Chapter 93
The Departed
LYRA
Shock turns the bristling gods across from us immobile for several breaths.
Then Hermes’ face twists into something so riddled with fury, I can no longer recognize him. All focused on…me. Hecate opens her mouth in a hiss even as Hermes, black eyes flashing, snarls a single word. “Traitor.”
The messenger god, the former god of thieves, bolts across the space between us with a guttural shout.
His winged sandals lift him a few feet off the ground, shooting him through the air at impossible speeds until a gust of wind catapults him backward.
I jerk around to find Eurybia with her hands up.
She only stops when Hermes’ angry yell grows distant and he’s far from us.
The Titaness drops her hands.
As if the sudden cease of wind is like the lowering of a flag, the gods of death unleash.
“Try not to hurt them!” I yell over my shoulder at the Titans.
They’re glamoured. This isn’t their fault.
Then I brace to take a hit from Anubis.
But he doesn’t slam into me. Hyperion shows up out of nothing and teleports him away.
I grunt like the Egyptian god did hit me but reset to face the next threat, only, as if I am the Moses of the Bible, the other gods part around me like the Red Sea.
Chaos reigns with the clash of bodies and weapons everywhere, the shouts and groans of pain or impact.
It rages all around me, but nothing and no one comes straight for me.
I drop my arms to my sides as I straighten and look around in jerking turns. “What in the name of Hades?”
Why aren’t they coming for me?
Because they need me.
Hades needs me.
“Oh my gods!” My tattoos. I was given back my vest and axes—why not them, too? I draw a line down my arm, and immediately they come to glittering life. The tarantula waves her two front legs at me, while the owl fluffs his wings and the fox and panther both leap around. Happy to see me, I think.
I wish I had more time to join them in the joy.
“Get to Hades,” I order them. “Tell him I’ve escaped Tartarus. Quickly.”
All four animals leap from my skin, becoming life-size. Only instead of turning to flesh and blood, they remain in their glittering forms. I cock my head, but before I can ask, they disappear. Teleported, maybe?
Please let them get to him. At least I’m sending him some hope while I deal with the mess down here.
That done, I look around me.
The only battle of gods I’ve ever witnessed, and then only a few moments of it, was the fight to imprison the Titans. I don’t know why I was expecting anything that could look remotely like a human war. But that’s not what this is.
Gods don’t just fight on the ground. They don’t only do hand-to-hand or weapon-to-weapon combat.
The massive cavern is filled with gods and Titans disappearing and reappearing, still fighting, and with powers being thrown around—winds, waters, darkness, fire.
The deep, black cavern lights up in strobes and flashes.
The two-faced orisha, who has to be Eshu, the messenger spirit of the Yoruba, shifts swiftly into a hippopotamus and charges Rhea’s lions with a shocking speed. The damned animal is like a tank.
But before it can hurt her babies, Rhea appears on Eshu’s back. She puts her hands to either side of his ears, and the hippo starts to slow and even calm. But not soon enough. The lions realize it, too, chasing the hippo and its rider down.
“No!” I only have time to reach out before all of them tumble over the edge of the abyss.
Rhea can teleport. I have to have faith she’ll get herself and both her newly reunited pets out of there.
Which… The Titans can all teleport now that we’re out of Tartarus. They can hide. No need to fight.
“Teleport and hide!” I yell out. I cup my hands around my mouth and yell it again, louder.
Now to figure out what I need to do. I don’t think my axes are going to be much help in this situation. When I cross them, they create a defensive shield that can keep out even a kraken, but no one is coming at me, and I’m not sure how to use it as an offensive tool.
“Not so fast, Mnemosyne.”
I whirl at the twisted words. Across the room from where I stand, partially blocked from view by a stalagmite, Hecate splits into three versions of herself, standing back-to back so that no one can approach from any direction.
Her long black hair flows from one form to the next, the only thing connecting her.
All three of her forms hurl fire from the torches in all her hands.
