Power (29 page)

“And you believe this
why
?” Reed asked me. I got the feeling he’d been holding it back for a while.

“Because I’m what he wants,” I said and glanced out the door to see the black smoke of the fires I’d started as we circled once around the crater that I’d made. I tore my eyes from the scene of the carnage and looked around the helicopter. “And that means he has nowhere else to go.”

Chapter 49

Rome

282
A.D.

“There’s nowhere else I’d care to be,” Marius said to the empty room. He shook as he paced the floor, hands vibrating unconsciously as he struggled to keep them steady. “This is my home now. It has been since—”

“I know this, dear boy,” Janus said, “but you have to understand … you make the others nervous.”

“Maybe they should be nervous,” Marius said, his voice quivering just a little.

Janus sighed and lifted a hand to his head. “Good lad, you have been allowed to absorb a great many souls that have caused us immense trouble.” He hesitated. “Far be it from me to suggest that you might have had enough, but—”

“They’re scared,” Marius said. “They’re scared because I have power that they don’t. Power they’ll never have.”

Janus looked at him flatly. “Yes. But these are not people who you want to scare, Marius. Neptune himself has convened councils to discuss—”

“The problem with me,” Marius said, spinning on his heel to look away from Janus. He sniffed the air, catching a hint of the fire in the next chamber. “Well? You were there. What have they decided?”

“They have decided nothing,” Janus said. “I have argued in your favor, but of late you are more distant and temperamental in your dealings with the others. I cannot read you anymore, Marius, and that is concerning—”

“That’s all right,” Marius said with cold precision. “I can read everyone else.”

Janus clicked his tongue. “So it is true. You have absorbed the powers of a telepath.”

Marius spun around to him and gave him a slow smile. “Among others, yes.”

Janus appeared to consider things for a moment before speaking. “You should be careful in gathering the sort of power you are. It does not come without some cost.”

“Cost?” Marius laughed. “You are a peculiar one to lecture me about costs of power. Was it not you who manipulated me into helping you kill Jupiter?”

“To establish a safer course for our people and a better path for this Empire, yes,” Janus said, and he sounded unapologetic. “For—”

“Revenge,” Marius cut him off.

Janus did not even blink. “It was a consideration.”

Marius nodded once then again. “I can’t say I haven’t taken a little revenge myself.”

Janus hesitated. “I suspected it was you who burned your old village to the ground. The others thought perhaps an earthquake, or an incursion through Gaul.” Janus shifted and folded his arms. “Tensions are high right now. There are too many outside considerations with usurpers causing uprisings. Neptune does not want fractiousness. He wants a united front, a safe haven. The Emperor is already nervous enough. Ares—I mean Mars,” he said, shaking his head, “is handling more than he can deal with, trying to reach to the edge of the empire to handle this foolish man’s requests for territory.”

Marius blinked. “Perhaps he should tell them no. Let them fight their own battles for a while.”

“They likely could for a time,” Janus said, shaking his head. “But we hold this empire together.” He clutched a hand tight in front of his face. “They exist because of us. The rule of law, the peace for the citizens, it comes from us. Men cannot handle holding together what gods have made.”

“Maybe gods should rule it, then,” Marius said, unflinching.

Janus did not blink. “What you suggest runs in the opposite direction of what Neptune is proposing. He wishes us to distance ourselves further, to let ourselves fade into the background of the empire, exercise the power needed to keep it running and no more. Keep the enemies at bay and grow powerful through other means.”

Marius stared back at him. “Why would we fear to stand before them and declare ourselves? They fear us. They worship us. We are fit to rule them. Indeed, we are the only ones who are.”

Janus looked at him carefully. “That sounds … much like Jupiter speaking.”

Marius turned away. “Jupiter is dead.”

“Is he?” Janus asked. “Or is he in there somewhere, in you? Whispering words in your ear about who you are, what you can do? Does he tell you that you can be emperor? Does he define for you what you are capable of, what your ambitions are?” Marius heard Janus’s steps just behind him. “Is he telling you to strike me down right now, merely for speaking these words to you?”

Marius whirled and thrust a finger in Janus’s face. Janus did not react but to glance at it. “I am the most powerful man in Rome.”

