The Power

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  The world was tinted in white.

  Fear flickered over the Titan’s face. Oh yeah, he knew what he was facing. He knew the end was coming for him, the true end, and there was no escaping it, because I was the beginning and I was the end.

  “No,” I said, in a deep and heavy voice I did not recognize as my own. “I am done with this.”

  I summoned akasha, but this time it was different. The aether sang in my veins and flooded my body. The whitish-tinted amber circled down my arm, crackling and spitting into the air as it powered down my arm.

  Atlas tried to move, but it was too late.

  Akasha slammed into the Titan, hitting him in the chest, and it kept coming as I prowled forward, keeping up with the intensity, surrounding him with its power. Wisps of smoke hit the air and tiny bursts of light shot out, hitting the shades. The light swallowed and destroyed them.

  Atlas was backing away, but one leg gave out and then the other. He hit the floor on his knees, and I smiled as I placed my palm on his face. My chest expanded as I tapped into what was in the Titan, drawing every ounce of aether out of him, and what was inside me became a white-hot fire.

  The Power retracted.

  I jerked my hand back and the whitish-amber light retreated.

  Atlas stared up at me, his mouth gaping open. A darkish, shimmery blue blood leaked from his eyes. Underneath his skin, a network of veins became visible, lit from within. The light seeped out, washing over his entire body.

  I laughed.

  A loud popping sound, like bombs exploding at the same time, echoed through the room, and when the light faded Atlas was nothing more than a scorched spot on the stone floor. I stared down at the spot for several moments until something behind me whimpered.

  Slowly, I turned around. There were people on the floor. They were the things that were withering. Things. Insignificant. Moaning. Trying to sit up. Annoying.

  I walked toward them, each step purposeful. Something moved to the right of me. I looked. It was big and reaching out to me. Hercules. Gods, I did not like him.

  Lifting my hand, I sent him flying backward. My attention zeroed on the dark-haired pure-blood with silvery eyes. He was shielding someone. Blood trickled from his nose.

  Oh, yeah, I really did not like him. Couldn’t quite grasp why, but I knew I’d be thoroughly pleased if I made him go splat. I lifted my hand.

  “Seth! No,” a female shouted. The voice was familiar. It did something to me. Distracted me. “Seth!”

  A stinging sensation shot across my left forearm, and I spun around, lifting my arm as I summoned akasha. It coiled, rushing down my arm.

  “Seth,” she whispered.

  Her voice stopped me, reached in and shook me. The whitish-amber light fizzled out. I looked down and saw blue eyes—Josie. My Josie. And then I saw what she held in her hand. That soft hand trembled, but it was not empty. She clutched the blade. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My legs gave out below me, and Josie dropped the stake. I heard it clang off the floor and then I heard nothing.

  There was nothing.

  Chapter 30

  Josie

  Dropping the blade, I shot forward and tried to stop Seth’s fall. I circled my arms around his waist, but he was too heavy. The toxin had hit him hard, and I couldn’t hold his weight. Not when standing and forcing my way to him had leached what remaining energy I had.

  I crumpled along with him, hitting the floor on my hip. Pain flared, but I ignored it as Seth’s head cracked off the stone floor.

  Reaching deep down, I scrabbled up his side and rolled him onto his back. His eyes were closed, dark lashes fanning his golden cheeks. With a shaking hand, I felt his neck for a pulse and then swallowed a cry of relief as I felt it steady under my fingers.

  I had no idea what the Pegasus blood would do to him. It could kill mortals. Immobilize Titans and demigods, but the Apollyon? No one had really said what it would do to him.

  He was alive.

  Out cold, but alive.

  Pushing myself up, I sat down and scanned the room. My gaze landed on the blade first. You will need the toxin, but not for whom you expect. Medusa’s words haunted me. She had known. That woman had known.

  And I’d seen the Titan Atlas before.

  He’d been in my nightmares. Over and over, he’d been there. That had been him. How? I didn’t understand, but he had.

  Numb, I lifted my gaze. Deacon was struggling to his feet, along with Luke. Both looked like they’d been blown through a wall. A fine trickle of blood leaked out of Deacon’s nose, but he appeared otherwise uninjured. The bruises on Luke’s jaw were from fighting Atlas. Hercules was sitting up, his expression absolutely dumbfounded.

  “How did he do that?” Alex stumbled to her feet with Aiden’s aid, swaying to one side. Both looked okay. “How did he do that?”

  I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know how Seth had tapped into all of us without even touching us.

  My gaze finally fell on Solos. “Oh gods,” I whispered, quickly averting my gaze. What Atlas had whispered in my dream the night before had also been right. Dig a grave.

  He was . . . I closed my eyes, biting down on my lower lip until I tasted blood. Pain opened in my chest, overshadowing the physical aches that bit and chewed at me.

