by R. E. Vance
Yes, Bella had been dead for seven years, but up until a year ago I had thought she was gone, gone. As in, turn off the lights, goodbye forever, no soul, no afterlife. Nothing. With the gods gone, Heaven and Hell were now closed. But then this creature, this First Law came, and I discovered that Bella wasn’t gone, gone. She was in the void left behind by the gods. Alone forever. And me, I was here on Earth with absolutely no way to get to her.
Astarte’s gaze softened. No, that’s not right … it lessened. The creature that stared back at me was less succubus now and more … human. Her facade dropped, and I knew that the person in the car with me at that very moment wasn’t the demigoddess of lust, but a being who cared for me. “I’m sorry,” Astarte said. “I didn’t mean to be so harsh. It’s just that you will never see her again. You know that, don’t you?” Despite being a diva and a huge pain in my ass, she was my friend.
There was that word again. “Will.” You will never see her again. You will not be with her again. She will never return. By the GoneGods I knew it to be true, but still, how do you turn it off? Everything I was, am and will be is because of her. Hell, the fact that I even stuck around Paradise Lot to run that GoneGodDamned hotel was because of her and the promise I’d made to her to help Others.
Astarte took my hand in hers, not in a “This is going to lead to sex” kind of way, but more in a “I am your friend” gesture. “You are still young. You are in very good health. Why not enjoy what time you have left? Bella, from everything you have told me about her, will understand. She will even welcome it.”
That was true … her last words to me were, “Live well,” and being with someone like Medusa would be living well. But still. “I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“Very well,” Astarte said, her lips warm and inviting. “But should the day come when you can, know that Bella will rejoice. As will I. Bella and I do not have much in common, but we both want you to be happy.”
I fumbled the twisty-tie on my necklace. “I know you’re right,” I said. “You’re a good friend. A difficult, troublesome pain in my ass. But a good friend, nonetheless.”
“I am,” Astarte agreed. “A friend who will do much to help you. And a friend who asks for little in return.”
“I’m not taking you to the gala.”
“By the GoneGods!” she said, every ounce of her succubus nature returning with a flood of passion and desire. “All that sentiment wasted for nothing!”
“I like you, too,” I said, putting the car in Drive.
“Human,” Astarte growled, “I shall never understand you.”
Hairy Men, Fish and Flight … As in, Run Away
We pulled up to the docks just before ten in the evening. The sun had long set, the only light coming from the moon that hung high in the sky. Several barges swayed lazily in the evening tide. Once they were part of a vibrant trade that ran through Paradise Lot, but ever since the Others moved in, the port was rarely used and had an abandoned feel to it.
Across the bay was the Promenade, but whereas once it was lit by the lights of restaurants and the amusement park, the only lights one could see now were the few campfires of homeless Others that spent the night on the beach. It made me sad to see the decline of Paradise Lot, a city so aptly named because it had once served as a beacon of trade and tourism. Now it was a slum, and all because most humans didn’t know how to coexist with creatures that they used to read about in fairy tales.
I guess some of us just couldn’t handle fantasy becoming tangible.
I pulled into a long concrete driveway that paralleled the water. No chains locked the large mesh gate and no guard stopped us from rolling in. I drove slowly along the loading bay area looking for the SakanaSama Mori.
“What are we doing here?” Astarte said, still sulking.
“We’re picking something up for the gala.”
“The gala I can’t go to,” the succubus pouted. Sexily.
The docks curved, and as soon as I turned the bend, I saw a delivery van with a bat-like creature called a popobawa sitting behind the wheel, his little horns sticking out of the sides of his brown cap. Right in front of the van stood a very large and very, very hairy man. He was well-built, about six feet tall, and he wore a leather thong, old Roman-style shin guards and nothing else. Nothing, that is, if you discounted the carpet on his chest. Seriously, the guy’s chest was more Velcro than hair, and I got an image of him falling on a shag rug and getting stuck. He reminded me of Sean Connery in Zardoz.
Apparently, when Stewart said they had a human problem, he was being quite literal. Whoever that man was, he didn’t want the van to leave the dock. I’d seen this before—well, not this exactly. I’d never seen a grown man in a thong snarling at a van like a hyped-up Doberman Pinscher, but I’d seen human beings challenge Others because they fit some preconceived notion as to what a demon looked like. Racial profiling—or rather, Other profiling. If I had a penny for every beating that humans justified because poor creatures had horns like the Devil, I’d vacation in a penny arcade. Just because a satyr has cloven feet, or an ooak has antlers, or a fire dragon has red skin, doesn’t mean they are devils. But humans are humans, and we are quick to judge you by the color of your skin or the bone protruding from your skull.
Thing was, I knew the popobawa. I met him at the St. Mercy Hospital when I was helping Others complete check-in forms. Most Others are not illiterate, they just don’t speak a language you could input in Microsoft Office, and dealing with hospital bureaucracy can be overwhelming. I’d helped fill out countless forms until I met the popobawa and, in a moment of inspired genius, declared him the Master Form Filler. Miral tells me he’s in twice a week, helping conquer human bureaucracy one form at a time. I knew this creature to be kind and good-natured. Given that, I suspected that the hairy man was picking on the popobawa because the Other reminded him of something that once-upon-a-time slighted him in some way or other.
