Mortal Gods

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  For the students of Lyons Township High School in Illinois.

  Because that kid in the back row asked.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Boy howdy, writing this one was tough. And a lot of the first draft created by all that writing was a pile of poo, so first off, thank you to Melissa Frain for once again being editor extraordinaire and slicing out the poo with diplomacy, precision, and an uncanny sense of what the story needed. Also thank you for introducing me to City Bakery hot chocolate. I didn’t believe her when she said I could only have a shot, not a full cup. But as usual she was right. That is not hot chocolate for rookies.

  Adriann Ranta lended her laser focus to this one as well, so thank you, Adriann, for finding those remaining hiccups. Also, she’s just a plain great agent, working on stuff when I don’t even know it, and then dropping in with amazing, unexpected good news.

  A hundred thanks to you both, Mel and Adriann. In addition to being great at your jobs, you’re both just plain great, and I’m so glad to be working with you.

  I don’t know how Alexis Saarela manages to keep everyone’s publicity schedules straight but she is always ten steps ahead with everything covered. The best. Publicist. Ever. And a fellow mini donut enthusiast. Thank you, Alexis.

  Thank you to Kathleen Doherty, art director Seth Lerner, and the entire team at Tor Teen, who do amazing things for books every single day. How lucky I am that a few of those books are ones I wrote. A shout-out to librarians, teachers, and bloggers, who make the world better by spreading the love of reading. Getting to know so many of you is the best perk of this gig.

  Thanks to my parents for thinking everything I write is incredible, even before they read it, and for professing to people that I am the next Hemingway. I’m not. I’m way more macho. But thanks, folks. It’s a nice sentiment, and I appreciate it.

  Susan Murray, Missy Goldsmith, you know what’s up. Ryan VanderVenter, you’re a big dumb idiot. Kidding. Just checking to see if you read these acknowledgments.

  And always last but never least, to Dylan Zoerb, for luck.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraphs

  Prologue: Blood and Ivory

  1. Sand Through Her Fingers

  2. Sun and Stone

  3. Worlds

  4. In the Caverns of the Earth

  5. Gods Flung to the Far Corners

  6. Civilian Relations

  7. Running Red

  8. Stranger Forests

  9. The Dogs of War

  10. Out of the Past

  11. The Wounded and the Dying

  12. Murderous Hands

  13. Killer of Men

  14. Weapons

  15. Homecoming

  16. The Days of Heroes

  17. Never Look a Gift Wolf in the Mouth

  18. Exhibition

  19. Moirae in the Mountain

  20. Blood and Smoke

  21. Plans

  22. The Space that Gods Inhabit

  23. Trip to the Underworld

  24. Corpse Royalty

  25. All the Hours that Remain

  26. In Wait

  27. Arming

  28. Olympus

  29. Fataliste

  Epilogue

  Tor Books by Kendare Blake

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ARISTEIA: From the Greek word for excellence. A moment in epic poetry when a hero is untouchable, in which they display their utmost skill and valor; when they are almost a god.

  Before the walls of Troy two armies met

  In bronze and blood

  The Trojans and the Greeks fought

  For gods on both sides.

  Gray-eyed Athena and Hera, white-armed queen,

  Filled the Greeks with rage and righteous song

  Against Aphrodite and Apollo

  Who strengthened the Trojans.

  At their urging the great heroes faced each other, sword to shield

  Noble Hector and wrathful Achilles

  And Achilles threw Troy’s hero down, killing him and dragging his body

  Around the city.

  Troy, which would fall as Cassandra foretold

  And leave all to waste and ruin in its wake.

  PROLOGUE

  BLOOD AND IVORY

  The god of war stood still as a statue, waiting for Aphrodite as he waited for prey, for foes, for anything with veins to cut. The stillness lasted only an hour or so. Then he paced and huffed and gnashed his teeth. Ares had no more patience than he had rationality or restraint. He made a fist, and the skin of his knuckles cracked and ran red. Damned Aphrodite. She kept him waiting even when the meeting was her idea.

