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She hadn’t seen Kay in days. Figures, she thought dully. Why would she want to be around me now? She barely wanted to be around herself. Her phone buzzed, and she lifted her head just enough to see the screen. Not Kay. Never mind, then.
She could feel the newly-awakened ichor humming in her veins, and she wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t wanted to become a monster. She’d tried to stop it. She’d yelled and shouted and even cursed at the odd, glowing presence that had showed up in her bedroom a few days ago. The books she’d thrown at it were still scattered haphazardly across the floor, where they’d fallen after passing straight through the glow. Sure, it had felt soothing initially, but she knew to distrust that feeling; like booze and drugs and cigarettes, it might feel nice at first, but it ended up blunting your senses and making you vulnerable. Then, it had spoken to her, and she screamed, but not loud enough to drown out its voice. She figured that was when Kay had cleared out, because she hadn’t seen her since.
She’d screamed throughout the entire torturous process, but to no avail. She’d cried and begged and protested, tried everything she could think of, but it hadn’t stopped the presence. It seemed sad, and maybe even kind of upset, but that hadn’t changed anything. Then her blood had started boiling - not just a figure of speech, she had felt it sizzling in her veins, like someone had dropped a live wire into water. She’d already been ready and willing to die from the pain when the headache started. She could’ve sworn her brain was expanding into the inside of her skull. It was a good thing she was already screaming, or she would’ve woken the neighborhood. Dimly, she’d felt the presence extend a ray of reassurance, but she managed to twist away just in time.
As soon as the pain had passed, the presence had left with a gentle, sorrowful “I am sorry, my child.” She’d collapsed, and she had yet to move from that spot. At first she’d been too physically exhausted from fighting that thing, and she eventually stopped wanting to move altogether. If she never bothered to get up again, she’d die here sooner or later, right? That sounded kind of nice.
Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it, choosing to drift off into a half-sleep. It was restless, and filled with endlessly crashing waves and craggy rocks. She came out of it a few hours later as her phone rang yet again. She should probably tell whoever kept calling to go away, so she scooped it up and answered it without looking.
“Chaz? What do you want?”
“Fucking hell, Mars, what happened to you? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Have you heard about Kay?”
“No,” she answered tonelessly. “I haven’t seen her in days.”
“Fuck. Of course you haven’t. I’m so sorry, she - I - I sent you a link, take a look at that.” She flicked open her texts - there were dozens, some from Chaz, some from their other connections. She clicked on the most recent one.
“I’m sorry,” Chaz’s voice came from the phone. “I didn’t know how else to tell you, Mars -”
She hung up on him and pulled the garbage can over so she could retch into it over and over, her stomach trying to expel nothingness. Her phone lay on the floor, the small news blurb still open: Englewood Woman Murdered with ‘Unusual’ Weapon. Beneath the headline was a grainy black-and-white photo of Kay. Of course it was the Scions, she thought, wiping sour bile from her mouth. Who else in Chicago would use a sword?
Her skin prickled with realization - this was how it felt for all the allies Kay had gathered. Somebody important, somebody you loved was just torn away, and no one would ever explain. Buildings just collapse. Natural disasters just happen. Sometimes people are just collateral damage. Even if every bit of your instinct, every bit of your soul, screamed that it was anything but natural, no one would ever acknowledge otherwise. All they ever got were empty words that might as well have been lies. Seeing that picture of Kay, broken and bleeding on the ground, would be a thousand times worse if she couldn’t explain it, and the thought made her retch again.
She probably should have been comforted by the phrase “extensive defensive wounds,” but she really wasn’t. Of course Kay wouldn’t have gone without a fight. She stuffed down the tiny part of her mind that kept saying _she was too good to get caught like that, it was on purpose, she went looking for a fight, she just couldn’t take it anymore_ and told it to shut up. Kay had been murdered by the Conclave gang and it was her fault. Her presence had brought the god here, and that was what drove Kay out into the streets, to find (or maybe seek out) her death.
If this was her fault, then she would pay for it, with Scion blood. First she would track down Kay’s murderers, then the rest of their Conclave allies, then every last strange “immortal” creature in Chicago. Then, once they were all dead, she would open her own corrupted veins, and maybe that would finally be enough. Maybe that would end this twisted, ugly world where regular people could fall before a Scion’s blade like wheat before a scythe without a single consequence.
No. It wouldn’t be enough. It couldn’t be, because the Scions were not the problem. The Scions, terrible as they were, were just a symptom. They were a symptom that needed to be eradicated, sure, but she could kill every Scion in the world, and tomorrow, there would be just as many. It wouldn’t solve the root issue; maybe nothing could.
Or could it? Suddenly there was an idea in her brain, hammering to get out. It sounded crazy, but maybe -
She dragged herself upright, feeling the effects of a few days without food, and headed towards the corner of their apartment that they referred to as the “research library.” Really, it was just some thrift-store shelving overflowing with books, notebooks, printed PDFs, and hand-scrawled notes, but it served its purpose. She stood in front of it, muttering to herself since there was no one else to hear.
“Baldur,” she said, picking out the thick file marked with his name. “Osiris. Quetzalcoatl. Dionysus. Tammuz?” She went through the shelves once, and then again to make sure she’d caught everything. Eventually, she’d need to eat and shower and change her clothes; eventually, she’d have to relocate to a proper library to do more in-depth research. Eventually, she’d find herself poring over arcane manuscripts and plotting out family trees that extended back dozens, maybe hundreds of generations. She’d hire private investigators, borrow stacks of books, learn new languages, puzzle out allegories, sweet-talk the information brokers. She’d do whatever was necessary to avenge Kay’s death and make sure the same thing never, ever happened to anyone else. She would make her city normal; no Titans roaming around causing chaos, no god-children running after them and making everything worse. She would stop the problem directly at the source.
Whatever the cost.