Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  “Nobody’s putting me up to anything. You need to come with me.” She tried to tug him away from the anvil.

  He wouldn’t budge. Instead he let out a short, husky laugh. “Wait a minute—it’s my birthday tomorrow. Did the guys hire a stripper to come here and do some sort of weird, fantasy role play?”

  Ash punched Modo in the arm, eliciting a whiny “ow” from him. “I am not,” she enunciated, “a stripper. I am a god like you who has come here to save your ass from a group of other gods who are far less friendly.” Every time she said the word “god,” his confusion deepened, and it was then that she had an epiphany.

  Modo honestly had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

  “You seriously don’t know?” Ash asked. “I figured it out within five seconds of seeing you, and you have no freakin’ clue what you are? Who you are?”

  He just stared blankly at her.

  “Hephaestus?” she said, sounding less sure now. “You know, the Greek god of the forge and metallurgy?” Maybe the forward approach wasn’t the brightest plan after all. Modo was starting to look like a rabbit that had been backed into a cave by a coyote.

  He shrugged free of her grip, and his hand tightened around his hammer, as though he might need to defend himself. “Are you completely off your rocker?” he rasped. A group of boys chowing down on turkey legs gave them weird looks as they walked by, so Modo switched back into his theatrical voice. “I mean, what sort of strange sorcery is this, mage?”

  Ash slapped him on the back of the head. “Modo, I know you’re under the impression that I’m a nut job, but take a moment to connect the dots: You’re a Greek boy . . . with a crippled leg . . . and despite the fact that it’s well into the twenty-first century, you’re a fucking blacksmith.”

  “Listen, cupcake,” Modo said. “It’s no secret that I like women who are into the whole fantasy role-playing thing, too. But even if I didn’t have a girlfriend already, you are seriously starting to freak me out—and that’s saying something.”

  Ash growled in frustration. It was never easy—but then again it had taken some convincing two months ago for Ash to finally accept the truth about her own identity.

  Well, she’d just have to convince him, too.

  She snatched the hammer out of his hand, grabbed him by the wrist, and forced his fingers down onto the flat of the blade. Then, with her free hand, she touched the other end of the sword.

  He yelped and jerked his fingers away. Where the blade had almost completely cooled down before, Ash had heated it right back up so that the metal glowed orange against the anvil.

  “If I’m not a goddess, then how the hell did I do that?” Ash ran her finger along the length of the sword, which whistled under her fingertip. “And if you’re not a god, then why aren’t you burned? I bet you’ve never been so much as singed a day in your life. You’re just conditioned to associate heat with danger . . . when it holds no danger for you at all.” She pointed to the smoldering furnace in the back. “You could probably stick your hands in those coals and be fine.”

  This seemed to give Modo pause. He was starting to look at least a little reflective. Maybe he was reviewing the last twenty years of his life, all his time spent around fire and forges, struggling—even hoping—to remember a time that the flames had left a mark upon his skin.

  “I was where you are barely two months ago,” she went on. “And unfortunately, just like me, you don’t have the luxury of taking time to let it all sink in. Of sorting through the lunacy of what I’m telling you. Of wondering why the news that will change your life has to come from a complete stranger.” She put her hand on his chest and let a swell of warmth pulse through the fabric of his tunic. “But when you start to realize how my crazy theory fills all the cracks that have been accumulating in your life, you’ll be left with four words: I am a god.”

  For a moment, given the way he was staring into the embers crackling out of the furnace, Ash thought that her little speech had done the trick, that Modo would cave and come with her. This oblivious engineering student somehow factored into Colt’s dark vendetta. If she could keep Modo out of Colt’s hands, maybe she could prevent the trickster from putting Pele back together.

  But Modo had other plans. He scooped up his sword, which was still glowing, limped across the tent, and submerged it in a trough of water. With a hiss, a thick curtain of steam billowed out of the trough as the sword rapidly cooled. “I have a choreographed duel to get to,” he said, withdrawing the wet blade. “At least the cripple gets to be the hero—the audience loves cheering for the underdog.” He waved his sword at her and turned his back as he hobbled out of the tent.

