Spellcrash (7 page)

“All right. Let’s rejoin the others. I’m sure they’re as curious as I am.”

“More so, actually,” said Melchior from the doorway. “What in Hades’ name is going on up here?”

“Funny you should mention Hades,” said Thalia, “and for once I don’t mean ha-ha.” Melchior sighed. “It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it?” Thalia tapped her lips thoughtfully as I wound my story to a close. “If what you’re saying about this little jaunt of yours is true, then all the other pantheons are real, too. That’s very interesting. I wonder who knows besides Necessity and you.”

“I imagine you could have some very interesting conversations with the Titans about that one,” I said. “If you could get into Tartarus to see them.”

“Which reminds me, I’d be very careful whom I told the whole story, if I were you,” said Thalia.

“That bit about the Norse Fate naming you the Final Titan might not go over so well with Zeus, among others.”

I snorted. “It’s all just more manipulative Fate bullshit as far as I’m concerned. Portentous lies for the aggrandizement of colossal egos. I was raised on the stuff, and I’m done with it.”

“Don’t dismiss the words of the Norns so easily,” said Fenris. “They can have deep costs. Truth matters little if others believe the lies.”

I thought of the magical cord that had bound Fenris to an island for a thousand years and nodded.

“Point taken. But enough about me and the Norse gods. What brought you here, Thalia?”

“This.” She produced a slender red memory crystal veined with pink. “How far do you trust Dexter and the Wolf here?”

“We can duck out if you’d prefer.” Fenris’s ears and tail sagged.

“No, it’s fine.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I trust you.” I turned my attention back to Thalia.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the mere existence of what’s on this crystal reveals a number of secrets I don’t think should be shared with anyone.”

“So why are you showing them to me?” I asked. “You’re my grandmother and all, but so is Lachesis. Family loyalty isn’t exactly this pantheon’s longest suit.” Thalia laughed ruefully. “True enough, and, as much as I love you, I don’t know that I would be showing this to
you
if it were up to me.”

“Can we all stop fencing and just look at the thing since we’re going to anyway?” Melchior rubbed his temples. “You do realize that as a whole your extended family must spend ten times as much energy on double and triple crosses as it saves by dint of same. Doesn’t it ever strike you all as the least bit tedious?” His eyes darted from Thalia to me and back again, then he sighed and threw up his arms. “No, of course it doesn’t. That’s probably half the fun. Why am I even asking?”

“The sound of one hand clapping?” asked Thalia. “No, probably not, and too absurdist for most senses of humor at that. Oh well, were you done?”

Melchior nodded, and she handed him the crystal. He popped it into his mouth, then flickered from goblin to laptop shape. On his screen a dialogue box opened.

Scanning volume for viruses . . . Holy shit!

He returned to goblin form. “Persephone doesn’t half mess around, does she?” Melchior’s voice was muffled by the crystal tucked into his cheek. Given his reaction, I was quite surprised he hadn’t spit it across the room.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Persephone put the source code for the Necessity doomsday virus on this thing, along with about thirty variations of same, and major nastiness designed for most of the other god systems.

She’s even found a way to get a virus to jump from Hades’ personal desktop machine to the totally disconnected systems that run the business of the underworld. None of it’s active code, but my virus checker just about had a heart attack when it hit the file tree where it’s all stored.” He gave Thalia a hard look. “This stuff makes Scorched Earth look like kindergarten in the suburbs, and that’s the virus Ravirn crashed the mweb with way back when.” He turned my way.

“If this ever gets a wider audience, you and Eris can both hand your computer bad-ass hats straight over to the real evil genius. Why is Persephone offering all of this to us?”

“She thinks you might need it,” answered Thalia, looking far more sober than usual. “Play the video, and you’ll see why.”

Melchior nodded and shifted shape again. A picture opened on his screen. Persephone sitting in a garden under the open sky—after her long ordeal in Hades, she refused to allow a roof of any kind over her head. The goddess looked into the camera and raised the corners of her lips in a very good imitation of a smile. If I hadn’t known her as well as I did, I might even have believed it.

