“God appears not as an eagle, not as an angel, not as a burning bush—but as glory unleashed. So brilliant that mortal eyes can’t bear the sight.” Dionysus was shouting now, foam flecking his lips. “The Father comes like a lightning bolt. The woman turns to ash. Only her heart remains unburnt.”
Dionysus gestured to one of the naked men beside him. No muscled youth, but an over-the-hill satyr with gnarled horns on his head and breasts as saggy as an old woman’s. The satyr reached into a cooler at his feet and pulled out a tupperware full of raw meat. Not the shrink-wrapped kind from the supermarket, but dripping and bloody organs, red and brown and floppy like the flesh ripped from an animal. The old satyr handed the heart, all swollen lobes and protruding arteries, to Dionysus, then passed the container to the next initiate.
With the blood from the raw heart dripping down his wrist, Dionysus reached into the bonfire with his other hand and grabbed a fistful of embers. They tumbled through his fingers, red-sparked gray; if the coals burned him, he showed no sign. “Does God let the child burn within her womb?” he asked the crowd.
“No!” they shouted in response.
“He snatches the unborn babe from the flames and plants him in his own thigh. He pulls the mother’s heart from the ashes and keeps it safe. And when the boy-child is born from the Father’s thigh, he carries his mother’s burning embers in his own soul. His feet dance to the same tune, his veins flow with the same sweet wine, he knows no fear.”
The crowd shuffled toward the fire, close enough for sparks to land on their rapt faces, their bare limbs. Theo found himself doing the same, a moth drawn to the flames. The sparks sent pinpricks of hot pain across his skin. The blood from the meat in his hand dripped cold across his knuckles. He had never felt so alive.
“The Releaser will find his mother!” Dionysus cried. “He will journey across the River Styx and the River Lethe to bring her back from the dead. But to do so he must rip apart Time. Tear through Time’s boundaries, release the serpent coils that hold him in place. Let Unbounded Time burst from his sphere! Let him fly on his many wings!”
The crowd’s groans oscillated between despair and arousal. Theo closed his eyes, seeing the image before him. The lion-headed creature hiding in the depths of the mithraeum, a winged proto-god made of snake and man coiled one within the other, holding their secrets close.
“The Releaser travels into Death itself and grabs his mother by the wrist.” Dionysus’s gesture echoed his words, seizing the blond maenad’s arm with his soot-stained hand. “His mother crumbles at his touch, for she is only ash. But he has her heart!” Dionysus held aloft the raw organ, the blood running down his arm. “Holy Spirit and mortal flesh! Join them into one! Bring the woman back from the Underworld. Bring her back to life!”
Each reveler raised the bloody meat to his or her mouth simultaneously.
“This is the blood and the body!” Dionysus cried. “Whosoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live!”
They bit with gusto, blood streaming over their chins. Dionysus opened his own mouth wide and dropped the fist-sized heart inside, swallowing it in one inconceivable gulp.
Theo remembered the last time he’d seen men eat raw flesh—the syndexioi had made it part of their feast the night they’d sacrificed Mars. I’m on the right track, he assured himself, staring at the meat in his own hand. Mithraism and Orphism combined into one. Yet his stomach revolted as he raised his portion to his lips. Chewy and spongy at the same time. Blood gushing against his tongue. Arteries sticking between his teeth. But then, suddenly, it wasn’t raw organ meat anymore. It felt hot and golden in his mouth. It tasted like electricity—like the spark of life itself. Without thinking, he swallowed, wondering at the sudden feeling of warmth and energy that filled his veins.
Dionysus looked pointedly at Theo as he went on. “We can be Releasers!” He pounded a bloody fist against his chest. “Release from Death! Release from Time! Release from all the rules this fucking world binds us with.” He ended his tale with a bastardized quote from Plato. “We are dead, and the body is a tomb. But our souls are immortal, divine—”
“And full of wine!” the crowd roared in unison, finishing his sentence.
Then, as if on cue, the drummers threw themselves back into action and the dancing resumed, wilder than ever.
