The Gatekeeper's Challenge (11 page)

She decided to pray to Hermes, to tell him what she was up to. “I’m going to tell him off tonight, Hermes. I’m going to tell him how he broke my heart and how I never want to see him again. I’m going to the Underworld so I can tell him to his face.”

She found herself in a dark tunnel. She couldn’t see Vicki, but she could vaguely feel her hand in hers. A bright light shone at the end of the tunnel, so she half-walked, half-floated toward it. The walls of the tunnel looked like granite, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought there was a very small spring running through the bottom of it. Her feet didn’t feel wet, but she thought she could hear herself sloshing through the stream. When she finally reached the end of the tunnel, she recognized the Styx River in front of her. She was at the very same bank she had come to the night her parents were killed.

Fog curled around her, but she recognized the river flowing in a narrow gorge between two huge and creepy granite mountains. Her bare feet sunk into the itchy mud. She held on to Vicki, who stumbled beside her, to try and keep their balance.
Tall blades of grass as high as their knees grew in tufts along the shore, tickling her bare legs. She wondered if she should have worn jeans and if it would have made a difference. She seemed to be in the shorts she had worn to Vicki’s. Mosquitoes swarmed over one area of the water. Three large boulders leaned in a cluster on the left side of the shore against the base of a steep, massive wall of rock. Where was Charon?

Vicki tugged her across the sticky mud and tall blades of grass to the edge of the river, where Charon and his raft came into view. Without saying a word to the old, stooped man, Vicki jumped on board, pulling Therese with her.

Therese fought the urge to greet Charon by name as he gave them a look of confusion before towing them across.

The fog swirled around them like the tentacles of a gray octopus. Therese was surprised she wasn’t cold or nervous. She felt completely at peace and couldn’t wait to tell
Than what she had come to say.

In fact, she felt so peaceful, that she found it hard to be angry. She had planned to scream her angry words, but the contentment swooned over her like a glittery beam of warm sunshine, and the anger dissipated into the fog.

She recognized Cerberus as they approached the huge black iron gate. She couldn’t stop herself from saying sweetly, “Hey, boy. Hi there, Cerberus.”

His three huge heads panted happily, and he wagged his long, dragon-like tail.

“You know him?” Vicki whispered.

Charon glared at them, so Therese said nothing.

The big gates creaked open, and Charon hovered just at the entrance.

“What are you waiting for?” Vicki asked the old man.

Then suddenly the contentment vanished from Therese, and she filled with dread as some kind of commotion took place around her. Cerberus’s three huge heads barked ferociously. She couldn’t quite tell what was happening, but she felt herself lifted away from the raft, and she could make out through the fog Charon leaving. She wondered if the drug could be wearing off so soon. Then someone shouted, “Grab her! Don’t let her escape this time!” and big bodies were pushing and pulling Vicki away from her. Another had grabbed Therese and pulled her still further away from the gate. It was Hermes.

“You can’t go through the gate,” he said,
panting from the struggle. “You’ll piss off Hades for sure and never win his heart.”

His wooly black hair blew in the gentle breeze up here away from the fog, far above the river. His dark eyes and dark beard were barely
visible in what seemed to be obscured moonlight. His winged helmet gleamed, though, and so did his white teeth, which were gritted.

“It was foolish of you to come here. What made you think you could get away with this?”

Then she realized Vicki wasn’t with them. “Where’s my friend?”

Hermes shook his head but made no reply. Panic overcame Therese. She pushed herself free from Hermes and flew down to the gate. She saw
Than holding Vicki against her will on the other side of the iron gate, which he was just now closing.

“Vicki!” Therese screamed, trying to push the gate open again. But it slammed shut in her face.
“Than! Give me Vicki! She’ll die!”

Than
held on to Therese’s struggling friend. “I’m sorry, Therese. Vicki has to stay here.”

“No!” Therese threw herself against the iron bars of the gate, screaming at the top of her lungs. “No! Please! No! I beg you! I’ll do anything! Take me instead!” She was tortured by the thought of Mr. Stern losing his only child on the heels of his wife’s suicide. “I beg you,
Than! If you love me, take me instead!”

“I have no choice. She’s angered my father. She came through once before and cheated death. He won’t let her do it again.”

“But there’s got to be a way! You can’t let her die! Please! Her father will be so miserable! Please, Than!”

He shook his head again and backed away from the gate.

The anger Therese had felt over Than rekindled in her chest and she gave him a ferocious look. “I hate you, Thanatos! So you’ve been too busy to worry about me? The other night you were just doing your job? Well, I came down here to tell you to your face that I hate you and I never want to see you again! Stay out of my life! And send someone else to collect me when I’m dead!”

Hermes was there beside her now, trying to calm her down. He took her in his arms and allowed her blows to hit his chest rather than the iron bars of the gate. “I hate him!” she cried. Then she pleaded with Hermes, “Isn’t there anything you can do to save my friend?”

“Even gods are limited by the will and actions of others. There’s nothing I can do.”

She looked through th
e gate at Than, who backed away, looking miserable. Vicki had stopped struggling, and her face reminded Therese of the blank expressions on her parents’ faces the night she saw them in the Underworld. Therese realized Vicki must be dead already, and she wailed as loud as she could in the foggy air.

