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

by Mur Lafferty

  * * * * *

  Kate took his hand in hers, studying the wrist closely. “Are you serious? You chewed it off? There’s not even a scar!”

  Daniel shrugged. “I know. I have no idea what happened. I didn’t even expect to get it back.”

  She released his hand and looked at him. “But dude, why did you just wait on us? You had to know I was going to come back for you!”

  They sat alone in the priestess’s office, Kate demanding to get the story from him first. Daniel’s eyes were hollow and he slumped in his chair, but he seemed fine physically. He stared at her.

  “I — I don’t know. I guess it was pretty extreme, huh?”

  “Daniel. You chewed your own fucking hand off.”

  “I guess I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know if he had you, too. And I was stuck in coyote form. My thinking got a little wild there for a bit.” He paused and stared at the wall, unfocused. “Or maybe I was given a test.”

  He told her about the disconnect during the storm, when he was on trial in front of the other trickster gods.

  “You think they orchestrated this?” Kate asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t say exactly that. I just mean that they were watching. And what god sits around and waits for people to rescue him?”

  “What god chews his own hand off to get out of a cage?” she replied.

  “I do,” he said.

  She stared at him, and then blinked once. “I guess you do.”

  “What happened with Prosper? Did you find him?”

  Kate smacked herself in the forehead. “Crap, I totally forgot. Yeah, I got him. He’s not really in good shape. The whole orchard was growing out of him. He tried to kill me, and he might have done so if I hadn’t taken off that coat. But I got him back here. He’s in his temple now, and drunk, as far as I know.”

  “Yeah, we need to talk about those coats,” Daniel said. “The coats and the cage Sam had me in and the vat Fabrique put me in. What the hell is that?”

  Kate sighed and twisted her robe her in her hands. “We determined it’s got to be another divine force. That’s the only way we could explain it.”

  “But who?” Daniel asked. “I thought we knew all the gods here.”

  “Clearly, we don’t,” Kate said. “There’s that flaming guy from last night, we have no idea about him. And then there’s whatever this chaos energy stuff is. People learned to harness it and now they can trap gods.”

  Daniel stood up. “We need to bring the others in on this.”

  “I gave them some time off. Barris wanted to visit Lathe and Fabrique went with him. I think we’ve earned some rest. Why don’t you get some rest?”

  He smoothed the hair away from her face. “Just do me one favor?”

  “Anything.”

  He bit his lip momentarily. “Stay with me?”

  She kissed him. “Of course.”

  * * * * *

  Improbability storms were once described in Meridian as cries of joy from lovemaking gods. In Lathe they were more crudely described as godfucking. Regardless, Kate and Daniel did not force an improbability storm as their innocent, exhausted cuddling led to stroking, fumbling, undressing, pinching, giggling, biting, sweaty, loud activities. They had wrestled, each wanting the on-top position, and Daniel won, trapping her roughly beneath him, losing himself in passion that bordered on animalistic.

  Kate moaned beneath him, his rough handling driving her to match his passion. She stopped trying to get the upper hand and accepted the frantic pleasure he offered her.

  After their first time, they lay together, whispering things to each other, dozing, and wrapped around each other. Kate roused Daniel from light sleep, insisting to him with little nips that she wasn’t quite done. The second time was slower, tenderer, and took much more time.

  When they were done, the ground did not shake, but the temple swayed in the sky as if pushed by a very hard wind.

  Kate pillowed her head on his shoulder. “I see what you mean,” she said, panting.

  He stroked her hair. “What do you mean?”

  “The animal. Coyote. That was different. And amazing.”

  “I haven’t felt like that before. It was…primal. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “Oh, hell no,” she said, wrapping her naked legs around his. “You can do that any time.”

  “Good,” he said. Her eyes closed, but his remained open, staring at the ceiling and wondering.

  * * * * *

  “I don’t know why you wanted to come with me,” said Fabrique. “What does Lathe hold for you?”

  “Oh, I don’t get to see it very often,” said Barris, looking around the main street of the city beneath Meridian. “It’s in Meridian’s shadow most of the day. I like to visit…” Something caught his eye and he trailed off.

  Fabrique raised an eyebrow. “All right. I need to get some things from my house; do you want to come in?”

  “I think I’ll do some shopping,” he said, starting forward without looking at her.

  “There goes the source of all life,” the clockwork goddess said softly. “Help us all.”

  She went back into her house, what was, until recently, her prison. She had only supplies to help during an airship battle with her, gathered swiftly upon their last exit from the house. Now she looked around and tried to figure out what she would need for air or water travel.

  Air tanks, mechanical wings, jetpacks, swimming fins, laser weaponry that worked underwater…there was just too much. Even her modified bag could only hold so much.

  She smiled slowly to herself. How had she not thought of this before? She gathered her tools, a disused chaos battery, and a sketchpad. She left everything else in her house and then went back outside, sat in the street, and began to sketch.

  * * * * *

  Professor Burns’s Idea Emporium was changed since Barris had last seen it, but that was not a new thing. Every time he went into the store to buy a little box that contained an idea, he paid the proprietor in blessings. So every time he came back, Burns was a little richer, a little healthier, a little younger, and his shop was a little nicer.

