“This was your fault,” Apollo hissed, and Hades felt the power behind his words cut deep into him.
“She would have been destroyed if she’d tried to let anything through,” Hades said. “You and I know this. You and I both know she wouldn’t have accomplished anything, and she would have died in the process, along with many, many others.”
“I would have stopped her. I would have stopped her without killing her, but you left me… you left me no choice,” his voice broke in the end and he looked away, his light eyes settling on the body of Judas, frozen along with time. “I’m not finished with them, and I’m not finished with you. This… isn’t over.”
Hades was too old and too tired to be afraid of the threat. He and Apollo were evenly matched, and he knew that once the winged immortal let the pain heal, and felt the freedom of no longer being tied to a thing that existed so far beneath him, he would let it go. That didn’t stop him from being cautious though, but he didn’t protest when Apollo spread his wings and in seconds, disappeared.
There was a shift, and everything started up all at once. Bodies hit the ground, bones cracked, rocks shifted. The portal collapsed on itself, closing for good, taking with it one of the only escapes left for the beings not of this world. Hades winced at the sounds of flesh tearing, and ragged breathing as lungs were punctured and organs were crushed.
But, oddly, they all lived. One by one they regained consciousness. Mark first, torn up from the blast, but relatively unharmed as any immortal was. Judas next, having taken the least of the blast, and having been unconscious from the start of the battle, had rested in his dreams until the spell Nike sent over him had disintegrated.
Hades stepped into the shadow of the trees as Judas rose, looking around at the carnage, and one-by-one, laid hands on them all. Hades could feel the power, too, something ancient and powerful, something that shouldn’t be able to exist in a mortal without destroying them. He could feel it winding around their human bodies, repairing damage, restoring their souls, and tearing Judas inside bit by bit, but still he carried on.
Mark was supporting him by the end of it, and Hades decided that enough was enough. He’d done his job, fulfilled his promises, and he was free. He spread his wings and flapped them, uncaring if another being heard or saw him as he rose above the trees, into the starry sky and felt the cold wind whipping across his face. It was done, she was gone, and he was free.
Chapter Thirty-One
It felt like he’d been out for days when Ben finally regained consciousness. The first thing he noticed was the warmth of the fire, and the second was his utter lack of pain. He didn’t quite remember everything, but he remembered falling, and the ground beneath him as his body broke into pieces. He had to wonder, just for a moment, if maybe he had died.
It was the heat that brought him back to reality, and the sound of quiet whispering off to his right. His hand went to his face, inspecting the damage, but everything felt in place. He was covered in dirt, and his hair matted with drying blood, but he was okay. He took a deep breath as he shifted onto his side, cracking an eye open, and he realized his ribs didn’t hurt. He remembered falling against the rock, feeling them break, but as his hand pressed along his ribcage, they felt fine.
“What happened?” he asked, the question escaping his lips before he could stop it. In the dim firelight, he had no idea who was there, and how it had all… ended.
“Sit up slowly,” warned a voice, Mark, Ben recognized, and a gentle hand closed around his upper arm.
He managed to open the other eye, though it stung with dust and his body, though apparently healed, was still very sore. He grunted as Mark helped him shift into a seated position, and he squinted as the breeze blew a plume of smoke from the fire into his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Mark asked.
Ben looked over to see Mark well, a bit scratched up in the face and neck, but the last thing Ben remembered from Mark was the immortal falling to the ground under Nike’s spell. “I’m… yeah,” Ben said, giving a stiff nod and wincing at the ache in his neck. “You?”
“Considering I missed the entire thing, I’d say so,” Mark said, and his voice sounded bitter and sardonic. “I’m not sure how she managed to castrate us like that.”
“She picked up power from somewhere,” Ben said.
“From me,” came a second voice off to Ben’s far right, and he glanced over to see Jude sitting cross-legged near the flames, stoking it gently with a long stick. “When my powers healed your sister,” he went on, “it left something residual inside of her, just as it did you. Nike was able to tap into that once she was able to sync her own consciousness fully into the body. It’s another reason why letting any of them get ahold of you is so dangerous.”
