by Carmen Kern
“I’m sure he does,” Arle replied in a soothing tone and helped lower Hades down to the bench. “Rest. The Bounty Hunter’s beast won’t find you here. He cannot leave the sewers.”
Hades placed his palms on the seat as if rooting himself. “Are you sure about that?” Hades mumbled. His lip cracked open, and a thin line of blood seeped out.
Arle jerked his arms toward the ceiling, a moving marionette of limbs flapping and then falling to his side in a graceful swoop. “Kush, get the god some water while we wait for Reshawna.”
“And who’s Reshawna?” Hades asked as he watched Kush cross the room with stilted footsteps. A step, clomp, and then a floating glide. A one-two-three of motion that, in a better place, could be a viral line dance found in the Euro club scene.
“Reshawna is the only female dwarf Thanatos ever created for a story line,” Arle answered. “She’s smarter than most of us here and has a giant-sized attitude. And she’s the closest thing we have to a doctor. That makes her your new best friend.”
The men moved strangely, with jolting, lurching steps and gestures, and in the semi-dark room, a fine dust floating on the muted light, Hades wondered if he was in a dream. He looked around slowly, his body stiff, riddled with more aches and pains than the god had ever had at one time. His mind drifted. He raised his hand to his neck, feeling for the necklace Persephone gave him before he jumped into the void in Elana’s living room. It wasn’t there. He checked again, this time looking down at his chest.
Kush interrupted Hades’s search. His finger joints clicked softly as he offered a tin cup of water to the god.
The cup was wet with condensation. The water was clear and cold, so cold it hurt the god’s throat as he swallowed.
“Don’t drink too fast,” Kush said. “He shouldn’t drink it too fast, should he?”
Hades wondered if the man had always asked his brother what to say or do. If, even in their childhood, one had been the protector of the other. He drank the cup dry, slurping at the last few drops. Maybe this whole thing is a dream, a part of his brain thought. “Can I have some more?” he asked, his voice more like itself, deep, but still raw around the edges. The empty cup slipped from his fingers into his lap.
Someone retrieved the cup. Hades couldn’t seem to keep his head up, his neck, his eyes, every muscle in his body was too tired to do its job. He stared down at his skull ring, the stones normally red with flame black and lifeless. “I feel the same way, buddy,” Hades mumbled to his ring.
The sounds of kitchen bowls and pans clanked nearby, water whooshed from the mouth of a pump, clicks and clacks and whispers—life went on around the god of the Underworld while he lost himself in an exhausted daze.
“Hades,” Arle said.
At the sound of his name, he looked up. The wooden man held out another full cup of water. “Drink.” Kush followed behind him with a glass bowl that could have been created from Kay Te herself. Streams of pink and gold swirled through the glass, glittering, shining under artificial lights. Kush held out the bowl to his brother with both hands.
“There is no tactful way for me to say this”—Arle bowed his head—“but you seem an awful mess. Here is water and a towel for cleaning yourself.” He took the bowl from his brother’s outstretched hands and placed it on the bench beside Hades. From the pocket of his simple drawstring pants, he pulled a lemony-smelling bar of soap, crushed herbs poking out of the thick mass. All this presented like an offering. The best of what they had.
A thrilling jolt of energy surged through Hades. He took another long drink and set his cup down beside the colorful bowl. “Where are we?”
“Forgive me, lord of the Underworld.” Arle bowed again, this time keeping his head down. “This is our humble home. One kilometer east of Necromourn’s downtown core. We brought you up from the sewers, out of a culvert two blocks away. We covered your head with a hood and dragged you through the streets like we would a drunken friend.” He paused. “I hope that does not offend, but we had to keep you hidden.”
“No offense at all.” Hades dipped his hands in the warmed water, letting it fall through his fingers. The simple act of bringing him water, the kindness of these wooden men in a world in which he had no powers, was close to overwhelming. He cupped the water and brought his hands to his filthy face again and again, until his beard and the front of his hair were soaked. “You put something in the drinking water.” He looked up at the two men, water running down his face. “My pain…it’s dulled.”
