Mere seconds after he’d sprinted off, Hermes returned through the mists of Tartarus with Persephone, Demeter, and Hestia in tow.
Selene looked beyond them, searching desperately. “Where’s the Smith?”
“Patience,” her brother chided.
She felt Hephaestus come before she saw him step from the mist. She was there to meet him when he emerged, tall and glorious and alive, walking with no hint of a limp. He carried her golden javelin in his fist.
She couldn’t resist clasping him in her arms for just an instant, the strong planes of his chest hard against her, the muscles of his back rippling beneath her hands. His breathing quickened.
“You came.” His voice was the one unchanged part of him. It still rumbled deep enough to send a low thrum through his chest and into hers.
“Of course.” She pushed away, unable to say more. Not here, among the shadows and dread. She simply handed her friend his hammer. “Philippe asked me to make sure you had this.”
Hephaestus looked down at his familiar weapon, and something of Flint passed across his face. Not the bitter, angry man who’d turned away from the world, but the doting stepfather who had found room in his heart for his wife’s bastard.
Hera—no longer the dowdy Aunt June—stood beside her son. A sheen of sweat coated her white arms; her inky hair hung lank around her regal face. “Please,” she begged Selene. Her wide eyes were shadowed with unspeakable horrors. “Get us out of here.”
“We’re going.” Selene nodded. “Before the giants sniff us out.”
As if in response, a monster bugled from somewhere in the distance. Selene loosed her golden arrow, aiming into the darkness and trusting the supernatural weapon to find its mark. The bugling cut off an instant later. “That’s one down, but there’ll be more,” she said, reaching for her quiver. “And I’ve only got one more hawk-feather arrow. So unless the giants are susceptible to plague …” Her fingertips brushed the fletching of one of her twin’s silver arrows. To her surprise, music floated from the quiver, so sweet and lovely it could only be a tune composed by Apollo himself.
“They’re not all plague arrows,” Hephaestus said. “I made different arrows for Apollo’s different attributes. Here in Tartarus, the shafts have their power back. That one sings.”
Selene scowled. “Awesome. That’s not going to be much help defeating a horde of giants. We need to leave. Right now.”
Athena gave a solemn nod of assent. She untied the rope from around her waist and handed the dangling end to Demeter. “Climb. As fast as you can. I won’t be able to hold off Typhoeus forever.” She walked to the edge of the swirling dark and lifted her spear above her shield.
“What the hell are you doing?” Selene demanded.
“Calling Typhoeus and the other giants to me. I will fight them while you escape.”
“That’s your wise plan? You won’t survive. Not alone.”
Athena just lifted her chin a little higher—but she didn’t disagree.
Demeter, still standing with the rope in one hand, gave a mournful sigh. “She’s sacrificing herself.”
“Not on my watch,” Selene insisted angrily. “You’re not Mary or Jesus or some other Christian martyr, Athena. You’re the Destroyer of Giants, not their prey.”
Athena rounded on her. “Do you have a better idea?”
Selene didn’t. But she wasn’t about to admit that. “We need to get up there fast. Before the Storm Giant even knows we’re coming.”
“Then we fly,” Hermes offered.
Every god turned to stare at the Trickster.
“We don’t do anything,” Selene snarled. “I told you—you don’t get to come.”
Persephone stepped forward and slapped Hermes hard across the face. “That’s for my husband. You still helped Father, even after you knew what he’d done.”
Aphrodite charged forward next, ready to rip Hermes to shreds for what had happened to her lover Mars. Hermes didn’t flinch, didn’t try to defend himself. Once again, it was Athena who stepped in front. She looked at Aphrodite, then Selene.
“Are you without blame? What did you do when our kin were pulled into Tartarus?” She slammed a fist against her own chest, turning the accusation on herself. “What did I do? Nothing. June and Philippe tried to save Flint—June lost her freedom and Philippe nearly lost his life in the process.” Hephaestus groaned at the news, his knuckles white on the haft of his hammer.
“Only one other dared try to help,” Athena went on. “Hermes. The Messenger could’ve flown away. He could’ve escaped the maelstrom. Instead, he flew down to save Hephaestus and got sucked into Tartarus in the process. He was willing to take that risk. We were not.”
This time, when Athena placed a hand on her younger brother’s shoulder, no one protested.
“Your cap works?” she asked solemnly.
“Yes, but it’s not much good when Typhoeus guards the way out.”
“I’ll take care of the Storm Giant,” Selene interjected, sure now of her plan. She looked to Hermes. “As long as I can get up there.”
Hermes opened his arms. He didn’t smile or tease. With his eyes alone, he asked to be trusted.
I don’t trust him, Selene decided. But I trust Athena.
Another bellow from the fog decided her. Better they face one giant in the air than a thousand on the ground. She stepped into Hermes’ embrace. He wrapped one supernaturally strong arm around his sister’s waist.
Athena lashed the extra flashlight to the top of Hermes’ cap.
A thousand heavy footsteps drummed behind them—another thousand drummed in front.
Persephone whimpered, clutching her mother’s arm.
Athena raised her spear and shield, turning in every direction to seek her enemies. Selene hesitated, unwilling to leave her family to face their ancient nemeses without her bow to guard them.
“If you’re going, go now!” Athena shouted to her. “I’ll climb first, so if you can’t stop Typhoeus, I’ll be the first one it attacks. At least I’ll stop it from getting to anyone else.”
