Pawn (25 page)

Chapter Twenty Nine.

“Alright, what do we do now agent? Dikē?”

Barns was in a very strange state of mind as he like the rest of them stood in the courtyard surrounded
by the bodies of fallen monsters, and asked his question of a woman in a white robe holding a silver spear. But then he’d been in that state for a while.

“Dikē, Goddess of justice, inspector. And what we do is simple. We wait until our friends open that rather intimidating oak door keeping us out of the castle itself. Then we find Venner and Plutos and teach them a lesson they’ll not soon forget.” Barns liked that, they all did, and a half-hearted cheer went up from all of them, even if they didn’t know who their friends were, or for that matter who Plutos was. Wasn’t he a corporation?

But still most of them were simply trying to deal with the events of the past few minutes. Of huge black hounds with two fire breathing heads a piece, and of surviving. Their worlds were collapsing all around them. The simple, logical world of the humble copper, where things made sense, was being replaced by a fantasy tale of some sort. And it wasn’t helped by the fact that some of those black corpses were starting to smoke a little. Corpses didn’t do that. Still the inspector managed at least a semblance of self-control.

“Goddess?” His question brought a smile to her lips and then a small chuckle.

“I like you inspector. And your service these past decades has been exemplary. So please don’t spoil my good impression of you by asking foolish questions.” All of which left Barns wondering what exactly the smart ones were. No one else he noticed was in a hurry to jump in. Not even Hopkins who was normally full of questions. And as for his service? She didn’t pay him his wages. But that was irrelevant like everything else. So he ignored all the madness of what had happened, of what he was staring at, and tried to regain his wits as he thought of smarter questions to ask.

“So Venner, he’s a god too?”

“Hell no!” She seemed shocked by the thought, maybe even outraged. “He’s just a mortal. Horrible, loathsome and disgustingly greedy, but human. But he’s in the service of a god, Plutos, god of greed. Think of Venner as his high priest, working hard to glorify his name.”

A high priest? Barns wouldn’t have thought Venner capable of worshipping anyone above himself. But if that worship gave him power? Wealth? Maybe. He might even have asked him, but Venner had vanished from the battlements so high above them when the hounds had proven less effective at killing them than he’d hoped for. Everyone had. All his buyers, his fellow crime lords, his friends if he had any had gone with him, maybe disappointed that their games hadn’t worked out quite as they’d hoped. But when he looked up to double check, it was to see that someone new had arrived in their stead.

“That’s the god of prosperity Dikē. Learn it. Or when I take my place, I will teach it to you so sternly that you will never forget.” He didn’t look like much Barns thought. Short and overweight, overdressed to the extreme and who wore a fedora anyway? People didn’t even wear hats any longer. But suddenly he knew where Venner got his dress sense from. It wasn’t about style after all. It was about wealth. It was about showing everyone how much you had by wearing the most outrageously expensive stuff you could buy.

“Ahh the toad finally shows his ugly face.” Dikē didn’t seem particularly impressed by his dress sense either. “Come to watch the demise of your plans in person?”

“Mine? Think again bitch. I am about to claim the heavens, and you are about to die a truly horrible death. For there shall be no justice in the new world save mine. Money.” And when he said it, Barns and the others felt as though a doom had come upon them. A chill running through their blood. But at least Dikē hadn’t been affected. In fact she seemed completely untroubled by his threats.

“Really toad? All on your little fat lonesome?”

“I’m not alone. I have Hades on my side.” Now that was finally a name that Barns recognised. They all did. But he didn’t want to. God of the underworld? Hell? That did not sound good. Not good at all.

“Oh really? Then where is he? Nowhere nearby I assume.” Dikē actually managed to laugh at him, something that did not go down well with the short fat god. In fact it made him scowl.

“He’ll be here.”

“Dreams are free toad. Hades serves no one but himself, and now that your plans are in ruins, he will find that distance will be his dearest friend. So who have you really got with you. Erebos? The frightened little shadow? He’ll be looking to hide too.”

“Then why don’t you come and find out?” It was a dare, but Barns knew it was more than that. There was something sneaky in the words. A trap maybe.

