The Immortals (39 page)

Finally, Everett revealed the last of the
hiera
. He drew it carefully out of the
kalathos
and held it in the palm of his hand. A pale diamond of flesh, drained of blood. Crude black stiches had sewn Helen closed. Unlike the other sacrifices, Helen was not a virgin—so Everett had made her one. Theo retched against his gag.

Everett betrayed no emotion. “We call upon the Virgin Goddess, Artemis, she who protects the pure from harm, that she may restore our fragile bodies and cleanse our corrupt souls.” He dropped the offering into the flames. Each curling hair caught fire, a hot orange nimbus quickly charred to black.

Everett moved closer to the flames, inhaling the smoke through his mouth as if imbibing it. He drew Selene to stand beside him. “Breathe. Let the offerings give you strength, as they have done for me.” Theo wasn’t surprised to see her obey. Little could surprise him anymore. Selene stood with her mouth open and eyes closed, sucking in the smoke with great, wheezing gasps. Suddenly, her hands began to shake. Blood flooded her cheeks and her eyes snapped open.

Everett knelt before Selene like a supplicant and took the hem of her shirt in his hands. He lifted it slowly, just to the bottom of her rib cage, and pressed a long kiss against the red scab that ran across her stomach. When Everett pulled away, the scab was gone.

“It works,” Selene gasped.

“I told you.” Everett pressed her palms to his lips. “This is just the beginning.” He drew his sword and pointed it at Theo.

“No, my lover,” she said, raising her bound hands before her. She flung her arms wide, breaking free of the ropes. Theo winced in the bright silver light that suddenly flooded the cave. He could barely see Selene through the glare, but he could hear her voice, thrumming and deep, vibrating in his skull like the words of a prophet.

“This is where it ends.”

“What are you doing?” Orion demanded, shielding his eyes from the glare of Selene’s divine radiance. “We have to complete the ritual!”

“I am the Protector of the Innocent.” She moved to stand by Theo, glaring at each of the
mystai
in turn, daring them to challenge her. “Saving him is my birthright.”

Orion stepped back as if struck. His face slackened with the same look of disbelief he’d given her when she thrust an arrow through his throat on the shore of the sapphire sea. The same look she’d spent so long trying to forget. “You don’t… you can’t…”

“You made me choose. I choose him.”

Orion shook his head, incredulous. “You only want him because he’s a Makarites. You can’t resist the allure of a mortal who remembers the gods.”

“No. Whether he is Blessed or not, I
choose
Theo. I choose his brilliance. I choose his empathy. I choose his laughter.”

“But he’s dust. Have you forgotten? Every second of his life is spent hurtling toward death, his body disintegrating even as
you watch. His mind is mortal, finite. Even as a Makarites, he’s unable to comprehend your true glory. That’s what you choose over
me
?”

“There was a time I would’ve chosen you over anyone, anything,” she said, unable to keep the regret from her voice. “Why didn’t you come to me then? Why wait for so long?”

“I wanted to come to you in my full glory, not a pale shadow of the hero I’d once been. I knew you’d never condone the killing of innocents, and I couldn’t let you stop me before my transformation was complete. Maybe before, in the old days, you would’ve overlooked the murders, but I know how you’ve changed, even if you don’t.” The pleading left his voice, replaced my something hard, accusatory. “You’ve grown soft. You’ve come to care for those you protect. Still, I thought that if I waited until you could see for yourself the power I could bestow, then you wouldn’t be able to say no.”

“Then you didn’t really know me at all.”

“But I would give you an eternity of power.” He opened his arms as if expecting her embrace. “How can you resist that?”

“I’ve already had it,” said Selene, unmoved. “I don’t need it any longer.” Orion dropped his arms. His sword hung loosely at his side.
Leave here,
she begged him silently.
Disappear back into my memories, where you will stay forever beautiful and brave. Let me forget the monster you’ve become. Let me finally find happiness without you.

Then Orion lifted his head, and she knew with a sinking heart that the fight had just begun. No longer was he the yearning lover of old, nor the fierce companion of her youth, but a creature neither god nor man, a monster wracked by millennia of bitterness and resentment, disappointment and fury. “So be it.” He turned to his
mystai
and said very calmly, “Kill them both.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Martin Anderson lurch awkwardly forward with his knife outstretched. In a flash, she
punched him in the jaw with her right hand and ripped his knife away with her left. Martin stumbled backward, moaning and spitting blood. She brandished the knife at the other two
mystai,
who froze in place. Only then did she allow herself to look at Theo. Her divine radiance cast a cold light across his bruised face, but his gaze was still warm. Despite the duct tape silencing his words, she could read the message clearly in his eyes:
Whatever you’re planning, I’m with you. Just lead the way.

“Don’t just stand there,” Orion commanded his acolytes. “Complete the sacrifice!”