“Ravirn,” she said, “I’m sorry to impose on you yet again after the great service you’ve already done me, but the very thought of what I’m about to show you fills me with a dread that makes it very hard for me to act with restraint. I don’t want to have to do something about this, so I am asking you to address it if you would.”

It was my turn to whistle. The last time Persephone had acted without restraints, she had very nearly destroyed the whole damn multiverse. Coupled with a request for my help and the plethora of doomsday viruses she had just shown herself to possess, it was both the gentlest and most terrifying threat anyone had ever made to me. I glanced a question at my grandmother.

Thalia nodded. “She’s deadly serious.”

Melchior had paused the playback during the interplay—better than TiVo, that little guy. Now he started it again.

Persephone whistled something long and complex and self-harmonizing. It was a subtle piece of coding and one I definitely wanted to listen to again later for study purposes. The spell resulted in the formation of a black picture frame in the air beside her. The area within initially showed only static.

“I won’t watch this again,” she said in a voice edged with jagged ice, “but you must.” Then she rose and walked out of the picture as the camera moved in tight on the contents of the frame so that we were watching a picture within a picture.

The static seemed to fold in on itself, reaching into elsewhere. As it did so, a haze like heat distortion shimmered into being in front of the black frame—a typical symptom of some sort of really heavy-duty encryption. Whatever was at the other end of the spell, Persephone truly didn’t want it finding its way back to her. When the picture came clear, I understood why.

“Oh hell,” I whispered.

“Hades, actually,” said Thalia.

“From where I sit on Hades’ personal hate list, there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two,” I replied.

The frame provided a window into Hades’ office in the underworld. It had changed radically since my last visit. Not surprising since that visit had resulted in the utter destruction of Hades’

headquarters complex. But even though the positioning of the camera—probably a monitor mount—hid much of the room from me, I recognized the place instantly. The presence of the death god in his pretentious office chair was only the most obvious giveaway. Even without Hades as a pointer I would have recognized the horrible deadness of the lands beyond the Styx.

Our view showed the god sitting at an angle to the screen, giving us a two-thirds view of his face. He was nodding thoughtfully. Behind him, a large open window looked over a pier on the river Lethe. As I watched, a young man walked hesitantly out to the end of the pier and stared into the water. He wore a sort of grayed-out version of the T-shirt-and-jeans uniform of the college set, and his shoulders slumped with the classic dejection of the dead.

“That’s
very
interesting,” Hades said to someone offscreen, drawing my attention back to the foreground.

I realized then that I’d been avoiding looking at Hades. He was snake skinny, with dark, smoky hair that moved on its own and skin drawn too tight over his bones. His flesh had something of smoke to it, too, a tenuous quality, as though it might drift away between one moment and the next, revealing his true self—a skeleton that only played at being a man.

“My principal thought you might feel that way, all things considered.” The voice answering Hades was a woman’s and very tense. It sounded familiar, too, though I couldn’t immediately place it.

“Is the damage really so extensive?” asked Hades, and there was a hunger that lurked just beneath the surface of his words.

“Irreparable,” said a second woman. This one had a faint accent that sounded as though she didn’t have quite the right vocal apparatus for human speech. “She knows she cannot ever properly resume her role and thus must find another to take her throne.” Hades leaned back and steepled his hands, too obviously working at projecting confidence and limited interest. The Lord of the Dead clearly hadn’t had to do much bargaining over the long years of his reign. The immediate question his attitude raised was who had something that he wanted that much.

“I have a hard time imagining her retirement,” said Hades at last.

“So does she,” replied the second woman, the one with the inhuman accent.

“Am I the only candidate?” asked Hades.

“Don’t be an idiot,” replied the first—more familiar-sounding—woman, and I almost knew her then. “You are one of four. This is by way of a preliminary interview for a tough job.” Hades’ jaw clenched. “Whom do I have to convince? Her?” He nodded straight ahead. “Or you?” Again the nod, this time a bit to the right.

“You need to convince my mother, of course,” said the first voice, and I would have had it then even without the edge of a green wing that momentarily slipped into the picture.

