Titan: An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology (The Gods War Book 1)

by Daniel Mignault

  “Your mother's not Rhea; you don't have a mother. Well, not technically. Not in any normal kind of way.”

  “I don't understand.” I'm getting a very bad feeling, the kind that makes me want to punch stuff.

  “Hmm… No mother, you say?” Mark paces back and forth, that priestly brain of his working overtime. And instead of adding to the conversation, he only adds to the mystery. Not saying a word.

  There's a slight smirk on Hannah's face. She's enjoying stretching this out, making us work for it. When she catches me watching her, she pretends to be interested in looking for the ferryman.

  “How do you know Charon's coming?” I ask.

  “He knows everything that happens along the river. The minute we stepped onto the bank, he knew. That's why he's so good at his job.”

  “And he won't report us to Cronus or the monsters?”

  “Not a chance. Charon's a workaholic. He gets his kicks ferrying the dead to Tartarus. Not much call for that since there's no more death―at least not until we free my father.”

  “So he's on our side?”

  “We're the only ones who can give him what he wants, so yeah, we can trust him.”

  Mark finishes pacing. “I think I've figured out who your mother is, Andrus.” He looks at me, and he must be hoping I got it too, but I just stare at him.

  “OK, so we all know Cronus devoured his children so they couldn't usurp him. All of them except Zeus. Am I getting warm?” Mark asks Hannah.

  “You're warm,” she admits.

  “And Rhea was―pardon the pun―fed up with her children being devoured. So after she gave birth to Zeus, she hid him and substituted a rock disguised to look like a child in his place, and Cronus ate the rock. Am I hot yet?”

  Hannah nods. “Scalding.”

  “Wait,” I say, “where the hell is this going?”

  Mark holds up a hand to stop me. “Hang on, I'm getting to it. So Cronus ate the rock and it joined the children in his stomach who were still alive. Cronus absorbed their power and added it to his own―but of course, he couldn't do that with the rock.”

  I remember how Mrs. Ploddin sighed when Mark had mentioned that. How the whole class had laughed. They thought he was being pedantic, a stupid nerd obsessed with pointless details. But what if he was also being prophetic?

  Mark and Hannah look at me expectantly. An angry, embarrassed heat flushes my cheeks. “What? So I'm the rock? Is that what you're telling me?”

  “Hey,” Hannah says, “you said it, not us! But yeah. Congratulations, Rock Boy. You figured it out.”

  Now it's my turn to pace. “That doesn't make any sense! How can I be a rock?”

  “Not just any rock,” Mark says. “A magic rock.”

  “Great! Even better.”

  “What you don't understand is that while you were in Cronus's stomach, while he was absorbing the Gods' powers, you were absorbing his―including those he stole from the Gods.”

  “But that was over a thousand years ago! I haven't been alive that long.”

  “You only think you're a teenager,” Hannah says. “Your mother, who had given you to Rhea, took you back and hid you in her womb until she knew it was time to bring you into the world.”

  I stop pacing and turn on her. “I thought you said I didn't have a mom?”

  “Not in the normal sense. You're a rock, Andrus! Think about it. What kind of woman gives birth to a rock?”

  “Gaia,” Mark says. “Goddess of the Earth, Mother of the Titans. She must have created Andrus to serve as a balance between Gods and Titans in case things ever got this bad.”

  “Balance? Let's worry about that after we free Hades and kill Cronus. The rest of the Titans won't exactly be begging for peace until their king is dead.”

  “I'm not a goddamn rock!” I shout. But deep down, I know it's true. I can feel it. It's crazy and it hurts. It's also strangely liberating. It explains everything about me, from discovering oil in my parents' backyard to my fascination with rockhounding, caving, climbing. The dreams, the magic. All of it.

  “Hey, man,” Mark says. “It's OK. We're all something. I'm human, Hannah's a Demigod, and you―you're a rock. A very important rock that can change the world. But we're all heroes. We're all in this fight together. And that means accepting ourselves as much as it means accepting each other. That's the only way we win.”

