by Paul Neuhaus
“I don’t have to speculate too hard. I know for certain he doesn’t need it to lengthen his own lifespan.”
“He’s a Mythnik.”
Max came back in and gave Medusa another tall glass of rum. She winced. “I despise that term,” she said. “It makes we few happy survivors sound like silly toys. Playthings.”
“Nicos is one of we few happy survivors?”
She smiled as she imbibed but said nothing.
“Oh, come on. Don’t clam up on me now. At least give me a hint.”
My hostess threw back her head and sat contentedly as the booze flowed down her throat. She opened her eyes and was still looking at the ceiling when she spoke next. “Nicos Nephus is unusual amongst our breed. He doesn’t enter into the modern world until the last days of World War Two. He was freed by an errant artillery barrage.”
“‘Freed’? What do you mean ‘freed’?”
Medusa paused for dramatic effect. For just a moment, I got a flash of the woman I’d seen in many black and white movies. “From the rock he was chained to,” she said with some relish.
I’m sure my eyes popped open as wide as they were able. I know for sure my lower jaw went slack. From where I’d put her on the floor, Hope said, “Whoa.”
Medusa was loving the effect of the bomb she’d just dropped.
“Prometheus? You’re saying Nicos Nephus is Prometheus?”
“I would not say otherwise since saying otherwise would be an untruth.”
I sat back again, blown away. For those of you without a working knowledge of Greek myth, Prometheus was one of the biggies. He wasn’t a god himself; he was one of the few Titans remaining after Zeus and the others staged their rebellion. To cut to the chase, he—against the direct will of the Olympians—stole fire and gave it Mankind. For that he was punished. Big-time punished. Zeus had him chained to a rock for all eternity. Every morning, he’d awaken to a vulture who was there to tear out his liver and eat it. Every night, the liver would grow back so the whole thing could start over again. If what Medusa was saying was true, he’d been freed from his cyclical hell sometime in the nineteen-forties. Freed to move to the States and start a cult. That was the part I was having trouble with. Why does a culture hero of Prometheus’ stature chuck it all to become an A-list Jim Jones? “You’re implying he wanted to free the Evils from the pithos. Why? Why would he want that?”
“Based on the fact you didn’t know his secret identity, I’m going to assume you’ve never spoken to him.”
“That’s right. I haven’t.”
“I have. He’s been here in Los Angeles since the early fifties. Building his empire. He’s not like he was before the fire incident. If I may draw a parallel with a stereotype in the modern world…”
“Please.”
“Prometheus is like an American dad. An American dad who was liberal and progressive in the nineteen-seventies but is old now. He’s old and he watches FOX News and all he lives for is libtard tears.”
‘Libtard’? Maybe Medusa was less eccentric and savvier than I thought. “Can you elaborate?”
She demurred again. “I don’t really want to speak for the man. I don’t know him well. All I can say is, like the caricature I sketched for you, he longs for a time he idealizes. A time that maybe wasn’t as great as he thinks it was.”
“Okay, okay. I won’t press. I gotta say, though, that was really helpful.”
Medusa shrugged with her shoulders and held out her newly empty glass a second time. At least one of those long legs was hollow. Max took the glass and disappeared again. “Would you like some advice?”
“By all means…”
“Nicos has paid you more attention than he typically pays to other… Greek refugees. He had two things he wanted from you and only got one. Don’t think that, just because his envoy was clumsy, he’ll give up.”
Obviously, that thought hadn’t occurred to me. I looked down briefly at Hope. “Okay, well. Thanks for the warning. I don’t wanna take too much more of your time. What’s the hierophant? What is it really? Do you really have it?”
“What made you think I have it?”
“Medea’s diary. She said in a recent entry that you had it and that she wanted it.”
“I told her I still have it, but I no longer have it.”
“You no longer have it?”
“There were too many people sniffing after it, so I put it in someone else’s care.”
“Who—?”
