Theta (13 page)

“
Tommy, this is
Alessandra,” Niko said in a clipped tone and then folded his arms
across his chest. “My son has a unique ability.”

I started to smile. “Theodocia’s son,” I
said, recalling how shocked I’d been to learn the two of them
procreated when we all first met. The mercenary cared for nothing
in this world, except for the boy sitting in front of me.
Suspecting it took a great deal for him to introduce anyone to
Tommy, and that today was somehow special, I didn’t say what I
wanted to and sat by the boy instead.

“
Hi Tommy,” I said
cheerfully.

“
Hi.” His eyes were
identical to Niko’s – bright green – while his caramel coloring was
unmistakably Theodocia’s. “I have a message for you.”

“
From …”

“
Thanatos.”

I blinked, not certain I heard him
correctly.

“
He gets his ability to
talk to gods from his mother,” Niko said with a scowl, none too
pleased.

“
Wow. Okay.” I studied
Tommy. “Can you tell me in my head what the God of Death wants me
to know?” I was not yet certain if Cleon could hear when someone
spoke in my head and not about to risk getting the boy in front of
me in trouble, if Cleon picked up on something he said
aloud.

Anger trickled through me. Cleon wasn’t
happy with the request, which I was taking as a win for me.

Tommy tilted his head to
the side.
Thanatos says to be careful when
you tread into the realm of Hades.

My mouth dropped open.

He says to stay on the other side of the
curtain.

“
Holy Zeus. I had no idea,”
I replied.
Is Hades angry?
I asked him telepathically.

Tommy shook his
head.
He knows things aren’t right. But
Thanatos says he’s moody, and if he decides he doesn’t want you
there, he will take you away.

By the boy’s smile, he either didn’t
understand what that meant, or he was as amused by death as his
father was. I didn’t know him well enough to figure it out. I had
witnessed firsthand how lethal his mother and father were. That the
God of Death spoke through their child seemed very fitting, given
what I knew of the former couple.

“
That’s all,” Tommy
said.

The short message was intense. So Thanatos
and Hades had their eyes on me. I was as willing to disappoint
either of them as I was Adonis, and I didn’t think the gods would
take anything I did as well as the butcher who used to be in charge
of SISA.

“
Can I ask him one
question?” I pressed.

Tommy nodded.

Why can I hear the deities in my head but
not communicate with them?

Tommy tilted his head once more, as if
listening, before he blinked and smiled. “He says because you
aren’t listening.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sometimes they’re so
stubborn.”

Tommy nodded, as if accustomed to the
strangeness of gods. At his age, I was learning to track rabbits
and other small prey in the forest, not talking to gods, though I
wondered if I should have been doing the latter instead. Whenever I
started to regret my upbringing, I thought of Herakles. My
protector had done his best, and what he’d taught me had already
kept me alive. I wasn’t able to resent him, of all people, for
being the only one who tried to prepare me for a life none of us
were able to imagine.

Why are they even in my
head?
I asked.

“
He says because they want
to help you.”

My eyebrows went up. The voices had claimed
similar on the night I destroyed part of DC, as well as asserting
that I had been deceived about who my real enemies were.

Why were they lying to me, when the evidence
of what they had done to humanity was so visible outside of the
protected zone? Troubled, and feeling as if I were once again
caught in a blind maze, I fell quiet.

At times, I sensed something else was going
on without being able to identify what. How did I decipher what my
instincts couldn’t make out, either?

“
Time’s up,” Niko said,
clearly uncomfortable with me talking to his son. Was it
me
or his son’s unusual
knack for communicating with a god? The head of Cleon’s armies, and
my security detail, was not the spiritual type.

“
Thank you, Tommy,” I said
and stood.

Niko led me out of the locker room and back
into the gym. He gripped my arm as I passed him and turned me to
face him. With the tension in his frame, and the tightness of his
hand around my upper arm, I didn’t need to hear his words to
understand he wasn’t pleased.

