Urban Mythic: Thirteen Novels of Adventure and Romance, featuring Norse and Greek Gods, Demons and Djinn, Angels, Fairies, Vampires, and Werewolves in the Modern World

by C. Gockel

  Get out of here! It’s too dangerous! Jeno warned.

  With her night vision, Gertie charged through the narrow, winding tunnel. A vampire came out of nowhere and bit her wrist before she knocked it away. Another bit her leg. She kicked it. Hissing and screeching sounds echoed throughout the narrow passageway.

  Then Jeno appeared before her. “Get out! Are you crazy? You’re fair game in here.”

  He took her hand and led her out where the stars and moon once again shone down on her.

  “Thee moy,” he said. “You’ve lost so much blood. Perhaps too much. Who did this?”

  The name of the one responsible popped into her mind: Alexander.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Jeno said.

  “I feel fine.”

  “You do now, but when the vampire virus is out of your system and your powers have faded away, you will feel faint—maybe even sick.”

  She heard his thoughts. He longed for her blood and was fighting the temptation to taste it.

  “Go ahead and take some,” she said. “Please. You’re starving.”

  “You’ve already lost too much. I can tell in your color.” He punched his fist into his hand. “I’m going to kill Alexander.”

  “You’re going to go into a coma if you don’t feed,” she reminded him.

  He sat on a nearby rock. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “How can you say that?” She sat beside him.

  He didn’t have to explain. His thoughts were an open book to her:

  The night I met you on the bus, I was returning home, after saying goodbye to someone I loved. I met her thirty years ago. When she died, I wanted to die, too. But on the bus ride home, I met you, and I realized it was possible to become interested in another person.

  When I got off the bus, I knew you and I would meet again.

  But I cannot compete with Hector.

  After I last left you, I walked the streets of Athens, hoping to meet another friend to take my mind off the one I lost—the woman I had to bury.

  “And did that work?” she asked.

  No. All I’ve thought about is you.

  “And all I’ve thought about is you,” she said, leaning closer. “Why do you think I’ve come here?”

  “You like the power.”

  “I like you.” She took his hand. “Please take a little sip—just to keep from going into a coma. I can handle it. I promise.”

  He licked his lips. “Maybe I’ll just take what is already running down your arm.”

  He held her hand and gently lapped up the blood dripping from her wrist.

  In the next moment, they were both startled by the sudden appearance of Hector. He wore a button down pajama top tucked into a faded pair of jeans, and a scabbard hung from his belt. His blond hair stuck up on one side, where it had been slept on.

  “Back away, vampire,” Hector commanded.

  Jeno dropped Gertie’s hand and jumped to his feet.

  “Wait, Hector,” Gertie said, also standing. “It’s not what you think.”

  He pointed a finger at Jeno, and, shaking with anger, said, “She’s lost more than a pint.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Gertie insisted. “Hector, listen to me.”

  “Quit trying to protect him.” Hector unsheathed his sword. “He knows the rules.”

  The moonlight glinted on the blade of the sword, pointing now at Jeno. It reminded her of Alexander’s fangs just before he…

  Gertie’s heart beat out of control. Too much was happening too fast.

  “Do it,” Jeno said. “I dare you to slice off my head and feel the wrath of Dionysus.”

  Gertie positioned herself between Jeno and the sword. “No one is slicing anybody’s head. Come on, Hector. This isn’t fair.”

  She didn’t mean to read his mind, but when he looked down at her with hurt in his eyes, she couldn’t hold back.

  So you’ve chosen, then.

  “This isn’t fair,” she said again.

  “When I look at you, I see a girl who’s been hurt by more than one vampire,” Hector said between clenched teeth. “A bite on your neck, wrist, and leg, color drained. That’s what isn’t fair. The tramps need to pay.”

  “She came to me like this,” Jeno said. “She entered the caves.”

  “You did what?” Hector growled.

  Gertie stopped herself from entering his mind. “I was frightened. I wanted his help.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” Hector asked.