Nate lunged toward Selene, who sidestepped him easily, then knocked the knife from his hand with a well-placed kick. At the same time, Theo ducked under Bill Webb’s slash, then came up to head-butt his chairman soundly in the forehead. Neither of the
mystai
took long to recover, not with their
kykeon-
enhanced strength. She tensed for a renewed attack.
Let them come,
she thought.
They are mere mortals against a goddess.

Then a muscled arm snaked around her chest from behind, pinning her in place. “You can’t stop this,” Orion hissed in her ear. He held his sword to her neck. “Now drop the knife, my faithless lover, and watch my
mystai
complete their work.” She ignored him, slamming her booted heel into his shin and twisting in his grasp. Implacable, he swung his sword, striking at her knife and knocking it from her grip. With the flat of his blade, he forced her head toward Theo.

The
mystai
had him in their grip again. Handcuffed and bound, her friend had no hope of fending off all three of them at once. A cold fist of dread seized her heart, and she realized that despite all the danger of the past week, she’d always believed, deep inside, that she could protect him from harm. Even when he’d been kidnapped, she’d known somehow she would find him, save him, no matter what it took. And now he stood only a few feet away, and though the burnt offerings had granted her
more strength than she’d known in years, she was helpless to prevent what was about to happen.

She continued to thrash desperately against Orion’s embrace, heedless of the sword’s kiss on her throat. “Go on! Kill me now. Make
me
the sacrifice if you must.” But Orion just stood behind her, wordless and unyielding. “You can’t, can you?” she taunted, her cries edging toward hysteria. “You’re weak, Hunter. You drug your followers. You bind your sacrifice. You lied about Helen. She didn’t go happily to her death. She fought with everything she had! And when she died, she prayed to
me
, never to you. She begged me to avenge her—and her prayer will not remain unanswered!” But her words were wind and Orion stone.

Martin and Nate gripped Theo by the shoulders while Bill Webb, a red welt on his forehead, held a knife aloft. He looked to his hierophant for the final command.

Theo’s eyes sought Selene’s. Even now, she knew, he held out hope that she could rescue him.
My brilliant professor—you will die a fool, believing in a goddess who doesn’t deserve your faith.
Then Orion nodded to his acolyte.

Webb thrust the knife into Theo’s heart.

A high-pitched keen like a hawk in distress reverberated through the cave. An instant later, Selene realized she was screaming. Orion released her and she fled to Theo’s side, dragging his body into her arms. His blood seeped through her clothes and pooled against her skin.

She ripped the gag from his mouth and tore the cypress wreath from his head. He looked up at her, his green eyes still bright.

“You can’t die,” Selene said. “I won’t let you.”

Blood bubbled through Theo’s words. “Just try to stop me.”

She kissed him. Through the blood. Through her tears.

He smiled. A faint shadow of the dimpled grin she knew so well. “Worth it… for that.”

She kissed him until his lips went still and his body grew limp. Only then, as he lay lifeless in her arms, did she allow herself to admit the dreams she’d had for him.
I’d kiss you beneath the stars, and we’d swap stories of the constellations,
she thought, brushing a lock of hair from his eyes.
You’d take me to the movies, but I’d watch you more often than the screen, loving the way you smiled with delight.
She kissed the corner of his mouth.
We’d climb mountains and swim in cold streams. You’d learn to enjoy it, and I’d learn to laugh as easily as you do. Then, someday, when the time was right, and I knew you’d understand, I’d give you my real name.
She closed his eyes, then leaned her forehead against his and whispered, “And then, perhaps, if I was very brave and you were very patient, I’d give you myself.”

A burst of laughter ripped her from her mourning. She looked up to see Nate grinning and flexing his biceps. “It worked!” he crowed. Martin took off his glasses and blinked, as if astonished that he could see without them. Bill Webb straightened and ran his hands along his throat, feeling for a tumor that was no longer there.

In that moment, the power of the sacrifice blazed through Selene’s veins, leaving her trembling in its wake. The cave grew brighter as her aura intensified. She felt the glow burning around her now, cold flames licking her skin. Very carefully, she laid Theo’s head on the stone floor. The strength she’d gained from the burnt offerings was nothing compared to the force now pulsing within her. Dimly, she recognized that something fundamental had shifted, cracked, reformed—granting her unbounded strength while, at the same time, destroying the kernel of humanity she’d both cherished and resented for millennia. She could barely feel grief at Theo’s loss, couldn’t remember the touch of his arms around her or the warmth of his smile—all those human memories had been suddenly burned away within the fiery outrage of an offended immortal. Artemis the Untamed rose to her feet and faced Theo’s killer. Webb
stood, laughing and smiling with his comrades, Theo’s blood still red on his hands.

