False Gods

by Nazri Noor

  I led the way up the stairs, acting as naturally as I could, like I’d been up those steps a hundred times before, like I owned the place – or at least rented the corner one-bedroom. What I’d forgotten to consider, though, was how we were actually going to break in. Never mind that 2F was in a corner. We couldn’t just go smashing the door down. Everyone would notice.

  “Push a credit card into the slot,” Florian whispered. “You’re supposed to be able to jimmy doors open that way.”

  “News flash,” I said through gritted teeth. “My wallet and my phone were both in Beatrice’s handbag when it went up into a mushroom cloud. Not that I have any credit cards I could have used in this situation, but still.” I rubbed my chin, staring at the keyhole like it owed me money. “Maybe I can call something out of the Vestments to help. You know, a narrow knife to poke between the door and the frame? Maybe. Hmm. Maybe a mace?”

  That got me all excited. I loved swords, sure. They were my favored weapons when it came to a scrap. But maces had that special quality of being really, really useful for crushing things. I liked the feeling of having all the force of a miniature wrecking ball in my hand. Plus you have to admit, it’s pretty fitting, considering my nickname.

  These were the times when I missed the Boneyard the most. Everyone had a role to fill, a part to play, because we were a team formed out of so many different specialists. Gil the werewolf and Sterling the vampire were good at breaking things and making people bleed. Carver, the boss I keep talking about, was a powerful, ageless lich who knew all sorts of magic, and could use his spells to scout ahead, scry, and pick up information, which would have been super useful for me and Florian just then. We didn’t even know who – or what – Gambanteinn’s keeper was supposed to be. And then there was Asher, my best friend at the Boneyard, an ungodly necromancer, but the sweetest dude you’ll ever know.

  I eyed the doorknob again, wondering what Sterling would do. Punch through the wood with his fist, of course, and just deal with the splinters, because he didn’t do subtlety. I glanced around. The apartment plaza looked empty, at least. We’d timed it so that everybody would be at school or at work. I tensed my muscles, calling for a nice, blunt weapon from the Vestments, ready to bash the knob off the door in one clean, decisive blow.

  But then the door swung open.

  15

  Florian’s shoes scraped against the ground as he backed away, but I didn’t move, content to present myself to the occupant of apartment 2F.

  The consequence of which, apparently, was being exposed to the awful stench of his apartment. I thought my eyes were watering. It smelled like old food, and sweat, and stale cigarettes. A disheveled man shuffled towards the doorway, a cigarette hanging loosely from the corner of his stubble-rimmed mouth, black hair hanging in scraggly tendrils over his forehead, the rings under his eyes as dark and as deep as the defeated look that lived within his pupils.

  “Can I help you?” he rasped. “I heard talking out here.”

  “We,” Florian started to say. “We’re here to fix your, uh.” I loved the big lunk, but I often wished he would wait to finish his thoughts before trying to string them into words.

  “Pipes,” I blurted out, quickly replacing the uncertainty on my face with another smile. I know, I know. I’m a grumpy bastard most hours of the day, but a little charm applied practically always did well for smoothing out the creases in everyday life. This wasn’t a crease, though. This was a big old wrinkle, and we had to hope that this guy had some leaky pipes that needed fixing.

  Actually, hold that thought. I looked up and down his body, at the ratty slippers on his feet, the threadbare pajamas, the T-shirt with a too-wide neck and a bunch of little holes in it. Yeah, ain’t no one had fixed any pipes here in a long time. His apartment was in worse shape than his clothes. The poor bastard was never going to get his deposit back. No chance in hell.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me, a glimmer of intelligence wavering in his eyes despite the fact that he looked very much like he hadn’t slept in days. “I didn’t call for any plumbers.”

  “Oh,” I said, still smiling. “The super sent us. We’re doing a routine check of all the apartments on the first and second floors. Didn’t you get the circular?”

