“Manners, Apollo!” Demeter whacked him on the forehead with the curve of the fork. “And stand in their way of doing what? Olympus’s doorways are quite wide enough.”
Before Apollo could think of a response, the horn that summoned the Dodekatheon into assembly sounded throughout Olympus. A trio of extra notes declared that all gods and beings upon Olympus were required to attend.
“A universal summons,” Apollo tried. “I’d best go too. If you’d please help me get free, Demeter?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Apollo. Poseidon told me specifically that you must stay here until he sends for you by name. You just rest up and remember: turn on the love, even when you don’t get what you want!”
“You’ll remember to ask if I can see the Muses?” Apollo called after her. She was out the door so quickly that he couldn’t be sure if she’d even heard.
He tugged at his chains again; they still refused to budge. Once more he wondered at the meaning of his vision of Zeus talking to Karlson on the Eiffel Tower. That Karlson had fallen into the sea was the one detail Thalia had managed to whisper to Apollo when they’d been captured at the temple. Could Leif have survived somehow, or was the vision merely a figurative one?
In any case, if Apollo was to get to Paris himself and meet Zeus, he was rapidly running out of time, if he had any left at all. Perhaps the call to assembly heralded Zeus’s return. What could Zeus possibly do on his own against a united force of Olympians? What would Apollo’s own fate be when they triumphed?
It is uncertain just how Apollo might have reacted to the knowledge that around the same time, Tracy herself was alive on Olympus. As she occupied a prison of her own, however, it likely would not have given him much hope.
It was at least comfortable, for a prison. Tracy had to admit she’d never actually been in a prison before, so her basis for comparison consisted of only what she’d seen in films and that one hotel in Kansas with the three thousand crickets in the bathroom.
This place was at least better than Kansas.
In fact, given the brightly shining skylight above, the glorious view from the balcony (which dropped off much too far to consider it a means of escape), the plush furnishings, and numerous flowers adorning the place, she didn’t realize it even was a prison until she discovered the door was locked. And that no one responded to her yelling. And the helpful “So Now You’re in Prison” pamphlet on the bedside table.
In hindsight that should’ve been her first clue.
Decidedly tired, Tracy had languished for an indeterminate amount of time before the door opened at last. She waited on the edge of the bed to find out if someone was coming to rescue her or if her jailors were coming with a meal, and given the growl in her stomach, she couldn’t decide which option she’d prefer.
Hermes entered, bringing neither food (on account of being empty- handed) nor rescue (on account of being Hermes). She gave no greeting, barely even making eye contact as she estimated her chances of running past him and out the open door in the split second before he closed it: surely impossible.
She bolted for it anyway. Hermes grabbed her by the back of her shirt and lifted her off her feet in an instant. Her estimate’s accuracy at least made her feel a little better about the failure. Plus, she figured, points for trying, right?
Hermes closed the door and set her back down. “Tracy Daphne Wallace,” he said with a smile. “Mortal daughter of Zeus. How did that escape us for so long?”
Despite the numerous snarky comebacks queuing in her mind, Tracy said nothing.
“Zeus rarely sires mortal daughters,” Hermes went on. “He prefers strong, heroic young lads. Perseus. Hercules. Davy Crockett. I suppose that’s part of why you slid right under the radar. Crafty ol’ Zeus, switching to his least-favorite gender just to trick us all.” He sat down on the other end of the bed. “Not a very smart move, trying to bring him back to life.”
“Better than killing him, isn’t it?” she tried.
“It’s not as if we didn’t try other options first. He was a tyrant, you know. A world-class, manipulative git. Power mad. Made us all retreat from the public eye without even a word about why. ‘I command it!’ he would shout. Nearly his favorite phrase, after ‘Can I read your T-shirt in Braille, miss?’ I daresay. Quite frankly we did the world a favor, putting him out.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, this and that. World peace. Fat-free doughnuts. Winged sandals with better arch support.” Hermes shrugged. “And for you to see things from our point of view. Despite everything, I meant you no personal harm. I like mortals; I’d prefer to call you a friend. You might better understand if you could see what a manipulative bastard Zeus really is. Or was, rather. That ritual he demanded of you would have killed you if it had worked.”
