Antigoddess

“Not necessarily. There’s no rule that says you have to be reincarnated as the same gender.”

“How would you know? You should hope there is. Or our task becomes harder. So rattle off some female prophets.” She took a long drink and set her mug down hard with a heavy clink. “All I can think of is the Sybil, but she was never one person. She was a line passed down over time.” She took another drink. The temptation to let this business rest rose up, strong and cloying. Her back hurt, and her eyes hurt. There were feathers seeding her internal organs. Beside her, Hermes’ labored breathing hadn’t abated. Maybe it never would. They could just drink here, in this small, comfortable bar, and forget about things. They could stretch out across the land like Demeter and sink into the dirt.

Haven’t I lived long enough? Shouldn’t a goddess have the grace to accept this?

“She also said you screwed the girl over.” Hermes squinted while he thought. “The three of you, she said. That mean anything?”

“I’ve screwed a lot of people over.”

“Yes, you have.”

“So have you,” Athena snapped.

“But we’re talking about you. So think.”

Think. What prophetess did I screw over with the help of two other gods? A prophetess strong enough to help us now, somehow …

“Oh, shit.” Athena turned to him. “It’s Cassandra.”

Hermes’ eyes glowed brilliant blue and stood out like methane torches against his dirt-streaked face. “Of course it’s Cassandra,” he said. “She’s talking about Cassandra. God, we’re idiots.” He clapped a hand to his chest.

Cassandra of Troy. A princess and prophetess during the Trojan War. She’d warned her city that they would fall to Achilles and the Greeks, but no one had listened.

Because she was cursed. Someone cursed her to never be believed.

Not just someone. A god. Their brother, Apollo.

“It’s so simple,” Hermes said. “Cassandra of Troy.”

Athena blinked. Hermes was getting ahead of himself, as usual.

“Don’t get too excited. We might be wrong. And you should hope we are.” She took a drink.

“Why?”

“Because I fought against her, last time. I sided with the Greeks to burn down her city and murder her family. I started the war.”

Hermes waved his hand dismissively.

“Sides change all the time.” He tightened his thinning fist, spread his fingers, and watched them tremble. “But I guess … Even if we find her, she won’t be the same person we knew once. She’s probably happy and not a part of this anymore.”

The sympathy in his voice edged just nearer to sorry for himself. Death was softening him up. Athena didn’t remember him having an excess of compassion for mortals in the past. It was sort of touching. And they didn’t have time for it.

“You’re not even half right. She probably is happy, but she’s also the same prophet we knew once, and that means she always has been, and always will be, a part of this.”

She took a long pull of her beer, but it tasted bad. Cold water was what she’d craved since they’d come in. She looked at the bartender to order, and found him staring straight at her. When she opened her mouth, he opened his in a broad, strange smile. A smile that quickly stretched until it split into bleeding cracks across his cheeks.

Beside her, Hermes took a drink and crinkled his nose. “Yuck. Did someone salt this while I wasn’t looking?”

“Hermes.” Athena put her hand on her brother’s arm and together they looked around the bar. The baseball game was forgotten. Every pair of eyes was on them.

As the seconds ticked by, the flannel shirts and thick, tanned flesh of the bar patrons hung looser. Blue and silver scales began to show through at their temples and cheeks like harlequin-painted sequins. One moment she was looking at a middle-aged man dressed in a John Deere ball cap and tan shirt, and a blink later seeing a clawed, finned thing in a melting human costume.

Athena’s eyes did a full sweep and came back to rest on the bartender.

Who wasn’t the bartender anymore. Only the slightest resemblance to his previous form remained. The bone structure around the eyes and cheeks was still intact, and there was something about the curl of aquatic lip, peeled back against piranha-jagged teeth, that was reminiscent of the way he had smirked when he dropped off their beers. Beyond that, everything had changed. Black, speckled scales peppered his skin. His irises were gone. Slight webbing fluttered between his fingers, and his legs had molded into one long, muscled appendage. He stood balanced on it like a snake’s tail curled beneath him. At the end a broad fin waved lazily.

All of this she saw in an instant, and in her silence, Hermes looked as well. He reacted with more force, spinning off of his stool and sending it swiveling unevenly to the floor with a sharp thud.

“Nereid,” she said lowly. They had of course seen the oceanic creatures before, swirling about their master, Poseidon, the god of the sea.

“Make that plural,” Hermes added. The other bar patrons had almost finished shedding their human makeup: shirts and jeans slid down scaled and rubber-skinned legs. When the Nereids stood, they made a wet squelching sound like they’d been sitting in a mud puddle, and a look at the seat of their chairs revealed a flesh- colored pool of water. Their disguises ran off of them in rivulets.

“Neat trick,” Athena said to the bartender. “Who taught it to you?”

She glanced around. It was hard to believe that these monstrosities had once been jewels of the sea. That they swam in swirling patterns and entranced fishermen from their boats. The silver hair and shining body was gone, evolved into cracked scales and oily eyes. They reeked of salt and old blood.

The bartender didn’t answer her question. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out the Nereids had been planted there. They’d been waiting, and they’d listened to everything she and Hermes said. Once the two of them got to the interesting part, it was time to lose the masks and get down to business.

“Six of them, two of us,” Athena said.

“I think Uncle Poseidon’s trying to send us a message.” Hermes kept his eyes on the group of Nereids clustered around the television, still droning out a baseball game in the seventh inning.

Athena flexed her muscles. I’m tired, I’m tired, I just crossed the fucking desert, they protested, but beneath the protest was springy strength.

“I guess it’d be rude if we didn’t reply.”

The attack came all at once. The group darted forward, knocking over whatever tables and chairs got in their way. Their movement reminded her of a pod of fish, fast and synchronized, as if they shared one brain. Athena was up instantly, moving almost as fast as Hermes, who had grabbed the first of the pod by the throat and didn’t waste any time tearing its gills out and throwing them to the floorboards where they bounced like bloody, rubber filters. Athena drew her legs up to perch on the seat of her stool. With a grimace, she flung herself headlong into the bunch, and felt a sharp fin slice through the skin of her underarm. The wound barely registered. Claws gripped her legs, her shoulders, and the strength in them was almost enough to pop her joints. The air filled with the smell of salt and a watery, raspy sound that the Nereids made from their lampreylike mouths.

Athena reached for the nearest body, and her fingers slid against the slick mucous coating the skin. She almost didn’t get a grip, but with a deep breath she twisted her arms and tore the head free. The body fell to the floor and flopped, webbed hooks still grasping. Then she used the head like a bludgeon, swinging it wide and knocking three of the others back. The head flew out of her hand and knocked into the TV. It crashed to the ground and sparked.

“Don’t kill them all,” she hissed, and Hermes shot her a disbelieving look.

“I’m killing until they stop,” he shouted, but he pulled his fingers out of the gills of the creature atop him and punched it in the face instead.

Athena feinted backward as the hooked finger-claws of the last Nereid in front of her passed dangerously close to her face. There had been a time when no god or mortal would have dared try to disfigure her cheeks. The