Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods

by Michael R. Underwood

  Carter flicked the purple blood from his sword and rejoined us, and Antoinette led on toward the center of the park.

  The sky darkened above us, clouds unnaturally dark and heavy as if a tornado were looming. But there was no rain, no wind. Just darkness, and a heavy sense of wrongness.

  I gave directions that led us to the grove where Esther had begun her slaughtering tour of New York, the killing that had jarred me from my now comparatively-idyllic life as a student, unaware of both the coming storm and the many complexities of New York’s occult community.

  We rounded the bend, and I saw the portal, a screaming tear in the fabric of the world, eclipsing the tree where Esther’s first New Yorker victim had been crucified. Wisps of Deeps power stretched out of the portal like the tentacles of a spirit Xoggox. The third circle was complete, the ley lines of New York holding the rest of the world at bay while a portal opened directly to the Deeps. And from there, to the Gates that held back the Younger Gods.

  Leaving behind the assistance, I started to jog up the hill, taking in the forms and faces of the half-dozen bodies that lay around Esther’s ritual circle, the incantation written out in blood on the grass. I looked, turning over my shoulder several times, but I did not see Nate among the slain, which meant Esther still had him.

  And that he was meant to be the final sacrifice. The taste of blood that would awaken the unborn, call it forth from its womb. Another life snuffed out because of my failures.

  “We have to go after her,” I said, pointing to the portal.

  “Where?” Carter asked.

  “The Deeps. Beyond the Gates of the Keepers, to the womb of the world, where the unborn wait for the appointed day. Which, unless we succeed, is tonight.”

  I looked to Antoinette and Carter, the beaten and battered friends who had put their lives on the line countless times for me, despite my repeated lack of anything resembling social graces, and in Carter’s case, well-justified active antipathy.

  “If something happens to me, know that I am honored to have had your help. Thank you, my friends.”

  Carter ran a hand through his hair, leaning back from the group, more color in his cheeks. Antoinette wrapped me in a short hug.

  Then, as one, we walked through the portal.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  At first, there was only darkness.

  Antoinette lit her flashlight, but the beam was quickly swallowed by the looming shadows, illuminating no more than three feet in front of her.

  “What the hell?” Antoinette said.

  “These are no ordinary caves. These are the Deeps. The source of the Greene’s power. And the Deeps do not like light,” I said, drawing my fingers over my eyes and restoring my vision.

  We were in a wide-open cavern, a matching ritual circle surrounding us. There was only one way out: down.

  “Stand still,” I said, and passed my hands over both of my companions’ eyes, attaching the Deepness to their vision to match my own. Here, I did not even have to take the power into myself, merely grab it from the air, shape it with my will, and attach it to its subject.

  “Whoa!” Carter said, raising his hands, then looking around.

  “So that’s what you’ve been doing,” Antoinette said.

  “Indeed. Now we must hurry.”

  Breathing in the Deeps, I knit the power into my cracked ribs, then used the energy to flush my lungs of pollutants. We stopped for a truly unsightly round of purging, which I wished my companions couldn’t have seen, then we made our way down.

  And down.

  Farther down. The tunnel spiraled downward for thirteen turns, then changed directions, spiraling counter-clockwise for thirteen more.

  We walked past rivers of lava, tracked wide to avoid endless pools of boiling water that housed sleeping Xoggox, and crept past fungus-laden fields and the packs of Vexl that ruled over them like lions of the savannah.

  After what felt like many hours later, we came to a vast arena lit by the Gate.

  My family did not even have pictures of the Gate. It was forbidden, a prohibition I suppose not unlike the Muslim ban against creating representations of Allah or Mohammed, though in practice, the religions could not be more unlike.

  The Gate was crafted with thick, layered walls of Deep-forged steel that formed a near-opaque net across a chasm so expansive I could not see its top or either side. The Gate itself sparked with eldritch lightning, something moving, shaking beyond the power-wrought steel.

