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“I’m talking about him being an impostor.” It was everything in me not to punch in his grin. “This is not Jason. He’s a monster in human skin, and he’s here to make sure Selene gets free, so do it already,” I snapped. “Get the key for your mistress and goddess. I’m sure you know she’s getting quite impatient.”
Jason laughed out loud. A laugh cut short by another coughing fit, he still managed to smirk his way through it. “All right then.” Straightening, he winked. “Be right back.”
Jason disappeared.
Nitsa cried out, whipping this way and that. But the traitorous sack of shit was gone. “I don’t understand. Where did he go?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t speak, I was so angry that I’d been reduced to this—asking that piece of garbage for help. Asking him to do the one thing he and Selene wanted us to do, be bound to them in this awful game of pawns.
The heavens suddenly came to life. Lightning attacked the mountain in a frenzy, striking all over and raining rocks on our heads. We threw ourselves against the face, huddling for shield.
Zeus wasn’t worried about killing me anymore. His trap was about to be defeated, and he knew it.
“I know,” I shouted into the air. “I want to kill the bastard too.”
It was centuries, millennia, eons... before we heard his cry of triumph.
All around us, the landscape melted away. One moment we were hanging off the side of a mountain, the next we were in another room much like the one from Athena’s trap. A cushioned floor pressed against my boot treads. A beautiful, self-glorifying fresco splashed Zeus all over the circular walls. He laughed, drank, wielded lightning, and ruled in painting after painting.
Jason appeared before me, holding a key stamped with lightning.
Our gaze locked across a stretching divide.
“You should get rid of that silly disguise now, don’t you think?” I returned his grin with a mirthless one of my own. “You’re not fooling anyone, Marinos.”
The tall, handsome, fun-loving son of hades disappeared, and the short, shaggy-haired, long-nosed guy I’d come to know took his place. If anything, his smirk was even smugger.
“Oh, but I d-did,” he replied, stumbling over a wheeze. “I fooled all of you, and for so much longer than today. Ha! Just think, that you ran to my rescue, saving the guy who threw your precious mommy into a pit.”
I advanced on him. “I should’ve let Sebastian kill you.”
“Ahh.” He pouted. “Yes, you should’ve, but we’ve all got regrets.”
“Why?” My voice was a thin rasp. “Why was he beating you? What did he know?”
Marinos shrugged. “A few of my playthings came to him, no doubt. Whispered in his ear. Don’t be charmed by his rebel act.He’s a total do-gooder. Taking it upon himself to avenge the dead.” He rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t know what I know. What you all will soon know. Olympia will be nothing but a smoldering crater by week’s end. Why shouldn’t I have my fun with you walking corpses while I still can?”
Alex growled, throwing his hand up.
“Don’t even think about it, son of Zeus!” He swung to Alex, grin vanishing. “As we speak, your father is spinning a tale of treachery and treason that’ll hang your worthless lover. If you want any chance of giving him another head to put in the noose, you better not explode mine.”
Alex froze, hand hovering in the air. “What do you take me for? You’ll never let us take you alive.”
“Are you willing to risk her life on it?”
Alex looked from him, to me, to him, and then to me. He lowered his hand.
“That’s what”—cough, cough—“I thought.”
Nitsa whipped between us, eyes huge. “I don’t understand this. What is going on!”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on.” I backed away from Marinos. “In the last few years, Selene slithered into the heart of the right ally. A child of Apollo with a gift no one wants—true visions. The seer saw Selene rise, and pledged her loyalty.
“She found a way to anchor Selene’s essence into items like the bracelet I wear, then she recruited more followers to achieve their goal,” I said. “A group of those followers broke into this prison, got as far as the cyclops, and died. Maybe they weren’t the only ones. Like Drakos said, there have been many disappearances here over the years.
“Anyway, I assume sometime after the students and instructor failed, Selene’s pet seer killed herself trying to find someone who would succeed, because she wasn’t jumping in herself. Finally, she spouted a prophecy naming the personthey needed. A child of fate. Me.” I raised my voice to speak over Marinos’s coughing fit. “There was never a cerberus or an echidna in my house that night. It was you.”
I barked a laugh. “Isn’t that wild? I really was deluded and hallucinating. The shrinks kept asking me that question in the hospital. If a ten-foot-tall dog with three heads and his half-snake mother carried my mom away, why did no one else in the city that never sleeps see them? They didn’t, because of course, they weren’t there.” Hatred twisted my lips. “You made the world think I was crazy. You mademethink I was crazy! You stole my mother and two years of my life!”
