Olympus Bound

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “Once Father’s safe,” she went on, “then we can deal with Saturn.”

  Flint just frowned beneath his beard.

  “Hey, they also call me She Who Works in Secret, right?” She tried for a cocky smile.

  “And Lady of Clamors, don’t forget. What if you set off an alarm?”

  She waved aside his concerns. “I’ll be in and out before they even notice I’m there.”

  But Flint was right. No matter her many relevant epithets, their plan was weak. Usually, he cooked up intricate strategies involving ingenious mechanical inventions and a thorough understanding of probabilities—that’s how they’d traced their last Mithraist to the ancient town of Ostia. For Flint, He of Many Arts and Skills, such tactics were second nature. But Selene had always been the Goddess of the Wild; on the hunt, she relied on reflexes alone to avoid the boar’s tusk and drive her javelin home. Tonight, they’d do things her way.

  She gestured for Flint to head toward the southern end of the plaza, where the Swiss Guards stood watch at a broad archway leading to the rest of Vatican City. The two men on duty in their long velvet tunics and purple-and-yellow-striped hose held halberds—tall poles topped with wickedly curved blades. Despite the silly clothes and anachronistic weaponry, the Swiss Guards had trained for over five hundred years to defend the Vatican. Selene had little doubt they carried more advanced weapons out of sight, just like her.

  She wore the most nondescript outfit she owned—loose pants with plenty of pockets, a dark T-shirt, and, of course, a backpack with her dismantled bow safely stowed inside. She tried to look like a tourist, pulling out her phone to take photos of the colonnade and the saints overhead.

  After a few moments, she moved her phone so the camera recorded over her shoulder, where Flint hobbled toward the guardhouse. The soldiers stood at attention, their eyes straight ahead. Flint moved far more slowly than usual, leaning heavily on his crutches. He, too, had dressed for the evening, eschewing his usual somber clothing and long pants for a tourist’s Italian flag shirt and shorts that displayed his withered legs.

  When he’d emerged from his bedroom that evening, Selene had to bite back a gasp of dismay. She hadn’t seen his bare legs since the days when gods and men wore togas. She’d forgotten just how misshapen and pitiable they were. His thighs were barely thicker than his skeletal shins. His knobby right knee buckled inward and his left crooked outward in a mockery of a classical statue’s elegant contrapposto. Thick hair grew from the hem of his shorts to his ankles, making him look more like a wretched beast than a man—much less like a god. Flint had caught her staring.

  “Thank you,” she’d said quickly, feeling her own face warm in response to his obvious embarrassment, “for helping with this. I know you bear no love for my father.”

  His eyes held hers as he said, “That’s true.” He didn’t say more. He didn’t need to. She knew what he was thinking. I bear love for you. So much that I would reveal all my weaknesses upon your request. That was the sort of love few men and fewer immortals could offer.

  Am I an utter fool not to grab it while I can? Selene wondered as she watched him limp closer to the guardhouse. What am I waiting for? I don’t feel for him the way I did for you, Theo, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe love isn’t supposed to be as joyful as ours was. Maybe it’s supposed to be serious and profound and just a little bit tortured.

  Flint groaned loudly and started muttering prayers in Latin. Her keen hearing recognized the Lord’s Prayer; she wondered when he’d picked up that bit of knowledge. Taking her cue, she meandered toward the granite meridian embedded in the ground.

  A few feet away from the Swiss Guards, Flint collapsed to the ground with a grunt. He raised one hand heavenward as if imploring Jesus and rubbed his skinny legs with the other. When the guards didn’t move, Flint moaned more loudly and pulled a conspicuous silver crucifix from beneath his collar. He attempted to get to his feet but fell clumsily back to the ground, now clutching at his chest.

  “Please,” he gasped. “I need a doctor.”

  Selene couldn’t help a small, amazed smile. She and Flint had both counted themselves exceptions to their generally histrionic family; she hadn’t expected him to do so well with the theatrics.

  Sure enough, the guards put aside their halberds and rushed forward to help the fallen man, crouching beside him on the pavement. The few other nighttime tourists turned toward the commotion, leaving Selene temporarily unobserved.

