The Beginning of the End

[Saoirse Murray]

Las Vegas, Nevada. January 21st, 2019.

It is the evening before the world’s largest gun show begins. Tens of thousands of representatives of the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade industry will spend the weekend clustered inside the Sands Expo and Convention Center, browsing all manner of military, law enforcement, and tactical equipment.

By coincidence, or perhaps divine design, it is during this very same week that another gathering is set to take place in the neighbouring Wynn resort and casino. Though smaller in its number of delegates, this meeting of like-minded individuals has the potential to fundamentally shape the course of humanity as we know it. Of course, such a caucus is invitation only and taking place in a location so secret that the Wynn hotel staff not only deny any knowledge of it’s occurrence but appear to genuinely have no idea that the meeting's participants ever checked into the Wynn to begin with.

“They would have used aliases, of course,” says a voice at the other end of the phone that Saoirse Murray has pressed to her ear. No matter how hard she strains to her him, it always sounds as if he’s calling from the other side of the world. From the underworld, even. Standing in the Wynn’s extravagantly colourful lobby, beneath the bough of an artificial tree, her all-black attire does not allow her to blend in. “My nephew isn’t particularly... imaginative, however,” the voice carries on, with a sigh. “You might find him more easily than the others.”

His nephew. Six months ago, Saoirse would have had no idea he was talking about, but now? Ares, she thinks, imagining the Greek god of war, like a statue come to life, striding across the Wynn’s marble floors with all the subtlety of a chariot. Even after meeting one of them face-to-face, it’s difficult for her to picture the gods of ancient Greece as anything other than walking sculptures.

“I’m going to look for their children,” she says, stepping aside to allow more room for a porter with a luggage cart to pass by. She looks over the dozens of other people in the lobby: some checking in, others getting ready to start their afternoon on the Strip. Could anyone of them be a god or goddess of war in disguise? Or had she walked past one of the children, one of their Scions, already? The prospect was as likely as it was infuriating. With any luck, the scion of Ares had made the unimaginative choice of checking into Caesar’s Palace.

Her gaze catches on an ornate clock above the check-in desk. “I need to go. I’ve got tickets for a show,” she says. Before he can cut in and ask what acrobats and musicians have to do with war, she adds, “I’m following a lead.”

“Oh?” She can hear his disdain in that single syllable, punctuated by a hmph of laughter. “Be certain you don’t allow yourself to be lead anywhere I wouldn’t want you to go.”

“I-” she starts to reply, but he’s already cut the line. She shoves the phone into her jacket and from the same pocket pulls out a gilded ticket for Panegyris, listing a starting time in just over ninety minutes. Before then, she has a meeting of her own to attend: in a cocktail bar, with a stranger who sent a cryptically worded message to her room - of course. If Saoirse Murray had learned one thing since being named the scion of Hades, it is that gods and their scions will never act artlessly when they could instead do something dramatic.