Theta (9 page)

“
Queen or Oracle, I know
that look.” The skin around his eyes crinkled with warmth. “You may
not like to hear it, but it is true. I am not sending you to bed
without your dinner. I am advising you that you have not slept in
two days, and you are as mortal as I am. Take it how you will.” He
ended his speech with a deferential bow of his head.

My temperament was less befitting my
position than normal. I’d reached out of anger to Paeon when
normally I was capable of calmness in any situation.

Nodding in reluctant acquiescence, I turned
away from my trusted advisor and returned to the headquarters
building. My quarters consisted of a private manager’s office
converted into a small bedroom with simple necessities: a bed, box
of clothing, a chair and desk, and my own private bathroom with a
shower installed by the engineers in my army.

Stepping into the quiet room, the tension in
my shoulders and neck began to release. My accommodations were
plain but comfortable.

Leery of what nightmares awaited me if I
dared sleep, I opted for a shower to scrub the blood off my skin.
Hot water trickled over me, and I sighed deeply. My mind was on
Theodocia’s hidden message, and I closed my eyes.

There was another reason I approved of her
idea of attacking by winter, another reason for hating Lantos.
Another reason my temper was short, and I was afraid to sleep, in
case I missed the opportunity to locate Zeus before it was too
late.

I allowed the water to wash away all my
worries, to cleanse my skin and soothe my mind. Recent developments
of a personal nature led me to believe I was not likely to live
long past the start of the New Year, several months away.

A few seconds before the fire of
transformation flew through my body, I dropped to the ground from
my perch in a branch in the massive olive tree overlooking a beach.
The first rays of dawn crested the horizon as I changed from
monster into man.

“
I’m still waiting,” I
whispered.

With my challenge of turning into a monster
at night, I’d had to select my transportation across the ocean
carefully, choosing the kind of companions who didn’t ask questions
once enough money was exchanged. My trip in total took two weeks to
reach this point, and I’d spent the rest of my time searching every
beach within kilometers.

The nearest village to this part of the
coast was surrounded by a handmade moat. While peaceful, the towns
and cities I had encountered thus far on my journey rarely welcomed
strangers. I could think of dozens of reasons, ranging from limited
food stores to the fear of possession, a reality I had initially
chalked up to paranoia, until I met the first god in human form. I
passed civilization by without stopping. I traveled half by night,
half by day, hunted for food at night in my monster form and feared
neither man nor god.

My progress was slower than I liked, though
generally unimpeded by anyone. But, after weeks of searching, I had
lost any real hope of finding the plaque Artemis had tasked me to
recover or of running into any god who might assist me.

“
Please. Just let me go,”
came a wan voice from the base of the tree where I’d spent the
night.

I glanced at the rotting body of the teenage
boy without a drop of pity. The god possessing the youth had
identified himself as Cyamites, a minor terra god, and had made the
lethal mistake of crossing my path in search of a new host several
days ago.

“
When you pass my message
to the goddess I seek, I might consider it,” I replied. “I know you
all can communicate telepathically.”

“
I’ve told you every day
since you found me. She will not answer me.”

“
Then you will not
live.”

“
I have never harmed a
human before I was forced to. Look at all I’ve done for this
world,” the god pleaded. “You can’t let me die here, like
this!”

“
The world will survive
without the god of beans,” I replied, amused.

Cyamites sighed. His body had disintegrated
to the point he could barely move, which left me free to explore
without worrying about the god wandering off to seize someone
else’s body.

I strode from the orchard, neglected and
weedy, across a narrow, dirt road to the beach. It had seemed much
larger when I was young, four thousand years ago. The stretch of
sand ran for a kilometer along the brilliant, blue green Aegean Sea
and was capped on either side by jagged rocks. Over the past few
weeks, since arriving, I had used my human brain and my beast
strength to alternately inspect and then tear up every inch of
beach in the hopes of finding the elusive plaque Artemis had sent
me around the world to find.

The sea breeze ruffled my hair, and I stood,
listening to the sounds of the waves rushing up the beach. I was at
a loss as to what to do next. Every day I remained here, I placed
the woman I cared about in more danger by leaving her alone to face
the political madhouse that was DC. I had faith Alessandra could
handle herself, especially when she possessed the powers of a
goddess, and my most trusted friend, Lantos, was there to shield
her from others if needed. It was more of an instinct that had been
needling me. I kept seeing her face in my thoughts and dreams, and
she was distraught every time.

I hadn’t been able to shake
the sense something was wrong. Alessandra hadn’t used our
connection to summon me. Even so, I should have been able to
feel
her presence in my
soul, as I had since we became reacquainted several weeks
ago.

“
I have to be missing
something,” I murmured and began to pace along the beach. I was not
the kind of person who overlooked any detail. Ever. But the idea
that I sought wasn’t here, and I’d been sent away out of some
unknown motivation by a fickle goddess, left me furious with myself
as well as with her.

Half an hour passed. The sun perched on the
horizon, and I grew impatient. Returning to the olive tree I had
adopted as my temporary home, I sat on a boulder nearby, upwind, so
I didn’t have to smell the rotting god seated at the tree’s
base.

“
If you’d tell me what
we’re doing here, maybe I could help,” Cyamites said, not for the
first time.

“
Unless you were on this
beach four thousand years ago, there’s nothing you can do to help
me.”

“
Well that’s simple. This
beach didn’t exist four thousand years ago. No one was
here.”

I glanced at the god and then back. “I was
here.”

“
I planted these olive
trees ten thousand years ago. They stretched for another two
hundred meters at that time. The sea has swallowed the beach that
used to be here.”

My eyes went to the sea. I hadn’t considered
this possibility. “You’re saying the beach I remember is
underwater?” I stood. “You couldn’t tell me this several days
ago?”

