Thanatos

by Carmen Kern

  An eerie green glow filled the room, above the water and below. At the edge of her vision, Kay Te noticed fins and snakes slicing through the water around them, slithering over her arms and through her legs.

  “I’m offering you a way in, a way to get your precious Hades out. It’s up to you and your god posse to contain Thanatos.” Phobetor shoved the nose of a hammerhead shark away from them. “I’ll be gone by the time you get there and will be happy to stay out of your way if you stay out of mine.” He let go of Kay Te, digging around in his clothing under the water while the muse sank. He found what he was looking for and held it up—a piece of paper, dry, filled with neat, tidy writing—a page torn from his personal journal. Almost as an afterthought, he yanked Kay Te above the surface once more. Her hair hung across her face. She sputtered, her lips blue with cold, a shade she would never pick for herself.

  “To make it easy for you, I’ve written it all down so you don’t forget anything. You’ll find it in the front pocket of your pants when you wake. Show the god squad. When they agree to my terms, draw this key on the other side of the sheet.” The paper disappeared, and in its place, Phobetor held up a skeleton key, the end shaped like an unblinking eye. The pupil burned with red flame. “Memorize its shape. Draw it, call on my name, and you’ll have your key.” He grinned, all smoke and shadow with the face of the god of the Underworld. “Let me know if you understand.” He paused.

  “Yes,” she squeaked, eyes wide, searching the waters that churned with monsters.

  “Brilliant. I was hoping you’d say that. This means we all get what we want. I’d say this has been a most successful encounter.” Phobetor pulled Kay Te’s face close to his, his empty eyes and thin lips burning through the mask he wore.

  “Ffff,” Key Te managed to say.

  “No use cussing at me—”

  “No.” She pleaded with her eyes.

  “You have something to say.” Phobetor rolled his eyes to the ceiling, thinking. “Thanatos used to tell me I was far too curious for my own good.” He sighed for dramatic pause. “Speak, little muse.”

  Kay Te’s mouth loosened; she moved her lips freely. “There’s a ferret in your world that belongs to us.”

  “Ah, the one Thanatos captured. Let me guess, you want it back.” The smile of the god of the Underworld flickered, and underneath, the sneer was all nightmare.

  “Not back, just free him.” Kay Te’s teeth chattered.

  Phobetor observed the muse’s face. He saw that the critter meant something to her, something she wouldn’t divulge. She wouldn’t waste her breath on something unimportant. But what did it matter, as long as he got what he wanted?

  The Hades mask vanished, and the true face of the god of nightmares glared at Kay Te. Clicking his blackened teeth, he said, “If you make the deal with the gods, I’ll throw in the animal’s freedom as a bonus. And now, it’s time for you to wake. Wake, little muse. Wake.” His grin unfolded, his jaw unhinged as a mouth within his mouth jutted out, teeth elongating, sharpening into rows upon rows of teeth while she sank into the bottomless murky waters that churned with eel tails and serpents and the god of nightmares himself, now the greatest of great whites. Jaws opened, lunging at her with a ferocious snap.

  Something jerked her out of the way of those massive teeth, shoving her ahead until she burst through the door and into the narrow hallway. Water and garbage and a stick-legged chair poured from the room. The force of the water pushed her forward and into someone’s arms. She coughed and sputtered and finally turned to see what other nightmare had found her.

  Rad, surging with purple light, held her up by her elbow, guiding her past the doorways she’d passed by earlier. This time, the doors were shut. “Keep going. Almost there,” he said in that dreamy djinn voice of his.

  “You know, you really are quite beautiful.” Kay Te reached out to touch the lit tattoos on his face and stumbled. He caught her, ducking under her arm to take more of her weight. “When you’re not being a jerk,” she finished her thought.

  “I’ll remind you of what you said when we get back.” He almost dragged her to the final doorway and the opposite end of the hallway. “Open the door. I got you here, but you have to open it,” Rad said to her, his eyes glowing violet.

  She hung limp in his arms, unable to lift her hand.

