“Yeah?” he said again. His next move came so fast I didn’t even see it. He fist flicked out, but instead of hitting me, he smashed Irene. She crumpled to the floor at Lucian’s feet with a tiny whimper. Before I could even react, Lucian’s hand dipped under his jacket and I was staring down the barrel of his pistol. I had forgotten he had it. The air went cold, and I heard Eryx’s breathing, harsh and scared, next to me.
“You think that’s how this works?” he said in a voice calmer than a doctor’s. “You can just walk in here and tell me what to do?” Quick as lightning he slapped my face with his free hand. The gun never moved. “You belong to me, all three of you. You did from the first second you walked into my hotel.”
I couldn’t speak. Eryx remained silent beside me, and Irene wasn’t moving on the floor. I wanted to check to see if she was all right, but I didn’t dare move with the pistol on me.
“We’re going to get in my van and take off,” Lucian continued in his calm doctor’s voice. “You and the wetbacks cowering in my bar. Once the hurricane blows through, we’ll come back and you’ll help me rebuild. Or maybe we’ll ditch this place and start a new one somewhere else. The suck-and-fuck trade is legal in Nevada. Maybe we’ll go there. I can use you to start a little house going.”
“No.”
My eyes flicked around, looking for the source of the word. But the speaker was me.
Lucian’s expression went flat and deadly. “You better not have just said—”
“No,” I said again.
“Fuck you aren’t.” He cocked the pistol, a mechanical sound that almost stopped my heart. Eryx’s face was white as bleached feathers, but he didn’t move. “Know what else you’re gonna do? You’re gonna break three of your little girlfriend’s fingers while your boyfriend watches, and if you can’t do it with your hands, you’ll do it with a hammer because I own you, you little fuck!”
I wavered. For maybe half a second. In that moment, I knew I’d rather die than give in anyway. “Won’t work,” I said. “We’re not doing it, and you can’t shoot all three of us. How will you explain the bodies? And you’d never get all the blood cleaned up.”
Lucian laughed. It was more of a giggle, actually, and it scared me more than the pistol. “You think the cops will miss three runaways? Or bother to investigate anything during a major evacuation? Have it your way, kid. If you won’t do as I say, you’re a danger to me.”
His finger tightened on the trigger, and I knew I was going to die. Then Irene stabbed him in the leg.
A hundred years passed. Ganymede tried to keep a low profile. Most of his time he spent with Iris and Eros, hanging out or wandering the world or exploring what it meant to live forever. Part of his time he spent serving Zeus at his table and on his divan, and every time Zeus smiled his charismatic smile or touched Ganymede’s face with kind fingers, Ganymede’s heart moved inside his chest and he thought about the water slowly corroding Typhon’s seal away. Several times he almost went down to Tartarus to change the flow and preserve the seal, but something always stopped him. Eros and Iris knew what had happened—was happening—but they never talked about it.
And then the Trojan War hit.
Eros got the whole story from his mother Aphrodite because it started as a bitch fight between her, Hera, and Athene. All three goddesses wanted the same magical golden apple, and Zeus, again ignoring the impact his little decisions would have on the world, told them to find a mortal to decide which goddess should own the stupid thing. They settled on Paris, who was a prince of Troy and the bunch-of-greats-great-grandson of Ganymede’s father Tros, which made him a distant nephew of Ganymede himself.
“They all offered him bribes,” Eros said in Ganymede’s grotto. “Hera said she’d make him an emperor. Athena said she’d give him the secrets of the universe. But Mom said she’d give him the most beautiful woman in the world to be his wife, and then she pulled down her dress and flashed him. So he gave her the apple.”
“A real horn-dog, that Paris,” Iris said. “I’ve seen him pounding it three, four times a day when he’s out with the cattle herds and thinks no one can see him.”
“Take it from me, there’s not much else to do out in a cattle field,” Ganymede said. “Wait—the most beautiful woman in the world. That’s Helen of Sparta, isn’t it? Sparta just signed a peace treaty with Troy.”
“How do you know that?” Eros asked, cocking his head.
“I watch,” Ganymede said, shifting on the big divan the three of them liked to share. “Troy’s my hometown. They’ve been fighting with Sparta on and off for almost a hundred years now. Priam finally calmed everything down. How’s Paris going to marry the queen of Sparta? King Menalaus won’t just give her to him.”
