by S W Clarke
“The one with purple hair is Hesperia, also known as sunset glow. She’s the softest and most pliant.”
“And that one?” I gestured to the red-headed dancer—the only one who didn’t seem to be wearing a wig.
“Erytheia, the red one. She’s vicious, one to be wary of.”
“How did you get past them?”
“I enlisted my handsomest friend to distract them.”
“Handsomer than you?” I blurted, then covered my mouth. The Ambrosia must have been doing its work, because I wouldn’t normally have said that. Fortunately, Justin was still distracted.
Hercules chuckled. “You flatter me. But yes, Theseus was handsomer, wiser and more intelligent. The Hesperides were in the palm of his hand almost as soon as he entered their line of vision.”
I finished my glass. I had gone through those eight ounces way too quickly. “That worked?”
“Oh yes. You see, they may be guardians, but they are forever young women. And as Cupid will tell you, the flesh always beckons.”
Our hostess appeared. “More Ambrosia?”
“Yes,” I said at once.
After three more top-ups on our drinks, I was ready to infiltrate. Actually, I managed to climb over our table and up onto the stage, where the Hesperides were on to their fourth song. When I pulled myself up next to them, they seamlessly incorporated me into their dance. The blue-haired one Hercules had called Aigle—dazzling light, my Ambrosia-addled brain recalled—took my hand in her soft fingers and pulled me right in.
And though I try to be humble, there are a few things encantados are really, really good at. One is seduction, and another is dancing. We tend to be shy, but pour a few dozen ounces of Ambrosia down our throats and that shyness falls away like a shawl.
I danced with those Hesperides like I had a dollar left to my name.
“Hey,” Justin called from the darkness beyond the twinkle lights, “that’s my girlfriend!”
“Lucky man,” I heard Hercules reply.
Sober me would have been bashful about overhearing that. Inebriated me let out a whoop and attempted to do the infinity sign gyration with my hips, and I found myself back-to-front with one of the Hesperides, whose body aligned with mine so that those “perfectly laden wineskins” pressed up beneath my shoulder blades as she helped me with the movement.
Suffice it to say, I was completely infatuated.
Near the end of the third song, one of the nymphs helped me toward the edge of the stage. “You’re very good,” she murmured in my ear, red hair pouring over her shoulder. Erytheia. One to be wary of.
I gazed at her pouting lower lip, wanting to suck on it like a lollipop. My eyes drifted to her chest, and a line from a movie my college roommate and I had watched floated into my mind. “How about them apples?”
The nymph’s eyes widened as she let me off the stage. “What did you say?”
I turned to repeat myself, but Justin, who’d been waiting to ferry me off, took hold of my hand. “Hinata, honey, let’s get you back to the booth.”
As we approached, Cupid slid over next to Hercules. “Way to embody passionate love, Hinata.”
I mimed a curtsey, nearly tripped. “We encantado live to please.” Justin helped me into the booth, and it was only when I sat that I realized I had gotten way, way too drunk to do what we had intended to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said as Justin slipped in next to me. “We were supposed to talk about Times Square.”
He passed me a glass of water. “Drink this first.”
Apparently I was way drunker than anyone else, because I seemed to be the only one who was having trouble drinking without spilling.
I’d finally managed to hold my glass steady at my mouth at the same time as a middle-aged woman stepped up to our booth. She was clad in dark robes, her aged face a floating mirage of wrinkles to my inebriated brain. I recognized her as one of those sham psychic readers, and she was staring at Hercules.
“You,” the woman said to him. Her voice sounded like a handful of gravel in a bag.
I was about to tell him to ignore her, but Hercules lowered his glass to the table. “You.”
↔
“Don’t buy what she’s selling,” I whispered to him. “She’ll try to read your palm, and—”
Hercules waved a dismissive hand through the air. “The Oracle of Delphi would never do such a thing. She is the world’s most revered seer.”
