by Nazri Noor
“I’m telling you, I did my homework, and everything points to this stuff,” Gil said. “She’s not one to stick to tradition.”
Sterling peeled out a couple of bills then handed them, grinning and winking, to the cashier. “And a pack of cigs. No, no, those over there.” The cashier giggled, making what seemed like intentional mistakes as she hunted down Sterling’s cigarettes of choice. Sterling’s grin stayed on his lips, and his eyes just kept on wandering. He certainly didn’t seem to mind.
“I just find it hard to believe that Artemis wants a jumbo bag of Snacky Yum-Yums as an offering,” I said.
They were cheese snacks, the kind that left orange powder on your fingers. The similarity in name to Puppy Yum dog biscuits isn’t lost on me. A quick look at the packaging would tell you that they were owned by the same company. It was Happy, Inc., the mega-corporation behind Happy Boba, Happy Cow, and all those other food franchises I’d grudgingly come to love and crave at odd hours of the night. I had to wonder if Puppy Yum and Snacky Yum-Yums shared certain common ingredients. I tried not to gag.
Gil shrugged. “Times have changed. The entities have different tastes now. You saw Amaterasu’s cellphone, remember? And I don’t mean to pull any cards here, but I’m a werewolf.” He rolled his shoulders, pouting a little, pretending to look hurt. “I mean, I know one or two things about moon gods. Give me some credit.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “I believe you, big guy. It’s just – it sounds ridiculous, is all. But entities are entities, right? I believe you.”
Sterling kicked and hissed as we dragged him out of the convenience store and away from his cashier crush, but what else was new? I was so close to asking Gil to just pick him up by the scruff and carry him out. He wouldn’t drop the Snacky Yum-Yums.
Artemis’s tether – her place of power, or more accurately, the gateway to her domicile – was apparently in the Nicola Arboretum, the biggest, prettiest botanical garden in Valero. Our last visit there must have been that time we had to fight the giant beanstalk from hell that Thea had called from out of the earth.
My heart pounded a little faster as we entered the garden, and I had to silently reassure myself. It was going to be fine. No hell-stalks this time. Thea was dead. We were just there to deliver a huge bag of salty processed snacks to an ancient goddess, then ask for her help in identifying what, exactly, Banjo was supposed to be.
Oh, did I not mention Banjo? He had to come along, naturally. Whole point of the expedition, in fact. But we couldn’t take anyone else from the Boneyard with us, so it was just the original three amigos, avec Welsh corgi. Carver said as much.
We weren’t going to do well lugging around an empowered nephilim, something he described as even rarer than a necromancer. Mason, in a sense, was Asher version 2.0. Incidentally, Carver had been on the verge of allowing Asher to come with us this time, except he figured that Mason could use some company back in the Boneyard.
Not the worst idea, really, considering the kid did need a little bit of orienting in terms of the arcane underground. The fact that they were basically the same age helped, too. Mason had tons of questions about the world behind the Veil, and Asher had tons of questions about, well, practically everything else. A match made in heaven, really.
We found it, finally, the tether – a little stone statue in the shape of a fox, tucked away somewhere among the flowers. It was a little moss-covered, a little grimy, as if the garden’s employees specifically avoided cleaning it. Maybe that was intentional on Artemis’s part, a sort of insurance policy to ensure that no one could meddle with her tether, or worse, accidentally open her gateway and stumble into her domicile.
Not that it was likely to happen, of course, unless you brought the right offering.
“So what, we rip the bag open, pour it over the ground?” I said. “That’s how Arachne likes it. You take out a fortune cookie and smash it on the pavement.”
It was then, remembering Arachne’s own tastes, that I realized how Artemis’s desires weren’t exactly so peculiar after all. In fact, of all the entities we’d encountered, Hecate was really the only one who stuck to tradition, requesting offerings she was actually supposed to want in the myths.
“Hell no,” Gil said. “You want her to smack you upside the head? That’s the whole point of bringing an entire bag. She wants to chow down on it.”
“Huh. Point taken.”
