The Dogs of Athens by Kendare Blake Page A

draws back the bowstring in her mind and lets an arrow fly into the fat woman’s heart. The woman snatches at her shoulder like she’s trying to tear off her shirt, and stumbles. Daphne hops out of the way. One black ear twists toward Artemis before she trots back to her in the shadows of the museum. The fat tourist’s family finally takes notice. They begin to squawk like chickens, shouting and fluttering their arms, wishing loudly that they were home where there are fast ambulances and clean hospitals.
    â€œWhat did you do to her?” Daphne asks.
    â€œIt’s nothing,” Artemis answers. “It’s angina.”
    â€œThat wasn’t really necessary.”
    â€œI protect my pack,” Artemis says. “Even if my pack has become willful and learned to back talk.”
    She looks past the crowd surrounding the fallen tourist, up the stone road to the crest of the hill and the golden Parthenon. Should they go to the summit, and walk through the ghosts? Like the others on the road and milling in and out of the museum, they too have traveled far to be here. But now the idea isn’t particularly appealing. What seems grand to millions of visitors seems only sad to her. The Parthenon is a monument stripped bare. It’s stood too long under the blasting Grecian sun. So long that it’s only bones now, and to gawk feels indecent.
    â€œWe shouldn’t have come here,” Daphne grumbles, meaning that they shouldn’t have returned to Athens. Too many memories, the pack had said. Too many other gods, and no god was to be trusted except for Artemis. But they had found no other gods. Artemis had found no other gods for almost three hundred years.
    â€œI don’t like it here,” Daphne goes on. “There’s nothing good to hunt. These cats are too thin. Their bones stick in my teeth.”
    â€œLeave the cats alone, then,” Artemis says. “You’re free here. Invisible.”
    Daphne snaps her jaws.
    â€œThe pack needs a purpose, Goddess. We aren’t neutered terriers content to steal meat skewers from the market. We need to take down game. We need to shred.”
    *   *   *
    At night, Monastiraki glitters. All of Athens glitters, every ruin glowing as if lit from within. Walled gardens flash light from black-and-white movies, and the wide black sky settles over it all. Looking up over the hills, Artemis feels like a goldfish in a bowl.
    Around her, music rings off the stone street. Vendors sell roasted cashews and fried dough as appetites return in the cool dark. Lovers walk together with their footsteps in sync, happy to experience the city. They have so little time, to see and do all the things they wish. It must be frustrating. Artemis could close her eyes, and they would be dead and dust when she opened them. She could stay in Athens for a hundred years and consider it brief.
    But she won’t. There are no gods here. Only a graveyard of chipped marble cheeks and blank, all-seeing eyes.
    Have others returned to this city, too? she wonders. Perhaps they thought too that it was the likeliest place to find one another. As if they had marked it. In the unlikely event of Olympus falling, all gods should meet in Athens.
    She smiles, slightly. The others have all passed through. She’s certain of it. She can almost smell them on the wind, and taste them in the ocean. Perhaps it was her brother, Apollo. Perhaps he had been looking for her. She hasn’t exactly made herself easy to find, wandering the wilds with the pack. And she hasn’t tried very hard to find the other gods, either. If she doesn’t see Apollo for five hundred more years, it will only be her fault.
    A laughing boy bumps up against her shoulder as he passes from behind.
    â€œOh,” he says, and touches her arm. “I’m sorry. Excuse me. Sig … signomi.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” she says in English.
    For a moment they stare