The Cult of Kronos (17 page)

“
Good. I mean, don't let him
get lost down there. Make him feel useful. Maybe put him in charge of
some people.”

“
You know we have a problem
with crazed Titans dipping weapons into the Styx,” Peter said.
“Maybe we need another guard. I think he would get along great with
Charon.”

“
Good,” Zach said. He
pushed himself to his feet. “Oh,” he said, stopping and looking
down at Peter. “Jason?”

“
His body is destroyed.”

“
But he wasn't killed with
the blade from the Styx. Right?”

Peter nodded. “I'll see what
I can do.”

“
Death does not concern us,
because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does
come, we no longer exist.”

-Epicurus

XVII.

The first thing that Hades did
upon returning to the underworld was call over a guard and send them
to find Poseidon. “He'll need a trident,” he said, taking up his
own two-pronged weapon and shifting back into his commanding, bearded
form. “Post him by the bank at the entrance from above. No one is
to touch the water save Charon. Especially not with any weapons.”

He answered a few questions
and made judgement for the spirits who had been waiting for days, and
then excused himself from the throne room. Ahead, as he left the
great black doors of his palace, was the Stygian Marsh. To his right
was the Styx, to his left the Mnemosyne. Hades walked along the
shimmering waters of the Mnemosyne, looking out across the Blessed
Elysian Fields and the groves next to them. He hiked alone, passing
by wandering spirits, past cattle, both living and dead, and towards
the misty banks of the Lethe. A line of spirits connected his palace
to the shores of the far river, but their path was crowded, rocky,
and cold, and Hades preferred to walk the path along the riverbanks.

As he neared the river, he
began to look on the faces of the spirits, lined up and waiting to
drink. Their faces, echoes of the men and women they had once been,
were relaxed and complacent as they blindly walked towards the water.
Hades' eyes searched for that handsome bearded face, for those
crinkled smiling eyes. He walked swiftly as he neared the front of
the line, the blunt end of his bident biting the soil as he used it
to pull himself along, faster and faster. There was no sign of him.
Had he gotten this far? Hades' eyes fell on Jason Livingstone just as
his spirit knelt at the water. He ran forward. Hades let his hulking
form shimmer away and reached out as Peter to put his hand on the
ghost's shoulder. Jason turned around, water dripping from his lips.
His gaze was unrecognizing. It was too late.

“
Did I fall asleep?” Jason
asked.

Peter closed his eyes and
nodded. “Only for a little while.”

Peter would do as he was told.
He would put Jason's soul in a new body and bring him back. It
wouldn't matter. The soul was the same, but Jason was gone. All the
waters in the Mnemosyne could not bring back the mortal they loved.

“
Give me but one firm spot
on which to stand, and I will move the earth.”

- Archimedes

Epilogue.

The surface of the long wooden
table in the hotel penthouse was made of bamboo, the brushed nickel
legs bolted on in a minimalist design. Seven white, fabric-covered
chairs were placed on either side of the long table and one at each
end. They were lined up along a seamless glass window that looked out
onto the furnished balcony. The sun was setting. The guests would be
arriving soon.

The first to arrive was their
host, a lean, silver-haired news anchor named Macon Keen. He had
recently left his job anchoring a nightly news program to replace a
retiring host on a morning news program. He swiped his key card on
the door of the penthouse and stepped inside, surveying the room to
make sure that everything was ready. A row of carts was parked near
the door and a server was stirring the contents of a chafing dish.
Macon Keen flashed his charming white smile at the young man and
handed him a hundred dollar bill. “Thank you,” he said. “That
will be all. Please ask the rest of the staff to stay off of this
floor for the evening. My guests are coming to a dinner among
friends. They don't need photos of their arrivals all over Mother
Jones.”

The server mumbled a thank-you
and left the room. Mr. Keen took a bottle of champagne from a bucket
of ice and popped the cork, letting it launch across the room and
laughing. He began to pour glasses for all of his friends.

The lock behind him beeped and
the door opened. The first guests were here. A massive man with olive
skin and blonde hair stepped through the door. Anyone in the lobby
would have recognized him as seven-time Superbowl champion and head
coach for the San Diego Chargers, Brutus Pierce. His wife, a
Victoria's-Secret-model-turned-actress, Portia Okeanos, followed.
When Portia passed through the door, she threw her arms around Macon.
“It's so good to see you, what has it been, a year?”

“
A year,” Macon agreed,
closing the door behind them. “Champagne?”

Brutus Pierce waved away a
glass, but Portia took two.

“
Starting the party with a
bang, I see,” Macon commented.

“
Celebrating. We've decided
to take new identities.”

“
Oh yeah?” Macon asked,
raising an eyebrow. “Have you informed the techie?”

“
Not yet.” Portia said,
“Ares wants to compete again, this time perhaps as an MMA fighter?
And I just want to be young again.”

“
Forty is hardly old,”
Macon said. “Considering…”

“
I have wrinkles,” she
said, puffing her lips out in a sensual pout.

The door clicked open and two
more guests stepped in. The first was Albert Smith, famous for
founding the software company that created the operating system,
Platform. All of the big game consoles were using it. He was a short
man with thick wooden glasses. When he walked, the whirring of a tiny
motor followed him; he wore an exoskeleton apparatus on his bad leg
that let him walk with ease—his own invention. He carried a tablet
with a box plugged into it, and red lights flashed on the little box.
Behind him, Xander Pierce, Brutus and Victoria's son and wiz-kid app
programmer, walked in. Xander, his curly blonde hair falling in his
face (as a teenager he had eventually learned to control his shifting
enough that he didn't need to shave off his natural golden curls),
looked over Smith's shoulder at the tablet.

“
All clean,” Smith said,
setting the tablet on the nearest table. “No bugs on this floor.”

