As she tried to rise, two syndexioi hurried to grab her, and she found herself too weak to throw them off. A quick glance around the planetarium told her that the rescue had gone horribly awry. Flint and the others lay facedown on the ground beneath the golden net. The syndexioi, despite various wounds, still held their divine weapons.
Selene’s only solace lay in the knowledge that the two men she cared most about had escaped. Theo was gone. It’ll be easier to die, she thought, without him here to watch. His very presence makes me want to live. And by now, Paul would be out of the museum. If he could simply flee, he might escape the cult’s influence long enough to recover from his despair and find the strength to fight them off when they came for him again. There was no such hope for her.
When I am gone, Apollo, she prayed to her brother, you must take all that was mine. When women talk of Artemis or Diana, when they dream of a Huntress and her golden bow, I ask that you hear their prayers. That you help them where I have failed. And—in return—that their reverence might lend you the strength I’ve squandered.
Flint, however, had not given up. Despite the arrow wounds in his stomach and the golden threads holding him down, the dam that held his rage had split open. He growled like a caged animal, his biceps bulging, the whites visible around his rolling eyes. Yet no matter how he strained, he couldn’t free himself from his own net.
Dash, a red welt on his neck from the snakes’ embrace, spoke rapid fire to the legionary holding the edge of the net, no doubt hoping to lie, cheat, or steal his way out of captivity. The masked man just looked away impassively.
Philippe, one hand pressed to the spear wound in his side, simply stared at his stepfather’s futile battle against his own creation, his eyes filled with compassion. Then he calmly reached for the golden threads—he tore a hole in the net as easily as he might rip the tissue paper on a Valentine’s gift. Selene didn’t understand until she remembered what Flint had told her about the net’s supernatural properties—only someone who truly loved him could escape it.
Philippe slipped out of their prison and turned to reach a hand through the hole. “Allons-y, Papa!”
Flint lurched toward the opening, but the gap in the net magically repaired itself, blocking his way. He roared in frustration. He doesn’t love himself, Selene realized, otherwise the net couldn’t hold him.
Dash began to cackle hysterically, a sound of more madness than mirth. “Oh, the irony!” he gasped. Flint kept clawing at the net, but all in vain. Philippe screamed at him to try harder, but the syndexioi dragged him away, bending him sideways to stretch his wound. He gasped in agony and then stood still in their grip, incapacitated by pain.
The Pater, his eyes bright blue behind his metal mask, looked from one god to the next. “The pantheon comes to me,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Tonight’s sacrifice will be powerful indeed!” He turned to the exit. “Bring the Bright One forth!”
“What?” Selene cried as the doors to the planetarium burst open, and the Heliodromi reappeared, dragging Paul between them.
“NO!” she screamed, writhing in her captors’ grasp. Paul raised his head slowly, his eyes slitted. It’s all been for nothing, she thought. They never meant to let him go. Still, she begged, “I won’t go willingly to my death if you kill him!”
The Pater only laughed. “Who needs you when I have them?” He gestured toward the Athanatoi within the net. “They will all go willingly in the end, far more easily than you did.” He turned to Paul, lifting his sickle high. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
A crack like lightning. As if Zeus himself had sent a thunderbolt to save his favorite son. The Pater doubled over with a pained grunt. Not lightning, Selene realized. A bullet. From somewhere far overhead, Selene heard Gabriela Jimenez shout, “Next time, pray faster, cabrón!”
The two syndexioi holding Selene dropped her and rushed to their Pater. Then Theo was at her side, grabbing her useless right arm and dragging her toward an emergency exit.
“No, wait,” Selene managed, her mind spinning as she stumbled after him. He ignored her protests, still pulling her arm with surprising strength.
Around them, bullets flew, sending the syndexioi cowering behind the seats. The wounded Pater managed to raise his head, his eyes full of fury. He clutched his stomach, and blood seeped between the fingers of his left hand, staining his white robe. His right hand still held the sickle. He staggered toward Paul.
