull from the cigarette and blew the smoke out lazily. They sat in a silence for a while, Jude drinking slowly on the second glass of wine while Alex stood near the railing of the terrace, staring at the immortal with wonder. “The last time I saw him do that to someone, that person hurled themselves out of a fifteenth story window.”
Jude looked up slowly, trying to take in what Alex was saying. “What is he, exactly? What did he do to me?”
“I’m not entirely sure. There are only about four of them in existence, and they all have different abilities. They’ve spawned with others, so half-breeds exist out there in non-corporeal form. I think some humans can lay claim to being of that line. They were never given a name, they came out of the portals squalling infants, confused and alone. Winged and grotesque to us, but they grew up beautiful and terrifying. Persephone doesn’t possess enough of her father’s power to make her a threat, but she could cause some trouble if she really wanted to.”
Jude gave a slow nod, his eyes fixed out on the city beyond. He could feel the wind whipping his hair, but he paid it no mind. “Am I poisoned?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Will I heal?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone like you put under his…spell…or whatever. All of the ones I’ve seen him use like that ended up committing suicide. You, however, don’t have that luxury.”
“So now what?”
“Now, I don’t know,” Alex said. “You’re compromised, Jude, and I am sorry about that. You can stay drunk, but unless you can fight off your urges,
eventually you’ll go to him. We’re going to have to hold you captive now. I am sorry about that.”
“I need him,” Jude blurted. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I feel like I need him,” he corrected.
“From what I’ve seen, it’s only going to get worse. I’m sorry.”
Jude took another drink of the wine and laid his head back against the top of the chair. “Does Nike have any idea what he’s capable of?”
Alex laughed and shook his head. “Oh no. Nike is young, newborn compared to most of us. She burst forth into her own form and led armies until she was forgotten. Apollo was old and ever present as she ruled the armies of the human world, and he loves her, but he never told her the truth about what he was, and she never figured it out. I don’t know why she can’t see it, and I don’t know why he loves her. He can’t seem to shake his desire to please her, and out of fear that she’ll resent him for his power, he lies.”
Jude felt sleepy suddenly, as the alcohol reached its peak. He stood up, stumbling a little and Alex took his arm as they went inside. Taking him to the back room, Alex put him to bed in his own room, to take control in case Jude woke and tried to flee. He realized he should be upset over the whole thing, being compromised, poisoned by the winged creature with just a kiss, but instead he was just tired, and felt more alone than ever.
Chapter Fourteen
Hades
Much like the human beings, I was born into the world naked, an infant squalling, confused and alone. I tumbled out of the portal useless, weak, and powerless. I looked like the gods, like the humans, except I had small, downy wings that seemed to shift in and out of form.
Also like the humans, I don’t remember my birth. My memory of the event consists of what the gods who found me had told me. I was fat, pink, screaming, and I wasn’t alone. There were four of us that tumbled out into existence, terrified and cold.
The gods who took us in had corporeal form, but to say that even I could process what they looked like would be a stretch. They were vast, beyond every living thing on Earth, and often they simply stopped existing. They were the earth, the sky, chaos and existence. They were breeding, though, and as I grew, the others grew with me.
Around this time, man was evolving into what he would eventually become: upright, sentient, strong beings. The men were desperate though, lost and confused, and as my brothers grew with me, they took it upon themselves to guide them.
Before I was consciously aware of it, my siblings had been schooled away by beings that I did not know, and would not come to meet for years. I was taken in with the gods who would become my brothers, Zeus and Poseidon as they were called by humans then, who worshiped them. Zeus and Posideon, who had sprung to life in their grown form, full of knowledge, but unwise and childlike.
By the time I reached an age of consciousness, I was surrounded by the ones you, Ben, know as the Greeks. Gods, the humans called us, laying sacrifices on altars built in our images. All of them had skill, particular abilities to further the humans along in their lives until they were snuffed out. I was perplexed by the men, their fragility, as I didn’t possess any of that.
However, I wasn’t like the gods, either, though I lived and walked among them. I was stronger, fiercer, my wings were expansive and none of them really looked like me at all. But they accepted me for what I was, though they weren’t very fond of whom I had become. I was close with Athena, my brother Zeus’s daughter, and she and I often found ourselves sitting high above the world of the humans, watching, listening, trying to understand them.
The others, they found me bizarre. I spent most of my days watching the humans, not as they lived, but as they died. Their sparks inside of their bodies growing brighter, exploding out of them while their corporeal form rotted into the earth. They rose from them, these sparks, wandering around, and eventually they disappeared, only to take on another form, repeating this cycle for generations and generations until one day, they just didn’t come back.
None of the others seemed to notice this, the cycle of the humans. They just couldn’t bring themselves to believe that the humans were more than just a body for abject worship of the gods. I wasn’t like them. I wanted to understand the cycle of birth and death, the power the human souls held, what happened once they stopped existing. My brothers and their children were petty. They mocked me because they didn’t understand me. I’d like to say I didn’t care, either, but I did.
