Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods

by Michael R. Underwood

  Closing the door behind me, I searched the room, taking in the deliberate chaos of a ransacking.

  I took the calculated risk and gave away my position.

  “Hello?” I asked. If Esther was still here, I had to force the confrontation, try to stop her before she could escape to collect the Hearts. Each step was more involved, and more dangerous. It took the blood of dozens to complete the third circle.

  There was no response. I stepped gingerly over the fallen volumes, trying not to ruin more texts with the dampness of my shoes.

  “Is there anyone here?” I asked. The store should be open, so where was the proprietor? Had she fled to the police? Or worse, had my sister taken her to help fuel her sorcery?

  Again, I heard nothing. I reached the front desk, with dozens of tarot decks on display in a glass case, Tibetan prayer flags along the back wall, and lushly illuminated volumes lining the walls on sturdy display hooks. Seeing a place of knowledge and seeking such as this violated made my stomach turn.

  Another glass case had been broken into, shards scattered across displays of semiprecious stones and assorted crystals. Esther would need malachite to bind an older spirit, a dozen rubies to sanctify the blood of the sacrifices, and detailed information about the local ley lines, which I took to be her goal in ravaging the shelves.

  “Hello?” I asked one more time. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.”

  I heard breathing. Faint, muted, but nearby. I turned in place, then saw a well-worn rug whose misalignment was incongruous with the rest of the disheveled room. As if it had been moved not by the ransacker, but by another.

  “Who are you?” said a voice, angry but unsettled.

  “My name is Jacob. I’m unarmed. I think whoever did this is gone. Unless you did it, which would be very odd and seems highly unlikely. But as this is your property, I suppose it is within your rights to do so. Did you?”

  “Of course not!” The voice was female. I saw the rug shift then slide off of a heavy metal hatch, which swung open beside me.

  A large handgun emerged from the darkness, followed by a head. I recognized the proprietor—a young black woman with hair in braided rows, tied in the back. She climbed up step-by-step, leading with the gun.

  I backed away, my hands up. “I’m no danger to you, Ms. Laroux. I’m Jacob; we met several months ago. I purchased the tourmaline pendant.” I gestured toward her gutted gemstone display.

  Antoinette Laroux wore a loose purple wrap over a black top, and a patterned knee-length embroidered skirt over multicolored leggings. She considered me for a moment then lowered the gun to a holding position.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I believe I may know the person who attacked your store. If so, then I need your assistance to stop her. And if I don’t know the person, I’m willing to assist you in tracking them down in exchange for help with my own matter. Did you see the assailant?”

  Ms. Laroux nodded. “She was tall, maybe five-ten, not too skinny, with scars on her arms. Long sandy-blond hair, handmade-looking clothes. And her eyes were cold, callous.”

  I nodded. “That’s her. Did she say what she wanted?”

  Laroux walked to the register. “She started by asking about gemstones, and some other ritual tools, nothing too scary. Until she got into the rarer stones and asked about the spiritual geography surveys. I don’t know what she was hoping to do, but it wasn’t good.”

  “Indeed. She is trying to wake one of the Younger Gods.”

  Laroux’s jaw dropped, and she spent a moment stunned. “You’re shitting me. The unborn? Seriously? But that will . . .”

  I nodded again. “She’s my sister. Our family have been servitors of the Gatekeepers for millennia. I’ve . . . left the fold. And I need your help to stop her.”

  Laroux threw her hands up in frustration. “This was never my bag. My mom was the mambo. I inherited the store and couldn’t get a buyer, but it’s not exactly easy to liquidate the stock for a store like this.”

  Understandable. I pressed on, my questions coming out rushed as my mind sorted through the possibilities. “Did she say where she was going after here? What foci would she be using for the second circle?”

  “No. When I objected and asked her to leave, that’s when she started flipping out. She summoned an air spirit and started brandishing these wicked Crocodile Dundee knives.”

  “Who is this Crocodile of Dundee? Some spirit that Esther summoned to assault the store?”

  Laroux narrowed her eyes. “Where the hell do you come from?”

  I shrugged. “We had a very sheltered youth, but that’s hardly the most pressing thing. Are you able to assist me? I’m afraid I am not equal to the task of stopping my sister unaided. For one, I’m woefully understocked in occult tools, which you would be able to assist me with.”

  “Does it look like the store is open?” she said, waving her hand to indicate the ruined rows.

  “I suppose not. I am offering the opportunity to seek restitution for the violation of your mother’s memory.”

  “You’re a weird guy, you know that?”

  “I certainly do. But strange or not, I am devoted to this task. If you will not help me, then I must depart before the trail runs too cold, and I am unlikely to succeed, which means this crime will go unavenged until the unborn god is released and we all suddenly have far larger, more apocalyptic problems.”

  “And how do I know that you’re not working with her, coming back to play weird-but-ostensibly-good cop and get what you really want out of me?”

  I hadn’t thought of that, since it was preposterous. But she did have no good reason to trust me.

