“Some things have changed since we were last seen in the world. Chastity, for one. By now most of the formerly chaste goddesses have dropped all that nonsense, and it’s about time, if you ask me. We’re modern now. Why let the men have all the fun? (Hestia’s always at home anyway, so she’s got the time.) Artemis is the only chaste goddess left. Don’t ask me why. I keep telling her she’s missing out, no matter how special it makes her. Obviously I’m biased . . .”
—Aphrodite (Aphrodite! Magazine, July 7, 2009)
WHILE TRACY’S LOVELY unconscious skull hit the ground, copious miles away in a hotel near the center of the Las Vegas Strip, Thad Winslow sat in his suite’s private Jacuzzi beside a woman who was also quite lovely, and conscious to boot. She was not, Thad lamented, as attractive as he was. Yet that was to be expected. Finding companionship to equal his own often required an exhaustive search, and he just didn’t have that kind of time. Thad consoled himself with the thought that after he’d finished the favor for his mother that brought him to Vegas, he’d hang around for another week and see what he could find.
It was hardly Thad’s first time in Vegas. Even had he not grown up the only child of rich parents, the modeling career he’d fallen into at age sixteen brought him here on numerous occasions. In the eight years since, he’d forgotten exactly how many occasions, or would have, if he’d ever bothered to keep track.
Thad had better things to do with his time than keep track of things. Beyond “a lot,” he no longer cared how many times he’d gone to Vegas, how many photo shoots he’d done, how many other models he’d slept with, or indeed how many women he’d slept with at all. (He seldom bothered to ask what they did for a living, so their model status―or lack thereof―wasn’t something he could have kept track of, anyway.) Managers and dorks kept track of things. He was there to look good.
If the excited smile of the woman in the bubbling water beside him was any indication, he did it well. Thad took a sip of champagne. He’d sipped better, but it would do. As jet-lag cures went, a bottle of Bollinger, some tail, and a Jacuzzi were all at the top of his list.
Not that he actually kept track of the list either, but it always came to mind when needed.
Thad turned to his companion. Did he not get her name, or did he just forget? “Now,” he said, avoiding the dilemma altogether, “where were we?”
Thad loved saying that. It always sounded so damn smooth.
Her smile was half a whisper away from becoming a kiss when a discarded robe dropped over both of them.
“Hello, Thad,” came the dropper’s voice. It slid from the throat of another woman behind them like silk on fur—like familiar silk on fur. Thad managed to stifle a curse before pulling the robe away from his head.
His companion followed suit. “Who the hell is this?” she asked.
Thad swallowed uncomfortably. “This is . . . ah . . . my sister.”
His “sister” just laughed at that. “Not quite.” Clad in a bikini, she strode around the edge of the tub, dipped her toes in the water just opposite them to play with the foam, and then stepped down in to take a seat. Her sea green eyes flicked to the other woman for a heartbeat before settling back on Thad. “Usually I’d cheer such a diversion, dear Thad, but don’t you have more important things to be, ah, doing?”
Thad’s companion sat up. “Excuse me? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“Hrm. I think I’m talking to Thad. You should go now.” She gave a quick shooing wave. “Go on. Out! Take the champagne and find another rich man to mount in a hot tub. It’ll be fun.”
Thad’s companion’s mouth was barely open before the other woman cut her off. “Listen, missy, not another word! Out! Now! Or I’ll pitch your cute little body off the balcony!”
Be it the threat, the situation, or just the look in the newcomer's eyes, it was enough to drive Thad’s companion from the Jacuzzi. She gathered up her clothes and dashed for the door, stopping just short to turn around and open her mouth.
The new woman cut her off again. “Don’t bother leaving your number,” she called. “He won’t have time.”
Thad waited for the door to slam before he forced a smile.
“Hi, Mom.”
Most people would be thrilled to discover that their mother was one of the goddesses of Olympus. Most people would consider it a path to fame and a fantastic boon to their modeling career, were they lucky enough to have one. Of course, by virtue of actually being the son of a goddess, Thad was not most people. That was kind of the point.
After the Return, fame-seeking mortals declaring themselves the offspring of a god came out like camera phones at a wardrobe malfunction. Most were outright lying. Such a lie risked the wrath of the Olympian in question to be sure, but most of the time, the gods seemed not to pay much attention.
Most of the time.
There was the occasional correction. One professional wrestler boasted himself the son of Ares on national television. Word got back to the god, who swiftly cursed him in the middle of a “smackdown” with the voice of an eight-year-old girl and the inability to end any spoken sentence without, “Ares wouldn’t touch my mommy with a ten-foot spear.” The claim was a foolish miscalculation, anyway. Zero gods like professional wrestling. Even Dionysus considered it juvenile and phony, and he had once nominated the inventor of the beer bong for a Nobel Prize.
