Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “Gabriela, please …” Theo moaned.

  “Yeah”—she held up a dismissive hand—“we’re not done with you, but let me finish. So he’s not alone. Sexy hairy man’s with these two other guys: one chain-smoking teenager who’s as gay as the day is long and one slick prick in expensive clothes who won’t shut up. And they won’t tell me who they are or how they know Theo.” She gave her friend an accusatory glare.

  He sighed. “They’re Selene’s family. Extended family.”

  She scowled dubiously.

  “I swear it on all that’s holy. Look, you know how private Selene is. If I told you any more, it’d be a betrayal of her trust. Her secrets aren’t mine to tell. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  He knew Gabriela always found “keeping secrets” oxymoronic, but Ruth nodded reluctantly.

  “Let’s just say that Selene’s family history stretches back just as far as this cult does,” Theo continued. “I told you that the guys at the planetarium were members of a Mithraic cult. Well, they see her family as a threat to the resurrection of their god.”

  “Hold up,” Gabi interrupted. “Like actual resurrection? Not like metaphorical one?”

  “Yup. As far as I know, they think it’s the real shebang. They wanted to kill Selene’s twin brother—she was willing to die in his place. And I was willing to die for her.”

  “I don’t see why you bothered,” Gabi grumbled, “if she’s the kind of girl who’s going to punch you for saving her. She’s got anger problems, Theo, and trust me, I know all about anger problems. She should be in therapy.”

  And that, finally, made Theo laugh. He envisioned Selene sitting on a leather sofa discussing three thousand years’ worth of incestuous family drama while the shrink was driven slowly and inevitably insane. Then his laughter turned to a choked sob as all the pain and terror of the past few days came flooding back. For a long while, he simply sat slumped on his stool while Ruth held him around the shoulders and Gabriela clasped his waist until he could breathe again.

  Gabi released him first. Ruth more reluctantly. “So now are you going to tell us why she hit you?” she asked him softly.

  “I tried to make her feel better.” The words sounded ridiculous as soon as he’d said them.

  “Wow.” Gabi crossed her arms angrily. “Honestly, querido, she sounds like a bitch. So it’s just as well she doesn’t want you around.”

  Theo shook his head. “She just thinks she doesn’t.”

  He could feel Gabi and Ruth exchanging an incredulous look over his head. They thought him delusional. Odds were, they were right. But he owed it to Selene, and to himself, to give it one more try.

  Chapter 38

  THE HOST

  From the corner of her eye, Selene saw Theo kneel before her on the rug.

  “I know all the myths about goddesses who’ve been angered,” he said gently. She didn’t turn to look at him. “I know that to assuage their wrath, an offering must be made.”

  She didn’t want to hear any of this. He might be a Makarites, yet what could his books and research tell him of the true nature of gods and goddesses? But to tell him to stop would require talking to him, and she couldn’t bear it. She could just hit him again, but she found herself barely able to move. Her right arm still hung limp; her back throbbed with pain. Easier just to ignore him and hope he finished soon.

  “I thought of bringing you some bacon or ham, since I know how you love pork,” he said with a glimmer of his usual wit. She felt no urge to smile. “I could burn it in front of you, let you inhale the smoke. But Ruth’s fridge is basically empty, and she doesn’t want to set off the fire alarm.” He gave her a flat, very un-Theo smile, and she realized that he joked more out of habit than anything else. He didn’t find it funny either. He paused. She didn’t look at his face, but she watched his body. His hands lay flat on his knees, his knuckles white. “The only offering I can make, the only offering I want to make, is the truth.”

  He dared to take her right hand in his. She let him hold it, unable to withdraw without using her left arm to do it, and unwilling to show such weakness.

  “The truth is that you can never push me like that again. I told you I’d be patient—I know that violence is in your nature, and that you don’t play by the same rules as a mere mortal like me. But I can’t play by yours. I won’t heal in a day, Selene. This is the only body I’ve got and I’d like it to last. So if you’re angry, you can scream at me, you can throw dishes, but don’t ever strike me. If you do, I’m gone, no matter how much it might tear me apart to leave you.” He paused as if waiting for her to say something.

