by M. K. Gibson
From the bridge of the Zenith Umbra, I let out a deep sigh. “Well, what number are you up to?”
“Um . . . twelve?” Wraith Knight said.
“Twelve?! That’s it?”
“Yes, Jackson,” Myst said with a familiar tone. “The legs separate into three pieces each. Same with the arms, that’s twelve. But once we cut off the head and torso, that’ll be fourteen.”
“I guess we could cut off the fingers and toes,” Wraith Knight offered. “He has six on each appendage, that would put us up to thirty-six. The nose and penis would put us up to thirty-eight?”
“Which isn’t fifty thousand,” Myst said.
I let out another sigh. “Look, you two. I’m the Shadow Master. If I make a bold, chapter-ending statement like ‘cut him into fifty thousand pieces’ and we settle on thirty-eight, what kind of message does that send?”
Myst sighed while Wraith Knight offered, “What about his bones?”
“Just get it done,” I said.
“Please, I’m loyal to you, Shadow Master!” Algren pleaded over the comm.
“Jackson!” Sophia scolded me as she came to stand next to me in the ship’s lounge. “You know the rules. You can’t kill him unless he means you mortal harm. He is a citizen of this dimension--”
I pulled out the contract and showed it to her.
“Oh, you own him then?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no harm no foul then. Sorry Algren, you would have been a fun tertiary character.” Sophia shrugged, then yelled into the comm, “Okay you two, you heard the man, fifty thousand pieces!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Where Science and Fiction Meet, Parenting Skills Are Displayed, and I Learn the Next Step
Sitting back, I lit a cigarette and wondered if I was nothing more than a better-dressed version of Cobra Commander or Megatron. Call it a rare moment of doubt, if you will. But if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.
Seriously, I can.
You bought this book, and that leaves a financial paper trail. You know how all your metadata and personal information is bought and sold by Russian companies? Well, I’ll sip a nice vodka while I sift through sales receipts and find you.
All villains have minions. Like the old expression “You can learn a lot about a person by their choice of enemies,” you can learn a lot about the villain by their choice of minions, as well.
Some choose stupid, subservient, lovable dimwits. Others choose Cassius-level backstabbers. Me, I’ve always tried to populate my stable with competent agents who need me more than they need to dethrone me. Which bit me in the ass back in book one when my bodyguard, Courtney, plotted against me. Granted, he was under the influence of my nephew, the late Randy, but that does not excuse the fact that I was betrayed.
Hence my current batch of immediate minions. While useful in their own respective ways, they had only recently been promoted to the big leagues of villainy. I had to keep reminding myself that over time, they would get better.
Or I would just have to replace them.
Frustrated, I went to the bridge were Sophia was relaxing with Lydia. I gave my wife a quick kiss.
“How go the wet-works?” Lydia asked.
I sat next to her and rubbed at my eyes. “Poorly. They’re complaining that the number is too high.”
Lydia patted my leg. “Don’t worry, husband. I’ll take care of this for you.”
She tapped the ship’s transporter function and disappeared in a swirl of energy.
“What do you think she’ll do?” Sophia asked.
“Considering the nature of my wife, there’s no telling,” I said. “But my guess is she’ll figure it out. Now, do me a favor and keep an eye on things. I’m going to step out and have a private conversation.”
Sophia gave me an odd look, but nodded. I headed into the hold of the ship, then out the door. I walked to the front of the Zenith Umbra, sat on a nearby tree stump, and lit a cigarette.
“I know you’re listening,” I said aloud. “So, anything you want to admit?”
“Leave me alone, Jackson,” Dmitrius replied from where he was embedded in the ship.
“We saw the prophecy,” I continued. “There was a unique expression it used: ‘a God that was not meant to be’.”
“You were never meant to be.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence. Not when you do what I do for a living. I’ve seen beyond the veil and I’ve seen the machinations of powerful beings. Tell me everything or I will make you suffer.”
