“We can’t tell you that, sweetie,” Klotho said. Spin, spin, spin.
“Against the rules,” Lakhesis said. Measure, measure, measure.
“Whose rules?” Ganymede shot back.
“Get out of here,” Atropos said. Snip, snip, snip. “We have work to do.”
Ganymede’s temper spilled over. The golden goblet, now filled with icy water, seemed to swing all by itself in his hand. A great gout of liquid gushed through the air straight at the three Fates. Water splashed in all directions, drenching the Moirae and the low stools they sat on. But rather than show anger, they continued working as if nothing had happened. And Ganymede stared. A tangle of strings, now made visible, hung in the air above the Fates, sparkling with rainbow droplets. The strings were connected a dozen, hundred, thousand times to every limb, finger, and joint of the Fates, pulling on them, making them dance and move. At the command of the strings, Klotho spun a thread, Lakhesis measured it, Atropos cut, but instead of vanishing, the new string floated up and joined the tangle.
Ganymede felt all the blood drain from his face, leaving icy skin behind. “Who’s in charge?” he whispered. “You or them?”
“Better go now,” Lakhesis said, and the strings stretched her face into a gentle smile.
He turned to flee, but Atropos called to him out one last time, the strings pulling on her jaw and cheeks. “If you want to see a piece of the future,” she said, “maybe you should use a piece of the god who can see it.”
Ganymede fled up the auditorium steps and away. He eventually found himself on a deserted beach with no memory of how he got there. The fingers clutching Zeus’s goblet were bone white. He sat on the pale sand, his eyes turned toward the clear water without seeing it, thinking about what he had seen and what the Fates had said.
“Fuck it,” he said at last. “May as well just do it and get it over with.”
He filled the goblet with pure nectar and drank, savoring the sweet, orgasmic taste that thundered through him, then thought about the water in Tartarus. Since he’d been there once already, it was easy enough to find the place again, and he appeared in the silent blackness. The nectar he had just drunk shielded him from the pit’s crushing despair, and he wasn’t in any mood to put up with darkness.
“Light,” he ordered, and held the goblet aloft. There was a popping noise, and the cup glowed brighter than any torch. Only a few steps away on the ledge was the rock that hid the three hairs of Prometheus, and further up the ledge gaped the hole that had once been Ketos’s prison. Ganymede tried not to look at it as he rolled the rock over, plucked one of the hairs from its hiding place, and rolled the rock back. He held the hair in the glow of the cup, and it competed with the pit to suck the light into itself. His mouth felt dry. The cup was Ganymede’s seat of power. It let him travel through the present and look into the past. But Prometheus saw the future. Ganymede held the hair over the goblet and, before he could lose his nerve, dropped it in.
Space swirled and rushed around him. He was everywhere and nowhere all at once. The single hair split, wound around itself, split, and split again, weaving itself into a tangle Ganymede recognized as the same one that hung above the Fates. He followed the tangle into the past, further than he had ever looked before. He saw chaos, watched Gaea and Ouranos, earth and sky, spin into existence, watched them couple and have children. One of them was Khronos, and he killed his father Ouranos. Khronos produced six children. One of those six was Zeus, and Zeus killed Khronos. Zeus and his siblings took their seats as rulers of the world.
The tangle led further ahead. Prometheus created humans and immediately the gods set about playing with them. They seduced them, punished them, tricked them, and even killed them. Zeus seduced a young woman and took her to Crete, where she became a queen and established a line of rulers that finally led to greedy King Minos. Hera, angry that Zeus had fathered yet another child by a mortal woman, took her anger out on the son, named Heracles. She made him go insane and kill his own children, a five-year-old and a six-year-old who had done nothing. Hades kidnapped Demeter’s daughter, and in retaliation, Demeter refused to let anything grow in the world, creating famine everywhere and letting countless people starve. Helios indulgently allowed his half-mortal son to drive the chariot of the sun for a single day. The boy lost control, the chariot took the sun too close to the earth, and thousands died. The gods ignored most prayers, demanded unfair sacrifices, broke promises, played favorites. And worst of all, they never thought about the future consequences of their actions.
