Discord's Apple

The goddess continued, “I could use your help, Evie. I need as many allies as I can find. While you may not think you have any power, you hold—or will soon hold—the stewardship of a great collection of treasures. You could be my Keeper of Treasures. I would honor you.”

She made a gesture that encompassed Alex and Arthur.

“They may have told you that I want to break this world. What else would I do with the apple of Discord but cause strife and turmoil? And they’re right. I do want to break this world. The storm of violence has already begun. All the props are in place. But I would break it so that I could make a new one. An ordered one.”

Evie had heard such claims before, many times. Every time a separatist group drove a truck bomb into a hospital, whenever terrorists crashed a plane into a building or a suicide bomber stepped into a crowded marketplace, it was in the name of a new world, or a better order that would rise up from the ashes of the old.

Evie stood twenty feet away from the grave marker of Emma Doyle Walker. Fifty-three years old, playing tourist at the Pike Place Market in Seattle when a twenty-year-old misguided activist blew herself up and murdered eighteen people.

“There’s a place for you, Evie Walker. We can work together.”

Hera didn’t use bombs, but she took hostages. She had different tools and she’d been working at it longer, but the rhetoric was surprisingly similar.

Evie had often wondered what sh

e’d say to the woman who killed her mother, if she ever had a chance. More often than not, all Evie wanted was to punch the bitch out. She’d spent the last few years using Tracker and the Eagle Eyes to stop as many terrorists as she could.

She didn’t have a gun. She couldn’t just walk up and shoot them, as Tracker had. So if Tracker didn’t have a gun, and her compatriots and a hostage were still in danger—what would she do? If everything depended on her, and she had the confidence to act, what would she do? Because she’d be damned if she was going to give in to this woman.

She took a step, then another. Hera might have thought Evie was moving toward her. But really she was moving toward the space between Hera and the car, where her father stood. The driver’s seat was empty. The key might still be in the ignition. She didn’t dare look behind her, where Arthur stood. He could take care of himself. She looked at her father and hoped he knew her well enough to guess what she was doing. She looked at Alex and bit her lip. She needed his help. She needed him to keep Robin away.

Approaching Hera, she hefted the apple, testing its weight, getting ready to throw it. Hera lifted her chin, rounded her shoulders, getting ready to catch.

Evie threw, Hera reached, but the apple never left Evie’s hand.

She ran, shoving the apple back in her pocket. In her other pocket, she found the sprig of rowan Alex had given her. She threw this instead. Hera grasped at it, flinching when the leaves hit her face, stumbling—actually losing her poise—when her hands flailed for a target that wasn’t there.

She had to trust the others to do their parts and couldn’t take a moment to watch for them. She barreled into the sedan’s front seat and groped for the ignition.

No key.

She gripped the steering wheel, wondering if she could start the car through sheer willpower. Whenever Jeeves hot-wired a vehicle, Bruce just showed him fiddling with wires on the steering column. Evie didn’t have to actually know how to do it.

One of the back doors slammed. There was Frank, clicking the lock on.

Her father leaned over the front seat. “No keys?”

“No,” she said, a wail creeping into her voice.

“Evie! The window!” On the other side of the car, Arthur held Hera’s well-dressed henchman in a headlock with one arm, twisted at such an angle that the man had to struggle to keep his balance. Arthur raised his other arm, like he was getting ready to throw something.

The car had automatic windows that didn’t work with the engine off. She scrambled to the passenger-side door, and as she opened it, Arthur tossed. As he did, his prisoner wrenched out of his grasp and ran.

A car key on a rental company keychain landed in her lap.

She couldn’t think about how many bad guys were out there or what the others were going through to oppose them. She had her task: Take the key and get her father out of here.

As she slid the key into the ignition, her hand shaking, her mind numb, a hand slapped onto the windshield in front of her. The well-dressed man who’d been with her father, Arthur’s former prisoner, pressed his hand flat to the glass and caught her gaze. Caught it, and held it.

. . . what he’d seen over the years, the centuries, would make a man weep with despair, and he was cursed to see it all, to wander for all time, until the Second Coming of him called Christ the Lord, and that was the real curse because the wizard who named himself so would not return—he’d sacrificed himself and was gone. But the one he’d cursed had found a power of his own: He could take what he had seen and he could show others. The horrors, the despair, plague, massacre, torture, enough to shock the strongest of men, more than enough to chill a modern girl, and this showed through his eyes, and Evie felt cold, her joints aching, her muscles cramping, her eyes filling with tears.

Then she saw nothing.

“Drive, Evie.” Reaching from behind, her father covered her eyes with his hands. By feel, she turned the key, sparking the engine to life. Her muscles were her own again; the man’s hold on her was broken. Her father sat back, and she could see to shift into drive. Tires spun on the gravel and the car jolted forward. The man fell away.

She drove, hoping she stayed on the straightaway, uncertain of her bearings. She needed to find the others. Alex was wrestling Robin among the gravestones. Arthur was chasing after that strange man again. Where was Merlin?

The goddess appeared in the middle of the lane, standing in front of the oncoming car, wholly unconcerned.