“I’ve always shown you respect,” Odysseus finished lamely, and she looked away. He said her name and got no response. She might as well have been a statue. So he turned and left, slamming the door of the cab behind him.
* * *
Athena stepped out of the Freightliner and took a breath of Toledo. It smelled about the same as South Bend, only colder. The wind had come up too, and it whipped her hair into her eyes. She couldn’t tell what time it was. The clouds blocked out the sun.
They were parked in the loading dock of a long, navy blue and white warehouse. Half a dozen other trucks were lined up beside Craig’s, a few of them idling, most of them turned off. Workers passed by on forklifts, moving pallets of white boxes. She looked around. Odysseus hadn’t made it far. He stood about fifty feet away, near the hot lunch truck, talking to the driver while he ate a hot dog. She walked up behind him.
“Once you start eating you just don’t quit.”
He turned. Uncertainty floated over his features, like he still half-expected to be turned into a toad. He cleared his throat and his brows lifted.
“I’m a bottomless pit. Can I get you anything?”
“Maybe just a Coke.”
He paid the worker and handed her a cold can. Athena walked away and motioned with her head for him to follow, past the line of parked trucks and over to the end of the lot, where a lonely picnic table stood in the middle of dead brown grass.
“Well,” he said and threw a leg over the bench, “this is awkward.”
“Talking about why Hera and Poseidon are after you?” Athena asked lightly. “Why would that be awkward? Is it that awful?”
She looked him in the eyes. Deal with the problem at hand. The rest we can worry about later.
Odysseus nodded slightly and Athena took a long drink of her soda.
“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” he asked.
“Looking for tools to help them eat us, you mean?”
He gave her a weird look, and she waved her hand.
“I don’t think the eating part is literal. But who knows? They’re just trying to save their own skins.”
“For them to live, other gods have to die.”
Athena nodded. “So everyone keeps saying. Though nobody seems to be able to say why.”
Odysseus shrugged. “Because that’s the way that it’s been fated to happen. No one escapes Fate. Not a single one of us, after we’re born. Not even you.”
Athena rolled her eyes. He sounded like her father. “So why even bother fighting? If we’re fated to lose, then we lose. If we’re fated to win, then one way or another, we’ll come out on top. Right?”
“Don’t get philosophical on me. For the record, I don’t believe in Fate. I believe that the pieces have been placed. The ending hasn’t been written yet.”
Athena ground her teeth. She did believe in Fate. It was almost impossible not to, after having the king of the gods drive it into her head for so long. But she’d always hated it. It made her feel powerless. Why people saw it as a comfort, she would never understand.
She twisted the tab off of her Coke and flicked it into the recycle bin. “So what are they doing, right now? Do you know?”
“They’re looking for a weapon.”
“I figured on that. What weapon? It can’t be Cassandra. You didn’t even know about her.”
He hesitated, which was good. The fewer who knew the better. But she was the leader of the damned resistance. He needed to cough it up.
“There’s just the one weapon that I know about,” he said softly.
“Okay.” She waited for him to talk. When he didn’t, she nudged him with a finger. “So what is it? And why do they need you in particular to get it?”
Odysseus swallowed. “Because I’m the only one who knows how to find it.”
“How to—?” she asked, and stopped. Suddenly she knew. It was just like it had been before. During the war against Troy. Greece had needed a weapon, and only Odysseus had been able to convince it to come out and fight. Only Odysseus had known where it was hiding.
“It’s Achilles,” she whispered. “They’re looking for Achilles.”
Achilles. The greatest warrior the world had ever seen. She hadn’t thought of him in ages. During the time of the Trojan war, he’d been necessary, but even then she’d wished he hadn’t been. He was cold, smart, and narcissistic. He knew the price of glory and he didn’t care. The slaughter he left in his wake was red and spread with entrails. He knew nothing of pity, and when he was angry, even the gods were afraid.