Brandywine Investigations

by Angel Martinez

  As Ava returned to remove his glasses and to loop two more ropes around his horns to tie them off on a pipe in front of him, his chest tightened on perhaps the saddest thing of all. When he died, he would have only the memory of a handful of beautiful evenings and nothing else besides regrets.

  Dio let the hands grope him and caress him, hands sliding over his ass, between his legs, cupping his balls. The ecstasy was close, just under the surface, though losing it here in the club might not be the best idea. The club owners let them get away with a lot. Orgies on the dance floor could potentially get them banned. Yeah. A little self-denial, maybe. For once. Don't let it get away from you.

  Not tonight, when someone waited for him so patiently, someone he believed was the whole reason for him finding any speck of control at all. He tossed the hair out of his eyes and searched the back wall. No Leander. He shook some of the hands off, giving himself room to turn as he searched the crowd. Fafnir was dancing with Hermes. Sometimes Herm managed to get the big grump out on the floor. George was the happy peanut butter in the middle of a Theo-and-Mak sandwich. Jack, where was Jack?

  There. Near the door, right where he should have been. Dio fought free of the crowd, squirming through the tightly packed bodies until he was within shouting distance of Jack.

  "Where's Leander?"

  Jack shouldered his way through the shout in Dio's ear, "He left with that woman who works with Lady Hestia."

  "What woman?" Grace? No, Grace would never come to a concert.

  "Short, blonde, forearm crutches?"

  "Ava?"

  "Yeah, I think that's her name."

  Ava. The name hit him like a lead pipe to the back of the head. "You're sure she left with him?"

  "Yeah. Boss? She's one of ours. I thought you'd be fine with it."

  Dio gave Jack a quick squeeze and ran down his brother, tugging at him until Hermes followed him outside.

  "Herm, I have to go. Is your door still open for Leander?"

  "Yeah. What's eating at you? What's wrong?"

  "I'm not sure. I have a bad feeling, but I'll just sound crazy if I try to explain. Look, I'll take a cab back to your place. I'm going through to the library to see if Leander's there. Gather the troops for me. Call Uncle Hades. Check Auntie Hestia's building, since Leander might not be in the library."

  Hermes took him by the arms and shook him. "Dio, why? What the hell is this all about?"

  "He left with Ava. Leander did. He left with her. And didn't tell me. And no text. Herm, I know it's crazy, but I think he's in trouble."

  "All right." Herm gave him a long, appraising look. "All right. I'm going to see if Anthony's still inside. Then we'll go to the Domestica building in force while you check to see if he made it home safe. I hope like hell he did. You find him, you come back out and call, okay?"

  Dio nodded, his heart sledgehammering against his ribs. "And if I don't, I'll call and see if you did."

  "You need cab fare?" Herm gave him a quick hug when he shook his head. "Good. Go, go."

  Dio raced down the street and hailed a cab by jumping out in front of it. He knew he looked wild and maybe dangerous, but he flung himself into the backseat, yelling out the address as he handed the cabbie a fifty.

  "A hundred more if you make it there in ten minutes."

  The money, as it often did, erased any hesitation, and the cabbie took off into traffic, dancing through the cars as only a New York cab driver can. They made it to Herm's building in nine minutes, and Dio made good on his promise before he shot out of the cab and into the building past the astonished doorman. He was here so often though that no one questioned him. Security knew him as Mr. Angelus's little brother.

  Up the elevator that took too damn long, into Herm's condo and through the open library door in his guest room, Dio kept reminding himself where he would be when he came out. Third floor. By the Alexandrian stuff and junk. He had to make it to the other side of the library and up the stairs. Why couldn't they have built the closer set of stairs all the way to the third floor? No. He knew the answer. It would've been too close to Leander's rooms, and he would feel less secure that way.

  In his desperation to reach Leander, he ended up at dead ends twice, cursing a streak so blue it went ultraviolet. I know why he left. It bothered him, it did. Seeing people groping me. He left because I couldn't get my head out of my ass fast enough to see it bothered him. Please, please be safe. Even if you never want to speak to me again.

