Читать книгу Goddess Interrupted - Aimee Carter - Страница 12

As glass flew through the air, I covered my head instinctively, but the jagged edges glanced off my skin as if I were made of Kevlar.

Right. Immortal. I kept forgetting that part.

“What the—” I twisted around to survey the damage, but before I could get a good look, Henry pushed me behind him. I fell to the ground amidst the shards of glass, and while I scrambled to my feet, Henry and his brothers advanced toward the broken windows.

Ava appeared beside me and took my elbow. “Come on,” she said in a trembling voice as her face turned ashen. “We have to get out of here.”

“Why?” I said, but a sick sense of dread filled me as I stumbled along beside her. The others parted to let us through, each poised as if ready to strike. No matter how reluctant they were to talk about her, I knew this had to do with Calliope and the fresh scar running down Henry’s chest.

Ava didn’t answer me. She all but dragged me along the aisle, my heels skidding against the floor as I tried to regain my balance, but it wasn’t working.

I fell a second time, pulling Ava down with me. We landed in a heap, but she wasted no time hauling me to my feet again. As we scrambled forward, another crash echoed through the hall, and a shimmering fog seeped into the palace. The same fog from my vision.

In the past few hours, it seemed to have grown stronger. It crackled with strange tendrils of light, and for a moment, the fog hovered in front of Henry, as if recognizing him. Henry held up his hands again, exactly as he’d done in my vision, and the other members of the council formed a semicircle behind him and his brothers.

My heart hammered against my rib cage, and beside me, Ava froze. This was the thing that had nearly killed Henry, and now it was attacking all of us. The instinct to protect rose up inside of me as it drew closer to Henry and my mother and everyone I loved, but what could I possibly do to help stop it?

Without warning, it sliced through the air faster than the members of the council could control it, but it wasn’t aimed at Henry or Walter or Phillip.

It went directly for me and Ava.

I didn’t have time to think. Shoving Ava behind the nearest pillar, I darted after her, but not fast enough.

Unbelievable pain whipped my knee like lightning, shooting through my body until it surrounded me, pulsing with each beat of my heart. I cried out, and it was all I could do to stay standing.

“Ava,” I gasped, leaning against the pillar as shouts from the council echoed through the hall. “Get out of here.”

She stared at me uncomprehendingly. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I took her arm and forced myself forward, half limping, half hopping toward the exit. A trail of blood smeared across the floor behind me, but the fog didn’t try to strike again.

Someone shouted behind me, and I thought I heard Henry call my name, but everything sounded far away as my heart thudded. I was going to die. We were all going to die. Somehow, someway, that thing could kill gods, and this time there wouldn’t be an afterlife. Not for immortals.

I wasn’t ready to go. Not yet. Not ever.

An eternity later, we finally reached the doors, and I shoved Ava through. Dizzy with terror and agony, I grabbed the handle to keep myself upright and watched the battle raging on the opposite end of the hall.

Twelve members of my new family fought it, with Henry and James blocking the aisle from a force I couldn’t see. I could feel it though, deep within my bones and every nerve in my body. Whatever it was, it seemed to shake the very foundation of the Underworld.

Blood dripped down James’s exposed arm as he struggled to hold off the monster with his uninjured hand. Henry stood beside him, an unmovable force, and I couldn’t tear myself away.

“Brothers!” cried Henry. “On my count!”

The three brothers moved in toward the fog, and the others moved in behind them in a triangular formation, immeasurable power radiating from each of them. Dylan and the redheaded Irene took the lead, but they didn’t have a chance to attack.

In the blink of an eye, Henry and his brothers flew upward and out the window, taking the fog with them.

After the explosion of battle, the silence rang in my ears, and I finally let myself slump to the floor. Most of the remaining members of the council milled together near the thrones, but James and my mother hurried toward us.

James reached me first, and he dropped to his knees several feet away, his momentum sliding him toward me. “It got you, didn’t it? Theo!” he yelled over his shoulder, and I winced.

“Stop it,” I said. “You were hit, too.”

