by Brey Willows
“Totally. Of course.” She shrugged and swallowed back tears. “No.”
Dani took her hand and tugged so they were sitting on the sand together. She put her arm around Meg’s shoulders again. “Tell me.”
“Am I so terrible that people don’t want me around?” Meg hated the pitiful tone in her voice but couldn’t help it. Tis’s offhand comment had hurt.
“Terrible isn’t the word. Passionate. Wild. Energetic. Curious. Those are the words I’d use.”
She stroked the top of Meg’s wing, sending electric shivers through her feathers. “Then why didn’t she tell me about this place? What did she mean?”
Dani was quiet while she thought, something Meg was used to when it came to Dani, though it drove her crazy when it came to other people.
“Let me ask you something. When you’re in a great mood, would you rather have a quiet dinner and read a good book, or would you rather hang out with friends, listen to music, and eat and drink the night way?”
“You know the answer to that.” Meg liked the feeling of Dani’s arm around her. The warm strength that emanated from her made her want to immerse herself in everything she had been and was in the moment and would be in the future.
“This place is dinner and a book. It’s a place of quiet and reflection and time to get away from everything.” She hugged Meg to her. “Your passion for life is exceptional, like everything about you. I know you like occasional time by yourself, but I also know how fast you’d get bored with no drama and no one to have sex with.”
Meg sniffled against the tears she couldn’t quite keep at bay. “I’ve never felt unwanted before. I don’t like it.”
Dani laughed softly. “Believe me, you’re far from unwanted. And if you felt like staying here, I’m sure they’d welcome you. But I think any place where you’d have to blunt your beautiful energy isn’t the right place for you, let alone them.”
They continued to sit there watching the waves slowly lap at the shore, and Meg curled into Dani’s strength. She thought about what Tis had said, as well as Dani’s take on it. Always one to take things at face value, she rarely stopped and really thought about the deeper sense of things. Now, though, she wanted to understand. Dani was right. She did get bored quickly, and although she was happy to lie in the sun for a few hours doing nothing, it was usually with a thousand things she wanted to do later going through her mind. And, yeah, sex was often in the mix, if she wasn’t already having it on the beach. Lately, however, the parties had started to pall, the sex had become rote, and the alcohol was more sour than sweet. Who the hell am I?
The sun hovered at the edge of the horizon, slowly sinking beneath the waves and casting sherbet splatters across the duck egg sky. They both looked over when they heard Kanaloa call to them.
“Hey! How about a little wave play with my old friend Death?” He held two surfboards under his arms.
Dani looked down at Meg, still tucked under her arm. “Want to have a go?”
“Now? Isn’t it about to get dark?”
Dani stood and pulled Meg to her feet. “It is, but there’s a full moon tonight. And surfing under a full moon is something else.”
“Sharks? Other bitey things? I know we can’t die, but I don’t want to see how hard it is to grow back a limb. And I’m not getting my feathers wet just to have something sting or chomp me.” Dani’s laugh made Meg’s stomach flip, and she started to smile. She could think deep thoughts later. It was time to play again.
“Bitey things tend to say away from me. I can’t speak for the other gods, but every living thing avoids death. It’s a beautiful aspect of evolution, the intrinsic desire for self-preservation. The smaller fish don’t mind me as much because their brains aren’t as evolved. But the big things tend to steer clear.”
There was no sadness in Dani’s voice the way there used to be when she talked about the loneliness that came as part of her job. I wonder if that’s because of the believer thing. “In that case, I’m in. Let’s do it.”
She held Dani’s hand as they made their way to Kanaloa, who was kneeling in the sand to wax his board. The idea of doing something important to Dani was exciting, and she couldn’t wait to try something new. The fact that she’d be wet and pressed against Dani out on the water didn’t hurt either.
