The Immortal Game (book 1) (13 page)

Sage and Ruby locked eyes. “What happened?” they said in unison.

Sage didn’t answer, and it terrified Ruby.

Sage’s voice rose to a shout, “What happened?”

“We were talking and he …” Ruby stammered. He what? Ruby didn’t know. “He got a headache, or something. Something went through him. I felt it. It stung. It burned.” Her hands still tingled.

She wanted Sage to tell her that everything was fine, just a little god thing, no big deal. But Sage remained silent.

The radio announcer broke in on them, interrupting the local indie-rock station. “This is an alert,” he said. “An Allied
…
”

Ruby almost ignored it. She had gotten used to the bulletins on the radio, always updates about the peace process.

But the announcer paused. “Oh my God,” he said, under his breath.

Ruby looked up at the radio, as if that could give her a clue as to what he might say next.

The announcer cleared his throat, and tried again. “This is an alert. An Allied soldier opened fire in a Rogue territory market full of civilians. When he was out of ammunition he detonated a suicide bomb. It happened moments ago.”

Ruby’s mind glazed over, unwilling, unable to believe what she heard.
One of our troops? An Ally? Blowing up markets in Rogue territory? But we’re the good guys, and the peace …

“Hundreds are feared dead or injured,” the announcer continued. “We will update you on this important development and what it means for the cease-fire and the peace talks as we get more information—”

Ruby looked at Sage, but the goddess of knowledge was staring out the glass door, staring at where the god of war had run out.

TEN

“There’s nothing I can do,” Sage said. She sat across from Ruby with both hands wrapped around the white ceramic of her coffee mug. “Ares will have to come back on his own.”

“When?” Ruby insisted. It had been hours since the news of the suicide bombing, hours since Ash had walked out of Athenaeum with no explanation. The revelers had flown off like a murder of crows at the sound of the shattered peace. Ruby glanced around the quiet coffeehouse and out the wall of windows. The sky was a uniform grey that gave away nothing and the streets were once again empty.

“I can’t know that, Ruby.” Sage’s voice was not unkind, but it was not sympathetic either.

“What about the dreams?” Ruby asked. “Ash seemed to blame Langston.” She had been peppering Sage with questions, hoping that information might make her feel less helpless.

Sage’s head cocked to the side. “What dreams?”

Ruby looked down at her now cold cup of coffee. “I don’t really remember. Mostly it was a feeling.” She looked up at Sage. “And snakes.”

Sage’s eyes shifted away. She didn’t say anything.

“What is it?”

“Gods can influence dreams. Create them, even.”

“What do you mean?”

“A few suggestions in a sleeping person’s ear,” Sage said. “The kernel of an idea. A whisper. Their subconscious will do the rest.”

“A whisper?” Ruby repeated. She felt her nose wrinkle in revulsion. “Langston was in my room? While I slept?”

Sage didn’t respond.

Gods could disappear in an instant and reappear anywhere they wanted. Even into someone’s bedroom? What else had Langston done to her while she slept?

She glanced to the door, eager for Ash to appear there now.

He didn’t, and hot anger flared in her chest. She wanted to strike out at Langston for invading her privacy and at Ash for leaving her here alone and worried.

“What’s the big deal about Kronos?” she shot randomly at Sage, the only handy target for her unwieldy fury. “Langston said you would all end up being the next Prometheus or the next Kronos because of me. Was he a—”

“He was our enemy in the Great War.” Sage startled her into silence. “The war between the Olympians and their parents, the Titans. We won. Zeus cast most of the Titans into the depths of Tartarus, including Kronos, his own father.” Sage’s tone was flat. She could have been reading from an encyclopedia.

“So?” Ruby heard the condescending annoyance in her own voice. “There are more of you. You can rise up. You can fight Zeus.” Ash’s words and confidence filled her.

Sage laughed, but her heart-shaped face crumpled into a look of horror. She placed her hands on the table, palms up. “Let me show you.”

Ruby looked at her upturned hands and thought of the painful electricity that had come off of Ash. She thought of Langston in her room while she slept.

Sage flicked her fingers inward as if to say ‘come on.’ Ruby’s arms felt heavy as she placed her chilled palms on Sage’s warm ones.

