by Ben Zackheim
“Why do I feel like that’s not on Google Maps?” Rebel asked.
“It is a place in Reykjavik. It is under the city.” He started to run as I waited for Rose to pick up. “Or, that is to say, it is a realm that is accessible from under the city.”
Spoken like a true supernatural.
“Hi boss,” Rose said on the other side of the call. She sounded like she’d just woken up.
“Rose, why are you asleep?”
“Because my internal clock is all messed up,” she whined. “This country is like a torture device, Kane!”
“Get Cassidy and tell him to meet us at the drop-off point.”
“No time! No time!” the Traveler shouted. He was pulling away from us. I could barely see him ahead.
The first sign of trouble was the boom. It was a big damn boom. The sound surrounded us and made us duck. I glanced over my shoulder and saw, well, something. It was a disturbance in the air around us. The light purple sky was distorted, like looking through curved glass.
Just before the next boom came I thought I could make out the shape of a…
“FOOT!” I yelled. I yanked Rebel toward me and rolled down the hill right as something massive stomped the ground she’d been standing on. The rocks under our feet shattered like dim firecrackers, blasting shards of pain everywhere.
“What… was… that…” Rebel managed to scream as gravity took over and we rolled faster and faster down the steep hill.
I tried to get my feet planted in the ground somehow. There was a cliff with a twenty foot drop just ahead. We’d passed it on the hike up while commenting how the mountains of Iceland were quaint with their pleasant slopes and tiny cliffs. At that moment, it looked like Iceland had something to say about that.
The ground under us started to get rocky. I knew the edge was near.
“Coleslaw!” I yelled.
Travelers are powerful beings. They’re dedicated to helping people away from home. They can guide you, fight for you and even die for you, if they take their job way too seriously. They can be strong in some kinds of magic. Usually inconsequential magic, like making machinery break down, or making sugar sweeter.
But I didn’t know they could move earth.
When I started to fall off the cliff I thought that was the end of that. But instead of falling twenty feet I only dropped about two. My rolling ride started to slow down as the angle got gentler until my momentum was weak enough to stop. The adrenaline felt like the ghosts of 1000 hangovers past but when I got my bearings I looked down on the cliff. Yeah, down.
Coleslaw had bent the stone of the cliff into an upward arc, like a truck trap on the highway. The ones that catch semis that lose their brakes.
“Damn, elf,” Rebel shouted. “That is some cool shit!”
“Not an elf, but thank you, ma’am.”
Our glee was short-lived as whatever was trying to step on us destroyed Coleslaw’s creation, sending us into freefall.
He managed to form a flimsy slide under us but it was a rough ride. We landed at the Traveler’s feet.
“What’s after us?” I asked getting up and running.
“Apu!”
A huge rock emerged from the darkness. I felt the wind of the missile blow by my ear.
“Apu are Peruvian mountain spirits!” I yelled. “What are they doing in Iceland?”
“Vacationing?” Coleslaw said.
“Was that supposed to be funny?” I asked Rebel who dodged a rolling boulder as it slid by us.
“It kind of was,” she said.
The cloud cover passed and the moon shone down on our little game of life and death. The shape of the creature pursuing us flickered into view as the silver blue light covered the world.
“That’s a giant, all right,” Rebel yelled. It was 100 feet tall. At least.
And its knee was bent upward, as if it was about to smash some bugs.
So I did what any other Spirit agent would do under the circumstances. I shot it in the toe, forgetting that I’d loaded explosive bullets.
Apparently, the semi-visible giant was made of stone because a storm of rocks showered us from above. His massive form was suddenly visible as his leg came down hard and splintered in two all the way up to to his waist. He fell to his side and his torso also cracked in two. With one bellow that sounded more like a cave-in the Apu broke into a million pieces.
We tried to catch our breath in the settling dust.
“That was one shot, by the way,” I said.
Maybe it was the exhaustion of running down an Icelandic mountain escaping a mountain god from Peru, but we let our guard down. That’s a stupid thing to do in our line of work. The only thing that the supernatural does naturally is show up when you least expect it.
Lava started to flow from the biggest chunks of the Apu’s stone corpse. At first I thought it had caught fire somehow. But I know the smell of lava.
A torrent of orange and black magma shot into the sky like the mountain was blowing its nose. Rebel was fast enough to get a Shield Spell over her head but I wasn’t so lucky. A few stray jiblets smacked my clothes and set them on fire. I pulled my jacket off before it consumed me.
We both ran. Coleslaw was nowhere in sight. He’d disappeared into the day, night, whatever.
Then I noticed my pants were on fire. I ran while unbuttoning and unzipping them.
“Wooooooo, take it ALL off!” Rebel yelled from behind me.
“Maybe help put out the fire?” I yelled back, a slight crack of desperation in my otherwise manly voice.
An explosion from behind us wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. The lava was pushing through the crust and flowing. Fast. Lava can move 40 mph when it first tastes the earth’s surface. It wants to eat as much as it can before it settles down for a few billion years. At that moment I was pretty convinced that we’d be its final meal.
The fire coming off of my jeans hadn’t reached my flesh yet but it was about to.
