Age of Heroes (24 page)

EIGHTEEN

Gesundheitsklinik Rheintal, Switzerland

A
S SOON AS
Josie had awoken in her room at the Gesundheitsklinik that morning, she had known it was going to be a Yellow Day.

Yellow Days were smooth and bright. They were for getting outdoors and taking in the scenery. They were days when it wasn’t wrong to listen to some music on her headphones, maybe sing along to it if no one was within earshot, maybe even dance to it if no one was looking. They weren’t as good as Green Days. Those were the best of the lot, plain sailing all the way, days of serenity and appetite. Nor were they as adventurous as Red Days, when Josie sincerely believed she could take on the world. But there were better than the Blue and Brown days, and infinitely preferable to the Black.

How she loathed the Black Days.

She was out roaming the grounds when Benedikt found her. The clinic sat in fifty acres of land, large enough that you felt you could get lost in it even though you never really could. Eventually, if you wandered far enough, you would come to the wall – the neat brick-topped fieldstone wall which bounded the property and was just tall enough that it could not be climbed – and you would be reminded that your freedom had limits. As long as you remained out of sight of the wall, however, the illusion held. The winding paths and neat flowerbeds, the benches and lakes, the trim lawns and evergreen glades, all seemed to exist just for your pleasure, and while occasionally you might come across a gardener or another patient, most of the time you had it all to yourself.

Josie liked Benedikt. Of all the orderlies he was by far the gentlest and the kindest. He had thick dark hair and enviably long, curly eyelashes. She had something of a crush on him, in fact, although relationships between orderlies and patients were strictly prohibited, and – more to the point – Benedikt was avowedly gay.

She beamed at him as he approached.

“Josie. There you are.” A tone of mild reproof. “You didn’t come to the dispensary for your medication.”

“Oh, is it that time already? I’m sorry. I lost track.”

“Never mind. Here, I have it.”

“That’s so nice of you. Thanks.”

He gave her the pills. He’d had the foresight to bring a small bottle of mineral water with him too, so that she could wash them down.

They sat on the grass side by side. It was a quiet, sheltered spot where few of the other patients ventured. The Swiss summer air was crisp and smelled of meadows.

“And today is what colour?” Benedikt asked. His English was mannered and precise, and his
w
s had a slight
v
to them, which Josie found endearing. “No, don’t say. Let me guess. Yellow?”

“Spot on.”

He held up both hands in a double victory salute. “Yay me.”

It was Dr Aeschbacher, Josie’s primary therapist, who had suggested assigning colours to her moods. Josie never knew, until the day began, how she was going to feel, but once she realised what sort of frame of mind she was in, that was what she would be stuck with until bedtime. If she woke up and her head happened to be jammed full of dark thoughts, there was no shaking them. They crawled all over her like cockroaches, filling every crevice of her being with their prickly legs and insistent chittering. She feared they would suffocate her. The terror was almost beyond her capacity to bear.

Dr Aeschbacher was teaching her that her moods, even if they couldn’t be changed, could be managed.

“Put a colour on them, Josie,” she had said. “Then see only the colour. See that it is just a colour, nothing more. It is just red, or blue, or green, or whichever. Then the mood will not matter nearly as much. You understand?”

Josie was trying to follow the advice. Dr Aeschbacher was pretty and very wise, with thin rimless spectacles and an aura of calm that seemed to seep out of her and into Josie during their sessions together. Josie felt she could tell her anything and not be judged for it.

“As it is a Yellow Day,” said Benedikt, “I feel it would do no harm to ask if you have heard from either of your parents recently. I know it is a sticky topic, but...”

“Mum Skyped last week. We spoke for an hour. She’s doing okay. My dad...” Josie frowned. “He’s not been in touch for a while. I think he’s working. He works abroad a lot, off doing... stuff.”

“I like him. He seems like a nice man, the times we’ve met.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not your dad, is he?”

“He is a computer consultant, yes?”

“Troubleshooter, he calls it. He’s ex-service. After the Army he re-skilled, took some courses, and now does IT stuff for the rich and stupid. He has international clients. They pay him to sort out their systems, fix bugs, get everything running smoothly.”

“So he is very busy.”

“He is. I never saw much of him even when I was living at home. He kept getting posted to places. And him being away so much was why he and Mum split up. It wasn’t the only reason, obviously. I’m...”

She faltered.

Benedikt did not touch her; physical contact was not permitted. But he gestured as though he would have patted her hand sympathetically if he could.

“I am glad it is a Yellow Day,” he said. “You seem to be having more of them. And more Green and Red too; and Black, not so many. Have you noticed that?”

Josie had, sort of. She didn’t keep track of the day colours. She didn’t write them down in a journal or anything. Looking back, though, she could see that the Black Days, and the Blues and Browns as well, had been getting fewer and further between.

“Progress,” said Benedikt.

“Progress,” Josie agreed.

And then there was a tiny wet sound, like a fly splatting against a car windscreen, and Benedikt started staring at her in a curious way, as though he had something important he wished to share.

Whatever it was, he failed to say it. Instead, he slumped backwards onto the grass, and Josie wondered if he was being cute, if he was trying to be funny, and she laughed, but nervously, because she didn’t quite get the joke, assuming it was a joke. Was he pretending to have fallen asleep? Was it some sort of comment about her boring him so much he had sunk into a coma? No, Benedikt hadn’t a mean bone in his body. He wouldn’t tease her like that.