A flash of Nike’s fallen body, of Abby’s form laying there with a bullet in the head, made Ben wince. He wiped at his face and wished desperately that they were anywhere near a place with a shower. “She’s dead.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “Her and Stella.”
“I shot her,” Ben said, and when Mark quirked a curious eyebrow, Ben clarified, “Stella. She… she told me she could take Nike out. That I had to… I had to shoot her. So I did.” Ben felt his voice break and he knew a flood of emotions and pain rested just below his mental dam. It was going to break soon, too, but Ben knew he had to keep it together long enough to clean up and get back home. He would fall apart, he owed himself that, but not just yet.
“Andrew’s neck was broken,” Jude said, his voice cutting through the silence of the group. “I couldn’t help him.”
Ben’s eyes lowered and he let out a shaking sigh. “And Alex?”
“Alive, but unconscious,” Jude said. “His consciousness is in there. Thor, I mean. He’s around, but he has to heal. I did what I could, but whatever power I use seems to affect them adversely.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Ben had to ask, because Alex had tried. He’d stood by Ben until Nike had taken him down.
“I believe so,” Judas said, and then he fell silent again.
Ben shifted on the ground, feeling like he could sleep for a week. His entire body ached, and as he draped his forearms over his knees, he saw a slight tremble in his hands. He took in several deep, slow breaths to keep himself calm.
“Olivia is alive as well, but she’s not…” Mark said, and shook his head. “She’s still infected.”
Ben felt fear rise up in him, fear because Olivia hadn’t asked for any of this. She’d just been some girl he met at a restaurant and shared a drink with. She had the misfortune of crossing his path, and for that, Alex had stolen her, and Nike had broken her. He rose and looked around, his eyes finally coming to rest on the young girl sitting at the base of one the trees. The trunk was thin, gnarled and crooked, and it looked like either Mark or Judas had tired her there.
In the dark, Ben could still see the glow in her eyes, shining over at him, and he could hear the murmurs as she trembled. He couldn’t begin to imagine how she felt, how alone and battered she was, and he felt something rise up in him, something powerful and encompassing.
He walked to her, the ground seeming to give way beneath his feet and he reached her in seconds. He sank down into the soft sand and let his hands reach out for her face. She whimpered, clearly terrified, but when she wasn’t hit, wasn’t hurt, she let out a trembling breath.
“Help me,” she begged.
Ben felt something shifting, tingling in his fingers, pouring out of him. It was reaching inside of her in a way he couldn’t explain and couldn’t control. He felt it tugging, pulling at her, and the same, familiar feeling he’d gotten when he read Mark’s story washed over him. It felt like he was being lifted, pulled inches above the ground, and he felt something stronger behind it, like rushing waters flowing between her face and his fingers.
Something snapped, he heard it audibly and she fell forward onto him. They tumbled backward, Olivia landing on his chest and he looked over her shoulder to see the tree branch h
ad given way. Her hands were still tied, crushed between her body and his, and she was tugged up as Mark and Judas raced over to see what happened.
Olivia gave a slight whimper and when she looked over at Ben, her eyes were still and dim. “What happened?”
Ben was shivering with the power as he felt it seeping out of him. He didn’t know where it was going, or how it was happened, but he knew she was okay. He knew it had broken, and she was going to be fine. “You were kidnapped,” Ben finally said.
Mark was fumbling with the bindings on her wrists, and Olivia took one look around the group and fell to her knees, sobbing. Ben snapped up, instantly into detective mode and he brushed the dirt from his back as he walked forward to where she’d collapsed.
“What do you remember?” he asked, going down onto one knee. It felt better, leaving everything that happened behind, pretending that he was just a cop on a job, and she was just a vic and the terror for her was over thanks to him. “Do you remember how you got here?”