Chapter Seventeen
Angie eyed the newcomers with distaste, and yet Dis could also feel her deeply hidden fear. Though Angie knew exactly what she wanted and why, it didn’t make her immune to the knowledge that the gods were powerful, regardless of why or what they did with that power. Dis liked that she functioned within her own tightly controlled chaos.
“Seriously? I thought you said you were going to help us. Not make us the chess pieces in a game of power.” She motioned at Osiris and Horus. “He’s green, and he’s a bird. That guy keeps looking at me like he’s going to feed me to some weird pet he probably has.” She pointed at Iblis. “And you…I still haven’t figured out what the hell you are.” She glared at Dis, her arms crossed over her chest.
Iblis leaned forward to say something, but Dis held up her hand to stop him. “Did you think we could vacate the Vatican with a few meat-bag humans? Don’t you think God will show up to defend his house and followers?”
Angie slumped into a chair. “I’d hoped for something like that, yeah. That’s how you made it sound when you convinced me to follow you into this black hole of a plan.”
Horus moved to her side and placed his huge hand on her shoulder, almost gently. “The world is a confusing place, small woman. Your desire to rid the world of the gods might happen one day. Today is not that day. But we will rid the world of the gods who have failed their followers for centuries, who have demanded war but not cared about the aftermath.”
Angie looked at his hand on her shoulder and then up at him before she slid from beneath his touch. She looked shaken, but her true mettle continued to shine through.
“I’m not convinced. In fact, if you’re going to war with other gods, why do you need humans? Can’t you just snap your fingers and bring the Vatican to the ground? Then you can fling lightning bolts and tridents and owls and whatever the fuck else at one another all you want. Why should I put my people in the middle of this?”
Osiris opened a cooler and handed Angie a beer with the Eye of Horus symbol on the label. Dis thought it was both disturbing and hilarious that he and his son Horus had decided to take Tisera’s suggestion about rebranding to heart. As gods of creation and harvest, they’d established a brewery that developed beer laced with a mild aphrodisiac. Not only did people get addicted to it, they also began to flock to the gods as followers, just as the fury had predicted would happen with good rebranding.
“There are two rules when it comes to another god’s temple. First, we can enter if they specifically invite us in. That’s the way it’s most commonly done, and a tenet we’ve lived by for millennia. But the sanctity of the structure is also protected by the faith of those within, the ones who have created their gods in the first place. That’s what really makes the structure strong. If you shatter the faith of those within, if you can make them think that their gods have truly deserted them in their time of need, then the invitation becomes unnecessary. Take down the followers, and the god will fall with them. As gods, we forget that there are few rules without loopholes of some kind. Even for us.”
He handed bottles of beer to the other gods. “Paradoxically, faith has been weakened by the gods coming into the physical world. They’ve always been told theirs is the only one, and now they know they’ve been lied to. It serves our purposes, because the believers inside those walls are already in a state of confusion, which weakens the structure. We simply need humans to get into the building and remove the faithful. Once the believers are dead or their faith broken, you can open the doors and invite us in. You believe in us, you see, which allows us passage within. Just as the Christians took over Pagan sites and claimed them for their own use, so too will you then claim this site for yours.�
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Angie sipped her beer and looked at them contemplatively. “People were burning temples all over the place not so long ago, but it didn’t do any good. The gods just rebuilt them. I guess their followers were still strong, huh? None of this shit makes any sense to me. I hope you’ve got a better plan than that for this particular building. And then after? What about us?”
Iblis scoffed and was about to answer, but Dis cut him off once again. “You leave. Or stay. Whichever you want. Stay and watch the fun or run away like those grotesque poultry things you eat on this planet.”
Angie frowned, clearly thinking. “Chickens? You’d call us chicken for not getting in the middle of a war between gods? You’ve got some nerve, lady.” She set down her beer and stood unsteadily. “I’m going to let my people know we’re on a suicide mission. They can decide whether or not to get on this ride to nowhere. All we can hope is you all cancel each other out.” She stumbled from the room, holding on to the wall as she went.