Sterling drew out a rough circle in the grass, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Banjo sniffed curiously at Sterling’s boot, then went around him, snuffling at the fox statue. Then he lifted his leg.
“Banjo!”
Gil dived, sweeping the dog up in his arms. Banjo yelped, once, but loudly. Gil exploded into a stuttered burst of soothing supplications. I might have neglected to mention that we’d snuck into the Nicola Arboretum past midnight. Hey, whatever works for our schedule, right? Also, as Sterling always said: carpe noctem.
Banjo settled down soon enough, and Gil took him off into the bushes to “make pee-pee,” as he called it. It was interesting, to say the least, seeing the biggest and strongest among us softened by a little dog with a waddle for a walk and a cute butt, but you’ve never met Banjo. They returned shortly, and we were ready for the ritual.
Sterling stubbed his cigarette out somewhere in the grass, then elbowed me. “Okay. You’re the expert. You do the incantation. Knock on the door so she lets us in.”
“Sure,” I said. “Consider it done. But only if you clean up after yourself. Pick up that cigarette butt, man, come on.”
Sterling narrowed his eyes at me, grumbled, but complied anyway, checking that the cigarette was totally out, then chucking it in the closest trashcan. Eh, good enough.
The four of us took position inside the circle that Sterling had drawn. He handed me the bag, and I held it close to my chest, focusing my eyes and my will on the fox statue as I mumbled to myself, incanting the great and powerful words of magic that would coax a goddess of ancient Greece herself into inviting us into her domicile.
Two guesses as to what that incantation was.
That’s right. I went for my old standby, reciting the blurb off of the backs of Puppy Yum biscuit bags, something I’d memorized ages ago. As I chanted, I filled my mind and my heart with my request, and my intent. Wisdom, I thought. Divine knowledge. Guidance. That was all we needed, and we would be on our way. Sterling bit into his hand, dripping blood onto the grass, completing the circle.
Somewhere in the air before us, I felt a seam opening, but only a peep, energies rushing out of it in a slow stream, like a draft through the space under a door. The gateway was like a closed eye, and it was taking a peek at who wanted in. We’d attracted Artemis’s attention. We just had to seal the deal.
I raised the bag of snacks to eye level. “We brought your favorite,” I said in a singsong voice.
The draft turned into a full-on gust of wind. Tendrils snaked up from the bushes, multitudes of them twisting, towering, and forming into an empty oblong doorway. Then in the space between, where the entrance would be, the air wavered and turned into a scintillant green, like thousands of drops of dew slipping across a brilliantly colored leaf. That was as good an invitation as we were going to get.
A voice spoke from within the shimmering portal.
“Come in, losers. And hurry, the cold air’s getting in.”
Like I was about to keep a goddess waiting. Sterling went first, the green of the gateway rippling like the surface of a pond as he stepped through. I tucked the snacks safely under one arm, then walked into the portal, too.
My jaw dropped. Artemis’s domicile was nothing like I would have expected. We had found our way into an enormous jungle, except that it was a forest, except that, on closer inspection, it turned out to be both. Plants that had no business being next to each other grew out of the same soil: coconut trees next to towering sequoias, pitcher plants with roses, fruits that thrived in conflicting seasons just chilling out in the same, strange b
iome.
And among the vegetation, I realized, still mostly hidden because of the arrival of new intruders in their land, were all manner of fauna. The goddess of the hunt, it seemed, liked to keep a full menagerie in her domicile. At least they were tame. I hoped.
Somewhere in the distance, obscured by the treeline, came the babbling of rivers, of soothing brooks, and what sounded like an actual waterfall. We could hear owls in the bright daylight, their hoots mingling with the twitter of birds. It didn’t make sense, but it worked, somehow.
Wait? Daylight? Oh, fuck. Sterling. I couldn’t see him. I checked the ground for patches of ash. What if he was incinerated the very moment he stepped in? Fuck. Fuck. I thought Artemis was a moon goddess? She belonged to the Midnight Convocation.
