“One constant in life is that nothing worth doing is ever easy. It would be trivial for the gods to change this; however, as the reverse of this adage must also be true (i.e., nothing easy is ever worth doing), they’ve decided it’s not worth it.”
—Olympian Priesthood in Thirty Days!
(Day 1: Know Your Place, Mortal)
DESPITE THE COMPLETE LACK of upkeep, it was an admirable temple. The wall carvings were eroded, the paint was long faded, and the place possessed a distinct emptiness, but its location within the mountaintop lent it an aura of mystical majesty. Though there were no torches to provide any sort of compelling firelight, sunlight shone down from the wide hole in the rock above with a power of its own. It highlighted the floating dust motes, illuminated the white marble altar in the center of the room, and deepened the shadows along the edges of the temple it could not reach.
The power of the place, faint but surely present, tingled on Tracy’s skin as she made her way to the altar. Her feet moved of their own accord. This was less unsettling than it might have been, were she not of a mind to go where her feet led anyway. She said nothing, silenced by her own anticipation.
Leif was the first to break the silence. “The force field goes all the way up above, does it?”
“It doesn’t cover the entire mountaintop, but it does wrap the portion that houses the temple, which of course means that skylight, yes,” Thalia answered. “And thank you for doubting that I did a thorough job of checking.”
“Not doubting, just doing a thorough job of asking.”
Tracy continued her own thorough job of staying quiet as she climbed the couple of steps around the altar dais. Well. This is it. Been a very odd week. Her fingertips traced the altar’s edge as she admired the lightning bolts and Greek lettering etched across it on all sides. The marble was cool, and though she supposed she ought to have expected that, it surprised her nonetheless. The amulet grew warmer, however, and soon bathed the marble in a soft purple glow.
“So what now?” she asked Apollo.
“Place the amulet upon the altar.” Apollo, with millennia of experience in such matters, knew to make the distinction between placing an object on an altar, and placing it upon said altar. Though the practical result is the same either way, the latter sounds much more impressive.
Tracy did so. Even after her fingertips lay the amulet (up)on the marble and then let it go, the tingling sensation remained. She could sense an aura, felt more than seen, connecting her to the amulet regardless of physical contact. It swelled to envelop the altar as well.
“And then there was something I have to say, right?”
“You must speak some words of power.” Apollo recited the preternatural phrasing of the required words and then repeated them more slowly for her to mimic. The words were in no language she recognized, though she was hardly a linguist. “It’s Olympian,” he explained in response to her unspoken question. “Try turning your tongue to one side. It helps.” He repeated the words again.
“What’s that mean in English?” Leif whispered.
“Literally translated?” answered Thalia. “It means ‘some words of power.’” She sighed. “Yes, I know.”
“Huh. ‘Cthulhu fhtagn’ has more kick to it.”
“Oh, you don’t want to know what that really means either, I assure you.”
“I thought that stuff wasn’t real?”
“Yes, but—”
Tracy cleared her throat at the two kibitzers. They quieted, for the moment, and Apollo repeated the words for her once more. With a nod, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and took the plunge.
“Wÿhr üairîe nah’c ûl’lá.”
Nothing occurred. Or almost nothing: Leif’s foot shifted against the ground, and a seagull gave a cry somewhere outside, but she figured those things had nothing to do with the ritual. Wait, did Zeus like seagulls? Tracy considered that maybe she just wasn’t able to tell if the ritual had worked. Yet if she was going to resurrect a god, surely she ought to feel something, right?
“Is that it?” she asked.
Apollo frowned. “Nothing happened.”
“Noticed that too, then.”
“Maybe we have to wait for it to kick in?” Leif offered. “More dramatic that way?”
“No,” Apollo told them. “It ought to have been immediate. Something’s wrong.”
“Maybe this isn’t a temple of Zeus after all?” Leif tried. “You know, aside from the lightning imagery and the talking tree out front who said so.”
“Don’t forget the writing declaring this a temple to King Zeus,” Thalia added with a sad pat on his shoulder. “You’re grasping at straws, honey.”
“It might be a trick!”
