Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits (23 page)

Nergal’s eye pops like a grape under a boot.

His head follows suit, deflates like a punctured basketball.

And suddenly Cason drops to the floor as Nergal’s body folds into itself and collapses like a skinsuit without a hanger—all his bones turned to air.

The last flies circle, then drop to the floor.

Cason laughs.

It worked.

It worked
.

The God of Storms, and Death, and whatever else fell under the madman’s aegis, was now gone from this world,
this world of men
, and there’s a moment as Cason lays there like a broken doll that he feels a sense of elation, a kind of deep self-satisfaction he hasn’t felt in a very long time. This god was complicit in the conspiracy against him and his family, a conspiracy he has yet to understand.

His elation is woefully short-lived.

Something punches through the wooden floor beneath him. Like zombie arms rising from the grave, hands encircle Cason’s midsection and pull him down through the shattering wood and throw him to another floor below.

He crashes into the darkness. Smelling dust. Rust. Wood. And...

The sea.

Brine and salt and sand.

Aphrodite stands over him. Even in the darkness, her beauty radiates off her in waves Cason can almost see—like ripples in water, shimmering and silver.

“You had a chance to save yourself,” the goddess says.

Cason tries to answer, but finds his words are only a whimper.

She shrugs at his attempt. “Pity you did not take me up on my offer.”

“To the Farm, then?” comes another voice behind him. A woman’s voice.

“Yes, Driver. To the Farm.”

Hands grab Cason. Leathery wings envelop his face, cover his mouth—
can’t breathe, can’t breathe
—and claws dig into the meat of his back. Then, suddenly, rain and wind and the sense of falling, and Cason’s whimper turns into yet another scream.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Horse Thief

T
HE WOMAN IS
off doing her... well, he doesn’t know? She hasn’t smoked another cigarette, so it’s probably not that. It’s likely some woman thing. She’s got to, and this is all just a guess, fix her makeup, pee for the hundredth time, adjust her bra, have her period, milk her bosoms, or maybe just sit on the toilet and cry.

Of course, Coyote—‘Kai,’ he told her his name was—isn’t very good with women.

He’s made love to thousands of women. Most of them human. All of them acquiesced to his charms, his wiles—it’s not magic. He
has
magic, yes, but that’s not what brings them to his bed (or to a patch of field, or to a rock in the middle of the woods, or to an ice floe, or to a... well, where hasn’t he done it? A gazebo. He’s never made love in a gazebo. He makes a mental note:
have wild rumpus in gazebo
). The women come to him because they want to ride the Ki-yote Express. They want to feel his howls reverberate down through their lady parts and up through their teeth. They want to
trap
him, make him theirs. Ha, ha, ha, ladies. Good try. Good try.

Everybody wants to trap the Coyote. But nobody can.

Ah-ha-ha. So many women.

And he still understands them not one fiddly whit.

He wants to make love to this one, too. She’s a bit older, but certainly pretty. Her skin is like milk. Her hair is like fire. Primal and comforting, in equal measure.

In his pocket, his member twitches.

But that’s not why he’s here.

At present, Coyote stands in the parking lot of a Conoco gas station in Missouri, the morning sun coming up over a flat blasted brown nowhere nothing patch of dirt that surrounds him and stretches off in all directions. The highway a pale ribbon cutting through it all. Tractor trailer grumbling by.

He waits for the woman.

Coyote leans back against the Mustang and pulls out his phone. He sends a text to someone in his address book listed only as ‘E.E.’

The text:
The golden thread is unbroken
.

The thread. Sometimes: the chain, the rope, the ladder. He’s even heard it spoken of as a frequency, as a
signal
, but to him it’s always been the golden thread. A thread is delicate. Easy to tear a thread in twain, and yet, the golden thread always remains, strung between all the gods of his ilk. They never know what will come down the thread or what the instructions will be when it comes to them. They never know the outcome or even the
why
. They only know that they do what they must because the golden chain must remain unbroken and what it demands must be done lest the whole thing come falling down.

The world. Suspended by a thread.

A beautiful image.

It almost gives him a boner, honestly.

Then again, a spring breeze gives him a boner. See also: a car honking, the smell of coffee, the stink of beaver pelts (not a metaphor, except when it is), a sneeze, a cough, a hiccup, a cricket chirping, peyote buttons, scorpion venom, the sound of flip-flops on a heavy woman walking along the boardwalk next to the beach...

It
all
gives him a boner. He has a boner for this entire world and its contents.

Other deities seem to hate this place. Those mopes. They dismiss it. They treat it like it’s a... a
prison
. Exiled here, thrown down (or in some cases, dragged up) from their places of import. Each seeing themselves as a pretty necklace around a beautiful woman’s neck that was suddenly yanked from her neck and thrown into the gutter forever.

But Coyote likes the gutter. He likes
this
gutter,
this
world, most of all.

It has hamburgers! And pornography. And remote control cars and Swisher Sweets cigarillos and cat videos and fast cars and loud noises and gazebos and lust and love and charity and books and soft human women with imperfect, asymmetrical breasts.

Oh! And phones with the ability to text message.

This, Coyote decides, is what Prometheus stole from the gods.