I whipped around, about to yell Gil’s name, when I noticed that he wasn’t there. The portal was gone, too. Had it closed before he and Banjo could get in? What the hell was going on? I turned back around, studying my surroundings. There was a lightly worn path, just through the trees.
“Artemis?” I called out, repeating her name, my throat getting tighter the more I shouted, not from the strain, but from the slow, building terror of not knowing what had happened to Gil, and worse, to Sterling. “Artemis!”
That must have been the seventh time I’d yelled her name. Artemis came trumpeting out of the foliage, screaming unintelligibly, a barbed arrow nocked in her bow, her eyes huge and wild. Leaves were tangled in her hair, but in an oddly elegant way, like they’d been arranged there, and not like she’d been rolling around in the undergrowth.
I held my hands up, standing still as a statue, careful to note that she was aiming directly for my face.
“What is it?” she screamed. “What do you want from me, who are you – wait. Dustin? It’s just you. I let you in already.” She lowered her bow and arrow, frowning at me. “What the hell are you yelling about?”
“Sterling,” I said, little traces of panic returning to my blood. “The vampire. Where is he? The sun’s out, and he came into your domicile before I did. Where is he?”
Artemis’s face bunched up even more, twisting with anger. She thrust her finger out past the trees. “He’s right over there, you idiot. I’m in charge of this place. That thing in the sky is artificial. It’s not a real sun. Magic, dum-dum.”
I ran past her, through the trees, following her finger, following the trail, until I came to a clearing that opened out onto a cliff. The valley below us teemed with green, specked with the colors of distant birds and glimpses of flowers and fruit. The sky was crystalline blue, clouds soaring against its perfection like streamers of pure white smoke.
The view gave me pause, but my body took over, wanting to see and to know with certainty that Sterling was fine. He was standing at the edge of the cliff, his back turned to me, his face raised to the sky.
“Sterling,” I shouted, rushing to him, grabbing him by the shoulders, turning him around. “What the hell, man? Why didn’t you answer? I thought I’d lost you.”
I hadn’t noticed he was crying. Sterling placed his hands on my cheeks. His palms were warm, his fingers soft. Tears spilled down his face as he smiled.
“Dust,” he said, his voice shaking. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen the sun?”
Chapter 24
“It’s for the aesthetics, more than anything. And it depends on my mood. Sometimes I like it bright in here. If not, then I just snap my fingers and turn on the moon.” Artemis pushed her sunglasses up her face, leaned back on her hammock, then sipped from her coconut.
“Please don’t snap your fingers,” Sterling said dreamily, still rapt by the sunlit world around him.
Sterling and I had been given our own coconut shells, both of them filled with piña coladas, with curly straws and tiny paper umbrellas stuck in. Somewhere among the bushes I swore I saw a blender. Where Artemis was getting power in this gigantic combination biome was anybody’s guess. I squinted as I searched the palm trees. Maybe they had power outlets in them.
Her domicile was an idyllic tropical paradise, something that still didn’t quite mesh with my idea of what a goddess of the moon would call home. It was the sun that confused me, that and the very many live birds and beasts just chilling around the place. If some of the animals had gotten up on two legs, broken out steel drums, and started banging out Caribbean music, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. I watched a toucan suspiciously, waiting for it to burst into song.
“No worries, I like it sunny sometimes. Not just my brother who likes a little golden glow, you know.” Artemis stretched her legs, squirting a little more suntan lotion on her arms, then sighed. “But I’ll keep this simple, boys. I can’t help you.”
I shifted around in my own hammock, finding it extremely challenging to get comfy, then feeling guilty for trying to be comfortable when Gil and Banjo were still stuck in the wet cold of the arboretum.
“See,” I said. “That’s what we were expecting. Does the Midnight Convocation truly hate me that much? And – and I’m sorry about Metzli, by the way.”
Artemis lowered her sunglasses, fixing me with an even stare. “Yes. About that. It’s exactly why the Convocation is so pissed. Some of us are more understanding. And generous, clearly.” She nodded at my coconut. “How’s your piña colada?”
“G-good,” I said. “Thank you.”
