Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods

by Michael R. Underwood

Usman nodded. “Me too.”

  “Are you all Raksha?” I asked.

  Husna shook her head. “Not I.”

  Rahim spoke up, “My grandmother is a Deva.”

  “Are there that many of you in Queens?”

  “This is all of us. Except for Sariya,” Sveta said.

  I turned to Sveta, about to ask a question.

  “The Bearer,” she said.

  “The woman from your apartment?” I ventured.

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  My ears popped, and I leaned to the left to see the candle had died out.

  I pointed at the candle.

  Sveta’s face stretched into a wicked smile.

  “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  When all assembled, our group was the size of a hallway, two-by-two ranks going three deep and more. Rahim and Sveta went first, Antoinette and myself second, and the rest behind.

  “How are we going to find Esther?” I asked as we moved through the next floor.

  “She’s been burning her way through the building. My people here have been keeping tabs on her. The apartment we used is warded so she’d just gloss over it, think she’d already checked there. And she hasn’t left, which means she’s still searching.”

  With our group seven strong, we dispatched several more fire elementals and refuse spirits.

  Two floors up, we found her in a common area. The decorations on the wall told me that it was likely used for holiday parties, maybe local outreach events from civic organizations.

  But right now, it was where Esther had brought her sacrifices. Bodies lay in several pieces, blood painting over the murals, viscera instead of ornaments.

  Rahim and Usman lost their gorge, emptying their stomachs on the floor, but the rest of us charged on.

  Five on one, surely that would be enough. Especially if Sveta’s prayer had been answered.

  Rahim charged Esther, and with impossible reflexes, she caught the spear in her hands, then shattered the wood in her grip. Rahim fell forward as Esther turned the spear point back on him, embedding the folded steel in his neck.

  She stepped aside and he fell dead to the floor. With him, my confidence imploded.

  The sacrifices, the blood, it had all been a prelude, a way to make herself ready. She’d drawn us out, and she’d be able to sweep us all away in one night.

  Unless I turned the tables. I held out the ruby and the peridot, squeezing them together in my left hand. Drawing out the energy accumulated from fire and heat, I cursed my sister in Enochian, an epithet unsuitable for translation into English or any decent language.

  Esther met the blast with one outstretched hand, her expression flat. But the burst overpowered her defense, and she stumbled back, her hand singed. Her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared, and she screamed in a guttural voice, her Enochian unintelligible even to me. But it was enough for the working, which she tossed at Sveta as a coruscating purple net.

  Sveta reacted without pause, raising her sword to cut through the net. She dove forward, trying to fit through the hole she’d cleaved. The net collapsed onto her, so she came up with sickly burns across her back and leg, stumbling instead of rising to her feet.

  I lashed out with another blast, drawing the Deeps this time, the ruby’s charge depleted. Esther waved the blast off like brushing off a gadfly, then turned to face Sveta.

  Antoinette spoke in hurried French, and Carter shouldered by me, sword in his off hand.

  “Everyone back!” said Usman over my shoulder, and I leaned against the wall. She stepped forward and raised the rifle to her shoulder, spraying on full automatic.

  The sound in the contained hallway was deafening, the gun’s report echoing off every surface and assaulting my eardrums.

  I turned to watch as Esther flattened, then waved like a reed in the wind, becoming some impossible cartoon through a working I’d never even read of. The bullets whizzed by her with no effect, hammering into the far wall.

  The gun clicked empty, and Esther laughed, mouth moving like a paper-cut doll, her form still flat.

  “Surprised, dear brother? Did you think you’d learned everything Mother and Father had to teach? That we’d give such power to the white sheep of the family?” Esther popped back into her normal shape, then reached out as Usman reloaded and snapped. The gun broke in two, shattering in Usman’s hands.

  “I have seen wonders that would make these mortals’ eyes turn inside out, brother.” Carter lunged forward, stabbing at my sister. She slapped the side of his sword, knocking the blow off course. Then she reached out and stabbed at his wounded arm. Carter dodged by rolling forward and past her.

