Zeus is Dead

by Michael G. Munz

  Stout awaited his answer with the look of a man similarly troubled. As the one in charge, Kindgood knew it remained up to him to respond appropriately to his fellow’s crisis of faith.

  “I think you did something wrong,” Kindgood told him. “God grant me strength to forgive you. I will do my best to make sure our superiors understand you didn’t mean to . . .”

  A swirling bit of blue light appeared between them.

  Stout stepped back, pointing. “A sign! By the glory of God, a sign!”

  Kindgood stepped back a bit himself, fighting his own amazement. It was indeed a sign! He’d done it! Holy crap, he’d done it!

  “God has chosen me to be filled with the power of His forgiveness!” Kindgood declared to the group. “I opened myself up to Him that I might forgive you, Gabriel Stout, and through me His glory is made manifest! I am the vessel through which He creates—” Kindgood pointed at the growing light, grasping for words. “—This!”

  All seven of them staggered back as the light crackled and swelled. Ribbons of energy rippled across it and stretched the light taller and wider until it was a broad, blue vortex an arm’s span across. Power gusted forth like a burst of wind to knock the group on their backs. The vortex swirled faster, continuing to grow and rising into the air above them as the brass cans trembled and rattled in place.

  Pure power whipped Kindgood’s hair and tugged at his clothes. “Now the false gods’ time is at an end!” he yelled, exhilarated. “Now they shall reap the fruits of their blasphemy! Now we shall—”

  The pull grew stronger, grasping at loose stones.

  “Now we shall—”

  A seagull shot backward over his head and into the vortex with a shrill cry.

  “Now we shall . . . withdraw to safety and rejoice in—um . . .”

  The vortex’s lower edge sliced into the stone beneath it, cracking it in half and sucking the brass cans and their lids into blue oblivion. Stout scrambled to his feet on the other side, lost his balance against the pull, and tumbled screaming into the vortex after them.

  “Run!” Kindgood yelled it more to his own body than to the others, who hardly needed him to tell them that at all. As the frightfully blue maw grew, both looming above and spinning like a saw blade into the Earth itself, someone grabbed his hand and tugged him to his feet. Desperate, he yanked on the helping hand and flung its owner backward to gain ground for himself. The helper disappeared into martyrdom; Kindgood didn’t look back.

  “For the greater good!” he called in apology. “I must escape to spread word of your sacrifice!”

  It bought him no more than a few seconds. The pull raged stronger around him. It yanked the soil out from under his feet and set him scrambling. He fell forward, then up, legs flailing, arms grasping helplessly as he toppled head over heels into the vortex with the final thought that God sure as heck better be grateful.

  Though there were none left to witness it, the vortex continued to grow, sucking in everything nearby until it was as tall as ten men. There it halted at its full dilation, blanketing the surrounding landscape in sudden, vortex-ie silence. The pull subsided. The blue light faded to gray mist. For a moment, nothing moved.

  And at last a hand appeared from within, then another, and nine long-trapped entities began to crawl forth from their prison, gasping with the effort of their escape. It goes without saying that they were incensed.

  Having said it anyway, it’s still an understatement.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  —proverb, originator unknown

  “Some dolts’ll believe anything if ya make it a proverb.”

  —Ares

  “I AM GONE,” Zeus seethed, “for nine small months . . . and you let the Titans get released?”

  He’d recovered before the rest of them and seized the opportunity to yank himself from their shocked grips and spring to his feet. They followed suit, without renewing their assault.

  “Really they didn’t get released until you came back, strictly speaking,” Hermes pointed out.

  The lame joke sustained the silence for just a moment before all began shouting at once. Accusations flew like ice in a blizzard: some yelled at Hades; some yelled at Poseidon; some just yelled in no particular direction. Zeus couldn’t even make out most of it, and he didn’t care. He drew a mighty breath to silence them all.

  His brother beat him to it.

