“Don’t hurt me,” the man says. “I don’t wanna die.”
“Look out!” Jake yells. The first guard, who ducked when the flash-bang went off, doesn’t seem to share his partner’s sentiment. He bolts up from behind the reception desk and pops off a round at one of the Amandas, hitting her high in the back of the shoulder. She spins around, the shotgun roaring in her hands.
The beanbag round hits the guard center-mass, knocking him flat against the wall. He drops his guns and slides down to the floor, gasping for breath.
“Don’t do that again,” Amanda says. She looks over her shoulder at the gunshot wound. “Goddamit,” she says. She hands the shotgun to Fitz as the other Amanda hands her a Taser from a backpack she has slung over her shoulder.
“My left arm’s gonna be next to useless,” she says. “You okay with the shotgun?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” He leans down to the guard he took the keys from. “You’re gonna want to get your friend some help,” he says. “He’s not dead, but he’s gonna feel like shit real soon.”
“Okay,” the guard says, his voice very small.
“Only, you know, wait a little while.”
The guard nods.
Jake, Fitz and the two Amandas pile into the elevator. Fitz pops the key into the slot and lets the doors slide closed.
“What floor?” he says.
Amanda frowns. “Top floor,” she says.
“What’s wrong?” Fitz says. “Is it the police?”
“No. The police won’t be coming. I’ve blocked all communication in a twelve-block radius and triggered a tactical alert for the police to an area south of here. The problem is that I still can’t sense Big.”
“Fuck,” Jake says. “After all that, he’s not here?”
“No, I think he’s still here. It’s just that there’s another shielded area on the top floor. He must be in there.”
“He shielded his building, then he shielded a room?” Fitz says.
“Guess he likes his privacy,” Jake says.
“One way to find out,” Fitz says, reaching out and stabbing the button with his finger. The elevator ascends.
“SO NOW,” THE Man says, looking at the shocked faces around the conference table, “you all have a choice to make. Seems the Baron here thought he could take me down. Had I been a lesser god, he might have done it, too. So the question is, on the relative scale of power between all of us, who thinks I’m less than they are?”
“He was a Voodoo Loa,” Zaphiel says. “He was not one of us.”
“And what are you exactly?” the Man says. “You’re no god. You never have been. Is that what you want to be? Is that why you’re so invested in getting your hands on the Chronicler? You think he’ll turn you into a real boy?”
“You say you have killed Bacchus. What proof do you have?” Zaphiel says.
“Wow, you’re just not gonna let up on this, are you?” The Man stands up, begins to walk around the table toward Zaphiel. Quetzalcoatl and Ereshkigal scramble out of his way. Zaphiel stands defiant in front of him, unflinching.
“Whattayasay, angel boy,” the Man says, “You wanna tussle? You think you can take me?”
“Take a shot,” Zaphiel says, “and see.”
“That is an excellent idea,” the Man says, and before he’s even done speaking, his hand whips out. The Cherub is lightning fast, but not fast enough to keep the Man from grasping Zaphiel by the throat.
The Cherub rakes at the Man’s face with his claws as he tries to pull free. Sparks fly where the claws strike, but the Man doesn’t so much as flinch.
The Man’s hand begins to glow as it did when he destroyed the Baron, and Zaphiel tries harder to pull away. He flaps his immense wings, the wind blowing the chairs away from the table, the pressure blowing out the glass in the conference room windows.
“My daughter did a real number on you,” the Man says. “What’d she use in those satchel charges? Crosses? Bits of myrrh? Little scraps of paper with Enochian glyphs on them? Whatever it was, and whatever she did to you, it’s nothing compared to what I’m about to do to you now.”
Zaphiel’s mouths roar and scream, his claws raking ineffectually against the Man’s face, his legs kicking but he might as well be kicking a steel wall. The Man doesn’t move.
“What do you want of me?” Zaphiel hisses.
