by David Welch
Another man to Lenka’s left went down, the top of his head torn off by two bullets. He slumped forward, collapsing across the barricade. The person immediately to his left noticed him motionless, and paused momentarily from his assault. One of the immortals acting as the distraction, blasting away on full auto, caught the man during his moment of hesitation. A half-dozen bullets slammed into him, shattering his armor and ripping into his chest. He staggered back under the impact, striking hard against the cavern next to Athena. His slumping figure smeared a path of blood on the wall.
“You should have walked away!” Athena roared. “Made peace with your rotten childhood and gone about your life!”
“Shut up!” he snarled. Only three mercs remained at his side, not enough to turn this around. The tactic was all too easy to see now. One group blasted away to draw their attention and keep them busy; the other skulked through the darkness, waiting for a target. They did the killing. But now he couldn’t force either group back. He was outnumbered, and had only a single magazine left.
“You’re going to die here, Lenka!” Athena yelled, laughing maniacally. “Did you think we’d just let you keep pushing?”
A bullet split the skull of a man to his right, sending a pink spray onto another merc. That man flinched, wiping at the gore. As he did so, the motion drew attention, and three streams of gunfire ripped into him. His hand and head were shredded by a storm of lead.
“My aunt! My brothers! Did you think we’d forgotten about them?!” Athena demanded. Lenka fought the urge to turn about and club her in the head to shut her up. Rewarding as it would be, he couldn’t spare the seconds, not with his people falling and the Olympians drawing closer.
His last man fired blindly, frantically spraying his dwindling ammo into the darkness. It bought them a second as the attackers ducked behind stalagmites to avoid the wild shots.
“You’re a fool, Lenka,” Athena went on. “Foolish enough to push them to the point that they put my brother in charge. You know why we don’t usually let Ares off his leash?”
“Shut up!” Lenka roared futilely.
“Ask your men, Lenka!” she continued between bursts of triumphant laughter. “They’ll tell you why!”
To his right, his final man popped up, hoping to expend his last magazine. He didn’t get to pull the trigger. Two shots rang out and he fell backward, his jaw blown clean off. Lenka turned away as the man expired.
“If you want your revenge,” Athena taunted, “you better be quick about it.”
He threw down his rifle. Pulling a pistol from a holster on his hip, he dashed toward his mother and wrenched her off the floor of the cavern. With speed that would be impressive for a man half his age, he swung her in front of him and rammed the barrel of the gun against her forehead.
“All right!” he bellowed in English. “Stop firing, or Athena dies!”
Athena smiled wanly.
“You just blew your chance,” she said. “You never did know when to quit.”
Lenka grumbled, his grip tightening on the pistol.
“You heard me!” he bellowed once again. “Guns down! Now!”
Desmond fell back, taking a few steps into the darkness. The shooting had come to a stop. Everybody looked on as Lenka stood up, Athena in front of him. Desmond nearly retched at the sight of Athena. The beautiful, petite woman with gray eyes and honey-brown hair that he’d seen in pictures had suffered horribly at Lenka’s hands. She was naked, bruised, sunburned, and emaciated. Her hair was short and ragged, unevenly hacked off by some sort of knife. Her face was sallow, with sunken eyes and far too prominent cheekbones. Scars covered her body, and she was missing two fingers. A mass of blood-red burns marked where they had been.
Desmond shuddered. Lenka had done this to his own mother?!
Sidorov showed no such disgust for his handiwork. He crouched low behind Athena, making sure no part of his head protruded above hers.
“And turn the fucking lights on!” the Russian bellowed.
For a moment, nobody reacted. Then Des heard quiet footsteps to his right. Artemis appeared out of the darkness, tiptoeing up to him.
“What do we do?” Des whispered.
“Stall him,” Artemis replied softly, barely audible.
“What?”
“I’m going up to the ledge,” she whispered. “I can get a shot on him there, from the side. But I need at least ten minutes to get through the tunnel. Stall him.”
“How exactly do I do that?” he asked.
