The Greeks are slightly more on top of the situation this time; or, at least, they’re not immediately being steamrolled. The strobic, multi-planar quality of the battle, however, makes it hard to tell exactly who’s winning, or even what’s happening. One minute, men and women are clinched in battle, snarling, gouging holes in one another with knife and nail and gun and more exotic utensils. The next, it’s all flickering light and the sense that my brain is being turned inside out, and introduced to new planes of horrified consciousness.
Needless to say, the experience is excruciating, and it’s serendipitous that I’ve yet to be targeted. In part, I imagine, because I’m curled beneath a table, from which oceans of blood are pouring across the floor. Too late, I discovered that Nyarlathotep and his cohorts are unable to queue in an orderly fashion. Where they can’t access the portal, they extrude from my pores, individual strands of pus constituting into many-eyed nightmares.
All things taken into consideration, however, things could be worse. I could be dead.
Wait. That would probably be better.
Despite the injuries, despite everything, I find enough cogence to crawl across the floor, dodging bodies and individual conflagrations, towards Demeter and Poseidon. The two are pinned in a corner, with Poseidon brandishing his trident, holding back what looks like a farm animal fused with a creche of juvenile squids, beaks clacking dumbly at the air.
Demeter, on her part, stands passively, exhibiting neither interest nor apprehension, seemingly disconnected from the furor. I scuttle into her field of vision and gesture for her attention, only to recoil as a thing of unspeakable grotesquerie smashes through the table I’ve taken shelter under and vanishes through the floor, its writhing prey pinioned between teeth.
It’s Sucellus, entrails glistening through the air, intestines taut between two grinning maws. Eye contact is made, for a single frenzied moment, and he is gone.
“Demeter!” I hiss from the detritus, poking my head out again. “Demeter! Come here! I’m trying to save you!”
That sounded considerably less impressive than I hoped it would.
She blinks from her ennui and a smile roots itself in her face, the goddess of agriculture once again all the way flesh, her skin a rich loam. There is a fierce, abstruse delight in her eyes. Demeter does not accept my invitation. Instead, she presses a fingertip to her mouth and turns to Poseidon, who has just incinerated one of those calamari-goats.
“Poseidon.”
Behind him, more of the—Thousand Young, chitters a voice in my head, unsolicited—gather, grinning, their mouths turned human, fringed by plush lips.
“Good, I need you to—”
No glimmer of steel. The weapon is older: dull, pitted bronze with a hilt of jaundiced bone. Demeter betrays no emotion as she brings both hands to bear on the pommel, weight thrown into the motion. The sword twitches deeper under Poseidon’s diaphragm and blood oozes in lucent droplets. His expression is one of absolute mystification as he lowers one broad palm to cup her cheek.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for so long.”The blade digs two inches deeper. “You have no idea. The hours. The waiting. The planning. But it is so, so good to finally be able to gut you like a fish.”
The light discards his eyes, and Poseidon topples backwards into the gibbering maws of the Thousand Young, who immediately set upon him. Loud slorping ensues.
“What the fuck was that?”
Barometric pressure plunges sharply, tailspinning to breathlessness, and my vision throbs as I begin to cough for dribbles of air. Something important definitely just happened, and I’m willing to put money on it having to do with the fact that the Greek pantheon is now missing two of its integral patriarchal figures.
Through the deoxygenated haze, I watch as Demeter saunters away, hand curled around her curving blade, gait jaunty. She is happy. No, not happy; overjoyed. Ecstatic.
It was her all along.
How had I not realized?
Oh. Right.
Because I was busy being maimed, murdered, and otherwise mashed into puree.
For a scatter of moments, less than the time it takes a thought to bridge neurons, I contemplate scrabbling onto my feet and joining her in combat. But common sense coupled with a honed instinct for self-preservation argue another course of action: evasion. After all, Demeter just stabbed Poseidon in the chest and is, even now, walking into the throes of a tentacular apocalypse without so much as a sidelong glance at the gridlock of villi infesting the bar.
This is a damsel clearly capable of distressing her opponents without masculine intervention.