  The man rolled his eyes, turned his back to me, then shuffled back into the apartment, gesturing for us to follow. “Don’t give a damn about no circulars. I just throw them in the pile.”

  Said pile was a mountain of mail and loose papers, some of them coupon catalogs, the others sheaves upon sheaves of unopened bills. How this guy was able to live here without getting kicked out was anybody’s guess. I looked over my shoulder, checking on Florian, only to find him staring aghast at the inside of the apartment.

  “Behave,” I said. “Be polite.”

  “I am being polite,” he hissed.

  “Your face really, really isn’t.”

  Then again, it was admittedly a challenge trying to look past the state of the apartment. For that matter, it’d be a challenge to find anywhere to sit. Practically every surface was covered in junk, whether it was pizza boxes – not all of them empty, I noted with dismay – or crushed cans of cheap beer. I didn’t know what kind of funk this dude was in, but I was starting to feel worse for him.

  “Florian,” I said. “You should probably start in the kitchen.”

  I nudged my head at the filth of what used to be an area made for cooking food and washing dishes, now transformed into a toxic hazard. Florian stared hard at me with wide eyes, then shook his head vigorously. I nodded my head vigorously back. He shut his eyes, sighed, then relented, taking his sweet time to go around the counter separating the kitchen from the living area.

  Just as well, because I needed some alone time with – what was this dude’s name, anyway?

  “I’m Jason, by the way,” I offered. I held my hand up to my chest, because as bad as I felt for him, there was no way I was going to shake the hand that the man had just been using to scratch his nuts.

  “Skeeter,” he grunted, without hesitation, or even attention for that matter. He stared dispassionately at a muted television, hitting the remote control at oddly regular intervals, never stopping or lingering on a single channel.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” I said. “We just need to check on your water, and then I promise, we’ll be on our way.”

  He shook his head, his eyes still reflecting the harsh blue light of his ancient television. “No, you won’t,” he said. “I know what you people are here for. You’re not going to leave me alone. None of the others did, not until they could take Gambanteinn away from me.”

  I froze in place. “Were we really that obvious?” I said. A hard clanging sound drifted in from the kitchen. What the – was Florian actually doing some plumbing? Did he even know anything about it?

  Skeeter waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the door. “Every few months someone tries to come in. At least you two were polite about it.” He smacked his lips, looking lazily up into my face, neither angry nor amused. “Or maybe I just caught you while you were trying to break in. Doesn’t matter. Everybody wants Gambanteinn. You don’t live in Valero with a sweet magical relic and expect to keep it forever.”

  My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Standing above him like that made me feel like I still had an edge in the situation, at least physically. But I wasn’t liking where this conversation was going. Here he was, a crumpled man of forty, or maybe a really dehydrated early thirties, slumped into an armchair and grumbling little inanities. We could take him, me and Florian. No sweat. But first we needed to know where Gambanteinn was.

  Skeeter made it very easy. He pulled something out of his pajama pockets, a long, slender object I could best describe as a really elegant, shiny chopstick. The way it gleamed from between his fingers was even more impressive because of how grimy said fingers and the rest of his body were. He raised it to me, and for a second I thought he was going to offer me the wand. But then he stopped short of placin
g it in my hand, instead pointing it dead center of my chest.

  “If you want it,” he said, grinning through perfect white teeth that looked like they didn’t belong in his mouth. “If you want it? Come and get it.”

  16

  Skeeter leapt to his feet with alarming alacrity, grabbing my throat with one shockingly powerful hand, then twisting me around. I gasped and I croaked as I spun helplessly on my heels.

  “This doesn’t belong to you, and it never will,” he said. The unexpected strength of his forearm pressed down on my throat, the wand stabbing into my temple, its tip as sharp as a knife. “Over my dead body.”

  “Ack,” I choked out. “Gack. Florian. Fucking. Help me.”

  Florian’s head whipped left and right as he searched the apartment. “But all the plants here are dead!”

