Shadows on the Aegean (73 page)

“My gratitude,” Chloe said once she caught her breath.

Niko waved a burned hand before it fell beside him. Chloe crawled over; he was unconscious. After dragging him up as high
as the shore went, she left him. Holding a torch she’d taken from its sconce, she walked the length of the harbor, looking
for a way up. The only opening she could find was one leading to the Labyrinth. Raising her light, she saw that a ladder was
carved into the side of the chute.

Eee
, shit. Gripping the torch between her teeth, Chloe grabbed the lowest rung and began to climb. Sweating, swearing, and drooling
from the torch, she finally climbed out onto the landing. The pungent stink of her own refuse welcomed her, and Chloe realized
her life sucked when she looked forward to smelling her scat. Dear God, this was disgusting.

However, when lit, it did burn! Triumphant, regardless of the grossness scale, Chloe tried to backtrack. This level was a
Greek key, the chute was in the center. She found herself on the outside again, another noticeable pile for marking, which
she lit. Then, because she had the torch, she could see the ladder and let herself down the outside chute. Once on ground
level she walked until she hit the other side, another chute. Holding her torch high, she thought she saw it turn. Another
Greek key?

Wincing at the blisters on her palms, she climbed up. On her right she passed two landings. One whiff of the first and she
knew she’d been there, done that. The second was laid out the same way. After peering down the center chute again, she found
her way out and back up the outside chute. The torch was getting low, burning dangerously close to her hair and face, so Chloe
put the end in her mouth, climbing faster.

This chute rose high, zillions of steps, but she’d left the other layers behind. The ladder ended, and she saw a ledge above
her. Sweaty hands shaking, she moved one, then the other, to the ledge. With a groaning heave and much scrambling for footing,
she pulled herself over as the torch fell down into the darkness.

Resting her head against the stone, Chloe fought for breath, to stop shaking, to calm down. Once she felt a little less like
screaming and crying, she raised her head. To her right was a doorway. Cold with sweat, she stepped through it and turned
back.

She’d escaped Hades.

She was in the palace!

Chloe took off at a run, taking the first set of steps in twos and threes. Niko needed help, she needed answers, and they
all needed to get the hell out!

E
VERYTHING WAS BURNING
, Cheftu could feel nothing except the heat, smell nothing over the acrid stink of the fuel. Human bodies. Just as Mount Apollo
had incinerated thousands hiding on its hillsides, so Cheftu had personally overseen the burning of the corpses. So many,
all stricken down by the plague.

Bathing them, as Aztlantu custom declared, was a massive production lacking elegance. Serfs held the bodies, drooling and
jerking but still alive, by shoulders and ankles, dunked them in the lustral bath, and laid them down in almost endless lines.
Then, when they died, they were taken out and set on the earth as macabre kindling.

I will soon be among them, he thought with some effort. His mind grew increasingly confused. The only reason he could imagine
he’d lived this long was that he’d not eaten the bull … or the man. Absently he fingered the pink scar on his shoulder. The
bull must have bitten him, some of the illness coming through with its saliva.

He stared across the sea. Patches of flame danced next to rivers of fire. It was beautiful in a hellish way. Cheftu looked
away as he arranged yet another body in the position of death. Who would do this for him? Nestor? Dion? Chloe?

Scampering down the falling, sliding hillsides of Aztlan, the truly desperate were trying to flee, to swim if they could.
Frantically they made for Prostatevo, now a place for refuge, far from the fire-foaming mountain and the cruel sea. Cheftu
turned back to another patient, checked for breath, did not even pause when he didn’t feel it, then crossed her arms, too.

Dion came running in. “Niko! He’s been found! Come quickly!”

Cheftu didn’t even turn. “By whom? Where?”

“Sibylla,” Dion said.

Cheftu turned and stumbled back, glimpsing his wife in the doorway. She never ceased to steal his breath; he never stopped
wanting to give it to her. She was battered, filthy, yet she felt so good against him, in his arms. He held her until he was
trembling.

Dion left to retrieve Niko. Cheftu felt him go, then tilted Chloe’s face to his, seizing her mouth, groaning against her lips
as he felt his blood move, his heart sing, once more.

Her response was as desperate, as fevered, and Cheftu felt tears slide down his cheeks. She was here! She was his! He broke
away from her mouth and held her tight, pressing his cheek against her head. Her hand gripped him, and Cheftu stiffened.

“I guess this means you are bi?” she asked in English.

“Bi?”

