by R. E. Vance
And then there were the walls. There were no plaques of achievement or family photos; they were completely bare except for one small chalkboard on the wall opposite the desk. It was one of those “Today’s Special” menu boards that you might find in any café or restaurant in the world, its black face still stained with white and pink chalk that had been erased long ago. The old board was empty, except for the name of the restaurant at the top: Hot Mama’s Cookies.
The name snapped with memories from long ago, when I was young and Bella was alive and the Others had yet to come.
My PopPop used to take me there for a treat—a reward for when my little league team won, a consolation when we lost. Sometimes I’d go there after school and have a hot chocolate, the only thing I could afford on my meager allowance. When I got older, it was my go-to place for dates with Bella. She loved the a chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies. I was happy with an oatmeal cookie, a glass of milk and a chance to see her smile.
That’s why Sally looked so familiar. She was Mama, the woman behind the till—and I didn’t recognize her. Sure, it had been fourteen years since I last saw her, but it was more than that. She was different then. Smiled more, wore an apron over summer dresses—not the dresses and layers of makeup that was her uniform now. Then she was young, now she was worn. And not the worn that comes from the passage of time. It was a worn that betrayed how hard the last fourteen years were for her. How much she must have struggled to hold on to something she loved.
When the Others came, she lost her business, her community, everything. I guess we all dealt with loss in our own way. And here I was, judging her. Sure, her mission was horrible and evil, but she had her reasons. Human reasons. In my own mission to help Others and to keep my promise, I forgot that it wasn’t just Others that lost so much. Humans lost too.
Sally lost too.
“Mama?”
The older woman’s hard look all but disappeared. It was as if hearing that old name uttered again had somehow melted away so much of the hate and anger that had colored so much of her last fourteen years. She didn’t acknowledge what I called her, but I could sense that something had suddenly become very different between us. She put both hands flat on the desk and took in a deep breathe. “You’re dead set on this ridiculous plan, aren’t you?” Sally’s words jarred me back to the present.
I nodded. “I have to do something,” I muttered. “I can’t let this happen. I need to at least try to save my city … my hotel, my business, my home.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
“I’d find another way out of here and over to Greg’s. One way or another, I’m going,” I said. “And this plan, as ridiculous as it sounds, is our best bet. I know … I’ve lived amongst the Others for years now. I know how they think.”
“OK,” she sighed. “All right … Let’s say this works and they all disperse. What next? Are you going to walk the eight miles to Greg’s apartment?”
“We’ll run,” I said, but I couldn’t deny she was right. It would take us a couple hours to get there, and then what? We had six hours, and that would waste a full third of the time we had left. For the first time I felt the magnitude of what we were facing. Maybe, if we had more time … but we didn’t. We were screwed, but still—I had to do something. I looked away.
Sally stared at me for what felt like an eternity before shaking her head in what I thought was going to be a renewed protest. Instead, she simply sighed and said, “Fine.” She shook her head and slammed a fist on her desk. “Fine,” she repeated. “But if you get killed, I will not accept an iota of blame, do you hear me?”
I nodded.
“And you are most certainly not going to run eight miles.”
↔
While Sally and I had been debating the merits of my plan, the others were dipping into Sally’s accessory supplies: supplies I apparently owed her a full price for, should we survive the calamity. I witnessed the transformation of Astarte from a sex goddess and Queen of Lust into an evangelist in pajamas and fluffy slippers. “I’ll need better shoes,” she said, and Sally pointed to the back of the store.
Sally’s transformation was a bit more dramatic. She cursed me as she put on leather pants, a PVC tank top, and slicked back her hair to mimic Astarte’s androgynous hairstyle. It was ironic that despite disguising herself as an Other—something she hated—Sally looked good. OK, “good” might be a stretch.
She must have liked the way she looked, because she kept eying herself in the mirror. Like Astarte always said, “Leather is liberating.”
EightBall and I exchanged his hotel uniform for my white tux. Then we covered his facial tattoos with the Being Human’s makeup stock. We also found a wig of brown hair that, with liberally applied glue, looked decent enough on EightBall’s shaved head.
