by Paul Neuhaus
Venables sighed. “We really need to seal that shit up. It’s nothing but trouble.”
“Agreed, but that’s a Later Problem. Right now, we’ve got a Now Problem.”
“Right. The crazy lady. What can we do?”
"First, you’ve gotta keep her from the Tartarus grate—or preferably out of the Underworld all together.”
“Hold on.” She put her cellphone on her shoulder and I heard her talking with someone there with her. Connie no doubt.
When she came back, I had to ask her: “Was Connie sitting there the whole time you said you weren’t sure you and he were compatible?”
“No, he just got back from the shitter.”
“Oh, okay. Good.” I liked Connie and I didn’t want him hurt by any reckless disregard for his feelings.
“So... There’s a woman headed toward us and she’s cray cray and she’s riding on a Pegasus. Where’re you?”
“She’s riding on the Pegasus. It’s not like all winged horses are called Pegasuses. It’s a proper name not a species.”
“I’ll remember that, but I can’t help thinking it’s not important right now.”
“Okay, you’re right. It’s not. I’m on the edge of the Valley. Somewhere near Calabasas. Don’t ask me how I got here ‘cause it’s a long fucking story.”
“Alright. Hold up. There’s this thing on here called ‘Find My Friends’.” Her voice went away, and I could hear her tapping on the screen with her fingertips. “Got you,” she said when she came back. “Stay right there.”
“It’s not like we were gonna—”
I was cut off when a hole appeared in the ground and Amanda rose up out of it. She was wearing a long black grown and the iron crown which was the badge of her office. When she first appeared, she was smiling. When she saw the dead Kraken, she almost shit herself. “What in the name of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is that?!”
“It’s a Kraken,” I replied. “You’ve never seen a Kraken before?”
“I most certainly have not. Who’s your friend?”
We both looked over at Keri Wiener and Keri waved at Venables. “That’s Keri,” I said. “She’s with me. And, just so you won’t be surprised by something she does later, she’s a demigoddess.”
Amanda nodded. “Cool. Why don’t you both step into my hole.”
As Keri and I obliged, I laughed like both Beavis and Butthead. “You said ‘hole’.”
Venables rolled her eyes. “You can be insufferable sometimes.”
When we resurfaced in the central chamber of the Underworld, I felt like I’d just left the place. I kinda had. Connie—AKA Constantine Constantinides—was there to meet us. He looked like Josh Groban in a black, crushed velour suit and an iron crown. “What the hell’s happening?” he said. “Haven’t we earned a little peace and quiet?”
I looked around. The Underworld was, in general, one of the quietest places I’d ever been. It was filled with wandering shades, but they kept to themselves and rarely spoke—much less wailed or gnashed their teeth. “Hey, if it was up to me...” I said.
“What’re we up against?” he said.
“Same type of deal. A revenge-addled chick wants to let the Titans out of Tartarus.”
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake.”
I turned to Keri. “Maybe this isn’t the right time for it, but I just wanted to point out to you that not all the women of Greek mythology are hormonal nutbags.”
“You’re reasonably together,” the girl replied, meaning it.
I laughed. “Were you not paying attention during the part where your dad broke up with me and I went into hiding for more than ten years?”
“That’s better than a lust for world domination which is apparently what my mom’s got.”
“Granted.” I turned to Constantinides. “This is my new friend Keri. It’s her mom that wants to steal your exiled gods.”
“We’ll try not to hold that against her,” Amanda said.
“What do you got for me in terms of defenses?” I said, looking around.
Connie shrugged. “You’re looking at it. I’m thinking it’s mostly just the four of us.”
Amanda sighed in a way that showed she was frustrated sharing the Underworld with a man who might not be on top of his game. “Don’t forget the Erinyes,” she said. “We’ve got the Erinyes,” she added, addressing it to Keri and me.
“What’s an Erinyes?” Keri asked, legitimately, I thought.
I was the one that answered. “They’re also known as the Furies. They’re hanging from the ceiling up where we can’t see them. Mostly they’re for keeping the dead in line, but they’ll attack anything that attacks the Underworld. Just so you won’t be too surprised when you see one, they’re like these little demon things with lady heads.”
