It's where Murders are Solved Love is Kindled Monsters Lurk Dragons are Hatched.
Chapter One
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Chapter 1 The Waves of the Past
It silently rose in the distance, dark and foreboding, to-ward an angry sky. Prometheus, the god, flexed his immense muscles, his eyelids clamped down and his face contorted in a grimace. His invisible power reinforced the structure of the ship, enabling the craft to remain whole as it was battered and bruised by the unforgiving sea. Despite his protection, the frigid spikes of rain assaulted my skin and jet engine howl of the wind penetrated my ears. Lightning, a ballerina dancing among the clouds, crackled to the sea and briefly illuminated the wave as it descended upon us. I held tightly to the mast of one of the alien ship’s sails, praying for deliverance from the two gods unleashing their fury.
Down we went into the trough that was the mouth of the behemoth. Prometheus held tightly to the steering mecha-nism of the ship as it rose. As with previous challengers, its nose pointed skyward darting up the wall of water toward the crest - but this time it wouldn’t make it. For a moment, I hung to the mast like a trapeze artist to his line, but I lost my grip and dropped. Instead of a net I was greeted by the ship’s cabin door with a painful thud. Another wrenching twist flung me over the top of the cabin, continuing my descent until I hit the ocean - a concrete wall tearing the air from my lungs and sending a shockwave of pain cascading through my body.
I looked above me just in time to see the At-lantean ship keel over and come crashing toward me. As I mentally prepared for my surely fatal encounter with my former transportation, the force of the wave’s current sucked me underneath the water. The sea intruded my nostrils, my eyes, finding its way inside my mouth and down my throat. Through the murky haze of my flaming vision I saw the white foam of the wave above me, its circular corona continuing as it passed over. A white shimmering shape replaced where the roll of the wave had been…through the blurred view I knew it was the hull of the ship. Prometheus managed to right it.
My lungs begged for the absent air and I could feel the cold chill of the darkness creeping in. The Grim Reaper’s scythe was being sharpened for me now. I knew for fact there was an afterlife – Persephone, the half mortal-half god, told me as much. The gods fed off the life force of things that had passed on – but she didn’t really go into detail about how it all worked. Death remained a mystery. Would I just be a floating buffet with no consciousness? Would I see my wife and daughter in the afterlife?
It wouldn’t be long until I found the answers. Once the last bit of oxygen deprived my brain I’d likely lose consciousness, crap myself and it would be over. In a sense, I welcomed it as penance for my misdeeds.
Slimy hands grabbed my bare legs and tugged on the chi ton I was wearing. I opened my eyes, allowing the acidity of the saltwater to assault them again just to get a glimpse of what had a hold of me. Pulling me downward like anchors were two female creatures with scaly faces and large fishy-looking eyes. Their thin heads connected to a coral adorned humanoid torso that led to an aquamarine fish tail where their legs would be. It was those tails that seemed to give them unbelievable strength in pulling me deeper.
Darkness invaded from the outer reaches of my vision, taking up territory like a hungry lava flow. I was ready to succumb to it, accepting the inevitability of the end - but before it completely took me a muscular arm wrapped around my waist. I weakly gazed at the face connected to the arm and saw it belonged to Prometheus.
At first my body was the rope in a vicious tug of war between beings that a year ago I couldn’t have imagined existed. Finally, losing the battle, the mermaids released my legs, shrieked in anger, and tried to attack him, but a simple gesture from his hand sent them crying in pain. The lava flow took the remaining shreds of my consciousness and all went black.
***
As my face felt the sting of the rain propelled by the category five winds, my eyes opened to the swirling tempest above the mast of the ship. Another bolt of lightning struck across the sky, dancing from cloud to cloud until it found its home in the sea a few miles to the west of us. The wooden deck beneath me was hardened, water logged, and swayed as the waves of
Poseidon continued their assault of our vessel. Spray from the conjoining of the ship and its assailants shot into the air and collapsed on me. My lungs were still searching for the air – I coughed, vomiting water and seaweed that spilled down my cheeks to the deck.
