by David Welch
But she’d seen too many monsters to make herself believe that they weren’t real. And she had one hunting her down, probably systematically planning to do unspeakable horrors to her.
“I know, Dita,” she said. “I know. We’ll get her back.”
“Will we?” Aphrodite said, a bitterness entering her voice.
Artemis said, “Dad just lost his wife and his son. Lenka attacked him, his children, Hera, and me. And now it’s pretty undeniable that Lenka has Athena. The equation has changed, Dita.”
“Oh? Are you and Dad and Ares suddenly immune to bullets?” Dita grumbled.
“You would do nothing?” Artemis challenged.
Aphrodite shot to her feet, throwing up her hands in futility.
“What else can we do?!” she said.
“Kill him,” Artemis replied.
Aphrodite sighed, shaking her head.
“You’ll try,” she said heavily. “And I’ll be the last one left when the dust clears. Alone.”
She shook her head once more, then trudged out of the room. Artemis frowned, but made no move to stop her.
18
Outside Sacramento, California
“Is he still behind us?” Zeus asked as he drove.
“Four cars back, same guy,” Hera said. Zeus glanced in the rearview. Despite the darkness of night he could make out a green Prius, illuminated by the headlights of others. It was the same one they’d seen since Colorado, where they’d been this morning. The chance that the driver had followed all this way, for this long, just by sheer coincidence . . . no, there was something wrong here.
“I guess it’s time for a pit stop,” said Zeus.
He took an off ramp, underneath a large sign for a truck stop. Pulling in, he found a parking lot for cars, and cut the engine. Moments later the Prius pulled in. It passed the car lot, driving into the larger lot for trucks.
Zeus reached into the glove compartment, removing a nine-millimeter Glock pistol and an eight-inch-long curved knife. Melika popped up from the back seat, her eyes going wide at the sight.
“Your daddy’s just being safe,” Hera said to the girl. “Why don’t you come up and sit with me until he gets back?”
The girl unclipped her seat belt and clambered over the seat. Hera helped her down, placing her in her lap and wrapping her arms around her. Zeus leaned over and kissed his daughter’s cheek.
“I’ll just be a minute, Meli,” he said, tousling her hair. “Promise.”
Melika said nothing, and wiped a tear from her eye. At five she was just old enough to understand what had happened. She knew her mother wasn’t coming back. She’d spent the last two days going between bouts of crying and bouts of silence, having said no more than a half-dozen words since Lenka’s attack. For the last two nights she’d slept clinging to Zeus, crying every time he had to get up.
Zeus sighed and glanced back at Bane. The three-year-old was asleep in the back, head lolling against the seat belt. In a way he was lucky. He still cried, but they were the cries of a little boy who wasn’t getting what he wanted, which was his mother. They weren’t the deeper tears of somebody who realized the enormity of death.
But Zeus knew that, in a larger sense, Bane wasn’t lucky at all. Some children remembered back to the age of three. Some did not. His little boy could very easily grow up with no memory of his mother.
He felt sad as he got out of the car. Keilana wasn’t the type of person who should be forgotten. She’d had an infectious smile, and an open heart. She’d loved completely, fitting into their unusual three-way relationship as if it were normal. He’d always known Keilana had loved him more than she did Hera, but he couldn’t help but feel for Hera. When they’d started, she’d gone along with it as she always did, sharing a bed with them, making love to each. But the feelings between the two women had grown into something greater.
Gone, he realized. He cursed the universe for the millionth time. He’d lost wives and lovers before. But loss was one of those things you never grew used to. How could it be otherwise? Those past lovers weren’t this one. Their deaths weren’t hers.
Mired in these thoughts, he pulled his peacoat tight to conceal his weapons. He moved around a nearby building, toward the entrance of a gift shop/convenience store. Gazing into the truck lot, he saw figures moving about under the street lamps. One stuck out. It was a man in khakis and a dress shirt, wearing an open trench coat. Not exactly the standard look for most truckers.
“So you’re the one . . .” Zeus whispered, then disappeared into the gift shop.
He drifted about, looking at the paperbacks on sale in a large rack near the coolers. He picked up a fishing magazine, thumbing through it, looking toward the door out of the corner of his eye. The man in the trench coat entered, keeping his eyes off Zeus. He smiled at the counter girl and headed for the snacks.
Zeus put the magazine back. He purchased a disposable lighter for a dollar, then headed out of the gift shop. He didn’t go back to the car. Instead he headed for the truck lot. There were dozens of big rigs and trailers, most of their drivers eating in the nearby restaurant. Those who were around paid little attention to Zeus. A big man with a beard looked a bit more like a trucker than a well-dressed guy in a trench coat.
Zeus spotted a pair of trucks near the end, both dark, separated from the others by forty feet of empty blacktop. Moving toward them, he unsnapped his knife sheath. He didn’t look behind him, not wanting to give away his suspicion of being followed.
Coming to the two trucks, he ducked between them. If anybody was following him, he was now out of sight. He darted past the tractor, to the first wheels of the trailer. There he paused, turned, and lifted the knife to his ear.
