Thanatos

by Carmen Kern

  Scritch. Scritch. Thanatos’s thin-tipped felt pen shaded the edges of a quad-limbed mafia man on the comic panel.

  Another high-pitched screech. Thanatos shot out of his chair and slammed his finger onto the receiver button. A ghostly-green hologram of text flew up from the control panel.

  “What do you want, brother?” Thanatos clenched his teeth. His depleted powers and the frustrations of the past few days pressed down on him. What little patience he possessed had crept off with its tail between its legs and never came back. “I’ve got five panels to finish.”

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  Thanatos hung his head. His left hand squeezed the back of his chair until his knuckles turned light gray. “Unless it’s Hades in chains, begging for his mortal life to end, I’m not interested. Do. Not. Disturb.”

  “That won’t fly. Get down here. Mom’s here to see us.” There was a shuffling, the line crackled, and then, “I’ve got bourbon.”

  Thanatos ended the call. “Flames.” He flared his wings half-heartedly and let them hang limp. “She ignores us for most our life…and shows up now, of all times.”

  He swung his bowed head toward the secret drawer in his drawing table. His body followed his eyes. Opening the drawer, Thanatos fished out an eel-skin pouch. Something about the electrical surges that had run through the fish in life preserved the fungus inside the skin, continuing their growth while their potency grew. Thanatos dipped into the pouch, pinched a wad of the spongy substance, and shoved it between his back molars and his cheek. It only took a few seconds to dissolve and only a few more to take effect.

  Thanatos capped his pen and tossed it on the table. It landed and rolled down the angled surface, blurring into dozens of pens in multiple colors until finally, they stopped at the edge of a sketchpad, melding into the single once again. Drugs were the best way to handle a visit from his mom. They kept him excruciatingly calm. Which, in turn, pissed her off when he didn’t rise to her bait. All in all, a good reason to get high.

  He pressed the sleep button on the control panel, dimming the many screens and LED fans cooling his equipment.

  The stars seemed to shine brighter outside his window. As if his own world were showing off for his mother, Nyx, the goddess of night. “Figures,” he mumbled, straightening his fur collar and his folded wings. Thanatos looked at his reflection in the window, laughed wildly, and spun around, striding across the room and out his door. Instead of taking the elevator, he stormed through the fire door and took the stairs three at a time. He flew down, feet and hands and wings blurring until he stood, breathless, before his brother’s door. He entered without knocking and called out, “Hello, Mother.”

  Some called the goddess of night half demon, a witchy woman, the queen who subdued darkness and birthed all of life—and they’d all be right.

  Nyx sat on Phobetor’s couch, her black power suit formal and stiff against the soft cushions. Her eyes were sharp behind her round, black-framed glasses. She nodded at Thanatos, her sly smile—the one that lured men, gods, and the stars of every galaxy to bend to her will—burned through him.

  Thanatos noted the half-empty glass of bourbon held between her slim fingers and her concealed wings. Two hopeful signs. It struck him then, how his family needed hallucinogenics or booze to deal with each other. Another thing, perhaps, that the gods had learned from the humans.

  “Came straight from work, did you?” Thanatos strode into the room with the same self-awareness he entered every room. “Always a pleasure, Mom, but what brings you to our humble abode? This is what, the second time you’ve been here?” He looked to Phobetor for confirmation. “The first was to bless the skies of our world. As I remember”—Thanatos plunked down on the club chair facing Nyx—“you left right after you said your congratulatory bit. Didn’t even wait for the cake.”

  “We didn’t have cake, brother.” Phobetor turned away from Thanatos, busying himself by pouring another glass. He slammed the round ice cubes in the glass, coppery liquid splashing out and over his hand. He licked it off.

  “It was a metaphorical cake,” Thanatos crooned. His eyes ran over the multicolored book bindings on the shelves behind his mother as they blurred into thin streaks of light, bending at the ceiling and coming back on him, like space travel and shooting stars and auroras with—

  Phobetor jammed the glass into his brother’s hand. He walked away without checking if Thanatos had a firm grip.

