Ares joins them and assumes his greatest Aspect: Andreiphontes the Manslayer, God of War and the Horrors of War. In his fists any weapon can slay thousands. At his command entire nations have consumed themselves in berserker fury. At the height of his power, he could transform himself into a mighty bear, or a murderous leviathan, or any other lethal seeming to achieve his ends. Now he stands nearly seven feet tall, his eyes aflame.
They’re anachronisms, disenfranchised and forgotten by all but scholars and movie buffs. Yet now they tower above me, vital and eager to reclaim their bygone glory.
And in front of them stands the mad prophet of the godstalker, the god of whom Zeus warned. Holiday raises his voice to the blackening skies.
“‘And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, saying Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Who shall not fear thee and glorify thy name? For all nations shall come and worship before thee.’”
He pockets the Shell and looks down at me, his face swollen with dark joy.
“Your mother and I will miss you, Lando.” Then he turned to his divine assassins. “Brothers… Sister… kill him.”
It can’t end like this. Do something.
The world is growing dim. I reach out, seeking the power. The pain that detonates in my head is immense and final. I taste smoke and blood.
Ares unsheathes his sword.
“This is no battle. The little bastard’s already half dead.”
Then something bursts through the skin of Ares’ throat. For a moment, golden light pierces the darkness from a network of shining cracks racing through the War God’s body, while blood the color of molten gold pours from his mouth. Then Ares opens his arms… and explodes. The something that pierced Ares falls to the snow: it’s an arrow, a shining silver arrow.
As steaming gobbets of once-immortal flesh rain down all around me, I look toward the direction from which the arrow came. And I see her. Flashing beneath the gray-black clouds, leaping toward us across the surging sea, she’s coming, riding the godhorse, eight-legged Slepnir – a nutbrown young woman in glowing deerskins, her long black hair flying, a second arrow already drawn.
The Golden Lady. Changing Woman.
Connie.
Her war cry silences the shriek of the winds. Where her horse runs across the surface of that bitter sea, the clouds part and her husband, the Sun, shines his face upon the waters. Even as Kali begins her Dance of Destruction and Thor summons a tempest to blast her into atoms, Changing Woman comes, trailing Spring’s warmth in her wake.
The Navajo religions tell of her bow, how it was given to her by her son, Monster Slayer. It was formed from the wood of the First Tree, strong enough to harness the power of the sun, or the fury of the storm. With it, the Navajo gods could incinerate the monstrous enemies of humankind. Still singing, Connie fires. The arrow soars through the sky, sweeping aside the darkness like a golden comet plummeting through the blackness of space.
But Kali Durga raises a Song of her own: its power is the power of Death and it burns Changing Woman’s arrow to ash, a wave of unlife that murders every living thing in its path. As the echoes of Kali’s voice pass over the surging seas, the waters go black. Dead fish pop up in spots all along the shore. The death surge shatters Connie’s bow with a sound like a detonation. Connie clutches her right hand to her breast. Then the force of Kali’s song strikes Connie and the godhorse: Odin’s steed falls into the water, dead. Changing Woman leaps at the last minute, somersaulting to land on the ice.
Kali surges forward, arms waving above her head. In one of her right hands a long, curved knife appears, blazing with a hazy blue light. But Connie raises a shield with the emblem of a spider emblazoned on its face, deflecting Kali’s blow. She pulls back, her arms crawling with red spiders as big as tarantulas. Kali spins, shrieking, her power pulping the red spiders, staining the snow with burning bodies. But the survivors quickly cover her. Kali disappears beneath a living red wave.
But the red spiders burst into flame. The death goddess’ hands weave the flames into a roaring whirlwind and send it howling toward Changing Woman. Connie raises her hands as the whirlwind closes around her, shielding her from view.
“Connie!”
Out of the fire a giant black shape rises, and stretches dark wings toward the sky: a Thunderbird. Connie, in the form of the Navajo birdgod, envelops Kali within the shadows of her wings.