  Hannah gives him a respectful nod. “Well, well. I take it back, Andrus. I'm glad you brought him.”

  “Maybe my wisdom is my magic,” Mark suggests.

  “Don't get your hopes up.” She turns away from us and points to an approaching boat. “At last! Charon's here.”

  The wooden craft is long and narrow, like a gondola, and decorated with the bones and skulls of the dead. A hooded, dark-robed figure stands at the rear clutching a rafting pole. It's Charon, and when the ferryman lifts his head toward us, I see his bleached and bearded skeletal face. He peers at us through empty sockets, yet I sense he can see us. The boat skims to a halt. Charon keeps one bony hand on the pole while the other reaches toward me with a dry, clacking sound.

  “He's asking to get paid,” Hannah says. “Charon may break some rules―like helping us―but getting paid is the one rule he never breaks. Did either of you bring any drachmas?”

  Mark checks his pockets and comes up empty. “I'm out. Andrus? What about you?”

  I don't have any either, but I do have something in my hand that wasn't there a second ago: the first rock I absorbed.

  “I don't think he accepts rocks,” Hannah says. “What else you got?”

  Without thinking, I squeeze my fingers around the rock and wish. There's a grinding pressure, and when I open my hand, the rock is now a diamond. I hand it to Charon; his long-dead hand clacks shut around the gem and whisks it into his robe.

  “Interesting,” Hannah says as she steps into the boat. “Your powers are evolving.”

  I join her. “Not just my powers, Ghost Girl. Me.”

  “We're all evolving,” Mark says as he steps in beside us.

  And he's right―our old lives are dust. Our new lives await, fraught with new challenges, new horrors. New everything. It's a fight I'm not sure we can win, but we have to try.

  For my parents, for Lucy, for the world.

  So the three of us sit. Facing forward, facing destiny as the ferryman pushes off from the shore, and then there are no more words, no more thoughts, just the soft shush of black, still water.

  Tartarus awaits.

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  Our heroes return in The Gods War, Book II

  — KINGDOM OF THE DEAD —

  Be ready, citizen. Cronus is watching…

  Book II: Kingdom of the Dead releases July 20, 2018

  Turn the page to read the first two chapters now!

  Book III: Gift of Death releases July 27, 2018

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  Read the Beginning of Kingdom of the Dead

  This is what it’s like to be dead. It’s funny, but it’s true. I’m in the boat of Charon—just like a dead man, like a ghost, a ferried soul on its final journey. I hope this won’t be mine. There are people I love, people I care for back on Earth. I can’t let them down, just like I can’t let my friends down: Mark Fentile and Hannah Stillwater. They’re in the boat with me, my fellow fugitives from life, from death, from horror.

  How we got here, to this place between worlds, is a long story. I go over it in my mind, searching for answers, searching for t
ruth among the lies, the magic, the mystery. Maybe, if I can wrap my head around it, it will all make sense. Maybe I won’t feel so lost or alone, though I don’t know why.

  I’ve always felt this way.

  The River Styx flows, and we flow with it. Down, into the deep. Down, into the underworld, to Tartarus, the Kingdom of the Dead. But Tartarus is not just home to ghosts, it is home to monsters and to Hades, Greek God of Death. He has been imprisoned by Cronus, King of the Titans. Cronus the Immortal. Cronus the Cannibal, All-Devouring Father of the Gods: Zeus, Poseidon, and all the rest. Cronus, who is my father too.

  My name is Andrus Eaves. I only discovered the truth of my birth yesterday… That I was born from a rock. The magic rock Cronus ate, tricked into thinking it was his son, Zeus. The rock that absorbed a fraction of my father’s power. Power that flowed into me and became me.

  In my former life, I was the adopted son of George and Carol Eaves. The Eaves are rich from oil—oil I found as a child in our backyard. That’s another of my gifts, sensing the bounty of the earth. But my old life, my old esteemed position in society is gone. I wanted to join the Warrior caste and serve the New Greece Theocracy, the NGT that rules what’s left of Earth. I wanted to put in my military service helping my fellow citizens before joining the family oil business. That’s hard to do when you’re on the run.

