He snatched it from the air with a nod. Before I could say anything else, he followed Persephone and the two disappeared into the courthouse.

  I waved everyone else back. We could only stand among the fallen Iron Guard and watch the building as more darkness spewed into the sky and fragments of stone fell to the ground. For the first time, Koalemos’s jaw wasn’t hanging open. Even the god of stupidity sensed something very bad was happening.

  I cast a shield to keep the wind off us and the piercing whistle from our ears.

  “Do they have a chance?” Red Beard asked from beside me in his gruff voice.

  I clutched the amulet hanging around my neck. With the addition of Persephone, we were twelve again. “The numbers are right,” I said, not bothering to elaborate. “We just have to pray they really mean something.”

  “You’re a strange dude, Croft. If things were different, we might’ve gotten along.”

  He flicked his tactical whip back and forth as though anxious to use it on something. I knew the feeling. I released the amulet and drew my sword from its staff. As I gazed along the blade’s runes, I noticed them dimming by degrees. It was the energy emptying into the sky, turning what passed for daytime in the shadow realm to an early twilight. I lowered my gaze back to my father’s sword.

  Be your magic, I thought, knowing it was the only thing I could do. The only thing I needed to be doing.

  As I began to open myself, a distressing chain of cracks sounded, and a wall collapsed from the courthouse’s west wing. The beings around me murmured worriedly, and I felt our cohesion wobble.

  “Stand firm,” I told them. “This isn’t the end.”

  I refused to allow myself to consider it, breathe it, even think it for an instant. Instead, I sheathed my sword and closed my eyes. I concentrated wholly on the idea of faith in magic. I filled myself with it. I channeled it into our amulets. I asked that it hold together our twelve in the face of Typhon.

  Shouts went up. My eyes opened to stone bursting from the base of the courthouse in a series of gunshot-like reports. And then the entire building imploded as though from a controlled demolition, landing in an outrush of dust and debris. The storm washed over my shield, slashing and swirling like a spectral attack.

  “Respingere!” I shouted, fear displacing my faith. I might as well have shouted Alec!

  My shield blew out, taking the dust storm with it. The force washed over the ruins of the courthouse, and what I saw stopped me in my tracks. Crouched in the debris was an enormous figure.

  He unfurled slowly, head lifting from his lap, stones tumbling from his bare back.

  By the time he straightened, he was much larger than the building that had once stood in his place. Streaming gray hair joined a thick beard that hung past his navel. Muscles flexed across his torso as he moved a giant scythe from his left to his right hand. This was Cronus, son of Heaven and Earth, father of Zeus, embodiment of Time, lord of the Titans.

  The nymphs squealed in terror while the other mythic beings fell to the ground in submission before this eater of gods. Madge yanked Koalemos down beside her. Red Beard and the other biker backed away.

  I remained frozen in place.

  From his tremendous height, Cronus peered around. You couldn’t possibly understand the power and scale of a major god until you stood before one. He looked grand, eminently divine, but when his gaze touched mine, I saw the frosty blue eyes of a killer. I’d thought my first meeting with Persephone was intimidating, but Cronus made her look like a Girl Scout. His gaze lifted again, surveying the lands he meant to rule.

  It was then that I remembered Typhon.

  And it was then that Cronus released a booming cry.

  The ground shook as he peered down the lengths of his immense legs. Something wasn’t so much devouring them as growing over them in a torrent of dark scales, spines, and serpent heads. Lots of serpent heads.

  Cronus drew back his scythe, but the being was already spreading down his arms, encompassing and inhabiting them until they took possession of the scythe. More serpents sprang from his sides.

  Cronus’s face was the last to disappear, its look of pompous outrage twisting into sheer terror before becoming the visage of a demonic being so incomprehensible that I felt my sanity bending at the struts. But I couldn’t avert my gaze. Cronus’s beard fell away in a column of flames as the creature continued to grow.

  It filled more and more of the darkening sky with scales and serpent heads and cruel gouts of fire. This was truly Typhon—more awful than any account I’d ever read. The mere sight of him was going to send thousands jumping from windows, drowning themselves in bathtubs, chugging household chemicals. Anything to scrub the horror of his existence from their eyes and shattered minds.