“You live?” Prometheus asked me, his deep voice penetrating my now waterlogged eardrums like a spike.
I managed to croak a yes.
“Good. You look like death.”
I thought of telling him, “I was dead. You saved me.”
“Indeed,” he responded, as if I informed him directly.
“You just read my mind?”
“Of course.”
“Does that go with the ‘being a god’ territory?” I asked.
“Yes. You’ll learn.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“You mock me?” Prometheus looked confused.
“No, no, I meant no disrespect.” I coughed again, wheezing more salty wetness.
“Oh, so you still are in denial of your lineage.”
“If you say so.”
Prometheus’ normally blondish hair was soaked dark and tumbled down his face and broad shoulders. His smooth face and pronounced jaw grimaced. His thick neck connected to a chiseled body as his muscular frame slipped back into his golden Atlantean chest plate.
“Your mortal ignorance is insufferable.” He griped, “Has the fact that you released the gods and set us into our current predicament shown you nothing?”
“Yeah, it showed me that I’m a mark.”
“Daniel, Zeus and Poseidon wouldn’t personally be at-tacking us unless you were a threat to them.”
“Me? Come on, Prometheus. You don’t see me doing that hocus pocus you do. I can’t fly. I can’t control weather – I’m just a guy who somehow got some good people and myself into the middle of this clusterf-”
“You are a son of Hercules, Daniel – it’s the reason why you were chosen by Hermes to release the gods.”
“I’m the son of Jimmy Ryan – a con man from Yonkers who is doing twenty in the pen for scamming old ladies out of their social security checks.”
“Anyway…” He extended his hand to me and assisted me to my feet, “…the Naiads can pack a wallop. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“The Naiads?” I was dumbfounded.
“The half-fish, half-women. They are daughters of Tri-ton, Poseidon’s son.”
“Ah, the mermaids. What did he do? Score with a dolphin?”
Prometheus erupted into ferocious laughter.
“You are a strange half-breed, Dan Ryan,” he said, finally composing himself. “A strange one indeed.”
“What part of this are you not getting, Prometheus? I am no half breed. I don’t even know what Hermes was talking about.”
“Dan, you know the answer to this – you were the only remaining descendant of Hercules and only you could free the gods from their underwater Atlantean prison – for it was Hercules that put them there. Now, you can continue to deny that or accept th-”
Prometheus suddenly looked skyward. The sheets of rain dissipated to a light drizzle and the roaring wind subsided to a slight breeze as the furious clouds pulled back to reveal a billion stars. The violent rocking of the galleon had slipped to a gentle caress, like a mother easing her child into a slumber.
“This is not good,” Prometheus grumbled, as he took the wheel of the vessel.
A tremor beneath our feet shook the deck, followed by smaller tremors that created bubbling near the starboard side of the ship.
“Dan, take the wheel.”
Prometheus stood toward the fore of the ship, peering out into the black ocean. The bubbling continued to accumulate, first a few, then, as if in concert with the vibrations, more and more of the bubbles appeared until there was a large foamy vortex directly in front of the ship. At the center of the vortex, a head with a crown of coral emerge, framed by long white hair and a long beard. His large, naked torso would appear soon thereafter, followed by his seaweed-covered loins and his muscular legs. Around his neck, he wore a chain of seashells laced in gold. He floated above the water, his immense muscles seeming to glisten as the moonlight shone on his wet frame.
“Finally decided to stop being a coward, Poseidon?” Prometheus taunted the god of the sea.
“Be still your tongue, Prometheus,” he returned. “You will pass no further with the seed of Hercules.”
“Are you going to stop us?” Prometheus laughed. “You? The second-in-command? Your waves did nothing but annoy me, and you are blocking our way. Do you truly want to face me?”
“You overestimate your powers, Prometheus,” Poseidon retorted. “You are not the god you once were.”
“Let’s see then, shall we?”
Prometheus levitated off the deck of the ship and into the air, cupped his hands in front of him, and then expelled a beam of red energy from them striking Poseidon in the chest. The sea god tumbled backward, a shriek of pain erupting from his lips.
