The Gods' Day to Die

by David Welch

“Nothing,” Dionysus replied.

  “Hey, Ted,” the woman’s voice said. “Can you come here for a moment? I want to show you something.”

  Pretty sure I saw everything you had last night! He fought a chuckle, picked up his phone, and headed for the bedroom.

  “And what’s that, babe?” he said.

  He found himself looking at a pistol, pointed straight at his chest. A silencer had been screwed onto the end of the barrel.

  “It’s a Walther P22,” she said in Russian-accented English. “Now that you ask. Small, quiet, and strong enough to get through a man’s skull. Doesn’t always come out the other side, though.”

  She shrugged casually at the words.

  “Seriously?” he said, switching from Dutch to English. “You fuck me, then you kill me? What are you, some praying mantis?”

  “You were cute,” she said. “And a good dancer. Good dancers are always the best fucks. But I have a mission.”

  Damn, I should’ve checked my messages sooner. His mind raced, looking for a way out of this. Violence and gunplay just wasn’t his thing. Sure, he’d run from his share of pissed-off husbands, but rarely had he found a lover pointing a gun at him. He wasn’t sure what to do. If Ares was here, he’d disarm the woman in the blink of an eye. Maybe if he got closer . . . no, he’d probably get himself shot in the process. So he did what next came to mind. He stalled.

  “A mission?” Dionysus said. “Damn. Friend of Lenka Sidorov?”

  “He trained me once,” she said with a shrug. “Many years ago. Not such a ‘good dancer,’ but a very good killer.”

  “And a crazy fucking psychopath,” Dionysus said. “But hey, you learn from the best . . .”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I am sorry about this. I am sorely tempted to keep you for myself.”

  “Nothing’s stopping you,” he said.

  “No, my American friend,” she said. She clearly had no idea who he actually was. “In my business, reputation is everything. If I fail to complete a mission, I find myself out of work, or worse. That’s simply the way it is.”

  “I see . . .”

  “Now, if you want to close your eyes—”

  A knock interrupted her. Her gaze shot toward the door. Dionysus reacted instinctively, hurling his phone at her head as forcefully as possible. It struck her temple. She fell, more from shock than from the impact, tripping over the bed. Dionysus sprinted for the door. Whipping it open, he saw a woman with a room service cart staring at his naked form. He must’ve ordered breakfast some time during last night’s bender. He leapt over the cart, then wrenched it sideways, jamming it in the doorway. The woman darted back, her shock turning to panic. In the room a tall blonde woman, slightly more dressed in a bra and panties, stumbled to her feet and charged toward the door.

  Dionysus skidded around the corner, bursting through the door leading to the stairwell. He was only two floors above street level. His bare feet pounded hard on the metal stairs. The stairs worked their way down in a square pattern, alternating between flights and landings.

  The sound of a body slamming into the door rang out from above him. Dionysus pushed on faster, reaching the bottom floor. A shot rang out, ricocheting off the metal railings. His lover was firing from above, trying to hit him as he scurried. Dionysus instinctively swerved. Two bullets struck the floor inches from him, certain hits if he hadn’t dodged just in time.

  He barreled through another heavy metal door onto the main floor. He found himself in the lobby. At least a dozen guests were present, moseying about and talking with each other. They, and all the staff behind the desk, stared slack-jawed at him. It took Dionysus a split second to remember he was naked.

  “Heh, heh,” he laughed self-consciously, then started sprinting again. He left the hotel, dashing onto the street. For the next half hour he ran, oblivious to the stares and shouts and shocked gasps of the local Islamic community. He didn’t look back, which meant he didn’t realize for a good while that nobody was chasing him. When his adrenaline wore off and he finally ran out of breath, he came to a stop atop a small pedestrian bridge over one of the city’s canals. Gasping, he stared behind him, looking for the blonde woman.

