Battle for the Blood (17 page)

“Enough,” I snapped. “Lyssa, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. If you’re really scarred by the bloodlust you’ve inspired in the past, you’ve got to get your nature under control. Or channel it. Namtar’s nearness is driving you nuts.”
Try saying
that
five times fast,
my brain taunted me. “Store it up. Once we find Namtar, you unleash the fury. But not until then.”

“Can’t. Help. It,” she said, her eyes now totally consumed by the blood, her body vibrating with the need to fly into a frenzy.

“Freeze!” I told her forcefully. The vibrations halted immediately, and she stood like a statue, nothing stirring but a single blood tear that had reached critical mass and started the slow, thick descent down her cheek.

“Make the call,” I told Hera. “Do it now. Hermes, you’re the trickster god. You can arrange it to be somehow untraceable, right? Route it through computers and whatnot?”

“Who needs computers when you have magic? What is it they say—any sufficiently advanced geekspeak is indistinguishable from arcane mumbo jumbo?”

“I don’t think they say that,” Cori responded.

“I might be paraphrasing. Anyway, it’s true. Do you have a phone you won’t mind losing?” he asked her.

“Well, I
am
due for an upgrade.” She pulled a phone from her hip pocket and offered it to Hermes, who gripped it, looked at it, front, back and sides, held it upside down and let it dangle there as he used some of that arcane mumbo jumbo on the device. It glowed a faint red, then strobed into purple, which died down into nothing.

“Here,” he said, handing it over to Hera, “try it now.”

She looked at Michelle, who recited the number right off of the top of her head. I eyed her suspiciously, like she too might be a goddess in hiding, maybe Mnemosyne, but then I remembered that M was a titan (with whom Zeus had once had an affair), so it was beyond unlikely the two would have formed an attachment.

“Eidetic memory,” Michelle said, seeing my look. “If I hear it, it’s locked inside.”

“Blessing and a curse,” Hera said. “Great for party tricks. Great for an assistant, but if what she hears is wrong, that’s locked away too, and good luck overwriting that file.”

“You don’t like it, don’t be wrong,” Michelle answered, but there was no bite to it, as though the conversation had been replayed a time or two.

Hera hit Send and looked over at all of us watching like this was a spectator sport. Olympic cell signaling. “Here it goes.”

The call itself was anticlimactic. Hermes amplified the sound coming out so that we could all clearly hear a mechanized voice inviting us to leave a message. Hera looked at us, at a loss, and then thought fast when it came to the beep. “You know who this is. This apocalypse thing has hit too close to home. I’m not saying I’m fully in your camp…yet. But if you’re against this thing, then we’re on the same side. I don’t know where I’ll be; I’m moving around, but you can try me at this number.” She looked at Hermes, signing something in the air, and he quickly mouthed numbers at her, which she repeated into the phone. “Call me.”

She hung up. “Now what?”

“Now, we go to the hospital,” I said. “We grab Nick, find his sister, get any intel we can and get out again. Maybe by then, we’ll have a return phone call.”

She looked around at the rest of us. “That’s all you’ve got? A couple of gods, a muse, a gorgon girl, a
human
, and no discernible plan?”

“It’s worked for us so far,” I said defensively.

“Great,” she responded. “Michelle, take a memo. We need to call in Athena. She’s the sultana of strategy.”

I grabbed Michelle as she reached for the phone Hera held out to her. “You can’t,” I said, intercepting it. “For all we know, she’s part of the girl-power clique. If you call her and she’s on their side, you’ll blow the whole thing.”

“So we’re just going to wing it?” Hera asked dubiously.

“It’s called improv and it works for comedy,” Cori said.

“But, honey, this is war.”

Chapter Fifteen

“What do you mean you can’t just open a portal? You opened one just a little while ago.”

Hermes gave me the hairy eyeball. “Yes, but you’re talking about opening a portal into an overrun hospital. There’s nothing to keep someone from walking through as the portal opens. Or lurching through. Do you really want to occupy the same space as one of the walking undead? I don’t know what that’ll do to you, but there’s a certain scene from
Galaxy Quest
that comes to mind.”

