Gabrial the Archangel slowly walked into the room. He looked about, and a slight curl of his upperlip evidenced his distaste. The room was small, and dingy, with peeling yellow wallpaper on the waterstained walls and piles of rat dung on the cracked wooden floor. A single table was set up in the center of the room, flanked by two stools. On the table, still in the box and wrapped in cellophane, was a packet of playing cards.
Gabrial pulled his flask out of his coat pocket and fortified himself with sweet Jack Daniel's goodness. Then he made his way to the table and took a stool. He waited patiently for a few moments, and then grabbed the playing cards before boredom could set in. He ripped through the plastic and flipped the box open, spilling cards onto the tabletop. He threw the jokers on the ground, along with the other detritus, and began to shuffle the cards.
It was then that the door opened, and Mephistopheles added his malevolent presence to the small room. The Demon smiled his wide, toothy grin. "You're early, Gabrial." The Angel merely grunted, and continued to shuffle the cards.
Mephistopheles sat down and drew out a cigarette. He lit it with a thought, and sucked smoke into his lungs. "Shall we play?"
Gabrial nodded, and began whipping cards across the table. When both Kherubim were set, he placed the deck in the precise middle of the table. Gabrial pulled his flask out and sucked down a swig.
Mephistopheles examined his cards, and then looked up at the Angel. "Two," the Demon said, his head wreathed in smoke.
Gabrial handed the cards to Mephistopheles, and then took one for himself without looking at his cards. He discarded one at random and then laid the new one down beside the old.
Mephistopheles regarded the Angel curiously. "Just what do you think you're doing, Gabrial?"
Gabrial looked up from the backs of his cards and into the Demon's smoking black eyes. "You took the words from my mouth, Meph. What is your game? Why did you call me here?"
The Demon shrugged. There was humor in his eyes, though his smile had faded. "I wanted to see how you're taking this defeat." The smile slowly came back. "There's no way you can win this round, you know."
The Angel looked at the Demon sharply. "I have no desire to see another world destroyed because *you* grew tired of it. Especially not one as heavily populated as this one. I cannot afford to lose."
"Really?" the Demon grinned, turning over his cards. He held a royal flush. "When the stakes are this high, Gabrial, its best not to play."
The Angel looked at the Demon for a moment, then took a sip from his flask. He looked down at his cards. And then again at the Demon, as he rolled the cards over. One ace after the other.
The Demon's mouth gaped, and his cigarette fell to the floor.
"All four aces? How did you...?"
The Angel smiled slightly. "'God does not play dice with the universe,'" he quoted.
"You stacked the deck."
"Correct, Meph. As I said, I cannot afford to lose." Gabrial stood up. "I think this meeting is at an end."
"Hold on a moment, Simon Pure. You can't be that sure you'll win the coming confrontation. Wait... does this have to do with that Wraith? Is he one of yours?"
Gabrial just shook his head. "After all this time, Meph, you still don't comprehend how to play. Perhaps instead of cards, we should play chess next time. It will give you an opportunity to brush up on your skills."
Gabrial left, shutting the door softly behind him. Once out of sight of the Demon, he relaxed. And began to sweat. And hope the Demon didn't recognize his bluff.
Alec sat on the counter and watched as Densmore's friends arrived. The first one was a big bruiser in a trench coat. He was tall enough to play forward for the Heat, but blocky enough to be a defensive tackle for the Bears. His long, brilliant red hair was pulled into a ponytail, and his eyes were dark pools. The left one was bisected by a puckered scar that must have hurt like hell when he earned it. Densmore introduced him as Bran Mac Lyr. The man took Alec's hand in his paw and shook vigorously. "Very glad to meet you, Mr. Scott."
Then the giant sat down in one of Densmore's wooden chairs. It groaned, but held. He adjusted himself in the seat, and then opened his coat and produced a huge sword which he casually leaned up against the chair. Underneath the trenchcoat he wore a white button down shirt and jeans. Alec almost went for a gun, but decided against it. The guy looked like he would take a few bullets and then decapitate Alec anyway.
Densmore and Mac Lyr began to chat amiably about some guy named Perseus, and a trip to Germany to buy gargoyles or something. Alec only listened with half an ear. He was too preoccupied with thoughts of the pendant. What was so terrible about a piece of jewelry that a woman was willing to die before giving up its secret, and a guy who owned an occult store needed his flunkies with him in order to share that secret?
Granted, Alec felt intense revulsion whenever he looked at the thing, and absolutely hated to touch it, but that was more of an aesthetic thing. Wasn't it?
