When she came back down, Lore closed the shutters of the bay window in the front room, sealing it off like a fortress. Miles switched on the ceiling lights.
The TV screen above the fireplace was a black mirror as Lore cleared the coffee table out of the way. Miles spread out the dark bedsheets, and Lore realized with a pang that they had been Gil’s.
“What is going on?” Miles asked as they dragged Athena’s prone form over. “Lore—seriously, what the hell is happening?”
The goddess moaned. Lore glanced toward the entry, the blood smeared there, and remembered that they had another very big problem.
“I need you to do something,” Lore told him as she knelt down beside Athena. “I need you to go to Mr. Herrera and ask for as many containers of bleach as he has— Wait. Not the regular bleach, the oxygen bleach, unless the regular bleach is all that he has.”
“Oxygen—what?” Miles asked helplessly.
“Oxygen bleach, as many as he has,” Lore said. “Tell him to put it on my tab.”
“Bodegas have tabs?” Miles asked.
“Go,” Lore said, throwing her arm out toward the door. “And hurry.”
Miles seemed too stunned to do anything other than what she’d asked. He jumped over the blood, gagging one last time before the door slammed shut behind him.
The house’s usual smells of sandalwood and old books vanished beneath the hot stink of blood. Lore’s stomach gave a violent lurch as she turned the goddess onto her back. She tore the fabric of the ruined tunic, trying to get a better look at the wound. Blood spilled over her fingers.
“Damn,” she whispered.
The liver and kidney had been pierced. Lore knew this work; it was an expert cut by a léaina—one of the young women sent out by the bloodlines to hunt gods and bring back the wounded prey for their leader to kill.
She pressed a towel to it, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “Wake up. Wake up!”
Athena’s eyes rolled beneath her closed eyelids.
Lore did the only thing she could think of. She slapped the goddess across the face.
Her gray eyes snapped open, blinking rapidly.
“I’d say sorry,” Lore managed. “But you deserved it.”
The air in Lore’s lungs suddenly felt scalding. She was surprised at her fear in that moment, the flash of regret she’d had as she’d struck Athena. Years of conditioning to hate the old gods faded away as she saw the sparks of power burning in Athena’s gaze.
You could only convince yourself something was prey until it turned around and showed you its teeth.
The goddess let out a wet cough, her head rolling against the floor. Even in a mortal body, there was something cold, almost alien, about her appearance up close. Her body was an unnatural container. One made to be killed.
Lore pressed her hands against her thighs, trying to stop the involuntary tremble in them. She wouldn’t kill her. She didn’t want a god’s power. She didn’t want any of this.
“Feels bad, doesn’t it?” Lore asked, letting a wild recklessness sweep in to replace her fear. “Man, mortality. What a bummer. Dare I ask who got you?”
This moment had been over a thousand years in the making. Athena had survived two hundred and eleven cycles of the Agon only for number two-twelve to get her.
The honey tone of Athena’s skin paled as death found its way in. The goddess was one of the last of the originals still in the Agon, the others being Hermes and Artemis, and, maybe, Apollo. She had been an impossible target. She was too strong, too quick, too clever.
Until now.
They studied each other. If Athena was trying to gauge Lore’s worth, her strength, Lore would have been the first one to tell her not to bother.
“I’m out.” There were plenty of pretty words Lore could have used to flatter the goddess. To grovel and appeal to her kind’s exhausting vanity and pride. Lore didn’t care to remember any of them. “And I’m not going to let you or anyone else pull me back in.”
The goddess stared, the stern line of her mouth never once relaxing. Lore expected nothing else. There would be no bending; like a blade, Athena would hold, or she would break.
“I know you speak this language,” Lore said, refusing to give the goddess what she clearly wanted. The ancient tongue was a mixture of many ancient dialects that had eventually become Modern Greek, but Athena’s version was epic in quality.
“Whatever you came here for, there’s nothing to find,” Lore continued. “If this is a trick and you’re here for revenge, you’re too late. Everyone else who bears my name is dead. I’m the last of the Perseides. The House of Perseus is gone.”
The expression on Athena’s face told Lore that the goddess already knew exactly who she was.
Fear tore through her. Lore had stopped believing in Fate and the old crones tending to it years ago, but this was too much to be mere coincidence, especially after Castor’s warning.
Attend to me, she’d said. Help me.
“You found me,” Lore said, proud of how steady her voice sounded. “Tell me what you want, and make it fast. I know this is a difficult concept for you, but your time is running out and my plans for this morning don’t include an awkward staring contest with a deity. Why don’t you start with who tried to kill you?”
Athena met her gaze again as she said, her voice weaker now, “My sister.”
A cold dread slithered through Lore’s body. “As in, Artemis?”
The goddess glowered. Her other sister, Aphrodite, had been taken out by a hunter a century ago, and a new god with her powers had been born. That new god had lasted only one cycle before another hunter killed him seven years later. It was a morbid sort of marathon relay, with immortal power as the baton being passed between bloodlines.
“I thought the two of you always worked together,” Lore said. “What happened to that fun little alliance you used to terrorize everyone with?”
“Turned . . . on me,” Athena said, pressing her palm to her side again. “Betrayed. The Ares imposter . . . he . . . came after me . . . at the Awakening—Artemis slowed me, escaped.”
“That’s cold,” Lore said with mild appreciation. “Even for her.”
“Alliances form from need . . . break in fear. . . .” Athena struggled for the words. “Now . . . need . . . protection. Until I . . . heal. Bind your fate . . . to mine.”
Bind your fate to mine. Lore shuddered.
“Why the hell would I ever do that,” Lore said, “when I can sit here and watch you die instead?”
Despite temporarily losing their immortality, the gods did retain a sliver of their might to defend themselves. In their prime, their true powers had been all-encompassing; what remained must have felt like a sad pantomime, and, worse, only Apollo seemed to have been left with the ability to heal himself and others. Athena might have been physically stronger than the other eight gods in the Agon, capable of leveling whole buildings, but it wasn’t going to do her any good now.
Miles’s quick steps pounded up to their front door. Lore jumped to her feet, giving the goddess one last hard look. Athena visibly bristled at the impertinence of it.
“Don’t say a word to him when he comes in,” Lore said. “Pretend you’re asleep.”