The Gatekeeper's House (24 page)

“
Caught,” he said,
panting.

“
What?” they all turned to
him at once.

“
Zeus grabbed me before I
could integrate.”

Hades appeared beside them in the
caverns. “What’s this I hear? Hypnos is captured?”

“
Yes, Father,” Hypnos said.
“Help me!”

Than caught his brother as he seemed
about to faint.

“
What is Zeus up to?” Hades
asked. “Is he torturing you?”

Than frowned as he noticed the sweat
dripping from his brother’s brow.

Hip replied, “He’s carried me off to
Mount Ida and he’s chained me to the mountain top. He’s commanded
the vultures to eat my liver every day until you turn over
Cybele.”

Therese gasped in horror and met Than’s
terrified eyes.

“
Zeus has gone mad!”
Hephaestus wailed.

“
He can’t get away with
this!” Artemis cried.

Panting and quivering, Hip leaned
against Than’s arms. “Help me!” Hip said as tears welled in his
eyes. “The birds are coming!”

“
Oh my gods!” Therese
screamed as tears poured down her face.

Hip’s entire body convulsed in Than’s
embrace, he shook his head madly from side to side, and then he
drooped and lay still.

“
What do we do?” Than asked
desperately, as he held his poor, dear brother close to him. “How
do we help him?”

Therese put her arms around his back
and kissed his hair. Then, just as Hip’s soul called to him, the
body of his brother disappeared, for whenever one of them dies,
they integrate into the one that was killed. Than dispatched to
retrieve his brother’s soul and to bring him to Tartarus until his
body healed. To the others in the room, he said, “We can’t allow
this to happen again.”

Therese met his eyes, and he couldn’t
believe what came out of her mouth. “I think I can
help.”

***

Zeus hurled Hip onto the floor before
him in the palace at Mount Olympus, and soon there were chains
wrapping themselves around his arms and legs, binding him to
Zeus.

“
What treachery is this?”
Zeus bellowed. “Do you dare deceive me, your king?”

Hip tried to reintegrate with his free
self, but a block around the palace walls prevented it.

“
Was Therese in on your
plan, or was she oblivious to it?” Zeus shouted.

Hip said nothing.

“
And Hephaestus and
Artemis?” Ares asked. “Were they captured, or did they leave
willingly?”

Hip glanced over at Aphrodite. Tears
streamed down her face, and her pain at having been betrayed was
too much for him. He said, “Therese loves you,
Aphrodite.”

Hermes came up to him and said, “How
could you do such a thing? How could you connive against Mount
Olympus?”

Hip could not contain his anger, and
his words leapt out like flames. “This is Zeus’s fault!”

“
How dare you!” Zeus
raged.

“
You should have confronted
Athena and told her you would never release her mother!” Hip cried.
“Instead you went behind her back with this cowardly plan that now
has us all at odds with one another.”

“
I know my daughter,” Zeus
said through gritted teeth. “Confronting her would have led to war
regardless. Once she has it in her mind to have something, she will
not give up.”

“
You sold your own daughter
out!” Hip spat.

“
Athena will be restored to
her former glory,” Zeus said. “Not that you deserve an
explanation!”

“
I meant
Melinoe!”

Zeus lifted his bushy brows, and his
voice bellowed across the palace. “She torments humanity, and you
defend her? You would turn away from me because I misuse the
Malevolent?”

“
You made it hard for us to
follow you when you attacked us and then had Poseidon take Athena
as his prisoner.”

“
Then let me make it easier
to gain the loyalty of the Underworld.” Zeus grabbed the iron
chains in his hands and moved closer to Hip. “Come with me.” He
turned to his son. “You, too, Ares.”

Zeus dragged Hip out of the palace to
his chariot. Ares took the reins.

“
Where to?” Ares
asked.

“
Mount Ida. The
peak.”

In no time, they landed, and Zeus
hauled Hip to the peak and chained him to the highest
rock.

Ares stood over him with a grave
expression on his face. If Ares had been laughing, Hip would have
felt less terrified. The fact that Ares appeared sorry for him was
not a good sign.

Zeus then called for his eagle and the
other condors that lived on the mountain. That’s when Hip knew what
the god of the skies had in mind.

“
Don’t do this!” Hip
shouted. “You’ll make war between us inevitable.”

“
Your father can’t bear to
see you suffer twice,” Zeus said. “I’ll have Cybele in my custody
before this time tomorrow.”

Hip broke into a sweat as the birds
landed on him, one by one. Their claws pricked his thighs and
chest, but he could barely feel them. It wasn’t until Zeus gave the
command and the eagle ripped its beak through Hip’s side that the
pain took his breath away. His eyes and mouth stretched open, but
he could not speak. He watched in horror as the birds tore his
flesh. The blood spurted out of his body like a fountain. Then the
eagle snatched at his liver, and Hip flailed his head from side to
side in a frenzy of madness until, at last, he lost consciousness
and all went dark.

Chapter Twenty-One:
Deliberations

That night, Jen lay in her bed, wide
awake. Hip had said he’d come and protect everyone in her family by
making them all fall asleep, and he’d said that as long as they
weren’t awake, they’d be safe from the Malevolent. But here she
was, tossing and turning. Was Hip coming? Or had he forgotten his
promise?

She heard the creak on the floor
outside her room. This time, she knew it was Pete, and she was
terrified he was seeing the ghosts again. She opened the door
before he could knock.

“
Do you see them?” she
whispered.

He moved past her and sat on her bean
bag. “No. Only Dad.”

She gently closed the door, in case
Bobby was sleeping. Then she sat on her bed. “You see Dad? Do you
see him now?”

He shook his head. “He’s in the barn.
He looks lost.”

“
Have you tried to speak
with him?” Jen asked.

