by R. E. Vance
“Oath-Breaker,” he whispered. “Other-Slayer. Do not presume that I am unaware of who you are. The path to redemption is long and filled with peril. You are correct that I will not drop you. But that does not stop me from telling your Army commanders where their precious little AWOL soldier went. What is the statute of limitations on desertion? Do you know, Oath-Breaker? Or maybe I don’t tell them where you are, but rather inform some of the less tame Others where you are. There are many who would like nothing more than vengeance against the once-great Exterminator. Tell me, how long do you think you will survive without an army to protect you? You have forty-eight hours to tell me who is responsible for the death of the Unicorn.”
My face drained of all color. After Bella died, I had re-enlisted for a while before things got really bad. At the time, humans were no longer at war with Others, but Special Forces were put in place as a countermeasure against the “less-agreeable” Others. Black-ops kind of thing—take out this terror cell, assassinate this uppity Other. Typical stuff we humans have always done to protect our interests. Only thing was, after a few missions I couldn’t stomach it anymore and just left. Didn’t tell Command—hell, they thought I was dead anyway—didn’t even bother to get my stuff. I just left. That’s a pretty serious offense, but at the time, I couldn’t have cared less. I thought I had kept my secret pretty well, but if Michael knew, who else did? I was scared. Terrified.
But then it hit me … Michael must have known for a while—probably figured it out not long after I got back that second time. Maybe got suspicious when I never changed the name on the lease from Bella’s to mine, or stopped signing for things in my full name or used Penemue’s name on the utility bills and car registration. And despite knowing, he still hadn’t turned me in. I needed to know why.
But more importantly, I needed to call his bluff.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’ve got to get better at threatening! You’re the original Boy Scout. You don’t break rules or even bend them … for whatever reason, you haven’t told the Army yet, and you’re not going to tell on me now.”
Michael smiled. And not a happy kind of smile. More like a Got you! kind of smile. I mean, I’d seen the Devil smile and it scared me, but this took “intimidating smile” to a whole new level. My body literally curled up, trying to get into the fetal position and die.
But Michael wouldn’t let me off so easy. “You are correct, human. Yes, I must now obey mortal laws. But they are not the highest order. There are principles that negate their necessity. The path of redemption, for example, cancels the need to obey many mortal laws, and I, as a guardian of such principles, must give those who have proven themselves worthy a chance to do so unimpeded. That is why I have never told the mortal armed forces where you hide. Yet, if you should encumber this investigation, then I shall consider you to have strayed from the path and, therefore, no longer exempt.”
A subtle pulse of luminosity passed through his eyes. “As for my other threat—do you know which principle is one rung lower than redemption, but still above mortal law? Righteous revenge. I am sure there are many Others that qualify, do you not think?”
I gulped. He had me there. During my fighting days, I had killed just as much out of pleasure as necessity, and his moral compass would not twitch one bit by helping some Other get revenge on me over some of the terrible things I’d done.
But I was surprised to see that my—what did he call it?—path of redemption offered me some leeway with him. Seems I’d been doing some things right … not that it would do me any good now.
The shock of his threats was so all-encompassing that I didn’t notice that the whole time we were speaking, he was lowering us. He dropped me, and I yelped as I fell all of three feet, before tumbling ungraciously on my ass smack-dab in the middle of the PD’s investigation.
“Jean-Luc Matthias, should any information concerning the events that transpired last night come to mind, please call the number on this card.” He dropped a business card with Michael Arch, Chief of Police written on it in bold letters. “Thank you for your cooperation. Let’s wrap it up, boys.”
The Billy Goats Gruff bleated, and the eldest said without a hint of irony or suggestion, “Let’s go graze Miss Dolly’s backyard.”
Hellelujah—I was absolutely, totally and unequivocally screwed.
