XIX: That Noise Downstairs

Gasper and I didn't say a word to each other as we walked to the closest motel. To avoid drawing eyes on the street, Nikaea had used a handkerchief and some water from her bottle to clean the blood from Keller's face and mine. He had that bite mark on his nose bridge, and I'd tossed a band-aid at him so he could cover it up. Nikaea muttered that one of his ribs may have been fractured, and his face was definitely ruined now. But it wasn't only him.

I hadn't looked into any reflections, but I was sure my face wasn't much better than his. He'd likely partially fractured my right cheekbone, and my chin wasn't feeling so well. Pain throbbed from my shoulders, soreness straining my neck bitterly. The improvised noose had left marks around my neck, forming a purplish line that caved in.

"You shouldn't wear a necklace to a fight next time." Alastor suggested in a windy whisper, walking next to me. "You would've won easily without it."

I shook my head, rejecting his suggestion, and he shrugged casually in response. 

The pendant was not something I was willing to lose by taking off. The silver string hung one of those cringey photo lockets. You'd flick it open, and inside you'd see a tiny picture and a broken watch, that'd randomly stop ticking and start ticking again at wrong speeds. Dad and Ethan weren't something I was considering to put away every time I fought. Specially not now that both of them were gone.

A tick in my shoulder kept annoying me, flaring up in pain with each stride. I suspected that perhaps I'd dislocated a small cartilage or joint when I threw those punches. Nico and I had already thought of the possibility of the first confrontation of this quest being between members of the group itself, but that fight had flown out of its limits definitely.

I hardly even remembered why I'd started the brawl with him. All that crawled in my skull, echoing even as the cloying victory reverberated in my mind, was Ethan's name in his dirty mouth, through his crooked teeth.

I figured this barely had anything to do with his death. Even when he was besides me, badmouthing him would often result in a fight with me, and vice versa. 

Since our birth, we'd been ridiculously close. The first time a boy had pulled my hair, making me cry, Ethan had very confidently pushed the four-year old down a slide, almost dislocating the kid's arm. In middle school, when a kid picked on him because of his eye, I'd hospitalized him for a month. It was just how we worked, I suppose. We'd argue every two minutes, but at the end of the day, all we valued was each other.

We'd do anything to protect each other, even if it meant betraying ourselves. That's what I'd done my whole life, even when he betrayed Kronos. 

I missed him. I missed feeling that he was around for me, that I had something to fend for. But there was no use in thinking about him anymore. At least, not while I had more important issues to attend to. 

***

The rest of the day went by like that. We searched for possible clues in the small town, and even ended up encountering a midsized hellhound, that Nikaea was able to pierce through with an arrow as it spotted us. In the afternoon, Nico had settled to rest early, since in the darkest hour of the night, minutes before sunrise, we'd have to leave to shadow-travel.

We'd already mentioned sleeping in turns, but as my shift on guard started, I began to regret my decision to agree to the plan. I'd been paired up with Gasper, our longer shift starting just past ten. Di Angelo had made me go to sleep by seven so that we could have equal hours and he could have his stupid princess sleep. 

We were in some crappy motel by the outskirts of the town, facing a freeway. The poor building was a misery. The paint was so worn that it looked like it was about to fly off with the next gust of wind. Inside, the wooden counters and tables seemed about to rot and fall apart. 

Nico was sleeping like a rock on one of the twin beds, Nikaea laying on the one next to his and Connor dozing off on the couch. The atmosphere was tense and uncomfortable amongst the woken. We glared at each other wordlessly, electricity crackling every time our thoughts crossed. 

Another decision I regretted, sending off Alastor to get sustenance off wandering daemons. I was stuck here with Gasper by my own carelessness. I should've asked to be paired with Nikaea. A part of me suspected that this shift was made to be so as a scheme from the Di Angelo boy, some dumbass method so that me and Gasper would make up. 

Like hell we would. It'd be out of luck and great self-restraint that the others would wake up to both of us alive and kicking. Still, the silence bothered me. Keller, who stood by the door, tapped his foot incessantly as if only to irritate me.

"Can you quit it?" I snarled, pausing the cleaning my sword to look up and glare at him. "Why are you so annoying?" 

He growled back at me, baring his crooked teeth at me.

"Not my problem you're so easy to annoy."

Instead of starting to fight with him, I wiped the blade once more with a sigh, before sheathing it and turning around to face the window. I thoughtfully stared into the black sky, wondering if the faint stars watched us as we'd been told. 

