by Paul Neuhaus
“He told you that?”
The rapper pushed his hoodie down around his neck and rubbed his sweaty bald head. “Oh, yeah. He talks about you all the time. How his life got derailed when he knocked up the Ice Queen. How things should’ve been different.”
I flushed. “Yeah, well, I know what he means.”
“I’ve been watching you. Not creepy watching, just looking. I’m good that way. With my eyes. It’s part of why my rhymes’re so good. I don’t talk about big booties and Benjamins. I'm more like a journalist.”
I wasn’t the world’s biggest Pliny the Elder fan, but I felt there was something to what he was saying. “Sure,” I said. “I buy that.”
“I look at you and I see a strong, beautiful woman. A little soft around the middle, but...”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. Where was this going?
“But I also see stoicism. I see you’re in a bubble of your own making. You stand off to the side. Apart.”
The conversation was getting a little familiar for my taste. “What’re you getting at, M.C. Pliny the Elder?”
He smiled, realizing he’d maybe crossed a line. “I’ve got me a family. I got an old lady and I’ve got two kids. Boy and girl. She’s seventeen. He’s at UCLA studying to be a podiatrist. Why he’s into feet I dunno. That’s his trip. Anyway, the point I’m making is my family’s the only reason I’m still alive. The field I’m in, let’s be honest, can be full of stupidity and pointless violence. I was always more grounded than a lot of the fellas I came up with, but I’m just a man. I coulda been persuaded to do some of the stupid shit going on around me. I never did though. Not once I had me a missus. I always thought about what would them two little kids think if I landed in jail or, to lean on an old cliché, had a cap put in my ass. Thinking that got me un-stupid in a hurry.”
“That makes good sense. Why’re you telling it to me, though?”
“Alls I’m saying is every ship needs a port. No port equals ‘lost at sea’.”
“And I’m the ship?”
“You’re the ship. All of us are the ships.”
I sat back and soaked that in. It turns out Petey was a soulful guy. I’m not sure I appreciated the unsolicited advice, but I couldn’t fault the place it was coming from. “Hey, can I ask you something? Unrelated to what you were just talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“Why ‘Pliny the Elder’? Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you know who Pliny the Elder even was?”
He grinned a big toothy grin. “Pliny was a general. A naval commander. A naturalist. He was friends with Emperor Vespasian. He was a renaissance guy way before the Renaissance. Motherfucker was tight.”
I sat back, impressed. I’d known Pliny the Elder, and Petey’s encapsulation was accurate.
Still grinning, the hip hop star raised one eyebrow. “Just so you know, I got a Masters in Classical Roman Studies from Dartmouth.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
I decided I liked M.C. Pliny the Elder.
4
Adrestia
By the time I got to the Firebird, I was soaked through. The ferocity of the downpour was unusual for Los Angeles, especially for that time of year. I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t been wearing any makeup and my hair was too short to go scraggly. Still, I looked bad. Pale with big purple circles under my eyes. “Are you alright?” Hope said to me from the passenger seat.
“No,” I replied. “Remember how I sat on my ass for more than a decade? How I was pretty much a vegetable?”
“I remember.”
“I’m thinking it might not be healthy to do that and then have as much stimuli as I’ve been having.”
The girl in the jug made a sympathetic “mmm” sound. “All you can do is all you can do. So far, you’re playing it right. Do the best you can to get through then go somewhere quiet to process.”
“You think I’ve got my ducks in a row?”
“I do. You’ve stayed as cool as you can under the circumstances. Right now, tracking the Kraken is your smartest play. Telling the others to go to Pegasus and wait for you was good. Having Elijah tell me where Pegasus was rather than having him tell you was, frankly, inspired. The Kraken can’t read my mind, and I can steer us to the others after we’ve dealt with the monster. That was solid thinking. If I was in your position, I wouldn’t’ve done as well.”
I appreciated the vote of confidence. I was running on fumes, and the positive reinforcement helped. I put the car in gear and pulled out of the spot. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Any time, sis.”