It was. Very refreshing, especially for such a balmy day – which was weird to think of, considering it was past midnight in Valero. Briefly I wondered if she’d poisoned me, but Artemis didn’t seem like the type of entity who’d do that. It wasn’t her style. She could have skewered me like a pincushion the moment I walked into her domicile, that trick she loved where she’d split one arrow into twenty. Poison would have been too subtle.
“Wonderful,” she said, leaning back in her hammock. “I knew bringing in that blender was a good idea. But yes. Sure, the Convocation knew the risks of just handing you some way of summoning us out in the open, but I don’t think that enough of us had fully considered the possibility that you would call on us to fight one of the Old Ones. Christ on a bicycle, Dustin, an Old One. The Overthroat, no less.”
I sipped on my piña colada. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but the possibility was heavily implied, right before you guys gave me the crystal.”
Artemis sighed. “True enough. But a lot of us aren’t done grieving – Chernobog, especially – and Metzli’s death was a horrible reminder of how painfully unimmortal we actually are. It was different, you know, in the old days, when our worshippers could have fed us with their prayers, brought us back. But now? Fat chance. And that brings me around to my point: I can’t help you. Sorry.”
I struggled to sit up, gripping my coconut firmly. “But you’re not pissed at me the way the others are. As far as I know, Nyx doesn’t hate me, either.”
She nodded. “Both facts. Yes. But I’m bound to my brothers and sisters. It’d be a betrayal to the other entities of the Midnight Convocation.”
“Then can you recommend anyone else we could ask? Someone with a similar portfolio. An entity who knows a lot about animals.”
Artemis’s eyes flashed momentarily, and she leaned forward to answer, but stopped herself. She cleared her throat. “Sorry. It would be a betrayal to the other entities.”
I blinked at her, flummoxed. “Seriously?” Well and good, though. I understood that the Convocation still had it out for me, and I couldn’t exactly, in good conscience, rope her into something that would put her in a similarly shitty light. “Fine then.” I sipped the last of my drink, the dregs of it slurping noisily, and set my coconut shell aside. “I guess we’ll have to find help from someone else.”
The big flourish I’d hoped to accomplish by making a slightly passive-aggressive, hopefully dramatic huff, where I would have swept out of the portal in a grand exit, was cut short by the fact that my foot got tangled in the hammock. Artemis watched from behind her sunglasses, unmoved, as I struggled and p
anted.
“Sterling,” I grunted.
He sipped from his coconut, his eyes staring directly into the sun.
“Sterling!”
Still nothing. Artemis whistled, and my heart quickened when a gorilla burst out of the undergrowth. It glanced at Artemis, nodded once, then headed straight for me. I panicked, because gorilla plus incapacitated man tangled in a hammock? Never a good combination.
I stammered randomly in my confusion, bleating Sterling’s name a couple more times, then Artemis’s once as I prepared a clump of fire in one hand. But the gorilla patted me on the rump, as if in reassurance, then carefully laced its fingers through the hammock, untangling and freeing me from the netting. I blinked at it, confused. The gorilla held out one hand, helping me down to the ground, then gave me a toothy smile. I think. It was baring its teeth, at least. Never a good sign.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
The gorilla grimaced.
“Don’t be so rude, Dustin,” Artemis said lazily. “Priscilla here likes to make herself useful. That’s not how you thank someone who helps you out.”
I blinked at my rescuer, studying her. “Priscilla the gorilla?”
She smiled again.
“Thank you,” I said.
Her smile grew even wider. She collected my empty coconut, loped over to Artemis, gave her a high five – seriously – then shambled back into the vegetation.
“I have so many questions,” I said.
“Oh?” Artemis chuckled. “But you were in such a rush to leave.”
“Right, right,” I stammered. “About that. We have a friend and the magical animal in question waiting outside your portal. Which you shut very quickly, I might add. What was up with that?”
“Oh, sure. No offense meant, but I wasn’t about to let the dog in my domicile. Because then I’d be tempted to look at it.” Artemis leaned back, adjusting her sunglasses. “Nothing personal against the werewolf, you know? He just happened to be carrying it.”
