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

by Mur Lafferty

  Kate nodded. “It exiled us and keeps us here by infecting the Wasteland between us and heaven. It sends improbability storms at us. It somehow convinced the tinkers here to impose order on it to use its energy. When Morrigan stole part of the moon, it had more room to seep directly into the world.”

  She shook her head, holding her forehead. “It’s like it was right there in front of us the whole fucking time. I have no idea how we missed it.”

  Daniel sat on the dry grass, sighing loudly, looking as tired as she felt. “We’re not omnipotent or omniscient. Aren’t we supposed to be?”

  Kate shrugged. “We never have been before.”

  “God. Poor James,” Daniel whispered.

  Kate nodded. “Poor James, poor Alicia, poor Morrigan. All those poor bastards who got screwed for being part of our little crew, or just being touched by us.”

  “We’re not very good at this, are we?” Daniel asked.

  Burns blurted out a shocked noise, reminding Kate they weren’t alone. “How can you say that? You created us all! The whole world!”

  Kate smiled sadly. “That was an accident.”

  The professor frowned, but didn’t continue.

  “So what now?” Daniel asked.

  Kate thought of all the loose ends flailing around her. Alicia’s son, as Kate wondered if they could get him back from the underworld. Gamma and Prosper, wherever they were. Barris’s new form. Persi, the dinosaur goddess who had no control of her powers.

  And heaven, the problem that she never let go far from her mind.

  Ishmael folded his beefy arms in front of him. “I have a question,” he said softly. “Is what Morrigan said true? Did you kill Cotton?”

  Kate looked him in the eye. “Cotton died when I destroyed the city, yes. I didn’t know she was there.”

  He nodded slowly, and said nothing else.

  “So?” Daniel said, his question still unanswered.

  Kate rubbed her face. “We need to figure out what’s going on with everyone else. So I guess we need to get back to the Sheridan. Check on Alicia. See what’s going on between Prosper and Gamma. When we get all the gods we can together, we’ll figure out our next step.”

  Daniel nodded. He looked at Barris. “Can you give us a lift back to the Sheridan?”

  Barris looked at Burns and frowned. “I don’t know if I can get all the way there with him. The necklace, you see.”

  “Fuck, if we never see that chaos stuff again it’ll be too soon for me,” Daniel said.

  “I can carry him,” Kate said. “He won’t need it with me.”

  Barris stretched to the sky again and grew, gathering Ishmael, Persi, and Daniel in his arms. They took off, climbing into the sky toward the moon, which now felt as if it watched them with a baleful eye.

  She shook her head. “Lady?” Burns asked.

  She smiled at him and willed her wings to spring from her back. “It’s very complicated; that’s all.”

  Burns put his arm around her shoulder and she picked him up. “If I may offer an observation?” he asked as they followed the huge beacon that was Barris.

  “Please,” Kate said.

  Burns took a deep breath as if to steel himself. “You never did ask what the other gods wanted. You didn’t even ask if they wanted freedom. Prosper clearly did not. Ishmael did not, but is benefiting from it. Instead of freedom, you’ve chained Persi. The only gods happy with your interference are Gamma and Fabrique.”

  “And I’ve never even asked them if they’re happy,” Kate admitted. “You’re right.”

  “Before you fight your war, you have to make sure your soldiers are on your side,” Burns said.

  She didn’t answer, but flew after Barris to reach the Sheridan, to confirm to Alicia that her son was dead.

  * * * * *

  Daniel found Sarah sitting on the deck of the Sheridan, slumped and weeping. She cradled Ursula in her lap, who clung to her with white knuckles. Alicia and Samuel — Samuel? — lay unconscious in a thick cloud near the railing. She looked blearily up at the new arrivals and then back down at the deck. Fabrique, Gamma, and Prosper were nowhere to be seen.

  His throat closed up when he thought about telling her the news, but he figured she already knew.

  “What happened?” he finally managed to say.

  Sarah sniffled and sighed. She told him, saying she only saw Prosper holding her siblings up for an unknown man to kill them with a knife. Her mother called Gamma, she readied the chicken gun, and the battle began.

