Authors: Carrie Vaughn
From the wind, mist, and darkness, a trio of figures approached to meet him and the dog at his side. One of them was tall and poised, like a goddess. The others, a man and woman, her lieutenants, emulated her carriage. A space of calm formed around them. The wind didn’t gust there.
“Come on, Evie,” Alex said into her ear. “Come on!” He gripped her around the middle and hauled back, stumbling with her into the kitchen. Merlin followed, and Arthur protected their retreat.
Into the house, through the kitchen, down the stairs. A window shattered as a piece of debris struck it. Dad was still out there. Hera wouldn’t care if he lived or died.
She’d felt very little when she found the Marquis’s body. His death hadn’t entirely surprised her. She’d been prepared to
make sacrifices. He’d succeeded, and that was something. The house was free now. Maybe she would name a bird after him.
In the space of quiet she’d created, Hera watched the old man and the dog approach. No, he wasn’t an old man. He was solidly middle aged, but old before his time. Dying. Even the dog seemed to be on its last leg, limping, bleeding from a dozen hastily stitched cuts.
For the first half of her life, she hadn’t bothered even to think about what that must be like—dying. Then, she almost had, when Zeus pulled his trick. She didn’t much like the feeling. She’d vowed to avoid the possibility in the future.
Frank Walker entered the stormless space without blinking. He held the apple in his hand.
It pulsed with power in her eyes. She’d seen that power the first time it rolled into her sight, at the wedding. Not everyone had seen it, even among the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Aphrodite had, and of course, Athena. The three of them exchanged glances across the banquet hall, each challenging the other:
It will be mine
.
If she were to be charitable, she’d admit that Aphrodite had won it fairly. She’d rightly seen into Paris’s heart, seen him for the idiot he was, and played to his basest desires. With what Hera and Athena had offered him, he could have acquired any woman in the world, including Helen. But the boy hadn’t been able to see past his libido.
She and Athena both should have known better. Aphrodite had bested them.
But now, finally, the apple would be hers.
“Mr. Walker,” she said amiably, ignoring her minions and the chaos billowing around her. “I was just coming to make your daughter another offer. I took the wrong approach last time—I understand that now. She doesn’t want power. She doesn’t want to be part of a new pantheon. She wants to save
her mother, but since she can’t do that—she wants revenge. Am I right?”
“Can you give that to her?” he said.
“I can do away with the system that caused her pain. It’s as close as she’ll ever find. This age is over. Nothing can stop that now, you know that.”
Walker smiled sadly and shook his head. Hera quelled a spark of rage. She hadn’t seen such a look of condescension on a man since Zeus.
“What do you think this is going to do, really? You think you can use it to wipe the slate clean. But the so-called chaos that’s already out there, that you want to take advantage of, the wars and terror—that isn’t chaos. It isn’t discord. It’s orchestrated. The gods of this age, the ones who made this world, pushed it into fear and chaos to stay in power, they made the world this way. They’re the ones who must be broken.
This
breaks the power of the gods.” He gestured with the golden apple.
Troy had been the beginning of the end. Troy had happened when they overstepped their bounds—when they manipulated the fates of men for the sake of a trinket. When men destroyed civilizations for the sake of status. The gods of this age—oh, yes. Discord already ran loose in the world. This artifact was meant to overpower those who sowed chaos. Use the values of the age to turn the tables.
His role as the Keeper of the Storeroom had given him understanding. How did a mortal gain such wisdom? His family had been living with this power in their cellar for over three thousand years. She wondered: Who had been the first? Who from the age of heroes had founded this line?
She nodded to him with the respect he’d earned.
He pulled something else out of his pocket: a cell phone. He offered her both, one in each hand.
“You need energy. You need a life to do this thing. Take mine.”
The sacrifice had to be willing. He was. And she was sure she had the skill to guide such power.
“Are you sure?”
“I have a condition. A request. This is for my daughter. To keep her safe. Build a world that will keep her safe.”
“I will. To the best of my ability, I will.”
