Chapter 42

HURLER OF THE JAVELIN

Icy water dripped onto Theo’s cheek. He woke with a start, surfacing from a dream of murdered women only to plunge into a waking nightmare. Handcuffed and gagged, he lay on damp stone, his pulse racing. Another cold drop struck his face. Rolling out of the way, he realized his captors had tied a rope around his ankles and secured it to an iron ring hammered into the rock wall. He could only move a few feet in either direction.

Looking around at his stone prison, Theo couldn’t help thinking, See, Brandman, they may not have used it for the Asklepia, but there is a cave in Manhattan. At least, he hoped he was still in Manhattan. The only thing worse than being kidnapped would be being kidnapped and spending the night in Staten Island.

Mortared stones plugged most of the tall, narrow entrance, but a low opening admitted a thin sunbeam. They must’ve knocked me unconscious, and I’ve been passed out all day, he realized. Fighting the sense of growing panic, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. Birds chirped nearby, and he thought he could hear the lapping of water. Through the cave’s mouth, he glimpsed the bottom of a narrow staircase hewn into a rock face, descending into muddy, leaf-strewn ground. A cave in a park then, he surmised. He opened his mouth to scream for help, then remembered the duct tape across his lips. He tried shouting anyway, but only a weak moan emerged. He beat the ground with the heels of his shoes, but the muffled thuds would never carry. Theo struggled against the metal handcuffs and the ropes around his ankles, but to no avail.

Finally, exhaustion and fear left him motionless, helplessly watching as the sunlight crept across the ground, turning from yellow to gold to orange. When it disappeared entirely, the cave plunged into twilight. The cult will come for me soon, he realized. No use calling for help any longer. Sane New Yorkers didn’t wander in parks after dark. Only deranged classicists bent on torturing their least favorite colleague.

His fellow professors’ roles started to fall into place. Bill Webb wanted to lead the cops astray. That’s why he’d worked so hard to implicate Theo. Nate Balinski must have learned how to brew kykeon from Dennis during one of their old grad school parties. Fritz Mossburg worked as a part-time consultant at the Met; he would have had access to the stolen vases. His absence from Helen’s memorial service now made sense—he must have been the initiate shot in the stomach at Rockefeller Center. Likely he was now dead, hence the presence of only four men at the Liberty Theater. Martin Andersen—awkward, harmless Martin—had used the shoes he’d borrowed from Theo to make the footprints at Helen’s crime scene. Any one them could’ve gotten Theo’s hair off the back of his desk chair and planted it in the hospital basement. And Everett? Passionate, loving, charismatic Everett? He had played it all perfectly—luring Theo right into his clutches. But why? Why would any of them join the cult in the first place?

Theo leaned back against the damp wall, slowly thumping his head against the stone. If I knock hard enough, I could knock myself senseless again. Maybe then I won’t notice when they kill me. Would that be better? Had Helen known she was about to die? He realized suddenly that Brandman never told him whether she was already dead when they cut her apart. Will Everett kill me first? Or cut off my cock while I watch? Burn it maybe. A sacrifice to the gods. That would be more in keeping with the tradition of the Mysteries, I suppose. Even facing death, he was still trying to figure out the scholarly angle. He laughed at himself, the sound a choked, muffled cough through the duct tape. Someone watching would’ve thought he’d lost his mind. At least laughing’s better than pissing myself with fear.

Footsteps outside the cave. He crawled forward on his knees and elbows as far as the rope would allow, but could see nothing in the darkness except the faint outline of the narrow entrance, a dark slightly less chthonic than that within the cave. Be like Selene, he thought, HEAR! Yes, he could hear more than one set of footsteps descending the stone stairs. Three, maybe, he wasn’t sure. Slow, deliberate, loud. Not Selene, then. How absurd that I still think she’s going to rescue me. She has no idea where I am.

The bright circle of a flashlight beam skittered across the bottom of the step and into the cave, seeking him out. He squeezed his eyes shut as the light found his face, holding up his bound hands to block the sudden glare.

“Still alive, then,” said a voice he recognized as Nate Balinski’s. “Hasn’t died from fear, at least.”

Theo lowered his hands and blinked away the colored haloes in his vision until four hooded figures materialized before him. Three wore identical wooden masks crowned with false black hair. On the night of the Pompe, they’d worn the face of Comedy. Tonight, Tragedy’s grotesque, twisted frown stared out malevolently from beneath their hoods.

