Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “Ego sum resurrectio et vita. Qui credit in me, et si mortuus fuerit, vivet.”

  I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

  There simply wasn’t time to go back for her weapons. Could she launch herself at the Pater and try to throttle him with her bare hands? How would she rescue her family if she couldn’t fight?

  How ’bout another well-timed cannonball? she prayed to Flint uselessly; they’d found only two projectiles on Governors Island. Still, I bet you’d come up with some plan. Some way to make a weapon out of shoelaces or something. Then, for the first time since he’d handed it to her, she remembered his gift.

  It’s got hidden secrets, just like you, he’d said.

  She pulled the necklace from her pocket. It was surprisingly heavy, even for a gold chain of its thickness. Still, it bore no magic that she could detect. Looking at it more closely, she could see intricate engravings across its surface, but no discernible pattern. Then, unsure what else to do, she unclasped it.

  It immediately unfurled like a waterfall, thinning and stretching until it lay across the ground in a long coil. One end thickened to become a handle, perfectly sized for her grip. The far end narrowed to a wicked, razor-thin tip. She stared at it in wonder. By Kronos’s gullet … it’s a …

  A whip cracked overhead as if in answer.

  She looked up to see the Heliodromus Secundus descending the stairs, weapon in hand. He swung his leather whip, its tip licking toward her and slashing her right cheek.

  “You scourged my brother with that lash,” she said, raising a hand to the trickle of blood.

  “Get back, Diana Pretender!” he hollered at her, cheeks aflame. The hawk-faced man had always remained calm in the face of her threats—this other Heliodromus had little control over his emotions. That would make him even easier to defeat.

  “They sent a mortal with a mortal weapon to defeat me?” she asked icily.

  He raised his whip again, but she flicked her hand. Flint’s gift shot forward to spiral around his wrist. She yanked on the handle, pulling the man down the stairs and into the path of her booted foot. He wheezed and doubled over. She uncoiled the gold whip from his wrist and looped it around his neck instead. With the whip’s grip in one hand and its tip in the other, she jerked both her arms with a sudden furious strength. His neck snapped.

  Selene stepped over the body and continued on her way, no longer mindful of the sound she made. Her feet thundered on the metal treads as she entered the statue’s head, announcing her approach. Before her, the face of Libertas hung in counter-relief, her enormous, heavy-lidded eyes watching impassively as a fellow goddess hurtled by.

  Selene burst onto the narrow viewing platform in the crown, expecting to see the Pater with his last two guards. Instead, she found herself nearly blinded by blazing LEDs that beamed through the crown’s windows, spreading their glow for miles around. She turned her back to the glare and squinted into the small chamber before her.

  Dash and Philippe lay on the ground. Alone.

  They turned to her, their faces drawn and haggard as if they’d neither slept nor eaten since they’d been captured. Selene could only imagine what memories the Pater had sent to torment them.

  Their bleeding lips stretched around cloth gags. Metal handcuffs and ankle fetters bound their limbs, and a thick chain secured them to a steel beam. They looked at her through eyes slitted against the light, moaning and shouting through their gags. Selene shushed them to silence.

  The Pater’s chanting floated through the row of windows that arched across the crown. She stuck her face against a pane and peered upward. Above her, on the round base of the torch, stood the Pater and one of his black-clad soldiers. Prometheus hung before him, chained to the torch’s gold-plated flame. Little remained of the formidable Titan whom Selene remembered. In the floodlights, his naked body sagged with loose skin and atrophied muscles. His rib cage heaved, but his face looked relaxed. He wanted this.

  She turned back to her family, coiling Flint’s whip around her arm so she could fish her lock picks from a pocket. Dash shook his head, his eyes darting frantically around the narrow chamber.

  “I’m trying!” Selene protested, jimmying the clasp on his handcuffs. Dash only shook his head more furiously. Philippe pounded his feet against the echoing metal floor. Growing more annoyed by the second, she seriously considered leaving them both to die—or at least threatening to—when a golden net descended like a colossal hand to smash her to the ground.