Sage closed her fingers around Ruby’s hand. A gold and amethyst ring flashed in the dim light. “Close your eyes.”

Ruby glanced at the door one more time and shut her eyes.

“Now imagine the darkest, dankest portion of the Underworld,” Sage said. “Not Hades: the realm of the dead. Tartarus: the realm of the
damned
.”

A sensation came to Ruby through her hands. It was not like what she felt with Ash, but a slight tingle, subtle and not uncomfortable. In her mind’s eyes she saw a dark cavern. Flames flickered somewhere on the periphery.

“Smell it,” Sage said. “The decaying, fetid corruptness.”

The smell of the anatomy room came to her. Not the chemicals that preserved the delicate tissues of life, but the smell under that. The smell of what could not be saved, of what had passed over. That smell filled the cavern around her.

“Feel it,” Sage said. “The creeping damp chill that sets up in your marrow.”

A cold crept into Ruby, not into her hands, or her toes, but into her bones. Into her being. She shivered, but the convulsion provided no extra heat.

“Hear it,” Sage said.

First it was the sound of water dripping off rocky walls that came to Ruby, but then it was the moans she heard, distant and animalistic. It mixed in with the smell and the cold; a symphony of discomfort.

“Hunger,” Sage said. “There is no food. Not in Tartarus. You’re immortal and the desire to eat will tear away at your soul.”

A dull hollow feeling stole into Ruby’s middle and her stomach growled painfully.

“Thirst,” Sage said. “The only water is from the scant rivulets that run down the dirty rocks from Hades above.”

Ruby’s throat tightened with the desire to drink.

“There is no companionship, though your wife and your siblings are in their own cells carved out of the rock around you. You can barely see them through the dimness, but you can hear their moans and sobs. You have not held or touched your wife in thousands of years.”

Ruby felt the deep ache of infinite loneliness, the most familiar of all the sensations.

“The worst are the memories you carry with you into this place,” Sage went on. “Dreams that wake you in the night, as clear as the springs of the great river Oceanus. You were the king of the gods. The lord of all. Now you languish in the bowels of hell.

“You will never forget that it was your own sons and daughters who sent you to this place. They were led by the youngest of them all; the one who looked you in the eye and made this pronouncement with a grin. The very son, who, it was prophesized, would be the undoing of you, as
you
were the undoing of your own father.”

Anger, mixed with crushing desolation, filled Ruby. It was hopelessness so profound, so real, so endless, that she could not imagine ever feeling joy again, until a flicker of hope sparked on the periphery of her mind: revenge.

“Can you feel it?” Sage whispered.

Ruby didn’t respond. She didn’t have the energy or the will.

“Now
know
. Not think. Not feel. But
know
. That this is forever. Your cell is so permanent there isn’t even a door to try to open. The only thing that can alter your state is the will of the gods who sent you to this place.”

Ruby tried to swallow but her dry throat shuddered with the effort.

“And where is their will?” Sage asked. “Are they for you? Are they against you? Are they ready to show mercy after thousands of years?” She paused. “No. The worst part. The very worst, is that they’ve given up their will entirely.”

Sage let go of Ruby’s hands and the vision disappeared.

“We’ve forgotten how to fight,” Sage said as she sat back in her chair. “And we’re too afraid to try to remember.”

Ruby looked around the familiar coffeehouse, glad she didn’t have to feel the punishment of Kronos anymore.

“That’s the power Zeus holds over us. Any one of us could become the next Kronos.”

Ruby searched for something to say. She could still feel the lingering cold, the gnawing hunger, and the crushing despair. The front door swished open behind her. Her head snapped around at the sound.

Ash?

Instead Langston strode in, his cheeks pink and his hair windblown. He only looked at Sage as he approached their table. “It’s chaos out there,” he said.

Ruby looked to the street outside but it was still empty. Even the pizza place across the road was closed.

“The Rogues are drawing their defenses together again.” He snickered. “The timing couldn’t have been better. They hadn’t even begun to pack in their weapons.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruby stood and faced him. She was anxious for any news, but fearful of Langston’s lingering smile.