“Again, we meant no harm or disrespect, sire.” Arle pointed a stiff finger toward another room, where roots and plants hung to dry in bunches from the wood beams. “Kush is somewhat of an herbal genius. Many of his mixes are used to heal, to sleep, to ease pain. Many of the misfits of this world need such things. Their limbs, the strange joinery of their body parts, are riddled with disease and pain. Many seek to destroy themselves, but Kush gives another option.”
“I gave you the tasteless powder from a wildflower grown in the forgotten districts of this world. The flower has no name, but the effects are most useful.” Kush sounded like a different creature when he spoke about his healing plants. It was the most he had said to Hades. He didn’t hesitate or question his brother. “The pain is going away, no?” He turned to Arle and asked, “It is, isn’t it?”
And there he goes with the questions again, Hades thought. “I feel better than I have in days…or weeks. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but by the length of my beard, it’s got to be several weeks.” He lathered the soap in his hands while he talked, the smell of citrus strong enough to cover the rest of his stink.
“You wash. I’ll talk,” Arle said. “There are many of us, Thanatos’s creations, who are unhappy with our world, with the lives he has given to us. Our maker is cruel. There are a few of us who were made to be story heroes, appearing again and again throughout a series. We call them the heroic villains. The rest of us were created for torture, for death, and at best, to be the faithful sidekick for an episode or two. We’ve watched our friends erased line by shaded line. Here one moment and gone the next. Others have fled to the Badlands of this world to scrape out a life far away from Thanatos’s capital. He doesn’t bother with the outliers. At least, not yet.” Arle handed Hades the towel he had draped over his shoulder.
The water turned dark gray with blood and filth. Hades dried his face on the towel and rubbed at his damp hair. “You’re a lot more diplomatic than I am. Thanatos is a bastard. Is that what you’re trying to say?” Hades dried his ear, his arm moving freely, his chest wound still burning but with a less intense fire.
The two brothers rolled their marble eyeballs toward each other and back to the god of the Underworld. “Will you come with us to meet the others? We’ve been praying for deliverance. But we never expected the god of the Underworld. We have much to talk about.”
“Whoa, I’m appreciative of your help, I really am, but I’m here to find Thanatos and take him back to the Underworld for judgment. He screwed with the balance of our worlds, and that doesn’t fly with the gods or the humans, even though they don’t know why or what exactly is happening to them—”
“I believe that you, Hades, can be a great help to us. And in turn”—Arle dipped his head in reverence again—“we can help your cause. That is, after our Reshawna patches you up proper like.” The wooden men stared at Hades, unmoving. They had no need to blink or breathe, and so they stood still. Waiting.
Hades slumped back against the wall, the damp towel clutched in his hands, resting in his lap. “How many creatures are we talking about? And just so we’re on the same page, you are talking about a revolt? Are you ready to lose your lives? ’Cause the way it sounds, you’re headed for a hell of a fight.” He studied each of the brothers as they studied him. “Or am I misreading the situation?”
It was Kush who spoke first, his voice more solid than before. “He’s not misreading.” He spoke to his brother, but this time,
it wasn’t a question.
“No, he isn’t,” Arle said, his lips raised in a forced wooden smile that some might think was downright grotesque, but to Hades, was a thing of beauty. Because what it meant was that he had allies in this world. He wasn’t alone. And that was something he could work with.
“Well, boys, I’d be happy to talk to these friends of yours.” He grinned, looking like the god of the Underworld for the first time in a long time. “How much of that flower powder can you give me before I pass out? I need to be clear. You know, mentally? But I could really use another hit.” Hades drained the cup of water, licking his shredded lips. “I’m asking for a friend.”
The brothers smiled a creepy if sincere smile and went to fetch another dose of drugged water.
It wasn’t until the brothers left him alone that Ferret’s masked face peeked around the corner of their wood stove. His whiskers twitched.
