Mortal Gods

“Don’t leave him?” Henry asked. “What if he leaves us? It’s not like we can keep up.”

“I won’t leave you. I promise.” Hermes smiled. “And if I do, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Athena turned her back on them. Now wasn’t the time for her to comfort mortals. She was mortal. And inside the cave, she would take her godhood back.

She filled her lungs with cold air and felt it rush into her blood. Her heart pumped. Her muscles wound tight.

I am the goddess of battle.

*   *   *

Cassandra squared her shoulders and followed Athena into the cave. As the shadow fell over her head, she knew how it must feel to be a clown loading into a car. Any minute now, she’d run into Athena’s back, and then Achilles into hers, and so on and so forth until they were all swearing and squirming in the dark, wedged into a twelve-foot-deep hole with no back exit.

But that didn’t happen. They walked and kept walking, and Cassandra couldn’t tell when the cave stopped being the cave in the state park and started being part of Olympus, but it did. She breathed deep, expecting to smell salt and wet rock, but the air was cool and scented softly with sweet herbs. She could see, too, and not because her eyes had adjusted. Eyes didn’t adjust to the total dark of a cave. But as they went farther she could see more and more.

Walls shifted gradually from jagged stone to smooth, and then from stone to white marble. The ground beneath her feet became an actual floor, and it was fire-warmed and comfortable.

Of course it was. It was the home of the gods.

“Does the old Trojan princess inside you want to fall to her knees and tremble?” Achilles whispered.

“Not one bit,” she said back.

“Here. Up this way.” Athena turned up a short flight of stone steps. At the top they opened on a small room, the walls covered in relief sculpture depicting gods in flight and in ecstasy, slaying beasts and creating them, storms and victories. Cassandra thought she recognized Hercules and the Hydra. The room was a tapestry of greatest hits.

Athena looked around, and then turned to face them.

“Tell me you know where we are,” Cassandra said.

“Of course I do.” Athena’s voice left no echo, despite standing in a circle of enclosed rock. She sounded sure, but the way she looked around searching the walls seemed confused. Or maybe she was just admiring the sculpture.

Hermes turned in a small circle.

“It’s weird, being back,” he said.

“It’s weird, period,” said Andie. The spear shook in her hand. “Where do we go now? Back the way we came?”

“No. Not the way we came. Through the door.”

“What door?” Andie asked. There wasn’t any door. Not until Athena turned and pointed to the open passageway.

“There are doors everywhere,” Athena said. “So be on guard. They’ll send things for us, through the walls. Pick us off, one by one.”

“How do you know?” Andie asked.

“Because it’s what she would do herself,” Odysseus replied. “We should get moving. They already know we’re here.”

“Of course we do.”

Aphrodite’s bright blue dress fluttered in the open doorway. Her arms braced against either side, and her face emerged from shadow like a cracked porcelain doll, white and painted, framed with hair so golden it seemed artificial.

“Aphrodite,” Cassandra growled. Aidan’s murderer. Rage seared down to her toes and fingertips. Good. She wanted Aphrodite to be first.

Cassandra ran too fast for Athena to stop her into the hallway as Aphrodite giggled and fled. Her hands were on fire. Her feet pounded so hard it felt like she could crack the marble floor.

Athena shouted, and ordered Hermes and the others to stay behind. But Athena couldn’t stop her. Not this time. The heat in her hands would flow over Aphrodite’s face. Those wicked blue eyes would fill with blood. The golden hair would melt off her skull.

Cassandra turned a corner. The hall was empty. No scrap of blue dress to follow and no mocking laughter to track. She slowed, listened for footsteps, and heard nothing.

“Don’t run off like that.” Athena stood beside her and looked for signs of the other goddess. “Follow orders.”

“Where the hell is she?” Cassandra shouted. “Where did she go?”

“Where she went isn’t the problem,” Athena said, and ran her hands over the walls of their small stone chamber. “The problem is, where did we go?”

“What?” Cassandra asked. Pissed off as she was, she hadn’t noticed at first that the hallway they’d run down was gone. Shut. Disappeared.