The Cult of Kronos (13 page)

“
Well,” Jason said,
pulling out a plastic box of darts labeled Horse Tranquilizers.
“There must be a tranquilizer gun in here somewhere, because he has
these darts.”

“
Why the hell does your
father have an arsenal?”

“
He's a bit paranoid that
the Democrats are coming for his guns.”

“
Maybe they should,” Zach
said, nervously picking up a submachine gun. “Is this an MP5? I've
only ever seen one of these in Call of Duty.”

“
Put that down,” Jason
said nervously. “Help me find something that's a bit less lethal.”

“
Well, it's not a perfect
plan, but it sure beats shooting or electrocuting them,” Zach said.

“
I think we're covered,”
Jason said, sliding out a drawer filled with boxes of all kinds of
ammo.

They finished rifling through
the cabinet and found a pair of specially made tranquilizer rifles.
They loaded up the pair of rifles with tranquilizer darts. There were
hunting rifles and shotguns as well, but they left those on the rack,
locked the cabinet up, and sat down at the rough wooden table to
plan. Jason found some paper and crayons, stuff his father had
stocked for when Haley came to visit, and they used it to draw a map.

The map software gave them a
top-down view of the street.

“
That's my Dad's building,”
Zach said. “He's keeping them at the office tower.”

“
Downtown. That's going to
be tricky.”

“
It's smart. It seemed like
almost everyone in that office had read the book. My Dad even tried
to get me to read it before Kronos jumped in.”

“
You sure Kronos wasn't
there the whole time?”

Zach shook his head and
scratched his face. His beard was starting to come in. “Naw, his
eyes were normal until then.”

They mapped the best way to
approach the building and then took a break to finish off the rest of
the snacks from the gas station.

“
Do we wait until morning?”
Jason asked. “Get some rest?”

Zach shook his head. “No. We
use cover of darkness. People will be out of the city; commuters will
have gone home. We slip in at night. If we wait too long, he might
move them.”

“
Where do you think he'd
move them to?”

Zach took a deep breath,
“Tartarus.”

Jason went out to the Uhaul
and came back inside with a black backpack. He tossed it on the
table. Something inside made a clanking noise.

“
What is it?” Zach asked,
reaching for the bag.

“
Peter arrived with it. He
brought this back from the underworld, along with the water from the
Mnemosyne.”

Zach reached inside and pulled
out a dagger. It was old, really old, but it was in decent condition
for its age. “A dagger?”

“
He dipped it in the Styx.
It should kill Kronos permanently. No coming back. His soul would be
tied to the underworld and not even Hades could set him free.”

“
And why didn't he tell us
this at the meeting?” Zach asked, his voice rising with fury.

“
Because there was a traitor
among us. You told us that.”

Zach turned the knife around
in his hand. He gripped the handle and made a few stabs in the air.
“Kill Kronos. For good.”

“
That's the idea.”

“
That's a fate we never even
resorted to before.”

“
Do you think it's necessary
now?”

Zach nodded. He slipped the
dagger into the backpack and slung it over his shoulder. “Oh yeah.
No more second chances.”

Jason scooped up the rifles.
“Good. That means I don't have to do it myself.”

They loaded the van. “Ready?”
Zach asked.

Jason started the van. He
looked back at the cabin, a place that he had spent a lot of time as
a child. They had even come up here for Thanksgiving once. He nodded
his head slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm ready. We can't hide
forever, right?”

Zach nodded in response. “We
end this now.”

“
I have learned to hate all
traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than
treachery.”

-Aeschylus

XIII.

With his eyes blindfolded,
Evan Fuller had tried to track where they were going as he was
dragged from a van and lead into the building. He was pretty sure
they were on a basement level, one of the few basements in Florida.
Judging by the length of the drive and the sounds of city traffic,
they were most-likely in Orlando. The room was large and grey with
metal riveted to every wall. The heavy bay door they were brought in
through shut behind them: a steel curtain. One other door was cut
into the wall at the other end of the room, but it was solid steel
and there was no handle on the inside. There were no tables and no
chairs in the room. It was just empty space. Evan examined the metal
tracks built into the floor and determined that the room must have
been used for crash and blast tests.

Every member of the Pantheon,
save for Zach, was captured and trapped in this room. They sat on the
floor, Devon and Frank huddled together around their sleeping infant,
Astin moving around the room to heal people's injuries. It had been
too risky to fix Penny's broken arm before; the police had documented
the injury. Now that they were taken, they needed every able body
they could get.

“
And that was yesterday,”
Lewis said, finishing the recap of their latest Pantheon meeting for
June and Minnie. Everyone was there except for Zach. “If Zach isn't
here, that's good news, right?”

“
Okay, so you all have your
memories?” Minnie asked. She and June had missed drinking the
Mnemosyne. “What's that like?”

Everyone paused to think.
Penny was the first to speak. “Like a reading a Harry Potter book.”

“
What?” Nick asked.

“
Hear
me out. So it's like you're reading
Prisoner
of Azkaban
and you hear the name Sirius Black for the first time. Now big stuff
you remember from book-to-book, but the details you have to actually
go pick up the other books to refresh. I had to go back and pick up
Sorcerer's
Stone
to remember that Sirius Black loaned the motorcycle to Hagrid.”

“
I didn't have to look that
up,” Minnie said.

“
Well, pretend you're normal
for a minute,” June snapped back.

“
So you have your memories,
you just have to try a little to find the details?” Minnie asked.

They all nodded.

