Selene gave up on the door and rushed down the hallway, looking for a back entrance to the stage. The voice followed her as she ran.
“Getting the blood out of the clown suit.”
She found her way backstage, where costumers and production assistants huddled beneath dressing tables. The rasping voice droned on and on, the drumbeats keeping time.
“How do I get onstage?” Selene demanded of a scrawny makeup artist.
“Be careful! They said if we moved, they’d kill Jenny!”
“Let them try,” she growled. “Just show me the way in.”
He pointed to a nearby door. “They locked it from the other side.”
Suddenly, the hierophant’s voice ceased, replaced by those of multiple men, chanting with surprisingly intricate harmonies to the steady pounding of the drum.
“Pheromen touto to partheneion thuma…”
“What the fuck is that?” whimpered the makeup artist.
Horrified, Selene didn’t think twice about translating aloud: “We bring this virgin sacrifice, so that our god might flourish with her blood.”
She took a running start and hurled herself against the door. She could hear a faint splintering on the other side.
“Here!” The makeup artist had come out of hiding to offer her a fire extinguisher. But Selene had already kicked the door open on her own.
She burst onto the set just in time to see the yellow-cloaked man’s knife slip into Jenny’s neck. The hierophant held the flask to her throat, collecting her blood. The other actors screamed. Then blackness as the lights in the building snapped off.
The shuffling of booted feet told her the hierophant and his followers were on the move, dragging Jenny with them. Through the actors’ panicked shouting, she heard the clatter of a falling chain as the security guards finally broke through the main entrance. They poured through the doors, their flashlight beams zigzagging wildly across the set. But the cult had disappeared.
Dodging the guards’ lights, Selene stepped onto the stage, sniffing the air for Jenny’s fear. Finally, she caught a whiff of the pheromone, sharp and pungent. She followed her nose, moving quickly into a back service corridor, then opened the door to a pitch-black stairwell.
She could hear footsteps, a few stories down. Swiftly, she reached into her backpack and assembled her bow. She didn’t need any light to know how the pieces fit together. She took a step forward, nearly tripping on Jenny’s fallen wig. Then, with one hand on the wall to guide her way, she moved down the stairs in complete silence, taking them three at a time.
Before long, she saw wavering lights up ahead; the initiates had brought flashlights to ease their way. She grabbed four arrows from her pack, slipping them between the knuckles of her right hand. Two flights later, the cult members came into view. Two of them carried Jenny’s limp body between them. Then, for a heartbeat, the hierophant crossed into a beam of light—Selene loosed her first arrow. He dodged out of the way, faster than any mortal ever could. Then he laughed. A cold, cruel sound. A second later, Selene rolled the second arrow from one finger to the next and shot again—but he plucked it from the air as if it were a paper airplane.
He gestured for his acolytes to stop their flight.
“Let the woman go,” Selene said, willing her voice to be calm.
The hierophant’s wooden mask, made horrific in the glancing light and shadow, betrayed no emotion. “Why?”
“Because you may be able to pluck arrows from the air, but I doubt your companions can.” Hoping she was right, she swung around and sent the third arrow sailing into the thigh of an initiate. He grunted and fell to his knees, nearly tumbling forward. “You need them, don’t you?” she went on. “A Mystery Cult with only a hierophant isn’t much of a Mystery Cult. Let the girl go, or I shoot again.” He tilted his head, as if considering. “Too slow,” she snapped, firing the last arrow into the initiate’s stomach.
Before she could grab another arrow, the hierophant lunged forward to rip the bow from her hands. He’s strong. Stronger than I, she realized with a shock. Then, a screeching of metal, the twang of a string, and her golden bow lay broken upon the ground. She cried out, as if her soul itself had snapped in two. But the hierophant gave her no time to grieve. He still had her arrow in his fist. He pressed its point up against her throat. She could barely breathe. Her voice squeezed past, thin and weak.
“Are you trying to make me stronger? Or trying to kill me? Make up your mind.” The arrowhead nicked her skin. A trail of wetness ran down her neck to pool between her collarbones.
