Quickly, she threw all three of her deadbolts, grateful that she hadn’t removed a single one when gentrification pushed the pimps and the drug dealers out of the neighborhood.
Panting, she glanced at the parlor-level windows—their iron gratings would stop only a ground-floor incursion, not an attacker who could fly. She sprinted up the stairs even as Hippo appeared on the landing, her tail wagging in wary agitation.
“Move!” Selene shouted, pushing the huge dog out of the way. She ran to the unused back bedroom on the second floor, empty but for a large wardrobe and a few storage chests. She grabbed the wardrobe in her arms and tried to move it. Why don’t I just own a modern particleboard piece of crap? she wondered. Instead I went for three hundred pounds of solid walnut.
“Redecorating at four in the morning? Really?” Theo yawned from the doorway, wearing only his boxer shorts.
“Help me!”
One look at her face and he was instantly alert, rushing forward to grab the other side of the cabinet. “What’s going on? Tell me!”
“Hopefully nothing. But we’ll know soon enough.” With a mighty heave, they slid the wardrobe a few inches.
Theo glanced out the window, just as a grim face in a winged golden cap appeared hovering above the sill. “That’s not nothing!”
Hippo lunged, barking frantically. “Get back!” Selene shouted at her dog. “He’s got a gun!”
Face ashen with fear, Theo put his back against the wardrobe and, nearly shouting with the effort, helped her slide it across the window.
“How many more wardrobes do you have?” he asked a little desperately.
“Not enough.” She rushed up the stairs to her bedroom on the third floor, ignoring the front-facing rooms. Her attacker would stick to the back of the building, where there was less chance of being seen by her neighbors. “There’re too many windows,” she called over her shoulder while locking the casement. “Styx! He’s going to get in eventually, even if he has to break the glass and let the neighbors alert the police.”
“Alerting the police sounds like a great idea!” She could hear Theo on the fourth floor, slamming the shutters closed.
“And tell them there’s a god in Hermes’ winged hat trying to assassinate me?” She threw open her closet as Theo returned to the third floor to join her in the bedroom. She shoved a handful of wooden arrows into her backpack. “He must’ve followed me here—or he knew where I lived. Either way, you’ve got two minutes to gather anything you want, then we’re leaving. And we’re not coming back.”
Theo cursed, fumbled his glasses onto his face, grabbed a large satchel, then tossed in his laptop and a seemingly haphazard collection of clothing, books, and papers.
“Shoes, Theo! Don’t forget shoes!”
Nodding frantically, he dove under the bed and emerged with a pair of sneakers that he shoved onto his feet.
Broken glass clattered on the floor above, followed by a crack of wood. Hippo skittered toward the sound, teeth bared. Selene loosed an ear-splitting howl, stopping the dog in her tracks. The house fell silent, as if the intruder, too, had frozen at Selene’s command. Hippo tucked her tail between her legs and slunk back to her mistress. Selene grabbed her by the chin and snarled at the dog. Stay quiet, do exactly as I say, and guard Theo, she communicated. Sometimes it paid to be the Lady of Hounds.
Then footsteps on the stairs above. Slow and cautious.
Selene slung her bag onto her back and nocked a wooden arrow to her bow. She stepped out into the hallway, motioning curtly for Theo and Hippo to fall in behind her. Go now, she mouthed. I’ll meet you in the basement.
Theo looked like he was about to protest, but she bared her teeth at him, too.
Be careful, he mouthed back at her, before heading down the stairs with his satchel, dragging Hippo by her collar.
Selene kept her eyes locked on the landing above. As she knew it would, the sound of Theo’s descent brought the attacker darting into sight. Her fingers released the arrow the instant before he appeared—he jumped right into its path. It sliced into his shoulder, but not before he fired his gun.
She felt as if she’d been slammed in the head by a crowbar. Everything went black as she staggered toward the railing and tumbled down the steep, narrow staircase, smacking her head against the wall on the landing below. One hand to her bloody skull, she managed to crack her eyes open; the world spun around her, a blur of colors and light with no up or down. Half falling, half crawling, her bow clanging loudly against the banister, she turned the corner and made it down the next set of stairs, dimly aware of a shadow sprinting toward her from below. Another attacker.
