The Blood of Athens

by Amy Leigh Strickland

  xx.

  It is said that once, a murderer, pursued

  by the parents of the man that he had killed,

  fled from the city to hide in the forest

  and was followed there.

  Along the river bed he saw a lion,

  and so, to escape the beast, he climbed a tree.

  But climbing through the tree he saw a serpent

  and so he jumped down.

  As he fell towards the surface of the river,

  A crocodile popped up and snapped its great jaws.

  It caught the murderer and broke his body,

  killing him at once.

  There is a lesson to be learned from this tale:

  when you stoop to take the life of another,

  you'll find no refuge on the land, in the air,

  nor in the waters.

  “A human being is only breath and shadow.”

  -Sophocles

  XX.

  “What the--” Teddy jumped out of the driver's seat and chased after Jason as he ran to the fallen man. The Titan lay dead, his face frozen in a distorted mixture of unharmonious features. Jason reached out to check his pulse and felt something invisible block his hand.

  “Oh, shit, Peter,” he said. He grabbed what he assumed were Peter's shoulders and turned him over. Peter faded back into visibility, his head covered in blood, his limbs twisted and broken.

  “Call 911!” Jason shouted, “And then get the hell out of here.” He threw his phone at Teddy. Teddy dialed the number, set the phone on the concrete, and ran back to his car.

  Frank looked over the edge of the roof. “What happened?” he asked, wiping a thick coating of sweat from his brow.

  Jason took off his coat and laid it over Peter to keep him warm. “Don't move Peter,” he said, though he wasn't sure if the barely breathing boy could hear him. There was a gurgling response. Peter was choking on blood.

  The voice of the 911 dispatcher on speaker phone faded into background noise and Jason worked, trying to help stabilize Peter without any supplies. Frank jumped down off the roof, landing on his feet and sinking into the soft lawn. He had Lewis draped over his shoulder. Lewis was awake, but clearly concussed. “That's Zach's car,” Lewis said, pointing to the Tesla Roadster parked hidden in the shadow of the building.

  Jason took the keys out of the dead Titan's pocket and threw them to Frank. “Go on,” he said as a siren sounded in the distance. “Take it back to Celene's. You can't be found here.”

  Frank ran with Lewis still over his shoulder.

  “Put me down, I’m fine,” Lewis said.

  Frank ignored him and kept running until he got to the Roadster. He set Lewis down, and Lewis staggered before leaning against the car and holding his head. His face was swelling and turning a deep shade of purple.

  “Man, you hit me.”

  Frank grunted as he unlocked Zach's car and jumped in. Lewis took the passenger's seat.

  “You actually thought I was a Titan?”

  “Not now. Where the hell are Zach and June?” Frank asked as he started up the car.

  “Certainly not in the trunk. That thing barely holds anything... wait.” Lewis rubbed his head, “Zach installed a GPS tracker on the car in case it got stolen.” He flipped open the glove box. Zach's iPhone fell on the floor. The case looked scuffed, like it had recently been dropped, but it turned on. Lewis logged in to the application for the tracker and held it up show to Frank as they peeled out of the parking lot. “We've got a map of everywhere this puppy has been in the last twenty four hours,” he said. “Turn left up here.”

  The Lightning Green Roadster was out of sight just as the police and ambulance arrived at the school. Sirens wailed and blue and red flashing lights flooded the parking lot, casting Jason’s shadow across Peter’s still and broken form.

  “There is nothing permanent except change.”

  -Epicurus

  xxi.

  Lord Zeus called Hephaestus into his chambers

  to commission him for a special project.

  He had received a visit from his sister

  that very morning.

  Hestia, the goddess of the hearth and home,

  was wearied by the drama of her siblings

  and had asked to abdicate her golden throne

  on Mount Olympus.

  And so Zeus asked the Smith to craft a new throne

  for his son, young Dionysus, god of wine.

  The fledgling god would take his seat as one of

  the Olympians.

  “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

  -Plato

  XXI.

  The sleeves of Zach Jacob's suit weren't quite long enough to cover the rope burns on his wrists. He covered the left wrist with the watch his mother had given him for Christmas and covered his right wrist with his left hand. June clung to his arm, her fingers pressing painfully into his bicep as she forced herself not to cry. It was a beautiful, sunny day when they buried Peter.

  Across the cheap steel casket, Penny sobbed into her mother's shoulder. The entire Pantheon had shown up, but hardly anyone else had come. Peter's father stood at the head of the casket, stone sober and expressionless. Peter's science teacher and the minister were the only other attendees.

  When the service was over, a parade of cars left the cemetery, leaving a lone worker to turn the crank and lower the box into the ground.

  Zach sat on Celene's couch, still dressed from the funeral. His navy blue trench coat was draped over the back of the couch and his tie was loosened, but he hadn't gone home to change. He sat with his hands folded, his elbows rested on his knees, his fists pressed tight against his mouth. The reality of the last few days was finally settling. Nobody outside the Pantheon could know that Zach and June had been kidnapped or that Lewis and Frank had found them in a storage locker on the edge of town. Peter was dead. They were at war.

