Chapter 11

 

“Are you feeling any better?” I asked Lissa the next morning, as I sank into a chair at the kitchen table with my second cup of coffee. I had needed the first cup just to render me coherent enough to speak.

Staring gloomily down at a bowl of oatmeal dotted with fruit—I recognized Kimmy’s touch there—Lissa shook her head. “No. But I didn’t expect to. Not this soon.”

Last night, she had explained to us that the effect almost certainly wasn’t permanent. It was a severe injury, the psychic equivalent of a broken bone, but not a permanent one. Even though that had been better news than I had feared, I had still held out a tiny bit of hope that she would wake up and discover the effect had been more temporary than she thought.

I should have known better than to hope for any good news by now.

“How long do you think it will be?” I asked, before I guzzled half the mug of coffee in one go.

Lissa thought for a moment. Her eyes defocused as she looked inward. “Most likely a couple of weeks. Maybe more, but probably not less.”

Which wouldn’t help us against Persephone’s temple. A couple of weeks from now, this conflict would be over and done with, one way or the other.

I tried to turn away before she could see my thoughts on my face, but I was too late. Her face fell, and she started gnawing on her lip. Next to her, Kimmy reached out and squeezed her hand, glaring at me as if I had voiced the thought aloud.

“This isn’t your fault,” I assured her. “We all agreed to take the risk. We knew it might not work out. We’re just happy you’re alive.”

Lissa stirred the oatmeal, but didn’t take a bite. “What are we going to do next?”

The table fell silent at the question. None of us wanted to say out loud what we were all thinking—that we had no idea what to do, and worse, that we might not have any options left. Not anything that would let Hades keep the city, at any rate.

Ginevra, carrying a mug full of what I suspected was Ciara’s calming tea, pulled up a chair at the head of the table. If she was feeling as discouraged as the rest of us, she didn’t show it. Her back was so straight it made me wonder—not for the first time—if she was secretly a robot underneath her human skin. But although she was doing her best to look like her usual self, I hadn’t missed the lingering stiffness in her movements as she sat down.

“I think we’ve exhausted our options when it comes to diplomacy,” said Ginevra.

“That’s an understatement,” I muttered into my mug.

Ginevra prudently ignored me. “Ciara, do you see any other diplomatic angles we could try?”

Ciara was at the sink, scrubbing the dishes—because when your temple could be obliterated at any moment by someone who was supposed to be an ally, keeping the dishes clean is a top priority. She paused to shake her head. “The temple leadership is firmly against us. Judging by last night, so is the goddess herself. Even if we still have allies inside the temple, they won’t be willing to speak out—and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to do us any good. A few scattered rebels won’t have any more power over the temple than I do. And that’s if we could even find them.”

Ginevra nodded grimly, like she had expected that answer. “Then it’s time to fight.”

I rubbed my ear. “I’m sorry, my hearing must be going. I could have sworn you suggested fighting Persephone’s temple, and without prefacing it with, ‘Since we’re all in the mood to get ourselves killed…’” I swept my arm from one side of the room to the other, nearly knocking over my mug in the process. “This is our entire army. This, right here. Do you remember what we saw at Persephone’s temple? That’s what we’re up against. You see any problem with the odds there?”

Ginevra fixed me with the kind of look I used to get as a child when I tried to butt my way into an adult conversation. “I didn’t say we would be fighting alone. Hades does still have allies. Mal told me what you said about the risks, Ciara, but at this point, the greater risk is doing nothing.”

“You’re right,” said Ciara. “It’s time. At this point, you don’t have anything to lose.”

“That settles it,” said Ginevra. “Mal, go to Hades’s minor allies. Anyone who has a presence in the city, no matter how small. See if you can persuade any of them to join us in the fight against Persephone.”

“Me? You’re sending me on this mission? Aside from the fact that putting me in a situation where I have to use my words is generally a bad idea, I wouldn’t even know where to find half their temples. It’s not like I’ve had that many occasions to pay them a visit. How often do we run into a situation where some low-rent god of flowers or ceramics has any meaningful help to offer?”