“Oh, now that is an interesting question.” The Man lets up the pressure around Zaphiel’s neck, but doesn’t let go. “What do I want? What is that word? Ah, yes. Fealty. I want your fealty. Your loyalty. Your acknowledgement that I’m the one in charge.”
Zaphiel stares at him in horror. “I will never give up my loyalty to the One True God.”
“You don’t get it, you fucking hasbeen,” the Man says through gritted teeth, his hand tightening around Zaphiel’s throat, the glow and heat returning. “Daddy left you high and dry, and you know why? Because He knew His time was over and done with. This is the modern age, you antediluvian piece of shit. You’re a dinosaur and I’m the motherfucking meteor. Now you get the fuck in line or you join that pile of ash on the goddamn ground and all the others I’m going to burn who get in my fucking way. So you have a choice to make, Zaphiel. What’ll it be?” The Man grips tighter, the heat from his hand searing into the Cherub’s throat, bringing smoke and the stink of barbeque.
The Cherub grits his teeth from the pain, the skin under his jaw sloughing off. Rivulets of golden ichor begin to bubble and hiss as it erupts through burst capillaries.
“Fine!” the Cherub roars. “I give you my oath. You are my commander. You are my Lord.”
“Is there any other? Do you renounce your previous master?”
“Yes!” the angel screams. “Yes, just make it stop.”
The Man releases his grip around the Cherub’s throat and Zaphiel falls to the floor.
“Excellent. I’m glad we had this talk. I’m feeling really good about this team dynamic we’re building here.” He looks at the other gods cowering against the wall. “I’d really like to have you all on board. We’re going to be doing some exciting things.”
He smiles at their nods of agreement. “Good, good. Now—”
An explosion tears through the building downstairs, the sound carrying up through the shattered conference room windows.
The Man looks at his wristwatch. “Ah. Right on time. Ladies and gentlemen, the guest of honor has arrived.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“IS THIS CAPTAIN and Tenille?” Fitz says, trying to place the familiar pop song warbling over the elevator’s speakers. Horns, woodwinds, violins in place of the vocal track.
“Nah, this is Donny and Marie,” Jake says. “I think?”
“Supertramp,” the Amandas say. “‘The Logical Song.’ Off Breakfast In America.”
“Seriously?” Fitz says. “This sounds nothing like Supertramp.”
One Amanda starts to hum along with the music while the other belts out, “Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable.”
“Saxophone solo!” Jake yells. “Yeah, I remember this one.”
“It is really creepy hearing you sing,” Fitz says.
“What?” Amanda says. “I like this song.”
“Are you glitching again? Because now is probably a really bad time to do that.”
“Oh, screw you,” she says. “What the hell’s wrong with liking Supertramp?”
“Well, the Internet does have pretty bad taste,” Jake says.
“The Internet is also carrying a shotgun and a pistol,” the Amandas say.
“Whatever.” Jake rubs his hands on his pants, his brow furrowing. “How many more floors?”
Fitz shakes his head. “Fifteen or so.” He frowns. “You feel that?”
“Like pressure on the back of your eyeballs?”
“Yeah,” Fitz says. “It feels... off.” He’s starting to sense Big. And more.
“That’s because it is off,”
Amanda says. “My father is up there. And other gods, too.”
“Shit,” Jake says. “I didn’t sign up for this. Let me the hell outta here. I’ll walk down.” He starts stabbing at buttons, but the elevator doesn’t slow.
“We’re in express mode,” Fitz says. “We’re not stopping until we get to the top.”
“Then I hope you got a plan for taking them all out or getting us the hell out of here,” Jake says.
“Have you thought of anything?” Amanda says.
“Sort of?” he says. “I was thinking I could just grab those threads I saw around Big before and twist them around until I—I dunno, turn him into something else.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Amanda says. “Do you think you could it to more than one god at a time?”
“I’m not sure I can do it to one god at all. The whole point of coming here was to find out.”
