No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  And this is it. This is the end of everything, and I can feel the madness stretching up, up, up, black fingers closing over my thoughts, I can feel the unreality of reality tearing my thoughts apart. And then comes a great sigh. A great exhalation. Something like grief and something like sorrow. And something like joy too.

  And then the Feeder is gone.

  The Dreamers drop as one to their knees. Grunts of pain. Tears and bellows. Shouts of joy

  Above my head—just a night sky, just the night stars.

  And then, finally, it’s over.

  67

  The world still hangs in the sky. Everything is still there, everything still a mess. But the terrible pressure is over. The crushing, sucking power of the thing is done.

  It takes me a long time to look down. To look at us. Tabitha is slowly clambering down the steps of the walkway. She leans heavily on the banisters with her left arm. She still cradles the right to her chest. The masked man that is Clyde takes graceful steps toward her. He offers a slender arm for support. She takes it and wraps it around herself. He lifts her gently off the steps and she buries herself in his chest. When he sets her down, even in her platform Doc Martens she still doesn’t quite come up to his armpits. They stay there, holding each other like teenagers slow dancing at the prom.

  Shaw is still slumped against one wall, looking bloodstained and dazed. I rummage in the back of my mind and eventually find the manual for taking a few steps toward her. My body feels distant and sore, like a problem I’m going to have to deal with in the morning.

  I offer a hand to Shaw to pull her up. Kurt Russell waiting for the credits to roll. The man of action come to get his woman.

  Well... I mean... Not exactly...

  Shaw grabs my hand, and as I try to pull her up, she pulls me down. I don’t have the strength to resist.

  “Sit,” she says.

  I nod, take a seat next to her. We both sit there, side by side. After a moment she rests her head on my shoulder. It feels as close to peace as anything I’ve come across in a long time.

  I can see Kayla, still out on the floor of the cooling tower, on her knees. Her sword lies before her on the floor, and she stares down at it, shoulders shaking.

  Ephie is there too. The princess as well. The princess’s hand is on Ephie’s shoulder, but Ephie shrugs it off and crosses to her mother. She lays a small hand on Kayla’s forehead. She pushes Kayla’s head up, pushes the bangs back.

  “You should grow your hair out,” Ephie says. “Your fringe hides your eyes.”

  A sound comes from Kayla that lies somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She grabs Ephie and pulls her into a savage hug. I’m surprised I don’t hear the poor girl’s ribs snapping. But, of course, Kayla would never hurt her daughter. I know that now. I shouldn’t ever have doubted it.

  I look at the space Ophelia occupied. No sign that she’d ever been there. Not a smudge or a mark. All gone.

  Shit. Shit and balls.

  “I’m so sorry, Mum.” Ephie’s words are muffled in Kayla’s hair but no one else is talking. Everyone is staring. Even the Dreamers, still standing there, staring along with us.

  “No.” Kayla pulls away slightly, still holding Ephie. She shakes her head violently, sure Ephie can see her. “No,” she says again. “Never that. I’m sorry. Not you. I’m the one. You should never... I never wanted you to have to do that. I never wanted history to...” She bites her lip, chokes something back down. “I should have been stronger, Ephie. And I wasn’t. And I’m sorry you had to be the strong one for us.”

  Something complicated and unspoken plays out on Ephie’s face. Not the emotions of a young girl. Something very adult. Eventually she says, “There was never anything you could have done.”

  “It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have tried.”

  Ephie holds her mother’s gaze, then nods. “Thank you,” she says. Then she steps away. The princess takes a step forward, puts her hand back on Ephie’s shoulder.

  “I have to go now, Mum,” Ephie says.

  “No.” I can tell Kayla doesn’t want to say it, but I can tell she can’t help it either.

  “I’m not a little girl anymore, Mum.”

  “I love you, Ephie. Ephemera.”

  “I know, Mum. I love you too.”

