by Carmen Kern
Rain bounced off the asphalt, running down gutters and into the storm drains. And still they went further into the city, toward its soul. Beneath their feet, water rushed through pipes and drains, and sewer lines filled and rushed out to the many culverts around the city.
An hour earlier, the same culverts had swallowed rebel groups of creatures burdened with weapons and ammo, and other beings who sat upon their shoulders or perched on their heads. They had walked through the rising waters to their assigned manholes, each of them aware of their job and the time.
It didn’t matter that the characters’ world conspired against them; it only mattered that they made it to their spot before Arle and the others stormed through the borders of Necromourn. They would stick to the plan, believing that their months and years of hiding, their sacrifices and prayers, would pay off, and if they didn’t see tomorrow, so be it. They would make it a hell of a finish, and for once, they’d decide for themselves how their story would end.
TWENTY-FIVE
Phobetor dragged his bag from behind the bar and stood in front of his wall of bookcases. He mourned the passing of the first editions he’d collected throughout many lifetimes. He mourned because in all probability, Thanatos would find a way to burn it to the ground or lock it up for good. Either way, once his brother discovered his betrayal, the god of nightmares would not be back.
As the god packed clothes for the human form he used in the Overworld, he tried to recall when he had first thought of bailing out of his brother’s plans. To be fair, he thought, they were my plans too. At least in the beginning. Until it became too complicated.
He was one of the gutless gods—he didn’t mind admitting it. He was the bully who scared people and used the fears of others to feast on, and when it came down to standing up for something or picking a side, he’d lock himself in a closet and wait for the whole thing to blow over. He was the one to pick through the spoils of war on a bloody, gore-filled battleground, claiming weapons and rings and flags from those who were stupid enough to fight for something.
He recognized all of this while he zipped up the bag he’d retrieved from his alleyway hiding place earlier in the day. “Why, then, did I release the critter from my brother’s cage?” He pursed his thin lips, searching for a good answer. “Tit for tat,” he said. “I had to give them something to show I’m a man of my word, at least in this instance.” He nodded, satisfied that his reasoning was sound, that he was doing this to save himself and keep the wrath of the gods off his mother. It wasn’t for love, not really. He felt a certain responsibility to the Night family, but he wouldn’t label it love.
“You don’t seem to have that same consideration, brother.” Phobetor tucked the letter he’d written Thanatos into a thick envelope. Taking a few extra minutes, he looked around his comfortable apartment, caressing some of the objects as he made a circuit around his rooms.
A muffled bing-bong rang out from the security app on his laptop. He hurried to open his computer. The camera eye above his brother’s door glowered down on three beings exiting the elevator.
Phobetor traced Persephone’s face with a talon nail. “Well, hello, my darlings. I didn’t know who’d show up, but I’m not surprised it’s you. Here to save your man, are you? And the delicious witch.” He licked his leathery lips. “And who might you be? You have a certain…what is it, shadow? Flame? Or maybe you’re just one of those red-shirt guys written into the adventure only to be sacrificed.”
The god of nightmares studied each of their faces, the goddesses in particular, while they tried each door and eventually went out into the stormy streets.
“Hmm, it would be most sporting to follow you, such entertainment, but I just don’t have the time. I’ll leave you in my brother’s capable, if wicked, hands. I bid you farewell.” Closing his laptop, he placed it in the outside pocket of his pack, zipping it in.
Phobetor opened the door to the bedroom where many of his characters had met their end, and most recently where he had proposed his deal to the delightful muse. He would’ve liked playing with her for longer, perhaps for years, but that wasn’t in the cards.
Phobetor left the door to the haunted bedroom open. When he turned, he thought he saw tentacles reach out from under the bed. He smiled and walked the path to his front door for the last time. He didn’t bother to lock it behind him.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he pulled out the letter he’d written, and placed it neatly at the base of Thanatos’s door. The envelope seemed stark, crisp against the black stone tile.
