He had, and he’s still not sure what exactly it all was. A lot of it was meaningless drivel, as far as he could tell. Not even letters or numbers so much as the idea of letters and numbers. Concepts of code, abstractions of words. Notions, ideas, perceptions. But very little concrete enough for him to latch onto.
At the time it, well, it didn’t make sense exactly. It just didn’t feel so alien. It’s like, when he got that hit of who she was, he became like her somehow. But now he’s trying to look at it all through the lens of his own brain and it’s not quite working.
Oddly, though, he feels like the jolts he got off Bacchus, Medeina and the Agent are resolving. Becoming clearer. He knows the names of Medeina’s family—Dievas, Perkūnas, Teliavelis, Dalia and others—and that she has almost died at the hands of her family on at least three occasions. That she can turn into a hare or a wolf, and that she gets her power from the woods.
Bacchus is more difficult. There is just so much there to wade through and so much of it contradicts itself. But he knows the god’s stories, even though they make next to no sense. He knows that he is the son of Semele of Thebes and the god Zeus and sometimes the son of Zeus and Persephone and sometimes Zeus is Jupiter and sometimes Bacchus is Dionysus and sometimes destroyed by the Titans before his birth and sometimes carried to term within Zeus’s body after Semele was destroyed and—
It seems as though all of these stories are true and none of them is.
But Amanda is still a mystery to him. He’s still sorting through what she is. It’s like there’s some kind of block preventing him from understanding her. When he looks at it too much, it all turns into a red haze in his mind.
“Well, as long as you still know how to find this other Chronicler you were talking about.”
“I do,” she says. “He’s nearby, actually.”
“What? Where?”
“Place down the street.” She looks at the untouched burger, the guns, the bottles of oxy. They all tell a story, he knows, but what story is it? What story is she making out of all those things? “But I think maybe you need to eat something and get some sleep first. Maybe take some pills.”
“I’m not crazy about taking the pills,” he says. It’s a weird, foreign feeling, like he’s just said, Sure, I’d like to carve up and eat my grandmother. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s there all the same. “I don’t want to tune out. Not now.” He’s too scared, too wired.
“You still need to get some rest,” she says.
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, watches the starburst patterns explode on the insides of his eyelids. He knows she’s right, but he just can’t do it.
“Tell me about him. Who is he? Where is he?”
“His name’s Jake Malmon. Been in and out of jail, mental institutions, group homes. Guy’s a mess, but he’s starting to turn his life around. Working as a janitor at a strip club off Tujunga in North Hollywood.”
“Blue Monkey?” Fitz says. He’s been to just about every strip bar in Los Angeles. Some legal, some not. It’s amazing how many guys in East L.A. have set something up with a pool table in their garage for girls to dance on. There’s only two legal ones he knows about off Tujunga, and only one of them is sketchy enough to hire a crazy ex-con with a history of mental illness.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” she says. If she’s surprised he knows the place, she doesn’t show it. “He’s not on shift yet. You’ve got time to get some rest before we track him down.”
“Why don’t we just go to where he lives?” Fitz wants to go now. He’s almost shaking with the need for action.
“Because he lives out of his car,” she says. “And he’s really good at avoiding surveillance cameras. I don’t know where he is. But I know where he’ll be.”
“He sounds paranoid,” Fitz says. He can’t blame him. Probably has good reason to be. If he’s as far gone as Amanda says, he’s probably wearing tinfoil hats.
“Paranoia. Survival mechanism. Tomayto, tomahto,” she says. “Point is, we aren’t doing anything for a while, so you might as well get some sleep. Oh, and one more thing.” She ducks back into her room and brings out a box of Winchester 9mm hollow-points and tosses it onto the bed next to the guns. “That ought to make you feel better.”
“Thanks,” he says. “It does. Sleep, huh?” He’s not convinced. He picks up the box of rounds and turns it back and forth in his hands. In a world of gods who can’t die, what good are they? He tosses them back onto the bed.