“Because I know you have mined that door, desperate to kill us all. So I think I’ll wait patiently until my friends let me in instead.” She laughed at him some more. “Or did you think that your pathetic plans and traps would actually work? That I wouldn’t see through your lies? That Moirae wouldn’t know every single detail of your plan years in advance?”

For an answer Plutos snarled, a sound that wasn’t at all godlike as far as Barns could be sure. But he wasn’t finished.

“Your friends down in the dungeons? They aren’t coming. They’re dead. I made sure of that. Moirae isn’t the only one who can spin a thread.”

“Actually they’re all alive and well. Nothing more than a few scratches among the lot of them. Your beasts are dead. I do hope you didn’t promise to return them to Hades.” They all turned as another woman’s voice came from behind them. “He likes his pets. And he’s going to be very upset with you if they aren’t returned whole and happy.”

The woman didn’t seem very godlike to Barns. She wasn’t as young and powerful as the others, and her face showed the deep lines of worry. Years and years of worry. But still she held herself tall, and Dikē nodded respectfully to her. She had to be someone.

“Moirae. Still spinning fairy stories for children? You forget, I still have Aphrodite.” Plutos yelled it down from the battlements like a threat. But then it was exactly that. “I will destroy her utterly.”

And there it was, the name that somehow tied everything together. Aphrodite. Goddess of love and beauty, and more importantly the woman, goddess who Rembrandt had painted. Barns clutched at that little jewel of information even as he knew he would never be able to use it in a court of law. But he was already certain that none of this was ever going to court.

“Oh toad! You do make some terrible mistakes don’t you? Aphrodite is free already, protected body and soul by her consort. You never had a chance against her. The chains are broken, Hades is going to be very upset about that as well, and Rufus is leading her straight through the tunnels to exact a very fitting punishment on your backside.”

Rufus? The most unfortunate man in the world still lived? Now there was something to celebrate, and Barns almost risked a smile. Just a small one. Especially when he was suddenly realising how a man could be so unlucky and yet lucky at the same time. He was being played with. The news of his survival didn’t seem to have the same effect on Plutos though.

“That puny mortal. I will eat him alive!”

“I don’t think so dear. You see he’s been well trained and well armed. He knows how to use a weapon. And you keep forgetting, you were never a god of war.” She smiled at him, almost like a sweet old aunt at her wayward child and he knew she was doing it just to anger the little man.

“But speaking of the war gods, you should probably step aside as they’ve reached the door. Chances are that it’s going to be violent, and I doubt that balcony of yours will survive.” Plutos snarled, but still he backed away, his ugly face disappearing from the battlements high above. He was only just in time.

There was a cry of fury, a woman’s voice piercing the air, and then an explosion as the entire front section of the castle suddenly decided it didn’t like standing upright any longer. Instinctively Barns and the others hit the ground, covering their heads with their hands, and all of them knowing that this close to such a massive blast it didn’t matter. But nothing came their way.

Instead the stones and rubble and dust all somehow sailed safely high over their heads, the shockwave when it touched them was barely a breeze, and even the dust decided to go somewhere else instead of settling on them. It was impossible of course, but so was everything else. And when Barns risked looking up, it was to see the two goddesses still standing there in front of the castle, completely unconcerned by what had happened. They hadn’t even ducked.

Feeling a little foolish, Barns picked himself up and started dusting off the dirt on his clothes. So did everyone else. Just in time to see a whole host of new people, more gods he guessed, emerge from what had been the front of the castle. One by one they exited out into the daylight to greet the two goddesses, and each of them she named. Polemos, Alala, Mars and so many more. All coming to greet them. And all he noticed, covered in muck and filth. It seemed the tunnels and dungeons underneath the castle, weren’t the cleanest of places, and even gods could get dirt on them. But the heavily lined woman seemed to have an answer for that as well.

“Eumonia dear.” A name called, and a woman appeared on cue, though where she’d come from he didn’t know. What he did know was that she had to be the most neatly dressed, impossibly clean woman he’d ever seen. There was not a spot on her, not a fold in her dress out of place, and even her hair refused to move an atom’s breadth in the gentle breeze. But that he guessed was her power. Neatness. Especially when she started waving her arms around gently, and all the muck and filth on the new gods, and even that on the uniforms of the mortal cops still picking themselves up off the ground simply turned to dust and floated to the ground away from them. In mere seconds they were all shiny and clean again.

