The Cult of Kronos (6 page)

“
So what are you proposing,
a democracy?”

“
When I ruled over men,”
he said, “Everyone was happy. I don't just mean a few rich
senators. Everyone. Not just men. Women too. And there was no slave
class. They called it The Golden Age. Nobody wanted for anything.
There was no fighting, no jealousy, no hunger. Everyone was their
best self and everyone was happy. How would you like that?”

Nick shrugged. “I dunno,
seems kind of boring.”

“
There was no boredom
either. There was no want.”

“
And you want to make
everything golden again?”

“
Exactly. And you are just
the god to help me.”

“
Yeah? How do I do that?”

“
Well, first I would have to
convince your friends.”

“
I'm not exactly their
favorite, as you pointed out.”

“
I was thinking the choice
would be a little less persuasive and a little more intimidating.
They join me or they die.”

“
Oh.”

“
If you give yourself over
to my service, if you vow to be my loyal servant, when I kill them
all, I will let you live. When they are gone and I am in charge, you
will be a king. You will not just reign over the sea, but you will
personally help me rule the land with fairness and wisdom. How does
that sound?”

“
Uh…” Nick looked back
at his locker. His green and gold Olympia Heights Senior High
Athletics sweatshirt hung on the hook opposite his towel. He was
being offered a chance to live, rather than to have his neck snapped
like Dr. Davis. If Kronos was going to kill the Pantheon anyway, why
shouldn't Nick make it out alive? “Can I have a few days to think
about it?”

Cruz smiled. “Of course. But
while you mull it over, remember how they've treated you. Would they
give the same consideration for your life?”

As Nick was watching, Cruz's
pupils snapped back to normal size. The change was quick, like
watching a rubber band rebound. Cruz stopped smiling and blinked.
“Oh, hey, Nick.”

“
Kronos?”

“
Huh?”

“
Nothing.” Nick watched
Cruz put his hands into his pockets and saw the change in his stance.
No longer was he solid and intimidating, but bouncy and open.

“
What're you doing here so
late?”

“
Just…just practicing a
little more.”

Cruz clapped Nick on the side
of the arm. “Well,” he said, “don't wear yourself out too soon,
eh?”

Nick nodded.

Cruz turned back to his
office, muttering to himself, “Now what was I doing out here?”

Nick turned back to his locker
and grabbed his shorts. He would shower in his dorm. He wanted to get
out of here as fast as he could.

“
Cure sometimes, treat
often, comfort always.”

-Hippocrates

vii.

Asclepius, son of the god
Apollo,

was known across the land
for his healing arts.

And though he brought much
glory to his father,

he soon crossed a line.

It was of great importance
that mortals should—

upon reaching the end of
their time—pass on.

Asclepius had learned to
cure even death,

and for it he died.

It fell to Zeus to strike
him down with lightning,

even though he admired the
human man.

So when Apollo claimed the
corpse of his son,

Lord Zeus allowed it.

The sun god took a cup of
sacred nectar

and poured it past the lips
of Asclepius.

Then he fixed his broken
body with the light

of his healing hands.

When Asclepius then lifted
his eyelids,

the eyes that now gazed
upon Mount Olympus

were the shining eyes of an
immortal god,

god of medicine.

“
To love and be loved is
everything.”

-Greek Proverb

VII.

The house was too quiet. The
wooden floors in Jason Livingstone's home were old and made with
large, stained planks that had warped and shifted in the humidity of
south Florida. The place had always creaked. There was a pleasant
squeaking every time his children ran across the living room. Even
the floor under the carpet in the utility room squeaked. He had
gotten used to the sound like little mice constantly filling his
house in the daytime. Now it was silent except for the pounding rain
outside. The thunderstorm that raged—one that had been forecast,
not one that Zach had caused—was threatening to become a tropical
storm.

The kids were out of state,
staying with Jason's father. Penny was in Haley's room, camped on the
pull-out mattress that normally hid under Haley's bed. He hadn't seen
her since breakfast, when she had popped out to claim a toaster
pastry and then vanished into the room. That was sixteen hours ago.
He wanted to give her plenty of space, but the silence was eating at
him.

Jason
sat on the couch, reading a
Game
of Thrones
book. He was just past the point where the TV series had left off for
the summer, but despite his curiosity, he couldn't focus. The rain
beat on the roof outside, and the constant noise reminded Jason that
the house he occupied was just a very small box in comparison to the
raging ire of mother nature outside. He was very small, and he was
very alone.

Jason
slipped a bookmark into his book and set it down. He got up and
crossed the room, pleased to hear the
squeak
squeak squeak
of his old floors. He knocked gently on Haley's door. “Penny?” He
needed to hear signs of life.

Penny opened the door. She
wasn't wearing any eyeliner around her pale blue eyes, which made
Jason suspect that she had washed it off because she had been crying.

“
What do you like on your
pizza?” he asked.

“
Pizza?”

“
Yeah, I mean it's only four
thirty, but I figure it'll take the pizza guy time to get here in
this rain anyway, and if we wait too long it might be raining too
hard to get delivery.”

“
Oh, uh…I like cheese.”

“
Just cheese?”

“
Mmhmm.”

“
You don't want to live a
little, get pepperoni? Black olives? Spinach and tomato?”

