Antigoddess (7 page)

Seconds ticked by with Aidan staring at the blanket. It wasn’t exactly the quick comfort she’d expected.

“It was really real. I think I could smell the blood, the disease, even through the cold.” She swallowed, careful not to inhale too deeply. That smell might stay with her the rest of her life: sweet, cloying, and sick. It reminded her of counting pennies from her piggy bank.

Beside them, something struck the window, and Lux nearly punctured Cassandra’s lung scrambling off the bed to attack. It was gone before he’d managed to bark twice, gone in a thump and a flash of silent feathers, but they’d both seen what it was: an owl. An owl had landed on the windowsill. It had balanced for an instant, all tufted ears and yellow eyes.

“Lux, quiet,” said Cassandra, and the dog gave one final bark before returning to jump back onto her lap. Aidan went to the window and rubbed his sleeve through the fog of dog breath.

“It’s gone.”

“That’s a weird coincidence,” Cassandra said.

“Yeah.” Aidan returned to the bed but didn’t sit. He reached for his jacket. “Listen, I’d better let you get some sleep. You and your dad.”

“My dad?” she asked as he walked to her door.

“You think he actually goes to bed before he hears me go out the door?” He smiled, then paused with his hand on the knob. “You know I won’t let anything happen to you, don’t you?”

“I know. Are you weirded out?”

“No. And if I am, I like it.”

*   *   *

The sensation of cold hit her first. It shocked her insteps and made her toes clench. The dead, half-frozen grass spread ice all the way up her legs, and slow, chilly wind took care of the rest of her.

It’s cold and it’s dark. And I’m flipping barefoot. Where am I?

Moonlight showed the bony trunks of pines, green needles silver in the night. Up ahead was the orange glow of a dying fire, and the wind rattled through dry, brittle things.

Abbott Park?

No, not Abbott Park. There was no crumbling, patchy stone fence, and the trees were different. No sound of moving water from the stream either. Wherever she was, it wasn’t in the hills of Kincade. It was wide open, and flat.

This is a dream.

But every physical sensation was there, from the cold on her goose-bumped skin to the irritating wet of thawing grass between her toes. Even the weight of her body. It felt completely real, to move and blink, to feel her hair shift across her back.

But I’ve had these dreams before. This must be someplace I’m going. Soon.

Cassandra stood silent, waiting for whatever mundane tidbit the dream wanted to impart. She crossed her arms. Stupid. The last thing she remembered was lying in her bed with a warm dog beside her. Now she was in the middle of a frigid, overgrown field, edged by pine trees.

I’m dreaming of an overgrown field. I’m not really in one. Just show me what you’re going to show me already.

Nothing happened. She waited, and then walked toward the place where the small fire ebbed in a hand-dug pit. She wondered who dug it; maybe her dad, or Henry. Maybe this was a preview of a really miserable future camping trip. When she stepped into the small clearing, off the grass, her wet feet turned the dirt to mud that stuck to her soles.

“Damn it.”

Her voice rang out too loud and made her jump, which made her feel stupid. Cold air crept down the neck of her sleep shirt and the embers of the fire inhaled and glowed brighter. She put her foot over them to get dry, but couldn’t feel heat. Her foot dropped lower and lower, until she stood on the embers.

This is different.

“This is different.” Her voice was too loud again, though she’d spoken softly. But she didn’t care. Something was off here; something was unfamiliar. What was off was hard to say. It felt … altered.

I don’t know this place. I’ll never know this place.

The urge to leave rose up in her neck and shoulders and rushed down to her feet. The instinct to back up, to return the same way she’d come and disturb nothing.

Maybe then they’ll never know I was here.

But who did she mean? Her heel shuffled backward, out of the coals she couldn’t feel, and in her hurry she sent pebbles and sand skittering across the ground, loud as her voice. She jumped back, and gave a short yelp when her feet ran up against a rough wool blanket.

It hadn’t been there before; she was sure of it.

There’s something under that blanket.

She knew it as surely as she knew it hadn’t been there a moment before. She wouldn’t touch it in a million years, but she bent, and her fingers found the edge.

Don’t.

