Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  I stepped back and caught my breath, immediately feeling more in control once I was a few feet away from her. I looked over at the sex goddess and saw real fear in her eyes. But not of Grinner. She was afraid of me. And she was defending herself the only way she knew how.

  “OK,” I said, forcing myself to take deep breaths, “OK … I’m sorry. But there are no more mortals and immortals. There’s only us and we’re all going to die. So please, tell me … what is he?”

  Penemue grunted, throwing back his papers on the table. “Ahhh, how can one know what any of us really are?”

  “Stop stalling. And none of your typical cryptic shit. What is he?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

  Penemue adjusted his armless glasses and flattened out his tweed vest before standing up straight and looking over at me.

  “Don’t—” Astarte started, but Penemue put up a hand.

  “He is right, Astarte,” Penemue interrupted, “the rules have changed. We are all mortal now.”

  Penemue crumpled up a piece of paper and dropped it. It fell like most things do—down. “When the gods made this world, they needed to be able to communicate with certain immutable principles—the Laws of Nature, if you will. Whereas there are many laws that govern nature, there are only five Laws that are essential for life. They are known as the First Laws—Energy, Life, Death, Time and Gravity. Each is necessary for this universe to possess life, and they exist with or without gods. Energy is the force that allows motion, growth and change. Life and Death are the principles of renewal—they are the Laws that allow the world to keep evolving, ensuring each generation slightly improves on its predecessor. In theory, at least. Are you following me?”

  I nodded.

  “Then there is Time, through which all must make passage. Relative or not, Time moves us ever forward. Finally, there is Gravity. Gravity keeps the world together; it moves the Earth around the Sun. The Sun around the Milky Way. Our galaxy within the Universe. Gravity, some of us theorize, was the first of these Laws, for it is what originally paved the way for the existence of all. Without it, we would be wandering atoms of motion, never attached, never together. Never alive.

  “These five First Laws were needed to make all that is, and therefore the gods needed to negotiate with them in order to shape the world in the ways they wished. But how does one—even a god—communicate with a First Law?”

  “Avatars,” I said, the word catching in my throat. No wonder Astarte was frightened. Grinner was the Avatar of a friggin’ First Law.

  “Exactly,” Penemue said. “You are astute … for a human, that is.

  “The gods created avatars for the First Laws so that they could speak to the principles and negotiate with them for certain concessions. They asked Life and Death to not touch the denizens, they asked Time to leave their dominions be, they asked Energy to imbue them with miraculous powers and they asked Gravity to allow their realms and this one to coexist, theirs invisible to this one.”

  “So it was because of Gravity that Heaven and Hell were invisible to humans?”

  “Partly, yes. And partly for other reasons that even we—” he pointed at Astarte “—are not privileged to know.”

  “So this Grinner guy is the Avatar of Gravity?”

  “Indeed, Human Jean, he is.”

  ↔

  “Because gravity still works, Grinner doesn’t burn through time like you guys do when you use your magic,” I said, mulling through the logic of what it meant that your god was still around. Unlike Penemue and Astarte, whose gods had abandoned them, gravity was still here. Otherwise we’d all be floating away to oblivion.

  “Yes and no,” Penemue said. “He is a creature like any other Other. But unlike myself or the succubus, he has so much power that he is as close to immortal as any of us could ever hope to be. Because his source of power still remains, there is a theory that he can renew himself, given enough time.”

  “You shouldn’t have told him,” Astarte said to Penemue. “There will be repercussions.”

  “Perhaps,” Penemue said. “But I have paid for giving humans knowledge in the past and I suspect I will again. If he is to have a chance against his foe, he must know who his foe is.”

  “His only chance is to run. That is the only chance any of us have.” She turned to me. “Run, foolish human. Run. Gravity does not have the ability to track you. Run, and pray that old age takes you before he does. That is what I plan to do.” She lifted the hatch to leave.

  “What does he want?” I asked.

  Astarte turned from the hatch and said, “What do any of us want? Either for the world to return to what it once was or for it all to end.” And with that, she left.

  “What’s with her?” I said.

  “After this night, things will have to change yet again,” Penemue sighed, speaking with a softness he rarely displayed. “Change has come once more. We are ancient beings used to the world being static. This constant revolution, it disturbs us.”

  Of course, I thought. Others spent eternities in one place, doing one thing. I’d met valkyrie who had stood guard duty at the halls of Valhalla on century-long shifts, fairies who’d hosted parties that lasted thousands of years and a giant who had slept for an entire eon, only to wake up, see the world was as it was and go right back to sleep. Dealing with change was not high on their set of life skills.

  I nodded and pointed at the little box. “And that?” I asked.

  Penemue picked it up and looked at it closely. “A box,” he said without a hint of irony.

  “And …?” I pressed.

  “And nothing. It is a plain wooden box.”

  “Grinner,—ahh, I mean the Avatar of Gravity—really wanted it. He almost killed me to get it. It must be magic or something.”

  Penemue snorted. It was an angel’s version of belly-wrenching laughter, but to me it looked like he was sniffing in copious amounts of phlegm. “Magical item? What are we doing here? Playing Dungeons & Dragons? Items are not magic. They are only meaningful. Magic comes from you.”

