Specifically, the sandal-clad foot of a golden god, shining like his symbol in the night. Light like from a pale sun spilled out impossibly around us, impossible because he couldn’t be here, he couldn’t be anywhere, because he was dead. Dead, which meant ghost, which meant he could be here even though I’d killed him, killed him and flushed him down the metaphysical equivalent of a toilet—
Straight into the Badlands.
A fact that he seemed to recall quite vividly.
“Pythia,” he hissed.
And then that foot was coming down on me.
Chapter Fifty-five
Somebody screamed, but I didn’t think it was me. Because I was experiencing the sensation of being squashed flat as a pancake. And I was experiencing it, since spirits don’t have the same issues as humans with broken bones and rent flesh.
They do have other problems, though.
I felt the power loss, immediate and deadly. And realized that Apollo was trying to do to me what Daisy had done to all those faded ghosts, and steal whatever remained of my energy. But I wasn’t a remnant, and it hadn’t worked entirely.
But it had come close.
By the time he lifted up his foot, I was too weak to fight, or even to peel myself off the ground. I just lay there, watching Billy circle around, trying to reach me. But he was being given no opportunity. I’d killed Apollo, and he was determined to return the favor.
But he was going to tell me about it first.
“A lifetime,” he hissed, bending down. “That’s what it has felt like. Subsisting off these tattered dregs, watching the world I couldn’t enter, watching you, and waiting. And now you’re here.”
It was a hand this time, smashing down on whatever was left of me, pulling my remaining energy away. And worse than anything, even worse than dying, was knowing what he was going to do with it. “You’re going back,” I whispered.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked, in faux sympathy. “Draining you will give me life again, and the Pythian power will do the rest. Who knew that the small piece of myself I carved out all those centuries ago would be my salvation? But with it, I can hunt. With it, I can feed. Before long, I’ll be as strong as I ever was. My only regret is that you won’t be here to see what I’m going to do to your friends, to your world, in your name. But I assure you, it will be—”
He cut off, I didn’t know why. I could hardly breathe, barely think. Everything was a panic of pain, horror, and hopelessness.
But I could still see.
Enough to make out the light that had just appeared in the distance, shining so brightly it hurt. If I could have moved, I’d have shaded my eyes. Instead, I just lay there, looking at what appeared to be a small star fallen to earth. Or an angel. Or . . .
A god.
A real one, a living one.
Because Caedmon suddenly didn’t look like himself at all. I’d thought him beautiful before, with features so perfect they didn’t seem real. But I could barely see them now, so eclipsed were they by the radiance of his power. Did you miss one, Mother? I wondered vaguely. Did you miss . . . ?
But she couldn’t have; the spell couldn’t have. But it could have missed a demigod. One not half human but half fey.
And I guessed that made all the difference.
Next to Caedmon’s brilliance, I was dim, powerless, uninteresting. Next to him, I was barely visible, just a shadow on the darkness. Next to him, I almost didn’t exist at all.
And Apollo must have thought so, too. Because he suddenly took off, drawn, like every other ghost I’d ever met, to the biggest source of power around. Leaving me to die in the darkness alone.
Or with Billy, who was doing something.
Instead of enveloping me as he had done on the drag, he was pushing and pulling and heaving and yanking. I didn’t understand why until I noticed that the number of sparkles in the air had increased. And that the pitch-blackness had lightened. And that there were ghosts zooming around now, zooming around everywhere, like hunters circling wounded prey.
Billy couldn’t carry me and fight them at the same time, so he was taking turns. But the closer to the barrier we came, the thicker they became, until they felt like a smothering cloud. Until I could barely see the darkness anymore. Until Billy was forced to drop me, standing over me with his usual pleasant, round face contorted into something unrecognizable, and a dreadful screech emanating from his lips: the tearing-metal sound of a ghostly challenge.
Many of the smaller spirits fled, not willing to take the risk. But the larger ones stuck around, deciding that a feast was worth a fight. And that was bad—that was very bad—because there were a lot of them and only one of Billy, and he couldn’t fight them all.
“Billy,” I whispered.