“I’m not going to kill you. I couldn’t. Not with this.” He tossed the wooden arrow on the ground and reached over his shoulder. Only then did she notice the quiver hidden beneath his purple cloak. “Now this—this could kill you.” In the slanting illumination from the flashlights, the arrow in his hand glinted silver—just like her twin brother’s divine shafts.
“Apollo,” she hissed. “Is that you?”
He brushed the arrowhead against her cheek, as gentle as a lover’s touch. But his voice still rasped like sandpaper on skin. “Very smart, Artemis.”
Of course. Paul would do anything to stop the fading he feared so much. The drummer, the harmonic chanting—the four mystai must be his three band members and his manager. The worship they showed for their frontman already bordered on idolatry; someone as charismatic as her brother could easily manipulate those feelings into the blind obedience mystai owed a hierophant.
“I should’ve known you’d let Mother die while making yourself stronger,” said Selene. “Now speak to me in your true voice. Show me your true face. Let there be no lies between us. Not anymore.”
But he just laughed, a dizzy cackle.
He’s gone mad, she realized. Like our father. Like Hestia. It won’t be long before I lose my mind, too, if I haven’t already. Maybe we were crazy to begin with, thinking we were gods in a world of men. She closed her eyes. He wants to save me and kill me at the same time, she thought with a sudden icy calm. So we have always been, loving and hating all at once, for millennia. It was always fated to come to this.
She opened her eyes, searching the carved face for some sign of the man she’d known so well. “I’m not scared. Death comes for us all. We are Athanatoi no longer.”
A sudden pounding of footsteps on the stairs above. The mystai swung their flashlights wildly toward the disturbance, but Selene didn’t dare look. An instant later, the hierophant groaned sharply, and she managed to twist her head an inch to the side.
Theo stood, teeth bared, one end of her broken bow in his hands, the other embedded in her attacker’s side. The hierophant lurched away, the silver arrow in his fist slicing across Selene’s abdomen. Before she could fall, Theo grabbed her arms and pressed her body close. “I gotcha,” he murmured, turning their bodies so he stood between her and the hooded men.
“Help me,” the hierophant demanded of his acolytes, still using the low rasp that disguised his melodious voice. The three mystai who could still walk dropped the actress’s body on the ground and moved to their leader’s side.
“I’m fine,” Selene hissed to Theo, pushing him away. She blinked in the swerving flashlight beams—the sharp alternation between light and dark played havoc with her night vision. But there—she spotted the other half of her broken bow on the ground. The end that had once slid so effortlessly into the handgrip lay twisted and torn. A small voice in her head—her mother’s voice, she realized—begged her to be merciful. But Leto had also understood that the Protector had a job to do. Selene’s code was clear: murder for murder. Apollo might be a god, but that didn’t make him exempt from the Punisher’s justice. Selene snatched up the piece of her bow and swung it toward him.
The mystes who’d sliced Jenny Thomason’s throat, shorter than the others, but broad and solid beneath his cloak, stepped in front of her blow. The ragged metal sliced into the murderer’s shoulder. He grunted but did not cry out. Another initiate, this one with a hand
drum slung over one shoulder, grabbed her from behind. She broke his grip easily.
Hair whipping across her cheeks, she spun and lashed out with her leg, the blunt heel of her boot catching her assailant in the chest. Now a third man rushed toward her, a knife extended. She batted it away with the broken end of the bow, then brought the sharp point up to strike him in the neck. He choked and stumbled to a halt just as Theo jumped onto his back and the two men collapsed in a pile of flailing limbs.
Now the drummer and the stocky murderer were on Selene at once, swinging with their flashlights and knives. She struck out with one end of the bow and then the other, knocking aside their weapons. Even when her bow landed on their flesh, they merely moaned and winced, then came on like zombies. She wondered if they were drugged—maybe with the kykeon potion so central to the Mystery. Theo’s sudden grunt of pain distracted her attention for an instant, allowing the drummer to grab her. Before she could break free, the stocky one kicked her injured side. She fell to the ground with a cry. From the corner of her eye, she watched a booted foot swing toward her face.
“Enough!” gasped the hierophant from his position by the wall. “This is not the time. Leave her and get me out of here!”