“Oh, shit,” Jake says, sliding to the floor of the elevator. “This was a bad idea. This was a bad fucking idea.”
Something else isn’t right. “Didn’t you say the room Big was hiding out in blocked you from sensing him?” Fitz says.
“Yes,” Amanda says. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Jake says.
“If Big’s in a warded room, then how can we sense him? From what I can tell, he’s still in the room but the wards are broken. Not just turned off, but broken. Like a wall has been damaged, maybe?”
As the elevator ascends, Fitz gets a clearer sense of who’s up there. There’s the Man and Big Money, but also Zaphiel and three others that feel familiar.
Their names and stories suddenly pop into his head: Ereshkigal, Vaiśravana, Quetzalcoatl. And traces of another, too faint to fully grasp. All of them were in his dream.
“There are a lot of gods up there,” Fitz says. The voices start to chatter in his head. They know he’s coming. They’re waiting for him. He has a faint sensation of those red threads, and when he closes his eyes he can see them radiating out from the floor far above. He thinks about sweeping them aside and the voices in his head stop.
“Huh.”
“What?” Amanda says.
“I think I just figured out how to shut them up. If only I’d known that twenty years ago I could have saved myself some time in a psych ward.”
He closes his eyes again and sees the threads, traces them up. It doesn’t take long before he knows which ones belong to which gods. Whether he can do anything to them or not is another question entirely.
He should be freaking out. Sitting on the floor with Jake and pissing himself. Those are motherfucking gods up there. The last time he saw them, they played an epic game of keep-away with him until it turned into an all-out brawl. But instead of losing his mind, he feels surprisingly calm.
“Do you know anything about the layout of the building?” Fitz says.
“Some from public records,” Amanda says, “but knowing my brother, he made undocumented changes. Why?”
“We need to get Jake out of here. When we get to the top, is there a stairwell he can take to get down? Things are going to get messy no matter what happens and he shouldn’t be here.”
“Damn right, I shouldn’t,” Jake says. He rocks back and forth, with his eyes closed and his hands pressed against his temples. Fitz can feel the pressure in his mind from the gods’ attention on him; he can only imagine what Jake is going through.
“This elevator opens on a hallway. There’s an emergency exit leading to a stairwell to the left. As long as Big hasn’t changed it.”
“You got that?” Fitz says to Jake. “That door opens, you run for it. Get out of here. Don’t look back. I appreciate the help, but this is too much for you. Hell, it’s probably too much for me, too.”
“Then why aren’t you freakin’ out?” Jake says. His whole body is shaking.
“I don’t know.” He should be overwhelmed by the voices, but they’re subdued, like the background hum of a fan. “Maybe it was the dream I had. Maybe it was all of them coming at me at once. Their stories are starting to piece together for me now. I know the gods that are up there. I know their histories. I might not be able to do anything about them but—” He hesitates. But what, exactly? He understands them? He empathizes with them? They’re all a bunch of arrogant bastards with too much power trying to grab more. Then he has it.
“I might be able to stop them from making things worse.”
“Well, you’re about to have your chance,” Amanda says. “We’re almost there.”
Fitz reaches down and pulls Jake to his feet. The old man can barely stand, he’s shaking so hard. “Remember. That door opens, you run. Got it?”
He nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought what those Chumash gods did to me made me stronger. I thought I could do this.”
“You have helped,” Fitz says. “A lot. But this isn’t your deal. Thank you.”
“If you two are gonna hug, you better do it quick,” Amanda says. The elevator chimes. The doors slide open onto a marble inlaid floor with a mirror shine. Dark teak walls with frosted-glass lighting fixtures along them. Ahead, a set of double doors, and to the left an exit sign with a stairwell door.
“Good luck, man,” Jake says. “Hope they don’t kill you.” He staggers to the exit, wobbling, barely able to stand.