Dionysus gyrated his way back toward Theo. “Does that answer your question?”
“What did I just eat?” Theo asked, swiping at the blood already congealing on his stubbled chin.
“The woman. The god. The Holy Spirit. Whatever you thought you ate—that’s what you ate.”
“But the Holy Spirit is—”
Dionysus laughed. “Let your scholarly mind go, Theodore. Believe, and your heart’s desire will appear before you.”
And then he was gone again, and in his place stood a tall woman with eyes like the moon, a single streak of white shining in her black hair. The firelight tattooed each sculpted curve of muscle with flickering shadows and played across the shallow rise of her breasts, the sharp corner of her jaw. Theo took a step forward, eyes stinging with sudden tears.
“Selene …” His breath caught in his throat.
She slipped into his arms, her breasts pressing against his chest, her thighs hard against his own. Her mouth was on his, tasting of wine and blood and wonder. He had a million questions, yet for the first time in his life he feared the answers.
She wrapped one long leg around his hips, and the moment he’d relived every night for half a year came rushing back to him. He clutched at her as if she could disappear at any moment. He drew her down onto the ground, or she drew him, and then she was on top of him, head thrown back, her pulse thrumming visibly in the long column of her neck.
She pressed her hands against his chest and ground her hips against him. He reached upward to bury himself in the sweaty valley between her breasts, but she pushed him backward and then fell onto all fours, crawling over him until her groin hung above his face. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her downward, a moan rising in his throat. She stayed there, perched above him like a she-wolf birthing her cubs, until she cried aloud with pleasure, then squatted backward and pressed her face against his cheek, panting softly.
“How?” he whispered in her ear. “How did you come back?”
She said nothing, just raised her head and smiled at him, gentle and warm and sweet. That’s when he knew it wasn’t her. The real Selene was never sweet.
And just like that, he ceased to believe.
The woman was blond, not black-haired, her cheeks too round, her body too soft. She smelled wrong, tasted wrong. She wore a gold leaf pendant around a neck too short, too thick.
She must’ve seen the horror in his eyes, because she rolled off him.
Theo lurched to his feet, anger chasing the arousal from his veins.
The dancers weren’t satyrs after all. Just middle-aged men with paunches, young men with bony hips, old women with sagging flesh. The woman beside him wasn’t Selene—she was no maenad either. Just another drunken actress in Dennis’s little play. She darted into the woods, giggling maniacally. Dennis, in a tank top and shorts once more, danced nearby with his eyes closed, a stoned hippie believing his own nonsense.
His mind suddenly clear, Theo grabbed his old roommate by the arm. “I came here for answers! Not to be tricked into your damn orgy.”
Dennis’s eyes flew open, but he seemed more amused than angry. “You’re the only man I’ve ever met who has to be tricked into an orgy. Get it together, dude.”
“You’re saying you really brought your mother back from the dead?” Theo demanded.
Dennis shrugged in time to the beat. “That’s how the myth goes. The truth? I don’t even remember. But that’s the story Orpheus told to his followers, so I’m sticking with it.”
“Your mother returned from the dead because you ate her flesh.”
“Mm-hm. The Christians stole that from me, yeah? Fuckin’ Eucharist. So I decide
d to put a few Christian touches into my little liturgy here. What’d you think? Saturn did it with Mithras—I figured why not give it a go? Makes the crowd go wild.”
“Right, but it doesn’t actually bring back the dead, does it? I thought maybe Pythagoras—”
“That nerd? You can’t bring anyone back with just numbers, although I’m sure you’d like that,” Dennis scoffed. “You keep trying to avoid the obvious: If it doesn’t involve death, it can’t create life.”
“Then how did Orpheus bring Eurydice back from the dead?” Theo begged. “How does anyone return?”
Dennis stopped dancing, looking at Theo with eyes instantly hard. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
Theo didn’t reply, just met his stare and refused to back down.
