Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  “What?” Wes snapped, then lowered his voice. “Do you . . . do you think they recognized me as the Five-Borough Vigilante?”

  “No,” Ash said when she finally stopped cracking up. She shifted the satchel slung across her dress from one shoulder to the other. “You bear a striking resemblance to a certain player on the Knicks. They probably think we’re your arm candy for the night.”

  “Ugh,” Eve groaned in disgust. “I’m no concubine, especially for a professional basketball player.”

  Ash figured that most of the museum donors would be on the older side, but when they emerged onto the moonlit rooftop gardens, the three of them really didn’t look that out of place. In addition to the more mature patrons she’d expected, there was a smattering of young donors too—probably real estate brokers, Wall Street types, or dot com entrepreneurs, she guessed.

  Fortunately, Ash didn’t immediately have any Colt sightings on the crowded rooftop, although it was tough for anyone to stand out among all the men wearing tuxedoes. Instead she wandered carefully through the crowd, with Eve and Wes in tow, while she went from glass case to glass case to investigate the new exhibit. The items the curator had chosen to represent each one of the sins weren’t much on first look—mostly timeworn relics that looked like throwaways from Antiques Roadshow.

  But when she stopped at each of their glass encasements to read the plaque below, she felt a growing sense of awe. For instance, at the installment for the sin of pride, there was a gold-trimmed mirror. According to its caption, the mirror had purportedly belonged to the Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary—or the Blood Countess, as she was known later in history. Bathory had been infamous for a sense of vanity so intense that in order to preserve her youthful looks she’d allegedly stooped to black magic by torturing and murdering young virgins.

  According to some accounts she actually bathed in their blood.

  “Jesus,” Eve muttered after she read the caption. “Maybe she should have just tried Botox.”

  When Ash skimmed through the captions of the exhibit’s other antiquities—gluttony, envy, lust, sloth, greed—they were just as unsavory. But it was when she finally came to the wrath artifact near the far end of the exhibit that she felt truly sickened.

  For all appearances, the wrath object looked like a tobacco pipe, although oddly it was made out of a scuffed bronze metal. Only when Ash peered closer did she recognize the pieces that had been sculpted and welded together to form the pipe.

  They were shell casings from a rifle.

  The caption explained that the pipe had belonged to an officer in the Nazi Gestapo during the Holocaust. Apparently his favorite sport had been to corral groups of concentration camp prisoners that he no longer needed for his labor efforts.

  Then he would line them up.

  And he would see how many human beings his bullet could pass through in the lineup before it would come to a stop.

  The bullet casings that he’d saved and fashioned into a pipe—which he apparently smoked out of every day—were from the bullets that had gone the farthest.

  This truly is hate, Ash thought. No ulterior motives. No desperation because of poverty, no jealousy over an unfaithful wife. Just one man who so unconditionally loathed another group of people that he killed them without provocation, and without mercy, and with so much pride that he made this pipe to remind him of his own hatred on a daily basis.

  Ash was very relieved to see that the man had been executed as a war criminal in the wake of the Holocaust, but she still felt a desire for retribution and vengeance for victims that she would never know. Who knows how many had been slain to make this pipe—fifty, sixty, maybe even more? All she knew was that the mere sight of it made her vision swim.

  “So this is it,” Eve said, and she seemed equally mesmerized as she peered at the pipe. “A couple of old bullet casings, and our boy Colt buys himself a get-out-of-jail-free pass to walk untouched through the Cloak Netherworld.”

  Ash nodded absently, but before she could speak, another party guest caught her eye through the glass case. The young girl was breathtaking in her floor-length black gown, and there was a willowy elegance to her with her one-size-too-long arms and legs. Her dark hair was so straight and well cut that it seemed to fall in one seamless curtain.

  But her expressive brown eyes and her face, which looked like Ash’s own, only harsher and more angular, needed no introduction.

  “Oh my god,” Eve said, apparently noticing the girl at the same time. “How did Colt manage to get her hair done and have her dress fitted without her blowing anyone up?”

