by R. E. Vance
To be forgotten is to die again.
Astarte will not forget, but nor will she love again. To do so would be her death, and that is something she will not abide. She rises and takes the pendant that Gilgamesh once gave her … oh, so long ago … and places it on his tomb. Love, she thinks, is pain. Love is torture. Love is something I shall never allow myself to feel again.
Now lust, on the other hand …
What the What?
My life isn’t that exciting. I swear. Usually my days are filled with running the hotel and with dispelling the daily drama that seems to follow Others around. Occasionally I have to teach the virtue of dental hygiene or the necessity of wearing clothes—especially when they happen to be giants with epic appendages flapping about. There are also times when I have to deal with Internet scams, having conversations that go like this:
“No, Penemue, the prince of Nigeria has not bequeathed you a small fortune.”
“Are you sure, Human Jean? The Queen of Sheba was a personal friend of mine. Perhaps she left me something in her will …”
I’ve also brainstormed ways to merge their cultures with our own. I’ve helped minotaurs string up mazes made of bed sheets just so they could feel at home. I’ve ordered doll furniture and built birdhouses for pixies. I’ve stapled eggshell cartons and mattresses to bedroom walls just so that banshees could scream in peace.
I’ve ordered brass lamps for genies.
There is no end to Others’ eccentricities—and why should there be? They are, after all, refugees on Earth, their cultures older than agriculture and as plentiful as grains of sand on a beach. And although swaddling seven-foot-tall mummies so they can get some sleep may sound strange, it’s pretty harmless stuff when you get down to it.
Then I have days like today.
In the past twenty-four hours a cosmetic company called Being Human threatened to close my business, my hotel was nearly destroyed by an apocalypse accidentally set off by a peacock-feathered asshole of an Other, my date was arrested and I myself was a fugitive from the law. I’d also been beaten up by a balloon demon, a rancor, a giant and an extremely hairy man.
And let’s not forget the giant, squid-like creature in the ocean.
At least I’d managed to get out of that bright white tuxedo that would have been embarrassing to wear at a 1950s “Under the Sea” dance.
But now I stood before not one, but two peacock-feathered pompous BisMarks—and that was something I could not forgive. I didn’t like either of them, and two was two too many.
The BisMarks stood face-to-face, identical in every way, except that the previously frozen one was dressed like Poseidon—a toga, a coral crown and shell decor. The other BisMark wore his peacock-feathered suit with the unapologetic dignity of a used car salesman—which is to say, guilty.
The Poseidon BisMark growled at his impersonator. “You!” he cawed. Hell, even the human soldiers who had no idea what was going on startled at The Real BisMark’s bark.
The Fake BisMark put an innocent hand on his chest. “Who, me?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “The old impersonation routine. Come on! That’s the biggest cliché in the book.”
The Fake BisMark narrowed his gaze at me. “Bold words, coming from the guy who used the same trick to get out of the salon.” He was referring to Astarte and me switching clothes with Sally and EightBall to trick the Others into pursuing the wrong offenders.
“Touché,” I conceded.
For a moment I thought that The Fake BisMark was going to play to the end by pulling the old “I’m The Real BisMark,” “No, I am” quarrel. He didn’t. Staring at the two identical Others, I knew that there could be no mistaking who was real and who was not. The BisMark—the real The BisMark—exuded an aura of authority, confidence and, what’s more, responsibility.
The fake one had confidence, sure, but he lacked that intangible quality of authority that was innate to The Real BisMark.
The Fake BisMark must have known he had lost. He snapped his fingers, and cloven feet appeared, then a bushy tail. Slowly he transformed into a bad Halloween-costume version of the Devil. A satyr.
Or rather, the Satyr—Pan. He was just as all the stories described him. Half goat, half human—all boy. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Endymion, Jitterbug Perfume and the epic Disney cartoon series Gargoyles—they all got it right. And why not? With an ego like Pan’s, he probably played muse to those writers just to inspire their desire to write about him.
