Stop.
The water immediately diminished. A thick stream poured lazily into the cylinder and the water level continued to rise, but she could easily push off the bottom. With her head out of the water and her hands braced against the sides, she could hear the thrum of electricity emanating from the grate only a foot above her hair. Soon, the water lapped at the underside of her breasts, then licked her collarbone.
“Diana is only one name for her,” Theo said, his eyes never leaving hers. “She is Artemis. She is the Huntress. But to me she is Selene.” As he spoke, his voice grew louder, more confident. “There is rage in her. And strength beyond mortal understanding. And an uncompromising sense of justice. But above all, there is love. She does not know it. She resists it. Even resents it. But it is there in the way she looks at the people of her city. It is there in the way she would give her life for them. Or for her brother Apollo. In him are all her contradictions. She hated him once, but he is a part of her. Without him, she is nothing. She is not weak … but she is soft.” His voice fell to a whisper, one meant only for her ears, though it carried throughout the chamber, a public declaration, not to be misconstrued. “And it is a softness I would bury myself in for all the days of my life.”
The water slowed to a trickle. The walls retracted as swiftly as they’d arisen, sending water rushing out across the floor and Selene crashing to the ground. She fell on her hands and knees, bruising them badly, and stayed motionless, panting, wondering what new torture lay in store.
Then Theo was there.
He crouched beside her and took her shivering body in his arms. His bare flesh was as clammy and cold as her own, but she pressed her face against his neck, and the warm pulse of his blood warmed her as nothing else could.
“You’re supposed to be pretending to hate me,” she murmured in English.
“Seemed the gig was up,” he whispered back.
No one pulled them apart. No rivers of water or walls of glass rose up to separate them. Theo clutched her a little closer and soon their combined body heat warmed them both. She felt her own shivering subside as his did.
“Diana. Makarites.” The Pater stepped to the edge of the pit.
With Theo’s hand in hers, she stood.
“Initia facta sunt.” The initiation is over. Then the Pater continued in English. “There is no need for the sacred tongue when you profane our sacred space with your lies, Professor. Did you think we would ever believe that you would turn on the woman you so clearly love? We have watched you for many months. You have no secrets from us. But now you have given us what we want. The key to a willing sacrifice.”
Theo turned toward her, questioning, but she kept her gaze firmly on the eyeholes in the beaten gold mask. She no longer doubted Theo—or herself. All the memories of her horrific past, all the visions of her uncertain future, no longer mattered beside the feeling of his grip, warm and strong, on her hand.
“You said you won’t kill me if I’m not willing,” she said to the Pater. “You tried to break me—but you’ve failed. I do not consent to be sacrificed to your Mithras. And Theo never will either. So what now, Pater? You’re running out of options.”
“Oh, you’ll be willing.” She heard a smile in his voice. “Because we must have a sacrifice for the Procession of the Sun-Runner, and what better offering than the Sun himself?”
Across the ring, another panel slid open.
A man stumbled out of the darkness, his hands on his knees. A glass cylinder immediately rose to trap him in place. When he lifted his head, she saw Apollo’s divine countenance—and Paul’s terrified eyes.
Selene felt as if the pit’s floor rocked beneath her. She stumbled, and Theo held her tighter, but sweat slicked her palm and she slipped from his grasp.
“They were waiting for me.” Paul’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d been crying or screaming for hours. He wore a slim toga draped around his hips. A laurel wreath garlanded his brows, and his golden hair sprang in perfect coils to his shoulders. His bare torso gleamed in the firelight, covered in sweat. She could smell the fear on him from across the ring. His eyes darted from her, to Theo, to the Pater standing above. “I went to Sophie’s and she was lying in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor … They were already there …” His voice faded away. An instant later, his face contorted with terror as a vision overtook him, and he walked through a nightmare only he could see.
“No!” Selene took a step forward, scanning the crowd of initiates for the source of her twin’s agony. The hawk-faced man had removed his rayed crown. Now he wore Morpheus’s wreath in its place. The poppy buds stood upright, milky white fluid seeping through cracks in the waxy green spheres.
