by Ramy Vance
Deserved or not, this is his fight, and if he can’t get out of the room, then the innocents behind him will be punished for something his other self did a long, long time ago.
Focusing on where he thinks the doorway must be, he thrusts his body forward. But the doorway is small, and as he throws his body through its narrow pathway, his shoulder hits the doorframe with a bone-crunching thud; he hears his collarbone crack. Grimacing in pain, he fumbles out the door when two of the doglike beast charge at him.
He tries to get of the way, but blind as he is, it’s luck of the draw whether feinting right or left will do anything. Marc chooses right. A poor choice; one of the dogs slams into him as another clamps down on his wrist with crushing force.
Much to his surprise, Marc does not scream. Despite the enormity of the pain, he makes little show of it. This is so unlike Jean who, having suffered lesser injuries in the past, would have screamed like a fresh baby just out of the womb.
The second dog still clamps onto him, and before the first can leap away from Marc to resume its attack, he grabs it and does the only thing he can think of. He runs for the floor’s railing and throws himself over the edge.
↔
Falling into darkness is far more terrifying than falling with light. With light, one can see the approaching ground, ready themselves for the inevitable impact. But in the dark, the hard ground can come at any moment, and even though the fall is brief and the ground is near, Marc feels fear for the first time since coming into existence.
He’s not afraid of the pain. He knew what this fall would cost him before he tumbled over the edge.
What he fears is the uncertainty. That is what grips his soul—should he have one. And with every nanosecond he spends falling, he wonders if this will be the moment of impact. When it is not, his fear cycles back. Will this be the moment of impact?
Will this be it?
Will this be it?
Until it finally is. Marc feels relief as the breath is knocked out of him and the familiar pain of his body hitting marble washes over him. He relishes that; he would gladly jump off a hundred buildings than deal with that uncertainty again.
That, and Marc is no fool. During the fall, Marc twisted his body so that the laelaps would hit the ground first, his bony body acting as a cushion to his fall.
The laelaps that had bitten his wrist detached during the fall, and with a whimpering yelp, hit the ground several feet away. But the one Marc gripped made no noise as it hit the ground.
Well, no noise came from its fang-filled lips. There was a splattering sound, accented by the crushing of bones and flesh as its body flattened under the weight of Marc’s own.
“One down, two hurt, and I’m just getting started,” Marc says as he gets to his feet. He tries to access just how injured he is: his wrist, his shoulder, bruises from the fall. Feeling around, he looks for any more punctures on his body. He knows that the adrenaline of battle would hide any wounds. He can’t feel anything—just the soft, gushy mess of the laelaps’s body caking his own.
As he considers his next move, Marc hears a scream followed by a blinding light filling the room.
↔↔↔
Hecate’s new moon form sends her hounds into the hotel and up the stairwell. Despite being made of light, her sister’s magic is so complete that New Moon finds it difficult to see. She knows that she must end the foul human quickly, for with every passing second that her other self maintains the magic, she too ages.
And thus death draws nearer. How ironic, she thinks, if this day we manage to end the human, only to die of old age in our efforts.
She puts the thought out of her mind; her hounds will make short work of this human. With his death, they will finally be able to move on and find their place in this GoneGod World.
Her hounds are just as blind as their prey, but they are Hecate’s. They are used to hunting in such conditions, and long ago learned to use the less deceptive sense of smell when seeking out their prey.
She hears them in the room, feels their rage as they attack the human and one other inside. Perhaps this will be a swift victory. Then, from the door bursts forth the human, one of the hounds in his arms. Another clamps down on his wrist as the three tumble over the edge of the stairwell and falls to the ground below. With a deafening thud, she watches as one of her loyal beasts is crushed into oblivion.
Bastard, she thinks.
Illuminating the hotel, she blinds the human and reveals her location. Then, pulling out a mace made from the very star that hung on Orion’s belt, she charges forth.
New Moon, No Moon
Marc turns to see a hooded figure standing before him. Despite the impossible, blinding brightness, he’s able to focus on the center of the halo, as if part of this creature’s magic is to be able to see her face even as the rest of the world is denied to him.
And the face he sees? It’s unmistakable. Marc recognizes that face, but he doesn’t know where from. Her features would be marvelous—high cheekbones, kind eyes, beautiful and inviting lips—if they weren’t contorted in fury and anger. Marc searches John-Luc’s memories, trying to find any clue as to who she may be. But he knows that he has never met her before. She is a new player, but still someone from his past; how he knows this, he is not sure. She is someone he has never met, and yet she is entirely familiar.
Despite being blinded, he senses her hand in motion. A second, somehow even brighter light appears over her head, and Mark knows that she wields a weapon. He does not stand still to figure out what kind of weapon; now is the time to move.
Making his way to the stairwell behind the elevators, Marc heads downstairs. One flight down is an exit outside, and he figures if he can only get to the helicopter, he can use the heavy, mounted gun to level the playing field. He may not be able to see his target, but when you’re spraying your surroundings with heavy shells, all you really have to do is get close.
