“Who are you?” Cassandra shouted, looking from the boy to the dead monster and back again. He’d killed it. Feigned sleep and killed it, with no fear. His voice was accented, London-street, but not strained. He might’ve sounded more upset if he’d just come out of a scuffle in his local pub. Cassandra pushed off the ground and stood beside him. They watched silently as the body of the creature stiffened. Its pale, blood-streaked face stared up at the sky accusingly, and its arms and legs drew in and curled like an arachnid’s carapace. He’d left the knife in its chest. When he reached forward to pull it out, it made a sick sucking sound that made Cassandra want to retch. She swallowed hard.
The boy studied the blood on the knife and wiped it on his sleeve.
No surprise in your eyes. You knew it was hunting you. You knew what it was.
She studied his profile.
I know you. I knew you. I liked you, and I hated you.
“Glory of Athena,” the boy whispered, and made a reverent gesture before bowing his head.
The next attack came too fast. The second Cyclops leapt onto his shoulder and drove him forward, facedown into the stiffening body of the first. Cassandra screamed as it dug its jaws into his shoulder and neck, tearing skin, but it was his screams that finally drove her away, out of the dream.
* * *
Aidan’s footsteps fell heavy on the bridge. Frost crunched beneath his feet as he walked down the center of the road, listening to the whisper of the river water thirty feet below, barely perceptible as it flowed lazily past downed trees and rushed against a steadily spreading sheet of ice. He didn’t bother to listen for cars. It was late and the road was quiet. His ears were on the sky, on the branches creaking above his head. He was listening for feathers. For wing beats.
An owl’s feathers made no sound. That was how they hunted. They watched silently, heads spinning round, eyes wide as dinner plates. They watched, and they swooped without warning, talons breaking the backs of an unsuspecting rabbit, or mouse, or unlucky house cat. It seemed cowardly. It seemed like a cheat. And he expected better, especially from her.
He stopped in the middle of the bridge and stared up at the blank spot in the sky that the road left, cutting through the vast forest that surrounded Abbott Park. It was there somewhere, the owl that had flown up against Cassandra’s window. He had to find it.
That’s a weird coincidence, Cassandra had said. But it wasn’t. No matter how much he wanted it to be. Their time of calm would end. Unless he stopped it.
The moment Cassandra spoke of feathers breaking through skin, he knew. He knew that somewhere his sister was dying, with feathers cutting through her body. His self-righteous, battle-ready sister. And now she wanted something. Something that had to do with Cassandra.
“You can’t have her,” he said, and his breath left his throat in a cloud of steam. He had to find the owl. It wouldn’t be hard. It was Athena’s servant, but it was still just an owl. It wouldn’t race to her side to whisper in her ear. It would fly, and hunt, and sleep, and reach her in its own time.
The wind came up hard and sudden; the sound it made moving across the bridge and over the river was like a scream. The river would be covered over soon, locked down under ice and snow, only breaking through in the spaces where it sped up, past rocks and through spinning eddies. Aidan breathed the cold in deep but couldn’t feel it. Cold had never been able to touch him. Not in all his long, immortal life. He was a golden glow. He was light, and heat. He was Apollo, the sun, and he’d burn down anyone who tried to hurt her.
Movement high up in the pines caught his attention and he moved, darting off the bridge, running low and quiet. He reached the owl in moments, watching from beneath as it swooped from branch to branch. He watched its brown speckled belly, its flight feathers stretched out on the wind like fingers. It didn’t pay any attention to him, so far below on the ground. Not even when he leapt up to catch it when it dove.
The sensation of being pulled down out of the air had no time to register in the bird’s brain. Neither did the feeling of its wings being crushed, or its neck being broken. There were no final thoughts. Only vague surprise and no regrets.
Aidan looked down at the feathery mess in his hands. The owl was dead. Silenced. He stroked the feathers.
“You didn’t feel it. And it wasn’t your fault.” The bird was so light in his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed it. Maybe they could have caged it and kept it as a pet. Cassandra might have liked that.
But how many more would she send? He couldn’t cage them all. His hands tightened. Questions filled his ears like they’d been shouted. What did she want? And how many others would she bring with her?