  She was nowhere to be seen. There were plenty of blonde women, but not her. His mind slowed, trying to figure things out. It made sense she wasn’t following. Guns were an oddity here. Running through the street with one, shooting at somebody, would draw too much attention. And Lenka liked to hire intelligent people, which meant that blowing a cover might not be an option.

  So you just ran across half the city for nothing!

  He shook his head, fighting the urge to swear. His head pounded. So much for drinking all that water. Near him a woman approached. She appeared to be somewhere in her fifties, and had a confused look on her face.

  “Are you all right, son?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just out for a walk.”

  “Naked?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said. “It is Amsterdam.”

  The woman scowled and stormed away. Dionysus grinned and wondered where the hell he was going to get some new clothes.

  North of Holysloot, The Netherlands

  He’d been walking for hours, heading northwest from the city. Amsterdam wasn’t the world’s largest urban area, and it had only been three miles or so to the northeast before the city had dropped away and low fields had opened up. Canals laced the area, breaking up fields of churned earth. Crops had recently been sown.

  He was no longer naked. Stumbling into a church, he’d played on the generous nature of Christian holy men toward the poor. Not that he was poor, but the priest hadn’t known that. The man had dug through a vat of secondhand clothing donated for charitable purposes, finding him basic jeans and a T-shirt from some tourist shop, along with some sandals. Dionysus had left, heading northeast.

  There was a cache here, he remembered. His family had them scattered all over the world for situations like this. Countless times he’d had to change identities quickly. Initially they’d had to do it because former worshipers had recognized who they were, and had been quite eager for revenge. Then, as people with knowledge of their actual identities had died off, they’d kept up the practice. Even when you planned to change your identity every twenty years or so, there arose occasions when somebody who had known you under a past identity recognized you under your new one. This usually led to the new one being as compromised as the old. So any immortal worth their salt would flee to a cache, snatch up some new documents, and become a whole new person.

  And given that he had no money, no phone, and no identity, finding this cache was the only way he would get back to America.

  “Aandammergouw,” he said, reading the word off a road sign. It was the one he was looking for. He followed it, a freshly planted field to his left, a small canal to his right. About a quarter mile down the road was a small, familiar bridge. The bridge was barely wide enough for one car, but there didn’t seem to be anybody within a half mile of him, so he dashed over it.

  Before him lay a small, derelict cottage. The field around it was all natural, the grass short as it was still spring. He made his way to the doorless cottage, walking through the main entrance.

  Despite the cottage’s external appearance, the inside was immaculate. There was no furniture, no rugs, and no objects of any kind that indicated it had ever been lived in. It was just bare walls and a concrete floor. He moved to a small side room. There, instead of an empty frame, he came face to face with a steel security door. It looked like something off a bank vault. Next to it was a retinal scanner.

  Good old Hera, he thought. She kept up the caches, through one of her various businesses. And she wasn’t the type to skimp on security.

  He pressed a button to turn on the scanner, then stuck his eye in front of it. A little green light made a quick pass over his eye. The securi
ty door clicked, and a bolt automatically slid back. Dionysus grabbed the latch and opened it.

  He revealed what had once been a bedroom, but was now a storeroom. Cases lay stacked atop each other. Dionysus knew from experience that he would find a small arsenal of weapons in there, regardless of local gun laws. He moved to a series of filing cabinets across from the cases. Each had a name on it, written in a forgotten language and alphabet. He found his, and opened it up. Inside lay identity documents for him, under various names, for various countries.

  He pulled out a passport, flipping it open. The name Patrick Quinn leapt out. Shrugging, he pocketed it. Nearby lay a wallet, inside which was a New York state driver’s license for Patrick Quinn, a Social Security card, and five hundred euros. He slipped that into his pocket with the passport.

  He turned to leave, walking from the vault. A sound caught his attention. It was a car, and it was coming to a stop. He crept to a window, ducking low to stay hidden. About thirty yards from the house, on the road, sat a car. A figure walked from behind it.

