by Laura Wylde
For all their squabbling, Orson was more confident when he had Barnaby around. They were like the two sides to an issue, arguing it out until they reached an understanding. Who needed lawyers when you had Orson and Barnaby? They could argue the sun blue in the face, yet they worked in perfect synchrony.
I appraised the situation. “Do you see that creature isolated a bit from his brothers? Focus on him. I want you to hit him with the strongest volume of water you can muster, right in the face. I’ll go in for the clean-up.”
He did as he was told, directing a volume of spray so forceful, the demigod staggered back and groped blindly at the source. All I needed were those few seconds of confusion. I dove in, my wings snapping with sharp, titanium blades, a metal headdress wrapped over my skull, glittering with spikes. With swords extended, I cut a quick X through his body, the swirling blades on my wings scattering the pieces. Still, as his head dropped, he screeched terrifyingly and the pieces of his body jumped about, trying to fit back together.
By now, we had attracted the attention of the others. “Blasphemers! God killers!” They drew close, hissing. I readied myself, metal plates sharp and rippling.
They turned red, fiery eyes on me- their lips lifted into crooked snarls. I didn’t wait for them to say more. Brandishing my swords, bristling with knives, I sped toward them, slicing and hacking at these early design rejects for dinosaurs. I was tiring. If I cut off an arm or a leg, it grew back. If I sliced one into parts, it looked for its members. There was no blood. Just the horrible pieces wriggling across the ground and gluing themselves back together.
A spray of boiling water hit them, causing them to howl with pain and fury. They squirmed, the scattered body parts twisting with agony. Barnaby was back! I fought with renewed fever, but the gods just wouldn’t stay dead. They changed their tactics. They began humming deep in their throats. The body parts began dancing along the ground, swirling madly. The humming grew louder, and the pieces danced around each other, growing closer and closer. There was a moment of silence. With a rattle and clang, the pieces swirled into the air, popped loudly and the brothers were whole again.
A guy can only take slicing someone to pieces so many times before he gives it up. There are times when the whole resurrection thing seems to be a bad idea, and this was one of them. I watched the brothers gathering their powers in visible balls of energy, getting ready to obliterate me, when an arrow shot through the air and landed squarely in a monstrous chest. He dropped to the ground with a thud. The demigod dropped dead. He was really dead this time. He didn’t move. He was stiff as concrete. He began to shrivel the way the viper had, dissolving from the inside out, leaving nothing except a few flakes of skin.
A few seconds were suspended in time. A few dazzling seconds of complete shock. A baffling moment in which everyone searched for the archer and realized it was Irene. She held Apollo’s bow straight and true in front of her. The brothers howled with rage, “you killed him!”
The battle began in earnest. Now that we knew they could be killed we threw all we had into keeping them distracted while Irene readied the next shot. Orson had been telling the truth. Irene was a descendent of Apollo. We stuck to the plan Orson laid out, falling back inch by inch, foot by foot until we were near Hyperion’s cave. Two more brothers had died in the pursuit. They were down to three. It wasn’t as hard keeping them back now. They were more cautious. They didn’t notice how far back Irene had slipped and probably didn’t care. Their intent was to take us down first and worry about the god-killer later.
My blades had all dulled during the battle and I didn’t have the time or energy to sharpen them. The blows pummeled against my armor with no weapons for fighting back except the blunt clash of my swords. Barnaby dropped down beside me. “Drop back. Get behind the rest of the team. Stay with Irene.”
I wasn’t going to argue the matter. I felt like a VW that had just been mauled by a Hummer. I fell back to the cleared area in front of the hole leading to the Tartarus gate. Irene was already there, the centaur, Astir, prancing on all four paws, his bow drawn and ready to defend her. She had slung Apollo’s bow over her back, the bow string separating her breasts into two pert, spandex covered cones, and tucking it at the side.
She had drawn a tape recorder from a leather pouch. She turned the recorder on to play and slipped it in the pouch. I hoped this critical part of Orson’s information was true. He had been correct so far, but if we didn’t find the four sisters, we would never be able to defeat Hyperion. Killing the brothers was not enough. We did not need a god destroying half of earth’s population looking for the descendants of Zeus.
