The Gods' Day to Die

by David Welch

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “If that is the fate I must suffer . . .”

  “Damn right it is,” she snapped back. “And I want to live in Hawaii.”

  The words sounded almost comical, the way she was both pouty and insistent at the same time.

  “Hawaii it is,” he replied.

  “And we’re renewing our vows.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Fine,” she said, gazing up to the life-sized crucifix hanging above the altar. “You better make it worth my while.”

  “I will,” Ares replied solemnly.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” she replied, getting to her feet. She disappeared down the pew and left the church. Ares looked back to the crucifix and laughed.

  “She’s serious. You better come through,” he said. “For Your sake. You do not want to be around that woman when she’s mad . . .”

  25

  Outside Michurinsk, Russia

  Athena lay back against the post, naked in the hot sun. It was summer, and Lenka’s home was far enough from the city that he felt safe leaving her outside to suffer. There was nothing but abandoned fields around them for a quarter mile, little chance anybody would see her poor and abused form.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. His dogs would see her. He’d set up six doghouses in a circle, fifteen yards from her. Each was home to an Ovcharka, also known as a Caucasian Mountain Dog. These were huge, stocky, and covered in long fur. They’d been bred for aggression, were excellent guard dogs, bad-tempered, and quick to snap. They answered to Lenka and few others, and spent most of the day growling at Athena. Each was tethered on a thick chain twelve yards long, close enough that they could almost reach her on her post. Her own chain was four yards long, long enough that if she extended it fully she’d be in range of the beasts.

  Of course Lenka’s people made sure to throw her meager scraps of food at four yards’ distance, meaning it was a race between her and the dogs to get it. The Ovcharkas had figured out the four-yard limit, and knew exactly when they could strike at their prey. Athena had a half-dozen bite marks on her arms and legs already, mixed among burns and the scars from Duscha’s knives.

  She sighed, watching one of the dogs chew on a bone. The sun burnt her skin, but there was nothing she could do. Her left hand throbbed, phantom pains tricking her brain into thinking the middle and ring fingers were still there. Duscha had chopped them off just before Lenka’s disastrous attack on Ares’ house. But the sadistic bitch hadn’t only cut them. She’d snipped them joint by joint, using an iron to sear the gaping wound shut each time. They didn’t want her to bleed to death, after all. The whole time the girl had been laughing . . . and gratifying herself. Some days Athena didn’t know which of the two was worse. Duscha got a sexual thrill from inflicting pain, and cherished being part of inflicting it. But she was a creature of instinct, as much of a pet as the dogs surrounding her. When Lenka let her off her leash, she became too violent too quickly. Like most psychopaths and sociopaths, her mind blocked out thoughts of what the consequences of her actions would be, leading her to do incredibly violent things that would have landed her in jail if not for her father.

  Most days, Athena thought Lenka was far worse. He may have shared with his daughter a complete disregard for the lives or feelings of others, but beyond that they were night and day. He loved the power of dominating another, not the actual pain. He had a mind like his father’s, capable of playing a part and functioning in a society of mostly decent people. He’d hidden his psychosis long enough to rise in the KGB, and long enough to find blackmail material on government officials. While Duscha may have been the more revolting of the two, Lenka was more effective. Athena wished he’d been the one to die in Big Sur, not Duscha.

  Depressed at the thought, she closed her eyes, trying to escape in the only way she still could. For the thousandth time since her capture, she summoned memories out of her long past. She drew up images of past loves. Artemis had always told her she had shitty judgment when it came to men, and given Lenka’s father, Athena felt she had to concede that point. But not all of them were bad. She’d found herself with men and women who had truly loved her, partners who had raised families with her and spent long decades of happiness by her side.

  One filled her mind: Hrothgar, Saxon thegn and hard-bitten warrior, her husband for most of the first half of the sixth century. Looking at him, one wouldn’t think he’d be one of the better ones. He’d stood six feet four, with broad shoulders, thick muscles, and a long beard. Even by the standards of the day, he hadn’t been considered exactly attractive. In battle, he’d been a ferocious man, a force of nature. She’d fought alongside him to defend their village from Welsh raiders, and watched him hew through a half-dozen men.

  But after each battle he’d come home, hang up his sword, and be the best father she’d ever known. What modern folks would call a big teddy bear. Together they’d had eight children, five boys and three girls. He’d spend hours holding them when they were little, then more hours roughhousing with them as they grew. All signs of the brutal slayer of men would vanish, and he’d be just another father, another man of the village. Better than most of them, in fact. Fathers hadn’t been as indulgent in those days as they were now. The conditions of the age wouldn’t allow it. But Hrothgar had been an exception. Perhaps the brutality of war had pushed him to embody its opposite at home; she didn’t know. All she knew was that he’d loved hard, and had given her and their children every bit of attention they could possibly desire.

  She smiled at the memory of being in his arms, her petite form dwarfed by his hulking frame. Even when he’d turned old and gray, he’d had the energy to take her to bed, right up until the end.

