“No. Should I be?” I said, shaking my head as I slid the picture back.
“It’s more than it appears. Are you familiar with the legend of Jamshid?”
“The Persian king, fourth ruler of the world, controlled angels and demons and invented wine—that guy?” I was unable to think of any other Jamshids off the top of my head.
“Correct. Among his accomplishments was the creation of a cup.” Her deadly serious countenance might have been frightening the first two jillion times I’d seen it, but now it just underlined the importance of the situation. “A cup that—”
“That supposedly allowed the user to see anything that happened anywhere in this world or any other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was supposed to be a crystal ball, not a cup. And I would have thought it would look nicer than an old beer can. I mean, I know lots of guys who seek wisdom in a six-pack, but come on.” I wasn’t really thinking straight, and I was kind of worn out from fishing five days in a row.
“How long have you and I been doing this?” she queried, glaring at me, a deep furrow forming over her brow. “Three thousand two hundred and eleven years, isn’t it? Have you really forgotten what happens to objects from the immortal plane when handled by normal mortals? And have I ever given you reason to question me before? Honestly, you’re behaving like that ass Achilles.”
The nasty comment about Achilles was just uncalled for, but as she said it, she eyed me the same way a lioness watched its prey just before it attacked. Her eyes glowed intensely. As she closed the short distance between us, I unconsciously stepped backward into the refrigerator. I should have known better than to screw with her when she was that tense. I’d watched her waylay thirty soldiers in seconds at Troy when she was only mildly perturbed.
Then the doorbell rang. Whew. Thank Zeus for delivery.
CHAPTER 3
I grabbed the plastic bag containing the noodles and soup from the confused Asian kid at the door, tipped him a ten—the only cash I had on hand—and returned to the counter to mix the pungent broth, noodles, tripe, and tendons with a liberal helping of sriracha. My boss watched me without reaction, much as I imagined a scientist would have viewed a petri dish, as I prepared the soup and began to eat.
My boss. Of all the Old Ones I’d dealt with over the years, she was by far the strongest I’d ever seen. While she beat Ares in combat on numerous occasions thousands of years ago, I hadn’t seen her use more than a mere hint of her powers since our days at Troy. Even then, for reasons still unknown to me, she began to appear in corporeal form less and less often and instead began channeling her power through me. With her help, I bested both Aphrodite and Ares in combat and killed every warrior I faced, even when I was wounded or the odds were otherwise insurmountable.
She told me she’d chosen me because my honor, courage, and wisdom in battle impressed her even when I was a young boy fighting in the War of the Epigoni. Even so, I knew I wasn’t her first choice to become her immortal emissary. Originally, she chose my father, Tydeus, one of the greatest warriors of his time. Finding him eating the brain of a fallen enemy on the battlefield at Thebes as he lay mortally wounded, Athena rescinded her offer and let him die for committing such a dishonorable, inhuman act. I never knew about that until she told me some centuries later. I was horrified by the idea that my father would have done something we Greeks viewed as heinous and utterly dishonorable. Given my father’s reputation prior to that, I understood why she picked him, but I also understood why she rescinded the offer and let him die instead.
I took it as a great compliment that she chose me in his stead. Just after the war ended, in my tent on the beach at Troy, she offered me immortality in exchange for acting on her behalf in all matters pertaining to the protection of humankind. She explained that her strength and power would inextricably bind us forever.
Her overwhelming offer sent my mind racing through the stories about legendary heroes, like Heracles, Perseus, and Bellerophon, and their tales of sacrifice and suffering. I felt dizzy and even sick at the surreal offer, so I refused.
I changed my mind after the tribulations that Aphrodite inflicted on me in revenge for wounding her and nearly killing her mortal son Aeneas. The so-called Goddess of Love prejudiced my wife against me, so I could not go home again. I tried desperately to enter Argos but could not because the men who’d usurped my throne and bedded my wife kept attacking me at her orders. Finally, after weeks of anguish, faced with the prospect of never seeing my wife and family again and wandering aimlessly at the hands of a powerful but petty being for the rest of my days, I decided to take Athena up on her offer to protect mankind from such creatures.
If only I’d known a tenth of what I knew now, I probably wouldn’t have waffled so long before I accepted her offer. I had no concept of the variety of beings that existed alongside us, or the true extent of the world, nor did I have any idea how tenuous mankind’s position was. I discovered that heroes like Heracles and Bellerophon were more than legends—they were my predecessors. Yet I remained, having survived far longer than any others of my kind.
While I stood there in my kitchen eating the pungent soup, I could feel a buzz begin to grow in my head as visions of centuries spent pursuing the stuff of nightmares raced through my mind. Everything—from other Old Ones trying to subjugate humanity, to the seemingly endless creatures, also native to our world, that simply didn’t like humans—flashed through my head like a slide show. I saw creatures—Paranthropoi, or Parans for short—that people believed were mythical or legendary, such as vampires and the races of fae that were so numerous even I didn’t know them all.
