Last God Standing (9 page)

“If you’re finished…?”

“I am.” The Pope smiled, his eyes bright and utterly sober. “Having spoken my piece I’ll withdraw and say, simply: thanks fer nothin’.”

With that he turned. Then he turned back. “I take it the redheaded colleen with the big winnebagos was the Morrigan: the pagan Whore of Ireland’s savage pre-Christianity?”

“Yes.”

The old man whistled, and winked. “Wonders within wonders. And none of it to do with us. Goodbye then.”

Gathering his tattered robes, the old Pope walked, whistling, back into the burning city. Sometimes I wonder about people. I really do.

I took it all in. Then I reached out, and up, grasping my way into the Eshuum. Power shimmered there, colder than the blood of icebergs. A small portion of the human thoughtforce awaited my command once more.

“You’ve come back.”

“I could never abandon you.”

“The Other whispers of your betrayal.”

“What other?”

“He that promises. Who speaks truth.”

“Where is it? Who is the Coming?”

“The beginning of your end. And the end of all beginnings.”

Reset.

Nothing happened. With a sinking feeling, I realized that I couldn’t trust the connection any longer. I was just about to summon an Aspect – try to – when the power answered.

Reset.

The world faded as I opened myself to the Eshuum and a billion lives times a billion roads-not-travelled opened themselves to me, stretching toward a multitude of realities both probable and possible, each of them branching out toward an infinity of decreasingly viable outcomes, and all of them anchored to this moment in time, its relation to the most critical element of all… free will. I expanded, growing godlike again as potentials unspooled beneath my fingertips.

Then I went to work.

From:[email protected]

To:@LORDOSIRIS, @BLACKSHANGO, @AGNIFLAMER, @JesusChristJR.

Subject: HAS ANYBODY SEEN LUCIFER?

@LORDOSIRIS: Insanely bizzy! Glorious revival happening in Egypt!

@BLACKSHANGO: Not since the last election.

@AGNIFLAMER: Very busy ’n Bollywood. No time for games.

@JesusChristJR: Still not speaking to you.

I shut off the display on my mobile and set the ringer to vibrate. Then I leaned back against the headrest of my seat and imagined welding my eyelids shut against the stomach churning brightness of a midsummer Chicago morning. The sunlight beating against my eyelids threatened to pop my eyeballs out of their sockets. Two days after my battle with Hannibal I was still nauseated, disoriented and depressed. I was in a foul mood as I made my way to work.

But these ailments paled before the doubt that was deepening toward existential crisis with each passing moment.

Zeus had used stolen divinity to attack me, a move which, had he succeeded, would have permanently altered human continuity, something that, all extant deities had acknowledged under the terms of the Covenant, would be a bad thing. I’d stopped him only at the cost of his apparent death, which should have been technically impossible: a god of Zeus’ stature was virtually immortal, even while masquerading as a mortal. Now he was gone.

A few days later, a resurrected Hannibal had used more stolen divinity, power that, under normal circumstances, would have been inaccessible to him. Both had tried to kill me using this borrowed power; both had nearly succeeded; now both were gone. But so was the Morrigan, a powerful goddess in her own right, and one of my few reliable allies: three catastrophic god-related events, occurring within days of each other.

Beware the Coming. It stalks us all.

In my descended state I had limited communications with select active top gods via the waring; a cybertelepathic treasure house composed of what you might call “dark matter memory banks”. It was a sort of psychic world wide web, funneled through and similar to the mortal internet, only without the animal porn. (The Greek Pantheon filed a petition to have that section sealed off when they realized that it was occupied mostly by members of the Greek Pantheon.)

But I didn’t need to mindsurf the web-browser of the gods to know that something was seriously out of pocket. The renunciation of an old, worn out God occurs in different ways, sometimes after weeks of tribal warfare, sometimes after decades of ethnic cleansing, but mostly, quietly, after a gradual shifting of belief, a replacement of old ideas by bright, shiny new ones. The Advent of a new God is always accomplished through an uptick in the intensity of human belief in that god, never through direct action from the ascendant God to be.

You’ve been replaced, by the One who Comes.