Cyamites was quiet.

I looked at the god. Cyamites’ eyes were
open and blank, and his body was limp.

Had he even revealed this information to me,
or had someone else?

For a moment, the timing struck me as odd.
Artemis was known to work in mysterious ways. Had she planted
Cyamites here to guide me? If so, why hadn’t the god of beans told
me this information earlier?

Because gods never stop playing their games,
even on their deathbeds.

I would never know the truth, and obsessing
over what exactly just happened wouldn’t help me.

I left the corpse and strode onto the beach,
stopping only when my feet hit the water. I gazed two hundred
meters out and judged the water to be somewhere around ten meters
deep. As a human, I was stronger than most and faster than
everyone. But as a beast, I had ten times the strength of the
strongest human. I could pierce the water and reach the sand at its
depths with little effort in my monster form.

Restless to find the plaque, and also aware
of how much easier it would be in my secondary form, I relented and
sat higher up on the beach, prepared to watch the waves all day
until the sun set.

The morning became warm quickly.
Fortunately, the cool sea breeze prevented me from needing to leave
my spot for shade. I’d created a routine since arriving and
understood when the hottest points of the day were, when the tides
intruded upon my ability to search the beaches, and the rhythm of
Hesperides and Aurora.

As I sat, I thought about the last time I
had been to this part of the world, when I ruled a vast kingdom and
spent most of my waking days on battlefields. Crowned the head of
the armies at the age of fourteen, I had left my comfortable palace
near the sea the day following my coronation and never returned.
The curse of the Bloodline befell me at the age of seventeen, and I
had been frozen in stone as a temple guardian for four thousand
years, until Alessandra awoke me.

Alessandra wasn’t the only person occupying
my thoughts. I had left DC reluctantly, on the orders of a goddess
I had sworn my life to on this very beach. I left behind the temple
guardians – thousands of members of the sacred, royal Greek
Bloodline waiting for me to rescue them, and the sole living
heiress to the Bloodline, the Silent Queen. The first and only
grotesque to be re-animated, it was my responsibility to save the
others. They were my family, my predecessors and successors, and I
would rescue them from the hell they all endured as immortal stone,
sentient statues.

At least I saved one of my
descendants,
I thought, mind on Phoibe. The
Silent Queen had followed the instructions I gave her when she was
six. As long as she never spoke the invocation, and never
reproduced, she would not fall prey to the Bloodline’s
curse.

Alessandra was the key. If she had saved me,
she could save everyone else.

Deep in thought, my beast senses picked up
on the man and animals approaching long before I acknowledged them
with a direct look. I didn’t feel the presence of a god, indicating
the elderly man walking with a cane was human. With him were three
large dogs.

The moment the canines caught wind of me,
all three raced down the beach towards him. As the alpha of all
predators, I was accustomed to other hunter species reacting with
excitement and prey fleeing at the sight of me.

“
Calm down,” I told the
dogs as they neared. They obeyed, to an extent. I was soon
surrounded by canines with wagging tales. They licked and rubbed up
against me, and I reached out to pat the head of the dog burrowing
under my leg.

Their master took more time to reach me.
Sizing him up through my peripheral, I waited for the old man to
come within earshot.

“
It’s not safe for you out
here,” I said in flawless Greek. “Shouldn’t you be in hiding with
the others?”

“
I might ask you the same,”
the old man said and paused, leaning heavily on his
cane.

“
I am far scarier than
anything I might run into,” I said with a smile. “You should take
that into account.”

“
My dogs favor you. They
are good judges of character.”

The truth was much more difficult to explain
to a stranger. The man lowered himself carefully to the beach and
sat with a sigh. One of his dogs joined him and licked his face.
With close-cropped white hair, large, dark brown eyes, and leathery
olive skin, the elderly man was handsome despite his age.

“
What brings you here?” he
asked.

“
I’m not sure I know,” I
answered. “It wouldn’t make sense to you anyway.”

“
I’ve seen a lot in my
time. Try me.”

You haven’t seen four
thousand years. I’m the old man here,
I
responded silently.

When I didn’t speak, my visitor seemed to
take the hint. “I’ll be on my way,” said the elderly man. “Do you
need a place to stay or are you passing through?”

“
I don’t know that either,”
I replied.

The old man climbed to his feet with effort
and steadied himself with his cane. “Well, I live around the bend.”
He pointed past the rocks on the north side of the beach. “If night
falls, and you need shelter, we will welcome you.”

“
Thank you.” I didn’t take
my eyes off the sea. It wasn’t likely a mere human could help me,
and I was grateful for the solitude while I waited. Giving the dog
sprawled on the ground a final pat, I draped my arms over my
knees.

The old man whistled, and his dogs raced
after him. Aware of their progress with my beast senses, I didn’t
have to watch them to track their movements.

Before they reached the road, I sensed
something was wrong. Twisting, I saw the man sprawled on the
ground. His dogs were standing over him, one whining and another
licking the back of his neck.

One person’s life wasn’t much of a concern
to me, when I already had too many people to save as it was. The
butcher I’d been as the head of SISA, before I rediscovered my
memories, wouldn’t have cared for the fate of a million humans, let
alone someone who was far beyond his prime. Likewise, the prince I
had been four thousand years ago would have viewed the old man’s
visit as an inconvenience.

But I wasn’t either of those people anymore.
I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t a prince. I was something in between,
or perhaps, someone new, and I didn’t really know what that
was.

After a pause, I stood. I didn’t fully
understand what drew me to consider helping, when kindness had
never been a trait of mine in any of my lifetimes. Unable to
explain my reaction, I nonetheless never hesitated to act once I
made a decision, and trotted across the sand to the old man
struggling to stand.