Dennis threw back his head and laughed so hard he choked. “I know you’re a Makarites.” Theo’s ancient title sounded like a joke on Dennis’s lips. “And because of your oh-so-special status, you can use the gods’ divine weapons better than the gods themselves. But that doesn’t mean you’re actually an ancient hero, man! You sure you haven’t been eating too many of my shroom cookies? This is all just touchy-feely shit. A little wine and revelry to pass the time. You think Selene’s actually hanging out in the Underworld, waiting for you to show up and lead her out?”
“I know it’s a long shot,” Theo answered tightly. “But I have to try, don’t I?”
“So that’s why you came all the way up here.” Dennis clucked. “And I thought you’d finally loosened up.”
“You’re my last hope,” Theo said. “If Pythagoras’s numbers don’t hold the key to her reincarnation—”
“Enough. This is fuckin’ pitiful. You want to know my connection with Orpheus? Fine. When he went to get his chick out of the Underworld, he figured I’d know the way because I’d gotten my mom. He asked for instructions—I gave them to him. Told him how to get in and how to get past Aion on the way back out.”
“Aion?” The Greek name wasn’t familiar to Theo, though his whirring brain immediately connected it to the English word “eon.”
“You heard me. Aion. The name means ‘Unbounded Time.’ Weren’t you listening, dude? That was the best part of the story: ‘Release the serpent coils that hold him in place. Let Unbounded Time burst from his sphere! Let him fly on his many wings!’ You’ve got to release him to release death.”
“The lion-headed god! The one who looks like the Orphic proto-god. You used to sing his hymn all the time when you were especially wasted.”
“Yeah. Protogonos. Aion. Same thing. But he didn’t have a lion’s head last time I checked. That sounds like some Magna Mater shit—the Great Mother was the one with the lions sitting next to her throne like some dominatrix in a bestiality porno. The point, Theo-bore, is that my instructions to Orpheus didn’t work. Or has the classics genius forgotten how the myth ends? Orpheus failed, even with my help.”
“You gave him instructions,” Theo said, pouncing on the one part of the story that mattered. “Now give them to me.”
Dennis snorted. “Go get them yourself. Everyone’s wearing them around their necks.”
“The pendants! Followers of Orpheus wore them, right? They’re found in burial plots all over the Hellenistic world.”
Dennis rolled his eyes. “Too school for cool. As usual.”
Theo looked around the clearing with new eyes. “You had that many authentic gold leaves left over? Or did you make precise copies?”
“Yeah, precise copies, sure.” Dennis’s hand drifted to the leather cord he wore around his own neck.
A gray-haired woman with dirt on her breasts and leaves in her hair broke from the revelers and grabbed Dennis’s hand. “Dance with me,” she panted, blood staining her teeth.
Dennis grinned at her and made to follow.
“Hey, wait!” Theo lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Dennis’s neck in a crushing hug. “Thanks, man,” he gushed, “for your help.”
“Finally I get a little love.” Dennis squeezed Theo’s ass in both hands. “Anytime, fucker.”
The God of Revelry jigged his way back toward the fire.
Theo looked down at the necklace in his palm. The snapped leather cord was still damp with Dennis’s sweat. The gold pendant was paper-thin, shaped like an ivy leaf. He could hardly see the Greek characters etched on its surface, but he could tell from their shape that this was no cheap modern re-creation. As he suspected, Dennis had kept the authentic artifact for himself.
Theo closed his fingers over the pendant, then shouted after Dennis, “But how do I get to the Underworld in the first place?”
Selene had once told him that Hades lived in an abandoned downtown subway station, but he knew that couldn’t be the actual entrance to the realm of death. In the myths, heroes like Orpheus entered through a natural cleft in the earth. But which one?
Dennis glanced over his shoulder with a drunken leer. “We’re not in the Age of Heroes anymore—you really think you can just saunter into the Land of the Dead like some lamer version of Odysseus?” He waggled a finger. “You’re a shitty student, Professor. You forgot what I said: If it doesn’t involve death, it can’t create life.”
“So to enter the Underworld”—Theo choked—“I have to kill someone?”
“Don’t worry, dude.” Dennis began to laugh. “Only yourself.”
