by Nazri Noor
Some Hands had extensive experience with healing magic, however, and one of those was attending to Florian’s bruises, running her fingers lightly over his brow, across his forearms. I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw the Hand giggle as she slipped a piece of paper into Florian’s pocket. Attaboy. He looked down at himself, then back up at her, confused.
A couple of Mouths had worked in tandem to help subdue Wyatt Whateley. His sword was returned to him, and together Wyatt and Mistleteinn were teleported by a friendly Wing all the way back to his sumptuous house over in Silver Lake.
And I’d never known it to happen to a god, but Mouths were engaged to erase Skirnir’s memories, too. It took five of them, perhaps because he was still an entity despite his state. A couple of Hands and Wings were sent to escort him and Gambanteinn home to his apartment, where he could continue to live his life unmolested, I hoped, by gullible alraunes and nephilim who just happened to be conned by trickster gods.
Speaking of which, Loki had disappeared, though not without a trace. They found a note in his armchair, addressed to me, that promised payment in full. My mouth soured just at the sound of that. Knowing Loki, that could just as easily be interpreted as a threat.
But he’d better cough up, I thought. This whole thing at the warehouse was a gigantic mess, initiated by a single entity’s boredom. I wanted out of all that, out of this life where my location burned as bright as a bonfire on the arcane map, where any Tom, Dick, or Harry Houdini could easily track me down.
Maharani cleared her throat as she tapped her foot in front of me, one eyebrow cocked, both expectant and analytical. “You’re off the hook, Mr. Albrecht. We won’t be hauling you in – at least not this time.”
“Really?” I forced myself to stare her in the face, using every ounce of my willpower to avoid glancing at her new lock of gray hair. “What gives? Not that I’m complaining, honestly.”
“Because with or without Laevateinn, Loki would have found some way to catalyze his insane plan. All he really needed was power sources, which you so conveniently brought to him.”
I toed at the ground, scratching the back of my wrist. “Sorry.”
“Well, as luck would have it, we managed to halt distribution of these – gods, whatever these things are. I couldn’t imagine the headache our PR department would have had to deal with if these monsters had made it out all across California.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip, drumming up enough courage to test her with a question. “So what you’re saying is that we saved the day?”
Maharani scoffed. “Hardly. If I hadn’t intervened, the collision of energies might have been more catastrophic. Explosive. But – I do very much appreciate your cooperation in the matter. Your commitment to righting your own wrongs has not gone unnoticed.”
But that was when it clicked for me. Arachne commanding Beatrice Rex to hide Laevateinn made sense all along. They were supposed to prevent all of this from happening. I felt guilty for a moment, but the reality was that Loki would have found his sword at some point, one way or the other. Arachne’s solution was delaying the inevitable. By some happy accident, we’d nipped the problem in the bud by destroying every last living Cube.
My chest puffed out and I grinned. “You’re welcome.”
She frowned. “Not so fast. This is not a matter of the Lorica thanking you. I’m only saying that we may be growing more sympathetic to your existence, and more aware of the possibility that you are not, as was originally presumed by the rest of the Scions, a threat and a menace. I will be the first to admit that the Lorica does indeed wield a heavy hand, especially when it comes to matters of the demi- and nonhuman species. But only time will tell.”
I shrugged. “Look around you. I don’t know what else I could say or do to prove to you that I’m just a really good boy. I mean, I am part angel.”
Maharani’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the other part that I’m worried about. Good evening, Mr. Albrecht. The less we see of each other, the better.” She turned away from me in a swirl of silks, and just like that, I was dismissed.
“Piece of work, that,” Sterling said sulkily, rubbing at a spot on his cheek. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Fantastic idea,” Florian said, stretching his arms, then groaning as his joints popped and creaked in a way that most definitively proved he was both a little bit human and a little bit sequoia.
“I’m beat. Let’s head out.” And I was just about to, leading the three of us out of the warehouse in a direction that I knew wouldn’t take us past the Lorica’s cleanup crew when – well, something nudged up against my shin. I glanced down at it, recognizing its whitish, gelatinous sheen.
