Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  Veronica sat down on her rump, and Betty simply flopped all the way to the ground with a sigh. Signs of submission and relaxation.

  “I’m jumping down now,” she warned them. “Don’t get pissed.”

  She dropped off the ledge and into the exhibit, landing hard and slipping slightly on the gravel beneath the snow. Now she stood only a half-dozen paces from the bears. She glanced past them to the glass-enclosed viewing areas and the rest of the zoo beyond. Empty. It had closed a half hour earlier. Most of the keepers would be tidying up and moving their charges indoors for the night. But Minh reported that Lars liked to give the bears a little extra time outside, especially in winter.

  From her pocket, Selene pulled a flexible plastic collar with a small container affixed to one end. “Who wants to wear this and do She Who Has Bear Paws for Hands a huge favor?”

  Veronica walked slowly forward, nose still dancing curiously. This close, the bear’s head hung nearly level with Selene’s. Her heavy breath puffed white like a steam engine, and Selene could taste the dark musk on her tongue. The bear paused, and her ears swiveled backward. Selene forced herself not to tense up at the sight of the sudden aggressive gesture. Instead, she bleated—the sound a mother bear makes to summon her young—and Veronica’s ears swung forward once more, listening. Selene bleated again, then took a step forward to demonstrate her own lack of fear.

  “Easy there, my arktulos.” She reached around the bear’s massive neck, her hands disappearing in the thick fur, and secured the collar. Then she scratched Veronica behind one swiveling ear and placed her head against the bear’s. Veronica warbled a high-pitched, pulsing thrum, a cub’s response to its mother’s attentions. The bear took one last look at her, then lumbered toward the gate that led to the climate-controlled enclosure and indoor swimming pool. Every evening, she’d been trained to go to the door, wait for it to open, and enter her chamber, where a fishy treat awaited.

  Selene could’ve just left then, message delivered. Lars would eventually find the container, read the note enclosed, and hopefully be impressed enough by its method of delivery to obey. Selene could no longer send men dreams or spy upon them from her chariot as she rode the moon through the sky, but she’d learned to get the same effect through trickery. Lars would have no idea who could’ve managed to plant the message on the bear without leaving a severed limb behind. He was a scientist—but somewhere deep in the primal portion of his brain he might secretly wonder if something supernatural had been at work, and that suspicion would likely get him to obey the message’s command.

  But that would be too easy. And too merciful. He needed to be more than astonished—he needed to be terrified.

  Betty followed Veronica toward the door, her massive haunches jiggling with winter fat as she went. Selene stepped in front of her and drew a folded T-shirt from the capacious pocket of her cargo pants. Lars had left it in Minh’s apartment the night of the assault. Selene lifted the fabric to her own nose and sniffed loudly, then held it out so Betty could do the same.

  “You know this man,” she said. “He brings you food. You like him. But he must be taught a lesson about how to treat females.” The bear would not understand her words, of course. She’d long lost that kind of supernatural power. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate her needs. She put the fabric in her own mouth and bared her teeth. She huffed and clacked her jaws, then threw the scrap to the ground. Then, with another quick scan of the viewing area, she pulled down her pants and pissed on Lars’s T-shirt. She hadn’t told Theo about that part of the plan—he’d never let her live it down. But bears communicated largely through odor, and a sure way to convey her rage was to have them smell it in her urine.

  Betty stared at her, ears flat and anxious. Selene smiled. Now all she had to do was get Lars inside the enclosure. That was where Theo came in.

  With a scraping of gears, the metal door behind the security gate slid open. A man’s deep voice, with the barest hint of a Scandinavian accent, floated toward her. “How did you get this number? No, I’m not going to go into the bear den—it’s prohibited. What I am going to do is call the cops and tell them someone is threatening me. Then I’m going to alert my superiors.”

  But he wasn’t. He was coming to look inside the bear exhibit, just as Selene knew he would when he heard what the stranger on the phone had to say. Once Theo mentioned Minh’s name, Lars would be too skittish to involve anyone else. He knew what he’d done was wrong.