“Stop it! You’re killing him!” she screamed.
“Indeed,” the Pater continued calmly. “Apollo will choose to die rather than live as one haunted by his own past. He will be our willing sacrifice.”
Selene howled and raced across the pit, flinging herself at the side of Paul’s prison. She beat her fist against the glass until smears of blood blocked her twin’s face from view. Theo shouted at her to stop. Paul backed away as far as his cell would allow, murmuring, “It’s no use. It’s no use.” But she barely heard either of them.
She spun away from the unbreakable prison, sprinting to the wall of the pit, just below the hawk-faced man. I will leap free like a wolf, she thought, her feet ringing on the metal floor like the crash of cymbals. I will rip the crown of poppies from his head and throttle him with it.
She sprang into the air.
Her hands struck the wall three feet below the rim, and an electric shock sent her tumbling backward with a sharp cry of agony.
The Pater looked down impassively as Theo rushed to Selene. She lay prone, the world spinning and her vision blurred, her heart beating an irregular tattoo. Theo gathered her in his arms, his own heart racing against her cheek.
The Pater’s calm voice broke the sudden silence. “There is an alternative. If we can’t have the Sun, we would take the Moon.”
“Take me instead,” Theo shouted, pressing Selene’s forehead protectively against his chest.
“You? You think there is power enough in your death? You mean nothing to us. For centuries, we have held one goal foremost—to find and destroy those who claim divinity, who hang on to an existence they do not deserve, who block the return of our Lord.”
“And when Mithras returns, what will you do then? Move some more equinoxes? You’re all fucking delusional, you know that?” Theo spat. “You’re clinging to a dying religion that worships a dead god. You have no power, except what you stole.”
Around them, the syndexioi murmured angrily. A few even stepped toward the edge of the pit. But the Pater’s voice remained steady. “You do not understand Mithras. He is the God of Three Aspects. Your pantheon, with its petty jealousies and foibles, is nothing more than a dream, given life by man’s imagination. Mithras represents the one true God. He existed before the universe. He will exist after it. He is beyond this world. You are just a product of it.”
“If he’s so all-powerful, why does he need a string of murders to bring him back?” Theo went on, unbowed.
Again, murmurs from the crowd. This time, more confused than angry. Theo had touched a nerve.
Selene saw the Pater turn his masked face slightly, taking in the reaction of those around him. He raised his voice and spoke over the crowd. “The Host’s instructions are far older than I, but they are clear. We must destroy those who would sap power from the God. He alone rules the afterlife. He alone is the leader of soldiers. He alone guides the sun’s orbit and moves the heavens on their axes. To assign such feats to false idols is the most terrible blasphemy. Now we reenact His actions at the sites most propitious. The God of Wealth dies at the seat of greed. The God of Bloodlust dies at the seat of war mongering. And tomorrow, at midnight, there must be another sacrifice. Sun or Moon. I leave it to you, Selene DiSilva.”
She had no choice. Theo had spoken true
. Apollo was a part of her. She pried Theo’s hands from her body and levered herself to standing. “Then let the Moon set and the Sun arise.”
The triumphant stomping of feet drowned out Theo’s horrified protests, but she could hear Paul’s keening cries above it all. Whether of grief or relief, she wasn’t sure. The walls of the pit slid open, admitting two men in legionaries’ armor and a third in a crow’s mask. The two soldiers grabbed Selene. She barely resisted. What use was there? The crow pinned Theo in place.
As her captors dragged her toward the opening in the wall, she heard Theo’s words, carrying above the crowd’s roar, “The Moon may disappear from the heavens, but she always waxes again!”
Beautiful Theo, my Singer of Stitched Words, she thought as the panel slid back into place and hid him from view. When they kill me, I will truly die. Yet the moon will rise and set as it always has. A blind, unfeeling rock that doesn’t know it once had a goddess’s soul.
