by M. K. Gibson
“In this, we can teach you,” Kali said. “You can learn to face the pain. To embrace the death.”
“I . . . I turned my back on a man who loved me to face it alone. I . . . I hate being alone.”
“Men are fickle, capricious, volatile, erratic beings,” Kali said. “Your sisters will show you this.”
Cassy looked up at her, into her dark eyes, and quirked an eyebrow. “Is that why you were fucking Vulcan all that time then?”
“Yes, trust in your sisters—wait what?!” Morrigan said, her head whipping over to look at her lover. “You were banging Vulcan?”
“I thought you knew?” Cassy said. “I mean, we all figured that you knew, but didn’t want to be alone. So you just looked the other way while a second-string Hephaestus was balls deep in your woman.”
Kali’s dark eyes turned on Cassy. “Silence, you—”
An angry fist cold-cocked Kali across her jaw, sending her sprawling to the ground. An angry Celtic war goddess stood over her. Morrigan’s shadow grew and resembled a giant raven with its wings outstretched.
“So you were cheating on me?!”
“Oh, stop acting like this is new to you. I told you I missed the touch of a man.”
“I bought that marital . . . attachment, like we talked about!” Morrigan countered.
“It’s not the same,” Kali said. “I love you, it’s just that . . . wait! Why are we talking about this now? We have to subdue them so that—”
Kali never finished her words and twin blasts of torrential water and frigid cold tore across the gym from the western stairwell. Cassy jumped back as the goddesses were encased in magically created ice. She looked over at where Gabby and Arby had hidden, both of them holding an outstretched wand. Cassy gave Arby a smile and nod.
“I see you found the safety.”
“I see you still know how to act,” Arby said.
“Was it an act?” Kyle asked as he came to stand next to her. In his hand, he held her dark green wig. “You want this?”
Cassy rubbed a hand over her smooth bald head. But instead of answering him, she looked over at Jessie. She and Freeman were putting the remaining guards in zip ties. It was clear that without the protection of the goddesses, they had no interest in resisting the authorities anymore. Jessie caught her eye, looked at her head, and smiled.
Cassy smiled back, then looked up at Kyle. “No. I’m good.”
Kyle nodded. He dropped the wig and walked towards the stairs.
“Okay folks,” Freeman said. “Third floor. Let’s get this asshole before time runs out.”
“Who’s left?” Arby asked.
“Hmm?” Freeman said.
“Thor, Morrigan, and Kali,” he said. “Buddha’s up there, and that makes four. Derek said that there were five here. So, who’s left?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jessie said. “No matter who it is, it can’t be worse than this.”
Chapter Forty-Two
15 May - 9:46 pm
Body by Buddha, 3rd Floor, District of New Dorado
As Jessie reached the midpoint landing up to the third floor, she saw fog eerily rolling down the stairs. As she crested the third floor of the gym, she saw no light, save the dull glow of emergency lighting. With each step, she felt the temperature drop drastically. She could see her breath as gasps of steam. Confused, she looked at Kyle. She could just make out the frost that was just starting to form at the tips of his hair. His tail wrapped around his waist for warmth and protection.
“W-what’s going on?” she said as she shivered.
“I d-don’t know,” he said. “B-but give the coats a s-second. Th-they’ll adapt.”
In a few moments, her coat did begin to feel warmer. It wasn’t perfect, but it was just enough to keep her from shivering.
“What do you sense?”
“Darkness,” he said. “Madness. Chaos.”
As Jessie took a step, the floor beneath her boot squished. The cold air smelled of salty brine and rotting sea life. It reminded her of the trip the orphanage took to Kincaid Park in Anchorage when she was young. The smell of ocean water mixed with the cold.
“Come,” a single voice beckoned. “Come to me.”
“You lied to me, New Girl!” Arby hissed. “This is not better!”
“Shut up,” Cross said reflexively. “She never said it would be better; she said it wouldn’t be worse.”
