The Age of Zeus

56. THE CALL

"Y ou were bluffing," Ramsay said in the taxi back to Sam's house. "All that stuff about a Cold War, a balance of power — psyching them out, yeah?"

"Well, to work, any good bluff has to have an element of sincerity."

"But detente — doesn't that mean they have to believe we're a force equal to them?"

"As long as they believe it, then it makes no difference whether we are or aren't."

He whistled through his teeth. "You are some piece of work, woman. You've got even me thinking there could be a nonviolent solution to all this, and I'm a 'shoot first, don't bother asking any questions' type of guy. This comes off, and a certain former billionaire we all know is going to be mighty pissed."

"And I care what he thinks because…?"

Ramsay downpipe-gurgled, and Sam realised she'd missed that wonderful ugly sound.

"Can we trust those two back there, though?" asked Mahmoud. No one was mentioning any names. The partition between the taxi driver and his passengers was shut, but it was as well to be discreet.

"I trust their sense of self-interest," Sam said. "And I think, by their own standards, they're trying to do what's best for all concerned."

"So now we wait for them to call."

"We do. It all depends how far they get with their leader. I'm not holding out much hope, but you never know."

"A part of me doesn't like the idea," Mahmoud said, "them not being brought to book for what they've done."

"Your brothers?"

"And all the rest of it. But another part of me thinks your proposal could actually be the right thing under the circumstances. It shows that we're better than them. We're not descending to their level. As a cop I was never in favour of the death penalty, even for the worst kind of murderers. Bang them up for life, yes, but don't kill them. The law shouldn't stoop to the level of the lawbreakers, it should rise above. I felt differently after what happened to my brothers and what that did to my dad and mum, but now, if there really is an alternative available, I think I could live with it."

Back at Kensal Rise, Sam put her mobile on charge and left it switched on, and a day passed and the only call she got was from her phone service provider enquiring whether she would like to upgrade to a pricier and staggeringly more complicated tariff. Another day passed, and still no word from Dionysus and Aphrodite. Her initiative appeared to have failed. She was disappointed but, if she was honest with herself, not that surprised. It was doubtful that Zeus could be persuaded to surrender his authority, his position, all he had gained, just like that, whatever the perceived threat to him and his cronies. Xander Landesman had dedicated five years of his life to plotting revenge against his father and a further decade to seeing it through and consolidating his grip over the world. Such a fire of spite and pride burned inside him that nothing short of death, it seemed, could extinguish it. And what he decided, all the other Olympians, beholden to him for the gift of their extraordinary powers, would loyally go along with.

"At least you tried," Ramsay said to Sam on the evening of the second day, over beers in the back garden. It was actually warm out, something of a miracle. The first proper good weather of the year, and they'd celebrated it with a barbecue on the patio and two six-packs of Samuel Adams which Ramsay had found at a local, specialist off-licence and pounced on like a man lost in the desert finding water. Now, on deckchairs, beneath a purple sky streaked with flamingo-pink contrails, slightly drunk on the beer, he and Sam were consoling themselves. Mahmoud was indoors, catching up on Corrie.

"Shot for the moon and missed," Sam said.

"More like Pluto than the moon. But still worth trying."

"I take it you mean the planet, not the cartoon dog."

"There's a planet called Pluto?"

"Don't think so any longer, actually. Hasn't it been downgraded to a dwarf planet or some such?"

"Oh, so now it's Dopey, not Pluto."

Sam laughed. "By the way, did you hear about those astronomers who want to rename the planets? It was on the news just the other day. They want to switch them from their Roman-god names to their Greek-god equivalents. Neptune to become Poseidon, Jupiter Zeus, Mars Ares, et cetera. Can't believe it. It's not enough that the Olympians have the earth, they have to have the solar system as well?"

"Ah, it's just whackjob scientists trying to be controversial, get noticed, maybe hoover up some extra funding," said Ramsay. "It'll never gain any traction."

"But why, even still, are there people who want to suck up to the Olympians? We were changing things, weren't we? Turning everyone against them, even the waverers. What happened?"

