Eve ran towards one of the newly exposed sections of soil. She glanced nervously around, and satisfied that nobody was paying attention, reached down and gently placed her hands into the dirt. Within moments, a narrow tree began to sprout between her cupped hands. It looked like a small evergreen, but the bark was a solid, smooth black. When she was satisfied that it was the right height, she stood and whistled sharply.
“Philistine!” she shouted.
“Busy!” Goliath shouted as he bounced off the front of a building and slumped into the street. One of the mannequin legs was bent into a useless J-shape, and the other didn’t look like it would last much longer. Pazuzu, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the workout.
I stepped in front of Eve. “Nice parlor trick, but I don’t think this is the time for Better Underworld Gardens, do you?” Here I thought she’d just tended the gardens on Earth, and it turned out she was quite the green thumb.
Eve pointed towards the tree she had made. “This’ll take him down a notch. He’s an elemental. Fire with fire, you know?”
“I guess,” I said.
An echoing roar filled the space behind us as Monkey started his car. “Is it time to go yet?”
The wind demon shrieked, sending a vortex through the decimated store. We took cover behind Monkey’s car as anything not bolted down turned into a projectile.
“My paint job! I’ve got a race coming up, you jerk!” Monkey howled.
Goliath had been across the street watching Pazuzu’s assault. He hobbled towards Eve’s tree, which had survived the assault unharmed. Perhaps there was something to her magic after all.
Pazuzu crouched and tried to force its head into the store. Its shoulders were too broad to fit, but the wall was giving way quickly. We could feel the car rocking each time its shout battered the door. The demon shoved again and a large section of the storefront gave way, allowing it to reach one arm inside. It hooked a finger over the car door and began to pull. Three quick tugs later, the car went sailing across the store, leaving us open for the demon to finish off.
“If anyone has a thought as to how to kill that thing,” I whispered, “now would be a great time to act.” “I’m more of a joker,” Monkey said.
“I’ve got nothing,” Eve said.
“We’re dead,” Lenny said.
Then, from outside the store, “Hey ugly! I said I ain’t done yet!”
Pazuzu gave one angry grunt, then started to pull itself out of the store to deal with the Philistine Who Would Not Die. Unfortunately (for the demon), it had lodged itself into the opening a little too tightly. Not that it would have mattered, because a few moments after Goliath’s challenge, the wind demon gave a startled shriek and collapsed to the ground. Blood spilled from its mouth.
“You can come out now, you pansies!” Goliath yelled.
“He won?” Monkey asked.
“Of course, I won! This was nothing!” Goliath roared.
With Pazuzu blocking the front entrance, we had to exit through the back of the building and walk around the block to see the outcome. We found a crowd gathered around the tail of the demon. Perched high on the beast’s rump was Goliath, bathed in blood, cut and bruised, his smile down by a tooth or two, one hand still wrapped around the shaft of Eve’s tree.
“Are you sure you won?” Monkey asked.
“The creature was never a match for me, you understand,” Goliath boasted. “Creatures like this, you’ve got to let them romp a bit, get their blood flowing.”
“You couldn’t have speared him a minute sooner?” Monkey yelled. “My car is trashed!”
“We’ll find another ride,” I said.
“How dare you! There’ll never be another like her!”
“Oh God, you’re one of those guys?” Eve asked.
“Listen, toots, that car was the finest piece of machinery in the underworld, hands down.”
“So you’ll find another. And you’ll make it rock like only you can, right?” I asked.
“It’s not the same,” Monkey kicked at a chunk of building. With Lenny’s head tucked under my arm, I walked towards the demon’s rear end. “He could trace you. Maybe you can trace him. Can you get any kind of reading on him? Know where he came from, who sent him?”
Lenny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, producing an odd whistling noise as the wind rushed through his mouth and out of his neck stump.
“Must you continue doing things like that?” I asked.
“Oh, you mean breathing? I’m sorry, force of habit. It’s just something you do when you have a body!”
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“He’s not gonna say anything,” Monkey snarled.
