Killing Olympia

Dontfollowerherdontfollowerherdontfollowerher. It was constant. Loud. So deep in Bianca's head she was starting to feel dizzy. She stumbled against trash cans, through garbage mounds covering entire streets. The husky darkness of Lower Olympus' night had fallen hard and heavy, like a hammer beating down on her skull. I should call mom. It came and went as quickly as the bile in her throat was spat out of her mouth. Bianca clutched her phone. Hot in her hands. Screen broken. Light flickering. Rylee's peaceful face in glitchy nirvana. Barely ten percent left. She swiped, made for her contacts, scrolled and scrolled through the dozens of missed calls Harper had flooded her phone with.

She was hunched over her phone, stopped in an alleyway, shivering as her thumb stopped above her mom's number. Bianca licked her lips, heart pumping loud blood behind her eyes. Her breath stank, tasted stale. She licked her cracking lips and tasted blood and flaking skin. The girl with white hair stopped walking and glanced at her.

"Bianca," Ben said, almost right into her ear. "Think for a second. Who the hell is this chick? She tried to kill you just a second ago, and now she's gonna help you? Really? Come on, Katie taught you better than that."

"What're you waiting for?" the white-haired girl asked. She faced her. Faint candlelight from a low window shaded half of her face, throwing a long, flickering shadow against the opposite wall. Bianca flinched. A shard of pain went through her skull, her chest. She massaged the back of her neck and shuffled back. The girl with bloody fists narrowed her eyes, tilted her head. "I'm offering you my help. A lot of people in this city wouldn't do that."

"Right," Ben said, shaking his head, "like anyone in this city means well. Run. She's not good for us."

"Are you gonna hurt me?" Bianca whispered. She blinked. It hurt. She clutched her phone harder.

Still with her mom's number on the screen, still with her thumb hovering right over it.

"No, I won't," the girl said flatly. "But if we stand around long enough, someone will."

"That's a threat," Ben hissed. "Bianca, Jesus, just get your head on straight for a second. Look at you, you're a fucking mess. Stand up straight and get out of here before this psychopath takes your damned head off."

"You're gonna hurt me," Bianca stuttered. "I don't… I don't think… I should go. Don't follow me."

"Run, and Circe is going to kill you." Bianca froze at the end of the alleyway, feet buried in mounds of wet trash, right beside the skeleton of a half-eaten cat. She scratched her forearm, almost until her fingernails came away pink with blood. The pain was dull, distant, almost someone else's. The worms, though, didn't spill out and sew her skin back together. It remained bruised and tender, aching softly. "Run, and someone else is going to kill you. It's not the kind of city where you can stay alive long enough to see morning all on your own, unless you're Olympia."

The girl with white hair offered her hand. Blood on her knuckles. Grit under her nails. Golden paint soaked into the tape wrapped around her hands and wrists. Bianca swallowed, stared at her thick fingers and padded palm.

"Don't do it," Ben said, standing in front of Bianca, blocking her view. His face was a mess. Sloppy and sweaty and almost blurry. Bianca rubbed her eyes so hard they stung, trying to see him better. "Be smarter, sis."

Then she had a thought: What would Rylee do right now? She'd been living in this hell for so long on her own. In these alleyways. Breathing in the smoke and the sewage and the rotting piles of trash and dead bodies buried by collapsed buildings. Rylee would be…focused. Right, that's what she'd be. Maybe? I should've called her more. Well, I did call her more. But she never picked up. I guess I know why now. I'd hate to drag her into my screw jobs as well. Bianca wiped the sweat off her brow. Licked her lips again. Swallowed blood and flakes of dry skin, then turned off her phone and slowly slid it back into her pocket. She breathed shakily, then nodded, too.

Bianca hadn't always wanted to be a superhero, and she didn't think she wanted to be one now.

And she wasn't going to be.

She was hungry, she was cold, and she really needed to get out of the dark.

So she took the white-haired girl's hand, and she led her deeper into Lower Olympus.

The white-haired girl led Bianca a block away from a graveyard. She could smell it. At least, she thought she could smell it. Wet soil and putrid flesh. Something rotting in the ground as the asphalt crumbled underneath her feet. The sidewalk was brittle and wet. The puddles were large and cold and filled with shards of broken glass. Kids walked around with studded baseball bats, all with the same hooded, angry look on their grimy faces. They veered away as soon as they saw the white-haired girl. Muttered under their breath and flashed their knives at Bianca. She held the girl's hand a little tighter, maybe childishly, but she didn't care, not one bit, because she didn't want to get mugged.

