“What are you doing?” Orion demanded, shielding his eyes from the glare of Selene’s divine radiance. “We have to complete the ritual!”
“I am the Protector of the Innocent.” She moved to stand by Theo, glaring at each of the mystai in turn, daring them to challenge her. “Saving him is my birthright.”
Orion stepped back as if struck. His face slackened with the same look of disbelief he’d given her when she thrust an arrow through his throat on the shore of the sapphire sea. The same look she’d spent so long trying to forget. “You don’t… you can’t…”
“You made me choose. I choose him.”
Orion shook his head, incredulous. “You only want him because he’s a Makarites. You can’t resist the allure of a mortal who remembers the gods.”
“No. Whether he is Blessed or not, I choose Theo. I choose his brilliance. I choose his empathy. I choose his laughter.”
“But he’s dust. Have you forgotten? Every second of his life is spent hurtling toward death, his body disintegrating even as you watch. His mind is mortal, finite. Even as a Makarites, he’s unable to comprehend your true glory. That’s what you choose over me?”
“There was a time I would’ve chosen you over anyone, anything,” she said, unable to keep the regret from her voice. “Why didn’t you come to me then? Why wait for so long?”
“I wanted to come to you in my full glory, not a pale shadow of the hero I’d once been. I knew you’d never condone the killing of innocents, and I couldn’t let you stop me before my transformation was complete. Maybe before, in the old days, you would’ve overlooked the murders, but I know how you’ve changed, even if you don’t.” The pleading left his voice, replaced my something hard, accusatory. “You’ve grown soft. You’ve come to care for those you protect. Still, I thought that if I waited until you could see for yourself the power I could bestow, then you wouldn’t be able to say no.”
“Then you didn’t really know me at all.”
“But I would give you an eternity of power.” He opened his arms as if expecting her embrace. “How can you resist that?”
“I’ve already had it,” said Selene, unmoved. “I don’t need it any longer.” Orion dropped his arms. His sword hung loosely at his side. Leave here, she begged him silently. Disappear back into my memories, where you will stay forever beautiful and brave. Let me forget the monster you’ve become. Let me finally find happiness without you.
Then Orion lifted his head, and she knew with a sinking heart that the fight had just begun. No longer was he the yearning lover of old, nor the fierce companion of her youth, but a creature neither god nor man, a monster wracked by millennia of bitterness and resentment, disappointment and fury. “So be it.” He turned to his mystai and said very calmly, “Kill them both.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Martin Anderson lurch awkwardly forward with his knife outstretched. In a flash, she punched him in the jaw with her right hand and ripped his knife away with her left. Martin stumbled backward, moaning and spitting blood. She brandished the knife at the other two mystai, who froze in place. Only then did she allow herself to look at Theo. Her divine radiance cast a cold light across his bruised face, but his gaze was still warm. Despite the duct tape silencing his words, she could read the message clearly in his eyes: Whatever you’re planning, I’m with you. Just lead the way.
“Don’t just stand there,” Orion commanded his acolytes. “Complete the sacrifice!”
Nate lunged toward Selene, who sidestepped him easily, then knocked the knife from his hand with a well-placed kick. At the same time, Theo ducked under Bill Webb’s slash, then came up to head-butt his chairman soundly in the forehead. Neither of the mystai took long to recover, not with their kykeon-enhanced strength. She tensed for a renewed attack. Let them come, she thought. They are mere mortals against a goddess.
Then a muscled arm snaked around her chest from behind, pinning her in place. “You can’t stop this,” Orion hissed in her ear. He held his sword to her neck. “Now drop the knife, my faithless lover, and watch my mystai complete their work.” She ignored him, slamming her booted heel into his shin and twisting in his grasp. Implacable, he swung his sword, striking at her knife and knocking it from her grip. With the flat of his blade, he forced her head toward Theo.
The mystai had him in their grip again. Handcuffed and bound, her friend had no hope of fending off all three of them at once. A cold fist of dread seized her heart, and she realized that despite all the danger of the past week, she’d always believed, deep inside, that she could protect him from harm. Even when he’d been kidnapped, she’d known somehow she would find him, save him, no matter what it took. And now he stood only a few feet away, and though the burnt offerings had granted her more strength than she’d known in years, she was helpless to prevent what was about to happen.
