The Unclaimed (University of the Gods Trilogy Book 1) (28 page)

He offered Alexander the Ambrosia intermixed with a sleeping potion and Alexander took it.

“You shouldn’t do it for her”, Sam said and helped Alexander get into a more comfortable position.

“I know that you heard what I just said about your brother”, Alexander said.

Sam froze. That was dangerous ground and he didn’t want to do or say anything that might hurt his brother. But thankfully Alexander was already half asleep.

“He is my best friend”, Alexander murmured, his voice slurred by the effects of the sleeping potion. “It’s not his fault that I feel the way I do.”

“My brother is bound to Arissa”, Sam said carefully, listening to Alexander’s breathing getting deeper. “There is nothing he can do to cut that bond. But to you he isn’t bound. He follows you because he believes in you. And he would do anything for you. Anything.”

A golden tear ran from Alexander’s eye but he didn’t reply to that. Just when Sam thought Alexander had fallen asleep, he opened his eyes again and looked at Sam.

“I wish we had a choice”, he said. “But we don’t. Ben is the only person I have ever trusted. I would never hurt him.”

Alexander’s breath became gradually more relaxed and finally he was asleep. Sam looked at the son of Zeus and wasn’t sure what to think of him. He would undoubtedly make for an inspiring, even great leader one day but would he also be a fair one? Only time would tell.

When Sam took up his position outside Alexander’s room again, he thought of his brother who was caught between so many threads of duty and desire that it threatened to choke him. The glowing band on his wrist was a visible reminder of the demonic band that Hera had demanded to be spun for him. The union between Olympus and Hades had to be formed to ensure peace between the kingdoms. He knew that if Ben ever so much as kissed another girl, that girl would die instantly. Hera had made sure of that. She should have taken the same measures with Arissa, Sam thought and extended his teeth, trying his best to shut out the noises coming from Bear’s bedroom.

The most terrible thing about the spell binding Ben and Arissa together was that Ben was entirely at Arissa’s mercy. She was the only one able to break the spell but Sam knew that this would never happen. There was nothing Arissa loved more than power and with Ben, she possessed the ultimate power.

Sam waited until the sun rose and four guards took his place. Then he went to see his brother. Ben needed to know what had happened that night. And even though Cassandra was right when she thought that Ben was indeed more powerful than him, it wasn’t some kind of spell that made him willing to do anything for his brother. It was the simple fact that Sam loved his brother and was willing to protect him with his life.

When he entered Ben’s chambers, he found him already dressed and showered. He looked haunted, like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. When he asked how Sam’s night had been, Sam didn’t hesitate. He winked at his brother, poured him a glass of water and told him that there had been nothing special about this night. Nothing at all.

The tall figure was standing at the window in broad daylight playing with the magical object called the Pipe. She knew exactly how powerful it was and imagined herself blowing it a hundred times, a thousand times to call here all the creatures, monsters and demons from this earth and beyond. And then she would destroy them, all of them, just because she could.

But she knew it didn’t work like that. She also knew that she shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture. There was a plan in motion that would eventually lead to her dominating over them anyway. So maybe it was better if some of them stayed alive. That way she could see them suffer later.

“What is so funny?” the smaller figure asked who was concentrating on moving an object to the right with her mind. Eventually it worked and the curtain closed itself. Startled, the tall figure turned around.

“I told you not to do that”, she snarled.

“I am getting better at it”, the small figure said, satisfied. “You shouldn’t show the object in broad daylight. It might be detected.”

“There is no one strong enough here to detect the Pipe”, the tall figure said but hid the object after some hesitation in the special black box in her desk anyway.

The small figure hummed and slightly shook her head.

“No one but her”, she said and her eyes gleamed with crazy delight.

“Shut up”, the tall figure said. “No one is supposed to know that”.

The tall figure gritted her teeth. The little rat was getting bolder. In the end she would need to get rid of her rather sooner than she had expected. But for now she needed her alive.

“Today is the big day”, the tall figure said, finding satisfaction in the way the creature’s eyes widened in anticipation. “We need to call it again. It needs to be back when we bury River. They will all be there, just like my mother said, and then Scylla will kill them all.”

The thought thrilled her.

“What about him?“ the little creature said springing up and grabbing the tall one’s arm. “Will he be safe? Promise you won’t take him from me.”

The tall figure smiled and slowly detached herself from the small one.

“Of course”, she said. “I won’t take him from you.”

That seemed to appease the little one, at least for the moment.

Satisfied, the tall figure turned towards the window again, all the while stroking the spot where she had just been held much too tightly.

