by S W Clarke
“He flits from person to person and place to place, shooting them with arrows,” Justin offered.
“That’s right,” Cupid said, turning back around. “Good word, by the way … ‘flit.’ ”
Hercules leaned toward me and whispered, “If he gets moody, the best thing to do is talk about love.”
I swear, hearing that man’s voice in my ear—feeling his hot breath on my skin—was all the incentive I needed to talk about love. But I shied away from Hercules; I loved Justin, and no super-strong, super-charming demigod would change that.
Right? Right.
I cleared my throat. “I would love to grab lunch. How does everyone feel about that? Does anyone else love lunch?”
Justin met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “We need to keep moving, Isa.”
“We can’t move if we don’t eat.”
Cupid pointed at a passing sign. “Could do Dunkin for a quick bite. I recommend the ham-and-cheese croisswich.”
“Crosswich?” Justin and I said together.
Cupid sighed. “Canadians.”
I raised a finger. “I’m actually Brazilian.”
“I crave a good ham,” Hercules boomed.
“All right,” Justin conceded. I was surprised by how quickly he’d warmed to the idea. “But only the drive-thru.”
That was the thing about Hercules, I was realizing: you found yourself wanting to please him, to do as he asked. I had noticed Justin eyeing Hercules in the rearview mirror, and not with envy. Well, not just with envy.
The truth was, Hercules was a whole lotta man. And you’d have to be blind not to appreciate that.
That was why, twenty minutes later, Justin’s Mustang was filled with the scent of fast food and crinkling wrappers. And for a little while, the pure pleasure of fat and cheese and sodium helped take the edge off.
It helped me put aside the fact that the World Army had sent an odontotyrannos after us. That they were diverting a large portion of their resources to recovering the biologist with the keys to their genetics program, and the super soldier they’d manufactured to stand at the front lines of their war, destroying Others and all of Otherkind. And that if we were caught, my definition of “suffering” would be redefined.
For twenty minutes, we were just two college students and two demigods stuffing our faces as we drove to NYC.
“This delicacy is beyond anything I have tasted,” Hercules pronounced. He’d swallowed his whole sandwich in a single bite and now sucked the salt off each finger. “Except perhaps Ambrosia. Cupid, how long until we arrive at the Big Apple?”
“Under an hour until we hit the traffic,” Cupid said with a full mouth. “And then we’ll spend the rest of our mortal lives in it.”
I leaned forward. “You’ve been in the city?”
“Unfortunately. That was where I fell when the gods left. I hated all the noise and commotion at first, which was why I came all the way out here and found Jimmy’s auto-shop.” His voice went low and gravelly as he turned to stare at me in the gap between the seat and headrest. “But just when I thought I was out, they sucked me back in.”
I stared back at him. “Who’s they?”
“Really? Al Pacino? Godfather III?” Cupid said.
I gave him a blank look.
“The movie?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really into movies. Now a good book, preferably a romance, and you have me.”
“Girl, you are wasting your mortality. Are you sure you want to be with this chick?” he muttered before his gaze strayed to Justin, who shrugged with a wry smile.
“I, too, know nothing of this Godfather,” Hercules interjected. “Now the All-Father, Odin, he was one to reckon with.”
“Oh brother,” Cupid groaned. “I’ve hitched a ride with charlatans.”
“Anywho, you were saying?” I said to Cupid. “New York City?”
“Ahh, yes.” Cupid nodded. “Loved the lights, the bustle. So many people looking for love. I’ve never shot more arrows in my life than the years I spent in New York City.”
“Then what were you doing at a gas station in Vermont, holding a big stuffed sheep?”
Cupid’s mouth dropped. “I forgot Baa Baa. He was the perfect pillow.” Then he sighed and rolled his eyes at me. “Anyway, like I said: I was looking for you.”
He was looking for me because of my love story. I still couldn’t get that part through my head. I had spent five hundred years mostly invisible to the world, and now the World Army and the three Cupids were searching for me. As much as I enjoyed attention from men, I was a monogamous gal in all respects; unless I was dancing, I preferred the attention of one person at a time.