“What the fuck,” Florian yelped. “Don’t move, I’ll squish it.”
Metal sang as Sterling unsheathed his katana. “No no, let me do the honors.”
“Because that worked out so well the last time,” I hissed. “Chill out, the two of you. Look at it. It’s not trying to bite me or anything.”
Which was somewhat hard to tell considering the Cubes had no perceptible mouths or – well, any other features, apart from being small six-sided things. This one felt like it was clinging onto my pants leg, almost like a cat, or a puppy. I lowered my head, studying its glossy, somewhat gross outer membrane when it made a sound like a dog whining.
“Let’s just kill it,” Sterling said.
The Cube turned over on itself, rolling lumberingly into place behind my shoes.
“Sue me for saying this, but it’s kind of cute.” I bent down, sitting on my haunches to give the creature a closer look.
“Mason, what the hell are you doing?” Florian tugged on the back of my jacket. “It’s going to eat your face.”
I shook my head. “No. This one’s different. And there are none of the others left for it to turn into that stupid mega-monster. It’s the last of its kind, and it’s not angry. It’s not trying to kill us.”
Wondering what the hell I was doing, I reached out gingerly for the Cube, knowing that its membrane probably felt like the surface of a bowl of jello. The translucent whiteness of its fleshy body pulsed once, then turned into a deep, oak brown, like wood. I prodded it with one finger. Nope, definitely wood, just like how every Cube was supposed to look when it was brought into someone’s home.
“You scared it,” Florian said.
“I think that’s just a defense mechanism. It’s trying to blend in, sort of like camouflage.” I picked it up in both hands, cradling it against my chest, somehow completely unafraid of it unhinging its heretofore unseen jaws and biting my entire head off. I looked up at Sterling, batting my eyelashes. “Can we keep it?”
“First of all, I don’t live with you, so do what you want.” Sterling sheathed his katana, then in one smooth motion, lit his first cigarette of the evening. “Second of all, it’s your funeral.”
Florian shrugged. “It’s not sleeping in my hut.”
“He won’t,” I said, tucking the Cube under my jacket so no one would notice when we snuck out.
Sterling cocked his eyebrow at me. “Oh, it’s a ‘he’ now, is it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Does it matter?”
He shook his head. “The only thing that matters is that you feed it, clean up its boom-booms, and make sure it doesn’t chew up the furniture.”
We walked into the night, just me, a vampire, an alraune, and my new pet – um, whatever it was.
What could possibly go wrong?
39
“It’s a mimic.” Artemis poked a finger into the side of the Cube, grimacing when it slid in a little too far. “Loki must have found some way to mass produce them and bind them to his will. And you’re right, these things have no gender. But I don’t think it minds very much what you call it.”
I scanned quickly through the textbook that Artemis magicked out of the air and handed to me, looking for a ‘care and feeding’ section, disappointed when I found none. Mimics were exactly
what they sounded like, organic oddities that could camouflage themselves as practically anything. The caveat was that they could mostly only copy inanimate objects.
“This white, fleshy body it’s wearing appears to be its juvenile form. You know, like larvae? Normally it should look a little wooden, especially when it reaches adulthood, but it’s dropping its defenses around us. Kind of like when a cat shows its belly to you.” Artemis scritched the Cube on – well, on one of its six sides, I guess. “It’s a sign of trust. Isn’t it, you little cutie?”
The mimic’s jelly-like surface rippled, which I suppose in mimic-speak meant that it was happy.
“In time I think it’ll take a form that it’s more comfortable with, because this is really like the thing walking around without a carapace. Back in the old days, sorcerers hid these guys around their dungeons as booby traps. Great deterrent for thieves.” Artemis laughed, stroking along the top of the mimic’s surface. “You think you’re rummaging through a cabinet or a treasure chest, then wham! Out of nowhere it slams shut on you. Also, it has teeth. Also, it just ate your arm all the way up to the elbow.” She wiped a finger under her eye and slapped her thigh. “Good times, man.”
