“The same as I’m about to do to you,” I hissed, drawing my knife back. But I didn’t get a chance to do another thing because the cyclops came hurtling through the air, then smashed into the minotaur, both of them yelling as they crumpled to the sand. Ares had thrown the creature clear across the campfire clearing, into my minotaur.
“If I were you, I would leave now, before Ares gives you both away,” said Zeeva’s calm voice in my head.
“No way! We’re just getting started,” I answered her, throwing a glare at Ares, then looking around for the other two human men. They were nowhere to be seen. But movement registered on my right, and I saw the panther with the scorpion tail stalking through the tents toward us. I heard Ares snarl, and felt another pull in my gut, and my focus slipped again with the alien feeling. “Stop doing that!” I shouted, turning to the god. His eyes were dancing with red, gleaming with power.
“I have missed this,” he breathed. Was he getting high off my war power?
“Well, you’re putting me off!”
“I do not need your help.”
A surge of anger bolstered me, an idea striking.
“Yes, you do. You’re weak without me.”
Exactly as I’d expected, I felt the tug in my tummy that accompanied Ares’ anger at my words, but this time I turned my focus inward, and I tugged back.
He let out a shocked breath, then I felt a burst of something shoot through my hands, into my flick-blade. The weapon seared hot under my fingers, and the sound of war drums banged loud in my ears. Everything slowed around me, and it was like my normal fighting focus had been multiplied by a million. I could see what was happening around me in slow-motion. It was incredible. I was invincible.
Or at least, I would have been if I had eyes in the back of my head.
Pain lanced through my left shoulder blade, and the magical moment severed abruptly. I couldn’t help the scream that tore from my lips as white-hot agony burned all the way down my spine, and my legs buckled. Sand flew up around me as I crashed to the ground, and my vision swam like I was underwater as I struggled to hold onto what was happening. I heard the drums redouble, a roar from Ares, the snarl of a cat, then my head hit the sand.
10
Ares
“I told you she would get us killed!” The girl was a dead-weight over my shoulder as I stamped through the entrance gates to Erimos. Nobody cast us a second glance. As long as you’d paid entry to the city you could be carrying five dead bodies on your back and no-one would care.
“If you hadn’t accessed her power so much, she wouldn’t have been tempted to try to use it herself,” Hera’s accursed cat answered me. “You were foolish to fight those men. You should have walked away.”
“The God of War does not walk away from a fight,” I spat.
“And now the God of War can’t access any power because his only source has been poisoned by a manticore,” she sang back at me. I screwed my face up, a sick feeling churning through my gut. Gods, I wished I had my helmet on. It felt so completely wrong to have my face exposed like this. But other than a few appreciative looks from the local whores, I was largely being ignored.
I knew where the sole apothecary was in Erimos and turned left into the busiest of the many bazaars in the city. Hawkers shouting and the smell of spices consumed me as I strode through the square, Bella’s cheek bouncing softly against the skin of my back as I walked. Something uneasy flashed through me again as I recalled her face changing from awe to shocked pain as the manticore stinger had sunk into her back. I’d barely had enough time to access her power and deal with the vile thing before she’d fallen unconscious. And as such, cutting off my access to her power.
That was where the uneasy feeling was coming from, I was sure. I was utterly powerless whilst she was like this. It was nothing to do with the fact that actual flames had burned in her eyes when she had looked at me in the camp, her muscles tense, her weapon ready.
She was rude, impulsive, unladylike, and embodied everything I disliked in a woman. She was the opposite of Aphrodite. So it did not matter that I had heard the drums of war when I looked into her eyes. What mattered was keeping her alive long enough to use her power to hunt down the escaped demon and getting my own blessed power back.
“She’s blue,” said the owner of the apothecary, when I slid the girl from over my shoulder onto the stone table in front of him. His store was lined with bottles of hundreds of colors. Some were so bright they made my eyes squint. Bowls of powders and ooze were interspersed with the bottles, and the whole place smelled like iron.
“I’m sure you’ve seen worse,” I said.
“Hmmm,” he responded, dipping his head to look at her face. He was a small human man, with thinning hair and spectacles. “Manticore sting?” He asked, looking at the blackening wound in her back.
“Yes.”
He tutted. “And what is she?”
I paused, trying to work out the best way to respond. “Demigod,” I answered eventually. The skinny man looked up at me over the rim of his glasses, disdainfully.
“I can see that, she’d already be dead otherwise. How strong? Will she be able to handle Ambrosia?”
“I, erm...” Anger rippled through me as I struggled to answer his question. Look at me! One of the twelve most revered beings in the damned world and a tiny human was looking at me like I was an idiot.
“She is powerful,” I said eventually. But I had no idea if she could withstand Ambrosia. It sent those without enough power completely mad, and was highly addictive to those on the cusp. But it healed mortal wounds so it was a risk worth taking if required.
“Fine. I’ll try something else first, but if it does not work, it will have to be Ambrosia. You can pay, I assume?” His eyes flicked to my headband as he spoke.
“Of course I can,” I snapped. “Get on with it.” He gave me a sarcastic bow.
“Voithos!” he barked, and a sprite appeared from a minuscule doorway in the back of the room. She was only two feet tall, and moved as fast as a cat.
“Yes, Giatros,” she squeaked.
“Get me some epikóllisi, and hurry up.”
“Of course,” she said, and scampered off to the shelves. I watched absently as sheer wings popped out of her back, and she hovered up the shelves, scanning for whatever she’d been asked to find. Giatros had fetched a large stone bowl and was pounding an orange flower in it.
If the girl died now, could I find the demon without her power? The days after Zeus had left, when I’d had nothing, were some of the darkest of my extremely long life. What was the God of War without strength? My father had stolen the core of me, my essence, the thing that made me who I was. The thing that made the world both fear and love me. That made my subjects respect me, drove them to achieve great things.
If it hadn’t been for that voice reminding me that my power existed in another form, in another world... I looked down at Bella, as Giatros smeared an orange paste onto her wound. The stuff made her skin look even more blue. The manticore toxins were spreading through her fast.
If she did survive, would she discover how she ended up in the mortal world to begin with? Did that damned cat know?