  “Shit,” Ash muttered. She’d gone the straight-up honesty route, and now Modo thought she was a total psycho. She would have probably had better luck luring him away from the Renaissance fair by seducing him, then springing the whole “surprise—you’re the reincarnation of a Greek god” concept on him.

  She dropped onto the footstool next to the trough and sighed. And to think most men would be flattered to be called a Greek god.

  She was stirring her finger in the trough, letting it burn hot and creating her own veil of mist, when she saw something that made her blood run cold, so cold that the flame on her finger instantly extinguished.

  Through the wall of steam, shimmering like a desert mirage, a figure in a medieval cloak was jostling her way through the crowd. Ash might have just written her off as another costumed fairgoer had she not spotted the telltale jeans sticking out from under the knee-length cloak. And when she turned at just the right angle, Ash was able to see beneath the hood.

  It was Eve, in the flesh.

  The desire to punish Eve for her treachery urged Ash to leap over the trough and tackle her sister, but she stopped herself. So far Colt and Eve had no way of knowing Ash had followed them to Massachusetts. To reveal herself now would be to piss away any advantage of surprise she currently had. She hesitated just long enough that Eve disappeared into the milling crowd.

  Well, two could play the chameleon game. Ash grabbed Modo’s hooded brown cloak that was hanging from the roof and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was big on her, but that could prove useful, since it was long enough to cover her jeans. She popped up the hood and slipped into the marketplace.

  The fairgoers were gathering in the outdoor amphitheater for the six o’clock sword-fighting demonstration. Eve had somehow stealthily blended in with the audience, and Ash was having a difficult time finding her again—the Wilde girls were on the shorter side, and the upcoming duel had drawn a brood of taller teenage boys. It was like trying to spot a shrub in a copse of redwoods.

  Already the show was beginning. From what Ash could see between heads, a burly boy wearing lightweight armor and a red dragon crest had given Modo a rough shove across the stage. He leveled his finger at Modo. “You dare to block the path of the king’s guard?”

  Modo, who had rather ungracefully regained his footing, leaned on his sword like a crutch. “You? You’re one of the king’s knights?” He turned to address the audience. “It’s so generous of King Edward to give his court jesters the opportunity for advancement.”

  The crowd rumbled with laughter. Meanwhile Ash elbowed her way closer to the stage. Still no sign of Eve.

  The knight drew his sword. “Step aside, knave, or I shall skewer you like a swine upon a spit.”

  “Skewer me like a swine?” Modo echoed. “So you’re a knight, a jester, and the king’s cook. A true Renaissance man.” He turned to the audience again. “Apparently good servants are exceptionally hard to come by these days. And to think with all that money the king spent on wanted posters for Robin Hood, he could have invested in a help-wanted ad.”

  More laughter from the audience. At this point Ash pushed her way through the last of the spectators to reach the front of the stage. She scanned the crowd for Eve, but with so many people in medieval garb Eve’s cloak had effectively camouflaged her in the sea of browns
and blacks.

  “Your retorts are as lame as your foot, blacksmith,” the knight said.

  “And your face bears striking resemblance to a lady I frequent at the brothel,” Modo replied. “What was your mother’s name again?”

  This time the crowd stepped forward to cheer on Modo, and as they pushed closer to the stage, the river of people parted just at the right time for Ash to spot Eve’s cloak. The weather goddess wasn’t watching the duel.

  She had her face angled to the sky.

  This wasn’t good.

  The knight leveled his sword at Modo, and two identically dressed swordsmen joined him on stage. “I’ll give you one last chance to move aside before we cut you up and feed your remains to the king’s pet pig.”

  “Pet pig? You mean the queen?” As the audience roared once more, Modo lifted his sword and brandished it at the three men. “In the words of a good wizard friend of mine: You shall not pass.”

