Alex Anderson The Last Son of Zeus (22 page)

"Troy--the bet of Troy."

"The bet of Troy."

Hera sat down again, her eyes distant.

"Oh, don't look so depressed. I'm Zeus, god of thunder. You're just Zeus's wife."

She said nothing.

"I tried to forget about it at times. I figured, maybe if I can get this off my chest, you know, tell someone about it, maybe I wouldn't feel this constant need for revenge. So, one day, I ran down to Earth and told the first human I found about our story. The entire thing. I filled his head so full, that later I had to send Muse down to fix him. That human later wrote Macbeth,
which,
near as I can figure was the only way he could deal with it. I tried to get it off my chest again. I told Milton, but it made him go blind, and he still got the details wrong. Paradise
Lost
indeed..."

"Why come down here yourself?"

Zeus looked around. "Oh, I've got a deal with upper management. It's partly for him--" Zeus grabbed Hera by the armpit, "but mostly for me."

He drug her off the rock, Hera kicked, screamed, clawed, and she, God help her, even bit. Yet Zeus would not drop her or even acknowledge her attacks. He even started whistling.

Later, he had her nailed to a cross.

Hera laughed. The sound was pathetic and raspy. "This? This is your grand punishment? To leave me here for eternity? Eventually I'll find a way down. Eventually, I'll--"

"What makes you think you'll have the opportunity?"

Hera stopped talking. Not because of Zeus, but because of the raven she saw in the distance. It seemed to fly towards her in slow motion, past the embers and swirling smoke.

It landed on her side and started pecking away at her dress. "You're giving me the punishment of Prometheus?"

Zeus smiled. "Prometheus was just the start." He pointed over the hill.

Hundreds of ravens charged her.

Hera screamed as they descended upon her. They landed all over her body. They picked her skin, her blood, her muscle, and her eyes. They didn't stop until she was a barely hanging sack of a thing. She could no longer smell. She could no longer see. She could no longer speak, but she could hear.

And what Hera did hear was a distant humming. A sound she recognized from her time as an angel. Before she and Lucifer talked Zeus and the others into warring against God. Before God cast them out of heaven and they, in an attempt to reclaim some of their former glory, re-imagined themselves as the Greek Pantheon and introduced to humanity what would later become a religion.

The humming she heard was Zeus ascending into heaven.

He, because of his actions against her, had been forgiven by God.

"Don't worry my
love,
you'll be fully healed by the time they return tomorrow."

And then he was gone.

Hera couldn't even scream.

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