Antigoddess

by Kendare Blake

  “Did I? I could have stayed. I could’ve fought her in the rubble. I might have lost, been beaten to paste, but I could’ve taken part of her with me.” Cassandra watched as Odysseus touched Athena’s arm. The way his fingers lingered, and the concern in his eyes. He loved her. Athena didn’t touch him back, didn’t put her hand over his. She didn’t even look in his direction.

  She’s a virgin goddess. Men aren’t supposed to fall in love with her. She’ll break him, and she won’t care.

  Hermes pressed to the front. “It doesn’t have to be enough. It doesn’t have to be all. She might not have gotten to the others yet!” He looked to Athena for permission. He seemed ready to force wings through his back, as long as there was a chance. “I could still get there. I could save them.”

  “If they listened to us, they won’t be where you left them,” said Athena. “They’ll have moved on. And we don’t know how much time Cassandra’s vision gives us. It might not give us any.”

  “If I get there too late, then I’m too late. I’ll come back.”

  It was a lie, there for everyone to see. He cared about those witches. If he arrived too late, he’d do something stupid and heroic. He’d take on Hera alone, and she would forcibly remove his spine. Cassandra wanted to ease his conscience. He seemed so guilty, and so earnest. She’d thought she’d hate them all, but she couldn’t hate him. Not with so much desperation in his eyes to save someone he cared for.

  Athena shook her head, once.

  “We can’t risk it. I’m sorry.”

  “Athena—”

  “We have to stick together now, brother.”

  Cassandra watched Hermes slowly sink back into himself, into his prominent bones and hollow cheeks. The light that had briefly flickered went out. Athena should have let him go. But no. The way Athena looked at him, and the sad fury in her face told the whole story. She wants to let him go, but he’s too weak. He’d never win.

  “This wasn’t your failure,” Athena said. “It wasn’t the way you hid them, or how fast you ran.”

  “Right,” Hermes muttered.

  The TV beside them was still on, and Athena struck the button with the side of her hand, hard enough to knock it back against the wall. In her frustration, she seemed to swell three sizes, and the space in the motel room grew small.

  Hermes glanced at Cassandra.

  “What use is she? If she doesn’t even give us time? What use are visions that you can’t change?”

  Athena peered at her. “Do you feel any different now? Now that you remember your old life?”

  “No.” Cassandra thought a moment. “The vision was a little strange, but they’ve been evolving since … I guess since you started looking for me. But I don’t feel any different.”

  “Useless,” Hermes muttered.

  “Hey,” said Aidan. “She’d be more than happy to be useless. Why don’t you face Hera and tell her so? Then you can leave us alone.”

  Voices broke out, the voices of gods, and they forgot themselves. The sound of their argument rose over everything else. It thundered through walls and rang out across the nearly empty parking lot. Odysseus couldn’t do anything to shut them up, but he did try, with an elbow in each of their chests.

  Cassandra and Athena looked at each other. The time for bargaining had come and gone. So had the time for laying blame.

  “Quiet,” said Athena, and the room fell silent. Cassandra stared into the flowered wallpaper. Outside, the city of Kincade went about its business in cars and shops. Meals were made and eaten. TVs played too loud. Lights turned on and off. Just like every other Kincade evening.

  This was her life. Her city. And they meant it to be their battleground, just like it was before.

  “What good will running do?” Athena asked. “How far can we go before Hera burns up all the land behind us? We’d never be safe.” She looked at Cassandra. “They’d never be safe. We’d run until Hermes’ body eats itself from the inside out and I’m too stuffed with feathers to breathe. Our fall would be pathetic. Unworthy of an epithet.”

  “So what?” Hermes shrugged. “Let it be. After we’re dead, it won’t matter anyway.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Athena said softly. “And besides, what about them?” She nodded toward Cassandra and looked at the door. Cassandra edged into her view, like she could shield Andie and Henry from her thoughts, but Athena had already looked back at her brothers. “Will you let them try to stop Hera on their own?” No one had an answer. They stared at their feet.

