“Charge!”
We all marched after him as he led us from the Hall of Heroes, down the winding path and back through the agora. Some men stopped to kiss women or children—or remove swords and helmets from children who thought they’d come along. By the time we reached the diamond gates, only the warriors remained. The heroes and me, headed to face the monsters and men at least triple our sizes with bronze-age weaponry and a few gods for good measure.
Chapter Thirteen
“You can laugh or cry in the face of danger. Laughter is far more disconcerting for the enemy.”
We met up with Hypnos and the others at the Archeron…or at least a riverbed with not much more than a trickle of water left at the bottom. The remains of what looked to recently have been a mighty river were splashed about the banks, wetting the barren rocks all around and slowly slinking back into the earth. Whether there had been a massive battle, the titans had drunk it dry or we were seeing the result of hundreds of feet, claws, tentacles and hooves crossing in a frenzied rush, I couldn’t tell. One way or another, the titans had bypassed the barrier and were headed into trouble.
Hades stared in horror at the destruction of the Archeron, and when he looked to his son and the reinforcements he’d been able to gather, there was a fire in his eyes. Literally hellfire, and he gave off the stench of brimstone like he bathed in the stuff. Hypnos had managed a dozen or so hellhounds and a few unassuming gods in house black who I presumed to be relations based on the family resemblance. Now that I thought about it, myths had Hypnos breeding at least once—his son Morpheus, the Shaper of Dreams. But beyond that, my knowledge failed me.
“They
He whirled, giving us the back of his hydra armor, and led the way through the nearly nonexistent river to the other side.
The ground started to climb and the walls narrowed in as we passed by it, until we were moving only about four across. Part of the ceiling had come down where the larger titans had knocked their heads, so that smaller stones turned ankles and made the way somewhat treacherous, but no one went down. No one complained.
The tension in my stomach ratcheted up with every step. I didn’t like this setup at all. A huge rockfall ahead or behind…or
Apollo had slung his bow over his back in favor of another, more modern weapon. He had his cell phone out and was fussing with it.
“I thought you said there were no cell towers in Hell,” I said, nudging him to get his attention.
“There aren’t, but the way we’ve been climbing, I keep hoping we’re close enough to the surface to get messages in and out. We need to know what’s happening up there, and they need to know the situation down here and that help is on the way.”
“Anything yet?” I asked.
“No, dammit. I’ll keep trying.”
Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to see the twins. “How ’bout now?” the green-eyed one asked. He seemed to be the ringleader.
“Might be your last chance,” said the other. “We might not survive the battle.”
Wow, were they the princes of romance or what?
“I thought you were already dead,” I said wryly.
“Do we
I really didn’t know how to answer that.
A huge rumble up ahead saved me the trouble. The ceiling seemed to jump, like an ancient elevator finally hitting its floor, and then it buckled right overtop of us. I screamed like a girl and from the choral effect, I wasn’t the only one.
A man lunged forward to catch the center of the dipping ceiling, his muscles bulging where his lion pelt exposed them—Hercules, once again taking up the mantle of the earth as he had from Atlas. I hoped he hadn’t gone soft in the intervening millennia.
“Go!” he grunted at the rest of us. “I’ll hold it up. Just go!”
“You heard him,” Hades said. “Go!”
The army moved around Hercules. Sweat was breaking out across his brow, and I could make out not only every muscle, but every vein and artery.
“Can you hold out?” I asked with no clue what I’d do if the answer was, “No.”
He must have gotten the gist of what I was saying, “Don’t worry about me,” he answered. “Just get out of here. The sooner you go, the sooner all I have to worry about is me.”
“We’ll be back for you,” I promised. I hoped I lived long enough to follow through.
He nodded, as though another word would break him, and jutted his chin toward where the others had disappeared, signaling us to go.
Apollo grabbed me, and I ran after the others, trying to ignore the creaks and groans of the stone ceiling above, the jagged shards of rock still falling here and there like icicles to shatter on the ground.
I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of a phone ringing. Apollo grabbed it out of his pocket and answered on the run. “Yes?” He listened for a second. “We’re on the way. We should come up behind them. And for Olympus’s sake, tell Zeus to stop shaking the earth—at least until we’re above it.”
He hung up. I guess whoever was on the other end already knew the titans had broken free.
“Who was that?”
“Hermes. He says get there as fast as you can and that it’s not Zeus doing the shaking.”
“Great.”
A rock pinged off my head, but I hardly registered the pain with all the adrenaline flooding my system. Ahead of us, people were calling out warnings and slinging boulders, pulling them away from the cave-in at the exit. We were already one hero down, but the others had it covered. All Apollo and I could do from the back of the field was stay out of the way of flying rocks.
When they’d cleared enough room to crawl out, Thanatos insisted on leading the charge, his sword raised before him to skewer anyone in his way. With a great cry, he pelted up out of the ground, the heroes echoing him as they followed.
Apollo and I climbed over the rocks in our way and blinked into the sudden sunlight, our sight clearing onto chaos. We were on the field of the Pythian Games that capped the sacred sight of Delphi at the very top of Mount Parnassus. My natural fear at the height clashed with my precog alarm klaxons for a sickening, blinding panic attack that threatened to take me down, but I didn’t have time for any of that. The battle was already in progress, the titans towering above our force of Hellenic heroes who’d rushed into the action, weapons drawn.
I couldn’t see our allies—gods and goddesses, my friends and family—all the way across the field, opposite our titanic foes, but I could feel the electricity in the air. I desperately hoped that meant Zeus and Poseidon had joined our team. I wondered who else had been recruited.
Something at the edge of my vision caught my attention, and my head swiveled as a figure rose into the air, great black wings unfurling, batlike in construct, but feathered along the struts where on a bat there might be fur. But at its core was something very familiar…
