Power

by Robert J. Crane

  “You think I am so doddering as to fail to notice treason under my very nose!” Jupiter’s deep voice filled the hall. “You think me so decayed that you would try to push me off the throne as though I were already a corpse?”

  Marius ran to another column. Two more to go until he was at the far edge of the room, only a simple rush from the throne and the figure in front of it. He cringed, considering his options at that point. My power takes the better part of a minute to work. His lightning comes in the better part of a second. He was no mathematics student, but his calculations did not give him hope.

  “I think you have lost your mind!” Janus’s voice came from the fray at the back of the chamber. “You have killed good people—decent people—whose only crime was to disagree with your selfish whims!”

  “You are a fool, Janus,” Jupiter said, “and I was a fool to let you and your sister live after destroying your parents. I thought you could fill their roles, see the wisdom and know your own places in our order. But you don’t know power when you see it, boy, and you’re far too ignorant to be allowed to live now.”

  Marius ran again, finding himself covered behind the next column. Jupiter was focused on the battle at the back of the room now, and Marius heard the lightning roar in that direction. “You think that you can gather your weakling allies against me? Against me?” The rage in the god’s voice shook the room. “I, who put asunder Cronus and took his place? I, who united our people in these lands long before you were even thought of? I, who am worshipped, who directs Emperors and tells gods in other lands what to do and when to do it?” Thunder roared once more. Screams followed, and Marius wondered who had succumbed.

  “Discordia. Venus. Vulcan. I see you slithering alongside Janus. Diana! Fool, to follow in your brother’s wake, to share his idiocy in this challenge!” Jupiter was bellowing now. Peeking briefly out from behind his column, Marius could see him striding about the throne room. “And your little stableboy, who you send at me with nothing more than the strength of a weakling in his hands and naught but the power to fly.” Jupiter’s voice turned his way. “Fly away, little servant. Or fly to me and I will show you what my dominion of the skies feels like.”

  Marius held his position, listening, and almost missed the soft crunch of boots just behind him—

  Lucretius had him by the throat. He knew the man mainly by reputation and only little experience. Lucretius was bestial, practically feral, his teeth showing. Marius felt his body dragged from behind the column, Lucretius’s hand firmly wrapped around his neck as tightly as if a serpent had coiled around it. His feet only brushed the ground and he was pulled, without fight, from his hiding place.

  “You send an alliance of sucklings and babes against gods and monsters,” Jupiter said. Marius could see his face now as Lucretius pulled him along. It was undignified, certainly. “You know the tale of Lucretius, boy? His sons are the three-headed dog that guarded Hades himself.” Jupiter laughed, his back turned to Marius. The pressure, though, around his neck, was incredible. He sensed that he was only a bare moment’s thought away from death.

  “You are a fool, Jupiter,” Janus said from the back of the room. Jupiter now stood in the middle of the chamber, Lucretius just behind him. Marius could barely see Janus and the others, faces barely showing above a pile of rubble that had been carved out of the back wall of the chamber. Black scorch marks darkened the marble walls, and Marius wondered at the force of the lightning that had taken whole blocks out of the palace wall. “You rule over people with power, and you do so by abusing your own to create fear.”

  “Fear keeps you in your place,” Jupiter said without any emotion. “Fear lets you know who is in charge of you. You, better than anyone, should know the value of fear. When your daughter was killed, you showed the humans responsible who they should fear more than anyone. Fear keeps the order. Fear of Rome maintains the Empire. Fear of us keeps the Emperor from straying. And fear of me keeps you fools from exposing yourselves so you don’t end up dead like that idiot of a girl of yours.”

  Janus did not dignify that with an answer, though Marius knew the man must surely be boiling inside. Marius could feel the burn in his neck and knew that it was not from Lucretius’s grip on his throat. Seconds more. Seconds more.