“No, you shut up,” he said. “Thunder and lightning, check. Goddesses of war and death having a lesbian romantic spat, check. That’s a disembodied voice and fog. Which means horror. The black guy never makes it in the horror flicks, not when there’s plenty of honkys running around.”
“I’m Latina,” Jessie said.
“Half-Asian, half-myth,” Kyle added.
“Don’t look at me,” Cross said. “The bitch never lives in those movies.”
Arby sighed. “Y’all are really killing my totally reasonable freak out.”
Gabby nodded her agreement.
“See, Gabby gets it,” Arby said. “C’mon Freeman, back a brother up.”
“All of you shut up,” Freeman said, then muttered, “but this is some bullshit.”
“Right?”
Jessie turned back to look into the darkness of the hall.
“Step closer,” the voice demanded.
The voice was formless. Directionless. Jessie felt the words rather than heard them. They resonated through her being. Penetrated her. Each syllable forced its way into her like an aural puncture wound. Every natural instinct she had told her to run. To hide.
But that wasn’t why she became a cop.
It wasn’t to run away from danger, but rather to run towards it.
Well . . . carefully approach danger, that is. Preferably with a gun. And with outstanding backup.
She looked back at her friends.
Well . . . competent backup.
“Based on the floor plans, the executive offices would be towards the back, where Buddha should be,” Deek said in her ear.
“What’s between us and him?”
“The youth area,” he said. “Where kids play while their parents work out.”
Jessie nodded, feeling slightly relieved. She expected to see brightly colored plastic toys and chairs for the younger kids. Wholesome activity centers. Murals on the walls with the standard images of multi-ethnic children smiling, playing, and laughing. Like the kids on the boxes of Girl Scout cookies or the covers of Highlights magazine.
But instead of vibrant blues and warm yellows, everything in the youth center was muted and diseased. All color was sucked away, replaced by shades of gray and sickly green. Tendrils of wet, pulsing black vines spread across the walls and the ceiling like a sickness. The fog swirled so thick that Jessie couldn’t see anything below her knee. And with each step came an audible squishing sound.
The large mural on the wall did show multi-ethnic children, but not smiling in sunny nature scenes. Instead, children stood shoulder to shoulder on empty beaches at night, staring into the black, endless ocean.
Even though it was impossible, Jessie swore she saw the waves rolling. She heard the sound of the sea. Somewhere in the room, she heard children giggle in impish delight.
“Nope!”
Jessie turned to see Arby pointing at the mural while Cross shook her head.
“What are you doing?” Jessie hissed.
“Taking a stand,” Arby said. “That’s not right!”
“It has to be that guy Gary,” Cross said. “He’s the emissary for Cthulhu.”
“Ya think?” Arby said, then again pointed at the mural of the children. “Look at the creepy little bastards.”
“Uh, Arby?” Kyle said.
“What?”
Kyle inclined his chin at the mural.
Arby looked to see that all the children in the painting were no longer staring at the ocean. They had all turned around and were now staring at him, and only him.
“Jesus!” Arby sai
d, jumping back.
In slow sinister synchronicity, smiles crept across each of the children’s faces. Tears of blood trickled down their cheeks. But as the blood ran, it streaked down the mural itself, disappearing into the fog at their feet.
“Nope, fuck it, I’m done,” Arby announced. “I quit. Fuck this. Fuck this place. Fuck y’all. Where do I turn in this ugly-ass coat?”
Gabby and Freeman inspected the blood, touching it and rubbing it between their fingers.
“Oh, come on, don’t touch it,” Arby pleaded.
Gabby sniffed it and then tasted it.
“Why?!” Arby asked.
Gabby shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the situation. The imagery and growing sense of maddening fear didn’t seem to bother her. Perhaps elvish minds didn’t see horror the same way humans did.
“Well, that’s messed up,” Freeman said with a cold detachment as she knelt down to the floor.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“Oh, that’s just nasty,” Cross agreed from where she stood beside Freeman.