I had my fears, and a million questions. Was the Coming, the entity that both Zeus and Hannibal claimed to represent, an avatar of this new God? If so, what were its motives? Who were its worshippers? I had seen no evidence of a widespread new religious movement powerful enough to have stimulated the Collective Unconscious, so where was this Coming getting his or her power? And what did it stand to gain by pitting retired gods against each other? What were its tenets? Its divine selling points? So far, it had displayed nothing more than a penchant for staging godfights.

But my darkest fears were reserved for a more personal subject. I had heard no word from my former counterpart since our mutual descent to the mortal plane. Lucifer had successfully hidden himself among humanity’s teeming masses for nearly thirty years. Was he at the root of the Coming’s takeover attempt? If the Father of Lies was hoarding undeclared powers in contravention of the Covenant, what did he intend to do with them?

More importantly, could I stop the Devil if he was, in some way, at the heart of the problem? Exactly how much power was he hoarding? Who were his allies? Where was he?

I tried to relax as the L train came up out of the underground and onto the elevated tracks near the Loop. Thoughts of the day ahead only made matters worse.

I had experienced headaches after godfights, but never with this kind of intensity. Maybe two major duels occurring so close together was too much for my substandard constitution. My gut insisted, however, that this was different. Something was wrong.

What’s happening to me?

When I dragged myself into the Westside location, two hours late, Herb and his watch were waiting for me in Motor Oils. He’d spent the last three days scouting potential new locations in Milwaukee only to learn that I’d been AWOL. Flaunt capered at Herb’s side like the Wicked Witch of the West’s favorite flying monkey.

“Well, the Mad Zulu returns. I thought you were getting a haircut for your big date with Salome tonight.”

“Something suddenly came up.”

“What? Dammit, man, don’t you have any self-respect? You look like a retarded voodoo doll.”

“Have you seen my Advil? I’m getting a sick headache.”

“I mean I’m as liberal as the next guy when it comes to personal freedoms for my employees. Didn’t I let you grow those gridlocks…?”

“Dredlocks.”

“Your mother wanted me to drop a tranquilizer in your Sunny D, sneak into your room and shave your head. I said ‘Barbara, this is America: let the boy look like a damn bushman if he wants to’.”

“Wrong. You didn’t shave my head because you broke your clippers shaving your name into that alpaca during the Herb vs the Dollar Lama spot.”

“Did I hassle you when you pierced your eyebrows?” Herb droned on. “Did I say a single, solitary word when you grew a Mohawk and dyed it lime green?”

“You said, ‘No son of mine is gonna prance around lookin’ like Chief Sittin’ Pretty and call himself Herb Cooper’s offspring. Not while Herb Cooper’s pullin’ the chuckwagon.’”

“Damn right.”

“Pop…”

But Herb was rolling, and nothing short of a nuclear accident would shut him up.

“Do you know how hard I’ve slaved to create this empire? How much valium I power-slammed just to keep from stabbing your mother long enough to keep this family together?”

“Pop…”

“But what does Dad get in return? Renfield in San Francisco working in a damn headshop…”

“He’s a biochemist. He specializes in alternative therapies and eastern medicine.”

“Western medicine was good enough before I spent two hundred thousand dollars to put him through a Western medical school. Atticus can’t even be bothered to visit on a regular basis…”

“He lives next door.”

“And that other one… my firstborn son. The heir to the Cooper Empire… ashamed of his own name.”

“You named him after a wizard!”

“Gandalf is a seminal character from a beloved piece of Western fiction, smartass. I don’t see people in China naming their kids after Charlie Chan.”

“Or that Cirque du Soleil crap,” Flaunt muttered. He had ditched the Elviswig in favor of his own implausible toupee. “Too much of this globalization goin’ on, Herbie. New World Order time. They want us all speakin’ Spanish, Chinese... Whatever happened to American literary type names like… like…”

While Flaunt struggled to remember the last book he’d burned I staggered behind the customer service counter. Underneath it I’d stored a bottle of Eco Water and the little metal tin in which I kept my stash. I opened the tin, palmed four Advil and downed them dry.

“What’s wrong with you?” Herb said. “You look like crap.”

“He’s probably crankin’ the crystal meth,” Flaunt crowed. “All these idiots are doin’ it.”

“Will… you…
shut up
?”

My voice echoed a little too loudly. Somewhere out over Lake Michigan, the echo stroked thunder from the skies. Flaunt flinched, his gaze flicking across the ceiling. He waved a hand in my direction. “See what I mean?”