“Indeed,” Janus said, looking him straight in the eyes. “And who points the finger of the most powerful man in Rome?”

“I do,” Marius said, the pride burning in his chest.

“Then why is your finger dancing with lightning?” Janus said and looked down.

Marius stared at his hand, and it shook. Blue electricity crackled over the flesh, and Marius took a step back, staring at it in horror.

“He has been whispering to you all this while,” Janus said. “I could tell, before you took steps to block your thoughts from me. I did not wish to say anything because, let us face it—you do not trust me anymore. You think I have used you and cast you aside. I could assure you all day that it was untrue, but it would be pointless. You see now the truth of what inhabits your mind.”

Marius fell to the floor, felt the cold smack of the stones against his palm as he hit the ground and began to skitter backwards, as though he could back away from the truth as easily as Janus. “I … I …”

“The others would kill you if they knew,” Janus said. “I would suggest you not give them opportunity to find out.” He turned his back on Marius and started to leave.

“You wanted him in me,” Marius said, and his voice cracked. “You put him in my head.”

Janus paused, standing in the middle of the room, and then his shoulders slumped slightly. “I did. I thought it was the only way to kill him, and I took it.”

“Now you are done with me,” Marius said, staring at his hands. “You expect me to—what? Go into exile?”

Janus glanced back. “It is either that, or you will eventually be killed by the others. Perhaps I have used you. Perhaps I have given you more power than I should have. But it is your power now, and your responsibility. You can listen to the voice in your head, and you could force the issue with Neptune. You could become the next Caesar, great and terrible as any who have ever lived. You could take control, kill each of us one by one, assert yourself over the kingdoms of man until you ruled the whole of the earth.”

Marius heard him, heard the words he spoke, and a jealous pleasure rushed through him at the thought. “And why would I not?”

Janus held out his hands. “Because then you would be no better than the people who ground you under their feet in your village. Back when they had all the power and you had none.”

Marius felt the spear of truth stab into him and he drew a sharp breath. It felt like something had hit him in the chest, and he blinked. The voice that had whispered so long in his thoughts, louder than the other voices in the chorus, it spoke.
You
are
greater. You deserve to—

“No,” Marius whispered. “I am not … one of them. I am not …
like
that.”

You could do it more subtly. You could make them suffer, make them pay, make things right—

“No,” Marius breathed. “No, not that …”

“You see the truth of it now,” Janus said. “You see the truth of the man in your head. He ruled by force. What he could not use to control the empire, he crushed. We expanded in all directions under his rule and direction, but those who opposed all died. In order to do what you wish to do, you would have to be prepared to extend your grasp over the whole of the empire, and direct your military commanders to break them all if they moved out of line so much as an inch.” Janus stepped toward him. “Are you ready to slaughter whole villages, whole cities?”

“I am a killer now,” Marius whispered.

“Are you a murderer of the innocent?” Janus asked. He did not sound anything other than curious at the answer.

You can do it. One step, one easy step—one death, one man—Neptune, and you can be the head of the council. And then, from there, the Caesar—

“No,” Marius whispered and felt all the grand plans he’d imagined in the last year slip from him in an instant. “No. This I will not do.”

Janus nodded. “I thought not.” With that, he turned and began the slow walk back to the exit of the chamber.

“I will go into exile,” Marius said as his mentor—his father—his friend, had nearly walked out on him. “But know this: I want nothing to do with your empire, or with the world of gods, with the affairs of your kind, or with your manipulations of men. I will leave this day and not come back, and if you so much as send a messenger to seek me, I will send him back to you in pieces.”

Janus paused then nodded his head once. “So it is, then. Good journey, Marius. I wish you fair travels.” He disappeared behind the arch.

Marius felt a hot blush on his cheeks. “And I wish you an empire of ash to sit your ass upon.”

Chapter 50

Sienna

Now

“So what are we going to do about Sovereign?” Reed asked, breaking the silence that hung over the conference room.

We were all sitting around. It should have been a victory party, but it wasn’t. Too much else on the mind, I guess. Or maybe the fact that our glorious plan had ended with something that looked like a nuclear bomb going off in the northwoods of Minnesota was putting a damper on things. I didn’t pay much attention to the news, but I’d seen a few people watching live feeds of footage from Gables, and I knew it was not a pretty bit of optics, as the political class might say.

