The Immortals (19 page)

As Selene walked swiftly away from Natural History, her mind wouldn’t stop reeling.
No mortal could have infiltrated the museum like that,
she decided.
And only Olympians knew the truth behind the Caledonian Boar. The cult’s hierophant must be one of the Athanatoi. But why? There’s only one reason an immortal would bother with a long-forgotten ritual…

“I see another cop car,” Theo said, interrupting Selene’s musing. He led the way north up Broadway, where the crowds of Saturday fun-seekers were thicker. “Come on, in here.” He gestured toward the AMC movie theater.

“What about Hippo?” she hissed after him.

He just waved her inside and dashed up to the teenage ticket taker. “Excuse me,” she heard him ask. “My friend here is epileptic. That’s her seizure dog. And I just wanted to know if there’re any flashing lights or quick edits in
Last Woman Standing
.”

“Uh… yeah…”

“Okay, so then we’ll definitely bring the dog in with us. That way we’ll have some warning.”

“You’re not allowed to bring—”

“No, no, she’s a
seizure dog
. For the disabled.”

“Shouldn’t it be wearing a sign or something?”

“We don’t believe in
labeling
people with disabilities, okay?” Theo said, with a glare that Selene could’ve sworn he’d learned from her. Before the teenager could ask any more questions, he was walking back toward Selene, grinning.

“What’re we doing here?” she whispered.

“Isn’t this what people always do in movies to avoid arrest? Hide out in movie theaters?” He flashed his dimples at her. “I’ve always thought it was just another way for Hollywood to plug itself, but it’s better than nothing.”

Selene had to admit, it wasn’t a terrible idea. Theo walked to a kiosk, tapped the screen with practiced ease, swiped a credit card, and retrieved two tickets from the slot. She watched warily. She didn’t own a credit card because it made her too easy to trace, touchscreens mystified her, and she hadn’t been to the movies since the 1980s classic
Clash of the Titans
came out. She’d taken her mother, and the two of them sat howling with laughter as the actors playing their family stalked around in glowing white togas and teased hair, maneuvering the mortals below by playing with poorly sculpted clay figurines. “Why didn’t we think of that?” she’d asked her mother. “Making voodoo models would have been
so
much easier than giving them cryptic prophecies and hoping they’d do the right thing!” Finally, an usher had asked them to leave.

She and Hippo followed Theo up the escalator and into a dark, nearly empty theater full of large red leather seats. Movie trivia and advertisements flashed silently across the screen. They took seats near the front, close to the emergency exit, just in case they were being followed. Selene eased herself into the wide armchair, a far cry from the cramped, moldering seats she remembered from her last cinematic foray. Next to her, Theo pressed a button on the side of his chair. The back began to recline while the front rose into a footrest. Soon, he lay nearly horizontal, a Roman aristocrat on his chaise. Cautiously, Selene followed suit.
Hippo growled a complaint or two but finally wedged herself beneath the footrests with a sigh. Selene shifted restlessly, unused to such decadent comfort. Theo, on the other hand, sat with his head thrown back and eyes closed, more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. “That was close,” he murmured. “I have to admit, this whole running from the law thing is exhausting.”

Selene had barely broken a sweat, but she, too, felt the weight of the hunt on her shoulders.
This isn’t what I wanted,
she thought.
I never meant to chase one of my own.

Theo’s eyes opened a crack. “Henry Thomas.”

“What?”

He pointed at the screen and read aloud. “Who played Elliott in 1982’s
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
?”

“Why do you know that?”

“More importantly, why don’t
you
? You might be damn handy with a bow, but we’re going to have to work on your cinematic education.”

“I’ve heard of it, just never seen it. It’s good?”

“One of the best. A little boy meets an alien from another world and they become friends. Then the cops are chasing them, but they escape.” He slid a glance toward her. She knew what he was thinking. It sounded a bit like a story about them.

“The little boy is one of the great heroes of film. Would brave anything, go anywhere, to save his friend. Sort of like the dedication you see in Odysseus, who risks his life a hundred times to make it back home to Penelope. My kind of hero.”

