by Gabby Fawkes
“Upstairs. Now,” Axel growled, conveying me up with him.
I struggled free once we were up a few steps. “Hey - that was our friend there. Those people had no right.”
“Indeed,” Dion said, lifting a glass of some purple glittery liquid to his lips. “And there’s more of them than us.”
“Thought you were supposed to be super-powerful gods,” Kian said, anger flashing in her deep brown Latina eyes.
“Doesn’t mean we go aiming for a fight every time we go out,” Apollo said.
“The people in this bar aren’t the only ones, either,” Artemis said, lifting up her phone. “Look.”
On it, was another sensationalized article, describing bear Jeremy’s ‘disgusting bloodlust,’ as well as the ‘efficiency’ of the agents who had taken him down. She pointed to a line near the bottom. “There we are, look.”
‘If anyone has any information about three unidentified reggies present on the scene, please contact the DSA head office.’
At the bottom was a whole whack of comments. Some were just shocked and regretful: How sad, another bad attack….
My prayers are with the injured
But many were spiteful, outraged.
THEY SHOULD PUT THAT THING DOWN.
Ewww!!
“Great,” Axel was saying, clearly still thinking about the ‘three unidentified reggies’ line. “Now we’ve got them suspicious.”
“They won’t dare set foot in Olympus,” Dion said, striding ahead with a little laugh.
“Don’t be so sure,” Apollo said. “With Zeus away and Hera all over the place…”
“Is it true she left for two weeks in Milan?” Artemis said hopefully.
“If I knew for sure, then we wouldn’t be laying low. Even my messengers are too fearful to reliably report on her whereabouts,” Apollo said with a sigh. “So, here we are.”
He walked up to a circular table whose wood grain contained flecks of what might have once been gold and put down a plate of deep-fried cucumbers.
“You guys have your own table here?” I asked.
“Kinda,” Dion said, patting it fondly.
“What do you mean kinda?”
“I mean, it’s here the whole time, only by now people know not to use it.”
“Why not?”
“Because then it’ll do” – he smacked it – “this.”
Apollo grabbed his plate off just in time - the table began whipping around, so fast that it was a blur.
“That would make eating difficult,” Demi agreed, stepping away cautiously.
“Bastard,” Apollo grunted at Dion. He smacked it again, and it stopped. He put his plate down.
“Why even have a table that turns though?” I said, eyeing it.
While the idea of a giant lazy Susan as a table had its allure, I still couldn’t see how it’d be practical.
“So we can do this,” Dion said happily. He gave the table a little spin, sending Apollo’s plate of deep-fried cucumbers in front of him. He took a bite of one, put it back on the plate, then spun it back to Apollo, who looked tempted to smash the plate over his brother’s head.
All at once, this scene seemed ludicrous. Everyone’s muted bleh moods, how no one had said anything. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“So what are we going to do?” I said, nails digging into my palms.
“We’ll probably lay low here for another few days,” Axel said. “The Flying Narwhale has beds.”
“She meant what are we going to do about rescuing our friend,” Kian said.
All the gods stared at her as if she’d just suggested deep-frying the spinning table and eating it.
“No one knows-” Dion began.
“Where the DSA base is,” I snapped. “We get it. But that can’t really be all we can do - just go back to your cave with our head between our legs. I mean, what’s even the point of poking around Times Square in a few weeks when the DSA’s cleaned everything out?”
“I find it hard to believe that nobody knows anything about the base’s whereabouts,” Demi said, twirling a light brown curl around her finger.
Artemis shook her head, her dark braids moving too. “All we’ve narrowed it down to is Europe, and besides, that’s just hearsay.”
“Ooo,” Dion said, munching on the last of his cucumber. “Are you suggesting a cross-Europe search for the secret DSA base?”
“‘Search for the Secret DSA Base sounds like an Indiana Jones movie,” Axel said drily. “But no. I have a better idea.”
