“You broke my net.” Flint growled the words, but he sounded impressed. And touched.
Scooter’s grin broadened. “Yup.”
“And we noticed your other handiwork on the way up.” Flint still looked skeptical, but Selene could tell he wanted to trust his brother. “Interesting plumbing job.”
“Not bad, right? All part of the plan.”
Flint grunted. “A plan you’ve been working on for a very long time.”
Scooter laughed and put a hand to his heart. “I swear I did it all in the last few days after Father told me his proposal. I’ve turned the whole mountain into an instrument to help us open Tartarus. In just a few minutes, we’ll be tossing Grandpa in like a Skee-Ball at the state fair.” He kicked the bound Titan with surprising force, eliciting a strangled grunt. “I know, it doesn’t seem possible,” he went on with a wave of his hand. “But some of us are still quite supernatural.”
The first drops of rain spat from the sky. Thunder rolled overhead as the clouds darkened to slate, obscuring everything but the shelf of rock on which they rested and the narrow summit above.
A feeble voice spoke, barely audible beneath the storm’s growl. “Hermes has always been loyal.” Zeus’s eyes had finally opened; he stared at Maryam through his newly repaired glasses, seeing his daughter for the first time. His wrinkled mouth puckered with distress. “He did not abandon us all.”
Maryam stared back at him, silent but unbowed.
“I brought her,” Selene jumped in. “According to the prophecy, her spear’s the only thing that can defeat the giants in case more than just pneuma comes out of Tartarus.”
Zeus coughed hoarsely, curling on his side like a slug sprinkled with salt. But he found the strength to say, “We don’t need this … Christian. We have plenty of other gods here.”
As if heeding his summons, the rest of the Athanatoi emerged, one by one, from behind the jagged stone pillars on the summit. First Persephone—called Cora—with her dyed-blond hair and sagging skin, looking like she hadn’t slept in days. Selene recognized the woman at her side: her mother, Demeter. The Goddess of Grain looked about the same age as her own daughter, elderly but still tall and imposing. She wore her gray hair wrapped around her head in intricate braids. Millennia spent in the fields had turned her skin copper-brown. She wore a thick woolen poncho woven in geometric designs of green and gold and seemed completely unfazed by the weather. She’s been living in Peru, Selene remembered. Olympus must seem a mere hill compared to the Andes. With eyes the color of new wheat, Demeter looked down at her nieces and nephews with more curiosity than affection. She had only ever loved her daughter.
Hestia, Zeus’s eldest sibling, wore snow pants and a large hooded parka. A bit extreme for Greece in June—even this high on the mountain—but the Goddess of the Hearth had lived in Tunisia for years; she’d be woefully unprepared for the cold. Selene had heard her aunt was close to death. Indeed, the old woman was hunched so far over her cane that she seemed half her sister’s size. The fur-trimmed hood hid her face, but a long wisp of hair had come loose, whipping around her head like a tendril of fog, impossibly long, so fine and white that it was nearly invisible.
Hestia’s brother Poseidon supported her by the elbow. The blue-haired god had a white mane now. A beard as long as Zeus’s, twined with seashells, covered much of a face as craggy as a barnacled hull. All the Athanatoi tried to retain some of their attributes, but most had abandoned their old costumes for the sake of blending in. Poseidon must’ve lived far from the eyes of men, because he wore a fishnet cloak, a horsehair scarf, and a sharkskin tunic that made him look like an aging Inuit hunter. He held his whalebone trident before him, the prongs tilting to the side as if he couldn’t quite support its weight.
June stood a few steps away from her immortal siblings, bundled in a sensible fleece vest and pom-pommed hat. The sight of Flint on the slope below did nothing to erase the vexation stiffening her features. When she shifted her regard to her frail ex-husband, her puckered frown hardened to a slit-eyed scowl.
“Your mother looks pissed,” Selene murmured to Flint.
“She’s never trusted her husband, remember?” He didn’t remind her that he’d never trusted Zeus either.
On her other side, Theo cast them a surprised look. “That’s Hera, Zeus’s wife?”