  “I like that we’ve never given in to the human traditions of small talk. It’s a waste of time and energy.” Nyx’s voice purred blues and jazz all at once.

  Thanatos remembered when she would sing him and his brothers to sleep before she left to bring in the night. How her songs were like stories, with heroes and beasts and great battles won or lost. They would ride her notes, the rasp of her voice carrying them back into a version of history that could only be told from one of the primordial gods. There were few motherly moments in their young lives, but that, Thanatos remembered.

  Phobetor stood off to one side, between the living area and the kitchen. A boozy glow flushed his skeletal face, his one eye flickering between his brother and mother. He stayed quiet and still.

  Nyx placed her glass on Phobetor’s coffee table, careful to slide a coaster underneath. “Let’s cut the oxshit, boys.” She settled back into the luscious leather. “Zeus sent his messenger to my house. And you know I don’t appreciate receiving anything from Zeus, or any of the other Olympians, for that matter. Imagine my surprise when I found Hermes waiting on my doorstep with a message that my son, excuse me”—she waved her wrist toward Phobetor, glancing at him with her black, all-knowing eyes that said ‘you can’t hide from me’— “sons, have been killing our own. Not only that, the god of death isn’t doing his job,” she said, in the voice of every disappointed mother gathered from the beginning of time.

  Thanatos was pleased enough to grin at the news. “I’m doing—”

  Nyx held up a delicate hand. The ring on her middle finger, set with a large oval stone, glowed with an ever-changing scene of the aurora borealis in its face.

  Phobetor wondered if she drew attention to her middle finger deliberately.

  The grin on Thanatos’s face widened. He crossed his tatted arms across his chest and gazed at his mom, waiting.

  “After Hermes delivered his message, I came to find you. Both of you. I will thank you for one thing: your predictability. It saved me a wild duckling chase.” Nyx fingered the artfully frayed edges of her silk scarf. “At least one of my sons has managed to stay off the Olympians’ most-wanted list. Charon proved to be most informative, but to be fair, there was much he didn’t know. I think what surprises me the most is how long you two have been planning your little coup…rebellion…whatever you want to call this thing that you are doing. Honestly, I didn’t think you had it in you. You have never been a planner, Thanatos. You never had the patience.”

  “Well, Mom, maybe I’m more like you than you think.” Thanatos uncrossed his arms and gave her mock jazz hands. “Surprise.”

  Nyx leaned forward, elbows on her knees. She sat like a man taking up more room than needed, legs spread, wool pants wide at the hem, impossibly high-heeled shoes peeking out in a wicked point under the fabric—this was her power posture, one she executed regularly in meetings with old-school scientists, researchers, and board members from the university she contracted for. “Your lackey, your counselor, Stanley…I persuaded him to tell me of your sessions together.”

  Silence. Nyx knew how to use that pause between statements, when her words had time to sink in and the look of horror, surprise, or indignation crossed her subordinate’s face. It was one of the small pleasures in dealing with humans, and even more so with the gods. The satisfaction of exposing the cracks within an opponent. Arrogance tasted as smooth as the finest Olympian wine. She wet her lips.

  Phobetor had finished his drink. He held up his glass, shook the ice cubes, and the
n stood still as the gargoyle crouched in the rafters above.

  Thanatos managed to keep his grin intact, even while his gray skin lightened by a shade. His fingers tensed and arched.

  Nyx studied Thanatos in the same way she studied the heavens, with an obsession to know its construct so thoroughly that she could recreate or manipulate or destroy it at will. With a satisfied arch of an eyebrow, she picked up her glass and held it out to Phobetor without looking at him.

  “Flames,” he mumbled, moving to fetch her glass.

  She settled back into the couch, her pointed shoe bouncing slightly. “Your file was an interesting read. To be honest, there were moments I was filled with pride. The way you used Stanley from day one of his stay in the Underworld. Brilliant move to have him as an informant. You saw his deviousness when no one else did. But”—she paused, and her foot stilled—“the rest, it was almost a bore. How Freudian. How human. To blame me, my lack of attention and affection, for your insecurities. What a disappointment. It didn’t escape my notice that Phobetor’s file said almost the opposite. How he learned to fend for himself at an early age and was thankful I didn’t coddle him.”

