“Kronos’s gullet,” Scooter cursed. “Selene died so you could live, remember? I’m not going to let you kill yourself! If you want to honor her memory, you’ll help me track down Saturn instead. Trust me, if the old bastard had killed you, she wouldn’t have rested until he was just as dead.”
For months, despite Scooter’s begging, Theo had refused to help find Saturn. He’d insisted he was simply too grief-stricken to bother with revenge. In truth, he’d had a far more important task to focus on. He drummed his fingers
on the steering wheel, impatient with the old argument. “Selene wasn’t the same vengeful goddess anymore. She would’ve rather had me back than see Saturn punished. I believe that.”
“I’m warning you, Theo. Don’t even think about doing this. It’s stupid. It won’t work.” Scooter sounded deadly serious. He sounded scared.
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“Damn you,” Scooter hissed. “You’re all I have left of my sister. Of course I care.”
Theo fell silent, stunned to hear such emotion from the usually blithe god. “If you loved Selene so much, then you’d want to get her back.”
“I won’t—”
“You’re in Los Angeles! Even with all your money and your private jet and your computer hacking skills and whatever else you’re amusing yourself with out there, you can’t stop me. I’ll do it with or without you.”
“No!” the God of Eloquence spluttered, seemingly at a loss for a more convincing argument.
“Then get on a plane to New York and come help make sure this isn’t all for nothing.”
Scooter gave an agonized groan. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”
“Then you better hurry.”
“Wait. Wait. Forget New York, Theo.” He took a sharp intake of breath, as if struck by an idea. “If you really want this whole ridiculous resurrection plan to work—and may I just stress again that it won’t—you shouldn’t off yourself in some Manhattan brownstone.”
“Why not? I don’t have to go to some physical entrance to the Underworld. I just have to die.”
“Sure, but location matters, my friend. Remember how the Mithraists always performed their rites at landmarks in the city? They not only chose times with astrological significance—they picked significant sites, too. You want to bring Selene back, you need a location scout to find someplace with serious ties to the afterlife and resurrection cults.”
“Then maybe we can both get what we want,” Theo said, his eyes still on the dark highway before him but his mind thousands of miles away.
“Now you’re talking. What did you have in mind?”
“Our Mithraists, it turns out, were equal-opportunity worshipers. They also prayed to a lion-headed god—a version of Aion, the Orphic Protogonos. His statue was right there in the mithraeum under Saint Patrick’s. He’s a crucial element in their understanding of reincarnation. So if I find Saturn’s current mithraeum, I also find the best possible place to perform my own rite of resurrection.”
“Now you want to help us find Saturn?” Scooter sounded more satisfied than surprised.
“I want to find the mithraeum—an active site of worship with the power to make my own quest succeed. If we find Saturn, too, well, that’s extra credit.”
“Uh-huh. You’re talking about the mithraeum somewhere in Rome that Flint’s spent half a year looking for? The one I’ve been begging for your help in finding and you’ve refused to bother with. That one?” he asked pointedly.
“Yeah.”
“What about ‘we’ve been searching for six months’ didn’t you understand? Looks like you’re going to have to delay the suicide pact. Who knows how long it will take us to find it?”
“You’re only stumped because I haven’t been helping.”
“Hah! What happened to the humble professor, awed by the presence of the immortals?”
“He died about when Selene did.”
Scooter fell silent. That’s twice in one conversation that he’s been speechless.
“I’m close, I can feel it,” Theo went on. “I even have instructions.” That was technically true, although the illegible Greek on the stolen gold pendant wasn’t providing much help so far. “If we can just find this Aion, we can get Selene out. At least that’s what Dennis said.”
“You talked to Dennis? You really are desperate.”
“Yeah, I wound up both enlightened and morally compromised. As usual.”
“You’re probably still high. That explains a lot.”