  “Silence!” Poseidon bellowed, slamming his trident into the stone and stealing Zeus’s thunder. (Zeus quickly checked to make sure it was merely figurative. It was.)

  “Our business with Zeus shall wait,” Poseidon went on, glaring at Zeus, “and his with us! The Titans will be weak from their release, but it shall not last!”

  “We take care o’ Zeus first!” Ares yelled. “I ain’t fightin’ with him! ’Longside, anyways!”

  “And have the Titans fall upon our backsides as we battle Zeus? No!” Poseidon slammed the trident down once more in emphasis. (He’d gotten better at it since becoming king, Zeus had to admit.) “We strike now, all of us together, beat them back into their prison again before it’s too late, and then we shall deal with these matters! The Titans must be fought at once!”

  “Oh!” Demeter gasped in revelation. “What if we simply—?”

  “This problem cannot be solved with baked goods!”

  “Well! Certainly not with that attitude.”

  “But Ares is right!” Aphrodite flung a petulant arm at Zeus. “Zeus vowed to punish the lot of us! You can’t possibly suggest we trust him now! He disowned me! I’m his favorite!”

  “Silence!” Poseidon ordered. “You will do as I say! I am your king!”

  “For now,” Zeus grumbled.

  “Ya see?” Ares summoned a spear to his hands in an instant. He roared a battle cry and rushed before anyone could stop him.

  Zeus was ready. He seized the spear in his bare hands and stepped to one side to yank Ares off his feet with the god’s own furious momentum. It carried Ares around in a full circle, once, twice, three times as Zeus whirled the hapless war god like a hammer until finally the spear itself broke. Zeus timed it perfectly; Ares flew straight into the phlegmatic field and Tracy’s dangling (and nearly forgotten) prison. The impact snapped the chain clean through and sent both phlegmatized war god and prison sailing clear out over the edge of the rocky shelf to splash into the waves.

  Zeus hoped that thing was airtight.

  “Who’s next?” he demanded, bristling with cathartic release. Impending Titan threat or no, he almost hoped Ares would rise up again immediately just so he could smack him around again. How could one of his few children born in wedlock still turn out to be such a bastard?

  “No one!” Poseidon demanded, putting an end to his fun. He pointed to Aphrodite and Hermes. “You, two, fetch Ares! The rest of you, gird yourselves! We battle the Titans!”

  Hermes laughed. “Ah, yes, Titan-fighting requires completely different girding than Zeus-fighting. There’s a whole color scheme, lots more lace!” Nevertheless, he did as Poseidon ordered.

  “And you!” Poseidon pointed his trident at Zeus. “You had best help us, Zeus. If we lose to the Titans, they will seek you out to complete their vengeance just as you do now for those who struck you down!”

  Zeus ground his teeth, barely restraining himself. If Poseidon thought to persuade with a reminder of the Olympians’ crimes against him, he was a fool. “Of that I am certain,” he growled.

  “Assemble on Olympus!” Poseidon ordered them all. “We strike from there!” He rose upward and cast a final glare on Zeus. “Remember what I say!”

  “Every word, Brother.”

  The others joined Poseidon. A beleaguered Ares, supported between Aphrodite and Hermes, lamented something about how people kept breaking his favorite spears. A brilliant flash of light later, Zeus was alone on the shelf.

  Out amid the waves, Tracy’s prison floated and bobbed. Zeus launched hims
elf after it, scooped it up by the chain, and headed for shore.

  Tracy was half-conscious already due to her suspension within the phlegmatic field—but Ares’s impact into her prison had knocked her unconscious before she even hit the water, so one really has to wonder why the narrative now switches to her point of view. After all, she didn’t see Zeus picking her out of the water or witness the singular experience of flying at lightning speed across the water in an airtight box. She did not even know that he carried her to the Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera—a beautifully rugged stretch of five villages built upon sea cliffs, where she quite coincidentally had always wanted to vacation when she had the time. Yet through the magic of books, we can learn of such things regardless of Tracy’s state of awareness.

