Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  “How’s it going, Marty?” I said. The snake stuck a forked tongue out at me.

  “Medusa,” Michael said. “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.”

  Medusa turned away. “I’m sorry, Captain. You’re not going to fire me, are you?”

  “We’ll determine your fate later,” the archangel pronounced. “As will we decide the fate of the fugitive you’re holding onto. For now, we have bigger problems to address.”

  “Great,” Medusa muttered. “I’m going to get fired!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me …” I started, then caught myself. Michael wasn’t going to overlook the fact that I ran away from the law and broke Medusa out from jail. If we were lucky, he’d exercise discretion by giving us the minimum punishment possible, which would come later … and later might not come at all if we didn’t figure out a way to get rid of Tiamat. “Fine, we’ll deal with my fate later,” I said in a mocking tone. “Do we have enough time to hold Tiamat for a few hours? With all the chaos at the bridges, it will be some time until the cavalry arrives.”

  “They’ve already been called in,” Michael said.

  I followed his eyes to a weary commander, who nervously spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Super-hearing?” I asked.

  Michael grinned. “Super-hearing. And speaking of super-hearing, your pocket is buzzing.”

  “Huh?” I said, looking down. Sure enough, my pants pocket was vibrating and a muffled blue light emanated from it. I pulled out the Bluetooth earpiece and stuck it in my ear.

  “Ahhh, Jean …” Brian’s voice said.

  “Hey, Brian,” I said, touching the earpiece. “Is this important? I’m kind of busy here.”

  “I know. I’ve been watching the news. Umm … I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s something you forgot.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Frogs.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Brian’s voice hesitated. “The seventh sign … We’ve only had six. The earthquake, the sky falling, the sour wine, the matricide, the Blood Moon and Tiamat appearing. Six. According to the Grimoire of Metatron, there are seven. In other words—frogs.”

  “GoneGodDamn,” I said. As if to punctuate my sentence, a trident flew out of the water and landed in the sand before us.

  Atargatis pointed at the water. “It seems my daughter is the least of your worries. It’s my grandchildren that are of concern now.”

  “Grandchildren?”

  “Yes,” Atargatis said, pulling the weapon out of the ground. “Grandchildren.”

  She pointed at the shoreline, where hundreds of humanoid creatures with bulbous heads, big round impassioned eyes and scaly green skin emerged from the ocean, armed with tridents, barnacle-laced swords, shell-covered whips, nets and a whole host of underwater weaponry. And as they marched forth, they croaked—it was their battle cry.

  Hey, apparently everyone gets a battle cry, even frogs.

  “Oh, great,” I sighed. “FrogMen.”

  ↔

  The FrogMen—a.k.a. Astarte’s great-nieces and -nephews—poured out of the ocean in a platoon-like fashion, with one objective in their minds.

  To save Momma.

  Although they did not fall like raindrops from the sky, they were just as plentiful and just as wet. I was a fool to think that the frogs would literally fall from the sky—just like I was a fool to assume that they would be normal-sized frogs.

  Regardless, the Seventh Sign poured out from the ocean.

  Forming row after row and standing shoulder to shoulder, the FrogMen advanced. I’d seen this tactical formation before, mostly in Civil War reenactments. The basic strategy was that when a soldier on the front line fell, someone in the row behind replaced him. A great strategy, if you didn’t care about suffering heavy casualties. And given the sheer number of FrogMen that emerged from the ocean, I was guessing “heavy casualties” was quite low on their list of concerns.

  “They’re going to try to destroy the Crystal and free Tiamat,” I said, meeting the front line of the FrogMen together with Michael, Astarte and Atargatis. We stood between them and the Creation Crystal. The BisMark was behind us, one hand on the Crystal that kept Tiamat frozen and the other holding Poseidon’s trident.

  The FrogMen advanced, and the four of us attacked. Michael dealt the first blow, unfurling his wings and swatting a dozen FrogMen away like flies. Astarte and Atargatis used a combination of acrobatics and brute strength to push back the advancing lines. I pulled out the Highlander sword and charged at the nearest FrogMan. The damn creature leapt right over me—ever play that game Leap Frog as a kid?—and went for the Crystal. I managed to grab him by his hind leg and yank him down. He plopped to the ground. Just as I was about to squash his face, another FrogMan jumped on my back, knocking me over.

