"Derleth?"
"August Derleth. Editor of the The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. He was the only newspaper editor who took Lovecraft's communiqués seriously."
"Lovecraft," I said.
Zotz nodded. "Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Died young. Official story was cancer."
I grunted. "Brain tumor?"
"Naw. Intestinal cancer. Though one rumor was he was insane when he died. Another that, whatever he was hunting, it found him first."
"So, what was he hunting?"
"An ancient city. A big, bad-ass alien city built a million years ago."
"More ruins?"
"That's just it. Some of his dispatches talk of this city like it's an ancient tomb. Yet others suggest that it's still inhabited. He got Derleth's and the paper's backing to take a tramp steamer down to the South Pacific to look for it."
"Sounds like a nice vacation," I observed.
"No, I mean the Southern South Pacific. Down closer to the Antarctic. Bit nippy. Anyways, no islands at the first set of coordinates, 47° 9'S 126° 43'W, so Derleth radioed a second set to explore while he was in the area: 49°51'S 128°34'W. They're fairly close together—in the global sense—and way off the regular shipping lanes."
"And?" I prompted.
"Nada. Nothing. Empty ocean. Even today's satellite maps show nothing's there. On the surface anyways. But underneath? These two locations linked to the first set of coordinates for your fictional Lincoln Island form a triangle that covers a good portion of the Eltanin Fracture Zone of the South Pacific. A strange series of seismic events involving intense T-waves was recorded back in the early 90's and again earlier this year."
I looked at him.
"And that's it. That's all I've got. Four global chart coordinates and only one correlation to an actual land mass. It's not like I had a lot of time to do the research but it's not like there's a lot of info available on the base data. Four sets of coordinates; one tiny, pretty much deserted island. You want more? You gotta give me wider search parameters. And an internet connection. And more time."
"Okay, Lincoln Island," I mused, "was part of a dormant volcano—fictional, of course—but if Lovecraft and Derleth had any actual intel on their two locations, undersea volcanoes would certainly account for the rapid appearance and or disappearance of a land mass at sea."
"And Palmyra," Zotz added, "is actually an atoll, rather than an island by classification."
"So, it's the remains of an extinct, collapsed volcano?"
He nodded. "A crescent shaped remainder of the original cone and several islets."
"Okay," I said. "We've got four sets of coordinates located in the Pacific Ocean. One is for a real island—or atoll. With a spooky history. One is for a fictional island that never existed outside of the pages of a science fiction novel . . ."
"As far as we know," Zotz interjected.
"What?"
"Well, just because there's nothing there now, doesn't mean there wasn't at one time. You just pointed out that undersea volcanoes—"
"It was a sci-fi novel! A pretty good sci-fi novel but fiction, just the same. Verne wrote about fictional people on a fictional island! The submarine didn't even exist, yet!"
Zotz shook his head. "Not true. Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel built the first navigable submarine in 1620 based on Englishman William Bourne's designs from the 1570s. You Americans were experimenting with submersible vessels well before Verne's fictional Nautilus. Bushnell's Turtle was invented in 1775 and employed in the Revolutionary War. And the Civil War saw the development of two Confederate subs, the David and the Hunley, and one Union submersible, the Intelligent Whale."
"The Hunley was the only submersible to ever successfully sink a target," I interrupted, "if you can call an unintentionally 'kamikaze' mission 'successful'. I see you really have been doing research and not just spending all of your online time smut surfing. But the bottom line is there wasn't anything like the Nautilus until the last century."
Zotz shook his head again. "The fact that there isn't an island there now doesn't prove that there wasn't an island there then . . . anymore than the fact that there wasn't a submarine like the Nautilus then proves that Verne was writing of fictional events."
"Wow," I said. "I know I'm tired and distracted and my brain is probably co-opted by all my nanos giving me a hive-five . . . but I'm just not up to debating your impeccable logic on that one."
He shrugged. "Thought you'd learned by now to keep an open mind."
