Voices flowed around me, emergency workers, police officers, ambulance attendants. Someone tried to take her away from me, and I snapped my teeth at them, every bit of me willing to fight them off if I had to. With shaking legs, I stood, still holding her to me. The uniformed people stepped back and let me carry her out. More than one looked away, tears of their own slipping down their faces. Too much, this was too much. Somehow I was out of the hole and standing on the road in front of an ambulance. “You have to give her up,” a voice said.

I turned my face to see Smithy standing there. Tad was beside him, his face pale and his cheeks stained with tears. “I’ll go with her, Alena. She won’t be alone.” My brother choked on the words, and that brought another round of tears from my own eyes.

Smithy had a hand on my arm, and he squeezed it gently. “Alena, you have to let them take her, and I need to get you some help. You’re dying, sweetheart.”

“I don’t care,” I whispered.

“I do.” His blue eyes were intense, and I fought not to sob.

“You shouldn’t.” Because what I had in me was nothing short of revenge. I wasn’t sure I could hold the Drakaina in me back anymore.

Maybe worse was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wanted to let her loose and watch Hera and her pets run for cover while I rained down venom and destruction.

Smithy held his arms out to me, indicating I should give him my mother. “They need to take her, Alena. You can’t help her now.”

Another voice, one that was as dear to me as my mother’s, called out. “That’s not true, Hephaestus, and you know it.”

CHAPTER 9

My distraction with what my grandmother said allowed Smithy to take my mother from my arms and hand her body off to Tad. I stared at Yaya, not caring that I was naked and covered in blood. “What are you talking about?”

Yaya’s blue eyes were soft with tears, but under that was a determination that I’d seen in her before. “Death is never the end, Alena. Your mother is not gone forever, not if you’re brave enough. Look to Orpheus.”

I reached for Yaya, and my knees buckled. A pair of strong arms swept under my legs and scooped me up. My head lolled back, and Smithy stared down at me.

“Let me go,” I said. “If I’m dead, this all ends. Hera wins. No more fighting.”

He frowned. “No, you need to heal before you can even begin to consider what Flora is saying.”

What Flora was saying? What was my yaya saying? That I could save my mother somehow from death? Who was Orpheus, and what did he have to do with anything? If it was possible, I would do it, I would bring my mother back. I would. I struggled, but the struggle was small and weak. I doubted that Smithy even felt me twitch. He held his arms a little tighter around me. “I’m taking Alena to my place. I’ll have Panacea meet us there.”

Panacea, the healer. I didn’t mean to close my eyes, but I couldn’t help it. There was something pulling the lids closed, something I couldn’t fight, couldn’t deny. My mother was dead, gone, killed in a battle with another monster. This was all . . . “My fault.” the words slipped, slurred past my lips like I’d been dipping into the ouzo while baking. I reached up, touching someone’s face, feeling ridged scars along a thick neck.

“Hush, Alena. Just hang on, we’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” was what I wanted to ask, but what did it matter? I’d killed my mother. Tad . . . he’d find out it was my fault soon enough, and then he’d hate me too. He’d hate me. Oh, God. I groaned. Dad. I still had to talk to Dad, to tell him. I whimpered, unable to keep the pitiful sound back, and I closed my eyes, suddenly exhausted.

Voices floated around me, and time passed. I knew because the voices kept saying it. “Too much time, we’re going to lose her. Too much time.”

I didn’t really care. The dark of unconsciousness was blissful and I hid in it, a part of me hoping that I never fully escaped it.

I woke up as I was being set down on something soft and cushiony, like a marshmallow filling. I sank into it, and water slipped over my head. Smithy was drowning me, that was the only thing I could think, and I didn’t want to fight it. All along he’d been working for Hera, working for her. Damn him. But I didn’t damn him, not really. What was the point? I’d asked him to let me go, so he was. A voice slid through the water. “Breathe it in, Alena; it will flush the toxins out of your system.”

I recognized the voice as Panacea’s, and my body lurched as I opened my mouth to do as I was told. To breathe in the water. I sucked a lungful in deep, and the water didn’t taste of water but of flowers and herbs, spices I could recognize, and then their names floated away on my thoughts like the bubbles escaping my lips. Lavender and eucalyptus, sage, rose petals, saffron, and honey, the honey so thick it coated my tongue. In and out I breathed, as though the water were air, and slowly my senses came back to me, and I was staring up at two people above me through a clouded glass. No, I was in a tub, a big tub, staring up through pale-green liquid. I recognized Smithy and Panacea.

“You can’t be serious,” Panacea whispered, her words amplified through the water.

“She’s going to get herself killed if she goes after her mother. Not to mention I don’t think she’s strong enough to face the Hydra or Hercules on their own, never mind together. The Hydra got up and walked away from that fight; Alena has been unconscious for days after being carried out.”