  When he finally reached Leander's door, a hollow feeling of something profoundly wrong had settled in his chest.

  "Leander?" He knocked first, then pounded. "Leander! Just come to the door. You don't even have to open it. Just tell me you got home okay."

  Nothing. No hooves pacing through the rooms. No shuffling of someone listening behind the door. No huffed breaths of upset Leander. Just terrible, ice-around-the-heart silence.

  Dio hurried down the hall to the little cat door the pandas used to reach their room. While he could fit through it, he did shove it open and yell inside, "Jane! Jane, I need to talk to you!"

  Sleepy twitters reached him. A wet nose pushed against his hand before a red-and-white head poked through the door to scold at him.

  "Please, Jane. Leander's missing. I'm pretty sure he's missing. He won't answer the door, and I don't think he's in there, but I don't know where he is, and I'm so fucking worried I think my heart's gonna do an alien-baby thing and rip through my chest."

  Jane turned her head to twitter into the panda room and slid through the door to join him in the hallway. She trotted to Leander's door and sniffed around. When she lifted her head, her twitter was in the negative.

  "Right. I didn't think he came home. But where is he?"

  She sat up on her haunches a moment, statue still as if deep in thought. Then she took off down the hall as fast as she could run. Dio hurried to catch up, keeping his questions to himself, sliding and slipping around the corners she took unexpectedly. They raced down the stairs, past the third floor, the second, to the first. Then she was off again through the corridors until they reached the halls around the Circulation Desk.

  Here she stopped again, sniffing, before she turned to Dio twittering in distress.

  "Scared? Why was he scared? Jane, was someone with him?"

  She turned to fix him with a stern look. "Chek."

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck! Where did they go? Can you tell?"

  Instead of answering, she took off again, heading toward a part of the first floor where he'd never been. The shelves and displays suddenly ended along what he assumed was the outer wall, giving way to unadorned wood paneling on either side of a huge iron door. The door had been propped open with a shoe. A woman's white sneaker. If he'd been a real detective, he would've checked the shoe size, but right then he didn't give a flying rat's ass at the moon. With Jane pawing at the door, it was a sure bet Leander was down there.

  He held a finger over his lips, asking Jane to stay quiet before he picked up the shoe and eased the door open. Some things from the meeting in Auntie Hestia's room had stuck, and he did recall someone saying that Leander was the only one who could open the basement door. Carefully, he replaced the shoe before he and Jane started down. They were halfway down the steps when he spotted Leander, on his knees, cruelly trussed by his horns so he couldn't move his head, with his hands bound behind him. Every logical speck left in Dio's brain fled screaming.

  "Leander!"

  He leaped down the steps and dashed to his beautiful librarian, who watched him with wild eyes but didn't say a word. Dio had his hands on the uppermost knot on his right horn when something slammed into him from behind. He staggered and turned in time to see a length of metal pipe coming at him from the corner of his eye. Didn't give him enough time to prevent the pipe from connecting hard with his face.

  His last view was from the floor, staring up into Leander's horrified eyes, Jane's little body stretched out unmoving beside him, before the pipe struck once more and the
lights went out.

  "No!" The poison was working its way through Leander's system, the last protest nearly a full whisper. But it was too late. He couldn't move, and now she had Dio and Jane as well.

  Dio, my Dionysus, if only you would have looked before rushing to save me.

  "Well, that was rude." Ava set the pipe on the ventilation fan housing she had leaned against to deliver the terrible blows to Dio's head. "A little inconvenient, but not too much. He is a resurrection god, after all."

  "What… do you mean?" Leander croaked out. "Ava, what is… is this?"

  "Oh, I suppose I can explain while I get him ready." Ava pulled the duct tape out again and rolled Dio to begin taping his hands behind his back as she had Leander's, from wrist to elbow. "You're the librarian, so you really should know these things."

  "What… things? Ava, why?"

  "The why is pretty obvious. And I think you've figured out by this time that I'm the one who stole the scroll."

  "Yes. Bull of the Sun."