  It was a bittersweet thing to remember. Most of her good memories were. Because as good as they may be to relive, they always ended with one inescapable reality. Hrothgar was dead. They were all dead. All her husbands and lovers, all of her friends . . . and all but one of her children. And she prayed that one would meet his end soon.

  As if to darken her mood, she heard the back door of Lenka’s house open. Her son walked down the stoop and into the field, accompanied by a younger man with a typically grim Russian expression. This newcomer was tall and wiry, with brown eyes, a scraggly beard on a thin face, and a military bearing to his step. He and Lenka slowly made their way across the field toward her, conversing with each other. The young man laughed, unbothered by the ring of dogs or the brutalized naked woman in the center.

  The dogs turned their attention to the newcomer, growling in the backs of their throats as they saw the man close to their master. Lenka snapped at them, and they backed down. He casually led the young man to the center of the circle.

  “Well, here she is,” Lenka said. “If you are to fight with my team, you must be at least able to hold your own with her.”

  The newcomer stared down at Athena, disbelief on his face.

  “A ninety-pound girl?” the man said.

  “She killed several of my men in hand-to-hand combat the day I captured her,” Lenka said. “And she isn’t the worst the family has to offer.”

  Athena rolled her eyes, knowing what was to come next. Lenka had been doing this for months, since her capture. Any new person who came on had to fight her, to test their skills. Lenka’s reasoning was that if they could survive battle with the “Goddess of Just Wars,” then they could deal with the other Olympians. Granted, she was starved, suffering from heat exhaustion, and in incredible pain; but such things were a side benefit to Lenka, not a drawback.

  “She’s missing fingers!” the man said.

  “Oh, yes,” Lenka said, looking at her ruined left hand. “She was disobedient. Corrections were made.”

  The newcomer frowned, then shrugged.

  “If you insist,” the man said.

  Lenka smiled and turned to Athena.

 
“It seems I have forgotten my manners,” he said. “This is Arkady. I’m hoping he will be one of my new people. Please don’t go easy on him.”

  Athena coughed, her throat parched and rebellious.

  “Go fuck yourself,” she croaked.

  “On your feet, woman!” Lenka snapped, kicking her in the hip. It hurt, but no worse than the dozens of other injuries plaguing her body. “Get up! Only chance for you to fight back!”

  “How tempting,” she deadpanned. “I’m not fighting your pawns anymore.”

  “Well, he’ll be fighting you anyway,” Lenka said. “Whether you resist or not.”

  “How like you, beating up on a woman,” Athena snarked.

  Lenka sighed and turned back to his newcomer. “She gets this way when we don’t have time to remind her of her place. Lately we’ve been so busy.”

  “How ’bout I have some fun with her?” Arkady said with a smile. “She’s a little beat up, but I can work with that.”

  “No, no,” Lenka said. “She’s not for that. I know a few good whores in town, if you’re looking for some action.”

  “So just knock her around, eh? Well, for what you’re paying . . . ,” Arkady said with a shrug.

  Lenka smiled, and crouched in front of Athena.

  “Now, Mother, please put up a fight for our guest. Or else I’ll have to change up the dogs’ menu for tonight,” he said.

  “You’d kill me now? Before you pick off my family one by one?” she said with a dark laugh.

  “Kill? No,” he said, grabbing her wounded hand. “But you survived losing two fingers, makes me wonder how much more you can lose before your life is really in danger.”

  She spit in his face. He smiled, and turned to Arkady.

  “Can you go unhook Wolf? He’s the one with the missing ear . . .”

  He paused as Athena staggered to her feet. The effort nearly drained her of strength. Between the tortures, and meals that usually consisted of maybe half an apple, she had little energy at her command. Lenka knew this. If she had been fed and fresh and uninjured, this man wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. But like this? Muscles atrophied from months in confinement, starved, riddled with injuries that even her body would need months to heal? Even if she fought back, this battle would be one-sided.

  Which is probably why he does this in the first place! Athena thought.

  As she lifted her fists in a weak defensive stance, she felt the weight of the chain around her neck. Arkady shrugged, and leapt forward. His fist shot for her face in a sharp jab. Her left instinctively batted the blow away, the quick move exhausting what strength she had. His next blow rammed into her stomach, crumpling her to the ground. The air gushed from her lungs, and she doubled over, barely able to stay on her hands and knees.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Lenka said, clucking at her like a parent scolding a child. “Wolf gets so hungry this time of day.”

  Athena groaned, and slowly lurched back to her feet. She grabbed at the post to pull herself up. Lenka had a small smile on his face. Maybe the man was more like his late daughter than she thought.

  She didn’t have time to consider the possibility for long. Arkady threw a hard roundhouse to her temple, and once again she found herself on the ground. Lenka’s taunting voice filled her ears.

  “Come on! You’re not even trying!”

  26

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  Desmond didn’t like to cry. Or even to feel the urge to cry. And since neither Bane nor Melika was technically related to him, he supposed he shouldn’t feel the urge as strongly as he did at this moment, but he felt it anyway.

