Battle for the Blood Read Online Free PDF

heading straight for me. The eye in my hand rolled, and I shrieked but held tightly. Could she still be connected to the eye? Seeing through it? I wanted to be sick, but later. No time now.
    The Grey Sister still standing leapt as if the rolling bones were springboards and flew in my direction. I instantly rose into the air, winging my way to the top of the cave, leaving Apollo behind, still locked in his vision. I dove as she would have hit him, knocking her to the ground in a literal flying tackle. We went down in a daze of brittle bones snapping beneath us. She fought like a rabid dog, kicking, screaming, snapping at me as if she would bite, but, luckily, she wasn’t the one with the tooth. I wondered, though, if her nails might be toxic enough to do me in all on their own. They were ragged and filthy, and she herself smelled of vermin droppings and decay, the sweet-sour scent of death and body odor. I choked on the cloud of stench and pulled back the hand fisted around the eye to let it fly hard at her jaw. She went limp beneath me as my fist connected, her arms falling to her sides.
    I breathed out a deep sigh of relief. I didn’t dare take a corresponding breath in, not until I got some distance from her.
    Apollo snapped back to himself suddenly and flashed a gaze around to catch himself up on what he’d missed. A look of amusement crossed his face. “Chick fight? And I missed it?”
    I had a sharp retort ready, but the other two sisters were collecting themselves and skittering toward us on hands and feet.
    I fixed them with my gorgon glare and debated hitting them with it, stopping them in their tracks, but I needed information. Silence and stillness were all well and good, but they couldn’t solve everything. Instead, I held the eye above my head and threatened with all of my body language to smash it to the ground.
    “I have the eye,” I told them, realizing that while I held it they couldn’t appreciate the full effect of my posturing. “All I want is information. If you tell me what I need to know, you get the eye back in one piece. If you hold back or you make one wrong move, I’ll stomp it to paste.”
    “It’s ours,” the toothy one protested.
    “Yes, it is, just like the flesh you want to rip from my body is mine. I’d prefer to keep it, thank you very much. I’ll do the same with your eye unless you tell me how I can control my wings. Is there a way to banish them until I need them? Get rid of them entirely?” Though I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to do that last. As annoying as they could be, especially for my wardrobe, they were proving very handy.
    “You’re naked,” Apollo said with amusement, but quietly so as not to ruin my moment.
    “Only from the waist up,” I countered.
    “I like it.”
    “Later,” I told him.
    “Is that all?” asked the sister who’d originally worn the eye. She cackled. “No world peace? No end to strife? Riches beyond your wildest imaginings?”
    “The wings,” I repeated. “I have no confidence in world peace. The only true peace lies in death, isn’t that right?”
    The other two sisters joined in the cackling now. “Oh, she’s good. Wise beyond her years. Medusa was like that…”
    Great, Medusa and me…just like two peas in a pod. But where she could turn men…or women…to stone, all I could do was stop them in their tracks. And only temporarily. Hell, Hollywood starlets could stop traffic without even the gorgon glare.
    “Enough with the laugh track,” I snapped. “Tell me about the wings.”
    The sisters turned blindly toward each other, seeming to communicate without words. I was certain they made up for a lack of the usual senses with others of an extrasensory sort.
    “There is a way,” the toothy one admitted finally, “but it must be taught. There is no snapping of fingers, no potion.”
    “Then teach me.”
    “For a price.”
    “The eye—” I began.
    “Make no mistake,” said the toothy one, “we will get the eye if