He reached out with the apple. She covered it with one hand, touching both its gold surface and his cool flesh, creating a link. After three thousand years of waiting, she felt the object’s power—the hum of an oncoming storm.
With her other hand, she took the phone. It was already on. Deftly, she dialed with her thumb, checked the screen briefly, then met Frank Walker’s gaze.
This would be myth. This would be turned into metaphor and told in stories. The two of them would be the founders of a new age.
She didn’t turn away as the phone rang against her ear. Then, there was an answer.
“Hello, yes,” she said. “I’d like to order a delivery.”
In a secret room in a distant city, the power brokers worked their spells. The lobbyist from one country, the general from another, the president of a corporation that did business with them all. They moved their pieces across the board and manipulated the world to their best advantage.
Then came a knock on the door.
A lackey answered it. There was a man in the uniform of a delivery service. He offered them a square box, small enough to fit in a hand, wrapped in plain paper, unmarked but for an address which read:
FOR THE GREATEST.
_________
Evie found the flashlight and went to the Storeroom. The box, he’d said. Which box? She didn’t have a clue. The room was a jumble of antiques and knickknacks, forgotten museum pieces. Lore and treasures. Her mother’s writing was still on the shelf, as if it held some magic other than memories.
Alex had stopped at the threshold. He was almost laughing, hysterical, when he said, “I still can’t go in there.”
She shook her head, clearing it of a sudden certainty that Alex belonged here if she wanted him to be here. The power of this place was
hers.
“Alex.” She went to him and reached out her hand. “Sinon. I think you belong here. You fell out of time, didn’t you? Like everything else here. An artifact of legend, forgotten by the myths.”
He wore a strange, distant smile. “Forgotten, eh? Dante wrote a place for me in hell. Shakespeare used my name. I became a metaphor for treachery. But—if I could change the past, I wouldn’t. Not a minute of it,” he said with a frantic edge. “The past brought me here.”
When he wouldn’t take her hand, she took his, so they were connected across the threshold. “They all thought you died, and you didn’t. You belong here.”
“Moros maruma moo emetrei.
. . .”
She narrowed her eyes, inquiring.
“It’s something Cassandra said. Fate has measured out my thread . . . to a frayed end. I’d forgotten.” He squeezed her hand.
She pulled him into the Storeroom.
He looked at her; then he looked around. “Gods, this place is unreal.”
Merlin waited outside the Storeroom. Arthur was at the top of the stairs. He scurried down a few more steps when the sound of wood and metal groaned above them, crashing with the noise of destruction.
“The house is collapsing!” Arthur called.
“We should hurry,” Alex said.
“But I don’t know what to do.” She looked around. There was something she was supposed to save. Something more important than the end of the world itself.
On top of a crate, she found a neatly folded leather bag. The bag was part of this. It had been here from the beginning.
She was on the verge of knowing.
Alex stared at the lyre on the shelves. His hand paused an inch or two from touching it. He clenched a fist and drew away. “It reminds me of someone,” he said when he caught her watching him.
Next he turned to the rack of weapons. He pointed, his hand shaking a little. “I might need a sword,” he said softly. “Could I have this one?”
It wasn’t the best sword on the rack, dull and bronze-looking, ancient and stubby compared with some of the more impressive broadswords around it. She expected the odd voice to resist. But it didn’t argue.
“Sure,” she said. “Take it.”
His face lit with wonder. “Apollo gave me this sword.”
The room had never mentioned that. When he came to the door wanting something, she could have given him this.
But it wouldn’t have killed him, and that was what he wanted.
Then the voice flared, screaming. She screamed to match it and fell, her knees striking the concrete, her hands at her temples.
And she knew that her father was dead. In that moment, she knew everything else as well. Everything she needed.
Alex was at her side, holding her. Heart pounding, she said, “Help me find it. We’ve got to find it. A box. A small box.” She showed dimensions with her hands.
She shoved aside a stack of folded banners and a pile of reptilian scales the size of her hands. She listened to the voice whispering
you’re getting close.
“My lady, you’d best hurry,” Merlin called from the next room.
