Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  He slumped to the ground and lay still.

  The monster’s triumphant cries rose further in a violent crescendo upon noticing that the dislodged hero had torn off its arm as he went. The tiny arm shielded the gaping socket hole left behind by the larger one. Renewed shrieks drove higher, higher, and then slowly came back down as the beast stood there, reeling . . . or perhaps catching its breath. Everyone watched, awestruck, just waiting for the moment when it would finally lose enough blood and topple over.

  For what were likely purely selfish reasons, the beast refused to cooperate.

  Dave panned back and forth between the creature and Jason’s body while the other three quietly backed the hell away.

  “You know, traditionally, ripping the arm off something like that’ll kill it, no questions asked,” Leif said. “What, no one’s read Beowulf?”

  Tracy ignored him. Her own gaze mirrored the camera movements as the monster shrieked and turned toward Jason’s body. “Doctor?”

  From what Thalia could tell, save for some blind and half-hearted reaching for his collapsible cot bundle, the doctor was rather frozen in place. The beast took a few more steps toward where Jason lay defenseless.

  Tracy scooped up a few stones of her own. “Doctor!” she tried again, whipping a stone right into the back of the monster’s knee. With a cry of pain, it spun around to face them, head out, eyes blazing and fixed on Tracy.

  “Tracy, get back!” Leif tried, but she only hurled another stone. The creature ducked it and charged at her.

  “Aaaaaaugh!” Leif’s scream was either cowardly or courageous. He threw himself between them, arms held up to protect himself, a statue of unwilling heroism.

  “Leif, get out of the way!”

  “No!” he yelled at the creature. It was Tracy to whom he’d spoken, but conversational eye contact fails to be a priority when a giant, angry turtle-frog is bearing down on you.

  Perhaps the creature might have been amused enough to fall over laughing at such a display were it not filled with the pain of a torn-off limb. As it was, its hesitation was brief. For only a fraction of a second did it stop to regard Leif’s fearful bravery (the way a Buick might regard a possum)before continuing forward with a wild cry, its one good arm raised to strike the defenseless mortal.

  It occurred to Thalia that, were this a television program, this would make an ideal spot to go to commercial.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Monster Slayer: You can’t handle this much awesome! Wednesday nights on the Adventure Channel!”

  —Monster Slayer advertisement

  ROOTED TO THE GROUND between the monster and Tracy, Leif prayed for a miracle, for a distraction, for anything! A heartbeat later, a falcon appeared between him and the advancing creature. The bird flapped wildly in the monster’s face in a way that Leif, had he been more in control of his wits, would have deemed unnaturally altruistic.

  The beast assessed this new element for a fraction of a second. The brief distraction allowed Leif the exact bit of time he needed to waste the opportunity entirely.

  Then the falcon was forgotten. The arm-deprived creature reared back to strike with a soul-piercing scream.

  The claws rending Leif’s tender flesh sounded a great deal more like a shotgun blast from behind than he would have expected. Much less painful too. A second blast followed the first. The beast’s scream turned into a horrible, mangled gurgle as a third blast took the beast in the face.

  Leif blinked in realization and looked over his shoulder as the monster staggered backward. There stood the doctor. He held a wicked- looking sawed-off shotgun, apparently pulled from within the collapsible cot that now lay on the ground beside him.

  “Aha!” Leif spun around completely, arm flung wide and pointing at the weapon in triumph. “I knew it!”

  “Karlson, get out of the bloody way!”

  “Wha?” Leif turned back as the doctor scrambled around for another shot. The beast loomed, its eyes blazing in an eviscerated face, far more enraged than wounded by the blasts. Leif had no time to even think of defending himself before the monster knocked him aside and rushed for the doctor.

  That could have been the end of the doctor, of Leif, of Dave, and of Tracy, who were perhaps saved by only the considerable number of pages remaining after this one—though if you really wanted to, you could give credit to Jason.

  Recovered from a brief tango with unconsciousness, Jason lunged to his feet, scooped up his fallen sword, and drove it hilt-deep into the beast’s gaping shoulder wound. He gave no battle cry or clever one-liner to punctuate the strike. Perhaps were Jason not of the “strike first, quip later” school of combat, the beast might have had a chance to avoid the three-foot lance of steel now embedded crosswise through its vital bits.

