by Carmen Kern
“See you in a couple of days.” The man nodded, tossed the clipboard on the seat of the forklift, and started the engine.
The two gods looked on while the longshoreman drove away.
“Ten years ago, if you would’ve told me we’d be here moving Zeus’s cargo from one of Poseidon’s ships, I’d have laughed my ass off,” Hermes said, turning to his brother. “Yet here we are.”
The gods made their way back to the pickup truck.
Apollo swept his hand toward the shores of Vancouver Harbour. “I don’t think even the Fates could have predicted this…not any of it.”
“If they knew, they kept it to themselves.” Hermes broke into a jog, heading for a cement blockade. With a hop-skip, he ran up its face and flipped backward, landing on his feet. “Flames, I miss running.” He grinned like a kid who’d just rode his bike over a killer jump for the first time and didn’t wipe out. “Going full out for miles and miles until the whole world is one big blur.”
“Brother, there’re a lot of things I miss.” Apollo threw his arm over Hermes’s shoulder and walked him toward the loaded truck. “Pissing away my days in a hazy drunken stupor…I didn’t know how good I had it. Now I’m the one making the drinks and the food. And sex? Who in Hades has time for that? Especially now.”
“Hades,” Hermes said. “You said Hades.”
Apollo gave him a little push and dropped his arm. The two of them slowed as they neared the back of the truck.
Hermes stopped. “I know you aren’t a super-fan, but—”
Apollo raised his face to the sky. “He’s an arrogant prick, at least most of the time. But Pers loves him. And I love my sister. So…” He soaked in the full strength of the winter sun. “We help her any way we can and keep to Hades’s plan ’cause it’s the only plan we’ve got. The only plan that makes sense.”
“Assuming he isn’t—”
Apollo slapped a palm against the side of the truck. “He’s alive. The god of the Underworld is too stubborn to die.”
An icy wind blew across the water.
“You want this load to go to the old Molson brewery, then?” Hermes brushed his long hair out of his eyes.
“Yeah. Take it into the north entrance. They’re expecting you.” Apollo wrapped his blood-orange-colored scarf tighter around his throat. “I’ll take the other truck to the Sally Ann. Art and Bob are setting up for the street cookout tonight. I’ll make this delivery and run to my restaurant to get more supplies for the dinner.” Apollo fingered the bottom of his jacket, feeling for the end of the zipper. “All this driving around…now I know what you have to deal with every day. Traffic and people, and those damn bikes.” He zipped his tailored army jacket up under his scarf. The edges of his mouth arched.
“Don’t you be dissing the bikes, man.” Hermes threw him an amused glance. “But the traffic’s getting worse every day.” He glanced away with a seriousness that looked out of place on him. “All the people in the streets. They are the walking dead, you know. Without the flesh eating. Thank the gods for that.” He paused. “Have you looked into their eyes?”
Apollo nodded. “Like there’s nothing there, or they’re dreaming,” he said and cleared his throat. “A decade ago, I wouldn’t have given a damn. Flames of Tartarus, I hear what that sounds like…”
It was Hermes’s turn to nod. “It’s a damn confusing time to be a god.”
“It’s damn confusing to be alive at all.” Apollo waved at a semi-truck driving past. “I never remember my dreams, but I remember one I had a couple of nights ago. I could’ve sworn Thanatos was in my living room. I fried him with the sun erupting from my eyes. What was left of his wings hung at his sides, useless bone sticks, no flesh on them at all. He reached for me as he burned like a torch. The flames consumed him, and me. And when I woke up”—Apollo glanced down at his muddy work boots—“my sheets were on fire.” He looked up at his brother. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you’ve got some pent-up anger, dude,” Hermes answered. “They’ve got anger management classes for that kind of thing.” He grinned fleetingly. “I don’t know. All of us want Thanatos dead right now. Even your subconscious is thinking up ways to make it happen. In the meantime, this world is falling apart because of another selfish, power-hungry god. And all we can do is help who we can and hope that Hades’s arrogance keeps him alive long enough to bring the god of death to his knees.”