  Kayla’s biting her lip so hard I’m scared her teeth are going to go through it. “I’ll see you again, won’t I?” she says. There’s an edge of begging to her voice.

  “All the time, Mum.”

  Kayla smiles, a little glimpse of something brighter in the clouds of her fear. She swallows hard. “You’re going to make the world a better place,” she says. “I know it.”

  Ephie smiles, big and pure. She runs forward from the princess’s hand, throws her arms around Kayla. They embrace one last time.

  “We shall put it back,” the princess says to no one and everyone, sweeping her hand round, “as best we can. We will find what is left in the less probable realities. Bring it forward. Rewrite what is real.” She looks kindly at Ephie. “Of course some things will always be lost. Some things can never be regained. But we shall do what we can.”

  Ephie pulls away from Kayla, goes back and takes the princess’s hand.

  “See you soon, Mum.”

  “See you soon, Ephie.”

  They both turn back to the main body of the Dreamers, but before they take a step, the princess pauses, turns back, looks me in the eye and smiles.

  And then she’s gone, and Ephie’s gone, and they’re all gone, and all around us, reality starts to pull itself back together.

  68

  TEN HOURS AND SUBSTANTIALLY MORE THAN ONE DRINK LATER

  Light comes in sluggishly through my curtains and puddles on the floor. Morning has broken.

  I should feel awful, I know. I should, at the very least, be hungover to hell. And failing that I should be bone-sore. Every muscle in my body should be screaming at me, asking me what in God’s name I was thinking, what I thought I was playing at. And, all told, I should probably be regretting that I ever set my eyes on Felicity Shaw.

  Except Felicity Shaw is looking at me right now, is smiling at me right now, and, quite frankly, I’m still a little bit drunk, but she looks pretty great.

  I smile back at her. Her expression changes to something like suspicion.

  “If you make any jokes,” she says, “about working under a woman, I swear I will castrate you.”

  With a grunt, she rolls off me. I shiver as a breeze blows over my naked, sweat-slick chest. But I don’t go to pull the sheets back from her. There is something wonderful and grounded about being here, now.

  Outside I can hear traffic trying to make headway, can hear townies shouting insults at students, can hear the students ringing the bells on their bicycles as they plunge madly between buses and infuriated drivers. All the mundane minutia of everyday life.

  “I like this,” I say. “I really genuinely like this.”

  “Peace?” Shaw asks me, wrapping the sheets around her, a great rumpled bundle of white.

  “Yes.”

  “It won’t last.”

  “I know,” I say. “I don’t think I’d want it to.”

  Shaw leans over and shuts me up with a kiss. When it’s over she rests her head on my chest.

  Quite the night, all told. Quite the night.

  “Do you think Kayla will be all right?” I ask. Now, with some distance, some peace, I can start to think about things, to process events. I see again the fractured smile Kayla gave as Ephie left with the Dreamers.

  The Dreamers.

  They put our car back. Put the road back. Most of the infrastructure of things seems to be back. There were signs of damage of course. Roofs gone. Trees lying on the ground. Patches of turf torn up. Cars trashed. There was a story on the news about terrible storms. Meteorologists were being fired. Not so bad really. Unless you were a meteorologist.

  We’d dropped Kayla off outside a house in Southtown I’d never seen before. A
surprisingly flowery-looking place with boxes of roses and a purple door. Not too far from the Sheilas actually.

  “After everything we’ve been through,” Shaw asks, “do you still really doubt Kayla’s strength?”

  “No,” I shake my head. No hesitation.

  “We’ll go over later,” she says. “Make sure she’s got some company.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Disturb the peace.” Shaw laughs. And it’ll be good to see Kayla, to check up on her.

  Things I never thought I’d think...

  And maybe Clyde and Tabitha could be there too. Pick them up from Tabitha’s along the way. We dropped them both off there after Kayla said goodnight. It didn’t seem like a good idea to take Clyde back to his place. I’m not sure how Devon would take the news that her boyfriend is leaving her for an angry goth, let alone that his entire physical form is now a wooden mask. She’ll have to hear it at some point, but that’s not today’s problem.

