Chapter 5
Calliope’s Pain
1
The Villa
“
“Yeah?”
“Can vampires die from starvation?”
A baby bottle of warm pig blood was held in front of her. “No, but there is the Living Death. We can become weak from starvation and won’t be able to feed to ever get our strength back. We become living corpses, always hearing, always aware, always feeling the pain, but without the strength to do anything about it.”
“Is that what’s gonna happen to me?” She asked as he popped the bottle’s nipple in her mouth, her teeth biting down on it so he wouldn’t take it away from her as she greedily drank it down.
“That’s what is gonna happen to you if you kill humans. I will put you somewhere where nobody will ever find you as long as Mel and I live. Do you understand how long that could be?”
Bliss nodded in understanding. A sudden pull pulsed in her veins for her sire, for her original blood source. The call in her blood ached to be let loose. She gave him an imploring glance, and he sighed.
“Watch the sheets,” he said gruffly and left her.
In the kitchen, he pulled a bottle of vodka from the freezer and proceeded to make his favorite kind of Bloody Mary. Flopping back on the couch in the den, he turned on the Sundance Channel. His boots were kicked off and his feet met the coffee table.
Bliss brought the porcelain hammer down with a crash and it shattered over his skull. The pain was instant, searing.
Shaking off his surprise, he stood on weak legs, and turned to see her mad, alligator smile.
She laughed at him, clapped her hands, and pointed, “I know! I know what you’re afraid of when you’re alone in the dark with me! You tried to hide it, but I know!” Bliss jumped up and down as though this were a merry game.
“It’s me, right? C’mon,
“Oh, Christ,” he moaned when he hit the staircase. He grabbed a dowel from the banister and broke it free after a strained moment. His makeshift stake held tight in a defensive position,
“What are you going to do with that? Are you gonna stake me? You think you’re Buffy the fucking Vampire Slayer now?” She rushed him and they wrestled onto the tiled stairs.
His foot connected with her middle and he kicked her off him, hard enough to send her sailing into the wall. Bits of plaster knocked loose when she slammed into it and slid to the floor.
Bliss jumped back to her feet and saw the stake that had been knocked loose at the bottom of the stairs. As soon as she grabbed it, she was tackled to the ground. They rolled onto the carpet and she got the upper hand, straddling him.
Bliss still had the stake.
“Bliss, what are you doing, for god’s sake?”
Holding each other by the wrists, she began her childish humming in that raspy voice of hers, “Joy to the world, the teacher’s dead, we barbecued his head.” Her slow singing had an eerie, terrifying quality to it.
“Bliss, don’t do this,” he pleaded, but it was too late.
The stake was lifted above her head and she buried it deep into
2
Tartaros
Outside of Calliope’s Pain
Apollo turned to Ares and nodded almost imperceptibly, his long hair blowing in a breeze with no sound. Cerberus was still a football field away, but judging by his size, he would be upon them in one or two strides.
The two gods kept themselves between the group and the beast, silently herding them closer to the building. The beast dropped suddenly into a tense crouching position.
“Run. Now!” Ares roared and with a fierce battle cry, ran to meet the monster halfway. His Glock was already firing shots when Apollo realized what he had done.
The sun god was quick behind him, leaving a stunned Clio to turn and sweep Miranda up into her arms.
“Quickly, to the building, as fast as you can!” Clio ordered as she fled with her daughter in her arms.
Crow turned to Mel. “I’m real sorry,” he said and tossed her over his shoulder.
Ares dropped to one knee while he aimed for the monster’s eyes. Cerberus pounced and a massive paw blew past Ares and planted itself mere inches from him. With the monster directly above him, the heads snapped wildly at the war god.
Deftly dodging the beast, he fired off a couple of shots at its face. A mouth full of canines grazed his arm and opened a jagged gash in his left bicep. Ares fired again and caught it in an eye, the monster jumped back and howled in pain.
“The eyes! Go for it’s bloody eyes!”
The scorpion tail struck the ground with such a force it knocked Apollo to the field. Apollo resumed his attack in the second it took him to recover and he managed to shoot the other eye of the wounded head. Cerberus screamed in furious agony.
With the middle of the three heads out of commission, Apollo concentrated on the right one and Ares, the left. Apollo watched as Ares, in a move straight from a comic book, scaled the monster’s leg and leapt onto it’s back. Ares held on as though it were a Brahma bull and tried to aim his 9mm at the left head’s brain.
