The Blood of Athens Read online

  They took torches to every thatched roof about

  and slaughtered the surprised Trojans as they slept.

  So it came to be that these Greeks bearing gifts

  burned the city down.

  “Avoid enemies.”

  -Delphic Maxim

  XIV.

  “Stay there,” Peter said as he made his way to the door of the hotel room. He opened it and peeked out. Other students were looking around the dark hall. The only source of light came from the street lamps, a narrow, dim beam, streaming in through the windows of the open hotel rooms.

  The scream repeated. It was coming from below. Another scream joined it.

  Diana Hill, alone in her own room, crouched down and put her ear to the floor. When she sat up, her eyes were wide with fear. Someone was being murdered down there. Everyone was running to the emergency exit. It was chaos.

  Doors slammed shut as students hid back in their rooms. Peter ducked his head back inside Penny's room for an instant, popped into invisible form, and left the room. “Stay put,” he said to Penny before he left. He grabbed her room key off of the dresser so he could get back in.

  Peter crept quietly down the hall. Astin was standing outside Diana's room with his hands glowing. Peter stopped next to him.

  “Put that shit out,” Peter whispered. Astin nearly fell over with surprise, but he extinguished the sunlight from his hands.

  “Peter?”

  “Screams, Astin. Screams. If someone’s on a murderous rampage, don’t give them a target.”

  “I was checking on Diana.”

  “Great, get in her room and lock the door.”

  “Where are you going?” Astin asked.

  “Call it re-con. The minute I know what’s going on, I’m going back to Penny.”

  “Astin?” Diana whispered through the door.

  “Let me in.”

  Diana cracked the door open and Astin slipped inside.

  Diana closed the door. Peter was alone in the hall.

  The screams stopped downstairs and everything was quiet. Peter could hear the noise of the busy city outside, but there were no sounds within the hotel. Everyone was frozen in silent terror, waiting to find out what would happen next.

  The door to the stairs opened down the hall. Peter pressed himself against the wall. He held his breath as a man stepped into the hall. With all of the doors to the rooms now closed, the hallway was dark. The only light was the glowing red letters of the fire exit sign, running on backup battery. It shone a dim red light on the man, casting his figure as a silhouette. The way he held himself, it was clear that this stranger wasn't a maid or hotel security.

  Peter inched down the hall. He held himself flat against Penny's door and waited.

  As the man came closer, just a shadow in the dark hall, Peter saw a long knife in his hand. He passed Peter and stopped outside of Diana and Alexis' room to listen. He put his hand on the doorknob and pressed his weight down. The nickel doorknob groaned and snapped. He pushed the door open, but was stopped by the chain. He kicked the door and the chain snapped. The door swung open and the dark hallways was filled with the sounds of broken links scattering about the room. The stranger with the knife stepped inside, but Peter could tell from the cool breeze and the light pouring into the hall that Diana and Astin had already escaped through the window.

  Peter looked directly across the hall and saw the door to the opposite room creep open. Evan Fuller peeked out. Evan looked down the hall, setting his eyes on the killer as he stepped into Diana’s room. Evan took a deep breath and bolted down the hall towards the emergency exit. Someone in the room behind him slammed the door and frantically locked it. The man with the knife darted out of the room, ready to chase Evan down. It was no good, Evan's crooked run was too slow. What was he thinking? Peter didn’t have time to contemplate Evan’s stupidity. He took his opportunity and stuck out his invisible foot, tripping the attacker and sending him sprawling across the floor of the hall.

  The man didn't even grunt as his body thudded on the carpet. He didn't scramble to get up or roll around in pain. He sat up silently and slowly rose to his feet.

  Peter slipped Penny's room key into the lock and ran in. Penny jumped up and slammed the door. She got the chain across the door before the man in the hall started to bang on the door.

  “Alright, Penny. Astin's got Diana. Where's Minnie?”

