“I still think we need a better plan,” Flint grumbled when they returned to Saint Peter’s Square that night.
“We don’t have that luxury,” Selene insisted.
They’d debated it all day. They had fewer than forty-eight hours before the solstice. If they tried to break in tonight and it didn’t work, at least they’d get another shot tomorrow.
“I still think we should wait for Scooter,” Flint insisted. “He’s a smarmy little bastard, but we could use his help.”
As the God of Thieves, Scooter Joveson had a talent for breaking into locked places.
“You tried to call him, right?”
“Voice mail every time.”
“So he’s either taking one of his spa days, stuck somewhere on a plane, or locked away in bed with his latest starlet.”
“He’s not a movie producer anymore.”
“You think tech moguls don’t sleep with hot celebrities?” she scoffed. “Regardless, we don’t have time to wait for him to get here from Los Angeles. It’s got to be tonight.”
“Then I should go in with you.” He gave her that look again. The same one he’d been casting her way all day when he thought she wasn’t looking. The “maybe I should trap her inside one of my famous nets and make sure she can’t get away” look. But the Smith was nothing if not smart. He knows that the minute he allows his love for me to devolve into overprotectiveness, I’ll run.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, a remonstrance more than an assurance. “I’m not planning on any fighting. I’m just going to sneak in, find where they’re holding Father, and get him out. It’ll all be over before sunrise.”
She patted the bulge in her pocket, where she’d stored the modified two-way radio Flint had given her. Unlike a cell phone, it transmitted super-low-frequency waves that could travel underground. “I’ll signal when I’ve got Father, and you just make sure you’re back here in the plaza to create another distraction so we can get back out without being seen by the guards.” She found strength in saying the words aloud. After so many futile months, she would finally rescue Zeus. She felt, for the first time since she’d left New York, like herself again. Like She Who Helps One Climb Out.
“Once Father’s safe,” she went on, “then we can deal with Saturn.”
Flint just frowned beneath his beard.
“Hey, they also call me She Who Works in Secret, right?” She tried for a cocky smile.
“And Lady of Clamors, don’t forget. What if you set off an alarm?”
She waved aside his concerns. “I’ll be in and out before they even notice I’m there.”
But Flint was right. No matter her many relevant epithets, their plan was weak. Usually, he cooked up intricate strategies involving ingenious mechanical inventions and a thorough understanding of probabilities—that’s how they’d traced their last Mithraist to the ancient town of Ostia. For Flint, He of Many Arts and Skills, such tactics were second nature. But Selene had always been the Goddess of the Wild; on the hunt, she relied on reflexes alone to avoid the boar’s tusk and drive her javelin home. Tonight, they’d do things her way.
She gestured for Flint to head toward the southern end of the plaza, where the Swiss Guards stood watch at a broad archway leading to the rest of Vatican City. The two men on duty in their long velvet tunics and purple-and-yellow-striped hose held halberds—tall poles topped with wickedly curved blades. Despite the silly clothes and anachronistic weaponry, the Swiss Guards had trained for over five hundred years to defend the Vatican. Selene had little doubt they carried more advanced weapons out of sight, just like her.
She wore the most nondescript outfit she owned—loose pants with plenty of pockets, a dark T-shirt, and, of course, a backpack with her dismantled bow safely stowed inside. She tried to look like a tourist, pulling out her phone to take photos of the colonnade and the saints overhead.
After a few moments, she moved her phone so the camera recorded over her shoulder, where Flint hobbled toward the guardhouse. The soldiers stood at attention, their eyes straight ahead. Flint moved far more slowly than usual, leaning heavily on his crutches. He, too, had dressed for the evening, eschewing his usual somber clothing and long pants for a tourist’s Italian flag shirt and shorts that displayed his withered legs.
When he’d emerged from his bedroom that evening, Selene had to bite back a gasp of dismay. She hadn’t seen his bare legs since the days when gods and men wore togas. She’d forgotten just how misshapen and pitiable they were. His thighs were barely thicker than his skeletal shins. His knobby right knee buckled inward and his left crooked outward in a mockery of a classical statue’s elegant contrapposto. Thick hair grew from the hem of his shorts to his ankles, making him look more like a wretched beast than a man—much less like a god. Flint had caught her staring.
“Thank you,” she’d said quickly, feeling her own face warm in response to his obvious embarrassment, “for helping with this. I know you bear no love for my father.”
His eyes held hers as he said, “That’s true.” He didn’t say more. He didn’t need to. She knew what he was thinking. I bear love for you. So much that I would reveal all my weaknesses upon your request. That was the sort of love few men and fewer immortals could offer.
