Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  Ash held up her hand and let a small but vibrant stream of sparks shoot from her fingertips into the air. The impromptu fireworks display snagged everyone’s attention, and the group of sullen gods formed a ring around her. Wes and Ade smiled at her encouragingly. Eve crossed her arms and waggled her eyebrows at Ash as if to say, You better make this good, sis.

  “There’s always that point in the movies,” Ash began slowly, “where the general stands before his troops, or the coach comes into the locker room before his team takes the field for the last time, and he starts motivationally waxing on about how they may be the vastly outnumbered and outgunned underdogs, but that’s exactly why they’re going to win. It all builds up to this intense emotionally charged climax where everyone cheers with unity as they fill to the brim with a power they weren’t even sure they had.” Ash blinked and looked to the sand. “Well, I’m not your coach, and I’m not your general, and in full disclosure, I got a B-minus in the last public-speaking course I took.” A few people laughed, but it was a choked, tense laughter.

  Ash switched on her internal furnace, and fire instantly lapped over her arms, all the way up to her elbows. She held them out for the group to see. “There was a time, even after I learned that I was a one-woman pyrotechnic freak-show, where I thought I could live a normal life if I just retreated to schoolwork and dances and tennis matches, and pretended like this other, ancient world didn’t exist. But then I met Colt Halliday, this”—she searched for the word to call him—“this fucking asshole, and the world started to fall apart around me. Friends turned on each other. People I loved dearly were murdered in the most unmentionable, personal ways. Hell follows him like a shadow, and everyone pays for it. Everyone.”

  Ash gazed to the south, between Ixtab and Serena, in the direction of the Blackwood campus. “As long as Colt Halliday walks the earth, nobody’s fireproof. He manipulates everyone around him, and then steps back and watches the chaos. One morning you’ll wake up with a knife between your ribs, and while it may not be his hand on the dagger, you’ll hear him laughing from the shadows. That’s how the douche bag operates. And now he’s got a posse of gods, some of whom have spent centuries stewing in a sweaty prison and are about to make up for lost time by torching this world. They’ll let the whole planet burn for no better reason than to watch its ashes blow in the wind.”

  Ash knelt down, scooped up a handful of sand, and let it sift down through her fingers. “As much as the gods we’ll be going up against probably deserve to be punished, it makes me sick that anyone has to die. I’ve seen so much killing in the last few months, all because of Colt’s puppeteering, and let me tell you: It doesn’t matter whether the person is innocent or guilty, whether it’s in rage or in self-defense, whether it’s something I witnessed or an act of violence by my own hand—killing is always a vicious, ugly thing. This one girl, who I once might have called a friend, fell from grace, and I watched her personally murder two of my friends in cold blood.” Ash flinched as Lily’s face popped into her mind, as if the girl had snuck up behind her. But then she pictured Lily as she’d last seen her, as she died, floating in a moat of water, with blood pumping out of her chest. “I really thought I wanted to avenge my friends, but in that final moment, when I put the sharp end of a broken champagne glass through her heart, I felt no happiness or vengeful excitement. It was awful.

  “That’s why it’s with a heavy conscience that I ask you to join me on what could inevitably be a suicide mission. I’m just a stranger to most of you, and I’ve already asked too much of you—summoning you to this distant beach, luring you away from your family and friends, and placing you into the path of danger. I had little right to do so.” Ash took a deep breath. “Think of those people dear to you when you decide whether to join me on the journey into the forest. No one will blame you if you turn around now and go back to the life you left behind. If you pretend you never saw this cataclysm between the gods brewing.” Ash pointed south, in the direction of Blackwood. “But sooner or later, if we fail tonight, then those dark gods will come to your town, to destroy your home and the people you love. So either you can fight by my side now, when we still have a chance . . . or you can fight alone then, when it might be too late.”

  And just like that, Ash gave them the option. Five of the assembled gods turned and walked away, after various levels of hesitation. One even came up to Ash and could barely meet her gaze as she said simply, “I can’t,” before she turned on her heel and headed back to the parking lot.