“Okay.” I handed the book back to her, maintaining eye contact the entire time. “But I can keep it, right?”
Artemis shrugged. “No skin off my back. Might be some skin off yours, depending on whether you train it not to eat you.” She slapped her thigh again, chortling. “Holy shit, why am I so funny? But seriously, make sure it doesn’t develop a taste for human flesh.”
“Oh.” I cast a suspicious glance over the squishy little box as it wriggled across the ground. “Um, I’ll be sure to look out for that, then.”
“Because technically, you’re the only human who actually lives here.”
I looked around her home dimension, smiling at the sight of my friends, our slowly growing family. She was right, too. Artemis was a deity and didn’t qualify. Neither did Priscilla, a goddess of the kitchen and the culinary arts living in the body of a gorilla, as far as I was concerned. Florian was half human as well, but he’d spent so much time hibernating, so oblivious of the modern world that he sometimes still felt like a relic from a different age. I guess I understood why he lied to make himself seem older.
Sterling was human once, too, but the vampiric transformation probably changed his biology in a way that wouldn’t make him very palatable to carnivorous beasts, mimics included. Part of the reason why zombies don’t eat other zombies, for example. Plus he wasn’t exactly going to be a permanent fixture in Artemis’s domicile. He sure was good at making it seem otherwise, though.
Hanging from trees spaced evenly apart were three hammocks. Artemis clambered onto hers after she finished her inspection of the mimic, sighing as she sank into the netting. And there they swung happily in the breeze, side by side, Artemis, Priscilla, and Sterling. Priscilla had on a pair of oversized sunglasses, her lips working busily on a straw connected to a massive and extremely fruity cocktail. A coconut shell was balanced on Sterling’s stomach, the skin of his bare torso as pale as the coconut’s meaty flesh.
Florian had gone on a date with the Hand who healed him, someone named Becky, I think. He was apprehensive, at first, but Artemis and I rooted him on. “Just don’t be weird” was the best advice the goddess of the hunt and I gave him, an ancient deity and a single-from-birth nephilim, the both of us clearly qualified relationship experts.
He went happily in the end, excited as a puppy as he slicked his hair back and stepped out of the portal from Artemis’s home. Scratch that, from our home. He told me that he’d realized how both he and Beatrice had things to figure out about themselves. Maybe it was best if they tried to stay friends, at least for the moment.
It was weird, seeing him vacillate so wildly between being a consummate flirt and a blushing teenager, but I was coming to accept that about Florian. He was steadfast and dependable, like an old oak with its roots set deep in the ground, but somehow still temperamental, changing like the seasons. Too sappy and poetic? Probably. I blamed Raziel. It was all his influence.
Raz actually did decide to show up to come and see me, shortly after we returned to the domicile. He even brought Artemis those offerings she wanted. Where Raziel found the money or learned the modern social interactions necessary to buy fifteen jumbo packs of Snacky Yum-Yums from a supermarket, I’ll never know. He dumped them sheepishly at Artemis’s feet when he appeared – this time, through the front door.
As the three musketeers swung languidly under the sun in their hammocks, Raziel spent his time poking and prodding at my skin, examining my sigils, running his finger across my collarbone, humming curiously the whole time. We’d put down a woven mat like a picnic blanket so I could hang out in the sun and get some fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, I felt mostly okay, but summoning that stupid cannon had taken a lot out of me.
“Ouch.” I slapped at Raziel’s hand when he started digging the end of his fingernail at a spot just under my throat. “Hey, quit that.”
“Sorry.” He retrieved his hands, examining the tip of his finger. “I had to make sure it was one of your glyphs, and not just a smudge of dirt.”
I scratched at my forearm, sulking. “I’m really not as filthy as everyone makes me out to be.”
Raziel sniffled. “That is debatable. Now tell me again how it happened.”
