“Hey, Arktios, you sure this is a good idea?” Theo’s voice over Selene’s archaic flip phone was an urgent whisper.
“Do you have a better plan?” she hissed back as she prepared to break into the Central Park Zoo the evening after they’d met Minh.
“Catch Lars after he leaves work? Or is that too easy for the Potnia Theron?” He’d been using her epithets all night. Arktios: Ursine. Potnia Theron: Mistress of Beasts.
“Too late for second-guessing, Theo. I’ve worked it all out. I’m about to climb over the wall.”
“You sure that’s wise, you being the Arktokheir and all?”
She Who Has Bear Paws for Hands. Even Selene didn’t remember that one. For all she knew, Theo had just made it up. Having three hundred epithets gives him way too much ammunition, she thought, not for the first time. “Are you ready for your part, or not?”
“My part’s easy. I just wish I could be there with you.”
“The plan needs a pay phone, or else the cops can trace the call back to you. So you’re going to have to stay where you are.”
“Fine, but as soon as I’m done, I’m running back to the park. This is possibly the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done, and that includes venturing into the Underworld and confronting the Lord of the Dead.”
She didn’t bother replying; she didn’t want him to hear her trepidation.
“I still think we should test this out before you—”
“Too late.” She snapped her phone shut. Theo might be right, but once she’d put a plan into motion, she didn’t like to back down. He should be grateful I even have a plan. Her usual course of action involved leaping into the fray with arrows flying and worrying about strategy later.
She stood on the narrow sidewalk beside the busy Sixty-sixth Street transverse that passed through Central Park. It was five thirty—still rush hour—and a stream of cars and taxis blazed by her, creating far too many witnesses and blinding her night vision with their headlights. She waited for the stoplight on Central Park West to create a brief break in the traffic, then scaled the stone wall that separated the street from the park.
She fought her way through overgrown shrubbery until she reached a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. An obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. Clearly the zoo officials didn’t expect anyone to break into the exhibits from this direction—especially when the animals inside could cause far worse injuries than the razor wire.
Selene had considered bringing a pair of bolt cutters to slice through the wire, or even a carpet fragment to protect herself from cuts while she climbed over it. In the end, she’d decided to simply circumvent the wire entirely. She found a sturdy tree close to the fence line. The maple’s lowest branch was still thirteen feet off the ground, impossible to reach for even the tallest climber—but the tallest climber hadn’t spent millennia communing with trees. Selene shimmied easily up the trunk using only the strength of her arms and legs.
From her perch, she could see over the fence and into the zoo itself. Feeling confident, she scooted along a branch that reached toward the chain-link—only to find herself still six feet shy of the fence. Her self-satisfaction evaporated. She considered her options. I could shoot an arrow with a rope attached, hope to gain purchase on a zoo building, and then zip-line over the fence—likely drawing the attention of every worker in the place. I could give up on the tree, cover the razor wire with my leather jacket, and get it—and myself—torn to shreds crawling over. Or, as Theo would no doubt suggest, I could give up on the plan entirely and find a different way to catch our zookeeper that didn’t involve risking my life. Then, with a shrug, she discarded all three options—and jumped.
She nearly made it.
One heavy leather boot caught in the razor wire, and she found herself hanging upside down, her chest pressed to the inside of the fence, and her head dangling four feet off the ground. Grasping the chain-link with both hands, she wiggled her foot free. The boot came loose with a metallic rattle, shaking snow onto her face and up her nose. Then the weight of her legs dragged her inexorably off the fence; she flipped forward like an accident-prone gymnast and landed on a snowy ledge above the bear enclosure. Various shrubs poked perilously close to her most sensitive areas. Deeply undignified for any burglar, she thought, heaving herself to her knees, much less a goddess supposedly endowed with preternatural grace.
She reached back to brush the snow and twigs off her pants. Trying to make up for her cacophonous entrance, she crawled slowly and silently toward the front of the ledge.
Betty and Veronica were waiting for her.
The pair of six-hundred-pound grizzlies, each standing on her hind legs, snuffled curiously at the intruder as if waiting for a treat to descend from above. Selene scooted backward in alarm, then reminded herself that the faux-rock walls stood at least twelve feet high and sloped slightly inward so that no mammal could climb up without a grappling hook—or at least an opposable thumb.
Veronica, the darker of the two bears, sniffed loudly, her squat snout twitching dexterously in the snowy air. Betty, the blonde, dropped back onto all fours with a thud and turned to the side, showing Selene her size. Both clacked their teeth and made popping sounds with their breath as they worked over Selene’s scent. Betty even reached out a paw to swipe at the air before her. Neither charged. Not yet.