  Solos was gone.

  Him falling had tipped Seth over an edge, a very precarious edge I hadn’t even realized he’d been teetering on this . . . this entire time.

  I was numb, sitting between where Seth had fallen and where Solos lay. This scent of death was different than what followed the shades. This . . . this was heavier, more real.

  “Solos,” Deacon spoke softly. He’d dropped to his knees beside him. “Oh man. Oh gods, this is . . .” He reached out, but drew his hands back. “This isn’t right.”

  It was never right.

  Alex shuffled over to Deacon and her face crumpled a second before she smacked her hands over her cheeks. She turned slightly, her shoulders tensing, and then, after a handful of moments, she appeared to pull it together. When she turned back around, her expression was devoid of emotion.

  “We need to bury him with coins,” she whispered. “We need to give him that so he can cross over on the ferry at Styx. Now.”

  “Agreed.” Aiden knelt by Solos, and I saw his fingers move over Solos’s face. Oh God, he was closing his eyes. “Gable?”

  I’d forgotten all about him.

  He crept out from behind the stairs. He hadn’t made it farther before everything went crazy. There was no color in his face as he stared at Solos. “We . . . we have a lot of property. There are . . . um, shovels out in the shed, by the pool.”

  Aiden turned to his brother and Luke. “Go with him. I need you guys to make sure he stays safe.”

  For once, Deacon didn’t argue. With one last look at Solos, he rose and joined Gable. They followed the shaken man toward the kitchen. At the last second, Deacon veered off and hurried into the living room, returning seconds later with a blanket.

  “I can’t leave him there like that,” he explained as he walked up to where Solos lay. Carefully, he draped the blanket over him, covering Solos’s face and chest, along with most of his legs.

  Then Deacon was gone.

  “We need to figure out what to do with Seth.” Aiden dragged a hand under his bloodied lip.

  I stilled, looking up at him.

  “He pulled aether from us,” Hercules said, sounding like sandpaper had gotten inside his throat. “I was not told he could do that. No one should be able to do that.”

  I looked back at Seth. The glyphs had now faded, seeping into his skin. His eyes hadn’t been amber when he’d faced me. Had the others seen that? They’d been all white, like a god’s.

  “He didn’t just stop Atlas.” Aiden clutched a dagger as he neared us. “He . . . he took out Atlas. He killed a Titan.”

  Hercules shook his head back and forth. “That’s not possible.”

  “Looks like it to me.” Al
ex rubbed at her hip and chest as she walked over to the spot where Atlas had stood. The stone was charred. “Looks real possible.”

  “That means . . .” Aiden trailed off.

  “Means what?” I asked, placing my hands on the stone. I pushed up, climbing to my feet. “What does it mean?”

  “Only the demigods can kill the Titans, right?” Aiden walked around to stand behind Seth’s head. I tensed. “Or entomb them, but no one else except . . .” He didn’t finish again, almost like he didn’t want to give word to what he feared.

  “The only thing that could take out a Titan would be the same thing that could take out one of the Olympians.” Alex’s face paled. “That would be the God Killer.”

  Air punched out of my lungs. What had Medusa said? “But that’s not possible. You were the God Killer before—well, before you ended up in the Underworld. He’s not the God Killer.”

  Her gaze met mine. “He shouldn’t be, but what he just did was the same thing I did to Ares.”

  “But you’re not connected to him, are you?” I reasoned, refusing to believe where everyone was heading with this, refusing to believe that I hadn’t heeded a warning given to me.

  “Nope.” She lifted her hands. “I am not Team Seth right now.”

  I frowned.

  “Something hardcore just went down,” she continued, gesturing at Seth. “But if he has somehow become the God Killer, tripped up some sort of celestial rule, then all the Olympians would be here, right? They showed up immediately after I killed Ares. They wasted no time.”

  “That’s because they knew you were on their side. They knew you were aware of what most likely would happen. They didn’t think you were insane. They fully believe Seth is insane.” Hercules took a step back. “If he’s the God Killer, they aren’t coming anywhere near him. Who would? He could take them out.”

  “Damn,” spat Aiden.

  “And why are we even here? He can take us out with the snap of his finger,” the demigod continued. “Fuck this. We need to blow this joint and—”

  “He’s not going to take us out.” My hands formed fists. “Stop overreacting.”

  “You don’t know that,” Hercules replied icily. “None of us do. I say we take one of these nifty daggers and shove in through his—”

  “You do that and it will be the last thing you do without being tied up by your own intestines,” I warned, a hundred percent serious. “You are not going to harm him.”

  Herc blinked. “Hell. That’s excessive.”

  “Stabbing him isn’t?” I shot back.

  Alex stopped several feet from Seth and didn’t go any closer. “Dammit. They were . . . they were concerned for a reason.”