He was bullying the popobawa, and the one thing I hate more than anything else is a bully.
“Stay here,” I said as I got out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
Astarte didn’t move as she stared at the man with an expression that was an equal mix of shock and desire.
“You! Zardoz reject!” I cried out. The crazed man did not turn around, just continued crouching before the van, growling. “Leave him alone. He’s just trying to do his job.”
The popobawa rolled down his window a crack. “Master of Master Form Filler. You’re here to save me?” he gulped as he held out the simple Bic pen I gave him all that time ago.
“Yes,” I said.
“Thank you, Master of Master Form Filler. Thank you!” he yelped, and closed his window.
“You,” I repeated, putting a hand on his shoulder, “you leave him—”
I’d trained in the Army, I’d done several tours with a special forces unit created to deal with unruly Others of all shapes and sizes … In my killing days, I’d taken down everything from a dust of rebel pixies armed with box cutters to a bona fide, fully grown fire-breathing dragon. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m fast, strong and experienced.
Not that any of that helped me on the dock.
The second my hand touched his shoulder, and before I even knew what was happening, he threw me in the ocean.
↔
Getting dunked in the cold, bottomless ocean without warning sucks. I don’t recommend it. Luckily for me, there were several large tires used as boat bumpers that I was able to use to climb back onto the dock. Of course, it meant dragging myself up over algae-covered rubber, but that was preferable to freezing to death. Still, as I felt the mushy green sea slime cover my clothes, I cringed. I was wearing my collarless jacket, my hotelier jacket. My favorite jacket. Hell, my only jacket.
As my head cleared the dock, I saw Astarte standing five feet away from the hairy man. “Why are you here?” she asked.
He gave the succubus a taunting sneer as he held out his hand. A gold
en necklace hung from his fingers, a little pendant bobbing at the end. When Astarte saw it, she fell to her knees, hands covering her lips as she held back her shock. “How did you get that?” she asked.
He stood still, the necklace dangling from his outstretched hand.
“You shouldn’t have it,” Astarte said, her tone a mixture of anger and misery. “It’s not yours.”
The hairy man did nothing.
“It’s not yours,” she repeated, this time her tone pure anger. “IT’S NOT YOURS!” Astarte leapt at the man, her hand snatching the necklace with preternatural speed. As soon as she had the necklace, he slammed down his massive fist, aiming to crush her under its weight. She tumbled out of the way, and he followed her with a backhanded swing. The succubus ducked and, with gymnastic agility, somersaulted away.
She was about ten feet away from him, and I thought she would take the distance between them to flee. Instead, she stood, put on the necklace and rolled the pendant between thumb and finger. “You shouldn’t have taken this,” she said, and I noted a slight glow behind her eyes. She was burning time. She started to hum before leaping towards him. For a moment I thought she was going to match strength for strength, but at the last second she slid between his legs and kicked the back of his knees. He went down, bellowing in agony. For any normal human that would have been a broken knee followed by months of physiotherapy and years of getting used to a cane … but this guy just shook it off and attacked her again. Astarte did a backflip that would have put a Cirque du Soleil acrobat to shame, and as she arched back, her foot connected with his chin. Again—a devastating blow, but he took it like it was a playful slap between lovers. With lightning-fast reflexes, he grabbed her ankle and lifted her up. Upside down, Astarte punched at his groin. The man doubled over. Hell, every man within a thousand miles would’ve doubled over. But this guy had the highest tolerance for pain I’d ever seen. The hairy man reached down with his other hand to grab her arm and pulled, wringing her out like a wet towel.
I pulled myself onto the dock and made my way over to my car. Thankfully, I had left my keys in the ignition. Otherwise they might have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. “Hey!” I cried out. “You ruined my jacket!”
“Really?” Astarte yelled out.
“Oh … and put down the lady.” I got in the car and gunned the ignition. By way of an answer, he whirled around and grinned with blood-stained teeth and murderous eyes.
“Fine. Have it your way!” I screamed out of my window as I floored my classic 1969 Plymouth Road Runner. The car jerked forward like a sprinter hearing the starter pistol, then settled for a slow but gradual increase in speed. I will say something about my old car: She may not have a fast start, but once she gets going, she has momentum. And a steel shell. Let’s not forget the steel shell. I hit the guy head on, his massive body tumbling over the car and cracking its windshield. “Crap!” I slammed on the brakes and stuck my head out the window. Astarte spiraled out on the ground. I put the car in Drive, got close to her and pulled her into the passenger side of the car. “Are you OK?” I said, looking in my rear-view mirror. He was dusting himself off, completely unhurt. I pointed at the Master Form Filler and yelled, “Go, go … GO!”
The popobawa didn’t need to be told twice. He put his van into Drive and floored it, its metal underbelly sparking as it hit an ignored speed bump.
