Last God Standing (8 page)

Hannibal yanked at his blade. I allowed the momentum of his tug to pull me into a forward lunge, dived over his left hip, hit the ground behind him and rolled into a defensive crouch. Hannibal whirled to face me, his arm steady, the blade’s point unwavering. Even considering the Morrigan’s gifts, I had no illusions about who was the more experienced fighter.

Hannibal swept in, swinging his sword in slicing figure eights. I backflipped away as he came on, once, twice, three times, kicking up dust and burning debris, my final leap carrying me over the giant sword still embedded in the dirt. I reached down, pulled it easily from the ruined earth and landed just in time to block Hannibal’s blade with it. The clash of steel struck sparks, and rang loudly enough to shatter all the unshattered windows in what was left of Rome.

The Morrigan’s blessing filled my body with certainty. I pushed Hannibal back, swept in with a flourish and brought the Nubian blade down toward his head. Hannibal parried easily, sliding my blade along the length of his own, only to spin around at the last moment, stepping past my thrust even as a vicious-looking curved knife appeared in his left fist. I barely got my sword up in time to block a left handed jab that would have opened my belly, and twisted around and under the backhanded return slash from the big scimitar.

Hannibal lunged forward again, his right fist slicing the air with the knife, followed by a left handed sweeping cut with the sword, a parry, a thrust, his blades whirling as he came for me. Then his right elbow connected with a solid blow to my forehead and I saw stars. Dodging, shielded from the worst of the attack by the Morrigan’s blessing, I countered him move for move, planted a shimmering spectral boot in his chest and pushed him back. Then I pressed my attack. I became a whirlwind of motion and magic, thrusting and hacking until Hannibal backed away, unable to break past the wall of coolness that surrounded me.

“You’re not the fighter I’ve read about, Hannibal. I think maybe Hades got the best of you.”

Hannibal roared, countered my strike, lunged, thrust and missed.

“Think about it, HannaBell,” I said, circling him now. “The warrior who fought the Holy Roman Empire to a draw. Then you take poison and Bam! You spend the next two thousand years climbing out of the Roman version of Hell. Even you gotta admit: that’s funny.”

And that’s when the Morrigan’s blazing strength flickered and went out.

“Morrigan! What are you doing?”

I ducked, barely avoiding Hannibal’s crosscut with the short sword. The Lion of Carthage gritted his teeth in his lupine grin and came ahead, swinging.

“Morrigan!”

I leaped backward as Hannibal moved in for the kill, risking a glance toward where the Morrigan should have been hovering. But another woman lay sprawled on the ground. Her gorgeous face and figure had been replaced by those of Megan McCool, the Morrigan’s human host. McCool was snoring. I could make out the trail of drool sliding down her chins. Apart from being schizophrenic, McCool was also a narcoleptic: the strain of godly combat had triggered a seizure.

A sizzling band of agony wrapped itself around my neck and yanked me off my feet. I hit the ground face first. Air exploded out of my lungs and the bright stars came back, only this time they were red. I managed to kick myself over onto my back, scrabbling for leverage by digging my heels into the dirt. Behind me, Hannibal clutched the handle of his cat-o’-nine tails: the leather thong was strangling me. The vicegrip around my throat tightened, and Hannibal pulled me across the smoking grass.

“You shouldn’t be doing that.”

The pressure on my throat eased up just enough to allow me to turn my head: Gabriel was gawking at me from over Hannibal’s right shoulder.

“Don’t you know who that is?”

Hannibal yanked me closer, laughing. “I know who he was.”

Gabriel smirked.
“He
is
the Lord Almighty, you dolt. Where have you
been
for the last two thousand years?”

Hannibal’s eyes flashed. Harm throbbed in the air around him like the fallout cloud over Chernobyl, and Gabriel was smirking at ground zero. “I’ve been in Hell!”

“Gabriel! Get him! Attack!”

“As you command, Lord. This barbarian must be shown the error of his ways, and I intend to do so… with lashings of faith.”

Turning back to Hannibal, he continued.
“That pathetic
looking human is actually the One. He is the All-Father. The Master of Time.”

Hannibal hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat on the ground at Gabriel’s feet. “And your point?”

Gabriel stepped lightly to one side to avoid the demonic loogie sizzling next to his perfect toes.

“He is the Father of Life, Hannibal Barca. The one true God.”

“Lay waste, Gabriel! Smite him!”

“But…”
Gabriel stammered.
“Don’t you believe in God?”

Hannibal punched Gabriel. His fist passed through the archangel’s chest and burst through his back, sending golden ichor splattering out at roughly the speed of sound. Gabriel crumpled to the earth, a lifeless manikin.

“I serve no God but me!” Hannibal shouted. “I am He That Follows, as Day follows the long Winter’s Night! I am the Order that Follows Chaos! I am… the Coming!”

Then a huge dark shape emerged from the smoke behind Hannibal, wrapped itself around his waist, lifted him off his feet and smashed him headfirst into the earth with bone shattering force. Hannibal hopped to his feet a second later. His head hung at an obscene angle, dangling from his broken neck. But the Lion of Carthage was undead – even a broken neck couldn’t keep him down for long.