  The glass decanter slammed against the bar top. Phobetor winced and wiped his clammy hands on his pants, careful not to look up.

  Thanatos nearly flew out of his chair from anger, lifting off the cushion a few inches. But then he slowly sank back into the soft leather. “That’s a lofty view from your judgment seat, Mom.” His voice was cold and dagger sharp and completely steady, as if it came from another being altogether.

  Phobetor handed Nyx a generous glass of bourbon and retreated into the shadows of his bookshelves to sip at his own refill.

  Nyx nodded in thanks. She rattled the large ice cube and took a drink. “Let’s talk about your hatred of Hades. Your obsession with Persephone. You aren’t the first god to lust after something you can’t have.”

  “Of course I’m not. And in true god fashion, I take what I want. To hell with the consequences. Isn’t that our way?” Thanatos rose from his seat. “So what if the Overworld implodes?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve never had a love fest for the gods of the Underworld, or humankind. Why start now?”

  Nyx stood. “Are you doing this for me, Thanatos? To prove something?” The room dimmed of natural light. The candles were snuffed out, and only the lamplight was left unaffected by the coming of night.

  Thanatos rose to face her. “I’m doing this for our family. You are primordial. All the others came after you.” Thanatos carefully unfurled his wings. “And we are your sons. The Night family should rule the Underworld. The dark world. Not Hades. I’m doing this for all of us.”

  And then Nyx laughed. A tinkling bell chime that deepened into something stranger, darker. A deep rattling came from inside. She threw her head back in raucous laughter. Black wings unfurled from behind her, growing longer, larger, blacker than those Thanatos was born with. And where his tips were streaked with gold, hers were the black of deepest space, the absence of all color.

  As the planets orbit the sun, so Nyx’s sons were drawn to her. Phobetor crossed the space between him and his family. Now, he wore the mask of an eagle. Beak stained crimson from blood and gore, a yellow-eyed demon with talons for ripping flesh, and mighty brown wings cascading down from his shoulders. He, like his other siblings, had been born wingless, cursed to walk the earth. All but Thanatos. But at least he had his nightmare personas. At the very least.

  Thanatos watched his mother, her laughter petering out while his feet brought him closer and closer to her. Until in the middle of the room, circling the coffee table, night, death, and nightmare became a writhing cloud of fury and viciousness. Flies buzzed around limbless torsos reaching from the nothingness of space while stars burst and died around them, as if the world Thanatos created were being ripped in half by their mythical powers and the only place to fall was into an endless darkness, starless and silent.

  Thanatos and Phobetor were alone in the nothingness. Their hearts ceased beating, their lungs shriveled into useless sacks in their chest with no air to fill them. They hung within Nyx’s web, in the deepest of space. Airless. Soundless. Blood and soft tissue turned to liquid, swelling under their skin, stretching them thin, stretching to the brink of consciousness.

  And then, as if they awoke from a dream, the three of them stood once more in the quiet dark of Phobetor’s living room.

  “I never wanted the Underworld,” Nyx whispered. “Never,” she repeated. “I want night. The stars. Space. It is a world above all others, and it is everything.” Light seeped back into the room, creeping in, not sure if it was wanted. “Don’t say you’re turning the worlds upside down for me. You want this for yourself. And maybe for your brother, but I’m not even sure about that.”

  Silence.

  “I want to give you the Underworld,” Thanatos said without conviction.

  “My sights are set higher than the Underworld. You can have it if you want it. But I will not be your excuse to kill immortals or skip out on your day job.”

  Phobetor watched, like he always did.

  The darkness of moods and wings and egos faded. Everything came into sharp focus, words on book spines, the small creases in the skin around Nyx’s eyes, dust motes.