  Gertie didn’t know what to say.

  A shriek from a distant hill made all three turn their heads. Bright flames licked the night sky, like long, forked tongues. Laughter and shouts rang out.

  “Speak of the devil,” Hector said.

  “What is it?” Gertie asked.

  Jeno stepped beside her, so that she was now flanked by both boys, as all three gazed at the bright flames on the other side of the acropolis.

  “Dionysus,” Jeno said. “That’s the location of his old temple, before he was forced underground.”

  Gertie used her extraordinary vision to get a closer look. When the hill blocked her view, she hovered up into the air about twenty feet.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” Hector cried.

  “Are those the Maenads and satyrs with him?” she asked of the thirty or so women and hoofed men dancing around the fire.

  Jeno flew up beside her. “Yes. And among them is my mother.”

  “Which one?”

  “You see the one with the longest hair?”

  “The dark hair?” She was dancing with a satyr.

  “Yes. That’s her,” he said sadly. “Though she does not acknowledge me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Hector cleared his throat.

  Jeno and Gertie looked down to see him with his sword sheathed and his arms crossed and his foot tapping impatiently.

  “May I please take you home, Gertie?’ he asked. “You aren’t safe.”

  She glanced at Jeno.

  You should go with him, Jeno said telepathically.

  “But I want to see Dionysus,” she objected. “Who in their right mind wouldn’t?”

  Suddenly Jeno dropped from their height and fell toward the ground. Hector reached out and caught him in his arms.

  Gertie flew down and landed on her knees beside where Hector was laying Jeno out on the ground.

  “He’s going into a coma,” Hector said, positioning Jeno’s arms at his side. “He needs blood.”

  “We have to help him.” She put her wrist to Jeno’s lips, but Jeno, who was barely conscious, refused to open his mouth. “Please. You need this.”

  “You’ve lost too much already.” Hector pulled his sword from its scabbard and cut the palm of his left hand. Then he held his hand to Jeno’s lips.

  Jeno drank from Hector’s offered hand, hesitantly at first, and then more urgently. He pressed Hector’s hand against his mouth and sucked hungrily. Hector allowed it.

  When Jeno released Hector’s hand, he opened his eyes, wiped his mouth, and said, “Thank you. Why did you do that?”

  Hector didn’t reply, but Gertie could hear his thoughts, even though she tried not to listen, and she was certain Jeno could, too.

  If you had harmed Gertie, I would have killed you; but you are clearly her friend.

  Gertie’s esteem for Hector went up several more notches. Jeno glanced her way, having heard her thought.

  The voices from the distant hill were now overshadowed by music playing from pipes and flutes, and it sounded as though the source of it all was closer to them. By the time the three had climbed to their feet, a troop of dancers and players came around the hill in their direction.

  “We need to get Gertie out of here,” Jeno said.

  “Agreed.” Hector took Gertie by the hand.

  But she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to meet the satyrs and the god of the vine. She wanted to join their singing and dancing.

  “I want to
stay,” she said.

  “You’ll end up like my mother,” Jeno warned. “Come on.”

  Ten yards away, one of the Maenads pointed at them. She had the leg of a rabbit in the corner of her mouth—fur and all—and was sucking on it, as if it were a popsicle. Her hair was fire-engine red and piled on top of her head, with wild curls sticking out. Her face was pale, her eyes black, and two dark half-moons fanned from the bridge of her nose.

  Tossing the rabbit leg to the ground, the Maenad screeched, “Ty yne afto?”

  Gertie’s vampire-infected mind understood that to mean, “What is this?”

  19

  Two Gods

  As fast as a tidal wave, enormous vines grew out from beyond the hill and climbed along the rocks toward the three teens. Gertie drew in air and lifted herself from the ground, but the vines reached up and encircled her ankles before dragging her back down to the earth. She struggled against them, as they hauled her along the rocky ground toward the troop of Maenads and satyrs.

