My stomach rumbled. “Yeah … I am not waiting that long.”
“Theo, look!” Simon said, drawing my attention to the rim of the amphitheater where a wood elf stood beside Orion his wrists and ankles bound together.
“That’s elven rope,” Garfunkel said approvingly.
Orion glared at me, but at least he wasn’t trying to kill me at the moment. And aside from some bruises and cuts, it appeared he’d survived his fall from Atlas without permanent damage.
Sure, the Seven Sins formula didn’t seem to be going away anytime soon but there was still hope for him.
A wave of exhaustion rippled over me and I sat upon a stone chunk of Atlas.
I still couldn’t believe I’d killed a demigod, releasing from his power hundreds of mythical creatures forced to repeatedly kill each other in a cursed Arena.
Too bad I couldn’t have saved my mother. I guess she would’ve been proud.
“Darkness Has A New Face”
One moment I was resting on the chunk of stone waiting for the cheering to subside; the next moment, the world was silent and I was home.
Well, not exactly home, but inside my grandmother’s living room. Faded yellow wall paint, a simple couch, a rocking chair. The smell of minestrone cooking on the stove from the kitchen. Oddly enough, my stomach didn’t rumble, and that’s how I knew I was in the InBetween again—in soul form. Which meant none of this was real, just a damn good construct pieced together from fragments of my memory.
“You like it?” a clipped, British voice called from behind me.
I spun. Posted up against the doorway stood the Jersey Devil, although this time he wasn’t wearing the façade of vampire Edward Cullen from Twilight or the vampire Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Now the devil was dressed in a black t-shirt under a black overcoat with short bleached blonde hair and a faint scar across one eyebrow.
“Spike?”
The Jersey Devil, in the guise of Spike grinned and nodded. “Thought I’d give it another whirl. This face closer to the mark?”
He stood with his arms folded over his chest, his head tilted downward, his eyes smirking up at me.
My heart skipped a beat and my lips curled up into the ghost of a smile.
I sighed.
So weary was I that not even the sight of my biggest teenage crush could stir me. Often after receiving some of her more invasive medical treatment, my mom would say she was “tired in her soul.” Now I knew what she meant.
My mom …
“Why’d you summon me back?” I asked, thinking of the stone pendant I’d failed to retrieve. “And why am I standing in my grandmother’s old house?”
Spike pushed off from the wall, swinging his arms out in front of him as he spoke. “Well I thought you could use some cheering up after your … little showdown in the amphitheater.” He snapped his eyes to mine. “Quite the spectacle. How did it feel?”
“What do you mean?”
“To have an arena jampacked with Others showering their undying gratitude upon you, you mope.”
“I don’t know. Good?”
“Good? Good?” Spike laughed and threw an amused glance at the ceiling. “Well, I for one, wish to thank you, on behalf of Otherkind.”
I dropped my gaze to the floor as I stepped toward the rocking chair my grandfather had supposedly hand-carved when he was alive. I ran a hand over the smoothed wood. Beside the chair was a window looking out toward the sea. Through the glass I watched the Shade of a manticore bounding out toward the sea while a goblin performed a jig.
I turned back to the rocking chair. Nothing beat rocking to sleep in my mother’s arms here when I was a child. Ah, the joys of rocking oneself to sleep. Out of all the ancient ruins I’d traversed, this was my favorite place in the world. No worries. No expectations. A place I could rest in peace.
I turned to Spike. “You want to thank me? Thank me for what? As I’m sure you know, I didn’t get the sundial pendant.”
Spike snickered. “Well sure. But you did manage to put an end to Typhon’s operations. No small feat for one pesky girl.”
I scoffed and gestured around me at the house—well, not the house, but the glamor and illusions that comprised the InBetween. “I’ve been around the block long enough to know that, like the InBetween, my dethroning Typhon is only a temporary solution to a permanent problem. How long will it take for someone else to pick up Typhon’s mantle? Resume his operations? What did Typhon’s death really achieve?”