Than locked eyes with hers, his face contorted with pain. “When I said I’d been busy, I meant…”

But Hermes was pulling her back before she could hear the rest of Than’s statement. Back they went from the river, from the muddy bank, through the dark granite tunnel. She floated for a brief moment on the ceiling and then popped back into her body. She opened her eyes and found Vicki lying beside her, dead.

Chapter Thirteen: The Labyrinth

Ariadne vanished, leaving
Than alone at the entrance to the cavern, the labyrinth devised by Daedalus for King Minos centuries ago to house the Minotaur. In the old days, the Athenians sent seven warriors and seven maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur as payment for killing Minos’s son, but once Theseus destroyed the Minotaur, that practice ended.

But the Minotaur was immortal, and he came back.

He had no regular food source, so he must depend on lost travelers for sustenance.

Although
Than was immortal, he could be consumed by such a monster. And it would be painful. More threatening, though, was the recovery time. Than wasn’t sure how long it would take, and his chances of securing Dionysus’s help would be jeopardized. He would never see Therese as his bride.

Though now, as he crept through the winding, rocky maze, he feared he’d already lost her. The anger in her eyes when he kept her friend still haunted him. Why had Therese taken such a risk? Didn’t she know she would lose his father’s favor, which was already shaky if it existed at all? He was beginning to wonder if he was alone in still wanting this union. She hadn’t really meant it when she said she hated him, had she?

Cracks in the rock above him allowed dim points of light to illuminate the passageway, adding to the light cast by his own body. Cables of different colors lay at his feet where others copied Theseus and his ball of yarn. He bent down and held a red colored chord and hoped to use it to find his way back. When he came to a fork in the tunnel, he recalled what Theseus, upon entering the Underworld, told him centuries ago. He said, “One should go straight and down, never right or left.” Than went straight and down.

He could easily god travel out of the labyrinth, as Ariadne well knew, but if she discovered it, she would refuse to help him. He could also disintegrate and hover above the labyrinth, making its outer walls transparent so he could guide his other self through, but he didn’t want to risk Ariadne catching him at cheating. If he wanted Dionysus’s help, he had to do this the hard way.

And since he carried no weapon, he would have to defend himself from the Minotaur with his bare hands.

Chapter Fourteen: Aftermath

Therese touched Vicki’s limp body on the bed beside her, still warm. “Vicki?” She shook Vicki’s shoulder. “Vicki?” She put her hand to Vicki’s throat to feel for a pulse, her ear to Vicki’s chest. Both were silent. This can’t be happening. This must be a nightmare. Therese looked up to the ceiling and let out a blood-curdling scream.

Mr. Stern opened the bedroom door, his face at first bewildered. He might have said something, like “What’s going on?” Then his expression changed to terror as he rushed to Vicki’s side.

“Ducky? Talk to me, sweetheart!” He put his ear to her chest. “Ducky, love, wake up!”

Vicki did not move.

“Call 9-1-1,” he said to Therese as he started CPR. “Now!”

“Oh my God!” she screamed, unable to think. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, but still her mind couldn’t keep up. She stumbled around the bed for the phone on the nightstand and dialed the numbers, the same numbers she dialed around this same time last year.

She told the person on the other end the Stern’s address. “She’s not breathing! There’s no pulse! Her dad’s giving her CPR!” Her own voice kept asking her accusingly,
What have I done?

“Stay on the line with me until someone arrives,” the person on the other end said.

“I’m so sorry!” Therese didn’t want to admit what they had done. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
What have I done?

“Talk to me Therese,” Mr. Stern said while he continued to pump Vicki’s lifeless chest.

“She wanted to see her mom. She saw her last weekend using this drug. Ketamine. I wanted to see my parents, too. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She couldn’t breathe. She was hyperventilating. She didn’t care. She wanted to die rather than face Mr. Stern.

The woman on the phone asked, “You and your friend took ketamine? Can you tell me how much and how long ago?”

Tears ran down Mr. Stern’s sallow cheeks and some of the determination and hope vanished from his face. He stuck his finger down Vicki’s throat. “I need to make her vomit.” But Vicki’s body would not respond.

Therese knew Hades would not let her return from the Underworld.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said again. In her mind, to Than, she said, “How could you?”

Mr. Stern rode in the ambulance with Vicki to the hospital while Carol, Richard, and Therese followed in Richard’s car. Therese prayed to Hermes to please, please, please find a way to let Vicki return to the living. She couldn’t stop crying and wished she herself could die. If she hadn’t provided the money for the drugs, Vicki would be alive.

Carol and Richard weren’t talking. They were so upset with her when they discovered what had happened: that Therese had bought the drug, had taken some herself, and not only contributed to the death of her friend but might have died herself.

Therese didn’t blame them for being mad at her. She was mad at herself. She wished she, too, would have been taken by Death and forced to stay in the Underworld. The Lethe River was beginning to sound good.

“Hermes,” she whispered too softly for the adults up front to hear. “You should have let me die.”

Chapter Fifteen: The Minotaur

Straight and down, Than said to himself as he crept through the cave listening and watching for the first sign of the Minotaur. Ariadne had commanded Than to enter and exit the labyrinth, but she hadn’t specified how far in he had to go. Couldn’t he turn back now, especially since the red chord wound away, in the wrong direction, and he could no longer follow it?

No. He couldn’t risk her denying him her help. He could tell she didn’t want to go back to her husband, and he didn’t want to make it easy for her to refuse him. He would go far into the belly of the beast, down and down, until he couldn’t go any deeper. Once the path went uphill again, he’d know he was at its center.