“It smells fresh!” Hopkins was right. His suit, his vest it smelled as though it had just come straight from the laundry. Even his gun was spotless, looking as though it had just been polished. The others were discovering the same. Was that a miracle? A goddess’ power? Barns didn’t know. It probably was one, there was no other way to explain it, but it seemed like such a small thing compared to everything else that had happened.

“Thank you my dear.” The heavily lined woman smiled at her and the new goddess, Eumonia, curtsied to her. Who curtsied these days? And just who was she supposed to be, the Goddess of Dry Cleaning? But of course that was just another of those questions that he knew would never be answered. Best not to ask it in the first place.

Best not to ask the figures in togas and battle dress appearing in the dust of what had been the front wall of the castle, if they truly were gods of war, either. They were so overdressed that they could only either be actors playing ancients Greek war gods, or else the gods themselves. The first would be a disaster, as he suspected there would be more fighting ahead and plastic swords wouldn’t be a lot of use. But the second might be even more dangerous, especially if they got upset with the question. And there didn’t seem to be a third option.

“Come along people. We have a bad guy to witness receiving his punishment.” The heavily lined woman clapped her hands and called to them all like a teacher calling to her young students, and they obeyed much the same way, lining up to follow her to their new allies inside the castle.

It wasn’t a choice but even if it had been, Barns would have followed her. The inspector was suddenly curious about what lay ahead as he hadn’t been in a very long time. This might not be a police matter any more, after all if the gods were involved it was out of the jurisdiction of any court of the land, but he still hoped to see some bad guys put in their place and judgement made.

He absolutely wanted to see Venner locked away.

*********************

Chapter Thirty.

Rufus kicked the huge gold and silver gilded doors open, as he ran through the castle, desperate to find the outside, and get Di to safety, and at least they were finally above ground. It had to be close. Close enough that even a window would do.

But it wasn’t the way out that opened up in front of them as he’d hoped for. It was a ball room, maybe. Or a hall. Or something with huge marble tiled floors, tall thin leaded windows reaching for the sky on both sides, ornate velvet drapes hanging from them, and a domed ceiling painted with ornate frescos and speckled with crystal chandeliers.

“Oh bugger!” Rufus and Di both were surprised as they found themselves entering the great hall and, again when they discovered everyone standing there, seemingly waiting for them. Rufus especially as he’d thought he was heading for the entrance to the castle, and the way out. Getting Di to safety had been his goal. His only goal. And he’d thought they were on the right path. Instead he seemed to have lead them directly to the heart of the celestial battle.

But at least no one seemed to be fighting, yet. No one seemed to be attacking them. That was a pleasant change. Though the tension in the air as they stood their ground against one another was like a physical weight.

Plutos, some other overdressed guy, and nearly a dozen men armed with heavy artillery held the left side of the chamber, setting up barricades and preparing for world war three. And why he had to ask himself, did they get guns and he didn’t? It seemed unfair somehow.

But closer to them on the right were Polemos and the other war gods, all standing proud and straight, not bothering with barricades, and not worried either. They seemed to believe that their primitive weapons and shields would be enough. Then again he realised, they were quite possibly right. Certainly his armour and weapons had been performing miracles thus far.

“Oh my god you are alive!” Rufus turned to his right as he recognised the shocked voice, and sure enough Inspector Barns was standing there with a lot of other officers, looking as though someone had just whacked him over the head with a shovel. It was actually good to see him though. A touch of the familiar in this truly strange world.

“Yeah. I don’t know how exactly. But I’m alive.” It was funny how he could say that and not even think it remarkable. Too much had happened since then. But at least he understood what they were doing even if he didn’t know why they were there. The officers, all in their full body armour, were raising barricades of their own, upturning huge dining tables and hoping they would stop the bullets soon to start flying. Rufus wasn’t sure that they would, but he also wasn’t sure that they needed to. This wasn’t a battle of guns, so far.

