Chapter 9
Paint It Black
Gray clouds covered the sun as the first hoofs of the city of London appeared below our feet. The capital of the modern world remained the same as the last time we've seen each other, even though a certain sadness was carried by the wind. Mortals had no idea that the Greek gods were real and had shared London with them for the last couple hundred years, but they could feel that a big part of them, of the English spirit, was disappearing a little bit more every day.
We had no idea how much time we had until Olympus' last goodbye, it could be an hour or a year. Whatever it was we had to do to save the flame of western civilization, it was better if we did it fast.
We landed in an old abandoned port, a few minutes away from downtown London.
"The mist should fool most people into not seeing the wings on our Pegasi." Gregory said, still mounted on Cherry. "We shouldn't waste any second."
The four of us trotted into the city, navigating the dangerous corners and alleys as four normal persons and a couple of horses. It was the middle of the morning and everyone was just going by with their lives, too busy trying to survive to notice the celestial turmoil around them.
"I am really fucking hungry," Jane said. "Whose idea was to leave camp before breakfast?"
"I know a place we can go," Gregory said. "Turn left here."
Mary made Cherry turn and trot down a long avenue that started filled with shops and restaurants and ended in the middle of some of the biggest houses I'd ever seen. I'd always walked around London a lot, but I'd never really been to the upper class neighborhoods. We stopped before a four story house made of red bricks with white windows and roof.
"It's been a while since I've been here." Mary said, her words coming from a distant and nostalgic past.
"Woah, who lives here?" Jane asked, tilting her head back so she could see the whole house. "The queen?"
"Actually, the prince." I said as I watched Gregory getting a key off his pocket and opening the huge white door.
We got off of Ace and followed Mary and Gregory as they stepped into the mansion. I went up the steps and stopped before the doorway, worrying if I should take off my dirty boots before walking on the tapestry. I could not like Gregory or his father, but I'm not impolite, you know? My mom made sure that was something no one could ever say of me.
I looked to my left and saw Jane there, blushing while looking down at the little blood stains on her clothes.
"Come on." I said, holding her hand and walking in with her. My first impression was why there are no windows in this house? All the curtains were closed, turning the dark oak of the walls even darker and stealing the gold ornaments from its usual glory.
We followed Gregory and Mary to the dining hall, where we were greeted by a long table covered by all types of food—breads, fruits, cakes, pies, anything you could want.
"Can we?" Jane whispered to me, her eyes going from me to the feast.
"Your mom still cooks this much?" Mary asked Gregory.
"She does this every day, just in case he decides to make a quick visit," He said, before turning to Jane and I. "I told you I knew where we could find food. Help yourselves, I'm not hungry."
Gregory exited the room and left Jane, Mary and I alone. We sat on the table and stared at all the food before us.
"The 'he' Gregory talked about," I said looking at Mary. "That's his father, right? Zeus?"
The daughter of Aphrodite nodded sadly and lowered her eyes.
"Gregory's mother used to be the most beautiful girl around, she'd have the wealthiest men in Britain coming down to ask her in matrimony. Until the day Zeus laid eyes on her. Suddenly, he was her entire world. I never want to know what is like to fall in love with a god. To know that you'll never find anyone like him, no matter how hard you look. And gods are gods, they'll eventually leave and you'll be stuck with a love that can't be shared with anyone but him," She swallowed dry and stared at the rose birthmark on her right forearm. "My dad always said 'After you had the most beautiful woman in the universe, love becomes just an endless bitter story'."
We ate in silence for a while, till Gregory came down the stairs and avoided us, going straight outside and mounting on Cherry.
"We should go." Mary said, looking worried at him through the window.
"What? Now?" Jane said, grabbing a chicken leg and a bread to take with her.
All that talk about our parents made me upset thinking about my mom. I wished she could've been so dazzled by Poseidon that she'd never want any other man in the world. Maybe that way she wouldn't have abandoned me to sail to America with the first rich guy she saw.
Jane and I mounted on Ace and started trotting away. I looked up and something on a window of the upper floor of Gregory's house caught my eye. It looked like a beautiful middle-age woman with long brown hair, obsessively looking up to the sky, waiting for something that she knew would never come.
I swallowed dry and told Ace to race down the avenue back to the London I was used to.
We were en route to the Palace of Westminster, simply because we had no idea where we were supposed to go now that we were in London. We stopped by a marble fountain near a fancy hotel so Ace and Cherry could drink some water. I sat on the marble and dunked my right hand on the fountain, took a deep breath and tried to get over how tired I was.
"This is my fourth quest. Trust me, things just tend to happen around you. We don't need a plan." Gregory said when Mary complained about visiting Olympus.
"Yeah, well, something better happen soon or I might have to pick a fight with someone just so I won't die of boredom." Jane said leaning on Ace.
