“The Ages must turn,” he said simply. “From the Age of Heroes to the Age of Iron to the Age of Man. And from the Age of Taurus to Aries to Pisces. Now we shift from Pisces to Aquarius. From the Age of Man to the Age of God.”
“God.” Selene laughed bitterly. “Not gods. The sacrifices are working—you’ve been getting stronger every time. And after tonight, you think you’ll be all-powerful. You’ll be more than Kronos, God of Time, or Saturn, Ruler of the Afterlife. You’ll be Mithras, God of Soldiers and the Sun and Salvation. And God the Father, the omnipotent Creator. You want it all, you greedy bastard.”
Theo, still holding his sword to the Leo’s neck, groaned. “That’s the reversal the liver foretold: Zeus and the Olympians overthrew their father. Now their father seeks to overthrow them.”
“I’ve simply taken what lay before me,” Saturn said calmly. “You could’ve done the same, Diana. They needed a Holy Virgin. Who better to play that role than the Chaste One herself? It’s not too late.” He gestured to the waves, the city, the heavens above. “You could help me rule over all of this. You need only become something new, as you’ve done a hundred times before. With tonight’s sacrifice, my power is resurrected. Then together, we can expel Zeus from this world, and the reversal will be complete. We can leave this mortal realm and ascend once more to our place in the heavens—incorporeal gods, omnipotent and omniscient.”
“My father should have sliced off your head when he sliced open your gullet.” She shot her arrow at his face.
The Pater didn’t duck. He simply swung his sickle and sliced the shaft in two, sending the pieces sailing into the ether. “You can’t defeat me, granddaughter.” His aura flared, until even his robes seemed to glow. Selene had to squint to see his outline. “And as soon as Prometheus gives himself to me, no one will.”
A figure emerged from the trapdoor in the floor of the torch’s base. Geraldine Hansen, unarmed and unafraid, stared straight at the chained Titan hanging spread-eagled upon the torch. She’d freed herself of the gag and the bindings on her wrists. “Don’t go willingly, Praenuntius,” she panted, still winded from her climb.
Saturn glanced over his shoulder at the woman. “Ah, my Hyaena. You who betrayed the Host to free the professor. You come groveling back to me?”
She would not look at her Pater. “Do not speak to me of betrayal. I heard Selene. You’ve lied to us for a thousand years.”
She stepped to Prometheus and put both hands on his sunken cheeks. His dark eyes met hers. “I promised to free you from life. Now you must free me instead. Free me from this monster by denying him your final gift.”
For the first time, fear flashed across Saturn’s face. He reached for the old woman, sickle raised, but Selene rushed forward and grabbed his arms, jerking him backward. He threw her off with impossible force, flinging her body through the air.
Her head snapped back to clang against the top rail with enough power to darken her vision. Her chest slammed against the lower railing, knocking the breath from her body. Apollo’s bow fell from her fingers. As she lay stunned, she saw Theo kick the captive Leo aside and turn to look at her, his mouth open with a shout her rattled brain couldn’t hear.
The copper floor vibrated against her cheek with a man’s heavy tread. She looked up to see her grandfather striding toward her.
Theo leaped in front of him, his sword raised in both hands.
Selene reached for the railing to lever herself off the ground, but her limbs wouldn’t obey her commands. She could hear the clash of metal as Theo’s blade blocked the sickle’s swing. As the divine weapons struck each other again and again, sparks flew like shooting stars, stinging Selene’s cheeks.
Theo took a step backward, faltering beneath Saturn’s ceaseless blows. He jerked to one side as the sickle swung near. Its curved blade caught him on his right wrist, sheering a long strip of flesh and tendon from the bone. Theo dropped the sword with a cry—it spun across the metal floor and slipped through the railing to tumble toward the ground. He held his bleeding wrist with his other hand and raised it overhead like a shield to defend Selene.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Gerry step to the fallen Leo, pull something long and metallic from a holster at his waist, and then return to Prometheus. She spread her arms until they mirrored the old man’s outstretched limbs. She placed both her hands in his, the metal object still grasped between them. Prometheus closed his eyes. Very gently, he pursed his lips and blew a stream of air upon her upturned face.
