The Spaces in Between (6 page)

And where Cameron was headed was the court of Lilith, Queen of the Underworld and keeper of its gates.

Fae was in perpetual twilight, but had a full moon so bright that you could read by it. This was the best light for Lilith’s complexion. The millennia of living in the Twilight had paled her to snowy white. She was not a native to Fae, but in fact the first woman. She sought sanctuary in Fae after rejecting Adam and hence God. With a mastery of sorcery and the Tree of Life from eating the Forbidden Fruit she became the Queen of the Underworld.

“Why Dread Pirate you’ve returned in a most insulting fashion,” Lilith said from her open-air throne. “Bearing cold iron and in that filthy flesh.” Her court of assorted Faeries, Hobgoblins, Gnomes, and Elves cowered about their bon fires where they eternally reveled in the Queen’s honor.

“I’m afraid I’ve come here for business not pleasure this time,” Cameron said, “but it’s not with you. I just need you to open the gates. There is a disease spirit I need to talk with in there.” Cameron concentrated with all his might to maintain eye contact and keep his eyes from wondering to her cleavage blanketed in hair as black as space. It went beyond ample to the realms of supra-ample threatening to break out of her bodices to fly into orbit.

“I think I know of the disease you speak. He’s running amok in my ex-husband’s realm so I don’t see why I ought to allow you to stop it. Name a price.”

Some of the Fae a few centuries younger screamed when Cameron drew his flintlock pistol from his belt. “For opening the gate I won’t shoot off one of your tits.”

“Oh, you old romantic.” Lilith grinned maliciously. “You certainly know how to talk to a woman.”

“I thought you dropped that title centuries ago.” Cameron pulled back the hammer on his flintlock. “I’m a horrible shot, but there’s not much aiming I’d have to do here.” Lilith smirked and leaned forward with an eerie grace. The hammer fell.

Fae hit the ground all around them. There was screaming and pandemonium. But the only a soft click ran through the air. Lilith threw her head back and her chest heaved in her roaring laughter. “I’ll open it. You’ve always known how to make me laugh, Dread Pirate, and that’s more than I can say for any other man.” She recomposed herself. “I need to warn you that thing is not part of Creation. Normal means will not bind it. You know, Cameron, you could stop this inane quest and stay with me forever. I’ll tell you how to keep your powers.”

“I might be a lot of things, but not a sell-out.”

As he passed through the wrought iron gates Cameron replaced the shell in his flintlock muttering something about duds. Noremac guided him through the Underworld, but it wasn’t very hard for Cameron to find
Fillipre
’s disease on his own. Its trail was marked with the path of dead flora and fauna on the borders of the realms of the Death Gods. They finally pinned it on the banks of the river Styx where the spirit was ambushing souls seeking passage there along with their spirit guides.

The river divided Adam’s kingdom from the Necropolis, or Land of the Dead, or Limbo, or Summerlands, or Hel (but not Hell), or whatever the culture calls it. It wasn’t Heaven, but it certainly wasn’t bad. It was more like a locker room where souls could wash up before their next life. To gain entry would require passing the trials of whatever Death God, and it wasn’t really that hard. Those who were intentionally cruel were cast into Hell for a while to cool off, but that’s for another time.

The creature thrashed on the banks, screaming in indecipherable tongues, and truly was beyond description. Or more accurate would not keep a shape long enough to be described. In one moment it could be a writhing mass of tentacles and then the next a writhing mass of puppies. The only real repeating features were the writhing and the mass.

It turned and screamed something that could not be comprehended by human ears and lashed at Cameron with its tentacles. He snatched the tentacles flying at him and struck the spirit at the highest concentration of tentacles. It was launched a few feet away from him - aside from having to wear the space suit there were huge advantages to being a living human in the spirit realms.

A chain materialized in Cameron’s hands and pierced the spirit through the center. He recited the words of power and binding over the spirit. It thrashed and changed shape to an immense primordial lobster. The shell and body were made of a permeable jelly, but the claws felt like rocks crushing down upon Cameron.