  He glanced to his wrist, like someone checking the time, but in place of a watch was a blood-soaked bandage with fraying edges. He could have been anywhere else, enjoying the end of his days. Maybe lounging on an island, eating figs and honey. Maybe killing someone.

  Ares should’ve known better than to come early, or even on time. Aphrodite was unmindful of anyone’s needs but her own. He bit down hard when a smile started at the corner of his mouth. Even her bad habits made him sentimental. The god of war had gone soft.

  He flexed his arms and the muscles of his chest. Blood oozed from a broad cut on his bicep and soaked the black cloth of his shirt.

  Soft, but not weak. Strong, but still dying.

  His death had started to show over a year ago. All his old war wounds, long since healed, reopened on their own. Ares loved blood more than all things, so the cuts blooming on his chest and shoulders delighted him at first. He waited for the next one to open, and remembered with nostalgia the fight when he’d taken the wound. The cuts lingered and bled, but eventually closed. Then the whispers started, of other gods falling ill. Impossible stories of gods dying. By the time the half-eaten Nereid washed up at his feet on a beach in Tanzania, he wasn’t feeling quite so nostalgic anymore.

  Across the stream, in the trees that lined the opposite bank, something moved. Rustled. He peered into the shade. Maybe just the wind through leaves, or a careless squirrel. Only squirrels didn’t usually smell like vanilla and cinnamon.

  “Aphrodite.”

  She picked her way along the black stone that bordered the streambed, and he took her in, inch by inch. Her bare soles scraped over cold rocks and wet grass. She hopped and hummed like a little girl playing a game.

  For Aphrodite it was always a game. She ran, and Ares chased. She laughed, and he fought to catch his breath.

  Images flashed behind his eyes, a thousand images from a thousand years. Rose-colored lips. Gold hair. Bared breasts that brought men to their knees.

  But shadows like coal smudges marked Aphrodite’s calves now, long lines of darkness that disappeared beneath the uneven hem of her blue-green dress. Only they weren’t shadows. They were bruises.

  Suddenly Ares didn’t want to see her face. To see her changed from breathtaking to hideous, with sores on her forehead and blackened eyes.

  It would be an unfair fate for the goddess of love and beauty. As unfair as for the god of war to die from battl
es he’d already won. Ares took a breath and looked up.

  Golden blond hair twisted down to her waist, and she smiled with lips red as blood. Her curious eyes shone blue and bright. The most beautiful of goddesses was still the most beautiful, even with the hint of bruising on her jaw. Even if she was mad as a rabid dog.

  “I’ve come, as you asked,” she said. “To this river. Will you come to me now? Or must I cross?” She dipped a toe into the current and kicked, splashing Ares’ shoes. The flirt.

  “I’ve come, as you requested. But not to the place you dictated. I’m not your pet, Aphrodite. I never have been.”

  She pursed her lips. He was her pet, and they both knew it. She stood ungainly, unbalanced, the cock of her head at odds with the jut of her hip. Mud streaked her skirt. He couldn’t tell whether her eyes were truly bright, or only fevered. And then there was the dog to consider: a small, golden puppy, asleep in her arms.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’ll come to you.” She walked into the river up to the waist, hugging the puppy close, careful to keep it dry.

  “What do you want, Aphrodite?”

  “I want you to come home,” she purred. “I want you to fight, like you used to. Like the god you are.”

  Ares snorted. Appeal to the strength of a dying god. Tell him he was strong. She was clever still, even through the crazy.

  “Things have changed,” he said. “War has changed. Men don’t need me to take up their cause.” He lifted his arm to show her the blood. “The world sloughs us like dead skin.”

  “It isn’t men who are asking.” She pouted. “And it isn’t like you to submit.”

  He clenched his jaw.

  “I heard about Hera and Athena. About you and Apollo. Is it true about Poseidon? Is he really dead?”