“That’s because I killed him!” Goliath exclaimed.
“Yes, thank you. Mystery solved.” Monkey shuffled his feet. “Can’t believe we’re walking. I hope nobody sees me.”
Lenny trembled; a mild golden light started to gather around his eyes.
“It was one of her tests,” he said. “Pull out its eyes. You’ll find an anima crystal somewhere in its skull.”
Goliath shrugged, all too happy to do more dirty work. He hefted Eve’s spear into the corner of Pazuzu’s eye socket and pried. A loose, wet shifting sound, like a lizard laying eggs, and one eye dislodged from its socket, hanging by a thick rope of muscle and tendon. Goliath reared back his right hand and punched into the wind demon’s skull, rooting around in grey matter and mucus. “Nothing on this side.”
Within minutes, the other eye had dislodged, Pazuzu now looked like Tex Avery’s acid nightmare crumpled by the building. Goliath hopped from foot to foot, juggling a shining wet orb.
“Got it! It’s freezin’!”
He laid it on the ground. Monkey and Eve stared at it.
“Blank,” they said.
They were wrong. It was cold, bright, swimming with colors. It was painting pictures for me, showing me deserts, mountains, and a familiar blonde girl. I reached down and picked up the crystal. It felt like gel in my fingers, spongy and malleable.
My vision started to go grey at the edges. I looked at my colleagues. “S’not cold. S’burning. Bright blue waters…” The world went dark before turning bright blue. I hovered hundreds of feet above the lake of tears, descending on a lone girl walking through the sand…
Chapter Six
She reached the edge of the bridge at high noon, pausing to tighten the straps on the only genuine posthumous Versace shoulder tote in Creation. Or after Creation, or whatever. The sun glinted off of her gold rimmed Schiaparelli sunglasses. Oh yes, Aspen Biltmore was making the long journey in the underworld look damn good. The sun was up. It wasn’t too hot or too cold, but then again, it never was. Sure, this was the most work she’d ever done since, well, ever , but how hard could it be to walk across the desert? She looked at it as a long walk in the mall. She cleared her throat and reached a finger into her tote to stroke Yappy’s head.
Yappy was her first dog from childhood, and she was ecstatic when he greeted her in the desert with his trademark barking and jumping. Yappy had been the recipient of endless torment in life, both from Aspen and anyone else who saw him. She turned him into her grotesque doggie dress-up doll, and as a result, he was the object of mockery every day of his life. He never won a fight, never ran farther than across a living room, never caught a Frisbee in mid-flight. Yappy was certainly not a dog’s dog. But, as fashionable dogs went, Yappy was ahead of his time. He was a famous person’s Chihuahua before it was all the rage to be such a thing. He was a style icon, and he was a raging bisexual. Had Yappy known that today was the last time he’d see the city of Angel Falls in his life, he’d have taken his time at those hydrants, spent extra seconds sniffing those butts, just dog it up as much as possible. Alas, Yappy’s fate, like that of his master, was to take a dark turn.
Aspen felt a chill in her bones as she took her first step onto Cinvat Bridge. It stretched off into infinity, across the fog- shrouded waters of th
e lake. The cold seemed to abate, and the light began to fade from the sky. With each step, the sun moved closer to the horizon, until soon she was in a grey haze, unable to see the end of the bridge in either direction. She clutched her bag tighter, evincing a small yelp from Yappy. The side of the tote, filled to the brim with stolen anima crystals, began to sag. Even in her short time here, she’d heard stories about the things people saw on the Long Walk. The monsters, the visions of death, the dreadful thirty-mile stretch near a chasm known as the Brink of Insanity.
She didn’t know what all the fuss was. That first thing, the wind guy that screamed a lot, hardly took any convincing. It screamed defiance at her, a sound loud enough to rattle the roots of Shirley Johnson’s soul. Only, Shirley Johnson wasn’t the one presenting the anima crystal, it was just Aspen. The demon had opened its fearsome maw wide when Aspen presented the crystal, closing its mouth around her arm all the way to the shoulder. There was a slight crack, their eyes met, and the creature released her. Her arm was dry. She cocked her head to one side, and the demon did as well, and they both simultaneously said, “Whatever.”