They were struggling desperately to hold off the remaining brothers while Irene made her stopover at the scene of the crime. Even Orson was having a hard time remaining hydrated and Barnaby’s fireballs were steadily getting smaller. The archers, though, kept right on shooting their arrows and because the demigods were afraid one might come from Apollo’s bow, turned back each time they were met with a volley. And there was Heath. Every time he stomped his foot, the mountains trembled, and rocks rattled down the hillside. He had buried the demigods twice, which was beginning to annoy them.
It was strange out here, when I think about this as where I had met her, and all that has happened since then. There wasn’t even a scrap of cloth or a crumpled sandwich bag to prove just two weeks ago there had been a busy archeological team about to make a world-shattering discovery.
It’s difficult for me to talk about my emotions. They coil inside of me like a trap waiting to spring. They are the heat of the night, the cliff’s edge. I’ve got to be the tough guy. I’ve seen a lot of tough things, although what those monsters did to those poor tourists is near the top of the gag list. It was obscene and for Irene to see it made me want to move heaven and earth to make her unsee it. Such eyes, so exquisitely blue and crystal-clear, were never meant to see such defiling.
Yet here she was, the only thing that stood between us and destruction. Her music was exquisite. It created the perfect balance with her ferocious battle skills. She was exquisite. Sure, she seduced me. She seduced all of us but she’s a modern woman. She doesn’t see that as a problem, and we were seduced willingly.
I listened to the music, shivering inside, trying to remain cool and collected on the outside. There is something all dragons have in common. They like fine things. Not just gold and precious jewels, but exquisite art, music and dance. They also fall in love with beautiful women as I think I’ve mentioned before. Irene was beautiful.
It was easy to imagine her as Artemis, goddess of the hunt and wild animals. The sun glistened on her blue-black hair. She sat proudly upright, ready to draw her bow in case of trouble, music tinkling from the leather pouch by her side.
The sounds of the battle drew closer, Astir poised motionlessly, Irene waited, the open bag in her hand. I sharpened my swords quietly.
I heard a rustle from the cave and spread my wings automatically, a sword gripped in each clawed hand. A sprinkling of powder, like multi-colored fairy dust appeared at the cave entrance. Four ethereal, shimmering figures appeared. They were porcelain goddesses come to life. They were completely naked other than a wreath of flowers that wound around their hips. They undulated while my eyes bugged out. Their hands fluttered like birds. The glittering powder swirled around them.
They spun and swirled. They dipped and turned. They fluttered around Irene’s head, sprinkling it with golden pollen. They kissed her, one after another, then slipped inside the leather bag.
I felt bad. These were the goddesses that had given humankind music, dance and art. I felt as though we were betraying them, stuffing them into a bag and sending them off to Tartarus, but there weren’t any better solutions. They were gods. They would have to sort it out.
I think she felt as badly as I did. She had a sad look on her face. and she caressed the pouch as though it contained something very precious and meaningful. It did, but we couldn’t afford to be sentimental. “
Are you ready to finish them off?” I asked.
The softness of the instant gave with to a harsh determination. She flashed her eyes, steel blue with anger. “You bet I am.”
We were just in time. The brothers were growing bold. Noticing that none of the arrow piercings had been deadly, they were calling our bluff. They had come out of hiding, their advance announced by the lightening bolts shooting from their fingertips.
Irene wasted no time. “Whack!” An arrow shot from her bow with the speed of a bullet, lodging in the neck of one of the brothers. “Whack!” Another one whizzed by, finding its target straight through the heart. There was only one brother left. Swinging about wildly, he howled. The howl was answered back by a clap of thunder. A lightening storm gathered around him, crackling in a black, swirling wind. Irene raised her bow again and aimed. The lightening crackled with terrifying bolts that reached into the sky. She shot the arrow shot through the storm. With an audible thud, it embedded in his back. His cry was shriek that ended with a death rattle as the demigod collapsed in a heap. The wind calmed and the lightening ended. The last of the six brothers was dead.