“Indeed, young Heracles.” Despite the music, this “oracle’s” voice issued with crystal clarity into my ears. “I never thought we would meet again.” Her eyes floated around to the rest of the party, then darted toward the stage, where I could have sworn Aigle, the blue-haired nymph, was keeping an eye on us as she danced.
Pythia’s gaze swept over the four of us. “I sense a strong spiritual presence among your group. Will your table join me in the reading room?”
Justin and I met eyes as Cupid and Hercules slid out of the booth and followed her. Justin shrugged at me. “The worst she can do is pull out the tarot cards and try to upsell us.”
His forehead was beaded with sweat, and even in my state, I had the sense to grab a napkin and dab at his skin. He was declining again. “Justin,” I began, but when his eyes flashed, I remembered his nickname. “Joe,” I corrected, “what if she’s really the Oracle of Delphi? She said one amongst us is fated to meet her.”
He glanced toward the stage. Up there, the Eurytheia and Aigle were pressing their bodies against one another, both their faces on … us. They were staring at us. “I don’t trust this. I don’t trust any of it. I think this ‘Pythia’ and the nymphs are in cahoots, and that ‘reading room’ is a trap.”
I downed my glass of water, trying to sober up as fast as possible. “Then we need to be careful, which means we need to stick with Hercules. You saw what happened when he punched you. His own nose started bleeding. Like he said: his fate is entwined with yours, which means if anything happens to him before he gets those apples, it happens to you, too.”
Justin hadn’t taken his eyes off the nymphs. “And they’re going to fight us for these apples? They weigh less than me put together. No … there’s something else going on here. I think we should just go straight to the resistance in Times Square.”
My mouth opened, but I didn’t answer. Hercules and Cupid had disappeared into the “reading room” with Pythia, and Justin and I were alone. We could walk out of this club right now, head to Times Square and try to find the resistance. We could run.
And it was because I believed everything Hercules had told us about his labors and their entwined fates that I wanted to run. We’d be safer with Hercules and Cupid, but every instinct in me leaned toward leaving this club behind. If I was honest, I liked to run. To disappear. But right now, I couldn’t even change my appearance. I had tried three times in the Gap bathroom to no effect.
There was also this: I was beginning to feel something for the two demigods. A kinship of sorts. And if we walked out right now, any trust we’d developed would be obliterated. We would be abandoning them.
Moreover, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t run from the things I had to face. The promise came on the heels of walking into the forests of Mont Royal to meet the stymphalian birds and the monster Empusa.
I told myself after we’d defeated the birds and Empusa that I would never turn tail when it mattered.
Easier said than done for an encantado.
I grabbed Justin’s water and took a long, long drink. It cleared my head enough that the decision came to me with perfect ease. “We can’t leave them.”
Justin squeezed my hand. “We can. We’re not responsible for them—just us.”
“They’re Others, Justin, and one of them saved our lives. The other one’s life force is bound up with yours. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.” I let out a long sigh. “But it’s more than that. If we don’t take care of the two Others with us tonight, how can we possibly go to the resistan
ce’s door?”
This seemed to hit him hard, because his eyes softened. “You’re right,” he whispered. “We have to bring them with us.”
“We have to bring them with us,” I repeated.
He squeezed my hand again before he lifted it, pressed his lips to my knuckles. “You’re a good person.”
My throat constricted, and I swallowed. “I mostly feel like a pretender.”
“It’s all in the intent, Hinata. Do you want to be good?”
I nodded.
“And you try to do good things?”
I nodded again.
“Then you’re a good person.”
Together, we slid out of the booth and passed along the stage toward the reading room. Justin pressed aside a black curtain, and we found Pythia flanked on either side by Hercules and Cupid, all sitting on a luxurious half-circle sofa under a pink light. The whole room, in fact, followed the shape of the sofa, and all of it was a soft pink.
“This is the champagne room,” I said. I knew enough to know that this was where the really dirty, VIP action happened.