Ciara shut off the faucet and turned to face us, her hands still dripping with suds. “I know where to find them.”

I looked up at her in surprise. So did Ginevra.

Ciara shrugged and gave a self-effacing smile. “When I snuck into the temple to rescue Ginevra, I took the time to find and memorize the locations of their temples. I had a suspicion we might find ourselves in this position.”

Ginevra nodded briskly. “Good. Ciara, you aren’t a Marked of Hades, so I can’t order you. But if you’re willing—”

“I’ll go with Mal,” said Ciara.

Ginevra swept her gaze over Lissa, Alex, Ravi, and Kimmy—and Imogen, who was sitting on the couch with her head bent over one of Bastian’s notebooks as she pretended not to listen to the conversation. “The rest of you, stay here inside the wards. I know it’s not ideal, especially since the Guardians are currently unable to use magic. But Persephone’s temple hasn’t broken through our wards yet, which indicates that they need considerable time and effort to do so. Each of you will choose a suitable weapon from the training room. Ravi will lead you in basic combat drills. Try not to cut off any body parts.”

I expected Ravi to break into a grin at the fact that Ginevra was trusting him with this responsibility. Instead, he only nodded, his face more serious than I had ever seen him. “We’ve got this.”

“I’ll see if Imogen can finally manage to explain Bastian’s magic to me,” said Kimmy. “That should help us if Persephone’s temple attacks while Mal and Ciara are gone.”

I frowned at Ginevra. “What about you? No offense to Ravi, but wouldn’t they all have a better chance if you stayed here to protect them?”

“I’m sure they would,” said Ginevra. “But I can’t stay. I have an appointment at The Venus Flytrap.”

I stared. “Ishtar’s temple? Aren’t things bad enough without getting her attention?”

Ishtar and her allies had control of a couple of blocks in the seedier part of the Bronx. Her territory was the one part of the city Hades didn’t own. But those scant blocks had never been enough for her. She had wanted the city since long before Hades and Persephone had claimed it. And she still intended to take it for herself one day.

Which, strangely enough, made her into an almost-ally a lot of the time. We both wanted to keep the rest of the gods out of the city, which meant our interests often aligned. But that didn’t mean I would ever turn my back on a Marked of Ishtar. I had made that mistake once, and nearly died for it. In fact, technically speaking, we wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with if not for Ishtar, seeing as she had been the one to free Melinoë from her prison and bring her to the city in order to destabilize it.

“I know,” Ginevra said to me. “But I’m hoping they would rather keep the city in the hands of the devil they know. Especially if I’m willing to make certain concessions in order for that to happen.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of concessions?”

Ginevra hesitated just long enough to tell me I would like what she had to say even less than I expected. “The Bronx.”

I choked on air. “That’s a big chunk of Hades’s territory to hand over. Wouldn’t you need him to sign off on that?”

“He already has,” said Ginevra. “After the events of last night, he no longer believes the alliance—or his bond with Persephone—can be salvaged. It’s better to lose part of the city than the whole thing.”

It wasn’t my place to argue with Hades. When it came down to it, what he did with his territory was his own choice. And I knew as well as he did that losing the city was a real possibility. Even a deal with Ishtar was preferable to that.

I couldn’t bring myself to voice my approval. But I didn’t argue as I stood up and pulled on my coat.

A few minutes later, the front door spat me in Ciara back out into the freezing air, and we were on our way to the first temple on our list.

We had decided to start with Tridamos, because of how well his people had proved themselves in the battle with Humanity Ascendant. Back before the pantheons had split up, he had been a small-time god of bovine fertility. These days, his sphere of influence had expanded to cover excess growth of all kinds. Like all pf Hades’s minor allies, he only had a couple of Marked and Guardians to his name. Not many gods signed up to join Hades’s alliance if they had better options available to them. Hades had never been the most popular of the gods. It probably had something to do with the whole underworld thing—plus, although I didn’t know him as intimately as Lissa did, I got the feeling he had never exactly gone out of his way to make himself liked.

