The Blood of the Hydra (4 page)

I couldn’t risk it.

“We need information.” Kate sat straight and alert, focused as always. “If only the Book of Shadows actually had something inside.” She reached for the Book sitting on the coffee table and flipped through the pages, as if expecting something to change. But the pages were still blank. She slammed it closed and sat back in the couch, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at the Book. “What use is the Book if it’s empty?”

“I’m still researching the history of the Book to figure that out,” Darius said. “For now, we need to focus on other ways to obtain information. Do any of you have ideas?”

The way he asked it made me feel like I was right back in his homeroom classroom. I looked around at the others, figuring that they had more experience with this stuff than I did.

“The New Alexandrian Library with all the books on the history of witches is in Virginia, right?” Danielle asked, and Darius nodded. “Maybe we can go there and do research.”

“The Head Elders have been researching Kerberos since the night of the Olympian Comet, and one of the first places they went was the library,” Darius said. “But the portal to Kerberos has been sealed since the Olympians locked the Titans and their supporters there after the Second Rebellion. Since this is the first time the monsters have been able to escape the prison world, there are no answers in the historical texts.”

“Dying has always meant going to Hades,” Kate said, leaning forward as she voiced her thoughts.

“For everyone?” I asked. “What about all the good people who should go to Heaven?”

“Hades isn’t the equivalent to what humans call Hell.” Kate laughed, as if this were something she expected everyone to know. “It’s the general underworld where
all
souls go after they die. There are many different sections of Hades, but to simplify it, Elysium is the equivalent to what most people think of as Heaven, and Tartarus is most similar to Hell. I thought that when we killed the harpy, we sent her to Hades—hopefully to Tartarus. But what if that’s not what happened? What if, when a creature who was in Kerberos dies on Earth, it doesn’t go to Hades, but it goes back to Kerberos instead?”

“And with the portal weak, they’re able to escape again,” I said, and she nodded. “It would be an endless circle. No matter what we do, we can’t kill them.”

“If we can’t kill them, then how will we win?” Chris slumped back on the couch. “It’s hopeless.”

“It can’t be hopeless,” I said. “The gods wouldn’t have given us these powers and sent us the prophecy that led us to the Book if this was hopeless. There has to be an answer.”

The others gave general nods of agreement, but they hardly looked convinced.

“We could go to Virginia and check out the library, like Danielle suggested,” Kate said, although she sounded doubtful. “Maybe there’s something there that the Head Elders are missing.”

“They’ve put their best researchers on the case,” Darius said. “I assure you, they’re not missing anything.”

“Then we need to get our information from somewhere else.” I stared at the Book, as if it could give me answers, even though I knew it couldn’t. Looking at it reminded me of everything we had to go through to get it when we fought with the harpy. Which reminded me of something that Kate had said afterwards…

“I think I have an idea.” I sat straighter, feeling more confident than I had since we’d gotten here. “After we fought the harpy, Kate said that if she’d been conscious when we’d killed it, she would have told us to keep the harpy alive so we could ask it questions to get information. What if, the next time a monster escapes, we capture it instead of kill it? Then we can talk to it and see what information we can get out of it.”

“I don’t think that ‘talking to it’ will be enough to get it to spill,” Blake said. “We’d have to go to more extreme measures. But it’s a good idea.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, glad that I’d been able to help. Sometimes I felt so clueless, since I was so new to all of this. And I was also happy that Blake seemed impressed.

“
If
we’re able to capture one of these creatures, where would we keep it?” Chris asked. “We couldn’t just lock it anywhere. It would have to be a place where it couldn’t escape, no matter what.”

“The training center doubles as a bomb shelter,” Darius said. “You could keep the creature there.”

“In your basement?” Kate’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “It’s the safest place in town.”

“It’ll have to be a creature like the harpy—one that can talk—and not one like the hound,” Kate mused. “And who knows how long it’ll be before one of them escapes again?”

“So, we shouldn’t just wait around,” Chris said. “Let’s go into Kerberos and capture one ourselves.”

“No.” Darius’s tone was firm, silencing us completely. “Whatever happens, none of you can
ever
enter Kerberos. Understand?”

He sounded so intense that we could do nothing but nod.

“Do you know what’s
in
Kerberos?” I asked.

“No one knows what’s in Kerberos,” he said. “Until the harpy and Orthrus, no one who’s been imprisoned in Kerberos has ever escaped. And just because those two creatures were able to escape, it doesn’t mean it would be the same for you. You could be trapped there forever, and we can’t risk losing one of our own.”

“So what
do
we do?” Chris asked.

“We’ll have to wait for a creature who’s able to communicate with us to escape,” Darius said. “Until then, we’ll plan how we’re going to go about capturing it.”

The rest of the weekend was a blur of training and planning, and I was actually glad to get back to school on Monday. Like always, I sat with Blake in ceramics. I figured that sitting with him didn’t break my pact about not being alone with him, since there were other people in the class. Sure, the other people rarely ever
talked
to us—I’d realized that witches had a general otherworldly vibe that intimidates humans—but they were still there.

“Danielle hasn’t stopped asking me about why we snuck off to the playground together last month,” Blake said to me as we settled in to get working on our current project. “She thinks we’re a couple.”

My heart fluttered at the idea of me and Blake being a couple, but I focused on the vase I was making, trying to keep my emotions off my face. “You told her she’s wrong?” I asked, surprised by how calm I sounded.