Then he stomped off to berate a customer.

“Why do you have to antagonize him?” Herb hissed. “You know he gets flashbacks.”

“I’m out.”

“What? It’s only 12.15!”

“I gotta go. My head’s killin’ me.”

I grabbed my satchell and headed toward the door.

“I’ll be taking that loan out of your check!”

I went to see Surabhi.

My headache abated a little on the train ride up to Rogers Park. By the time I rang Surabhi’s doorbell I was feeling more like myself, anticipating the look on Surabhi’s face later that night when I gave her the ring – and the night of passion sure to follow – when she snatched open the door to her apartment.

“Yo,” I said. “What’s crackin’?”

I moved in for a kiss. Surabhi grabbed my lapels and screamed, “Kiiiiyaaaaaahhh!”

In one fluid movement she shifted her center of gravity downward and backward, pulled me forward onto the balls of my feet, planted her foot in the center of my chest and I was sailing head over heels across her comfortable living room. I landed on my back in the center of a deep mound of sofa cusions, comforters and fluffy pillows.

Surabhi jumped on me and sat on my chest, smashing me back into the pillows, her face alive with martial excitement. Even though she was restricting my airway, I marveled at what time, circumstance and several million years of natural selection had wrought.

Surabhi Moloke was the most beautiful woman since the advent of Homo sapiens. Imagine cinnamon-brown skin, smooth and rich as warm cocoa, wide brown eyes shot through with glints of gold like flecks of borrowed sunlight. Imagine curly, reddish brown hair, and a generous mouth armed with perfect white teeth and a ready smile. Throw in sharp cheekbones, and an aristocratic nose with perfectly arched nostrils , finally, stack all that on top of a body toned by Pilates; thrice weekly Jujitsu/Karate/Muy Thai kickboxing classes; Saturday morning African dance workshops and/or Brazilian capoeira jam sessions and you’ll get the picture. Surabhi had muscle in all the right places, a dancer’s grace, and the lethality of a shaolin monk.

My girlfriend was constantly learning new ways to disarm, disable or disembowel people. She regularly attended self-defense seminars, and had earned an instructor’s certification in Savate by her fifteenth birthday.

She’d grown up in an upper middle class suburb of London, the eldest daughter of Magnus Moloke, Ethiopian soccer legend and entrepreneur, and Marian DotsonMoloke, an attaché to the American Ambassador to the UK. Now she sat astride me: the Amazon Triumphant; beautiful, intelligent and capable of killing a water buffalo with her bare hands.

“Judo,” she said, breathlessly. “The principle of using your attacker’s momentum against him. It’s brilliant!”

“Can’t… breathe.”

“Oh, my god! I’m sorry, babe! Do you need your inhaler?”

Surabhi shifted her weight while still holding her position. I didn’t mind, now that oxygen was flowing to my brain.

“Not anymore,” I laughed. “Hi.”

Surabhi smiled. “Hello, loverman.”

She kissed me. And everything – the fight with Zeus, the battle with Hannibal and my fears about a satanic takeover attempt – downsized themselves on my list of priorities. We were good. As long as that never changed, everything else would work itself out.

“I need you to change.”

“What?”

Surabhi reached over and grabbed a plastic garment bag off the back of a nearby chair. Inside the clear plastic bag dangled an expensive-looking dark suit complete with a crisp new shirt and tie. In the other hand she dangled a pair of freshly polished, even more expensive-looking, leather shoes.

“I need you to wear this.”

“Why? What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

For our big moment I’d selected the dark brown suit I’d purchased for my college graduation. It was a little snug in places – that was to be expected since it was seven years old, but Classic never goes out of style. For color, I’d added an excellent black T-shirt featuring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster. The exact matching T-shirt in Surabhi’s size featuring Elsa Lancaster’s “Bride of Frankenstein” was folded neatly inside my satchel. I’d planned to present it to her before dinner, and taken the time to have the date stenciled across the fronts of both shirts to commemorate the occasion. I’d used some of the advance Herb gave me to buy a new pair of lime green All Stars to top off the ensemble.

“My parents are here,” Surabhi said. “My father’s gone completely mental.”

Her London accent was lightly tinted with the Midwestern twang she’d picked up over the last five years living in Chicago. I loved her voice; it was rich, dark; exotic without being ostentatious.