All of this love story business was making me itch with discomfort, so I changed the subject. “How safe is it in the city?”
Cupid smirked, turned back around. “However unsafe it is, do you have a choice?”
“No.” I sat back in my seat. “No, we don’t.”
↔
As promised, the city rose to view within the hour, skyscrapers meeting the low clouds and disappearing beyond. It put me in mind of Rio, except …
“Ugh,” Cupid said as we came to a barricade of brake lights, “see what I mean?”
The road widened to six lanes and slowed to a standstill all at the same time, and Justin spent the next hour cursing every time he had to put the gearstick in neutral and then into first just to move us a few feet.
To his credit, we didn’t stall once. But I observed him closely; I couldn’t tell if his agitation stemmed from the traffic or his sickness returning. His episodes had been occurring closer and closer together, for longer and longer. It reminded me of my own mortality, and the invisible crown of good health we immortals used to wear. We were like most human teenagers, in that sense, unaware of how blessed we were with a fully functioning body and a lack of chronic pain.
Healthiness—you don’t notice it until you or someone you love loses it.
I stared at Justin’s lush black hair—what we would have to shave off—and wondered if he still considered it all worth it. The jimmying with his insides, the resulting superhuman reflexes and strength. I still didn’t know the details of what had been done to him, since he was mum about most of it. But I knew it had been extensive and painful. It pained him even now.
From somewhere came a long blast on a car horn. Someone else beeped in response.
I flinched as a low voice resonated in my ear. “You love him.” Hercules’s face was conspiratorially close to mine.
“How did you …?” I began.
“I’ve been married.” A bolt of pain crossed his face, and he fingered a little blue vial set around his neck that I hadn’t noticed until now. “Once, I had six children. Anyone who’s loved can recognize it.”
“Well, you’re right,” I said. Justin couldn’t hear us, or if he could, he didn’t acknowledge our conversation. “I do love him.”
“Good,” Hercules said. “Because he’s very sick. He needs you.”
My throat closed. Another honk sounded, and I leaned forward. “Does that happen a lot?” I asked Cupid.
“Oh, you’ll grow to love it. Either that, or it’ll kill you.” Ahead, the highway sloped down toward a tunnel. Cupid pointed. “That’s the entrance to the city.”
“How long is the tunnel?” Hercules asked.
“Let me put it this way,” Cupid said, “get your vitamin D now, kiddos, because it’ll be a long time before we see the sun again.”
I glanced around us; we were surrounded by harried New Yorkers, yellow taxis, and a whole lot of bored and agitated faces. Nothing menacing. So why did I feel so uncomfortable?
“Is this the only option?” I asked.
“Now it is,” Cupid said. “Unless you want to get out and walk.”
“I love a good walk.” Hercules patted one of his bare, bulging quads. It gleamed like someone had shaved it and rubbed coconut oil in. “Cupid, do you remember our walk from Epirus to Thessaly?�
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Cupid chuckled. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into that.”
I finally got it: these two were buddies. One of the original bromances. And it gave me a small pleasure in my discomfort, to know that these two had found each other after two thousand years.
“As I recall,” Hercules was saying, “you rode your puff for the last hundred kilometers.”
Cupid swatted at him. “Slander. Don’t listen to him.”
By increments we passed into the tunnel, the sun replaced by yellow lights set at intervals along the tunnel walls. It darkened, and behind us, the outside world was reduced to a shrinking rectangle of light.
“And if I recall, Herc,” Cupid said, “you got us lost.”
“I most certainly did not.”
“Yep, you did.” Cupid turned around to look at me. “We had reached this weird-looking rock that kind of looked like an eye.”
“Ras El-Ainn,” Hercules said.
“Whatever. Not the point. The point was that rock was one of a kind. Kind of like Sauron’s eye, but without all the fire, magic and orcs.”