Panic gripped her chest. She reached for an arrow, but the fletching slipped through her blood-slick fingers. Her eyes couldn’t focus anyway. She’d never make it through another attack. Then Theo was pulling her into his arms and heaving all six feet of her over his shoulder with a strength she didn’t know he possessed. He headed straight for the front door.
“No,” she gasped. “He’ll just come after us. He’s wounded but …” She could hear her attacker moving awkwardly on the floor above. “He’s still conscious. The basement.”
Theo spun around and flung open the low door under the stairs. He pushed Hippo through with a kick, then ducked to pass through with Selene still lying over his shoulder. She bit back a gasp of pain as her head knocked into the lintel on the way through.
Theo scrambled down the rickety stairs, laid Selene gently on the concrete floor, then dashed back up to close the door behind them, thrusting them into darkness.
“No, don’t turn on the light,” she insisted. “There’s a bolt on this side. You can feel it—” She heard the lock slam into place, then Theo was at her side once more, cradling her head in his hands.
“You’re shot,” he said. “There’s … there’s blood everywhere.”
“It’s my head. That’s why I fell,” she managed. “Anything else and I would’ve been okay.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Shh. He’s right upstairs,” she whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here before he breaks down the door.”
“I’ve got to get you to a doctor. This is not the time to try that invulnerability experiment!”
“I’m not going to die, Theo. There are no divine handguns out there. I should be fine. As long as …”
“As long as what?”
She felt gingerly for her forehead, hoping the bullet hadn’t lodged itself in her brain. She might not die, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be paralyzed. Then she began to laugh quietly.
“Please tell me what’s so funny,” Theo begged.
“It’s a graze. That’s all. Bleeding a lot because it’s a head wound, and it must’ve given me a bit of a concussion, but there’s nothing—” It was all she could do not to yelp as Theo fumbled in the dark for her face and kissed her soundly.
The basement door rattled on its hinges. With Theo’s help, Selene struggled to her feet. Her head cleared enough for her to discern the sliver of moonlight leaking through the basement’s one tiny window. It provided just enough light for her night vision to function. She grabbed Theo’s hand and led him toward the back corner of the basement. There, a small round grate covered a drainage hole. She lifted the grate and flipped a hidden trigger that loosened a larger square of cement in the floor. She lifted it aside—anything was lighter than the wardrobe.
“There’s a ladder,” she whispered in Theo’s ear. As he clambered down, Selene grabbed Hippo by her hindquarters and dragged her toward the hole in the floor. The dog whimpered, her claws scrabbling on the concrete. The rattling on the door got louder.
“I know you’re in there, Diana!” came her attacker’s muffled cry. Then a loud slam as he kicked the lock.
Selene shoved the dog’s backside in the hole, growling at Hippo to be quiet. But for once, her power over hounds didn’t work: The terrified dog wouldn’t stop whimpering. Sorry, girl. She punched her beloved dog on the side of the h
ead. Unconscious, Hippo was much easier to handle. She passed the animal down to Theo, who caught her with a surprised grunt. Then Selene slipped through the hole.
Another angry cry from the floor above, a slam, and the lock on the basement door splintered. Footsteps pounded down the stairs just as she pulled the cement block over the hole and dropped down the ladder to stand beside Theo.
In the blue light of his phone, his eyes were wide with bewildered fear. She put a finger to her lips, then covered his phone with her hand to block the light. Above them, she could hear her attacker stalking through the basement, tossing aside her possessions as he looked for their hiding place. A trunk scraped across the concrete. The lid of an old trashcan clattered against metal shelves. A paint can rolled across the floor with a sound like a snare drum.
Then, for a moment, silence.
“Please, don’t tell the Pater, but I’m at her house.” Her attacker’s voice was a terrified whimper as he spoke into his phone. “I got the arrows, but she got away … I know, but I thought … Yes, right away. It won’t happen again.”
