Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  The massive stone edifice symbolized the opposite of everything Mithraism stood for. Christian instead of pagan; lofty instead of underground; public instead of secret. Yet it was also the perfect place for a mithraeum. There might be thousands of churches in Manhattan, but only one’s the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York. It made sense that the Mithraists would’ve built a pagan shrine right under the Christians’ noses—the ultimate fuck you to the dogma that had displaced them.

  Theo sprinted across the street. The doors to the cathedral were shut and locked. According to a posted placard, they wouldn’t open until 6:30 a.m. Who knew churches closed for the night? he thought to himself. What happens when I really need to consult with God at four in the morning? He knocked loudly, hoping for some cowled nun with a lantern to unbolt the door for him like a scene out of a BBC miniseries about medieval crime-solving monks.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “What if I were being chased by an angry mob like in some Victor Hugo novel? Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

  “Hey, dipshit!”

  A woman bundled in three layers of stained coats and a pompomed knit hat stood beside a shopping cart overflowing with cans and bottles. “God ain’t gonna hear ya, but the cops sure will. Whyn’t ya shut up so the rest of us can work in peace?” She lifted a plastic water bottle out of a trashcan and added it to her collection.

  “Sorry.” He jogged down the steps. “You usually work around here late at night?”

  She shot him a suspicious glance with rheumy blue eyes. “Why? What I’m doin’ is legal, buddy. It’s a public service.”

  “Of course. I’m just wondering if you’ve seen anything weird happening around Saint Pat’s.”

  “Besides you actin’ like God’s gonna open up the doors for you if you just holler at him?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  She shrugged and reached deep into the barrel for a can. Orange Fanta. She shook it; it rattled icily.

  “Is that a no?” Theo asked.

  “It’s a ‘what’s it worth to ya?’” She tilted back her head and drained the can.

  “How about a night at the Four Seasons?”

  She spluttered, the orange soda dribbling down her chin. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “I’m not.” He pulled his hotel key card from his pocket. “I’ll call ahead and give them your name so they won’t stop you in the lobby. Think of it as an early Christmas present.”

  She took a step back, and her mouth twisted with amusement. “Okay, buddy,” she said after a moment. “I know this is some prank, but I’ll tell you what I seen. I’m over here at this garbage can and there’s five men groping that naked dude statue over there like he’s a stripper on a pole.” She pointed at Atlas. “Now, maybe it’s late and dark and I’m awful tired after workin’ all day and sleepin’ in the cold, and my eyes ain’t that good no more, but I look down at my cans and then I look up again and they’re just gone. No sign of ’em nowhere. Poof.”

  “You see anything else?”

  “No. Just snow and slush and frozen garbage.”

  She held out her hand. Theo passed her the key. He called the hotel, which patched him through to Dash’s room, and informed the Messenger first that he’d likely found the mithraeum, and second that they’d have a guest for the evening. As she trundled away, Theo thought of warning her that the doormen might not take kindly to her cart of cans. Then he decided Dash deserved to handle that particular headache.

  He crossed back to the Atlas statue and watched the snow fall on the mighty bronze shoulders. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he muttered to the Titan. Either there’s a secret entrance in this statue, or the homeless woman is hallucinating. One of those options is much more likely than the other. But he didn’t want to give up. Not yet.

  Theo took a quick glance around the street. The homeless woman was long gone, and the block lay momentarily deserted in the wee hours of the morning. He hurried to the base of the statue and heaved himself up to stand beside Atlas. Then he clambered onto his giant bent knee, put his arms around the statue’s neck, shimmied up his naked torso, and finally stood up on his spread arms. The whole thing felt completely ridiculous, mildly obscene, and definitely illegal.

  He grabbed the ring of the celestial equator high above his head. He craned his neck, looking at where the massive bronze circle met the constellation Aries. It would take two thousand years for the world to move into the next age. “Let’s speed it up a little, shall we?” Theo murmured. He shoved the ring with all his strength, trying to push it toward the constellation Pisces. He strained, he groaned, he felt sweat pop beneath his arms despite the winter chill. Nothing happened.