  “Such wonders,” Esther said. “Give me the Heart, and this power can be yours too. We want you back, Jake. You can finally earn your place.”

  Carter came back around with a cut to Esther’s head, and she flickered again, dodging the blade.

  Esther reached out and sliced into Carter’s bandaged arm.

  My roommate dropped to the floor, crying out in pain. She spun the dagger in her hand, and moved to strike him again.

  Sveta parried the blade aside, then dove at Esther, moving with inhuman grace as she cut, thrust, and tore at my sister. Esther matched the other woman’s speed, moving with languid rapidity, blinking between frozen moments in time.

  Sveta’s blade caught Esther once across the hand when my sister failed to bat the blade aside, then cut her again at the waist when she failed to dodge quite enough.

  After the second cut, Esther jumped back onto her other foot and snarled at Sveta, her tongue twitching like that of a snake.

  No. That wasn’t her tongue. The tongue unfolded once, twice, three times, growing and expanding, pseudopods shooting out and becoming limbs, until the creature became a bright pink homunculus a foot tall, with serrated teeth and eyes of onyx blackness. The homunculus jumped at Sveta, biting for her ankles and knee.

  From the other end of the hall, we heard a bullhorn. At first I thought it another refuse elemental, but the bullhorn carried words, not just an empty honk.

  “NYPD! Put your weapons down and put your hands on your heads!”

  A unit of gas mask–wearing police had braved the fire and assembled at the far end of the hall, weapons leveled at our melee.

  All I could think was More gristle for the slaughter. It was my father’s voice, callous, disconnected. I shut it away and focused.

  Sveta speared the homunculus with her sword, then turned and pinned the creature to the wall. She released the sword and stepped back, her hands up over her head.

  “Of course, officers. Just one moment.” Esther turned slowly, one hand waving in the air with a subtle working, too small a motion to be noticed by any who didn’t know what to look for.

  Even with her back turned to me, I could tell Esther was smiling just by the way her hips shifted and her weight settled into her left leg.

  Several of the officers shifted, their shoulders closing up and in toward their faces. One turned and removed his mask, retching.

  Esther pulled both hands into fists. Hands of Deeps energy made manifest reached out of the floor and engulfed two of the five officers. The remaining three fired, the guns’ reports roaring over their colleagues’ screams.

  I dropped to the floor, keeping my eyes forward. Esther went two-dimensional once more, flowing and waving in the air. Behind me, bullets tore through flesh. The ground shook as multiple bodies hit the floor.

  Unable to resist, I turned my head back to see. Antoinette was on the ground, her arm bloody. Usman was also hit, but alert, weapons in hand.

  Looking back to the police, I saw Esther waft forward like paper in the wind, headed for the police. The officers left standing opened fire again, but Esther twisted and flutter
ed in the air, avoiding all of the bullets. I scooted back to Antoinette, who was being treated by a calm Usman, her hands moving quickly, ripping a section off her own shirt to form a tourniquet.

  “We need to run before she’s done with them,” I said in a stage whisper, unsure how Esther’s flattened ears could hear.

  “No,” snapped Sveta from down the hall. “This ends, now.”

  “Did you see what she did? How are we supposed to even slow her down?” I asked. “What happened to ‘diminish her powers’?”

  Sveta snarled. “It will work. We have to be faithful.”

  “Forget faithful, we have to survive,” Usman said. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s time. To run,” Carter said, clutching his wounded arm into his chest, lying on his side.

  Looking over the group once more, I saw Esther tearing through the police, a carnivorous smile on her face. Police continued to fire, making a mess of the hall, the bullets sawing through wood and plaster.

  “We don’t have long,” I said, and moved to force Sveta to leave with us.

  I got a foot from her arms and Sveta said, “Don’t you fucking touch me. I’ll go.” Sveta stood, and I reached out to stop her.