  The cheers were deafening as the fairgoers prepared for the fight—the three knights had fanned out in a circle around Modo. But the cheering spectators were missing the little details that Ash was beginning to observe.

  The way the air pressure around the amphitheater was rapidly plummeting.

  The clicking in their ears.

  The point of light gathering at the tip of Modo’s sword.

  The way his matted hair was slowly beginning to rise off his head from the static electricity.

  Ash vaulted up onto the stage to the surprise of both the spectators and the nearest knight. Modo, however, was oblivious, with his back to Eve and his weapon raised, ready to strike the incoming swordsman.

  Ash knocked aside one of the king’s guards and tackled Modo around the waist, right as the clouds overhead crackled. She hit him just hard enough that he relinquished his tight hold on the prop sword and it went sailing into the air.

  It didn’t even land before the lightning snaked down from the sky and, in a blinding flash, zapped the makeshift lightning rod.

  The lightning strike was about as loud as a high-speed car crash. The stage itself quaked where the lightning continued right through the sword and pounded an electrical fist into the wooden floorboards. Screams broke out in the audience, but even the shrieks couldn’t drown out the ringing that had erupted in Ash’s ears.

  Ash could feel Modo—who was still crushed beneath her—staring at her in shock, but she had already locked eyes with her sister through the crowd. Eve had her hand outstretched and looked momentarily taken aback to see Ash protecting her target. Once the shock wore off, however, Eve seemed to be considering whether or not to send another bolt of lightning through the crowd to kill Modo . . . even if it had to pass through Ash first. Ash held out her own hand in warning. Even Eve wasn’t immune to a fireball to the face.

  The clouds overhead gave way to a monstrous typhoon. The sudden downpour was enough to send the spectators running for shelter. Ash shook her head. So the crowd had just stood there gawking when a lightning bolt nearly fried them all, but they fled for their lives as soon as it rained. Common sense at its best.

  As soon as Ash had helped Modo to his feet, she stepped between him and Eve, who was sauntering unhurriedly toward the stage. “There are two of you?” Modo asked, his voice cracking.

  “Remember that time I told you that there were evil gods after you,” Ash snapped over her shoulder, “and that you needed to come with me . . . and you decided to have a fake sword fight in a public place instead?”

  Modo started to lunge for his fallen sword, which was faintly smoking, the rain evaporating off the blade, but Ash grabbed him by the front of his chain mail and yanked him back. “Don’t pick that up, idiot.”

  “Oh, please,” Eve muttered, climbing up onto the platform. “Metal might speed up the process, but we both know that I can make a perfectly workable lightning rod out of a human being.”

  Ash shook off the mental image of Eve electrocuting the field hockey captain a year ago on the Wilde’s roof. Even after all that time Ash could still smell the gruesome odor of burnt flesh.

  “After all you’ve done, after all the people you’ve hurt,” Ash said, “I still came to the Cloak Netherworld, risked my own life to get you down from that terrifying tree they’d plugged you into—and you repay me by coming here to electrocute another high schooler?”

  “College student,” Modo corrected her.

  Eve slicked back her rain-drenched hair. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Ashline. If you knew who he is—what he is—you wouldn’t be protecting him.”

  “All I know is that if Colt wants him dead, then I want him alive,” Ash said. “I’ll stand between you and him as long as—”

  She cut off when she heard a splash behind her. Modo had hopped off the back of the stage and was fleeing out the rear of the amphitheater. Despite his impediment, he moved at a surprisingly quick gait.

  “Courageous, isn’t he?” Eve said. With that she held out both her arms, letting electricity crackle over them until a bright, white charge accumulated at her fingertips. She aimed her hands in Modo’s direction, ready to take him out with a bolt before he could disappear behind the row of marketplace shops.

  Before Eve could release the charge, Ash spun around and slammed a fireball into her sister’s stomach. The detonation shot Eve backward like an arrow. She landed in the dirt of the amphitheater floor and carved a long line through the thick mud until friction brought her body to rest.