God, no, that was so silly. Mugged? Here? She'd get killed down here. Low buildings. Grassy pavement. Burnt out cars and windows filled with old women glaring at anyone looking up at them. Something lurked in the sewers under her feet, too. Something that made her spine tingle and breaths catch. It's here. The…things. The worm. It didn't have a name, and she didn't want to think it was Ben, so she called the things Worms. For now. Until she could think of something better soon enough. But it was there, it was hiding in the sewers, but not only that.

The people. Some of them were sick. The worms were inside of them, festering in their guts, in their skulls. She passed homeless people half-dead on the pavement, clutching their stomachs as hives of worms gushed out of their empty eye sockets. They'd groan and grab their head, then the worms would push through their fingers and spill onto the pavement. Out of throats. Out of stomachs, dragging organs onto their laps. Bianca put a fist to her mouth and swallowed vomit, because oh, man. Ohmanohmanohman. Where the hell was she? What was she doing?

All under murals of superheroes, of Zeus and Cleopatra, of Titan's folded arms and crossed out eyes. Kids would stare at them, sitting there on upturned trashcans, as if they could will them into life with enough hatred.

But there weren't any superheroes in the sky. Just smoke and flies and cigarettes flicked out of windows.

The white-haired girl tugged her arm. "Don't look at them. Eyes forward. Stay focused."

Bianca stumbled after her, splashing through a greasy puddle. "Should we help them?"

"It's not really our job to do that," she said in a low voice. "The second you go around offering people help for free is when people start spreading word about yourself. Before you know it, you're the one getting cut open." She glanced over her shoulder at Bianca, eyes hard under the looming sparking streetlights. "Olympia tried. And for a while, it almost worked. She killed a lot of people. But it kept a lot of the worse people in the dark, off the streets. Without her, all of them are out to 'play,' is what Circe says. Without her, nobody's here to keep us in check."

"'Us?'" Bianca quietly repeated.

The girl shrugged. "This isn't the comics. Sometimes you do things because you have to do them. Other times you do things because you don't want to, but they're necessary. We're all just trying to survive down here."

The rest of the walk was silent. Her feet slapping against the pavement, hand clutched tightly by the girl with white hair, head turning on a swivel as every shadow and sound made Bianca flinch. She wasn't scared of the dark, at least, not anymore. When she was little, she'd get nightmares so easily that her mom would have to scoot over and let her sleep beside her every other day. The older she got, though, the more Ben would sit with her on the porch, sometimes with a cigarette between his lips that he'd make her promise not to tell their parents, and she'd nod and shrug, try it out because she wanted to be cool too, and end up hacking out a lung until she almost vomited in her dad's rose bushes. Ben would laugh and clap her back, telling her to keep it down so they wouldn't get caught. And it was nights like those that made the shadows not so dark and the night not that loud. When he…

Bianca had to force herself to slam the door shut on those memories. Enough. Enough. Fuck sake, enough. She'd been doing better. She'd been going to see a woman who'd tell her to scribble down her feelings and attend art therapy, and her mom would pay for all kinds of weird spa dates that she'd end up going to alone because God forbid Carly Ross ever has time for anything more than her emails and the school and—breathe. She did. Then she noticed the girl with white hair was staring at her, jaw hard, not walking anymore. Bianca looked around, and then at their clasped hands. Blood. Slick and wet, seeped through the bandages, right where her fingernails were slicing through the white-haired girl's skin. Bianca cursed and let go, wiping the blood off her fingers and apologizing.

She only flexed her hand, looked at the tiny scarlet crescents in the back of her hand, then jerked her head for Bianca to keep following her. Scared, shaking, hungry and cold, she did, like some dog on an invisible leash.

They'd gotten further away from the graveyard, but the smell of bodies was thicker in the air.

They turned down a cramped alleyway, sliding past the homeless huddled over flaming trash cans, past a man who could stretch his fingers into bone-cracking shapes for extra change—the deeper they got, the harder it was to see. The darkness was a wall standing in front of her, dense and putrid, cut through by the girl with white hair, who grabbed her wrist and led her deeper and deeper, down a short flight of stairs and told her duck right before a metal bar suddenly skimmed the top of her head. Sweat beaded on her neck and slid down her face. Sounds. People. Pushing and shoving. Grumbling. Distant smells of something meaty cooking on a fire that briefly burnt away the shadows and revealed the dozens of people slumped either side of them in a dingy brick hallway. Bianca swallowed, and for some reason, some weird, tiny reason, her heart stuttered. She felt like she'd get in trouble.