  Just promise not to tell her.

  Or do tell her; it doesn’t really matter. If you’ve not figured out by now that these people can’t hear you, you’ve larger problems to worry about. Even if she could somehow hear you, she’d only be disappointed. She won’t be staying in the Cinque Terre long. (More important, if you do tell her and she actually appears to hear you, seek help. Seriously. That’s not a good sign. And shame on you for telling her anyway.)

  It was the crack of Zeus ripping the top off the prison glass that finally jarred her to consciousness. Tracy opened her eyes, her body thick with residual fatigue, as Zeus lifted her from the box and stood her up without a word.

  “It should be illegal to feel this bad without the fun of being drunk first,” she grumbled.

  “Easy, Daughter. You’ve been phlegmatized.”

  “Oog. I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.”

  “It is now. Divine license.”

  “Uh-huh, sure.” She groaned again and tested her legs. Though her body felt as if it were wrapped in thick rubber, her head was at least beginning to clear a little.

  “How do you feel?” Zeus asked.

  Zeus asked? For the first time, it registered as highly relevant that Zeus stood here helping her rather than being too busy in oblivion. She’d watched the entire scene on the shelf unfold from within her prison, yet this was the first time it didn’t seem like a dream or a poorly written piece of fiction.

  “Zeus?” she marveled . . . and then decked him in the arm. “Why did you do that to me? Do you know the kind of crap I’ve gone through in the past few days? What my friends have gone through? One of them died because of all this, for crying out loud!” Okay, she admitted to herself, Jason was really more pain-in-the-ass coworker than friend, but she was suddenly too pissed to let that soften her. Jason hadn’t deserved what he’d gotten.

  “And you just sprang it on me!” she went on. “No details, no nothing, just a vision and vague impulses to help you! And you messed with my mind!” She punched him again. “All this loyalty and burning need to bring your killers to justice!”

  “You claim you would feel no anger at any murder?” Zeus demanded. “That you would not do what was in your power to find justice? I did not raise you, but you are my daughter, and I know you better than that! The amulet told you the truth of your heritage and amplified your natural tendencies. There was no brainwashing.”

  Even if it was true—and she couldn’t be entirely sure it wasn’t just further manipulation—the fact that it made sense only infuriated her more.

  “But—you didn’t even ask me!” Tracy pounded out her accumulated anger on his shoulder, punctuating every other word with a blow of her fists. “I find this damned thing in a cave and then there’s Erinyes and pissed-off gods and idiot models coming out of the freaking woodwork!”

  Zeus caught her forearm in mid pound and held it still with a warning glare. She stopped, out of breath and more than a little flustered, yet managed to match his glare with one of her own. To her surprise, he laughed.

  “You have your father’s temper.”

  She swallowed, cooling just a bit. “I always thought I got that from Mom.”

  “Jointly gifted, then. But I warn you, Tracy, as much gratitude as I have for what you’ve done, I will not allow you to raise a hand against me. I’ve suffered the treachery of one daughter today; I will brook no more from another.” He released his grip. “I am sorry about your friend. What was her name?”

  “His name,” she corrected, still cranky. “Jason Powers. I actually ran into him on the way to his afterlife. He seemed happy with it, at least. No family.”

  “Suitable memorial will be given when this is over, I promise you.”

  “Yeah, well . . . good.”

  She would later wonder what it meant about her feelings for Jason that the potential ratings from Zeus’s tribute for Monster Slayer’s fallen star didn’t enter her mind until a good while afterward.

  Tracy gave a long sigh, collecting herself. “So it all worked at least, right? You’re not just half back and need me to do the Three Labors of Hercules or something, do you?”

  “Hercules did twelve labors, not three.” (Or thirteen, depending on who you ask.)

  “I know. I lowballed it.” She disliked bringing up the possibility of even three labors. No freaking way was she going to mention twelve.

