I was shocked as hell when I hit the ground hard instead of dead falling into nothingness. As I hit, I heard a sharp blow and a cry of pain, which I felt against my temple. Phantom pain…Apollo’s. I knew then that he’d been struck for calling out. I listened for what was happening, but I heard nothing, felt nothing. Had he blacked out? Surely just that.
“Let’s get them into place,” the man giving orders said as my captor wrestled me back upright.
“Gi, help him.”
Or, it sounded like
Gi
anyway. It might have been a name or a letter. But if I didn’t live, it would hardly matter. Unless I could somehow follow up from beyond the grave.
I concentrated on the link between me and Apollo. Unwanted as it was, I’d spent the time since learning of it in denial and had done my best to keep my emotions from leaking out. So I didn’t know what it could do. Could I goose him back to consciousness? Feed him some of my strength? Did I have enough to spare?
Apollo had told me that it was strong emotion that leaked through our connection. I used that now. I let all of my fear pour out, all of the gratitude I’d never been able to show him for fear that he’d take advantage of the debt I owed. But I was still holding back, and I knew it. If I admitted to the knowledge that I’d always been able to count on Apollo, that no matter how I pushed him away, he’d always been there for me, then I’d have to acknowledge that I’d been unfairly holding his past against him. Who wouldn’t make
some
really heinous mistakes over the course of a few millennia? If I admitted all that…then Nick was the only thing really keeping us apart. Not that he wasn’t enough.
Nick
. What would he think when he discovered me gone?
Apollo’s eyes snapped open. I knew it, because the world suddenly came into view, and I knew I wasn’t seeing it through my own eyes. It was strange, though, like an out-of-body experience. I was disoriented by the difference between where my body knew itself to be and where I felt…and saw…that I was. So the men in black hadn’t replaced Apollo’s hood as they had mine. Okay, that I got, but seeing through his eyes? This was new.
All around were quiet columns and silent structures lit only by a nearly full moon that seemed far closer here than at home, as if we could reach up and lasso it like in the old Pecos Bill tall tales.
Then suddenly Apollo’s vision canted in a stomach-turning twist, and I felt a cold blunt pain to my back, as if he was slapped down onto something. A broad column base? Some kind of altar?
The vision tweaked out as I was slammed down as well and a more immediate pain rose up in my back.
“She weighs more than she looks,” my captor complained gruffly, and I thought
damn, he’d better kill me now or I’ll make him pay for that.
Not that I cared so much, really, but the anger kept the fear at bay.
“Blades,” his compatriot ordered.
Someone else came forward. I heard it in the swish of his robes. So there were at least three…against the two of us, all trussed up. But conscious. At least we had that.
Then the chanting began. One voice started—one strong voice that I almost,
almost
understood. Not quite Greek, but not quite anything else. Like the difference between modern and old English. I felt like if he’d pause between each word or if I could see it written out, I
might
grasp the meaning, but none of that was about to happen. Then the other voices joined in, and there was no chance to decipher. It wasn’t musical, but it was intense. Something seemed to rise up from the ground and shiver through me. My skin pricked with power, suddenly too tight for my body. My hair wanted to stand on end, but couldn’t, held down almost painfully by my hood and clothes, which, like my skin, felt too constricting. I wanted to be naked, and I didn’t, because then I’d have no protection. But also no restrictions. Against what, I had no idea, but it felt like everything surrounding me was leashing something in and at the same time felt too fragile to hold for long. Like a water balloon filled to bursting.
The chanting hit a crescendo, and I could feel movement I couldn’t see off to my side, something crashing down, disturbing the swirls of power pricking me within and without. Apollo cried out, and pain exploded in my chest, as if I’d been the one pierced. An immense rush of power—too much, too intense, like raw nerves being cauterized—rushed into me where I felt the phantom blade…like an electroshock to my heart. It spread throughout my body, wakening my limbs and blasting through any barriers I still had in my brain. Light flashed through my head as the power spread like ball lightning across every single synapse. I arced up off the altar they’d placed me on. I was an overloaded conduit, bursting with the power and pain. I was going to go up in flames.
