The Blood of Athens (17 page)

“
Or
perhaps
not,”
said Nick. “Face it. Peter's dead. The police can't explain who
that Titan was or why they were fighting on the roof. They can't
explain how everyone saw Mrs. Matthews on the airplane when she was
sitting in a morgue in Athens. People are asking a lot of serious
questions and nobody has any good answers.”

Jason sat in
the large arm-chair, silent, his fingers steepled as he listened to
the chatter around him. He hadn't spoken since arriving.

“
And then
there's the blackmailer,” Teddy added.

Minnie shook
her head, “Spade won't be coming back. They found him dead in his
apartment. Well, they found James Harper Junior. Spade was his work
alias. There was a little back-page piece in the paper yesterday.
Suicide.” She looked at Devon when she said this.

“
If he’s
dead,” June asked, “Where’s the evidence?”

They stared at
her.

“
You didn’t
honestly think that his death would erase this, did you? If he says
he had photos, someone is going to find them.”

“
He died
without family and the police don’t suspect foul play. It’ll
probably be months before anyone finds the evidence, if they ever
do,” Minnie said.

“
Or maybe he
gave them to a lawyer with ‘open on the event of my death.’ If he
saw Frank kill Atlas, he knew he needed insurance.”

“
I’m still
not a hundred percent sure he had evidence,” Jason said. “He
asked for so little money. He might have been bluffing.”

“
In a few
days when the scene is clear, we need to break in to his apartment
and make sure there’s nothing to incriminate us,” June said. “We
can’t wait too long or the land lord will clean it out.”

“
Peter's
dead,” Penny said.

Everyone
stopped and looked at her. Peter hadn't been the most popular guy,
but he had grown on them. He might have been dark and distant, but he
was one of them. They were a family. You couldn't survive two Titan
attacks and a handful of supernatural powers without growing some
sort of bond. They all knew that Penny had been close to him. He was
Penny's best friend.

“
Peter's
dead,” she repeated after a long, awkward silence, “Peter died to
protect us. And that means any one of us is mortal.”

“
He was
going to get away from his father,” Jason said. Everyone let that
thought sink in. It was no secret that Peter had more black eyes and
split lips than were normal. The silence grew thick and heavy as it
filled the room, and with each passing second it became harder to
speak. What more could be said?

There was a
rumbling outside. The engine of a car cut out and a minute later the
door creaked open. Valerie Hess poked her head in.

Valerie was
their sixteenth member, the goddess Hestia reborn. She hadn’t come
on the trip and nobody had seen her since lunch at school two Fridays
before.

“
Valerie,”
Zach said, “We missed you at the funeral.”

“
Because
nobody told me,” she said with tracks of tears running down her
face. She closed the door.

Silence.

Valerie shook
her head. “Remember, I was in Guatemala with my church. I haven’t
had phone or internet.” She closed her eyes. “Nobody told me
anything. I just got home and read about Peter's death on Facebook.”

Celene
cringed and rose to her feet. She wrapped her arms around Valerie and
held her for a minute. Everyone else in the room was out of tears.
They shared the misery of stinging eyes and the painful lump that
forms in the throat after too much crying. “Come in, Valerie, sit
down,” Celene said, “I'll make you a cup of tea and we'll fill
you in.”

“
Inferiors
revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be
superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

-Aristotle

xxii.

The
Lord Zeus lay in bed with his wife, Hera.
It was a cool evening in
mid-summer.
The gentle breeze was comfortable on his
uncovered
shoulders.

The
light of the stars cast everything in
indistinct shades of indigo
and shadow.
Hera breathed warm against her husband's bare
chest.
All Olympus slept.

The
darkness came, not as a gradual fade
or the sudden extinguishing
of candles,
but as a tidal wave that swallowed the stars:
a
blanket of night.

With
the darkness came a sudden chill that woke
the King and his Queen
from their slumber.
But before Zeus could take up his bolts, it
sprang
forth to bind them both.

“
He lives
not long who battles with the immortals, nor do his children prattle
about his knees when he has come back from battle and the dread
fray.”

-Homer

XXII.

Jason sat on
his sofa, watching Haley and the twins enact a soap opera with
mismatched Happy Meal toys. The dialogue blended into white noise as
he thought about the last week. Spade had come to him. Menoetius was
planning to kill him and take his place. Somehow, as a bystander in
all of this, he had become the center of it.

His eyes
flicked to the back of Haley's head. She sat, sucked into the drama
of their role-play, completely unaware of the trouble that had
threatened her world over the last year and a half.

The doorbell
rang. “Go play in your room with the twins for a bit, will you?”

Haley pouted.

“
I'll bake
cookies when I'm done.”

The kids
bolted to Haley's bedroom and slammed the door. Jason crossed through
the mud room and opened the front door. Celene stood alone on the
doorstep. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in the
crook of his neck.

Jason had
found it hard to sleep over the last few days. He felt like something
cold and solid had climbed inside his chest and settled there. The
weight of it sapped his energy throughout the day and jolted to wake
him suddenly every time he drifted towards sleep. He was haunted.
Jason thought about all of the ways that he could have done that
night differently. How many scenarios could he run through in his
head that left Peter Hadley alive? Jason held Celene and felt her
warmth spread through him. She even smelled warm, like fresh earth
and caramel. When she finally pulled back, Celene stepped into the
house and Jason closed the door behind her. He slid his hands into
his pockets. Here was a woman he loved, someone he was almost ready
to take the plunge with. After the death of his wife, he had finally
found someone who made him happy again. But he couldn't do it. He had
other responsibilities.