But before he can make it outside, another one of those damn dogs jumps on his back. How many are there? Marc wonders as he tumbles down the second flight of stairs into the dining hall below.
↔
Marc knows that he needs to get outside—out in the open—if he wants a chance at surviving the night. But a monstrous hound stands between him and the closest exit. To escape from any other place would require running through the basement of Jean’s hotel, in the dark, moving while using only his hands to feel around and the memories of another man to guide his path.
Marc doesn’t like the odds of success. The only other alternative is to stand his ground and fight the hound, so he tilts his head to listen for it.
It is behind him and to the left, about ten steps up. Given the angle of the stairwell’s descent and the three yards between them, he is sure the hound will cease to pursue him on foot, instead leaping from its vantage point onto his back.
Of course, he has no way of knowing this. He is not facing the hound and even if he was, his sight is oppressed by this magical darkness. But Marc is sure that he is right.
The hellhound’s location, its next move … Marc simply knows. Just as he also knows that these hellhounds can see in the dark.
And he knows that sight in such circumstances isn’t always an advantage.
Marc takes three more steps. Instead of continuing to run as the hound would expect, he pushes himself to the left, hugging the wall as tightly as he can.
He times it perfectly. The hellhound leaps past him, and because it leapt with the ferociousness intended to knock the human over, it sails past him, knocking itself against the wall.
Marc knows he has two seconds before the hellhound shakes off any injuries it might have sustained and continues its pursuit.
Jean-Luc would run. He would head out the door and try to make it to the helicopter. He would regroup and plan his next move.
But Marc is not Jean-Luc. Last night proved that—and so does his next move.
Leaping from where he stood, he lands hard on the hellhound’
s back. How he knew where the hound was, he is not sure. Perhaps he heard where it crashed and aimed for that point. Or maybe his eyes are adjusting enough to the dark to make out the shadows within the shadows.
Or maybe he just knew.
Whatever it was that guided him did so with uncanny accuracy. Marc’s bare feet land on the back of the hellhound’s neck and with a bone-chilling crunch, he hears the beast’s neck snap.
Then he feels it flail around in its death throes. It is dying, but based on its injury, it will be hours before the mercy of death finally takes it. Until then, it will suffer.
“Good,” Marc whispers, walking up the stairs. “I will leave you to your pain. Just one more difference between me and Jean-Luc.”
Part IV
Hell
Prologue to Part 3—
Penemue fell.
And as he did, he felt an odd sensation of familiarity wash over him.
This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen, and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last.
Still this time was different. This time he did not fall to another divine place made only for gods and their denizens—this time he fell to the mortal plane of Earth. A plane of existence not meant for celestial beings.
So, this is how the world ends … not with a bang or a whimper, but with a fall, he mused to himself.
Penemue fell with his back to the ground, unable to see where he was going. Knowing that the impact would hurt but not kill him, he sought to stop his fall, or at the very least, slow it down. Spreading his wings, Penemue tried to adjust his fall. But he was going too fast and his wings folded up on him, transforming his body from a falling rock to a shooting arrow.
Down, down, down he fell. An angel in freefall—how undignified.
The angel tried to turn himself around. At the very least, he could get into a skydiver’s pose and slow his descent, but he was going too fast to do even that.
Perhaps if he could retract his wings, then—
But all his efforts were in vain, for the distance between the portal from where he resided in Hell and where he’d end up on Earth was shorter than he thought possible.
This was confirmed when his body crashed into an apartment building.
↔
“Oh God,” Penemue muttered to himself as he assessed what had happened.
The building. He hadn’t just crashed through it—he had totaled it, reducing the once tall structure to rubble. His body contained just enough mass to act as an unexploded missile.
His first thought was of his own body. How hurt was he? He touched his side; several broken ribs—oh, and then there was the steel rebar piercing his abdomen. With a grunt that sounded more like a roar, he pulled himself up, and burning a bit a time—seven hours, to be exact—he healed himself just enough to turn his wounds from critical to severe.
The rest would have to heal naturally. He didn’t dare to lose more time; he had already lost so much protecting his library.
Standing—if you could call the agony required to be upright “standing”—he assessed his surroundings. There were no human bodies (or pieces of them) to be seen. That was good. It meant that few humans had been hurt in his fall.
And if he was really lucky, perhaps he had hurt no humans in his fall.
But then Penemue heard a whimper, and knew that he had not been lucky.
Not lucky at all.
↔
Staggering around the corner, the twice-fallen angel saw something that would haunt him to his last days.
A little boy whimpered as he clung to the hand of his dead mother. Penemue searched his mind for this child’s Book of Souls. He was cut off from the writing, but remembered what had been written on the boy’s soul in his first six years.
His name was Newton.
He was damn near a child prodigy, able to play the piano better than most angels.