Abruptly, the men stopped their attack. Jenny’s murderer and the drummer hurried to their hierophant and lifted him in their arms. Theo’s assailant retrieved the man Selene had shot. As they continued down the staircase toward the basement shopping concourse and subway entrance, Selene dragged herself unsteadily to her feet.
“Are you all right?” Theo asked from the corner, where he stood clutching his stomach.
“We can’t let them—”
A faint moan interrupted her. Jenny lay slumped on the landing where the mystai had left her. Theo crawled toward her. “She’s alive, Selene!”
Ignoring him, Selene turned to follow the initiates.
“Leave them!” Theo cried. “If you don’t go get help, she’ll die!” He cradled Jenny’s torso in his arms, pressing vainly against the flow of blood from her neck. Selene stood frozen, torn between her desire for revenge and the desperation in Theo’s voice. “Hurry, Selene! What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, breaking through her paralysis.
What’s wrong with me, indeed? She fled out the nearest door, nearly bowling over a young policewoman. “I found her. She’s in the stairwell. Hurry!” She didn’t warn them to stop the subway trains leaving Rock Center. Didn’t tell them to block off the entire concourse level. This was still her fight. Her hunt.
Selene dashed back down the stairs into the underground concourse, flying by the shuttered Starbucks, the newsstand, the Ben & Jerry’s. No sign of her twin. No sign of his mystai. Then to the subway station. No MTA worker manned the entrance booth this time of night, just MetroCard machines and man-high turnstiles. It would have been hard to get two wounded men through, but not impossible.
She sprinted from one train platform to another, fighting the late-night crowds of theatergoers and tourists. “Have you seen a group of men in yellow cloaks? Or a tall man in purple robes?” she begged as she ran. But people mostly shook their heads and stepped away, alarmed by her battered face and the piece of twisted gold metal in her hands.
She heard a downtown F train rumble out of the station before she could get down the stairs, then watched in frustration as an uptown B departed while she was on the downtown track. She cursed loudly and slumped over, breathing heavily and wincing at the pain in her slashed abdomen. They were gone. No sign of blood on the ground; no smell of fear or triumph in the air. She thrust the broken piece of her bow angrily into her pack and stumbled as fast as she could back out of the subway, up the stairs, and toward the landing where she’d left Theo and the girl.
Just then, she felt a strange jolt of adrenaline pump through her veins. The unbearable pain in her stomach grew a little less fierce, as if the healing process had already begun. Last night in the shower she’d felt a similar rush of energy—just before the sudden healing of the cut on her face. On that same night—probably at that same instant—Sammi Mehra stopped breathing.
Selene felt a wave of despair as she realized what had just happened: The human sacrifice was making her stronger. And Jenny Thomason was dead.
Chapter 30
THE LADY CAPTAIN
Someone had gotten the lights back on. Selene watched over the heads of the EMTs as they pried Theo’s bloody hands from Jenny’s body. “I tried,” Selene heard him say. “I tried to save her.” A young policewoman gently helped Theo to his feet and led him through the crowd of medical personnel.
As they passed Selene, the policewoman said to her, “We’ll need to ask you some questions after an EMT looks at your neck, okay?” Selene nodded, putting a tentative hand to the nick on her throat. It came away bright with blood. When the policewoman turned away, Selene lifted her shirt to glance quickly at the larger wound across her abdomen. Not as bad as she imagined; she’d stopped losing blood in the rush of power after Jenny died, and a wide scab already covered half the gash. The remaining wound, three inches long and glistening red, had missed her organs, but still sent waves of stabbing pain through her side. She pulled her leather jacket tighter to conceal it. Made with Apollo’s divine arrow, the injury wouldn’t respond to the paramedic’s interventions anyway.
As she followed Theo and the policewoman toward the lobby, Selene leaned in toward her partner, her mouth a hairbreadth from his ear. “You don’t know me,” she whispered. “There were no arrows, and I’m not a PI.” He turned toward her, his eyes red-rimmed and dazed. He looked like he might protest, but something in her face must have stopped him. He nodded wearily then hung his head and allowed himself to be led away.