  Okay, so maybe the securely welded rings of an eighty-year-old statue in plain view on Fifth Avenue aren’t the secret entrance to a pagan temple. Panting heavily, he dropped his arms and rested them on the zodiacal ring.

  It shifted soundlessly to the right.

  Theo nearly fell off the Atlas statue in surprise. The celestial equator now passed neatly through Pisces, just as it did in the modern day. He looped an arm around Atlas’s muscled neck and twisted to look back at Saint Patrick’s, half expecting the cathedral doors to have magically opened. Then he dropped down to the ground and walked around the statue’s base. There, on the side facing away from the street, a panel had slid away, revealing a three-foot-high opening. Theo stuck his head into the hole and switched his cell phone to flashlight mode. Metal rungs ran down the interior of the statue’s base—a ladder reaching far underground. He was willing to bet it led to a tunnel that would take him straight under Saint Patrick’s.

  He sent a quick text message to Flint detailing the Atlas statue’s secrets. But according to the plan, he needed to enter alone. I’m heading inside, he wrote. I’ll give it a shot your way, but if you don’t hear from me, go to Plan B and call the cops. And tell Dash to be nice to the woman with the cans.

  Chapter 30

  MAKARITES

  Theo crawled through the entrance in the statue’s base and pulled the sliding panel shut behind him. From somewhere above, he could hear a whisper of movement and knew the zodiacal ring had shifted back to its original position. With his cell phone clutched between his teeth as a flashlight, he started his descent.

  He hadn’t gone far when a dim light appeared below him. He turned off his phone and kept going. His palms were sweating—only his winter gloves prevented him from slipping off the rungs. Finally, his feet touched bottom. The low tunnel before him headed eastward. He had to crouch to avoid smacking his head.

  He walked for about forty more yards—just far enough to cross beneath Fifth Avenue—before the tunnel ended at a large wooden door banded with iron. On either side of the entrance hung electric lighting fixtures made to look like torches—they even flickered convincingly. He figured he stood right below Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

  It was hard to feel any satisfaction at having guessed the mithraeum’s location correctly when the door before him looked like the entrance to a medieval dungeon. He was, without a doubt, about to walk into a metaphorical lion’s den. Then he thought of how Selene had walked into a very literal grizzly bears’ lair without a sign of trepidation. It was his turn to be fearless.

  He tested the door handle. It didn’t budge. No visible keyhole, and he had no experience picking locks anyway. Grabbing the handle, he pulled with all his strength. Nothing. He tried pushing instead. Not a creak.

  Finally, he knocked tentatively on the wood, feeling only slightly less idiotic than he had on the steps of the cathedral. Of course, no one answered.

  He took a step backward to examine the entrance. It had no Mithraic symbolism he could see. No signs of the zodiac engraved into the wooden door. No snakes or bulls or dogs carved on the lintel. Just two torches. Then he nearly laughed aloud. Cautes and Cautopates: the torchbearers who flanked Mithras in so many depictions of the tauroctony. Cautes, signifier of Day and Birth, held his torch facing up. But Ca
utopates, who brought Night and Death, always held his facing down.

  Theo reached up, grabbed the right-hand lighting fixture, and rotated it downward. The door swung open.

  He entered a bare white chamber only slightly larger than a closet, furnished with a metal desk and one chair. The ceiling paint had browned in the corners, the linoleum floor peeled at the edges. But the round steel door on the opposite wall, bolted and barred with a wheel-shaped handle like the entrance to a bank vault, made it clear this was no storage room.

  Theo stood uncertainly. He scanned the ceiling, knowing there must be security cameras but seeing nothing besides the light fixture. After a long moment, he cleared his throat. “Um. Hello?” His voice sounded weak and reedy in his own ears. Already making a great first impression, as usual.

  He tried again. “It’s Theodore Schultz.” All the gods had agreed there was no point in hiding his identity. The cult members had seen him at Selene’s home and in the Rockefeller Center skating rink. And if they’d done any research at all, they’d find that he’d worked as a police consultant the last time a Mystery Cult stalked the city. “I’ve come to speak to your Pater Patrum.”