“Of course, they are,” Wiener replied. “Why wouldn’t they be? By the way, don’t you think I’m doing a great job of not completely cracking up? I mean there’s ghosts everywhere and creepy stalagmites and whatnot. It’s like being in the Haunted Mansion only it’s real as fuck.”
“Hey, that’s what I thought the first time I came down here,” I said, pointing at the girl to acknowledge our shared observation.
“You get used to it,” Connie said. Like he was some kind of old hand at running afterlifes. He’d been in charge for less than a week.
“Can we focus here, people?” Venables asked, clearly right on the edge of getting testy.
“Okay,” I said, turning in place so I faced away from the main gate. I was looking in the direction of the Bronson Caves entrance, the way Amanda and I had entered when we’d come down to recover my lost pithos. “Adrestia—that’s our villain’s name—should be coming from that direction. She made a beeline over the Valley toward the Caves. I expect she’ll take one of the sinkholes down.”
“Or the weird vagina door you and I used,” the Queen of the Underworld said.
That gave Constantinides pause. “There’s a vagina door?”
“We can talk about it later. If she’s coming from that direction, she’s bound to meet Cerberus. He likes to hang out in that wing. It’s a little cooler. Why don’t you do that whistle thing and hip him to the situation?”
Amanda was referring to the fact I’d mastered a whistle that could get Cerberus, the three-headed dog’s attention. “If I do that, won’t he just come running? It’s not like I can lace the whistle with Morse code.”
“So maybe not then.”
Then I had a dark thought. Pegasus was a wonderful means to an end for Adrestia. She needed him to get her from the edge of the Valley to Griffith Park. Once that was accomplished, she didn’t need him anymore. In fact, he wouldn’t be particularly useful at all in the Underworld. What if she had the Kraken vacate Pegasus and enter Cerberus? A big, bitey dog’d be a much more useful ally in the Underworld than a flying horse. Without giving it another thought, I put two fingers into my mouth and gave a shrill whistle that caused my three friends to clamp their hands over their ears. A few minutes later, Cerberus—the biggest fucking pooch you’ve ever seen—came bounding across the river Styx to stand in front of us. He leaned down and licked my whole face with one of his giant heads. It was sloppy and gross, but the affection was appreciated.
Once we were all in attendance, we turned our attention back toward the entrance Adrestia would likely use. We watched for a good while, but nothing happened.
“Retrace your steps for me,” Connie said. “How far did you make it before you lost this crazy lady?”
“We started at sea,” I replied. “We followed her ’til she came ashore just above Malibu. Then she struck inland and we lost her not too long after. Somewhere near Calabasas.”
The new custodian of the Underworld nodded. “Right. And everything I hear about Pegasus is that he’s super-fast.”
“Oh, yeah. Crazy fast.”
“No doubt about it,” Keri added. “The ride in scared the piss out of me.”
“Wait...” Amanda said. “You guys we
re on Pegasus? I thought you said the crazy lady was on Pegasus.”
I sighed. “We had our flying horse hijacked, okay? Look, I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened.”
Constantinides grinned at my discomfort. “On surface streets, Calabasas to Bronson Caves is a hike, but flying—especially on a super-fast Pegasus—wouldn’t be too bad. I guess what I’m saying is—”
“‘Shouldn’t she be here by now?’”
Venables raised an eyebrow. “Maybe there was a delay at the Burbank Airport.” She turned to her partner in crime. “Remember the last time we had to land our Pegasus at Burbank? It was a nightmare.”
I was starting to get annoyed. “Yeah, yeah.”
After another long moment of staring, Amanda spoke again. “By the way,” she said. “Why’re you nearly naked? I mean your ass is hanging out of that robe.”
Connie nodded. “Right. Yeah. I wasn’t gonna say anything, but... yeah.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “It’s a really long fucking story, okay? As soon as I get into it, Addie’s gonna show up and we’ll lose the thread, so I’ll tell it after. In the meantime, anyone who’s offended by my ass, should kindly divert their eyes.”