An EMT led Selene to the lobby and sat her on a bench as he dabbed at the wound on her neck. Selene looked at the TVs mounted on the wall, each tuned to a different NBC affiliate. On every station, newscasters hovered outside 30 Rock, their faces creased with concern. And over and over, they ran the footage of Jenny Thomason in the hierophant’s arms. They didn’t show the stabbing, but Selene couldn’t help replaying it in her own mind.
She died so I might grow stronger. Can I ever forgive myself for that? Once, she might not have cared about the life of a mortal. She found thanatoi frustrating, confusing, and annoying in equal measure. But over the millennia she’d come to admit that without their worship, their faith, their need, she might not exist in the first place. Mankind might tell stories of how Zeus commanded the gods to mold the first human beings, but in truth, the creation stories themselves came from the minds of men. So thanatoi created Athanatoi who created thanatoi… an Ouroboros, a snake eating its tail, no end, no beginning. Selene’s entire life, her very being, lay entwined with those who worshiped her. And now she knew that without the deaths of three innocent women, she would still be weak, vulnerable, an Athanatos with no power at all. And without Theo, she realized, I would have died tonight.
The EMT covered the wound on her throat with gauze. “From all the blood, I figured you really got hurt,” he said. “But it’s barely a scratch. Still, keep it covered for a while until it heals completely. Anything else hurt?”
“No.”
“You sure? You’re sitting funny.”
“I’m sure.”
“Why don’t you just take off your jacket and let me have a peek?”
“You come near me and I’ll rip your hands off.”
“Whoa!” He stood up. “I’m just trying to help, miss.”
Selene stood, then caught the edge of the bench when a wave of dizziness passed through her. Instinctively, the EMT reached out to her. She snapped her teeth at him like a rabid dog.
He backed up, eyes wide. “Can I get some help over here?” he called across the lobby.
“What’s going on?” demanded a croaking voice.
Selene turned toward the approaching woman, instantly recognizing her narrow-hipped stride.
The EMT gestured toward Selene. “This woman was present at
the scene—”
But her old friend Geraldine Hansen wasn’t listening. Mouth slightly agape, the captain just stared at Selene.
“You look—my God—just like…” She shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. The EMT stopped speaking. He glanced from one woman to the other, confused.
Selene fought the urge to flee, forcing her mouth into a polite, bewildered smile.
The gray-haired captain blinked twice, and Selene noticed her chest heave slightly with a suppressed sigh. Geraldine looked away. Suddenly, she was all business. With calm, cordial authority, she told the EMT to check the actors and crew in the dressing rooms for signs of shock. Then she gestured for a weedy, olive-skinned cop to come join her, saying, “Get out a pen, Officer, and take down this woman’s statement.”
When she finally turned back to Selene, she acted as if nothing unusual had occurred. “You must be the woman who attacked the perpetrators.” Geraldine introduced herself as a member of the Counterterrorism Division, and Selene nodded warily. The captain hadn’t seen “Cynthia Forrester” in nearly forty years. Hopefully, she’d blame her sense of recognition on foggy memories.
“Counterterrorism? Do you think terrorists are involved?” Selene asked with an attempt at wide-eyed innocence.
“I’d say killing a woman on TV in front of ten million viewers qualifies as terrorism, wouldn’t you?” She put her hands on her hips. “Although exactly what kind of terrorism remains to be seen. We still don’t know what language they were speaking.”
“It was Greek,” said the weedy cop at her side. Selene glanced at his badge: Officer Christopoulos. “I only made out a few words here and there, and the pronunciation was weird. Sounded like Ancient Greek maybe.”
The captain grimaced. “Then there’re going to be a lot of questions asked at the Greek Consulate tonight. Now, Ms. DiSilva, I understand you were up on the eighth floor when the murder took place. Tell us what happened.”
I just wanted to see the show, Selene decided. When I saw what had happened on the TVs in the lobby, I wanted to help. I pursued the murderers while a tall guy in glasses tried to save the actress, but it was too late and they got away. But before she could begin, the captain continued, “And we’ll need to get some fingerprints, if you don’t mind, to compare against those at the crime scene.”
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