The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)
Page 47
“What are you talking about?” Mea took another sip of her drink.
Dante took a sip of his scotch. Setting the glass, it made a hard thump as it hit the table, and Mea could see the anger building inside Dante, for some reason or another. He snorted then said, ‘Mea, you killed my friend.”
“Vandriel?”
Dante’s anger exploded across his face. Using his free hand, he thumped his palm against the table, and Mea could see his other hand squeezing his glass of scotch. “Didn’t I just tell you what happens when you speak the names of dead gods? They die. They fade from existence. Now, please do not be so wonton with your words. Thank you.” Dante took a deep breath and slid his hand off to the side, as if trying to smooth out his anger. “I would appreciate it if you did not say his name. I would like to remember him—who he really was—for a little while longer… while I can. In return for your consideration, I promise not to visit your brother Ryan again, in his dreams, or to give him nightmares, or use any other one of my infinite tricks on him. After all, he is just a boy. So, let’s not act like politicians and squabble over our infinite disagreements and, at the very least, put this issue to rest. Okay?”
Mea nodded in agreement, almost sorry for the man. “I’m sorry for your loss, I am, but… your friend tried to kill me, and he almost killed my brother.”
Dante chuckled and shook his head. “Yes he did. And he killed many of the Wolf’s children—and apparently pissed off Lilly as well.” Dante snorted, remembering his friend. “He is—was—an acquired taste. We were friends. We understood each other. He knew what had to be done, why it has to be done.” Dante took another sip of scotch then stared into the glass, as if it might answer his hidden questions.
“The Cleansing?”
“Yes,” Dante said, then downed the rest of his drink, “the Cleansing. It is a necessary evil. You see, the Cleansing, aside from what I told you before, that it’s secretly what everyone wants, he understood why it had to happen. Evil must be purged from the land, and if the good happens to get purged with it… then so be it.”
“You know,” Mea said, shaking her head, “that’s a really shitty answer. With answers like that, everyone can just go around doing whatever they want, being assholes, because, you know… reasons and stuff.”
Dante threw his head back and chuckled. Squinting and smiling, he looked deeply into Mea’s eyes. His gaze drifted downwards, reaching her bare, beautiful shoulders before he caught himself. Dante shook his head, and then half-smiling and snorting, he said, “I see why he chose you. The old Lion, the one before you. He was much like you; hopeful, ambitious… foolish. Do you know where the gods came from?”
Mea shrugged. I don’t know.
“Well, it’s a conundrum of sorts.” Dante noticed that the sleeve of his dress shirt was getting sucked into the sleeve of his suit jacket and he gave it a tug then adjusted the cuff. “Most people think that the gods, or God, created them, but it’s the other way around… maybe. Either they created us, using their prayers, wishes, beliefs, or whatever; or we created them… somehow. It’s sort of like: what came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Mea grinned and shook her head. “That is a really bad answer.”
“Yes, I suppose it is, but… it’s still true. The truth is: sometimes things are the way they are. That’s just the way it is.” Dante paused and began tapping his finger on the table, thinking hard about something. “I loved him, you know. Don’t overthink it, but I did. I mean, it wasn’t the way that mortals think of love, not exactly. It’s like the way you love your family, or friends, or a lover.”
Mea wrinkled up her forehead. “Sounds confusing.”
“Love? Love is only confusing when you try to label it, to dice it up and put it into categories. And that’s what mortals do. They try to sort out the roles for the ones in their lives, how much they love them, how they love them. That’s what makes it complicated, trying to categorize it. Otherwise, love is love.”
Looking at Dante, Mea could see his pain, his loss. Despite what Vandriel (Malick) was, despite what he did, she still felt back for Dante’s loss. “I’m sorry,” she said, “for your loss. I am. I mean it.”
Dante snorted and cleared his throat. “Thank you. Oh, and you never asked me why, why I wanted to thank you.”
“Why did you want to thank me?”
“Because, while you did kill my friend, you also brought me back to life, in a way. For so long, I was just… dead. Dead inside—stoic, like those vampires that everyone seems to like so much. Immortal but still dead inside. Anyways, when you killed him, I was reinvigorated, brought back to life. And all those feelings that I thought had faded away inside me came back, came back from the dead. Although it was the most rudimentary of emotions that stirred me, the strongest emotion… given my loss.”
“What’s that?”
“Revenge.” Dante waved a finger at the empty shot glasses. “Those are going to hurt in the morning. Trust me.” Dante stood up and brushed himself off. He buttoned a button on the front of his suit jacket then brushed off his jacket again. “Mea, it was a pleasure to meet you. Take care of yourself. What’s coming is…” Dante dropped his head, snickering and shaking his head back and forth. “It’s not going to be fun.” He stepped away from the table then quickly turned back to Mea. “I’ll give you a year, a year before I return, before I end the world. My advice to you is: spend that time wisely. Hold your family. Tell them you love them. Cherish every moment with them, every second of every day. Because… because when I return… it’s not going to good for you, or for them. In fact, it’s going to be bad, really bad.”
Mea snapped up, awakened from a dead sleep. Her head was pounding. Something was bubbling inside her stomach, and the room was spinning. She was drunk. A belch sent the burning taste of tequila back into her throat, and she was already falling out of bed. Stumbling and wobbling onto her unresponsive legs, she made her way to the bathroom. One year, she thought as she lunged at the toilet. She was sweaty and everything hurt. She wrapped her arms around the toilet bowl, and the alcohol in her stomach lurched up again and felt like it was hanging inside her throat.
Lurching forward and over the toilet, Mea found that it was a false alarm and was able to hold back the vomit—at least this time she was. Still the mixture of sugar and high-proof alcohol were still swirling around inside her and banging against the inside of her belly again, begging to be release, and she knew that it was eventually going to come up. One year. Then he was coming back. Then it would really start. There wasn’t any stopping it, it was going to happen.
Mea wiped her sweaty forehead and swept aside her sweaty, sticky hair. Taking a few deep breaths, she found a moment of reprieve when the pain dulled and the burning cooled down. But Mea still knew: it is going to come—either now, five seconds from now, in a minute, or sooner or later. It’s going to happen, she realized, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Then she smile and thought, I can’t stop it, but I can deal with it. Then she laughed and shook her head, and then it came—erupting like a volcano, it was painful and burning, and there was a lot of it. Lurching forward, Mea let go, and everything splashed into the toilet bowl… and Mea dealt with it.
After flushing and keeping her head hovering over the toilet—waiting for the next attack and still dealing with the tequila scorching the inside of her throat, Mea smiled again, realizing something.
She won. Despite her current condition, she’d won the battle. Her family was alive and safe. The world was still standing. She got her best friend back, sort of. And she had time—one year. It could’ve been worse; she knew that. And while it wasn’t the greatest of victories, sometimes you have to take what you’re given, and that’s what Mea decided to do.
Then it came again, and she heaved into the toilet again. Again flushing the nastiness away, Mea waited for the burning liquor to settle, and when it finally had, she flopped backwards and crawled over the cool bathroom tiles and leaned her back against
the nearby porcelain bathtub. Slumped over the side of bathtub now, Mea sighed, smiled, and shook her head. Drunk and hungover, from a dream; what the hell is that about? But she dealt with it and chuckled. And next year, when Dante came for her, she’d deal with him too.
The End
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