Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (11 page)

It was hurt, but it didn’t seem any less deadly for that. It rounded on Kalkin, who had a wickedly curved talwar in either hand. He slashed both sabres in an X pattern across the rakshasa’s chest, and it reeled, keening horribly. Sticky, tarry blood spattered the platform and Kalkin’s face.

The rakshasa scuttled down onto the track and limped off. It had had enough. These devas weren’t easy pickings like ordinary humans were.

Parashurama gave chase, his battleaxe held high. He swung. There was a
chunk
sound, like a hatchet cleaving wood, only louder and wetter. The rakshasa let out a high-pitched shriek that reminded me of the blood-curdling noise urban foxes made when fighting in my garden, and then Narasimha sprang forth, straddling the creature’s back, talons out. His
coup de grâce
blow severed the demon’s head clean from its neck at a single swipe.

The image steadied. I could hear Rama panting. Vamana was looking startled and dazed, his head bowed beneath the ceiling. Varaha was feeling himself all over, checking to see that he was uninjured. Kalkin was saying, “Did we get it? Tell me we got it.”

Buddha joined Parashurama and Narasimha down on the track. He approached the rakshasa and uttered what sounded like a prayer in Bengali. Switching to English, he said, “You are gone. You have acted only as your nature compelled you to. We bear you no ill will for that. You were savage but necessary, and your cycle through life will lead you to purification and oneness with the heart of creation eventually, as it does all of us.”

“Yeah,” said Vamana, shrinking down. “Or, to put it another way – you’ve just been deva’ed, you piss-ugly piece of shit.”

¹
Secret Origin:
He was Jean-Marc Belgarde, gold medallist in the men’s recurve event at the FITA Archery World Cup three years running, and also winner of the Longines Prize for Precision trophy for scoring the most bullseyes during a single competitive season.

²
Secret Origin:
Prior to becoming an Avatar, he had been an ascetic yogi and professional life coach, Mohinder Dasgupta from Bangladesh. He had packed on the pounds since donning the mantle of Buddha but still moved with the lightness and nimbleness of a trim, limber man.

³
A bit like the ghost girl in
Ring
, but without the scary long hair.

12. THE SCOOP OF A LIFETIME

Y
OU CAN’T HAVE
missed the footage of the Avatars’ first public interview, such as it was. Even if you missed it as a live broadcast or repeated endlessly on Epic News and other channels for days afterwards, once it was up on YouTube it got about a kajillion hits worldwide. I’ll bet there were monks in remote Himalayan lamaseries who watched it, families on Micronesian atolls who debated it for days afterwards.

The Avatars emerged from Grand Central victorious, lugging the rakshasa’s remains with them. Melody Berkowitz and crew were waiting to pounce. Berkowitz, sensing the scoop of a lifetime, vaulted the police barricade and hustled across to them as fast as her Jimmy Choos would allow, holding her microphone out like a cattle prod. The questions came thick and fast: “Who are you guys? What is that thing you’re carrying? Where are you from? Are you maybe superheroes?”

Cops closed in on Berkowitz, ordering her to get back behind the cordon. Buddha raised a hand and begged them to leave her be. He wished to speak. He wished to address the world.

The cops, once again in thrall to Buddha’s voice, backed off. The Epic News camera operator, who was less intrepid than the onscreen talent and had stuck to the civilian side of the cordon, zoomed in for a close-up.

“We,” said Buddha, “are the Dashavatara, the Ten Avatars of Vishnu. Our purpose is this: We wish to help. Whatever threats rear their heads, we will deal with. Whatever sinister powers endanger the safety of humankind, we will confront. Wherever innocent lives are in jeopardy, we will be there. It’s that simple.”

“Vishnu...” said Berkowitz, struggling to place the name. “So you’re... gods?”

“Some might call us that.”

“And this is what was attacking those people?” Berkowitz gestured at the dead rakshasa, which Parashurama and Narasimha were loading onto Krishna’s chariot.

The camera operator tried to get a clear shot of the asura, but all he managed was a blurred glimpse of its flailing limbs as it tumbled out of sight into the sky sled’s rear deck.

“A rakshasa,” said Buddha. “A demon. Bloodthirsty. Driven by rage and hunger. Unrestrained by conscience. Ignorant of the sacred duties of dharma. Its only instinct is to slaughter and feast. That one was the first since the days of the scriptures to manifest in the mortal realm and wreak havoc. It will in all likelihood not be the last. There will be more of its kind to come, and worse, alas.”

“But rest assured, we will stop them, as we stopped that one,” said Kalkin.

“Yeah,” said Vamana. “Kicking monster arse, that’s what we Avatars do. Like Ghostbusters but thirty times cooler.”

“Wait!” exclaimed Berkowitz. The Dashavatara had begun boarding the chariot. “Don’t go yet. The Epic News audience – the world – deserves to know more about you. What are your names?”

“You can look that up,” said Krishna.

“Google, Wikipedia,” said Varaha, in his dry, drawling New Zealander accent.
¹
“It’s all there.”

“For the time being all you need to know,” said Parashurama, “is we’re on the right side. Our siddhis – our powers – are in service of American citizens and the peoples of all nations.”

“Will you be fighting terrorism?” Berkowitz asked as the chariot’s engine began to cycle. “Going after Al Qaeda? Bringing peace to the Middle East?”

“I advise you to step back, ma’am,” Parashurama said.

