Chapter Thirty-Two

Lindsay made a few verbal noises of discontentment but made no move to force me to stay behind. Gregory protested me putting on a uniform. And by "uniform", I mean a few leather pieces and some spandex.

My shirt, like Lindsay's, covered me from my neck to my belly button, leaving my midriff exposed and vulnerable. Why I couldn't have a uniform like Alex's—which covered her entire body in one slim piece of tightly woven fabric—I didn't ask.

Melding to my shape as if it were made to my specifications, the thick woven fabric was unlike anything I had worn before. At least it felt foreign; I didn't know if it truly was a new tactile in my unreliable memory. With my torso covered so entirely that the fabric felt like a second skin, the actual leather felt bulky and restricting.

Lindsay laughed at me; turns out I had the armor on backwards.

I shrugged out of the breastplate in favor of the pants—same thick weave as the shirt, same second-skin feeling—and tied the cuffs around my forearms before letting Gregory help me into the dreaded shell that would protect my chest. In the mirror my reflection looked too much like Lindsay's, down to our bare feet.

A lone pair of boots remained where Alex had dropped her bundle; I snatched them up before Lindsay had the chance. Upon reexamination of our identical reflections, I looked like the cheap version of Lindsay, who looked every bit a warrior queen.

I no longer cared that Hector had kidnapped me. It didn't matter what memories I had forgotten and it wasn't frightening that I might never remember them. Tomorrow I would worry that Jasper had been feeding me Lindsay's blood. Tomorrow I would wonder why Hector suddenly didn't want me to be the motivational mascot he had encouraged me to become. I would force someone to tell me who stole the Nectar—tomorrow.

This is what I was meant to be doing today. Destiny, you know how it goes.

What mattered was restoring the Nectar to wherever it belonged. What mattered was keeping the peace between the gods. Keeping Hector happy mattered.

We were dressed and ready but the war had not officially begun. "We wait until he calls us," Gregory had said both times I asked, now what?

So we waited.

We each fell into a sort of comfortable anticipation. The leather on our bodies looked sturdy enough to take a hit; it didn't hinder Alex from lounging on the floor or Gregory from polishing his blades. I tried to determine the effectiveness of the armor. If I were the enemy, I would aim for the unprotected middle—it made an easy target, my stomach was definitely not bulletproof.

It didn't matter: the gods wouldn't use bullets. Everybody knows that.

We had covered swords and whips and staffs. We went over the different gods who might be there and what they were most known for. I read up on the various creatures who might be part of either army, many of which I would not want to meet in a dark alley. I even, briefly, got a little practice driving the Fury. But still, I was outlandishly unprepared for battle. If this were a test, I'd fail fabulously.

But that was okay: I wasn't supposed to be more than a symbol of the army anyway, right?

We all had different ways of coping with our potential and near-future deaths. Finished polishing, or perhaps too anxious to stay still, Gregory picked up two practice swords and swung them in the drills he taught yesterday.

Alex had her dagger out—no, there were two, three of them—and she ran her finger across the sharp edge, checking on the lethality of her weapons. She did this for all three blades and tucked them away, one in her boot, the other two at her hips. Needing something to do with her jittery hands, she took them out again and repeated the process.

Neither of them would admit to being apprehensive about what was coming.

Lindsay continued to admire herself in the mirror. From every angle, she looked the picture of danger, the kind of creature you would want to stay away from—in battle and out of it. Her hair tumbled off of her shoulders and for the first time I noticed the snake tattooed around her middle—just below where the armor ended above her belly button. Was the armor a vanity to show off the tattoo? She was not afraid.

It was my reflection that looked frightened. I may not have felt that way but I certainly didn't look like Lindsay, confident, ready, certain. Later I might look back and think it was wrong to be so willing to march to my death for people that I couldn't trust. But just then, in that moment, preparing ourselves for the call, I had a deep-seated righteousness and sense of belonging that imbued in me the need to fight for them.

And maybe I could trust them. I had gotten more information out of them than out of Hector since I arrived. He continually let me down, pushed me away, shut me out.

Of course, he would turn around and astound me with his charm or almost kiss me in his office or bring me back to myself when the Fury took over. He was so back and forth—as soon as I was sure he wouldn't lie to me anymore, he thought of a reason to keep me in the dark. If I didn't know better I would think he was as sure about what he wanted from me as I was about leaving when this was all over.

Hector wanted me to fight, then he didn't want me to fight; he wanted me to lead the army but he wanted the Fury, not Autumn; he wanted me to be strong but not enough to fight my own fights.

What he had definitively wanted from me a week ago was something I could not give: the Fury. After what happened with Ares, I vowed not to lose control of the Fury again.

That vow rendered me useless to him, to the Underworld, to the cause. Maybe he knew my hesitation and that's why he told Lindsay he no longer wanted me. Panic grew in my stomach, crept its way into my chest until I couldn't breathe.

Useless. Useless and weak; a joke. Oh gods, I'm such a joke. I fought to inhale but my lungs locked up; my body froze, the only indication of my struggle was my eyes, desperate and wide.

