Here Be Dragons

by Bill Fawcett

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled on the elevator. When the door opened on the seventh floor, Vampire-Teeth slid out, though I had seen her press eleven. Nifty little trick on my part. A lot of other people departed as well. By some grace of Hades, no one else got on. There was myself, Wanda, and a pirate left on the elevator. Since I knew we had a few floors remaining before Captain Kidd left us, I figured I might as well have a bit of fun.

  Wanda trembled in the corner, blathering about floods, yarn and something that sounded like chick peas, but could have been Rick Steves. I gave her a fetching smile, winked devilishly, and vanished—but only to her. She let out a wail and started sobbing with what sounded like relief. Captain Kidd glanced at her with furrowed eyebrows. I shrugged at him and he shrugged back. I reappeared and her screams took on a tortured tone. The pirate was not slow in getting off when the door next opened.

  “Alone at last.”

  Wanda stood with eyes that saucered in terror. “I didn’t want to—I had to kill him.”

  “Yeah, about that. See, I’ve heard that before. Many, many times. And wow, they all died anyway,” I said. “So guess what?”

  She didn’t seem to be absorbing my simple lesson, so I decided to wax philosophical on her. I had a lot of time on my hands, sort of a job pre-req when you’re immortal. “Look, you accepted the potential ramifications when you killed your grandfather. You knew the law might find you. Yes, it’s true that you eluded justice—at least the justice of man. But some laws are enforced by those above mankind. Spilling the blood of your kin is a crime that can not and will not go unpunished.”

  The elevator opened, and Wanda backed out of it hesitatingly. I mentally directed her to the left. She proceeded this way for about a hundred feet. Her terrified eyes stared at me from her sallow face, framed by a mess of hair matted with sweat. I advanced towards her with retribution burning in my eyes. She took the seventh and sixth last steps of her life backing away from me.

  “You’re a Christian, right? How about this: ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.’ ”

  “That isn’t even from the Bible. That’s a quote from Pulp Fiction.” Her voice was surprisingly lucid. I almost smiled. “Almost” being the keyword.

  “Ooohh. Girl knows her trivia.” I advanced further—and she took her fifth, fourth, third and second last steps. “The point is this: your ‘God’ cannot help you now, not that he would if he could, something about free-will and all that.”

  She tried to lift her leg to lever herself over the railing, but since it was so high I had to send a wave of energy to help with the process. She sat on the side of the thick metal rail, trembling. I wasn’t going to push. She had to make the decision to jump herself. I continued my analysis of her God, “I prefer to think He’s just an absentee landlord.”

  Her lips quivered. “What do you want from me?”

  “Your life. Now jump.”

  She did. They always do.

  * * *

  The name’s Megaera. I am one of the few people in this world that it is truly unpleasant to meet for just about everyone. This could have something to do with the fact that the people I meet generally die within a few days, or even hours. It could also have something to do with the fact that their deaths generally involve me (insert innocent looking smile here). But I like to think that if I wasn’t here to kill you, I would be a blast to hang out with.

  There’s a very high probability that whatever god you believe in doesn’t exist, unless you happen to belong to the ever-shrinking minority of people who believe in Zeus, Poseidon and company—or, I suppose, their inherited Roman counterparts. I am living, breathing testament to the fallacy of your religion—I am a Fury. I live in Hades, and I bring justice to criminals who slay their kin.

  That’s about all you need to know about me—I have two sisters, and we are the Erinyes in Greek Mythology, the Furies in Roman Mythology, and just really scary bitches in everything else. You probably haven’t heard of us, but perhaps you’ve heard of Oedipus Rex—big shot hero, married his mom, killed his dad, and gouged his eyes out? Yeah. That was us.