Am I an utter fool not to grab it while I can? Selene wondered as she watched him limp closer to the guardhouse. What am I waiting for? I don’t feel for him the way I did for you, Theo, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe love isn’t supposed to be as joyful as ours was. Maybe it’s supposed to be serious and profound and just a little bit tortured.
Flint groaned loudly and started muttering prayers in Latin. Her keen hearing recognized the Lord’s Prayer; she wondered when he’d picked up that bit of knowledge. Taking her cue, she meandered toward the granite meridian embedded in the ground.
A few feet away from the Swiss Guards, Flint collapsed to the ground with a grunt. He raised one hand heavenward as if imploring Jesus and rubbed his skinny legs with the other. When the guards didn’t move, Flint moaned more loudly and pulled a conspicuous silver crucifix from beneath his collar. He attempted to get to his feet but fell clumsily back to the ground, now clutching at his chest.
“Please,” he gasped. “I need a doctor.”
Selene couldn’t help a small, amazed smile. She and Flint had both counted themselves exceptions to their generally histrionic family; she hadn’t expected him to do so well with the theatrics.
Sure enough, the guards put aside their halberds and rushed forward to help the fallen man, crouching beside him on the pavement. The few other nighttime tourists turned toward the commotion, leaving Selene temporarily unobserved.
From her backpack, she withdrew a crowbar. This particular entrance to the mithraeum, she knew, must be ceremonial. No way the syndexioi can pop in and out of Saint Peter’s Square on a regular basis without anyone noticing, she thought. Which means this plaque isn’t meant to be easily moved by human hands.
She held the crowbar close to her leg to hide it from casual observation and slipped the end into a slight gap around the slab’s circumference. Good thing I’m not human.
Repressing a groan of effort, she threw her weight against the tool. At first, it seemed the bar would bend before the stone gave way. Then, with the sucking pop of an opened jar, the marble lifted an inch, then another. She risked a glance toward the Swiss Guards. They were busy struggling to get Flint to his feet—not an easy task with a 250-pound man actively resisting their assistance.
She pressed the crowbar to the paving stones, secured it with her boot, then spun the massive disc to the side. A narrow, dark shaft yawned before her. With a speed no mortal could manage, she slipped inside, braced her feet against the sides of the shaft, and reached overhead to replace the marble.
Blackness.
She froze, suspended within the open shaft, hands and feet holding her steady as she listened to the sounds above. No running footsteps, no cries of alarm.
Relieved that her excavations had gone unnoticed, she turned her attention to her surroundings. Beneath her hands, cold cement.
Scooting gingerly along the circumference, she searched for a ladder with her hands and feet. Guess they don’t want visitors, she decided when her search failed. So either I’m right that this is a purely symbolic entrance, or I’ve just crawled into a sewage pipe.
She peered futilely into the black void beneath her boots, wondering how deep it went. She dared support herself with just her legs so she could reach into her pocket for a headlamp.
In the light’s beam, she saw a dry, concrete floor below her—no wider than a dinner plate from her perch so far above. She let go of the wall, shooting down the shaft with only her boot soles to slow her descent.
She slammed to the ground in a crouch, the smell of burnt rubber wrinkling her nose. Before her, a tunnel led southward. She started down it, adjusting the light more securely on her forehead and readying her bow and arrows. Her quiver held mostly wooden shafts, but she’d packed three god-forged golden arrows as well, the only kind that could actually kill her divine grandfather. Rescuing Zeus was her first priority, but if she happened to run into the Titan on the way out, she wouldn’t waste the opportunity.
After a few hundred feet, the tunnel made a sharp right turn, blocking her view of the path ahead. She stepped forward more cautiously and rounded the corner, only to see the tunnel turn again ahead of her. Even as it grew more labyrinthine, the corridor widened. A section of masonry wall interrupted the smooth cement. Old bricks in shades of red and yellow, uneven and chipped, as if made by hand centuries—or millennia—before.
Farther on, she passed another patch of bricks below the fragment of a marble cornice. The floor beneath her feet changed, too, from poured cement to flat paving stones. I’m walking on the remains of an ancient Roman street, she realized.
By the time she’d turned three more times, the Huntress—who could navigate through the thickest forest by the feel of the wind alone—had completely lost her bearings in this underground maze.
She had no idea how much time had passed, but she felt sure she’d been wandering the tunnels for at least an hour. She began to long for a man with a gun to show up around the next corner—at least she’d have something to shoot at.
She got a bull instead.