Page 9 of Gods' Battleground

Istruggled to my feet, fighting against my own body. My own mind. They had betrayed me. Each throb of my pulse was like a hammer, pounding me down.

Slowly, dizzily, I stumbled toward Vertigo. My eyes weren’t working. I was totally blind, but my other senses were still hanging on by a thread. For now.

I could hear Vertigo. The wet wheeze of her labored breaths. The crumple of her oversized jumpsuit. The squeak of her shoes against the smooth, polished tiles.

I could smell her. The chemical scent baked into the jumpsuit she’d stolen. And the stench of old, dried sweat.

I could feel Jace’s worries too. They streamed into me, wild and unchecked, mixing with my own thoughts and troubles.

His concern for his father was at the forefront of his mind. The gods had agreed to spare a single dose of pure, undiluted Nectar for Xerxes Fireswift’s long-overdue promotion. I’d exerted my influence on the council to do away with the archangel trials, a move that had cost me a great deal of political capital. I now owed a favor to almost every god on the council. I shuddered to imagine what they would demand of me when they finally came to collect.

Jace was worried his dad wouldn’t survive the Nectar. He was also worried about what would happen if his daddidsurvive the Nectar. The two of them had a troubled relationship.

But there was something else in Jace’s mind, buried under all the drama around his father. A secret he was struggling to hold back.

“Do you have a new girlfriend, Jace?” I laughed.

I heard him throw up.

Right. Focus. I had to focus on what mattered.

“Can you get to Vertigo?” I asked him.

“No,” he croaked. “Because of…all the vertigo.”

Yeah, her nickname was spot-on.

I tried to focus on Vertigo’s smell. That harsh chemical burn stood out like a path lit up by a searchlight. I grabbed Jace’s arm and moved toward the smell.

“Stay back!” Vertigo cried out from the dark abyss.

The whole world flipped upside down again. Instinctively, I snapped my eyes shut, even though I couldn’t see. Well, it didn’t help at all anyway. My head was still spinning. I stopped, drawing in a few long, deep breaths, waiting for it to stop.

Distractions pulled at my raw senses, demanding to be heard, to be felt, to be smelled.

The drip-drop-drip-drop of the snow melting off the rooftop.

The rumbling of my pulse, shaking me from the inside.

A fresh new chorus of honking cars.

The shattering of a glass bottle.

A slamming door.

A braking car.

Rotting fruit.

Pain.

The bitter, metallic tang of blood in my mouth when I bit my own tongue.

The demons’ council.

The gods’ council.

My sweet Sierra.

---