“Maybe the Fates are looking out for us after all,” Hades whispered to the critter. And then after a moment, “But let’s not count on it.”
ELEVEN
A teetering tower of abrasive colors and sharp lines weak on detail marked the corner of Orion and Macabre Street, its decaying walls a mash-up of fungus and dull paint and rusted steel. Outside the front door, at the edge of the sidewalk, a manhole cover lay on its side, propped up against one of the angled walls.
This neighborhood was the product of Thanatos’s earlier work, an experiment in perspective that went awry. The rest of Necromourn had then grown outward from this city block. Thanatos kept it as a reminder of where he started, to show how far his skills had grown. He strode past the goth church, the butcher shop, and liquor store he drew after several of his first characters complained that they needed somewhere to go in their downtime, somewhere they could forget about the horrors of their story lines.
The bar was freakishly quiet and empty. The patrol had cleared the few stragglers that roamed the streets at this ungodly hour.
One of Jethro’s soldiers stood guard beside the hole in the sidewalk, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms. He had the look of a put-out-to-pasture cowboy.
Thanatos remembered drawing him as an extra in a Western comic series he abandoned after the third book. He had lost interest in the sheriff/hooded-bandit trope.
The man chewed on a wooden toothpick. “Down and to the left. Follow the burned-meat smell,” he drawled. The weathered skin beside the cowboy’s eyes puckered when he ground the toothpick between his oversized teeth.
Thanatos studied the horselike face of the soldier. The detail of his shaggy hair, the flared nostrils, were so lifelike that the man seemed part photograph, part drawing. He turned abruptly, stepping up onto the sidewalk and dropping into the hole in a flurry of motion. Wings shot out from his back; the clacking of his armor echoed in the narrow opening. Thanatos landed softly at the bottom of the tunnel.
Torches littered the ground in a zigzag pattern, lighting up the cavern. Another two officers, one with goat horns sprouting from his forehead, the other with gears and pulleys for legs and arms, stood at the entrance of another tunnel. The sick smell of barbecued meat permeated everything. A stink that even months afterward wouldn’t wash away with the heavy rains. The men snapped to attention as Thanatos folded his wings behind him.
“The sergeant is inside, sir,” the goat man bleated.
Thanatos stomped on a creeping vine that wound around his ankle. The fauna in these tunnels had mutated from his original drawings, something the rest of the city had also done over time. His whole world had fermented into a stronger, sweeter kind of nightmare all on its own. He followed the trampled fungus path to the opening of the tunnel, stepping over the small lip separating one cement slab from another. Through the wide mouth of the tunnel, officers roamed and squatted in different parts of an open space. Blood covered most of the walls and floor, puddling under the leftovers of a grisly attack.
The god tried to recall if this had been a scene from one of his drawings. There were familiar elements, but the artistry of the killings was not of his making. Chunks of meat, some still on the bone, some not, had been placed carefully in a large circle. Intestines, intact and stretched out in a straight line, led away from the leftover parts of the dead soldiers. Jethro crouched in the center of the circle, intent on marking severed body parts.
The torches flickered, yellow tongues of light licking up the walls and across the ground. Moss and other greenery were absent here, as if the tunnel itself had sucked the life out of every living thing. There was a tomblike beauty to the scene.
“Jethro,” the god’s voice boomed.
The sergeant pivoted in his crouch to face the god. “This is what’s left of my men.” He rubbed his nose with his shoulder, his hands and wrists red with blood. “Which of your creatures could have done this? What are we up against?”
Thanatos took a closer look at the claw marks on the wall, expanding his fingers to match the scratches. “There’s no name for this beast. The Bounty Hunter’s old partner did this.” He dropped his hand, sighed, and wove his way through scattered body parts and working officers until he stood beside Jethro. “I took parts and pieces of discarded drawings, shook them up, and let the pieces fall where they may to make the creature that did this. It is the one of the ugliest of my characters. And one of the most pissed off.”