But then that stupid mutt skulks from the pandemonium on silent paws, fumes clawing from its soot-black pelt, heads low and muscles gathered, grins bared in glittering triplicate. And Demeter doesn’t notice. Demeter doesn’t fucking notice. Even as the air crisps with ozone, with the raw charnel stink of mana, with the sound of history pirouetting on the needle of Now, Cerberus creeps closer yet, headlight stare bearing down like a quick death on a dark highway.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” I jump to my feet and stumble after him, the word concatenating into a single desperate whine. If this is what heroism feels like, the virtuous can keep it to themselves.
THIS IS ONE of those moments that you remember in staccato, flash-bang vignettes manacled together by a blurred recollection of mortal dread, like the afterimage of the sun baked into your retina. I couldn’t tell you if I shout first or if I lunge for Cerberus, or even if I do the intelligent thing and alert Demeter from a cautious distance.
Similarly, I couldn’t say for sure if there’s a smile on Demeter’s face as she turns just so, just enough so that the glimmering parabola of a blade misses her hip, slams instead into the wall. If Hades’ eyes go wide, if he sighs or screams as Demeter reciprocates, no magic on her lips, only bronze and flesh and a mother’s hate counted in eternities—well, those are secrets the walls will keep.
What I remember is this:
Doggy breath, no matter the species, is excruciatingly bad.
“N-NICE PUPPY—FFRRRAGGHEERK.”
A giant three-headed dog is a complication that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and that isn’t just because I can’t imagine the volume of shit it would produce. The end of the sentence drowns itself in a shriek as fangs clamp down on my upper arm, catching on the division between bicep and tricep. With a twitch of Cerberus’ leftmost head, the connective tissue separates into a cat’s cradle of bloodied strings.
I scream as the strength winks out of the limb, and again when I thrust the appendage into the hellhound’s middlemost maw, its jaws crashing shut in a storm of halitosis. Crunch. Teeth crack through the bones of my forearm, slicing nerves to tufts, and I thrash under its bulk, keening with every exhalation.
Taking my ululations as encouragement, the rightmost head, till now an indifferent party, mobilizes. It jolts forward with a yelp of excitement and begins worrying at my side, gobbling chunks of skin and meat. Blood spurts messily, dribbling from its muzzle.
With a howl, I let go one of Cerberus’ central snouts and twist, hand gliding up its muzzle. Momentum carries the canine forward and it buries its teeth into my shoulder, about the same time I drive fingers into its eyes. The cornea doesn’t hold; aqueous humor bursts over my knuckles as I dig for the optic nerves.
And pull.
Cerberus convulses, screams as one beast.
I use the opportunity to scramble away, arm hanging uselessly—again—from the maimed shoulder, the clavicle snapped into pieces. Blood loss is doing a number on me. The light circulates in uneasy currents, adding an attractive soft focus to the carnage. I stagger, one knee going weak.
Growling. A warning, intended to be heard, a declaration in sub-aural vibrations. Cerberus takes his time. He oils forward. The middle head twitches, nothing but jerks and hard stops, a broken war machine.It laps at the air. Lips peel back over gray-pink gums and the hackles on the other heads bristle to spines.
Possibly too late, I curl my thoughts about the first protection spell I can think of, daubing runes in frantic shorthand across the floorboards. Tentacles lash overhead, tessellate into a ceiling of not-quite-meat. I can hear something in the ambient background. Not screaming, per se; lower in volume but no less high-pitched, a terrified whine that ripples without the need for air, practically seamless as it eases from one trembling sob to the next.
There’s also chewing.
Let’s not think about the chewing.
Cerberus keeps advancing. I throw up my magic, and he smashes it aside with a flap of a heavy paw; the air fractalizes, mana disintegrating in patterns of scintillant nacre. I kick away a little further, skidding back, red palmprints undulating from the point of retreat.
“You want a treat? I could totally make you a treat if you leave me long enough to go to the supermarket, buy ingredients at a competitive rate, and—”
Cerberus hunches, ears wicking back, shoulders and spine cocked. There is no warning. The hellhound saccades into motion, quicker than plausible, and all at once, I am out of time.
