Rise of the Blood

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.

My body lurched again, suddenly, and my feet hit something hard, like the ground. All at once the acid that had been burning its way up erupted. I doubled over, coughing and spewing it, causing a yell and a sudden movement outside myself. Someone—Apollo—braced me from behind and patted my back. I wanted to tell him it was torment, but my throat had been burnt out and I couldn’t speak.

I blinked away tears from my violent purging and only then realized I could blink again. I was as weak as a kitten, completely dependent on Apollo holding me upright, worried about keeping my feet under me.

Until my newly opened eyes lit on the carnage all around us, and I learned we had much, much bigger things to worry about.

I blinked up at Apollo, every muscle in my body protesting the simple turn of my head. “Did you do that?” I asked.

His eyes were a bottomless pit of pain. I fell back away from them—or would have fallen if I hadn’t caught myself on a still-standing column. “What?” I asked, filled with dread. There was no way that pain was caused by killing in self-defense. There was more to it, and the way he was looking at me…

I looked down at myself and saw my chest, matted in blood that was tacky and thick. It wasn’t just the “blood spatter” pattern on all the CSI shows with the blowback from a bullet wound or the cast off from a blunt force weapon. It was up close and personal lifeblood spilling out as I—

I hit a mental wall, and my knees buckled. My back scraped against the stone as I slid down it to the ground.

Had I—

The wall hit me. With a vengeance. My vision, my world blinked out and swam back again, but when it did I was lying in a puddle of bile and blood with Apollo crouched over me, smoothing hair away from my face.

“You saved my life,” he said softly, as if that would make it all better. “Or, anyway, Rhea killing them kept them from killing me. This wasn’t really you, you know. None of this was your fault.”

They were just words. My hand had wielded the blade, had buried itself in some guy’s flesh. I knew that now. I remembered. I was the one covered in their blood. I searched inside myself for any sign of Rhea, to cast her out or rail at her or assure myself that yes, truly, this had happened and there was nothing I could have done to stop it. But if Rhea was still in possession, she was playing it cool.

“Come on,” Apollo continued, reaching for my arm when he saw that I was coming back to myself. “We have to get out of here before anyone finds the bodies.”

I couldn’t process. “Find? Shouldn’t we report them?”

Apollo looked at me pityingly and continued trying to pull me to my feet. I wasn’t being any help. Escape felt…pointless. Three men were dead. I’d killed them. Sure, they were trying to kill us, but…it hadn’t been self-defense. Not for me—or Rhea. I remembered it all now. There’d been anger, hunger, righteousness, but no fear. I hadn’t—she hadn’t felt threatened. She’d felt vengeful.

I started to shake. Hard. So hard my teeth clacked together and I almost shook loose of Apollo’s hand.

“You’re in shock,” he said. “And no wonder, but you can break down later. For now, I have to get you out of here. No arguments. We can’t report this when you’re the one covered in their blood.”

It seemed pointless—to protest, escape, report, breathe. All equally hopeless. What could the authorities do, after all? Arresting me wouldn’t stop a disembodied mother goddess. I wasn’t even sure she wouldn’t take possession again to prevent that from happening, and I was afraid of what that would mean for any authorities.

My shaking grew more violent, but Apollo held on and dragged me from the site.

It was dark. There was no constant glare of city lights and pollution like in L.A. Just darkness barely lightened by the moon and stars, even with no clouds to blot them out. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not thinking about the dead priests. Someone’s sons, certainly. Brothers? Lovers? Who was left behind to mourn and how could they without knowing…

I stumbled, and Apollo kept me upright.

“No guard?” I asked, surprised, looking around the ruins.

“No money for them. There’s only one way in, and it would have been closed hours ago.”

So the bodies wouldn’t be found until morning. Were there predators up this high? Scavengers who would… The bile rose up again, but not with enough force to spill over.

Right, not thinking about them. Not my fault. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. My body, my rules. My parents had taught me that before we’d even had the first sex talk. It was like a mantra, and it had been totally blown to smithereens. If I wasn’t safe inside my own mind and body, where was I safe? And who was safe from me?

Right, fleeing the scene of a crime now, complete mental break later. After my murder indictment. Maybe I could claim insanity. I already had the family history.

Apollo was moving slower than normal, I noticed after a minute. “Are you okay?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. “Healing,” he said finally, “and talking to the winds. Getting help.”

I craned my aching neck to stare at him. “You couldn’t have done that earlier?”

“No winds where they had us locked away, and then I was distracted taking a knife to the chest.”

“Oh, that. And between times?”

He looked away. Between incarceration and attempted sacrifice, I’d been knocked out. Had all his focus been on me?

“I tried. He wasn’t taking calls,” Apollo said.

“Who wasn’t? Hermes?”

Apollo snorted. “I wouldn’t trust Hermes to help me cross the street.”

“Who then?”

“Pan.”

I stopped short, and Apollo, still holding my arm, propelling me along, nearly fell on his face with the sudden loss of momentum.

“Pan,” I said, confirming. “As in my possible progenitor Pan?”

“You don’t know?” he asked.

“Know what?” I snapped back. I’d killed tonight. I really wasn’t in the mood for guessing games.

“Your Uncle Hector.”

My brain refused even to process that thought, still fried from earlier or just unable to accept any more impossible things before breakfast…or rehearsal dinner. Oh gods, that rehearsal dinner. Tina was going to kill me. And right now I could only think that it would solve all my problems.

“Uncle Hector,” I repeated stupidly.

“Ask your yiayia. She knows. Or ask him yourself. He’s on his way.”

My brain had truly blown a fuse. Suddenly, my divine heritage had gone from theoretical to actual. Oh sure, I’d come to terms with the gorgon glare; there was no denying that. But divinity… Although, actual relation to the god Pan, the earthy divinity best known for his sexual appetite, explained so much about Spiro.

Uncle Hector. Now I understood why I’d never known quite where he fit into the family tree. It seemed to be kind of an emeritus title. I wondered…did everybody know? Or was everyone but Yiayia as ignorant as I was?

“Tori, stay with me. We have to get past the road block so that Hector can pick us up.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” I snapped.

“Not physically. But mentally you’re so far away your feet have stopped moving.”

I cursed, colorfully and bilingually. It didn’t help anything, but it felt good. I had so much pent up…stuff—horror, shock, panic, horror, stunned disbelief, horror—that it was a release valve of sorts, letting off just enough steam to get my feet moving again.

We made it past the gated-off portion of road and down a little ways from the bloodshed and ruins when a car, running dark with no lights, pulled up to us. The passenger side window rolled down, and Uncle Hector ordered, “Get in.”

Apollo opened the back door for me and gently lowered me in, then he took shotgun.

“That your blood?” Uncle Hector asked as he got in.

“Mostly.”

Uncle Hector only nodded, like he picked up bloody men on dark mountain roads on a regular basis. He was completely unfazed. “Tori-girl, how are you?”

There was no way to answer that.

“In shock,” Apollo said for me.

Hector nodded, popped the car into gear and somehow managed a three-point turn on the narrow road. We drove for a mile or so before he felt it safe to turn on the headlights.

“I didn’t make any excuses,” Uncle Hector said as he drove. “Would lead to too many questions, and I wanted to get out of there in a hurry. Plus, I didn’t know what kind of injuries we were gonna have to account for. But you two disappearing together, that’s caused quite a stir.” He took his gaze off the road to look back over his shoulder at me. “Your young man is fit to be tied. Caused quite a ruckus saying you’d gone missing. Nearly derailed the rehearsal. Stayed behind to search for you. Had hotel security all up in arms.”

Nick.

My heart broke. How was I going to tell Nick that I’d killed, even if I hadn’t been the one in control of my body? That I’d left the scene. That I could feel Apollo’s pain…

Even without a psychic connection, I could sense Nick’s pain, because I knew what I’d be feeling if situations were reversed and he’d gone missing after threats to his life. I’d fear the worst. He was a Los Angeles police officer, a detective. He’d seen a lot more of the worst than he had of best case scenarios.

“Cell phone?” I asked.

Uncle Hector reached into the console cup holder and handed me the phone that sat there. “Wait a minute or two though. We want it to ping off the right cell towers.” If I’d had my head on straight, I’d have thought of that.

When Uncle Hector—I still couldn’t think of him as Pan—gave me the nod, I dialed the hotel. But Nick wasn’t in our room. Of course not, he was out looking for me. I hung up before the voicemail came on and then called again. This time I asked the front desk to give him a message, just that I was okay and on my way back.

“We need a cover story,” I said the second I hung up.

“Ahead of you there,” Uncle Hector said, far too cheerfully, especially under the circumstances. “You went for a walk together and ignored the signs about loose scree and falling rocks. Happens all the time. You got hurt, went bumping down the mountain, got stuck on a ledge. Apollo had to figure out how to get you up safely and didn’t dare leave you to go for help. I presume you don’t have your phone on you?” he asked Apollo, who shook his head. “So, he couldn’t leave you, and he didn’t have a phone to call for help.”

“You’ve done this before,” I said, not sure whether I was accusing or admiring.

“Anipsi, I’ve been sneaking into and out of bedrooms and coming up with alibis since long before you were born.”

“How do we explain all of this blood?” Apollo asked.

“Change of clothes,” Uncle Hector answered, “in the back.”

On the floor in front of me was a dark backpack. I tore open the zipper and out fell PowerBars, mini water bottles, a first-aid kit and a profusion of clothes. I looked from it to Uncle Hector.

“Just one question, why am I the one getting rescued in your scenario?”

I hadn’t meant to be funny, but his laughter fell about me as I ripped into a PowerBar, suddenly consumed with the munchies, maybe trying to fill the empty void that was my soul.

But once I’d consumed the calories, all I wanted to do was sleep. Playing host to a psychotic mother goddess after her millennia of slumber apparently took a lot out of a girl. Ambrosia or nectar would probably perk me right up, but now that the supplier was suspect, the cost was far too high. This wedding had already become more about death than a new life, and it wasn’t even over. None of it. Apollo’s blood and near sacrifice had awoken Rhea, and she didn’t seem inclined to slip quietly into that good night.

Sleep. It seemed to be the best thing. Already my body was shutting down. My eyes were closing. My head lolled back against the headrest, and my eyes shut with a satisfying finality. I had a blissful moment of escape, and then, “Tori!”

I was so sick of hearing it. My eyes stayed shut and my mind blank.

A slap rocked my head from one side to the other, and my eyes snapped open. “What?” I asked without the energy for the heat I felt at the rudeness.

“We’re almost there. You have to change.”

“Let ’em take me.” It came out “Et em ake ee,” and my eyes shut again.

There was cursing, and then someone was crawling into the backseat with me, and I was half aware that I was being undressed, but not awake enough to actually care. Then my arms were lifted, and I was slumped forward so my shirt could be pulled off of my back. The wet suctiony sound barely penetrated my cloud of exhaustion. I didn’t resist, but I didn’t help either. If I was caught bloody-handed, so be it, as long as they let me sleep. Deep down, I knew that wouldn’t happen. There’d be an interrogation, mugshots, fingerprinting—things for which I’d probably have to stay upright, but… Yeah, I wished them luck with that.

The car door opened. Presumably, the car had stopped first, but I hadn’t been aware of it. I stayed deadweight as I was lifted out of the backseat. I was vaguely aware of a sense of movement, of being taken from one place to another and being laid down on something, but whatever warned me of danger didn’t sound an alert, and so I didn’t bother to rouse myself. I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Not even for the insistent voices all around me. I did manage to shift into a more comfortable position and fall far, far away from it all.

At a certain point, I became aware of a loud argument, followed some time later by warm arms pulling me into a seated position and someone spooning something into my mouth with the command, “Eat this.” That same someone rubbed my throat to make sure that I swallowed, like a recalcitrant kitty with a heartworm pill. Then I was out again.

Blood, seeping, absorbing, awakening. Power rising. Me rising, seeking, laughing at the glory of it, then horrified at the degradation. Finding a new avatar. Strong, that one, but so pointless. Hardly aware of her potential. Wasteful. So much to be exploited, taken over, pathways seldom traveled. Unguarded.

I thrashed, trying to wake, trapped in the dream, wanting out.

A new avatar, linked to the blood sacrifice. Blood I knew. Blood relation. Oh, the flavor. The power, the hum and life of it. I’d nearly forgotten life and the immediacy of the sensations. Almost too much after all this time asleep.

And then those bladed men, thinking they could take it all from me. I saw it in their hearts.

All for my eldest son, Zeus, who’d ruined everything. I should never have fed his father that stone in his place.