Theo could tell one mystes from the other by their bearing: stocky Nate, gangly Andersen, and stooped Webb. Everett, of course, towered over them all in his purple robes. Once again, he wore the mask of an invincible warrior hero. Fitting, Theo thought grimly, since despite limping off after I stabbed him with a broken bow two nights ago, he shows no signs of injury.

Everett squatted in front of Theo and removed the gag.

As soon as he could move his lips, Theo demanded to know where Gabriela was.

Nate Balinski spoke up. “Who knows? We left her at the theater.”

“If she’s hurt…” Theo began.

“You should be worrying more about yourself,” came Everett’s cool response.

“You don’t need to wear those masks, you know,” said Theo. “I know who you are.”

“Very smart, Theo-bore, as usual,” Nate said, leaving his mask in place.

“How could you? Everett—you of all people. How could you kill Helen?”

“I had no choice. She had a role to play, just as you do.” Everett’s dark eyes glinted behind the mask.

“Oh? What role is that?”

Everett chuckled. “You’re a Makarites, Theo. Didn’t you know?”

“A what?”

“And that makes you the best bait I could ask for.”

“If you mean Selene—”

“The woman with him at Rockefeller Center?” interrupted Bill Webb. “The one who killed Fritz?”

“That’s one thing our genius here never figured out,” said Everett, rising to his feet. He turned to his mystai. “She’s not really a woman.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” said Nate. “Did you see the legs on that chick?”

“No, she’s not a woman at all… she’s a god. And so am I. Or at least, I will be.” Everett pulled off his mask and flashed Theo a dazzling smile. “As soon as we kill our Corn King.”

Phoebe Hautman first visited the sacred cave in the middle of Manhattan in the midst of a blizzard in 1643. She’d been hunting along the edges of the lake when the winds kicked up. The biting cold pierced through her leather leggings and fur cloak, chilling her nearly impervious skin. The snow wouldn’t kill her, but it would make for a deeply unpleasant night. She walked along the shore of a narrow cove, looking for shelter. That’s when she saw the firelight beckoning through the tall, narrow cleft in the rock. She snuck to the edge of the cave entrance and peered inside.

A dozen Lenni Lenape sat huddled around their fire in a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder. Although Phoebe couldn’t understand their chant, she felt a familiar, tingling tug that told her they sang to the aspect of Kishelemukong who helped them in the hunt, begging for sustenance in the depths of winter. Slowly, she entered the cave like an answer to their prayers, holding out the carcass of a white fox as an offering. They took her in without question. If they thought it strange that a white woman dressed and hunted as a man, they didn’t show it. They had long ago accepted the inscrutability of Europeans.

This was a holy place, their shaman told her in his broken combination of Dutch and English. Close to the heart of the Earth, its narrow opening like a woman’s cleft, its wide chamber like a mother’s womb.

Phoebe returned often to the cave, even after the last Lenni Lenape had left the island. Eventually, Dianne Delia made the same pilgrimage to sit in the last ancient sacred space in Manhattan. When the city leaders built Central Park in the 1860s, the “Indian Cave” became a popular tourist attraction. Decades later, Officer Melissa DuBois patrolled it regularly. In 1929 alone, the NYPD arrested 335 men for unwanted groping in the cave’s shadowy depths. In part due to the patrolwomen’s protests that the place had become a magnet for perversion, the city walled up the cave in the 1930s and removed it from maps of the park. Now, few people knew it had ever existed.

The Huntress hadn’t been to the cave in eighty years, but she remembered where it was, at the tip of a narrow cove on the north end of the lake, just south of Central Park’s Great Lawn. Not far from the Delacorte amphitheater. Right where Orion’s sword would fall. The constellation would be complete.

The sun had set by the time Selene entered the tangle of woods above the Lake. The place was a favorite destination for dog walkers during the day, but this late at night, with the chill of autumn in the air, she had it to herself. She sprinted down the curving paths, hurrying toward the two men who loved her.

Barricades labeled “Restoration in Progress. Please Keep Out” blocked her way. Orion wasn’t taking any chances that a passerby might stumble upon his ceremony. She vaulted the barrier and continued to run until she saw a glimmer of moonlight reflected off the cove to her left. There, nearly hidden by the surrounding trees, rough stone steps descended a steep hill into darkness.

