The Age of Zeus

72. FANTASIA OF GHOULISHNESS

She took Hyperion's gauntleted hand, and together they ran, out of the agora, away from the oncoming electrical blitz. Behind them flashes lit up the air, turning the mist brightly pearlescent, and then came a tremendous crackle and clatter as the lightning struck, and the grinding of flagstones behind torn up, and beneath their feet the booming groan of the mountainside as it cavilled at the harsh treatment being meted out on it.

"Where are we going?" Sam yelled.

"Anywhere but there," Hyperion yelled back.

"And the others?"

"They've got their orders. There's a plan, believe it or not, and part of it is you and I need to get somewhere sheltered and safe. See this thing on my back? Santa's sack. I have a present for you."

She hadn't noticed in all the melee, but Hyperion had a large container strapped to his shoulders, somewhat like a hiker's backpack but made of solid plastic. It looked big enough to contain…

"My suit!" Sam gasped.

"Not quite, but good as. Now shut up and run."

She shut up and they ran, hand in hand, while the lightning apocalypse raged on in the agora. Hyperion appeared to be making a beeline for the amphitheatre but Sam had a better idea. With a tug she diverted him toward the nearest temple, which happened to be Hades's. They darted through the entrance, passing along a shadowy passageway and emerging into the naos.

Sam hadn't ventured in here before — had had no desire to — but she was not surprised to find the courtyard decked out with all manner of death-related paraphernalia. There were coffins, crematorium urns, headstones, skulls, wax death masks, embalmed foetuses in jars of formaldehyde, and even a lifesize mock-up, like a museum diorama, showing Charon the underworld ferryman punting his skiff across the Styx, the river represented by a sheet of rippled glass.

"Jesus," muttered Hyperion, "who did the interior design here — Tim Burton?"

The centrepiece of this fantasia of ghoulishness was a stone bier on which lay a naked woman, clad in diaphanous nightwear, garlanded with silk flowers and surrounded by candles. Hyperion approached the bier for closer inspection, assuming the woman was another model like Charon. Sam grabbed him by the arm.

"I wouldn't."

"It's just a waxwork."

"I don't think so."

Hyperion looked again, and his lip curled in revulsion. "You have got to be shitting me."

Not an effigy. A cadaver. The skin puffy in places, grey-tinged, not shinily smooth like the Charon replica's. The undersides of the arms and legs empurpled with livor mortis. The make-up overdone to compensate for pallor. The hair matt and listless but too thick and wavy to be anything but the hair of a once-living person.

Sam would have bet anything that Hades called this embalmed corpse Persephone, and what he got up to with it in the privacy of his temple didn't bear thinking about, although the half-used tube of lubricating jelly that lay at the foot of the bier was something of a clue.

She would have bet anything, too, that Hades had been considering her, Sam, as a substitute Persephone for when he got bored of this one here or the relevant parts of the corpse wore out their welcome. Hence his constant speculative interest in her. He'd been sizing her up as the next candidate for the role of necrophiliac fuck-dummy.

"Let's just do this quickly and get out of here," she said to Hyperion, suppressing a shudder.

Nodding agreement, Hyperion unshouldered the container and began fishing segments of TITAN suit out of it. Sam, with her back firmly turned on Persephone, shrugged out of her clothes and set to work armouring herself.

"It's Fred's, not yours," Hyperion said, "but he wasn't big. You guys were pretty much the same height and weight, so with a bit of adjustment it should be an OK fit."

"I don't mind," Sam said, tugging on the one-piece undergarment. "How did you know, though? That I was here? How did you know I was even still alive?"

"We didn't. We believed. We hoped. I hoped most of all. And believed most of all. The way Hermes took you, it looked like a planned kidnapping. We figured maybe Zeus wanted you for some reason, like as a bargaining chip or something."

"Worse than that."

"What?"

"I'll tell you some other time," said Sam. "It's been a long wait, Rick, but I never gave up on you lot. I never despaired." Although it had been close.

"Hey, you want to talk about long waits? Try spending two and a half hours in a sealed crate with Dez Barrington." Hyperion downpipe-gurgled.

The lightning bolts were still streaking down onto the agora, but now a deeper, louder sound resounded across the stronghold. It came from the direction of the gate, and resembled nothing on earth so much as the splintering creak then crash of some immense tree being felled.

"What the hell was — ?"

"That," Hyperion said, "is Rhea taking out the gate with a frostique charge. Least, it should be if we're still on-plan. Did you see her scooting off just before the helicopter fell?"

"No. Too busy getting out of the way."

"Hermes went after her, but she dropped countermeasures."

"Caltrops?"

"It was glorious. She plunked them down behind her like a handful of jacks. Asshole couldn't stop himself, trod straight on them. Spikes stuck right through his feet and he went over like a bowling pin."

"Wish I had seen it," Sam said, strapping the breastplate on. "Darren ruddy Pugh."

"Huh? What about him?"

"Again, I'll tell you some other time. So if the gate's breached…"

"…there's about fifteen hundred armed troops waiting out there in the mist to come in."

And as if to illustrate, a faint, far-off cry started up, a throaty bellow from hundreds of voices, a massed rallying call. Counterpointing it were shrill, indignant shrieks from the Harpies and a few sharp cracks of gunfire.

"God, this is really it, isn't it? This is the day the Olympians finally get what's coming to them."

"Don't jump the gun, Sam." Hyperion handed her a helmet. "It's looking good but it's far from decided. The Olympians are tough sons of bitches and shouldn't be underestimated."

"But three of them have been taken out already."

" Two of them. Two of the weakest. Hermes isn't out of action. He can still teleport, and if Demeter gets to him he'll be up and running again in no time."

"We need to take out Demeter. She's their most valuable asset, in a way."

"Hey, fearless leader, let's get you back in the game first before you start handing out orders again. How's the suit feel?"

"Odd." But right. Oh so right. She snugged the helmet on.

"Patanjali's reprogrammed the voice recognition to respond to your speech patterns rather than Fred's. Try it."

"Options menu up," Sam said, and the visor HUD sprang to life. Again, oh so right. The beautiful familiarity of those glowing symbols and characters.

She looked down at herself. The breastplate still carried the black-bordered "HK" that Fred had had put there, emblem of the Obliteration. A dead man's suit, but that didn't bother her. It was hers now, and she was Tethys once more.

As if to confirm it, she heard a familiar voice in her ear.

"That sounded like… Tethys? Is that really you?"

"It is, Jamie. How's tricks?"

"Not so bad. We're cooped up in some bloody wee Portakabin in the back garden of the boss's pad in London, me, Rajesh and a couple of the other guys. This is base now, and it's no Bleaney but it'll have to do. I'll be here if you need me."

"Gotcha."

She looked round at Hyperion and found him holding out a recoilless submachine gun to her.

She took it.

"Rick…"

"Hyperion."

"No. Rick. When this is over — "

"When this is over, Sam, and assuming we make it, we're going to get roaring shitfaced drunk and have a damn good time. Right now — "

"No."

She flipped her visor up, leaned forward, flipped his up too, and kissed him. It was awkward, a case of angling her head over to the side as far as it would go and extruding her lips as far as they would go. It was also fleeting, because the position was impossible to maintain for long. But it was tender, and soft, and meaningful, and she relished it right down to the scrape of his day-old stubble against the tip of her nose.

"And now," Sam said, flipping her visor back down and ratcheting her gun's cocking lever, "let's get out there and finish this."

"That's what I want to hear," said Hyperion, and he and Sam hustled out of the temple — Hades's little haven of morbidity, his celebration of all things deathly, complete with corpse bride — and into the mist-draped tumult of battle.