Chapter 3
Even Angels Have Wicked Schemes
With Michael gone, the police wrapped up their investigation and left. I headed to my room and tapped on Castle Grayskull, nervous that one of the cops might have accidentally found the hiding fairy. She was, after all, a myth of a myth, and finding her would be like finding the back door to Narnia.
“Tink?” I said. “Tink … are you OK?”
At first there was nothing, but then the left eye of the turret flickered and the three-inch-tall golden fairy popped out. She hit me square in the nose. I don’t know if a punch from a Lego-size fist should hurt, but it did. My eyes were watering.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
She shook a fist at me.
“Look, Tink, I had no idea this was going to happen or how to stop this.”
A pang of guilt hit me—earlier, my instincts had told me that Grinner was bad news and I ignored them. In another life, I would have never let it go, especially not to bake some cookies for Miral’s event.
“It’s not like I asked for this. I didn’t ask Joseph to move in here—I didn’t pick a fight with that maniac. So you can be as angry at me as you like, but for once, this isn’t my fault.”
Tink fluttered around the room twice and then pointed up at Joseph’s room. Being here, hiding in Castle Grayskull, she didn’t know what had happened to Joseph.
I looked down and shook my head. “He didn’t make it.”
Tink buzzed round and around at speeds I’d never seen her go, before finally settling in on the turret of her home. The fairy was crying.
“Oh, Tink …” I started, but she turned away.
I took a step forward and she looked up at me as golden streams ran down her cheeks. Then she put her head on her knees again, and her tiny shoulders started bobbing with wails of abandonment. I never knew silent cries could be so deafening.
“I’m sorry, Tink. I liked the guy a lot, too, and …”
But it was no use. TinkerBelle was too far into her own grief for me to reach her.
Confused and grief-stricken myself, I left the room and headed to the only place I knew that I could get any answers.
↔
I passed by Judith’s room on the way up to Penemue. A pang of guilt and anger shot through me as I walked past the floor where Joseph once was, knowing that if I opened his door, all I’d find would be an empty cavity. The box weighed heavy in my pocket.
“Jean,” came my mother-in-law’s shrill authoritative voice, “I was going to ask a favor from you.”
“Sure,” I said resignedly.
“Find that smiling asshole and kick him in the nuts for me.”
“OK,” I said with a weak smile. “Cross my heart.”
I knocked on Astarte’s door. She opened it, still in her teddy from earlier. She looked me up and down before saying, “Believe it or not, I’m not in the mood.”
I didn’t say anything, just gestured for her to follow me, and we went to Penemue’s loft.
↔
“First of all,” I started, my voice dripping with sarcasm, “let me thank you for your help earlier. While I was getting my ass kicked downstairs, it was really comforting knowing that I had two demigods upstairs hiding.”
“How,” Astarte started, “do you know we did nothing?”
“Because while I was getting pounded down there, I didn’t see a winged angel or a succubus in a teddy coming to my rescue. Would it have killed you to use a bit of time to help?”
Astarte rolled her eyes, and I turned to face Penemue, who had his nose buried in some ancient leather-bound tome. “And what do you have to say for yourse
lf?” I asked the angel.
Penemue put the book down on a stack. It had been some time since I had been in his room and it was pretty much exactly as I remembered it. There was an angled roof, the peak running along the center of the room. It was only under the apex that Penemue could stand upright. At one end there was the straw bed we’d made for him. It was literally a bale of hay held in an old, empty sandbox that we’d stolen from an abandoned playground. An ad hoc solution, but how would you make a bed for an eight-foot-tall, four-hundred-pound angel? At the far end was the stoop where he flew in—when he wasn’t too drunk to fly—and it had the same stained-glass window I installed four years ago. There was a bucket filled with half-empty bottles of Drambuie, and the rest of the room was filled with books stacked from floor to ceiling. Where he got them all, I didn’t know, nor did I want to. I suspected there were several libraries in Paradise Lot with open windows and missing books.
