Chapter 28

CHAINED ONE

Selene awoke facedown in a cold, bare cell. Cheek pressed against the concrete, she blinked in the harsh light bouncing off the white walls, trying to recall how she got there. The last thing she remembered was dying.

After she’d realized the cops who’d arrested her actually belonged to the cult, she’d cursed expletives creative enough to make Dionysus himself blush. The “cops” had pulled their cruiser into a parking garage not far from Times Square and told her to get out of the car. She’d refused, of course, but the linebacker cop pulled her last divine arrow from her pack and held its golden tip to her throat. She had no choice but to obey. He told her to turn around and get down on her knees.

They won’t dare kill me here, she told herself as they forced her to the ground. She couldn’t conceive that her death would be as pedestrian as a gang-style execution in a dank parking garage. Surely there’d be incense and chanting and some sort of ritualized dance at least! And then, even as death lurked a step behind her, she nearly laughed aloud at her own egotism. Theo said I try to make it all about me. Here I go again. I’m probably not important enough to serve as their sacrifice. She heard a gun cock. I’m finally going to find out if a bullet to the brain can actually kill me. She had the sinking suspicion that it might leave her permanently paralyzed instead. Will I still crave immortality if it means an eternity as a quadriplegic? she wondered. Then a gunshot echoed against the concrete walls, and a sharp pain pierced her back, right between her shoulder blades. Seconds later, all went black.

Now, unless she’d been sorely mistaken about the afterlife all these years, she was very much alive and still able to feel all her limbs. The cell, however, seemed its own version of hell. No toilet, no bed. A single small grate high overhead allowed a thin stream of air. Beside it, a recessed fluorescent light. The steel door had no window, no knob, no visible hinges.

She sat up gingerly, trying to reach her own back to feel the gunshot wound, and realized she wore only a thin hospital gown. On a smaller woman, it might’ve provided some modesty; on her it came only to mid-thigh. They saw me naked, she realized, rising from the ground with strength born from fury. She slammed her palm against the steel door. Once, twice, as if she could smash it apart by sheer force of will. I will find them, I will turn them to beasts, I will rip them limb from limb for their offense. But the wound on her back burned when she raised her arm, and the door didn’t budge.

She sank back onto the cold floor, her rage dissolving into helplessness, and felt again for the bandage between her shoulder blades. It was far too small for a wound that had knocked her senseless—unless the bullet had actually been a tranquilizer dart.

A narrow food tray slot slid open near the top of the door. She sat up immediately, the movement sending a sharp pain down her spine. Maybe at least they’ll feed me, she thought.

Her voracious appetite hadn’t been sated since lunch at the hotel before the excursion to Governors Island, and her stomach growled in anticipation. And if they stick a hand through far enough, she decided, I’ll just grab it and drag the bastard through the slot, no matter how narrow it is. But before she could even stand up to look through the opening, the slot slid shut with a clank. Almost immediately, another panel opened at the base of the door and a metal object slid through.

A circular bronze disk with a handle. She made no move to reach for it, worried it would start spurting poison gas or turn into some sort of attack robot. But once she decided Theo’s sci-fi movies were warping her brain, she reached for it with her bare toe and dragged it closer.

The handle had been cast in the shape of a naked goddess, one knee cocked forward, her breasts tipped with golden nipples. Etched flowers, seashells, and doves adorned the disk itself. The symbolism instantly raised her suspicions; she couldn’t resist flipping the object over to see if they were correct.

Aphrodite’s hand mirror. Just as she’d feared. Made by the Smith as a present to his wife on their wedding night. So iconic that it became the basis for the Venus symbol that signified both the planet and all womankind—and now, somehow, it was in the hands of a cult that, according to Theo, worshiped a different god entirely.

“Is this so I can fix my hair?” she demanded of the empty room, hoping her captors could hear her. “Very thoughtful, but you must be confusing me with some other goddess who gives a shit.” She picked up the mirror nonetheless and looked at her reflection in its polished bronze surface.

She nearly screamed.

The face she saw was not her own. An old man, nearly bald, his white hair floating in a wispy combover above his age-speckled scalp. Wire-rimmed glasses balanced on a pointed nose. Loose wattles of flesh hung from his neck. His lips, thin and colorless, pursed in an expression of confusion and dismay. She recognized him only when she noticed his green eyes.

“Theo?” she whispered.

The man in the mirror didn’t respond. He just stared blankly ahead.

