“Why did you break off from them?” I asked, the less pressing questions fading to the back of my mind for later.
“Because Poseidon died,” she said. “And because the man who replaced him had not near the integrity of Poseidon, and took Omega in directions I didn’t think it should go.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m sorry, what? What directions did they go?”
She shrugged. “I think there’s plenty of money to be made by legitimately supplying humans with what they want and need. Owning corporations, merchants, employing people was a way that we made gold hand over fist for millennia. The replacement Primus, the one who ran Omega until his son Rick took over a few days ago, was a servant of my late husband. His right hand man, if you will. He considered organized crime to be the last frontier for increasing the margins and the control Omega exercised over people, and so he took them into a very different place.” She leaned toward me. “Now understand, we were gods. Our hands were not clean, by any means. We killed people, sure. I tried not to, but it happened from time to time, usually while I was avenging some wrong done to one of my followers. It’s not as though they had a very good criminal justice system back then, and crimes on women tended to go unpunished.
“But I tried to steer us hard away from the course of being bloodthirsty killers,” she said with narrowed eyes. “That was what Hades was. What his little triad did, those Cerberus boys. They were the scum of our kind, and most of us didn’t want to sink to their lows, didn’t want to be compared to them. Hell, some of us had even died trying to bring his ass down. But that was all lost on Rick’s father.”
“Who was he?” I asked, interrupting her. “The Primus? Who was he in the old myths?”
She shrugged again. “His name was Gerasimos, but the only way you would have heard him mentioned in myth was as Alastor, which was a nickname way back, a sort of curse that mortals wished on each other to signify what he had done, which was carry forth vengeance for Zeus, to strike down those who offended him for whatever reason.” She rolled her eyes. “Often nonsensical and fueled by alcohol. Anyhow, he took over after Poseidon’s death, and we had a bit of a clash, he and I. He earned that name by killing people. I didn’t approve, but it didn’t matter so long as Zeus was in charge. Which is another reason I hate that man to this day. Poseidon had reason, less ego, would at least hear you out.” There was something behind her eyes that was akin to longing. “He shouldn’t have died. He was the one who united the old-world gods, brought us together, expanded influence from Europe to Asia, even made inroads to South America.” She shook her head again. “I don’t suppose this all matters, but you know why I’m telling you all this, don’t you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Because I asked?”
“That’s close enough to true,” she said with a smile. “I’ve heard that Erich Winter tended to feed you a little at a time and keep the rest to himself, doling it out whenever he felt like it. I expect after what happened, it might have made you a little suspicious.”
“So you want me to trust you?” I asked and sent a canny look toward Reed, whose face was neutral. After that, I looked to Breandan, who wore a poker face of his own. “You’re drowning me in exposition so I won’t think you’re keeping things from me?”
She wore a maddening fragment of a smile, and I watched her tap her fingers on the side of her legs while she seemed to contemplate something. “Is it working?”
I thought about it for a second before answering. “It’s not hurting your cause. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard the tales?” she asked, watching me for a reaction. “I call them tales, but they’re more like rumors, straight from the fields of west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, from people who have seen things like you found in that church basement.”
“You mean about how death is coming for them?” I asked, drawing a nod from her. “About how death is reaching out his hand for the metas, again? Just like what happened before.” Her expression was carefully guarded, but her lips were upturned just the slightest in the corners. “They talked about it like it was Hades, right? Like it was him all along, back again?”
She finally broke into a smile. “So you have heard.”
“Janus said he’s dead,” I replied. “So did you, just a few minutes ago.”
“And so he is,” she said and glanced at Reed. “Get the car ready, will you?”
He nodded and brushed his way out of the room, his ponytail swinging behind him. He didn’t even protest or ask her why, just did it. I wondered at that but only for a moment before Hera got my attention again.
“I’m having him get the car because I think it’s time you learned what use I would have for you,” she said, almost quietly. She gave a nod to Breandan. “You can bring your friend with you if you’d like, but the next lesson I’ve got for you is going to require a little trip back in time, and I can’t do that here. I need a little help.”
“Back in time?” I asked. “Like … really back in time, turning back the clock?”
She laughed lightly. “Figuratively. I want to show you something, something that will help to explain things better than I could without the visual aid. Will you come with me?”
I hesitated. It’s not like I wasn’t squarely in the middle of her safehouse right now. It wasn’t as though she didn’t already have the ability to persuade me, to push me along. Still, she could have tried to force the issue but she was going for the delicate approach. It was the opposite of manipulation and yet carried the fingerprints of it still. “Sure,” I said, overcoming that hesitancy. “Where are we going?”
“To show you where you came from,” she said, stepping over to the door that Reed had just gone through a moment before, “to show you where your family originated.” She smiled. “And to hopefully answer for you, finally, just one of the reasons you’re so damned important to everybody on the planet.”