  Rad grabbed her hand and put it on the doorknob. “Open the door!” he yelled.

  And somehow, she did.

  Rad shoved her through into the brightest of lights.

  TWENTY

  It was late evening in Necromourn, the cloudless sky turned from indigo to a dark violet. It was Thanatos’s favorite part of the day, when the view from his many windows looked upon the palette of a violent bruise, not unlike the one forming on Jethro’s face. His eye was swollen shut, and around it, the skin was the darkest of purple, smooth and shiny under the art light above Thanatos’s desk.

  Kintos stood beside Jethro, his fur ruffled, ears pinned back against his head. He panted from the exertion of a fight.

  Jethro stood beside him, breathing heavily.

  The god of death leaned against his light table, arms over his chest, his fists bloodied from Jethro’s split lip. “The top three things on my ‘hate’ list is people who don’t do their job, dried-up pens, and Hades. So imagine my disappointment when I come back from a most glorious day in the Overworld to discover that my assistant forgot to order the art supplies I’d asked for and my sergeant and his team still hasn’t located Hades.” His face cratered with a scowl. “You’re lucky I’m out of erasers. You’d be nothing but a faded line in a mistake of a drawing.”

  Jethro stood at attention. Blood splattered the front of his uniform. He blinked his one good eye. “I’m sorry, sir. We have a couple of leads on the god of the Underworld. Our intel is reliable, and we’re confident—”

  “I’m glad one of us is. I’m not in the mood to hear anything from you unless its news on Hades’s whereabouts. Get out before I break you.” Thanatos turned around to gaze at the night sky, the stars switching on one by one like tiny fairy lights.

  Jethro and Kintos exchanged glances, nodding to each other before Jethro took his leave.

  Thanatos sighed and asked, “Did you send word to my brother?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kintos licked his chops. “He should be here shortly.”

  “Good.” Thanatos turned to face his head of security. “For the time being, I want double patrols around the perimeter of this building, and three sets of eyes on the security cameras. No one leaves the control room unoccupied.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?” Kintos’s ears perked up.

  “Send in my brother when he—”

  Phobetor quietly opened the door, his footsteps silent, a contrast to the polar bear mask he had donned. “Welcome back,” he said in a voice cracking like ice.

  Kintos started for the door. “I’ll be at my post if you need anything.” He brushed by Phobetor’s large, furred shoulders, the animal smell thick in the wolf man’s snout.

  “Where have you been?” Thanatos asked.

  “I got your message that you were going topside,” Phobetor said, ignoring his brother’s question. “How’d the interview go?”

  Thanatos studied Phobetor crossing the room, his eyes boring three inches down past his brother’s mask, into his empty eyes. He smells different, Thanatos thought. And I don’t think it’s his new mask. His brother seemed a little too illusive. Where has he been all this time? He stood in front of his brother’s large white form and finally said, “Perfectly.”

  “And the sea goddess?”

  “Dead. And beautifully displayed.”

  “Just like you drew it.”

  “Just like you wrote it.”

  Phobetor shifted uneasily, looking past his brother to the drawing table strewn with what looked like new sketches. “Are you working on something new?”

  “It’s my plan B.” Thanatos stro
lled up to his table, his brother padding behind him.

  “Why deviate from the story we already wrote?” Phobetor took the paper Thanatos handed him. Hades stared up at him from the page. An RCMP officer led the god to his police car, bound in handcuffs. Crowds of faceless people huddled together behind barricades, their fists raised above them, heads thrown back. Phobetor could hear their anger, their cries for justice in his head. His hand itched to pencil in the text.

  “I’ve planted a seed of doubt within the people, shifting their gaze to the wealthy business and landowners in the city. Zeus and Hera are already feeling the eyes of the media, the police, and soon, the people themselves will look at them with blame. Poseidon has been questioned about his role in the missing and late shipments of food supplies.”

