Doubletake

“Hephaestus is also the god of volcanoes. Fire and metal.” Niko’s hand had altered from pushing to fisting my shirt—Jesus, I was going to die in this pink shirt—and yanking me to stand still. “What is he making?”

A brilliant mind asking a question with the most obvious of answers. Or let’s be honest. Just a damn stupid question.

“Something to kill us, Dr. Oblivious,” I hissed, hoping whatever it was didn’t have great hearing, or any at all. The beams were joining faster, other metal flying up to it to enhance its status as the bestselling murder machine for kids four years and up. It was the size of Janus, no bigger, but a framework with no head. It had arms, though, four of them, with grasping metal claws. I could hear the creak of the ratchets as the hands opened and closed. And it had two legs. Thirteen feet tall in length, it hung above like a waiting spider. Would it climb down or leap inst— Motherfucker.

It was on fire.

All of it.

Like the Cyclops’s eyes but thirteen feet of it. A metal skeleton became an inferno. Metal shouldn’t burn like that, unless Hephaestus wanted it to—as if it were an endless fuel. There was a darting of flaring coat, brown hair, and sword. Robin was getting out before he turned to charcoal. I thought that was a damn good idea. Fighting monsters was one thing. Fighting a god and the industrial age combined, we weren’t properly armed—like with a fire truck and several bulldozers and earthmovers from the nearest construction site.

Shit, it fell. Just…fell. Didn’t climb. Didn’t jump. The building shook under the earthquake of it.

No sense of survival, no pain, no mind to manipulate, on fire, and could play with our charcoaled remains until Christmas if Hephaestus wanted. “Robin was right. This was a bad idea.” Niko’s hand still wrapped in my shirt, I began to weave my way toward the door, then flat-out run as it rose to stand upright. Sliced feet I’d worry about later, if there was a later.

I saw Promise at the entrance to the hall. An earthquake was a good cue that we needed help, but unless she had a couple of tanks with her I’d stick with the running. “Hephaestus, it is I. Aphrodite…O sweet Virgin Mary in heaven.” Under the hood of her cloak her eyes widened and stared upward.

There was the sound of a footstep behind us. Metal against metal, it was the peal of the largest of bells—the one tolling for our asses. The heat had been intense when it had hit the floor. It was getting hotter now.

Idiot Puck. Dying for the answer to the simplest of questions.

Then Hephaestus laughed and the hundreds of shards of metal rang again, this time church bells for a funeral…ours.

Robin ran past Promise, hooking his arm in hers and dragging her after him down the hallway. He wasn’t deserting us. If he had made it out, we could too. And if we couldn’t, other than adding himself as another piece of coal to the furnace in a heroically martyred brothers-in-arms gesture, there was nothing he could do. And if it doesn’t save anyone and you’re still dead, it’s hard to appreciate all the perks of martyrdom. Like having his dick preserved as a sacred relic.

I didn’t look for Kalakos. He had saved Nik, said it was his duty, but it was my duty too and had been long before he came into the picture. Of course, Niko felt the same, and no one outdid him at the job. He was behind me, beside me, and then in front of me, decapitating a Cyclops. Flames were a fountain out of its neck before it collapsed and we ran over the top of its body.

Another step from behind, another earthquake, another rising of the heat until I thought the earth was crashing into the sun. I started to look over my shoulder before deciding I had no desire to see the world of shit about to drop onto us.

“The Cyclops,” Niko snapped.

The last of them were clawing free of the earth—in front of us, on each side—and I snatched a glance behind me…yeah, there too, right in front of something that made me rethink that whole atheist, nonhell philosophy of mine. A gigantic scarecrow of pure hellfire, made special for us on some black altar. No, the devil wasn’t close to this. When it came to taking names and incinerating asses, Greek gods had it all over him.

Step.

I felt my skin began to tighten against the heat.

The Cyclops surrounded us in a closing circle. It wasn’t too many, but it was too little time. We were out of it. Out of goddamn time. Not martyrs, but dead just the same. Didn’t that suck? Didn’t it just…

No.

Hell, no.

Fuck that.

“Niko, down!” I yelled as I raised the Glock. He hit the floor instantly and I started shooting.

Ten Cyclops, I’d counted. You carry guns, you count your ammunition, and you count the enemy. I spun, firing as I went. Every eye a target, every target my whole world. One…four…seven…ten. Ten and the end. Ten shots in a fraction over a second—check the speed-shooting records—and each Cyclops a dead, eyeless heap on the floor. This was why I carried guns. This was why I loved them. Some felt the need for speed and some were about the result: Kill ’em all and let God sort them out. I was a fan of both. I came to a stop where I’d started, the first and last Cyclops to die lying side by side. “I think I’m ready to shoot in the Olympics now.”

“You were ready for the Olympics seven years ago. Stop stroking your ego and your penis extension and move.” Niko was up and running flat-out for the entrance. I was on his heels. Goodfellow was waiting for us there. He had come back, knowing he could do nothing but die with us. What a friend—and an idiot, as a god had told him seconds ago.

I told him so as Niko and I slammed into him, carrying him along in the rush before he had a chance to turn around. The fiery proxy hand of an infuriated dead god, like a plummeting comet, crushed the hall three feet behind us. We erred on the side of caution and kept running. Promise waited for us in the next room and she joined our escape. When we made it out of the building, we all stopped and turned to see if this was far enough. If New Jersey would be far enough.

It was. Hephaestus wouldn’t reveal himself or his machines to the outside world. I guess he’d gotten comfortable in his coffin of solid metal, mouth filled with it, eyes blinded by it. Or he was crazy enough that “out of sight, out of mind” was a literal term. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I sat on the ground and then lay back, eyes on the sky. My legs and feet were hamburger; those godawful khaki pants Goodfellow had forced on me were more red than tan now. If Niko hadn’t been wearing black, I’d have seen the same on him, except from the neck down. We both had cuts on our faces. Robin was also in dark colors and I did smell blood on him, puck blood—green and earthy as a forest—but not as much. Goodfellow could move when he wanted to. A hundred thousand lifetimes and more of outrunning jealous husbands or wives—he should be.

We were alive, though, and “surprised about it” didn’t begin to sum that up. I waved a hand to get Promise’s attention. “Sweet Virgin Mary? Yeah? I didn’t know you were Catholic. Didn’t know vampires were anything.”

“My housekeeper is Catholic,” she said, still staring at building thirteen of the factory. “I must have picked it up subconsciously from her. It did seem oddly appropriate. In all my days…Gods.” She pulled at her hood, her hands gloved in silk against the sun as well. “I never wanted to meet one, and I don’t plan on repeating the experience.”

“I warned you he has a bad temper,” Goodfellow said. “And the insanity issue. I said this probably wouldn’t work. But did you listen?”

I lifted a weary arm and aimed the Glock at his knee. “I have one round left. It’s all I need.”

Kalakos came around from the side of the building, where he must have escaped out the back. The cherry on top of the fucking sundae.

“Never mind.” I let my hand flop back. “I think I’ll save it for myself.”

13

Black Sheep

Home is where the heart is or where you bury the ones you want to eat later.

The cattle with their idiotic sayings, mooed by lungs not fit to breathe the same air as mine. The new world would have sayings that fit the mouth of the predator, not the bleating prey. But the new world took