Rise of the Blood

myself left to push him away, but there wasn’t enough of me that wanted to, not enough to pull together into action.

The impact felt…cataclysmic.

I thought I’d drown in him with the tsunami of emotion crashing over me. I made a sound, like a whimper. Too much. It was all too much. He drew back.

I found his gaze easily enough, and he looked concussed.

“No,” I said, now that he’d found the power to stop. It was too little, too late, and I wasn’t even sure whether I was telling him no, don’t stop or finally drawing the line.

“I had to,” he said softly. “If we’re going to die, I had to do that at least one more time. But it…it wasn’t like the first time. It was….”

I latched onto the one part that I could deal with, as twisted as that was. “Die?” I asked.

My voice didn’t even quiver. No, that was for the rest of me, still shaking from the emotional storm or from ambrosia withdrawal or just from the cold.

“Have you ever heard of the Selli?” he said.

Holy non-sequitor, Batman.

“The who?”

“Zeus’s priests, from back in the old days. Based on their talk, that’s who we’re dealing with here, a surviving sect, still doing his bidding.”

“Lovely, and the dying part?”

“They seem to be planning a blood sacrifice.”

When I’d joined my uncle’s PI business, I knew there’d be times when things might get a little hairy, but I was thinking hand-to-hand combat, maybe, or a shoot-out or two in the entire course of my career. Blood sacrifice had never even popped up on my radar.

“I’m sorry, my hearing must not be working. Blood sacrifice?”

Apollo was silent for a second, and I could sense him listening, making sure no one was on their way back for us before he asked gravely, “How much do you know about Delphi?”

“Dedicated to you, site of the famed Oracles…um, that’d be about it.” I’d intended to read up before we came, but there’d never been time.

“This was a sacred site well before I came along, dedicated to the titan Rhea, the mother of Zeus, etc. I sort of…took it over.”

“By wrestling the Pythian Serpent,” I remembered. It was a pretty famous story. Ranked right up there with Hercules strangling the hydra in his crib.

“I was young and stupid. And, in my defense, the time of the titans had passed. Rhea had seen her husband Kronos devour their children. It seemed to be a popular thing to do back then. Then she saw him deposed by Zeus, whom she’d saved from being eaten by feeding Kronos a stone instead. She’d watched Zeus battle her fellow titans for supremacy. Her heart just wasn’t in the whole goddess thing anymore. Anyway, I didn’t defeat her so much as repurpose her place of power. She’d already more or less withdrawn with the other titans.”

“And the point of the history lesson?” I asked, my back shrieking at me as I nearly dislocated my shoulders in the attempt to get loose of my bonds.

“The point is that Delphi has always been strategically important. The story goes that when Zeus let free two doves from either side of the world, they met in Delphi. The ancients called it the “naval of the world”. There’s a great deal of power here.”

“Where does the sacrifice come in?”

“From what I’ve overheard, they want to awaken the power of the place, I suspect to somehow restore Zeus to his former glory.”

“Does it have to be our blood?” I asked. Not that spilling anyone else’s was okay in my book. What I wanted to know was whether, if we got free, they’d go after softer targets. How deadly were these guys? Priests, that didn’t sound so scary…until I thought about augury and reading entrails and the ritual sacrifices of various religions in bygone days.

“It has to be my blood, at the least. My ties here are strong. They’ll need to be broken before others can be established, just as I had to spill the blood of the Pythian Serpent, Rhea’s avatar, to make Delphi my own.” We were both silent for a second at that. “On the upside, there may be a window of opportunity after my blood reawakens the sanctuary and before I grow too weak when we might be able to seize the moment.”

It wasn’t much, but it was hope, and I latched onto it. As much as I didn’t want to walk that aisle tomorrow in a puke-green gown, going out this way seemed even worse. I might die of something other than embarrassment.

“Are you fading?” I asked suddenly.

“Sun’s going down,” Apollo said, meeting my gaze. “I can’t hold the light much longer.”

Skata. I looked quickly around, hoping to see more than I’d seen before, squinting, trying to extend my senses. If only I’d asked Hermes about that ambrosia after all. Funny how he now seemed the lesser of two evils. But as far as I could see, which wasn’t far, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. Earth and stone, all well-fitted together. No loose stones or jagged edges.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“At a guess, the Athenian Treasury. It’s the only intact structure on site.”

“Great.” Nothing better than a prison meant to hold valuables in and intruders out. “Do you have anything we can use to get free?” I asked. “Pocket knife, unclipped toenail. Anything?”

“Just my teeth,” he answered.

Phantasmagorical. The way his light was starting to dim, there was no way we had time for him to chew through my bonds or for me to untie him.

Especially not when the sound of stone sliding against stone signaled that our time was up. Apollo let his glow go out, but it was replaced by the blaze of flashlights striking our faces.

“Don’t look in her eyes!” a male voice called out in Greek. “Get the cover back over her face,” he further demanded.

The lights flicked away from our faces and over the ground, as no doubt they searched for the hoods that had cut off our sight.

My precognition kicked into high gear, but it didn’t take a psychic to know that my hood couldn’t be hard to find and that I’d soon be blind again, in addition to helpless. I tried desperately in the dark to search out the eyes of our kidnappers, to catch them with the gorgon glare, but they were too wary, and in no time, I was grabbed from behind, the hood once again yanked over my head.

Then I was hoisted up off the ground and against someone’s chest, being force-marched out of wherever we were. I already knew flailing around only made my bonds cut into my flesh and didn’t do a damned bit of good, so I changed my strategy. This time I tried to make myself smaller, cringing in on myself, trying to loosen the bonds now that I’d hopefully strained and stretched them in my earlier struggle. I felt them ease up, but they were still a long way from falling to the ground, and as soon as I expanded my chest for a breath, they’d tighten back up again.

I wasn’t the damsel in distress sort, counting on rescue, though under the circumstances I couldn’t help but wish that Nick or Uncle Christos or someone would come looking for us. But who would know to search for us here?

I could feel when we stepped from wherever they’d been keeping us into the fresh air. For one, whoever held me pressed down hard on my head to get me to duck through an exit clearly smaller than I was. For another, the night air was cooler. There was very little breeze, but at this altitude—

A lethal injection of fear shot through me at the thought. Here we were at the top of Mount Parnassus and I couldn’t see a thing. The kidnappers could walk me straight off a cliff, and I’d never know it until I was banging tits over tail down the side of the mountain, my body crashing against every cliff and outcropping, screaming in terror all the way, at least until the pain or the fatal blow knocked me out.

I froze in fear, unable to take another step into the unknown. My kidnapper tripped at my sudden stop, knocking me forward. I panicked, twisted, trying frantically to clutch at him, to take him with me as I fell, but he was faster.

“Tori!” Apollo called out, feeling my fear and probably thinking the worst.