  Thanatos sat on the edge of the table and reached for another drawing, pulling it out to show Phobetor. “The people are looking for someone to blame. What if we give them someones. Two brothers with networks that span the globe and wealthy enough to execute a pandemic like this one. And a third brother, an unknown, who has the backing and anonymity to create a pathogen that stops people from dying.”

  Thanatos smiled with delight. “It sounds absurd but yet so believable. We know how gullible the human species is.” He chuckled, soft and vicious. “They don’t believe we’re real. They stop worshiping and praying, and suddenly we’re thrust into their world to live among them. This will wake them to the gods. But instead of bowing down, they’ll curse us. Hate who and what we are. Draining what little power we still hold. That is, of course, all but the Underworld, where the dead believe in what they see.”

  “You want to hang the undead problem on Hades.” Phobetor kept his bear eyes pinned on the drawings. “Make him powerless.”

  Thanatos nodded. “Him and the others. They will be found guilty before there’s a trial, as all scapegoats are. It’s the perfect storm.” He slapped his brother on a massive shoulder. “I finished the drawings. I know we usually start with your story lines, but I was inspired. I’ve no doubt you can fill in the text.”

  He stood and strolled toward the expansive windows, looking out to the night sky. “When I catch Hades, I’ll take him to the Overworld and let the humans string him up. The people will condemn them all one way or another. And while the gods deal with their problems, I’ll be in the Underworld, rearranging the furniture and changing the locks.” He turned to look at Phobetor. “I’ll make it my own. Our own. The Underworld will finally belong to the Night family.”

  Tapping a clawlike finger on the table, Phobetor hesitated and then said, “You heard Mom, right? She isn’t interested in a takeover.”

  “Are you?” Thanatos asked in a hushed voice. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. But the thought had been planted before his mother showed up. The spindly stalk of doubt had popped up, and he couldn’t seem to shake it down or prune it back. Its trunk had thickened and because of it, he questioned his brother’s loyalty.

  Phobetor’s mask slipped for a moment, his hairless skull gleaming at Thanatos, and then, as if it were never so, the polar bear turned its beady black eyes to the god of death and said, “More than ever.”

  In the window’s reflection, Thanatos had seen Phobetor’s body shimmer. The death god closed his eyes. Have you already betrayed me, brother? he wondered. Is it too late to change your mind?

  The room sat in silence. Thanatos reeled at the stunning idea. Had he questioned his brother’s commitment to their cause too late? If only he’d been more attentive, put a tail on Phobetor and installed cameras in his living quarters. Thanatos sighed and opened his eyes to the swirling, gaseous sky. It’s never too late.

  Phobetor placed the story panels in order across the long table. “Have you thought of what you’ll do to the characters who are helping Hades? What are their fates?”

  The same as yours, Thanatos wanted to say, but instead, “I’ll give them a chance to hand Hades over to us. One chance to save themselves. And if they don’t take it? This world will die a glorious death. I’ve taken our books, every drawing, every edit with me to the Overworld. I will burn them all in our crematorium, obliterating them into ash, only to be spread over the nearest landfill alongside dirty diapers and tube televisions.”

  Phobetor jerked his massive head around to face his brother, his eyes wide with surprise. “You’ll destroy all of this because of the sins of a small group of people?” The nightmare god walked toward his brother but stopped. “This world is our life’s work.”

  Thanatos turned on him, storming across the room. “In case you haven’t noticed, our life’s work has taken on a life of its own. The characters are changing, especially those we used only once and didn’t erase. The streets and the architecture are shifting, building upon themselves. The tunnels below are a testament to it. There are miles of them that I never drew. The outlier towns have never been part of our world, yet they emerged from the ground almost organically.”

  He grabbed the fatty skin around Phobetor’s neck and yanked him close. “We built this place to control it. And now, we will end it our way,” he said, spit flying. “And then we will rule another. One with a long history and adoring people who will make us invincible. This was a steppingstone to ruling the Underworld.”

  “And if they give you Hades? What then?”

  “If we have the Underworld, why do we need another? I see the same fate either way.” He shoved Phobetor’s large head away. “Or does the future we’ve worked for no longer suit you?”