  From her backpack, she withdrew a crowbar. This particular entrance to the mithraeum, she knew, must be ceremonial. No way the syndexioi can pop in and out of Saint Peter’s Square on a regular basis without anyone noticing, she thought. Which means this plaque isn’t meant to be easily moved by human hands.

  She held the crowbar close to her leg to hide it from casual observation and slipped the end into a slight gap around the slab’s circumference. Good thing I’m not human.

  Repressing a groan of effort, she threw her weight against the tool. At first, it seemed the bar would bend before the stone gave way. Then, with the sucking pop of an opened jar, the marble lifted an inch, then another. She risked a glance toward the Swiss Guards. They were busy struggling to get Flint to his feet—not an easy task with a 250-pound man actively resisting their assistance.

  She pressed the crowbar to the paving stones, secured it with her boot, then spun the massive disc to the side. A narrow, dark shaft yawned before her. With a speed no mortal could manage, she slipped inside, braced her feet against the sides of the shaft, and reached overhead to replace the marble.

  Blackness.

  She froze, suspended within the open shaft, hands and feet holding her steady as she listened to the sounds above. No running footsteps, no cries of alarm.

  Relieved that her excavations had gone unnoticed, she turned her attention to her surroundings. Beneath her hands, cold cement.

  Scooting gingerly along the circumference, she searched for a ladder with her hands and feet. Guess they don’t want visitors, she decided when her search failed. So either I’m right that this is a purely symbolic entrance, or I’ve just crawled into a sewage pipe.

  She peered futilely into the black void beneath her boots, wondering how deep it went. She dared support herself with just her legs so she could reach into her pocket for a headlamp.

  In the light’s beam, she saw a dry, concrete floor below her—no wider than a dinner plate from her perch so far above. She let go of the wall, shooting down the shaft with only her boot soles to slow her descent.

  She slammed to the ground in a crouch, the smell of burnt rubber wrinkling her nose. Before her, a tunnel led southward. She started down it, adjusting the light more securely on her forehead and readying her bow and arrows. Her quiver held mostly wooden shafts, but she’d packed three god-forged golden arrows as well, the only kind that could actually kill her divine grandfather. Rescuing Zeus was her first priority, but if she happened to run into the Titan on the way out, she wouldn’t waste the opportunity.

  After a few hundred feet, the tunnel made a sharp right turn, blocking her view of the path ahead. She stepped forward more cautiously and rounded the corner, only to see the tunnel turn again ahead of her. Even as it grew more labyrinthine, the corridor widened. A section of masonry wall interrupted the smooth cement. Old bricks in shades of red and yellow, uneven and chipped, as if made by hand centuries—or millennia—before.

  Farther on, she passed another patch of bricks below the fragment of a marble cornice. The floor beneath her feet changed, too, from poured cement to flat paving stones. I’m walking on the remains of an ancient Roman street, she realized.

  By the time she’d turned three more times, the Huntress—who could navigate through the thickest forest by the feel of the wind alone—had completely lost her bearings in this underground maze.

  She had no idea how much time had passed, but she felt sure she’d been wandering the tunnels for at least an hour. She began to long for a man with a gun
to show up around the next corner—at least she’d have something to shoot at.

  She got a bull instead.

  Chapter 17

  BULL RIDER

  The bull tore through the narrow tunnel beneath the Vatican like a shotgun slug down a barrel. Two thousand pounds of rippling white flesh, a ring through his nose, an incongruous wreath of pine boughs bouncing around his neck, and a pair of wickedly curved horns aimed straight at Selene’s rib cage.

  She loosed an arrow with more instinct than accuracy. The shaft lodged in the creature’s shoulder, only enraging him further.

  There was nowhere to hide, no place to dodge. But Selene had honed her fighting skills in the cramped alleys of New York City. At the last second, she dove forward, sliding beneath the beast’s belly. His hooves churned inches from her head.

  She jackknifed to her feet as the animal clattered to a skidding halt behind her.

  He twisted like a mutant dog chasing its tail until he faced her again, nostrils pumping air.