  I smile. Tabitha and Clyde. They’re an odd couple, but I can actually imagine it working.

  And this... Whatever this is. Shaw and I. Can I imagine this working? I feel like this has been sneaking up on me for a while, and I never got the chance to even think about it. I’m worried that if I do think about it, I’ll just mess it up.

  One day at a time. If this job has taught me anything: one day at a bloody time.

  A cellphone rings, interrupts my thoughts. Shaw groans and rolls over, picks it up.

  “Yes?” she says. Then she sighs. “What?” A pause. “Where? When?” Another pause. “Now?” She sighs. She nods. “OK. As soon as possible.” She hangs up.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Apparently there’s a thaumaturge re-enervating fossils—”

  “Wait.” I hold up a hand. Find out what people are actually talking about—another lesson I’ve learned. “Can you translate for me? Please.”

  She smiles. “Rogue wizard. Natural History Museum. Zombie dinosaur.”

  My eyebrows climb a good inch up my forehead. “Zombie dinosaur?”

  “Apparently so.”

  I think about that. “You’re talking bollocks,” I say.

  “No rest for the wicked.”

  “But I’m good,” I say. This really doesn’t seem fair given that I saved the entire bloody world last night.

  Shaw smiles again. “You’re not bad, Arthur. Not bad at all.” She rests a hand on my thigh. “Now get out of bed.”

  I lie there, hesitating. I don’t want to get out of bed. I have to get out of bed.

  Shaw looks down at me. She raises an eyebrow. Just the one. It’s a good look on her. “What?” she says. “You’re afraid of a zombie T-Rex? After the Feeder? I’d have thought you’d have grown a pair by now.”

  And hearing that here, now, makes me a little sad. But it makes me smile too. Some things can never be regained. But we do what we can.

  And anyway, with a zombie T-Rex on the loose, what would Kurt Russell do?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jonathan Wood is an Englishman in New York. He is the author of the Lovecraftian urban fantasy novel, No Hero, named one of the best paranormal fantasy books of the last ten years by BarnesandNoble.com. He also writes odd little things that show up in odd little places, such as The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Chizine, and Weird Tales. The sequel to No Hero, Yesterday’s Hero, will be published by Titan Books in September 2014.

  COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS

  YESTERDAY’S HERO

  BY JONATHAN WOOD

  Another day. Another zombie T-Rex to put down. All part of the routine for Arthur Wallace and MI37—the government department devoted to defending Britain from threats magical, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and generally odd.

  Except a zombie T-Rex is only the first of the problems about to trample, slavering and roaring, through Arthur’s life. Before he can say, “But didn’t I save the world yesterday?” a new co-director at MI37 is threatening his job, middle-aged Russian cyborg wizards are threatening his life, and his coworkers are threatening his sanity.

  As Arthur struggles to unravel a plot to re-enact the Chernobyl disaster in England’s capital, he must not only battle foreign occult science but also struggle to keep the trust of his team. Events spiral out of control, friendships fray, and loyalties are tested to their breaking point.

  SEPTEMBER 2014

  TITANBOOKS.COM

  COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ANTI-HERO

  BY JONATHAN WOOD

  MI317—the government department devoted to defending Britain from cosmic horrors and otherwordly threats—comes under attack. Again. A version of Clyde (2.0) has escaped onto the Internet, and Area 51 wants their help in catching it, sending over Agent Gran as their contact.

  The team follow a lead to a trash dump in India, where they discover 2.0 in the mind of a child, a child who thinks that to save Earth he must destroy humanity. Cue the destruction of New York City by spore zombies.

  Arthur’s team must now race to a small Arctic town — naturally populated entirely by zombies—in a last attempt to fix Clyde and save the world. Hopefully the half-vegetable life forms in the ice palace won’t prove too tricky.

  MARCH 2015

  TITANBOOKS.COM