Selene heard him retreat back up the stairs. She held her breath, her hearing tuned for his tread. He entered the foyer, then she heard him go out the front door and onto the sidewalk. “He’s gone,” she whispered to Theo.
“Can we go back up now?”
She could hear his teeth chattering. “It’s not safe. If he knows where I live, we can never go back.”
“Never?”
“Not until we’ve taken care of him. And anyone else who knows to call me Diana. From the sound of that phone call, there’s a whole organized group behind this. Clearly the same guys who killed my uncle.”
“So until we solve Hades’ murder, I’m going to live in the sewers like some mole person?”
“This isn’t a sewer. It’s a bootlegger’s tunnel—part of why I bought this building in the first place. During Prohibition they used it to smuggle crates of liquor from the Hudson to the speakeasies. Now it leads down to the Amtrak tunnels. Come on, help me with Hippo. I’ll feel better the farther we are from the basement.”
She reached for Hippo’s front legs, Theo took the back, and they carried the dog’s limp body a few hundred yards down a low corridor. As they went, she grew increasingly light-headed from the blood loss and the probable concussion, and she felt her already diminished strength threaten to give out entirely.
Just in time, Hippo cracked open her eyes. They put the dog down, letting her stumble about a little until she regained her balance. Selene knelt and pressed a kiss to the dog’s nose. “Forgive me for knocking you out, Hippolyta, but you’re the least stealthy animal in the world.”
When she stood, the light from Theo’s phone fell on her bloody face. He gave a yelp of dismay and dug through his satchel. He emerged with a Columbia Classics Department T-shirt, which he quickly ripped into three long strips.
“You don’t have to do that,” she assured him. “My head will heal on its own faster than you’d think.”
“Not fast enough.” He wrapped the makeshift bandages tightly around her forehead. “You’re looking even paler than usual. And between moving that wardrobe, slinging you around, and hauling Hippo’s fat ass, my back’s about broken. Sorry to ruin the chivalrous hero routine, but I don’t want you passing out, especially if it means more lugging for me.”
Only when he was done did he extricate a pair of pants from his bag. Shivering with cold, he pulled them on, then dug a little further, clearly looking for a second shirt among his hastily packed possessions. He came up empty. He cast a wistful gaze at the torn T-shirt strips on Selene’s head.
“Regretting the Clara Barton move?” she asked.
“Nice attempt at a pop culture reference, but nineteenth-century celebrities don’t count.” He gave up looking for a shirt and donned a bulky sweatshirt with a broken zipper instead. “Now, how about you tell me who the hell was just shooting at us.”
“Who do you think? One of the Messenger’s followers, obviously. That cap’s one-of-a-kind.”
“But it wasn’t Hermes himself? I didn’t get a good look at his face.”
“I did. He didn’t even look like a god. Until he started to fly, that is.”
“So your brother gave one of his few remaining divine objects to some mortal acolyte?”
“Except divine objects shouldn’t even work for mortals.”
“Wait. You’re telling me I couldn’t use your bow?”
“You probably couldn’t even bend it.”
“I’m not that much weaker than you,” he said with a hint of wounded pride.
“It’s not a matter of strength. Despite all my fading, the bow has always retained some of its divinity, so it can only be effectively used by a god. Some of the more supernatural items—like the Earth Shaker’s trident—just ceased working entirely after the Diaspora, even for the god they belonged to.”
“But the winged hat guy—”
“Wasn’t a god. I’d have recognized him. There just aren’t that many of us left. Which means someone, somehow, has figured out how to give their mortal acolytes the power to use divine weapons. I told you. My relatives cannot be trusted. Dash Mercer may seem completely harmless,” she said, using Hermes’ latest mortal pseudonym. “He may even help me out from time to time with new identities, or come to my aid like he did when we fought Orion, but he’s not just the Messenger. He’s the Trickster too, remember? And now he’s given his cap to some mortal and sent him to kill me.”