I have to help her.
Thor seems content to hang back, laughing, for the moment. But soon he’ll join the fray. When that happens, Connie will die.
Meanwhile, Holiday has turned away from the battle, searching the glowing horizon.
I won’t let it end like this.
Kali dances, a space-warping swirl of color and light and death. The Thunderbird’s feathers turn gray and fall out, the birdgod collapsing into a pile of desiccated bones. Connie stands amongst the debris, old now, her Crone Aspect rising as her power wanes. One of her hands has been mangled. She clutches it to her breast, cradling it, her eyes shining, defiant even now.
I close my eyes, seeking deeper than I’ve ever gone, ever had to go. Holiday must be uncertain about the extent to which I still control the power. Why else has he brought the Big Guns of Divine Destruction? Maybe I can give Connie a moment to get away. I reach up, ignoring the tearing pain in my head, ignoring the screaming agony in my side. I reach…
“Hello, Lando.”
Stormface.
“I need you.”
“I can’t play with you right now, Lando...”
“Listen to me! I know another way you can link up with the power!”
Something screams like a bandsaw ripping through ironwood. I turn in time to see Connie fall to one knee. From where she kneels, her eyes find mine.
You were right, kiddo. Our time is done.
Then Connie smiles.
And one of Kali’s bladed weapons strikes her in the chest.
Changing Woman falls backward into the snow.
“The guy with the hammer! He’s connected!”
“Does he want to play?”
“Yes! He wants to play!”
Connie isn’t moving.
“They both want to play!”
Stormface glides across the ice; a giant babyhead with burning eyes. Kali, wounded, turns to face it. Three of her arms lay on the ice, and half her face is gone, burned away. She staggers toward Stormface, her right foot dragging a glowing golden line behind her in the snow; whatever energies she borrowed from the Coming must be nearly depleted. She reaches for Thor, but the thunder god ignores her.
“At last! Something I can fight!”
Behind him, a stocky older woman with a dark brown crew cut rises from the shining puddle where Connie fell: Esmeralda Sanchez, her University of New Mexico sweatshirt stained with the blood of her goddess. The lenses of her eyeglasses glint, the Aurora borealis flickering in her eyes as she faces the two immortals.
Changing Woman’s last prophetess raises her right fist to the sky. She shouts a Navajo invocation and hammers her fist down onto the ice. As Kali and Thor advance toward Stormface, the ice beneath them erupts and something huge blasts through and rockets into the air, knocking Thor off his feet. The orca grasps Kali in its jaws as it rises toward the sky: for a moment, killer goddess and killer whale hover in midair. Then the orca smashes down in a furious spray of ice and bloody water. The impact vibrates through my kneecaps. The shelf of ice upon which Esmeralda Sanchez stands upends itself like one end of a giant seesaw. The orca smashes back into the water, holding Kali in its jaws. But Esmeralda Sanchez slides toward the hole in the ice and plunges into the gap between the two ledges.
“Connie!”
A silent detonation shudders through the ice; the power that had elevated Kali just vacated her corpse.
“Mmmm,” Stormface mumbles, absorbing those energies. “It’s been too long.”
The surge of power refuels our connection. Stormface surrounds me just as Thor rams h
is hammer into my defenses. Stormface takes the brunt of the blow. Even so, the impact flings me across the ice. I come to in a snowdrift as Thor drops out of the sky and strikes the permafrost with the force of a dynamite charge, his hammer screaming carnage. He’s too close. He’s too strong. Stormface lashes out; a battering ram of force that strikes Thor. The explosion flings us apart. But Stormface breaks; its protection falls to glowing tatters. Thor lands fifty feet away, unconscious or dead, his godslaying hammer sizzling, its indestructible head buried in the ice.
Connie.
I drag myself across the permafrost toward the gap that claimed Changing Woman and her prophetess, struggling to see through the steam and boiling water below.
