But Achilles didn’t drive his knife into Henry’s chest. He flipped it and brought the handle down on the top of his head.
“Later,” he whispered as Henry buckled at his feet.
The room blacked in and out. Henry heard sounds, shouts, words, Lux barking. Ares and Achilles struggled again in the middle of the room, their movements too fast for Henry’s spinning vision. He heard something like a growl, and Achilles’ hand stuffed into Ares’ gut.
There’s a knife on the end of that hand.
Another moment flickered past, and Achilles jumped through the broken window. Henry couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that Achilles had been holding something in his arm. Something loose, and wet, and pink. Achilles had been holding his own intestines in his hands.
“Andie,” Henry said, right before he lost consciousness.
PART III
ONE FATE
24
LIES CAVE IN
“Did you kill him?” were the first words out of Henry’s mom’s mouth when Andie yanked her gag. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” Ares groaned. “He can’t be killed.”
“What are you saying? Of course he can be killed. You cut through his stomach. He’s probably out there now, on the ground.”
Henry’s head pounded, but he hauled himself up and ungagged his dad, then started working on the knots in the rags used to tie him to the chair.
“We need to call the police,” his dad said.
“We need to call Athena,” Ares corrected. “She’ll coordinate … hospitals.” His voice was low and far away. Henry glanced at him, fearful he’d see the god losing consciousness, or holding his own guts in his hands. The idea brought back a flash of Achilles, diving through the window with ropes of intestine looped over his wrist. Henry gagged.
But Ares wasn’t holding his stomach. His gut wound looked like a clean stab, just leaking blood and nearly forgotten. Ares looked down at the floor, where Panic lay limp.
“Damn it.” Henry finished with his dad and wadded some of the rags together to press to the cut on his cheek. “Andie?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Lux is okay. Your mom is okay.” She had finished with the knots holding his mom’s feet and started on her hands. Her left arm was a sleeve of red, but her hand was steady.
“Where’s Cassandra?” his mom asked. “Is she all right? Did any of you see her upstairs?!”
“I didn’t think she was home,” Andie said. But before anyone could really panic, Athena kicked in the door and ran inside, with Odysseus and Cassandra behind her.
*
“Cassandra! Thank god!”
Cassandra blinked hard twice. The sight before her eyes made no sense. Overturned furniture. Her parents wearing bracelets of rags. There was a blood-soaked bandage on her dad’s cheek. And in the center, Ares stood motionless over the body of a red wolf.
“Where were you?” her dad asked, though she thought the answer was a little obvious. Athena was right beside her. She’d been with Athena.
Only that wasn’t quite true. Clotho and Lachesis had been with Athena. Cassandra had last been in her room, where they’d wormed inside her head. But they were gone now. Back at Athena’s house, two creatures that resembled translucent, elongated crustaceans lay ground into the carpet. One had fallen out of Cassandra’s nose. The other from her ear. She’d crushed both beneath her feet and listened to them crunch like hard candies.
Henry lurched from behind their father to kneel over the top of Panic. He pressed a reluctant hand to its chest.
“He’s not dead,” he said, and Ares knelt beside him. “He might be okay, if we get him to a vet.”
“It isn’t a dog,” Ares said. He sounded slow. In shock. Blood had soaked one of his pant legs all the way to the knee.