“Wait,” Hermes said. He sniffed the air. Athena sniffed too, once, tentatively. The breeze carried the scent of salt back to them.
“Go,” she said, and he ran, faster than she could, though she ran too. His footfalls grew fainter as he raced ahead of her, god of thieves, faster than a Nereid, faster than an antelope. Soon she could only hear her own breath and the wind in her ears. The scent of salt grew fainter. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she made out the landscape, shadowy buttes and clusters of cacti. Stars sparkled brightly overhead, witness to their embarrassing chase. When she heard a faint whisper, her legs pushed harder. It was the whisper of water. They were too late.
When she caught up to Hermes he had already stopped by the edge of the creek. It was black and tiny, barely more than a four-foot stream, but it moved fast over the sandy bottom and swirled in rippled eddies against rocks. The Nereid had slid into it like a sharpened blade and disappeared. It would find its way to an ocean in less than a day, and then it would spill its secrets to its master.
“Don’t go in,” he hissed when she stepped into the water. He yanked her backward, and her feet splashed angrily, but he was right. They would never catch it now. And who knew what might come after them, who knew what was waiting in some darkened underwater cave.
“Poseidon,” Athena said darkly, and then she screamed his name, her battle cry ringing out into the empty air, vibrating into the sand and water, and she hoped he heard it before his little guppy got home to whisper.
* * *
“What do we do now?” Hermes asked, walking briskly by her side. “Athena! It knows everything. We don’t know anything!”
She didn’t reply, just kept walking, stiff-legged, back to the bar. Hermes’ questions bounced annoyingly around her ears and echoed in her head. Telling him to shut the hell up was tempting. But instead she silenced her own mind. Somehow, she had been elected captain and commander of this damned little enterprise, and as such she didn’t have time to indulge in panicked, useless questions, or snapping at her sibling. Her focus was on one thing: the Nereid trapped back at the bar. She hoped beyond hope that it wasn’t dead. An image popped up behind her eyes: the creature straining, twisting the chair loose and scrambling out into the night. The idea made her break into a sprint.
It was their only link, their only chance to find out what Poseidon knew, to find out why he had obviously allied against them. They needed the Nereid to talk.
When they burst into the busted bar, she thought they were sunk. The Nereid lay motionless, tacked to the floor like some bizarre crucifixion. A blood puddle surrounded it at least three feet wide. But then the mouth moved. It looked like it might be swallowing.
They went to it and knelt. Hermes gripped the chair, but Athena stopped him and shook her head. If they removed the chair, the wounds would only bleed faster.
“Hey,” she said, not terribly gently, but at least in an even tone. When the Nereid didn’t respond, she patted its cheek softly. Then with a little more force.
“Can it even talk?” Hermes asked, grimacing.
“The bartender could talk. And the rest could whoop it up over that damned baseball game,” she replied.
“What if that was part of the enchantment?”
“If it was, then it’s an even better trick than I thought.”
The Nereid was coming to, swiveling its eyes slowly to the left and right. It was disoriented and weak. Whether it would be able to impart anything useful before it cacked off, Athena wasn’t sure. But neither she nor Hermes had any powers of healing, aside from basic first aid, so there was nothing to be done about it now.
“What were you doing here?” Hermes asked loudly and slowly, like he was talking to a simpleton, but Athena gave him a shove. Why waste time on the obvious? The thing was bleeding out all over their feet. In another five minutes, there’d be nothing left to do but wrap it in yesterday’s newspaper.
“What does Poseidon want?” Athena asked instead. “How did he know we would come?” Although she figured she knew the answer to the last one already. Demeter was wise, and easy to find. Demeter had also been Athena’s ally before, and not terribly fond of her sea-ruling brother, Poseidon. There were probably similar surprises planted around every god she might have approached: Artemis, Apollo, Hephaestus. Heaviness squeezed her heart. They were so far behind. A war that she had no idea about was already being fought. For all she knew, those who would have been her allies had already been found and killed, or turned to the other side. And now Poseidon would find Cassandra and use her prophecy for himself, or worse.