  What we do is bring justice to those who have avoided it. While we don’t actually kill these people, we compel them to do that themselves, and we are very good at what we do. My sister Tisiphone is off in Miami tailing some football player who killed his wife in the nineties—I forget his name. My other sister, Alecto, is off stalking some fellow in Amsterdam. And I’m here, in Atlanta—at DragonCon. It’s a coveted job—we all are keen on letting our wings unfold in public every once in a while.

  Anyway, I was here to take care of a few jobs. You wouldn’t believe how many fratricidal psychopaths get a kick out of dressing up as robots and playing Magic: The Gathering. Then again, maybe you would.

  At any rate, Wanda was my first job at DragonCon. It had taken me about seven hours to break her, beginning this morning when I appeared behind her for an instant while she was washing her face in front of the mirror. I’m a sucker for that cheesy movie crap, I really am. The Technology Age really made people fear the strangest things. Next time, I’m crawling out of a really staticky TV in nothing more than a white night dress and super greasy hair, but I get ahead of myself. Anyway, I’m not complaining—it’s just fun to contrast the differences in tormenting Orestes and tormenting the polygamist Warren Jeffs.

  Not that I have yet, but he’s on my to-do list.

  Okay, that’s neither here nor there. What I meant to say is that I’m halfway done with my trip to DragonCon, which is upsetting because I really do enjoy walking among living, breathing, normal (kind of) human beings. Cerberus isn’t the best company, you see, and I like humans. They can be a rotten bunch, but fun to toy with. Occasionally they can even carry on a conversation. But let me be the first to say that humans really, really freak out about death. Even the most stalwart role players would break ranks when death reared its ugly head—and that’s precisely what was happening in the Hyatt atrium.

  The truth is I couldn’t have planned Wanda’s death in a more picturesque fashion. I know that sounds sadistic, but it’s kind of my job. Wanda was really helpful in dramatizing her death—her scream was among the shrillest, most genuine screams I’d ever heard. Trust me when I tell you I’ve heard a fair amount of screams in my day. Nearly every eye in the atrium was drawn to the careening woman, and nearly every mouth was agape in horror. The ever-considerate masses scattered as people tried to get out of Wanda’s way. That or they didn’t want blood to jack up their costumes. By the time she hit the ground, right smack dab in the bar area, she’d toppled several tall stools. Making kindling of one in particular.

  In keeping with her trend of dying well, Wanda’s body made a delightful, bone-crunching thud as she hit the floor. I winced at approximately the same time a young woman (dressed as Xena the Warrior Princess, in case you were wondering) vomited across the floor. Considering the price of food at this con, it was the real tragedy of the day.

  I quickly became disinterested in the body. All the fun goes out of it, and I mean that in the most literal sense. As usual, I was the lone possessor of that opinion since everyone swarmed around the corpse like snatching candy from a burst piñata. I took one last look at Wanda’s body, and felt a bit like a young child who had broken a favorite doll. I never understood the fascination humans have with the dead. They kept their distance, of course, but not a single eye left Wanda or the broadening pool of blood she lay in.

>   A man with a katana was crouched over her, feeling her pulse as if there was any chance she had survived the fall. Obviously not, but people still grimaced when he ceremoniously stood up and shook his head dourly as if he was the harbinger of some shocking news. By the time the first eyes turned upwards to where Wanda had jumped, I had already made myself invisible and swooped down to the fifth floor, where my room and a pot of coffee waited.

  And so I spent the next hour staring into a mug of java as if it could somehow liberate me from the pervasive sullenness that had settled over me. I really shouldn’t drink this stuff—it tastes like shit. If it actually tasted half as good as it smelled, I would have to forgive all humans for their sins, both past and present, just because of that fact. I took a sip and grimaced.

  And as the coffee chilled, my thoughts did as well. Okay, maybe Wanda wasn’t the most deserving of her death, but why did I care? I was just doing my job. Still, it felt wrong. Big time. I shook my head to rid myself of the blasphemous thoughts. Maybe I was having a crisis of conscience, which was a nifty trick since I wasn’t supposed to have one. I stood and stretched, trying to shake the memory of Wanda’s tear-streaked face as she tipped over the edge. The sadness in those eyes spoke volumes.