The upshot was, anyone who signed on with Hades did it because they were too weak for anything else, and wanted to bide their time and build up their strength until they could move on to greener pastures. Which didn’t bode well for our coming battle against Persephone. But Tridamos’s Marked and Guardians had made a real difference against Humanity Ascendant. I was hoping they could do the same here.

And either way, right now we would take anything we could get.

His temple was on the fifth floor of a sleek modern office building in Midtown. The small sign that greeted us as we emerged from the stairwell said Manhattan Cancer Research Center.

I looked from the sign to Ciara with a frown. “Are you sure this is it?”

“Cancer,” Ciara answered, tapping the relevant word on the sign. “Excess growth, remember?”

I raised an eyebrow. “He’s come a long way from encouraging cows to make babies.”

“Not many cows in the city,” Ciara pointed out.

I pushed open the door. The cramped entrance barely had room for the scuffed and dinged wooden reception desk, which looked like it had been rescued from a yard sale—or, more likely, the side of the road. I was guessing funding was in short supply at the Manhattan Cancer Research Center. There was no one sitting at the desk, only a bell with a handwritten note that said RING FOR SERVICE.

As Ciara walked in behind me, I rang the bell. It dinged softly. No one appeared.

I took a seat behind the desk. Ignoring Ciara’s look, I swiveled back and forth in the seat, and drummed my fingers on the wood. I rang the bell again, then put my hands behind my head and swung my feet up onto the desk.

Ciara glanced over her shoulder at the door we had come through. “Mal, stop it. This isn’t the time.”

“What? If they don’t want my feet on their desk, maybe they shouldn’t make us wait so long. I know they’re understaffed, but if they aren’t going to answer the bell, why even have it?” I heard the harsh note in my voice, and tried to force down my annoyance. I knew perfectly well that what I was feeling wasn’t about Tridamos, and it wasn’t about Ciara.

“I don’t care what you do with your feet. But we can’t afford to waste time playing around.” Ciara glanced behind her at the door. “We didn’t see any Marked of Persephone outside. We should have. That could mean they aren’t watching the temple—but it could also mean they were hiding too well for us to see. We don’t want to take the chance of hanging around here any longer than necessary.”

She was right. With a sigh, I swung my feet down. “I guess breaking and entering is on the agenda for today.” I eyed the inner door. “Sure hope they don’t have any kind of magical security on this thing. You don’t think this will give me cancer if I touch it, do you?”

“It might give a civilian cancer. I’ve never heard of a case among the Marked. But why not try the simpler solution first?” Ciara pushed past me and tried the doorknob. The door swung open easily.

Ciara walked through the door, but I hung back. “I don’t like this,” I muttered. “It should have been locked. Who leaves their temple door unprotected?”

“Mal?” Ciara’s voice shook.

I rushed through after Ciara. The door led onto a narrow hallway, painted a dull gray. I could feel the faint hum of divine power in the air, but otherwise, it could have been any small and dismal office space, right up to the faded motivational posters on the wall.

Although I doubted most motivational posters came dotted with blood.

I followed the trail of droplets down to the floor. They ended in a smear that ran a good twenty feet along the tile before disappearing behind one of the wooden doors.

I cursed under my breath and started running.

In the center of the room, a long work table—with a sink to one end of the flat white surface—lay on its side, shoved up against one wall. I was guessing it had once been built into the floor, judging by the cracked and broken tiles in the center of the room, and the pipe in the floor where the sink had been that was lazily spurting water. There was just enough water on the floor to make my shoes squeak as I circled the room, but not enough to risk flooding the temple, or even to wash away the blood on the floor.

But while there was enough blood to fill the air with its sharp tang, I didn’t see any sign of the person, or people, it had come from. I checked every corner—it didn’t take long—but the room was empty.

With Ciara close behind, I threw open the doors that lined the hallway. Some rooms sat untouched. Others had been ransacked, with desks and shelves on their sides and broken glass littering the floor. Two more were smeared with red the way the first had been. But the temple was silent. No matter how many times I called out, no one answered.

