Battle for the Blood (12 page)

From where she stood, she couldn’t see the glint in his downcast eyes, but he caught me looking and gave me a wink.

Even without it, Hecate was unfooled. “Idiot god. I’ll help because it amuses me to do so and because my realm is overrun. But don’t mistake me for one of your minions to whom you can lash out orders and expect them to be obeyed.”

Hermes sat back on his butt and smiled up at Hecate. “Fine, fine, but if you ever want to do a bit of role-playing…”

She swatted at him, and he fell back just enough for her to miss, but she let it be.

“What if
I’m
not on board with the plan?”Apollo asked. We all turned to look at him in surprise. “Tori, can I talk to you?”

I kept my smart-assery to myself, though I wanted to point out that he’d just demonstrated his absolute ability to do so. Instead, I stood, presuming that he really meant in private. The intensity in his gaze sent a blaze of heat through me. I’d never entertained any fantasies about doing it in a dusty stable, but if we were alone I’d have been more than willing to give it a try, especially if… But, no, I was not going to think about Apollo pushing me up against the stable wall and taking me hard. Even not thinking about it stirred my libido, which flared, much like my bloodlust earlier, and I wondered if it was all part of the same thing. My primal instincts so close to the surface that they wanted to push right through my skin.

Apollo, connected to me as he was through our link, grabbed one of my upper arms, firmly but not painfully, and hurried me toward a stall at the far end of the stable. It wasn’t big enough that I thought it would give us much privacy, especially if we…if we did exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t suspect I’d have enough control to be quiet or that we were in the kind of company that might not notice. And in Hermes’s case, maybe even take video.

Apollo got me into the stall and shut the door behind us, even though it wasn’t floor to ceiling and hardly offered soundproofing. It gave the illusion of privacy, anyway. He put me gently up against the wall, my wings taking the brunt of it. I was torn between elation and disappointment. I didn’t want gentle, but he was headed in the right direction.

“Stop,” Apollo said softly through gritted teeth.

“Stop what?” I asked, rubbing against him.

“That,” he said. His lips moved. His teeth didn’t, still clamped down hard as he fought his reaction. I could feel it like a tsunami, surging to meet my shoreline.

I knew he was right. Now was not the time, but still. I could feel his response, physically and through our connection, and it was all I could do not to rip his clothes off. But to stop rubbing…that was beyond me.

He pulled away from me, letting me go. I’d been pressing so hard into him that I nearly fell with his sudden absence. He held a hand back toward me, like a traffic cop, clearly a sign for stop. He faced the other way, breathing. Getting himself under control. It felt like failure on my part. Rejection. Even though I knew…

I was tougher than this. I closed my eyes so that I couldn’t see those ridiculously broad shoulders tapering to that narrow waist and that perfect butt, so that I couldn’t so easily imagine the powerful thighs under those jeans and the incredible everything that would be revealed if he’d just turn. If the clothes would drop away. If we were alone…

I thought instead of those horrors out there in Central Park. I remembered glistening hands rising to twisted lips, the squelching and wet sounds of… I gagged. The lust receded, but the bile didn’t. I fought down the need to toss up the acid that had just burned its way up my throat.

“I’m okay now,” I told Apollo when I could speak. It came out hoarse, but it came.

“Lords of Olympus, Tori, what the hell?” Apollo sounded out of breath and not in the good way.

“I don’t know. It’s like all my hormones are raging. I’ll…I’m trying to keep it under control.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing that we separate for a little bit, but sending you off with Hecate… That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t trust her.”

“She’s on our side for now,” I protested, though I knew exactly where he was coming from.

“Is she? What if Hades ‘commanded’ her? What if she responds to his commands as well as she did to Hermes’s?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you take the sword and you be on guard.”

I stared at him. “I have wings,” I said. They flapped as if in demonstration. “If she tries anything, I can fly circles around her. Same with any zombies we might encounter. You’re the ones who will be hampered by a zombified Muse and no weapons to speak of. Not to mention, Hermes.”

“You’re taking the sword, that’s all there is to it.”

“Why, ’cause I’m a girl?”

“No, ’cause
I’m
a god.” He had me there. “Look, the sun is coming up. I’ll be in my element. I’ll be fine, but you…” He looked away. “Just come back in once piece, okay? For me?”

I wondered what he’d been about to say. But I, what? I wouldn’t be okay? Had he seen something? Sensed something? Had his gift for prophecy flared?

