by Chuck Wendig
Tundu screams.
Cason raises the shotgun, winces—
Feels a hand in his mind. Psyche. Her voice: I can only get away with this once, before she puts up all her walls—
Psyche reaches out with a hand, a real hand—and points all her fingers toward the monster on the hood of the car. She gives her wrist a twist.
With the turning of Psyche’s wrist, the Driver’s own head wrenches left. Tongue out, eyes bulging, howl cut short. The Driver tumbles off the hood. Just in time to see the Barn zooming up into view.
Tundu cries out, cuts the wheel—
The cab misses the corner of the Barn by inches.
A rain barrel is not so lucky. It explodes, pieces flying up over the top of the cab, murky water sloshing down over everything, again distorting their view.
But the sound beneath the cab’s tires changes from soft to hard. Asphalt, not grass. The water recedes from the windshield.
Ahead, several figures exit the farmhouse, stepping into the driveway.
And it’s then that Cason knows they’re fucked.
The beauty of Aphrodite shines brighter than the moon, and Cason has to steel himself so as not to just open the door and tumble out before her and beg for mercy. A tall man next to her holds his hands by his side, and lightning snaps from his fingertips, licking the ground at his feet. An Asian woman, tall and thin like a wind-blown reed, extends her arms, and even from here Cason can see the tattoos on her arms flickering, growing brighter, colors like running paint. An older woman steps next to her, long red hair in a braid over her shoulder. Her hands pull at a long thread of water like it’s taffy.
The gods have gathered.
Everything seems to slow—
Tundu jerks the wheel right, away from the farmhouse—again the tires bound off the asphalt and onto grass, and again the car slides across the green. The cab blasts through a barberry hedge, cutting a car-shaped swath through it.
The gods stir. They move. They come.
The cab leaps back up onto the driveway, and Tundu straightens the wheel. They run the gauntlet of fountains, statues, and trees. The driveway is long. Escape is ahead—it’s night and Cason can’t make out where the road is, but he knows it must be there, must be coming up on them soon—right?
It may not matter.
The gods are coming.
Across the moon, a winged shape flies.
The man with the lightning rises up off the ground, the crackling fingers of lightning carrying him forward faster and faster, his body tilted forward at a lean, mean angle.
The woman with the water flows forward just as swiftly, standing tall on her tip-toes, cresting a small froth-churned wave.
And then come the dragons.
Five of them—red, blue, green, white, black. Small at first, no bigger than dogs, but then growing, swelling, heads soon as big as wheelbarrows, their tails tied together like the flags on a pinwheel, anchored as they are to the Asian woman’s arms. They pull her along like huskies drawing a sled.
He can’t see Aphrodite. But Cason’s sure she’s coming. They’re all coming.
It’s then that it all starts to come crumbling down: his hopes of escaping, of seeing Alison and Barney again, are as tangible as a fog, as real as a dream. He has no means of fighting these monsters. Whether he’s human, part-human, or some secret monster in a man’s costume doesn’t matter. He can’t stop what’s coming.
The car barrels forward.
Thunder crackles. Rain begins to patter the back windshield. Dragons roar as a jet of flame crackles above the roof of the car, brightening the dark, turning rain to steam.
The car gauges begin to spin and flicker. The LCD clock shifts, blinks, and the numbers turn to letters that spell DOOM.
“What the hell do I do?” Tundu asks, panicked.
“I dunno,” Cason says. “Lemme think.”
“Fuck ’em!” Frank hollers. “Just keep driving!”
Then he starts humming Ride of the Valkyries. Dun-dudun-dahn-dahn...
“Shut the fuck up, Frank!” Tundu says.
It’s then that Cason knows what to do.
He focuses a thought toward Psyche—he doesn’t know how this works, doesn’t know if she’s still in his head or somewhere else entirely, but he reaches out and finds her reaching back. Her awareness, a snarled ink-scribble at the back of his mind.
He tells her what to do.
His stomach feels like it’s going to drop out of him. Like a rock dropped through a piece of tissue paper.