She continued to thrash desperately against Orion’s embrace, heedless of the sword’s kiss on her throat. “Go on! Kill me now. Make me the sacrifice if you must.” But Orion just stood behind her, wordless and unyielding. “You can’t, can you?” she taunted, her cries edging toward hysteria. “You’re weak, Hunter. You drug your followers. You bind your sacrifice. You lied about Helen. She didn’t go happily to her death. She fought with everything she had! And when she died, she prayed to me, never to you. She begged me to avenge her—and her prayer will not remain unanswered!” But her words were wind and Orion stone.
Martin and Nate gripped Theo by the shoulders while Bill Webb, a red welt on his forehead, held a knife aloft. He looked to his hierophant for the final command.
Theo’s eyes sought Selene’s. Even now, she knew, he held out hope that she could rescue him. My brilliant professor—you will die a fool, believing in a goddess who doesn’t deserve your faith. Then Orion nodded to his acolyte.
Webb thrust the knife into Theo’s heart.
A high-pitched keen like a hawk in distress reverberated through the cave. An instant later, Selene realized she was screaming. Orion released her and she fled to Theo’s side, dragging his body into her arms. His blood seeped through her clothes and pooled against her skin.
She ripped the gag from his mouth and tore the cypress wreath from his head. He looked up at her, his green eyes still bright.
“You can’t die,” Selene said. “I won’t let you.”
Blood bubbled through Theo’s words. “Just try to stop me.”
She kissed him. Through the blood. Through her tears.
He smiled. A faint shadow of the dimpled grin she knew so well. “Worth it… for that.”
She kissed him until his lips went still and his body grew limp. Only then, as he lay lifeless in her arms, did she allow herself to admit the dreams she’d had for him. I’d kiss you beneath the stars, and we’d swap stories of the constellations, she thought, brushing a lock of hair from his eyes. You’d take me to the movies, but I’d watch you more often than the screen, loving the way you smiled with delight. She kissed the corner of his mouth. We’d climb mountains and swim in cold streams. You’d learn to enjoy it, and I’d learn to laugh as easily as you do. Then, someday, when the time was right, and I knew you’d understand, I’d give you my real name. She closed his eyes, then leaned her forehead against his and whispered, “And then, perhaps, if I was very brave and you were very patient, I’d give you myself.”
A burst of laughter ripped her from her mourning. She looked up to see Nate grinning and flexing his biceps. “It worked!” he crowed. Martin took off his glasses and blinked, as if astonished that he could see without them. Bill Webb straightened and ran his hands along his throat, feeling for a tumor that was no longer there.
In that moment, the power of the sacrifice blazed through Selene’s veins, leaving her trembling in its wake. The cave grew brighter as her aura intensified. She felt the glow burning around her now, cold flames licking her skin. Very carefully, she laid Theo’s head on the stone floor. The strength she’d gained from the burnt offerings was nothing compared to the force now pulsing within her. Dimly, she recognized that something fundamental had shifted, cracked, reformed—granting her unbounded strength while, at the same time, destroying the kernel of humanity she’d both cherished and resented for millennia. She could barely feel grief at Theo’s loss, couldn’t remember the touch of his arms around her or the warmth of his smile—all those human memories had been suddenly burned away within the fiery outrage of an offended immortal. Artemis the Untamed rose to her feet and faced Theo’s killer. Webb stood, laughing and smiling with his comrades, Theo’s blood still red on his hands.
The chairman turned to face her, waving his bloody knife. “You can’t hurt us now. Look how strong we are!”
“Now it’s your turn, Artemis,” Orion said. He looked younger than he had a moment before. His muscles even larger, his skin glowing with a hint of his own divine radiance. A god indeed. “If you won’t live by my side, you won’t live at all.”
Artemis began to laugh. A crazed, piercing howl, more fury than mirth. The mystai grew silent, watching her uneasily. Orion raised his sword and took a single step toward her.
Her laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She pointed an accusing finger at her lover of old. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
She lifted her arms above her head, palms to the sky, feeling like she could ride the moon once more. “I am Artemis, the Relentless One,” she roared. “I am the Punisher, the Huntress, and no man can escape my justice.”
Orion curled his lip in disdain. “You had none of those titles until I gave them back to you.”
