by R. E. Vance
And that was when things got interesting.
Someone jumped on the back of the rancor.
Two massive hands grabbed its upper jaw, mindless of its row of jagged teeth, and pulled. Our combined effort was enough for us to get the damn thing off me. With one final grunt, my rescuer twisted the creature’s head back until its jaw practically ripped from its skull. The rancor dropped for all of three seconds before we heard the bones start repairing themselves.
At least it wasn’t on me anymore. A hairy hand helped me to my feet before getting on all fours and growling at the healing rancor. Enkidu, from the harbor, was standing in Greg’s living room. WildMan and rancor charged at one another, massive bodies slamming together with a thunderous roar.
Astarte pulled me away from Arnold and looked over at Enkidu. She played with the neck of her blouse and moaned, “See, I told you I was helping.”
“What …” I said as I sat up, “are you talking about?”
“Watch,” she said, pointing at WildMan, who somersaulted over to the rancor before leaping onto its back. He clenched his hands in fists and bore down on the beast with the force of a sledgehammer. The rancor’s head hit the floor, shaking the apartment. Enkidu bore down on it again.
And again. And again.
Each blow crushed its skull with immense power. Bones crackled and teeth shattered, until all that was left was a flat surface of skin, ground bone and blood.
Enkidu was panting with exertion, happy that he had defeated the creature before his strength left him. Dismounting, he turned to us and threw back his head, howling in triumph. Then he looked at us, expecting our gaze to be on him.
Our gaze wasn’t on him. It was on something behind him, on the floor.
He turned to see the rancor’s skull reassembling itself like an inflating balloon.
Enkidu sighed.
“OK,” I said to the case of Smurfs that was miraculously intact. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” I picked up the Highlander sword and charged.
Stupid. I might as well have announced my attack. The rancor turned and knocked me over. I slid across the marble floor toward the apartment door. It opened, and there stood the frantic, out-of-breath popobawa doorman. “Master of Master Form Filler, a strange human came up without permission and …” The popobawa stopped dead in his tracks as the rancor descended on him. “Oh my!” he cried out, releasing his sonar screech before running out the door.
Great. Now I was practically deaf. “Thanks, popobawa,” I muttered, barely hearing myself.
↔
Before I could clear the ringing in my ears, the rancor picked me up and threw me into Greg’s massive comic book collection.
Marvel and DC Comics flew everywhere—a hurricane of sharp colors and chiseled jaws flapping across the modern museum that was his living room. I groaned, peeling myself out of the shattered shelves, the magazines sliding around me. I wanted to take a step forward—rejoin the fight—but my legs failed me and I fell on my rump, my back resting against the imprint of my body. Everything hurt.
The rancor fought against Enkidu and Astarte, both of them striking it down with blows that would have felled a normal creature. Hell, Enkidu’s punches were so powerful and Astarte’s strikes so accurate that no human, animal, Other or god could have withstood them. But the rancor kept healing itself, and I knew that eventually Astarte and Enkidu would fall from exhaustion. By the GoneGods, I was already there.
How could Greg control something so primal and powerful? How did it end up in his living room, as part of his collection of 1980s geekery? Sure, the Big Bad—his emperor in waiting, his “master”—could’ve given him the creature as a gift—but for what? To slow us down? To act as his bodyguard? What?
And how did he control it? It was a statue. A statue, until he took out his slingshot and …
Holy crap. The ruby!
I crawled around, my eyes searching the floor. But amongst all the comics and toys and posters and action heroes, it was nowhere to be found. I dug through the piles of expensive stuff until … until … There it was. Just lying on the ground right next to The Mighty Thor #293.
I picked the ruby up, and immediately my fingers turned gray and my hand lost all sensation. It fell asleep, past pins and needles, past numbness—it turned into a lifeless lump at the end of my forearm. I waved it around experimentally, watching it swing stiffly about like a truncheon, no longer under my control.
