The Afterlife Series Omnibus: Heaven, Hell, Earth, Wasteland, War, Stones

by Mur Lafferty

  “I don't really have a choice,” he said, casting a quick look at Coyote, whose grinning mouth was open, panting. Which is worse? A guide you can't trust or no guide at all?

  “Since you’re running in front of her, it doesn’t look like you need a guide.” The rabbit scratched at the ground, pulling moss and dirt into a rough ball and rolling it around.

  “Who should I trust, then?” Daniel asked, watching the rabbit play with the dirt. “The only one I can trust in this weird-ass afterlife has been Kate. And, well, she's not here. So I'm up for suggestions.”

  The rabbit continued to mess with the dirt, forming it into the rough shape of a human. “There is one other you can trust.”

  Daniel snorted. “Great. More riddles.”

  Driving past the overwhelming urge to taste this massive meal in front of him, Daniel left the bunny to his dirt and ran on, catching that scent again. He dashed ahead of coyote and broke free of the forest. A woman dressed in black stood in the road, wearing a fine dress and hat.

  “Kate!” Daniel barked, running up to her, nearly delirious in his excitement. Delirious in his desire to lick her, to jump on her, to let her know just how much he missed her.

  She smiled at him as he ran up to her, but when he jumped up and put his paws on her, trying to lick her face, he stuck fast. His feet sank deep into her abdomen and his jaws into her chest.

  “You’re kidding me,” he thought desperately as Kate’s body and face twisted. The more Daniel struggled, the more caught he was.

  “Help me,” he begged Coyote.

  But she laughed that hiccupping laugh again. She ran for him, her shoulder hitting his, driving him into the pitch. He sank in deeper with each attack until the pitch covered him entirely. His lungs burned, but his nose and mouth were plugged. He struggled once more and blacked out.

  “Another turtle,” was his first thought as his consciousness returned. He still wasn't breathing, but he remembered he didn't necessarily need to. He floated in space, huge and powerful as planets circled around him. He could see Kate's new Earth and swelled with warm love for it. The debris that had been created with the destruction of his home was gone now, and two moons now orbited the Earth. Nothing of the horror that he had seen before remained. Whatever was going on with him and Kate and their problems, the Earth was okay.

  He turned his awareness to the rest of the universe, the millions of stars around him, and the warm blanket of black. The hugeness of it all dwarfed him, even as big as he was, and he wondered how many other gods were out there. How many suns and moons and heavens and hells? Was this something he and Kate should explore?

  He chuckled to himself, sending sunspots glowing through him. Exploring was done. They had wars to fight, jobs to do. Wars. That's right, there was a war going on. He wondered how Kate was doing.

  A movement to the right caught his awareness. The stars were going out. Not in a winking, one at a time sort of way, but more like they were being covered by an oozing oil slick. The universe itself was being put out. Or devoured.

  Faster than it should have happened, half the sky was turned to pitch black. And as the blackness neared him, his only thought was that he should protect the Earth. But what would Earth be without his heat and light? The last thought he had before the shadow devoured him with its many, many teeth was, “What was on the other side of the Earth when it was destroyed?”

  He stood outside a cave with a round stone blocking the entrance. Women sat outside, candles lighting up their somber faces, tears shining in the soft light.

  “Is someone, uhh, in there?” he asked.

  “My son,” said a woman of about forty-five.

  “A boy?”

  “A man grown,” she said, glaring at him.

  “Does he need help? Is he trapped?” Daniel eyed the stone, unsure if he could move it.

  “He is dead. He died five days ago by a traitor’s hand.”

  Daniel bent his head. “I'm sorry to intrude on your grief. What was his name?”

  “It would do you well to know it,” said a younger woman, setting her chin defiantly. “His name was Jesus.”

  Daniel sat down heavily on boulder by the cave, numb and tired. Of course it was.

  He sat with the women for a while, trying to figure out what to do. Someone passed him a hunk of bread and some water, but he refused, encouraging them to eat instead. Something bothered his mind and he tried to grasp it.