“Do I really have to wear this?” he groaned. “I look like a fool.”
“Yes, you do.” I patted him on the shoulder and pulled out the Bluetooth earpiece. Putting it in my ear, I looked in the mirror. It felt good to be out of the tuxedo shop’s reject and back in my hotel uniform. EightBall’s collarless black jacket was a bit tight, but after what I had been in, I’d take tight over blindingly white.
With the two of them ready, it was time for the grand exit. Astarte leaned in close and said, “Medusa would’ve loved this.”
Crap. Medusa. In all the excitement, I forgot about her. Again. “Yeah,” I agreed. “She would. OK—you guys ready?”
Penemue nodded and with hardly an effort picked up Sally in his massive arms. For a moment, they looked like a Harlequin Romance novel cover. As was evident by her blush, Sally must have realized this. Penemue shifted her to one arm, put another arm around EightBall and said, “Both of you, hold on. I’m going to have to get a running start for this to work.”
Penemue charged, and at the last possible moment I pushed a button on Sally’s control panel and the reinforced door opened up. The angel burst through, knocking over a valkyrie and a dwarf before taking to the sky. By the GoneGods, he had power. Astarte, looking like Sally, cried out, “Stay out of my salon, you filthy world breakers!” I pushed another button, which immediately slammed the front door, locking us in.
“Hey,” the dwarf cried out, “they’re escaping.”
“After them!” cried a minotaur. And with that, the mob of Others chased after the flying angel.
I jumped over the desk and looked at the security monitors. The Others were running after them. Holy guacamole, it worked.
“I can’t believe it—your stupid plan worked,” Brian sighed.
“Hey!” I said. “Never underestimate the ’80s. Never!”
Hellelujah!
Chapter 3
Hairy Men, Bulls and the Predator Three
With the coast clear, I grabbed the iPad and put it into one of the salon’s gaudy handbags. I also grabbed Sally’s keys and opened a trap door that led to a small underground garage where a moderately fast and highly fuel-efficient pink Vespa was parked.
There was a small ramp leading up to an aluminum gate. Behind that was the main street. I pushed the little red button on the remote control that was strapped to the front panel, and the metal gate rolled up.
I got on and Astarte slipped on behind me, her thin arms wrapping around my waist. She pushed herself in close, or pulled me back into her—either way I felt the small of my back slot into her pelvis region like we were two Tetris pieces that were meant to be together. This was Astarte’s thing: to make everything about sex, no matter what else was going on. Even though I was used to Astarte’s thing, these little moves still got to me. But can you blame me? I still had a pulse—not that that mattered to Astarte. If anyone could bring back the dead in a fit of raging desire, it was her. All that having a pulse meant was I had little to no chance in not being affected by her thing.
I twisted back the throttle. It puttered forward. “Shadowfax!” I cried out. “Show me the meaning of haste.” And with that we were on our “only
slightly faster than jogging” way.
As soon as we got out of the garage, a giant taloned claw swiped at us. A chimera was waiting for us. I guessed my little Dukes of Hazzard scheme didn’t work as well as I had hoped.
Hellelujah!
↔
Chimeras have three heads—one of a lion, one a dragon and the last a ram—as well as bat wings and a scorpion tail. With the exception of the ram, they were a hodgepodge of predatory animals. But a ram was deadly in its own right. Rams, after all, could crush a human’s chest with a single headbutt, and were excellent climbers as well. Don’t discount the ram. After all, it was the ram’s head on this chimera that slammed against a parked car, flipping it thirty feet in front of us and right in my path.
I swerved to the right, narrowly missing the rolling car as I did. “Holy—”
“Shit,” Astarte echoed.
I stopped the bike and stared back at not one but three chimeras—that’s nine heads, for anyone counting—all galloping in our direction.