“No, nothing like Sauron’s eye,” Justin chuckled. So did I—it was good to hear him laugh.
“Again—whatever. Then Herc was all like—that-a-way, so we walked and walked ... For two days we walked, only to wind up right back at that rock.”
“Lies,” Hercules chuckled.
“And why did we do a big circle? Because Herc’s right leg is stronger than his left. And without some point, some map, we made this huge circle.”
“Very well, little one … I concede part of our trip was one large circle. But why was it my fault? How do we know it was not you and your tiny little legs that didn’t lead us astray?”
“Because I was on my puff.”
The car erupted in laughter.
“So you admit it?” Hercules said between a snorting laugh that sounded more like a donkey braying than a manly-man laughing.
“Better to be lazy and right than not lazy and wrong.”
“True. But you forget that I, too, was right.”
“How so, Herc? How does you wasting two days and leading us in a circle make you right?”
“Because sometimes we need to wander aimlessly and find ourselves back where we began to truly understand where we must go.”
I don’t know if it was the gravitas with which he said it, or me being tired, but there was real wisdom in those words, and I found myself wondering where I needed to go to find where I must go.
But before I could let those words sink in, Cupid piped up. “There’s already one self-help guru for Others named Aldie. A dark elf, way handsomer than you. I suggest you stick to hitting things.”
Hercules shot his balled-up wrapper at Cupid’s head, and Cupid responded by pelting him with a sauce packet. They’d lived through a lot, the two of them. They were true friends having a road trip.
The two of them seemed entirely unconcerned, which I guess made sense: they’d lived through a lot, and Cupid was a New Yorker. But neither grasped the magnitude of what was after us—who was after us. How could they? They hadn’t encountered the World Army. They hadn’t met Serena Russo, studied her research, seen the devastation she’d wrought in Montreal.
Innocent people had died because of her. Probably more than I knew.
Justin found my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Isa, are you all right?”
He always seemed to sense when I was uncomfortable. Right now, he’d probably be reaching for my hand if he could.
“I’m fine ...” I began, trailing off as my eyes focused through the windshield. “Who is that?”
In the distance, a man was walking down the dotted centerline between cars, staring into them as he did so. He came to a red sedan, leaned over and knocked on the window.
“Looks like a panhandler,” Cupid said. “Anyone got two bucks?”
“Lock the doors,” I said.
“Isa, it’s probably just—“ Justin began.
“Lock the doors,” I repeated. In the past two weeks, I’d learned that a panhandler was never a panhandler, and an unlocked door should always be locked.
Justin pressed the button, and all four locks engaged at once. Beside me, Hercules’s massive form shifted to peer between the seats. “He’s looking for someone.”
Ahead, the man was dressed in oversized slacks and what used to be fine leather shoes, his wispy hair combed to his head, but he looked more like the approximation of a homeless person than an actual one. There was something about him that was too … refined. A panhandler’s never a panhandler. And he was only about three cars away now.
“They know,” I said. “Somehow, they know.” I unbuckled my seatbelt, twisted around in the car and began searching the headrests, feeling around.
“Who knows what?” Cupid asked.
“She senses something amiss,” Hercules said. “And she’s right. I sense it, too.”
Justin turned, one hand set on the center console. “What are you doing, Isa?”
“I’m looking.”
“For what?”
I leaned down, my fingers searching under Cupid’s seat. To Justin’s credit, he kept his car immaculate; I felt nothing except clean carpet, one of the wrappers Hercules had thrown, and …
I froze as my hand settled over a tiny disc, small as a quarter, that shouldn’t have been there.
A knock sounded on Justin’s window, and I jerked up with the disc in my hand.
Outside, the panhandler stared in at us.
Chapter 8
I recognized those gray eyes, but from where? I studied him as he studied us, and then he straightened and removed something from his coat pocket.
“Don’t roll down the window,” I said, grabbing the disc from the floor of Justin’s car.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Justin said. His hand rested over the gearstick, but there was nowhere he could take us.