  The NGT wants me dead.

  That’s because Cronus doesn’t want any more children. Especially me. He likes to eat his spawn because, well, you know the story: Cronus worries they will grow up to challenge him. And he’s right—I know I will. And I know Zeus did, and won, for a time. Only Zeus is dead. The Gods are dead: dead or fled, fled and gone. Only Hades remains, imprisoned in the depths of Tartarus. That’s where Hannah, Mark, and I are going. To free her father.

  To free Hades.

  I look to Charon, the robed and hooded figure in black who guides our boat down the Styx. He’s a living mummy, with parchment-thin flesh stretched tight over ancient bones. But he’s not without a sense of style: his pointed beard is groomed into shape with cobwebs. And Charon’s boat is just as ghoulish: long and narrow, like a gondola, decorated with the bones and skulls of the dead. Not exactly cheery, but at least it’s consistent and exactly what you’d expect from the Ferryman of Souls.

  I look to my friend, Mark Fentile, former priest-in-training. Mark, one step up from slavery, so poor he had to live in Loserville. Poor Mark! All he ever wanted was to serve the Titans and the Theocracy. That was before he realized how evil they are.

  Mark has lost everything: his alcoholic mother, hung by the neck in their Loserville shack. Lucy, his beautiful blonde sister—the girl who dared to love me—lost to the clutches of our enemy, Inquisitor Anton.

  Mark’s mother is a zombie now, and Lucy, we don’t know what happened to her. We only know she sacrificed herself wounding Anton, to buy Mark and I time to get to Hannah, and to buy herself revenge on Anton for raping her. I hope Lucy is OK, because if she isn’t, she might be a zombie now too.

  That’s because the dead don’t die. Not as long as Hades is imprisoned. Once King of Tartarus, now he is its prisoner, and a prisoner cannot force the dead to die. So the dead live on, in mindless agony, as zombies.

  Immortality is the Titans’ “gift” to humanity, the gift the Gods never gave, and now we know the reason why. It’s a curse. You grow up, aging normally, then when you hit adulthood, you don’t stop, but slow down—so slow, each year is like a decade, and that’s great until you get too old to function. Then you slowly wither, yet horribly go on. That’s because unlike the Gods or Titans, the human body isn’t meant to live forever. But the bodies of immortals? Bodies like mine? We go on. We must go on until we are destroyed or destroy ourselves.

  Like I intend to destroy Cronus—with Hades’ help, and the help of my friends. Once Hades is free from his prison, then even Gods and Titans can die…

  I look to Hannah Stillwater, the beautiful witch, the Demigoddess. She's thin, black-haired, and pale, wearing a purple cloak and toga. Almost eighteen, like Mark and me. Her dark eyes are tombstone gray and sharp with intelligence. Her raven familiar, Shadow, sits perched on her shoulder.

  I look behind us, to the shores of the secret cave below Bronson Canyon. In the past, before the Gods War, the canyon was a place of magic and monsters. Hollywood filmed everything from Batman to It Conquered the World there. Under the NGT, it’s a place of magic and monsters again, only this time, it’s all real and nowhere is safe.

  Moments ago, we barely got away from Captain Nessus and his Night Patrol: centaurs and harpies. We’d still be fighting them if I hadn’t used my magic to collapse the tunnel behind us.

  So that’s where my life’s at. It’s easy to look back, to other people, other places. It’s not so easy to look to yourself, to gaze deep inside, but that’s what I do now, and it all comes down to this:

  I am Andrus Eaves.

  I am a Titan, and I am Earth’s last hope.

  Our boat glides on, through the murky darkness, through black, sluggish water. All around us is rock. Rock walls, rock ceiling. The Underworld. The Afterworld. Silent and eternal.