  The room went cold and still. Phobetor tried to control his face, but instead, he transformed into the more suitable mask of Mark Twain. He marched to the table, took the first page of Thanatos’s drawing, and said, “I’ll write the story.” He stroked the bushy mustache. “I could use a drink, though. Something dark…and strong.”

  He picked up a black pen and the scrap of watercolor paper to rest his hand on and sat down to ink the letters within the spaces Thanatos left him. He’d filled in two speech balloons and a few sound words by the time Thanatos brought the drink he’d asked for.

  Thanatos set the glass down behind Phobetor, on a small rolling cart they used for food and drinks while they worked.

  Phobetor licked at the sweat forming on his lip, but the mustache got in the way. “The detail on Hades’s face…it’s…lifelike,” he admired. He finished coloring in the g in ktang.

  Thanatos read over his brother’s shoulder, something he knew Phobetor hated. “I’ve spent decades looking at his mug, wishing it away. His face is branded into my brain. I guess it shows.”

  Phobetor pushed past Thanatos, making a grab for the pint of dark ale. After downing half the glass, he set it down. “You know, I’ll get his done much faster if you stop hovering.”

  “You say that every time.”

  “And every time it’s true.”

  Thanatos narrowed his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “I have a good feeling about this, brother. It’s the ending we’ve been working for. You and me, running the Underworld, just like we dreamed about when we were kids.” He reached over and clamped his hand on Phobetor’s shoulder, his fingers tightening, and for a moment, he thought he might tear through muscle and tendon, striking fast and lethal until his arm blossomed with a spray of his brother’s blood. But he dropped his hand begrudgingly. He left Phobetor to his inking. He had a few things to take care of.

  Kintos met Thanatos in the lobby of his building. “Do you need something, sir?” Kintos asked.

  “A few things, actually. Cameras in Phobetor’s apartment and in the side alley. Put them in every room. And put a tail on him. If he leaves this building, I want someone watching.”

  Kintos spoke carefully, “You want us to monitor Phobetor from the control room or do I run the camera feed to your room?”

  “My room. Only your most trusted people on this, the fewer the better.” Thanatos took a drink of ale. “Phobetor cannot suspect.”

  “We’ll be li
ke ghosts in a forest, sir.”

  “Do you have any cameras available?”

  “We have more than enough. I keep spares.”

  “Good. My brother will be busy for a few hours—plenty of time for you to get in and out of his cave.”

  “With your leave, sir.” Kintos bowed his head and headed for the stairs.

  “Let’s see what you’re up to, Phobetor.” Thanatos cracked his neck and then straightened his jacket. He was in the mood for a drink and a vampiress, in whatever order they presented themselves. He pushed through the doors of his building and into the dark arms of the night.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kay Te jolted up. The glare of the bedside lamp blinded her. Coughing and gasping, she shielded her eyes against the light. “I can see,” she choked out.

  “She’s okay.” Bob’s voice was rife with relief. He clutched Kay Te’s hand.

  “Rad. Rad.” Persephone’s voice came from far away.

  Kay Te felt the bed go down on the other side. She could make out the shapes in the room now and lowered her other arm. Bob’s face came into focus beside her. Persephone sat beside Rad on the other side of the bed.

  Smack.

  “What the—?” Rad jerked awake, rubbing his stinging cheek and glaring at Persephone. “I do you a solid and this is what I get? Now, if we were naked—”

  “Okay, jackass, I was just trying to wake you up,” Persephone said in a tightly wound voice.

  The bed heaved as Persephone got up. Rad cradled his cheek in his hand and rolled over to face the muse. “Don’t worry. I didn’t take advantage of the situation. We both still have our clothes on.”

  “You came for me,” Kay Te whispered. “Thank you.” She took a jittery breath and smiled weakly.

  Rad looked to the end of the bed at Persephone and Hecate. “I didn’t have much of a choice. But…you’re welcome.”

  Bob held Kay Te’s hand tighter. “We were worried. You were shaking and so cold and you wouldn’t wake up.”