Megaera, the Fury with hair and wings of ship-devouring seaweed. In turn, that meant the trio must be talking about Necessity. My back clenched. Every muscle from the backs of my knees to my neck contracted all in an instant at the thought of Necessity handing over her role as the Fate of the Gods to
anyone
, much less Hades.

It would take about ten minutes and forty-seven seconds from the time he took over to the instant when my eternal-torment regimen started. The only reason it would take even that long was that the first ten minutes would be devoted to reclaiming Persephone and . . . I shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about. I found myself looking past Hades to his window, staring at the boy on the end of the pier again rather than looking at the death god. The boy seemed mesmerized by the water flowing beneath him.

I couldn’t blame him. Putting Hades aside, I wasn’t too keen about any of the other likely candidates for taking on the role of Necessity 2.0 either. The second woman had said there were four. That could only mean the pole powers. Fate would hand me over to Hades in an instant.

Eris I love as a sister—a completely psychotic and extremely dangerous sister. No one in their right mind would want to live in a universe ruled by Discord. Zeus? Zeus I might be able to live with, though that would likely put Athena in the role now held by the Furies—divine enforcer and cosmic sys-admin—and if she had her druthers, she’d skin me slowly. No, none of the candidates was particularly good for team Raven.

“Is there any way for me to sweeten the pot?” asked Hades, dragging my attention back to him and the office. “Special favors Necessity needs to have done before the handover? Things I could help
either of you
with?”

“That sounds suspiciously like an attempt at bribery,” said Megaera.

Hades nodded and opened his hands wide. “Is that a problem? Because I could always rescind the offer if you’d prefer.”

Megaera stepped forward into the frame. I could see her head, about half of her torso, and one poisonous green wing. She looked tense enough to kill—just like always.

“I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with the direction this conversation is taking,” she said.

“Why not?” asked Hades. “If you don’t believe that Zeus and the others will make similar offers, you don’t know them. Besides, don’t you think that your dear, dear mother would want to make sure you’re taken care of in the new regime?” He widened his eyes. “Unless you were planning on retiring as well? Surely not. With your work ethic?”

“Of course not,” said Megaera, visibly startled. “Who would handle all of the computer details and enforcement duties?”

“Well,” said Hades, sounding profoundly unctuous, “I imagine that depends on who takes up the reins. Zeus would certainly install Athena in that seat, and I frankly doubt Eris would want any administration at all.”

“Fate would keep us on,” said Megaera.

“To be sure,” replied Hades, “but only as
complete
puppets. Is that really what you want?”

“What we want doesn’t matter.” Megaera glanced back toward her offscreen companion.

“Right?”

“I don’t know for certain,” said the voice. “I can only speak with Necessity in special circumstances. But I can’t imagine that she would want you cast aside. She loves
all
her children so very much. Always has.”

There was something decidedly off about the way the voice said “all.” It made my teeth itch.

“Oh, well said.” Hades turned and grinned at the Fury. “Listen to your companion, Megaera.”

“She’s not my companion. Neither is she a friend. She is—”

“The voice of your
mother
,” interjected the other, “but only in some things.” Megaera submissively bowed her head for a second, then nodded. I
really
wanted to see who belonged to that voice.

“So,” said Hades, “
is
there anything I can do for you? Anything at all? You need but ask.” Megaera relaxed her shoulders and mutely shook her head.

“Are you sure you can’t think of something?” he asked. “Because I have a few thoughts there.

Don’t you wonder what’s become of your sister Tisiphone? What the Raven has done with her? I could possibly help you to find out. Extract some information from him.”

“We have our own window into Raven House,” said the alien voice. “One of my . . . little sisters is there, providing a feed.”

“I was thinking of something more direct and—” Hades was interrupted by a chiming sound.

“Hang on a moment.”

He waved Megaera back out of sight of the camera, then turned directly toward the screen and tapped the button on his mouse. A picture opened within the corner of the one we were watching, a tiny window showing us what Hades was seeing on his computer. Zeus stood there, in all his buff, bronzed, frat-boy glory. Athena stood beside him, looking even more deliberately drab and invisible than usual—most of the time she eschews flash in favor of the power of going unnoticed.