“No,” Henry said. “I’m fine. Is there anything else you need?”
“Well, you could butter my pancakes.”
“God. Odysseus was right. You’re a terrible patient.” He reached into the bag for a handful of butter packets and a plastic knife.
“I’ve missed you, mortal,” Hermes said. “And your little girlfriend, too.”
“We were here,” Henry said. “We came to see you. You had us worried.”
“I should have been the one worried,” Hermes said. His chewing slowed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Achilles came. I looked after you well enough until you really needed looking after. Then I passed out.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe not.” Hermes shrugged. “But nothing ever seems to be. Not my fault, and not my doing. I wasn’t the one who brought our sisters home. Or got us out of Hephaestus’ house. Or even got you that fine shield. You did that. I drove.”
“You can’t think that way,” Henry said. “You did everything we needed you to.”
“I won’t be there,” Hermes said. “I didn’t even make it to the end. You’ll be alone. You and Athena.”
“Don’t talk like you’re already gone. You don’t know that.”
“My heart hurts every time it beats. Like a countdown. And I know when it’s going to hit zero, Henry.” He sighed. “Athena will make it all right. She’ll make sure you’re okay. Even against Atropos, I’d lay money on my sister any day of the week.”
Henry sat on the foot of Hermes’ bed and bit into a cooling hash brown. He wasn’t sure whether Athena had told Hermes that when the battle was over, she’d be gone, joined into the Moirae, but somehow he doubted it.
“She won’t be able to help me,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“She’ll have her hands full fighting Atropos.” He regretted having to ask a favor of a dying friend. But there was no one else to ask. “I saw Achilles last night. The way he moved. The way he fought. I can’t beat him.”
“You can. Demeter said so.”
“She said I could kill him. And maybe that’s true. But I’ll never get close enough. Not like this.”
“Henry,” Hermes said through a cheekful of pancake. “What are you talking about?”
“Ares says that the reason Achilles is so strong, the reason they all are—even Odysseus and Cassandra—is because they embody the myths. Because they died and came back with a hero inside.”
Hermes pressed deeper into his pile of pillows. Henry thought he saw his heart beating through his T-shirt, and looked away fast.
“And you believe Ares?” Hermes asked.
Henry shrugged. But how could he see Cassandra and Achilles and not believe?
“But,” Hermes sputtered, “you and Andie always said that you were yourselves. And you can fight. We trained you, and honestly, you sort of could to begin with. Probably why you both had such stellar ice-hockey careers—”
“Hermes. I’m asking you if you have the energy.” He nodded toward the god’s thin hands. “And the breath to bring me back.”
Hermes looked him in the eyes for a long time. But Henry wouldn’t change his mind.
“All right,” Hermes said. “Odysseus is in the living room. If I don’t have the breath for CPR, I’ll shout for him.”
* * *
Athena sat on her back patio, foot up on the damp cushion of a cheap plastic chair. The sun shone bright on young grass, merciless in a cloudless, blue day. Spring gave way to summer already. Beside her, a bucket of beer bottles sat insulated with the ice packs they’d used to cool Hermes.
She took a breath and smelled drying earth and warming leaves. The neighborhood was peaceful. Softly quiet. No indication of the violence that had erupted last night, less than a mile away.
If I was the god I used to be, I’d spur a storm. Something great, and black, and blasting. My winds would tear that little rabbit out from whatever tree he hid under. I’d string him up by his innards and watch him kick.
Wishful thinking. And impossible, even if she possessed the power. Achilles wasn’t shivering somewhere in the woods. He was back with Atropos.
The message from Clotho and Lachesis would come soon. Athena knew it as surely as if they’d touched her with the sight already. The message would come, and they would go. Achilles would fall alongside his mistress of death, and Athena would take her place. She hoped not literally.
Clotho and Lachesis had implied that with Atropos gone, the disease and corruption would also be gone. Athena hoped that meant they would go back to separate bodies. She said she would join them, but not at the hip.