Zeus. The name burned. He would not rise again to ascendency. His time had passed, but the titans. I could sense it in this new avatar, in the very earth…the old ways had been forgotten. The titans themselves had been forgotten, along with any remembrance of how they might be defeated. And unlike the upstart Olympians, their power had never been fueled by belief, but by the sheer primal power of creation.

I flailed, trying to throw Rhea out of my head, as I’d tried and failed to exorcise her from my body. I lashed out and struck something, but it might have been in the dream, because…

One of Zeus’s human dogs made a move, and as quickly as I willed it, the sacrificial blade was in my hand, slashing, cutting deep. More blood, more power. More elation, more bloodshed. Until I was bathed in it, as I’d been when I’d borne my misbegotten son.

I jerked out of the nightmare, terror blind. There was sound and stabbing light and something weighing me down. I tried to shake it, and panicked when I couldn’t move, couldn’t control my own body. Again. My own personal hell. And then the dark clouds across my vision started to clear but for pixilated pain throbbing around the edges. I looked up into Nick’s midnight blue eyes, almost black at the moment.

“Shh, shh, Tori, it’s just a night terror. Tori, it’s me. You’re safe.”

His cheek was swollen, and it was my fault. The lashing out had been real enough, not simply part of the dream, which wasn’t a dream in any case.

The fight leaked out of me, and when he felt me relax, Nick eased onto his side next to me, studying me with concern.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I answered. It hurt to talk. I wondered if I’d been screaming, and then whether it was in my own panic or Rhea’s triumph.

“You didn’t get hurt walking with Apollo, did you?” he asked, and I could hear something like fear beneath the careful gentleness in his tone. “The news—”

So the bodies had been found already.

I rolled over, away from his probing gaze. What did I tell him? That I’d committed triple homicide, but I hadn’t been myself at the time? Did possession qualify someone for the insanity defense or—

“Tori.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

“Tori!” he said it sharply, and I rolled to face him so suddenly he almost looked afraid…of me.

“What?” I asked.

The pain in my throat and in my head were already receding, and I no longer ached all over like I had after… No, no tangents. The bodies had been found, Nick was asking questions, and I had to face this. If someone had spooned ambrosia into me earlier in the evening, it was the least of my worries. So the pain in my head was gone, but the one in my heart… “What do you want me to tell you? That I killed them? That I was possessed at the time? That I passed out in a dead faint afterward and relived it all in my nightmares? It’s all true.” Nick looked lightning stuck. “Apollo and I were kidnapped, and we were going to die, and the only reason I’m still alive is that a goddess more powerful than I am used me as her own personal puppet.”

I broke down. I could have counted on one hand with fingers left over the number of times I’d cried in my life. I wasn’t prepared for the sudden explosion of sobs that seemed to start from somewhere around my gut and wracked my whole body.

Nick didn’t touch me. Didn’t hold me, and that only made me cry harder, because I knew I was horrifying to him now. Repugnant, but no more than I was to myself. I’d had my hand buried in some guy’s solar plexus.

Too late, he finally reached for me, as if it was a duty and not one he was sure he should perform. I knew it as if I still had some fragment of Rhea’s all-knowing.

Maybe I did.

I pushed him away and ran for the bathroom, locking myself inside. It wasn’t the most mature response in the world, but we’d blown well past any concern about maturity on the way to post-traumatic stress.

I started the shower, just thinking I didn’t want him listening to me bawl, and then realized that beneath my borrowed top there was still caked blood from the attack that had seeped through the fabric of my discarded clothes. All I could think of was getting clean.

I didn’t even wait for the water to get warm, but stepped into the shower fully clothed. I didn’t adjust the temperature when it turned from frigid to scalding, but stood beneath the onslaught shivering. Burning and yet cold, all at the same time.

I grabbed up the bar of soap and scrubbed everywhere—over my clothes, under. And then I ripped the clothes off entirely and let them lay there on the floor of the bathtub as the water swirled all around, washing me clean.

I’d barely gotten a towel wrapped around me when there was a pounding at the outer door to the room.

I yelled out, “Go away,” but still I heard Nick open the door and let someone in. A second later, I knew who. Small person, big voice.

“Where is she?” Tina demanded.

“Shower,” Nick said.

“Oh my god, what happened to your eye?” Tina asked him, but she was already moving on before Nick had the chance to answer. “Tell her to get her butt out here. I need to see if she’s still fit for duty and to walk her through what she missed at rehearsal.”

“Tell her yourself,” I yelled from behind the bathroom door. “She can hear you.”

Somehow, talking about myself in the third person was easier. Like I could escape. I didn’t even blame Tina for her attitude. After all, we came from circus stock, where you downed the painkillers, put on your flesh-tone bandages, smiled to hide the wince and made sure the show would go on. If there was time later, you could ice it up and call in the medic.

The bathroom doorknob rattled, and I reluctantly reached to unlock it before she could tear it off the hinges. I wouldn’t put it past her.

Tina yanked the door open and we faced each other on either side of the doorway. “You look like crap,” she said, showing off her sensitive side. “What happened to you? They said a walk, but I couldn’t see you scaling the side of the mountain.”

No one could blow your cover like family.

I pulled her into the bathroom with me and shut the door.

“Ooh, secrets,” Tina said, belligerence giving way to elfin mischief. “Tell me all. But be quick about it.”

I rolled my eyes. The normality of Tina’s presence was starting to have a strange calming effect on me. I wasn’t sure I deserved calm, but my brain must have decided it couldn’t sustain a state of perpetual panic.

“Apollo and I had…things to discuss, okay? So we found someplace quiet where no one would be looking for us, and I slipped and hit my head, that was all.”

“Uh huh, someplace to talk. Important enough to make you miss my wedding rehearsal?”

“In my defense, I was unconscious.”

“Sure, sure, some excuse. Of course, if I’d been on a private walk with Mr. Hollywood hottie, I’d have swooned too…if I weren’t a soon-to-be-married woman and all.”

“I did not swoon,” I answered, indignant.

“There, now you look more like yourself.” Her eyes glittered. “You look like you want to take a swing at me. Come on, get dressed.”

“But—” After everything that had happened, the last thing I wanted to do was walk down the aisle at her side like nothing was wrong. I felt like I’d taint the whole ceremony just by being part of it. A wedding was supposed to be something sacred. The show must go on didn’t seem to apply. But there was no way I could explain all that to Tina, even if I was sure she’d see things my way. She’d just see that her wedding party was lopsided and that it was all my fault.

“Okay,” I said finally. “But can we stop for coffee and calories before whatever fresh hell you’re going to put me through?”

“Andre said ‘no caffeine’,” she protested. I guessed Andre was the clipboard guy from yesterday’s production meeting.

“No caffeine, no Tori,” I said, talking about myself in the third person again.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I’ll just tell the makeup artist to give you the teabag treatment before she goes to work on you. Now get dressed.”

I didn’t get it—teabags were good, coffee was bad? There was no justice in the world.

I hoped the lack of justice would work in my favor for the next twenty-four hours at least. Having the police crash the wedding to arrest me would probably ruin Tina’s big day and Uncle Hector’s production and put me back on the outs with my family…not to mention in prison.

I went to get dressed, avoiding Nick’s arms when he reached for me as I passed him on the way to my suitcase and avoiding his gaze when he tried to catch my eye. I’d just gotten myself together. I was afraid that I’d fall apart again at one hesitant touch.

If I were Christie, I’d probably focus on what I was going to wear, just in case I ended up on the morning news. What went well with handcuffs? Did I go with unobtrusive and demure, completely incapable of cutting down three grown men single-handedly? Since I didn’t exactly own pearls and Peter Pan collars, I went for the first thing I touched, but Tina took it out of my hands and reached for a plain white button-up with just enough darting for shape. Feminine but not girly. “A wardrobe staple,” Christie had called the shirt when she’d made me buy it.

“Button-up is better,” Tina said. “Then you can change later without messing up your hair and makeup.”

Couldn’t have that.

I shrugged and took the shirt, added black skinny jeans and went to the bathroom to change. I didn’t bother with makeup or anything else, since I knew it would all be redone, and I didn’t wear much anyway.

On the way out, Tina dragged me to the hotel’s breakfast buffet, flashed her room key, loaded croissants and fruit into a napkin and looked pointedly from me to the coffee keg. The carafe was keg-sized, anyway, with both ceramic and foam cups sitting beside it. Unfortunately, they only had one size to-go cup, which was not nearly big enough, but I didn’t think the hotel would take kindly to me grabbing the keg like a football and rushing it out of there, so I made myself two cups, doctored them both with cream and sugar, drank one still standing at the coffee bar and refilled the cup before applying lids.

“Okay, let’s go, I said.

She looked like she despaired of my behavior. Since I agreed with her, I didn’t say a word, but followed her out into the extra crisp morning air. It slapped me awake better than the cup of coffee I’d already downed.

The sun was shining, glistening off the dew that sparkled on every leaf. The world seemed newly made, pristine. Perfect. It was the kind of day that made you glad to be alive and death seem far, far away. I felt like crap about it, the kind that stunk and stuck to your shoes, clinging to the treads. The kind that stayed with you…like the memory of cutting down three men without missing a beat.

Okay, enough self-loathing. The only way I was getting through the day was denial. I couldn’t change what was. Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t confess. I’d have to go forward. Somehow.

“Seriously, you all right?” Tina asked, studying me. “You and your boyfriend get into a fight?”

“You could say that.” I took another sip of coffee and avoided looking at her.

“You love him?” she asked.

I glared at her for the question, but she was family. She was entitled to ask. “We may have irreconcilable differences,” I said, avoiding a direct answer.

Like, I’m a killer and he’s a cop.

Part of me knew that wasn’t exactly right. Guns didn’t kill people. People killed people. And all I’d been in Rhea’s hands was a weapon. But that didn’t change the fact that the killing was now part of my muscle memory.

Gah, enough already.

“If so, you can do better for yourself. You deserve more than a constant struggle.”

I let that go. I wasn’t entirely sure what I deserved, but I was not going to wallow in self-pity or self-loathing or whatever. Rhea was not going to defeat me. That meant I had to wo-man up.

I braced myself as we reached the doors of a beautiful little white-washed church with vaulted ceilings and small stained-glass windows catching the light. On the upside of things, my preoccupation with death had temporarily overwritten my fear of heights. I’d forgotten even to notice the path we’d taken. Tina held open the beautiful oak door for me to enter, and I prepared myself to be struck down as I crossed the threshold, but nothing happened.

The inside of the little church was painted floor to ceiling with Byzantine-styled frescos representing the saints, the holy family and, looking down from the pinnacle of the vestry, Christ Pantokrator, aka God Almighty. I’d grown up with kind of a loose sense of religion—believing in God, just not really clear on exactly what that might mean. One all-powerful god sounded good, focused. One message. One agenda. But the fact that no one, not even within the same religion, could agree on exactly what that was…well, it made me wonder. Was Christianity about one god who was open to interpretation? Was the trinity really somehow three-in-one or multiple entities who might sometimes get into turf wars?

Then there’d been Yiayia’s beliefs—the old gods still running around in modern day. But they hadn’t seemed so godlike with their day jobs and petty squabbles. Not for the first time, I wondered what divinity even meant. Did it just mean cool powers and immortality? Was there more to it than that? Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben had said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but the gods I knew didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. I wondered about the Pantokrator. I’d have to ask when and if we ever met, and hope he’d forgive me for hanging with the competition. Or at least his—her?—would-be competition. The heyday of the Olympians was long gone, which was why most seemed so obsessed with staging a comeback.

“You like?” Tina asked, indicating the church.

“Beautiful,” I admitted.

She smiled from ear to ear. “I know, right? There’ll be candles and buntings, a whole bower-type arrangement on the altar…perfect. Come on, I’ll walk you through it.”

“Can you—” I had to clear my throat. “Can you give me just a moment alone?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll, uh, just sit back here for a minute if you want to say a prayer or something.”

She took a seat in a back pew and set the fruit and croissants down beside her. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I took her suggestion and went over to the side of the church where you could light candles and say prayers for the deceased. I knelt on the padded rail and lit a candle, feeling guilty that I didn’t have any money tucked away in my pocket for the offering box. But that was the least of my sins.

Knees already protesting, I stared at the flickering candle. I’d been in church often enough with my mother, who didn’t believe a word of Yiayia’s obsession, to know what to do next. I crossed myself and said, simply, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I hung my head and contemplated that. I didn’t have a flowery prayer to add, just a heartfelt plea. Forgive me. All of my being went into those two words. I didn’t know who I was asking. Everybody. Anybody with the power to lift whatever part of the responsibility I bore for those deaths at Delphi. The candle flame flickered, flaring bright, dwindling nearly to nothing and coming back again. I didn’t know what it meant, if it meant anything. I didn’t feel any differently. But maybe it was like antibiotics…it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours to take effect. Or maybe I was grasping at straws.