“Connie!”
“You’ve done well, old boy. But the tribulation is nearly done.”
Holiday.
“You killed her!”
“A justifiable homicide, my friend. Your plans were disruptive to my patron’s Ascension, His vision: a world eternally ruled by fear. Your little mentor died in service to the greater good. As will your parents, when their usefulness has ended. A lot of people are going to die, Lando. Everything that your other self infected must be purged to allow the new paradigm to settle in. But know that their deaths will not be in vain.”
“Kill you… swear to God… I’ll kill you!”
“New Eden has begun, Yahweh. You’re done.”
Behind him, the sky grows lighter, dawn’s glow illuminating the horizon, but the color… the color is wrong.
“He comes! My Lord’s greatest Lieutenant comes in fire and victory!”
The red light, a pinpoint of flame burning across the sky, whistling as it pushes frigid air aside, dragging sonic booms in its wake. It’s coming fast, and I’m afraid.
Because I recognize that light.
Holiday opens his arms like a man welcoming his long lost brother as the wind from the red light’s descent whips the snow into a million minor storms.
“‘And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand!’”
I’ve searched for him, ignored the uncertainty of our ancient stalemate. But now he’s found me, and I’m about to learn just how stupid I’ve been.
“‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away!’”
The red nimbus lands silently, touching the permafrost without so much as a whisper: the Devil always knew how to make an entrance.
Yuri Kalshnikov steps onto the bloody snow.
His eyes shine in that particularly Red way I remember from our ancient contest. He hid himself in plain sight, passing himself off as my best friend and mortal ally. Now he crackles, incandescent with the power the Devil was supposed to have renounced.
I lay there in a deepening puddle of bloodslush, shut off from the power that might have turned the tide; finally, damnably human. I can barely see him through my tears.
“Was it? Was it always you?”
Yuri stares at me, through me, as if he’s looking into the distant past or some unknowable future. Holiday puts one hand on his shoulder.
“Prove yourself worthy, my brother. Join the winning team.”
Yuri bends and grasps Thor’s hammer. Like a man towing an invisible anchor, he walks toward me, lifting his feet out of the knee-high snow. The hammer pulses, its bass heartbeat thrumming across the ice… the burning, freezing air, beating echoes from my bones, its head throbbing with a purple-white light violent as the heart of murder. Overhead, tongues of lightning flicker through the dark skies as Yuri summons ancient enchantments both divine and demonic, charging the hammer with enough power to slay a god.
“Fool. To have commanded such power.”
His head shakes back and forth like a man in the grip of a seizure, jaw muscles clenching as if he were biting back words too terrible to voice, his scorn straining through gritted teeth.
“We are… children… playing with the fire of the gods.”
Thor’s hammer recasts the ice field in arclight flashes of blue, crimson crawlers of divine lightning and infernal magic. Livid stalks of elemental fire dance surround me, blinding me as shoots of lightning crackle up from the earth and surround me with elemental fury. Yuri steps between the bars of the burning plasma cage. Only his eyes reveal the price of his betrayal.
“We could have remade this world in our image.”
Surabhi. What have I done?
“Yuri… you have a... choice.”
Arcane energies snarl the air, blistering my flesh with a hurricane blast. Arctic air tears the skin of my cheeks and the tendrils of a strange gravity tug me backward as the Devil lifts the stormgod’s blazing hammer.
If I can just reach him, touch him, finally.
“Yuri… you’re… my best friend.”
Then the hammer…
PART 2
THE QUANTUM MECHANIC
“In this multiverse of universes, most universes are dead. The proton is not stable. Atoms never condense. DNA never forms. The universe collapses prematurely or freezes almost immediately. But in our universe, a series of cosmic accidents has happened, not necessarily because of the hand of God but because of the law of averages.”
Parallel Worlds. Dr Michio Kaku.
“People are damn crazy.
Every human livin’ knows that’s true.