Saturn paid them no heed. He moved toward Theo, the glow of his aura reflecting off the curve of his upraised blade.
Gerry cried out, her knees buckling. But Prometheus wrapped his fingers around hers and kept her upright, his breath a little louder now, a breeze’s gentle susurrus. A new light blazed forth from their clasped hands, a white so brilliant that the golden torch, the shining god, and the full moon all seemed to dim in its glare.
Saturn turned toward his Hyaena. Selene struggled to her feet, pulling Theo upright with one arm and shielding her eyes with the other.
Gerry dropped from Prometheus’s grasp and faced her Pater. She held a shaft of blinding light gripped in her fist. “You know what happens when lightning strikes a copper statue?”
Her eyes met Selene’s. A warning. A regret.
For the first time in two thousand years, Zeus’s thunderbolt split the heavens.
Chapter 44
SHE WHO RIDES THE MOON
Theo’s breath left his body as Selene dragged him over the railing and into midair. They plummeted downward as the sky cracked above them—a deafening blast of sound and a blinding flare of light.
“Fly, Theo!” she screamed above the din. “Fly!”
He squeezed his eyes closed, ignored the searing pain in his wrist, and directed all his will into the winged cap, stopping their descent before they smashed into the island below. For an instant, they hung suspended.
He dared open his eyes as lightning coursed across the torch’s gold-plated flame and ran in jagged tendrils down Liberty’s copper arm.
As their hair rose on end and the air hummed with electricity, they clutched each other tightly. They smelled scorched flesh, but it was not their own. They heard agonized moans, but their own lips were silent.
We’re safe.
Then a line of white fire shot from the torch itself, seeking them out like an accusatory finger. You shall not live while the others die.
It struck Selene in the chest, then leaped to Theo, blasting the coat from his body and burning the flesh beneath. The force of the strike blew them backward; they spun like a top above the swirling black waters of the harbor.
Theo fought through the pain, desperate to keep them from falling. The gold cap flared hot on his scalp, and he could hear the currents of electricity cracking across its surface. The wings beat irregularly, like a heart off rhythm, plunging them downward and jerking them up again with every stroke. Selene’s body nearly slipped from his arms. His wounded right hand hung limp and useless—and she wasn’t holding on.
“Selene!” Her head lolled against his shoulder before rolling backward on her neck. A charred hole in the center of her jacket revealed scorched skin. He lifted her body in his arms so he could press his ear against her neck. Her pulse had stopped beating. He tried to call her name again, as if that alone would bring her back to life, but he could manage nothing more than a strangled gasp.
Another crack of thunder split the night. He looked to the torch, where the fallen bolt continued to send rivers of electricity across the statue’s copper cladding. Hansen’s body was blackened gore. Prometheus’s bloody frame hung from the torch like an animal’s dripping carcass. He didn’t see Saturn.
Electricity destroys—but it also gives life, Theo thought, willing the cap to bring them closer again to the torch. They lurched forward. The lightning sparked, dimmer this time, the thunder a growl rather than a deafening clap. One more, one more, he begged. He turned Selene in hi
s arms, screaming with pain as her body scraped against his charred chest.
“Come on!” he shouted to the lightning, to the Fates, to Zeus himself. “Try it again!”
A final surge rocked the torch. A finger of electricity leaped through the air to Selene’s bare breast and flung them backward once more.
The current raced through her body and into his, and Theo felt his own heart clench and stutter. His mind splintered.
Then, slowly, the shards reformed.
It felt like hours had passed, but when his consciousness returned, they were still aloft, and Selene gasped in his embrace.
She clutched his arms where they passed around her body. He could feel her heart beating beneath his grip.
He rested his cheek against the back of her head. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
He had no sense of direction; he knew only that they pitched through the air and that the dark harbor yawned beneath them. He wanted to slow down, to right himself. Seek land, or at least make a controlled drop into the icy waters and hope to survive until a ship came to rescue them. Instead, he had no control over the cap. It lifted them ever higher, as if supercharged by the second bolt. He tried to concentrate, to bring it back under his control, but blood poured from his right wrist, draining away the remnants of his strength.
