The Blood of Athens (11 page)

Alexis Ruiz
was down the hall, visiting one of the boys from the marching band.
Diana was alone in her hotel room, watching a nature documentary in
Greek. The language barrier wasn't that big of an issue, given
Diana's first supernatural ability; generally, when she watched
Animal Planet, she was unable to focus on the narration anyway. What
the exotic animals had to say was much more fascinating. Diana was
watching a family of Meerkats argue over food when Astin knocked on
the door.

Diana turned
the TV on mute and got up from the bed. She looked through the peep
hole and sighed. Did she have to answer it?

“
I know
you're in there,” Astin said.

Diana unlocked
the door and let her brother in. “Hi.”

Astin walked
past Diana and into the room. He stood by the window, overlooking the
busy Athenian street.

“
What do you
want?” Diana asked. She had been cold to him since August. She had
every reason to be since the Titan Atlas had revealed that Astin had
murdered her boyfriend with a peanut butter sandwich.

“
To talk?”

Diana crossed
her arms and just stared at him

“
I mean, we
used to talk all the time, and now we don't.”

“
I wonder
why that is.”

Astin rolled
his eyes. “Your anger is noted, Di.”

“
Yeah, and
justified. Is there something important you needed to talk about?”

“
I need to
fix this.”

“
Well, you
can't.”

“
I know, but
I need to try. Diana, I killed Ryan. I thought he was corrupting you,
or hurting you, and then he was coming between us and I just wanted
to get rid of him. I just saw him as a threat, someone who was going
to break your heart and blow our cover and ruin our lives. But the
moment he stopped breathing I realized that I had made a mistake. It
was too late. I couldn't take it back. It was a mistake”

“
A mistake
is something that happens in the moment. You planned it. You actively
planned to kill my boyfriend.”

“
I didn't
realize he was
that
allergic. I
thought I'd have time to stop it. I thought I could heal him.”

“
You killed
him.”

“
I know,”
Astin's voice cracked. “I'm sorry.”

“
This isn't
even your first offense. You did this before. I have memories of you
setting me up to kill Orion. You don't even have the guts to do it
yourself, you have to trick me into it. It's like you're so
threatened that I'll fall in love with someone and stop being your
sister.”

“
I suppose I
am.”

Diana sat down
on the bed and picked up the remote. “Get out,” she said.

“
I'm sorry,”
Astin repeated.

“
I know. But
I'm not ready to forgive you. Get out.”

Celene sat in
a large arm chair, camped out with her laptop and her step-down power
converter in the lobby of the hotel by the elevator. She wasn't going
to have a repeat of the night before. She knew that she couldn't
reasonably stay up all night until the trip was over, but she thought
that staying out until one-thirty would give the impression that she
was holding a constant vigil.

Celene
restarted her game of solitaire and started clicking through her
stack of virtual cards, looking for aces. Bed check was soon.
Students would need to be in their rooms, then the real watch began.

The elevator
opened and Nick Morrisey stepped out. Celene was ready to jump up and
call him a hypocrite for ratting out his friends and then attempting
to sneak out on his own, but Nick turned straight for her. He was
seeking her out.

“
Hey, Dr. D,
I was just looking for you.”

“
Were you?”

“
Yep. I
wanna show you something.” Nick had a newspaper in his hand and he
held up the rolled-up issue. “But not here.”

Celene looked
between her laptop screen and the newspaper. Curfew wasn't for
another twenty minutes. She could check-in with Nick, do the sweep,
and then come back down here. Surely nobody would sneak out right
before bed-check. They would be missed.

“
Alright,”
she said, folding her laptop and unplugging it from the power source.
“Let's make it quick.”

Celene
followed Nick to the elevator.

“
So tell
me,” she said, after pushing the button to return to her floor.
“What made you rat them out?” Celene had been turning over Nick's
possible motives in her mind all day. He was usually at the root of
trouble, right? Of all of the kids in The Pantheon, Celene would peg
Nick as the one most likely to sneak out to a nightclub in a foreign
country. Why had he stayed behind to tattle?

“
We already
pushed our luck vanishing through an archway at the Acropolis. I just
knew someone like Lewis would do something stupid to get us all
exposed. I mean, they almost got caught up in a crime scene, right?
Like we need that association added to our record.”

Celene wasn't
sure she believed it. Was his self-preservation instinct actually
stronger than his desire for hedonism? Maybe Jason’s speech this
summer had worked. The door opened and Celene stepped out onto the
plush rug. Nick followed her down the hall.

Celene
unlocked her door and looked around. Nobody in the hall. Good. She
didn't need to be seen going into a hotel room alone with a student,
especially Nick. “Make it quick,” she said as he closed the door.
“What's in the paper?”

“
The guy who
was killed was a tourist. American. Nothing special about him. He's
from Missouri and he was traveling abroad after college. Some of his
friends were at the club with him. They said he had been buying
drinks for a girl when they last saw him.”

