Gabriela sprinted off to alert the construction workers on the Manhattan side as the Athenian army marched through the portal. The construction workers called the local police precinct. The police summoned the city’s SWAT team.
Before the Greeks could get off the bridge, the people of New York had set up a barricade of bulldozers and backhoes manned by machine-gun-toting cops. Police helicopters hovered overhead, blaring warnings over their loudspeakers and panning their floodlights over the ancient army.
That should’ve done the trick. Spears and javelins were no match for automatic rifles.
But mortals were no match for the King of the Gods.
Zeus towered two stories high even in this godless modern world. He raised his massive palm over the East River. The water swelled, domed, like a mass of iron filaments pulled by a magnet’s inexorable force.
Theo watched it all from his position in the barley field, terrified for his friends and his city, knowing that if he left now, he’d take with him Selene’s only hope of ever coming home. But when the massive dome of water broke into a tsunami-sized wave and rushed toward the bridge, Theo couldn’t stand by any longer. It was his fault Zeus had reentered the world to hunt down the rest of his family, and now New York would suffer. Selene would want Theo to defend her city, no matter the cost.
He leapt through the portal, shield and sword raised. Only divine weapons could bring down a divinity. The cops’ bullets might work against the Athenian promakhoi, but they’d be useless against an immortal.
The wave crashed against the construction machines, washing the barricade off the bridge and into the river below. A dozen police officers went with it.
My friends are up there somewhere, Theo thought, staggering to a halt. Philippe too. They could be in the water right now. Drowning. Dead. He forced himself to keep moving. No! Don’t think of that. Just end it, before anyone else gets hurt.
But even with his divinely inspired skill with the sword, Theo could never fight his way through the entire Athenian army in time to reach Zeus. Fighting’s not my strong suit anyway, he decided, yanking on Hades’ helm.
Invisible, he clambered onto the metal girder that bordered the walkway. He had none of Selene’s easy grace, but he grabbed onto one suspension cable after the other and made his way down the bridge, unseen by the promakhoi who would stop him.
Overhead, the police helicopters opened fire on Zeus.
The bullets never even made it to his skin. They hit an invisible barrier that surrounded the god and clattered to the walkway like leaden hail.
Athena’s aegis, Theo realized as he scurried the last few yards along the beam, drawing even with the god. It protects its bearer like an impenetrable cloak. But it can’t protect all his soldiers.
Even now, the cops had turned their guns on the Athenians. The promakhoi might be innocents, drafted into service by a god they dared not disobey and forced into a world they could never comprehend, but Theo felt little sympathy. They were, knowingly or not, providing Zeus with his strength. By leading his own army of worshipers, the god brought with him the ancient world—and all the power it provided.
Rank after rank of promakhoi fell beneath the wall of bullets that sheered across the bridge—and right into Theo’s path. He ducked behind his shield.
“Holy shit. I wish invisible meant invincible.” The constant hammer of bullets on bronze drowned his words, the force of the strikes nearly knocking him off the railing.
Then the barrage stopped.
He peeked over the shield’s rim. Another dark cliff of water rose above the bridge. It collapsed in a river of foam, washing the next row of police officers aside.
Zeus flicked his lightning bolt like a conductor’s wand, and a gust of wind dashed the two helicopters into each other in a ball of fire. Theo could hear the officers up ahead, screaming desperately into walkie-talkies suddenly gone dead.
Theo finally understood. God of Storms. Now God of the Sea like Poseidon. God of Messages like Hermes. Is there anything he can’t do? By trapping his family in Tartarus, Zeus had become omnipotent indeed. He’d usurped their domains without allowing their deaths to sap his own strength. How long before he withers the crops in the fields with Demeter’s power, or stops the spring from coming with Persephone’s?
No longer protected by the ranks of police, four figures huddled at the far end of the bridge with Athena’s shields linked before them.
Thunderbird. Fish. Stars. Wings. Symbols that could do nothing to protect them.
Still invisible, Theo charged toward Zeus, stumbling over the fallen bodies of the promakhoi, pushing past those still standing. The Athenians cursed in Ancient Greek and shouted in alarm as the invisible force knocked them aside, swinging their spears wildly at empty air.
Theo dodged their blows and kept running. He skidded to a halt before Zeus’s colossal sandaled foot. Raised his sword to slice the god’s Achilles tendon. Swung with all his might.
The invisible blade struck the aegis’s invisible wall and lodged there like an axe in green wood. Theo yanked on the handle, trying to free his blade. A flash of bronze drew his attention to the end of the bridge. No, no, no, he begged silently. But the fish shield rose despite his pleas. Ruth stepped out from its protection.
