Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  There was a small ramp leading up to an aluminum gate. Behind that was the main street. I pushed the little red button on the remote control that was strapped to the front panel, and the metal gate rolled up.

  I got on and Astarte slipped on behind me, her thin arms wrapping around my waist. She pushed herself in close, or pulled me back into her—either way I felt the small of my back slot into her pelvis region like we were two Tetris pieces that were meant to be together. This was Astarte’s thing: to make everything about sex, no matter what else was going on. Even though I was used to Astarte’s thing, these little moves still got to me. But can you blame me? I still had a pulse—not that that mattered to Astarte. If anyone could bring back the dead in a fit of raging desire, it was her. All that having a pulse meant was I had little to no chance in not being affected by her thing.

  I twisted back the throttle. It puttered forward. “Shadowfax!” I cried out. “Show me the meaning of haste.” And with that we were on our “only slightly faster than jogging” way.

  As soon as we got out of the garage, a giant taloned claw swiped at us. A chimera was waiting for us. I guessed my little Dukes of Hazzard scheme didn’t work as well as I had hoped.

  Hellelujah!

  ↔

  Chimeras have three heads—one of a lion, one a dragon and the last a ram—as well as bat wings and a scorpion tail. With the exception of the ram, they were a hodgepodge of predatory animals. But a ram was deadly in its own right. Rams, after all, could crush a human’s chest with a single headbutt, and were excellent climbers as well. Don’t discount the ram. After all, it was the ram’s head on this chimera that slammed against a parked car, flipping it thirty feet in front of us and right in my path.

  I swerved to the right, narrowly missing the rolling car as I did. “Holy—”

  “Shit,” Astarte echoed.

  I stopped the bike and stared back at not one but three chimeras—that’s nine heads, for anyone counting—all galloping in our direction.

  But the other thing about chimeras—the part of their hunter makeup that wasn’t rooted in mortal animals—was their skin. They were made from a creature that I have never seen because, as legend has it, they’re invisible. As in permanently not visible. Chimeras’ skin was made from that unseen creature, making them excellent at camouflage. And I don’t mean the kind of camouflage that comes from fatigue colorings that hide you from plane or satellite surveillance. Nor am I referring to chameleon-style camouflage either. I’m talking Predator, shimmers-of-disturbed-air style camouflage. A chimera could be right in front of you and you wouldn’t know it’s there. Hell, you could witness a chimera disappear right before your eyes, know the exact spot where they vanished, and you’d still struggle to know exactly where they were. After all, they could have moved.

  There is only one way to fight a chimera: run.

  I gunned the moped for all its worth, willing its meager 50cc engine to find speed it did not know it had. I prayed, not to the GoneGods—I’d never pray to them again—but to the Honda manufacturers, that on the day this pink Shadowfax of a moped was made, the engineer was bored and put a little extra oomph in the engine. I looked behind me and saw nothing, but I heard the pitter-patter of leathered feet on asphalt behind us, and I prayed that that same engineer put in a whole lot of extra oomph in the engine.

  And still it puttered on. The hair raised on the back of my neck as the pitter-patter grew from a cantor to full-on gallop. I was terrified, so terrified that I almost didn’t notice the little red button in the middle of Sally’s dashboard. What’s up with this woman and little red buttons?

  I pushed it and—boom—the moped sputtered, then spat and burst into life. We went from barely breaking forty miles an hour to hitting almost eighty. Man, oh man, this thing was fast. I thought we’d be in the clear—after all, how many Others can actually run eighty miles an hour and sustain it for long?—when I heard Astarte yelp in pain. She clenched me tighter and screamed, “Swerve.” I guessed the chimeras had cheetah legs.

  I swerved. The bike turned to the right and then the left, and had it not been for my military training, I would have wiped out. But we had been taught how to do a controlled swerve. I just managed to keep the vehicle upright. Hellelujah!

  “What’s going on?” I cried out.