  The cliff leading up to the Gate narrowed to no wider than a subway platform.

  And atop the platform were two figures that could only be Esther and Nate. Above them, dozens of half-visible figures the size of buildings watched, flitting back and forth, moving faster than my eye could follow, then sticking frozen in mid-motion for a second before darting forth again.

  The Gatekeepers.

  Bogeymen saints of my childhood, the sources of my family’s seemingly-limitless power. The handmaidens of the end-times, in the not-flesh. When summoned to the farm, the Gatekeepers were merely faint shadows, silhouettes of unbearable dark light. Here, they seemed both lesser and greater, fully formed but massive. To be more defined, more real, made them somehow less overwhelming despite their literal size.

  “Gulp,” said Carter from beside me.

  “So, what’s your plan?” Antoinette said.

  Words caught in my throat. I’d thought about this moment the entire week, run endless scenarios in my mind, all ending in blood, death, and Armageddon.

  I did not have an answer. But when the other choice was oblivion, a poor plan was better than no plan.

  Tying my words to the Deeps, my voice boomed out across the football-field-long distance.

  “I, Jacob Abraham Greene, son of Ezekiel and Salome Greene, challenge for the position of scion, and the family birthright! Face me, sister, or forfeit your power!”

  “Jake, what are you doing?” Antoinette said, her voice shaking.

  “It’s the only plan I have left,” I said, striding forward, gathering power. “She can’t refuse a challenge in front of the Gatekeepers, not if she wants to keep their favor, which she needs to open the Gate.”

  Esther turned to face me, and I could see the hatred in her eyes across the field, though it was technically impossible. I’d never been able to read the faces of outsiders, but my family had been my world, and I knew them as well as I knew myself. Or, thought I knew. This week had taught me many things, both about the lengths I was and wasn’t willing to go to, and the complete lack of inhibitions and limitations possessed by my sister.

  The ground crunched under my feet, volcanic debris in gravel form shifting beneath me as I moved. This ground had been trod upon by giants, by gods, and by my ancestors in the first days, when the unborn were locked away to prevent another turn of the cycle.

  Gods had bled on these rocks, and now they would be watered again by the blood of Greenes.

  As Esther approached, Nate remained frozen in place, held aloft by cuffs of purple energy.

  Esther had to be taxed, given the constant use of power, the exertion of cracking open a portal to the earth’s core, and the willpower gathered to open the Gate. I was in all likelihood no less strained, but I had stopped trying to defeat my sister on her own terms.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  “I accept! Choose the weapons!” Esther said, speaking the ritual response. The choice of weapons was usually a formality, as any Greene worth the name would lean on their command of sorcery. Sometimes the choice would be more specific, like summoning, Deeps shaping, or elemental magic.

  But those were not the only options.

  “I choose friendship,” I said, shouting across the distance. “I have brought my friends, and you will match with your own.” I broke from the script. “Since I know that t
he term is unfamiliar to you, friends are people who choose to stand beside you, of their own free will, without bargaining, bribery, or enslavement. Who are your friends who would stand for you?”

  Esther stopped. “Invalid choice. The weapon must be something both parties have at hand.”

  I continued, a smile on my face. “Incorrect, sister. I’d invite you to remember the duel between Bartholomew and Jedidiah in 1432, when Jedidiah had been cut off from his magic by Templars, and his brother, knowing that, chose sorcery and melted his brother to the bone. Or do you claim to know better than our forefathers?” I asked, taking almost perverse glee in being able to throw family precedent back in her face. She was always the stronger magician, the greatest magics concealed from me without my knowledge, but I knew the family histories and our public customs perhaps even better than Father.

  “This is just a cheap trick,” Esther said, her voice growing uncontrolled, wild. Finally, I had the advantage. Now I had to get her to concede or to violate the terms of the duel.

  “It’s nothing of the sort, and you’re stalling. The challenge has been met, and the weapons chosen. Pick the time and place or forfeit,” I said.

