The Hyaena knelt on the floor of the Templo, her eyes fixed on the sacred tauroctony before her. The meditation circled like a rosary. Eyes, mind, and soul in concert.
First the Dog.
“Let me be as obedient as a hound, leaping to his master’s will,” she murmured. Even as she looked upon the Dog’s marble form, her mind traced the trailing stars of the constellation Canis.
Then the sculpted Scorpion and Snake.
“Let me face death unafraid,” she prayed, “that I might be reborn.” She imagined their searing poison flooding her veins as she pictured the stars of Scorpius and Hydra.
The Crow followed, with Corvus’s bright square: “Let his dark wings lift me high above this mortal world.”
Next, the Bull and the starry horns of Taurus. Neck thrown back, ready and willing to accept the knife.
“Let me not fear the sacrifice, for it is through death that life begins again.” This Age would end, as all Ages ended.
Finally, she gazed upon the God Himself, His golden face so bright it brought tears to her eyes. “Mithras and not Mithras. Son and Sun. Ruler of the Cosmos, who brings the next Age into being. Let Him heal the world.”
She finished the prayer and started again. Around and around, just as the heavens orbited the earth, just as the Ages spun on the wheel of time. A whirling vortex to suck her mind into emptiness that she might better contemplate the glory of the god she served.
Seven times she completed the prayer, once for each rank in the Host. Then, a final silent prayer for herself—a rank never publicly acknowledged by the ancients, created for a woman who remained an anomaly in a society of men.
Today, for the first time, another woman had stepped inside the Templo. Diana. The Hyaena had fought against the sudden sense of kinship that she felt with the Pretender. She could not allow her loyalties to waver, not now.
Yet when Schultz had held Diana in his arms, his skin singed red from the flames, hers pale as snow from the water’s chill, the Hyaena had to look away. Their love burned bright and pure, like the face of Mithras himself. What sort of god would command his servants to sever such a bond?
What sort of god would let the innocents on the Staten Island Ferry die? Or those killed in the riots the night of Mars’s sacrifice? Or Apollo’s young lover, who’d fought off the syndexioi until her nails were bloody before they put her down with a bullet to the brain? Yet they all must die. The Pater had ordained it, and the Pater was never wrong.
It’s my doing, the Hyaena knew. My doing that the Praenuntius has helped us. My doing that we discovered Diana after all this time. She’d said she was proud of her role. No other syndexios had done so much to help the Host fulfill its destiny. And yet, the same thought kept circling through her brain, more insistent than the prayer: I bring death, not life. I bring hatred, not love. How can that be the work of the ever-merciful God?
She pushed herself off the ground. Her knees cracked. She was not a young woman anymore, to spend hours prostrate before the tauroctony, losing herself in its glory. She looked again at Mithras, and her doubts dissolved in the warmth of His gaze.
Tonight, she reminded herself as she left the Templo, the moon will set, and a woman will die. It is the will of the God. There can be no rebirth without destruction. When Diana turned her face to the Pater’s sickle, the Hyaena knew she would feel compelled to interfere—to save a woman she’d admired for so long, a woman who reminded her of all the best parts of herself. But she would not.
She would stand aside and do nothing—even if it meant betraying her own heart. Because that, too, was the will of the God.