“Sleep would be good.”
“Do you sleep?”
“I—” she cocks her head like a dog trying to figure out a particularly difficult problem. “Not as such? I mean, this body kind of has to, but I can have part of the brain sleeping while the rest runs.”
“So, you don’t sleep.”
“No, I don’t sleep.”
Of course she doesn’t sleep. She’s not just a clone, he realizes. She’s the fucking Terminator. He wonders if he’s made a terrible mistake trusting her at all. “I need you to leave now,” he says. “Just. Just leave me alone for a while.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice a little too flat. When he looks at her, sometimes, the façade slips. She’s not a person anymore. She’s not even a computer program. He doesn’t know what she is. “I’ll check on you in a few hours.” She steps back into her room and closes the door.
Fitz closes and bolts his side of the connecting doors and sits back on the bed. He pulls himself in, huddles with his arms wrapped around his legs. How can he trust her? She’s not even human.
He loads his guns and tries to figure out what to do next.
SAM SWIMS TOWARD consciousness the way a drowning man grasps at a life preserver. Her awareness is hazy at best, a twilight state where time and memories crash against each other in waves. She slips in and out, not quite connecting with the real world.
The fuck did Fitz dose her with?
“Would you mind checking on my associate?” Blake says. At least, Sam thinks it’s Blake. He sounds very far away. There is a jolt. Are they in a car? They must be.
“She can’t hear us,” a woman’s voice says. “She’s still unconscious.” She’s never heard her before. Another surprise employee? Like those guys in the helicopters? Where the hell had Blake gotten them, anyway? She thought she knew everyone Blake hired, but they just... appeared.
“Are you sure?” Blake says. “I’d hate for her to hear this bit. It might upset her.”
A long pause, and for some reason Sam swears she can feel the woman looking at her, her scrutiny like a physical thing bearing down on her. Then the woman says, “I’m sure.”
“Good. I have an idea for bringing Fitz into the fold, but it’s going to require Samantha in a capacity I’m not sure she’s going to like. I’ll need to gain Fitz’s trust, and that means I’ll need to look more beneficial than the alternative.”
“You want to use this mortal as bait?”
“More as... pathos. Fitz needs to come willingly, and I’m going to need to show him that the other gods are evil. And since she and Fitz are friends—”
“You want her killed.”
The words hang in the air and Sam can’t tell if that’s really what she said. But it was clear as a bell, even through the haze of the drug. She wants to pull herself up out of it, grab Blake and demand answers. But she can’t.
“Retired,” Blake says. “Killed sounds so final.”
“But it is what you want,” the woman says. “You want her murdered at the hands of one of the others, where the Chronicler can see it.”
Blake sighs. “Yes. Though I really wish you’d embrace a better way of phrasing these things. Tone is very important, you know.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I want you to kill her.”
The woman says nothing for a long time and Sam is hoping she’ll say something like, No, you’re off your fucking nut, but instead she says, “All right.”
“Good. I’ll let
you know when. I just wanted to make sure you were on board.”
“I have questions.”
“I’m sure you do,” Blake says. “Like, if you kill Samantha and Fitz blames you, how are you going to get anything out of his prophecies?”
“Something like that,” she says.
“Don’t you worry,” Blake says. “I’ll handle that. Now—”
“She’s waking up,” she says.
And suddenly the wall that has been separating Sam from consciousness lifts and her eyes snap open.
“Samantha, my girl!” Blake says. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m not sure.” She looks at the woman and back to Blake. She’s not sure she heard what she thinks she heard. Did they really just plan to kill her?
Sam is in the back of a limousine. Blake hates limos. Hates being driven around. Says it reminds him of his days shuttling boy bands around to press junkets. She’s not sure, but she doesn’t think this is the same limo that he had at the museum. What the hell is going on?
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I was talking to Fitz,” Sam says. “And Fitz stabbed me with a syringe.”
“You went down like a drunk prom date,” Blake says. “But it’s good to see you alive and kicking. This is Medeina, by the way.”
