The Gatekeeper's House (15 page)

“
Than?” Jen asked when Hip
set her on her feet. Her teeth chattered. “Where’s
Therese?”

“
Listen to me, Jen,” Hip
interrupted. “You were captured by the Malevolent. Cubie and Galin
were with you.”

“
And Therese may be there,
too,” Than added.

“
Can you remember?” Hip
asked gently. He moved her blonde hair from her eyes and looked
down at her. She was so lovely. Why did this mortal move him so
deeply?

“
The tree,” she said.
“They’re up in that tree.”

“
And where is the tree?” Hip
asked, caressing her cheek. “Did Melinoe the Malevolent take you to
a forest?”

“
Melinoe the Malevolent?”
Jen pinched her brows together.

“
She’s half black and half
white,” Than said. “She has a hunchback and is covered in hairy
moles.”

“
One of her legs is thinner
than the other,” Hip said. “And she may have Medusa with
her.”

The landscape changed into a snowy
embankment, and jagged blades of ice shot up around
them.

“
I’m freezing,” Jen said
through her chattering teeth. “I can’t move.”

“
Where are you?” Than asked
desperately. He moved nearer to Jen’s trembling projection only to
stop abruptly. He gave Hip a look of concern. “She’s
dying.”

Hip stiffened. He felt his tongue go
numb and he could barely speak when he said, “What can we
do?”

Than shook his head. “I wish I
knew.”

Hip put his arms around the shivering
projection of Jen and used his power to warm her. “I don’t know if
this will work. Maybe if she’s hot in her dream, her body will
react. I just don’t know.”

Hip transformed the snowy embankment
into a sandy desert with the sun blaring down on them. Sweat rose
to the top of his skin as he conjured as much heat as he could
muster.

“
Help me, bro,” Hip
said.

Than moved beside them and wrapped his
arms around Jen from the back. Hip gave his brother a grateful nod.
Together they warmed Jen’s psyche, hoping that maybe a fraction of
that heat might intercept her death.

Then, without warning, she
vanished.

***

Jen opened her eyes and found herself
covered in a thick layer of snow on a thin ledge of the
mountainside. The falling snow made it difficult for her to see how
far down she had fallen from the cave where the monster had taken
her prisoner. She turned her head and searched for the ground over
the cliff edge and could just make out the slope of the mountain,
the ground nowhere in sight and probably still thousands of feet
below.

She sat up, dusting away the snow, and
leaned her back against the mountainside, her knees bent, and her
arms around her shins so that she formed a ball. Her body shook so
violently from the freezing cold that she feared she might cause an
avalanche. She looked up again at the snow above her, and, feeling
hopeless, began to cry, but her tears turned to ice. She closed her
eyes, wiped away the ice, and tried to think.

How did she get here? She’d been
talking to Hip, and he’d told her the most outrageous thing she’d
ever heard—that he was a god. He’d taken her to a warm cave—not by
plane or bus or car. They’d been standing in front of Lemon
Reservoir one minute, and then, the next, she felt like her guts
were getting squeezed out of her, and then she was in a cave with
crazy talking animals. Therese and Hip had left her with the
talking animals and the monster had appeared. Clifford had barked
up a storm, annoying the monster and escaping her
clutches.

Jen shook her head. This had to be a
dream. It had to be. Her mind couldn’t accept the possibility that
these extraordinary events were real.

Wait a minute. Dream. She’d
just been dreaming of Hip. Had he been the
real
Hip, the supposed god of sleep,
or just a part of her dream? Maybe if she closed her eyes, she
could find out.

With chattering teeth, she whispered,
“Hip.”

Behind her lids, she saw white streaks,
but she was still awake. Slowing down her breathing, she willed
herself to relax. Where had she been in her previous dream? She’d
been so warm. Oh, God, she missed that warmth. She pulled her feet
closer to her body and tried to recall the source of the heat. The
white streaks behind her eyes became huge hills of sand. A bright
sandy desert! Yes, she could remember now. The sun shone down with
unrelenting heat. Turning her face up to the sun, she took a deep
breath, sank into the comforting heat, and…slipped down a hill on
her bottom.

She flinched as she hit the
ground.

“
Jen!” Hip cried. “You’re
back!”

He ran up to her and helped her to her
feet. Than came up beside them.

“
Did you notice anything
about your surroundings while you were awake?” Than
asked.

Hip wrapped his arms around her from
the front, and Than did the same from the back. She was sandwiched
between two gods who were hot in more ways than one. Sweat dripped
down their skin as the sun embroiled them and the sand reflected
heat up into her eyes.

“
Were you in a forest with
trees?” Hip asked.

“
Huh?” Jen met his beautiful
blue eyes. His blond hair swept across his forehead, dripping in
sweat.

“
This feels so good,” she
purred, burying her face against his hot chest.

“
Jen,” Than said, lifting
her head from behind. “Try to remember where you were before you
fell asleep. Were you in snow?”

The desert instantly changed into a
snowy embankment, and Jen shivered uncontrollably. “I’m on a
mountainside,” she said between chattering teeth. “I don’t know
where.”

“
Bring back the desert,”
Than said. “She’s slipping from us again.”

Hip conjured the desert landscape and
the blaring sun, and Jen sank against him once again, but Than took
a step away from them. “I have to go.”

Jen wished Than would stay. The heat
from his body was comforting, and now wind blew against her
back.

“
Don’t!” Hip said too close
to her ear.

“
I have to, Hypnos. I can’t
disintegrate and do my duties while I’m here, and I think I have a
better chance to save her if I go.”

“
Don’t leave me,
bro.”

“
I’ll make this quick,” Than
said. “I promise.”

Jen flinched when Than disappeared, and
when she sought Hip’s eyes, she saw fear in them.

