Rise of the Blood

Chapter Eight

My eyes snapped open as my body rocked roughly into something that grunted in pain. But opening them didn’t help; something was blocking my view. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. I remembered then being grabbed and reflexively jerked my hands toward my face to remove whatever kept me in the dark, but they wouldn’t move, lashed as they were to the sides of my body by some sort of restraint.

“Tori?” a voice came from beside me, the same direction as the grunt. It was muffled, but still identifiable.

“Apollo?”

He let out a breath. “Thank gods it’s you and you’re okay,” he said softly.

With every breath I took, I felt more lightheaded rather than less, and I knew the hood over my head must have been treated with something like chloroform. I didn’t think I was meant to wake, at least not so soon. Ambrosia gave me almost godlike powers of healing, but with so much time passed since my last fix, I didn’t know how long that would last.

I had to focus on keeping awake.

An engine coughed and then roared to life, and I could feel the rumble of the machine all around us. Wherever we were, we’d soon be on the move with no one knowing where to find us or even that we were missing yet. And the only person who could sense my alarm, through our unwanted mind link, forged when he granted my precognition, was right here with me.

“Can you move?” I asked in a whisper.

“No, you?”

“No.”

“See?” he asked.

“Not a thing.”

We were both silent then. What was there to say? Apollo was the god of many things—the sun, music, poetry, prophecy…none of them action hero oriented. Oh, he was wicked with a bow and arrow, but partial petrification and the lack of an actual weapon didn’t bode well for fighting our way out. Ditto for me. I could stop men in their tracks, but only if I could look them in the eyes. Whoever these men in black were, they’d come prepared. But for what? Who were they? Why were they after us? Where were they going?

All good questions. I wanted to demand the answers, but I didn’t see a reason for anyone to respond to me, even if I could make myself heard over the engine.

I squirmed as best I could, trying to determine, at least, whether we were in the trunk of a car or somewhere a bit more spacious. I hadn’t gotten the sense of a cramped space when I’d been struggling to bring my hands to my face, and sure enough, I could wiggle around freely, except backward, where I pressed up against Apollo’s hard body.

“I don’t suppose that’s something useful you’re sporting, is it? Like the handle of some kind of sword?” I asked him.

He snorted. “It’s called a haft, and no, that’s not what you’re feeling. Although, as far as usefulness, that would depend on the situation.”

I supposed that was true. If rescue depended on writing an SOS in the snow, he’d certainly be packing the right equipment. The mental picture somehow made breathing a little easier. My panic started to recede.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Don’t mention it.”

I wondered with that strange empathy between us whether he was breathing a little easier as well. I was glad he only sensed my emotions and not my mental pictures.

“So, how are we getting out of here?” I asked.

A sudden hard turn rocked me away and then back into him. Damned switchbacks. Were we climbing higher on Mount Parnassus? I was instantly back to hyperventilation and lightheadedness.

“Wait and see?” Apollo suggested. I could barely remember what we were talking about, gripped in the steel bands of fear.

Apollo squirmed closer to me, putting a chin over my shoulder to hold me in place as the vehicle rocked and twisted us farther away from help. “Hey, hey,” he murmured near my ear, “it’s going to be all right. I’m a god, remember. I didn’t get to be this insufferably arrogant without cause.”

He was trying to make me laugh, and I appreciated the attempt, but this time… I blacked out for a second as the scent of the sack over my head overwhelmed me and came back to him urgently whispering my name. “Tori! Stay with me, Tori. We’re going to need our wits about us.”

I couldn’t feel engine vibration anymore.

“Have we stopped?” I asked, still groggy.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Where?”

“Delphi,” he said.

Well, duh… But wait, did he mean the sanctuary and not the town? Given his connection to the place, maybe he could sense it like he could me…things bound to him. I pushed the thought down into a deep dark place along with my fear of the heights. Or I tried to.

“Your place of power?” I asked to be sure. “Can you—?”

“Trying,” he said. “There’ve been a few reenactments here over the years, some things that have kept the faith, but mostly lots and lots of tourists. I have to dig deep.”

The vehicle rocked on its wheels and a door slammed, then a second. Another one opened and in rushed cold air. Suddenly, Apollo’s comforting form was ripped away from me, and I heard him ooph as he hit the ground. I felt the impact myself as a sharp pain shooting up my back, a disturbing new feature of our connection. Was it the power of the place or the strengthening of my sixth sense with the elimination of my sight?