When the gods left, we all expected Pan to make an appearance sooner or later. From everything we knew about him, Pan was the one Other bound to cause mischief. Governments monitored all the media channels and the Internet, examining every audacious act, looking for the trickster Other. He never appeared, and it was assumed that he had died during the GrandExodus, the darkness of the closing heavens and hells consuming him before he could escape.
Apparently, we were wrong.
Pan strutted around the stage with an arrogant showmanship, indulging the crowd. He wanted to be the center of attention, needed to be. Seeing the joy he got from having all the eyes of the world on him, I knew that there was simply no way that he could have spent the last few thousand years of his life in hiding. The only mystery that remained was why it took him so long to reveal himself in the GoneGod world.
“You!” The Real BisMark cried out again, this time the word carrying far more than a simple accusation. It was also a question demanding to know what this whole thing was about.
“Time,” Pan said, twirling Poseidon’s trident like a baton. “This is the greatest time heist of all history.” He pointed the trident at the crowd. “I must have gotten—what? Five thousand years? Maybe ten.”
“And how much time did you spend doing all this?” I asked.
“Hey!” he said in mock hurt, “you’ve got to spend time to get time. If you must know, I spent no time freezing Tiamat.” He stuck his hand in the crystal vat and pulled out an apple-sized red ruby.
“The third Eye of the Gorgon,” I said.
Medusa nodded.
“I didn’t have to spend much time. The Eye of the Gorgon took care of most of that and what magic I did need to use … well, I used theirs,” Pan said, pointing Poseidon’s trident at the crowd.
The BisMark shook his head. “What exactly do you plan to do with her?”
We all looked at Tiamat, who stood frozen a mile off the shoreline of Paradise Lot.
“Her … she shall remain there, a reminder to the world that the great Pan still exists. From now until the end of time, humans and Others alike will stare at the monster and know that Pan is the only real god now.”
“Except,” The BisMark said, “you’ll have to continue holding the creature, hour after hour, to keep her in a state of suspended animation. Is that your plan? Stay on this beach forever?”
“No,” Greg said, pulling back his hood like some cheesy villain. “Not as long as I have this.” He pointed at the crystal vat. “You see, that crystal … it’s a Creation Crystal, and it’s hooked up to a generator and laptop. the Crystal is an amplifier, and as long as it channels time through the Eye of the Gorgon, she will remain frozen. It’s what is holding her. I have encrypted the laptop so that only I know the password. So … here’s the deal. You keep giving us time, and we’ll use half of it to keep her still. Stop giving us time and … well … crack goes Tiamat.”
So that was the play. Steal a bunch of time from the Others, then blackmail them for more. “Can that work?” I asked. I reached in my pocket, but Pan pointed the trident at me. “Relax, O great and powerful Pan. If I’m going to die, I want to smell minty fresh.” I held up one of the sticks of gum Medusa gave me before unwrapping it and biting down.
The BisMark shook his head in disgust. “Vain human,” he said.
“That’s me.” I gave him a big, gum-filled grin. “Now, if you don’t mind answering this vain human’s question— Will what Pan says work?”
&nb
sp; The BisMark nodded and Pan danced at this, like he had just won the game. Then he patted the crystal vat. “Seeing how this is a Creation Crystal, I’ll be able to fuse my being with that time. At this rate, I’ll live forever.”
Atargatis’ eyes brimmed with anguish. “And what about my daughter? My Champion?” she asked.
“What? Her?” Pan pointed at Tiamat. “She’ll stay like that, unless you want me to … you know …” He made a cutting gesture.
Atargatis shook her head and started crying. Astarte stepped forward and put a comforting hand on her sister’s shoulder, hugging her with a tenderness I’d rarely seen the succubus exhibit before.
“You betrayed me,” The BisMark said to Stewart, evidently more upset by the fact that he had been crossed than by the giant frozen monster in the water. Priorities—we all got ’em.
“I did,” Stewart said, with all the enthusiasm of a houseplant.
“For what?”
“When the gods left, everyone was freed—except me. Why? Because my master happened to be the one god that was never a god at all.”