“Yes, but the difference is, if I die, Henry won’t rip the world apart.” His good hand hovered over my injured knee, not daring to touch me yet. I didn’t blame him. Blood dripped down my leg, pooling at my heel, and now that the threat was gone, however temporarily, every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire. I’d never been in this much pain before in my life, not even when Calliope had killed me and thrown my body in a river.

My mother reached us and observed the damage, but she said nothing. Instead she slipped behind me and took Ava by the elbow. Now that the fight was over, some color had returned to Ava’s cheeks, and when my mother tried to lead her away, Ava remained planted in front of me.

“You saved me,” she said, shaking like she was barefoot in the snow. “He would’ve killed me if you hadn’t pushed me out of the way.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “You would’ve done the same for me.”

Ava was silent. My mother moved to push her past me again, but this time Ava dropped down beside me, opposite James. “You don’t understand,” she said, her blue eyes wide and earnest. “They’re the only things that can kill us, and you saved my life.”

Caught between burning curiosity and agony, I said tightly, “Why did it attack us? Why didn’t it go after Henry and Walter and Phillip instead?”

“Because Calliope sent him,” said James, still fussing over my leg. He called over his shoulder, “Theo, she needs you now, not next week.”

Theo shuffled down the aisle toward us, his curly hair falling in his eyes. Ella matched his pace, but she focused on the ground, and her forehead was furrowed deeply. The only time I’d seen her look like that was when Theo had been attacked at Christmas last year. It was jarring, seeing the ever-confident Ella look as if she didn’t know up from down, and my stomach twisted.

“He got her,” said James, gesturing to my leg. Theo knelt down beside me and set his hands above my knee. I’d been healed by Henry before, and I expected the same comforting warmth to come from Theo.

Instead fiery light spread through the wound, pushing out the deep, agonizing pain. Burning heat replaced it, and I gasped, positive my leg was going to turn to ash and fall off. I didn’t dare open my eyes, and even when his hands pulled away, the pain remained.

“Done,” said Theo, and I heard him rise to his feet. “There is nothing I can do for the scar.”

Gathering what was left of my courage, I cracked open an eye, relieved when I saw that my leg was still attached, and by all accounts it looked perfectly normal. But when I tried to wiggle my toes, the fire started all over again.

“If it’s healed, then why does it still hurt?” I said, panicked. What if the pain never went away? How was I supposed to live with that? Had Henry experienced the same thing in his chest? How could he have possibly fought that thing again if he had?

“Because there is no power in the world that can take away the pain until it is ready to leave,” said Theo. “It’s not an ordinary wound. It won’t last longer than a few days, because he is still so weak, but there is nothing I can do for you until then.”

“He?” I gingerly touched the thin silver line that ran across my knee. “You’re all calling it a he.”

Theo nodded toward my mother. “I will leave this in your capable hands to explain. If you will excuse us.”

He slipped his arm around Ella’s waist and headed back toward the cluster of remaining council members. They all sat in the pews again, their heads bent together as they spoke among themselves. As Theo and Ella approached, Dylan, Ava’s ex from Eden High School, rose to make room for them. Even from across the massive hall, I could feel his eyes on us.

“Mom?” I said, rubbing my knee now that I knew it wouldn’t make it hurt any worse. “What’s everyone talking about?”

She offered me her hand. I took it, amazed by how strong she felt compared to the years of frailty, and with effort I stood. Ava stayed glued to my side as my mother led me to a bench in the antechamber, and I eased myself down. It wasn’t possible that Henry had been in this much pain and I hadn’t known it. It must’ve had something to do with the council granting me immortality only six months before. Or maybe Henry was immune.

Ava sat beside me and took my hand. James lingered in the doorway, leaning against it casually, but one look at him and I could see the fear beneath his mask of neutrality. First Ella, now him—whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

“Do you remember the Titans from your lessons with Irene?” said my mother in such a soft voice that I was jolted back to the days spent in a hospital, leaning over her so I could understand her dry and broken whispers.

I shook my head. Irene had seemed to hit only the most salient points in those myths, and I didn’t bother retaining much of that information past the first exam anyway. At the time, it hadn’t seemed important.

