* * *
For a long time, the only sounds were their feet breaking through twigs and crushing pine needles and grass. And then of breathing, as they began to tire.
Athena kept her ears wide open, and couldn’t help checking over her shoulder. At any moment, the Moirae could crash down like a sack pulled over their heads. She hoped they had enough of a lead that the attack wouldn’t come while it was still dark. And as the light around them turned first gray and then silver, she hoped the Moirae would strike soon, before the strength in their legs gave out, or they lost their nerve.
* * *
No one broke an ankle in the dark, but it was a wonder. In the predawn light, more and more exposed roots and fallen branches came into view.
Cassandra adjusted the medical pack on her shoulders. She’d taken it from Andie an hour ago, when the weariness on Andie’s face was too much to bear.
Cassandra looked back, down the mountain. Surely they’d gone far enough. They should start looking for someplace to use as a sort of stronghold. But Athena kept going up and up, and glancing over her shoulder far too often, unsure as a sheepdog without an owner to command it.
(Athena breaks her word. She runs. But don’t fear. We can be anywhere we need to be.)
Cassandra stopped short and blinked hard. But Clotho and Lachesis weren’t lurking behind the nearest tree. They hadn’t wriggled their way up through her nose or into her ear. It was only their voices. In the dark part of Cassandra’s mind, a curious itch started, like an oiled gear clicking around and around. Turning from a cave in some other mountain to a cave in this one.
Cassandra stole a look in Athena’s direction. The goddess continued to walk. She gave no indication of having heard or sensed anything.
Cassandra exhaled, and the knot of strings in her chest began to relax.
30
ONE FATE
They stopped for a light breakfast, using a fallen log for both bench and table. No one ate much. They nibbled at granola bars and sipped from plastic bottles, and tried not to look as tired as they felt.
Athena perched on the edge. The Moirae should have come by now. She’d thought they’d be enraged that they’d tried to run, that they’d have spurred Atropos and Achilles, driven them out of their cave as horses harnessed to a chariot.
She looked over the sweat-streaked faces of Andie and Henry. She couldn’t keep them going for much longer. They’d have to find a good place to make their stand, and wait.
Or we could just keep on running. The hell with the feathers in my lungs and their plan for us. We could run like Hermes, fast as we could, until they couldn’t even track the dust behind us. Maybe with that much defiance, I could defy even my own death, and we could go on like that together. Forever.
Forever was a very pretty word. A very pretty, very bullshit word.
Odysseus caught her eye, his cheek stuffed full of granola.
“Has anyone else noticed,” he asked, “that all of the birds stopped chirping five minutes ago?”
Everyone stopped chewing. He was right.
“Stay together,” he said calmly, and popped a piece of dried apple into his mouth. Athena watched Andie and Henry carefully. They wanted to bolt but neither moved. They trusted Odysseus like they trusted Athena.
The sound of the hatchet slicing air gave only a second of warning before Athena saw it, aiming end over end for Andie’s chest. Odysseus barely had time to pull her clear.
“Where is he?” Henry shouted. He dragged Andie back behind the shield with him, and Odysseus frowned. That wouldn’t do, in the fight that was coming.
Achilles’ laughter rang out from somewhere in the trees. Thanatos edged in front of Cassandra, and Athena eyed him carefully. Could she count on his help? She didn’t think so. He’d stand against Achilles, but not the Moirae. Athena scanned the woods below. In the Moirae’s present state, they’d be hard to miss. No trunk in the forest was broad enough to hide their twisted form.
Something else cut through the air: a spear this time. The throw was better; it sliced Odysseus in the shoulder as he spun out of the way.
“We can’t just stand here and let him toss things at us,” he said. He pressed his hand to his arm and it came away red. His eyes sought Athena’s. Don’t worry about me, they said. There’s something bigger headed your way.
“Then let’s go out and meet him,” said Henry. He stood and hefted the shield. Another spear launched through the air and he jumped toward it and leaned in. It bounced off harmlessly, and he laughed out of sheer surprise.
