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Blake Northcott [Arena Mode Assault or Attrition (epub)
Blake, Amber Sheantee 02 Tobar
Crouch, Blake Andrew Thomas Blutzeichen
Crouch Blake Wayward Pines Krzyk
Charlton Blake Czaropis tom 1 i
Blake Ally Dom w Toskanii
Blake's progress R. F. Nelson
Bunt Blake Crouch
Dragonlance Kingpriest 01 Chosen of the Gods # Chris Pier
Doctor Who Fallen Gods Jonathan Blum

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.But that wasn’t going to happen.She’d dropped her jacket shortly after hitting her aunt’s skin and hadn’t bothered to drag it along behind her.“Back so soon?”Athena spun at the sound of Demeter’s oddly disembodied voice, carried on the wind from all directions at once.“What do you want this time?”Athena didn’t answer.She scanned the wrinkled skin for the eye, broad and bleary.When she found it, she stood over the top and peered down.It swiveled over her body, blinking lashes longer than a camel’s.“The goddess of battle returns,” Demeter said.“In torn jeans and barely a shirt.” The eye squinted.“The jewel in your nose is gone.”“I took it out.You’re welcome.” Under her feet, the skin pulled and plumped: a set of pursed lips.“If you’ve come to tell me your news, I’ve heard it.You found the girl.”“The girl who kills gods,” said Athena.The eye narrowed.“Does she? Does she really?”“Don’t get excited,” Athena muttered.“I’m not going to drag her out to the middle of nowhere so she can take care of you.She’s a god killer, not a god euthanizer.”“Careful, Gray Eyes.Don’t insult me.You at least die with some semblance of self.I’m a bare-skin rug.Vultures loose their bowels on my face, and I’m forced to snack on passing lizards.” Demeter took a breath.“Why’d you come all this way? Perhaps to gloat? To recount your victory? Tell me how my seaward brother died.”Athena crossed her arms.Victory, Demeter called it.When they’d lost Apollo.He died a mortal, and they buried him under a mortal’s name in a Kincade cemetery when he should’ve had a temple.But yes.It felt like a victory.“I was sent to ask whether you know what became of Aphrodite,” Athena said.“Sent? Who could send you?”“Cassandra sent me.”Demeter sighed, and the skin dropped Athena four inches.She wondered how the lungs were laid out over the acres.It would make for an interesting dissection, if any ballsy scientists ever happened across the corpse.“The girl wants revenge,” Demeter said.“Wouldn’t you?” Athena asked.Cassandra swallowed rage and tears like candy.Her guts would soon burst with it.“The pain burns her like fire.Aphrodite’s blood will put it out.”“Will it? I think you know better.”Maybe she did.But it was what Cassandra wanted, and Athena owed her that.“What about your fight?” Demeter asked.“Your battle?”“What of it? We found the weapon.We won the day.But we’re no closer to answers.We’re still dying.”“What did you think would happen, Gray Eyes? That you’d destroy Hera and the feathers would dissolve in your blood? That Hermes would plump like a fattened cow? That I would spring up out of this dirt, soft and supple and woman-shaped?” Demeter’s eye closed, wearily or sadly or both.“Everyone wishes for answers, Athena.But sometimes the answer is that things just end.”“Is that the answer here?”“I don’t know.But I know you don’t think so.If you did, you would wander off and let yourself be torn apart by wolves.You’d dye more harlot colors into your hair.”Athena snorted.She could be killed.They’d proven the impossible possible.But it wasn’t as easy as Demeter made it sound.Her bones would break those poor wolves’ teeth.A death like that would take months.And she wasn’t ready.Who would have thought, after so much time, that she wouldn’t be ready.“The point is,” said Demeter, “that you stay.Why?”Odysseus flashed behind Athena’s eyes.His voice whispered in her ears.And Hermes, too.Her beautiful brother.Thinner and thinner.“There are things, I guess, that I still need to take care of.”Demeter drew in a rippling breath.“You are tired.Sit, child.Rest.”Athena cleared her throat.“No, thank you.”“Why not?”“Hermes says…” She hesitated and rolled her eyes.“Hermes said that when he sat on you he could feel your pulse through his butt.”Demeter laughed, hard enough to knock Athena off-balance.Her feet skidded apart, and she put her arms out to steady herself.Startled birds flew from wherever they’d been hiding moments before, squawking their worry at the shifting dirt.“I wish you’d brought him,” Demeter said, quieting.“I miss his impudence.”Athena smiled.Having finally reached her aunt she was no longer all that tired.Wind cooled the sweat on her shoulders and neck.The quest neared its end.Soon she could go home.“Aphrodite,” she said.“What do you know?”“Nothing.” Demeter recoiled innocently, stretching herself so thin that Athena could feel desert pebbles beneath her toes.“Without Hera to direct her path, Aphrodite will hide.So fast and so well that you’ll never find her.”“We will find her.”“Why do you ask if you aren’t going to listen?” Demeter snapped.“Why are you talking about a mortal girl’s revenge? Why are you fighting her fight, instead of yours?”Athena looked away, across the sand.At first it was grief.The loss of a loved brother.And then it was guilt, too many days spent staring at Cassandra, at the shell of a girl Apollo left behind.She’d made a promise to look after them all.Cassandra, Andie, and Henry.Apollo had made her promise.“I don’t know what it is,” she said softly.“I never … understood time before.It didn’t mean anything.I could never make a mistake.I don’t know how mortals do this.How they only live once.”“You doubt your instincts.”“Why shouldn’t I? Things just end.Isn’t that what you said?”Demeter wriggled in the dirt.“I might be wrong.You beat Hera, but it wasn’t Hera who caused this.Whatever really did, you may be able to fight.” The eye bulged, scrutinizing.“Tell me.What you’re thinking.”Images flickered in Athena’s mind: she saw Demeter rise up from the earth and shake herself off, no longer a flat expanse of skin but a woman, with brown hair waving to her waist and deep dark eyes.She saw Hermes with muscle returned to his arms, a beautiful curve in his cheek when he smiled.She saw Apollo, Aidan, bright and perfect as ever, with Cassandra by his side.She thought and she dreamed.Of wrongs put right.Things restored that would never be.Impossibility hovered like a light in her chest and made her want.To be a hero.To feel alive.As alive as she’d felt that day on the road above Seneca Lake, when she’d charged Hera with iron in her fist.“We won,” she said quietly.“Hera and I both sought the oracle, but I found her first.The other side was stronger, and everything went wrong.Our side was scattered and made terrible choices, but we won anyway.We left Hera and Poseidon dead, and Aphrodite running for cover.And now I have the girl who kills gods.And I have Odysseus, who can lead me to the other weapon.”She had Hermes, and capable soldiers in Henry and Andie.And she had herself.Goddess of battle.“You have much,” Demeter agreed.“I don’t want to put them through any more,” Athena said, and that was true.Hermes, Odysseus, and Cassandra had been through enough [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]