In the distance, Manhattan glimmered like a promised land, its towers offering rest and warmth and home. And still they soared higher. The clouds appeared above them, alight with the moon’s glow.
He clasped Selene with his one good arm, his muscles spasming from the aftereffects of the blast. It took every ounce of his quickly dwindling strength to hold on to her.
The wind whistled past his ears, and snatched away Selene’s voice. He leaned closer and pressed his ear against her skull. He could barely hear her words. And when he did, he couldn’t believe them.
“You have to let me go.”
“Never.” The world dimmed before him. Black sky, Selene’s black hair, more blackness closing in.
“You’re going to pass out. If you do, the cap stops working, and we both die. We’ll never survive a fall from this height. Without me, you can control the cap, land safely.”
They were passing through the clouds now, ice particles searing their skin, the thick black world dissolving into white nothingness. Is this what death will look like? Theo wondered, his mind spinning in slow motion.
Selene twisted in his arms to face him. They passed above the clouds. Ice formed on her lashes. Theo’s body began to shake; his teeth rattled. She stared at him, her silver eyes suddenly aglow. Then she looked around at the sea of clouds spread beneath them, a glowing white world of spun moonlight.
“This is what it was like,” she said, her voice hardly more than a breath. “To ride the moon across the sky.” She looked back at Theo for a moment. Too short. “I love you, you know.”
She pried his arm from her chest and lifted his mangled hand to her lips for a precious instant.
“What are you doing?” he gasped, clutching at her with his other hand, his legs, his heart. “You have to hold on!”
She shook her head and gave him a tiny, heartbroken smile. “It was always fated to come to this. I could never grant you immortality, Theo. But at least I won’t have to live without you.”
Then, with the sudden strength of a goddess, she ripped herself from his grasp.
She fell through the clouds, a needle piercing the fabric of the world, and disappeared.
Epilogus
THE NEW MOON
New Year’s Day
Theo Schultz sat on a bench in Riverside Park, the winter sun weak on his upturned face. The blanket around his shoulders did little to dispel the cold. He was always cold now. Even indoors. Even sitting before a roaring fireplace in the parlor of Selene’s brownstone—the brownstone Dash had told him she would’ve wanted him to have.
The Messenger had appeared at Theo’s hospital bedside to tell him the deed to the house would be waiting for him when he got out. “Give me a call, Makarites,” he’d said. “If you ever need anything.” Theo had passed back into unconsciousness, as he often did those first few days after crash-landing in downtown Manhattan.
When he came to, Dash was gone. He’d thought the visit a dream until he saw the large, neatly wrapped gift box on the floor by the bed. The attached business card read, “Scooter Joveson: Cybersecurity Consultant and Venture Capital Entrepreneur.” Beneath a layer of folded tissue paper lay Hades’ Helm of Invisibility and Orion’s sword. Theo hadn’t taken them out of the box. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
From his spot on the bench in Riverside Park, he watched Ruth appear at the end of the path, carrying a grocery bag in one hand and Hippo’s leash in the other.
Hippo spotted Theo and began to run, dragging Ruth behind her. The dog licked his bandaged hand then settled her bulk beneath the bench.
“Brrrr!” Ruth said, sitting beside him. “You sure you didn’t want to picnic indoors?”
“I like it here.”
She peered at him through her glasses. She’d taken to wearing them, Theo noticed, rather than her contacts. Perhaps because she rarely went home anymore. She’d been staying in one of the many spare rooms in Selene’s house, playing nursemaid. On the few occasions she’d left, Gabriela had come in her stead. Theo didn’t have the heart to feel guilty. He didn’t have the heart to feel much of anything.
“This is where you met her,” she said quietly.
He nodded reluctantly, thinking, And where we made love. That night, he’d felt like he’d flown on rainbow wings. Now, the wings had been torn from his back, leaving only ropy scars behind.
Ruth pulled out a sandwich and handed it to him. He let it rest, untouched, in his lap. A smattering of pigeons flapped down to the path and paced in nervous circles, waiting for a crumb. Hippo sighed and ignored them. She, too, had barely eaten since Christmas.
