Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  Ash nodded impatiently. “ ‘Kill the trickster.’ I could have gotten a head start if you’d told me my target was also my fucking boyfriend.”

  Jack ran a talon down the birch tree’s trunk, scoring a line through the char Ash had left. “When we gave you that task, we were looking for someone to show us that this world is worthy of being saved. We were looking for . . . a champion. And if the best this world has to offer can’t vanquish the worst it has to offer—if good cannot ultimately triumph over evil—then give me one reason why you deserve our intervention.”

  Ash could see that it was a lost cause trying to convince Jack and that she was quickly running out of time. There was a hunger in his eyes, as though he were absorbing the violence of the world like a sponge . . . and that hunger had fixed Ash as its prey.

  She was backing away now, as Jack sauntered forward. His mouth parted, and each of his gray teeth glistened with the same oil that writhed over his body. “If you won’t help me directly,” Ash implored him, “then at least give me a push in the right direction.” She thought back to the cryptic directions the Cloak had once delivered to her and her friends and how they’d provided her with visions of Rose to set her on the correct path. “You were never against dropping a hint from time to time to help me stay the course. So tell me this: Where are they keeping Hephaestus’s girlfriend?”

  Jack paused and cocked his snout to the side, as if deciding whether to answer her question. “Greymoor Hotel . . . top floor,” he growled out finally, each word a struggle. “You’ll find . . . her there.”

  “Alive?” Ash asked, but just then Jack bellowed and lunged for her. Ash held up her hands to shield herself, as his gray jaws snapped open. . . .

  And then, like that, his body burst into a million particles of darkness that evaporated as he returned to the Netherworld. Only the spectral image of his blue flame eye lingered in the air in front of her, shimmering until it faded, but it left her with a very clear message that Jack had left before:

  We’ll have our eye on you, Ashline Wilde.

  As Ash returned to Boston, Jack’s final hint wasn’t sitting well with her. In the last few months Ash had found herself in several kidnapping situations. First there were the mercenaries who tried to toss Serena—the tiny, blind siren that Ash went to school with—into the back of a windowless van. Then she’d had to rescue Wes from being tortured in the humidor of a cigar shop, and just a couple of days later she nearly died rescuing Ade, her thunder god friend, from a mafia safe house.

  Those environments all seemed fitting under the category of “places to kidnap someone or hold them hostage.” Shady, secluded, populated with men for hire.

  The Greymoor, however, was one of the finest four-star hotels in downtown Boston. With its sweeping views of Boston Common, right in the heart of the city, it was about as conspicuous a place you could choose to bring a captive. Ash’s parents stayed there on business trips, for crying out loud. At four hundred dollars a night it wasn’t exactly the kind of hotel where you dragged a college-aged girl, bound and gagged, through the marble lobby and expected a bellhop to help you haul her over to the elevator on a golden cart.

  Ash earned a few looks of disdain from the concierges on her walk through the Greymoor’s regal lobby but she couldn’t look that out of place—surely they must be used to spoiled teenagers staying with their loaded parents. So she walked with an air of self-entitlement through the elevator’s silver doors and rode it all the way up.

  Ash’s uneasiness only grew when the doors parted and she stepped out onto the twenty-seventh floor. The luxurious top level was adorned with all sorts of abstract modern sculptures, and Ash was having a real hard time imagining some girl gagged and tied to a chair behind one of these doors.

  So, Ash thought, looking at the four top-floor rooms. I have a one-in-four shot of choosing the right one on the first try. She glanced up to the ceiling at the fire alarm that was silently blinking red every few seconds, and she felt her lips forming a smile that they reserved only for when she was about to do something particularly devious. Time to improve my odds.

  With the same flicking motion that one might use on a lighter, Ash ignited her thumb and held the flame up to one of the ceiling’s steel sprinklers.

  It only took a few seconds. As one, the sprinklers on the top floor all whirred on, sending curtains of water raining down over Ash and everything else in sight. Red lights pulsed down the hall, and the fire alarm picked up to an almost deafening level. Ash reached up and melted the nearest one so she could hear better.