"Okay. One known 'island', three patches of empty ocean—at present—for the other sets of coordinates. The only common threads are that all are placed in the mid to southern expanse of the Pacific Ocean with the possible criteria of volcanoes, past or present. And one scary lady's voodoo altar." I looked at Zotz. "What does it mean?"
Zotz's inhuman features tightened into an implacable knot. "It means we run down to the Big Easy and make a certain close-mouthed fortune teller tell us what it's all about."
"Good luck," I said, remembering her reticence on the entire subject matter.
"You mean on getting her to talk? Or taking a shallow draught houseboat down the Ouachita, Black, Red, and Mississippi Rivers, all the way down to the Gulf and finding her in the middle of a monster tropical storm—if she isn't already blown up in a hundred different directions and into a hundred different dimensions?"
"There is that," I said.
* * *
Dawn was still hours away when, one by one, the stars began to go out.
There wasn't a visible cloud in the sky so the effect was a little end-of-the-worldish.
The Marine-band radio was busy with reports of a Category One hurricane forming out in the Gulf of Mexico but spared time for a mention of volcanic eruptions along the Pacific Rim of Fire. Apparently Mother Earth was convulsing big time, blasting billions of tons of ash into the Earth's upper stratosphere and mesosphere. A nice, scientific explanation but it did little to dispel the eldritch effect of the rest of the universe disappearing into endless darkness.
When sunrise finally came it was nothing more than a red smear on the horizon. Continental shelves of cumulous clouds rolled up from the south like airborne glaciers. The sky turned the color of an ancient tin roof. Down in the Gulf, Hurricane Eibon had ramped up to a Category Two.
The Ouachita was still running relatively smooth and the New Moon was making headway at twelve knots. When I had purchased my home upon the water she'd come equipped with a pair of Mercruiser 180 hp engines that gave her a cruising speed of seven knots on one motor or a full running speed of eight knots using both. One rarely races houseboats and since running both engines doubles the fuel consumption while only yielding an additional one-point-one mile-per-hour increase in speed, I could have done the sensible thing and left the whole package alone.
I am not a sailor. I am a guy who values a quick getaway and the ability to outrun things that the local law enforcement types—police, fire department, coast guard—are typically unprepared to protect you against.
So I had the original engines replaced. Had bigger, badder, more powerful props and motors squeezed into the chassis. As expensive as the new engines were, the dry-dock charges and rehabbing cost me even more.
As I said, I'm not a sailor: they saw me coming. After all was said and done I discovered that my new engines were "theoretically" capable of pushing the New Moon's equivalent weight and mass at better than 20 knots. But the houseboat's draft and overall displacement would only tolerate eleven—and only under ideal conditions, thirteen to fourteen—knots before becoming "unmanageable." I could say "unstable" but that's more descriptive of what would happen if I pushed it to sixteen. Forget the Proud Mary; the New Moon would redefine the phrase "rollin' on the river!"
At this speed it would take me better than three days to thread the river traffic, switchbacks, locks, and obstacle-laden watercourses between the Ouachita and the lower Mississippi. Not taking into account fueling stops, mechanical coo
l-downs, or the mitigating effects of bad weather.
And God help us if we encountered any more boarding parties along the way.
No, I needed an alternate means of locomotion. Going ashore seemed to be our only option, even if the return trip was guaranteed to be a nightmare due to the choked evacuation routes.
But first we had to lose our furry "tails."
Every attempt to swing in close to either side of the river during the night had been met by a series of howls and a gathering wolf pack along the shore. Any hope of daylight providing a solution was dispelled as a trio of pickup trucks was revealed off our starboard side, pacing us on the levee road. I almost didn't need the binoculars to see that the "human" occupants had a decidedly unshaven, lupine look. And the "hunting dogs" grinning from the back beds left no doubt as to their true pedigree. We kept to the center channel, mindful of cab mounted gun racks and overhead bridges.
"Go below and get some sleep," Zotz said as I took another quarter turn around the upper helm. He was nearly human-looking now in deference to the growing odds of daylight traffic on the river.
"We should take turns," I said.