  “For one, you are armed, and I am not. Two, I’m still in your place of power, and even if Esther’s air spirit was able to overpower your warding spells, you should have methods for discerning if I am lying. Ask your Loa. If Papa Legba were not able to force the truth from me, then I would be powerful enough to take what I want from you no matter what you try, correct?”

  “That’s not very comforting.”

  “I’m not trying to comfort you. I’m trying to stop my sister before she makes the seas boil and releases a creature more powerful than any that has set foot on this earth since antiquity. May we go now?”

  “One second.” Laroux pulled a jar down from a shelf. “I’m going to make some tea, and you’re going to drink it. And then you’re going to tell me everything again. And if you can manage to say it the same way, I’ll believe you.”

  She walked over to an electric kettle and activated it.

  “In the meantime, we will need some tools.” I gestured back at the store. “May I?”

  Laroux exhaled, rolling her eyes. “Go ahead. If you just wanted to smash-and-grab, you would have already done it.”

  “Thank you.” We were reaching an understanding at least.

  I listened to the water bubble and boil as I built myself a mobile kit with several reference texts on summoning, binding, and warding spirits.

  Our family magic largely drew from the Deeps, the background radiation of the universe, which existed everywhere in trace amounts but clustered in its greatest density in the core of the earth, the domain of the Gatekeepers.

  The Greenes gained access to the Deeps through centuries of pacts and deals with the Gatekeepers, and their connections to the Bold—gods who started a celestial civil war in order to claim control over the universe.

  The Gatekeepers were ostensibly neutral, but the Bold had sworn a number to their service. The Gatekeepers were as old as the gods, created when the universe was born. And the Deeps were raw power, most effective when focused and filtered to a specific purpose rather than wielded raw.

  Having forsaken the Deeps, I needed to turn to lesser powers, sources such as blood, and the power of spirits. Beneath the Gatekeepers in power were
the chthonic spirits, creatures inherent to and emergent from the world, spiritual reflections of nature: beings of air, wood, fire, earth, and so on.

  The lesser spirits were far easier to bind, due to their proximity, their relative weakness, and their default neutrality. They served not the gods such as Antoinette’s Legba, nor the Gatekeepers, nor the Bold. The Gatekeepers constantly demanded prices, but spirits could be bent to one’s will through dominance, sometimes merely through persuasion.

  I returned to the glass counters and added several crystals and gems to my collection, the basic tools of the trade for a sorcerer. Each style of gemstone and crystal had a specific resonance. Some were associated with the air, some to fire, others to beasts and vegetation. A fully-equipped practitioner would have access to more than a dozen stones to be ready for any situation. But they would also need a power source.

  To my collection of borrowed stones, I added several opals, feeling the buzzing power contained within. These were as close to magical batteries as one could get. Outside of viewing humans as blood sacks. Another notion I had been raised with and never truly accepted. Perhaps my departure from the family was inevitable.

  A few minutes later, Ms. Laroux offered me a mug of tea (the mug read “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards”), which I sipped dutifully, tasting for poison before taking a larger drink. I considered the taste for a moment. Beyond the scalding were notes of hibiscus, cardamom, and something odd.

  “Is this nightshade?” I asked.

  Laroux huffed. “Yeah, it is. That’s pretty good. You an herbalist too?”

  “My parents were very catholic in our upbringing. Small c catholic, that is.”

  That combination of flavors could not cover any poison that I knew of, so I continued to drink, letting the near-scalding heat soothe as it ran down my throat and warm my chest.

  “Shall I begin again?” I asked, eager to get back on the trail. Esther could already have taken the next victim. Our only advantage was that such kidnappings or assaults would draw attention, even in a city like New York. That and I could easily track her using our blood tie.

  I’d gone to great lengths to make my blood inaccessible to the family, giving of myself to mask my presence using the tourmaline and controlled bloodletting rituals—which had nearly gotten me thrown out of the dormitory until I changed my timing and did the bloodletting at four in the morning, usually after a round of nightmares.

  It seemed unlikely that Esther had taken similar precautions, but I wouldn’t know until I tried. And I couldn’t try until I had Ms. Laroux’s support.

  “Okay, now. Had to let it get into your system.”

  I repeated my best estimation as to the identity of the invader and her plan for the materials stolen. Shortly into my recitation, Ms. Laroux took the mug back from me and produced a canvas bag.

  “Put those in this and wait a minute while I get my own kit together,” she said as she made for the back room, heading past a shattered wooden door.

  True to her word, one minute later Laroux emerged with a leather jacket over her wrap, jeans instead of her skirt, and her own laden bag slung over her shoulder.

  “You say you have a way to track your sister?” she asked.

  “Yes. Though, as I am unfamiliar with the spirits of the area, it may take some time to reach an understanding.”

  Laroux smiled. “Let me handle that. Just get whatever it is you have that will help us pin her down, and I’ll call up the locals.”

  She righted a toppled table and laid out several half-melted candles from her bag, along with divinatory bones and more, quickly assembling a ritual altar.

  “You should probably take a step or two back. They might have the same first thought I did, given the family resemblance.”

  “Perfectly reasonable. She and I both take after the look of our grandmother. The Idahoan Greenes favor our great-grandfather’s coloring, which put my grandfather out to no small degree—”

  “Jake?” she asked.

