by Rob Thurman
He moved away then. He didn’t wait for a comment. The fight was only warming up. There was blood to be spilled, lives—our own—to be saved, answers to be wrenched from an insane god.
“I hate him more now than I did before,” I muttered. “Sanctimonious ass.” Whether he meant it or not, it was too late.
“Perhaps he meant it and we should take it at face value, but that window of opportunity has unfortunately long closed.” He added, “And he managed to get the last word.” His clothes were saturated with blood. I could feel the warmth of it against my back as I did my best to press him hard enough against the wall to pin him, leaving no room for him to be sucked down again. That meant there was no avoiding feeling his blood, all but seeing the cloud of bright copper in the air floating around us.
“Unfortunately,” he’d said, which meant regret, and my brother deserved much more than regret, thanks to that Vayash son of a bitch.
“Last word. That’s the worst.” No—regret was. “Bastard,” I said, wishing for the first time that Kalakos hadn’t been one as I watched for the next Cyclops. “You okay? I can smell the blood. Not enough to take you out of the fun, but could be enough to slow you down.”
“Other than your crushing me into what I’m beginning to think is a piggyback position, I’m all right. Fully functional, certainly not slow, and definitely not your papoose.” I felt his hand urge me away; he was ready to rejoin the battle. I thought about stalling, but this was Niko and he was right. He’d have to lose half the blood in his body to slow down.
As I began to move, I heard a groan from above. The beams that had shaken earlier at Hephaestus’s voice were moving again…and Hephaestus wasn’t talking. They were wrenching free of their mounting and joining together over our heads, booming as they struck. The movement…it wasn’t falling. Not falling down, but moving fast and inevitably, as if they were falling sideways. Tinkertoys would puzzle him, Robin had said. I didn’t think so. I was looking at the most badass set of Tinkertoys on the planet, and Hephaestus wasn’t stopping there. Metal hit metal and was held in place with the sudden intense red, then white glow of a forge I didn’t see.
“Hephaestus is also the god of volcanoes. Fire and metal.” Niko’s hand had altered from pushing to fisting my shirt—Jesus, I was going to die in this pink shirt—and yanking me to stand still. “What is he making?”
A brilliant mind asking a question with the most obvious of answers. Or let’s be honest. Just a damn stupid question.
“Something to kill us, Dr. Oblivious,” I hissed, hoping whatever it was didn’t have great hearing, or any at all. The beams were joining faster, other metal flying up to it to enhance its status as the bestselling murder machine for kids four years and up. It was the size of Janus, no bigger, but a framework with no head. It had arms, though, four of them, with grasping metal claws. I could hear the creak of the ratchets as the hands opened and closed. And it had two legs. Thirteen feet tall in length, it hung above like a waiting spider. Would it climb down or leap inst— Motherfucker.
It was on fire.
All of it.
Like the Cyclops’s eyes but thirteen feet of it. A metal skeleton became an inferno. Metal shouldn’t burn like that, unless Hephaestus wanted it to—as if it were an endless fuel. There was a darting of flaring coat, brown hair, and sword. Robin was getting out before he turned to charcoal. I thought that was a damn good idea. Fighting monsters was one thing. Fighting a god and the industrial age combined, we weren’t properly armed—like with a fire truck and several bulldozers and earthmovers from the nearest construction site.
Shit, it fell. Just…fell. Didn’t climb. Didn’t jump. The building shook under the earthquake of it.
No sense of survival, no pain, no mind to manipulate, on fire, and could play with our charcoaled remains until Christmas if Hephaestus wanted. “Robin was right. This was a bad idea.” Niko’s hand still wrapped in my shirt, I began to weave my way toward the door, then flat-out run as it rose to stand upright. Sliced feet I’d worry about later, if there was a later.
I saw Promise at the entrance to the hall. An earthquake was a good cue that we needed help, but unless she had a couple of tanks with her I’d stick with the running. “Hephaestus, it is I. Aphrodite…O sweet Virgin Mary in heaven.” Under the hood of her cloak her eyes widened and stared upward.
There was the sound of a footstep behind us. Metal against metal, it was the peal of the largest of bells—the one tolling for our asses. The heat had been intense when it had hit the floor. It was getting hotter now.
Idiot Puck. Dying for the answer to the simplest of questions.
Then Hephaestus laughed and the hundreds of shards of metal rang again, this time church bells for a funeral…ours.
Robin ran past Promise, hooking his arm in hers and dragging her after him down the hallway. He wasn’t deserting us. If he had made it out, we could too. And if we couldn’t, other than adding himself as another piece of coal to the furnace in a heroically martyred brothers-in-arms gesture, there was nothing he could do. And if it doesn’t save anyone and you’re still dead, it’s hard to appreciate all the perks of martyrdom. Like having his dick preserved as a sacred relic.
I didn’t look for Kalakos. He had saved Nik, said it was his duty, but it was my duty too and had been long before he came into the picture. Of course, Niko felt the same, and no one outdid him at the job. He was behind me, beside me, and then in front of me, decapitating a Cyclops. Flames were a fountain out of its neck before it collapsed and we ran over the top of its body.