"We stopped. The campaign went into hiatus. That's what happened. Halfway through the game us guys suddenly walked off the field, and now folks in the bleachers are all confused. Who do they support? They thought the underdogs were going to bring the league champions down. The Olympians were the team they hated to love and they were just beginning to love to hate them, and think it was safe to, and then…" He flapped his lips, making a noise like a deflating balloon. "All over, so maybe they should start to hate to love them again." A shrug. "Crowd psychology's not one of my strong suits, but that would be my guess. We've let them down when we least needed to. I'm sure we can pick up from where we left off, though."

"Is this you trying to re-recruit me?"

He held out a fresh bottle of Samuel Adams. "Right now I'd settle for us, you and me, getting back to where we were not so long ago. The rest I can take or leave."

"I'll consider it," she said, twisting off the cap. Beer foamed, and for no good reason she thought of Aphrodite and her mythical birth in a turbulent froth of divine semen and sea water.

"Thank you for that," Ramsay said. "Not least 'cause sleeping on that couch of yours is giving me a hell of a crick in the neck."

"So all you're after is somewhere comfy for the night. How romantic."

"I thought romance didn't enter into this."

"You have me there," Sam admitted.

Indoors, her mobile rang.

She and Ramsay exchanged glances.

"Probably just another sales call," she said, starting to get up.

"I'll go!" Mahmoud shouted from the house.

"Would you mind?" Sam shouted back. The deckchair was proving tricky to extricate herself from. She was perhaps a little tipsier than she thought.

The twiddly melody of her ringtone halted and she heard Mahmoud say, "Yes?"

Then there was silence.

A long silence.

That got longer still.

Sam and Ramsay exchanged glances again.

"Zaina?" Sam called out. "Did you pick that up? Did they ring off? Who was it?"

No reply.

A chilly breeze prickled the back of Sam's neck.

Except that there was no breeze.

She and Ramsay levered themselves out of the deckchairs and crossed the lawn. Ramsay looked as apprehensive as Sam felt, and as puzzled about it too, for there was no cause for apprehension, was there?

The back door led through a utility room extension into the kitchen, where Sam's mobile lay on the countertop, still hooked up to the mains. Of Mahmoud there was no sign. Sam grabbed the phone and checked the memory. Whoever had rung a couple of minutes ago had withheld their number.

"Zaina?"

A creak of a floorboard, overhead.

Ramsay pointed in that direction, then aimed two fingers at his eyes for look, followed by a pumping of the fist to indicate move out.

Sam would have laughed at him, but somehow, as things stood, the use of military patrol hand signals didn't seem so absurd. Not least because at that moment she noticed something. A knife was absent from the knife block next to the toaster. The slot where one of the large carvers was normally sheathed gaped empty.

She drew Ramsay's attention to this.

He looked a question at her: you're sure?

"Don't think we used it tonight," she whispered. "It should be there."

"But not for definite?" he whispered back.

"If it's not there, I don't know where else it would be."

"Shit." He rolled his eyes. "OK, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for all this. That was a wrong number and Zaina's gone up to her room to get a book or something and the knife's been mislaid and you and I are making a big deal outta nothing."

The fearful note in his voice undermined everything he said.

"Why hasn't she answered me then?" Sam said.

"I'm trying not to think about that. Come on."

They headed up the stairs single file, stealthy. The guest room, which Mahmoud was using, lay directly above the kitchen. It used to be Sam's bedroom when she was a girl, and still visible on the door were the shapes of eight wooden letters that had spelled out her name, bright white against the surrounding age-yellowed paintwork. She kept meaning to sand the door down and repaint it, get rid of the ghost name. She had repapered the walls of the guest room itself to cover up the greasy Blu-Tack residue which marked where posters of Take That and the Spice Girls — and, later, Jarvis Cocker and Blur — used to hang. The door had been next on her to-do list, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to erase every last trace of her childhood from the house.

Now the door stood slightly ajar and the white letter silhouettes seemed to be calling to her, beckoning her in. The light inside the guest room was not on. Yet she knew Mahmoud was there. She could sense her, a waiting presence in the dark.

Ramsay rapped carefully with one knuckle, just above the second A of SAMANTHA.

"Zaina? You OK? Sam and I were wondering if there's a problem of some kind. Who was that on the phone? Was it, maybe, Aphrodite?"