  “Sorry?” I asked, startled by her interruption.

  “No offense, but I need to focus, and that doesn’t include details about your distant relatives.”

  “Ah, just so.”

  I left Laroux to her devices, instead dwelling on the places Esther might choose for the drawing of the other circles. To capture enough energy, she’d need to properly triangulate the ley lines of the city, which would mean casting a fairly wide net. Given that her first site was near the middle of Central Park, she might choose sites in either downtown Manhattan or northeastern Queens.

  Alternatively, she could draw a wider triangle including New Jersey, or with Queens and Brooklyn. Without knowing the second point, prediction was nearly impossible. But I had no desire to merely wait for her to kill again. And triangulation was not her only possible tool. There would be people here who knew the location of the Hearts.

  “You don’t know where the Hearts of New York are kept, do you?”

  “I know the people who know where they are, yeah.”

  “Then you must tell them immediately that Esther Greene has come to the city, and that they are all in terrible danger.”

  “So that’s what she wanted the surveys for,” Antoinette said. “This is bad.”

  “Very bad.”

  Antoinette made a quick round of calls while I put my supplies in order. With luck, the guardians of the Hearts would rally and send Esther running back home, tail between her legs.

  If only it could be that easy.

  Her calls complete, Antoinette lit several candles and poured a generous portion of whiskey into a bowl. She took a large breath, and then spoke.

  “Papa Legba, opener of ways, hear my call. I wish to speak to the spirits of this place, the old friends of my mother, Cynthia Laroux, who was one of your devoted mambos for fifty years.”

  The light in the room dimmed, and I felt far less alone as presences loomed large on the edge of my mind.

  We had our spirits at home, but they were servants, living near us but not among us. As we were to the Gatekeepers, the spirits were to us. All things within hierarchies, certain of their place.

  Except me.

  The air grew hot, and I felt the presences grow stronger. Three figures filtered into sight before Antoinette, each vaguely human in form and dominated by one color. The largest was olive green, the next the black of shadows, and the third the red of a blood moon.

  “Called, we answer,” one of the spirits said, the sound seeming to come from the whole room rather than any one place.

  “Who is this? Is this the defiler?” asked a different voice, higher and brighter in tone.

  The red-tinted spirit grew close, filling my vision. Its form was vast, but still vague, more an impression than a definite shape. But I felt its presence all the same, looming high above me.

  Antoinette answered, thankfully. I was not sure I could have spoken myself. “No. This is Jacob. He’s here to help. I need your assistance in finding the woman who defiled the store.”

  The shadow-black spirit shifted in place, voice as hollow and vast as an ancient well. “Where is the defiler? I will break them into kindling for the fireplace. Then I will build a shelf out of their bones, and we will have a place to put the extra divination books.”

  “We’re looking for the defiler, Agwe. Jacob here has a way to find her,” Antoinette said, then nodded to me.

  “I do,” I said, trying to sound confident. These were the first spirits I’d met who were not at my family’s beck and call, and from the gooseflesh breaking out across my arms and back, I could tell they were incredibly powerful.

  “My sister and I share the same blood. I give you this offering, so that you might seek restitution for the invasion of your home.”

  I pulled back my sleeve to reveal an arm riddled by scars. We gave deeply to our Gatekeepers, and
often. My mother’s arms had been solid white scar tissue as long as I could remember, and my arms were well on their way along that road when I fled from home.

  Using a knife taken from Antoinette’s stores, I drew the point across the back of my forearm, and held the cut over an empty bowl in her arrangement.

  “I give this freely, so that we might all find what we seek.”

  The red spirit drew back then dove through the altar out of sight, while the other spirits floated, unmoving and unspeaking.

  A moment later, the red spirit emerged from the floor, a darker-red thread running from spectral hands through to the center of its ectoplasmic mass.

  “I have the scent.” Its voice was charged, like a hound struggling at its reins. “Come quickly; she is on the move. Agwe and Okayo will remain to guard the store. We will not allow another insult like this.”

  I sheathed my knife, and Laroux snuffed out the candles. She picked up a handful of beads and gems, stuffing them into a pocket.

  She looked to me and said, “Let’s go.”

  I nodded. The red spirit bolted forward like a rock flung by a sling, and we followed.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Igbe, the red spirit, was like a wolfhound on a leash, straining constantly against Antoinette’s metaphysical lead. It concealed its physical form, but I could still sense its whipping, darting motions with the wind, a mild scent of turned earth left in its wake.

  The spirit led us through Brooklyn Heights, down Fulton, and then hurried along Flatbush.

  “Do you know where we are heading?” I asked Antoinette as I hustled along, both of us nearly jogging to keep pace with the spirit.

  “Looks like Prospect Park,” Antoinette said.

  I tried to plot a line between Prospect Park and Central Park, running scenarios in my mind to deduce whether this was a ritual site or was in fact the home of the Brooklyn Heart.

  Each city had a Heart, an embodied gem, usually fist-sized, that contained the essence of that city, the key to its metaphysical existence. Some cities had multiple Hearts, like London or Shanghai, all depending on their size.