Rise of the Blood

vanity, but still I had to touch my face and hair to make sure there were no tusks or snakes rising out of it. Although, right now they’d really come in handy.

As far as I could tell, my face and hair were as they’d always been, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have time for a breakdown over any sort of ereptile dysfunction. Rhea already had her upper body entirely free and was pushing off the ground to get her hips loose as well. If we had any shot at her, it was going to have to be now.

I darted in, still with no plan. With all the static electricity Zeus’s pyrotechnics had unleashed in the air, Rhea’s hair was rising alarmingly, and it gave me ideas. I knew I couldn’t see a thing when my crazy hair flew in my face. It was a start, and I had to do something quickly, because the arrows being sent her way via Althea, Junessa and Apollo were only pissing her off.

I willed myself to fly toward her, hoping my wings would obey, having no idea how to work them. I jerked back and forth as they flapped, trying to work out how not to do that and realized pretty quickly that I just had to relax and go with it. It was like I had some ancestral muscle memory. The wings knew what to do, even if I didn’t.

Rhea tried to bat me out of the sky as I flew in, but I dodged instinctively, flitting like Tinkerbell in the face of Captain Hook. Proportionately, the description was apt. I dashed in closer, rather than dancing out of reach and grabbed hard for a handful of her hair. It was too thick, though, and too heavy for me to grab enough to make any difference, and I realized it as soon as she shook her head hard and all that hair whipped around, lashing me a thousand times and sending me flying.

From across the battlefield Zeus saw what I was trying to do and yelled, “Stay back!”

He whipped up the winds and sent them in a tornado cone toward Rhea. Her own hair whipped up around her, blinding, restraining. Maybe we could lash her up, net her in her own tresses.

Rhea raised her face to the sky and sucked in a breath. It was like the suction of a black hole; the winds roared down into her open maw. Her hair fell still about her head and shoulders. And yes, in front of her face, but it didn’t seem to even give her pause.

I saw her prodigious chest expand until I thought it might bust…no pun intended.

Then she blew out the breath again in a gale-force wind that knocked everyone to their knees. I went head over feet, windmilling through the sky until I crashed into something and crumpled to the ground.

Chapter Fourteen

My vision wasn’t just double, it was Ferris wheel—an image in every car, all circling around, making my stomach lurch along with the ride. Blinking just seemed to send the wheel spinning faster. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing.

Three calming breaths were all I could stand. I had to know what was going on. I had to get back in there.

My stomach gurgled as I opened my eyes once again and the images shifted, slowly coming together into focus. I was laying on top of a behemoth chest, very human except that the hair covering it was more like fur, bunny soft. It was…disconcerting. I sat up in a shot, anxious to make sure the titan wasn’t about to squash me flat, but it looked like he’d gone down badly. His head was at a funny angle and his eyes gazed up unseeingly at the sky. No one who’d seen death could ever question how you could tell. There wasn’t just a stillness. There was a light that went out of the eyes, almost a film or a shade drawn across them. They just looked dead. There was no poetic way to describe it. Not that I could think of.

I didn’t even know him. Likely, if he’d been alive he’d have been trying to kill me. But, oddly, he reminded me of Pappous—my grandfather, the strongman with the weak heart. Maybe it was that the titan was so massive and seemingly strong, yet the bunny fur and the bad fall made him seem so vulnerable. So dead.

Bile burned its way up my throat, and I quickly slid off the titan’s cooling chest toward the ground before I could lose it.

I knew what had to be done. Separately, we were vulnerable. Each part of this battle from Zeus on down was so used to being powerful in his or her own right that they weren’t thinking about working together. Not really. Zeus had seen what I’d been trying to do with Rhea’s hair and played off of that. It was a start, one we’d have to build on.

We were going to need a strategy. A coordinated plan of attack.

I was still in shock over my wings, didn’t know what to feel about them or how I’d get them home on the plane, but they were good for getting a bird’s eye view on the battle. I rose, keeping a watch on Rhea, who had now completely risen out of the earth and faced off with two bearded figures—Zeus and Poseidon, who’d managed to pull themselves up off the ground. Serena, who’d clearly joined up with her lord of the deep, wasn’t so lucky. She lay beside them like a doll who’d been tossed aside. I could tell she still breathed, but she hadn’t yet regained consciousness. Hermes hovered beside the brothers in his winged sandals. My movement caught his eye as Rhea swept downward with an outstretched hand to swat them like flies. With no hope of stopping her, he zagged out the way and flew to my side, staring at my wings.

“Tori—what—when—how?”

I shook my head. “No idea. We need a plan.”

“You got one?” he asked.

“Maybe. How do I know I can trust you?”

“Tori,” he said, a hand to his heart. “How can you ask?”

I gave him my best gorgon glare. “I know, okay? I figured out about the thing you’ve got going with Eterne. ‘Where’s the real money?’ you asked. I’m going to say pyramid schemes and youth serums. What’s in your product? Nectar? Ambrosia?” I don’t know when I’d guessed, but suddenly it was all crystal clear. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it ends. You promise me. If I save the day, no more trying to hook humans.”

Hermes’s eyes blazed, and for an instant, I could see his relationship to Hades. “And if I don’t agree?”

“Then I’ll do this without you and let the whole ancient world know what you could have helped and didn’t. If that’s not enough, I’ll come after you myself.”

He eyed me sourly, but we didn’t have the time for a battlefield sulk. “Yes or no?” I asked, staring straight into his eyes, looking for a lie.

“Yes,” he spat.

“Swear.”

“Swear? What are we, five? Swear on what?”

“On something you care about, beyond mischief and mayhem. Swear on your blood and your balls.”

“My balls?”

“Do it.”

“Fine,” he said, quickly. Rhea was swinging around toward us now, Zeus and Poseidon clutched in her fist. I presumed we were next. “I swear by my blood and balls I’ll carry your messages faithfully. Happy?”

“Unbelievably.” I grabbed his shirt and flew him up, up and out of even Rhea’s immense reach, and then I told him. Everything but my part of the plan. He dashed off the second I lowered him back to Earth, and I flew off too, sweeping the battlefield for those I needed. Hades. Apollo. Castor and Pollux.

Three of them—Hades, Castor and Pollux—were in about the same position on the field as I’d left them. Closer in, of course, but bashing it out with two titans who’d, like them, survived Rhea’s blowback. The one titan, spiderlike, was already down to about half its legs, and as I watched, Castor grabbed one side of its huge, clashing mandibles and Pollux the other, and they pulled with everything they had, cracking it open, breaking its jaw. The spider spit something out of its mouth as it collapsed to the ground in pain, and the something hit me square in the chest, burning like a firebrand, but I didn’t have any time to worry about it.

“You two ever play bait and switch?” I asked them.

They looked at each other, grinning.

“Good. Think you can do that with Rhea? Distract her, taunt her, make her come for you, see if you can get her so riled she forgets to finish off her sons?”

They exchanged another glance, like they had some sort of mental twin speak going on.