The Cult of Kronos Read online

  “Kronos was never supposed to be in charge. Prometheus promised.”

  “Well now Prometheus is dead,” June said. “Zach saw to that.”

  “Prometheus is in Tartarus,” Peter corrected. “Where we'll be, permanently, if we don't get out of here.”

  “What if we get Lewis to go get him,” Evan suggested, “To free Prometheus.”

  “Then we have to fight Prometheus again,” Frank said. “He still hates us.”

  Their conversation was cut off by thumping outside. The door at the back of the room, a small metal door with no handle on the inside, opened.

  “Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.”

  -Homer

  XIV.

  Traffic lights reflected off the glass sides of the corporate office building in downtown Orlando. Zach and Jason pulled up in the Uhaul outside the lobby doors and put the car in park. “You ready?” Zach asked.

  “To kiss my squeaky clean criminal record goodbye?”

  “No more working in a school,” Zach said.

  Jason nodded. “Hey Zach.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No regrets, right?”

  “No regrets.”

  The lights were on in the lobby of the building. Zach opened the door of the moving truck and jumped out, holding his rifle low so that the people on the streets wouldn't see it and panic. Not everyone was under Kronos's grasp, just enough of them, and Zach didn't want to cause alarm or call in well-meaning police.

  Jason followed. The door was unlocked. A guard at the front desk stood up. “Zeus. You came back,” she said. Zach pulled the trigger on the gun, catching her in the arm with a dart. She looked at it for a moment before slumping back in the chair and falling unconscious.

  “You sure this is legal?” Zach asked.

  “Hell no. I'm not even sure my father was supposed to have these darts. Probably got them from his vet friend.”

  “So…police any minute?”

  “Kronos has seen us anyway, let's move.” Jason pointed to a stairwell. Zach raised his leg, kicking the push bar and opening the door ahead of him. They moved into the stairwell, Zach's rifle aimed up, Jason's aimed down.

  Jason fired his tranquilizer, taking down a guard one floor below without being spotted. “He has guards posted this way,” he whispered to Zach. “Wanna bet our friends are this way too?”

  They moved down the stairs quickly, stepping gently to avoid making much noise. Jason checked the chamber of his rifle before opening the door at the bottom of the stairs. A long hallway lay ahead of them, one lined with concrete slabs and lit by buzzing, flickering white light. Two men were posted at a door down the hall. One of them was a regular security guard, but he was holding a gun that was clearly not standard issue for his job; from the best Jason could guess, it was some kind of submachine gun. The other was a thin man in a well-cut suit. They must have been Kronos's men.

  Jason raised his gun and fired at the armed guard, catching him in the back with a tranquilizer dart. As he slumped forward, the thin man whipped around and fired a pistol he had been holding. The bullet sank into the door just above Jason's head. Zach pulled the trigger on his own gun and took down the thin man.

  “That was close,” Zach said.

  Jason turned his head to spy the bullet hole. “Too close.”

  A sound like thunder came from the stairwell behind them. Dozens of feet were flooding into the stairwell. Kronos had sounded the alarm.

  Zach braced the doors while Jason jammed his rifle in between the handles to bar the door. They ran ahead to the door the men had been guarding. Zach grabbed the security guard and yanked him to his feet long enough for Jason to place the man's finger on the scanner by the door. A green light flashed and made a happy, high-pitched sound before the door swung open.

  Frank was standing over the door, a fist raised, ready to swing.

  “Whoa there!” Jason shouted, stepping out of the way. “Don't maim the rescue party.”

  June dashed across the room and threw her arms around Zach. Jason nodded at Celene before focusing on the moment at hand. They could celebrate later. “There's an army behind us. Evan,” Jason looked around and found Evan seated in the corner of the room. “Seal this door.”

  They slammed the door shut. It was the smaller door with no handles on the inside, and Jason worried that they were closing off their only route of escape. As Evan finished melting the door to its frame with his hands, however, a loud bang indicated that the crowd had broken into the hallway. “We need another way out,” Jason said.