  “Meaningful?” I asked, more confused than ever.

  “When you possess something meaningful to you, truly meaningful to you, it will naturally accept magic with very limited amounts of time needed to be spent. Think of it like driving. Going uphill you will have to use a lot of gas, but downhill you will use very little. The same is true of a meaningful object. They will do for you what you need with almost no time burned. The question is not What can this box do? The question is Why is this box meaningful? I suspect that once upon a time, this box held something of great significance. Perhaps Joseph and—what did you call him?—Grinner wished to use its meaningful history so that it could hold something else of significance, but what do I know? Sadly, this box is meaningless to me.”

  “But if you knew its history, could you use it?”

  “Perhaps. It depends on if it means anything to me.” The angel adjusted his armless glasses and held the item closer to himself.

  “Is there any way to find out?” I asked, hopeful.

  “Of course, in time, perhaps I could figure it out,” he said, pointing at his massive stack of books.

  I smiled—it wasn’t every day the celestial librarian you need is living in your attic. “Hop to it.”

  Placing the box back on the table, Penemue walked over to the stack of books and picked up the one that was lying on the very top. It started to glow. “Internet,” he said, showing me his iPad. “Best place to start.”

  “But where did you get—”

  “I stole it from Tommy Fisher, forty-two years old, married just before the GrandExodus, and who made out with his bride-to-be’s sister on their wedding night. Karma,” he said, smiling as his taloned, oversized fingers surfed the Net, leaving me to realize that divine justice was also not a thing of the past.

  “Fine,” I said. “Internet, books, whatever. Also, one more thing—do your research somewhere else. I don’t want you here, in case he comes back.”

 
; The angel looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “I seriously doubt that—”

  “Please,” I said.

  “Very well, I shall sit on the turret of the National Library,” Penemue sighed. Then, lifting the iPad, he pointed at the Wi-Fi symbol and said, “I can get two bars from up there.”

  The Question Is an Answer

  After receiving the hodgepodge of oh-so-not-confusing information from Penemue and Astarte, I headed to the reception, hoping there would be some other clues as to what was going on and what my next steps could be. Right now I was grasping at straws, desperate for anything. Anything at all. I was fairly certain this was the calm before the storm.

  EightBall and the rest of the HuMans would be off somewhere licking their wounds, probably more scared than ever. They’d be planning their next attack, and after last night, I was pretty sure they’d rule out a head-on assault. A group like that lacked inspiration and, like everything else they did, stole their ideas from what was around them. I would bet my entire collection of G1 Transformers that they would be inspired by the explosion and that they were online looking up how to make Molotov cocktails. That’s exactly what I would be doing in their shoes.

  Not that there was much of a hotel left to blow up. Still, there was no chance of them backing down. No way. Not after last night—not kids like them. If the hotel wasn’t here, they’d hunt down whoever was, which meant that every Other they saw in the foyer was in danger. Penemue, Astarte, Judith, Sandy … Oh, hell. Whatever they were planning, it was coming, and coming soon.

  But still, that wasn’t my real problem. I was equipped to handle punk kids. What I wasn’t equipped to handle was a pissed-off archangel, and what I really, really wasn’t equipped to handle was the anthropomorphic representation of gravity.

  There was nothing downstairs that was of use. Turned-over chairs, blown-out windows, broken glass. Even my desk was splintered apart. One thing that was intact was the damn bell. It was lying on the floor, not a scratch on it. What the hell was this thing made of and I can I be made of it, too? I wondered.

  , I looked over a my phone, which was in a plastic evidence bag, thanks to an enthusiastic pixie officer. It was chipped, but still working as was evident by the fact that it was currently blinking. I had a message. Somehow I suspected it wasn’t someone calling to reserve the room.

  Unwrapping it, I checked my voice mail.

  Beep. “Jean—are you OK? Michael came by and told me what happened to Joseph. The sanctimonious bastard even implied you had something to do with it. I know you didn’t. I have faith in you. Bella had faith in you. The loss of Joseph will be felt throughout Paradise Lot. There will be a lot of grieving, angry Others. We’ll have to handle this carefully, otherwise we will have a riot on our hands. I’ve called an emergency meeting with some of the locals. I think we can contain this, but we really need a miracle. I don’t suppose they left any behind, do you? Call me. Or better yet, come by.” Beeeep.

  Oh, frig, Miral was right. I hadn’t even considered how Joseph’s death would be taken by the Others. Shit—their Unicorn was gone, killed in a human-run hotel. Whatever she did, she’d have to handle the news of Joseph’s death very carefully.

  I had to go to Miral, but first I needed answers. Something—anything—was better than turning up empty-handed. Maybe Penemue would figure out what the box was, or … Oh, come on, Jean. When did you become so useless? What does your training tell you to do?

  My choices seemed simple enough. Go to bed or find this Ghost guy, and seeing how I didn’t have a chance in Hell of falling asleep with all this going on, I decided to look for the gods’ broadcasting system.