He had a wonderful, loving mother who, seeing the hand that he clutched onto, was no longer able to take care of him.
“No,” Penemue said as he removed the slab covering her body. In doing so, he saw that he had not just killed Newton’s mother, but his father, too. This good man lay next his wife, his skull cracked open by the falling rubble.
Penemue tried to revive them, to burn some time to bring either of them back. But his fall had ended their lives, and all the time in the world would not bring them back.
He did not have that kind of power.
No one short of a god did.
After he’d carried the young boy from the ruins, he placed them both under an oak tree that stood in front of their once home. Then he cradled the child as Newton lamented the loss of his mother, his father … his home.
↔
It will be years before Penemue sees the boy again. His childhood name may have been Newton, but after years of living on the streets without the guidance of his parents, the boy has renamed himself EightBall.
This boy, this EightBall, is a thug, a gang leader and an Other-hating human.
He is, by all accounts, a monster …
A monster that Penemue created.
And of all the things this twice-fallen angel has done, robbing this boy of his parents and future is what he regrets most.
Tearful Serpents
Medusa’s arrow pointed at Bella, and I could sense hesitation in her as she considered unlatching her fingers from the bow’s string. Even though I had no doubt that the being who stood in the rock-face grotto was Medusa, she wasn’t the same cutesy, bubble gum-chewing gorgon from Paradise Lot.
This being was far more feral—more tortured. As though the few months of death she had endured had turned her into the fearsome beast before us.
Then again, we were in Penemue’s inferno, so she might have been a construct just like the child-gods we’d faced off against.
But real or not, her arrows would kill Bella just as dead.
“No, don’t!” I put myself between Bella and the gorgon’s dart.
Medusa gave me a confused look, like she didn’t quite understand what or why I had placed myself between her and Bella. But despite her confusion, her bow quivered slightly before she bellowed a mighty scream.
I’d heard that scream once before, when she faced off against Tiamat. It was her war cry and what she had yelled before mummifying a platoon of advancing FrogMen. Her eyes lit up just as they had done on the beach that day. She was getting ready to turn us to stone.
“Look away!” I said. “Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t look at her.” And not taking my own advice, I continued to hold the gorgon’s gaze with my own.
I truly didn’t know who I was looking at. Was she the Medusa I knew from before? The Paradise Lot beat cop? The caring, loving Medusa? It didn’t look like her. The woman—well, gorgon—standing in the rock-face grotto was more worn, angrier.
But then again, dying and spending some time in Hell just might do that to you.
The person I was staring at was anything but carefree. She wore clothes that she must have scavenged from only the GoneGods knew where, and her normally olive-colored skin was pale, as if her face hadn’t seen the sun in an eternity. She was skinnier, too; her cheekbones were more pronounced, her collarbones protruding out from the rags otherwise covering her shoulders.
And her snakes … they were there. There was even a viper that looked suspiciously like Marty sitting on the crown of her head. But the serpents I knew from Paradise Lot, the ones that both liked and hated me, were alive and filled with personality. They had a will of their own. The way the snakes writhed and wiggled on her head was unnatural, as if they had been programmed to look alive, but weren’t. They reminded me of those autotropic mannequins you saw at Epcot.
Not that I had much time to really look at them. Medusa’s hum continued to grow in its aggressiveness as her eyes lit up with a fiery energy that could have frightened the sun. She was getting ready to turn us all to stone.
Taking a step forward, I did the only thing I could think
of when faced when meeting an old friend I’d never expected to see again. I smiled. She might be trying to kill us, but it was still good to see her.
Damn good.
And since I had already consigned myself to dying at the hands of adolescent gods, being turned to stone by someone I actually cared for was a step up in the demise category.
Besides, I didn’t think she actually wanted to kill us. If she did, she would have hit us with a poisonous arrow when we weren’t looking.
“Hi,” I said.
Medusa tilted her head in confusion. Like she wasn’t used to having someone look at her without utter fear on their face. I supposed that was true … before the gods left. Before the GoneGod World and Paradise Lot.
Before me.
In the rush of seeing Medusa and her threatening to petrify us, I forgot about Marty. But of everyone who had never expected to see Medusa again, it was him … And of everyone who would be floored by seeing her, it was the viper.
Marty slithered up my leg and torso until he sat on my shoulder, and staring up at his former host, he hissed—a viper’s way of saying hello. And then I saw something that answered a question I never knew to ask: can snakes cry?
Marty’s eyes welled up as he looked at his former host, his friend ... the one person he loved more than life itself.
And soon as Medusa saw her former main snake, the gorgon closed her own eyes, and the energy that had been building began to dissipate as she slowly released it into the air around her.
Lifting my hand, I gave her a gentle wave. “Hi,” I said. “It’s good to see you again. Really good.”
Medusa let her bow drop and the stringed construct fell to the earth below. A wail of pain found its way out of her, and she lifted a hand to her mouth as if she was trying to catch her pain and swallow it once more.