No, she thought, she wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t dirty her hands with his death. But she would make damn sure that someone else would.

When the sun finally rose on the last day of the semester, Cassandra hadn’t slept a minute. After her encounter with Alexander, she had been too riled up and had spent the rest of the night lying awake in bed thinking about where it had all gone so terribly wrong. She heard Hector stir above her and went to take a shower.

She decided to have a coffee, too, and found Charlie lying in a puddle of his own vomit in the kitchen. She turned him to the side and checked that he was still breathing. When she couldn’t move him further, she called for Hector to help her. Summer, who came down with him, swore, then bent down to check on Charlie.

“He is alive”, Cassandra said and Summer huffed.

“I can see that”, she said. “Take him to the shower, I’ll take care of this mess. Call me when he is in his bed, I will give him something for his hangover. Although he really doesn’t deserve it.”

With that she went to get a bucket and a cleaning cloth while Cassandra and Hector carried Charlie to the bathroom, undressed him and sat him under the shower. His skin was grey and sagging and he had gotten so thin that his bones protruded visibly. His belly was swollen and he kept rubbing it like it hurt. Cassandra let warm water run over his destroyed body while Hector picked up his clothes and murmured something about throwing them in the trash and left.

Cassandra tried to get Charlie to talk to her but his head kept lolling back and forth and he seemed unable to focus on Cassandra. He was looking at a spot behind her and talked like there was someone standing behind her. Unnerved, Cassandra kept looking over her shoulder but there was no one to see.

“He is talking in ancient Greek”, Summer said when she came in. “It sounds like he is apologizing but that is all I get.”

Cassandra had never heard anyone speak ancient Greek. She had seen it written down, read and translated it but Charlie spoke it like it was his native tongue.

Now that she had an idea what he was doing, Cassandra recognized the pattern. Charlie got more desperate every time he apologized and when Hector came in with a change of clothes, he started fighting them.

He screamed and howled until Hector and Cassandra finally held him down and Summer gave him some Ambrosia. After that he stopped struggling and they managed to get him dressed and up to his room.

Summer said that it would take a while for him to get better but that he would be ok eventually. Then she told them that it was time to leave for the ceremony and went to get her things together with Hector. On an impulse Cassandra stayed with Charlie and bent down to stroke his hair, murmuring that he should stop destroying himself.

Up close he once again smelled of grapes and earth and fun. When her lips touched the skin on his forehead, she was suddenly gripped by such a strong vision that her whole body seemed to be spinning out of control. Cassandra felt like she was falling and suddenly she was sitting on a kind of throne at the side of a big ballroom, watching what was going on through the eyes of someone she felt was somehow familiar.

The feast was nearing its climax. No one could say that his family didn’t know how to have a good time. His father Zeus was so intoxicated he could barely sit straight. Hera seemed to be the only one not having fun but it didn’t matter. Time for phase two, he thought, and made sure that everyone got something much stronger than wine.

He winked at Eros, who knew it was time to approach Artemis now. They had slipped her something so that she would let go once in her life. She was so drunk that she didn’t even put up resistance but simply fell into Eros’s arms. Eros looked at him and he felt pleased with himself. That would show Artemis to underestimate the power of physical attraction.

They had had a falling out this afternoon where Artemis had called him and Eros dirty pigs because their idea of love never went beyond the physical and that it was only the marriage of two minds that could give you true satisfaction. He had laughed at that and Eros had said that both aspects were important in a relationship to which Artemis had only shaken her head and called them primitive and stupid.

They had let the dice decide who got to take her. Eros had won. They knew this would cause problems later but he loved the unexpected and he loved creating chaos and this was about to be spectacular.

He winced when he saw that Athena gave her goblet to Heracles. He had slipped her something as well but just for the fun of it. Heracles emptied the goblet, smashed it on the table and met the fire burning in Athena’s eyes and he knew that he had made a mistake. Heracles grabbed Athena’s hand and whispered something in her ear. She smiled and nodded and followed him to a place beyond the hall. Just before they left, she turned around to look back at him. There was something in the way she cocked her head that told him that he could stop this right now but then he got distracted by Aphrodite who started dancing lasciviously before him and the moment was gone.

He felt Chaos spread and knew that he was the mightiest of them all. With a move of his little finger he could make them do what he wanted. They were all weak, slaves to the flesh, little dolls that danced to the music of his mind and it was he who controlled them. He was their Master.