  At the base of the statue, Theo had no time to wonder what had become of the captain, or to worry about the fact that he’d just killed two men. His only thought was to get to Selene as quickly as possible. He took one look at the back of Liberty’s head and decided there were better ways to get there than trudging up more than twenty flights of stairs. He took a running leap and lifted into the air. Up, up, up, he willed himself. The wind grew stronger the higher he rose, buffeting him from side to side.

  He wove a spiraling path ever upward and managed to navigate around to the front of the statue without smacking into the gargantuan tablet in Liberty’s left hand. Her stern Roman face rose before him—she reminded him of Selene.

  Then he heard the chanting. He looked toward the torch and saw the Pater, Prometheus, and a single syndexios standing on its rim. But no Selene.

  The seven rays of Liberty’s diadem, the same ones that graced the head of Sol Invictus in images throughout ancient Rome, loomed overhead. He slowed his flight and approached the windows in the crown’s face, checking to make sure he still had Mars’s spear securely strapped to his back and Orion’s sword slung at his waist. His wings folded flat as he perched on the crown’s ridge to peer through a small window. Light poured out, too intense to bear, and Theo had to shield his eyes before he could see inside.

  Selene lay facedown beneath Hephaestus’s golden net. Dash and Philippe, chained to the wall, screamed against their gags.

  Then, suddenly, the hawk-faced Heliodromus Primus—the same man who’d lured Selene into the trap at the ice skating rink, the same man who’d chased Paul at arrowpoint during the Procession of the Sun-Runner—materialized inside the chamber, removing Hades’ black helm from his head. In his other hand he held Apollo’s silver bow, and at his side hung Hephaestus’s massive hammer. A quiver of gleaming silver arrows lay against his back. He reached to select a shaft and fitted it to his bow, just as Selene rolled over beneath the net. She strained to tear free, but the net looked heavy as lead and hard as diamonds.

  Theo shouted a wordless cry of fury that turned the Heliodromus in his direction. He fumbled the spear free of his back, even as the hawk-faced man shot an arrow through the opening in the small window. Theo swung to the side just in time, pressing his back against the next window in the row. But the Heliodromus simply sent another arrow, this one grazing the side of Theo’s parka and sending white feathers floating like snow.

  Theo jumped from the crown, spun in midair to face his attacker, and launched Mars’s spear through the window.

  The Heliodromus stepped easily to the side and the shaft went sailing over the narrow viewing platform and down the stairwell beyond.

  Theo wanted to hurl himself at this man who dared to threaten Selene, but even if he could break through the thick glass, the windows were too small to crawl through. He pounded a fist on the copper casements as if he could break them with brute force alone. His knuckles split. He didn’t even feel the pain.

  The Heliodromus stared at him impassively, knowing full well Theo could do nothing to stop him. Slowly, he turned back to Selene. She’d stopped thrashing; she lay calmly beneath the net, her eyes closed. In her hands, she clutched a strange, golden whip. The Heliodromus raised his bow once more and loosed a divine arrow at Selene’s heart.

  Even as Theo cried out, Selene tore apart the net as if it were spider’s silk. She caught the silver arrow in the golden threads and turned it aside, bending the sha
ft. Then her foot struck out, slamming into the man’s ankle so he toppled toward her. Still lying on the floor, she raised the gold whip in her hand—the flexible links telescoped together and suddenly she held a javelin, seven feet long. She thrust it forward.

  The Heliodromus slid down its length like meat on a skewer.

  After a moment, she rolled free of his body. She drew the javelin from his back in a single smooth movement, ignoring the man’s dying groans as his entrails spilled onto the floor.

  By that time, Theo had managed to squeeze an arm through the window opening. Selene looked not at him, but at the javelin in her hand. She rolled it slowly, staring at the engravings along its length.

  “The hammer,” Theo called to her. “Hand me the hammer!”

  Selene looked up, surprised. The javelin melted back into a whip.

  Looking dazed, she unhooked the Smith’s hammer from the man’s belt and passed it through the window. Theo nearly plummeted to the ground with its weight. The hat alone couldn’t hold him aloft.