Cason turns around in his seat. Meets Frank’s lidless eyes. Frank’s grinning like a kid on a roller coaster. Licking his teeth.
“Almost there, Casey Kasem!”
“Is it true?” Cason asks Frank.
“Is what true?”
“Sally. You abandoned her. And now she’s dead.”
A flicker of guilt and recognition across Frank’s face. That’s all Cason needs to know.
“I’m sorry, Frank.”
“Sorry? Sorry for wh—”
But he doesn’t get to finish the question.
His jaw locks. Neck tendons snap tight. His eyes follow Psyche as she leans over him, pops the door handle. Frank starts making a wordless noise: “Nnngh. Nnngh!”
Tundu looks back, raising an eyebrow. “Hey, what the hell?”
Psyche shoves Frank out the door.
FRANK’S HEAD CRACKS against the driveway—skin scrapes from his scalp as his body tumbles like a discarded crash-test dummy.
It’s not the pain that gets him. It’s the betrayal. It’s the fear that the plan is falling apart.
As control of his body returns to him, he scrambles to his feet, panic at what’s coming shooting through every nook and cranny of his being.
Rain falls upon him as the gods come.
He looks toward the road, sees the cab fishtail, tires screeching. Then taillights, as the car rockets away down the road.
They slow upon seeing him.
Shango, the Thunder God, drifts back to earth—from floating to walking without missing a step. The Dragon Lady, Long Mu, settles in alongside him, the dragons shrinking and yowling and once more returning to bright ink on her pale arms. Then water like a slow tide splashes up, and on it rides Dana, the Mother Goddess.
Behind him drops the Driver. Claws out. Teeth bared. Talons clicking as she paces.
Then: her.
The one he loves. The one he despises. The one he needs. The one he needs gone.
Venus. Cytherea. Aphrodite.
Shango asks her: “Do we go after the others?”
“No.” Aphrodite shakes her head. “Let them go.”
“But,” Dana protests, “Cole is dangerous, and he’s with your daughter-in-law—”
She cuts him short. “We’ll see where they go and it’ll tell us more. Relax. We have the true terrorist in our midst right now. Don’t we?”
Frank’s skin feels hot. Tight. Dried out. “Hey, babe,” he says.
“Hello, Francis.”
“Been a long time.”
“Not that long. I thought my warning was enough to keep you away.”
“What can I say?” He shrugs. “I’m like a dog with a bone. I just keep coming back for a lick.”
Aphrodite steps closer. “I can give you a taste.”
“Not how I want it.”
“Maybe. You still love me, don’t you?”
He pauses. Hands flex in and out of fists. “You don’t own me anymore.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You’re all going down,” he hisses. “There’s gonna be a reckoning, you know that? You thought the Exile was bad? You have no fucking idea. You’re going to pay for the way you treat people. Like this place is your playground and we’re all your toys.”
“You are our toys,” Shango says, voice booming. He, too, takes a step closer.
“You’ll pay for Nergal,” Long Mu says, her voice barely above a whisper. A green dragon lunges from
her arm, breathing a cloudy ochre vapor before she reels it back to her flesh. “You cannot do what you do and escape justice.”
“We’ll see,” he says.
Shango sucks in a deep breath.
The ground begins to rumble. Overhead: thunder.
In Dana’s hand, a lash made of water grows. She cracks the air—mist flecks Frank’s face.
And once again the dragons begin to emerge from Long Mu’s arms. Small, now, small as rats, but growing bigger.
Aphrodite nods. Gives them the signal.
They attack at once.
A jagged knife of lightning strikes from above—
A red dragon grows ten sizes and belches a plume of flame—
The tip of the water whip sails toward Frank’s head—
Movement behind him, too, as the Driver pounces from the dark—
And all of it stops. The lighting crackles above his head. The fire parts in front of him as if it’s a river and he’s a stone in the water. The water whip dissipates. And the winged Fury is bowled backward, ass over teakettle.