  I assured myself that Wanda was the worst of humanity, a kin-slayer; and I felt marginally better. By the time I left my room, my mind was on my next target.

  His name was Brian Fawcett, and about two years ago he became the last person in his bloodline by poisoning his brother. The crime had been well-executed and, while the suspicions of the authorities had been aroused, there had never been enough proof for the law to find him guilty. The law of man was certainly not infallible, and guys like Brian escaped justice every day. Therein lay the problem: every criminal thought they could outsmart the justice system, and a fair few were right. Brian was smart, and that meant he would be harder to break than the mediocre Wanda.

  But I had never failed.

  I went to the railing and looked down at the atrium floor. The cops had situated themselves near Wanda’s now-vacated landing spot. Scanning the floors that opened to the atrium below, I saw a veritable plague of blue uniforms on each one. Business had resumed to something that resembled normal, but there was no denying that a dark tone had settled over the con. A pair of officers huddled outside a door about fifteen yards away from me. They appeared to take interest in my presence. I considered cloaking myself, but instead decided to try and sidle past.

  A balding man of about forty grabbed my elbow. It wasn’t an unkind grasp but it was certainly firm. The movers and shakers in the Underworld wouldn’t be overjoyed if I broke an innocent’s wrist just because he wanted to ask a question. So I glowered at him but stopped walking.

  “Miss, do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” His tone was meek, too meek to represent the iron hand of the law or the talon grip on my elbow. I removed my arm from his grasp.

  “Not at all.” But my mind hissed, touch me again and I’ll simmer your liver in that coffee pot back in my room. Instead, I offered my most winning smile, but I sensed the writhing snakes and hemorrhaging eyes ruined the effect. The girls didn’t get out in public much and they were partying down.

  “Those real?”

  I rolled my eyes up to the girls. “Yes, but I have a patent pending, so can’t chit-chat about it.” I made a zipping gesture across my lips.

  “Bunch of smart asses around here.” Baldy took out a notebook, licked his finger, and turned the pages until he got to a blank one. “Your name?”

  “Do you mean my character’s name, or my name?” I knew I didn’t really have time to waste with these idiots, but I couldn’t resist being cheeky.

  Baldy just stared at me.

  “Meghan.” It was the name I always used when I had to give a human name, for the obvious reason that it sounded like Megaera but did not sound like it came from the second century.

  Baldy stared expectantly at me, and his friend, an Italian guy who probably fancied the notion that he was a tough cop, gave me a withering look. I grinned and added, “Peterson. My name is Meghan Peterson.”

  “Date of birth? The year as well, please.” My lip curled scornfully at his attempt at sarcasm. I vaguely considered telling him my true birth date, but he would probably have regarded my honesty (I was born in a time that now has “Before Common Era” after every year) as flippancy.

  “A woman never tells her age. You should know that.”

  He rolled his eyes and jotted something down.

  “What do you know about Wanda Vincent?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Oh, really?” Baldy glanced at his friend as he interjected. I stared passively at the Italian as he stepped close to me. I was tall for a woman, and a bit of the intimidation factor melted away when he stepped on his tip-toes to make our eyes level. “We have two sources that saw you with Vincent minutes before her death.”

  “I don’t know who Wanda is, and I don’t know what sources you’re referring to. You’ll need something more substantial than that.” I wasn’t going to yield an inch because I knew that admitting that I had been anywhere near Wanda at any point today would only mean further questions. And while it would not be hard to escape from that, I always preferred to not forever scar people by vanishing suddenly, if they were not deserving of it.

  I figured if I just played dumb for a while even the Italian would get bored—it looked like his enthusiasm had faded some when I had remained unfazed by his belligerence, and Baldy already looked like he wished he were anywhere else.