Chapter 33
APOLLO
Theo couldn’t stop panting. His chest refused to expand, no matter how hard he willed the breath to fill his lungs. Every time he closed his eyes to the bare white ceiling of his prison cell, he saw Selene drowning.
It’s my fault. His chest constricted a little tighter. I told them about her love for her brother. I gave them the tools to make her surrender. Who knew bringing down the Relentless One could be so easy? Just let a mortal learn the secrets of her heart, and she was done for.
Now he lay on the cold concrete floor in no more than a hospital gown, completely unable to help her. But Flint is still free, he remembered. This time, he didn’t begrudge the Smith his attachment to Selene if it meant he would save her.
Flint had given Theo a way to communicate with him, but what information should he impart? I’ve failed. They’re going to kill her, and I don’t even know where to tell him to go. He doubted even the Smith’s mighty hammer would be able to break through the massive vault door beneath Saint Patrick’s. There must be other secret entrances to the mithraeum, but he had no idea how to find them. The plan had always been for Theo to gain the cult’s trust, learn the location of the next sacrificial rite, and relay the information to Flint. Then the gods would ambush the cult, stop Selene’s murder, and capture the Pater. Now, the only hope lay in Theo’s ability to predict the rite’s location on his own.
He closed his eyes again, forcing aside the memory of Selene’s terror, and tried to recall everything the Pater and his syndexioi had said. Surely, somewhere, there was a clue. His brain felt as bludgeoned as the rest of his body, as if the fire and ice had destroyed decades of carefully formed synapses and left him dull and witless.
Come on, Theo, he urged himself, think! Wall Street, the Rainbow Room, what do they have in common? Rich people? That does NOT narrow it down. The next ritual was … he pressed his hands against his temples, trying to force the knowledge into his sludgy mind … the Procession of the Sun-Runner, the Pater had said. But had he provided any clue to its location?
Theo stared up at the ceiling as if looking for inspiration. A single light and a small vent. A memory pierced his brain instead—he and Selene crawling through the air ducts in a building at Columbia as they broke into an office looking for clues to catch the Classicist Cult. When he’d tumbled out of the vent, he’d bowled her over. Her shirt had ridden up, and his hands had rested on her bare abdomen. He’d felt the chill of her flesh, the planes of her muscle, her panting breaths as she demanded he get off her immediately. He’d hastened to obey, knowing even then that if he could’ve, he’d have stayed pressed against her forever.
At first, the music seemed to emanate from his own head. A dirge for the future he’d lost, for the goddess he’d failed. Then he recognized Paul’s voice, very faint, coming through the vent. A haunting, minor key. If Theo’d had any hair left on his arms, it would’ve stood on end.
Sun and Moon,
Midnight or noon,
Never together.
Never together.
A quiet weeping began, a low counterpoint to Paul’s song. The choked sound a person makes who’s long lost the knowledge of how to cry.
Theo sat up straight. “Selene?” he whispered. Then, louder, “Selene?”
He was sure she could hear him. The crying stopped the moment he spoke. It did not continue. Nor did she respond. Yet the song went on.
But never say never.
When the mountains shake
And the forests quake,
They’ll dance together.
Their love’s forever.
Their love’s forever.
The music stopped, but the tune replayed in Theo’s mind, its futile optimism a ceaseless torment.
He knew Selene didn’t want to hear from him. She’d made her decision, and she wouldn’t want Theo to try to talk her out of it. But that had rarely ever stopped him before. “You have to forgive me,” he said loudly. “I didn’t know they had Paul or I never would’ve said anything about him.”
“It’s okay, Theo.” Her voice was barely a whisper through the vent. “This isn’t your fault. It’s the way it must be.”
“No. I’m going to get us out of here. You too, Paul!”
“Stop.” She sounded weary, the word more a plea than command. “Don’t make this any harder.”
He held his tongue, but he wished she were indeed still a goddess that she might hear his silent oath. I promise, Huntress, I will find a way.
Selene stared up at the vent, her vision hazed with tears. She called her brother’s name, but he did not respond. After his song, he’d fallen silent. Theo, too, had ceased his pleas. There had been no word from Prometheus.