The team of warriors sat heavily wherever they could find a place to sit and began examining their wounds. None of the injuries were serious, primarily the type of bruises and sprains you would receive rolling down Mt. Everest in a cardboard box. Barnaby was nursing his ribs. I suspect that sling shot into neverland did a little damage.
Astir had sheathed his bow and was standing with his chest proudly thrown out while Irene brushed the sweat away from his flanks. I could see why the others were jealous, but I trusted Irene. I really did. I was beginning to wonder about Astir, though.
Barnaby limped over, disrupting Astir’s grooming. “It’s time. Carry her as fast as you can go to the water’s edge. Hyperion will come here first. He wants his daughters.”
He looked at Irene intently. “Are you up to this?”
She drew herself up rigidly. Her eyes were like blue, coldly burning suns. “The people…”
“We’ll take care of them,” he promised. “As long as they are alive, we have specialists that can heal them.”
Her face was full of anger, not horror and grief. “They suffered so much…”
“We have specialists that can take away the memory of their suffering.”
Heath, the sentimental fool, was wiping at his face and leaning against my neck. I gave him a shove. “Don’t start blubbering on me. We’ve got work to do.”
Irene
I never really believed in the whole god DNA thing. Heath calls them God strands. They aren’t technically part of the DNA, but the strands are there if you know how to look for them. Whatever. That was before I held the bow Damian gave me. It almost leaped into my hands. I could hear it sing a thin, strumming music. I knew I couldn’t fail.
I’ve seen a lot of amazing artifacts, but nothing like this instrument Damian handed to me. It appeared to be made of ivory. It was bone-white, smooth and rigid. The dragons were not able to draw it all, yet when I pulled back the string, it was supple and light.
The bow woke something. Nothing seemed strange anymore. In fact, what seemed stranger was the world that still didn’t believe in monsters, magic and gods. They are all around us. We just don’t see them. We shut our eyes and we don’t see them.
I did wonder how centaurs could be prancing around without anyone noticing. I finally asked one of them, a handsome fellow with dreadlocks curling down his back, thick brows and a long, pointed chin. He explained that they can change their appearance to look like normal horses. He did it for me once. He looked very wild, like an Arabian that spent its time thundering through the desert. He made a beautiful horse and a very sexy centaur. If he could have turned into a full man like the dragons, they might have had some competition. Or maybe not. I was falling very much in love with all four dragons.
They were my destiny. I realize that now. It’s why I was so attracted to them from the moment I laid eyes on them. I didn’t believe in destiny until I believed in god strands. Damian knew it. The electrical pulse jumped from my hand to his for a second and the doubts and regrets he felt for handing me his prized treasure, melted away in astonishment. He got down on one knee, which was weird. I told him to get up, then saw that the others were also kneeling. “Oh, come on,” I told them. “I’m not exactly the Princess Bride or the Virgin Huntress. I’m just me, remember? The one who sleeps in your bed and can make a kickass omelet.”
That brought them around enough to get a grip. We had a job to do. It wasn’t going to get done in a demonstration of slavish devotion, even if it was every girl’s dream come true. Dragons and centaurs kneeling in front of me? How much hotter can it get?
I slung the quiver of arrows over my back and hitched myself into the saddle. Like a horse, Astir pawed at the ground with his four hooves, but his chest was thrown back as he held his own bow ready in his two hands. Centaurs have larger upper chests than the average human, with huge, rolling biceps and massive arm. It’s very impressive. I almost wanted to pat his neck, but it seemed inappropriate. Instead, I raised my gloved fist and shouted, “by the light of Apollo!”
A shout went up through the entire group. “By Apollo!” The centaurs reared up on their hindlegs, pawing the air before charging forward. My knees dug into Astir’s sides and I held the saddle horn with one hand, clutched the bow with the other, and leaned low, my heart drumming. Dust and rocks churned behind them and the landscape billowed under the galloping feet.
