When his goddess mother came to him one night and told him how she’d birthed him, given him up for adoption, and that he’d better show some damned respect, he was stuck. He held a legitimate Olympian pedigree, but to claim it now meant catastrophe and scandal. He’d stood on a talk show couch and declared his pure mortal status, for crying out loud!
Thad successfully begged his mother’s forgiveness with an abject (if private) apology and numerous (and ongoing) sacrifices, but she still held the secret over him, still used it to manipulate him, still blackmailed him with guilt and threat of disclosure.
It was how she’d gotten him to follow this Leif Karl-something in the first place. Another person might have called it ironic, but the definition of the word wasn’t something Thad kept track of either.
“‘Hi, Mom’?” she repeated. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? Thad. Darling. Why are you still here?”
Thad shifted in the water where he sat. “Recovering. I was jet-lagged.”
“Jet-lagged? You flew two hours across a single time zone!”
“Yeah, but there’s the drive to the airport, the wait at the airport, and—Look, you don’t understand, you’ve never taken a plane.”
“Oh, believe me, dear, I’ve taken a plane.”
“I need my rest!” he argued.
“And I need you to follow that blond fool with the arrow in his heart!”
“I did! I followed him all the way here, didn’t I?”
Her features hardened, eyes becoming daggers. “You don’t know where he is, do you?”
Thad was normally quite good at lying to women, but the fact that this woman was his mother blunted his skills. Or maybe it was the goddess thing. Still, worth a try. “He’s . . . nearby.”
“You lost him!”
“He was on a different flight! I can’t make the plane go faster!”
“We told you where he was staying!”
“Yeah, well, I went there. And I found him. But there was this woman across the street, see, this absolutely gorgeous blonde with—”
“Thaddeus Archibald Winslow!”
“I’m sorry! . . . Are we done?”
Thad had considered telling her the second he’d realized he’d lost track of Leif, but he figured it would work out eventually. Why bother making her mad? He endured his mother’s put-upon sigh without rolling his eyes and waited for her answer. It didn’t take long.
“You’re my son, Thad, and obviously I have to love you. But Mommy is a goddess, so show some respect. You’re going after him.”
“Love to, Mom, but I don’t know where he is.”
“Fortunately for you, we do.”
“Good! Then you don’t need my help anymore.” He smiled, sipping the champagne.
She smacked him across the face, which was impressive considering the distance between them. “You’ve embarrassed me enough already! I told the others you could handle this, and I had to hear it from them that you’d lost him!”
“Look, Mom, I just don’t see why you can’t do this yourse—”
“The whole point of this is to be discreet! And don’t second-guess your mother! You’ll do it, and you won’t screw it up this time!”
Ares listened to the boy and his immortal mother from the adjoining room. To the untrained eye (of which there were none in the otherwise empty suite), he was seething. His teeth gritted, his hands clutched at the fireplace poker he’d grabbed in the event anything should need pokering, and his pacing feet ground into the carpet in a way that would, given perhaps a decade, give the Grand Canyon a run for its money. The trained eye, however, would tell you that seething was the wrong word. (There were no trained eyes in the room either, but as we are also imbuing trained eyes with the power of speech, questioning their existence in a given area is unfairly pedantic.) Seething was among Ares’s five resting states, along with raging, blood-lusting, hating, and missing important details. No, Ares was more than seething, more than raging, more than hateful at Thad’s utter failure to do as he was told.
Ares was annoyed.
When Athena first designed the turtle-frog (official Olympian registry name: “Testudomeleon ATH-4R”), she had for whatever reason consulted Ares about its greater arms. In an uncharacteristic fit of cooperation― perhaps brought on by either boredom or the hope that the goddess would sleep with him―he had given a small bit of help. Then the thing got killed by that Monster Slayer guy. Ares was the first one Athena told. The insufferable bleeding-heart-defense queen blamed the whole thing on failure of his arm design, of course. Argument ensued, and damned if it didn’t come out then that the victorious hero got a little help. The pieces were easy to put together from there, especially since Ares wasn’t alone when he was told and therefore had some help to figure it out.
And so Ares was annoyed. The blond mortal bugger got away from them so easily! The others were fools. Send another mortal to watch in their place? A mortal? Discretion be damned, that’s what he should have told ’em! Who cared how much attention they’d attract? Stupid jerk Hades!
Okay, so they’d flick Thad back on the job and put the fear of the gods into him if he screwed it up again. Titans’ armpits, that wouldn’t be enough! And what the heck was taking her so long?
The goddess returned just as he’d made up his mind to yank the boy out of the water and throw him where they needed him.
“So?” Ares asked.
“Boy’s as smart as his father,” she sighed.
“Yeah, so?” That didn’t tell him nothing, even if he’d known who the boy’s father was.
“He’s back on the trail. I gave him a good head start.”
“A head start? That’s it?”
She pouted. “Apollo’s champion might have a Muse watching, or Apollo himself. Do you want them to see him just teleport in?”