Finally, my brain clicked. I had passed him many times in McGill’s biology lab. A few times he’d been leaving Serena Russo’s office. She had called out to him as he was exiting, a name that sprang into my head with dizzying clarity.
“It’s Kilby,” I said. “They traced us.”
“How?” Justin said.
“With this.” I held the coin-sized disc out to him between the seats.
Justin stared at it. “A tracer.”
“I take it Kilby isn’t a friendly,” Cupid said.
“He’s with Serena Russo,” I said, scanning left and right. How would we get out of this? “He’s with the World Army.”
“Does this awkwardly dressed man pose a danger to you?” Hercules asked. His fingers closed over the end of his massive club, which was longer than my thigh.
I stared at it, and then my eyes lifted to Hercules. He was bound to us—indebted, he’d said. The man had leveled an odontotyrannos with two blows. I could only imagine what he would do to Kilby’s head.
A plan unspooled in my mind. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, he is.”
“Don’t worry,” Hercules said, pushing on Justin’s seat. “I shall dispatch him. Allow me out of the vessel.” He kept trying, but he didn’t know how to get out of the two-door sports car.
“Hercules,” I said, “is this your first time inside a car?”
“Hey,” Justin shot over his shoulder as Hercules rocked his seat, “cool it, Terminator. I have to let you out, OK?”
In the passenger seat, Cupid had unslung his bow from around his body. “I’ll back you up, Herc.”
I turned to Hercules. “When Justin lets you out, can you just … gently knock the awkwardly dressed man out? But don’t give him a concussion. No brain damage.”
Hercules paused to stare at me. “You want me to hurt him.”
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“But only a little,” he said.
“Yes. Just a temporary hurt, nothing permanent.”
He gave a single nod.
Outside, Kilby had passed arou
nd the hood of the car and was kneeling in front. What the hell was that about?
“Whatever he’s doing, it’s not good,” Cupid said.
Justin spun to face me, and for the first time since Hercules had shown up, he grinned. “So we’re doing this?”
And by this, I knew he meant our escape-the-car strategy, which we’d hashed out specifically for situations like this. In our time on the run, we had figured out a lot of strategies for different situations. “We’re doing this,” I said.
“Doing what?” Cupid broke in.
“Abandoning the car,” I said. It was a potential reality Justin and I had discussed before, and while he hadn’t been at all keen on the idea of leaving his baby behind, he had accepted that there might come a time when he’d have to. And, in this standstill traffic with Kilby standing in front of our car, we didn’t have much choice. We had to run.
“Are you nuts?!” Cupid threw his hands out. “This is a prime piece.”
“Don’t I know it,” Justin murmured. “Trust me, I’m going to cry a little tonight when no one’s looking.”
“We don’t have time to discuss it.” I pointed at Kilby. “Because like you said, whatever he’s doing, it’s not good.”
“The lady has a point,” Hercules said.
“Fine,” Cupid sulked. “Let’s do it.”
Justin leaned back into his seat and pulled a latch, and the trunk popped open. “I hate sitting around anyway.”
Meanwhile, I reached over Cupid and pulled the lever on his seat to pop it forward, to which the little demigod let out a curse. “Sorry!” I said as I grabbed the lever on the passenger-side door, waiting for Justin to do the same on his side.
“Ah,” Hercules observed, “miraculous technology.”
“All right, everybody,” Justin said. “We’re all exiting the vehicle. Now.”
When he opened his door, I threw open the other door, and Cupid flew out right away. I followed, rising up and out of the Mustang. All at once we were on the asphalt, the scent of fumes and idling engines all around us. In the dark, the headlights from opposing traffic shone at us like a thousand tiny stars.
Justin and Hercules came out on the other side. From his kneel in the front of the car, Kilby’s face lifted—and lifted—high and higher, his mouth opening as Hercules stepped toward him with his club held before him. From the other side came Cupid, drawing his bow.