  “They’re right behind us,” she yelled and, pulling out a long knife from only the GoneGods knew where, she threw it to our left. The blade stuck in midair as I heard the simultaneous cry of pain from a lion, dragon and ram. “There’s still two more,” she yelled out.

  “OK,” I said, “I’ll keep swerving.” Except I knew that this strategy wasn’t a good one. It would only be a matter of time before one of the chimeras got in a well-timed swipe, or I lost control of the moped. Not a sustainable strategy at all. We needed to stop and fight.

  I looked for a place where we could get our backs against the wall. Stand up and fight these things. But I heard another yelp, followed by a bone-crunching squeal. In the rear-view mirror I saw the WildMan standing there—he was wrestling with thin air and winning. Then he toppled over as he was tackled by an invisible creature—the third chimera had stopped pursuing us to help its friend. I stopped the bike and thought about going back to help the WildMan.

  “No,” Astarte said. “Just go. He can handle himself.”

  “But—”

  “Just go!” she screamed, using every ounce of majesty in her. I felt compelled to go. I pulled back on the moped’s throttle.

  ↔

  We sped along the street past the other shop fronts, most of which now catered to Others’ needs: the Perked Café, the Stalker Steak House, an elven theatre, a church where the Others were trying to pray the gods back.

  “Who is that guy?” I had to yell to be heard over the rush of air. Even at the low speed that was Shadowfax’s maximum, it was hard to be heard.

  “Who?” Astarte said, as if we had not just been attacked by three chimeras and been saved by a man in red spandex speedos. She laced her hands around the lower part of my stomach, and every time the moped hit a bump in the road, they brushed against my groin, causing my pants to tighten ever so slightly. I lifted her hands up to my chest, and now they were rubbing against my nipples with skin-hardening accuracy. GoneGodDamn it, I thought. I resigned myself to the sad fact that there was nowhere Astarte could touch me without it turning me on.

  I groaned and repeated my question. “Don’t play games. He shows up at the docks, then again here. Who is he? And don’t say a former lover. That’s a given. I want to know what he has to do with all this.”

  I felt Astarte shrug and put her lips against my ear. “Je ne sais pas.” The word came out soft, hardly a whisper. I guess the succubus could seduce the wind when she needed to.

  “Come on … Be serious.”

  “I am. He is my former lover.” One of her hands unlaced and presented itself in front of me. The pendant that he had taunted her with at the dock flapped in the wind. “But that particular lover died a long, long time ago, so it cannot be him. Not unless …” Her voice trailed off. “Unless things are more dire than either you or I could imagine.”

  “Dire? How so?” But Astarte did not answer. I gripped hard on the breaks and jumped off the bike. “We don’t have much time, and that creature has something to do with all of this. I need to know and you need to tell me. Now!”

  At first Astarte took her typical defiant stance, like she was going to tell me I had no right to question her or demand knowledge not meant for mortal ears. But Astarte and I had played that song and dance enough times in the past that she knew she couldn’t get away with it. We were not negotiating another room at the Millennium Hotel. We weren’t arguing about her need to keep the moans and groans of her latest orgy down so that the other guests could sleep. We were talking about the end of everything. And she knew she had lost the right to silence when she agreed to help me out, or let me help her—which amounted to the same thing in this case.
r />   She nodded. “Man,” she said. “That creature is as human as you are and as human as I am not. His name is Enkidu and our story is a long one. But do not worry, Jean.” She dismounted the moped like she had been straddling it to exhaustion and walked over to me. “I have ways of telling you that are far more efficient than words.” Before I could protest, she kissed me.

  The kiss wasn’t sensual, nor was it particularly passionate. It certainly didn’t arouse me. And then images—no, more like memories—started swimming in my head. Astarte was talking to me, using some form of Other communication.

  My mind filled with present images—memories that were not my own, but felt as though they were happening now: I see two men—Gilgamesh and Enkidu—being attacked by a creature they called the Bull of Heaven. They pierce its flesh with sword and spear, deflecting its attacks with shield and agility, but it’s not enough. How can two men fight such a powerful creature with only mortal weapons?