If God made People in His own image
He must be damn crazy too.”
CHAPTER XX
HOMECOMING
When he opened his eyes it was into the glare of too-bright lights, shouting and the sounds of praise. He shut his eyes against the glare. But he couldn’t shut his ears.
“Thank God! Thank God in His Heaven!”
“Can someone get her out of here?”
His chest hurt. It felt as if someone was sitting on it. It was difficult to breathe and there were shadows in his mind, dark, moving forms. He was cold, and the smell… like rubbing alcohol. A hospital smell. It was almost worse than the voices.
“His blood pressure is stabilizing. Heart rate normal.”
“Excellent. Let’s get him prepped.”
Darkness again.
“Lando? Lando can you hear me?”
This time he opened his eyes slowly, wincing against the memory of that other time, when light and sound threatened to drive him back into the darkness. It was important to stay out of the darkness. But the pounding in his head forced him to shut his eyes again. The darkness was cool, comforting. In the darkness he could float and forget about… forget about…
“Surabhi.”
Hushed voices. Whispering. Then…
“Who’s Surabhi?”
“Quiet, Charles. Lando… can you hear me?”
“What…?”
“Lando, dear, this is your mother speaking. Can you open your eyes?”
“Easy, Barb. Give ’em some breathing room, fer Cyrus’ sake.”
LC Cooper squinted his eyes open enough to make out several blurred shapes. As the image swam into focus, the first person he recognized was his mother.
“Bar… ba… ra,” he said. His throat. There was something wrong with his throat. It was dry. It felt as if he had been forced to gargle with sand. “M… mother.”
“Yes, dear, praise God. It’s mother.”
“Thr… throat… hurts…”
“That’s the anesthetic, dear. The doctors said it would dry out all your membranes. Would you like some water?”
“Wha… what?”
“WOULD YOU LIKE SOME WATER?”
Water.
A dark vortex. A swirling hole in the red ice leading down… down. Blood… blood on the ice. His blood in the…
“…water, dear. Oh, I forgot, he has to use the straw.”
“Connie!”
“Now just relax, Lando. He shouldn’t try to sit up.”
“W
ho’s Connie?”
LC opened his mouth to answer.
“Connie… she’s my… my…”
…but he couldn’t remember.
“Boy, Barbie, he don’t look so hot.”
LC squinted toward the speaker, the only other person in the room, a short, barrel-chested man with a blockshaped, bald head. He was wearing a brown suit, light blue shirt and lime green tie covered with pineapples.
“Flaunt,” LC said huskily, his throat burning. “You’re… Chick… Flaunt.”
The barrel chested man frowned appreciatively.
“Chuck, sonny. Chuck Flaunt. But hey, that’s pretty good. Looks like you may have kept a brain cell or two in that noggin o’ yers after all.”
“Bite me, Chick.”
“Lando Kalel Cooper, that’s no way to talk to your father.”
“My what?”
“That’s alright, honey,” Flaunt said. “I got nothing to prove to him, or anybody else. I know who I am. Hell of a lot more than I can say for some people in this room.”
“Charles…”
“Just kiddin’, Barbie.”
Barbie?
“My father?” LC said. “What the hell are you two… are you two…?”
He cleared his throat. His voice… his voice felt… different to him, rougher, harsher.
“What’s wrong with my… with my voice? Why am I in the hospital?”
Barbara approached again, a giant plastic hospital cup in her right hand. She stuck a straw into the top and handed it to him.
“I’ve called Danielle. She was just dropping the children off at school. They’re so excited. They can’t wait to see you.”
LC took a sip of the water. It was cold, soothing to his throat.
“Who’s Danielle?”
Barbara frowned as if she smelled something unpleasant. “We were told to expect this.”
“Expect what? What did you do to your hair? And what’s wrong with your face?”
“I see being in a coma hasn’t improved your attitude.”
“A coma? What are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine.”
Last God Standing Page 22