  “I see. You needn’t worry; you completed the ritual.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at that, as tentative and tinged with residual annoyance as it was. “Then we did it?” After everything, it didn’t seem so easy to believe there wasn’t more.

  He grinned. “You did. Without full instructions, I might add. Were I any more filled with pride, I would surely rupture.”

  “Don’t you dare. I’m not going through all that questing stuff again. Is Apollo okay?” she asked, not without a pang or seven of guilt. The question of Thalia’s and, unfortunately, Leif’s fates also sprang to mind, but one thing at a time.

  “Captured, I suspect. Further questions must wait for the moment. We’re far from out of the woods yet.”

  “Oh, of course. Because safety at this point would be too much to ask, right? And what’s this ‘we’ stuff?”

  “You—”

  Tracy put up a hand. “Oh, no! I did what I was supposed to! I brought the king of the gods back to life! Don’t I get a little vacation? A little rest? A little chance to get my life back in order?” At the very least she needed to call Monster Slayer’s production company to let them know what happened to Jason. And, she realized, to check on Dave and the doctor. Geez, she’d completely forgotten about them.

  They’re still fine, by the way.

  “You brought me back, Tracy. Should I fail to regain my throne, the others will seek vengeance again. Our best hope lies in Switzerland. We must fly.”

  She balked. More endless traveling. “You’re not diminished or anything, right? Wouldn’t teleporting be faster? I’ve seen you guys do that.”

  “We are traveling somewhere secret, and teleports can be traced. Even with the others distracted by the Titans’ release, I will take no chances. And no child of mine has a fear of heights. Come with me.”

  Zeus offered his hand, and she took it without thinking. (Zeus had a knack for that sort of thing.) “I’m not afraid of heights, but . . . I can’t just come with you. I’ve got a life to get back to and responsibilities and—and it feels like I haven’t eaten in days!”

  They flew into the sky—or at least Zeus flew. Tracy mostly just hung on and dangled.

  “Food I can fix quite easily.”

  “Good! Maybe if I get a little food, I can think about this better. And a sundae because I’ve been craving—”

  Sudden recognition of the rapidly disappearing coastline beneath them cut her off.

  “Hey!” she finally managed. “We’re in the Cinque Terre? And we’re leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  Tracy groaned, still staring behind them in horrified disappointment. She waved good-bye to the ruggedly beautiful isolation and vowed to make Zeus take her back there at some point.

  They soared toward the Alps, faster than Tracy would have thought possible until s
he recalled she was flying with a god. The speed placated the impatience that had been growing inside her since she’d escaped the prison. Wind rushed past her, whipping through her hair and continuing to clear her mind. Something else clicked.

  “Hey!” she shouted through the wind. “Did you say something about the Titans?”

  It was at that point, perhaps without coincidence, that the sky turned the exact shade of violet to best indicate that something was very, very wrong.

  It was sort of a magenta-lavender with a twist of azure and nausea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “It is difficult to confirm the names of the nine Titans imprisoned in Tartarus. The Olympians avoid speaking of the ancestors they insist are securely locked away. The only information given comes from an interview with Hermes who once listed their names before changing the subject. According to him, the trapped nine are as follows: along with Cronus (the Titans’ leader and father of the first generation of Olympians) there is Astraeus, Coeus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Kreios, Menoetius, Phoebe, and Steve.”

  —A Mortal’s Guidebook to the Olympians’ Return

  ON THE ROOF OF the CERN facility, Leif finally halted the pacing he’d begun when Zeus had effectively called Tracy a lost cause and hung up on their telepathy. He hadn’t cooled; his worry had only increased, but his feet ached in worn-out shoes, and he was getting tired.

  Also the sky was now suddenly the color of neon barf, so stopping to gape in wondering fear seemed more than appropriate.

  “Zeus?” he tried. “Zeus, answer me! What’s going on!”