“When did they get here?”

“Two hours ago. My mum’s here on UN business and Daddy tagged along. Daddy says he has good news, but he’ll only spill it when we’re all together. They want to meet you. I’m afraid they won’t take no for an answer.”

“No! Not tonight!”

Surabhi winced, took a deep breath.

“Calliope told them we’ve been sleeping together.”

“What?”

“My dad said, ‘Either I will sit down to dinner with the man who violated my daughter, or my brothers and I will hunt him down and beat him until he begs for the release of death’.”

“Why would your sister do that?”

“Calliope’ll do anything to sleaze her way into my parents’ good graces. I recommended a personal trainer to her in New York and she got all pissy. They showed up here unannounced. Dad wouldn’t come in until he was sure you weren’t here. He stood there in the hallway pouting while my mother dragged in the suitcases. Even then he checked under the beds and rifled all the closets; hunting for my stolen innocence.”

“That’s insane.”

“Dad’s old school,” Surabhi said, ignoring my admonitions about people with British accents using hip hop jargon. “He’s still pissed about my not marrying Alex Thessenden.”

“You told me he gave you his blessing when you told him you didn’t believe in arranged marriages.”

“It wasn’t really an arranged marriage, babe. More like an informal agreement between him and my Uncle Shad when they became blood brothers back in Addis Abbaba.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re not Ethiopian. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. I already know who I’m spending the rest of my life with.”

“But that’s the point,” I said. The little velvet box in my pocket seemed to throb in time with my heartbeat. “Tonight was supposed to be about us.”

Surabhi had been tucking away money from her job as a French and English teacher at a small community college in the south suburbs. My planned proposal would not come as a complete surprise; only the time and the date had been left up to me. I’d tried to mislead her with a few false leads over the last few months, hoping to keep her off balance until I was ready for the big moment. Calliope had ruined months of planning.

“You don’t mind do you? About the suit and everything?”

“Mind? Of course not. Your father wants to hack my head off for ‘violating’ you. What could I possibly ‘mind’ about that?”

Surabhi gently laid the suit and shoes across her small kitchen table. I got to my feet.

“I’m serious, Surabhi. I’m putting my foot down. Tonight is off limits. You and I have serious matters to discuss.”

“‘Serious matters.’ Sounds incredibly important. What exactly did you want to talk about, Mr Cooper?”

“I’m not going to talk about it here. We have reservations. I made plans.”

“Reservations? I think I’m impressed.”

“Don’t change the subject. Look. You’re always telling me that I don’t plan. Look.”

I reached into my backpack and produced the menu I’d taken from L’Ethiope.

“See? Table for Two. L Cooper. 8.15pm. I even pre-selected the menu. All our favorites.”

“But my parents made reservations at Henri Lumiere’s.”

“Henri Lumiere’s? No. No!”

“Lando, I don’t know… exactly what you were planning for tonight, but you’re forgetting one really important thing you have to do before we can move forward.”

“What…? Oh no.”

Surabhi nodded. “You’ve got to have a ‘man to man’ with Magnus Moloke if you expect to go on ‘violating’ his daughter in wedded bliss.”

I’d grown so accustomed to operating as a nurture-free agent during the alien shooting match that was my upbringing I’d forgotten that some families actually care who their offspring might marry. It had been all Herb and Barb could do to keep from selling us off to a work farm.

“Your father expects me to…”

“…ask for his blessing. And his permission. I think. Although that’s largely ceremonial. My mother’s already onboard. She trusts my judgment. At least about this.”

“And he wants to do this tonight?”

“Yep. Then, assuming you don’t totally cock it up… they want to meet your parents.”

“No!”

“Of course, babe. They want to examine the gene pool from whence any future grandchildren might arise.”

“But they can’t meet my parents.”

“Why not?”

“Because my parents are insane.”

“They’ll have a lot in common.”

“I’m serious, Surabhi.”

“No you’re not. But my parents are leaving tomorrow, so that gives us a little more time to bring our lovely families together. That is if you don’t cock it up tonight.”

“You’ve got to stop saying that.”

“Babe, it’s not the end of the world.”

“You don’t know my parents.”

“Of course I do. Your dad’s a scream...”

“…screaming maniac...”

“And Barbara’s lovely.”