Alec looked up from his musings as a man and a woman entered the shop. His eyes were drawn immediately to the woman. Her beauty was hard to miss; long red hair that fell in waves down her back, eyes somewhere between blue and gray in color, a smattering of freckles across the nose, full, kissable lips, and smooth, porcelain skin. She was breathtaking and honest. No makeup, no jewelry. Her clothes were simple and functional. Yet her eyes held something... a haunted look?
The man, unsurprisingly, was just as beautiful as the woman. Raven dark hair, shoulder length and curling at the ends, framed a finely drawn face with high cheekbones and an aquilonian nose. A pair of sunglasses hid his eyes from view, but the way he pursed his lips intimated he was a serious man bent on serious business. His skin was very pale, almost but not quite as dead-white as Alec's, and his dark clothing seemed to accentuate his paleness.
The woman was an unexpected arrival, introduced by the man as Rachel Van Horn. The man was called Michael Hazard. Rachel shook hands and introduced herself to Densmore and Mac Lyr, but she hesitated as she offered her hand to Alec.
Assuming she did so in disgust, Alec prepared something biting and cynical to throw in her face. He opened his mouth to say it, and then looked in her eyes, and everything he planned to say left his head. Her expression was one of concern, *genuine* concern, not of distaste. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" Alec returned.
The woman let her hand drop, seeing as how Alec hadn't offered his. "I... well, this is hard to say, but... I can tell things. About people. And you... I can see that you've undergone a terrible ordeal recently. I was just asking if you were all right."
Alec looked at her a moment, and then pulled off his mirrored sunglasses. "Do I look like I'm all right?" he said.
She flinched. "I'm sorry," she said, and then found a seat by Densmore. Alec shrugged and put his glasses back on.
Hazard stepped toward Alec, and said in a very low voice, "That was uncalled for Serpico. Rachel isn't like the rest of us. She's a baseline human, and she's my guest. I'll thank you to be more civil to her in the future."
Alec bristled. He slid off the counter to look Hazard in the eye. "Don't tell me what to do, pal. Your threats are hollow to a dead man."
Hazard smiled slightly. "Careful, Serpico. You're not the only Undead in the room." The smile widened, and Alec saw canines that were far too large to be normal. Alec pulled back involuntarily from Hazard.
He couldn't be a Vampire, could he? Vampires weren't real. Hazard's smile softened. "I know what you've been through, so I'll let this go just this once, Serpico. Next time I won't be so forgiving."
Alec nodded, as concepts whirled in his head. Why couldn't Vampires be real? In a world where spiders talked and dead men walked, who was to say what constituted reality and what did not? Hazard turned to find a seat, and Alec asked him a quick question. "Why are you calling me 'Serpico'?"
Hazard shrugged. "That's who you look like in that jacket."
As Hazard sat down, leaving Alec with his mouth agape and mind reeling, Densmore began to talk. "Some of you are familiar with what I am about to say, others are not. But no one knows the whole story."
He paused, searching for the right words. "Where to begin?
"There are things in this world that one simply cannot believe in, things that defy our world view, defy our... no. That isn't what I want to say." Densmore stopped, thinking.
"Religion. That is a good place to start," he said. "Since the Neandertals, humans have worshipped one manner of supreme being or another. For the Neandertals, it was the vegetative Green Man. The first Moderns in Europe worshipped anthropomorphic animal deities. Civilized men in Sumer and Babylon, Egypt and Israel, formed images of gods shaped like men. God makes man in his image, and man responds in kind by making god in his image."
"Ancient and 'primitive' religions were used as a means to describe natural events. To put human-like hands and motives on things like the seasons, or an angry volcano, or the premature death of a loved one. Strange events such as these become, oddly enough, comforting when we are assured that a mind like ours controls them. A spoonful of sugar, one might say."
"There were other groups in the Middle East, and in Asia too, that differed in their interpretations of the gods. To their way of thinking, a being of inestimable might, a true god, must forever be inscrutable to the mortal mind. How could a mere man or woman hope to understand the motivations of a god? These people prayed to beings like Cthulhu, Chibbakukk, Shadrak, and Xis. They prayed for gifts of power, offered up sacrifices so that their souls would not be torn asunder in the next world, fully knowing that gods such as these cared little for mortals or sacrifices. Better to hedge ones bets, right?"
"These... cults, for lack of a better term, were popular about six thousand years ago. Yet they went the way of most pagan religions; the eventually dried up and disappeared. Especially as the Judeo-Christian religions took over Europe and the Middle East. If Zeus and Mithra are falsehoods, how much more false are Shadrak and Zaalbun?"
"I suppose it was more attractive, more comforting, to believe in a single, omnipotent god who cared for every human being, than to believe in an alien creature with powers and desires beyond the understanding of a normal human."
