“Mortals are like matches: fun to play with but dangerous.”
—Olympian saying, source unknown
IN HINDSIGHT, it surprised Tracy that it had taken so long for her to remember that Apollo was just as much a child of Zeus as she. From what he had stated, the Fates said nothing about the ritual requiring her blood specifically. It was a bit of a leap to guess that “lifeblood” referred to a set quantity that would kill an ordinary mortal, rather than the actual loss of life of the subject—but standing before an altar about to commit suicide does tend to open the mind to possibilities.
Tracy sincerely hoped she was right and that Zeus’s resurrection would kick in before Apollo bled out. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that she might be able to kill Apollo at all, even in his diminished state. That initially miniscule worry grew stronger and more gut wrenching with each passing second. He was still immortal, wasn’t he? He said so, right?
Bitch move, Tracy.
“I’m sorry,” she yelled again. “Please hold still!”
Apollo wasn’t struggling; that much she had to be thankful for. Yet save for his blood rushing over the marble, nothing was happening. For a few terrible moments, she thought she’d been wrong, that she’d have to spill her own blood to finish things up, that she may have actually done permanent damage to Apollo, or that there wouldn’t even be time to—
The altar exploded with light. It shone up through the blood and consumed the scarlet flood in a blaze of lightning that flashed in time with the amulet’s gemstone. Its rhythm matched Tracy’s heartbeat— pounding, thundering, pouring through her. Something was being drawn out of her in heavy gasps, gathered up, stolen, and given all at once. Power surged from the amulet, the altar, the blood, all lancing skyward with a force that finally threw both her and Apollo from the dais.
Tracy landed on her back, unable to do anything but stare at what was now a column of electric light streaming up through the temple roof. The draining she felt inside subsided, and still the column blazed. The amulet crackled, shattered, and was consumed in the light, which only flared brighter. Tracy lay transfixed, awaiting the display’s end, the return of Zeus, or simply the return of her strength so she could run the hell away before the whole place exploded.
In another instant it was over. The column ceased to exist, as did the cacophonous roar she hadn’t even noticed. Tracy cast about for Zeus or even some sort of sign anything had changed.
As far as she could tell, nothing at all was different.
Across the temple, Apollo groaned. Tracy scrambled to her feet and stumbled over to where he lay clutching his neck with one ensanguined hand. A bit of golden light flared from his palm as she neared. When he removed it, the wound was healed. Apollo gave another gasp.
“Ow.”
Tracy knelt, guilt replaced by a wave a relief. “You’re all right?”
He nodded. “God of healing. Diminished or not, I can at least fix a knife wound. I ought to be furious with you, you know.”
Tracy smacked him in the face, then punched his shoulder. “If you knew you could heal, why didn’t you offer to make the sacrifice in the first place!”
“I didn’t know it would work! When they told me ‘child of Zeus,’ it followed they meant you. Zeus sent no amulets to me, you know. Besides, have you ever had your jugular slashed? It really hurts!”
Tracy spent the next few moments agape and reining in the urge to strike him again. “You would have let me—? What the heck is wrong with you?” she screamed. “And where the hell is Zeus, anyway?”
Apollo stood. “I don’t—I don’t know.”
Tracy wondered which question he was answering. “Something happened. Don’t tell me all that light and stuff was nothing. Where is he?” she demanded, suddenly furious that she might have thrown away their chance entirely and screwed everything up.
Apollo paced the temple, eyes glowing as he looked about. “You may not like the answer. It’s entirely possible that the Fates did actually mean for you to be the one to make the sacrifice. Using my blood may have had unintended consequences.”
“Don’t tell me we pulled up some other dead god or something.”
“No, I don’t think—” Apollo stopped in his tracks. “Uh-oh.”
“No saying ‘uh-oh’ without immediate elaboration! What’s going—?”
Three rifts appeared around them as reality parted like an opening gate to deposit three new figures into their midst. Tracy recognized two of them from pictures. The third she’d met personally a few days before. Ares, Hades, and Hermes now stood with them in the temple. Hermes held captive by the arm a decidedly unhappy Thalia.
“—on?” Tracy finished.
“The hour of time we had before full gods could get near the temple would seem to be up.”
“Yeah,” Tracy sighed, “I figured.”
Hades raised both arms to send a pulse of godly power skyward. What remained of the force field crackled into sight and then burned off like a dissipating fog. The Erinyes swooped down into the temple with all of their usual shrieking charm.
“Hello, everyone,” said Hermes. “Nice day for upsetting the balance of the cosmos, isn’t it? You’ve been busy.”
Precisely three moments prior (give or take a few)—in a rented flat just outside of London that served as the ad hoc English headquarters of the Neo-Christian Movement of America—Richard Kindgood, Gabriel Stout, and a small panel of experts sat around a humble wooden table. At the table’s center waited the nine cans stolen from Sidgwick’s Antique Shoppe in Swindon.
The theft had gone remarkably well. The shop’s single alarm was no match for a highly trained group of Ninjas Templar (nor too much of a problem for the moderately trained group they’d actually sent), and no other security measures were to be found. In and out, the entire operation took eleven minutes and six seconds. Kindgood had no idea that all seven ninjas would have met their doom at the claws of the Orthlaelapsian wraith had they shown up a day earlier, but as they didn’t, it’s hardly even worth mentioning.
