Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  Just a little narcissistic, as always, Theo couldn’t help thinking.

  Selene went on. “I don’t think you’re on the right track anyway. How can this be about some obscure Roman deity? Who would bother worshiping him if even a classicist like you barely remembers him?”

  “Oh, I see. It can’t be about Mithras because it has to be about you.” Theo instantly regretted the vitriol in his tone. Some part of him obviously was still upset about seeing Selene in Flint’s arms on the roof of Rock Center. He reminded himself that he hadn’t seen anything more damning than a look of desire in Flint’s eyes. It wasn’t Selene’s fault if her stepbrother found her attractive—what man wouldn’t? “Look,” he went on more calmly. “I’ve got to get somewhere I can do some research.” Now that he finally knew what to look for, the answers would be easy to find. “Let’s meet back up with Paul and the others and take a second to work through all this new information. When our captive wakes up, we can try interrogating him with a little more carrot and a lot less stick. See if we learn anything new.”

  He reached for the knob just as the door flew toward him, nearly knocking him in the face.

  Two policemen stood in the corridor.

  “Whoa there!” said the first, a young black man with a shaved head and the arms of a linebacker. “Hands up, buddy. You’re breaking and entering on Rock Center property.”

  Theo tried to find a suitably confused expression. “Am I?”

  “And what’s wrong with that dude?” The cop nodded toward their unconscious captive.

  “Our Uncle Bob here had a bit too much nog to drink, and the stuff just knocks him flat. We were looking for a bathroom to splash some water on him, and we must have wandered into—”

  The second cop, a white guy whose double chin and rosy cheeks made him appear more Pillsbury doughboy than police officer, barked at Selene in a Queens accent, “Drop the man, DiSilva. We’ve got you on camera picking this lock. And don’t try to talk your way out of this, Schultz. We know who you are.”

  Theo knew without a doubt that Selene was about to throw her captive over her shoulder and take her chances outrunning the two police officers. But for once, Theo felt his role as a thanatos would serve them well. Selene had no idea how to deal with mortal authority, while he’d been navigating it his whole life. “Calm down, everybody,” he said. “If you know who we are, then you know this will all be quickly resolved if we talk to Detective Freeman or Captain Hansen.” Selene shot him an angry glance, clearly still intent on keeping their captive for herself, but Theo shot one right back. He reached into the pocket of his coat. “Let me just call them—”

  “Keep your hands where I can see them!” The linebacker put his hand on the butt of his gun.

  “Hey, no need for that! We’re consultants with the police. And the man Ms. DiSilva apprehended may be an important witness in the murder case up in the Rainbow Room.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s coming with us, too,” assured the doughboy. He grabbed Selene by the elbow. “Now, like my partner said, drop the man. You’re under arrest for trespassing, breaking and entering, and assault and battery.” He drew his own weapon and pointed it at her. “And any second now, we’ll add resisting arrest. Now release him.”

  Selene snarled, but dropped her captive. His skull made a dull thud on the floor.

  “Put your hands in the air.” The cop waved his gun at her.

  “Go on, Selene,” Theo said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’ll talk to Hansen and get this all straightened out. Really, it’s not worth getting shot over, is it?” From her glare, he could tell she disagreed.

  The policemen cuffed Selene. They took her backpack, not bothering to open it. With a divine bow about to land in police custody, Theo needed to act fast. He slipped a hand surreptitiously into his pocket, fishing for his phone, but the linebacker cop pointed his gun at him.

  “You aren’t under arrest yet, buddy, but one more move toward that pocket and I’ll put you there.”

  Theo seethed in silence while the cops herded the goddess and the cult member into the corridor and toward the concourse exit. Then he yanked out his phone. Hansen didn’t pick up. Theo left a ranting message. Then he called Freeman.

  “Detective, thank God I reached you. Look, two of New York’s boldest just arrested Selene right when she was getting an eyewitness for you.” He explained the situation. “You need to call them and tell them to let her go. This is clearly all a misunderstanding.”

  “All right, Professor. Let me take care of this. Hold on … No one called in anything. Did you get their names or their badge numbers?”