“It’s not a trick,” Apollo said. “Trust me. Though Zeus’s death lessened the temple’s power, I still sense it.”
Tracy nodded. “He’s right. I can feel—” A passing thought wandered out of Tracy’s head and clocked her in the face. “Uh-oh. Oh, damn it.”
“Really shouldn’t say that kind of thing in a temple,” Thalia warned. “Especially while standing at the altar.”
Tracy ignored her and turned to Apollo. “You’re diminished.”
Apollo winced like a man with a burgeoning compulsion to buy a ridiculously expensive car. “Of this I am aware.”
“I got the quest through your oracle!” she explained. “She gains her power through you, isn’t that how it works? So whatever quest she gave me, it wouldn’t be enough! Is that it?”
“Oh, damn it,” Apollo agreed.
Thalia glared.
“Then there’s no choice!” Leif said. “You have to seduce me.”
“No!”
“Hey, I’m not exactly thrilled either, you know! There’s hardly the time or comfort or privacy I’d have hoped for, but—Hey, can you two go outside?”
“There’s another way!” Tracy shot.
“You mean spill your blood all over the altar? Are you freaking nuts?” He rushed to Apollo. “Tell me you can heal her after! You can do that, right?”
Apollo shook his head. “The amount of blood required would kill her. As with Jason, I cannot heal death.”
“I’m sure Apollo could at least conjure up another tent,” Thalia offered, not without hesitation.
“No!”
“And as I told you before, Leif isn’t heroic enough for our purposes,” Apollo reminded.
“I beat Dionysus in cards! Come on! She’s already done her Cerberus thing, that’s got to be enough to put her over the edge!”
“Leif—” Tracy tried.
“No! You keep acting like this is just about me getting to sleep with you, but for crying out loud, you’re talking about killing yourself! Geez, if you’re not worried about your life at least worry about giving me a hell of a complex!”
Tracy began to speak when Apollo cut her off with a raised hand. It was the sort of gesture that would have annoyed her had she any idea of something to say.
“Trust me, the both of you, when I say—”
Apollo himself was cut off by a bellowing rush of words from outside. “No! Guardian-tree is not being letting flying uglies into temple!”
“The guardian-tree!” Thalia announced so unnecessarily that it’s a wonder the line itself wasn’t edited out of this book before publication.
Leif shot Tracy a desperate look. “We’re out of time!”
“It won’t let them in.”
The tree’s voice lowered yet continued to filter in from outside. “Is chainsaw like rock over—?”
The rest was drowned out by the rev of a gasoline engine.
“Leif! Thalia!” Apollo pointed at them both. “Hold them off!” Joint protests erupted, but Apollo spoke over them. “Do as I say, or all of this is for nothing! Go now!”
Diminished or not, it seemed he could still be commanding when he wanted. Though it pleased neither, they nodded and made for the exit. Leif got as far as two steps away before he turned, rushed for Tracy, and planted a kiss on her before she could stop him. Hurried and off target, he nevertheless stunned her to inaction until he broke the kiss and stepped back. A flustered, speechless look showed on his face before he turned and ran toward the sound of a chainsaw carving through a tree that could scream.
They’d vanished up the exit tunnel before Tracy regained her wits. Her heart pounded. Her mind raced for alternatives and found none. The option to run barely registered. Even were she not bound and determined to help her murdered father, the amulet had completely stolen the strength from her legs. Her arms, however, remained strong. She pointed to Apollo, fixing him with as firm a gaze as she could manage.
“I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“I know. Though, would it be so bad?”
“Not the point.”
“The sacrifice, then.”
Thalia and Leif crouched midway up the tunnel from the temple, hidden from those outside. Though the voices were indistinct and spoke over each other like caffeinated six-year-olds, it was obvious to whom they belonged.
“Erinyes,” Thalia whispered.
Leif groaned. They'd already killed Jason. What the heck could he do against them? The only thing he liked less than death was the thought of living the rest of his life without Tracy. The need to buy time for her so she could find a way to get through the ritual alive was all that kept him hiding behind the nearest rock. “Okay, so . . . here’s the plan. We hold them here in this tunnel. It’s narrow; it’ll help us hold them off. Tactical advantage. We can do this, right?”