I was interrupted by a monstrous pounding from the foyer. A pounding so loud our teeth rattled, and we jumped in our seats. Max had just brought Medusa her third glass of rum. He gave it to her and headed back to the front door.
“What the fuck was that?” I said.
Medusa shrugged again. “I think we’re about to find out.”
I wasn’t about to just sit there and wait. I picked up the pithos and nestled it in the crook of my right arm. I hadn’t brought brass knuckles or a gladius, so I held my left hand poised over the jug’s lid.
Medusa seemed annoyed that I’d gotten up. She might’ve been perfectly content to keep on chatting and let whatever was happening at the front of the house run its course. She put her half-empty glass down on a table and stood with a sigh. “Relax,” she said. “It’s probably just an aggressive Rotor Rooter man.”
It wasn’t just an aggressive Rotor Rooter man. I peeked around the corner into the main hall just as Max put his hand on the doorknob. Medusa, who was quite tall herself, peeked around just above me. Anyone looking at us from the other direction probably would’ve found us comical. But any thoughts of hilarity were quickly dispelled when the butler opened the door.
As soon as the door swung open, Max died. I couldn’t get a good look at what was on the porch behind him, but I did see the results of its actions. Max sprouted spines like a porcupine. At least that was the image that first came to my mind. What’d actually happened was he’d been impaled by six or eight spears all entering him from the front and exiting him from the back. It was a horrific vision. The only consolation was there was no way the grouchy manservant could’ve felt any pain. Medusa was another story.
When she saw her caretaker of many decades breathe his last, my hostess lost her shit. She screamed so loud, I fell to the floor with one hand over my ears. It wasn’t a normal scream; it was a woman’s scream mixed with the cry of a predatory bird. I looked up at her from where I fell, and I could see that she’d changed. Her jaw had unhinged like the jaw of a snake. Her wig had fallen off (or been torn off) and underneath was a bed of writhing, hissing reptiles. She opened up her robe with newly-clawed hands and, underneath, she was nude. She was in amazing shape (a lot better than me) and I watched as areas of her flesh grew scales and ridges. Once she was fully unveiled, she stepped out into the hallway.
I badly wanted to see what was going on—not to mention pitch in if necessary—so I crawled out behind her and came to my feet. I looked around her and saw that Max had been shoved from the front and had fallen. Medusa reached up with her long, reptilian fingers and withdrew the contacts from her eyes. Mental note, I told myself. Don’t look her in the eye during any of this.
When Max hit the Persian rug in the foyer, a couple of the spears came out and fell at different angles. Both Medusa and I looked up from the body to see a cluster of hoplites complete with helmets and chest-pieces. Wherever the armor left them exposed, they were nothing but bone. Skeletons in ancient dress. A squad of undead. Whoever’d initiated this raid had planned ahead. Skeletons didn’t have eyes. Without eyes they couldn’t gaze upon Medusa and be turned to stone. They also, presumably, didn’t have souls which meant I couldn’t suck them into my pithos. The one time I really could’ve used a gladius and I’d left mine in the trunk.
Beyond the skeletons, I could see at least two flesh and blood people milling on the lawn. The guys’d been sent to pick up the pieces. They wouldn’t enter the house until after Medusa and I were dead.
The skeletons were silent and
implacable as they stepped into the mansion. Most of them drew their swords. The one in front (who wore the armor of an officer) pulled a spear out of Max and hurled it expertly down the long hall. Medusa twisted her serpentine body, so the weapon sailed by her, close enough to almost draw blood. To almost draw blood from her. Me, on the other hand, I thought the tip was going to strike me squarely in the face. It would have if my hostess hadn’t reached up and grabbed the shaft with her left hand. The spear stopped and vibrated in her grip. I had to take a step back as she spun it in her hand until the point was aimed in front of her. Then she raised it and threw it. Looking past her, I saw the Officer twist to the side, mimicking his former target’s own maneuver. He was fast. Much faster than I would’ve thought a skeleton could be.