“What do you want from us?” she called up to the looming god. “You have your own world now. Why do you want ours?”
Zeus bent his glorious visage toward Theo’s friend. She squinted in the light from his aura, and the skin of her cheeks reddened as if burnt by the glow—but she did not look away.
“I don’t,” the god said, his voice so deep it reverberated through the sword’s grip and hummed against Theo’s hands. “I need those you harbor. Give me Artemis. Eros. Aphrodite. Only then can my new universe be complete. Only then can I be complete.”
Theo choked back a cry. If he told Zeus that he’d lied and that the Athanatoi were actually in Tartarus, this massacre would stop. Ruth, Gabi, and the whole city would be safe—and Selene would be trapped for eternity. He knew what decision his lover would demand of him, yet he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. There had to be another choice.
With a grunt of effort, he finally wrenched his sword free of the aegis and sprinted across the drenched walkway toward his friends.
“Your bow, Philippe!” He ducked behind the shields and pulled off his helmet. “It always strikes the heart, right? No matter what? Even through the aegis’s shield?”
The Athanatos looked terrified, but he nodded.
“Shoot for Zeus’s chest!”
“It won’t kill him,” Philippe said. “He’s too strong.”
Theo pointed to the face of the Gorgon emblazoned across the center of Zeus’s tasseled aegis. “But Medusa isn’t.”
Philippe swallowed and nocked a small dart to the string of his miniature bow. He stood up from behind the shield’s cover.
Zeus stepped forward eagerly, each stride buckling the wooden walkway. The eagle on his shoulder ruffled its wings and shrieked at the sight of its prey. Zeus’s hand extended toward Philippe as if to pluck him from the ground.
The God of Love took aim.
The dart shot right through the invisible barrier and struck the Gorgon’s face. Medusa’s eyes rolled back in her head. Theo wondered if Philippe’s dart would somehow give the Gorgon a heart attack, as he’d seen it do before. Instead, her stony face melted back into flesh. She gasped like a woman just woken from a nightmare. Her eyes sought the God of Love. Her expression calmed, softened, her lips parted in a sigh of desire. Every snake on her snake-laden head suddenly turned toward Philippe; their tongues darted forth to taste his scent.
Zeus ignored Medusa’s metamorphosis, taking another step toward the god who would let him rule men’s hearts.
“If you love me,” Philippe shouted to the Gorgon, “save me!”
As one, the snakes uncoiled. They darted backward beyond the aegis’s hem, sinking their fangs into Zeus’s neck, ribs, stomach.
He stumbled to a halt, tearing at the snakes, ripping them from the cloak by the handful. His eagle launched itself into the air, diving amid the snakes to snap their throats with its wicked beak. Medusa screamed in pain as her serpents died.
Zeus tore off the aegis and tossed it aside. His skin blistered and swelled beneath the snakebites, and he moaned his agony in low counterpoint to the eagle’s high-pitched shrieks.
Theo turned back to the remaining policemen on the bridge. “Now!”
They opened fire. The bullets pocked Zeus’s skin like mosquito bites. The god swatted them away. Already, Theo saw with a sinking heart, the skin around the snakebites had healed.
“The longer you resist,” Zeus called, “the more damage I will do.” He raised an arm and swept it toward Manhattan.
The trees at the base of the bridge instantly withered, their thick summer leaves tumbling to the ground in a shower of brown.
Another sweep of his hand and the policemen around Theo collapsed, their legs suddenly shrunken and too weak to hold them.
“How’s he doing that?” Minh gasped, still crouched behind her shield.
“The other gods have left our world.” Theo had to shout to be heard over the cops’ tortured groans. “Zeus has become Demeter now—Hephaestus, too.”
Gabi looked at her own legs. “And why aren’t we crippled?”
Philippe tapped the back of his winged shield. “Athena.”
Gabi clutched her own shield tighter in one hand and grabbed Minh with the other. “You think she can protect us from getting ripped apart by Zeus like those snakes?”
Theo shook his head. “It’ll take more than shields to save us then. We need the Olympians. If they come through, the presence of the Athenians will keep them divine, too.”
“Oh yeah? Then what the hell are they waiting for?” Gabi demanded.
“They can’t just walk out like Zeus. They’re trapped until I pull them through.” He looked at the ranks of promakhoi standing between him and the portal and felt his limbs grow numb with fear. “The portal will be almost closed by now—I won’t reach it in time.”
Around him, the police officers continued to moan. The trees continued to wither. His city continued to die.
Philippe added his own desperate groan to the cacophony. “I wish I really did have wings. I’d fly you back.”
Ruth poked her head out from behind her fish shield. “I’ve got a better idea.”