“Golly, let me think! Um, no! They’re fury on wings; we’re mice with toothpicks!”
“The tunnel’s narrow! They can only come at us one at a time!” Leif’s courage flared as he tried to rally the Muse. “This is our best shot!” His heart pounded. “This is our only shot!” His adrenaline spiked further as the realization that he was currently in Greece propelled him into a glorious culmination of, “This! Is! Spart—”
Thalia decked him right in the face before he could finish, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him close to whisper. “First of all, we’re nowhere near Sparta, and second of all, just no! And anyway I’m a Muse, not a fighter!”
“You just punched me in the face!”
“You’re not a vicious, taloned vengeance-machine with blood gushing out your eyes, and anyway it had to be done! Maybe if they make some annoyingly clichéd reference I might be motivated to deck one of them too, but—”
The Erinyes’ enraged shrieks cut through the air. Leif and Thalia reflexively pressed back against the wall as the voices carried in from outside.
“You see! The barrier's not fading, you spastic bitch! You killed it too soon!”
“Killing the guardian ought to have brought it down! That is how these things work!”
“Clearly not!”
“Then it should be! And you try being patient when wielding a chainsaw!”
The argument again turned chaotic and impossible to make out. Leif didn’t bother to try. “They haven’t found that key! Hurry!” He grabbed Thalia’s hand and rushed for the exit. He was forming a plan, but he needed to get a look at things before he could be sure.
“This is foolish!” she cried, following him. “Foolish, foolish, foolish! Why did Apollo send me?”
“Stop whining! At least you’re immortal!”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain and—”
They rushed out into the light and stopped short at the sight of all three Erinyes hovered above the guardian-tree’s stump. The rest of the unfortunate being lay ten yards down the slope, its bark raked with talon marks, eyes shut, and mouth frozen in a silent yell.
Thalia removed the hand she’d clapped over her mouth, composing herself with a remarkable resilience to address the Erinyes. “Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone. Whatever brings you here? Are you lost?”
“Musey!” cackled Megaera. “We’ve come for Apollo!”
“And anyone else in there!” Alecto added. She still held the idling chainsaw.
“Send him to us, and we’ll spare you a world of torment!” Megaera continued.
“A cosmos of torment!” Tisiphone added.
“Torment-torment-torment!” Alecto cried.
Leif wondered if he was included in that offer, but the sight of Tisiphone skinning him alive with her eyes was not encouraging, and it wouldn’t help Tracy anyway. In a flash he scanned the area. The barrier key was nowhere to be seen, so he hoped that meant it was still inside the tree itself. Trusting on the barrier to keep him safe, he turned his back on the Erinyes and tugged Thalia back into the tunnel mouth.
“We’ll go get him!” he called over his shoulder.
“Hey!” called Megaera. “We were talking to her! Double-vengeance for rudeness!”
At this Alecto cackled maniacally, which is probably redundant, but there it is.
“Is this barrier a one-way thing like the one at the Styx exit?” he whispered. “Can you fly out while it’s still up?”
Thalia gave a quick nod. “Yes. Or maybe. Just possibly maybe. I don’t really know. I mean, I ought to know; you get a lot of barriers and force fields and the like in sci-fi, but there’s really a broad variety and—”
“Is it likely?”
Thalia nodded again.
“So, new idea: you fly out and draw them away for a second or something. I’ll grab the key when their backs are turned and run back behind the barrier. Problem solved!”
“Leaving me outside! What am I supposed to do then, did you think of that? I’m far too pretty to be rent and torn, and chainsaws are very bad for me. I have combination skin!”
The Erinyes continued their hovering, shrieking jeers at them and hurling rocks against the barrier (which—for some reason perhaps best left to philosophers—deflected the rocks despite their being utterly mundane). Tisiphone drifted back to break a branch off the felled tree, getting dangerously close to the key’s hiding spot.
“Just—just do it, please?” Leif couldn’t think of a better argument, adding somewhat lamely, “For Zeus? Before they find it! Just chuck a few insults at them, fly off faster than they can and escape!”
