Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (45 page)

Vamana reached up and grabbed the chandelier by its support chain. He yanked the dazzling mass of glass free from the ceiling and flung it down onto Kali.

But the asura spun his swords over his head like a helicopter’s rotor vanes, whittling the chandelier to pieces. He was the eye of a storm of glass shards that sprayed outwards around him. When he was done, the chandelier was just a ring of twinkling ice on the floor, Kali at its centre, unharmed.

Vamana rushed at Kali, arms open to crush him in a bearhug. Kali sidestepped, and a scimitar flickered, and all at once the Dwarf was a crumpled heap, clutching the back of his knee.

“Aargh! My fucking leg! Cut the fucking tendon!”

He lashed out with his good leg, but Kali was already moving on, focusing on his next target: Narasimha, who growled and straightened up as much as his injured ribcage would allow.

Kali’s scimitars became a flashing cyclone of thrusts, feints, jabs and slashes. Narasimha bobbed and wove, evading one blow after another. Even unhurt, it would have been all he could do to keep from being hit. Kali didn’t give him any opening for a counterattack.

Rama, on a mezzanine halfway up the staircase, loosed three arrows. Kali barely even paused from his assault on Narasimha. One scimitar did the work of deflecting all three shafts. Then the onslaught against the Man-lion resumed in earnest.

“We’re getting our arses kicked here,” I said to Kalkin.

“No shit. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The bastard’s unstoppable. What do we do?”

“It’s all right, Hanuman.” Kalkin unsheathed his talwars. “
You
don’t do anything. Leave this to me.”

The Horseman stepped forward, resolute. I could see in his eyes the fulfilment of the bushido code he so loved: the virtues of honour, loyalty and courage, even unto death.

At that moment, a couple more asuras arrived to join the fray. Hanuman recognised them instantly, their identities surfacing in my brain from the monkey god’s deep pool of memories. These two were Koka and Vikoka, brothers, Kali’s generals. Neither was as large as the master they served, but they were no less ugly. They were conjoined at the flank, like Siamese twins. Koka carried a kukri dagger in his right hand; Vikoka had the same in his left.

They came down from the head of the staircase, meeting Rama and Krishna on the mezzanine. Tongues bared, they swung their kukris as one.

Krishna countered Koka with Nandaka. Rama, who had emptied his quiver with those last three shots at Kali, used his bow like a shield to ward off Vikoka’s strike.

“They need your help,” Kalkin told me. “Kali is mine.”

I knew the truth of this just as Kalkin did. The Horseman, with his talwars, was made for fighting Kali.

He yelled out Kali’s name, and the demon broke off from harrying Narasimha. Canine contempt filled his face, and he charged headlong at the Horseman. Blade met blade, twice over. Steel clanged ringingly against steel.

I sprinted up the staircase to Rama and Krishna, who were holding their own against Koka and Vikoka but only just. The twin demons moved with a supple grace, four legs working as one. Their daggers’ flame-shaped blades darted, fast as snakes’ tongues.

Spotting a gold sovereign ring adorning Koka’s hand, I knew where these asuras had come from, who they had been. The Trinity were throwing their bodyguards at us, the four goons. This was a last-ditch attempt to beat us. They had exhausted all other avenues.

The thought reinvigorated me. It meant we were almost there. We had ploughed through the Trinity’s defences, battered down every obstacle they had put in our way. Now they were sacrificing their final pieces on the board. This was what we had reduced them to.

I leapt between Rama and Krishna. There seemed only one logical way to combat the seamless twin terror of Koka and Vikoka, and that was divide and conquer.

The battleaxe descended, and Koka was unzipped cleanly from Vikoka and vice versa. The severed demons, blood pouring from their sides, fought on, but they weren’t nearly as efficient apart as they were together. Krishna ran Koka through with Nandaka. Rama clubbed Vikoka’s brains out with his bow.

Back down on the atrium floor, Kalkin and Kali were going at it hammer and tongs. The swordplay was almost impossible to follow, so blazingly, blisteringly fast did the lunges and thrusts and parries and ripostes come. Narasimha and Vamana looked on from the sidelines. There was no room for anyone else in this contest. Kalkin and Kali were locked in mortal combat, perfectly matched adversaries, Kalkin smaller but nimbler, Kali larger and stronger but a fraction slower. The space between them seemed latticed with steel. The clashes of blade on blade were drum-tattoo swift, as though there were a dozen duellists in the room rather than just two.

“Let’s go,” I said to Rama and Krishna. “Kalkin’s buying us time. I don’t think the Trinity are going to hang around. They never stay put if they can run.”

We barged through the door at the top of the staircase, the one Koka and Vikoka had come in by. A short corridor led to a second door. We barged through that too.

Beyond lay a theogenesis chamber, a cramped, bonsai version of the room in the second ring at Mount Meru. There was an upright plexiglass tube with vents that could flood it with aerosolised god virus. There was an Induction Cocoon in the corner. All the kit you needed to build your own gods on the go. Doubtless the Trinity had intended to perform demonstrations here for visiting dignitaries, showing just how quick and easy it was to make men supermen.

Professor Korolev looked up, startled, as we slammed our way in. He was busy strapping the fourth goon to a steel table in preparation for dosing him up with god gas. Diamond Tooth, Buddha’s killer. Presumably Vikoka was Knuckleduster Ring’s brother, twins in demonhood as well as in life; by a process of elimination, Kali was Hillbilly Moustache.

Korolev hoisted his hands straight into the air. He wasn’t daft. Against three devas, he didn’t stand a chance. Abject surrender was the only realistic option available to him.