  How could he not feel something? Both of the kids were bawling their eyes out, and their parents weren’t much better. Except for the tears streaming down her face, Hera kept her composure remarkably well. Zeus, however, had Meli in a bear hug and looked close to breaking down.

  Standing back a few feet from them was Albert Baker and his wife. “Uncle Alby” was a dead ringer for his father and grandfather. He had the large frame and bearlike stature of Zeus and Dionysus, and facial features too similar to be anything other than family. His wife was a pretty Hispanic woman. She was a few pounds overweight, and seemed to like loud colors from the look of the sundress she wore. A few yards behind them, on the stoop of the house, twin girls watched anxiously. They were six years old and practically identical. Only their haircuts set them apart from one another.

  “I don’t want you to go!” Melika pleaded, clutching fiercely at her father’s shirt.

  “It’s just for a few days,” Zeus said. “I promise. We’ll be back soon.”

  “I wanna come!” Melika pouted.

  “I know, but you can’t. We have to go way far away,” Zeus said soothingly. “Some place a little dangerous. You’ll be safe here, I promise.”

  “No!” Melika snapped angrily. She buried her head in her father’s shoulder and bawled some more.

  Bane was in Hera’s arms, his hands looped around her neck and clinging fiercely.

  “Don’t go,” he said in little-kid English. “Don’t!”

  “It’s okay, baby,” Hera whispered, stroking his hair. “You can play with Uncle Alby and Aunty Lena while we’re gone. And your cousins.”

  “No Uncle Alby!” Bane said vehemently. “Don’t want you to go!”

  Desmond turned away, unable to watch anymore. He made his way down the driveway, back to the car. Artemis stood by the driver’s-side door, watching the scene from a distance. Somehow, the remoteness gave her the ability to resist tearing up. Either that, or she was far more jaded than the rest of her family. He decided to believe the former.

  “It’s for the best,” she said. “Insane to bring children to a gunfight.”

  “I know,” Desmond said.

  “Well, I figure a good reason might make it easier for a mind like yours,” she said.

  “Strangely, it doesn’t,” he said. “Too much empathy. I keep wondering if you and I will ever have to do something like this.”

  “You thinking of starting a family soon?” Artemis asked, amused.

  “I’m twenty-nine. When my dad was my age, he already had a little boy in the middle of his terrible twos,” he said. “And you won’t be getting any younger.”

  “No,” she said, “I suppose I won’t.”

  They moved to the back of the car, the cries of the little ones growing louder as their parents handed them over to their “uncle.”

  “So, how many were you thinking?” Artemis asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Two? At least?”

  “Hmm,” she replied. “That’s it?”

  “Well—I don’t know! Seven! Four! Nineteen! Who knows? I thought you were the one who never had lots of kids anyway.”

  “Well, it’s different now,” she said. “I won’t outlive them. I won’t have to . . . to watch them die.”

  “So you want more than two?” he said.

  “When I was young, I always wanted a big family,” she said. “The family that fostered me and Apollo when we were teenagers had nine children, so there was always somebody to play with or go exploring with.”

  “I figured from the story about you and the dog that gave you the scar that Zeus raised you himself,” Desmond said.

  “He did, when we were little. But when we got older he sent us to live with a merchant’s family,” she said. “This was before we started sending our children away in infancy. Not the smartest thing, I guess, growing attached to your kids, then sending them off and hoping they make it. But there was a lot of stuff Dad and his brothers had to figure out as they went along.”

  Desmond nodded, a whole new feeling of sadness coming over him. Stuff like this made him wonder how these guys had made it this far at all. Watching your children die, over and over, or sending them away and
knowing you’d probably never seen them again. How did a person handle that? And to see so many go . . . it wasn’t something he could wrap his mind around. He hadn’t dealt with his parents’ death all that well. The disconnect he’d felt from their sudden absence, the fact that it could never be undone . . . It hadn’t left him in a great spot. Heck, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he had felt “connected” to anything in the past eight years.

  At least until I stumbled upon that pond. That thought made him smile.

  “So they placed you and Apollo together?” asked Desmond a little forcefully, to break himself out of his thoughts. “Even though one of you could’ve survived the Rot while the other didn’t?”

  “I think it was a twin thing,” she said. “They figured that either both of us would make it or both of us would die. Remember, we didn’t know about genetics, even after being alive for centuries. Immortality screws with innovation.”

  “I’d have thought all your millennia of experience would lead to greater recombination of thoughts, making you better at it,” Desmond said.

  She shook her head. “There’s no drive to get things done when you know it’ll always be there tomorrow. Mortals want to leave a mark; they’re pushed to get things done. We never advance the world, we seem to go along for the ride.”

  “Well, maybe when you’re mortal, all that will change,” Desmond figured. “I’ll wake up and find myself married to a female Da Vinci, or Edison, or Franklin, since you admire the guy so much. Or something like that.”

  “I doubt it,” she said, a note of sadness in her voice. “Is life going to give me something it hasn’t already? Money? Fame? Being remembered for all time? I already got those.”