“
So the
killer is female?”

Nick shrugged,
“Or part of a team. Anyway, the police released that all of the
victims have been left with a coin in their mouth, as we suspected,
but also that their names were carved into the surface they were
found on, almost like a burial marker. This guy's was scratched into
the toilet.”

“
Odd,”
Celene frowned.

“
Yeah, so he
kills in public places without being seen and then follows Ancient
Greek burial rites. Sound like a Titan?”

“
Or just a
serial killer who happens to be in Athens. What's the timeline?”

“
The first
associated murder was September. There was a second in October, two
in November, six in December, a little cooling off period in January
and early February, and then three more in the last two weeks.”

“
Thirteen.”

“
But it
started right after we killed Atlas.”

Celene shook
her head. “We can't assume that this is a Titan. All of the Titans
thus far have come to us. But, we can't relax either. We've been
attacked by three in one year. We can't drop our guard.”

“
We need to
have a meeting when we get home,” Nick said. “Olympus, that cave
Peter found today, and finding bodies on top of it?”

“
And I got a
strange email from Jason this afternoon about giving Diana and
Frank's baby a haircut.”

“
A haircut?”

Celene nodded.

“
Cryptic.”

“
It's just
not safe to share what's been going on through digital communication.
We'll have to meet with everyone in person.”

Nick set the
newspaper down on the dresser. He sat down on her bed. “That sounds
good. Minnie is trying to seize control in Zach's absence, but she's
not doing a very good job of being a leader. She and Lewis went off
and played Blackjack last night. Real responsible.”

Celene raised
an eyebrow at him. “You're going to lecture about responsibility?”

Nick stood up,
laughing. “Fair enough. But hey, I'm eighteen. Maybe I've just
finally decided to grow up.”

Celene looked
down at her watch. “Bed check is in ten. I can't be seen with you
leaving my hotel room. You'd better go.” When she looked up, Nick
was standing very close.

“
You sure
you want me to go?” he asked.

Oh hell no
,
she thought. Celene stepped back. “Nick, get out.”

Nick smirked.
“You've never been curious?”

“
You're a
teenager.”

“
I’m
eighteen. It’s alright.”

“
No, it's
not. Get out.”

“
Or do you
only sleep with bearded men?”

“
It's not
funny, Nick. Get--”

The room was
plunged into darkness.

“
What just
happened?” Nick asked.

Celene looked
out the window of her room. The lights were still on in every other
building on the busy street. “It's just this hotel. A fuse must
have blown.”

“
Well, we
could make use of the time--”

“
Shut up,
Nick. I don't need the lights to put my knee in your crotch. Use the
blackout to get out before someone sees you.”

“
Jesus,
fine. Alright.” Nick grumbled as he walked to the door.

Celene had
expected the backup generator to kick on by now.

“
You know
where to find me if you change your mind,” Nick said.

Celene was
just about to answer that she wouldn’t when somebody screamed.

“
Whatever
it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.
”

-Virgil

xiv.

The
great walls had been built by the gods themselves,
and the army of
Agamemnon was tired.
No siege weapon was strong enough to breech
them.

It
fell to deceit.

The
wooden horse was presented at the gates.
The fleet of Greek ships
receded from the harbor,
and the Trojans took the sign of
surrender
as a great godsend.

They
brought the parting gift inside the great walls.
After dark the
great sculpture began to stir,
and Greek seamen burst with a
rallying cry
from inside the horse.

They
took torches to every thatched roof about
and slaughtered the
surprised Trojans as they slept.
So it came to be that these
Greeks bearing gifts
burned the city down.

“
Avoid
enemies.”

-Delphic
Maxim

XIV.

“
Stay
there,” Peter said as he made his way to the door of the hotel
room. He opened it and peeked out. Other students were looking around
the dark hall. The only source of light came from the street lamps, a
narrow, dim beam, streaming in through the windows of the open hotel
rooms.

The scream
repeated. It was coming from below. Another scream joined it.

Diana Hill,
alone in her own room, crouched down and put her ear to the floor.
When she sat up, her eyes were wide with fear. Someone was being
murdered down there. Everyone was running to the emergency exit. It
was chaos.

Doors slammed
shut as students hid back in their rooms. Peter ducked his head back
inside Penny's room for an instant, popped into invisible form, and
left the room. “Stay put,” he said to Penny before he left. He
grabbed her room key off of the dresser so he could get back in.

Peter crept
quietly down the hall. Astin was standing outside Diana's room with
his hands glowing. Peter stopped next to him.

“
Put that
shit out,” Peter whispered. Astin nearly fell over with surprise,
but he extinguished the sunlight from his hands.

“
Peter?”

“
Screams,
Astin. Screams. If someone’s on a murderous rampage, don’t give
them a target.”

“
I was
checking on Diana.”

“
Great, get
in her room and lock the door.”