  It was Rose, after all, and even though she’d only been in a teenage body for less than a week since Raja aged her, she’d already shed the initial awkwardness of her newfound, taller body to reveal a powerful grace.

  Still, despite the façade of beauty and elegance, Ash only saw the deadly darkness that lurked beneath it.

  For the first time, as Ash gawked at her younger sister, she realized it wasn’t Eve she was most terrified of sharing a head space with again for eternity if they failed to stop Colt. It was Rose, who was volatile and alien and oblivious to just about anything human, like an incurable psychopath.

  “Breathtaking, isn’t she?” Colt said. He had snuck up beside them and was leaning against a patch of railing with a martini in hand. Ash could tell he was trying to look composed, as always, but he had to be surprised that they’d worked out what “armor” he was after. His eyes kept flitting to the glass case beside them, then down at the satchel slung over Ash’s shoulder.

  “That girl,” Ash said, pointing across the way to Rose, who was looking curiously at their group but not approaching, “has the mind of a six-year-old . . . and you’re playing dress-up and house with her as though she’s Evening Wear Barbie?”

  Colt swilled his drink around. “You know one of the things I loved most about Pele? She—you—would never impose such rigid human morality on the gods. We make our own rules.”

  “Cool it, James Dean,” Ash said.

  Meanwhile Wes positioned himself between Colt and Ash, ever the protective boyfriend, even though Ash and Eve were both arguably more dangerous than he was. Colt, who was six feet tall himself, had to gaze up at Wes, but there was no fear in Colt’s face. Fear doesn’t function the same way when your body can repair itself from even the most horrific injuries.

  Wes leaned his head down just slightly, to remind Colt who the big dog was. “The last time we crossed paths, I seem to remember telling Ash that I didn’t trust you as far as I could throw you . . . and that I’d be happy to find out exactly how far that was.”

  Colt gestured to the other museum patrons around them, who were completely oblivious to the tense confrontation happening near the wrath artifact. “Really, Towers? Let’s save the primitive fisticuffs until we’re no longer in civilized company.”

  Wes glanced up at the gibbous moon, the moon from which he drew his night powers. “Okay,” he said.

  Then he grabbed Colt by the front of his tuxedo shirt, spun him around a few times like he was a discus, and then launched the trickster with every ounce of his super strength off the roof.

  Colt’s body sailed over the museum and across Fifth Avenue, until he smashed into the fifth floor of the building across the street. He left a visible dent in the brownstone exterior before he dropped out of sight to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk below, where the screams of pedestrians echoed up even into the rooftop gardens.

  They were followed by a second wave of screams, probably as the man who had just plummeted five stories magically began to peel his broken body off the sidewalk.

  There were plenty of shrieks on the roof, as well, from the patrons who’d seen Wes toss Colt like he was made of balsa wood. People slowly drifted away from them, while two security guards edged closer, walkie-talkies in hand.

  “How about another blackout, Eve?” Ash murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

  Eve knelt down to the nearest elect
rical socket and put two of her fingers where a plug would go. She sent a hard burst of electricity into the circuitry.

  The lights all around them burst, immersing the rooftop in darkness. Ash felt panic rise within her. Colt might have been subdued for now, but he was nearly impossible to kill and relentless as hell. Plus it was only a matter of time before security came to confront and detain the three of them. She needed to get the wrath artifact as far from Colt as she possibly could before he had a shred of a chance to steal it himself.

  Ash plated her fist with volcanic rock. Then, under the cover of darkness, she wheeled back and slammed her knuckles into the glass encasement.

  Her punch passed right through, shattering the glass around it. She groped around until her hand found the pipe. She put a hand on Wes’s shoulder and said, “Keep the trickster and the explosive one off my tail for as long as you can.”

  Then she took off running across the rooftop . . .

  girded her legs with the same volcanic plates she’d used on her fist . . .

  and vaulted off the back of the roof into Central Park.

