Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  She was about to offer Modo some apology, some promise to him about getting his girlfriend back, when his eyes grew wide. “Jenna . . .,” he breathed.

  Ash turned in time to see a shock of blond hair—the girl from the photograph earlier—as she rushed up the stairs. Next thing she knew, Modo was already plunging through the dance-floor crowd, even as she cried out for him to stop, her voice lost over the music. She tried to catch up with him, muscling the dancing satyrs and wood nymphs out of the way, but the crowd was far more yielding to Modo. Even despite his limp, his broad shoulders allowed him to cut a path through the dancers. And like that, he beat Ash to the stairwell and rocketed up to the second floor.

  When Ash reached the steps herself, she took them two at a time. She hit the landing upstairs just as Modo disappeared into a bedroom at the end of the hallway. There was no doubt that the Jenna clone who’d climbed those stairs was probably the shape-shifter Proteus, luring him into some secluded trap where he could finish what Eve started. With a last sprint she barreled through the open door, expecting to find Modo with his neck broken, lying on the—

  A hard fist, far too solid to be just flesh and bone, slammed into Ash’s gut. When she looked up, Proteus was standing over her, his hair slicked back, and his greasy complexion glinting under the light of the room. Now that he’d shifted back into his own male form, he looked ludicrous in the one-size-too-small woman’s shirt and jeans he was wearing as part of his Jenna disguise. Of course Ashline wasn’t laughing—especially with the guy’s fists transformed into cast iron, another one of his shape-shifting tricks.

  He grinned savagely at her, clinking his iron knuckles together. Ash spotted the burn scars she’d left him on one wrist, the marks of her fingers clearly seared into his flesh. “Second time I’ve gotten the drop on you,” Proteus said, reminiscing about the time he’d clipped her with a rock fist. “I’ll let you pick what my fist will be made out of the next—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Ash transformed her own fist into igneous rock and landed an uppercut under his jaw. He dropped backward onto the oriental carpet, and Ash lunged at him, ready to take her second swing.

  Someone else in the room applauded. “Now that’s the Pele I remember.”

  Colt stood behind her. He softly closed the bedroom door and kept the gun in his hand trained down at Modo, who was curled up in a fetal ball on the carpet. Proteus must have given him an iron fist to the stomach as well.

  Here he was, in the flesh again, the man whose life Ash was devoted to ending. Everything that had once seemed sexy and alluring about him—his sun-kissed complexion, his muscle-bound forearms, the mysterious music that always danced in his eyes—now disgusted her.

  Then there was his smile, the same smile that he’d been giving her since the day he’d first introduced himself at a seedy bar in California. It was a soft smile, but disconcertingly sincere, as though the corners of it had been dulled or weighed down by history . . . a history that, until recently, she didn’t know they shared.

  “Turning your skin into volcanic rock,” Colt said. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a new trick for you in this lifetime. Just you wait, though. There’s so much power in you, Pele, waiting to be unlocked. I know . . . because I’ve seen it.”

  “I am not,” Ash seethed, “Pele.”

  Colt clicked his tongue. “Soon, darling.”

  Ash crossed in front of Modo so that she was now between him and the bullets in Colt’s gun. He wasn’t about to shoot her. “Why this kid?” Ash asked the trickster, even though Modo was older than her and didn’t really qualify as a “kid” anymore. “What will killing him accomplish?” Across the room Proteus was staggering hazily to his feet, using a window curtain to pick himself up. Ash wagged a burning finger warningly in his direction.

  “Kill him?” Colt echoed, and even though Ash knew he was a practiced liar, the confusion on his face read sincere. He tucked the gun in his hand into his waistband. “I don’t want to kill Modo. The gun was just to keep you from doing anything rash. No, I just wanted to offer Modo a job. Your friend has a unique skill set that will prove integral to my mission.”

  Modo tried to step out around Ash, but she held him back. “Some way to hire me,” he shouted over Ash’s arm. “Kidnapping my girlfriend.”