  Eating a mouthful of sand, I turned around and saw that Michael, Astarte and Atargatis were faring marginally better than me. There were simply too many FrogMen, and already several of them were at the Crystal. The BisMark fought them off, doing that weird thing of his where he couldn’t be touched. He swung Poseidon’s trident, and for the first time I understood what it meant to “smite” someone. The FrogMen felled by the GoneGod’s trident didn’t simply die—they disintegrated, their wart-covered green flesh turning to dust as soon as the weapon touched their skin. It reminded me of a child popping soap bubbles. And as he fought, his left hand never let go of the Crystal. The BisMark was magnificent.

  But as magnificent as The BisMark was, as agile and vicious as the Assyrian sisters were and as powerful as Michael was, we had no hope in winning this battle. Not when it was just the four of us. So I did what years of Army training told me to do when the situation looked hopeless: retreat.

  Retreat and regroup.

  I ran to the Army, still standing around holding over-sized bananas, and got in front of their commander. “Come on!” I barked, mustering my old command cadence. “Organize your men and defend that Crystal!”

  The commander stared at the invading army without blinking, evidently unfazed by my old military voice. Either I lost the touch or my touch wasn’t strong enough to break through his shock. And given his wide-open eyes and gaping mouth, my bet was on the latter. An invading army of soldiers ready and willing to die for their cause was one thing. He had trained for that. But a monster looming in the background waiting to eat them whole, while they stood with only bananas for weapons—that was something they’d never trained for. Hell, I doubted there was a crisis military think tank in the world that could have anticipated this scenario for OPT. This was every human’s worse nightmare. Monsters, and being helpless.

  Except they weren’t helpless. Not with all those artillery weapons at their disposal.

  “Come on!” I growled, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Pan didn’t disable those Humvees. Give the order. Attack.”

  The commander’s eyes flickered from the FrogMen to me, his stupefied gaze faltering as his training kicked in.

  “We got to fight these guys,” I repeated.

  “Fight? Against that?” His voice wavered before it found some steel behind it. “Fight, you say. For what? To save their city?”

  It was the way he said “their city,” with all the belief that the Others’ city was not his city. It was not a place he would lay his life on the line. Not for an Other’s home. Not for Paradise Lot. Fine, if he wasn’t going to fight for them, maybe he’d fight for himself.

  “It’s not for them,” I said. “You really think that creature is going to stop after destroying Paradise Lot? Don’t you get it? Everything is at stake.”

  “We’ll deal with that later. Once it’s done here, we’ll drop a bomb on its head.” He whistled and raised his hand in the air. “Fall back, boys!”

  “No, you can’t! You’re condemning them to death. If we—”

  “ ‘If’ nothing,” the commander said. “Let them die. They never belonged here in the first place.”

  The soldiers began ret
reating. I could see on many of their faces that their commander’s decision didn’t sit well with them. But they were scared, and orders were always the easiest excuse for running.

  This We’ll Defend. The motto of the United States Army. Apparently, they weren’t thinking of Others when they came up with that one.

  ↔

  As the Army pulled back, Michael and the other Others were slowly being overwhelmed. This was not a battle we were going to win.

  So, I thought. This is it. I turned to face the invading FrogMen. There were thousands of them. All armored and carrying swords, tridents, nets and whips. They were endless.

  It would have been easy to falsely believe we could persevere. After all, we had an archangel on our side. But even an archangel gets tired, and as far as I could tell, these guys were limitless.

  A silence grew over the invading army as they sized up the ragtag band that stood at my side. A thousand versus … seven.

  From their ranks rose a FrogMan who was a head taller than the rest. He was dripping with water and algae. Barnacles littered the parts of his body not covered by armor made from seashells. He looked at us, pointing his trident at the Creation Crystal.