I rolled my eyes, leaning back on the mat on my elbows, very much aware of how my weight against its woven surface was printing textures into my skin. “I closed my eyes, and I imagined this long, tubular thing, okay? As best as I could reconstruct it in my mind from whatever I’d seen in books and movies. Then I opened my eyes, and wham! There it was. I wish I could tell you if I called it out from the Vestments or somehow made it on my own.”
The smile that spread across Raziel’s face crept slowly, turning into something that made him look very much like a proud parent, or a teacher who knew that they’d done the right thing. “Mason? You’ll be quite pleased and alarmed to know that the armories upstairs do not, in fact, have stocks of cannons and cannonballs.”
My breath left my lips in a gust of warm wind. “You’re joking. Do you mean that I – the thing and the ammo, I did all that?”
Raziel nodded so quickly that his hair started bouncing in time with the rhythm. “Precisely. You created them. And this could really only be the beginning.”
“Holy shit.” I clambered onto my knees. “Could you even imagine all of the things I could – ” But I faltered, stumbling forward, barely catching myself as I planted my palms onto the mat. This creatio ex nihilo business had sucked away more of my strength than I thought. I grunted as Raziel helped me back down. “I’m fine. It’s okay. I just – need to rest. I think.”
“That would be prudent.”
The little cube of jelly wriggled up to me then, snuggling up against my legs. “I think I’ll call him Box,” I said. Raziel blinked at me, his eyes dimming with confusion and maybe a little disappointment. “Fine, I’m not creative, don’t look at me like that.”
“But,” he protested. “Creativity is in your nature. Creatio ex nihilo.”
“Shut up, Raz. Just – please. Let me enjoy this.” I patted Box along the top of his surface. Head? Whatever. He quivered slightly, which I took as a sign that meant he was okay with being petted.
Raziel sighed, then handed me another coconut shell. “Anyway, drink up, eat up, whatever it takes to regain your strength. And it’s exactly as you said. Imagine the things you could do, Mason. Granted, the cannon didn’t even last a minute in existence, but with time, with practice? Who knows what wonders you’ll manifest?”
Sterling groaned, then ripped the sunglasses off his face, glaring at the two of us. “Well, can he manifest a muzzle for you? Angel of mysteries, my ass. More like angel of never shutting the hell up, if you ask me.”
Raziel pressed his lips together, too good and pious to fire back with an insult, but he shook his head
when Sterling turned away, then bent in to whisper to me. “How is he staying alive?” Raziel pointed up at the sky. “With all this, you know.”
“Artificial sun. Artemis’s specialty.” I pressed my hands against either side of my mouth. “Yo, Sterling. How long are you gonna bake over there with your shirt off? Are you trying to get a tan?”
I laughed as I dodged the coconut he threw directly at my head. It hit the ground and splashed its leftover juices onto a quickly darkening spot on the earth. Priscilla shook her head disapprovingly, but kept on sucking down her glorious cocktail.
“Kiss my entire ass, Mason.” He leaned back into his hammock, slipping his sunglasses back on. “Just sunning myself.”
Like a cat, I thought, conniving, and snippy, but so sporadically affectionate. If there was something to be said for Sterling, it was his loyalty, to his friends and his chosen family. That much could never be denied.
And despite all my whining about Raziel and his celestial spontaneity, I had to admit, the guy was teaching me more than a couple of new tricks. He might have been awkward, really just learning the ropes when it came to human contact, but his heart was in the right place. I couldn’t begrudge him for trying.
“Everyone just shut up and let me nap.” Artemis snapped on her bikini in irritation, twanging it like she would a bowstring. The gesture was somehow very successful in making me nervous, in various ways. “I said you could all come over and hang out, but I didn’t invite you to – to my. Hmm.” She sat up, pulling off her sunglasses. “This place needs a name.”
Sterling wriggled around in his hammock, scratching absently at his chest, then spreading his arms far above his head, stretching like a cat. “I mean, I don’t know that it needs a name, really. What could you possibly call it? There are no words. This place is paradise.”
Something clicked for everyone then, and a breeze rushed through the heart of the domicile, as if binding our silent agreement. Exactly. Paradise. That was it. That was the name.