Then the image shifted. The background came into focus. A log cabin, sparsely furnished, the rugs worn with age. And a woman, tall and lean, black-haired, bent over a stove. She clattered a pan, cursed loudly, then threw a piece of crockery across the room. It smashed against the far wall; white liquid oozed down the logs. A bowl of soup, perhaps, or batter. The woman turned toward Theo.

She has my face, Selene saw with a start, but not my name. I’ll be someone else by then. Ursula maybe, for the bears. Or some other version of an old epithet. Lucinda for the moonlight.

As the woman came toward Theo, Selene could see the fan of wrinkles around her eyes and the scowl line on her brow, more pronounced than the one she currently bore. Older, certainly, but not by much. Theo was in his eighties at least. The future version of Selene threw down a new bowl in front of Theo and stormed away, her face twisted into a furious, self-loathing sneer.

Theo moved his lips into a vague “Thank you.” He had no teeth.

Selene dropped the mirror to the ground with a clatter.

Theo sat on the couch with his head in his hands hours after Flint had finished explaining his incredibly elaborate proposal for rescuing Selene.

Philippe sat down beside him and started rubbing his back in desultory circles.

“Um …” Theo stammered. “I’m okay.”

Philippe ran a hand up to the back of Theo’s neck and massaged gently. “You look tense.”

“Well, yeah, I’m supposed to figure out where the cult’s ultrasecret hideaway is before the next sacrifice, so I guess you could say I’m tense.” And you coming on to me right now is not helping matters, he wanted to say. I’m trying to rescue my girlfriend, and you’re acting like I’m already single.

“It’s okay,” Philippe soothed. “It’s past midnight already, and Dash and Flint have been monitoring every police scanner and TV news station in the city. No word of any strange outpourings of hunting-related emotion. So she’s still alive. If they keep the same pattern of late-night murders going, then we’ve got at least another day to find her.”

Theo nodded wearily and felt his shoulders relax in spite of himself. His mind, which had whirled with images of planets and stars and fiery gods for hours—not to mention Selene covered in blood—finally calmed and centered itself.

Philippe lifted his hands. “Better?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“Where are you so far?”

Theo reached for the pad of paper where he’d scribbled his ideas. “Mithraists call the leader of each branch of the cult ‘Pater,’ and there are various ranks underneath him. The Pater Patrum that our captive mentioned is the ‘Father of Fathers,’ presiding over the entire religion. All we know about the traditional temple—a mithraeum, it’s called—is that it usually looks like a cave. Sometimes they really were caves, sometimes just secret underground chambers. We already sent Dash to check on the cave in Central Park—it’s empty. The city has an incalculable number of secret underground spaces, so that doesn’t help either.”

“There must be something more specific about where they like to put these temples of theirs.”

“At the cult’s height, there were upward of seven hundred mithraea in the city of Rome alone,” he read from his notes, speaking quickly. Philippe might be right that they had another day to work—or he might not. “Unlike other Mystery Cults, the members were all male—and most were soldiers. So wherever the Roman legions went, the cult followed—there were even mithraea as far away as England. Then, in the fourth century, the execrable Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius destroyed them all. The Christians often built churches on top of the old sites just to prove their superiority. So I thought maybe our new Mithraists would put their temple under a church, but since there are thousands of churches in New York City, that’s a dead end.” He resisted the urge to crumple up his useless findings and toss them in the trash.

“Okay, what about finding the location of their next ritual instead and ambushing them there?”

Theo flipped to the next page on his pad. “I’ve been matching up what we’ve seen so far at the crime scenes with the archeological evidence from the mithraea. We know very little about Mithras himself, but it looks like the cult’s rituals are reenacting the events of his life. The murder at the Charging Bull, of course, represents the tauroctony—Mithras’s famous killing of the bull. The food laid out at the Rainbow Room corresponds to a ritual banquet where Mithras feasts with Sol the Sun—it’s like an after-party to the original sacrifice.”

“What else?” Philippe prodded.

Theo opened a photo of a statue of Mithras emerging from a large round chunk of stone. “Could be a dramatization of Mithras’s birth. But we don’t know whether he supposedly sprang out of a rock in a cave or an egg in a cave. Or an egg-shaped rock in a cave. See? Not that helpful.”

Philippe tutted. “And lazy mythology. The egg thing sounds like Helen of Troy.”

