Theta (33 page)

I didn’t possess the details about what had
happened, and Niko was being unusually cagey. “You want two favors
in exchange for helping me see Alessandra and turning me over to
Cleon after,” I repeated in a hard voice. Did he know I’d do
anything to see her again, even if he asked me for a dozen
undesirable favors?

His smile and answered my question before
his words did. “She destroyed four thousand lives for you. I’m
pretty sure you’ll do whatever I want for her.”

At that moment, I wanted to murder Niko. It
wasn’t entirely because of him. He was basically the messenger in
this scenario, one with the ability to help me reach the House
without being arrested first. My anger was close to the boiling
point, and I loathed Niko’s smug smile and confidence.

It would be much easier to reach her, and
Lantos, if I could do it in broad daylight. At night, I could fly
into the compound, but I’d draw attention the moment I tried to
creep into the House, the most fortified, safeguarded, and closely
monitored building in the world. It wouldn’t stop me from smashing
in a window to reach her. But I’d rather assess if what Niko said
was true about her mind and Cleon’s colliding before I busted her
out and risked hurting her.

I also needed to talk to Lantos face to
face. I had trusted him. I wasn’t completely willing to believe
he’d betrayed me, not when his motives were often times beyond the
scope of a human like Niko to understand. It was possible there was
a solid explanation for what Lantos had done. I was going to give
him the benefit of the doubt, and if I found him unworthy, I’d kill
him where he stood. That he and Alessandra were imprisoned in the
same building would make it easier for me to maximize the one shot
I had at entering the House.

“
All right,” I
said.

“
I’m headed straight
back.”

I dwelt briefly on Phoibe’s situation before
my thoughts settled on Alessandra. Phoibe was surrounded by good
people and capable of taking care of herself. I wasn’t able to say
the same about Alessandra. “I need to go somewhere first. I’ll be
thirty minutes.”

“
You’ll understand if I
don’t stand here in the crossfire of my enemies,” Niko replied
wryly. “I’ll be at the main road.” Turning, he walked away,
unconcerned with the weapons trained on his back or the anger
radiating off me.

I released the breath I was holding and
strode into the forest.

I was infuriated enough that I didn’t feel
capable of facing Phoibe before I left, not when she had kept
something this important from me. I stalked off into the woods
towards the cabin Menelaus and I had discovered our first night
here. He and Apollo were my secret. After seeing Phoibe’s hostile
reaction to any suggestion of the gods helping her take the city, I
had initially decided to keep Menelaus hidden.

Several minutes later, I reached the cabin.
The previous occupant of the isolated home had lived completely off
grid. Solar and wind power provided electricity, and a well ten
meters from the wood cabin provided water. A small paddock had
housed some sort of animals at one point before rotting.

I leaned against the fence. It was a very
rare day in my life when I felt as if I was going to lose control.
In fact, I couldn’t recall a time ever when rage bubbled within me
as it did after hearing Niko’s tale. I was torn between anger with
Lantos for turning on me and with myself for leaving Alessandra
alone, despite knowing how the twisted politics of DC worked.

Niko was as likely to turn me in the moment
I set foot in the walls as he was to take me to the House. But my
own safety was the smallest of my concerns. I was capable of
anticipating danger and acting in my self-interest with skill no
man could match. And if he was telling the truth, and I would be
permitted to see Alessandra, I wasn’t going to pass up the
opportunity.

A sliver of self-doubt returned, and I
wrestled with my two sides. Right now, they were both urging me to
go to her and to destroy anyone who had tried to hurt her. The
unity left me struggling even harder to control the fury inside me.
I squeezed the wood in my hands hard enough for it to snap.
Dropping my arms, I rolled my shoulders back, seeking to calm
myself.

“
What is it?” Menelaus was
standing in the doorway of the cabin.

“
Bad news,” I replied.
“Alessandra’s in danger. I’m returning to the city and have to
leave you here. If I’m not back in a day, introduce yourself to
Phoibe. But do so carefully. She holds no favorable views of the
gods.”