Selene froze, barely able to process the scene before her. She knew she should rip away from Theo, but her arm was dead weight; she couldn’t twist it from his grip. Pain from the arrow wound seared up her back and into her skull as she tried to break free. For the first time, Paul’s eyes locked on hers.
“Artemis,” he whispered, so faintly only the Huntress’s ears could hear him. “I can’t see the sun …”
Using her whole body, Selene tore from Theo’s grasp just as the Pater drove Saturn’s divine sickle into her brother’s heart.
Around her, every mortal injured in the chaos suddenly collapsed, reaching for minor wounds that suddenly grew deeper and bruises that spread wider. The man she’d kicked in the groin keened in high-pitched torment. The Corvus grazed by Dash’s bullets moaned as he tried in vain to stanch the sudden gush of blood that drenched his arms. Theo clutched at the wound peeking above the collar of his shirt, his groan of pain a stuttered hum. With Apollo’s death, healing simply ceased. An atonal symphony of agony arose in its place, a discordant requiem ripped from the throats of men to proclaim the God of Music’s passing.
Theo reached for Selene once more, clearly fighting through his own suffering. “This is our chance,” he gasped. He dragged her out of the planetarium, urging her to run faster.
But she heard only the dirge. She felt only the sickle as it sank into her own chest. As it sliced her twin away. As it cleaved her heart in twain.
Chapter 37
MOONSHINE
On the top of Mount Kynthos, high above the shores of Delos, I stand with my twin. His long hair catches the sunlight as the wind whips it free of its bonds. It streams forth in ribbons of gold.
Our mother sits on the rocky crest, watching her son with eyes the color of the ocean. Her gaze turns from him to me, and her pride beams as bright and fierce as the rays of the sun itself.
From the temples below, where men pay homage to the colossal statues that are mere shadows of our true glory, voices rise.
“Everywhere, O Phoebus,” they sing, “the whole range of song falls to you. Over mountain peaks and high headlands of lofty hills, and rivers flowing out to the deep, and beaches sloping seaward, and havens of the sea.”
Apollo lifts his lyre and begins to play. The music floats down the rocky slopes and toward the wine-dark waters that surround us. The priests below sway to its tune. The waves themselves dance to its rhythms. The music overspreads the earth and reaches Father in the heavens, who clears all clouds from the sky in deference to his glorious son, Phoebus, Bright One, whose music carries the sunlight on its wings.
Our mother’s joy is a palpable thing, spurring our feet to dance upon the sun-baked ground. I twine my voice with my twin’s. We sing as the sun rises higher in the sky. We sing as it sets, knowing it will rise again. I am perfectly happy. And I know, in the deepest reaches of my heart, that this feeling will last forever. “O Phoebus,” I sing again. “O Phoebus … O Phoebus.”
Theo could hardly bear to look at Selene. She sat on the couch in Ruth’s apartment and stared vacantly at the wall, her lips moving in some silent prayer, just as she had for half a day. The same words, over and over.
“Do you think she’s going to be all right?” he asked again. “Maybe we should take her to the hospital.”
Gabriela sounded like she wanted to slap him. “You’re the one who told us that she never goes to hospitals. She’s in shock, okay? If it were up to me, we’d be in an emergency room right now, rather than holed up in this apartment with not one but two barely conscious w
omen on our hands. If they die, I am not responsible. I want that on the record.”
Ruth was far more patient. “I checked the wound in her back. The bleeding’s stopped and the bandage is clean. I don’t think it hit a lung or she’d be breathing blood. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” The brand on his chest, which had flared anew with Apollo’s death, had settled back into a dull ache as soon as they left the museum. The bruises on his head from the syndexioi’s blows were swollen but bearable. Physically, he was in better shape than Selene. Mentally, he was a wreck. He’d made some of the worst decisions of his life this week. Dragging Captain Hansen’s unconscious body with them when they escaped the planetarium probably counted among the worst of all, but he knew that to protect Selene in the long term, he needed answers only the captain could provide.
Now the unconscious policewoman lay in Ruth’s bedroom, her hands and feet securely tied to the bedposts. She had no visible wounds, but she must’ve cracked her skull when the bookshelf fell on her. Theo tried to worry about her—for all he knew, she could be in a permanent coma—but all his anxiety remained focused squarely on the woman sitting beside him on the couch.