I looked to Apollo in appeal.

“He’s got a point,” Apollo said. “We can open a portal, but we have to weigh the risks.”

Hermes looked sour, and I realized what all the protest was about. “You’re scared,” I said. It popped out of my mouth before I could think about it, finesse it. If he were Hecate his glare might actually have incinerated me on contact.

“I’m not scared. But like any trickster god, hell, like any sane person, I have a healthy sense of self-preservation. A field trip to ground zero of a full-on crisis seems like insanity.”

“Who was it who said, ‘There’s a fine line between genius and insanity’?”

“I don’t know, but I’m fairly sure he hadn’t met you.”

“Children!” Lau snapped. “Let’s pull it together. Between breaking into a plague hospital and porting in, the safer choice seems fairly obvious.”

Go figure, the two of us on the same side for once.

“Fine,” Hermes said, “but if things go wrong, don’t blame the messenger.”

“What about any of this is
right
?” Cori asked.

“Point taken,” Hermes said. “Okay, everyone, grab whatever weapons you want to go in with and give me silence while I work.”

Cori went to the kitchen and rummaged around while Hermes linked his fingers together and twisted his hands outward to crack his knuckles. He put on a show of rolling his shoulders, stretching his neck and generally limbering up. Cori came back a minute later with a serving tray filled with an array of knives, a cleaver, surgical masks and rubber gloves. She saw me looking.

“I’m not a germaphobe or anything,” she said quickly. “I just like cleanliness and hate the smell of bleach. Anyway, I thought they’d come in handy in a plague zone.”

It was smart thinking. If I’d had the time to give it any thought, I’d have expected the muse of comedy and choral performances to be a lot more…I don’t know…giddy, maybe. Less practical. It was unfair, I realized. Comedy was hard work and heartbreaking in its own way, with humor being so subjective and everyone a critic.

Lyssa was coming out of her frozen state now, glaring around. Cori took several steps back, keeping the weapons tray out of reach.

“You stay,” Hera ordered Michelle, eying Lyssa. “Keep an eye on things here.”

“Who’s going to keep an eye on
you
?” Lyssa asked. I felt the backlash of her hatred. “Perhaps I’d better come along as well.”

Hera’s struggle showed on her face. On the one hand, she clearly didn’t trust Lyssa at our side. On the other hand, leaving Lyssa behind meant cooping her assistant up with the demon’s barely leashed madness or taking her into a different kind of danger.

“If we could guarantee we were the only people you might whip into a murderous rage…” Hera began. “Wait, that came out wrong. We don’t want
anyone
whipped into a homicidal rage, least of all our enemies, and we’ve already established that you have no control.”

“I haven’t killed you yet,” Lyssa countered.

But it was a close thing. I could feel it. To her point, maybe Lyssa
did
have more control than we knew, but still. The rage was starting to boil my blood…again.

“Just go,” Lyssa snapped. Her first clenched. Her body taut as a drawn bow. The control was costing her and she was truly going to snap at any moment.

“But—” Michelle said.

“GO!” Lyssa roared, her eyes flaring red again.

I reached for the tray, grabbed the biggest knife there and handed it to Michelle. “Just in case,” I said.

She looked terrified.

“I’m staying too,” Cori said to Michelle, “don’t worry.” When Apollo’s eyes blazed her way, she said, “I’m not leaving Mel. You find a way to save her or, heavens help me, I will kick your fine ass from here to eternity.”

“What about my ass?” Hermes asked.

“You want me to kick that too?” Cori asked.

“You could show a little appreciation.”

“Enough!” Hera thundered. “Open the portal.”

Hermes grinned as though he was thrilled to finally get a rise out of someone—which probably he was—and turned to Apollo. “Shall we?”

Apollo growled and reached out to take Hermes’s hand in a man shake. The latter closed his eyes and once again focused on the space above the coffee table. As before, the air rippled and churned, but this time it refused to fix on anything.