“You don’t know that! Why would Dash want to hurt you? Maybe somebody stole his cap to frame him.”
“Stole it from the God of Thieves himself? Does that seem likely?” She wasn’t sure whether the piercing pain in her temple was from the bullet graze, the concussion, or her exasperation.
“Then I think it’s time you gave up on the whole recluse thing. Your twin did promise to help if anyone tried to revive the sacrifices.”
Selene shook her head. “Absolutely not. Paul could be in on this, too.”
“Why in the world would you think that? I thought you guys were reconciled!”
“Think of the dead crow at the crime scene. It could be a reference to my twin.”
“Because of the Coronis myth? That’s a stretch.”
“No, it’s not. Coronis was my twin’s lover, the mother of his son, Asclepius.” Her own memories of Coronis’s story were shaky, but she remembered enough to know it had actually happened—and she wasn’t proud of her part in it.
She’d been with Apollo at his temple at Delphi when his sacred bird, the crow, came flying across the valley on white wings. The bird landed on the god’s outstretched arm and told him that Coronis, one of his mortal lovers, had been seen in the arms of a human warrior. Apollo raged and cried, and Artemis swore she would exact revenge on her twin’s behalf.
She raced forth in her stag-drawn chariot and found Coronis, eight months pregnant with Apollo’s child, playing amid the gardens of Thessaly. She sent a single golden arrow through the woman’s creamy white throat. She didn’t dwell on Coronis’s last gurgling cries, on the way her hands clutched at her swollen womb, on how her eyes had silently begged She of Good Repute for mercy. In that ancient time, Artemis didn’t struggle with the contradictions of her godhood. She was the Goddess of Childbirth, who eased women’s pain in labor, yet she thought nothing of murdering an unborn babe or his mother. She was the Protector of the Innocent, who defended women from the abuses of men, but she turned her back on those who needed protection from her own twin.
If only I could still close my heart so easily, thought Selene, looking to Theo. Despite all my responsibilities as a goddess, it was a simpler time. Given the chance, she wouldn’t go back—she’d made that decision when Orion offered to revive her immortality, and she would stick to it. But that didn’t mean she didn’t long for a little merciless, omnipotent godhood every once in a while.
Apollo, as the lover of countless humans and the father of many ha
lf-divine hemitheoi, had always been more vulnerable to mortal emotions. When Coronis lay on her funeral pyre, and the flames licked up her saffron robes toward her rounded belly, Apollo relented. He ripped his infant son Asclepius from Coronis’s womb, pulling him through the fire to safety. The child grew to become the hero-god of medicine and healing, one of the most powerful and important hemitheoi in the ancient world. Men saw the myth as a reminder of Artemis’s heartlessness and Apollo’s mercy. But the Huntress knew better. If Apollo had truly repented his actions, he would’ve assumed responsibility for them. Instead, he decided he was not to blame. “If the crow had not told me of Coronis’s treachery,” he explained to his sister, “she would still be alive. So you see, the bird is at fault, not I.” As punishment, he smeared the bird’s white wings with the ashes of Coronis’s pyre. The crow had been black ever since.
Thinking of the slaughtered bird lying beside the Charging Bull statue reminded Selene that her twin could convince himself of anything. Even, perhaps, that reviving a human sacrifice cult was a good idea.
“Selene, you’ve got to trust someone, sometime,” Theo insisted.
“I trust you. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’d be lying to myself and to you if I said it was. I’m damn good at research and problem solving, and you know I’d do anything to protect you, but when it comes to taking down some dude who can fly? I think someone who’s got a little more combat experience is in order.”
He was right. Theo’d proven himself more than once in a fist fight, but once the swords and spears came out … “No. Not yet. Someone’s messing with the mortals in my city. And someone’s killing my family. It’s up to me to stop them.”
Theo cleared his throat. “You mean us.”
“What?”
“It’s up to us to stop them. You’ve got a partner, remember? One besides Hippo! And not just for hunting down rapists, but for anything, no matter how terrifying. And that’s true whether you like it or not.”
Winter of the Gods Page 9