  Lungs punctured and hearts pulverized, the monster gave barely a gurgle of pain before it collapsed to its knees, pitched face-first into the dirt, and moved no more.

  “There now,” Jason declared. “All dead-like.”

  The major reason Jason preferred the “strike first, quip later” method was because he so seldom could come up with something clever to say in the moment. As it was, his triumphant comments were often written by someone else after the fact and added to the footage via post-production camera tricks.

  Everyone else stood, either stunned or checking themselves for injury.

  “Nice timing,” Dave managed.

  “Thanks.” Jason yanked his blade free of the creature’s body and, with a nod to Leif’s frantic gestures, severed its head in a single cleave.

  Tracy turned to Dave. “Tell me you got all that.”

  Leif was too wired from fear and adrenaline to catch Dave’s response. Flush with the dual triumph of being right about the gun and seeing the creature slain just after he’d thrown himself in its path like a selfless idiot, he could barely catch his breath! He was alive! Tracy was alive! . . . He was alive!

  And the gun hardly even hurt it?

  “Guy killed it, Trace,” Leif whispered. “Killed it with a sword.” He went to sit down and realized he hadn’t gotten up yet.

  Jason sank down to lie on his back with a groan. “After I get at least an aspirin, Doc, you’re going to tell me how long you’ve been toting that gun around.”

  The doctor hurried over to examine his leg. “It was rather her idea,” he answered.

  “Tracy!”

  She blinked calmly back at Jason. “What? It’s for our safety, not yours. We’ll edit it out later. I don’t know if you noticed but the gun didn’t do much to it anyway. That was all you.”

  “Still. It’s just not right. Dishonest.”

  “Okay, so we blame it on the new kid,” Dave offered.

  Tracy nodded. “Workable.”

  Leif blinked. “Wait, what?”

  Jason laughed and then winced at the doctor’s needle. “That’s probably worse. Just . . . I don’t know. We’ve got time to figure it out, I guess.”

  The doctor forced them to wait before exploring the canyon lair any further. The hero needed rest, he declared, and his wounds needed patching, all of which was fine with Leif. The hike, the fear, the smack in the head by a giant turtle-frog—likely in ascending order—they’d all sucked the energy right out of him.

  Jason complained at the delay but did so on his back with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. Dave happily reviewed the footage. Time drifted on for a while as they rested. Tracy gradually began to pace.

  “What’s wrong?” Leif finally asked.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  Jason opened his eyes. “Getting antsy, Trace?”

  “Not antsy. Just . . . a feeling. There’s something else in that canyon, I think.”

  “Another of . . . those?” The doctor gestured to the dead creature.

  “No, just . . . Look, I don't what it'll be, or how I know. Call it gut instinct. Producer's sense. We’ll find something interesting in there.”

  Leif grinned. “That’s what I said!”


  “I don’t mean treasure, Mr. Karlson.”

  Leif scowled. He’d hoped living through the monster attack would bond them a bit, but she continued to use his last name. There’d be progress when she used his first name, he’d decided. It’d be all symbolic. That’s just how it worked. “So what, then?”

  “I don’t really know. Just a feeling.” She turned to the doctor. “We’ve been resting for a while now. Satisfied?”

  “I suppose. Careful on that leg, though.”

  Jason stood. “Feels fine. Hey, let’s get a shot of me saying all that stuff about something else in the canyon. Sounds dramatic.”

  “Good point,” she said. “Dave?”

  They did a few takes of Jason mimicking Tracy’s intuition as his own—one solemn and weary, the other dashing and complete with broad grins to the camera.

  “Cheesy,” said Leif, turning to Tracy. “You ask me, you should host. He’s a great fighter, don’t get me wrong, but you’re the brains here.”

  Tracy actually appeared to smile for a moment—almost. “Thanks, but no one asked you,” she said finally.

  “Plus, you’re a lot sexier than he is.”

  The almost-smile vanished. “Jason? Lead on. Karlson, in the back. And shut it.”

