Chapter 21

21

Nemea

“ W ho wants to take a trip to Las Vegas?” I hop up off the bed, looking around at the four of them.

Campe looks impressed. Alcides is clearly about to object. Typhon’s non-reaction is as transparent to me as glass. He can’t go and is numb to the constant disappointment of being left behind.

“Vesh will be there,” Alcides warns, but I’m already up and walking to Typhon. There’s something more important we need to tackle first.

Ty stands up straighter when he realizes I’m focusing on him, his gaze hopeful again. When I reach him, I grab his face between my hands and press a hard kiss to his mouth that leaves him blinking and dazed.

“Let’s see if we can teach you how to shift.”

“Have you ever done it?” he asks skeptically.

“No, so it’ll be new to me too. But supposedly I have powers similar to Vesh, and if he can do it, I figure so can I, right? And so can you. Any tips?” I turn to face Campe, who is looking on in amusement.

“He needs to let go of the dream form he’s taken on here, first of all. Nothing but the truth to start with. The chosen shape comes from your power, not from your mind. It is your essence transformed, not a wish made flesh. Once you have a grasp on controlling your essence, you can make it look however you like.”

“Right.” I look back at Typhon. “Let’s see you in all your glory, big boy.”

He takes a breath and backs up several paces. In a blink the lovely, strapping young blond is gone, and in his place is the three-stories-tall, scaled beast with one hundred heads who made me come so many times I forgot who I was. My core heats and throbs at the memory. All his tongues flick out, tasting the air, and his big head makes a low rumble, dipping close to inhale the air around me.

I place a hand on his snout and step back. “I’ll let you have your way with me when we get back. Right now, focus your power on making yourself the shape you were before.”

In a deep, resonant voice, he intones, “I do not have the same well of power inside me that you do. I am power.” To illustrate, he sweeps his immense tail across the landscape behind him. The temple is in his way and crumbles like it’s made of sand. It reforms when he stills again, but is enough of a demonstration of his meaning.

I square my shoulders and step back, giving Typhon room. “You can still control that power, right? You can make decisions and take actions. So now you just need to decide to be human-shaped.”

Typhon’s hundred heads bob in a way that I take for a nod. I watch as his massive body shudders, scales rippling like a sea during a storm. His two hundred eyes fix on me with determination.

“You can do this,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel. I wish that I could take him back to the island and St. George School to test his magic with different materials, the way I tested mine to learn how it worked. But maybe I don’t need the school for him to try. “Imagine the power that makes up your body is like clay. You’re the sculptor.”

A low rumble emanates from him, vibrating the ground beneath my feet. It’s as if he’s murmuring to himself, a chant in a language of growls and hisses that sends chills down my spine.

“Visualize your human form,” I continue. “Remember how your limbs moved in your dream shape, how it felt to be smaller, more... compact.”

He starts to condense before my eyes, scales pulling inward, heads retracting like turtles into their shells. But it’s messy and disjointed—limbs sprout at odd angles and heads pop out where they shouldn’t.

“No, no,” I say gently, reaching out a hand to rest on a bulging part of him that I think might be a shoulder. “You’re thinking too hard about the details. Focus on the essence of being human—walking on two legs, talking with one mouth, seeing with two eyes.”

“If I may,” Campe says, stepping forward. She rests a hand on my shoulder, looking up into one of the strange heads that peers back at us with eyes too large for its face. “Your bond may help. You have access to Nemea’s power too. Let her feed some of it to you, some human essence, to guide your shape.”

His oversized eyes blink owlishly, but when I reach out to touch him, the connection is instantaneous. My power reaches for him, and I focus on what it feels like to be human.

Typhon’s form begins flickering, as if he’s caught between stations on an old TV set. He’s trying to find the right frequency. I step back to give him room, our link stretching like a glowing tether between us.

“Think about emotions,” I suggest, grasping at straws now. “Humans are all about feelings. How do you feel when you’re in the human form you show me?”

There’s a pause—a moment where even his rumbling chant stops—and then something shifts in Typhon’s demeanor. A head—the central one—begins to morph into something more recognizable: a face with vivid violet eyes that hold an ancient sadness.

“Yes!” I exclaim. “That’s it! Hold onto that feeling!”

The transformation accelerates now; the remaining heads shrink away as his body contracts further into a distinctly human shape. The scales fade into starkly pale skin and muscles form beneath.

He stumbles forward on two legs that are finally his own and collapses into a heap of exhausted humanity.

I rush to him, kneeling by his side. “Typhon? Are you okay?”

His chest heaves as he catches his breath in ragged gasps, but he manages a nod and then looks up at me with eyes filled with wonder and gratitude.