  As I called “No!” a lance of blackness shot out across the hall. Sveta raised her sword to block, but the lance sheared straight through her sword and then punched a hole in her chest.

  Staying whole, the lance twisted into a tentacle, wrapping around Sveta’s chest and arms. The guardian’s body slumped to the floor, held upright by the tentacle, which retracted slowly. Sveta struggled with the tentacle, screaming, trying to pull something free. I saw the chain that held the casing for the ochre Heart of Queens shimmer against the lights in the hallway.

  Tearing the wound open even further, Sveta struggled against her bonds, pulling the chain free.

  I stood, drawing upon the Deeps to lash out again, stop Esther at all costs. Someone bound my arms behind me and dragged me back.

  “We have. To run,” Carter said, his voice cold. I saw Sveta slump, likely passed out from shock. The chain dropped to the floor, the world slowing to a molasses drip as I reached out to pull the Heart to me, desperate to salvage this disastrous engagement.

  The chain bounced, tugged toward me a few inches. Then the suction-cupped end of the tentacle snatched the chain up and whipped it back to Esther. Carter dragged me around the corner.

  Sveta called out once more before the sounds were engulfed by another explosion, just one more painful memory of my failures added to the pile.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  We didn’t stop until we reached Manhattan.

  Antoinette took the five of us to a clinic on 3rd Avenue run by the Broadway Knights.

  A stern-looking middle-aged Hispanic man met us at the door, his arms crossed. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Esther Greene,” I said.

  The man stepped to the side, his voice shaken. “Oh. Go ahead. Godspeed.”

  The door led directly into a room that might have otherwise been a receiving area. Instead, it was covered in cots, all filled with wounded, burned, and obviously sick people, each of whom looked like they’d been on the streets for years.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  A woman with straight long hair and the coloring of a Pacific Islander emerged from the back room, a stethoscope around her neck.

  The woman’s voice was clipped, rapid, like a recording with its speed turned up. As if she didn’t have time to talk at a normal pace. “The Greenes happened, is what. That monster has unleashed unholy hell in the city. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She looked our group up and down, then pointed at Carter. “Bring him into the back. The rest of you will have to wait, I’m sorry. We’re way over capacity as is. And if any of you have medical training and want to be useful, follow me.”

  We walked Carter into the back, where another dozen people lay on tables and stretchers, their wounds grievous, but the care more substantive. There were respirators, IVs, and I think even an MRI machine in one corner. We laid Carter out on a green vinyl cot that did not appear to be any kind of medical standard issue. The woman kept Carter’s arm tucked in close to him.

  “Someone, boil me some water and bring me three towels along with it. Someone else, go around and ask everyone who’s awake if they want water. There’s hot and cold running water in the sink over here,” she said, pointing with one hand while she laid the other on Carter’s forehead.

  And so, we set ourselves to the triage. I went to check on the other patients while Antoinette drew the water. Usman helped Husna, bandaging each other’s wounds and talking quickly in Pakistani. Knowing Enochian, Latin, and English seemed ever more paltry since moving to Queens, and even more so after these last few days, making my way through nearly the full ethnic and linguistic range of New York.

  Most of the patients were unconscious or nonresponsive. I brought water to a businessman with a bloodied suit, a father and daughter with matching burn wounds, and an older woman with a head wound. While I was bringing water to the older woman, one of the other patients went into convulsions.

  “Lashawna!” the presumptive doctor yelled, dashing over to the cot where a young man shook violently, purple foam bubbling out from his mouth.

  “That’s a Vexl bite,” I said, handing the water to the older woman as I bounded over to help the doctor.

  “A what?” she asked. A black woman rushed to her side, and together, we held the man down.