Please not, Sam said to herself, but she had been thinking exactly the same thing. Aphrodite had called and had spoken to Mahmoud in her special way, her influential way, and had ordered her to do something — something that involved a carving knife.

"Zaina, we're going to come in," said Ramsay. "Nice and gentle. This is me and Sam. Your friends."

"Titans," came Mahmoud's voice from the dark. The word rose and fell, eerily neutral, neither quite interrogative nor statement.

"Yeah, Titans. Like you. So is it OK? Us coming in?"

No answer.

Ramsay eased the door inwards, a hinge squeaking softly. He and Sam peered into the darkness, trying to make out as much detail as they could by the twilight glow coming in through the uncurtained window. Bed, wardrobe, dresser, chair, fireplace, radiator — but nothing of Mahmoud.

"Zaina, if Aphrodite's been speaking with you, whatever she's said to you I want you to ignore. It's lies, all of it. You have to remember, Sam and me, we're the good guys, and so are you. We're on the same side. We — "

Sam glimpsed the glint of the blade an instant before it came jabbing through the gap between the door's hinges. She yelled out a warning, but not in time. The knife slashed down Ramsay's arm, raking it from shoulder to elbow. Ramsay recoiled with a shout, colliding with Sam and sending them both asprawl on the landing carpet. He rolled off her, clutching his arm in pain. Sam leapt to her feet.

Mahmoud came out from behind the door and stood framed in the doorway, bloodied carver in her hand. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and staring. Her smile was likewise unnaturally broad. She looked lost and dazed and at the same time serenely happy.

"Oh Sam," she said, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "I cut your man. I penetrated him. Just like he penetrates you, when you let him. Doesn't like it, though, does he? Being penetrated. Look at him."

Ramsay was struggling to get up but he was in shock, grey-faced, gasping. Blood gushed from a deep, foot-long wound in his arm, soaking the carpet.

"Zaina, put the knife down," Sam said. "It's not you doing this, it's Aphrodite. You have to fight it. She's told you to attack us, kill us, but you know you don't really want to. Deep in your heart you know."

"My heart?" echoed Mahmoud. "Yes, Aphrodite is in my heart. She loves me, I love her, and I'd do anything for her. You don't know much about love, do you, Sam? You've got a man to fuck, and that's great. Everybody needs a good fucking. Me especially. I haven't had a good fucking in ages, and to be honest I'm jealous of you, you with your big stud there. Wish I'd been able to get him to fuck me. But love? You don't do love, do you, duck? It's not in your vocabulary any more. You've forgotten what it means. You've shut yourself off from it, ever since you lost that other fella of yours, that Ade. Let me open you up to love again, Sam." She reaffirmed her grip on the knife handle. "Let me open up your heart."

She ran at Sam with the carver held out at chest height. Sam stepped smartly to one side, as she'd been taught in her training at Hendon. Avoiding the impetus of the blow, she parried at the same time, shoving Mahmoud's arm aside. Mahmoud's momentum carried her forward, but she quickly wheeled and came back. Sam knew she ought to use one of the more vicious control techniques she knew to bring Mahmoud down, but couldn't bring herself to. This was her friend. In the event, all she could do was catch Mahmoud's wrist double-handed, just preventing the knife from plunging into her. The two of them slammed against the landing's wooden balustrade. Mahmoud bore down hard on Sam, forcing her to bend backwards, away from the knifepoint, which quivered over her sternum.

The balustrade was old, an original feature of the house from the late Victorian era. Sam's parents used to caution her often about putting too much weight on it, in case it broke.

Now, with too much weight being put on the balustrade, her parents' prediction came true. Several of the spindles snapped free from their sockets, the handrail cracked in two and gave way, and Sam and Mahmoud plummeted through onto the stairs. Sam took the brunt of the impact with her shoulders, then together she and Mahmoud, with the carver still between them, slither-rolled down to the foot of the flight. Mahmoud tumbled free at the bottom, spreadeagled across the parquet floor. The knife remained in her clutches.

Sam lay upended, stunned, her neck and shoulders in spasm, and though she kept telling herself to get up, get going, because the danger was far from over, her body felt numb and unresponsive and stubbornly refused to move. She looked up, and there was Ramsay peering out over the lip of the landing through the broken balustrade, face tight and pain-wracked.