  Phobetor rubbed the smooth feathers on the top of his eagle head, feeling slightly sick. His wings were out of place now that his were the only ones visible.

  Thanatos stared into his mom’s dark and perfect face. “Are we done here? I’ve got work to do.”

  Nyx thought for a moment. “Zeus demanded a meeting tomorrow. He’s got questions for me. And I won’t lie for you. I will not openly go against the other gods. Not for my boys. And not before I’m ready. Zeus has my loyalty…until he doesn’t. And that will be for me to decide. Not you.”

  Nyx turned and looked into Phobetor’s yellow predator eyes. “Phobetor, my boy. You’ve always been a follower. Be sure this is the path you want to walk. Weigh the consequences, even if you’ve already done so.” She carefully clasped his large talon and opened her mouth to say more, but didn’t. Nyx turned her back on her sons, gathered her raincoat, and made for the door.

  She stopped. “I suppose I’ve just given you more to talk about in your next session with Stanley. Perhaps I really am the cold bitch you say I am.” Glancing back at her boys, she said, “I’m okay with that.”

  Nyx closed the door softly behind her.

  The brothers exchanged glances.

  “What the hell did she mean about being loyal to Zeus, until she isn’t?” Thanatos asked, more to himself than to his brother.

  Phobetor shrugged as if indifferent.

  But Nyx’s words played in Thanatos’s head. As always, Nyx did what was good for her. She wasn’t, and never would be, the momma bear fighting for her cubs. So be it, he thought.

  Thanatos fluttered his wings neatly and tucked them away again. “If you need me, I’ll be working on the book.” Thanatos retrieved his glass from the table, downed the watered-down bourbon at the bottom of his glass, and handed it to Phobetor. “I’ve had enough family for one day.”

  Phobetor watched his brother leave, and as the door closed a second time, he said, “Me too, brother.” He slipped out of the eagle mask, back into the comfort wear of his own skin. He checked his watch. “Flames. It’s late. I’m late.”

  Across the city, through the shady alleys behind Mantis Market, a caped figure swept through the slums after waiting over an hour. He waited too long for nothing. There was another he had to meet—a doctor who owed him a favor from a long time ago. He might have to remind the doc of past promises, and if that weren’t good enough, he’d use threats. Those always worked. The Bounty Hunter hurried across the cobblestones. A furred rodent scurried across his path. He kicked at it, cursing, his mood fowl.

  No one stood him up, not even the god of nightmares.

  EIGHT

  The city of Necromourn toss
ed uneasily in its sleep. The usual chaos of the streets was the same—the jarring, haunted songs continued to spill from the open doors of bars and brothels, easing down the streets with an arrogant strut. Drunk and sober violence was easily found. But something in this night had changed.

  The ones who slept and chose to stay safe behind closed doors, who had worked an honest day for honest pay, their families warmed by dying fires—they lent their bloody and vicious screams to the disjointed pounding of music, their bedsheets in turmoil while they fought and writhed, much like those who battled in the streets.

  Glass and bones shattered. Temperatures dropped.

  All around the city, beings of all types stewed with hate, thrashed and moaned while nightmares and fears and paranoias crashed through their minds like a mammoth battering ram.

  Ghosties and beasties were let loose in bedrooms, living rooms, bar rooms, and dark streets.

  Phobetor ran until he could only walk, winded and drunk. The world, his brother’s world, rocked, jarred by the unrest in the god of nightmares. His indecision, his jumbled thoughts and wayward emotions, caused an epidemic, a plague of new and terrible nightmares.

  He leaned against a brick wall at the entrance to a narrow alley. “Hades, come out, come out!” His voice cracked. “I’ve got candy.” A deep gurgling laugh welled up from his throat. No telling how long he stood there chuckling to himself, but finally the need to urinate urged him further into the alley. He unzipped his pants and relieved himself, one hand pressed against the wall.

  He finished and rolled his body along the brick wall, back toward the street. “It would be so much easier if you just let me bring you in, Hades. Or even better, I could sell you to the highest bidder…maybe your wifey? Make some money and take off to—”