Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  Dash huffed. “Sounds like a lifecycle thing, for sure.”

  Flint finally spoke. “Plato.”

  They all turned and stared at him.

  “You don’t remember Plato?” he asked grumpily.

  “I didn’t know him personally,” Theo said dryly. “What about him?”

  “I liked the mathematicians at his Academy,” Flint explained, “so I sometimes visited. And I remember Plato had a theory about celestial spheres and the afterlife.”

  “Damn, that’s right,” Theo said, quickly turning back to his computer to confirm the details of a story he only dimly remembered. “The end of Plato’s Republic is a fable about a man who ascends through seven celestial spheres after he dies—seven spheres for the seven celestial bodies recognized by ancient astronomers. Only then can he reach heaven. A god—like Mithras—who has power over those spheres would also have power over salvation. The idea survived for centuries, so it would overlap perfectly with the rise of Mithraism.”

  “Salvation? Heaven?” Philippe wrinkled his nose. “Sounds Christian.”

  “That’s probably because Mithraism was popular at the same time Christianity gained a foothold in the Roman Empire,” Theo explained. “Some historians even think the Christians based a lot of their theology on it—they call Mithras a proto-Jesus. Seems like they’re both part of a general trend toward religions more concerned with the fate of the human soul than with placating a pantheon of gods. Either way, the two religions have a lot in common.”

  The gods fell silent. Finally, Flint heaved himself to his feet, tucking a crutch under each arm. “Then we dare not underestimate this god—or his followers. Christianity has wreaked more destruction on our kind than any weapon I’ve ever devised. Let’s make sure this Mithras doesn’t do the same.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Theo closed his laptop.

  “We will not let them get anywhere near sacrificing the Huntress,” Flint continued. Theo wasn’t sure exactly when the Smith had become the leader of this little band, but for all his physical fading, it was suddenly clear he was in charge. “We will find where they’re keeping her and strike there.”

  Dash nodded in agreement, but Philippe looked worried. “Papa, I know you want to save her.” He lowered his voice. “I know how you feel about her. But these men have powers we don’t understand. And how will we even find them in the first place?”

  Flint turned his dark, piercing eyes on Theo. “You found Orion and his cult. Time after time, they eluded you, and time after time you tracked them down. You can do it again.”

  “Absolutely,” Theo said, although he had no idea how. With Selene’s life on the line, he’d find a way.

  Flint looked at each god in turn. “We chop off head after head, but another grows in its place. We’ve killed two of their men, yet still they keep coming. The only way to kill a hydra is to stab it through the heart. We find the Pater Patrum. We kill him. We free Selene and end the cult once and for all.”

  Dash whistled. “Sounds very bold. I assume from your tone you’ve got a plan to accomplish all that?”

  Flint nodded.

  “Et bien,” said Philippe with a sigh, “I hope it’s better than your last plan, where we all nearly drowned and my father still didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Flint said. “This time, we’re sending the professor in first.”

  Chapter 28

  CHAINED ONE

  Selene awoke facedown in a cold, bare cell. Cheek pressed against the concrete, she blinked in the harsh light bouncing off the white walls, trying to recall how she got there. The last thing she remembered was dying.

  After she’d realized the cops who’d arrested her actually belonged to the cult, she’d cursed expletives creative enough to make Dionysus himself blush. The “cops” had pulled their cruiser into a parking garage not far from Times Square and told her to get out of the car. She’d refused, of course, but the linebacker cop pulled her last divine arrow from her pack and held its golden tip to her throat. She had no choice but to obey. He told her to turn around and get down on her knees.

  They won’t dare kill me here, she told herself as they forced her to the ground. She couldn’t conceive that her death would be as pedestrian as a gang-style execution in a dank parking garage. Surely there’d be incense and chanting and some sort of ritualized dance at least! And then, even as death lurked a step behind her, she nearly laughed aloud at her own egotism. Theo said I try to make it all about me. Here I go again. I’m probably not important enough to serve as their sacrifice. She heard a gun cock. I’m finally going to find out if a bullet to the brain can actually kill me. She had the sinking suspicion that it might leave her permanently paralyzed instead. Will I still crave immortality if it means an eternity as a quadriplegic? she wondered. Then a gunshot echoed against the concrete walls, and a sharp pain pierced her back, right between her shoulder blades. Seconds later, all went black.

