"Who," he growled, "the fuck are you?"
The armoured man pursed his lips as though in sympathy. "Bleeding pretty badly there, mate," he said in an Australian accent. "Of course, it's nothing Demeter couldn't fix. Only, your healer Sheila's not going to get here in time."
Hercules eyed the shotgun contemptuously. "You can't kill me with that."
"Reckon? Maybe, maybe not. But I bet this'll hurt heaps."
The shotgun belched. The skin was flayed from Hercules's right trapezius. The Olympian staggered but stayed upright. He was dimly aware of the workmen, who only moments earlier had been looking on with pleasure as he did their job for them, running away now as fast as they could, hightailing it out of there, ditching their hardhats and high-viz vests to lighten the load.
Another shotgun round shredded Hercules's other, treasured biceps.
"I'll kill you," he snarled at his assailant. "Fucking strangle you with my bare hands until your head pops off like a champagne cork."
"Vivid image," said the Australian. "Shame neither of your arms is working properly any more."
"Then I'll chew your head off with my teeth."
"Yeah, yeah. I had a brother, you know. Malcolm was his name. Malc."
"So?"
"Lived in Sydney. You killed him with a car. You don't even know you did, but you did."
"Do you think I care?"
"I think you do now."
Hercules's laugh was a caustic croak. "All you mortals are so feeble, so frail. You're like strands of spun sugar, and I am a hammer. I break you. It can't be helped. I brush past you and you crumble. I'm used to it. So should you be."
"'I break you'? This from the fella who's being cut to ribbons."
"Even like this," Hercules said, "I can pulverise you."
"Come on then, you big beardy shirt-lifter. Come and have a go."
The Olympian let out an enraged "Gnaaarrrhhh!" and lurched forwards as emphatically as his mutilated body would allow — which wasn't a lot. He was hit by yet another shotgun round, he had no clear sense where, he hurt all over so one further source of pain did not much make of a difference, it was one amongst a chorus of screaming voices — and then his target vanished from view.
After that, Hercules found himself on his knees in the broken roadway. He was howling in helpless fury, a baited bear hounded by dogs. The black-clad figures swooped in again, again, again, cutting, cutting. He was being made an example of. He was being made to suffer. Crucified. Tears sprang to his eyes. The injustice of it. His blood soaked the shattered asphalt around him. Genteel Gramercy Park had a new sound to keep it awake, the keening wail of a beleaguered, dying demigod.
And then one final, muffled shotgun blast brought hush.
44. AMBUSHING THE AMBUSHERS
S hortly before the op commenced, the latest mythoporn extravaganza showing on Blue Eros came to a climax. Perve-seus And His Winged Stallion Poke-ass-horse exhaustively documented the sexual permutations that could be achieved between man and equine, and in one scene extended the range by having the pair copulate while in flight, although cheaply rendered special effects and the patently fake pair of wings tacked onto the horse's back somewhat diminished the boundary-stretching majesty of the moment.
The movie was playing on one screen in mission control at Bleaney while the other screens were dedicated to the visor-cam feeds from the five Titans who were lying in wait in various places of concealment all round the site of the roadwork. Ramsay was trying to pay attention to the op-in-progress but kept finding himself drawn to the filmic bestiality, then repelled by it, then drawn, then repelled, over and over. His expression was at times so incredulous that his face looked as if it was melting and sliding downwards.
"Fuck," he breathed as the final credits rolled and, in yet another Pyrrhic victory for low-budget CGI, Perve-seus and mount soared off unconvincingly into the sunset. "I mean, Jesus. That was some sick, sick shit."
"I don't know, looked like true love to me," said Patanjali. "Of course, if you were that offended, Rick, you could always have asked me to change channels."
"I guess I thought I was broadening my horizons or some such, but now all I've got is a vision of a man drinking horse spunk stuck in my head."
"All right, quiet, people," said Sam. "It's started."
Much of the visor imagery was an unintelligible muddle, the Titans travelling too fast and their motion too shaky for the cameras to cope with. Time and again there were glimpses of Hercules flitting in and out of view at the corner of a screen as everybody took their turns with their oscillo-knives, Coeus then Phoebe then Rhea then Cronus, in a well-choreographed sequence. Iapetus had his moment of face-to-face confrontation, delivering shotgun rounds to Hercules's shoulder, arm and finally groin, and then the darting knife attacks resumed. The Titans were whittling the Olympian down. It was the only way to tackle an opponent so physically powerful — swift harrying strikes that gradually and increasingly disabled, like fighter planes strafing a dreadnought. Hercules tried to lash out at his assailants. On several occasions his blows nearly connected, but he was slowed down and made clumsy by the knife slashes, hamstrung, and he was flailing rather than fighting, and anyway at full speed the Titans were all but unhittable targets.
At last he was entirely helpless. On his knees, still somehow upright, but sagging. His lion-skin cloak tattered and dripping with blood. Unable to lift his limbs. Scarcely able to hold his head up. Once more he became a steady central object in Iapetus's visor-cam, as Barrington approached him, shotgun to the fore.
"Sorry now, you lousy mongrel?"
Hercules's brimming eyes suggested he was, if only for himself. The tears mingled with the blood spatters on his cheeks, turning from clear to pink as they trickled down.
"The other… Olympians," he gasped. "My family. They… will kill you. All… of you."
"Maybe," said Iapetus. "But you won't be around to see it."
He lodged the end of the shotgun barrel between Hercules's teeth.
"I'd ask if you have any last requests, Herc," he said, "but I can see you've got a gobful. Just the way you like it."
"Do it, Dez," Sam muttered, off-mic. "Enough tormenting. Get it over with."
"My brother was worth a hundred of you," Iapetus declared, and squeezed the trigger.
Hercules's cheeks were lit up from within like a jack-o'-lantern. Then his face seemed to collapse in on itself. His eyes bulged dumbly. His body slumped.
"There you go, Malc," Iapetus said softly. "She'll be right. Rest easy, mate."
The other four Titans joined him beside Hercules's lifeless body.
"Good work, one and all," said Cronus. "Iapetus, I trust you're pleased."
"Ripper, boss. Couldn't be happier."
"Then we should think about making tracks." Cronus's visor-cam viewpoint swept from one end of the street to the other. The roadway was deserted, as were the sidewalks, but faces were visible in almost every lit window overlooking the scene. "Before we attract any more attention."
"Fair go."
"We rendezvous at — "
"All Titans." This was Sam, into the mic. "Look north. I think I just saw…"
The visor-cam images all swung in the same direction.
All showed that something was coming.
A man.
Fast as a car.
Sam had spotted him appearing round the corner at the far end of the street, just as Cronus had been turning to look the other way. Cronus had missed him but she hadn't.
Loincloth. Winged sandals. Winged metal helmet. Staff with a pair of snakes wrapped around it.
Hermes, brandishing his caduceus.
None of the Titans had time to move, or even to cry out.
Then the visor-cam image from Coeus spun, showing brown night-time city sky, buildings, ground, sky, buildings, ground, until it finally settled on just sky, with blobs superimposed on it, splashes of something ink-dark and wet…