The BisMark’s eyes crackled with fury. “So you sought to destroy the world?”
Stewart looked back at Tiamat. “The Crystal will hold her for as long as the gems are upon it. For as long as the bearer wishes it, the beast will remain stone.”
“Do you really think I will allow you to leave here and be free? That will never happen. Not after this. As for you …” The BisMark sneered at Pan. “There are no amused gods to protect you. No places for you to slither under. You’ll be dealt with by the appropriate measures of the GoneGod world. Mortal law.”
“No … No! … NO!” Pan said, with what seemed like genuine lamentation. That was until his cries turned from anguish to mockery. His eyes were glowing again. “Alas … how can I live with myself? Oh … yes. I can. See that helicopter over there? My co-conspirators and I are going to board it. Don’t interfere, or the human Greg will turn off the machine and free the beast.”
“What about me?” Michael said. “Do you think I’ll let you go?”
Pan snickered. “Of course not. But I now possess five thousand years I didn’t have before. How many of those do I have to burn to hold you down for a few minutes? A year? Two at the most.” Pan’s eyes pulsed with electrical illumination, and from the sand emerged a giant hand which grabbed the archangel. “There … as for you, young whippersnappers—” Pan pointed at the Army, and with a flick of his wrist turned their weapons into giant bananas, complete with the Fairtrade stickers.
While Pan was distracted by his little magic tricks, I whispered to The BisMark, “What do you need to hold Tiamat yourself?”
“The Eye, and Poseidon’s trident. If I were to possess both, I could hold her for a short while.”
“What’s a short while?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
That would have to do. I couldn’t let Pan escape and continue to take time that wasn’t his, nor could I let that monster run rampant. We did have one advantage that Pan hadn’t considered: The world was allied neither to Nature nor Chaos; in this ambiguous state, Tiamat could be turned back. I was sure. I just didn’t know how.
The way I saw it, although a couple hours wasn’t a lot of time, it was a lot of motivation for one of these older-than-sin creatures to find a way. So before Pan could turn his attention to anyone else, I leapt. The plan was to knock him over and to kick him in his goat testicles. Then, once he was down, to keep him down. I landed, and Stewart lifted one of his damned diamond hands. One of his gargoyles charged at me. It was the good ol’ ScarFace.
“Not this again!” I cried out. I ducked, the gargoyle’s hands grabbing at nothing. Pan, Greg and Stewart ran toward the helicopter, Greg clutching to his laptop.
I drove into the sand and, using the sleeve of my jacket, cupped up the gem that had been responsible for stonifying The BisMark. Then I spit out the gum and squished it on the gem.
ScarFace swooped down and grabbed me. Hell, I wanted him to, because as soon as his stone hands were on me, I attached the gum-covered gem to his forehead.
What happened next was better than I expected.
The thing about the Others’ talismans was that, under the right conditions, they always had the opposite effect. The prince turned into a frog, the frog into a prince. An instant two-way evolution.
Others can evolve at will. Before you get all technical and say that’s not evolution, I challenge you to this: Weren’t we all some version of frog before we evolved into royalty?
ScarFace turned to a creature of flesh and blood, with taut muscles, searing breath and a huge scar across his face.
After thousands of years of being stone, flesh must have felt strange and foreign to him. My hand grabbing his arm, the feeling of the sand beneath his feet, the light cool breeze that came in from the ocean—all so new, so overwhelming. It was more than that—he had never sensed his heart beating within his chest, or what the blinking of an eye felt like. He had never known what a breath was, the cool air that filled the nostrils and the throat as the air expanded the chest.
“Weird, isn’t it?” I said, and added pain to his new experiences with a headbutt. ScarFace screamed in agony and dropped me, clutching his nose.
Before ScarFace could get up, I scraped the gem off his face with my jacket’s sleeve. He turned back to stone, still holding on to his aching nose.
Greg jumped into the helicopter, switching on the propeller as Pan and Stewart jumped in the back. The helicopter started to lift.
