The Blood of Athens (3 page)

June laughed
as he nipped at her ear. She had learned to relax quite a bit over
the past few months. The summer before had nearly resulted in a
complete mental break down, but June had learned to recognize when
she was being irrational or uptight.

Zach didn't
care that his face felt like sandpaper or that June had morning
breath. He could feel her breasts, free from the constraints of a
bra, just below her tank top, pressed against his chest. Zach pressed
his hips forward and let out a little moan. This was way better than
Athens.

June's arms
tensed. “Zach,” she said, hesitating. She could tell that she had
accidentally started something. “Zach, wait.”

“
June,” he
whined.

“
Zach,”
she said, a little more severely.

Zach sat up.
“Alright.” He held his hands up in surrender as he rose to walk
to the bathroom. June pulled the black cotton sheets up and crossed
her arms over her chest. “Zach,” she called.

It was quiet
for a minute, and then Zach came back into the bedroom. He grabbed a
pair of jeans off the floor and put them on.

“
I'm sorry,”
June said.

“
Don't be.”

“
Zach...”
she left his name hanging in the air, the opening clause to a
sentence she didn't know how to finish.

“
It's fine.
I mean... we've been together for how many years?”

“
I don't
want to count before, Zach. It wasn't good, then. You-- we weren't
good to each other.”

“
And I
cheated,” he said. It was something he rarely admitted out loud. “A
lot.”

“
And I
manipulated you. We weren't good for each other. I'm not blaming you
Zach.”

“
We've been
together for seven months, then.”

June shook her
head. She climbed out of bed and picked up the large, black, slouch
bag that held a change of clothes. Her parents knew she was sleeping
over a friend's house. They had assumed it was a
girl
friend. “It's
not about time.”

“
We're
eighteen,” Zach added. “Eighteen. And you wouldn't be here if you
were worried about your parents.”

“
It's not
about being eighteen or being together for a predetermined amount of
time, Zach,” June snapped. She took a deep breath and started
pulling clothing out of her bag. “Yes, for a while I thought it was
about that, but it's not. I've had a lot of time to think and to know
what I want. I do want to have sex with you, Zach, but I want you to
be the first, the last, the only.”

“
And I've
cheated.” Zach crossed to June and wrapped his arms around her. She
dropped the pair of jeans in her hand and relaxed against him.

“
I don't
want to wait until marriage because society or church or my mother
tells me to. I know it's stupid with the fifty percent divorce rate,
but I want to wait because I want to be sure that the first person I
give myself to is the last. Is the only.”

“
That's not
stupid.” Zach had played the field enough this past summer to know
that having sex with a lot of different beautiful women, while fun at
first, was highly overrated. He held June for a while, letting the
tension of the moment fall away.

“
I love
you,” she finally whispered, “And I trust you. But--”

June didn't
get to finish. Zach was on his knee.

“
No!” she
said. “Get up. You are not proposing to me so that I'll have sex
with you.”

Zach laughed,
“I'm not.”

“
You're not
proposing?”

“
Oh, no. I
am proposing. Will you stop talking long enough to let me do that?”

June opened
and closed her mouth.

“
Good.”
Zach took her hand. “Now, I don't know how old we are. Three
thousand, four thousand, a million years old? We're already married.
I may have seduced a couple of women disguised as an animal and you
might have horribly massacred them, but we keep coming back to each
other. I'd like to think that after all of these years, I've grown.
You have, too. I had you for thousands of years and I couldn't stand
six months apart. I love you, and even when we drive each other to do
insane things, we always find each other again. So I'm not asking
you, June Herald, the eighteen-year-old girl, to run away and marry
Zach Jacobs, the horny teenager. I'm asking you, June, my Queen,
goddess, to renew your vows to me.”

There were
tears in June's eyes. It was unprecedented.

“
That's
really sweet, Zach,” she finally said. “Maybe next lifetime you
shouldn't include massacre in a marriage proposal.”

Zach squeezed
her hand. A faint surge of energy passed from his fingertips and
along with it, the echo of a memory. It was pure happiness, and she
knew that it was associated with some lost memory of her wedding
night with Zeus. They were made for each other.

“
Alright,”
she said, nodding. A small smile turned up the corners of her lips.
“I'll marry you.”

Zach jumped
up, grinning, and picked her up. June clung to him, afraid that he
might drop her.

“
Let's go
today,” he said, setting her back down on his bedroom floor.

June shook her
head, “You have to wait like, a month, in Florida. You have to file
for a license and then wait.”

“
But you
don't in Georgia,” Zach said.

June cocked
her head. “You're serious?”

“
Totally.
You can tell your mom you’ve gone camping with some friends from
school and I’ll tell mine that I’m in Orlando with my dad. It’s
only a few hours drive. We can be there by sun down.”

June chewed on
her lip for a moment. She nodded, “Alright. Savannah, Georgia.”

Zach pumped
his fist and ran to his closet for a duffel bag.