This occupied the right head long enough for Apollo to get off a couple of lucky shots in the face, not the eyes. Cerberus fixed himself into a rage in an attempt to get the offending thing off its back and his tail began striking chaotically. Apollo dodged it as best he could.
In grim determination, Ares began firing the Glock into the torso of it, point blank. Cerberus reared up from the pain and bucked the war god off.
Ares landed in a broken heap and Cerberus stood between him and Apollo. Both guns were lost and he possessed nothing more dangerous than a bowie knife in a sheath on his leg.
The three-headed dog turned its attention to the wounded war god.
Apollo shouted, “Cerberus! Cerberus, over here! Come on!”
The monster disregarded him and attacked Ares in a vicious fury. The tail came down and pierced Ares through his left thigh, pinning him to the ground. A gaping hole of teeth came crashing down upon him biting and slashing. Ares struggled to fight it off with his knife.
His hand hit something hot and metallic in his thrashing and he realized Apollo had tossed him one of the Glocks. The clip was dropped and changed with the expertise of a thousand-year veteran and he fired into Cerberus’ face as it came in to devour him once more. Eight shots pierced the animal’s eyes.
Ares could hear gunfire that wasn’t his and felt the sudden weight of one of the head’s crashing down atop him.
It was done.
Covered with blood, dirt, sweat, and dog drool, Ares began to lose consciousness. The weight of the head was lifted and Apollo’s face was suddenly swimming before Ares’ spotty vision. “Can you move?” The sun god asked him.
“Does it bloody look like I can move, you dolt?” He waved a hand over his pinned leg.
“Okay, this doesn’t look too bad,” Apollo said.
“Your bedside manner sucks, doc, you’ve gone all pasty-like,” Ares said and a snarl of agony came from his twisted face.
“On the count of three, I’m gonna pull this out, okay?” Apollo wrapped his hands around the nasty, armored tail. “Okay. ONE,” and he heaved it out.
“AWWWW! Bloody hell!” Ares cried and looked down at the sticky red substance pumping freely from his thigh. In a thick, dumbfounded whisper he said, “Wouldja look at that?” He blacked out.
“Christ,” Apollo muttered as he used his belt to tourniquet Ares’ thigh. As the God of Healing, he contemplated trying to heal his half-brother and then decided that Ares would probably prefer to piss glass than to owe anything to Apollo.
With a grunt, he hefted Ares over his shoulder, and headed for the building.
3
The Villa
After a moment’s struggle,
With a swift kick to his side, she said, “That wasn’t like the movies at all, he didn’t turn into dust or melt or anything.”
“What happened to his body, we flushed it down the potty, and round and round it goes, and round and round it goes,” she sang as she climbed the stairs to pack a couple of bags.
When she was finished, she even showered, she felt so good. She came back down the stairs, put the rest of
“School’s out forever,” she sang and giggled as she strode out the front door.
4
Tartaros
Calliope’s Pain
Gunfire could be heard all throughout their flight to the building and Clio could do nothing but pray that they would be all right. She had three mortals she needed to look after, so she couldn’t worry about the two gods right now. As they approached the building, Clio could see now it was the Kraken.
The same warehouse in
Iris had flown ahead and was trying to kick the door in. It’s locked? Of course, it’s locked, Clio’s lungs burned and she felt her muscles turn into overstretched rubber bands.
“Clio, put me down, I can run myself,” Miranda demanded. “This is ridiculous!”
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Clio labored, “you can’t run as fast as us.”
The rainbow goddess suddenly disappeared from sight, and Clio knew she had succeeded with breaking the door down. Clio stopped suddenly. So suddenly, she dropped Miranda.
A weathered hand-painted sign hung over the door.
“Calliope’s Pain.”
The sign looked old. Clio’s heart froze.
“Oh, no,” she moaned.
Iris came out, pale and grave. “Clio, you may not want to come in here.”
“Is she in there?” She raced to the familiar door, pushing past Iris. “Calliope?” Terror tore from her throat and filled the warehouse.
Mel was right behind her.
Clio flew down the stairway, tripping over her own feet and onto the floor. Scrambling to stand, she ran past the desks and she found a shadow moved in the curtained corner that Calliope had been kept in. Clio knocked the fabric cubicle wall to the side and saw her.