Her heart hammered. The adrenaline would wake her up as soon as she lifted the blanket. Too soon for whatever was underneath to move. But not too soon to see it.

Don’t, idiot.

Her fingertips tightened on the edge of the wool and pulled until his face came into the light.

His face. Just a boy. Not much older than she was, relaxed and asleep. Shaggy, dark hair hung across his forehead. He was handsome, with angular cheekbones. The sight of him filled her with cold dread.

I know him. Or I did. I would if he’d open his eyes. If he opened his eyes, they’d be dark, dark brown. And they’d be so clever.

But she couldn’t know him from anywhere. Not from school, even though he seemed about Henry’s age, maybe seventeen or eighteen. The gentleness of sleep wasn’t at home on his face. This boy was a flashed grin, narrowed eyes, a quick tongue. An image of him flickered: fierce and confident. She wanted to hit him in the head with a rock.

It wouldn’t do any good. It’s done. It’s started.

“What’s done? What’s started?” Words flew into her mind. Her own thoughts, but she didn’t understand them.

The wind shifted, and drew her gaze up and away from the boy, into the trees. She couldn’t see anything but black shadows between trunks. Maybe that was where she was supposed to go. Her way out.

“No.” No. She stared at the darkness.
That’s not the way out.
“There are wolves in the woods.”
Not wolves.

Not anything. She glanced down at the boy, then back to the trees. The shadows had shifted. Something had changed. A tree that was there before wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Not a tree.

She stood still and stared for so long her eyes started to go dry. Cold wind whipped across them and made them water, but she didn’t blink. She wouldn’t blink and let it fool her in that moment. Eyes wide open, she stared into the dark. Until the darkness lost its patience.

It moved, picking its way from shadow to shadow. Slowly at first, and then faster.

Cassandra’s stomach fell through her feet and her mouth tasted bad suddenly, like she’d gargled with cemetery dirt.

“Get up.”

The boy didn’t move. Even as whatever waited in the trees came closer, close enough to hear the sounds it made, insect clicking, like jointed legs and jaws. An image flashed in the dark part of her mind: one red, faceted eye above a disturbingly human nose. A human mouth that opened to reveal a second set of mandibles.

“Get up!” Whatever it was in the woods, it was almost out. And when it came from the trees it would spring. She didn’t want to see its face. She looked down at the sleeping boy. Maybe it was better this way. Better that he sleep through his throat being torn out. If he woke he’d be afraid, and he could never outrun it.

Cassandra backed up, the wrong way, back into the dying coals.
This is not the way out.

The smell of caves and mold scented the air. She couldn’t remember where she’d come from, or how long she’d been there.

A face broke through the trees, pale as the moon, with a ruined mouth and one red eye. It saw the boy and scrambled forward, on him before she could stagger back, before she could think of finding a weapon or what she would do if she had one.

The boy’s eyes flew open. He pushed against the chest of the creature as its fingers sought his eyes and mouth. A flash of silver showed through the blanket, and he dragged a knife across the thing’s eye cluster.

Dark blood sprayed across his face and arm, and the creature rolled and curled in on itself, hissing and clicking its mandibles. When it came back to all fours, its head twitched and one of its forearms kept flicking at its mangled, dripping eye, or what was left of it.

The boy drew himself up from underneath his blanket. His eyes never left the creature, and his knife never left his hand. He slipped quietly to the left, and Cassandra moved out of the way.

You weren’t sleeping. You were never sleeping.

He smiled. “You know I don’t have all night.”

Cassandra turned toward the boy in surprise just as the creature sprang, and it knocked her down as it passed. Rolling onto her elbows, she watched the two struggle. The creature’s back pressed down into the smoking embers and it screeched. The boy kept his face away from the clacking jaws, and his arm jerked hard, once, then twice. The creature twitched and gurgled.

“I suppose it wasn’t exactly fair,” he said as he continued to stab. Dark blood coated him up to the wrist. “Robbing you of your one”—stab—“stupid”—stab—“eye.” The creature lay limp, and the boy pushed it away and sat back on his haunches, breathing heavily. “But fair is overrated.”