The latch on the back gate lifted; a dark-as-night snout pushed through the privacy fence. Oblivion. Even under a bright sun and clear skies, its coat sucked up light like a black hole.
“I thought you’d be back sooner,” Athena said.
Ares started, surprised to find her waiting.
“Panic’s been cooped up and bandaged too long,” he said. “It needed to eat a few raccoons.”
The red wolf came into the yard, walking a little stiffly. But it wasn’t dead. Its jaws hung open and dripped bloodstained spit. Pieces of the raccoons were stuck in its teeth.
Terrible, wicked wolves. Who saved our friends’ lives.
Terrible and wicked, like their master. Athena looked at Ares and noted the fresh blood over the wound in his stomach. What had he ever been, except what he was? What right did she have to expect otherwise?
“How’s your stomach?” she asked.
“Hole in it,” he said, and shrugged. “Not healing as fast as I’d like.” He came to the patio table and shoved her foot off the chair opposite to sit down. He shoved a little harder than necessary, and she hid her smile behind a turned cheek.
“Is this how it is for you?” he asked. “Is this how it is to play the hero? A knife in your guts and a half-dead wolf, and she hasn’t even said thank you.”
“She hasn’t tried to kill you again, either.”
He laughed. “That’s what passes for gratitude? What a state these mortals are in.” He watched his wolves circle each other in the yard. Oblivion snuck in to steal a lick from Panic’s reddened teeth. They were grotesquely sweet.
“Not long now, is it?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“That why you’re out here? Soaking up the rays, making a toast to the first casualty of war?” He nodded to her beer, and squinted skyward at Aidan’s sun.
“Making jokes about him now?” Athena asked, and her jaw clenched. “When it was your girlfriend who killed him?”
“It wasn’t easy to hear that,” he said, voice going lower, and louder. “No matter what you think. He was my brother, too. And Aphrodite didn’t know. She didn’t.”
“But she did it.”
Ares made a fist, and Athena took a deep breath. Aphrodite killed Aidan. Aidan killed Poseidon. Cassandra killed Hera. And on, and on, one to the other. The only constant was that they were dead.
“I don’t want to do this,” Athena said. “I was waiting for you as much as anything.”
“Really?” he asked, and she almost laughed. He sounded all of eight years old. The little brother forever in her shadow.
“So,” Ares said. “What do we have, besides ourselves? What can we turn to our advantage? Location? Weapons? You should have let me keep Aeacus’ scepter.”
“So he could pound down our door looking for it? No.” Athena took a swallow of beer.
“I wish we still had Uncle Poseidon’s head,” Ares sighed. “We could call the sea. Recruit an army of Nereids.”
“You had Poseidon’s head?”
“Right.” Ares smiled. “You jumped off the mountain before that part.”
“Well … where is it?”
Ares frowned. “Aphrodite stashed it when we were on the run. She buried it in a hole in Rhode Island. Two days later she went to dig it up and the whole place was a saltwater marsh. It’s gone. Lost.”
“You lost our uncle’s head?”
“Yes. You turned him into a head, and we lost it. Either way, we can’t count it amongst our assets.”
“He probably wouldn’t have been too big a help anyway, even if we hadn’t killed him,” Athena said. “The Titans’ children seemed to suffer worse than us.” She picked at a scab near her neck and tore out a feather like a ragged splinter before tossing it into the yard. Blood leaked hot down her chest. “How do you think Dad died?”
“Zeus? What makes you think he’s dead? With the ego on him, he’d probably explode. We’d have heard it, or dreamt it. Or died right along with him.”
Athena curled her lip. Ares always put too much stock in their father. She glanced to the yard, where the wolves circled the bloody bit of feather.
“Don’t let them eat that,” she said, and he shooed them off.
“You should let me carry Achilles’ shield,” Ares said. “The kid will only get killed and stripped of it.” He waited, eyes sharp as though he hoped she’d argue.