Spike studied me for a bit before dropping his shoulders and slink-waltzing up beside me so he could peer out the window. “You can lose the puppy dog stare. You corrected a big injustice against Others today. Think of all the Others who owe you their freedom. Think of all the Others who’ll get to see tomorrow without the looming threat of fighting for their life in that cursed Arena. Theo, you’re every bit of champion I thought you would be.”
I turned my gaze back to the window. “But I didn’t recover the sundial pendant.”
“Pish posh. So you didn’t get it this time. How’s that dreary Wizard of Oz song go? There’s always tomorrow?”
I let my shoulders drop. “But there’s the whole ‘Nyx stole the Heart of Atlas’ and now she’s planning GoneGods know what. And Orion is still under the Sin Formula’s influence. And my mom … is dying, or dead, I guess. And I wasn’t there for that.”
Spike threw an arm over my shoulder. “Cheer up, Buttercup. I know it might not seem like it, but the world is a better place because of your actions. Sure, all that stuff was, unpredictable. And sure, there might not be a rainbow right now, but it’s not exactly raining any longer, either.” He paused, his eyes widening in delight. “Well look who came to say hi.”
I glanced up and wiped a tear from my eye. One of the magic fish Typhon had extinct-ed had swam up to the window. It blinked like how fish do and I could have sworn it smiled at me.
“And he brought some friends,” Spike said as the rest of the fish floated into view, joining the smiling one. They all stopped and nodded at me in unison, turning and swishing their tails above their heads as they performed a series of slick coordinated movements in the air worthy of an Olympic gold medal. After a short pause, they each began to perform their own individual “dance moves,” flipping and swishing in fluid, graceful maneuvers.
“They’re so beautiful,” I murmured, wiping my eyes again, embarrassed and frustrated that my soul could cry.
Spike gripped my shoulder. “There, there, Teddy Bear. I don’t think they’re done. Look.”
After wiping my nose, I glanced back up out the window. The fish had arrayed themselves in static poses to form the words THANK YOU, THEO. (Yes, a baby fish had even formed the comma.)
Spike slow-clapped. “Well said.”
I turned on him, resentment surfacing. “Did you make me see that? And that goblin doing the jig. They’re not twitching or jerking anymore … Are you trying to manipulate my emotions?”
Spike grinned. “Nothing of the sort, love. I only control the environment here. And my face. What the Shades of the Others who inhabit this place do is completely up to them.”
I shook my head. “But you said there was something wrong with them.”
“There was,” Spike said. “But that was before you ended Typhon’s brutal reign. If you recall, Others no longer have to slaughter each other in the Arena anymore. Your actions have cleared away some of the anger, frustration and confusion clouding their little Other minds. You’re their hero.”
I swallowed.
“A lot to take in,” he said, “I know.”
Something my father used to tell me flooded back into my mind. “The trouble with witnessing a great wrong, is that you know what you have to do to fix it …”
I’d always assumed he was referring to my rebellious ways, that he was chastising me. Trying to get me to fall more in line with the expectations of the world or maybe even to be a better daughter.
I’d been s
elfish all my life. Sure, I’d witnessed wrongs and spoke up whenever my family was concerned, but maybe it was time I actively started looking out for others.
I glanced up at Spike, for the first time allowing myself to appreciate the Jersey Devil’s handiwork. He’d nailed the face and clothes and voice, almost as if he’d taken them straight from the TV. The levity eased my burden—not by much, but enough for me to ask the question bubbling up in my brain.
“It’s not over is it?”
Spike shook his head sadly. “Afraid not, love. Even if you somehow manage to recover the sodding sundial pendant, we’ve got a rogue goddess on our hands.” He paused. “I’ve never met her, but according to the rumors, she’s a bit looney. And now she has the largest supply of raw, pure power this GoneGod world has yet seen—the bloody Heart of Atlas. So, our little InBetwen project will have to wait.”
“It’s going to be hard?” I asked.
