The Cult of Kronos (12 page)

“
Get Xander,” Frank said.

Devon scooped the baby up from
his bouncer. Xander sensed the sudden tension in the room and began
to fuss. Frank went to the back window and threw it open. Devon
handed Xander to Frank so she could climb out onto the fire escape.
Frank passed Xander back through the open window and then barely
squeezed his seven-foot frame out after them.

Devon could hear footsteps
inside the building, hundreds of them stomping up the echoey
stairwell. Frank closed the window and glanced back at Devon.

“
Give me your earring,” he
said.

Devon was wearing a pair of
long stainless steel earrings that looked like pointed pendulums. She
took one off and handed it to Frank, who used his fist to smash it
into the window frame, effectively nailing it shut.

Frank started down the fire
escape, dropping the ladder and going first so that Devon could hand
the baby down. A crash from their apartment confirmed Frank's worst
fears. The mob, for some reason or another, was coming for them.
Perhaps they were rioting in general. Perhaps they knew about The
Pantheon. Whatever the reason, there was an aggressor in their
apartment, and Frank had to protect his family.

Frank hit the street and held
up his arms to take Xander. Someone upstairs was trying to force the
window open. Devon hopped down and started running. Frank followed
close behind her.

“
Why?” Devon panted as she
stopped at her car.

Frank fumbled to slip the key
in the lock with his great big hands. He knew why they had traded in
her red BMW, but Frank sorely missed the keyless entry. “Dunno.”

He looked up from the lock to
see someone standing behind Devon. The man had wide, vacant eyes and
he smiled at Frank before grabbing Devon and pointing a switchblade
to her throat. Devon screamed. Frank glanced down at his son, who he
cradled in one arm, and back up at Devon. Why was this happening? Why
was it happening in broad daylight?

“
I don't think you wanna
mess with me,” Frank said, trying to figure out how he could get
the knife away without Devon getting hurt and without dropping his
baby. He was strong and he could adapt quickly, but he didn't have
Lewis' speed.

“
Oh I know, Ares,” the man
said. He grinned. “Which is why I've delegated. You do know that
word, right? Delegated?”

“
I'm not stupid.”

“
Could have fooled me. You
stay on the other side of that car and I don't have my pointy little
friend here spill her throat on the sidewalk.”

Devon closed her eyes. Frank
could feel a wave of her power, rippling out. The air got heavy, and
he felt a little goofy. She was the most beautiful woman on the
planet.

“
Not gonna work on me,”
the man said. “Or rather, this meat-suit I'm working with. You see,
he's sacrificed his free will. He doesn't have any desire in this
state. Isn't it beautiful?

Frank realized that a crowd
was closing in around him. He hunched his shoulders and pulled Xander
close to his chest. The baby cried out.

“
I'm calling the cops!”
someone shouted. Frank watched an old man in an apron come out of a
shop, waiving a fish knife. The man who Frank had seen earlier with
the gun pulled back the hammer and pointed it at the good samaritan.
“You'll do no such thing,” he said.

“
Puppets,” Frank spat.

“
Yep. It's better this way.
See how everyone is getting along?” said the man with the knife.
“Now I know you're strong, Ares, but even you can't single-handedly
fight off a hundred men. Especially not a hundred men when seven of
them are packing heat. And you really can't do that and protect that
precious cargo in your hands.”

Frank looked down at Xander.
The child was scared and screaming, his face red with exertion.

“
What do you want?” he
asked.

“
I want you two to take a
little road trip with me,” the man said. “I've got most of your
friends already.”

“
And if I don't cooperate?”

“
I kill your child.”

Frank raised his upper lip in
a snarl.

“
Good dog,” the puppet
replied.

Frank glanced at his arm just
as someone jammed a needle into it. His head spun. The world closed
in. The last thing he saw was a woman with dilated pupils pulling
Xander from his arms as Devon screamed and Frank collapsed.

Celene, Peter, and Penny had
gone back to the Davis apartment to grab a few things. Celene wanted
the photo album that her friends had put together after the fire.
Penny wanted her posters. Peter and Celene had entered the house in
forms that looked like they could have been Penny's distant
relatives. Penny had gone as herself.

They wandered around,
collecting items and dropping them into cardboard boxes. “Only take
what has sentimental value,” Peter reminded Celene. They needed to
have enough things left for a convincing yard sale. After all, Celene
was supposed to be dead.

They had been there for twenty
minutes when a knock came at the door. Penny went to answer it. A
rotund police officer was standing on the front step. “Excuse me,”
he said. “A neighbor reported three people entering this apartment,
but I have a report that the owner passed away last week. I'm just
checking to make sure—”

“
My mom was the owner,”
Penny said. “I live here. Well, I did until,” she recalled her
emotional state in the hospital that night. Her eyes started to well
up. The police officer did not look moved. In fact, Penny realized,
something was wrong with his eyes.

“
I'm going to have to ask
you, Demeter, and Hades to step outside.”

Penny slammed the door shut
and turned the lock.

“
What's going on?” Celene
called from the kitchen.

“
He knows who we are!”
Penny grabbed a chair and wedged it under the doorknob as the officer
started throwing his weight into the door. “He used your names,”
Penny said.

“
Out the back,” Celene
said. She left her box of photos and jewelry and waved for Penny and
Peter to follow her.

When Celene threw open the
door, another police officer, an EMT, and three more strangers were
standing in the tiny fenced-in yard. Two guns were leveled.

“
Any more ways out?” Peter
asked, raising his hands in the air.

“
Aside from getting shot and
walking back out of the Underworld again?” Celene asked.