“What treachery is this?” he squeaked.

Persi the quarter-mastodon trumpeted and reared up on both legs, towering over his master, pawing at the air, his great ears extended, his eyes aflame. The light burning in those elephantine orbs looked disturbingly familiar

“For the Trasimene Seven!”

Then Persi headbutted Hannibal. The King of Carthage crumpled beneath the weight of the undead pachyderm’s two-ton skull and flailing feet, compacting beneath that awful strength as Persi rose up and slammed his head down again, and again, and again, until what remained resembled a smashed sack of squirming, unmortal flesh.

Persi sat back on his haunches, his chest heaving. Then he looked over at me.

“Hello! Name’s Persi. Short for Perthon. Have you seen my master? Carthaginian? About so high?”

Persi indicated Hannibal’s approximate height with his trunk. Then he noticed the pulsating meat bag at his feet.

“Oh dear.”

“You don’t remember doing that, do you?” I volunteered.

“No,” Persi said. “I wish I did. I’ll bet it was lovely. But why can’t I remember?”

“
Avek plezi
.”

I turned to find Baron Samedi standing beside me.

“What’s crackin’, mon frère?”

“Samedi. What are you doing here?”

“Gabriel was looking for Pluto,” the Haitian Loa chimed in his nasal, French creole whine. “But Pluto wasn’t available, so he came and found me.”

Baron Samedi was the death and sex god of the Haitian vodou pantheon. In his function as the head of the Guede Loa, it was his responsibility to guard the entrance to the realm of the dead, and to heal the gravely ill or wounded whose mortal moment had not yet come. He was classically depicted as a tall, cadaverous overly-endowed spectre in tuxedo and top hat with a white skull for a face. At the height of his pantheon’s power, he’d been known to seduce hundreds of mortal lovers in a single night. In his current mortal seeming he was wiry, muscular with a shaved bald head and light golden eyes. He’d found a niche in the modern world as the choreographer for the long-running hit Broadway musical,
Vooodoo Nights!

“Similar infernal energies,” Samedi said. “When Gabriel couldn’t find the Roman deathlord he found the next best t’ing.”

“But Hannibal was damned to Hades. That’s the Greek/Roman pantheon.”

Samedi shrugged. High overhead, a vulture shrieked and dropped out of the sky.

“Last I heard, Pluto, he was livin’ in Miami with Persephone and their life partners. They’ve begun a polygamist commune to protest Florida’s stance on…”

“Samedi, you aren’t supposed to do possessions anymore.”

I had recognized Samedi’s distinctive handiwork when Persi attacked Hannibal. But for just a moment I’d suspected other sinister magicks at work. Most of the “dark” gods and devils had agreed to abandon “all powers of supernatural ’suasion” before Lucifer and I drafted the Covenant. I hadn’t seen Lucifer since.

Are you the Coming, Samedi? Are you working alone?

“Well,” Samedi shrugged. “You clearly needed help.”

“That’s not the point. You could have just stabbed him or something. You didn’t have to possess a sentient being.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Persi rumbled. “It was lovely. Like a tiny holiday in my mind; freed from care and inhibition. And the centuries of slavery of course.”

“I did what needed to be done, Yahweh,” Samedi said. He gestured a lit cigar into existence and stuck it between his broad, white teeth. “Besides, I’m a pacifist.”

“You’re the Lord of Black Magic!”

“I was the Lord of Black Magic. But that’s in the past, and you seem to be the only one who can’t let go of the past. You haven’t even said ‘ey,
merci
for saving my sorry mortal life, Samedi.’
Ou se tres egoyis
.”

“I am not selfish. And I’m supposed to be making you feel guilty.”

Samedi swore again, and puffed smoke into a grinning skull, which hovered above us for few seconds before vanishing.

“Come now, Yahweh. You accusing me is like the pot callin’ the kettle a nigga.”

“Samedi…”

“Sorry: African-American. Anyway, it’s a good t’ing I came along, or else you’d be dead, wouldn’t you? And who would you have to blame then?”

I got to my feet. My throat hurt. I needed to take a hit off my inhaler and I was too tired to argue.

“Where am I?”

Megan McCool, the Morrigan’s last High Priestess and current human host, tugged at my elbow.

“Hello, Megan. You’re in Rome.”

Megan McCool was the definitive mousy school marm. She’d taught high school in Cambridge for ten years before her first novel,
The Irishman’s Mistress
, sold four million copies. Now she lived in a damp Tudor mansion on the outskirts of Boston. On certain nights of the year, she donned the robes of her office and welcomed the Morrigan to enter our world using her mind and body as the conduit. She was also certifiably insane.

“Ooohh that green bitch. What’s she done now?”

While I filled her in, “Baron Saturday” began to gesture like a stage magician unveiling his latest illusion. His black magic tugged at invisible superstrings, pushing aside flotillas of the dark matter that makes up the bulk of our reality.

“What are you doing?”