I rose again to my feet, and turned to face Tina. “Okay, I’m ready. Show me what you’ve got.” For her sake, I pasted on a smile that flickered like the flame.

She showed me what to do, and I did it, all the while waiting for lightning to strike me down. I might have been thinking more Olympian than Old Testament, but I was pretty sure a monotheistic God, capital G, would have lightning in his arsenal. Or any other natural forces to command—the attributes of all the lower-case-g gods all rolled into one.

Then the set designers arrived to shoo us out of the way, and we were on to hair and makeup back at the hotel. I ate my croissants and fruit on the way back, suddenly voracious. The munchies had crashed my pity party and were all about the buffet. Someone had definitely given me ambrosia last night. I wondered if Nick had been there for it and if he now saw me as a drug addict as well as a killer. No wonder he couldn’t trust me.

I had a lot of time to think about that while I was reclining in the suite that had been set aside for all of us to prep in. I had goop all over my face and tea bags over my eyes. The makeup prep person—like the sous chef of facial artistry—had first insisted on putting drops in my eyes that stung like the dickens and followed with a hot towel to open the pores, some kind of scrub, soothing cream, cold compress to take down the swelling in my face from last-night’s tears, and then had followed with the tea bags and goop. I doubted that any of my original surface skin remained behind.

The others arrived while I was getting prepped, and conversations buzzed all around me. I ignored them, not really concerned with whether Althea preferred apricot scrub over the cucumber crystal cleanser, but at some point Apollo’s name popped up, and my ears—about the only part of me still in their original state—perked up.

“Has anyone seen Apollo this morning?” Junessa asked the room at large. “Tori, what about you? Did your savior come by to check on you this morning?”

I lifted the tea bag off one of my eyes to look at her and got swatted by the sous chef. I glared for the split second before I dropped it back down. I needed all the help I could get and knew it. Even if I didn’t care, there’d be all those pictures immortalizing Tina’s wedding forever after. I didn’t want my ugly mug to break any cameras.

But I’d caught a look at Junessa’s face before the tea bag fell back in to place, and there was something less than casual about the intensity with which she watched for my answer. Then there was the fact that she’d called him “Apollo” like they were on a first-name basis. I doubted he’d found the time to start making his way through the bridesmaids, especially since Spiro would likely make sure he was at the head of the line. (Because I doubted that Jesus had suddenly made him into a monogamist.)

“You know him?” I asked.

No matter how much help I needed, I needed my senses more. There was a mystery here, or maybe the clues to solve one. I lifted the tea bag again in time to see Althea and Junessa exchange a look. The former’s was a warning, as if Junie should have kept her mouth shut.

“Not well,” Junie answered casually, ignoring Althea’s look. “Mostly by reputation. I hear you know him a lot better.”

Stupid media.

I shrugged. I must have unintentionally made a face too, because the goop protested and threatened to crack. I wondered what that would do to my complexion.

“Shhh,” the sous chef hissed at me. “Quiet.”

I took her advice, but only because protesting rarely convinced anybody of anything, and anyway, I was more interested in getting than giving out information. I hoped she’d be compelled to fill the silence. I wasn’t wrong.

“I just wondered, because Serena said that his performance yesterday was a little…wooden.”

My gaze sharpened on her. That clinched it. She knew something.

I waved my arms around to signal that the makeup person should get the goop off my face, and she sighed heavily and began wiping it away with gentle aggression. When I felt I could talk without tearing, I asked, “You know Serena too?”

Oblivious to my undertones, Tina cut in, “You don’t recognize her?”

I was totally baffled now. “No, should I?”

Her disbelieving look was framed by the layers of tin foil all over her head. She looked ready to receive phone calls from outer space. Highlights and lowlights, she’d told me, very excited by the concept.

“Tori,” she said, “Serena Banks. Before she got discovered, she was circus folk. Her mermaid bit was like the most sought-after sideshow act ever. Lenny tried to get her for Rialto Bros., but he couldn’t meet her fee.”

I stared, gears grinding and clicking into place in my mind. Serena Banks…mermaid show. Siren-a Banks…siren?

What had Apollo said—that the sirens were water divinities, devoted to Poseidon. I stupidly hadn’t taken my suspicions of her seriously enough, chalking them up to jealousy. I’d sent Nick to talk to her instead of interviewing her myself. Nick! To talk to a woman who legends had it regularly lured men to their death. The fact that he’d survived didn’t mean anything long term. She was still free to wreak her havoc on him or to finish off Apollo…

“I’ve got to get out of here!” I said, trying to rise from my chair.

“Oh no you don’t,” Tina said, lunging up from her seat and holding me down with uncanny strength. “You disappeared yesterday and missed my rehearsal. You are not going to miss my wedding.”

It was a huge struggle not to fight her on that, but it seemed bad form to manhandle the bride before the wedding, and she wasn’t letting me go any other way. “Fine, then I need a phone and a moment alone.”

“That we can do. I don’t think anyone’s using the back bedroom.”

“Thanks.”

She let me up. As I bolted for the back of the suite, I heard Junessa ask, “Tina, what do you call the color of our dresses, I just love them. So green, like spring.”

And Tina answered, “Sea glass, though it looks to me more like ‘fern’ or ‘moss’, which is just what I was going for. A foresty kind of look, very natural.”

So, not “puke” green then. Yeah, that probably wouldn’t have made it past marketing.

Then I was in the back bedroom and shutting them out. I went straight to the phone on the bedside table and dialed the room I shared with Nick. He answered on the first ring.

“Nick, it’s me. Did you get anything out of your interview with Serena yesterday?”

“Well hello to you too.”

“Nick?”

“She doesn’t much like you,” he said. “In fact, she offered me ‘an upgrade.’ I told her I already had the top of the line.”

I nearly melted at that. “You are so getting lucky later,” I told him. The knot in my stomach began to unkink now that we had fallen back into our banter. “Just stay away from her, okay? I’m pretty sure she’s like me…but not. A siren instead of gorgon get. You know, the kind of girl who drives men to their death for fun and profit.” Because why lure sailors to their doom unless you were after the booty that went down with the ship? And why Apollo, unless she was acting as Poseidon’s agent just like the Selli were working for Zeus?

“Way ahead of you on staying out of her path,” he answered.

“Good. Because I’m kind of attached to you and I still need a date for the wedding.” Flippant had gotten me this far.

“I’m kind of attached to you too,” he said, the warmth in his voice telling me that we were going to get through this.

As soon as we hung up, I dialed Apollo.

When he answered, his voice was stiff and brittle, barely recognizable. The petrification had to be progressing at frightening speed.

“Apollo, it’s Serena. I’m pretty sure she’s the one doing this to you, acting on Poseidon’s say-so—”

The door burst open, and I spun around to see Althea standing there, “Let me talk to him,” she demanded, holding her hand out as if she had no doubt that I’d obey.

“Huh?” I said brilliantly.

With two strides more worthy of her taller compatriot, she was at my side and ripping the phone out of my hand. “Apollo, tell me how it happened and what you need. We’ve got your back.”

I stared, waiting for understanding to dawn. So she and Junie did know Apollo. I’d begun to gather that much, but as to her behavior…

I couldn’t hear Apollo’s side of the conversation, but Althea answered, “Artemis would never forgive us if we let something happen to you. We’ll handle.”

She handed the phone back to me and started to walk away. “Wait, Althea, what’s going on? Who are you?”

She looked amused at that. “I’m the same person I was two seconds ago—Tina’s bridesmaid, your friend, and one of Artemis’s huntresses.”

My mind boggled. “Tina and Junessa?” I asked, sounding strangled.

“Junessa is the same. Tina…well, I think this whole wedding thing puts the kibosh on the idea of her dedicating herself to a virgin goddess, don’t you think?”

Not to mention I knew for a fact that that ship had sailed at about sixteen.

“Come on,” she finished. “You going to stand there gaping or are we going to kick some siren ass?”

“But Tina—”

“Got it covered.”

But a knock at the suite door stopped us in our tracks.

“Hotel security,” a voice called from behind the door. “We’re looking for Tori Karacis.”

I prayed quickly and quietly that it was about the girl who’d broken into Apollo’s room yesterday rather than the bodies atop Delphi, but I knew better.

“Here,” I said, all eyes turning to me. Not one, but three official-looking men had come to collect me. One was clearly hotel security, based on the suit and nametag. The other two wore cheaper suits, and one had a badge clipped to his belt. Not just cops…detectives.

“Miss Karacis,” said the one with the badge showing, “if you’ll come with us.”

Tina, pedicure foam between each toe, rose from her chair to her full five foot height, facing them down. “What’s this all about? My wedding is today. Just a few hours away, and Tori’s one of my bridesmaids. I need her.”

“I’m sure we’ll have her back to you in an hour or two, but we have some questions that need to be answered.”

“About what? What on Earth is so important that it can’t wait?”

“Murder,” the badged man said into the dead silence of the room. Everyone heard it.

Tina gasped and fell back a step. “Murder? But…but who?”

“Miss, if you’ll come with us,” he said, ignoring Tina’s questions and pinning me with his gaze. It wasn’t a request, and I didn’t mistake it for one.

“Of course—”

“Althea?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Got it covered,” she answered.

“But how’s she ever going to get ready in time?” Tina wailed. “You can’t arrest her. The wedding party will be all lopsided, and there’s no way I can find someone to fit her dress at the last minute, and there’s the filming—” The hotel security man pushed past the police officers to comfort and calm her, mentioning something about complimentary champagne and assuring her that it would all be okay. I looked at the officers to see what they thought, and they didn’t seem nearly as certain of that.

“Call Uncle Hector,” I told Tina, figuring that if anyone here had access to decent lawyers, it would be him. Then I followed the cops out, trying to ignore the fact that Tina had been more worried about filling my spot than about my fate. I was sure that on any other day she’d have been a lot more sensitive about the whole thing. Well, fairly sure.

“Right, Uncle Hector, he’ll know what to do,” she said as the door closed behind me. It sounded pretty final, but I didn’t know whether it was my precognition or just my own fears.

“This way,” badge guy said, leading me with a hand just barely touching my arm.

This way was toward the elevator, and I noticed that while they didn’t actually cuff me, hotel security walked in front and the two cops walked behind, ready to grab me should I try to bolt. I had a hard time not trying it. I had a very, very bad feeling about all of this.

“Murder?” I asked, making conversation to avoid making a run for it.

I glanced at the cops as I asked.

Both nodded silently.

“You’re not going to tell me who? Or when? We could clear this all up right now if I wasn’t in town when it happened. I only got in yesterday.”

“You were here,” badge guy said.

“Then it’s only just happened? Wait, it’s no one I know, is it? Please tell me it’s no one in the family or any of the wedding guests!”

Fear was fear. Hopefully they’d misconstrue the cause of mine. I hated the misdirection, but last night I’d been in no condition to call the deaths in and now that the cover-up had begun it felt like there was no going back. There was nothing I could do to stop Rhea from behind bars. No way I could make any part of this right. It wouldn’t be justice, it would be stupidity to assuage my guilt.

The officers exchanged a look, but didn’t say a word.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

“Down at the station,” the other cop insisted.

I worried all the way there about what they might have on me. I’d been kidnapped, for gods’ sake. If anyone had seen anything it would be that, wouldn’t it? But that hardly helped. If the police thought Apollo and I had fought our way free of our captors, then my little performance had just killed any self-defense plea before it even began.

I wasn’t prepared to walk into the small bustling station and see the shopkeeper who’d covered for the man in black sitting in a chair talking to yet another plainclothesman. She looked like she’d been watching the entry, because as soon as she saw me, she knocked her chair over in her haste to rise and point an accusing finger at me.

“That’s her,” she said, loudly enough to carry. “She’s the one who was following that man.”

Something welled up in me, strong enough to knock me to my knees, but I locked them and tried to ride it out. This was alien yet familiar—like Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers or any other horror villain…because that’s what filled me, horror. That part was all mine. But the rising tide of power and righteousness…

HOW DARE SHE accuse us? How dare they try to question me and hold my avatar. Those men were NOTHING.

The last thought roared out of me, and the ground beneath all of our feet started to shake. Pencil holders, phones and folders started to topple from desks. The shopkeeper tried to catch herself on her chair back, but since it had already fallen, she overbalanced herself and ended up going down hard. She cried out, and inside me, Rhea exalted.

