Antigoddess

stiffen.

“Tell me you have money,” he said.

“Of course I do,” she replied. “But if I didn’t, I’d drink that place dry and burn it down.”

Hermes laughed. “Now you sound like me.”

Inside the bar, they were surprised to find a handful of patrons and much less dust. The floorboards still squeaked under their feet, and on one wall there was a mounted head of some rabbit/deer monstrosity labeled a “jackalope,” but the bar was polished hardwood, and a stone chimney held a small fire. To Athena it felt like coming home. It was primitive and firelit, and even the ridiculous jackalope felt familiar, a lame contemporary of the old creatures: the Chimera, the Minotaur, the Sphinx.

When they sat upon the swiveling stools, exhausted and confused, only the last remnants of their gods’ pride kept them from resting their foreheads on the bar. Not that anyone would have noticed. The patrons, all men, ignored them completely, immersed in their beers and in the baseball game playing on the surprisingly nice flat-screen TV. Behind the bar, the bartender absently dried glasses with a white terry towel, his eyes trained on the game while he rolled a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

“Yo,” Hermes called out irritably. “Can we get two waters?”

“There’s a two-drink minimum,” the bartender replied without looking over.

“That wasn’t posted anywhere,” Hermes grumbled, but Athena set her pack up on the bar.

“Two waters and two Bud Lights then,” she said.

Hermes’ eyes widened. “Bud Light? I’d rather dehydrate. How about a Rolling Rock?”

“Bottle okay?”

“Fine.”

“I’m going to need to see some IDs.”

They flipped their wallets open and tapped sand out onto the floor. The bartender checked them, but it was just for show; he didn’t seem to care if they were fake as long as they were IDs.

“Let me see that.” Hermes snatched Athena’s license out of her hand. “Twenty-one. Mine too. You should change yours so people don’t think we’re twins.”

“Why should I change mine? I don’t look twenty-two. You change yours.”

“You barely look nineteen. That’s not what I meant. But with the way you are…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

There was a sharp hiss and a pop as the cap was taken off of a beer. A few seconds later, the bartender set the Rolling Rock and a frosty mug of Bud down in front of them. Athena tossed a ten onto the counter and he spared her a wink. She didn’t think he’d bring back change, and she didn’t have the energy to argue. In days gone by she might have smote him, turned him into a tree or a statue or something. Glory days.

She took a long drink of her beer. He’d forgotten to bring the waters, but it didn’t matter. The Bud was ice cold, the carbonation a satisfying burn in her throat. Behind them, a meager cheer went up from two or three patrons as apparently something good happened to whatever baseball team was being rooted for.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Hermes asked after half of his Rolling Rock was sitting comfortably in his stomach.

She nudged the roof of her mouth with her tongue. The quill of the owl feather was more defined, but still several days from poking through the skin. When it did, she wouldn’t be able to help herself from yanking it free, drawing blood and leaving a ragged, stringy wound. Then it would probably turn into a canker sore because she wouldn’t be able to stop sucking at it.

She shook her head, but said, “I guess we have to.” Their voices were low, cloaked in that way that they still knew how to do, so that people could hear that they were talking but if pressed would never be able to remember just what it was they had been saying.

“It wasn’t exactly what you wanted her to say, was it.” Hermes sighed.

“I never expected it to be easy.” She shot him a look. “I just thought maybe we’d band together this time instead of tearing each other apart. How stupid of me.”

“Some of us will band together. Only … to eat the other band. Still a team effort, depending on how you look at it.”

Athena snorted. “And these reincarnated tools? I never figured on dealing with humans again.” Even though she had lived among them, blended into their population almost since the day they tossed her and her brethren off of Olympus and sent it crashing into the sea.

“So much bitterness. I thought the humans were your friends. That they came even before us.”

“They did. Once.” Before they forgot me. When I was a true god.

Hermes took a long drink of Rolling Rock. “So what happened? Some hideous mortal break your heart?”

She laughed, genuinely and ruefully. “Shut up, Hermes.”

He shrugged. “Guess not. Still the virgin goddess then, eh? I don’t know why. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.”

“It’s a choice,” she said. And more than that. It’s what I am. What I’ve always been. “But you’re getting off point. You heard Demeter. We need to find the tools. The oracle. Whom she seemed to think is a ‘she.’”

He sighed. “An oracle. In this century you can find one on every block. Neon palm with a blinking eye in the center. You can call them on the phone. How are we supposed to find the one she’s talking about? And why would this human even help us?”

Athena clenched her jaw. Find her. Make her remember, and she’ll be more than a prophetess. It sounded like another of Demeter’s riddles. But Demeter wanted them to survive, no matter what she said. She’d been a curmudgeon as long as Athena had known her. The kind of aunt who slapped your hand off the table but gave you a dozen cookies if you just asked properly.

“The prophet will help us. We’ll convince her. We’ll make her remember.”

“Right. Somehow.”

“Will you shut up? We have to find her first.”

Hermes shrugged. “Maybe if we tell her we can prevent the war. A war between the gods means a dirty, bloody mess, and not just for us.”

“So we should lie.”

He shrugged again. “Maybe not. If we have to go down, I wouldn’t mind if the mortals went down with us. It sort of eases the blow. Is that wrong?” He took another long swallow of beer. “To tell the truth, I sort of thought that it was the humans who were doing this to us, somehow.”

“We still don’t know what is doing this to us. This whole thing feels strange. I’m dying, and I feel like something’s starting. Like something is on its way. But maybe that’s just how it always feels. Not like we would know.”

Hermes took a swallow of Rolling Rock.

“A war against our own. Killing each other to survive. I wonder who we’ll go against?” He started to say more, and then summed it up with a shake of his head. The truth was, the gods had never really cared that much about one another. Bonds were fickle and morality generally nonexistent. They changed sides constantly. “Those bastards.” He looked at her incredulously. “How could any of them think of killing me? Me! All these millennia, all I’ve done is be helpful. Deliver a message here, fetch a hero there.”

“Necessity is a strong motivator.” Athena rubbed her tongue across the bump of feather on the roof of her mouth. The others were dying too, in various ways and shapes. She knew that much. And killing each other wasn’t really such a strange way to survive. Their grandparents, the Titans, had eaten their own children toward the same end.

“Another round?” The bartender stood directly in front of her, an impatient stare on his face like he’d been there for days waiting for her to notice.

“Yeah,” she said, and reached into her wallet for a twenty. He took the money and their empties. They waited to speak again until he’d brought the fresh drinks. He still forgot the waters.

“Are you sure the oracle isn’t in Delphi?” Hermes asked.

“She called it a ‘she.’ Which I guess rules out Tiresias.”