“If Henry says you can take it, you can take it. I don’t know if Henry will want to go at all.”
“Want to?” Ares asked, puzzled. “Who cares if he wants to? And why aren’t you planning? Battle strategy. That’s your bag of tricks. What’s gotten into you?”
“I messed up,” Athena said. “I can’t be in charge of their lives. I won’t be. I’m a soldier now, just like you.” She laughed bitterly. She couldn’t believe she’d had to say that, and to him of all people.
She reached down into the ice bucket and brought out two fresh beers. Ares looked at her skeptically.
“A little early, isn’t it?”
“No, brother. It’s late.”
* * *
Hermes’ hands trembled around Henry’s neck. Not because he lacked the strength. He might not be able to hold himself upright, but he was still god enough to cut off a mortal’s air supply. He was still god enough to crack right through a mortal neck.
But Hermes looked at his thin fingers wrapped around Henry’s throat and trembled. They were numb and graceless as dry twigs. He had to be careful, oh so goddamn careful.
“There has to be a better way to do this,” he stammered. “Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland made an entire crappy movie about it in the ’80s.”
“Hermes. You have to.”
“I don’t have to. Flatliners. That’s what it was called. Terrible.” He squeezed down gently, testing. “And fantastic. Like most things in that decade.”
“Hermes.”
“I don’t know why you had to ask me. I’m your friend. You think I won’t mess this up, but I could, I really could—” As he spoke, his grip tightened, and as he kept talking, Henry stopped. Henry turned first red, and then purple. He hit Hermes in the chest. Hermes knew he would, that his blacking-out body would try to defend itself, but it still made the act that much worse. But if he stopped now, Henry would make him do it again on an already bruised neck.
“It’ll be all right, when you wake up,” Hermes whispered.
“What are you doing?!”
Andie’s voice was such a shock that he let go. She stood in the open doorway, eyes wide and furious. Then she shoved him back into the pillows and knelt over Henry, rolling him over and slapping his face.
“Odysseus!” she shouted over her shoulder, and then glared at Hermes. “What were you doing to him?” She pressed her ear to Henry’s chest, felt his wrist for a pulse. “Wake up, Henry. Wake up.”
“Is he still alive?” Hermes asked.
“You were trying to kill him?” Her face grew as red as Henry’s had been a moment ago. “Because you’re dying and you think your sister needs another soldier? I should cut your head off!”
At her feet, Henry took a great, whooping breath and started coughing. She knelt and helped him sit up, tugged at his shirt collar as if it could give him more room to breathe.
“Hermes, you stupid asshole,” Andie spat. “I don’t care if you’re dying. I’m glad you are. We’re your friends!”
Henry’s coughing slowed, and he sat quietly, one hand to his forehead, blocking his eyes. Hermes didn’t know if Henry’s heart had stopped, but if it had, even for a few seconds, it might have been long enough.
“Andie,” Henry said. “I told him to do it.”
She drew back as though he’d slapped her in the face.
“Henry?” Hermes asked. “Or Hector?”
“It would be both,” he replied. “If he came back, it would be both. But it’s just me.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Andie asked. “We decided!”
“That was before he tried to kill my parents,” Henry said as she got to her feet and backed away. “That was before I realized I can’t beat him. Andie—”
“So you were going to Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers yourself without even saying anything?” She held up her hands. “Don’t. I am so out of here. And don’t even think about following me. I don’t need a domestic on my record right before college applications.”
Odysseus caught Andie by the arm as she darted for the door.
“Oy. What’s going on?”
No one responded, but there were many eyes, shooting many daggers. Odysseus sighed.
“Time for a family meeting.”
* * *
Despite the loss of Aidan and Achilles, the backyard circle had grown larger. Athena looked around at the new faces: at Thanatos, pale beside Cassandra. At Ares and his wolves. They left a space for Hermes, too, who listened through his open window.
