She’d spent a full two hours thinking of just how to phrase that.
At the time, the only secret Wynter really cared about was that the whole business was just a way to mess with people—to freak out her family and show them that yeah, she was going to college as they’d wanted, but it was her life. The day her friend Gail left town, Wynter had picked up a vampire book on a whim. Then she’d cloistered herself in her room and decided that, what the heck, she’d go Goth.
It seemed fitting. She was alone. No one really cared how she felt because graduation had stripped her of any friends her own age—and if there’s one thing TV and music had taught her, it was that friends her own age were the only ones who could possibly understand her. Her family just couldn’t wait for her to go to college, to start her new life.
So why not mess with them a little? Even better, why not freak them out by worshipping dark powers they wouldn’t understand? The whole “queen of secrets” thing was just a bonus. The day she dyed her hair black, her anticipatory grin hung from ear to ear. They’d think she’d gone mental.
“Magic isn’t real!” they’d say. “Hecate isn’t real!” they’d cry! “Look what you’ve done to your hair!” (It would’ve been better if her hair weren’t already dark, of course. She did consider going blonde for a day just to accentuate the contrast, but she’d been on a budget.)
Then the stupid gods had to actually show up at that press conference and ruin all her fun by being real.
It was so unfair! Before she even got the chance to disturb her parents with a crazy bedroom shrine to a made-up goddess, legitimacy thrust itself upon her, and her parents proclaimed her a visionary. Suddenly she was a young woman who’d seen an opportunity in the new world order and positioned herself to properly take advantage.
In short, they were thrilled. Robbing her of her rebellion, they even had the nerve to call her happily—happily!—by her new name.
Just her luck she’d wind up kin to a bunch of Pragmatists.
Human reaction to the Olympians’ reappearance ran the gamut, with Pragmatists smack in the middle: just going with the flow to capitalize on whatever benefits they could gain with lip service. At one end of the spectrum hung the True Believers, Olympian zealots who welcomed the “new” gods with open arms and sincere worship. Balancing them out at the other end—beyond those who refused to call Olympians “gods” but still tolerated them as a testament to the complexity of God’s creation—raged those who declared the Olympians false gods. Any mention of their divinity was reviled as heresy. These groups gave themselves all sorts of names, but the media wouldn’t stand for that—viewers had enough to keep up with, after all. So the media collectively dubbed all of these groups Pious Reactionists, whether they liked it or not.
At first the Pious Reactionists openly showed their defiance. Groups as large as entire countries took a stand against the false gods. When the frequency of natural disasters in these countries spiked dramatically— alongside curious “coincidences” of government leaders developing a second head or a stubborn case of death—the movement gradually went underground to avoid further reprisals. Yet it was still out there.
Wynter would’ve caught hell if just one of her close family members had fit into such a group. Yelling, screaming, fights—maybe even random searches of her room that would force her to hide her materials of worship.
In short, it would have been awesome. Stupid supportive family.
Yet Wynter wasn’t a quitter—not this time, anyway. She kept trying to evoke a reaction, dropping hints that maybe a certain closed-minded uncle might want to visit and trying to scare them with Latin chanting. She even left a few pamphlets from the ultra-extremist Neo-Christian Movement of America lying around the house with the hope they’d take the propaganda to heart, but no dice.
Perhaps, had Wynter known that the aforementioned seven figures and their pointy weapons would eventually be coming for her, she would have taken comfort in that looming confrontation. Except we’re still not talking about them, so forget we mentioned it. Sorry about that. Back to Wynter.
She had spent the summer learning the ways of worshipping her new goddess, guided by the Internet and a few books provided by her dreadfully encouraging parents. It wasn’t until she got to college that she realized that at some point during the past few months of fakery, she’d grown to truly enjoy it. Her devotion to Hecate blessed her with divine dreams, a sense of belonging, and the discovery that Melinda— that “redheaded” bitch—secretly dyed her hair. (It wasn’t enough to break up Melinda and Chad, but it was close, darn it.) Hecate’s mastery of secrets even helped Wynter get the answers to numerous midterm exams. They weren’t actually for any of the classes she was taking, but they still fetched quite a good price on the black market.
Wynter mostly flunked out of her own courses.
That didn’t matter. Hecate’s power was all she needed, and by abandoning college, she could use her tuition money to transform the secret underpass alcove into a proper (and secret) temple. Real gold paint was expensive, after all—as was bribing art students to make a few statues and carve the devotionals into the concrete without telling anyone. (Constantly re-dying her hair was also starting to add up, frankly, but it was necessary: she hoped to eventually prevent any light from escaping it whatsoever.)
Now the evening’s opening convocation to the goddess was complete. The anchovy and artichoke pizza sacrifice sat in ashes upon the ritual coals. Incense hung heavy in the air. Her laptop computer displayed the (secret) spells of Hecate that she’d found online and then improved upon with her own touches. The candle of power burned before her. Wynter focused on the tiny flame and calmed her mind, awaiting the touch of the goddess.
In the temple, Hecate was there.