The cans themselves were made of brass, each perfectly sized for soup containment, and covered in ornately carved pictures and distinctly un-American lettering. Phineas Rand, the NCMA’s premiere mythological scholar, was busy translating the script while they all waited. He had assured them that the lettering was an obscure variant of ancient Greek. The confiscated parchment of Brittany Simons (a.k.a. Wynter Nightsorrow, a.k.a. the young woman from Chapters Four, Seven, Twenty, and briefly alluded to in Thirty) alluded that this lettering would detail the “great and powerful secret ritual” required to open the cans. Once known, the NCMA would have a weapon with which to destroy the Olympian false gods, and all would be right with the world.
Rand checked something in a notebook, made another few marks with his pencil, and actually laughed. “The translation is finished.”
All around the table leaned forward, instantly energized.
“Well?” Kindgood asked. “What must we do?”
“How do we open the cans?” added Stout.
Rand chuckled. “In hindsight, it seems rather obvious. You, ah, have my fee?”
“We do this for the glory of God, Professor Rand!” Stout declared.
Kindgood restrained his subordinate’s outburst with an upheld hand. “Certainly the money has been transferred. Rest assured.”
“All right, then. The means of opening each can, as inscribed . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’ve checked this against each of them, you understand.”
“All right?” Everyone leaned farther forward.
“Beyond being in another language, it was also in code, you realize. I had to use a cipher from the Simons parchment to decode it.”
Kindgood acquiesced with a hurried nod. “You did say as much.” They now leaned as far forward as the table would physically permit.
“I just want to be clear. Even after decoding, I verified it, cross- checked it, made sure each one said the same thing, and . . .”
“And?” Kindgood was on his feet by then without realizing it. Stout followed suit and banged his hip on the table’s edge. “For God’s sake, don’t keep us waiting, man!”
“It reads . . .”
Rand paused for emphasis. Had he been writing a book, he probably would have tried ending the chapter at that moment. He swallowed.
Kindgood swallowed.
Stout held his breath.
The others around the table swallowed and held their breath, just to be safe.
Inquisitive minds may be curious as to why, if these cans somehow contained the imprisoned Titans—or at the very least the means to release them—they were lying around in an antique shop, guarded or no, instead of being shut away safely in the gods’ halls on Olympus, where one would assume they ought to be. These inquisitive minds have answered their own question.
After all, why hide something where everyone expects it to be? The world is a large place. If one wishes to hide a needle in a haystack (no one ever does, but one thing at a time here), one does not lay the needle on top of the pile with a signpost pointing to it. (Nor does one, as some myths of the Titans tell, guard it with hundred-handed giants. Hundred-handed giants are as easy to spot as they are costly to feed, and in any case, the myth of such guardians alone is deterrent enough.)
That said, Zeus did keep the cans close to him for quite some time until, perhaps inevitably, he gifted them to a young woman in order to impress her into bed. The seduction was indiscreet, and the poor woman was trampled to death in a cattle stampede soon after. (Hera made sure to have an alibi, but no one could miss her retributive signature.) The woman’s family then sold the cans, and they drifted throughout the world, their true nature unknown. The gods dispatched Hades’s Orthlaelapsian wraith to shepherd them through their anonymous journey, and the cans were believed to be secure.
Though some Olympians initially complained about the situation, Zeus insisted it was the safest course. They need not worry about the cans being opened, he told them. Even in the event that someone found them (unlikely, he counseled), recognized that they could be opened (highly unlikely, he insisted), and somehow evaded the unerring guardianship of the wraith (practically unthinkable, Hades claimed)― the cans were constructed in such a way that none but the wisest, most patient, most intellectually capable people could comprehend the highly arcane method of doing so. All Olympians eventually agreed that anyone that wise would know how foolhardy it would be to open the cans at all, and they finally stopped bothering about it in order to observe the Renaissance.
Now that those inquisitive types are placated, we return you to the London flat.
Rand checked his notes one more time. Calmly, he read: “‘Push down . . . and turn.’”
Silence took the room, broken finally by Kindgood. “Push down and turn?” he demanded. “That’s it? We paid you how much?”
“We do this for the glory of God!” Stout declared again.
Rand shrugged. “As I said, I’ve double-checked it. I’m certain that’s what it says on each one. There’s nothing more.”
Kindgood spared a few moments to take the temperature of the room. None of his subordinates appeared willing to take lead. “All right, then, if you’re certain. If it is to be done, best that it be done quickly.” With no further preamble, he snatched up the top can, pushed down the lid, and turned.
It didn’t budge.
Kindgood shrugged, pushed down again, and turned the other way. Again, nothing. He strained, he twisted, he shook and forced the lid, he wrenched it, he gripped it until his hands were slick with sweat and slipped across the brass. He tried turning it again in both directions, to no avail.
Frowning at last, he tossed it to Stout. The man possessed the forearms of a professional baseball player, after all. “You try.”
“For the glory of God,” Stout answered. “But you loosened it for me, sir.”
“Just shut up and try it.”
Stout’s superior strength proved no more helpful. Frustrating, thought Kindgood, but at least his pride was salvaged.
The group tried further methods. Each of the seven Ninjas Templar who’d captured the cans took a chance, with no success. Special can openers, lock-wrenches, vice grips—all failed to budge the lids in any fashion at all. It was after hours of trying―when frustrations were high and talk was bandied about that perhaps Rand didn’t deserve his fee after all―that Rand offered another suggestion.
“It’s entirely possible the cans may only be opened in the same land in which they were sealed,” he said. “Bear in mind that my specialty is language, but from what I’ve learned of these sorts of things in the past year since the gods came back—”
“False gods!” Stout corrected.
“—it’s a fair assumption. You may have more luck if you take the cans to Greece.”
Kindgood pondered this a moment. “All right. We go to Greece.”
He prayed to God they spoke English there.