Mythmaker

by Tim Waggoner

  He opens his mouth—dry lips peeling apart like two strips of sticky tape—and tries to call out for Sam, but his voice doesn’t work at first. He swallows, breathes out, then in, and tries again.

  “Sammy?” The word comes out as a rasping croak.

  “I’m here.” Sam doesn’t sound much better.

  Dean’s not sure exactly how close Sam is, but his voice came from nearby. Without saying anything, both brothers start to squirm around on the floor until they bump into each other.

  “Do you think the others are here, too?” Sam asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  They spend several minutes calling for Julie, Gretchen, and Stewart, but none of them answer.

  “Maybe they’re still unconscious,” Sam says.

  “Maybe they’re not here.”

  Dean hears Sam thrash around on the floor. “Too bad we’ve got zip ties on us,” Sam says. “Otherwise we could try to untie each other.”

  “And if the Underwoods used duct tape, we could try to tear it off with our teeth,” Dean adds.

  “You think they did this to us?”

  “Maybe. The last thing I remember was washing down a mouthful of roast beef with a glass of milk, and after that, lights out. I figure we were drugged.”

  “It had to be in the milk,” Sam says. “That way they could make sure they didn’t accidently drug themselves.”

  A door above them opens, and fluorescent lights hum to life above them. Dean and Sam squint their eyes, and listen to shoes thumping on wood as people descend the stairs. This is definitely a basement, Dean thinks, and a second later his vision adjusts and he sees that he’s right. The basement is unfinished, with bare concrete walls that match the floor. Metal storage shelves line the walls, filled with the tools of the hunter’s craft: weapons, of course, but also spell ingredients kept in neatly labeled jars, and volumes of books, some new but most very old, likely handed down from generation to generation. There are notebooks, too, along with loose pages that have been bound with twine. Much hunter lore is recorded by hunters themselves and never published, like his father’s journal.

  “Sorry about that, boys. I hope your headaches aren’t too bad,” Julie says.

  Any hope that it wasn’t the Underwoods who drugged them vanishes upon hearing Julie’s words. Dean shifts around until he’s facing the stairs, as does Sam, and they watch as the Underwood family steps onto the basement floor, Julie first, Stewart next, Gretchen last. Stewart steps to his mother’s right, Gretchen to her left. All three of them carry handguns, but they’re holding them down at their sides—for now, at least. Dean sees sadness in Gretchen’s eyes, but her brother is smirking, almost as if he thinks what’s happening here is a joke. Julie’s face is unreadable to teenage Dean, but if he were older, he would recognize her expression as one of resignation.

  He’s not surprised to find that he’s scared—his father once told him that only a fool, a madman, or a dead man doesn’t feel fear at one time or another—but he is surprised by how much he’s afraid. He’s hunted with his father lots of times, even gone a couple times by himself when his father thought the situation wasn’t too dangerous and would make a good training session for him. And while he was scared on those hunts, he also felt prepared. He wasn’t bound like he is now, he was armed, and his father told him whatever lore he needed to know to get the job done. One of the things that Dean likes about hunting is that supernatural creatures have rules that govern their behavior. Rules that explain why they do the things they do, and rules that tell hunters how to kill them. For example, ghosts want vengeance for some wrong that was done to them in life, and to get rid of them, you need to find and burn their bones. As long as you know the lore, you know what to expect from a supernatural creature. But Dean knows there are no easy answers when it comes to humans. They’re unpredictable, and that’s what frightens him the most. Sometimes they can do truly awful things for what they believe are good reasons. There’s nothing simple about them, and that’s why, in a very real sense, Dean prefers monsters to humans. At least with monsters, you know where you stand.

  “I’m sorry we have to do this,” Gretchen says. “We wouldn’t if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Stewart says. “I’m enjoying this.”

  Gretchen shoots her brother a dark look, and Julie says, “Hush.” She doesn’t look at her son as she says this, though. She keeps her gaze fastened on Sam and Dean.