  Eventually, the Bull of Heaven wears them down and, victorious, stands over Gilgamesh, its mouth gaping open, about to consume its prize. Astarte appears, running into the forest with unnatural speed. She pulls Enkidu and Gilgamesh back and the Bull pursues. It is faster than her, and she is encumbered by two large warriors who are so exhausted they cannot even get to their feet to walk away, let alone run. Astarte turns to fight the Bull, but there is no hope. She cannot win. She knows this. Enkidu knows this. But she is not going to let the Bull take her companions. She lifts her arms up in a fighter’s stance. But before she can swing her sword, Enkidu uses the last of his strength to push her out of the way. Then, standing in front of the beast, he stretches out his arms and cries out, “Enough.” Enough. He is surrendering.

  One moment he is standing there, the next he is consumed by the great Bull, who, satisfied with the sacrifice, saunters into the forest. The last thing I see and feel is Astarte holding a wounded Gilgamesh as she cries in utter abandonment.

  They say that eighty percent of a conversation is done through gestures and body language. Astarte’s kiss was more like a conversation on overload, because the flashes of knowledge didn’t just show me things. They made me feel them as well. I smelt everything she smelt. Felt everything she felt. Experienced every emotion that she had experienced, exactly as she had experienced it. So when Gilgamesh fell, I felt her fear, knew how devastated she would be to lose him. Astarte, the being who expounded passionately about lust, was in love. Mind-numbing, all-consuming love. I knew what that felt like: It was a feeling I had for Bella … have for Bella. And it was a feeling that I was starting to feel for Medusa, too.

  What Astarte felt for that once-upon-a-time king was no less.

  The next real emotion that came was when Enkidu stepped into the mouth of the Bull. There I felt another kind of love: a love for a friend, a companion. It was another kind of love I knew. I had felt that kind of love before, too. For PopPop, for Miral and TinkerBelle and CaCa and Sandy. Even for Judith. It was the love you reserved for your family. And what I felt at that moment was powerful.

  The memories stopped and I wiped away tears from my eyes. All this from a kiss … I shuddered and tried to step forward, except my legs wouldn’t work. In the crushing tsunami of memories, I had fallen to my knees and didn’t even know it. Astarte extended a hand to help me up.

  “My sister wanted Gilgamesh dead. The Bull of Heaven was my sister’s last attempt to kill him,” Astarte said. “Enkidu willingly sacrificed himself to save Gilgamesh. Such a sacrifice does not come easily, for when the Bull consumes you, it feasts on your soul for eternity. He should not be here.”

  My head still swam with her memories and I sought to make sense of it all, just as she did. “When the gods left, wouldn’t that negate his punishment? Or at very least stop the magics that held him?”

  Astarte considered this. “I suppose that’s possible, but it doesn’t explain why he wasn’t released when the gods left. The gods have been gone for fourteen years, and he has only come to me now.”

  “Maybe he got out right away, but he only sought to come out of hiding now, when he sensed what was happening. Or maybe The BisMark’s plan to use the Sacred Carp of Urfa somehow set some release mechanism. Either way, he appeared because of what’s going on.”

  “Perhaps, but even so … What’s his purpose? To kill me?”

  “Maybe … maybe thousands of years in the belly of the Bull drove him crazy. But I’ve been replaying what happened at the dock over and over in my head—I’m not entirely sure he was trying to kill you.” Astarte shrugged. “I don’t deny he’s violent, but think about it. He didn’t just attack you. He was trying to stop the popobawa from driving away with the fish. He knew that a sacred carp was in the van.”

  Astarte considered this, a pained expression on her face. “Oh, how he must have suffered.”

  “And just now … he didn’t attack us. He took down the chimeras. He saved us,” I said.

  She looked back from where we came. Enkidu was nowhere in sight.

  “Either way …” I said, rubbing my temples. My head hurt from trying to reason out what was happening. Gods and logic didn’t always go hand in hand, and I simply didn’t feel smart enough to put myself in celestial shoes and figure this out. “The mission stays the same.”

