Rise of the Blood

He led me back the way I’d just come and used a keycard to get us beyond the general ER area and back to the trauma treatment rooms. Nick was in the first one on the left, and I had to keep from throwing myself on him as I spotted him laying there, looking so helpless. One side of his face was loosely bandaged in white gauze pink with blood. The eye on the bandage-free side rolled to look at me, so blue and perfect in contrast.

I gasped and approached the bed tentatively, as if even displacing the air might cause him pain. My vision went blurry, and I realized there were tears in my eyes.

“I’ll give you a minute,” the orderly said, “but he may not be awake long. He’s on some pretty serious pain meds.”

Nick raised a hand, again on the uninjured side. The left, I noticed, which meant it was his dominant side that had taken the hit. I reached gently for the hand and stood by his bed, afraid to perch on it and cause him to shift.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. My damaged throat and the tears made it a hoarse whisper.

He shook his head. “Not your fault,” he whispered, as soft as spider’s silk.

“It is,” I insisted, not allowing myself the relief of looking away from his pain.

“Tori—” Saying my name recalled my gaze to his one good eye, and I realized I was lying to myself. I had let my gaze wonder down to his chest where the skin was less angry.

“Yes,” I said, wiping tears away from my eyes with my free hand.

“I’m out.”

I blinked. “Well, of course. I’m so, so sorry. No one expects you to come back to the fight. I should never—” a sob stopped me, and I had to swallow it down before I could continue, “—I should never have drawn you into any of it.”

He started to shake his head and stopped as it sparked pain that flashed across his face and made his body nearly arc off the bed. He breathed shallowly through the pain for a minute before his muscles untensed and he relaxed back onto the mattress, looking smaller than before somehow.

“No, I mean I’m out of everything. I can’t be…part of this.” He sounded like he was drowning on his words, and I could see a single tear welling in his good eye. “I’m not…equipped for these battles, and now…can’t even fight for those I’m meant to fight for, back home.”

He wasn’t a god…or a gorgon. Hell, I wasn’t equipped for this and that was with ambrosia and my gods-given gifts. But I suspected he was saying something more…something I desperately didn’t want to hear.

His eye kept closing, and it looked like it took more effort each time to reopen it, like the medicine was dragging him down into sleep. I wanted that for him, the freedom from pain, but he squeezed my hand to hold me there as he sensed me start to pull back to leave him in peace.

“Come with me,” he said, finally letting his eye shut and stay that way. “Not your fight either. I’m not sure…” He trailed off, and for a second I thought he was finished. Then his lips moved again, though his eyes stayed shut. “Not sure you’re helping the situation. Not sure things aren’t worse.” My heart stopped beating. I wondered if it was the medicine talking. Or confusion from the pain. But deep down I knew. He meant every word. I knew it, because he was voicing my very own doubts. Only, he was my touchstone. He was supposed to believe. And he’d cracked under the pressure.

I was so torn up and tangled up in my own pain that it took me a second to realize he wasn’t quite finished. “If this is…your path…can’t walk it with you.”

His hand went slack in mine, and I checked to see that he was still breathing. He was, and I struggled to feel something at that, but I’d gone numb with the stopping of my heart. I didn’t know what to process first—that he blamed me as I blamed myself or that it sounded like he was cutting me free.

Because that’s what he was saying. I couldn’t turn my back on the fight that had begun. I couldn’t. My responsibility was here. Now. With my friends and family and this mess I hadn’t started but had been sucked into nonetheless. His responsibility, his job, his identity was back in L.A. with the people he’d vowed to protect and serve. And because of me—I’d said it myself—because of me right now he couldn’t even do that. All he could do was hurt and heal. He couldn’t stay and I couldn’t go. After all I’d put him through, that felt like a betrayal. Yet I couldn’t see any other path.

I walked out of there like I was walking the Green Mile, already dead inside.

The tears didn’t start until I was in the limo Uncle Hector had sent to collect me, and then they wouldn’t stop.

Viggo looked at me in the rearview mirror and asked, “The man, he’s going to be okay?”

I wiped the tears out of my eyes. “Eventually. Nothing skin grafts and time away from me can’t cure.”

He looked sad, like he could read between the lines. “Back to the hotel?”

I thought about asking him to go by way of a liquor store, but I needed my wits about me.

“Yes,” I said finally. “Thank you.”

“It’ll be okay,” he told me.

I wished he had the power of prophecy.

I was too emotionally exhausted to fear the hairpin turns on the way back up to the hotel…or maybe I was getting used to them. Exposure therapy.

Like before, we had to stop short of the actual parking lot that looked like an explosion site. I thanked Viggo and raced out, ready to find the others and plot away my sorrows. Nick had pulled away from me. I didn’t think it was just his painkiller talking. My touchstone was gone. That voice that told me not to do the crazy things I usually did anyway had given up on me. But more than that…I hadn’t said as much, not even to myself, but the truth was that when Nick and I finally got through the bantering and dancing our way around our relationship, I thought we’d…settle down sounded too tame. Be together forever sounded too romancy. But somewhere in there lay the truth about what was slipping away from me.

The lobby of the hotel was all but deserted when I entered. One lone receptionist was holding down the check-in desk. I realized I didn’t know where to go. The banquet hall would be a crime scene, although what crime the police could prosecute I could only imagine. I headed for the elevators while I pulled my phone out to call Apollo, feeling stupidly guilty as I did it, even though this was hardly a social call. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I had a relationship anymore to worry about. The thought didn’t cause me anything but pain.

I was not going to cry again. Big girls don’t cry. I’d heard it in a song once. The wisdom of Fergie.

I heard a phone play out the first few bars of “Black Magic Woman” in the elevator coming into the lobby and knew I didn’t have to look any further for Apollo. I’d found him. He accepted the call just as the doors opened, and then dropped his hand to his side at the sight of me.

“What happened?” he asked immediately, stepping toward me. I took a step back. “Are you okay?”

I looked at the hand reaching out toward me, the phoneless one, and he stopped. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not the one hurt.”

“Then what was all that I sensed?”

Damn and double damn, I’d forgotten our weird, unwanted bond that meant he’d had a front-row seat for the breakup. But he could sense emotions, not read minds. He might guess, but he couldn’t know anything I didn’t tell him for certain. And I wasn’t about to tell him. He’d been wanting me to break up with Nick since we’d met. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it was done or appearing pathetic because Nick had been the one to end it.

“Zeus is a douchebag, so what else is new? But I think I talked some sense into him and Poseidon both. I don’t think they can fight Rhea without us.”

“Without Zeus and his idiot priests, we wouldn’t have to fight her at all.”

“Where is everybody?” I asked, before he could whip out any more questions of his own.

“Strategizing,” he said, “in the bridal suite.”

“Oh, Tina must love that.”

“She volunteered it. She’s pissed that ‘that bitch goddess’ ruined her wedding. We had to fill her in. Pretty hard to keep her in the dark after everything.”

I felt oddly pleased. If she knew the full story, she’d have to know that none of this was my fault. Oh sure,