"Oh, the sweet smell of tea leaves. Reminds me of the old times. I love tea." Ace said, and I should've guessed that was a bad thing. When you're a prisoner and forced to smuggle tea from Bath to London by the man who controlled more than half of the criminal activities in all of Britain, if something reminds you of the old times, it's usually not a good thing.
I heard the sound of a chariot stopping just behind the fountain. Before I could think of turning around Jane widened her eyes, stepped on the fountain and mounted on Ace.
"This is bad!"
As I turned around, I saw two men pointing their knives at us and shouting.
"Hey, you were the gal who stole our horse! Look, it's Ace of Spades, it's our Ace of Spades!"
I jumped on my Pegasus, startling Gregory and Mary, who still argued about which direction to take. When the chariot started circling the fountain toward us, the royal couple ran and got on Cherry, just in time for the smugglers' knives not to cut our arms off. We raced down the closest street, knocking people to the ground and scaring the other horses, while the chariot closed in behind us, charged by two strong stallions.
"Mary!" I shouted. "Prepare yourself!"
I pulled Ace's reins to the right, toward a fruit stand and a brick wall. "Now, buddy!" As the owner of the stand dived sideways to escape being kissed by half a ton of pure muscles, Ace jumped over the stand and spread his wings, his hooves trotted on the wall for a second before flying away, carried by the wind. The people in the street gasped and screamed when, after us, Cherry did the same maneuver and gained the skies.
Now, I don't know how the so called mist actually works, but I think a couple of horses bouncing off a wall and flying away isn't really easy to hide.
"For Ares, do not do that again!" Jane punched me on the ribs as London appeared endless below us.
"You got yourself some skills riding a Pegasus, son of Poseidon, I'll give you that." Mary said smiling as Cherry appeared beside us. "I guess we lost them."
"Unless we're not the only ones riding Pegasi." Gregory said looking back. I turned my head quickly and saw the two smugglers riding a couple of wood colored Pegasi, dashing above the roofs of London, coming to get us.
"I'll give you what you deserve, horse thief!" One of them screamed. "Yeah, you should've never messed with Fair!"
"Damn it, Ace, you really belonged to one of the most powerful men in London, don't you think you should've told me?" I shouted as we rose higher in the sky.
"Sorry, Master Jack, must've slipped my mind." Ace said.
"Yeah, a lot of things slip your mind!" Cherry replied, behind us.
As we flew upwards, the smugglers dashed toward us and forced us to fly lower. Ace closed his wings and span a couple of times before reestablishing flight away from our chasers.
"Oh, gods, I shouldn't have eaten so much." Jane said after the maneuver.
"Jack, heads up!"
I ducked before I could think, in time for Mary to fly Cherry awfully close above us and knock down one of the smugglers, who was about to take us from below. The man and the brown Pegasus fell from the sky and crashed on the gray roof of a house. I guessed whoever owned the place, wasn't the luckiest person in the world.
As I looked up, the remaining smuggler flew toward us and knocked Ace to the side with his huge brown Pegasus. We lost control for a while and hit Cherry beside us. The white mare flew sideways, while Mary tried to re-establish flight. The tower of a church appeared in front of them and I held my breath as Mary regained control of her Pegasus on the last second and flew through the bell windows of the tower, making the bell ring loud and a lot of people think it was already five 'o clock.
"It's you and me now, boy." Said the smuggler beside us. He tried to knock us down again, but I anticipated the attack and dived down with Ace, flying dangerously close to the roofs and chimneys of the city.
"Eyes open, Ace." I told my Pegasus, who neighed and increased the speed of his flight.
"I think I have an idea, Master," Ace said. "But you're going to have to trust me."
"I'm with you, buddy."
As I said it, Ace turned west and dashed like lightning, the brown Pegasus close behind us. I had no idea what Ace was planning, until I saw the enormous clock tower that was being constructed on the north end of the Palace of Westminster. I looked up and saw a brighter light behind the gray clouds. I hope the gods don't mind if we do our dirty work on their backyard. Ace raced faster than ever toward the golden tower covered by scaffolding.
"Ace, I trust you, but please don't kill us." I said, closing my eyes and praying to the gods above us.
"I second that!" Jane shouted behind me, holding me even tighter around my waist.
Ace didn't answer, instead increased his speed to the maximum. The tower became overwhelmingly close, the brown Pegasus so close to us he could probably bite Ace's ponytail.
When everything in my line of sight was scaffoldings and iron, Ace flew up and backwards, just meters before hitting the tower. He made a loop around the smuggler and his brown Pegasus who crashed faster than a train directly onto the tower, making scaffolds fly meters and meters away and people scream on the ground.
Thunder roared all around us as the entire clock tower shook with the impact. I looked to the skies and shrugged.
"Sorry, uncle. But that's what family is for, right?"
One last thunder sounded higher than the others before returning peace to the skies.
