Arrogance is so embedded in his withered soul that he can’t imagine I’m a threat, she realized. He’s the Wily One—I’m just a dumb goddess. I can work with that. She curled her lip in disdain. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
The mole-spattered syndexios frowned at her, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. “A Pretender should not question the Pater.”
“No, it’s fine, my son.” Saturn jerked his chin toward the pine tree statue. “Keep working while I tell my ignorant granddaughter the truth.”
Selene had no idea why Saturn wanted the sculpture, but it was important enough that he’d come in person to the Campus of the Magna Mater to claim it while sending a lowly syndexios for the mosaic arc. He’ll keep talking, thinking he’s distracting me so his henchman can complete the theft, she realized. Meanwhile, I egg him on, waiting for Flint to recover. We both want to drag this out: For once, we share the same aim—with very different consequences.
She kept one eye on Flint, only half listening to Saturn’s tale.
“Our Lord Jesus died upon the cross,” her grandfather began. Selene gritted her teeth and prepared for a recitation of the entire New Testament. One of her own medieval witchcraft trials had begun much the same way.
“His followers in Jerusalem mourned him, loved him, but even they did not know the truth—that Jesus was no mere prophet, but the true and only son of the true and only God. Then a Pharisee, an unbeliever, set out on the road to Damascus—Are you listening to me, Diana?”
Selene’s attention flew back to her grandfather. He raised his remaining eyebrow and waggled his thumb above the injector button. When he spoke again, his voice resonated with power. “Listen closely as I tell you of another Time.”
He continued his story, and Selene suddenly saw it unfold before her. Months earlier, Saturn had sent her visions by using the God of Dreams’ divine poppy wreath. This was different, as if Saturn’s status as the God of Time had somehow given him the power to control history itself. Walking through the ruins of Ostia, she’d remembered only snatches of the ancient past. Now his words dragged her deeper with an inexorable force. They filled her eyes, her ears. She drowned within their pull.
A man rides a mule down a dusty road. He wears the robes of a Jew, his head veiled, his beard long. A trio of servants plods beside him. They look like they’ve traveled far and have farther yet to go.
Suddenly, the bearded man gasps and reins his mule to a halt. The servants turn to ask their master what’s the matter, but he has already slid from his animal. He kneels now in the dust, his face so full of wonder that the servants look around, convinced there must be an angel crossing his path. They see nothing.
But the bearded man sees clearly who stands before him. A god, twelve feet tall, with a snowy white beard and eyes of midnight blue. He wears a Phrygian cap and a star-spangled cloak. He holds a sickle in one hand.
The god’s voice blares like a shofar, although only the bearded man can see its source.
“SAUL OF TARSUS …”
“Yes,” the man replies, awestruck. “Who speaks to me?”
“It is I, your Father. The Host. I come to tell you of Mithras.”
Saul looks bewildered. “The Roman god? An idol worshiped by pagans?”
“Mithras has many names. You call him Jesus.”
“The rebel? The one they killed in—”
“Jesus can never die, though you hang his body upon a cross. He is my only son. He alone contains the Holy Spirit. He alone moves the heavens on their axes. He alone forges the path to salvation. That is the good news you must spread throughout the world. Not just to Jews, but to the gentiles as well. That is your task. Now rise, for you are Saul no longer. You are Paul. And you will be my greatest servant.”
Selene ripped herself free of a memory so vivid it felt as if she’d witnessed it herself. Something about the bearded man tugged at a remembrance buried deep beneath the accumulated weight of millennia, but she shrugged it off.
She interrupted her grandfather before he could complete his tale. “So you came down to Saint Paul while you were still an omnipotent god,” she accused him. “You told him a Jewish rebel was a Mithraic god—one who, conveniently, already presided over rituals that granted his followers salvation. And you did it all knowing that if your plan worked, your own family would fade and die. You weren’t a victim of Christianity’s rise—you were its cause.”