  “So,” started Lewis in an uncharacteristically somber tone, “What now?”

  “He told Peter something,” Frank said. “I heard it as I was coming to. He said there was a traitor in the Pantheon. Someone who freed the Titans.”

  Zach's eyes went straight to Nick, who didn't seem to notice the accusing glare.

  “Well,” June started, “If someone did that, and he wasn't just screwing with us, then they got double-crossed too.”

  “The Titan, Menoetius: he was the last of the four sons of Iapetus,” Minnie said. “Perhaps they're all that's coming.”

  “Or perhaps not,” said Nick. “Face it. Peter's dead. The police can't explain who that Titan was or why they were fighting on the roof. They can't explain how everyone saw Mrs. Matthews on the airplane when she was sitting in a morgue in Athens. People are asking a lot of serious questions and nobody has any good answers.”

  Jason sat in the large arm-chair, silent, his fingers steepled as he listened to the chatter around him. He hadn't spoken since arriving.

  “And then there's the blackmailer,” Teddy added.

  Minnie shook her head, “Spade won't be coming back. They found him dead in his apartment. Well, they found James Harper Junior. Spade was his work alias. There was a little back-page piece in the paper yesterday. Suicide.” She looked at Devon when she said this.

  “If he’s dead,” June asked, “Where’s the evidence?”

  They stared at her.

  “You didn’t honestly think that his death would erase this, did you? If he says he had photos, someone is going to find them.”

  “He died without family and the police don’t suspect foul play. It’ll probably be months before anyone finds the evidence, if they ever do,” Minnie said.

  “Or maybe he gave them to a lawyer with ‘open on the event of my death.’ If he saw Frank kill Atlas, he knew he needed insurance.”

  “I’m still not a hundred percent sure he had evidence,” Jason said. “He asked for so little money. He might have been bluffing.”

  “In a few days when the scene is
clear, we need to break in to his apartment and make sure there’s nothing to incriminate us,” June said. “We can’t wait too long or the land lord will clean it out.”

  “Peter's dead,” Penny said.

  Everyone stopped and looked at her. Peter hadn't been the most popular guy, but he had grown on them. He might have been dark and distant, but he was one of them. They were a family. You couldn't survive two Titan attacks and a handful of supernatural powers without growing some sort of bond. They all knew that Penny had been close to him. He was Penny's best friend.

  “Peter's dead,” she repeated after a long, awkward silence, “Peter died to protect us. And that means any one of us is mortal.”

  “He was going to get away from his father,” Jason said. Everyone let that thought sink in. It was no secret that Peter had more black eyes and split lips than were normal. The silence grew thick and heavy as it filled the room, and with each passing second it became harder to speak. What more could be said?

  There was a rumbling outside. The engine of a car cut out and a minute later the door creaked open. Valerie Hess poked her head in.

  Valerie was their sixteenth member, the goddess Hestia reborn. She hadn’t come on the trip and nobody had seen her since lunch at school two Fridays before.

  “Valerie,” Zach said, “We missed you at the funeral.”

  “Because nobody told me,” she said with tracks of tears running down her face. She closed the door.

  Silence.

  Valerie shook her head. “Remember, I was in Guatemala with my church. I haven’t had phone or internet.” She closed her eyes. “Nobody told me anything. I just got home and read about Peter's death on Facebook.”

  Celene cringed and rose to her feet. She wrapped her arms around Valerie and held her for a minute. Everyone else in the room was out of tears. They shared the misery of stinging eyes and the painful lump that forms in the throat after too much crying. “Come in, Valerie, sit down,” Celene said, “I'll make you a cup of tea and we'll fill you in.”

  “Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

  -Aristotle

  xxii.

  The Lord Zeus lay in bed with his wife, Hera.

  It was a cool evening in mid-summer.

  The gentle breeze was comfortable on his

  uncovered shoulders.

  The light of the stars cast everything in

  indistinct shades of indigo and shadow.

  Hera breathed warm against her husband's bare chest.

  All Olympus slept.

  The darkness came, not as a gradual fade

  or the sudden extinguishing of candles,

  but as a tidal wave that swallowed the stars:

  a blanket of night.

  With the darkness came a sudden chill that woke

  the King and his Queen from their slumber.

  But before Zeus could take up his bolts, it sprang

  forth to bind them both.

  “He lives not long who battles with the immortals, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he has come back from battle and the dread fray.”

  -Homer

  XXII.

  Jason sat on his sofa, watching Haley and the twins enact a soap opera with mismatched Happy Meal toys. The dialogue blended into white noise as he thought about the last week. Spade had come to him. Menoetius was planning to kill him and take his place. Somehow, as a bystander in all of this, he had become the center of it.

  His eyes flicked to the back of Haley's head. She sat, sucked into the drama of their role-play, completely unaware of the trouble that had threatened her world over the last year and a half.

  The doorbell rang. “Go play in your room with the twins for a bit, will you?”

  Haley pouted.

