by R. E. Vance
Bonus Content
OK—so we’re accumulating quite the cast down here in Paradise Lot. It seems that this world cannot be contained by just following Jean-Luc’s story. That’s why I’m writing a series of short stories that will NEVER BE SOLD, and are reserved for fans of the series.
Details can be found at the end of the boxset.
Paradise Lot Urban Fantasy Thrillers
(click the links to jump straight to the book)
GONEGOD WORLD
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CRYSTALDREAMS
INTERLUDES
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GONEGOD WORLD
A Beginning of Sorts
This morning—
Before the gods left, Milad’s purpose—his soul’s sole reason for existence—was to protect his god’s domain. Not an easy task when your master is Wepwawet, the Egyptian god of war. One would think, now that Wepwawet is gone, Milad’s life would be easier.
But in this GoneGod World, life is anything but easy.
“This way,” he growls at the two cynocephaly who march behind him. Milad gestures toward a narrow dark road. “A shortcut. Less humans.”
“Will the Unique One be waiting for us?” asks Rictor, a creature so large he must tuck his veiny arms close to his body to fit into the human-size alleyway.
Milad shakes his head. “The Unique One will appear in a day, perhaps two. Our mission is to ensure that his accommodations are safe before he arrives.”
“Safe?” growls Kelb. Unlike his companions, who hide their muscular frames with large overcoats and their wolf-like faces with wide-brimmed fedoras, Kelb dresses as he did when fighting for his god in Asyut: hemp cloth around his waist, gold bands clamped to his arms and nothing else. His overpronounced canines tear into a huge hunk of bison leg. “There is nowhere safe for our kind in this world.”
“Our kind?” Milad lifts an eyebrow. “And who exactly is ‘our kind’? Few creatures on this world have the head of a wolf and the body of a man.”
“What do the humans call us? Others? They are now our kind,” Rictor says.
Rictor is right. It doesn’t matter what you are—a Chinese dragon, a Japanese oni demon, a Norse draugr or a Greek minotaur—to the humans you’re now an Other. The GoneGod World isn’t big enough for both humans and Others, but the GoneGod World is the only option—for all the heavens and hells were shut down when the gods left. Indefinitely.
As they walk down the lane, a human man sleeping on a filthy, discarded futon mattress stirs. He glares up at the three cynocephaly as if they were the scum on his shoes. Rictor snorts. Even homeless vagrants see themselves as better than Others—at least they’re human, after all.
“Agreed. It is bad enough that we are no longer immortal. Now we must defend ‘our kind’ from them.” Kelb growls at the homeless man, his wolf snout exposing teeth that even nightmares fear.
Milad places a forceful hand on Kelb’s chest and growls at the beast, locking eyes with him. Milad may be a refugee now, but he is still a guardian.
Kelb considers challenging his leader, but is wise enough to know not to test wills with the ancient cynocephalus. After all, Milad was the first of them to be made. The first and most powerful. Kelb looks down and whimpers with a submissive murmur.
Milad is satisfied. “Good Kelb,” he says, bending down to the human. “I apologize on behalf of my friend. He is still learning mortal manners. Are you not, Kelb?”
Kelb grunts affirmative.
From his pocket, Milad pulls out one of the few joys he has found on this mortal realm—a can of Coca-Cola—and hands it to the homeless man. And as it is their way, Milad asks, “Do you accept our apologies, human?”
If the homeless man does not, then the cynocephalus must find a greater tribute to bestow on him. But the homeless man does not know their way and simply nods.
Kelb sighs. “Yes, I fear that mortal manners are quite difficult for me to understand. Therefore, I offer my apologies as well. Have my meat.” Reluctantly, he holds his half-eaten leg of bison over to the man, who, even more reluctantly, accepts.
↔
“You are too kind, Milad,” Kelb says as they approach the mouth of the alleyway.
“And you are too quick to anger,” counters Milad. “It will just take time for the humans to accept us. This is their home, after all.”
“Was,” corrects Kelb.
“Was … is … States of being. As our god Wepwawet was once the Opener of Ways, so too will we now be on this mortal plane. We shall open the way for peace and coexistence in this GoneGod World.”
“How?” asks Rictor.
“The Unique One will show us the way. He is the Opener of Ways now.”
“You wax poetic, my leader,” Kelb sneers, “but you forget that the Unique One is but one creature. One Other.”
“He is more than that,” Rictor protests. “You’ll see, Kelb. He will open the way.”
The troop breaks free from the alleyway and onto a main thoroughfare that proudly possesses the name House Street. There are no homeless sleeping here. Milad takes in a deep breath and his ears twitch with nervous energy—not so much because of what he senses. It is what is not there that raises the alarm.
There are none of the usual smells attributed to humans: sweat and perfume; mortal secretions and scented soaps. But there is one scent that Milad recognizes. An ancient odor belonging to a creature whose body is but a formality—for a Force of Nature does not need a body to be alive.
It is a smell that fills Milad with terror.
Tumbling to one side, he cries out, “RUN!” But as the word leaves his lips, he watches helplessly as an invisible force slams into Rictor and Kelb, embedding their bodies into the redbrick wall opposite them.