Thalia growled in frustration. “Calypso would call this all very heroic and I wish to the Fates she were here instead because this is the dumbest thing I’ve done since Time Moronz!”
She peeked around Leif at the Erinyes, who’d formed a midair huddle of their own. Their discussion was impossible to make out over Alecto’s increasingly fanatical chainsaw-revving. Thalia ducked back with a tortured whine.
“Seven hundred years avoiding those virulent bitches and now I’m tangling with them twice in a few days? What has become of my life? I’m an artist!”
Leif punctuated his get-on-with-it gestures with a rapid nod. “There, angst! You’re still an artist. Can we do this please before I lose my nerve?”
“Art doesn’t have to be angsty!” she shot. “Oh gods, ‘angsty’? That’s not even a word! That’s not even a word! Oh, stop looking at me like that, I’m going, I’m going! I’m older than you, you know!”
With that, Thalia stepped into view and grabbed a rock.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Alecto! A newborn puppy’s more intimidating than you, you vacillating bunny-cuddler!”
Thalia hurled the rock in a direction that could only be generously described as “toward” the vacillating bunny-cuddler in question. Fortunately Erinyes take offense the way fish take to water. Before the rock could travel half a stone’s throw, Alecto pointed her chainsaw and dived at the Muse with a shriek that became a wail upon her near-instant impact with the barrier. The chainsaw flew from her talons, careened through the air between her two sisters, and smashed apart on the side of a boulder.
“There, that’s a little better,” Thalia muttered. “Time to work blue.” She launched herself straight up through the barrier, flipped off the Erinyes with both hands in an ascending pirouette, then made a beeline for that mythical place known as “the frog’s balls away from there.”
Even hidden as he was in a cleft of the rock, Leif knew the Erinyes took the bait from the way their shrieks faded into the distance. He gave Thalia a three-count to draw them away, gulped down a mouthful of fear, and bolted out of the tunnel. He passed through the barrier without trouble, and a dozen more hurried strides took him down the path to hunch over the poor guardian-tree and stick his hand in its knot.
“Please still have the key, please still have the key, please still have the—” It was then that he heard the voice behind him.
“So, Leifferson, we meet again.”
“The sacrifice must be done with an appropriate dagger,” Apollo told Tracy.
She swallowed, steadying herself against an onslaught of thoughts: a mix of self-preservation; self-sacrifice; and a last-minute, fruitless scramble for alternatives. And, of course, the unresolved sundae issue.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Give it here.”
Apollo looked uncomfortable. “I, ah, didn’t bring one.”
“You didn’t bring—? Why not?”
“You performed your quest,” he grumbled. “It followed that we wouldn’t need it.”
“Yeah, but—can’t you pull one out of wherever you got the sword and the bow? And the tents? And—”
“It doesn’t work that way. Such daggers are special, and—”
“It doesn’t work that way?”
“They must be specially consecrated and can’t be pulled out of thin air! And they’ve a lot of points and sharp edges that makes them a pain to carry concealed! If you are to repeat everything I say—” The god cut himself short, taking a breath. “This is a temple. There is likely to be something suitable lying about somewhere. We shall make a search. But hurry.”
“Oh, gosh: hurry. Right. I didn’t think of that.”
She turned from the altar and rushed as much as she could on leaden legs. Why did everything have to be so damn difficult?
His arm still buried in the knot, Leif twisted around and nearly wrenched his shoulder off. Standing nearby, almost as an afterthought, was one Thad Freaking Winslow. Clever words failed to find their way to Leif’s lips. All he managed to stall with was, “Er, hi. You’re here too, then?”
“Shut up, geek, I don’t want to talk to you. Just tell me how to get in the temple so I can get the hell back to civilization. What’s this about a key?”
Leif didn’t quit the search, but the knot seemed larger inside than out, and there was still no sign of the key. Smart-assed stalling tactics, however, began to flow more freely.
“How am I supposed to tell you anything if you want me to shut up?” Leif’s fingertips brushed something squishy, something moving, something green (he had no idea how he knew that), and finally something very square, stony, and keylike. He grinned.