“I blame Di here.” But he was just being facetious and he kissed her on the cheek to prove it. She wasn’t that bothered anyway as she held his hand and beamed at him. But the Inspector was, and he suddenly turned very pale and started coughing.

“Inspector?” But the inspector was down for the count, and all he could do was gasp and cough for a while. It was probably a bad place for that to happen. With the gods and goddesses all lined up against one another and a celestial war looking to break out very shortly. But that didn’t stop the others from rushing to his side, checking if he was alright and starting to slap him on the back.

“Are you alright?” Sergeant Hopkins was with him, looking very worried, and for someone with such a naturally long face, that was a worrying expression. He was even looking to be getting ready to perform the Heimlich move, stretching out his impossibly long arms and balling up his fists.

“No! No! The painting! The painting!” The inspector though, wasn’t actually choking and he clearly didn’t want his sergeant to manhandle him. He even pushed away his nearest hand. He was simply coughing for some reason as he desperately pointed at the stolen painting sitting proudly in the centre of the room, while still bent double and spluttering away.

“What?” Everyone turned to stare at the painting, and Rufus had to admit when he laid eyes on it that it was a very nice portrait of Di. Sitting on some sort of garden chair surrounded by roses, she looked lovely. Almost as lovely as she did in real life. So what was the big deal?

But it was a big deal. He knew that when he saw the other officers’ eyes all doing exactly the same thing as Inspector Barns’ had. Stare at the painting for a bit, then stare at Di standing beside him, and then repeat. Funnily enough they didn’t look quite so well either after a bit. In fact they’d all gone quite pale.

Then, like a bomb exploding somewhere inside his tired brain it hit him. He’d seen it on the late news, usually when he was falling asleep after another hard day of being beaten up. It was a four hundred year old painting of a woman who was standing right beside him, looking not a single day older. He’d been slowly adjusting to this strange new world as shock after shock was dropped on him. The others were just starting down that path and getting hammered by it. But that just made him laugh.

“Yes ladies and gentlemen. May I present to you the Goddess of beauty and love, Aphrodite and the woman I love.” It was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but after everything else that had happened he needed something to lighten the mood. They all did. And though no one else laughed, at least a little of the cares of the day seemed to leave the others. Though not everyone was so easily amused.

“For roughly the next thirty seconds or so worm. Until my servants chop you into little pieces.” Plutos was still himself, still one of the nastiest people around, and he reminded them all again that there was a battle looming. A battle of gods. He still looked outnumbered though, at least to Rufus’ untrained eye. Though he understood that the true power of the sides had nothing to do with numbers. Plutos was a god in ascension, whatever that meant. The others were on the decline, and he still thought he held the balance.

“My lord?” His servant, Venner, didn’t seem half so sure as he stared at his lord with something akin to horror on his face. But then he wasn’t the sort to fight. Not in the physical sense. His weapons were cheque books and lawyers.

“Not you fool.” Plutos snapped at him, on edge even if he did still think he was in the driver’s seat. “You couldn’t hold a sword against him. But there is one who can. Who always has, and who always will. Or Moirae sweet pea, had you forgotten that? All your plans, all your machinations, the twisting and turning of all the strings, and you forgot that little fact.”

“But I didn’t.” Plutos was back to gloating. It seemed to be his godly attribute. But Moirae standing among the war gods didn’t look particularly concerned. In fact she was grinning too.

“Let’s put that to the test shall we brother. Your so very clever planning against my centuries of having prepared for this very moment.” She smiled at him, and Plutos would have had to be blind to not realise that she thought she had him. But he was blind and instead of worrying he laughed a little louder. She turned to him.

“Rufus dear. This is yours to do. This is your choice.” Her eyes were staring straight at him, the look on her face so serious, and he knew she meant it. This was the choice she had spoken of before. But what choice? There was no choice to make. Just one short fat trader in a frippery of expensive clothes, who might or might not be a god, but who was no fighter. And he was just about bold enough to believe he could take him, sword and shield in hand.

“Plutos.” He raised his sword high, preparing to attack.

“Oh not me worm.” Plutos leered at him. A most unpleasant expression on his equally unpleasant face. “I’m no warrior. I hire them.”