“Stop!” I yelled, not realizing that I’d said it out loud until the ground momentarily stilled and everyone, including the goddess within, momentarily focused on me in surprise. “I want a lawyer.”

I didn’t really. Waiting for a lawyer would only delay things, and I had a wedding to get to. But I knew they’d set me to wait in some kind of holding cell or interrogation room, hopefully away from any temptation Rhea might have to do harm.

A holding cell might be the safest place for me. With a vengeful goddess, newly awakened, cranky after her millennia-long nap doing a ride-along in my body, I wasn’t safe to be around.

But Rhea didn’t agree. At all. Apparently, she had places to be, and as the vehicle she’d chosen from the motor pool, I was going along for the ride. Suddenly, I was under attack from within. Something wrenched inside my brain hard, and it felt like an aneurism or a flash migraine or…something monumentally painful and potentially mind-blowing in the permanent sense of the word. My vision went purple-black. My stomach rebelled, my brain shattered. I fought for consciousness.

“What’s going on?” one of the cops, detectives, asked, like this might all be part of some scheme.

There was a hand under my arms now, holding me up, gripping too hard. I hadn’t noticed its arrival, but from the placement it went with the voice demanding answers.

“Concussion,” I managed “Hit…head…last night.”

“Damn it,” said the other cop. “We need to get her looked at. If she really did hit her head last night, that quake might have set something off.”

Yes! I thought.

Then…

No! An ambulance ride or whatever would only delay me getting help for my goddess issues or getting to the wedding. My brain was so scrambled, I didn’t know what I was thinking.

“No,” I said out loud, but not too loud, because my head seemed in danger of shattering. I couldn’t hold Rhea down much longer. She didn’t like the feel of the cop’s hand gripping my—our—arm. She was trembling on the verge of doing something about it, even if it meant bringing the station down around us. “No,” I said again, more quietly. “I just need to lie down.” My words were slurred as my control over my body faltered.

“Fine,” said one of the cops. “You can lie down in a holding cell while you wait for a lawyer.”

“And a doctor,” said the other. “Because there’s no way in hell you’re going down with an aneurism on my watch. I’m not doing that paperwork.”

And then…and then nothing. I lost control, even to the point of awareness.

I woke in a cell. The bars were a dead giveaway.

Those bars seemed to move as I watched them, and my stomach moved with them—warning: contents may have shifted during fight. I fought my guts back down where they belonged just in time to see a familiar face between the bars. Uncle Hector. I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life. Well, maybe Nick on my doorstep with pizza, but aside from that… Uncle Hector stared down at me, studying my face.

“Tori, are you okay? They said you’d passed out.” I must have looked at him blankly. “Oh, yeah, I’m your lawyer,” he said with a wink. “No need to mention my background is in corporate law.”

I rose up and reached through the bars to hug him tight. He hugged me back, like I was a little girl again. That was when I became aware of all the other eyes on me from the next cell over. Apparently, I’d been put in some kind of isolation and had a cell to myself, but the one beside me held three women—one with a black eye, one looking scratched as though she’d taken my supposed tumble down the mountain, and the third smelling of vomit. The other women stood as far as they could from her in the cell. All three stared disconcertingly at me.

I wondered if Rhea had gone out like a light when I had and, if not, what she’d been doing with my body while I wasn’t using it to have garnered such attention from next door.

“Um, nothing to see here,” I told them forcefully.

None of them even blinked. It was eerie, like they were waiting for some signal they didn’t want to miss. If they weren’t behind bars, I’d have likened them to the birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic and controversial film, massing on the wire.

Uncle Hector looked over his shoulder at them and back to me.

“You know them?” he asked dubiously.

I shook my head.

“Well then, let’s get you out of here.”

“But the questioning…I don’t think I’m free to go.”

“I’ve convinced them it can wait. They know they can’t use anything they might get out of you in this condition. I’d never allow it. Anyway, they’d rather you be my problem at the moment.”

“Oh.” Score one for concussion, I thought. Or maybe it was the mini-quake and the thought of one less prisoner to evacuate if it happened again.

A uniformed officer opened the door for Uncle Hector, and motioned me out. Moving hurt, my head most of all.

“You okay?” he asked again, and I realized I’d never answered him the first time. “Do you need a doctor?”

I started to shake my head and quickly realized that was a bad idea.

“No,” I said instead, “exorcist.”

“We’ll talk outside,” he promised.

I thought that was a damned good idea. There was still paperwork to sign and the warning that I shouldn’t leave town and should keep myself available. Then we were free of the station.

Free. With a goddess possessing me at will, doing gods knew what to attract the unwavering attention of my fellow prisoners. I didn’t like it.

As we got into Uncle Hector’s limo, the prisoner with the black eye was just leaving the station, apparently having made bail or whatever herself. Her head turned a third of the way around, almost like an owl’s, to stare at me through the tinted windows she couldn’t possibly see through. When her gaze locked on to mine, she gave me a very definite nod, as though I should know what she was agreeing to. Uncle Hector’s driver pulled away.

“Wait,” I said, brain racing and getting nowhere. “Maybe we should stop and question her.”

Uncle Hector turned around to see what I was seeing. “Right here in the police station parking lot?” he asked. “Better not. I know that look. She won’t tell you anything. She thinks you already know.”

“Know what?”

“Whatever it is. She’s been mesmerized. It’s all over her face. Apollo said that Rhea rose last night, using you as her vessel?”

“Yeah.”

“Rhea has many powers, not the least of which is mesmerism. How do you think she convinced Kronos that the stone she fed him was the child Zeus? I don’t know what she’s planning, but she’s had millennia to think on her revenge. I’d say she’s just tagged her first recruits.”

“How do we stop her? Stop me? I’m not safe to be around people.”

“For now, we ward you as best we can. We get through the wedding. Rhea should still be getting her feet under her. She shouldn’t be strong enough yet to summon power in someone else’s sacred space. The church should be safe enough.”

“Should be?”

“It’s not exactly a science.”

“Can you do wardings? Lay down protections?”

“I don’t know that I’m strong enough alone, but I’m sure that if we explain the situation, we may be able to find some recruits of our own.”

We had a little over an hour to go before the wedding. Our appearance back at the staging suite caused quite the kerfluffle. Althea opened the door to Uncle Hector’s knock. She looked like a Greek goddess—hair half up and half spilling down in ringlets over her neck and shoulders. The green gown draped over one shoulder and hung almost like a chiton. Her eyes got manga-huge at the sight of me, and she yelled back over her shoulder at top volume, “You can stop panicking, she’s back!”

“I don’t know that I’d call off the panic just yet,” Uncle Hector said helpfully. “We need to talk. Get Junie.”

Her eyes went from soup bowls to slits. “I don’t answer to you.”

“What about Rhea?” he asked. “Because she’s back and she’s pissed. Look, I know you don’t like me.” Because Pan the promiscuous and Artemis’s adherents were pretty much diametrically opposed. “But I think it’s time for us to come together lest we come apart.”

From the look of fury on her face, she was not unaware of the double entendre.

“Rhea?” she gasped. “But how—”

“Call your compatriot. I promise to fill you both in.”

“Junessa,” Althea called over her shoulder.

She appeared, looking like a Nubian goddess, her hair done in the same style as Althea’s. Runway fierce.

As Uncle Hector opened his mouth to speak a third person pushed them out of the way and grabbed my arm, yanking me into the suite. I expected Tina, but it turned out to be one of the makeup militia.

“Come on,” she said, “there’s no time to waste.”

I dug my feet in and held my ground. “One minute,” I told her. “Give me that and I promise I’ll be as good as gold.”

“I’ll vouch for her,” Althea said with a smile.

I bristled over needing a voucher, but I didn’t have the time to make an issue of it. “One minute,” she said significantly.

I held my fingers up in what I thought was the sign for scout’s honor, and she huffed, but moved off to prep…whatever she had to prep to make me presentable.

“Serena?” I asked Althea quickly, hoping she’d neutralized that threat while the police had held me in custody.

She was shaking her head before the name even left my lips. “Couldn’t get to her. She was already with the production people.”

“Damn.”

“Time’s up,” the makeup lady said, tapping the spot a watch would be if she was wearing one.

“Tell him,” I said to Althea. “I’ll—”

“You’ll come with me,” my new nemesis said, taking me by the arm. I let her lead me away, hoping I’d left our fate in good hands. A petrifying Apollo, me, Pan and a couple of huntresses against a rising mother goddess who could mesmerize and possess at will…to say that I was worried would have been a massive understatement.

Then I was in another room and plunked into a chair. My hair was sprayed down with some kind of gunk—probably conditioner to give the stylist a fighting chance to get a brush through it, and then I was combed, curled, twisted, twirled and teased until my head ached. The makeup was less painful only, I presumed, because I’d been pre-threaded and waxed. When the torment was over, all the girls stood round me gaping.

“Wow,” Tina said. “I didn’t even know you could look like that.”

I took in my reflection and…maybe took in was too strong. I saw, but I didn’t necessarily accept. The image looked like me, but as Disney might paint me, some idealized version that didn’t seem quite real. My hair fell in soft ringlets rather than tangled curls. My brows arched gracefully. My skin was smooth, even and youthful, like I was sixteen again…only without the acne. I looked…beautiful.

Except for the dumbfounded expression on my face. I’d been through a lot of crazy crap today, but this seemed downright impossible.

“Um…thanks?” I said to Tina.

I’d certainly steal Nick’s breath, but his heart? I had to hope it wasn’t already lost to me. I felt selfish beyond all reason even thinking about that in the midst of everything else.

I stood from the chair before I could get too crazy with the new look and start asking the mirror, mirror on the wall whether I was the fairest of us all. It wouldn’t last anyway—not past the first sign of humidity or the first course I spilled on myself.

“Let’s get you dressed,” Althea said, and dragged me off to the room where we’d all hung our gowns. Once she had the door shut behind us, she dropped my arm and said, “We’re still working on plans for Rhea, but Serena’s going down. Don’t sweat it.”

“How?” I asked.

“She’s a water divinity, right? Apollo said it happened when she walked in on him in the shower. That’s because she needed to catch him in her element.”

“Okay, how does that help us?”

“Apollo’s the sun god.”

“Yeah,” I said, not following.

“It’s not in his nature to change. He’s not fluid like water. He’s centered, steady, that around which things revolve.”

“Or so he’d like to think,” I muttered.

“That’s why he hasn’t petrified already. His own attributes fight against the transformation. That means this is an ongoing spell and they’re still battling it out. Serena’s not strong enough to do this on her own, I wouldn’t think, which means she’s got some kind of help, a talisman to enhance her power or an effigy she’s constructed to work sympathetic magic. All we have to do is find it. Junie and I have already tossed her room and it’s not there.”

“Which means she has it on her.”

“Bingo. And we’re going to get it. If not us, then Hector or Apollo. We’ve got it covered.”

It was the first good news I’d heard since I’d seen the tabloid back in L.A. But it wasn’t a done deal yet, and there was still the matter of Rhea. I knew Hector had told her about the goddess rising. I wondered if he’d filled her in on the rest, like the fact that Rhea could ride me like the city bus. I made sure to tell her, figuring she and Junie would be close enough at the wedding to take me down if I started to act out of character.

“Hector told me about that. But he also says that you saved Apollo’s life. Junie and I will keep an eye out for trouble. If we have to, we’ll stop you, but we’ll do our best to use non-lethal means.”

She grabbed my gown and changed gears so quickly I got whiplash. “Okay then, let’s get you suited up.”

There was a knock at the door, followed immediately by Tina’s voice. “Hurry up in there. We’re taking a few quick pics, then we’re off to the church!”

Althea held out my dress, and I carefully unbuttoned my shirt and dropped trou to step into it and shimmy it up my body, careful not to disturb a single curl. Althea zipped it for me, and I searched for my shoes. Golden sandals with straps that crisscrossed my ankles and tied at the back. Thankfully, they were flats, so that Tina could almost level the field when she donned her four-inch heels.

When I caught sight of the full effect in the mirror, I had to admit that the dresses maybe hadn’t been such a bad choice. The green somehow set off the amber of my eyes and my dark curls contrasted nicely, tumbling over the draping. I felt weirdly powerful. Almost goddess-like, only a lot less bloodthirsty than those I’d met so far.

“Do I have time to make a quick call?” I asked Althea.

“Really quick. I’ll cover for you.”

I went to the phone in the room and was especially careful putting the receiver up to my ear. I dialed Nick’s and my room.

“Tori?” he answered.

“It’s me.”

He let out a huge breath. “Thank God.”