  “If you want to know the truth, giving up would be easy. As easy and comfortable as falling into a bed. Stopping these feathers … Saving my life doesn’t seem any more possible than it is important.”

  “If it’s not important,” Cassandra said, “if you don’t care, then why are you here? What are you doing?”

  Athena looked at her, and for the first time Cassandra saw less a goddess and more a girl. A girl who had fought a hard battle and still come up cornered. Athena smiled, a small smile, through closed lips.

  “There isn’t much to me anymore that isn’t push me and I push back. There hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but there it is. And besides, I can’t do nothing, when they stand here looking, waiting for me to say what to do.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “We have to make a stand,” she said.

  “What? Here?” Hermes sounded horrified.

  “Kincade is as good a place as any for the world to end.”

  Hermes shook his head. “It most certainly is not. Kincade is a place of unclean motel rooms and a mall that’s several dozen stores too small. I vote with Apollo. Running. Running I’m good at. We could run halfway around the world, to places worth seeing once more before dying: London, Paris, Florence. Maybe all the way to fricking Delphi.”

  “More than that,” Aidan said. “Kincade isn’t the best place to face an enemy. It’s settled into a valley in foothills. Not exactly the high ground. You should know that. You should seek advantage.”

  Cassandra swallowed. He talked so casually of war and strategy.

  “Putting it off will only make us weaker.” Athena looked at Cassandra. “And I think she’s the only advantage we’re going to get.”

  “What is it that you think I am?” Cassandra asked.

  “You’re a weapon.”

  Hermes crossed his arms.

  “But what sort of weapon? An amped-up prophetess? What use is someone who tells you the boat is sinking when you’re already bailing it out?”

  “I don’t know, Hermes. But Hera is afraid we’ll use her. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t go to so much trouble. I thought, maybe, after I made you remember…” She shook her head. “All I know for sure is she’s a link to the Moirae.”

  “The Moirae? You mean the Fates?” Cassandra looked at Aidan. “Is that what my visions are? A link to Fate?”

  Aidan shrugged. “It’s what we’ve always thought. But the Fates don’t talk to us.”

  “Except through me.”

  No one responded. They’d already moved past it to the matter at hand, thinking of strategies and contingencies, and not one of them looked like they expected to win.

  “I suppose I should watch the waterways,” said Hermes. “Maybe check the river. That’s where Poseidon would come from. Or Nereids, if he sends them on ahead.”

  Athena nodded like she was relieved. “I half expected you to refuse, or to go spend one last season in Paris or Rome.”

  “Nah. I’ll stay.” When he breathed, the skin over his ribs stretched and the bone of his sternum was visible. “I wouldn’t have been able to run for that much longer anyway.”

  Athena put a hand on Hermes’ shoulder. Cassandra watched the bones and tendons shift underneath his shirt. Most of the muscle had been eaten away.

  Athena squeezed. “Not everything’s hopeless. If we throw Hera down, you might heal and grow strong again. I might escape this cage of feathers.” She look
ed at Aidan.

  “I don’t think so.” He moved nearer to Cassandra. “If we stay here, and fight her … You saw what she did to those witches in Chicago. Do you even know what she wants? Is she trying to kill her or trying to use her?”

  “Does it matter?” Athena asked, and glanced at Cassandra. Cassandra didn’t reply, but had to admit that one didn’t seem more desirable than the other.

  “If we stay here, she could level this place.”

  “If you leave, she might level it anyway, looking for you.”

  Level it. Cassandra held her breath. Her hometown. The house she grew up in, and her family inside it. Everything up until then she’d managed to swallow, even the idea that she was once again just a tool, a toy for immortals to play with. The longer she looked at Athena, the more she disliked her. That reasonable face. That voice, so steady and unruffled. For her, leading battles was a matter of course. Never mind that innocent people would die. Never mind that a whole town might get caught in their stupid cross fire.

  She thought of the freshman with the mop of brown hair who had watched her call the coin. She thought of Sam, unsinkable in his stocking cap, and sweet, sort of slutty Megan in her Bo Peep costume. Every one of them had lives, and plans, going on that very minute. And none of them had any idea it was days away from being ruined. That the gods’ mess was going to ruin it all.

