Something Wicked (10 page)

Usually I connected goddess worship with the moon, and shadows, and night. But with the gritty, hewn stone warm beneath my jeaned legs, I closed my eyes, held up my arms, and felt sunshine caress me. I wished my left hand weren’t still encased in its fiberglass cast, so that I could spread both hands wide and capture whatever essence it was that bathed this magical place. But more…

“Oh, Diana,” I silently said. “I wish we’d come here together, while we still could.”

“How do you know we haven’t been here together?”
I imagined her answering. Because Diana always had to be contrary—it was a bossy, big-sister thing.
“How do you know we weren’t priestesses in a past life, living here on the sacred rock, bringing silken robes and golden jewelry for the Lady’s statue?”

“The statue,” I murmured, sleepily opening my eyes to a world without Diana and scanning all the scaffolded temples. It was nice that so few tourists were here; it gave me privacy for my communion with the Goddess. And my sister.

Sort of. Ben got back in time to hear me. He sat beside me and said, “There used to be a statue of Athena in the Parthenon, made of gold and ivory. It was huge, maybe forty feet tall.”

“But she’s not there anymore?” I asked, my gaze moving to the columned temple in question.

“Oh, no. Please. Her time’s long gone. The site was turned into a Christian church, then a Moslem mosque, and Athena got melted down for parts. Pollution’s slowly taking the rest of her rubble. So much for her so-called power, huh?”

Even as I began to turn, began to question why Ben was suddenly being such a jerk, part of me must have guessed.

I even imagined, very clearly, Diana saying, “Katie,
look out.
”

Then I was nose to hawkish nose, not with Ben, but with Victor Fisher. Same heavy brows. Same sharp eyes. Same angular face.

No soul.

“So about that curse,” he said, and I scrambled backward, farther onto the wall. I would have swung to the ground’s safety, taken off in the direction Ben and Eleni had gone, but Victor easily closed the space between us. So the wall made for my only escape. I stood, to better react.

On the plus side, it made me taller than him. And Ben and Eleni were more likely to see me. These were huge, solid ramparts, so even the top of the wall was as wide as a good sidewalk.

On the minus side? The wall dropped beyond, hundreds of feet down the wall to its rocky foundation. Wind whooshed past my ears and blew at my hair. When I backed away from Victor, I did so
very carefully.
And yet…

Remember when I startled Mrs. Hillcrest, but didn’t scare myself? This felt kind of like that. I was a creature of darkness, of power. And he was my enemy.

“Whoa there, Katie,” Victor cautioned—which would have been a lot more credible if he didn’t also spot me, staying between me and the only safe way down. “You aren’t much use to me dead.”

Much use to him?

He grinned, so very friendly. “Just ask your sister.”

“Stay the hell away from my family.” My mind searched for ways to protect myself, like one of those logic puzzles I’ve never been good at. Luring him up here with me just to push him off seemed risky. And while screaming for help might work, the magic of this place, the power of the Goddess, still flowed through me.

It was time I took care of this guy
my
way. Mine, and Diana’s, and Hekate’s.

“I call upon Hekate,” I warned him, and spread my arms.

“Stop it,” he protested. “That last mojo hex you put on me is bad enough. If you want me to play nice, maybe leave Eleni alone, you’ll take it off me, not cast another one.”

Or I could just finish him, here and now. “I call upon the Goddess of the Crossroads, the Queen of the Night. I ask her to be here with me, now, in this place.”

Surely it wasn’t just my imagination that the wind was picking up, buffeting me, whipping my hair, snakelike, around my face. This was magic, witchcraft,
power.

“Uh, Katie.” Victor’s gaze fastened on something just behind me. “Whatever you’re doing—”

“Be with me,” I said, a second time. But there’s no great magical power in doing something twice. So I lifted my arms even higher, my posture proud and strong.
“Be with me!”

“Watch it!” Victor lunged forward. I kicked out at him, but then my foot landed on something soft.
Something that moved!

It happened too fast. Even as I looked, saw the rearing brown snake, it struck at me. I dodged—somehow, through magic or luck, I dodged a striking snake.

But I did it by stumbling out into nothingness. Hundreds of feet above rock and ruins.