“Want to walk me to the church? We’re headed down to the lobby in just a minute.” I needed to see him. Everything else was such a mess, but Nick…he was my touchstone, my normalcy in the midst of chaos. I was only just realizing how much that meant to me. He was straightforward, direct, by the book. With Nick, I never had to worry about ulterior motives, what game he was playing or who he really was. Unlike, it seemed, everybody else…including me. I didn’t even know who I’d be from one moment to the next.

“I’ll meet you down there,” he said.

Tina appeared in the doorway, hand on one hip. “Come on. The photographer wants to take some candid shots before we go down.”

I bit my lip rather than point out that they couldn’t exactly be candid if they were planned.

“See you in a few,” I told Nick and hung up.

Out in the main room, Tina posed facing a huge mirror with me pretending to adjust her veil. We all posed around her, admiring the ring. There was another candid of Tina holding the curtains back, looking wistfully out the room’s picture window at the view. There were a dozen or so more poses with a zillion shutter snaps for each before the photographer let us go. To her credit, they were quick. She set them all up and knocked ’em down.

I tried to focus on Tina and her day rather than the bodies, police investigation and impending doom. I hoped my smile looked natural, sure the photographer would have told me if it was too hideous. She’d already told us how to stand, where to look, how to cock our heads and stick out our chins and chests, lean in and generally contort ourselves into the world’s least comfortable positions for the sake of the “candid” camera angles.

Then we were on our way down. One of the primping people had gone ahead and caught us an elevator. I picked up Tina’s train and held it so it wouldn’t be caught in the doors. Her dress was a ruched, sequined fit and flare ball gown with the bling concentrated toward the top, getting scarcer and simpler toward the bottom. In her four-inch heels with her hair bigger than everyone else’s—more Marie Antoinette than Grecian goddess—she looked like Bridal Barbie. It was the first time since we were eleven that she could stand and almost look me in the eye.

“Thank you,” she said, as the elevator closed on us. “For being here, for finding Uncle Christos to give me away.”

I admit it, I got a little choked up.

“No problem. You’d do the same for me.”

“You look beautiful.”

“So do you,” I said, blinking away the tears in my eyes before they could dissolve the glue on the false eyelashes they’d given me.

We smiled at each other, and I could almost forget everything going on outside this elevator. Then it hit bottom, dinged and opened up, and I realized there was at least one thing I didn’t want to forget. Armani. Nick.

He stood there in a silver-gray open-necked shirt with no tie beneath a dark blue suit. He had actual product in his hair, it seemed, so that for once it didn’t flop over his amazing eyes that were just a shade lighter than his suit. He looked good enough to eat. Way too good to take to a public place where I’d be expected to keep my hands to myself. I wanted to drag him back into the room and rip the rest of the buttons off his shirt.

He licked his lips as he looked at me, those incredible eyes growing darker as they did when he wanted to drag me off somewhere private. I didn’t know if we were okay yet, but it was clear that at least we weren’t finished with each other. That was something.

I forgot to pick up Tina’s train as she exited the elevator, instead going right to Nick. I waited for him to open his arms, to take me into them and hold me so that I could apologize and…but he just stood there, arms at his sides.

My heart fell until he said, “I’m afraid to touch you. You’re so perfect.”

“Oh no,” Tina cut in as I was about to tell him he was being ridiculous, “No touching. Not until after the ceremony and the pictures.”

Nick looked amused and offered me an arm instead of a hug or a kiss. Apparently, that was okay, because Tina didn’t protest when I slid my hand along his forearm and held on.

Uncle Christos stood a few feet away with his date, Detective Beverly Simon of the LAPD. Clearly, we Karacis investigators had a type. He kissed her warmly on the cheek and left her to offer his arm to Tina, since he was standing in for the parents she’d lost.

Tina looked sad for a moment, maybe thinking of them, but then Uncle Christos smiled that infectious smile he had and said, “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you. You look beautiful, m’dear. Like a cake topper.”

“Or Bridal Barbie,” I said, out loud this time.

Christos laughed so loudly that everyone stared. “Bridal Barbie, only better, because you are Greek!”

“Hear hear!” a voice agreed wholeheartedly. I recognized it as Hermes, and looked to see Christie beside him in a dazzling silver sheath dress.

Another person to protect. That was what ran through my head. My heart started to pound, and I didn’t know if it was pessimism or precognition—fear or knowledge that something would go wrong.

I looked for Jesus, wondering what he’d say about my transformation, but I didn’t see him. Clipboard guy stepped up to block my view of the others assembled and clapped to call us all to places in the procession. We were walking to the church. Tina had told me about this bit. Paper lanterns—luminaries—had been lit and placed all along the sidewalks of the short walk to the church, and the hero and heroine of the film were to first catch sight of each other in the candlelight, which meant that Apollo and Serena were here somewhere. It also meant that Nick got pushed aside in favor of my matching groomsman, Jason’s cousin Ernest, who had the most pronounced Adam’s apple I’d ever seen and who turned pink every time I looked at him. I thought he was going to have a stroke when I had to take his arm.

Uncle Christos walked almost at march, standing every centimeter of his five-foot-nine height, looking like a proud papa as he escorted Tina out of the hotel. Lining the streets were luminaries, light diffusers, roving cameramen and others high up in a cherry picker for the overhead shots. I did my best not to look at any of the cameras, which was fairly easy because the paper lanterns were so beautiful. Like something out of a dream or, yes, a romantic film. I wished it was Nick’s arm I was holding.

“That your boyfriend back there?” Ernest asked, nodding behind us toward where Nick and everyone else followed.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering whether it was okay for us to be talking. Tina hadn’t said, but I doubted the cameras would do more than pan past us, so I wasn’t too worried.

“He going to kill me for laying a hand on you?”

I laughed at that thought, and suddenly the image of a sword slashing and blood flying rose up to choke me and I stumbled.

Ernest caught me with a hand under my elbow. “I’m sorry, I was only kidding. I didn’t mean for you to take me seriously. I’m terrible at small talk, as you can see.”

I fought down the bile that had burned its way up my throat, leaving it stripped and raw. “It’s okay,” I rasped out. “I just…I’m no good at it either.” I worked to put a smile on my face. “No, he won’t kill you. He might even thank you for preventing me from falling on my face.”

“But it was my fault you stumbled. I shocked you.”

“Oh, it takes a lot more than that to shock me. It’s just been a long day.”

“I heard about your concussion. That’s probably it then, you’re still a little dizzy, between the altitude and the knock to the head—”

Oh gods. I hadn’t been looking or thinking beyond the lanterns. I hadn’t been thinking about the height…until then. Panic started to rise.

“Ernest, um, I don’t think we’re supposed to be talking. Maybe I should just focus on putting one foot in front of the other?”

His face went from pink to red. “Oh, yeah, sorry.”

He looked miserable and embarrassed, and I swore to make it up to him as soon as I could breathe without hyperventilating. If they sat us together at the reception, maybe I could give him my cake…if the ambrosia munchies allowed.

We made it to the oversized oaken doors of the church without incident. No Rhea. No quakes or men in black. No police or portents, except for the vague queasiness in my belly.

The doors opened before us, as if by magic, to reveal the inside of the church, lit by more of the paper lanterns, as well as candles over every surface. Branches had been laid along either side of the white runner that led toward the altar, heavy with deep green leaves and red berries. Straight ahead, the set designers had created a bower from a white trellis strung with climbing vines of what appeared to be poppies, only I didn’t think they grew that way, and little white mini-lights that glowed like fireflies. The altars were decorated with more of the berry-laden branches with flickering tea lights.

All I could see was doom. The place was a fire hazard, and the sickness in my stomach grew.

Clipboard guy hustled the women of the bridal party into a small anteroom, mercifully candle-free, and sent the men off to seat the guests.

I smiled at Ernest as he bowed to take his leave. Old-fashioned and charming. He dashed away, and as the doors closed us off from the guys, Tina suddenly folded like a subway map. I caught her before she could fall.

“Chair, someone!” I ordered, looking around for one myself.

Junessa was there in a flash with a folding chair from the stack against one wall. I lowered Tina into it. Her eyes were wide and shocky. “I can’t do it,” she said, her gaze meeting mine in appeal. “I thought I could, but I can’t. The cameras—on film. They say the camera adds ten pounds. What if I look huge? What if I stumble over my lines? What if they call ‘cut’ in the middle of my wedding?” Her voice rose with every word. “What was I thinking?”

“Get her a glass of—something,” I said to whoever would listen. Althea and Junessa exchanged a look. There was clearly nothing in this little room where they kept vestments and extra odds and ends. Althea let herself out of the room to find something, and I squatted in front of Tina and took her hands.

“Breathe,” I said. “Just breathe.”

The vision hit me like a two-ton truck. Tina gripping Jason as the earth lurched beneath their feet, screaming, fire erupting, panic and pain.

I let go of her hands with a gasp.

“What? What is it?” she asked. “Tori?”

I shook my head, trying to erase the vision like the lines from an Etch A Sketch, but it wasn’t that easy. Not nearly.

My heart pounded, but I made myself put on a show for Tina, starting with a smile.

“Nothing, just…your hands are so cold.”

Tina gave a little laugh. “Only because yours are so hot. You’re burning up!”

Probably my body trying to fight something off—like a body-stealing mother goddess.

Althea came rushing back with a flask.

“Whose?” I asked before I’d let her pass it to Tina. All we needed was the bride hooked on nectar or something to really kick this crisis into high gear.

“Spiro.”

I took the flask from Althea, who protested, and tested a drop myself.

“Whiskey,” I said.

“What did you expect?” Althea demanded, swiping the flask from me and handing it to Tina, who took a huge swig.

Althea grabbed it back. “Enough. That ought to warm you up.”

Tina coughed and nodded.

Althea dropped to her knees in front of Tina.

“It’s not too late to back out. Say the word and we’ll have you out of here.”

“What?” I pushed Althea out of the way and squatted down to Tina’s eye level. “You love him, right?”

Tina looked apologetically at Althea and nodded back at me.

“You want to marry him?”

She swallowed hard and brushed away at tears that threatened to fall and undo her perfect makeup. “Yes,” she said.

“So don’t let the cameras stop you. Don’t let anything stop you. The important thing here is that at the end of the day, you’re married, right?”

Tina sniffled.

“Right?” I asked again.

“Right,” she echoed.

She took a deep breath and smoothed down her dress as she stood. “I’m ready.”

“Good, because so are they,” Junessa said, peeking out through the door. “Let’s go.”

Tina went first, leading the way back into the small foyer where Uncle Christos and the groomsmen waited to escort us in.

She smiled transcendently and took Christos’s arm. I looked away, wishing I could appreciate the moment, but trying to spot whatever it was tying my stomach in knots. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but my inner alarms wouldn’t cease. I was wired. I wished I’d had more of that whiskey to settle my nerves.

Ernest held out his arm for me to take, and as I did he whispered, “Everything okay?”

“I hope so,” I whispered back.

Then we were walking down the aisle—slowly, as we’d been taught. Step. Pause. Step. Pause. I forced myself to smile at everyone, looking for particular faces in the crowd. Apollo with Serena right there beside him, Jesus, Hermes and Christie, Uncle Hector, Nick, looking handsome and alert, as though he sensed something as well. Spiro, Mom and Dad, Yiayia and Fergus… Everyone I knew and loved in one place. Disaster could not strike. If the prophetess Cassandra had been cursed with the inability to change the futures she could see, it meant that changing them was a possibility in the normal course of things. I had to hang onto that thought.

I just prayed I’d be part of the solution and not the problem. I put Rhea out of my mind and hoped she’d stay out.

We reached the front of the small church, and Christos kissed Tina on both cheeks before surrendering her to Jason. Then everyone turned toward the priest. I fixed Tina’s train as she took her place beside her groom and then she handed me her bouquet. It took a superhuman effort to turn my back on the congregation. An entire church full of potential trouble, and I had to face forward.

My back itched. My nerves jittered. My stomach danced the syrtos, at least staying in the wedding theme, but as each second ticked by and nothing happened, the constriction around my heart started to ease.

Behind the altar, the candles flickered, but no more or less than they should. The happy couple stood gazing into each others’ eyes, hands clasped, bodies straining toward each other. Tina was beautiful. Her veil, sequined along the scalloped edges like the bodice of her dress, caught and reflected the light, which didn’t even come close to matching the luminescence of her eyes. Jason looked at her like they were the only two people in the world, and seemed to pull himself out of a trance each time a response was demanded of him.

It would have been perfect, if not for the nettling sense of doom pricking at each one of my nerves. I waited for the “kiss the bride” part of the ceremony with held breath, which I realized only when spots began to form in front of my eyes.