He snatched up his bag and waited for the elevator. Instead of watching the countdown of floor numbers, he stared outside at the tumbling, wrestling clouds, an effect of his brother’s growing powers. He almost regretted his betrayal, wishing he could be there to see the outcome of the War for the Underworld. He grinned. The title had a certain finality to it. A darkness that he appreciated.
The elevator binged, and the doors opened. Inside, the air stank of unrefrigerated blood. Phobetor stepped up to the edge, gazed down into the gap between, into the darkness below the swinging cage. It took only a moment for his eyes to adjust—water the color of blood raged below, hammering against the rock of the abyss, surging as if the city itself was overflowing.
“Like the river Styx, but fouler smelling. I wouldn’t have thought that possible,” Phobetor whispered.
Many times in the god’s life, he’d sensed that something wasn’t as it should be, saving him from unsavory trouble with other gods or those pesky humans, and now, for no rational reason, the back of his eyes sockets itched and his withered skin puckered. No reason at all. “Unless…” he said, looking back over his shoulder to check the hall and then looking outside to the city.
Phobetor paused, then took the long stride over the gap, into the elevator. He would leave this place just as he planned, despite his unease. His boot touched the floor of the elevator car—bones crunched, many bones. Small skeletons of rodents and fish, tiny skulls staring up at him in mocking grins, some without teeth, some with needle-sharp fangs that seemed too big for the small faces. It was something made of a nightmare, yet, this wasn’t of his making.
“What is this? he whispered. He dropped his bags, crushing more bones.
The cage rattled and hummed, gears grinding and straining to move the cage from a standstill. Rhythms of a clicking pulley quickened, and the elevator car jerked into motion and picked up speed, as if it had a mind of its own.
Phobetor hurried to close the iron gate.
An unnatural heat rose from the rushing water, transforming into something new. A volcanic ooze splashed in massive glops against the rocks jutting out from the river.
Phobetor thought he saw something floating in the now-boiling water. At first, a tiny seam in the water formed, growing longer until it split open in a neat cut, as if slicing through skin to show the different layers.
There was a snap, like a flag in the wind or the flick of a whip, and Phobetor could see a dark, shadowy shape beneath the murky surface, swimming fast to keep up with the momentum of the soaring cage. Through the seam, the form emerged with the sound of a stomach rejecting its contents. The water gurgled, roiling with acid and gas, churning into violent waves that splashed against each other until, in the middle of the cauldron came a sucking sound and then a loud hiss.
A burst of rotten air erupted from under the surface, ejecting a foul substance into the air. And riding on its current, a massive creature, part bat, part stingray, emerged. Its thin wings beat slowly, sweeping the water as it drove its body to keep pace with the cage above.
Its gills flapped wide and then closed with each steamy breath while it sped along the water, and then, as if a gong had sounded, it turned its googly eyes upward to the cage and looked at Phobetor. It happened fast. The creature gathered its long flat body, bunching in the middle. Its slimy skin rolled around its middle, and it came up out of the volcanic river, a winged cannon steamrolling throug
h the air.
The god stumbled back to the far side of the cage and he tasted the same fear that plagued the dreams of his making. The stench of rotten cabbage blew from his lips. He pressed his back against the hot iron. His nightmare body glistened with sweat.
A flurry of motions, far too quick for Phobetor to take in, pushed the cage back and forth in wild lurches. The screeching of gears and pulleys, the squeal of cables strained with the added motion, filled the cavernous space with its ominous sounds. The god gave a low cry of horror as a shadow of wings and folds of flesh shot up beside him.
The creature turned its thick head gracefully to one side and then whirled around, its wings shaking the cage outward, changing its trajectory. Two tentacles whipped out from its belly, flailing across the top of the cage, smacking the iron with a loud shlick, sucking onto the clamp arm. Its wings gently widened, stretched taut as a sail catching the wind, beating the air against the cage, moving the creature’s enormous body away and yet bringing it along for the ride. The cage slipped on its side.