His eyes shot to hers, annoyed, as if he had hoped to be able to ignore her entirely. “Your boyfriend doesn’t have a hope now, no matter what voodoo thing you have going with him.” Excitement spread across his face and widened the smile. “The hate is so thick Theseus couldn’t cut it with his sword. Ares won’t pull away now. He loves it too much.”

Ruby’s heart raced.

Sage stood too, so that the three of them made a loose triangle. “What did you do?” she asked.

“It didn’t take much,” he said. “A few whispers in the right ear. That Allied soldier wasn’t exactly stable to begin with.”

“What?” Ruby asked. Her eyes darted from Langston to Sage and back.

“You made the bomber kill all those people?” Sage said, putting the pieces together. “You knew Ares wouldn’t be able to resist.”

“Wrong!” Langston shouted as he turned on Sage. “I can’t
make
anyone do anything. You know that. Gods can suggest. We can hint. We can whisper in the ear of a crazy man.” He looked Ruby in the eye and added, “Or end up in a silly girl’s dream. What he or she chooses to do with that, well, that’s up to them.” He smirked at her. “Turns out some people can’t take a hint.”

Sage glanced at Ruby, a flicker so quick Ruby couldn’t read her emotions.

Langston’s eyes were bright with satisfaction. “Ares brought this down on himself. He needed to be distracted. He thinks the rules don’t apply to him? He thinks he can challenge Zeus? He thinks he can march some human slut up to Olympus, despite the visions of an oracle? Despite the consequences?”

“We could have found another way.” Sage’s voice was low. “This … This is too much. People will die. People
have
died.”

“We are
saved
,” Langton shouted. “If Ares wants to self-destruct on a war binge, I say let him, but guaranteed he’s already forgotten about her.” He pointed in Ruby’s general direction. “I’m going back. Today. Come with me.”

“I won’t let you and Ares bring down the human race to save my own skin,” Sage said. “Or yours.”

Langston huffed and turned away.

Ruby felt a scream rising in her. She wanted to lunge and tear at him. She wanted to run out the door and not stop until she found Ash. She wanted to sit on the floor and cry. A choked sound escaped her.

Langston laughed, a short harsh laugh, that ended abruptly as he disappeared into thin air.

…

The silence in the coffeehouse was all-encompassing with no espresso machine running, no milk foaming, no customers chatting. A refrigerator in the back clicked on and Ruby started. Her eyes moved over the dim room and to the dark windows, but there was nothing.

Almost a week had gone by since Ash left. Langston hadn’t been back either. The war raged on. Casualties mounted and talk of peace faded.

It was after midnight and Ruby was tired, but she knew that if she went home she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The nightmares had stopped but she would lie awake and listen for little noises, hoping that each rattle of the old furnace or creek of the settling timbers meant that Ash had come home.

She looked down at her history text again, Prussia and the Austrians. She had been reading for hours but little had sunk in. What was the point anyway? Even if she got into medical school, even if she earned a double residency, even if Medics for Mercy wanted her, what would any of it matter without Ash?

Most days she stayed at Athenaeum and read the yellow myth book that Sage lent her instead of going to class. Sage gave her a key to Athenaeum and she came and went as she pleased.

Ash—Ares—had not been back to Olympus, Sage—Athena—had told her. Sage always used their Greek names now, but Ruby still had a hard time thinking of Ares as anything but Ash.

Zeus and Hera weren’t suspicious, Athena said, but others were talking. They wondered if Ares knew what he was doing. Langston—Apollo—had kept quiet. If he gave Ares away he would be giving himself and Athena away too. So far his plan was working. Ares was still off fighting, and he and Ruby were apart.

With each passing day Ruby felt more and more desperate. She longed to know that Ash was well, and whole, and uninjured. Why had he stayed away? What was he was thinking about? And then the most painful question, did he love war more than he loved her?

She looked at the chess board at the back table. She had practiced a few of the problems Ash had taught her, end games, where only a few pieces remained on the board and the goal was to finish the game in a set number of moves; mate in two or mate in four. But playing only made her miss Ash more and she quickly gave it up.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She pictured him in as much detail as she could. She saw him happy and excited, his eyes luminous and his face serene. She imagined him unhurt and healthy. She tried to feel his arms around her, and their energy flowing together. Her breath slowed at the thought but she jumped when she heard a sharp tap, tap, tap on glass.