I followed suit, flooring the Plymouth again. The wheels screeched, but the car didn’t move. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the hairy man lifting her back wheels off the ground. We weren’t going anywhere. “Crap,” I said. “He’s like the Terminator.”
“The Terminator?” Astarte said, looking out the back window.
“Yeah—you know, ‘I’ll be back’…” I searched the glove compartment for anything to use as a weapon. All I found were some old manuals and a screwdriver. Discarding the manuals, I leaned out the window and tossed the screwdriver at his head. The guy ducked, but in doing so he got low enough for the back wheels to touch the ground. I floored her again, and with a steel-grinding crunch she lurched forward. I looked out the rear-view mirror again and saw that he stood there with my fender in his hand. “Damn,” I said. “That was an original piece.”
Astarte stuck her hand out the window, one finger erect. “Screw you, Enkidu!” she cried out as my poor Road Runner slammed onto the onramp of the adjacent road.
Family Feud: Gods Edition
We got back on the highway, following the delivery van with the big bright letters—Earthly Needs. It had one of those enlarged pictures on its side … you know, the picture of the friendly delivery guy that just braved wind, rain, sleet and snow to deliver your package like he was born to do that and nothing else. Except this van didn’t have a human on it. Rather, it was a picture of the popobawa, glowing like a firefly. The soft halo-like radiance was what passed as a smile for his species. He was handing an angel a package, and the caption said, “Delivering Your Earthly Needs.” Beneath that was a signature: Form Filler. So the little guy had been true to his word—he did change his name.
As we drove I glanced over at Astarte, who hadn’t said a word the entire ride. Instead, she sat on the passenger seat, hugging her knees to her chest. I had thought about telling her to buckle up, but the truth was, I had never seen Astarte like that before. She was always confident, sure of herself. But the Astarte that sat beside me was nervous and … What? Scared?
I wanted answers, because, well, I’d promised to help Others, and Astarte was exactly the kind of creature I swore to protect. But it was more than that. Astarte was my friend. We’d been living together for almost six years. Six tantalizing years of me resisting her temptation. Six years of her tempting me because that’s what succubi do. But those six years were more than a cat-and-mouse game of sexual urges. Truth was, the more I got to know her, the easier it was not to be tempted by her ways. Not because she became less attractive—by the GoneGods, the opposite was true. It was because we were friends. She took care of me, the latest manifestation being that she got me the Millennium Hotel rent-free. And I took care of her, too, as best I could. And now some beast of a man was in town, hurting my friend. I wouldn’t stand for that. I wanted to find out who he was and why he was after her. I wanted to put a boot to his face and make sure he never lifted a hand against her. But in order to do that, I needed Astarte to talk.
If I was being honest with myself, there was one more reason why I needed an answer from her now, and not later. The gala was tonight, and as much as I hated that being a factor in my need to know now, I couldn’t deny that money was excruciatingly tight, and The BisMark was paying me—a lot. I had already received the deposit, but it was the “after everything is done” fee that he still held over my head. I needed tonight to go well.
So here I was, stuck between wanting to help my friend and wanting to help myself. Both meant asking the same questions, but only one of them needed to be asked now, before the gala. “Who was that hairy man?” I said. Sometimes I hate myself.
“WildMan,” she said absently.
“Wild what?”
“He is the WildMan,” she moaned, as if that explained everything.
“OK, fine. Again with my question: Who is the WildMan?”
“Who do you think?” she shot back, angry to be taken out of whatever memory she was replaying in her head.
“A former lover?” I said.
She rolled the pendant between her fingers. “I guess you could call him that …” Her voice trailed off.
“And?”
“And what, Jean? You want to know what he was doing at the dock? You want to know if he is going to crash the party, and you want to know how dangerous he really is, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“OK—here are your answers. I don’t know what he was doing at the dock. He’s not going to crash the party, and he is very, very dangerous.”
I believed her on two of those points. “How do you
know he’s not going to barge into the hotel and beat the crap out of you again? I might not be there to save you again.”
“Firstly—oh, please, I saved you. Secondly—he won’t enter my home. If he wants to attack me, he will draw me out.”
“How do you know?”
Astarte straightened up, a bit of her confidence returning. Then, drawing an electrifying finger along my cheek and down my neck, she said, “Trust me, lover. It is an Other thing.” She was back.
I’d heard that before—Others with their rituals and rules. Protocols that made up the social contract of Heaven and Hell. But the problem was that Heaven and Hell were no more, and although Others still held on to their old ways, it was only a matter of time before some of them realized that they didn’t need to. Not anymore, at least. But saying that to an Other who believed without a doubt that the old ways still protected her was akin to convincing a wall to be a door. You needed time and a sledgehammer to get it to open.
“Fine,” I said, pulling away from her touch, “but if he crashes the party, it’s on you.”
“Sure thing, lover,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “So … what’s for dinner?” She nodded at the delivery van in front of us.
“I don’t know what you are eating, but as for the party goers, some kind of special fish from somewhere far away. O-something, I can’t remember—”
“Urfa?” Astarte said, her voice surprised.