  Lucretius jerked a moment later, his grip slackening. His legs buckled, just slightly, but enough for Marius to get to his feet. He slapped a hand upon Lucretius’s mouth and pushed him down. The man’s strength was fading with his life, and he made to scream just as Jupiter sent another frenzy of lightning across the chamber. The noise drowned out Lucretius’s cry, and Marius stuffed his hand farther down into the beastly man’s throat. He felt strong teeth and jaws bite hard against his hand and ignored them.

  Yes, take the pain and shut it away, his mother’s voice came, intertwined with Ennias’s, and the voices of all the others whom he had taken in the last year and made his own. They spoke in a chorus, as he did when he was joined with them. One will, one mind, wedded to his own in an unstoppable force.

  He felt Lucretius sucked free from his body and thrown into the depths with the others. He sensed the fear, the abject terror in the man at the separation from his own body.

  YOU WILL BE OURS, Marius said, his voice joined with those of the others. YOU WILL BE ONE WITH US.

  I will not, Lucretius said. I will not!

  The screaming lasted only seconds, the howls of an animal as it was picked apart by a pack of wild things. Marius’s fury was that of the ten people he carried with him, all their rage and anger and fear and pain collected over their lifetimes and their imprisonment with him, all his to command. He turned it loose upon Lucretius and the man broke in mere seconds.

  YOUR POWER IS MINE, Marius said, Lucretius’s voice added to his chorus.

  My power … is yours … came Lucretius’s voice for the last time as it dissolved into his own.

  There was a flash of light around him as Marius came back to his senses in the throne room. Lucretius’s body lay beneath him, one of his hands still anchored on the man’s cheek, the other buried to the wrist in his throat. He pulled the hand free from the mouth as Lucretius’s eyes stared up at him, empty yet somehow accusing. And Marius stood.

  “Your power is mine,” he murmured and felt the essence of Lucretius come to the fore with the rest of his subjects. His slaves.

  His souls.

  He flew at Jupiter, his broad back partially covered by robes. He slammed into it hands first, grabbing hold of him at the neck and smashing his face into the ground. He dimly felt the first shock, but it was weak and Lucretius’s power made it hurt not at all after a moment. He felt the flesh pull together where it had burned into his skin as he stared down at the back of Jupiter’s white hair as he ground the God of Thunder’s face into the floor.

  “You have always misjudged weakness and strength,” Janus said, and he appeared from behind the pile of rubble. “You have always glazed over courage, over friendship, over the value of care and concern for others. You think decency is base and stupid, gratitude and loyalty the things of animals.” He limped across the throne room, and Marius could hear the screams of Jupiter begin in his head.

  “You … cannot …” Jupiter muttered, his face against the marble floor.

  “I remember thinking something similar as you sent your power against the flesh of my parents over and over,” Janus said. “How many enemies do you think you have made over the years in just such a manner as that?”

  “A … Alastor …” Jupiter said weakly. Marius could feel the man’s soul, and it was a great, struggling beast. His will was fearsome, larger than any other he had touched in his time.

  “He will not come to you,” Janus said quietly. He stood only feet away now. “He is with us, you see, and is helping Ares to maintain control of the Empire as we make this … transition.”

  “N … Nep …” Jupiter’s voice flagged. “Po … seidon …”

  “He is gone,” Janus said. “On a tour of
the Empire you so lovingly control from behind the scenes with his aid. It is a shame that you did not do what he has done; then you might have been indispensable.”

  “He … ra …” Jupiter said, and Marius felt the last of him begin to slip free of the bonds. There was a stir of electricity that hummed at the god’s fingertips as he grunted.

  “She has betrayed you,” Janus said, and in this Marius heard the cold satisfaction at last. “She knows you for the fool that you are, for the detriment to our continued authority that you are.”

  “You cannot do this … I am …” Jupiter said, voice cracking, “… the alpha!”

  “And we are your omega,” Janus said quietly.