Pythia waved a hand through the air. “The room is called by its purpose. Right now, it is the reading room.” She gestured to the open spots beside Hercules and Cupid. “Sit, please.”
Justin and I separated. I sat next to Hercules, and he next to Cupid.
Pythia’s hands folded in her lap. “Tell me, Heracles, why you have returned. Tell me all.”
And like a man on a therapy couch, Hercules told all. Waking up where his funeral pyre had burned, the certainty inside him of his labors come undone. How he walked along an endless black road—a highway, I realized—past flat fields and houses, through snow and wind. How he boarded a ship and crossed the ocean. Sixty-five days, and all the while he processed this new world and his place in it.
Aboard the ship, he sensed that someone had slain the stymphalian birds—the first of his undone labors. And that was when—here he pointed at Justin—“I determined I would find this one and kill him. He stole my labor from me.”
Justin lifted a hand to wave. “Hi. I’m that guy.”
Pythia regarded Justin at length. “But you did not kill him.”
“I did not.” Hercules clenched his hands. “For some reason, the murderous rage I had carried with me for so long simply … dissipated into an inexplicable loathing after I met him. I still do not understand it.”
Pythia’s eyes strayed to Cupid, who sat beside her. “You always were an imp.”
Cupid set an offended hand to his chest. “Moi? I did nothing to—”
Pythia raised a hand. “Enough. You know by know, Cupid of Eros, that I see the past with the same clarity as the future. You cannot hide such things from me.”
Cupid’s cheeks reddened. “I may have shot one arrow.”
Pythia gestured me forward. The sheer force of her presence brought me to a kneel in front of her, and she studied my face. Her eyes fluttered, closing and unclosing. “An Other,” she said. “One who possesses quite the story.”
“You sense it,” Cupid said.
“Oh yes. Yes, yes.” At once, her eyes opened, shifted to Justin. “Come.”
Justin seemed less convinced about kneeling in front of Pythia, but he did so. She did the same with him, and as her eyes fluttered, her white brows drew together. “Not human, not Other. One and both.” She paused. “You are deathly ill. How is it you kneel before me now?”
Justin scoffed. “I feel fine.”
“Determination and a strong will, it seems.” She shrugged, her eyes flitting between Justin and Hercules. “You have an identical injury.”
Hercules lowered his eyes. “It happened when he slew the stymphalian birds, Oracle.”
Justin went to stand, but Pythia pressed him back down. She withdrew one hand, set it on Hercules’s shoulder. Her nostrils flared, and her hands lifted abruptly from both men, as though she had touched a hot stove.
“Fools,” she whispered. “You fools have bound your fates.”
Chapter 13
I sat forward. “So it’s true?”
Pythia gathered her robes at her chest. “It’s as true as their swollen noses. By slaying the stymphalian birds, Heracles’s fate is now bound with Justin Truly’s—and Justin Truly’s fate is bound with Heracles’s. Such is the nature of the labors. Such is the laws of the gods. If one fails, the other dies.” She glanced at Justin. “And by the looks of him, your success is in doubt.”
“The gods are gone,” I said.
“But their laws remain,” she shot back.
“And can I not kill him and take the labor from him?” Hercules said.
I immediately stood up, standing between them, ready to claw Hercules’s eyes out if he made a move against Justin. But the great warrior made no move—he didn’t even look in our direction. He just stared up at Pythia. His question wasn’t a threat, it was curiosity. Information that he’d act on later … if need be.
But any chance of him attacking Justin later was dispelled with a simple shake of her head. “You had your chance, but you did not. Now it is too late.”
“Why?” Hercules asked.
“Because you care for her.” Pythia gestured to me. “And she loves him.”
Hercules nodded in understanding.
Heat rushed up my neck. I had gotten that last part loud and clear, but of their bound fates, I understood nothing. “What does that mean?”
“It means he had his shot, didn’t take it, and in the game of fate and destiny, won’t have another one,” Cupid said.