Chapter 11
INTERMISSIO: THE TETRACTYS
The man who called himself the Tetractys watched from the forest as Theodore Schultz hunted for his clothes. The professor didn’t look much like a Makarites at the moment, not with his glasses askew and the irritated look on his face. Then again, the ancient heroes had usually performed their greatest deeds in the nude, and Schultz looked surprisingly buff for a classicist—likely because he hadn’t been eating much since that whole unfortunate episode with the Huntress. His grief had burned away any softness he’d possessed; he looked lean and strong, ready for anything.
The Tetractys didn’t resemble his title either. He looked nothing like the perfect equilateral triangle for which he’d been named. I’m full of flaws, he admitted to himself with a shrug. Foremost among them that I can’t keep my mind off that blonde.
The woman who’d spread her legs for the professor had run right by the Tetractys’s hiding place, cheeks flushed. He’d marked her route, sure she’d be up for more action later on. If she thinks Schultz can make her come, just wait until she meets me. It took every ounce of his self-control—and he didn’t have much to begin with—not to take off after her right then. He could use some release. Someone to ease the knot of worry in his stomach.
Six months ago, his life had unraveled. The tune he’d danced to for so long had grown too faint to hear, and the man who’d written the music in the first place—the man he called Father and who’d first granted him his secret title—was lost to him. The Tetractys had escaped the brutal battle atop the Statue of Liberty to find himself alone, no brothers to help, searching in vain for the missing Father, trying to remember the notes to a melody he’d never fully understood.
He remembered their last hurried conversation. You are the only one left to me, the Father had told him, although the Tetractys doubted that was true. How could he trust a man who had schemed for so long? Wiles ran in his blood.
So many gods dead, the old man had said, nodding his white head sorrowfully. Yet I had no choice. We sacrifice a few for the good of the many. Though so many of the Father’s family lay dead, he spoke with nothing more than weary resignation. It will all be worth it when the symphony plays. And that, at least, the Tetractys believed.
But sometimes, just before he drifted off to sleep, he’d jerk back into wakefulness, heart racing, skin chilled, stomach clenching with an unfamiliar emotion it had taken him months to name: Guilt.
He caught a buzzing mosquito between his fingers, wondering whether the blood smearing his fingers was his own. One little libation, sacrificed for a higher being
, he thought. How much more blood will be spilt before this is over?
He watched as the man who would inevitably become the next sacrifice shoved on a pair of sneakers and headed out of the meadow at a jog, clearly eager to leave the orgy behind. The Tetractys stepped back a little farther into the shadows, unwilling to be seen as the classicist passed his hiding place.
The Tetractys hadn’t heard Schultz’s conversation with Dionysus, but he worried about what might’ve been said. Schultz’s doggedness, he felt sure, would eventually lead him to the Father, but he was taking his own sweet time about it—following paths of his own making, swerving away from the ultimate goal—and the Tetractys’s patience was wearing thin. Whether through force or cunning, he needed to keep Schultz on track.
There’s that guilt again, he noted, watching the professor go. Despite the summer heat, the familiar chill prickled across his skin. He’s a good man. I’ve watched him long enough to know that. But even good men must sometimes die for the sake of the greater good. The knowledge gave him little comfort.
And me? Am I a good man? It was a question he’d never asked before.
Perhaps because he already knew the answer.
The Tetractys caught a glimpse of Schultz’s blonde seductress meandering from the forest into the clearing and back, her pale skin flashing through the trees like a beacon. He stood, brushed the leaves from his pants, and ran a hand through his hair. Schultz would be in his rental car by now, heading back to the city. The Tetractys would have plenty of time to track him before he made any further moves.
At this point, he decided, one more sin won’t make a difference.
He donned his most charming smile and headed toward the glimmer of flesh, determined to enjoy himself while he still could. Soon enough, he’d have to start leading Schultz, rather than following. The Father had made his wishes clear:
You, my Tetractys, may play the harmony that makes my symphony soar—but the Makarites is the note to which we all must tune our instruments.
Olympus Bound Page 10