“This shield you left me isn’t half-bad,” he shouted, and in the next second Achilles was there, running up on them, faster than Athena remembered even in paranoid nightmares.
She braced, ready to help, maybe to toss him like she’d tossed him in Australia. She might have done it, despite the damage he’d have done to her, if it hadn’t been for Thanatos’ shout.
“Cassandra! Don’t!”
When Athena turned the girl was running off into the trees, east and down the mountain.
“Cassandra!” Athena shouted, and glanced between Cassandra and Achilles. He’d be on Henry in a blink.
“Go,” Odysseus said, and his sword was beside her cheek. “Just don’t go far.”
Athena turned and ran.
* * *
Henry didn’t breathe. There simply wasn’t time. The first blow that Achilles landed rang the shield like a cathedral bell and sent Henry wheeling backward. Panic fluttered through his limbs. The impact told his legs to buckle, but that wasn’t an option. If he lost his feet, it was all over.
He stepped back, and his ankle turned on a root. He went down and landed hard on his hip.
This is it.
Achilles’ sword would slice through his exposed neck, right above the protection of the shield. It would shear his head clean off, foolishly as a turtle caught out of its shell. Henry wondered if he’d feel it.
“Just like back in Troy.” Achilles laughed. “You stumble and fall.”
“Back in Troy I was tricked,” Henry said. He got his legs under him and stood, stifling the urge to use the shield to help. The damned thing was so heavy. It pulled his shoulder down despite the adrenaline. “Back in Troy I was alone.”
Odysseus and Andie closed in cautiously on both sides. Achilles kept his eyes on Henry, as though he was trying to decide whether Henry’s accepting help was practical, or cowardly.
The sword in Henry’s hand was slick with sweat. Even if he could swing it, it might fly from his grip like a wriggling fish.
Achilles didn’t look the least bit concerned that Odysseus and Andie had him cornered. He looked every bit the warrior, right down to the blond hair ruffling in the wind. He didn’t carry a shield of his own. Probably because he intended to strip his old one off of Henry’s dead body.
“What happened to you, Achilles?” Henry asked. “They called you a hero. You used to be a hero.”
“I still am a hero,” Achilles said. “Avenging my friend’s murder for the second time. It’s all a matter of perspective.”
“And what about what you did to me?” Odysseus asked. “Putting a sword through my chest. You avenge one friend and fuck all to the rest?”
“I didn’t enjoy doing that,” Achilles said.
“And I won’t enjoy doing this,” said Odysseus.
* * *
Cassandra ran between trees, skirting and ducking branches, moving closer and closer to the Moirae, as though she was attached to the end of a string.
“Cassandra!”
“Cassandra, stop!”
Athena and Thanatos were close, too. Cassandra didn’t turn when they called, but it was good. She might need Athena, at least, to do what needed doing. She didn’t know how strong Clotho and Lachesis could be. They were so shriveled. So deflated.
A branch caught Cassandra in the eye and she blinked away pain and water. It didn’t matter. A few more strides. Maybe just over the next rise, or past the next t
ree trunk.
It’s almost over. I’m almost done. The gods will leave, and my family will be safe. The Moirae will be whole. We’ll be whole.
She ran faster until it felt like flying. When her foot came down on a pile of brush and she fell right through, straight into the heart of the cave, she was only slightly surprised.
* * *
Athena saw Cassandra disappear. One second she was there, and the next gone, as if the earth itself had swallowed her up. Between herself and Thanatos, she didn’t know who yelled louder, but she reached the hole first.
“Cassandra!”
She didn’t answer, but Athena saw her down there, in the circle of light let in by the cave opening, paddling and sputtering in the middle of a blue-green cave lake with bits of leaves and sticks floating around her.
“Are you hurt?” Athena shouted, but Cassandra had already started swimming for the rock ledge.
“Dammit.” Athena looked around at the trees. The hole Cassandra had uncovered was fairly broad, eight by ten feet at least, and the edges were smooth, gray stone.
“Thanatos,” she said, and gripped his arm. “Go get rope. Tie it off on the trees and lower it down.”