Calliope.
The sweet, heavy smell of blood in the air assaulted the historian’s senses. Calliope lay supine on the hospital bed staring blankly, weakly at the ceiling. She did not flinch at Clio’s intrusion, didn’t turn her head, and didn’t even acknowledge her sister’s presence.
The poet’s arms hung over the sides of the bed, dripping blood onto the cement floor. The only sound was the maddening pat pat pat of the dripping. The floor was stained black from countless puddles of blood before.
Clio snapped her mouth shut and moved to staunch her sister’s bleeding. Her hands passed right through her wispy form. Startled, Clio grasped at Calliope’s face and felt the pillow beneath Calli’s head.
“No!” Clio shouted. “No.”
“What is it? What do you see?” Mel asked. Miranda narrated the scene to her in low tones.
“Her body’s in the freezer, Clee,”
Panic threatened to choke the historian. Mel put her arms around her from behind and Clio roughly pulled away.
“Where’s Apollo? Apollo will know what to do!” Clio said as she ran for the stairs. Apollo limped onto the landing, Ares’ unconscious body limp in his arms.
“What happened?” Clio raced up the stairs and Apollo whisked past her.
“He’s okay, he lost a lot of blood, but I think he’ll be okay.”
Clio brushed a platinum lock from Ares’ forehead, “Are you sure?” Her complexion paled at the sight of the gash in his leg.
Apollo frowned, “Clio?”
Unbidden tears filled her eyes. “It’s just that we were sure Calli would be okay, you know?”
“He’ll be fine, Clee. Where is she?” Apollo asked and deposited Ares on an errant gurney. Clio pointed to the corner.
“She won’t see us,” Mel said.
Her knowing voice seemed to infuriate Apollo. In a low, gruff voice, he told Clio, “They’ve taken her memory from her. Calliope’s not allowed to see us, she doesn’t have the will, she’s consumed by her pain.”
Suddenly at a loss, they watched as her blood slowly drained onto the cement. Calliope closed her eyes and took one last shallow gasp of air. The scene was mesmerizing, the wounds closed and she woke as though from a nightmare. She bolted upright in the bed, walked over to the small sink, and washed her face.
Calliope could not see any of them. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and closed the medicine cabinet. It slammed so hard that Clio jumped. Glass shattered and fell into the sink, slicing Calliope’s wrists in the fall.
Calliope slid to her knees and sobbed, looking at her wrists with instant regret. She stood, sullenly walked over to the instrument table, and wrapped her wrists with gauze. The bandages filled with blood and she changed the dressing. Pacing the warehouse frantically now, she searched for anything to stop the blood flow.
She never tried for the door. Clio wrung her hands and paced the warehouse floor.
Finally, after a couple of hours of bleeding, Calliope laid on the hospital bed and then, after awhile, her arms slipped over the sides of the bed, back in the position they had discovered her in.
They had taken positions on desks, chairs, or the floor to watch Calliope’s drama unfold as she again, bled to death, healed, and woke up.
Mel finally said, “This is never-ending for Calli, this is her punishment, to bleed to death day after day, alone in this warehouse.”
“But what did she do?” Clio choked out. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She must have given up everything. Blood, secrets, knowledge, she may as well have given them
“How long has she been here?” Clio asked.
“Time is funny here, she may have been here only a day, but it could be a hundred years, or twenty, or hours for her, we will never know,” Mel answered.
“I know,”
Her, Crow, and Miranda split the counting, it gave them something to do while the immortals tried to figure out what to do with Calliope.
Iris finally said something worthwhile. “I could fly back and ask Hypnos for his opinion on getting her to see us.”
“That’s a good idea,” Clio replied.
“Christ, almighty, did someone get the name of that bleedin’ truck?”
Ares was awake.
“Are you alright?” Clio asked and took his hand in hers.
“In a minute, I hurt like hell,” he said. “Did we do it? Did we get the poet?”
Clio’s eyes filled with tears. “You were very brave, Ares, you and Apollo both, and I didn’t get to thank you.”
“What’s goin’ on, pet?” He struggled to sit up. “Did we save the bloody damsel in distress or didn’t we?”
Apollo caught hold of him and eased him back. “You lost a lot of blood. You shouldn’t be up yet.”
