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“What are you going to do?” Finley asks.
“I’m going to get some weapons,” I reply, shooting Carrick a look. He knows exactly where I’m going.
“You could incur the gods’ wrath,” Carrick warns.
“Well, they’re not here to stop me now, are they?” I quip as I turn away from them.
“Wait,” Finley exclaims, lunging for my arm. “Where are you going?” She looks to her husband, then to me again. “Why would you incur the gods’ wrath?”
“Because I’m going to steal their weapons. We need all the help we can get.”
“No,” Finley says, pulling hard on me. She knows stealing from the gods could mean instantaneous death. “I’m not letting you do that for Zora.”
“I’m not doing it for Zora, I’m doing it for you,” I say.
Finley’s lips press together, and she gives me a chastising look. “Liar. I don’t know what happened between you two, but—”
“Nothing happened. I’m going to help you get her and the other gods back, and then everything will be fine. They’ll even forgive me for taking their weapons.”
“But—”
“No buts.” I look over Finley’s head to Carrick. My message is clear.
Get your woman and get out of here. We’re wasting time.
Carrick takes Finley’s hand and they disappear, assuredly bending distance back to his house to look in the vault.
I head to the grotto, knowing that the minute I step inside, I could be enacting my own death sentence.
I walk past the gazebo, over a grassy knoll, and along a winding path that opens to a seaside cliff where a set of stairs carved into the stone lead downward. I’ve only been here one other time when Onyx loaned me a weapon to aid in ending the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans were far more generous in their devotions to her than the Athenians, so I was sent to help guide Lysander and his forces to victory. The weapon seemed benign but was powerful, a magical sextant that helped the Spartan naval fleet deliver a crushing blow to the opponent.
But I don’t want the sextant now.
I know the gods have far more formidable weapons in the grotto.
The stairs wind down the front of the cliff face to a stone shelf that sits twenty feet above the rolling waves. It opens in an inverted V shape, just large enough for a man to fit through. I skirt along the slippery edge as ocean water flows inward and sloshes against my pant legs.
About ten yards in, it opens into an underground grotto with a pool of clear water dappled in rays of sunlight reflecting from the ocean outside.
Along the stone wall sits shelves with various weapons created by the gods. They are given out to the demigods to assist in whatever battles the gods have a vested interest in, and I see the sextant there.
I’m not interested in those, however.
What I want is at the bottom of the pool—five weapons that belong to the gods themselves, and no one may touch them. They’ve never once been loaned to a demigod.
Long ago—many more eons than anyone can count—the gods fought alongside their followers in battles. Not that there was much of a fight since their magical powers were enough to obliterate an army, but they had symbolic weapons they carried and sometimes bloodied. But as the universe expanded and dimensions grew, the gods grew tired of getting their hands dirty and created the demigods.
Those five supernatural weapons have been in this pool for longer than I’ve been alive, and they don’t look like they’d be worth the risk. Crusted in barnacles and sea fungus that wave back and forth in the current, to the casual observer they look like they might disintegrate upon touch.
Cato uses a lightning bolt, Onyx a battle-ax, Veda a spear, Circe a bow and arrow, and Rune used a mace. It’s purported that the weapons never miss their target and I wonder if Zora will have her own weapon at some point.
Assuming she makes it out alive.
It will be me, Amell, and Carrick who will storm in to find Zora and the gods, assuming we can figure out where they are. But I’ll need a fourth weapon for Finley, as I know she will not sit back and wait. I expect she and Carrick are already arguing about it.
I study the water, wondering if there are any magical protections in place. Perhaps there’s a vicious sea monster in one of the shadowed recesses waiting to tear me up when I dive in.
Neither of these options—if true—would stop me. I do choose the easiest route first, though, and attempt to bend distance to the bottom of the pool. Keeping my focus on the weapons, I force the spot I’m standing on and the sandy ocean floor to pull together.