“Did we bring rope with us from the cars?”
Athena closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember.
“If we didn’t then there’s some in Henry’s trunk. Go!”
“But—” he started, but he didn’t get to finish. Athena stood and jumped down into the cave.
* * *
Odysseus attacked first. Henry thought that he should have been the one to do it. Or maybe that Achilles should have. But it seemed they might have stood there talking until Cassandra and Athena dealt with the Moirae. If no one attacked, no one had to die.
It wasn’t brave to think those things, watching Andie dart in on Achilles’ other side. But as Achilles held them off, with grace and with such goddamn ease, Henry couldn’t help thinking it. He couldn’t help seeing the young man in Achilles’ face. Neither one was older than the other. And both had their reasons. When it was over, one of them would lie dead. One of them always lay dead.
Henry took a breath and brought his sword down, his eye carefully trained on the expanse of Achilles’ exposed form. But the blade struck steel. Achilles moved faster than them all. Much faster than Henry and Andie. Even faster than Odysseus. He attacked as quickly as Henry could block, and they were all driven back. Henry’s shield arm ached miserably.
Andie and Odysseus kept on, though their faces grew strained and nervous. Achilles treated them as an afterthought, holding them off and hurting them just a little. Blood ran from Odysseus’ nose. Andie limped from a shallow gash above her knee. All of his wrath he saved for Henry. Had any one of his blows struck outside the shield, the part of Henry that met it would have been cleaved in two.
And he talked. Spat words of hate that chilled Henry’s blood.
“I’ll smash your skin, break the bones against each other.” He would feed Henry’s cheeks to Ares’ wolves.
And still, Henry didn’t want to fight him.
Henry braced the shield against his shoulder and made his swing, swung his sword hard and steady as he could. It was a good blow. It felt like it had been waiting, curled up inside his chest the whole time.
The blade sank deep, deep into Achilles’ side.
When Andie and Odysseus saw the wound, they stopped mid-attack, their eyes no wider than Achilles’ own. Achilles went down on one knee, barely believing the blood that already dripped past his lips. Henry didn’t pull out his sword so much as Achilles fell off of it.
Achilles pressed his hand down hard. Blood dripped through his fingers.
“This isn’t how it ends,” he said. He stood and stumbled backward, staring at Henry like he’d never seen him before. And then he fled down through the trees.
“Do we follow?” Odysseus asked.
“No,” Henry replied, relieved to find none of the hate in his heart that he thought might be there.
* * *
Athena hit the water and kicked up hard, shoving wet strands of hair out of her eyes, looking for Cassandra on the stone bank. But when she saw her, she almost wished she hadn’t.
Cassandra stood, drenched and shaking, not ten feet from the Moirae. The Moirae stared down at her with three sets of eyes: two murky green, and one murderous red. Five arms twitched like spider legs in their massive, monstrous form. Three of the arms held wicked, shining shears, all pointed at Cassandra’s chest.
They led her here. They led her here to take her apart. It was all a trick.
The shears were long, and bore razor edges on both sides of their blades. They could slice as well as they cut, and it would take them less than a minute to reduce Cassandra to a pile of girl-colored confetti on the cave floor.
“Leave her alone!” Athena shouted, and swam fast to the edge. Her fingers slipped once on the stone and she cursed. In the corner of her eye, the tips of the shears weaved through the air like the heads of dancing snakes.
She hauled herself out of the water and took two strides toward Cassandra before stopping short. Something was different. The power to kill gods coursed through Cassandra’s entire body. Athena felt it in the air, in waves. And she had almost run up and grabbed her.
The girl nodded and it took Athena a moment to realize the nod wasn’t meant for her.
Cassandra was speaking to them.
“Cassandra,” Athena said. “Come here to me.”
Cassandra’s head cocked over her shoulder. “Athena. You’re here.”
“I am.” Athena kept her eyes on the tips of Atropos’ shears. Not even Hermes would be fast enough to snatch Cassandra out of the way from that distance.