They sat in silence, staring out at the slate gray water. A new year. A new beginning. But to Theo, it only felt like the end. After the holiday, he planned to tell the university that he’d spend the next semester on sabbatical. They’d have to get someone else to take over the department. He wasn’t sure he’d ever come back. How could he spend his days speaking of Ares and Apollo, Prometheus and Hades, as if they were mere myth? As if a goddess named Artemis hadn’t taught him to love and then broken his heart?
In the hospital, Dash had told him how the world mourned her death. Not through a convulsion of violence, but through an outpouring of grief. “That night, on the boat,” he’d said, “the tide swelled, as if the Moon herself cried out in agony and dragged the waters to her breast. And then I knew Artemis was gone.”
Theo felt a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold passing through his body. Ruth put a tentative hand on his shoulder. He wanted to shake her off.
He finally understood why Selene always wanted to be alone. His grief was too complete a thing to share. If he let someone else take even an ounce of its weight, he’d split asunder. He’d never be able to gather the pieces together again. He wasn’t sure he’d want to.
Something sharp pierced the side of his arm. He swatted it away.
Ruth looked at him quizzically. “A mosquito? In January?”
“I don’t know. Felt almost like an electric shock. Some leftover lightning bolt pissed that it never got a turn.”
“Not sure that’s scientifically possible,” she said with a smile.
“I’ve given up on scientifically possible,” he said, surprising himself with a small smile of his own. “From now on, I believe only in the supernatural.”
“Oh? You’re going to fly around in that winged cap and speak to the pigeons?”
“The winged cap’s busted. And the pigeons probably don’t have much to say besides, ‘Stop wasting that sandwich, asshole, because if you don’t want it, we do.’”
Ruth laughed, a delighted chortle of glee, long repressed. Theo felt a chuckle in his own throat.
Not ready to emerge, not yet. But it was there.
Hippo got up suddenly, distracted by something in the distance. Theo looked over his shoulder, but saw nothing. “Here, girl,” he said. He tore off the corner of the sandwich and waved it at the dog, who trundled back and wolfed it down whole before settling back beneath the bench. Then he took a bite himself, suddenly ravenous.
Ruth’s hand remained on his shoulder.
After he’d finished the sandwich, he placed his own hand on top of hers and drew it down to hold it against his heart. The lightning had burst the vessels on his chest, leaving behind branching lines of red that mirrored the bolt itself, all radiating from the Mercury brand. The slowly-healing flesh felt new and raw and painful to touch. He pressed Ruth’s hand against it anyway. She grounded him. Right here on this bench, on this shore, in this city.
And for the first time since he’d held Selene in his arms and then watched her slip away, he felt a glimmer of hope.
Philippe ducked back behind the stone wall that overlooked the riverside path and lowered his bow. “And voilà. That should help.”
He stared thoughtfully at the woman crouched against the wall beside him. “It doesn’t take away his love for you, you know. It can’t do that. It just opened his heart. Enough to let him feel something besides grief.”
She stared down at her knees, her voice a tentative whisper. “So he’ll love Ruth now.”
“Ah, non, ma chérie. He’s still too in love with you for that to happen. But perhaps, given time …”
She nodded quickly, wanting him to stop.
“I thought this is what you wanted,” he said after a long silence.
“It is. I don’t want him to suffer any more than he already has.”
“What about you?” he asked gently. “What about your suffering?”
He’d tried to convince her to go to Theo. “He trusts you,” he’d insisted as she lay recovering, too weak to make him stop talking. “He knows you. When I first met Theo, I thought him just a passing fancy.” He didn’t say he’d wanted her to be with Flint instead, but she knew he had. “But love—true love—is all too rare for us,” he went on. “Don’t throw it away.” He urged her to tell Theo how she’d swum to Governors Island and found Flint, how they’d hailed the motorboat and escaped with the others back to Manhattan. How they’d dropped the dogs back at an adoption agency, then holed up in the hotel with a homeless woman and her can collection while they recovered their strength.
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