“She’s so convinced that she’s right that she won’t believe me.” He placed his hand on mine, and I froze, heat rushing through my veins. “There’s something between us—I know it, and I can tell by the way you’re looking at me that you know it, too,” he said. “I might not have the best things to say about Danielle, but she’s not stupid. She knows there’s something between us. She’s upset, but it hasn’t made her act out or do anything crazy. So I think it’s time that we give this—
us
—a try.”

His eyes blazed with so much passion that it took all of my strength to not agree on the spot. But I wasn’t the angelic demigod with the power to heal that he thought I was. Even now, he watched me with so much admiration. But I were to give this a try with him, I would have to be truthful with him about what I could do—about how easily I could harness black energy and use it to kill.

I couldn’t bear the thought of him looking at me as if I were a monster.

So I pulled my gaze away from his, glancing around the room to make sure no one was listening to us. “We can’t talk about this here,” I said, hoping it would be enough to avoid this conversation for now.

“You’ve refused to be alone with me since we fought the harpy,” he said. “So I don’t have much of an option but to bring it up here.”

“I know.” I focused on smoothing the handle of the vase, so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve thought about it so many times, and I just don’t get it,” he said. “Whatever was going on between us last month, it was the start of something real. Why are you running away from it now?”

Because I can kill with a touch.

Because I don’t know what the Head Elders would think of me if they found out.

Because I don’t know what
you
would think of me if you found out.

Because if I let us get close, I couldn’t keep something so huge a secret from you anymore.

And then, if you hate me for it and tell the Elders, what will they do to me?

But obviously I couldn’t tell him any of that.

Maybe I should just tell him that he’s wrong, and that I’m not interested in him at all.

Or—maybe—I should trust him. Blake had put his trust in me the first week I was here, when I’d been the first person he’d told about his ability to control fire. Shouldn’t I trust him in return? Shouldn’t I trust that he cared about me, and that he wouldn’t do anything that would put me in danger?

But he cared about Nicole the
healer
. Not Nicole the
killer
.

Before I could say anything, Darius opened the door and stepped inside the classroom. “I’m sorry to interrupt the class,” he said, and our ceramic teacher’s pupils dilated, which meant that Darius was using gray energy to confuse him into not questioning him. “But Nicole and Blake need to come with me to the office. Now.”

Despite what he’d said, Darius didn’t lead us to the office. Instead, he brought us to our homeroom classroom in the back of the library, where Danielle, Chris, and Kate were already waiting. Given the grave expressions on their faces, I guessed that whatever had happened was serious.

“Another monster has been spotted,” Darius said once the door was closed. “A siren.”

“A siren…” I repeated, the word sounding familiar. “Weren’t they in
The Odyssey
? The women who sang and lured sailors to their deaths?”

“Yes, that’s them.” Kate nodded. “They stand on cliffs, and their song is so tempting that it makes sailors drive their ships into the rocks below, straight to their deaths.”

“Which is exactly what happened this morning,” Darius said. “A group of tourists rented a boat, and they drove it into a cliff on the shore. A rescue team went in and found only one of them alive. He wouldn’t stop rambling about hearing the most beautiful song in the world, and he begged to be taken back to the cliff so he could listen again and learn the secrets of the universe.”

“Where is he now?” Danielle asked.

“Sedated and in the hospital,” Darius answered. “I need to pay him a visit to wipe his memory of what happened. I’ve also spoken with the principal, and she’s given the five of you permission to leave school for the day. I trust you’ll be able to take care of this situation, in the manner we discussed?”

“We’re on it.” Blake grabbed his bag and threw it over his back, looking more than ready to get out of there.

“Good,” Darius said. “I hope to find the five of you—and the siren—in the training center when I return.”

“Of course.” Kate played with the ends of her hair, her eyes filled with worry. “But you really trust us this much? We only started training for this a month ago. It’s hard to believe that the Head Elders can’t handle this themselves…”

“The Head Elders are powerful in a different way,” Darius said. “Yes, they have powerful
mental
magic, but they have no
physical
magic. The five of you have physical magic that’s never been seen in witches before, which, given the circumstances, makes you the most powerful of our kind in the world. You’re our best chance against these monsters. Remember—the gods wouldn’t have blessed you with these powers if they didn’t believe you could do this.”

“I know, I know,” Kate said. “Let’s go get our weapons. But first, I need to make a quick stop at my house. I already have some ideas about how to capture this siren.”

Two hours later, the five of us piled into Blake’s dad’s boat, with Blake at the wheel. His dad would be beyond angry if he found out that he took out the boat without permission—but we figured that if we ran into any snags, Darius could use his Jedi mind tricks to get us out of trouble.

“How often have you driven this thing?” I asked Blake, looking out across the cove. The water was clear and gorgeous, but it was so freezing outside that I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. Those tourists must have had a death wish by taking a boat out in February.

“My dad’s been taking me out since before I can remember,” he said. “I got my boating license right after I turned sixteen. Don’t worry.” He smiled, pulling the boat away from the dock. “You’ll be safe.”

“I know,” I said, my eyes meeting his. “I trust you.”

The words came out without much thought, and my stomach flipped with surprise about how much I meant them. It reminded me of the conversation we’d been having in ceramics before Darius had burst in. I trusted Blake with my life in battle. I
should
be able to trust him with the truth of what I could do.

But I couldn’t dwell on it right now. Because now, we had a siren to catch.

Kate sat down in the seat next to Blake, breaking whatever moment the two of us had just had. “It’s time,” she said, holding out the handcuffs. “Lock me up.”