  I turned inside to get my stuff, when I saw Astarte standing at the entrance. She had a suitcase in hand. “I’m going to be staying with some … ahh, friends for a while,” she said. “Not that it matters. Seems like your dream of a haven for Others is dead anyway.”

  I nodded, looking over at her as she headed for the door. The ship was sinking and she was doing the smart thing—getting off. “OK,” I said. “Good luck.”

  She paused at the door. “You know the origin of ‘Good luck’?”

  I shook my head, not really in the mood for another Other lesson.

  Astarte didn’t take the hint. “The original expression was ‘May God give you luck.’ ”

  “Really?” I said, continuing my Sisyphean task of shuffling around the rubble.

  “Yes—but the problem with that was that often the god’s luck was more of a curse than a boon. So it evolved into ‘May God give you good luck’ and then to just ‘Good luck.’ That was the last thing they said to us when they left. ‘Good luck.’ I think they were mocking us.” Her eyes took on a distant look as she recalled some ancient memory. “I never liked the expression. It implies that you don’t have control over your fate. That was the lie the gods tried to convince mortals of … that what happens to you is destiny, out of your hands, the will of the gods. But it was always in mortal hands. Always.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Having luck means you have no control. But you always have some control. Even if it is only to run or to fight.” She looked over at me, her deep azure eyes locking with mine.

  At that moment, a car pulled up to the front of the hotel and its passenger-side door opened. “Jean,” she started, “I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” I interrupted.

  She looked at me with mournful, sad, vulnerable eyes, and for the first time since meeting her I actually got to see what she looked like. I mean, really looked like, when you took away all the yearning and lust—deep down, she was just like everyone else. Then the veil was thrown up again as she tossed back her head and laughed, shaking away all the vulnerability and bringing back the want of her with it. “Look at me, so serious … Really, Jean, mortality has made you such a drag. Listen here, lover. If you survive this, you look me up. We’ll have a drink or ten, and laugh about when the world almost ended for a second time.”

  “Sounds good to me, Astarte,” I said. “Sounds really good to me.”

  “Yes,” she said, getting into the car, “it really does, doesn’t it?”

  ↔

  With the slamming of the car door, Astarte—my only paying customer—was gone. Not that it mattered. However this was to end, it wouldn’t be with the One Spire Hotel staying open for business. I went inside and saw that my desk had been turned right-side up and there was an envelope on it. Inside, a note read, I’m not really the apocalyptic kind of gal. May you make your own good luck. Damn—even her handwriting was sexy. I shook the envelope and a stack of hundreds fell out—easily a room’s rent for a year. Hell, two years, even.

  I know that seeing that money should have made me happy. It was enough to pay off the landlord and keep all the other friggin’ bills at bay for a while. But it really pissed me off. It pissed me off that there was a hole in my hotel. It pissed me off that after all I’d been through, I’d have to shut down and break my promise to Bella. And it pissed me off that the kind, sweet, literally one-of-a-kind Joseph was dead.

  But what really pissed me off more than anything else, what really boiled my blood, turning my anger into pure, unadulterated rage, was that the bastard responsible for all of it was still smiling.

  Everything Leaves Behind a Scent

  After Bella died, I joined Special Forces for a couple years. Those were the darkest days of my life and I am not proud of anything I did while obeying orders. It took a while for me to wake up, but I did. I woke up in the middle of what would be my last mission, when Headquarters thought I’d been burned to a crisp by dragon fire. They were wrong and that’s when I went AWOL, leaving the killing and fighting behind. But I still had all the gear they had sent with me. And because I was Special Forces, that was some pretty significant stuff—stuff I’d dragged halfway across the world. Stuff that, if they had known I was still alive, they would have hunted me down years ago to ge
t back. Stuff that was going to be useful now. Most of it I had left in PopPop’s cabin, where I lived in the years between leaving the Army and coming back home, but I did bring a few things with me to Paradise Lot.

  I still had the chest piece of my battle suit, an Army-issue flashlight, my Swiss Army knife and my hunting sword. The sword wasn’t Army issue. I had got it off of an Other I took down in a particularly bloody battle, and because I was the scourge of the OnceImmortals, the Army let me keep it. It was eighteen inches long and curved downward, the last third of the blade about twice the width of the rest of it. The single edge ended four inches from the tip, where it met another razor-sharp edge, turning the last four inches into a double-edge knife. As it was intended to be a one-handed weapon, the hilt was not quite long enough to accommodate both my hands. The blade was engraved with an intricately decorated mural, depicting an ancient hunt. I asked Penemue one night about the image, and he—drunk and facedown in his bale of hay—looked up long enough to say, “Young Human Jean, this is the Earl King’s hunting sword. The one he carries with him on the Great Hunt. To possess it can mean only one thing. You are the one to have brought down the great King. Not bad for a social worker. He was a legend and an epic asshole. With the gods gone, he would have been hell-bent on taking over this world. Still, he did have his loyal minions …” Then he put his finger over his lips and pretended to zip it up.

  I thought about that as I tied the scabbard around my waist and sheathed the sword. Then, placing my backpack on the driest section of pipe I could find, I took a deep breath and clambered out of the sewers.