Once, as the Mistress of Beasts, Selene had possessed the power to speak with nearly all denizens of the wild. She still maintained a special connection to her closest companion—the hound. As for her other sacred animal … well, she was about to find out.
“Hello, arktuloi,” Selene said softly, knowing full well that creatures born in the Rockies wouldn’t know the Ancient Greek for “little bears,” but hoping the words might help nonetheless. These bears were larger than those she’d played with in her Mediterranean youth. Their curved, four-inch claws stood out from their dark paws like piano keys—if piano keys could kill you.
For her plan to work, she needed to enter the enclosure itself and approach the animals. For most people, that would mean getting bitten, mauled, or even killed. But not for the Mistress of Beasts. Or so Selene hoped.
She glanced at Betty’s beady eyes, then away, not wanting to rile her. Bears were solitary creatures, not pack animals. They didn’t respond to dominance the way a hound would. Yet even in that brief instant of eye contact, Selene felt a flash of recognition, as if she’d met a sister again after a lifetime apart. They’d both changed over the years, but an unquenchable spark of kinship remained.
“You and me, we’re the same, it turns out,” she said, keeping her voice low and unthreatening. “We’re both trapped in a world far from our home, amid creatures who don’t understand who we are or where we came from. Finding solace in whatever tiny patch of wilderness is left to us.” She found herself slipping into an old cadence, not a goddess commanding her worshipers, but a deity communing with her acolytes.
“We see with different eyes than they do, we hear with different ears.” She lifted her own nose to sniff the air. “I smell the snow and the smog. I smell your curiosity. I smell how healthy you are—so well fed you don’t bother to hibernate, though winter’s hard upon us. Your keepers give you peanut butter on branches and sweet potatoes beneath cairns to keep you from going mad.” She hadn’t prepared this speech—hadn’t even expected to talk to the bears in the human tongue at all. But seeing them there, so strong and powerful, yet utterly helpless, the words welled out of her in a torrent. Her own bitterness surprised her. “I, too, have found distractions here, enough to make me forget who I really am. I fight for women, I prowl the streets, sometimes I even shoot prey with my arrows like in days of old. I have a house and a dog and … a boyfriend.” She laughed shortly, and Veronica snuffed in acknowledgment. “What does that make me? A caged animal. Just like you.”
Veronica sat down on her rump, and Betty simply flopped all the way to the ground with a sigh. Signs of submission and relaxation.
“I’m jumping down now,” she warned them. “Don’t get pissed.”
She dropped off the ledge and into the exhibit, landing hard and slipping slightly on the gravel beneath the snow. Now she stood only a half-dozen paces from the bears. She glanced past them to the glass-enclosed viewing areas and the rest of the zoo beyond. Empty. It had closed a half hour earlier. Most of the keepers would be tidying up and moving their charges indoors for the night. But Minh reported that Lars liked to give the bears a little extra time outside, especially in winter.
From her pocket, Selene pulled a flexible plastic collar with a small container affixed to one end. “Who wants to wear this and do She Who Has Bear Paws for Hands a huge favor?”
Veronica walked slowly forward, nose still dancing curiously. This close, the bear’s head hung nearly level with Selene’s. Her heavy breath puffed white like a steam engine, and Selene could taste the dark musk on her tongue. The bear paused, and her ears swiveled backward. Selene forced herself not to tense up at the sight of the sudden aggressive gesture. Instead, she bleated—the sound a mother bear makes to summon her young—and Veronica’s ears swung forward once more, listening. Selene bleated again, then took a step forward to demonstrate her own lack of fear.
“Easy there, my arktulos.” She reached around the bear’s massive neck, her hands disappearing in the thick fur, and secured the collar. Then she scratched Veronica behind one swiveling ear and placed her head against the bear’s. Veronica warbled a high-pitched, pulsing thrum, a cub’s response to its mother’s attentions. The bear took one last look at her, then lumbered toward the gate that led to the climate-controlled enclosure and indoor swimming pool. Every evening, she’d been trained to go to the door, wait for it to open, and enter her chamber, where a fishy treat awaited.
Selene could’ve just left then, message delivered. Lars would eventually find the container, read the note enclosed, and hopefully be impressed enough by its method of delivery to obey. Selene could no longer send men dreams or spy upon them from her chariot as she rode the moon through the sky, but she’d learned to get the same effect through trickery. Lars would have no idea who could’ve managed to plant the message on the bear without leaving a severed limb behind. He was a scientist—but somewhere deep in the primal portion of his brain he might secretly wonder if something supernatural had been at work, and that suspicion would likely get him to obey the message’s command.