“Something’s interfering,” Hermes said. “I can’t get a read on your detective.”

“He’s not
her
detective,” Apollo growled, like
that
was the important part.

“You don’t think—” I began, but I couldn’t finish the thought. “Hell with that. I’m going in.” I tested my wings. Stiff, but they’d do. Whatever had awakened in me, I was glad the superhealing was part of the package. “I can carry one person with me.”

Because the only way I could think to get into a quarantined and barricaded building was via the roof. I doubted there were any handy-dandy subterranean tunnels leading to secret entrances into the facility, and I didn’t have the leisure to go looking.

“Me,” Lau said, unsurprisingly. “You’re taking me.”

“Hera,” I said. My tone didn’t invite argument, but Lau had never in her life waited to be invited. I cut her off before she could begin her rant. “She’s got that kickin’ I-can-give-life-and-I-can-take-it-away power. If Nick and his sister are in trouble, she can give them the strength to hold on. Right?” I asked her. I’d need Hera’s strength, but, more than that, it was a test. Her history didn’t exactly inspire trust, and if she was going to turn on us, better that I be the only one in the line of fire.

Hera nodded.

“Good.”

Apollo stepped up—ready, I could tell, to insist on joining up somehow. “I need you and Hermes here. If we get into trouble, you’ll sense it through our link. If Hermes can’t zero in on me, I know
you
can, and if we need you to open a portal so we can make our escape…”

He looked down into my eyes, and I pleaded with him through our connection to just let it go. Let me go. I tried to reinforce how much I was determined to return. That much I could be sure of. The “to him” part that should have followed…
that
was churning my gut. Faced with Nick in need…I couldn’t make that call.

I tried to push that confusion way down where Apollo couldn’t sense it, to hide it behind the force of my determination. Anyway, it had no place right now when there was no guarantee any of us would live long enough for it to matter.

“Do your windows open?” I asked Cori.

She nodded.

“Then let’s go,” I said to Hera.

How
to carry her was the awkward thing. As weird as it was to have her arms wrapped around my neck and her body pressed against mine, it turned out to be the easiest way. My wings had to be free to flap, so there was no throwing her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

We were on the Upper East Side, and the hospital was on the Upper West. Not far, as the crow—or gorgon—flies, but not close enough for my comfort. The fact that Hermes couldn’t get a read on Nick had my panic kicked into high gear. My heart pounded in my chest, making it hard to catch the breath I needed.

I hoped and prayed I’d recognize the hospital from the sky. The upside: That turned out not to be a problem. The downside: Things were worse than I thought.

The barricades were easily seen from the sky…as was the fact that they’d been abandoned. When we’d seen them on the news, they’d been manned by police officers in riot gear. Now…most of the barricades were down, like they’d been overrun. Only two bodies had been left behind that I could see…bodies too badly damaged to rise again, even if they were raging with the zombie plague.

Worse, a small white-and-brown dog stood over one of those bodies, muzzle buried deep. My stomach lurched, and Hera snapped, “Don’t you dare,” before I could lose my lunch.

I was terrified of what we’d find inside. My precog kicked my gut, as if to say that I was right to fear. I focused on the rooftop we were headed for. There was a copter sitting there all by itself. I waited for a challenge, the sight of soldiers with weaponry trained on us, but there was nothing. Silence. Eerie and unnatural.

Or…not nothing. There was smear. And then chunks among the smear. And then… My stomach rebelled and I wobbled in our flight. I had to get us down onto that roof before I blew chunks… Oh, bad thinking. Bad, bad thinking.

I aimed hurriedly for a slick-free spot on the roof, but in my eye-watering attempt to hold my nausea in, I overshot by the merest bit and we went sliding in the…stuff. The red slick of once human. Or animal. I couldn’t know for sure.