“Don’t get cute. Just tell me or I call back the screechers. And give me the redhead’s number.” Thad loomed closer. If he wanted to, he could have stepped on Leif’s back from that distance to hold him there. Fortunately he either didn’t want to or hadn’t thought of it yet. “The key’s in there? Come on, out with it!”
Thad grabbed for his arm just as Leif stumbled back out of reach, key in hand. His heel struck the ground at a bad angle and momentum sent him flat on his ass.
“That’s what we need, isn’t it? Give it, now!” Thad demanded before yelling over his shoulder, “He’s got a key!”
Leif raised an arm as if to hurl the key at the model’s face. “You want it? Catch!” He threw as hard as he could without letting go.
It felt remarkably similar to baiting a dog with a falsely thrown tennis ball. As Thad threw his arms up to protect himself, Leif seized the opportunity to scramble back to his feet. Thad narrowly caught and then lost the back of Leif’s shirt as he bolted past. A surge of elation carried Leif the final distance to the barrier.
“I love it when a plan comes togeth—”
The barrier field struck Leif like a swung trampoline, hurling him backward violently. Thad broke his fall in a collision that sent them both to the ground. In the few seconds before he could push off of Thad and regain his feet, two things crossed Leif’s mind: the barrier wouldn’t let the key past, and his perfectly excellent plan was now shot to bits.
Now his only instinct was to escape and get the key as far away from the lock as possible before Thad could grab him. On his feet again, Leif dodged around Thad again and made his way downhill. Before he managed even a thought about what to do next, Megaera exploded into bloody existence smack in the middle of his path.
Fright alone saved him. Leif’s body twisted in pure shock. He spun onto an alternate course at a right angle to his previous one, around a bit of rock, and back up the slope as Thad again gave chase. Leif was rushing up one of the steep, narrow paths along the side of the mountaintop before he knew what he was doing. Nothing stopped him; no barrier field sent him flying back again. Deciding he was far enough away from the tunnel to skirt the field entirely, he redoubled his pace, kicking dust and pebbles back at Thad and the Erinys, who were surely only moments behind him.
“He’s got the thing!” Thad yelled. “The thing that does the stuff with the thing!”
The speed with which Apollo searched for a dagger made Tracy feel like she was standing still. He rushed along the temple edges and found hidden compartments in the walls; he uncovered loose flagstones on the floor and searched their depths for anything useful; he moved with an urgent sense of purpose. Most of Tracy’s effort involved putting one foot in front of the other, to the point where she figured it’d likely be just as useful for her to wait by the altar. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that. After all, she’d already figured out the reason the quest didn’t work, a reason Apollo himself missed. Who was to say she wouldn’t again see something he didn’t?
Tracy spotted a promisingly cracked wall Apollo hadn’t yet noticed. One step at a time, she made her way toward it. As she continued to brainstorm alternatives to what she was about to do, her thoughts far outraced her stride. Neither got her anywhere fast.
“Is there any particular reason for the sacrifice?” she tried. “Or is it just ’cause the Fates said so?”
“A release of mystical energy is needed to finalize the ritual and allow the amulet to do its thing. To trigger that release, the offspring of Zeus must give a sacrifice of lifeblood, I was told. For what it’s worth, I am sorry none of us thought of the oracle problem earlier. Father Zeus will elevate you highly when this is completed.”
“He can bring me back to life?”
“No, but he will likely rearrange some stars to set your visage in the heavens.”
Fat lot of good that did her. She’d seen the Perseus constellation; it looked like a freaking bent-over Y.
“Aha!” Apollo cried. He drew a box from a compartment in the base of a pillar, pulled away the crumbling top and withdrew a stylized, wicked-looking dagger. “A little worn, but still sharp.”
Tracy broke through her own chosen compartment just for the heck of it. She startled the heck out of a mouse living within but found nothing else of value. She turned and took a few steps back to the altar before Apollo scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way. He set Tracy down on the top step, moved to the other side, and handed her the dagger.
“The blood must be spilled upon the altar.”