“Not gay?”

“To see you
chérie
, to touch you, fills me with great joy and gaiety.”

She chuckled, confused. “I can see we are hitting one of those time-comprehension boundaries,” she said, searching his face.

Cheftu kissed her again, reveling in the relaxation of her body against his. For moments he forgot he was also ill, that the
mountain was on fire and the island sinking. For a short moment he forgot his hopelessness, for when Chloe was with him, he
had nothing but hope. Hope they would be together always; hope that they would grow old in each other’s arms; hope that he
would see their flesh mingled in a child. Children.

He felt another quake.

“Eee
, Cheftu, the earth moved,” she said in his ear, her tongue tracing the outer whorls. His hands were on her breasts, his hips
moving against her. He needed her, now, here. Before he could voice his need, they were knocked flat.

Silence.

“A sonic boom?” Chloe asked in the darkness. Her voice was tremulous. Cheftu took her hand, and they ran out the door, up
the stairs to the portico.

Where once had been the mountaintop, now there was only black smoke. Chloe was transfixed. “It’s stunning,” she whispered.
“Red and black: look at the patterns and swirls.’

As Chloe and Cheftu watched, the pyroclastic cloud rolled down the mountainside like a ball, bouncing and turning, reducing
everything it touched to cinder yet leaving some areas unmarred, except for a hot breeze. Temperatures of 750 degrees reduced
all other living things into rolling puffs of atmosphere, vaporized even before the citizens heard the eruption. All the dwellers
of Kallistae saw were crackles of heat. All they felt was pressurized air. Vineyards and flowers were laid flat, ash even
before they touched the ground, bowing in obeisance to the fury of the earth. Buildings of red, black, and white stones were
crushed by the hoof of Apis.

As Chloe and Cheftu watched, two hundred million cubic feet of rock spewed from the mountain. The gargantuan cloud of red
and black rose, growing exponentially larger with every breath. It rushed like water down the slope. The cloud grew like a
wide-topped pine, branches of scorching death reaching out to encompass the entire horizon.

To encompass them.

Cheftu pulled Chloe, running down the stairs, shoving and pushing through screaming, panicked people, never losing his grip
on her hand. They reached the underground level, and Cheftu kicked open a door. A storage room.

For once, being in the storerooms was where he wanted to be.

A thunderous clap, a noise so pervasive that he felt his blood vessels expand, knocked Cheftu flat. When he could see again,
he noticed blood dripping from Chloe’s chin.

Cheftu ripped off his kilt, tearing it in two. He urinated on both pieces and wrapped a wet piece around Chloe’s face. She
tried to back away, but Cheftu forced her face in it, barely finishing tying the other piece over his mouth before they were
knocked down again.

Screams were cut short, and there was no sound except the roar of destruction. He lay across her, his breath shallow through
the fabric. His body shielded hers, one arm protecting their heads, the other covering his groin. His bare backside was pelted
with falling stone. A jar exploded, and he screamed as boiling olive oil rained down on his head and back.

I
T WAS SILENT
, but Chloe knew she wasn’t dead. She hurt too much. The cloth over her face was dry. She pulled it off and threw it away,
watching in horror as it burst into flame midair. She tried to swallow but couldn’t. Panicked, she touched her face, only
to find that her hands were blistered, scorched.

Cheftu!

He lay facedown beside her, his body half shielding hers. His back was a mass of swelling blisters, and one side of his head
was now bald. Chloe touched him. He didn’t move.

Crawling to her knees, which seemed unhurt, as did the rest of her front, she tried to turn him over. Dead weight.
No! No!
she screamed, though the words didn’t come out. She fumbled at his neck for a pulse—nothing.

Be calm, she told herself. Check again! His hands were beneath him, and she couldn’t pull them free. She grabbed around him,
feeling for the other side of his throat. Something moved beneath his skin, and Chloe held her breath. It moved again. He
was alive!

He wouldn’t be for long. She rose slowly, taking stock of her own body. Nothing broken, burns on her back, but her face and
lungs had been protected. She looked down at Cheftu—he’d protected her. Her neck was scorched and she felt her exposed, burned
scalp. What remained of her luxurious hair snapped like broomstraws.

The room was lighter, and Chloe realized the two floors above them were missing. Sheared off. Where had they gone? She walked
to the doorway and almost stepped into a puddle of still simmering olive oil. She hobbled into the corridor.

The cloud had sliced off the two stories of the wing they were in and had deposited the remains twelve feet away.