Althea elbowed me in the side like she knew I was in danger of passing out, and I let the breath out in a gasp, sucking more in and then holding that like I couldn’t help myself. I tensed for the words…or for disaster. When the priest finally spoke them, I didn’t know who was more elated—me or the bride and groom.

Tina’s smile lit the room, and she threw herself into Jason’s arms as though she’d barely been holding back. As soon as their lips touched, the earth moved.

Literally.

Gasps sounded throughout the church, even from the bride, but Jason only pulled Tina closer as if he thought she was the one rocking his world. Candles toppled from the altar, and Junessa screamed as one caught her dress. She brushed at it, and it flew into one of the altar cloths, which were already starting to smoke from one of the other candles. I lunged to rip it off the altar, but before I could, it burst into full-on flames. The ground bucked again, more violently this time, and I fell forward toward the blaze. I’d been planning to smother the flames, not snuff them out with my own body, but as I went down, I grabbed at the cloth, which tore free of the altar, falling all around me, along with the branches and berries that had sat atop it. The branches also started to smoke, but were still green enough not to catch…yet. I’d stopped and dropped, now I rolled, desperately trying to smother the flames.

All around there were screams and running feet. Someone yanked at the cloth engulfing me, trying to get me free. It was Junessa, offering a hand to help me up.

We looked quickly around the little chapel filling with smoke, the priest yelling instructions for evacuation, ushering the newly bound bride and groom out and calling to the altar servers to grab holy water and to pray.

Nick dashed to the nave to take me off Junessa’s hands, and together we all ran for the door of the chapel. It was bottlenecked by panicked people, including Apollo and Serena, who was frantically trying to turn back, into the church. At first, I thought she was mad with terror, but then I realized she must have left something behind. Something important? Like her purse with the power she held over Apollo. Our eyes met, his and mine, and I mouthed, “Get her out.”

He nodded and I stood on my toes to give Nick a quick kiss on the cheek before bucking his grip and promising, “Be right back.”

I whirled and pushed through a stunned crowd of fleeing people back into the church. They let me go, more interested in taking my place closer to the door than in stopping the crazy lady who wanted to run into the flames.

Smoke clouded my vision as I raced to the pews. The priest yelled at me to get out, but I was on a mission. I ran to the pew where I thought I’d seen Apollo and Serena earlier. I could barely see the bench, but I felt along it. Nothing. Coughing now with the smoke clogging my lungs, I dropped to the ground to search beneath the seats. My hand encountered papers and a pair of shoes—high heels someone had left behind in their haste to escape. I despaired finding Serena’s talisman when I encountered something pliable and beaded. A purse! I grabbed it and the heels, hoping and praying one held the key, and bolted, wheezing, for the door, which had already spat out the fleeing guests. I had to dodge a fireman racing his way in, but then I was out of the burning building.

More firemen rushed the entrance, one grabbing and moving me away at speed, turning me over to a paramedic who’d just arrived on the scene. I refused medical treatment and went for Nick, who met me halfway, having seen me escape the church.

“Here, stash this,” I said, shoving the purse at him.

He gave me a disbelieving look, but grabbed it all the same to conceal under his suit jacket.

Then he grabbed me and kissed me for all he was worth, which was a helluva lot in my book. I was breathless when he let me go and not because of the fire.

“Don’t do that again,” he ordered.

“I won’t,” I promised, leaning into him. “But I think that’s Serena’s purse and that it may hold the spell petrifying Apollo.”

His expression turned grim and I knew then I was losing him. I’d left him and safety to run into a burning building, just like I’d left him aboard the storm-lashed plane. I’d risked my life for a purse, all to help Apollo. I’d have done the same for him or Tina or…but the fact that it was for his rival made all the difference.

In my turmoil it took me longer than it should have to realize that the tremors had stopped and that no attack had followed, which baffled me. If Zeus Earthshaker and Poseidon Stormbringer had been behind things, surely they’d have brought the church down around us. This didn’t feel like them, which meant that it was another thing entirely. The unknown. I didn’t like it one bit.

The earthquake had to be a side effect of something else, because Delphi was not known to shake, rattle and roll, and the idea that it would suddenly do so while we were on site…too much coincidence to credit.

But what then?

Jesus sprang out of the crowd toward us muttering a string of Spanish that seemed three quarters prayer and half curse, which even I knew didn’t add up.

He stopped just short of us and applied hands to hips. “Chica, I love Ferragamo as much as the next person, but even I wouldn’t have dived back into a burning building for them!”

Ferragamo? Oh right, the shoes.

The absurdity of it all struck me suddenly funny, but my laugh turned into a cough almost instantly.

Yiayia approached as I was fighting it off and I was so glad to see her that I nearly threw myself into her arms…before I saw the look on her face.

“Tori, what the hell is going on? That was no natural quake. During your cousin’s wedding and everything. What have you brought down on us?”

My whole body went cold, frozen out by her words. “Me? What do I have to do with anything? I don’t have the power to shake the earth.”

I’d gotten loud, and people around us were turning to gawk.

“Trouble always finds you. Or you find it.”

It hurt to breathe, but this time I knew it wasn’t the smoke. So much for returning to the family fold. Lenny Rialto had kicked me out for turning up trouble. The family had more or less washed its hands of me. I’d thought that finding and rescuing Uncle Christos had won my way back in, but apparently, it had been short-lived. Even Yiayia, who’d always stuck by me, now sounded ready to be done.

The worst part was, I couldn’t even tell her she was wrong. With Rhea playing ride-along, I held the potential for destruction inside of me. Despite what I’d said, I could shake the earth. Or she could, and had back at the police station.

Rhea. Could it be? Wouldn’t I have known? Or did it somehow have to do with that head-nodding from my fellow prisoner back at the jail? Was it possible I wasn’t alone in my possession? That somehow, like disaster coverage, Rhea could show on multiple screens at once? If so…if so, she could be anywhere. In anyone. And if this was like a multiplication dance where I tag three people and each of them tag three people…how long before the possession or mesmerism or whatever this was spread like an infection? I’d been worried about Zeus and Poseidon, Hermes and his addiction schemes, but an invasion from within…how did we fight that?

“Tori!” Nick snapped—literally and figuratively—in my face. “Tori, come back to us. What’s the matter?”

“Only everything.” I looked for Uncle Hector in the crowd and spotted him not far away, watching us. “I think it’s time to rally the troops,” I told him. “So far we’ve been reactive. I think it’s time we change that.” I grabbed his hand and started for Uncle Hector…Pan. That was going to take some getting used to.

“Wait,” Yiayia said with a hand to my arm that wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d been really determined to get away. “That really wasn’t you in there, was it?”

“No. I’m sorry you didn’t know that.” I took my hand back. “I really didn’t start this, any of it, but I’m going to finish it.”

“How can I help?” she asked.

I looked at her and at Fergus standing behind her. How much did he know about Yiayia’s crazy beliefs? Did it really matter?

“For now just see that all the wedding guests get back safely to the hotel.”

I turned for Uncle Hector again, to find Apollo, Althea and Junessa converging as well.

“What was that all about?” Althea asked, but it was a general question, not directed at me. The knot in my chest didn’t loosen, but I could breathe through it.

I had a horrible fear I might even know the answer, though saying it out loud seemed to somehow make it real.

I looked at everybody, weighing my words. “When Rhea was in my head she ranted about the time for the Olympians being past and about it being time for the titans. The last time I felt the earth shake like this a dragon had awakened…” from its slumber at the peak of Mount Lee in L.A. Its rise had knocked the Hollywood sign askew. “Do you think she could be awakening the titans?”

Silence met my question. I’d been hoping someone would tell me I was crazy, that the titans had died out ages ago, but I could tell from the looks on their faces that no one would be laying my fears to rest.

“Where’s Serena?” I asked Apollo, like he was her keeper.

“She’s trying to convince the firemen to rescue her purse,” he said with a grim smile. “I made sure she left it behind when I dragged her out.”

Nick and I exchanged a look. “You mean this purse?” he asked, letting it peek out from beneath his jacket.

Apollo’s eyes widened. “You couldn’t have just let it burn?”

I stared at him. Nick stared at me, and I got a sinking feeling. “You mean fire would have done the trick?”

“Maybe. Hector told me about your theory. If whatever she’s using to fuel her spell is inside, fire should have cancelled it out. It’s anathema to water.”

“Gah!” I poured my frustration into that one word, but it was inadequate for the job.

“Never mind,” Apollo said, amusement trying to twitch the petrified planes of his face into a smile. “Now that we have it, I know just what to do.”

“Good,” Nick said, handing it over. “Then it’s all yours. Goes much better with your outfit anyway.”

Althea looked over her shoulder to where clipboard guy was heading for us. “I’m supposed to be rounding you up,” she said. “Andre wants us to stick to the schedule. The fire department has things under control here, and we’re due at the Tholos for pictures.”

“But—” I said at the same time Nick said, “Tholos?”

As Althea started to explain, “Well, the guidebooks call it the Sanctuary of Athena, but really it was designed to celebrate some old military victory…” Apollo walked over to one of the glowing luminaries and passed a hand over it. The candle inside flared and started to engulf the paper. Before anyone around could react, Apollo reached into the purse and pulled out a little stick doll, an effigy, and dropped it onto the flames. Off to the side, Serena screeched, but it was too late. The little stick figure caught fire instantly, and as Andre arrived, Apollo stomped out the tiny bonfire, crushing the effigy beneath his feet. Instantly, I could see his face relax. The smile he turned in Serena’s direction was chilling.

“Come, come,” Andre said, bustling up, oblivious to everything. “We’ve got to keep to our schedule. The fire department has things well in hand here.”

As the others started to move, I said to myself, “Yes, by all means, let’s go film a movie, then stop the titans and save Greece.”

There was a sudden gasp, and my head whipped around to see that Hermes and Christie had reached us and that she’d just heard me loud and clear. I was looking straight into her widened eyes, her gaze willing me to deny what I’d said, turn it into a joke. I’d kept everything I could from Christie thus far, but she’d seen things that were hard to explain away and it was clear that all the pieces were suddenly falling into place for her.

But Andre was shepherding us toward the limos waiting back at the hotel with a nudge here and there from his clipboard. I could have avoided the accusation in her eyes if his herding hadn’t pushed me closer to Christie, who hissed quietly. “Save Greece? What’s going on? How could you not tell me?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You’re not my mother, and you’re not my keeper, so cut it out.”

Beside her, Hermes grinned, but it faded when she turned on him. “And you. You knew too, didn’t you? That’s why you locked Jesus and me away in that bathroom in San Francisco, isn’t it? To protect us?”

Hermes didn’t look a bit cowed in the face of her anger. “You needed protection. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“What about you? You didn’t need protection?”

Hermes met my gaze, and I bit my lip, not willing to lie to Christie anymore and not quite ready to rock her world.

“No, I didn’t.”

Christie waited, trying to dig in her heels but being pushed along by the crowd.

The ground shook again, like an aftershock, and we all grabbed each other to steady ourselves. I felt something pass to Christie when she gripped me, an electric shock that arched between us, zapping us both. She looked at me, startled, and then Andre pushed us on, talking into his Bluetooth. “But the Tholos is still standing? The quake didn’t— No, no, you tell them it’s already been approved. The tremor is over, and we have insurance. What we don’t have is a lot of time in the production schedule. Yes, ten, twenty minutes. Make sure it’s all ready.”

“Do you feel all right?” I asked Christie, worried about that zap.

“Perfect,” she answered. It was too serene to be reassuring. She should still be angry at me. Or hurt. But she sounded strangely calm now. I thought about my fellow prisoner back at the jail and started to pull away, to try to drop to the back of the group. What if I was like patient zero, spreading Rhea’s infection? What if Christie’s calm was every bit as unnatural as it seemed?

But Andre pushed me again and nothing happened this time but an overwhelming urge to deck him, which I was pretty certain was all mine.

Back in the hotel parking lot, the makeup staff waited to touch us up as Andre directed us toward our limos, all the better to drive to the Tholos and the stunning vistas with the Delphi temple complex in the background. They could do remarkable things in post-production now, including, I hoped, smooth over any still-smoking or singed wedding finery. I envied the regular guests who got to stay behind at the hotel and drink away the horror of the wedding chapel going up in flames during the cocktail hour. I just hoped the shoot would go more smoothly than the wedding and that when we returned the bride and groom would make a triumphant entrance and put all the rest behind them.