  “I haven’t seen that woman in days,” he lied. “She was fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Selene ducked behind a rocky outcropping as Lars appeared behind the gate. He was less attractive than she’d imagined him from Minh’s description. Tall and muscular, yes, his lush blond hair gone gray at the temples. But his face was hard, his pale eyes nearly hidden beneath a protruding brow. A Viking marauder. He stood behind the grate, cursed roundly into the phone, then hung up on Theo.

  He stared for a moment at his bears. Veronica snorted and raised a claw to scratch at the plastic collar around her neck. Just in case Lars hadn’t noticed it. He cursed again.

  “How’d someone get that on you?” he demanded of the bear. She gazed at him impassively. “You come inside, I’ll get the tranquilizer gun, and we’ll get that off.” He disappeared, probably entering a secure observation area. After a moment, the gate swung open. Veronica took a step forward, following her usual routine.

  But that wasn’t part of Selene’s plan. From her hiding place, she made a high whining sound, the closest she could come to a bear’s warning signal. Veronica swung her head to look at her curiously. Selene whined again. The bear sat back down, obeying the command. Then the three females waited patiently.

  Eventually, the safety gate swung shut and Lars reappeared behind it, this time holding a large silver fish by its tail. “Come on, girls, come inside and have a little dessert.” But the bears didn’t move. He repeated the performance three times: tempting the bears, disappearing into the safety enclosure, opening the gate, and then closing it once more when they refused to budge. Finally, as Selene knew he would, he appeared behind the bars and muttered, “Fine, if that’s what it takes.” He pushed a button and the gate swung open. In his right hand, he held a tranquilizer pistol. In his left, a box cutter.

  He walked slowly toward Veronica, murmuring calming words to her the whole way. He looked cautious but not nearly as terrified as he should’ve—clearly he’d done this before. If his boss found out, he’d be immediately fired. Minh called him a daredevil. I call him an arrogant, reckless asshole, Selene decided.

  The bear lay down and rolled to her side, then cocked her head in a show of submission.

  “You gonna make it easy on me, huh?” Lars asked. “No dart gun needed?” He came within two feet of her, then dared to put the gun aside and lift the box cutter to the collar around her neck. The bear’s heavy panting lifted the wisps of hair from his forehead as he slit the plastic. The message container dropped into his hand.

  Quickly, he backed out of Veronica’s reach. He should’ve immediately retreated to the observation area, but his curiosity got the better of him. He pried open the plastic cylinder and drew out the roll of paper.

  “‘Lars, if you ever touch another woman again,’” he read aloud, “‘we are coming after you.’” Lars looked to Veronica, as if she could answer the obvious question. “Who’s we?”

  That’s when Betty bit off his hand.

  Chapter 4

  THE FURIES

  From his post on the busy road beneath the zoo walls, Theo heard the screams. For a moment, he thought they were Selene’s and that her ridiculous plan to talk to the bears had gone just as badly as he’d feared. Then he realized that even if she had an entire pack of slavering grizzlies on her heels, she’d never make a sound that high-pitched. When he caught a few Norwegian curse words through the screaming, he knew Lars was the one shrieking like a woman.

  Theo stared at the heli
x of razor wire above him, hoping to see Selene climbing to safety. Five minutes passed. He didn’t dare call her cell—he didn’t want to give away her position. Finally, just as he was about to attempt an ill-conceived scaling of the fence, Selene appeared at the eastern end of the transverse, running full tilt toward him.

  She waved him ahead of her. “Go!”

  He didn’t ask questions, but sprinted down the sidewalk. He could hear her gaining on him—not surprising considering she was the Swiftly Bounding One, but still mildly humiliating for a man who considered himself in decent physical shape. Moments later, she’d passed him. Now he could see the torn leg of her pants and the blood dripping into her boot. Her hair lay flat and wet, frost already forming at the tips.

  “What the hell happened?”