  “Wait a second,” he said, interrupting their vigil a second time. The older woman — the Virgin Mary? — glared at him. He pressed on. “How long did you say you've been out here?”

  Another woman spoke up, fatigue coloring her voice. “He was crucified five days ago.”

  “Jesus was supposed to rise after the third day.” Daniel said. “This is all wrong.” He reached to his side and found Izanami’s blade. He may not remember how fight with it, but he didn't need a great skill to split the rock in front of him.

  The women fell back screaming as the rock burst outward after Daniel’s first strike. A piece of debris hit him in the face, knocking him down. The pain blossomed in his head on the right side. Bright and red and familiar. In a moment of hysteria, he laughed, wondering about the myths they would tell about the god who could not keep his eye. He fell to his knees and screamed, but did not drown out the joyful cries of the women around him.

  A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up, blood turning the vision in his left eye, his only eye, red. He saw a figure standing above him in a white robe. Nearly retching with the pain, he moaned and said, “Kate?”

  The figure smiled at him and he saw a man. Despair and pain overcame him and he passed out.

  Daniel opened his eye and found himself in a cave, much like the cave where he had found Kate meditating before their trip to Hoboland. Someone was tying a strip of cloth around his head to cover bandages over his ruined eye. The pain had retreated, but he felt hot and disoriented.

  “Where’s Kate? Who are you?” he mumbled.

  “I am a God of Life. I was killed. I was resurrected and went into heaven,” his caregiver said. “I am Jesus Christ.”

  Daniel squinted his eye. Osiris bent over him, securing the bandages.

  “You’re Osiris.”

  “I am. I am every Reborn God. Did you not meet the Trickster as one person?

  “Coyote. Yeah, she shoved me into a pitch mannequin. Didn't like her much.”

  “She tested you. You passed.” The words sounded fuzzy in Daniel's ear.

  His head began to throb deeply and he groaned. “Tested?”

  “She tested your desire to mate with her. She tested your ability to stop from hunting Great Rabbit. She tested your ability to adapt.”

  “Where's Kate?”

  Osiris — Jesus — paused briefly, sat back, and sighed. “She has fled heaven. She has gotten away, and now she's …” the room filled with a kinetic buzzing sound that stopped as abruptly as it started.

  “I’m here.” Kate’s voice was calm, soothing.

  Daniel smiled, relieved. He closed his eye. She put her hand on his shoulders. “God, what happened to you?”

  “I had to find Jesus for you. He was trapped in a cave or something. I don't really remember.”

  “And your face?”

  “When I started the vision quest, I had my eye back, and then I lost it again.”

  “Damn it, Daniel, you just can’t hold on to that, can you?” she said, her voice amused but not hiding the worry.

  “I’d lose my own head if it wasn't attached,” he said grinning.

  He felt her cool hand on his face and he smiled and relaxed. His Kate was here. He'd be okay. The fever began to die down and he slowly dozed off. As he drifted, he heard Osiris say, “Goddess, we have to talk.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Yasha, the war hero, thrashed and groaned on her bed as the priest leaned over her. He spread soothing salve on her face that helped with the surface pain, but the chaos inside her head did
not cease. The large cats the other side had trained for their evil purposes had taken her eye and she couldn't concentrate past the pain.

  “You lost the left eye, like Daniel, Beloved of Kate,”the priest soothed. “You are favored by him now.”

  Yasha bit back a retort. It would not do during a holy war to blaspheme against your own pantheon. They had been fighting for years, though, and there was no end in sight. They had the numbers and the discipline, but they fought on the northern continent, where the opposition had been training animals to fight alongside them.

  Each soldier had at least one animal trained to fight, which made them more than doubly dangerous. The worst battles were when their priestesses, the beekeepers, got involved. They worshiped the goddess Jane, Keeper of Bees. And when their priestesses released full hives on the battlefield, the losses on Yasha's side were always devastating. The only saving grace was that bees were sacred to worshipers of Jane and it was rare that the bees entered battle.