“Don’t fall down the stairs and break your neck,” Fitz says. He doesn’t know if getting him out will save him, but he’s sure that being here will end badly. He just hopes that he can get far enough away and not attract more of the gods’ attention. With a little luck, he should live long enough to drink himself to death.
“No promises,” Jake says, as he disappears through the door.
“Any suggestions?” Fitz asks the Amandas.
She shakes her head. “Not much I can do that will hurt any of them. If my father throws his Agents at us, I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but against him and the others? The best I can do is annoy them.”
A voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he can leave. They haven’t burst out of the door yet to grab him. They’re just waiting. He could follow Jake down the stairs and out the door and... then what?
Presuming they let him get very far, they’ll still track him down. He’s going to be hunted until the end of his life unless he can do something here and now. Whether that’s giving them a bloody nose or getting hit so hard he signs himself over to them, he doesn’t know.
There’s only one way to find out.
He throws the conference room doors open onto the strangest sight he’s seen outside of a hallucination. The Man wearing Blake’s body, Big Money shifting between forms so fast Fitz can’t keep up, Zaphiel looking like he’s been through a meat grinder and three other gods. Ereshkigal sitting with her arms crossed, looking somewhere between scared and pissed off, Vaiśravana in a full suit of plate and an expression on his face like he’s just bitten a lemon, and Quetzalcoatl, wings tucked in, feathers back, his body coiled up tight in a Herman Miller chair.
The entire bank of windows opposite the door have been blown out, which, Fitz thinks, is probably what broke the wards that hid the gods from Amanda and him.
The only one in the room who looks even remotely happy is the Man.
“Fitz, my boy! I’ve been expecting you,” the Man says, arms wide as if to embrace him. “You’re just in time to help me remake the world.”
SAM STEPS OVER the shattered glass in the lobby of the building and smells the pungent stink of gunpowder in the air. After her episode as a wolf, she’s having trouble getting used to being human again. She keeps wanting to smell everything, and is constantly frustrated that she can’t.
“I think we’re in the right place,” Sam says, picking up a discarded beanbag shell. She resists the urge to smell it. “But why are they here?”
Medeina explained to her that ever since she had tracked Fitz down for Zaphiel, she was able to find him fairly easily. He was obscured from time to tim
e, dropping off her senses, but then he would pop back up again. And knowing where he had just been made it even easier. From the safe house, she led Sam through a confusing game of Hot or Cold until they got close enough that she was certain where he was.
And once they knew where he was, they knew there was trouble.
Medeina had sensed the other gods before they even got off the freeway. She didn’t know who most of them were, but El Jefe and Zaphiel were among them.
“Perhaps Fitz was captured,” she adds. “I can feel the new goddess of technology upstairs with the rest of them.” She bends down and sniffs at some droplets of blood on the floor. “This is from one of her bodies. She was shot here.”
“Maybe they got hit at the safe house and she came here to get him back?” Sam says. “Dammit.”
“I don’t know, but they should have been safe there. She had the house warded against all manner of threats and detection. Anything that could have found them there would not have been stopped by you.”
“I know,” Sam says. “So you’re sure they’re upstairs?”
“Yes. Several floors above us.”
Sam goes to the elevator and punches the button. When it arrives, she goes inside the car and pushes the top floor. It flickers, but nothing happens.
“I was afraid of that. Security on these. You either need an emergency key or a key card. We won’t be getting up that way.” The emergency stairs are around a corner. “We’re walking it.” Sam opens the door, but Medeina doesn’t follow.
“What’s wrong?”
“There are seven other gods up there and Fitz. I imagine some of them are ones who joined Zaphiel as I did, or have joined with El Jefe. None of them will be happy to see me.”
“Can they hurt you?” Sam says.
“One on one? Possibly. We gods grow in power through belief, and there are so very few who believe in us anymore that many of us are fairly evenly matched. I suspect that I could take any one of them directly. But in numbers, they could almost definitely destroy me. Unless they’re distracted, it’s a good chance they already know I’m here.”
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