When my foot stepped into thin air, I threw myself forward, risking snake, killer and all. But you can’t push off of nothingness. My knee slammed against the hard edge of the wall as I dropped. I fumbled for a hold.
Hekate, help me!

But my good hand caught a handful of writhing snake, instead.

I threw it. My left hand skidded, useless in its cast, off rock. Weight and gravity pulled me backward. My knee slipped, and my right hand didn’t have the strength to do anything but break fingernails in a last, desperate scrabble.

The last of my balance, and apparently the goddess Herself, failed me.

I plummeted off the ramparts of the Acropolis.

I
was going to die.

I didn’t have the wits or heart to try more magic. I was going to fall, hit the rocks…

Then two strong hands clamped around my last sliding foot. With a lurch I slammed against the outside of the rock wall. Distant treetops and orange-tiled roofs blurred at the edge of my vision. Bits of loose rock fell silently away from me, down, down, down. But I wasn’t falling with them.

I was hanging. Someone had caught me.

Someone?

Trying to twist without kicking free of whoever held me, digging the fingers of my right hand into a grassy crevice between two vast white blocks, I managed to crane my neck and look upward.

It was Victor.
Even upside down, there was no mistaking his well-pressed business casual, his slicked-back hair, his sharp focus as my weight bent him over the wall.

Victor
had saved my life?

“Give me your hand, Katie,” he gasped, hooking my foot awkwardly under his arm to better secure a one-handed grip, then reaching downward for me with his freed hand.

I stubbornly dug my fingers deeper into the crack I’d found, pressing my cheek against the stone like a lover. But really…four fingers and a thumb wouldn’t hold my weight if he let go. Would they?
Especially
upside down.

His grin widened, as if I amused the hell out of him. “C’mon, Katie. What choice do you have?”

Damn, I hated that he was right.

I released my fingerhold. With a hard twist, I swung myself upward with all my strength, reaching, straining. I felt sure he would let go. He would drop me, and the last thing I would ever see was him laughing at me over this one final betrayal.

That’s why I felt such soul-deep shock when his hand clamped around mine.

Our fingers curled hard into each other’s. With me hanging in a kind of U now, by one foot and one hand, he pulled. But I’d been right. Fingers weren’t strong enough to hold a whole person. Even with his tight grip, my hand began to slip, bit by slow bit, out of his. My foot, still tight between his arm and his ribs, could feel his heart pounding right through my shoe.

With a lurch, my hand slipped free.

Throwing himself forward, Victor somehow caught my wrist instead. The sudden lurch of it—my drop as he moved forward, the wrench in my shoulder as I caught—made me scream. He was leaning precariously over the edge now himself.

“Not
yet,
” he growled.

With him holding my wrist
and
my foot, I managed to turn more surely and to lean upward, fighting gravity all the way, scrabbling with my free foot and my cast hand—

Other hands caught me then, fingers digging into my calf, onto my elbow, grabbing my shirt, and now two more bystanders were pulling me up and over the wide rampart wall.

My feet touched stone, and I gasped what felt like my first real breath in forever. I’d survived. But…

Because of
Victor?

I turned on him.

“Why?” I demanded, rudely ignoring more helpful tourists who crowded close asking worried questions in languages I didn’t understand. Sheer fury tore out of me in that one question.
“Why?”
But I wasn’t just asking why he’d saved me, was I? I was asking about a lot more than that. Why Diana? Why Athens? Why the hell wouldn’t he leave me and my family alone?

Other than that we were bound by my curse.

And why hadn’t Hekate helped me this time?
A snake!

My legs shook, but I was determined to stand on my own feet in front of my sister’s killer.

“Here’s my deal,” Victor said, low and intense. He tried to take my shoulders, but I shook him off. The whites of his eyes seemed particularly bright against his dark, dark focus. “You cancel the damned curse, and you help me find the Hekate Cup.”

“But you
have
the cup!”
You killed my sister for it!

“That thing? It’s barely a century old. I’m talking the
real
cup, Katie. The
original
Hekate Cup.
That’s
what brought me and Diana together, what brought you and me together, what we’re all here for!”

Still holding my gaze, he tried to skim his hand down my jawline. When I smacked it away, he drew his fingers back, a smear of blood on their dusty tips. Then he smiled the sweetest, most helpful smile—and licked them.