  Now, unless she’d been sorely mistaken about the afterlife all these years, she was very much alive and still able to feel all her limbs. The cell, however, seemed its own version of hell. No toilet, no bed. A single small grate high overhead allowed a thin stream of air. Beside it, a recessed fluorescent light. The steel door had no window, no knob, no visible hinges.

  She sat up gingerly, trying to reach her own back to feel the gunshot wound, and realized she wore only a thin hospital gown. On a smaller woman, it might’ve provided some modesty; on her it came only to mid-thigh. They saw me naked, she realized, rising from the ground with strength born from fury. She slammed her palm against the steel door. Once, twice, as if she could smash it apart by sheer force of will. I will find them, I will turn them to beasts, I will rip them limb from limb for their offense. But the wound on her back burned when she raised her arm, and the door didn’t budge.

  She sank back onto the cold floor, her rage dissolving into helplessness, and felt again for the bandage between her shoulder blades. It was far too small for a wound that had knocked her senseless—unless the bullet had actually been a tranquilizer dart.

  A narrow food tray slot slid open near the top of the door. She sat up immediately, the movement sending a sharp pain down her spine. Maybe at least they’ll feed me, she thought.

  Her voracious appetite hadn’t been sated since lunch at the hotel before the excursion to Governors Island, and her stomach growled in anticipation. And if they stick a hand through far enough, she decided, I’ll just grab it and drag the bastard through the slot, no matter how narrow it is. But before she could even stand up to look through the opening, the slot slid shut with a clank. Almost immediately, another panel opened at the base of the door and a metal object slid through.

  A circular bronze disk with a handle. She made no move to reach for it, worried it would start spurting poison gas or turn into some sort of attack robot. But once she decided Theo’s sci-fi movies were warping her brain, she reached for it with her bare toe and dragged it closer.

  The handle had been cast in the shape of a naked goddess, one knee cocked forward, her breasts tipped with golden nipples. Etched flowers, seashells, and doves adorned the disk itself. The symbolism instantly raised her suspicions; she couldn’t resist flipping the object over to see if they were correct.

  Aphrodite’s hand mirror. Just as she’d feared. Made by the Smith as a present to his wife on their wedding night. So iconic that it became the basis for the Venus symbol that signified both the planet and all womankind—and now, somehow, it was in the hands of a cult that, according to Theo, worshiped a different god entirely.

  “Is this so I can fix my hair?” she demanded of the empty room, hoping her captors could hear her. “Very thoughtful, but you must be confusing me with some other goddess who gives a shit.” She picked up the mirror nonetheless and looked at her reflection in its polished bronze surface.

  She nearly screamed.

  The face she saw was not her own. An old man, nearly bald, his white hair flo
ating in a wispy combover above his age-speckled scalp. Wire-rimmed glasses balanced on a pointed nose. Loose wattles of flesh hung from his neck. His lips, thin and colorless, pursed in an expression of confusion and dismay. She recognized him only when she noticed his green eyes.

  “Theo?” she whispered.

  The man in the mirror didn’t respond. He just stared blankly ahead.

  Then the image shifted. The background came into focus. A log cabin, sparsely furnished, the rugs worn with age. And a woman, tall and lean, black-haired, bent over a stove. She clattered a pan, cursed loudly, then threw a piece of crockery across the room. It smashed against the far wall; white liquid oozed down the logs. A bowl of soup, perhaps, or batter. The woman turned toward Theo.

  She has my face, Selene saw with a start, but not my name. I’ll be someone else by then. Ursula maybe, for the bears. Or some other version of an old epithet. Lucinda for the moonlight.

