Rise of the Blood (17 page)

I thrashed, trying to wake, trapped in the dream, wanting out.

A new avatar, linked to the blood sacrifice. Blood I
knew
. Blood relation. Oh, the flavor. The power, the hum and life of it. I’d nearly forgotten life and the immediacy of the sensations. Almost too much after all this time asleep.

And then those bladed men, thinking they could take it all from me. I saw it in their hearts.

All for my eldest son, Zeus, who’d ruined everything. I should never have fed his father that stone in his place.

Zeus. The name burned. He would not rise again to ascendency. His time had passed, but the
titans
. I could sense it in this new avatar, in the very earth…the old ways had been forgotten.
The titans themselves
had been forgotten, along with any remembrance of how they might be defeated. And unlike the upstart Olympians,
their
power had never been fueled by belief, but by the sheer primal power of creation.

I flailed, trying to throw Rhea out of my head, as I’d tried and failed to exorcise her from my body. I lashed out and struck something, but it might have been in the dream, because…

One of Zeus’s human dogs made a move, and as quickly as I willed it, the sacrificial blade was in my hand, slashing, cutting deep. More blood, more power. More elation, more bloodshed. Until I was bathed in it, as I’d been when I’d borne my misbegotten son.

I jerked out of the nightmare, terror blind. There was sound and stabbing light and something weighing me down. I tried to shake it, and panicked when I couldn’t move, couldn’t control my own body.
Again.
My own personal hell. And then the dark clouds across my vision started to clear but for pixilated pain throbbing around the edges. I looked up into Nick’s midnight blue eyes, almost black at the moment.

“Shh, shh, Tori, it’s just a night terror. Tori, it’s me. You’re safe.”

His cheek was swollen, and it was my fault. The lashing out had been real enough, not simply part of the dream, which wasn’t a dream in any case.

The fight leaked out of me, and when he felt me relax, Nick eased onto his side next to me, studying me with concern.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I answered. It hurt to talk. I wondered if I’d been screaming, and then whether it was in my own panic or Rhea’s triumph.

“You didn’t get hurt walking with Apollo, did you?” he asked, and I could hear something like fear beneath the careful gentleness in his tone. “The news—”

So the bodies had been found already.

I rolled over, away from his probing gaze. What did I tell him? That I’d committed triple homicide, but I hadn’t been myself at the time? Did possession qualify someone for the insanity defense or—

“
Tori
.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

“Tori!” he said it sharply, and I rolled to face him so suddenly he almost looked afraid…of me.

“What?” I asked.

The pain in my throat and in my head were already receding, and I no longer ached all over like I had after… No, no tangents. The bodies had been found, Nick was asking questions, and I had to face this. If someone
had
spooned ambrosia into me earlier in the evening, it was the least of my worries. So the pain in my head was gone, but the one in my heart… “What do you want me to tell you? That I killed them? That I was possessed at the time? That I passed out in a dead faint afterward and relived it all in my nightmares? It’s all true.” Nick looked lightning stuck. “Apollo and I were kidnapped, and we were going to die, and the only reason I’m still alive is that a goddess more powerful than I am used me as her own personal puppet.”

I broke down. I could have counted on one hand with fingers left over the number of times I’d cried in my life. I wasn’t prepared for the sudden explosion of sobs that seemed to start from somewhere around my gut and wracked my whole body.

Nick didn’t touch me. Didn’t hold me, and that only made me cry harder, because I knew I was horrifying to him now. Repugnant, but no more than I was to myself.
I’d had my hand buried in some guy’s solar plexus.

Too late, he finally reached for me, as if it was a duty and not one he was sure he should perform. I knew it as if I still had some fragment of Rhea’s all-knowing.

Maybe I did.

I pushed him away and ran for the bathroom, locking myself inside. It wasn’t the most mature response in the world, but we’d blown well past any concern about maturity on the way to post-traumatic stress.

I started the shower, just thinking I didn’t want him listening to me bawl, and then realized that beneath my borrowed top there was still caked blood from the attack that had seeped through the fabric of my discarded clothes. All I could think of was getting clean.