“Yeah, I know. Every drop?”
He gave an apologetic smile. “Not every drop you have,” he answered, “but enough that it would kill you.”
“That’d be the ‘lifeblood’ thing.” Not realizing the ritual required a specific quantity of blood, she’d actually been asking how much needed to hit the altar rather than how much she needed to spill.
“Right.”
“Got it.” She gripped the dagger tighter, struggling internally. At least her arms were still strong.
Leif neared the top of the rise, giddy and confused with amazement at Megaera’s failure to seize him by his shoulders and hurl him down the mountainside. In fact, he seemed to have lost Megaera entirely and wished he knew just how he’d done that so he could be more impressed with himself. (In truth, Megaera remained below at the tunnel mouth, guarding it for a time until she was sure Leif wouldn’t double back, unaware he could no longer pass through it himself. Erinyes are not brilliant, but they get plenty of practice chasing flightless quarry, so they know to cover their bases.) Thad, however, was still on his heels, and Leif was rapidly running out of mountaintop.
“Thalia!” It was a yell borne out of desperation. “Help!”
Only then did he seize upon another idea. Not only would it give his cowardly cry a purpose, but it might even prove helpful. A squarish, key-sized rock lay ahead. Leif spun around to kick dust into Thad’s eyes below (even more satisfying when done intentionally), and then turned back to grab the rock. The blinded model cursed, tripped on the uneven ground, and conked himself to unconscious irrelevancy.
“Thalia!” Leif yelled again. He stuffed the real key into the inner pocket of his jacket, casting about for any sign of her.
“This is a repugnant plan!” Thalia screamed. She flew straight for him with Alecto and Tisiphone in her wake. Though faster, Thalia seemed unable to shake them. At the same time, Megaera exploded into being about twenty yards to his left.
Leif held the fake key aloft for everyone to see (or everyone still conscious without two eyefuls of dust, at least). “I got the key!” he yelled. “Catch!”
Thalia’s eyes all but bugged out of her skull. “What? Don’t give it to—Monkey-cusser!” The curse was barely from her lips when the false key sailed up toward her in a perfectly thrown arc (as far as Leif was concerned). The Muse caught it in mid-flight and redoubled her speed to streak out toward the Mediterranean. “This is a worse plan!”
“That’s the key!” Leif managed to lie.
Though Tisiphone sped after the Muse, to Leif’s horror Alecto halted in midair, her blood-gushing eyes fixed on him. “Meddling mortal! For this you shall pay!” she shrieked. “Pay! Pay! Pay! Pay!”
Megaera clocked her sister in the back of the head. “The Muse has the key! The key is important! After her!” Without waiting for a response, Megaera vanished in a bloody mess and reappeared right in Thalia’s path. The latter swerved to the right and went invisible.
Even were Leif able to track an invisible Muse, Alecto gave him no time. She dived at Leif, talons slashing in an arc he narrowly ducked. “Pay!” she cackled. “Pay-pay-pay!”
“Listen to Megaera!” he tried, dashing across the mountaintop. “You’re going to get in trouble!” And if that had any chance of working, thought Leif, he was a dragon-god.
Leif was, as it turned out, not a dragon-god. (Though that would have been wildly helpful, this book isn’t going to pull that particular kind of crap.)
“Let the others chase after the Musey, mortal! You are mine! You will suffer! You will pay! Pay-pay-pay!” Alecto flung a stone across the back of Leif’s thigh that cut him through his jeans. He stumbled, caught himself, and scrambled on against the pain.
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a real impulse-control problem?” he yelled.
In the temple, compulsion and duty rooted Tracy’s legs to the altar dais. Her pulse pounded in her ears as the amulet glowed brighter (up)on the altar in what she could only assume was anticipation. The dagger shook in her grip, her muscles spasming with every moment she clutched it.
A part of her knew her rage at Zeus’s murder was artificial, that the amulet itself compelled her. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to mind. Regardless of everything else, he was still her father, the father she’d been robbed of a chance to know. If her mother were murdered, would she not do everything in her power to bring her killers to justice?
Was this any different?
