by Paul Neuhaus
Hope sighed. “She’s steering the Kraken toward Bronson Caves. She wants to get to the Underworld and steal the key.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’ll take them across the San Fernando Valley. America’s suburb. It’s chock full of Dairy Queens and malls and apartments and people.”
“Right again.”
Keri stirred behind me. “We can’t let that happen,” she said.
“Hey, I’m on your side.”
Fortunately, Addie didn’t have a tremendous lead, so we didn’t have long to wait—it turns out eighty-foot sea monsters are easy to spot even when they’ve only got their head and shoulders above water. There was the Kraken a ways in front of us. I could even see the little dot that was Addie holding on for dear life. The two of them were angling in which meant they were likely to make landfall soon. That would put them a little north of Malibu. What was just north of Malibu? Not a whole lot, but it perfectly positioned them to move inland into the Valley.
“What’s Bronson Caves?” Keri said over the noise of the wind.
“It’s caves, but it’s also an entrance to Hades. The Underworld.”
“Bullshit,” the teenager said reflexively.
“You just found out you’re a demigoddess, you’re riding on a horse with wings and you’re gonna call bullshit on the Underworld?”
“Right. Sorry.”
The Kraken had made landfall and was standing looking down on the PCH. That caused a lot of confusion on the ground as cars slammed into one another or pulled one-eighties and sped back in the direction they’d come from.
Between where we were on the coast and the San Fernando Valley, there was a fair amount of hilly terrain. To me, that was a good thing. “Okay, you two, look alive. Keri, I’m gonna need you to open your eyes because shit’s about to get real. If you’re here to help, now’s the time. We need to get them before they can get into too populous an area. For lack of a better plan, Keri, you’re gonna control the siren head and I’m gonna control the pithos.”
“I’m gonna control the siren head?” Keri said. “What siren head? What does that even mean?”
“I’ve got a siren’s head. Sirens were those singing bitches that lured sailors into the rocks. The Kraken’s supposed to be especially susceptible. When the wind blows through it, it sings and lures people in whatever direction it’s pointed.”
“What about us?” the teenager asked. “Will it lure us in whatever direction it’s pointed?”
That, I had to admit, was a really fucking good question. If memory served, Perseus had had something stuck in his ears when he stopped the Kraken from wrecking Argus. Unfortunately, we were a little short on cotton balls. On the up side, I had a sword and a terrycloth robe. “Here, take this,” I said, passing the gladius back to Keri. The transfer was clumsy, but we managed it.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“This is gonna be weird, but just trust me, okay? I want you to cut off a chunk of my robe near the bottom then, if you can, cut that into strips we can jam into our ears.”
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake. It’s been ages since I took home ec,” the girl complained. She immediately set about doing what I asked her to do, though.
Pegasus had pushed us inland but, rather smartly, he stopped a ways in and flew in circles. He didn’t want Addie and the Kraken to become aware of us. I was starting to get the idea he was a sacred animal for a reason. He was smarter than most of the people I knew.
Sure enough, the Kraken stepped right over PCH and headed roughly eastward toward the Valley. Given his stride and his pace, I tried to figure out how long it would take him to get from where we were to Griffith Park—but then I remembered I suck at math, so I gave up. Anyway, it didn’t matter because the kind of casualties the monster’d rack up along the way were completely unacceptable to me. We really, really needed to stop him before he got to where the people were.
It occurred to me then that I wished I had a cellphone. If I’d had a cellphone, I could’ve called Amanda Venables—my friend and the new Queen of the Underworld. I could’ve warned her we were coming. Then I realized Keri had a cellphone. “Do you have your phone with you?”
She was still cutting terrycloth behind me. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“Could you call a friend of mine and let her know what’s going on? I think she can help.”
“Sure. Do you have her number?”
I was flustered so I said something stupid. “Oh. I need her number?”
Keri laughed. “Yeah, you need her number. I mean I could call at random until I got her, but that could take a while.”
“Alright, alright. Nobody likes a smartass.”
“That’s not true in my experience.” After another moment, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Here.”
I took two strips of cloth from her. “Perfect. When I tell you, jam yours in your ears good and tight. I have no idea how powerful this singing head is, so we gotta be careful.”
“What’s the plan? What’re we gonna do exactly?”
“First we’re gonna jam the cloth in our ears. Then we’re gonna take out the head and we’re gonna get it singing. I don’t know if it needs to warm up first or what. Once it’s singing, I’m gonna have Pegasus fly in circles around the Kraken. Hopefully, that’ll drive both the monster and your mom crazy, at which point, I’ll unstopper my jug and suck them both into it.”
“Okay,” the girl replied. “I think that makes sense.”
A thought occurred to me. “Are you okay putting the whammy on your one and only mother?”
I could feel her shrugging behind me. Her voice had only the tiniest bit of ambivalence. “She is my mom and all, but she only had me to get even with you, and then she unleashed a giant fucking monster on the world, and then she straight up murdered my grandpa before I got a chance to get to know him. So, you know, that kinda sucked. All things considered, I don’t think she’s a nice lady.”
