The Immortals Read Online Free

leaves in her matted blond hair might be more than just river detritus. Laurel sprigs—she recognized the leavesthat had so often graced her twin brother’s brow—twined together in a crude crown. She examined the sheet more carefully. A safety pin still held it closed at one shoulder, and a tiny hole showed where a second pin had secured the other side. She sat back on her heels, struck by a realization: The sheet was no makeshift shroud. It was a chiton. A draped garment not unlike those worn by ancient Greek women. This woman had been wreathed and draped like a priestess.
Or,
Selene realized with a shock,
like a sacrifice.
    She looked again at the braids in her hair. She turned the head gently from side to side, counting. Six braids. A
sex crines
. The hairstyle worn by Roman virgins.
    “You’re one of mine,” she murmured. Instinctively, she pulled the leather glove off her right hand and laid a fingertip upon the woman’s brow. In that moment, a vision swam before her.
    River water sloshes lazily against the shore while my heart drums with terror. His footsteps, swift on the pavement, draw closer and closer no matter how fast I run. I glance behind—but shadows cloak his face even as he passes beneath the lampposts. Then a knife glints red in the darkness.
    He catches me, binds me. “I wish there were another way,” he says, slipping the ring from my finger and holding it to his lips. “But you know there isn’t.” He puts aside the knife, and for a moment I clutch at hope. Then he pulls forth something else—small and silver and curved like a fishhook. He pushes aside the folds of my yellow robe; my bare thighs tremble on the cold ground. There is pain beyond imagining. I look toward the heavens, searching for help. Searching in vain.
    Feeling as if she’d awoken from someone else’s dream, Selene grasped at the swiftly receding images.
A needle,
she saw in the final flash.
He had a suture needle and black thread.
She reeled, sitting down hard on the rock, clutching her hand to her chest with a gasped curse.
    Selene hadn’t received a vision of a woman’s last momentssince the Diaspora.
Why now? Why this?
Her heart still raced with the woman’s fear. Selene could picture her, braids streaming as she ran from her attacker, a modern simulacrum of the innocents who’d once prayed at the altar of Artemis.
    The image brought swift rage to blot away her terror. She rose to her feet, frantically scanning the riverside once more. The names she’d rejected only hours before now sprang to her lips. “I am the Goddess of Virgins,” she seethed under her breath. “I am the Protector of the Innocent.” For millennia, she’d guarded her own virginity, the most sacred of her divine attributes. Much of the time, such abstinence felt like an anachronism: Few of the women she helped were virgins anymore. Yet she had never forgotten the duty she owed her ancient worshipers.
    She reached for her bow.
    Then she froze, uncertain.
    In ancient days, she would’ve already known the perpetrator’s identity. As Artemis guided the moon across the sky, she heard the pleas of women and witnessed the crimes of men. No one could hide from her swift vengeance. But she’d lost such supernatural abilities more than a thousand years before. Selene raised a finger to the swollen bruise on her chin, feeling the silky texture of the powder, a tangible reminder of how far she’d fallen.
    In recent decades, she’d preferred to work in the shadows, defending only women who asked directly for her help—those like Jackie Ortiz, whom the cops usually ignored. Now, if even a bully like Mario Velasquez could overpower her, what use would she be tracking a murderer? Then again, how could she not try?
    She looked down at the woman.
You were killed steps from my home,
she realized.
Sacrificed as a sick invocation, a perversion of rituals I once held sacred. And I did nothing to stop it.
Disgusted, she thrust aside her self-pity, her