  Now it occupied a swaying two-story building made out of dark green glass. The pegs that tethered it to the ground — as the ground rejected anything built upon it — looked recently hammered in, so the building was new.

  Professor Burns’s weathered face lit up as Barris walked through the Idea Emporium’s front door. “Ah! Your Excellency! Welcome back! It’s always an honor to see you!”

  Barris’s lip trembled and a sheen of sweat glazed his forehead. He stared at Professor Burns with wide eyes and said, “I may be going on a trip soon. I need to stock up.”

  The Professor inclined his head, nearly bird-like. “Understood, sir. Should you be in need of a weapon or military idea? Or perhaps…” he trailed off as if he knew what Barris needed.

  Barris took another step forward, putting his shaking hands on the counter. Burns frowned.

  “I — I don’t care. Just give me some.”

  “Your Excellency, I am but a mortal, and —”

  “I’ll take five. Give me three regular and two bad, or four bad and one regular. I don’t care.”

  Burns choked and sputtered. “Five? Surely you don’t mean —”

  The sun god’s eyes went wide. He shook his head; an irritating buzzing sound had begun to distract him. “F-five. Yes. I need five. Is that a problem? I can pay for it.” His watery blue eyes began to glow.

  Burns’s eyes flitted to the green windows, where the morning sunlight had dimmed even more so than usual, being underneath the shadow of Meridian.

  “No, of course not, Excellency,” he said smoothly, unlocking the display case in front of him. The light outside brightened a bit.

  Barris shifted from foot to foot, wringing his hands, as Burns pointed with long fingers. “I might suggest a political idea, perhaps two war, and two bad?”

  “Perfect, sure, whatever,�
� Barris said, willing his hands not to shake.

  As Burns’s establishment and person had gotten fancier with the repeated blessings by the sun god, so had his ideas. Before they were contained within boxes, but now they consisted of carefully folded paper, cloth, or even metal. Most of the ideas were folded into the shape of something-dinosaurs were common — but he did keep the old favorite idea boxes around. Burns handed the god a piece of blue silk folded into the shape of a judge’s tunic, two tiny pterodactyls folded from hammered-thin sheets gold and silver, and two small wooden puzzle boxes.

  Barris accepted them with shaking hands. He stashed the origami in pockets inside his robe, slipped one box into his breast pocket and turned away from Burns, hunching over the last one.

  His fingers flew as they manipulated the puzzle box, the hidden catches and pressure panels no match for his eagerness and familiarity. Once open, he held it to his ear.

  Developing trade relations with Leviathan City would be a simple matter of visiting them and bearing gifts. They are eager to hear from the cities above the air.

  As the idea wormed its way into Barris’s head, he let out a great gust of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. As he pondered the implications around the idea, he straightened and smiled and Professor Burns, who watched him, frowning.

  “Thank you so much, Professor Burns,” Barris said. “It’s always a pleasure.”

  He turned and leapt lightly out of the front door, dropping the two feet down to the ground, and walked back toward Fabrique’s House of Mysteries, whistling.

  * * * * *

  Professor Burns pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the now-locked glass case. He walked quickly across the room and closed the door behind the sun god, locking it and putting up a TEMPORARILY CLOSED: USE YOUR IMAGINATION FOR 5 MINUTES sign.

  Barris’s blessings always came; Burns wasn’t concerned that the god wouldn’t pay. He had paid in odd ways — everything from the new building to the fact that he no longer woke up with his joints aching. But the most surprising result of the blessings was the upgrade to his Chaositron Idea Generator.

  Burns previously would feed in small boxes, and the idea generator would place a vacuum-sealed trapped idea into the box, only to be released when the box was open. It was a brilliant piece of machinery, and Chaositron had given the professor a promotion and a hefty bonus. These are what he thought of as the glory days of Meridian.

  Everything crashed when Chaositron had gone bankrupt soon after it started the idea business. Unfortunately, the idea generator created one very bad idea out of every ten good ones. They had no way of knowing which were good and which were bad, and after a particularly tragic airship crash connected directly to a bad idea that Chaositron sold the airship pilot, the company folded. Professor Burns’s boss took “The quick trip to Lathe” (how people in Meridian referred to suicidal jumpers), leaving Burns penniless with nothing but a corrupt idea generator.

  Fortunately, people in Lathe are more open to machines that only sometimes work, and he was able to build a somewhat thriving idea business there. He became familiar enough with the machine to be able to identify the bad ideas, and sold them as novelties.

  One thing he noticed as his business grew was that his customers seemed to be in two camps. Some of them came to honestly needed the ideas. They would purchase what they needed, use them, and only come back when they were stuck again in whatever they were working on.

  Then there were the addicts.

  Some people used ideas just for the thrill of the potential of it; the possibility was limitless and made them feel powerful. One addict likened it to being poised at the zip line in Meridian, about to let gravity sweep them down the line to Lathe. But they never actually took the step to fulfill the potential. They just went back for more ideas.