  Theo stood in silence for another interminable span. I’m going to feel like a complete idiot if it turns out I’m talking to myself in an empty room. But just then, the wheel on the far door rotated slowly of its own volition, and the door swung open. Solid steel, six inches thick.

  As imposing as Theo found the door, the figure that emerged was even more so. It was not its appearance that sent a shiver of terror through Theo’s gut—but its lack of one. A long, gray veil obscured the face and head; it looked like a ghost come to haunt Theo’s waking nightmares. Beneath the waist-length veil it wore simple gray woolen slacks and shiny black loafers. Looks like a very shy stockbroker, Theo decided, trying to see the veil in a less disturbing light.

  “Theodore Schultz.” A man, then, with a surprisingly deep voice. Somehow, with the veil, Theo’d expected it to be light and mincing. He scolded himself for his heteronormative preconceptions and nodded.

  “I’ve come to help.”

  The man extended his hand, and Theo clasped it in his own. That was easier than I thought it’d be … but the man was shaking his head as if Theo’d already done something wrong. He took a seat behind the desk. With only the veil now visible, Theo felt as if he were being interviewed by one of the ghosts from Pac-Man. Then, with a click, the door to the tunnel locked behind him, and he decided it felt more like an interrogation by the Grim Reaper.

  “How did you find us?” asked the veiled man calmly.

  “Atlas. Pretty obvious for anyone with an Internet connection.” They didn’t need to know how close he’d come to missing the clues. “Let me guess, John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a member of your cult.”

  “Our membership remains secret. That is the first rule.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “We know who you are. What makes you think we won’t just kill you? You work with our enemies.”

  “You think I do,” he said, trying to look the man in the eye. A difficult task when his entire face was just a gray sheet. “I’ve gained their trust, so I can work from within to destroy the Olympians. You know who I am. I know what they are. And I also know, with the utmost conviction, that they have no place in this world.”

  “And you have no place in ours. Membership is only for those sent by a syndexios, Professor.”

  Syndexios? A ‘joining of right hands’? Theo surmised, translating the Ancient Greek. Ah, that’s where I went wrong. I didn’t know the secret handshake. Handshaking itself was an Eastern custom, not originally a Roman one. It made sense that the Mithraists, with their interest in Persia, would’ve incorporated it into their secret rituals. “I don’t need to be initiated into the cult,” he said quickly. “I just want my life back.”

  The veil swung back and forth as the man shook his head. “Only initiates may enter the Templo. Only initiates may know our secrets. If you want to work with us, you will have to join the cult. Surely, as a classicist, you understand that is how it works.”

  Somehow, Theo didn’t think he could just say, “My bad,” and turn to go.

  “But you’ve intrigued me,” the man went on. “You would work to destroy the very entities you’ve spent a life studying.”

  “I studied them as figments of imagination. As creations of a society long dead. I never dreamed they were real until I met Selene.” That much, at least, was true. Theo mentally crossed his fingers and hoped his interpretation of Mithraism had been correct. “I believe our lives are our own,” he went on. “Yet I’ve become a pawn, subject to a pantheon of gods who try to bend me to their will. You believe in man’s ability to find salvation, right?”

  The veiled man nodded slowly.

  Theo considered trying to claim that he was a true believer in the power of Mithras, but he didn’t think he’d be particularly convincing. Better to keep the lies modest. “I’ve never been a particularly spiritual man, as you know if you’ve been following me around all this time. So I’m not sure what ‘salvation’ even means. But I do believe that if it exists, it’s something transcendent, something that lifts us past the material world. Selene and her family—they reduce divinity to something pedestrian. They’re like schoolyard bullies, convinced of their own mastery, turning what should be magical and mysterious into something utterly mundane.”

  “You believe this strongly enough that you’d risk their wrath by pretending to be their ally? You’d pollute your body by joining with the Pretender named Diana? You’d come willingly into our Templo and offer yourself up to us, without knowing what such an offer entailed?”