“Stop!” Rebel yelled as the lava from an explosive burp fell down on us. She got the shield over both our heads, saw my pants were about to put an end to my manhood if not my life, sliced through the denim with her fingernails, and cast the flaming jeans into the river of lava behind us.
Right behind us.
Chapter 4
I was fighting off lava and nudity at the same time.
“Looking good from back here, Kane!” Rebel hollered. “That Pilates crap is working.”
“Shut up and run!”
We were looking for a path uphill. Somewhere the lava flow couldn’t reach us. We were at the bottom of the slope between two hills.
“There!” I leapt onto a small ledge and ran for the steady slope ahead of me. The lava could fill up a few feet and fast. But if we could just get to the spot I had my eye on…
“Kane!” Rebel yelled. I knew it was trouble before I even turned around. The lava had stopped flowing. Well, it had stopped flowing downhill. Now it was flowing into itself — squeezing and wrapping around itself and making a high-pitched screech straight out of hell.
“I don’t think I want to stick around to find out what that is,” I said.
“Agreed.”
We scurried up the hill, just out of reach of the heat. We kept running, fighting gravity’s pull toward the lava. We had to make it to the bottom of the ravine. Maybe we could flag down a car.
The roar made us stop and turn.
Our newest giant was the bigger, badder, fiery brother of the last one. Except he was all too visible.
And he was a rat.
More like a bastard rat spawn of Hell, born of a mother who bred and slew the tortured souls of one million abandoned rat souls. His massive, white-hot eyes told me ratty was hungry.
This hunt would not last long. The lava rat giant monster thing would be on us in two leaps.
It was time to take a look at the situation. It was time for Lines.
I stopped. The last weapon in my arsenal was Lines. That’s what
I call my ability to see lines between moving objects. It’s kind of like a sniper seeing the line between the bullet and the target. Or a billiard player and the balls on the table.
“What are you doing, Kane?” Rebel shouted over the hissing rock all around us.
“Throw me! Over there!” I pointed to the moon above us. She didn’t hesitate. She knew better than that. I didn’t question her abilities. She didn’t question mine. Except when it amused her.
I felt myself being lifted by her best spell. The Toss Spell was her first success. She did it as easily as she breathed. I usually liked to stay away from it because I tended to end up with broken bones, but I’d take broken bones over being kibbles and bits.
When I reached fifty feet in the air I knew I had a broken bone or two in my immediate future.
But the rat did what I thought it would do. It couldn’t resist this little morsel flying away.
It crouched and leaped. But it didn’t take into account that I’d start dropping. It had aimed too high.
Its fiery claws bumped the top of my head sending me into a plummeting whirling dervish.
This was going to hurt.
But not as much as the rat’s landing. It slammed its lava head into the cliff behind me.
Once again, the Traveler moved earth to catch me. A sloping hill of really uncomfortable terrain formed below me and then guided me gently to my partner’s feet.
I didn’t waste any time. I ran down the hill. “Where is he?” I yelled.
A car horn honked below us.
“There’s a car! Parked right there!” Rebel said, catching up.
We could see one pair of headlights beaming up at us. I spotted a small figure behind the wheel.
“He drove here?” I asked.
When we got closer I could tell there was something wrong with him. He was bent at the waist and leaning on the wheel.
“About… time…” he managed to say.
“Hey! Are you sure you’re okay to…” I started.
The distant hiss broke my concentration.
I looked uphill. The rat shook its head and spit-hissed again. Streams of lava flowed between its flaming fangs and arched through the sky at us.
Rebel and I jumped in the car. We ended up tied around each other like a Twister game.
“GO!” we yelled at the same time.
He accelerated. My head snapped back and smacked Rebel in the nose.
Coleslaw held onto the steering wheel and hopped down to slam the brakes. Rebel’s head snapped forward and smacked mine.
“Forward!” she said, holding her nose.
“Do you even know how to drive?”
“I am a Traveler.” He slammed on the gas.
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Rebel said, squinting in pain. “Does it mean anything to you, Kane?”
“He can’t drive would be my guess.”
We veered right and caught a glimpse of the ocean. Its deep darkness looked hungry for a car with two humans and a tiny, injured driver.
“We don’t have time to grab the wheel, Coleslaw,” I said. “So listen carefully.”
“My name is Shlkxchrslew.” He was getting woozy.
“And that’s the last time anyone will ever say your name right if you don’t listen to me.”
He glared at me in the rear-view mirror.
“Lay off the steering wheel. If you do that then we’ll start going straight.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “I thought the wheel was for going fast and slow.”
“How did you even drive here?” Rebel asked.
“Drive?” the Traveler said. “I’ve never driven a car before.”
“So we’re car thieves now,” Rebel said. “Cool.”
The rat leaped onto the road behind us, sniffed the air and came after us in great bounds and leaps.
“Okay, good,” I said. “Now push down as hard as you can on the right foot.”
He slammed the brakes.
We started turning like a top.
I could feel the car tipping.
The ocean beckoned.
“Other pedal! Other pedal!”
Good thing it wasn’t a stick-shift.