“Yeah. But don’t remind her,” Selene replied. “Aunt June thinks she’s married to a hot Italian boy. Long story.”
She bent and hoisted her father into her arms like a babe before scrambling the last few yards to the top of the summit. Theo helped her lower him back to the ground, propping the old man’s back against an outcropping that sheltered him from the worst of the wind and rain.
Zeus could barely sit upright, yet his rheumy eyes were bright with excitement as Scooter dragged over a large duffel and opened it before him. He patted his son on the shoulder. “Thank you, my Giver of Good Things.” He pulled Athena’s aegis over his shoulders with shaking hands, then dragged out the heavy metal lightning bolt.
He could barely lift his own weapon, much less wield it.
June rested her fists on her hips and barked at her ex-husband, “If you can barely stand, how the heck are you going to open Tartarus?”
“I’m not going to.” A smile cracked Zeus’s chapped lips despite his ex-wife’s nagging. “Only one man on this mountain can do that.” He stared out—not at his children, but past them. Selene twisted around.
Theo pointed dumbly at his own chest.
Zeus held out his lightning bolt to the professor as another crash of thunder split the sky. “The storm is here, Makarites. Now bend it to your will.”
Chapter 46
HE WHO MARSHALS THUNDERHEADS
The pantheon is complete, and I stand at its center.
How the hell did that happen?
Theo stood at the very top of Mount Olympus, Zeus’s thunderbolt in his hands, as heavy as a gold ingot and humming in tune to the electricity crackling across the sky. He had come to witness the Athanatoi. Now they witnessed him instead.
Flint and Philippe watched him dubiously. Maryam remained expressionless, although Theo noticed she hadn’t removed her armor, and her eyes kept drifting greedily to the tasseled aegis around Zeus’s shoulders. Esme, her arm looped through her son’s, seemed more worried about the spitting rain dotting her silk kerchief than about what might happen when Theo hurled the lightning bolt. Dennis gave him a thumbs-up, along with a sarcastic smirk.
Theo twisted around to look at Demeter, Poseidon, Persephone, Hera, and Hestia. None of these Athanatoi were what he’d imagined; only Demeter seemed to have retained much of her divine majesty. Despite his maritime costuming, Poseidon looked more like a vagrant beachcomber than a God of the Sea. Hera—June—looked like a middle-aged substitute teacher on an ill-considered summer vacation. Still, Theo found himself trying to memorize each face, each detail of their clothing, their posture, their expressions, as if still fulfilling his promise to Zeus to record the event like Homer or Hesiod.
Yet none of that mattered anymore. Selene mattered.
She stood right in front of him, her brow furrowed with worry, but her feet planted firmly, as if to say, This could all go very wrong … but I’m with you.
He’d seen the horror on her face when she realized she might be dragging her father—and him—into some unknown danger. It had made him understand just how much she’d been willing to do to keep him safe—even deny herself happiness. All this time, he’d thought she’d easily made the choice to leave him. Now he knew it had nearly broken her. She’d finally told him the truth. And as much as it clearly worried her to watch him take the lightning bolt, she hadn’t said a word to stop him. She let him make the decision. Finally, they were equals.
Inch by inch over the past two days, she’d cracked open the doors to his heart, which he’d so carefully sealed against her. Now, finally, they swung wide.
Or, perhaps, he admitted, I flung them open myself the moment she appea
red in the airport, ready to be my partner again.
He looked down at the twisted metal in his hands. I can do this. I can do this. He would’ve loved to give the honor to Dennis or Scooter or anyone else, but he knew that Zeus’s thunderbolt would work only for a Makarites. No faded god could wield it.
He would’ve preferred some prior notice, of course. Time to prepare for such a weighty task. But he understood why Zeus had kept this part of his role a secret. After their escape from the Vatican’s mithraeum, Theo had made it perfectly clear he never intended to use divine weapons again on behalf of the Olympians.
So I’ve already been manipulated into breaking that vow, he thought wearily, but I told Selene I’d help save her father. He tightened his grip on the twisted bolt. How can I refuse now?