When heroes died, they turned into constellations. 

Perseus, the Dioscuri, Aegipan, even Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and the recent Huntress, Zoe Nightshade. They looked down to us, watching us repeat their feats over, and over, and over, and over. Sometimes, they saw themselves in us, offering aid and refuge by shining bright in the darkest hours of the night, leading young heroes to their safety. 

Gasper's tapping stopped. Perhaps he'd grown tired of trying to annoy me. I let my mind drift away.

Castor and Pollux had helped me and Ethan before. From miles up in the sky, they had reached down, extending a gust of wind or a blessing of good aim. I suppose the world had always seen us as twins. Kronos had called us twins as well, as had his brothers, the gods. 

Just as my thoughts dwelled on the time I'd grown from a child to a warrior, Keller's voice startled me, landing on the same theme as my mind.

"Why did you betray him?"

Spite wasn't buried in his words, that came calmly. It was only a question. I looked back at him, seeing his curious eyes questioning mine. As if he was a child, asking an older one what was her favorite ice cream flavor. Answering him wouldn't hurt. In fact, perhaps answering him was some form of closure. Facing my past, eh?

"Because I love my brother." I replied with a sigh.

"But you were so close to having everything." muttered Gasper, without comprehending my answer. "That old fool was willing to give you anything you asked for. Riches, immortality, land, anything."

I shook my head, wondering how it sounded as if love or honor were so foreign to him. His intent wasn't even to question my loyalty or gratefulness to the man who had built me. Was that how mortals dealt? No, I'd seen humans with spunk and a code, so how could Keller be so selfishly greedy?

"He killed my brother. I wouldn't have stuck by his side had he offered me the world." I said, before turning my head back to the window. "That's love for you."

"You're such a dumb kid…" scoffed the boy, almost resentful, as his paces came closer to me. "If you'd killed that boy, Percy Jackson, you could've asked for anything once he was sat on the throne. Orcus himself would drag your brother back from the Fields of Punishment just to say he'd done a favor to the Golden Titan."

I'd shrugged. I had considered his mumbled words countless times in my head, but at the end of the day, when Kronos' scythe slashed through my brother, he'd killed the little love I had left for him, already wounded by the hundreds of needless deaths he'd inflicted. Even if I had thought everything through as I reached the Throne Room, I would've chosen the same.

"You wouldn't get it even if I had the crayons and the dolls." I sighed again. "What about you? What made you want to be one of us?"

His words came dry and cold, thoughtless as if it'd been programmed for him to say so.

"Power. It's always about power, Nakamura." 

"Who was that power for?" I inquired curiously, turning my eyes to look into his. He didn't seem so sure of what he said.

"Myself. Obviously myself." he retorqued dryly once more, but I heard the dry swallowing that surfaced before his response. "I wasn't going to just be a background character as you all reshaped the world I live in."

"What could you have possibly been after, with that power? You're nobody important, you didn't have to put yourself through the war. You didn't need to suffer the way you did." 

"I'm not nobody. I'm the champion of Hecate." he insisted, and this time there was anger to his words and nervousness to his eyes, teeth gritted together and arm tensed. "Fuck you, I was chosen."

"Did she choose you when you went up against Alabaster?" I raised my brow at his agitated behavior, tipping my chin to the wound on his neck. "The gods don't give a fuck about their own children, let alone someone who ain't related to them."

His glare shot through me, but his empty fury no longer bothered me as it had during the fight. I figured he noticed as well, and his anger lightened quickly. Still, he looked away from me, guilty in his own failure.

"She lied to me."

"That's all they do, Gasper. Get used to it if you want to fit into this…" my advice died down as I slowly recalled that he was dead. "Yeah, you won't need to fit into this world anymore. That's fucked up."

To my surprise, he actually laughed dryly upon mentioning his death, instead of backing away. Perhaps, if he hadn't done so much against me and my brother, I'd feel compassion towards him. Even if we were nothing alike, all the people in the Army were only children the gods failed to protect.

"I suppose so. It was all for nothing, you know? That pisses me off." he walked toward my station, lifting a piece of the curtain to get a glance of what was outside. "I mean, at least Ethan and Castellan will get part of whatever they died for, justice or safety for the ones they love. I'm getting none of that, plus an eternity of whippings down at Tartarus."

