own private 30-foot schooner, and when that was repossessed in order to help offset his legal defence team's costs, he knew he was going under. Xander Landesman threw him a lifeline.
'I wouldn't dismiss my wife's proposal so quickly,' said Hephaestus. 'Aphrodite is sensitive to what goes on in the hearts of men — '
'The hearts and the loins,' Ares interjected.
'— and,' Hephaestus went on, ignoring him, 'she is right to hope that maybe, in this case, people will come to their senses before it is too late. However,' he added, 'should that not happen, I have something up my sleeve that will assist us in the conflict. Athena suggested I build this particular item, and I think, once you see it in action, you'll be impressed, both by her foresight and my dexterity.'
He'd been a sculptor, an expert in metalcraft, praised for the way he could replicate the texture and flow of organic objects with inorganic materials. But as with many an artist, he was flawed, temperamental, prone to bouts of rage and depression. Like the stuff he worked with, he was either cold and inflexible or incandescently hot and dangerous. He lost friends, fell from grace, his creative fire sputtered out — and then, at the hands of the man who would be Zeus, he was forged anew in the crucible of science.
'In my view,' said Demeter, 'in this summer heat, we must reap when the harvest is ripe.'
'And that means…?' said Apollo.
'Mortals are corn. You be the scythe.'
'That's what I thought it meant.'
Demeter was an ex-doctor, a member of the caring profession who grew complacent and stopped caring. Stopped caring to the extent that she neglected the patients whose health she was responsible for, especially the elderly ones. Many of them were left permanently damaged, and some even died, as a consequence of treatable conditions she'd failed to diagnose. She was struck off the medical register. Then came a chance to redeem herself.
'Demeter and I,' said Hera, 'see eye to eye on this, as on so many matters. Cerberus will enter the fray at my command, as will Typhon, Scylla and, it goes without saying, the Harpies. You must make the decision, my husband, but I'm sure you will make the correct one.'
Hera had been a veterinarian, good with animals, but that wasn't Xander's only criterion for choosing her. She'd been married no less than four times by the age of thirty-five, always to unfaithful men, and he'd wanted someone who was familiar with the burden of the wronged wife — who even took a perverse pleasure from it.
'I am He Who Presides Over Contests,' said Hermes. 'If it is your will, Zeus, I shall preside over this one too, this clash between us and the mortals. Wherever you ask me to be, there shall I go.'
Hermes had been Darren Pugh. His predecessor had been a getaway driver, of all things, a criminal who'd turned informant and had to go into witness protection. But Hermes the second, the replacement, was the erstwhile Darren Pugh. The elusive, slippery traitor.
Sam watched them as they debated, and superimposed over all of them was her knowledge of the people they had been, the lives they had led before Xander Landesman approached them with the tantalising prospect of godlike powers. What a sorry bunch. Losers, perverts, cheats, crooks, the lowest of the low, and Xander had taken them and elevated them to the highest of the high.
And now he was offering her the same opportunity.
'What do you say, Sam?' he had asked her in the Temple of Apotheosis, a few hours earlier.
Her immediate reply had been, 'You've just described to me a dozen or so utter scumbags, and you're asking if I'd like to join them?'
''Scumbags' they may have been, but they were also uniquely suited to the roles I'd planned for them to play. Each had the requisite characteristics, a background in tune with the abilities I intended to give him or her. Each, too, was in dire straits, at low ebb, with very limited future prospects.'
'You made them an offer they couldn't refuse.'
' Wouldn't refuse. It had to be consensual. Otherwise the indoctrination wouldn't take. No form of hypnosis can make a subject do something he or she wouldn't do naturally. That's another movie canard, the idea of the mesmerised victim becoming an assassin or whatever. My Olympians couldn't behave as they do if it wasn't already inherent in their psychologies. Athena's ruthless streak is that of the boardroom schemer she used to be. Ares's warrior aggression has been there since his soldiering days.'
'Did they know, going in, that they would be losing all memory of their old selves?'
'It was made crystal clear to them that I would be rewriting their conscious minds, erasing their pasts so that they would know nothing about themselves other than that they were gods. All of them were happy with that. It was, I feel, one of the great attractions of the procedure for them. They'd all done things they weren't at ease with, things that had earned them opprobrium and shame. I was giving them the opportunity to start again, afresh, all sins forgotten, like a religious rebirth. That and supranormal powers — an irresistible combination.'
'Not to me,' Sam said. 'I've no interest in forgetting who I am.'
'Really, Sam? Strikes me there's a lot of past baggage you'd gladly let go of if you could. Your parents' deaths. You boyfriend's death. Your miscarriage. Your stalled police career. Perhaps also the Titans' abject failure in realising their objective. All that, I could whisk away from you, as though you were a soul in the afterlife drinking from the river Lethe, whose waters remove all remembrance of a person's time on earth. I could rid you of the pain you carry around inside you, the deep-seated traumas that have left you as you are — reserved, aloof, untrusting, cynical.'
'I am none of those things!'
'You may not think so, but you do not see yourself as others see you. Have you ever loved anyone? Truly?'
'Not that it's any of your business, but yes.'
'Adrian Walters?'
'Ade.'
'One man. And before him? After?'
She nearly said Ramsay's name, but didn't.
'And was it love?' Zeus said. 'Or more of a convenient arrangement? Ade was in the same line of work as you, therefore comfortably within the parameters of what you knew and understood. He was also inferior to you in professional terms, so not likely to threaten your self-image in that respect.'
'You can't know any of that.'
'I've done my homework, with Argus's assistance. I can read you, Sam, same as I read all of the candidates I chose for apotheosis. I can see into you. It's a gift I have. You're a smart but inhibited woman, with so much anger inside you, a well of frustration and aggrievedness. And I can save you from that. I can tap that well, relieve the pressure. I can unshackle you from your self-made chains, open you up to who you truly are and what you'd truly like to be. Come on, admit it, isn't that just the least bit tempting? The possibility of absolute freedom, absolute selfhood, a life lived without constraint or regret?'
Not tempting, no. Not at all.
Well, perhaps slightly.
'It does hurt,' Zeus said. 'It takes several days, it involves courses of injections and infusions, and the physiological alterations these cause are unpleasant while they are happening. But does the athlete not endure great hardship as he trains to become the best in his field? Does the ballerina not go through agonies as she distorts her feet and builds up calluses? If we are to become sublime, do we not have to pay first in sacrifice and suffering? You will sit in that chair and experience a sometimes unbearable level of discomfort and distress. The restraints may be necessary from time to time, if only to stop you harming yourself or me in the throes of change. And you will listen to the myths constantly while the procedure is in progress, until the transformation is complete and you are no longer Sam Akehurst but someone else, a greater being, superior in every way.'
'Who?' said Sam. 'Who would I become?'
'You are interested, aren't you?'
'No. Hypothetical question. Which goddess do you think I'm most like?'
'Well, it's a matter of serendipity more than anything. We have a vacancy. It just so happens that you'd be ideal to fill it.'
'Artemis.' She knew it. She'd known it all along, somehow.
'Artemis,' Zeus confirmed. 'The cool, calculating, vicious huntress. Lethal in a fight, and not one who likes to