Then suddenly, I wasn’t just arcing off, but rising up off the altar…floating. The power took me over, within and without. Hands grabbed for me, but I barely felt them. They were insignificant in the face of what I felt myself becoming.
Knowledge and insight bombarded me. Not in any way I could grasp and hang onto, build into a picture, but with snippets and snapshots and feeling and
knowing
. I could see the past and the present and the
future
. Was this what Apollo’s oracles had felt in this place? Was this what had driven them mad? Caused them to speak in riddles?
Somehow, my hood was gone, and I could see outside my head as well as within.
Three men stood below me, as I floated up like a saint ascending, my hands down to my sides, still tied, though I knew I could end that at any time. The men looked panicked. This hadn’t been any part of their plan. I knew it, and I laughed. What came out…there was something alien to it. I had my own reverb. I was
more
than me.
Apollo lay on a slab of stone, staring at me, somehow still alive, even though his chest lay open. Like Prometheus, who’d had his heart pecked out each day by eagles…or his liver, depending on the source.
Liver
, I knew suddenly. I knew everything.
One of the priests rushed to Apollo’s head and put the blade to his throat as if he would slit it if I made a move.
“
No!”
I roared. I felt the power reverberate out of me like sound waves. The priest with the knife was knocked to the ground and sat stunned.
Apollo moaned in pain. The other two men in black backed away from the scene.
“
I am Rhea
,” I said, shocking myself. My eyes widened, I knew, but it was the only thing I seemed capable of controlling. If they were windows to the soul, then I wasn’t the only one looking through them
. I wasn’t alone.
The power I felt flowing through me wasn’t mine.
Rhea?
The
Rhea?
“If there is any more blood to be spilled here,
I
will spill it,” the voice issuing from me continued. “I” looked at Apollo. “You will not reclaim this place of power. I have found a new avatar, and it is mine now.”
The priest on the ground didn’t rise. He didn’t dare. But he did recover himself enough to say, “Mother Rhea, we’ve come to kill Apollo, your usurper, so that he will never bother you again.”
“
Liar!
”
It thundered out of me with a force that shook the earth and cowered the men in black. I felt her satisfaction throughout my body, a rush like the high of ambrosia hitting my system. But then I saw Apollo’s chest cavity quiver, the knife still embedded within, and I tried to fight back the euphoria. I didn’t know if the knife was enough to kill him, if even now he lay dying. I was afraid I might find out. I struggled to rise up and retake my own body, to help him. But Rhea seemed to thrash in my mind, throwing me against the walls of my own skull. “Do you think I don’t know all? See all? What else have I to do these many millennia but watch and wait?” I realized that she wasn’t even talking to me. She could squash me like a fly with barely a thought. No, the priests held her focus. “You have not come to drive out the usurper but to install a new one in his place. Zeus might have taken my kingdom, but he couldn’t hold it, could he?”
The priests didn’t answer, but two of them looked to the leader, as if he might have a response that would appease her…or a plan. He looked lost, terrified, and trying not to show it. He glanced around frantically for inspiration to fuel any kind of plan. I saw it…or
she
saw it, which right now was the same thing but with more potential for trouble.
But we—
she—
waited, interested to see which path he’d choose, because I could feel all the promise in the air. My brain—
hers—
unfocused, clicked through a dozen potential actions and series of branching outcomes. The second he reached for the knife in Apollo’s chest, the
Now
snapped into clarity and actuality. Instantly, the goddess controlling me lunged and the knife plunged into Apollo’s chest was in my hand instead. The priest was lunging too, but an infinity too late. I was slashing for his throat before he could even close on the spot the knife used to be.
The blade sliced. His skin ripped open like a busted seam. Blood spurted. Already I was whirling on the other two priests, who’d risen to come to his aid. One rushed in from the left and the other from the right. I continued on my slashing arc and buried the blade in the chest of the priest on the right. It sank deeply and stuck when I tried to yank it out. I had to use a foot to kick off his body, and the knife caught on bone before sucking free. The other priest reached me. Hands or something equally ineffective crashed down on my back, and the anger that he would DARE touch me rose up like someone had just tossed accelerant on the fires of Hell.