The chairman turned to face her, waving his bloody knife. “You can’t hurt us now. Look how strong we are!”

“Now it’s your turn, Artemis,” Orion said. He looked younger than he had a moment before. His muscles even larger, his skin glowing with a hint of his own divine radiance. A god indeed. “If you won’t live by my side, you won’t live at all.”

Artemis began to laugh. A crazed, piercing howl, more fury than mirth. The
mystai
grew silent, watching her uneasily. Orion raised his sword and took a single step toward her.

Her laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She pointed an accusing finger at her lover of old. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

She lifted her arms above her head, palms to the sky, feeling like she could ride the moon once more. “I am Artemis, the Relentless One,” she roared. “I am the Punisher, the Huntress, and no man can escape my justice.”

Orion curled his lip in disdain. “You had none of those titles until
I
gave them back to you.”

“They are my names and always have been.” She remembered what Theo had once told her: There was power in naming. “I am an Olympian, the Daughter of Leto.” She curled her fingers toward the ceiling of the cave, feeling the moonlight pouring on the rock above. “I am Phoebe, granddaughter of Phoibe. I am Selene, Moon Goddess.” She opened herself to the power of the heavens and felt it rush through her like a waterfall. She grabbed hold of the light and
pulled
. Outside, the lake itself moved with the moon’s force, sliding toward its mistress until it lapped over the shore. Water, spotted with algae and smelling of loam, flowed into the cave. Artemis felt it seep through the soles of her boots and rise to her ankles. She took a deep breath and reached for another name, another power. “I am the Mistress of Beasts and the Lady of Hounds.” Somewhere in the park, she heard a
dog’s howl, dimly familiar. Then, farther away, a furious roar, rolling across the park with the rumble of thunder. The grizzly bears in the Central Park Zoo, proclaiming their fealty.

Artemis sensed the initiates moving cautiously toward her, armed once more with their bronze knives. “Remind your followers—I am the Shooter of Stags and the Huntress of the Wild Boar, but men are my favorite prey.”

“You’re alone and unarmed,” Orion scoffed. “I still have the divine sword my father gave me. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. You will fall tonight, and I will cease to be tormented by what I cannot have.”

“You forget that I am the Lady of the Starry Host.” Even now, she could feel the heavens pulsing above, giving her strength. “And you are nothing but a constellation I created.”

Orion snarled like a wounded animal. He lunged toward her, sword outstretched for a killing thrust. Then, with his blade a few scant inches from her chest, a silver arrow burst like a shooting star through the side of his stomach. He stopped in his tracks, staring down at the glimmering shaft in disbelief.

Artemis turned to see Apollo, the Bright One, standing in the mouth of the cave, Hippolyta prancing in place beside him.

“She’s also the Bearer of the Bow,” her twin said, tossing his sister a perfect golden weapon and a quiver of gleaming arrows. “And she’s not alone. Not anymore.” Beside him stood Dionysus in ripped jeans and a stained undershirt, holding his six-foot-long thyrsus, a pinecone-tipped staff covered in twirling vines. Hermes, wearing a slim linen suit and a gaily colored silk pocket square, carried no divine weapons. Just a semiautomatic pistol in each hand. And there, nearly hidden by the shadows, a barrel-chested figure with a massive hammer in one hand. He limped forward on shriveled legs, leaning heavily on a titanium crutch. Hephaestus, the Smith.

Orion gripped the arrow in his flank and fell back against the wall of the cave, his sword still held tightly in his other hand.
He looked at Apollo, his face suffused with rage. “My betrayer, the Gilded God,” he hissed. “I have waited millennia for my revenge.” He dove at his old nemesis. Artemis moved to stop him, but the
mystai
stood in her way, knives flashing in the last remnants of the firelight.

Hippo bounded to her mistress’s defense. With a yelp, Martin swung his blade toward the lunging dog. Faster than thought, Artemis nocked a gold arrow to her new bow and sent it through the old man’s throat. Hippo toppled him to the ground, her growls drowning out his death rattle. With a desperate cry, Nate tackled Artemis from the side. She shrugged off his attack, then watched impassively as Hermes shot two bullets through his chest. Somehow, the professor managed another staggering step toward her, only to be felled by a single stroke of Hephaestus’s hammer, which broke his kneecap with a gravelly crunch. Nate splashed into the shallow water. Before he could scream, she stepped on his head, pushing his face into the water and holding it there. He thrashed and choked, but she ignored him, turning her attention instead to the battle at the cave’s entrance.

She watched Apollo fire arrow after arrow at Orion, who, despite his wound, batted the shafts from the air with the flat of his sword, forcing her twin to dodge and shoot at the same time. Unlike his sister, the Bright One had never learned to hold more than one arrow in his shooting hand at once, so Orion easily kept pace with his onslaught.