When I woke up, the sun was still up and a glance at the clock on the nightstand told me I had been asleep for about three hours. It was enough because I felt refreshed as if I had slept an entire night. My sleep had been deep and free from disturbing nightmares. A healing sleep, both mentally and physically. The memory of Sonara still swirled in my brain as I faced midday. I sent a mental thank you to Eli. He understood the gratitude I felt.

From my closet, I removed a white tiered skirt that reached almost to my ankles and a medium blue peasant blouse that made my eyes look more blue than gray. I brushed my hair which was still damp and walked out to meet the guys who sat around the table. Bill had several sheets of paper on the table in front of him and he was writing more notes. Aaron stared intently at Bill’s writing. Eli leaned back in one of the chairs looking as if he had no cares in the world. He smiled at me and mouthed the words, “I love you.”

“You look better,” Bill said, as he glanced in my direction.

“Thanks,” I said to him.

Eli rose and offered me his seat while he crossed to the kitchen to pour some coffee into my favorite mug—a pear-shaped mug with a beautiful hibiscus flower in pink on the side. When I gripped it in both my hands, it seemed to fit my palms perfectly.

“We’ve actually made a lot of progress,” Bill was saying as if I had never been out of the room. “Progress based on what you told us about the house and the people in it. If Phobos has this same talent that Zeus has, then we won’t be able to just go in there. I won’t send cops in to die. I think what he did with the bodies we have been finding all over the state was just practice.”

“I don’t know about that,” Aaron said. “Why would he need to practice on more than one person?”

“For fun,” Bill argued.

“But, as Athena verified, they like their fun up close and personal,” Aaron argued.

“I dunno,” Bill said. “Maybe he gets some kind of rush when he kills a guy that’s thirty miles away.”

“I don’t think you’re right,” Aaron argued, again.

Eli placed the mug of coffee on the table in front of me and flopped into the last available dining room chair. “They have been going at it since you went to sleep. Arguing every point to death. We have, dearest wife, created a monster.” There was a hint of humor in Eli’s eyes. “So, Great Mediator, as you can see, we desperately need your services.”

I nodded and said, “I have heard only this small snippet of conversation, but think about this Bill. What if Aaron is right?”

Bill sat up straighter and said, “Aaron isn’t right.”

I continued, “What if it is more than one person who can do this? Say one person figured it out—Phobos maybe—and he tells someone else how to do it. Deimos is the next likely choice. To test out the theory, Deimos kills someone, then tells Eris and she kills someone...”

“Holy Hannah, you may be right,” Bill said.

Aaron, looking more than pleased with himself as if he won the argument alone, said, “We have all known that Zeus can kill someone—even an Olympian or a Titan—with a thought. It is an instantaneous death. Zeus considered it a merciful execution. But, until now, we didn’t know how he was doing it.”

I interjected, “But Zeus killed with a thought and the person just collapsed. He didn’t explode them. That is overkill and not his style. Whoever is doing this is doing something new and different.”

“We,” Bill emphasized the word ‘we’, “still don’t know how he is doing it,” Bill spoke as if I hadn’t opened my mouth.

Aaron shot Bill a glare and continued, “Maybe Phobos has been trying to figure it out since the Golden Age. Maybe all this stuff he has done over the years was simply practice. It is a simple metaphysical ability, like transporting or telepathy. You just have to get the metaphysics right in your head. Maybe he just kept trying until he figured it out. Maybe he thinks that is the key to Zeus’s power, although we all know it is not.”

“I counted four maybes in that little speech of yours, Aaron,” I said. “First, we don’t know the key to Zeus’s power. It is a lot more than simply being able to kill with a thought. Every talent we possess, as a race... both races for that matter... was perfected in Zeus. He is just flat better at everything. And he is stronger than all of us combined. Everyone knows that.”

“Okay, okay,” Bill said. “So, assuming Athena is right and they have figured out how to use this new talent, that means eleven of them can do it.”

“Not necessarily eleven,” I said and Bill shot me an irritated look. I continued, “The last two that were killed at the same time, that could have been the second phase of an experiment. A person kills one and they know they can do it. Then, they try to kill two at the same time.”

“True,” Bill conceded. “So, we are back to nine killers?”

“Bill, stop thinking like a cop,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it is one or nine people doing the killings. One or more has developed a formidable talent and that has to be stopped, if for no other reason than to keep others of our kind from getting the same idea and trying their own experiments.”

“But, why the blood?”

Aaron answered. “To get attention. Maybe even national attention. Or international attention. Bodies dropping dead of mysterious causes wouldn’t hardly warrant even a mention on the local news. But, spectacularly blown up bodies dropping dead is another story altogether.”

It was Eli’s turn to frown. “Why would any of them want media attention?”

I smiled at Eli. For all his great age, he was still innocent in so many ways. I said, “Anyone of us would recognize what was happening. Eli, remember the car we found full of blood? As soon as we saw it, we knew where it came from. We told Aaron and he knew, immediately. There are a lot of us on earth, us Olympians and Titans. Phobos is sending out a calling card. He is contacting all of us to grow his power base, considerably I would think. I think the body count will escalate until it gets worldwide attention.”

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“Athena,” Bill said. “You have just put a face on this whole thing that’s not very pretty. So, we have to stop the escalation. If they get enough practice, they could drop ten thousand people in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve.”

“By Zeus, he’s right,” Aaron said. “Phobos could make the Twin Towers look like child’s play.”

“Let me ask you this,” Bill said. “What is the difference between killing one or killing more than one? I mean the metaphysical difference?”

I thought for a moment and then said, “Eli, you have the answer to this one. Is it the same transporting yourself as it is transporting you and your horses?”