  “Ah yes,” Colt said. “Ms. Paulson.” He crossed the room to one of the windows and drew the curtains aside. Cautiously, Ash and Modo both joined him at the glass and peered out.

  A van with tinted windows was parked on the side street behind the house. As soon as Colt waved his hand twice over his head, the side door rolled open. There were three people inside: Eve, who sat nearest the exit, had her hand clutched tightly in Jenna’s blond hair, while Ash could see just the faintest shadow of a third girl—Rose—on the other side. Jenna was no longer gagged, but she looked too terrified to even try to scream out. All it would take was one hard electrical shock from Eve’s hands . . .

  It was hard to see very well in the low light of the streetlamps, but for just the briefest of glances Eve stared penetratingly at Ash, a look that Ash couldn’t quite decipher. Then she slammed the door closed.

  Ash was close enough to Colt to smell the cinnamon cologne wafting off his neck . . . which meant that she was also close enough to wrap her fingers around that neck and just let the fire pour out of her until she melted him alive—to test just how much bodily harm his regenerative abilities were capable of repairing.

  But in her heart, even if there was the slightest chance she could end this now, she also knew that she’d be risking Jenna’s life, and Modo’s. And she couldn’t take on Colt and Proteus simultaneously. Proteus could easily transform his arm into a shiv and put it right through her heart while she was trying to barbecue her ex-boyfriend.

  Colt must have sensed her resignation, because he offered her another soft smile. Then he turned to Modo. “You are Hephaestus, god of the forge. I need you to use your powers of metallurgy to create me an ax.”

  Modo scowled. Ash could tell he was ready to claw out Colt’s eyes himself. “If you wanted an ax, asshole, all you had to do was swing by the Renaissance fair yesterday and buy one for the low price of $79.95 plus tax.”

  “Not a toy, and not just any ax,” Colt corrected him. “This needs to be stronger and more resilient than any blade ever created, with an edge so fine and sharp that it can cut through anything—an ax only a god like you could create.” He tapped his skull. “Everything you need to forge it is stored up here.”

  “And you’ll let my girlfriend go if I agree to do this for you?” Modo asked.

  “Upon delivery,” Colt said.

  Modo nodded sullenly. When it had just been his own life in danger, he’d still retained a brightness, an aura of better days about him. Now it was like there was a vacancy sign dangling from his soul. “Sorry, Ash,” he said. “It’s hard to argue with an ultimatum like that. I . . . have to.”

  Proteus was beckoning Modo over, and the boy obliged. With metal fingers curled around Modo’s shoulder, Proteus led him out of the room.

  Colt shadowed the two of them to the door but lingered in the exit. “Why do you still resist, Ashline?” he asked her. “Rose is magnetically drawn to me. Eve has rediscovered the electricity, the charge between us. You’re the only one, the only piece of Pele, who’s fighting this now. Sooner or later, though, you’re going to take a step back and appreciate all these elaborate measures I’ve taken, just to make you whole again. Sooner or later you’re going to stop denying the old spark you’ve never stopped kindling for me.”

  “The only spark I’m going to rekindle,” Ash said, enunciating each word sharply, “is the one I’m going to light beneath your funeral pyre.”

  Colt smirked one last time at her. “You always did say the most romantic things.” Then he was gone, and Ash was left with only the fading traces of his cologne and a tightness in her chest.

  She stayed in the frat bedroom for some time, staring out the
window until Proteus and Colt had forced Modo into the back of the van, then driven off. Ash was struggling to put some of the pieces together. To start: What the hell would Colt need to cut with a special ax, and how could it possibly relate to melding Pele back together?

  Remember Occam’s razor, Ash thought, recalling a lesson from one of her teachers at Blackwood. Occam’s razor, in short, was the philosophy that the simplest explanation was usually the best one . . . so Ash started simple.

  Colt needed an ax.

  Aside from medieval warfare—which wasn’t exactly Colt’s style—axes were most commonly used to cut down trees.

  And if a real ax could be used to cut down a real tree, then a specially made ax could be used to chop down a specially grown tree.