Yeah, that's right, that's what she was feeling—afraid that some cop would come around a corner and arrest her, because she was breaking her curfew and just accidentally stepped on someone and tripped over a tiny child.

Before she could apologize, they were at the end of the hallway, where a single, solitary door stood.

"Where are we?" Bianca whispered, throat dry, voice scratchy. "You said you wouldn't hurt me."

"You're friends with Olympia," the girl muttered. "How are you so afraid of everything? She's fearless."

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"People are different," Bianca said, maybe bitterly, maybe just terrified. "She probably is, too."

The girl snorted. "Olympia doesn't get scared. She's probably the bravest person I know."

"Could we just…" Bianca sighed, folded her arms, trying to fight the chill. "Drop it."

White-Hair slowly shook her head, then slammed the side of her fist against the door several times.

Barely a handful of seconds later, the door creaked open all on its own. Bodies stirred. The homeless, the disheveled and dirty and dying in the hallway all perked up, just the same as Bianca and her stomach, as soon as the smell of soup and meat poured past the doorframe. Bianca was yanked through the small gap, stumbled, and slammed her toes into the hard edge of a table. She swore and cursed, and then, like a switch had been flipped, she grabbed the edge of the table, fingers sinking into the wood, and flipped it across the room, along with every piece of pottery, every book, every candle and plate and— They stopped, frozen mid-air, slowly spinning in front of her.

A cup of tea floated right in front of her, lit by the same candles spiraling lazily around her head.

"And what did fate bring me tonight?" A violent shard of pain sunk into her brain. She flinched and stumbled, heard the things inside of her flinch and hiss and lash around right underneath her skin so violently that old, healed wounds split open and bled. Bianca clutched her head, panting so hard she had to grab a low shelf to make sure she didn't fall. Her head swam, singing with blood and rage until it silenced and, finally, she could blink, breathe, stop gasping for air and slowly straighten. She wearily looked around the dimly lit room, sweat in her eyes, hair glued to her cheeks and temples. Tables pieces of paper with strange writing scribbled all over it. Walls covered with chalk markings. A boxy TV draped with a moth-eaten blanket. The room stank of mildew, coffee, and something worse, maybe blood, maybe from the black cat sitting on an armchair in the corner, staring directly at Bianca with its glowing yellow eyes. She frowned, stared at the creature. One of its ears flicked, its tail quickly shuddered. Then it went back to licking its tiny hooked claws.

"What was that?" Bianca breathed, careful not to move, staring at the floating cups and pieces of paper, at the table still mid-air and the flakes of chalk suspended around her. She slowly moved through the room, light on her toes, careful not to touch the tiny assortment of skulls on one shelf, or the fingers floating in an old pickle jar, the tiny eyeballs bobbing in a cereal bowl, right beside a rusting, bloody knife. The worms under her skin felt like static. She scratched and itched the closer she got to the the chalk markings on the walls, until, finally, she stopped.

A door in the corner opened, just enough for threads of candle smoke to spill into the room.

Bianca watched them snake along the floor, almost like serpents, curling around the legs of tables and ratty arm chairs, along the walls and through the couch, until they finally curled around Bianca's filthy feet, went up her calves and curled around her thighs, waist, her arms and even her neck. And then they vanished in a huff of smoke.

The door creaked open, and out came the most beautifully terrifying woman Bianca had ever seen.

And she was missing her eyes.

Pits of inky darkness sat in her skull, framed by thick crimson hair that sat on her shoulders. Bianca stepped back and swallowed a gasp. The air stilled. The cat on the armchair stopped licking its claws and curled into a tight ball, tail flicking with annoyance. The woman stood at the door, a thin eyebrow raised curiously, a smile sliding onto her lips—lips that looked like she'd kissed a wound and gotten blood all over them. In loose black sweatpants and an Olympus Eagles t-shirt, she looked…wrong. Something was wrong. Something was so freaking wrong. It was in her head, in her blood, right under the skin she kept scratching and pinching and she almost considered gnawing on it to get to the worms squirming under her flesh. But she didn't. Bianca stared, didn't move, and swallowed when the woman quietly strode closer, and for just a moment, it looked like the shadows were grasping for her, it looked like the candles flinched and withered the second she got closer to her.