Dion grinned. “You mean the fundraiser?”
“Bad idea,” Apollo said immediately.
Axel held up his hand. “Let me finish. It’s supposedly to raise money for victims of the recent attacks, but it’s basically an excuse for the who’s-who of the DSA to rub noses with each other. By invite only, of course. We could go, ask around casually.”
“You finished?” Apollo said blandly.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, here’s why that’s a bad idea.” Apollo started counting off with his fingers. “First off, you, me and all the gods are well-recognized faces. Second off, as you said yourself, the girls have a giant target on their backs.”
“You didn’t hear the rest of my plan,” Axel said.
“Which is?”
“We’d wear disguises, have Dion forge us some tickets. Security there will be fairly lax, it’s nothing top-secret, has been advertised in all the papers. It’s only some dumb fundraiser, after all.”
“And how exactly will we benefit by attending?” Artemis asked, drilling her dark fingers on the tabletop.
Axel shrugged. “Might not. But if we’re able to talk to the right person…”
“We could find out clues to where the base is – if not the location itself,” I realized, smiling.
“Yes,” Apollo said drily. “Because I’m sure they will just happily volunteer that information to anyone who asks. Nor will they find it suspicious that we are asking about it.”
“Just because it’s a bad idea doesn’t mean it won’t work,” Dion said. He clapped his hands together and bumped shoulders with Kian. “Oh, I have just the things!”
23
We got to see ‘just the things’ several hours later. At some point, Dion alerted one of his maenads and they’d sent a whole sack of them over in the bathtub.
“Those women we saw when we first met you,” Kian said, now that we were back at our table, after Dion had explained how exactly a sack of damp wigs had come to appear in the bathtub. “They’re like your… followers, kind of.”
“Yep.” Dion smiled as he pulled at the drawstring. “Why? Care to join?”
“Fat chance,” Kian said.
Dion’s face fell. Although it lit up soon after, once he started leafing through the contents of the sack. “Axel, look!”
“No,” Axel said immediately to Dion’s thrust-out neon red and green dreadlocked wig.
“C’mon,” Dion said. “This is your idea.”
“Going in looking homeless was not my idea.”
“Hey,” Kian protested. “Lots of cool people had dreads. Bob Marley. Whoopi Goldberg. Captain Jack Sparrow.”
“And were any of those fine individuals believable members of the DSA?” Axel said coolly.
“Fine, fine,” Dion muttered, still rifling through the bag, as a pile of blobs of hair increased before him. “This one, then.”
Axel eyed the sandy blond one he’d been tossed with deepest loathing, but said nothing.
“Do you have any red ones?” I asked hopefully.
As impossible as it had been back at school, I’d always wondered how I’d look as a redhead.
“Nah, got something special for you girls,” Dion said, clearly pleased with himself.
He tossed me something blue, which I caught.
“You trying to make me Hades’ twin?” I teased.
No one laughed, although I wasn’t seriously bothered. The wig he’d tossed me was cute – sl
eek, and a peacock blue shade that I loved.
“So let me get this straight,” Kian said, holding her neon pink wig with an expression that couldn’t hide how pleased she was. “You think the DSA will get suspicious over someone with dreads, but not neon hair?”
Dion shrugged. “It’s a progressive institution?” He slid a neon lime wig Demi’s way, who beamed. “Anyway, word is they turn a blind eye when it comes to pretty young women. So even if they sense you aren’t… DSA, strictly speaking, they’ll just assume you belong to one of the fine gentlemen who work there.”
“Belong? More I hear about this place, the more I hate it already,” Kian said drily.
“Yes,” Demi said. “And the wigs are wonderful.”
A few minutes later, we emerged from the bathroom with our disguises – wigs, some metallic dresses and some shiny lipstick Kian had grudgingly spared.
“You look hot,” Artemis declared, in an odd polk-adot pouffe skirt herself.
“Love it!” Dion exclaimed, eyes on Kian.