“
It is fortunate I am not
one.”

I glanced at him. Apollo didn’t yet feel
safe revealing himself to me, and I wasn’t going to risk alienating
him when I would need his help later.

“
If you do not return,
should I tell her to find you?” Menelaus asked.

“
No. Stay with her and keep
her safe. She needs the type of guidance only an ancient king who
brought down the walls of Troy can provide.”

Menelaus nodded. His warm gaze was
concerned.

“
Take care,” I said
quietly.

“
And you.”

I left him, troubled about the future, yet
convinced I was leaving Phoibe with the only person who could help
her more than I was able to. Jogging through the forest, I returned
to the dirt road leading to the encampment and strode down the
opposite direction, towards the main road.

Niko was waiting. He had brought no soldiers
with him and stood leaning against a black van, arms crossed. He
pushed himself away when he spotted me and climbed into the
driver’s seat. I opened the passenger seat to find a black SISA
uniform, complete with hood, waiting for me.

“
Figured it’d make you less
conspicuous,” Niko said.

Already, I’d accepted I was going to my
doom. I got in and maneuvered into the back of the van. He began
driving while I changed. I returned to the passenger seat when I
was finished.

“
What happened to
Theodocia?” I asked as we headed towards the walls of
DC.

“
Cleon ambushed her.” The
response was clipped enough to reveal his unhappiness about the
circumstance.

“
I meant, what did
Alessandra do?” I clarified with a half-smile.

“
She turned her into a
gummy statue. Dosy’s alive, but has the consistency of a
tire.”

“
Alessandra’s come into her
power?”

“
Eh.” Niko was quiet,
thinking hard about the answer. “She’s fighting it and has been.
The safe zone is starting to recede, and Cleon’s desperate to
create this utopian safe zone filled with the elite and weather
away whatever happens next, but can’t wield her power well enough
to stop it. And she’s … confused.”

“
I would be, too, if I had
more than one voice in my head.” My hands tightened into fists
instinctively. I
did
have more than one voice in my head, but I wasn’t about to
tell Niko I’d been struggling with my own identity.

There was a pause. I sensed more before Niko
spoke. “It’s not just that,” he said pensively. “I have no desire
to understand this insanity about power or magic or energy or
whatever this is.” He waved a hand at the unseen forces about which
he spoke. “But something’s going on beyond what is supposed to be
happening. The Oracle is in a coma. Cleon is fading and obsessed
with either the insurgency or the safe zone. Lantos is playing an
erratic game no one understands, and Alessandra is on the verge of
being lost. They’re all part of a bigger picture, and I don’t know
who could be calling the shots – but someone has to be.”

“
The major players are too
preoccupied to be manipulating the board,” I said.

“
Exactly. And Lyssa … her
visions have her spooked, and her power has something to do with
Thanatos and Hades.”

As strategic a thinker as I was, even I was
unable to assess what was going on beyond the obvious. Niko’s
astuteness came as no surprise. It was his uneasiness that
concerned me. When a street thug, whose survival depended upon the
speed of his ability to read people, took a step back and couldn’t
piece together what the danger was, then the problem was either
immense or complex.

With gods and power in the mix, I was
guessing both.

“
How quickly is the safe
zone receding?” I asked.

“
It’s sporadic. Some days,
it’s a kilometer or five or ten. On other days, no loss occurs. On
the rare occasion, it grows.”

“
Almost like someone is
trying to prevent it from receding.”

“
It’s not Cecelia or Cleon
or Alessandra, and they’re the only people capable of fighting
anything unseen.”

“
Lantos?”

Niko shook his head. “If he knows, he’s not
looking in that direction.”

“
In which direction is he
looking?”

“
I can do a lot of things,
but tracking a shadow isn’t one of them. When he wants to be seen,
he’s in his apartment, doing absolutely nothing. When he doesn’t …”
Niko shrugged. “But in our discussions, he’s not at all concerned
about the safe zone.”