“Do you see her? The disease in the middle?”
Atropos hissed. Aside from the bloodred eyes, her face didn’t look diseased at all. It was only below her chest, where her legs had grown into her sisters’. Where her stomach had absorbed Lachesis’ arm all the way to the elbow.
Athena trembled. She was afraid. She stood before the failing, dying gods of her father, and she was afraid.
Zeus rose up to throw down the Titans. I can rise up against the Moirae.
Cassandra leapt forward and Athena screamed. Atropos’ shears took aim for Cassandra’s throat, ready to open her up like a slaughtered pig. Athena’s hand fumbled at her side for a knife: it wasn’t much, no weapon of legend, but in her haste to get to Cassandra, it was all she had.
She ran full force, even as Clotho and Lachesis took hold of Atropos’ arms with surprising strength and jerked them back tight. Athena ran so fast that she and Cassandra struck the Moirae at almost the same time. Hermes would have been proud.
Her knife stabbed into Atropos’ shoulder. Atropos shrieked. Athena shouted, too; her hip had bumped Cassandra and pain sprang sharp from the bone along with a rush of hot blood. Feathers. A mass of them by the feel of it. Pain sent her to the floor.
She looked up. Cassandra had latched on and Atropos was screaming, but not enough. Atropos’ lungs heaved underneath stretched skin, but didn’t shrivel. She didn’t flake away, or turn to dust. She was the Moira of death. She weakened, but she resisted.
“How do I help her?” Athena shouted, and Clotho and Lachesis answered in her mind:
(With the shears. Help her. Help us. With the shears.)
Athena ran in and grappled with Atropos, careful to avoid Cassandra. The edges of the shears sliced into her cheek and made her vision swim, as if the edges were poisoned. But even through the drug of the Moirae she heard Atropos hissing.
(TRAITORS! SISTERS! BETRAYORS!)
Athena chuckled groggily.
“Strong words coming from someone who’s been eating them.”
(DOWN, GODDESS.)
Athena heard the words, and her legs buckled even as her fingers closed around the handles of Atropos’ shears.
“Stay up!” Cassandra shouted, but she didn’t try to pull her. The girl was thinking clear
. Both hands stayed on Atropos’ chest. Cassandra’s teeth bared and clenched. Sweat stood on her forehead. She and Atropos traded death back and forth.
(Help us. Cut her out. Help us.)
Athena groaned and forced her legs to stay. She turned the tip of Atropos’ shears inward and sliced. The sound Atropos made was inhuman and terrible. When her sisters’ shears joined her own, it became a wail.
Three sets of razor edges cut through Atropos. Lachesis hacked her own arm free, leaving a gaping red wound across Atropos’ stomach. When they started on her legs, the brutality was too much to bear. Athena and Cassandra stepped back. Clotho and Lachesis cut and cut until one mangled form became three, each bleeding from the hips down.
Clotho and Lachesis lay on their bellies, legs damaged, their faces and arms withered and graying as blood left them. Atropos wavered on her feet, wobbly as a mermaid who’d lost her tail. Blood covered her in a broad skirt.
“Athena! I’ve got the rope!”
The rope dropped and almost at the same time she saw Odysseus’ foot, ready to climb down.
“No!” she shouted. “Thanatos! Don’t let him come!”
“Athena! Don’t you do it,” Odysseus shouted as Thanatos pulled him back up. “Don’t you leave me!”
There was so much love in his voice. He was wrong, what he said on the widow’s walk. She would have been with him as long as she could, if there had been a choice.
“Cassandra!”
“Cassie!”
Andie and Henry up there, too. They were all right. How Athena wanted to see all of their faces again. Just once more. But Atropos wasn’t dead yet.
“Now what?” Athena asked Clotho.
(The shears. She dies by her own shears. The one who kills her will take her place.)
Clotho and Lachesis lay sprawled, clutching their own shears in their hands.
“You heard them,” Cassandra said. “Give them to me.”
“What?”
“Give them to me.” She held her hand out. “It’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Athena stared at her, open-mouthed.