Selene knew that even Athena wouldn’t survive such a battle. They might have changed the plan, but the outcome would be the same.
Hephaestus stepped forward. “I’ll go up last to hold off the other giants from below. You just open the way.”
Athena gave him a grim nod, then grabbed hold of the rope and began to climb. The others started up after her.
Hephaestus stayed at the base, the golden javelin now a long whip in one hand, his hammer ready in the other. Already, the source of the first hundred footsteps emerged from the mist: a hekatonkheir—a Hundred-Handed One with as many legs to match. Persephone screeched and climbed faster. Hephaestus’s hammer flashed forward, knocking the monster’s head from its body in a single blow.
Another hekatonkheir emerged to take its place. The Smith slung the end of the whip around its throat, then caved in its lungs with his hammer.
A third giant strode from the darkness.
“That one’s mine!” Selene cried out.
“Artemis,” Hermes protested.
But Selene ignored him, quickly lashing another of Athena’s ropes to her last hawk-fletched golden arrow and shooting it toward the new giant. The shaft flew around the monster in a swift circle, binding all hundred arms tight against its body. Selene held the tail of the rope tight in both hands.
“Fly!” she shouted to her younger brother.
Hermes shot through storm and cloud with a speed that sucked the air from her chest.
The weight of the giant on the end of her rope only slowed their flight for an instant. Selene felt the line slipping from her grip but wrapped it around her wrists and held on with a strength she hadn’t possessed in over a thousand years.
Hermes rocketed upward with a new burst of speed. Selene couldn’t see her captive through the clouds below them, only the rope hanging taut like a fishing line hooked on a whale. Her joints popped, her muscles tore, and she screamed aloud with the strain of holding the massive creature aloft.
Hermes slowed only when the mists above them began to coil into the shape of a monster overhead. “I’ve gotten this far before,” he explained. “But any higher and the serpent’s winds would tear me limb from limb with the force of a hundred hurricanes. Typhoeus is made of storm clouds—your arrows will pass right through it.”
“That’s why we have to distract it,” Selene panted. “Not destroy it.”
She began to swing the rope back and forth. Hermes bent to help her. Wider and wider they swung, until the Hundred-Handed One began to bellow with fear and rage, its voice undulating in time to its oscillations.
Typhoeus’s head loomed before them, a gaping maw of thunderheads with fangs of lightning and a tongue of ash.
“Now!” Selene shouted as the hekatonkheir reached the apex of its swing.
They let go, flinging the creature upward like a bowling ball aimed at the sky. It sailed into view above the clouds. Fifty of its arms had slipped from their bindings, flailing so fast Selene wondered if it would take flight like a helicopter and ruin her plan.
Typhoeus wasn’t about to let that happen. The hekatonkheires had been its first prisoners. It would never allow one to escape. Its cry was thunder’s drum, lightning’s cymbal, and a hurricane’s reedy roar. It reached out with countless cloud-snake fingers and wrapped them around each of the hekatonkheir’s hundred arms, plucking them off like the petals of a daisy.
Hermes shot past Typhoeus’s thick body as it writhed and swirled around its prey. Selene could see a spot of light above them now, no bigger than a candle flame, but growing wider and bluer by the second. She looked across to the rope—Athena and the others were climbing with a speed only gods could muster. They were almost to the top.
Selene didn’t bother telling Hermes to hurry. His own instinct for self-preservation sent him hurtling upward.
She risked a glance below. Typhoeus’s fiery, unblinking eyes stared back from less than a hundred yards away. It saw them. It was coming.
If Hermes drops me, he can go faster, she realized. She grabbed onto his arm where it clasped her waist. But if he tries it, I’m going to take his damn arm with me.
But Hermes didn’t let go. He only clutched her tighter, bared his teeth, and closed his eyes, as if to send all his force of will into his cap. The wings droned like a biplane’s propeller, the feathers a shining blur.
The fiery eyes grew larger. Larger. Lightning spit from its mouth like a serpent’s tongue.
They weren’t going to make it.
“We can’t stop Typhoeus,” Hermes gasped, his voice barely audible above the rush of the wind. “I’m sorry.”
He was right. The only thing that could clear away such storm clouds was the will of Zeus, the Sky God. Or the warming rays of the Sun itself. And there was no Sun in Tartarus.
Then Hephaestus’s words came back to her: Different arrows for Apollo’s different attributes.
She thrust a hand into her quiver, scrabbling at her twin’s silver arrows. One turned her stomach. The next played a barely audible hymn. The third burned her skin. She snatched it up by its crow-feather fletching and nocked the white-hot shaft to her string.
Apollo, Bright One, God of the Sun, she prayed. Guide my arrow.
The shaft flew like a shooting star into the swirling darkness of Typhoeus’s head, leaving a brilliant streak of white behind it. The arrow didn’t lodge in the giant’s body—it exploded. The burst of light and heat tore through the clouds, burning away the storm. Typhoeus’s roar became a whimper. Its limbs thinned, dissipated, evaporated.
Hermes shot into a brilliant blue sky.
Beneath them, what was left of the mighty giant spun away from the cleft and disappeared into the darkness of Tartarus.
The two Athanatoi fell from the air, slammed into the barley field, and rolled apart.
Selene granted herself three panting breaths to stare at the cloudless blue before she sat up and looked for Theo.
He was gone.
The portal still hovered in the air—no wider than a doorframe. She looked through, desperate to find him.
What she saw instead was a battle.
An army had invaded Manhattan.