Lore

They followed the trail of broken furniture through the rooms beyond it. Shipping crates had been smashed open, the paintings inside shredded, the vases and clocks smashed.

They passed the infamous bowling alley and continued their search, until, finally, Lore saw signs for what lay ahead.

The museum’s storage vault.

She jumped as a booming crash split the air. It was followed by another, and another—glass shattered, and a single voice let out a ragged scream of frustration.

Lore pulled the dead hunter’s dagger out from where she’d tied it to her thigh with a strip of fabric. She switched off the flashlight and passed her phone back to Miles. He nodded in understanding when she pressed a finger to her lips, but ignored her when she motioned for him to stay back as she approached the door and nudged it open.

Paintings had been stored on sliding walls of thin metal fencing, all lined up like stacks in a library. Beyond them, the dark walkway continued to the left. Lore stuck her head around the corner, only to quickly pull back at the next splintering crash.

Miles shot her a questioning look, but Athena urged her on with a nod.

Lore approached the door at the end of the hall. It had been left ajar, and if she kept close to the wall, she had a view of what was waiting for them inside.

A titan of a man careered around the storage room, moving between the shelf-lined walls, all brimming with boxes, clocks, and smaller figurines. Stone busts and bronze statues watched the man with lidless eyes from a platform at the center of the room, and narrowly survived an angry sweep of his arm.

He dragged one of the storage boxes off a nearby shelf and threw it to the ground with a grunt. It broke apart in an instant, leaving him to rummage through the padding. He kicked the remains of a broken vase aside. It skidded through the shards of glass and tufts of packing material littering the floor.

Iason Herakliou. The new god still wore his sky-blue tunic and sandals, both filthy with grass and dark grime.

The photograph had shown a middle-aged man who, while fit, was still balding and showing other signs of age. Yet this man—this new god—looked as if he had been carved from sun-warmed sandstone. His hair was nearly the same shade as Athena’s dark gold, and his skin was a deep olive but was caked with dirt and dried blood.

The Reveler reached for a handle of whiskey he’d left on one of the shelves, sucking down a long draw of the burning liquid. Then he upended the bottle, pouring the rest of the contents over a massive gash in his thigh. He growled and snarled through the pain, beating a fist against the cinder-block wall until it passed.

Lore reached behind her, and, without looking, grabbed Miles by the shirt. She pushed him back, then pointed down the hall, to safety.

Which, of course, was the exact moment Miles’s phone let out an earsplitting ring from inside his pocket.

“Shit—” He fumbled for it, hitting buttons as he did. His mother’s voice poured through the device. “Miles, I need your help with something—”

Lore stared at him.

He hung the call up, breathing hard as he switched it to silent and pressed the device against his chest.

The storage vault’s door slammed shut in front of them, the sound echoing through the terrifying silence that followed. Lore gripped her knife, straining her ears to try to track the new god’s steps, but heard nothing.

Where is he? she thought, sweat beading her upper lip. Where the hell did he go?

A torrent of plaster and shards of cement exploded out of the wall to her right. Lore was thrown by the force of it, momentarily stunned by a blow to the head—only to be caught by a hand that reached through the jagged hole and locked around her throat.

LORE CLAWED AT THE hand choking her, head throbbing and half-blinded by the veil of dust choking the air.

His fingers tightened, and as her vision began to go dark, Lore felt her spine compress, ready to crack. She thrust her dagger up again and again until it finally stabbed through the Reveler’s forearm. He howled in pain, his grip loosening just enough for her to drop down onto her knees and roll away, coughing.

The Reveler retracted his arm through the wall. The hole it left revealed the rest of the room, the way a section of it extended to nearly the exact spot she’d chosen to stand.

Lore grimaced. Great job as always.

Athena glowered and moved Lore out of her way. She tore at the damaged wall with her hand and dory, widening the hole until it was large enough to step through.

“Reveler! We’re not here to kill you!” Lore got out, her voice raw. A bestial snarl answered. Inside the room, shelves fell in an earsplitting cacophony.

Athena ripped one last cinder block away and ducked into the vault. Lore scrambled after her, turning to face Miles through the fractured wall. “Go get Castor!”

She didn’t wait to hear if he actually listened.

“I knew you’d come for me eventually, you big, hateful bitch!” The Reveler gnashed his teeth at them. Athena had backed him into a corner, and all he had to defend himself was Lore’s dagger, pulled from his arm, and a crate’s lid for a shield.

Athena watched, stone-faced, as his body heaved with his hatred.

“No one is here to kill you,” Lore said again, holding out her hands to show him she was unarmed, and to placate him.

“I may yet alter course,” Athena said coolly.

The Reveler’s face screwed up, twisting with rage and disgust. The sight of him, drunken and stripped down to the chaos of fear and self-preservation, might have stirred a trace of pity in Lore, if he hadn’t just savagely murdered six innocent people upstairs.

“My name is Melora Perseous,” Lore began.

The Reveler let out a dark laugh. “Of course. Gods damn it all. Don’t know why I expected anyone else, given how shit this cycle has been.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with that, so she continued. “I appeal to you, a descendant of mighty Herakles, himself the most famous and renowned of the ancient Perseides—”

“That shit doesn’t work on me, idiot child,” the Reveler snapped. “I don’t give a flying feck, and even if I did, Eurystheus of the Perseides attempted to destroy all the children of Herakles before the Agon was ever born.”

“Okay,” Lore choked out, having forgotten that dark bit of history. “Fair point. But we’re just here to talk.”

“Unless you would prefer to fight?” Athena said. “We will have answers from you either way.”