Saturn, still bound in his golden chains, sat at Theo’s feet. Stripped of his Mithraic finery, he huddled shirtless on the bare rock. The lightning that had burned away half his hair on Liberty’s torch had also left a swath of tight skin stretching from his face to the center of his chest. There, two tall ridges of older scar tissue formed a perfect “X” that sliced from rib cage to hip.
Scooter had removed the sickle’s handle from Saturn’s mouth, but the razor-sharp collar still pressed against his throat, a silent reminder that if he dared try to manipulate his children with his words, they’d take off his head.
The God of Time looked up at Theo with eyes full of hate, but he made no move to attack. He merely seethed silently, occasionally casting furious looks at Zeus, the man who’d left the scars upon his stomach when he carved him open and freed the other Olympians so long ago.
“Don’t worry about Grandpa,” Scooter assured Theo with a wink of encouragement. “He’ll be out of the way soon enough.”
Zeus struggled to his feet, waving away Scooter’s help. He swayed a little but remained upright, then lifted his hands as if to test the raindrops, his face suffused with rapture.
The storm suddenly intensified, and in an instant, the rain turned to tiny ice balls, pelting Theo’s head and shoulders. The older gods grumbled and pulled up hoods and cloaks to shield themselves. Selene only scowled. Hail the size of chickpeas stung Theo’s face.
Sudden thunder crashed like cymbals beside his ear, followed instantly by a flash of lightning so bright he had to close his eyes. Not again, not again, he prayed, remembering the bolt that had nearly killed him and Selene above the Statue of Liberty.
Another lightning bolt, visible even through his closed eyelids, streaked overhead like brilliant ichor in a god’s branching vein. Someone shouted at him, but he could barely hear the words above the now constant roll of thunder.
“Open your eyes, Makarites!” Zeus stood before him now. He’d lifted his rain-streaked glasses onto the top of his head, revealing hard gray eyes. The hands he laid on top of Theo’s had ceased to tremble. No one could think this man feebleminded. His voice resounded as he hollered, “Use the bolt!”
“To do what?” Theo squinted through the pounding hail at the currents that forked and skipped across the sky. “Don’t you have enough lightning already?”
“The bolt controls more than that,” Zeus insisted. “It controls the wind, the storm, the sky. Send the wind into the mountain. Into the plateau.”
“I don’t know how to do that!”
It was Scooter’s turn to press him now. He stepped close enough to shout in Theo’s ear, “Did you know how to fly before you wore my hat?”
Theo reached back for the memory of the first time he’d donned the winged cap, the first time he’d picked up Orion’s sword or put on Hades’ helm. Scooter was right; he was capable of all sorts of magic.
He turned his attention to the metal bolt. He hefted it in one hand, holding it around the middle like he’d seen Zeus do in statues all over Greece. The bolt wants to be closer to the storm. Theo wasn’t sure how he knew that.
He lifted it higher, forcing himself not to cringe at the thought of holding a metal conductor above his head while lightning streaked from the clouds.
“Hold still!” Zeus shouted at him. “It’s coming!”
WHAT’S coming? Theo thought, although he already knew the answer.
This is the end. This is the trap.
Distantly, he heard Selene scream.
A finger of lightning streaked down and slammed against the metal bolt’s tip.
Theo didn’t die. Instead, he felt the bolt’s energy course through him, lifting every hair on his body and surrounding his flesh in an eerie blue glow. In that moment of power, he became the storm itself.
He could no longer hear Selene’s shouts nor see her terrified face as she rushed forward, only to be stopped by the force of the sudden vortex that surrounded him.
He stood in the center of a funnel of wind and ice, each particle bursting into fluorescent light like green tracer fire and eddying around him in patterns that suddenly made perfect sense. He reached out a hand to grab the wind itself. He threw it over his shoulder, down to the Skala plateau beyond the ridge. The wind arced in response, gathering force and speed as it whistled past his ears.
He turned to watch it go, a beautiful, bright, cascading stream. With vision as keen as a god’s, Theo saw the glowing wind rip the caps from the small pipes dotting the plateau, then pour through them into the heart of the mountain.
A low moan built beneath him, vibrating through the rock and into his feet.
“Keep going!” Zeus’s voice rang above the storm.