  Burns had not seen anyone as addicted as the weak-willed sun god. Cutting him off had been a bad idea — the god’s wild eyes had begun to burn with a fierce light. If he could bless Burns so well, Burns was sure he could curse him just as easily.

  Burns stood in front of his idea generator, upgraded by the divine blessing of the sun god to make more intricate ideas — even though it still produced bad ones. Burns rarely used the machine himself; he felt it was best to be the middleman. But this time he felt it was important.

  The machine hummed to itself in the corner, small finger-like jointed rods whirred as they deftly folded another idea and dropped it into a basket.

  Burns went and picked it up. Folded from a heavy linen cloth in the shape of a swan, the idea formed in his head as he shook it free of its shape.

  Only the other gods can deal with one god’s problems.

  Professor Burns sighed and dropped the idea linen into the used pile to be recycled later. He hadn’t been to Meridian since leaving it in disgrace years earlier. He guessed it was time to go home again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The kids in Meridian assumed that James was the luckiest kid around. He had lived a life of excitement, true. He had been placed as a hand on his mother’s airship when her crew had either died with his father in a pirate attack, or died when they had escaped the fiery fall of Dauphine.

  The escape from Dauphine had been very exciting, true. Terrifying, as well. What the other kids didn’t know was that when they had fled in his mother’s signature airship, the Sheridan, that two gods had stowed away aboard, taking control of the ship and ordering his mother, Alicia, to take them to Meridian, where his father had died.

  James had had further adventure when he was appointed guide to the god Daniel when he visited Lathe for the first time and had to save him from the enraged goddess Fabrique. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he accompanied the gods into the Dark to fight air pirates.

  And he was only ten.

  James was lucky to call the god Daniel a friend. He was lucky to have the god’s blessing on him as a reward for saving him. And he was lucky to be an able crewman on his mother’s airship.

  But the times when he missed his father, he didn’t feel so lucky. And the times when he missed his home in Dauphine, and his friends. And the times when his stupid big sister, Sarah, tried to pull rank on him.

  Sarah had done so this night. He had wanted to go into Meridian; he’d been so bored staying on the Sheridan, waiting for the gods to need transport somewhere. But Sarah said that they needed an able crewmember to be alert at all times, and tonight was his night. She got to go into the city with their mother to check on, oh, he didn’t know. Or care. Supplies. Find out what the gods were up to. What did it matter?

  The Sheridan docked at a tower in Meridian close to the central temple, but it still had to be on the outskirts of the floating city. If he looked over one side, he could look into the city. The city glittered in the twilight as people began turning their lights on. The gondolas and lifts ferried people home to their gleaming tower apartments, or took them to restaurants and theaters. They went about their lives, living in the sky, with no idea what was going on around them, without realizing the gods were among them.

  James didn’t like looking over the city. He preferred to turn his back to it and stare over the barren land below, into the hills and the Dark. He hoped if he looked far enough into the dark, he would see where the moon had run off to and he could find her and convince her to come back.

  Being able to watch the skies had been his favorite part about flying. He had spent his allowance on books about the heavens, learning about the constellations of Fenrir, the Diving Mother, the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Kate’s Heart. He had been amazed to meet Barris, the sun god, and was disappointed, to say the least.

  He still hoped that they would meet Cotton, the moon goddess, and wondered why the moon had been gone these many days. The ground had rumbled when it had left, something he’d heard instead of felt, as he’d been in the air when it happened. The hint of ocean he could see to the west did not gleam as it once did, as the tides had ceased. He wondered how the animals
were faring.

  The moon had been his favorite, and he missed her terribly. She had waxed and waned like him — crushing blows and huge excitements, being treated like a kid and being given airship crewman responsibilities, getting to meet the gods who created you and then learning they had as many flaws as you did. Maybe more.

  James sighed, longing for the moon, and stared into the Dark as night fell. A large, soot-smudged bird landed on the railing a couple of feet from him. It looked like a crow, only it was white. He frowned at it.

  “Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  The crow opened its wicked beak and cawed once, loudly. James winced at the sound.

  “You won’t find any food here. My sister would kill me if she found me feeding the chicken gun ammo to a crow. Go away.” He waved his hand half-heartedly at the bird.

  The bird didn’t spook, but just hopped about six inches toward him on the railing and cawed again.

  James squinted at it. The bird cocked its head and ruffled its feathers. It fixed its eye on him, and he was astonished to see it wasn’t beady and black, but white and luminous. Its eye actually glowed in the shadows.

  “What …?” asked James, still staring at the eye and relaxing against the airship railing.

  The bird took another hop closer.

  * * * * *

  The boy was gorgeous. Morrigan had not had much experience with men — she knew the sun was male, and had longed to meet him, as she was the sole person who could see his true form at night and reflect that beauty back onto the world. But she had never met him.

  The lost souls in the underworld had flavors of male or female, but none had become a companion, a friend, or lover. The loneliness of captivity had been stifling to the goddess, but now that she had her freedom, the barriers raised by her disfigurement were maddening.