  Jeno and Hector were dragged right alongside her. Hector pulled out his sword and swung at the vines until he freed himself. Then he charged after the other two, swinging and grunting, until he had freed them as well. Gertie and Jeno scrambled to their feet just as the troop caught up to them.

  A satyr approached and offered them a goblet. Nubby horns stuck out through curly dark hair on the top of his head. His face was wrinkled but otherwise youthful, and his smile was disturbingly flirtatious. She glanced down at his hooves, wishing she could touch them to see if they were real.

  “Don’t drink,” Hector warned.

  Jeno gave her the same warning, telepathically, adding that it would turn her into a Meanad.

  With her thoughts, she asked Jeno if the transformation would be permanent.

  I don’t know, he replied.

  Gertie looked at the satyr. “What will happen to me if I drink the wine?”

  “You will be set free,” the satyr replied in the deep voice of an old man.

  “From what?” she asked.

  “From all that binds you,” came his cryptic reply.

  “Don’t do it,” Hector warned.

  Please, Gertie, Jeno said, directly into her head.

  “No, thank you,” she finally said to the satyr, though her curiosity had nearly led her to take the cup.

  She flinched when the satyr dropped the goblet at her feet and took out his pipe to join the other players, who skipped and jumped about. The women swung their arms and hips and kicked their legs. Dionysus remained hidden from Gertie’s view, somewhere at the back of the crowd, where she sensed his presence. She tried to read his thoughts, but an impenetrable wall surrounded his mind. The Maenads seemed to have no thoughts, and the satyrs thought only of music and dancing.

  Jeno’s mind was full of his mother—memories of when he was a boy before her transformation. She saw him tugging at the hem of her skirt when he was six years old as she baked a batch of cookies. Gertie realized how selfish she’d been and sent a telepathic message to Jeno that they should leave.

  She and Jeno each hooked an arm beneath Hector’s and lifted off the ground. Before they had gotten very high, another vine caught hold of their feet, and the commanding voice in the distance shouted, “Wait!”

  The music and dancing stopped, and all eyes turned up to the three teens, hovering above the ground and bound at the ankles by vines.

  “What is this?” the commanding voice called out.

  The troop below them parted—satyrs on one side and Maenads on another. Down the center, from the back of the crowd, strolled a magnificent ram, the size of a rhinoceros, with golden fur and horns.

  Dionysus, Jeno told her.

  “Since when are demigods and vampires friends?” the golden ram asked.

  Hector and Jeno exchanged looks, as Hector shouted, “Since tonight, Lord Dionysus. A mutual friend brought us together.”

  “If only more would follow your example, the people of Athens might live in harmony,” Dionysus said. “The prejudice against vampires has harmed the city more than the vampires themselves.”

  “You are right, my lord,” Jeno said. “But why do you hold us prisoner?”

  “I do not.”

  The vines disappeared.

  “Seeing you together reminds me of an ambition of mine from days of old,” the ram said.

  Gertie asked Jeno what was going on, but he only shrugged.

  “I have always wished to instigate an uprising of the children of the night.”

  “An uprising, my lord?” Jeno asked.

  “So that vampires could be liberated from their impoverished crypts and given respectable positions in the city.”

  Gertie wondered what this would mean. She was all for equality, but a vampire uprising?

  Hector gawked. “The gods of Mount Olympus…”

  “Would finally be forced to feel my wrath,” Dionysus said. “It was one thing to remove my temple and put Athena’s in its place, but it is another to deny my requests again and again for better living conditions for my people. Seeing you three has reminded me of a more hopeful future for my followers.”

  “But what about the mortals?” Hector asked.

  “They’ve had plenty of time to recognize the subjugation of my people and have done nothing. Perhaps it’s time the tables were turned.”

  “There’s got to be another way,” Gertie said, not having meant to speak.

  A great bird, as large as a small plane, swooped down from the Parthenon and hovered above the crowd, its wings flapping slowly and gracefully. It was an owl—gray and glimmering, brighter than the moon. Gertie’s mouth dropped open as she looked up at the magnificent creature, suspecting its true identity.