  Which left the question: Where on earth was there a special tree that Colt would want to get rid of?

  When the answer dawned on Ash, her elbows slipped off the windowsill. “Oh my god . . .,” she whispered.

  She’d asked herself the wrong question when she wondered where on “earth” this special tree was . . . because it wasn’t on earth at all.

  The Cloak Netherworld revolved around a towering “life tree,” a mystical organism that the oily creatures apparently drew their power from. The tree was also a sort of jail for gods who the Cloak had taken off-line, ones who they’d deemed too sadistic and dangerous to exist in circulation anymore. Each of those gods was plugged into the tree to rehabilitate them, like acorns on an oak, to teach them selflessness and peace by forcing them to exist as part of a communal organism, for the common good.

  Both Eve and Colt had at one point been imprisoned within that tree . . . only Colt was so wretched a soul that his very presence had proven toxic to it.

  Now he intended to chop it down. It could prove the end of the Cloak . . .

  . . . and it could jailbreak a whole lot of twisted, deranged gods.

  That still left one last question though. Colt needed Modo, alive, to build him the tree-killing ax . . . yet Eve, who supposedly now sided with Colt, had attempted to murder Modo the day before.

  What’s your angle, Eve? Ash wondered. Why destroy the very tool your would-be lover needs to complete his vile mission? Unless . . .

  Ash pressed her hand to the glass pane, which was cool beneath her palm. Pictured the look that her sister had given her before she drove away. Listened again to the words Eve had heralded yesterday before Ash subdued her: You don’t know what you’re doing, Ashline. If you knew who he is—what he is—you wouldn’t be protecting him.

  Ash let her forehead slump against the window. You have got to be kidding me, she thought. Her next words she actually uttered out loud, because they were so ludicrous, so unfathomable that she needed to hear them to believe them.

  “Eve . . .,” she whispered, “is on my side?”

  VANITY’S PRISON

  Friday

  It was a restless and haunted eight hours of sleep back in the hotel room. Ash woke up at least once an hour to gaze at the empty bed where Modo should have been. In between she suffered through nightmares, from which she would wake up sweaty and with only a loose grasp of what had happened in the dream. Only vivid but fleeting images remained, burned into her memory upon waking—of giant falling trees, of her body wreathed in fire as she held hands with Colt . . . of flames spreading throughout a city as Pele allowed it to be consumed in lava. People screaming up and down the streets. Fire devouring everything. Everything.

  She prayed that these were truly just nightmares, and not visions of the future.

  By morning Ash was short on options. She couldn’t in good conscience stop Modo from making the ax unless she rescued Jenna before he created it, and she couldn’t rescue Jenna without knowing where they’d taken her. Colt was smart enough to keep Modo’s girlfriend in some secluded location, away from Modo, so the metallurgy god wouldn’t try anything stupid.

  What Ash needed was to talk to someone higher up than her.

  Someone omniscient.

  She needed to have a conversation with the Cloak.

  After devouring a quick breakfast in the lobby restaurant, Ash hopped in Modo’s car and drove out of the city. The Cloak were a strange race. As powerful and all-knowing as they were, they had a weakness: They were allergic to hate and violence, though not exactly in the way a human might be allergic to peanuts or dairy. When they were exposed to it, they transformed from a wise, sentient super-race into uncaged, animal-like monsters. For that reason they could only tolerate quick visits to Earth before retreating to their home world, where only their magnificent tree could detoxify them.

  Ash wasn’t sure precisely how the “hate allergy” functioned, but she had noticed that the Cloak more frequently appeared to her in natural settings—the woods, the ocean. That much at least made sense, since cities and populated areas were more likely to be tainted with hate and violence . . . whether it was residual or fresh.

  So with that in mind, she kept driving down Route 117 until she hit the town of Lincoln, fifteen miles outside Boston city limits. There she parked in a dirt lot just off the road and headed out into the woods. A few joggers and locals walking their dogs populated the trail here and there, but by the time Ash crossed a train trestle and veered off the path, she found herself alone.