  As the woman came toward Theo, Selene could see the fan of wrinkles around her eyes and the scowl line on her brow, more pronounced than the one she currently bore. Older, certainly, but not by much. Theo was in his eighties at least. The future version of Selene threw down a new bowl in front of Theo and stormed away, her face twisted into a furious, self-loathing sneer.

  Theo moved his lips into a vague “Thank you.” He had no teeth.

  Selene dropped the mirror to the ground with a clatter.

  Theo sat on the couch with his head in his hands hours after Flint had finished explaining his incredibly elaborate proposal for rescuing Selene.

  Philippe sat down beside him and started rubbing his back in desultory circles.

  “Um …” Theo stammered. “I’m okay.”

  Philippe ran a hand up to the back of Theo’s neck and massaged gently. “You look tense.”

  “Well, yeah, I’m supposed to figure out where the cult’s ultrasecret hideaway is before the next sacrifice, so I guess you could say I’m tense.” And you coming on to me right now is not helping matters, he wanted to say. I’m trying to rescue my girlfriend, and you’re acting like I’m already single.

  “It’s okay,” Philippe soothed. “It’s past midnight already, and Dash and Flint have been monitoring every police scanner and TV news station in the city. No word of any strange outpourings of hunting-related emotion. So she’s still alive. If they keep the same pattern of late-night murders going, then we’ve got at least another day to find her.”

  Theo nodded wearily and felt his shoulders relax in spite of himself. His mind, which had whirled with images of planets and stars and fiery gods for hours—not to mention Selene covered in blood—finally calmed and centered itself.

  Philippe lifted his hands. “Better?”

  “Yeah, actually.”

  “Where are you so far?”

  Theo reached for the pad of paper where he’d scribbled his ideas. “Mithraists call the leader of each branch of the cult ‘Pater,’ and there are various ranks underneath him. The Pater Patrum that our captive mentioned is the ‘Father of Fathers,’ presiding over the entire religion. All we know about the traditional temple—a mithraeum, it’s called—is that it usually looks like a cave. Sometimes they really were caves, sometimes just secret underground chambers. We already sent Dash to check on the cave in Central Park—it’s empty. The city has an incalculable number of secret underground spaces, so that doesn’t help either.”

  “There must be something more specific about where they like to put these temples of theirs.”

  “At the cult’s height, there were upward of seven hundred mithraea in the city of Rome alone,” he read from his notes, speaking quickly. Philippe might be right that they had another day to work—or he might not. “Unlike other Mystery Cults, the members were all male—and most were soldiers. So wherever the Roman legions went, the cult followed—there were even mithraea as far away as England. Then, in the fourth century, the execrable Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius destroyed them all. The Christians often built churches on top of the old sites just to prove their superiority. So I thought maybe our new Mithraists would put their temple under a church, but since there are thousands of churches in New York City, that’s a dead end.” He resisted the urge to crumple up his useless findings and toss them in the trash.

  “Okay, what about finding the location of their next ritual instead and ambushing them there?”

  Theo flipped to the next page on his pad. “I’ve been matching up what we’ve seen so far at the crime scenes with the archeological evidence from the mithraea. We know very little about Mithras himself, but it looks like the cult’s rituals are reenacting the events of his life. The murder at the Charging Bull, of course, represents the tauroctony—Mithras’s famous killing of the bull. The food laid out at the Rainbow Room corresponds to a ritual banquet where Mithras feasts with Sol the Sun—it’s like an after-party to the original sacrifice.”

  “What else?” Philippe prodded.

  Theo opened a photo of a statue of Mithras emerging from a large round chunk of stone. “Could be a dramatization of Mithras’s birth. But we don’t know whether he supposedly sprang out of a rock in a cave or an egg in a cave. Or an egg-shaped rock in a cave. See? Not that helpful.”

  Philippe tutted. “And lazy mythology. The egg thing sounds like Helen of Troy.”