“Who are you?” Cassandra shouted, looking from the boy to the dead monster and back again. He’d killed it. Feigned sleep and killed it, with no fear. His voice was accented, London-street, but not strained. He might’ve sounded more upset if he’d just come out of a scuffle in his local pub. Cassandra pushed off the ground and stood beside him. They watched silently as the body of the creature stiffened. Its pale, blood-streaked face stared up at the sky accusingly, and its arms and legs drew in and curled like an arachnid’s carapace. He’d left the knife in its chest. When he reached forward to pull it out, it made a sick sucking sound that made Cassandra want to retch. She swallowed hard.

The boy studied the blood on the knife and wiped it on his sleeve.

No surprise in your eyes. You knew it was hunting you. You knew what it was.

She studied his profile.

I know you. I knew you. I liked you, and I hated you.

“Glory of Athena,” the boy whispered, and made a reverent gesture before bowing his head.

The next attack came too fast. The second Cyclops leapt onto his shoulder and drove him forward, facedown into the stiffening body of the first. Cassandra screamed as it dug its jaws into his shoulder and neck, tearing skin, but it was his screams that finally drove her away, out of the dream.

*   *   *

Aidan’s footsteps fell heavy on the bridge. Frost crunched beneath his feet as he walked down the center of the road, listening to the whisper of the river water thirty feet below, barely perceptible as it flowed lazily past downed trees and rushed against a steadily spreading sheet of ice. He didn’t bother to listen for cars. It was late and the road was quiet. His ears were on the sky, on the branches creaking above his head. He was listening for feathers. For wing beats.

An owl’s feathers made no sound. That was how they hunted. They watched silently, heads spinning round, eyes wide as dinner plates. They watched, and they swooped without warning, talons breaking the backs of an unsuspecting rabbit, or mouse, or unlucky house cat. It seemed cowardly. It seemed like a cheat. And he expected better, especially from her.

He stopped in the middle of the bridge and stared up at the blank spot in the sky that the road left, cutting through the vast forest that surrounded Abbott Park. It was there somewhere, the owl that had flown up against Cassandra’s window. He had to find it.

That’s a weird coincidence
, Cassandra had said. But it wasn’t. No matter how much he wanted it to be. Their time of calm would end. Unless he stopped it.

The moment Cassandra spoke of feathers breaking through skin, he knew. He knew that somewhere his sister was dying, with feathers cutting through her body. His self-righteous, battle-ready sister. And now she wanted something. Something that had to do with Cassandra.

“You can’t have her,” he said, and his breath left his throat in a cloud of steam. He had to find the owl. It wouldn’t be hard. It was Athena’s servant, but it was still just an owl. It wouldn’t race to her side to whisper in her ear. It would fly, and hunt, and sleep, and reach her in its own time.

The wind came up hard and sudden; the sound it made moving across the bridge and over the river was like a scream. The river would be covered over soon, locked down under ice and snow, only breaking through in the spaces where it sped up, past rocks and through spinning eddies. Aidan breathed the cold in deep but couldn’t feel it. Cold had never been able to touch him. Not in all his long, immortal life. He was a golden glow. He was light, and heat. He was Apollo, the sun, and he’d burn down anyone who tried to hurt her.

Movement high up in the pines caught his attention and he moved, darting off the bridge, running low and quiet. He reached the owl in moments, watching from beneath as it swooped from branch to branch. He watched its brown speckled belly, its flight feathers stretched out on the wind like fingers. It didn’t pay any attention to him, so far below on the ground. Not even when he leapt up to catch it when it dove.

The sensation of being pulled down out of the air had no time to register in the bird’s brain. Neither did the feeling of its wings being crushed, or its neck being broken. There were no final thoughts. Only vague surprise and no regrets.

Aidan looked down at the feathery mess in his hands. The owl was dead. Silenced. He stroked the feathers.

“You didn’t feel it. And it wasn’t your fault.” The bird was so light in his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed it. Maybe they could have caged it and kept it as a pet. Cassandra might have liked that.

But how many more would she send? He couldn’t cage them all. His hands tightened. Questions filled his ears like they’d been shouted. What did she want? And how many others would she bring with her?