  The gesture was obvious: “Reverse the spell and meet your fate or face us in battle and meet your fate.”

  So be it, I thought, I’d rather try and fail than let Kermit’s evil brother win. I pointed my own sword at the creature and shook my head. I swear to you, the frog smiled. He didn’t come all this way to chat.

  The FrogMen’s leader raised his trident above his head and croaked. What followed was a deafening chorus of Ribbit!s as a thousand leaping frogs bounded forwards with one thought in mind: Free Momma.

  So, I thought, this is how it all ends for me. So be it. This is as good a way to die as any.

  I charged into the fray and struck down the first FrogMan that got in my way.

  Swinging my sword in a fluid arc, I cut down two more.

  I needed to clear a path in all this chaos to get to the Crystal and help the Others defend it. Chances were, by the time I’d get to it, it’d be too late.

  And that’s when the cavalry arrived.

  On a Prayer and Wing—Well, Two Wings

  Miral descended, followed by Penemue with EightBall in his arms, a host of valkyrie and a legion of other angels. Fairies and pixies adorned with thimbles and syringes glittered the sky around them. And that was just Paradise Lot’s air force.

  Land forces emerged from the streets. Wraiths, ifrits and jinn flowed to the beach, creating a fiery mist that shrouded centaurs, giants and goblins. Harpies, wendigo and orcs lumbered out of the alleyways, brandishing homemade weapons.

  Then I heard an ominous “WAAN, WAAN, WAAN!”

  I swear to the GoneGods, the battle stopped for a moment as the FrogMen trembled in fear at the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who’s battle cry—something I’ll never understand. You see, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who is a four-foot nothing, red Australian vampire with wafer-thin arms that make him look like one of those inflatable balloon men in front of used car dealerships. Yet his battle cry inspired fear in all Others—and I’d seen the little guy in action before. He was fierce!

  The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who appeared on the back of a galloping sphinx, waving his signature knitting needles for swords. He nodded at me before joining the fight, his terrible battle cry booming ahead of him.

  From above came the churning of air from Penemue’s wings. “We really must stop meeting like this,” he said.

  “Like what?” I ducked under a FrogMan’s trident.

  “You in the middle of a fight you can’t win, and me showing up at the last minute to save you.” Penemue picked up a FrogMan and tossed it away like a rag doll.

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  “Oh? And how exactly do you see it?”

  I punched a FrogMan right in his cartilage-lined jaw, and he toppled head over feet. “I see it as me saving you and you, last minute, deciding to help. How did you convince them to come, anyway?” I motioned at the army of Others that were joining the fray.

  “Not me. Miral. The Army wasn’t letting them out anyway, which meant that there was a fairly large congregation at the bridge. You know how angels love congregations? She merely pointed out how embarrassing it would be for a human to save Paradise Lot—twice—and suggested that should they join the fight, they could claim their part in the impending victory. In other words, she appealed to their pride. You know how they say, ‘Pride goeth before destruction.’ ”

  “Ah-ha … and what about EightBall?” I asked, nodding at the kid.

  Penemue landed next to me, putting down EightBall, who shakily held a baseball bat in his hands. “He insisted on coming.”

  EightBall gulped. “I’m starting to regret some of my life choices.”

  “Stay next to me, and we’ll survive this. I promise,” Penemue said.

  EightBall forced a smile. “Just like you promised me a PlayStation?”

  “You must have known that I was drunk when I promised that.”

  “You’re always drunk.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And Sally?” I asked.

  “You think I’d bring her to this? She already fears us. I dropped her off at the hotel. Figured it was the safest place for her to be, given everyone was here.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, dodging a FrogMan’s trident.

  “Indeed.” Penemue turned to an approaching pair of FrogMen. He burned a bit of time and released two daggers attached to metal chains that extended out from his forearm. I’d seen him do it before—it was the same weapon he used when he rebelled in Heaven, and it was damn cool seeing it again.

  “Shall we?” he asked, and without waiting for my answer he threw his daggers at the FrogMen and flung his arms back. The two creatures flew in the air before splatting on the pavement a couple hundred feet behind him.

