Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  His arm still buried in the knot, Leif twisted around and nearly wrenched his shoulder off. Standing nearby, almost as an afterthought, was one Thad Freaking Winslow. Clever words failed to find their way to Leif’s lips. All he managed to stall with was, “Er, hi. You’re here too, then?”

  “Shut up, geek, I don’t want to talk to you. Just tell me how to get in the temple so I can get the hell back to civilization. What’s this about a key?”

  Leif didn’t quit the search, but the knot seemed larger inside than out, and there was still no sign of the key. Smart-assed stalling tactics, however, began to flow more freely.

  “How am I supposed to tell you anything if you want me to shut up?” Leif’s fingertips brushed something squishy, something moving, something green (he had no idea how he knew that), and finally something very square, stony, and keylike. He grinned.

  “Don’t get cute. Just tell me or I call back the screechers. And give me the redhead’s number.” Thad loomed closer. If he wanted to, he could have stepped on Leif’s back from that distance to hold him there. Fortunately he either didn’t want to or hadn’t thought of it yet. “The key’s in there? Come on, out with it!”

  Thad grabbed for his arm just as Leif stumbled back out of reach, key in hand. His heel struck the ground at a bad angle and momentum sent him flat on his ass.

  “That’s what we need, isn’t it? Give it, now!” Thad demanded before yelling over his shoulder, “He’s got a key!”

  Leif raised an arm as if to hurl the key at the model’s face. “You want it? Catch!” He threw as hard as he could without letting go.

  It felt remarkably similar to baiting a dog with a falsely thrown tennis ball. As Thad threw his arms up to protect himself, Leif seized the opportunity to scramble back to his feet. Thad narrowly caught and then lost the back of Leif’s shirt as he bolted past. A surge of elation carried Leif the final distance to the barrier.

  “I love it when a plan comes togeth—”

  The barrier field struck Leif like a swung trampoline, hurling him backward violently. Thad broke his fall in a collision that sent them both to the ground. In the few seconds before he could push off of Thad and regain his feet, two things crossed Leif’s mind: the barrier wouldn’t let the key past, and his perfectly excellent plan was now shot to bits.

  Now his only instinct was to escape and get the key as far away from the lock as possible before Thad could grab him. On his feet again, Leif dodged around Thad again and made his way downhill. Before he managed even a thought about what to do next, Megaera exploded into bloody existence smack in the middle of his path.

  Fright alone saved him. Leif’s body twisted in pure shock. He spun onto an alternate course at a right angle to his previous one, around a bit of rock, and back up the slope as Thad again gave chase. Leif was rushing up one of the steep, narrow paths along the side of the mountaintop before he knew what he was doing. Nothing stopped him; no barrier field sent him flying back again. Deciding he was far enough away from the tunnel to skirt the field entirely, he redoubled his pace, kicking dust and pebbles back at Thad and the Erinys, who were surely only moments behind him.

  “He’s got the thing!” Thad yelled. “The thing that does the stuff with the thing!”

  The speed with which Apollo searched for a dagger made Tracy feel like she was standing still. He rushed along the temple edges and found hidden compartments in the walls; he uncovered loose flagstones on the floor and searched their depths for anything useful; he moved with an urgent sense of purpose. Most of Tracy’s effort involved putting one foot in front of the other, to the point where she figured it’d likely be just as useful for her to wait by the altar. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that. After all, she’d already figured out the reason the quest didn’t work, a reason Apollo himself missed. Who was to say she wouldn’t again see something he didn’t?

  Tracy spotted a promisingly cracked wall Apollo hadn’t yet noticed. One step at a time, she made her way toward it. As she continued to brainstorm alternatives to what she was about to do, her thoughts far outraced her stride. Neither got her anywhere fast.

  “Is there any particular reason for the sacrifice?” she tried. “Or is it just ’cause the Fates said so?”

  “A release of mystical energy is needed to finalize the ritual and allow the amulet to do its thing. To trigger that release, the offspring of Zeus must give a sacrifice of lifeblood, I was told. For what it’s worth, I am sorry none of us thought of the oracle problem earlier. Father Zeus will elevate you highly when this is completed.”