June
picked up her jeans off the floor and started towards the bathroom to
change. She closed the bathroom door and sat down on the wooden lid
of the toilet. She had always planned to graduate from a top college,
marry Zach, get him into a political office, and become the first
lady some day. Finding out that they were Greek Gods had temporarily
derailed her ambitions. She smiled as she thought about this plan,
one she had plotted every day for most of her life. It was back on
track now. Who cared if it was a little out of order?

“
The art
of living well and the art of dying well are one.”

-Epicurus

iv.

The
spear of Achilles struck bold Telaphus
and tore a fatal wound in
the soldier's thigh.
Telephaus knew that, without help, he was
dead
and grew desperate.

With
a terrible fear of losing his life,
Telaphus snatched up the young
boy, Orestes.
He held the dagger to his throat and threatened
to
end the boy's life.

The
small boy was very dear to his mother.
Achilles was left with no
other option.
He had to heal the villain, his enemy,
to save
the young boy.

Achilles
knew of a kind of old magic
that allowed the weapon to be the
savior.
He scraped the bronze of his spear onto the
wound:
Telaphus was healed.

“
Knowledge
becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.”

-Plato

IV.

Jason found
himself at Tamiami Park that afternoon, watching Haley take turns
pushing Scotty and Jamie on the big, red, bucket-seat swings at the
playground. He sipped from his thermos of iced coffee and pushed his
aviator sunglasses back up his nose. His skin was covered in a thin
layer of perspiration and the glasses soon slid back down.

He had only
gotten an hour and a half to nap before the credits were rolling on
his
My
Neighbor Totoro
DVD
and the twins were trying to get into something messy. At least Haley
was smart enough to wake her father before trouble started. She was a
good girl.

Jason pulled
out his phone and checked the application he had downloaded to track
the flight. Celene and Penny were somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
They wouldn't land until after dinner time here, which would be after
three in the morning in Athens.

Someone sat
down next to Jason. He looked up from his phone to make sure that his
kids were still playing safely. He glanced casually at the man in his
peripheral vision. The stranger wore sunglasses and a suede sports
coat. He had dark, receding hair and ears that stuck out. The man
cleared his throat. “I think it’s a little toasty for this coat.”

Jason nodded.
“It's supposed to be eighty by mid-afternoon.”

Jason took a
long sip of his coffee and surveyed the playground, trying to guess
which kids belonged to the stranger. Scotty was now trying to swing
on his stomach and Jamie was copying his twin. Haley had found a big
earthworm to poke at in the dirt.

Jason was just
starting to consider calling Frank (to check in on Devon and the
baby) when the stranger spoke again.

“
They're all
on their way to Greece, huh?”

Jason's back
stiffened.

“
It seems
appropriate,” he went on. “Thematic.”

Jason could
hear his pulse behind his eardrums.
Keep
cool,
he
thought. Jason tipped his phone so that the stranger couldn't see the
screen in the sun and selected the option to record. “Who went to
Greece?” he asked, playing dumb.

“
Dr. Davis
and her band of misfits. You know, your girlfriend.”

Jason recalled
June and Astin both reporting strange encounters last summer. A man
at the cemetery had made a cryptic comment to Astin about the death
of Diana's boyfriend, Ryan Bear. A similar-looking man had shown June
a passage from a book of mythology at a fair. It had curiously been
about Hera. This man seemed to fit that description. “I'm not sure
how you know Celene,” Jason said, wondering if he should grab his
kids and run, “But she is a teacher, so yes, she's chaperoning a
field trip.”

The stranger
laughed. “Do I need to show you pictures?”

“
Pictures?”

“
I do have
them, you know. Not here, of course, but we can make an appointment.”

“
Listen--”
Jason started.

“
No, you
listen,” the stranger said. Jason kept his eyes on his children,
but he could see the man looming close in his peripheral vision. “I
know
.
It was really my lucky break. I normally get paid to spy on cheating
husbands. Imagine my surprise when I saw them all arrive to spend the
night with Teddy junior. One was enough to seal your fate, but I did
some digging, too. If you think I'm going to ignore three murders and
a whole lot of unique abilities, you're even more naïve than I
thought. ”

“
What do you
want?”

The stranger
stood up and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He blotted the
sweat from his forehead. Jason turned to watch him, finally getting a
real, good look at the stranger. The man put the pocket square away
and drew a small metal case out of his pocket. He opened it and
handed Jason a business card. “The moment they get back, we need to
talk. It's going to take a lot to make me forget what I've seen.”

Jason looked
down at the business card.
Mr.
Spade. Private Investigator.
Jason
watched Spade walk back towards the parking lot. His fist balled
around the business card. He knew things had been going a bit too
smoothly; there was just no way to keep fifteen super-humans a secret
when everyone had cameras on their phones. He cursed and shoved the
card into his pocket.

“
Haley,
Jamie, Scotty!” he shouted. “Let's go.” This park didn't feel
safe any more.

“
It is
not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”

-Aristotle

v.

When
the war between the Gods and the Titans
had ended, and the
Olympians had won,
it came time for the three brothers to draw
lots
to choose a domain.