Someone grabbed me by the ankle, and before I could react, I was sliding backward myself, bumping over indeterminate things that clanked and bruised. Metal tools, maybe. I braced for the impact with the ground, but as I started to drop, I was grabbed around the waist and hoisted up onto someone’s back, a shoulder creasing my gut. I hung there like a sack of potatoes, my nose smashed up against knobby vertebrae.

I let out an “ouch” and started to squirm. My captor stumbled with the ferocity of my fight, and a second later pain burst through my skull as I was knocked over the head.

My awareness fled like shadows from Zeus’s lightning.

Fear woke me again. Pounding fear, and someone nudging my shoulder. “Tori. Tori, wake up, please.”

“Huh?” I asked brilliantly.

The pounding fear receded, and I realized it hadn’t been my own. I realized something else as well—I could see. Not much. Just enough to know that my view was unobstructed, but wherever we were wasn’t bright enough for much detail.

“I pulled it off with my teeth,” Apollo said, “as soon as I managed to get rid of mine.”

I squirmed around until I was facing him, ignoring the protests of my bruised body…and froze when I saw that the slight glow which allowed me to see anything at all was coming from him.

“Sun god,” he explained without me asking. “They don’t realize it, but the guys who captured us are fueling my power with their belief. Whoever they are, they know exactly who they’ve taken hostage.”

“They?”

“Your men in black. Skinny, unshaven, look like they haven’t bathed in a while. Smell like earth, patchouli and incense.”

Right, I remembered.

“What do they want with us?”

“They’re waiting for dark,” he said, looking away.

“Apollo—”

Reluctantly, he met my gaze again. “What do they want?” I repeated.

Apollo threw himself forward, and a wave of feeling swept me, crashing over me, submerging me just as his lips hit mine. I was so stunned, so overwhelmed, I just lay there. Lust and love and want and fear and regret and resentment, right and wrong and even more right…they were all jumbled, all powerful, and all poured into the kiss.

My arms strained against my bonds, desperate to get around Apollo even while I tried to find enough of myself left to push him away, but there wasn’t enough of me that wanted to, not enough to pull together into action.

The impact felt…cataclysmic.

I thought I’d drown in him with the tsunami of emotion crashing over me. I made a sound, like a whimper. Too much. It was all too much. He drew back.

I found his gaze easily enough, and he looked concussed.

“No,” I said, now that he’d found the power to stop. It was too little, too late, and I wasn’t even sure whether I was telling him no, don’t stop or finally drawing the line.

“I had to,” he said softly. “If we’re going to die, I had to do that at least one more time. But it…it wasn’t like the first time. It was….”

I latched onto the one part that I could deal with, as twisted as that was. “Die?” I asked.

My voice didn’t even quiver. No, that was for the rest of me, still shaking from the emotional storm or from ambrosia withdrawal or just from the cold.

“Have you ever heard of the Selli?” he said.

Holy non-sequitor, Batman.

“The who?”

“Zeus’s priests, from back in the old days. Based on their talk, that’s who we’re dealing with here, a surviving sect, still doing his bidding.”

“Lovely, and the dying part?”

“They seem to be planning a blood sacrifice.”

When I’d joined my uncle’s PI business, I knew there’d be times when things might get a little hairy, but I was thinking hand-to-hand combat, maybe, or a shoot-out or two in the entire course of my career. Blood sacrifice had never even popped up on my radar.

“I’m sorry, my hearing must not be working. Blood sacrifice?”

Apollo was silent for a second, and I could sense him listening, making sure no one was on their way back for us before he asked gravely, “How much do you know about Delphi?”

“Dedicated to you, site of the famed Oracles…um, that’d be about it.” I’d intended to read up before we came, but there’d never been time.

“This was a sacred site well before I came along, dedicated to the titan Rhea, the mother of Zeus, etc. I sort of…took it over.”

“By wrestling the Pythian Serpent,” I remembered. It was a pretty famous story. Ranked right up there with Hercules strangling the hydra in his crib.

“I was young and stupid. And, in my defense, the time of the titans had passed. Rhea had seen her husband Kronos devour their children. It seemed to be a popular thing to do back then. Then she saw him deposed by Zeus, whom she’d saved from being eaten by feeding Kronos a stone instead. She’d watched Zeus battle her fellow titans for supremacy. Her heart just wasn’t in the whole goddess thing anymore. Anyway, I didn’t defeat her so much as repurpose her place of power. She’d already more or less withdrawn with the other titans.”