  Before she could grab another arrow, he charged. Like the bull-leapers of ancient Knossos, where Theseus once faced the Minotaur in the heart of the twisting Labyrinth, Selene sprang up. She planted one hand on the animal’s spine and flipped her legs toward the ceiling, hovering for just a moment in a precarious handstand. The bull bucked beneath her. She pushed off and landed behind him, her bow still gripped in her other hand.

  She nocked another shaft. The heaving bull lowered his head just after she loosed her arrow. It sailed harmlessly above the beast’s horns.

  Without missing a beat, Selene sent another shaft through the animal’s back, hoping to slow him down. The beast bellowed, the sound resonating in the narrow tunnel like a war horn blown from the battlements of Troy. Selene cursed under her breath. So “Lady of Clamors” it is.

  She thought about sprinting back toward the exit and shimmying up the cement shaft, but it was too soon. Flint would still be resting in some clinic, unable to distract the guards while she emerged into the plaza. She’d be thrown in jail and lose any hope of rescuing Zeus before the solstice.

  Father, if you’re down here, she prayed, now would be a great time to stage a distraction. Unsurprisingly, no thunder rocked the underground passage, no lightning flashed before her.

  Instead, she heard two men farther down the tunnel jabbering worriedly in German. She knew little of their tongue, only enough to catch something about a bull. Their prize animal has escaped, she realized, but they don’t know about me yet.

  The bull himself, unfortunately, knew exactly where she was. Despite his wounds, he closed the distance between them. She sent an arrow into the meat of his chest. He kept coming.

  She dodged aside, but he turned his head and pinned her to the wall between his long, curved horns. The bull panted hot against her face like an overeager suitor cornering a blushing virgin. She managed to reach for another arrow. I never could stand the attentions of smelly men. She raised the shaft overhead, ready to drive it through the top of the beast’s skull.

  “Halt!” Two men stood before her in Swiss Guard uniforms, guns raised.

  These were no mere Papal soldiers patrolling the Vatican’s secret spaces; she knew that the moment one turned to the other and said, “Sie ist Diana.” Only initiated members of the Host would know her true identity.

  “We need that bull more than we need you,” the younger man said in English. “So either drop the arrow or we put a bullet through your brain.”

  Still trapped between the bull’s horns, she had little choice but to comply. She put down the arrow but kept her bow, holding it out of sight beneath the animal’s body.

  The older guard stepped forward to place the barrel of his gun against her head. The other clipped a rope to the ring in the bull’s nose and led him away.

  Free of the horns, Selene ducked away from the guard’s gun and smashed her bow into his knees. He buckled but pulled the trigger—his bullet cracked into the wall behind her, dispelling any last hope that these men had orders to take her alive.

  She whipped her bow around to kick the gun away, then back to crack it against the guard’s jaw. As his head snapped to the side, Selene sprinted in the other direction. She caught just a glimpse of the second guard reaching for a black device on his belt.

  A walkie-talkie, she thought, until two probes shot out faster than even her eyes could follow. They ripped into her neck. Convulsions racked her body.

  Darkness slammed her to the ground.

  Chapter 18

  MAGNA MATER

  Warm liquid splatted against Selene’s cheek.

  Her eyes flew open. She sat up in a circular stone chamber awash with torchlight. Beside her, the marble pine tree from Ostia stood upon an ancient pedestal of cracked limestone.

  Selene took a quick survey of her body. Her head and neck still throbbed from the Taser’s charge, and steel pinned her wrists behind her back. She wanted to scream her frustration. She’d found the Host only to fall prey to them once more. They’d taken away her low-frequency transmitter—she couldn’t signal Flint. And this time, there’d be no Theo Schultz to rescue her. He was four thousand miles away and convinced she was already dead.

  Why did I think I could do this alone? she let herself wonder for a moment before angrily thrusting aside her self-pity.

  She rose dizzily to her feet and stared at the grate overhead, its openings too small for her to see through. Another drop fell toward her, landing on her upturned face.

  Is that … piss? She heard a bellow, a stamping hoof. Her bovine nemesis must be standing overhead.