  When the deserters had departed, ten gods remained on the beach: Ash, Eve, Wes, Ade, Serena, Ixtab, Papa, Rangi, and two new arrivals that Ash had never met before, in this lifetime or in any of her resurrected memories: Sila, the Inuit goddess of the air, and Erebus, the Greek god of the shadows. They both had very personal reasons to fight. Sila’s sister, Sedna, an Inuit goddess of marine life, had been tortured by the awful Epona, racked with nightmares for hours at Colt’s request. Sedna had survived the ordeal, but was now institutionalized and hadn’t uttered a word since. “Even if you stand in front of her,” Sila explained, her face hard but her eyes welling with tears, “it’s like she stares right through you.”

  As it turned out, Erebus and Eve already knew each other, which Ash didn’t realize until she saw her sister give him a civil clap on the shoulder. The teenage shadow god, along with Eve, had been part of Colt’s dark entourage a year ago, when the trickster was still moonlighting as the masked figure Blink. Once Erebus had seen the big picture of Colt’s plans, he’d tried to escape . . . and Colt had sent Itzli to “take care” of Erebus’s girlfriend as a parting gift. Itzli had crushed the girl—a mortal—with a massive stone from the neck down, so Erebus would be able to recognize her face when he returned to the apartment. Until now, however, Erebus hadn’t known where to find the trickster to seek his revenge.

  Nightfall landed, and Ash knew it was time to move out. They would strike Colt’s Dark Pantheon first, then storm the trickster’s stone tower afterward to rescue Ash’s parents and Rose . . . that is, if the girl wanted to be saved.

  Thanks to Ixtab’s visions and her in-depth knowledge of mythology, they had a pretty good idea of some of the gods they were up against out in the wild. However, this didn’t put Ash at ease, because she knew that identifying the gods was one thing—but surviving a battle against them was something else altogether.

  In the beach parking lot they loaded up into the two jeeps that Wes had rented for the attack. “I hope you opted for the insurance on these,” Ash said to Wes, as he handed a pair of keys to her.

  “Unfortunately, the insurance only covered ‘acts of God’ and not ‘acts of gods,’ ” Wes joked.

  “Damn these rental companies and their refusal to acknowledge the supernatural.” Ash leaned into Wes and pressed her forehead against his collarbone—she had to stand on her tippy toes to accomplish this. “You drive safe, Wesley Towers,” she said to him, since they’d each agreed to drive one of the jeeps.

  Wes pulled her in close. “We’re just driving down the 101,” he said softly. “We’re not piloting dual space shuttles on a dangerous mission to destroy a globe-killing asteroid.” But they both knew that the risks were every bit as high, and that the moment they parted here could be the last moment they shared alive.

  Ash couldn’t handle the thought of a prolonged goodbye, so she kissed Wes hard on the Adam’s apple, then turned and walked to her own car without making eye contact.

  She was surprised to find Ixtab in the passenger seat of the jeep, in addition to Ade, Erebus, and Sila, who’d loaded up in the back.

  “What?” Ixtab said defensively when she saw the way Ash was looking at her. “Let me guess: You want to know what good my powers will do us out in the field? How the whole ‘I see dead people’ shtick will help me out there?”

  Ash put a hand on Ixtab’s shoulder. “You’ve already done so much. Because of you, we’ve been able to identify some of the gods we’re up against tonight. You�
��ve given us a fighting chance. You don’t have to do anything else to—”

  “Look,” Ixtab interrupted. “I may not be able to ignite things, or make earthquakes, or summon the wind, or . . .” She glanced back at Erebus. “Or whatever the hell that guy does with shadows. But humans have fought for centuries with more material means, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Colt’s underlings already took one person I love from me.” Her weary eyes went somewhere else for a second, and Ash could all but see Aurora’s pumping wings reflected in them, the Roman goddess of the dawn taking flight. “I won’t let that happen to anyone else while there’s still breath left in my body.”

  Ash nodded. Even if she were stripped of her own fiery abilities, nothing would stop her from marching into battle to avenge any of her friends.

  And after all, Ash thought with a wry smile as she started the jeep, even before she’d acquired her own powers, she’d always been able to throw a mean right hook.