  “We can’t do this. Not here.” She looked at Aidan. “Our friends are here.”

  “It’ll come to this eventually,” Athena said. “You know I’m right. We live or they do.”

  “We live or they do,” Cassandra said. “Us or them. But it isn’t us that you mean. It’s you. Just you, and yours. We die so you can live, just like always.”

  “That’s not true, Cassandra,” said Odysseus.

  “You’re blind,” she growled. “And you.” She turned on Athena. “I’m not helping you. Not here. Maybe not anywhere. I’m getting out of here. And you’d better find a way to tell Hera I’m gone.” The bruises on her throat cut inside like broken glass when she spoke. She had to turn away quickly to hide the tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

  “Wait.” Athena reached for Cassandra’s arm. The goddess’s touch sickened her, ignited a heat deep inside her head and in her chest. Her arm trembled. She wanted them out, all of them; she wanted to break them down with her bare hands. The goddess’s grip was iron. Athena had forgotten everything about being soft, or compassionate, or human, if she’d ever known in the first place. Without thinking, Cassandra drew back her free hand and slapped Athena hard across the face. In the half second it took for Athena to recover from the surprise, Aidan got between them.

  “I’m not going to hurt her.” Athena stood still, her hand against her face.

  “Of course you’re not. You need me.”

  Odysseus narrowed his eyes from where he stood at Athena’s shoulder. “Don’t be so sure. Might be just as smart to get rid of you. At least then Hera couldn’t use you either. Level the field a bit.”

  Cassandra felt the muscles in Aidan’s arm tighten. Odysseus was lucky Athena stood in his way.

  A half-hearted, hurried knock broke the tension just before the door swung open and Andie and Henry burst halfway through, blinking in the sudden change of light from the dark parking lot. Cassandra looked from them to Athena and back again. They’d sworn they would stay in the car.

  “You were taking so long.” Andie fidgeted. The way she looked at Athena and Hermes, Cassandra knew her friend could sense something was off. Even if she hadn’t known there were gods in town, she would’ve sensed it—that something was unnatural about these strangers.

  Andie stared wide-eyed at Athena’s slightly shocked face. Her gaze dragged slowly down and then back up without blinking, like she could discover some secret behind the human costume.

  “She looks less human than Aidan. Even with those tattoos. Why is she looking at us like that?”

  “Leave them alone,” Cassandra warned.

  “But you told them already,” Athena said. “Hector and Andromache. They look so much the same. Untamed. And he’s still so tall and broad-shouldered. He could help, if we woke them up.”

  “Don’t touch them. Aidan, don’t let her touch them.”

  Odysseus gestured to Henry. “They’ll kill him too, if they find him. They’re after Achilles. That means they’ll kill anyone who could possibly stand against him, and that means Hector.”

  “What are you talking about? Who are you?” Henry asked. Andie backed into him to get him to shut up.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Aidan stepped just to the center. “That you should just get it over with. Wrap your hands around their throats and let Odysseus bring them back. Then you’d have two soldiers instead of a pile of questions. But it should be up to them. Let them decide. That’s justice.”

  “Since when are you the authority on justice?”

  Athena shifted her weight, her eyes on the lines of Henry’s muscles. Cassandra nudged Aidan’s side, and he stepped farther forward.

  “Aren’t you tired of using them? Aren’t you tired of moving them around and spending their lives like pocket change? You’re a monster, but you’re also a god. Don’t you have any grace?”

  Athena’s eyes snapped to his. “It’s not like we have the luxury of time. It’s a hard choice, but this is why I lead. No one else has the stomach to do the unpleasant things that sometimes need doing.”

  Odysseus cleared his throat. “Do they really need doing? Look at him.” He nodded toward Henry. “You already killed him once.”

  Cassandra’s eyes snapped to Athena. Odysseus had caught her off guard. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Take them,” Athena said finally.

