area where the Minotaur had most recently been sighted. They'd found tracks that could only be Minotaur tracks, the imprints of bare human feet far larger than any normal human feet, but the monster itself had proved scarce.
Base camp was a half-dozen tents clustered around a van. Divested of their suits, the Titans gathered wood for a fire, and for their supper Tsang barbecued chicken breasts coated in a marinade that he had prepared specially for this cookout, a sticky, sinfully sweet concoction akin to toffee.
'An old family recipe,' he said. 'The trick is to boil the soy sauce down to the consistency of tar, then add the chilli, ginger and the other spices and ladle honey on like there's no tomorrow.'
'Eat enough of it and there will be no tomorrow,' said Mahmoud through a mouthful. 'I can feel my arteries furring up.'
'You won't be having second helpings then?'
She held out her plate. 'I never said that, duck.'
Soon everyone had retired to their tents, the two techs included. Only Sam and Ramsay remained up.
'Not sleepy?' he asked her.
'Tired but wired,' she replied. She stared into the dark, insect-throbbing landscape around them. The scent of heather was strong on the breeze. 'The Minotaur's out there somewhere. Not far. And I don't have my suit on, and, to be blunt, I feel naked without it.'
'And here's where I don't make some wisecrack about you being naked.'
'Absolutely you don't.'
''Cause it wouldn't be right because you hate me. Again.'
'No, it wouldn't be right because it would be inappropriate. If you said that kind of thing in any normal workplace, they'd have you up before a disciplinary tribunal and off on a sexual harassment awareness course before you even knew what hit you.'
'So you don't hate me,' said Ramsay. 'Is that what I can take away from this?'
'Rick, frankly I'm not sure how I feel about you,' Sam said. 'Let's turn it around. How do you feel about you right now?'
'Honestly?'
She twitched her shoulders — what else?
Ramsay gazed into the fire for a time. 'Honestly, what I feel is… empty. I feel I've done it now, I've killed the thing that killed my son, but all that's left me with is this sense of: is that it? Now what? I was expecting to have this great swelling in my chest of triumph, satisfaction, completion…'
'Closure?'
'Oh yeah.'
'You Americans are big on your closure.'
'We are. And it ain't there, or maybe it is but it doesn't feel like I was hoping. It doesn't feel solid. There's no 'Oh, OK, so that's that chapter done with, let's turn the page and start the next.' Ethan's still dead. Ain't nothing going to change that. Ain't nothing going to bring my little boy back. The Lamia being dead as well kinda balances up the scales but somehow not all the way, not even near. I'm glad it's dead, but mainly I'm glad because that's a whole bunch of other kids who won't be sucked dry by it now, a whole bunch of other parents who won't have the light taken out of their world like I did. So that's something. But it's not everything.'
'Ethan's mother. I don't even know her name.'
'LaVonne.'
'Is she around any more?'
'Why d'you ask?'
'You just never mention her, that's all.'
Ramsay shook his head a fraction, just enough to convey regret, regret of the mildest kind. 'We'd already split up by the time Ethan was two. LaVonne didn't make a good military wife. Didn't like it when I was off on tours of duty. Didn't like being on her own and me being away for long periods and in danger. Wasn't what she'd married me for, she said. That stopped after the Olympians came. President Mayhew, as it then was, called the troops back home once she realised the Olympians weren't going to let us keep on with our police actions in the 'Istans. Most sensible thing that woman did. Lost her any chance of re-election, of course. She said she was a realist, the other party called her a coward and un-American, although the guy who got in and replaced her hasn't been any more proactive or 'American' than she was, has he? Stavropoulos has even hinted he thinks the Olympians might be actual gods, which gives you some idea where he's coming from. Plays up his Greek ethnicity like anything, that man. Says belief in the Pantheon is in his blood.
'Anyways, Mizz Mayhew got me home permanently, is my point, and then I got laid off in the personnel cuts that followed. Half pension, not enough to live on, so I found myself a job as mall security, would you believe, and I thought that'd make LaVonne happy, me in a safe job, clocking on and off like a regular Joe commuter, only it was too late for us by then, unfortunately. There hadn't been enough of a marriage to start with, and it turned out that Vonnie didn't like living with me there every day any more than she'd liked me being off in some desert hellhole for months at a stretch. We were bickering like crazy, and then Ethan came along and I thought he'd be the saving of us. But all he was, poor kid, was the final straw — a baby on top of all the other frustrations in LaVonne's life. So she bailed. Just packed a bag one day and went. I got sole custody, and Vonnie became visitation-rights mom, only she hardly ever exercised those rights.
'We didn't see or speak to each other much, and then after Ethan was gone, we didn't have a reason to see or speak to each other at all any more. She moved back to be with her folks in Gary, Indiana, where, far as I know, she still is. Short question, long answer. How about you, while we're on this subject? No other half? No, of course not. Would you be here if there was? But were you ever married?'
'No. I was… not quite engaged. My partner and I lived together. We'd talked about marrying. We were definitely going to. It just didn't have a chance to happen.'
Ramsay waited. Sam didn't offer anything further.
'That's all I'm going to get, isn't it?' he said drily. 'All anyone's going to get out of you, Sam. You know something? This enigmatic schtick, this whole keeping-it-all-to-yourself thing — I tell you, it's getting real old. What you don't appear to realise is that, whatever you're holding inside you, not talking about it doesn't make you heroic, it just makes you seem…'
'Seem…?'
'Like not a normal person. Normal people talk about stuff. Normal people open up.'
'Just because I don't yammer on all the time about — '
'No.' Ramsay stopped her with a jabbing index finger. 'It ain't yammering. It's being human. It's accepting that bad things have happened, not trying to act as if they never did. It's being the same as everyone else, not imagining you've somehow had it worse than everyone else and that that somehow makes you superior in some way, privileged 'cause life took a bigger shit on you than it does on most folk and it's beyond your ability to express how much you've been hurt. Hell, we all get shit on, and us Titans got shit on particularly heavily, but I don't believe your pain is worse than the pain I've suffered or Fred has suffered or Dez has suffered or any of us has suffered, and I dare you to prove otherwise.'
'You're trying to piss me off, aren't you?'
'Figure I've got nothing to lose.'
'Goad me and I'll lose my temper and drop my guard and blurt everything out?'
'That's the general idea.'
'And then what? I'll feel better? I went to a counsellor twice a week for nearly a year, Rick. I talked and talked with him. And after a hundred hours of that I didn't feel one ounce better. What makes you think it'll be any different, talking to you?'
'Because, Sam Akehurst,' Ramsay said, chidingly, 'I'm your friend.'
'Oh, right. And maybe you're hoping I'll confess all and then fall sobbing into your arms and you can comfort me and next thing you know, hey presto, we're shagging like rabbits.'
'Yeah, that's always been my technique with women. I only sleep with the crying ones. Distraught's such a goddamn turn-on. Those puffy eyes, that runny nose…'
'Ha!' said Sam. It was both a laugh and a victory cry. 'Watch this, then. No tears. Dry-eyed, Sam Akehurst delves deep and comes up with the goods. This is what happened. You want to know? I'll give it to you in two