As the little army of animated dead charged down the corridor, I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon. We were past the section of hall where Medusa kept eight by ten glossies of her sexual conquests. Where we stood, there was no adornment. Only two more of the tables bearing comical stuffed monkeys. Amusing but useless. I wasn’t feeling my most confident at that moment. I thought that a bunch of guys in armor with swords might have the advantage. Medusa, apparently, didn’t feel that way. She gave another blood-curdling scream and charged away from me toward the interlopers.
“Fuck,” I said. I had no idea what I was gonna do.
The only thing I could think of was to turn and run out the back, but not because I was afraid. I wanted to go around the house and get the drop on the two living people standing on the front lawn. If they were somehow controlling the skeletons, taking them out of commission might solve the problem. It was a faint hope, but I clung to it as I flung open the French doors and ran around the side of the gorgeous in-ground swimming pool. Medusa’s property was big for L.A., but at last I came to a white picket fence separating the backyard from the side. I brought the structure down with a couple of strong kicks and scrambled over it. I could hear the sound of serious battle from inside the home. How could Medusa hope to take on combatants who had edged weapons and were not susceptible to her particular curse? The woman was strange, but I was as determined as I could be to make sure she didn’t lose her life at the hands of those monsters. Monsters who, let’s face it, were probably sent after me.
When I rounded the corner of the house, I saw who the skeleton wranglers were. Taylor Chriss and Samoa Joe. I hadn’t been as stealthy as I should have been, so both of them turned to me as soon as I appeared. Their expressions confirmed they’d come for me rather than Medusa. Or, more specifically, they’d come for the pithos. If they wanted it that badly, they could have it. I skidded to a stop, throwing up sod, and pulled the lid off the jug. I’m a good judge of character and I could tell the pithos would be happy to have them both. Samoa Joe looked like he’d been around the block a time or two when it came to evil behavior. And at least some of Chriss’ transgressions were a matter of public record. He used his fellow congregants as slave labor on his autos and homes, and he allowed the Church of Reciprocity to audition his wives. Neither man was anything close to a saint. The suction from within the pithos began and my targets threw up their hands as the pull laid into them.
But then a pull laid into me.
My arms were nearly wrenched out of their sockets as the pithos was torn from my grip. The jug flew through the air diagonally and to the right. My eyes went in that direction in response to the theft. Standing near the sidewalk was Nicos Nephus, AKA Prometheus. He now had my pithos. He tucked it under his arm (being careful not to get in the path of the suction) and raised his free hand. The pithos’s lid came out of my grip and crossed the space between he and I. He caught it and slapped it onto the jug.
Rather than panic about the pithos, my brain prioritized differently than I expected. I ran forward, kicked Samoa Joe hard in the stomach and, as he doubled over, I reached into his shoulder holster to withdraw his gun. Weapon in hand, I spun to my right and, as fast as I could, I re-entered Medusa’s mansion. I didn’t have far to go before I encountered the tangle of combatants. It was the lady of the house and three of the skeletons. One of the invaders was in a heap on the floor. Medusa had somehow robbed it of its animation. I bobbed and wove with the rhythms of the fight and, in more or less short order, I put a bullet into each of the remaining undead skulls. There was no brain inside the skulls, but having their heads utterly destroyed killed the monsters. As soon as the skeletons were dead, Medusa banged into the wall behind her and slid down it, leaving a trail of green blood. Some of the black and whites of her former amorous partners were dislodged. One of them hit her in the head.
I rushed forward and bent over her. She’d been slashed in many places and her life was leaking out of her. Her breathing was shallow and growing shallower. “Medusa,” I said, my tone a mixture of sternness and pity. “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here. We’ve got to get you help.”
She kept her eyes closed, still aware enough to know that looking at me would turn me to stone. “It was a good run,” she said. “A good, long run.” Then a pitiful, sputtering breath leaked out of her and I knew she was gone. As I dropped her lifeless hand, I realized anger had taken me over. I was in a reckless rage. I cared about one thing and one thing only.