  He managed to balance on the statue’s copper brow while swinging the hammer two-handed against the window frame. It reverberated like a gong. He knew the Pater would see him, if he hadn’t already. He didn’t care. He struck again. And again. The safety glass shattered, the copper bent beneath the Smith’s mighty hammer, and the casement ripped open into a hole big enough for Theo to tumble through.

  He dropped the hammer to the floor and gathered Selene in his arms. “I saw you lying there, and I thought you were dead,” he said hoarsely.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. “I’m all right.”

  He took a step back, holding her face between his hands. Besides a graze on her cheek, she appeared unharmed.

  Dash started humming an impatient melody behind his gag, while Philippe tapped out a frustrated tattoo on the wall with his bound hands.

  Theo let Selene go and moved to Philippe first, pulling the gag from his mouth.

  “Wait until I tell Papa that you used his hammer to bust through the Statue of Liberty’s forehead,” he said with a weak laugh. “He’s either going to be very proud or very pissed.”

  Selene took the handcuff key from the Heliodromus’s pocket and released the Athanatoi from their shackles. Dried blood from the spear wound he’d suffered at the planetarium crusted Philippe’s pale blue dress shirt. He stood awkwardly, one hand pressed against his side. Dash, who still wore the livid red welts of the snakes’ embrace around his neck, stared fixedly at the winged cap on Theo’s head.

  “Philippe,” Selene said, “you’re in no shape to fight tonight. Dash, help him out of here. Take Flint’s hammer and Hades’ Helm of Invisibility in case you run into trouble. We left the boat moored off the northern shore. Wait for us there.”

  Philippe gave them a wan smile and blew Selene and Theo each a kiss.

  Dash, his face as stern as Theo’d ever seen it, looked up at Selene with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “You’re going to take the Pater down. Promise me you will.”

  Theo wondered what visions carefree Hermes had been sent in the mithraeum’s cell. Something truly awful, from the look in his eyes.

  Only when she nodded her assent did Dash put on the helm, wincing a little at the press of its weight. He remained conspicuously visible. Then he picked up Flint’s hammer in one hand and put the other arm beneath Philippe’s shoulder. Together, they headed down the stairwell.

  Theo looked from the stairs to Selene and back. “We freed them. Please tell me we’re going home now.”

  Selene snorted. “And leave the Pater alive? Not a chance.”

  “I’m not interested in revenge.”

  “And I’m not interested in letting this cult come after us again. You want to spend the rest of our lives running?” she demanded.

  Theo took a deep breath and shook his head.

  She grabbed Apollo’s silver bow off the ground and pulled the quiver from the dead man’s back. In it lay one final divine arrow. She coiled her gold whip around her shoulders and stepped into the gaping hole in the front of the crown, staring at Theo expectantly. “Now can I get a lift, or what?”

  Selene hadn’t flown through the air since she’d guided the moon across the sky in her stag-drawn chariot. Needless to say, the stags provided a considerably smoother ride. It became clear within seconds that Dash’s cap was never meant to carry so much weight. They plummeted a few feet, then rose again, only to start rotating in an awkward circle. She was painfully aware of the three hundred feet of nothingness between her and the ground. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around Theo’s waist to hang on more securely.

  “That’s not helping.” Theo’s voice was strained.

  “I don’t want to fall.” Fear made her snappish. “No moonlight would be enough to heal me from that.”

  “I have to concentrate to be able to steer,” he said, “and I can’t think straight with your …” He moved his hands a little lower on her waist.

  She lowered her legs with an exasperated huff, grabbing on to his neck even more tightly.

  “Better,” he murmured in her ear, “but if we make it out of this, we’re going back to your house and not leaving for a week. Got it?”

  She could see it before her—Theo sprawled naked across her bed, the glow of a winter sun pouring through the window and dispelling the cold. Somehow, it no longer seemed impossible. Then the wind struck her face in an icy blast, whipping away all thoughts of warmth and peace.