But that would be too easy. And too merciful. He needed to be more than astonished—he needed to be terrified.
Betty followed Veronica toward the door, her massive haunches jiggling with winter fat as she went. Selene stepped in front of her and drew a folded T-shirt from the capacious pocket of her cargo pants. Lars had left it in Minh’s apartment the night of the assault. Selene lifted the fabric to her own nose and sniffed loudly, then held it out so Betty could do the same.
“You know this man,” she said. “He brings you food. You like him. But he must be taught a lesson about how to treat females.” The bear would not understand her words, of course. She’d long lost that kind of supernatural power. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t communicate her needs. She put the fabric in her own mouth and bared her teeth. She huffed and clacked her jaws, then threw the scrap to the ground. Then, with another quick scan of the viewing area, she pulled down her pants and pissed on Lars’s T-shirt. She hadn’t told Theo about that part of the plan—he’d never let her live it down. But bears communicated largely through odor, and a sure way to convey her rage was to have them smell it in her urine.
Betty stared at her, ears flat and anxious. Selene smiled. Now all she had to do was get Lars inside the enclosure. That was where Theo came in.
With a scraping of gears, the metal door behind the security gate slid open. A man’s deep voice, with the barest hint of a Scandinavian accent, floated toward her. “How did you get this number? No, I’m not going to go into the bear den—it’s prohibited. What I am going to do is call the cops and tell them someone is threatening me. Then I’m going to alert my superiors.”
But he wasn’t. He was coming to look inside the bear exhibit, just as Selene knew he would when he heard what the stranger on the phone had to say. Once Theo mentioned Minh’s name, Lars would be too skittish to involve anyone else. He knew what he’d done was wrong.
“I haven’t seen that woman in days,” he lied. “She was fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Selene ducked behind a rocky outcropping as Lars appeared behind the gate. He was less attractive than she’d imagined him from Minh’s description. Tall and muscular, yes, his lush blond hair gone gray at the temples. But his face was hard, his pale eyes nearly hidden beneath a protruding brow. A Viking marauder. He stood behind the grate, cursed roundly into the phone, then hung up on Theo.
He stared for a moment at his bears. Veronica snorted and raised a claw to scratch at the plastic collar around her neck. Just in case Lars hadn’t noticed it. He cursed again.
“How’d someone get that on you?” he demanded of the bear. She gazed at him impassively. “You come inside, I’ll get the tranquilizer gun, and we’ll get that off.” He disappeared, probably entering a secure observation area. After a moment, the gate swung open. Veronica took a step forward, following her usual routine.
But that wasn’t part of Selene’s plan. From her hiding place, she made a high whining sound, the closest she could come to a bear’s warning signal. Veronica swung her head to look at her curiously. Selene whined again. The bear sat back down, obeying the command. Then the three females waited patiently.
Eventually, the safety gate swung shut and Lars reappeared behind it, this time holding a large silver fish by its tail. “Come on, girls, come inside and have a little dessert.” But the bears didn’t move. He repeated the performance three times: tempting the bears, disappearing into the safety enclosure, opening the gate, and then closing it once more when they refused to budge. Finally, as Selene knew he would, he appeared behind the bars and muttered, “Fine, if that’s what it takes.” He pushed a button and the gate swung open. In his right hand, he held a tranquilizer pistol. In his left, a box cutter.
He walked slowly toward Veronica, murmuring calming words to her the whole way. He looked cautious but not nearly as terrified as he should’ve—clearly he’d done this before. If his boss found out, he’d be immediately fired. Minh called him a daredevil. I call him an arrogant, reckless asshole, Selene decided.
The bear lay down and rolled to her side, then cocked her head in a show of submission.
“You gonna make it easy on me, huh?” Lars asked. “No dart gun needed?” He came within two feet of her, then dared to put the gun aside and lift the box cutter to the collar around her neck. The bear’s heavy panting lifted the wisps of hair from his forehead as he slit the plastic. The message container dropped into his hand.
Quickly, he backed out of Veronica’s reach. He should’ve immediately retreated to the observation area, but his curiosity got the better of him. He pried open the plastic cylinder and drew out the roll of paper.
“‘Lars, if you ever touch another woman again,’” he read aloud, “‘we are coming after you.’” Lars looked to Veronica, as if she could answer the obvious question. “Who’s we?”
That’s when Betty bit off his hand.