“We’re too late.” I kicked a metal chair hard enough to send it flying into the wall. It left a fist-sized dent before it fell with a clang.

The worst part was, I knew we hadn’t missed Persephone’s Marked by all that much. The blood hadn’t even dried yet. Just a few minutes earlier, and maybe we could have saved them.

In my mind’s eye, I saw myself rushing toward Hades’s temple. I saw the ground yawning under my feet as the temple collapsed below me.

Too late. Again.

“I guess Persephone got tired of waiting for us to show up,” Ciara said heavily. “Or else she didn’t want to take any chances.”

I turned in a slow circle, taking in the Jackson Pollock slaughterhouse walls. Not that I hadn’t gotten a good enough eyeful the first time around. But I felt like there had to be something I was missing, something I hadn’t seen. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the goddess Hades had worked alongside for longer than I been with the temple. Was it?

“This isn’t the Persephone I know,” I said aloud. “It’s not like I’m new to this game. I know how ruthless the gods can be. But Persephone? With the flowers and the healing and…” And the rage that had thrown New York into a bitter winter in the middle of July. I couldn’t forget that part.

“That goddess hasn’t existed in a long time.” Ciara sounded faintly impatient, like I should have known this already. “This is what I meant when I told you she had changed.”

She was right. I couldn’t say I hadn’t been warned. Ciara had told me, again and again, that the merge had made Persephone into a different goddess. She had even almost left the temple over it. And after she had decided to stay, she had briefly tried to close me out of her life, afraid she would find herself changing along with the temple. So I didn’t have the right to stand here and be shocked. If anything, I should be grateful Ciara was still on our side.

But looking at the bloodstained walls, I wasn’t finding a whole lot to be grateful for.

I took another, slower circuit through the temple, this time searching only for survivors. I knew in my heart when I would find, but I wasn’t willing to give up just yet. When Hades’s temple had been destroyed, I had at least been able to pull Lissa from the wreckage. If I searched long enough, and carefully enough, maybe I could save one person. Just one.

At the end of my slow hopeless search, I found a door I had missed the first time around. It looked like a supply closet, with a narrow door and an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, but it was the only door in the whole temple that didn’t open when I turned the knob. I held my breath as I pulled the hairpin off my belt and jiggled it in the lock until it clicked open.

I hesitated before stepping through, mindful of the possibility of the magical booby-traps I had mentioned to Ciara earlier. But nothing zapped me as I gingerly poked a toe across the threshold.

The rest of the Manhattan Cancer Research Center had been exactly what it said on the tin, full of cramped rooms and peeling paint and secondhand equipment ready and waiting for underpaid scientists to do sciencey things—at least until Persephone’s hit squad had swept through. This room revealed the place for what it truly was. The room was lit by two candles on the central stone altar, both burned nearly to nubs. A tile mosaic of a running herd of cows covered all four walls, and if I looked at it out of the corner of my eye in the flickering light, I could have sworn I saw them moving. The sense of divine power was stronger in here, not that I needed that feeling to tell me I had found the heart of the temple.

The room was silent, but I thought about the locked door, and held on to the hope that there were survivors hiding in here. Until I completed my slow circle around the altar and saw that this room was as deserted as all the rest.

“Who locked the door?” I asked aloud. My voice echoed strangely off the tile wall.

“What do you mean?” Ciara stepped into the room behind me.

I turned to her, aware that I was pouting, like a child protesting that it just wasn’t fair. But even if I put my personal feelings aside, there was still something screwy about this. “There’s no one in here. So who locked the door? Persephone’s Marked, on their way out? Why would they do that? Or are there survivors after all?” I squinted at the mural, as if I thought I might find a Guardian of Tridamos hiding in there among the bulls.

“We’ve searched everywhere.” Ciara’s soft hand on my shoulder felt like a punch. “There’s no one. I’m sorry.”

She thought I was grasping at straws, I could tell. But it had to mean something. There had to be something. “Doesn’t it seem weird to you, though? Why would Persephone’s people go to the trouble of locking the door behind them?”