“They were your parents?” I said. My mother was Walter’s sister, but not by blood, as they had insisted time and time again. As Henry had told me nearly a year ago, family was the only word mortals had to describe anything close to the bond they shared, but it went much deeper than that.

“In a way,” said my mother. Spotting a few drops of blood on her sleeve, she waved her hand and they vanished. “The Titans were the original rulers of this world, and eventually they grew bored and created us. There were six of us in the beginning—myself, Walter, Henry, Phillip, Sofia and Calliope.”

“They were slaves,” said James.

“Toys,” corrected my mother. With the straightforward way she spoke, it was clear she’d told this story before. “That was our purpose. To be the playthings of the Titans. They loved us, and we loved them in return. But then they decided that we weren’t enough, so they made a new race that, unlike us, could cease to exist if they fought one another.”

“They created war.”

Ava sounded so small and meek that I hardly believed it was her speaking. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red, her cheeks had lost their color, and the hurt on her face was so palpable that I could barely stand to look at her.

“The Titans made humans do terrible things to entertain them.” Ava wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed. “They were denied the most basic rights and freedoms.”

“Humans were soldiers who never saw the end of battle,” said James. “They were at the mercy of the Titans, but unlike the six siblings—”

“They were powerless to stop them.” My mother sat down beside me and set her hand over mine. “The things mortals do to one another is nothing compared to what the Titans did. Mental and physical torture. No sign of relief. No voice that could possibly sway the most powerful beings in the universe.”

“So the six rebelled,” said Ava. She stared at the space between us, seemingly studying the velvet bench cushion, but a thread of strength ran through her voice now. “They banded together and used the powers the Titans had given them to fight back.”

“And we won.” My mother smiled. She was the gentlest person I knew; she didn’t even kill the spiders and snakes that snuck into her garden. I couldn’t imagine her going to war untold eons ago with a force I didn’t begin to understand. “The Titans’ greatest weakness was their belief that there was no greater power in the world, and they couldn’t imagine us thinking for ourselves. Perhaps if they hadn’t created mortals or given us abilities for their own amusement, we would still be theirs after all this time. Their mistake was not in creating us, but in creating something for us to protect.”

She ran her fingers through my hair, and it was such a familiar gesture that my anxieties began to disappear, replaced by warmth that ran through me and melted the icy fear that had formed.

“We nearly lost so many times, and there were moments when we wanted to give in, but all it took in each of us was the memory of what the Titans were doing to the defenseless, and we pressed on. As long as we existed, we would not stand for it.”

With startling clarity, I finally saw the balance between gods and mortals: gods were, in a strange way, the ones who were chained because of a war the six siblings had won an incalculable amount of time ago. They—we depended on humanity for our survival as much as humanity had depended on Walter and the others all those eons ago. It was why James was so afraid of the day humanity would eventually die out and there was nothing left but the dead and those who ruled them. Once humans didn’t need him any longer, he would fade. They all would, except for me and Henry. But without humans, gods were nothing.

“Is that what that was?” I said. “A—Titan?”

“He’s called Cronus, and he was once the king of the Titans,” said my mother. “He has been asleep since the end of the war, trapped in Tartarus with Nyx watching over him and the other imprisoned Titans.”

Ava shuddered, but said nothing. I fidgeted. “Nyx?” I said, hating how little I knew about any of this. My lessons from the year before had focused on the Greek myths, not their true heritage, and no amount of studying would ever make up for the fact that I hadn’t lived through it like the rest of them. Or at least hadn’t heard the stories for millennia.

“She is the best guard we have,” said my mother. “Henry volunteered to keep Cronus and the rest of the Titans who posed a risk to humanity locked up in the Underworld so there would be no humans around to tempt them, but we knew that if we allowed Cronus to remain conscious, he would find a way out. So the only solution we had was to keep him trapped in his dreams, which is Nyx’s specialty.”

“Then how did he wake up?” I said. “How did he get to the palace?”

