Theta (39 page)

I studied Pythia, wanting
her to refute his confident claim of who my enemy was. When she did
not speak, I did. “Is this true?” I asked. “Did …
she
start the Holy Wars?
Did she nearly destroy humanity? Did Zeus save what he could of my
kind?”

“
The truth of matters like
this is always complicated,” Pythia said softly. “I made a mistake
when I opened the gateway to allow the gods onto Earth. I replaced
the Old Ways, in which humanity ruled itself, with a group of
selfish dictators of extraordinary supernatural power. It was one
thing for them to exist and create from their place in the universe
and another for them to live among us. That’s one bridge that
should not have been crossed.”

“
Then you accept
responsibility for destroying humanity,” Cleon said.

Pythia and I both gave him looks.

“
Before I could correct my
error, I was struck down by none other than Zeus, over the protests
of Apollo,” she continued. “There has never been a threat to their
rule of the Earth, until one Oracle figured out how to block the
bridge. She couldn’t undo what I had done, because she didn’t have
the strength, but she could start an initiative that extended
across a dozen Oracles. Each of them fed some of their power into
building a wall between the world of the gods and ours. And
finally, one had the strength to hammer the last nail into
place.”

“
Cecelia,” I
said.

“
Correct. Except, when the
time came to act, she acted not out of the desire to help humanity,
but to punish everyone. What her true motivations are, I don’t
know. If not for the god who struck me down, humanity would be
gone. My enemy is who kept you alive, knowing when you came of age,
you could do what I had not, and what Cecelia won’t: put an end to
this chapter of human history.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “Then why was she
helping me?”

“
Was
she helping you?” Pythia challenged.

“
She was teaching me
control, so I didn’t destroy everyone by unleashing my
power.”

“
She was trying to clip
your wings, and keep you under her thumb, until she had the ability
to outmaneuver you. It’s similar to what I did,” Cleon said. “You
look at her and you pity her. You don’t see her brilliant,
manipulative mind. You related to her, and she used this. It’s why
she wanted a power transfusion, and why she encouraged you not to
learn or use your magic.”

“
To harness my power, I’d
have to kill her first,” I said, thoughts on the third trial I had
not yet completed.

“
All the more reason to
keep you in check,” Cleon said wisely.

They made too much sense. As much as I
didn’t want Cecelia to be my enemy, it was looking as if she were
going to be the next name on my memorial wall instead of Cleon.

“
How do I kill her?” I
asked quietly.

“
You have to touch her, and
then you’d have to overpower her,” Pythia said. “With her guard up,
it’s virtually impossible. You can’t access the full power you need
to beat her in a direct confrontation, and she’s likely
safeguarding her body in a manner which would prevent you from
reaching her to try.”

“
If I can’t get to her from
my world, can I from here?”

“
You understand too well,”
Pythia said. “How long have you been here, waiting for
me?”

“
An hour. Maybe two,” I
answered. “We came to ask you about my visions, but stopping
Cecelia seems more important.”

She was looking into the distance, towards
the compound. “What of them?” she sounded distracted.

“
How do I know which ones I
want, and which ones lead to total annihilation?”

“
With a gift as strong as
yours, the visions will follow a sequence or pattern or contain
meaning only you can understand. A single vision may tell you
nothing, but looking at the larger picture created by several will
reveal clues you wouldn’t see otherwise,” she said. “Is there a
common theme? Location? Sequence of events?”

“
Adonis,” I said. “He
appears in three of them, and he’s always dead.”

Cleon drew nearer. Our minds were working
hard to identify other trends.

“
What else?” Pythia
asked.

We were quiet, our thoughts bouncing back
and forth through one another’s minds. Cleon was stuck on the
vision I hadn’t wanted to look at too closely, the one of me in
Hades speaking to Adonis. The more he dwelt on this particular
premonition, the more I began to see what he did.

“
Adonis is the key, but I
don’t know how,” I said. “Lantos is convinced I’ll kill him, and he
appears in Hades to … find me? Warn me?” I looked at
Cleon.

“
It has to be
warn
,” he said. “Based on
what he told you, his death isn’t an accident.”

“
He dies because …” My eyes
went to Cerberus. “… because he knows I can see him, no matter what
world I’m in, which must mean, my body and my mind are
separated.”

“
Good,” Pythia said. “What
else?”

I closed my eyes. I felt so close to
understanding.

“
Adonis is sent to Hades to
warn me in one vision. In another, I am with Cecelia …” I
started.

Cleon picked up the thought. “… in the
caverns, where Lantos stands and claims he will die a hero for
betraying everyone …”

“…
while Tommy – who can
speak to Thanatos – looks on …”

“
They’re not watching me,
but something happening in a place where only Tommy can speak to
one of the gods present.”

I gasped suddenly, and the visions clicked
into place. “They all occur on the same day, in reverse order in
which I foresaw them!” I exclaimed.

“
Adonis is killed in the
morning. The walls are breached around noon, while Lantos is
standing in the cavern with us. At dusk, the world ends,” Cleon
said.

“
To stop this sequence,
Adonis can’t die,” I said and glared pointedly at Cleon. “This is
the warning, isn’t it? Lantos said Adonis was the key, and he also
said I’d kill Adonis when I wasn’t in control of my
body.”

“
I would guess this is
correct,” Pythia said. “It is not always possible to discern
the
why
behind what
we foresee, only the event itself. Somehow, the death of Adonis
causes a chain of events that results in you being unable to stop
Cecelia.”

Neither Cleon nor I were able to understand
how this was possible. It was implied from the vision that Adonis’
death was purposeful.

“
Lantos,” I said. “Lantos
kills Adonis. It’s why he and Tommy are in the cavern.”

