Chapter 38

THE HOST

From the corner of her eye, Selene saw Theo kneel before her on the rug.

“I know all the myths about goddesses who’ve been angered,” he said gently. She didn’t turn to look at him. “I know that to assuage their wrath, an offering must be made.”

She didn’t want to hear any of this. He might be a Makarites, yet what could his books and research tell him of the true nature of gods and goddesses? But to tell him to stop would require talking to him, and she couldn’t bear it. She could just hit him again, but she found herself barely able to move. Her right arm still hung limp; her back throbbed with pain. Easier just to ignore him and hope he finished soon.

“I thought of bringing you some bacon or ham, since I know how you love pork,” he said with a glimmer of his usual wit. She felt no urge to smile. “I could burn it in front of you, let you inhale the smoke. But Ruth’s fridge is basically empty, and she doesn’t want to set off the fire alarm.” He gave her a flat, very un-Theo smile, and she realized that he joked more out of habit than anything else. He didn’t find it funny either. He paused. She didn’t look at his face, but she watched his body. His hands lay flat on his knees, his knuckles white. “The only offering I can make, the only offering I want to make, is the truth.”

He dared to take her right hand in his. She let him hold it, unable to withdraw without using her left arm to do it, and unwilling to show such weakness.

“The truth is that you can never push me like that again. I told you I’d be patient—I know that violence is in your nature, and that you don’t play by the same rules as a mere mortal like me. But I can’t play by yours. I won’t heal in a day, Selene. This is the only body I’ve got and I’d like it to last. So if you’re angry, you can scream at me, you can throw dishes, but don’t ever strike me. If you do, I’m gone, no matter how much it might tear me apart to leave you.” He paused as if waiting for her to say something.

She stole a glance at his face then, noticed the red of his eyes behind his glasses and the way his shoulders hunched as if to protect his chest. She remembered the wound, then—the brand she’d seen below his collarbone in the ordeal pit—and she felt a sudden stab of horror. Am I the wrathful goddess once more? The murderer of Niobe’s children?

“Just leave,” she insisted. For your own good. “Stop trying to make this all right.”

She saw his body tense, and knew he was on the brink of getting up and walking away. But then he took a deep breath and continued. “I will decide when to give up on you. On us. I will say my piece, Selene. Apollo is dead. But there was nothing you could do to stop that. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me. I told Flint to contact Hansen for help. It’s my fault the cult knew that your brothers were coming—my fault that they didn’t have a chance. I failed you—I failed Apollo. I failed Dash and Flint and Philippe. For that, I am truly sorry.”

“You should’ve let them kill me, too,” she whispered. “We shared a womb. We should share a grave.”

“No.” He sounded angry. “What I will not apologize for, what I will never regret, is saving you.”

She could tell he expected her to say something. To offer him some hope for the future. But she had nothing left to give. The piece of me that always belonged to my twin has split away, taking with it all that was civilized, or warm, or graceful. All that’s left is grief so strong it will carry me into madness, and rage so hot it threatens to incinerate everything around me. To contain them both, I must turn my soul to ice.

Theo still wouldn’t give up. He pulled over the footstool so he could sit level with her. In his eyes, she saw his devotion, his intensity, his hope. “You’re in shock,” he said. “You’re in mourning. I understand that. But I’ve given you all the time I could—the others are in danger, now, and we have to help them. We’re the only ones who can stop the Pater.”

She knew he spoke the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about the rest of her family’s fate, not when the image of her twin’s death played in an endless loop through her brain.

Hippo appeared from somewhere behind the couch and scuttled toward her mistress. Selene felt the cold nose brush against her palm. She did not respond.

“Come on, Selene!” Theo urged. “If you won’t do it to save Flint or Dash or Philippe, do it to bring down the Pater.”

“Justice for Apollo,” she said softly. Hippo whimpered and slunk away once more.

“Yes, if that’s the only thing you understand.” Theo sounded exasperated, disappointed. “Do it for vengeance.”

“Vengeance …” The word was bitter on her tongue. “Niobe. Coronis. Orion. I thought I could change. I thought I could find mercy in my heart. But the world needs a Punisher, doesn’t it?”

“The world needs you,” Theo replied sternly. “So get off the couch and let’s rescue the others, just like they tried to rescue you.”

