The Gods' Day to Die

by David Welch

  The things you can find on the Internet!

  “I—I d-don’t remember him!” Mr. Terry Edwards of Edwards’ Coastal Auto Emporium stammered. He was intensely uncomfortable. Lenka read him easily. Mr. Edwards was used to being an alpha male, lord of all his underlings and his multimillion dollar business. Now another more powerful alpha was staring him down, with the full power of the government behind him. Or so Edwards believed.

  “We realize you see many people, Mr. Edwards. You are not in trouble for selling to this man. You had no way of knowing he was involved with the cartels,” Ruslan explained, firmly but with just enough understanding to lull the man into trust. “But this car you sold him is our best lead.”

  “But what if he comes back?” Edwards stammered. “What if he finds out you were here and sends some hit squad up from Mexico? I know what goes on down there!”

  “Mr. Edwards, we’ve had a car watching your business for three days,” Ruslan said. “And will continue to have one here until such time as Mr. Krieger is captured.”

  “But after that? If he gets word out from prison—the gangs rule those places!” Edwards stammered on.

  Lenka fought the urge to roll his eyes. So far he’d been silent, simply staring at the man through sunglasses, standing behind the two younger “agents.”

  “The FBI will be happy to provide protection until things settle down,” Ruslan said. “We are here to serve and protect. I assure you, you will be perfectly safe.”

  “You’ll have people nearby?” Edwards asked nervously.

  “Yes. Out of sight, but never out of sight,” Ruslan said.

  “Okay, Agent Pritchard,” said Edwards. He turned to a nearby desk, where a middle-aged woman typed away at a computer.

  “Ellen, can you get me all the information we have on Douglas Krieger?” the man said, all the alpha-male resonance returning to his voice. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Edwards,” said Ruslan, extending his hand. “The FBI is grateful for your cooperation. We’ve been wanting to put this guy away for a while.”

  Lenka fought a smile. You have no idea!

  “I’m glad to help any way I can,” the man said perfunctorily, flashing a practiced smile. Nerves twinged at the corners of his mouth. Lenka sighed at the sight. A scared man, facing a serious situation, well out of his element, and he still smiled. Some days Lenka didn’t understand Americans.

  They were moving again, the RV driving down the winding coast road. They had the address, the location of Ares, possibly of all of them. Ares’ home had been the one Athena didn’t know. Hours of torture hadn’t gotten it out of her, convincing Lenka that she truly didn’t know. The whole thing had been disappointing. One would think a person who lived forever, who no doubt had suffered torture and enslavement before, would be able to resist longer. But Lenka’s mother hadn’t held out much longer than a normal trained operative. He guessed that all that stuff about being like normal humans was true. Everybody broke; it was just a question of when. Athena had been no different.

  But that disappointment wasn’t what drove him to the small bedroom of the RV right now. No, he was here to make sure she knew what was about to happen. Should most or all of the remaining immortals be there, it would be a fight, he had no doubt. He wouldn’t have enough control of the situation to drag her out and make her watch, no matter how much he wanted to. But she had to know. She had to dread and fear what was coming. It was what she deserved. So here he was.

  For a long moment, neither spoke. They stared at each other. Athena’s slight, naked form was still marked by the passage of Duscha’s wood-burner. Black streaks covered her body, some swollen, but that was all. Immortals didn’t get sick. There was no infection her immune system couldn’t destroy, so there was no pus, no gangrene, nothing. Just scars that would fade away, back to normal skin in the months to come.

  “Keep staring at your mother like that, and I’ll think you’re a pervert,” Athena said.

  He ignored the remark.

  “What do you want?” she asked. “Haven’t you run out of ways to torture me yet?”

  “You never run out of ways,” Lenka said. “But there is little need to now. I only wanted to let you know that we’re on the way to Ares’ house. And if what you say about him is true, Aphrodite will no doubt be there as well.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Despite her hands and feet being bound, she looked like an animal ready to lash out in a final, desperate fury.

  “You’re in trouble, Lenka,” Athena said.

  “Because he’s the ‘God of War’? If I recall, you were a Goddess of War, and yet here you are,” Lenka said.

  Athena laughed, shifting her body up against one of the beds into a sitting position.

  “Ares is better than me,” she replied. “If he’s really in that house, I give you even odds, at best.”

  “A bullet will kill him as easy as any other,” Lenka replied. “Especially if he doesn’t see his enemy coming.”

  “It won’t matter how much surprise you have,” Athena said. “You think he leaves the house without a gun? You think he’s ever more than a short run from body armor? The man stashes weapons like most people toss around magazines! You think he’ll put himself in a position where you can get a clean shot?!”

  Lenka frowned. Something had made her especially defiant today.

  “You’re walking into a bloodbath, Lenka,” she said.

  He didn’t give her the satisfaction of getting indignant and insulting her. Instead he went quiet again, looking down at her. He noticed for the thousandth time that apart from the scars of torture, she looked no different than she did when he was a boy, or when he was a young man. She looked young enough that were he not her son, and he saw her on the street, he would dismiss her as pretty but far too young for him.