Chapter 27
The luxury sedan cruised the rain-slicked streets of London. The weather had turned in the last day while I was unconscious, and the chill had been palpable as we had gotten in the car. Hera sat in the back with me, her platinum hair short-cropped around the top of her head as she leaned it back against the leather seat rest. Breandan was quietly nervous up front, and part of me thought about asking him why he was here with me. I didn’t bother, though, because a second after I thought of the question, the answer came to me—he was still worried some Century sweep team was going to jump out of the shadows and kill him the moment he wasn’t around me. Somehow, I’d become a good luck charm to a man who could control luck. Go figure.
Reed was up front with him, driving, and we rode along in silence until we crossed Tower Bridge heading north. I saw the Tower of London across the water. I had meant to check it out but that obviously hadn’t panned out. As my eyes followed it while we passed, they came back to Reed in surprise. “Hey, aren’t you used to driving on the other side of the road?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “So?”
“So,” I said, “isn’t it kind of confusing, trying to remember you’re not going the right way? I mean, I’ve only been in the passenger seat so far for a couple of drives and it messed with my head.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Just takes some thought.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and thought about giving him a glare as he stared back at me in the rearview mirror. “What are you trying to say?”
He stared back while we sat at the traffic light, waiting for it to go green. “That it takes some thought.” I saw his grin flash in the mirror. “Don’t go looking for an insult where there isn’t one.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “You’re just saying that so I won’t be expecting one later and—BAM!”
He looked back to the road. “You know me too well.”
“Oh, yes,” Hera said, her eyes closed and her head back. “I haven’t seen a brother and sister this sweet on each other since Artemis and Apollo.”
I frowned. “Janus’s parents? Wait, are you saying they were like … Cersei and Jaime Lannister? Cuz, if so … eww.”
She raised a drooped eyelid enough to stare back at me with a commanding green eye. “That’s exactly what I was saying. It sounds more incestuous than it was in most cases, though, because you have to keep in mind that myth isn’t fact. What looks like family was more like an organization. What appeared like a father figure was more like a … Director, I suppose.” She gave me an elusive smile. “His children were actually his lieutenants. Brothers—well, Hades and Poseidon actually were his brothers. But none of the kids were related.”
That shut us up for a while. An uncomfortable silence persisted even as we slid through the downtown area, the tall buildings towering above us as I stared out the window and tried to crane my neck to look straight up. The rain dotted the glass like little diamonds, refracting as the sunlight peered out from behind a cloud and hit them. Prisms of rainbow light were as small as little beads within the drops, and I watched them refract as we drove on.
It took us what felt like an hour to arrive at our destination. My internal map was totally screwed up, and we passed a hundred parks along the way. It seemed like every few blocks there was a square that was empty save for greenery, with a fence wrapped around it so it could be closed at night, I presumed. “Looks like Russell Square,” I murmured as we passed another. I wasn’t really thinking about it as I spoke; all these squares looked alike to me, surrounded as they were by fairly similar buildings to my untrained (and uninterested) eye.
“It is Russell Square,” Hera said quietly, causing me to sit up in surprise. “We’re almost to our destination.”
We parked a few minutes later and walked under cloudy skies down a street toward a building hidden partially behind a wall. Grey, weathered columns marked a massive facade, and as we climbed the stairs I turned to Breandan and whispered, “Where are we?”
He shrugged, a look of complete obliviousness plastered to his face. “Never been here before myself. I wouldn’t know.”
“It’s the British Museum,” Hera said, not able to disguise her irritation. “Don’t you live here?” she asked Breandan pointedly.
“I’ve only been here for a few years,” Breandan replied. “It’s not like I’m some tourist who has all day to sit around scratching myself while pondering the great sculptors of ancient Carpathia.” He thumped his chest. “I work for a living!”
I shot a look at him sideways. “You pick pockets on the tube a couple hours a day.”
He gave me a look of great personal affront as we climbed the steps to the entrance. “Also downtown, sometimes.” His pale cheeks flushed slightly crimson. “You know, just … to be clear for the record.”
There were only minor crowds as we entered the building. It was a little darker. Not dim, but the light was plainly reduced. The smell of the place was clean and reminded me of shopping malls but with a hint of age to the whole thing, as though this was a place that had been around longer and carried great importance. “This way,” Hera said, leading us forward into a well lit room beyond the entry.
As we walked through the doors into an open courtyard, my eyes widened. Above us was a dome that covered a massive room. Had it been outside, it would have easily been large enough to be a stadium. In the middle rested a circular structure all on its own, with a spiral staircase wrapped around it on either side. Small restaurants and shops were scattered around the courtyard, and I felt a craving for a strong cup of coffee. I walked on, though, following Hera’s lead, and marveling at the impressive white space of the courtyard around me. It was surprisingly brightly lit, especially for such a cloudy day.
Hera took us to the left, and I caught a glimpse of Reed at the rear of our procession, his eyes darting around, looking for any threats. Part of me wondered who would even be able to find us here, but after only a moment’s thought, I remembered I had been found by enemies in odder moments and with less reason to believe they’d be looking for me.