The syndexios, she saw now, had finally knocked the pine tree loose and lowered it onto a large dolly, ready to transport it out of Ostia. He looked up from his task to gaze at his Pater reverently. “Saturn has been here since the world began,” he said. “He is no Pretender—he is the true Father. He helps Mithras shift the stars. The heavens move at his command: The sun passes through Taurus, Aries, Pisces. Each constellation a new Age, until now, finally, the Last Age begins.”
Selene wanted to scream. This acolyte recited the ancient Mithraic version of astronomy as if he actually believed it, despite a thousand years of science that proved him wrong. The sun wasn’t moving at all, nor were the constellations. It only looked that way from the perspective of the ever-spinning, ever-orbiting, ever-wobbling earth. Unaware of the mechanics of the heliocentric solar system, the Romans had credited the god Mithras with the heavenly shifts instead. These modern followers of the god still clung to that explanation, and Saturn fed on their stubborn faith.
He flicked a quick, covetous glance at the pine tree before turning once more to Selene. “I do not need the Lame One to bring on the Last Age, you know, not when your father lies chained in the dark, ready to be sacrificed. Flint Hamernik is just an insurance policy. A very useful insurance policy who can craft weapons to strike down even the strongest Pretender. But if you come after me, I will kill him. Just like I killed your twin.”
Selene only clutched her javelin tighter at the reminder of Apollo’s murder. She had no intention of letting Saturn kill Flint, much less her father; the sacrifice of the King of the Gods would give her grandfather unimaginable power. Power he would use against her, the scattered remnants of her family, and the world itself. Humans and gods alike were mere pawns to the Wily One. She didn’t doubt he would knock them all off the board if it suited his purposes.
She glanced at the steel net—Flint stared back, his expression calm, determined. He made a fist with one hand, the muscles of his bicep swelling like a basketball. The drug had worn off. He was ready. Jerking his chin toward the side, he raised his grizzled eyebrows in a silent reminder.
On a pile of dry grass only a yard away from the marble pine tree lay his duffel bag. A duffel bag full of contingency measures.
“Please, Grandfather.” Selene twisted her javelin back into a necklace. She raised her palms, forcing them to tremble. “Don’t hurt Flint. I beg you.” She walked to the corpse of the young Mithraist, crouching beside his arrow-studded eye in a show of penitence. “No one else should die today.”
“I’m glad you finally understand.” Saturn turned to his mole-spattered syndexios. “Get the tree—”
Selene ripped the bloody arrow from the young man’s eye with one hand as she retrieved her bow with the other. The wooden shaft streaked across the clearing and into Flint’s duffel.
The bomb inside exploded in a fountain of flame.
The grass beneath caught fire, threatening to engulf the pine tree, the syndexios, and the Pater himself.
Saturn dropped the injection cord and scuttled away from the flames, shouting for backup. In the distance, barely visible beyond the billowing smoke, three more black-clad men hopped over the city wall. Their drawn guns glinted blue in the moonlight.
Already Flint’s clever fingers had untangled the net.
Selene lunged forward, threw an arm under his broad shoulders, and half dragged, half carried him from the field. She could hear the Mithraists pounding closer and worried Flint wouldn’t move fast enough to escape them. Risking a backward glance, she saw that the explosion’s sparks had s
et Saturn’s sleeve ablaze. Two of the syndexioi rushed toward their leader to douse the flames; a third ran toward the pine tree and began to roll it away from the fire.
Urging Flint to move faster, Selene led the way into the ruins. She tried to ignore the flaring pain in her hip while tracing a circuitous path through the narrow alleys and crumbled buildings. The crackle of flames grew fainter in the distance, but sirens wailed in their stead. Soon Ostia’s fire brigade would arrive to save the archeological site. Saturn and his men would have to take their pine tree and run.
“You should’ve just killed Saturn when you had the chance,” Flint panted.
“With what? A wooden arrow? And you know I can’t lose my only shot at finding where he’s holding my father.”
Flint grunted, clearly in too much pain to rehash their old argument.