I looked at him. He was still peeking through the uncovered curtain, and I was unsure on whether his statement demanded an answer. He perplexed me very much. He was older than me, and somehow he seemed to have no purpose. But that was impossible. He was too determined to not have a drive, something leading him to do what he did.

Now, if his actions had only condemned and pained others, perhaps it had been out of cruelty, some perverse sadism. But often his actions ended up hurting himself, often he would sacrifice his own pleasure to achieve something that, in his mind, was worth it. 

So what had it been for? Had he died for his ideal of being in the room where it happens? Had he killed for an illusion of power? Had he bled for the fake validation from a goddess of tricks? Had he suffered only for the sake of it?

"I'm curious, Keller. So tell me the truth, or part of it. What drove you?" I asked, greedily, stretching the limits of what I was supposed to know.

He dropped the rag, covering the window again and facing me. His face almost tugged at my heartstrings, lost eyes in a pained frame, chuckling to cover up a sea of secrets with a sheet of paper. 

"Jesus, Nakamura. You didn't ask those many questions back when I was alive. Why are you so curious? It doesn't matter anymore anyway."

"Nonsense. You died for it, of course it matters." I answered, determined to get my answers.

"I lost the reason midway. I abandoned it, and kept going just because. And man, it was all for nothing."

"What was it at first then, Sargent? Or have you already forgotten-"

I was cut off by a deafening crash outside. Immediately, Vendetta's vicious fang spawned in my hand, slashing open the air as my other hand slapped away the curtain. I looked down, expecting beasts and daemons, to be regarded by an empty street. Not even a beggar or a knocked over garbage can, nothing. A pigeon casually pecked at the floor for some crumbs, seemingly unaware of the noise. 

I lifted my eyes cautiously back at Gasper, wondering slowly if I'd imagined it, but he seemed as alert as I was, shoulders tensed up and hands around the pathetic rod he now carried. His eyes widened expectantly, as he tipped his chin toward the window.

"There's nothing out there." I muttered nervously, turning away as he dragged the curtains to his side and examined the dark alley.

Nico, Connor and Nikaea slept like rocks. Unbothered. Unaware. If Keller had heard it, it had not been my imagination. How come the rest hadn't? It'd be impossible for them to not wake up if they'd heard that tremendous noise. 

"Stay here. I'm going down to check."

Before he could protest, I took an index towards my lips as I opened the door, and cautiously closed it behind me. The hinges creaked miserably, but I tried to quieten it and move on. 

Slow, steady, and scared, I paced down rugged, uncared for stairs until I reached the ground floor. It was empty. No one by the counter, no one behind the empty doors. I prepared to kick open the main gate, but a noise behind me disrupted that course of action, leading me to slash Vendetta in a great arch almost instinctively.

Had it not been the resistance my blade had found unexpectedly, it would've sliced Gasper's neck clean, letting his head roll swiftly across the floor. He mumbled Ancient Greek quickly, summoning the purplish energy that held up between my sword and his throat. I scowled quietly, bringing the blade back to me.

"Bastard. Who's guarding them now?" 

"I reinforced the windows and the door with spells, kid. No need to worry." he scoffed, adjusting the rod in his hands.

"Call me kid again and I'll shoot you." I snarled, but deep down I felt a lot more reassured now that he was down here with me. He muttered something underneath his breath, but I figured I'd be better off without hearing it. "You ready?"

He nodded, and I opened the door. I held my sword offensively, his lips parted half open, ready to speak any spell he would need to. There was nothing waiting for us outside. There was nothing outside, full stop. 

"Holy shit, it's emptier than Percy Jackson's brain out here." Keller mumbled, as he started to move left. "Nothing, no one. Are we schizophrenic?"

"Do you think it was the Mist?" I inquired, half crouched besides him.

"I'm clear sighted. I've got spells, banishments, even Hecate's own blessing. Who the fuck is that good at Mistsounds to be able to get through all that?" 

Hecate herself, perhaps.

We scouted the entire street. There was nothing. But just as we prepared to make our way back to the room, a scatter in an alley drew my attention. 

"Finally, a noise. I thought we were going insane by how quiet it was down here." Gasper sighed, adjusting his stance once more with an apparently calm smirk. Good actor. "Come on, this was getting boring."

I followed him in short steps, scared to admit that I was terrified. For once, one plus one was negative. We were both wounded, by each other on top of that, and now we'd need to fight. How ironic that the Moiras were.