So I do the only thing I can: I ball up. Knees to chest, arms over head, head scrunched into the canyon of my shoulders, a decision that tangles into a locus of tortured nociceptors. (You say coward, I say pragmatist. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Screw you.)
But no heavy weight drives itself into my supine form, no teeth fasten onto my limbs.
“Heel.”
Salt and earth, funeral smells. An overlay of ozone, golden with the dry, earthy, cut-grass sweetness of the harvest. I unclench to stare up at Demeter, magnificent in her mundanity, a wry smile worn like a badge of office. Her sundress is polka-dotted with green, her feet sandalled, and her silhouette is fringed with a corona of yes, of unspun possibility, invisible, immaterial, but entirely unmistakable.
Cerberus prostrates his bulk at her feet, central head lolling, eyes rolled up to its whites. Spittle foams from its mouth, blood-brindled.
“That’s a good trick,” I rasp, licking rust from dry lips. “Would have appreciated you getting to it sooner, though. By the way, good job. Whatever you just did. I think.”
Her smirk is not unkind, but it is trimmed with warning. Demeter offers no answer, merely stoops to scratch behind one of Cerberus’ myriad ears.
Ignored, I peer over her shoulder. The room quieted: not jungle-silent, where microfauna chitter and chirrup, a million noises coagulating into a kind of stillness, but silent. Dead silent.
On the bright side, there aren’t any actual bodies. Entrails, sure, and in abundance; the walls are a holocaust starscape, notched with the marks of desperate hands. The floors are black.
“So, you going to tell me what is going—”
“Not yet.” A gleam of an indulgent smile as Demeter rises, stretching her arms. The survivors cower, maggot-colored, identities pared into sexless uniformity: lumpless bodies, noseless faces, eyes hollowed into bruises. They huddle behind the detritus of the fight, crooning in nonsensical whalesong voices. All except for Sisyphus, who twists in place, bound by loops of muscle, his eyes pried open by millimeter-long hooks. Demeter ignores them. Her arms slowly rise, fingertips bleeding light. Her palms clap shut.
And reality spasms.
A slit divides the air and a moment is tipped out of time, heaped high with chthonic sights: lakes of pitch, fringed with glass-forests; a ribbon of black water haunted by a boatman; fields of eternal wheat, whispering to itself, bright as sunlight. An Ouroborosian debauchery of sinners tormenting sinners, sustained by the guilt of their collective subconscious. One vision stands out: a woman on an alabaster throne, her skin the color of limestone, head drooping over a skinny chest, ribs bladed against her skin. The eyes are gray, sightless, focused on nothing.
“Persephone.” Demeter’s voice rings out, strong and rich, like the call to prayer, and with her daughter’s name, she rewrites the universe.
The world disembowels itself, reconstitutes with Persephone trembling in the center of the room, dripping silks of white. Still pallid, still alien, more ghost than girl, tottering on bite-blackened legs, but here at last. Here finally. Demeter runs to her daughter, catches her as she falls, Persephone’s pellucid hair floating like a funeral veil. The goddess sinks to her knees, pressing kisses to her child’s brow.
Something loosens inside me, like a rib shifting on its axis.
I swallow; claw my way to the nearest wall; prop myself up, an arm flung around the seat of an upturned chair.
The urge for a cigarette twitches under dulled strata of pain. That’s what heroes do, right? Light up a smoke after the explosions have cleared. Maybe even strike a dramatic pose as the sunset paints them in orange gradients. Except that I’m not certain I was anything but the comic relief. Whatever the case, I have neither the energy nor a supply of nicotine, so I sit and hurt instead, and observe the reunion.
No tears from either of them; Demeter whispering in a language I don’t understand, the words falling liquid; Persephone watching the walls, watching, watching for something that no one else can see. After an indefinite span, the mother looks up, brushing wisps of pale hair from the knife-wedge of her daughter’s face.
“You’re still here,” Demeter declares, almost affronted.
I shrug around the weight in my chest and swallow, extremities now pleasantly numb. The world is a tide of softness, suffocated by gauze and cotton. “Not out of choice, if that helps at all.”