  “Whoa,” EightBall muttered.

  “ ‘Whoa,’ indeed,” I echoed.

  I heard a pistol shot and looked over to see a human soldier standing in a shooting stance and pointing his gun at the FrogMen. He fired another shot. And a third. I guess seeing creatures of lore and legend attack the FrogMen must have woken something in him. He reloaded his magazine and continued to fire. Other soldiers joined him one by one until the entire division decided that retreating was not an option. And before I could swing my sword again, humans and Others were fighting side by side.

  ↔

  Others and humans fought side by side against an invading army of FrogMen. In the fourteen years since the GrandExodus I had never seen the two fight against a common enemy—usually their common enemy was each other—and it would’ve filled me with a warm and fuzzy feeling if my legs didn’t feel like jello and my muscles didn’t burn with the hot fires of Tartarus.

  Into the fray came several humans from the oil rig. They wielded unusual weapons—pipe wrenches, drill bits, flare guns. One particularly short man sprung on top of a FrogMan and beat him with the sharp end of a claw hammer. He screamed, “Azzah was my friend. MY FRIEND!”

  We cut them down one after another until the beach was covered in the bile-colored, sea-foam blood of FrogMen. But it wasn’t just their blood that stained the sand. Others of all walks of life also bled, which meant that the earth was stained with every color of the rainbow and a hundred shades in-between.

  I was beginning to think that we could win this one. It would cost us dearly, but we could win. And just as hope rose in me, one of Tiamat’s tentacles broke free, shaking off slates of stone like a duck shakes off water.

  The tentacle slammed down, knocking dozens of FrogMen and Others alike, and with it my hope that the tables had turned. A FrogMan army we could handle. But the earth-shattering power of the Tiamat was well beyond anything we could ever hope to stop.

  Tiamat smashed her free tentacle down a second time, then a third. Each crash caused us to lose our footing and fall, as mounds of sand flew up and dispersed, filling the air with a mist o
f granular powder. The BisMark doubled his efforts. Slowly, the tentacle froze. Tiamat must have realized what he was doing because she crashed her massive appendage on top of him. He would have been lost, except he had that weird “Nothing can hurt me” thing going on—at the last minute the tentacle slipped to the side, striking the ground next to The BisMark, right where Stewart and Greg kneeled, turning the sand red with blood and sparkling with diamond dust … So much for the Sith and his gargoyle partner.

  A FrogMan came at me. I struck him hard on the head. He wasn’t getting up again. His friends, on the other hand, turned on me. I never knew the croaks of a frog could be so terrifying. I was overrun by them. I swung and slashed, ducked and jabbed … Still, there was no way I could keep this up for long. It was only a matter of time until fatigue would put me out of the fight, put us all out.

  Just when I thought I was done for, the FrogMan standing before me turned to stone. Then another, and a couple more.

  Medusa appeared next to me, daggers at her sides. With a hissing roar she called to the FrogMen. They answered. A troop of them turned on her, charging with the coordinated efficiency of a well-trained unit. Not that their training did any good. Her lips curled upward as her snakes faced the advancing FrogMen and—FLASH!—turned twenty of them to stone. Medusa whirled around, speed and grace in every step. Again, her snakes hissed. Another FLASH! and sixty more froze where they stood.

  Knowing that she was burning through time too fast, Medusa drew her daggers and strode through the FrogMen, slicing and slashing. A FrogMan crept up behind her. Before he could strike, Marty flicked around and bit him. Whatever venom the snake used was fast-acting and powerful—the FrogMan fell to his knees, frothy bile spilling over his lips.

  And still the FrogMen came.

  The BisMark cut through them, using the trident to impale, eviscerate and destroy a dozen FrogMen per attack. Michael blew his mighty trumpet, and a hundred FrogMen turned tail and fled back into the ocean. The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who bit FrogMan after FrogMan, cutting through them like a knife through jelly. Miral’s bright sword came down, splitting them in halves and quarters. Officer Steve reverted from four legs to two, headbutting three FrogMen at once. Officer Conner stood by his side, firing from his shotgun at their bellies.