If Cameron and his armor weren’t a hundred-fold stronger in the spiritual realms it might have actually hurt. Cameron slipped the flintlock out of his belt. Each immense shell it fired contained a pocket dimension holding a droplet of antimatter. When Cameron pulls the trigger the antimatter annihilates. It’s like watching an H-bomb going through a funnel.

Cameron brushed himself off and made a “do you want to help me with this gesture” at Nomerac. He seemed disinterested. Cameron picked up the charred spirit and then threw it over his shoulder.

“At least take me to Adam’s palace.”

7

The abandoned looking castle in the most isolated location of Adam’s realm was his own. Unlike Lilith he was completely disinterested in his kingdom. Adam had absolutely no intentions of ever holding court with the various nature spirits and Pagan gods that inhabited his realm. He used his mastery of the Arts Unseen bestowed on him by the Forbidden Fruit in order to gain power in hopes of impressing God. Over the millennia Adam grew immortal and incorporeal so he descended to the Underworld.

The castle was barren and would be in horrible disrepair if things here actually needed to be repaired. Cameron found Adam sitting in the middle of the floor locked in meditation. He was in every way the perfect man at least physically, but to assume that the first being was actually human is a major hubris. Adam and Lilith were the archetypes for the first man and woman for any species.

The story was always the same, too. Lilith refused to lie under him and Adam refused to view her as an equal. She ate the Fruit and left, and after two more wives God got fed up with Adam. While Cameron was an extraordinary human he was still a human regardless. So in this scenario Adam was also human.

“I slew a monster in your realm,” Cameron said and definitely threw it at Adam’s feet. “It’s customary for the King to bestow the Knight a reward.”

“It’s not dead and you can’t control it, because it lies outside of God’s plan.” Adam didn’t open his eyes. “Just like you, Blasphemer. It will only be a matter of time before Creation puts you back in your place so savor these moments, because you’ve made a lot of enemies.”

“Or so you keep saying.” Cameron put another dosage of antimatter to the disease spirit. “You know what I want Adam, and I’ll take this thing off your hands if you help me.”

“Do you think I care about these pissant Pagan spirits?” Adam replied, “They are trash in the eyes of my God. I try to stay out of their business, but they keep insisting that I am their king.” Three failed marriages and one estranged creator had made Adam very cynical. His first choose suffering and death over an eternity with him. He left the second because watching her creation disgusted him so much. The third used her knowledge from the Forbidden Fruit to regain the relationship with God that he used to have.

“I saw Lilith on the way here. She said I was the only man that could make her laugh. Name this thing, and I’ll be on my way.” Cameron loaded another shell into his flintlock. Adam had a skill that was very unique to him – he was fluent in the
Logos
or True Language. The True Language was a Hebrew dialect spoken by God. Hebrew was the language that repeated itself the most across Creation. One of the goals of Kabbalah, the Kosher one, was to discover this dialect.

There were few fluent speakers, but Adam was charged by God to name all things in creation. Unless Adam had named it, it was not part of Creation. He could not go an entire minute without reminding someone.

“I really hate you Cameron Styles. So much that I’m willing to make a deal with you – if you can make it interesting.”

“How about a year’s servitude?” Adam didn’t flinch. “Alright, my left hand. Your own access to the physical world.”

“There are many people trying to find you, Cameron Styles, but there is only one of them that you fear. I want the flutter of butterflies put back in your stomach. For you to feel what it’s like to be an insignificant again. I want you to remember your place.” Adam opened his eyes. “I want you to remove the wards that prevent Lam from finding you.”

“You have three seconds.” Cameron put the barrel of his flintlock to Adam’s forehead. “Make it a good name. Something masculine.”

“I told you my terms,” Adam said, “I am not a mere Elemental you can threaten. Pulling that trigger would be the worse mistake of your existence.”

“One!”

Adam closed his eyes.

“Two!”

The
Fillipre
disease made a run for the door.

“Three!”

It became splattered across the walls of Adam’s barren throne room. Cameron inhaled deeply.

“Alright, Lam can find me.” The
Fillipre
strand quickly reformed and spilled towards one of the broken windows. Adam stepped out in front of it and whispered in its ear.