  The occupants of two of the rooms exited almost immediately. First a mother and her grade-school-aged son from one, then a couple—both in bathrobes and looking more than a little flushed—from the other. All of them rushed past Ash and headed for the stairwell to begin the long trek down.

  That left only two rooms, neither of which had produced any guests. Ash headed for the nearest of the two and wheeled back, ready to kick the door down . . .

  But then she heard just the faintest peal of laughter from the other room. When she listened more closely with her ear against the door, she could hear two people inside giggling over the alarm—a man and a woman. There was a hard wrenching sound, then the alarm on the other side of the door cut out altogether.

  Until now Ash had sensed there was something shady about this kidnapping, but that hunch was quickly transforming into understanding. And with that Ash felt her anger heading for its boiling point.

  Ash took a step back and unleashed a devastating kick on the door in question, her foot connecting hard, right next to the lock. The door imploded, slamming against the wall inside with its mangled dead bolt protruding like a broken bone. The scene inside the hotel room brought Ash’s rampage to a momentary but very abrupt stop.

  On the bed, as she predicted, Modo’s girlfriend lay only half-dressed, tangled up in a bedsheet with the water from the sprinklers cascading down on her. Her matted blond hair was so long that it practically flowed off the mattress, and she pulled the covers more tightly over herself when she saw Ash. Although she was no longer laughing or smiling upon Ash’s entrance, the expression on her face wasn’t a “thank God someone’s come to save me” look that would make sense for someone who’d been kidnapped.

  It was the guilty expression of someone who had just been caught in a lie.

  That much Ash had expected. But the other man in the room was the true surprise. His name was Brett Hardeson, and Ash knew this because he was a musician—a pop star. His infectious breakout hit “Star-studded” had been ravaging the Top 40 radio stations for the last two months. Now here he stood in front of Ash, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and the fire alarm that he’d ripped out of the wall, while the sprinklers continued to wet his boyish haircut and his bare chest.

  Before Ash’s brain could properly compute “Modo’s supposedly kidnapped girlfriend is sleeping with a pop star,” Brett lunged for her. Water droplets flew off his wet body, and one of his fists transformed into wood midair, on a collision course for Ash’s face.

  Ash dodged the punch, letting the wooden fist clip her shoulder, then seized her attacker under his bare armpits. With her strength still fully engaged, she lifted him off the carpet and hurled him into the wall behind her.

  His body struck the ornate sculpture that had been nailed to the wall, which looked like a pair of twisted antlers. Both the man and sculpture fell, but the pop star’s face smashed into the cherry dresser on his way down.

  His eyes rolled back into his head, and his body transformed. Hair sprouted out of his smooth, toned pale chest, which lost all its muscle definition. An angry red burn mark appeared on his wrist, and when the metamorphosis was complete, Proteus lay on the carpet, unmoving.

  Someone squeaked behind Ash. She turned to find Jenna, still wearing only lacy lingerie, darting off the bed and toward the exit.

  Ash was too fast for her. In one jump she blocked Jenna’s escape, slammed the broken door shut
, and then grabbed Jenna by the throat. While Jenna flailed futilely, Ash threw her out the sliding doors onto the balcony.

  Jenna curled up in a ball, quivering against the railing. Tears were streaking down her classically beautiful face—it was the kind of face that could probably make a man do anything. Ash towered over her. She was so angry that the water from the sprinklers evaporated right off her red-hot skin and into a fine mist. “Right now,” Ash said, “you’re probably wondering what you should be more afraid of: the twenty-seven-story drop behind you”—Ash pointed to Tremont Street, so far below them—“or the angry Polynesian volcano goddess in front of you. If you don’t tell me who you are and what’s going on, you’re going to get a taste of both.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jenna shrieked. “My name really is Jenna Paulson. But my goddess name is Aphrodite.”

  Ash choked on absolutely nothing at all. No wonder the girl was obnoxiously beautiful—she wasn’t even human. Then Ash had a funny thought and glanced back through the window to where the unconscious Proteus had his face pressed into the soggy carpet . . . and she began to laugh. “Now I get it,” Ash said. “History’s most famous lover . . . is hooking up with the god who can be any lover that he wants. Tell me . . .” She stooped down so that she was closer to Jenna. “When you make Proteus shift into a new celebrity every night—because let’s be honest, who wants to shack up with his real face?—does he feel empowered, or does he feel . . . inadequate? And who did you have him transform into last night, to celebrate your fake kidnapping? Matt Damon? Ben Affleck? Angelina Jolie?”