  “The guys from Scholar's Bowl invited her to practice Ancient Greek questions in their hotel.”

  “She's on the boy's floor? Good. The fire-escape.”

  The doorknob jiggled.

  “I need to get to my mom.”

  Peter ran to the window and looked out. There was an iron fire-escape just outside. “He’s coming now. You get to the ground level and get help. I'll go get your mom.”

  The doorknob groaned.

  “She’s my mom, Peter.”

  It snapped. The door opened and stopped at the end of the chain.

  “I know. I'll make sure she's safe. I'm stealthier alone.”

  Penny took a deep breath and nodded. “Alright. Keep her safe.”

  Penny slipped out the fire escape just as the door was kicked open. Peter hid in the corner behind an arm chair and waited until the man with the knife looked around the room and then moved on.

  Evan Fuller slammed the door to the stairs behind him and pressed his fingers to the frame. The metal warped and melted, holding the door shut. He just had to hope that his classmates were smart enough to stay in their rooms. If he had been smarter, he thought, he would have stayed. It wasn’t his job to stop the killer. Still, he knew what he could do to help; if he had sat in the room and waited, he would have forever blamed himself for whatever happened to his classmates.

  Heavy footsteps grew louder in the hall. The doorknob jiggled. Someone slammed into the door. The knob creaked and jolted and then settled, crooked and obviously broken. Someone slammed into the door again and again, and then it was quiet. Evan sighed in relief. The welded doorframe had held up.

  Evan turned and ran down the stairs. He knew he had to hurry. There was another set of stairs at the other end of the hall; the killer wasn't completely trapped on the girls' floor.

  Evan turned and looked down the stairs. He hated stairs. His limp made him slow-going. Stairs in the dark were really no good. His hand fell on the smooth railing, though, and Evan sat on the edge of it. He had never slid down a bannister before. There was a first time for everything. Evan slid down the first one and stumbled on the landing. The second railing brought him down to the boys' floor. As he approached the door, he tripped on something at-once soft and solid. Evan caught his balance against the door. He groped around in the dark below him. Whatever he had tripped over was warm and wet and squishy. He realized, as his fingers mapped its features, that it was face with the skin peeled off . There was a dead body slumped before the door.

  Evan threw the door open and fell into the hall. A german tourist stood, ready to strike anyone who came through that door with a raised fire-extinguisher. He stopped before he struck Evan, his muscular frame highlighted by the moonlight coming in through the window of his room. “Sind Sie verletzt?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you injured?”

  Evan shook his head and held up his blood-stained hands. “Not my blood. There's a body in the stairwell. I need to get to the power. I need to put the lights back on.”

  Lewis came out into the hall.

  “Evan! Where the hell were you? Where's Astin and Peter?”

  “I was upstairs. Jess Silver forgot her wallet today and was paying me back for--”

  “Doesn't matter. Are the other guys alright?”

  “I think Peter tripped the killer for me. The guy went down and there was nobody else in the hall.”

  The German looked confused.

  “Listen,” Evan said to Lewis. “I need to fix the power. The screaming started right after the power went out, so unless there's two o
f them, the killer took out the lights on this floor before he started his spree.”

  “Yeah, he got the guy refilling the soda machine first,” Lewis said. “Then this woman who was getting ice. He turned for me next, but I bolted.”

  “So any idea where he fried the power?”

  A beam of light shone from Nick and Teddy's hotel room. Teddy stood in the doorway, holding up his iPhone to cast light on his allies. “I've got a flashlight app. I'll help you look.”

  “Do you need my help?” the German tourist asked.

  Evan nodded. “Go down the the lobby through the stairs and make sure they're sending help.”

  “Do you think it's the serial killer?” Lewis asked.

  Teddy nodded. “Probably. Did you see his face, Lew?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Naw. It was too dark.”

  As soon as the German went into the stairwell, Lewis took Teddy's phone and dashed around the hall. A few seconds later he shouted, “Down here!”