“
Leave my son out of this,”
he told me. The protective edge in his voice was new, and I sensed
it was present only where his son was concerned.

“
I’m not placing him in any
sort of danger,” I replied. “But you have to know by now my life
and my power are both out of my control. I can’t cause him any
harm, but I can’t keep him safe either.”

“
Keeping him safe is my
job.”

“
Niko, you can’t fight
what’s coming. Only I can, and only if I have my mind as my own.
Tommy’s dead otherwise.” The brazen, but true, statement was spoken
out of frustration and out before I could censor myself. Then
again, I was never really good at censoring myself in the first
place. I didn’t want Niko angry with me, but he also needed to know
the truth.

Niko’s jaw clenched, and fire flashed in his
gaze.

Cleon was displeased to the point of angry
again, and I had the brief satisfaction of knowing how angry he
would be from here on out when he heard and saw everything I was
doing.

I started to pull away, but Niko yanked me
closer.

“
If you threaten my son
again, I don’t care who you are or what magic powers you possess. I
will strip your skin from your body and melt your organs while
you’re still alive. Do you understand?”

Herakles would tell me never to provoke
someone whom I had no chance of winning against. Niko was one of
those men. At least, when we were on his territory, he was.

I nodded without speaking. It didn’t matter
that he misunderstood me. When he was calmer, he might view our
conversation differently. Convincing him the world was going to end
if I didn’t get Cleon out of my head wasn’t my most immediate
concern. Niko wasn’t ready to make a move against his boss, because
I had nothing better to offer him. I hadn’t proven myself the most
powerful Oracle in existence yet.

He released me, pushed me away then whirled
and strode back to the locker room.

My arm was bruising already. I was
accustomed to rough treatment from him, but his intensity still
scared me. Even when he was beating my ass in the ring, or
tranquilizing me, he was in command of himself. What that man would
do, if someone tried to hurt his son …

I had no intention of ever finding out. I
would have to remember to phrase my warning better next time.

Cleon was openly amused.

“
Get out,” I said through
clenched teeth and squeezed my temples.

There had to be a way. Maybe, I could lose
him on the wrong side of the curtain, and Hades would snatch up
Cleon and carry him away.

Cecelia’s warning returned to my thoughts.
Cleon couldn’t die before we were disconnected, or I risked losing
part of my power and mind. Or both. Or neither. The most
frustrating part: no one knew with any certainty what would happen,
least of all me, the greatest and mightiest Oracle in ten thousand
years.

Filled with self-loathing, I left the gym.
Trailed by my security detail, I returned to my villa and went to
my room. No events were scheduled for tonight, and I had a date
with my mind, hopefully on the right side of the curtain this
time.

“
Sorry about that,” I said,
uncertain if the two gods were watching me or not. “But I don’t
really know what I’m doing, so if I end up on the wrong side,
please be patient while I learn.”

Mrs. Nettles was napping on my bed, purring
in her sleep. I stood over her, tempted to wake her and hope
Artemis was paying attention.

When she didn’t stir, I stretched out beside
her and closed my eyes. With a great deal of excitement, and just a
little anxiety, I entered the meditative state that allowed me to
step outside myself.

My body relaxed, and the picture of my room
formed in my mind’s eye. It was gray and hazy again. Puzzled as to
how I was supposed to know how to do this without guidance, and
without stepping on the toes of any deities who didn’t want their
realms disturbed, I lingered in my room for a moment.

If there were a door, I didn’t see it. I
pushed my hands forward to see if this curtain of which Thanatos
spoke were something I could pierce. I couldn’t see it, and my
hands didn’t slide through a veil into the real world.

“
I’m not trying to
trespass,” I whispered. “But I don’t know how to leave your side of
the curtain, Hades.”

No sooner had the words left my mouth, when
I felt the hot breath of someone breathing down the back of my
neck.

I tensed and whirled, expecting to see the
wall behind my bed.