Diamond Tooth strained against his bonds. “Don’t just stand there, you idiot,” he snarled at Korolev. “Untie me. I can take them.”

“No,” I said evenly, “you can’t. Krishna? Rama? Which one of you wants to do the honours?”

To his credit, Diamond Tooth didn’t sob, he didn’t plead, he didn’t beg for his life. The game was up. He faced his end with bravery and bravado.

“Shit,” he sighed as Krishna loomed over him, Nandaka aloft. “Well, if you’ve got to go, might as well be a god that does it. Come on, you blue-skinned cunt. Don’t faff around. Let’s be having you.”

Krishna beheaded him with a single clean chop.

Korolev said, “You’re too late, you know. Is all over. No point executing me as well. The situation has changed more than you realise.”

“What have you done?” I demanded.

“What have I done?” The Russian biochemist chuckled coldly. “What I was asked to do by Trinity. I am making Kali, Koka and Vikoka only to run interference, giving time for other lot of theogenesis to bed in.”

“What other lot of theogenesis? Who else have you zapped with your fucking gas?”

“Who else is there?”

“I don’t know. The crew of this boat?”

“They are on the bridge, still sailing it.”

“More of those mercenaries.”

“Not them.”

“Domestic staff?”

“Down below, confined to quarters for their own safety. You really are being dense, Hanuman.”

“The Trinity themselves,” said Rama.

“Well done, the Archer. Bullseye.”

“You theogenised Lombard, Krieger and Bhatnagar?” I said, incredulous. “Jesus fucking Christ, how stupid is that? Those three are certifiable madmen.”

“I disagree. Is sane act, to give themselves siddhis as final layer of defence against you.”

“What have you transformed them into? Please don’t say asuras.”

I had visions of the Trinity as nagas or maybe vetalas, on the loose, rampaging, causing all kinds of havoc. It didn’t seem a stretch of the imagination at all. Billionaire businessmen as snake monsters, as vampires – they were made for it. Vocational determinism.

“Why not see for yourself?” Korolev nodded to a door behind him at the far end of the chamber. He gave a smile that was eerily beatific. “They are just through there, in the stateroom. Companionway, up one deck. They are waiting. I would even say they are expecting you.”

I walked past him.

“So I get to live?” he said, casting a glance at Diamond Tooth’s decapitated corpse. “I am co-operating. Not resisting. I am not such a bad guy, huh? Just scientist, with scientist’s curiosity. I research. I discover and create. I advance human understanding. Is not so wrong. Is no crime.”

“Curiosity isn’t a crime,” I said.

Korolev visibly relaxed.

“But almost everything else you’ve done is.”

I swung the axe backhand. It’s fair to say he never saw it coming.

51. THE TRIMŪRTI

I
N THE STATEROOM,
a semicircle of windows faced the bows. There were plush cream leather sofas and armchairs and a carpet soft as mink. Recessed LED lighting cast a muted ambient glow. The wallpaper had a lotus pattern, white on gold.

The Trinity greeted us calmly as we entered.

They weren’t themselves any more.

Dick Lombard had pale blue skin now, like Krishna, and an extra pair of arms. He perched on one leg, with his left heel lodged against his right knee, exquisitely balanced. The corners of his mouth were permanently turned up in a hint of a smile.

R. J. Krieger was even odder-looking. Instead of one head he had four, each facing in a different direction as though to the cardinal points of the compass. Like Lombard he also had an extra pair of arms, but next to the multiple heads that seemed almost normal.

Vignesh Bhatnagar, meanwhile, sported a third eye in the centre of his brow that moved and blinked in synchrony with the other two. His triple gaze was even and haughty and timeless.

All three men were naked save for loincloths. They stood absolutely, serenely still, neither cowed nor aggressive. I turned to Rama and Krishna. We all recognised the gods before us. We didn’t know what to do. Bow? Genuflect? Attack? Retreat? What?

The Trinity were the Trimūrti, Hinduism’s holy triumvirate, the three-as-one who rule over all. Lombard was Vishnu, the maintainer, he who preserves. Krieger was Brahma, the creator, he who bestows life and form. Bhatnagar was Shiva, the destroyer, he who brings about change.

A media magnate, upholder of the status quo. A biochemist with his hands on the building blocks of life. An arms manufacturer whose product was responsible for countless deaths.

Now
that
was vocational determinism.

“Please,” said Vishnu, “Hanuman, Rama, Krishna, all three of you, lower your weapons.” Lombard’s abrupt Australian tones had been replaced by something mellower and more neutral. “Violence benefits no one.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” said Brahma. “Our children. Our creations.”

“We know your desire,” said Shiva. “We see how it burns inside you, an all-consuming flame. Let it expire.”

“You don’t want to fight?” I said. “You’re not resisting? Are you scared of us?”

“Not scared,” said Vishnu. “How could we be scared of you when we are everything – the beginning, the middle and the end? We are the universe in three aspects. Nothing you can do holds any terror for us.”

“We were, we are, we will be,” said Brahma.

“Ceaselessly in flux,” said Shiva, “and thus, in our natures, unchanging. The eternal Trimūrti, united, interleaving, everlasting.”

They all three spoke with the same slow, dreamy inflection, their native accents and intonations erased, as though their individual personality traits had been overwritten, replaced by those of the gods who now inhabited their bodies.

It was both creepy and beguiling. These were
our
gods, the deva’s devas, supreme even to us, the threesome from which everything was born and lived and died. Yet they were also still Lombard, Krieger and Bhatnagar, whom we’d pursued halfway across the world and wanted – needed – to expose for the criminals they were.