“Erebos.” There was a sudden shift in the light, the shadows that had been covering a part of the room near to him suddenly lightened, and people started appearing from within them. Two of them. Two heavily armed people.

“Rufus.” He knew that voice, and the sound clutched at him, just as it had when he was a small child. “You will pay for what you did to my son.”

Rufus saw him then, the cloud of shadow and darkness that had been surrounding him somehow, vanishing fully, and his heart almost stopped beating. That face. That terrible, grinning, sadistic face. It was the face in the darkness that he’d feared all his life. It was the face of all his nightmares. And finally, not having seen him for the best part of ten or fifteen years, he knew it for the face of his father.

And standing beside him was the other face he knew and hated with every fibre of his being. His mother. She who had known. She who had not only done nothing to help him, but watched. And she who had called him a mistake, told him he should never have been born. And laughed at his misery. He hated her.

Together, the two of them in one place, coming for him. It was a waking nightmare. And as strong as he had felt only seconds before, he was suddenly kid weak. But worse they had weapons. God weapons like his. His father a sword and shield, black and horrific as it whispered to him of unspeakable evil. His mother a pare of knives that glowed with the fury of the damned.

Time seemed to stop about then. Seconds taking hours, their every step as they came closer and closer impossibly drawn out, but not stopped. And all the time Rufus knew that they were coming for him. That they were going to hurt him, again. And that there was nothing he could do.

His legs had stopped working, and if he tried to run he knew he’d just collapse on the spot and they would have him. His heart was thundering in his chest. He was sweating from every pore, and his palms were moist as they gripped the hilt of his sword. He would have screamed if he could, but even his throat was paralysed with fear.

It was the longest and most terrible moment of his life. And it wasn’t the first time.

“Courage.” From out of nowhere he heard Moirae’s voice inside his head. And he remembered what she had told him. A choice. A decision. And he had to make it. He had to make the right one. But it wasn’t even a choice. It was life and death. Run, give up, scream in terror, that was one choice. But if he did it he would die. He knew it. The gods on the side of good would lose their battle. And Di would be returned to her prison, to eventually rot and die herself. It was unthinkable. But the other option was only to fight, and he didn’t know how to. He had never known how to stand up to them. It was why he had learned to run.

All those sessions in the arena. All those battles as he had been smashed and broken again and again. They didn’t matter any more. And the armour, the shield, the sword in his hands, they couldn’t help him. Not if he couldn’t wield them, and for some reason his arms just wouldn’t work. Like his legs they were simply frozen with fear. And all the time those two monsters were coming closer. He had no time.

“Oh dead God please.” He begged for help, not even knowing any more who he was begging. But he could hear nothing save the frantic beating of his own heart. No one could help him he knew. This was his choice, his and his alone. Fight or die. He had to fight, but he couldn’t.

“You can do this.” Di was beside him, her hand in his, and he knew the glorious power that was her love.

“This is the man who hurt you.” Polemos was suddenly in his head, his voice taking him back to that day in the arena when he’d punched a bag through the far wall. And though he was as always too certain and too demanding, it was good to hear him again. It was good to remember that day. And to remember the punching bag. But then as he remembered, staring at the bag, hitting it with all his might, he hadn’t been afraid. He hadn’t been asking for help from anyone else. The power was within him. Always.

And it wasn’t rage and anger. He’d thought it was then. But now he suddenly knew better. It wasn’t about striking back at those who had hurt him as a child. It was about one thing, and one thing only. It was about right and wrong. What they had done to him for all those years was wrong. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his doing in any way. It was theirs, and theirs alone. He had been a child.

They had done wrong. A door opened somewhere inside his very soul. A pathway to his own power. They had done wrong and as they grew closer he suddenly understood that could not be allowed.

No more.

And as he understood that he suddenly understood his older brother and sister in a way he’d never known before. He realised that he wasn’t the only one who had been hurt by them in that most terrible way. His older brother Daryl, he had been the first. He had been hurt again and again and again by their father until finally he had broken. He had learned to accept the evil, to recognise it as a sign of love, and when it had been taken away from him, he had felt empty. He had filled that emptiness with anger and rage. And he had blamed those who had come after him for his loss. That was why he so hated him.