  “I was a little busy worrying about the gun pointed at my head!” He wracked his brain. “I don’t think … No, I’m sure of it. They weren’t wearing name tags.” Theo’s heart sank. “That’s not normal, is it?”

  The hawk-faced cult initiate slumped against Selene in the backseat of the police cruiser.

  The doughboy cop looked over his shoulder at her. “You better not have hurt the Heliodromus Primus. That’s going to land you in real trouble.”

  His partner snorted. “Hard to be in more trouble than she is already.” He shifted his hands on the wheel, and his coat sleeves rode up. A circle and a cross peeked out from beneath his left cuff. The sign of Venus.

  The other policeman—if that’s in fact what he was—followed her gaze to his partner’s tattoo. He gave Selene a wink and opened the collar of his coat so she could see the Mercury symbol emblazoned at the base of his throat.

  “Welcome to the Host, Diana.”

  Chapter 27

  RULER OF THE COSMOS

  On the walk back to the hotel, Theo felt like a shard of iron caught between two magnets, trembling with the pull of the opposing forces that nearly shredded him apart. He wanted to be pounding down the door of the police station or trolling the streets looking for the “cops” who’d stolen Selene. But Freeman had assured him that the police were doing everything they could. “The previous victims have been men,” she said, clearly trying to sound comforting. “So let’s hope they’re not planning to use Selene for one of their sacrifices. Maybe they just wanted her off their tail.” Theo couldn’t very well tell the cop that gender mattered far less to the cult than divinity. “The most helpful thing you can do,” Freeman went on, “is help us figure out where they’ve taken her.”

  To do that, Theo needed to give himself a crash course on Mithraic scholarship. He knew such knowledge could be useful—he’d based his entire life on the idea that problems could be solved with patient research and investigation. Yet for once, he longed to be Selene: to beat the shit out of someone until they just told him the answers.

  Flint, he knew, felt the same way. Theo’d found him still waiting for Selene on the plaza. Now he lumbered along, his limp more pronounced than ever. He wouldn’t meet Theo’s eyes.

  “You’re mad at me because I told Selene to go with the cops,” Theo said, deciding he might as well have it out with Flint once and for all. The Smith just grunted. “You can’t be more angry about it than I am,” he went on. “So why don’t you stop sulking and help me figure out how to find her?”

  Flint’s head shot up. He glowered at Theo. “I should have put a tracking device on her the minute she came to my forge.”

  “That’s a bit—”

  Flint cut him off. “I should’ve come to her before. I should’ve never let her be alone.”

  Theo felt his hackles rise, sure Flint was referring to more than the skating rink. “She wasn’t alone.”

  “She was alone for thousands of years.”

  “She wanted to be that way. I don’t think you had any say in the matter.”

  Flint grunted again.

  “Why don’t you just say what you mean?” Theo demanded.

  “I knew her when she was full of joy and light,” he said, his voice husky. “I knew her when stags bowed at her approach and her skin glowed brighter than the moon.”

  Theo laugh
ed shortly. “Let me get this straight. You blame yourself for her capture, because you should’ve been with her instead of me—because you know her better than I do … maybe even better than she knows herself.” He didn’t bother to disguise his scorn. “And you wonder why Selene just stood there while you mooned at her on the roof of Rock Center? Why she didn’t fall into your arms as you clearly think she should? Maybe it’s because you’re a pompous ass who can’t trust a woman to make up her own damn mind!”

  Theo picked up his pace, not feeling a shred of guilt for leaving Flint limping far behind. He had no energy left for pity, nor even for jealousy. Whatever feelings Flint had secretly harbored for his stepsister all these years weren’t Theo’s problem. And if Selene felt anything in return—well, that was something he’d deal with when he rescued her. Until then, all that mattered was that she not turn up draped across some other New York City landmark with her heart cut out.

  “So you actually told her to go with the cops?” Dash asked, incredulous, when Theo related the story back at the Four Seasons. “You’re lucky Paul isn’t here. He’d lose what’s left of his mind.”

  “I feel bad enough about that already, thanks,” Theo said as he reached for his laptop. “Now can we please concentrate on rescuing her?”

