“Strength?”
The room went quiet again, so the professor finished. “She was the goddess of the arts, agriculture, crafts like weaving and metalworking, skills, culture. . . . Athena was, and still is, intensely interested in culture and civilization. She prided herself on being a part of not only Greek civilization but every subsequent civilization thereafter. If you think she speaks only Greek, ignores mankind, and walks around carrying an olive branch, think again.” A few students chuckled at that.
Cromley pushed away from her desk and walked slowly back and forth. “Since we are her enemies, it’s safe to say she knows everything there is to know about us. How we think, the things that are important to us, what we eat, how we talk, our modern weapons and technology. This is no stuck-in-the-ancient-past goddess. Her art is strategy, and she didn’t get to where she is now by being stupid or too lofty to immerse herself in our way of life. Athena is cunning, highly intelligent, and powerful. She was a champion of heroes and mankind until”—she stopped moving and paused for effect—“sometime in the tenth century, when she killed Zeus and took over his temple, and the War of the Pantheons began. Can anyone tell me why she did this?”
Interested, I glanced around the room. Most of the students were older than I was by a year or two, this being a college-level course, and yet none of them seemed to know the answer.
“The truth is,” Cromley finally said, “no one knows. No one knows what caused the rift. Only that it was swift, brutal, and absolute. Some say it was a power struggle long in the making; some say it was a betrayal. Some say that time has a way of reshaping the gods, slowly turning them from good to bad and back again over thousands of years. Cycling through personalities, if you will.
“It was during this long war that Athena began turning our ancestors into what we call , the Greek word for ‘monster.’ In fact, it is known that she made an entire army of minions to aid in her cause in the war, many of whom were killed in the battles. She targeted mostly vampires, witches, shape-shifters, and demigods because their natural abilities allowed her to make of great power. She took witches and made them into harpies. She used shape-shifters to create all manner of monsters. She kidnapped demigods to form into her immortal hunters. And she used humans as well. All this, as you can imagine, led to our banding together and taking a stand against Athena. And when some of her own turned against her and joined us, we have been on her Annihilate’ list ever since.”
The ancestors Cromley spoke of had branched off the human evolutionary tree a long time ago and evolved into humans of a different kind. Vampires, witches, monsters . . . And I’d learned during my short time in Athena’s prison that the prisoners had three classifications: Borns, beings born of power, such as vampires, witches, and shape-shifters. Mades, beings made or turned into something grotesque by The Bitch herself. And then there were the Beauties, those of rare beauty who simply inspired jealousy. Beauties would become Made at some point to satisfy Athena’s ego. Medusa had been a Beauty.
In the darkness of Athena’s prison I’d been asked if I was a Beauty. The thought made me snort, because take away the hair and eyes, and I was left with an average face. Not ugly. Not gorgeous. Just normal.
“Ari.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
Cromley frowned at me. “I was informing the class about your ancestors. The gorgons.”
“Oh . . . ,” I said slowly, looking around and wondering what she wanted me to say about it. Um, yeah, it totally sucks being cursed and knowing one day you’ll become a disgusting snake-headed monster.
Athena had hunted each of my female ancestors, and for what? For being what she created them to be? Because she was afraid of the power she’d mistakenly given them? Just the thought of it made my blood boil and my hands ball into tight fists.
Cromley decided to continue her lecture without my input, which was good because I wasn’t sure I could speak at that moment.
Athena had cursed the once-beautiful and devout Medusa and made her into a gorgon, all because some shithead of a god raped Medusa on the floor of Athena’s pristine seaside temple. Had Athena blamed the god? Hell, no. The goddess of justice had blamed Medusa and cursed my ancestor’s beauty so that it became something so hideous that just one glance at her face would turn another to stone.
Only, Athena had forgotten to exempt the gods from Medusa’s power.
The goddess of wisdom had created a god-killer.
And once she’d realized that, she’d charged Perseus with killing her creation, which he did. But what neither of them had counted on was Medusa’s child, who had been hidden away—a child who was cursed like her mother to have strange eyes and hair the color of moonlight, a child who would follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a monster in her twenty-first year, the same age Medusa had been when she was cursed.
And so it began, from mother to daughter, all the way down to me.
And according to the curse, I had less than four years left.
Sometime before my twenty-first year, I was destined to birth a daughter, be hunted by the Sons of Perseus, and either commit suicide like my mother, be killed, or turn into the monster I feared most.
