“Some cite Ares’s love of dogs as proof that the god of war is not without his positive sides. While this text has no official opinion on the matter, anyone wishing to decide for themselves would do well to also note Ares’s love of dog fights.”
—A Mortal’s Guidebook to the Olympians’ Return
THALIA’S CALL TO APOLLO had come while he was in the middle of a hurried in-flight reprogram of one of the sun chariots. Getting lax in the maintenance schedule was never a good idea, especially when replacement parts had to be special ordered from Hephaestus (whose position as senior editor of the European Journal of Engineering absorbed much of his free time). Apollo jury-rigged a fix he hoped would hold―at least until he could send the other chariot up to take its place. Only then did he notice Thalia’s message. A few seconds after he heard her voice mail, he’d shot off to where he sensed she was.
It was just after sunset by the time he arrived. The sky was lousy with Erinyes, Thalia was shepherding Leif and two other mortals down the hillside, and Death was silently leading away the spirit of a confused and burly mortal whom Apollo didn’t recognize. (He’d brought the scythe. Why did he always bring the scythe? He never actually used it anymore. He was like a college sophomore who still wore his high school letterman’s jacket.) Questions in need of immediate answers numbered three in Apollo’s mind: Why were the Erinyes here? Who died? And just what was the “major breakthrough” Thalia spoke of?
He was also vaguely curious why exactly Thalia was running around half naked, but that could wait. What was clear was that the Erinyes’ venomous shrieks and rock-hurling put a stop to any ideas of discreet godly observation. Apollo thrust himself between the two parties and appeared with a blast of sunlight right in front of the shrieking bat-hags. They pulled up sharply and looped back around to hover, begrudging him the attention that was his due as a god.
He smiled at all three, arms crossed. “Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone. Would you care to explain just what you’re doing?”
They hissed and shrieked, spitting palpable vitriol that floated in the air before dissipating. They teleported a few yards to reappear directly in front of him and then floated back a few feet again with their eyes gushing blood, posturing. Apollo wouldn’t normally put up with that kind of crap, but with the Erinyes, you had to pick your battles, especially if you were trying to speak to them mid-vengeance. Demanding manners may as well be asking for a nice vivisection-free foot rub, for all the good it would do.
“Do not interfere, Apollo!” Tisiphone yelled. “This is just vengeance you’re . . . interfering with! Interferer!”
“Paperwork!” Megaera declared. “Right here!” She yanked it out to wave it in his face before stuffing it away again. Fortunately thousands of years of wading through bad poetry had made Apollo quite the speed reader. He got a pretty good look.
“Ares sent you just to avenge the death of one of his creatures? Rather extreme, that. He usually rewards bloodshed.”
“Who cares?” Tisiphone shot.
“He helped create the creature! It’s his right!” Megaera added.
Alecto kept quiet save for a frustrated mewling as she quaked with barely contained bloodlust. Her eyes tracked the mortals’ retreat. Her talons twitched.
It was Ares’s right, Apollo thought, but it was a right seldom exercised these days, when there were more surplus monsters stored up than anyone really knew what to do with. “Who killed the creature, exactly?”
Tisiphone pointed up the slope to the dead mortal’s body. “Jason Powers!”
“Monster Slayer!” Megaera declared.
Alecto remained silent, her glare fixed. She bounced in the air like a toddler after too much Kool-Aid, provided that toddler held a wicked dagger.
“Then he’s dead now. Your job is over.”
“Now, see, that’s what we thought just now, but then Ares came and said—”
“The job,” Apollo interrupted pointedly, “is over. Now you will take your lovely faces elsewhere.”
“Helped! They all helped!” Tisiphone screamed.
“No one tells us how to do our jobs, Apollo,” Megaera hissed. “Not even a god.”
“Yet in the past you’ve only gone after the party directly responsible for a slain favored creature, no? Did you change your rules, or did Ares change them for you?”
Megaera scowled. It was a moment before she admitted anything. “Ares . . . But he had a point!”
“They deserve it!” Tisiphone cried. “They saw it happen! They must suffer!”
“Yes!” Alecto burst. “Suffer! Suffer-suffer!” She quaked with giggles punctuated by stabs of her dagger.
Apollo smiled. “I thought you didn’t let gods tell you what to do.”