  “Is Alicia all right?” he asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know what that gas does to people. And I can’t go get her; I get sleepy if I get too close, even if I hold my breath.”

  Barris walked into the cloud and picked up the unconscious woman. He pointed to Sam. “What about that one?”

  Daniel felt bile rise in his mouth. “He caused all this. He’s a waste of humanity. If he’s not already dead, toss him overboard, he’s fucking trash.”

  Barris touched him briefly. “He’s dead.”

  Daniel laughed bitterly. “Then he really is trash. Toss him.”

  Barris picked Sam up without ceremony and dropped him over the side. The resulting splash was not as satisfying as Daniel had hoped.

  “Get rid of the pot while you’re at it,” Kate said from his side.

  “When did you get here?” he asked.

  “Shortly after you. I heard everything. Where is everyone else?”

  “Prosper and Gamma are still in the sea. I don’t know if they live or not,” Sarah said, staring at the deck.

  “Fabrique?”

  “She arrived, looked around, and then went below deck. I don’t know why.”

  Gods, Kate thought. “Sarah, we’re very sorry for what happened here. We’re going to make sure your mom is all right and then get the hell out of here. Can we count on you to fly us back to Meridian?”

  Daniel wanted to back down from the anger in the young woman’s eyes. But she didn’t challenge them; she just nodded.

  Kate looked at Daniel. “We need to find Gamma, if not Prosper as well.”

  “We could just call Gamma back,” Daniel suggested.

  Kate looked over the side where the sea still churned below them. “I don’t think she’d appreciate that. We could—” She stopped when the water gradually stilled below them.

  “So, what happened?” Daniel whispered, but Sarah made a startled noise behind them. She tossed the knife away from her boot, and Gamma flowed through the blade and appeared. She was soaked and gasping, scratches and cuts all along her arms and legs. Her leather clothes were ripped to shreds and she bled freely from a cut on her forehead.

  “Shit,” Daniel said, and ran to her side to heal her.

  She pushed him away. “These are war wounds. They’re a matter of pride, Daniel. Leave them.”

  “Are you all right? What happened?” Kate asked.

  “I beat him. I think,” she said, standing straighter. She looked from Persi to Barris to Kate and said, “And clearly I missed something.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gamma hadn’t been too worried about underwater combat. She was a warrior, and she fought where she was needed. But she had very little combat experience, only learning what she could from her worshipers.

  However, divine power did a lot to bridge the gap, and despite the grief and guilt over the boy’s death, she still hit the water with a sense of gleeful anticipation as she swam after the flailing harvest god.

  Prosper clearly was not at home in the water. He wasn’t Barris, though, with the water as his antithesis. He was the god of the harvest, but also the god of kelp, algae, and even coral reefs. He paddled a moment and looked around, his golden eyes glowing in the black water.

  Gamma didn’t wait for him to get his bearings. She swam forward and grabbed him around the waist, squeezing him. He jolted in surprise. Thorny vines erupted from his skin, slicing into her as they wrapped around her arms, but she kept
squeezing. Finally he pried her off and flung her from him. He swam further down toward the sea floor, a drop-off that formed a fifty-foot trench. The water below the drop-off was black and murky, not touched by the lights from Leviathan City or the full moon, and Prosper headed there.

  Gamma’s eyes were quite good in low-light situations, but she wasn’t sure she could find him in complete darkness. She dashed after him, cutting through the water with all her strength.

  Prosper was maybe ten feet into the trench, disappearing from view, when she hit him again. They slammed into the trench wall, Gamma forcing his head into the barnacle- and coral-encrusted rock.

  He bellowed as the barnacles cut his face deeply, and deep green blood bloomed in the water. It was nearly black except for the tendrils that floated upward and waved gently in the water, not diluting itself in the sea, but gaining shape and mass.

  Algae, she thought, amazed, which allowed Prosper to place his hand on the wall and push himself off, cutting his hands deeply and causing more algae to drift into the water.