Amongst the many things I took from Greg’s apartment was the slingshot he used to awaken the rancor. I pulled it out, quickly loading it with the gem—still sticky with gum—took careful aim and waited until the helicopter was about fifteen feet off the ground.
Then, I let the gem lose.
My shot rang true. The gem hit Greg square on his cheek. The little Sith wannabe turned to stone, and his toy helicopter came tumbling down … Pan, Stewart and all.
It’s Raining Frogs! Hellelujah!
Michael was one of the most powerful beings in existence. As much time as Pan put into the giant hand, it wasn’t enough. The archangel broke free and with preternatural speed launched at the falling helicopter. In one seamless move, he stopped it from careening into the beach. Once it was safe on the ground, he tore the hull apart and grabbed Pan, disarming him from Poseidon’s trident. Pulling out a spindle, he wrapped a thread around Pan—once, twice, three times—before the trickster satyr could so much as think about burning more time.
I ran over and pulled a stone Greg out of the helicopter. I thought about unfreezing him, but then thought better of it. The little guy looked good in gray.
Two minotaur cops rushed over and pinned down Stewart and, before you could say “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” all three bad guys were detained.
“There,” the police chief said, handing Pan over to an officer. “That should hold him.”
“Sure,” I said, looking at my own handiwork. “But it looks to me like you only tied him up with thread. At least I turned mine to stone.”
Michael grunted. He did that a lot. “It’s a thread from Rumpelstiltskin’s spindle. Others can’t burn time when tied with it.”
“Rapunzel is real? Never mind. Don’t answer that.” I pointed at Tiamat who stood frozen on the shore of Paradise Lot. “What do we do about that?”
Michael sighed, which sounded like a semi-truck downshifting. “I honestly don’t know.”
The BisMark put his hands over the Crystal. It glowed under his power. “I can use this. But not for long.”
“Good. We only need magic to hold it long enough for us to dismantle Tiamat, piece by piece.”
Atargatis shuddered. “My girl.”
“Your girl,” The BisMark said dispassionately, “will kill us all … including you.” He looked hard at her, his stare charged with warning and accusation. It was a look I knew well. It was a warning and a threat. Don’t stand
in our way, or else …
And it was a look that was not lost on Atargatis. She nodded.
“Good,” The BisMark said.
“OK—that’s all fine and dandy,” I said, “but how do you plan on doing that? The creature is as big as the Statue of Liberty.”
Michael huffed. “Bigger, I suspect. But you forget how good your kind is at destroying things.” He nodded over his shoulder at the beach, where a group of scared soldiers trembled, holding onto the giant bananas like they would their guns. “They just have to find new weapons, which shouldn’t take long. There are whole stockades just over the bridge.”
All this time Michael knew that the Army had amassed just over the bridge, and still he stayed. I guess that’s what made him Michael: he lived and worked in Paradise Lot, upholding mortal law to show the human world that Others were nothing to fear. He also knew that if he failed, the humans wouldn’t hesitate to invade the island. I had to hand it to Michael—as much as I personally did not like the archangel, he gave a damn. And that, if nothing else, earned him my respect long ago.
On the beach, those of the media who had returned were filming the frozen Tiamat and giving their take on what was happening. I cringed at all the “theories” they threw around. Whatever they said, I doubted it would help the Others’ situation.
Stewart, Pan and Greg sat handcuffed, several of Michael’s police officers standing over them with pointed shotguns and itchy trigger fingers. Conner and the other police officers were pushing back the crowds, which had turned into an angry mob that wanted nothing more than to tear the time thief apart.
From the corner of my eye I saw Enkidu. He crouched on all fours at the edge where the man-made concrete sidewalk met the god-made sandy beach. The rancor sat next to him, panting. Evidently, Enkidu earned the rancor’s loyalty when he pummeled the creature. Enkidu’s cold eyes stared at the unfolding scene, and I got the feeling that he was trying to assess whose side he was on in all of this.
“Jean!” Medusa came up to me and took my hand. “I saw what you did. So brave.” She squeezed it, and several of her snakes patted my head with theirs. Only Marty gave me his usual distrustful stare.