“
So try to find a power that
can get us out of here. Lewis said you can shape-shift. What else?”

They all stared at each other.
Evan was still walking around the walls, looking for a way out. “This
camera,” he called. “Can we block it?” The camera he pointed to
was mounted high above their heads in the corner of the room.

“
Ooh!” Lewis raised his
hand as if he was still in English class. “I know!”

He closed his eyes and took a
deep breath before he started nodding. “I totally got this,” he
said, opening his eyes and smiling. Lewis began to run across the
room, but as he ran he ascended as if he was climbing on a staircase
of air. Diana gasped. Teddy whispered, “Nice!”

Lewis got to the camera and
stood there, hovering in the air. It was clear from the way he
floated that all of his lift came from his feet. “Do I try and
break it?”

“
Cover it up,” Astin
suggested.

Lewis peeled his t-shirt off
and hung it over the lens.

“
Ew, nobody wants to see
your scrawny concave chest,” Astin said.

Lewis looked down at his body
and then took a deep breath. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and
blew. Like a Loony Tunes character, his chest inflated when he blew.
His shoulders, stomach, and chest puffed out into nicely formed
muscles. He looked like a classical statue. “That better?”

“
Nice,” Teddy said. “I'm
getting rid of my gym membership.”

“
Alright,” Minnie said.
“Now we can work in private. What else have we got?”

Frank had been sitting with
Devon, keeping a protective arm around her as she cradled their
sleeping infant. Now Frank stood up and walked to the door. He swung
his fist and punched it. The room rang with the sound, but the door
was hardly dented. Frank stepped back. Horns sprouted from his head
and his body hunched over. In seconds he was gone and in his place
stood an enormous black bull with white horns and shining fur. The
bull Ares crashed into the door over and over, but aside from
breaking a horn, he accomplished nothing. Frank shifted back to his
human form and sat down hard. He looked dazed, and he shook his head.
“The alloy's too strong.”

“
I might be able to melt
through it if I had enough time,” Evan said.

“
Time is, apparently, all we
have,” Astin noted.

“
Time is not on your side,”
someone next to Peter said. Peter spun around, but the others didn't
hear the words. A ghost had appeared in the room.

“
Ghost!” Penny shouted.
Apparently now, she could see them too.

“
Where?” Nick asked.

Peter recognized the ghost,
though he had hardly known the guy. It was Ryan Bear, the same ghost
that told them to drink the Mnemosyne. “What are you doing here?”
he asked Ryan.

“
Whose ghost?” Astin
asked.

“
Ryan,” Penny said,
looking at Diana.

“
Kronos came back to the
underworld,” Ryan said.

“
Did he try another
jailbreak?” Peter asked.

Ryan shook his head. “He
stopped at the Styx. Charon saw him. He dipped his sickle in the
waters.”

“
Oh crap.”

“
What is it?” Nick asked.
“What's he saying?”

Diana crossed to the spot
where Peter was staring. “Is he here?”

Ryan's ghost turned and looked
at Diana. He tried to touch her shoulder, but his fingers passed
through her. Peter nodded.

“
How long ago was this?”
Peter asked.

“
Yesterday morning.”

“
Teddy said Kronos was at
that fundraiser,” Penny said. “He must have gone before, right?
Isn't the closest hellmouth in New Orleans?

Peter nodded. “Thank you
Ryan. Thank you for warning us.”

Ryan looked back at Diana one
last time before he vanished.

“
He's gone,” Peter said to
Diana. “And for those of us who don't speak ghost, Kronos just made
himself a god killing weapon.”

“
God killing?” Nick asked.
“Like he killed Dr. Davis?”

Celene shook her head. She
remembered the dagger they had dipped in the Styx. If only they had
it now. “If a blade dipped in the Styx kills you, your immortality
is gone. You are bound to the Underworld. Not even Hades can bring
you back.”

“
It's his sickle.”

“
Like the grim reaper?”
Lewis asked.

“
That's a scythe,” Evan
said. “A sickle has a short handle. It's got more of a curve to the
blade.”

Lewis was still flying around
the perimeter of the room. “I'm not waiting around for him to get
Zach so we can all be executed together.” Lewis' hand settled on a
grate that pumped air into the room. “I can pass through locks, I
bet I can pass through air ducts.”

“
You're just gonna leave us
here like a coward?” Nick asked.

“
I'm gonna leave and find a
way to bust you out of here. Man, you have trust issues.” Lewis
looked back at the grate and focused. Slowly his hand turned into
shining particles and slipped through the vent. The rest of his body
followed. In seconds, Lewis was gone.

Everyone sat in silence.
Minnie paced the room.

“
None of this would have
happened,” Astin finally said, “if someone hadn't stabbed us in
the back.”

“
Well, we know it wasn't
Zach,” Teddy said. “I mean, why would he? He was the big man at
the top.”

“
But he's also the only one
of us not here right now,” Diana pointed out.

“
It was probably someone who
wanted more power,” Astin said, glancing at Peter.

“
Don't look at me,” he
said, “I had my own kingdom.”

“
Yeah,” Teddy said, “With
a bunch of dead people.”

“
Oh come on,” June said,
“We all know that one person here has never been a team player.”
She looked directly at Nick.

“
Hey! If he wants to accuse
me of something, he should come here himself instead of sending his
bitch.”

June lunged at Nick. Minnie
grabbed her and held her back. “He's not worth it.”

“
I wanna see them fight,”
Teddy said. “Fifty bucks on June clawing Nick's eyes out.”