“I already suffer,” Dmitrius said. “You can make it worse, I know. But your humanity limits your vision. You have no idea what game you’re playing. Humiliate me. Torture me. It doesn’t matter.”
“Dmitrius,” I said.
“What?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “I know you’re involved in this, but I wasn’t talking to you.”
I then turned around to look at the figure that was now sitting on another nearby stump. “Hermov. How are you?”
“Jackson,” the high god of this realm said with a soft English accent. He gave me an acknowledging nod, which I returned out of respect.
Instead of a bulbous-headed alien, Hermov Wellshlein, god of Stella Primus, appeared as an elderly man with a pipe. He tipped his bowler hat to reveal a bald head with a fringe of reddish-gray around the side that blended into comically large mutton-chop sideburns.
“You’re outside your embassy,” Hermov said, looking at the ship. “Your time is ticking.”
I pulled out the pocket watch, noted the time, and put it away. “I’m fine for now. But I meant what I said. Tell me everything, or I will hurt you.”
“That’s it?” the god of sci-fi asked.
“That’s it,” I flatly said.
Hermov looked perplexed. “No long-winded diatribes about how smart or clever you are? No mocking anyone whom you dislike as intellectually inferior? Perhaps you’d like to—how does the expression go—troll your audience? Maybe you would like to go on one of your boorish non sequitur rants?”
I flicked my cigarette away. “Nope.”
“Jackson, are you pondering something . . . brutish?”
I stood up and flexed my fingers in and out of a fist. “Yup.”
Hermov scoffed. “My respect to you and your work, of course, but I am a high god. While you are, frankly, only a minor god.”
Crossing the space between us, I threw a hard overhand right across the bridge of Hermov’s nose. I felt the cartilage pop as his head snapped back in a spray of blood. He fell off the stump and his stupid little bowler cap tumbled off his head.
Standing over Hermov, I smiled down at him. “A minor god who happens to have The Blessing of the One.”
He began to mumble some mathematical equation-like spell. I tsked, snapped my fingers, and willed the Zenith Umbra’s exterior weapons to swing towards us.
“If I could knock your smug ass down with a punch using the Blessing of the One, imagine what I could do to you with a few auto-cannons?”
“How dare you?” the high god seethed, ceasing his equation-casting.
“You said it yourself. Not only am I brutish, but I like to mock anyone I dislike as intellectually inferior.” I smiled at the angry god. I tapped my comm link by my ear. “Sophia, I assume you’re listening in, despite my saying I wanted to have a private conversation?”
“Naturally,” her voice said back.
“Excellent. Please, lock a tractor beam onto Hermov. With the Umbra having The One’s Blessing, I think it will be powerful enough to hold him for the rest of this conversation.”
“You got it, sir!”
A blue-green beam of ever-shifting energy shot from the Zenith Umbra and engulfed Hermov. The God seemed rather angry as he cursed in an ancient tongue that was part mathematics and part . . . Klingon?
Sigh. Nerds.
“So, here’s what I suspect,” I said to the god, who was now floating in the air before me. “You are not responsib
le, but culpable, in Evie’s kidnapping. And I think there is more to this prophecy. So let’s revisit my original statement. Tell me what I want to know, or I will hurt you.”
“Soon, none of this will matter. I can endure your tiny, arrogant mind until the deed is done.”
“You . . . fucking . . . sci-fi dorks,” I said through gritted teeth. “You praise science one minute, then bend the rules for the sake of your story in the next. Well, fine. So will I. Sophia?”
“Yes sir?”
“Please constrict the field by, oh, forty percent?”
“Sir?”
“Just do it.”
Sophia complied and the field that held Hermov condensed into a much smaller space. Yet the god was still held firm, and a small grimace of pain escaped his lips.
“Seeing as you are a god, a being that flips the middle finger to science, you are impervious to most mortal danger. And even if I were to destroy your avatar form, you’d just come back at a later time and place. So I am not, technically, intending you mortal harm. However, thanks to The Blessing of the One, I can simply hold you and squeeze you, smaller and smaller.”