  If she waited until Mother or Father could arrive, she’d miss the window to open the Gates, and even the Hearts might not be enough. She had to win now or accept that the duel was lost.

  “I concede,” Esther said, continuing to pace forward. She held out the family’s ritual dagger, handle first.

  I tried to let myself relax, tension slide out of my back, from my spine. But the smile on Esther’s lips ruined any such efforts.

  “As the scion, I bequeath to you the ritual dagger, and all of its responsibilities. Do you accept?”

  I’d come too far to turn back now. I stepped forward and opened my hand. “I accept the mantle of scion of the Greene clan,” I said, taking the knife.

  Esther stepped back, her smile growing impossibly wide. “Then as the scion, I beseech you to finish the ritual, which has already started. The Gatekeepers have accepted terms, and await only the remainder of the payment promised.” She pointed to Nate, held aloft by Esther’s magic. “The heart’s blood of a Bearer and chosen of the Gardeners.”

  “No!” Antoinette said.

  “It’s a trick,” Carter added. “She’s beaten. Let’s get Nate and go.”

  One of the Gatekeepers flickered forward, looking down a yards-long beak. It spoke without any lips or mouth, pointing to Nate.

  “The payment, Greene. If you tarry, the bargain is broken, and we will take our penalty in the lifeblood of a million more.”

  “They can’t reach the surface, can they?” Antoinette asked.

  “They can. It’s part of the bargain my family made with them. If the Greenes ever break a bargain, the Gatekeepers are given free rides to the surface, courtesy of my family as hosts. And there are a great many of us, when all is said and done. Thousands. Enough to jump-start the apocalypse even without birthing the god.”

  I was inviting no end of trouble, possibly greater problems than I could ever hope to handle, but it was the only option I could see to avoid this apocalypse.

  And it would still cost an innocent man’s life. And this time, I wouldn’t just be a helpless witness. It would be my hand, my blade, and my crime.

  Refuse, and I’d be giving over my body and inviting the Gatekeepers to the surface. But there was no other choice.

  Or was there?

  “As the new scion, I wish to renegotiate the deal,” I said to the Gatekeeper.

  “Refused,” the Gatekeeper said. “The deal is struck. Pay, or forfeit.”

  The tiniest working told me that the solstice was only minutes away. There was no time to bargain, even if the Gatekeepers would allow it.

  As I strode toward Nate, the knife heavy in my hand, my mind raced through the lore, through our family myths, through Esther’s recollection of the prophecy.

  I racked my memory, scouring through memories of dusty texts, histories of bargains between the Greenes and the Gatekeepers. I needed a loophole, a contingency, some alternative that would let me walk away from this situation without becoming a murderer.

  Keeping the bargain would mean taking the life of an innocent man and beginning the last age of humanity.

  Breaking the bargain would unleash the Gatekeepers’ wrath upon earth. They were happy to stay in the Deeps as long as humanity upheld its bargains, continued to make deals that fed them blood, bound humanity into further bargains. But if the Greenes, one of the Gatekeepers’ greatest partners, defaulted on a deal, it wouldn’t just be these Gatekeepers that lashed out, and not just at the Greenes. I did not doubt the figure of millions that the Gatekeeper above me had quoted.

  Either way, there would be blood on my hands. I’d be no better than my sister, than my parents. Remorse would mean nothing if it did not stay my hand.

  On one hand, there was the uncertain future of the gods’ birth. On the other, the certain doom of the Gatekeepers unleashed.

  I made my choice.

  The birth of the Younger Gods would spell the beginning of the last age of man. Beginning. Not the end of the Last Age. Humanity might survive, perhaps as servitors. Or perhaps I would be the singular instrument of the end of days, having been just clever enough to steal the title away from my sister, but leading to exactly the same result.

  I could not look Nate in the eye. His hair was disheveled, hands and fingers bloodied. He’d fought, he’d struggled, and he’d resisted. And I was going to be the one to write the last chapter of his story, when it was only beginning its second act.