  “There are forces at work beyond those we can comprehend.” This sounded like something a Mithraist would believe. “I’m a Makarites. Did you know that?”

  The veiled man didn’t reply. Theo explained. “That’s Greek for ‘Blessed One.’ It used to be that only the ancient heroes could earn such a title, but someone like me, who’s spent a lifetime studying the gods’ stories and—”

  “There are no gods,” snapped his interviewer. “There is only one God. That is the first thing you must understand.”

  “Sorry. I’ve picked up their language. I should say the ‘Pretenders’—is that it? Okay, then I’ve spent a lifetime studying the Pretenders’ myths. It’s given me an understanding of them that borders on … well, the supernatural, although I don’t want to sound pretentious. Let’s just say that they’re drawn to me, and I to them. I’m like Greek catnip.” He tried for a charming smile, but couldn’t tell if the veiled man responded in kind. Probably not. “Why would I be given such a power if not to use it?” he continued. “I must have a role to play. And that role is to rid the world of their pollution.” It wasn’t hard to imitate the Mithraist’s rhetoric. It reminded Theo of the language used by fundamentalist believers of all faiths. Throw in some “moral corruption” and “false idols” and you fit right in.

  “I have no reason to believe you, and every reason to distrust you.”

  “But if I’m right, I can tell you how to find them.”

  “We already know there are other Pretenders hiding in Manhattan. We don’t know where they are, but it will not take us long to root them out.”

  Theo tried not to let his relief show—at least the cult didn’t know about the Four Seasons yet. He tried for wide-eyed fervency instead. “The New York Pretenders are just the beginning, my friend.”

  The veiled man sat in silence for a long moment. Theo could almost feel the intensity of his regard, despite being unable to see his eyes. Finally, the man said, “I will take you to the Pater Patrum. He will decide.”

  Theo nodded solemnly, but inside he let out a small cheer. Score one for the mere mortal. Ten minutes in the mithraeum and I get to meet the Big Bad.

  The man opened the massive steel door and ushered Theo into a bright, sterile hallway. None of the antechamber’s dinginess here. Instead, sleek cu
rves of stainless steel and molded fiberglass formed the walls, floor, and ceiling. Theo felt like he’d entered the Starship Enterprise, but without the friendly ensigns. The corridor continued for at least a hundred yards. At the very end, he could just make out another large vault door. Smaller, less imposing doors appeared every twenty feet. None of them, Theo realized, had knobs. At one of these doors, the man stopped. He didn’t knock, but rather pressed his palm to a sensor on the wall.

  The door swung open with a slight exhale. The veiled man gestured for him to enter, but remained in the hallway himself. Theo stepped inside, and the door hissed closed.

  The only illumination came from a small fireplace at the far end of the long chamber. He took a careful step forward on what felt like thick carpet.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the richly carved mahogany of the walls and the ornate plasterwork ceiling. Niches held statues and paintings, but with no lamps to illuminate them, their subject matter remained hidden. Large furniture cluttered the room with great hulking shadows.

  Only when he squinted could he make out a figure sitting in an armchair beside the fire, his back to the flames and his face concealed in shadow. Theo took another step forward.

  “Stay where you are.” The voice was rough with age, but resonant with authority. Theo felt frozen in place like a moth pinned to a wall. “You seek to work with the Host?”

  “Yes,” Theo said, trying not to sound confused. The Host? Why would they call themselves the Host?

  A small movement in the shadows beside the chair alerted Theo to another figure. The person leaned down to whisper in the Pater’s ear.

  “The Hyaena says I shouldn’t trust you. She says your loyalty lies with the one who calls herself the Huntress.”

  Theo took a deep breath and prepared himself to betray the woman he loved.

  Selene tried to wedge her fingers into the nearly invisible cracks around the food slot in the top of her cell door. She tried to kick out the lower panel with her bare feet. She only managed to bruise her toes and rip her fingernails. Finally, she sat down to conserve her strength. She left the hand mirror facedown, afraid of what it might show her.