“Then we clean up the shit pile he left us.”
“Get your shovel out, bro!” Hermes clapped his gloved hands together and started for the driver’s-side door. “I’ll see you later.”
“Are you coming to the mission tonight?”
“I’ll see you there. I’ve got another delivery to make to Pers, but I’ll be there.”
They pulled out and onto Stewart Street. One turned left, the other turned right. It didn’t take long until they were both tire-deep in a sea of wandering rotters, following the detours the first responders had set up for those who still had somewhere to be. It was slow going. And they both had too much time to wonder if the god of the Underworld, or anyone else, could save the Overworld.
Inside room 305 of the Dominion Hotel, Persephone, Hecate, and Kay Te sat around the small table they had pulled between the double beds. The Lamplighter restaurant below them had started hopping about an hour ago.
Those who still had a job downtown, who were healthy, and remembered how to spend money but wanted to forget about everything else, went through a screening process and several security guards to gorge themselves in alcohol and deep-fried delicacies. All this while rotters were forced down other side streets toward the volunteers giving out food, and first-aid stations set up for any who had the mind enough to want help.
A wispy unease whispered through the room, mixing with thoughts and ideas and gin martinis. Kay Te rubbed her bloodshot eyes and finally looked up from the sketchpad at her elbow. “I reworked the drawing five times. Rad’s descriptions got us there…finally, but why can’t we see through Ferret’s eyes anymore? It must be too dark in there. You think?”
Hecate, the goddess of witches, speared two olives with one jab of her small plastic sword and held them up to the light, studying the intricacies of how the pimiento fit so perfectly inside the small fruit. “How do they do it? You think they shove it in there by hand?” She offered Persephone a closer look of her drink garnish.
“Some things I just don’t question. I don’t care how it’s done, as long as it’s done.” Persephone twirled a stray lock of hair that had worked its way out of her bun. She sighed. “I wish—”
“Don’t say that word!” Hecate jerked her head toward Persephone. “We’ve got djinn ears everywhere. Don’t give those tricksters a hold on us.” She popped both olives in her mouth.
“One of those tricksters just helped get Ferret into Mr. Grim’s world. And he did it for you.” Kay Te looked at Persephone.
“He didn’t do it for me. He did it to save his princely ass. He doesn’t want his daddy dearest to find out that he’d enslaved his own people to power his new enterprise.”
“Okay, maybe he doesn’t fly with the purest of heart, but when he found your Mr. Inferno, I heard what he said.” Kay Te twirled a pink pencil around and over her knuckles in a perpetual blur. “I know concern. I know respect, and there were slivers of both in the djinn’s words. He smoothed out the big bads while doing the breaststroke through Mr. Inferno’s dreams. Gave him the deepest of sleeps. A quaalude kind of sleep. That sounds good to me.” She studied Persephone. Her indigo eyes swirled with slashes of lime green.
Hecate stirred the cocktail ingredients in an ice cube bucket and refilled Persephone’s outstretched martini glass without a single drop spilled.
“You’re right,” Persephone said. “Rad did good. He got us inside.” She swirled her cocktail and took a small sip, the vermouth coating her taste buds with a desert kind of dry. “But that was hours ago, and there’s
been nothing since. I can’t feel Hades anymore.” Persephone stared at something that wasn’t there, her voice small, childlike. “I can always feel him. Even when I’m in the Overworld and he isn’t. Even when he was hunting. It’s a…like fever heat and a cool, soothing ointment all at once.” She placed her hand over her belly. “Right in here.” She seemed to notice the table, the bed, the faces of her friends again. “You know?
“I don’t know,” Hecate answered.
“Me neither.” Kay Te glanced down at the sketchpad to see if anything had changed. “I wish I did.”
“I’m drunk. Ignore me.” Persephone took another sip and stood. “Flames of Tartarus, that’s what I get for staying in the Overworld for too long. Human sappiness rubs off on me.”