“Hannibal was damned by the Roman gods,” Samedi said. “But since Pluto is
très non
, I’m the only one who can open the death portal back to Hades.”

“That’s crossing pantheons. Exactly how many of your powers did you keep?”

Samedi clucked like a disapproving mother hen and uttered a creole swear word I won’t repeat. “You were always so naïve,
frère
. Of course I saved some for a rainy day.”

He shot his hands up, his index fingers pointing skyward, then took three long backward steps. A second later, twin columns of blue flame roared up from the Earth. Samedi had summoned a Hades Portal, a direct link to the Roman Underworld. The air thronged with the bored moans of the Roman dead who had lived, died, and been damned before the coming of Christianity. These days, most eternal damnations consist largely of endless wandering through badly lit hallways searching for someone to unlock the doors.

There was a flash, and the Portal became a bright hole hovering between the two flaming columns. Persi the quarter-mastodon inserted his trunk under Hannibal’s shattered body and lifted it off the ground. The Carthaginian had nearly reconstituted himself. The force that empowered him was working overtime.

“Wait!”

Megan McCool strode forward and stared up at the rapidly reforming features of the man who nearly destroyed Rome twice.

“Bastard looks like Vin Diesel.”

With that completely indecipherable comment, McCool gave Hannibal the finger.

“‘Concubine’ my ass, swordboy.”

Then Persi dropped Hannibal into the Hades Portal.

“Well,” McCool said, “now that that’s over, would one of you handsome Entities kindly provide a lady with a portal back to Boston?”

Behind her, Hannibal’s right hand shot out and grabbed McCool’s belt. McCool was yanked backward and fell, screaming, through the Hades Portal. The columns of fire were sucked after them while the earth rumbled beneath me as if giants were breakdancing in the guts of the world. Then the Portal slammed shut.

“Sweet Christmas.”

“Well,” Samedi sighed. “I’m off.”

“You’re off? Open it!”

“
Pourquoi
?”

“You just damned the Morrigan, that’s why!”

Samedi shrugged. “I’m all dry,
mon petit dieu
. It cost me a lot of power to help you today. And besides, the Morrigan’s tough: she be aaahhhiiight.”

“Hey! You also sent her mortal host to Hell!”

“Can’t you get her out?”

“Not now! Only a death god can free a damned soul. You’ve got to open that Portal, Samedi. She’ll think I tricked her!”

Samedi shrugged again, sadly.

“I’ve got just enough
couraunt
to get back to New York. I’ve incorporated one of those Disney kids into the show. He’s handsome enough, but he dances like Barbara Bush. We have a run through in twenty minutes and I’ll have to seduce fifty dancers just to stay awake.
Je vous en prie
!”

“Samedi wait!”

He forked a “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinky finger. Then he turned away and vanished in a violent burst of smoke and bongo drums.

Persi nuzzled me the way a dog nuzzles a distracted human.

“That was delightful. What’s next?”

I could already sense my connection strengthening as the subtle fabric settled around me. Hannibal’s rebanishment had removed the psychic interference. However, electronic evidence of divine interference was already circling the globe. I knew what came next.

And it was going to hurt.

“What will you be doing now?”

The Pope was standing a few yards away. In all the chaos I’d forgotten about him.

“Pardon?”

“I said now that you’ll no doubt be appearin’ on YouTube, what will you do?”

The old man leaned forward, his eyes twinkling with glee. “Perhaps, in your wrath, you’ll destroy the Earth… and all who dwell upon her?”

“You know me?”

“Don’t insult me, Lord. I’ve only served you for over fifty years. At least the idea of You, you know… in the grand sense. The zombie mammoth over there keeps bowing to you. And that Puerto Rican with the pigsticker kept calling you ‘God of the Hebrews’.”

The Pope chuckled and scratched his backside. “I may be a thickset old dinosaur, but I’m not blind. Now, will you answer a man who has served for over five decades?”

“I have no intention of destroying the Earth. You people seem capable of that without any help from me.”

“Will you redeem us then? Save us from ourselves?”

“I’m going to push the Reset button.”

“Beg pardon?”

“In a few moments you won’t remember any of this. You’ll all go back to doing… whatever it is you do.”

The Pope nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. “Back to business as usual then?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I’m comfortable with that, I suppose,” he shrugged. “Well, g’bye to you then.”

The Pope turned and took two steps toward the burning city. Then he turned back. “One last thing?”

“Yes?”

“We don’t really need you anymore, do we? I mean… it’s obvious that you couldn’t be less interested in guiding the river of human destiny. ‘Free will’ apparently being the way o’ things… I gather that’s best for all concerned. And anyway, I’d say we’ve done alright for ourselves: global warming, famine, reality TV and the military industrial complex notwithstanding. I suppose if you were really the God you were cracked up to be… you’d have put a stop to all that.”

“Well… this was fun, but I’ve got a reality to repair, so…”

“Stands to reason then, that we’ve been on our own since Day One. Leaving us none the better or worse fer your occasional indulgence. I s’pose it’s best that you go back to doin’ whatever it is you do, and leave us to work things out fer ourselves.”