  “Bullshit. Your exact description was given to us. Not a lot of people walking around with—” he gestured at the girls, “those things in their hair.”

  “There’s a patent-pending, so I should hope not,” I winked at Baldy.

  “The witnesses ...” The Italian thumbed through his notebook, “ ... Donald Smith and Jerry Anderson.”

  “Who? I’m sorry, those names mean very little to me.”

  “A robot and a pirate.”

  I grinned. “Well, there you have it! Who are you going to believe, a robot and a pirate, or the girl with a bleeding heart ... okay, technically my eyes are bleeding, but you get the idea.” I realized that such an argument held more water when I didn’t have an eight foot wingspan, and though it took a few moments for the Italian to pick up on this obvious contradiction, he eventually did.

  “And what are you supposed to be, Medusa?” He sneered, and elbowed Baldy as if he had said the funniest thing ever. My eyes narrowed.

  Son of a bitch.

  If there was one way to piss me off, it was to call me Medusa. No joke, I lost it there. Five seconds later the Italian was sitting on his ass with a broken nose, and Baldy lost his remaining hair. No more comb-overs for you, Mister.

  I ducked around a corner, made myself invisible, and leapt into the atrium as if I was Wanda—a major difference being my ability to fly. I glided down to a secluded corner and scolded myself. I would not be able to truly reveal myself to anyone but my prey now, which is a huge downer since I’d be wasting a perfectly good DragonCon. I supposed I could find another disguise. I reminded myself that this was secondary to finding and eliminating my target, but what was the big rush? I didn’t have anything to do but kill Brian today.

  While I could change my image in ten seconds flat to make myself a troll or samurai or fox-woman, I couldn’t settle on which one. I rarely dressed up for anything, really, and that’s a real drag since I’d been around for a few eons.

  Next thing I knew, I was squeezing myself between Aragorn and Boromir in an attempt to get through the crowd. I had transformed to fox-woman, complete with twitching whiskers and a sporting fluffy tail. The girls weren’t too happy with their banishment, but hey, they had their fun. Time to find my target.

  I thrust my arms out and released the energy into the Hyatt. It
cascaded, emanating across the crowd in ever-expanding concentric circles. And then I felt him, like a fish tugging at its line. I followed the vibes. When I’m hunting all sound recedes. An eerie silence devours everything; the lips of con participants open and close in conversations that I can’t hear.

  And then I heard a pop, almost like a cork had been disengaged from a large bottle. Each individual noise punched through the soundless barrier. The clatter of costumes collided with the hum of conversations. My gaze swept the space settling on my target: Brian Fawcett.

  He had straight silver hair of moderate length and a rather pale complexion. His eyes were a piercing blue color that I noticed from across the room, but what distinguished him from anyone else in the room was the fact that he was not dressed up like he was born a thousand years in the past or future: he wore khaki pants and a blue polo shirt. He certainly didn’t look like a murderer—but I’d found over the years that such a thing wasn’t uncommon.

  The only reason I knew it was him was because I have an eye for such things—two eyes, actually. My vision is as good as any creature alive, but what truly distinguishes it from a normal being is that it can see beyond the material world. I can see the worst in people—for instance, the Italian cop had once essentially tortured an innocent man in a sadistic attempt to assert his dominance (that fact made my punch all the easier—but it was secondary to the Medusa remark) and Captain Kidd, the dude from the elevator earlier, once ran over a Yorkie-poo and never so much as stopped.

  So much evil in the world, so little time.

  The point is, the moment my eyes passed over Brian, I could see that he had killed his brother. The strange thing was that I found my attention drawn to him before it even registered that he was a murderer. When my gaze fell over him, I found that he was staring unwaveringly at me. He didn’t even try and avert his gaze when I noticed it. If anything, those piercing blue eyes seemed to scope every part of me. He wasn’t checking me out because I looked hot, either; he was evaluating me, judging me. Okay, this just doesn’t happen. Ever.