  “Buckle up, kids,” she instructed the four gods in the car. “It’s going to be a Wilde ride.”

  “Really?” Ade groaned. “You went there?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Sila said, buckling her seat belt nonetheless. “We’re headed into a cataclysmic battle between the gods . . . and you’re concerned about seat belts?”

  Ash looked into the rearview mirror and raised her eyebrows. “Clearly you’ve never driven with me before.” Then she threw the car into drive, slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, and rocketed past the jeep containing Wes, Eve, Papa, and Rangi. Serena stood on the corner, with her cane slung over her shoulder, and in true Serena fashion, shouted, “I’ll see you soon, Ashline Wilde,” as the jeep flew past her.

  How the blind girl knew it was the jeep with Ash in it, Ash would never know.

  The drive from Crescent City to the Blackwood Academy campus was only forty miles.

  Thirty miles into it, the passengers of Ash’s jeep fell into an anxious silence.

  Thirty-eight miles into it, they hit the fog.

  It started as just a light mist over the narrow road. After another minute, it thickened until the enormous, towering redwood trees that flanked either side of the highway disappeared into a dark, gray cloud. The road glistened with an inch of standing water, even though it hadn’t rained. Ash slowed the jeep way down and chanced a look over her shoulder just to make sure that Wes and the others were still following behind them. Wes flashed his headlights reassuringly.

  Behind Ash, Sila had tilted her head to the sky. “This isn’t right,” she said, and sniffed the air. “This fog isn’t . . . natural.”

  Ash had figured as much herself. If one of the Dark Pantheon was behind this, then there was a good chance that the welcoming committee already knew they were coming.

  Somewhere in the trees off the passenger side, a large crack resounded from the woods. Before Ash could even see what had made the sound, Ixtab grabbed her arm and shouted, “Watch out!”

  Ash slammed on the brakes just as the colossal trunk of a redwood tree came chopping down across the road like a cleaver. It landed just ten feet in front of them, and even at the jeep’s diminished speed, Ash had to whip the steering wheel to the side. The jeep hydroplaned sideways over the slick road before it stopped inches from the fallen tree.

  Behind them, Wes’s jeep screeched to a halt as well, and Ash stood up and frantically waved for him to turn around. But even as Wes started to put his jeep in reverse, there was another crack, and a second redwood toppled across the road behind them. They were now trapped in a wooden pen, with nowhere to go in the jeeps unless they tried to go off-roading into the forest.

  A third crack. This time, through the mist, Ash saw the tree hammering toward the second jeep. “No!” she screamed over its groaning, splintering trunk.

  Wes leaped out of the driver-side door, and at first Ash thought he meant to get out of the way. Instead he stepped right in the path of the falling tree, braced his legs against the asphalt, and extended his massive arms over his head.

  Even with his superhuman strength, the Aztec night god staggered backward under the tremendous weight of the tree, and the pavement cracked beneath his feet. The tree’s descent stopped only a foot from crushing the jeep and its occupants, who took the opportunity to scramble out onto the road. As soon as Wes was sure everyone was out of harm’s way, he growled and then heaved the trunk off to the side.

  Everyone was evacuating Ash’s jeep when a fourth redwood came crashing down. With no one to catch it this time, it crushed the abandoned jeep just as Ash and her compatriots dove clear. Glass shattered everywhere, littering the road. The tree trunk practically folded the vehicle in half, mangling the steel of the jeep’s chassis as though it were Play-Doh.

  “It’s an ambush,” Sila hissed, as if that weren’t obvious enough. The five from Ash’s car defensively backed up into each other, as the milk-thick mist continued to pulsate around them.

  There was a shriek down the road, in Wes’s group, and Ash snapped to attention just quick enough to see some sort of man-size creature with batlike wings carrying Rangi up into the mist, its talons fastened around the god’s neck. Ash prepared to launch a fireball up at the creature, but dared not, lest she hit Rangi in the process. She could no longer see the creature in the clouds anyway, so she’d be throwing blindly.

  Ten seconds later, Rangi’s body fell back through the mist and hit the pavement next to Ash with a wet thuck. Blood seeped into the rain-slick road, mixing with the gasoline that was leaking out of the jeep.