  Athena, Hector said in her mind.

  Hector had spoken to her telepathically? The vampire virus must be in his blood. Did that mean he could hear her thoughts?

  Yes, he said.

  So who is worse than a thief now? she thought.

  The owl opened its beak and said, “Dionysus, god of the vine! How dare you speak of an attack on my people so close to my temple? You are deluded if you think I wouldn’t defend them.”

  The golden ram reared back on its hind legs and brayed.

  Suddenly the music blared once more over the hills near the acropolis. The great owl hooted with condemnation before flying off in the dark sky. Jeno, Hector, and Gertie followed Athena’s lead and left the party for the rock below the Parthenon. Athena continued to fly toward the moon and out of sight. Gertie watched her until her vampire eyes could no longer see her.

  Once they had landed and were recovering on the rock, Gertie gazed down at the troop, its music still audible to her vampire-enhanced ears from this distance.

  “What just happened?” she asked the boys, who were shaking almost as much as she.

  “Have you heard talk of this uprising?” Hector asked Jeno.

  “Every other century, my lord speaks of it, but nothing ever comes of it. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “Maybe it was the wine talking?” Gertie suggested.

  “That would be nice,” Hector said. “But Athena seemed to take it seriously.”

  “That was incredible.” Gertie kicked her feet with excitement from where they hung over the ledge. “Scary, but amazing. I saw two gods in one night.”

  “You have a way of attracting their attention, don’t you?” Hector said.

  Gertie laughed.

  “The sun will be rising soon, and you will not be feeling well,” Jeno said to Gertie. “You need to go home and stay in bed all day tomorrow.” He turned to Hector. “Can you help her?”

  Hector nodded. “I’ll make sure she gets home all right.”

  “But you are a son of Apollo’s direct descendant,” Jeno said. “Don’t you have some of his healing powers?”

  “How did you know that?” Hector asked.

  “You forget how long I’ve been around. I know things. Can you help her?”

 
“Do you mean, like magical healing powers?” Gertie asked.

  “They’re very mild,” Hector said.

  “You couldn’t save your dog,” Jeno said. “Because he was too far gone. Thanatos, the god of death, was already coming for him. But you can heal.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Gertie asked Hector.

  Hector opened his mind to her, and there she saw him holding his mangled dog, Paris, in the street after a car had run over him. Hector had tried to use his powers, but his dog had died. If his mother had been home from the hospital, she might have saved Paris, for her power was far greater than his. He resented his mother a little. She was always at the hospital. Always.

  “I’m sorry,” Gertie said.

  “I haven’t tried to use the powers since that day,” Hector said. “I haven’t had the occasion or the need.”

  “Try with her,” Jeno coaxed. “Erase the bite marks, so Marta and her family won’t worry. Heal the cuts and bruises from the vines.”

  Hector pressed his warm hand to her wrist and closed his eyes. A hot, tingling sensation crawled across her skin. When Hector removed his hand, the bite mark from her wrist was gone.

  You are amazing, she thought.

  Hector blushed and Jeno frowned.

  “I didn’t know I could do that,” Hector said.

  “Now her leg and throat,” Jeno said.

  Hector put his hand on Gertie’s throat, causing her heart to go wild. The close proximity of his face to hers was electrifying. She tried to hold back her thoughts of attraction and arousal as she glanced unwillingly at his mouth, which twitched into a grin. She turned her eyes from him and met Jeno’s sad gaze.

  I’m glad he’s helping you, Jeno said telepathically.

  My body responds to you both, she told Jeno, though she knew Hector could hear her thoughts as well. It doesn’t mean anything.

  Hector’s grin became a thin line as he moved his hands to her ankles and continued his healing touch. Although her body continued to respond to Hector, she kept her eyes trained on Jeno. Nikita was in love with Hector, and Jeno needed her more than Hector did. Once she was healed of her bites, cuts, and bruises, she turned to Jeno and kissed him on the lips.

  “Please come for me tomorrow night,” she whispered.