She had to do this twelve more times? Walking was boring. She pushed it back in her mind and focused on the task at hand. What was this bridge but another catwalk? What was beyond Heaven’s gates but another throng of fans and well-wishers?
Aspen decided to keep putting one foot in front of the other, frightened that stopping at this point would leave her hopelessly lost, unable to reach land no matter which way she traveled. She tried to look over the edge of the bridge into the waters, but couldn’t make out anything through the fog. There was no current, no tide to suggest her distance from shore. There was no sound at all save Yappy’s faint nasally whine and her own footsteps. Aspen’s head was filled with visions of great ravens and vultures, avian monstrosities circling ever closer to pluck the eyes from her skull.
As if on cue, the peace was shattered as a great black shape flapped across the bridge and slapped into Aspen’s face. She shrieked and dropped to the ground, covering her head. The ravens had come to claim her soul, she was sure of it. Another black blur bounced across the planks and hit her head before continuing to flop across the bridge, over the side, and into the water. If these were ravens, they were fairly clumsy. Aspen decided to risk one eye, squinting to see if she could figure out what was happening. What she saw made her scream in terror. She jumped backwards, landing firmly on her butt, scrambling to her feet.
It was a catfish, inches from her face. Large, black, slimy, mouth gaping, tentacle-whiskers probing. It flopped and slithered, tossing itself over the edge of the bridge. Before she could rationalize the situation, another fish flew out of the fog, narrowly missing her head. This was followed by a faint war whoop and the sound of approaching footsteps. The cry she heard next baffled her completely.
“Fish! Who bet on red? Fools! Fish is a winner! Fish always wins!”
Aspen cracked open her left eye ever so slightly more, just enough to see if another attack was imminent. Everything was too quiet, the same way that a fast-food restaurant used to get if she happened to enter. Dead silent but for the sound of footsteps. There were no staring eyes and cameras this time, only a shape approaching through the fog.
He seemed like a skeleton dressed in flesh-colored spandex, a man so rail-thin it made Aspen jealous. In one hand he held a long pole with a torch hung from the end. His other hand clutched a catfish, wriggling and shiny. As he drew closer to Aspen, she realized he was holding not a torch, but a spear. The blade at the tip cast faint limelight. There was something truly unbalanced about this man. Even the fog seemed afraid to touch him. The air surrounding him for three feet was perfectly clear, and remained so even as he walked forward.
Aspen, realizing that there was no way around this man and nowhere to run, decided to turn on the charm and schmooze her way out of the situation.
“Hey,” she said. She batted her eyes once, then decided that the fog was too thick for small gestures.
The old man paused, sniffing the air. He held his fish higher, and higher still, until he was clutching it near his face like a cell phone.
“You hear that?” he asked. “We got a visitor. Get dressed!”
He threw the fish over the side of the bridge, then shuffled quickly over to Aspen. He stood before her, trembling in a way that reminded her of Yappy. She reached a finger in the bag and was comforted by the warm lick he gave her.
“So, you live out here?” Aspen asked.
The man winced, then thrust his spear quickly towards Aspen’s face, stopping just as the tip made contact with her cheek. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to keep her afraid to move. Through the glow of the blade, Aspen saw only the man’s eyes and mouth. The rest of the world became a green blur. “You wanna take a walk? Show me, the uh…your place?”
Aspen asked.
“Why aren’t you cowering?” The man snapped. He spun the spear once in his hand, flipping the butt end towards Aspen. He tapped it against her bag hard, causing Yappy to whine with each poke.
“Something’s wrong with your anima crystals, girl,” the man growled. He brought his face close to her bag, flipping his spear again to cast light on the situation.
“So,” Aspen tried again. “You like fishing, huh?”
“I am the Requiter,” he said.