  They zigzagged heavenward, following the path of Libertas’s upraised green arm. Above them, the one remaining syndexios peered over the railing of the torch’s base. Selene recognized him as the doughboy cop from Rockefeller Center. He cried the alarm to the Pater.

  The old man turned to look. She could see his long white hair tangling in the wind. He no longer wore his golden mask, but he turned his back before she could get a good look at his face. Prometheus, hanging limply from his chains, looked from Selene to the Pater, bewildered.

  “You’ve got to land,” Selene told Theo. “No way I can shoot a bow if I’m holding on to you for dear life.”

  “Stop them,” the Pater said calmly to his syndexios. “I must complete the sacrifice.” He began chanting again in Latin, one hand on Prometheus’s bare chest and the other holding his sickle.

  The pudgy syndexios bent to retrieve something from the ground. When he stood, he held Poseidon’s trident in his outstretched hand.

  “Oh no, not this bastard again.” Theo flapped backward a few feet.

  “What’re you going to do with that?” Selene shouted toward the syndexios. “Start an earthquake on the torch and bring down the whole arm—and everyone on it?”

  A worried look crossed his face, but he leveled the whalebone tines in her direction. “Stay back!” he shouted in his Queens accent.

  “Hey, Leo!” Theo called, “If we’re here, that means all your friends are dead. And you’re going to be next, you piece of shit.” As he spoke, they jigged violently from side to side, making it impossible for Selene to aim any attack.

  “Hold still!” she told him. “If you’re too busy yelling insults, you can’t concentrate on the cap!”

  “I’m trying!” he said. Sweat streamed down his temples despite the cold. “The cap doesn’t like holding two people.”

  They swooped recklessly toward the trident’s point, and Selene dared to let go with one arm and raise her whip with the other. The syndexios thrust the trident toward them, nearly impaling Selene. But she flicked the whip forward and it snaked around the trident’s shaft. She jerked the weapon from his hands, the force of her movement sending Theo and herself spinning wildly in midair. The trident tumbled to the island far below.

  As they lurched back toward the torch, Selene released Theo and leaped over the railing. He stumbled after her, holding one hand to his temple while he drew his sword unsteadily with the other.

  The Leo lunged toward them, unarmed, but Selene slammed her foot into his kneecap, sending
him sprawling. Theo stood over him. “How’s it feel to have the tables turned?” he asked, the point of his sword digging into the folds of fat on the man’s neck.

  Selene slung her whip around her shoulders, knowing its reach would be too long for the cramped quarters, and nocked the last silver arrow to Apollo’s bow instead. “Turn around!” she shouted at the Pater. “Let me look my brother’s killer in the eye before I send him to his death.”

  “You don’t want to kill me, Diana,” he said, sounding like a tired father lecturing a recalcitrant child.

  Selene barked out a laugh. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”

  The Pater slowly turned around. “No, I’m afraid you’re the one who’s wrong … about so much.”

  An old man’s face, deep creases across his brow, but with none of the slack weakness of age. Blue eyes as fathomless as the spaces between stars. He showed no sign of injury from the bullet Gabriela had shot into his stomach. A faint smile played across thin lips.

  “Saturn …” Selene whispered.

  “Hello, granddaughter.”

  The bow trembled in her hand. The man she once knew as Kronos, King of Titans, held his sickle steady and relaxed at his side.

  “I don’t understand …” she stammered. “Why would you lead a Mithras cult? Much less a Jesus one?”

  “I’m the Father of the Gods, the father of Zeus himself.” Saturn seemed to swell in size. His pale skin glowed faintly. A divine aura, Selene realized. He’s stronger than I am. But how is that possible?

  Beside her, Theo spoke urgently. “The Father of the Gods … God the Father. He is one of the Three Aspects. He’s not copying Christianity, Selene—he is Christianity. He’s stolen the Trinity itself.”

  “Close, Professor.” Saturn barely flicked his eyes in Theo’s direction. “But there’s much you still don’t know.”

  “All the deaths—” Selene snapped. “It’s not about resurrecting Jesus, is it? It’s about killing us all off to leave more power for yourself.”