When I went through the front door again, I saw Taylor Chriss and Samoa Joe getting into an Aston Martin Valkyrie. A three point two-million-dollar automobile. They both looked at me briefly but didn’t seem particularly interested as they shut the doors and Chriss fired the engine. Meanwhile, Nephus stood exactly where I’d left him. He was waiting for me, holding my pithos. His eyes were misty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry about Medusa. It’s a waste, really.”
He seemed completely sincere, but that didn’t stop me from raising Samoa Joe’s pistol and firing it at him. Both bullets burst into flame and disintegrated about halfway to the target. I weighed whether I should rush him. He was huge man, but that wouldn’t have mattered if he didn’t know how to fight. I took a split second to gauge my chances of success and concluded I probably wouldn’t emerge from the encounter alive. He had another power on his side beyond his strength and whatever martial skill he might’ve had. Magic.
Prometheus had noted my decision as it played out on my face. “I don’t want to kill you. The world needs you just as it needed Medusa. Just as it needs what you’ve been carrying around with you all these thousands of years.” With that, he put the pithos in front of himself and crushed it between his two giant hands the same way one might crush a melon. Or a skull. For a second time in a brief span, I saw the Evils fly away to the four winds and I heard Hope scream.
Prometheus looked at me and smiled like a little kid. He held up his right hand and showed me it was bleeding. “I cut my hand,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do. Behind the cult leader, the Aston Martin pulled out and went off down Sunset Boulevard. He turned to watch it go, then he turned to look at me. He opened his mouth to speak again, but he was interrupted.
Pegasus landed to my right with a great rush of wind and a whinny. The sudden appearance of the mythical horse caught Prometheus and I both off-guard. I looked over and saw Petey was riding him. The man took only a second to assess the situation before dismounting and saying to me, “Watch my ride.” He then took two steps toward the Titan with his fists clenched. “You bothering my friend?” he said.
I tried to intervene—mostly to save the rapper’s life—but the intervention wasn’t necessary.
Prometheus nodded and smiled. “You keep good company, Pandora.” He turned his eyes to Petey. “I liked your last album—despite what the critics said. You haven’t gone soft, you’ve just grown up.”
“Who the fuck’re you?” Petey said.
“Call me Nicos. It’s what I go by now.” Prometheus looked around my would-be savior and said, “You’re going to come after me, aren’t you? It’s how you’re wired.”
I gritted my teeth. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t,” I a
nswered.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Because there’s no way you can beat me and because, now that I’ve accomplished everything, I set out to do—and those things’re irreversible—I’m harmless.”
“You’ve accomplished everything you wanted to do?”
He looked around briefly and took a deep breath of pine-scented air. “Yes. The world is as it should be again, and the pithos is no more. The natural order can slowly rebuild itself. I get to experience something few men ever experience: satisfaction.”
“What if people don’t like the changes you’ve wrought?”
He shrugged again. “What choice do they have? They’ll get used to it.” He paused and looked down at his bloody hand. “Pandora, I’m asking you nicely: Don’t come after me. Right now, the last thing I want to do is kill you. Don’t make me.”
He gave us each a nod and turned toward the street. By the time he reached it, he’d disappeared.
6
The Last Heroine
Petey and I stood there for a long time, neither one of us speaking. Finally, he said, “Who was that guy?”
“Prometheus.”
“The fire dude?!”
“Yeah. The fire dude.”
“He had a whole Bond villain thing going.”
“I know. How’d you find me?”
He flicked a thumb over his shoulder. “I didn’t. I said to the horse, ‘Take me to Dora’, and damned if he didn’t. That ain’t no ordinary horse.”
I smiled slightly and backed up to stand next to Pegasus. He nuzzled me with his snout and gave a snort of recognition and affection. “No. He’s smarter and more loyal than most of the people I know. Where’s Chad? Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. I dropped him at his house just in case I needed to give you an airlift outta here. I didn’t know if Peg could carry three people at once.”
“‘Peg’?”