Crashing Paradise

by Christopher Golden

  “We should kill them now,” Duergar said, hefting his axe as he stood above the unconscious Ceridwen. “Shouldn’t even be giving them the chance to wake up again.”

  The demon glanced over to see Legion squatting beside the frozen body of the other shape changer. He appeared fascinated by what lay upon the ground before him.

  “It would be like killing a piece of myself,” Legion said, reaching down to brush the tips of his fingers almost lovingly across Clay’s brow.

  “There will be no killing,” Abaddon declared, flexing his powerful wings as he folded his arms across his chest.

  Duergar snorted and stormed up to him, axe in hand.

  “It’s madness to leave them alive,” he snarled. “There’s always the chance that—”

  “They remain alive until I decide otherwise,” the demon said. He moved nearer to Duergar, lowering his voice and glancing around, letting the half-blood monster think that he viewed him as an equal. They were conspiring together. At least, Abaddon wanted Duergar to believe they were. “It is a matter of power, my friend. Our allies see that we have brought to heel those who would oppose us—those who frightened them—and they drool with anticipation. They see the great Conan Doyle and his illustrious Menagerie cowed, kept like animals or trophies, and they yearn to march beneath our banner. We are a force to be reckoned with, Duergar. And leaving them alive proves this to the disbelievers.”

  Abaddon closed his wings tightly about himself.

  The half-blood narrowed his gaze. The edges of his hideous mouth raised in a twisted grin that bared even more of the yellowed tusks jutting from his lower jaw.

  “You are cunning, Abaddon.”

  “It’s in the blood, my friend.”

  Duergar nodded.

  Satisfied, Abaddon glanced around and saw that the vampires and the Drows seemed to look upon him differently, now, just as the demons did. He reveled in it. He had defeated Conan Doyle, one of the great champions of the Twilight Wars. It was not an achievement to be taken lightly.

  One of the newly arrived abominations shambled forward to gaze upon the prisoners. Multiple eyes that weaved in the air upon thick, muscular stalks surveyed each of the mighty that had been brought down.

  “This is not all of them,” multiple orifices in a sea of soft, flaccid flesh burbled. “The collection is not complete.”

  Abaddon grinned, more snarl than smile. “The hobgoblin is of little worry.”

  The thing shuddered, its flesh turning from pink to a rotcolored gray. “It is not the hobgoblin of whom I speak.”

  Others within the invited began to whisper, nodding.

  “It is the mother,” the creature’s multiple mouths voiced.

  “Where is the one called Eve?”

  The mention of the vampiress brought a hush to the gathering.

  “Temporarily, she eludes us,” Abaddon replied.

  The eyestalks of the beast bent down to study again the unconscious Menagerie.

  “The collection is not complete,” it stated again.

  Understanding the implication, the demon slowly nodded.

  “Of course it isn’t,” he growled. “And the value of collection would be severely affected without the final piece.”

  “Exactly,” the nether beast gurgled.

  Abaddon turned to the vampires, many of whom still felt the effects of the battle with the Menagerie, still alive only thanks to the power of his dark magics.

  “Find her,” he commanded, pointing a clawed finger out into the thick jungle of the Garden. “Find her and bring her to me.”

  SHE’D wanted so desperately to remember.

  So much had been lost to her over the millennia that her loss of memory had seemed part of the Creator’s punishment.

  With the passage of time, Eve had remembered less and less of what she had been, before Abaddon had infected her.

  Eventually, however, she had come to realize that perhaps this was a blessing.

  Now, with the blood of the angel Jophiel coursing through her veins, she remembered it all.

  Every fucking bit.

  Pushing herself away from the angel’s corpse, Eve was bombarded by painful recollections. It was all so perfectly clear, as if it had just happened mere moments before.

  She curled into a tight ball on the ground, blades of wild grass gently caressing her cheek. But there would be no consoling her, for she remembered every detail of what she’d once had, and what she had lost . . . for herself, as well as for humanity.

  What would it have been like for the world if she had resisted temptation? Eve wondered, contorting into a stilltighter ball, as if trying to make herself disappear. But something told her that even if she succeeded, the pain and guilt would still be there.

  It could have been so perfect, so wonderful. If only she hadn’t listened.

  She remembered the sight of the serpent moving through the grass. Eve focused upon the memory of the serpent, the reptilian emissary of a much darker power. She doubted if there was anybody still alive that remembered that they had once had limbs.

  That had been the Almighty’s punishment for the serpent’s involvement in her temptation . . . her fall from grace.

  He had cursed the animal, and all its future progeny, to crawl upon its belly for what it had done.

  Partake of the fruit, be truly one with your Lord, the snake had hissed, as it climbed up the side of the tree.

  Eve opened her eyes, looking past Jophiel’s withered corpse at the Tree of Knowledge, its base wrapped in the thorny brambles. Large pieces of the strangely shaped fruit, plump and ripe, dangled from the highest branches.

  Remembering the taste of the fruit, she began to gag. It had started out sweet, the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, but it soon turned bitter as poison.

  Bitter as betrayal.