Connie spoke way too quickly for his own good. “Well, I wouldn’t say offended. Offended’s not the right word. It’s more like—” He was cut off by Amanda’s punch to his right shoulder. He stood rubbing that shoulder with a pouty expression during the next bout of watching and waiting.
Finally, Keri said, “Let’s take stock... My mom's a really volatile person. An emotional whirlwind. Could it be we’ve guessed wrong? Maybe she wasn’t coming here. Maybe she was going to get revenge on someone in, say, Sherman Oaks and we missed the signs. Maybe we got some bad intel.”
Hope cooed at the word “intel”.
The teenager had me thinking. “Okay, okay. I see what you’re saying, but the intel came from Hermes—as he was dying. And telling me he wished I was his daughter. That’d be some low-down dirty shit to do. To pass someone bad intel as you’re dying and telling them they’re good people.”
“Well, what was the intel? What did he say exactly?”
I thought back over the vision Hermes and I shared as I was in transit from Olympus back to Acadine. “He didn’t say anything per se. I entered into his memories. I saw how he and Medea and Adrestia planned the Free the Titans heist and how Medea hijacked it.”
“So, you were halfway between Olympus and the paddock with Pegasus and all of us and my mom?”
“Yeah,” I replied, still not catching her drift.
“Are you one hundred percent sure what you saw were my grandpa’s memories?”
“As opposed to...?”
“A vision implanted in your head by my mother the demigoddess to throw you off the scent.”
I threw back my head and yelled, “Fuck!” No doubt the Furies high above us were badly startled. I know everyone on the ground sure was—even some of the dead. “You gotta be fucking kidding me! You mean Addie was never headed here?”
Keri shrugged. “I mean do I know that’s what happened? No. I don’t know anything at this point.”
I lowered my voice and my brain raced. “No, no. You’re probably right. I mean the scenario you just laid out... It’s so Addie. But where the fuck could she’ve gone?”
Amanda turned and headed back through a secondary gate that led to the various “neighborhoods” of the Underworld. “I’ll put on some coffee,” she said.
Constantinides shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “I wish I could help, but I don’t know much about this... 'Adrestia', did you call her? Which is weird because I consider myself an armchair scholar on all things ancient Greece.”
“Adrestia is Hermes’ daughter. A tertiary character. Barely a footnote. She’s the goddess of minor affronts and disproportionate rage.”
“Yeesh,” he replied.
“I know, right?”
Keri was wearing a pained expression and her eyes were far away. “Do you think the Kraken will kill Pegasus when he’s done with him?” she said.
“Gods, I hope not,” I said.
“Wait,” Constantinides chimed in. “There’s a Kraken?”
“I told you it was a long story.”
“Just so I understand: Pegasus isn’t Pegasus, he’s Pegasus with a Kraken inside.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Wow. Don’t take this the wrong way, but things sure have gotten weird since you decided to stop being a hermit.”
I reflexively kicked him in the shin. “What’s the right way to take that, Connie? ‘Cause it sure as hell implies all of this is my fault!”
He took two steps back and raised his hands. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to say.”
Amanda reappeared carrying a tray full of coffee mugs. “What stupid thing did you say now?” she asked Connie.
The man took his coffee. “Nothing. I misspoke. I already apologized.”
As I took my own mug, Venables said to me, “Yesterday, he said he wished I was taller and had bigger tits.”
Keri and I both threw back our heads and made exasperated sounds. “What is wrong with you?!” Keri said.
Connie’s voice was barely audible. “I said I was sorry for that too.”
I sipped my coffee. It was terrible. Keri did the same and came to the same conclusion. She shot me a pained glance, but we both smiled at Amanda. Then it occurred to me I hadn’t done the obvious. “Hope, can you draw a bead on Addie and Pegasus?”
“No, not from down here. Maybe if we go back to the surface...”
I sighed. It looked like the detour into the Underworld had been a waste of time.
We put our cups back on Amanda’s tray, and I started to ask for an express trip back to the land of the living.