Another step from behind, another earthquake, another rising of the heat until I thought the earth was crashing into the sun. I started to look over my shoulder before deciding I had no desire to see the world of shit about to drop onto us.
“The Cyclops,” Niko snapped.
The last of them were clawing free of the earth—in front of us, on each side—and I snatched a glance behind me…yeah, there too, right in front of something that made me rethink that whole atheist, nonhell philosophy of mine. A gigantic scarecrow of pure hellfire, made special for us on some black altar. No, the devil wasn’t close to this. When it came to taking names and incinerating asses, Greek gods had it all over him.
Step.
I felt my skin began to tighten against the heat.
The Cyclops surrounded us in a closing circle. It wasn’t too many, but it was too little time. We were out of it. Out of goddamn time. Not martyrs, but dead just the same. Didn’t that suck? Didn’t it just…
No.
Hell, no.
Fuck that.
“Niko, down!” I yelled as I raised the Glock. He hit the floor instantly and I started shooting.
Ten Cyclops, I’d counted. You carry guns, you count your ammunition, and you count the enemy. I spun, firing as I went. Every eye a target, every target my whole world. One…four…seven…ten. Ten and the end. Ten shots in a fraction over a second—check the speed-shooting records—and each Cyclops a dead, eyeless heap on the floor. This was why I carried guns. This was why I loved them. Some felt the need for speed and some were about the result: Kill ’em all and let God sort them out. I was a fan of both. I came to a stop where I’d started, the first and last Cyclops to die lying side by side. “I think I’m ready to shoot in the Olympics now.”
“You were ready for the Olympics seven years ago. Stop stroking your ego and your penis extension and move.” Niko was up and running flat-out for the entrance. I was on his heels. Goodfellow was waiting for us there. He had come back, knowing he could do nothing but die with us. What a friend—and an idiot, as a god had told him seconds ago.
I told him so as Niko and I slammed into him, carrying him along in the rush before he had a chance to turn around. The fiery proxy hand of an infuriated dead god, like a plummeting comet, crushed the hall three feet behind us. We erred on the side of caution and kept running. Promise waited for us in the next room and she joined our escape. When we made it out of the buildi
ng, we all stopped and turned to see if this was far enough. If New Jersey would be far enough.
It was. Hephaestus wouldn’t reveal himself or his machines to the outside world. I guess he’d gotten comfortable in his coffin of solid metal, mouth filled with it, eyes blinded by it. Or he was crazy enough that “out of sight, out of mind” was a literal term. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I sat on the ground and then lay back, eyes on the sky. My legs and feet were hamburger; those godawful khaki pants Goodfellow had forced on me were more red than tan now. If Niko hadn’t been wearing black, I’d have seen the same on him, except from the neck down. We both had cuts on our faces. Robin was also in dark colors and I did smell blood on him, puck blood—green and earthy as a forest—but not as much. Goodfellow could move when he wanted to. A hundred thousand lifetimes and more of outrunning jealous husbands or wives—he should be.
We were alive, though, and “surprised about it” didn’t begin to sum that up. I waved a hand to get Promise’s attention. “Sweet Virgin Mary? Yeah? I didn’t know you were Catholic. Didn’t know vampires were anything.”
“My housekeeper is Catholic,” she said, still staring at building thirteen of the factory. “I must have picked it up subconsciously from her. It did seem oddly appropriate. In all my days…Gods.” She pulled at her hood, her hands gloved in silk against the sun as well. “I never wanted to meet one, and I don’t plan on repeating the experience.”
“I warned you he has a bad temper,” Goodfellow said. “And the insanity issue. I said this probably wouldn’t work. But did you listen?”
I lifted a weary arm and aimed the Glock at his knee. “I have one round left. It’s all I need.”
Kalakos came around from the side of the building, where he must have escaped out the back. The cherry on top of the fucking sundae.
“Never mind.” I let my hand flop back. “I think I’ll save it for myself.”
13
Black Sheep
Home is where the heart is or where you bury the ones you want to eat later.
The cattle with their idiotic sayings, mooed by lungs not fit to breathe the same air as mine. The new world would have sayings that fit the mouth of the predator, not the bleating prey. But the new world took time, and I had too much work to do to bother inventing new ones until the Second Coming ruled—hundreds of years yet. It wasn’t so long for those with Auphe blood. A pureblood Auphe had lived thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. I did the math. I didn’t like it. I’d used a calculator for it and to keep track of my growing horde of children, but I’d done it. I would survive a few thousand years easily. Hundreds were nothing.
A drop in the bucket.
Humans. I dragged my claws through the dirt and wished it were flesh. Boring in what they did, boring in what they said, boring to hunt. Criminally boring.
Bored, bored, bored with them and bored, bored, bored here. But I did have to check on the family. Didn’t want naughty thoughts developing in tiny meandering minds or escapes being planned by the incubators. I had picked them out a nice place, more room than the cage that had been my home. Prison. Homes were prisons; prisons were homes. Were homes, were homes…No.