“Besides,” she snapped, “with all those soldiers, if we’d stayed another second, we’d be riddled with bullet holes. I might survive, but you wouldn’t.”
Flint’s craggy cheeks burned red above his thick beard. He looked enraged and embarrassed all at once. He’d fallen victim to his own trap. And without his crutches, he was no match for his enemies.
Selene had little desire to salve his bruised pride. Saving his life was more important.
She veered toward the old city wall and clambered over it, hauling Flint up behind her.
By the time she made it to his parked motorcycle on the far side of Ostia, she’d gained a new respect for the Smith. He’d lived for over three thousand years with both legs withered and near useless, barely able to support his broad blacksmith’s torso. She’d had one bum leg for thirty minutes, and she wanted to scream with frustration—or cry from pain. Now they were both limping, two Lame Gods instead of one.
“We need to get you to the river water,” Flint said, maneuvering himself onto the motorcycle’s seat while she climbed on behind, lifting her wounded leg with her hands.
“I’ll make it back to Rome. I can go into the Tiber there.” As the Goddess of the Wilderness, she could use running water from a natural source to heal any injury inflicted by a mortal weapon. I’ll bathe in the river and come out as good as new, she thought with a pang of guilt. Flint lives this way all the time. He’ll never be healed, never be whole.
Unlike Selene, who’d regained some of her preternatural strength and senses, Flint lived a mostly mortal existence. Even before the fading that had affected all the Athanatoi, he’d been lame, crooked, his coarse features a pitiable contrast to the other gods’ beauty. Yet his frailties had made him the most humble of the gods, the one best able to deal with their slow descent toward mortality. “He of Many Arts and Skills,” the ancient Greeks called him. That epithet, at least, he still deserved. His inventions might no longer be supernatural, but they still seemed magical to Selene, blends of mechanics and electronics, both elegant and functional, that granted him power beyond his own faded strength—except when someone else used them first.
She wrapped her arms around Flint’s waist as he took hold of the adaptive hand controls and revved the motorcycle. Normally, she laid her hands only lightly on his hips to steady herself; tonight, she grabbed on tight.
I need the support—with this leg, I may slip off the damn machine, she told herself. But in truth, there was something comforting in the nearness of him. It had been many months since she’d been so close to another person—except to tackle them to the ground.
His hand moved to hers, pulling it even tighter across his wide rib cage. The gesture reminded her of Theo Schultz—the memory of him a sharp, guilty stab that dwarfed the pain in her hip. I’m glad you’re somewhere safe tonight, far from murderous cults and wrathful gods. She often spoke to Theo like this—a silent, one-sided conversation that did little to soothe the ache of his absence.
Theo’s frame was narrow where Flint’s was broad, his smile easy where Flint’s—well, Flint rarely smiled at all. But they’d both been willing to die for her. The thunderbolt’s scar on her chest proved Theo’s devotion; the gold chain hanging around her throat proved Flint’s. Yet since the day he’d given her the necklace, despite living and working together with her in Rome for the past six months, Flint had never mentioned his feelings.
Perhaps tonight he’ll finally break his silence.
Her first instinct was to loosen her grip on his torso, afraid of what he might read into the gesture. But I’m tired, she decided. Tired of constantly worrying if Saturn will catch us or we’ll catch him, if my father will survive, if I made the right choice with Theo. Maybe I don’t have to worry about Flint, too.
So she didn’t let go; she pressed herself more firmly against his back instead, grateful for the roar of the engine as they skidded away from Ostia and onto the road to Rome. Even if Flint wanted to say something, she wouldn’t hear it. And right now, his silence was exactly what she needed.
Chapter 5
HE WHO SOOTHES
A brownstone on West Eighty-eighth Street, just steps from Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Half as wide as its neighbors, rust pitting its iron railing, peeling paint feathering the windowsills. A house that begged to be ignored—just like its previous owner. Selene’s house.
Her half brother Scooter Joveson had given Theo the deed when she died, so it was technically his now, although he still didn’t think of it that way.