"I don't sleep. I'm a magical construct. You, however, are starting to look like a cross between Death warmed over and something stuck under those infrared lamps on the back counter at a third-rate burger joint."
I shook my head. "I thought we would have shaken them by now. We need a better plan than putt-putting down the meandering waterways of Louisiana's scenic vistas."
"You have something against traveling by water?" Liban's voice asked from my feet. Her head appeared as she climbed the steps from the lower deck.
"We're moving too slow," I explained as she stepped up to join us. "We need to go ashore."
"Your enemies are ashore," she said. You're safer on the water."
I snorted. "Until the Fabulous Finny Freak Brothers show up again. Or Carpet'O'Slime. Or Mysterious Underwater Light. The point is I can travel more quickly by car than by boat. Here, we have no maneuvering room. Silas' crew doesn't have to keep us in sight at all times; they only need to follow the river, monitor the forks, and wait for us to make landfall. But the bottom line is speed. The river doesn't travel in a straight line and we're not geared for speed."
Her eyes swept the river's course to the horizon. "What if you were?"
"What?"
"'Geared' for speed?"
I frowned. "I don't follow you."
"But if you do follow me, I can open a way that may solve some of our problems."
"Uh," I said. Somewhere behind the question of just what she was getting at was the issue of how "my" problems had become "our" problems.
"I am a sea goddess," Liban continued. "Unlike my sister, I still have power over water. If we were sailing upon the ocean I could open a path through the sea that would turn months into weeks, weeks into days, days into hours. Although the ocean is my elemental demesne, a tributary is not so alien as it is confining."
I stared at her. "Can you open a path to New Orleans?"
"I can but try."
"Great! Let's get started!"
She shook her head. "I must rest, first. Rest and prepare."
"Now there's a smart idea," Zotz rasped. "She rests. You rest. Everybody's fresh when we hit the Big Sleazy."
"Why don't you give it a rest?" I growled.
"I'm a magical construct," he beamed, "I don't need to rest. But you're overdue, Mr. Grumpypants. Go down below, get reacquainted with your bunk, and make sure you're not running on empty the next time you have to exert yourself. I've got it all covered up here but I promise to call if the scenery changes."
I gazed out to the south where the land was cloaked in distant darkness. A yellowed thread of lightning winked at the edge of the horizon. "I don't know if I can sleep . . ."
A hand fumbled for mine: Liban's.
"Come, rest with me."
I looked back at her face and saw what it cost her to swallow her pride and offer herself for a second round of rejection. To a mortal. With a demon as witness.
Damned pheromones!
I opened my mouth but no words would come out.
You think it's easy saying no to Faerie Queen? An Elven Sea Goddess? A woman whose beauty made the concept of "no" practically unthinkable?
Practically, but—even though Lupé had pretty much cut me loose this past year and even though our future was uncertain given the incompatibility of our body chemistries—I wasn't an emotional free agent, here. I was on my way to rescue the mother of my unborn son. And Deirdre was somewhere in the mix. And it wouldn't be fair—to anyone but especially her—to complicate things emotionally, now.
No matter how unthinkable "no" might seem to our super-amped, hormone-drenched response systems.
Still, given the fact that her mental/emotional/biochemical gestalt was being seriously destabilized by Yours Truly, I owed her better than another smack to her self-esteem.
And, from the purely practical, almost clinical point of view, rejecting a powerful ally whose contributions might make all the difference between saving my friends and family and arriving too late—well, bit of a horned and horny dilemma here.
All that aside, it wasn't the uncertainty over what to say that was preventing words from coming out of my mouth.
Something seemed to have severed the synapses connecting my brain to my vocal chords!
Maybe I was having a stroke! The top of my head felt funny. Numb . . . tingly . . . squirmy . . . ?
"Holy cow, Uncle Martin!" Zotz exclaimed.
I reached up and felt twin rods emerging from the top of my skull. I turned on wobbly legs and caught sight of my reflection in the port-side mirror for the helm. Silver stems that were dead ringers for an old set of rabbit-ears antenna had telescoped out of my scalp and now crowned me like a silver V.
I had just enough time to reflect on two things.