  A Latin chant echoed against the chamber’s walls: “Taurobolium facimus velut Mithras fecit, ut proximum saeculum efficiamus …”

  We perform this Bull Sacrifice as Mithras did, to bring the next Age.

  What was it June said about supplicants in the Phrygianum waiting in a pit? she wondered too late.

  Another mad bellow from the bull. A knife ripped through flesh.

  An instant later, a torrent of blood rushed through the grate, slamming hot and thick against her face. It ran down her scalp, her shoulders, her breasts. It seeped between her closed lips. She retched at the taste of salt and copper and something darker. Some ancient part of her remembered the flavor—and relished it. She retched harder.

  “Really?” she hollered when she could speak again. Blood and bile flew from her lips. She sought rage, that old friend, hoping its heat would burn away her fears. “It wasn’t enough to steal Jesus? You had to steal the Magna Mater’s taurobolium, too?”

  At Rockefeller Center, Saturn had dressed Mars up as Aries the Ram before killing him to symbolize the turning of the ages. The Host was obsessed with reenacting the heavens’ progress through sacrifice. Such rituals, they believed, helped bring about the final shift into the Last Age—hence the bull blood currently dripping into Selene’s eyes. But why bring in the Magna Mater? She might have once been Rhea, Saturn’s wife, but how did that help the stars move? She and Flint had never really figured it out.

  While Selene’s mind whirled, the syndexioi continued their chanting, mixing Mithraic liturgy, Catholic tropes, and references to the Great Mother in their usual synergistic stew.

  Mother of Gods, surrounded by bull-destroying lions,

  Come mighty power, Phrygian savior, come,

  Saturn’s great queen, help us move the spheres of heaven.

  For like the pine tree, we hold the seeds of our own rebirth.

  Water us with your blood.

  Blessed are you among women,

  and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

  Magna Mater, Mother of Gods.

  With her hands bound behind her, Selene ducked her chin against her collarbone, searching for Flint’s necklace so she could fight her way free of this horror. It was gone. Saturn had seen her use it as a whip and a javelin in Ostia—he’d known to remove it.

  They’re making me their sacrifice, she knew. This whole ritual is just preparation f
or the moment when Saturn cuts out my heart.

  Trying to quash her rising panic, she blinked the blood from her eyes and searched her surroundings for some means of escape. The Phrygianum had been constructed as a place for Rome’s powerful and wealthy to offer prayers to the Great Mother. The age of the pine tree’s limestone pedestal pointed to the cult’s ancient roots. Selene suspected the stolen Ostia sculpture was an ad-hoc replacement for an original cult statue, likely made of wood or ivory, that had disintegrated long ago.

  She stood in a cylindrical chamber surrounded by a viewing area where dignitaries could witness the blood pour through the overhead grate and onto the head of the Magna Mater’s supplicant. But tonight, the men watching the taurobolium served a very different god.

  Here in the privacy of their secret sanctuary, the syndexioi could flaunt their devotion to Mithras. The outfits they wore identified their rank within the Host’s strict hierarchy. The lower-ranked Miles, or “Soldier,” dressed as a Roman legionary. The mid-level Leo wore a lion mask. The second-in-command, the red-robed Heliodromus, or “Sun-Runner,” carried a long cat-o’-nine-tails with which to whip the Sun across the sky.

  “If you’re going to pretend to pay homage to my grandmother, why not chop off your own balls like you’re supposed to?” Selene shouted at them. Might as well piss them off, she decided. They’re going to kill me anyway.

  None of the men responded. They turned their masked faces upward instead. A voice floated through the wooden planks. Old and rough but filled with power.

  Saturn.

  “Hark, syndexioi, to the beginning of the world,” he said in Latin. “To Sky and Earth and the children they bore.”

  She knew this story; she’d heard her own father tell it often enough. But she feared Saturn’s version; she remembered how, in Ostia, the God of Time’s voice had dragged her backward into another age, making her a silent witness to events she’d only ever imagined. She couldn’t afford to tumble into the past, not with her enemies surrounding her in the present. She needed to think, to fight—but Saturn’s power could not be denied.