The Pantheon (27 page)

“
What happened?” she asked.

“
It’s the Alvarez brothers. They got everybody.” Others were starting to stare. “It’s the Alvarez brothers. They have everyone in the jar. They torched Celene’s house.”

Zach threw his stack of hats off. “C’mon,” he pointed to his car. The Thunderbird was parked close so he could keep his eye on it. Frank had ditched what he was doing and stood behind Diana. “We’ll meet-- at my house,” Zach suggested.

“
No, my house,” Frank said. “My mom isn’t home. Neither is my aunt.”

Zach nodded and helped Jason to his car. The older man was about to pass out. He’d inhaled a lot of smoke and was in no state to drive.

Frank and Diana got on his motorcycle. He gave her his helmet and she held on tight. Both vehicles raced toward the small house on the edge of town. It was a touch of good fortune that neither of them passed any police radar on the way.

Frank carried Jason from Zach’s car and entered his house. They all sat on the brown plaid couch. It was quiet. Nobody knew what to say.

“
So...” Frank grunted, “we’re gonna go kill them, right?”

“
They’re going to know we’re coming,” Diana pointed out.

Jason shook his head, “They think I’m dead. As far as they know, you three have no idea who you’re looking for.”

Zach turned his smart phone so that they could all see it. “There we go. Found them. James P. Alvarez. White Pages address, plugged in to Google Maps. Piece of cake.”

“
We need a plan,” Jason coughed.

“
Yeah, it would be stupid to thug it; they took out thirteen people with just the two of them,” Zach pointed out.

“
We have better powers than those thirteen,” Diana said.

“
We do,” Zach gesture between himself and Frank. “You talk to animals.”

“
Don’t underestimate me.” Diana clenched her jaw. “I make fast friends with big dogs.”

Miami was a much bigger city than Zach and Diana were used to. Diana rarely went there without her mother and Zach was too protective of his car to drive it in the big city. Because of this, Frank navigated. They left Jason on Frank’s sofa and took the T-bird into the city.

They parked a block away from the address. It had been easy to track down the apartment online and get a satellite picture of the street around it. Diana went ahead to check things out. Even as a striking, leggy blonde, she was less conspicuous than Zach, who had more presence than a hundred politicians, and Frank, who was just plain huge.

She wore a Miami Dolphins baseball cap and a grey sweatshirt. They were a few miles away from the green seacoast and the crisp glass skyscrapers that characterized Miami on film and television. The Alvarez’s apartment building was a tall stucco building with green trim and a flat roof. Every apartment had a tiny balcony out the back sliding door and opened into a dimly-lit, open-air hallway. Diana entered the apartment building and kept alert. She could hear voices through the door. She saw a car in their designated spot. Diana pulled Simon, one of her hamsters, out of her pocket and whispered in his ear. “Give this to the tall men I showed you and they’ll give you a walnut.”

“
Walnut?” Simon asked.

“
Yes, Walnut.”

The hamster started to run and she grabbed it again. “Wait. Trade for walnut.”

“
Walnut?” he asked again.

“
Give string, get walnut.”

Simon took a bit of green yarn from Diana and, clutching it in his mouth, scurried down the fire escape. The little climbing hamster dropped the last two feet to the street and ran to Zach. Zach exchanged the yarn for a nut and tucked the hamster away in its cage. They locked the cage in his car. Diana had quickly learned that most animals could perform any simple task if you could just communicate that there would be food as a reward. Hamsters made fine messengers for scouting missions.

Frank had a duffel bag under his arm as they walked away from the car. He had packed a fire extinguisher for himself and one for Diana. Zach had a long-range power to take care of his own personal safety.

“
Let’s do this,” Zach said before they headed up the back stairs of the building together. Diana smiled when they entered the hall. It was comforting to have them arrive to back her up. She climbed out on the fire escape. Zach and Frank heard the curly-haired blonde girl squeaking and all of the rats within earshot heard her promising that the two men inside had cheese in their pockets. Once more, the promise of food would be all she needed.

Frank, Zach, and Diana crouched outside the apartment door and waited. Finally they heard it: hundreds of tiny feet rushing through the walls. Zach laughed. Inside a man shouted. Rats squeaked. Frank kicked in the front door. It was a sea of greasy brown fur swarming over the Alvarez brothers. Prometheus and Epimetheus were overrun by rodents.

Zach and Diana followed Frank through the door. The boys kicked rats aside. The jar was sitting on a table at the back of their living room. It looked foreign in the room, particularly in contrast to the chrome stereo next to it. The room was fairly large, with a blue plaid sofa and love-seat and a television arranged on diagonals. The matching blue carpet was completely obscured by writhing rodents.

Epimetheus--covered in tiny scratches-- launched a ball of fire that sent the rats scattering. Panicked, flaming rats spread the fire around the room like the plague. He hadn’t thought that through.

Diana hurdled over the coffee table and sprang off the couch cushion, vaulting over the back of the sofa. Her hands landed on the jar just as Prometheus grabbed it. They struggled, locked shoulder to shoulder. She heard the click but Diana didn’t feel the knife until it was being removed from her flesh. He’d stabbed her between the ribs. Her muscles clenched around the blade and tore as he withdrew it.

Warm blood wicked through her sweatshirt. She dropped to her knees, clutching her side. Prometheus folded his knife and took the jar under his arm.

Frank took on Epimetheus. The Titan grabbed at Frank with steaming white hands. Frank dodged away and pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher. He doused Epimetheus. The CO2 sucked the oxygen out of the air around him and temporarily cut off the fuel for his fire. He couldn’t light his hands. Frank took the momentary lapse in his adversary’s powers to punch him out.