  “The walls are too strong,” Frank said.

  “And the bay door is too thick to melt through,” Evan said.

  Fists pounded on the door they had just sealed shut. Jason was sure he had just walked into a death trap. He looked around the room, counting to see who had been taken. It looked like everyone except…

  “Where's Lewis?”

  As if to answer him, a gear mounted to a track on the ceiling began to spin and the bay door started to rise. Lewis stood in the hallway beyond, a huge grin on his face. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “First I had to lead the guards on this side upstairs, then I had to dash back down here. We don't have very long.”

  Zach passed his rifle to June. “It's got one dart left,” he said. “So don't accidentally shoot me with it.”

  “Then we'd better go,” Nick said.

  They ran out into the hall and followed the emergency exit signs. The hall was narrow and there was no way for sixteen people to be quiet as they fled. Each footstep echoed off the walls and reverberated down the hall behind them.

  They came to a dead end. It was a door, this time a door with a handle, made of steel. Frank punched the door, but all it did was mar the surface and create a thunderous echo that rang in their ears. Evan pushed everyone out of the way and hunched before the doorknob. “There,” he said as the door began to swing open. “I picked the lock.”

  Zach looked down at Evan's hand. He was holding the doorknob and lock. The edges of the removed mechanism were white hot. “Evan, that's not picking the lock.”

  “Whatever,” Lewis said. “It's open. Let's get the hell out of here.”

  They came to a stairwell and an emergency exit. The door opened out onto the opposite side of the building from where they came in. Across the street, Zach could see Lake Eola Park. His father's office was somewhere directly above them.

  “Crap, the truck is on the other side of the building,” Jason murmured.

  “I can go get it,” Lewis offered.

  “Uh…no time for that,” Teddy said.

  They looked across the street. The few night-time strollers at the park had stopped what they were doing, either to approach The Pantheon or to look on in confusion as their loved-ones and friends suddenly abandoned their leisure activity and started across the street. Even a man in a swan-shaped boat had tipped it over and swam away while his girlfriend treaded water and screamed at him. (“Gregory, you jerk! Where are you going? I'm leaving you!”)

  “How many do you think?” Devon asked.

  “Focused on us? Easily fifty.” More people were marching around the corner of the street and coming right for them. Under the street lights, with shadows all around them, it was hard to be certain how many people were coming, but it was clearly a lot. “And now a hundred.”

  Baby Xander started crying. Devon held him close. Frank stepped in front of them. “I can't promise I won't hurt them this time.”

  “I'm starting to regret leaving my gun,” Jason said.

  The crowd suddenly, simultaneously broke into a dash. Zach swelled to the enormous form he had taken when fleeing this building the first time. He and Frank met the first wave of attackers, knocking them back and creating a domino effect. Like zombies, however, the crowd pushed forward, trampling the fallen in front of them to get to The Pantheon.

  Lewis jumped high into the air and began to fly above th
e crowd. “We're hosed!” he shouted.

  Minnie was doing a pretty good job blocking blows from the crowd and taking people down, but the crowd was too big and it pressed on them from every side. “There's at least two hundred now!” she screamed.

  As the mob descended upon them, their sheer numbers weighing Zach and Frank down and pinning them to the earth, something happened. Someone grabbed Diana from behind and she screamed. Astin spun around, sunlight blazing from his fingertips, and a pulse of white light erupted from his core.

  The light was more pure and beautiful than anything they had ever seen. It washed over the crowd, bathing them in its warmth. Everyone stopped. The pulse only lasted for seconds, but as the light reached the edges of the crowd and faded away, The Pantheon could tell that the people attacking them had come to their senses. The light of truth had shaken the haze. Their pupils shrank back to their normal size.

  “What am I doing?” a woman asked, letting go of her grip on Evan's arm. Zach shrank back to his normal size.

  Minnie shrugged, “I dunno. What were you doing? Are you on drugs, m'am?”

  “I—no!” the woman, alarmed, turned and rushed back across the street.

  “Smooth,” Lewis chuckled.