No, that couldn’t be it. If he knew something, he’d never let me go. And my own precognition would surely have kicked up as well, wouldn’t it?

“Okay, for you I’ll come back in one piece. Mostly because, well, there’s this one position I want to try…”

I visualized it, not because he could read my mind, which he couldn’t, but because I couldn’t help myself.

“Tori, you’re killing me.”

“Shakespeare’s ‘little deaths’, right?”

Apollo turned suddenly, grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me in to him. Our lips met and that heat that had been licking at me blazed up until I thought I’d spontaneously combust. I grabbed him back, holding him tightly, in case he was tempted to pull away. Our lower bodies pressed so firmly against each other I could hope the heat would singe our clothes away and leave us exposed and ready. I was anyway. The moisture gathering down below was not nearly enough to put out the fire. That would take everything we had. Maybe twice.

“Get a room,” Hecate yelled from outside the stall.

Apollo broke away, looking dazed, and I snapped, “Had one. You crashed that party.”

“I’m crashing it again. Let’s get a move on.”

I made a rude noise and gazed back at Apollo. “Rain check?” I asked.

“Rain. Shine. I’m not particular.”

“Good, then it’s on.”

He’d let me go…physically. Mentally, I could still feel our bond, still feel the fire that we hadn’t quenched. I hoped that the farther away we got, the more it would fade, because right now it was distracting as hell, and that could get me killed. Or him killed. I’d finally gotten used to having him around. I couldn’t lose him now.

The very thought was like an ice bath.
This
was what I’d worried about all along. That I’d become this attached. Even in the Romeo and Juliet couldn’t-go-on-without-him kind of way. But that was just stupid. I was made of sterner stuff, and, anyway, he wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to die.
No one
was going to die. Except maybe…

Bah, I didn’t have time for this. I was
not
going to become some lovelorn waif out of a Greek tragedy, turning into a flower or a tree or a deer shot through the heart by a stray arrow.

“Let’s go,” I said to Hecate, sweeping back into the main part of the stable. “You,” I added, pointing at Hermes, “you keep him safe. If anything goes wrong, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“Same goes for you,” Apollo said from behind me, talking, I presumed, to Hecate.

“I’m quaking in my boots,” she answered. “I’ve renewed the sleep spell, and filled Lau in on the plan, so we’re good to go.”

Lau was awake, standing just outside where Eu-meh slept. She had to be feeling the rumble of that snore all the way through the soles of her feet, but she didn’t show it. “We’re going to need
a lot
of water,” she said, voice still groggy from sleep. “And snowballs, if you happen across them.”

“Snowballs?” I asked.

“You know those pink balls of coconut and cake you find in the junk food aisle? Eu-meh loves them, and after all she’s been through, she deserves a treat, don’t you think?”

Hecate and I exchanged a glance. “Sure, why not,” she answered for us. “If we see them, they’re yours.”

Lau emptied the pack in which she carried all of her supplies and offered it to us, along with the use of her spare clothes for Hermes to rig a harness for carrying the unconscious Muse to keep his hands free in case of attack. Still, they were going to be at a huge disadvantage.

“Isn’t there anything you can do for them?” I asked Hecate as she eyed the arrangements.

“Maybe,” she said. “I can’t mask them while they’re moving and making noise, especially not at a distance, but I can hit them with a kind of apathy field. If anyone notices them, they won’t really care. But I don’t know if it works on the zombies.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“No,” Apollo said, firmly. “If you can enchant an object or something, that’s great. But no enchantments on us. If Hermes or I need to create some sort of ruckus or lead people away, say if Cori’s building is under attack, I want to be able to drop the field.”

Hecate looked annoyed. “More work for me. The one way draws on your own energies, the other on mine. But don’t worry. As always, I live to serve.” She gave Apollo a mock bow and ordered, “Give me something you can spare.”

He reached for his wallet and took a quarter out of it, handing it to Hecate. She took it in one hand and closed the other over it, muttering something beneath her breath. Her hair lifted, as if static electricity filled the air. Her eyes had gone black and rich with the feel of a starscape behind them, of galaxies dying and being born. And then she blinked and it was over. She removed her upper hand, and the quarter looked just like a quarter. No glow, no shine, nothing to tell it from any other coin, but when she handed it back to Apollo, he seemed to get a brief shock as he took it. His fingers jumped, and a look of surprise rushed his face, but he held on and tucked the quarter away in a front pocket, away from his wallet and any mistaking it for ordinary coinage.

