“Yes, I came for the love we have borne each other.” She nearly choked on the words. What did love matter when it couldn’t save his life?
His magnified gray eye squinted at her blood-caked cheek. “What did they do to you?”
“A taurobolium.”
It took him a moment, but eventually he nodded, the gesture made sloppy by the tremors that waggled his chin. “Rhea’s rite. Greedy.”
“Greed has served the Wily One well so far,” she said bitterly. “He stole you, didn’t he? And now—somehow—he’s turning me into Rhea so he can destroy the two gods who stole his crown so long ago. I don’t know what hope we have.”
For months, she’d pictured every moment of her father’s rescue: She would strike down Saturn with a single golden arrow, destroy every remnant of his perverted cult, and lead Zeus to safety while he showered her with his thanks. She’d never imagined failing. The reality felt like a bull’s horn goring her stomach.
“What about your friend?” he asked, patting her hand in a weak attempt at comfort.
“The Smith?” she asked, raising her head. If Flint was captured by the wrong Swiss Guards, she realized suddenly, he might be down here somewhere, too. Her heart sank still further.
“No, no.” Zeus shook his head, irritated. He’d never liked his wife’s bastard son. “Your mortal Makarites. Did they catch him, too?”
“Theo?” she asked, baffled. “He has no idea I’m here. How do you know about him?”
“Zeus Moiragetes. Zeus Semaleos.” He spoke the old epithets slowly, as if savoring their taste. The Leader of the Fates. The Giver of Signs.
“You can still prophesy?”
Again, that phlegmy chuckle. “No. I have no oracle at Delphi as your brother Apollo once did. But the dreams … they come whether I will them or not. I saw you in a mortal man’s arms.”
Selene’s cheeks burned, but her father went on, his speech growing more sure even as his gaze grew vague. “I saw brazen-armed Mars struck down like an animal. Dark Hades slaughtered on a bull’s back. Tortured Prometheus burnt in a lightning bolt’s fire. Bright Apollo sliced from this world. And when I woke”—he slapped his chest weakly—“a piece of my own soul had ripped away. With each god’s death, I grow weaker.” As if to prove his point, he doubled over in a sudden fit of coughing.
Selene helped him sit up straight and pulled the blanket more firmly around his body. Futile gestures, she knew, when she saw the red speckling his lips. Her father was dying, even before Saturn’s sickle did its work.
“I don’t understand,” she begged. “Why would our deaths make you weaker, when they make Saturn stronger?”
“The Titan always feared sharing his power. I did not.”
Saturn claimed his children’s births had threatened to split his domain asunder. Zeus, on the other hand, had happily granted each of his children and siblings a separate domain.
“You gave me the wilderness and the mountainsides,” she said softly. “The shaded forests and the secret meadows.”
“Yet in my dreams … you hunt through city streets.” Zeus didn’t look surprised, just saddened. “You gave up your birthright?”
“Because I couldn’t bear it,” she admitted. “To see all I once ruled and know it’s mine no longer. Better to turn aside than be reminded of how far I’ve fallen.”
Her father didn’t scold her. “I did the same. Years in my cave, turning my back.” His lips tightened, as if to hold back his emotion, but the trembling of his chin only increased. She remembered the pile of goat bones, the dripping stalactites. With so much solitude, it was a miracle her father retained any sanity at all.
“Saturn still sees strength in you,” she insisted, “or he wouldn’t seek your death. You’re the only one left who stands in his way. When you’re gone, he can truly become God the Father.”
“Me?” He blinked through his glasses. “I stand in no one’s way.” He slumped against the wall, looking half the size of the god she’d known. “Let him have what title he wants.”
“How can you say that?” she nearly shouted.
Zeus flinched, drawing his crooked hands close to his chest as if to shield himself from her wrath.
She went on more calmly. “He would raise himself above us all. He would become one with the Christian god. Incorporeal, omnipotent, eternal. What would that do to the world?”
Zeus’s mouth chewed for a moment on his answer before the words emerged. “What have we to fear from the Christian god that he has not done already?”
