by Tim Waggoner
“I don’t know about this,” Dean said. “If Armament used all four barrels on Jason Junior—and it sure as hell sounded like he did—there won’t be any shells in it. And we don’t have any extra-grande ammo.”
“It’s a magic weapon,” Sam said. “It only looks like a gun. What it fires is pure power. It shouldn’t need reloading.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“When do we ever know anything for a fact?”
“Fair enough.”
Instead of attacking them right away, Armament put his hands on his hips and watched the brothers struggle to get the gun into a firing position that they could handle. His eyes twinkled with merriment.
“Dinner and a show!” the god said, and his worshippers laughed.
The brothers ignored him. “You work the trigger,” Dean said.
“Okay.”
Sam pressed one of his hands against the side of the barrels and put the index finger of his other hand on the trigger. Dean used both of his hands to brace the barrels, and Sam hoped that when this was over, they both wouldn’t end up with broken arms.
Smiling in amusement, Armament started walking slowly toward them.
“You’re mere humans,” he said. “There is no way you can hope to operate my weapon without injuring yourselves. But I admire your bravery, however misplaced it is. Stop this foolishness now, and I’ll allow you both to become Bound to me.”
“What if we politely decline your oh-so-generous offer?” Dean asked.
Armament’s smile faded and he scowled. “Then I’ll kill you both with my bare hands.”
Because of the angle they held the gun at, the brothers had to wait until Armament was close enough to be in range before they could fire. Just another couple steps, Sam thought.
“It’s a shame you won’t be around to see me triumph over my brothers and sisters and claim my rightful place as the One. But in these last few remaining moments of your lives, you can console yourselves with the knowledge that at least for a short time you were able to experience my magnificence before death claimed you.”
“Dude, you are laying it on thick,” Dean said. “I’m used to bad guys that think they’re hot stuff and love to hear the sound of their own voices, but you—well, you’re something special.”
By this point Armament had come within ten feet of them.
“Now?” Sam said softly.
“Let ’er rip,” Dean said.
Sam tried to squeeze the trigger, but it wouldn’t move. It was large enough to get three fingers on it, so he did so and tried again. It took an effort, but in the end, the trigger moved, and the world disappeared in a blast of thunder, fire, and smoke.
TEN
Dean sat up. His ears were ringing and his head throbbed. He looked over to see Sam lying on the ground, his eyes closed.
“You all right, Sammy?” He could barely hear his own words, so he repeated them more loudly, not caring if he was shouting. This time Sam opened his eyes. He groaned—or at least, he looked like he groaned since Dean couldn’t hear him—and sat up. He winced and put a hand to his head.
“What happened?” he said. He frowned then reached up with a hand to touch one of his ears.
Dean heard his brother’s voice, but it sounded muffled, like he was hearing it through a dozen feet of cotton. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, so he took a second to look around. They were still in the alley, and both groups of worshippers remained. Karrion’s—those who hadn’t collapsed during the battle, that is—stood lined up against the alley walls, while Armament’s crowded at the mouth of the alley. Dean was less than thrilled to see that Armament’s group still had their guns drawn, although as yet no one was aiming at them, which he took as a hopeful sign. Armament’s weapon lay on the ground nearly twenty feet from where the brothers sat. Dean guessed it had skidded backward when they’d fired it, but as far as he could tell, it appeared undamaged. He couldn’t say the same for his hands, though. The skin on his palms and fingers was torn and blistered, and the bones ached like hell. He gritted his teeth as he flexed his hands and wiggled his fingers. They hurt, but he didn’t think anything was broken. He was about to ask Sam if his hands were okay, when Sam pointed.
“Look.”
Dean looked where his brother indicated and saw Armament lying on the ground. Well, three-quarters of him, anyway. The blast from his quadruple-barreled mega-shotgun had taken off his head and shoulders, along with the upper half of his chest. His arms were no longer attached to his body, and they lay on the ground nearby. Blood had sprayed both alley walls, along with several of Karrion’s worshippers, who’d had the misfortune of standing in the wrong place when a significant portion of their god’s killer had disintegrated.