“Maybe she was hoping whoever came to check the place out wouldn’t bother searching this room—the way we almost didn’t—and the place would burn down.” Ciara crossed the room to blow out the two candles, leaving us in darkness. “Or maybe Tridamos’s Marked had enough warning to lock the door in an attempt to keep the attackers out of the most important room in their temple, but not enough time to throw up any magical protections, or to hide in here themselves. Both of those are more likely than us finding survivors in a place we’ve already searched twice.” Ciara’s hand returned to my shoulder. “It’s time to move on.”

I shook my head. “I’m not giving up.”

“Neither am I.” Ciara’s hand tightened. “Hades has other allies. If there are survivors here, they’ll have to take care of themselves. It’s not our job to save them. It’s our job to save the city from whatever this new version of Persephone will do with it once she has it. The gods can do a lot to the mortals in their territory without revealing their presence; Zeus has proved that. Do we want Persephone blighting the land so nothing grows? Or plaguing the entire city with nightmares every night? Or—”

“I get it, okay?” I shook off Ciara’s hand. But it’s not right, the furious child inside me wailed. I didn’t know whether she was talking about the mysterious—or not-so-mysterious—locked door, or the fact that Persephone had turned on us to begin with.

With one last look at the empty room, I turned and walked out the door. Ciara’s hand on my back offered me a little comfort, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

We went to the temple of Deimos next—god of the dread that came over humans in war, or so one of his creepy Guardians had told me once. He had to be having a field day with what was happening in Hades’s temple right now. His temple was in a squat little brick building at the edge of the city, which the navigation app on Ciara’s phone told us was the office of an organization devoted to studying possibilities for human survival after global thermonuclear war. Again, we didn’t see any of Persephone’s Marked waiting nearby.

When we opened the door, we knew why.

Again, the blood was practically fresh. This time I didn’t waste any time on second and third searches. I was the one to hurry Ciara out of there and on to the next temple, in the hope that maybe, if we moved fast enough, we wouldn’t be too late this time.

Next came the temple of Cocijo, a god of lightning set up at a small weather station. Same thing there. Blood on the floor, but no survivors, and no one left for us to fight.

All day, we traveled back and forth across the city, moving from temple to temple. Every time, it was the same story. After a while, I thought I would start to expect it. But the smell of blood hit me just as hard every time.

All I wanted was one person I could save. All we needed was one advantage over Persephone, something that could give us the slightest bit of an edge. Was that too much to ask?

I could practically hear the gods laughing as I asked my silent question. Of course it was too much to ask. Alliances fracture, partners betray one another, the weaker gods fall to the stronger. That was how it had been since the splitting of the pantheons.

Eventually, we stopped hoping for survivors. Instead we focused on searching for bodies. If one of the temples had managed to take down a Marked of Persephone, I could use my gift to track their movements in the hours before the attack, and maybe that would give us useful information. But Persephone’s Marked had cleaned up after themselves. Not a single body, whether belonging to Persephone’s Marked or those of her enemies, remained in any of the temples.

“Still no bodies,” I said as we left the temple of Tithonus, god of cicadas. “Have we been looking at this wrong? Maybe they’re not dead after all.”

“With all that blood?” Ciara shook her head. “Most likely they didn’t want civilians stumbling on any corpses. Either that, or they preferred not to give you and Ravi a chance to use your gifts.” Ravi’s gift was similar to mine—he could call up a scene from a dead person’s final moments, and bring it to life in the air.

“Or Persephone’s Marked could have taken them prisoner,” I said, aware even as I said it that I was grasping at straws all over again. “You’ve gotten a look inside the temple recently—think there’s a chance we could pull off a rescue?”

Ciara shook her head immediately. “After Ginevra’s escape, they won’t take any chances. But I don’t think it’s likely they’re in the temple to begin with. That many prisoners…” She hesitated. “Even the old Persephone wasn’t as softhearted as she seemed. She wouldn’t have bothered keeping that many alive.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” I tried not to betray my disappointment—not that I was fooling Ciara. “All right, next temple. Where to now?”