I swung around with my newly liberated knife, noticing distantly that the tip had been left behind in the last priest’s chest. It didn’t stop me—
her—
from slashing the rough edge across any part of him that happened to be in my way. His cheek opened, and blood geysered once more. I could
feel
the power of the place further awaken all around me, fueled by blood and belief. Difficult for the men in black not to believe in the goddess tearing them to shreds, even when she was wearing another body. Pain tended to be
very
convincing.
It wouldn’t help them now, or me, watching a horror movie play out from inside my own head. I fought, but like trying to fly with broken wings, it did no good. I was fairly sure it didn’t even register with Rhea.
The priest took another run at her, and she let him come. He’d grabbed another knife they must have brought with them for backup. But it wouldn’t matter. She could see all—what would come and how it would end.
She moved my hand in a lightning strike, grabbing his knife and breaking bones. More powerful than I’d ever been, even after an ambrosia infusion. The power of the place was still flooding me. Overloading my system, which was not meant to hold it or the goddess. I felt the crackle of the electrifying energy singing my synapses, frying my senses. For now, though, I was a live wire, electrocuting on contact. The priest cried out, but was cut off when the broken knife in my hand slammed into his stomach. And not just the knife. I was knuckle deep in his internal organs. The rush of it, the lifeforce flowing straight out of the priest and into me, chased what was left of my consciousness straight out, and—
Gone.
Chapter Nine
A chill swept over me, and I reached for the comforter, cursing Nick as a cover hog
…tried
to reach for the cover, but couldn’t move
. My body wouldn’t respond. It felt frozen, though it wasn’t cold enough for that. Could I have been petrified somehow? Like Apollo…
Something stirred in my memory. Us getting kidnapped, being laid out for sacrifice and then…nothing.
I started to panic. What if this was it? What if the chill was of the grave? What if I couldn’t move because I was all but dead already? Not enough blood left to keep my limbs alive and motivate them to move.
I couldn’t hear my own heartbeat, but beneath me…warmth. I could feel that much. It was the only warmth in my world. And it came with a heartbeat, pounding loudly, as if it was pressed right against my chest. Apollo then? Alive?
The heartbeat and the warmth argued for it, but the fact that the warmth seemed liquid, like spilled blood… His or mine? I couldn’t remember.
My brain felt sandblasted, as if the infrastructure to catch racing thoughts had been blown away. Thoughts, fears and hopes whipped around, but like the rest of my body, my mind seemed too paralyzed to catch any of them.
All I knew was that something had happened here. Something big. The jury was still out on whether I’d live to tell about it.
The chest beneath mine rose and fell, focusing me on the moment.
A sound came with it. “Tori.”
I wanted to answer and couldn’t. My lips wouldn’t move.
The body beneath mine shifted, and I felt my body start to slide.
Felt
. It was the first physical sensation beyond warmth. With it rushed pain, everywhere. It overrode even the attempt to gather my thoughts.
Nausea rushed in, but had nowhere to go. Even my gag reflex was dead, immobile, and the bile sank back into my stomach to lie in wait.
Outside myself there was swearing in a language I almost thought I understood. Older than me. So old—
“My gods, Tori. We’ve got to get out of here.”
My head rocked from a blow I felt only when the pain suddenly concentrated in one spot, my cheek. “Tori, snap out of it. We have to get out of here before someone discovers…all this.”
He slapped me again, and I heard myself moan.
Then a sound of frustration, and I was grabbed, not gently, and hoisted up. The world rocked and Apollo held me in his arms. That bile reared its ugly head again and threatened to return with a vengeance. My stomach roiled like a storm-tossed sea. But was, as I’d been, unable to rebel.
Rebel
? But why? I couldn’t catch the thought, as hard as I tried.