“Okay, good. Just thought I’d check because there won’t be any going back. Once I capture her, there’s no way I’m letting her out again.”
“Fair enough. I appreciate your asking.”
I reached down and opened one of the saddle bags. From it, I withdrew the siren’s head, holding it by its long gray hair. I plopped it into Keri’s lap and said, “Okay, you’ve got head duty. We’ll fly around a little bit and see if we can wake it up.”
Quite understandably, Keri said “Ew,” but she wasn’t too much of a girlie-girl to do the work. I appreciated her ability to roll with the punches.
“Now. Jam in your earplugs. Remember: good and goddam tight.”
We both put the cloth in our ears and I said. “Hey, gimme back that sword. I want the sword.”
Irritated, Keri took out one of her plugs and said, “What? What’re you saying?”
Feeling sheepish, I also took out a plug and repeated my request for the weapon.
“Why wouldn’t you ask me that before we did the earplug thing?”
“I forgot,” I replied. “At least we know the earplugs work.”
“Is there anything else you wanna talk about before we do this? Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
I grinned. “I do need to go to the bathroom, but it’ll have to wait.” We nodded and put the terrycloth back in our ears. Pegasus took us further inland in a wide arc. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he’d been listening to my plan about revving the siren head up. Maybe he had. Like I said, he was a damn smart horse. It hit me all of a sudden: If Pegasus had been listening, wouldn’t he also be listening when the siren started to sing? The Perseus legend didn’t say anything about stopping up the horse’s ears, so I had to assume we were gonna be okay. Anyway, there was nothing we could do about it at that point. I wouldn’t begin to know how to stop up a horse’s ears.
We didn’t have long to wait for results. As soon as Pegasus built up a good head of steam, the whipping wind went through the creepy, mummified head and ou
t came a mournful song. I had just enough hearing to know the head was doing what we needed it to do, but it was dampened enough not to drive me fully crazy. (Which is not to say I wasn’t driven crazy at all. I could hear the song just enough to know that a full dose would’ve made me kill my own mother.) With that bit of the plan working, I leaned forward and said, “Alright, Pegasus. You know what to do. At least I think you do.” Immediately, the flying horse shot toward where Adrestia and the Kraken should be. We had plenty of open terrain between us and the heavily populated San Fernando Valley to do what we needed to do. I started to get optimistic—which was odd for me, I admit.
As soon as the monster came into view, I flipped open the other saddlebag, took out the pithos and placed it firmly in the crook of my right arm. In my left hand, I held Sebastian Squire’s golden gladius. (I wasn’t even bothering with the bridle anymore—Pegasus had already proven himself to be the world’s best self-driving car).
We went high above the Kraken and began to do wide orbits around him. Now that I had a good view of him in broad daylight, I didn’t think he looked especially aquatic. In fact, I thought he looked a lot like the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. That ugly brown thing under Jabba’s palace that tried to eat Luke Skywalker. He had long arms, huge clawed hands and stubby little legs that moved him overland at a surprising clip. (He wasn’t completely free of nautical accoutrements. Despite the fact he’d only been in the ocean a short time, he had crusty barnacles all over his legs.)
Once he had the Kraken at the center of his wide orbits, Pegasus both progressively tightened his circles and slowly descended. Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better mode of transport. The horse was totally teeing me up. If we missed the shot, it was on us.
We missed the shot.
Given Pegasus’ orbit, the Kraken was always on our left side. Keri wisely shifted the severed head to her left hand and pointed the gawking, singing face at her mother and the sea monster. Beyond a doubt, the plaintive keening of the ex-siren was having the desired effect. The Kraken had stopped mid-stride. If he’d been a cartoon character, his eyes would’ve turned into pinwheels. Adrestia was similarly distressed. Her expression was too far away to see but she had her arms up and her hands covering her ears in a doomed attempt to block the sound. She did have something neither Keri or I factored in, something that helped her more than even the odds. She had a ranged weapon. Being the demigoddess she was, she had the ability to use a kind of magic. Really what it was was an ability to manipulate the natural forces around her. She could, for instance, superheat the air and direct it in a beam.
Adrestia superheated the air and directed it in a beam—not at us but at our severed siren head. The effect was just like the old magnifying glass versus the ants trick. Right in Keri’s hand, the head burst into flames. It didn’t stop singing until the fire reached its mouth, then it gave a kind of gurgle and went silent. “Fuck!” the teenager said, having no choice but to throw the suddenly useless item overboard.
So, yeah, that was a blow. Without Perseus’ famous head trick, we had no way of containing the Kraken’s advance or, perhaps more importantly, keeping Addie from hurling spells-a-plenty our way.
I realized that we had a demigoddess of our own on our team, but I was reluctant to get Keri into a firefight with her mom. For one thing, Addie was more practiced, and, for another, I didn’t want to put the teenager at risk. I handed the pithos back to her and yanked the terrycloth out of my ears. She followed suit. “You said you wanted to go Ghostbusting with me... Well, now’s your chance. I feel like you’re gonna know what to do when the time comes, so keep your eyes open.”
Keri nodded and what I did next shocked the hell out of her. I leapt off of Pegasus’ back and pointed my plummeting form at the Kraken below us.