Theo obeyed, pushing more wind through the sky and into the ground, the currents so luminous he could see them through the rock, could watch them meet the underground lake that had been funneled upward from the spring. The wind collected in the chamber, pressurized by the rising water until it ripped upward to shoot through shafts drilled in the spires of rock that surrounded Mytikas.
It’s a hydraulis. A water organ, the last sane part of him marveled, even as he heard Selene dimly screaming, “Stop, Theo! Stop!”
“Now, Saturn!” came Zeus’s voice. “Be the God of Time once more!”
From the corner of his eye, Theo saw Saturn glare defiantly at his son. Scooter still held the leash attached to the sickle-collar. A sharp yank and the collar squeezed tighter. A line of blood appeared on Saturn’s throat, and the old man lurched to his feet.
“Time of heroes. Time of glory,” he began, his voice a resonant thrum. Soon, the roar of the storm drowned out the Titan’s words, but Theo still felt their power. With his heightened perceptions, he watched the color of the wind around him darken from fluorescent green to the red of old blood. Its roar shifted, tuned, steadied.
The mountain sang.
The tones rumbled the earth, too low for even divine ears to hear, then rose in laddered chords into a piercing melody too beautiful to comprehend before descending once more. Over and over, the chords resounded. Indescribable. Unbearable.
Electricity pulsed through Theo’s body. It didn’t sear his flesh like a lightning strike—it burned him from the inside out. A sphere of blue-white heat spun in his gut like a supernova. Ever faster, ever larger, incinerating everything in its path.
And still Theo played his instrument.
Selene wept. This will kill him, she knew, trying once more to reach for Theo through the swirling funnel of ice and rock that surrounded him. It wasn’t the hail that stopped her—she didn’t care if it ripped the skin from her body—it was the wind. It flew tornado-strong, impassable as iron.
All around her, the mountain roared. There was no music, no melody, just a continuous rush of sound like a jet passing overhead, growing louder by the second.
The glow around Theo turned from blue to white to a color beyond color, too bright to bear. A mortal surrounded by electricity more brilliant than any god’s aura. Theo was the wick at the heart of a flame. Soon he would be nothing but ash.
“What have you done?” she screamed at her father. He lured me in, she knew now, pretending to love me, all so he could
get his lightning bolt back—and use Theo to wield it.
Zeus had eyes only for the storm. His body remained aged, but the gentle old man she’d rescued had vanished. His eyes were eagle-sharp as he watched his plan unfold, and though his body trembled in the force of the wind, he wore the tasseled aegis with all the pride of a mighty god. He raised his arms, the wind whipping his long white beard—and smiled.
Beside him, Scooter stood solemnly, singing along to his grand hydraulis—the colossal successor to the simple reed pipes he’d invented long ago—as if music, not just noise, poured through his instrument. Tears stood in his eyes as he watched Theo’s end.
He looked mesmerized by the scene before him, but when Selene lunged toward Zeus, desperate to somehow stop the storm, Scooter moved quickly to block her way. She tackled her brother to the ground, knocking off his winged cap and smashing his skull against the jagged rocks.
“Don’t you see?” he gasped. “Theo’s sacrifice will be worth it!”
“You knew he would die!”
“But it’s going to work!”
“What’s going to work?” she cried, picking him up and slamming him once more into the ground before Maryam and Philippe managed to drag her away.
Scooter staggered to his feet and pointed. “Turn around.”
She did. Where Theo had stood, a field of golden barley rippled in a gentle breeze beneath a glorious blue sky.
From somewhere behind her, she heard Philippe’s awestruck French cursing.
The storm had stopped, the air hung cold and still, and the sky above the barley blended seamlessly into the sky above Olympus. Yet the field itself seemed to float in midair a few inches above the rocky summit, a vision seen through a frameless window.
A portal.
“Where’s Theo?” she begged, even though she already knew the answer.
He was gone. Winked out like a shooting star.
“He was the price—” Zeus began heavily.
Selene didn’t wait to hear his explanation. She crossed to her father in a single long stride. This time Scooter didn’t stop her.
Olympus Bound Page 35