But the other thing about chimeras—the part of their hunter makeup that wasn’t rooted in mortal animals—was their skin. They were made from a creature that I have never seen because, as legend has it, they’re invisible. As in permanently not visible. Chimeras’ skin was made from that unseen creature, making them excellent at camouflage. And I don’t mean the kind of camouflage that comes from fatigue colorings that hide you from plane or satellite surveillance. Nor am I referring to chameleon-style camouflage either. I’m talking Predator, shimmers-of-disturbed-air style camouflage. A chimera could be right in front of you and you wouldn’t know it’s there. Hell, you could witness a chimera disappear right before your eyes, know the exact spot where they vanished, and you’d still struggle to know exactly where they were. After all, they could have moved.
There is only one way to fight a chimera: run.
I gunned the moped for all its worth, willing its meager 50cc engine to find speed it did not know it had. I prayed, not to the GoneGods—I’d never pray to them again—but to the Honda manufacturers, that on the day this pink Shadowfax of a moped was made, the engineer was bored and put a little extra oomph in the engine. I looked behind me and saw nothing, but I heard the pitter-patter of leathered feet on asphalt behind us, and I prayed that that same engineer put in a whole lot of extra oomph in the engine.
And still it puttered on. The hair raised on the back of my neck as the pitter-patter grew from a cantor to full-on gallop. I was terrified, so terrified that I almost didn’t notice the little red button in the middle of Sally’s dashboard. What’s up with this woman and little red buttons?
I pushed it and—boom—the moped sputtered, then spat and burst into life. We went from barely breaking forty miles an hour to hitting almost eighty. Man, oh man, this thing was fast. I thought we’d be in the clear—after all, how many Others can actually run eighty miles an hour and sustain it for long?—when I heard Astarte yelp in pain. She clenched me tighter and screamed, “Swerve.” I guessed the chimeras had cheetah legs.
I swerved. The bike turned to the right and then the left, and had it not been for my military training, I would have wiped out. But we had been taught how to do a controlled swerve. I just managed to keep the vehicle upright. Hellelujah!
“What’s going on?” I cried out.
“They’re right behind us,” she yelled and, pulling out a long knife from only the GoneGods knew where, she threw it to our left. The blade stuck in midair as I heard the simultaneous cry of pain from a lion, dragon and ram. “There’s still two more,” she yelled out.
“OK,” I said, “I’ll keep swerving.” Except I knew that this strategy wasn’t a good one. It would only be a matter of time before one of the chimeras got in a well-timed swipe, or I lost control of the moped. Not a sustainable strategy at all. We needed to stop and fight.
I looked for a place where we could get our backs against the wall. Stand up and fight these things. But I heard another yelp, followed by a bone-crunching squeal. In the rear-view mirror I saw the WildMan standing there—he was wrestling with thin air and winning. Then he toppled over as he was tackled by an invisible creature—the third chimera had stopped pursuing us to help its friend. I stopped the bike and thought about going back to help the WildMan.
“No,” Astarte said. “Just go. He can handle himself.”
“But—”
“Just go!” she screamed, using every ounce of majesty in her. I felt compelled to go. I pulled back on the moped’s throttle.
↔
We sped along the street past the other shop fronts, most of which now catered to Others’ needs: the Perked Café, the Stalker Steak House, an elven theatre, a church where the Others were trying to pray the gods back.
“Who is that guy?” I had to yell to be heard over the rush of air. Even at the low speed that was Shadowfax’s maximum, it was hard to be heard.
“Who?” Astarte said, as if we had not just been attacked by three chimeras and been saved by a man in red spandex speedos. She laced her hands around the lower part of my stomach, and every time the moped hit a bump in the road, they brushed against my groin, causing my pants to tighten ever so slightly. I lifted her hands up to my chest, and now they were rubbing against my nipples with skin-hardening accuracy. GoneGodDamn it, I thought. I resigned myself to the sad fact that there was nowhere Astarte could touch me without it turning me on.
I groaned and repeated my question. “Don’t play games. He shows up at the docks, then again here. Who is he? And don’t say a former lover. That’s a given. I want to know what he has to do with all this.”