***

Than disintegrated and returned to his
duties, which he’d abandoned for the Dreamworld, and dispatched to
the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens. Fortunately, it was dark and
only a few of the tourists remained in the area. Invisible to them,
Than stood beside Athena’s statue and summoned her. She appeared
minutes later in his father’s chariot.

“
God travel is dangerous for
me right now,” she explained. “I assume this is
important?”

“
I’m hunting the
Malevolent,” Than replied. “Hip and I spoke to her prisoner in the
Dreamworld, and we believe Melinoe is camped on a mountain, but we
don’t know which one. If we could capture her, she could reveal the
identity of our enemies.”

“
You’ve come to ask
Amphisbaena?”

“
Exactly, with your help. I
don’t have time to fight with her again.”

Together they rode behind Swift and
Sure to the west of the acropolis and parked near the entrance to
Athena’s sacred caves.

Chapter Twelve: Parsing
Words

Therese’s tears continued to stream
down her face as she thought about poor Mrs. Holt and Pete and
Bobby. How would she explain to them? It would be impossible. The
thought of Jen dead made her regret everything. As much as she
loved Than, she hated that her relationship had meant the death of
her friend.

“
Hey you!” The Malevolent
kicked Therese on the thigh, but she didn’t care, and it didn’t
hurt. The action was meant to humiliate, not injure.

Therese refused to meet the monster’s
eyes.

“
Fine. I’m leaving to wrench
the soul of the mortal from her body before I lose it to Thanatos.”
Then Melinoe added, “Sisyphus, you stay here. Medusa, come with me
to hunt.”

“
Please!” Therese begged.
“I’ll do anything for you if you spare my friend!”

“
You already will do
anything for me,” the Malevolent said with a laugh. “You’ll
see.”

The monster and the ghost of Medusa
flew from the cave and into the snow.

“
I’m so sorry about your
friend,” Cubie said. “I wish I could have protected
her.”

“
This isn’t your fault,”
Therese said. “Melinoe tricked me. She said she’d free Jen, not see
her safely home. Why didn’t I see that coming?”

“
Because you’re not evil,”
Galin said. “You’re heart’s too pure to predict such
treachery.”

Sisyphus chuckled. “Because you’re not
as clever, that’s why.” He pointed to his head. “It takes cunning
to get around a sworn oath.”

Therese thought back to what
the Malevolent had said:
Swear on the River
Styx you will tell no one. Swear you’ll come alone.

I swear,
Therese had said.

She clenched her jaw in frustration. If
she told anyone where she was, she would be subjected to the
Maenads for all eternity and no longer trusted among the other
gods. It had taken Than the course of two years to regain the trust
of Zeus, and some still looked down upon Than for breaking his
oath. Should she follow in Than’s footsteps to save Jen’s soul from
the Malevolent?

On the other hand, if Cybele were
telling the truth (and Apollo says she was), and Zeus was behind
Melinoe and the attack on the Underworld, how could his system of
justice continue to rule the gods? Could Zeus still be the enforcer
of sworn oaths when he himself had acted atrociously? Hadn’t his
recent involvement against Athena and the House of Hades rendered
his authority questionable? Maybe Therese could make an argument in
her defense. She could say the oath was sworn during a time of
chaos and uncertainty and under extreme duress.

But hadn’t that been true of nearly
every oath ever sworn?

Uhh! She was wasting valuable time with
all this pondering. She needed to act! Jen’s soul could already be,
at this very instant, enslaved by the monster.

Her oath to Melinoe played through her
mind once more:

Swear on the River Styx you
will tell no one. Swear you’ll come alone.

I swear.

She had sworn she would tell no one.
Then an idea struck her. Odysseus once went by the name of “No one”
to trick the Cyclops, Polyphemus. When Polyphemus had cried, “No
one is attacking me!” the other Cyclopes had ignored
him.

Could Therese communicate with
Odysseus?

***

Than and Athena entered Amphisbaena’s
cave in the underbelly of the acropolis, accosted by the dank smell
of stagnant water and rot. They crossed the rocky cavern floor with
caution, Than on one side of the thin ribbon of water dividing the
cave in half, and Athena on the other. Athena called out to her
two-headed serpent dragon, who was hiding, and asked for her
favor.

“
My life is in peril,”
Athena said.

“
And so is the soul of your
mother,” Than added.

One of the two heads emerged from a
high shelf at the back of the cave. The head was made of shiny blue
scales and was crowned with bright red spikes down the center.
Intense black eyes peered from two slits above a short snout and a
darting, forked tongue.

“
We need to know the
location of the Malevolent,” Athena asked.

“
And your mother’s soul,”
Than said again. “They’re on a mountain, but we don’t know
which.”

The second head emerged alongside the
first, and a great hissing sound echoed inside the cave. A thick
flame alighted across the top of the cavern, and the residue of
smoke lingering behind spelled, “One says Ozarks. Two says
Himalayas.”

“
Can you be more specific?”
Athena asked. “Can you give us the name of a mountain?”

Another billow of fire illuminated the
top of the cavern, and when the majority of the smoke cleared, the
same words lingered in the air. “One says Ozarks. Two says
Himalayas.”

Than turned to Athena. “Two is the
reliable one, in my experience, but I’ll go at once to
both.”

He planned to disintegrate into the
thousands to comb every square foot of both mountain ranges, but as
he and Athena turned their backs on Amphisbaena, something
monstrous shot up from the stagnant water between them and wrapped
itself around the goddess of wisdom.

It was Poseidon with his golden
net.

***

Hip clung to Jen’s fragile, quivering
projection beneath his illusion of the desert sun, feeling helpless
and terrified. He’d never cared so much for a mortal’s life as he
found himself caring for this one. Why? Why did he care?