“
No way. Would you? It
freaks me out just to see him let alone talk to him. Are you
crazy?”

“
I guess I’d be scared to
talk to him, too.” She shuddered, hoping ghosts couldn’t continue
to do in death what the living did in life. “Do you think once we
have the funeral and bury him, his ghost will go away?”

“
I hope so.”

“
So why are you here?” Jen
didn’t think he came to her room just to chat. Something was on his
mind.

“
You and I both know that
what happened last night, or this morning, wasn’t no shared dream,
right?” He stared at her hard, like he was daring her to say
otherwise.

“
Right.”

“
How do we know it’s not
gonna happen again?” he asked.

She shrugged, weighing whether or not
to tell him about the god of sleep. “I don’t know.”

“
Maybe it’s me they want,”
he said. “Like in that movie with Bruce Willis.”

“
Sixth Sense?”

“
Yeah. That’s the one,” Pete
said. “Maybe they want to talk to me, since I can see them, and
they know I can see them. Maybe they want me to…I don’t know…help
them.”

She watched a shiver creep down his
spine as she bit the inside of her lip. “I don’t think so,” she
said. “I don’t think it’s you.”

“
Maybe if I go away, they’ll
follow me, and leave the rest of you alone,” he added.

“
No, Pete.” Jen threw her
feet onto the floor as she moved to the edge of her bed. She leaned
her elbows on her knees and met his eyes. “It ain’t you. It’s me.
But they told me they aren’t coming back.”

“
What do you mean it’s you?”
Pete asked. “What makes you think that?”

“
It has to do with Hip…and
even Therese.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me?” he
asked.

“
I didn’t think you’d
believe me,” she said.

“
Why wouldn’t I believe you
after all the crap we just went through? There’s nothing you can
say that could ever be crazier than last night.”

“
Oh, yeah?” she asked, on
the verge of telling him everything.

“
Yeah.”

***

The gods of the Underworld sat in a
ring in Hades’s chambers where the table had been removed to make
more room. They were joined by Apollo, Artemis, and Hephaestus.
Cybele was not among them, still being entertained by Lethe and
Laodice.

Therese felt uneasy when Hades asked
her to share her idea with everyone present. Back in the corridor,
when she’d witnessed Hip suffering, the idea had come to her, but
she hadn’t quite worked out all the details. She was embarrassed
and afraid of making a fool of herself before all these formidable
gods. More importantly, Artemis intimidated her, even though they
had been allies ever since Therese reunited the goddess with
Callisto.

Therese swallowed hard. “If we rescue
Hip, Zeus will know we’ve decided not to hand over
Cybele.”

“
Handing her over is still
an option, as far as I’m concerned,” Hades said. “I’m not certain
we have a choice. I can’t leave Hypnos out on the mountain to
suffer.”

Persephone hadn’t stopped weeping since
she had received the news about Hypnos. She pulled at her hair and
struck her chest and had a hard time gaining control of herself.
Therese couldn’t imagine the feeling of knowing your own child had
been eaten to death, and there was nothing you could do about it.
But to Hades’s speech, Persephone managed to say, “I agree. I feel
sorry for Cybele, but I want Hypnos safe at home with
us.”

Therese lifted her chin. “While I was
in court, Zeus asked me if you had made a decision, and I told him
no. I think he believes we’ll do what he wants, especially
now.”

“
With good reason,” Hades
said.

“
So my idea is to wear the
helm of Hades and go to Mount Ida and shoot my arrows into the
birds at their usual feeding time, just as they look at Hip. Then
the birds would love him and wouldn’t want to eat out his
liver.”

She looked at the faces gazing back at
her, waiting for someone to recognize the merit in her idea. Maybe
it wasn’t as good as she thought.

“
Are you sure you can
succeed?” Artemis asked.

“
We’ve seen her,” Tizzie
said. “Therese is very good with her bow.”

Therese recognized the look of jealousy
come over Artemis’s face, so she added, “Though not as good as
you.”

“
But what if different birds
come to feed on him the next day?” Meg asked.

“
I could go each day, before
feeding time, and shoot the new birds as they come,” Therese
replied. “And, as long as he is tied up on the mountain, maybe Zeus
will believe we are still trying to decide what to do. Then we
might have a better chance at saving Athena. I think our rescue
mission will be a surprise, as long as Hip is tied to the
mountain.”

Therese was the youngest among them and
the least experienced, but she believed in this idea. She hoped the
other gods would take her seriously and consider what she had to
say.

“
Zeus will have guards
stationed there,” Hephaestus said. “And they will notice when the
birds don’t eat.”

“
Plus, we will need the helm
as we travel to the sea,” Apollo added. “Zeus has spies in the sky,
and they will spot us otherwise.”

Another idea came to Therese. “What if
I change myself into a vulture and pierce the guards with my arrows
as they look at me? Then I can get them to cooperate with me. As
soon as you have Athena, I will unchain Hypnos and bring him
home.”

“
That’s too risky,” Than
said. “You’ve already done enough. Father? Tell her she’s already
done enough. She’s barely been a god two years. Don’t let her do
this.”

Than! Stop!
Therese prayed.

What are you doing?
Than asked her.

Trying to help, but you
don’t have faith in me
, she prayed
back.

Yes, I do. For god’s sake,
give me a break. I’m frightened of losing you. Even my father would
be at risk carrying out a plan like yours.

You don’t think it’s a good
idea.
She didn’t mean to pout, but he was
hurting her feelings.

It’s a brilliant idea.
That’s the problem. I fear my father will agree.

Hades picked at his beard. “Before we
can consider Therese’s suggestion, we must come up with a sound
plan for rescuing Athena. Without that, I’m afraid we will have no
choice but to hand over Cybele, for we will have no leverage
whatsoever with which to bargain.”