“I don’t know how,” she said quietly.

“That’s never stopped you before.”

Theo was right. Selene took a deep breath and levered herself off the couch with her good arm. “Then we start with Hansen.” She moved into Ruth’s small bedroom and stood looking down at the old woman lying spread-eagled on the coverlet.

She couldn’t help remembering her as she’d been in the 1970s, when they’d worked together on the force. Geraldine Hansen had dedicated her entire life to keeping the city safe, growing careworn in its service—or so Selene had thought. How long had she actually been serving a secret master?

Theo came to stand at her side. “Trust me, I’m just as angry at her as you are. She held a gun to my head—worse, to Gabi’s head—and threatened to kill us. But she’s the only lead we’ve got. You have a bad habit of killing people before they can tell us anything—let’s try some restraint this time.”

Selene sat heavily on the edge of the mattress and placed a fingertip on the woman’s temple.

“What are you doing?”

“Finding out what she knows,” she said calmly.

“Not killing her?”

“Not yet.”

“So you’re just going to read her mind? You can do that?” He shifted uncomfortably, clearly wondering if she could do the same to him.

Selene knew what little power she might have left would never work on a man, but there was no need to spell that out for him. “Geraldine Hansen worshiped me once—as a hero, not a goddess—but it might be enough to establish a link to her,” she said instead. “I’ve done it before, with the bodies of women who prayed to me at the moment of their death.”

Selene closed her eyes and reached inside herself for the whisper of pneuma she still possessed. For her, the divine breath had always blown strongest in the wilderness. If she’d been outside, she could’ve called upon tree and moon, spring and stone, for strength. Indoors, she could only draw upon Gerry herself. The woman might be a follower of Mithras, dedicated to destroying the Athanatoi, but she had once been a Protector of the Innocent, just like Selene. As a rookie cop, she’d looked at the Huntress with adoration. If Selene could tap into that worship, however oblique, she might be able to enter the captain’s memories.

She spread her awareness toward Gerry. The woman’s blood pulsed slow and even against her fingertip. The skin of her temple felt wrinkled from years of squinting suspiciously at the world. Selene reached deeper, trying to recall the young woman she’d known—short red hair feathered at the temples, eyes bright and curious, a light voice and a spine of steel. What she found instead was herself.

Officer Cynthia Forrester, sleek black hair unmarred by its white streak, one or two fewer creases on her brow, but otherwise identical in appearance to Selene DiSilva. She took a deep breath, let go of her own consciousness, and tumbled into Gerry’s memory.

The smell off the lake at the top of Central Park—if you could even call it a lake—made Gerry’s stomach turn. Rotting food, tires, oil barrels, all floated in the algae-coated puddle, their odors magnified by the steamy summer heat that clung to the air long after the sun went down. In these desperate hours of the morning, with the few working lampposts doing little to dispel the dark, the lake attracted criminals like clouds of mosquitoes. Their sergeant had warned that no woman could patrol such a dangerous beat. That only guaranteed that Officer Cynthia Forrester would volunteer. “If you want to learn something,” she’d said to Gerry, “you’ll come along.”

At the moment, Cynthia was teaching her how to choke a cocaine dealer half to death.

Gerry stood dumbfounded—the man easily outweighed her mentor by two hundred pounds, and he was jacked on his own product to boot. His face had turned an alarming shade of red.

“Is that really necessary?” Gerry asked. “He wasn’t exactly resisting arrest.”

Cynthia grunted and moved her mouth an inch closer to the man’s ear. “Tell you what, buddy. All you’ve got to do is escape from me, and you won’t spend the rest of the 1970s in jail.” He squirmed in her grasp and stomped a foot inches from her toe. Cynthia looked at Gerry. “He’s resisting now, isn’t he?”

“Why don’t you just cuff him and get it over with?”

“Because he doesn’t deserve to go easy.”

“There’re plenty of cocaine dealers, what do you have against—” A faint whimper drew Gerry’s attention to a clump of chest-high vegetation at the water’s edge.

“That’s what I’ve got against him,” Cynthia snarled, nodding toward the cattails.

Gerry swung her pistol toward the sound and approached cautiously, trying to move as silently as Cynthia always did.