“They don’t look completely unconvincing,” Apollo commented.
Axel said nothing. Still, it was hard to ignore the way he was staring at me. Like he wanted to press me to the wall with his weapons of hands, and…
“Hey there, kitty,” Kian said, ducking down to pat Gully on the head, who’d apparently wandered in. It was a bit of a shock when he squawked.
“I miss Cog,” Demi said quietly.
“I miss the noteraser,” I said, smiling – and grateful for the interruption. This thing with Axel, whatever it was, it was heating up. But this was way the wrong time.
I was pretty sure I could hear footsteps on the stairs too.
“What do you think ever happened to it?” Kian wondered.
Cruestacio’s appearance stopped any further idle speculation.
“Yer wantin’ a room, eh? Lucky for you, I gotta biggy. Three beds, a window big enough to jump outta.”
“Is that supposed to be a draw?” Kian whispered to me.
“How come there was no staircase here when we came last time?” I asked Cruestacio as I followed him up to the fourth floor, which hadn’t seemed to exist when we’d been here last.
He looked at me like I was touched in the head. “Why would it be there if you’re no’ needin’ it? You think I do no’ respect me guests’ privacy?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Anyhap,” Cruestacio continued, flinging his arm into the room on the top floor we’d now reached. “Here she is.”
Inside was a room that describing as ‘a biggy’ was a crime. Even calling it ‘moderate-sized’ would’ve been pushing it. The room was crammed with three double beds that were only a foot apart. The only thing that was as described was the window, which really did look big enough to jump out of.
“Guess you’ll be my bed buddies,” I told my friends.
“You don’t still snore, do you, Axel?” Dion asked lightly, as Artemis and Apollo partnered up. Aphie had apparently left for good, which was fine with me.
“No,” Axel said smoothly, walking over to the window. “Although I have been known to accidentally maim those in the same bed as me.”
Dion swallowed thickly, trying to muster a valiant smile. “Well, there’s always that nice big window to me to jump out of.”
24
Everyone settled down to sleep over the next hour. According to Apollo, the gods didn’t really need rest, not as much as we did. It was more like a treat for them.
I soon drifted away.
When my eyes opened again, I wasn’t me anymore. Only partially.
I had Jeremy’s massive bear form, and was burning everything around me to my PV’s desire. Burn all… Show them…
All was being reduced to the same pleasing shimmer of black ash. Buildings, people, DSA agents trying to arrive.
It made me smile. The ludicrous sight of the small people trying to bend me to their small ways. With power such as mine, it was a crime not to use it.
The seared stench was sweet victory. My every nerve was tingling with the rightness of this. Of the flames pouring from my lips, mixed with a cackle. Of triumph. Of glory. All mine.
“Hey.”
I was being shaken. It was Axel.
“What….” I blinked at him. He hadn’t let me go yet and his lips were kiss-close.
“You were shaking, dreaming I think,” he said.
Dreaming, right. Dreaming of…
I sat up fast, smacking into him.
“Ow,” I groaned, my hands going to my forehead. “Sorry…”
“It’s fine,” he said. “You good?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. Yesterday came flooding back with painful clarity. Oh my John, Jeremy…
We’d been so close, so damn close and we’d lost him. Again.
We’d failed him and now he was with the DSA – maybe for good if our gala-crashing plan didn’t work.
I glared at my wristband. In all that had happened, I’d forgotten about it. But now it seemed a firm symbol of our subjugation, of how the school owned us in a way. Pulling on it did nothing, was pointless.
“It was from the School for the Different,” I explained to Axel. “But they won’t come off.”
“Here, let me,” Axel said, and proceeded to give the bracelet a yank so hard my arm nearly came on.
“Whoa.” Axel took a step back. “Sorry, I-”
Next second, there was a flash of metal.
“What the…” Axel said, his eyes two enraged slits now as he sliced at my wristband to no avail.
“Yeah, just take my hand off, why don’t you?” I said.