But I wasn’t like all the others before me.
I was the daughter of a gorgon, true. But my father was a Son of Perseus, a hunter who tracked down and destroyed Athena’s monstrous creations. hunters. This had apparently made me into a different kind of freak, one who didn’t need to “mature” at twenty-one or become a monster in order to turn people to stone. I could do it now with a touch. Not that I’m any good at it.
But I was trying. Violet was counting on me. My father, who had betrayed Athena by falling in love with my mother instead of killing her, was counting on me. Christ, even now Athena was probably torturing them. I gripped the edge of the desk hard, my fear and imagination running wild as Cromley continued to talk about Athena.
“The ancient myths the world knows speak of Athena’s goodness, her just ways, her support of mankind and the heroes she chose to aid. But even in those, you will find that for all her good deeds, there are just as many bad. She was vicious in her unfairness to Medusa. She blinded Tiresias simply because he stumbled upon her bathing. She was given to fits of rage, jealousy, and unthinkable acts even in ancient times. And now she is known for the horrors she inflicts upon innocents, the sadistic mind games, the brutality, the torture. . . .”
Abruptly, I stood up, my chair scraping across the floor, my heart racing. Cromley stopped talking. I was out the door with my backpack and down the hall before she could even ask me what was wrong.
What was wrong was that the professor’s words made me sick to my stomach. With Violet and my father in Athena’s clutches, the last thing I wanted to hear was how horrible Athena was. I already knew it. I could imagine plenty what they were going through, and I sure as hell didn’t need to hear it from some one else.
I ducked into the girls’ bathroom, leaned back against the door, and tried to catch my breath. I stepped to the sink and splashed cold water on my face, then gazed at myself in the mirror.
What was I doing? How could I think for one second that I could beat Athena? I wasn’t even a David to her Goliath; I was more like an ant facing Mount Everest.
Yet I had to do something. And Violet. God, she was just a kid, only eight years old. Her age wouldn’t make a difference to Athena; she’d hurt her anyway.
Nausea mushroomed like a noxious cloud in my gut. I swallowed, my mouth watering in a sick way.
Oh God.
I grabbed my stomach, darted into an open stall, and puked.
My palms were damp as I braced my hands against the walls of the bathroom stall. I stayed there catching my breath and allowing my rapid pulse to return to normal.
The bathroom door opened. Soft footsteps shuffled against the tile. I flushed the toilet and walked out, sidestepping a young girl and heading to the sink to rinse out my mouth and splash more water on my face.
After drying off with a paper towel, I unbound my hair and shook it out, breathing in deeply and trying to rid myself of the queasiness that still lingered.
I reached up to make a braid at each temple, which I’d pull back into a tight knot with the rest of my hair. It kept the front strands from loosening out of my knot and getting in my eyes when I was training.
I’d only managed to gather a strip and part it into thirds when I saw the girl’s small face staring at me in the mirror’s reflection. She was young like Violet, with loose brown hair and brown eyes. She was dressed like everyone else in Presby: black pants or skirt and white collared shirt. Well, everyone but me; I’d come to Presby this morning in black from head to toe.
I narrowed my eyes at her through the mirror. “What?”
“Is it real?” she squeaked out, eyes big and round.
“My hair?” She nodded. “Yeah, it’s real.”
I’d hated my hair for so long that it was difficult to see it in the same light as other people—a thick, glossy sheet of white that reached the small of my back. I’d hated it for the sole reason that it attracted attention, and when you’re a kid being passed from one foster parent to the next, sometimes hiding and not being noticed is the difference between—
I clamped down on my thoughts and gave the girl a wry smile in the mirror, resuming my task with the idea that all the crap that had happened to me when I was young probably would have happened regardless of my hair. Maybe all it took to be mistreated was the fact that I was there, available, and defenseless.
“Is it true? Are you really a god-killer?” the girl asked in a small, scared voice.
I finished with the braid and moved to the other side. I knew what drove her to ask. The entire student body was probably terrified I’d break out the scales and turn them all to stone. I didn’t like being the center of attention, and I definitely didn’t like it when the reason was fear.
Feeling awkward but wanting to set her mind at ease, I said the only dumb thing that came to mind. “I am. And I only use my powers for good.” I nodded toward a stall as my cheeks went warm. “You’d better go if you’re gonna go.”