But the ritual had worked, Tracy insisted to herself. Hadn’t it? After all, blasts of electric light like that didn’t just happen, right? . . . Anyone? The nagging doubt she’d kept locked up since her capture sprang forth, empowered by her continued imprisonment and Hermes’s insinuation. She tried to quash the worry and keep a brave face as a trickle of sweat slid down her spine.
“Aren’t you the god of tricksters?” she asked finally.
Hermes rolled his eyes. “Hardly a question anyone answers ‘yes’ to, is it? Shall I try to deny, knowing you’ll doubt me even if I tell the truth?”
“Call it rhetorical if you want.”
“Unfair would be more like it.” Hermes shook his head with a sigh. “Put a couple of whoopee cushions on the wrong chairs, and suddenly you’re the ‘trickster god’ for the rest of existence. A misrepresentation, I assure you. More chiefly I am god of merchants, travelers, and boundary crossings. I love a good gate.” He shrugged. “But every ounce of trickery in me I inherited from Zeus, and he has it in spades! Take that amulet of brainwashing you wound up with. The loyalty to Zeus you felt when you had it, that irresistible drive to bring him back—did you feel nearly so loyal and zealous once the amulet was gone?”
He did at least have a point, she thought. When she had the amulet, she’d hardly cared about herself, willing to do anything to find justice for a father she’d never known. Yet now the worry about her own fate loomed much larger.
“Let me go,” she said.
“We will, soon enough. For the moment I am required to show you something.” Hermes stood and opened the door for her. “Do follow me. And don’t try to run again because . . . well, Hermes.” He smiled apologetically.
“Where?”
“To see something the others have made,” he answered. A long horn sounded, followed by three short blasts. “I only ask you to remember this was not my idea.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“The angry swearing of oaths by the Styx is seldom a wise idea and should be avoided.”
—sign, Styx riverbank
“No wading. Keep dogs on leash. Under no circumstances feed anything purporting to be a duck.”
—sign, adjacent to first
BROADCAST FROM THE HIGHEST PEAKS of Olympus and delivered around the world via satellite on a frequency discernable to only the highest tier of Olympians (and, for some reason, rhinoceros beetles), the message comprised an effective means of both reaching Zeus and irritating the stuffing out of him. That particular method of communication necessitated a dreadfully high-pitched shriek, which both preceded the message and continued to fill his ears for the entire duration. Knowing that there was no other guaranteed means for his former subjects to reach him did nothing to reduce Zeus’s irritation, nor did the knowledge that his siblings must also endure the shrieking; it was disrespectful to the point of making him curse each and every one of them under his breath before the actual message had even begun.
To say that the content of the message itself failed to appease his irritation would be an understatement worthy of government inquiry:
“The remaining United Gods of Olympus, one unified force under Poseidon, Earthshaker and Lord of the Sea, sen
d this message to Zeus the Deposed, Zeus the Throneless, Zeus the King of Nothing: Your hiding serves only to underscore your cowardice. If your sense of vengeance proves so weak as to leave you cowering in some cave, perhaps love for your own mortal offspring shall prove sufficient to move you toward a measure of bravery! We have captured your mortal daughter, one Tracy Daphne Wallace, and now hold her in the Tyrrhenian Sea one hundred fifty nautical miles due south of the city of Rome. You refused us our rightful presence in the mortal world for millennia, yet broke your own law by fathering her with a mortal woman. We therefore deem her an illegal child who, with her execution, shall pay the price for your hypocrisy. Present yourself there and surrender within the hour, and she will be spared. Fail to do so, and she will die.
P.S. Please bring your appetite. There will be cake.”