What was most disturbing about the sensation was that turning to stone didn’t hurt. I didn’t want to think what would have happened if I had held the jewel with my fist. I suspect it would have involved a chisel and a few missing fingers for good ol’ Jean.
I searched Greg’s cornucopia of geekery for something to pop the gem out of my hand and finally settled on a Dr. Who sonic screwdriver. Of course, it wasn’t a real sonic screwdriver, but it did the trick—the gem popped out of my hand and onto the floor. Lines of red and blue veins crawled from my forearm as my stoney gray hand slowly returned to normal. I’d like to tell you that it felt like pins and needles, but it was more like nails and spikes. Ouch! OK—so bare skin wasn’t an option. I grabbed an old issue of Thor, scooped up the ruby, wrapped it in between the pages and did something the rancor didn’t expect.
I charged.
Throwing my whole weight at it, I managed to knock it off Astarte. It reared up. “Strike a pose,” I said, jumping on its chest and slamming the edge of Thor against its forehead. As soon as the jewel touched flesh, it froze. Concrete gray spread from the funneled pages, like I was pouring liquid stone into the rancor’s being. First its head grayed, then its neck, then its limbs, too, becoming hard, unmoving, permanent stone.
In another second, the rancor was a sculpture once more.
“What the hell is this thing?” I shouted.
Astarte walked over to the frozen rancor and examined the crystal, without touching either. “It’s an Eye of the Gorgon. It has to be. I know of no other talisman that turns flesh to stone.”
“Eye of the Gorgon … As in, Medusa.”
“Of course, Jean. Who do you think your girlfriend was? She was one of the most powerful Others the world has ever known, and this crystal was one of her many, many weapons.”
“Huh?” I guess I’d always seen Medusa as the sweet girl doing her best to be mortal. I mean, how was I to know that the girl with the Hello Kitty purse was a fierce warrior? “How is it that Greg has this crystal?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be with Medusa? Or better yet, lost in the void when the gods left?”
Astarte shrugged.
“OK—just another piece of the puzzle … which leads me to my next question,” I said, carefully trying to balance the gem on the rancor’s head. The ridges of its nostrils and brow made it hard to do, but I didn’t dare let it fall off. “Will it hold?”
“If enough time has been spent on it … yes. But these talismans are created for a specific purpose. The Eyes of the Gorgon only have one function: flesh-to-stone.” She shook her head.
“And?”
“It costs you too much. Even I, when time and magic were unlimited, rarely used them. It takes a bit of you with it, storing it for later use.”
“Like a battery.”
She nodded. “Like a battery—except the energy it takes comes from within you, and no rest or food will replenish you.”
“I got it,” I said, still holding the gem to the rancor’s forehead, but this solution wasn’t going to last forever.
Astarte sensed my dilemma, because she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a tensor bandage, except these weren’t for ankle injuries. She wrapped the self-adhering elastic around the rancor’s head, firmly fixing the gem to its skull.
“No,” she said as she worked, “I don’t think you understand. Whoever gave this talisman to Greg has spent a lot of time on it. Years … and for what? So he could lay a little trap. It doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational to give up so much tim
e for so little gain.”
The first thing that went through my mind was: A Fanatic. In the GoneGod world, there were Others with big enough chips on their shoulders to spend all the time they had on accomplishing whatever they wanted. Often Fanatics were about pure destruction. The gods were gone, and they couldn’t cope with this new world. Better to burn out than to fade away—that kind of thing.
But Fanatics tended to be the “walk in the room and blow yourself up” type. Whoever imbued this stone with power and gave it to a human was far more calculating.
There was a low growl. I turned just in time to see a fist smash me right in the nose.
Out with the Old, In with the Chaos
A second massive fist came down. I sidestepped and tumbled, clutching my nose. Enkidu turned to follow me. But before he could get into the leaping position again, Astarte punched him hard in the face, driving him to his knees.