  His gun-happy lover appeared, walking toward the house. Her gray eyes cold and focused, she pulled her pistol from the pocket of her coat.

  “Fucking bitch . . .” grumbled Dionysus.

  He sprinted back into the storeroom, tearing open several of the cases. He found several pistols, with dozens of loaded magazines beneath them. He grabbed the gun and several mags. From a nearby case he snagged a disposable cell phone.

  He emerged from the storeroom. The woman was near the front of the cottage. Dionysus’ mind spun. He hated guns. He’d used plenty of them, but he hated them all the same. All weapons. They always seemed to cause trouble.

  Plus, he wasn’t nearly as good with them as the rest of his family was. Since firearms had been invented, he’d gone out of his way to avoid them, seeing how easily they killed and knowing how much he wanted not to die. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been forced to use guns. So it was entirely conceivable that this trained assassin was better with a pistol than he was.

  But he had an idea. He punched in the local emergency number, staying just outside the storeroom so its reinforced walls didn’t block the signal. A voice came back.

  “Emergency response, how can we be of service?”

  “Hi, yes,” he said in Dutch, “I’m on Aandammergouw, just near where the bridge crosses the canal. There’s a woman near an old house up here, she has a gun in her hand.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, could you send somebody? I do not feel safe,” he said, playing up the fear in his voice.

  “Right away. Please, if you can, return to your home and stay indoors,” the voice said.

  “Thank you, I will. Good-bye.”

  He turned off the phone and retreated back into the storeroom. Once inside, he shut the door, locking the latch from the inside. He was safe.

  He could hear muffled footsteps move around the house, and finally come to the door. The heavy lock moved slightly as his attacker vainly tried to open the door.

  Two metallic pings filled his ears as his pursuer tried to shoot through the lock. Need a shotgun to do that right, he thought. Provided she hadn’t changed weapons, his lover was still carrying a twenty-two.

  Then came another muffled sound, that of an engine. Footfalls pounded away from the door as the new car came to a stop. Then came indistinct shouts in Dutch. His recent lover did not answer with words, she just cut loose with her gun. Several guns, unsilenced and loud, answered hers. For several moments the muted sound of gunfire filtered into the storeroom.

  Then it stopped. He heard more shouting, then a barely audible splash. One of the cars came to life and tore away from its spot in front of the cottage.

  His own gun in hand, Dionysus crept to the steel door. He unlocked it and stepped cautiously out into the cottage. It was empty. Several new holes had been torn into the wall. Peering out the window, he saw his attacker’s car.

  Instantly his gun came up, ready, waiting. The police car was gone. So were the police.

  And so was she!

  He put it together quickly. She’d run off on foot and jumped into one of the canals. The cops had followed, at least one of them taking their car.

  Dionysus slid the pistol into the waistband of his pants, making sure to pull the T-shirt over it. Moving to the front door, he opened a small panel built into the wall. Inside was a lever. With a firm yank the lever came down. Behind him he felt a flash of heat as thermite incendiaries sent up a wall of flames in the back room, burning hot enough to destroy pretty much everything. He darted from the house, staying low until he got to his attacker’s car. He crouched behind it, getting a look at the situation. Several policemen were on foot, standing at the edge of a canal, shooting at a distant figure. Their car was careening across a field on the far side of the canal, trying to get into position. In the water a blonde head surfaced momentarily, took a breath, then disappeared back under the water. Bullets followed her, but they didn’t have the velocity to penetrate deep into the drink.

  Dionysus ducked around to the driver’s side of the car. He peered in, seeing the keys still in the ignition. So she’d been planning to get out of here in a hurry.

  Guess some good will come of her after all!

  He slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and gunned the engine. The cops shouted, their attention split between their fugitive and this newcomer. He ignored them. Instead he pulled out of the field, pointed the car at the bridge, and jammed on the gas.

  He made great time to Amsterdam.