  The impact with the grass below sent through her a tremor so violent, she almost forgot her own name for a second. But the volcanic reinforcement on her legs prevented them from breaking. By the time she emerged from her awkward roll through the grass, she was already back on her feet and running, the pipe still tightly clutched in her hand, and her satchel slung over her back.

  As Ash sprinted through the dark park, with no real destination in mind, she briefly contemplated just throwing the pipe away. Central Park was almost eight hundred fifty acres, and maybe it was safer just to melt the object and leave it in a gooey metal puddle somewhere.

  But if anything, Colt was supernaturally resourceful. He’d managed to find Ash lifetime after lifetime, in a world with over six billion people. The gods and goddesses made up only an infinitesimal fraction of that population, yet he’d sought each of them out and wrangled them together in no time at all. Knowing Colt, the guy would just bankroll some god of magnetism to play metal detector in the park until they found it.

  Ash’s legs (which she had returned to flesh so she could run more freely) began to burn. Ahead she saw the banks of Turtle Pond, a little wildlife preserve in the middle of the park. She started to change her trajectory to circumnavigate the pond . . . when a hard object cracked her on the side of the head.

  Pain sang through her skull, and suddenly she couldn’t tell which direction was up. She distantly felt her body tumble to the grass, but her limp limbs no longer felt like her own. Darkness convulsed in and out of her vision as she struggled to retain consciousness. Somehow she regained enough feeling to touch the side of her skull, and felt a hot stickiness where blood was flowing out of a wound near her temple.

  A foot caught her by the shoulder and flipped her over so that she rolled onto her back like a beached turtle. A demonically gleeful face stared down at her from behind a head of long red curls. Epona held a cricket bat, tinged red with Ash’s blood. The Celtic nightmare goddess pressed her riding boot down hard on Ash’s wrist, driving her sharp heel into the flesh until Ash painfully relinquished her hold on the pipe.

  As soon as Epona had the wrath artifact in her possession, she tilted her head back to the sky and let out an animalistic shriek that sounded like a hawk’s cry. At first Ash thought that Epona was just going berserk with pleasure at having thwarted her. But thirty seconds later, even through the church bells that were tolling in her ears, Ash heard the pad of footsteps coming toward them.

  It was Colt. His tuxedo coat was gone, as was his tie, and his tuxedo shirt was shredded and stained with his own blood from the long fall. Unfortunately, thanks to his regeneration, he looked healthy as ever.

  He caught Epona by the back of the neck and kissed her hard. Ash wasn’t sure whether the need to throw up in the grass was because of the concussion Epona had given her, or from watching the two of them go at it.

  Colt pulled away first, even as Epona lunged in hungrily for more. He stayed her with a hand. “Do you have it?” he asked.

  She coyly held up the pipe, twisting it between her fingers while she gave Colt a naughty smile.

  “Good,” Colt said. “Let’s get this over with then.”

  Ash tried to pull herself into a kneeling position, but her legs were still refusing to cooperate, so she curled back up in the mud. What happened next, while she watched, was a scene of horror far more grotesque than watching the two of them kiss.

  Colt stripped off his tuxedo shirt and turned so that his bare back was exposed to Epona. The nightmare goddess reached into her belt and plucked out a long dagger.

  “It’s going to heal quick, so you’ll have to work fast,” Colt reminded her.

  She nodded. With a pained expression, Epona held the dagger up so that the blade pointed down . . . and then she plunged it into Colt’s back.

  Colt let out an agonizing cry as the blade sank into the flesh beneath his shoulder, buried in his body all the way up to the hilt. The cry turned into choking sounds as Epona dragged the dagger down, creating a long, deep incision in Colt’s body.

  Then, before the muscle and tendons and skin could repair themselves, a process that would happen almost immediately, Epona took the metal pipe and forced it into the open wound. She pushed it hard, gritting her teeth, until it was firmly embedded in his body.

  She removed her fingers just in time. Like Ash had witnessed many times before, the flesh over the blade’s incision zippered back together on its own. Within ten seconds the skin sealed the pipe inside Colt’s body and left his back as smooth as it had been two minutes ago, without even the faintest trace of a scar.