She nods, rising, leaving Persephone to her strange vigil. Demeter flows across the floor, feet barely grazing the gore-crusted floorboards; the air seethes with her new power. When she reaches me, she cups both hands around my cheeks. A smile like the moonlight in coils of black hair.
Hurt tightens around my lungs. “You going to tell me what was all that about?”
“Rupert. You should know better by now. I don’t believe in unnecessary exposition.”
“But do you believe in collateral damage, though? I mean, you could have told me that you’re working with these squids—” My tongue thickens as mana flows into my veins, needlepoints tracing the topology of my wounds, a cauterizing heat. I pant into the healing, grimacing. “Guan Yin stuff a peach up your ass, haven’t you gods heard of morphine?”
No reply, even as Demeter withdraws, hands clustered at her base of her stomach.
“Thank you.” A corner of her mouth twitches. “Minah would have been proud.”
“Don’t.” The word jerks in my throat. “I thought I told you that you needed to stay out of my head. Don’t bring Minah into it. You’re not allowed to fucking talk about her.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you to tell me I’m a hero, or—” I’m losing my grip. Hysteria pounds against each syllable, demanding egress. I shudder from the effort of maintaining coherence, even as I palm tears from my eyes, gabbling erratically between sentences. “Get out of my head. I don’t want—”
My argument buckles into an undignified whimper. I swallow the sobs. Swallow again and again, despair lumping viscous in my throat. “The only reason I did anything is because I know what it’s like to scrape the bottom of the barrel, and you, and Persephone, and I don’t know, but—”
“Honestly, Rupert, in all the millennia of my existence, you’re the first to reject divine accolade.” Demeter seats herself beside me, scoops a warm arm around my shoulder.
I shiver again. A sound tears itself out of my lungs, neither laugh nor cry. “Because I don’t deserve any of it. I—fucking hell, I was a selfish son of a bitch. I’m still a selfish son of a bitch. Do you know why I tried to save you? Why I gave a shit? I think—I think it’s because I’m a selfish fucking asshole who wants nothing more than to see his girl again. And I was hoping, praying, that if I did this for you, you’d make it happen. Or at lea
st—”
Salt and snot mix in rivulets as I begin to cry in huge, ugly bursts, no longer able to withhold the wracking grief. “At least you’d tell me that she’s still there in the universe somewhere. That she is alive. That there is some way that our atoms might meet in the future, perfect strangers tied together by a syllable of memory. I need—I need—I—”
“I think I owe you enough to not lie to you.”
I inhale, trembling. “Fuck your honesty.”
“Honestly, Rupert. I wasn’t lying when I said she would have been proud—”
“Don’t. Don’t say that. I don’t want any of that. Not your platitudes, not—fuck. I—I know that she would have been proud of me! Fuck you! That’s why I tried to save Persephone, that’s why I tried to help you. Because I wanted to do something that she’d have approved of, something she’d have agreed with. God.”
Silence.
And then, into the trembling quiet:
“You’re a good person, Rupert.”
“You’re such a liar,” I look up, a laugh strangling itself in my voice, and wipe my tears on the back of my palm, gulping air. “But thanks. I guess.”
Another deep breath, and I push myself to my feet. Demeter makes no endeavour to stop me or to coax me back into her arms. Her interest in my wellbeing is vestigial, contingent on the structures of courtesy. I expedited her revenge on her own pantheon and then broke down on her watch. Of course she had to supply platitudes. That’s just how it’s done.
But having performed the obligatory formalities, Demeter returns her attention to her daughter. Persephone, for all of the minutes she has spent corporealized, could be a ghost still, her hair colorless, her skin gray and dusted with starlight. Chalk-filmed eyes regard the abyss, impassive, blind. When her mother palms her shoulder, however, she startles, animal-quick, and something like recognition crosses the china-bone face.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I mumble, rising to my feet. The Outer Gods call out as I do, seeping from the walls, their incomprehensible warbling glissading into meaning, into non-Euclidean visions, glimpses of paradises sandpapered from nightmares, knowledge beyond mathematical probability, beyond three-dimensional perception.
Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth Page 17
