Dead Lines

16: Test of Durability

“Give my best to Hermaphroditus. He’s training her well.”

“Glad we’ve got that settled,” Janus said snidely. “If you wanted to test her, all you had to do was ask.”

“I had to make sure she was prepared for anything.” Oh, yeah. Because that hadn’t been about his ego or temper. I rolled my eyes and stepped back up to the table next to him. Andrzej finally reappeared from his trip to the stacks, looking much like Ares did when I let him up from the table. The wolf looked like he was ready to tear the God’s head off. Maybe even play a little jump rope with his intestines. Andrzej’s eyes were even glowing. But when he saw I was in one piece with no harm done, he calmed down real quick. Andrzej’s grudge would have to be solved another time. “Now, back to finding this weapon…”

“What do we know about the knife?” Logios asked. “Ephipany, you said…”

“It’s no longer in Tartarus or the Underworld.” I paused for a second, allowing Andrzej to make his way back to his spot behind me. “Persephone has it.”

“Then I was right,” Ares commented boldly. “We should capture her any way possible.”

“Like we’ve stated, we can’t capture her until we are assure she’s not going to disappear again,” Apollo said. “If we send Artemis after her now, my sister will only become frustrated with each failed attempt. Everyone here knows what she’s like when she’s frustrated.”

“How long, Natalie?” Janus asked calmly.

The map of the island Persephone and Chris were on was back on display, the 3D image glowing softly as it rotated before us.

“Andrzej,” I said softly.

I needed him to stop nullifying my Particular so I could See. Since he’d come back into proximity of me, I’d been reduced to just being a plain ole demigod. Not a horrible thing but when people were asking specific questions…

“Are you sure that’s wise?” someone asked. “Gaia might try…”

“What she was doing took a lot of energy and tons of power. She won’t try it again so soon,” I assured.

The God who asked nodded and turned his attention back to the map. The two dots were still where I remembered them to be. There was a quick flash of day turning to night, night to day, and just as the day was turning to night again, a whole different place came to view. The weird floaty feeling of a quick vision passed and I was back to staring at the dots.

“They’ll switch locations in about two days if Artemis doesn’t interfere.”

“Where?” Apollo asked.

I frowned as that little bit of information got stuck. “I need a map.”

“What kind of map?” Ares asked as Apollo sorted through the papers on the table. “We have tons.”

“Modern or Antiquity?” Apollo asked.

I poked at the vision a little, pulled at the various strands until a clear image of another island came to mind.

“Modern overlapping Antiquity.”

Apollo got it all sorted out and slid the papers across the table. Andrzej helped me flatten them out and since he could technically see the destination right along with me…let’s just say I would’ve been staring at the map for a while before finding it.

“Here,” Andrzej pointed. “Peloponnese.”

Ares frowned as he looked at it. “Are you certain?”