She passed Athena her dory as the goddess stepped out of the cab several blocks north and east of the building. The driver had eyed their staffs—the ends of both covered by pillowcases stolen from someone’s laundry—with some suspicion, but not enough to jeopardize his fare.
“This way,” Lore said, hurrying along the sidewalk. She turned around when she realized Athena hadn’t followed.
The goddess had stopped near the steps of St. Jean Baptiste Church, her gray eyes glowing in the deep violet of late night. The church, with its classical pediment and columns, Renaissance-style bell towers and domes, and statues of Christian angels, suddenly struck Lore as an embodiment of history itself. The way it marched ever forward, each civilization devoured by the next.
“Do you feel something?” Lore asked her. “Or someone?”
The goddess shook her head.
“Okay,” Lore began slowly. “Then why do you look like you want to tear the place apart with your bare hands?”
Athena leveled her with a look that came like a blade across the neck. “How shall I look upon the temple of a god whose followers destroyed the culture of the Hellenes, defiled our images, sanctuaries, and temples, and ravaged the people’s faith in their gods?”
“Fair enough,” Lore said.
Athena cast one last look at the church. “But this god did what we no longer could, even at the end. He made them fear him, and it took control of the hearts of our people.”
“Maybe,” Lore said. “But that’s only one interpretation of fear. To some, it just means that they respect their god and stand in awe of that power.”
“Do you not feel angry?” Athena asked her. “Your own way of life has been threatened.”
“Good,” Lore said. “Good riddance. It’s a horrible way to live. It can’t end soon enough.”
A flicker of true surprise moved across the goddess’s face. She seemed to change her mind about what she was about to say, though her voice didn’t betray it.
“Do not deny your birthright,” Athena said. “You are no mere mortal. I have seen you fight. You may silence her, you may suppress her glorious rage, but a warrior lives in you still.”
My name will be legend.
The memory of her declaration, the confidence that had powered it, made Lore feel sick to her stomach. She hadn’t thought of the dream in so long, but now it crashed through her mind. The edge of a shield. The golden wing. Eyes in the blade of a sword.
Bullshit. All of it.
“The Fates—” Athena began.
Lore shook her head. “The Fates have nothing to do with any of this. I don’t accept that anything is outside of my control.”
“You may deny the Fates, but they will not deny you,” Athena said. “Fighting them will not save you from what is ahead. It will merely quicken the course of things.”
“So you say,” Lore said. “But that would mean you think you were always destined to fall from favor and be hunted. The Ages of Man have all come to an end in one way or another, with the exception of this one. Why can’t we see the end of the Age of Gods?”
“The Age of Gods is eternal.” Athena gripped her dory, and Lore wondered if she would ever become used to the goddess’s eyes, the way they seemed to raze her defenses. “I may have been meant to fall, but it is so I might prove my worth to my father once more.”
If you say so, Lore thought.
Athena finally followed her as Lore started down the street again, this time at a quick clip. “Take heart, Melora. If Wrath believes you hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the poem, we will survive this hunt. He cannot kill you. Your death as the last of the Perseides would remove it from this world.”
“Yeah, real comforting,” Lore muttered.
But still the thought sent a shiver rippling over her skin. With Tidebringer dead now, Lore truly was the last of her bloodline.
After Iro had left, leaving only a phone number she could be contacted at, Lore had told the others about the inscription on the aegis, which had, as expected, brought on more questions she didn’t want to answer.
“Still, the thought of the imposter Ares possessing my father’s shield . . .” Athena began, her expression darkening. “If only your family had been stronger—wiser—and had not lost it.”
Anger sparked in Lore, too quick to smother. “They didn’t lose it—it was stolen, along with everything else.”
“It occurs to me now that this is why he did not immediately kill the false Poseidon,” Athena said. “He may have believed she, as one of your line, could decipher the poem on the shield.”
Lore bit the inside of her mouth hard enough to taste blood. “You’re probably right.”
The truth was, Iro had only seen a sliver of the greater nightmare. As much as Lore hadn’t wanted to tell Athena about the poem being inscribed on the shield, she’d seen an opportunity in it. If the goddess believed Wrath already had the poem—that he already held her key to escaping the Agon—it would give her all the more reason to focus wholly on pursuing him.
Of course, the problem would be dealing with what happened once Wrath was dead, and Athena realized he didn’t have the aegis after all.
But that was a problem for the future, and for the first time all day, Lore felt calmer. Secure, at least, in the knowledge that neither god would ever find the shield or the secrets it possessed.
Athena mistook her expression for worry. “Do not trouble yourself, Melora. It is to our advantage that he seeks you out. It will draw him directly into the path of my weapon.”
“Great,” Lore said. “Can’t wait.”
“What I cannot abide, however,” Athena continued, the words edged like blades, “is the knowledge that your ancestors would sully the perfect form of the aegis with any inscription. Defiling my father’s shield, yet still praying and offering for his blessings . . . It is little wonder he does not protect these hunters.”
“We’ve never needed gods to protect ourselves,” Lore ground out.