  Aphrodite clutched the puppy tighter, and it squirmed. Any tighter and she’d break its little neck. But then she took a breath and stroked its soft, shiny fur, soothing it to sleep. It was a beautiful little dog. Perfect. Its fur matched her hair. In another life, she might’ve carried it around in a designer handbag.

  “Poseidon is gone,” she said, swaying. “Drifted back into the sea. His blood flows, red and black streaming clouds, moving through the currents. It makes the sharks weep. His bones have dug into the sand, taken over by coral. A million fish carry his eternal flesh in their bellies.” She smiled. “But we kept his head.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You killed Apollo. You killed our brother.”

  “He killed Poseidon! He and wicked Hermes. Weak, vile boys tore him apart in the lake. Nasty girls put their hands on Mother.” Her thin fingers walked over the head of the puppy to tap its nose. “Turned her to stone.”

  A glaze had taken over Aphrodite’s eyes, and she looked over Ares’ shoulder into the trees. With the dress clinging to her narrow hips and her long waves of blond hair, she looked fragile. But that was only a costume she wore. When she wanted to be, she was as warlike as he was. Aphrodite Areia, they called her. Her loveliness hid rage and bared teeth. How he’d always loved that.

  “You killed Apollo,” he said. “But Athena and Hermes sent you scuttling for cover. And what about the prophetess? They say she can kill gods.”

  “Ares.” Aphrodite frowned. “We mean so much to each other. You always fight with me. For me.”

  “I haven’t seen you in centuries,” he said. “Not a word in a hundred-odd years. Not until you need me.” He swallowed. Her dress clung in just the right places. “I should turn around and find Athena. Tell her you’re still up to your old tricks.” Aphrodite parted her lips. Old tricks, indeed. “Maybe I should help her swat you like a fly.”

  Aphrodite drew a long, silver knife from the fastenings of her dress.

  “Don’t be hasty. You haven’t heard everything. You don’t know.” She held the tip of the knife out toward him, playful. Light from the moving current fluttered along the sharpened edge. “An offering.”

  She fitted the blade beneath the puppy’s throat, and Ares held his breath. She would do it well. One long cut. The puppy wouldn’t yelp. The knife would be hidden back in the folds of her skirts before it even woke.

  Ares imagined the blood racing down her dress to dye the river red. He saw the dog’s empty body carried away by the current.

  “Does it please you?” she asked.

  “From you? The gesture of sacrifice has no meaning.” But despite his words, it touched him. The beautiful little dog. The ceremonial knife. Just like old times. Ares leaped into the stream, blindingly fast, and twisted Aphrodite’s wrist. The knife fell to the water, silver sides shimmering like a fish, and the puppy slept on.

  “It isn’t dog’s blood I want.”

  “Mmm.” Aphrodite led him out of the shallows like a legend: the goddess, rising from the sea, borne on the waves. “And you would draw the blood yourself. Like always. Ares. Curse of men. Sacker of cities.”

  “Names I haven’t been called for a long time,” he whispered. She was so close. The scent of her cloaked him in floral and vanilla, cinnamon and fruit. And underneath that, the sweeter, darker perfume of sickness and decay.

  “Men will scream those names before we’re through,” she said into his ear, and pressed something into his hand. He looked down. A chunk of marbled granite, one edge smooth as a statue, the other ragged and cracked.

  “Mother isn’t dead. They brought her back. Healed her. And they’ll do it for us, too, my love. We’ll be whole again. We’ll live forever.”

  1

  SAND THROUGH HER FINGERS

  The desert never changed. The same sun-dried sand, hard packed beneath Athena’s feet, and the same herds of saguaros strung out across the horizon, were programmed on repeat. And maybe that’s really how it was. Maybe it was the same five tumbleweeds, rolling through on the wind to fall off the edge and show up again back at the start.

