Rise of the Blood

part of my muscle memory.

Gah, enough already.

“If so, you can do better for yourself. You deserve more than a constant struggle.”

I let that go. I wasn’t entirely sure what I deserved, but I was not going to wallow in self-pity or self-loathing or whatever. Rhea was not going to defeat me. That meant I had to wo-man up.

I braced myself as we reached the doors of a beautiful little white-washed church with vaulted ceilings and small stained-glass windows catching the light. On the upside of things, my preoccupation with death had temporarily overwritten my fear of heights. I’d forgotten even to notice the path we’d taken. Tina held open the beautiful oak door for me to enter, and I prepared myself to be struck down as I crossed the threshold, but nothing happened.

The inside of the little church was painted floor to ceiling with Byzantine-styled frescos representing the saints, the holy family and, looking down from the pinnacle of the vestry, Christ Pantokrator, aka God Almighty. I’d grown up with kind of a loose sense of religion—believing in God, just not really clear on exactly what that might mean. One all-powerful god sounded good, focused. One message. One agenda. But the fact that no one, not even within the same religion, could agree on exactly what that was…well, it made me wonder. Was Christianity about one god who was open to interpretation? Was the trinity really somehow three-in-one or multiple entities who might sometimes get into turf wars?

Then there’d been Yiayia’s beliefs—the old gods still running around in modern day. But they hadn’t seemed so godlike with their day jobs and petty squabbles. Not for the first time, I wondered what divinity even meant. Did it just mean cool powers and immortality? Was there more to it than that? Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben had said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but the gods I knew didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. I wondered about the Pantokrator. I’d have to ask when and if we ever met, and hope he’d forgive me for hanging with the competition. Or at least his—her?—would-be competition. The heyday of the Olympians was long gone, which was why most seemed so obsessed with staging a comeback.

“You like?” Tina asked, indicating the church.

“Beautiful,” I admitted.

She smiled from ear to ear. “I know, right? There’ll be candles and buntings, a whole bower-type arrangement on the altar…perfect. Come on, I’ll walk you through it.”

“Can you—” I had to clear my throat. “Can you give me just a moment alone?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll, uh, just sit back here for a minute if you want to say a prayer or something.”

She took a seat in a back pew and set the fruit and croissants down beside her. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I took her suggestion and went over to the side of the church where you could light candles and say prayers for the deceased. I knelt on the padded rail and lit a candle, feeling guilty that I didn’t have any money tucked away in my pocket for the offering box. But that was the least of my sins.

Knees already protesting, I stared at the flickering candle. I’d been in church often enough with my mother, who didn’t believe a word of Yiayia’s obsession, to know what to do next. I crossed myself and said, simply, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I hung my head and contemplated that. I didn’t have a flowery prayer to add, just a heartfelt plea. Forgive me. All of my being went into those two words. I didn’t know who I was asking. Everybody. Anybody with the power to lift whatever part of the responsibility I bore for those deaths at Delphi. The candle flame flickered, flaring bright, dwindling nearly to nothing and coming back again. I didn’t know what it meant, if it meant anything. I didn’t feel any differently. But maybe it was like antibiotics…it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours to take effect. Or maybe I was grasping at straws.

I rose again to my feet, and turned to face Tina. “Okay, I’m ready. Show me what you’ve got.” For her sake, I pasted on a smile that flickered like the flame.

She showed me what to do, and I did it, all the while waiting for lightning to strike me down. I might have been thinking more Olympian than Old Testament, but I was pretty sure a monotheistic God, capital G, would have lightning in his arsenal. Or any other natural forces to command—the attributes of all the lower-case-g gods all rolled into one.

Then the set designers arrived to shoo us out of the way, and we were on to hair and makeup back at the hotel. I ate my croissants and fruit on the way back, suddenly voracious. The munchies had crashed my pity party and were all about the buffet. Someone had definitely given me ambrosia last night. I wondered if Nick had been there for it and if he now saw me as a drug addict as well as a killer. No wonder he couldn’t trust me.

I had a lot of time to think about that while I was reclining in the suite that had been set aside for all of us to prep in. I had goop all over my face and tea bags over my eyes. The makeup prep person—like the sous chef of facial artistry—had first insisted on putting drops in my eyes that stung like the dickens and followed with a hot towel to open the pores, some kind of scrub, soothing cream, cold compress to take down the swelling in my face from last-night’s tears, and then had followed with the tea bags and goop. I doubted that any of my original surface skin remained behind.

The others arrived while I was getting prepped, and conversations buzzed all around me. I ignored them, not really concerned with whether Althea preferred apricot scrub over the cucumber crystal cleanser, but at some point Apollo’s name popped up, and my ears—about the only part of me still in their original state—perked up.

“Has anyone seen Apollo this morning?” Junessa asked the room at large. “Tori, what about you? Did your savior come by to check on you this morning?”

I lifted the tea bag off one of my eyes to look at her and got swatted by the sous chef. I glared for the split second before I dropped it back down. I needed all the help I could get and knew it. Even if I didn’t care, there’d be all those pictures immortalizing Tina’s wedding forever after. I didn’t want my ugly mug to break any cameras.

But I’d caught a look at Junessa’s face before the tea bag fell back in to place, and there was something less than casual about the intensity with which she watched for my answer. Then there was the fact that she’d called him “Apollo” like they were on a first-name basis. I doubted he’d found the time to start making his way through the bridesmaids, especially since Spiro would likely make sure he was at the head of the line. (Because I doubted that Jesus had suddenly made him into a monogamist.)

“You know him?” I asked.

No matter how much help I needed, I needed my senses more. There was a mystery here, or maybe the clues to solve one. I lifted the tea bag again in time to see Althea and Junessa exchange a look. The former’s was a warning, as if Junie should have kept her mouth shut.

“Not well,” Junie answered casually, ignoring Althea’s look. “Mostly by reputation. I hear you know him a lot better.”

Stupid media.

I shrugged. I must have unintentionally made a face too, because the goop protested and threatened to crack. I wondered what that would do to my complexion.

“Shhh,” the sous chef hissed at me. “Quiet.”

I took her advice, but only because protesting rarely convinced anybody of anything, and anyway, I was more interested in getting than giving out information. I hoped she’d be compelled to fill the silence. I wasn’t wrong.

“I just wondered, because Serena said that his performance yesterday was a little…wooden.”

My gaze sharpened on her. That clinched it. She knew something.

I waved my arms around to signal that the makeup person should get the goop off my face, and she sighed heavily and began wiping it away with gentle aggression. When I felt I could talk without tearing, I asked, “You know Serena too?”

Oblivious to my undertones, Tina cut in, “You don’t recognize her?”

I was totally baffled now. “No, should I?”

Her disbelieving look was framed by the layers of tin foil all over her head. She looked ready to receive phone calls from outer space. Highlights and lowlights, she’d told me, very excited by the concept.

“Tori,” she said, “Serena Banks. Before she got discovered, she was circus folk. Her mermaid bit was like the most sought-after sideshow act ever. Lenny tried to get her for Rialto Bros., but he