  “He can bring me back to life?”

  “No, but he will likely rearrange some stars to set your visage in the heavens.”

  Fat lot of good that did her. She’d seen the Perseus constellation; it looked like a freaking bent-over Y.

  “Aha!” Apollo cried. He drew a box from a compartment in the base of a pillar, pulled away the crumbling top and withdrew a stylized, wicked-looking dagger. “A little worn, but still sharp.”

  Tracy broke through her own chosen compartment just for the heck of it. She startled the heck out of a mouse living within but found nothing else of value. She turned and took a few steps back to the altar before Apollo scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way. He set Tracy down on the top step, moved to the other side, and handed her the dagger.

  “The blood must be spilled upon the altar.”

  “Yeah, I know. Every drop?”

  He gave an apologetic smile. “Not every drop you have,” he answered, “but enough that it would kill you.”

  “That’d be the ‘lifeblood’ thing.” Not realizing the ritual required a specific quantity of blood, she’d actually been asking how much needed to hit the altar rather than how much she needed to spill.

  “Right.”

  “Got it.” She gripped the dagger tighter, struggling internally. At least her arms were still strong.

  Leif neared the top of the rise, giddy and confused with amazement at Megaera’s failure to seize him by his shoulders and hurl him down the mountainside. In fact, he seemed to have lost Megaera entirely and wished he knew just how he’d done that so he could be more impressed with himself. (In truth, Megaera remained below at the tunnel mouth, guarding it for a time until she was sure Leif wouldn’t double back, unaware he could no longer pass through it himself. Erinyes are not brilliant, but they get plenty of practice chasing flightless quarry, so they know to cover their bases.) Thad, however, was still on his heels, and Leif was rapidly running out of mountaintop.

  “Thalia!” It was a yell borne out of desperation. “Help!”

  Only then did he seize upon another idea. Not only would it give his cowardly cry a purpose, but it might even prove helpful. A squarish, key-sized rock lay ahead. Leif spun around to kick dust into Thad’s eyes below (even more satisfying when done intentionally), and then turned back to grab the rock. The blinded model cursed, tripped on the uneven ground, and conked himself to unconscious irrelevancy.

  “Thalia!” Leif yelled again. He stuffed the real key into the inner pocket of his jacket, casting about for any sign of her.

  “This is a repugnant plan!” Thalia screamed. She flew straight for him with Alecto and Tisiphone in her wake. Though faster, Thalia seemed unable to shake them. At the same time, Megaera exploded into being about twenty yards to his left.

  Leif held the fake key aloft for everyone to see (or everyone still conscious without two eyefuls of dust, at least). “I got the key!” he yelled. “Catch!”

  Thalia’s eyes all but bugged out of her skull. “What? Don’t give it to—Monkey-cusser!” The curse was barely from her lips when the false key sailed up toward her in a perfectly thrown arc (as far as Leif was concerned). The Muse caught it in mid-flight and redoubled her speed to streak out toward the Mediterranean. “This is a worse plan!”

  “That’s the key!” Leif managed to lie.

  Though Tisiphone sped after the Muse, to Leif’s horror Alecto halted in mi
dair, her blood-gushing eyes fixed on him. “Meddling mortal! For this you shall pay!” she shrieked. “Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay!”

  Megaera clocked her sister in the back of the head. “The Muse has the key! The key is important! After her!” Without waiting for a response, Megaera vanished in a bloody mess and reappeared right in Thalia’s path. The latter swerved to the right and went invisible.

  Even were Leif able to track an invisible Muse, Alecto gave him no time. She dived at Leif, talons slashing in an arc he narrowly ducked. “Pay!” she cackled. “Pay-pay-pay!”

  “Listen to Megaera!” he tried, dashing across the mountaintop. “You’re going to get in trouble!” And if that had any chance of working, thought Leif, he was a dragon-god.

  Leif was, as it turned out, not a dragon-god. (Though that would have been wildly helpful, this book isn’t going to pull that particular kind of crap.)