  “Better do what she says or she’ll bring out her producer’s whip,” said Jason with a grin.

  “Ooh, you have a whip?”

  “Figure of speech, Karlson. Now quiet.”

  “Yeah,” Dave added. “Down, boy.”

  Tracy didn’t realize she was walking shoulder to shoulder with Jason until Dave complained that she was getting in his shot. She slowed and forced herself to let the star take the lead. He just had to get himself a leg injury, didn’t he? It was a good thing she didn’t have an actual “producer’s whip,” she realized, or she might have used it; she wanted to be in that canyon. It further vexed her that she couldn’t put her finger on just why.

  Vexed? she thought. Who talks like that? She swore to not say it aloud.

  The hike up the canyon was a short one, punctuated with quick stops to search within each alcove. There were those who like to say that a sought object is always in the last place you look. There were still others who, upon hearing this uttered, flashed their smug little grins and pointed out that few people continue to look once they have found something. Tracy hated the second lot so much that she once continued to look for her keys after finding them, just out of spite. As they found little until reaching the very end of the canyon, she’d have been out of luck if anyone had made that comment today. There was simply nowhere else to search. Fortunately, no one said such a thing. They were all too mesmerized by the sight of an amulet on a golden chain hanging from a small natural peg of rock at the end of the alcove.

  A smallish shaft in the alcove’s ceiling directly above the peg spilled daylight directly onto the amulet. Purplish glints of light scattered from the gemstone embedded in its center, which shone with the illusion of its own soft glow. Reflected light sparkled off the gold and danced upon the natural rock.

  “You didn’t notice that before?” Leif asked.

  “Might have,” answered Jason. “I was looking for a creature, not a necklace. This isn’t Jewelry Slayer, here.”

  “You didn’t notice it.” Leif said.

  Aside from the basics, Tracy had never been big on jewelry. Nonetheless . . .

  “It’s beautiful. . . ” she whispered. Ignoring Dave’s protests, she stepped into Jason’s shot to reach for it.

  “Looks like a trap to me,” Leif said.

  She barely heard him. (This was not due to any preoccupation with the amulet. Tracy had spent most of the day trying to avoid listening to Leif and was just managing to get the knack of it.)

  Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the amulet called to her, like a cranberry-orange nut muffin. Or six-hundred-thread-count sheets. This, she knew, was for her.

  She snatched it from its hanging place and slipped it over her neck before the others realized what she was doing. When the purple stone flashed a second later, they at least reacted quickly enough to catch her before her lovely unconscious skull hit the ground.

  PART TWO:

  MUSES AND ERINYES AND FATES,

  OH MY!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Some things have changed since we were last seen in the world. Chastity, for one. By now most of the formerly chaste goddesses have dropped all that nonsense, and it’s about time, if you ask me. We’re modern now. Why let the men have all the fun? (Hestia’s always at home anyway, so she’s got the time.) Artemis is the only chaste goddess left. Don’t ask me why. I keep telling her she’s missing out, no matter how special it makes her. Obviously I’m biased . . .”

  —Aphrodite (Aphrodite! Magazine, July 7, 2009)

  WHILE TRACY’S LOVELY unconscious skull hit the ground, copious miles away in a hotel near the center of the Las Vegas Strip, Thad Winslow sat in his suite’s private Jacuzzi beside a woman who was also quite lovely, and conscious to boot. She was not, Thad lamented, as attractive as he was. Yet that was to be expected. Finding companionship to equal his own often required an exhaustive search, and he just didn’t have that kind of time. Thad consoled himself with the thought that after he’d finished the favor for his mother that brought him to Vegas, he’d hang around for another week and see what he could find.

  It was hardly Thad’s first time in Vegas. Even had he not grown up the only child of rich parents, the modeling career he’d fallen into at age sixteen brought him here on numerous occasions. In the eight years since, he’d forgotten exactly how many occasions, or would have, if he’d ever bothered to keep track.