“You know I’ve got a hate on for Hades,” said Hecate, “but I’ve got no doubt he will survive. If for nothing else, to torture and taunt me when he gets back. He’ll bind Thanatos. He’s not the hero I’d’ve picked to save the Overworld, but I think he’s probably the best one for this job. And I’ll help you, and him, in any way I can.” She took another olive and rolled her eyes. “But right now, I’ve got to go help the others serve food to the deadless.”
Hecate finished the last of her drink, scooped up her shiny black coat from the bed, and stood. “I’ll stop in after we’re done, see how things are going.” She placed her hand on Persephone’s arm and squeezed. “You’ll get him back. I’m telling you…” Her voice faded off while she made her way to the hotel door, picking up a charcoal-gray scarf and matching wool toque from a luggage rack.
“Thank everyone for me!” Persephone called out. “For checking in and for getting the supplies out for the dinner…”
Hecate pulled on her toque and tucked her raven hair back from her face. “I will.” The door barely made a sound when she left.
Persephone and Kay Te sat in silence for a moment.
“Pers?”
Persephone turned to the muse. “Yeah?”
“Maybe we should think—”
The door clicked open.
Kay Te jumped up, her pencil aimed at the intruder.
Hermes crashed the door open with his elbow, a box cradled in his arms. Hecate stood behind him in the hall. She braced the door open for him while he pushed into the room.
The queen of the Underworld clutched twin blades, one in each hand, positioned for throwing. She lowered her arms.
“Whoa there.” Hermes shook his head at Persephone. “At ease.”
Kay Te dropped her pencil, subconsciously smoothing her lime-green bangs to the side.
Hecate followed Hermes into the room. “Look who I picked up in the elevator.”
Hermes beamed at them, for a moment looking like the gods of old, made of sunlight and starlight and burnished copper. “Three beautiful women in a hotel room. Man, back in the day…” He placed the box on the end of the bed. The navy ski jacket, gloves, and knotted scarf around his neck dulled some of his god essence, a reminder that the days of Olympus were over. “Never mind. Being politically correct and being a god is an oxymoron.”
“Now that you point it out, yeah, it is.” Persephone slid her throwing knives into a hidden leather sheath sewn into the lining of her knee-high boots. “Although I would’ve stuck you with my blade for making a sexist comment even a millennium ago.”
Hermes pulled up the bottom of his ski jacket and shirt, showing off his lean abs and a four-inch-long scar. “I did, and you did…you stuck me like a wild boar.”
“Oh, yeah.” Persephone arched her brow and grinned. “You deserved it.”
Hecate pulled him around to get a look, tracing the scar’s raised edge with her black-tipped fingernail.
Hermes closed his eyes for the span of two human heartbeats. “Um,” he hummed. “Yes, I did. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.” He lowered his jacket almost hesitantly.
Kay Te caught herself looking a little too long at the messenger of the gods and busied her hands with sorting her pencils and pens into separate piles. “What are you? Sixteen?” she whispered to her papers.
“So, this is it?” Curiosity drew Persephone to the box.
Hermes unhooked the cardboard flaps, peeling them back.
All of them stood around, staring inside the box at…nothing.
“Is this like the emperor’s clothes?” Kay Te asked, narrowing her eyes. “’Cause I’ll say I like it if you wants me to, even though there’s nada inside.”
“It’s empty.” Persephone reached in slowly as if testing hot water in a bath. “But Heph wouldn’t make nothing. There’s always something.” Her hand hit a solid surface. She ran her fingers around, over a circular object.
Hermes made way for Persephone to get in closer. “Heph used Hades’s helmet of invisibility as a template of sorts. Inside is a set of shackles. Invisible until it’s activated. He thought it would be easier to get these on Thanatos if he couldn’t see them. Oh, and they’re expandable to fit whoever or whatever will be wearing them.”
Kay Te watched Persephone’s fingers. “Activate it how? How will Mr. Inferno know they’re there or how to use them? And how do I get these cuffs inside their world? Ferret’s small. Strong. But too small to carry ’em.”
The rest of them exchanged looks while Kay Te continued.