"Yet, ironically, these alien... intelligences... existed once. Millennia ago, when megafauna and dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the land was a plaything for these stellar intelligences known today as the Elder Gods. Sixty-four million years ago, something terrible drove them into hiding and decimated thousands of species on Earth, including the dinosaurs. The Elder Gods were banished from this dimension, sent to slumber in a far off world for all time."
"Yet, in every age a little bit of their immense evil spills free to pollute the universe, and in particular, this world. The cults that flourished so long ago, the cults that somehow learned their names, could not awaken the sleeping giants. Yet they managed to direct some of the gods' power, and they grew mighty. Two Immortals and three Nightspawn banded together to destroy these cults. Only one of them survived, but he and his fallen brethren succeeded in eradicating the cults."
"Or so he thought. Over the ensuing millennia, small pockets of resistance flared up all over the globe. They were quickly put down. But the Nightspawn Lord who had destroyed the first cults found it necessary to document the legend, to make a record of the events, so that future generations would be able to recognize the evil and root it out. My mentor, a sixth generation descendant of that Nightspawn Lord, made certain that I was well versed in the knowledge of these dark cults."
"He told me he had never encountered them personally, but that his mentor had. He emphasized how terrible and frightening these monsters could be. Were one of them to be wakened, loosed on this Earth, no one could comprehend the evil that would be done. For make no mistake: these gods are *completely* alien. They have no human traits at all. They understand things no human mind could ever hope to grasp. They wield unimaginable power. And before them, a human being is less than nothing."
"Now, in all my years as a monster hunter I have never come across any sign of even one of these cults. Not a hint, not an inkling. I assumed them all dead and forgotten by all save a few loremasters. Until today."
"Alec, show them the pendant."
Alec had been spellbound despite himself as Densmore spoke. The man knew how to weave a tale and how to keep an audience rapt. When Densmore called on him, Alec had to physically shake himself. As he reached into his pocket to grasp the pendant, he noticed dazed expressions on the others as well. This was just *too* much for him to swallow. Wraiths and Vampires, sure. Immortals and Nightspawn -- why not? But Elder Gods? Really. And then he pulled the pendant out, and the horrible, ugly thing sat in his palm, seeming almost to move, and Alec found his doubts slipping away. Hurriedly he placed the pendant on a table between himself and Densmore. The others leaned in to examine it.
Hazard looked disgusted. Mac Lyr's face was twisted into a scowl that thrust his scar into prominence. Van Horn shivered in fear, and muttered something about a dream that made Hazard look at her sharply.
Densmore started talking again. "According to the records in my possession, that pendant is an aspect of Chibbakukk. Keep in mind that these names, and any representations, are approximate. Mortal minds cannot fully comprehend the magnitude of such beings."
"So what are you saying?" Mac Lyr asked hoarsely. "That some millennia old cult of devil worshippers is trying to raise their supreme being from his rest?"
"Exactly," Densmore said. Alec felt an involuntary chill.
Hazard wrenched his sunglasses off, and his icy blue eyes locked onto Alec. "Gabrial said... you were a sacrifice. They killed you to help awaken their god." He added, almost to himself, "Worse than the Blood Covenant, I bloody well think so."
Alec's insides turned to ice as every eye in the room turned to examine him. "What, like its my fault or something," he tried to say, but the words froze in his throat. The enormity of it all was just too much. He couldn't really fathom it all. None of it made sense.
They were all silent for a moment.
Mac Lyr stood up. "Well, then. Its very simple what we have to do. We have to aid young Alec here in his quest for vengeance, and keep this evil from our world." He suddenly grinned. "It may even be a little fun."
Alec looked from face to face. Bran Mac Lyr looked every inch the Celtic hero; more solid than Conan and tougher than King Arthur. The kind of man who would spit in the eyes of death and laugh on the way to Hell. Hazard's visage was one of grim resolve. Rachel looked the way Alec felt: dazed and confused. Densmore smiled slightly, but Alec could detect a glimmer of fear in those dark eyes. "It appears you have found yourself some allies, Alec Scott."
Alec's dead throat swallowed carefully. Allies indeed.
Shelley suddenly woke with a start. She put a hand to her forehead, and moaned. She didn't remember falling asleep. She didn't remember going to bed, either. Or turning out the light. Yet all these things apparently happened, for the room was dark, and she was lying on the bed, though still fully clothed.
She looked around, trying to pinpoint what awoke her, and saw Perseus' outline against the window, semi-lit by the streetlights outside. She reached for the lamp on her nightstand, but froze when Perseus said, "Leave the lights out, please."
