by Leah Cutter
Laura would help customers on the floor—she was really good at explaining the different dildos and gels—then after a while, she’d come back over and talk with the men (and a few women) who stood in line for the peepshow.
I’d never worked in a team like that before. I think it was something that Hunter had wanted, for him and me to work together like that, anticipating each other’s needs. Hell, I only had to hold up a cigarette for Laura to know I was taking a break. She didn’t smoke, but she mimed smoking when it was her turn.
I hoped she stayed. Travis seemed to like her, too. Amy got along with everybody.
Had Chinaman Joe hired Laura just for me? Not as a replacement, though I could see, if she did stay, that she’d be able to fill my shoes as the pseudo–store manager. But so that I’d realize what a good deal I had here, could have here?
Would any other kind of job have this kind of camaraderie? Could I have as much fun working with a bunch of suits in a company who only hired the blessed?
Maybe that was the real reason I hadn’t found another job yet.
I didn’t want to leave home.
Ξ
I kept thinking about Hunter’s proclamation that I’d be seeing the non–men again.
I was sure he hadn’t meant my previous night’s call to Odin. And about the Old Ones. I was going to have to do some research about them. The Elder Gods.
I looked at the schedule again. Next Wednesday night. Odin had said it wasn’t Loki. Hunter had talked about non–men. Other gods.
The marshal of the torchlight parade was always the god Poseidon.
It had to be a coincidence. Right? It wouldn’t be the actual god. Except maybe…
I was going to have to get Amy to cover for me that night. Because I had to be at that goddamned parade.
Chapter Six
Steve stood just inside the door of the coffee shop. He didn’t want to get anything then be waiting there lamely when Gary stood him up.
The barista was already giving him the stink eye—Steve obviously wasn’t hip enough for this place. Some indie–discordant–crap thumped through the speakers. Guys with neck beards, wearing T–shirts with pithy statements, took up most of the tables, focused on their tablets or phones. The two lesbians in the corner were too involved with each other to even bother looking up. They should either get a room or go further than light kisses and start charging pay–per–view.
Finally, though, Gary showed up. He still wore his bright blue box–store uniform shirt.
That sure wasn’t going to get them better service from the barista.
But Gary looked well—better than Steve. Dark lines didn’t circle his eyes. In fact, it looked like Gary was regularly sleeping, like he wasn’t being kept awake by the nightmares that had been visiting Steve.
Bastard.
And whatever dark thing that Steve had seen in Gary’s eyes had gone into hiding, at least for the time being.
“Hey,” Steve said.
“Hey,” Gary replied. “You okay? You said it was important.”
Now Steve felt like all kinds of fool. But he was still going to talk with Gary about the game. “Yeah. Sure. Come on. What would you like? I’m buying.”
“You’re buying? Actually spending money on another human being? You sure you’re okay?” Gary asked.
“Asshole,” Steve said, ignoring Gary’s jibes and walking up to the counter. He ordered an iced mocha, with extra whipped cream, then stood to the side so Gary could get the scowling treatment from the barista.
“So what’s the most expensive thing on the menu?” Gary asked the barista.
Steve rolled his eyes. Asshole. He wasn’t trying to flirt with her or something, was he?
The barista didn’t smile at that. But her look softened slightly as she glanced from Gary to Steve and back again. “Extra tall, iced–mocha breve,” she said. “Could also throw in a shot of caramel to raise the price.”
“Done,” Gary said. He turned to Steve and smiled sweetly.
“Yeah, sure, fine,” Steve said. Six bucks for a stupid coffee drink seemed really extravagant. But what the hell.
Gary was his friend. Even if he was an asshole.
“I’ll bring them out to you,” she said.
Huh. Maybe she wasn’t an angry barista. Unless she was going to come and spill their drinks on them.
Which would have been exactly how Steve felt his day was going.
They sat down at a white table that showed the signs of the three previous inhabitants. Obviously the barista didn’t believe in wiping down the place between guests. Gary didn’t say anything though as Steve got a napkin and wiped futilely at the sticky spots.
When Steve came back to the table, Gary looked at him closely. “You okay?” he asked again. “You don’t look great.”
Steve grimaced. That was supposed to be his line, how he started this conversation with Gary.
“Haven’t been sleeping well,” Steve admitted.
“Nightmares?” Gary guessed.
Steve gave him a short nod.
“Me too,” Gary admitted. “Or at least, I had a bunch. But they’ve gone away now.”
“Really?” Steve asked. “How? I mean, what did you do?” Steve would give just about anything to stop dreaming of terrors and gibbering slime.
Gary paused, then said with extreme seriousness, “Have you considered taking Cthulhu as your lord and savior?”
“Asshole,” Steve said.
Of course, that was when the barista came up with their drinks.
She put them on the table, then gave them a surprising grin. “Now you two boys kiss and make up,” she directed before she sauntered off.
They both gaped at her for a moment before Steve turned back to his drink. God, the world was just out to fuck with him today, wasn’t it?
Gary sniggered and took a sip from his tall, whip–cream–piled drink. “That’s good,” he said, surprised. “Not too sweet.”