Athena turned her sharp gaze on her. “When true darkness is upon you, you will remember us. But if the world persists in the way it is now, who will be left to answer you?”
“Who says,” Lore answered sharply, “that we’ll even remember you?”
The goddess had no answer for her.
“You don’t care about this city or any other,” Lore continued, unable to stop herself. “All that matters to you is power.”
Lore hated her temper more than she hated any other part of herself—how quick she moved from spark to flash, incinerating everyone around her.
“Listen,” Lore began, slowing her steps. “I didn’t mean—”
But before she could turn, something sharp pressed against her lower back, right against her kidney. She turned, looking over her shoulder.
A Minotaur mask stared back at her.
Lore gripped her dory, lifting it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he warned. “I wouldn’t do anything other than drop your weapon and come with me quietly.”
Lore searched the street around her, but Athena was nowhere to be seen.
“Working with gods,” the hunter continued, edging her forward. “I should have expected you to become a blade traitor eventually.” His tone shifted as he began to speak to someone else, likely through his earpiece. “Yeah, tell him I’ve found her—”
Lore leaned left, letting his blade graze her, but giving herself enough room to jab her dory back. She spun it, bringing the covered tip around to bash against his mask. Its straps broke, sending the mask to the ground.
“You bitch,” the hunter snarled.
She jabbed him with the dory, but he brought his blade down and cleaved the wood staff in two. Lore spun forward, avoiding his reach as he came at her with the blade again. The only thing that finally stopped him was the feel of the dory’s kitchen-knife tip cutting through the pillowcase to press against his windpipe.
Breath heaved in and out of her, and her arms strained with the nee
d to push forward just a little more and end the fight completely.
“You should have killed me when you still had the chance,” Lore hissed.
“Can’t,” he told her, an unnerving excitement in his words.
The hunter spun left, kicking her chest with enough force to knock her to the sidewalk. The piece of the dory flew from her hands, rolling beneath a nearby parked car.
He was on her in an instant, bringing his dagger down toward her shoulder. Lore blocked it with one arm, trying to buck him off, even as she felt along the ground for the head of the dory. Her hand found something else instead.
Lore brought a broken chunk of cement against the side of the hunter’s head, knocking him sideways off her. She slammed it into his face and heard the satisfying sound of gagging as blood filled his mouth. He crawled back, desperate to get away from her.
She brought the piece of cement up again, her gaze narrowed on his temple. Olympia’s small, singsong voice in her mind repeating the words they’d heard a thousand times, Kill, or be killed—Kill, or be killed—Kill, or be killed—
Lore clambered off him. The hunter lay spread out on the ground, his face bloodied. He wheezed, his lungs wet and desperate for a breath.
I could have killed him. Icy needles pierced her skin, instantly cooling her blood. She shuddered.
After everything . . . after what Gil had helped her through . . .
Someone peeled out of the shadows beside them. Athena.
“He,” Athena said, “will never have her.”
She was the last thing the hunter saw.
The young hunter’s body jerked as the goddess slammed her spearhead through his rib cage. The wet suck of muscle as she pulled it out was even worse. His eyes widened, blood pouring from his mouth as he tried to speak.
Athena dragged the hunter and leaned him against the nearest building. She wiped the blood from his mouth with his black robe, pulling it tighter around him to disguise the wound.
“When you see him,” Athena began, leaning down to bring herself eye level with the hunter, “tell Lord Hades that the rest of Theseus’s line will soon join you in the world below, for today you have cursed them all.”
Lore turned her gaze down, her hands clenched tight around her upper
arms.
“Do not look away,” Athena told her. “You are no coward.”
She wasn’t. In that moment, though, Lore almost envied Athena for the hollow place inside the gods where a mortal’s humanity would be.
Athena handed her the hunter’s dagger, then collected the pieces of Lore’s dory. She kept one of the kitchen knives but threw the other one, along with the splintered wood, into a nearby gutter.
“Sorry,” Lore said softly. Her life wasn’t completely her own this week.
“There is no forgiveness in the Agon,” Athena told her. “There is only survival and what must be done.”
THE MOMENT LORE LAID eyes on it, she realized she had seen the Frick before—many times. She’d walked by it and hadn’t bothered to stop and investigate the large, handsome building that stretched from Seventieth to Seventy-First Street. The city was a place where you only saw what you were looking for.
The lock on the construction fence was broken. Lore pushed it open to reveal the museum’s nondescript entrance a few feet away, and Miles crouched on its steps. He looked up at the sound of their approach, his face wan.
“Are you okay?” Lore asked.
Miles hugged a water bottle to his chest. “I should have listened to Castor and stayed outside. . . .”
Athena shifted uneasily behind her.
Lore looked through the windows of the entrance’s two wooden doors, startling at the sight of two security guards sitting in high chairs, their backs to her. Castor stood between them. His grave expression turned Lore’s lungs to stone.
She smelled it as soon as she pushed the door open. Stale air and decay and blood. The hair on her body rose.
“Do you want to wait for Van outside?” Lore suggested to Miles.
Miles shook his head. “He’s not coming. He texted Castor to say he’d meet us back at the house.”