  She shook her head and realized the water was not the best place to have this battle. If algae could exist floating in the sea, rootless, then Prosper was much more powerful here than she was. She grabbed the vines that still sprouted from his shoulders and torso and hauled upward, fighting for the surface.

  Prosper had just realized what the algae meant as well, apparently. He sent more vines out to tangle her feet and drag her back down. He swam up with renewed strength, seemingly becoming stronger with the more algae he bled, and wrapped her tightly in the thorny vines. They cut into her skin and she bled only blood, it washing away as quickly as she bled.

  Prosper forced her downward to the barnacled trench, slamming her into it and forcing cuts all over her body. Her leather shirt protected her for the most part but her bare arms and face opened every time a sharp barnacle met her skin.

  She allowed the pain to fuel her and twisted her body, causing Prosper to force his own vines between her and the barnacles; with two more slams into the wall Gamma swam away, free.

  She swam a few feet away and surveyed Prosper. He seemed to be in a cloud of algae now as his body still leaked. She recalled what Kate had said his greatest wish was: to be newly imprisoned. She nodded to herself.

  She swam downward with renewed energy, slamming into him again, and their bodies plummeted to the sea floor at the edge of the trench, a gentle plume of sand wafting from their landing. Prosper struggled, but Gamma’s bet paid off as his bare skin touched the ocean floor rich with bio matter and his emaciated and hungry body shot out tendrils from his back to root deep into the sand.

  She expected him to continue to fight, to turn his efforts to freeing himself, but his eyes rolled back in his head in a perverse mask of sexual pleasure. He let go of her entirely then, and she swam back to survey the changes.

  A rumble shook the water around her as Prosper dug himself deeper and began to change. His wounds opened as if something dreadful had pried each one open to force out more blood, and algae bloomed in the water, nearly obscuring his body. The algae expanded more, forming a cloud, and Gamma had a nasty feeling that Prosper had become something she could no longer fight. A questing vine moved toward her and she swam upward and away, biting her lip against the retreat, but knowing it wasn’t a real fight she was leaving. A warrior doesn’t leave a battle. She does leave a pointless fight against something that is no longer an opponent.

  Gamma fixated on a weapon aboard the Sheridan and disappeared from the ocean.

  * * * * *

  Prosper had never felt such power, such life. First he had rooted deep in the ocean, but that was simply for stability, for a foundation — not for sustenance. The food came from the very water around him, and the more he bled, the stronger he became. He willed his wounds open, his blood to stream out, his interior to become his exterior, his bones …

  By the three original gods, his bones. The calcium dissolved; there was no pain, only ecstasy as they turned from hard bones to delicate coral polyps, the algae streaming inside, outside, adding life to the already god-infused living sea wall. Prosper felt the earth itself in all its confused glory, the sea in its constant movement. So much stronger than air; so much less frightening than fire.

  This was where he belonged. This was safe. This was home.

  Prosper’s coral reef grew exponentially under the waves as the sea floor quaked.

  * * * * *

  “I’m going to check it out,” Daniel said.

  “No, Daniel —” Kate said.

  “We have to know,” Daniel said. “He killed James; he could be down there doing god knows what.”

  Kate smiled. “True. We don’t know. Just promise me you won’t get into anything. Go down and look and come back. OK?”

  Daniel nodded, kissed her briefly, and dove over the rail of the airship.

  Daniel marveled at how his slight fear of heights still managed to hang on even though he was a deity. But he had to know — for James — so he dove off the zeppelin at the end of Gamma’s story, needing to see the facts for himself.

  He hit the water with a tidy splash and swam deep into the dark. He spotted the trench Gamma had mentioned and the massive reef beyond it. His eyes widened; it was bigger than a two-story house and clearly still growing, the coral blooming and reaching higher, algae wafting off the polyps and the marine life swimming close to inspect the new reef as it expanded. Near the top, two golden eyes gleamed, crusted lightly with calcium.

  He shook his head slowly and then returned to the ship, willing himself dry as he flew back.