  I would have leapt right for his throat if Skeeter hadn’t been holding me back. “Just fucking punch him. Kick him in the nuts. Ack. Anything.” Warm blood dripped down the side of my head. The fucker had cut me with the wand.

  “You know the best thing about this?” Skeeter said, his breath sour with stale beer. “Gambanteinn isn’t really a wand. It’s a staff. One command from me – just one – and this thing will grow to its full size and shove through your skull and your brain like a railroad spike.”

  “Fucking – Florian, help me!”

  The side of my head stung as Skeeter removed the wand and pointed it at Florian. A crackling bolt of energy leapt from its tip. Florian threw himself at the ground, using the kitchen counter as a barrier just in the nick of time. Formica and cheap, fake marble flew in jagged chunks as the magical bolt struck the counter with a dull crash.

  “Don’t move a muscle, alraune. That’s right. I know who you are. I know who you both are.” His breath came hotter on my ear, and I grimaced, knowing that he’d bent closer to speak into it. “Jason, my ass. You’re Mason Albrecht, the nephilim. You don’t just roll into town and expect no one to hear about it.”

  “Nice to actually meet you,” I grunted, still struggling in his arms. Where the hell was all his strength coming from? He had the body of a man who worked way too much time at a desk and ate way too many salty pretzels.

  He jostled me again, his forearm pressing even harder against my throat. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said mockingly. “It isn’t actually Skeeter. I am Skirnir, servant and messenger of the Norse god Freyr, he who was once as glorious and as powerful as the All-Father himself.”

  Florian’s eyes peeked out over the edge of the counter. “Interesting choice of alias you picked there, Skeeter.”

  “It was convenient,” he snarled.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t even work. And anyway, if you’re supposed to be Freyr’s messenger, what are you doing cooped up in this garbage heap subsisting on takeout and pizzas?”

  No offense meant to either takeout or pizzas. I loved them both. Just not when they’d been living unrefrigerated in a rundown apartment next to the shell of a man-god who refused to clean up – or bathe, for that matter.

  “Because he’s forsaken me,” he hissed. “I seek him out and he eludes me. I sought solace in working for the other gods of our pantheon, but none of them would take me. Not even the trickster, Loki.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “About that.”

  Skirnir froze. “Don’t tell me he sent you.”

  “He did. And guess what. I learned a couple of tricks from him.”

  I swung my left hand upwards just as he let his guard down, the force of my punch augmented by the gauntlet I’d summoned from the Vestments. Just the gauntlet. That was all I needed. Good thing he was a mouth-breather, because it meant I knew exactly how to find his teeth without even looking. When my fist connected with the meat of his face, I felt and heard a deeply satisfying crack. His limbs flew off me as he grabbed his mouth, wailing. I caught a glimpse of blood spurting past my shoulder, along with a couple of broken shards of teeth. I danced away from him, finding him crumpled to the ground, his hands cupped around his mouth and under his chin.

  “I was kidding. Loki didn’t teach me shit. That was all me.” And okay, I thought. Maybe a little bit of Raziel, too. “Now. Hand over the wand.”

  Skirnir snarled. “Then take it.”

  I got too cocky. Skirnir tossed the wand upwards, grabbing it in midair when it grew into its full length, then firing a second bolt from the tip of what was now a magical staff. This blast was bigger, brighter, and more violent. I didn’t twist my body away in time, didn’t anticipate the exact trajectory of the arcane bolt he fired straight at the center of my chest.

  My mind and my muscles had prepared quickly enough to summon the full suit of armor from the Vestments this time, and my heart pounded with an exhilarating mix of excitement and fear as the warmth of divine steel encased me. Within a split-second I was a golden knight myself, just like Raziel.

  Then the magical bolt struck my chest.

  The sound that the impact made was like the clanging of an enormous bell. The force took me off my feet, sending me flying across the room. I slammed into a far wall as my chest began to beat dully with pain. It felt as if my breastplate had caved inward, pressing into my muscles and my bones. I looked down at myself only to find that it was even worse. The breastplate was shattered, almost as if it was made out of glass instead of golden steel.