"Sam…" he groaned. Then, with sudden, bug-eyed urgency: "Sam!"

Mahmoud appeared, looming over her, the knife poised above her throat.

Sam had no idea how she managed it, but somehow, through some panicked miracle, she found herself scrabbling up the stairs feet first, on all fours, on her back, faster than she would have ever thought possible, like some sort of human crab. Mahmoud came charging up after her, but Ramsay intercepted, reaching out from the landing and seizing her knife hand with his one good arm. She twisted out of his grasp easily, but the delay gave Sam just enough time to reach the top of the flight and right herself and turn.

Mahmoud aimed a couple of ferocious stabs at Ramsay's face, which he barely succeeded in evading. Next moment, Sam hurled herself down the stairs in a headlong lunge, slamming into Mahmoud. The two women staggered all the way to the bottom and crashed together onto the hall floor. This time it was Mahmoud who, being underneath Sam, got the worst of it. The impact jarred the knife from her hand and sent it skidding under the small round table near the front door on which Sam left her house keys and her unopened post.

Sam straddled Mahmoud, pinning her wrists to the parquet.

"Zaina! Listen to me! Snap out of it!"

"This is kinky, isn't it?" Mahmoud's wheedling tone was accompanied by a leery grin. "I always suspected you'd be an on-top kind of woman. But girl on girl? Isn't that more Therese's thing?"

"Shut up. This isn't you. This isn't the Zaina Mahmoud I know. Aphrodite's turned you into a… a thing. A perverted thing. You have to remember who you are."

"Such a beautiful voice, the goddess has," Mahmoud crooned. "When you hear it — hear it properly — you can't help but listen. It's still in my head, and my heart. She loves us, us Titans. Loves us so much. But we can't carry on. We can't carry on hurting the Olympians. She can't let us. Zeus doesn't want it, and she is his aunt after all. His doting aunt. She wants me to kill as many Titans as I can, then myself. And she's right to want that. It's the best way, the kindest way. Like putting down a pet, remember? Euthanasia."

"Zain-"

But with a sudden, startling burst of strength Mahmoud lunged upwards, shoving Sam off. She scrambled on her hands and knees to get to the knife. Sam sprang after her, but Mahmoud was faster, nearer, and snatched up the carver from under the table and began twisting round to meet her opponent. Sam dived on her back, driving her onto the floor. She'd hoped to lodge the knife securely beneath Mahmoud's body, flat, out of harm's way. That had been the plan. Put the weapon beyond immediate use, then hold Mahmoud down, applying minimum restraint techniques — armlock, wrist flexed round, one knee on her back. Continue trying to talk her round from Aphrodite's bewitchment. Failing that, keep her secured in place until the spell wore off. As a rule, Aphrodite's commands had a life of half an hour or so, after which their influence rapidly waned. Sam was willing to hold Mahmoud down for that long, longer if she had to. With Ramsay's help, perhaps she could truss her up with bedsheets or something until her mind was fully clear again.

But Mahmoud had stopped moving, had gone entirely limp, and even as Sam bore down on her with her full bodyweight she knew the truth. The truth had been in the angle of the carver's blade as she had landed on Mahmoud. The truth was in the soft rattling croak that now escaped Mahmoud's throat, followed by utter silence. The truth began leaking out on either side of Mahmoud's torso, a seeping dark flood that submerged the parquet tiles, erasing their unevenness with its thick, oily smoothness. The awful crimson truth.

Sam clambered off her friend and crawled to the edge of the hallway, clear of the spreading blood and the motionless body. Knees to chest, knuckles to mouth, she began to choke. Then she began to sob. For the first time in a long while tears came to her eyes, burning as they brimmed and spilled. Soon she was howling, and shaking uncontrollably, and it felt terrible but it felt good as well, for as much as she was filled with grief, she was filled with hatred too. The old familiar hatred but a new strain of it — stronger, hotter, purer. A hatred so intense that, like some all-dissolving acid, it seemed nothing could ever contain it.

That was how Ramsay found her as he came limping down the stairs, his belt lashed around his bicep as a makeshift tourniquet. Sam was hunched up, in torment, and hating as she had never hated before.