We passed fine stone carvings and art from ancient Egypt, and my head swiveled as I walked by a display. I halted to read it—a sculpture of Bastet excavated from Bubastis. I rejoined the procession as Breandan gave me a look that indicated he was wondering what I was thinking. “Nothing,” I replied to his nonverbal question.
I had seen a memory from Zack that detailed the moments before Omega destroyed the Directorate headquarters. Bastet had been there, and she and Winter had plainly been familiar with each other. When he had greeted her, he had mentioned that it had been “a long time since Bubastis.” I had wondered about it at the time but had been more focused on other things that happened in the course of the memory. It was a skill I had, bouncing around from detail to detail without getting mired in anything but what I needed to focus on now. In some ways it was helpful. In other ways it wasn’t. At the moment it was helping me distract myself from the possibility that I was pregnant with the child of my dead lover.
We made our way through a corridor filled on both sides with Persian carvings that were brilliantly done. I didn’t have much experience with sculpture, but it looked like the work of years to create something so detailed. I caught Hera looking as well, and she flashed a reserved smile when she realized I had seen her. “These artisans did impressive things. Now you could craft something smoother and more perfect in sand in a matter of hours.”
“You’re talking about sandcastle sculptures?” I asked, my eyes tracing over the lines of the work as we continued to walk.
“Yes. It still impresses me what they can accomplish,” she said.
“But those don’t stand the test of time,” I said. “I doubt any of them will be in a museum in a few thousand years.”
“That’s not the point,” Hera said. “The point is that with technology and knowledge, man has advanced to a level where it’s not only possible to surpass many of the things the gods used to do, but it’s trivialized much of the making of art. Rather than a chisel and a piece of marble, a power tool can make a sculpture like these,” she indicated with a wave of her hand to encompass the Greek gallery we were entering as she said it, “in hours or days. It used to take considerably longer.” She smiled ruefully. “Just like killing men, really. It used to take battles or pillages to kill thousands or tens of thousands.” She snapped her fingers. “Now you can do it in an instant.” Her smiled faded. “It used to take a Hades or an Ares to do such a thing.”
I glanced at her sidelong as we passed a gorgeous sculpture of one of the goddesses of ancient Greece crouched. It seemed well preserved, the white marble still looking clean and bright after what had to have been thousands of years of existence. “To do what? To fight a battle to kill tens of thousands?”
“No,” she said, and stopped in the middle of the gallery. There were only sporadic groups around now, the museum drawing close to closing time. “Well, yes, in Ares’s case. But Hades,” she said with a shake of her head, “he was something else entirely.”
“You keep mentioning him,” I said. “And others, that Athena I met—she came from a cloister in Greece—she said that the old metas, the ones that had lived as long as you,” I caught the twitch of her eye at my mention of her age, but she said nothing, “thought it was like Death had returned. Death with a capital D.”
Hera seemed to consider this for a moment. “Death with a capital D. That’s as good a way to describe him as any.”
I thought of the village that had been destroyed, the bodies all piled in the church basement, and I stared down Hera, who was now pensive. “What was Hades’s power?”
She blinked, not really in surprise, but looked at me almost as though she were amazed I was asking the question. “He could rip the souls from mortals to imprison them within himself.”
I felt myself flush with heat, as though it was an embarrassment that he was like me. “He was an incubus.”
She shook her head, dismissing that idea. “No. Your kind has to touch to drai
n a soul. By necessity, even if we threw you naked into a pit of other naked bodies—which has been done, rather cruelly, I might add,” she said, “you could only drain a few at a time. Hades could rip the life out of every person standing within a hundred meters of him.” She seemed to grimace. “If he focused hard enough on someone miles away, thought really hard about him, he could rip the soul right out of them at that distance. Touch had nothing to do with it. You could touch the man all day—not that I did, other than once—and nothing would happen.” She shook her head again. “No, he wasn’t an incubus. Close, though.”
Very close, Wolfe whispered.
I kept my gaze on Hera. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me?”
She smiled slyly. “Something I’m not telling you yet. Give me just a minute.” She turned and we began to walk again, this time toward a far wall. Two sculptures sat posed next to each other in thrones, the marble weathered with time and age, pieces flecked off it from ill care. The man’s face was utterly missing, but his muscled body was still present, one hand gripping the arm of his squared throne, the other broken off at the wrist. It was sculpted in such a way that it could have been holding a staff, or a piece of fruit—anything, really.
To his left was his queen in a smaller chair. Her face, too, was missing, but her body was more complete. Her robes were flowing, but the curves were exquisite, and one breast was displayed. Her feet were lost in the furls of her dress, but there was a simplicity and elegance to her that caught my notice.
“A fine piece of art, here,” Breandan said casually as we ambled up to it. “I wonder how much that would fetch on the open market?”
“I think you mean the black market,” Reed said, “since you’d have to steal it in order to sell it, and I doubt that Ebay would be very excited to have you place it with them.”
I looked at the inscription on the placard in front of them. It read, Hades and Persephone.
Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven Page 19