Theo ignored him, even though Scooter had a point. He probably shouldn’t be driving, much less contemplating suicide. Yet he felt surprisingly clearheaded. When his hallucination of Selene had vanished, he felt he’d lost her all over again. He’d do anything to bring her back—for real, this time.
“Did you know Aion?” he pressed. “I think I’d trust your recollections of him more than Dennis’s.”
“Man with a lion’s head? Sounds like if I had, I’d remember.”
“He’s twined with snakes, he’s holding two L-shaped tools in his hands—Here, let me just show you.” He risked taking his eyes off the road long enough to send a photo he’d taken of the lion-headed statue in the Met to Scooter’s phone. A moment later, Scooter’s disembodied laughter rang through the car.
“I hate to admit it, but you may be onto something. I don’t recognize the god, but those tools are keys, Theo. Roman keys.”
The words of a Pythagorean prayer came back to Theo: Bless us, divine number, you who generated gods and men. O holy, holy Tetractys that contains the root and source of the eternally flowing creation. The never-swerving, the never-tiring holy Ten, the key holder of all. But if the lion-headed god held keys as well, all the more reason he could open the doors to the afterlife.
“So Aion holds the keys to reincarnation …” he pondered aloud. “Keys to heaven …” He nearly swerved off the road as he made the connection. “Who else holds two keys to heaven?” he nearly shouted.
“Uh—”
“Peter, for God’s sake! Saint Peter. As in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Where the pope lives! Saturn’s been inserting Mithraic ideas into Christianity since the very beginning. He even put them into the Vatican itself! We know where our mithraeum is, Scooter!”
“Styx. You are good. You think the mithraeum’s actually inside Vatican City?”
“Under the biggest church in the whole damn world. Yeah, I think that’s exactly where it is.” Theo’s mind spun, already judging how quickly he could get home, pack, and book a flight to Rome. “I can get there by tomorrow evening. You?”
“So you’re putting off the whole suicide thing for a day.” Scooter let out a long breath. “Good. That gives me time to change your mind.”
“If we don’t find the mithraeum before the solstice,” Theo said sharply, “I’ll kill myself anyway. I’ll slit my wrists in the damn Trevi Fountain if need be. Going to Rome is not procrastination. I’m just giving myself—and Selene—the best chance I can.”
Scooter sighed. “You sure you can find Saturn?”
“Of course not!” Theo took a deep breath to steady himself and added more calmly, “But it’s worth a shot.”
“And all I have to do in return is promise to help you die.”
“Nope. Pretty sure I can manage that on my own. I need you to help me live again.”
“There’s no guarantee—”
“I don’t need a guarantee. I just need a chance. Worst case, at least my misery is over. But if I’m right about the mithraeum, you still get Saturn.”
Scooter sighed again. “I’ll meet you in Saint Peter’s. But Theo, since we’re about to face an army of angry syndexioi—don’t forget to bring the … you know whats.”
“Hey, what kind of Makarites would I be if I showed up without my magic weapons?”
“A dead one,” Scooter answered unnecessarily.
“Oh, I think that’s a given at this point.” Theo forced a laugh, then hung up bef
ore Scooter could say another word.
Chapter 14
BRAZEN-ARMED
Theo had died before.
Soon after he’d met Selene, he’d stood in a cave in Central Park, surrounded by cult initiates who believed his death would grant them immortality. One raised a knife. Then everything had gone black. The next thing he knew, he’d awoken in Selene’s arms, gasping back into life.
So why, oh why, do I think there’s an afterlife now if there wasn’t one last time? he asked himself as he reached for another T-shirt to shove into his suitcase. Yet he remembered what Dennis had said—the raw meat at the bacchanal had transformed into something more because he thought it did. Belief itself could create reality. Weren’t the gods themselves proof of that? They had come into being because they were worshiped—because mankind believed in them. Before learning Selene’s true identity, Theo had considered himself a confirmed atheist. Nine months later, he still didn’t believe in God, but he sure as hell believed in the gods.
Even if the Underworld didn’t exist for me before, he reasoned, maybe it does now.