Her hand slowly fell onto the bed. "What's up?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light. Having Perseus in her room and the lights off made her nervous.
"I had a rough night this evening," Perseus admitted. And then he switched the subject in a typically Perseus manner. "Tell me something about yourself, Shelley. Where did you grow up?"
Shelley pulled herself into a sitting position on the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I was born in Western Massachusetts. The city of Springfield. But my parents lived in Amherst, and that's where I went when they adopted me."
"You remember being adopted?" Perseus asked, his silhouette turning to look at her.
She shook her head. "No. My parents spilled it when I was eight. One of my friends had a baby sister, and I started pestering my parents one of my own. It took them a while, but they finally explained that neither one of them could have children. That they adopted me. It felt weird for a while, but they eased my worries." She smiled at the memory.
"Amherst," Perseus mused. "I seem to recall that name from somewhere."
"Hey, you pronounced it correctly!" Shelley exclaimed. And then, when he gave her a curious look, she said, "Most people pronounce the 'h.' Like Dick Vitale. What a loser. Anyway, if you follow college basketball at all, you've heard of Amherst. That's where UMass is. My mom works there in the math department. Dad is at Amherst College. He's an anthro professor. Both really bright, really loving people. I miss them a lot."
Perseus turned away from the window. "Why haven't you called them?"
Shelley shrugged in the darkness. "They think I died in Kenya. Quin said it wouldn't be a good idea to disillusion them of the idea."
Perseus snorted. Shelley looked at him sharply. "And what about your parents? Did you tell them when you became a demi-god?"
Perseus was silent a moment, and Shelley was afraid she had crossed some invisible line. Finally, though, he spoke, in a voice that was quiet and tired. Shelley almost had to strain to hear him. "I learned about my parentage, or lack thereof, after my first death. I was twenty-three years old, a soldier born and bred, trained almost from birth to be a killer. And like every other Spartan, I was very good at it."
"Or so I thought. When the Persians invaded Greece, we were ready. We met them with our forces massed. A puny army compared to their might. We fought like heroes, though. We fought like Spartans. But eventually, we were pressed back. Our reinforcements from Athens were slowed by the mountain passes. They never reached us."
"After dispatching a dozen or so Persians, I caught a spear in the gut. I was ripped open quite quickly. Died almost instantly. When I awoke, I was behind enemy lines, and it was dark. I couldn't understand how I survived. Not at first. Eventually the logical answer presented itself; I was blessed by Zeus. So I worked my way through the lines, killing as many Persians as I could find -- healing what wounds I took -- and returned to my unit."
"They were surprised to see me alive. I demonstrated to them my regenerative abilities. The lightning that played along the wound as it closed clinched it for them. Zeus had brought me back to life to save Greece from the Persians. In the morning, our battered army, with me at its head, met the Persians once more. And beat them back to the sea."
"When I returned home, I was hailed a hero. And my father, the crotchety old campaigner that he was, stepped forward and told to me for the first time the story of my birth."
"It seems his son, the child my mother gave birth to, was deformed. Before she learned of this, he took it into the wilderness to expose it. Such was a common practice in Sparta, and many other regions of the world at the time. A hand that could not hold a blade was useless in Sparta. The child was better off being destroyed young."
"As my father left his son on an outcrop of rock, he heard the wailing of a child from some nearby bushes. Unable to resist looking at the child, he parted the vegetation, and found a perfectly normal, healthy baby boy. The Fates had smiled upon my father. He gathered the child up, wrapping it in the bedclothes of his son, and brought it home to his wife. She never knew I wasn't hers."
"My father consulted the oracle to find out what to name me. The oracle told him to christen me Perseus. A hero's name. And it turned out to be the right one, because I eventually proved to be a son of Zeus after all."
He trailed off into silence. Shelley didn't know what to say. It sounded like Perseus' first experience with Immortality had been easier than most Immortals experienced. Still, it must have hurt learning that the man he considered his father all his life was not, technically, that. She could understand how he felt.
"What happened tonight?" she asked.
"Oh, my Watcher arranged to have me killed, I destroyed eighteen Hunters, and then learned where Lei is hiding."
Shelley almost let it drop at that. "What are we doing tomorrow?"
"We're going to find Tyr. He's an old... acquaintance that will help us against Lei."
"Immortal?" she asked. He nodded.
"If you'll excuse me, I think I'll get some rest for tomorrow."
With that, Perseus left as silently as he arrived, leaving Shelley alone with her thoughts.
<-- Previous | Table of Contents | Next -->
PoT_Ch17.php -- Revised: January 27, 2021.