She shook her head, her tangled hair falling into her dirty face. “No,” she sobbed. “The last thing I remember is… is…” she looked up at Ben with a frown. “Being near the beach? It’s all so foggy, I just…” she began to cry again and Mark put his arm around her gently.
“It’s going to be okay,” Mark said gently. “Police back-up are on their way. You’re alright.” Mark gave Ben a knowing nod, and Ben read that. He would have to call the police. Olivia had been in the hands of Nike and her group of gods for nearly five months, and she likely would have been reported missing. Ben had to call Albert and tell him that he’d stopped his sister, that it was over and there wouldn’t be any more death. No more patients missing from the hospitals later found dead in back alleys. It was finished, Abby was gone, and they could close the case.
Ben helped Olivia back to the fire after Jude carefully pulled Andrew’s broken body into the woods, out of her eye line. There wasn’t much they could do about Stella and Abby, but Olivia didn’t even look over that way as she hunkered near the fire and hugged her knees to her chest.
Rummaging through their bags, Ben found some water and then asked her to stay still as he walked into the dark area where Mark and Jude huddled. “You two shouldn’t be here when they arrive,” Ben warned in a low voice. “You want to keep anonymous and I support that, but you’ve already been on a suspect list.”
Mark gave a nod. “We’ll take Andrew’s body and bury it,” he replied.
Ben winced, but he realized that was best. Ben had been seen with the kid more than once, and the last thing he needed was a second investigation. Andrew would join the nameless missing persons, those drugged up street kids who never came back home, who never gave their parents peace, and eventually were mourned and let go. He hated himself a little bit for that, but at the moment, he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
He stayed by Olivia as Mark and Jude left, giving them thirty minutes to get as far away as they could. In the distance, he thought he could hear a car, and assumed they’d taken the one Alex had left behind. Alex, who was still unconscious, hadn’t moved or shifted, but Ben knew there wasn’t much he could do about him. He was a well-known man in his own right, and he would likely have a decent story for the cops when they showed.
Ben didn’t say much to Olivia after he hiked up the road a ways to get signal, and made the call. The only thing he could offer when he got back, a bit of cold comfort in that deep night, she accepted. They sat, Ben’s arm around her, and waited until they heard the sirens in the distance. It took the cops a little while to find them, it was nearly dawn when the first officer showed on scene. An ambulance followed shortly after, and they took Olivia and Alex after Ben refused treatment.
He wasn’t hurt, he said. He was fine, he just needed a shower. He wanted to wait for Albert to show up. He wanted to help with the crime scene. They let him, likely to humor him because Ben would later see his reflection and realize just how terrible he really looked.
They’d bagged up Stella and Abby’s bodies and took them away by the time Albert arrived. He and two other detectives from San Diego arrived in Sedona via private jet. Albert crossed the soft sand the moment he saw Ben, and pulled his detective into a firm embrace.
“You look like shit,” he said quietly.
Ben gave an embarrassed laugh and swiped his hand across his forehead. “Yeah, I feel like shit.”
“How much did you see?” Albert pulled Ben into the shade of a tree while some of the crime scene officers were marking the area with small, yellow tags.
Ben gave a sigh and a small shrug. “Everything. Not enough, but yeah man, I was here. For all of it.” Ben then launched into the events, the fabricated version. He’d gotten a call from his sister, she sounded terrified. She warned him that if he called the cops, a girl would die. Ben broke procedure and drove down to the desert and found her with Stella, the detective gone rogue. Stella had kidnapped the poor girl they’d taken to the hospital. Stella and Ben had a standoff, Stella killed Abby, and Ben pulled the trigger killing Stella. When he got to Olivia, she was unconscious, tied to a tree, but okay.
“I realize I’m going to have to be investigated, and frankly, that’s okay,” Ben said. “I could use the break.”
“Trust me, it’s not going to be a big deal,” Albert said.