Once again, Phobetor cursed his mother for not bearing him with wings like his brother. He tumbled off his feet and slammed flat against the side of the cage, his bags smacking him on his head and shoulders.
There was a brief pause in the motion, an intermission of sorts, while Phobetor thought of all the things he could have brought with him—the Eternal Flaming Sword from their epic fantasy comic series, the bone gun from their zombie series, the common yet practical AK-47, or hell, even his hunting knife with the double-edged blade—but no, he’d brought books and sweaters for the cold winter ahead. All of it was a sick joke. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was the punchline.
The cables warbled and groaned against the opposing force, the cage dragged backward, the brakes pressed down, the friction weakening the steel weave.
Phobetor struggled to his knees. He strangled the bars trying to pull himself upright. An explosion of volcanic rock from below spewed into the air, the glowing liquid reaching higher with the growing violence of the river. The ground and the walls of the cavern quaked and cracked.
The beast heaved on the cage again and again, following the scent that called him from his depths.
Phobetor was tossed around like a flopping doll. His bags tumbled and smashed into his flailing body. He couldn’t gain a foothold, his arms swung frantically, his hands grabbing and clutching while he was rolled and knocked about with each mighty pull until at last, the clamp arm attached to the cable folded, the gear dislodged, and the god with no wings took to the air.
“Thanatos!” Phobetor let out a desperate yell of anger and of a fear so deep, his body purged itself. He spied the beast blurring past, knocking the cage once more in the air, flinging it aside where the fiery waters shot up to meet him. The brightest of starry nights flashed in his mind, and a crash of metal boomed through the cavern a millisecond before nothingness took him in her sweet, sweet arms.
But with his last thought, he donned another mask.
Ferret entered the ducts of yet another building. His paws skittered and slipped on the smooth surface. Thunder crashed as he burst out of a roof vent. He lowered his head against the driving rain, pinning his ears back and scurrying as quick as he could on the wet shingles. Ferret chittered while he ran. He stopped periodically to listen, to perk his ears, and peer through grating.
Ferret ran and hopped and leaped over curbs and benches and windowsills. He stuck to sheltered paths when he could, shaking his drenched fur into a fluff of silver and then continuing on his preordained journey, weaving around the deepest of puddles. He was close now. He felt the call of his creator.
At the end of the street, Corvus Tower rose in hard angles that tore through a jagged line of rooftops and up into layers of thunderheads. Ferret ran toward Thanatos’s headquarters and the birthing place of this world, following a neon-pink thread that only it could see.
Ferret stood on hind legs outside the tower’s front door, his tiny paws pressed against the glass, peering into the empty lobby. He waited.
In a quiet room of the Dominion Hotel, Kay Te and Rad sat at the makeshift drawing table. One inking but mostly waiting, the other mostly drinking, because that was what he did when he waited. Outside their window, night was taking a final bow as day entered with a flourish of her pale-lavender skirts flung over the eastern sky.
Rad pointed to the drawing Kay Te had finished almost an hour ago. “So, how long are they going to stand there?”
Kay Te looked up at him, her kaleidoscope eyes shifting from shape to shape. “A minute or an hour.”
“That was vague.”
“Vague is what I got. This building is the ins and outs of the world. Meaning, Pers and the others will end up here, best case, with Mr. Inferno. You gots a better way of doing things, my ears are ready.”
Rad took another sip, ice cubes rattling in his glass. “I’m thinking.”
The muse grinned. “Well, how long does it take to do that?”
“Ha.” Rad clinked his glass down on the table and got up. “I’m not good with this ‘doing nothing’ thing. I can’t get a thread on dreams or nightmares, not in your drawings, at least. But there’s a shit load of them out there.” He jabbed a finger at the window. “If I can’t get into their minds, I can’t tell you what I see.” The djinn snatched the hotel menu off the end of the bed where he’d thrown it just twenty minutes before after thumbing through the pages.