Selene couldn’t help comparing the man sitting beside her to the legendary adventurer she’d once watched fight his way across the seas. Odysseus had been a short, burly king inclined toward flatulence, and he’d never met a sorceress he wouldn’t sleep with. But he also possessed tenacity unmatched by any other Greek hero. He used every tool he possessed—brawn, brain, and bluster—to accomplish his goals. Theo might not know it yet, but she suspected he and Odysseus had that in common.

“You know why else I love movies?” Theo was saying. “Because, except for the very bad ones, you always understand the plot, at least by the time the credits roll. Unlike real life.” He sat up a little straighter and turned to her. “You’re going to have to explain the bow.”

“No. I’m not.”

He frowned, and she thought he’d protest, but he just sighed. “Fine. Then answer another question. Why’s someone bothering with all this? Breaking into two museums? Creating a cultic retreat in a hospital basement?” He pulled his coat tighter, despite the theater’s warmth.

The answer, which Selene had been formulating since she saw the entelodont picture, finally made sense:
Because there’s someone out there who used to be a god and is trying to become one again.
Cult worship and burnt offerings had sustained the Athanatoi for millennia, but once mankind had stopped such worship, the Olympians’ power began to wane. Selene and the others had long ago given up hope that men would turn away from Christianity and return to the worship of the Greek deities. They’d resigned themselves to living as neither mortal nor fully immortal, but stuck somewhere in between. Yet if someone could actually re-create a cult ritual—not just going through the motions but finding true believers to offer sacrifices to the Olympians—the gods’ power might be restored.

But how could she tell Theo any of this? Even if she did, he wouldn’t believe it. How would it sound?
I know our killer’s an immortal because he’s probably one of my brothers. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that your friend Helen had the right idea—the Greek gods are real and I’m one of them. Or at least… I used to be.

“Let’s just focus on the fact that, whatever their motivations,” she said instead, “we know what the
mystai
are doing next. If they’ve collected all the
hiera
, including one of the Hell Pig’s tusks, they’re going to be ready for the next step in the ritual.”

Theo glanced around the nearly empty theater and lowered his voice, “And the next murder.”

“We’re up to the
Pompe
, right?”

“You remember.” He looked pleased. The lights in the theater dimmed to black. Selene looked over her shoulder. No sign of police bursting through the doors. Only a few other people sat scattered in rows behind them. It must be a particularly terrible film.

A swell of music accompanied the first preview. Theo leaned over and whispered loudly in her ear: “So far, every ritual’s been amplified. Besides the murders, we have massive porcine entelodont teeth instead of Demeter’s traditional suckling pigs. They use
dozens
of snakes for the
Asklepia
instead of just one. Tonight’s
Pompe
involved a procession to the temple in Eleusis. How will our hierophant amplify a parade?”

“It’s already an intensified ritual,” she whispered back, “because they processed in front of the whole city, while the previous rites were held in secret.”

“You think they’re going to do something tonight in public?” Theo clutched at the armrest, his elbow brushing hers. “You think they’ll kill someone where everyone can see? That’ll throw the city into a complete panic.”

She could see the crease of concern behind the bridge of his glasses. “We need to stop them,” she said, aware of her breath fanning the fair hair on his forehead. She turned away, back toward the movie preview, where a superhero ran through the streets of New York, dispatching three masked thugs with a magic whip, then flew through the air, chased by fighter jets. If only being a real hero were so easy.

“Then Trinity churchyard it is,” Theo said. “I bet we’ll catch the bastards there.”

“Why Trinity?”

“It’s the most famous cemetery in Manhattan, and the
Pompe
always started at Kerameikos, the most important burial ground in Athens. Leaving the graveyard symbolized a progression from death to life, remember? They’re not going to change that part.”

Selene knew Trinity churchyard: She’d stood there feeling smug the day they laid Alexander Hamilton in his grave. But she’d also lived in Manhattan long enough to know that many other cemeteries lay scattered throughout the city. “You’re forgetting about the two nineteenth-century Marble Cemeteries off Second Avenue and the Jewish graveyards near Sixth Avenue—one of those is from the late 1600s. And Trinity Church has an overflow graveyard way uptown, too.”