Using the hem of her coat, Freeman swished the leather to clear away the fog. The floor was more of the wet, black vine-like material—interwoven with thousands and thousands of unblinking eyes.
Arby didn’t say anything. He simply rubbed at his chest, then stared at her. Jessie put her hands up.
“What do you want me to do? Huh?”
“Eyeballs, Jessie?”
“Yes! Eyeballs!” She yelled, then stomped her booted feet, ignoring how her team winced each time the squishing sound turned into a popping sound. “Eyeballs in the floor, hentai tentacles on the walls, creepy mural children, the fact that everything in here looks like a day care run by Tim Burton. It’s not ideal! But Buddha is that way, and we have a job to do.”
“Come to me,” the voice said again.
“Shut the fuck up, Gary!” Jessie bellowed. “We’ll deal with you in a minute!”
“Jessie, calm down,” Cross said.
“No, you calm down,” she said, her anger growing. “Let’s just deal with this and go get Buddha before we run out of time. What time is it anyway?”
“Ten,” Freeman said.
“I have eleven fifteen,” Kyle said, looking at his watch.
“I have quarter after eight? 1972?!” Cross said. “What the shit is going on?”
“Freaking Gary,” Jessie grumbled. “He’s messing with time, trying to distract us.”
Turning on her heels, Jessie stormed through the youth center, ignoring the shadows and images.
“Jessie, wait!” Freeman yelled, but she ignored the older woman.
There in the middle of the room sat Gary in a single wooden folding chair. He looked exactly as he had at the Osiris Outreach Center, a middle-aged man with a recessed hairline, beard, a green sweater vest, and circular glasses. He hands were on his knees and he smiled at her as she approached. But his eyes seemed to be looking off into the distance.
“Hello, Agent DeLeon.”
“Shut up!” she said. “You’re under arrest.”
“We do not recognize your authority over us,” Gary said, yet she never saw his mouth move. He simply maintained his childlike grin, staring at nothing.
“You’re not scary, pal,” she said. “Grow up an orphan on the streets, and you’ll see real fear. These tricks of yours? Cheap scares that might frighten movie watchers or book readers, but not me.”
“Jessie, how about you don’t piss off Cthulhu’s champion?” Cross said. “Just a thought.”
“Why? It’s all just illusions.”
Figures stood out from the fog. Gabby hissed, but Jessie rolled her eyes. “The gym guards? Really? After all we’ve gone through to get here, that’s all you have?”
The guards were all facing Gary, their backs to her. They seemed to be awaiting his orders.
“Handle them,” Gary said.
The guards didn’t turn around, not exactly. But their heads turned a complete 180 degrees with the sound of snapping bone. Their shoulder joints popped as the guards’ arms dislocated to turn towards the agents. From behind her, Jessie heard Arby wretch.
“So gross.”
Awkwardly, the guards marched towards them. With their legs facing Gary, they walked backwards with jerky, uneven movements. Jessie looked at Freeman, and the senior agent nodded.
“Light ’em up.”
All of them opened fired on the guards. Instead of blood, only rancid seawater spilled from their wounds. The possessed guard didn’t stop. They didn’t even slow. The guards simply marched on them.
When two of the guards closed on her, Jessie batted away the grotesquely bent arms, then brought the butt of her gun down on one of the guards’ skulls. Brackish water poured from the wound as the creatures clamped down on her wrists with supernatural strength. Despite her attempts to fight back, the guards continued to march, pushing her back up against one of the walls. The children from the mural grabbed at her from behind, giggling as they reached through the painting.
In moments, she was immobilized, held from behind by the children while the guards pressed their cold bodies against her. But that was all they did. They held her there. Looking around, she saw that her friends had been similarly incapacitated. Gabby and Freeman to her left, Kyle to her right. Cross and Arby were pinned on the far wall opposite her.
Cross looked at her and shook her head. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Jessie stared past the guard at Cross. “What? This is my fault?”