I drove us to a flood control canal near the Convention Center and, with Hope and a gladius strapped to my back, I climbed over the chain-link fence. The rain hadn’t let up one bit so not only was I drenched, so was the canal. Usually there’s barely a trickle in those things, but on this day, there was a raging torrent. “I wish I’d known we were doing this,” I said. “I would’ve worn my rubbers.”
“You know what you need to do?” my jug-bound friend said. “You need to go into Bourne mode. You think Jason Bourne worries about a little water? The man’s a machine. His environment, his opposition, they’re irrelevant as long as his goal’s in sight.”
By then we were at the bottom of the canal and I was walking toward an opening leading into a tunnel. “I feel like maybe we let a genie out of a bottle up at Vasquez Rocks. I had no idea you were so espionage-obsessed. Are all your metaphors going forward gonna be Bourne-related.”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Swell. Maybe, before all this is over, we’ll get to fight Matt Damon hand to hand.”
Hope squealed. “Is it possible for a disembodied spirit in a jar to have an orgasm?”
I scrunched up my face. “If it is, don’t tell me.”
By then, we were out of the rain and standing over a grate. I pulled the gladius and used it to pry up the covering. Under it was a ladder leading down into the dark L.A. County sewers. As I re-sheathed the sword and climbed onto the ladder, Hope said, “My money’s on Damon, by the way.”
I sighed as I descended. “What’re you trying to do, reverse the pep talk from the car? I’m very fragile right now.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” There was a pause. “What’re you fragile about?”
“Oh, I dunno... Seeing my ex-boyfriend who ended our relationship after sleeping with a stranger which caused me to lapse into a years-long depression.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah. That.”
“I guess I can’t relate. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
“Well, I don’t know why. You’re cute as the dickens. Maybe, when we get some downtime, we can get you hooked up with a boy anthropomorphized emotion. Who do you think you’d like? Maybe Angst or Nonspecific Ennui.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“Yes. I am teasing you.” I dropped down onto the slick ground and unfastened the flashlight I had hooked to my belt loop. I moved the beam around in a slow arc and got exactly what you expect in that situation: a scattering of rats. Disgusting, filthy rats. I shivered and pointed us toward the Convention Center (or the underneath of the Convention Center which would be where the Kraken escaped to). “Keep your eyes peeled for glow-y blood,” I said.
“It’s probably not glow-y anymore. It gets less glow-y as it dries. That doesn’t matter, though, since I can smell the stuff.”
“Alright. Keep your nose peeled.” It wasn’t as stinky in the sewers as I expected it to be, which was a small blessing. I tried to find a happy medium where I was watching where I was going, but I wasn’t seeing any rats or poopies bobbing in the water. Your mind is good at protecting you from things like that when you give it enough warning. There are drawbacks, though. I was tuned-out enough to walk into a big cloud of angry, buzzy flies. Super gross. Finally, we came to a four-way intersection. “You’re gonna have to help me now ‘cause I’m lost.”
“Actually, we
’re right below the Convention Center lobby. Look up.”
I looked up and there was a sliver of artificial light above us. It was the hole the Kraken had dug. “Good, good,” I said, “What now?”
She gave me a series of directions which drove us deeper and deeper into the underground. “Left. Right. Straight ahead two intersections. Right. Down the incline. Watch your step, it’s slippery as hell. Left. Left. Left.” When we got near where we were going, we began seeing little glow-y patches. Fresh, non-dry Kraken blood. Hope’d steered us true. When we got exactly where we were going, something weird happened. We had to go through a hole in the concrete wall—and it wasn’t a fresh hole of Kraken manufacture, it’d been there for a while. On the other side was a hard-packed platform of dirt looking down on a catacomb of tunnels—tunnels I assure you were not made by the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Wooden railings lashed together by rope defined walkways. Catwalks hung suspended overhead. What I took to be a waterwheel turned in the distance. The place was lit by torches and an eerie silence hung over it. If you’ve ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, think of the mine occupied by the Thuggee cult. This place was a fair approximation. “Wow,” Hope said. “I did not see this coming.”
