Chapter 33

APOLLO

Theo couldn’t stop panting. His chest refused to expand, no matter how hard he willed the breath to fill his lungs. Every time he closed his eyes to the bare white ceiling of his prison cell, he saw Selene drowning.

It’s my fault. His chest constricted a little tighter. I told them about her love for her brother. I gave them the tools to make her surrender. Who knew bringing down the Relentless One could be so easy? Just let a mortal learn the secrets of her heart, and she was done for.

Now he lay on the cold concrete floor in no more than a hospital gown, completely unable to help her. But Flint is still free, he remembered. This time, he didn’t begrudge the Smith his attachment to Selene if it meant he would save her.

Flint had given Theo a way to communicate with him, but what information should he impart? I’ve failed. They’re going to kill her, and I don’t even know where to tell him to go. He doubted even the Smith’s mighty hammer would be able to break through the massive vault door beneath Saint Patrick’s. There must be other secret entrances to the mithraeum, but he had no idea how to find them. The plan had always been for Theo to gain the cult’s trust, learn the location of the next sacrificial rite, and relay the information to Flint. Then the gods would ambush the cult, stop Selene’s murder, and capture the Pater. Now, the only hope lay in Theo’s ability to predict the rite’s location on his own.

He closed his eyes again, forcing aside the memory of Selene’s terror, and tried to recall everything the Pater and his syndexioi had said. Surely, somewhere, there was a clue. His brain felt as bludgeoned as the rest of his body, as if the fire and ice had destroyed decades of carefully formed synapses and left him dull and witless.

Come on, Theo, he urged himself, think! Wall Street, the Rainbow Room, what do they have in common? Rich people? That does NOT narrow it down. The next ritual was … he pressed his hands against his temples, trying to force the knowledge into his sludgy mind … the Procession of the Sun-Runner, the Pater had said. But had he provided any clue to its location?

Theo stared up at the ceiling as if looking for inspiration. A single light and a small vent. A memory pierced his brain instead—he and Selene crawling through the air ducts in a building at Columbia as they broke into an office looking for clues to catch the Classicist Cult. When he’d tumbled out of the vent, he’d bowled her over. Her shirt had ridden up, and his hands had rested on her bare abdomen. He’d felt the chill of her flesh, the planes of her muscle, her panting breaths as she demanded he get off her immediately. He’d hastened to obey, knowing even then that if he could’ve, he’d have stayed pressed against her forever.

At first, the music seemed to emanate from his own head. A dirge for the future he’d lost, for the goddess he’d failed. Then he recognized Paul’s voice, very faint, coming through the vent. A haunting, minor key. If Theo’d had any hair left on his arms, it would’ve stood on end.

Sun and Moon,

Midnight or noon,

Never together.

Never together.

A quiet weeping began, a low counterpoint to Paul’s song. The choked sound a person makes who’s long lost the knowledge of how to cry.

Theo sat up straight. “Selene?” he whispered. Then, louder, “Selene?”

He was sure she could hear him. The crying stopped the moment he spoke. It did not continue. Nor did she respond. Yet the song went on.

But never say never.

When the mountains shake

And the forests quake,

They’ll dance together.

Their love’s forever.

Their love’s forever.

The music stopped, but the tune replayed in Theo’s mind, its futile optimism a ceaseless torment.

He knew Selene didn’t want to hear from him. She’d made her decision, and she wouldn’t want Theo to try to talk her out of it. But that had rarely ever stopped him before. “You have to forgive me,” he said loudly. “I didn’t know they had Paul or I never would’ve said anything about him.”

“It’s okay, Theo.” Her voice was barely a whisper through the vent. “This isn’t your fault. It’s the way it must be.”

“No. I’m going to get us out of here. You too, Paul!”

“Stop.” She sounded weary, the word more a plea than command. “Don’t make this any harder.”

He held his tongue, but he wished she were indeed still a goddess that she might hear his silent oath. I promise, Huntress, I will find a way.

Selene stared up at the vent, her vision hazed with tears. She called her brother’s name, but he did not respond. After his song, he’d fallen silent. Theo, too, had ceased his pleas. There had been no word from Prometheus.

She wondered if she’d ever hear Paul’s voice again. She rested her forehead on her knees and waited for the next nightmare to suck her even farther into despair. But nothing came. The Pater knows he’s won, she decided. Why bother breaking a woman who’s already broken?

Hours had passed when a voice whispered at the very edge of her hearing. “Moonshine …”

“Sunbeam?” she cried, rising to her feet and looking once more toward the vent. “Are you all right?”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said. She could tell he’d been crying.

“Don’t say that. How could I let them kill you if it’s in my power to save you instead?”

“But I’m ready to die.”

“Stop it!” she shouted. “I won’t let you die, don’t you understand?”

“The things I’ve seen …” He drifted into silence. Then, softly, “Do you remember Coronis?”

“Asclepius’s mother. Yes, the crow told you of her betrayal. I killed her, not you.”

“You killed her because I asked you to.” He choked back a sob. “And Daphne?”

“The nymph you loved.”

“She ran from me and I … I forced her to become a laurel tree.”

“That was all long in the past, Paul.”

“Not to me. Not anymore. The Pater sends me visions of each death. I relive every one, in all the horror of tears and blood and flame. All those women I pursued, and young men too. Some came willingly, but some did not. I had no patience for that. And so time after time, I cursed them, I killed them. You were the Protector of the Innocent, the Chaste One! Why didn’t you stop me?”

Selene sank back onto the floor. “I … I loved you. I always took your side. Until …”

“Until I lied to you about Orion and made you kill the first man you’d ever kissed.”