Those memories just made me feel old, at first, but then part of me recognized the fact that my experiences made me dangerous and very good at my job. I was a Guardian—the bulwark that stood between humanity and anything that would try to alter it.
All at once, the electric surge of Athena’s power stabbed at the very core of my mind, and her voice echoed in my head, snapping me back to the problem at hand. While Athena filled me in on what she knew about the bombing, I got the feeling that the situation could prove troublesome, mostly because I’d been around long enough to understand the devastating potential objects like this Cup could have, even if used for a noble cause. It was a good thing I was such a highly trained troubleshooter.
I excelled at clandestine operations, intelligence gathering, and combat. Some historians even credited my theft of the Palladium at Troy as the first commando raid in history, and I could no longer keep count of the number of special-operations groups I’d been involved with around the world. I was as deadly with the archaic weapons I grew up with as I was with an assault rifle, and I had over three thousand years of training and experience in every type of combat that humans, and most nonhumans, could devise. And right then, my instincts were screaming that the mortal authorities knew nothing about the true nature of the Cup situation.
“You need to find who took it and get it back before they try to use it to assassinate a dignitary, disrupt world economies, or worse.” She flashed a predatory grin.
“How long do you think we have? If it really was the Cup of Jamshid, then certainly whoever took it knows of its power and thinks they can use it. Can you find out anything more about the limits of its abilities? That may help us figure out what they want it for. Meanwhile, I’ll work on who took it. I’ll head out tonight. Oh, and do you have anyone set up who can get me access to the investigation?”
“You’ll meet with someone from Homeland Security there in New York,” she said, sliding an official-looking Department of Homeland Security folder over to me. I could have sworn she didn’t have it two minutes earlier.
“Your contact’s name and information is in there. I’ll be in touch as we find out more about the Cup.”
She didn’t need me to inform her about my progress. We were linked by more than just her power,
though she allowed me to function on my own and respected me enough to interact with me face-to-face, rather than in my head, for most things. Having someone else bang around in your head never worked well for the one hosting. Just look at what happened to Joan of Arc, for Pete’s sake.
Athena walked out of my kitchen toward the front door, and I followed.
“What, no ‘Good luck’?” I quipped.
She glanced back around the door at me and smirked. It was a playful look that could have easily waylaid a lesser man. “There’s no point in involving Tyche in this. Her mother is still upset with you,” she said, smiling, and closed the door behind her.
Man. Beat the crap out of one immortal’s mortal kid and wound her in the process, and they never let you live it down.
CHAPTER 4
I retrieved my primary gear bag from my loadout room, which was just my mostly converted walk-in closet in my bedroom. I still kept some clothes in it, but various kinds of weapons took up most of the space. The pack contained a special tactical vest, both of my swords, several knives, emergency gear, my laptop, some black combat clothes, and two sidearms: a SIG Sauer P226 Navy and a Glock 21. It also contained enough extra ammo to make a militia jealous. Even though I knew it would be ready to go, the old soldier in me still took the time to make sure everything in the bag was in order.
Once I was done with my gear, I pulled out a pair of slightly wrinkled khaki pants and a white button-down oxford shirt from the small part of my closet not dominated by weapons and gear. I wanted to dress respectably, figuring I was entering into a full-on Department of Homeland Security investigation that would be further mired by the alphabet-soup crew—FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA, NYPD—and who knew what other agencies. Besides, putting more pressure on Athena’s inside man would not go over well, and I needed to give myself an edge by wearing something more respectable than boat shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt. I was not about to wear a tie, though. I was only willing to do so much for humanity.
The last thing I did was pull my Way Stone out of the safe in the closet floor. In the hands of a normal mortal, it was just a highly polished river stone, but in the hands of someone with power or a connection to the plane it came from, the Way Stone glowed a soft greenish color and would open the Telluric Ways—the energy highways along ley lines all over the world. The stone opened a hole in the fabric of space that connected it to some other spot on Earth, enabling me to travel the entire world in a matter of minutes.
Once I got onto Interstate 8, I chose to head east toward one of the two nearest gateways. The particular point I was headed to sat at the base of the mountains about forty miles east of San Diego, just outside a casino parking lot. My other option was just about as far, only it sat to the north along I-5 in the middle of Camp Pendleton. Leaving my truck in the parking lot at the casino was a much more reasonable option than abandoning it along the side of a road at a Marine Corps base, especially with the nation’s terrorism-threat level so high.
For me, and for most humans who could use the Ways, traveling along them was a bit random and kind of a shot in the dark, with some minor exceptions. I knew the Ways functioned by creating a link between any two spots on a given ley line. If I wanted to cross to a spot not on that line, I first had to get to a spot that was on it. I also knew from experience that the energy in the Ways would fry anything battery operated if it was powered on when a person entered. But that was all I knew about how they operated. For getting from place to place along them, I had learned a few major paths fairly well over my lifetime, and my route to New York was one of them.
I left early, arriving at my jumping point at about three in the morning because I wanted to get to New York at dawn, and with the time change, I figured it’d come out perfect. I left my truck in the adjacent casino parking lot and marched off into the foothills to find the exact spot I used as my main gateway.