  Philippe had immediately moved to his stepfather’s side. “Papa, I’m so sorry.” He seemed far more concerned with Flint’s feelings than with Selene’s imminent murder.

  So he knows the Smith is in love with her, Theo realized, unsurprised. That knowledge put Philippe’s Cupid and Psyche story into a whole new light. If he thinks he’s going to scare me off a relationship with an immortal so that his stepfather can have Selene for himself, he’s wrong, he decided. I’m going to find her, with or without their help.

  But it seemed he’d have little choice in the matter. Without asking permission, Dash attached a cable from Theo’s laptop to the television screen so they could all see his research, then sat beside him on the couch, peering unnecessarily over his shoulder. “So the brilliant Makarites doesn’t know how to keep Selene safe, but he’s going to crack the cult, is that it?” He spoke lightly, and Theo couldn’t be sure if he was being sarcastic.

  “That’s the idea,” Theo muttered, trying to stay focused.

  “Goody. Maybe if you figure out how to find this Mithras, Paul will forgive you.”

  “Where is he anyway?”

  “He said we were nuts for coming back here—thought we’d be too easy to track—but he’s the one who’s gone mental. Kept fading off into hallucinations, as far as I could tell. So he left—going to hole up with his thanatos girlfriend, I bet. I’m sure he’ll be in touch. I, on the other hand, decided that if they’re going to kill me anyway, I might as well meet my death with a Dead Sea detoxifying treatment and a flat screen facing my marble soaking tub.”

  “Mm-hm,” Theo said distractedly while he pulled up a photo from the Vatican Museum of a “tauroctony”: the bull-killing scene found in every Mithraic sanctuary.

  “There he is.” He gestured to the marble statue of a man standing astride a bull’s back. He had one knee on the animal’s neck and a foot on its back hoof. “Mithras.”

  Dash squinted at the photo. “How come I don’t remember him? I know everybody.”

  “He was worshiped for about three hundred years or so, right around the height of the Roman Empire,” Theo said, skimming through an online journal article in another window.

  Dash humphed. “Well, that explains it. Three hundred years is nothing. He might’ve never taken corporeal form. And look at what he’s wearing—” He pointed to the god’s soft, conical hat. “That deeply unfashionable headgear is a Phrygian cap. No wonder I didn’t know him—he must be Persian.” He sounded defensive.

  “Yes and no, actually,” Theo said as he continued reading the article. He felt himself slipping fully into teaching mode. At least this is something I’m good at, he thought. But it was small comfort when he envisioned Selene as the next sacrifice. He wished his talents lay with something a bit more heroic, like knife fighting or telepathy.

  “The name ‘Mithras’ comes from an earlier Persian god, Mithra,” he explained, “so the Romans always portrayed him in a Persian costume: baggy pants and a Phrygian cap. But besides the name, he’s a wholly original creation.” By now, Flint and Philippe had gathered around. The slim God of Love sat cross-legged on the sofa, nervously flicking the ash from a cigarette. Flint sat beside him, bending a piece of wire into ever tighter circles as if fashioning a lasso to reel Selene back into his arms.

  Philippe pointed to the photo with the lit end of his smoke. “The hat is pretty similar to the wool stocking cap Hades was wearing when they sacrificed him.”

  “Yeah, the whole murder scene looks like a backward version of the tauroctony,” Theo agreed. “A dead man on a living bull rather than a living god on a dead animal. That might relate to the liver divination I performed—”

  “You what?” Dash asked.

  “Long story. But the omens predicted there’d be some sort of reversal. Maybe this is it.” He turned his attention back to the marble tauroctony and let out a small whoop of surprise. “Oh man, I had a feeling I was on the right track. But not this right. Check it out.”

  He pulled up a photo of the Charging Bull crime scene next to the image of the tauroctony statue. With his trackpad, he drew a bold yellow circle around the eviscerated dog, then a line to a carven image at the base of the Vatican Museum’s statue: a hound standing on its hind legs to lick the bloody slash in the bull’s throat. “There’s our dog.” Another circle, another line. “Asp at the crime scene. And look—a serpent in the sculpture, also licking the wound.” He kept drawing. “Dead crow on Wall Street. Crow perched on the marble bull’s back. Dead scorpion in the remains of the sacrificial fire. Scorpion carved at the Mithras statue’s base.”