Not, you know, there-there, but present in spirit, called by worship. The goddess’s gaze turned upon her disciple in admiration and thanks. The attention glowed (secretly) within Wynter’s mind. A smile crept its way onto her lips, and, ever vigilant, she forced it into an unsmile. Those cloaked in the secret embrace of Hecate’s shadowy arms, after all, did not smile. Smiling was full of daintiness and, therefore, beneath them.
She was certain she’d seen that on TV somewhere.
Not smiling was one of Wynter’s first rules when she began her worship. The problem was that when she felt the touch of the goddess’s power, she felt happy. She could only surmise that the feeling itself was somehow allowed, yet the contradiction irritated her—until a fit of divine inspiration and tequila led Wynter to create the “unsmile,” a completely different expression involving an upturning of the corners of the lips.
Okay, so it was exactly the same as a smile, but that just made it even more of a secret that she was, in reality, unsmiling.
And so, with an unsmiling glance at the laptop, she began to chant the incantations. The words flowed from Wynter’s lips as she traced designs with gold dust on the pristine floor. Feeling the power surround her, she repeated the words until she could no longer recall when she had begun. Each iteration added onto the last, lifting her higher and higher until, euphoric, she could no longer even see the temple around her.
Nearby, swiftly approaching figures (of whom we’re still not really speaking yet) caught the scent of burned anchovies and adjusted their course. Each moved as silently as the moonlight, as graceful as a hunting cat. All right, so one of them stumbled and fell. (His name was Bob Higgins, in case you ever meet him and wish to make fun.)
In her mind, Wynter felt her goddess's presence as she floated among a sea of stars and the ritual reached its zenith. Wynter’s arms spread over the sacred parchment (butcher paper purchased from the local office supply store and treated with a secret, ritualized process involving glitter). Holding a golden pen, she whispered quietly to Hecate, Outsider of Olympus, Queen of Secrets . . .
“Queen Hecate, with the deepest reverence I beg of you: entrust to your loving servant a secret, a great secret, the greatest you deem me wort
hy to receive. I who have created this temple for you, I who have sacrificed much in your name, I who am sorry I was late in my usual devotions because Mr. Winn made me cover a shift at the café even though I told him he was meddling with mystical secret powers he couldn’t possibly understand . . . I am an outsider, just as you. On this moonless night, share with me a Secret of the World!”
Wynter’s hand began to move. On the parchment, it scribbled words of the goddess’s own volition. Wynter had no idea what she was transcribing, but the ritual was working! Hecate was smiling on her, or unsmiling on her or—heck, who cared, it was working!
Or she was having a stroke.
Wynter decided that was less likely and gave herself over to the goddess, eyes closed, furiously sketching and writing across the paper. Her heart raced. Her breath quickened until she was nearly hyperventilating from the power of the goddess’s secrets pouring through her. So lost in the sensation was Wynter that she utterly failed to notice the seven figures slipping, ninja-like, into the cave.
Well, six, actually. After his failure to be graceful, they had sent Bob back to the car to think about what he did. In fairness, the six figures didn’t so much as slip (ninja-like) into the cave as they did barge in and shout for Wynter to “stop in the name of the Neo-Christian Movement of America! . . . and Almighty God!” Even so, this was done as ninja-like as possible, with a great many of the flips and katana-twirls that they had seen in movies. They were, after all, ninjas themselves. Their leaders told them so.
Perhaps one of the most unpredictable changes resulting from the Olympian Return was the sudden rise of ninja training camps run by far-right Christian groups. Once the Pious Reactionist movement was forced underground, operating in secrecy grew paramount to survival. Furthermore, leaders of fanatical groups such as the NCMA swiftly realized that they had something of a public relations problem. The youth of America (and indeed the world) had been seduced by the utter coolness of actual beings purporting to be mythological “gods”. Cults sprang up overnight. A person couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing news such as the new Las Vegas casino Dionysus had opened or the latest lucky mortal to be seen with Aphrodite. Hermes even had a regular show on MTV.
The NCMA urgently needed to become more competitive, or it faced a coolness gap. The necessity for both coolness and secrecy led them to the inevitable and obvious concept of ninjas. Kids loved ninjas! (Kids loved dinosaurs, too, but the NCMA’s efforts at cloning a few proved disastrous when they accidentally funded some Texas A&M fraternity brothers posing as scientists. The “scientists” bought a used Godzilla costume and spent the rest of the NCMA’s money on the biggest keg party the Aggies had ever seen.)
And so the first Christian ninja squads were trained.
On a reduced budget.
No one was really sure just what to do with these squads at first, but the program proceeded, based on the philosophy that it was better to have ninjas and not need them than to need ninjas and not have them. Even so, the first groups completed training before the ninja squads even had a suitable name, as a few dissenters who considered the training a waste of resources and refused to dignify the effort.
It was then that the monsters began to appear: harpies off the coast of North Carolina; poisonous, winged kittens terrorizing America’s heartland; there was even talk of a hydra dwelling in Lake Michigan. Such new horrors silenced the bickering over the value of ninja training. God in His wisdom had clearly chosen to demonstrate his approval of the ninja program by causing to appear something for which they would need ninjas!