The world roared around me like wind in my ears, bright with white marble and blue sky and questioning strangers—and memories.

Memories of Victor Fisher and blood.
Evil.

He leaned even closer. “And hey,” he whispered gently, hot against my ear. “Take my advice, hon. Don’t trust—”

I punched him, solid on the gut, my fist curled tight with the thumb on the outside just like my cousin Ray had recently taught me. It felt good. And it worked! Victor staggered back with a satisfying “Oof!”

Then he winked through his wince of pain, like,
point for you.
He tipped his head significantly to my right, and turned away—

Just as Ben himself shouldered through the bystanders and threw himself in front of me.
“Get away from her!”

“You’ve got it wrong, bro.” But Victor didn’t even bother turning as he said that. Instead, he held up one hand as he walked away, regal and dismissive. “You always have.”

Ben lunged after him—but I must have made some noise, because he looked back in time to catch me as I dropped. I didn’t exactly faint. Fainting means losing consciousness, and I didn’t. But it’s almost as embarrassing that, suddenly, my own two legs couldn’t hold me anymore.

It was okay, though. Ben’s arms closed around me, cushioning my fall before I could hit rock for the second time in five minutes. He eased me the rest of the way to the ground, stronger and safer than you’d think a genius would be. His head pivoted from me to his retreating brother and back, his expression unusually dark.

Then he shouted something in Greek, apparently calling for help. Because he could do that. As soon as Eleni arrived, pale from my near miss, Ben eased me from his arms to hers and tore off after his brother.

Damn, damn, damn.

Ben didn’t return for far too long. Eleni reassured and thanked my other saviors. Guards came by to make sure I was all right and—according to Eleni—to lecture me about not standing at the edge of a drop, and about watching out for snakes.

Yeah, great advice, that. Timely, too.

I wanted to send the guards after Victor, especially the longer Ben stayed away—what if Victor hurt him? But what excuse would I use? More than one bystander swore that Victor had saved my life.

Even more confusing—Victor
had
saved my life.
Because he wanted something.

After checking me for snakebite, Eleni sat next to me against the white stone wall, her arm soft around my shoulders. She said the snake I’d described had been a poisonous horned viper, probably come out to sun itself on the rocks in preparation for spring. But that wasn’t the viper I most worried about.

Finally, thank heavens, Ben was back—mussed and panting and looking more frustrated than I’d ever seen him. “He’s gone,” he admitted, pacing a half circle in front of us and pushing his hair back from his sweaty face before zinging me with a full-on stare. “What happened?”

So I told them. Partway through my story, Ben finally stopped pacing and sank into an easy crouch in front of me. I don’t know if his balance came from natural grace, or the intensity of his focus holding him in one spot. It seemed both odd and right that he would be that into me—even if he was just “under my spell.”

“So Vic wants you to find the Hekate Grail,” Ben mused, when I finished. “Maybe he thinks he can’t find it himself.”

“I thought he
had
the damned grail,” I muttered. My words were faintly slurred. My tongue moved fine and my teeth still fit together, so my jaw wasn’t broken. “Diana’s.”

“But yours is barely a hundred years old.” Apparently, Ben had to be told a story only once to keep its details straight. “My guess is that he got into Eleni’s apartment and saw her grail, too. Maybe he went back today to find an older one. How old
is
your chalice, Eleni?”

Rather than deny that she had one, the way she did earlier, she said, “Our grandmother’s mother, she is a potter. She makes special cups, before the Balkan Wars.” Before the
what?

“That’s 1912, 1913,” translated Encyclopedia Ben. But he looked angry enough that even accessing little-known historical facts didn’t much soothe him. His brows were low, his jaw tight as he threw worried glances toward me. It made him look more like his brother…but not in a bad way.

“My sisters, my cousins—we all have such cups for our altars. I think perhaps Kate and Diana do once as well?”

“Did,”
I snarled. There was my life before Victor Fisher, and after—and they didn’t have much in common.

“So Vic is after something older,” translated Ben, taking a deep breath. “Maybe the original Hekate Chalice, if it really exists. Kate, didn’t your friend Maggi say Grail Keepers are better at finding goddess cups than the average person?”

“He thinks I can find it for him because of who I am?” That, and he wanted the curse gone. But I hadn’t mentioned that detail to Ben, for obvious reasons.