Javelin ready, Selene crept down the stairs. Sure enough, someone had removed the bottom portion of the stones blocking the cave entrance. She stopped with her toes brushing against the square of firelight pouring from the opening. I am no wild girl tonight, she reminded herself. I will not rush headlong into the fray. With only her javelin and kitchen knives, she’d be vulnerable to attack, and she couldn’t predict Orion’s reaction to her appearance. He’d almost killed her at Rockefeller Center, yet he could not have forgotten their love, any more than she had. What would it be like to look once more upon his face? To catch his dark gaze in her own? Her heart raced at the thought. She knew Orion deserved to die for the murders he committed, but for once, she ignored the imperatives of her own code. If she could forgive her brother for his crimes, didn’t she owe Orion at least that much?

The voices of the mystai rose through the cave’s mouth. “Legomena,” they chanted. Things Said—the first of the Unspeakable rites that marked the Mystery’s climax. In Helen’s description, the hierophant told the tale of Persephone’s abduction. But not tonight, Selene thought, remembering Dennis’s explanation of how to steal a cult. Tonight Orion will tell our story. As shadows swept past her, she could imagine the mystai dancing in a circle, masked faces awful in the firelight, eyes bright as they waited for the epiphany.

“They say that Orion was of gigantic stature and born of the earth.” Her lover’s voice, deep and warm. The Hunter. “But Pherecydes says that he was a son of Poseidon and Euryale. Poseidon bestowed on him the power of striding across the sea, but he was killed by the arrows of the Delian twins, and died with a wish upon his lips.” Hearing him now, Selene felt an almost irresistible pull. For a moment, she imagined rushing into his arms. Surely, he wouldn’t kill Theo if she asked him not to.

“But even as Orion’s spirit took its place among the stars, blue-haired Poseidon took pity upon his son and sent the waves to carry his body to his watery lair. With a blast of the triton, Poseidon granted his son his heart’s desire. Immortal he would rise from the sea. Immortal he would walk through the woods. Immortal he would seek his revenge upon his enemies. Now he shares the gift, bestowing immortality on those who follow him. You, my mystai, will grow strong by my side.”

An incredulous guffaw broke the rhythm of the chant.

Selene’s heart skittered. Theo.

“This is the fabulous Mystery?” His hoarse voice was nearly unrecognizable, but his sarcasm was unmistakable. “It’s plagiarism. He stole the beginning of that from Apollodorus, for God’s sake.”

“Shut up, Schultz.” Not Orion’s voice now, but one of the mystai. His speech was slightly slurred. They’ve already drunk the kykeon, she realized.

“I get it, Bill,” Theo went on, undeterred. “Everett promised you he’d cure your cancer with his little ‘immortality ritual.’ And you, Martin—did you think he could bring back your dead wife? Nate, you’ve always been an arrogant prick, so why not make yourself even more powerful than you already think you are? But surely you all don’t believe the lies he’s telling you!”

“Theo.” Orion was deadly calm. “If you interrupt the ritual again, I will be forced to put the gag back on.”

“Oh, sorry, don’t let me interrupt. This is fascinating, really.”

“I’m sure you won’t be bored once it’s your turn to participate.”

“Yippee. Do I get a mask, too? Maybe something a bit more flattering—I don’t pull off the dour tragedy thing that well. And of course, you’ll have to teach me the dance steps. Unless my participation is purely sacrificial, in which case learning choreography seems like a waste of my last moments on earth.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Orion with a hint of his old charm. “You’ve been essential to my plans from the beginning. You made the perfect suspect, the aggrieved ex-boyfriend—thank you for distracting the police all this time. You kept them off our tail just long enough to reach the end of the ritual. It almost backfired, of course—we couldn’t let you actually get taken off to jail. But a well-timed call to Captain Hansen solved that problem. You’re welcome, by the way. Of course, the cops will be of no concern after we finish with you tonight—they won’t be able to hurt me. No one will.”

“Try untying me, and we’ll see if you’re right. I—” Theo’s voice cut short, devolving into muffled protest. Orion had heard enough.

Once again, the Hunter took up the chant. “Tonight we sing of love found, then lost, then found once more. Tonight we sing of death defied and power restored. Tonight we sing of revenge.”

Theo gave another smothered protest.

“I said do not speak!” Orion cried. Selene heard him drag something—or someone—across the ground, heard his indrawn breath and then the dull clap of flesh striking flesh. Theo moaned. Another strike, this one on bone. Then the thud of a fist punching soft tissue. With each strike, Selene’s dream of rejoining her Hunter slipped farther out of sight, banished by her growing rage.

“ENOUGH.” She ducked through the entrance, stepped into the light, and hurled the javelin.

She’d meant to stop him, to wound him, but as Orion tumbled forward, she saw the weapon had pierced clean through his heart.

In giving the Hurler of Javelins back her unerring aim, the Hunter had doomed himself to die at her hands.