“Oh it probably will be, but I’ve already surrendered my weapon to forensics and they’ll find the bullet in Stella that matches my gun. I’m not denying it was self-defense, but there’s been a laundry-list of shit over the last year that’s not going to look great. And you know what, I don’t… I don’t care. I just don’t.”
“The important thing is that it’s over,” Albert said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slender, white card with a magnetic strip on the back. “Head out to the road and have one of the guys take you to my hotel. Get a shower, get some food and a nap. We’ll be heading back to California tomorrow, once all of the paperwork is processed, and we can start closing this case.”
Ben wanted to argue. Part of him wanted to be charged with murder. He’d killed Stella to save a bunch of people, but that didn’t erase the fact that he’d killed her. It had been premeditated, he’d planned to do it all along. He was a killer, he was a monster, no better than Abby, because intentions be damned, he’d meant to take a life.
He was tired, though, too tired to argue, and he found himself marching along the barely-worn path to the main road where the highway had been blocked off, and a long line of black and whites lined the street. One of the Arizona officers flagged him down, and when Ben explained the situation, there was no hesitation. They rode, sirens off, but faster than necessary, back down the winding road to the adobe and turquoise colored city. He passed square-shaped buildings, a McDonalds with the golden arches painted a greenish blue, and lines of tourists in big, straw hats and sunglasses pointing at window after window declaring healing crystals, psychic fortunes and tarot readings.
They passed trailer parks where barefoot children in hemp clothes ran back and forth, and shopping centers where kids with bright green and red mohawks loitered out front, smoking and drinking from brown paper bags. It was the same everywhere they went, every city had those people, and with that thought in mind, he wasn’t so homesick by the time he stepped into the hotel room.
He hadn’t even noticed that he’d grabbed his bag, and was grateful for that after his shower when he had a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt to change into. His stomach was aching for food, but the very thought of eating made him nauseous. The flitting memories of the night before, of Nike and Stella, of Apollo taking the lead, of the others laying on the ground unable to move. It had all come down to him, like he knew it would, like he’d been terrified that it would, and he won. He stood his ground, he pulled the trigger and ended it.
A huge wave of nausea rocked him and Ben lay down face-first on the bed. It reminded him of the moment when he thought Abby had died in the explosion. He remembered layin
g on the hotel bed, feeling the ice-cold air from the A/C wall unit blasting over him, and he remembered how much it had hurt. How he thought that he would never make it out of there. How he thought nothing would ever be the same.
Well he’d been right, because nothing was, but this time he just felt finished. He felt accomplished. He felt guilty and inhuman, but he didn’t hate himself. It was over. His eyes slipped closed and though he was sure that he’d be wracked with nightmares of bullet wounds and dead bodies, he didn’t. He was enveloped by blackness, without a dream in his head. He went to sleep feeling powerful and complete, and that was all he truly needed right then.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mark wiped his hand across his brow. The sun was beating down through the trees in the deep Northern Arizona forests. With their speed and strength, Mark and Jude managed to find a place that hadn’t seen the footprint of a human in over a decade. The forest floor was soft, plush with rotting pine needles and rich green moss. It was wet, despite the lack of rains, and the ground shifted easily as they dug into the earth with their hands.
Mark stared down at the body after Jude tipped the man into the hole, and he felt a pang of grief. He was young, too young to have suffered so much. He remembered how often Ben campaigned for Andrew to just let the human go, to find a different host, to find a way to let this kid live. Mark understood it, but not once did he stand up for him, and now this kid was dead.
His parents would mourn him forever, if they cared. Mark couldn’t be sure anymore, how kids ended up like this, on drugs, alone on the streets. But someone would care, he was sure of that. It wasn’t fair, this unmarked grave where no one would come to visit, where he would decay into the earth and be forgotten. But then again, it also felt very fitting.
Jude began to push the dirt back over the hole and Mark helped, his arms aching despite his preternatural strength. They replaced the mud and rock, the moss and pine needles, and with their skill, not even the most trained eye would have notice the forest floor had ever been disturbed.
Cry, Nike! (The Judas Curse) Page 25
