IF: Gods and Monsters Read online

  “Why?” Willy demanded again, on the verge of tears.

  Etherie placed a gentle hand on Willy’s arm. He twitched and shook her off, but she approached him again, gently taking his hand. “Willy…was that a monster from your nightmares?”

  Willy’s eyes bulged. They looked ready to pop straight out of his head. He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. He yanked his hand out of Etherie’s careful grip and stalked away, back up the hill. Cole jogged after him. “Willy! Wait!” he called. He reached out and grabbed Willy’s arm. Willy shook him off, hard, and Cole went tumbling across the wet grass. As he skidded across the ground, a second door shot out of the earth, this one made of thick, gray steel with what looked like a metal ship’s wheel for a handle. Cole slammed up against it, and the wind whooshed out of his lungs.

  “Cole!” Emma cried. She hustled up the hill after him, but the Stranger reached out a hand and held her back.

  “Wait,” he said. “Nobody move.”

  The children froze in place. Even Willy took a break from stomping up the hill. They watched the Stranger carefully as he closed his eyes and listened. The owl in the distance had stopped sounding its lonely call; there wasn’t a single noise carrying in the air. No wind, no crickets—nothing.

  Nothing…except for a low rumbling from deep within the earth.

  The Stranger crouched down low in the grass and motioned for the children to do the same. “Hold fast,” he warned. “Try to stay out of the way.”

  “Stay out of the way?” Cole whispered. “Out of the way of what?”

  Suddenly, the ground began to shake, and doors exploded out of the earth. Lots of doors. Wooden doors and metal doors. Painted doors and carved doors. Doors with handles, doors with knobs. Front doors, French doors, back doors, barn doors. Basement doors. Office doors. Screen doors. Church doors. Cellar doors. Bedroom doors. Garage doors. Closet doors. Doors with knobs, doors with handles, doors that slid from side to side. Old doors. New doors. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them, bursting out of the ground, ripping through the grass and thrusting themselves toward the sky. A blue door painted with golden stars popped out two feet from Emma and made her scream. An old copper door with bright green verdigris actually came up beneath Willy’s feet, launching him up into the air as it shot up out of the ground.

  One by one the doors appeared with a great SHOONK! SHOONK! SHOONK! SHOONK! Soon the field in which they stood looked like a cemetery for giants, the doors serving as mismatched grave stones, until the last door appeared, a high, art-deco thing made of pewter. It surged up toward the sky, then came to a rest, propped up by nothing but the ground below it, just like all the others.

  The world fell silent once again.

  Cole realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out now and heard the other children do the same. The forest of doors was so thick, he couldn’t see any of the other members of his party. “Is everyone okay?” he called. His voice bounced around the heavy, looming planks.

  “Follow my voice!” the Stranger called brusquely. “Everyone come together! Now!”

  Cole didn’t wait for an explanation. He pulled himself to his feet and hustled through the maze of doors and joined the cowboy next to a wrought-iron gate with two small gargoyles perched on either side, leering down at the group gathered below. It was just a gate, with wide openings between the vertical bars, but for some reason, Cole couldn’t see through to the misty air behind them. The space between the bars…or maybe behind them…was black. Blacker than the darkest night.

  “What’s happening?” Etherie asked.

  “We landed in a bad place,” the Stranger scowled. “The Place of Doors.”

  “Are there any more nightmares?” Emma asked, pulling her shirt up over her nose and peeking out over the collar.

  The other children turned to the Stranger, who hesitated. Finally, he just said, “Stay close to me,” and motioned the children inward. “Don’t stray. We need to find the center.” He didn’t wait long enough for the children to ask why; he grabbed the hands of the two nearest to him, Emma and Cole, and pulled them off to the right. Willy and Etherie followed close behind.

  They wove their way through the doors, the Stranger stopping every few seconds to get his bearings and alter their path, pushing them on toward the center of the maze. Willy ran his hand along the doors that he passed, flaking paint off the older ones, clanging his fingernails against the metal ones. At one point, his hand closed on the wrought iron handle of a large rosewood door and began to twist with his momentum as he walked past.

