“Yes it does.” Athena hesitated. “I know what it means, to be too young to die. Whether you believe it or not. And I am sorry about all of this. I wish I didn’t have to use you. But I do.”
Cassandra watched her carefully.
“What did Demeter tell you, in the desert?”
“That it wouldn’t really be over until I’m dead,” Athena said. “So I have to survive the longest, do you understand? And then I’ll go. And it will be over.”
Cassandra wiped her face. Athena gripped the wheel hard with her unspoiled hand.
“You think you’re going to win, don’t you?” Cassandra asked.
“I think we are. Yes.”
“I just want all of this to go away.”
Athena sighed. “It will. After.”
“I am sorry about your arm.”
Athena tucked the bandage under her sleeve.
“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do. If you can’t stomach giving me a feather rash, how do you expect to kill Aphrodite?”
“That’s different,” Cassandra muttered.
“Maybe,” Athena said thoughtfully. “But it would be better if you had more control.”
“I can’t control it,” Cassandra snapped, angry again in an instant. It came and went, ebbed and flared, all on its own. “Every time I think of Aphrodite I want to watch her burn.” She paused. “And sometimes when I see you.”
“It wasn’t like that on the road, with Hera.”
“No. But that’s what it’s become.” Cassandra let out a long, shaky breath, scared by her own words. Her own thoughts. One second she didn’t want to be a killer, and the next, rage flooded her heart and mind, washing everything red.
“What it’s become,” Athena repeated softly, and to Cassandra it sounded like a warning. What it had become. And what she was becoming.
*
“This place is a constant facial,” Hermes said, and pushed aside a vine. “The heat, the mist, the aromatics.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Odysseus. They were deep into the rain forest, far from worn paths and tourist excursions. He couldn’t tell how far they’d traveled. Their pace had been fast and uneven. Hermes led by choosing directions seemingly at random. He’d walk for miles steadily, and then reach back and grasp Odysseus under the arm to take off at breakneck speed, so fast Odysseus had to huddle close to Hermes’ neck for fear of catching a tree in the face. When he stopped, it was just as quickly as he started, and he never gave an explanation.
“I don’t believe you,” Hermes said, and peered at Odysseus’ face. “No mortal has pores that small naturally.”
Odysseus took a deep breath as he stepped over a rotting log. The smell of decaying meat and blood filled his nose in a cloud, so strong he almost puked.
“What is that?” he asked. He scanned the ground for a corpse, hoping to see half a rotted monkey, or a gutted tapir. Anything but a tanned leg and long silvery hair. Anything but Artemis.
Hermes took a whiff. “No need to panic. There’s nothing dead. It’s the rafflesia. Corpse flowers.” He pointed to an obscenely large blossom, fat red petals speckled with white. It looked more like a fungus than a flower. He sniffed again. “It doesn’t smell anything like death, really.”
“Smells exactly like it to me.” Odysseus walked carefully around the plant, like it might bite. It was oddly beautiful. He wouldn’t have touched it for all the tea in China.
“Not to my immortal nose.” Hermes sniffed the air again. Odysseus ran up against his back. He had his hand over most of his face to filter the smell.
“Can we get going?”
“Hang on. We’re coming up on something else, and it won’t do to startle them.”
“Them?” He couldn’t see or hear anything living, except for the constant chorus of insect chirps.
Hermes took off again, slightly to the right. “People. A village. There’s a little bit of smoke and something cooking.”