  Thad had better things to do with his time than keep track of things. Beyond “a lot,” he no longer cared how many times he’d gone to Vegas, how many photo shoots he’d done, how many other models he’d slept with, or indeed how many women he’d slept with at all. (He seldom bothered to ask what they did for a living, so their model status―or lack thereof―wasn’t something he could have kept track of, anyway.) Managers and dorks kept track of things. He was there to look good.

  If the excited smile of the woman in the bubbling water beside him was any indication, he did it well. Thad took a sip of champagne. He’d sipped better, but it would do. As jet-lag cures went, a bottle of Bollinger, some tail, and a Jacuzzi were all at the top of his list.

  Not that he actually kept track of the list either, but it always came to mind when needed.

  Thad turned to his companion. Did he not get her name, or did he just forget? “Now,” he said, avoiding the dilemma altogether, “where were we?”

  Thad loved saying that. It always sounded so damn smooth.

  Her smile was half a whisper away from becoming a kiss when a discarded robe dropped over both of them.

  “Hello, Thad,” came the dropper’s voice. It slid from the throat of another woman behind them like silk on fur—like familiar silk on fur. Thad managed to stifle a curse before pulling the robe away from his head.

  His companion followed suit. “Who the hell is this?” she asked.

  Thad swallowed uncomfortably. “This is . . . ah . . . my sister.”

  His “sister” just laughed at that. “Not quite.” Clad in a bikini, she strode around the edge of the tub, dipped her toes in the water just opposite them to play with the foam, and then stepped down in to take a seat. Her sea green eyes flicked to the other woman for a heartbeat before settling back on Thad. “Usually I’d cheer such a diversion, dear Thad, but don’t you have more important things to be, ah, doing?”

  Thad’s companion sat up. “Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

  “Hrm. I think I’m talking to Thad. You should go now.” She gave a quick shooing wave. “Go on. Out! Take the champagne and find another rich man to mount in a hot tub. It’ll be fun.”

  Thad’s companion’s mouth was barely open before the other woman cut her off. “Listen, miss
y, not another word! Out! Now! Or I’ll pitch your cute little body off the balcony!”

  Be it the threat, the situation, or just the look in the newcomer's eyes, it was enough to drive Thad’s companion from the Jacuzzi. She gathered up her clothes and dashed for the door, stopping just short to turn around and open her mouth.

  The new woman cut her off again. “Don’t bother leaving your number,” she called. “He won’t have time.”

  Thad waited for the door to slam before he forced a smile.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Most people would be thrilled to discover that their mother was one of the goddesses of Olympus. Most people would consider it a path to fame and a fantastic boon to their modeling career, were they lucky enough to have one. Of course, by virtue of actually being the son of a goddess, Thad was not most people. That was kind of the point.

  After the Return, fame-seeking mortals declaring themselves the offspring of a god came out like camera phones at a wardrobe malfunction. Most were outright lying. Such a lie risked the wrath of the Olympian in question to be sure, but most of the time, the gods seemed not to pay much attention.

  Most of the time.

  There was the occasional correction. One professional wrestler boasted himself the son of Ares on national television. Word got back to the god, who swiftly cursed him in the middle of a “smackdown” with the voice of an eight-year-old girl and the inability to end any spoken sentence without, “Ares wouldn’t touch my mommy with a ten-foot spear.” The claim was a foolish miscalculation, anyway. Zero gods like professional wrestling. Even Dionysus considered it juvenile and phony, and he had once nominated the inventor of the beer bong for a Nobel Prize.

  Yet to some people, it was worth the risk. Many of Thad’s fellow models claimed Olympian parentage, with Aphrodite, Athena, or Hermes being the usual favorites. The imposters’ rising exposure and incomes tempted Thad to do the same, but he refused to be like them. The son of two mortal parents, he was gorgeous, statuesque, toned, cut, intense. As far as Thad was concerned (and as far as he knew at the time), he was so stunning he didn’t even need Olympian genes, and to his reckoning that made him even better than the others. He repeatedly announced this belief whenever possible. His manager loved the idea and took out a full page ad in Vogue declaring Thad “mortal perfection that even gods cannot match!” Thad swiftly worked this hubris into every public appearance he could, gaining a reputation even more unique than that of those falsely claiming immortal parentage.