  The Stranger caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and in one fluid motion, he whirled around, picked up a rock from the ground, and flicked it through the air. It caught Willy’s hand right on the middle knuckle.

  “Ow!” Willy cried, letting go of the door handle and shaking out the sting. “What was that for?”

  “Don’t touch the doors,” the Stranger said.

  He continued leading the children through the maze, first to the left, then to the right, then back to the left. Finally, he motioned for them to stop. He looked around the space and nodded once, satisfied. “This is the center. Now we wait.”

  “For what?” Willy grumbled, still pouting over his injured hand.

  The ground began to rumble again. The earth trembled under their feet. The children instinctively grabbed onto each other, forming a ring around the Stranger’s knees. The cowboy grimaced. “For that.”

  The doors flew into action. They seemed to leap outward from where the children stood, though they remained anchored to the ground. They moved out and away like the fins of scattering sharks. Then they spun around each other, gliding into formation, and settled in a huge, open ring around the group.

  Cole stared open-mouthed at the new formation of doors as they loomed on the perimeter. The mists swirled wildly in the wake of the sudden movement. “How did they do that?”

  Etherie tucked her long, black hair back over her ears and said thoughtfully, “Maybe the better question is, why did they do it?”

  They all looked to the Stranger for an answer. He tugged his hat down tighter on his head, stuck his cheroot between his teeth, and muttered, “’Cause that’s what they do.” He put his hands on his hips, considering the doors. Finally, he said, “Guess we might as well try it.”

  “It” apparently meant walking through the ring of doors. It looked easy enough; there was a good three feet of open space between each door, more than enough for a grown man and four small children to slip through. But as they approached the opening between a red church door and a rusty gate, the doors shifted themselves again, spinning as a unit to block their path. The red door and the gate came together with a loud CLACK, and the other doors filled in closely on either side. The travelers moved to the left; the doors moved with them. They moved to right; the doors moved, too. The Stranger even tried flicking one of his lightning-fast hands through an opening a few doors down, and he nearly lost it at the wrist.

  He chomped on the cheroot and took a few steps back from the doors, shaking his head. “No way around it,” he said miserably.

  “What does that mean?” Etherie asked. “What do we do?”

  Cole already knew the answer. The reality fell on him like an iron coat. “If we can’t go around them,” he said, his heart growing cold, “we’ll have to go through them.”

  The Stranger sighed. He pushed his hat back on his head and mopped the sweat from his brow. “Go on, then,” he said, gesturing at the circle of doors. “Choose your nightmare.”

  Chapter 10:

  “You’re All Greek to Me”

  Zeus pushed his way through the batwing doors and hopped onto a stool near the end of the bar. “Dionysus,” he said, beckoning the bartender, “a round for the house.”

  Dionysus gave a short guffaw. “You’re the only person in the bar.”
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  “In that case, make it a double,” Zeus smiled.

  “Yes, sir.” The bartender reached for the other god’s usual on the bottom shelf, but Zeus cleared his throat and ticked his finger up a few notches.

  “The good stuff today.”

  Dionysus turned around and eyed Zeus suspiciously. “Good day?”

  “It is that,” the old man said with a grin. Then he added, “For all of us.”

  Dionysus pulled down a bottle of pure Olympian ambrosia from the top shelf. Then he grabbed a glass from under the bar, blew the dust out of it, and set it down in front of the older man.

  “Aw, come on, don’t use that.” Zeus pushed the glass away. “You don’t put true nectar in a dusty cup.”

  “We don’t have anything but dusty cups. This place isn’t exactly hygienic.”

  “At least rinse it or something. That’s a 40,000-year-old bottle of ambrosia, for Titans’ sake.”

  Dionysus shrugged. “Whatever you say. But I don’t think it’ll help.” He dunked the glass into the barrel of water he kept behind the bar. Then he shook the glass dry and set it back down in front of Zeus. “Better?”

  “Better enough.”