  Evan ran to the light. Lewis was standing next to the soda machine. A door with a Keep Out sign in multiple languages stood open. Two bodies, a man in coveralls and a female tourist, lay in a shared pool of blood in front of the door. They were beyond help. Evan stepped over their bodies, trying not to look at them, and stepped inside. “Hold the light,” he said to Lewis. “This should only take a minute.”

  Celene dialed Penny's room number.

  “Uh, hello. The power's out,” Nick said.

  “Landlines still work when the power is out.” She slammed down the receiver. “That proves it's not just a power outage. Someone cut the phones. I'm going out there to get Penny.” Their cell phones didn't work in Europe. She would have to go there herself.

  Nick stood in front of the door. “No way. You're not opening this door. You heard that downstairs. A generator would have kicked on by now if it were just a coincidence.”

  “Nick Morrisey, don't you get between a mother and her child. I'm going out there.”

  Nick shook his head. “I don't feel like dying today, Dr. D.”

  “Then stay here like a coward. I'm going.” Celene grabbed Nick's shoulder and pulled. He moved away from the door, not willing to find out what she would do if she had to be any more forceful.

  Celene stepped out into the dark hallway. A tall man, holding a large hunting knife, banged on the door to the stairwell. It was jammed. He turned around and set his eyes on Celene. In the dark, his eyes flashed red.

  The shadowy figure began to step towards her. He took his time, making each footfall heavy and solid. Celene looked between the man with the bowie knife and the door to Penny's room. Was it open? Celene couldn’t tell from this angle, and she didn’t have a key to the room if it was locked. How was she going to pull this off?

  The killer continued his approach. A low chuckle growled forth from his throat. “Demeter,” he said. Celene's eyes snapped from the door to Penny's room to the killer himself. He was half way down the hall now. “You've come home.”

  The door behind her opened. “Get in here,” Nick hissed from the door. He reached out. He grabbed Celene by the arm. Something struck her front and shoved her back into the room. An invisible force slammed the door shut. “Are you crazy, he's out there!” Peter Hadley said, his head appearing in front of her. “Penny's going down the fire-escape, let's go!”

  “He knew my name,” Celene muttered.

  “Great, he heard someone say it,” Nick took her hand and pulled her towards the window.

  “No,” Celene dug in her heels and stopped. “He called me Demeter.”

  Peter's body popped into visibility in front of her. “He did what now?”

  “He called me Demeter and said 'You've come home.'”

  “He’s been snapping doorknobs like they’re matchsticks,” Peter said.

  Something banged on the door, then there was a screech like the tip of a steel knife being dragged across metal. Nick stepped out onto the fire-escape. “Good for him. He's a Titan. Even more reason to run. Let's go!”

  Evan got the lights back on a few minutes before the police arrived. They had to cut open the door to the stairwell on the fifteenth floor. Nobody could explain how it had been sealed shut. The students of Olympia Heights gathered in the lobby for a headcount as bodies were carted out. There were three dead. The maintenance man and the tourist that Lewis had witnessed being killed, plus the redheaded woman that Evan had tripped over in the hall. They carted her out with a sheet over her face; her remains were so mutilated that the blood soaked through the covering.

  There was no sign of the killer. He had vanished into thin air.

  Celene's whole body shook as she called off names. Candice Matthews, who had been dragged out of her room by police, sat shaking in a corner, unable to speak. It was up to Celene to call the parents. Thank God nobody from Olympia Heights had been hurt.

  “Unless you need medication from your luggage, you're going to have to go home without it,” Celene said. “This hotel is an active crime scene. Your luggage will be shipped to you when the police release it. The school's travel agent is arranging for us to go home this morning. The rest of the trip has been called off.”

  Students groaned.

  “Would you rather be dead?” Minnie asked under her breath.

  “Point,” said Nick.