James shoved his hands into his pockets. “Henry and I think he’s been waking up for some time—at least a few decades. He’s kept quiet until now, gaining strength, but there’s no way to check and see how awake he really is without risking our lives.”

“The Titans created us,” said my mother. “And they can kill us, as well.”

That was the last thing I wanted to think about, Henry running off to fight that monster again while he might very well be in agony. “You still haven’t told me how he woke up in the first place,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

“We don’t know,” said James. “We think Calliope did it.”

“But—” I frowned. “You said he’s been waking up for ages.”

“Decades,” he corrected.

I rolled my eyes. What was a lifetime to most people was the blink of an eye to the council. I would get there eventually, I supposed—if Cronus didn’t eat me first—but until then, I was on mortal time. Six months was six months, not a pleasant nap.

“There’s a strong possibility Calliope planned ahead and started the process when Henry made it clear he would never return her feelings,” said James. “When he started to bring girls home to meet the family and get tested, well …” He shrugged. “She must have snapped. No one but Calliope has the power to break Nyx’s loyalty to Henry and persuade her to wake Cronus up.”

Another thing I wasn’t crazy about hearing: how powerful the goddess who wanted me dead happened to be. “It doesn’t make any sense. If she was trying to protect humans, then why would she risk things going back to the way they were under the Titans?”

“We don’t know,” said my mother. “If we did, we would try to reason with her, but that has proven futile so far.”

“There’s a possibility she bargained with him,” said James. “Why she would trust him to keep his word, I don’t know, but she took your decision hard—”

“She hates you.” Ava squeezed my hand. “It’s the kind of hate that’s all-consuming, and it doesn’t stop for anything. Especially not reason.”

So I had been the target after all, not Ava. I shuddered to think what might have happened if I’d frozen, too.

And was James right? Would Henry have ripped the world apart if Cronus had killed me? I wanted to believe it would have been because of how he felt for me, but a nagging voice in the back of my mind pointed out that if I died, he might have to give up his position as ruler of the Underworld and fade, if he didn’t die going after Cronus. That would’ve pissed me off, too.

“James,” I croaked. “Please get your arm fixed before you bleed to death.”

Glancing at his ripped jacket that was now soaked with blood, he frowned, as if he’d forgotten he’d been injured in the first place. More proof my wound only hurt so badly because I could remember what pain felt like. “Oh. Right. I’ll go do that, then. You’re okay?”

I nodded, and he hesitated before crossing the antechamber and kissing my cheek. He didn’t say goodbye, and I was grateful for that small sign the council wasn’t afraid the world was about to end.

“Come,” said my mother, offering her hand. “Let’s get you someplace where you can rest.”

I wanted to protest. If Henry couldn’t rest, then what right did I have to do so while he was out battling a Titan? However, I knew better than to fight my mother on it. Stubbornness really did run in the family.

She and Ava helped me as I limped to the bedroom. It was humiliating, feeling as if my leg was on fire when the wound was gone and no one else seemed to be affected by injuries that were worse than mine. I tried to walk on my own and ignore it, but that only resulted in a few agonizing steps and the embarrassment of having to stop and lean against the wall. Eventually I gave in and let them help me.

Once I was settled in bed against the mountain of pillows and silk, my mother excused herself. “I would stay, but the others need me, too,” she said apologetically.

“I know,” I said. Whatever the others were discussing was undoubtedly more important and productive than hanging around with me. I wanted her to stay, but she wasn’t just my mother down here, and she had more responsibilities than holding my hand when I was upset.

After making me promise to let her know if I needed anything, she strode out the door, leaving behind a trail of worry she couldn’t hide. That, more than anything else that had happened that day, ate at me until I was sick with anxiety.

“Everything’s going to be okay, right?” I said to Ava as she settled down next to me. Pogo jumped up on the bed and snuggled between us, and I idly stroked his fur. At least I could count on him not to fret.

Ava didn’t answer right away. Wondering if she hadn’t heard me, I turned toward her, only to see that she was crying again.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. No matter how many fights they had or—or anything, they’ve never purposely hurt innocent people before. We’re supposed to protect them, and the six were always really, really adamant about that, you know? That’s why we never thought Calliope was the one killing Henry’s girls. It’s just—she’s never done anything like that before. None of them have.”