The chariot lifted off, and the hurricane downwash from its tilted rocket forced Berkowitz to retreat several paces. Her hair was thrown into chaos, whipping about her face. She kept lobbing questions at the Avatars, even as their transport roared out of earshot. The camera followed the chariot all the way down East 42nd Street until it was no more than a dot on the horizon, then resumed on Berkowitz, who was trying her best to fix her dishevelled coiffure.

“Well,” she said, breathless, “I can’t begin to describe the magnitude of what we’ve just seen, but I’ll try. The Ten Avatars of Vishnu – gods, we’re told, but they look like bona fide superheroes to me. And they fight demons. Slay demons.
Demons
. It’s a lot to process. Everything, and I mean everything, has changed in an instant. This isn’t the world we woke up in this morning. I’m... I’m finding it had to put into words. They’re out there. They’re here. Holy cow.” She was lapsing into stunned inarticulacy. “Viewers, you have just witnessed something extraordinary. Unprecedented. We’ve entered a new era. Avatars. Superheroes. Whoa.”

¹
Secret Origin:
He had once simply been Stevie Craig, a committed Kiwi eco-activist who had been kicked out of several green organisations for being too radical. Now, as Varaha the Boar, he was the Avatar of Vishnu most closely associated with the Earth, its protector and upholder.

13. DOUBLE-PAGE SPREAD MONTAGE

W
HAT
I
SHALL
do now is the prose equivalent of what we in the artist biz call a montage.

In a comic this would be a double-page spread, a series of tableau images segueing one into the next without panel borders, straddling the staple fold. The captions would carry the reader’s eye across the entire composition, making sure every section got its equal share of attention.

This montage is of the Dashavatara during the days immediately after New York, as they jetted around the planet battling one Vedic bad guy after another.

Here’s them in Moscow taking on Kumbhakarna, a huge horned demon with Hulk-like musculature and Herculean strength. Kumbhakarna has been busy snacking on any Muscovites he can lay his hands on, snatching them up and biting off their heads like human Peperami sticks. The Avatars have pursued him halfway across the city, down into the Metro and up again, and are facing him in a final standoff in Red Square, with St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin wall forming a scenic backdrop to the action, church and state in all their pomp. Kumbhakarna, blood dripping from his mouth, is tearing up granite paving slabs and hurling them at his pursuers like missiles. His body is quilled with Rama’s arrows. Varaha is charging at him, head down, tusks to the fore, ready to deliver the fatal blow which will disembowel the monster and end his rampage.

And now here’s Paris in the spring, but we’re far beneath the avenues and boulevards, in the city’s maze of sewers and catacombs, because there is a nest of vetalas down here, slimy, nocturnal vampiric types, all snaggle teeth and pulpy albino axolotl flesh. They have been coming up through manholes during the wee small hours and dining on denizens of the Pigalle, Paris’s red light district, pouncing on lap dancers, prostitutes and punters alike in the street, hauling them down below and draining their blood. Narasimha has led the Dashavatara to the nest thanks to his tracking skills and hyper-acute sense of smell, and Parashurama and Rama are making short work of the creatures, as is Matsya, who drags the vetalas down into the foetid waste-lumpy water and holds them under until they drown.
¹

Here’s another scene showing Matsya in his element. It’s Venice, and Duryodhana, a villainous eldritch king, has been subjecting the city to a reign of terror. Armed with a massive mace, he has been cutting a swathe of devastation through
La Serenissima
, smashing down delicate, venerable Venetian buildings left, right and centre, a one-man demolition crew. The local authorities have been unable to prevent him or even catch him. Every time he runs into opposition he dives into the nearest canal and swims off underwater. Duryodhana is capable of holding his breath indefinitely. Luckily, Matsya is at home in an aquatic environment, can swim at speeds of up to twenty knots, and can see in watery murk as well as you or I can in broad daylight. He’s as strong as a great white shark, too. He wrestles Duryodhana to the surface and onto dry land, where Krishna takes over. He and Duryodhana have history. They were on opposing sides on the battlefield during the war between the Kaurava brothers and the Pandava brothers, as chronicled in the
Mahabharata
, so it is fitting that Krishna again defeats him now. He grabs Duryodhana’s mace handle and hauls him up high in his chariot, Duryodhana too stubborn to let go of the weapon. When they are at an altitude of several hundred feet he drops him, and Duryodhana plummets, landing on the Campanile in St Mark’s Square and becoming impaled on its pyramidal spire. The bell tower, already suffering badly from subsidence, shudders under the impact. Cracks appear, and it collapses in a heap of red brick rubble, its five bells clanging mournfully as it falls. An architectural tragedy, but at least Venice is spared further ruin.

Here’s Rahu, a shape-shifting asura, on the loose in the
favelas
of Mexico City. Rahu can adopt any humanoid form he wishes, but his transformations cannot fool Narasimha because his scent remains constant and is distinctively noxious. He has even at one point assumed the guise of a ten-year-old girl and feigned abject terror, but Narasimha’s nose never lies. The shanty houses of the slums are flattened as Rahu finally morphs into his true shape, of a dragon with hooded eyes and an abnormally huge head, and engages the Avatars in a knock-down, drag-out fight. Vamana, at full height, begins strangling Rahu while Parashurama slashes at his body with his axe. Kurma is protecting some street children from becoming collateral damage. He shields them with his armour-clad body as a corrugated iron roof comes crashing down. Rahu, tail lashing and thrashing, dies.