“Come out of there,” she said, deepening her voice. She’d never sound like a man, but it didn’t hurt to try. Perps never took policewomen seriously—at least not until they met Cynthia.

The reeds parted. An emaciated child in a pair of grimy shorts and a tank top crawled through on all fours. Tears streaked her pinched face. When she stood, her knees knocked together. A large purple bruise circled her upper arm. White powder clung to her upper lip. Gerry just stared, the barrel of her pistol still pointed at the child’s skinny rib cage.

Cynthia’s voice was calm. “Lower your gun, Officer.”

Gerry snapped back to attention, holstering her sidearm so fast she almost dropped it on the ground. She crouched down before the child. “What’s your name, honey?”

The girl cast a terrified glance up at the drug dealer, just as he made a last effort to break from Cynthia’s grip. Gerry turned around in time to see him fling his torso forward, hurling the policewoman over his shoulder and onto the ground. He dove toward the girl, shouting, “Don’t you rat on your daddy!”

Gerry threw herself in front of the child, her heart pounding—just as a wide-heeled pump rocketed through the air and caught the dealer on the temple, sending him unconscious to the ground. Cynthia stood, brushing grass from her uniform. The rent in her knee-length navy skirt reached all the way to her hip. She adjusted her standard-issue miniature fedora, then retrieved her shoe with a tight smile. “Damn sight more useful as a weapon than as footwear.”

It took another half an hour before the little girl let Gerry pick her up. Throughout, Cynthia stood with one foot balanced on the back of the drug dealer’s neck in case he revived. He didn’t.

They called in the arrest, then Gerry carried the child back to the precinct in her arms before turning her over to the Bureau of Child Welfare.

Later, in the utility closet that served as the women’s locker room, Gerry took a much-needed drag on a cigarette, finally regaining her calm after the harrowing night. “My father’s a great cop, but even he doesn’t have instincts like yours,” she said to Cynthia, tapping the ash into an empty can of Tab cola. “How did you know the girl was there?”

Cynthia shrugged as she rolled off her stockings and pulled on a pair of canvas shorts in their place. “Experience.”

“Experience? You’ve only been on the force three years longer than I have! How old are you … twenty-five?”

“Then call it women’s intuition,” Cynthia said with her customary scowl. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and jammed a large-brimmed sun hat over her sleek black hair.

“Whatever it is, I hope some of it rubs off on me.”

Halfway out the door, Cynthia turned back to Gerry. She stood silently for a moment, lips pursed as if holding back her words by force. “It’s not enough, you know,” she said finally. “You can help a few, but the pain goes on. We row against the tide. That child … she’ll probably end up like her father someday.” She left without another word.

Gerry watched her friend go, wishing more than ever that she could tell her the truth. It’s going to be okay, Cynthia. You don’t realize it, but the work we do prepares the way for the Last Age. No child will go hungry, no woman will suffer, and the sinners will finally meet their just ends.

She tossed the cigarette butt into the can, then took off her fedora with its shiny badge and placed it carefully on a shelf. Then she drew her necklace from beneath the collar of her shirt and rolled the gold cross between her fingers.

“Speed the day of Your return, my Lord,” she prayed, her voice no more than a whisper in the empty room. “Your children need You.”

Then she reached for the round medallion that hung beside the cross. Though she knew her fellow syndexioi would never allow it, she longed to share the medallion’s meaning with Cynthia. The policewoman would make a mighty soldier in the army of the Lord. But her father had made it clear long ago—the Mystery admitted only one woman at a time. That honor—that burden—fell to her alone. Still, it felt wrong withholding the truth when the knowledge could bring her friend such comfort.

“I vow to do everything in my power to bring about the Resurrection in our lifetime,” she murmured, squeezing the medallion of Saint Theodosius. “So that Cynthia and I, and all the others who risk everything to bring peace to our world, might finally enjoy the fruits of our labors.”