  And just beneath the twisted crisscross of broken metal, I caught the unmistakeable crimson sheen of my own blood. I gasped, the pain coursing through my body, radiating from my torso. Had the blast ripped shrapnel into me? What was a plain, dull ache just moments ago was turning into stabbing agony. I writhed on the ground, trembling fingers hovering at my chest, wanting to clutch at my wound. But I knew I would only make things far, far worse.

  Skirnir rose to his feet, an eerie, faint wind blowing through his apartment. The stench of rotting food faded, as did the veneer of filth from his body. While his clothes remained rumpled and soiled, Skirnir’s skin, hair, and eyes looked clearer, as vital as someone who was meant to be a god. Because that was who he was, after all, a deity of the old world, regardless of whether he’d been forsaken by his more powerful master.

  I panted and strained through the pain, my mind focused on only one thing. If Skirnir was a god, it still meant that we could kill him. This apartment couldn’t possibly be his domicile. If I could call something new from the Vestments, then stab him through the heart or decapitate him, it would all be over. But my ruined armor wasn’t a good sign. I reached out to the armories, asking for a sword, a throwing dagger, anything – but nothing answered.

  “Nephilim,” Skirnir said, eyes wide with the thrill of ambition and power. “I will bring you to my master. You will be a fine prize indeed. Then he will know to love his old servant again. Then I won’t have to live in this repulsive human hovel any longer. I only have to take you alive.” His eyes narrowed as he grinned. “I’m sure Freyr won’t mind if you’re a little battered and bloodied when I deliver you to him.”

  “That’s never going to happen,” I growled.

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  The sound of breaking pottery stopped Skirnir’s monologue short. Soil, a shattered pot, and dried stems and leaves showered down past his temples and neck, along with trickles of blood courtesy of the new wound in his head. Skirnir’s eyes rolled back into their sockets as he slumped to the ground. Gambanteinn clattered and rolled into a corner, a terrifying staff of power, but just a worthless broomstick without a warrior to wield it.

  “Oh, thank God,” I muttered.

  “I found the heaviest potted plant he had,” Florian said, beaming proudly as he stood over Skirnir’s unconscious body. “See? Nature always saves the day. The plant was dead, too, so I didn’t feel too bad about smashing it over his head.”

  “I’m not sure Skirnir really cares at this point. Come on. Grab the staff and help me up. He wrecked me good and proper.”

  Florian gently pulled me to my feet, offering
Gambanteinn as a walking stick. I accepted gratefully, but as I stood, my borrowed armor from the Vestments vanished. I saw myself in a mirror in the hallway, saw the bright bloom of wet, stinging red that covered well over half of my shirt.

  “Holy shit,” Florian said. “You’re losing a lot of blood. We need to get you some help. Right now.”

  “I’m okay,” I mumbled, wondering why Skirnir’s apartment was so much colder. “I’m fine, it’s nothing.” I held on to the staff, cursing the room for spinning around me, unsettled yet helpless over how my clothes were drenched with my insides. I blinked once, then felt myself falling. I blinked again, and the world faded from view.

  17

  “Gross,” Artemis said, wincing as she stared at the gash in my chest, munching on entire mouthfuls of her fresh supply of Snacky Yum-Yums. “That is so gross, man.”

  “Would you get out of here with your cheesy snacks?” I grumbled. She carried on chewing and ignored me, flecks of orangey crumbs falling from her mouth and staining her fingers as she noshed on the whole bag of snacks like it was a bucket of popcorn. I narrowed my eyes. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t even look at me when she nodded, or when she spoke. “It’s like those videos on the internet where someone pops a huge pimple, or a cyst, and all this pus comes gushing out. It’s gross as hell, but you can’t look away.” She peered even closer, then mumbled to herself again. “Ew. Disgusting.”

  “I give up,” I muttered.