I grabbed Nick’s hand and kept him close to my side, dragging him into the limo with me before the primping posse could get their hands on me. Andre started to protest, but I stopped him with a look. I must have put some kind of freaky force behind it, because he let it go. I’d been able to stop men in their tracks before, flash freeze them temporarily, but never make them compliant. If this was some new thing Rhea or nectar or whatever had awakened inside me, I was glad for it.

It was a tight squeeze with Nick in the limo with the wedding party. When it came time for my escort, Ernest, to climb in, he offered to catch the next limo, the one with the talent, but we pushed in and made room for him.

Then we were off. Andre slammed the door on us, still talking nonstop into his Bluetooth. He slapped the side of the limo like a trail horse, and it bucked forward, taking us to the peak of Mount Parnassus.

I squeezed Nick’s hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “About…just everything.” I wasn’t going to go all George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life and say he’d have been better off if he’d never met me. He was a big boy and could make his own decisions. Unlike Christie and Jesus, he’d known what he was getting into with me, almost from the start. But the fact remained that if he’d stayed away from me, he wouldn’t constantly be in any crazy kind of danger.

“Stop,” he said. Not it’s okay. Just stop. “I’m a policeman. I accepted trouble a long time ago. Hell, crossing the street in L.A. can be dangerous enough, and it doesn’t come with any of the perks.”

Great, so I was trouble with benefits—friends with benefits only with more potential for bloodshed. Go me.

Still I smiled. “What about—” I couldn’t say it. Not in a carful of people. Maybe not at all. What about me killing people and leaving the scene of the crime?

But he seemed to know what I’d left unsaid. “We’ll…get past it. If the options were you dead or you alive and the bad guys taking your place, I don’t see that you had any choice.”

It hadn’t been my choice at all, but he was so close to acceptance I didn’t argue. Maybe he’d forgive, but I wondered if he’d ever be able to forget. And he hadn’t even seen me in action.

I hoped he wouldn’t get a second chance. I had a very bad feeling about heading back toward Rhea’s place of power with the people I loved all around me, with Nick at my side. What if Rhea manifested again and decided they were in her way? What if I was right about the titans rising? What if Nick got to see my possession up close and personal?

Nick pulled me closer, as if he thought from my shiver that I was cold. Instinctively I pulled away, like that little distance could save him if something happened.

My gorge rose, and the limo stopped just in time. I popped the door open and climbed over Nick to get out. I stumbled off only a few feet before the contents of my stomach made a reappearance, burning their way up and out.

Everyone else exited on the other side of the car, as far away from me as possible, except for Nick who, like a good boyfriend, came to hold my hair.

I was gasping by the time my stomach was empty, still too horrified even to be embarrassed.

“Who has that flask?” Althea asked.

Junessa handed it over and Althea rounded the car to make me drink.

“Usually, I don’t agree with spirits, but every once in a while, they have their uses,” she said. “In moderation.” As if I might take it as a license to party. Gorgon Girls Gone Wild. It was both the nearest and farthest thing from my mind.

I took a decent swig from the flask, more to kill the taste in my mouth than because I thought it would do any real good, and then tried to breathe through the nausea as the whiskey hit my stomach.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Thank you.”

I handed the flask back to Junessa and saw that everyone was staring at me as if I might grow a second head or start clucking like a chicken. “Really,” I added, smiling to show conviction.

Andre got out of the second limo with the others, passed a disapproving look over me, by which I knew he’d seen everything, and then made flapping motions to move us toward the Tholos. Two other cars were already parked on the shoulder of the road near the site—I assumed the production people that Andre had been chatting up on his Bluetooth.

Apollo hung back, refusing to be wafted toward anything. He scanned the area, looking up to where his defiled sanctuary could be seen on the pinnacle of Mount Parnassus overlooking the Tholos and everything on down.

There was an official car parked up there, but we were too far away to see what was going on. Apollo scanned downward, toward the Tholos and across to where I was lagging behind. Nick stayed with me, maybe sensing like I did that there was a verdict to await.

Apollo met my gaze, caught Nick’s, and then looked back to me. “Something’s wrong,” he mouthed so the others couldn’t hear.

I felt it too. In the churning pit of my stomach, in the way that the place was plucking at my nerves.

Something wicked this way comes.

I looked toward Althea, who nodded to me before I could say a word. She’d seen Apollo’s warning and moved off to talk to Junessa. It was hard to be prepared when you didn’t know what to be prepared for.

A car pulled up behind ours as we walked to the Tholos, a small site practically within the shadow of Apollo’s temple complex, which rose in the background to dwarf the much closer Tholos.

The newly arrived car didn’t have lights flashing, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a police cruiser. Andre signaled someone to go talk with the cops, and I wondered whether they were some kind of security for the ancient site…or whether they were coming for me. But my precog warning signal didn’t point me in that direction. No, I sensed trouble beneath us, as if we were standing on the danger, and above, from the direction of Apollo’s sanctuary, but not from the road.

I couldn’t keep my gaze from being drawn up the mountain, as if the spirits of those I’d killed might rise up and accuse me or descend to take their revenge. It was stupid, I knew. The bodies would have been removed, and I didn’t believe in ghosts, but something was up there still. I could feel it. Maybe it was the center of awareness for the goddess we’d awakened. Maybe it was something more. Either way, it was trouble.

Nick pulled me gently along, watching our footing while I, less helpfully, watched the cliffs above.

“Keep an eye out,” I told him.

He nodded, stopping with me when Andre put a hand out signaling that we should all halt. Ahead of us, Tina huffed, “But I’m the bride.”

Clearly, since we only had the site for a limited time, and since the production company had arranged it, Andre was going to make sure they got their film shots first.

Up ahead, the director, who none of us hoi polloi had been introduced to, staged Apollo and Serena, who pretended the sound, lighting and film equipment all around them didn’t exist. Serena couldn’t quite do the same with her co-star, though she didn’t seem to know what to do with him. The fire of hatred burned in her eyes, and I didn’t think it was going to do wonders for their romantic scene or her film career. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be the one getting replaced. I had a hard time concerning myself about that. Apollo alternated between looking at the mountain and making enough eye contact with the director to feign attention.

They were positioned in the center of the Tholos, on the raised platform ascended by stairs and loomed over by the three columns still standing. Or restored to standing, anyway, since I was pretty sure from the mottled dark and light stone that parts of the column weren’t original. But they were huge and impressive, especially with the field of white sprinkled with purple flowers and other felled columns lying all around them. It was striking from any angle, whether the skyline peeked between the pillars or the ruins of Delphi rose behind them.

Andre gave us a short “silence or death” speech, and we all stood around gawping as Apollo and Serena acted out a romantic comedy scene about why each had sneaked away from the wedding and what each would have asked the ancient oracles at Delphi. It was amazing how they’d gone from enemies one moment to potential lovers the next. It was a shame Serena was a sociopathic siren. There was no debating she had talent. Together they managed to spin an entirely illusory web of magic and romance.

The first half dozen times anyway. Once the director had stopped and restarted them, moved them and the cameras into different positions and made them go through it ad nauseum, the scene had lost its charm.

Tina began tap-tap-tapping on Andre’s shoulder, ending more on a thump than a tap. I could see an argument brewing, when the director finally turned and smiled through his scraggly beard. “And now for the bride.”

I let out a breath, praying we’d be done and gone before whatever tension I felt building sprung on us like snakes from a can.

Someone snapped in my face, and I blinked at Andre’s fingers an inch from my nose. I thought about breaking them, but I was pretty sure it would piss Tina off and, anyway, the police were watching.

I settled for glaring and going where he arranged me. We all stood at the steps of the Tholos, apparently not cleared, like the famous people, for use of the platform. A photographer and videographer both moved in to shoot us. Traditional poses first—boys on one side, girls on the other flanking the bride and groom. Then variations. Just the girls. Just the boys. Guys holding the bride vertically and her looking exasperated. Girls gathered around the groom, all leaning in to kiss his cheek. And then the wedding party was off the hook and it was just the bride and groom in the spotlight.

Tina was gazing up into Jason’s face, looking like she’d just won the lottery when my precog kicked into high gear. I looked around at every face, including the face of the mountain above us, searching out the danger. But my vision jerked suddenly as a tremor started up the mountain, radiating down the side. Rocks began to cascade down, knocking larger rocks loose and starting a shearing. The stones sounded like gunfire as they struck, broke apart and ricocheted down the mountain toward us.

“Back to the limos!” Andre yelled to be heard above it.

No one needed to be told. Already, Tina clutched Jason’s hand and was running blindly away from the Tholos, back toward the road. I lurched for Nick just as the whip end of the tremor hit us like an explosion, sending me skyrocketing into him. He rocked with the impact of my body blow but managed to keep us upright…until the ground bucked beneath us again, harder this time, like the earth was a bed sheet being snapped out of its orderly folds. Nick and I were knocked apart. I fell hard, striking my butt bone in a spine-numbing impact with the ground.

I lay momentarily stunned, until something began to rise from the ground before me and true fear kicked me in the gut—a monstrous snake with fangs the size of steak knives. The head was triangular, which somewhere in the back of my jibbering mind I knew meant that it was poisonous. Its yellow-green eyes gleamed with intelligence and malice.

Around us was chaos. There were screams and running feet. Someone clutched clumsily at my shoulders, and I looked up into Tina’s terrified face, but she had eyes only for the snake—hence the clumsiness—and when it darted its head at her, fangs fully extended, she shrieked and ran. I didn’t blame her. I gave her props for coming back for me at all.

The upheaval of the snake’s eruption from the earth upset one of the huge stones atop a Tholos column and it came crashing down. I shouted a warning to anyone still in its path and covered my head, as if that would do any good against a two-ton stone, but for one brief shining moment luck was with me. It missed, falling onto the stone platform in an explosion of sharp projectile fragments. The snake’s head whipped around at the crash, and I seized the moment to roll away toward Nick.

He reached for me too, a “What the hell!” coming out of his mouth, but I presumed it was rhetorical, because even if I had the answer, I didn’t have the breath to offer it.

Gunfire started up around us, and Nick pulled my head down to the ground, covering me with his body to protect me from doing anything stupid like trying to get into the line of fire. I’d forgotten about the police officers and their weapons, but I blessed them now.

I squirmed enough in Nick’s grip to be able to see what was going on…and to be very, very afraid. The snake barely rocked with the impact of the bullets. Instead of recoiling, he sprang at one of the officers and bit down hard before the man could even cry out. I flinched my eyes shut as the officer's blood spurted and his gun fell to the ground.

Within me, deep within as if it had burrowed there, an alien part of me reveled, glad to see the serpent rise again. The Pythian serpent resurrected? Rhea’s avatar that Apollo had fought for control of the sanctuary back in his glory days? Would Apollo have the power now to do it all over again? I couldn’t imagine it. The thing was bigger than a football field—not end-to-end, but circled like a boundary line. It was twice as thick as a person, too thick to wrap arms around and too deadly.

The other officers fell back toward their cruiser, emptying their clips into the creature, who spat their compatriot to the side and went after the next.

We had to do something.

Suddenly, an arrow lodged in the roof of the serpent’s mouth, catching it in mid-strike. It seemed to shriek as it spasmed in pain, looking around for the source of its torment.

I did the same, and found Althea and Junessa poised by our limo, its trunk open, making it clear from whence their weapons had come. They closed on the serpent in unison, as if they’d been hunting together forever, stopping to fire arrows, advancing again as they reached for another.

The other limo was on the move, carrying everyone who’d piled in to safety. But as it made the turn to head back down the road, a door was suddenly flung open and Apollo bailed out, flying past the hands trying to grab him back inside.

I pushed at Nick, desperate to get up and join the fight, but before I could do a thing, the serpent launched itself at the new moving target, its tale lashing into Nick and I, sending us rolling over the ground, skinning arms and legs, tearing up my bridesmaid’s gown something fierce. It blew past the officers still standing, slamming its oversized body right over them to get to Apollo and the girls.

The girls? Women. Huntresses. Right now our best hope.

The belt radios of the downed officers all came to life at once, and I didn’t know the code coming through, but I recognized the address involved. Something was happening back at the hotel.

What in the holy hells was going on?

I rose up and dove after the snake with no real plan but to end things. Thinking only to launch myself on top of it, distract it long enough to keep it from eating Apollo and to allow Althea and Junessa to finish him off. I landed on top of the tail. Beneath me, bands of muscles worked, terrifying in their power, but the snake didn’t so much as swivel at my extra weight. The tail did flick, and I couldn’t find a handhold on the smooth scales. I went flying. My vision went cloudy with a chance of blackout.