Eleni asked, “Then how old is this original grail he wishes us to find?” Because she was a Grail Keeper, too. I wasn’t Victor’s last chance at a grail-detector.

Ben used bottled water to redampen the handkerchief that a kindly old tourist had given us, then returned it gently against my sore, scraped jaw. Would he ever see me without bruises? He said, “Well…from what I’ve read, Hekate was originally a Karian goddess.”

“Karian,” I repeated blankly.

“Karia was a civilization in what’s now southwest Turkey, from about the same time as the ancient Egyptians, and why did Vic call you Katie?”

I had to do a double take on that. “He did the night he killed my sister, too. Diana must have called me that.”

“Oh. Well…” He frowned down at the rock between us. “Anyway, Hekate had become part of Greek religion by the 700s B.C. That means an early relic used in her worship could be over two thousand years old.”

Eleni’s eyes were big. “And very,
very
powerful.”

“Well, I’m not doing it,” I announced. “Victor really is crazy if he thinks I’d actually help him find something that valuable. Wherever it is, it’s probably a lot safer than if I help him dig it up. Not that I’d even know where to start looking.”

“You could try goddess sites,” Ben suggested. “The remains of Eleusis aren’t far from here. There are islands we could try, and Turkey isn’t even that far, relatively speaking. So what do you suppose Vic meant when he said I had it wrong?”

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter where the grail is because
I’m not looking for it.
Not for him.”

“But didn’t Maggi Sanger say that it’s time? That could mean the grail will be found by someone, either way.”

If Her cup is kept safe, and its power joined with that of other goddess grails, their combined force could improve the situation of women a hundredfold. I have reason to think it’s time.

“Maggi also warned that the grail can’t be destroyed, or women would suffer. But how can I protect it without finding it? And how can I find it without endangering it?” Damn, I hated this stuff.

“If you feel better,” Eleni interrupted, “we should take you back to my flat. You will stay with me, of course. I leave on Saturday for Istanbul, for a demonstration, but you may come as well if you wish? We are holding a free clinic for International Women’s Day, and there is much work to be done.”

I hadn’t heard of International Women’s Day, but that didn’t mean anything. At the moment, I had more important things to consider. What could I do to stop Victor? How long could I stay away from my nursing job to protect Eleni? Would anything I did actually be enough?

And why had Hekate turned on me?

Because really, she had. I’d called on her for help, but this time I was nearly bitten by a poisonous snake.

Snakes, like dogs, are sacred to Hekate.

“Come,” insisted Eleni—and from the way she held my gaze, I realized that she understood more than I’d given her credit for. “We have much to discuss.”

Perhaps I could get a few answers, after all.

Nonna and Diana were not the only priestesses of Hekate that I knew.

When we went by Ben’s hostel to pick up my luggage, he surprised me by insisting that Eleni and I go on alone. “I’ve got, um, stuff. To do,” he added awkwardly.

“Stuff,” I challenged. But despite his lingering frown of concern, all he did was nod stubbornly. So we went on without him. It felt strange to be separated from him, the one familiar person from home…but how wimpy was I, to care? Besides, I did need rest.

Still, I only got a few hours’ nap on Eleni’s sofa before she woke me again.

“It is time,” she said.

Groggy from jet lag, and still shaken from the day’s near misses, I just followed.

As it turned out, one of Eleni’s roommates—a forty-something nurse named Thea—was also a goddess worshipper. She assured me that this wasn’t common in Greece, which was mostly Orthodox Christian despite its pagan past. But Thea was a rebel, as proved by her recent divorce. The divorce rate here wasn’t high, either.

Hefting a backpack full of occult supplies, we got on one of the electric trolleys outside the Plaka. When I suggested we grab something to eat on the way, Eleni told me we were “fasting.” Resigned, I watched the ancient, modern, polluted, beautiful mess that was Athens out the window until we transferred onto a big orange bus for Elefsina.

Elefsina, it turns out, had once been ancient Eleusis.

“Wait,” I protested as, with a slight lurch, the bus headed out. “Ben said that was a Hekate site. I told you, I’m not finding any grail just so Victor can get hold of it.”

“We do not go there for the grail,” Eleni assured me. “You have heard of the Eleusinian Mysteries, yes?”