“Nice shot, if I do say so myself,” Dean said. He rose to his feet and reached an aching hand toward his brother. Sam took it and grimaced, but he let Dean help him up.
“Your hand okay?” Dean said.
Sam massaged the fingers of his right hand with his left. “Yeah. I don’t think anything’s broken, but it might be sprained.”
Dean nodded to where Armament’s gun had ended up. “With a kick like that, we’re lucky our hands are still attached.”
Sam nodded.
The brothers stepped over to what was left of Armament. The damage his shotgun had done was even more impressive close up.
“Damn,” Dean said. “Maybe we should look into getting one of those four-barreled jobs for ourselves. It’d make hunting a lot easier. We roll into town, find a monster, aim, fire, and pow! No more monster, and it’s Miller time.”
Armament’s ravaged body started to glow then, just as Karrion’s had when he’d died. The brothers had no reason to think the white light was dangerous, but then again they had no reason to think it wasn’t, so they stepped back several feet. They—along with all the worshippers in the alley—watched as the glowing light enveloped Armament’s corpse. The same thing happened to the blood on the ground, the walls, and even on the worshippers. It began to glow, too. Just as had happened with Karrion, the light contracted into a sphere and rose several feet into the air until it was chest-level with the Winchesters. The blood became small flecks of light that drifted over to join the main mass. For a second, Dean was afraid the sphere would come flying toward them. After all, they had been the ones to kill Armament. But it hung in the air for several moments before simply fading away to nothing.
“I guess only other gods get to feed on a god’s energy,” Dean said, “which—when you think about it—means these guys are cannibals. Which is just plain wrong, even for monsters.”
Sam looked thoughtful. “They’re like sand tiger shark embryos that devour their littermates in the womb until only the strongest survive to be born.”
Dean looked at his brother. “You’ve been watching Animal Planet again, haven’t you? I guess it makes sense. So what’s the womb? The whole town?”
“I guess so,” Sam said. He glanced around, frowning. “The gun’s gone.”
Dean looked around then. “So is Karrion’s machete. Looks like their weapons are made of the same stuff they are, and when their owners take the last train to Purgatory, they do, too. Too bad. That machete would’ve made a hell of a souvenir.”
Sam nudged his brother. “Check it out.”
Dean looked and saw that both sets of worshippers were leaving the alley, shuffling along silently, heads bowed, as if they were depressed or drained of energy. Maybe both. That was fine with him. He’d rather not fight a bunch of pissed-off cultists if he didn’t have to. He wondered if they would go home, or—more likely—if they’d return to the streets in search of a new god to Bind themselves to. The thought depressed him.
“I don’t know about you, Sammy, but I’m cold and tired, and I could use another cup of piping hot coffee to get me going again.”
Sam smiled. “Along with a donut or two?”
Dean grinned. “Or three.”
* * *
&
nbsp; Renee was still asleep by the time Geoffrey made it back to TechEdge. He parked the Geek Fleet car at the side of the building and turned off the engine. For several moments he sat behind the wheel and considered what to do with Renee. He was reluctant to wake her, not only because she obviously needed to sleep, but because he feared that finding herself in strange surroundings might jolt her into full awareness. And if that happened, she might get scared, start screaming, maybe try to escape. If she bolted from the car before he could get hold of her, there was no way he’d be able to catch her. She was young, her body still strong, while he was older, and a couple years of living on the street had taken their toll on his health. If she got outside, she’d take off like a jackrabbit, and all he’d be able to do was stand there and watch her disappear into the night. He wished he’d thought to look for some rope in the Mendezes’ garage to tie her wrists and ankles so she couldn’t run. But he’d never done anything like this before, and he was basically making it up as he went along. He’d been lucky to find her almost asleep on her feet and so groggy that she’d accompanied him without his having to do much to convince her. But now that he was back at TechEdge, he knew he couldn’t count on his luck to keep holding. He needed to find a way to prevent her from escaping.