Poseidon fired back with his own energy beam and it sent Prometheus flying backward. He regained his bearings, then sent another burst finding its mark, this time sending Poseidon into the sea. He immediately rose with a wet and furious look on his face. Poseidon made a gesture toward the water and large, geyser-like streams of water struck Prometheus on both sides of his body.
BREEEEOOOOOH…a strange sound erupted from Poseidon’s lips.
Exploding from the sea, an orca chomped down on Prometheus, swallowing him whole like some bad remake of Moby Dick. The whale crashed back into the water - he was gone.
Poseidon floated toward the Atlantean ship.
“Dan Ryan, if you and your companions wish to live, you will turn this ship around and follow my directions back to Atlantis.”
Beneath us, a great eruption occurred and suddenly, the head of the orca flew past Poseidon. Its tail tumbled over the ship and its dorsal fin plopped on the deck. With innards scattered across the sea, all manner of watery beasts began to take their fill as Prometheus arose from its muck.
“Poseidon, you did not seriously believe you could defeat me with your pets, did you?”
Poseidon inaudibly growled a response and another energy burst erupted from him, blasting into Prometheus with everything he had. I heard him cry out in pain.
“You will die now, insurrectionist.” Poseidon screamed as he continued to put all of his might into the power of his next attack.
I saw a globe of blue energy surrounding Prometheus… he was no longer visible.
“Dissipate into the abyss!” Poseidon cried.
“No…” I whispered.
Poseidon released the charge and the blue ball at the other end began to disappear, revealing a figure with long light brown hair, bulging biceps, and an annoyed look on his face.
“What?” An exhausted Poseidon wheezed in anguish.
“Was that truly the best you have?” Prometheus mocked. “I mean, really. I would get more of a challenge from Aphrodite.”
“You… could not have survived that.”
“Poseidon, for a god of your stature, you are particularly dense,” Prometheus told him, smiling. “Of course I survived. Gods cannot die – and you cannot destroy me. I am a Titan – a higher order than you. I will always be stronger than you, Zeus, or any of the Dodekatheons you send my way.”
“What is your profit in all of this?” Poseidon asked, “Do you aim to rule the mortals? We can give you that role once more.”
“Are we to bargaining now?”
“What else is there? I cannot defeat you and you cannot defeat me. We are at an impasse.”
“Wrong, king of the sea.” Prometheus growled, and a blinding white light erupted from his outstretched hands, looking like two bolts of lightning. The bolts swirled around Poseidon, striking him over and over, drawing cries of agony.
Prometheus continued his torment, a wild, angry look appearing on his face. He was determined to end Poseidon’s existence. As Poseidon writhed in pain, the stars disappeared, the wind picked up and rapidly the wall of rain pelted us.
“Well, Zeus,” Prometheus called out as he continued his barrage on Poseidon, “Have you come for the same treatment as your brother?”
“Release him,” a booming voice stereoed from the clouds. “Release him - now.”
Prometheus ignored Zeus’ request, continuing his attack against what now appeared to be an unconscious Poseidon.
“RELEASE HIM!” Zeus cried out again.
“Come take his place!” Prometheus called back. “Or withdraw this storm, the waves, and trouble our journey no more.”
“Agreed,” Zeus’ voice boomed. “If you release him – you will not feel the wrath of the wind, rain or waves the remainder of your journey.”
“So be it.” Prometheus replied, as his hands dropped to his side, releasing Poseidon, who simply slipped into the sea, no sign of life emanating from him.
Once more, the rain stopped, the wind died down, and the skies retreated back to reveal the moon and its heavenly companions.
Prometheus returned to the deck of the stilled ship and fell to one knee.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“The battle took a lot more out of me than I let on,” Prometheus rasped in obvious pain. “I need to rest.”
“You need me to pilot the ship for you? I’m no mari-ner but I used to have a small boat I took the family out into Tampa Bay.”
“No, it will not be necessary.”