Yet to some people, it was worth the risk. Many of Thad’s fellow models claimed Olympian parentage, with Aphrodite, Athena, or Hermes being the usual favorites. The imposters’ rising exposure and incomes tempted Thad to do the same, but he refused to be like them. The son of two mortal parents, he was gorgeous, statuesque, toned, cut, intense. As far as Thad was concerned (and as far as he knew at the time), he was so stunning he didn’t even need Olympian genes, and to his reckoning that made him even better than the others. He repeatedly announced this belief whenever possible. His manager loved the idea and took out a full page ad in Vogue declaring Thad “mortal perfection that even gods cannot match!” Thad swiftly worked this hubris into every public appearance he could, gaining a reputation even more unique than that of those falsely claiming immortal parentage.
When his goddess mother came to him one night and told him how she’d birthed him, given him up for adoption, and that he’d better show some damned respect, he was stuck. He held a legitimate Olympian pedigree, but to claim it now meant catastrophe and scandal. He’d stood on a talk show couch and declared his pure mortal status, for crying out loud!
Thad successfully begged his mother’s forgiveness with an abject (if private) apology and numerous (and ongoing) sacrifices, but she still held the secret over him, still used it to manipulate him, still blackmailed him with guilt and threat of disclosure.
It was how she’d gotten him to follow this Leif Karl-something in the first place. Another person might have called it ironic, but the definition of the word wasn’t something Thad kept track of either.
“‘Hi, Mom’?” she repeated. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? Thad. Darling. Why are you still here?”
Thad shifted in the water where he sat. “Recovering. I was jet-lagged.”
“Jet-lagged? You flew two hours across a single time zone!”
“Yeah, but there’s the drive to the airport, the wait at the airport, and—Look, you don’t understand, you’ve never taken a plane.”
“Oh, believe me, dear, I’ve taken a plane.”
“I need my rest!” he argued.
“And I need you to follow that blond fool with the arrow in his heart!”
“I did! I followed him all the way here, didn’t I?”
Her features hardened, eyes becoming daggers. “You don’t know where he is, do you?”
Thad was normally quite good at lying to women, but the fact that this woman was his mother blunted his skills. Or maybe it was the goddess thing. Still, worth a try. “He’s . . . nearby.”
“You lost him!”
“He was on a different flight! I can’t make the plane go faster!”
“We told you where he was staying!”
“Yeah, well, I went there. And I found him. But there was this woman across the street, see, this absolutely gorgeous blonde with—”
“Thaddeus Archibald Winslow!”
“I’m sorry! . . . Are we done?”
Thad had considered telling her the second he’d realized he’d lost track of Leif, but he figured it would work out eventually. Why bother making her mad? He endured his mother’s put-upon sigh without rolling his eyes and waited for her answer. It didn’t take long.
“You’re my son, Thad, and obviously I have to love you. But Mommy is a goddess, so show some respect. You’re going after him.”
“Love to, Mom, but I don’t know where he is.”
“Fortunately for you, we do.”
“Good! Then you don’t need my help anymore.” He smiled, sipping the champagne.
She smacked him across the face, which was impressive considering the distance between them. “You’ve embarrassed me enough already! I told the others you could handle this, and I had to hear it from them that you’d lost him!”
“Look, Mom, I just don’t see why you can’t do this yourse—”
“The whole point of this is to be discreet! And don’t second-guess your mother! You’ll do it, and you won’t screw it up this time!”
Ares listened to the boy and his immortal mother from the adjoining room. To the untrained eye (of which there were none in the otherwise empty suite), he was seething. His teeth gritted, his hands clutched at the fireplace poker he’d grabbed in the event anything should need pokering, and his pacing feet ground into the carpet in a way that would, given perhaps a decade, give the Grand Canyon a run for its money. The trained eye, however, would tell you that seething was the wrong word. (There were no trained eyes in the room either, but as we are also imbuing trained eyes with the power of speech, questioning their existence in a given area is unfairly pedantic.) Seething was among Ares’s five resting states, along with raging, blood-lusting, hating, and missing important details. No, Ares was more than seething, more than raging, more than hateful at Thad’s utter failure to do as he was told.
Ares was annoyed.
When Athena first designed the turtle-frog (official Olympian registry name: “Testudomeleon ATH-4R”), she had for whatever reason consulted Ares about its greater arms. In an uncharacteristic fit of cooperation― perhaps brought on by either boredom or the hope that the goddess would sleep with him―he had given a small bit of help. Then the thing got killed by that Monster Slayer guy. Ares was the first one Athena told. The insufferable bleeding-heart-defense queen blamed the whole thing on failure of his arm design, of course. Argument ensued, and damned if it didn’t come out then that the victorious hero got a little help. The pieces were easy to put together from there, especially since Ares wasn’t alone when he was told and therefore had some help to figure it out.