  Ash stepped up next to Eve, who was groaning and trying to pull her wits together enough to stand up. Ash drove her heel into Eve’s ribs and pushed her over so that she flopped onto her back. The mud splattered up around her.

  “Do you know what my major motivation is for stopping Colt from melting you, me, and Rose back into one goddess?” Ash said. “It’s the fact that if I were given the choice between waking up in the next lifetime sharing a brain with you and not waking up at all, I would choose eternal death in a heartbeat.”

  Eve started to say something, but Ash was too disgusted with her sister to listen to another word out of her. Using the supernatural strength that only came to her in times of true rage, Ash scooped her up by the waist and hurled her up and out, toward the nearest medieval workshop.

  Eve landed on the slope of the roof, which yielded under her weight. She dropped through the roof and into the hut in a shower of straw, wood, and shingles, where she lay still.

  By the time Ash caught up to Modo, he was already staggering across the parking lot. He held up his keys, which he’d magically hidden somewhere in his pocketless trousers. When he pressed the button, a little green sport coupe nearby clucked twice, its lights flashing.

  Ash didn’t let him get to the car. She caught him by the arm and pushed him up against the side of a nearby van. “Look,” she said to him, pinning him against the wet metal. “If this were just about you, I’d say screw it—the kid can try to survive on his own if he really wants. But it’s not just about you.”

  Modo squirmed but Ash held tight. “I’m just an engineering student,” he protested. “I build prosthetics for amputees, for God’s sake. Fake feet, fake legs. What the hell could anyone possibly want from me?”

  It was a valid question. But if Modo was truly Hephaestus, a god whose specialty was weapon making, and Colt had sent Eve to assassinate him . . . “It’s probably about what they don’t want from you, something they don’t want you to build. Something worth killing you for.” Her mind replayed watching Rolfe get skewered through the heart, watching the weeping willow tree crush Aurora, watching Raja get thrown off the side of a skyscraper. “Three of my friends are dead because of them. If you run away from me, if you won’t let me protect you—if they find you and get what they want—then my friends died for nothing.” Ash finally released him. “At least stay alive so they’ll have died for something.”

  Modo surprised her by reaching out and tenderly wiping the tears off her cheek. “It’s just rain,” she said.

&n
bsp; Modo offered a sad, close-lipped smile. “Of course.” He nodded back toward the Renaissance fair. “So these guys really want to hurt me? To kill me?”

  “Modo,” she said. “You were about two feet from being zapped with enough lightning to run Boston for a day.”

  “Then I guess we better clear out of here . . . and get the hell out from under these rain clouds.” He cringed and ducked down, as though the lightning were coming for him again.

  Once they’d climbed into his car, there was a moment when they both sat silently in the front seat. The car vibrated quietly beneath them. Modo’s hands rested on the steering wheel as he blankly watched the windshield wipers bobbing back and forth. “What do we do now?” he whispered.

  Ash’s window had begun to fog up from the air conditioning. She drew a little flame in the condensation. “First we find out exactly what they don’t want you to build. . . .” When she’d finished the flame drawing, a few beads of water dribbled down the glass. “And then we build the hell out of it.”

  THE DRIFTWOOD STRANGER

  Maui, 1831

  This beach is your favorite because the other gods avoid it.

  The Council loathes it, in fact. Hundreds of islands in this archipelago, innumerable beaches to choose from . . . so why, they ask, would you willingly opt for the one covered in dark lava rocks over one with smooth, walkable sand?

  To you this is walkable, comfortable. You love the way the coarse igneous stone feels beneath your bare feet. Those same dark stones protrude from the water, where the lava once pooled after cascading from the summit of Haleakalā and didn’t let anything stop its path until the sea itself finally cooled it. I made this, you think proudly. Although on second thought, as you gaze back toward where the rising sun is illuminating the summit of Haleakalā, you think: I made all this. Every big island, every little one, all gifts of the volcanoes, of the magma rising up through the sea. You may not remember it—they were from a former incarnation of Pele, after all—but this beach and the archipelago in general are a point of major personal pride and accomplishment for you.