The woman is dressed like a reject from a Robin Hood movie. She’s big, bigger than Sam is, with a body-builder’s physique and dressed in rough green and brown fabric and wearing a strange, horned crown. She has a rough look to her, rugged. Someone who knows how to work with her hands. Her forest-green eyes bore into her. Sam has no doubt that this woman could easily snap her neck.
“Nice to meet you,” Sam says, her voice quiet.
“She’s a consultant. She’ll be assisting us in our quest to find our lost boy. She’s very good at finding things. Bit of a hunter, actually.”
“Great,” Sam says. The limo slows, rolls to a stop. The limo’s windows are tinted almost black, but Sam thinks they’re back at Blake’s condo.
“Ah, we’re here. We’ll be resuming the search for Fitz in a little while. You need to get some shut eye. I’ve had a spare room made up for you.”
Sam doesn’t know what to say to that. Blake doesn’t let anyone stay over at his place. Ever. And that he would offer? Or even have extra sheets? Or even the room? His spare rooms are all filled with cardboard boxes of legal papers and old souvenirs from his producing days.
“Thanks,” she says, finally.
The driver, a man in a suit like those guys in the helicopters, opens the door and Blake slides out. Sam goes to follow him, and Medeina stops her with a hand on her arm that’s as rigid as steel.
“You heard all that,” she says. It’s not a question.
“Yeah. You’re supposed to murder me.”
“I have no intention of killing you,” she says. “I agreed because he is dangerous; and I let you hear him because together we may be able to stop him.”
“Stop him from doing what?”
“I don’t know, yet,” she says. “But it will not be good for either one of us.”
“So what the hell do I do?”
“Play along. Do what he says. I will come up with a plan.”
“You going to tell me what it is when you do?”
“Possibly,” she says. She lets go of Sam’s arm and Sam can feel bruises welling up on the skin. She slides out after Blake, leaving Sam alone in the limousine.
Sam takes a deep breath and gets out of the car, wishing this was all just a nightmare.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FITZ STUFFS THE two pistols into his waistband at the small of his back and lets his jacket fall over them. He should be able to get hold of them in a hurry if things go south. His hands have a slight tremor and he considers taking some oxy. Instead, he drops one of the bottles in his pocket in case he needs it later.
The burger still sits uneaten on the plate, and now it’s too disgusting to even consider eating. He’s managed to get a couple hours of sleep, but it was fitful and full of dreams of gods and torture. Thousands of them transforming the world into a Hell on Earth, an Amanda Terminator turning the land into a Hieronymous Bosch triptych of blood and fire and pain. Blake standing on top of a huge pile of broken vinyl records shooting Agents out of his hands like death rays. He wonders what will really happen if the gods force him to make people believe in them again. Will it be that bad? His subconscious certainly seems to think so.
There is no way he’s going to let that happen.
He’s paced his room like a caged animal that knows it’s safer where it is but desperately wants to get out anyway. He has unloaded and reloaded his guns, taken a shower, got dressed, loaded his guns again, and now he’s fidgeting.
He’s considered knocking on the adjoining room door to see if it’s time to go yet. He’s gone to the door half a dozen times already, but he’s still freaked out by his last conversation with Amanda.
The phone buzzes on the bed. MEET ME IN THE LOBBY, it says.
Is he ready for this? If this other Chronicler is as crazy as Amanda says, he’s not sure what he can show him. Has he figured out some way to influence things the way Fitz could at Big’s casino? Can he teach him to do it again?
And more, is he ready to trust Amanda? He keeps going back and forth. She’s human one second, some kind of weird construct the next. What exactly is she capable of?
All the things he’s met so far have some kind of power unique to what they are. Downloading her brain into a clone body can’t be the only thing she can do.
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. Types OK into the phone and, before he can change his mind, slips out the door.
