“Innocent witches. And innocent mortals,” Athena said. What Ares said couldn’t be. Hera couldn’t be healing. Yet Ares wasn’t lying.
“You’ve always been so fond of saving mortals,” Ares said. He looked at Cassandra and Odysseus, standing near a thick trunk. “You curried their favor and accepted their accolades. Had cities named for you. You had their love, and I had their fear.
“Hera says it’s you or us. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t get bogged down in the politics. All I know is that you’ll try to save these people, and I will try to kill them.”
The words came so easy. Life to him was a shrug of the shoulders, even when his was ending.
“Why, Ares? Do you even know?”
“I know better than you do. What we are. Why we’re here. We are two sides of a coin. You save and I kill, but blood runs because of us both. We are the dogs of war, Athena, and we always have been.”
“No,” Odysseus said, his voice ragged. “Don’t put yourself in the same sentence with her. War isn’t battle. It’s not the same.”
Ares smiled smugly. War, battle. Semantics.
“Hermes,” Athena said. “Are you well? Can you take them to a safe distance?”
“What are you doing?” Hermes asked. His eyes shifted from Cassandra and Odysseus to Ares and back again.
“Take them and stay with them. Don’t leave them alone.” She clenched her fists. “The gods of war are about to bleed.”
*
Wild dogs, was the first thought in Henry’s head. Then wolves. Then something exponentially worse. One was white, but not like snow. It was white like bone, with a long, thin snout and lips a size too small, stretched back and dried out past its purple gums. Another was red, and it moved faster than the others. The sound of its fangs snapping was like something trapped in a box. Then a slow gray one came, hunched and panting. Blood dripped from its mouth and ran down its chest, into the sores matting its fur. But the worst one was the last, so black it didn’t appear to have eyes.
“Henry,” Andie whispered. They huddled back to back, with Lux between them. “What are they?”
Dogs, he almost said, but couldn’t quite manage it. They weren’t dogs any more than they were ponies. What they were was something that Henry couldn’t quite see, as if what he was looking at were just skins taken from some other animal. A sheepskin tossed over a wolf’s back. But what could be so horrible that it would use a wolf’s skin to hide under?
Between them, Lux whined and leaned into Henry’s leg. Whatever they were, they were closing in fast. Henry looked each one in the eye, except for the black one whose eyes he couldn’t find. He couldn’t remember if that was the right thing, making eye contact, or if he should’ve been appearing submissive. Somehow he didn’t think it was going to matter.
The creatures around them stopped. They rose up on two legs, and their forelegs stretched until they hung like arms. Their torsos shifted until they were upright, and Henry could barely imagine them on all fours.
“What are you?” Andie asked angrily.
Pain.
Said the gray with the matted fur. It hadn’t spoken with its mouth. Its tongue hung out, mute, bleeding drops onto its chest.
Panic.
Said the one with red fur and fierce yellow eyes.
Famine.
That was the white. Flecks of something dropped from its dingy fur: dry skin or parasites.
Oblivion.
The black wolf. Its voice was deeper than the others, and more terrible. Hearing it, and looking into the utter blackness where its eyes should have been, made Henry sick to his stomach.
Pain, Panic, Famine, and Oblivion. The names felt familiar. But Henry couldn’t think. He couldn’t do anything besides stare, and breathe, and move closer to Andie.
“What do you want?”
Is this the boy? asked the wolf called Pain. The boy he said to kill? Who they said must be killed?
This can’t be the boy. Famine sniffed and snapped its jaws. He smells like ordinary meat to me.
Oblivion snarled, and the other three whined and stepped sideways.