The guide of the dead hurls a ball of fire at Mnemosyne.
But the Titaness merely lifts a hand, absorbing the blast and dousing the fire with no effort.
With an animalistic snarl, Hecate starts to spin.
As she does, she hurls ball after ball of fire from her six torches, and the Titaness absorbs blow after blow.
Not fighting back. Not getting closer. Just keeping her occupied and away from me.
I take Hecate’s distraction as a chance to run toward her. There is only one way to stop this fighting. I need to take away their glamours, or they’ll never stop coming until we kill them.
Killing is out of the question.
There’s no way to sneak up on Hecate, though. Two of her three heads turn abruptly to face me, and while she’s busy throwing fire at Mnemosyne, darkness hits me right in the chest from the other two.
I don’t even see it coming.
I’m running, and then I’m suffocating.
I can’t see. Can’t breathe. Can’t move.
Until a shaft of light splits through the blanket of night Hecate buried me under. It grows closer and closer until suddenly a hand is reaching through the dark and drawing me out of it.
The same way the dark came on so fast, I’m instantly back in the chamber. Hecate’s heads, all three of them, glare at Hyperion, who releases my hand. The father of the sun, moon, and dawn shows us exactly why as he glows brighter and brighter by the second, filling the cavern with pure light.
Light so radiant I have to throw a hand over my eyes or risk losing my sight.
I hear a scream, and then the light winks out.
I drop my arm, blinking spots out of my vision. Hecate is gone. “Did you hurt her?”
He shakes his head. “She ran away. Though she won’t cower for long.”
Hyperion’s gaze jerks over my head, and I catch a whomp, whomp, whomp of sound just before he shoves me to the ground.
The blade passes close enough that I feel the disturbance in the air over my back.
I follow the trajectory of the scythe until it unexpectedly stops midair in front of Theia, who merely stands in its way.
A scythe.
It could belong to so many of the gods and goddesses here.
Theia looks at the weapon, then tips her head, and with the blink of her long lashes, the precious metals that comprise the weapon all melt, falling to the ground in a puddle. The jewels that had dotted the staff hit the rock with glassy tinks, scattering at her feet.
As the jewels bounce around, two gods appear on either side of her. Moccasins and caribou coats are the only indicators of what part of the world they might come from. Twins, maybe. Brother and sister, surely, they look so much alike. And that’s what gives them away…
Tia and Ta’xet. The Haida goddess of peaceful death and god of violent death.
Theia’s cry of alarm cuts off as they all disappear together.
I jump to my feet, looking for anything I can do to help stop them.
Get closer. I need to get closer.
Hermes returns with a war cry, sprinting across the room at speeds that make him near invisible, thanks to those sandals. I set my feet and focus on the hint of a blur that is the god. If I can snatch at the mesh of glamour when he’s close enough…
Boone appears directly in front of Hermes, taking his speed with a slam of bodies and grunts from both. The two of them disappear. No idea who teleported whom.
To my right, Iapetus is using his spear—the famous Spear of Mortal Life. He’s going head-to-head with Anubis and his crook.
“I always knew you wanted a piece of me, Piercer,” Anubis taunts.
Typical Iapetus—the Titan grins. “What gave it away, mutt?”
Anubis bares his teeth, the hackles on the back of his jackal neck rising. The two gods thrust, parry, spin, maneuver, weapons flashing and neither gaining ground on the other. Equally matched.
I won’t get closer while they’re doing that, and I don’t want to risk getting the sharp end of that deadly spear.
Mictlāntēcutli appears out of nowhere, directly in front of me. Instinct has me jumping back when I should be reaching for his face.
“You are needed in Olympus, little one,” the Aztec god says in a voice that is so otherworldly it sends chills all over me.
Those eyeballs floating in empty eye sockets are unnerving as fuck.