“
You wanted
to talk to me?” she asked.

Jason looked
at the floor. “You know that he was going to kill me and take my
place to get to you, right?”

“
Well, thank
God we sent Frank and Lewis instead.”

“
Thank God
for Peter,” Jason said. Frank and Lewis would have been dead
without Peter’s sacrifice.

They stood
quietly for a moment. That was a debt that could never be repaid.

“
And you
know Spade expected me to raid my kids' college fund to pay him off?”

Celene nodded,
“We don't have to worry about that. He's gone.”

“
And you
know I was the one left to burn in your house when Prometheus trapped
you all in the jar. I was the one who was supposed to fall off that
roof the other night.” Jason felt like he owed her a solid
explanation for what he was about to do.

Celene took
his hand. Jason slipped his hand out of her grasp. “When Felicia
died, I thought I would too. But, by some miracle, I'm still here. I
have to be. I've got Haley and Jamie and Scotty to worry about. I
can't be worrying about the next Titan to pop up, looking for
vengeance. I care about you and I care about those kids, but I have
to put
my
kids first.
What would have happened to them if Menoetius had taken my identity?
What would have happened if he had come home to this house while he
picked you off, one-by-one. I can't do it. I can't put them at that
kind of risk anymore. If it were just me you know I'd be by your
side, ready to fight. But it's not just me.”

Celene nodded.
“I understand. I do.”

“
I have to
cut myself off,” Jason said. “I've thought about this a lot and I
hate it, but I have to. I can't be involved with any of it.”

Celene clasped
her hands together. A horrible knot in her stomach told her that this
wasn't merely Jason leaving The Pantheon. He was leaving her, too.
“This is goodbye, isn't it?”

Jason nodded.
There was a lump swelling in his throat that made it hard to talk. He
wanted to apologize, to wrap her in his arms and kiss her, but he
knew it wasn't the right thing to do. “It is,” he said. His voice
got stuck in his throat and he had to push to force the next words
out. “I'm sorry.”

Celene took a
deep breath. She nodded. “Alright,” she whispered. “Goodbye.”

Celene turned
and opened the front door. Jason wanted to tell her he loved her, as
if that would ensure that she knew how hard this was for him, but he
knew that it wasn't fair to leave someone with knowledge like that.
“Goodbye,” he said.

Celene stepped
out into the cool, sunny afternoon. Jason closed the door and leaned
against it for a long while. There was no turning back.

June Jacobs
hung the last of her clothing in Zach's closet. His half of the
closet was a random assortment of jerseys, dress shirts, pants
hangers, and jackets. June's half was organized by type (sweaters,
tank tops, blouses, skirts) and then color (rainbow order). Obsessive
organization was how June handled her feelings. It was much easier to
sort articles of clothing than to think about her father shouting
that she had thrown her life away by marrying Zach Jacobs in high
school.

Zach returned
to the house from his trip to the mailbox and threw a pile of bills
on the counter for his mother. Beneath his issue of
Sports
Illustrated
was
a postcard addressed to him. He hadn't gotten a chance to check it
out or read it. He was too enthralled in the latest article about
upcoming college football prospects (he was still choosing between
scholarship offers at Florida State and Auburn) to pay much attention
to it.

Zach wandered
back to the bedroom and threw a wedding card, the post card, and his
car insurance bill on the bed while he read the article. June grabbed
for the wedding card, hoping it held money, when she spotted the
postcard. It was from the Canary Islands and featured a picture of a
mountain, Mount Tiede, against a clear blue sky.

“
Zach,”
she said, her tone urgent.

“
What?” he
asked, turning the page of his magazine.

“
Zach,”
she snapped, “Look!”

Zach sighed,
but smiled, and put down the magazine. He took the postcard. When his
eyes settled on the message, the smile vanished from his lips.

I'll be
seeing you soon.

~Kronos

And now for a
preview of the first book in Amy Leigh Strickland's new series:

Rescue

OR,

Royer
Goldhawk's Remarkable Journey

Available May
2013

“
It
is too thick to pass here,” Benjy said. I marveled at the thousands
of people marching, wondering how many were risking their jobs to be
there. Benjy pointed back towards the theater. “Let’s go wait for
America with Mercy,” he suggested. I was up for any excuse to spend
more time near Miss Winmer and nodded my head.

Benjy
and I entered the alley next to the theater. Up ahead, Mercy waited
at the back door, fighting to keep her extravagant hat from blowing
off in the breeze that swept through the alley. Benjy called out and
she turned to wave. A great shadow fell over the alley and I became
acutely aware of a rumble overhead.

I
placed my hand on the rim of my hat to keep it from falling off as I
looked up at the sky. Overhead, a great dirigible loomed. The rigid
airship was being steered directly over the alley and had slowed to
linger above us. “Brooker & Bedloe Steam Industries” was
painted on the side in a text style that resembled a circus poster. I
marveled at the great airship, wondering if it was a part of the
parade. Surely a great company like Brooker & Bedloe did not want
to encourage their workers to organize, but there was no other
explanation for the great ship to fly so low over the city.