From the top shelf of his closet, he pulled down a large cardboard box. He hadn’t opened it since Scooter gave it to him in December. Now, raising the lid, he found his gaze caught by the empty holes in the dark bronze helmet. With its flared nosepiece and long cheek guards, it looked like the face of Death. When he lifted it from the box, frost stuck to his fingers, sapping the warmth from his body as surely as any wind blown from the Underworld.
This is my inheritance: Hades’ helm. Emblem of the Lord of the Dead, he thought grimly. Who knew it would be so fitting?
“Theo? You finally home?”
He quickly wrapped a shirt around the helmet before turning to Ruth with studied casualness. She stood blinking at him in her pajamas. “It’s four in the morning.” Her eyes flicked to the half-packed suitcase, and a hint of fear tightened her voice. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Rome,” he answered shortly, placing the wrapped helmet into his suitcase. “Flight leaves in two hours.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared at him. “Please tell me that means Scooter and Flint have found Saturn, and you’re just going along as a … consultant?”
“Not exactly.” He returned to the cardboard box and, with his back to her, pulled out a second divinely forged item. He shoved it into his satchel before she could see it, making a mental note to transfer it to his checked baggage before he got to the airport. Otherwise, he’d be spending the summer solstice trying to get out of TSA security rather than the Underworld.
“You’re going by yourself.”
“Not exactly.”
“Theo, you can’t,” she said, sitting down heavily on the bed.
“That’s what everyone says.” He tried to sound cheerful as he tossed a flashlight into his bag. “But I defeated Saturn once before, remember? Tracking him down again shouldn’t be too hard. I have a lead.”
He tried to sound confident, but he’d only gotten as far as: Get to Vatican City. Miraculously find hidden mithraeum. Kill myself. The whole “come back from the dead and bring Selene, too” part was still pretty fuzzy. His last-minute plane ticket included a layover in Iceland and another in Geneva before he finally made it to Rome, giving him a total of sixteen hours to figure out how to defeat Death itself. No problem.
Ruth brought him back to the present with a small groan. “And when you find Saturn …” She didn’t finish the thought.
Theo didn’t like lying to Ruth, but he’d been doing it for months now. It was getting easier. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else again.”
“But Selene’s gone,” she said softly. It was the first time he’d heard her speak Selene’s name in a very long time. “Revenge won’t bring her back.”
He felt her eyes on him and this time said nothing. He just kept packing, moving a pile of underwear to hide the crown of the dark bronze helm—it had slipped from its wrappings like a corpse rising from the grave.
“Theo? It can’t bring her back. You know that, don’t you? Please, tell me you know that.” He heard the tears in her voice a moment before they streaked her cheeks.
Crouching beside the bed, he took her hands in his. “I have to try, Ruth. There’s a chance she might not be—out of reach.”
She clenched her jaw tight, as if to hold back her words, but he read the accusation in her eyes: I’m not enough. You’d rather go after a dead woman than be alive with me. Then her nostrils twitched, her eyes widened, and she blurted, “You smell like …” She jerked away from him with a dismayed gasp. Theo hadn’t yet changed out of the clothes he’d worn upstate.
His first instinct was to explain. To apologize. To tell her about the drugs and the dancing and the hallucinations, then laugh it off with a joke about Dennis’s jean shorts, all so she wouldn’t feel worse than she already did. So many months living in the same house and he’d never done more than hold her. How must it feel to think he’d chosen to have sex with someone else while she waited desperately for him to make up his mind?
But he didn’t say a word. If Ruth thinks I love someone else more than her—she’s right. And I owe her the truth, even if it hurts.
He stood, threw his toiletries into the suitcase, and zipped it shut. He picked up his satchel, heavy with its divine burden, and slung it over his shoulder. He paused in the doorway, resisting the urge to embrace her one last time.