  She stole a glance at his face then, noticed the red of his eyes behind his glasses and the way his shoulders hunched as if to protect his chest. She remembered the wound, then—the brand she’d seen below his collarbone in the ordeal pit—and she felt a sudden stab of horror. Am I the wrathful goddess once more? The murderer of Niobe’s children?

  “Just leave,” she insisted. For your own good. “Stop trying to make this all right.”

  She saw his body tense, and knew he was on the brink of getting up and walking away. But then he took a deep breath and continued. “I will decide when to give up on you. On us. I will say my piece, Selene. Apollo is dead. But there was nothing you could do to stop that. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me. I told Flint to contact Hansen for help. It’s my fault the cult knew that your brothers were coming—my fault that they didn’t have a chance. I failed you—I failed Apollo. I failed Dash and Flint and Philippe. For that, I am truly sorry.”

  “You should’ve let them kill me, too,” she whispered. “We shared a womb. We should share a grave.”

  “No.” He sounded angry. “What I will not apologize for, what I will never regret, is saving you.”

  She could tell he expected her to say something. To offer him some hope for the future. But she had nothing left to give. The piece of me that always belonged to my twin has split away, taking with it all that was civilized, or warm, or graceful. All that’s left is grief so strong it will carry me into madness, and rage so hot it threatens to incinerate everything around me. To contain them both, I must turn my soul to ice.

  Theo still wouldn’t give up. He pulled over the footstool so he could sit level with her. In his eyes, she saw his devotion, his intensity, his hope. “You’re in shock,” he said. “You’re in mourning. I understand that. But I’ve given you all the time I could—the others are in danger, now, and we have to help them. We’re the only ones who can stop the Pater.”

  She knew he spoke the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about the rest of her family’s fate, not when the image of her twin’s death played in an endless loop through her brain.

  Hippo appeared from somewhere behind the couch and scuttled toward her mistress. Selene felt the cold nose brush against her palm. She did not respond.

  “Come on, Selene!” Theo urged. “If you won’t do it to save Flint or Dash or Philippe, do it to bring down the Pater.”

  “Justice for Apollo,” she said softly. Hippo whimpered and slunk away once more.

  “Yes, if that’s the only thing you understand.” Theo sounded exasperated, disappointed. “Do it for vengeance.”

  “Vengeance …” The word was bitter on her tongue. “Niobe. Coronis. Orion. I thought I could change. I thought I could find mercy in my heart. But the world needs a Punisher, doesn’t it?”

  “The world needs you,” Theo replied sternly. “So get off the couch and let’s rescue the others, just like they tried to rescue you.”

  “I don’t know how,” she said quietly.

  “That’s never stopped you before.”

  Theo was right. Selene took a deep breath and levered herself off the couch with her good arm. “Then we start with Hansen.” She moved into Ruth’s small bedroom and stood looking down at the old woman lying spread-eagled on the coverlet.

  She couldn’t help remembering her as she’d been in the 1970s,
when they’d worked together on the force. Geraldine Hansen had dedicated her entire life to keeping the city safe, growing careworn in its service—or so Selene had thought. How long had she actually been serving a secret master?

  Theo came to stand at her side. “Trust me, I’m just as angry at her as you are. She held a gun to my head—worse, to Gabi’s head—and threatened to kill us. But she’s the only lead we’ve got. You have a bad habit of killing people before they can tell us anything—let’s try some restraint this time.”

  Selene sat heavily on the edge of the mattress and placed a fingertip on the woman’s temple.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Finding out what she knows,” she said calmly.

  “Not killing her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So you’re just going to read her mind? You can do that?” He shifted uncomfortably, clearly wondering if she could do the same to him.