The tangle of threads remained clear, winding through every being in the world. Ganymede saw how the gods constantly pulled and tweaked and twisted them just for fun, never looking to see how the tangles came out in the end. Mortals—his people—suffered, and no one was doing anything about it.
Then Ganymede saw his own self. Trailing a thread behind him, he stormed through the palace at Knossos and terrified Minos into signing a trade agreement that changed the lives of an entire city full of people at Troy. He set free a monster that destroyed part of a city but also established a powerful dynasty of good rulers. And he saw how, with a wave of his hand, he had accidentally altered the flow of water around another seal the last time he had come to Tartarus, and how the flow would wear the seal away in three or four thousand years and set the monster Typhon free.
An enormous tangle tugged at Ganymede’s attention, and he followed the threads to Zeus, who was talking with a god Ganymede didn’t recognize. The strange god had a falcon’s head on a human body, and the sun blazed brilliantly over him. Billions of threads converged on them both, creating a powerful nexus, and Ganymede realized that he was watching a turning point in history. Without knowing where the knowledge came from, he understood the strange god’s name was Ra, and he was king of gods in Egypt. Zeus and Ra were looking down at an entire tribe of people who worked and sweated from dawn to dusk as slaves for the Egyptians.
0o0
“The Hebrews must remain slaves forever,” Zeus was saying.
“Even though they are fated to be freed,” Ra said. “They are children of another god, you know.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time the people of one god held sway over those of another. Best for everyone that the Hebrews keep their shackles.”
“By that,” Ra said, “you mean best for us gods.”
“Who else matters?” Zeus replied. “So we’re in agreement, then?”
Ra didn’t hesitate. “We are.” They shook hands, then vanished.
But now Ganymede saw the future threading in two directions. He looked into one future, the one that Zeus and Ra had agreed upon. The Hebrews remained slaves in Egypt. The world continued with many, many gods, and people lived and died at their whims.
He looked down the other. The Hebrews escaped slavery. They evolved a new concept—monotheism. The idea of one god spread around the Mediterranean, gaining converts. As more and more people stopped worshipping Zeus, he began to fade away.
Eventually, he died.
Ganymede watched the slaves work and suffer under Egypt’s molten sunshine. They were supposed to be free people, free to choose what they wanted. Zeus and Ra had deliberately taken choices away from the Hebrews. Just like Zeus had taken choices away from Ganymede. Just like Ilos and Tros had taken choices away from him. He stared at the Egyptian slaves, heard their groans, felt the lashes that landed on their backs like small sacrifices on bloody altars. They were supposed to be free, but Zeus and Ra had made other plans for them.
The vision faded and Ganymede stood in the darkness of Tartarus. The goblet had gone out, and he started it glowing again, then sat down at the edge of the precipice, his feet dangling over infinite, silent darkness. His throat abruptly thickened and tears slid down his face. The Fates had been right. His own choice was clear, and only an hour ago he would never have made it.
Slowly he got up and trudged up the wide winding ledge to the seal that held Typhon prisoner. Water continued to trickle ar
ound the worn edges, and he could see how, in a few millennia, the seal would weaken enough to set the monster free. Ganymede passed his hand over the flow, and the soft water shifted beneath his fingers. It flowed over the seal, filling every little crack and letter and symbol. Zeus’s power was strong, but water was a basic element of the universe and would eventually wear him away. In fifteen hundred years or so, the water would wash the seal away completely, and that would be enough. Zeus was dead. He just didn’t know it yet.
Setting his shoulders, Ganymede turned his back and walked away.
BOOK 8
PART X
I flailed around in the black water screaming June’s name. The waves shoved me around, pummeled me with uncaring force. Salt stung my nose and throat. I went under, surfaced, kept screaming for her. But I found no sign of June anywhere. I staggered out of the ocean and ran down the black beach, hoping, praying she might have washed ashore. All I found were my own footprints.