Ares growled. “Then I’ll go myself.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’ll be what I bloody want to be! Can’t matter anyhow if they see me. I said I killed Zeus all along! I got no cover to blow.”
“Ares, you’re a boasting, blustering brute.”
“Um . . . Thanks?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean no one believes you! They just think you stole the credit to look stronger. Please, for me, let Thad do his job.”
Ares held her gaze and grunted, thinking a few moments before seizing on an alternative that would end this whole thing a small sight quicker. “You’re right,” he said.
She beamed. “Always am!”
“See you back on Olympus.” Ares turned to go. “There’s things I got to take care of.”
She grabbed his arm and drew him back.
“You’re planning something, aren’t you?” she asked with a poke at his chest. “I mean insomuch as you plan anything.”
“What? Nah.” He turned again only to have her yank him back, glaring.
“Or, to put it another way, ‘yes,’” she said. “It’s all over your face. What is it?”
“Oh for the love of—” He shoved away her grip. “So what if I am planning something?”
“Hrm. We’ve already got a plan? Stick to that!”
“Your plans’re what got us into this! We wait any longer for this one to work and we’ll still be waiting while Zeus shoves lightning down our throats! I’ll just kill the twerp! He’s mortal; that’s what they’re for!”
“You can’t!”
“Sure as Hades I can. Just one more dead mortal on a long, long list. I’ll make it quick if you’re so squeamish.” In fairness, he supposed she didn’t look squeamish. She looked angry, which frankly was quite a good look for her. Then again, it was a good look for everyone so far as Ares was concerned.
“Ares, no! Hades said you can’t just—”
“You can ram a pike up what Hades said!”
“We don’t know enough about what Karlson might do!”
“We don’t need to know nothing!” he fired. “What if he did what he was supposed to
when your little pipsqueak lost him, eh? What if he does it when Thad loses him next time?”
“Thad will not lose him again!”
“Bettin' our hides on that, are you?”
She hesitated. “Even if Thad does lose him, Karlson’s distracted. He’s in love! Mind-bogglingly, distractedly infatuated!”
Something slid into the war god’s mind and failed to stick. Ares stopped. “. . . He’s fat?”
The other blinked. “Infatu—! It means ‘in love.’”
“Yeah, like that ever solved anything. This ain’t a movie.”
“Not yet.”
“What?”
She went on. “Fine, don’t listen to me. But you kill Karlson and you know, you know that Hades will come down on you. Hard. You know what he’s like when he’s angry.”
“He don’t scare me.”
“Liar. He’s older than you, Ares. You can’t stand against him alone.”
“So you can help me.”
“I agree with him! Karlson’s death might be the very trigger to bring back Zeus!”
“And . . . it might not be!” he stammered. “You don’t know!”
“Exactly!”
Ares glared at her. He hated arguments that made sense. They usually meant that he couldn’t do what he wanted to, if he paid them any attention. So as a matter of course, he ignored them as best he could. But she wasn’t going to stop nagging him.
“Fine,” he said finally. “I won’t go kill him.”
“And you won’t go watching him either. Not yet, anyway.”
He only then realized he still had the fireplace poker in his hand. He tossed it to the floor, glad for the chance at least to throw something. “Fine.”
She smiled. “Thank you. You know how these things work; there are all sorts of little rules and such, especially with death.”
Ares just grunted at that.
“I’ll make it up to you in some, oh, creative way, I’m sure. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Uh-huh.”
He followed, pondering. All sorts of little rules and such, especially with death. Another scheme was creeping into his mind in an attempt to take form. He started to hum Wagner to keep it from showing on his face this time. After all, he’d only said that he wouldn’t kill Karlson. Didn’t mean someone else couldn’t. Heck, if he played it right, even Hades couldn’t fault him for it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Zeus pretty much stopped siring daughters after the Trojan War, which I expect was a combination of what happened with Helen and his dislike of having attractive mortal women in the world that he couldn’t sleep with. It’s likely why no one suspected Tracy at first. I’m still unsure if her gender was foresight or whim on Zeus’s part.”
—personal journal of the Muse Thalia (written under house arrest)
IT WAS TRACY’S SECOND real vision, though she didn’t know this. The first―received eight months ago, just after Zeus’s death―had burrowed unnoticed into her subconscious and eventually drove her to select this particular location for a Monster Slayer excursion. The first vision was subtle and impressively nuanced, seeking her out to worm its way into her mind without so much as a single dose of psychotropic drugs. By contrast, this second vision walked up and smacked Tracy in the face with all the subtlety of an indoor fireworks display.
In the darkness before her the amulet spins alone, shining as if to suggest either its paramount importance to her or a jewelry commercial. The darkness soon lifts: the background illuminates from an unseen source to reveal a grandly appointed, white marble room. It holds a broad desk, lush furniture, and one of the largest plasma screens she has seen that wasn’t on a billboard. There is a grand aura, a wonder that takes her breath away.