  Colt raised his arms over his body in a stretch, letting his musculature get used to the collection of bullet casings that was now lodged inside his body. It was buried so deep that Ash couldn’t even make out a bump on his back.

  There was more padding in the grass, and Ash prayed it was Eve or Wes, coming to stop this for good. It was Rose, however, who appeared through the trees. She’d abandoned her heels and walked barefoot around the banks of the pond. She looked curiously at Ash, who was still curled up in the grass, but there was no sisterly warmth behind her gaze. Ash could only guess that Colt had given Rose some sort of Stockholm syndrome through his manipulations, convincing her that he was the only person who could make her feel whole again, to stop the loneliness inside her.

  Rose wanted to be part of Pele again.

  Colt gave Rose a big smile and an even bigger hug. Epona looked disgusted to see Rose there, and Ash was sure the nightmare goddess would try to slit Rose’s throat the moment Colt left the two of them alone—if he was stupid enough to do that.

  Ash hadn’t regained her strength enough to even half-ass chase after them, but she did have one last idea left in her arsenal. She reached a trembling hand into the satchel lying in the mud beside her and pulled out the secret weapon she’d brought with her.

  It was the music box from Rose’s demolished home in western Massachusetts. After a few quick cranks of the key by Ash, it began to twinkle its soft melody across the park.

  Rose stopped dead in her tracks, leaving Colt and Epona to walk ahead of her. Soon they noticed she was no longer following, but by then she was already under the trance of the music box’s song.

  Rose took a shaky step in Ash’s direction, drawn toward the music. Then she stopped again and gazed back at Colt. Soon her head was twisting frantically back and forth between the trickster god and Ash, who held the music box out for her little sister, beckoning her over. She looked like she was being physically torn apart, like a human tug-of-war rope.

  Tears streamed down Rose’s cheeks. Then she let out a wail so deafening that it probably could be heard all the way across the Hudson River in Hoboken.

  That’s when Rose detonated.

  The blast of intense energy burst out of Rose in a magnificent orb. The blinding explosion threw the bodies of Colt and
Epona into the woods and reached far enough to send Ash tumbling into Turtle Pond.

  When Ash spluttered to the surface, she saw just the tail end of Rose’s black dress as the girl disappeared through a portal she had carved into the air. Then the air fused closed behind her, and the rift was gone.

  Ash only managed to crawl out of the shallows onto an algae-covered rock before her concussed brain gave way to unconsciousness.

  SHATTERED LANTERN

  North America, 1831–1832

  Your journey across the eastern continent begins on its Pacific shores.

  When you first make land in the boat you stole from the Hawaiian missionaries, you’ve drifted farther north than Colt anticipated. It’s colder here, and the misty shore air has the same crisp morning bite that the sea does. Your first thought, as your bare feet touch down on the rocky sand, is that you’ve made a big mistake. Maybe you and your beloved should have remained on the islands, despite Tu’s warning. It was your home after all.

  How could this place ever be your home?

  But some of that trepidation disappears the moment Colt’s hand finds yours. Together you wander up the steep hill into a forest that leaves you breathless. The forest here is unlike anything you ever saw back home, even on the most fertile slope of Kīlauea. The trees are so thick that even ten of you couldn’t make it all the way around one trunk if you were holding hands. The bark is a funny red color, not crimson like volcanic fire, but instead a deep earthy clay. The giant trees journey so far up into the sky that they might even penetrate Rangi’s clouds.

  If only Rangi and Papa were still alive to see these sights.

  The going isn’t easy—the two of you have to survive off what you find, sleeping under whatever natural protection the landscape can provide for you. It will be a long time before you encounter another human being. But Colt is truly a child of these lands. He knows what berries and leaves you can eat, and which are poisonous. He can catch fish from mountain streams and lakes, fell birds with a single stone, and catch game from rabbits to deer just by using the natural elements around him. Of course, when you’re lucky enough to gather meat for dinner, you’re more than happy to light a fire for him to cook it.