  “Let the others chase after the Musey, mortal! You are mine! You will suffer! You will pay! Pay-pay-pay!” Alecto flung a stone across the back of Leif’s thigh that cut him through his jeans. He stumbled, caught himself, and scrambled on against the pain.

  “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a real impulse-control problem?” he yelled.

  In the temple, compulsion and duty rooted Tracy’s legs to the altar dais. Her pulse pounded in her ears as the amulet glowed brighter (up)on the altar in what she could only assume was anticipation. The dagger shook in her grip, her muscles spasming with every moment she clutched it.

  A part of her knew her rage at Zeus’s murder was artificial, that the amulet itself compelled her. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to mind. Regardless of everything else, he was still her father, the father she’d been robbed of a chance to know. If her mother were murdered, would she not do everything in her power to bring her killers to justice?

  Was this any different?

  Above, Leif was trapped. To his left was the rim of the open roof of the temple, easily a fifty-foot drop to the stone below where Tracy stood; to his right lay another drop of much greater distance to ocean- battered rocks that no one could possibly survive. At his back stood a wall of rock, which, while scalable, would allow him only a sixty-foot drop to the temple floor or a greater-distance-plus-ten–foot plunge to certain death.

  This, Leif judged, was unhelpful.

  A small boulder shattered against the wall above him as if thrown by a giant wrestling personality-turned-actor. Biting shards of rock rained down on him. Alecto picked up another, cackling in a way that Leif thought might be infectious were he not about to die. “Pay!” she jeered again, clearly toying with him. “Pay-pay-pay-pay!”

  Leif was running out of options the way Alecto was running out of vocabulary. He had no idea where Thalia was. Thad remained unconscious behind Alecto and gave zero indication of any impending change of allegiance, in any case. Leif could think of nothing clever to say, nor any semblance of a plan that could possibly save him. Below, Tracy stood with Apollo at the altar, dagger in hand. Leif felt a stab through his own heart at the sight of it. She was really going to do it!

  “I am going to beat you senseless, mortal!” Alecto hissed. “Claw you until you pass out from the pain and skin you upside down like a hog when you wake! And then I’ll do it all again somehow! This job allows for marvelous innovation!”

  Leif took small comfort in knowing he still had the key. Yet they’d find it on his dead corpse sooner or later, and who knew how long the rest of the ritual would take to fulfill itself once Tracy made her sacrifice? What if the Erinyes got inside and stopped it before it all could take effect? Could they do that? Wasn’t there some sort of common decency involved?

  Leif cursed himself for not throwing the real key to Thalia. At least then he might be able to jump down through the barrier. If this were any sort of role-playing game, he’d likely survive the, what, five six-sided dice’s worth of damage? Yet this wasn’t a game, this was—

  At once he knew what he had to do. The idea sucked, but it was all he had.

  Alecto lost patience and threw another stone. It knocked off a chunk of wall that landed with a thud beside him. Leif’s blood raced. There was no turning back. Before he took action, Leif risked a moment to add a flourish that he hoped might be impossibly cool.

  “There’s one thing you didn’t think of, Alecto!” he yelled. “I am a leaf on the wind! Watch how I soar!”

  Leif figured it would have been cooler if Alecto had responded before he said the last part, but the adrenaline hadn’t let him wait. In what he desperately hoped was a fit of genre-savvy heroic sacrifice, Leif clutched the key through his coat and hurled himself off the cliff to the sea below.

  The fall took long enough for him to think of at least three other outstanding choices for last words that he could have screamed before he jumped—and that he might have swapped “leaf” for “Leif”—but of course it was too late for that.

  He doubted Alecto got the reference anyway.

  Apollo glanced skyward toward Leif’s voice and some sort of screeching.

  “We have no time,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’ve never done this before. How far do I need to lean over?”

  Apollo’s crystal-blue eyes swelled with sympathy. “Slump over so the blood spills on the marble. Like this.” He leaned across the altar and gripped the opposite edge in demonstration of the ideal posture.

  “Okay, okay.” She swallowed. Now was the time, she told herself. Now or never. It all came down to this. Here she stood at the crossroads. Time to pay the piper. It was a far better thing she did than she’d ever done.