  Aphrodite just whimpered and said nothing, pressing her face into the bars of the balcony railing. Maybe the drop was starting to seem like a more pleasant fate than being interrogated by Ash.

  “So you’re a goddess masquerading as human, who seduced a god who actually believed that he was human,” Ash went on. “I’m not even going to ask if you’ve been working for Colt, since the answer to that is pretty obvious. But what I don’t get is: What the hell do you get out of this? You worm your way into Modo’s life, make him love you, all so he’ll unquestioningly build the ax that Colt needs, in order to ‘save your life,’ . . . But what’s in it for you? Money? Fancy rooms at the Greymoor? Or do you just get your jollies hurting good men you think are beneath you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand!” This time Aphrodite actually snarled, the first time that she’d shown any sort of anger since Ash kicked down the door. She quickly softened her tone, though, when she remembered it was Ash she was talking to. “You said it yourself: I’m history’s most prolific lover. . . . And those oily, hell-dwelling Cloak bastards took all my memories from me! Thousands of years of lovers and affairs in cities across the globe, and I don’t get to remember any of it? It’s bullshit. Colt promised me that if we cut down the Cloak’s tree, he’d get those memories back for me.”

  Ash laughed, but she was so disgusted that it sounded more like the bleating of a sheep. “Fake relationships, fake kidnappings, emotionally torturing some innocent kid—all this bullshit—because you can’t remember who you shagged a hundred years ago?” Ash pressed a heel into Aphrodite’s sternum, forcing her up against the railing. “Where is Colt holding Modo?”

  Aphrodite let out a wheeze. “Modo interns for a technology company, RazorWire. Their HQ is a tall glass building down in Fenway, and they were so impressed with Modo’s work that they gave him his own lab on the top floor. Please . . .,” Aphrodite pleaded. “You have to understand. I just wanted to remember. I just . . .” Then she started sobbing, her tears flowing off her face and onto Ash’s foot.

  Ash shook her head as she removed her shoe from Aphrodite’s breast. “If I ever cross paths with you again . . . Let’s just say that I’ll give you some memories you won’t be so keen on remembering in your next life.”

  Then she turned fast, stepped back into the flooded hotel room, and slammed the glass door. With a quick flame from her hand she heated up the lock enough from the inside so it would jam shut, then drew the curtains across to hide the balcony. Aphrodite would have to break her way through the dense glass door or wait until a housekeeper came to clean up the room.

  Either way, no one on the street below was going to hear her cries from the top floor.

  Either way, Aphrodite was going to have to spend a long time out on the balcony thinking about what she’d done.

  Unfortunately, Ash discovered when she turned back to the room, the spot on the floor where Proteus had supposedly been unconscious was no longer occupied by the shape-shifter. The coward had fled, leaving his supernatural lover to fend for herself.

  He was probably also making his way back to Colt to warn him that the ruse was up. Ash just prayed that Modo hadn’t finished the ax yet.

  The front door to the room flapped open, revealing two men in Boston Fire Department gear. “What the hell are you doin’?” the firefighter in front yelled at Ash. “Head to the staircase and get outta here.”

  “Yessir,” Ash said with a salute.

  “Anyone else in the room with you?” the second firefighter asked as she started to pass him.

  Ash smiled darkly. “Just me and my lonesome.”

  Then she headed for the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time all the way down to the lobby. There was no time to waste.

  After all, she had a laboratory to infiltrate.

  RazorWire Laboratories was an intimidating tower of glass and steel that looked more like a massive modern sculpture than the headquarters for a technology company. It sat squarely in the middle of a series of liberal-arts college campuses, not too far from Fenway Park. The reflective glass windows blazed a blinding orange under the setting sun.