“Xibulba.” The writhing black mass jerked and took the form of rotting and fetid Cameron. Xibulba stared back at Cameron with a sullen and sunken green eye. Dirty red dreadlocks draped over a contorted face, and he let out a horrible scream. Cameron pierced Xibulba through the torso, and the screaming creature thrashed as he said the words of power over it.

Adam looked smug and very pleased with himself.

9

Cameron shoveled four sugar cubes into his glass of pale green liquor. It quickly shifted to a cloudy color. He sipped his absinthe and held a bag of ice against his head. The tablets he rescued from
Fillipre
lie in his lap, but they were written in the
Logos
. He had a starship full of corpses that have finally stopped moving in tow. Xibulba thrashed and screamed from the room beside him.

“Come and get me you sons of bitches.”

The entire bridge was filled with little gray men. Their black eyes were all focused on Cameron. He raised a toast to them.

Intermission: Six Shooter Samurai

Sakamoto Ryoma meditated upon his impending demise. Only moments before he was enjoying a meal with colleague and friend Nakaoka Shintarou in the basement of the Omi Inn. It had been a month since Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu accepted Ryoma’s Eight Point Plan, which would peacefully return rule of Japan into the hands of the Emperor.

The
Ronin
from Tosa was to remain in hiding until the Tokugawa abdicated the throne in the next month. Despite turning down a position in the new government both sides were deeply threatened by him. This was not the first attempt on his life, but it would be the last.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.” Ryoma grasped the sandalwood handle concealed in his kimono. With a flick of this thumb Shinta loosened his sword from its scabbard.

“
Oyasumi nasai
,” a man in a nondescript kimono stepped through the door. He wore only one katana and his hair was uncut in the front, which told Ryoma this man was a
Ronin
. The man was strikingly familiar. “
Hajimemashite. Watashi no Yamaguchi Jiro desu.
I’ve been sent by Saigo-sama. He has heard rumors that the Shingengumi plan to the take your life in hopes that the Meiji Restoration dies with it.”

“Fools. It’s far out of my hands now,” Ryoma said. “Or even Saigo-san’s. This is far more the united clan of Satsuma and Choschu rebelling against the
Bakufu
.
Sonno-joi
is now the will of
Nihon
. Repel the barbarians, revere the Emperor.”

Ryoma stood on Edo Bay nearly a master of the sword when US Commodore Perry sailed in upon his three black ships fifteen years ago. It was a stern message. “Open your ports or we’ll blow them open.” And what were foreign goods? The foreigners would surely flood the country with Opium and Christ to overthrow the Emperor in order place the American President in his place. This may seem like the paranoid theories of a xenophobic people, but they’d already seen it happen with the British in China. The West had used their technology to rule Africa, and now had set their sights on Asia.

“But you’re a national treasure.”

Jiro’s katana jumped from its scabbard, cut a silver arc through the air, and split Ryoma’s skull. Ryoma had drawn his weapon out of reflex. It slid from his numb fingers, but he kicked it aside from trying to retrieve it before tripping over his own feet. He cursed himself while watching from the floor on his stomach like a dog. Shinta drew his katana, but Jiro had moved his to his left hand.

The tip of Jiro’s sword flew through the air past Shinta’s guard that did not know how to compensate for a left hand strike, then between his ribs, and through his lung. Ryoma bellowed for the owners of the inn to come. He recognized that style – the style of former spymaster and third Captain of the Shinsengumi Hajime Saito. Saito turned his sword and the ribs cracked under the strain then snapped.

He pulled the sword out and slung the blood. Ryoma was morbidly reminded of a Sumi-e painter cleaning the excess ink from his brush. In this light Shinta’s blood looked like splatters of ink. Ryoma screamed again and scrambled for his gun, but he couldn’t find it. Saito sheathed his katana and walked out the same way he came.

“Somebody!
Help!
” Ryoma screamed. “Shinta, we’re going to get you through this. We just got to hold out. If I could find my gun…shit, they’d hear that.”

“Ryoma…” Shinta wheezed. “Y-your face.”

Ryoma touched his face and looked down at his hand. It was filled with deep crimson and gray matter