This is not to say that the ninjas were then put to work, roaming the country to slay monsters. The NCMA astutely noticed that the Olympian “gods” regarded monster slaying as a good and glorious thing, and clearly the Ninjas Templar (as they eventually came to be called) could in no way support an Olympian agenda! Nor was the NCMA particularly worried about the monsters. They were, after all, a sign of God’s approval of the ninja program. He would undoubtedly take the monsters away once the NCMA had trained enough ninjas to please Him, and the problem would, therefore, take care of itself.
And they would have ninjas.
In the event that they needed them.
On a reduced budget.
There were a few heretical souls in the NCMA who lay awake at night, harried by a feeling that something was not quite right about the whole thing. But for this reason, they often overslept and missed key policy meetings. This in turn led the others to vote them out of the policy committees on grounds of truancy, and so no one had to be bothered.
It wasn’t long after that the NCMA decided the Ninjas Templar might possibly be used to strike against “cells” of Olympian insurgency.
And so it was with cries of “Death to false gods!” that the squad of Ninjas Templar (sans Bob) rushed into Wynter’s temple. They knocked over a statue of the goddess, kicked out the sacred fire, and swept away the still entranced Wynter in a flurry of righteousness. They gathered up what treasures they could (to be repurposed or sold to fund the NCMA), set fire to the temple (or as much as they could, given its concrete construction and off-ramp location), and threw the heathen laptop and texts upon the flames to be destroyed forever (except for the ritual parchment—because the glitter was kind of neat, and Bob might enjoy it once he was done with his penance).
It was not until the Ninjas Templar returned to their black Ford Econoline of Righteousness parked a mile down the road that they noticed the words Wynter had written upon the parchment. Beneath a half-completed sketch of what appeared to be nine elaborately decorated cylindrical containers, the following words were written:
Within nine cans depicted here
Resides that which Olympians fear.
It was, Bob decided, even better than the glitter.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Looking back, I suppose it’s not as if Apollo didn’t give the whole thing some careful thought. The decision to act must have torn him apart long before he brought us in on the plan. I can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out differently if those visions had included just a few more details.”
—personal journal of the Muse Calliope (written under house arrest)
SEEKING A SECOND VISION left Apollo with good news and bad news. The good news was that he now knew the first vision to be only something that may be rather than something that will be (to borrow back a phrasing he once gave Dickens). As for the bad news, well, that was the same as the good news. (So really, there was twice as much bad as good. Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. Not that he had much use for money, but still.)
The second vision also strengthened his impression that the young blond man clinging to the Eiffel Tower would play a part in restoring Zeus. Or, he corrected, may play a part.
And therein lay the rub (more borrowing back).
Apollo wanted Zeus to return—or at the very least, he wanted a return to Zeus’s policy of withdrawal. If this mortal played a part in that, Apollo would help. More to the point, Zeus would know that Apollo had helped and spare him the wrath that he would surely visit upon the other gods for their inaction. Nobody liked wrath, after all; it hurt, or at the very least it was itchy. The Titans’ full share of it got them sealed away for eternity.
Yet there would be others who would try to stop him if they learned of his intent. As far as Apollo knew, he was the only god no longer enjoying the Return and the additional worship it entailed. Ares and Aphrodite positively reveled in it. Even Athena, Zeus’s self-appointed bodyguard, held a grudging enjoyment of the situation behind her vow to find Zeus’s real killer. Ares had claimed responsibility, of course, but the brute claimed responsibility for just about anything if he thought it would make him look tough. No one really believed him; he just wasn’t smart enough. The real killer—or killers, Apollo figured, given the level of conspiracy killing the king of the gods likely had required—would have even greater motivation to stop him. The fact that there were zero clues to the iden
tities of those conspirators made a minefield out of confiding in anyone.
Apollo couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole endeavor was doomed to end in disaster.
The following morning Apollo strode the verdant expanse of the Olympian courtyards. It was a ritual he’d managed to cling to despite his busy schedule, yet lately his time there grew shorter with each visit. Today, the dawning sunlight and crystal blue skies failed to penetrate his thoughts. Frigging god of the sun and he couldn’t enjoy it.
Good gods, he was getting whiny! He reached a hand into a stream, splashed the cold water on his face, and gave himself a mental kick in the butt. If he could kill a dragon when he (Apollo, not the dragon) was four days old, he could get through this.
May be, might be . . . but how likely? The question danced in front of him with infuriating little hops and pirouettes. He wasn’t a gambling god like Dionysus. Betting on the long shot of this blond mortal, if it was indeed a long shot—
“Great Apollo.”
The greeting from behind him broke his train of thought. Even had he not recognized the voice, its formal tone alone gave away its speaker’s identity. Apollo froze for a fraction of a second to bundle up his worries before turning with a smile on his face. Caution required that he at least appear as pleased as everyone else until he puzzled out what to do.
“Queen Hera,” he returned. “A pleasure to see you this morning.”
“And you, Stepson. A fine morning we have. You are looking . . . well?”
The queen of the gods stood atop a wide block of granite beneath a pomegranate tree—the white arms that had so enthralled the poet Homer folded within her robes, nose raised high as she looked down on him from her dais. A smile perched on her face with the unmistakable pleasance that declared she wanted something from him.
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