“I’m trying to help get your wristband off,” Axel said.
“It won’t work,” I said. “Nothing my friends and I have tried has.”
“Okay,” he said, putting his knife away reluctantly. “But are you okay?”
I ripped my gaze off it. There was no point in wasting any more thought on it, on myself. Freeing Jeremy was the most important thing.
Axel was still eyeing me expectantly. What was it he’d asked, if I was okay?
“No,” I said shakily.
“You had a bad dream, didn’t you?” he said quietly.
Oh yeah, my dream. The one where I’d been… a vicious monster… destroying everything, and worst of all… liking it.
I shuddered.
“Where are the others?” I asked, changing the subject. Best to just forget about it.
“Downstairs getting food.”
Silence.
“That’s what happens, you know,” Axel said. “When you stifle your powers.”
And something in the twist of his lips told me that Axel knew what he was talking about.
He sat down beside me on the bed, but kept his gaze on the wall. “You can’t change what you are, Tala. And the more you try to fight it, the worse it will fester.”
“Great, thanks for the pep talk,” I muttered. “Anyway, if that’s true, then what about your powers?”
“Why do you think I like to be alone so much?” he said. “I need time to get out the energy. The drive to destroy, hurt, kill.” He grimaced. “I’ll take it out on trees, usually, boulders, anything inanimate nearby. It’s better than… the alternative.”
His voice had a certain hollowness as he continued speaking.
“I was born in a time of war, of strife. When titan fought titan. When Zeus needed something, someone, a pure instrument of war. Someone who reveled in destruction and bloodshed. I was his gift, his tool. But when the times changed…” Axel’s eyes darkened. “I didn’t.”
At some point, our sides had started touching. Heat crackled through me.
“No,” he continued, his hand absently grasping mine. “For centuries, I clung to the old ways, let my violent nature control me. Every war I was in the thick of, brutalizing any unlucky enough to come in my path. Until one day, after a millennium of committing atrocity after atrocity, I committed an
act of brutality with unforgiveable consequences. What even my own father cast me out and intervened to make me pay for.”
He was shaking now, and I grasped his hand. “What do you mean?”
Axel shook his head miserably. “I didn’t mean… this is just to say that it is not our thoughts that make us, Tala.” He turned to look at me miserably, almost as if seeking the answer as much as he was saying it. “That, even though a part of me still yearns for the destruction I used to wreak, that I am different now because I do different. Not because I think different.” His Adam’s apple bobbed with his swallow, then he nodded. “The good have bad thoughts, the bad have good. No, it is not our thoughts that decide us – it is what we do in spite of them.”
Our fingers had curled further together, Axel’s gaze riveted on the contact. “What I’m saying is…”
“Even if I’m wracked with violent impulses, I don’t have to obey them,” I said quietly. “I don’t have to let them overtake me.” His words were like water in a desert, like support beams for my heart.
I rose, though I didn’t let go of his hand. “But what if I lose control, how do I know…”
“You try,” Axel said simply, rising too. “You try and you mess up, maybe. So then you practice some more. Until you can control it. Until your impulses – as little as you like them – are only minor annoyances, like flies in the room. Until you are in control.”
Control. I liked the sound of that.
Yet with Axel’s hand in mine, and the way he was turning to me now, looking down at me, I knew I had none. Not now. Not with the flame in those sea ice eyes as they claimed mine. Not with how I could feel his heart beating into my shoulder from his chest pressed there. Not with how his face was nearing mine, closer and closer, his musky scent fogging my brain like a drug, as his lips pressed to mine…
“Yoohooo Talaaa - you can’t still be sleeping!” came Kian’s good-humored call from down the stairs.
Axel and I ripped away just in time.
“Well, at least you’re up,” she said brightly, holding out a plate of sausages.
As I inspected them, she said, “Don’t give me that look. I’m getting you your whole food pyramid and shit. These aren’t just meat sausages.”