“We may not fear him, but what of the millions of Christians who will find themselves worshiping a cruel, all-powerful god they never dreamed existed?”
“He may be powerful, he may not. Mankind sees their ‘God’ everywhere and nowhere—I have never seen him at all. Have you?”
“No. But—”
“The Jews, do you remember how we laughed at them for their invisible god? No statues, no paintings?” He gave a rattling snort. “If they’d never seen him, why did they think he existed?”
“And yet that invisible god now rules the world.”
Zeus shrugged. The filthy blanket slipped, revealing skeletal shoulders. “Or perhaps he exists only in some other plane. Do you remember how we existed in more than one world?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly. “I have memories of walking the earth, memories of riding the sky, but much is fuzzy in between.” As Artemis, she’d contained multitudes. A thousand versions of herself, worshiped by a thousand different peoples. Now Rhea’s memories tugged at the edges of her mind, too, turning her already hazy grasp of the past into a swirling mist of impressions that she couldn’t begin to fathom.
“You’re confused,” Zeus said, “because our half-mortal minds”—he tapped swollen knuckles against his skull—“can’t understand true godhood … not any longer.” He knocked his head again, harder, as if punishing himself for his failings. Tears pooled in his eyes, the sight made more conspicuous by the magnifying effect of his glasses. “If Saturn wants to be … infinite … maybe he’ll simply disappear. He won’t bother us any longer.”
“Except that he’s going to kill us both before then,” she retorted. Her father’s theories were all well and good—they might even be right. But she couldn’t take that chance. Her goals hadn’t changed: rescue Zeus, stop Saturn. “I doubt Grandfather will be patient enough to grind us down into willing sacrifices as he did to Mars and Apollo and the others. Now that he’s so close, he’ll want to kill us both on the summer solstice—that’s tomorrow. We have to escape before then.”
“I’ve tried. How I’ve tried. There’s no way out of here, child.”
No offense, Father, she thought, but you’re not the man you once were. I will succeed where you failed. “I destroyed the cult in Manhattan by convincing one of its initiates that their precious Pater Patrum was not who he always claimed to be. The lunkheads here know he’s a god, but they think he’s the one and only. If I can convince them he’s just another petty Athanatos intent on reviving his own power—”
Zeus shook his head sadly. “That won’t work. I’ve heard them talking: Their ancestors have been soldiers in the Host stretching back for generations. They can’t question their leader now. You know how thanatoi are—they need a purpose to live. They won’t let you take that away from them. At least a dozen of the Swiss Guards are more loyal to my father than to the pope himself.”
“Does the pope know there’s a conspiracy right under his basilica?” she demanded.
“No. The Wily One is too clever for that. His syndexioi speak of keeping their movements secret, so even if earlier popes were members of the Host, the current one isn’t. And most of the Swiss Guards are just what they appear: young Christian men serving the Catholic Church.”
“Deeply oblivious young men whom we can’t count on to rescue us,” Selene said with a grimace.
She rose to her feet and began to pace the small chamber. She could never compete with Saturn in a
battle of wits, that much was clear. She’d have to use force. Which was just as well—she was much better at breaking things anyway. “This whole place is over a hundred feet below street level,” she said. “Which means they must’ve built ventilation shafts somewhere. Otherwise, we’d suffocate.”
Zeus didn’t even watch her prowling. He kept his eyes on the stone floor, scratching at it with an overlong pinky nail. “There are no vents.”
“True, they’re probably in the hallway. But the ducts have to run nearby. If I just knock a hole through the wall, then through the ductwork—”
“You are still goddess-strong?” He looked up eagerly.
“I’m stronger than most mortals,” she replied. “But as strong as I once was? No.” Saturn’s taurobolium might have somehow implanted her with Rhea’s spirit, but it hadn’t increased her physical strength. Zeus was right: Even if she could locate the ducts, she’d never be able to break through the plaster and brickwork, much less the metal. Still, she was no common girl, as Saturn named her. And she had not come this far just to let her father die.