Penemue took a swig of Drambuie. “If you remember,” he said proudly, “I came down only to have the ex-werewolf throw something at me, presumably for me to whisk away. A task, mind you, I attempted before I was rudely pinned to the ground by burned time.”
“You mean this?” I said, pulling out the box and throwing it to him.
“Yes,” he hiccuped.
“What is it?”
Penemue put down the box and said, “There are other questions that need answering. Questions I am currently researching.”
“And pray tell,” I said, exaggerating the vowels, “what does your research reveal?”
“That you are screwed,” Astarte purred, grabbing my crotch. “And not in the good way.”
I flinched and pulled her hand away. “What’s going on here? Someone give me some answers. Who were those guys? No, scratch that … let’s start from the beginning. Who—rather, what is … ahh, was Joseph?”
“The Unicorn. But you knew that already,” Penemue said, slurring his words.
“Yes, but I thought unicorns were white horses with a single horn?”
“Oh, my poor misinformed mortal friend,” Penemue said with an admonishing smile. “There is, was and will always be only one Unicorn. And now he is dead, he truly is a myth.” Penemue put a hand over his heart.
“A legend,” Astarte chimed in, a hand over her own heart.
“A fable,” Penemue finished, taking a large swig of Drambuie.
Astarte walked over and put a hand on his shoulder, before taking the bottle from him and having a drink herself.
Now it made sense why all the Others reacted to him the way they did. He was a singularity in their worlds and this one. Being truly unique, he belonged to no tradition or species other than his own. He didn’t belong to some clan, have some historical beef or hold allegiance to any group over another. If anyone had a chance to unite all the different kinds of Others, it was him.
“And as for being a white horse,” Astarte continued, “Joseph was whatever we needed him to be. Tell me, who did you see when you saw him? A friend? A parent? Perhaps a lover? You saw whoever you needed to see. Whoever brought you the most comfort. Perhaps if you saw him at another time in your life, he would have appeared as someone else.”
An emotional chameleon, I thought. “Who did you see?” I asked.
“Light,” Penemue said. “Just light.” His eyes grew distant at the memory as a warm, content smile crept upon his face. Even in death, Joseph still offered comfort to the fallen angel.
“And you?” I said to the succubus.
She gave me a sly little smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, pretending to zip up her lips with an erotic gesture of her fingers and a hint of tongue. Hellelujah, Jean—focus.
“OK,” I said, “what about the Other who saved me? What is he?”
Astarte shot Penemue a look and said, “He is not an Other. He was a human.”
“But he burned time,” I said. “Humans can’t do that.”
“Hence the ‘was,’ ” Penemue said. “Besides, some humans can—rather could—possess magic. Harry Potter, for one.”
“Fiction,” I said.
“Harry Dresden, for another.”
“Again, fiction.”
“I would have cried more for his death than for my own … Both Harrys are very real, I assure you.”
Dealing with Others hurt my head. “So, what? He’s a ghost like Judith?”
“Something like that, but I fear it is a bit more complicated. You see, he is not a ghost, but rather the Ghost. As in the first human who chose not to ‘shuffle off his mortal coil,’ but to stick around.”
“The Ghost?” I repeated, unable to keep the skepticism out of my voice.
“You’re still not getting it, Jean. He was a human and now he is the Ghost. Before the gods left, he was the conduit between them and mortals. He is Isimud, Zaqar, Turms, Hermes and the Holy Ghost.”
“The what?”
Penemue ignored me. “Tell me, Jean … who do you think was responsible for telling the world that the gods left?”
↔
“So, what? That guy who saved us was also the guy responsible for the gods’ broadcasting system to us? ‘This is GBS—this just in …’ ” I said.
“You mock, but how did they communicate to you?” Penemue asked.
“I guess I never really thought about it before,” I said, my head spinning with the meaning of it all.
OK, I get how the gods couldn’t just broadcast their leaving on Facebook, but still, an actual living, breathing conduit who was still on Earth? And what’s more, at my hotel, saving my ass from some Fanatic? This night could not get any weirder.