“You didn’t bloody touch me, did you?”
“Don’t worry, Ares, relax, I tried to leave you to your demise,” Apollo told him.
Ares examined Apollo’s belt pulled tight across his thigh and then turned back to Apollo, “
Clio pulled a chair up to the gurney and explained the whole situation to him, hoping he might have something to contribute.
“I’m at a loss, historian, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Clio nodded grimly and stood on shaky legs. “I’m not going to leave her here.”
“Twenty-seven years, three months, and nineteen days,”
Ares tried sitting up again, “What did you say, pet?”
“You can all go if you want, I’m going to stay here with her.”
“What do you mean, like, forever?” His voice cracked, “Like bloody hell you are!”
“There’s no arguing this, you guys need to deliver the key to Hades and bargain for his help, he’s the only one who can help us now. But if he won’t let her go, I’m not going either.”
“Christ, already! Quit your whining, muse, you’re giving me a fucking headache,” said a dark, scabrous voice. All eyes were where he stood on the landing. Hades pointed at Ares and Apollo, “And you two, you owe me a fucking dog. A big one.”
Hades stood there looking down at them, a heavy flak jacket and leather pants tight across his muscular frame. His Caesar cut, small dark eyes, hawk nose, and substantial amount of scruff fashioned him an Underworld gangster. Miranda shivered.
He raised his eyebrows and examined them all as though he was looking over a pair of spectacles. Ruggedly handsome, fear followed him like a sidekick. With a schoolyard bully’s casual gait, he slapped the palm of his hand with his Soul Cleaver as he strode down the stairs. The sword was a couple of feet long and glowed a soft blue.
Ares tried to pull Clio behind the gurney he was still on and she pulled away from him. Hades didn’t look at her as he walked past. She ran ahead and stood between him and her sister.
“What are you doing here, Clio? Again, I might add,” he said and smirked.
“I want Calliope back,” she said and jutted her chin out the way Calli would have.
“Sing me a new one, historian, cause that one is gettin’ old.” His heavy hand palmed the historian’s hair, causing Ares to jump off the gurney, discovering he had only one good leg too late. Plummeting to the floor, Ares brought the gurney down with him. “Relax, nephew, I’m not gonna hurt your girlfriend.”
Clio flinched but did not pull away. “We have the key.”
Hades’ expression turned suddenly. His fingers whipped out and seized her by the chin. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here!”
Miranda pulled on the leather of his coat. Hades released her mother and flashed a toothy grin at the child. “Hello, what’s this?” Reaching down and plucking her up, he settled her on his hip, and fingered the chain around her neck. “You’re mommy there stole this from you when you were just about this age, did you know that?”
“Yes. Now I want you to give Calliope back.” Miranda solemnly unclasped the chain and held the key lightly in her hand.
Hades’ jaw played in and out while he considered a deal. “I’ll tell you what, Miranda, since this was your gift, I’ll let you have the choice.”
Clio pried her daughter out of his arms. “Deal with me, Hades, I’m the one you’re pissed at.”
“I’ll get to you, Clio, right now I am talking to the person I gave a gift to.” He waved her off. His forefinger tapped the side of his nose in a moment of contemplation. “You may have your aunt back if I can have back the soul that was wrongfully stolen from me by your mother. That seems fair to me.”
“No!”
Clio shook her head violently. “You can’t make Miranda decide something like that! He’s her grandson! You can’t do this!”
“Well, I’m not the one who put Calliope here, now am I?”
Clio shot out a raging scream and made to claw at him. Mel and Iris pulled her back.
“Temper, temper, you’ve been hanging around with my nephew too much – bad influence.” Hades regarded Miranda again. Clearing his throat, he said, “Julian died fair and square, he was a mortal, it happens.”
“Megaera killed him! How is that fair and square?” Clio spit.
The Dark God turned to regard her comment. “What are you talking about, historian?”
“Like you don’t know! Julian discovered a scroll regarding some stupid prophecy regarding your death,” she replied.
“What stupid prophecy?”
“Give me back my sister and I’ll tell you.”
“You’re getting good, muse. You almost had me.” Hades smiled.
“Clio is telling the truth,” Mel said.
“No deal,” he said. “Now, choose. Remember, Calliope is an immortal and what happened to her is unnatural, she doesn’t belong here, I don’t even want her here, but I do have a reputation to keep up. C’mon kid, whaddaya say?”