“I’ll . . . say . . . nothing!” Hermov grunted.
“That’s fair. Sophia, another forty percent, please.”
“On it, sir!” she cheerfully replied.
Hermov Wellshlein screamed as his humanoid form was condensed to the size of a basketball in an instant, with all the bone-sapping, squishy results one would expect. And as promised, his divinity, held captive by the Blessing of the One, ensured that his avatar continued living.
Off in the distance I heard what sounded like a muffled explosion. Raising an eyebrow, I looked back at the ship. “Sophia?”
“Don’t look at me, sir, that came from the temple.”
“Ah,” I nodded. “Likely Lydia then.”
“Indeed,” my wife said as she materialized beside me.
I gave her a quick kiss. “How’d it go with the minions?”
Lydia sighed. “When I got there, they were still arguing the best way to reach fifty thousand pieces. Myst wanted to create a wire mesh to push Al through. WK simply wanted to shave his head and claimed that the average human has over one hundred thousand hairs on his head.”
“And?” I asked with a bemused smile. “What did you do?”
“Lobbed a couple of plasma grenades and told the idiots to stand back. I told them they could walk back after they finished counting.”
“That’s what I love about you,” I said, kissing her forehead. “Firm but fair.”
“What is that?” Lydia asked, pointing at my own encounter.
“Oh, honey, you remember Hermov Wellshlein, the high god of Stella Primus. You met him at that last Never Realm mixer?”
“The pervy old man with the sideburns and the fixation with three-titted green alien women and bugs?”
“Yes, that would be the one.”
“And I assume this has something to do with getting Evie back?”
“It does indeed,” I assured her.
“Then let me just knife him in the dick-hole and be done with this.”
I turned back to the mushy ball of Hermov. “So, what’ll be? An even smaller living space with never-ending nerve endings, or the old knife-in-the-urethra gambit? Frankly, I’m good either way.”
“Fine!” the gooey ball of Hermov gurgled.
“Sophia, be a dear and release the tractor beam,” I said with a smile. “But have it on standby the moment it looks like he’s going to bamf out of here.”
“You got it, sir. And might I say, you two make wonderful parents. Both with Evie and the minions.”
“We really do,” I said with a sideways smirk towards my wife.
A moment later, the tractor beam blinked out, dropping Hermov to the ground. The tiny ball of god began unfolding itself with wet, sickly pops and the grating of resetting bone. After that horrific display was over, Hermov stood before us.
“You were saying?” I asked.
“Evie was taken from my universe. But I didn’t do it, I swear.”
“You allowed it,” I growled.
“That doesn’t matter, not now,” Lydia said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Where was she taken to?”
“You have to understand,” Hermov said, “there are forces at work you don’t understand. There are reasons why--”
“Where?!” Lydia roared.
“She--”
A bolt of purple-black lightning boomed from the clear sky, striking Hermov directly in his head. His body swelled with otherworldly power, beyond the limit of which he could hold. And then, he simply exploded.
And that split second before High God Hermov Wellshlein ceased to be, I swear he looked . . . relieved.
The force of the dying god cracked the ground. An eruption of power unlike anything I’d ever felt blasted outward, enveloping both Lydia and me.
Reaching out to the power of the Umbra, I wrapped Lydia and me in a shield of my power until the shock wave dissipated. Breathless, I dropped to the ground.
“Wh-what was that?” Lydia asked.
“H-Hermov is . . . dead,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“You mean his avatar form is destroyed?”
I shook my head and regretted it as the world continued to spin. “No. He . . . he’s dead.”
“How?” Lydia asked. “What could kill a high god?”
The answer was simple. “Another high god. Someone wanted him dead before he could tell us what happened to Evie.”
“Who?” Lydia asked, still confused.
“I think I know. That bolt of power was . . . familiar.”
If I was right, then taking Evie was part of something large. Large enough for the gods to kill one another over it. And based on what I saw, there was a particular goddess who not only had the power, but also the flair for purple and black lightning.