“If you got the munchies, order something. Food helps…sometimes.”
“I don’t have the munchies.” Rad threw his head back, gazing at the white ceiling. “I just want something to happen.” He studied the crown molding, the joinery, and the pattern that looked like square teeth.
A chair leg dragged on the floor. “Mr. Flameless, if you uttered any sort of prayer, perhaps the gods heard your plea.”
“Right.” He looked at the muse. “You mean—”
“If you asked for something, we’re getting something.” Kay Te hunched over her drawing. From the edge of the last panel she had drawn, a shadowy figure, and then another, sprinted from the lines of black felt.
Rad flung the menu back on the bed and dashed over to his chair. “I’ll be damned.”
“Let’s hope none of us is damned.” Kay Te’s eyes brightened with the light colors of the rainbow. “They found Ferret.” She grinned as another figure burst into the image.
“There’s only three.” A new look came into Rad’s face. “They didn’t find Hades.”
Kay Te’s grin faltered. “Have some faith. He’ll show.” And then she whispered, “He’ll show,” as if to cement her own faith.
TWENTY-SIX
Thirty-two rebel vehicles and 157 beings had made the pilgrimage across the tundra, stopping once to meet up with another group of rebels who would infiltrate the streets of Necromourn on foot.
Arle and his people were late, but the others had waited in faith, a rumor floating around that the god of the Underworld had come to lead them against Thanatos. A rumor that was confirmed by Arle when he ran over a few details with the group leader. Their meeting didn’t last long.
The group leader radioed the other teams about the change in plan. Some of them had to double back in the sewers, shimmying through small cracks in stone walls and sliding down short ramps into bigger tunnels rushing with storm water. They had time, but not a lot. Just enough for the mobile units to get in place while Arle’s people went on to pick up artillery for the tanks.
Arle drove ahead in the van, leading the caravan of rebel trucks, motorcycles, and two tanks. They slowed as they approached an abandoned bus station on the outskirts of Necromourn. The hand painted signage was worn, but there were traces of a Greyhound skeleton stretched out in a full run. Rats milled around the dumpsters that had never been emptied, not since the station closed its doors.
Several trucks pulled into the covered loading zone, just outside of the station building. The
rest of the caravan stopped in the middle of the dirt road to wait, windshield wipers flapping at high speed.
A dozen of the rebel’s strongest fighters hurried into the bus station lobby, kicking at a few of the city rats who wouldn’t get out of their way. Others from their group had used the place to store food supplies and scavenged armor-piercing rounds for the tanks. They were here for the shells.
Arle got out of the van and tapped on the rear doors with the butt of his rifle. “How’s it going back there?”
Hard rain pounded on the roof covering them. The parking lot flooded with the torrent.
After a few seconds, the door opened. Kirkus knelt on one knee, his head skimming the top of the door frame. “One of the prisoners puked. It stinks like a son of a gun, but other than that, we’re good.” Pointing back over his shoulder, he said, “Hades is all high on god power. It started when we pulled up to the city.”
“You were holding out on me, my wooden friend.” Hades’s voice was whiskey smooth. He rested his head against the side of the van, his face split into an easy grin. “This is better than the last high.”
Arle stepped back, his face screwing up in disgust. “Let’s get that mess cleaned up. Gods, that smell is not fit for beast or man.” Arle turned around, scanning the rest of the lot. “Dump these men here. All but Jethro—he comes with us. Are you guys good?”
“I could use a smoke.” Hades sighed. “My brother, Zeus, gave me a cigarette that never burns up and never goes out. I didn’t know he had it in him to give me something I’d like.” Hades turned to look at Kirkus, his eyes in a haze. “I lost it somewhere in the city sewers.”
“I don’t have brothers. Or sisters,” Kirkus replied.
“Count your yourself lucky.” Hades shook his head. “They’re more trouble than they’re worth…cigarettes aside.”