He checked the glove compartment and the backseat, but he found nothing that would be of any help. He popped the trunk, got out of the car—careful to close the driver’s side door gently so as not to wake Renee—and walked round to the open trunk. There wasn’t much inside: a spare tire, a jack, and a roadside emergency kit. The latter contained a pair of jumper cables, and he wondered if he could use them to bind her wrists, but he quickly dismissed the idea. The cables were sheathed in thick black plastic, and he doubted he could tie them tightly enough to keep her from pulling free. Besides, the plastic was hard and cold, and the moment it touched her flesh, it might wake her. He was still standing there, trying to decide what to do, when he heard Adamantine’s voice.
“What is taking you so long?”
Despite her disapproving tone, he was happy to see her. She stood next to the Geek Fleet car, her silvery skin and clothing gleaming in the fluorescence of the parking lot lights. In that moment, she looked as if she were made of starlight, and Geoffrey thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful.
“She’s sleeping, my lady, and I… I don’t have anything to prevent her from escaping if she wakes.”
He was afraid that she would chastise him, or worse, punish him, but she did neither. Instead, she walked up to him, removed the piece of her gauntlet that she loaned him from his hand, and returned it to her own finger. Metal flowed together, and the gauntlet was whole once more. She then walked around the vehicle to the passenger side and bent down to look through the window.
“That’s her,” she said. She spoke these words softly, almost reverently, as if she were in awe.
And why wouldn’t she be? Geoffrey thought. It’s not every day that a god gets to meet her creator.
He walked over to stand near Adamantine and watched the god’s face as she gazed upon the woman from whose mind she’d been born.
“She looks like any other human, doesn’t she?” Adamantine said, not taking her eyes off Renee. “If you were to encounter her on the street, you would see nothing to hint at the vast power that lies within her. But I can sense it, roiling beneath her unassuming veneer like the waters of a rushing river, and now that she is so close, I can practically taste it.” She placed a palm against the glass of the passenger-side window, as if by doing so she hoped to draw some small measure of Renee’s power into herself.
Looking at Adamantine now, Geoffrey was struck by a sudden realization.
“You resemble her,” he said. “A little, anyway. Mostly your eyes and mouth.”
Adamantine answered without turning to look at Geoffrey.
“Naturally. You humans are fond of saying the gods made you in their image, but in truth you make us in yours.” She continued gazing upon Renee for several more moments until the cold began getting to Geoffrey and he started shivering. As if aware of his discomfort, she said, “Go into the store and find some power cables to use in lieu of rope. I shall remain out here and watch her.”
“Her name is Renee Mendez,” Geoffrey said.
Adamantine’s silver eyes glowed a hungry blue-white.
“As if that matters,” she said.
* * *
Lena didn’t drive back to the office building where her practice was located. Paeon had said he intended to go forth into the streets and begin transforming people into “ultimate humans,” but she had no idea exactly where he’d gone. He might’ve used his magic to implant the location of the Mythmaker’s house into her brain, but he hadn’t bothered to give her a homing signal that would allow her to find him. So when she reached the general neighborhood of her practice, she removed her phone from the inside pocket of her coat and called one of her physician’s assistants. Sarah answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Sarah. This is Lena. Can you tell me where Paeon is?”
“He’s at the corner of Marshall and McAllister. He’s been leading us up and down the streets, stopping everyone he can find and touching them with that magic wand of his. When he’s finished enhancing them, he asks if they want to become Bound to him. Of course they all say yes!” She laughed then.
Enhancing, Lena thought. Is that what he’s calling it?
Marshall and McAllister was only a couple blocks west. She could be there in a few minutes.
“Thanks, Sarah. You must be so tired and cold by now.”
“Not at all. Paeon enhanced the staff before we left the office. I barely notice the cold, and I have more energy than ever before. I feel like I could run a marathon if I wanted!”