  Eve buried her face in the dirt and grass, no longer wanting to remember. First she had betrayed the Creator, then, with nary a moment’s hesitation, she had betrayed her mate.

  And the serpent had laughed and laughed.

  She heard it all again, clamping her hands to her ears to block out the sound, but still she could hear the awful laughter.

  With Jophiel’s blood flowing through her, Eve remembered it all, every single detail of her past, no matter how small.

  “Careful what you wish for” was the old adage, but she had never truly grasped its full meaning until now.

  She climbed to her feet, the blood of the messenger like fire in her veins. The tip of her tongue flicked at the pronounced canines inside her mouth as the claws upon her hands grew long, the tips of her fingers tingling in the anticipation of prey.

  There was only one way to quench the unbearable fire.

  Eve tilted her head back and sniffed the air. The angel’s blood had charged her, had healed all her wounds, enhanced her every sense, and her strength and speed as well.

  There were certain people she needed to talk to, and now seemed as good a time as any. Then, just as she was about to begin her hunt, she caught it on the breeze.

  The smell of the undead.

  The stink of her children.

  Eve smiled, backing into the cool darkness of the forest to hide.

  How considerate, she thought, waiting for them to arrive.

  This saves me the trouble of looking for them.

  IT had been a very long time since he felt like this.

  Palu stopped in the tangle of the forest as the others continued to hunt around him. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, alerting him to danger. Long ago, while hunting a wild boar with his brother on Samoa, he had experienced a feeling very much like this.

  How odd it was that he would recall it now.

  They had stood in the jungle, their spears in hand, searching for signs of their injured prey. The animal had been swift, vicious, gouging a deep, bloody gash into his thigh with one of its tusks. But they had also injured it.

  Palu and his brother Afua were their
tribe’s greatest hunters and had promised the village elders that the animal would be slain for a great feast. The raging boar had become legendary in his village as well as the surrounding villages.

  The number of Samoans it had injured—even taking the life of a child—was growing with the passing of seasons. The beast was growing too bold, too powerful, and the elders of his tribe dispatched their greatest hunters to dispatch the savage pig.

  Though ages had passed since that time—his brother, and the rest of their tribe, having fallen to Palu’s vampiric hunger—the memory seemed strangely fresh. On that day in the jungle, he and his brother had become the hunted. He had felt the eyes of the maddened predator that day.

  He felt them again now.

  Palu was about to yell a warning, but it was too late.

  The beast exploded silently from the concealment of some shadows, its movements so swift—so deadly—that his eyes had trouble following its deadly course.

  For the briefest of moments, he had trouble distinguishing between the then and the now, the images of Eve and the memory of the beast blending together in his mind as one, terrible, ferocious force.

  Palu couldn’t move, watching as she moved from victim to victim, her slashing claws so razor-sharp—cutting so deep—that they brought instantaneous death to his horde, even though they were protected by Abaddon’s sorcery.

  There was only so much magic could do when dealing with something like the mother of them all.

  He considered running, as he had done so many times in the past when Eve had confronted him. How many times had he managed to evade her wrath? He was looked upon by his kind as one of the lucky ones, but he’d always harbored a secret shame about his survival.

  To run from fear was to dishonor one’s lineage.

  He hadn’t run from the boar, even though his leg had been badly injured. He had confronted the beast and, with the help of his brother, finally killed it, watching the life go out of its black eyes.

  As Eve came closer, a horrible grin upon her blood-spattered face, Palu saw that she had the same dark eyes.

  The eyes of the beast.

  Was it possible that boar somehow lived in her, now, and sought revenge for the death he had dealt it those many years ago? Gazing into the woman’s eyes as she killed his brethren—her children—one after another, he believed it.

  He had almost died from the injuries sustained in the jungle those ages ago, as day turned to night and he bled into the earth. He had lost so much blood, and infection had begun to poison him. Palu knew he would have died if not for the stranger who had come out of the night, promising to make him well, and to make him the greatest hunter his tribe had ever known.

  For a simple price.

  How could he have possibly refused such an offer?

  Through the delirium of fever he’d accepted, and died horribly, painfully, before what had been promised to him was delivered.

  Now the vampires tried to escape her, as Palu himself had done in the past, but none of them were successful. Eve was relentless.

  Palu would not flee.

  Eve dug her talons into the flesh of one of the older females—an ancient thing named Samsessa—and dragged her to the ground. With tooth and claw, the mother tore Samsessa apart, digging into her and tearing out black, twisted organs and, finally, her heart. Samsessa burst into a cloud of oily smoke and ash, drifting upon the winds of Eden.

  On all fours, Eve lifted her head, those dark, marble eyes connecting with his. Palu was startled to see that he was all that was left from the hunting party Abaddon had sent to find her.

  “Hey, Palu,” she rasped, her body tensed to spring. She was expecting him to run.

  He glanced at the ground, searching for anything that might serve as a weapon. Not far from where he was standing he saw a broken tree limb.

  It would have to do.

  “So, what’s the story?” Eve asked him, still crouched, watching him with an unwavering gaze. “Are you going to try again?”