“Grim world is no parallel world like Deadman’s Island. It’s newish, made up from mostly nothing but a stinky manhole cover and—”
Hermes gently clasped Kay Te’s hand. Her fingernails turned from blue to red. She stopped talking and gazed into the god’s dark eyes. “Hades sees his helmet, well, kind of an outline of it. This is the same thing.” Hermes stroked the muse’s hand gently. “You talked to Hades through Ferret before, right?”
“Ah…yes. But there’s no promise I can in Grim world.”
“It might not matter. If Hades sees the cuffs, he’ll know what they’re for.”
Persephone appeared to cradle something in her hands, one of the edges denting the skin on her wrist. “What happens to Thanatos when he’s bound?”
“Hecate,” Hermes said, nodding his head in her direction. He smiled at Kay Te and released her hand.
“There are two curses and one binding spell infused in the materials. Zeus—don’t cringe at his name,” Hecate said, looking at Persephone, “and Poseidon—don’t cringe at his name—loaned their weapons to Heph to weld the materials. Thunder bolt and trident—”
“And Hades’s bident to complete the binding spell,” Persephone finished her friend’s sentence.
Hecate nodded. “I taught you well.”
Hermes looked at each of the women. “Hades will feel the marks of his brothers. At least, that’s what Heph is counting on. And then he’ll add his mark to theirs. Once the cuffs are secured, Thanatos will be under the influence of the Underworld, forced to obey the god essence he was born with. The death god will be back in business. That’s the theory.”
Persephone spun around and plunked down on a nearby chair, the cuffs resting in her palms. “I’d trust Heph’s theory over most things in this world.” She glanced up at Hermes. “So, can Ferret get these inside?”
Hermes stepped backward, forming a larger circle with the others. “The sizing of the cuffs changes along with the size of the wearer. These aren’t like traditional handcuffs. There is no cross piece. Think of it more like an electronic shackle, like the ones worn by humans under house arrest. Ferret can wear these inside. They’ll fit. Trick is handing them off to Hades. Making him understand. This is where your imagination comes in, little muse. They’re made to slip on like one of those rubber bracelets.” Hermes gave her the kind of look that disappeared everyone else in the room.
Kay Te didn’t know what to do with it other than to say, “No problem.”
He gazed at her and then clapped his hands loudly. “Great! Now the witch and I gotta go. Dinner isn’t getting served by itself.” With a bow, he offered up his arm to
Hecate and led her out of the room.
After they left, the hotel seemed quieter than ever. Persephone continued to feel around the nonexistent cuffs. “I don’t want to put these down. I never could find Hades’s damn helmet either. I tried, but it wasn’t made for me.”
“Pers.”
“Yeah?” said Persephone in a tired voice.
“Something’s happening.” Kay Te scrambled around the table to get a better look at the sketchpad. Light, filtered through canvas or some sort or textured material, appeared on the page. Thick and thin sticks, no, trees or legs…and then the filter was ripped away.
Persephone jumped up out of her chair, at the last second remembering the object in her hand. She held them tight to her chest and moved around the bed to stand beside Kay Te. They watched together.
There were bodies. Tall tree-shaped beings and squat hairless beasts with wings and without, hooved creatures with human-type heads, two-legged lizards, and a one-eyed giant with no arms.
Kay Te gasped. “That one looks like Marlo, without arms. No thousand arms…” Her voice faded off.
Persephone would have asked about Marlo, about his limbs, about all of it, but then she saw Hades. A flashlight glinted off the iron bracelets around his wrist. The end of a chain dangled down between them. His skull ring smiled wickedly on his middle finger, next to the ring that matched hers. “It’s him.”
“Ferret’s on his shoulder, or in his shirt.” Kay Te turned to Persephone. “You want me to bring Ferret home? Get him fitted with the cuffs and send him back?”
“Can we see some more? Just a bit?”
“You tell me when you’re ready.”
They both turned their attention to the scene on the paper.
Two of the beings seemed to do all the talking, their lips moving along with hands and wings. The rest stood silent. Some shaking their heads, others looking away at different times, and some leaving or entering the dark cave.