And then she was right in front of Bianca, taller, smiling, with her sharp, cool fingernails sliding across her cheek and brushing hair out of her face. Bianca stared at her, heart hammering, body feeling like she's on fire.

White-Hair grabbed the woman's wrist. Something broke. Bianca blinked, gasped, took a sudden step back as the girl with the knuckle tape shoved the woman's hand away and said, "Whatever you're doing, don't try it."

"No fun at all," said that voice. Again. Bianca bit down so hard on her tongue blood spilled down her throat. She massaged her temples and forced herself to breathe, because it was the sound of the voice, or the voice itself, or the…or… She didn't know. The Worms hated it. Hated it so badly they wanted to make stew out of her brains like some kind of punishment for listening to it. The woman put one hand on her hip and tilted her head. She raised her hand, spread all five fingers, then got stopped by the girl with white hair again, this time with a fist to her ribs. Bianca expected the woman to buckle. She only rolled her eyes—or did whatever was closest to that—and waved her away like some fly. "I won't hurt you. I'm just going to make it—" She clenched her fist. The Worms suddenly…stopped. All of them, all at once, froze. Silence in her skull. No ice sliding down her spine. Hands shaking, she pressed her fingertips to her throat, and didn't feel them rushing up and down her spine. Her. Just her. Bianca smiled. Stopped smiling. Couldn't help it, lost out the battle, and almost laughed.

Almost.

The black cat was staring at her, one eye open, tail curling on the cushions around it.

And the woman with the red hair was smiling at her. Something in her gut tightened.

"Are you OK?" white-hair asked her, then glanced sharply at the woman.

"Ok?" Bianca repeated, then laughed and ran her hands through her nest of hair. "I can hear myself think! And— And I'm not angry, or hungry, and look! I can't see Ben. I can't… I can't see…" I can't see my brother now.

He'd been there, just there a second ago, standing beside the black cat, staring at Bianca.

Not moving. Not smiling or shaking his head. Just…there.

Sad. Disappointed. Who knew?

Bianca didn't, because Ben was dead—he'd been in a graveyard tucked under a moss-covered tree for years now, and what she'd been seeing wasn't him, but the thing inside of her had been making her see him, and much younger than he should actually be, but it had felt so good to feel this—

She blinked, frowned, and then stared at the woman.

It felt like fingers were groping through her brain, sleazy and sharp and painfully cold.

"Get out of my head," Bianca whispered.

The woman's eyebrows raised. "Well, well, look at you. Much more mentally in-tune than your brother ever was, I'll tell you that. Maybe it's all the suffering you've had to endure that's mentally strengthened you, because not a lot of people realize I'm in their heads. Not even Zeus did." Another smile. Perfect teeth. A super model that's had her eyes gouged out of her skull and left to get so pale her skin almost glows with translucence. She patted the white-haired girl's shoulder. "I know who she is. I know her quite well, probably more than she knows herself." A twinkle in those dark, dark eyes. "It seems like fate's got us crossed. Finally, it's a pleasure." She offered her hand. Slender fingers. Perfect nails. Rings glittered on her knuckles, catching every ounce of light they could, almost stealing them right out of the room. Markings up and down her arms, strange patterns that almost danced in the dark and glowed a soft shade of purple. Bianca looked at her hand, then her face, and slowly shook it. The woman smiled even wider. The cat fell back asleep with a huff. "Clementine, but your superhero 'friend' calls me Witchling, and a myriad of other names that hurt my feelings. Bianca Ross, isn't it?"

"Am I supposed to say it's a pleasure to meet a witch with no eyes who can read my mind now?"

The girl with white hair quietly snorted and turned away. "There's no pleasure meeting her, trust me." She went for a tiny fridge underneath several leather-bound tomes, fished for an energy drink, and cracked it open. It was warm, because most of LO barely had a light bulb to share, let alone electricity to keep drinks cold. "But she'll make sure you don't end up dead."

"Dead?" Bianca asked, pulling her hand away. "I'm pretty sure nothing can kill me."

Heck, I can't even do that myself.

And I tried pretty damned hard.

"Well," the voice in her head echoed, "that boy in your mind is a virus, and those tend to kill people if the body isn't ready." Bianca stared at the woman. It must be her voice. Maybe. This was…weird. Really weird. Harper wouldn't believe her, not in a thousand years. Her brain hurt just thinking about all of this. "And if Circe sent anyone else to deal with you, then you'd have wound up dead, or…worse. Maybe it was luck. Or maybe my lucky stars all suddenly aligned, how fun." The woman stepped back, winked, and turned. "Hungry, Bianca?"