She closed her eyes and reached for her God. He didn’t always respond. But today He granted her a fleeting vision: a city at rest, the sunlight warming the towers of steel, while women and men, their children at their side, all walked in the same direction. They filled the streets, eager but patient. And finally, at the water’s edge, He appeared. More beatific than in any painting or crucifix. His smile as gentle as a summer breeze, His face as radiant as the sun itself. He wore no crown of thorns, for all suffering had come to an end. Instead, a seven-rayed diadem graced His brow. The wind lifted His cloak on its breath—red on the outside, star-spangled blue on the inside—and the people sighed in awe. Gerry stood at His side, and her father stood near, his face full of pride. And there, amid the crowd, walked Cynthia. The lines erased from her forehead, the frown banished from her lips. She looked up to Gerry and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

Selene lifted her finger from the woman’s temple and blinked her way back into the present, into her own consciousness. Captain Hansen’s gray eyes stared into hers, wide awake.

“Your heart has always been true, hasn’t it, Gerry?” she asked quietly.

The captain’s face remained stone, but tears pooled in her eyes.

“The Pater sent you visions, too,” Selene continued. “Not memories of your past, but dreams of the future. You saw a man with a cloak of stars and a rayed crown, leading the people into an age of peace.”

“Mithras,” Theo said from behind her.

Selene kept her gaze fixed on Gerry and shook her head slowly. “No. Jesus.”

She heard Theo’s quick intake of breath. “‘The God of Three Aspects,’ that’s what the Pater called him.”

Selene nodded. Mithras and more than Mithras, Prometheus had said. She hadn’t understood why until this moment.

“The cult’s not trying to resurrect Mithras,” Theo continued, his voice hushed. “Or Jesus. They’re resurrecting Jesus as Mithras. To them, they’re one and the same. Different aspects of the same god. Like a new trinity.”

“An old trinity,” Gerry snapped before turning her face aside and blinking away her tears. “Do not ask me to betray the Host. I won’t do it.”

Selene would not relent. “This Host killed a brother before his sister’s eyes.”

“We killed Pretenders.”

“You killed a brother before his sister’s eyes,” she repeated. “You killed my brother, Gerry.”

The policewoman’s entire body began to tremble with repressed emotion. Look how hard she fights not to weep. Not to scream. We are very alike, this warrior and I.

Deep within herself, as deep as the old memories of working the city streets with young Gerry at her side, Selene found a sliver of empathy. Despite everything the captain had done, she couldn’t help seeing Gerry as a victim of her own rectitude. If she’d been a little more compromising, a little less committed to saving her city, perhaps she would’ve seen how unforgivable her actions had been. Another way we’re the same, Selene realized. As a goddess, I killed with impunity, always convinced that my brand of justice was the only right one. How many innocents died at my hands because I was protecting the honor of the Olympians? How many have died at the hands of Gerry’s cult because they were doing the same for their god?

Selene’s smooth fingers wrapped around the woman’s arthritic ones. The lines across the cop’s knuckles told the years like the tally marks of a prisoner in a cell.

“You wanted to share it with me—this dream of yours—but you kept your secret well,” Selene said, finding a gentleness she thought had burned away with Apollo’s death. “I had a secret of my own … you know that now. You probably knew it from the moment I appeared this fall, pretending to be my own daughter. Is that how the cult found me? Through you? And from me, you found my brother Dash, and from him, the others were easy to trace.”

Gerry didn’t respond, but her lips tightened in assent.

“Let there be no more secrets between us, Gerry.” Selene took a long breath then let the truth pour forth—a cleansing stream to sweep away the dam between them. “I came into creation as Artemis. A daughter, a sister, a huntress. A woman. Others might not have seen me that way—I did not dress like a girl, I desired no children, I refused to sew or spin or bow to the pleasure of others. And in all the ages since then, for all the hundred names I’ve borne, I’ve sought to protect my people, my women, from those who would deny them those rights. Rarely have I found a companion in that quest. Once I ran beside nymphs with long black tresses and arrows soaring, and our hounds bayed in concert with our own cries—announcing the approach of justice, trumpeting the joy of the hunt. My nymphs faded away long ago … but you reminded me of them.” She gripped Gerry’s hand tighter. “So brave, so clear, so stubborn. The years have aged you, my friend, but your heart is still strong. Open it to me, as once you wished to. I promise that this time—I’ll listen.”

Gerry turned her head to Selene and held her gaze for a long moment. Then she slowly withdrew her hand, eased her way onto her elbows, and propped herself against the headboard. She winced as she moved. An old woman, with decades of cigarettes in her ragged voice. “The Holy Order of the Soldiers of Theodosius.”