For long moments nothing happened. He stood shrouded in shadows, a snake poised to strike. Then a figure appeared in front of him, at the front of the trucks. Zeus recognized the long, hanging shape of a trench coat. And silhouetted against a distant streetlight was a small pistol in the man’s right hand.
Zeus’ hand flicked forward, hurling the knife with precise accuracy. It was a move honed by centuries of practice and experience. The blade spun through the air and struck the man’s right forearm, sank deep, piercing the arm, the tip sticking out the other side. The man cried out and dropped the gun.
He scrambled to pick it up. Zeus lunged forward with his fist extended, all his weight and the momentum of his charge behind his punch. The blow snapped the man’s head back. Blood gushed down his face. He babbled helplessly.
Zeus grabbed his neck in a bearlike hand and dragged the smaller man back, toward the wheels of the trailer. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t all that big. It was pathetically easy for Zeus to hurl him against the tire.
The figure crumpled to the ground, tears streaming from his eyes. Zeus pulled his gun and crouched before the man. He rested the end of his weapon over the man’s heart.
“Start talking,” he said simply.
The man blinked away tears and spat a tooth from his mouth.
“Fuck you!” he shot back, a desperate defiance coming to his eyes. “You shoot that thing, you’ll have everybody in this truck stop over here!”
Zeus nodded, as if considering the idea. Standing up, he planted a heavy foot on the man’s chest. Then he bent over, clamped one hand over the man’s mouth, and with the other yanked the blade from the man’s forearm. The man screamed, the sound too muffled to be heard from a distance.
Zeus let go of the man and crouched in front of him again. He extended the knife forward, resting it a hairsbreadth from the man’s left eye.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Zeus said. “But you are going to talk. I know you’ve been following me. I know you’re the one who led those men to me.”
“No, I don’t know nothing—”
“They killed my wife!” Zeus seethed, fighting to keep himself from roaring a
t the man. “They left my children without a mother. So you’re going to talk if I have to carve the information out of you.”
The man shook, seeing the rage in Zeus’ eyes.
“I—I don’t know who they are,” the man stammered. “I got an e-mail, saying some people would be following me . . . to intercept you! I didn’t know who they were—”
“You think they wanted to ‘intercept’ me for a nice chat?!” Zeus demanded. “PI, mercenary, ex-cop, whoever the fuck you are, you know damn well what those fuckers were going to do.”
“Look,” the man said, “I didn’t know about them until I got the message. I was told—”
“Told by who?” Zeus demanded.
“I don’t know!” the man screeched. Zeus tightened his grip on the knife.
“Seriously!” the man cried. “I’ve never seen him, or her, or whoever it is! They communicate by e-mail! Just their e-mail addresses! I don’t know their names!”
Zeus shook his head.
“Not good enough,” he said.
“Please!” the man pleaded. “They paid me thirty thousand dollars to follow you! That’s it. That’s all I was supposed to do! If I’d known—”
“If you’d known?” Zeus snapped. “You know now what they’re doing and you’re still following me!”
The man swallowed nervously.
“I need the money, man . . .” he said pitifully. “I really do. It’s nothing pers—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Zeus seethed. “My wife is dead. It is entirely personal.”
He shifted back from the man, thinking.
“I can’t have you following me,” Zeus said.
“Please don’t kill me,” the man said, raising his arms in surrender. Blood trailed down from the long wound on his right forearm.
“No,” Zeus said.
He looked down, finding the man’s left foot. The man wore loafers, which left his ankles exposed. Zeus placed the knife over his Achilles tendon.
“I can’t have you following me,” he repeated, clapping his free hand back over the man’s mouth. He cut deep, severing the tendon with a brutal jerk of the knife. The man screamed, bawling frantically into Zeus’ hand. Zeus waited a few moments, until the initial pain had passed.
He stood up, pocketing the knife.
“If you get to a hospital, they’ll probably be able to repair the damage,” he said simply. “Otherwise you’ll be limping the rest of your life. If I see you again, you will die.”
He stalked away, leaving the crying man slumped against the truck tire.
19
Big Sur, California
“How can you be this sober after six shots?” Desmond asked.
Dionysus shrugged. He’d just arrived three hours ago. From the way he told it, after his flight from Amsterdam he’d returned to the city, lying low in a cheap hostel for a day and a half to make sure his pursuer had truly been shaken. When he was satisfied she was no longer on his trail he’d been able to catch a red-eye flight to San Francisco. From there he’d driven south, directly to Ares’ house . . .
. . . where he’d found his way to the basement bar/lounge, and started working his way through a bottle of Sazerac. Desmond nursed a beer and watched Dionysus land bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye on a nearby dartboard. It was late, so late it was actually early. But no one could sleep, not with Zeus expected in sometime during the next few hours. That was enough to keep people up. Though Des doubted Dionysus needed the incentive. From what little he’d seen so far, he was not sure if the ‘God of Wine’ slept at all. He’d been up all day, was downing whiskey with alarming speed, and still looked no worse for wear.
“Tolerance,” Dionysus replied. “You know last time I took the driver’s test I was eight beers into a case? Passed with flying colors.”
“A true example for the children,” Artemis snarked from a nearby couch.