“I know, right?” I duck-walked over to the railing looking down on the big chamber beneath us. I heard two people speaking as soon as I went through the hole in the wall, and I didn’t want to draw their attention. I looked down and it was the Verne Troyer-scale Kraken and a woman. The woman had her back to us.
The woman was the one speaking. “It’s clear Poseidon supplied you with brawn but not much brains. You had one job: get in there and find somebody—anybody—who knew Pegasus’ location. And now, here you are, and not only don’t you know the horse’s whereabouts, you look like a Muppet. Also, you’ve got a knife sticking out of your head.” She reached over and yanked the knife out of the monster’s noggin. A little jet of luminous blood shot out and he squealed. “Did you at least see Elijah?” she went on. “I showed you a picture of him. Did you see him?”
The Kraken pouted. “I see him,” he said. “He had many friends. One—little girl—stab me in new head.”
The woman put her hand on her hip. “Yeah, well, you know what? If you’re open to be stabbed in your new head by a little girl, maybe you don’t deserve your new head. I know it’s hard, but I want you to think for a minute. Do you realize we’re no better off than we were before?”
“I realize,” the Kraken said.
“No, actually strike that. We’re worse off than we were before. Not only do we not know where they’re keeping Pegasus, they know they’re being stalked by a Kraken. That’s bound to make them a little cautious, am I right?”
“You right.”
“Remember when you came to me, lost and lonely? Not sure what to do or where to turn?”
“Yes.”
“What’d I tell you then?”
“You say, ‘listen’.”
The woman tapped her foot. “That’s not what I said. I said you needed to listen to every word I said and do exactly what I told you. Do you remember that?”
The Kraken lowered its head and looked like a sullen six-year-old. “I remember,” it said.
“I can’t help you if you don’t listen.”
Then another voice from the direction of the waterwheel surprised Hope and I. It said, “Leave him be. He said he’s sorry. Riding him like a little bitch doesn’t help.” We were even more surprised when we looked up and saw who the voice belonged to.
It belonged to Hermes. He limped toward the two speakers below us.
The woman folded her arms over her breasts and replied, “Nice of you to take a break from your busy schedule of whacking off.”
The Olympian’s brow furrowed. “You’re my daughter and I’m your elder. Can’t you at least give me an approximation of respect?”
Daughter? The woman with her back to us was Hermes’ daughter. I had a sudden flash of memory and all the energy left my body. We were hip-deep in some serious weirdness.
Adrestia.
The woman’s name was Adrestia.
The demigoddess ignored the question. “What’re we gonna do? We need that horse if we’re going to take this any further. I can’t use the Kraken at the size he is now. It’d be pointless.”
Hermes sighed. “Don’t ask me to do what you’re thinking about asking me to do,” he said.
“Why? Because you love her more than you love me? Because you don’t wanna betray her trust. Well, you betrayed my trust eons ago, and you still owe me restitution. You still need to become the father you never were.”
Hermes’ face became hard. “I won’t do it. Don’t ask me.”
Adrestia shrugged her shoulders and her voice became especially snarky. “I’ll say it again... We’re exactly where we were when we started. Unless you step up. Either become the man you always should’ve been or leave here and never return.”
The whole time the god and his half-god progeny were talking, the Kraken looked back and forth between them, fascinated. Now that they were at a crucial point in the conversation, the little monster was set to burst with anticipation. Would Hermes capitulate to his daughter’s cryptic demands, or would he turn tail and leave? Hope and I wondered the same thing.
Hermes turned tail and left. Good for Hermes, I thought, even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on. But then he backpedaled. He stopped when he was about twenty feet away from Adrestia and the Kraken and, without turning, he said, “Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo. They’re at Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo.”
What? What had just happened? But then it hit me. The petting zoo. Keri had mentioned it. In front of Hermes and I—and Hermes had put the pieces together before I had. Elijah had leveraged the same memory—a memory from better times—when he needed a place to board Pegasus. And the other person Adrestia mentioned—the one who’s trust Hermes hadn’t wanted to violate—it was me. Talk about your Holy Shit moments. With my face very near the pithos, I said, “Jellybelly’s... Is that where Elijah told you to go?”
