"She really is powering up the entire network." Asterion's face went grim.
"The eclipse is going to approach ahead of schedule!" Artemis’ voice was stunned. "She’s actually forcing a celestial alignment using stolen magic."
"Where is she?" I asked as I struggled to my feet with Aidon's help.
"Here," Cordelia announced, appearing at the deck's edge with her silver eyes blazing. "The artificial eclipse centers above this location. She intends to complete the ritual where she can claim your children's power."
"How long do we have before she arrives?" Aidon asked.
The three gods exchanged glances, their combined power reaching beyond normal perception. "A few hours," they said in unison. "Perhaps less."
CHAPTER 15
The words hung in the air like a death sentence. My stomach dropped somewhere around my ankles. Which, considering I was currently carrying three magical weapons of mass destruction masquerading as babies, was quite the feat.
Jean-Marc's laptop decided to have what I could only describe as a technological nervous breakdown at that moment. The screen that had been flashing more alerts than a Vegas casino suddenly went completely, utterly, spine-chillingly dark.
"Well, shit," I muttered. Sometimes eloquence just wasn't in the cards.
The silence that followed was the kind that made your skin crawl. It was the exact opposite of the comfortable quiet you got on a lazy Sunday morning. This was the ominous, hair-raising, something-very-bad-is-about-to-happen kind of silence. The kind that turned every horror movie victim into a complete moron who decided investigating creepy basement noises was a stellar life choice. Even the ocean seemed to be holding its breath. And my experience with Things Going Catastrophically Wrong had been vast as of late. So, it was about as reassuringas finding a black cat under a ladder during a blood moon while someone walked over your grave.
I shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a position that didn't make me feel like the triplets were using my uterus as a bouncy house. Every time I moved, they seemed to rearrange themselves. Now wasn’t the time to be playing musical chairs with my internal organs.
"That's not good," Jean-Marc announced, staring at his laptop screen with the expression of someone who'd just realized they'd accidentally sent an email with a sex tape to their entire office. His fingers flew across the keyboard as if he were trying to defuse a bomb with five seconds left on the timer. "All the energy readings just flatlined. Every single site across three continents went dark simultaneously."
I struggled to my feet with Aidon's help. His warmth was the only thing keeping me from completely losing my shit. "When you say not good, are we talking 'forgot to pay the electric bill' not good, or 'ancient psychotic witch is about to end the world as we know it' not good?"
"No idea. There was a complete shutdown," Jean-Marc replied, his voice doing that thing where it cracked like he was going through puberty all over again. "It's like someone just pulled the plug. The monitoring equipment is working fine, but there's literally nothing left to monitor. It's like trying to tune into a radio station that's been wiped off the face of the earth."
Nina shook her head, sending her brown hair flying over her shoulders. "That's impossible. The network covers thousands of sites. They can't all just... vanish."
"They haven't vanished," Artemis said. Her silver eyes were tracking something the rest of us couldn't see. Probably because we weren't ancient goddesses with unlimited power. "They've been drained. Completely."
Nyx stepped forward, studying the screen with the kind of intense focus most people reserved for their tax returns. She had the sort of concentration that came with knowing one wrong calculation could result in a very expensive tax bill. Or potentially life-threatening consequences.
"She's not preparing to attack," Nyx announced. Something in her tone made my blood turn to ice water. "She's already begun."
Her hands started to glow as she reached for the monitor again. I held my breath, half expecting Jean-Marc's laptop to go up in smoke. Magic and technology had about as much natural compatibility as cats and bath time. The screen flickered and danced like it was at a disco. Sparks of light danced across the display. Miraculously, it managed to stay functional.
"Wait. Look," Nyx said, pointing to new patterns spreading across the display like some kind of digital cancer. Her finger traced lines that began pulsing with ominous energy, connecting points across multiple continents. "The corruption network is collapsing inward. She's still pulling everything into a central location."
"Everything, everything?" I asked. “Is the magic gone? Is the world going to implode?”
"It's not all of the magic," Asterion said, staring at the screen as if it had personally offended him. "She's pulled in every drop of stolen power she's accumulated over the past century. It's all being funneled into one location."
"How much power are we talking about?" Aidon demanded. "I want to know what I am looking at when I go after her."
I snorted before anyone else could answer. "She'll be gone by the time we get there, Yahweh. Trust me, she wouldn't paint this big a target on her back and then stick around a second longer than absolutely necessary. She’s stupid, not suicidal."
"Your mate is right, Aidoneus. She's got enough power to level a small country." Artemis tracked the display with the kind of focus a hawk uses when spotting prey. "She will be a challenge even for your father. Depending on how efficiently she can channel it. She's managing to pull from every magical source within range. Including us."
"What?" I choked out as exhaustion settled into my bones like lead weights.
"She's trying to draw from every practitioner within a thousand-mile radius," Nyx said matter-of-factly. "She's essentially creating a massive magical vacuum and pulling power from anyone and anything with even a spark of supernatural ability."
"Wait, hold up," Nina said as her gaze skipped around the gods. "How can she just take power fromgods? I mean, how did you guys survive this long if it was that easy for someone to just... drain you?"
"We can stop her from taking anything from us." Artemis's silver eyes now blazed, and I feared for my daughter’s life.