Spike scoffed. “Well, yeah. Considering the first sign has already happened.”
“Sign? Huh?”
“Right … remember how I said I was well-versed in prophesies? Typhon’s death reminded me of one of them.”
I nodded. “Umm, OK?”
“It was an apocalyptic prophecy.” Spike clasped his hands out in front of him and cleared his throat. “The end shall be heralded by three omens. And it shall be terrible to behold with much death and destruction and … blah, blah, blah, etcetera.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “Right, I don’t remember the actual words but they go something like this:
Step One: The dead shall rejoice.
Step Two: A fortnight of darkness
Step Three: A sacrifice of spirits.”
Kameno tost! “The dead rejoiced when Typhon died.”
Spike nodded. “I know. That’s what reminded me of this prophesy.”
“OK. So, uh, how’s it end?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
I flashed him a look.
“OK. OK.” Striking a fist seriously over his heart, he said, “And lo, the dead shall be raised.”
The dead shall be raised? “What does that even mean?”
“Well, translated to modern terminology, I believe it’s referring to the zombie apocalypse … you know, World War Z.”
I let my body sag backward against the wall of my childhood second-home. Seriously? I’d just defeated a demigod and freed a bunch of enslaved Others from his killer-club Arena. And now I had to contend with a zombie apocalypse?
“So …” Spike rubbed his hands together. “Whadya say? You in?”
(Not) The End …
The Better Demons saga continues with …
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Chapter 1 of Daggers and Demons - “Caught in the Act”
The goddess stepped over the security guard’s still body, her scythe-like claws tearing through the storage unit’s retractable door as easily as a welder’s torch to a tin can.
Shrouded by shadows, the outdoor storage facility had a noir-like quality to it. A solitary overhead light buzzing off and on in the night, puddles of rain on the asphalt. There was a graininess to the entire image that made my skin crawl, made me feel like I was watching a true-crime documentary.
Nyx slipped through the tear in the door like a wraith, the backs of her dusty legs disappearing for a few moments before reemerging back on the grim pavement. With a bent back and clenched claws, she tilted her smooth face up at the night sky, opening her mouth in a silent, anguished howl.
Then, pausing ever so slightly, she pivoted her cold eyes directly at me, maintaining her stare as black fog enveloped her, concealed her. It dissipated, and so did she as if she’d never been there.
I held my breath.
I blinked and she stood right in front of me, materialized from the misty blackness that was her cloak, her eyes bloodshot in this sepia-toned world.
I felt the pain in those eyes. Felt the determination in the creases of age along her smooth cheeks, in the sharp angles of her teeth.
She raised her scythe-like claws.
My heartbeat hiked and then the screen went black.
I stepped back from the computer monitor, my eyes adjusting to Arachne’s darkened parlor.
“We have to find a way to get ahead of her,” I said, finally.
Arachne set down her can of Red Bull. “Gurl, ever since Nyx escaped with the Heart of Atlas, that’s, like, all we’ve been trying to do.”
I glanced over at the numerous monitors lighting the darkened space. They all showed serious-looking news reporters behind desks or out on the darkened NYC streets. The ticker scrolling across the bottom of one read: Day 7 of Dark Sky Phenomena …
It’d been almost a month since I’d killed the demigod Typhon with the cursed axe holstered under my jacket. Almost a month since I’d unwittingly initiated Step One of the goddess Nyx’s master plan: The dead shall rise …
“I know,” I said, turning away from the news reports and leaning back against Arachne’s computer desk. I crossed my arms. “But you know the prophesy. Step Two: A fortnight of darkness … We only have another week to figure this out before the final step of Nyx’s plan.”
How Nyx had started Step Two and summoned the black clouds over NYC we didn’t know but it probably had to deal with all the artifacts the goddess had been acquiring in the meantime.
Arachne threw back another gulp of energy drink and placed a slender hand on my arm, her perfectly manicured eyebrows arching seductively. “Theo, keep up this pace, you're going to kill yourself.”