“It should be,” Steve grumbled. His own was cold and good, but he wasn’t about to thank that stupid barista for it. He sighed, then decided he had to push forward anyway.
“Look, I feel stupid saying this, but can we find someplace else to game this weekend?” God, it sounded lame. But he really, really didn’t want to go back to Gary’s basement.
There was just something wrong there.
“I’d like to finish out the campaign there,” Gary said, sitting back.
That dark thing looked out at Steve from Gary’s eyes. It chilled Steve’s soul, made him suddenly wish for a hot drink instead.
“Then you’ll have to finish it without me,” Steve declared. He took a hurried sip of his drink. God, when did he grow such a backbone? He normally avoided this kind of confrontation like the plague.
Was he really that scared?
“No, no, can’t do that. You have to be there,” Gary said.
Steve stubbornly shook his head. It kind of felt good to be so firm about this.
He was going to have to remember this trick the next time his housemate tried to wiggle out of doing the dishes.
“How about if we marathon this weekend? Play to the very end? Then we can play somewhere else,” Gary suggested.
Steve hesitated.
“Please?” Gary begged. His eyes were now wide and clear and possibly held a touch of fear. “We need you. You’re the leader of the group. You have to finish out the campaign. Think about the other players, dude! I promise I can wrap this up quickly. This weekend.”
“You sure?” Steve asked. Maybe if it was only a couple more times…
“Here. Tell you what.” Gary pulled out a golden four–sided dice. The odd numbers carved into the sides were black, while the even numbers were blood red.
Steve had never seen this die before. Where had Gary bought it? It looked kind of cool, but ominous at the same time.
“You roll an even number. Any even number. And we’ll have the next game wherever you like. But if you roll an odd
number, we finish off the game at my place.”
Steve eyed the die sitting on the table between them. The air conditioning in the coffee shop hadn’t suddenly broken or started blowing hot air, but he felt like it had, sweat instantly gather across his back, running down his sides.
It was a stupid game. A single dice roll.
What harm could there be?
He could always lie later, and tell the gang he was sick.
Steve glanced up, saw the barista staring at them. He knew she already thought he was an idiot.
Fine. He thought he was an idiot as well.
He rolled a 1.
“I promise it will all be over soon,” Gary said.
Why did that sound so much more ominous than it should? They were sitting in a coffee shop in broad daylight, for Christ’s sake.
“Okay, okay,” Steve grumbled. He still wasn’t sure he wouldn’t tell the group he was sick.
But then Gary got that shifty look in his eyes again. Like there was something else living inside Gary’s skin. Some darker force at work here. “And you can’t call us complaining you’re sick or something either,” he warned.
Steve shrugged. He wasn’t about to promise that.
“So did you hear about the X–box patch?” Steve asked instead.
Gary rolled his eyes. “Lame.”
They easily fell into their usual conversations, but Steve kept feeling as though Gary was watching him.
Or rather, something inside Gary was watching him.
Steve didn’t know what was going on with Gary.
But he knew that somehow he was going to have to save his friend.
Ξ
Hunter held the luminescent pearl in the palm of his hand.
So much potential. For both good and evil.
“How much?” Hunter asked, looking up at Dusty, Csaba’s second in command, who had taken over the drug–dealing business after Csaba had been killed by Loki.
Dusty wasn’t a general, though. He couldn’t maintain the former empire through his force of personality or command. He wouldn’t be able to hold it together with cruelty or threats either.
The alliance of dealers was disintegrating. Dusty was desperately trying to keep it together. He wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
Hunter read Dusty’s acne–scarred face with ease. Hunter had been a good client, once. Had he come back? Fallen off the wagon, as it were? Could Dusty start relying on him again?
What price would keep Hunter hooked and coming back?
Additional calculations entered into the equation as Dusty spent a moment really looking at Hunter.
That surprised Hunter. He tensed. He didn’t like surprises.
They were in the back of a club in northern Minneapolis. Music thumped loudly from the front. The two idiots at the door both carried semiautomatic weapons. Neither of them knew how to handle themselves. The guns were more dangerous than they were.
The guy sitting next to Dusty on the couch was more of an issue. Bald and muscled, he was only packing a knife in his right boot.
That he could handle himself wasn’t as much of a worry to Hunter as the fact that his pupils were mere pinpricks in the darkened room.
He was likely to be an idiot and do something stupid.
Dusty didn’t worry Hunter. He was still a punk with his jeans pulled down halfway over his ass, his curly hair giving him an innocent air that his sly smile and hard eyes belied.
“Could always work in trade,” Dusty said eventually. “Could use some more help around here.”
Hunter blinked, surprised. Why would Dusty try to bring him into his organization?
“Having someone who could predict when the cops were coming—that could be useful,” Dusty added.
Hunter barked a laugh. He couldn’t help it. “The first time I did that the cops would fall out of thin air trying to get at you. And me. It’s suicide.” Of course, there were always rumors about pre– and post–cogs being bought by the mob or some gang.
In reality, if one of those called the blessed turned against the others that way, they’d end up dead. Sooner, rather than later.