We drew near a checkpoint. Neither of us
spoke as we crossed through two checkpoints before reaching the
heavily guarded entrance of the wall. Niko drove through slowly
with a wave at his men then picked up speed as he headed through
the city towards the compound at its center.

The city looked much like it had when I left
… until we reached an area cordoned off by police tape. A gaping
hole ran for several blocks before the cityscape began again.

Seeing my long look at the collapsed area,
Niko spoke for the first time since we started driving.

“
Your girl did that,” he
said. “Messed her up.”

I didn’t have to imagine Alessandra’s
distress; I’d experienced it in some form every day, whenever I
tried to rest, only for the image of her to flash through my
mind.

“
Everyone agrees she’s
stronger than Cecelia,” Niko added.

“
She’s the strongest since
the first,” I replied. “That is her prophecy.”

“
Maybe you can fix
her.”

Niko wasn’t capable of caring for anyone
outside his son and ex, but even he had to understand Alessandra
was the key to everything.

He drove us to the compound. We entered with
no difficulty, and Niko parked in the general lot a short distance
from the mall, around which the buildings were arranged. We left
the van and began walking towards the House, the largest of the
remaining buildings.

“
You may want to see Lantos
first,” he said. “Cleon can see everything Alessandra does. He’ll
alert security the second she spots you.”

Niko was genuinely concerned about
something. At the moment, I cared too much about the woman on the
third floor of the House to find out what.

Niko left me at the back entrance of the
heavily guarded house. I wore a uniform similar to my old one,
complete with the red patch on the shoulder marking me as a
commander, which ensured no one challenged me. Several checkpoints
inside the House slowed my progress considerably. My blood was
boiling, my skin crawling with my growing sense of dread.

Finally, I made it through the final set of
guards monitoring her hallway and stood before her door. My heart
pounded hard in anticipation, and I was on edge enough that I
paused to breathe deeply, so I didn’t snap if I heard a loud
sound.

Niko’s advice returned to me. As much as I
yearned to walk into Alessandra’s apartment, the rational side
warned me I had one shot today, and I needed to talk to Lantos
first.

With reluctance, I left her door and passed
through another set of guards to the section of the House where
Lantos was loosely confined. His door, too, appeared to be locked
from the outside. As I stood there, I felt sorrow replace much of
my anger when I considered my only friend in the world had betrayed
me.

I walked into his apartment and closed the
door behind me, senses on alert.

“
I’m not due for my meeting
for an hour,” Lantos said from the breakfast nook a short distance
away. He glanced up at me from his tablet then back.

Spotting the camera in the corner of his
apartment, I didn’t remove my mask.

“
I’m not here about your
meeting,” my voice carried a note of unmistakable tension. The
muscles of my frame were taut, stiff, as I considered my personal
failing in trusting Lantos. “I came to see a friend, but I’m not
certain he exists anymore.”

His bright green eyes fixed to me. “Adonis,”
he breathed after a moment.

“
I have little time,” I
said. “Because we are …
were
friends, I wanted to give you one chance to tell
me why you’ve done what you’ve done. I urge you to think and speak
quickly. Your candidness determines your fate.”

“
I assure you, there is an
explanation.” He stood and moved towards me then stopped when he
saw me tense further. “Adonis, I need you to know what I’m doing is
for the benefit of everyone, including Alessandra. My actions
appear –”

“
Like you betrayed the man
you called your brother?” I finished with calm I didn’t
feel.

“
And like I betrayed
everyone else,” he said. “The truth is much more
complicated.”

“
Tell me. Now.”

“
I can’t.” He searched my
features. “I know how this looks, and I know how this sounds. A
secret was revealed to me, so that I could take action. But it is
not my secret to reveal. I consider you to still be my brother. I
have, and always will, do what I feel I must to protect
you.”