  Dionysus poured two fingers of ambrosia into the glass, and when he tried to pull away, Zeus grabbed his elbow and tipped the bottle back down. “Little more…little more…there we go.”

  “Better take that easy,” Dionysus warned, plugging the bottle. “Hera was down here not too long ago, and she said—”

  “Hang what Hera said!” Zeus snapped. He shook his head. “Me almighty, you’re worse than one of my kids.” He brought the cup to his nose and inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils with the sweet, heady aromas of honey, citrus, and jasmine. The difference between genuine ambrosia and the schlock they usually served up was as far apart as mountain and desert. The smell flooded the old god with memories from a time long, long past, a time when he was king over most of the civilized world. A time of silver robes and power, oh, such power, infinitely more potent than the glass of god-wine in his hand. The old days. The brutal ones.

  The good ones.

  Zeus raised the glass in a toast to the old ways, then he sipped decorously from the somewhat-clean cup.

  “Ahh. There you are, Olympus,” he smiled.

  “I think I’ll join you,” Dionysus said, pulling his own glass from under the bar. “For old times’ sake.”

  “Just make sure you pay up,” Zeus warned, leveling a finger at the bartender, who saluted his acknowledgement. “You growing your beard back again?”

  Dionysus often oscillated between a clean-shaven jaw and one weighed down by a thick curtain of salt-and-pepper hair. His face had been smooth ever since the descent to the desert, though. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, feeling the bristles that were beginning to push through the skin. “I think maybe I will,” he said. “The weather may be turning soon.”

  Zeus took another sip of ambrosia. “No,” he said, feeling the sweet wine warm his limbs from the inside out. “It won’t be. That’s the whole point.”

  “Call it an old comfort, then. A link to the past.”

  Zeus raised his glass again. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Dionysus filled his own glass and clinked it against his better’s. “To the past,” the bartender agreed.

  “And to the future,” Zeus grinned.

  Both gods sipped deeply from their cups. They drank on in silence, and when both glasses were empty, Dionysus reached for the bottle, but Zeus snatched it first. “I’ll keep an eye on this,” he said, pouring himself another glass. “You go assemble the pantheon.”

  It had been some time since the Twelve Gods of Olympus had been seated together in one room, and it took none of them long to remember why.

  Hermes was the first to arrive, windblown and haggard. “You’re not looking so well,” Dionysus observed, setting up the table. “The old man running you ragged?”

  “I haven’t slept in eighty days,” Hermes admitted, rubbing a hand over his increasingly gaunt jaw. His eyes were rimmed red with lack of sleep, and deep, black pools filled the hollows under his eyes. “He’s got me flying all over the blessed Boundary.”

  “Could be worse. At least you’ve got the Pinch’s pass, yeah? Must cut eons off your trips.”

  Hermes shook his head miserably. “The Royal took it away. I’m traveling cross-country.”

  Dionysus winced. “Oof. In that case, I’ll make yours a double.” He set out the bottles and mixed Hermes a drink. The tired god took it gratefully.

  “Don’t know what Zeus did to anger the Royal, but whatever it was, he did it good. And I’m paying for it.”

  Apollo arrived next, his golden blond hair curling out from under his cowboy hat. He shook the dust from the day’s ride off his trousers before stepping into the meeting hall.

  “Punctual as always,” Dionysus said, reaching across the table and shaking hands with his old friend.

  “Couldn’t be late for this,” Apollo said, smiling his easy, boyish grin. “Dad hasn’t called us all together since Olympus. Something big’s a-brewin’.” He hung his hat on the stand in the corner and winked up at the electric light overhead. The filaments glowed brighter, washing the room in a clean, white glow. Apollo nodded and smiled. “Better.”

  Then came Hephaestus, his hands still blackened with soot from the day’s work. “You could have left the leather apron at home,” Apollo said cheerily to his half-brother. “No bellows to blow here, Vulcan.”

  Hephaestus turned his scarred face to the sun god and scowled. “Call me Vulcan again, I’ll rip your tongue from your throat with a pair of ruby tongs.”