Sheer luck helped us get out of the tailspin we were in. The only problem was that we faced the wrong way.
The giant rodent overshot us, its weight carrying it over our head. It landed on the road and melted the pavement beneath its paws.
All it had to do was swipe at us and we’d be its plaything for the rest of the night.
It slapped us across the rear bumper. The car righted itself and faced the toll booth ahead.
“Wheel straight,” the Traveler muttered to himself. “Push down with the right foot.” We shot forward just as the giant’s claw whisked past our rear.
Now it was just a race to the Hvalfjarðarsveit Tunnel. It went under the peninsula and I was pretty sure the entrance would be too small for Fluffy the Rat.
There was a line of three cars at the booth but the Traveler hit the edge of the road, again tempting the waters below us, and squeaked by the cars with a smattering of Icelandic curse words trailing behind us.
Coleslaw smiled back at us, said, “Not bad, eh?” and passed out. His chin hit his chest at the same moment the giant hit the toll booth behind us.
I grabbed the steering wheel from the back seat and used it to pull me up into the front seat. I sat on Coleslaw’s lap for just long enough to get control of the direction. But we were slowing down. His foot had dropped off the gas and was gently nudging the brakes.
“Get him out from under me!”
“If I had a nickel for every…”
“Rebel!” But she was already pulling him as I lifted my butt up. I dropped into the drivers seat and tore down the road to the tunnel entrance. We were about to enter a tunnel that was 20 feet tall and 578 feet below sea level at its lowest point.
The giant was one long step away from us.
We were still too far from the entrance.
“Kane!” Rebel yelled, as if I didn’t know these were probably our last moments together on this mortal coil.
I saw its left front paw raise up as it pushed off for its next step.
I knew where that fucking paw would land.
“Kane!”
“Aware!” I yelled back.
At the last second I steered left, just a bit. The rat’s paw nipped the passenger’s side door and the car shook.
But I kept control.
We pierced the tunnel and the giant stopped short, sliding into the arched entrance. It let out a wail of frustration. I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see it get doused in sea water. It had broken the wall holding back the ocean.
I hit top speed like the Atlantic was on my tail because it probably was.
“I think he’s alive,” Rebel said. “But I have no idea what’s wrong with him.” She felt around his neck for a pulse.
The Traveler grabbed her hand, his eyes wide.
“Go to Elliðavatn,” he said, voice creaking with pain. “Hurry!”
Chapter 5
It took us an hour to get there. Elliðavatn was a lake just outside the city. It had a tourist trap boat house and a couple more buildings on its shore.
The one we were looking for was hidden behind a wall of trees. It was a cross between a medieval hut and an Ikea catalog cover. Its straight-lines and elegant presentation slammed door-first into rickety steps, dilapidated paint and creaky windows that knocked around in the breeze.
“Creepy,” Rebel said, studying the mess in front of us.
The Travelers’ Friend opened his eyes for the first time since he’d passed out. “Bring me inside. Quickly. We…”
“Yeah, yeah, we don’t have time,” I said, lifting him out of the car. “Come on, little guy.”
“You have a read on our location?” Rebel asked the twins. Her phone was set to speaker as they tried to guide us around.
“Yeah, you’re on the outskirts of
town in another place that I can’t pronounce unless I have a pickle in my mouth,” Rose said.
“Just make sure you have eyes on us. I don’t like the looks of this place.”
“Roger that, warrior woman.”
Rebel sighed and climbed the stairs after me. I was too loaded down with imp meat to knock, so she reached over my shoulder and knocked for me.
“Coming!” a woman’s voice called from inside. As usual, the voice had no accent. Icelanders speak better English than Americans and they speak it much clearer than we do.
A woman opened the door, about 50, with silver hairs streaked through gold. She smiled a big smile, filled with crooked, pearl-white teeth.
The smiled dropped when she noticed I had a bearded garden gnome draped over my shoulder.
“Oh my, Shlkxchrslew. What happened to you?” She took his bearded chin in her hands and he opened his eyes. He realized I was holding him like a burping baby and pushed away from me, stumbling to the floor. He made his way to his feet with her help.
“It was an Apu, my dear,” he said. He tried to bow but he stopped short and winced in pain. “The giant’s presence almost drained my magic.”
“Because you will not carry the milk of keys,” she said. I had no idea what that meant but opted to keep my mouth shut.
“Yes, yes, maybe one day. And these are them,” he said, gesturing at us, trying to change the subject.
Our hostess looked at us again and the smile came back.
“You have no pants on,” she said.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“No, no need to apologize,” she said. “Please help him to my couch, and I will get you something to wear.”
We’d just helped the Traveler onto the couch when our hostess hurried back into the room with some khakis draped over a forearm.
“I’m Rebel…”
“Yes, I know,” the woman said. I slipped my new pants on. “And this is Kane. I am honored to meet you both. I am Hilde. I fix organs.”
“People organs?” I asked.
“Musical organs.”
“Is that a big business in Iceland?”
“Big enough,” she said with a smile that told me she had some secrets hidden in her answer. “So Shlkxchrslew. Is this it, then? It’s not another false alarm?”