  With a cry, Marius felt Jupiter’s soul slip free of him, screaming into the depths. He felt the power of the man, the sheer weight of his will, and held fast, kept him at a distance. Marius’s breathing was intense, heavy, and his head felt light with both the joy of an absorption and the terror of the man he now kept inside.

  “Are you all right?” Janus asked, keeping his distance.

  “He is dead,” Marius said, shaking his head. “But I can feel him. Absorbing him may be a challenge.”

  “I am certain you are up to it,” Janus said, but he said it quickly, and his eyes left Marius as soon as he’d said it. He turned away, sandals making a noise like a scuff upon the cracked marble floor. “My friends … we have work to do.”

  “You have done it, Janus.” This came from Vulcan, his scarred face visible in the knot of people in the rear of the room.

  “We have done it, you mean,” Janus said, his back to Marius. “We have deposed a madman. We must now secure our empire.”

  Whose empire? The voice in his head came, in a twisting, nearly whining, chorus. Marius thought he could hear his own voice in there, somewhere.

  “The Emperor,” came another voice—this one Diana’s. “Probus. He feared Jupiter,” she said, her long hair unknotted, hanging limply around her shoulders and frizzed as though a stray bolt had hit close to her. “How will we control him now?”

  “In much the same way,” Janus said. And now he looked to Marius, and smiled. “For while I am certain that Jupiter was wrong about a great many things—rule over us foremost among them—he was right about one thing. Fear … is an excellent motivator.”

  Marius felt a little shudder as he sat there, and Janus turned away from him again. Then he swept from the room with the others, discussing in rapid exchanges their next movements. It sounded very far away to Marius’s ears as he felt the strength of that soul unsubdued suddenly cease its push against him. Jupiter stopped fighting like a wild animal straining against the edges of its pen, and he felt him turn, ever so quietly, and join the wills entwined against him, holding him back.

  Whose empire? The tenor of the voice in his head changed just a little, but Marius could still hear his own within it, and it put him at ease.

  Chapter 46

  Sienna

  Now

  We hit the lobby with the crash of gunfire all around us, rifles thundering from the FBI Hostage Rescue team snipers hiding in the woods behind us covering both sides and from the mercenaries Century had hired who were returning fire and trying to get in a few shots at us from where they were being systematically chopped down by the FBI’s superior sniper ability. It was a free-for-all before we even hit the lobby, and after we burst through the doors, well—

  Well, it was like a ballet of frickin’ death, that’s all.

  The lobby was glass on the front and done up in a sweeping lodge style with a ton of rustic décor combined with concrete. It was a natural extension of the architectural scheme we’d seen outside, something somebody in the seventies had thought was a really good idea. LSD was big in the seventies, right?

  Now it looked like the northwoods version of the Matrix lobby scene. Bullets were already flying at us as I came in the front door. There were a series of planters leading up to a three-story waterfall that cascaded down behind the registration desk in the middle of the massive lobby.

  The glass panes that lined the front of the room shattered within seconds of me leading the way into the building, my team a few dozen steps behind me. I’d meant to draw the mercenaries’ fire to me, and wow, boy, did I succeed in a big way.

  I rolled behind a concrete planter and heard a hundred rounds lodge in the cover I’d chosen. I’d heard about auditory exclusion, a temporary loss of hearing caused by an excess of adrenaline, but it obviously hadn’t kicked in for me. My adrenaline was in overdrive, but I could hear a hell of a lot of gunshots, and they were loud.

  I edged my gun just slightly around the side of the planter and fired in the direction of the nearest shots. I had no hope of hitting anything, but the gunfire tapered slightly as I did so, which was my main goal. I didn’t know how many assault rifle rounds it would take to bust through two sides of a concrete planter and the three feet of dirt in the middle of it, but I was guessing a hundred rounds per second would eventually do the job.

  Fortunately, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had given me an app for that.