  Selene knew what little power she might have left would never work on a man, but there was no need to spell that out for him. “Geraldine Hansen worshiped me once—as a hero, not a goddess—but it might be enough to establish a link to her,” she said instead. “I’ve done it before, with the bodies of women who prayed to me at the moment of their death.”

  Selene closed her eyes and reached inside herself for the whisper of pneuma she still possessed. For her, the divine breath had always blown strongest in the wilderness. If she’d been outside, she could’ve called upon tree and moon, spring and stone, for strength. Indoors, she could only draw upon Gerry herself. The woman might be a follower of Mithras, dedicated to destroying the Athanatoi, but she had once been a Protector of the Innocent, just like Selene. As a rookie cop, she’d looked at the Huntress with adoration. If Selene could tap into that worship, however oblique, she might be able to enter the captain’s memories.

  She spread her awareness toward Gerry. The woman’s blood pulsed slow and even against her fingertip. The skin of her temple felt wrinkled from years of squinting suspiciously at the world. Selene reached deeper, trying to recall the young woman she’d known—short red hair feathered at the temples, eyes bright and curious, a light voice and a spine of steel. What she found instead was herself.

  Officer Cynthia Forrester, sleek black hair unmarred by its white streak, one or two fewer creases on her brow, but otherwise identical in appearance to Selene DiSilva. She took a deep breath, let go of her own consciousness, and tumbled into Gerry’s memory.

  The smell off the lake at the top of Central Park—if you could even call it a lake—made Gerry’s stomach turn. Rotting food, tires, oil barrels, all floated in the algae-coated puddle, their odors magnified by the steamy summer heat that clung to the air long after the sun went down. In these desperate hours of the morning, with the few working lampposts doing little to dispel the dark, the lake attracted criminals like clouds of mosquitoes. Their sergeant had warned that no woman could patrol such a dangerous beat. That only guaranteed that Officer Cynthia Forrester would volunteer. “If you want to learn something,” she’d said to Gerry, “you’ll come along.”

  At the moment, Cynthia was teaching her how to choke a cocaine dealer half to death.

  Gerry stood dumbfounded—the man easily outweighed her mentor by two hundred pounds, and he was jacked on his own product to boot. His face had turned an alarming shade of red.

  “Is that really necessary?” Gerry asked. “He wasn’t exactly resisting arrest.”

  Cynthia grunted and moved her mouth an inch closer to the man’s ear. “Tell you what, buddy. All you’ve got to do is escape from me, and you won’t spend the rest of the 1970s in jail.” He squirmed in her grasp and stomped a foot inches from her toe. Cynthia looked at Gerry. “He’s resisting now, isn’t he?”

  “Why don’t you just cuff him and get it over with?”

  “Because he doesn’t deserve to go easy.”

  “There’re plenty of cocaine dealers; what do you have against—” A faint whimper drew Gerry’s attention to a clump of chest-high vegetation at the water’s edge.

  “That’s what I’ve got against him,” Cynthia snarled, nodding toward the cattails.

  Gerry swung her pistol toward the sound and approached cautiously, trying to move as silently as Cynthia always did.

  “Come out of there,” she said, deepening her voice. She’d never sound like a man, but it didn’t hurt to try. Perps never took policewomen seriously—at least not until they met Cynthia.

  The reeds parted. An emaciated child in a pair of grimy shorts and a tank top crawled through on all fours. Tears streaked her pinched face. When she stood, her knees knocked together. A large purple bruise circled her upper arm. White powder clung to her upper lip. Gerry just stared, the barrel of her pistol still pointed at the child’s skinny rib cage.

  Cynthia’s voice was calm. “Lower your gun, Officer.”

  Gerry snapped back to attention, holstering her sidearm so fast she almost dropped it on the ground. She crouched down before the child. “What’s your name, honey?”

  The girl cast a terrified glance up at the drug dealer, just as he made a last effort to break from Cynthia’s grip. Gerry turned around in time to see him fling his torso forward, hurling the policewoman over his shoulder and onto the ground. He dove toward the girl, shouting, “Don’t you rat on your daddy!”