  “Back toward the tree line,” Ash barked at her group, trying to urge them off the road and out of the open. There was nothing they could do for the dead Polynesian sky god now.

  Before they could properly retreat, the beating wings of the bat creature sounded through the mist, and as he swooped over them, he vomited a fireball down at the mangled jeep. Ash barely had time to leap in front of the vehicle before it ignited. The explosion from the gas tank sent her reeling back, but Ash recovered her footing and held out her arms, shielding her friends from the angry flames. She let her fireproof skin absorb the heat before letting the shield drop altogether.

  The remaining eight gods all retreated to the forest, and not a moment too soon: A series of inhuman growls echoed out of the woods on the opposite side of the road, from the direction of Blackwood. At first Ash thought they must be coming from some crazed gods. But the figures that emerged through the mist were far more terrifying.

  It was a pack of woodland animals indigenous to the redwoods—coyotes, mountain lions, and black bears—only they were all in various states of postmortem decay. Most of them had lost all but patches of their fur in the decomposition process, leaving behind exposed fat, sinew, and bone, which glistened in the firelight from the exploded jeep. They didn’t look friendly, either—they foamed rabidly at the mouths with hunger, and their gnashing teeth looked as sharp as the day they’d died.

  Behind them, walking coolly, was a human figure: Hel, the Norse goddess of the underworld, if Ixtab had identified her correctly. She pointed at Ash and the other fleeing gods, and the zombie animals loped after them.

  Ade boldly stepped forward and raised his arms, preparing to bowl the creatures over with one of his signature waves of thunder. But before the Zulu thunder god could release a shock wave, a zombie elk came barreling through the mist. It rammed into Ade with its head down and scooped him up with its antlers, carrying him off into the wild.

  Not only did the attack of the undead animals force the rest of them deeper into the trees, but their angle of attack divided Ash’s squad even farther from Wes and the others. The last thing she wanted to do was to lose sight of her sister and Wes when there were bloodthirsty creatures in pursuit, but she had little choice, so she dashed like hell was on her heels into the mist. The last she saw of Wes, an undead bear was taking a swipe at his head with a bone-breaking swing of its claw. Wes ducked under the bear’s right hook, and then countered with one of
his own that knocked the bear’s lower jaw right off its skull.

  Ash made it a solid forty feet into the forest before she heard the quickly approaching padding of paws on dirt. She knew it was only a matter of time before she was outrun by the reanimated animals, so she turned on her heel, switching to the offensive. The outline of a cougar materialized through the mist, coming fast. Ash launched a fireball in its direction, hoping to burn the creature alive.

  But the problem with burning the cougar alive was that it was already dead. The fireball exploded across the exposed sinew of its face, but the mountain lion didn’t even flinch. It just continued to lope forward, in flames, and Ash couldn’t even get out the words “oh, shit” before it pounced and landed on her.

  Its claws sank into her shoulders, and the weight of the creature took Ash to the ground like a falling tree. It was all she could do to thrust out her hands and wrap them around the zombie cougar’s neck and squeeze. This kept its gnashing teeth inches from her nose. The fiercely putrid smell of burning, rotting flesh threatened to make her vomit, and she tried her best not to scream as its claws dug deeper into her flesh.

  Ash’s own anger was growing at the thought of dying at the mercy of a carcass. Hel couldn’t fight her own battles, so she summoned carrion to do her bidding instead?

  “Fuck this,” Ash growled. She kicked off the ground, somersaulting backward with the mountain lion, then launched him by the neck hard at the nearest redwood.

  The cougar hit the tree back-first, and its exposed spine snapped in half. Still, with its back and hind legs twisted at a macabre angle, it tried to drag itself forward through the dirt on just its front paws.

  Before the fallen creature could crawl its way any farther, Erebus reappeared from the mist, wound up with his right leg and let loose a kick across the cougar’s face. Its head snapped off its neck and flew into the mist. “Got to admire its persistence,” Erebus said, as the broken, headless corpse on the ground continued to lash out blindly with its claws.