Sarah laughed again, and Lena thought she sounded a bit like she was drunk. Lena wondered if an “enhanced” human’s body produced massive quantities of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, the so-called neurochemicals of happiness. If so, it was no surprise that the people Paeon enhanced were so eager to Bind themselves to him. He was basically drugging them. She supposed it could be a natural effect of the enhancement process, and maybe it was, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also a damn effective recruiting tool.
“Okay. I’m on my way there. See you in a few.”
“Sure thing, Lena! And when you get here, you need to have Paeon enhance you right away. You won’t believe how good you’ll feel afterward!”
Lena disconnected and tossed her phone onto the passenger seat. She had mixed feelings about the idea of becoming enhanced herself. On the one hand, who wouldn’t want to possess ultimate health? But on the other, if the process radically altered her body’s neurochemistry, her personality—her very self—would change. She would, in a sense, become a different person, and that was a frightening prospect. She wasn’t sure she had any choice in the matter, though. If Paeon insisted on enhancing her, would he accept her refusal? If she was his second-in-command—his priest—he couldn’t allow her to spurn the greatest gift he had to offer. How would it look to his other followers? No, Paeon would force her to accept enhancement, and he had the power to ensure her compliance. She’d learned that first-hand when he’d used the caduceus to temporarily inflict her with cancer. The pain had been beyond anything she’d ever imagined, and she wasn’t eager to experience it again. So if Paeon wanted to enhance her, and he would, there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
That’s not true, she realized. There was one thing she could do. She could keep driving, head out of town, hit the highway, and never look back. Yes, she was Bound to Paeon, but he himself had said that humans could switch their allegiances from one god to another merely by willing it. Following that logic, one could be able to unbind themselves from a god without choosing another. Of course, Paeon could’ve been lying, or at least simplifying the truth. She had a hard time believing gods would let go of their followers that easily. But even if Paeon didn’t want to release
her, she didn’t think he had the power to force her to return to him, and even if he did, the more distance she put between them, the weaker his summons would be. He was, for all intents and purposes, a child god, one who was maturing rapidly but had yet to come into his full power. And if another god managed to defeat him in battle, he never would. In the end there shall be One. So there was a good chance she could escape him, one way or another. All she had to do was press her foot down on the accelerator and drive like hell.
She almost did it.
But she had helped Paeon Bind dozens of people, and she felt responsible for what might happen to them. And although she was beginning to have doubts about her role in the Apotheosis, she still believed in the potential of Paeon’s incredible healing powers to do great good in the world. That, more than anything else, was what made her continue driving toward the corner of Marshall and McAllister.
* * *
Geoffrey needn’t have worried about the specifics of getting Renee into TechEdge. The woman barely stirred from her sleep as he wrapped computer power cords around her wrists and ankles, and then carried her inside the store. How long had she been awake, painting one god after another, and how much of her own life energy had gone into the creation of each new image? It was a wonder that she hadn’t slipped into a coma when she finally finished.
There were quite a few more people inside the store than when he’d left—a sign that Adamantine’s recruitment drive was proving successful—and they gathered around to gaze upon the Mythmaker with wonder and curiosity. Geoffrey doubted they knew who and what Renee was, but as they were all Bound to Adamantine, he supposed they recognized the Mythmaker on an instinctive level. More than a few tried to reach out and touch Renee as he carried her toward the back of the store, but in each case, they withdrew their hands before making contact, almost as if they were afraid of what might happen if they did.
Adamantine was waiting for him in the employee break room. The redheaded woman who had been wounded in the battle with Masque no longer rested on the couch, and since Geoffrey hadn’t seen her as he carried Renee through the store, he feared that she had died in his absence. He wanted to ask Adamantine what had happened to the woman, but he decided he’d rather not know right now. He didn’t want to think about her body lying in the dumpster out back with the others. He gently deposited Renee onto the couch, and other than turning onto her left side and shifting her weight a bit to get comfortable, she didn’t move. A moment later, her breathing deepened, and she was sleeping soundly again.