  “Someone's gotta explain your miraculous ascension.”

  “At least they aren't swarming us,” Diana said, wiping blood from her lip.

  As the crowd began to drift back across the street, wondering if they had just played into some elaborate marketing stunt, Astin noticed a man left on the ground, his leg clearly broken. Astin knelt down and pressed his hand to the leg. With a gentle, white glow, the leg reknit itself. The man sat up and looked into Astin's light blue eyes. “I…did you just…thank you.” he said.

  “You're welcome,” Astin said. “Now get out of here.”

  “Way to blow your cover,” Zach said. His voice was deep and loud.

  “Oh leave him alone,” Nick offered a hand to help Astin up. “Our cover was more likely blown by Lewis flying over the crowd, or you growing twenty feet tall.”

  “He has a point,” Lewis said from his vantage point floating high above them.

  “Let's get to the truck before he whips up a new angry mob,” Jason said. “I had to see it to believe it, and now it terrifies me.”

  A slow clap began across the street. Diana heard it first, but the others weren't long after. Atticus Speal, Kronos, was sitting on the bench across the street, dressed in a fine suit, and clapping. He was a tall man with a wild beard and neatly trimmed hair. He smiled, and that smile was oddly unsettling. “Nice work, Apollo. The light of truth. That set back my plans just a smidge,” he said, holding up his fingers to indicate just how small a “smidge” was. “But hey, you know what they say. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

  “Are you always so corny?” Lewis asked.

  The crowd quieted. Its members turned to watch the exchange between Kronos and the Olympians.

  “Perhaps,” Kronos said. He reached beside the bench and held up a sickle, a shining curved blade with a handle fixed to one end. It caught the moonlight and glinted, and Peter instinctually knew that this was the blade Kronos had dipped in the Styx. Kronos rose to his feet and pointed the sickle at Zach. Kronos tilted his head from side to side and put one hand under his jaw, pushing upward as if trying to crack his neck. He rolled his shoulders and shook them out. When he relaxed, when he dropped his shoulders back and lifted his head, he stood before them ready to fight. “You'll find I'm just as deadly.”

  “Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost, nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.”

  -Homer

  XV.

  The crowd around them began to scream and run in every direction. People shoved and trampled over each other in their urgency to get away. Valerie closed her eyes and held up her hands, casting a calming wave, but Teddy swatted down her hands and shook his head. “Let them panic. Their fear will keep them alive.”

  “I ain't afraid of you,” a man in a Dolphins hat said, holding out a hand gun and pointing it at Kronos. “You got a big knife? I got a big gun, and I feel sufficiently endangered enough to use it.”

  “Don't be stupid,” Zach said, reaching to grab the man by the arm. The man shook Zach off.

  “I got a right. Stand my ground,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Kronos said, approaching the man. “Shoot me.”

  “Stay back!” he shouted.

  “Shoot me!” Kronos replied.

  The man pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through Kronos's chest, barely rattling him. Kronos looked down at the hole and touched his finger to the wound. He licked the blood off his fingertip and laughed. “Mortals.” And then he swung his sickle and took off the man's head.

  More screams erupted as the last of the crowd made a dash as far away from Kronos as they could.

  “Guys,” Minnie said from the back of the group. “I think we're done worrying about anonymity.”

  “So go all out?” Nick asked.

  “Precisely.”

  Nick held out his hands and the road fractured. The ground heaved up in front of them, stopping when there was a concrete wall between the fleeing crowd and Kronos. Some of The Pantheon with less combat experience used the opportunity to jump behind a line of cars: Teddy, Devon, and June, lead by Celene, found a blue florist's van to crouch behind.

  Minnie started calling the shots, using her quick mind to strategize. “Zach and Astin, take the right and left flanks. Be ready with projectiles. Lewis—high ground. Jason, you got any real fire power?”

  Zach tossed his backpack to Jason. Jason looked inside at the weapon Zach had sneaked out of the cabinet without telling him. “I thought you didn't want to hurt anyone?”