Eros flushed and looked away. Ganymede gave him a hard look even as his heart sank.
“Eros,” he said. “What did you do?”
“Mom made me, okay? I didn’t have a choice.”
“Made you do what?” Ganymede grabbed Eros’s left wing and twisted slightly. “Tell me.”
“Ow ow ow!” Eros yelped. “I’ll tell! I always do. Let go.”
“Be nice, Ganymede,” Iris said. “He can’t help being a mama’s boy.”
Eros glared at her, but continued. “Paris was part of the envoy that went from Troy to Sparta to finalize the peace treaty. Mom made me shoot up Paris and Helen so they’d fall in love. Paris ran back to Troy and took Helen with him.”
“What?” Ganymede bolted to his feet. “You’re shitting me!”
“Uh oh,” Iris said.
“That’ll end the peace treaty,” Ganymede said, starting to pace. “Menalaus won’t be able to keep his throne without Helen. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’ll get all the friends he can together and declare war on Troy to get Helen back. What was Aphrodite thinking?”
Eros just looked at him.
“Yeah,” Ganymede said. “Bad question.”
“Maybe you’re wrong,” Iris offered. “Maybe Menelaus isn’t going to war. Check.”
Ganymede took out Zeus’s goblet and looked into it. He’d gotten better at seeing what he needed to, and it only took a second for him to find a fleet of Greek ships sailing angrily across the sea toward Ganymede’s former home.
“Sorry,” Eros muttered.
“I have to stop them,” Ganymede said, and sent out his thoughts until he located Zeus. Leaving Iris and Eros behind, he appeared before the king, who was sitting on his misty throne in the empty great hall with a bucket of thunderbolts at his side. The overhead sky had grown cloudy, and the grass on the floor was wilting.
Ganymede approached from the side and touched Zeus’s hand, as he was now allowed to do. “My lord?”
Zeus came out of his reverie. “Ganymede.” A smile crossed his face and reached his handsome blue eyes. “It’s always good to see your face. But you look unhappy. Is something wrong?”
“The Greeks are attacking Troy,” he said.
“Yes,” Zeus said. “I’ve been watching. It’s going to be a long and harsh war.”
“Please stop them,” Ganymede begged. “Troy is special to me. Don’t let my people be destroyed over a little piece of gold. Please?”
Zeus ran the back of a finger down Ganymede’s cheek in a long-familiar gesture, one that still made Ganymede shiver. “Oh, my Ganymede. You’re so beautiful, and I love you dearly.”
Relief flooded him. “Then you’ll stop them?”
“Well, no.” Zeus shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“What?” Ganymede shrank away, horrified. “Why not? It would be easy. A storm washes Menelaus overboard. The fleet gets lost in a fog. You appear to the Greeks and tell them to go home.”
Zeus laughed a little. “I could do all those things, my boy, but I can’t. I won’t.”
“But why?” Ganymede felt at a loss.
“Athena and Hera are angry at Aphrodite because she won the apple,” Zeus said. “They both want this war in order to punish her—and to punish Paris for cho
osing her. If I stop the war, Athena and Hera will be angry at me, and their anger can last a long, long time.”
“Thousands of people will die. Women and children, too.”
“The anger of a goddess lasts for longer than any mortal lifetime,” Zeus replied. “And in this case I’d have the anger of two goddesses. I think it’s best to let this play out. We’re talking about mortal lives, after all—short and squalid in the best of times. This will give a few of them a chance to see some glory before they go. They’ll be remembered.”
“But—”
“And I forbid you to get involved,” Zeus finished. “Now let’s hear no more about it. Pour me some nectar.”
Anger, horror, and helplessness reduced Ganymede to speechlessness. He couldn’t move. Zeus waited a moment, then turned to face him. “Boy? I’m waiting.”
Face burning with humiliation, Ganymede set the goblet on the arm of Zeus’s throne, called up a tall, thin pitcher, and filled it with the sweet golden drink of the gods. Zeus drank and went back to staring at nothing. Ganymede made a perfunctory bow and fled back to Iris and Eros in his watery grotto.