  He’d always looked at the others slain by her as sacrifices to a greater cause. In the laws of nature, there were always others of the herd that were slower, allowing the swift to escape while the predator took down the weakest.

  Now, he was alone. A herd of one.

  “Go on.” She smiled at him, running a pointed, pink tongue across beautifully white teeth. “I’ll even give you a head start.”

  His mind traveled back across the years again, and he was in his hut, the stink of infection drifting up from his injured leg. Palu knew he was going to die, and was afraid. His fear had drawn the stranger . . . the vampire. As he had looked upon the corpse white face of his savior and caught the stench of his breath as he opened his mouth to reveal jagged fangs, Palu had understood that what he feared was oblivion.

  He had welcomed the vampire’s bite, if only to stave off the unknown.

  Palu thought that he had moved beyond the fear of death, that the centuries of walking the earth had cured him of his malady. Now, he knew better.

  Fear blazed up within him. All he wanted was to survive.

  If he went for the tree limb, tried to fight her, he knew how it would end. Palu spun and hurled himself into the forest, running as swiftly as he was able. Branches whipped at his face and eyes, but he would not allow himself to slow.

  If I can reach the camp, I will be safe. Palu pushed on, listening for the sounds of pursuit, but he heard nothing.

  A glimmer of hope rose within him, then was extinguished as Eve dropped down from the treetops to land in front of him, naked and gloriously feral. Before her bare feet had touched the ground, her talons slashed his throat, tearing through muscle and tendon. She gripped his head in both hands and began to pull. In the last moment of his undeath, he felt his spinal cord snap.

  And then, oblivion.

  14

  CLAY lay on the ground, unmoving, but not entirely unconscious.

  His mind eddied upon the currents of thought and memory and dream. Whatever his counterpart had done to him, it had shocked his body so badly that he had physically shut down. If not for the mind and spirit within him, he would have been little more than a fallen statue, formed of clay. Outside, he remained completely still. But within, all was chaos.

  Here, he was closer to the source of his creation than he had been in all the ages since he had first been set down upon the Earth. And as he lay there, mind a maelstrom, the grass and roots and soil seemed to pull at him. Eden itself touched him.

  HE can feel the attention of the Creator. The intent and focus. The whimsy and curiosity. That attention is the totality of him. For he is the Clay. There is light, an infinite array of glittering points that he understands are stars. There is darkness, and the weighty presence of earth and sea, of a sphere of potential, floating in the infinite. How can he know this?

  The Creator’s hands give him form again and again, but the touch of the Creator is all that he knows. He floats in the infinite, flesh and bone flowing and twisting, hair and fur and feathers rippling across his hide, then vanishing again as creatures are imagined and either met with contented approval or discarded.

  How can the Clay know anything at all?

  Yet even this he has begun to understand. As the Creator shapes and reshapes him, molding, inventing each of the birds and beasts that will populate this world, awareness has woken in him. This cannot be an accident. The Creator has lent him this awareness with some intent, but it is only a spark of knowledge, and he understands so little of the infinite.

  An eternity of light and shadow passes before his eyes . . .

  his many eyes. On the planet that spins below, time passes.

  The Clay feels the Creator considering, enjoying the art of this work as His hands reshape the Clay yet again. He lingers for a time in that drift-state and he can see the world below, and watch as trees and plants begin to grow, as landmasses take form, as the animals his flesh has been used to model are born for the first time upon the surface of
the world. They are fashioned by the Creator from the stuff of the infinite, and yet the Clay feels tethered to them all, as though they are all a part of him.

  The world spins. The Clay drifts. The Creator considers.

  Time passes, and now the evolution of the planetary sphere below seems to slow.

  Through the ages he has remained the Creator’s plaything, His template, the physical manifestation of His minor imaginings. As time slows, however, the Clay has begun to awaken to detail. The awareness implanted in him by the Creator has blossomed, like the world below, and grown wildly. He feels bliss at the sight of the beauty of the world, admiration as he perceives the growing awareness of the first man, whose awakening seems to parallel his own.

  Yet he also feels impatient and frustrated, even fearful.

  Has the Creator finished with him? Would He give the gift of awareness only to leave the Clay to drift eternally across the infinite? No. He cannot believe this. He has felt the hands of the Creator, has felt His regard and purpose. Surely He must have some plan.

  Still, he drifts. The Clay can never be alone, so long as the Creator is near, yet he longs for the weight of His attention once more. Life has stirred all across the spinning world below. It grows and thrives with the rutting and killing, the cries and struggles of the beasts of water, earth, and sky. He has been each of these creatures, had their form in his flesh before the Creator deigned to introduce them to the world, yet he is a prisoner, of sorts. Aware, but unable to wake.

  Alive, but unable to live.

  The Clay is of two minds. He envies the beasts of the world the Creator has made and wishes he could be among them, longs to walk and fly and swim with them, to cherish all of Creation. Yet, somehow, at the same time, he despises it all. His frustration has turned to anger and jealousy. He wishes he could descend upon the world and destroy all that he cannot be or have.

  The Creator knows this. Of course he knows. The Clay feels the return of his attention, of his regard, and rejoices.