“I’m not supposed to say, remember?”
“Have you not been listening?” I said, almost raising my voice.
“Okay, okay. It is, it is.”
“Fuck,” I replied. “We gotta get outta here.”
I tried to duckwalk backwards toward the hole in the wall, but I dropped the flashlight and it went skittering down the incline to the lower floor of the catacombs. Adrestia and the Kraken looked up and the Kraken hissed. For some reason it said, “Die, Brony, die!” again and came charging up the slope toward Hope and I. In that moment, I saw that Hermes had seen us too, and he was wearing a shocked, guilty expression.
Hope and I said, “Oh shit!” at the same time and dispensed with stealth. I got to my feet and spun. Since the hole in the wall wasn’t at floor level, I dove through it, did a somersault through a brackish puddle, and came to my feet again, already in a run.
“Put some distance between us and it,” Hope said. “If you stop too soon, he’ll be on you and he’ll tear you to shreds.” I could hear the Kraken behind us and I knew she was right. I also knew what she was angling for. She wanted me to get a comfortable buffer between us and the monster, so I could turn and pull the stopper off the pithos. If I could manage to do that, our problems would be over. Most of them, anyway.
Understanding Hope’s plan and making it happen were two different things thanks to the loss of the flashlight. Since we couldn’t see, Hope had to call out her directions again like some kind of mythic GPS. It was tough following her orders because I had a disconnect between what she was saying and my sightlessness. Fortunately, my trust in Hope was complete.
We turned into a straightaway and I poured on the speed (despite the fact I had a knot in my right side and I felt like I was going to stroke out). I listened behind myself, but I couldn’t get a fix on where the Kraken was. The sound in the tunnel was dopplering in a funny w
ay. “Is... he... far... enough back?” I wheezed.
“I think so,” Hope answered.
I slid to a stop right in the same cloud of flies we’d passed through on the way in. I pivoted and saw immediately, the midget-sized monster wasn’t as far back as I needed him to be. I did the only thing I could think of. I drew the gladius from my back and threw it through the air end over end. It imbedded itself in the Kraken’s forehead right next to the hole from Keri’s steak knife. Unlike the steak knife, the gladius was three feet long and had significant force behind it. It perforated the sea monster’s tiny brain and he went down like a sack of shit. As I fumbled to get the pithos off of my back (and I do mean fumbled), I had to swat at angry flies. They didn’t like me crashing their party and they were particularly buzzy and bitey. By the time I got the jug out of its straps and poised in front of me, I wished I had a wingman on fly detail.
When I got the stopper off the crock, nothing happened.
Well, not nothing exactly. I could feel the suction, but the screaming-Evil-getting-sucked-in part didn’t happen. Somehow, the Kraken’s spiritual essence had eluded us.
Standing there in the stinky corridor, surrounded by flies, I screamed, “Fuck!”
Okay so, right now, you gotta be asking yourself, “Who the fuck is Adrestia?” Well, let me share with you the memory that came flashing back once I realized it was her.
Way, way, way back in the day, Hermes hooked up with a nymph named Rhene. When the Olympians were in charge, there was a lot of free love and grooviness. It was like the sixties before Manson. Anyway, Hermes hooked up with this nymph named Rhene. Usually, the wham bam, thank you ma’am would be the end of it, but Rhene got pregnant. Not only that, Rhene was crazier than a shit-house rat. We’re talking Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction crazy. She started stalking Hermes and generally harshing his mellow. Hermes was in a major league funk because of it. So much so Zeus got tired of seeing his mopey ass around the office and did his boy a solid. He turned Rhene into a slug. As sometimes happens in these stories, Rhene managed to give birth to a full-sized demigoddess even though she was a gray squishy thing no longer than a fingernail. After that, she oozed away (leaving a trail behind her) and died a slug’s death.