“
Yeah, aside from that.”

“
No.”

“
Well, damn.”

“
The God of War hates those
who hesitate.”

-Euripides

XII.

Zach was glad he had charged
his phone overnight because he needed help and he wasn't risking a
trip back to his car. After trying every member of The Pantheon,
Jason Livingstone finally picked up.

“
Zach, what's wrong?”

“
Nobody is answering their
phones. I just had a run-in with Kronos. I'm hiding. He can get into
people's heads.”

“
Slow down. Where are you?”

“
Orlando,” Zach said. “I
need you to come get me. It's not safe to go back to my car.”

Zach instructed Jason on how
to download a Geocaching app on his phone and then gave him the
coordinates of where he would be. Zach started hiking, heading
towards a nearby road, keeping his distance from the green Tesla
Roadster that was probably swarmed with mindless Kronos drones.

As Zach walked through a sea
of poison ivy, he remembered his decision that morning to wear
sneakers instead of flip-flops. “Good one, Zach,” he said. At
least he wouldn't have itchy feet while he tried to figure out what
to do.

Jason pulled up in his Buick
Electra four hours later. Zach's stomach was grumbling (he had missed
lunch) but the classic car was of more concern to Zach at the moment.
Jason parked on the side of the road where Zach told him to and
unlocked the passenger door. Zach darted out from his hiding spot in
the woods and climbed in.

“
This car is too
noticeable,” Zach said as he locked the door. He grabbed Jason's
face and turned it so he could look into the older man's eyes.

“
What are you doing?”
Jason asked, his words muffled as Zach's hands gripped his cheeks.

“
Checking
your eyes,” Zach said. He let go of Jason's face, satisfied that
his pupils looked normal-sized. “When Kronos is inside people,
their eyes go big like…” Zach held his fingers up in the shape of
a circle the size of a quarter. “You haven't, by any chance, read
Becoming
Your Golden Self
,
have you?”

Jason snorted, “That crap?”

“
It's how he's getting
people to surrender their will,” he explained. “He got my Dad. He
got everyone in the office and about a bajillion people on the
street.”

Jason put the car in drive.
“Swell. So we have to assume that anyone who may have read the
self-help bestseller is an extension of Kronos?”

“
Basically.” Zach shook
his head. “Your car.”

“
What about my car?”

“
Too obvious. Pull over at
that Uhaul over there,” Zach said.

Jason
pulled into the rental place and went inside. He decided that the
slovenly teenager working the desk probably hadn't rushed out to buy
Becoming
Your Golden Self
and
took the risk of renting a moving van from him.

Jason removed anything he
thought they'd need—the emergency blanket, his roadside kit, the
baseball hat in the backseat, Jason's sunglasses, the backpack Peter
left at his house—and then left his car. They left the Electra in
the parking lot and took off in the rental van, heading away from the
city as fast as they could. When they finally stopped for gas, Jason
grabbed the baseball cap and sunglasses to hide his face and went in
to buy snacks.

“
Alright,” he said,
passing a soda and protein bar to Zach. “I went by the apartment
after you called. Signs of a struggle. No sign of Peter, Celene, or
Penny. I double-checked everyone's phones. Nobody picked up. So we
have to assume they've all been taken.”

“
Even Frank?”

“
How do you take down
someone as strong as twenty men? Get fifty men.”

Zach slumped in his seat. “So
it's me and you.”

“
Sounds like it. Me and you
and Celene's phone.” Jason pulled the phone out of his pocket.
“Celene left it on my dresser…anyway, it might help?”

Zach took the phone and
flipped through the apps. “She has find my phone on here. It's
synced to Penny's phone.”

“
What's that do?”

“
It tracks Penny's phone!”
Zach said, his voice lifting. “This is perfect. Look! They're in
Orlando.”

Zach passed the phone to
Jason. “So we know where they are?”

Zach rubbed his hands
together, smiling. “We do. And Kronos has been on an island for a
couple thousand years, so I bet he hasn't even thought of that
possibility. We can get the jump on him.”

“
We can get the jump with
ten percent of Orlando playing eyes and ears for him?” Jason asked.

It was clear they needed a
plan. Jason told Zach about his father's old hunting cabin. When
Jason was a child, they had gone there a few times a summer to camp.
Now it was collecting dust, but Paul Livingstone drove out there once
in a while to leave survival supplies in case the government
collapsed and society dissolved into anarchy. It was twenty minutes
away, and Paul Livingstone hadn't used the place in nearly two years.
It would be a perfect hideout until they could figure out what to do.

As night fell, Zach and Jason
pulled up to the cabin. A little dirt access road lead right up to
the cabin. From its front porch, no sign of civilization could be
seen. It was the perfect horror movie cabin: a quaint little place in
the middle of nowhere. It had one advantage that Jason had not
mentioned until they were pulling up. It was full of guns.

“
These are real people,”
Zach said. “Real people being puppeted.”

Jason looked back at Zach as
he unlocked the door, feeling a sense of pride. The Zach he knew of
two years ago might have considered shooting everyone to save
himself. Now Zach was worried about hurting innocents.

The old cabin smelled musty
and dusty. Most of the cabin was one room. There was a fireplace on
the right-hand wall and a large table in the middle of the room.
Couches and chairs, coated in dust and mildew, were arranged on the
left side of the room. A kitchen and a bathroom were just beyond the
fireplace wall, and a staircase lead up to a bedroom. It was quaint.
Jason crossed to the opposite wall where a large armoire loomed over
the room. He slipped yet another key into the padlock on the door.
The armoire was packed with crossbows, rifles, snares, and bright
orange vests.