“Why don’t you go meet him?” she said. “You don’t have to go back inside.”
“No,” he said, forcing the words out. “I can handle it. I don’t need to leave.”
“I don’t want you to have to handle it,” she told him.
But Miles moved past her, heading inside.
Athena’s breath came light and quick behind Lore as they stepped into the entry. The goddess approached the guard on the right. The young woman’s hair had been braided down her back, much like Lore’s own. Her head rested against the wall, as if she’d merely dozed off.
Lore saw the truth as they came to stand by Castor’s side.
The woman’s throat had been cut so deeply, Lore could see the white bone of her spine through the gaping flesh. It would have been a quick death, but a brutal one. She wouldn’t have been able to scream.
The other guard’s face had been battered, but whatever suffering he’d felt would have been over as soon as he’d been stabbed through the heart.
“A léaina?” Castor guessed. “The Kadmides might have beat us to the punch again.”
“Or a desperate god,” Lore said.
She wasn’t sure which would be worse.
There were four more bodies. One police officer and three more uniformed security guards. The killer had brought them into the Garden Court and arranged them in a grotesque pattern around the dry fountain. Their lifeless eyes watched the heavens through the domed glass ceiling. There were no signs of blood or struggle anywhere else in the museum, and the monitors in the security booth seemed to be on some sort of loop.
Which meant the likelihood of hunters being behind the deaths went up significantly.
Miles leaned against one of the nearby pillars, hugging his arms around his body.
Maybe this will be enough for him, Lore thought. Maybe Miles would see that Unblooded mortals weren’t spared from killing when they stood in the path of the Agon.
“They’ve all been”—he seemed to be searching for a nicer word to describe the small massacre in front of them—“cut up. Do hunters not use guns?”
“Some do,” Lore told him, giving his shoulder a quick, comforting touch. “Mostly on other hunters. Gods are killed with arrows or blades.”
“Why?” Miles asked.
“Zeus’s words at Olympia were interpreted as a command,” she said. “I will reward you with the mantle and the deathless power of the god whose blood stains your bold blade. No one has been willing to risk losing out on a god’s power by testing other methods.”
She watched as Athena used one of the security guard’s batons to thread through the door handles, reinforcing their busted locks.
“Based on their condition they’ve been dead for a few hours,” Lore said. Castor nodded. Aside from the color of their blood darkening as it oxidized in the air, and the faint smell of death that clung to them, there wasn’t any noticeable decay. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in.
Miles gave her a look that was half-amazed and half-horrified.
“No museum staff or construction workers . . . this has to be the night shift,” Lore said. “Otherwise someone would have come looking for their loved ones, right?”
“Do you think the Reveler is capable of doing all of this?” Castor asked, astonished. “Alone?”
“Yes,” Athena said, gripping her dory. “He has not survived this long because he possesses a gentle nature.”
“Can’t wait to meet him,” Miles said, pained. “But we should probably get on that now, before the next security shift comes in.”
Lore and the others had pulled the chairs with the security guards away from the doors, wiping their fingerprints from the seats, and Castor had melted the door’s locks shut, but Miles was right. Every moment they wasted standing around was another opportunity to be caught surrounded by bodies.
; If the Kadmides were responsible for these deaths, one of their crews would be by before sunrise to clean the scene—in a strange way, she hoped they would. While she and the others wouldn’t have DNA or fingerprints in the system, there was every chance Miles did and could be linked to the scene.
“You will keep an eye on the entrance, imposter,” Athena said. Her eyes shifted to Lore. “You and I will start searching below and work our way up.”
Castor looked as if he wanted to protest, but acquiesced. “All right, but if you do find him, don’t approach him yet. We need to see what kind of state he’s in before making a call on how to use him as bait.”
Athena gave an unfeeling smile. “Imagine lecturing one such as me on strategy.”
“You’re with us, Miles,” Lore said. “Now—how do we get downstairs?”
The lower levels were as still and dark as the upper one had been. Lore reached out a hand, feeling along the walls. The corridor there would have been pitch-black if it wasn’t for the light of an emergency exit sign.
Lore pulled the phone from her back pocket and turned its flashlight on. She led the group as they moved into the first of two galleries connected by the long hallway. Paintings and documents had been removed for the renovation, leaving empty walls and small information plaques behind.
Outside the lower galleries and the vestibule connecting them, there was no signage to help direct them, just doors leading into some kind of administrative area.
Doors that had been kicked in by force.
Athena moved one of them aside, lifting her dory like a spear. Lore motioned for Miles to stay farther behind her. Her phone’s light passed over an office and a storage room. Both looked like they had been gutted, and had bled out with storage boxes and scattered papers.
They followed the trail of broken furniture through the rooms beyond it. Shipping crates had been smashed open, the paintings inside shredded, the vases and clocks smashed.
They passed the infamous bowling alley and continued their search, until, finally, Lore saw signs for what lay ahead.
The museum’s storage vault.
She jumped as a booming crash split the air. It was followed by another, and another—glass shattered, and a single voice let out a ragged scream of frustration.
Lore Page 23