  “Merde,” Philippe swore, clearly impressed. “But what do they mean?”

  Theo repeated Minh Loi’s description of the shift of the equinoxes, the movement of the celestial sphere, and the placement of the constellations during the Age of Taurus. Thankfully, the Athanatoi made better listeners than your average hungover college student. As he spoke, he scrolled through other online images of tauroctonies, stopping at a Roman bas-relief now on display in the Louvre. “Look at this one. Two torchbearers on either side of the bull.”

  “Damn it,” Dash grumbled. “I don’t recognize those guys either.”

  “Cautes and Cautopates,” Theo read. “Cautes holds his torch facing upward. The other, Cautopates, points his toward the ground. That explains the torches found on either side of the Charging Bull.”

  Flint started to laugh. Theo had never heard anything like it. A wheezing hiss like air escaping from a volcano, followed by a sharp, explosive bark. He stared, dumbfounded.

  Finally, Flint regained himself enough to shout, “If it’s all this obvious, why the fuck didn’t you come up with this sooner?”

  Dash jumped in. “Hey, if you and Selene hadn’t been so sure that Mars was behind all this—”

  Flint glared at his stepbrother, the cheeks above his beard turning ember red. “The Huntress is only trying to protect all of us. She’s the one putting her life at risk, captured by these maniacs, while you just flit off to meetings and spa days—”

  “Hold on!” Dash protested mildly. “Who bought the speedboat?”

  Flint snapped the piece of wire in his hand in two. His voice was full of menace. “How dare you joke about this. You always were a mercurial little shit.”

  Dash’s smile slipped into something twisted and dark as he rose to his feet, towering over the seated Smith. “Keep talking, Lame One, and we’ll see who—”

  Philippe leaped up. “Ne menace pas mon papa!”

  “Settle down!” Theo shouted in a voice he usually reserved for rowdy freshmen on the last day of classes. “Listen to yourselves! Even while I’m proving to you that this cult isn’t about the Olympians, yo
u all keep making it about yourselves. I know you’ve got several thousand years of baggage to gripe over, but could we please stay focused on the case at hand? Unless you want the Mithraists to kill off some more Athanatoi so you’ve got fewer relatives to yell at.”

  After a stunned beat, Dash applauded loudly. “Well said, Professor!” He sat back down, immediately jovial once more, and rested his chin on his hand in a pose of conspicuous concentration. “Now please, continue. I for one have no intention of winding up the victim of some cut-rate god’s deluded acolytes.”

  “Um. Thank you.” Theo glanced over at Flint, whose furious expression hadn’t softened.

  Philippe rested a hand on his stepfather’s shoulder. “Recriminations won’t get Selene rescued faster, Papa,” he said quietly. “We’re on the right path now, and Theo led us there.”

  When Flint didn’t respond, Theo plowed ahead. “And if we’re going to find out where that path leads, we have to understand where it started.”

  Dash nodded. “And why a group of mortals would want to travel down it again.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. The man on the ice skating rink insisted his Pater Patrum was a man like any other—not a god.”

  “If he’s not a god, how can he give mortals the power to wield divine weapons?” asked Philippe.

  “I have no idea, but maybe he got it through Mithras.”

  Dash threw up his hands. “You’re assuming Mithras exists! How is that possible? How could such a weak god still be hanging around?”

  “His followers certainly didn’t see him as weak,” Theo insisted. “If I’m right, the Roman philosophers thought Mithras brought about the shift in the Ages—the movement of the equinoxes. He’d have to be a massively powerful deity to control the motions of the heavens themselves.”

  He pulled up two new images of the torchbearers: marble statues found on Rome’s Palatine Hill. “Look how the upward torchbearer is shown with a rooster, so he likely symbolizes both Day and Birth. The downward guy gets an owl, symbolizing Night and Death. And here”—he opened a photo of a fresco from a sanctuary in central Italy—“we’ve got a tauroctony with a head of Sol the Sun in the left-hand corner and Luna the Moon in the right. Those same images appear on sarcophagi of the period.”