Page 40

Gray stone flesh seeping with hot-red blood falls to the sun-baked sand with a sizzle as vicious clouds roll overhead. Gladiators roar and rage, lashing at the broken mountain that is the God of War and Courage , now crumpled in the center of the amphitheatre.

Gods stand in their seats, human servants hovering close. I’ve been here long enough now to see the difference. Even the lesser Gods possess a glow about them that the broken souls of the humans in Olympus do not carry.

At the table I share with the worst of the Gods and Goddesses, bile rises at the unrestrained excitement that burns bright in each of their expressions.

Even Hera wears a look of delight as she holds her wine, watching her son on his knees being beat by the human souls turned trained gladiators.

Beside Hera, Hercules’ blue eyes are bright with delight.

The kind of delight that only one whose soul has been woven with threads of malice can wear while watching such a scene.

It is as though they hunger for the torment of the God they should love.

Hunger for the destruction of all that he is.

A grunt of raw agony echoes up from the arena.

I look back to find Ares has spilled forward to hold himself up with his hands planted in the sand.

Blood rains from the weapons that land again and again over the dark stone of his back.

The drops sizzling as they fall to the earth, as though acid leaks from the very blood he bleeds.

It goes on for so long that even the stone of his Gods’ flesh begins to tear open over his back. Blood-soaked obsidian bone protrudes from split flesh and muscle, and still, Ares does not stand. He does not fight.

His clawed hands are fisted in the sand and his thick thighs, now gaping with wounds, quiver as though he is moments away from complete collapse.

A skip in my heart is the match that ignites a true fear inside my heart that he may very well be killed today. But can a God be killed?

I thought it impossible, thought the consequences too great. Now…

“I don’t think he is going to succumb to the bloodlust today, Father.” My head snaps around to see a woman I’ve not yet seen. She’s beautiful, as all Gods are, but there is something about her that feels off. Something other lurking behind her dark brown eyes.

“Something is missing. The place where the soul should lay is empty, barren.”

I flinch at the voice of three that are not of me, and the new arrival smirks as though delighted by my discomfort, those oddly dim brown eyes sparking with interest that quickly dulls again.

“Athena.” Zeus pushes back from the table and pats his knee with one big hand, adorned in rings of gold that glitter with diamonds.

A slither of sick slides through me when Athena pushes a mass of dark curls over her shoulder to plop down on Zeus’ knee. My eyes shoot to Hera. Her gaze forced toward the arena as though ambivalent to the display of—well, I’m not sure what is being displayed.

I’ve come to realize that most of what I know about the Gods is a lie that is twisted around the truth.

Sure, I know Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare.

She is beloved among mythology, but I’ve learned enough to know that the most loved are the truly evil.

The truth humanity knows today of the Gods is steeped in lies disguised to demand the affections of the foolish.

Athena shimmies on Zeus’ knee, her smile dark and twisted with depravity. There’s no other word for it. Everything in her, of her, is ugly.

Zeus’s big hand falls on her bare thigh with a slap that makes both me and Leuce flinch.

Unlike everyone else at the table, heck, unlike everyone else in the amphitheatre, Athena is dressed in a short dress of armour.

Splits in the armor of the skirt display a pair of white panties that has a sickening discomfort warring inside me to mingle with the fear for Ares.

In front of everyone, Zeus lets his big hand slide too far up her thigh to be appropriate.

Leuce leans close to whisper, “Fucking disgusting.”

“I agree,” Hydra says in my mind. She is always close, always listening and watching.

Hera’s jaw tightens and Hercules’ blue eyes watch the path his father’s hand takes on Athena’s thigh with a hunger that can’t be mistaken as anything but vile.

Athena leans her back into Zeus’ chest, pushing her own breast, plated in armor, out toward the table. Her eyes dance for a moment on Hera, as though trying to taunt her wrath, before she sighs. “You don’t need him. I can start the wars for you, father.”

“When did you return?” Zeus ignores her words to ask his own question.

“Just now. I came right to you.” She looses a hideous little giggle when Zeus lets out a pleased grunt, squeezing her thigh. “The Middle East is burning with wars. The devastation will spread, slowly but surely to the West who can’t leave well enough alone.”

“You are a brilliant little war strategist, my love,” Zeus praises.

“That is why you don’t need him.”

“You may be able to start the wars, but Ares is war. He is the bloodlust that stains the earth. He is the weapon to end it all. The weapon we must use if we wish to begin again, to show ourselves in all the power of ancient times, to command the worship we are due,” Zeus says loud enough for all the table to hear. “He will submit.”

Athena harrumphs, and Zeus’ hand slides higher. So high…

I can’t watch any more. It’s the worst kind of wrong.

Everything here in Olympus is wrong.

And the wrongness is leaching into the societies of man. The sins of the Gods overwhelming the minds of humanity.

Mom always preached about the evil of the world showing itself for all that it was. That the wrong would become right and right would become wrong. That in the end it would all be revealed.

I think we’re close to that revelation now.

Close to understanding that that which cloaks itself in light is truly the darkest of dark.

And sometimes within the dark, in the silence of the shadows, is where the good hides.

Where good bides its time and builds its strength for a revelation that will win the final war.

In the arena below, Ares falls from his hands to his elbows. My heart falls with him into the deepest pit of my belly.

“If you wish to break him, you must show him that there is something worth breathing for.” Hera’s smooth voice is filled with shards of ice.

Her cold eyes cut to me, and Zeus makes a noise in the back of his throat.

“Run!” Hydra’s voice is loud in my mind. So loud, I hardly hear the snap of gun metal silver wings that burst from Athena’s back as she stands.

I don’t take more than two steps before Athena snatches me into the air with hands that bite into my flesh like the taloned claws of a bird of prey.

Below, I see Leuce fighting the guards that have descended on her.

She slices the throat of one with a steak knife before burying the blade into the chest of another. And then another is on her.

My eyes snap up to Hydra when she roars a roar of rage and fear. Around the perch she’s made her own each night while we dine is an orb of crackling electricity.

“Don’t fight it!” I scream to her, begging her not to die to save me. “Please.”

Hydra stops her frantic movements, and through the crackling glow of electrified lightning, I see the flash of her eyes.

My soul aches and fear burns like acid inside my veins as Leuce is beaten and restrained.

Vicious words spill from her lips, the threats deadly even as Zeus orders for her to be taken away.

Taken away to where? What is happening?

Athena cackles diabolically as she flies us high into the angry sky over the bloody arena. Her taloned fingers bite into my flesh as she growls low in my ear, “Scream.”

I shake my head, but I’m too afraid to speak. If she drops me from this height…

My gaze falls on the human man who is looking up at me from where he’s plastered himself against the wall of the amphitheatre. His face is an open book of dread as he watches me from far below, held by the diabolical creature that is Athena.

“Scream!” she yells over the wind that now whips at us.

“Why?”

“Because when he hears his little pet scream, he won’t be able to fight the bloodlust.”

“What bloodlust?”

“The bloodlust that will end it all.”

I shake my head, refusing even if it means— God, Hades, I love you.

I send the prayer into the ether of time and space, believing with all of me that it will find him. That he will hear it. That he will hear my love and the apology in it.

Tears of grief and fear prick my eyes, and Athena laughs over my shoulder. And then she lets me go.

Even as I promised myself I wouldn’t, I scream.