“They are my names and always have been.” She remembered what Theo had once told her: There was power in naming. “I am an Olympian, the Daughter of Leto.” She curled her fingers toward the ceiling of the cave, feeling the moonlight pouring on the rock above. “I am Phoebe, granddaughter of Phoibe. I am Selene, Moon Goddess.” She opened herself to the power of the heavens and felt it rush through her like a waterfall. She grabbed hold of the light and pulled. Outside, the lake itself moved with the moon’s force, sliding toward its mistress until it lapped over the shore. Water, spotted with algae and smelling of loam, flowed into the cave. Artemis felt it seep through the soles of her boots and rise to her ankles. She took a deep breath and reached for another name, another power. “I am the Mistress of Beasts and the Lady of Hounds.” Somewhere in the park, she heard a dog’s howl, dimly familiar. Then, farther away, a furious roar, rolling across the park with the rumble of thunder. The grizzly bears in the Central Park Zoo, proclaiming their fealty.
Artemis sensed the initiates moving cautiously toward her, armed once more with their bronze knives. “Remind your followers—I am the Shooter of Stags and the Huntress of the Wild Boar, but men are my favorite prey.”
“You’re alone and unarmed,” Orion scoffed. “I still have the divine sword my father gave me. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. You will fall tonight, and I will cease to be tormented by what I cannot have.”
“You forget that I am the Lady of the Starry Host.” Even now, she could feel the heavens pulsing above, giving her strength. “And you are nothing but a constellation I created.”
Orion snarled like a wounded animal. He lunged toward her, sword outstretched for a killing thrust. Then, with his blade a few scant inches from her chest, a silver arrow burst like a shooting star through the side of his stomach. He stopped in his tracks, staring down at the glimmering shaft in disbelief.
Artemis turned to see Apollo, the Bright One, standing in the mouth of the cave, Hippolyta prancing in place beside him.
“She’s also the Bearer of the Bow,” her twin said, tossing his sister a perfect golden weapon and a quiver of gleaming arrows. “And she’s not alone. Not anymore.” Beside him stood Dionysus in ripped jeans and a stained undershirt, holding his six-foot-long thyrsus, a pinecone-tipped staff covered in twirling vines. Hermes, wearing a slim linen suit and a gaily colored silk pocket square, carried no divine weapons. Just a semiautomatic pistol in each hand. And there, nearly hidden by the shadows, a barrel-chested figure with a massive hammer in one hand. He limped forward on shriveled legs, leaning heavily on a titanium crutch. Hephaestus, the Smith.
Orion gripped the arrow in his flank and fell back against the wall of the cave, his sword still held tightly in his other hand. He looked at Apollo, his face suffused with rage. “My betrayer, the Gilded God,” he hissed. “I have waited millennia for my revenge.” He dove at his old nemesis. Artemis moved to stop him, but the mystai stood in her way, knives flashing in the last remnants of the firelight.
Hippo bounded to her mistress’s defense. With a yelp, Martin swung his blade toward the lunging dog. Faster than thought, Artemis nocked a gold arrow to her new bow and sent it through the old man’s throat. Hippo toppled him to the ground, her growls drowning out his death rattle. With a desperate cry, Nate tackled Artemis from the side. She shrugged off his attack, then watched impassively as Hermes shot two bullets through his chest. Somehow, the professor managed another staggering step toward her, only to be felled by a single stroke of Hephaestus’s hammer, which broke his kneecap with a gravelly crunch. Nate splashed into the shallow water. Before he could scream, she stepped on his head, pushing his face into the water and holding it there. He thrashed and choked, but she ignored him, turning her attention instead to the battle at the cave’s entrance.
She watched Apollo fire arrow after arrow at Orion, who, despite his wound, batted the shafts from the air with the flat of his sword, forcing her twin to dodge and shoot at the same time. Unlike his sister, the Bright One had never learned to hold more than one arrow in his shooting hand at once, so Orion easily kept pace with his onslaught.
Hermes turned away from the professors to join his brother in the fray, shooting at the Hunter with reckless abandon. The first mortal-crafted bullets bounced off Orion’s newly strengthened skin harmlessly. He caught the next bullet on his sword, sending it whizzing back toward Hermes so quickly even the Many-Turning One couldn’t dodge it completely. The bullet grazed the arm of his suit, ripping a long slash through the linen. With Hermes’s weapons doing more harm than good and Dionysus useless—he merely leaned drunkenly on his thyrsus, watching the proceedings with mild amusement—Apollo would need his sister’s help to defeat Orion. But first, Theo’s killer had to die.
Bill Webb stood trembling, his back to the cave wall, staring aghast as Nate quickly drowned in three inches of water and Martin choked to death on the blood welling from the arrow shaft in his throat. The chairman looked up at Artemis, dropped his knife, and kneeled before her. Hippo sprang toward him, and Hephaestus raised his hammer, but the goddess stopped both her protectors with an upraised hand. “No. He’s mine.”