Theo whistled appreciatively. “You’re certainly a font of morbid knowledge. Hopefully, after my conversation with the cops, they’ll stake out all the cemeteries, but I’d like to have eyes on them. You have any discreet friends who might help?”

Selene laughed abruptly. “I don’t have a whole lot of friends, in case you couldn’t guess.” She couldn’t call the city’s other immortals her friends—she hadn’t spoken to most of them in years. Besides, one of them was likely the very killer they were seeking. “And don’t go dragging your friend Gabriela or any of your adoring students along. You don’t want them getting into trouble with the cops, too, do you?”

Theo turned back to the screen, chewing his lip. He was clearly devising some plan, but she, on the other hand, found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. The main attraction had begun, and for just a few minutes, she longed to escape into a fantasy world where the enemies and heroes were clear. To stop worrying about the ancient stories that defined her existence and to start enjoying the new ones mankind created instead.

A spaceship roared across the screen, spurting laser fire. Ahead of it, a blue-white nebula surrounded a red-orange planet. A burst of fire struck the spaceship, exploding the vessel into a thousand fragments of molten metal. The deafening sound
thrummed through Selene’s bones. She reached a hand down to pet her whimpering dog. Was the pilot dead? No, a figure in a spacesuit ejected from the blast, falling toward the planet. After shooting down a passing enemy ship with a handheld laser gun, the pilot finally landed on the planet’s surface. When the space helmet’s visor flipped up, the face underneath was that of a young woman. She pulled off the helmet and shook out long orange hair that contrasted strikingly with her ebony skin. Then she stalked off into the orange jungle, her gun at the ready.

Half an hour later, as the heroine met up with her long-lost, half-alien love interest and was about to engage in some interspecies eroticism, Theo tapped Selene lightly on the wrist. She turned to him sharply, as if awoken from a dream, her cheeks flushed.

He bent toward her, “Earth to Selene. Come in, Major DiSilva. We should get going.”

As they walked into the theater lobby, Theo chuckled. “You were totally transfixed.”

“Please. It was terrible,” she said defensively.

“Terribly
awesome
, you mean,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’ll be online in a month and we can watch the whole thing.”

Selene snorted, but in truth, the idea was oddly appealing. She stopped at a water fountain to hide the smile she could feel creeping over her features. When she straightened up, a little girl, no more than three years old, toddled over to her. In that moment, she felt a pull so sharp she nearly stumbled forward, as if the child had tugged on an invisible rope attached to her rib cage. Selene planted her feet and stared at the girl in wonder. This time, she recognized the sensation immediately—the pull of the worshiper on the worshiped. Artemis reigned over many groups: virgin women, hunters, wild animals, hounds—and children. Of them all, it was the children she’d never really liked, never understood. Maybe because she would never have any of her own.

“Come back here, Lydia!” A harried mother scurried over to retrieve her child. “Sorry, is she bothering you?”

“No, it’s okay,” Selene managed, unable to move. Hippo sniffed curiously at the girl, who completely ignored the enormous dog.

“You glow,” said the child, raising a hand to pat the air around Selene’s body. “Sparkles.” She grinned, showing a gap between her pearly baby teeth.

The mother laughed. “She’s been watching too many cartoons.”

Theo started up a conversation with the woman about the animated movie she’d just left, but the girl’s eyes never left Selene’s. And in that moment, the Huntress knew the truth about why she was getting stronger. The answer lay in the trusting gaze of this little girl.

The cult was actually
working
. Her strength, speed, aim, hearing—all were gifts from the Eleusinian Mysteries. Now, miraculously, even a hint of her divine radiance had returned, visible only to those whose extreme youth made them able to sense the secret worlds around them.

The boar tusk, the painting of her family, the obsession with virginity. Everything fell into place. She wasn’t just reaping residual benefits from the revived cult: The cult had chosen her specifically as one of the deities it invoked. But could the murders themselves, not just the ritual, be giving her power?
No,
she decided. The Athanatoi had long made clear their stance on human sacrifice, reserving their most heinous Underworld punishments for those who dared make an offering of human flesh to the gods.