“No. It’s totally different. It is different transporting me and one other person. Different again transporting me and two other people. It has to be different or else three times as much energy is used. If I adjust how I do it, I can save energy and not pass out from exhaustion in the middle of it.”

“You do it differently, you say,” Bill said.

Eli nodded.

Bill asked, “What happens if you transported just yourself by the same method you use to transport your horses?”

Eli thought for a moment and then said, “I don’t know because I have never tried it. I never needed to. I can get anywhere I want to go just as fast, so the extra energy was never needed.”

Bill said, “That means they have to practice on two, then three, then...”

Eli looked grim when he said, “Yes, that is the way it works.”

“So the next death will be another double if they follow suit,” Bill said, making more notes on the paper.

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“How do they choose their victims?” Bill asked. It was the same question we had been wondering from the beginning. Why these particular people?

“It could be random,” Eli said. “I can look over every person in a city, if I want to. Maybe they just scan an area, find someone who is in the right spot at the right time and then... wait a second. It would take two, each time.”

“How do you figure that?” Bill asked.

“One to kill the people and one to transport the excess blood. Those are two separate actions and can’t be done at the same time by the same person.”

“Two who are joined? Partnered?” I asked.

“Yes,” Eli said. “To get the timing right, they would have to be mentally synchronized.”

Right on cue, Bill’s phone rang and he answered it with, “Talk to me.” He listened, nodding and then asked, “What’s the address?” He grabbed his notebook and presumably wrote down the information. Then, he closed his phone without saying goodbye. It was so typically Bill Townsend. “There’s another incident. I have to go.”

“I’m coming with you,” Aaron said.

I rose to my feet and Eli said, “It looks like we are all coming with you. We’ll take Athena’s SUV.” He glanced at me and said, “I’m driving. After I bring the car back here, of course.” I nodded. “Aaron, you better come with me. We may have to dig her truck out of the sand.”

“Eli, wait,” I said. “What if the two of you are trapped like I was?”

“Won’t happen. First, dark power thrives on night. You were there just after sunset. It is high noon, now, when the dark ones are the weakest. Even if the wards are still as strong during the day, we are going to transport them to two different places and then meet at the SUV. Then, I will drive the SUV down the road a bit and transport Aaron, me, and the truck back here.”

I couldn’t argue with his confidence. “Just be very careful,” I said. Secretly, I was glad he didn’t ask me to go with them. Facing the house again, after the night’s festivities was not something I could deal with at that moment.

“Look, this is another thing we talked about while you were sleeping,” Eli said. He quickly caressed my cheek and then said, “Don’t worry. Back in five minutes.”

Eli and Aaron vanished from the room and I still felt very uneasy with worry that he would get into trouble, being so close to Phobos’s house in Eastover. I glanced at my watch. I would give them ten minutes only, then I would transport Bill and me to the house in Eastover and we would stage a rescue.

Eli once again stood beside me in less than four minutes, my keys dangling in one hand. I let him have the keys. Even after my rest, I wasn’t feeling perfect, yet. Eli could drive.

“Any trouble getting my truck out of the sand?” I asked.

“Nope,” Eli told me. “I just started it up and once it was moving a little bit, I transported it to the alley. It wasn’t stuck in the sand, Athena. It was just parked on the side of the road.”

I had a moment of confusion because I clearly remembered the tire being buried to the axle and gathering brush to shove in front of the tire to give me additional traction. I also remembered the strange passage of time while I was with Phobos. Could I have imagined the truck being stuck? Could I have imagined the whole episode? The thought of someone controlling my mind to that extent was more than a little bit frightening.

Aaron said, “I got shotgun.”

I replied, “No way. It’s my car. You ride in the back.”

Eli said, “Actually, Bill needs to be in front.”

“Why?” I asked.

“His legs are longer, my dearest,” Eli said as he opened the back door.

“He can turn sideways in the back seat,” I argued.

“Holy Hannah,” Bill said. “Is everything a production with you people? Just get in the car. There are killers running around the city and we have to stop them.”

We followed Eli down the stairs at the back of the apartment. Aaron started again, “I called shotgun before anyone else.”

All three of us turned and glared at Aaron for a moment and he raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. I got it. Athena gets the front seat.”

We piled into the Blazer and Eli started it. Before he was fully backed into the alley, Bill began explaining the crime scene. “Okay, you guys are guests at the scene. You will get to look from a distance, but you won’t be allowed to get really close. Listen to what the cops at the scene tell you. The biggest thing they will be worried about is compromising the scene. Destroying evidence.” He took a deep breath and then said, “This won’t be pretty. Looking at dead bodies before the undertaker has a go at them is never pleasant.”

Aaron replied, “I have seen more bodies before the undertaker had a go at them than you can even imagine. I am not squeamish.”

“Well, no, you wouldn’t be,” Bill conceded, emphasizing the word ‘you.’

“Are you implying that I am?” Eli asked. “You forget, I have seen almost as much death as Aaron has, simply because I can see everything.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Bill said. “But what about her?”

“’Her’ is in the car with you,” I said to Bill. “And furthermore, ‘Her’ was the goddess of war. You think I have never seen a dead body before?”

“Holy Hannah, I forget who I’m dealing with here. But, Athena, after last night...”

I interrupted him. “After last night, I want the guy responsible a lot more than you ever have. Last night was the embodiment of evil. It was an unspeakably heinous crime. Six people died in the room with me, bled to death, and they didn’t even scream about it. They let it happen like it was the most fun thing in the world. That is evil, Bill. That is more evil than your little crime scene will ever have.”

“You may not say that when you see what happened.” The tone in Bill’s voice was ominous.