“Very true,” Dionysus replied. “Since half of my children owe their existence to good old alcohol.”
“Well, where’s the fun in conceiving them if you’re too drunk to remember it?” Des said.
“The joy of surprise,” Dionysus declared. “Every time some woman brings me a kid I didn’t know I had, my heart grows a little bigger. And I’m pretty sure a few of them weren’t even mine. But who cares? I love the little punks! They’re so damn cute and optimistic. And blood’s never been all that important anyway.”
He tossed his last dart, which joined its companions in the crowded bull’s-eye, despite the fletching getting in each other’s way. Des shook his head in disbelief and moved over to the couch. He collapsed into the cushions beside his lover.
“So the whole God of Debauchery thing wasn’t just a kernel of truth blown out of proportion, was it?”
“No,” Artemis sighed.
“And since you’ve already told me you were debauched, I imagine for him to get that title . . .”
“Caligula was a Puritan next to him. Watch,” Artemis said, and turned to face her half-brother. “Dio, tell Desmond about the time you knocked up your daughter!”
Dionysus cocked his head.
“Which time?”
Desmond looked uneasy, and whispered to Artemis, “I thought you said you didn’t have kids with each other.”
“I didn’t. Nor did anyone else in Zeus’ family,” Artemis said, loud enough that Dionysus couldn’t help but overhear.
“In my defense, the first time I didn’t know she was my—”
“That’s not a defense, Dio!” Artemis interrupted.
Dionysus shrugged and retrieved his darts from the board.
“Don’t let her scare you. I’m really a nice guy. Unlike certain other brothers of mine,” said Dionysus, taking up a position to throw again. “Ares spends three millennia killing anything that looks at him funny, then just happens to find God!”
“He told me God found him,” said Desmond.
“He tells a lot of things,” Dionysus grumbled.
As if by fate, they heard the sound of heavy steps coming down the basement stairs. Ares appeared in the entryway of the bar.
“Dad’s here,” he said simply.
Artemis sighed and got to her feet. She had a sad look on her face, as did Ares. Even Dionysus’ perpetual grin flattened.
“Let’s see how he’s taking it,” Artemis said.
They all made their way upstairs and through the house to the front door. Aphrodite was already outside, helping the kids inside. Desmond saw a small boy in her arms, the child still half asleep from the car ride. A slightly older little girl walked alongside a woman Desmond assumed was Hera. She was young-looking and beautiful, like all of them. Honey-brown hair framed green eyes. A simple glance at those eyes, and the shape of her face, told him that she and Ares were family. Despite their being different genders, the resemblance was remarkable.
The girl next to her looked nothing like Hera, which made sense from what he’d been told. She was a mixture of features, Asian and Caucasoid. Her brown eyes were filled with tears, the skin beneath them flushed from crying. Desmond felt his heart sink, sadly able to imagine what the poor girl was going through, since he knew she had just lost her mother. But whereas he’d been twenty years old when he’d heard the horrible news, this girl couldn’t be more than five, and she’d seen it all happen. How did a person even make sense of that? Just thinking about it made the detachment he’d long felt seem utterly insignificant. Religious or not, he said a quick mental prayer for the two little children.
At the back of the group trudged Zeus. He was a solidly built bear of a man, nearly six and a half feet tall. He looked like Dionysus, though his face didn’t bear the easygoing grin of the God of Wine. Instead Zeus’ face was cloudy, his eyes staring at the ground in front of him as he walked, not really seeing the pavement of the driveway as it passed.
The immortals hugged, and a good many tears were spilled. Desmond watched from a few steps back. Zeus’ troubled expression softened a bit as he hugged his daughter, and locked eyes with his sons. The little girl was picked up and passed among her half-siblings, each cradling the child against them and saying whatever comforting words they could.
After several minutes Zeus broke from his family and approached Desmond. Des felt a flash of nervousness, realizing that for all the strange things he’d learned in the last few days, he was still standing in front of his girlfriend’s father for the first time.
“Hello,” Zeus said simply.
“Hi,” Desmond replied, shaking the man’s hand.
“You’re Desmond?” he asked, his head clearly somewhere else.
“Yes,” Desmond replied. “I . . . I was sorry to hear what happened . . .”
“Thank you,” Zeus said. For a long moment he looked unbearably sad, like he was going to break down then and there. But his face stiffened, and he focused his gaze back on Desmond. “So what’s your quirk?”
Desmond raised an eyebrow.
“Normal people bore my daughter,” Zeus said. “What’s your quirk?”
“Uh . . . I have several?” Desmond managed.
The faintest hint of a smile appeared on Zeus’ face.
“Sounds about right,” he said, looking off toward Artemis, who cuddled young Melika in her arms. He turned back to Desmond.
“Things will get bad, Desmond,” Zeus said. “We can’t keep you safe. We can’t even keep ourselves safe.”
“Artemis filled me in,” Desmond said.
“And you’re still here . . .” Zeus said, more to himself than Desmond. He appeared to think this over for a bit, then shrugged and said. “I suppose courage counts as a quirk these days, sadly. Maybe not the smartest quirk . . .”