  “I'll bake cookies when I'm done.”

  The kids bolted to Haley's bedroom and slammed the door. Jason crossed through the mud room and opened the front door. Celene stood alone on the doorstep. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck.

  Jason had found it hard to sleep over the last few days. He felt like something cold and solid had climbed inside his chest and settled there. The weight of it sapped his energy throughout the day and jolted to wake him suddenly every time he drifted towards sleep. He was haunted. Jason thought about all of the ways that he could have done that night differently. How many scenarios could he run through in his head that left Peter Hadley alive? Jason held Celene and felt her warmth spread through him. She even smelled warm, like fresh earth and caramel. When she finally pulled back, Celene stepped into the house and Jason closed the door behind her. He slid his hands into his pockets. Here was a woman he loved, someone he was almost ready to take the plunge with. After the death of his wife, he had finally found someone who made him happy again. But he couldn't do it. He had other responsibilities.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” she asked.

  Jason looked at the floor. “You know that he was going to kill me and take my place to get to you, right?”

  “Well, thank God we sent Frank and Lewis instead.”

  “Thank God for Peter,” Jason said. Frank and Lewis would have been dead without Peter’s sacrifice.

  They stood quietly for a moment. That was a debt that could never be repaid.

  “And you know Spade expected me to raid my kids' college fund to pay him off?”

  Celene nodded, “We don't have to worry about that. He's gone.”

  “And you know I was the one left to burn in your house when Prometheus trapped you all in the jar. I was the one who was supposed to fall off that roof the other night.” Jason felt like he owed her a solid explanation for what he was about to do.

  Celene took his hand. Jason slipped his hand out of her grasp. “When Felicia died, I thought I would too. But, by some miracle, I'm still here. I have to be. I've got Haley and Jamie and Scotty to worry about. I can't be worrying about the next Titan to pop up, looking for vengeance. I care about you and I care about those kids, but I have to put my kids first. What would have happened to them if Menoetius had taken my identity? What would have happened if he had come home to this house while he picked you off, one-by-one. I can't do it. I can't put them at that kind of risk anymore. If it were just me you know I'd be by your side, ready to fight. But it's not just me.”

  Celene nodded. “I understand. I do.”

  “I have to cut myself off,” Jason said. “I've thought about this a lot and I hate it, but I have to. I can't be involved with any of it.”

  Celene clasped her hands together. A horrible knot in her stomach told her that this wasn't merely Jason leaving The Pantheon. He was leaving her, too. “This is goodbye, isn't it?”

  Jason nodded. There was a lump swelling in his throat that made it hard to talk. He wanted to apologize, to wrap her in his arms and kiss her, but he knew it wasn't the right thing to do. “It is,” he said. His voice got stuck in his throat and he had to push to force the next words out. “I'm sorry.”

  Celene took a deep breath. She nodded. “Alright,” she whispered. “Goodbye.”

  Celene turned and opened the front door. Jason wanted to tell her he loved her, as if that would ensure that she knew how hard this was for him, but he knew that it wasn't fair to leave someone with knowledge like that. “Goodbye,” he said.

  Celene stepped out into the cool, sunny afternoon. Jason closed the door and leaned against it for a long while. There was no turning back.

  June Jacobs hung the last of her clothing in Zach's closet. His half of the closet was a random assortment of jerseys, dress shirts, pants hangers, and jackets. June's half was organized by type (sweaters, tank tops, blouses, skirts) and then color (rainbow order). Obsessive organization was how June handled her feelings. It was much easier to sort articles of clothing than to think about her father shouting that she had thrown her life away by marrying Zach Jacobs in high schoo
l.

  Zach returned to the house from his trip to the mailbox and threw a pile of bills on the counter for his mother. Beneath his issue of Sports Illustrated was a postcard addressed to him. He hadn't gotten a chance to check it out or read it. He was too enthralled in the latest article about upcoming college football prospects (he was still choosing between scholarship offers at Florida State and Auburn) to pay much attention to it.

  Zach wandered back to the bedroom and threw a wedding card, the post card, and his car insurance bill on the bed while he read the article. June grabbed for the wedding card, hoping it held money, when she spotted the postcard. It was from the Canary Islands and featured a picture of a mountain, Mount Tiede, against a clear blue sky.

  “Zach,” she said, her tone urgent.

  “What?” he asked, turning the page of his magazine.

  “Zach,” she snapped, “Look!”

  Zach sighed, but smiled, and put down the magazine. He took the postcard. When his eyes settled on the message, the smile vanished from his lips.

  I'll be seeing you soon.

  ~Kronos

  And now for a preview of the first book in Amy Leigh Strickland's new series:

  Rescue

  OR,

  Royer Goldhawk's Remarkable Journey

  Available May 2013

  “It is too thick to pass here,” Benjy said. I marveled at the thousands of people marching, wondering how many were risking their jobs to be there. Benjy pointed back towards the theater. “Let’s go wait for America with Mercy,” he suggested. I was up for any excuse to spend more time near Miss Winmer and nodded my head.