I scoffed. “Oh, and you’re not? What is that, your third energy drink this hour?” I cringed as Arachne’s eyebrows sagged. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Tiny hands tugged on my hair, one of my familiars. “That was mean,” Simon said.
“Yeah,” Garfunkel chimed in. “You hangry? Cause you’re acting like a real b-word.”
About as different as two personalities could be, sometimes I was glad only I could hear or see my familiars. With their intentions of balancing my thoughts and actions, they’d drive a lesser person crazy. But you know, family.
Arachne flashed me a weak smile. “It’s OK, friend. We’re, like, under so much pressure.”
I turned back to my friend, her bellybutton-length jacket flapping gently against her blouse as her torso swayed to pop beats only she could hear. Behind her in the darkness I could just make out an official Red Bull poster displaying Arachne’s upper half in a revealing two-piece bikini transposed in front of a green-screened beach, the “sunlight” glistening off her shiny dark hair.
Did I envy her looks? A bit.
Of course, there was her spidery under-half mostly concealed by the darkness of her basement office and the occasional clicking of her spider feet on the concrete floor. But as with the quirks of my familiars, I’d accepted that as just another part of her. And after she’d displayed her true self to the world during a gang war, it seemed the world had accepted that part too. I still couldn’t understand how Arachne was so comfortable with herself when part of her looked like a monster.
I sighed. “Who else is going to stop her?”
Simon nibbled at his fingernails. “Maybe the ‘darkness storm’ will just blow over?”
If only it was that easy. “Maybe we missed something. Can you replay the tape?”
Arachne’s luscious lips curled contentedly as her fingernails zipped across her keyboard. The security footage blinked back to existence in frame-by-frame shots as Nyx’s scythe-claws retracted from the screen and the black fog swallowed her. She reappeared back in front of the storage room door, her head tilted up in a scream. Her body shrunk and slipped backward through the impossibly narrow slit—
“Freeze,” I said, pressing a finger against the screen. “Blow this up, please.”
Arachne tapped some keys and the picture zoomed-in on the top of the screen, the end of the storage unit aisle. This section of the screen was darker, co
arser because of its lack of light, but there was a car there.
“Can you clear it up any?”
With a sexy smirk, Arachne flexed her magical fingers over the keys until the car’s features became clearer. It was a limo and the side window was down, but it was too dark to see the driver’s face. My tech friend tapped out some further commands and the image lightened by increments.
“Gan the butler,” Garfunkel said. “Hah! It’s always the butler.”
I nodded. Not exactly a surprise; he’d been working undercover for Nyx for a while, stringing along both Typhon’s gang and the Brotherhood of Zeus. But what he expected to get out of his partnership with her, I’d yet to figure out.
I pointed at the back of the car, at a shadowy figure posted up against it, observing the storage units.
“Who’s that?” Simon asked.
I flashed Arachne a questioning look. She giggled.
“Did thee find a clue?” a voice spoke just over my shoulder.
Nearly falling off the desk, I turned to see LK hovering in the darkness behind us, his translucent body glowing in the light of the array of monitors and tv screens. By the look on his serious face, he was completely unaware that his greenish face, tattered robe and cataract-glazed eyes resembled that green ghost from Scooby-Doo. All he needed was a chain shackled to one arm so that I could hear him lurking about.
“It might be.”
LK scratched his see-through chin, strands of his white wispy hair standing on end. “But this character’s visage. Tis cloudier than Scottish moor fog.”
Arachne bit down on the pink-painted nail of a slender finger, not realizing the seductive nature of the gesture or any of her gestures for that matter. “I’ve done all I can with this program but I still have a few tricks in my web.” She scrunched up her gorgeous face as her eyes flicked over at another computer screen. “In the meantime, check out these printouts.”
Her fingers flew across the keyboard and somewhere from the back of the er, parlor a printer whirred to life. Pages started flipping out and Arachne bobbed like a beach ball on the water as she caught the pages between two fingers and swayed back over to me.
Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1) Page 58