We walked to the origin of the noise, and more stutters sounded from it. What, at first, had only been a loud step now turned into endless shuffling and some grumbles. An irritating scratch against the ground or the walls, something falling apart. Sweat soaked past my skin, my heart clanking up inside of my now too narrow ribcage. 

"Who's there?" Gasper asked loudly, his raspy voice reverberating against the lonely walls. "Is there anyone in there?"

It'd gone quiet now. I exchanged a glance with Gasper, and with a careful nod we took another step forward.

"If someone's there, say so. We won't hurt you if you come out." I shouted, attempting to avoid a shiver in my tone. "Hello?"

Still nothing. 

"Fucking hell, if this-" 

A cough. An unfamiliar cough, shifting in octaves and mildly disturbing, sounded from the dark, where the light from the lampposts did not reach. The cough repeated itself, before short gags that alarmed something in me.

"If you come out now we're not going to hurt you." I repeated, considering the chance of it being some beggar. "Listen-"

"Erica? Erica, i-is that you?" 

I'd like to say I did something smart, like not let my guard down, but that's not what happened. Here's what did happen: I froze. I knew what I'd heard. I'd recognize that voice anywhere, be it in the golden hills of the Elysium or the rotten chambers of Tartarus. A voice I'd relied on since my birth, a voice I'd loved and lost. 

"Ethan?" I stuttered, trying to ignore the shiver on my hands. "Ethan?"

Vendetta shook violently, maybe because of my own tremor and maybe because it was trying to get back to its original owner. My brother. This had always been his blade, his gift, his weapon. 

Gasper called out my name, but I didn't hear him. I sought out Ethan's voice instead, tears flooding my eyes as I prayed to every divinity I knew that by some miracle he'd survived and ran away. How could I be so sure he was dead? I'd passed out, maybe they'd found him alive, maybe they'd exiled him, without telling me.

I hadn't realized I'd been walking toward the alley until Gasper held on my shoulder and hauled me backwards. His scowl was filled with anger, caution, disappointment, but I could not decipher its reasoning. His inpatient words came in whispers.

"Ethan is dead, Nakamura. Everyone who knows him knows that." 

"Have you seen him in the Fields of Punishment?" I whispered in return. When he didn't answer, I continued. "The Courthouses?"

"He's dead. Stop fucking lying to yourself, kid." he spat, as he knocked the sword out of my hand and grabbed me by the collar of my sweater. "It's an eidolon in his corpse, speaking with his voice. We have to run while we're fucking able to, get Nikaea and your dumbass boyfriend alive and away from-"

"Kelly, is that fucking you?" a male voice sounded from the alley. "Holy shit, dude. It is!"

His face went blank instantly. I saw firsthand the emotions going through his eyes, as he tried to juggle with fantasy and reality. His lips parted, but he didn't say anything. I didn't really doubt why the fuck my brother would be with someone Gasper Keller knew, but it was a small world around. Maybes weren't my preoccupation as of then.

"Vince." he managed to cough out after seconds of strange silence. As I turned to look at him, I noticed the quiver on his eyelid. Under his tweaked out breath, he whispered to me. "We need to get out of here. They're not real."

I heard what he was saying, but a magnetic pull drew me to the voices. I couldn't stand the thought of leaving Ethan again. I didn't move as he instructed me to.

"Erica, my Vince has been dead for years. I've seen his corpse." Keller repeated, but his voice was not firm. "Vince is dead. So is Ethan."

Ethan called me again, this time more desperate and louder. I picked up Vendetta from the ground, shoving Gasper away. 

"It won't hurt to check it out."

Ignoring the shiver all throughout my arm, I started walking toward the origin of the noise. Sweat trickled down my forehead, and my heart beat like it would never again. My knees wobbled, and every single instinct screamed at me to run the other way. But even if it was only a ghost… I'd want to say goodbye to my brother.

"Erica! We're in no state to fight these fuckers! I won't fucking defend you when you're being mauled apart." shouted Gasper, urgency straining his pleads. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

"Erica, I need you here now! I'm hurt, there's blood."

"Erica. We need to fucking leave." shouted Gasper, but I could barely hear him over the voices that I couldn't see. 

"Kelly, help me out here. I think I broke my leg or something, I can't move." 

"Erica!"

A bloodied hand showed through the shadow, and the lines between reality and dishonesty blurred, leaving me no space to breathe, as fantasies and hypotheticals filled my lungs.

I looked back at Keller. He was as surprised as I was, swallowing dryly as I approached the shadows, running toward what I so wished to be my brother with open arms and tears in my eyes.