  Tartarus is where your spirit goes when you die. It’s not a place of punishment, it’s just where the dead live. But just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you stop living—the flesh fails, but the spirit goes on. You’re still you, only a ghost, and you go on doing the things you did in life. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. The difference is your mistakes can’t kill you. You have eternity to learn and grow, to know joy or to suffer…

  Hades ruled Tartarus once, and despite the Theocracy’s propaganda, Hannah says he did a pretty good job. Now the Titans rule in his place. I’m not sure how things have changed, except there are probably more monsters. Monsters like harpies and centaurs need magic to breed, and there isn’t enough of it on Earth. Oh, there’s enough for short-term spells and the like, but long-term, sustained magic is hard unless you’re a God or Titan. That’s why monsters died out in the past. They’re sterile on Earth.

  Tartarus on the other hand, well, this place is pretty much all magic. It’s below the Earth, but not really part of it: another dimension. You can only get in through gates, like the one we passed through back in Bronson Canyon.

  The air down here isn’t air at all. It’s a deadly combination of sulphur, brimstone, methane, and other toxic things. As immortals, Hannah and I are immune. To me, the air has a strange, smokey flavor, but nothing too bad. But Mark is mortal, and shouldn’t be able to breathe. He should be choking right now, strangling, becoming a zombie.

  Only he isn’t. He’s wearing the ghost-mask Hannah gave him, a mask that makes Mark look like one of the dead, and allows him to breathe the gruesome gasses that fill Tartarus. “I can’t believe it,” Mark says. “We’re really here, in the Underworld!”

  Hannah shrugs. “It’s not that special, priest. I grew up here. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get out, but I guess every one feels the same about their home town. What about you, Rock Boy? You excited to be here?”

  I bristle at the nickname. “I’m excited we’re all in one piece. As for being here, well, it’s better than being back there. I hope Ares is all right. Last I saw, Captain Nessus had his magic sword.”

  “Correction,” Hannah says, “Nessus had one of his swords. You can bet Ares still has the other.”

  We’d left the God of War behind. Ares had bought us time to get inside the cave. I still can’t get over the fact he was Mr. Cross, my gym teacher in disguise. No wonder he’d been so hard on me. He was secretly training me for this…

  “You think we’ll see him again?” I ask.

  Hannah flashes a grim smile. “We’re going to war, aren’t we? War is kind of his thing. You can bet Ares will turn up sooner or later, don’t worry.”

  I flash her a smile of my own. “Who’s worried?”

  “Don’t try to play it off. You’re worried as hell. We all are… Well, except this guy.” She jerks her
thumb back at the living mummy piloting the boat. “Charon’s pretty chill, aren’t ya?”

  Charon bows his bony neck in a grisly nod. We sail on. Into the night. Into endless darkness.

  I let the silence sink in, let it wash over me like waves. I reach out to the rocks we pass, taking comfort in them. Hannah’s not wrong: I am worried. We’re in danger: incredible, impossible danger! But we’re also taking action. We’re doing what’s right. Right for us, and right for the world. Alone, none of us could, but together? We might have a shot.

  “So what’s the plan?” I ask Hannah. “You recruited us, remember?”

  “Actually, I recruited you. I warned against involving Mark.”

  “I was already involved.” Mark doesn’t sound bitter, though he has every right to be. What he does sound is determined. “We’re all in this together. I may be human, but I have something neither of you has.”

  “What’s that?” Hannah asks.

  “Brains.”

  She laughs. “Well, you’re not stupid. I’ll give you that.”

  “And you’re brave,” I tell him.

  Mark shrugs. “I guess, but I’m not brave because I want to be. I’m brave because I have to.”

  “Not much difference in the end,” Hannah muses. “We’re all coming out of this heroes.”

  “Heroes or traitors,” I remind her, “the biggest the world has ever seen.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so you’re bigger than Zeus now?”

  “If we win, I am. If we win, Cronus is dead, the Titans are dead, and… well, I’m not sure what happens after that, but I’m sure it will be impressive. And we’ll all be bigger than Zeus, not just me.” I add that last part because it sounds crazy to put all this on me. Yet part of me, the newly awakened Titan part says, Yes, I can defeat Cronus. Yes, I can save the world. I can rule in his place, because I should rule, only my rule will be just and strong and forever…