  Astarte nodded and walked over to the bike. She threw a leg over the seat, straddling the moped as if she were preparing for the ride of her life. With a sly smile, she patted the seat in front of her. “Let’s go,” she said. I sat in front of her and touched my lips. I could still feel her kiss. I wondered, if she could do all that with just a peck on the lips, what she could do when she used her whole body.

  Hellelujah!

  ↔

  We rode out of the city core and headed towards the eyesore in the distance. The skyscraper stood two miles to the west, about a mile from the ocean’s Promenade. Before the gods left, the building was seen as Paradise Lot’s attempt to claim major city status. Of course, one skyscraper didn’t do it, but it was a start. The City Council, on advice from some Swedish architect firm, approved the Ladder: a building aptly named so because it looked like—well, like a ladder—with every third floor acting as the next rung up.

  Of course, it was a ladder that went to nowhere. I thought of the story of Jacob’s Ladder. He tried to create a stairway to Heaven, but like so many stories in the Old Testament it ended badly for those who tried to climb it. With so many Others wanting to return home, I have often wondered if it was the last cruel joke performed by the now absent gods.

  We drove down the empty street and up to the front door, its glass entrance locked.

  Behind it sat the same popobawa who drove the delivery truck. I couldn’t hide my shock as I pressed the buzzer and waved at the bat-like creature.

  The door buzzed open, and the popobawa rushed over to grab my hand. “Oh … oh!” he said. “It’s the form filler! He’s here. He’s here! Twice you grace my presence! Twice I see you.” His fish-eyes twisted around, the horizontal slips becoming vertical as his mouth pincers clicked in what I assumed was his way of expressing joy. Then he looked at Astarte and stopped. “How may I be of service to the Master of Master Form Filler and the Mistress Popobawa?”

  “Mistress Popobawa?” I looked over at Astarte, who stared down at the little bat-like creature like he was the only creature on the planet. I was guessing that Mistress Popobawa was doing her thing—Astarte was the Queen of Lust to any and all creatures on the planet. That meant she looked like whoever and whatever you needed her to look like. To me Astarte was a sultry, sexy woman with a hint of a Parisian accent. To the popobawa, she was a winged creature of immeasurable, albeit leathery, beauty.

  To each their own, I guess. I shook away the thought and continued, “Do you work here?”

  “Yes,” he nodded.

  “And you have a delivery company?”

  “Yes, Master of Master Form Filler.”

  “And you work at the hospital?”

  “Of
course! That’s my highest honor and my namesake. A name you gave me, Master of Master Form Filler.”

  “So you have three full-time jobs?”

  “Six,” the humanoid bat clicked. “I also clean the bathrooms of those who live here and wash the dishes for Mistress Sandy. I sort recyclables from non-recyclables in the city dump and dig graves at dawn for the cemetery.”

  “Do you like all that work?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” he shook his head, “but I have a family to feed.” He pulled out a picture of what I assumed was his apartment. It was filled with a thousand bats, all hanging from his ceiling.

  “Interesting,” Astarte moaned.

  “These bats are your family?” I asked.

  He clapped his hands together and nodded. “After the darkness came and I was forced to leave my home, I was cast out here. I was alone and frightened until I found my adopted family, the AlwaysMortal bats of Earth. They are so kind, so generous … but also so fragile. I take care of them. I feed them bugs, lots of bugs. Bugs are expensive.” So that was it—this little guy came to the mortal plane and saw the typical bat as somehow a member of his kin. And he worked six crappy jobs that most humans wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them have leathery wings and sonar.

  “What about the truck driving? How did you get that job?” I asked.

  “Humans do not enjoy entering the city. But I live here. I go to the docks, the loading bays and the bridge, and load my van with the goods that the humans do not wish to deliver personally.”

  “That job you did today … Who hired you?”

  “Jedi Master Greg! He told me about the gala and the fish.”