“You killed six trained soldiers today. What’s a little bullshitting compared to that?” she said. “Besides, you’re creative, you’ll think of something.”
He couldn’t see her crooked grin in the darkness, but knew it was there. She melted into the darkness, freakishly silent. How she didn’t smack into a dozen stalagmites, Des didn’t know.
“You think I’m joking?!” Lenka roared from behind the barricade. “I want the lights on! If I can’t see where you are, I kill her and take my chances!”
Ares appeared at Desmond’s side out of the darkness.
“Where’s Artemis going?” he asked quietly.
“To that ledge,” Des said. “She says she can get a shot. We just keep the man talking.”
“Hmm,” Ares said, then nodded. “Best plan we have now.”
He turned toward Zeus, a few yards ahead of him.
“Dad! Turn on the lights! No use getting Theni killed!”
Zeus looked back, a momentary flicker of astonishment on his face. Ares said something in the language that Des now recognized as Vesclevi. Zeus sighed, and shuffled off toward the living corridor.
“Okay, Lenka! You’ll get your lights!” Ares replied. “But you gotta know you’re not getting out of here!”
“I will if you expect to talk to this bitch again!” Lenka growled.
Desmond followed Ares, moving up closer. Hera stood fifteen yards from the barricade, her gun on Lenka and Athena. Ares and Desmond took up positions on either side of her. Lenka shifted and retreated back toward the wall.
“Stop there. And stay in front of me or—”
“Or you kill her, yeah, we get it,” Ares replied sarcastically.
“Shade your eyes!” Zeus yelled from the living tunnel.
The lights went on, turning the cave from dark to dim. The areas around the floor of the cavern were brightly illuminated, with lights wired up on several of the stalagmites. Each side had a clear view of the other.
“Now get back out here, Zeus!” shouted Lenka. “Where I can see you!”
They expected Zeus to emerge with his gun up and ready. Instead he came dragging the semiconscious form of Duscha in front of him, a pistol at the back of her head. Lenka stiffened, his eyes cold and lethal.
“So what do we do now?” Ares asked.
“Shoot through me!” Athena shouted, a mad smile on her face.
“Shut up!” Lenka shouted into her ear.
“Do it, Ari! You know where to shoot! He’ll die. I’ll heal!”
Ares looked at her curiously.
“Do that, and I’ll use my last bit of strength to splatter her brains all over your precious caves,” Lenka snarled.
Ares sighed. “Think he’ll still be coherent enough to do that?”
“Probably,” Zeus said, as calm as if he were discussing the weather. “Gut shots don’t always kill right away. Too much risk.”
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Ares said.
“Let’s cut the games, Lenka!” Zeus shouted. “We both have something that doesn’t belong to us. You want your daughter back, then you hand over mine!”
Lenka made no move to release Athena. In front of him, Duscha lolled listlessly in Zeus’ grip. Her eyes were half open, and her head swam, as she was unable to focus through the haze of the drugs. Lenka’s face was a mask of a
nger, but a trace of uncertainty creased his brow. He shook in rage, the tremors visible as he warred with himself over what to do.
“Come on, Lenka,” Hera called out. “Do you love your daughter more than you hate your mother? Take her and go!”
Lenka’s eyes squeezed shut, then reopened, focused and intent. The tremors stopped, and he held the gun steady on Athena’s head.
“I am not letting her go,” he said coolly.
Duscha’s head perked up at the words, her eyes struggling to fix on her father’s voice.
“You can’t be serious,” said Hera. “Duscha is your daughter.”
“I am not letting Athena go!” Lenka snapped.
Duscha wasn’t able to speak yet, but was coherent enough to hear the words. Her face went slack, crestfallen.
Zeus sighed and released his grip on Duscha. She fell unceremoniously onto the rock floor.
“I always knew you were a monster,” Athena spat at Lenka, then turned to her family. “Kill him. Kill him now!”
Lenka tensed, his finger twitching, ready. Zeus pocketed his pistol, moved his rifle from his shoulder, and aimed at Lenka.