  And now it was Cronus who seemed like the Scout.

  I ripped my gaze away and searched the park. Where were Hermes and Persephone?

  The communication rune had become dead air—or maybe it was that the wind had grown so insanely loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. As I tapped into my amulet, determined to bolster our twelve, the mythic beings behind me got up and fled, scattering whatever power the number still held.

  When Red Beard turned to follow them, I surprised myself by grabbing his thick arm and yanking him toward me. Maybe it was that I couldn’t bear the idea of facing Typhon alone, because face him I had to. As long as he wielded the scythe, he wielded power over time—including access to our present.

  “We can’t do a fucking thing against that!” Red Beard shouted, his voice verging on a scream. The sky was so dark now, he was little more than a wild impression. He tore off his shades, his enormous pupils staring past me.

  I turned in time to see the scythe cutting toward us.

  51

  I released Red Beard and brought my cane around. “Protezione!” I shouted.

  The scythe met my gleaming protection in a blinding explosion that slammed me from my feet. I flew with the remnants of my scattering shield, landing in a bruising roll. When I flopped to a stop, I peered around.

  I was nearly to the city hall building, or what remained of it. The energy from the scythe had blown its top half away. I could hear masonry crashing for what seemed blocks as more buildings crumbled in succession. Back at the courthouse, Typhon’s serpent heads lit up the darkness like hellish gas flares. The giant scythe glinted blue in his monstrous grip. To say I was outgunned was being kind.

  The landscape reeled as I stood. I staggered forward, the side of my head warm with blood, my thoughts a foggy jumble.

  I stopped when I reached Red Beard. He was on his back, mouth agape, torso ripped open, right arm missing. In my stunned state, it didn’t seem real. I staggered past him and the other fallen Street Keeper. Parts of him, anyway. The single sweep of the scythe had torn him asunder, just as it had done to the lingering power connecting us.

  Ahead, thick serpents lunged from Typhon’s still growing body, spouting fire, promising devastation, annihilation. As though in exclamation, a giant pair of wings unfolded from Typhon’s back.

  Everson!

  Someone was gripping my shoulder, shaking me. I turned to find Hermes looking at me with frantic eyes.

  “Please tell me you’ve seen Persephone!”

  It took me a moment to process his words. I started to shake my head slowly when I saw something on the ground ahead. I looked at it for a long moment, its contours finally connecting with something I’d seen and held and cast through. Persephone’s scepter. Its dark gems glinted in the light of Red Beard’s whip, which lay a short distance away, the cord giving off sparks of energy.

  Wage, young mage, till your final breath…

  The Doideag’s prophecy, a scrap in my head, as though the wind had blown it apart and I was catching pieces.

  “I did wage!” I shouted back. “I gave everything I had, dammit!”

  And come night’s fall, accept your death…

  I was about to shout, “For what?” but I stopped myself. I was in shock, losing it. I couldn’t fall apart, not now. The Twelve may have scattered and been cut down, but the One remained: my magic.

  I steadied my thoughts and repeated the words, “‘Come night’s fall, accept your death.’” I peered from the blackened sky down to Persephone’s scepter. “Death…”

  Was that the answer? To take up Persephone’s weapon, a symbol of Death with a capital D? Use it to somehow repel Typhon?

  When Hermes saw me staring at it, he sped forward and picked it up. I thought he was going to wield it himself, but the scepter’s power appeared to have faded. He held it to his chest and cried her name into the wind-torn darkness, captive once more to his myth. I was about to demand the scepter from him when my gaze switched to Red Beard’s whip, writhing and crackling on the ground.

  Then it clicked.

  If the stories of the Avenging Angels were to be believed, they and the First Saints were essentially siblings. They shared blood. Blood I’d inherited.

  And come night’s fall, accept your death…

  Not Death with a capital D, but my death, which the whip had threatened me with several times. I remembered Red Beard’s confusion in the alleyway when his attack had failed to end me. Given the angel-saint connection, maybe the whip couldn’t end me—hence the “be not afraid” part. Not only that, I could wield it.