  She’d never actually summoned the Cloak before, so she cupped her hands around her mouth and called the name “Jack” over and over again. It was the human name with which the Cloak identified themselves, as if it somehow made them more mortal and less terrifying.

  Ash was about to give up and wander, defeated, back to the car, when she heard the softest rustle of leaves, just behind her. “Calling our name?” an inhuman, gender-neutral voice said into her ear. “That’s a new trick.”

  Ash spun and found herself gazing upward, face-to-face with one of the Cloak. The single fiery blue flame that it had for an eye drifted just slightly with the breeze that was blowing through the woods. Its oily black flesh moved fluidly around it, more like an ink than a skin. Its teeth were bared, a massive gray bear trap of a mouth that looked like it could chew through a tree in one bite. Ash couldn’t be sure whether it was smiling or about to devour her . . . or possibly both.

  She tried to swallow the lump of fear in her throat. “I didn’t know how else to reach you,” she said, trying to take a casual step away from Jack. “It’s not like you guys carry cell phones or check your e-mail.”

  Jack didn’t laugh. “I don’t have long here,” he said. “Even in the wilderness the hate from other areas of your world blows like a foul wind. In time it won’t be safe here for us . . . or for you.” Beneath those words Ash heard what he was actually saying: In time, you won’t be safe from us. Even though Jack had only materialized for less than a minute, Ash could already see how his inky body was starting to bloat outward, growing less humanoid and more animal in shape.

  “I summoned you because of Colt,” Ash said, skipping to the chase. “In order to fuse me and my sisters back together, he’s decided to get rid of you . . . and to do that he’s commissioned Modo—Hephaestus—to forge an ax to chop down your life tree.”

  “We know,” Jack replied calmly.

  After a few seconds, when Jack offered nothing else, Ash shrieked, “Then stop him, damn it!”

  Jack shook his head, which was starting to elongate into more of a snout than a face. “You know that’s not how we operate.”

  Ash did, and it was infuriating. The Cloak had been charged with overseeing the gods, the way the gods were originally supposed to oversee the humans . . . but according to their bizarre, inhuman code of ethics, they refused to directly meddle in the affairs of the gods unless they decided it was absolutely necessary.

  Of course Ash guessed that from their perspective, the few times they’d meddled had only given birth to more problems. When they’d split Pele into three goddesses, they’d created sisters who warred among themselves. And when they’d stripped the gods of their old memories to gi
ve them a better life, they’d opened the door for Colt’s manipulations to flourish, lifetime after lifetime.

  Ash couldn’t think of a time more urgent than this for them to at least try again. “Forget your stupid hands-off policy, Jack. Colt is coming for you. With a big-ass ax, too, which he’s going to use to go Paul Bunyan on your stupid tree if you don’t step in and stop him now. Don’t you get it? He is going to kill you.”

  Jack snarled a little, his back bucking with uncontrollable spasms. It wouldn’t be long now before the hate really started to leach its way into his consciousness and transform him. “Even with the ax he can only get to the tree by traveling through our Netherworld, at our mercy.” His voice sounded strained and phlegmy now, his words echoing up from the back of his throat. “And should he somehow succeed, we don’t fear death the way that you do. All of you, humans and gods alike, base all your rash decisions on your fleeting mortality. You’ve convinced yourselves that behaving like you will die tomorrow is the admirable and adventurous way to live. That,” he said, spitting out the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth, “is what we call a stupid policy.”

  Ash pounded her fist on the trunk of the birch tree next to them. With the heat rising in her, she left a faint char mark on the flaking bark. “You could probably end all this in a second,” she protested. “Instead you’re going to stand by and watch me struggle, on my own, to bring down Colt Halliday? While more humans and gods die at his hands?”

  Jack dropped to all fours as a pair of clawed arms emerged from his body where there had only been a dark amorphousness before. Ash had never seen the transformation progress this far. “You are missing the bigger picture, Ashline Wilde. Back in California, when you were first discovering your abilities, we sent you a scroll with instructions. Do you remember what it said?”