He’d never seen Selene like this. Wrath, frustration, grief, anger, even laughter—these were the emotions he knew. And on the rarest of occasions, love. But this vacancy was more terrifying than the height of her rage.
Hippo, who’d nearly fallen over with the force of her own wagging tail when Selene entered the apartment, had finally given up on getting any response from her mistress. The dog lay beside the couch, her head pillowed on Selene’s feet, staring up at her mournfully.
Theo took her hand in his and tried, once more, to speak to her. “Selene?” He kept his voice gentle and calm, although he wanted desperately to shout her name. This woman who could hear a rat crawling out of a sewer half a block away now seemed deaf to his words. He wanted to call her by every one of her three hundred epithets, hoping that one would finally break through. She has so many facets, he thought desperately, surely one must remain.
He glanced at Ruth and Gabriela. His two friends stared at him, both undoubtedly burning with curiosity. He wasn’t sure how he’d keep the truth from them much longer, but he owed it to Selene to try. “Could you guys give us a minute?”
Gabi rolled her eyes. “How big do you think this apartment is, chico? You want me to go hang out in the bedroom with the cop in the coma? Or should Ruth and I have a nice chat in the bathtub? Or maybe we should just run around the corner for some take-out except … oh that’s right … there could be some masked lunatics out there waiting for us. I mean hopefully we lost them, but who knows, right? I certainly couldn’t tell you what to expect, since I don’t know what is going on.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and sank back defiantly into the room’s sole armchair.
Ruth, however, stood up quietly. “Come on, Gabi, I do have a kitchen, you know. Why don’t we make something to eat? I’m sure we could all use it.”
Gabi shot a furious glance at her, but then softened. Ruth had that effect on people. “Okay. Fine.” She rose with a huff. “But when we come back, Theo, you owe us an explanation.”
He nodded weakly.
He waited until Ruth closed the kitchen door. Then he waited a few moments more, knowing Gabi’s penchant for eavesdropping, until he heard it close more firmly a second time.
He kissed Selene very gently on the cheek. She didn’t respond.
Who do I think I am, he wondered, that I could wake her with a kiss? Prince Charming? Selene had never been the damsel in distress—she’d always been the hero instead. He sighed and laced her limp fingers in his. That was another thing he worried about: She hadn’t moved her right arm since the planetarium. The gold arrow hadn’t struck any organs, but it might’ve bruised her spinal cord. He’d have to trust Selene’s preternatural healing powers to fix the damage. In the meantime, all he could offer was comfort.
“Selene?” he said again. Then, more softly, “Artemis? Come on, Lady of Hounds, you’re freaking out Hippo.” The dog lifted her head and whimpered at the sound of her name. Her tail lifted once in a halfhearted wag, then thumped back against the floor. She licked Selene’s booted foot, then gave a loud sigh before lowering her head again.
“She Who Helps One Climb Out, can you help yourself?” Theo begged. “Can you escape whatever world has trapped you?” He kept talking, not knowing if it helped, but unsure what else to do. “Stormy One, Relentless One, Good Maiden. I’d rather you be angry than this. I’d rather you be cold and furious like you were when we first met. Please, anything but this, Moonshine.”
And then, with the sound of the nickname only her twin had ever used, she finally turned to him.
“Theo?” Her voice was hoarse, but it was hers. Relief flooded through him. He placed his hands on her cheeks and swooped in for a kiss.
Her lips didn’t move. He pulled back, afraid he’d startled her with his exuberance, and what he saw in her face made him drop his hands in shock. She was furious.
“How dare you use that name?” She nearly spat the words. And with that, she suddenly dissolved into wracking sobs. The Lady of Hounds howled. The Stormy One thundered. The Bare-Fisted pounded her chest in lamentation. Through her cries, he could just make out her slurred words. “It’s my fault he’s dead. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
Hippo whined and tried unsuccessfully to crawl under the sofa. Theo reached to take Selene once more in his arms. He would weather the storm, no matter its violence. But her left arm whipped out with all her old speed, and she slammed him hard on the chest, striking his burnt flesh. He fell backward onto the ground with a gasp.