“It kinda is, New Girl,” Arby said. “You charged in there without us.”
Jessie started to argue, but stopped herself. Despite the severity of the situation, she laughed a little to herself. “I—I thought it was my turn.”
“Your what?” Cross asked.
“Arby took care of Thor. You handled Morrigan and Kali. I thought it was, you know, my turn. I thought Gary was just doing, I dunno, fear illusions. And since I grew up an orphan, I thought I was somehow . . . immune?”
Gabby nodded. Kyle and Freeman, though, shook their heads. Seeing them, Gabby changed her nod to a shake.
“What kind of dumbass reasoning is that?” Cross asked.
“You tell her, girl,” Arby said.
“I expect that kinda bullshit from this one,” Cross said, motioning her head towards Arby, “but not from you.”
“Yeah, she expects that from—wait, what the fuck?”
“Come off it. You treat everything like it’s a movie or a video game.”
“No I don’t.”
Kyle sighed. “He’s thinking about how it would be really cool if someone came in at the last minute to save us to theme music. Or what he would do if he had a mana potion.”
“Stay outta my head, Kyle!” Arby said.
“All of you shall now be silent,” Gary said. “Forever.”
The room grew darker and darker as all light slowly vanished, as if light itself were drowning, suffocating beneath the waves of the encroaching darkness.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said as the last bit of light was gone. She, and all her friends, were cast into darkness.
But then, for a fraction of a second, there was a crackle of blue light. A flicker and nothing more.
“Cass?” Arby said. “Why are your tits glowing again?”
A moment later, Jessie saw a single beam of light. The pure white light pushed the darkness away. And the light was in the shape of . . .
A knife?
“Howdy kids,” Messer’s voice said from the darkness. “Reckon you all could use a hand.”
Chapter Forty-Three
15 May - Time Unknown
Pocket dimension located tangential to Body by Buddha’s 3rd floor
It was always in the dark places that Messer had to go. To do the things that needed to be done. He was never proud of it. He never thought himself a hero. He always saw himself as the person willing to do the job. But every so often, after many lifetimes of service, he did enjoy his
job. Not the killing—that never brought happiness. But helping those who needed it? That put a smile on his face. And seeing his team in the situation they were in? Well, he couldn’t help himself.
He had to laugh at them.
“Wait, wait wait wait,” Deacon said in the growing white light. “Is Messer laughing at us?”
“Yes, yes I am,” Messer said. “I’m out of commission for a little while and look what happens. I swear. Baby agents. You try and raise them right.”
“I did my best, boss,” Freeman said.
“I know.”
“We’re in Hell,” Deacon said. “It has to be. We died and went to Hell. Only thing that explains why Messer showed up to tell jokes.”
“Greetings, Knight of the Knife. We were expecting you.”
“I bet you were,” he said. “But I’m gonna be honest with you, Gary. You best let my team go and return us to our proper dimension, or I’m going to get cranky.”
“Dimension?” Ito asked.
“Yeah,” Messer said. “Ol’ Gary here used the power of the Elder Beings to move y’all and this place slightly out of phase with the rest of the universe. A way to buy Buddha some time.”
“Among other things,” Gary chuckled.
“Oh, you mean this?” Messer said, holding the glowing Bowie knife.
“Yes.”
“I figured that’s why you all kept my agents alive. You were waiting for me to show up. Put them in enough danger and I’d rush in to save them.”
“Which you did.”
“Yup. I couldn’t leave my team in danger,” Messer said as he examined the glowing blade. “Your boss thought y’all could overpower me and take The Knife. I reckon Buddha wants this if he plans on taking over the world.”
“We thank you for bringing it to us.”
More of the gym’s guards stood from the fog. And as before, their bodies contorted with snapping bone and popping cartilage. When their transformation was complete, they began advancing on Messer from all directions.
Messer just smiled.
“Why is he smiling? This isn’t a smiling occasion!”
“Quiet, Arby,” Freeman said. “Boss?”