“Mr. Karlson,” spoke Zeus through gritted teeth. Speaking itself was actually unnecessary. The telepathic link between the two functioned just fine, but actually speaking aloud felt far more satisfying and kept him from accidentally sending stray thoughts. “How soon?”
The mortal’s response sounded immediately in his mind’s ear: “Soon. Those meteorites they recovered this morning are actually torn from Saturn’s rings. Looks like you were right.”
His teeth ground harder. “Of course I was right! All is ready, then?”
“More or less. They ought to be set to integrate the final components once you bring them in, but the lead guy here says they’ll need some time to adjust the supercollider, and that could take anywhere from six hours to a full day. Something about leptons and the Uncertainty Principle and some labor standards thing with the European Science Foundation or whatever. Unless you can do something to speed that up?”
Spawns of Cronus, that wouldn’t be enough time! “This cannot be sped up.”
“Guess you should get here soon with those mystery components and start the process then, huh?”
“No,” Zeus ordered. “Order Dr. Kowalski to do what they can to adjust the collider now. They will have the final components soon, but first I must confront the Olympians.”
“Er, didn’t you say you needed allies? Zeus, do you see a little golden ball anywhere nearby?”
“I can wait no longer. The others grow bold enough to challenge me directly!” Zeus growled. “They dare insult my commitment to my own laws! They mock my courage! Such insults to my honor cannot be ignored!”
“Insults to your honor?” the mortal had the impudence to ask. “So what? I mean, you want to go get yourself killed again, that’s fine, but it occurs to me that if something happens to you when I’m all linked up to you like this, it won’t go so well for me either. I don’t want—”
“They have captured Tracy!” he roared. “And they have the temerity to threaten the execution of my own daughter if I do not appear to them within the hour!”
“What? No!”
“Yes!” His rage grew the more he thought about it. “My daughter! As a united front, they have taken that which is mine and threatened its destruction! Throughout history there was one rule, one rule highest above them all that none dared break: Thou shalt not fuck with Zeus’s children!”
“Wait, are—?”
“Such audacity cannot go unanswered!” Zeus could not help but shout. “I shall storm down among them, burn Poseidon’s skull with a single bolt of lightning, and deliver unto them such wrath as they have never seen! I swear by the river Styx that no Olympian there shall go unpunished for this affront to my authority!”
“Er, saving Tracy is in there somewhere too, right?”
“Oh, they will expect that, won’t they? Her fate may be sealed, but her sacrifice will be remembered! She will be set among the stars as the one who—”
“You’re just going to sacrifice her?” The mortal’s indignation howled across their link. Zeus made a mental note to alter their telepathic bond so that in the future, yelling was allowed only down the chain of command. “After all she did for you? Don’t you care about her at all?”
“Silence, I command it! She will be honored in death, highest among—”
“But she’ll still be dead! You care more about an insult to your authority than your own daughter! She’s not just a thing to—”
“Will you stop interrupting!” Zeus roared. Mortals had such limited perspective in their short, finite lives! Obviously he would prefer for Tracy to prosper during her brief time alive; he was no monster! Yet her death, especially compared to that of a god such as he, was not such a large thing in the grand scheme. Her legacy was far more important!
“You have to try to rescue her!”
“I will do what is necessary! You are not one to be giving me orders!”
The mortal may have wished to express himself further after that. Zeus knew not. He muted the link, lunged to his feet, and stormed straight out of the New York Public Library, greatly relieving the group of flustered librarians drawing straws to determine who would ask him to please be quiet.
By the time Zeus reached the spot where the traitorous heretics held his daughter, whispers of rational thought had begun to penetrate his anger. As satisfying as it might be to simply show up and knock heads together, the sheer degree to which Zeus was outnumbered would doom such a strategy to failure. On the other hand, not all of the gods would be as committed to their course as Poseidon and the others who had murdered Zeus. He would give them a chance to come over to his side before the lightning struck. The delay would also give him time to discover the dangers of this trap, for a trap it certainly would be.