Penny shook her head. “Just
cheese.”

“
Okay. Half cheese, half
meat lovers.”

Jason went to the kitchen and
rooted through his basket of takeout menus. He wasn't one of those
single Dads that ordered pizza every night (he was a doctor, after
all, and he tried to cook healthy meals at home), but he did enjoy
the convenience of ordering out on Fridays. It was a nice reward at
the end of a work week. It had become ritual. After he placed the
call, he went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer.

Jason was just settling down
and finally getting his mind in a good place to find out what Tyrion
Lannister would do next when the doorbell rang. Jason thought he'd
imagined it for a moment, but then it rang again. “It's too soon
for pizza,” he said out-loud to himself as he marked his book, set
down his beer, and headed to the utility room at the side of the
house.

The utility room was carpeted
in an old, grey berber. The walls were paneled with planks of stained
wood that matched the floor in the living room. Jason walked by the
antique tin signs and coat-hooks lined with tiny jackets and
raincoats and stopped at the window. He looked out the little, foggy
window in the room. There were no cars in the driveway, save for his
own Buick Electra. Large globs of rain bounced off of the metal body
and filled the driveway with thunderous noise.

Jason opened the front door
just as a flash of lightning and a simultaneous clap of thunder
erupted. The sky lit up, and standing on the porch, Jason saw a
large, bearded man and a small, dark-haired woman standing in front
of him.

“
Uh…hello?” if they were
about to tell him that their car had broken down up the road and that
they needed a place to call for help, he planned to hand them an
umbrella and call the cops for them. Jason wasn't about to let two
soggy strangers into his home after all that had happened.

Jason was about to ask what
they wanted when something strange happened. As the lightning flashed
like a strobe light, the rain that poured down over their heads
washed away the illusion. The large man's beard and a hundred pounds
of muscle dripped away, and Peter Hadley was left standing on Jason's
doorstep. When he looked down at the woman, she was no longer a
stranger, but Celene.

Jason stepped back and sat
down quickly on an old wooden bench he kept tucked against the wall
for removing muddy boots. He was worried that the room would start
spinning and he would collapse. This couldn't be real. He was seeing
what he wanted to see.

“
Doc,” Peter said, his
voice a little deeper than Jason remembered it. “You alright?”

“
Of course he's not alright,
Peter. He's just seen two dead people.”

Jason put his head between his
knees. His back heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He heard the
door close, muffling the sound of the pouring rain.

“
Jason,” Celene said,
wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her clothes and hair were
soaking wet. She rubbed his back in large, soothing circles. “We're
real. We're really here.”

“
Maybe the 'surprise, dead
people!' approach was a bad idea,” Peter said.

Jason, still panting, looked
up at the boy. “Hades,” he said, before breaking into a fit of
weak laughter. “You're Hades.”

“
Yeah. And look who wandered
in through my front door,” he said, jabbing his thumb back to point
to Celene.

“
How are you alive?” he
asked them.

“
Turns out it takes more
than a broken neck to really kill a goddess.”

Jason threw his arms around
Celene and buried his face in her wet hair. The dam burst. The
powerful urge to sob rose up in his throat, choking him and causing
him to shake as he began to cry. He clung to her, letting out the
tears that he had held in for Penny's sake.

A creaking sound traveled
across the living room and stopped at the door to the mud room.
“Mom?” Penny asked.

Jason looked up just as Penny
dash across the little room and threw her arms around Celene and
Jason both.

“
Mom, you're not dead,”
Penny croaked, hugging her mother tight.

“
No, not anymore. I had an
escort home.”

Penny looked up and smiled at
Peter. He smiled back down at her and nodded his head. “Well, when
I heard that Kronos was out for you,” he said, “I couldn't just
wait around for the rest of you to show up.”

“
Come on inside,” Jason
said, extracting himself from the pile of hugs. “You two are
drenched.”

Jason found some sweatpants
and old t-shirts for Celene and Peter. He expected them to look
silly, dressed in his clothing, but when Celene had come out of the
master bedroom, she looked as if she was wearing her own clothes.

“
How?” Jason had asked.

“
Dying refreshed some things
for me. Like how to change form.”

The pizza had arrived while
Peter was explaining how death awakened their memories. The two had
shifted into strange forms until the pizza delivery boy had left. It
would have been a crisis had the pimply high school senior seen his
dead teacher and classmate sitting calmly on the sofa.

Realizing
that a single pizza was no longer enough, Jason baked a batch of
frozen garlic bread. They caught Peter up on the events of the last
five months and then filled Celene in on everything that had happened
since her death. There wasn't much to tell, just her funeral and a
political scandal that had been thoroughly ribbed on
The
Daily Show.

The four decided not to try to
text or call any of the members of The Pantheon with the news. It
wasn't safe. They needed to have a meeting, they decided, which would
be difficult with Zach and June already in Gainesville and Minnie all
the way up at MIT.

“
We'll have a meeting with
whoever we can get,” Celene said. “And I'm sure if we sent Minnie
a coded letter, she'd get the picture.”

“
And Zach?” Jason asked.
“He's our leader, right? He has to know as soon as possible.”

“
It's only five hours to
Gainesville,” Celene said. “Give or take. We can make a road
trip. Not like I have a job to go back to.”