Minos. Burt Weissbourd

      

      This is a Genuine Vireo Book

      A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books

      453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

      Los Angeles, CA 90013

      rarebirdbooks.com

      Copyright © 2016 by Burt Weissbourd

      first hardcover edition

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address: A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

      All of the characters and events in this story are imagined, as are many of the Seattle locations. Seattle is, of course, real, though the author has created an imaginary landscape in and around Capitol Hill.

      Set in Goudy Old Style

      ePub ISBN: 978-1-942600-65-7

      Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

      Names: Weissbourd, Burt, author.

      Title: Minos : a Corey Logan thriller / by Burt Weissbourd.

      Description: First Hardcover edition. | A Vireo Book. | New York [New York] ; Los Angeles [California] : Rare Bird Books, 2016.

      Series: The Corey Logan Trilogy

      Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-942600-40-4

      Subjects: LCSH Preparatory schools—Fiction. | Psychiatrists—Fiction. | Mythology, Greek—Fiction. | Murder fiction. | BISAC FICTION/General | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General.

      Classification: LCC PS3623.E45925 M56 2016 | DDC 813.6—dc23.

      To Kenneth Millar

      Contents

       The Minotaur

       PROLOGUE

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       EPILOGUE

       Acknowledgments

       Of the 12 Olympian Gods*, These are Featured in Minos:

       Other Mythological Figures and Creatures in Minos*

       History of the Mythological World

      The Minotaur

      (Minotauros, “the bull of Minos”)

      When Minos claimed the Cretan throne, he prayed to Poseidon to send him a sign as proof of his right to reign. At once, a dazzling snow-white bull (the Cretan Bull) emerged from the sea. Though Minos had promised to sacrifice this bull to Poseidon, he found it so beautiful that he sent it to join his herd and sacrificed another bull instead.

      Poseidon, enraged, made Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, fall in love with the wondrous, white bull. She confessed her unnatural passion to Daedalus, the master craftsman, who made a hollow wooden cow with wheels concealed in its hooves. Pasiphae climbed inside it wanting to mate with the great white beast. Daedalus wheeled it to the meadow where the bull was grazing. The bull mounted the wooden cow, and Pasiphae gave birth to a horrible monster, the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew fierce and wild, devouring men for sustenance.

      Horrified and ashamed, Minos consulted the Oracle at Delphi about how he might hide his terrible secret. The Oracle told him to have Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth, at the center of which he could conceal the Minotaur.

      PROLOGUE

      Minos admired his work. The scar was still there, if you looked closely, and yes, a thin line ran up from his partially closed eye, across his forehead. But now, there was the birthmark, a scarlet bloom, covering part of his left cheek. The way he did it, the birthmark was darkest in the center where it covered his scar. That way, the scar tissue was not so noticeable under the deep-purple inkblot, staining his cheek from lip to brow. He studied the bottles on the long table, dabbing his swabs in one, then another. Like a painter, Minos made adjustments on his palette before extending the birthmark downward.

      He applied the eyeliner, then the shadow. These he used because it pleased the Master. Minos thought he looked fancy, even gaudy, but that was fine if it made the Master happy. The Master found beauty in unlikely things.

      He looked again in the mirror and adjusted the overhead Halogens so that his face was fully lit. He liked how his curly black hair, a handsomely crafted wig, rested naturally on his head. Satisfied, he raised his long fingers and framed his face. Minos stood and waited, poised. When he felt steady and easy, even silky on the inside, he began his slow, silent dance. Minos’ fingers curled into fists, finding their marks in the air, uncurling again. His fingers moved deftly, making shapes in the air, until the extended forefinger of each hand settled just above his temples, curling forward. Then he swayed his body, graceful and deliberate.

      He was back in ancient Crete, where every year there was a sacrifice of a boy, a surrogate for Minos, the Bull King. The boy reigned for a day then danced through the five seasons—lion, goat, horse, serpent and bull calf—as Zagreus, Zeus’s son by Persephone, had done when fleeing from the Titans.

      Zeus had intended Zagreus to be his heir, and he entrusted him, like the infant Zeus in Cretan myth, to the care of the Titans. Hera, Zeus’s jealous wife, convinced the Titans to kill the child. When they tried to seize him, the divine infant showed great courage, transforming alternatively into a lion, a horse, a goat, a serpent, even a bull, as he fled in an attempt to escape. But the Titans grabbed his horns and feet and tore him apart, devouring him. Upon discovering their crime, Zeus struck the Titans dead with thunderbolts, turning them to ash. It is said that from the ashes of the Titans, containing the divine flesh they had just eaten, rose mortals, who were partly evil and partly divine.

      Minos smiled into the mirror. Remembering this poignant story of how Zeus, Minos the Bull King’s