“There’s another event in the god’s life that’s mentioned very briefly in a few Roman texts: They say Mithras participates in the ‘Procession of the Heliodromus,’ or the ‘Sun-Runner.’ Whatever that means. Maybe it’s a reenactment of the sun’s orbit. And I’ve also found some evidence for our salvation idea, because some sources claim that Mithras ascends to heaven in Sol’s chariot—hence passing through the celestial spheres. But unless the cult is planning to sacrifice someone at Cape Canaveral, I’m not sure what the modern parallel would be for that.”

“When you say Sol, you mean Sol Invictus?”

“Yup. The Roman ‘Invincible Sun.’ He had his own popular cult in the Imperial Era, remember? They based it around his birthday: December twenty-fifth, when the Romans observed that the days began to lengthen again. In Mithraism, Sol Invictus is both a secondary deity and another epithet for Mithras himself. So in a way, December twenty-fifth was Mithras’s birthday as well. That’s why our modern cult has chosen this week for their rituals. They’re piggybacking on a date that already carries great significance. Just like the Christians did when they picked it for their own god’s birthday.”

Philippe sniffed. “It’s just a little rude, you know? All those creepy mangers everywhere. I think the baby Jesuses look like baby me, honestly.” He chuckled. “How great would it be if all this time the Christians thought they were worshiping their infant savior, they were actually praying to adorable little Cupid instead? But I guess that’s just wishful thinking, because I’m still aging—slowly, but aging nonetheless. And don’t get me started on the Christmas trees everywhere. If they wanted to pick a pagan symbol, they could’ve at least picked something Greek! Why should the Norse gods get all the help?”

Theo interrupted him. “None of this is helping me figure out where they’ve taken Selene.” His visions of underground mithraea had been supplanted by those of Christmas trees. It made him think of the Rockefeller Center tree, soaring above the site of Selene’s abduction. How she must have hated seeing it there—the Christian icon overshadowing the pagan statue of Prometheus that usually ruled the plaza.

I could use some help from Prometheus right now, Theo thought, reaching beneath his glasses to rub his burning eyes. Prometheus, whose name meant “Forethought,” was more than just the god who’d given fire to man. He had also created humans in the first place, sculpting them from clay and then, when the other gods released a Pandora’s Jar of vices and suffering to plague humanity, Prometheus added winged Hope to ease his children’s hearts.

Come on, Theo prayed silently, give me some Hope, buddy. It’s about time. Unsurprisingly, his prayer remained unanswered. Fine. Any other gods I can call upon?

Prometheus, he remembered, wasn’t the only Athanatos represented in Rockefeller Center. There’s a famous motif of Mercury on one of the buildings. And then of course … “Atlas,” he said aloud.

“What about him? Long dead, I hear.”

“No, not the god Atlas. The statue Atlas. The one in Rock Center. My students all think he lifts up the earth, but he’s actually holding the heavens. A man bearing the celestial sphere. Don’t you see? That’s not just an ancient Greek idea—it’s a Mithraic one.”

Theo grabbed his wool coat and hat. The revelation wasn’t much, but it was the best idea he’d had so far. He thumped on the bedroom door where Flint had secreted himself, then stuck his head into the hallway to shout for Dash.

He quickly explained the Atlas connection. “It might be nothing,” he said, “but at least it’s a possibility. If these guys know that the Athanatoi exist, then maybe they’ve been in the city as long as you have. Or at least long enough to plant Mithraic symbolism in some New York landmarks.”

Flint reached for his leather jacket and crutches, but Dash put a restraining hand on his arm and warned, “Now hold on, we’re supposed to join the fight later—otherwise we show our hand too early. And you, my brawny brother, are very recognizable. If you go with Theo now, you’ll only put him in danger.”

“But what if he’s right?” Flint shook off Dash’s grip violently. “What if this is the entrance to their temple, but he can’t figure out how to get inside?”

“It’s okay,” Theo assured him, trying not to sound annoyed by Flint’s obvious lack of faith. “Once I know I’m right, I’m going to call Detective Freeman and tell the police to—”

“No!” Philippe and Dash shouted at the same time.

“Bad enough you told them Selene was captured,” Dash explained breathlessly. “Now you want them there when you finally talk to these murderers? The cult will reveal our true identities!”

Theo looked from one god to the other, flabbergasted. “We know the initiates are mortal. Yet they can use divine weapons. That means we’re facing a group of potentially overwhelming size and strength. We’re going to need reinforcements, but you’d let Selene die because you refuse help from the police? Are you really so afraid that a bunch of hard-nosed detectives are going to suddenly believe you’re all three-thousand-year-old gods? Are you insane?”

But Dash remained adamant. “We do this our way.”