It didn’t take long at that time of night to get away from prying eyes near the small Indian-run casino, and I walked to the familiar area—a valley several hundred yards from the lot—unnoticed. The only sounds I could hear in the still night air were cars racing along the interstate a few miles away. While the ground was rocky and uneven, I knew the terrain well enough that I didn’t really need the small Maglite I carried. Still, it would have been a really ignominious start to get to New York with a sprained ankle. With my free hand, I pulled my Way Stone out of a pocket on my vest.
In the darkness of the foothills, with only a sliver of moon offering any real light, I had to rely on the intensifying glow of the stone to tell me when I was close to the portal. In the daytime, thanks to the ability Athena gave me to see through veils, I could see those doorways even if they were closed. In sunlight, it was like gazing through crystal-clear but choppy water—no matter how I looked at it or cocked my head, all I could make out was a heavily rippled version of the rocks and desert behind it. The distortion was the effect of the energy from the Telluric Ways pushing in on our world. To find the Way in the dark, however, I had to use the stone’s glow to get close and then watch for the warping of my flashlight beam as the light passed through it.
The stone’s smooth, glowing surface got significantly warmer once I was in front of the Telluric Ways. I made sure I knew specifically where the portal was, put my flashlight away, rubbed the stone, and focused on opening the portal. I pictured it mentally as opening a door, and the choppy water congealed into a brilliant light.
I stepped into the light and, as always, was instantly overwhelmed by a barrage of energy that assaulted my senses of touch, smell, and even taste. It shut down my sense of hearing except for a persistent thrum that vibrated my entire being. All I could see inside the Ways was a pure white light that flooded in from all around me as I walked along the ley line. It felt like just outside the Ways, only magnified a thousandfold. The coolness of the arid desert at night and the earthy smells of the rocks and dry dirt became so concentrated that I could taste them, and all other sensations were lost.
The overwhelming sensations, as well as the vibrating thrum and uniform illumination, made moving through the Ways disorienting when I first started to use them. I had no sense of direction, but I quickly learned that if I just put one foot in front of the other, I’d advance. As I walked, I knew that each new smell, temperature change, and feeling was a different portal off the line, but I couldn’t read their energy signatures well enough to know where they let off. Most of the fairy folk, or fae, could navigate the Telluric Ways like a highway, complete with markers and signs. I, on the other hand, had to wait until I encountered a familiar energy before I stepped through it, or I risked ending up in some random place. The portals I knew best gave off sensations that mimicked those of the locations they opened upon.
I recognized my first door not only by its warm, dry temperature, earthy and herby smell, and relaxed vibe, but also by the fact that it was only ten steps from the point where I’d entered. The gateway opened onto a nexus point in the desert just outside of a small town in Northern Mexico called Caborca. From there, I could open a path in any number of directions, including the one that took me straight to New York and right into Central Park along the tree line on the south edge of Pug Hill. Anyone not specifically watching me when I passed from the Way into the park would think I simply walked out of the trees. The portal into Central Park felt exactly like New York—busy, intense, and prickly with an oppressive barrage of smells of food, car exhaust, cement, and people.
By the time I made it through, it was half past six in the morning, and the streets had not yet gotten crowded with the morning commute. I figured I had just enough time to find a hotel room and make a quick stop for a bagel before I needed to meet my contact at the museum.
Finding a hotel room wasn’t hard. I chose one at Fifth Avenue and Eighty-First Street because it was the closest to the Met, but I almost fainted when they told me the room rate. The simple brick
façade made it blend in with the rest of the block without much fanfare, so I’d assumed it was a modest hotel. Once I was inside, however, the extravagant lobby’s cool marble floor, gilded crenellated molding, rich wood paneling, and fragrant leather chairs revealed otherwise. Athena was probably going to kill me when the charge appeared on my Metis Foundation credit card, but what the hell—I was worth it.
I had arrived way too early to check in, but the front desk clerk offered to keep my bag for me until the room was ready. Before I handed my bag over, I ducked into the hotel’s business center and locked the door behind me so I could gather the things I’d need from my pack. I took the folder Athena had given me, a jacket, my Metis Foundation ID, the SIG Sauer, and one of my knives, which was a short tanto-style blade made for me by a Dvergar who taught Japan’s greatest bladesmith, Masamune. Sharp didn’t even begin to describe it. I hadn’t needed to sharpen it in three hundred years.
I strapped the knife to my calf under my pants, put my gun into a shoulder holster, threw on the light windbreaker, and then checked my bag at the front desk. I still had plenty of time to grab a bagel and lox, so I strolled down Eighty-First Street.
CHAPTER 5
While I sat and ate one of the best onion bagels I’d had in years at the shop on Second Avenue just south of Eighty-First Street, I opened the folder to check out whom I was supposed to meet up with.
Her name was Agent Sarah Wright, who, according to her bio, was a five-foot-eight-inch-tall brunette with gray eyes. There was no photo in the file, but I figured that her height and gray eyes would make her easy to spot.
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