  “Well, Kronos isn't anyone,” Zach said.

  Jason pulled the sub machine gun Zach had found at the cabin out of the bag and held it up. “Oh, I know that's illegal.”

  “Take cover and don't shoot friendlies,” she said.

  A massive hand smashed through the concrete, spraying broken chunks of blacktop at the Olympians and cracking the glass siding of the building behind them. Kronos was growing. He grew as tall Zach had, reaching twenty feet in height, and then he kept going. His growth only stopped when he was four stories high. The sickle grew with him.

  “That explains how he ate y'all,” Lewis said, launching into the air and dodging back as Kronos took a swipe at him.

  “The backpack,” Jason said to Peter as he loaded his gun. “I brought your souvenir.”

  Peter understood. Next to Minnie, he vanished from sight. Jason looked around for him as Frank caught Kronos's giant blade mid-swing, catching the end of the handle with both hands, and stopped him from slicing through Evan. Frank gritted his teeth and pushed back. Evan ran with a shout, launching off of the hood of a parked sedan, and landed on Kronos's massive wrist. His hands were white-hot and Kronos screamed as his flesh was seared. He swung his arm around and Evan held on tight as if he were riding a bull at a rodeo. His leg strained in protest, but his fingers kept on burning.

  In the chaos, nobody saw Jason vanish. Peter had wrapped his arms around Jason and extended his aura of invisibility around the mortal. Peter pulled Jason back behind a car, and when they were safely out of site, dropped the veil and unzipped the backpack. The knife was waiting, wrapped in a scrap of inky black cloth. “Thanks for packing this,” Peter said.

  “This ends today,” Jason replied.

  Peter nodded.

  Frank fell back, keeping guard over Devon and the others. “Get the baby out of here,” he shouted as he swung a lamp post to parry a blow from the massive Titan. Celene lead the way as the group of cow
ering Olympians ducked and crawled around the corner. They only stopped briefly so that June could scoop up an abandoned child and carry him away with them. Jason aimed his gun to provide cover fire as they slipped away, but Kronos was too preoccupied to stop their escape.

  Valerie stood up from her hiding place behind a car and thrust out her palm. Her eyes flashed as fire blossomed from her fingertips and rocketed towards Kronos.

  “Holy shit,” Nick shouted. “When did you get good powers?”

  Zach had grown to half of Kronos's size and was beginning to fire bolts of lightning. They weren't very effective on the Titan—just painful little zaps to his massive frame. Kronos finally shook Evan off. Evan crashed into the ground, landing on his wrists with a terrible crack. Astin dropped his hands, letting the blinding sunlight he had been aiming at Kronos fade away, and rushed to play the role of medic.

  “Weapons,” Minnie leapt over an overturned trash can and stopped next to Evan. Astin cast white light to heal Evan's broken wrists. “I need a weapon,” Minnie said.

  Diana was running about on the ledge of fractured concrete, hopping up and down and dodging blows. She was drawing Kronos's attention, using her agility to duck out of the way as his sickle came swooping down. Soon the wall of blacktop was leveled. Diana's face was red and sweaty, but she kept moving.

  Penny, crouching low to avoid drawing attention, edged over behind the car where Jason and Peter were hiding. “Peter,” she said.

  “Go with your mom, get out of here.”

  “No,” she said. “I need you to take me across the street.”

  “Why?”

  She put her hand over Peter's and looked into his pitch-black eyes. “Trust me.”

  Peter looked back at Jason. Jason nodded. Peter put the cloth-wrapped knife in Jason's hand and turned back to Penny. Peter and Penny vanished.

  Kronos's shoulders were on fire now, the result of Valerie's assault. He swatted at the flames, stamping them out with his massive hands. The Olympians were darting about in front of him, taking advantage of this momentary distraction. He began to swing his arms in front of him, causing his attackers to duck and weave. His open hand struck Frank with a backhand swing and sent him flying over Jason's head and crashing through the glass wall of the building. Astin left Evan's side and followed Frank through the Frank-shaped hole, hoping to patch his wounds.