“She’s on good behavior when you’re around! She’d have tried to kill you by now if I hadn’t stepped up the dosage on her anti-psychotics.”

Surabhi punched me on the shoulder. Hard.

“You’re terrible. Your mum looks at me with real affection.”

“Because she’s trying to decide which part of you she’s going to cook first. Owww!”

“You’re mean to your parents.”

“Believe me… they can take it.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you so angry at them?”

Thirty seconds later I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t answered her.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You and your parents. You’re obviously harboring a huge amount of resentment toward them.”

“Well… It’s not that I’m really angry…”

Surabhi made a noise that was similar to the noises Herb makes when he’s had one too many Muy Macho Cheesy Meat Burritos from Tangy Taco.

“You’re the most passive-aggressive person I’ve ever met. At least when it comes to your mum and dad. The question is: why?”

“Well…”

“Yes?”

“It’s not like they haven’t given me plenty of reason to…”

“Hate them?”

“I don’t hate my parents, I…”

“Mmhmm?”

“I mean I… really… admire… the way they…”

“Oh dear,” Surabhi sighed. “Go on.”

“They abused me.”

Surabhi’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of abuse?”

“It was sexual. Owww! Stop hitting me!”

“Stop it, Lando.”

“When I was fourteen they forced me to watch them making love. At least that’s what they called it.”

“Lando!”

“I just remember my father bent over on the bed…”

“God! You’re the worst!”

Surabhi enjoyed playing armchair analyst to a host of girlfriends, celebrities, and random passersby, speculating about the obvious clinical depression of the waiter with the resigned smile, the suicidal leanings of the middle-aged new mom with the expensive stroller. She loved what she called the Story, the hidden truths she believed made up the lives of people she would never know. But lately, she’d been focusing the spotlight of her curiosity on me with increasing frequency.

I had hidden one of the world’s deepest mysteries from everyone who mattered in my mortal life. No great accomplishment: who would believe I was the Judeo-Christian Divine Embodiment? I had allowed the sheer improbability of my situation to preserve my secret. Most of my family believed I was an idiot. That was fine with me. Hiding in plain sight made my dual existence that much easier.

But Surabhi was different.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Whenever we talk about you, about your past, you make a joke, or you get this faraway look in your eyes.”

“No I don’t.”

“You do. It’s like you’re looking back at me from someplace unimaginably distant. I hate that look.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m here. With you.”

“Your body’s here with me. I just get the feeling that…”

“That what?”

“That you’re hiding something.”

Vertigo. A feeling similar to standing atop a skyscraper with no walls or windows to separate you from the wind; fear and exhilaration tinged with the secret desire to step off into open air and fall, mortal and defenseless, toward the earth below.

You could end the whole charade right now.

I could do it, reveal myself – one minor miracle and I could expose the truth to the woman who loves me… the real, human me.

“I…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the truth is…”

I gave up the power of a god to be here. Now.

“My God, Lando. You’re doing it right now.”

“How can you say you love her if you can’t tell her the truth? If you can’t tell her Who you really are?”

“Quiet, Connie.”

From her small corner apartment in my medulla oblongata, Changing Woman clucked disapprovingly.

“Have you thought about your children?”

“They’ll be completely normal. You know that.”

“I’m not talking about the
power, I’m talking about truth, Lando.”

Connie, aka the Golden Lady, aka Changing Woman, always sang loudest when I was faced with an ethical dilemma. At that moment she was a short, roundish, heavy-breasted woman with shoulder-length black hair and stars where her eyes should be. In this Aspect, Connie communicated through song. And she was always pregnant.

“I’m talking about the false pretenses under which you seduced Surabhi.”

“What ‘false pretenses’?”

“What?” Surabhi said. “What are you on about?”

“
Yes
,
the lies you’ve told in order to pass yourself off as a mortal.
”

“I haven’t lied to her.”

Surabhi frowned. “Lied to who? What do you mean?”

“You’ve lied by omission,”
Connie continued, shifting into a lower key. “
You’ve taken unfair advantage.”

“No, I haven’t!”

“Lando, you’re freaking me out.”

“What kind of lives will your children lead if they don’t even know where they came from?”

“Come on, Connie…”

“Who’s Connie?”

“What?”

“I mean where they really came from.”

“I said, who’s Connie?”

Surabhi was staring at me, hands on hips.