Someone – rather,
some
thing
– else
was there instead.

“
Holy Zeus,” I said and
stumbled away. I craned my neck back until I could see the top of
the creature before me. The three-headed guardian of the underworld
was growling from all its muzzles, its teeth exposed and red eyes
glowing. The monster stood twenty feet tall at least, with legs
that were thicker than my torso.

Behind him, instead of the wall to my
bedroom, a black cavern yawned open. I didn’t have to guess where
it went, or why the monster was here. Thanatos had warned me about
trespassing again.

“
Nice puppies … uh, puppy …
whatever,” I murmured and stepped back. “I’m sorry, Hades. I wasn’t
trying to –”

Cerberus lowered one head and smashed into
my body with its muzzle. I flew backward, across the room – and
heard the strange sound of fabric ripping. The world erupted into
color. Unlike the black-white-gray world of Hades, and the normal
color of my world, this version of reality was my world on
steroids. The colors were vibrant enough to cause me to squint.

Landing on my backside, I scrambled to my
feet. Cerberus remained where he was, behind a thin veil that
rendered him and everything else behind it gray.

The monster turned and walked away,
retreating toward the dark hole leading to the underworld behind
it.

Relieved, I released a breath. “Thanks,” I
called.

The creature ignored me and disappeared into
the hole, which also vanished once the beast had passed through. It
was replaced by something more solid than a veil. A mirror
reflected my world and me, except everything was in black, white
and gray. The lack of color distinguished the two realms. Where I
belonged, there was color. Where I did not, it was gray.

I blinked until the loud hues of this world
no longer hurt my eyes. Studying my reflection in the black and
white world, I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to learn how not
to pop up in Hades’ territory without help from someone. Would
Cerberus be this helpful next time around?

My thoughts turned to Cecelia, and I began
to wonder if she was trapped in a place like this. With my body
safely lying on a bed beside a slumbering Mrs. Nettles, I floated
through the walls of my villa and out the front door. Tensing when
I passed by the guards stationed at my front door, I reminded
myself every few steps no one could possibly see me when I was
outside my body.

The sun was brighter outside, and the grass
so much greener than normal. The colors were dazzling, a little
overwhelming, but beautiful nonetheless. Ribbons were even more
vibrant and expressive in this place. They danced subtly, like
tendrils of smoke twisting and shifting in a light breeze.

I felt
real.
The ground was solid beneath my
feet and the sun warm. But I moved faster. It didn’t take me thirty
minutes to cross the mall and arrive at the Oracle’s cavern. Barely
a minute passed by my count, and I was suddenly there, passing more
guards into the security station. I didn’t wait for the elevator
but sank through the floor to arrive in her chamber.

The smells of the Oracle’s cavern were
stronger, too. They ensnared me, filled my senses and sent me
tumbling into euphoria. I floated in the state of joy for a moment,
forgetting why I had come, before I recalled my purpose in
visiting. I shook my head and focused on the Oracle.

Her body was still, her eyes closed, though
the machines connected to her assured me she was alive. She, too,
was made up of billions of tiny fibers in so many colors, it would
take me a lifetime to name and count them all.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I’d hoped
to find her here, in this strange one-off dimension, maybe seated
beside her body, where we could talk. She wasn’t present, and I
glanced towards the mirror demarking the separation of this world
from Hades’. Nothing was unusual or different at all about the
caverns in the reflection, and I began to wonder where the Oracle
was, if she weren’t in the human realm, this one or Hades’
territory.

Disappointed, I sat down
before her, awed by the bright green rainbow above her head. I
couldn’t see what was above mine. All of the ribbons of the world
were visible to me, except for those belonging to me. With their
richer colors present in this dimension, I searched through all of
hers to identify if any of them were broken or jagged or otherwise
showing me why she had fallen into a coma without identifying any
difference between what was in front of me and what had been there
before her coma.
I had tried
unsuccessfully several times to fix the tears caused by her
dismemberment.