Dusty just shrugged. “That’s the price. Take it or leave it.”
Hunter turned away, then stopped himself abruptly.
He hadn’t planned on taking all the pills himself. He wouldn’t need them, or at least not all of them.
Not like his blood brother would.
He turned back and looked at Dusty. The bodies were already piling up in his mind’s eye. It wouldn’t take much to reduce all the idiots in this room to corpses.
Might even do the world some good to clean up the place.
But he couldn’t. Hunter needed the drugs. He needed to keep the supply open. And if he took out these idiots, the cops would come after him harder.
He needed to stay free, out of jail, at least for another few days.
Then, it wouldn’t matter what happened to him.
Maybe then the bodies could be piled high.
“Done,” Hunter said with a sharp nod.
He didn’t trust the look that Dusty exchanged with the hard body next to him.
What had he just agreed to?
Ξ
Steve glanced across the gaming table at Mary. Ready?
The thief nodded. Steve picked up the three ten–sided dice he needed to roll in order to make this final save. He held up his hand and rattled them like they were ice in a glass.
Pat still slumped in the corner, his wounds oozing, unable to heal himself. Bryan held the spell over the body of the water god steady. The two remaining fighters in their party held a huge earthen jar covered with foul runes and glyphs at the ready.
Steve didn’t look at Gary, lurking over his tables and books like some kind of misanthropic troll. They were going to beat this dungeon. Steal the soul of the water god. Use it to bargain their way off this fucking island.
Every night that week they’d gamed. Steve had kept meaning to call in sick to the game. Tell the group that he couldn’t make it. Change his shifts around at work so he had a good excuse.
But he kept finding his way back to Gary’s house, like he was stuck in some kind of maze where he couldn’t get out. Steve would be going south, to get groceries, and suddenly find himself a block away from Gary’s.
Even if he drove the opposite direction, he’d find himself back here again.
Steve was going to win this time, though.
He rolled the dice.
“Two fives and a six,” Steve crowed. “Take that, sucker.”
He ignored the great whooshing sound that raced from one end of the basement to the other, how Pat, in the corner, suddenly laughed and cackled gleefully, how Gary’s eyes seemed to blaze red in the creepy light thrown from the lamp in the center of the table.
“You got it,” Gary said, amazement tingeing his voice. “You stole the soul of the water god. Sealed it in the Jar of Amorthantie. All hail Azothgar, the great!”
Pete and Luke dully repeated the phrase, while Pat giggled wildly again.
“So now, please, can we get out of this godforsaken place?” Steve begged.
Mary nodded mutely. She’d gambled away her voice some time before that, much to everyone’s initial delight—no one liked dealing with her rules lawyering all the damned time.
“But it isn’t forsaken by the gods,” Pat said, slumping toward the table. “The elder, eldritch gods are here. The Great Old Ones. If you tried praying to them, they might listen.”
“No thanks,” Steve said. Really, he wanted out of here. Out of the basement, out of the game, off the damned island. Anything.
“Why don’t we have the next game somewhere else?” Steve proposed.
“Like where?” Gary asked as he shut his laptop. He waved a remote at the lamp in the center of the table. Suddenly, light, real light, sprang up.
Steve jumped. He hadn’t completely lost his grip on reality. He’d known they were in Gary’s mom’s basement.
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But he did have to admit that all of that had mostly faded away outside of the light from that damned lamp. That they were on a cursed island and had made a deal with the local mage to get off, by capturing the soul of the water god.
Hell, he’d even thought Pat’s sores were real. And that Mary had truly lost her tongue for a while.
“We could meet at my place,” Steve suggested. He’d have to bribe his housemate, to get him out of the house, but it would be worth however many pizzas he’d have to buy if he didn’t have to come back to Gary’s basement.
“How about by Lake Calhoun?” Pat suggested. “In the park, near Thomas Beach?”
Steve blinked, impressed that Pat knew about any type of park or beach.
“Excellent idea,” Gary crooned. “Meet there 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon.”
Steve thought about protesting, or making up some kind of conflict. It was—holy cow. 4 a.m. already.
“Time flies when you’re kidnapping gods,” Gary giggled.
Steve shook his head. They’d done, what, four hours of chanting, waiting for the moon and stars and fucking tides to align so they could steal the water god’s soul? Lock it away in that jar?
Peter and Luke had set the jar down next to the stairs. Steve wasn’t sure where Gary had found it. Another estate sale? But it matched the lamp too well for it to be a casual find.
Steve didn’t like it, any more than he liked that stupid lamp. But what could he say? It was just a lamp. Just a beige urn, like a huge planter, with black scrollwork around the lip. It almost looked Grecian in brighter light, the foul characters fading away to mere memory.
“Everything’s all set,” Gary assured the group. “We just have to meet two more times.”
“What, we’ll be finished with this campaign in just two more sessions?” Steve asked.
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” Gary said, turning that creepy smile he’d recently acquired toward Steve.
“Then I’ll GM for a while,” Steve said. “And we’re going to play Browncoats.”
Mary perked up, nodding. Figured that she would have a thing for space opera. And that TV show.