He smiled. Blood—red blood—spurted out of his nose, trickling over his lips and gathering in the cracks of his teeth. He stood erect now, and I saw that although he was an imposing figure, he was a whole head shorter than me. For a creature that had just spent several thousand years in the belly of a celestial bull, he still looked human. Hell, he smelled human. He even bled human.
Others, with their many quirks, did none of those things. Even those who could metamorphose and disguise themselves, under heavy scrutiny could never pass off as mortal humans. It was something in their gait, their smell, their mannerisms that always made them look different. They could fool you for a while, but eventually you figured them out.
Then there was the issue of their blood. Goblins bled green, orcs bled gray, pixies bled yellow and angels bled light. Of the seven-thousand-plus species identified so far, not a single Other bled red—and yet this manlike being did.
I took a step back. We squared off, breathing hard, considering our next move.
“Enough!” Astarte cried out. “Enough,” she repeated. “Enkidu, enough.” Enkidu focused his attention on the succubus. “Do you remember me?” Astarte put a hand out.
The WildMan gave out a low, guttural warning, at which I advanced. Astarte lifted a hand, signaling me to stop. To wait.
“Enkidu,” Astarte said, her voice firmer, “it has been a long, long time. Do you remember me?” He growled. “I made you his equal.” Astarte put a hand on his shoulder, and Enkidu’s anger left him. She outstretched a hand, and the man whose fists felt like they were made of brick took it.
“Astarte,” I said, stepping toward them. I grabbed Astarte’s arm. Enkidu growled. I let go. “Astarte—now’s not the time.”
She looked over at the clock on the wall. “We have four hours until dawn, and this will not take long. Now is exactly the time, Human Jean.” Astarte took Enkidu’s hand in hers and, without guile or seduction, led the man away from me and into Greg’s bedroom.
Hellelujah!
↔
With Astarte in the other room doing only the GoneGods knew what, I was left in the destroyed shrine of Greg’s evil lair. Relics from my childhood littered the room, the rancor still frozen with its gem holding it in place.
I rifled through the mess, looking for the Grimoire of Metatron. I told myself that cleaning would help with the search, but the truth was, I couldn’t help it. Even if this stuff belonged to an evil Sith trying to destroy the world, what else was I going to do? I had time to kill and, well, I loved this stuff. I mean, really. Star Wars, Star Trek, He-Man and, by the GoneGods, a first edition Wolverine. This guy had everything. I swore that if I survived this—and Greg didn’t—I’d be back here to do a bit of grave robbing. Well … OK … I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. That’s not who I was—but after seeing this collection, I really, really wish I was.
In the middle of the carnage, I heard a muffled voice from Astarte’s earpiece. I rummaged through the carnage of destroyed memorabilia until I found the earbud. “Hello,” I said as I slid the cool plastic into my ear.
“Jean … where are you?” Brian murmured excitedly.
“We’re at Greg’s …” I looked at his bedroom door. “Investigating. Any word from Penemue and EightBall?”
“They’re fine. I’ve been hacking into security cameras and watching them. You were right … They flew for a few miles before Others caught up with them. As soon as they saw it wasn’t you, they went back to Sally’s place and destroyed it. She’s pissed.”
“Figures.”
“At you.”
I groaned.
“But that’s not why I’m calling. Have you seen what’s going on outside?”
“Brian, I’ve been busy trying not to die. What’s going on?”
“The Others are going mental. Half of them are trying to run away, the other half are at the shore welcoming the damn thing … and it’s not going well for either side.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bridges off the island are blocked—the Army is stopping everyone from leaving. There’s a huge crowd gathering at the beach, and Michael just declared martial law.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I have to see this for myself.” I looked around the room for a TV remote and eventually found a piece of tech that could have piloted the Starship Enterprise. It took me a minute to figure out how to turn the damn thing on—hey, don’t judge, when I was in the military everything came with pictures—and the flat screen flickered to life.
