The Cult of Kronos (3 page)

“
I—Frank—we…” It was
not like Lewis to be at a loss for words.

“
Did something happen to
Frank and Devon?”

Lewis shook his head. “Frank’s
mother works the nightshift at the hospital,” Lewis said. “There
was an accident. They brought them in last night. Dr. Davis is dead.”

June stood up fast, knocking
Zach forward. “That’s not funny.”

“
I know it’s not,” Lewis
said. “I just ran down to Mercy. There are police everywhere. It’s
a murder investigation.”

June’s face twisted into a
grotesque mimicry of herself. She grabbed Zach’s t-shirt and
pulled. Zach wrapped her in his arms, his chin resting on her head as
she began to cry. Lewis sat down on the sidewalk, finally letting
himself lose control. “I have to tell the others,” he gasped, his
voice broken by tears. “It’s my job to tell the others.”

Zach stared at the pavement,
trying to force the moment to feel real. He felt guilty, feeling numb
while the two most important people in his life fell to pieces. His
eyes stared ahead, watching Lewis’ shoulders quake. The humid
summer air distorted everything ahead of them, and a little black
bird trilled screechily from the shrubs behind them. His mind darted
back to the postcard they had received in March—the threat that had
come with no follow-up.

Murder. That only meant one
thing for members of The Pantheon. Another Titan had arrived. Kronos.

“
Either with it or upon it.”

-Spartan Motto

iv.

He was wearing the armor of
Achilles

when Hector had met him on
the battle field.

The renowned warrior blamed
himself as he

set flames to the pyre.

And as the tendrils of
flame licked the timbers

and consumed the body of
his closest friend,

Achilles swore to enact his
vengeance on

Hector, prince of Troy.

“
Oh, if I had Orpheus’
voice and poetry

with which to move the Dark
Maid and her Lord,

I'd call you back, dear love,
from the world below.

I'd go down there for you.
Charon or the grim

King's dog could not prevent
me then

from carrying you up into the
fields of light.”

-Euripides

IV.

A doctor was needed to declare
her dead, but everyone knew the truth before the ambulance had
arrived. An old colleague had called Jason Livingstone the moment the
ambulance had brought Celene's body in.

There hadn't been time to find
a babysitter, and so Jason had arrived with his three children in
tow. The call had been cryptic, a “sir, are you an acquaintance of
Dr. Celene Davis?” and a “we need you to come down to Mercy
tonight. There's been an accident.” Jason had driven faster than he
should have in the rain. The reflections of the traffic lights and
the street lamps and the garish neon signs of gas stations blended
into a chaotic mix of colors that made it hard to see the lines on
the road.

Haley, Jamie, and Scott had
been excited to go on a late night adventure, but now they were
asleep, propped up in awkward and uncomfortable positions on the blue
waiting room chairs, cheeks smushed up against the plastic arm rests.
When the nurse came out to find him, she was accompanied by a cop.
Beneath the buzz of a dying fluorescent light, the police officer had
shown Jason the contact card from Celene's wallet; despite the fact
that he had ended his relationship with Celene in March and severed
all ties with The Pantheon, it listed him as Penny's emergency
contact. Celene Davis didn't have any family in the country. And now
she was dead.

Jason
saw himself, in his mind, collapsing to the floor in fits of sobs.
Instead he stood steady, all expression vanishing from his face. He
wanted to kick over the empty gurney in the hall and scream, but he
just stood there, listening and nodding in response to the officer's
questions. After numbly answering a line of traditional
questions—“no, she didn't have any enemies”
(lie)
and “I can't think of anyone who would want to kill her”
(another lie)
—Jason
had brought Penny back to his house. He couldn't leave her there with
no family. Social Services would take her, and Jason couldn't let
that happen. There would be headaches and paperwork, but Jason was
cleared to take her home for the night by her emergency contact card.
There was a Titan out there looking for blood. Jason couldn't leave
her undefended. He had tried to leave The Pantheon, but here he was,
sucked back into it all.

Jason placed the phone call
the morning after Celene's death. He sat at the kitchen table, still
dressed in his shirt from the night before, a crinkly, collared,
light-blue oxford. He hadn't been to bed yet. Jason anxiously tugged
at his short beard as he spoke. All of this felt oddly familiar, like
the morning after Felicia had passed away when he had been up for
hours, unable to sleep because the quiet allowed him to think. He
remembered that night vividly. Every time he had tried to sleep,
grief overtook him and wracked him with fits of painful sobs. Jason
spent this morning calling colleagues from the school, because Celene
had no family, and he was trying to stay busy to stay numb. After the
phone tree had been activated and after a long call with Principal
Phillips, Jason called his father. When he heard his father's voice
on the other end, Jason couldn't help but remember that morning years
before.

“
I need you or Aunt
Elizebeth to come get the kids,” he said.

“
What happened?” Paul
Livingstone asked.

“
There's been an accident.
Celene passed away last night.” He heard his voice crack when he
said it. He needed someone to take the kids before the numbness
broke.

“
I'm the only one who can
take Penny in.”

“
What kind of accident?”
Paul asked.

Jason was silent for a moment.
Did he want to worry his father? “She was murdered ”

“
Then that's no accident,”
Paul said.

Jason didn't respond.

“
They catch the bastard who
did it?”