Only when she saw the small fluff of cotton protruding from the front of his white tunic did Josie realise that Benedikt was not being witty or silly. He was... unconscious? Dead?

She looked up. Looked round. Panic stopped her throat. Her stomach lurched.

Men were coming.

Not orderlies. Not any kind of clinic employee. Nor her fellow patients.

Men in black jumpsuits and balaclavas. Crossing the lawn towards her. Running low and softly.

They had guns. Pistols with oddly long, thin barrels.

One of them pointed his gun at her and pulled the trigger.

There was a spike of pain in Josie’s chest.

And her Yellow Day went completely dark.

NINETEEN

Benito Juárez Airport, Mexico City

W
ITH A COUPLE
of hours to kill until their flight was scheduled to depart, the three demigods – Theo, Chase and Salvador – made their way to one of the premium lounges at Benito Juárez for an early lunch. Chase had been disappointed that Theo was not springing for another private jet. “Once you’ve travelled in that kind of luxury,” he’d said, “it’s hard to go back.” But when Theo had suggested that Chase stump up the thirty grand charter fee this time, his cousin had been forced to admit that flying by mainstream air carrier wasn’t so bad. They would still be turning left when they boarded the plane, after all. It could be worse.

Salvador helped himself to everything the lounge’s lavish buffet bar had to offer. The attractive hostess staffing the counter made some remark about how she liked to see a man with a hearty appetite, and that was the cue for ten minutes of relentless and unsubtle flirting. Observing this, Chase said to Theo, “You’ve got to admire the guy. The way he goes on around women, you’d almost think he’s straight.”

“He is straight,” Theo replied. “Basically. He just strays in the other direction from time to time.”

“Um, Hylas? Philoctetes? Iolaus? And all the other, ahem, ‘squires’ he dragged around with him on his adventures? And the younger Argonauts he kept hounding after? That’s a heck of a lot of straying.”

“For every one of those boys there’s been at least three women. He had forty-nine of King Thespius’s fifty daughters, for heaven’s sake, and would have made it a clean sweep if the fiftieth hadn’t been so shy. That’s in addition to his wives and his concubines, and more princesses and slave girls than you can count.”

“He used to like fathering kids, that’s for sure, but I never saw any woman who could make his face light up the way a pretty boy could.”

“I guess in a place like Mexico, he’s playing safe by staying vigorously hetero. Can’t blame him for that.”

“And the wrestling gets the other stuff out of his system,” said Chase with a nod. “As long as he doesn’t mistakenly pop a boner while he’s –”

A ping from Theo’s phone interrupted Chase, preventing him from taking this line of thought any further, perhaps mercifully.

“Email,” said Theo. “Anonymous sender address. No subject heading.”

“Spam. Delete it. Unless you want your user ID hacked.”

“No, I don’t, but...” On a hunch, Theo opened the email.

It read:

Not all twelve sites ransacked. One still intact: Novy Tolkatui.

HG

Beneath the text was a link which, when Theo tapped it, opened up a new tab showing a map location – a tiny village in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

“Gottlieb,” said Chase. “Quick, hit reply. Ask for more details.”

“No use. It’s one of those one-shot disposable email service providers. The address expires the moment you use it.”

“So what’s he telling us?”

“What it says. Whoever has the artefacts missed one out.”

“Probably because it’s in Russia’s answer to Buttfuck, Idaho, and whoever has the artefacts couldn’t face going there and bailed. But what good is that info to us?”

“Depends.” Theo delved in his pocket for the cocktail napkin from the Eighteenth Amendment. Novy Tolkatui was where Gottlieb had hidden Hades’s Helm of Darkness.

“Hey, that was mine,” said Chase. “My artefact. The invisibility helmet I wore when I went after Medusa. That’s the only one of the twelve nobody wanted? I’m kind of insulted. I take that personally.”

“Seems like Gottlieb wants us to have it,” said Theo. “That’s how I interpret this.”

“Or he’s setting us up. Laying a trap.”

“A valid interpretation.”

“I’ve a third. He’s sending us on a wild goose chase, to keep us out of the way so he can carry on killing demigods without interference.”

“Also valid.”

“Maybe he and Evander Arlington are in cahoots. I love that word. Cahoots. It’s always good to have a legitimate excuse to say it. They’re in cahoots, scheming together against the rest of us.”

“Unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility.”

A thought occurred to Chase. “Hey, could this be a whole
Highlander
thing?”

“What?”

“
Highlander
. The movie. Think about it. Immortals killing other immortals. ‘There can be only one.’ Life imitating art – or rather life imitating ’eighties Hollywood sci-fi trash.”

“As I recall, in
Highlander
the villain beheads the other immortals to harvest their power. I don’t see how that could apply here. Our divinity isn’t a transferrable resource.”

“Transferrable resource?” said Salvador, re-joining them after his dalliance with the hostess, which had culminated in an exchange of phone numbers. “What are you talking about?”

Theo filled him in on the latest development.

“We must go,” Salvador said simply.

“Huh?” said Chase. “Just like that? ‘We must go’? Because Harry Gottlieb – who, let’s not forget, may well be our Big Bad – says so?”

“If it’s a trap, we spring it deliberately. Our enemy ambushes us, we get to see him face to face, we learn who he is, we have an opportunity to turn the tables and defeat him. Advantage us. If it isn’t a trap, we gain the last remaining artefact. Advantage us again. A win-win.”