Rob Thurman - Doubletake

Feeling my first Vayash impulse—to spit on the body packed tightly in the earth below—I instead growled and turned to look Nik up and down. He was bloody from being pulled through the floor, an inanimate monster all its own, but aside from scrapes, cuts, and abrasions, he’d live. He’d be sore for a while, but he wasn’t going to bleed out.

Kalakos had come to the same conclusion and had his sword back up for the next charge. “You don’t have to thank me,” he said, “either of you.”

“You think I would?” I snapped, and fired at another Cyclops across the foundry.

“No, because I know now it’s something a father must do instead of supposed to do and should’ve been doing since the day his son was born. I see now.” The rushing Cyclops came low, his eye down. Kalakos half removed his head from the thick neck, slammed it backward with the flat of his sword to bring the target in view, and quenched the flame. “Gratitude for that would be no different from gratitude for breathing. The Vayash have a duty. I’ve learned I have more than one.”

He moved away then. He didn’t wait for a comment. The fight was only warming up. There was blood to be spilled, lives—our own—to be saved, answers to be wrenched from an insane god.

“I hate him more now than I did before,” I muttered. “Sanctimonious ass.” Whether he meant it or not, it was too late.

“Perhaps he meant it and we should take it at face value, but that window of opportunity has unfortunately long closed.” He added, “And he managed to get the last word.” His clothes were saturated with blood. I could feel the warmth of it against my back as I did my best to press him hard enough against the wall to pin him, leaving no room for him to be sucked down again. That meant there was no avoiding feeling his blood, all but seeing the cloud of bright copper in the air floating around us.

“Unfortunately,” he’d said, which meant regret, and my brother deserved much more than regret, thanks to that Vayash son of a bitch.

“Last word. That’s the worst.” No—regret was. “ Bastard, ” I said, wishing for the first time that Kalakos hadn’t been one as I watched for the next Cyclops. “You okay? I can smell the blood. Not enough to take you out of the fun, but could be enough to slow you down.”

“Other than your crushing me into what I’m beginning to think is a piggyback position, I’m all right. Fully functional, certainly not slow, and definitely not your papoose.” I felt his hand urge me away; he was ready to rejoin the battle. I thought about stalling, but this was Niko and he was right. He’d have to lose half the blood in his body to slow down.

As I began to move, I heard a groan from above. The beams that had shaken earlier at Hephaestus’s voice were moving again…and Hephaestus wasn’t talking. They were wrenching free of their mounting and joining together over our heads, booming as they struck. The movement…it wasn’t falling. Not falling down, but moving fast and inevitably, as if they were falling sideways. Tinkertoys would puzzle him, Robin had said. I didn’t think so. I was looking at the most badass set of Tinkertoys on the planet, and Hephaestus wasn’t stopping there. Metal hit metal and was held in place with the sudden intense red, then white glow of a forge I didn’t see.

“Hephaestus is also the god of volcanoes. Fire and metal.” Niko’s hand had altered from pushing to fisting my shirt—Jesus, I was going to die in this pink shirt—and yanking me to stand still. “What is he making?”

A brilliant mind asking a question with the most obvious of answers. Or let’s be honest. Just a damn stupid question.

“Something to kill us, Dr. Oblivious,” I hissed, hoping whatever it was didn’t have great hearing, or any at all. The beams were joining faster, other metal flying up to it to enhance its status as the bestselling murder machine for kids four years and up. It was the size of Janus, no bigger, but a framework with no head. It had arms, though, four of them, with grasping metal claws. I could hear the creak of the ratchets as the hands opened and closed. And it had two legs. Thirteen feet tall in length, it hung above like a waiting spider. Would it climb down or leap inst— Motherfucker .

It was on fire .

All of it.

Like the Cyclops’s eyes but thirteen feet of it. A metal skeleton became an inferno. Metal shouldn’t burn like that, unless Hephaestus wanted it to—as if it were an endless fuel. There was a darting of flaring coat, brown hair, and sword. Robin was getting out before he turned to charcoal. I thought that was a damn good idea. Fighting monsters was one thing. Fighting a god and the industrial age combined, we weren’t properly armed—like with a fire truck and several bulldozers and earthmovers from the nearest construction site.

Shit, it fell. Just…fell. Didn’t climb. Didn’t jump. The building shook under the earthquake of it.

No sense of survival, no pain, no mind to manipulate, on fire, and could play with our charcoaled remains until Christmas if Hephaestus wanted. “Robin was right. This was a bad idea.” Niko’s hand still wrapped in my shirt, I began to weave my way toward the door, then flat-out run as it rose to stand upright. Sliced feet I’d worry about later, if there was a later.

I saw Promise at the entrance to the hall. An earthquake was a good cue that we needed help, but unless she had a couple of tanks with her I’d stick with the running. “Hephaestus, it is I. Aphrodite…O sweet Virgin Mary in heaven.” Under the hood of her cloak her eyes widened and stared upward.

There was the sound of a footstep behind us. Metal against metal, it was the peal of the largest of bells—the one tolling for our asses. The heat had been intense when it had hit the floor. It was getting hotter now.

Idiot Puck. Dying for the answer to the simplest of questions.

Then Hephaestus laughed and the hundreds of shards of metal rang again, this time church bells for a funeral…ours.

Robin ran past Promise, hooking his arm in hers and dragging her after him down the hallway. He wasn’t deserting us. If he had made it out, we could too. And if we couldn’t, other than adding himself as another piece of coal to the furnace in a heroically martyred brothers-in-arms gesture, there was nothing he could do. And if it doesn’t save anyone and you’re still dead, it’s hard to appreciate all the perks of martyrdom. Like having his dick preserved as a sacred relic.

I didn’t look for Kalakos. He had saved Nik, said it was his duty, but it was my duty too and had been long before he came into the picture. Of course, Niko felt the same, and no one outdid him at the job. He was behind me, beside me, and then in front of me, decapitating a Cyclops. Flames were a fountain out of its neck before it collapsed and we ran over the top of its body.

Another step from behind, another earthquake, another rising of the heat until I thought the earth was crashing into the sun. I started to look over my shoulder before deciding I had no desire to see the world of shit about to drop onto us.

“The Cyclops,” Niko snapped.

The last of them were clawing free of the earth—in front of us, on each side—and I snatched a glance behind me…yeah, there too, right in front of something that made me rethink that whole atheist, nonhell philosophy of mine. A gigantic scarecrow of pure hellfire, made special for us on some black altar. No, the devil wasn’t close to this. When it came to taking names and incinerating asses, Greek gods had it all over him.

Step.

I felt my skin began to tighten against the heat.

The Cyclops surrounded us in a closing circle. It wasn’t too many, but it was too little time. We were out of it. Out of goddamn time. Not martyrs, but dead just the same. Didn’t that suck? Didn’t it just…