A text comes in,
bing-bing
:

DO NOT LOSE THE THREAD

Ahh, Old Man Shu. For such a tiny fellow, he’s always so
loud
in his text messages. Time and again Coyote has told him: “You don’t have to type in all caps,” but Shu just shrugs and smiles that pinched little smile like he knows something nobody else knows (which is kind of their gig, isn’t it?). Coyote figures he should just be happy, since some of the others don’t tweet at all. Like that asshole Monkey King. What a sonofabitch.

As Alison comes back out of the gas station, Coyote texts back:

Not going to lose the thread shut up.

Reply:

GOOD

Are you sure I can’t bed this one?

Reply:

YES

Well, fuck-buckets.

Alison eyes him warily. She has the keys; he’s been letting her drive.

“I didn’t know if you’d be here,” she says.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You seem like that type. I don’t know.”

He just laughs and hops in the car.

W
EST.
L
IKE THE
strange man—‘Kai’—said.

The sun comes up. Orange like an egg-yolk, then a bleached yellow like the pith of a lemon beneath the zested rind.

They don’t talk much. The man whistles. Fiddles with the radio now and again—often singing along, smoking out the window and laughing at jokes apparently only he can hear. For now the radio is just static warbling between fundamentalist Christian stations and country music. He spins the dial, catches some hellfire-and-brimstone snippet—

“
Oh, how miserable your pleasures will be, when you must crawl through hellfire for an age
...”

Kai snorts. Shakes his head.

“Not a church-goer?” Alison says.

Another snort. He sweeps his arms. “This is my church.”

“The inside of a Mustang?”

He laughs. “The whole world.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“You people think you know God. Or the Devil. That amuses me.”

“You people?”

“Americans. White people. Same thing.”

“You’re not American?”

“I’m a bit older than that.”

“You’re Native American, then.”

To this, he says nothing. Offers her only a wink.

“Don’t judge us too harshly,” she says. “We try to do okay. And we’re not all like that. Just the loudest among us.”

“Then you shouldn’t let the loudest speak. You should get louder!” He shrugs. “Or shut them up with duct tape.”

“Maybe. But we are who we are.”

He smiles. “Good thing, too.”

It’s then she asks, because she must.

“Are you human?”

Another wink.

“Okay, seriously,” she says, “no coy winking, I want to know. Are you human? Is this real? Is this
really happening
? Who are you?”

“I told you. I am Kai. Beyond that: what does it matter? This word, ‘human.’ It’s not a meaningful word. I’ve known some humans who were less than human. Sub-human. I’ve known humans that were better than the angels, stronger and smarter than all the gods in all the heavens. I’ve known some animals that were the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I’ve known some gods that were more human than human. Human is just a sack of skin. It’s just the flavor of your meat, like pork or beef. Don’t worry about that word. Human.”

Her hands tighten around the steering wheel. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“I often don’t.”

“Oh.”

He clears his throat, flicks his cigarillo out the window. “Hey. Don’t suppose you want to have a quickie?”

She’s about to be appalled, to refuse and say
no, double no, hell no
—

But before she can:

Woop-woop
.

Strobing cop lights. Red, blue, back and forth. The wail of sirens.

“Oh, what the hell? I was doing the speed limit. I’m in the right lane.” She flicks on her turn signal. Kai gives her a quizzical look.

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling over.”

He flips the turn signal back off. “Just gun it.”

“What?”

“This car has pep. It’s like if a horse had sex with a rocketship and this is its baby!”

“I’m not outracing the police.”

He sighs. “We’ll be
fine
. Vertical pedal on the right. Come on. Chop chop, vroom vroom.”

“Wait. Why are they pulling me over? Do you have outstanding tickets or something?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“What are they going to see when they pull your license plate?”

“License plate? That’s not my license plate.” He shrugs. “This isn’t even my car.”

“
What
?”

“Oh. Yeah. We stole it. Did I not explain that?”

“We?”

“You’re driving. Actually, I’m not even in the books. So, legally speaking, it’s pretty much
you
, not
we
.”

“Oh.” She feels the blood drain from her face. “Oh, no. I’m not a car thief. I don’t... I don’t do this.” It’s like her whole life is a train on a rickety trestle that’s creaking and swaying, the tracks starting to fall apart beneath her.

She again puts on her signal and this time lets the car drift over to the shoulder. As the car slows, her heart races.

Kai just shakes his head, clucks his tongue.

The cop pulls in behind her. The sirens no longer wail, but the strobe continues. Red, blue, red, blue, sweeping over the car.

Cars pass on the highway. Alison can feel the eyes of rubbernecker drivers watching her, in the same way she’s watched dozens of others get pulled over.

Shame sends blooms to her cheeks.

“Okay,” Kai says. “I didn’t think it would come to this but... you never know, so.” He goes rustling in his pocket, pulls out something that looks like a foot-long desiccated strip of beef jerky. Like something a dog would chew on. He hands it to her.

“What is this?”

“It’s my penis.”

She doesn’t drop it so much as fling it at him.

He bats it back at her like it’s an errant volleyball.

“You’re going to need that,” he says, frowning. “Take it. It has powers.”

“This is all some kind of strange joke.” She feels queasy. “I’m not taking it.”

In the rearview, she sees the cop step out of the car.