“I forget how quickly humans are affected by the drink,” Horus said, sipping his beer through a straw, since they hadn’t yet created bottles made for beaks.
Iblis glared at Dis. “I dislike being silenced. I don’t suggest you do it again.”
Dis stepped into his personal space, her eyes open wide so he could see her world and her power. “I silenced you because you would have said something to tip the human off and send her scuttling away.”
“There are more humans. We don’t need that one.” He was clearly trying hard not to step back and averted his eyes, though his jaw worked angrily.
“As narrow-minded as the humans, you are. Think.” She poked his forehead. “Humanity First is a major player in the world. They defy the gods on every continent. They are a mass of faithless who could get us into places of worship all over the world. She’s the voice and face of their movement, and she’s got power of her own.” She stepped back, bored with his fear. “And when humans die in huge groups, people won’t know what to do or to believe. Humanity First will be working with gods, dying for gods, all while extolling their belief the gods shouldn’t exist. The confusion and chaos it will cause will be magnificent. Non-believers will turn on each other. Believers will kill believers thanks to the development of theocracies. Most importantly, true belief, the kind that created the gods in the first place, will belong to those who have proven their strength and validity.”
She turned to Horus and caressed his beak. “I’ll draw in the power from the solar eclipse and use it to slow time. Not for long, but long enough for us to attack in darkness, to shroud the world in fear. And to give you and the others who follow me time to drink that power from me. When the eclipse is over, when the sun shines once again, you’ll not only have the power of your believers, you’ll have the power of the universe. The gods still standing will step in and take true control of the humans left.”
Osiris opened another beer and relaxed in a chair. “We’ll rebuild. The world will be as it once was…with better plumbing and electronics.”
Dis looked at the few underworld gods beside her. They were a small group but powerful nonetheless. She’d hoped for Hades and Freya, but both had been able to dismiss the seeds of doubt she’d planted among the gods. Azrael had as well, but she’d figured he would. He had been an angel, not born to rule the underworld and the dead as the other gods were. Surprisingly, Yama had yet to answer her call. The blue-skinned Hindu god of death had seemed a sure bet, but apparently he was less power-hungry than his contemporaries. He remained in India, actually talking to the followers about what they wanted in an afterlife. It was baffling that he appeared to truly care for the believers of his religion. Silly god. If he gets in our way, another underworld god will simply have to take over his territory. She liked that notion, full of complexity and strangeness as it was. Maybe she’d suggest it, just to get the ball rolling. There were other gods, smaller ones relegated to bit roles among outlying religions who might come along for the ride. She decided to visit some the next day, since they had to wait for the rest of the Humanity First group to arrive.
Iblis stared out the window at the tall walls of the Vatican in the distance. “What’s the plan?”
She definitely hadn’t been surprised when Iblis had shown up. He’d always been a narcissistic goat, and the jinn were known mischief-makers. He’d refused to bow down before man and been cast out by his cloud god, and he’d been pissed off about it ever since. She wasn’t sure what he wanted more: power or simply revenge against the humans he felt had wronged him.
From her position in the stars, she knew he was simply playing out a story that had been created when humans could imagine something bigger than themselves but had to relate it to their own small lives in order to fill in the incomprehensible gaps. A wayward son disobeying and being forced into an unkind world wasn’t anything new, and every religion had a version of it. Still, he was unlikely to see past his own vitriolic nature or the fact that his story was one created by the humans who had thought up the gods in the first place.
“We’re going to bring the cloud gods to us. We’ll show them what power looks like, and when humans begin dying in the process, they’ll have no choice but to back down.” She smiled at Horus and Osiris. “They’ll have to be dealt with, of course, in order to keep them from taking power back at the first opportunity. I recommend releasing them into my domain.”
Stunned silence greeted her statement, as she knew it would. She gave them time to digest it.
“Yes. I suppose it makes sense. I hadn’t truly considered the death of another god at my own hand, but there’s no other option.” Osiris picked at the label on his beer bottle. “What’s to keep the believers of those gods left here on earth from creating a new version of that god?”