Two women sat hand in hand on the stoop, waiting for Theo and Ruth with three shopping bags from Zabar’s.
Gabriela Jimenez stood, holding aloft a bottle of wine. “I come bearing gifts.”
Minh Loi hefted a cake box in turn. “Heavy gifts, full of chocolate.”
“I never turn down chocolate, but what are we celebrating?” Theo asked, pulling out his keys.
“Minh just got a paper accepted into the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics,” Gabi said, fairly beaming with pride as she kissed her girlfriend on the cheek.
“Congratulations!”
Minh gave a self-deprecating shrug. “They were looking for female contributors.”
Gabi rounded on Minh. “Your article’s not being published because you’re a woman. It’s being published because it’s awesome.”
“Thanks, babe.” Minh rolled her eyes with a wry smile, managing to discourage Gabi’s effusiveness and bask in it all at the same time.
“And, Theo-dorable,” Gabi went on, “since your house has more space than all of our apartments put together, we decided to have Minh’s party here.”
“Party?” Theo asked with a raised brow, grabbing the shopping bags.
“Just a few friends from the museum,” she assured him breezily as she stepped inside and headed confidently toward the kitchen, pulling Minh by the hand. “Bring the groceries in here, will you?”
Minh looked over her shoulder at Theo with a grimace. Clearly, none of this was her idea, but Gabi was just about the most stubborn person Theo knew. If she wanted a party, she got a party.
With the other women out of sight, Theo looked to Ruth, whose cheeks burned a suspicious shade of crimson. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
“They needed a place that could host a dinner party for ten.”
“Selene’s table only holds two.” He lugged the grocery bags into the foyer. “Four if you squeeze.” He tried not to sound pissed. His whole life, he’d tempered confrontation with humor. But sometime in the last six months he’d lost much of his talent for levity.
Ruth’s flush darkened. “I ordered a folding table from Costco.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me first?”
“We knew you’d say no. You’d come up with some excuse so you wouldn’t hurt Gabriela’s feelings, but you’d still refuse.”
“That’s not true. I’m happy for Minh.”
“I’m sure you are. But you always say no.” Ruth’s voice slowed, as if she hesitated to admit the truth. But for all her shyness, Ruth never lied. When he asked a direct question, she answered it. Theo wished he could say
the same about himself.
“You just want to work, Theo. You know I support your research, but the way you’re going about it isn’t healthy. It’s bringing you more pain than joy. You keep looking into the past and ignoring what’s going on around you. Pythagoras, Mithras, Saturn—they mean more to you than your own friends. You’re sublimating all your grief into your work, rather than reaching out to those who want to help.”
“You’re right. Sublimating is exactly what I’m doing,” he snapped, more harshly than he’d intended. “The sick and suffering of ancient Greece used to go to the shrines of Asclepius, He Who Soothes, and offer themselves to his snakes for healing. The snakes knew the secrets of the Underworld. They could cure sickness by bringing men right up to the border between life and death, between god and mortal. That’s what ‘sublime’ means, Ruth—to come ‘up to the threshold’ between worlds. There’s nothing wrong with trying to do that. I’ve been broken apart, and that’s the only way I know how to heal.”
“Well, in chemistry, ‘sublimate’ means to turn a solid directly into a gas,” she shot back. Finally, his loyal friend had lost her patience. Theo was almost relieved. If she was angry at him, it made it that much easier to push her away. “That’s what you’ve become, Theo. Ether. Air. Floating above it all in a cloud of theories, living with dreams of a goddess. That’s not healing! Come back to the solid world! Come back to your very real, very human friends. Gabriela and Minh have been dating for three months now, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them. They want to share that with you, but they barely ever see you.”
“I won’t see them tonight either, not with ten people in the house.”
“I know you don’t like guests, because she never wanted people over, but you’re not her.” Ruth reached for his hand. “You’re your own man, and you’ve always liked having friends around. Retreating from the world isn’t good for you. We all thought it’d be nice for you to socialize.”
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