  The humans had gone. Daniel guessed they were below deck, dealing with their shocks of the day. Alicia’s weeping was audible.

  “So, what happened?” Kate asked.

  Daniel paused. “I think he’s gotten what he’s always wanted. He’s turned into a coral reef.”

  Kate shook her head, and then pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to bother us anymore,” Daniel said. “He’s turned into a huge immobile plant-animal thing. I’m not even sure I know what coral is.”

  “Well, now it’s a huge harvest god, apparently,” said Kate. “Gamma, are you all right?”

  The goddess nodded stoically.

  The door to below deck opened and Fabrique emerged. “I had to check on the engine. Apparently there’s been excitement? Where did you go?”

  Kate swallowed and told them about their unexpected detour, meeting Morrigan, and her realization that Chaos was behind the improbability storms.

  “Wait,” Ishmael said. “You left something out.”

  Kate looked at Fabrique and then Gamma. “I learned, to my great shame and horror that the goddess Morrigan came to be because I burned Dauphine to the ground, which killed Cotton the moon goddess and created Morrigan the death goddess. Many of you have blamed Daniel and me for your imprisonment, and I’ve denied it. Now I think Chaos had a hand in making the world with us, creating the Dark, the improbability storms, and imprisoning the world’s gods.”

  She took a deep breath. “But Morrigan blames me for her death. And she’s right. And I’m probably to blame for James’s death, since I forced Prosper here against his will. I screwed up.”

  The other gods didn’t speak. Barris frowned, his sympathetic eyes showing pity. Ishmael looked rapidly at the faces of the other gods as if for guidance. Gamma folded her arms over her chest and stared with stony features.

  It was Fabrique that surprised them all by striding forward, her curls bouncing, and reaching up to smack Kate in the face.

  “We followed you because we didn’t know anything else to do,” she said, her fierce actions in sharp contrast to her calm voice. “But you used us and acted with no thought to consequences.”

  Daniel put his hand on Kate’s shoulder, squeezing her as she turned her head to look at Fabrique. “You’re right.”

  Fabrique looke
d at the other gods. “I think we need some time alone to discuss things. We can talk until daybreak when Barris will leave us. Meet us in Lathe, in the House of Mysteries. Then we’ll decide our next step.”

  Kate nodded, then glanced at Daniel. “We should go.”

  The walked to the railing and looked at the descending moon as the zeppelin’s modified engines purred to life.

  “What are we going to do now?” Daniel asked.

  “You have to see if you can get James back,” Kate said, not looking at him.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “There are very few stories that say that heading into the Underworld for a soul is a good idea.”

  “We need to make things right. I don’t want to be the person who just goes around breaking worlds. I want to get the hang of this, Daniel.”

  He felt a bit of his old resentment returning. “Then why don’t you go?”

  Kate faced him, and he saw with shock that she was holding back tears. “Because she hates me. With good reason. You have to be the one to do this.”

  He nodded, disliking the fact but admitting the logic was sound. “What will you do?”

  “I have no idea,” Kate said.

  Daniel grinned suddenly. “I know where you can get one.”

  The stepped off the zeppelin together, Daniel flying south to Dauphine, Kate heading east to Lathe.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Didn’t work out for Orpheus, thought Daniel bitterly. Didn’t work out for Izanagi. You go to the Underworld uninvited, you’re in for a world of hurt.

  But Orpheus had gone to beg for his wife’s life and screwed up when he turned around to make sure she was there, and Hades had told him not to. Izanagi had found his wife, the goddess Izanami who had died in childbirth, but she begged him not to look at her. He did, saw the rotting corpse with the maggots and beetles, and was horrified, and she chased him back to the world. These guys couldn’t follow directions.

  He had retrieved his katana, a gift from Izanami herself, and flown to Dauphine. When they had had visited earlier, it was creepy and dead. Now, alone, he felt the utter gloom and foreboding. He looked around at the burned corpses of the buildings, of his and Kate’s own temples, and realized Kate might be right in that they were fucking up this whole god thing.