I felt Astarte shrug and put her lips against my ear. “Je ne sais pas.” The word came out soft, hardly a whisper. I guess the succubus could seduce the wind when she needed to.
“Come on … Be serious.”
“I am. He is my former lover.” One of her hands unlaced and presented itself in front of me. The pendant that he had taunted her with at the dock flapped in the wind. “But that particular lover died a long, long time ago, so it cannot be him. Not unless …” Her voice trailed off. “Unless things are more dire than either you or I could imagine.”
“Dire? How so?” But Astarte did not answer. I gripped hard on the breaks and jumped off the bike. “We don’t have much time, and that creature has something to do with all of this. I need to know and you need to tell me. Now!”
At first Astarte took her typical defiant stance, like she was going to tell me I had no right to question her or demand knowledge not meant for mortal ears. But Astarte and I had played that song and dance enough times in the past that she knew she couldn’t get away with it. We were not negotiating another room at the Millennium Hotel. We weren’t arguing about her need to keep the moans and groans of her latest orgy down so that the other guests could sleep. We were talking about the end of everything. And she knew she had lost the right to silence when she agreed to help me out, or let me help her—which amounted to the same thing in this case.
She nodded. “Man,” she said. “That creature is as human as you are and as human as I am not. His name is Enkidu and our story is a long one. But do not worry, Jean-Luc.” She dismounted the moped like she had been straddling it to exhaustion and walked over to me. “I have ways of telling you that are far more efficient than words.” Before I could protest, she kissed me.
The kiss wasn’t sensual, nor was it particularly passionate. It certainly didn’t arouse me. And then images—no, more like memories—started swimming in my head. Astarte was talking to me, using some form of Other communication.
My mind filled with present images—memories that were not my own, but felt as though they were happening now: I see two men—Gilgamesh and Enkidu—being attacked by a creature they called the Bull of Heaven. They pierce its flesh with sword and spear, deflecting its attacks with shield and agility, but it’s not enough. How can two men fight such a powerful creature with only mortal weapons?
Eventually, the Bull of He
aven wears them down and, victorious, stands over Gilgamesh, its mouth gaping open, about to consume its prize. Astarte appears, running into the forest with unnatural speed. She pulls Enkidu and Gilgamesh back and the Bull pursues. It is faster than her, and she is encumbered by two large warriors who are so exhausted they cannot even get to their feet to walk away, let alone run. Astarte turns to fight the Bull, but there is no hope. She cannot win. She knows this. Enkidu knows this. But she is not going to let the Bull take her companions. She lifts her arms up in a fighter’s stance. But before she can swing her sword, Enkidu uses the last of his strength to push her out of the way. Then, standing in front of the beast, he stretches out his arms and cries out, “Enough.” Enough. He is surrendering.
One moment he is standing there, the next he is consumed by the great Bull, who, satisfied with the sacrifice, saunters into the forest. The last thing I see and feel is Astarte holding a wounded Gilgamesh as she cries in utter abandonment.
They say that eighty percent of a conversation is done through gestures and body language. Astarte’s kiss was more like a conversation on overload, because the flashes of knowledge didn’t just show me things. They made me feel them as well. I smelt everything she smelt. Felt everything she felt. Experienced every emotion that she had experienced, exactly as she had experienced it. So when Gilgamesh fell, I felt her fear, knew how devastated she would be to lose him. Astarte, the being who expounded passionately about lust, was in love. Mind-numbing, all-consuming love. I knew what that felt like: It was a feeling I had for Bella … have for Bella. And it was a feeling that I was starting to feel for Medusa, too.
What Astarte felt for that once-upon-a-time king was no less.
The next real emotion that came was when Enkidu stepped into the mouth of the Bull. There I felt another kind of love: a love for a friend, a companion. It was another kind of love I knew. I had felt that kind of love before, too. For PopPop, for Miral and TinkerBelle and CaCa and Sandy. Even for Judith. It was the love you reserved for your family. And what I felt at that moment was powerful.