Someone called out and suddenly, instead of going dark, the world lit up like from a massive lightning strike, only there was no electricity in the air, and when I blinked the now gold-limned clouds away, I saw that it was as though a beam had shot straight from the sun, a laser-like solar flare targeted on the serpent’s face. The smell of ozone and burning flesh filled the air. The snake made an indescribable noise, thrashing and coiling back on itself like a spring that had bounced back, trying to escape the burning light.

The beam seemed to follow it, and the snake’s tongue darted out, started to smoke, and flicked back. Blindly, it sprang again, striking in Apollo’s direction, but it didn’t come even close.

“Now, aim for the eyes!” Apollo shouted.

Arrows arced through the air, striking the serpent again and again. Left eye, right. Everything about it screamed in pain, its contortions like the desperate throes of a worm that’s been hooked, and I actually felt sorry for the creature. If I was right, it was following Rhea’s compulsion, no less than I had the other night. It was blameless. It didn’t deserve this.

“Stop!” I ordered, before I knew it was coming out of my mouth. “Just stop. He’s retreating.”

And he was—drawing back and back. I’d never seen a snake move that way before. It was spastic and terrible to see, but the arrows halted and the world went back to its former lighting, which now seemed impossibly dim, maybe because I’d burned out some rods or cones or whatever in my eyes.

Momentarily, silence reigned, as we all watched to be sure the monster didn’t renew the attack, and then one of the downed officers said, “What the hell was that?”

Another rolled over, struggling to his feet. “We called it in. I don’t know why help isn’t here yet.”

“I’m not sure we’re getting our backup,” said the first. “There’s some kind of disturbance back in town.”

“Damn.” The second officer plucked the radio from his belt and started talking into it as he squatted beside his two compatriots—the one the serpent had attacked and the other who hadn’t gotten up after he’d been crushed when the snake went for Apollo. The one who’d been bitten was swollen up around the face, his skin the color of a bruise. It didn’t look like he was breathing. The other groaned when his fellow officer put a hand to his neck to check his pulse.

“Ribs,” the hurt officer gasped, face contorted with pain.

“ETA on the ambulance is less than five,” the other officer assured him, but he exchanged a worried glance with the other cop still standing.

If there were broken ribs, and if one of them had punctured a lung…

“Don’t move,” the officer said, as if the downed officer had seemed at all inclined. Then he looked around at all of us…all of us still there—minus the director, film crew, Andre, Serena and most of the bridesmaids and groomsmen who’d gone in the other limo. “None of you go anywhere. We’re going to need to take statements.”

“But the hotel,” Tina cried. “I heard—”

“We’ve already got officers on the scene,” the first cop said. “Nothing you can do there but get in the way.”

“Hell with that,” I said. “Who’s with me?”

Our limo still waited, and I raced toward it, not bothering to see who might be following. I could guess at some. As for others…well, the cop was right. They’d only be in the way. But stopping them would take time I wasn’t sure we had, and anyway, they had the right to make their own decisions and do what they could. It wasn’t like I could guarantee their safety anywhere; that was clear enough.

I hit the car and yanked open the driver’s side door. Our driver Viggo was still there, but looked to be in some serious shock. “Move over,” I ordered him. He didn’t have to be told twice. I don’t know if he’d heard from across the way and knew we’d been ordered by the police to stick around, but it didn’t seem to matter to him as long as someone else took control. Doors opened all around us as I quickly adjusted the seat and mirrors. Nick, Apollo, Althea and Junessa piled in, Tina and Jason tumbling quickly after.

“What are you waiting for?” Tina asked as she slammed the door behind them. “Go!”

I went, wishing I’d stolen a police car so that I could have peeled out with lights and sirens clearing our way, but whether it was the quakes or whatever that kept people off this part of the road, we had almost a straight shot down the mountain. Well, straight but for the crazy switchbacks. Luckily, adrenaline or ambrosia had my reflexes reacting better than ever and I didn’t have anything left over for panic.

Our driver felt differently, based on the way he kept trying to stomp on an imaginary passenger’s side brake. He crossed himself and started muttering a prayer as I took another corner in a way that a roller coaster car might have envied.

“Tori, what the hell?” Tina asked from the back seat.

“What the hell, what?” I asked back. We weren’t far from the hotel. I’d had plenty of interrogation practice with Armani. I could avoid a direct answer for far longer than our drive.

“The snake,” she said. “And you girls—” She turned on Althea and Junessa “—bows and arrows. How the hell—”

Hell was getting a lot of credit here.

“I thought maybe that was part of the movie,” I said. “I missed the rehearsal, remember.”

She looked confused for a second, as though working through whether I might actually have a valid point.

“No,” she gasped, still shell-shocked. “No way. Phone,” she said, holding a hand out to the car at large, waiting for someone to hand her one. Apollo obliged, and immediately she was dialing. “Uncle Hector?” she asked, voice sharp. Then, even more sharply, “Uncle Hector!”

There were screams coming from the phone, and we all heard him yell, “Stay back,” before the call ended.

Tina looked terrified.

“I’m, uh, I’m sure everything’s fine,” Jason said, convincing no one. “The cops said police are already there.”

She gave him an “are you crazy?” look as we pulled up in front of the hotel…but not into the parking lot. We couldn’t. Something had destroyed it. The center had been blasted out like something had exploded up out of it. Chunks of asphalt lay like volcanic rock in the road, denting car hoods, piercing windshields.

Tina was out of the car before anyone could protest, dodging the worst of the damage in a mad dash toward the reception, toward everyone we loved who wasn’t already with us. Jason took off after her.

I cursed and did the same, vaulting the debris and trying to catch them. There was a sick, sharp feeling in the pit of my stomach about what we’d find inside, but as it turned out, I’d had no idea. None.

I caught up to Tina, who followed the path of destruction toward the banquet hall. As we burst inside, I didn’t know what to process first. Tables were overturned and wedding guests were hiding behind them, using them as oversized shields. That was the upside. The down was that the center of the room was taken up not by one giant snake, but three—two of them in human form. Zeus and Poseidon…both larger than life, grown as much as they could with the high ceilings and facing (and facing and facing…) off with more heads than I could even process at first. Not the hydra. That serpent had only nine heads, one of them immortal. This beast had dozens, maybe a hundred, a seething mass of dragon-like heads on neck stalks bent to fit the room, all deadly as hell and spitting fire. I’d been so distracted by the heads that I only just now noticed the legs—far too many of them. So, not a serpent then. More like a militant millipede.

“Typhoeus,” Apollo said behind me, voice hushed in awe.

“You know him?” I hissed back, not wanting any of those heads to swivel our way.

Flames shot toward Zeus and Poseidon, and suddenly water burst forth from the sprinklers in the ceiling and wedding guests shrieked anew. The central combatants didn’t seem to notice. Except for Poseidon, who was doing something…grabbing the moisture out of the air as quickly as it fell around them and using it to create Super-Soaker blasts back at the spitting heads. Where fire met water, the dragon-thing hissed, and the air grew thick with steam. In seconds no one would be able to see to fight.

“I know of him,” Apollo said. “Gaea sent Typhoeus after Zeus during the rise of the titans. Zeus won.”

“How?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around what I was seeing.

“I don’t know, but he was at full power then.”

The…Tyhoeus gave up on the flames and lashed out with its many heads, coming from every angle. Zeus cried out—or Poseidon, or both—and I could no longer see them, covered as they were in the serpent-head swarm.

A sense of triumph bubbled up from within me that I knew wasn’t mine. Two down, Rhea crowed. More to come.

“Do something,” Tina cried.

She was right. Even knowing exactly what Zeus and Poseidon had come for, I couldn’t let them die like that. I didn’t know that Rhea would stop there anyway. Her anger seemed bigger than that. If they went down, I didn’t know that she’d call off the monster rather than turn it on the rest of the guests.

I whirled on Apollo. “Nothing we need to know here, right? If we cut off a head, it won’t grow back?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Hell’s bells, I was risking it all on a guess?

“Get back,” I told the others, knowing they wouldn’t listen. I summoned my inner loudmouth and all the power I could draw. I sensed something deep within…some hole that had been drilled or some dimension that had been tapped when Rhea moved in. I dove into that too, thrusting her aside as I sensed her try to get in my way. She was so stunned, she didn’t react in time, and I dipped a toe into her power stream. The torrent of energy that flooded me was uncontrollable. I let it overwhelm me and screamed at the top of my lungs, stomping and waving my arms to get the attention of its many hideous heads, “Hey, you. Worm. Come and get me!”

Some of the heads turned. Not all, not by a long shot, but I’d take what I could get and hope they’d drag the others down. I swept the faces with my gaze—those I could see through the steam—and screamed, “FREEZE!”

The power blew out of me in a bomb blast, and the heads looking my way froze, dropping like stones. But the other heads, by far the majority, now knew that something was off. Others began to turn toward me. Althea and Junessa, now that I’d entered the fray, took up positions to either side of me and began to fire off arrows. I knew when they hit by the recoil of some of the heads, but there were too many of them, and they were coming on too quickly.

I prepared to freeze more, when inside me Rhea revolted, throwing herself on the power I’d tapped and cutting me off, wresting control back to herself. My body seized up at the struggle like my brain had short-circuited. My eyes rolled up into my head and then…

A Rhea reboot.

My vision righted itself, only I was no longer in control of it. I watched in horror from within and without as I turned and stuck my hand right in the path of the latest of Althea’s arrows. She saw it too late, already releasing the bowstring. The piercing pain hardly registered as the bolt went right through my hand, fletching shredding my flesh on the tail end. With my good hand, I reached for her bow and yanked it away, only Althea hung on with a huntress’s power. While they fought, Junessa turned her bow on me, but hesitated to shoot it.

With one monumental tug, I/Rhea freed the bow from Althea’s grip, whipping her aside with the force of my torque and wielding the bow like a bat, straight at Junessa’s head. My heart clenched, hoping she’d duck in time. I saw the indecision in her eyes—fire or duck. At the last possible second, she dropped out of position and tossed her weapon aside, now in too close for it to do any good. Instead, she recovered and went for a flying tackle, aimed at my midsection. Rhea pivoted me out of the way, right into Althea, who’d recovered and showed it with a sucker punch to my solar plexus. I didn’t know if Rhea felt it any more than I did, but she didn’t let it stop her. She grabbed for Althea’s head and was, I was afraid, about to snap her neck, but the serpents got there first, going for her throat and coming up with mouthfuls of hair that had fallen in their path. They yanked Althea by the hair, dragging her toward them, the better to bite her.

But Nick had grabbed Junessa’s discarded arrow. I could feel his torment. He couldn’t bear to use it on me, but the monster…that was another matter. He lunged forward like a Maori warrior and thrust the arrow hard, right into the closest dragon’s eye.

It hissed back, and another head swung around to its aid, biting the shaft and snapping it in half. Other heads went straight for Nick.

I tried to jump in front of him, but Rhea had complete control. Apollo darted in to grab the bow in my hand, shouting, “Tori, if you’re in there, let go!”

I tried, but there were no signals getting from me to my body. Junessa grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back suddenly, and I snarled as Apollo swept my legs out from under me. I landed hard on my back with Apollo on top of me, but I didn’t surrender the bow. He had to knock the upper curve of it into my chin so hard I saw stars before that would happen.

When he had the bow, he rose up, getting it far, far away from my grasp, “Hermes, you coward, get out here and keep her down!”

I couldn’t see what happened next—whether Zeus and Poseidon were still alive, whether Nick had escaped the hundreds of fire-shooting faces he was far too close to with no defense. My heart pounded like it would explode and still my body wouldn’t obey.

My brain seemed to spin, and my stomach rebelled with the nausea of vertigo, and then, somehow, I was seeing the room from another angle.

Typhoeus still struggled weakly, a handful of heads trying to get the rest of the body moving. The heads I’d frozen were waking again, sluggishly, about to rejoin the fight. But Rhea must have decided he’d had enough, because I let out a high-pitched whistle that meant something to the beast. He jerked to attention, listening, and then sprang toward Tori…me…knocking me down like a bowling pin.

And that was when I realized that I wasn’t me. I’d forgotten in the insanity that I was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes—someone who hadn’t been brought low by Apollo and the huntresses. I was trying to think who I’d seen hiding where around the room when a voice called in shock, “Christie!”

My sight swung toward the one who’d called out—Hermes, staring in horror at the eyes through which I was seeing—and I realized that Rhea had gotten to Christie and that somehow we were now linked.

But as the serpent withdrew, racing toward his tunnel, so did Rhea, with a final proclamation in Christie’s voice. “This isn’t over. The titans are coming. Your time is through.”

My vision snapped back to my own body, retracting with a force that left my brain bruised. The world was fuzzy and purple, but I fought through it, needing to know who was still standing and who could be helped.