Nothing changed. Apollo was still there. I knew he was still there. But I was no longer worried about him or Hermes or…whoever else they had with them. I focused back on Hecate. “Shall we go?”

“After you,” she said.

She and I went first, making sure the coast was clear. Outside, the morning was crisp but not cold. The sky was pinky red, where we could see the sunrise off to the east, creeping over the skyline. Pappous used to have a saying about that—
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

If only I’d listened.

Chapter Eleven

Hecate and I were just about to set foot out of the park when I felt Apollo’s sudden alarm and I knew they were in trouble. My precog yowled like a tortured cat nearly instantaneously, and for a second I thought it was warning me about Apollo, but that didn’t make any sense. Usually it was imminent danger. I whipped around to tell Hecate that we had to go back for them and met her sharply pointed boot with my jaw.

Pain shot through my head, which torqued to the side like my neck would break. I brought the sword up, slashing blindly where she’d been, as my wings beat the air, trying to keep me upright. I caught something with the flat of my blade. Hecate
oof
ed, and I caught a flash of motion as I was bringing my head back around. The next thing I knew, my hand holding the sword went numb and started to open. Stunned by Hecate’s betrayal, I was slow to respond, but as the tip of the blade dipped to the ground, I had an idea. I played up my weakness, falling forward onto the pommel of the sword and using it as a pivot point for my body. My wings flared, and I swung both feet for her, aiming for a mule kick to the chest.

She fell back with a cry, her eyes blazing black fire, muttering under her breath. If she got off a spell, I was dead meat. But why the sudden attack? What the hell— My precog had me dodging to the left, taking the sword with me as I launched myself into the air. A molten ball of hellfire blew past me, singeing my calf as it flew by…too close.

My one hand was still numb, clutching but not with any surety, and the other was my off hand. I had no choice but to transfer the sword to it. I tried to catch Hecate’s gaze for the gorgon glare, but there was no chance to lock on before she was hurling another ball of fire at me. I used the sword like a bat, sending it back at her, but all she did was catch it again, whirling to relaunch right at my core.

But I wasn’t there anymore. I could fall faster than I could rise, and I crashed back to the ground, immediately ducking and rolling. More awkward with a sword and wings than I would have been without, but I did come up under her guard.

I swung the sword at her for all I was worth, hoping that what I’d lack in finesse with my bad hand, I’d make up for in ferocity. The bloodlust bubbled up through me again, demanding that I cut deep. I wanted to see the blood, wanted to fell her. But suddenly she wasn’t there.

I’d no sooner registered it than Hecate landed a blow right between my wings with the force of a sledgehammer, sending me falling forward. Uncontrolled, the pommel of the sword caught and bruised my breastbone but kept me from hitting the ground. It also held me in place, a perfect target for another blow, hard enough to knock me aside from the sword. It stayed quivering in the ground, close enough to grab again if only I had the strength and speed.

“Surrender the sword,” Hecate said, pausing in her attack long enough for me to focus on the growing ball of hellfire in her hands.

“Why do you want it?” I coughed the words out, my chest dented and my breathing painful. “And why now? I thought you were on our side.”

“Why? Because I was ordered to be? Because I seem so docile and sheeplike? I
was
on your side, until you gathered the information I wanted and got me where I needed to go. Now I’m on
my
side.”

“
What
side? There’s the apocalypse or saving the world. There are no sides.”

Hecate looked at me pityingly. “That’s where you’re wrong. You’re a smart woman—smart-ass, anyway—I shouldn’t have to explain it to you.”

“Pretend I’m stupid,” I said, feeling it at the moment. “Make me understand and maybe I’ll give you the sword.”

She snorted. So elegant. “You want to stop the apocalypse. You’re thinking too small. I want to control it. Think of it like demolition or like the immolation of the phoenix—destruction so that something new can rise from the ashes. A new world order…mine. But I can’t do it alone. I’ll kill you if I have to, but I’d rather you join us.”

“Who’s us?”

“Come with me and find out.”

The bundle of hellfire in her hands was practically the size of my head, hissing and spitting like it couldn’t wait to burn something to the ground. Me, to be exact.

I’d learned all she was going to tell me. It was now do or die. The longer I put it off, the longer Apollo and Hermes went without reinforcements. I had to end this.

“Go to hell,” I told her, rolling for the sword.