Bill’s eyes rolled from Hippo’s slavering jaws to Hephaestus’s massive weapon, then finally to Artemis’s stony face. He held up his hands in supplication. “Mercy, Gentle Goddess.”
She drew the string taut and aimed her shaft at his face. “Theo would’ve shown you mercy,” she said slowly. The force of her godhood left her memories of Theo washed out and dim, like a photo bleached by the brilliance of the sun—but she knew that much.
“Yes! For Theo! Do what he would’ve wanted!”
“For Theo. Indeed.” She sent a golden arrow through his eye and into his brain. Webb swallowed once, twice, with a familiar birdlike jerk, then collapsed.
“Moonshine!” Paul hollered. “I’m running out of arrows!”
She turned to him calmly, bemused by the panic in his voice. Didn’t he realize she was invincible? Orion didn’t stand a chance.
She narrowed her eyes, watching the pattern of Apollo’s shots. “Do you remember how we used to hunt?” she called to him. That memory, one she thought long forgotten, returned bright and sharp, even as she could no longer recall the sound of Theo’s laughter. Twin gods in chariots of gold and silver, racing across the plains of Attica, arrows flying like rain, striking down those who offended, those who defied. The ghost of a smile crossed Apollo’s face, even as he dodged another arrow ricocheting off Orion’s sword—he remembered, too.
She raised her bow and nocked a row of three arrows to the string. “Then hunt with me now.”
At her cue, Apollo shot his last silver shaft at Orion’s calves. Arms raised, the Hunter leaped upward to dodge the arrow, just as Artemis sent her own gold arrows hurtling through the cave, right into his path. One flew into his left wrist and another into his right, shot with such force that they knocked him backward and pierced the stone behind him, pinning him to the cave wall. At the same instant, the third arrow struck the bronze sword with a sharp clang, tearing it from his hands. It fell, dented and misshapen, to the ground.
Only Orion’s harsh breaths broke the sudden silence. He hung limply from the wall, his body dangling as if crucified. His feet swung weakly, looking for purchase, but the ground was just out of reach. Blood slid in torrents down his arms from the arrows in his wrists, two red rivers joining the stream still pulsing from the wound in his side.
Apollo looked from the helpless Hunter to the victorious Huntress. “You want to do it, or should I?”
Artemis stared down at the golden bow in her hands, then up to Hephaestus. His arms and chest retained their colossal girth, but gray peppered his bushy hair and deep crags marked his coarse face. He’d already moved firmly into middle age. “You made this.”
“Special order.” His voice was deep and rough—a slow tectonic attrition. “Dash said you needed it.”
She nodded slowly. “A divine weapon to kill a divinity.” She nocked an arrow to the string, but held it loosely at her side. She looked once more at Theo’s fallen form. Then, finally, she lifted her eyes to Orion. He struggled against the arrows in his wrists, trying to pull his flesh past the fletching, then gasped with pain and hung still once more. Artemis felt no pity.
She raised her bow, focusing only on the swell of muscle above his heart. Hippo barked sharply, urging her mistress on.
Orion didn’t cry out or beg for mercy. He merely shook his head, more disappointed than afraid. “You should be grateful. You’re stronger than you’ve been in millennia. You would kill the man who gave you such a gift?”
She searched her heart for any joy at what she’d become, any gratitude, any last remnants of love for the man before her, and found only emptiness. “Not a gift. A curse.”
“You’re wrong. Don’t you see?” he insisted bitterly. “I’ve given you the power to bring your sweet Theodore back to life.”
Artemis’s fingers faltered on the string. “What did you say?”
From the corner of the cave, Dionysus spluttered with laughter. “You were right, Apollo, I’m glad I came. This is finally getting interesting.” He lifted his thyrsus and pointed it at his sister. “Go on, Artemis, bring back your man, if you can. But Orion left out one teensy weensy detail. I warned you—the only way to get stronger is human sacrifice. If you reverse the sacrifice, you’ll lose all that lovely strength. And let me say, that radiance looks damn good on you, so think twice before you give it up.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Orion protested, but Hephaestus silenced him with a threatening wave of his hammer.
“Orion’s setting a trap,” Apollo begged. “He wants you vulnerable again so he can hurt you. Please, Moonshine, why would you return to weakness now that you know strength?”
“Because I finally know what real strength is,” she said, lowering her bow. “And this isn’t it. This is power, this is rage, this is Artemis… but I’ve lost Selene. I’ve lost Theo. If I can bring them back, I will. I must.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And you’re going to help me.”