She searched the room for tools or weapons but found only dust. The syndexioi had removed every item in her copious pockets. Her gold bow and arrows no doubt lay locked away in some Mithraic armory, ready to be used against her. Saturn had already recovered Mars’s spear—how many other divine weapons might he have access to? She bit back a groan of helplessness.
Her keen hearing picked up footsteps approaching the door of the schoolroom, and sudden fury chased all her doubts away. She had only the clothes on her back—but that would have to be enough.
She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and ripped off a length of fabric with her teeth. As the door opened, she leaped toward the armored Miles guarding her grandfather. She wrapped the fabric around Mars’s spear and yanked it from the syndexios’s grasp before he even realized what had happened.
Without missing a beat, she spun the shaft and rammed its point through the man’s throat. She wrenched it back out, blood flying. Then wheeled toward Saturn.
But the Wily One had slipped past her. He stood in the center of the room, his sickle already held to Zeus’s throat.
“Do you remember?” he said quietly, his mouth bent to his son’s ear. “How you held your blade to my stomach in the dawn of time? How you cut out the children I had swallowed so they might rule at your side?” The story sounded ludicrous now. Hunched Zeus stood a full foot shorter than his Titan father, his body birdlike and shrunken in the stronger god’s grasp.
Saturn raised his eyes to Selene. “Now it’s my turn to slice open a god. Shall I do it right now, granddaughter?” He narrowed his gaze. “Or should I say … wife?”
Selene’s vision doubled, her stomach clenched. She saw Zeus before her both as the frail father she’d sought for so long—and as the glorious son she’d saved in the dawn of time. She loved with two hearts. Daughter and mother. Neither would allow her to risk Zeus’s life.
No matter how many of his men I kill, she realized, lowering the spear, as long as Saturn threatens Zeus, he can always make me surrender.
She didn’t bother resisting as three other syndexioi pounded up behind her, ripping away Mars’s spear and fastening chains tight around her ankles. Only then did Saturn lower his sickle. Zeus bowed his trembling head, but not before Selene saw the shame on his face.
Another man entered the room, the red-robed Heliodromus with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Without his mask, Selene recognized him by the constellation of moles on his cheek as the syndexios from Ostia. She’d taken his Swiss accent for a German one. In New York, a similarly garbed man had been Saturn’s second-in-command, capable of wielding several divine weapons. This man was younger than his American counterpart but no less fierce.
He knelt beside the slaughtered Miles and stared up at Selene, lips bared in a snarl. His hand moved toward the thick whip at his waist, but Saturn stopped him with a gesture.
“I’ve decided what to do with you, Diana,” the old man pronounced. “I would’ve waited for the solstice—sent you and your father off together—but I see the Great Mother’s spirit has already bloomed within you. The first time my traitorous wife died, it was a waste. Ignorant mortals scrabbling and gnawing at her like a pack of sharp-toothed rats until they finally brought her down. Her death was pointless. Squandered. This time, she will perish in a fitting sacrifice, and her power—your power—will become mine. Just as it always should have.”
The last thing Selene saw before the Heliodromus threw a hood over her face was Zeus’s crooked hand reaching toward her. A father’s futile attempt to protect her. A son’s desperate plea for help.
She struggled as all four men dragged her from the schoolroom. She fought until her wrists were bloody from straining against the handcuffs. Until her lungs burned with effort and the hood stuck to her face with her sweat and the bull’s gore. She fought until they drove the prongs of their Taser three times into her temples and sent her plummeting into darkness once more.
Chapter 21
PRETENDER
After several hundred yards of crawling through the tunnel behind the grave niche, Theo emerged into a small brick antechamber, spitting cobwebs from his mouth. His sliced wrist ached, dust coated his pants, and his hands shook with a toxic mix of anticipation and dread.
He stood with Scooter before a locked wooden door.
The God of Thieves whipped out his ever-present lock picks and went to work while Theo held him by the waist to maintain their invisibility. Scooter uttered a variety of creative curses at having to work without seeing his own hands, but before long the door swung soundlessly open.