And so Ares was annoyed. The blond mortal bugger got away from them so easily! The others were fools. Send another mortal to watch in their place? A mortal? Discretion be damned, that’s what he should have told ’em! Who cared how much attention they’d attract? Stupid jerk Hades!
Okay, so they’d flick Thad back on the job and put the fear of the gods into him if he screwed it up again. Titans’ armpits, that wouldn’t be enough! And what the heck was taking her so long?
The goddess returned just as he’d made up his mind to yank the boy out of the water and throw him where they needed him.
“So?” Ares asked.
“Boy’s as smart as his father,” she sighed.
“Yeah, so?” That didn’t tell him nothing, even if he’d known who the boy’s father was.
“He’s back on the trail. I gave him a good head start.”
“A head start? That’s it?”
She pouted. “Apollo’s champion might have a Muse watching, or Apollo himself. Do you want them to see him just teleport in?”
Ares growled. “Then I’ll go myself.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’ll be what I bloody want to be! Can’t matter anyhow if they see me. I said I killed Zeus all along! I got no cover to blow.”
“Ares, you’re a boasting, blustering brute.”
“Um . . . Thanks?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean no one believes you! They just think you stole the credit to look stronger. Please, for me, let Thad do his job.”
Ares held her gaze and grunted, thinking a few moments before seizing on an alternative that would end this whole thing a small sight quicker. “You’re right,” he said.
She beamed. “Always am!”
“See you back on Olympus.” Ares turned to go. “There’s things I got to take care of.”
She grabbed his arm and drew him back.
“You’re planning something, aren’t you?” she asked with a poke at his chest. “I mean insomuch as you plan anything.”
“What? Nah.” He turned again only to have her yank him back, glaring.
“Or, to put it another way, ‘yes,’” she said. “It’s all over your face. What is it?”
“Oh for the love of—” He shoved away her grip. “So what if I am planning something?”
“Hrm. We’ve already got a plan? Stick to that!”
“Your plans’re what got us into this! We wait any longer for this one to work and we’ll still be waiting while Zeus shoves lightning down our throats! I’ll just kill the twerp! He’s mortal; that’s what they’re for!”
“You can’t!”
“Sure as Hades I can. Just one more dead mortal on a long, long list. I’ll make it quick if you’re so squeamish.” In fairness, he supposed she didn’t look squeamish. She looked angry, which frankly was quite a good look for her. Then again, it was a good look for everyone so far as Ares was concerned.
“Ares, no! Hades said you can’t just—”
“You can ram a pike up what Hades said!”
“We don’t know enough about what Karlson might do!”
“We don’t need to know nothing!” he fired. “What if he did what he was supposed to when your little pipsqueak lost him, eh? What if he does it when Thad loses him next time?”
“Thad will not lose him again!”
“Bettin' our hides on that, are you?”
She hesitated. “Even if Thad does lose him, Karlson’s distracted. He’s in love! Mind-bogglingly, distractedly infatuated!”
Something slid into the war god’s mind and failed to stick. Ares stopped. “. . . He’s fat?”
The other blinked. “Infatu—! It means ‘in love.’”
“Yeah, like that ever solved anything. This ain’t a movie.”
“Not yet.”
“What?”
She went on. “Fine, don’t listen to me. But you kill Karlson and you know, you know that Hades will come down on you. Hard. You know what he’s like when he’s angry.”
“He don’t scare me.”
“Liar. He’s older than you, Ares. You can’t stand against him alone.”
“So you can help me.”
“I agree with him! Karlson’s death might be the very trigger to bring back Zeus!”
“And . . . it might not be!” he stammered. “You don’t know!”
“Exactly!”
Ares glared at her. He hated arguments that made sense. They usually meant that he couldn’t do what he wanted to, if he paid them any attention. So as a matter of course, he ignored them as best he could. But she wasn’t going to stop nagging him.
“Fine,” he said finally. “I won’t go kill him.”
“And you won’t go watching him either. Not yet, anyway.”
He only then realized he still had the fireplace poker in his hand. He tossed it to the floor, glad for the chance at least to throw something. “Fine.”
She smiled. “Thank you. You know how these things work; there are all sorts of little rules and such, especially with death.”
Ares just grunted at that.
“I’ll make it up to you in some, oh, creative way, I’m sure. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Uh-huh.”
He followed, pondering. All sorts of little rules and such, especially with death. Another scheme was creeping into his mind in an attempt to take form. He started to hum Wagner to keep it from showing on his face this time. After all, he’d only said that he wouldn’t kill Karlson. Didn’t mean someone else couldn’t. Heck, if he played it right, even Hades couldn’t fault him for it.