It silently rose in the distance, dark and foreboding, to-ward an angry sky. Prometheus, the god, flexed his immense muscles, his eyelids clamped down and his face contorted in a grimace. His invisible power reinforced the structure of the ship, enabling the craft to remain whole as it was battered and bruised by the unforgiving sea. Despite his protection, the frigid spikes of rain assaulted my skin and jet engine howl of the wind penetrated my ears. Lightning, a ballerina dancing among the clouds, crackled to the sea and briefly illuminated the wave as it descended upon us. I held tightly to the mast of one of the alien ship’s sails, praying for deliverance from the two gods unleashing their fury.
Down we went into the trough that was the mouth of the behemoth. Prometheus held tightly to the steering mecha-nism of the ship as it rose. As with previous challengers, its nose pointed skyward darting up the wall of water toward the crest - but this time it wouldn’t make it. For a moment, I hung to the mast like a trapeze artist to his line, but I lost my grip and dropped. Instead of a net I was greeted by the ship’s cabin door with a painful thud. Another wrenching twist flung me over the top of the cabin, continuing my descent until I hit the ocean - a concrete wall tearing the air from my lungs and sending a shockwave of pain cascading through my body.
I looked above me just in time to see the At-lantean ship keel over and come crashing toward me. As I mentally prepared for my surely fatal encounter with my former transportation, the force of the wave’s current sucked me underneath the water. The sea intruded my nostrils, my eyes, finding its way inside my mouth and down my throat. Through the murky haze of my flaming vision I saw the white foam of the wave above me, its circular corona continuing as it passed over. A white shimmering shape replaced where the roll of the wave had been…through the blurred view I knew it was the hull of the ship. Prometheus managed to right it.
My lungs begged for the absent air and I could feel the cold chill of the darkness creeping in. The Grim Reaper’s scythe was being sharpened for me now. I knew for fact there was an afterlife – Persephone, the half mortal-half god, told me as much. The gods fed off the life force of things that had passed on – but she didn’t really go into detail about how it all worked. Death remained a mystery. Would I just be a floating buffet with no consciousness? Would I see my wife and daughter in the afterlife?
It wouldn’t be long until I found the answers. Once the last bit of oxygen deprived my brain I’d likely lose consciousness, crap myself and it would be over. In a sense, I welcomed it as penance for my misdeeds.
Slimy hands grabbed my bare legs and tugged on the chi ton I was wearing. I opened my eyes, allowing the acidity of the saltwater to assault them again just to get a glimpse of what had a hold of me. Pulling me downward like anchors were two female creatures with scaly faces and large fishy-looking eyes. Their thin heads connected to a coral adorned humanoid torso that led to an aquamarine fish tail where their legs would be. It was those tails that seemed to give them unbelievable strength in pulling me deeper.
Darkness invaded from the outer reaches of my vision, taking up territory like a hungry lava flow. I was ready to succumb to it, accepting the inevitability of the end - but before it completely took me a muscular arm wrapped around my waist. I weakly gazed at the face connected to the arm and saw it belonged to Prometheus.
At first my body was the rope in a vicious tug of war between beings that a year ago I couldn’t have imagined existed. Finally, losing the battle, the mermaids released my legs, shrieked in anger, and tried to attack him, but a simple gesture from his hand sent them crying in pain. The lava flow took the remaining shreds of my consciousness and all went black.
***
As my face felt the sting of the rain propelled by the category five winds, my eyes opened to the swirling tempest above the mast of the ship. Another bolt of lightning struck across the sky, dancing from cloud to cloud until it found its home in the sea a few miles to the west of us. The wooden deck beneath me was hardened, water logged, and swayed as the waves of
Poseidon continued their assault of our vessel. Spray from the conjoining of the ship and its assailants shot into the air and collapsed on me. My lungs were still searching for the air – I coughed, vomiting water and seaweed that spilled down my cheeks to the deck.
“You live?” Prometheus asked me, his deep voice penetrating my now waterlogged eardrums like a spike.
I managed to croak a yes.