  Athena swallowed. Nothing in her throat today besides smooth working muscles. No quills, no itchy edges of feathers cutting into her windpipe to make her cough blood. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

  She wiped sweat from her brow. It was high noon in the desert. She’d timed the trip badly; she should’ve left when she could meet Demeter in the fading light of evening. But there was nothing to be done about it now. Her boots already tread lightly on Demeter’s skin, stretched out for miles, half-sunk into the sand. At any minute, Demeter’s wrinkled, blinking eye could show up between her feet. If she wasn’t careful, she might step on it.

  It was the first time Athena had gone back to her aunt since finding her in the desert and learning about Cassandra. The girl was the key to everything, Demeter had said. And she had been. Three months had passed since they’d fought Hera, since Cassandra had laid hands on her and killed her. Since she’d turned Hera to stone. Three months since Hermes and Apollo had torn Poseidon apart in Seneca Lake. Since they’d laid Apollo to rest beneath the dirt.

  Athena’s dark hair hung hot on her shoulders. Walking the desert the night before had practically turned her into an icicle, but under the sun she felt like a stick of softening butter. The plan had been to cover up the swirling tattoos on her wrists, to dress decently and avoid any of Demeter’s harlot jibes. But that wasn’t going to happen. She’d dropped her jacket shortly after hitting her aunt’s skin and hadn’t bothered to drag it along behind her.

  “Back so soon?”

  Athena spun at the sound of Demeter’s oddly disembodied voice, carried on the wind from all directions at once.

  “What do you want this time?”

  Athena didn’t answer. She scanned the wrinkled skin for the eye, broad and bleary. When she found it, she stood over the top and peered down. It swiveled over her body, blinking lashes longer than a camel’s.

  “The goddess of battle returns,” Demeter said. “In torn jeans and barely a shirt.” The eye squinted. “The jewel in your nose is gone.”

  “I took it out. You’re welcome.” Under her feet
, the skin pulled and plumped: a set of pursed lips.

  “If you’ve come to tell me your news, I’ve heard it. You found the girl.”

  “The girl who kills gods,” said Athena.

  The eye narrowed. “Does she? Does she really?”

  “Don’t get excited,” Athena muttered. “I’m not going to drag her out to the middle of nowhere so she can take care of you. She’s a god killer, not a god euthanizer.”

  “Careful, Gray Eyes. Don’t insult me. You at least die with some semblance of self. I’m a bare-skin rug. Vultures loose their bowels on my face, and I’m forced to snack on passing lizards.” Demeter took a breath. “Why’d you come all this way? Perhaps to gloat? To recount your victory? Tell me how my seaward brother died.”

  Athena crossed her arms. Victory, Demeter called it. When they’d lost Apollo. He died a mortal, and they buried him under a mortal’s name in a Kincade cemetery when he should’ve had a temple. But yes. It felt like a victory.

  “I was sent to ask whether you know what became of Aphrodite,” Athena said.

  “Sent? Who could send you?”

  “Cassandra sent me.”

  Demeter sighed, and the skin dropped Athena four inches. She wondered how the lungs were laid out over the acres. It would make for an interesting dissection, if any ballsy scientists ever happened across the corpse.

  “The girl wants revenge,” Demeter said.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Athena asked. Cassandra swallowed rage and tears like candy. Her guts would soon burst with it. “The pain burns her like fire. Aphrodite’s blood will put it out.”

  “Will it? I think you know better.”

  Maybe she did. But it was what Cassandra wanted, and Athena owed her that.

  “What about your fight?” Demeter asked. “Your battle?”

  “What of it? We found the weapon. We won the day. But we’re no closer to answers. We’re still dying.”

  “What did you think would happen, Gray Eyes? That you’d destroy Hera and the feathers would dissolve in your blood? That Hermes would plump like a fattened cow? That I would spring up out of this dirt, soft and supple and woman-shaped?” Demeter’s eye closed, wearily or sadly or both. “Everyone wishes for answers, Athena. But sometimes the answer is that things just end.”