“What?”

“The H.O.S.T. The Host. That’s what we are. But like so many things in our world, the name carries more than one meaning.”

“The bread of the Eucharist,” Theo interjected quietly. “The body of Christ. And the Heavenly Host, the angelic army. It’s all those things to you.”

Gerry nodded. “Mithras himself, whom others call Jesus—but who is both in one—visited the Emperor Theodosius and commanded him to protect the secret rituals, the true rituals of the original church, while his soldiers destroyed the remnants of paganism that still fouled the land. Once the Pretenders are wiped from the earth, and only then, can He rise again to walk among us and bring about the End of Days. The Last Age. We’d thought it a futile task—one that had gone unfulfilled for nearly two thousand years—until I learned Prometheus could die. His death foretold that the end of our mission was at hand—you could all be killed. Then, when I found you again this fall, and I told the Pater about the Classicist Cult’s rituals, he realized we could use something similar to bring back the true God. He said that if we combined the ancient rituals of Mithras with the death of the Pretenders, we could complete both our tasks at once.” She looked hopeful as she reached a plaintive hand to her friend. “Please, you of all people know the evils that haunt our world. The poverty, the violence, the chaos. When the Last Age begins, it will all stop. Is that not worth a few deaths, Diana?”

“I’m not Diana.” Selene backed away. “Don’t call me that. I’m no longer the leader of nymphs who haunted the forest. I’m no longer a Moon Goddess. I’m not even Cynthia Forrester anymore, full of helpless rage. I’m just Selene DiSilva. A woman whose heart has broken once already tonight.” She stood up, staring down at this woman she thought she’d known. This woman she’d called friend. “I did not think you would be the one to break it all over again.”

“You sure you should leave Hansen untied?” Theo asked as Selene closed the bedroom door behind them. “She wants to kill us all—she made that clear.”

“No, she doesn’t. She wants her Mithras alive. We’re just collateral damage.”

“But why trust her not to run?”

“Because she doesn’t have anywhere to run to. Her Pater knows she took you and Gabriela out of the planetarium. She might’ve been willing to see me die, but she tried to save two innocent mortals—would’ve succeeded, too, if you hadn’t figured out who she was. They won’t forgive her for that.”

“And you won’t forgive her for saying Apollo’s death was justified.”

“No, I won’t.” There was little anger in her voice—only sadness. “She’s like me,” Selene went on. “Broken. Twisted. She thinks she’s doing the right thing. And because of that, she won’t tell us anything more—not if we tortured her or begged or threatened.”

“You’re not broken,” Theo began, although he wondered if the words were true.

The doorbell rang.

They both froze. Selene’s right arm twitched as she tried to reach for a weapon that wasn’t there with a hand that didn’t work. Before Theo could look for something to defend them with, Gabriela burst out of the kitchen, Hansen’s gun raised, with Ruth close on her heels.

“Who the fuck is that?” Gabi demanded, pointing the captain’s Glock variously at Selene, the front door, and the bedroom.

Selene rounded on her. “Give me that before you get someone killed!”

“I saved your life with this gun!” Gabi shouted back. “So don’t tell me what I should—”

“I know how to use it, and I’m the one they’re after so—”

“You can’t even lift your right arm. So unless ambidexterity is another one of your secrets—”

“Quiet!” Ruth’s urgent hiss silenced them all. “It’s probably just my super or something. Everyone calm down.” She walked with surprising poise to the door, gesturing for the others to get out of sight.

“Wait, Ruth!” Theo whispered. Unlike Gabi, he didn’t have a weapon. And unlike Selene, he couldn’t knock a man unconscious with a single kick. But it was his fault Ruth had gotten herself into this. His fault a homicidal cultist with who-knew-what divine weapon and a seriously confused take on religion might be standing in her hallway. He grabbed a heavy glass vase off an end table and moved to stand just inside the door.

Ruth gave him a thankful nod and pressed an eye to the peephole. Then she turned to Gabriela, who was unsuccessfully hiding behind a narrow pole lamp, her gun still drawn. “Didn’t you say something about a hot guy with skinny legs and a serious facial hair problem?”