“I’m not going to follow you,” Ruth said slowly, talking more to herself than to him. “I’ll want to. I’ll want to chase you to the airport and smuggle myself aboard that plane and help keep you safe as you face these … whatever they are. And when you fail, I’ll want to be there to hold you when you feel the hurt all over again. But I can’t do that, Theo. I can’t bear knowing I’m your second choice. I’ve been doing that for months. I won’t do it anymore.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. For everything.” He turned to go.
“Theo—” Her voice was thick with desperation.
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. You’re not a superhero, you know.”
She was right. He wouldn’t heal quickly like the gods. His arms weren’t as strong as Flint’s, nor his feet as swift as Scooter’s. But he had three things they didn’t: a god-forged bronze sword, Hades’ Helm of Invisibility, and the magic to wield them both.
With such weapons, I might just make a convincing hero after all, he thought, jogging down the stairs. His satchel banged against his chest; he could feel the sword’s razor edge resting against his ribs in silent remonstrance.
That is, if the damn things don’t kill me before I make it out my own front door.
Chapter 15
HE OF MANY ARTS AND SKILLS
Standing in the vast elliptical plaza before Saint Peter’s Basilica later that day, Selene felt like a grasshopper trapped in the web of a great hairy spider, chirping out her protests in vain while the silk bindings grew tighter and the numbing toxin sapped her strength. Hordes of tourists meandered around her like flies thrumming their wings, unaware of their own captivity. Bernini’s colonnade hemmed them in, embracing the plaza in two sweeping arcs and drawing the eye to the obelisk in the center of the web.
Carved four thousand years ago to proclaim the glory of ancient Egypt long before a wandering tribe of Hebrews dreamed of a single god, the obelisk rose seven stories into the air. No longer did it remind its viewers of Ra and Isis: The copper cross parked atop the stone tip demanded homage to Christ, instead. But even that soaring emblem paled before the building beyond it: the grandest church in Christendom. The great domed basilica loomed over the plaza, a tangible symbol of the immense wealth and far-reaching power of the vast hairy spider itself—the Vatican.
Selene squinted up angrily at the row of colossal statues perched on the basilica’s roof.
“I count twelve,” she said to Flint.
“Twelve what?”
“Twelve statu
es. Twelve holy figures. Remind you of anything?”
He peered upward, shading his face with his hand. “That’s Jesus and his eleven apostles.”
“Hah. Or Zeus with the other eleven Olympians.”
“Selene …”
“I’m just saying.” She waved a hand at the colonnade that surrounded Saint Peter’s Square. A full complement of one hundred and forty smaller saints watched over the faithful from atop the Doric columns. “That looks to me like a host of lesser gods—male and female, warrior and virgin and you name it.” She pointed back to the basilica itself. “And those are like the Olympians looking down from on high.”
“Just because our grandfather mixed Mithraism with his own brand of Christianity doesn’t mean the whole Catholic Church is secretly worshiping us.”
“Maybe not.” She shrugged. “But at this point, anything’s possible.”
For so long, a bright dividing line had existed in her mind between the time before the Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius had outlawed worship of the Olympians and the time after. Unlike the earlier eastern cults that had come to Rome, which had coexisted peacefully with—or even integrated into—classical religion, Christianity insisted that its single “God” not be polluted by the sin of polytheism. Or at least, that’s what Selene had always thought. Now, between the twelve “divinities” on the church’s facade and the towering Egyptian obelisk at the plaza’s center, she was beginning to think the Church had even more in common with Saturn than she’d thought—both had no compunction about stealing other people’s sacred objects and using them to demonstrate their own power.
Flint ignored her musings and glanced down at his large tablet phone. He hadn’t said a word about his feelings since the wedding that morning. No doubt he was waiting for her to finally respond to his confession. But even without June’s warning, Selene would’ve kept her mouth shut: Until she was absolutely sure what she wanted to say to Flint, she wasn’t going to say anything at all. She’d spent the afternoon focused on the chase, instead, and Flint, as always, had followed along.
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