"Ben's not killing me, by the way," she said. The woman stopped walking. "He's my brother."

"Family means a lot of nothing in Lower Olympus, unfortunately," the voice said.

"You don't know who Ben was," Bianca said, laughing dryly. "And this thing in me isn't him."

"Is that why you can see him, hear him, even sometimes touch him?"

Bianca clenched her jaw. "I don't know who you are, but don't talk about my brother that way."

"You're right." The woman sank into the armchair, floating the cat onto her lap. The thing pounced away, hissed, and curiously circled Bianca's feet. "After all, what do I know about the same Ben Ross who fawned over me?" Bianca blinked. The cat froze. The girl with white hair was too busy unwrapping the tape from her fists and massaging her bruised knuckles. "But you're right, Bianca. What would I know about the Arkphage? It's not like Ben came running to me for help, or Katie came begging me to find him when he would run off because of that thing slowly eating through his sanity." Witchling floated the spiraling cup of tea into her palms, quietly sipped it, set it down in the air beside her, and waved her hand. "You're exactly like Rylee. I guess lovers learn stubbornness from one another. What's with all you kids nowadays thinking you know so much?"

Bianca's mouth opened and closed, then she got closer, just enough to make the cat quietly snarl. "But…" She massaged her aching eyes. Exhausted. She needed to get some sleep. Not here, though. Something was wrong in here. It sounded weird, but it felt evil in here. Hateful. Slimy and wrong. And these weren't the worms talking. "You're a supervillain, right? You… Olympia told me about you. I think. You sold her soul to some kind of thing."

The girl with white hair paused, just for a moment, before she continued unlacing her boots.

"An insignificant price in the grand scheme of things," Witchling said.

"That's her soul!" Bianca said, grabbing the couch. "There's nothing insignificant about it!"

"And you're right, there isn't. But would you rather she died?"

"Ry, uh, Olympia would've been better with her soul if it wasn't someone else's, thanks."

The woman smiled and rested her chin on her palm. "So righteous, I almost forgot what that looked like. Well, in any case, I'm doing my part to make sure her soul isn't being taken, if that offers you any kind of solace."

"I…well…yeah, it does, actually," Bianca said, nodding. She pointed at her. "You better not be lying."

"She can't," White-Hair muttered. She forced her hands through her hair, wild and stark in the sparse light. She was good-looking, in the intimidating kind of way the girls who used to smoke cigarettes and fight boys after school used to be. The kind of girl her mom would tell her not to talk to, glance at, not even think about. "It's some kind of oath she's taken recently. Gods and spirits and whatever. So whatever she's saying is the truth, that's all."

"What if she's lying about the oath? Thought about that?"

She looked at Bianca the same way someone would look at a weird stain. "Would you calm down?"

"My girl…friend...my best girl friend's soul is in some creature's hands, my head is spinning because some kind of creature-thing is inside my body, and you literally almost killed me if it wasn't for my busted phone, and I don't even know where I am! So no, I'm not gonna calm down and trust a woman with no eyes who tried to read my mind without even asking! In fact, I'm gonna freak out some more if you don't start answering some more questions!" She was panting, heart racing, but for once, it didn't hurt to feel alive. She jammed her finger against the couch. "So how about you start with—"

Bianca's eyes rolled into the back of her skull as she slumped over the couch.

Witchling looked at her, then at Ruslana.

They both listened to her quietly snore, drool already spilling out of the corner of her mouth.

Ruslana sighed and lifted Bianca into her arms, then looked at Witchling. "Did you do this?"

The villain shrugged. "You know how much I hate noise, especially with what I'm doing."

Ruslana grunted and laid Bianca on the couch, then took the blanket off the armchair and tossed it onto her shivering body. The black cat curled itself beside the brown-haired girl, eyes staring up at Ruslana, as if it was testing her to get any closer.

She'd always hated cats. She had once heard her sister say the black ones were bad luck.

Nothing good had come since she'd seen one on the windowsill the day she met Ava.

She had a gut feeling nothing good was on the horizon, either.

Witchling stood. "Tea?"

Ruslana sat in the armchair, watching Bianca sleep. She was…

Well, it didn't matter what she was.

She was Olympia's.

"Sure," she said tiredly to the witch. "It's going to be a long night."

"That, Ruslana, it will be, and I just can't wait."