  “Vexl. Creatures of the Deeps. They carry parasites. An advanced infection produces this purple foam. You need to immerse him in pure soil.” Looking around, I realized that was unlikely. “Or, let me, just a second,” I said, letting go of the man and once more reaching into Antoinette’s loaned bag of supplies. I dove my head in again, searching, then decided to set the bag down and splay it open so I could search more easily. There was the azurite.

  I pulled the gem out and said, “I can use this to draw the parasites out, but it will tax his system terribly. Do you have any blood remaining for transfusions? The parasite will have corrupted many of his red blood cells.”

  “We’ve got blood. Get working,” the woman said. “Also, who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Jacob. I’m very familiar with the Greenes,” I said.

  The woman looked at me again, and her eyes went wide.

  Rolling the azurite in my palms, I began to speak in Enochian, reciting a prayer of purification. I’d learned it when I was four, before Mother summoned a Vexl for us to learn about the creatures. Esther had asked to keep the thing as a pet. She even got Father on his side, but Mother stayed firm. Likely for the best.

  Continuing the chant, I drew my knife and cut alongside my arm, an inch below the last cut, which I had forgotten was there, the latest in an ever-thicker cross-hatching of wounds. I dripped the blood on the azurite and then set the gem on the man’s forehead, holding it down as best I could.

  Purple sputum seeped from every visible patch of skin as the parasites were driven from the man, drawn out, cell by cell, organ by organ, then expunged from his bloodstream. The process was slow, which was in some ways fortunate, as it gave the woman time to set up the transfusion and replace his blood. The transfusion was fairly basic, a bag of blood strung up, the tube taped onto the man as the three of us held him down. The parasites fought to hold fast; I could feel them trying to hide from the ritual, bury themselves deep in tissues and cavities.

  Minutes later, I was drenched with sweat, and the man was drenched in the purple sputum, which my companions sponged away bit by bit.

  But in the end, the man was unconscious, in critical condition, yet stable.

  I took a towel offered by Usman, and wiped the sweat from my face.

  “Who’s next?” I asked, my heart racing.

  Dr. De l
a Cruz led me to a white man, out like a light, an IV connected to his left arm at the elbow, with some drug or another feeding into the tube. The man’s clothes were soaked through with sweat, a thin sheet covering him to his waist.

  “He’s got a cracked sternum. It’s an incredibly painful injury, that’s why we put him out. I can’t do much to help him without a lot of medical firepower.”

  I smiled. “You have me.”

  “Okay, what do you need?” she asked.

  “Show me where the break is.”

  She held her hands over a point at the center of his chest, and I reached down for the Deeps. I did not have a chrysoprase, which would have been the most appropriate stone to heal a broken bone. But I had a hematite, associated with earth, and crystal, which would resonate with a healing effort. As bodies were—according to my family’s myths—earth given life, it would have to do.

  I channeled the Deeps through the hematite, and then through the crystal, and finally, I laid a hand on the man’s chest as gently as I could, thankful that he was out. I envisioned the crack in his bone, let the Deeps give me true sight into his body, the power diagnostic and exploratory at first.

  With a clear vision of the break, I fed the power into the crack in the man’s chest. My eyes pressed shut, I saw only the body, felt his slow heartbeat, the signals of pain muted by the drugs attached to his IV.

  Filling in the cracks with the shaped Deeps power, I urged the bone to regrow itself, to remember what it was to be whole, to reach out to its shattered self and reunite. I’d never done a healing on this scale. It was an entirely different approach to Carter’s celestial blessing, but it was the best possible use I could imagine for the Deeps. A counterbalance against Esther’s rampage.

  I left the man’s sternum intact, letting the working settle as the bone knit together once more, using the Deeps as fuel.

  And I spent the next half hour retching into a bucket, gasping for breath.

  There was a reason my family were not known as great healers.

  By midnight, we’d saved five lives and stabilized a dozen more. Dr. De la Cruz did most of the work, but in the places where creatures of the Deeps or other magical realms were responsible, Antoinette, Carter, and I lent our expertise.