“It’s time for us to get Gothic.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Where I Hop Genres, Display Poor Marksmanship, and Reveal Naming Conventions
The carriage raced down the cobblestone street at night with all the speed both horses could muster. The steel-reinforced wheels clickity-clacked against the hard, uneven stone. From atop said speeding carriage, I felt the cold wind through my black double-layered coat and cloak. The constant rocking of the carriage made it really hard to shoot at the werewolves of the Dessemark Bloodpack who were chasing us.
“Hold it steady!” I yelled while trying to aim the electrostatic long rifle.
The firearm was a heavy monstrosity of three long steel barrels banded together that practically blistered with brass tubing. Gods above and below alone knew what half that shit did. Over the three crackling miniature Tesla coils in the vacuum-sealed container, I sighted at the lead werewolf.
Just as I took my shot, Wraith Knight pulled the horses hard to the right. The electric discharge went wide, hitting nothing. At best, all I did was singe the ass-hair off a couple of the pursuing monsters.
“Damn it!” I cursed, while I gripped the wrought iron railing around the carriage top. “Why’d you swerve?”
“Pedestrians!” Wraith Knight called from over his shoulder. In the Gothic nightmare realm of Horreich, my minion was garbed in something akin to an armored Russian greatcoat complete with the fuzzy Cossack hat. “Did you want me to run them over?”
“Yes!” I yelled back. “We’re villains and they’re idiots in vests, top hats, and steampunk petticoats. In fact, the next time you have the chance, steer into them! If I don’t see goggles and pocket watches flying, you’ll be in big trouble, mister!”
“Yes boss,” WK sighed.
The werewolves howled in rage as they pursued; their growls and barks were getting closer. Thanks to their enhanced physical abilities, the werewolves were closing in on us with each leap and bound. The beasts leaped from the sidewalk to lampposts, trying any way they could to get to us. People on the street screamed and dove for cover, but
many onlookers were knocked to the ground by the werewolves’ berserk rampage.
“See!” I yelled to Wraith Knight. “That’s how you do it!”
I fired several more shots from the electrostatic long rifle, scoring only a couple of hits, which momentarily paralyzed the werewolves. Each blast of the weapon left behind small pools of crackling electricity along the ground, arcing brightly until the energy dissipated. A quick glance down showed that the Tesla coils were depleted.
“Reload!” I yelled out.
“Here!” Wraith Knight roared back. He tossed me some strange contraption as I tossed him the electrostatic rifle.
“What the shit is this?!”
“Silver-tipped harpoon bolt thrower,” WK said.
“Oh, like that explains everything.”
“Damn it, boss, use it to pin them to the ground.
“Have you seen my aim?” I asked.
“Sadly . . . yes. But the Loup-Garou are vulnerable to silver.”
“I thought they were werewolves?” I said back, trying to get a measure of the strange gas-powered weapon.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wraith Knight said. “Lycans, Hexenwulf, Loup-Garou—they are all names for fanged, furry death machines!”
My minion had a point. And despite the dire situation, I couldn’t help but smile a little. Since coming to Horreich and the coastal city of Mondhafen, Wraith Knight had been . . . in his element.
Ah, LARP nerds.
Dialing the bolt thrower to what I hoped was full auto, I aimed the cylindrical weapon and squeezed the silver-plated firing lever. The weapon sprang to life with such a kinetic reaction, I almost dropped the poorly designed contraption. The barrel rotated over and over. With each revolution, a barbed, silver-tipped rod a little longer than my forearm shot outward. I was immediately rewarded with yelps and howls of pain as the makeshift harpoons struck the werewolves with pinpoint accuracy.
“Why the hell didn’t you give me this in the first place?!” I called out over my shoulder while I gleefully continued firing.
No sooner had I asked than I heard the sound of a breaking spring, and the sudden “tsst” sound of pressurized gas escaping. The barrel stopped spinning and was locked in place.