But he isn’t the same pretty human man he liked to show me before.

This version of him has the almost translucent skin tone of someone who’s never seen the sun, with tangled black hair that hangs over his eyes. Eyes that glow with violet power, haunted by a thousand years of witnessing torture, no doubt.

He resembles Cerberus in his human form, only paler, more haunted, and a little gaunt. I know he and Erebus and Vesh are brothers, but they never mentioned being related to any of the others. I suppose anything is possible.

I brush a lock off his forehead, holding my breath at the hesitant look he gives me, like he’s afraid he’ll lose control and revert at any second.

When he holds this shape for several breaths he smiles.

“I did it,” he says hoarsely, his voice resonating with that same deep timbre I remember from before—only now it comes from just one mouth and isn’t accompanied by a hundred hissing tongues.

I can’t help but laugh—a release of tension and joy—as I help him sit up. “You sure did. Now who’s ready for Las Vegas?”

“Hold on, not so fast,” Campe says. “I want to be clear that this is just for practice. We are not staying; we’re there and gone. In fact, the faster you can teleport, the better. The idea is for you to test it out in combat, when reflexes matter most. Also, we can’t very well hit the Strip dressed like this.” She passes a critical gaze over all of us, still naked, even Typhon. Erebus has transformed again into his battle-ready soldier shape, but not even that is good enough for Campe.

She exhales a cloud of smoke that sparks with magic, encompassing the five of us. It settles over my skin, clinging to me and making the small hairs on my body stand on end at first, before settling softly and draping around my frame. Tendrils of it work into my hair, tugging and pulling it this way and that.

When the smoke clears, I look down to find myself garbed in a snug black ankle-length skirt with a slit up the side and a black and purple bustier. I reach up to find my hair carefully arranged in two coils at the back of my head, with strands brushing my shoulders.

The others are dressed to the nines too; Alcides is in a sharp gray suit with a bolo tie and cowboy boots tipped in silver; Typhon’s in leather pants and a concert tee with the Fate’s Fools logo emblazoned across the front, looking like he could be a member of the band; and Erebus is dressed in simple black cargo pants and a T-shirt. He looks like he’s the sole bodyguard of our little entourage, but given his size and silent, intimidating look, he can certainly pull it off.

Campe’s looking quite fine in body-hugging leather pants, with a black satin bandeau top and a cropped jacket covered in iridescent sequins, her braid draped over her shoulder. She takes my arm.

“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

I brace myself, then stop. “Uh… I have no idea where to go. I’ve never been to Las Vegas.”

Alcides harumphs, and I glare at him. “What? I’ve never been anywhere, really. Just my hometown and Bear Island, and a few places along I-90, before I wound up with you guys.”

“It’s okay,” Campe says. “We know our way around the city. Open your mind to me. I’ll show you where to go.”

“This is a bad idea,” Alcides says. “Vesh brought her inside with us to protect her from Chaos. We know Nemea is what Chaos wants. Now you want to venture straight into his territory?”

Campe scoffs. “We’ll be in and out before he can catch our scent. He’ll be too busy with the others to notice.” She turns back to me and rests her hands on my shoulders. “Everyone hold onto us; we don’t want to lose you.”

Erebus and Typhon each grasp one of my hands while Alcides clutches my hips from behind. Campe’s beautiful eyes fix on mine, her irises flickering between every color of the rainbow until they finally land on a brilliant blue.

Instantly an image appears in my mind of an overhead view of a city at night, sparkling with an abundance of neon lights. Not too far ahead of us is a familiar sight, though extremely out of place. But Las Vegas has its own Space Needle, doesn’t it? What do they call it?

“It’s the Stratosphere,” Campe says, answering my question and pulling me back to myself. “That’s where we’ll land. There’s a platform at the top where they have thrill rides, but it’s closed now, so it’ll be unoccupied. Now focus and take us there the way you brought us here.”

“What time is it there?”

“Around 10 p.m.”

I take a beat before I remember the world has time zones and I’ve been in Greece for the past few days, not some alternate universe.

Where we are now is basically an alternate universe of my own creation, but the real world still exists. It’s still a challenge to wrap my head around, but I’m getting there.

“You’re stalling,” Typhon murmurs. “We’ve got you.” He squeezes my hand, and I meet his earnest gaze, struck yet again by the new look, and even more by the haunted depths in his eyes that so closely reflect my own.

But I need to focus, so I do, nodding at Campe and closing my eyes so she can show me where we’re going again.

It’s like we’re hovering in the air above the city once more, about two hundred yards from the platform at the top of the Stratosphere. That’s where we need to land, so with a deliberate surge of power, I simply will us there.

And the world drops out from under us.