  “What?” I asked, not following.

  “Hades warned us before we came up. The Olympians were worried about Seth’s . . . his stability. He’d done something before we left Tartarus that had them flipping out,” Alex explained, and she winced when she looked over at me. “We didn’t say anything, because the Olympians sometimes freak out when someone sneezes too loudly. They wanted us to keep an eye on him.”

  “That’s . . .” I shook my head. “That’s wrong.”

  Alex looked at me and didn’t respond, but her expression said it all. It was a cross between pity and understanding.

  I opened my mouth to tell them that they should’ve said something, but then I realized what Seth could’ve done that had them freaking out. “He fed off me.”

  That got everyone’s attention.

  “It was an accident,” I explained, my gaze falling once again to where Solos lay. “Things got out of control and he fed on me, stopping before I even knew what was happening. It was right before you guys came here. I didn’t know until . . . an hour ago.” Had it only been an hour? Felt like days. “It wasn’t on purpose.” I felt the need to reiterate that. “Doesn’t change what he did, but I think . . . I know he’s been struggling.”

  “Damn,” Aiden muttered. It looked like he wanted to say more, but changed his mind. “Right now we need to do something with Seth.” Aiden was moving to Seth’s head. “Before he wakes up.”

  “I have . . . there’s a panic room in the basement.” Gable had returned with the boys. I hadn’t even heard them. “It’s not a hundred percent ready, but it’s got walls and a reinforced steel door that will lock.”

  “That’ll work for now.” Aiden turned to Hercules. “Grab his feet.”

  “What about Solos?” Deacon’s red-rimmed eyes flicked over to the blanket-shrouded figure. “We need to bury him.”

  “We will.” Luke wrapped an arm around his neck. “But we’ve got to secure Seth first.”

  I stepped forward. “Wait. This doesn’t feel right.”

  “I get that it doesn’t, especially to you, but we have to do this.” Alex looked me straight in the eye. “We really don’t know what we’re going to be facing when he wakes up, and I hope—no, I pray—that he’s fine, but we can’t take that risk.”

  I didn’t like it.

  But I did understand it. Pressing my lips together, I nodded curtly. Everything that happened over that next hour was surreal. I felt oddly detached from it all.

  Gable led us down to a semi-finished basement. He’d walked to what appeared to be a normal wall, but hit his hand on the center. A section of the wall separated, swinging open, revealing a room . . . with another room inside of it.

  “My mom’s husband put a mattress in here to see if it will fit,” Gable explained as Seth was carried over and placed on a thin mattress. “I guess they plan on doing this room up also. Bathroom isn’t finished, though and . . . none of that matters.”

  A hand folded around mine, startling me. Luke held my hand. “Come with me.”

  I dug my feet in.

  “I know it’s hard.” His voice was low. “But we’ve got to leave him here, at least for right now.”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” I told him. “I should be here when he wakes up.”

  “And if he wakes up not in the right mind, and he does something to accidentally hurt you, what do you think that’ll do to him?” Luke reasoned. “It’ll make everything worse.”

  I wasn’t sure how anything could get worse at this point, but Luke was right. I let him lead me out of the panic room and up the stairs. I tried not to hear the door shutting behind them.

  And then we all went outside, this time with Aiden and Hercules carrying Solos’s body to a patch of land south of the landscaped pool. The shovels weren’t used. They weren’t even necessary, because Alex tapped into the earth element and a deep . . . a deep grave was formed. I realized that Aiden had sent Gable out of the room on purpose. Probably to clear his head, make him feel useful. Smart move.

  Solos was placed in the grave and two coins were placed over his eyes. I’d never seen anything like it.

  And I didn’t cry.

  Even though I really wanted to.

  The messy ball of emotion pinging around my chest might have been relieved that way, but all I could do was stand there as they moved the dirt back onto the grave.

  “He will be awarded a warrior’s welcome in Tartarus,” Aiden said solemnly, his silver eyes oddly bright. “He will want for nothing.”

  Staying outside wasn’t wise. Neither was going inside, but what other options did we have at this point? Once inside the kitchen, Gable turned off the oven, but there would be no getting rid of that burnt smell. Everyone split before I even realized what was happening, and I was the last to drag myself upstairs. Halfway down the hall, I heard voices—Alex and Aiden.

  I should’ve kept going, but that’s not what I did. Creeping to the door, I stopped when I heard them talking in hushed voices.

  “I’m going to call Marcus,” I heard Alex say.

  “And I can summon Apollo and see if we can get Hephaestus to finish a cage,” Herc said, sounding surprisingly level-headed. He’d been all business since the Titan had showed up. “That will hold him.”

  “It held me for a w
hile,” Alex spoke. “But I wasn’t the God Killer at the time. And I think we all need to accept the fact that Seth has somehow become just that.”