Zach rushed to Diana’s side. She lay on the floor with a halo of red around her. Zach put pressure on the wound. Prometheus had disappeared into the smoke.

“
She needs a hospital,” Zach called to Frank. Frank grabbed Epimetheus by the collar and dragged him like a rag doll.

“
I’ll get her there,” Frank promised. He picked up Diana and carried her easily in one arm. “You go get Prometheus. I’ll catch up if I can.”

Frank left Epimetheus in the hall. If the firemen didn’t get to him before the rest of the building went up, it wasn’t on his conscience. Zach ran past and down the back stairs.

Frank wondered if it wasn’t a better idea to just kill the Titan. He stared down at Epimetheus. The Titan had killed and enjoyed doing it, no matter what he claimed his motive was. He was a monster and if he lived, The Pantheon was more likely to be discovered by the rest of the mortals. Frank set Diana down. He carried Epimetheus back into the apartment and shut him in the smoky room. The promise of safety squelched any remorse.

The fire department was on its way. Frank jumped off the fire escape with Diana in his arms. She had lost consciousness. He ran with her. The girl was a hundred and twenty-five pounds. She weighed nothing to the war-god.

It had started raining while they were inside the building. The brief afternoon shower had parted, leaving wet streets and slivers of sunshine peeking out through the clouds. Frank knew his way from years of living in Miami. He’d driven his own mother to the hospital when his father had beat her into a coma. Frank ran as fast as he could, feeling a stitch forming in his side on the second mile. He had been running for five minutes, feeling Diana’s hot blood soak through his clothing, when he saw the hospital ahead.

A car stopped to offer help, but Frank kept running. He didn’t have time to explain, to sit in traffic. The police were catching up to him just as he bolted through the emergency doors of the hospital.

Frank finally set her down on a gurney. “Someone help!” he called. “My friend’s been stabbed!”

There was a rush of doctors and nurses around Diana. Frank kept stepping back to let people through until he couldn’t see Diana. The crowd around her moved toward the operating room. The doors swung shut. Frank saw a nurse rush in with a crash cart. A police officer tried to get his attention. Blood pounded in his ears. He stared at the door, unable to imagine what it would do to everyone if they lost Diana. He didn’t event want to think about what would happen if Zach couldn’t get that jar back. It was all up to him now.

Zach ran ten yards behind Prometheus. They ran down the alley and along the street behind the burning apartment. There was a gas station with suspiciously low prices and some boarded up shops. Nobody was on the street except for a few teenagers in oversized white t-shirts. Zach pushed himself to run faster. Prometheus ran up another alley. Zach used the cover from the public eye to launch a lightning bolt at Prometheus. The Titan ducked around the corner before Zach could fire, lost his balance, slipped, and fell into a pile of garbage bags.

“
Let them go,” Zach bellowed.

Prometheus laughed, “Do you think I care about what you could do to me? After all of those years of having my guts picked at by vultures, I fear nothing.” He pulled himself out of the garbage and stood tall in front of Zach.

“
Don’t make me kill you!” Zach’s eyes flickered to the jar that held his friends. It held June. Zach wasn’t sure if a Titan could be killed, but he thought that if Diana, a goddess, was fighting for her life, then there was a pretty good chance.

“
Try! I’ve lived for centuries. You can’t even remember that life. I welcome your worst.”

Prometheus made a back-handed swing. A jet of flame launched from his palm, thrown like a discus. Zach saw his hand go back before the swing. He reacted fast. In an instant, Zach saw all the suffering that this man had caused him. Anger seemed to swell up from deep within his mind. This man had June, his queen, and Lewis, his best friend. For that, he had to die. He fired the most powerful burst of lightning that he had ever conjured.

Zach threw his left arm up to cover his face. The burst of flame singed his arm and burned the hair off of it. He hit his back against the alley wall and the wind was knocked out of him. For a moment he thought he remembered fighting another battle, ages ago, hurling bolts of lightning at another adversary who meant to kill him. The memory was gone before he could grasp it. He slumped to the ground, coughing.

The thunderclap was so loud that the windows in the alley shattered, the ground shook, and jets of blue and yellow electricity flew off in all directions. This wasn’t a Japanese cartoon. The elements did not collide in the air and lock the men in a battle of will. Zach had aimed for the fuse box behind Prometheus. Prometheus was standing in a puddle. The discharge from the broken electrical box completed a circuit with Prometheus in the middle of it.

Prometheus was not knocked back. He was frozen in position as his muscles convulsed as hundreds of millions of watts shook and burned his body. His skin smoked and bubbled. His face was frozen in a silent scream. His heart stopped and it was over. His charred corpse fell to the ground and the jar hit pavement.

It cracked.

It rolled, dropped off the sidewalk into the empty street, and broke in two.

From the fractured Pithos came a flash of green light and the entire group of captured gods was birthed from the remains of Pandora’s Box. It was an anomaly, a violation of the conservation of matter that, luckily, no mortals saw.

As the remains of the jar fell still, a glow of white light lingered on the insides of the halves and then dissolved into the air. The colors seemed brighter. Zach’s chest was filled with a warm sensation: Hope.

Everyone struggled to get up. Evan was awake now, though badly bruised. Celene hugged Penny and kissed her forehead. Everyone else stood around, staring at their new surroundings, each other, or their own hands.

Zach got up off the ground and just looked at June. She stared back and nodded. There was too much hurt still there, but those years couldn’t vanish in just three days. Zach tore his eyes away from her and turned to Lewis. He had a lot to catch him up on now that his best friend was back. Zach held out a hand to shake but Lewis stepped forward and hugged him.

Astin and Devon both looked at each other. They seemed to be the only two to notice their missing ranks. “Are Diana and Frank still in Olympia Heights?” Devon asked.