“Yes.” The memory, despite the millennia, still hurt. “I couldn’t forgive you for hurting me. But all those others … the nymphs and princesses, the beautiful young men … they meant nothing to a goddess.”

“We are cruel, Artemis.”

“No—”

“You remember Niobe.”

She swallowed, the little girl’s screams once more piercing her brain. “The Pater forced me to.”

“Then you know we’ve done unforgivable things.”

“We can change!” If she said it loud enough, maybe she’d actually believe it.

“I’m tired, Artemis. I’ve been changing for over three thousand years. When can I rest?”

“This isn’t you talking. This is madness and dreams and despair.” She fisted her hands and glared at the vent as if she could see her brother’s golden eyes. “I will not give up on you. If I can just get you out of here, then you can recover. You’ll come back to yourself, and you’ll play your songs and write your poems and bring joy to the world. I’ve never done that, Apollo. I’m the one who brings death and vengeance. I’m the one who’s never learned to love. Let me go in your place. Mother would want it that way.”

A voice shouted at Theo to wake up, dragging him from a coma-like sleep on the floor of the bare cell. A slot had opened in the door. He fumbled at his face for his glasses, felt a moment of terror, then found them lying on the ground a foot away. Once they were on, he could see the Miles’s mask through the slot, facing him with its blank stare.

“How long have I been in here?” If it’d only been a few hours, that meant he still had plenty of time to plan how to rescue Selene. He’d tried to come up with something already, and had proven himself unable to do more than fall unconscious. Not surprising since his body was clearly in shock and he’d long ago been pushed beyond the point of exhaustion. When the Miles grunted, “Twenty hours,” Theo choked.

“Surely not.”

“Twenty.” No inflection, just a statement of fact. He slammed the slot shut.

The sacrifice would take place in just a few more hours. If Theo didn’t figure something out, and soon, Selene was done for.

Now that the initial shock of the ordeal was over, he found himself able to at least remember what had been said. The Pater had given some indication of why they’d targeted certain gods—they’d chosen those who competed most directly with Mithras. As a god who helped men to seek salvation in the realm beyond the stars and therefore “ruled the afterlife,” his powers overlapped with those of Hades, Lord of the Underworld. As a favorite god of the Roman legions—a “leader of soldiers”—Mithras competed with Mars, God of War and Bloodlust. And as the deity associated with Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, he would challenge Apollo, the Bright One, who also “guided the sun in its orbit.”

The Pater had also mentioned the “propitious” sites of the first two rituals. It seemed they’d been carefully chosen to reflect the victim’s domain. The God of the Underworld—and Wealth—died on Wall Street. That makes sense. The Rainbow Room held a less obvious connection until Theo remembered that 30 Rockefeller Plaza housed all the news studios for NBC and its affiliates. Fox News was just across the street. A cynic might see that as the site of “war mongering.” Another location might have a more obvious connection to soldiers—like the National Guard Armory on Lexington Avenue—but Theo suspected the sacrificial locations had another requirement: They had to be major New York landmarks. Why else would the Mithraists go to such lengths to perform secret rites in incredibly public locations? They must be drawing some extra mojo from the power of the site itself.

The Pater hadn’t described the site for the Procession of the Heliodromus, the Sun-Runner, but he had implied that Apollo sought to “move the heavens on their axes.” What landmark location would have a connection to astronomy?

It was suddenly so obvious he nearly groaned aloud. He patted his hip instinctively for his cell phone, ready to share his findings. But of course, his clothes and phone were gone, and there’d be no reception underground anyway.

Good thing Flint had foreseen exactly that.

The Miles had left Theo his glasses.

He reached up to rub his eyes beneath the lenses, then removed his frames entirely as if to get better access. He had no doubt the Mithraists had cameras in the cell. He looked down at his frames, twisting them this way and that as if examining them for damage. He peered at them myopically until he found the tiny black dot that Flint had affixed to the inside of the left temple. He placed his thumbnail on it and tapped out a message, trying to look casual. He didn’t know Morse code, so he and Flint had settled on a simple cipher using the Greek alphabet. If the Mithraists happened to pick up his transmission, hopefully they’d be too obsessed with Latin to figure it out. He tapped sixteen times in a row to indicate the sixteenth letter of the alphabet, then eleven, one, thirteen: π λ α ν. So far, that only spelled out “plan.”

He kept going. It took him fifteen minutes to tap out the whole phrase, and he was pretty sure he’d lost count a few times and probably sent the wrong letter entirely. Hopefully, Flint still had enough characters to transliterate it properly into English:

Plan B. Call the cops. Planetarium. Tonight.

Flint had assured him that the tiny device transmitted super low frequency waves that would pass through any walls or earth and be picked up by his own receiver. He constantly monitored seismic vibrations that traveled thousands of miles underground—something to do with his status as the Roman Vulcan, the God of Volcanoes—so hopefully he knew what he was doing.

Theo considered telling Flint about Minh Loi—she could help them secret themselves somewhere in the planetarium to make their ambush more effective. But considering how loath the astronomer had been to help Theo with his questions, he knew she’d never agree to assist in a break-in. Gabi, on the other hand, would have no such qualms. He added her name and number to his transmission, and then regretted it nearly instantly. Sure, as a Natural History employee, she knew her way around the planetarium, but if she insisted on sticking around herself (and knowing Gabi, she would), she could be in great danger. He added her to his mental picture—his best friend, black curls awry, staring wide-eyed at the Pater’s blade as it curved toward her heart.

Theo buried his face in his hands, suddenly wishing the Pater would send him flashbacks of his past as he had for Selene and Paul. Anything would be better than his own visions of the future.