  She ignored his question. She sprinted across the road and then up and over the rock wall and into Central Park. A moment later she reached down to help him up behind her. They dashed down a pathway that curved beneath an arching bridge. There, in the shadows, they finally paused.

  Theo leaned against the brickwork, panting heavily, hands on his knees. Even Selene was heaving. “You’re injured,” Theo managed. “And wet.”

  She glanced down at her leg. “The bears got a little crazy once Betty bit off Lars’s hand. Veronica turned on me—the whole Mistress of Beasts thing wasn’t quite enough to stop her from taking a swipe. Then it turned out it was harder to get out of the exhibit than into it—especially with a grizzly chasing me in circles—and I had to scale a cliff, drop down into the harbor seal pool, get over a glass wall, and then run out the main entrance.”

  “Rewind. Bit off Lars’s hand? What happened to telling the bear to just bluff-charge him so he’d wet his pants with fear but live to tell the tale?”

  “I did tell her that. She just didn’t listen. Or maybe she listened too well—bears are smart, you know; she probably intuited my true desires.” She spoke casually, ripping off the rest of her pant cuff at the same time and fashioning it into a makeshift bandage around her calf. “Although if it was up to me, she would’ve bit off his cock instead.”

  “And now we’re being chased by the police?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone saw me. The other keepers were too busy running toward the screams. I just wanted to get out of the area—you know, in case.”

  Theo slid down the wall and sat heavily on the asphalt. She sat beside him and threaded her fingers through his. Her sudden smile gleamed white in the shadows. I haven’t seen her this happy in weeks, Theo realized. Personally, he had little stomach for such bloody punishment, but he’d decided that sometimes the world needed an avenging goddess.

  “So I can pry my heart out of my throat?” he asked, finally catching his breath. “And Lars isn’t going to bleed to death? And you’re not going to get rabies from bear claws?”

  “Let me answer in ascending order of importance,” she said. Theo raised an eyebrow at her uncharacteristic levity, but let her go on. “Lars, unfortunately, is not going to die. He’s also never going to look at another woman again without thinking of six hundred pounds of bear flesh ripping off an extremity. Second, the bear claws are nothing I can’t handle, so don’t worry about it. And third, I like your heart right where it is.” She placed a hand on his chest, and he felt an answering flutter somewhere considerably farther down his torso. She lowered her voice and leaned toward him, her smile grown small and lopsided and meant just for him. “Not a bad night’s work, partner.”

  Theo reflected that his role in the affair had involved frequenting one of the city’s few remaining pay phones, standing like an idiot waiting for Selene to show up, then running for his life for no apparent reason. But even with his misgivings about the extremity of her justice, he found Selene’s exuberance infectious. He loved seeing her in her element. He let himself fall into her kiss and tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head warning that next time he found himself in a lovers’ spat, he should guard his limbs from any passing bears.

  Back in Selene’s kitchen that night, Theo forced himself to sit down and finish writing the final exam for his Intro to Mythology class.

  “What do you think?” he asked Selene as he flipped desultorily through the class syllabus, looking for inspiration. “What if I ask my students to explain why Greek mythology still holds such a fascination for modern society? And then, when none of them say ‘because Selene DiSilva is a fox,’ they all get F’s.”

  Selene laughed shortly. “A wolf, maybe. A fox, never. Too timid.” She sat beside him at the table, rolling up her pants to check the wound on her leg. “Why don’t you ask them to imagine what sort of Underworld punishment the gods would devise for the department’s four dead professors? Personally, I’d have the Furies tie them up while the shades of the women they murdered slowly skinned them alive to the sound of one of their own ritualistic drums. But that’s just me.”

  Theo couldn’t quite join Selene in her revenge fantasies. The professors she referred to had been his colleagues, after all—Columbia classicists drawn into the revival of an ancient Mystery Cult practicing virgin sacrifices. He’d met Selene while tracking them down three months earlier. The cult’s leader, the handsome Everett Halloran, had promised the rite would give the professors immortality. The press dubbed the killers the “Classicist Cult,” and a department usually ignored by anyone without a deep and abiding interest in Homeric Hymns had led newscasts across the country for a few days that autumn.