  12

  Wheeling, West Virginia

  “Mmm . . . what time is it?”

  Hera turned from the suitcase. On the bed lay Keilana Chin. Her petite form was half hidden by a white sheet, which clung to her figure. Hera smiled at that.

  “Eleven,” Hera replied, pulling a shirt on.

  “Where’s Zeus?” she asked, batting her eyelashes over almond-shaped brown eyes. “You know I don’t like waking up without you guys.”

  Hera walked over to the bed and kissed Keilana lightly on the lips.

  “He took the kids down to the pool. They’ve been wanting to swim since we got here,” Hera said.

  “Good,” Keilana replied.

  “I’m heading down there, if you want to come,” Hera said.

  “No,” Keilana replied sleepily. “It’ll be fifteen minutes before I’m out of this bed. Go on ahead.”

  Hera smiled, then headed out of the suite. She stopped by a mirror near a sink to run a comb through her hair. Looking back from the mirror was an attractive young woman with fine, classical features. Golden-brown hair ran in curls to her shoulders, framing liquid green eyes. Her skin was a little paler than the other immortals, but it contrasted well. Despite two hundred forty-nine children, she still had a trim, athletic figure. It didn’t have the curves of an Aphrodite, but beat the wisp-thin look of today’s fashion models and actresses. It was the head and body of a twenty-six-year-old woman who just happened to be five thousand nine hundred and two years old.

  Satisfied with her hair, she headed for the pool. They were staying at a chain hotel, on their way west. A day earlier Artemis’ text had come in, and without a moment’s hesitation they’d packed up whatever they couldn’t leave behind and abandoned their home in Connecticut. Well, she’d done most of the packing. She always seemed to. She’d always been good at organizing and orchestrating. And whenever Zeus thought his children were in danger, the protective dad in him came out. She’d always loved that about him, and she couldn’t count how many times it had saved lives in the past. But when you’re trying to relocate the lives of five people in a manner of hours, a hulking, angry man wasn’t much use.

  But, as always, he’d calmed down quickly. Long gone were the days when his anger had ruined nations. And once out of the house, away from a loc
ation Lenka may have known, they had been able to slow down a bit. The man had no way of tracing them when they were on the road. It was a good thing too. Extra time came in handy when you had little kids with little bladders riding in the back seat.

  She made her way to an elevator, riding it down one floor to ground level. Leaving the building, she found herself a few steps from the pool area. She could hear the splashing and the joyous shrieks of three-year-old Bane and five-year-old Melika.

  She walked across the pavement to the edge of the pool. Bane had his floaties on, but treaded furiously anyway. Melika, always a strong swimmer, pushed through the water unassisted. They stayed in the shallow end, while an ominous shape lurked in the water just behind them.

  “Aunty H!” cried Bane. They’d taught the kids to use that name rather than try to explain their system of aliases to them. They were far too young for all that.

  “Hi!” she said, crouching down at the pool’s edge. “Where’s your daddy?”

  “He’s here,” said Bane, then spun around in the water. He couldn’t see his father. For a moment a look of panic crossed his little face.

  Then the water exploded upward, Bane squealing as Zeus swooped him up. Hera danced back a foot to avoid the splash, laughing. Zeus swiftly lifted his son up above his head, then brought him back down to a chorus of joyous giggles.

  “Daddy!” Bane cried out.

  “You’re stuck!” Zeus replied, holding the child tightly to his chest.

  “Lemme down!” Bane said forcefully.

  “Down?” Zeus said. “In the water?”

  “In the water,” Bane said.

  “All right,” Zeus said.

  With that he “threw” Bane a good two feet, the child splashing amid squeals in the water, his father’s hands on him the entire time. When he let go, Bane frantically started swimming back to him, but Melika had already grabbed her father’s arm.

  “Throw me!” she demanded.

  Zeus shrugged, picked her up by the ribs, and tossed her a little farther than her brother. She splashed down, and the cycle continued.