She set her head on my shoulder, and I forced myself to swallow the lump of fear in my throat. Ava needed reassurance much more than I did.

“They’ll figure it out,” I said, even though I had no way of knowing if I was telling the truth or not. “They’re strong, right? The council. And she’s one against thirteen.”

“But she has Cronus,” Ava said with a sniff. “When he regains his strength, there’s nothing any of us can do to stop him. It took the six of them ages to contain him the first time, and the only reason they won the war then was because they had the element of surprise. The Titans never thought they’d go against them. But now …”

Now Cronus knew what to expect, and he’d had nearly the entire span of humanity to come up with a way to defeat them. “There’s more of you now though,” I said, keeping my voice steady for Ava’s sake. It was easier to keep a lid on my own fears when she was in such bad shape. “You can win again.”

Ava wiped her cheeks, and when she gave me a hopeless look, I blinked, taken aback. Despite her moments of doubt, Ava had always been bubbly and optimistic, seeing the best in a situation no matter how bleak it was. After she’d died in Eden, instead of bemoaning the loss of her mortal life, no matter how temporary it might have been, she embraced being dead. Even when I’d imposed a harsh punishment for the role she’d played in the scuffle that had resulted in Xander’s supposed death and Theo’s grave injuries, she hadn’t turned on me. She’d fished my body from the river after Calliope had killed me, and she’d brought me back to Henry, believing he could do something to save me. Ava was the one who believed in the impossible, not me. When she lost hope, how was I supposed to have any?

“You don’t understand,” she said in a broken voice. “It took all six of them the first time. It doesn’t matter how many new gods there are. None of us combined are as powerful as a single one of them. Without Calliope fighting with them, we don’t stand a chance.”

I looked away, refusing to let her see my eyes fill with tears. Losing would mean destruction beyond anything I could comprehend. At best, it would mean enslavement for Henry and my mother and everyone I’d come to care about; at worst, it would mean our deaths.

The council might have had countless lifetimes to live, but I was nineteen years old, and I really wanted to see twenty.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, Ava was gone and Pogo snored in the indent she’d left in the pillow. Sighing, I took inventory, pleased that at least some of the pain had dulled. Even if it did still hurt to move around, I was determined to grin and bear it.

But the moment I sat up, pain exploded behind my eyes, giving me a splitting headache. I moaned and lay back down, and Pogo licked my cheek as I massaged my temples. Apparently all the pain had gathered in my head while I’d been sleeping.

Someone to my right giggled, and my eyes flew open, taking in the rock walls around me. I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore. Instead I stood in the cavern where I’d watched Henry battle the fog I now knew to be Cronus, and the massive gate loomed before me, carved from the stone itself. I twisted around to find whoever it was that had laughed, and suddenly I was nose-to-nose with Calliope.

I froze. This was it. She’d somehow managed to kidnap me, and there was nothing I could do to protect myself. If she was half as powerful as Ava said she was, she could probably rip me in half with a single thought, and I knew better than to hope there was any way I could talk myself out of this.

To my amazement, she looked past me and stepped forward. Instead of running into me, she moved through me, as if I were nothing more than a ghost.

I wasn’t really here. Just like what had happened when I’d first arrived in the Underworld, this was another vision, and Calliope had no idea I was watching.

I hurried to follow her. She walked proudly through the cavern toward a smaller cave to the side, and I noticed an oddly shaped pile beyond the light that glowed from the ceiling. I could only make out shadows, but whatever it was made Calliope giggle again.

“I can’t believe it.” She stopped a foot from the cave entrance. “Eons of putting up with you, and this is all it takes?”

My insides turned to ice. I didn’t want to look, but my feet moved forward anyway until I could make out the three bodies piled together, bound by chains made of fog and stone.

Walter on the left, his head slumped forward as blood trickled down his cheek. Phillip on the right, an ugly wound running through an eye, down his face and disappearing underneath his shirt.

And Henry in the middle, as pale and still as death.