  Tracy ran out of clichés with which to stall. She raised the knife, leaned forward, and at that moment her plan changed. Suicide was senseless, especially with the other option staring her right in the face. Tracy hated to do it, but the only alternative was worse.

  Tracy smiled across the altar to clasp Apollo’s gaze with hers, steeling herself. “Does a woman get a kiss before she makes the ultimate sacrifice?”

  Apollo blinked and leaned farther forward to oblige. Tracy followed suit. Her breath came rapid and short as she prepared to do a god right (up)on the altar. Apollo’s eyes closed. His lips drew nearer.

  His neck stretched vulnerably as he leaned over.

  Tracy slashed the dagger across Apollo’s jugular. She threw her arms over his head and lifted her feet off the dais to hold him over the altar with all her weight as blood gushed from the wound.

  “I’m sorry!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Mortals are like matches: fun to play with but dangerous.”

  —Olympian saying, source unknown

  IN HINDSIGHT, it surprised Tracy that it had taken so long for her to remember that Apollo was just as much a child of Zeus as she. From what he had stated, the Fates said nothing about the ritual requiring her blood specifically. It was a bit of a leap to guess that “lifeblood” referred to a set quantity that would kill an ordinary mortal, rather than the actual loss of life of the subject—but standing before an altar about to commit suicide does tend to open the mind to possibilities.

  Tracy sincerely hoped she was right and that Zeus’s resurrection would kick in before Apollo bled out. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that she might be able to kill Apollo at all, even in his diminished state. That initially miniscule worry grew stronger and more gut wrenching with each passing second. He was still immortal, wasn’t he? He said so, right?

  Bitch move, Tracy.

  “I’m sorry,” she yelled again. “Please hold still!”

  Apollo wasn’t struggling; that much she had to be thankful for. Yet save for his blood rushing over the marble, nothing was happening. For a few terrible moments, she thought she’d been wrong, that she’d have to spill her own blood to finish things up, that she may have actually done permanent damage to Apollo, or that there wouldn’t even be time to—

  The altar exploded with light. It shone up through the blood and consumed the scarlet flood in
a blaze of lightning that flashed in time with the amulet’s gemstone. Its rhythm matched Tracy’s heartbeat— pounding, thundering, pouring through her. Something was being drawn out of her in heavy gasps, gathered up, stolen, and given all at once. Power surged from the amulet, the altar, the blood, all lancing skyward with a force that finally threw both her and Apollo from the dais.

  Tracy landed on her back, unable to do anything but stare at what was now a column of electric light streaming up through the temple roof. The draining she felt inside subsided, and still the column blazed. The amulet crackled, shattered, and was consumed in the light, which only flared brighter. Tracy lay transfixed, awaiting the display’s end, the return of Zeus, or simply the return of her strength so she could run the hell away before the whole place exploded.

  In another instant it was over. The column ceased to exist, as did the cacophonous roar she hadn’t even noticed. Tracy cast about for Zeus or even some sort of sign anything had changed.

  As far as she could tell, nothing at all was different.

  Across the temple, Apollo groaned. Tracy scrambled to her feet and stumbled over to where he lay clutching his neck with one ensanguined hand. A bit of golden light flared from his palm as she neared. When he removed it, the wound was healed. Apollo gave another gasp.

  “Ow.”

  Tracy knelt, guilt replaced by a wave a relief. “You’re all right?”

  He nodded. “God of healing. Diminished or not, I can at least fix a knife wound. I ought to be furious with you, you know.”

  Tracy smacked him in the face, then punched his shoulder. “If you knew you could heal, why didn’t you offer to make the sacrifice in the first place!”

  “I didn’t know it would work! When they told me ‘child of Zeus,’ it followed they meant you. Zeus sent no amulets to me, you know. Besides, have you ever had your jugular slashed? It really hurts!”

  Tracy spent the next few moments agape and reining in the urge to strike him again. “You would have let me—? What the heck is wrong with you?” she screamed. “And where the hell is Zeus, anyway?”