Theo spun to Flint. “What about you? You don’t want to call the cops either? You’re going to sacrifice Selene to protect a secret that doesn’t need protecting? I thought you cared about her. At least that’s what it looked like this morning on top of Rock Center.”

Dash rounded on the Smith. Suddenly they were all talking at once.

Flint silenced them with a raised hand. “I’m not worried about the secret. But once the police are involved, they’ll take all the cult’s initiates into custody. We’ll never get the answers we need about how they found out about us in the first place. If we don’t know that, we’ll never be safe again.”

Theo had nothing more to say. He had no intention of following their commands, but arguing further was simply a waste of time. And Selene might not have much time left. He pulled his hat low around his ears and headed for the elevator. Philippe offered him a weak “Bonne chance” as the doors slid closed. Then the elevator sprang back open, and Flint stood before him, holding out his hand.

“Let me see your spectacles.”

Theo grudgingly complied. Flint affixed a tiny black dot to the left temple of the wire eyeglasses. “You can’t leave without a way to communicate with us. Do you remember the plan? The code?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Theo took back his glasses, refusing to look impressed at yet another of the miraculous inventions the Smith had pulled from his bag of wonders. He jabbed the “Door Closed” button.

Flint stuck the edge of one crutch into the closing doors and leaned forward once more. His voice was a barely audible rumble. “We’ll get Selene out no matter whose help we have to enlist. The others will never agree to it, but I know you’re right. Try my plan first, Schultz, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll call the cops. You have my word.”

Selene closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands as if that might erase the sight of Theo’s aged face from her mind. “It’s not real,” she murmured into her palms. Yet if she stayed with Theo, what other future could there be?

She rubbed her face, hard, and then stared up defiantly at the ceiling. “You think to scare me,” she shouted. “Illusions and trickery. Aphrodite’s mirror torments the holder with thoughts of love and loss, but I am the Chaste One! Such things mean nothing to me.”

She tried to believe her own words, reminding herself that even if the image in the mirror were a true prophecy, it mattered little unless she escaped from the cell. If they killed her, she’d never have a chance to know just how miserable she and Theo could have made each other.

She rose to her feet and placed her palms against the walls, searching for some weakness that might allow her to break out of the chamber. She paced the perimeter, tapping for any sign of hollowness. They called me She Who Helps One Climb Out, she reminded herself. Walls cannot contain me. And when I finally escape, I will come for those who chain me here. I am the Relentless One, the Punisher, the Far Shooter.

As if summoned by her recital of epithets, a sudden hallucination overwhelmed her. This time, she recognized it for what it was: a memory of her past, brought to vivid life by Morpheus’s crown. That didn’t make it easier to resist. Her body registered pain as she fell heavily to her knees, but her mind was elsewhere, sucked into the past like a broken twig trapped in a whirlpool’s grip.

I hear my mother crying from half a world away.

Gentle Leto, neat-ankled and veiled, sits in the halls of Olympus, her distaff unwound at her feet, her tears hidden by her hands. I arrive only moments before my twin, for neither of us can bear our mother’s suffering.

“Tell us what brings you such grief,” I command.

She does not speak. She is too modest to complain of her own woes. But Apollo kneels beside her, and the bright rays of his face dry her tears. He speaks in gentle tones more suited to our mother’s ways, and she finally lifts her eyes to his.

“Niobe, Queen of Thebes, bans my rituals from her city,” she says. “She has borne seven daughters and seven sons, and counts herself more worthy of homage than I, who gave birth to only one of each. She brags that though some children may be lost, she will never be reduced to two, while I am near to childless.”

We do not wait to hear more, my twin and I, for that would but delay the punishment. Clothed in clouds, we glide swiftly down to the city upon our gleaming chariots. There we hear Niobe’s words of contempt. She speaks of Artemis, girt like a man in a short tunic, and Apollo with his womanly hair. “Leto should not be proud of her sickly litter,” she says, “but rather ashamed to bring two such into the world.”

Aflame with rage, Apollo raises his silver bow and showers shafts upon the seven sons of Thebes. But even as the sisters rail and weep beside their brothers’ biers, Niobe speaks bold.

“Feast upon my misery, cruel Leto! Satiate your relentless heart with seven deaths. More remains to me in my misery than to you in your happiness: After so many deaths I triumph still, glorying in these my seven daughters.”

Hard on her words my bowstring twangs, my fury a heartless wind that hurls forth my own golden shafts.

