Read Online Bad Blood: Latter-Day Olympians by Lucienne Diver - Free Book Online
Authors: Lucienne Diver
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couldn’t. I tried about a dozen more searches in both English and Greek and followed hoards of completely useless links before finally lighting on a likely site.
I browsed for a while, learning fun facts like that Zeus was currently performing at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas as Zeus Stormbringer, his act a “dazzling pyrotechnic extravaganza”. So heartwarming to see the gods using their powers for good.
Then there were silly sections like the “Find Your Inner God(des)” personality quiz and the “Gotta Getta God” word search, but my favorite, the section I was searching for, was the rap sheet, a gossip-rag-styled list of hints, allegations and things left unsaid.
It was intriguing to speculate on who’d starred in a series of porn films in the early ’70s under the names Ray Long and Venus Wells, not that the latter took a great deal of imagination. Venus—Aphrodite—too easy. And Ray, hmm, a sun god maybe, like—no, it couldn’t be. A grin spread across my face. Our very own Apollo? Well, hey, he wouldn’t be the first to transition from, ahem, adult film into mainstream theatre. Tracy Lords was probably the best known, but there were plenty of never-squelched rumors about Sly Stalone and Marilyn Monroe. I tried really hard not to linger too long on any images that wanted to take my mind off legitimate research—like finding a copy of one of those films.
Lords knew how much time I’d wasted before finding a single hint of useful information halfway down the rap sheet: “Rumor has it that some pretty elemental forces are coming together to stage a comeback. So, what I’m wondering is, are we all about to be thrown together into one big melting pot, complete with scalding, or are we in for the mother of all clambakes? Only time will tell.”
Even as rumblings went, it was pretty sketchy. I tried to puzzle it out. Was the rumormonger trying to be cutesy or was there a method to his madness? The former would be no help at all, so I focused on the latter. Elemental forces. Okay: earth, air, fire, water. Melting pot—water to fill it, fire to heat it, earth for the pot? Or maybe the people within represented clay or salt of the earth. Clambake—again maybe water from which the seafood came with fire for baking. Even if I was on the right track, I couldn’t see how that put me very far ahead. The list of water divinities stretched as long as my arm, from the great Oceanus through Poseidon down to the lowliest nereid. And fire? There was Apollo, of course; Circe’s own sire, Helios; Hephaestus of the forge; even Zeus with his firebolts…
I could think of only one kind of comeback and it involved worship, tribute and debasement for us mortal saps. At least I could probably rule out Apollo. If he were staging a coup I couldn’t see the sense of hiring me to poke around. Unless—unless Circe’s death put a hitch in his plans. But then why choose me if he figured I’d be too dense to shed light on his own closeted skeletons? On the other hand, what harm could little ol’ me do? It wasn’t as if I could make the midnight ride waving my lantern and yelling, “The Olympians are coming!”
I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t even know that Apollo was involved or that the rumors were true. Even if they were, these gods had been quiescent for thousands of years. Who was to say that they held the power to change things now? Wouldn’t they have risen up years ago if that was the case? It was probable that even gods had delusions of grandeur.
Somehow, my logic didn’t entirely put me at ease. As Mel Brooks once wrote, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” In serious deconstructionist mode, I took that to mean that the reason terrible things happen is that moral, rational people just couldn’t grasp the enormity of the horror in time to stop the juggernaut. Plus, the bad guys cheat.
Chapter Seven
“Tori fears to go where angels tread, but doesn’t seem to mind digging
I browsed for a while, learning fun facts like that Zeus was currently performing at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas as Zeus Stormbringer, his act a “dazzling pyrotechnic extravaganza”. So heartwarming to see the gods using their powers for good.
Then there were silly sections like the “Find Your Inner God(des)” personality quiz and the “Gotta Getta God” word search, but my favorite, the section I was searching for, was the rap sheet, a gossip-rag-styled list of hints, allegations and things left unsaid.
It was intriguing to speculate on who’d starred in a series of porn films in the early ’70s under the names Ray Long and Venus Wells, not that the latter took a great deal of imagination. Venus—Aphrodite—too easy. And Ray, hmm, a sun god maybe, like—no, it couldn’t be. A grin spread across my face. Our very own Apollo? Well, hey, he wouldn’t be the first to transition from, ahem, adult film into mainstream theatre. Tracy Lords was probably the best known, but there were plenty of never-squelched rumors about Sly Stalone and Marilyn Monroe. I tried really hard not to linger too long on any images that wanted to take my mind off legitimate research—like finding a copy of one of those films.
Lords knew how much time I’d wasted before finding a single hint of useful information halfway down the rap sheet: “Rumor has it that some pretty elemental forces are coming together to stage a comeback. So, what I’m wondering is, are we all about to be thrown together into one big melting pot, complete with scalding, or are we in for the mother of all clambakes? Only time will tell.”
Even as rumblings went, it was pretty sketchy. I tried to puzzle it out. Was the rumormonger trying to be cutesy or was there a method to his madness? The former would be no help at all, so I focused on the latter. Elemental forces. Okay: earth, air, fire, water. Melting pot—water to fill it, fire to heat it, earth for the pot? Or maybe the people within represented clay or salt of the earth. Clambake—again maybe water from which the seafood came with fire for baking. Even if I was on the right track, I couldn’t see how that put me very far ahead. The list of water divinities stretched as long as my arm, from the great Oceanus through Poseidon down to the lowliest nereid. And fire? There was Apollo, of course; Circe’s own sire, Helios; Hephaestus of the forge; even Zeus with his firebolts…
I could think of only one kind of comeback and it involved worship, tribute and debasement for us mortal saps. At least I could probably rule out Apollo. If he were staging a coup I couldn’t see the sense of hiring me to poke around. Unless—unless Circe’s death put a hitch in his plans. But then why choose me if he figured I’d be too dense to shed light on his own closeted skeletons? On the other hand, what harm could little ol’ me do? It wasn’t as if I could make the midnight ride waving my lantern and yelling, “The Olympians are coming!”
I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t even know that Apollo was involved or that the rumors were true. Even if they were, these gods had been quiescent for thousands of years. Who was to say that they held the power to change things now? Wouldn’t they have risen up years ago if that was the case? It was probable that even gods had delusions of grandeur.
Somehow, my logic didn’t entirely put me at ease. As Mel Brooks once wrote, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.” In serious deconstructionist mode, I took that to mean that the reason terrible things happen is that moral, rational people just couldn’t grasp the enormity of the horror in time to stop the juggernaut. Plus, the bad guys cheat.
Chapter Seven
“Tori fears to go where angels tread, but doesn’t seem to mind digging
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