“
Has anyone ever tried to
record this meeting?” Xander asked.

“
Once,” Brutus grunted.
“Fox News intern trying to spy on the POTUS.”

“
He was just a senator
then,” Portia reminded him.

“
Thought it was funny that
his only childhood friends were famous,” Albert Smith explained.

“
And that none of his
teachers or classmates could find a single photo of him in their
yearbooks.” Portia added. “He was a 'quiet' boy,” she said,
holding up her fingers in air quotes.

“
Speaking of our fearless
leader, he's coming in a different form, right? Shaking secret
service?” Xander asked.

“
He's on vacation, private
resort,” Macon Wiles explained. “And the only secret service on
duty right now are ours.”

Albert Smith reached to close
the door, but he didn't get the chance. A small group of women walked
in: Brigadier General Sofia Knight, the Dean of Academics at West
Point; Laurel Woolf, a popular survivalist and nature documentarian;
and Dr. Christine Lusia, the Secretary of Agriculture.

“
We should move out of the
doorway,” Wiles said, gesturing to the table at the far end of the
room. “Once you get a plate, you can find a seat. There's sixteen
of us coming today. We won't all fit if we only come three feet into
the room.”

While Portia was greeting the
new guests and Xander was pouring champagne, two men walked in. The
first was Marcel Rose. Twenty years ago he started a home-brew of
beer in a basement, but now he owned a chain of dinner-movie theaters
that served over fifty varieties of beer and wine, all of his own
invention. Monsieur Rose was chatting animatedly with Atticus
Delphias, the front man of a rock band that had gone solo fifteen
years ago and never looked back. He always wore gold leather pants
and too many rings, yet every record Delphias made was
multi-platinum, and he had taken to spending his fortune on music
education for disadvantaged kids.

“
Who are we waiting on?”
Rose asked. Atticus crossed to hug Ms. Woolf, ignoring the others.

“
The POTUS and the FLOTUS,”
Wiles said. “The lords of the dead, the traitor, and the newbie.”

“
Can we not call her that?”
Dr. Lusia asked. “It has been thousands of years.”

“
Right, but only twenty
since we found out about it,” General Knight said.

“
Hey, Zeus told us to let it
go,” Smith argued.

The rest came as the first
wave of arrivals sat down to eat. There was Megan Hagne, an unknown
who lived in cheap motels and tended to show up at notoriously
haunted houses, leaving them peaceful when she departed. Then came
Ignacia White. She wasn't famous either, except for the news piece
one time that profiled her as the foster mother of twelve; an
anonymous benefactor paid for everything and Ignacia did not have to
work (except to cook and clean for twelve children.) After Ignacia
came President Kingston and his wife, Olympia. They came in different
forms, but by the time they passed the threshold of the penthouse,
they were looking like the President and First Lady.

The next person in the door
was Kendra Seiler. She was younger than most of them, a woman in her
late twenties. She had made a name for herself as a dolphin trainer
at Sea World before becoming an eco-terrorist targeting whaling
vessels near Japan. Survivors of a recent boating accident that
killed a wealthy oil tycoon (a man on trial for negligence in a
massive oil spill on the gulf coast) claimed to have seen Seiler at
the site. Of course, they also claimed that the boat was taken down
by a giant squid, and everyone knew that was ridiculous.

Lastly came Hades. He didn't
don another form. He didn't need it because he didn't dwell among the
living. He did wear a suit, though, because it was inappropriate and
attention-grabbing to walk through the lobby of a five-star hotel in
a chiton and fur chlamys.

When Hades sat down at the far
end of the table, the gods shifted into their natural forms. It would
have meant death to any mortal spying on them through a telescope. At
the head of the table, Zeus, his whole form glowing with a light that
was deadly to all but the gods, called the council to order. Even
seated in his white upholstered chair, he was regal and intimidating.
The white cloth draped around his waist was clasped at his shoulder
with a golden clip shaped light a bolt of lightning, and his beard
was neatly groomed.

“
As first order of business,
the council would like to welcome Amphitrite to take the place of
Poseidon as warden of the seas,” he said, nodding to the goddess
who had previously appeared as Kendra Seiler.

“
I love the low profile
you're keeping,” Hermes said, “What with the Kraken and all.”

Zeus ignored his quip and
continued on. “Before we move forward with the agenda, is there any
business anyone else would like to bring forth? Something they won't
cover in their domain update?”

Aphrodite raised a hand, her
elbow staying on the table. “Ares and I would like to take new
identities.”

Zeus frowned. “So soon?”

“
I want to be young again.”

“
I see.” Zeus scratched
his beard. “Portia will die first. Make it an accident. Hades will
see to letting you out of the underworld. I need a body to bury, you
can't just shape-change this one. You'll have to be apart for at
least a year. In a year, Brutus can get drunk and pick a fight with
someone in a bar. A stranger.”

“
Ooh!” Hermes raised his
hand. “Can I do it? Can I kill you?”

Ares grunted. “I guess.”

“
Eventually we'll all have
to take new forms. This will be a good practice run. We can stagger
our deaths to avoid drawing suspicion. Xander,” Zeus said, looking
to the youngest god. “Can you handle their records?”

“
In my sleep,” he said.
“Literally.”

“
Kid's taking your job,”
Dionysus said, slapping Hephaestus on the back.

“
I think we should go back
to our teen years for each…rebirth. I had problems with people not
remembering me as their classmate in the last election. Now, is that
all?” Zeus asked.

Silence.

“
The next order of business
is about the Livingstone children. Haley is getting married.”

“
Do you need me to send a
gift?” Aphrodite asked.

“
I think I should handle
that,” Hera said, making a note on the lined yellow pad in front of
her. “You can send a bachelorette gift. I think that would be more
your style.”