“I can’t believe that bastard!” he shouted the moment he appeared. “He’s going to let it happen! He’s—”
“What’s that?” Iris shouted.
“Can’t hear you!” Eros yelled.
For the first time Ganymede noticed the roar. The water in the grotto was going crazy. The pools boiled, and geysers erupted from their centers. The pair of gentle waterfalls had merged into a single rabid torrent. Ganymede blinked, then forced himself to take a deep breath, calm down. Instantly, the water followed suit, though the waterfall refused to separate. The noise receded.
“Better,” Eros said. “What happened? Bad news?”
Ganymede sat on the divan and told them. The water threatened to boil again. Iris put a calming hand on his shoulder.
“There isn’t anything you can do,” she said. “Let’s go find something to keep us busy while it all happens. No point in watching something we can’t—”
The goblet abruptly appeared, empty and drained, in Ganymede’s lap. The rim made a perfect circle, a golden infinite. “No,” he said. “I won’t do that. Even if I can’t stop it, I have to know what happens.” He paused. “Will … will you two come with me?”
Instantly they both took his hands. “How can you even ask?” Eros said.
And together they watched the Trojan War from beginning to end. The other gods couldn’t keep from interfering, and they batted the Trojan and Greek armies back and forth like toys. Apollo sent a plague against Greek soldiers who displeased him. Aphrodite rescued Paris from death in battle. Poseidon switched sides, screwing over the Trojans in mid-fight. In the end, the Greeks managed to trick their way inside the white walls of Troy, past stones Ganymede had played on as a boy. They killed the men, enslaved the women, and threw the children from the highest towers. Then they burned the city to the ground. Ganymede watched it all from the shelter of Iris and Eros’s arms, and the tears never stopped running down his face.
As the Greeks sailed away, leaving the smoking ruins of Troy behind them, Ganymede stood up with terrible purpose. He filled the goblet with nectar and handed it first to Iris, then to Eros.
“Drink,” he said. “We’ve got shit to do.”
He drank himself, then grabbed their hands and yanked all three of them down to Tartarus. With the glowing goblet showing the way, Ganymede retrieved the other two hairs of Prometheus from their hiding place, then strode up the wide spiral ledge, past the empty prison of Ketos, to the seal that held back Typhon. Water continued to gush over it, and the seal was more worn than ever. Ganymede set his jaw, then drew the dagger Zeus had given him all those hundreds of years ago and held it over the glistening seal.
Eros grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Ending it for … him once and for all,” Ganymede said.
“Why?” Iris asked. “Look, we were hoping to talk you out of this before the water destroyed the seal. We figured we’d have several hundred years. But now … ” She looked uneasily around the darkness and ran a hand through her rainbow hair. “You’re angry about Troy, and that’s totally understandable. But killing … him? It’s insane! Especially if you think you can do it by releasing Typhon. He’ll destroy hundreds of lives. Thousands!”
“I can’t see a better choice, guys!” Ganymede was crying now, and he couldn’t tell whether it was anger or sorrow. “I’ve seen the future. If he lives, the gods will play with humans like toys forever, and they’ll continue to suffer and die. They interfere and take my—” He halted. “They take people’s choices away. I can’t watch anymore.”
“Have you thought about what it’ll do to the rest of us?” Eros said. “Including my mom?”
Ganymede nodded. “You know, the Fates showed me something I didn’t understand for a long time. But now I get it.”
“What’s that?” Eros’s face was pale beneath flame-red hair.
“We’re all intertwined. We exist because of them and they exist because of us. It isn’t right for immortals to treat mortals like they’re less important.” Visions of hacked, burned, and blooded bodies, fellow Trojans, filled his mind, and the more he spoke, the more right it felt. He gestured toward the crumbling seal. “It’s better this way. I’ve seen it. I already put it into motion. But Troy made me realize it needs to happen faster. It needs to start now.”
The conviction in his voice filled the empty blackness, and he felt the power behind it. At last, Iris nodded, though multi-colored tears of her own ran down her face. “I’ll help you,” she said.
Ganymede raised the knife again, this time with Iris’s hands on his, their strength joining together. They looked at Eros.
“Eros?” Ganymede said. “Come on.”