“You can’t do this! You sent The Grim to kill Julian, you took him before his time,” Clio said.
Hades closed the gap between them. His arm slipped around her waist and he pulled her to his chest intimately. “Nobody goes before their time,” he whispered in his growl. “I didn’t have your husband killed, muse. If Meg killed your husband, than that was how he was supposed to die. I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play, but I don’t have time for it.”
Clio placed her palms on his chest and pushed away.
Miranda looked from Crow to Calliope and back again.
Crow grasped his head in pain and did a complete turnaround. He stepped forward and dropped his hand to Miranda’s shoulder. “I’ll stay.”
“Julian, no!” Clio cried.
“NO!”
Hades regarded the redhead with amusement, moving towards her, he looked her up and down.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to play,
“Don’t take my brother, take me instead,” her voice was strong, with only the slightest hint of a tremor.
He smelled her hair and whispered into her ear, “I can’t.”
“Why?” She sobbed.
“You have a destiny. Goody for you.” Hades dropped her and moved away, suddenly bored.
“
Julian moved to his distraught wife and gathered her in his arms. “I don’t belong there, Clio, I belong down here. Somebody shoved my soul into our grandson to punish you, I don’t want to be a constant reminder of that.”
“Do you think I have nothing better to do than play games with a muse?” Hades said.
“Crow and I might share a soul, but we are two different personalities. We each have had different life experiences shaping who we became and in both instances, met you. We both fell in love with you. If I can’t have you there, in that body, in that form because the blood in those veins is the same as yours, what’s the point of going back? I can love you as much down here as I could up there, if not more. The pain of not being able to touch you, to kiss you, to hold you, I couldn’t bear it.
You will always be my wife. I could never treat you any other way. I love you too much, and look at how much she has suffered.” He gestured towards Calliope. “I’m not a god under fire here, I’m an ordinary guy, I won’t be punished like she has.”
Clio cried into his chest and he stroked her hair.
“I love you, Clio. I’ll always love you. Hades can’t change that, he’ll never take that from us,” he said and then he kissed her.
He kissed her, as he should have before he got on that plane to
She suddenly knew.
They hadn’t switched over – it wasn’t Julian, he hadn’t called her Pidge. The man kissing her, telling her these things was Crow, and he loved her as much as Julian did.
“Crow, no! Don’t do this! We’ll find another way! Please don’t leave me, you promised me,” she begged.
“I can’t keep that promise, I’m sorry. I’m partially responsible for what happened to her, too, you know,” he said.
“We’ll find another way,” she repeated.
Crow’s hand whipped and closed around Hades’ wrist. He drove the blade Hades’ held deep into his gut.
“Crow! No!” Clio cried.
Hades pulled his blade out with disdain painted across his rough features. “Clever, very clever, Dr. Mercado.”
Black blood bubbled from between Crow’s lips. “Separated us, right?”
“Yeah. You’re separated from each other,” Hades said.
Clio looked confused.
“Seeing how your husband just split the two personalities apart, he thinks that if Apollo can save Crow, I can have him and you can have both Crow and Calliope back.”
Crow dropped to his knees, Apollo and Clio hurried to his side.
“Crow, look at me,” Clio said.
Apollo examined the wound and applied pressure. “Iris, get my bag!
Crow turned to Clio and smiled. “For the record, this wasn’t my idea,” he said.
“I love you.”
“Now you say it,” Crow said and groaned. Blood came out in a small gush when Apollo lifted the pressure to look at the damage once more. Crow coughed and wheezed.
His hand grasped Clio’s jacket and pulled her close. “I had to do this one thing, have this one moment for you. I’ll never be what you are, and you need someone more like you,” he looked towards Ares over on the gurney, the war god’s usually impassive face now only looked torn. “This is something I can do for you right here, right now, that nobody else can, give me that much, Clee.
I know who you are and I know who I am. And, god help me, Clio, I still love you.” Crow touched her cheek, and she reached up, closing his hand with her own. “But I’m only sacrificing myself this once, Pidge.”
Crow shuddered and lay still.
“No,” Clio said. “No.”
He was gone. Apollo looked helplessly at her. “There was too much, it was too deep.”
“No,” she sobbed, “no, why did you let him do that?”