One, that Ray Walston looked just like this on My Favorite Martian every time he invoked his extraterrestrial powers. And two, right after his antennae came up, he turned invisible.
And that's when I turned invisible.
Well, to be more accurate, everything turned invisible.
* * *
* * *
Here's the thing . . .
I never really was much of a clubber. And once you settle down, get married, have a kid—well, staying out till two or three in the morning just drops off the options list.
Now a lot of undead are drawn to the late night club "life". It gives them a sense of community, something to do together to fight off that creeping ennui that won't go away as the decades and then the centuries mount up. And open clubs provide open hunting grounds for those too lazy to stalk their prey far afield.
Of course, that cuts both ways: I'd briefly reacquainted myself with the club scene on a few occasions when I'd gone hunting the hunters after Jenny and Kirsten died. Vampires hunt humans at certain clubs so vampire hunters hunt the vampires there, as well. Seriously, at least once bouncer per club should be trained as a Game Warden.
All that aside, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why I was standing in line outside of a Hindi nightclub with the soundtrack from some Bollywood musical pumping up the volume through the open doors. MERRICK'S flashed on and off in tubular neon over an arched doorway that tapered upwards to a point. Electric sitars and tanpura twanged and danced, violins and sarangi sang and wailed, tablas and pakhawajs thumped and boomed: the music was ancient, primal, the beat was vaguely disco. Somewhere in the back of my mind was this nagging impression that I had more important things to do at the moment.
Anything else to do at the moment . . .
The line moved and I found myself confronted by the doorman. He was a big gorilla and looked me over to decide whether or not I passed the entrance exam. I looked back.
It's sort of a stereotype to refer to club bouncers and door men as "gorillas" as they tend to be big, no-neck, missing-link types who will shake your tree
if you give them half an excuse. But this guy was really an ape! Half monkey, half man, he wore a Hugo Boss three-button red black pinstripe suite. Gold cufflinks with the letter "H" encrusted in diamonds flashed at his hairy wrists. I got a good look as his inhumanly long arm came down like a railroad crossing gate.
"Invitation?"
I looked up at the peculiar scar on his chin. Invitation? To what? Where was I? What was I doing here?
Just beyond his unfamiliar monkey mug a more familiar, less anthropomorphic profile appeared. The giant barrel-monster for the seafood-lover-in-you appeared in the doorway, waving tentacles and eyestalks and flexing its centrally spaced, leathery wings.
"Let it in, Hanuman," said the not-quite-Winky voice. "It is summoned."
The gorilla-like arm was removed from my path with a sigh. "Very well. I have nothing against ecumenicalism, you understand, but with the fate of the world hanging in the balance . . ."
"We are all Outsiders here, godling. Only those who inhabit the Prime Plane can contest for it when the Devourers come. Either they will prove themselves cattle and seal their fates," starfish-head said, backing into the darkened interior. "Or contend for their place among the stars as have those of us which have come before."
I wasn't keen on going forward. As I said before, what the hell was I doing in line at a Raga Rock nightclub? And, not real invested on following Tubby Tentacles into a strange, dark building. Monkeyman's parting shot was no confidence booster, either. "If all of our hopes reside in the demon-shade of one of our lost supplicants and a clueless unbeliever," he said, "then I fear all is lost before it is well begun . . ."
Unfortunately, dream-states come with their own sets of internal rules and compulsions: I was into the building and out of earshot before he was finished.
The entryway was a long, dark corridor that turned this way and that, becoming a pipeline of sound with thrashing electric neo-Hindi music pounding out a beat while occasional bursts of light indicated a destination of sorts, ahead.
I came out into an immense, black room whose walls and ceiling were tricked out in vast patterns of stars. It was the best disco-ball effect I had ever seen: it was as if I was standing out in the midst of the cosmos, surrounded by the endless depths of the universe. As the stars slowly revolved, the occasional comet and momentary meteor stuttered by. Such was the nature of the illusion that a room that could barely accommodate a hundred clubbers appeared as if it could contain tens of thousands with room to spare.
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