In front of him he holds a severed hand.
Gray-green flesh. Nails craggy, broken. On each fingertip burns a small blood-red flame, flickering in the night. The palm is marked with a sigil carved into the wrinkled palm: several upside-down triangles merging into a flourish, crossed with what looks to be the letter ‘V.’
Aphrodite gasps. A pleasing sound. Frank says, “I like that I can still surprise you.”
“A Hand of Glory,” she says. Straightening and scowling as she says it.
“Ayup. This old baby’s my Get Out of Jail Free card, innit?”
Long Mu weeps. “He cannot escape us! Murderer! Murderer!”
Frank chuckles. Starts to back away.
They try to follow. But can’t.
Even the Driver squirms out of his way.
Frank waves goodbye with the Hand. “See you later, cats and kittens.”
Then he turns tail and runs like he’s never run before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lineage
HE’S STARVING. HIS body feels like a hollow shell of itself, waiting to be filled up with—well, not guts or lungs or blood, but potato chips and slushies and those little doughy-chewy pretzel bites dipped in the nuclear-yellow probably-plastic cheese. It was like this after a fight, too—the worse the fight, the more ravenous Cason felt.
He’s never before felt this hungry.
He comes out of the convenience store with both arms loaded. One bag looped around the crook of his elbow while his hand shoves a super-size Snickers bar into his maw.
Back in the cab.
Psyche still in the back. Tundu outside the car, pacing, using his cell. Talking to his family.
“Ahm sho hungry,” Cason gurgles, finishing off the Snickers and dipping back into the bag for a sack of Bugles. Little crispy horn-shaped corn snacks. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
“It’s your body repairing itself,” Psyche says from the back. “The human part of you needs it. To replenish. To rebuild.”
“Oh,” Cason says, gob-flecks of corn chip peppering the dash. He wipes them away with the back of his hand. He does feel better. Not perfect. Not all the way back up to speed. But good. And he feels thin, too. Ropy. Strong. Like he’s back in old fighting shape. All the lumps and mush have burned away. Tightened up. “Okay.”
“I sense you’re feeling guilty about Frank.”
Dry swallow. “I don’t want to talk about this.” He pops the cap on a Dr. Pepper. Guzzles it. Burns his throat as it charges toward his guts.
“You shouldn’t feel bad. He was leading you astray.”
“Please.”
“He lied to you. He knew that you weren’t human. Did you know that? He knew.”
“I’m not talking about this. We just left him—no. We’re really not talking about this.” He finishes the Dr. Pepper, gasps for breath, then shifts his torso so he’s staring back at the pale, wild-haired girl in the back of the cab. “What I want to talk about is: who the hell am I? We didn’t finish that part of our conversation. I want to know who I am. I know I’m adopted. And now you’re telling me I’m... I’m not human. And shit, who knows? Maybe you’re right. I just broke my legs and now I’m up and walking around. I got the shit kicked out of me and while I do in fact feel like I was hit by a dumptruck, I should be in traction for the next six months. So, you’re telling me I have divine parentage? Then I need to know who. Who are my parents, Psyche?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out since I met you.”
That’s not what he wants to hear. He tells her as much.
“I know. But it’s true. The others, at the farmhouse. I think some of them knew. They must’ve. They targeted you for a reason. But I wasn’t privy to that. Aphrodite didn’t even know. Not all of it, at least. I think the others did this to you without... without her involvement. If she was involved, I’d know. I was her shadow for a very long time.” She sighs. Under her breath: “My mother-in-law. Ugh.”
Outside, Tundu paces, gesticulating as he talks into the phone. Trying to explain to his family where he was all night. Tundu said that Frank called him, told him the story—or most of it—and that Tundu didn’t hesitate. Cason, he said, was his friend. And he said the last few nights he went to bed feeling helpless, a small man in the face of very real gods. He doesn’t want to feel helpless, he said. So, here he is.
“Can’t you...” Cason gesticulates around his brow. “Get into my head, figure it out?”