As I fell, I shaped myself into a dart with the gladius as the point. When I landed, I was exactly where I wanted to be, in the center of the Kraken’s forehead. The golden sword entered his skull and, using it as an anchor, I first went slack and then I pulled myself up, my bare feet finding purchase in the wrinkled expanse between the monster’s eyes. With one foot still planted and one hand on the gladius, I kicked the pommel of the blade, driving it in further. Beneath me, the Kraken screamed, and I thought to myself, Now would be a good time, Keri.
Sure enough, I’d delivered a fatal blow to the heart of the Kraken’s brain. Its eyes rolled over white and the thick gray cloud of its spirit began drifting out of the wound I’d made. It drifted up and then got yanked like a skydiver opening his shoot. I spared a glance over my shoulder and I could see Keri above us with the pithos open. The Kraken’s essence was flowing rapidly into the clay jug.
Adrestia screamed—both out of fear and out of rage. She threw caution aside and began running up the Kraken’s back toward me. Her ascent was complicated by the fact the now-soulless monster was beginning to fall. In less than a second, it’d be a beached land-whale far from the edge of the Valley.
It looked like we’d just won a victory.
It didn’t look that way for long.
Addie didn’t come for me. Instead, she found a place on the Kraken’s back where she could stand still, and she used the steady ground as a platform. She reengaged her long-distance weapon. She super-cooled the air until it formed a flying chunk of ice. The flying chunk of ice struck the pithos so that it was pointed away from the Kraken’s swiftly retreating essence. When it became free of the mystic suction of my jug, the essence snapped back and reconstituted. As I looked on, it acted under its own power to jet upward at Keri and Pegasus. My heart skipped a beat when I thought that it might retake the teenaged girl, but that’s not what it did. It made the smart play and took Pegasus, flowing into him through every available orifice. With one movement, the possessed horse flipped Keri off of its back and swooped in to catch Addie before its old body hit the ground.
I yelled as I watched Keri fall, but I needn’t have worried. She pointed her hands downward and created a jet of air to slow her fall. The two of us hit the ground non-fatally at about the same time—her on her feet and me on top of an eighty-foot Kraken. As soon as we realized we weren’t dead, we both looked in the direction of the Valley and saw the diminishing dot that was Adrestia on the back of our stolen flying horse.
“Well, fuck,” Keri said.
7
(Week-)Old Friends
Keri joined me by the fallen Kraken. The day was turning into a hot one and the massive creature was already starting to stink. “What now?” she said.
“I’m thinking. And I’m totally open to ideas.”
“How long do you think it’ll take my mom to get to these caves of yours?”
I made a pfft noise. “On Pegasus? No time at all. You’ve got Google on your phone, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Do me a favor and see if you can find the number for my friend. Her name is Amanda Venables. Vee ee en ay bee el ee es.”
“I’m on it,” she said, and she dug her iPhone out of her pocket.
Since there was nothing for me to do that’d have a direct impact on our most significant problem, I started looking around on the ground for a container—preferably one with a lid. I was right to trust in my fellow man’s slovenly nature. I found a travel-sized shampoo bottle that was mostly empty. I dumped out the rest of the shampoo and held the bottle up to the Kraken’s wound. Once the bottle was about half full, I put the cap back on and stuck it into the pocket of my robe.
“Ew,” Keri said. “Why the hell’d you do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I found your friend. Her phone number’s in her Linked In profile—which is damned stupid if you ask me. What with all the weirdos out there.”
I smiled. “In this case, we’re the weirdos.”
The teen handed me the phone and told me to tap the number on the screen when I was ready. I was ready. Amanda picked up after three rings. “Hello?” she said. “Who is this? I don’t recogniz
e this number. Is this Larry? It better as fuck not be Larry.”
I’d spent a couple of crazy days with Amanda the week before and I hadn’t heard thing one about any Larry. My curiosity got the better of me. “Who’s Larry?”
A moment of silence passed. “Dora? Is that you?”
I had a bug in my ear. “Who’s Larry?” I said again.
“It’s a long story, and I know for a fact that’s not why you called.”
Despite the handshake she’d given me when we parted, I knew she was still sore at me for beheading her and bringing her back to life. People are sensitive about stuff like that. “Remember when there was a crazy lady trying to open up the subterranean prison the Titans are kept in and, to defend it, you and Connie became the new lord and lady of the Underworld?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but I think there might be another crazy lady headed to the Underworld to open up the subterranean prison the Titans are kept in.”
“Huh,” she replied. “Can I get out of being the lady of the Underworld this time?”
“Trouble in paradise?” I asked, concerned.
“Well, you know. It was a big decision and, when you get down to it, I really didn’t know Connie all that long, and now I’m committed to him in the worst way. We’ve got this whole land of the dead thing we gotta run together and I’m not sure we’re totally compatible. What’re you doing right now? Can we meet for coffee and talk about it?”
I caught myself and remembered I didn’t call to make small talk. “We can totally talk about it,” I said. “But I wasn’t kidding about the crazy lady headed your way. She’s riding on Pegasus. The winged horse. And she’s gonna try and enter through Bronson Caves.”