  Yasha had lost her lover, Penelope, to a bee sting. An archer who should have been safe from an enemy soldier, she was discovered to have an allergy to bees with one rogue sting causing her to asphyxiate on the field. Yasha had sworn to see the beekeeper priestesses die for this, but now she had lost an eye and a weaponless, armor-less priest was trying to tell her that it was okay because some god once lost his eye.

  “Three times,” the priest corrected her, mixing something in a bowl.

  “Wha — ?”

  “You said Daniel lost his eye once. He lost it thrice: once to free a trapped goddess and pay for his wisdom; once to get that wisdom back and heal another god; and lastly as a payment to find a god during a vision quest.”

  “Can you read my thoughts?” she asked.

  “No,” the priest sounded amused. “I can hear your fevered ranting. Now take this and get some rest.” He held a piece of bread smeared with bitter paste to her mouth and she swallowed it with difficulty. He helped her take a sip of water and then settled back in his chair to watch her. Beside him, in a cage, a ruby-throated hummingbird sat on its perch and cocked its head at her.

  * * * * *

  “A hummingbird?” Daniel asked.

  “Sure, I sent it to find you and then followed it. There’s another one looking for Skuld right now.”

  Daniel laughed and shook his head.

  Kate felt a stirring resentment. “I didn't have a lot of time to think,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “I just think it’s awesome, that's all.”

  She relaxed. He’d gone through an awful lot to get Jesus, or Osiris, or whatever his name was. The three of them rode on horses over a barren landscape. Kate wondered if Daniel had figured out where they were going, but he was still groggy from his injury.

  Jesus certainly didn’t know where they were going. Her conversation with him had been sobering, but he seemed to be convinced that together they could turn everything around. They would need reinforcements, but he had no doubt they could find them.

  In the dim dusk, a light flared in the distance, and Kate smiled. They’d arrived.

  Daniel swayed on his horse, and Kate grabbed his shoulder and held him steady. Jesus pulled up beside them as they approached the campfire.

  “Why are we here?” he asked.

  “We’re meeting some friends with a package for me.”

  “No, why are we meeting them in hell? Are they demons?”

  “Do you see any demons? The place is empty.”

  Jesus glanced around, his hands tightening on his reins.

  Kate grinned, “Don't worry, Jesus. Heaven is wherever you are, right?”

  They had reached the campfire. Ganymede, his golden curls drab in the dying light, tended it while Bela Boost cooked a sausage over the fire.

  “Ah, all of the gods are together again,” he said. “But who is the new one?”

  “Alternate Dimension Bela Boost, this is Jesus. Or Osiris. I’m not sure what he prefers to be called,” Kate said as they dismounted.

  Jesus shook Bela’s hand, still looking around as if he'd rather be anywhere else.

  “Do you have it?” Kate asked.

  Bela handed over the bindle and she carefully unwrapped it. She looked up at the dazed Daniel and said to Jesus, “Hold him.”

  Jesus took hold of Daniel’s shoulders as Kate pulled the colored cords on the package and Heaven unfolded around them.

  Daniel staggered. “Holy shit!”

  Jesus watched the buildings grow around him, his eyes narrowing. “You’re thinking of putting heaven in hell?”

  “No, Jesus. I'm definitely going to put heaven in hell. There’s a difference. It's empty, I was able to get it here safely, I have you and more reinforcements are coming. Daniel is here, as a ruler of hell, to help me. It's the perfect scenario. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

  The Son of God stared at her, but didn't say anything more.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  To put Jesus more at rest, Kate held a dinner in the stone room deep within the castle with Bela, Jesus, her, and Daniel. Ganymede served them, grinning, happy to be back with Kate.

  Bela smiled through blue smears on his face, with one empty pie plate in front of him. Ganymede quickly brought another one, a brackleberry pie, and he dug in. Jesus sipped at some clear broth while Daniel chowed down on a diner-type breakfast. Kate ate nothing.

  “So who imprisoned you?” she asked Jesus.

