Darkness Becomes Her

creature’s head between my calves. I dragged him off with a downward thrust of my legs. As soon as the hands left my throat I screamed their names into the mist, adding every ounce of force I had to increase the volume.

“Mapsaura! Arachne!”

I felt the air change with the power of their names, charging, electrifying, and shooting into the clouds.

The creature ducked out from my pin. I turned to run, to yell their names again, but he grabbed my head with both hands, his claws digging into my temples. He had a firm grasp, pulling my head up, trying to disconnect the skull from the base of the spine. Christ! I couldn’t hold on much longer, he was too strong. His arm slid around my neck, choking again.

My heart slowed. Pressure built in my face. All around me, the battle seemed to slow as my lungs failed.

Wind blew down, billowing the mist, scattering leaves and debris.

A loud, piercing screech rent the air.

I heard the flap of massive wings just before the creature on me was picked up. I was lifted two feet off the ground before he let go, and I fell onto my back and watched in shock as the mist tornadoed up, pulled by the wake of the harpy and her prey.

Three seconds later the creature’s body came hurtling back to earth to break upon a tomb.

Mapsaura landed at my feet.

I gulped, gasping for air and completely stunned that my call had worked. “Thank you.”

The small nostrils on the beak flared. The harpy’s head swung around and froze, eyes zeroing in on Athena. And then I saw Arachne, flinging bodies left and right, trying to make it to the goddess who had imprisoned her for so long.

Mapsaura bent at the muscular knees and pushed off the ground, shooting straight up, disappearing into the mist, and then torpedoing down, aiming straight for Athena as Arachne broke free and made for the goddess.

Both creatures hit her at once.

But Athena wasn’t the goddess of war for nothing. She caught each creature on a blade and used their momentum to throw them behind her. The harpy rolled herself right, finally stopping with her great talons digging a rut into the dirt. Map-saura stretched her wings wide and a bone-chilling scream ripped from her throat, the sound almost as loud as Athena’s war cry.

As Athena turned, distracted, a bolt of power from Michel and Sebastian, their hands combined, hit her square in the chest.

I blinked, storing away for another time the fact that Sebastian had that kind of power.

Athena flew back from the warlock blast as the harpy took flight again. Arachne lay on the ground, unmoving. But I saw Athena’s quick realization. Her creatures were falling to the Novem. And here in New 2, her powers were diminished. She could be defeated.

“Fall back!” the goddess shouted, glancing up just in time to see the harpy barreling from the sky, her wings folded flat against her back.

Athena vanished.

Mapsaura’s eyes went wide. Her wings unfurled and caught the air for two seconds before she rolled to the side, skimming the ground. Her talons punched into the soft soil, giving her enough room to flap her wings and push her high enough to skid-land atop one of the tombs. Slate roof tiles scattered as her talons dug in for support.

One by one Athena’s creatures disappeared into the mist.

A hushed quality descended on the cemetery, the steady fall of rain becoming the dominant sound.

Bodies littered the ground. Moans and voices broke the eerie quiet. I made my way to Sebastian and Michel near the tomb where Mapsaura perched, but a broken body lay in my path. I stumbled. Jesus. It was Daniel. I dropped down next to him. Blood bubbled from a throat that had been ripped away. His eyes blinked rapidly. His mouth worked, trying to speak, but no sound came out.

“Oh my God, Daniel,” I whispered, kneeling to help him but not knowing what to do. Josephine appeared next to me. “He’ll live, right? He’s a vampire. He’ll live.”

Two vampires, I think, walked forward and picked Daniel up. His head separated from his body, and the thin piece of skin holding him together ripped. My stomach rolled. I scooted back on my ass.

“He’s already dead,” Josephine said without a speck of emotion, and then walked away as the two men dumped Daniel’s body, leaving him in a broken pile. A pile that suddenly collapsed into itself and turned to ash.

I gagged. Bile stung my throat. I swallowed it down, turning and staggering away from the ash as my gaze caught briefly on Violet scrambling down from the tree.

I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Sebastian turned, seeing me approach. My eyes connected with his, and I opened my mouth just as a tingle of warning pricked my skin.

The hairs on my arms stood up.

Athena appeared at my back, instantly wrapping her arms around me. Her lips brushed the rim of my ear. “You know what they say.” Her voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “If I can’t have you. . no one will.” Her lips moved away from my ear. “Oh, and before you die, I want to thank you for leaving your father behind when you set the others free from my prison.”

My insides shriveled. “What?”

She laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it? A ????? hunter falling in love with your mother, a gorgon, the very monster he was charged with killing. As your spirit leaves you, I want you to think of him, of all the things I have done to him for betraying me and not killing Eleni when he had the chance. All the things I am going to do to him now. Good- bye, little monster.”

Athena shoved me away from her.

It seemed like it happened in slow motion. I stumbled to my knees, getting just a glimpse of the horror sliding over Sebastian’s features and the blur that was Violet dropping out of the tree. Shock. I was in shock.

Athena raised a ????? blade to take my head.

Time had slowed to the point that all the images of my life flashed randomly. But one image seemed to slow more than all the others — the image of me holding Athena’s wrist at the Arnaud ball and making it turn to stone.

I had three and a half years left before maturing into a gorgon, but there was power inside me. I’d used it before, and that was the difference. I was different from all those before me. Time, evolution, the genes of my father. . whatever the factors, I knew. I was a god-killer.

The blade sliced through the air. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a shout and a child’s scream. But it didn’t matter. It was happening too fast, too fast for any of them to help me. My blood hummed. My eyes locked onto the blade as it arced toward my neck.

I bowed my head and lifted my tingling hand, opening my palm, releasing all my anger, all the pain of my own life, my mother’s life, and all of the pain I had felt as Medusa, my ancestor.

The blade met my hand.

And broke against stone.

The sound rang out in a deep, echoing pop, an exploding circle of power, the force of it flattening everyone to the ground. I raised my head as the broken part of the blade flew through the air, and I met Athena’s astonished eyes.

My heart sounded slow and loud in my ears.

I shouldn’t have been able to do that; I could see the same thought in Athena’s stunned expression. Yet I had. My hand, I saw, was white like marble, white that was beginning to return to its fleshy color. I could control this power, and I didn’t have to turn into some monster to use it.

Then Athena blinked. Time returned to normal at the same instant that Violet hit Athena’s back from behind, her arms coming around the goddess’s neck and her little fangs sinking into the skin as one of her hands lifted a small dagger and plunged it into Athena’s heart.

A scream bubbled in Athena’s throat.

Shock and dread sent me falling back on my ass as the shout of Violet’s name, by many voices, echoed over the wet grounds.

And then they were gone.

Vanished, leaving behind the swirling mist. The hilt of Athena’s broken blade dropped against a slab of marble as Violet’s bloodied dagger thudded against the soft ground.