Athena was kind to me, though, when the others were not, and although I felt useless and powerless, she helped me feel like I had some sort of purpose. I’m not sure how many eons I had been around when I first realized that what I saw was different, but it was Athena who stood as my confidant as I explained to her what I could see when I observed man.
“Why are you always watching them at the end of their existence?” she finally asked me.
It was late, the sky pitch black, no moon visible, and I was crouched up on a wall, my wings spread wide behind my back, though not visible to the human eye. Below was an old man, barely clothed, lying at the base of the wall. His breathing had slowed, and I knew he wasn’t long for the world in this form, and I could see the spark of his consciousness growing stronger and brighter.
“This isn’t the end of their existence,” I replied with a frown, though I didn’t look at her. My wings shivered a little and nearly knocked her from her perch beside me. She righted herself and stared, her dark brows furrowed in confusion.
“What do you mean? Hades, this is where they stop. They’re not like us. They expire and rot while we stay the same.”
I shook my head slowly as I watched the old man begin to go, his breathing even more labored, his heart struggling to beat a handful of times more. “They don’t stop. Can’t you see them? Is that why you all believe that you are so unlike them, so much better?” There was disdain in my voice, a sort of quiet contempt at the gods’ attitudes toward humans. They worshiped us because they didn’t know better, but even as we sat here, they were growing, shifting, becoming something that no longer needed what we had to offer them.
Athena shifted closer to me and peered down at the man, her head cocked to the side. I found it funny, how much the gods thought they were unlike the humans, yet they shared so many similarities with them. From the way they thought and acted to their own physical form. “I see a man dying,” she said. “He’s about to take his last breath. Then he will cease to exist.”
I let out a laugh, surprising her enough to make her jump and she glared at me. “You don’t see it, then. How strange. All this time I thought you could.”
“See what?” she demanded angrily.
“The spark. The consciousness, the very thing that makes them human and makes them who they are. It grows, it shines bright and strong as the human body expires. They walk the land much like we can, invisible to the human eye, moving amongst even you, undetected. Then, when it’s their time, they enter into a womb and are born again.”
She stared at me with wide eyes, her brown hair flowing into her face by the gentle breeze. She was confused, and I could see from her expression that she wasn’t entirely sure she believed me. “Hades…”
But nothing she said was registering. I had something they did not. I possessed something beyond what they could see or understand, and I started to laugh. I laughed, and it angered her and she gave me a shove. I fell down the wall, hitting the ground hard next to the old man just as his body expired.
The moment it did, the space around me erupted with his light, so brightly I had to shield my eyes. When I finally looked up, another man was standing in front of me. He had form, but he wasn’t like us, nor was he like the gods, or any human form. He smiled down at me and nodded as I climbed to my feet and shook myself off.
“You’re the one who watches us as we go,” he said, though his voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
“I’m called Hades.”
“We are nameless, connected, yet spread out
over the world.”
I wanted to say more, to question him, to engage him, but in the blink of an eye, he’d gone, and Athena was standing beside me. “Have you told Zeus about this?”
Glancing over at her, I gave a slight chuckle and shook my head. “Zeus? He understands very little. He sits on his mountain and passes out judgment on those he sees fit and he doesn’t understand you, let alone the humans.”
Athena knelt down beside the old man and put her hand on his forehead. “There’s nothing left in here.”
“He’s gone,” I confirmed.
“And you can really see them?” she asked, looking skeptical but curious all at the same time. “When their bodies have ceased, you still see them?”
I gave a slight shrug and looked around. All over, through the hills in the distant cities I could see the sparks of the dead, rising from their bodies, moving on to whatever was next for them. I could always see them, and I had always assumed that the gods who raised me could as well. “Yes.”
“Maybe that’s your gift, Hades,” she said slowly, looking me up and down. “Perhaps it’s your job to rule the dead, to guide them.”
I let out a small laugh and ruffled my wings, making a sound like the trees blowing. “They don’t need anyone to rule or guide them. They’re not so unlike us, Athena. Not so unlike you.”
Her face fell and she looked offended. “They are not like me. They are…they are cows. They are ants, Hades!”
I shook my head, confused about why the others were so afraid to think of the humans as more than cattle set on the earth to worship them. They were far younger, yes, but the humans were native here, born here, created here, their consciousness and soul tied to each other, to the earth itself. We were merely welcome invaders, aliens meant to help guide them, but what was the point if they no longer needed it?
They were used to it, yes, and dependent on it, but I was beginning to doubt that we were necessary any longer. Glancing back at Athena who was still fuming, I spread my wings and took off. I let my form grow invisible to the naked eye, knowing that not even the gods themselves could see me, though they could often sense me if I wasn’t careful.
Cry, Nike! (The Judas Curse) Page 12