I didn’t even wait for the water to get warm, but stepped into the shower fully clothed. I didn’t adjust the temperature when it turned from frigid to scalding, but stood beneath the onslaught shivering. Burning and yet cold, all at the same time.

I grabbed up the bar of soap and scrubbed everywhere—over my clothes, under. And then I ripped the clothes off entirely and let them lay there on the floor of the bathtub as the water swirled all around, washing me clean.

I’d barely gotten a towel wrapped around me when there was a pounding at the outer door to the room.

I yelled out, “Go away,” but still I heard Nick open the door and let someone in. A second later, I knew
who
. Small person, big voice.

“Where is she?” Tina demanded.

“Shower,” Nick said.

“Oh my god, what happened to your eye?” Tina asked him, but she was already moving on before Nick had the chance to answer. “Tell her to get her butt out here. I need to see if she’s still fit for duty and to walk her through what she missed at rehearsal.”

“Tell her yourself,” I yelled from behind the bathroom door. “She can hear you.”

Somehow, talking about myself in the third person was easier. Like I could escape. I didn’t even blame Tina for her attitude. After all, we came from circus stock, where you downed the painkillers, put on your flesh-tone bandages, smiled to hide the wince and made sure the show would go on. If there was time later, you could ice it up and call in the medic.

The bathroom doorknob rattled, and I reluctantly reached to unlock it before she could tear it off the hinges. I wouldn’t put it past her.

Tina yanked the door open and we faced each other on either side of the doorway. “You look like crap,” she said, showing off her sensitive side. “What happened to you? They said a walk, but I couldn’t see you scaling the side of the mountain.”

No one could blow your cover like family.

I pulled her into the bathroom with me and shut the door.

“Ooh, secrets,” Tina said, belligerence giving way to elfin mischief. “Tell me all. But be quick about it.”

I rolled my eyes. The normality of Tina’s presence was starting to have a strange calming effect on me. I wasn’t sure I deserved calm, but my brain must have decided it couldn’t sustain a state of perpetual panic.

“Apollo and I had…things to discuss, okay? So we found someplace quiet where no one would be looking for us, and I slipped and hit my head, that was all.”

“Uh huh, someplace to
talk
. Important enough to make you
miss my wedding rehearsal
?”

“In my defense, I was
unconscious
.”

“Sure, sure, some excuse. Of course, if I’d been on a private walk with Mr. Hollywood hottie, I’d have swooned too…if I weren’t a soon-to-be-married woman and all.”

“I did
not
swoon,” I answered, indignant.

“There, now you look more like yourself.” Her eyes glittered. “You look like you want to take a swing at me. Come on, get dressed.”

“But—” After everything that had happened, the last thing I wanted to do was walk down the aisle at her side like nothing was wrong. I felt like I’d taint the whole ceremony just by being part of it. A wedding was supposed to be something sacred.
The show must go on
didn’t seem to apply. But there was no way I could explain all that to Tina, even if I was sure she’d see things my way. She’d just see that her wedding party was lopsided and that it was all my fault.

“Okay,” I said finally. “But can we stop for coffee and calories before whatever fresh hell you’re going to put me through?”

“Andre said ‘no caffeine’,” she protested. I guessed Andre was the clipboard guy from yesterday’s production meeting.

“No caffeine, no Tori,” I said, talking about myself in the third person again.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I’ll just tell the makeup artist to give you the teabag treatment before she goes to work on you. Now get dressed.”

I didn’t get it—teabags were good, coffee was bad? There was no justice in the world.

I hoped the lack of justice would work in my favor for the next twenty-four hours at least. Having the police crash the wedding to arrest me would probably ruin Tina’s big day and Uncle Hector’s production and put me back on the outs with my family…not to mention in prison.

I went to get dressed, avoiding Nick’s arms when he reached for me as I passed him on the way to my suitcase and avoiding his gaze when he tried to catch my eye. I’d just gotten myself together. I was afraid that I’d fall apart again at one hesitant touch.