  Lewis had been sure to grab his backpack from the hotel room. He kept it tucked under his chair while the police were around. It contained the shampoo bottles of nectar, which he would split between a few of the girls' purses before they got on the plane.

  Peter, who had been pacing at the back of the crowd, sat down on the couch next to Penny.

  “Thank you,” Penny said, “for getting my mom.”

  “It was a good thing I did,” Peter said. “She was about ready to charge the killer to rescue you.”

  They sat in silence. What else could they say? Three people had died tonight. Besides, what Peter really wanted to tell her, what Peter wanted to tell all of The Pantheon, would have to wait. As soon as they got back stateside, they needed to call a meeting. The Pantheon had to know that they were all in danger, again.

  “In War.”

  -Spartan Epitaph

  xv.

  As the battle between Zeus and Typhon raged,

  the earth beneath their feet trembled and thundered,

  and the air crackled with electricity.

  Lord Zeus was winning.

  But then the monster snatched the sickle Zeus held

  and sliced out the sinews from every limb,

  leaving Zeus unmoving on the mountain side.

  Then he hid the strings.

  “As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.”

  -Diogenes

  XV.

  It was nearly noon when June awoke. June Jacobs was the first thought that ran through her head. She had doodled it on notebooks for years and now it was a reality. Well, it was a reality once she got a chance to take her marriage certificate down to the social security office. Close enough.

  She rolled over to look at Zach, the sterile white motel sheets tickling her bare skin as she moved. Zach opened his electric blue eyes and smiled at her. They had spent their week sleeping in and wandering around the old city, a place so beautiful that General Sherman had spared it from burning during the Civil War. The hanging Spanish moss and the horse-drawn carriages set a perfect scene for newlywed bliss.

  “It’s about time,” he said. “I’ve been trying not to move and wake you.”

  “We’ve slept half the day away,” she said.

  Zach reached across the bed and tucked her hair behind her ear. She scooted closer and settled into his arms. “Your breath smells horrible,” she whispered.

  “I love you, too.”

  June played with the short beard that was already growing on his chin. “Maybe you should just let it grow and, you know, trim it.”
r />   “I thought you said people didn’t trust politicians with beards.”

  June shrugged, “Well, you’ve got four years of undergrad before you get to that point.”

  Zach laughed. “I’m afraid it might grow into an untamable jungle if I let it go.”

  “You would look good with a beard.”

  “Then maybe I’ll try it.” Zach arched his back and stretched. His stomach grumbled. “We need to head back today.”

  June nodded. “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “You get up and brush your teeth, then come back to bed for an hour. Afterward we’ll get lunch at that adorable tearoom on the square and head home.”

  “Which square?” Zach asked. “This whole city is a checkerboard of picturesque squares.”

  “The one with the griffin on the sign.”

  “Sounds like a deal,” Zach said, climbing out of bed. He stopped at the bathroom door. “Wait, did you say an hour?”

  June smirked.

  “Then you’d better come in here and brush your teeth, too,” Zach said with a grin. He ducked into the bathroom and turned the shower on before poking his head out the door. “Actually, you know what? You’d better shower too.”

  “Zach!”

  He walked to the bed and scooped her up, dragging half of the bedding onto the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Claiming my wife.” He carried her into the bathroom and shut the door. They would eventually have to return to the reality of school, responsibility, and secret superpowers. Today was their honeymoon; they could afford to let down their guard, if only for one afternoon.

  Zach hadn't been to a gas station since the death of his Thunderbird this summer; the green Roadster that his father had bought him was electric. The only real challenge had been finding a place to plug it in at the hotel.

  Still, breaks were needed on the drive from Savannah to Miami to buy drinks and use the restroom. Zach parked at the gas station next to a box truck with an advertisement for bacon on one side, and June headed for the bathroom. He bought a pair of energy drinks and paid at the counter. He walked outside and pulled out his phone to check the time, stopping at the curb to wait for a long white van to park next to his car. At that moment, the screen lit up with a call. It had been on silent all week.