My knees were sore. Dully I wondered why, and I slowly understood that I was kneeling in the sand and it was gritty against my joints. The wind was rising and the waves pounded harder than drums.
Eryx and Irene found me in the dunes the next morning under a flat gray sky. They were pretty pissed off at me for disappearing on them, but they calmed down when I told them what happened to June. We sat in a tight triangle, and the more I talked, the more my throat thickened up until I finally lost it.
“She was a stupid bitch and I hated her,” I said, crying now. “I’m bawling like a little kid because she’s gone and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.”
They both just hugged me without saying anything. I sat there in the shelter of their arms in the shelter of the dunes while the wind spun ropes of sand in the world beyond. Irene had brought my mug with her, and she gave it to me so I could drink. I hadn’t noticed how thirsty I was until that moment.
“We have to go back to the nursing home,” Irene said at last. Her hair color had faded almost completely, leaving behind nothing but sun-bleached blond. “Everyone’s leaving town, and we need to get our stuff so we can go, too.”
Eryx leaned his head against mine. “The cops have been driving through town shouting on bullhorns that everyone has to leave.”
I felt my body start to move, my muscles tense up so I could stand. Already I was packing in my mind—clothes, my backpack, the stuff Irene and I had scrounged from the hotel, the two hundred dollar bills.
And then the wind blew across the mouth of my mug, making a high, whistling sound. For a second, I heard June’s voice in it.
You called upon powers you don’t completely understand to destroy lives you haven’t even touched. How like a god.
I set my jaw. This was stupid. We would hitchhike or grab a bus with the money. The confusion would make it easy to evade Lucian and the sheriff. The whistling across my mug grew louder.
I told you to face your demons, Danny-boy, and you failed.
How could I fail when I hadn’t done anything?
You’re still running away.
Away from Hurricane Tyler. Away from Aquapura. Away from Lucian.
It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you everything.
No.
NO.
NO!
NO!
I put my hand over the top of my mug and the whistling sound stopped. “I’m not leaving,” I said.
Irene and Eryx traded looks. “Danny, we have to,” Irene said. “Tyler’s been upgraded to Class Five now. It’ll destroy the entire town. We have to get out.”
“No!” I gripped the handle of my mug until the plastic nearly cracked. “I’m sick of running. June sacrificed herself to get my attention. I have to confront that bastard Lucian, and I’m not leaving until I do.”
“Confront him?” Irene said, startled. “Why?”
“I’m with her,” Eryx said. “What for? Lucian’s fucked, Danny. Once Hurricane Tyler flattens this place, he won’t have two bricks to crush his own nuts with. We’re rid of him.”
“And who will take his place?” I asked, standing up. “You said so yourself—if it’s not Lucian, it’ll be someone else. I’m not going to let him or anyone like him run or ruin my life. If nothing else, I can get a fuckload of money out of him. He owes me that much.”
I started to walk away, but Eryx caught my arm. “Then we’re going with you.”
“Yeah.” Irene looked nervous, but she raised her chin. “We’ll help.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, guys, but I’m going—”
Listen kid—you need to use your own strengths, confront the fuckheads in your life instead of bending to them.
That was a memory, not a trick of the whistling wind.
I paused, looking for truth. I’m strong when I’m with you.
I remembered that, too, the words flowing from my pen like black water onto white sand. June had offered up her life to make a point, and fuck me if I was going to turn my back on it. I would take power from her sacrifice. Confront, don’t run. Use strengths, don’t ignore them.
I looked at Eryx, his golden glamour, his feathery grace, the mind that sped quick as an arrow, the arms that had circled me the night before and sheltered me from the wind just now, and I wanted to draw him into me, keep him with me always.
I looked at Irene, her colorful beauty, her breathtaking speed, her streetwise wit, the arms that had circled me the night before and sheltered me from the wind just now, and I wanted to draw her into me, keep her with me always.