If I were Christie, I’d probably focus on what I was going to wear, just in case I ended up on the morning news. What went well with handcuffs? Did I go with unobtrusive and demure, completely incapable of cutting down three grown men single-handedly? Since I didn’t exactly own pearls and Peter Pan collars, I went for the first thing I touched, but Tina took it out of my hands and reached for a plain white button-up with just enough darting for shape. Feminine but not girly. “A wardrobe staple,” Christie had called the shirt when she’d made me buy it.

“Button-up is better,” Tina said. “Then you can change later without messing up your hair and makeup.”

Couldn’t have that.

I shrugged and took the shirt, added black skinny jeans and went to the bathroom to change. I didn’t bother with makeup or anything else, since I knew it would all be redone, and I didn’t wear much anyway.

On the way out, Tina dragged me to the hotel’s breakfast buffet, flashed her room key, loaded croissants and fruit into a napkin and looked pointedly from me to the coffee keg. The carafe was keg-sized, anyway, with both ceramic and foam cups sitting beside it. Unfortunately, they only had one size to-go cup, which was not nearly big enough, but I didn’t think the hotel would take kindly to me grabbing the keg like a football and rushing it out of there, so I made myself two cups, doctored them both with cream and sugar, drank one still standing at the coffee bar and refilled the cup before applying lids.

“Okay, let’s go, I said.

She looked like she despaired of my behavior. Since I agreed with her, I didn’t say a word, but followed her out into the extra crisp morning air. It slapped me awake better than the cup of coffee I’d already downed.

The sun was shining, glistening off the dew that sparkled on every leaf. The world seemed newly made, pristine. Perfect. It was the kind of day that made you glad to be alive and death seem far, far away. I felt like crap about it, the kind that stunk and stuck to your shoes, clinging to the treads. The kind that stayed with you…like the memory of cutting down three men without missing a beat.

Okay
, enough self-loathing. The only way I was getting through the day was denial. I couldn’t change what was. Couldn’t go back. Couldn’t confess. I’d have to go forward. Somehow.

“Seriously, you all right?” Tina asked, studying me. “You and your boyfriend get into a fight?”

“You could say that.” I took another sip of coffee and avoided looking at her.

“You love him?” she asked.

I glared at her for the question, but she was family. She was entitled to ask. “We may have irreconcilable differences,” I said, avoiding a direct answer.

Like, I’m a killer and he’s a cop.

Part of me knew that wasn’t exactly right. Guns didn’t kill people.
People
killed people. And all I’d been in Rhea’s hands was a weapon. But that didn’t change the fact that the killing was now part of
my
muscle memory.

Gah,
enough
already.

“If so, you can do better for yourself. You deserve more than a constant struggle.”

I let that go. I wasn’t entirely sure what I deserved, but I was
not
going to wallow in self-pity or self-loathing or whatever. Rhea was not going to defeat me. That meant I had to wo-man up.

I braced myself as we reached the doors of a beautiful little white-washed church with vaulted ceilings and small stained-glass windows catching the light. On the upside of things, my preoccupation with death had temporarily overwritten my fear of heights. I’d forgotten even to notice the path we’d taken. Tina held open the beautiful oak door for me to enter, and I prepared myself to be struck down as I crossed the threshold, but nothing happened.

The inside of the little church was painted floor to ceiling with Byzantine-styled frescos representing the saints, the holy family and, looking down from the pinnacle of the vestry, Christ Pantokrator, aka God Almighty. I’d grown up with kind of a loose sense of religion—believing in God, just not really clear on exactly what that might mean. One all-powerful god sounded good, focused. One message. One agenda. But the fact that no one, not even within the same religion, could agree on exactly what that was…well, it made me wonder. Was Christianity about one god who was open to interpretation? Was the trinity really somehow three-in-one or multiple entities who might sometimes get into turf wars?

Then there’d been Yiayia’s beliefs—the old gods still running around in modern day. But they hadn’t seemed so godlike with their day jobs and petty squabbles. Not for the first time, I wondered what divinity even meant. Did it just mean cool powers and immortality? Was there more to it than that? Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben had said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but the gods I knew didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. I wondered about the Pantokrator. I’d have to ask when and if we ever met, and hope he’d forgive me for hanging with the competition. Or at least his—her?—would-be competition. The heyday of the Olympians was long gone, which was why most seemed so obsessed with staging a comeback.