But I could, because that was an ear and…and maybe a piece of scalp with blood-matted hair still clinging to it. Hera’s feet came down to the ground and tried to dig in to stop our slide, but the sudden jolt only overbalanced us, and we went skidding and rolling through the bloody remains. My natural instinct was to throw out my hands and scrabble at the concrete roof, make myself as nonaerodynamic as possible. The blood slicked my hands, getting in under my nails, filling my nasal passages, sickening my stomach. At the end of the slide, I managed to twist just enough to avoid getting most of the sickness on myself when my stomach violently reversed peristalsis.

How Hera held in her coffee was beyond me, but when I twisted my head and groaned, there she was, coming up to her hands and knees and quickly backing away from the filth, slicking her hands down her marginally less mucky suit in the attempt to clean them off.

“What the hells happened here?” she asked. Like I would know.

I got shakily to my feet, holding my hands out before me, unwilling to rub the slime on my clothes and keep the smell with me forever. Hoping desperately for a sink and soapy water hot enough to take off at least one layer of skin. But I wasn’t going to find it up here.

“Zombies?” I suggested hopefully. Better the devil you know.

“Are they usually so…thorough?” she asked.

We both knew they weren’t. Diseases existed to propagate themselves. It didn’t do any good to infect someone who was in no condition to go around infecting others. We’d all seen ample shambling evidence of the way the plague usually worked. This was something else.

“Let’s get inside,” I said, avoiding the question.

She nodded, and we both headed for a door clearly visible from where we stood. It had a man-sized dent in it and a still-wet smear of blood across it. There was nothing to do but reach for the handle with my bloody hands. It turned easily, but the banged-up door scraped along as I pushed it out of the way, making stealth impossible. I listened for a minute, but the eerie quiet continued inside. Nothing came for us.

Not a creature was stirring. Not even a mouse,
my brain supplied. I told it to shut the hell up. Nick was alive, somewhere. I’d know if he was dead.

But would I?
I asked myself. Would I really? I wanted to think yes, but in truth…

There was nowhere to go but down. I was relieved to see that the carnage had stopped at the door, but also horrified because it meant that no one from the roof had made it this far. I touched the clinically bare walls, rubbing my hands against them, doing my best to leave the filth behind, careful to smear enough that there’d be no attainable prints. I didn’t feel any better afterward. The horror had sunk in and found a home.

Hera was silent on the stairs behind me. I had to turn twice to make sure she was still there. At the first floor we came to, I pushed against the door to the hallway, and it opened easily. Too easily. Whatever had done the damage on the roof hadn’t brought the devastation inside. Was it too big to enter, like Eu-meh? Or uninvited like the vampires I still didn’t know actually existed. Or…wait, this was a public building, so I didn’t think the invitation thing was an issue. So not a vamp then. Maybe something patrolling the perimeter. Not so concerned with what was inside the building as what might get in for rescue or out for escape? But given the state of the barricades below,
something
had certainly gotten out.

This top floor seemed to be made up of offices…empty, silent offices. I wanted to raid them for information, but my precog was like a dog in a disaster film, tugging desperately at my mind to tell me that Timmy had fallen down the well or the aliens were at our door. It was telling me we had to go down. But we had to pass the offices, and in one someone had left a smartphone out on a desktop. I grabbed it, hoping maybe it would reveal something later on. I tucked it in a pocket and continued on, Hera right at my heels.

We paused at the elevators. There were only two that came up to this level, and I hesitated before pressing the call button. The plague victims weren’t exactly reasoning beings, but they might still have a Pavlovian response to the sound of the elevator if they’d previously discovered fresh meat at the ding of the bell. There was an inset sign by the call button, listing what could be found on which floors, which I committed to memory. Then I pushed the button. I wasn’t sure we should risk the elevator, but if it turned out to be stuck anywhere, that would be a good indication of trouble. It might give us a place to start.

Hera and I stood in silence, watching the display at the top of each car to see which would come and from where.

Car one said it was currently on the second floor, which didn’t change in the face of our summons. Car two started to rise up from the basement.

The second floor then. I hoped the elevator there wasn’t blocked by a body. My precog rewarded me with a bolt to the heart at the very thought, and I knew that as much as I wanted it to be otherwise, I was dead-on. Emphasis on the dead.