  “What now, Lenka?” she said, seeing something familiar in his look. “What’s eating at that twisted mind of yours?”

  “You,” he replied. “You do know my father was a psychopath?”

  She laughed darkly. “You think you’re the first to have me tortured? That bastard beat me, then shoved me in a gulag!”

  “Why did you marry him?” he asked.

  Her dark smile faded, her eyes clouding with rage.

  “Because good psychopaths know how to blend in,” she said. “And he did it well. In Europe, he was the charming Russian diplomat, putting a smile on the face of his government and cheering on the wonders of socialism.”

  “And you believed that?” Lenka said.

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice cracking a bit. “I wanted to believe it.”

  “You, who have seen so many tyrannies come and go, believed this one was different simply because it had a scientific-sounding ideology behind it?” Lenka asked.

  “Few things come along that are new to me,” she replied. “But the socialists intrigued me. I let myself believe because it made me feel alive again. Like my life was part of something important and not just a life.”

  “You were thousands of years old, and your judgment was that poor?” Lenka said.

  “Old, yes, but still human,” she replied. “Doesn’t matter how old you get. Your mind can still block out reality when it wants to. And I wanted to.”

  “Lenin’s persecutions, Stalin’s famines and killings, none of this made you doubt?” Lenka said.

  “I ignored what I didn’t want to hear,” she said. “I wasn’t the only one. Half the journalists in the world at the time pretended the ‘Great Workers’ Paradise’ wasn’t a charnel house, even when the evidence was undeniable.”

  “So because you fell for some stupid ideological infatuation, you met my father,” he reasoned.

  “You know all this,” she said. “Why bring it up again now?”

  He didn’t respond at first.

  “Why didn’t you try
to rescue me?” he said. “My father terrorized me my entire life. Beat me, twisted me. He made me walk with him through the state prisons when I was a child, so I could see what happened to enemies of the state, everything that happened to them. He made me help him torture people . . . when I was only eleven years old.”

  A hint of sadness came over Athena’s face, a bittersweet look.

  “I know he did,” she said. “When I got back to Russia . . . he changed. His true nature came out. But I was already pregnant. And I did try to rescue you—”

  “And you failed,” Lenka raged suddenly. “You gave up! Your own son was being twisted into a monster by this lunatic, and you gave up!”

  The sadness left her face, replaced by a resolute stare.

  “When you were four, I was thrown in the gulag for trying to smuggle you out of Russia,” she said. “I was regularly raped by the guards and worked half to death. When Zeus and Ares finally got to me six years later, I couldn’t walk and I weighed sixty-four pounds!”

  She expected the words to have some effect, but they didn’t.

  “Even then, had you found a way, I could’ve avoided being what I am now,” Lenka said. “The worst had yet to begin when I was ten.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, Lenka, no. Nothing could’ve stopped you from becoming what you are now,” she said.

  He froze, hate flushing through him. His mind stammered, trying to comprehend what she’d just said, what she meant. He was too angry to make much sense of things.

  “Maybe being raised right would have limited you,” she said. “But I doubt it. I’ve been around long enough to know. Some evil comes from being taught wrong, or raised wrong, or treated wrong. But some, a very small part, comes from being made wrong. Sadists, serial killers, sociopaths . . . there’s something wrong with you. I saw it when you were little, before I was taken. Remember Svetlana’s new puppy? When you were three? Most children would’ve played with it, held it, petted it. But you . . . you kept dropping it, over and over, no matter how many times I tried to stop you. From higher and higher spots . . . and every time you did, you’d make that excited, little-kid laugh. The kind most kids make when they’re having too much fun and are about to go manic. It was there then, Lenka. I tried to ignore it, but it was there . . . it’s always been there. Something is wrong with you, Lenka, something in your brain isn’t right.”

  He balled a fist, rage rising inside him.

  “You’re smart enough to know right from wrong,” she said. “But you still do this. I’ve seen hundreds of people, raised in pure hell, turn their lives around and become good and decent. And I’ve seen people raised to be saints throw it all away and become psychopaths. Your first assignment with the KGB outside of Russia, you could’ve stopped, defected, and become somebody new. The day the Soviet Union crumbled, you could’ve walked away and started again. Any moment since then, you could’ve put your rage behind you and become a decent person. But you didn’t. You can’t.”

  He leapt forward, grabbing her by the neck and jerking her up violently. His heart raced and his lungs ached from the exertion, but sheer force of will pushed him on. He slammed her against the recessed closet between the two beds, knocking her head against the fake wood.

  “Y-you,” she wheezed. “You’re broken! I didn’t want to believe it, I wanted to blame myself! Pretend it was all from your upbringing. But I can’t—n-not anymore. There’s something wrong with you, Lenka! Like there was with your father. Like there is with that twisted daughter of yours!”

  His hand tightened on her throat. He saw only red, watching Athena wheeze and gasp. Her hands clawed at his ineffectually. She was too weakened from many long weeks of torture and malnutrition to offer much resistance. Her eyes began to flutter, but Lenka kept squeezing. A small smile appeared upon her face. He recognized it. The smile of victory.