“What?” I said, fixing my fury on Cupid. “So now what? Their fates are intertwined. If this idiot gets himself killed, Justin goes, too.”
“Hey,” Cupid lifted his hands in defense. “Hate the game, not the playa.”
“Please never string those words together in that order ever again,” Justin said to Cupid.
“Ahh, Greeks and their friggin’ mythology. I miss the Amazon.” In my mind, I played back the moment when Justin had killed the birds. I was there. I had fed them the poisoned meat, even if I hadn’t brought them down with a bow and arrows. “Why not me? Why am I not bound to him, too? I helped to slay the creatures.”
“Not directly,” Justin said, rising and taking my hand in his. “It’ll be OK.”
I pulled away my hand. “Not true. I am the one responsible for their deaths. I killed the stymphalian birds, not Justin.”
“By your own hand?” Pythia asked.
“Yes, I laid a trap of poisoned meat.”
Her eyes flicked to Justin. “And you?”
“Arrows,” he said. “I shot them with arrows.”
“Well”—her hand floated through the air—“there you are. You are not the slayer, encantado.”
Hercules rose from his seat. “What is the condition of our binding, O great oracle?”
Pythia gazed up at him. “The completion of your labors. All of them.”
Cupid groaned. “The ancient rules were a real bitch.”
I stepped forward, one hand touching my chest. “I take responsibility.”
Pythia’s lip twitched up. “You love this Justin Truly. I can see it clearly. But the fates do not adhere to your desires—they cling only to truth and action. And the truth of this matter is that this man you love is the slayer. It is his fate, and his alone, that remains bound.”
“You’re wrong,” I growled. “I choose for my fate to be bound with his. It may not be some force of magic, but it’s just as strong.”
Hercules stepped close to me, set a hand over mine and lifted my palm to his chest. “Isabella, I swear to you I will not fail in my labors. I completed them once, and will do so again. Justin Truly will not die.”
From behind Hercules’s massive form, I heard Justin’s low voice. “You all talk about me like I’m not here.” He rose, and Hercules moved aside to allow a view of Justin, whose gaze moved from Pythia, to Cupid, to me and finally to Hercules. Fury raged inside him. “Maybe I won’t a
llow you to fail, Hercules. Maybe it’s your death I won’t allow. Maybe I’ll steal the apples from the Hesperians.”
A soft, gravelly chuckle emanated from the sofa. “You’ll steal the apples? Ah, humans and their hubris. You creatures, so low to the ground, have always lacked perspective.”
We all turned to Pythia, whose tiny smile had grown to a smirk. “And you, Heracles. You truly thought you traipse into our domain and simply”—she flicked her fingers through the air—“pluck the apples from Hera’s garden? You have always been a boisterous fool who can’t keep his mouth shut about his intentions.”
“I will complete this labor,” Hercules said. “Tell me where the apples are, Oracle.”
“Hidden,” Pythia spat. “From you.”
“I’ve only just arrived,” Hercules said. “How could you have possibly—“
“Known?” Pythia rose from the sofa, hands spreading. “I know all, son of Zeus. I see all, for I am the Oracle of Delphi. Two thousand years ago, it was I who instructed you to approach King Eurystheus. It was I who knew of your labors before they had even been given to you.” She stepped forward. “And it is I who knew you would arrive this evening and attempt to thieve from the nymphs. I knew you would allow yourself to be led into this room.”
“See,” Justin whispered to me, “a trap.”
GoneGodDamn, Justin had been right all along.
“You helped me long ago,” Hercules said. “Why not now?”
“Helped you?” Pythia laughed. “I could have sent you to any king, but I chose Eurystheus, a man known for his hardness. The labors he assigned you were the most dangerous and impossible in the ancient world.”
“You helped me,” Hercules repeated. “If the labors had been less than they were, I would never have atoned for the murder of my family. By the gods, I ask you to help me complete this labor now.”