Tisiphone nodded vehemently. “We don’t! Now stand aside! For the vengeance!”
“Because Ares told you so,” he said.
“That’s different!” Tisiphone scowled, ruminating a moment. “That is vengeance! V-E-N-J . . . and the rest! We heed not your orders!”
“You won’t listen to a word I say?”
“Not a word!” Tisiphone yelled.
“And whatever I say about doing your job is wrong?”
“Dead wrong!” Tisiphone’s use of the word “dead” set Alecto twitching longingly.
“Then I command you: obey Ares! Chase down the mortals! Tear them limb from limb even though they didn’t kill the creature! Obey both gods!”
“No!” Tisiphone screamed. “You cannot command us! We’re—we’re leaving! Now! Right?”
Alecto bit her lip on a desperate mewling as if she might explode.
Megaera looked troubled. “I . . . there’s something amiss about this, Sister.”
Tisiphone hesitated. “Yes. Yes, there is something, isn’t there?” She pointed a talon at Apollo, eyes narrowing. “And when we figure out what it is, we’ll be coming back for you! Or for those mortals, anyway! Our choice!”
Megaera downshifted from hideous and checked a ledger. “Er, no we likely won’t; there’s that Cthulhu thing to deal with. We’re late as it is.”
Alecto spun around, eyes wide with what Apollo took to be a fearsome hope at the possibility of action.
“Cthulhu thing?” asked Tisiphone.
“Don't you remember that pack of mortals who believe some god Lovecraft made up is real, just because Olympians are? Worshipping false gods shall earn them a demonstration of true eldritch horror!” She cackled dramatically before pointing to the ledger. “See? I made a note. True eldritch horror.”
“Ah!” Tisiphone agreed. She swooped up into Apollo’s face as Alecto looked back and forth among all of them. “So maybe we won’t be back. But maybe we will! You just tell those mortals that! Tortured, tortured they’ll be in their not knowing!” She glanced back at Megaera. “What’ve we got after that? Can we fit them in after that?”
“It’s a choice between—”
Alecto exploded into a shriek that sent animals five miles away diving for cover. “Stop it! Just stop talking! If we’re to go, then let us be gone and be done with it! This isn’t some bloody panel discussion show!” She seized Tisiphone by the neck and shook her, eyes crazed. “If I’m not torturing someone in the next thirty seconds I swear I’ll rip your filthy lips off!”
Tisiphone hissed, pushing her off, and then vanished. Megaera grudgingly followed suit. Alecto laughed in triumph and stabbed at the air with giddy cries of “Eldritch! Eldritch! Eldritch!” before she vanished after her sisters in a shower of blood.
Apollo allowed himself half a moment to savor his own amusement before he dropped to the ground to dash after Thalia and the others. Thalia, at least, stopped when he asked.
“Hi, Apollo, nice timing! Hey, mortals! Stop!” If they heard her, they didn’t care. “They keep doing that! I mean I suppose one can hardly blame them with the Erinyes on their tail, but they weren’t listening to me when I was telling them to run either, and it’s just, I mean, come on, do I project so little authority? Maybe it’s because I’m hardly wearing half a stitch, but even before I lost the robe they were all, ‘let’s not pay attention to the Muse!’ and so forth. You’d tell me if I was, wouldn’t you? Lacking authority? I mean, not now, I guess, but hi, how’d you get rid of the Erinyes?” She beamed.
“You know that thing you came up with half a century ago with the cartoon rabbit and idiot hunter?”
“You’re kidding! That worked?”
“Erinyes: not known for brains.”
“Well, yeah, but—Hey, do I get royalties for that?”
“Thalia, what exactly is going on? You mentioned a breakthrough. Was that before or after that fellow died back there?”
“Oh! Golly, yes! Before. Definitely before. All right, so Leif? Not related to Zeus! At least I don’t think so. Maybe he is. Could he be? I mean you so seldom know with these things, and he’s got a crush on Tracy that if she gave half a whit about reciprocating would mean—eww! I mean eww for mortals, anyway.”
“Thalia! In ten words or less if you can manage!”
“Ooh, word games! Um, let’s see . . . Leif’s in love with Tracy who’s Zeus’s daughter with an amulet.” She paused. “Oh bother it all, that’s one word too many, but the amulet’s important! Now you respond in, um . . . seventeen words or less! Apollo? Hey, come back!”
