“I thought you’d be back sooner,” Athena said.
Ares started, surprised to find her waiting.
“Panic’s been cooped up and bandaged too long,” he said. “It needed to eat a few raccoons.”
The red wolf came into the yard, walking a little stiffly. But it wasn’t dead. Its jaws hung open and dripped bloodstained spit. Pieces of the raccoons were stuck in its teeth.
Terrible, wicked wolves. Who saved our friends’ lives.
Terrible and wicked, like their master. Athena looked at Ares and noted the fresh blood over the wound in his stomach. What had he ever been, except what he was? What right did she have to expect otherwise?
“How’s your stomach?” she asked.
“Hole in it,” he said, and shrugged. “Not healing as fast as I’d like.” He came to the patio table and shoved her foot off the chair opposite to sit down. He shoved a little harder than necessary, and she hid her smile behind a turned cheek.
“Is this how it is for you?” he asked. “Is this how it is to play the hero? A knife in your guts and a half-dead wolf, and she hasn’t even said thank you.”
“She hasn’t tried to kill you again, either.”
He laughed. “That’s what passes for gratitude? What a state these mortals are in.” He watched his wolves circle each other in the yard. Oblivion snuck in to steal a lick from Panic’s reddened teeth. They were grotesquely sweet.
“Not long now, is it?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“That why you’re out here? Soaking up the rays, making a toast to the first casualty of war?” He nodded to her beer, and squinted skyward at Aidan’s sun.
“Making jokes about him now?” Athena asked, and her jaw clenched. “When it was your girlfriend who killed him?”
“It wasn’t easy to hear that,” he said, voice going lower, and louder. “No matter what you think. He was my brother, too. And Aphrodite didn’t know. She didn’t.”
“But she did it.”
Ares made a fist, and Athena took a deep breath. Aphrodite killed Aidan. Aidan killed Poseidon. Cassandra killed Hera. And on, and on, one to the other. The only constant was that they were dead.
“I don’t want to do this,” Athena said. “I was waiting for you as much as anything.”
“Really?” he asked, and she almost laughed. He sounded all of eight years old. The little brother forever in her shadow.
“So,” Ares said. “What do we have, besides ourselves? What can we turn to our advantage? Location? Weapons? You should have let me keep Aeacus’ scepter.”
“So he could pound down our door looking for it? No.” Athena took a swallow of beer.
“I wish we still had Uncle Poseidon’s head,” Ares sighed. “We could call the sea. Recruit an army of Nereids.”
“You had Poseidon’s head?”
“Right.” Ares smiled. “You jumped off the mountain before that part.”
“Well … where is it?”
Ares frowned. “Aphrodite stashed it when we were on the run. She buried it in a hole in Rhode Island. Two days later she went to dig it up and the whole place was a saltwater marsh. It’s gone. Lost.”
“You lost our uncle’s head?”
“Yes. You turned him into a head, and we lost it. Either way, we can’t count it amongst our assets.”
“He probably wouldn’t have been too big a help anyway, even if we hadn’t killed him,” Athena said. “The Titans’ children seemed to suffer worse than us.” She picked at a scab near her neck and tore out a feather like a ragged splinter before tossing it into the yard. Blood leaked hot down her chest. “How do you think Dad died?”
“Zeus? What makes you think he’s dead? With the ego on him, he’d probably explode. We’d have heard it, or dreamt it. Or died right along with him.”
Athena curled her lip. Ares always put too much stock in their father. She glanced to the yard, where the wolves circled the bloody bit of feather.
“Don’t let them eat that,” she said, and he shooed them off.
“You should let me carry Achilles’ shield,” Ares said. “The kid will only get killed and stripped of it.” He waited, eyes sharp as though he hoped she’d argue.
“If Henry says you can take it, you can take it. I don’t know if Henry will want to go at all.”
“Want to?” Ares asked, puzzled. “Who cares if he wants to? And why aren’t you planning? Battle strategy. That’s your bag of tricks. What’s gotten into you?”