“Cool! What’s your name?”
“I am the Requiter, The Righteous,” The Righteous said, “and fish…fish is…well, you’re one of them, aren’t you? A mortal? I don’t think you’ll ever quite understand. Luck of the draw, he always says. At any rate, you are now to be tested. You will present a crystal and we shall examine your life together. You come out of this clean and you’ll be on your way. But I’ve broken many a soul I have! Many a sole, too!” He erupted in laughter at a fish pun that was doomed the moment it hit Aspen’s wall of ignorance.
“I’ve seen things, girlie, don’t be shy. Let’s have it.” The Righteous punctuated this with a stiff tap of the bag with his forefinger. For Yappy, this was the last straw. With lightning speed, the dog uncurled himself from his pouch near the bottom of the bag, exploded upwards with such power that he tore the hem of what Aspen called his “gay little sweater ”, and burst from the top of the bag, latching on to The Righteous’s nose.
The old man dropped his spear and staggered backwards, clutching at Yappy, swatting, flailing. But this was Yappy’s proudest moment, his shining hour, the day the Chihuahua took down a god. Well, former god, lesser god, but nobody was around to tell him otherwise. The Righteous landed several sharp blows on Yappy’s back, which, due to the dog’s positioning, also happened to be the equivalent of punching himself in the face. The third and final blow was enough to stagger The Righteous back towards the side of the bridge. His momentum led him straight onto a writhing, slippery catfish, where his feet lost traction and he accelerated towards the railing. His last punch to Yappy’s back sent them both tumbling over the railing and into the deep.
All of this happened in the time it took Aspen to blink twice. One anima crystal crashed out of her bag, landing on the bridge with a sharp thok ! It slowly rolled to the edge of the bridge and tumbled into the deep, making a slight hiss as it sank below the waves. She couldn’t quite comprehend the crystal moving on its own any more than she could that her beloved accessory Yappy was now somewhere in the fathomless waters of the Underworld. She’d already coped with losing Yappy once as a child. Seeing him sink again only brought a small involuntary wince, more from the water looking cold than any emotional attachment. What she did know was that there was a glowing spear by her feet, something that would probably come in handy on her dark journey ahead. And best of all, nobody on Earth, or under Earth, in the last life, this life, or the next, nobody had an accessory like this. She was back on top of the fashion food pyramid. Her Yves Saint Laurent boots were made for walking, and that’s just what she did, leaving the bridge of the Requiter and heading into Parts Unknown.
&
nbsp; Chapter Seven
When I opened my eyes again I was asleep in the back of a bus heading uptown. After blinking a couple of times, I realized that what I thought was a wall separating me from the rest of the passengers was Goliath’s back. Eve was across the aisle from me.
“Welcome back,” she said.
“Whuh?” I whuhed.
“What just happened?”
“I saw her,” I said. I explained everything to Eve as quickly as possible, where Aspen had been and where I thought she’d be going.
“Whoever sent Pazuzu back for you was using the anima crystal as a homing device, right?” Eve asked.
“I told you it wasn’t me!” Lenny said.
“We don’t know enough to say either way. Where’s Monkey?”
“He’s in disguise. Won’t be seen on public transportation. I believe ‘humiliated beyond words’ was his description. So, he’s here somewhere, he’ll catch up to us at the next stop.”
“Which is…?”
“Whenever you say.”
Eve reached into her pocket and brought out a tiny black orb the size of a marble. It had a tiny hole punched roughly in one side. The anima crystal was spent, useless.
“Did you get a read on where it came from? Who it belonged to or who dealt it?”
“Take a look inside,” Eve said, handing me the crystal.
Most crystal dealers mark their wares with their personal sigil. Lets people know where to get the good stuff. There were faint brass markings on the outside of this crystal, but the hole had wiped out most of the marking. I sniffed it, hoping to pick up a trace, touched it to the tip of my tongue. It tasted green and fertile. Could be residue from Eve’s touch. There was another note there, iron or copper or brass… “A metal god?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
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