  That was it. That had to be it.

  “Hermes!” I called. “Bring me the whip!”

  He looked over at me, then up at Typhon, who was slithering from the wreckage on a giant serpent’s tail. When Red Beard’s whip crackled in another writhing fit, I remembered what Budge had said about his time inside his shadow self: The guy who was beating up my insides is scared shitless of Zeus.

  My magic, the symbol of ultimate unity, the One, was nodding fervently now.

  “The whip!” I repeated, fresh clarity and courage bursting through me. “Bring me the whip!”

  Hermes plucked it from the ground, and much as he had delivered lightning to Zeus’s hand, he sped the crackling weapon to mine.

  “Get behind me!” I shouted as the magic of the collective began surging inside me.

  With Typhon drawing the scythe back, I opened myself to the whip’s power. Electrical energy fissured the sky, and in the next moment it was as though I’d been struck by a bolt and knocked from my body.

  The landscape became a misty wash of gray. A massive, winged figure stood before me, but it wasn’t Typhon. It was the same being I’d glimpsed when I’d opened the whip’s defenses in my lab. No face, no distinct features, just an outline and an enormous pair of wings that seemed to merge with the mist itself. I sensed judgment and violence, but I also sensed the truce Red Beard had offered.

  And then I was back in my body, the magic of the collective swaddling me, holding me together, while fierce angelic power pounded through me.

  Typhon had stopped, the scythe down at his side. Scared shitless.

  I lashed the whip forward. As it forded the distance separating us, the whip stretched into dozens of crackling cords, which stretched into dozens more. They cracked Typhon’s serpent heads, causing them to shriek fire and rear back. When I stepped forward, I realized I was growing, rising to the stature of my opponent.

  But there was no time to marvel.

  Teeth gritted, I cracked the whip again. Typhon managed to swing the scythe around, the power of the blade sending my cords whistling wide. I dragged them back toward me, leaving smoking furrows of white fire in the ground.

  With a flick, I brought the cords leaping up as if I’d been commanding them my whole life, and I swung them at Typhon again. This time, they wrapped his scythe. Power sizzled and arced from the contact of our opposing energies as Typhon and I wrestled for control of the other’s weapon.

  He began to laugh, a deep, hissing sound that squirmed through my soul.

  I could hear his taunts in my head: You’re not Zeus. You’re nowhere close to his power. You’re just a puny mortal playing dress up.

  Or maybe he was merely stirring up my own self-doubts.

  He jerked me forward, and the serpent heads snapped at my face.

  “Respingere!” I cried, directing the power to repel into the whip.

  The building energy between our weapons burst in a ferocious explosion of light, fire, and force. The cords released the scythe’s blade, and I staggered back until I was safely out of his range again.

  Typhon resumed laughing.

  I didn’t like his confidence. I liked it even less that with every attack he felt stronger. I was setting up for another strike, when I noticed a figure wander between us. He looked up at me, then over at Typhon.

  “Whoa,” Koalemos guffawed. “You dudes are, like, ginormous.”

  With a grunt, Typhon flicked the scythe. My heart leapt as the blade severed Koalemos cleanly between his hoodie and surfer shorts. The god of stupidity disappeared in a fizzle of light, his chaplet rattling to the ground. I raised my eyes to Typhon, bracing myself. He had me on my back foot, and he knew it.

  But his hundred serpent heads suddenly appeared limp and listless. Then from Typhon’s demonic jaw came a lazy staccato laugh.

  Holy crap. By attacking Koalemos, he’d taken on the god’s stupidity!

  Seizing the opportunity, I channeled every last ounce of energy, angelic and magical, and poured it into the whip as I brought it singing around.

  Typhon had no answer this time. Bright white cords branched into more cords that branched into more still until they cinched every one of the serpents’ necks. Steam hissed up as angel-charged metal bit into scaly flesh. The final and longest cord wrapped Typhon’s throat several times, cutting off his hissing laugh.