Ciara sank down on the bottom step of a building that looked at least a hundred years old. “There aren’t any more.”

I stopped where I was. “What do you mean, there aren’t any more?” Not that it wasn’t obvious. She had said it plainly enough. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Joining up with Hades’s minor allies was our last chance. We couldn’t have been too late to save all of them.

“I’m sorry.” Ciara’s gaze followed an ant lugging a crumb across the sidewalk. She looked like she was about to cry again.

I had to fight the urge to squash the ant under my foot. It wasn’t responsible for any of this. It was just trying to get that crumb home to its anthill. Like the rest of us, all it wanted was to survive. “Where did Persephone’s temple find the time—and the army—to do this? She’s strong, but she’s not that strong, especially after Melinoë’s attack on her temple. And Hades’s allies aren’t that weak. You can’t tell me Persephone wouldn’t have taken losses. How did they just keep going? How did they…” I trailed off as the child inside me ran out of steam. I plunked myself down on the concrete step beside Ciara. I landed directly on a puddle of spilled soda; I could smell its sticky sweetness as it soaked into the seat of my pants. Fucking fantastic. Because why should one thing go my way today?

“Let’s go back to the temple,” said Ciara. “Maybe Ginevra had some good news.”

I answered with a harsh bark of laughter. “Right. Good news about a deal with Ishtar where we hand over a chunk of the city.” But with the way things were going, that would be an honest-to-Hades cause for celebration. And that alone was reason for me to kick the steps so hard as I stood up that a piece of concrete flew off the corner and rolled into the street.

And when we finally trudged back into the temple, silently and with heads lowered, we could already see we wouldn’t get even that much.

Ginevra sat slumped at the table, chin resting on her hands. She slowly raised her head as the door slammed closed behind us, and shook her head before we could ask the question. “Ishtar’s senior Marked wouldn’t even meet with me. Her temple says they’re waiting to see how the conflict progresses.”

I shucked off my coat and threw it onto the couch. “So they can be sure to back a winner,” I said flatly.

“They didn’t put it that way,” said Ginevra, “but yes.”

I stood still for a good ten seconds, taking in what Ginevra had said. Then I turned around and punched the wall beside the door. My fist went straight through the sheetrock, all the way up to my wrist. In front of the altar, Lissa flinched back. Her breath caught.

“Sorry,” I muttered to her. I turned back to Ginevra. “I’m guessing I don’t need to tell you how our day went.”

Ginevra looked between the two of us, taking in our defeated expressions. “They can’t possibly all have chosen to side with Persephone. What did she offer them?”

“The business end of a blade, by the look of it,” I answered. “It didn’t look to me like she gave them a chance to make any choice at all.”

Ginevra’s face drained of color. “All of them?”

I nodded. “Empty. No survivors.”

I gave her time to process that. She didn’t punch any walls—but for a moment, it looked like she was considering it.

I turned to Lissa, and to Ravi, who was on the couch tilting the last of the crumbs from my bag of spicy cheddar potato chips into his mouth. “If anyone else has any ideas, let’s hear them. We’ve tried the good ideas, we’ve tried the bad ones, now let’s move on to the suicidally stupid.”

“Even under those broad parameters,” said Ginevra, “I don’t have anything left. Unless we search farther afield for allies, but that will take time we don’t have, and Hades is low on bargaining chips.”

Lissa shook her head. “That kind of strategizing has always been your area. I just channel Hades’s power, and now I can’t even do that.”

“I’ve got nothing,” Kimmy contributed from the training room.

“No ideas here,” said Ravi glumly through a mouthful of chips.

I turned to Ciara. “How about you? Got any plans for us?”

Ciara let her breath out slowly. “Only the one.”

I sank into a chair. “You said this plan of yours might involve sacrificing all of Hades’s territory.”

“Definitely on a temporary basis,” said Ciara. “And there’s a chance it would be permanent.”

Around the room, we all looked at each other, taking a silent inventory of our situation.

Ginevra broke the silence first, saying what none of the rest of us had the courage to voice. “It’s time. Let’s hear it.”