  “The three of us had some help taking out the Sheepsquatch,” she says, “and now it’s time for us to pay our bill.” She raises her hand—it’s an effort for her to do so—and points toward the far end of the basement.

  Dean knows better than to turn his back on anyone who’s holding a weapon on him, but he shifts around until he can look in the direction Julie indicates. Sam does, too.

  Against the far wall, resting in a pool of shadow, is a high-backed wooden chair. An emaciated naked man sits there, bound to the chair by strips of white cloth wrapped around his stick-like arms, bony legs, and sunken chest. A huge set of deer antlers protrude from his hairless head, which lolls to the side as if he’s unable to keep it upright, and his eyes are moist and black like an animal’s. Parchment-thin flesh is drawn tight to his skull, and his mouth—which appears to have no lips—opens and closes rhythmically, as if he’s trying to speak, but no sounds emerges. His skin is leathery and colored a mottled yellow-gray, making his race impossible to determine.

  “Sam, Dean,” Julie begins, “allow me to introduce you to the Lord of the Hunt.”

  * * *

  Dean doubted it would stop the reject from an 80s slasher film, but he drew his .45 and fired at Karrion, hoping that bullets might at least slow him down. He fired three rounds into the god’s chest, and while Karrion’s body jerked with each impact, he kept coming.

  “Keep him busy, Sam!”

  “You got it!”

  Sam started firing his 9mm at Karrion, and the god turned to face him. He took lurching steps toward Sam, the 9mm’s rounds having no more effect on him than the .45’s had. As Karrion drew close to Sam, he swung his machete. The razor-sharp blade hissed through the air, and Sam jumped back just in time to avoid having his throat sliced open. At the same time, Dean tucked his .45 back into his pants and drew his knife. He ran behind Karrion, crouched down, and with a vicious swipe to the god’s left leg, midway between the hip and knee, cut his hamstring muscles. Blood gushed from the wound and Karrion’s leg, no longer able to support weight, buckled, and the god fell to the ground. Dean moved away just as Karrion swung the machete toward him, and the god’s formerly impassive expression twisted into a mask of frustrated fury.

  Dean switched his blood-slick knife to his left hand, drew his .45 once more, and aimed it at Karrion, who was furiously swiping his machete back and forth through the air, striking nothing.

  “Good thing slashers like this never run,” Dean said. “Otherwise, he’d have sliced and diced us by now.”

  Sam had his 9mm trained on the downed god as well.

  “We’d better question him while we can,” Sam said.

  “Okay, but he doesn’t seem like much of a talker.”

  Karrion tried to get up onto his uninjured leg, but Sam put a round into his right kneecap, and the god went down once more.

  “Hey, you!” Dean said. “Bone-Face! What the hell are you doing in this town? You shouldn’t exist anywhere outside of an old VHS movie. By the way, here’s a tip: You might think about covering up that ugly mug of yours with a mask. It worked for Michael and Jason—all the greats.”

  Karrion fixed his one baleful eye on Dean and snarled.

  “At least we know he can make sounds,” Dean said.

  “Can’t say much for his vocabulary, though,” Sam said.

  Dean wasn’t sure what to do next. He had no illusions that they’d defeated Karrion. No way a god would go down and stay down this easy. But it looked like they weren’t going to get any informatio
n out of him. Most of the gods he and Sam had run into over the years were only too happy to talk your ear off. Sam theorized the reason for this was that some gods needed a connection with humans in order to feed off them, and one way to establish that connection was through communication. Dean figured it was because gods were jerks with big egos who liked to show off how superior they were. Either way, it usually wasn’t hard to get a god talking, and once you did, they’d tell you more than they realized, often giving you the one tidbit of information you needed to defeat them. But not this guy. If Karrion could talk, he didn’t seem inclined to.