Milad is a seasoned warrior; he knows to mourn his friends after the battle.
Now he must fight.
Summoning centuries of experience and burning decades of time, Milad leaps toward his attacker with such speed and ferocity that no force on Earth—human or Other—could withstand his attack.
But this is no ordinary Other.
Milad’s claw slashes, but instead of scooping out muscle and sinew, intestines and bone, it is stopped mid-strike. Milad tries to pull back, but it’s as if his hand is stuck on his attacker’s chest.
Not stuck—attached.
Milad tries to slash with his other hand, but this time he is repelled by some opposite force—like two negatively charged magnets.
“I expected him to have guardians—but mongrels?” the attacker says in a casual, almost bored tone. “Surely one as divine as he could find better protection than stray dogs. Oh well, I guess we must take what we can find in this Godless World. Tell me, Guardian, do you know who I am?”
“You are an Avatar,” Milad manages as he struggles against this insurmountable force. “What do you want?”
The Avatar steps under the light of a flickering lamp. Although a truly divine and powerful being, he wears common black trousers and a long-sleeved black dress shirt. The Avatar looks almost human. Almost. For everything about his being screams human except for his smile. His impossible grin stretches, quite literally, from ear to ear.
“Where is he?” the Avatar asks.
Milad grunts, “What do you want with the Unique One?”
“That is not the concern of mortals.”
“You are mortal now as well. Just like the rest of—”
An invisible hand wraps tight around Milad’s chest, cutting his words short.<
br />
The Avatar’s grin has wavered, but just as quickly he smiles again. “I merely wish to offer the Unique One my services,” he says with a mocking bow. “Now tell me.”
Milad says nothing, knowing that his silence is a death sentence. But after centuries of battle, death has become this cynocephalus’s shadow, and he does not fear it. What he does fear is what will come because of his failure to protect his charge.
“Will you not speak? Very well, then—join your friends.” The Avatar subtly lifts his left baby finger and Milad is thrown against the wall next to the flattened frames of Rictor and Kelb. He can’t breathe; as the relentless force continues, it’s as if he is being buried by several tons of water.
No, not water—air. He is drowning in air.
“I know, I know,” says the Avatar. “I’ve encountered your kind before. You will die before you betray your charge. Still …” The Avatar approaches closer. “You don’t need to tell me. For I have … ah … what’s the word? Flattened several before you. They tell me that you have something the humans call a …” The Avatar rummages through Milad’s pockets. “… a … Ah, here it is. A ‘flyer,’ as the humans call it. Several flyers, it seems. Oh, and something else … a photograph. How strange is the human obsession with freezing moments? Moments that are so much better captured by the mind.”
Tossing the old photograph and short stack of paper aside, the Avatar keeps but one flyer, placing it in his pocket.
“To … what … end?” Milad manages, sacrificing his lungs’ last bit of air.
As the Avatar walks away, he picks up Milad’s fallen fedora and places it on his own head. “Why, to the only end that matters.” The Avatar grins wider still. “To regain what the gods have so callously denied us with their departure.”
And with those last words, the Avatar flicks his finger one last time, gravitating unimaginable pressure onto Milad’s body.
As bone, muscle and flesh flatten against the red, mortal-made bricks … as the Avatar turns the cynocephalus into little more than a stain on the wall … Milad wonders if he has a soul.
He can’t remember if Wepwawet imbued him with one the day his god made him.
But even if the old Egyptian god deemed Milad worthy of a soul, would it matter? After all, now that the gods are gone, there is nowhere for his soul to go.
↔
↔↔↔
↔
Also, this morning—
I’ve had the same dream every night since they left. I’m running from a devouring darkness that rushes over the world like a tidal wave of emptiness. I run on charred earth, unsure if the darkness or the fear will get me first. In the distance, I can just make out a pinprick of light ahead. If I can get to it, I will be safe. My legs burn and my lungs heave. I run and run toward the light, but before I reach it, the world stops. Not like a ledge or a shore: the world just stops. Null and void. And I know, in that way you do in dreams, that I’m standing at the end of everything.
I turn around. If I’m going to die, I want to see it coming. The darkness slows down as the rushing wave breaks into a creeping black fog. It knows I’m trapped. It’s savoring my terror.
Just before the darkness envelops me, a burning light grows from the Void.
Like the darkness, it blinds.
I am surrounded by light and dark until a hand reaches from the burning halo and pulls me somewhere else.
That’s when the dreams differ, because every night she takes me somewhere new.
↔
Tonight, we walk on a sandy beach that reminds me of where I proposed to her. This is more secluded though—there’s no other sign of life. An imperfect memory of a place made perfect by time and imagination.
I’m in linen shorts and little else. Bella is in the same sleeveless sundress she wears on all our nightly rendezvous. It’s the dress she wore the night we got engaged; the one she wore when we drove up to PopPop’s cabin for what would pass as our honeymoon.
The dress she was wearing the day the Others killed her.