  “I was not imprisoned exactly. After the destruction of the Earth, I was weakened greatly by the loss of so many believers. Unlike other deities, I still thrived on the food and drink of worship. I decided to hide myself until someone believed in me enough to find me, which would give me the power to move on. So I sequestered myself deep, where only someone meditating could find me.”

  “And Daniel’s eye?” Kate said, glancing at her friend. She tried to heal him, but it seemed to go more slowly than the last two times.

  “I had nothing to do with that. That seems to be his fate.”

  “Like Prometheus with the eagle eating his liver every day?” Kate asked.

  “The same.”

  “Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t get the eye back again, then.”

  Daniel remained oblivious, tearing into his food as if he actually needed it. It was the most animated she had seen him in a while. He put down his knife and fork, dragged his napkin across his face, and smiled at them.

  “So, I’ve got this great idea. Jesus is here, in heaven and hell at the same time. Kate and I haven’t been doing such an awesome job with the ruling of these places. Okay, okay, Kate’s been doing better than I have, but still. Now that you're here and we’re obviously fucking everything up, why can’t we just leave the keys of both places to you? You'll get your birthright, we’ll be free, everyone will be happy.”

  Jesus opened his mouth once and closed it.

  Kate hastened to speak before he did. “That’s an excellent idea. I'd be all for that, but let’s get the little matter of the war taken care of.”

  Daniel’s jaw dropped. “But, but ... I thought you brought heaven here to protect it, so they couldn’t find it.”

  “I did, but Mephistopheles is determined to get it, and he'll figure it out eventually. It may be days or weeks, but we can't assume he won't find us. All he has to do is go to the roundabout in heaven and follow a new soul headed this way.”

  Daniel jumped up, “Then what are we doing here? Let’s prepare for the fight! Where are the angels and the reinforcements? Where’s Skuld?”

  Something tickled at the edge of Kate’s consciousness. Where was Skuld?

  “Hang on, I’ll find out.” She closed her eyes and concentrated until she located the second hummingbird she had sent out.

  She popped out of her banquet hall and teleported next to Skuld. She stood in a barn full of warhorses and Skuld saddled her own mount. She looked down at Kate. “Goddess, how goes the fight?”

  “Not so good. Looks like we
’re going to need you. Can you bring the Valkyries?”

  Skuld tightened the gird on the saddle and frowned. She gestured to Kate to follow her through the grand barn and Kate realized with a sinking stomach that only Skuld’s horse was saddled. Skuld led her though the gilded barn doors and pointed to a grand fortress atop the hill. Torches flared and shone through the night, showing off the glory of Valhalla.

  The Valkyrie pointed to the fortress, “There is your army. They feast and wait.”

  “For?”

  “For Odin to return to them.”

  Kate clamped her jaw shut. She took a deep breath and said, “Odin is dead. His return is not prophesied.”

  “But Baldur isn't back, and his return is prophesied. So they are convinced Odin will return in his place.”

  Odin chuckled dryly in Kate’s head. She thought for a moment and then spoke carefully. “Skuld, do you trust me?”

  The Valkyrie turned and looked at her, really looked at her. Kate fixed her with a calm stare.

  The old woman smiled. “That I do, Goddess. For all your youth, your heart and your mind are in the right place.”

  Kate nearly laughed nervously, but she kept her poise. “Tell them Baldur has returned. Tell them Odin will return, but only on the Battlefield of Sol.”

  Skuld’s brow furrowed, “I don’t know where that is.”

  Kate smiled and touched Skuld’s forehead, where a bright icon of the sun flared once and then died.

  “It is wherever I am, Skuld. Tell them. Get them to come. If they don't, Ragnarök might as well have ended us all.”

  Skuld put her fingers on her forehead where Kate had touched her, “I will do it.”

  * * * * *

  Kate returned to the hall where Jesus and Daniel were finishing their meals.

  “The Norse are coming, but…” she said, looking at Jesus, “they want Baldur.”

  He nodded once and his features changed. He became taller, more broad-shouldered and blonde. “I have been waiting for them.”