  “Come on.” Cassandra shoved them out the door like children. Aidan followed behind, but she still glanced once over her shoulder, half convinced that she’d see Athena coming after them with hooked fingers.

  * * *

  Athena listened to the car peel out of the parking lot. She thought of the boy behind the wheel. Hector. Who was now called Henry. When she’d stared at him, he’d stared back with strong brown eyes. Shell-shocked for sure, but he didn’t run. He never ran. That’s why it had been so easy to trick him onto the battlefield to face Achilles.

  I lied to him. I put on the disguise of an ally and said he was blessed. That he wouldn’t fight alone. So he came and stood face-to-face with a madman.

  She still remembered the look on his face when he realized he’d been tricked. And later, the look in his eyes when Achilles drove the spear into his chest.

  Odysseus was right. She’d killed him as surely as if she’d thrust the spear in herself. Back then, Andromache’s screaming could barely compete with her own laughter.

  “Well, now what?” Hermes threw up his hands and collapsed on the bed with a bounce.

  “Athena.” Odysseus moved in front of her.

  “What?”

  “Your face.” He stared at her cheek, which still tingled where Cassandra had slapped her.

  Tingling. Almost burning. But she’s just a human.

  She twisted to look into the mirror. There was a red handprint painted across her cheek.

  “Why are you smiling?” Odysseus asked.

  Athena studied the impossible wound. As she watched, it tingled and burned deeper.

  “Because even though Cassandra doesn’t feel any different”—she pressed a cool palm to her face—“she is different. More than a prophet. A weapon.”

  18

  FATE’S A BITCH

  The scent of granite hung on the air. Whether it was real or just in her imagination, Athena didn’t know. The sleet had stopped, leaving the world wet and black in the absence of the sun. She inhaled; the scent faded. It probably hadn’t been there in the first place. The air was completely still, no breeze to carry news, or to dry the slushy puddles in the street.

  It didn’t matter. She stood at the tree line along the highway where she
and Odysseus had walked into Kincade. This was the way that Hera would come. She would follow them in, rising up behind them like some gruesome specter. The move had bravado. It had menace. Doing it any other way wouldn’t even cross her mind.

  The city of Kincade was cut through by one large river and five tributaries. There was also a lake, Lake Reilly, medium-sized but quite deep, and fed into by the river.

  Athena’s eyes scanned the horizon. The tributaries were no problem; they were too small for any water-dwelling bastard to move through that quickly. But the river and the lake were perfect hiding places for Poseidon. As for Aphrodite, well, they’d probably leave the sniveling brat back home. Or they would, if they were smart.

  She heard footsteps coming cautiously up from behind. Odysseus. She’d only been gone from the motel for twenty minutes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my bearings,” she replied without turning. “Preparing for battle. Doing what I do.”

  He came up to her shoulder and tried to rubberneck around the front of her to see her cheek.

  “Quit it.” She jerked away. “It’s gone.”

  “But what was it?”

  “An injury put on me by a mortal. And if she can do it to me, she can do it to the others.”

  “But it was just a handprint. I don’t even think she knew what she was doing. It could be nothing.”

  But it wasn’t nothing. It was something. Only she had no idea what, and it seemed Cassandra wouldn’t have much time to figure it out.

  Oh, Aunt Demeter. I wish I hadn’t respected your wishes. I wish I’d pulled you out of the sand and rolled you up. I could use you. I could really use you.

  Odysseus’ hands thrust into his jeans pockets against the chill and his neck turtled slightly. She didn’t want to look at him, so she kept on studying the terrain.

  “Kincade’s not exactly the high ground, I suppose,” Odysseus mumbled.

  “Nowhere is the high ground where Hera is concerned.”

  He leaned against her and heat moved into her from his shoulder. Why did he have to be so damned comforting? What was it about him that could make her so soft? Maybe it had always been this way. Thinking back, she remembered the fondness she felt every time she looked at him. When she watched him charge the battlefield at Troy, his eyes terrified but determined, he’d been so alive; it had made her want to laugh and scream. But it hadn’t been like this. Back then she was a goddess and he a mortal. Back then the lines between them were clearly drawn.