She roared and instantly let the fireball go. I had to flinch away to avoid it, the fire singeing my back, charring my wings and starting the remains of my shirt smoldering. I turned the flinch into a roll and came up in a crouch, facing both witch and sword.

We both reached for the pommel at the same time, and my hand came down on top of hers. My nails, ragged from all the recent battles, scraped her skin, but failed to tear her hand away. Her gaze met mine, and I yelled, “Freeze!”

At the same instant she threw open the palm of her other hand and a field shot from it, something I’d seen before when she was fighting alongside Hades, feeding power to the shields of Tartarus. This time the shield spell bounced my gorgon glare back at me. It struck me between the eyes, stunning me just long enough for her to grab the sword from under my grasp and vanish with it.

I shook myself out of the paralysis, but by then both the bitch and the blade were gone. The ground still smoldered from the hellfire that had strafed it, but there wasn’t enough smoke to conceal anything. Hecate and the sword had disappeared as if they never were.

Inside I raged. I wanted to shout uselessly at the sky or beat at the ground or, better yet, at myself for failing, but instead I did something very strange. Instinctively, I lifted my hands to my lips, where Hecate’s blood stained my nails, and I licked at the leavings. The voluntary part of my brain shuddered in horror, but involuntarily…something shifted inside. I felt the blood rush through my system, signals flying fast and furious to some newly awakened part of my brain. My head hurt like I was having an aneurysm and my eyes flew open wide as some revelation seized me. First, that I liked the blood. It was salty and spicy and…distinct. Second, that I could track her now. I knew it like I knew my name or that I needed caffeine to live. I’d remember the taste of her blood and I could use it.

Apollo screamed in my brain, not for himself, I sensed, but for…something. Something had gone horribly wrong. But Hecate had given them that charm… Hecate, who had betrayed us all. Who knew what that charm might actually do.

As much as I wanted vengeance, as much as I wanted to hunt the witch down right then, Apollo’s urgency came first. My precog pushed me to my feet and sent me launching into the air, flying across the park in his direction, straight into danger. I blew past Belvedere Castle and the green turtle pond at its base. Not far beyond, shambling figures ignored my flight, stumbling toward others in the distance as if drawn to them. One or two did look to the sky, as if some instinct remained, some sense of self-preservation, as a mouse might watch the sky for a hawk. But I ignored them, intent only on Apollo and the others.

I saw the body first, lying in the grass like a puppet whose strings had been cut and another beyond that, charred and smoking. Beyond that…a mob, gathered thick like the crowds on Black Friday awaiting the doorbusters. In the midst of it, I knew, were Hermes and Apollo.

I prayed to gods I wasn’t too late. As I hit the outskirts of the mob, there was a flash of light, like a solar flare or a burst of heat lightning, and suddenly there was fire in the mob’s midst. I expected screaming, peeling away, some move to save themselves, but there was none. My wing beats fanned the flames, and in an instant, it seemed, the whole mob was aflame. It didn’t change a thing. The bodies pushed against each other, teeth gnashing, some so close together there was barely enough air getting through to feed the flames. I started at the back, tearing bodies aside, throwing them to the ground, meeting faces, grasping hands and anything else that lashed out at me with powerful kicks meant to break bones. Not because I wanted to hurt, but because there was no other way. Pain wouldn’t stop these creatures. Immobilization was all I had.

In the air I didn’t have the leverage I’d have on the ground, and while my blows set them back, they didn’t keep the horde down. I fought two and three at a time, with others turning toward the commotion, grabbing for me, some even latching on.

I flapped hard to rise. One or two came off the ground with me, attached like leeches. I kicked like a maniac to loosen them, but the blows had no effect.

“Tori!” Apollo called.

I managed to catch one of the clingers just right, and he spiraled down into the smoldering crowd, taking one of the other zombies down with him as he crashed, but more just closed over them, still coming.

Still aimed like arrows straight for Apollo and beside him…a giant spider? It had to be one of Hermes’s other forms. He could take on Spider or Monkey or Coyote or the shape of any of the other trickster gods that existed in every culture. I’d never seen this form before and had to fight my freak-out, even as its—his—mandibles snapped, gripping one of the plagued and throwing him aside. The horde swarmed around him, still oncoming. There were too many of them and not enough of us. I didn’t see any sign of our Melpomene and feared that she must be one of the bodies scattered about.

“Apollo, what can I do?” I yelled to him.

“The sword!”