"Woah, that was something! Can we do it again?" Ace said, spinning excited in the air.
"How about we let Mary and Gregory ride you and then you can do it again?" Jane said behind me. I laughed and sighed relieved when we started going down and landed on a dark alley a few blocks away from the Palace of Westminster.
Jane and I got off of Ace and waited some minutes till Cherry appeared above us and landed gracefully next to where we were. Mary immediately got off and ran toward us.
"That was amazing! I never thought running away from criminals could be so much fun!" She said.
"Stealing a Pegasus, Jack?" Gregory said from a distance. "What are we going to find out next? You killed a duke or something?"
"A duke? No," I said, looking at him. "A son of Zeus? Perhaps."
"Boys, please." Mary said, looking from me to him. "What do we do now?"
Jane pointed up and grinned.
"Well, I don't know about you, but after all of this, I could go for a drink."
I looked up and saw a black and white sign on top of a little black door that was completely occult in the shadow of the alley. It read 'The Devil's pub' and looked just like the type of place Jane would want to take a look at.
"Sure, why not?" I shrugged and followed Jane in, noticing how Gregory and Mary hesitated on the doorstep. It was time for them to know the side of London Jane and I grew up in. The pub was dark and small, but filled with some of the worst looking people I'd ever seen in my life. And I'd been to the Ares Cabin.
Jane walked to the counter and whistled to the barman, who had a thick black beard around his ugliness, and a long scar going down from his left eye all the way to his massive chin.
"What can I get you, you lovely yellow bird?" He said walking to her. He stared at me, Mary and Gregory and laughed. "We don't usually serve your crowd here, but I guess I'm feeling generous today."
Jane ordered a beer and waited while Mary looked around, nervous with all the attention she was getting. Whoever said monsters didn't go after daughters of Aphrodite had never walked into a filthy pub with one.
"You nervous or something?" The barman asked me while pouring Jane's beer. I shrugged and he caught a glimpse of Perseus' blade on my belt. I guess that would be enough to scare him, but his eyes widened and he opened a horrible toothless smile. He served Jane's beer and, as she reached for the glass, he held her right arm and pulled up the sleeve, revealing her birthmark.
"I knew you all were something else the moment you stepped in here. Fair will be happy with me!" He held Jane to the counter while eight other men closed in on us coming from everywhere in the pub. We tried to fight them off, but they got to us before we could reach for our weapons. Soon enough we were disarmed and being held by big, bad smelling criminals who seemed too ugly to be real.
"Goodnight, golden fish!" I heard one of them saying, before punching me on the head and getting me unconscious.
I got to say it, I was getting really tired of being knocked out. I opened my eyes and saw I was tied down. Again. This time to a chair. I struggled with the ropes while making a promise to myself of never allowing someone to get me unconscious ever again.
Tied to chairs beside me were Jane, Mary and Gregory. The latter just rolled his eyes and whined about how we shouldn't have walked into the pub and how Jane and I were going to get him killed for nothing and so on, so on.
"Gods, just shut your mouth!" Mary snapped finally. Gregory looked at her startled and swallowed dry.
I looked around to see where we were. It was a small dark room, with walls covered by oak and books. A long and fancy desk lied before us, with an extremely pale man standing up behind it, beside a huge black chair that was turned the other way, making it impossible to know if there was someone sitting there or not.
"If I could have your attention, please," The man said in a high pitched voice, giving me chills at every syllable he pronounced. "You all have been brought before the mighty Fair, with whom you have business to settle, otherwise you would not be here."
"Gods, so Fair really exists?" Jane asked, sounding a little bit too excited for someone who was tied to a chair against her will.
"Who's Fair?" Mary asked.
The man rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, but I talked before he could.
"It's this mythical figure who is said to own and control pretty much all of London's criminal activities. Nobody knows who he is or what he looks like."
"If you don't know what he looks like, how do you know he's a he?" The huge chair span, revealing a deadly beautiful girl. She was about our age, had flawless pale skin and black hair. Her cold dark eyes stared at us while a mischievous grin appeared on her face.
"Who the hell are you?" Gregory asked, fighting against the ropes, fury burning behind his eyes. He actually looked a lot like me when I looked at him. "You have no idea who you're messing with, you have no idea who my father is."
The girl chuckled and laid back on the chair, amused at the situation.
"'You don't know who my father is', what an interesting choice of words. I guess I can say the same. As for who I am, haven't you heard of me already? Well, perhaps the lack of physical description might be puzzling you, so please allow me to introduce myself," She got up and walked around the desk so she could stand before us. "I was hoping you'd guess my name, but oh well. Pleased to meet you, I'm Fair."
Her eyes went from Gregory to me and she smirked.
"But since we're all family here, you can call me Lucy," She raised the sleeve on her right forearm, revealing a three headed dog shaped birthmark. "I've been waiting a long time to meet you two, cousins."