The god is there a moment later, his hand holding the amulet’s chain from where it dangles. His countenance is that of a man old enough to hold wisdom and power, yet young enough to retain the wolfish attraction of his youth. Concern mars his otherwise handsome face that few women could resist, yet Tracy knows she is one of those few women. She knows not from whence this knowledge comes—nor why she suddenly uses words such as whence—only that it comes because she knows this man to be her father. Her real father.
Father Zeus.
“Way to go, Mom!” she whispers, and wonders if her mother ever knew. Abruptly the vision pauses, the amulet flashes, and again she somehow knows that the vision is about to speak to her.
—To reduce the risk of cerebral hemorrhaging, please remain silent during the vision.—
The vision resumes and Tracy now watches the scene as if perched within the amulet itself. Zeus rushes to a window to look out. Sunlight shines upon his face, yet her attention is drawn to the sight behind him: A wrapped gift box sits upon a table, anointed with a broad bow that slips from the top as the creature within opens the lid. Its skin a dark pewter, its eyes glowing with violent malice, the little creature skitters onto the tabletop, silent as Death during naptime. Her father is focused on the window; he does not see the threat.
“Behind you!” she calls out on instinct, knowing the warning to be useless and that she is seeing into the past.
—To reduce the risk of cerebral hemorrhaging, please remain silent during the vision.—
Damn it.
The creature brandishes a barbed tail and lunges at her father like a living bullet. From within the amulet still clutched in Zeus's grip, she watches him fall out of the window. She sees the hateful god-killer perched on the windowsill―its stinger stained with his no-longer-immortal blood. She feels her father hurling the amulet itself toward where she knows it shall eventually land, halfway around the world in Nevada in a canyon that shall within nine months become a monster’s lair. Anger and desperation blaze in Zeus’s eyes, in Tracy’s eyes, as the amulet flies from his grip. The vision begins to fade as he whispers to the amulet, to her . . .
“You are my child, Tracy, the key to reversing my fate. Guard well this amulet. Do not let justice die with me!”
Time slows as Zeus plummets to the base of Olympus. There is no further instruction.
“But what do I do?” she yells.
—To reduce the risk of cerebral hemorrhaging, please remain silent during the vision.—
Why does he get to talk when I can’t? Her father crashes to the ground, his body breaking on the rocks, murdered.
Oh, right.
The vision ends. It belatedly occurs to her that she does not like the sound of that “reduce” before the “the risk of cerebral hemorrhaging”.
She slowly became aware of the voices.
“If she doesn’t wake up soon, I’m taking that thing off her,” said one.
“You don’t know what that could do!” said another.
“I hesitate to risk it,” said (perhaps predictably) a third. “She doesn’t seem to be in any danger for the moment, and we can spend the night here if need be.” It was the doctor, and for a time after he spoke, all were silent.
Tracy opened her eyes to the sky and bit of cave ceiling above. The sun was out of sight somewhere below the canyon walls and near the horizon. The others had yet to notice that she was awake. She lay there on the doctor’s cot, processing.
“Have you guys ever run into a talking bird?” Jason asked suddenly. “A bird, falcon, I think, it talked to me when I was fighting the monster.”
“. . . What’d it say?”
“Oh, you know. Bird stuff. It tried to tell me how to kill the thing.”
“That’s ‘bird stuff’?”
“Stranger things’ve happened today.” Tracy meant to say it louder, but it came out a whisper. It was audible enough to get their attention anyway.
“Hey!” Leif practically shouted. “Er, welcome back.”
He, Jason, and the doctor stared down at her. “How do you feel?” the latter asked.
The amulet lay heavy on her chest, its chain still around her neck. She sat up just a bit, cradling the thing in her palm to study it. “Overloaded.�
� It was the second word that came to her mind, after hemorrhaging. She kept that one to herself. She hadn’t talked that much.
“Maybe you should take that thing off,” Jason suggested. She shook her head.
“No. I can’t. I mean, I can, I think, but . . . I shouldn’t.” Tracy blinked, looking around suddenly. “How long was I out? Where’s Dave?”
“Two hours," Jason said. "And he’s fine. Doc didn’t want to move you, so Dave left about an hour ago to bring some things back from the truck. Why shouldn’t you take it off?”
She stood, shrugging off Leif’s attempt at helping. “Just . . . just let me think a sec.” It was a lot to take in. She couldn’t quite believe it.
No, she amended, she could believe it. What she couldn’t quite believe was how easily she was able to. She was the child of her ditzy mortal mother . . . and the king of the Olympian gods. This she knew without question (and rather suspected the amulet was to blame for that).
Someone had murdered her father! This, again, she knew. This she accepted. This she suddenly recognized as a terrible crime that demanded justice! Not that she’d ever been against justice, but—
“Tracy?” Jason snapped his fingers in her face. “You’re zoning.”
“I’m thinking. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“Well, think later,” Jason demanded. “What’s going on?”
She scowled, trying to find just the right way to put it. “I’m Zeus’s daughter.” No, that wasn’t it.
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