I snarled, then pulled my talons out of the dirt they’d ended up buried knuckle-deep into. It was a good place. Good enough. A cavern in the New Mexico desert, unknown by man or forgotten, it was a small opening three feet across that led straight down. It opened up into four large caverns. I kept the succubae in one guarded by their own children, the Second Coming in another, the dead bodies or the live waiting their turn in the third. The fourth was left for the children to spread as I made more. Room for the family to grow, little bundles of death and teddy bears everywhere.
Cute. Sweet. Look at Junior and Junior and Junior and Junior.
I’d need a new cavern soon.
Worst part was keeping the fifty succubae fed. It was human after human. Fifty every month to be drained of their sexual energy, all energy, unto death. It became tedious when I was the single one intelligent enough to steal them away without alarming the herd and bring them back from all the cities I’d ever traveled to be dropped down the cavern. Some children were grown, but not experienced. Stupid, in fact. Goddamn stupid. They weren’t ready for hunting trips, and nobody delivered this far from a city, no matter the tip.
Life was hard.
It was strange about the sex. Humans were supposed to enjoy it, and it was everywhere you looked where the cattle massed together as their herding instinct told them to. On every building, every wall, every TV or movie screen. It was…pervasive. Ah, that was the kind of word an educated monster like me would know. It was pervasive, and yet despite that none of the human husks were smiling when I sent in the children to clean out the succubae’s lair. Not a one. Screaming was a better name for the open rictus of frozen jaw. All of them the same, and I’d seen many. Too many to count, not interesting enough to bother with a calculator. Many said it well enough. Succubae liked to eat as much as I did.
I didn’t respect them. They weren’t as weak as humans, but only several slithers above them. I did respect the she-snakes’ philosophy, even if it was another human one made their own. They turned it into “if you can’t fuck it then eat it” and did both at the same time. It was efficient, economical, and twice the fun.
The earth began to tremble. Finally. This was what I’d been waiting for while chasing nonsense thoughts around, seconds away from teaching a few of the children about inexperience and stupidity as Caliban had taught the others in that basement. My brother had had my gift of them. Toys. He had many toys, the golden child. Here came one now.
I’d gated to just outside Caliban’s own cave after I felt him gate out as the machine plunged through the roof. I’d shot the lock out of the door, no windows to see through—inhospitable. I walked in and saw what I needed, the inside of the room and what it held. You can’t go where you have never seen and you can’t take anything from there either. This was about taking. I took Janus and gated it far down another cavern that was more of a well tunneling through rock several stories down. Then I had gated sand and dirt on top to complete its desert burial plot for safekeeping.
The tremble of the earth changed to a shaking, with plumes of sand erupting several feet high. It was impressive. Strong, quick, and useful for testing Caliban. How he reacted and fought it told me things, things I needed to measure his worth in the Second Coming. Unfortunately the things I learned were contradictory. No gate, then gate. On the verge of death, then whole again. Intriguing and annoying.
Janus was simpler. Intriguing and a tool, that was all. I planned on sending him back to New York and Caliban again soon enough. So much to learn…and while it wasn’t the ultimate game of Auphe against Auphe, it was a good game. I hadn’t been bored once it finally began.
Sand stopped flying up and now sank down under the earth, into a new pit as a hand, darkly gleaming in the hot sun, broke its way into the air and freedom.
On the downside: “You are a pain the ass. I’ve had body parts in a cooler without ice that kept longer than you.” I was also a truthful monster. When you had no one to fear, you had no reason to lie. “There was a teacher once. She had a saying she wrote every day on the blackboard. ‘Patience is a virtue.’ It made its mark on me, those words of the cattle. From weakness came truth. Those words have let me come as far as I have. From blood and filth and bars and cages, no way out. No way, no way, no way…” My thoughts circled viciously, ’round and ’round, then slowed. I pushed my sunglasses closer to my eyes, which I kept aimed on the sand. I didn’t look at the sun. It burned. It didn’t like me and I didn’t like it. But I would take the burn over the cage. Always. “Until one day I found a way out. I took it, and I plan to take everything else. All there is—because of patience. But while patience is a virtue, pissing me off is not.” I gated it down again and refilled the grave. I’d be back to check on its blind progress.
When I wasn’t watching…judging Caliban. Fitti
ng those conflicting pieces of him together—if I had to tear bits of them off to do it. Finding out how he worked—if I had to open him up and see the wheels go ’round and ’round in his guts and his brain.
Patience is a virtue…
But only sometimes.
14
It was heading toward evening and as I’d gated us and Kalakos yesterday, all of us from home to Goodfellow’s penthouse to escape Janus this morning, that still left me with three days before I could build a new gate to take that thing out of this world. Janus’s waiting those days didn’t seem likely; neither did Niko’s letting me attempt the third death gate in the hopes it would move the titan. But no guarantee.
That meant we moved to the last idea Robin had: the black market. As it involved sewers and underground tunnels, Promise decided that in addition to demented gods and a leviathan of fire and metal that had almost destroyed us while nearly converting her to Catholicism, she had had enough for the day. She wished Niko thought the same, given the much more passionate kiss she shared with him by the cars. Both of them were usually more private in their affections.