Above, Leif was trapped. To his left was the rim of the open roof of the temple, easily a fifty-foot drop to the stone below where Tracy stood; to his right lay another drop of much greater distance to ocean- battered rocks that no one could possibly survive. At his back stood a wall of rock, which, while scalable, would allow him only a sixty-foot drop to the temple floor or a greater-distance-plus-ten–foot plunge to certain death.
This, Leif judged, was unhelpful.
A small boulder shattered against the wall above him as if thrown by a giant wrestling personality-turned-actor. Biting shards of rock rained down on him. Alecto picked up another, cackling in a way that Leif thought might be infectious were he not about to die. “Pay!” she jeered again, clearly toying with him. “Pay-pay-pay-pay!”
Leif was running out of options the way Alecto was running out of vocabulary. He had no idea where Thalia was. Thad remained unconscious behind Alecto and gave zero indication of any impending change of allegiance, in any case. Leif could think of nothing clever to say, nor any semblance of a plan that could possibly save him. Below, Tracy stood with Apollo at the altar, dagger in hand. Leif felt a stab through his own heart at the sight of it. She was really going to do it!
“I am going to beat you senseless, mortal!” Alecto hissed. “Claw you until you pass out from the pain and skin you upside down like a hog when you wake! And then I’ll do it all again somehow! This job allows for marvelous innovation!”
Leif took small comfort in knowing he still had the key. Yet they’d find it on his dead corpse sooner or later, and who knew how long the rest of the ritual would take to fulfill itself once Tracy made her sacrifice? What if the Erinyes got inside and stopped it before it all could take effect? Could they do that? Wasn’t there some sort of common decency involved?
Leif cursed himself for not throwing the real key to Thalia. At least then he might be able to jump down through the barrier. If this were any sort of role-playing game, he’d likely survive the, what, five six-sided dice’s worth of damage? Yet this wasn’t a game, this was—
At once he knew what he had to do. The idea sucked, but it was all he had.
Alecto lost patience and threw another stone. It knocked off a chunk of wall that landed with a thud beside him. Leif’s blood raced. There was no turning back. Before he took action, Leif risked a moment to add a flourish that he hoped might be impossibly cool.
“There’s one thing you didn’t think of, Alecto!” he yelled. “I am a leaf on the wind! Watch how I soar!”
Leif figured it would have been cooler if Alecto had responded before he said the last part, but the adrenaline hadn’t let him wait. In what he desperately hoped was a fit of genre-savvy heroic sacrifice, Leif clutched the key through his coat and hurled himself off the cliff to the sea below.
The fall took long enough for him to think of at least three other outstanding choices for last words that he could have screamed before he jumped—and that he might have swapped “leaf” for “Leif”—but of course it was too late for that.
He doubted Alecto got the reference anyway.
Apollo glanced skyward toward Leif’s voice and some sort of screeching.
“We have no time,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ve never done this before. How far do I need to lean over?”
Apollo’s crystal-blue eyes swelled with sympathy. “Slump over so the blood spills on the marble. Like this.” He leaned across the altar and gripped the opposite edge in demonstration of the ideal posture.
“Okay, okay.” She swallowed. Now was the time, she told herself. Now or never. It all came down to this. Here she stood at the crossroads. Time to pay the piper. It was a far better thing she did than she’d ever done.
Tracy ran out of clichés with which to stall. She raised the knife, leaned forward, and at that moment her plan changed. Suicide was senseless, especially with the other option staring her right in the face. Tracy hated to do it, but the only alternative was worse.
Tracy smiled across the altar to clasp Apollo’s gaze with hers, steeling herself. “Does a woman get a kiss before she makes the ultimate sacrifice?”
Apollo blinked and leaned farther forward to oblige. Tracy followed suit. Her breath came rapid and short as she prepared to do a god right (up)on the altar. Apollo’s eyes closed. His lips drew nearer.
His neck stretched vulnerably as he leaned over.
Tracy slashed the dagger across Apollo’s jugular. She threw her arms over his head and lifted her feet off the dais to hold him over the altar with all her weight as blood gushed from the wound.
“I’m sorry!”