A live feed illuminated the dimly lit room with images of Paradise Lot’s beach. A terrified human reporter from a news station I’d never heard of was talking into the mic as a mountain of water rose behind her. The reporter’s words were cut off by the sound of helicopter blades. Michael flew up to meet it and, using police-issued flashlights, directed the helicopter to a landing spot on the beach. Once it touched the ground, several rig men jumped out of it. One of them carried a laptop and looked out at the sea. The reporter ran up to him. “Can you tell me what happened?”
The man wiped away tears. “We were working same as always when that thing appeared. If it hadn’t been for Azzah, the myarid who was part of our crew, we would’ve been killed. She saved us …” he faltered, “and that monster killed her!” His voice was barely audible over the helicopter’s whooping. He turned to face the ocean. “That monster killed her!” he screamed again.
The man was clearly in pain—having lost someone he cared for to Tiamat’s rage. And if I didn’t figure out something real soon, he wouldn’t be the only one.
The feed cut to the streets of Paradise Lot. Scenes of fighting, rioting and panic streamed on the screen. And not only between Others—the Army shot tear gas at the crowds that tried to escape using the bridges; large nets were set up to stop those who could fly; men and Others in riot gear beat reinforced plastic shields with batons—war drums disguised as crowd control.
And those were just the images of the Others trying to escape the island. Aerial shots showed images of Others who gathered on the shore—different groups performing various homages to the great Beast: ogres prostrated themselves, jinn dervishes danced, sirens shrieked at the moon, Ahkiyyini’s children beat leather drums. They all saw the coming of Tiamat as the return to the old, more familiar world—well, more familiar to them and their preternaturally long memories. I had to remind myself that the modern world, devoid of miracles, monsters and myths, was only a few thousand years old. What did that compare to memories that spanned millenniums?
The Army tried to break them up, but in the end, all they could really do was to set up a parameter to contain their misguided worship. I groaned as I watched trolls pluck chickens and hobgoblins beat the menacing-looking drums—creatures that the average human would see as grotesque, all doing what the average human would perceive as grotesque. Of course, if the shoe was on the other foot, these very same Others would find the average pregame tailgate party equally grotesque. But who was counting?
They were so different in the way they expressed their culture that, if we survived the night, humans
were going to be more terrified of Others than ever.
“Why are they blocking the bridges?” Brian asked.
“Think about it. When Tiamat comes, she’s going to destroy Paradise Lot first. A lot of Others are going to die … This is a win-win for them. Thin the Other herd, scare the locals and have even more power than before.” I knew that some general somewhere was thinking, And for my follow-up act, I’ll be handing out disease infested blankets. The thought made me sick with shame for my own species.
“Bastards,” Brian spat. “Aren’t they scared of Tiamat? I mean, she isn’t going to stop at Paradise Lot, is she?”
“Probably not. But who is better suited to fight a creature of magic than other creatures of magic? They probably figure that the best chance they have to kill the damn thing is by letting Michael, Miral and a whole host of powerful Others duke it out. Then, if they fail—where better to drop a big bomb than on Paradise Lot?”
The line went quiet before Brian’s nervous voice crackled in. “Do you really think they’ll do that? Drop a nuclear bomb?”
I sighed. “Only if we lose.”
Brian groaned.
“Look, Brian … We’ve got a small window of time. Astarte mentioned that we have to stop the last signs of the apocalypse from happening. And we need to find out who’s next in charge. But … Greg’s Grimoire of Metatron. I’ve no idea what it looks like.”
“Show me the room,” Brian said.
“How?” Then I remembered the iPad. Taking it out of the bag, I pulled up the Wi-Fi login. “No good, I need a password, and what would a super geek with a lot of money and all the toys use for a password?”
“ ‘Batman’?”
I shook my head. “No, he’s a Star Wars guy. Jedi robe, Minister of the Force …” My voice trailed off as I thought about it. I typed in Jedi Master. The iPad shook as I was denied access. “He was into the whole Star Wars ethos, but said that Jedi’s were lame. It was about the Sith.” I typed in Sith Lord. Again it shook.