  Murmured chanting filled the alley then, and Dean realized that he and Sam had forgotten about Karrion’s worshippers. That was a rookie mistake, one that could still get them killed. There were enough worshippers that if they were armed—or even if they weren’t—and they attacked as a group, they might well prove a threat, even if they were older. Dean and Sam could try to fight their way free, but in order to succeed, they’d have to kill a number of the worshippers, maybe most of them, and Dean didn’t want to do that. These poor suckers had been manipulated by Karrion, and they weren’t responsible for their actions—at least, not entirely.

  Dean turned to look at the worshippers, half-expecting to see them coming at him and Sam with whatever makeshift weapons they could get hold of—broken bottles, lengths of pipe, pieces of wood sharpened to deadly points… But instead they stood motionless, heads bowed, hands clasped, lips moving in unison, and he realized they were praying.

  “Karrion, our lord, arise and kill… Karrion, our lord, arise and kill…”

  “Crap,” Dean muttered.

  Several of the older worshippers moaned and went limp. They would’ve fallen to the ground if those closest to them didn’t reach out and help them remain upright. Dean heard a scuffing noise, boots sliding across the ground. He turned back to Karrion in time to see the god rise awkwardly to his feet. The left leg of his coveralls was smeared with blood, but while the leg itself appeared stiff, it held his weight.

  “He’s healing,” Sam said. “The worshippers are praying to him, literally giving him their strength.”

  Dean sighed. “Of course they are.” He’d known they couldn’t easily defeat a god, but this situation was looking worse with every passing second. He hated going into battle without any reliable lore. Humans were already at a big enough disadvantage when going up against supernatural creatures, but if you didn’t have at least an idea of what your opponent’s weaknesses might be, you really were up the brown creek without a paddle. He gripped his knife tighter and aimed his .45 at Karrion’s head. He had no intention of running, and he knew Sam didn’t either. They’d stand their ground, fight, and hope that luck broke their way before—

  A sound like a cannon blast erupted in the alley, and an instant later half of Karrion’s head disintegrated into bone fragments, red mist, and gobbets of flesh. The god went down on one knee, blood pouring from his ravaged head to patter on the ground like crimson rain, but he didn’t fall.

  A rough, gravelly voice followed the cannon blast. “If you boys know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my way.”

  Dean and Sam turned in the direction of the voice. A man stood in the mouth of the alley, big and tall like Karrion, and Dean knew at once that they were looking at another god. His head had been shaved almost all the way down to the scalp, leaving only a covering of black fuzz. His face was clean-shaven, with a broad nose, a prominent, square jawline, and an aggressively jutting chin. He wore a tight black muscle shirt which displayed arms so exaggeratedly swollen that Dean didn’t see how he could move them, along with green fatigue pants and black military-style boots. He held an oversized weapon in a two-handed grip, its quadruple barrels smoking. It looked something like a cross between a double-barreled shotgun—with an extra pair of barrels—and an elephant gun, and even though the lighting was dim in the alley, the gunmetal gleamed as if it produced its own light. As the god moved into the alley, a number of followers entered behind him, maintaining a distance, probably as much from wishing to remain out of the line of fire as respect for their god. These worshippers were mixed in terms of age, gender, and race, although there weren’t many old people in this group. All of them had guns—pistols, rifles, shotguns—but they carried their weapons down and at their sides. Dean had no doubt they would quickly raise them and begin firing if their god commanded it.

  The brothers were even farther up the brown creek now, Dean thought.

  NINE

  Paeon stopped in front of the examination room door, but he made no move to open it.

  “This isn’t working,” he said.

  Lena nearly bumped into him when he stopped. For an instant, she swayed on her feet, a mild wave of dizziness briefly taking hold of her. She’d been drinking coffee to keep awake, and she’d reached a point where she was equally exhausted and wired. It was a strange state to be in. She felt disconnected from what was happening around her, and everything seemed more than a little unreal. Then again, she was working as an assistant to a god of healing who—as she’d discovered—was also a god of illness when he so wished. She should be more surprised that anything felt even close to real now.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “This is going too slow.” Frustration was evident in Paeon’s voice.

  “You’ve helped many people tonight. Even you can only work so fast. Perhaps you need a rest?”