A daughter wrenches an arrow from her vitals and swoons away with her cheek upon her brother’s breast. I do not hesitate as I seek out further prey—a girl who tries to comfort poor Niobe, then falls suddenly silent, doubled by her wound. Another, vainly flying, collapses with an arrow in her heart. The fifth dies upon her sister, and the sixth trembles in concealment and prays silently to me even as I bring her swift death. The last is left.

She is little more than a child, with terror-wide eyes and thin arms clutched across her narrow ribs. Niobe shields this youngest daughter with her whole body and begs aloud for mercy, all her hubris fled. But I, stony hearted, raise my golden bow.

The cry of Leto herself, descending from the heavens to witness our wrath, comes too late to stay my hand.

The arrow slips beneath the mother’s arm and into the daughter’s breast. The girl screams like a small animal in a hawk’s talons, pure terror ripped from her throat, echoing through the palace until the cry of one child sounds like the wails of fourteen. The sound goes on and on. I listen, unmoved, as it finally dies to a whimper. Then there is silence.

The Goddess of Motherhood kneels in horror beside the girl’s limp form.

“What have you done?” she asks us. “Such vengeance offends me more than Niobe’s overweening words.”

We lay down our shafts, Apollo and I, but we feel regret only for our mother’s pain, not for the destruction we have wrought.

Niobe grieves, rigid beside the corpses of her children. Gentle Leto, the merciful one, prays to Zeus our father that he might ease Niobe’s suffering. In answer, he turns the woman’s stony frame to stone itself.

Now, among the rugged crags and sky-encountering crests of mountains, sits the Rock of Niobe. The likeness of a woman bowed in the depths of anguish. A broken heart in the guise of shattered stone. Men pass with feet fear-goaded, and from the rock pour waterfalls. Weeping, weeping … grief-stricken … endless.

As Selene emerged from the memory, a swimmer fighting through a maelstrom, the weeping went on. After a moment, she knew the sobs came from her own throat. She cried for Niobe as she never had before. On Governors Island, the memory of the Great Gathering had reminded her of her impotence, leaving her hopeless and melancholy. This memory of unchecked power was far worse. She could not erase the image of the children reaching in vain for the arrows that pierced their flesh, teeth bared as they gasped their last breaths. Now she heard the prayers she’d once ignored—their pleading, their terror, their agonized questions, “Why me? What have I done?”

Selene clapped her hands over her ears, but the prayers pulsed inside her, an unrelenting keening punctuated by the animalistic shrieks of that last little girl. This is merely a ploy by the cult to make me weak, she thought desperately. But no matter the source, the memory was true. She was a monster. Her gut tightened, seized, and she doubled over, her empty stomach retching bile as if to purge herself of all the evil inside her.

When even the bile was gone, she lay beside the stinking puddle, chest heaving, cold sweat coating her arms and legs. How long has Paul suffered from memories like this? she wondered, finally understanding his despair. No wonder he wants to die. No wonder mankind wants us to die. Why worship those they could not trust, could not respect, could not love? Her tears returned, harder this time, and she grieved for Niobe’s children, for her twin, and for Theo, too. For how could he love someone so cruel? The mirror’s message became clear: The horror was not that Theo would grow old and die, but that she would despise him for doing so.

“Who’s there?” The voice came through the grate above her head, the faintest of whispers.

Selene choked back her sobs and lay in frozen anticipation.

The voice spoke again, hoarse like that of an old man. “Who’s crying?”

She held her tongue, wondering what new torment lay in store.

“Athanaton tis eis?” The voice pleaded; it did not demand.

Who else but another god would speak to her in Ancient Greek, asking if she were an immortal? Those who’d captured her already knew who and what she was.

She decided to risk it. “Nai. Eimi he agrotera. Eimi desmios,” she replied, slowly levering herself off the ground so she could stand closer to the grate. Yes, I’m the Huntress. I’m a prisoner.

He continued to speak in the ancient tongue. “It is a bitter, bitter thing that you have joined me in captivity. I can only hope your end will be swifter than my own.”

“Who are you?” she begged.

“I am merely the Praenuntius.”

She wondered at the Latin word. “The Harbinger?” She knew of no such god, even in the Roman pantheon.

“We all have many names, do we not, Good Maiden? Praenuntius is only the most recent of them. But it is the title by which my captors call me, and thus has it become my truest self. But I was once the Chained One. The Lofty-Minded.” He laughed then, a rusty, half-formed sound. “They named me ‘Forethought.’ Though if I had ever seen this future before me, I would have killed myself long ago.”