She wondered if she’d ever hear Paul’s voice again. She rested her forehead on her knees and waited for the next nightmare to suck her even farther into despair. But nothing came. The Pater knows he’s won, she decided. Why bother breaking a woman who’s already broken?
Hours had passed when a voice whispered at the very edge of her hearing. “Moonshine …”
“Sunbeam?” she cried, rising to her feet and looking once more toward the vent. “Are you all right?”
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said. She could tell he’d been crying.
“Don’t say that. How could I let them kill you if it’s in my power to save you instead?”
“But I’m ready to die.”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “I won’t let you die, don’t you understand?”
“The things I’ve seen …” He drifted into silence. Then, softly, “Do you remember Coronis?”
“Asclepius’s mother. Yes, the crow told you of her betrayal. I killed her, not you.”
“You killed her because I asked you to.” He choked back a sob. “And Daphne?”
“The nymph you loved.”
“She ran from me and I … I forced her to become a laurel tree.”
“That was all long in the past, Paul.”
“Not to me. Not anymore. The Pater sends me visions of each death. I relive every one, in all the horror of tears and blood and flame. All those women I pursued, and young men too. Some came willingly, but some did not. I had no patience for that. And so time after time, I cursed them, I killed them. You were the Protector of the Innocent, the Chaste One! Why didn’t you stop me?”
Selene sank back onto the floor. “I … I loved you. I always took your side. Until …”
“Until I lied to you about Orion and made you kill the first man you’d ever kissed.”
“Yes.” The memory, despite the millennia, still hurt. “I couldn’t forgive you for hurting me. But all those others … the nymphs and princesses, the beautiful young men … they meant nothing to a goddess.”
“We are cruel, Artemis.”
“No—”
“You remember Niobe.”
She swallowed, the little girl’s screams once more piercing her brain. “The Pater forced me to.”
“Then you know we’ve done unforgivable things.”
“We can change!” If she said it loud enough, maybe she’d actually believe it.
“I’m tired, Artemis. I’ve been changing for over three thousand years. When can I rest?”
“This isn’t you talking. This is madness and dreams and despair.” She fisted her hands and glared at the vent as if she could see her brother’s golden eyes. “I will not give up on you. If I can just get you out of here, then you can recover. You’ll come back to yourself, and you’ll play your songs and write your poems and bring joy to the world. I’ve never done that, Apollo. I’m the one who brings death and vengeance. I’m the one who’s never learned to love. Let me go in your place. Mother would want it that way.”
A voice shouted at Theo to wake up, dragging him from a coma-like sleep on the floor of the bare cell. A slot had opened in the door. He fumbled at his face for his glasses, felt a moment of terror, then found them lying on the ground a foot away. Once they were on, he could see the Miles’s mask through the slot, facing him with its blank stare.
“How long have I been in here?” If it’d only been a few hours, that meant he still had plenty of time to plan how to rescue Selene. He’d tried to come up with something already, and had proven himself unable to do more than fall unconscious. Not surprising since his body was clearly in shock and he’d long ago been pushed beyond the point of exhaustion. When the Miles grunted, “Twenty hours,” Theo choked.
“Surely not.”
“Twenty.” No inflection, just a statement of fact. He slammed the slot shut.
The sacrifice would take place in just a few more hours. If Theo didn’t figure something out, and soon, Selene was done for.
Now that the initial shock of the ordeal was over, he found himself able to at least remember what had been said. The Pater had given some indication of why they’d targeted certain gods—they’d chosen those who competed most directly with Mithras. As a god who helped men to seek salvation in the realm beyond the stars and therefore “ruled the afterlife,” his powers overlapped with those of Hades, Lord of the Underworld. As a favorite god of the Roman legions—a “leader of soldiers”—Mithras competed with Mars, God of War and Bloodlust. And as the deity associated with Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, he would challenge Apollo, the Bright One, who also “guided the sun in its orbit.”
Winter of the Gods Page 32