In the exact spot described in the message, his enemies had raised in the sea a circular shelf of stone, its uneven surface dotted by sea spray blowing up over the raised edges around the shelf’s outer rim. The center was open to the water below, giving the entire shelf the look of a flattened doughnut some fifty yards across. From the northern side of the hole rose a stone tower with a broad spar that itself extended over the seawater in the hole below. Dangling from the spar like a hanged man on a noose was a transparent box containing his daughter. Tracy pounded on the box like a crazed mime—alive, for the moment.
There was no sign of anyone else.
At least not at first. Invisible himself, Zeus circled the area, peering down among the rocks and waves for the telltale shimmer of other invisible gods, spotting one, two, then three. Others surely lurked nearby, perhaps waiting in the ocean itself or, like he, flying invisible in the sky where light and movement would better conceal them. Rather than call them out immediately, he continued to observe.
Though divinely summoned, the shelf appeared to be no more than regular rock—somewhat slippery when wet, but little to be worried about otherwise. Yet something was off about the stone pedestal holding Tracy’s prison. An energy shimmer, barely visible, seemed to pulse in and out of existence. Zeus continued to circle, focused on the pedestal, unable to determine its nature.
Was it designed to explode if touched? No, that wouldn’t account for the pulsing.
Was it stone at all, or simply some creature crafted to look like it until he got close? While transmogrification was not Zeus’s specialty, it didn’t quite look right for that sort of thing either.
Zeus stopped and hovered in place so he might focus further. Only then did he realize the thing wasn’t pulsing; the shimmer was not around the pedestal at all, but beside it, rising up from the water under the spar to surround Tracy’s prison in a pillar of barely discernable energy. His orbit caused the illusion; only with the pedestal as a backdrop was the energy field visible at all. At all other times, the field was either impossible to discern or blocked entirely by the pedestal.
A phlegmatic field!
Formed of the emanations of the thousands who had died of boredom while on hold with customer service, phlegmatic fields represented the most powerful of the few joint creations of Hades and Hephaestus. Though such fields normally crackled with ennui, Zeus’s treacherous subjects had hidden this one well. A more fool
ish god might have swooped in and tore the chain that hung his daughter’s prison box from the rock above, only to be caught in the field—divine essence shackled in a swaddling of lethargy that would slow his movements, dampen his powers, and render him as effective as a snapping turtle without the “s”. The field’s effects would not last long—perhaps a god of Zeus’s stature might shrug it off in less than a minute—but it would be long enough for his enemies to pounce and render him further helpless in myriad other ways.
Even without the field, the chain itself might very well be durable enough to cause a problem. Hephaestus could make some strong stuff. Though Zeus could break it, such a feat would take time and effort that would leave him vulnerable, phlegmatized or not. The chain would surely be resistant to lightning. Though fools, the other gods were not idiots.
Most of them, anyway.
Again, the betrayal and audacity—from his siblings, his children!— stung like a whip. They’d worked together to create this trap; they were here, waiting for him to make a mistake. Zeus summoned two fistfuls of lightning, stretched out his arms, and burst into sight amid a web of electricity. Thunder rolled across the sea in a slap of power that shook the air and rocks alike.
It was a good entrance. Not his best, but it would do.
“Brothers!” Zeus bellowed, beginning to circle the shelf anew. “Sisters!” he continued. “Children and subjects of mine!” (No sense leaving anyone out.) “Hiding becomes you not!”
When none came forth, he went on. “So. Shall you prove to be keepers of the cowardice of which you dare accuse me? Do you hide in your cloaks like vulgar assassins, waiting for me to fall into your trap, too frightened to face me on your own? Where are these mighty ‘United Gods of Olympus, one unified force under the mighty Poseidon, Earthshaker and Lord of the Sea,’ eh? You call me deposed, my Olympians. You outnumber me yet still you fear me! What does this tell you of my power? What does this speak of my rightful place among you? I know you to be here! Show yourselves now or be branded cowards and betrayers in the tales for all time!”
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