Eros’s wings quivered and he licked his lips. “I … I don’t … my mom …”
“G’s right,” Iris said. “Come on, Eros. Help us.”
Water continued to drip in the darkness. At last, Eros reached out and put a trembling hand on the handle of the knife. Together they raised the blade.
“I can’t!” Eros choked. “I’m sorry. I can’t!”
He ran to the edge and dove over the side.
“Eros!” Ganymede cried and ran after him. There was a flutter of wings, and Eros was flying upward, high into darkness. The sound of his sobs faded as he disappeared.
Ganymede looked after him, the knife in his numb grip. Iris put her arm around his waist. “It cost him too much,” she said. “I’m sorry, G. He’s going to tell someone. He won’t do it on purpose, but Aphrodite will ask him what’s wrong, and he won’t be able to keep it from her.”
“Yeah,” Ganymede whispered. The hurt ran deeper than the pit below his feet. “We better hurry.”
They went back to the seal, raised Zeus’s knife together, and swiped it across the seal that Zeus had set. It scored deep mark across the stone, and the cliff trembled.
“Again!” Ganymede said.
They slashed at the seal a second time, and the new mark went even deeper. The cliff rumbled, and small stones clattered away into blackness. They brought the knife down a third time, and a big chunk of the seal broke away.
At first nothing happened. Then a full-blown earthquake struck. Iris, however, was ready this time. She created her rainbow path and slid herself and Ganymede out into the black void of Tartarus. They skimmed backward to a safe distance. The side of the cliff burst outward, and from the new opening boiled a huge, swirling mass of wind and fury. Howling wind shoved Iris and Ganymede farther back. A seething malevolence and a voracious appetite for destruction filled every corner of the pit as the huge monster screamed its need for revenge. It hurled itself upward the way Eros had gone, screaming all the way.
Ganymede grabbed Iris’s hand, concentrated on his own cave, and instantly brought them both there. Then, without a word, he tilted Zeus’s goblet so they could both see
.
Nearly seventy miles north of Crete lay the island of Thera, shaped like a backward, ragged letter C. In the center of the C lay an enormous sea volcano. The ocean floor trembled, the water hissed and bubbled. The people living on the island knew the signs and got to ships and boats just before the volcano exploded in the biggest eruption seen in five thousand years. Waves a hundred yards high rushed away from the site, shoved by the earthquakes and explosion. A choking cloud of fiery smoke and ash billowed up to the sky, incinerating even the clouds. Seconds later, bits of pumice dropped like gray snow to the water and what was left of the island. Typhon burst out of the terrible cauldron and flew straight toward Olympus, howling Zeus’s name.
Hermes was the first to see him coming, and he sounded the alarm. Ares reacted the fastest, rushing down in his war chariot, scratched and dented armor only half-buckled on in his excitement. Typhon swatted him aside with barely a second’s pause. Athena was a little smarter, and only tried to distract Typhon, slow him down, but Typhon ignored her, concentrating solely on Zeus.
Zeus, meanwhile, gathered every thunderbolt he could lay his hands on and met Typhon at the gates of Olympus. They clashed with a terrible sound that cracked stone and tore sky. Typhon ripped and tore at Zeus, and Zeus flung bolt after bolt after bolt into the creature. All the creatures in the world trembled and hid. The other gods joined in the battle, Hera standing closest by her husband, and slowly, bit by bit, they beat Typhon back. They pushed him, howling and screaming, back into Tartarus and forced him into his former prison. Hades closed up the rock and Zeus created a new seal while Typhon foamed and raged inside. Zeus set the seal in place, and silence slammed down again. The gods stood in a half-circle around the prison, exchanging glances and quiet words, then one by one streaked away, leaving behind only Zeus and Aphrodite, who murmured intently into Zeus’s ear.
Ganymede set his jaw and shifted his attention elsewhere in the world. He watched the tidal waves caused by Typhon’s escape skim across the ocean and slop over the shores of Crete to the south. The resulting floods wiped out several coastal cities, and Ganymede felt the tears sliding down his face as it happened. The eruption of Thera also set off earthquakes that nearly leveled Knossos, where long-dead Minos had lived. Crete, Ganymede knew, would never really recover. The inhabitants had no way of knowing that they had lost their position as a seat of civilization.
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