Then a sense of serenity overwhelmed me. The room faded away and all that was left was me—and the Fury, her face as recognizable to me as my own. We stared at each other in an empty place inside my head: I could feel the floor beneath my feet but there was nothing else as far as I could see. A layer of fog covered me from my knees down.

The dead space between us was just enough that she couldn't touch me. My brain instinctively lit up like flashing red warning lights. Don't let her touch you, whatever you do.

"Hi. We haven't officially met. I'm Autumn. You've been hanging out inside my body for, well, ever." It was worth a shot. Saying hello couldn't make things worse, right?

"Let me out to play, child. We could do such damage in war, as glorious as our sisters waged long ago. They were feared and revered. It is time the world remembered what it means to be Furious."

Funny, she sounded like me. She even looked a little like me, but with darker red-tinted skin, untamed hair and a crazed, bloodthirsty look in her eyes. And, to complete the picture, the woman before me had a set of wings folded serenely at her back. I noticed the same tattoo that I'd seen on Lindsay displayed around Fury-Autumn's middle. A snake that wrapped itself several times around her stomach and wound up her back. I could see all of this because the clothes she wore—if you could call them that—covered only the necessary bits. They were torn, as if she had been fighting in them already for a very long time, and left most of her flesh uncovered.

"If you let me fight in this battle, my first in a hundred years, you and I together will take down the armies of Olympus and the creatures of the Underworld and all who stand in the way of bringing old myths out of the shadows and into the realm of humanity once again," she said in my voice. Her smile showed teeth and betrayed her hunger.

"What do you mean 'my first a hundred years'?" I was tired of not knowing anything.

"Let me out and I'll answer all of your questions."

I'm so tired of playing these games.

I stood separately from the angriest parts of me, the piece of my soul that had caused so much trouble for me. Because I had no doubt that she had always been a part of me, the dark part that I could never hide from. She was the reason I was here, the reason that I couldn't go home. I had imagined that she was the reason I was so angry, always angry.

But I was apart from her here, as if we were two completely different people, and I was still angry.

So much for that theory.

"Tell me why you're here, attached to my soul, and I'll think about it," I lied. I was never going to let her out.

"I can tell that you lie, little one. I am much older than you, old enough to know when a human is being untrustworthy." Fury-Autumn started to circle me. I turned to follow her movements, never letting her out of my sight, not letting her close enough for touch. I wished desperately for a weapon. "But maybe if I show you that I'm worthy of your trust, you'll change your mind. Furies are reincarnated when they die; so I am thousands of years old. I have witnessed the rise and fall of more nations than you can count. The last time I was killed was over a century ago, and I am ready to rejoin the land of the living.

"Zeus is a greedy beast; he is bent on punishing us in the wake of hi own boredom. For six hundred years my sisters and I can only wake one at a time. No matter the number of our descendants who walk the earth." She harrumphed at me, mildly annoyed, before changing the subject. "When the Fates foretold of a Fury who would restore the precious ambrosia to its rightful place, they meant me. The Fates made sure that your father would hear of the prophesy and the greedy little man set off on a quest to sire as many children as possible in hopes that he might be a part of the coming legacy. And eventually, through you, I was reborn into the body of the seventh child. It's a random selection process, you see. Fate is funny that way, no matter how loyal you are."

For all of the crazy, out-of-this-world things I had heard in the Underworld, this one made the most sense. And I didn't have to fight her for answers.

What a welcome change of pace. It was a glorious feeling, clarity. Not something I had much of lately.

"Does Hector know why he was waiting for me, for you I mean, why the others didn't work out?" I asked.

Fury-Autumn kept circling me, sizing me up. She was probably wondering the same thing I was: would I be a match for her without her guidance in my bones? If she were to attack now, would I be able to fight her off?

"That young, naïve man knows only that one of my sisters would be reborn into this generation. He didn't know that you were all waiting for me, specifically."

So Hector couldn't give me all of the answers because he didn't have all of the information. I instantly felt bad for being frustrated with him—and then talked myself out that regret. He could have told me he didn't have all of the answers. The frustration returned.

Fury-Autumn grinned an evil grin. "Let me show you what I can do." Then she rushed at me.

Her hand whipped out and faster than I could duck she wrapped her hand around the back of my neck. Fury-Autumn was stronger than she looked: with one hand she held me captive, paralyzed. I couldn't move to stop her as her rested her forehead on mine in a mock-loving embrace.

As if a cloud had been lifted, I found myself back in the mirror training room. Nobody had noticed that I'd reappeared. My body must have remained, sentient and breathing, all of the action purely inside my head.

But no; something was wrong. My skin felt hot and prickly. It felt like my insides were melting into puddles beneath my skin, all of my organs fighting to stay alive. The air in my lungs emerged from my mouth in smoky puffs. And then just as quickly as it had started, the sensation of melting vanished.

I lifted my head to look in the mirror—surely I was imagining everything... my flesh had gained a tanned tint and my eyes turned red. Talons, wings, and a snake tattoo around my stomach: the Fury had transformed in me.