  Gerry threw herself in front of the child, her heart pounding—just as a wide-heeled pump rocketed through the air and caught the dealer on the temple, sending him unconscious to the ground. Cynthia stood, brushing grass from her uniform. The rent in her knee-length navy skirt reached all the way to her hip. She adjusted her standard-issue miniature fedora, then retrieved her shoe with a tight smile. “Damn sight more useful as a weapon than as footwear.”

  It took another half an hour before the little girl let Gerry pick her up. Throughout, Cynthia stood with one foot balanced on the back of the drug dealer’s neck in case he revived. He didn’t.

  They called in the arrest, then Gerry carried the child back to the precinct in her arms before turning her over to the Bureau of Child Welfare.

  Later, in the utility closet that served as the women’s locker room, Gerry took a much-needed drag on a cigarette, finally regaining her calm after the harrowing night. “My father’s a great cop, but even he doesn’t have instincts like yours,” she said to Cynthia, tapping the ash into an empty can of Tab cola. “How did you know the girl was there?”

  Cynthia shrugged as she rolled off her stockings and pulled on a pair of canvas shorts in their place. “Experience.”

  “Experience? You’ve only been on the force three years longer than I have! How old are you … twenty-five?”

  “Then call it women’s intuition,” Cynthia said with her customary scowl. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and jammed a large-brimmed sun hat over her sleek black hair.

  “Whatever it is, I hope some of it rubs off on me.”

  Halfway out the door, Cynthia turned back to Gerry. She stood silently for a moment, lips pursed as if holding back her words by force. “It’s not enough, you know,” she said finally. “You can help a few, but the pain goes on. We row against the tide. That child … she’ll probably end up like her father someday.” She left without another word.

  Gerry watched her friend go, wishing more than ever that she could tell her the truth. It’s going to be okay, Cynthia. You don’t realize it, but the work we do prepares the way for the Last Age. No child will go hungry, no woman will suffer, and the sinners will finally meet their just ends.

  She tossed the cigarette butt into the can, then took off her fedora with its shiny badge and placed it carefully on a shelf. Then she drew her necklace from beneath the collar of her shirt and rolled the gold cross between her fingers.

  “Speed the day of Your return, my Lord,” she prayed, her voice no more than a whisper in the empty room. “Your children need You.”

  Then she reached for the round medallion that hung beside the cross. Thoug
h she knew her fellow syndexioi would never allow it, she longed to share the medallion’s meaning with Cynthia. The policewoman would make a mighty soldier in the army of the Lord. But her father had made it clear long ago—the Mystery admitted only one woman at a time. That honor—that burden—fell to her alone. Still, it felt wrong withholding the truth when the knowledge could bring her friend such comfort.

  “I vow to do everything in my power to bring about the Resurrection in our lifetime,” she murmured, squeezing the medallion of Saint Theodosius. “So that Cynthia and I, and all the others who risk everything to bring peace to our world, might finally enjoy the fruits of our labors.”

  She closed her eyes and reached for her God. He didn’t always respond. But today He granted her a fleeting vision: a city at rest, the sunlight warming the towers of steel, while women and men, their children at their side, all walked in the same direction. They filled the streets, eager but patient. And finally, at the water’s edge, He appeared. More beatific than in any painting or crucifix. His smile as gentle as a summer breeze, His face as radiant as the sun itself. He wore no crown of thorns, for all suffering had come to an end. Instead, a seven-rayed diadem graced His brow. The wind lifted His cloak on its breath—red on the outside, star-spangled blue on the inside—and the people sighed in awe. Gerry stood at His side, and her father stood near, his face full of pride. And there, amid the crowd, walked Cynthia. The lines erased from her forehead, the frown banished from her lips. She looked up to Gerry and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  Selene lifted her finger from the woman’s temple and blinked her way back into the present, into her own consciousness. Captain Hansen’s gray eyes stared into hers, wide awake.