“We came down here to find Hades.” Jethro jabbed his thumb at a streak of colorful paint on the stone wall, now covered in dried blood. “My men were following the paint trails. When they didn’t meet up with the other officers, we came looking for them. This is what we found.” The sergeant stood. “We thought there might be more pieces to find, but so far, this is it. The blood stops where the intestines end.”
There was a shuddering hiss. A rush of water releasing somewhere close by.
“Let’s get this cleaned up,” Jethro called out to his men. “Don’t bother trying to separate the pieces.”
The other officers distributed garbage bags among themselves and began to gather the gruesome leftovers of their fallen brothers. Some of them had seen this kind of thing before. Others were newer to the force, newer characters in current stories, trying to earn a buck in the downtime between episodes, doing what they could to provide for themselves and their families. They wore looks of disgust and confusion and disbelief. Of course, they knew what they were: fictional story characters in a world of someone else’s making, but this seemed too real somehow. More real than they would have believed.
“Leave it,” Thanatos commanded. “They are inconsequential.” Thanatos held Jethro’s gaze. “Finding Hades is the only thing that matters.” Turning, he scanned the room, his attention on each officer, if but for a second. “If we find him, we have leverage against the other gods. Imagine,” he said, and threw out his arm, embracing the darkness and the gore around them, “taking our world into the others. Letting our monsters and villains loose, expanding our playing field, if you will. We will find Hades. I couldn’t have planned this better. The god of the Underworld imprisoned here, in my world.” His words thinned out to a whisper. “I know Persephone would pay anything to get him back.”
Jethro studied the god’s face with the eye of a detective. It was in his character to do so.
Thanatos was a precarious god, one prone to fits of anger. His cruel words and gruesome art a personification of evil. Compassion had packed its bags and snuck out the back door of the death god’s being when he was a small child, and never found its way back. Jethro saw all of this and more in the god’s face.
Without turning toward his men, he said, “Alpha squad, put down your bags and continue the search for Hades. Beta, get topside. We’ll need ropes, more ammo, and three dogs. Meet the rest of us at the Timberfall crossing. And find the doc, Tick. We’ll need to keep the god alive if we’re going to use him as a hostage.”
“Tick…he’s still around?” Thanatos asked. He began to wonder just how many of his
characters had slipped from his mind. But with at least a thousand of them at this point, it was impossible to keep track of them all. His default was to assume they had been erased, but clearly that wasn’t the case. He shoved the thoughts aside, along with any doubts that he could manage millions more beings in multiple worlds.
I’ve had other things on my mind, that’s all, he thought.
Jethro stepped outside the circle of bones to fetch his pack. “Tick’s been patching up anyone who needs it in the back of the Cross-Eyed Cow. Harley lets him drink for free at his bar in exchange for personal medical care.”
Thanatos strode along the double line of intestines, still glistening on the dirty ground.
Jethro nodded to his men and shouldered his pack, securing the straps. “Travel in twos. Stay within shouting distance. You see anything pastel colored, call out. We’ll split off to search other tunnels as we go.” He unhooked a water canteen and took a long, deep drink. “Got it?” he asked, smacking his lips.
They answered with multiple yes, sirs while they gathered their gear. A quarter of the soldiers slipped away, back the way Thanatos came in. The rest of them partnered up and brought up the rear, with the god of death leading and Jethro following at his heels. Each of them picked up a torch from the ground on their way out. The light bounced around, warm yellow flooding the tunnels as they walked.
Water rushed by in parallel tunnels while a beast patted its bulging belly in a cavern not two blocks away. The feast in its dreams hadn’t been enough. It needed real meat. The one he stalked had disappeared, but everything had turned out okay…two times okay. It licked gray matter off one of its cloven hooves and then rested. Satisfied for the moment.
TWELVE
The walls of the tunnels shone slick with slime, the air heavier and stinking of an organic rot. Thanatos and his men followed the trail of the Beast, its footprints, hoofprints, and paw marks easy to follow, even in the dim light. There were sporadic signs of gold and pink paint brushed along the stone walls.