“I do see someone. I see your mother, I think. A woman. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Humming a song. The song about the mockingbird and the diamond ring. And I smell the city and I hear cars honking and—that’s all I see. It’s buried deep. From a long, long time ago.” She pauses. “But there is something else.”
She hands him a road atlas.
On the cover is an icon of a man holding up a globe. She taps the man on the cover. “Atlas. I know him. Well. I’ve met him. Dumb as a sack of amaranth. Couldn’t find his own tiny shorts with all the maps in the world, so I don’t know why he’s on the cover of this one.”
“What’s your point?”
Psyche flips to the middle of the book.
Hands it to him.
It’s open to the state of Kansas.
“I see a crimson thread,” she says. “A literal bloodline. Faint. Like someone is trying to hide it. But it’s there. It starts with you, and connects here.”
She taps the map.
“Concordia, Kansas,” he says.
“Yes. Something is there. Something bound to you.”
“Then that’s where I’m going.”
“Are you sure? There’s no promises that this harvest will yield fruit. We could find your wife and son. I could... try to quell their... feelings about you. I’ll do it. To make up for my... transgressions.”
“No. I have big question mark-shaped holes inside me, and I need answers to fill them. Somebody’s messing with me. And worse, they’re messing with my wife and my kid. I still don’t know why or who I even am, so...” He trails off. “Concordia, Kansas, here I come.”
PART THREE
TO THE HEART
OF THE MAZE
CHAPTER THIRTY
This Tenuous Thread
THE PLAN IS simple.
Well. No. It’s not really simple. It’s actually quite complex.
But it’s simple in theory. Coyote finds elegance in complexity.
The woman, Alison, is inside this police station. In a holding cell. Awaiting—well, whatever it is you await when the police think you stole a car.
Coyote will crawl through the air ducts.
He’ll use his nose to scent his penis, which gives off a piquant, ermine-y odor that the ladies cannot resist. This will likely lead him to the evidence room, where he will find within the full-figured, robust-shouldered, ginger-topped Officer Bonita Squire, and he will then cast into the ducts his Bonafide Penis Returnin
g Powder, a fine concoction made of lavender, sage, beaver pelt, and the dried, pulverized shame of an ugly swan.
Then, he will descend into the evidence room.
As his penis stirs to life and seeks to return to him, he will begin to seduce the lovely Officer Squire, and just as he has disrobed her and laid her on a cardboard pallet, his penis will burst through the wire cage and reattach to his pelvis and he shall fornicate with her until she achieves the mighty gush of a well-satisfied woman. That will, of course, put her to sleep. From there he will steal her outfit, paint his hair orange, fill the outfit with whatever he can find nearby to pad the uniform, then wander into the small police building while masquerading as the beautiful, thick-bodied Officer Squire.
Then, blah-blah-blah, down to the basement, unlock the door, open the holding cells, free Alison, and once more find and follow the golden thread to its natural and necessary conclusion. Whatever that may be.
Excellent.
Coyote stands out back of the police department, hunkered down behind a few scrubby shrubs. He crawls over to the vent. Rattles it. Plucks numbly at the four screws with his hands.
“I should really have a screwdriver,” he says.
It’s then that a big fat horsefly lands on his shoulder. Zzzzzvvvpppt.
He flicks it away.
It returns. This time, to the other shoulder.
He swats at it. It takes flight.
Then: on the bridge of his prodigious nose.
Oh, no.
He can barely make it out, but it’s there—the horsefly has a human-looking face. Green fly eyes, but the rest is all tiny human.
It all happens so fast.
There comes a whumpf of air, a reverse imploding thunderclap—
There stands a tall, lithe man with dancing green eyes and long greasy hair draped around sharp-angled shoulders, ill-contained in a v-neck black t-shirt.
The man snaps his fingers, and in his hands a serpent appears. Black skin, green eyes, long fangs.
“You sonofab—” But Coyote can’t finish the statement. The snake stabs out with its triangular head and bites him right on the cheek.