  He released her, dropping her hard to the ground. She crumpled at his feet, gasping for breath.

  “Duscha!” he called.

  A moment later his daughter appeared, armed and ready for combat. She flinched back at the sight of his expression, a rare trace of uneasiness crossing her face.

  “Yes, Papa?” she asked timidly.

  “Bring your wire cutters,” he ordered. “I want to see exactly how long it takes for an immortal to grow something back!”

  The unease vanished, replaced by an anxious grin.

  “Right away,” she said, and scampered back through the RV.

  Big Sur, California

  Desmond pushed open the door, entering the guest room he shared with Artemis. It was early, but he’d already been up for nearly two hours, doing more of Ares’ crash combat training program. He supposed he should feel tired, but instead he felt invigorated. Sure, his muscles hurt and he had some more new bruises, but his blood was flowing and he felt ready to go.

  Not that he had anywhere to go at the moment. But if he had, he’d be ready.

  He heard the shower.

  “That you, Des?” Artemis shouted out, her voice coming from the shower.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Can you come in here for a sec?” she asked.

  Not being one to turn down a pretty girl in the shower, he headed in. He stopped inside the bathroom. The shower door was open, and Artemis stood there in all her naked glory, an expectant smile on her face.

  “What is it with you and water?” Des said, using what blood was left in his brain, given the sudden rush to his lower body.

  “Well, it occurred to me that we haven’t done anything ‘fun’ since we left Colorado,” she said. “And that is a long time for me to go without.”

  He found himself stripping down.

  “So I take it you don’t want to go on the hike with Zeus and the kids,” he said, stepping under the warm spray.

  “That mountain isn’t going anywhere,” she said, pulling him against her slick body with one arm and pulling the shower door closed with the other.

  Lenka didn’t like it. Ares was no fool. His house was halfway up a mountain, surrounded by grassy meadows. Patches of forest lay above and below the home, but nothing within a quarter mile of the house itself.

  “So much for surprise,” he grumbled.

  “We won’t get another chance like this,” Duscha said.

  “I know,” he said, dropping his voice. “But it will be costly.”

  Duscha shrugged, then moved to pick up an HK MP5 submachine gun. She was dressed in black, the pockets of her cargo pants filled with magazines. A bulletproof vest covered the front of her body, making her look blocky and mechanical. Around her, others in similar attire were readying for the assault. Half carried MP5s; the others bore AR-15 rifles, the commercial version of the venerable M16.

  Lenka turned back to the home, lifting up his binoculars. He scanned away from the house, looking again to see if there was some way to get near it. While examining the ridge he caught a flash of motion, barely visible even with the binoculars. He saw several figures emerge. Three large ones, a smaller one, and an even smaller one on the back of one of the adults. They were definitely headed up and away from the large house.

  “New plan,” said Lenka, tucking the binoculars in his belt. “Everyone with rifles come with me. We’ve got three people on the ridge above the house, out in the open. Everybody else, surround the house, don’t let anybody leave. Do not enter until we return!”

  The men quickly self-segregated. Lenka took another look through the binoculars, seeing the figures come more into the clear. It would be a long run, in the open. He felt short of breath just thinking about it. But if even one of those people were immortal, and he had the chance to catch them in the open, he couldn’t pass it up. And if they were encumbered with children? They’d have more than their own lives to worry about, which meant they’d be less able to resist.

 
Beautiful, he thought. His men began sprinting up the hill. He followed, rifle up and ready. He coughed as he ran, but pushed on. His heart pounded the way it always did when a hunt began.

  This being California, it was a beautiful day. It always seemed to be a beautiful day here. Sure, the taxes were astronomical and the state seemed to be crumbling, but at least it was sunny.

  It reminded Zeus a little of Greece, or Italy, what with the Mediterranean climate. In front of him the bare ridgeline, covered with only grass and a scraggly tree or two, stretched south. To his right, about five hundred feet lower in altitude and a quarter mile distant, was the house. Another twelve hundred feet down from that, the grassy slopes became cliff, and then the cliffs became ocean. He caught himself staring at the vast, sparkling blue expanse.

  He could understand why Poseidon had loved it so much. Unfortunately, his brother would never get to fish this vast ocean. He’d been dead for thirteen hundred years, killed by zealous jihadists.

  Zeus frowned, and tucked the thought away. There’d been enough death lately.

  Behind him walked Melika, hand in hand with Hera. The girl had a spring in her step, the first he’d seen since her mother had been killed. The fun of being outside and in the sun had pushed back the sadness, for a while at least. She’d stared at the mountains, the patches of redwood forest, and the ocean with equal amazement. She’d never been to California, never seen trees so tall, or great mountains rising out of the ocean. It was all new to her.

  Bane rode happily on Dionysus’ shoulders, bringing up the rear. The little boy had a kid-sized cowboy hat on, to keep his face from getting sunburned.

  “There’s the house,” Zeus said, pointing.

  “Oh,” Melika said, clearly surprised. “I thought we were far away.”

  “Not too far,” he said. “Who thinks Dita will have lunch ready?”

  “I’d be surprised if she’s even awake,” Dionysus replied.