“And the point of the history lesson?” I asked, my back shrieking at me as I nearly dislocated my shoulders in the attempt to get loose of my bonds.

“The point is that Delphi has always been strategically important. The story goes that when Zeus let free two doves from either side of the world, they met in Delphi. The ancients called it the “naval of the world”. There’s a great deal of power here.”

“Where does the sacrifice come in?”

“From what I’ve overheard, they want to awaken the power of the place, I suspect to somehow restore Zeus to his former glory.”

“Does it have to be our blood?” I asked. Not that spilling anyone else’s was okay in my book. What I wanted to know was whether, if we got free, they’d go after softer targets. How deadly were these guys? Priests, that didn’t sound so scary…until I thought about augury and reading entrails and the ritual sacrifices of various religions in bygone days.

“It has to be my blood, at the least. My ties here are strong. They’ll need to be broken before others can be established, just as I had to spill the blood of the Pythian Serpent, Rhea’s avatar, to make Delphi my own.” We were both silent for a second at that. “On the upside, there may be a window of opportunity after my blood reawakens the sanctuary and before I grow too weak when we might be able to seize the moment.”

It wasn’t much, but it was hope, and I latched onto it. As much as I didn’t want to walk that aisle tomorrow in a puke-green gown, going out this way seemed even worse. I might die of something other than embarrassment.

“Are you fading?” I asked suddenly.

“Sun’s going down,” Apollo said, meeting my gaze. “I can’t hold the light much longer.”

Skata. I looked quickly around, hoping to see more than I’d seen before, squinting, trying to extend my senses. If only I’d asked Hermes about that ambrosia after all. Funny how he now seemed the lesser of two evils. But as far as I could see, which wasn’t far, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. Earth and stone, all well-fitted together. No loose stones or jagged edges.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“At a guess, the Athenian Treasury. It’s the only intact structure on site.”

“Great.” Nothing better than a prison meant to hold valuables in and intruders out. “Do you have anything we can use to get free?” I asked. “Pocket knife, unclipped toenail. Anything?”

“Just my teeth,” he answered.

Phantasmagorical. The way his light was starting to dim, there was no way we had time for him to chew through my bonds or for me to untie him.

Especially not when the sound of stone sliding against stone signaled that our time was up. Apollo let his glow go out, but it was replaced by the blaze of flashlights striking our faces.

“Don’t look in her eyes!” a male voice called out in Greek. “Get the cover back over her face,” he further demanded.

The lights flicked away from our faces and over the ground, as no doubt they searched for the hoods that had cut off our sight.

My precognition kicked into high gear, but it didn’t take a psychic to know that my hood couldn’t be hard to find and that I’d soon be blind again, in addition to helpless. I tried desperately in the dark to search out the eyes of our kidnappers, to catch them with the gorgon glare, but they were too wary, and in no time, I was grabbed from behind, the hood once again yanked over my head.

Then I was hoisted up off the ground and against someone’s chest, being force-marched out of wherever we were. I already knew flailing around only made my bonds cut into my flesh and didn’t do a damned bit of good, so I changed my strategy. This time I tried to make myself smaller, cringing in on myself, trying to loosen the bonds now that I’d hopefully strained and stretched them in my earlier struggle. I felt them ease up, but they were still a long way from falling to the ground, and as soon as I expanded my chest for a breath, they’d tighten back up again.

I wasn’t the damsel in distress sort, counting on rescue, though under the circumstances I couldn’t help but wish that Nick or Uncle Christos or someone would come looking for us. But who would know to search for us here?

I could feel when we stepped from wherever they’d been keeping us into the fresh air. For one, whoever held me pressed down hard on my head to get me to duck through an exit clearly smaller than I was. For another, the night air was cooler. There was very little breeze, but at this altitude—

A lethal injection of fear shot through me at the thought. Here we were at the top of Mount Parnassus and I couldn’t see a thing. The kidnappers could walk me straight off a cliff, and I’d never know it until I was banging tits over tail down the side of the mountain, my body crashing against every cliff and outcropping, screaming in terror all the way, at least until the pain or the fatal blow knocked me out.

I froze in fear, unable to take another step into the unknown. My kidnapper tripped at my sudden stop, knocking me forward. I panicked, twisted, trying frantically to clutch at him, to take him with me as I fell, but he was faster.

“Tori!” Apollo called out, feeling my fear and probably thinking the worst.

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.