Apollo had already shot ahead and landed straight in front of the three fleeing mortals. Leif and the woman he took for Tracy stopped up short. The third screamed and changed direction, dashed through a stand of cacti, and vaulted a rock before Apollo managed to grab him and plop him back down with the other two. The mortal continued to scream nonetheless.
“Silence!” Apollo demanded. It didn’t work as well as he hoped.
Tracy took the panicking man by the shoulders. “Doctor, it’s all right! He helped us! Doctor!” She caught the doctor’s gaze long enough to apparently calm him to the point where he at least stopped hyperventilating. He nevertheless held the look of someone who’d bagged his limit of stress for the day.
“But,” he managed, “who is he?”
Apollo radiated a bit of divine manifestation over the group in response. “I am the god Apollo.” He just barely managed to get it out before Thalia answered for him. “I expect you’ve heard of me.”
“See?” Leif said. “I told you.” He gave Apollo a wave.
“Thank you,” Tracy said. “You stopped those things?”
“Less stopped than redirected. But we can discuss that—”
Something flickered at the edge of his vision.
“Oh, now, don’t be thankin’ him too soon,” said Ares. “I don’t think he’s gotten you out of this quite yet.”
The god appeared out of that flicker, standing atop a collection of rocks and girded for battle. With Ares, “girded for battle” normally equated to “not naked” (and sometimes even that was untrue), but now he’d gone to special effort. The gleaming bronze armor, colored red with the blood of every war in history, was usually something he wore for only especially dangerous battles or holiday meals. Strapped to his left hand was his favorite shield, a heavy iron affair crafted in the shape of a snarling dog. His right hand held a spear he used in the Trojan War (on both sides), and a vulture-shaped helm completely covered his face save for the eye slit. Even so, there was no mistaking him.
Leif groaned before Apollo could say anything. “Why is everyone so stuck on shields and melee weapons? Haven’t you guys heard of guns?”
Ares’s gaze didn’t waver from Apollo’s for a single moment. “Heard of, invented, perfected . . . But you don’t go messin’ with the classics, mortal. Now shut up and think up some proper last words.” At this fresh new threat, the doctor shrieked like a man crashing through his stress threshold and gleefully rocketing toward a temporary breakdown.
Apollo stopped time.
It wasn’t a true stopping of time; that’s just plain impossible. Yet when two or more Olympian gods stand close to each other, there exists enough malleability in the space-time continuum to create a small pocket outside of time. Such pockets are notoriously unstable and as such worthless for anything but the purpose of simple conversation, but they have their uses.
“Aww, now what’d you have to go and do that for? They were all ’bout to quake and piss ’emselves!”
“You answered your own question, Ares—which for you is amazingly astute. I assume you’ve been watching. What the Styx do you think you’re doing, if thinking even comes into it?”
“Figured I’d kill your little pet pipsqueak there before I grab a late supper. You got a problem with that?”
“You didn’t send the Erinyes for Jason Powers at all, did you?”
The god sneered. “Collateral damage. Seemed worth a shot. Damned crones can’t do anything right. Some things ya just gotta do yourself.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Ares laughed. “The great Apollo wants to know why? Don’t play dumb, sunshine; you’re bad at it.”
“I’ll assume that was intended as an insult.”
“We know what you’re doin’! You can’t be bringin’ Zeus back.”
Apollo tried to mask the worry boiling up inside him. “We?”
“Yeah, we! Me and—Yeah, we!” Ares pointed his spear at Leif. “We know about blondie there, about your visions. He’s the key to bringin’ back Zeus or some such. You know what Zeus’ll do if he gets back?”
Apollo considered that Ares might not really know the extent of Apollo’s commitment to that very thing, and that this was a trick to get him to expose himself. Then again, Ares’s tricks were usually of the “look behind you!” variety. He discarded the possibility.
“All the more reason to be the one to help him do it, I’d say. Care to join the cause?”
“You got the wrong damn pantheon, Apollo. Zeus ain’t the forgivin’ type.”
“So you did kill him.”
“Damn right, and it ain’t just me. Now I’m about done talkin’. This spear? It’s goin’ right through your pet mortal’s heart, and you got no choice in the matter.”
