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

by Mur Lafferty

  Julie shrugged. “Follow the crow. Seems like as good an idea as any.”

  Hand in hand, they followed the crow home.

  • • •

  As for Kate and Daniel, it was almost as if they had never left.

  Almost.

  They almost made a world that was right — that was their goal, all along — one without any imprisoned gods or blinded children or wandering Jews and Centurions.

  “I missed jeans,” Kate said, fingering the stiff new denim on her thigh as they sat together at a burger joint. “Those robes were pretentious.”

  “What’s wrong with that? No one has more right to be pretentious than a god.” Daniel asked. “I missed having two fucking eyes, man.” He waved his hand at his left ear. “Look, Kate! Peripheral vision! I can see my hand!”

  Their meal arrived and he dove in. “Damn, I missed good ketchup. Why couldn’t we make a world with decent food? We never got tomatoes right. Not once.”

  Kate looked at a newspaper that spoke of the tenuous peace that happened after a very real nuclear scare the previous week. The people of the Middle East, who worshipped the goddess of the stones, had nearly bombed those that followed the pantheon of the god of the land and the goddess of ravens. Zealot followers of the god of wandering were persecuting people they suspected of following the gods who fled.

  “I suppose that will never end,” Daniel said, sighing, looking at the television on the wall, where the news feed was broadcasting a riot in the Holy Land of Stones, Arizona. “People have to have something to believe in. And they have to bug other people about it.”

  “That’s okay,” Kate said, looking out the window at her home. “Rebirth, memory, cleverness, plants, death, ideas… there’s a lot to believe in. I wish they wouldn’t pray to Amadeus, but we’re done meddling there. As long as they remember they have to believe in people, too, I think they’ll be okay.

  “Now,” she said, changing the subject. “Are we getting married or not?”

  He stared at her, chewing a French fry. “I was going to ask you in moonlight, probably in an Italian restaurant somewhere. But you’ve ruined it now.”

  She laughed. “Daniel, I’ve ruined so many damn things in the past few years. I’ve ruined worlds. I really don’t think asking you to marry me will be in the top ten.”

  He looked thoughtful. “It’s going to be tough finding a church to get married in. Seeing as how we believe in all the gods.”

  His eyes widened in mock outrage. “Wait a minute. Where’s my ring? If you’re asking, you’d better give me a big fucking stone.”

  Kate grinned and slid a small black stone across the table.

  Daniel stared at it. “You kept one.”

  “Couldn’t help myself.”

  He grinned, impressed. “And I thought I was the naughty trickster god. Kate, we screw everything up when we have power. What is this anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the last thing the crow brought to me, right before we left. It might be the last dribble of Amadeus’ power. Or it might have come from Julie’s tears that soaked into my robes. I haven’t had the courage to use it and find out. So I thought I’d give it to you. It’s a good reminder of everything we’ve been through.”

  Daniel stared at the stone on the table, then looked up into her eyes.

  “Yeah, what the hell. Let’s do it.”

  MUR LAFFERTY

  IS AN AUTHOR AND PODCAST PRODUCER. She has released several works via audio podcast, including her novel Playing For Keeps, the audio drama The Takeover, and of course the novellas in the Heaven series. She’s won the Parsec Award, the Podcast Peer award, The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author, and the Manly Wade Wellman Award.

  Her published works include Playing for Keeps (Swarm), The Shambling Guides I: The Shambling Guide to New York City, and The Shambling Guides II: Ghost Train to New Orleans, not to mention several short stories. She is the host of I Should Be Writing.

  Mur lives in Durham, NC with her husband, Jim Van Verth, their daughter, and two dogs.

  Twitter: @mightymur

  Blog: murverse.com

  Stones, The Afterlife Series VI

  Published by Restless Brain Media on Smashwords

  Copyright 2014 Mur Lafferty

  Stones by Mur Lafferty is licensed under a

  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

  Layout by Pablo Defendini.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or dead

  is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Please visit us on the web.

  www.restlessbrainmedia.com