  The weight of obligation pushed me forward, nearly guiding my hand. There was no time for another trick, for a middle ground, or for salvation.

  I’d failed Nate like I’d failed Thomas. I’d made friends just soon enough to become a murderer before their eyes.

  I closed teary eyes as I lifted the blade.

  “I consecrate this man as sacrifice,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “Jake, what are you doing?” Nate said, his voice broken by terror.

  His words hit me like a sledgehammer. Nate spoke, but I heard the words in Thomas’s voice.

  I retched, my stomach revolting at my unconscionable act, but I pressed on, pulling myself back up. “To fulfill the bargain made and sanctified on behalf of the Greene clan, in good faith.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out, the words barely intelligible even to me.

  My entire body revolting, I had to force the blade down, piercing Nate’s chest. The pain was over. I took the tiniest of solace that he died in that moment, his soul taken by the knife as payment, just as Thomas’s had been.

  The bindings vanished, dropping Nate’s body over the edge and into the abyss below.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, tears staining my face.

  “It is done,” the Gatekeepers said as one, their voices a terrible dissonant chord that cut at my soul.

  And above, a sound greater than human hearing could encompass shook my entire body, as the Gates began to move. They unfolded like a four-dimensional puzzle, retracting into and through themselves, moving here and vanishing there, an eons-old puzzle solving itself.

  Beyond the Gates, I saw a humanoid form as large as the sky, simultaneously small and fragile yet impossibly immense. The cavern receded yet grew closer, like a camera trick in one of Carter’s old horror movies.

  Antoinette and Carter were beside me, and I could feel Esther just behind. She was laughing, victorious.

  A voice deeper than a foghorn cried out in wordless need. A shape moved forward, emerged from shadow.

  It was bigger than my eyes could fathom, but in struggling comprehension, my mind showed me the image of an infant, black hair on its head, a dirt-black umbilicus stretching off into the abyss.

  The cavern around us shook, dust and rocks
falling from the ceiling.

  “Jake . . .” Carter said.

  “I can’t leave,” I said, knowing it to be true. The god was linked to me; my hand had unlocked the Gates, and my blade had spilled the blood to bring it to life. And I could no more abandon it than the mother of a newborn could cast aside her child. It was an existential need, a supernal compulsion stronger than I’d ever known could happen, more powerful and inexorable than the compulsion to complete the ritual.

  The god descended toward me, shrinking, its voice approaching a human register. This was . . . not what I expected.

  “What is this!” Esther shouted.

  “Stand down, sister,” I said.

  The newborn god dropped into my arms, crying, flailing, acting far more like an infant than a world-ending divinity.

  “This . . . is not what I expected,” I said, repeating myself. My emotional apparatuses were broken, pummeled by the week’s roller coaster of fear, anger, as well as rare moments of grace and pride. But everything now was covered by guilt at my failure to save Nate, failure to stop the ritual. I’d been clever enough only to put myself into a position to fail.

  “What about the Last Age? What about shaking the foundations of the earth! This is our promised salvation?” Esther shouted, pointing at the infant like it was diseased, her composure shattered.

  “I have no more idea what is happening than you,” I said.

  “It’s just a baby,” Carter said, seemingly stunned.

  Esther stepped forward. “Give me the child. We must see that it comes into its power as quickly as possible to fulfill the prophecy.”

  I scoffed. “No, sister. As the scion, I will interpret the prophecy as I see fit to best serve the family.”

  “How can you even pretend to talk about serving the family? The family you deserted, abandoned. You turned your back on us. . . .”

  “As foretold in the prophecy, was it not?” I asked. “Perhaps we were all wrong about the prophecy. The Younger Gods, this one and others, are the heralds of the last age of man, we all agree on that. But perhaps the Last Age does not mean the imminent doom of man. Perhaps it is the last and greatest age, with the gods our partners. Perhaps there is more to the future than ambition, greed, and the family’s demands of inheriting the earth.”