  “There’s another event in the god’s life that’s mentioned very briefly in a few Roman texts: They say Mithras participates in the ‘Procession of the Heliodromus,’ or the ‘Sun-Runner.’ Whatever that means. Maybe it’s a reenactment of the sun’s orbit. And I’ve also found some evidence for our salvation idea, because some sources claim that Mithras ascends to heaven in Sol’s chariot—hence passing through the celestial spheres. But unless the cult is planning to sacrifice someone at Cape Canaveral, I’m not sure what the modern parallel would be for that.”

  “When you say Sol, you mean Sol Invictus?”

  “Yup. The Roman ‘Invincible Sun.’ He had his own popular cult in the Imperial Era, remember? They based it around his birthday: December twenty-fifth, when the Romans observed that the days began to lengthen again. In Mithraism, Sol Invictus is both a secondary deity and another epithet for Mithras himself. So in a way, December twenty-fifth was Mithras’s birthday as well. That’s why our modern cult has chosen this week for their rituals. They’re piggybacking on a date that already carries great significance. Just like the Christians did when they picked it for their own god’s birthday.”

  Philippe sniffed. “It’s just a little rude, you know? All those creepy mangers everywhere. I think the baby Jesuses look like baby me, honestly.” He chuckled. “How great would it be if all this time the Christians thought they were worshiping their infant savior, they were actually praying to adorable little Cupid instead? But I guess that’s just wishful thinking, because I’m still aging—slowly, but aging nonetheless. And don’t get me started on the Christmas trees everywhere. If they wanted to pick a pagan symbol, they could’ve at least picked something Greek! Why should the Norse gods get all the help?”

  Theo interrupted him. “None of this is helping me figure out where they’ve taken Selene.” His visions of underground mithraea had been supplanted by those of Christmas trees. It made him think of the Rockefeller Center tree, soaring above the site of Selene’s abduction. How she must have hated seeing it there—the Christian icon overshadowing the pagan statue of Prometheus that usually ruled the plaza.

  I could use some help from Prometheus right now, Theo thought, reaching beneath his glasses to rub his burning eyes. Prometheus, whose name meant “Forethought,” was more than just the god who’d given fire to man. He had also created humans in the first place, sculpting them from clay and then, when the other gods released a Pandora’s Jar of vices and suffering to plague humanity, Prometheus added winged Hope to ease his children’s hearts.

  Come on, Theo prayed silently, give me some Hope, buddy. It’s about time. Unsurprisingly, his prayer remained unanswered. Fine. Any other gods I c
an call upon?

  Prometheus, he remembered, wasn’t the only Athanatos represented in Rockefeller Center. There’s a famous motif of Mercury on one of the buildings. And then of course … “Atlas,” he said aloud.

  “What about him? Long dead, I hear.”

  “No, not the god Atlas. The statue Atlas. The one in Rock Center. My students all think he lifts up the earth, but he’s actually holding the heavens. A man bearing the celestial sphere. Don’t you see? That’s not just an ancient Greek idea—it’s a Mithraic one.”

  Theo grabbed his wool coat and hat. The revelation wasn’t much, but it was the best idea he’d had so far. He thumped on the bedroom door where Flint had secreted himself, then stuck his head into the hallway to shout for Dash.

  He quickly explained the Atlas connection. “It might be nothing,” he said, “but at least it’s a possibility. If these guys know that the Athanatoi exist, then maybe they’ve been in the city as long as you have. Or at least long enough to plant Mithraic symbolism in some New York landmarks.”

  Flint reached for his leather jacket and crutches, but Dash put a restraining hand on his arm and warned, “Now hold on, we’re supposed to join the fight later—otherwise we show our hand too early. And you, my brawny brother, are very recognizable. If you go with Theo now, you’ll only put him in danger.”

  “But what if he’s right?” Flint shook off Dash’s grip violently. “What if this is the entrance to their temple, but he can’t figure out how to get inside?”

  “It’s okay,” Theo assured him, trying not to sound annoyed by Flint’s obvious lack of faith. “Once I know I’m right, I’m going to call Detective Freeman and tell the police to—”

  “No!” Philippe and Dash shouted at the same time.