For a long moment there reigned a tense silence, all eyes boring in on Lenka and Athena. Desmond felt the urge to shift about nervously, but beat it down, keeping his gun on Lenka. He kept hearing Artemis’ words in his head. And they struck home. What was bullshitting a man compared to killing one?
This is a bad idea, his sense of reason reminded him. But the voice of caution in his head was strangely resigned, as if it knew damn well it wasn’t going to change his mind.
“Aw, fuck it,” he grumbled, slinging his gun on his shoulder. All eyes snapped suddenly to him as he said the words. He stormed forward a half-dozen steps, his breath fast and harsh.
“So this is him?” he said, turning back to the immortals. “This is Sidorov? This is the asshole who disrupted my life and made us drag ourselves halfway across the fucking planet?!”
For the first time since he’d met the immortals, he saw true shock on their faces. He spun back to Sidorov.
“You’re the fuck-wit with mommy issues who’s behind all this?!”
“Get back,” Lenka warned.
“Or what? You’ll shoot her? Fuck, the moment you do that you lose all leverage and get filled with lead! You barely have enough power to keep yourself alive right now! Fuck!”
He balled his fist, shaking his head, letting the anger he actually felt drive his performance. For once he understood all those actors who babbled on inanely about “method” during interviews. He had to convince this man he was insane enough to be actually doing this, and it helped a great deal that he truly was insane enough to actually be doing this!
“You worthless, washed-up, Soviet douchebag!” Des growled. “Let’s cut through the shit. Yeah, yeah, your childhood sucked, you daddy was a prick, there’s something wrong with your brain, Mommy didn’t rescue you. And whatever else you fucking tell yourself! But at the bottom of this, it isn’t about your shitty life! It’s about jealousy! You’re fucking jealous!”
Lenka said nothing, just kept his death glare on Des.
“Jealous! You’re throwing the world’s most violent hissy fit because they live forever and you don’t! Wah-wah, I’m just a mortal man. Hell, if you’d never met your mother, you’d have never known there was an alternative to mortality, and you’d be another bitter, middle-aged man dying of lung cancer!”
The faint tremor of rage returned to Lenka at the mention of his illness.
“You are a fool,” Lenka said coldly.
“Oh yes! I’m a fool! I’m the one trapped in the bottom of a cave in the middle of nowhere with four guns on me! I’m the fool!” Des raved sarcastically. “You’re a fucking idiot, Lenka. You waste your whole life trying to take revenge? For what? Look at them! Their whole damn subspecies is standing in front of you! They’re functionally extinct! If they didn’t live forever, they would’ve died out a long time ago!”
“Easy to say when you’re in your twenties!” snapped Lenka.
“They’re a fucking evolutionary dead end!” declared Des. “They’re a genetic mistake! You think you’ve killed a lot of them? Hell, there used to be thousands! And they’re all dead except for this bunch! Most of them blew their own fucking heads off! Immortality isn’t a gift! It’s six thousand years of clinical depression!”
Desmond heard a sharp breath behind him, from Hera. He knew his words made things sound far worse than they actually were, but he couldn’t stop now.
“I saw the conflict in you, when Zeus brought out your daughter. Imagine you weren’t a sociopath, that you had a wife and kids and a normal family. Now imagine watching them die! Every one of them! Every time you love somebody, dead! Your lovers, wives, children, friends . . . all dead! You envy them? Ever wonder why there aren’t millions of immortals? Ninety percent of their children die before they reach eighteen! They rot from the inside out! You want to live like that, Lenka? Knowing you have to have ten kids just to see one become an adult?!”
Lenka made no response.
“Unbelievable,” Des said, shaking his head in disbelief. “They’re not really people, Lenka! They don’t live lives, they just live. The same thing, over and over. Hell, we get jaded after eighty years of life. Zeus is over six thousand years old! His mind doesn’t work any differently than ours, Sidorov! He experiences time and emotion and reason the exact same way! You think you’re jaded? How the hell would you get up in the morning knowing that whatever you’re going to do, you’ve done it before? That anyone you love will eventually be gone, but you will still be here? Day after day after fucking day! There’s no risk to their existence, Lenka! They didn’t walk on the moon! They didn’t discover America! They didn’t invent the fucking printing press! There’s no urge in them. No incentive to achieve and excel, because they don’t need to be remembered! They’ll always be here! They’re not a part of history, they’re a fly on the fucking wall watching it go by!”