Dis finished her beer, glad he saw it her way. The other two were younger and would be easy to manipulate. “We’ll make it a spectacle. The white fury wanted them to be visible, and we’ll make their exile visible as well. We’ll play it on every screen on the planet. Humans believe what they see, especially on that mind control machine they keep in their homes. When they see their gods gone, when they see one of the most iconic religious buildings reduced to dust, they’ll turn to the gods left. Even if a few still have hope, the numbers won’t be there to help re-create the gods. At least, not for a very long time.” She held her hand out to Horus. “The drink is singing in my blood. Take me to bed.” She led him from the room, anticipation and excitement an unlimited aphrodisiac. She could almost taste the despair and devastation to come. Come, uppity godlings. Fall at my feet and weep.
Chapter Eighteen
Warm water lapped at her legs and moonlight stroked the ocean like a lover. But Dani hardly noticed, thanks to the beautiful woman straddling the board in front of her. Kanaloa had just taken a wave to shore and was paddling back, leaving Dani and Meg to float gently by themselves. Meg leaned back against Dani, and her energy was quieter than Dani could ever remember it being.
“This is amazing. I don’t know why I’ve never done it.” Meg scooped some water into her palm and let it fall over Dani’s leg. “Sometimes I get so caught up in the day-to-day stuff, I forget how much I need nature. It makes everything quiet but brings it all into focus at the same time.”
Dani shivered and tried to concentrate. “Wait until we catch a wave. That’s really something.”
“So how do I do it?”
Dani hadn’t ever tried tandem surfing, though she’d watched plenty of other riders do so. Surfing was mostly a solitary sport, just a rider and her board in the vastness of the ocean, but sometimes people found it fun to experience it together. Dani had never thought she’d have the chance, and now that it was here, she could barely breathe. “When we’re ready, we’ll position the board in front of a wave. You’ll scoot forward and kneel toward the front. Once I’ve popped up, you can carefully stand up. Your right foot will be at the front, pointed forward. Your back foot will be turned sideways, toward the side of
the board. Make sense?”
Meg’s brow was furrowed in the way that always said she was really absorbed in something. “I’m with you. Like the warrior’s pose in yoga?”
“Yeah, pretty much exactly like that. Soft knees, relaxed body. Because I’ve done this before and I’m in the back, I’ll do most of the steering. Once we’ve done it a few times we can try turning, and you’ll use your balance to lean into the wave slightly.”
Kanaloa waved at them to take the next wave, and Dani felt her kinship with the former god of the underworld, in the loose way the Hawaiians had thought of the afterlife. He was also an ocean god, and Dani had always felt an affinity for the ocean deities. Poseidon rarely came by Afterlife, preferring the ocean’s depths to walls and concrete, and he tended to keep to himself. He employed a huge number of nymphs and mer-people to carry messages all over the world, and he was fully aware of how necessary he was, though he didn’t have the number of followers many of the cloud gods did. Unlike Poseidon, Kanaloa had a chilled-out, serene energy that called to Dani’s desire for peace.
“Okay, ready? Knee onto the board and put your weight forward.” Dani leaned down and started paddling. When she caught the crest, she popped up, but without her usual space to get into stance she was off balance, and when she went to correct it, she caught Meg’s wing. The board flipped and sent them both into the water.
The wave passed, and Dani could hear Kanaloa’s bellowing laughter across the water. Meg spluttered to the surface, wiping water from her eyes.
“I don’t think that’s how you do it.” She grinned and began to laugh.
Her laughter was infectious, and Dani joined in. They rose and fell with the swells, hanging onto the board, until they eventually calmed. “Okay. Let’s try it again. Sorry, I’ve never done it before.”
Meg looked surprised. “Really?” She splashed some water at Dani. “I like being your first. It’s not often that gets to happen when you live forever.”