“
Betray them all, die a
hero
,” Cleon recited the words Lantos had
spoken. “We are frozen, and he can’t reach us any other way then to
send someone you care about into Hades.”

“
It’s not me directly who
murders Adonis. It’s his best friend because of me. Because my mind
is lost.” My heart was pounding. “So if Adonis lives, we have a
chance to stop the end of the worlds.”

“
Yes,” Pythia
said.

“
That seems easy,” I said,
growing excited. “We just tell Lantos, and he won’t kill
Adonis.”

“
Lantos never should have
been involved,” Pythia said. “I spoke to him a few weeks ago. He
knew too much, and he was going to become an instrument through
which Cecelia could bring about the apocalypse.”

“
You were his moment of
clarity,” I said. “She twisted his mind like she did
mine.”

“
I … stepped out of line to
help,” Pythia admitted. “Cecelia, you and I have all seen the same
sequence and interrupted it in different ways.”

“
She knew the only way to
get to Adonis was either through me or Lantos.”

“
She chose the weaker of
the two of you.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I’d been chatting
daily with Cecelia before she fell into her coma. She knew all
about the friendship between Adonis and Lantos, because I told her.
Before I could discuss this further with Pythia, Cleon gasped and
leaned against a tree.

“
She’s found the next weak
link,” Pythia said, eyes on him.

“
What’s wrong?” I asked
Cleon, irritated he chose now to have issues, when we were making
such headway.

“
Vertigo.” He was unsteady
and clinging to the tree.

“
Someone has his body,”
Pythia said.

Cleon paled, and I stared at her.
“What?”

Cleon pushed himself away from the tree,
headed towards the compound, and then collapsed where he was. “Go,”
he said urgently.

I hesitated, not wanting to leave him only
to discover he’d planned to take my body while I was
distracted.

“
I will stay with him,”
Pythia said, sensing my fear.

After a long look at him, I bolted and moved
through the brilliantly hued world with speed that wasn’t available
to me in my own reality. The moment I stepped foot into the mall, I
stopped. The flurry of activity was unreal, with lines of troops on
the lawns, helicopters buzzing overhead and the shouts of
commanding officers competing with the blare of alarms and voices
over intercoms and radios.

I started past the formations, headed
towards the house. Halfway there, I sensed something out of place,
a tickle to my instincts, and turned away.

Cleon strode among the formations, flanked
by officers with stars on their uniforms. Disoriented, I tried to
process how he could be in two places at once, before Cleon’s
thoughts surfaced loudly in my mind.

That’s not me,
he said.

His alarm was second only to mine, and I
rushed to the side of Cleon’s physical body, not understanding how
his body was here, walking, when his mind was with Pythia. As if
feeling my presence hovering, Cleon looked directly at me.

I stepped back. This Cleon’s eyes were blue,
not brown like the real Cleon’s. Blue like …

Cecelia’s eyes.

He smiled and moved on.

I remained in place, trying to quell the
tumbling emotions and thoughts that weren’t fully mine. Cleon was
urging me to do something, to retake his body, to … I didn’t know.
I had never seen or felt him this upset.

My gaze turned towards my villa, and I raced
across the lawn. The front door was open, and soldiers lined the
hallways while another half a dozen tore the villa a part. I
floated through the walls towards my bedroom, terrified of what I’d
find.

“
Please be there,” I
whispered to my body.

Reaching my bedroom, I stopped to scan the
damage. The bed was overturned, the mattresses shredded, and the
rest of the furniture tossed around as if by a hurricane. I ran
around my bed twice, searching for my body, before lifting my eyes
to the soldiers tearing apart my closet.

Our magic works
here,
Cleon reminded me.

I reacted instantly to the jarring reminder
and turned everyone in my room into a gummy statue. Shaking and
desperate, I searched the entire room for my body before floating
into the hallway. I turned all the soldiers into statues, lifted
all the furniture in the villa and attached it to the ceilings, and
searched everywhere.

“
Where is it?” I cried,
panicking.

I explored the entire villa again and
returned to my bedroom, sucking in breaths fast and quick.

“
She’s been here.” Cleon’s
voice made me whirl. His human body strode into the room, faded and
ghostly. None other than accompanied him. “She might still
be.”

“
If she is, I cannot see
her,” Lantos said.

I glared at the Supreme Priest. How long was
he in on Cecelia’s plan? Why was he working with her, when he had
been the first to dime her out to me?

Did he know with whom he was dealing at all?
Or did he believe he was talking to the real Cleon?

“
Alessandra, if you’re
here, it’s only a matter of time before I find your body and
possess your power,” said Cecelia through Cleon’s mouth.

I picked up the dresser with my power and
hurled it at her.

The real Cleon panicked. The dresser bounced
off the green ribbon around Cleon’s body and smashed into the wall
beside his body instead of hurting him directly.

It wasn’t
her
ribbon I saw but mine.
In choosing her host, Cecelia had picked one of the two people in
the world I couldn’t hurt with my magic. Cold fear shot through me.
How was I supposed to stop her? Where was my body?

“
She’s here,” Cecelia said.
“Any luck finding Adonis?”

“
None. He
disappeared.”

“
How can a human simply
disappear on a compound this big?”

“
You called off the
searches before the sweeps were complete. He obviously slipped
through to the city,” Lantos said.

Lantos was lying. He knew exactly where
Adonis was, because he had been the one to take him away. I studied
him, unable to understand his secrets.

“
First Niko, then Adonis,
and now Alessandra. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had
something to do with their disappearances,” Cleon rounded on
Lantos.

I held my breath.

“
Too bad you see me in your
final vision, or you could just kill me off,” Lantos said with a
confident smile.