He made a motion with his hands and saw Poseidon being drawn to a small pool by some water nymphs. Ares roared and then grabbed a servant girl by the hair and drew her to a corner. Hephaestus, too ugly to make anyone come to him voluntarily, was sent two servant girls by Zeus. Hera, with a look of acid hatred in his direction, left, but not without warning him that this would have consequences.

He laughed. She would never get it. They would feel bad the next morning, ashamed even, but in a few months they would ask him to do it again. Just like they always did.

He felt pleased with himself, even though he knew he might have gone a little too far that night. So he might as well go through with it. He raised his arms and made a deep, humming sound that reverberated through the huge hall. And the feast, only wild and a little out of control, turned into a frenzy.

He waited until the three servant girls bent down before him and then raised himself into a standing position. He saw himself in a mirror, looking tall and mighty, and he smiled at himself. To him it was a beautiful smile in a beautiful face…

To Cassandra it looked like the ugly head of a monster with a familiar face. Disgusted she withdrew from Charlie, her head still swirling from the images she had just seen. And she knew that it had not been a vision of the future but a look into the past.

She had just been present at the fateful evening that had led to her and Jim’s existence and now she knew who was responsible for it. Neither of their mothers had followed the men voluntarily. Even her father had been under the influence of a powerful drug and had had no choice in it. She stumbled out of the room, trying to regain her balance, inside and out. She had thought he was her friend. She had trusted him, had at times even felt attracted to him. How could she have been so wrong about him?

She had no idea how she got back to her room but when she was finally able to think straight again, she knew that she needed to talk to Jim, needed to tell him how it had all happened, how it was Charlie’s fault that they both existed.

She went over to Jim’s room and wasn’t surprised to find his door once more locked. When he didn’t react to her knocking and calling out to him, she threatened to kick in his door. Someone in a strangely high-pitched voice told her to go away. Without hesitating, Cassandra took aim and smashed the door with her foot. There was screaming and Summer and Hector, who came rushing over, stood in the frame that no longer held a door, surprised and shocked while Cassandra was holding on to a young adolescent boy of about thirteen, pinning him to the floor.

“Where is he?” she growled at the boy whose face was covered in spots. There was the typical teenage smell of sweat, old socks and not enough fresh air in the room but Jim was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is who?” the young man said, wriggling and bucking and desperately trying to get Cassandra off of his chest.

Hector cleared his throat and that was when Cassandra realized that she had been holding. Jim. She let go and Jim, flailing and swearing at Cassandra, made sure to get as far away as possible from her. He ended up with his back against the bedpost, fearfully watching their reaction.

“Jim”, Hector boomed and came in to draw him up into his arms.

He laughed and hugged him, then sat him on the bed. Jim seemed to have hit puberty overnight and had turned into an awkward thirteen-year old with incredibly long limbs and elbows and knees that were too big for his body. Only his eyes, green and huge, were still the same.

“I have no idea what’s happening to me”, Jim said, his voice shifting from too deep to too shrill within one word. “My whole body is going crazy. I think I am sick. Or dying or something.”

Summer and Cassandra exchanged a look and Summer nodded.

“Will you tell him or should I?” Summer asked, her voice betraying no emotion.

Jim looked like he was about to cry.

“What? What is it? You can tell me, I am strong enough”, he squeaked and then started blubbering uncontrollably. “I hope you’ll think of me from time to time because you are like, my best friends or something and you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, especially Pandora, and even though, you, like, abandoned me the past few months and I have been, like,
all alone
, I want you to know” – and here he started wailing – “that you have been really good to me.”

Cassandra and Hector looked and then Hector reached over to put his huge hand over Jim’s mouth. Jim’s eyes bulged and his shoulders continued to go up and down, but he was momentarily silenced.

“Jim, dear, you are not dying”, Summer said soothingly, reaching for a tissue in the process. “You are simply growing into a man. It’s called puberty. Familiar with the concept?”

Jim looked at her with eyes as big as saucers. Then he tried to get rid of Hector’s hands still clutched over his mouth until Hector finally took the hint and let him go.

“But that is impossible”, Jim said hoarsely. “The pain in my limbs, the stupid voice, the smell and those urges that keep me…”

Summer and Cassandra both held up their hands in unison.

“No need to go into those
urges
”, Cassandra murmured and Hector grinned. “Summer is right. You have grown almost seven inches since I last saw you. You don’t look like an eight-year old boy to me anymore, far from it.”

“The growing explains the pain in your limbs”, Summer said and smiled and Jim who blushed a deep red. “The voice is hormones and so are the smell and all the other things you are going through. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine in three, four years tops.”