  Apollo raised his hands innocently. “Okay, okay, got it. You’re not in the mood for Italian.”

  “Stop teasing my poor husband,” Aphrodite purred, sauntering into the room. She wore a red and black corset with matching bustle paired with black lace gloves that rose to her elbows and sheer thigh-high stockings clipped to a black satin garter belt. “You know he has such a temperamental disposition.”

  “Ex-husband,” Hephaestus growled, slipping the black leather apron over his head, crumbling it into a ball, and throwing it into the corner. His massive chest and arms rippled tensely under his tight, sooty shirt. “The title of Aphrodite’s husband is a sin I won’t keep paying for.”

  “Temperamental, indeed,” Hestia smirked, entering the room.

  Hera followed quickly on her heels, her face more soured and pinched than usual. “Can’t say he wasn’t warned,” she muttered, glaring at Aphrodite.

  “Now, now, surely we can have just one family reunion without leaving behind a smoldering pile of rubble, yes?” said Apollo jovially, handing a glass each to Hestia and Hera.

  “I always liked this one,” Hestia said, patting Apollo’s smooth, tan cheek. “Where are you keeping yourself these days?”

  “Oh, here and there,” the sun god beamed.

  Artemis and Athena came next, looking like two very different sides of one rather confused coin. They stood the same height, and had similar features, but whereas Athena wore a modest blue dress, buttoned to the throat, with full skirts and buttoned shoes, Artemis was clad in little more than a thin cotton shift, streaked with grime and stained with the blood of several animals. She wore men’s boots, heavy, blocky chunks of leather scuffed with use and wear. Athena’s hair was pulled back into a perfect bun; Artemis’s fell wild and tangled around her shoulders.

  “A hunting permit?” Artemis was saying as the two women stormed into the room. “Are you mental?”

  “‘Mental’? Where do you pick up this jargon?” Athena sighed. “A hunting permit. Yes. The law is in effect, so like it or not, you’ll need one if you’re going to continue trapping within the limits of the township.”

  “How long will it take to get one?”

  “I
don’t know, Artemis. It depends on the backlog. It could be a day, it could be a week.”

  “A week! You are mental!”

  “You’re not helping your case any,” Athena said, annoyed. “Hello, Hermes, dear, how are you?” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “Ready to drop.”

  “Father still has you running all over the whole of creation?”

  “And then some,” the haggard god replied.

  “I’ll talk to him, see if I can get you a reprieve. He’ll listen to reason.”

  “Ha!” sneered Hera. “That man’s never listened to reason in his life, I don’t expect he’ll start now. He’s a walking pile of idiocy and waste.”

  “No argument from me,” said Demeter, sauntering into the room. “I assume we’re talking about Zeus?”

  “Who else?” grumbled Hestia.

  “Is he not here yet?”

  “At the saloon, no doubt,” Hera said, signaling for another drink.

  “Sun god!” Demeter cried, pointing an accusatory finger at Apollo. “We get it. It’s the desert. It’s hot. Now turn off the sun. My crops are more useless than dust.”

  “Sorry, Demeter, you’re barking up the wrong deity. The sun is just as present here as it is anywhere else, no more, no less. You want relief, speak to the water gods about clouds.”

  “Why did Zeus bring us to this miserable dustbowl?” she pouted, plopping down in a chair next to Aphrodite.

  “Oh, like you had such luck on Olympus. You wailed about altitude then, you wail about heat here, you’d wail about the winds if we lived on the plains. Give it a rest,” Hera muttered.

  Athena pulled a thin, silver pocket watch from within the folds of her dress and frowned at the time. “If father’s going to call a meeting, he should have the decency to be on time.”

  “Decency,” Demeter snorted. “That’s rich.”

  The deities fell into their places around the table, the older generation huddling near the far end, glowering over their cocktails at the younger gods, who bickered and fawned over each other with equal ferocity. Only three seats remained open at the meeting table. “Two solid ounces says Poseidon doesn’t show,” Hestia said.