Lenka’s eyes narrowed. “If you think so little of them, why are you here? Fighting with them?”
Desmond shrugged impishly.
“Because you don’t get to choose who you love. I fell for a woman who happened to be some moon goddess-huntress thing. She’s with Aphrodite, trying to keep her from bleeding to death,” Desmond lied. “Thanks to your fucking friends. And I love her. Doomed human subspecies or not, I love her.”
Lenka’s head twitched slightly, the barest of motions, as if he was looking for something. Their eyes met for a long second, neither man giving. It was Lenka who broke the stare-down.
“Nice try,” he said to Des. “Whether you’re a raving lunatic or trying some desperate ploy, it doesn’t matter. You may be right about them, about everything. But you don’t have doctors telling you that you have two years left, at best. You don’t cough a hundred times a day and call it a good day when no blood comes up. And yet they live. Forever. We’re nothing but passing fancies to them, American. They fuck us, they raise us, and they toss us aside as inconsequential. They leave me to suffer and think they can walk away from it, because I’m just some ant that’ll die. They can walk away and forget about it? About me? About what this woman did to me!?” Lenka roared, pressing his gun hard against Athena’s head. “They are an insult! To you, to me! To every man and woman who has to face death while these degenerates live on! No! They die. They have to die.”
Lenka clamped his teeth shut. His eyes showed desperation and resolve. Des looked at him for a long moment, thinking. He didn’t dare look to the ledge to see if Artemis was there. The fact that Lenka was still alive strongly hinted that Arty wasn’t in position yet. And the longer he remained quiet, the more time Lenka had to wonder if Artemis was really tending to a wounded Aphrodite.
So Des sighed audibly, and turned back to Hera.
“Your plan ain’t working
, Mom,” he said. “I think we should tell him.”
Artemis forced her way past a small ridge that jutted up, narrowing the tunnel to just over a foot in diameter. She felt the walls rake against her camisole as she moved. Without her armor, she was thin enough to get through the tunnel, but had little protection against the rock. Her bare shoulders were already scraped up, and there were at least two rips in the camisole and cuts in the skin beneath, but she kept going.
She pushed her gun ahead of her. About ten feet ahead, the tunnel opened into the vast main cavern. And after that it was five feet down to the ledge. She could hear shouts coming from below, but couldn’t make out the words. It was Desmond’s voice, though, and as she inched closer she could hear him raving like a maniac. She suppressed a chuckle. She had no idea that when she’d asked him to stall Lenka, he’d go so over the top with it.
Using her elbows to pull herself forward, she reached the end of the tunnel. She grabbed the gun in one hand, then inched next to it, her head suddenly out in the open as she looked down on the cavern. She focused, ignoring the height. Searching next to the aperture with a free hand, she found a small ledge, and hung the gun on it by its strap. She wriggled a little farther, getting most of her upper body out of the tunnel. It had been millennia since she’d explored this part of the caverns, but she distinctly remembered a stone protrusion you could use to pull yourself out of the tunnel and lower yourself down to the ledge. Glancing about, she found it, a foot or so to her right.
She looped both arms around it and pulled. She moved slowly, not using enough force to jerk herself out in one go. Last thing she needed was to swing violently free and lose her hold. Bit by bit she drew her legs out, until only her feet remained in the tunnel. Gritting her teeth and hugging tight to the protrusion, she pulled free.
Her body swung to the left, but not violently so. Instantly she pressed her form against the wall of the cavern, arresting her motion. Already her arms ached, but she stayed focused. She lowered herself slowly, extending her legs straight down. Her toes touched the ledge, and she gently settled the rest of her weight on it.