Use strengths, don’t ignore them. And I was staring straight at mine, both more powerful than a pair of small gods. The realization of who they were to me, to my life, lifted me on rainbow wings and set me to soaring into misty clouds.
“All right,” I said. “Come on.”
The three of us ran through the streets of Aquapura. The stores were all closed and boarded up with big sheets of plywood. Cars clogged the street, filled with people and piled high with belongings, all inching toward the highway. Fear and desperation filled the air. I ignored all of it until I saw the black-and-white sheriff car. It was cruising slowly down the sidewalk to avoid the traffic. The driver, wearing a brown sheriff’s uniform with a silver star at the shoulder, was leaning partway out his window with a bullhorn.
“This is a mandatory evacuation,” he boomed in the bullhorn’s electronic voice. “All residents and visitors must leave for inland areas immediately. Repeat: this is a mandatory evacuation.”
My first instinct was to duck into an alley and hide. Then I suddenly ran toward him, waving my arms.
“What are you doing?” Irene called. “Danny! Wait!”
The car stopped and I ran up to the driver’s side. “Are you the sheriff?”
“That’s right,” he said. “Do you need help? Are you lost?”
“You’re the sheriff,” I said. My voice was cracking. “Not a deputy or an assistant or something like that?”
“Right. What can I do for you, son?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just checking.” I dashed back to Irene and Eryx, grabbed them by the arms, and hauled them down a side street.
“What the fuck were you doing?” Eryx demanded.
“That was the sheriff,” I said, breathless.
“Yeah, we noticed,” Irene said. “The penguin car was the first clue. Why’d you run to him like that? Trying to get arrested?”
“The opposite,” I said. “Lucian told me that one of my Guys at the hotel was the sheriff and Lucian had a deal with him. The sheriff got a discount, and in return, he made sure none of us kids could run away. But that guy in the sheriff car wasn’t the Guy Lucian made me go to.”
“So Lucian doesn’t have a deal with the sheriff,” Eryx said. “He lied.”
“Yeah.” I stood there on the sidewalk, trying to get my mind to work right. I still held my mug in my hand, and I stared down at it. Another thought slapped me harder than a tidal wave.
You shouldn’t get any ideas abo
ut running off before you’ve paid, or reporting the hotel. Not unless you want to get arrested.
If Lucian had lied about the sheriff, what else had he lied about?
I said I’d wire him five thousand for each of you.
I had believed every word he’d said, following him without question because he’d … because he’d …
Yeah, I’m gonna say it. Because he’d raped me, and I’d been too scared not to believe him in case he raped me again.
She said if you didn’t come home, that was fine with her. She didn’t really want you around much anyway, not now that she’s got a new husband and all.
But everything Lucian possessed was a lie. His power in the hotel was a lie. His power with the sheriff was a lie. His power over me was a lie.
Now we were running, all three of us. We got to the Haidou Hotel and the lobby was empty. The bar and restaurant were both closed, and a sign on the front desk said “Call 003 for assistance.” My stomach was tied in snaky knots, but I was determined to keep going. I strode straight for Lucian’s office with Eryx and Irene beside me, their lips tight and white.
The door to Lucian’s office was partly open, and I hesitated, trying not to see it as a gateway into hell. My heart thudded. Irene and Eryx looked at me, then both put their hands on my shoulders, and I found my courage again. I shoved the door open and stormed inside.
Lucian was going through his desk, and he jerked upright when we came in. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“You fucking lied to us,” I said.
“Yeah?” He came around the desk and I wanted to back up, but I made myself stand still. We were the same height, but he was heavier than me. I gripped my mug like a plastic weapon.
“The sheriff isn’t your friend, you didn’t talk to my mother, and we’re not working for you anymore,” I said. “We’re going to report you to the cops, so even if the hurricane doesn’t blow your hotel flat, you’re going to jail for the rest of your life.”
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