“Good. You look like death.”
I thought of telling him, “I was dead. You saved me.”
“Indeed,” he responded, as if I informed him directly.
“You just read my mind?”
“Of course.”
“Does that go with the ‘being a god’ territory?” I asked.
“Yes. You’ll learn.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“You mock me?” Prometheus looked confused.
“No, no, I meant no disrespect.” I coughed again, wheezing more salty wetness.
“Oh, so you still are in denial of your lineage.”
“If you say so.”
Prometheus’ normally blondish hair was soaked dark and tumbled down his face and broad shoulders. His smooth face and pronounced jaw grimaced. His thick neck connected to a chiseled body as his muscular frame slipped back into his golden Atlantean chest plate.
“Your mortal ignorance is insufferable.” He griped, “Has the fact that you released the gods and set us into our current predicament shown you nothing?”
“Yeah, it showed me that I’m a mark.”
“Daniel, Zeus and Poseidon wouldn’t personally be at-tacking us unless you were a threat to them.”
“Me? Come on, Prometheus. You don’t see me doing that hocus pocus you do. I can’t fly. I can’t control weather – I’m just a guy who somehow got some good people and myself into the middle of this clusterf-”
“You are a son of Hercules, Daniel – it’s the reason why you were chosen by Hermes to release the gods.”
“I’m the son of Jimmy Ryan – a con man from Yonkers who is doing twenty in the pen for scamming old ladies out of their social security checks.”
“Anyway…” He extended his hand to me and assisted me to my feet, “…the Naiads can pack a wallop. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“The Naiads?” I was dumbfounded.
“The half-fish, half-women. They are daughters of Tri-ton, Poseidon’s son.”
“Ah, the mermaids. What did he do? Score with a dolphin?”
Prometheus erupted into ferocious laughter.
“You are a strange half-breed, Dan Ryan,” he said, finally composing himself. “A strange one indeed.”
“What part of this are you not getting, Prometheus? I am no half breed. I don’t even know what Hermes was talking about.”
“Dan, you know the answer to this – you were the only remaining descendant of Hercules and only you could free the gods from their underwater Atlantean prison – for it was Hercules that put them there. Now, you can continue to deny that or accept th-”
Prometheus suddenly looked skyward. The sheets of rain dissipated to a light drizzle and the roaring wind subsided to a slight breeze as the furious clouds pulled back to reveal a billion stars. The violent rocking of the galleon had slipped to a gentle caress, like a mother easing her child into a slumber.
“This is not good,” Prometheus grumbled, as he took the wheel of the vessel.
A tremor beneath our feet shook the deck, followed by smaller tremors that created bubbling near the starboard side of the ship.
“Dan, take the wheel.”
Prometheus stood toward the fore of the ship, peering out into the black ocean. The bubbling continued to accumulate, first a few, then, as if in concert with the vibrations, more and more of the bubbles appeared until there was a large foamy vortex directly in front of the ship. At the center of the vortex, a head with a crown of coral emerge, framed by long white hair and a long beard. His large, naked torso would appear soon thereafter, followed by his seaweed-covered loins and his muscular legs. Around his neck, he wore a chain of seashells laced in gold. He floated above the water, his immense muscles seeming to glisten as the moonlight shone on his wet frame.
“Finally decided to stop being a coward, Poseidon?” Prometheus taunted the god of the sea.
“Be still your tongue, Prometheus,” he returned. “You will pass no further with the seed of Hercules.”
“Are you going to stop us?” Prometheus laughed. “You? The second-in-command? Your waves did nothing but annoy me, and you are blocking our way. Do you truly want to face me?”
“You overestimate your powers, Prometheus,” Poseidon retorted. “You are not the god you once were.”
“Let’s see then, shall we?”
Prometheus levitated off the deck of the ship and into the air, cupped his hands in front of him, and then expelled a beam of red energy from them striking Poseidon in the chest. The sea god tumbled backward, a shriek of pain erupting from his lips.