“I was just as surprised as you were, muse,” Hades said.
“The key?” Clio sniffed and looked at Miranda, who looked equally miserable.
Miranda handed Clio the key.
Clio hugged the old woman in the child’s body. “I did this,” she said. “I did all of this.”
“He knows,
“What happens now?” Mel asked him.
“First of all,” Hades said and squeezed his hand around the gold key. When he opened his hand, it had turned to sand and it ran in a river from his palm to the concrete. “I don’t know how you found that thing again, but it’s gone now.”
Ares watched as the sand blew across the floor and into the cracks.
“Now is the fun part, now we get to stir the muse,” Hades said and strode over to the recumbent figure on the bed. “Get the hell up, Calliope, we’re done here,” he said. His hands wrapped around her upper arms and jarred her violently.
Calliope opened her eyes and focused on him. Her expression changed as she slowly recognized his face and she shrank away. Eyes full of tears, she struggled to sit up with a strength she did not possess. The absolute and complete horror on her face shattered Clio’s resolve and she hurled herself at Hades.
Clio pulled him away from her sister and he turned to face the unruly historian. “Bastard! What did you do? What did you do to her?” She screamed and took a wild swing that connected with his jaw. The reality of her action hit her like a ton of bricks and she stumbled backwards, eyes wide with alarm, her head shaking in disbelief of what she had done. “No, I didn’t… I,” she stammered.
Hades’ hand wrapped about her throat and he lifted her to her tiptoes. “I am not the guy you want to lose that temper with, muse,” he said. “You don’t want me to lose my temper, do you?”
“N-no, no, please,” she pleaded in a strangled voice, her hands clawing at the one around her throat. He tossed her to where Ares was smoldering on the floor beside the fallen gurney.
Ares tried to break her fall as best he could from his awkward position. His skin was scorching to the touch and Clio flinched from his burning temperature. After a fleeting inspection of her throat, he glowered at Hades.
“Oh, what, nephew? Like you can do anything about it in that pathetic state you’re in.”
With a furious roar, Ares launched himself at Hades’ legs, knocking the God of the Underworld onto his ass. Hades kicked Ares back with a boot to the chest. There was a sickening crunching sound and the war god skittered back to where he started – in a broken heap beside the fallen gurney.
Ares’ darkened expression looked as though he might attack Hades again. “Don’t, just don’t,” Clio said.
His gaze softened and he put a tentative hand to the small of her back. His sternum was cracked, he had about a pint of blood left, his leg was shattered and torn open, and Clio was a broken mess. Ares was done for now.
Hades pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself off. “Apollo, you’re a man of prudence, take these insolent brats and get the Hell out of my Underworld.”
“We’re leaving,” he said.
Hades’ hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of feathers, pulling Iris to him, “Your Underworld privileges have been revoked, but I’m sure you knew that.”
Iris nodded. She gathered the frightened, bereaved mortals and moved them to the stairway.
Calliope had slipped off the hospital bed and crawled to a corner of the warehouse, a scalpel in her trembling hand, trying to fend him off. She looked like a furious, trapped fairy with wild, terrified eyes. Mad slashes swooshed at his hands while he mocked her with his raspy chuckle.
“Remember, you wanted the feral thing back,” he called to Clio.
A sapphire the size of a robin’s egg was waved in front of the ghostly muse’s eyes, mesmerizing her. Hades spoke a few words and the poet was gone, faded from sight.
In a lazy gait, he joined Apollo, Ares, and Clio, and to Mel, he held out two fists.
“Pick a hand,” he said.
A tremor coursed through the Muse of Tragedy as she reached out and found his left hand. He opened it and offered her the sapphire. She plucked it from his palm carefully, fearful of a trap.
“Ah! You’re boring the fuck out of me!” He boomed. “Now get out of my sight before I do something that would really piss my brother off!”
Hades walked out. The broken, dejected immortals looked to each other for support and helped Ares up. Mel wrapped Calliope’s sapphire carefully into her scarf and placed it gently into her pack.
“Let’s get out of here,” Apollo said woodenly.
“What about my brother?”
Apollo picked him up and carried Crow, the body that now resembled only Crow, up the stairs.
Ares nodded and leaned heavily on Clio for support, he was weaker than he cared to admit.
“You alright, pet?” He asked as she helped him hobble to the stairs.
“No.”
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