Rise of the Blood

“That’s two questions,” I said, “linked together by an ‘and’.”

He gave me a crocodile smile. “Why, so it is. Which brings us neck and neck at seven questions remaining.”

“Fine. He’s given me precognition and I haven’t given him a thing.” Except grief, but I was pretty sure that didn’t count.

I had to think carefully about my next questions. “So let me be really clear,” I said after a moment. “The Back to Earth plans to addict people to ambrosia are no more.” I made it a statement. “Do you have plans to pick up where they left off?”

“You’re getting better at this,” he commented. “There is far too much regulation in the food industry. No, I have no intention of picking up their mantle. Now, back to Apollo. You haven’t yet given him anything in return. But what do you owe?”

The question chilled me, because the answer was more complicated than it should have been. Overtly, I didn’t owe anything. I hadn’t asked for my precognition, and Apollo had never mentioned any strings attached, but I knew the story of Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy. Apollo had given her the power to see the future, only to curse her never to be believed when she spurned his advances. Hermes had centuries more knowledge of Apollo than I had. Could it be that my bill had not yet come due? Or could Apollo have learned from his mistakes and outlived his past? I knew what I wanted to believe. But wanting didn’t make it so.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Ah,” he said, unhelpfully. “Ah.”

Now I was torn. As much as I wanted to ask him about the consequences of doing the little dance Apollo and I were doing, I only had six questions left. I suspected that Hermes was trying to sidetrack me, which meant I couldn’t let it happen. Plus, the wedding rehearsal beckoned and I still had to change. I needed to start asking essay questions. Yes and no answers were getting me nowhere.

“What’s your present scheme?” I asked him.

“Scheme? Singular? Oh ho, girl, I’m hurt. You underestimate me.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“I’m trying to play fair. Do I tell you about my very explicit plans for your charming friend or do I share with you…no, no, I think I’ll keep that one to myself. Let’s just say that Back to Earth, in addition to showing poor judgment, thought too small. Health food, bah. Some will want it, yes, but not enough. Ask yourself, what is it that everyone wants?  Where’s the real money?”

My heart clenched. People were dead because of the Back to Earth cult. If Hermes was thinking even bigger we were in trouble. Was he still trafficking in ambrosia? Nectar? Either one was more addictive than crack and twice as deadly to kick, at least for mere mortals. Even granted that the gods weren’t known for keeping it in their pants, so traces of their bloodline would be flowing through a whole lot of veins, it still left tons of people in danger. Even those with a smidgen of divine blood weren’t guaranteed to survive the kind of changes ambrosia would make to their system. And should access to the drug suddenly stop for any reason, death was the likely end game.

“You can’t,” I gasped.

“My dear, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I surely can. Also, you still have no idea what exactly we’re talking about.”

“So enlighten me.”

Hermes clicked a finger against his teeth thoughtfully, annoyingly. “Have you not heard all the doomsday prophecies?” he asked. “They’re not really about the end of the world. They’re about the end of this incarnation. Out with the old, in with the new. The system’s broken. Rapture or zombie apocalypse, either way things aren’t intended to stay the same. I’m just planning to—” he pretended to pluck the right phrase out of mid air “—guide the course of future events.”

He was a maniac. Unconsciously, I’d distanced myself, leaning away.

“You’re insane,” I told him.

He looked me dead in the eyes. “Am I? If you saw a train wreck coming, wouldn’t you wrest control of the train to avert the crisis? I know you. You’d do it in a heartbeat. We’re the same.”

“We’re not.”

“I assure you, we are. And you don’t want to be a thorn in my side on this. Thorns get removed. With prejudice.”

I stared, stunned, unable to form a response. Suddenly everything—Apollo’s petrification problem, my ambrosia withdrawal and overcomplicated love life—seemed petty. What was Hermes up to? What was his end game? Was there—

My brain stuttered to a stop, and it took everything I had to force it to go on.

Was there a chance that I’d somehow been a pawn in Hermes’s game, whatever it was? Had he helped me before so that I would remove the greater gods from the playing field—Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus, Hephaestus, even Hades to the extent that he was still sulking? Who was left to stop him? Little old me? My gorgon glare didn’t work on the older gods. What else did I have? My precognition was no good without the power to stop my visions.

“Are you responsible for what’s happening to Apollo?” I asked suddenly.

“You’re getting colder. As I’ve said, I don’t have anything against Apollo. Even if I did, I’d hardly need to waste my time on him with Zeus and Poseidon on the loose and happy to run him down.”

Hermes reached in front of me and grabbed my glass of nectar, tossing back the remainder. Then he returned the glass to the bar and rose from his stool.

“By my count, there are still questions to be asked and answered. However, I believe you have a rehearsal to get to, and I have a…thing. So, we’ll have to pick up again another time.”

He threw money down on to the bar to cover my soda—too much—and strode out as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, he’d just rocked mine, and not in the good way. I tossed back my soda like it was something a helluva lot stronger and sat there stunned as it bubbled its way down.

But not for long. I didn’t have the luxury of time to process what I’d just heard. I had notes to compare with Nick and a wedding rehearsal to get to. If Hermes was in business with Uncle Hector, maybe I could even manage to squeeze some information out of him between learning where to stand and how to adjust the bride’s train just so for pictures.

I pulled out my phone to call the room, to see if Nick had escaped Serena’s clutches so I’d know where to meet him—changing seemed a no-go given how much time the interview with Hermes had set me back. But the phone just rang until the hotel voicemail picked up. I left a message telling him I was on my way, in case he got back to the room before I did, then hung up and dialed Christie. I was going to have to warn her off Hermes and find a way to make sure the warning took. I didn’t know what he was up to besides “no good”, but I didn’t want her stuck in the middle of it.

I decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator up to my room, afraid I’d lose cell service. I took the steps two at a time while I waited for Christie to answer…and waited. She was probably off at her shoot. I hit my floor and stepped out of the stairwell, about to leave Christie a message, when something lashed out from nowhere to knock the phone from my hand. It was so close to my ear that the blow caught that too, and my head whipped around with the force of the impact. I caught a glimpse of black robes, and then that black seemed to fly at my head and was suddenly smothering me. Fabric choked off my vision and my air as something was yanked over my head. Frenzied, I lashed out every which way. I made impact with something that oofed, but then I got lightheaded. The hood over my head smelled sickly sweet and…

My body fell like a disarticulated skeleton. I lost consciousness before I ever hit the floor.

Chapter Eight

My eyes snapped open as my body rocked roughly into something that grunted in pain. But opening them didn’t help; something was blocking my view. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. I remembered then being grabbed and reflexively jerked my hands toward my face to remove whatever kept me in the dark, but they wouldn’t move,