The guards on this floor were given explicit instructions to not be seen; he knows they’re watching him from behind the doors. He still feels exposed. The carpet of the hallway muffles his footsteps, but they sound like gunshots to his ears in the thick silence and when the elevator dings it’s like the pealing of a funeral bell.
Only four floors, but the ride down feels like he’s descending into the underworld. Maybe he is. The elevator opens and he steps out into an eerie emptiness. The doors slide shut behind him. He doesn’t see anyone and the only sound is a smooth jazz soundtrack quietly playing over the lobby’s speakers. Something is wrong. This is an airport hotel. There should be guests, hotel staff. But there’s no one.
His phone buzzes. WHERE ARE YOU? it reads.
In the lobby, he types. Like you said.
NOT ME. GET BACK UP HERE.
Fitz stares at the phone for a beat, then backs up against the closed elevator doors and starts hammering at the up button. He slides the phone in his jacket pocket, scans the room for bodies. There’s no blood or severed heads, so he doubts it’s Medeina. An empty room doesn’t really seem Bacchus’ style.
“Hello, Louis,” Zaphiel says, stepping from behind a column in the lobby. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“How’d you find me?” Fitz says, cringing. Nobody calls him Louis.
“One of your new friends gave me a call,” Zaphiel says. “Told me you’d be here. You really should choose your friends more carefully. Join up with the wrong crowd and you never know what they’ll do.”
Goddammit. That fucker Big sold him out. He should have known that would happen. You can’t trust money.
“You’re looking good,” Fitz says, stalling for time and trying to figure a way out that doesn’t get him kidnapped or worse. “I mean, you know, better. With the one face and all. And no wings. And not on fire.”
“Yes, that was a nasty business earlier,” Zaphiel says, nodding. “It took me hours to recover. Where did you learn that? That’s not something you just pick up.”
“A friend gave me a hand. Seemed to do the trick.” He’s trying to remember what that symbol was that Amanda had him draw on the side of the utility bucket. It was a circle? Maybe? He’s pretty sure there were some wavy lines in it.
“I think we got off
on the wrong foot,” Zaphiel says, stepping closer. Fitz reaches under his jacket for the two pistols. Zaphiel stops, wary. “What do you have there, Louis?”
“Something I don’t think you’ll like.” Fitz doesn’t know if the guns will do anything to him, but if it slows him down, that will be enough. They did a great job on Blake’s head, even if it didn’t stick.
“Oh? Do tell,” Zaphiel says, his head contorting, his body twisting. “I’m dying to find out what it is.”
Fitz knows what happens next. A few more seconds and Zaphiel’s going to be ten feet tall with four wings, four faces and a whole shitload of bad intentions. He’s not keen to repeat the experience, so he pulls out both guns, thumbs back the hammers and unloads in Zaphiel’s face.
The bullets never get there.
They stop in mid-air, spinning, hovering inches from Zaphiel’s face. He looks at them the way a dog looks at something it isn’t sure is food, cocking his head first to one side and then the other, all the while continuing to morph into the four-faced Biblical abomination.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Zaphiel says, his voice a four-part harmony that rattles through Fitz’s skull like a dentist’s drill.
“Yeah, well,” Fitz says, trying really hard not to piss his pants in complete terror. “I had to try.”
“Oh, totally,” Zaphiel says. “Here, maybe you should have these back.”
The elevator dings behind him, the doors sliding open. Amanda grabs Fitz, pulls him into the elevator and throws him to the side as Zaphiel reverses the bullets. They slam into her, punching through her chest and face, blowing huge, gaping holes through her body, the bullets smacking into the back of the elevator wall. She hits the floor with a wet, meaty thud, blood pouring out of her like it’s running out a faucet.
Fitz hammers on the door close button, but Zaphiel shoves his now enormous, clawed hands through the opening and holds them apart. “Was that your friend?” Zaphiel says, his words making the elevator vibrate. “The one who showed you how to burn me? I don’t think I like her much. She can’t help you anymore.” He steps into the elevator and reaches for Fitz.
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