“You know,” Wiener said. “Addie never talked about anything too deep. I was happy when I got more than a monosyllabic response. One thing she did tell me about—more than once—was how she’d lost her mother. About how she’d never gotten to know her. I never heard about any of the bruises to the ego or the follow-up revenges. But I did hear about her mom. I don’t know why I mention that. Maybe because it stands out. Little islands of humanity in a sea of nothing.”
I smiled, but without humor. “Did you appreciate the irony of an absentee mother talking about how her own mother was absent?”
“Not at the time, but I did, later.”
I sighed. “Well, I can appreciate Addie’s melancholy. I told you Zeus turned her mom into a slug, didn’t I?”
“Say what?”
“Yeah. Your gramma—her name was Rhene—went into stalker mode. She gave your grandpa a helluva time. Hermes was moping around about it, Zeus got sick of seeing him be all drag-ass, so he sluggified her.”
The teenager took a moment to digest that. “Wow,” she said. “That’s some cold shit.”
“I know. Even Hermes thought so.”
“No wonder my mom is the way she is.”
“Hold up,” I replied, cautioning the girl. “Let’s not overlook the fact Addie’d have bad wiring regardless of the whole slug-mommy thing. But, yeah, the slug-mommy thing didn’t help.”
Finally, we looked over at Amanda and Connie and both of them wore sour, bored expressions. “Do we even need to be here for this?”
I made a mental note to have that meeting with Amanda when and if the Adrestia situation got resolved. I started to make a request but Hope interrupted. “Dora... A thought just occurs to me.”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t choose Vasquez Rocks by accident. It’s a nexus point. A place of power where natural—one might say magical—energies converge and overlap.”
My jaw dropped. What Hope told me and what Keri told me snapped together in my head like Lego bricks. “Fuck!” I said aloud. I turned to our hosts. “Can you guys send us to Vasquez Rocks? With the hole in the ground thing? Li
ke now?”
One of Connie’s eyebrows went up. “So, what, you’re all like, ‘Hey, hate to cause a panic and leave, but...?’”
“Yes. Exactly.”
The lord of the Underworld snapped his fingers and a pulsating hole appeared in the ground behind Keri and I. Keri was confused and wanted to ask questions, but I hustled her along. Before we stepped into the hole, I said to Amanda. “Coffee next week?”
Venables brightened. “Tuesday?”
“Tuesday.” Then my pint-sized sidekick and I stepped into the hole and disappeared. As we faded out, I could still hear them speaking.
“Oh! I was going to offer her some real clothes,” Amanda said.
“How?” Connie replied. “She’s tall and you’re not.”
“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”
8
Mothers and Daughters
We reappeared outside the ranger station at Vasquez Rocks, and I had an instant deja vu. The place was deserted again, the sky was dark, and the wind was whipping. Keri had to shout above the din. “Wait... Are you saying my mother came here to resurrect my grandmother?!”
“Sure, looks that way,” I said. I put my hand flat above my eyes, so I could see the rock formation in the middle distance. Sure enough, there was activity at the top. I could see a small, bipedal shadow standing next to a big, quadrupedal shadow. Pegasus (AKA the Kraken) unfurled then furled his wings to cement the identification. “Come on,” I shouted. “We gotta get up there.”
I ran left along the path, over the scrubby terrain toward the Rocks. Keri pulled at me, was unsuccessful at first due to the difference in our sizes but won out finally when she dug in her heels. “Wait! Wait goddammit!”
I turned toward Wiener reluctantly. “We really gotta haul ass, I’m not kidding!”
“Why?” the teenager said. “Why do we gotta stop her? I mean I guess bringing back the dead does violate all the laws of nature, but isn’t this a whole lot better than releasing a bunch of moldy old gods and destroying humanity?”
I pulled at her, forcing her to get moving again before I answered. “It is, technically. I guess. But, to perform the ritual she’s attempting, she’ll need blood. Powerful blood. My guess is she was gonna bring the Kraken here under false pretenses and sacrifice him. Now, unfortunately, the Kraken’s inside Pegasus, so the blood at stake here belongs to our friend!”