They were waiting for Athena to start. To lead. But she refused. And after a moment, Odysseus spoke, catching Cassandra and Thanatos up.
“So,” Cassandra said. “If Henry dies, and is brought back, he’ll have more than just his memories? I thought it was just me and Achilles.”
“So did I,” Athena said. “Odysseus hid his strength from us, and not even your ability to kill gods was apparent right away.”
She met Cassandra’s eyes and saw the smolder there, the readiness to jump in front of Henry if Athena made the slightest move. Athena shook her head.
“I did hide it,” said Odysseus. “So who told?” He looked at Athena, but Ares straightened.
“I did,” Ares declared. “I figured it out.” He punched Athena in the arm. “And you always said I was stupid.”
“Ares,” Odysseus muttered. “You dick.”
“They had a right to know,” Ares said. “To choose. And this one’s chosen, so someone choke him out and bring back Hector. We could use him.”
“Athena,” Odysseus said. “Say something.”
“It’s Henry’s choice,” Athena said, and looked around at them. “Your choice, if you want to fight at all. Your choice what to do.” She swallowed hard. It still wasn’t easy to say. “I’m not your leader. I never was. You don’t need us. We needed you.”
“She’s right,” Cassandra said. “We are the weapons here. Me against Atropos. Hector against Achilles. It won’t be for the gods to tell us what to do.” She nodded to Athena. “We’ll wait for the vision from Clotho and Lachesis. And then we’ll decide.”
27
THE LAST VISION
Cassandra and her parents sat in the kitchen, like troops awaiting orders. Soldiers sitting in a U-boat, ears strained toward the first sounds of exploding shells.
Upstairs, Henry blasted music. He’d locked himself and Lux in his room after he’d explained to their parents for an hour how and why he had Hermes try to squeeze the life out of him.
“Like watching a pot try to boil,” Thanatos said from the doorway. “Take a walk with me?”
“It’s not like a walk is going to free anything up,” Cassandra said, but went out with him anyway, into the faded light of early evening. “I’m not giving birth. It’ll come when it comes.” But it would be soon. She knew it the same way she knew what side a coin would fall on.
They walked companionably down the block together.
The sky was clear and still. There was no breeze.
“Let Athena take your place,” Thanatos said.
“No.”
“You won’t be you, after it’s over. You’ll be gone.”
“So they say,” Cassandra muttered, and kicked a pebble.
“You’re acting like a stupid kid.”
“I am what they think I am,” she said. “What they created. I can’t let someone take that fate for me. Not even Athena. Besides, I owe Odysseus. A girlfriend for a girlfriend.” Cassandra closed her eyes and thought of Calypso’s face.
“Why?” Thanatos asked. “Why do you want to be a Moira?”
“It’s not that I want to be one,” she said. “I already am one.”
The Cassandra that used to be, before the gods descended like locusts, felt so far away she might as well have made her up. That was another girl. Aidan was gone and she was, too.
“How do you even know you’ll be able to do it?” Thanatos asked. “That you’ll be able to call up your power? Since you lost control with Ares, you haven’t been the same.”
He stopped her, took her by the arm. His fingers were so cold, even through her shirt.
“It didn’t feel bad,” she said, “to join with them. It didn’t hurt.” She squeezed her eyes shut.
She was stronger. In control. She could hold her power between her fingers as if it were a candle.
“Isn’t this what you wanted me to find, when we met?” Cassandra asked. “Control? Balance? To bring death from someplace other than a place of hate?”
“I didn’t want you to find it right before you disappear,” Thanatos whispered. He touched her cheek, knuckles cool against her skin.
Cassandra looked into his black eyes. He was different from Aidan in every way. Perhaps that made it easier to like him. He would never be a replacement.
“I used to think I was angry at the gods,” she said. “But I was just angry. Angry at Apollo for painting a target on my back. Angry at Aidan for being gone.”
“You still love Apollo,” Thanatos said.