  "Good. You got that far. Lady Eris had mentioned it to me as something that might hold answers for me. Then in all that research for Lady Hestia, I stumbled across what that scroll is. It contains a ritual to grant godhood. Immortality. A perfect body without pain, just like the gods I get to watch walk by and ignore me every day. Perfect immortality while I suffer and get weaker every day."

  "Help… Did you ask?"

  Ava shot him a disgusted look. "Of course I asked. Lady Hestia said there was nothing she could do. I'm mortal. I have to accept my lot in life so I can move on. Anyway, this scroll—Lady Eris helped me find it. She's been the only one willing to listen. Willing to help. But then I had to learn the ritual. I thought it would need a sacrifice, and I was right, but it needs a specific sacrifice. The blood of the eternal sun. That's you, hon. You're the son of the sacred bull."

  "Not… the sun," Leander said in desperate denial.

  "It's not literal, silly. The sun is a ball of incandescent gas. You can't get literal sun blood. But something immortal, yes. And the sun refers specifically to immortals who die and are reborn. Resurrection gods like you and this barely sane degenerate. So now I have two. The ritual should be twice as powerful."

  "Can't kill us… in cold blood." There, his voice was nearly normal now. He could shift his knees to ease the discomfort on the hard floor. Why didn't someone come? If Dio was here, someone had to be looking for them, didn't they?

  "I know." Ava nodded as she secured Dio's feet. "It's a terrible thing, and I had to think long and hard about it. But you're not listening. You're both resurrection gods. I can kill you by sacrificing you, but you'll just come back. It's going to be painful, and I'm sorry about that, but it's not permanent."

  "How… will you kill us?"

  "It has to be blood. Sorry about that too. I'm going to have to slit your throats. But we'll do his first, since he's out cold now. That would be more humane, wouldn't it?" She pulled a long, wickedly curved knife from her pack and set it on the floor.

  Stones piled up inside Leander's chest, taking up all the room and compressing his lungs. The blade in the dark. The terrible pain. Bleeding out onto the stones, alone, in agony. So cold… so cold…

  "I feel bad about the girl. I really do." Ava was still speaking from several miles away. "But she wasn't supposed to be there. Lady Eris swore the gallery was empty. And the girl would've seen and asked questions. I thought, I was so sure, that her god— her god!—would have the decency to bring her back from the dead. But no. Gods are selfish. If it doesn't benefit them, why should they bother?"

  She knelt down beside Dio with a leather bag, out of which she began to pour a red line of powder, colored sand, or more likely, something far less innocent. The powder described an enclosed shape around both Ava and Dio, a circle with spike shapes protruding every inch or so. A representation of the sun. Blood pooled under Dio's head where she had struck the hardest blow and matted his hair from the final one. Jane lay so terribly still. Impossible to say if she still breathed. Why did she have to hurt poor little Jane?

  He wanted to scream, to faint, to hide, but he couldn't even turn his head away from this horror. All his size, all his strength, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing. Dio moaned and whimpered softly, though he didn't move, and the sound pierced Leander, a spear of pain so sharp it deadened his despair. In that moment of agony over not being able to gather Dio close and comfort him, something new stirred in the depths of his heart.

  Leander, passive, quiet, gentle, able to count the times he'd raised his voice over three thousand years on one hand, Leander Asterion found a spark of anger. While Dio's anger clouded his judgment, Leander found that this spark of blue-white heat in his own chest cleared the miasma of fear from his mind. He couldn't allow this. He couldn't simply sit here and watch her hurt the god he loved.

  Hurt him more. Gods die. I know they do. Dio's own grandfather died. Just because his family saved him before, that doesn't guarantee any sort of resurrection.

  The still-reasonable kernel in his brain understood that Ava had no way of knowing whether they would live again or not. She simply needed a justification, a way to ameliorate the terrible crime she was about to commit, as she had justified Meghan's brutal murder. Leander tried pulling against the tape around his arms, hoping he could tear it, but none of the tape budged, not the slightest movement in his bindings.