  She wasn’t certain that beings like Paeon required rest. Aside from his frustration, he seemed as full of energy as he had when he’d walked into her practice. He hadn’t eaten or drank, not so much as a nibble on a snack cracker or a sip of water, but it was possible that even if his body didn’t tire, his mind might.

  He turned to face her, scowling. “I do not need rest.”

  His voice was low and angry, and Lena tensed, expecting to be punished once more. She was relieved when Paeon made no move to reach for his caduceus.

  “Then what’s wrong, my lord?” She hoped her use of the honorific would keep him from becoming angrier with her. “You’ve helped dozens of people tonight, and in return, each has pledged him or herself to you. And you’ve fended off challenges by three other gods.”

  Blight had been the first god to attack Paeon, and after him had come Silence and then The Degrader. The latter two gods gave Paeon just as much trouble as Blight had, but in the end he had triumphed over them and claimed most of their worshippers as his own. As far as she could tell, the Apotheosis was working exactly the way it was supposed to, but obviously Paeon didn’t think so.

  “So far, all I have been doing is reacting,” Paeon said. “Someone comes to me ill or injured, and I heal them. Gods appear to challenge me, and I fight them. One cannot achieve true Apotheosis through passivity. One must be aggressive.”

  As an oncologist, Lena understood the difference between passive and aggressive treatment. “How does one heal aggressively, my lord?”

  Instead of answering, Paeon opened the door to the examination room and entered. Lena followed.

  An attractive woman with straight, light-brown hair, black-framed glasses, and hoop earrings sat on the examining table. She’d removed her winter coat, as well as her shirt, and she now wore only boots, jeans, and a white tank top. She had a striking tattoo on her upper arm—a highly detailed, realistic rendering of an Indian elephant head, with swirling, interlocking designs made of blue lines on top of pinkish-purple hide. As a physician, Lena wasn’t a fan of tattoos. As far as she was concerned, the risk of infection was too great. But she had to admit that this one was spectacular. But as she and Paeon approached the woman, Lena thought she’d been too hasty in her appreciation of the elephant. Now that she was closer, she could see the skin around the tattoo was red and swollen.

  Paeon gave the tattoo a bored glance, then looked at the woman and forced a smile.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, voice flat, as if he didn’t care what the answer was.
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br />   “Tera,” she said, her tone uncertain. She looked at Lena, and Lena gave the woman what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Your tattoo is bothering you,” Paeon said.

  Tera nodded. “I had the last work done on it a couple days ago, and everything seemed fine. I’ve gone to the same shop lots of times, and I never had any trouble before, but last night it started itching and…” she trailed off.

  “I can relieve your discomfort,” Paeon said, “but in return, you must swear allegiance to me and come when I summon you. Do you agree to this?” He spoke the words without enthusiasm, like an actor who’d grown bored with his role.

  “Yes. If half the things people say about you are true—”

  “Everything they say is true,” Paeon interrupted. “Now please hold still.” He removed the caduceus from his pocket and touched it to the woman’s tattoo. The mystical object glowed with golden light, but instead of healing the woman, she drew in a sharp breath, as if the caduceus’s touch hurt her. Paeon frowned and concentrated harder. The caduceus’s glow grew stronger, and in response the woman screamed. She pulled away from the caduceus and slapped a hand over her tattoo as if she’d been burned.

  Lena didn’t understand what had happened. Had Paeon, in his irritation, accidently harmed the woman instead of healing her? She experienced a momentary urge to take hold of Paeon’s arm and pull him away from the woman to prevent him from doing any more damage to her, but she hesitated, fearing how the god might react to her interference in his current mood. Paeon seemed more curious than angry, though. He gently took hold of the woman’s wrist and removed her hand from her shoulder. The flesh was now healthy, but the tattoo was no longer an image of an elephant. The ink’s shape was rearranging, its colors transforming. A new image appeared, that of a young woman standing in front of an easel, painting what looked like a picture of Paeon.