Her tears abruptly stopped. “Do not take this pain from me.” The simple words were spoken like a curse. Never before had he seen her as Hecate, dark goddess of magic. Always, he’d found it the least likely of her incarnations. But in that moment, he could almost see the tendril of hatred that reached toward him like black smoke, and he wondered if she’d summoned some lost power in her grief, some evil spell to kill him where he sat.
He stood up hurriedly, one hand to his throbbing chest, and walked backward to the kitchen, afraid to turn his back on her. Her eyes followed him all the way, her hatred still a palpable threat. Only when he touched the knob did she turn away from him, her whole body shaking silently.
He retreated into the kitchen and turned to face his dumbfounded friends. After a stunned moment, Ruth turned purposefully toward the freezer and pulled out a handful of ice cubes. She wrapped them in a paper towel and handed them to Theo, who unbuttoned his shirt and held them to the brand on his chest with a hiss of pain. He stared at the fish tank on the counter, where an angelfish and a blue guppy swam side by side, oblivious to the drama around them. He felt a stab of jealousy.
Gabi gave an unsympathetic snort. “Now who should be going to the hospital?”
Theo could only shake his head. “It’s nothing.”
To his surprise, it was Ruth who spoke next. Her words were firm, as if she’d known for a long time what she wanted to say and had just been waiting to find the strength to say it. “I didn’t question you when you started seeing Selene, even though there was always something about her that made me … uneasy.”
Gabi barked a laugh. “Understatement of the year.”
“And I didn’t question when you asked me to take Hippo,” Ruth went on, “even though I knew you were lying to me about why … and that you’d never lied to me before. And when you showed up with nowhere to go, I took you in and didn’t ask for the whole truth, even though I thought I deserved it. And I’ve never asked you any hard questions about Selene, even though I don’t really know who or what she is.” She lifted a meaningful brow, and he knew she spoke of the video she’d seen on his phone—Selene miraculously healing beside the stream in the Catskills. Gabi looked from her to Theo, clearly wondering what she’d missed, but Ruth plowed on. “And tonight, you show up with an unconscious cop and Sele
ne wounded and a brand on your chest, and I let you in again. I didn’t even pause. Because …”
Gabi squinted suspiciously at the hesitation, but Ruth finally pressed ahead with a deep breath. “Because you’re my friend. Because despite your lies, I trust you. But if even half of what Gabi has said about what happened at the planetarium is true, you’ve put us both in danger. Even that I could forgive. I would go into danger for you. You know that. And so would she.”
Gabriela rolled her eyes but didn’t disagree.
“But whatever just happened in there”—Ruth’s voice dropped to an angry whisper—“you have to tell us. And you can’t lie. Because either you did something so terrible to that woman that she had to hit you—in which case you’re not the man I thought you were, and you are no longer welcome in my house—or she is an abuser, Theo, and I will not stand by while you let yourself be treated like that. I will call the cops and they will drag her and her dog out of my apartment, and I don’t give a shit if they discover the half-dead police captain on my bed.”
Only the quiet gurgle of the fish tank’s filter broke the silence. Then Gabi gave Ruth a soft, but very deliberate, round of applause.
Theo finally made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob and sank onto the bar stool beside the kitchen counter. “It’s mostly the former and a bit of the latter. How’s that for an answer?”
“Shitty academic ambivalence,” Gabi said immediately. “No more circumlocutions and prevarications, Dr. Schultz. How about you start by explaining who you gave my phone number to.” She glanced at Ruth. “Remember I told you I got a call from this dude with this incredibly low voice, like sexy-town rumbly low, and he said he was a friend of Theo’s and Theo was in trouble, again, and could I please sneak him and his friends into the planetarium? Well, turns out he’s on crutches and has these withered legs like a paraplegic or something, but otherwise he’s like super-hot in this very straight, very muscly, very much needs a shave kind of way … I mean, if you’re into men, which I’m not, but trust me, there’s something broken about him that makes you just want to fix him.”
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