  With the regular work day over there was only one security guard manning the check-in station, his legs up on his desk and a magazine open in his lap. Ash tried to exude an “I work here” confidence as she strode past the desk, but the guard was shrewder than she thought. “Miss,” he called out, and was already starting across the lobby for her.

  Ash was prepared. She telegraphed a point of heat to the magazine the guard had left on his desk. “Fire!” she cried, pointing behind him before he could get to her.

  Sure enough, when he turned, his issue of Maxim had gone up in flames. He sprinted back to his station. Ash tried not to giggle as the fan behind the desk blew some of the burning pages from the magazine, scattering them across the lobby floor.

  While the guard was busy trying to stamp out all the burning debris before a fire alarm went off, Ash darted for the elevators and slipped into one just as an employee was exiting.

  It only took the high-speed lift a few seconds to rocket her to the top floor of the laboratory, and another couple of minutes before Ash found a door marked R & D - NANO-TECHNOLOGY that she could hear voices behind.

  She threw open the unlocked door.

  Everyone in the laboratory froze as soon as they saw her. For a second, with the harsh setting sun backlighting the occupants of the room and gleaming off the high-tech machinery, it was hard to sort out who was who. Gradually, however, Ash saw that Modo was presenting a six-foot-tall ax to Colt. Proteus and Eve stood to either side like sentries, their eyes fixed on Ash to see what she planned to do next.

  “Don’t give it to him, Modo,” Ash yelled. “This whole thing was a setup.”

  Modo paused. Even though the silvery ax was as tall as Modo, he held its leather grips in his massive, callused palms as though it weighed nothing at all. The blade, Ash noted, looked sharp and refined enough to slice through stone like it was jelly. “But Jenna—” Modo started to say finally.

  “Is a double-crossing, goddess bitch who’s been working for these guys all along,” Ash said. “She conned you, Modo.”

  It was like someone had attached weights to the bottom of Modo’s face, his sagging jowls nearly falling to the floor. His head started trembling as he turned to regard Colt. Then he cranked on the machine behind him. The fans inside began to whir rapidly, and
a red beam—a laser—materialized between the two diodes.

  Modo spun around, pushing the blade of the ax toward the open laser.

  But Colt was too fast for him. In a blur the trickster god ripped the cumbersome ax out of Modo’s fingers. With his other hand he grabbed Modo by his hair and forced his head down toward the machine.

  Ash took a few steps forward to save him, but Colt shook his head at her, stopping her in her tracks. He held Modo’s face so that his cheek was just inches from the laser. If it was powerful enough to cut through steel, Ash guessed, then it would certainly cut through flesh as well.

  “You’re making my job awfully difficult, Ashline,” Colt said. “Although it’s really adorable that you show up wherever I go. Like a puppy dog. That sort of persistence reminds me of the old Pele. . . .”

  “You’re not leaving with that ax,” Ash told him. She sized up the fifteen feet that separated them, figuring out if it was possible to dodge both Proteus and Eve, get to Colt, and wrap her fingers around the blade long enough to melt it. Even if she had the agility to pull that off, however, there was a good chance Modo’s head would get sheared in half by the laser in the process. It seemed they were at a stalemate.

  That is until Proteus surprised all of them by pulling a pistol out of his pocket and pointing it at Ash’s forehead.

  “What are you doing, Proteus?” Colt asked, and the look of sincere terror that overcame him told Ash that this was definitely not part of his game plan. “I need all three of the sisters alive to put Pele back together again.”

  Proteus kept the gun trained on Ash. “This chick keeps popping back up like a cold sore, and sooner or later she’s going to get the drop on us. I think it’s about time that I put her down like the dog she is.”

  “Proteus, lower your weapon,” Colt said sternly.

  “Shut up,” Proteus barked. “I am so sick of taking orders from you. You completely lose all perspective when this bitch is around. You think I give a damn about your love life, Halliday? You’ve got these delusions of grandeur that you’re this master puppeteer pulling everyone’s marionette strings, and that you’ve got every single god and goddess in your pocket, doing your bidding. I just want my damn memories back, you asshole. So maybe I should just take that ax, have Rose cut me a portal into the Netherworld, and cut down that tree myself.”