My heart dropped to my stomach, sliding right past my compressed ribs. “Gone,” I said, but it came out strangled and possibly unintelligible. “Hecate.”

I didn’t give him the chance to ask. I flew over the crowd that Hermes was barely fending off and that Apollo had already blasted with concentrated sunlight. He was slightly behind Hermes, concentrating not on me, but on the sky, readying another solar flare, I thought. But the first hadn’t had much effect beyond setting the rabid horde on fire. I didn’t think the second blast would be any more effective. But I had another idea. I just hoped it would work.

“Hold up,” I told Apollo. “Hermes, give me the floor.”

Compound eyes met mine and creeped me out, even though I knew who was behind them, but I didn’t have time to dwell. I got in front of him and let out the most shrill, most annoying sound I could think of that didn’t involve Pan pipes or yodeling. It involved sticking my thumb and forefinger into my mouth and blowing for all I was worth.

A dozen or so eyes rose to me, the wolf whistle breaking through their fog, getting their attention. I met their gazes, refilled the bellows of my lungs and yelled “Freeze!” at top volume.

They froze, and I nearly fell to the ground in relief that I was good for
something
after letting Hecate get the drop on me and steal the sword.

Hermes, maybe testing the waters, lashed out a leg at the crowd, the front man fell like a domino into the one behind, but the thickness of the horde held them more or less upright. Still, the front of the line was neutralized…for now. If we could just get to the rest…

“Hurry,” I told the others. “Before they unfreeze. I have no idea how long the gorgon glare will hold. Plague minds could be more or less susceptible.”

“We can’t go without Melpomene!” Apollo said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Back the way you came.”

I flew back and discovered her on her stomach at the back of the pack, trying to crawl toward the others, head lolling toward the ground, horrifying in the way her neck barely held together. Her entrails had to be dragging on the ground beneath her… I had to stop thinking or my stomach would rebel.

I landed and grabbed her up, cradling her like a baby so that the crook of my elbow supported her head while my arms supported the rest of her body. I nearly gagged at the smell. There wasn’t just blood and guts. There was the scent of everything the body released at the point of death and that was…whew. It wasn’t any better for being a day old. She tried to claw me as I got her settled, so I looked down at those filmy eyes and told her the same thing I’d told the others. “Freeze!” She stopped, hand reaching for me, mouth gaping, lacking the muscles to close. As a zombie, she was going to starve to death. My brain refused to consider how to deal with that.

I flew back with her toward the others and found that Hermes was himself again.

I made my noise a second time and froze a whole new bunch of zombies.

“Let’s go!” I yelled, and we took off across the park, me still in flight with Mel in hand and the others on foot. We ran away from the stables and shelter.

“You can’t possibly think it’s safe still to head for Terpsichore,” I said, out of breath. “You’ll lead them right to her.”

“No choice,” Hermes said. “We still need supplies and information, now more than ever.”

“But if Hecate betrayed me and you—which she must have, because those things were far from ignoring you as they should have—anything could be happening back at the stable. Lyssa—”

“Skata!”
Hermes cursed.

“Okay, look, you move faster than the rest of us with those wings. Give me Melpomene and head for the stables. We’ll grab weapons and provisions as quickly as we can and rush back to you,” Apollo said.

“I’m going to skin Hecate alive,” Hermes cut in.

“Fine, good,” Apollo said, “we’ll make that our endgame. You can wear her skin like the Nemean lion pelt. Let’s just hurry.”

I bent my knees, poised to launch myself into the air when Apollo grabbed me suddenly for a kiss. It was brief and bruising, and when he let me go, I could feel his roiling emotions. If I’d been a girly girl, I would have stopped to sort through them, but I didn’t have the time.

It was a lucky thing, though, that the kiss made me pause. It suddenly occurred to me that if the zombies had risen just as they’d died, one of the walking undead was bound to be carrying a concealed weapon. If not a gun, then a flip knife, a pocketknife or
something
. This was New York City, after all.

I did a quick search, patting out flames and feeling up frozen corpses. It was not my finest moment. I found an empty belt sheath for a gun that was now gone, maybe lost in the battle with the zombie who’d turned the guy, but I found pocketknives on just about all of the men and some of the women. I stopped when I found a flip knife several inches long. It would do. It would have to. I couldn’t take any more time, and the milky eyes of the guy I’d taken it from were starting to track me. He was beginning to unfreeze. In a moment I’d be lunch.