  By the time the cult’s ritual reached its climax, Theo had learned that Everett was in fact the mythological hero Orion, Artemis’s onetime hunting companion and the great love of her life. Eventually, Selene’s divine brothers showed up in the final shootout and helped kill the professors. Theo couldn’t regret their deaths—it had been a matter of self-defense. But as much as he hated what they’d become, he still mourned the men they’d once been.

  “Honestly,” he said with a sigh, “I might travel to the Underworld myself if it meant I could bring one of them back to help me run the damn department.” With the faculty roster decimated, Theo’d taken on the role of temporary chairman. Once, he might’ve jumped at the chance, but now he resented all the extra work. He wanted to spend his time with Selene, and when he wasn’t obsessing over her, he wanted to continue delving into everything she’d taught him. She’d upended his entire understanding of the field he thought he’d mastered years before. How does one talk of the gods as if they’re legends, knowing that they’re real? So far, he hadn’t come up with an answer. Should I tell my students that Artemis still has her bow and lives on the Upper West Side and can control bears? Well—until they go crazy and try to kill her, that is.

  Selene unwound a roll of clean gauze to bind her leg. She was right; the wound wasn’t bad. Either the bear’s claws had only grazed her, or she’d already begun to heal. Should I mention that she’s sort of, kind of, almost, sometimes immortal? But most of her relatives are fading into oblivion? And she herself might lose what powers remain to her at any moment?

  The Athanatoi, he’d learned, retained their strength in correlation to how much they—or their attributes—were still revered in the modern world. So a god like Dionysus, the Wine Giver, still possessed much of his power—there were plenty of alcoholics to pay him homage, even if they didn’t do it directly. But Artemis presided over virginity and hunting—two things considered thoroughly outmoded by much of the population. Thus, before he’d met Selene, she’d faded almost entirely into mortality, unable to heal quickly, barely competent with her own bow. The Classicist Cult had restored some of her power through their bloody rites, and even after their demise, she’d retained that newfound strength. But when Orion offered to return her to complete omnipotence by sacrificing Theo, she’d turned him down. Theo had no idea how long Selene had left before her fading began again in earnest. One more thing I can’t investigate with my students, much less make the focus of my next scholarly treatise.

  He took o
ff his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. He’d made little progress on his questions—either the ones tormenting his brain or those written on the test pages. He glanced at his watch. Somehow, it was already three in the morning, although Selene still looked wide awake as she riffled through the fridge for yet another carnivorous snack. I may just have to give up and use last year’s test, Theo relented, pushing the papers aside and resting his head on the table. The night’s adventure had taken more out of him than he’d realized.

  He’d fallen asleep when the cell phone in his pocket jolted him upright. Selene appeared at his side in an instant. “Maybe it’s Gabriela with another client,” she said, her silver eyes bright.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that you want Gabi’s friends to be assaulted just so you can have the pleasure of exacting vengeance on their behalf.”

  Selene shot him her usual scowl, somehow grinning all the while.

  Then Theo read the caller ID on his phone and sat up straighter, completely awake. “It’s Detective Freeman.”

  The smile dropped from Selene’s face. Freeman had been one of the detectives on the Classicist Cult case. Theo had earned a rather peculiar reputation among the police as an expert consultant on crimes of a classical nature—crimes that, needless to say, hadn’t recurred since the destruction of Orion’s cult. But if the detective had called him, there could be only one reason.

  He picked up and listened as Freeman gave him a brief rundown of a new case facing the NYPD. He hadn’t spoken to the detective all fall, but he’d expected the call. Selene had warned him that other gods might learn of Orion’s methods and try to create new cults in their own honor. More sacrifices, more innocent women dead, all for the benefit of gods who couldn’t gain power any other way. Selene had vowed she wouldn’t let that happen, and Theo had sworn to help. A knot of trepidation formed somewhere beneath his lower ribs as he realized it was time to keep that promise.