I need to get closer, though, so I force myself to smile. “Why don’t you—”
Vines explode out of the ground and wrap around Mictlāntēcutli, who unhinges his bone jaw to show an endless dark void inside. It’s the last thing I see before he’s covered in them.
“Run, Lyra!” Persephone shouts at me.
Before I can take more than two steps, a hiss of sound comes from within the vines and a black circle of darkness cuts through the thick vegetation as if it doesn’t even exist. The circle of darkness disappears, taking Mictlāntēcutli with it and leaving a hole where it was, and the parts of the vines that had touched it turn instantly black in a horrifying display of immediate death.
That necrosis creeps farther and farther out until Persephone’s creation is rotting ashes on the ground.
Mictlāntēcutli appears before me again, but in the next instant Crius and Koios are here, too, and once again, they all disappear.
“Someone better fucking fight me,” I mutter.
Like a good little god, Hermes appears in front of me once again, taking me by the throat. We shoot up into the air, my legs flailing while I try to peel his fingers away from my neck with one hand and reach for his face with my other.
“I knew from the day you joined the Order of Thieves that you’d be trouble,” he snarls.
“Bullshit,” I manage to croak around his grip. “You didn’t even notice I existed.”
His veil-covered face descends into a glower of blame. “I lost my position as the god of thieves, and you’re the reason.”
“No, motherfucker. I’m the reason,” Boone growls.
Hermes’ gaze snaps over my shoulder. He drops me to go after Boone, and as I fall away from them, flailing—I’m definitely doing too much flailing as I fall into voids lately—I watch as Boone gets in at least two good punches that stun the messenger god, who maybe has never taken a hit before.
Boone lets go, falling away from Hermes, but the god grabs him by the ankle and they both disappear again.
“Gods damn it!” How are the Titans supposed to get out of here and hide if they can’t leave because they need to defend one another?
Someone is going to die—on either side—if we don’t stop this now.
If I don’t stop this now. Given the way both sides seem determined to keep me alive—even Hermes wasn’t trying to kill—I might be the only one safe down here.
And I need to get those glamours off their damn faces.
That will stop all of this.
I teleport, landing on the ground when I reappear.
Just in time to see Hel swallowed up in a bubble of water that forms around her, moving with her attempts to swim out.
Tethys, I realize.
Phoebe is right there, too, as close to the water as she can get with her hands held up like she wants to press her face against glass. “Don’t you remember me?” she calls at trapped Hel in a voice that sounds lost and heartbroken. “We used to be friends—”
Hel’s expression is so full of disgust it turns her beautiful face ugly as she vehemently shakes her head.
“Let me go, you bitch!” she screams at Phoebe. Or I think she does. I can only see her lips moving from here.
The water ripples, and Hel goes red in the face as if she’s being squeezed.
“Don’t hurt her, Tethys,” Phoebe cries out.
Which is when I start running for them, the rock walls blurring with my speed. “Can you pull just her head out of the water?” I yell ahead of me.
The water moves so that when Hel swims again, her head breaks the surface, but the rest of her remains trapped in the water.
And I’m so close. I’m reaching for her face when Hel looks at Phoebe. “Oh, I see now. You aren’t the one doing this,” the Norse goddess says to her. “This is…”
In the water, her hand splays wide, and just as I brush a fingertip over her cheek, the bubble of water breaks with a splash. Immediately, the water cascades across the floor, then starts drawing back in, gathering until it forms into a body.
A body that doesn’t move.
“Tethys!” Phoebe drops to her knees beside her sister and leans over her before jerking away with a gasp, her hands over her mouth.
She stares at Hel in horror. “What did you do?”
Hel lies there, breathing hard, then shoots a maddening grin at Phoebe.
“You didn’t,” Phoebe whispers.
“Hand of Glory.”
I feel the blood drain from my face as nausea rises up to greet it. Oh gods. Hel can kill any living being she wants with her touch alone.
Tethys is…
I stare hard at her form, lying on her side, her back to me. She’s not moving. Not breathing.
She’s…she’s dead.