Plank by plank, the ceiling flew away, screeching with the agony of destruction. Spaces of open sky showed through swirling dust and debris. The walls, the roof, were gone. Smelling of brimstone, howling air pulled at her, lifting her. Around her, scraps of cloth and paper, splinters and shrapnel, flew upward. Her ears popped, wind thundering around her. Alex held the waistband of her jeans with one hand and the sword with the other. He anchored her, or she might have flown away as well. Together, they crouched on the floor, protecting each other.
There, shoved far back under a bottom shelf, was a box, small enough to sit on a girl’s lap. It was made of simple wood, bound with bronze hinges. A latch secured the lid.
Stretching, she was able to reach it. She clawed it from its resting place and hugged it to her chest. She still had the sack draped over one arm, but no time to put anything else in it.
“She’s coming!” Arthur cried.
The wind’s ferocity never dimmed, even though Hera had what she wanted. But she wanted Discord and destruction, and she was getting it. Shelves toppled, boxes lifted from their places. The contents of the Storeroom were being sucked into the funnel of a tornado, which seemed to roar with a human voice.
“Now, Merlin! Now!” Evie cried.
“Come on!” Merlin said from the other side of the doorway.
Alex wrapped his arm around her middle and hauled her to her feet. They ran. Merlin pointed at them as they passed through what remained of the doorway.
“Blessings on you both,” he said, a wild look in his eyes, his hair blown in a halo around his face. “We’ll see you on the other side!”
Then the doorway disappeared, showing a rectangle of light instead. They went through it, to searing light and a room with no air. She hoped Alex was holding her, because she couldn’t feel him anymore. She tried to scream, but could not breathe. But she held the box, and the voice that told her what it was, told her that her father had died for it. All he knew, she now knew. And there was no time.
James drove. They’d gotten out just in time. Behind them, the interstate was being closed down, all traffic stopped. Homeland Security had raised the alert status to red, severe. The government expected an attack at any moment. They weren’t even sure from whom. China, India, Russia—did it matter?
Along with six people, the SUV was crammed with supplies like tents, sleeping bags, tools, and bags of groceries: canned food, bottled water, toilet paper. Bruce had known some of his friends occasionally displayed far-out survivalist tendencies—they planned stuff like this for fun during gaming sessions. Now, he was grateful. He wouldn’t have thought of toilet paper.
Callie lay against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, crying silently. Numbly, he held her. The radio blared a static-laden news report on NPR:
“—been an exchange of nuclear armaments on the Asian continent, no word yet on what targets—”
The weather had chosen to reflect the current mood of world politics. Black thunderclouds barred all sunlight; the world was dark. James gripped the steering wheel, struggling to hold the vehicle on its course against a terrible wind. It howled and battered debris against the windows.
“Holy shit! Look at that!” Tony, James’s roommate, pressed his face to the window and craned his neck, looking up. “Do you see it? Do you see it?”
Bruce looked out his own window and tried to see. He had to look almost straight up, as straight up as he could, to directly over the car.
Funnel clouds. A dozen winding, fingerlike swirls of twisting clouds snaked down from the storm, stretching ahead of them to the horizon.
They couldn’t do anything but keep driving. There was no escaping this.
“So where are they, man?” Tony said.
Bruce glared at him. “Who?”
“The Four Horsemen.”
It wasn’t funny.
A flash filled the sky. They all shut their eyes, or turned away to avoid the flare. Lightning. In a storm like this, it had to be lightning.
If a nuclear bomb struck, would they even know it?
The radio cut out with a high-pitched whine.
If the world ended, would anything come after? Would they be able to look back and know what had happened?
Bruce closed his eyes and pressed his face to Callie’s. “I love you.”
A second flash came, white hot, and he never saw the end of it.
Hera entered the Walker house. The game was in motion, the power was in play, but there were a few loose ends left here. She would leave no loose ends.
Part of her entourage flanked her: the Curandera at her right hand, the Wanderer at her left. She still had to see about the girl. She owed it to Frank Walker to make sure she was safe.