“You think I can’t stop you?”
Ares laughed. “I ain’t attacking you, Apollo. You wanna stop me, you gotta make the first strike. I ain’t much for laws, but you know what ‘King’ Poseidon decreed: god attackin’ another god gets you in big damn trouble after what happened to Zeus. He ain’t takin’ any chances now some mysterious unknowns of us know how to kill each other.”
“I can defend the mortal just as easily as you can attack him.”
“Maybe. But can you stop me from attackin’ again?”
He had a point, annoyingly enough. Apollo had no idea how Ares knew about the visions. He thanked the Fates that he didn’t seem to know Tracy’s significance, but Leif was likely still vital, and Ares was just as likely to take out the entire group once he got started.
“I can wear you out,” he tried. “Defend him until you lose interest in the fight.”
“Lose interest?” Ares laughed and flashed a smirk. “Apollo, come on. This is me here.” The god of war had another point.
“Very well. What if—?”
“Nah, I’m all through talkin’.” Ares raised his spear. Time took notice of them again. “Hey, towhead! Speeeeeeear’s Ares!”
The god rolled to one side and thrust his spear straight at Leif. Apollo leaped between them in time to slam his boot down on the shaft, driving the weapon into the ground and snapping it in two.
“All of you, run!” Apollo ordered. The others wasted no time, dashing off again with a panicked doctor in the lead.
“Puns are lazy writing!” Thalia screamed at Ares as she went.
Ares picked up the broken spear. “Rotten Titan-whore’s whelp! That’s my favorite damned spear!”
“And you let it get broken by a whelp!” Apollo taunted. “That’s got to be humiliating.” If he could just goad Ares into attacking him first . . .
Ares’s glare only turned to a sneer. “A broken shaft’ll run a mortal through good as anything, Apollo, and if that don’t work, I’ll pound him to death with my bare hands!” Ares tried to dash past him. Apollo grabbed the broken spear with both hands and wrenched him back. Tugging and yanking, they struggled against each other for possession of the weapon. Apollo considered whether this counted as an attack, but if he laid hands on only the spear and not Ares . . .
Apollo’s preoccupation with legal details allowed Ares to spin him around and away from the mortals. The war god released the spear entirely before Apollo could correct his mistake, turned back after the mortals, and sprinted away. Ares bellowed a wordless, bloodthirsty battle cry, shield arm raised to strike. He was one of the swiftest on the battlefield; there was no way Leif could outrun him. Off balance, even Apollo had next to no chance to get there in time. He hurled himself after them anyway. Thalia looked behind her and screamed, diving out of Ares’s way (to land in a spectacular pose). Leif ran hard beside Tracy, not looking back. Ares closed to striking distance.
Apollo wasn’t going to make it.
“Ares!” Apollo yelled and hurled the broken spear end over end at Ares’s head. Ares didn’t look back. The spear hit him in the back of the skull with the force of a cannonball and pitched him forward into a boulder. His helmet struck rock with a clang that reverberated into the evening sky like an alarm: Olympian had attacked Olympian. The Styx was hitting the fan.
Then again, no one particularly liked Ares . . .
Apollo dismissed the minor hope. It was just as useless as the non-fatal blow―Apollo didn’t even possess the power to even make it a fatal blow. There would be retaliation from on high. Poseidon would be anxious to enforce his law in the face of the first real challenge to his authority.
Apollo wasn’t the only one to realize it. Thalia had picked herself up and was staring in shock at Ares’s unconscious form.
“What did you do?”
“I knocked the lights out of the god of war. Most people would cheer me.”
“Oh, that’s good, why do I get the feeling Poseidon isn’t one of them? We’re out in the open now, Apollo. You know what everyone’s like! The pantheon’s going to freak, and you know how Poseidon gets when someone snubs him!”
“I had no choice, Thalia.”
“You’ve at least heard of The Odyssey, right? He’s going to come down on you like a tsunami on a rowboat.”
Leif spoke up before Apollo could answer. “You know, it occurs to me, this whole thing? Total deus ex machina! Gotta say I don’t mind when I’m on this side of it.”
Thalia stared. “Oh, gods! And on top of everything, now we’re cliché!”