Poseidon fired back with his own energy beam and it sent Prometheus flying backward. He regained his bearings, then sent another burst finding its mark, this time sending Poseidon into the sea. He immediately rose with a wet and furious look on his face. Poseidon made a gesture toward the water and large, geyser-like streams of water struck Prometheus on both sides of his body.
BREEEEOOOOOH…a strange sound erupted from Poseidon’s lips.
Exploding from the sea, an orca chomped down on Prometheus, swallowing him whole like some bad remake of Moby Dick. The whale crashed back into the water - he was gone.
Poseidon floated toward the Atlantean ship.
“Dan Ryan, if you and your companions wish to live, you will turn this ship around and follow my directions back to Atlantis.”
Beneath us, a great eruption occurred and suddenly, the head of the orca flew past Poseidon. Its tail tumbled over the ship and its dorsal fin plopped on the deck. With innards scattered across the sea, all manner of watery beasts began to take their fill as Prometheus arose from its muck.
“Poseidon, you did not seriously believe you could defeat me with your pets, did you?”
Poseidon inaudibly growled a response and another energy burst erupted from him, blasting into Prometheus with everything he had. I heard him cry out in pain.
“You will die now, insurrectionist.” Poseidon screamed as he continued to put all of his might into the power of his next attack.
I saw a globe of blue energy surrounding Prometheus… he was no longer visible.
“Dissipate into the abyss!” Poseidon cried.
“No…” I whispered.
Poseidon released the charge and the blue ball at the other end began to disappear, revealing a figure with long light brown hair, bulging biceps, and an annoyed look on his face.
“What?” An exhausted Poseidon wheezed in anguish.
“Was that truly the best you have?” Prometheus mocked. “I mean, really. I would get more of a challenge from Aphrodite.”
“You… could not have survived that.”
“Poseidon, for a god of your stature, you are particularly dense,” Prometheus told him, smiling. “Of course I survived. Gods cannot die – and you cannot destroy me. I am a Titan – a higher order than you. I will always be stronger than you, Zeus, or any of the Dodekatheons you send my way.”
“What is your profit in all of this?” Poseidon asked, “Do you aim to rule the mortals? We can give you that role once more.”
“Are we to bargaining now?”
“What else is there? I cannot defeat you and you cannot defeat me. We are at an impasse.”
“Wrong, king of the sea.” Prometheus growled, and a blinding white light erupted from his outstretched hands, looking like two bolts of lightning. The bolts swirled around Poseidon, striking him over and over, drawing cries of agony.
Prometheus continued his torment, a wild, angry look appearing on his face. He was determined to end Poseidon’s existence. As Poseidon writhed in pain, the stars disappeared, the wind picked up and rapidly the wall of rain pelted us.
“Well, Zeus,” Prometheus called out as he continued his barrage on Poseidon, “Have you come for the same treatment as your brother?”
“Release him,” a booming voice stereoed from the clouds. “Release him - now.”
Prometheus ignored Zeus’ request, continuing his attack against what now appeared to be an unconscious Poseidon.
“RELEASE HIM!” Zeus cried out again.
“Come take his place!” Prometheus called back. “Or withdraw this storm, the waves, and trouble our journey no more.”
“Agreed,” Zeus’ voice boomed. “If you release him – you will not feel the wrath of the wind, rain or waves the remainder of your journey.”
“So be it.” Prometheus replied, as his hands dropped to his side, releasing Poseidon, who simply slipped into the sea, no sign of life emanating from him.
Once more, the rain stopped, the wind died down, and the skies retreated back to reveal the moon and its heavenly companions.
Prometheus returned to the deck of the stilled ship and fell to one knee.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“The battle took a lot more out of me than I let on,” Prometheus rasped in obvious pain. “I need to rest.”
“You need me to pilot the ship for you? I’m no mari-ner but I used to have a small boat I took the family out into Tampa Bay.”
“No, it will not be necessary.”
Copyrighted by JC De La Torre © 2009. All rights reserved.
Self Published by DLT Atlantis Publishing - ISBN: 0-978527-23-2
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