Theo could hear the smirk in Scooter’s voice. “So much for high-tech security at the Vatican.”
“I guess the blood libation was security enough.”
Scooter humphed. He clearly still hadn’t forgiven Theo for slitting his wrist.
A low-ceilinged passageway sloped downward before them, its walls hewn from the archeological past—a conglomeration of brick layers, paving stones, marble slabs, and raw earth. Potsherds and bits of broken statuary peeked out from amid the layers like lettuce between slices of ham. Steve Atwood would be salivating, Theo thought. But he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for archeology with his own death staring him in the face.
After another hundred yards, the rough passage dumped them into a better-preserved corridor of well-matched brick punctuated by several other hallways branching in every direction. He had no idea how to find the mithraeum’s main sanctuary, but at least no guards patrolled the corridor. He had time to search.
“Where is everybody?” whispered Scooter.
“Maybe off at some pre-solstice ritual,” Theo answered under his breath. Let’s just hope they’re not all gathered inside the sanctuary. Otherwise, I’m going to have to die very, very quietly.
Theo walked cautiously toward the end of the corridor, where a door half again as wide as the others indicated a room of some importance. He pressed his ear against it. Nothing. He took a deep breath and pushed.
The foul stench of iron and rot slammed against his senses. He took a step; the sole of his shoe lifted with a sucking pop. He switched on his flashlight and took off the Helm of Invisibility so the beam could illuminate the ground. Dried blood.
Trying not to gag, he raised the beam to illuminate the walls. Any hope that he’d found the mithraeum’s sanctuary vanished when he saw the shape of the chamber: round instead of rectangular, its floor a wooden grate rather than the usual mosaic aisle.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Scooter said, his voice hushed and nervous. “It looks like a charnel house.”
Theo moved the flashlight lower, staring across the chamber’s floor. A single wide brown eye stared back.
A bull.
It lay on its side like a felled mountain, its beige tongue protruding obscenely between its jaws. A slice in its neck gaped like a second mouth, this one coa
ted in sticky red that ran down its white breast like a matador’s cape. A ram lay beside it, the pale curls of its pelt drenched crimson. Theo took an involuntary step back.
Scooter tightened his grip on Theo’s elbow. “Careful. We don’t want you to be the next sacrifice.”
He peered over his shoulder to find his heels an inch from the top of a precipitous stairwell. The grate beneath their feet hung suspended above another chamber. More blood coated the lower floor in a wide, dark puddle, its splattered edges reaching for the walls with inky tentacles. Droplets peppered the flagstones, the walls, the bottom steps. Selene had once explained to him how the police used blood splatter evidence to investigate crime scenes, but Theo didn’t need a cop to tell him that the animals’ blood had poured through the grate in a waterfall of gore.
A marble pine stood at the chamber’s focal point like a Christmas tree hung with bloody tinsel. Theo understood now. “It’s a Phrygianum,” he whispered. “A sanctuary for the Magna Mater.”
Red footprints led from the puddle to a door in the chamber’s wall. Someone, Theo realized with a shudder, stood in the path of this carnage.
The smell of death poured down his throat in a gagging cloud, an undeniable reminder of his fate. This was no game, no adventure. He forced himself to look at the dead bull once more. That’s going to be me. Staring eyes and stony flesh and silent heart.
The reality he’d resisted ever since he’d left Dennis’s bacchanal now brought him to his knees. He felt the cold blood seeping through his pants and didn’t care. Scooter’s voice in his ear, begging him to stand up, seemed very far away. He closed his eyes, reaching for a vision of Selene. The sweep of her black hair. The smile in her silver eyes. He could almost feel her hand in his, her fingers long and cool and strong as they faced life together. She should never have died. He should never have let her go.
There, a kneeling petitioner in an ancient temple, his hands clasped against his chest, he offered up a silent prayer to whatever god or God might listen: Let me find her. Let me bring her back where she belongs.
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