The hem is dry despite her being ankle-deep in the ocean. She’s standing next to me, so close that we could hold hands. But we never do. Even though I want it more than anything, we never touch. I don’t know why.
“Hi, Bella,” I say. She doesn’t look at me, her eyes fixed on the cloudless blue sky. “I thought you hated saltwater. What was it you used to say? ‘Salt’s a preservative and I don’t like the thought of anything preserving me.’ ”
“Dust to dust,” she says, still staring at the same spot in the sky. A single cumulus cloud has crept in from beyond the horizon.
“Yeah, yeah—‘dust to dust.’ Mummify me, I say. I want to be this beautiful forever.”
“I stand by my words,” she chuckles, looking at me for the first time that night. “I wanted life to use me up, and when it was done with me, I wanted to fade away into whatever came next.”
“And did you?”
“Nothing comes next. You know that.”
Yeah, I do. Everyone knows that Heaven is closed and Hell doesn’t exist.
“So what are you? A ghost, haunting my dreams?” I ask. The words come out bitter and angry.
Her mood darkens, and in a distant voice she says, “Ghosts aren’t real. Not anymore.”
“Well, they kind of are,” I say. “Have you spoken to your mother recently?”
A smile creeps across her face as she shoots me her You-better-behave look.
“Be nice. You promised.” Her smile fades and she is looking at the horizon again. The lone cloud has been replaced with a gray, ominous skyline. She points. “There’s somewhere you need to be.”
I hear the distant roll of thunder as the wind picks up.
“There is nowhere I want to be,” I say, raising my voice so she can hear me over the wind.
A fork of lightning strikes the sand beside us as a gale-force wind blows in from the sea, far too fast to be natural. The once-blue sky is now blanketed in grays.
“I didn’t say it was somewhere you wanted to be. There is somewhere you need to be,” she says, flattening the wrinkles of her impossibly dry dress.
“I don’t want this to end. Not yet.”
“Oh, Jean-Luc, I don’t want you to go either.” She captures me with her intense cerulean-blue eyes and, in a serious tone I’ve seldom heard her use, says, “Jean, there’s a storm coming. The thing about storms is that they always end. Remember that, and remember your promise.”
I nod. My promise. A promise I made to the dream of my dead wife one lonely night in the middle of nowhere. A promise that I would go to Paradise Lot and help Others. A promise I plan to keep.
The storm is getting stronger. I need to wake up. “Will you be back?” I ask her this every time I have to leave.
“Whenever you sleep,” she always replies, smiling. “Someone has to save you from your dreams.”
I know she will. She always does.
“In this life and the next,” I say, just before my body jolts as the real world comes into focus.
↔↔↔
My mobile phone was ringing. I glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. Only one person would call me at this time: Penemue.
Chapter 1
Of Angels and Men
I parked in front of the Paradise Lot Police Station. I had been summoned there—if such a lofty term could be used for being roused from a perfect dream at such a GoneGodless hour—to bail out a certain guest of mine. My head throbbed from lack of sleep. I hated being woken up; I hated being taken away from Bella.
From outside, the station looked like any other: redbrick building; a boring backlit sign with the name in big blue letters; a flex-face shield above the door. Typical—until you went inside.
The first indication that the Paradise Lot Police Station—and by extension the world—was different was that the entrance had been unceremoniously enlarged. Whereas the doors were previously wide enough to accommodate three humans standing shoulder to shoul
der, now they could fit an elephant.
The next indication that it wasn’t your typical cops’ HQ was who manned the front desk: Medusa. As in turn-you-to-stone lady-of-legend and friggin’ Queen-of-the-Gorgons Medusa. As I walked in, at least seven of her thirty or so snake dreadlocks looked up. “Jean,” she said, not taking her eyes off the computer screen, “what brings you here at …” One of the snakes looked at the clock on the wall. “Three in the morning?”
“Same old, same old,” I said. She giggled and pulled out a form for me. I avoided eye contact as I took it from her. I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me to stone—she could, if she was willing to burn through a couple years of her life—it was just that some habits die harder than others. It didn’t matter that in this Brave New GoneGod World she no longer guarded the Golden Fleece, or that she, like all cops, had taken a vow to serve and protect. Nor did it matter that she was mortal, with all the insecurities, doubts and fears that entailed …
She was still friggin’ Medusa.
Her giggles faded, and a shy hand took the signed form back. A few taps on a keyboard later, a hurt voice said, “Officer Steve will be with you in a moment.”
I got the feeling one of her snakes was eyeing me, which was confirmed by a disdainful hiss. I reminded myself that humans didn’t look at her out of the same superstitious habit as me. Hell, most Others probably avoided looking at her for the same damn reason. Medusa, like all Others, was newly mortal—thirteen years, to be exact—and I guess she had gone through all the existential angst any teenager did. After all, wasn’t not being seen the basis of countless teenage vampire novels?
Oh, hell …
I forced myself to look up. Medusa worked with her head down, but a large green snake that stemmed from the top of her skull edged forward. Its forked tongue flicked a couple of inches from my face. Partly because I was still half-asleep and partly because the snake genuinely looked like it was smiling, I petted it on the head.