  "You have… have blood in your circle already." Yes, and still pooling since you hurt him so badly. "Won't it… Doesn't it ruin the ritual?"

  "No, no, a little extra blood is fine." She waved a hand in an airy dismissal before pulling a silver bowl out of her pack.

  Words etched along the rim in old Minoan snaked around the bowl, though Leander couldn't read them without his glasses. The only symbol he could make out was a ritual spiral indicating eternity. He wanted to bellow his frustration as Ava began to cut Dio's T-shirt off with a pair of shears. His growing desperation had him pulling against the ropes, trying to yank his head one way or another. Without any leverage, any momentum though, he could break neither the pipe in front of him or the vent behind him, and the ropes themselves held fast. But as he squirmed and pulled, he unintentionally moved one shoulder and then the other, back and forth, causing his arms to jerk up and down inside the tape.

  Something had loosened. Where pulling outward had failed, moving his arms up and down against each other had moved the tape. If he could move it just that little bit to reach with his fingers, begin a tear at the bottom…

  "Sit still, Leander. You'll just hurt your head." Ava had caught his movements, but she was distracted, trying to gather Dio's thick, wild hair up and out of the way. Perhaps getting hair in the blood would spoil it.

  Trying to keep the rest of his body as still as possible, Leander worked on moving only his arms. Left arm up a quarter inch, right arm down. Up and down, a fraction at a time. Push a bit with his forearms as he could. Loosen the tape just a bit more.

  "You may want to close your eyes," Ava said as she took Dio's head in her lap, which would have been an oddly tender gesture if it hadn't been to position his throat over the silver bowl. "From what I've seen, you seem fond of him. No idea why. Oh, he is pretty. I can see someone so lonely being taken with him, I suppose. But you're such a gentle soul, Leander. I'd rather you didn't watch."

  He couldn't help the sob that escaped him. The tape wasn't cooperating fast enough. He had his fingers on it, but it wouldn't tear. No matter what he did, it would be too late, and Dio would bleed his life out into that accursed bowl.

  "Poor thing. I'm sorry for causing you so much distress. Just remember it's temporary."

  Something tickled Leander's palm. A bug? No. Too warm. A paw came to rest on his lower back and tugging started at the tape. Leander held his breath, not wanting to give anything away. His slid his gaze sideways, and yes, Jane no longer lay where she had been. She was behind him, gnawing at the tape. It was a valiant effort, but she couldn't possibly che
w quickly enough.

  Leander strained against the tape while Jane chewed, pulling back against the ropes in front. The knife was in Ava's hand. She yanked Dio's head back to expose his throat. Wild anguish gave Leander strength he didn't know he had, and though the pain from pulling against his horns was blinding and the tape cut into his skin, he pulled harder.

  The knife flashed as she put it against Dio's throat.

  A creak of protest came from the pipe.

  She pressed down, drawing blood, apparently hesitating as she drew slow, measured breaths.

  Three drops fell into the silver bowl, and Leander bellowed, yanking back hard as the pipe broke with a shriek. With his arms still behind him, he surged forward and slammed into Ava's head with the side of his right horn, hurling her sideways. The knife flew from her grip and she screamed in rage, scuttling after it along the floor. Not quite free but no longer helpless, Leander finally ripped through the remaining tape still holding his arms and snatched Dio to him, cradling him against his chest.

  "Stay there, Ava. Don't make me hurt you," Leander panted, keeping Ava in sight as she recovered the knife and glared at them with bared teeth. "You may not have him. Dionysus, my Dionysus, will not be your blood sacrifice."

  "I don't need him. I just need you. And you're still tied to an air vent."

  Ava crawled toward him, knife in one hand, vial of potion in the other, and Leander quickly realized that he wouldn't be able to hold onto Dio, reach a spot where he could lower his horns, and defend them both all at once. The pipe section still attached to his ropes hindered his movements. The ones behind him prevented him from standing. He backed away on his knees to gain more slack, but Ava smiled, her serenity regained, and hefted the vial. The contents would most likely paralyze him again. He might be able to dodge it if she threw it, if he could move quickly enough.