  I staggered forward, temporarily off balance.

  Typhon had an instant to realize what was happening before I set my feet again.

  “Not Zeus,” I grunted, yanking back with all my strength. “An Avenging Angel.”

  Serpent heads rained to the earth as the cords severed them completely. Typhon’s head was the last to go, erupting in a fount of black blood. It bounced over the ground, the forked tongue hanging out in a crazed death leer. The rest of Typhon’s body teetered back and fell into the ruins of the courthouse.

  But he didn’t stop there. The energy that had opened Tartarus and drawn Cronus forth was collapsing back into itself. Typhon’s taloned hands grasped furiously, carving trenches into the ground as they were pulled after the rest of him. They disappeared along with the tonnage of stones, debris, and rolling serpent heads, all plummeting back into that deep and mythical abyss.

  Though I leaned back, I held my stance, even as the potent vacuum drew the murkiness from the sky. Before long, night returned to day, and the ruins of the courthouse settled. I waited several moments in the smoky stillness, not quite believing it was done. At last, I picked my way forward and peered down.

  Typhon was gone, the portal already sealing over.

  Only then did I relax my hold on the whip. White fire had erupted over the cords, and they withered to ash now, like strands of incense rope. At last, only the handle remained. Light glinted from the sweaty imprint of my fingers. I peered skyward. Beyond the drifting smoke, the sun peeked through the clouds.

  Then the scene wavered, and I collapsed onto my back.

  52

  When I came to, I was myself again. Wobbling to my feet, I squinted through the smoke and dust. I didn’t seem to have been out long. In the middle distance, Hermes was picking his way through the debris, the scepter still in his grip. It was only when he stopped and knelt that I realized he’d been approaching Persephone.

  The goddess lay on the ground, the locks of her hair blowing across her pale face. Hermes placed the scepter in the hand that rested across her stomach. He then pressed her grip around it with his own hands, head bowed. He was speaking, but I couldn’t hear the words. A plea? A prayer?

  His head jerked suddenly.

  A long, thick torrent of smoke passed between us. When it cleared, Hermes was helping Persephone to her feet!

  He stood with her for a time. Then together, they made their way toward me.

  I took the opportunity to dust off my coat and comb my fingers through my blood-matted hair. For all I knew, I was cleaning off particles of my own shadow’s remains, scattered to the winds with the destruction of City Hall.

  I was still a mess by the time the gods arrived. Hermes was grinning from ear to ear, tears standing in his eyes. Persephone was smiling as well. Tiredly, but she was smiling, her lips turned up softly at the corners. Power moved through her scepter once more, a scepter that now featured sun-infused gems alongside the darker ones, reflecting her true nature. And her eyes appeared tender now, as though she didn’t so much wield death as nurture it, much as she’d coax the world back to life each spring.

  Hermes looked around. “We’ve done it.”

  In the enormity of my relief, I couldn’t resist a joke. “Was it ever in doubt?”

  Hermes chuckled before gathering himself. “Persephone, let me introduce you to my friend, Everson Croft. He puts his loved ones before himself, and he never gives up. He is a hero among mortals. Indeed, it was he who felled Typhon.”

  She extended her arm. “Thank you, Everson.”

  I took the goddess’s gentle hand and bowed slightly. “It was my honor.”

  She returned my bow and stepped back again, the brief contact leaving me rejuvenated.

  “She’s agreed to return with me,” Hermes said, hardly able to contain his excitement. “And, well…” He removed his backpack and placed it at my feet. “A deal’s a deal.” He stared at it for a moment. “I must confess, there was a time in all of this when I considered remaining in the box. Do you know what changed my mind?”

  I shook my head, still dazed from the goddess’s touch. “No.”

  “When I told you to hold onto your care for your son, it was because I needed to see that care up close, to feel it. I had been too long from my own father. And when your son responded to your care in kind?” He sighed. “I learned something, Everson. For all my rebellious acts, Zeus remained and shall remain my father, despite his faults. And now we will reunite in the cosmos, and there I will become whole again.”