“So what do we know about him?” I said, looking from Penemue to Astarte. She was sitting on Penemue’s bale of hay, and even though she wore the same teddy she’d been wearing earlier, she somehow had an innocent farm-girl look to her. All your fantasy needs in one neat little succubus’s body.
“Nothing,” Astarte said, jarring me from my thoughts. Who knew that standing up after sitting in hay could be so tantalizing? So many stray straws being drawn out of so many wondrous, mysterious places.
“Ahem … Except,” Penemue said, “that the Unicorn engaged with this ex-human. And that he came to your aid with magic far more powerful than either of us have. And for the Unicorn to reveal himself means that he was on a mission of great import. And we know that whatever that mission was, it failed. No matter how important your quest may be, death has a way of ending things.”
“OK, so what I’m gathering is that, although you know who Buzzcut is, you don’t know what his involvement is in any of this. I don’t suppose you know a bit more about that freak who killed Joseph …?”
“That is not for mortal knowledge,” Astarte snapped with such a godly authority that I felt shame for wanting to know.
In her domain, that would have ended the conversation. But down here, well, the tune of “I was once a goddess” was sung a lot in Paradise Lot.
“Don’t give me that crap! He came in here and blew up my hotel. My home! Our home! He killed the most decent Other that any of us has ever known. A totally unique, one-of-a-kind life extinguished by that asshole, and you fall back on your ‘It’s not for mortal knowledge’ crap. If you haven’t noticed, we’re all mortal now and if …” As I got into Astarte’s face, there was a part of me that wanted to rip off her clothes and have the angriest sex ever known to mortal or Other. I started breathing hard, sweating as I came to. “GoneGodDamn succubus,” I cried out.
I stepped back and caught my breath, immediately feeling more in control once I was a few feet away from her. I looked over at the sex goddess and saw real fear in her eyes. But not of Grinner. She was afraid of me. And she was defending herself the only way she knew how.
“OK,” I said, forcing myself to take deep breaths, “OK … I’m sorry. But there are no more mortals and immortals. There’s only us and we’re all going to die. So please, tell me … what is he?”
Penemue grunted, throwing b
ack his papers on the table. “Ahhh, how can one know what any of us really are?”
“Stop stalling. And none of your typical cryptic shit. What is he?” I demanded. “Tell me.”
Penemue adjusted his armless glasses and flattened out his tweed vest before standing up straight and looking over at me.
“Don’t—” Astarte started, but Penemue put up a hand.
“He is right, Astarte,” Penemue interrupted, “the rules have changed. We are all mortal now.”
Penemue crumpled up a piece of paper and dropped it. It fell like most things do—down. “When the gods made this world, they needed to be able to communicate with certain immutable principles—the Laws of Nature, if you will. Whereas there are many laws that govern nature, there are only five Laws that are essential for life. They are known as the First Laws—Energy, Life, Death, Time and Gravity. Each is necessary for this universe to possess life, and they exist with or without gods. Energy is the force that allows motion, growth and change. Life and Death are the principles of renewal—they are the Laws that allow the world to keep evolving, ensuring each generation slightly improves on its predecessor. In theory, at least. Are you following me?”
I nodded.
“Then there is Time, through which all must make passage. Relative or not, Time moves us ever forward. Finally, there is Gravity. Gravity keeps the world together; it moves the Earth around the Sun. The Sun around the Milky Way. Our galaxy within the Universe. Gravity, some of us theorize, was the first of these Laws, for it is what originally paved the way for the existence of all. Without it, we would be wandering atoms of motion, never attached, never together. Never alive.
“These five First Laws were needed to make all that is, and therefore the gods needed to negotiate with them in order to shape the world in the ways they wished. But how does one—even a god—communicate with a First Law?”
“Avatars,” I said, the word catching in my throat. No wonder Astarte was frightened. Grinner was the Avatar of a friggin’ First Law.