A shrill caw shattered the morning, followed by a great burst of flapping wings. Even above the thundering hooves, I could hear the dragons swooping through the air, the shadow of their giant wings stretching dozens of feet across. I looked up as they passed us, climbing higher into the sky. Orson and Barnaby were in the lead. Orson was so blue-white - he looked like a shiny missile sizzling upward, with Barnaby the flame shooting behind it.
In dragon-form, Damian looks the most like a warrior. His hide is a sheath of black metal, his nose like a beak, his teeth razor sharp. He is fearful. He is dazzling. He is a finely tuned, living weapon.
When they talk about weak links, this team didn’t really have any. For all their quarrels and insubordination, they fitted together perfectly. Damian lagged, watching the backs of the slender water dragon and volatile fire dragon. He was the cutting edge that swooped in violently, fiercely around a volley of water and fire.
Heath’s massive wings flapped just ahead of us. Heath was the dragon version of the Incredible Hulk. He was a stealth bomber swooping in below the radar range. He was so large, his shadow kept us out of the sun. We blazed across the desert just inside the shadow that never left us, poised and ready for battle.
When we reached the base of the mountains, the centaurs were sweaty, but not winded, thanks to their shaded ride. They dried themselves with towels and I helped groom their lathering flanks. Heath flew on ahead to be with his mates.
If I think too hard about it, none of it makes sense. I wasn’t myself that day. Once we began the rugged ascent toward Zeus’ cave, I was suddenly aware of every rustle in the grass, every chirping bird, every shift and change in the wind. I could smell my enemy. The brothers filled my senses, a twisted mass of hatred and cruelty. I could hear the dragons’ thoughts. They believed they could hide their secrets, but I saw the images of the massacred village flash through their minds and I saw the fury in their eyes.
I could hear the battle long before we reached the cave entrance. I drew an arrow from the quiver and laid it across my bow. I urged Astir to the front, riding with my bow drawn taut, looking past the point of the arrow, the other centaurs galloping to keep up. I was powerful. For that day, I was invincible. I knew it.
I looked neither to the right nor the left as I barrowed into the clearing, but straight ahead, my eyes transfixed on the arrow head’s point. The dragons were attacking in a fury of steel and fire, shuddering earth and blasting water. I readied my bow and took air, holding
back for a clear shot. Orson knocked one backwards with the cannon force of six tons of hydraulic pressure. The beast scrambled for footing and shook its dull, deformed head in confusion. I pulled back the bow another two inches and released the string. It flew straight as a bullet, burying half-way up its shaft as it pierced his heart.
It was almost too easy. I killed three, one right after another without a thought, a real Robin Hood, before remembering I had to draw them back toward Hyperion’s cave. If I killed them too quickly, I would not have time to call up the sisters before Hyperion showed. I wanted to finish them off right there. I fell back, letting the team whittle and hack at the self-repairing monstrosities.
It was then that I saw what they had done to the tourists. I saw them just beyond the unearthly battle stitched together with unearthly horror, forming a circle. Their breasts had been exposed, men and women alike. Each breast was pierced with a thick, metal ring attached to a chain that looped all the way around the circle.
It burned in my mind. Earth and fire mingled with blood and steel. The terrified tourist watched on with eyes that could not close. I had to leave them there. I had no choice. I choked back the venom bubbling into my throat, my hatred for these contortions, these mockeries of life. The victims would be avenged. I vowed this to myself silently. And they would be rescued. By the will of Apollo, I would make sure of it.
Everything exactly as Orson said it would, except he didn’t tell me how enthralling, how graceful the sisters would be. They shimmered, only half-solid, and came out of the cave dancing. They skipped through the air, swirling above my head, like young girls dancing around a maypole. They bent and touched me. They caressed my face with their barely definable hands. The touch was like a warm, gentle breeze. I felt loved. I felt wanted. I didn’t notice I was still holding open the bag. When I did, I wanted to throw it aside, but I was too late. They began to shrink. As the shrank, they swirled in smaller and smaller circles. They became solider and heavier. One by one they turned to stone and dropped into the pouch. I felt like a traitor. They trusted me to set them free and they were only bait for Hyperion.