  I tossed the flashbangs that had been hanging off my belt and curled into a ball. I heard Reed in my ear as I did it. “Stacked up just outside!” he called.

  “Two seconds!” I replied, and there was a blast of light as blinding as Amaterasu even behind the planter and a thunderous noise that sounded like the bass roar of grenades exploding around me.

  I heard the chatter of guns firing from where I’d entered the building and saw Reed, Kat and Scott making their way into the building with their guns ablazin’. I knew Zollers, Janus and Foreman would be somewhere outside, coordinating their powers to throw a damper on the area as much as they could.

  I came up shooting, pegging three guys in less than three seconds, headshots all. Tangos down and all that jazz. Yippy-ki-yay.

  I saw the flare of a gun blind fired from behind the registration desk in the middle of the lobby and realized that all the holdouts had cover by this point, because anyone out in the open when those flashbangs went off had been shredded by Reed and company’s entry. Reed was lurking behind a planter a row up from mine, and Scott was next to him. Kat was behind the planter opposite mine on the right side. She was reloading, I saw, and I threaded my way forward along the side of the lobby while firing a couple shots at the front desk. I hoped there was no clerk hiding behind the desk, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at this stage if there was.

  The steady chatter of an AK-47 answered me, aimed at approximately my last position. It hosed the tree above me with a good ten rounds before it ceased.

  “Harper,” I said, “call it out.”

  “You’ve got three, say again—zero three—tangos behind the planters in front of you. At least two are definitely still in play, and the third is either wounded or playing a real good game of possum. You have three more tangos behind the registration desk along with a possible civilian. Civilian has their head down and is curled up, left hand side. Tangos are on your right.”

  “And the rest of Century?” I asked as I reloaded, sticking a fresh mag into my Sig.

  “Acting cautious. They’re all clustered in the labyrinth of hallways behind the lobby, moving real slow.”

  “Roger that,” I said. “First things first, the tangos behind the planters—”

  “Got ’em,” Kat whispered, then I heard something truly horrific.

  The trees in every one of the planters came to life simultaneously, with the sound of branches cracking and whipping through the air. I poked my head up in time to see a man jerked from the ground with a broken branch impaled through his shoulder. He screamed as the tree jerked him to his feet, and I shot him in the head out of mercy as he was ripped in two by the strength of the branch heaving through his chest.

  I heard another call from across the lobby and watched a guy get hit by a stray branch like it was clubbing him. It came down on him once and he staggered. It landed on his head the second tim
e and flat-out crushed it like a boot on a grapefruit. He dropped and didn’t move, and the slow ooze of red across the floor signaled to me that his resistance was done.

  There was the heavy sound of branches whumping against something on the ground from behind the third tree, the one nearest the registration desk, and I cautiously looked out to see it flailing against the ground. There was no noise from behind the planter, and I thought about what Harper had said about the last tango being either dead or playing possum. I figured there was no doubt which it was now.

  “Front desk,” I muttered. “Three on the right—”

  “Got ’em,” Scott said, and there was a rumbling from the waterfall above.

  I had an inkling what was coming before it happened, but that made it no less spectacular when the stone fixture three stories up burst with a sudden explosion of excess liquid. It came like a flood had just blown over the edge and when it landed, it took on a life of its own. It formed a circular ball of solid water, like an aquarium filling before our eyes, and the cascade of water joining it from above continued to fill it as it held there, without glass to hem it in, only the will of Scott Byerly to keep it in control.

  I could see the three mercs trapped inside as the invisible aquarium continued to fill. It seemed to stop and then I saw the men caught within kick and thrash in a frenzy as the water kept pouring in but the space it occupied grew no larger.

  It took me until the first man began to bleed into the liquid to realize that Scott was compressing the mercenaries inside the aquatic prison. He wasn’t just drowning them—he was crushing them under the weight of all that water in a confined space. It took only another moment before the water just went red, too red to even see anything in, and I started to wonder why he was keeping it in that shape.