“I think you’re well on record as being in favor of killing him,” Scott said.

“It’s expedient, if nothing else,” Reed said.

“Yes,” Scott agreed. “It’s certainly not merciful, decent or humane.”

“I have a hard time weeping over him given what he’s done,” Reed said with a shrug. “But it’s not my decision.”

“He came to help Sienna,” Kat said. “Shouldn’t that count for something? I mean, he broke out of his non-prison imprisonment and came to save her.” She smiled sheepishly. “It was kind of sweet. And now he’s back in chains that don’t actually do anything to hold him.”

“Yeah, it’s really cool how he’s willing to just sit there like that,” Reed said acidly. “Except we don’t know that he actually is. He could be dodging out to Taco Bell for a Loco Taco and hanging out at the local bar, dropping back in whenever he feels like it. Imprisonment for murder shouldn’t involve a furlough.”

“Agreed,” Foreman said. “If he’s to be imprisoned, it needs to start happening for real, and now.”

“No courts to rule on the matter,” Scott said, shaking his head. “No evidence to prove what he did, even though we all know what he did.”

“Do we?” Kat asked. “Do we really?”

“I watched him burn Old Man Winter to death,” I said, breaking my silence. “Plus those other two Omega stooges.”

Kat’s eyes seemed to race, like she was trying to craft an excuse. “But, really, is that so bad?”

I didn’t blink at her, but only through long practice. “Yes. I know it sounds funny coming from me, but yes, murder is bad.”

“Now she comes to this conclusion,” Li muttered.

“What should we do, Senator?” Reed asked, turning to look at Foreman. “Or are you still not here?”

“I am most definitely not here for this,” Foreman said, shaking his head. “Not for Gables, not for the aftermath, and certainly not if Sovereign loses his head.” He frowned, deep furrows appearing in his brow. “What was his name? Before Sovereign?” He directed this to Janus.

“Marius,” Janus said, barely looking up. “Though that was so long ago I can barely recall.”

“He left Rome because he was mad at you after you guys conspired to kill Zeus, right?” Reed asked.

Janus shifted his gaze to look at my brother. “There was a little more to it than that, but yes.”

“What more was there?” Scott asked.

Janus sighed. “When we took over for Zeus—who was by then known as Jupiter—we were faced with an Empire that had already reached a point of disbelief in the gods. The rise of Christianity coupled with events within our hierarchy caused a fall from grace that led to exile from the Empire for us and the fall of said Empire a few centuries later.”

“That sounds like the Cliff’s Notes version,” Reed said, narrowing his eyes. “What aren’t you telling us?”

Janus blew air through his lips noiselessly. “Quite a bit, actually, because we are talking about centuries of events, after all. Zeus had pushed the Emperors too far, kept them in too much fear. When Poseidon took up his role, with Hera at his side and the rest of us advising him, he ended up with a string of noncompliant Emperors who culminated in Constantine the Great—so called—defying us entirely and embracing Christianity. That, coupled with the fact that we no longer had the power to defend Rome from usurpers and internal threats caused him to tell us to ‘get out’ in no uncertain terms. This led us to go underground at Poseidon’s behest.” He spread his hands. “Does that satisfy you?”

“No,” Reed said.

“Why couldn’t you defend Rome?” This came from Li. “Strong group of metas like you, it seems like you’d be able to raise enough hell to scare the Visigoths, Vandals and Gauls away.”

“How to put this nicely?” Janus said, rhetorically. “We were not fighters by that point. Certainly none of us were willing to go out on the battlefield—”

“And why should you, when it was easier to sit back and pull the strings?” Reed said.

“Exactly,” Janus said with a thick layer of resentment. “Can you imagine the effect of seeing a god on the battlefield against you? Then try to imagine the effect of seeing one felled by the enemy. Our presence in armies did almost as much ill as good, and we had long before devised a strategy to protect Rome that did not put any of us in a position to be killed and thus demoralize an army and destroy the power of our mythology.” He thumped a palm lightly against the table. “However, once our strategy did fall apart, some of us returned to the battlefield on occasion, never in an obvious way—”