“
No, Dad. He was… they
don't know. There was a car accident, and then he—I really don't
want to talk about it.

“
I told you that city wasn't
a safe place to raise kids,” his father said. “Too many gangs.”

Jason's fist clenched the edge
of the table. Paul Livingstone had always preached the evils of city
life. He was a survival nut, growing more paranoid of criminals and
populated areas as he aged. Jason knew that gangs had nothing to do
with what had happened to Celene, but the real culprit was far more
frightening. He knew, logically, that he should take his kids and get
out-of-town with them. That would have been the intelligent thing to
do, but Jason had always prioritized right over smart. “It's only
for a little while. I don't want them around. They're too young to
understand. And I've got all these meetings with social services.”

“
Of course. We'll be there
this afternoon.”

“
Thanks, Dad.”

When Jason hung up the phone
in the kitchen, Penny was standing behind him, her right arm hanging
in a blue, cotton sling.

“
You're sending them away?”

Jason twisted around in his
chair, startled. Whatever peace of mind Jason had found after
stepping down from his role with The Pantheon had been shattered by
Celene's death. He took a deep breath and nodded. “You saw him rip
the seatbelt apart like a party streamer. It's a Titan, and I'm not
going to have them in the line of fire.”

Penny nodded. “Of course.”
She started to turn from the room, but stopped. “I'm sorry.”

Jason frowned. “What for?”

“
For dragging you back into
this.”

Jason shook his head and stood
up from his seat. “Hey, don't be. I jumped right in two years ago.
When you know a secret like that, there's no going back.”

“
You didn't have to come
back.”

“
And leave you to the
system?” He slid his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans.
Jason knew that Penny wasn't safe in foster care. Even if she managed
to hide her powers for two years until she aged out of the system,
she ran the risk of being placed far away from The Pantheon. With
Titans running around, Jason couldn't take that risk. He had to take
care of Penny; he owed it to her mother. “Listen,” he said,
“Tomorrow, make me a list of what you need from your apartment, and
I'll go get it after my meeting with your case worker.”

“
It's okay. I can go too.”

“
Are you sure?”

Penny nodded. “Yeah. I mean,
my room is a mess, so you'll need my help anyway.”

“
Alright.” Jason nodded.
“Well, how about we do that tomorrow, and then get ice-cream?”

“
I'm not seven,” Penny
said, smirking.

“
Does that mean you don't
want ice-cream?”

“
Oh, no, I'll take the
ice-cream.”

“
Good,” Jason laughed.
“Because I'm in the mood for some chocolate chip cookie dough.”

They
held the funeral three days later. The Episcopal church was filled
with equal shares of students and teachers and rubberneckers. All
around were whispers of the horrific murder.
Why
would someone murder a biology teacher? Remember two years ago when
she was kidnapped with those kids?
Now
that poor girl is an orphan.

There was standing room only,
and even that was crowded. The Pantheon had claimed a pew early on,
and Frank Guerrero's massive figure, made almost comedic by the
five-month-old baby in his arms, capped off the row and kept anyone
else from trying to squeeze in. Baby Xander wore a sun hat to hide
the stubble of his metallic gold hair, and he slept peacefully,
drooling on Frank's navy blue dress shirt.

Along the row sat the rest of
the group: Devon, Lewis, Zach, June, Minnie, Evan, Valerie, Astin,
Diana, Nick, and Teddy. Even Astin Hill, with his sun-kissed skin,
looked pale and shaken. His arm around June, Zach managed to hold
back tears. It didn't matter; despite his appearance, they all knew
that the unforeseen rainstorm outside was Zach's doing.

None of The Pantheon felt like
gathering, and Jason did not invite guests back to his house to eat.
He couldn't do it. The site of her, eyes closed, displayed in that
wooden casket made it all too real. The woman who lay there was a
shell, not really Celene. Celene was gone. The moment Jason saw her
on display at the funeral home, before the procession to the church,
he had felt a crack in the dam that was holding back the floodgates.
After the service, they went their separate ways. They said a few
words, shared a couple hugs, and then packed into cars to head home.

There was no internment, as
they had to wait to cremate the body. It was an ongoing murder
investigation. Celene had died of a broken neck and severed spinal
cord. The angle of the break was not consistent with a car accident,
but the coroner just couldn't see how an unarmed man had been able to
apply the amount of force necessary to cause such damage.

Only The Pantheon knew the
truth, and the members who had been interviewed by police over the
last few days had kept it to themselves. They had all seen Zach's
postcard back in March. Celene hadn't been murdered by a gang or a
meth-head. This was yet another Titan. This time it was Kronos.

“
Evil draws men together.”

-Aristotle

v.

From the waist-up the
creature, Kampe, looked human,

if not for the writhing
bodies of serpents

that made up every black
lock of her hair—

constantly shifting.

At her waist, her flesh
gave way to gleaming scales,

and her long drakon body
slid through the dirt.

From that body grew the
hundred heads of beasts,

each gnashing their teeth.

When she rose up she rested
on thousands of

vipers where she should
have stood on human feet.

Black wings, soft like the
skin of a bat, were poised

ready to take off.

At last the sharp tip of
her scorpion tail

was curled up and hovering
over her head.

So when Zeus arrived at the
Tartarus jail,

Kampe was ready.

The great god dodged away
from her dagger tail

and evaded the biting
beasts at her hips.